Lords Sitting of 24 June 1980

Preamble
The House met at half-past two of the clock: The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
Prayers—Read by the Lord Bishop of Rochester.

LEAVE OF ABSENCE: THE LORD CHANCELLOR
The LORD CHANCELLOR (Lord Hailsham of Saint Marylebone): My Lords, before the commencement of the business of the day I would like to take the opportunity to tell the House that, with the approval of Her Majesty, I have accepted an invitation from the Swiss Minister of Justice and Police to pay an official visit to Switzerland from this Thursday 26th June to Monday 30th June. I hope the House will agree to grant me leave of absence for Thursday 26th and also for part of Monday 30th. Although I shall be back in England on Monday, I do not think I shall be back in time to be on the Woolsack at 2.30.

HONG KONG AND KOWLOON URBAN COUNCIL
2.37 p.m.
Lord BROCKWAY: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what proposals the Hong Kong Government have made for reconstruction of the urban council for Hong Kong and Kowloon.
Lord TREFGARNE: My Lords, on 6th June the Hong Kong Government published a Green Paper entitled A Pattern of District Administration in Hong Kong. Copies have been placed in the Library of the House, together with a summary of the proposals. Although the Paper deals primarily with district administration there are some consequential proposals for the urban council,
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including the reservation of seats for council members on district boards, an increase in elected and appointed membership and the introduction of adult suffrage.
Lord BROCKWAY: My Lords, while welcoming the extension of the franchise which previously was restricted on educational and professional grounds, I should like to ask two questions. First, in view of the responsible way in which the elected members have fulfilled their duties on the urban council under the inspiration of Elsie Elliot, why are half the members still to be nominated by the Governor? Secondly, are there any proposals to extend the functions of the urban council, which are now almost entirely restricted, to health, recreational and cultural amenities?
Lord TREFGARNE: My Lords, the functions of the council are a little wider than the noble Lord suggests. However, we do not propose—or at least it is not proposed under this document—to extend them further because of the need, as we see it, to maintain the efficiency of central Government throughout the territory. As for the ratio of elected and appointed members to the council, there is a need, as we see it, to maintain a wide range of experience on the council and we think that the present arrangements are working very well.
Lord GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, is the noble Lord-in-Waiting aware that we on this side of the House would support what my noble friend Lord Brockway has said as regards the general intention of the extension of elective democracy in the Crown Colony? We support him because he is always impeccable as well as implacable on these matters. Is he further aware that we are equally concerned that the Governor and the Government of Hong Kong—and equally the Government of the United Kingdom—should constantly bear in mind what the Chinese community in Hong Kong desire and what the authorities in Peking would deem to be generally in the interests of Hong Kong and, indeed, of themselves in this matter?
Lord TREFGARNE: My Lords, I am not able to comment on the views of the Government in Peking on this matter. We are not aware of those views. How-

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ever, as regards the extension of the electoral arrangements, these proposals do, of course, provide for such an extension in the new territories.
Lord BROCKWAY: My Lords, will the Government take a longer view of this matter? Is it not the case that before many years have passed China will probably take over Hong Kong? Would it not be an excellent example to Communist China if we had full democracy in Hong Kong not only in the urban council but by the establishment of a legislative assembly?
Lord TREFGARNE: My Lords, I know of no basis for the assertion that China will take over Hong Kong. The lease has many years to run, and in any event I imagine that the arrangements will be renegotiated long before it expires.
Lord LEE of NEWTON: My Lords, in view of the great change of attitude of the Peking Government, does the noble Lord agree that they may be looking at the position of Hong Kong in the longer term and that they will agree to a greater amount of election rather than appointment of the council?
Lord TREFGARNE: My Lords, as I have said, I cannot forecast what attitude the Peking Government will take in this matter. But it is certainly the case that China derives a good deal of benefit from the existence of Hong Kong in its present form.
Lord SEGAL: My Lords, does not Hong Kong as it is today already present an excellent example for Communist China and any other territory in the Far East to follow?
Lord TREFGARNE: My Lords, I am not quite sure to what sort of example the noble Lord is referring, but certainly it is a splendid example of the free enterprise system at its best.

THE FISHING INDUSTRY: PROTECTIVE MEASURES
2.43 p.m.
Lord BOOTHBY: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether, now that the British long-distance fishing industry is nearly dead, they can give an assurance that they are determined to protect the vital interests of our inshore fishing industry by limiting imports of cheap subsidised fish, and by ensuring the conservation of our breeding grounds, if necessary by means of an extension of fishery limits in certain areas.
The MINISTER of STATE, MINISTRY of AGRICULTURE, FISHERIES and FOOD (Earl Ferrers): My Lords, the Government's objective is to secure a satisfactory outcome to the negotiations on the common fisheries policy, which must include appropriate measures on conservation. We are, of course, aware that the fishing industry has been facing very real problems because of increased costs and weak markets. We have introduced a programme of temporary additional aid and pressed for changes in the tariffs which are applied to certain imports from outside the Community. Fisheries Ministers will be meeting representatives of all sectors of the industry on 3rd July to reassess the situation.
Lord BOOTHBY: My Lords, arising out of that Answer, do Her Majesty's Government realise that the present import of cheap, subsidised foreign fish into this country requires immediate action on the part of Her Majesty's Government if a serious crisis for what is left of our fishing industry is to be averted? Secondly, can we take it from the noble Earl's slightly vague reply that Her Majesty's Government have no intention of selling the British inshore fishing industry to the EEC in exchange for a budget settlement?
Earl FERRERS: My Lords, I think that I can reassure the noble Lord, Lord Boothby, on the last of his supplementary questions, which is that the solution of the common fisheries policy is one which must be found on its own account, and it will not be part of barter over any other aspect of the Community, least of all the budget.
With regard to his first supplementary question, I would dispute one point with

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him and that is his reference to supplies of cheap, subsidised fish. I have no knowledge of fish which is coming into this country being subsidised by other countries; but, of course, there is the position of the hardening of the pound which has made our country an attractive market. I would simply tell the noble Lord, Lord Boothby, that we have, in fact, increased the reference prices for foreign fish—that is, third country fish—from about 6 per cent. to 25 per cent., and consideration is now being given to the restoration of full tariff rates on imports of cod, haddock and hake from third countries.
Lord BLYTON: My Lords, is the Minister aware that there is great consternation among the fishing population about what is happening in their industry today?—particularly in the importation of fish in which they cannot compete, and which makes life very difficult for them. Did the noble Earl watch the programme shown on television which showed how the French are exploiting our waters and selling our fish in French markets, and that no action is being taken?
Earl FERRERS: My Lords, this is one of the problems which we are trying to overcome by the solution of the common fisheries policy. It is our desire to see—and in this we are in agreement with all the other members of the Community—that there is a fair and proper allocation of fisheries within the European Community.
As regards the French fishermen, I would tell the noble Lord, Lord Blyton, that there is an agreement as to the size of the total allowable catch within the Community. We have our own amount which we try to catch within our limits, and it is up to this country to ensure that those waters are properly policed, which we do. At the moment we have no evidence that there is unfair catching by other countries, other than the fact that until the total allowable catch is agreed between all the other countries, there may be some members of the Community who are taking, more than others, but they are not exceeding the total allowable catch.
Lord PARRY: My Lords, will the Minister not agree that there is con-
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siderable evidence that the decline of the Welsh deep-sea fishing industry followed by the decline of the inshore fishing industry has, in fact, been accelerated by the common fisheries policy; that in that area—whether or not it is accepted in this House—it is firmly believed that that is so; and that the classic over-fishing of the area as a result of the accelerated policies of the Common Market has contributed to that death?
Earl FERRERS: My Lords, of course, the original problem arose when the fisheries limits were extended universally to 200 miles. As a result of that, in 1972 in third countries we used to be able to catch 320,000 tonnes of fish and now our quota from third countries is less than 80,000 tonnes. Therefore, in that respect the noble Lord is quite right, there has been a severe curtailment of the deep-sea fishing industry. I go along with him in understanding the concern which is felt in the western parts of the United Kingdom, but I can only tell him that that is not solely the result of the common fisheries policy. However, we are trying to achieve a fair settlement which will benefit the industry.
Lord PARRY: My Lords, as the Minister has been so forthcoming, will he further agree that there is an honourable point in this, that the British fishing industry has always honourably observed the regulations? Will he agree that it cannot be proved that that has always been the case in regard to other countries?
Earl FERRERS: My Lords, I should like to agree 100 per cent. wholeheartedly with the noble Lord; I would go along with him to about 98 per cent. whole-heartedly.
The Earl of KIMBERLEY: My Lords, does my noble friend know that there is great concern in the West Country that the power for the present three-mile fishing limit for inshore fishing may be taken away from local authorities?
Earl FERRERS: My Lords, I am not aware of the point to which my noble friend refers, but I shall certainly look into it and let him know.

AFGHANISTAN INVASION: COMMUNICATIONS WITH USSR
2.50 p.m.
Lord SHINWELL: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what was the reply from the USSR when the Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary expressed regret at the invasion of Afghanistan and whether any further communications have since taken place between both Governments concerning the invasion.
Lord TREFGARNE: My Lords, in my noble friend's talk with Mr. Gromyko on 17th May and in diplomatic contacts, most recently on 11th June, we have pressed the Russians to withdraw from Afghanistan as part of a negotiated settlement. However, they have so far shown little willingness to negotiate seriously and are pursuing their policy of repression in Afghanistan.
Lord SHINWELL: My Lords, with respect to the noble Lord, I would have preferred to have the Foreign Secretary answer my Question, to whom it was actually addressed, because I am asking what communication he addressed to the Russians. However, the noble Lord is quite competent to answer for the Government. What I want to know is this. Instead of all the fuss about the Olympics, has it ever occurred to the Government to notify the Russian Government that, unless they withdraw their forces, we will supply adequate weapons to the Afghans who are seeking to resist the Russian invasion so that they can undertake the task themselves and clear the Russians out of Afghanistan as rapidly as possible?
Lord TREFGARNE: My Lords, I am sorry that the noble Lord is disappointed about the Minister who is answering his Question today. His Question is, however, tabled to the Government and I answer for the Government, as do all other Ministers from this Box. As for military aid to the insurgents, which the noble Lord was suggesting, the Afghan opposition to the Soviet Union appears
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to be sustained without external assistance. The main source of weapons for the insurgents seems to have been those obtained from Afghans defecting from the Afghan army and also those that they have captured from the Russians. I should like to make it quite clear that the United Kingdom have not supplied arms to the insurgents, as has been suggested. Indeed, the suggestions that we and various other nations instigated the fighting in Afghanistan by supplying the arms are of course quite untrue.
Lord SHINWELL: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that I did not suggest that he was incompetent to answer the Question? I paid my respect to him. I am not disappointed, and, on the other hand, he does not require to be annoyed. What I want to know is this. Now that within the last 48 hours the countries of the alliance have passed a resolution condemning the Russian invasion, what are they going to do about it? Just pass resolutions? Is that what is going to happen, as in the case of Czechoslovakia some years ago when they made a hullabaloo about it but did nothing? What is going to happen?
Lord TREFGARNE: My Lords, the noble Lord obviously is not aware that there are two ways of dealing with such matters. One of them would be a military solution from the West, which is of course not contemplated at all. The other solution is a diplomatic solution. That is the one we are pursuing, and that is the one which we hope will succeed.
Lord GLADWYN: My Lords, is there any prospect of the formation of an Afghan Government in exile?
Lord TREFGARNE: My Lords, I think that that would be for the Afghanis themselves.
The Earl of HALSBURY: My Lords, is not the choice of the word "insurgents" a rather odd one to describe a nation in arms defending itself against a foreign aggressor?
Lord TREFGARNE: My Lords, I am sorry if the precise word upsets the noble Earl, but he is of course quite right in suggesting that this is an unprovoked

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attack upon a nation quite within their rights to defend themselves.
Lord ORR-EWING: My Lords, can my noble friend give us an assurance that the very substantial loan originally negotiated with Russia, or made as an offer to Russia at very favourable percentage terms, is no longer open and has been closed since the invasion of Afghanistan, and will not be reopened until Afghanistan is again a free and independent nation?
Lord TREFGARNE: My Lords, yes indeed, that line of credit ran out in fact in the middle of March, if my memory serves me aright, and will certainly not be renewed.
Lord SHINWELL: My Lords, if the diplomatic efforts, to which the noble Lord has referred, fail to succeed, perhaps in the next three months, is any other action to be taken? No action against the Russian Government at all by refusing to trade with them? And, if necessary, to provide weapons to the Afghans so that they can deal with the situation themselves?
Lord TREFGARNE: My Lords, we shall have to take the situation as we find it in the time-scale that the noble Lord sets. We would not necessarily accept that particular time-scale. But we are not unhopeful that we shall achieve some progress diplomatically.

SALE OF PRESERVED FOODS
2.55 p.m.
Baroness SHARPLES: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether it is the case that preserved foods sold to the public by such organisations as Women's Institutes are required to be prepared on premises registered under the Food and Drugs Act 1955.
Lord CULLEN of ASHBOURNE: My Lords, yes, technically many of them are, but there is room for doubt about jam. Moreover, it is questionable whether
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it was ever intended to require registration of domestic premises in which food is prepared for sale by Women's Institutes and similar organisations, and local authorities have generally taken a pragmatic view and have not sought to enforce the strict letter of the law. We know of no case of food poisoning from Women's Institute markets.
As my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Social Services has indicated in another place, the Government will seek an early opportunity to make such changes as may be necessary in the law to safeguard the preparation of home-made jam and similar products for sale at Women's Institute markets.
Baroness SHARPLES: My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that reply. Is he aware that the Women's Institute sought counsel's opinion, who advised them that the Borough of Stockton was actually incorrect in their interpretation of the 1955 Act? Is he further aware that the market opened on 6th June under restricted terms, and that no pickles, et cetera, were allowed to be sold, also no jam, although home-made cakes with home-made jam in them were allowed to be sold?
Lord CULLEN of ASHBOURNE: My Lords, the trouble in Stockton has been caused by the somewhat obscure words in Section 16 of the Food and Drugs Act 1955. I have been advised that this section was probably intended to apply to meat and fish products, but the words are capable of applying more widely.
Lord PEART: My Lords, I intervene as a former Minister of Agriculture. Is the House aware that the Ministry first set up the Women's Institute Market in 1932 in my native county of Durham? I hope that we shall keep a sense of proportion. I think that the Minister is well aware of what the feeling of the House is.
Lord CULLEN of ASHBOURNE: My Lords, perhaps the noble Lord is suggesting that this is really a storm in a jampot.
Lord ELWYN-JONES: My Lords, will the noble Lord ensure that the result

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of taking a pragmatic view about jam will not result in jam yesterday and jam tomorrow, but never jam today?
Lord CULLEN of ASHBOURNE: My Lords, I doubt whether the noble and learned Lord expects much comment in reply to that.
Lord GISBOROUGH: My Lords, would the noble Lord agree that while hygiene officers were appointed for the very proper purpose of supervising the preparation of food, there is a tendency, not only in the hygiene department, but also in many other departments in local government, for a department to build up an empire, and then to go out looking where they can apply the letter of the law? Is this not a fairly typical example of the over-staffing of local authorities?
Lord CULLEN of ASHBOURNE: My Lords, I hope that it is not too typical. Certainly these arrangements are made entirely by local authorities, and I am sure that they differ one from another.

VENICE ECONOMIC SUMMIT
Lord SANDYS: My Lords, with the leave of the House, at a convenient moment after 3.30 this afternoon my noble friend the Leader of the House will repeat a Statement being made in another place on the Venice Economic Summit.

TENANTS' RIGHTS, ETC. (SCOTLAND) BILL
2.58 p.m.
The MINISTER of STATE, SCOTTISH OFFICE (The Earl of Mansfield): My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time. It is based on the same general philosophy as the Housing Bill for England and Wales which the House debated two weeks ago. Your Lordships will therefore already be familiar with the substance of many of the policies, derived from the election manifesto, to which I shall be referring, notably the right for tenants of public sector housing authorities to buy their homes and a
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tenants' charter for those public sector tenants who continue to rent their homes. The Bill, however, differs from the Housing Bill in many particular points, because it applies the broad policies in the way which is most appropriate to Scottish circumstances. Since well over half the people of Scotland rent their homes from a public landlord, the central policies of the Bill apply to a much larger proportion of the Scottish people than does the Housing Bill for England and Wales.
The right to buy is undoubtedly the most important provision in the Bill. Only about a third of Scots presently enjoy the advantages of owner-occupation, although that tenure is much more common not only in the rest of Great Britain but in virtually all of the countries of Europe on both sides of the Iron Curtain. The Government believe there is a massive pent up demand for home ownership in Scotland and we are determined to release it from the fetters placed upon it in the past.
It is essential, in considering this provision, to keep in mind that before this Government's election last May, or just over a year ago, public sector tenants in Scotland had to accept the policy of a Labour Government who had apparently set their face firmly against any substantial council house sales in Scotland, while allowing such sales on a more or less unrestricted basis in England and Wales. One might have thought that logic would suggest that if sales were to be allowed, the case for allowing them in Scotland was much stronger than that for allowing them in England and Wales. Now that the right to buy has been put before the Scottish people, and it is clear that they approve of it, we hear some elements in the Labour Party talking in terms of the sensible exercise of discretion by local authorities.
But we have to judge the significance of such words in practice by looking at the actual recent behaviour of Labour-controlled local authorities in Scotland. Although there has been discretion given to local authorities since last May to choose which houses, and how many, to sell, there was not a single Labour-controlled authority before the recent local elections which took advantage of the new policy and sold houses freely.

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Now we have the spectacle of some authorities where Labour gained control last month reversing the decisions of their predecessors and refusing to sell any more houses. We have even seen a gathering of representatives of Labour-controlled local authorities to discuss how to attempt to frustrate any of their tenants who wish to exercise the statutory rights which the Bill is to give them.
It is against this background that the right to buy represents the only realistic policy for bringing the benefits of home ownership to those tenants who want it. Clause 1 of the Bill gives virtually all tenants of public housing authorities—that is, islands and district councils, the new towns and the Scottish Special Housing Association—an unqualified right to buy their homes at a discount of between 33 per cent. and 50 per cent. of the market value of the house, assuming vacant possession. The exceptions to the right to buy are strictly limited and the numbers affected are small, chiefly tied tenants and those with temporary tenancies and those who live in fully sheltered housing, complete with warden and a call service, for elderly or disabled people.
Where the community has a special interest in houses because they have a measure of adaptation for the elderly or disabled, but the houses are not fully sheltered, Clause 4 allows the landlord to impose a pre-emption condition giving it the right of first refusal where the tenant resells. The possible difficulties affecting sales in rural areas also caused concern in another place. After considerable debate, the Government accepted an amendment which would in certain cases permit pre-emption conditions in rural areas where there is a second homes problem. But such conditions are not otherwise permitted. This is the core of our proposals.
I have already explained the need for the right to buy and I think the House will recognise that we have given shape to that right in a fair and reasonable manner. We have drawn the right as widely as possible and in as simple terms as possible, while writing in safeguards for legitimate community interests, and we have recognised by providing for substantial discounts that the sitting tenant has a very real interest in the house. These terms of sale will bring home
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ownership within the reach of many who would not otherwise be able to afford it. At the same time, they will bring substantial relief to the public purse as we realise the proceeds of disposals of public property which has for so long required regular and substantial subsidy from ratepayers and taxpayers alike.
Part I of the Bill, as well as conferring the right to buy, ensures that tenants will be able to exercise it. For those who cannot obtain a building society mortgage, Clause 5 provides for housing authorities to give loans. The procedure for exercising the right to buy and for obtaining a loan is organised into a timetable in Clauses 2 and 3, with strict limits on the time which authorities may take to act, and Clause 7 places a general obligation on authorities to take the steps necessary to enable their tenants to exercise the right to buy. In the event of disputes or breakdowns in the procedure, tenants are given a right of access to the Lands Tribunal, where the right to buy is concerned, or the sheriff, where loans are involved.
Part I also provides greater scope than in the past for voluntary sales. Clause 8 allows local authorities to sell any house not covered by the right to buy to the sitting tenant and to sell vacant houses, if they are difficult to let, and Clause 9 allows housing associations to sell houses. At present, these sales by local authorities would require the consent of the Secretary of State and there are statutory barriers to the sale of houses by certain housing associations. These provisions reflect a general encouragement by the Government to voluntary sales of housing by a range of public bodies. In the main, no statutory change is necessary to achieve this and Government departments are taking administrative action to identify houses which can be sold among those which they are responsible for, such as prison service houses. Other public bodies, such as police and education authorities, are being encouraged to conduct a similar weeding out of houses which it is not necessary to keep as tied housing. It will be possible for these houses to be sold at discounts in the majority of cases. Although it is only briefly reflected in the Bill, this policy on voluntary sales is, nevertheless, an important part of the context in which Part I as a whole operates.

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I turn to Part II of the Bill, which deals with the tenants' charter and which underlines our determination to improve the lot of all council tenants, whether they want to rent or buy. It will bring about a new stage in the development of public sector housing. The last few decades have seen enormous and rapid growth in the provision of public housing, but the quality of life in that housing has not always matched the physical quality of the accommodation provided. The balance of control over individual houses has rested with landlords rather than the tenants of these houses, leading to the growth of what has been termed "the new feudalism". The time has come to change this, to give quality of life equal priority with the physical quality of housing, by creating a new framework for the relationship between landlord and tenant which will provide a clear set of rights for tenants and an impartial mechanism for resolving disputes. I recognise that this approach is already adopted by the more enlightened local authorities, and in many respects the Bill simply gives statutory force to the existing best practice of local authorities. In this sense, no local authority which deals with its tenants in a reasonable manner need have anxiety about the provisions of the Bill but the Bill will ensure that tenants throughout Scotland will have equal opportunity to enjoy their homes free from unreasonable constraints.
The foundation of the tenants' charter is the provision of security of tenure for tenants of public sector housing authorities, including housing associations, in Clause 10. The exceptions to security of tenure are few and are clearly set out in Clause 11 and Schedule 1. The natural extension of security of tenure for existing tenants is a right of succession to the tenancy for their family after their death, and Clause 13 provides for this. The formalisation of security of tenure requires that the circumstances in which eviction can take place must be made explicit, and this is done in Clauses 14 and 15 and Schedule 2, with a special procedure in Clauses 18, 19 and 20 to deal with cases where tenants abandon their homes and the landlord needs particularly quick possession of the house. There is special protection given to tenants who are being moved from one house to another for management
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reasons, rather than being evicted because of their conduct, and Part II of Schedule 2 sets out in detail the basis on which the suitability of the alternative accommodation which they must be offered is to be judged.
The Bill extends a package of rights relating to enjoyment of their home to all tenants who have security of tenure and to one group who do not, tied tenants. The most far-reaching of the rights conferred is a completely new power to challenge unreasonable tenancy conditions in the courts, which is conferred by Clause 17. This is coupled elsewhere in Clause 17, and in Clause 16, with the right to a written lease so that the tenant can see clearly his rights and obligations, and a restriction on changes in tenancy conditions, so that landlords will no longer be able to impose changes unilaterally, as they can at present. Taken together, these measures put tenants on a radically different, more equal, legal footing in their dealings with their landlords.
Through this new framework for tenancy agreements, it is left to tenants and landlords to negotiate fair and reasonable tenancy conditions in a way which will take into account the special circumstances of particular areas, or of individual tenancies. However, there are certain areas of the dealings between landlords and tenants in which we believe that there should be standard rights for all tenants. These are the right for tenants to improve their homes and to take lodgers, or sublet, which are dealt with in Clauses 21 and 23 and relate to aspects of tenants' enjoyment of their homes which arise particularly frequently and in which any unreasonableness on the part of landlords is a source of particular annoyance and resentment among tenants.
We are not only concerned with those who already have houses. Part III of the Bill contains several provisions aimed at helping those seeking council housing. As a foundation, we are imposing in Clause 27 a statutory obligation on all housing authorities to publish their rules on allocations, transfers and exchanges, as the great majority of them already do, in order that those seeking a house, or wishing to move from one house to another, can see quite clearly where they stand and what their chances are. It is quite clear from the hundreds of letters

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about allocations received every year by the Scottish Office that people's dissatisfaction with allocations often arises because the rules are not made clear to them and they have no idea why some people are allocated houses in preference to others.
In addition to this, we have decided that, although the allocation of houses is, in general, a matter for local authorities themselves to control, it is necessary to take action against several features of allocation practice which are operated by some authorities, particularly those which act as barriers to mobility. There is a considerable volume of evidence to suggest that the practice of many authorities of refusing applications from, or discriminating against, applicants from outside their area has a depressing effect on the Scottish economy by inhibiting labour mobility. The size of the public sector in Scotland makes this a serious national problem, which justifies the exceptional step of over-riding local discretion and prohibiting residential qualifications and certain other aspects of allocation policies which act against people needing to move for employment reasons.
Clause 26 also strikes at a number of other practices which in an arbitrary manner exclude people from consideration for council housing without regard for their housing needs. Authorities will in future be prevented from discriminating against applicants on the basis of their age, or income, or against people wishing to move into their area for sound social or medical reasons. One particularly important change is that authorities will no longer be able to refuse to rehouse a separated or divorced woman as a threat to force her to pay off rent arrears owed by her husband. The malpractices at which we are aiming are not common but, in those areas where there will be changes, they will represent a substantial opening up of access to consideration for council housing so that people who may have acute housing needs are not denied the right to be judged on those needs, rather than by arbitrary general rules.
I now turn to the provisions in Part IV relating to the private rented sector. The main feature of these is that in order to encourage landlords to make, and keep, available accommodation for letting to
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private tenants, we shall introduce a new type of tenure—a short tenancy—under which a landlord may in future let accommodation with the absolute certainty of being able to recover possession of it on a pre-determined date, if he so wishes. This is a measure aimed at bringing new accommodation into the private rented sector and does not affect the rights of existing tenants under the Rent Acts.
In some quarters the continuing decline of the private rented sector has come to be regarded as inevitable. The Government do not share this view, which in any event overlooks the way that the role of the privately rented sector has changed in the past 30 years or so. It is no longer the normal source of accommodation for those who wish to rent on a permanent basis. People who prefer this type of tenure will now look to local authorities or to housing associations to accommodate them. Where the privately rented sector still has a vitally important role to play in meeting housing need is in catering for the young and the mobile who normally regard it as a temporary expedient. It is here that the privately rented sector can, and should, continue to make an important contribution to meeting housing needs, which the introduction of short tenancies will foster.
We are also taking powers in Clause 44 to complete the process that we began in 1972 to convert all remaining controlled tenancies to rent regulation; a process which was halted by the last Government in 1975. The anomaly of running a fair rents system and a controlled rents system side by side cannot be justified. This is also true of the anomaly of preventing progression to fair rent levels in some cases, while many thousands of other tenants are already paying fair rents. Consequently, we are changing the basis on which a rent progresses from one level to another. We recognise that to require all tenants to pay the full fair rent forth-with could cause hardship to those who have hitherto benefited from the phasing of rent increases. Therefore, while Clause 38 abolishes phasing as such, it is our intention that increases in rent should continue to be subject to a maximum annual increase, also provided for in Clause 38, which we are considering might be fixed at £104 per year, or 25 per cent. of the existing rent, whichever is higher, in the first instance.

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A benefit which Part V of the Bill will confer on private and public tenants alike is the extension of eligibility for the whole range of improvement and repair grants to most tenants in both sectors. This is part of a range of measures to extend the availability of grants, which will benefit owner-occupiers and landlords, as well as tenants, and will continue the drive to improve our older housing. Part V of the Bill contains other provisions which I shall mention briefly. We are removing, or relaxing, a number of central Government controls over local authorities, including the power to prevent local authorities from fixing rents at the level which they consider appropriate, and we have decided, reluctantly, to abolish the Scottish Housing Advisory Committee, which had fallen into disuse under the previous Government.
There is such a wide variety of important provisions that I have not been able in the time available to mention them all. I shall, of course, try at the conclusion to deal with any points which may arise in the course of the debate, but for the present I hope that I have made it clear that this is positive legislation which sets out to bring choice and opportunity to everyone living in the public rented sector and the private rented sector. Its main importance is the changes which it will bring to the public sector, where we are providing a framework in which all tenants in the public sector will be able to choose for themselves how they wish to live. My Lords, I beg to move.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a—(The Earl of Mansfield.)
3.18 p.m.
Lord ROSS of MARNOCK: My Lords, I had hoped that following my passage here from another place I had seen my last Housing Bill; and I do not know whether it was out of kindness to me that this Bill was christened the Tenants' Rights, Etc. (Scotland) Bill. The et cetera, the tail end of this Bill, unlike England's cricket team, is fairly powerful; so much so that I suggest that, had the Government been acting in another sphere, they might have been contravening the Trade Descriptions Act in respect of the Bill. We have just listened to the noble Earl giving a long, painstaking explanation
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of the details of the Bill, most of which was not at all related to tenants' rights. What the noble Earl said dealt with private sector landlords' rights and with changes in improvements grants, which apply mainly to owner occupiers, and to landlords as well, though history tells us that they do not tend to take up these things.
Would it not have been far better had the Government called this Bill a Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill? That would have been much more honest. But I think that this is probably one of the hangovers from the election. You get slogans and then you try, rather foolishly, to translate slogans into legislation. That is what has happened here.
I was fascinated by the noble Earl's description of the mandate. We all know about the mandate. The people of Scotland knew about the mandate. That is why the Conservative Government cannot get a majority in the Scottish Grand Committee, even although they take every single added Member to which they are entitled and put them on it. Scotland returned 71 Members of Parliament: there are 22 Conservatives. So that mandate was rejected by the people of Scotland at the general election. I was reading some of the earlier proceedings of the Committee stage on this Bill, which took place before the recent municipal elections. These municipal elections were elections only in the district authorities, created by the Party opposite when local government was reorganised. What is their one function? Their main function is housing. Do your Lordships remember the thinking behind this? They were going to create viable authorities; they were going to give them more freedom; they were going to be independent. They are the people who are being clobbered in this so-called tenants' rights Bill.
It was way back in 1917, when the position was so bad in relation to private housing in Scotland and when the working class rented houses, that a Royal Commission was established. When it reported it said that the system of private, tenanted houses had failed. It suggested that the Government should take responsibility for housing the people of Scotland, and that their agents should be, and should be compelled to be, the local authorities. The first Bills were those of

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1919, 1923 and then there was the Wheatley Act of 1924. The first, I think, was the Addison Act. Very little was done because there were no subsidies. In 1924 John Wheatley, the uncle of the present Lord Wheatley, introduced for both Scotland and England a housing Act that began the process of meeting the needs of the people of this country for housing. It was not exactly dear to the hearts of the party opposite.
I think it is ironic that I am talking here today on this Bill, which the Government are to use to force local authorities to sell houses. In 1925 there were five people in Ayr who used the power that was given them by previous legislation to demand of the Secretary of State that Ayr Town Council exercise their legislative power to build houses. One of these five was one William Ross—my father. We had to compel Tory local authorities to build houses; and it was as a result of that Act and then the Slum Clearance Act 1930, which was stopped by the Tory Act of 1934/35, which switched the emphasis to overcrowding. All the slums in Scotland were going to be cleared within five years; and when Parliament resumed their consideration of housing after the war they discovered that there were more slums than had been calculated by the Royal Commission in 1917.
We have scarcely had a housing Act without a White Paper in which the Government detail for the consideration of both Houses, and for the people outside, the reasons why they are making a change of policy or a change in financial provisions. But there is none this time. There has been no consultation; and the district authorities who have to apply this, whether or not they like it, have complained that this will upset the whole balance of their housing stock. There has not been a withdrawal from the local authorities of their obligations in respect of meeting the housing needs of the people of Scotland. As a matter of fact, the noble Earl gave one or two further instances where they have to extend the obligations to meet needs. He referred to the problem—and I do not disagree with this—in respect of the break-up of marital status, where they are now asked to undertake an obligation in respect of the people so affected.
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Of course, with the extension of the allocation system which is in one of the clauses—I believe it is Clause 7—it means that local authorities will have to accept applications for inclusion in their housing lists from people outside their area, and, indeed, will not be able to restrict them, as some of them (though not all of them) are doing, in that way. So there are more people going on to these lists; and, in the meantime, of course, we have report after report as to the needs in the rural areas. Most of the complaints have come from the rural areas. The honourable Member for Inverness instanced the fact that the Scottish Special Housing Association, which was going to build about 305 houses in his area, had that number slashed to about half; and at the same time local authorities are compelled to sell from their stock of housing. If you sell from your stock of housing, you cannot meet the needs of those who are dependent on it.
The noble Earl rightly pointed out that there are more than a million local authority houses in Scotland, and he deplored the fact that there are not so many owner-occupied houses. The whole tradition of Scotland has been that of rented accommodation; but if the noble Earl knew anything at all about the history of Scotland in the pre-war years he would know that there were very few working people who were able to embark on home ownership. When you have the highest unemployment figures, when one in three men are unemployed, you cannot embark on home ownership and you would not find a building society prepared to support you in it. Has the noble Earl had a look at the million houses? My Lords, 55 per cent. of the people in them are unemployed, are receiving rent rebates, are widows or are on pension. So 55 per cent. of the people do not have tenants' rights. They have some rights. It is not just tenants' rights: it is council tenants' rights. It is not all tenants; and not all council tenants, either, or public sector tenants, because the list was given.
We have the list in, I think it is, Clause 3. There we have the whole list of those so defined for occupation. It is a very lengthy list. But then you take the list of those who are given security of tenure—and you cannot buy your house unless you have security of tenure under the new procedures of the tenants' charter. They

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are forestry workers, prison officers, health board workers and water authority workers. None of these people is able to buy his house; so it is only some public sector tenants who can buy their houses. Then you have to take out from that list those who cannot possibly do so. There are 55 per cent., I think, of the people in local authority houses in Scotland who are over the age of 55. How many of them, even though they are not in the categories I have spoken about, are going to embark on a 25-year mortgage?
So the Government are deceiving themselves in respect of this. It was not mandated to them by the people of Scotland. On the eve of the poll at the time of the local elections, the Tories took a full-page advertisement in the Glasgow Daily Record. The Glasgow Daily Record is Scotland's national newspaper. I know that the noble Earl probably does not buy it. The noble Lord sitting next to him does buy it. He has to keep up with the football, which is reported on the last two pages.
The Earl of MANSFIELD: My Lords, the Courier and Advertiser has a far wider circulation over a much broader spectrum of Scottish national life.
Lord ROSS of MARNOCK: My Lords, I am afraid the noble Lord's education, even in respect of the sale of newspapers in Scotland, is as limited as his knowledge of housing. Scotland's national newspaper is not the Scotsman, the Glasgow Herald or even the journal to which he referred. That was why the Conservatives took a full-page advertisement on the eve of the poll. They knew what it was, even if the noble Earl did not.
What did they say? They said: "Vote Tory and buy your own council house". What was the result? The Tories now have fewer seats in the Glasgow district than ever they had before. They were massacred, not just in Glasgow but the whole of the West of Scotland—even in the constituency in which I reside, where the Secretary of State is the Member of Parliament. It is not exactly entirely working class. Troon, Prestwick, Ayr, and Turnbury as well—it is almost like a recital of golf courses in the West of Scotland. But the Tories lost seats in Troon, in Prestwick and in Ayr, and they
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lost control of that council, which is surely unheard of.
The noble Earl tells us that the Government have a mandate for this. If one thing is sure, it is that they do not have a mandate for it—and little wonder. COSLA, the Confederation of Scottish Local Authorities, are not enthusiastic about this. They are concerned, of course, about their rights that have been taken away—the main right of that local authority, the district authority in Scotland, to look after the housing of its people. Along come the Government and tell the districts, whether in Glasgow, Ayr, Inverness, Skye or Lochalsh, that they know better. On the demand of the tenant, every district, no matter where it is, has got to sell the house. They have not only got to sell the house. If the building society will not give the tenant a loan, they who own the house, and who have been compelled by the Government to sell it, must provide the loan. They cannot even draw up the conditions of that loan. It has to be done by the gentleman in Bute House. He need not apply for security of tenure of that place. I have been thrown out of it. Once I walked out, and once I was thrown out.
Is it not nonsense? All over Scotland, the housing needs are different. They are different in the rural areas and they are different in different rural areas over the country. They are different in the cities; they are different in what used to be the smaller burghs. But the Government apply one blanket policy over the whole lot: "You will sell your council houses". I think of the words of that eminent Back-Bench philosopher of the Tory Party in another place, the Member for Aberdeen, South. He said, "Get rid of the council house". It has always been thought—and it was evident in the noble Earl's speech today—that there is some great and special virtue in owning one's own house. Maybe some of the people who buy these so-called bargains (which I will come to later on) will find just exactly where the virtue is. Some young people today see little virtue in it when they examine very carefully every single thing they have to spend because of the obligation they suddenly find they have taken upon themselves, with a very high mortgage rate imposed upon them by the economic policies of this Government.

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I do not think the Government are truly in tune with the people of Scotland in this respect, and certainly they are not in tune with the local authorities. They objected, and will continue to object. I hope they will use whatever means they can lawfully to frustrate the Government's wishes. I would not wish anyone to act unlawfully. For 60 years these local authorities have been building up, meeting the needs of their people in respect of houses. Some of their housing schemes and their houses are a credit to Scotland, and certainly the people who have come out of them have been a credit to Scotland; and I do not speak about myself. But I am proud of the fact that I was brought up in a council house from the age of 12 until the age of 17. I do not take the view, as I was told by a gentleman in another place whose father I see sitting listening intently to me, that if one lived in a council house one was a second-class citizen. All this comes out time and time again. I see another noble Lord present who will remember a lady MP on his side of the House who once described the person in the council house as, "A shiftless council tenant".
In actual fact, of course, it has been expensive to meet the needs of the people in Scotland. It has been expensive from a Government point of view; it has been expensive also from a local authority point of view, but it was a priority consideration and they met it. And now that stock has to be sold off. Which houses will be bought? I ask noble Lords to remember what I have already said about the 55 per cent. who are receiving help of some kind with their rents, either from the DHSS or from the local authority. Which houses will be sold? It will be the best houses. It will be the most desirable ones, not necessarily the newest ones. Some of them are older houses, because some of the first schemes that were put up by the local authorities were nearer the centre of the towns and they were built to very good standards indeed. They have recently been modernised, with the local authorities spending quite a lot of money on them. These are the houses that will be sold.
As times changed, people saw the special needs. For a long time it was large families; before the war overcrowding was the problem. Since the war, it was a
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case of building houses, houses and more houses, and, I am afraid, sometimes without much consideration for the amenity as well. In fact, I remember a noble Lord in this House, when he was Minister of State for Scotland, saying that we were building the slums of the future. The multi-storey flats were not started by Labour Governments. They were started during the 13 years when we were not the Government; and if there are social problems they stem from that time. We are much more discriminating now. There was a sudden realisation that there was a shortage of houses for single people, for spinsters, for bachelors, for widows, for widowers, and so they have been built.
Under this provision of a tenant's right, even despite the feelings of the local authority that they had met the needs, the houses can be sold, outside of their control, and there is no saying what happens thereafter. They will be sold out of the control of the local authorities, and the local authorities will then find that they have got to rebuild again to meet a need that they thought they had met, or partially met. What about the elderly? Local authorities have been putting the elderly into suitable houses. These suitable houses are usually on the ground floor. They become readily available when reletting for other suitable elderly people. But, under this Bill, these houses will go outside the control of the local authority and what you will find is that the local authority will be left with a considerably unbalanced stock of houses but still with the same needs to meet. And the Government wonder why the local authorities object to this—and not just Labour local authorities. Why did they not leave this on a voluntary basis and leave the local authorities to decide which houses they want to sell and which they could sell without unbalancing their stock?
Then there is the question of the rural areas. There was a sudden touchiness about what they were going to do about rural areas. The provisions in this Scottish Bill are not as good as those in the English Bill. The noble Earl seems to think that the only concern in the rural areas was about second homes. He should read what was said by his own honourable friends in another place and what the leader of the Liberal Party said

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about their concern on the Borders. It is very easy to live in the Borders now and commute to Edinburgh; so that the pressure of prices for housing on the Borders has grown high, to the detriment of the chances of local people. If these houses are sold and there is a need for housing in the rural areas, the people who will suffer will be the local people in the rural areas. An SDA report has recently become available to the noble Earl, if he wants to read it—a report of the pressure for local authority houses in the rural areas. If he likes, he can read a letter from his honourable friend Mr. Rifkind in reply to one correspondent—I think it was in January this year—saying, "That is all right: the local authorities can build and use their resources for building." Do noble Lords appreciate that at the same time as we are passing this Bill, the Government are cutting the capital expenditure of local authorities on housing? The reduction in capital expenditure on housing and revenue in the next four years is from over £700 million to £410 million—a reduction of 42 per cent. In terms of the Government's economic policy, that is all right; but in terms of this Bill and of the burdens being thrown on local authorities and in terms of the needs of local authorities it is absolute nonsense. For the noble Earl to suggest that this is in any way going to meet the needs of the people of Scotland is absolutely wrong.
I can understand why the noble Earl did not produce a White Paper. I have a collection of them. I could paper the walls of this Chamber with them. It is the perorations that I like best. Let us take the 1971 White Paper, the Reform of Housing Finance in Scotland. It says:
"Taken together these policies are calculated at best to meet the urgent housing needs of Scotland today and the expected requirements of the next decade".
In 1973, two years later, in Homes for People: Scottish Housing Policy, these words appear:
"The conditions are being created in which nobody need go without a reasonable home for lack of means and most can enjoy a fair choice of sound, attractive houses. The tide has now turned and the Government intend to keep it Flowing".
In April of this year the number of registered unemployed in Scotland rose above the level at which it stood in the
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year 1933. What is the latest slogan? Is it: "Spend your redundancy money on buying a council house"?—and not any council house, just the one you are in. There is no choice there. It is like Henry Ford's choice: "Any colour you want, so long as it is black".
My Lords, I think that this Government have let down the people of Scotland. I listened to what the noble Earl had to say about the tenants' charter, the changes in allocations. I can assure him that these were in the Labour Government's Bill. All that is good in this Bill came from the Labour Government. Anything else that is good came from the committee that the Government are abolishing. I loved his phrase that they were abolishing the Scottish Housing Advisory Committee for the simple reason that it had fallen into disuse under the last Government. It fell into disuse during the 13 wasted Tory years—and I revived it.
On the allocation changes, I do not know whether the noble Lord realises it, but the improvement grant system stemmed from that Scottish Housing Advisory Committee. The better management of local authority housing, too, came from the Scottish Housing Advisory Committee. I would suggest that there is one invaluable report which they produced in 1967 and which the noble Earl should read again. I shall be kind to him: I say, "Read again". It will give him the whole history of Scottish housing, the whole perspective of what was needed to be done and of what must be done.
In the last Government we had started on a series of annual plans in which the local authorities, having surveyed their housing needs, made an assessment of what they were going to do. It covered modernisation, provision for sale of council houses, help for owner occupation, general needs, housing for the disabled and housing for the elderly. How can any local authority plan on a basis of what it is going to do if it does not know what stock it will have because its control of houses has passed to individual tenants who will be given these bargain prices? Three years in a house and you can buy it with a 33 per cent. discount—and that discount going up to 50 per cent. If you so unbalance your stock of housing,

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then you must rebuild. What will that cost? The Government are in Cloud Cuckoo-land so far as this Bill is concerned. There is one thing that we do know. Each house which comes off the housing stock, the Government will not need to pay towards in the housing support grant. But the housing support grant is being reduced as well. Only one thing is sure in respect of this, and it applies to private tenants and to the tenants of council houses: we are going to have an unsatisfactory position from the point of view of the local housing authority. Rents will go up, as a result of the housing support grant cut, by at least £1·40 a week—and our estimate is £1·60. And the rents of the privately-rented houses will go up. We are going over to the rent system. The houses which are still in control in Scotland are the houses occupied by the oldest people in the community. They are the poorest houses and their rent will go up. Imagine throwing these people into this whole business of fair rents, registered rents, regulated tenancies, rights of possession and so on!
If the noble Earl thinks that that is to the advantage of the people of Scotland, then he had better start to talk to the people of Scotland. I think the noble Earl is wrong. I think that the Government are wrong. The consequence of this sloganised Bill will be destructive of democracy. It will not commend itself to those who are democratically inclined and who thought that local authorities could judge what was best for their own particular areas. It shows a fundamental distrust of elected authorities. It shows more clearly than ever before the Government's detestation of municipal enterprise, whereas, so far as housing is concerned, without it the Scottish situation would not have been dealt with as well as it has. What further tasks have to be done in Scotland in respect of housing are not going to be done in the private sector. The Government say that themselves. There is the Homeless Bill. It is not the private sector that has to provide for the homeless: it is the municipalities. And everything the Government are doing within this Bill is going to make it more difficult. I think it is one of the most shameful Bills that I have come across in my 34 years of parliamentary life.

VENICE ECONOMIC SUMMIT
3.50 p.m.
The LORD PRESIDENT of the COUNCIL (Lord Soames): My Lords, with the leave of the House I will now repeat a Statement which has been made in another place by my right honourable friend the Prime Minister on the Venice Economic Summit. The Statement is as follows:
"With permission, Mr. Speaker, I will make a Statement about the Economic Summit meeting in Venice on 22nd and 23rd June at which I was accompanied by my noble friend the Foreign Secretary and my right honourable friends the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Secretary of State for Energy.
"This was the first Summit meeting since the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and, therefore, the first to have a detailed and formal discussion of international political problems. The unanimity and sense of common purpose that informed this discussion is reflected in our public statements. We confirmed that the Soviet occupation of an independent sovereign nation is and will remain unacceptable. We called for the complete withdrawal of Soviet troops and for the Afghan people to be left free to decide their own future. We were not deflected by the Soviet Government's carefully timed announcement of the withdrawal of certain units from Afghanistan. We made clear that the withdrawal, if confirmed, must be irreversible and must continue until no Soviet forces remain in Afghanistan. We reaffirmed our opposition to the attendance of our athletes at the Olympic Games.
"In addition to this declaration on Afghanistan, we also agreed further statements about refugees, about the taking of diplomatic hostages and about hijacking.
"The main purpose of these Summit meetings, however, is still to review the world economic situation. Here, our discussions were dominated by the problems of oil prices. These have virtually doubled since even our last meeting in Tokyo a year ago. The increases in the price of oil have had and

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will continue to have profoundly damaging effects upon the world economy. They have led to even higher inflation, to the imminent threat of severe recession and to increased unemployment in the industrialised countries.
"We agreed at Venice that our top economic priority must remain the reduction of inflation and that determined fiscal and monetary restraint is therefore required. We agreed that if we were to improve productivity and to provide new job opportunities, resources must be shifted from Government spending to the private sector and from consumption to investment. We agreed that measures of this kind might be economically and politically difficult in the short term but that they were essential to sustained non-inflationary growth and to the increase in employment which is our major goal. These conclusions are entirely in line with the policies which the Government are pursuing in this country.
"We accepted the need to break, over the next ten years, the link which has been apparent in some countries between economic growth and oil consumption. With this aim in mind, we agreed upon a series of measures to reduce consumption of oil, to use it more efficiently and to develop alternative sources of energy.
"The worst sufferers from the sharply increased price of oil have been the developing countries. Both their oil bill and their current account deficit have doubled in the last two years. The increase in their spending on oil over this period is higher than the total amount of aid they received last year from all official sources. At the same time the ability of the developed countries to help them has itself been diminished by the oil price rises; as we met, all seven countries present were in current account deficit.
"It follows that the democratic industrialised countries cannot alone carry the responsibility of providing aid to the developing countries. We must now look to the main oil exporting countries to use their vastly increased resources to give help. We believe that it is as much in their interests as ours to
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contribute in this way to the stability of the world economy and to the development of the poorer nations. The fact is that the industrialised countries of the free world, the oil exporting countries and the non-oil developing countries depend upon each other and need to work more closely together.
"Against this background we welcomed the report of the Brandt Commission and agreed to review our aid policies and procedures. We shall consider the results of this review at the next Economic Summit.
"In addition to our formal business, we had a number of less formal exchanges. In particular, I had a useful bilateral meeting with President Carter.
"Mr. Speaker, on the economic side this was a meeting at which we were largely concerned to carry forward the work begun last year. At the same time, we broke new ground by discussing the major international political issue of the day—the invasion and continued occupation of Afghanistan by the Soviet Union. The meeting offered a timely opportunity for the seven Heads of State and Government to reaffirm their unity of purpose on the political and economic difficulties that we face. The opportunity was taken."
My Lords, that concludes the Statement.
3.56 p.m.
Lord GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, we are all grateful to the Leader of the House for making this important Statement to your Lordships' House. The political content of it is, of course, rather slight, but the intention was to discuss economic matters perhaps more than political questions.
We welcome the renewed call on the Soviet Union to cease its aggression in Afghanistan and to withdraw its troops and arms from that country, leaving the people of Afghanistan free to choose its Government and its own form of government. We should have liked a more robust and comprehensive Statement on this harsh question, calling on the Soviet Government to come forward to a meaningful conference on détente, the renewal of détente, arms control and disarmament,

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including the real neutralisation of areas of friction, like, possibly, Afghanistan.
However, the Statement concentrates, to some extent at least, on the economic issues, and they are extremely and pressingly important. We are glad to see that the seven were unanimous in their determination to conquer inflation. I think there is general unanimity on that score. I speak on behalf of a party which formed the Government which reduced it from more than 20 per cent. to something under 8 per cent. I do not know what has happened to it since, but we are all in favour of reducing inflation.
The point is, what is the follow-up to be to these somewhat pious aspirations about inflation? I think the Government were right, with the Prime Minister, to fasten on to the oil question as the principal fuelling agent of inflation in our day and for the past few years, and indeed we welcome the reference to the need to reduce the dependence of the industrialised democracries on oil as a source of energy, to amplify the synthetic sources of energy, to double the use of coal in the next 10 years; although one wonders what the Prime Minister had particularly in mind when she very insistently reminded us that no so-called uneconomic pits were going to escape closure. What is "uneconomic" in this context? Uneconomic is, from one point of view at least, the exorbitant prices the industrialised West is paying to the OPEC countries for oil. That is uneconomic from our point of view because it distorts not only our credit system and our banking system but also our entire system of costing for home prices and, more important, for export. So I would urge in connection with the proposal to double the use of coal for energy in the next 10 years—which we strongly support—that particular attention is given to these somewhat facile caveats about not allowing so-called uneconomic pits to escape closure. We have made very grave mistakes on this score in the past. My noble friend Lord Strabolgi, who speaks for us on matters of energy, will agree with this.
We entirely support the proposal to increase synthetic and solar sources. Coming from where I do, and living near one of the biggest hydro-electric generating stations in the world which is
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a marvel and a hopeful example of what ingenuity can do and, which adds 4 per cent. to the grid, I hope that increased attention will be given under this heading to the use of hydro-electricity and estuarial waters. No doubt that will be done.
My point is, where is the follow up? Shall we hear more about this, as to what our own Government in Britain are going to do to follow up these excellent ideas about diversification of our sources of energy, reducing our dependence on oil, and also what our partners are going to do? I also welcome the reference in the Statement to the energy problems of the developing countries, and the recognition that the Brandt Commission Report is a truly important document with an acute relation to this question.
I particularly welcome the emphasis that Western industrial democracies cannot he expected to solve the problems of the developing countries on their own. This is the point made in the Brandt Commission Report. We must give an example and do what we can; but it is imperative that both the oil-producing countries and the communist world play their part. This part of the Statement I warmly welcome. It is time that we stood up and said these things. The West has very little to be ashamed of in the way in which it has sought to aid developing countries. We have done as much as some of us would like us to do; but compared with the performance of others who are more prone to posturing than to performance, the Western democracies have not done so badly. We want to do more but in company with the rest of the world, including the oil producers and, I repeat, the communist world. Let them live up to their assertions.
There is only one other point to which I want to refer and I once more welcome the emphasis placed by the Statement on this. There is a danger, of course, that in achieving an increased recycling of what we call the oil money we may distort the whole system of credit throughout the world, and indeed cause increasing difficulty for the international banking institutions. The conference was right to remind us all that it may need new institutions other than those we already have in order to supervise this particular aspect of recycling. I will not go into details regarding the oil money. The

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noble Lord will have the figures. This is a tremendous fact of monetary as well as economic life in the world today. It behoves everybody—not only the West but, I repeat, in the East, in the communist world, too—to pay attention to this. There is no economy, no system, which will long survive the kind of distortion of credit and banking operations that the relatively free flow of this money may cause to all of us.
4.4 p.m.
Lord GLADWYN: My Lords, we too should like to thank the noble Lord for repeating this very important Statement. There will, I think, be general agreement in this House on the tough line taken over Afghanistan. I do not think there is any divergence of opinion on that. I do not know whether there will be complete agreement on the suggestion, in respect of inflation, that resources must be shifted from Government spending to the private sector and from consumption to investment. We would agree on these Benches but I imagine the Statement is not necessarily in accordance with socialist policy, though it seems to have been approved by Chancellor Schmidt. But of course everything depends on the oil factor, on the immense increase in the price of oil, which is now dominating the whole situation.
The noble Lord, Lord Goronwy-Roberts, noted that we are going to take—as I hope—measures to restrict the consumption of oil in the signatory countries. Regarding coal, I also should like to ask the noble Lord how the Government intend to increase the production of coal in this country in a general way. Also, I should like to ask whether there is any reason to suppose that the Americans will reduce their consumption of oil to any significant degree. At the moment it seems doubtful whether they will; but unless they do the problem is increased enormously. Is there in particular any reason to suppose that they will be able to restrict their enormous consumption of petrol?
The dominant element is, however, the effect of increases of oil prices on ourselves and, more particularly, on the Third World. I see that the Brandt Report was apparently taken note of, but
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I do not know whether it was actually read with any great attention. Anyhow, as I understand it, its real consideration has been put off for a year. Is that not rather unfortunate? Is it not a fact that the situation is much more urgent than that? Is it not a fact that a good many of the developing countries are going to go bankrupt within the next six months, or anyhow before this time next year, unless urgent action is taken? Is it not a fact that in the Brandt Report the suggestion was that there should be some kind of meeting between the OPEC countries, the industrialised countries and the Third World—I am not certain at what level—at an early stage in order to consider a joint policy on this matter? I must say, in default of this, that I cannot see any real progress and the danger is immense. Can the Government give us any assurance that a real disaster is not going to happen? I should be very glad if they did.
4.8 p.m.
Lord SOAMES: My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Lords, Lord Goronwy-Roberts and Lord Gladwyn, for their comments and questions. To take first of all the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Goronwy-Roberts—at least that aspect of his statement that comprised questions—on coal and uneconomic pits, the fact that we were going to try to increase production, that those seven countries with all their resources would do their best to increase very considerably the production of coal, referred largely to a number of those countries, particularly the United States, where coal is not produced at anything like the rate that it could be. This does not mean that Her Majesty's Government will be in any way altering their policies towards economic or non-economic pits. There may be room for disagreement on what is an uneconomic pit. But all that I can say from the Dispatch Box this afternoon is that once Her Majesty's Government have decided what are economic pits, then it is not the intention, because of this meeting and what was decided at this meeting, to go for opening up pits again if it is thought that they are uneconomic. It does not have any effect on that aspect of Her Majesty's Government's policies.
I find myself very much in agreement about the aid from the richer countries

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the OECD countries, compared with OPEC countries and, in particular, the communist countries. This is a matter which has been near to my heart for a long time. I have figures for, I am afraid, no later than 1978. Noble Lords may be interested in them. They really tell a story. In 1978 the OECD countries gave development aid of 20 billion dollars, representing 81·5 per cent. of the total development aid; the OPEC countries gave 3·7 billion dollars, representing 15·2 per cent. of the total aid; and the communist countries gave 0·8 billion dollars, representing 3·2 per cent. This has been going on, of course, for some time and, in my view, it is one of the factors which are bringing home to those countries in the developing world who have made themselves partially, if not totally, dependent upon the communist world that this is not a very happy situation for them to find themselves in where aid is concerned.
On the question of the IMF and the World Bank providing new institutions for helping the developing countries which are not oil producers to develop new energy resources, I do not think it is new institutions that are required; what are required are new facilities. I do not think there is a need for a fresh bureaucracy. The arrangements are there all right, both for the IMF and the World Bank, but I think that new facilities will be necessary for this particular and enormously important problem, where a number of developing countries find themselves in the position where their total exports are less than the increase they have to pay, not for total oil exports but, I emphasise, the increase they have had to pay on oil imports in recent years.
The noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn, was concerned as to how we should increase the production of coal—I think that is probably the basis of the noble Lord's question. There is a limit, I think, to what we can do in this country because there are other countries which were represented at the Venice Summit who will be able to do more than we can. But it is thought that the total production of coal by the seven countries could be doubled over a period of years and all will make the contribution that they can towards this end. Of course, that does not mean that every country is going to double production.
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As to how the United States will reduce consumption of oil, I would say that at least they recognise the importance of so doing. I find already that it is difficult enough to answer questions about a meeting which I did not attend without answering a question about how someone who was present—namely, the President of the United States—is going to implement some of the decisions taken at that meeting.
As regards the Brandt Report, it is not for me to cast any aspersions on the Statement, but I rather sympathise with the noble Lord, if I may say so, particularly with regard to the passage:
"We shall consider the results of this review as it is written".
That seems to refer to the review of the Brandt Report, but my own hunch is that it does not in fact refer to that review. I take the noble Lord's point: the Brandt Report must be looked at and reviewed more quickly than that, but I think this refers to a review which was going to be undertaken by personal representatives of the heads of Government concerned and it was their review as to how we could best control the problem of the world contributing aid to the developing countries. It is that review to which that sentence refers, I think.
Lord STEWART of FULHAM: My Lords, may I ask two questions? The first relates to production of coal. Am I right in thinking that all the Ministers thought it would be a good thing to increase the production of coal?
Lord SOAMES: Yes, my Lords.
Lord STEWART of FULHAM: My Lords, secondly, am I right in thinking that you would not increase the production of coal by closing down pits? Is it not also true that, if the price of oil rises, some of the pits which are now regarded as uneconomic will become economic? The other question is about resources. If I heard the noble Minister correctly, the Ministers concluded that the resources should be shifted from consumption to investment and from the public to the private sector. What do you do if those two criteria happen to point in different directions? For example, if you save money by closing down a coalmine and use it to make tax concessions to wealthy

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people, and the recipients of that bounty spend it on luxuries, you might shift it from public to private but what have you done about investment and consumption?
Lord SOAMES: My Lords, to take the noble Lord's first point, he has a very nice and tidy mind and likes everything explained exactly, and I for long admired it when I was working for him, indeed, as one of his ambassadors. As to what was said regarding coal, I can only repeat what I said before. It was understandable—at least I understood it, and I am sorry if the noble Lord did not understand it. It was thought possible that those countries participating in this conference could double the production of coal. I can only tell him that my understanding of that is that it does not mean coal at any price, because that would not be very wise. What I think might have been meant is that it is thought that those countries could double the economic production of coal.
Now you come to the question, what is the economic production of coal? That is a somewhat wider point and I do not think we should get into a debate on that on the basis of what happened at the Summit Meeting. As to the transfer from the public to the private sector, broadly speaking, if you look at the economies of these countries as a whole, it is the private sector that produces so much of the wealth and it is necessary to get more investment and less spent on consumption as a general principle, in order to help all of us to get out of this inflationary problem.
Lord BROCKWAY: My Lords, in view of the emphasis given in this Statement, quite correctly, that the OPEC and communist countries must co-operate with the Western countries and the developing countries if the problem of hunger is to be met in the world, may I ask the Minister this. Was there any discussion of the Brandt proposal for a summit meeting of representatives of these four elements so that they might discuss measures of cooperation to deal with this problem?
Lord SOAMES: My Lords, I do not know about the noble Lord but I have had some experience of North-South meetings, and I do not think it is particularly wise
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for them to be brought together unless and until a lot of homework has been done before they are brought together and unless light can be seen at the end of the tunnel.
Lord HATCH of LUSBY: My Lords, may I draw the attention of the noble Lord the Leader of the House to the fact that, when I questioned his noble friend the Foreign Secretary on the previous Venice conference—the EEC conference—as to the content of the Brandt Commission discussion there, he asked me to go and read Hansard of the other place where the Lord Privy Seal was making a Statement on Government policy. I not only read that but I listened to it, and I joined with a lot of his friends in his party in finding that Statement both negative and depressing. I wonder whether the noble Lord has read a subsequent speech by another of his former colleagues, Mr. Heath, who called in that debate for an immediate international initiative by the British Government to put the recommendations of the Brandt Commission into effect. Because this does not seem to square with the Statement he has read out this afternoon, one phrase of which—
Several noble Lords: Question!
Lord HATCH of LUSBY: One phrase of the Statement which the noble Lord has read out quite rightly stated that:
"we depend upon each other".
That is the heart of the Brandt Commission Report: not aid: but the economic dependence on each other. Can the noble Lord tell the House whether the Government have completed their review of the Brandt Commission's report, as was mentioned by his right honourable friend the Lord Privy Seal, and what part did the Government's conclusions play at the conference in Venice this past weekend?
Lord SOAMES: No, my Lords. I cannot tell the noble Lord—if he would like to put down a Question it will, of course, be answered—what stage the Government's consideration of the Brandt Report has reached. More than this, I fear I cannot tell him: I think that it is not dependence on each other, so much as interdependence, which is a term which has now been on our lips and tongues for many a long year.

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We have been talking about it ever since 1973—for seven years. The trouble is that interdependence means transfer of resources and transfer of money, and it is not always easy to persuade people to part with their money for the good of others. This is what we have all got to get down to. What is being said today, quite frankly, is putting into modern language and adapting to present-day circumstances what a number of people have been saying for a number of years about the need for the recycling of petrol money, and the need for OPEC and also the Communist world to come in and help with aid. What we have got to do is stop just talking about it and get on with it.
Viscount MASSEREENE and FERRARD: My Lords, may I ask my noble Leader whether this means that we are going to cut down in any way on the development of our North Sea oil resources, which are so valuable to the balance of payments? We are not going to divert any investment from North Sea oil into the production of coal or anything like that?
Lord SOAMES: No, my Lords. It is not envisaged that this will, in any way, affect the Government's plans for investment in oil.
Lord BOOTHBY: My Lords, on the assumption that the question of gold was not mentioned at the summit conference, may I suggest to my noble friend that he might consider whether it should be put on the agenda for the next summit conference, because as a commodity it is just as important as oil and after the next presidential election may assume even greater importance.
Lord SOAMES: My Lords, it is not for me to lay down what will be the agenda for the next conference. But I shall certainly ensure that what the noble Lord, with all his experience, has said is drawn to the attention of those whose responsibility it is.

TENANTS' RIGHTS, ETC. (SCOTLAND) BILL
4.22 p.m.
Second Reading debate resumed.
Viscount THURSO: My Lords, before I turn to the Tenants' Rights, Etc. (Scotland) Bill, may I remind the noble Lord, Lord Ross of Marnock, that, whatever they may read in Strathclyde, we in the far North still start the day with the P. & J? Perhaps I may now ask the noble Earl, Lord Mansfield, a question which was put to me by another noble Lord and which I was totally unable to answer. Apparently, the Housing Bill, which is at the moment going through your Lordships' House, deals with Scotland and covers a number of subjects and problems which the Tenants' Rights, Etc. (Scotland) Bill also deals with. Can the noble Earl tell us whether there is, in fact, an overlap between the Housing Bill and the Bill whose Second Reading we are discussing today? I am unable to answer that question to my own satisfaction and I should like guidance on it.
The Earl of MANSFIELD: My Lords, may I interrupt the noble Viscount, so that I can answer his question? What does he mean by "overlap" in this case? Does he mean spheres of influence, time or what?
Viscount THURSO: My Lords, in a sense, spheres of influence. It seems to me that both Bills tend to deal with the same subject. Which one, therefore, is to have priority? I can perhaps explain that more clearly to the noble Earl privately, afterwards.
Turning now to the Bill which is the subject of the debate, it is only a qualified welcome which we on these Benches can offer to this Bill. Frankly, we find it to be a bit of a curate's egg. The good parts include, for instance, the power to sell empty houses, the security of tenure provisions, the opening-up of house allocation systems to public scrutiny and the abolition of minimum waiting periods. But the taint of the Bill arises mainly from a suspicion that it may, in the long term, spoil the chances of those who cannot afford to buy getting housed at all. It also looks as though it may create very great difficulties for local authorities in maintaining a properly balanced housing stock.
Let me say right away, that I am not against the sale of council houses to sitting tenants, nor is the Liberal Party against

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such a policy. Indeed, it has always seemed wrong to me that a family should be prevented from acquiring the house which they have come to regard as their home, if they want to do so and can afford to do so. In fact, if they do buy their house they must at the same time be doing the community in which they live, and indeed the whole country, a good turn.
They will be putting back into the coffers of the local authority a capital sum which can then be redeployed for useful purposes, and they will be relieving the local authority of the ever-increasing burden of maintenance and repair of that house. When I was a town councillor in Thurso, I often used to think that it would have paid us simply to give all our houses to the sitting tenants as a present, such was the burden of upkeep and the gap between rents and maintenance costs.
But, of course, such thoughts are mere idle speculation. Local authorities and governments cannot simply divest themselves of their responsibilities—much though their members might like to do so. I must therefore remind Her Majesty's Government of their responsibility in the area of housing. I must remind them of their paramount responsibility to maintain an adequate stock of houses for the people of Scotland. The selling of council houses to sitting tenants must not be allowed to happen in such a way as to threaten the provision of an adequate housing stock, or the ability of local authorities to give adequate shelter to the people.
The danger in this Bill seems to lie in treating the whole of Scotland as one. The noble Lord, Lord Ross of Marnock, drew attention to this earlier on and I would underline it. Danger also exists in not recognising that there are great differences in conditions and in needs from region to region, and from district to district within regions. Where there is a surplus, there is probably little danger in a policy of council house sales, but in areas where there is shortage and a long waiting list, social damage and hardship could be caused by lowering the stock of local authority houses.
Over much of Scotland, and particularly in rural areas, there is still a shortage of
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houses for young couples starting out in life. Too many people start their married life in the cramped conditions of a caravan. Too many young children are being born in Scotland into conditions which fail to meet a tolerable standard. How do I know, my Lords? It is because I know that there are 150,000 houses in Scotland which are below the tolerable standard, and anyone who lives in Scotland knows the caravan sites where families struggle to bring up children in the mud, slush and sleet of a Highland winter.
This means that not only must we see that local authorities are able to meet their commitment to house the needy, but, also, we must see that the private sector is able to bear its part as well. Private builders must be encouraged and helped to build in disadvantaged areas. Local authorities in some rural areas should be helped to add to their stock of houses, not to sell them off, and they should discriminate between different applications to buy, lest they sell off some precious housing stock to become holiday homes.
Above all, however, we should once again sharpen that excellent tool, the improvement grant, and put it to work to meet Scotland's housing needs. In 1974 when the Housing (Scotland) Act became law, the average cost of a dwelling in Scotland was £9,775, and the grant which could be obtained to bring a house up to tolerable standard was £1,875. Today, the cost of an average dwelling has doubled but the grant available has not. The grant should he £3,750 and it is £2,250. Therefore the effects of inflation are not being accounted for and the effects of increasing costs are not being met. Not only is the grant too little to help adequately but it is also hedged around with a thorn fence of regulations so that it is very difficult indeed to qualify for the full grant that is theoretically available.
We must surely all know the high cost of house improvements. Recently I added a room to a cottage—not a specialist room like a bathroom or a kitchen but just an ordinary sitting room, as there was not adequate public room space in the cottage for a family with kids doing homework and so on. It was only three walls and a floor, with a roof, added to a two-up, two-down, plus bathroom and kitchenette, and it has cost £5,500. None of it is eligible for grant.

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In 1968 or 1969 when improvement grants were brought into being, that sum of money would have built a five-apartment council house. Today it adds a room.
The Government are not keeping pace with inflation. Everybody knows it. Local authorities know it; ordinary people know it; Government advisers know it; Ministers know it. They cannot pretend otherwise. This is one area in which the Government must examine again their hard line on expenditure cuts. The sufferers are not the rich, or the lay-abouts, or the well established, or the well employed and well paid. They are the young, the vulnerable, the little children, the poor and the inadequate in the community. It is just plain unChristian to shut our faces to their need.
It is our duty to shelter our people. This Bill does nothing to help us to discharge this duty and it puts at risk local authorities' ability to do so. We must see that this risk is avoided, and we on these Benches may well bring forward amendments which will seek to do so. Meanwhile, without prejudice, we give this Bill a qualified blessing and we listen to its Second Reading with an open and critical mind.
4.33 p.m.
The Earl of SELKIRK: My Lords, with the permission of the noble and learned Lord, Lord McCluskey, may I say a word before he speaks? I am sure that he would rather speak on behalf of the Opposition at the end of the debate.
I think that my noble friend Lord Mansfield should give us a little more explanation of the way that these two Bills dovetail. The English Housing Bill deals with the whole of the country. The Scottish Bill deals exclusively with Scotland except for some rather curious references to "English local authorities". If one looks at Part I, Chapter I, of the Housing Bill, one sees that it is headed, "The Right to Buy". However, if one looks at the Scottish Bill, Part I deals with the right to purchase. I do not know whether there is overlapping, but there is a very strong suggestion that there is a certain amount of it, which means that one has to read both Bills carefully.
A more important question is this: if I put down an amendment to the
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English Bill, does it apply to Scotland, or must I put down an amendment to both Bills? I think that there ought to be a clear explanation of this, and it may be that there is. I do not know whether my noble friend wants to speak now or later?
The Earl of MANSFIELD: My Lords, in case my noble friend wants to intervene again, may I direct his attention to Clause 144 of what I call the English Bill, when I think all will be unfolded. I see that the noble and learned Lord, Lord McCluskey, is nodding.
The Earl of SELKIRK: Yes, my Lords, but if I look at Clause 142(2)(b) in the English Bill I see:
"… any provision may be brought into force on different days for England, Wales and Scotland".
That means that any part of the English Bill can be brought into force in Scotland. There may be a perfectly simple explanation which I am stupid enough not to understand.
May I make two points on the Bill? I think it reflects on the general administration of this country that Bills as complicated as this one must be produced in order to help people to get housing. This is a great pity because housing is terribly important. The great body of people will not understand the complications—the aura of law which surrounds tenancy and other forms of house ownership. It is probably impossible to simplify this Bill, but I very much hope that in the course of time this matter will be made very much more simple.
The noble Lord, Lord Ross of Marnock, referred constantly to the needs of local authorities. It is not a question of the needs of local authorities; it is a question of the needs of the people of Scotland who want houses of the type they require in the right place. Most of them would like to have owner occupation if they could get it. I would go further than that. I wonder whether it is right that local authorities should provide houses for people who can afford to buy their own houses and who want to do so. Certainly the Government's view is that anybody who can afford it should have owner-occupation. I thought that most members of the Opposition accepted that in proper cases owner-occupation is generally the

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most desirable form of occupation. I should have thought that the main task of local authorities was to provide houses for the homeless—for people who, for one reason or another, cannot afford to provide houses for themselves. It is on that need that today I hope local authorities will concentrate. We are dealing with a situation which is entirely different from that in the 1920s, the 1930s or the 1940s. There are, by and large, enough houses.
That brings me to my second point. In this Bill, emphasis is placed on the need to maintain houses. One of my anxieties is that if we do not maintain houses properly but allow damp to get in, gradually we shall allow houses to fall into that grey area from which eventually they will have to be wiped out as slums. I believe that a great many houses could be very much better maintained and that the time to maintain houses is when they start to get damp. We should not wait until they are beginning to fall down. I believe that this is what the Bill emphasises. In so far as it does that, I hope very much that it will succeed in its purpose. No doubt there will be many comments and criticisms, but I hope very much that these results will be brought about by the Bill.
Lord HUGHES: My Lords, my noble and learned friend Lord McCluskey has accorded to me the same courtesy as he gave to the noble Earl opposite of speaking just before him, very briefly, in order to explain that my silence so far does not indicate anything other than the fact that the Addison Rules prevent me from taking part in the debate. This will apply also to future stages of the Bill, so far as Parts I, II amd III are concerned. So far as the other parts of the Bill are concerned, which have no effect whatsoever on development corporations, I hope to make a contribution during future stages.
4.39 p.m.
Lord McCLUSKEY: My Lords, as some noble Lords may remember, I am a devolutionist. Had the Scotland Bill been put into effect, this Bill would never have reached this House—indeed, it would never have reached Westminster. Under the Scotland Bill housing was a devolved matter, but I am quite certain that no Scottish legislature would have
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passed such a wrong-headed measure as the one which comes before your Lordships' House today. Indeed, had this measure been left to the decision of the people who live and vote in Scotland, whether they were meeting in Edinburgh or in the other place, it would certainly have been consigned to the dustbin. It passed through the other House against the wishes of the Scottish Members, who voted against it by a majority of approximately two to one. It was carried in the other House by English Conservatives who know nothing whatsoever about Scottish housing. It will no doubt be passed by this House because of the substantial indifference of this House to the whole question.
I note with some dismay that not one Back-Bench Member of this House, comprising over 1,000 Members, has put down his name to speak on this Bill. The noble Earl, Lord Selkirk, intervened on a technical matter, and my noble friend Lord Hughes intervened to say that he was unable to speak on the Bill. That still leaves over 1,000 Members of your Lordships' House, none of whom saw fit to utter one word in relation to one of the most dramatic changes in relation to Scottish housing that has ever been proposed.
Not only that, my Lords. This Bill offends against a number of the principles which this House has traditionally held dear. For example, it is a basic, naked and quite uncompromising attack on the whole principle of local democracy. It says that central Government knows best when it comes to an essential local matter like housing. I should have thought that this House has many times affirmed the view that that is quite wrong. It introduces compulsory purchase at a price which is only a fraction of the market value of the property to be compulsorily acquired. Again, I should have thought that this House has many times expressed its view against such a proposal. It is a Bill based upon a slogan, and it is plain from the proceedings in another place, and I hope it will be plain as a result of the proceedings here, that no study at all has been made of the possible consequences of this Bill upon the housing stock in Scotland.
Fourthly—I hope to make each of these points good in a moment or two—it ignores the advice of almost everyone who knows anything at all about housing in

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Scotland as to the disastrous consequences that will flow from it for countless thousands of public sector tenants in Scotland. It will, in my view—and I hope I can make this point good in argument—at one stroke arrest the building of both public sector and private sector housing in Scotland. It will ensure that the best local authority houses pass forever out of the local authority housing stock, and local authorities will then be driven inexorably to be the providers of cheap welfare housing, social housing, indeed fulfilling the role the noble Earl, Lord Selkirk, seemed to think was properly theirs, but which has never traditionally been theirs in Scotland.
Finally—and I only summarise the main points—it will undoubtedly create in Scotland, bitterness, division and confrontation on a very severe scale indeed. It will—and I regret it very much—breed political extremism among local authority members, who fought and won local elections on this very issue, and who will, and again I regret it, be prepared to defy the law on the strength of their electoral mandate. I regret and I would not support such extremism, but this Bill will feed it and will foster it, and will give it strength, perhaps for many years to come.
My Lords, I have not been in your Lordships' House for very long, but I have been here long enough to discover that when a Bill of this kind is debated its protagonists stress the motives which inspire it, its opponents stress the results which it will produce. This House has repeatedly, and to its great credit, been mature enough on many occasions to recognise that what is important about a Bill of this kind is not how well intentioned are its essential ideals or how good are the motives of those who bring it forward, but what its effects are likely to be and whether those effects are desirable or deplorable. This House, therefore, knows from many experiences that the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.
For example, everyone remembers the Industrial Relations Bill 1971 which the noble Lord, Lord Drumalbyn, saw through this House. It was intended by the Government of the day, and I believe sincerely, to improve industrial relations. It did the very opposite—it embittered industrial relations. It produced in the process by far the highest number of
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working days lost through strikes since 1926. That is one example. Local government reform is another example of good intentions which went awry. The reform of the National Health Service is another example of good intentions which went awry. Some would say that the Rent Acts had the same kind of effect, quite the opposite of what was intended by their authors. No doubt other noble Lords on that side of the House would mention the nationalisation of great industries, inspired, they would say, by good ideals but impractical, producing wrong results. Depending on your political standpoint you can draw up your own lists. One thing we are all agreed about is that the excellence of the motives, or the idea that was espoused by the noble Earl, Lord Selkirk, does not save the Bill if in the real world the effects are disastrous. On that basis, I propose to look at the effects in relation to the main heads that I have outlined.
My Lords, this Bill is a fundamental attack upon local democracy. The housing role is surely the most important function of the district authorities in Scotland. They are principally the managers of a huge stock of local authority housing, nearly one million houses in Scotland, and they are responsible for its good management to several million people who are their electors. These people elected them into office. They are responsible to these people and that is their main function. It is the one which concerns the councillors, day and daily, in their surgeries; and it is even the one which concerns Members of Parliament, day and daily, in their surgeries, because it is a matter of great importance. These local authorities have to assess the need for housing; they have to plan the acquisition of land; they have to finance, perhaps over a 60-year period, the building of housing for rent, and they have to try to manage all their houses, good and bad, old and new, with a number of purposes. They have to try to do justice to existing and to potential tenants; they must try to provide for the housing demands which will be created by employment gains in the area, and they must try to allow room for the private sector to develop housing for those who can and do make that kind of choice.
But, my Lords, Part I of this Bill at a stroke destroys for ever the possibility of a

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sensible long-term planning of the housing stock of the local authority. The local knowledge of the elected district council and its officers are at once set at naught, because under this Bill the district council becomes a piece of administrative machinery activated by the self-interest—I do not use that word in an improper sense—of the tenant. Once it is activated, the local authority has no alternative but blindly to obey rules laid down by the Secretary of State and as yet undisclosed, because although this Bill is bristling with references to orders which the Secretary of State will make we have not yet seen these orders and we are in a sense buying a pig in a poke.
Let me give an example. There are no fewer than eight separate references in Part I of this Bill to statutory instruments that may be introduced by the Secretary of State. They govern, in Clause 1, the sale price, in Clause 2 the form of application. In Clause 4 they govern very important matters relating to rural housing, and in Clause 5 there are no fewer than four orders referred to which govern loans by local authorities to the people who are buying these houses. In Clause 7 s further order is contemplated in relation to the duty of the local authorities to process the sales. So here we have a Bill bristling with delegated legislation and we have not yet been told what its content is going to be. At every point the district council is made not a responsible local authority but a puppet on a string, and we do not know the length or elasticity of that string at the present time.
My Lords, your Lordships should be warned. I have already said—and I repeat because I want to make it clear—that I do not support defiance of the law. But elected district councillors are not in fact puppets. They and not the Secretary of State have the local knowledge. They and not the civil servants in St. Andrew's House have the local knowledge. To deprive them of the responsibility and turn them into the Secretary of State's puppets, to deprive them of the responsibility for housing, as this Bill does, is to commit a cardinal error with grave social and constitutional implications. I hope that this House, which has looked at many Bills to see what effect they will have, will look more carefully at this Bill than has hitherto
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been done by those who support the Government.
My Lords, let me turn to my second point, about compulsory purchase. As your Lordships will be well aware, compulsory purchase under our law is allowed only for the most limited purposes, and only after proof in each individual case. That proof is designed to show that compulsory purchase is necessary to achieve a clear and reasonably certain public gain. Then, after proof, if a compulsory purchase order is confirmed, there are provisions for fair compensation.
Let us contrast that situation with the present one. In this case, the individual case is not to be looked at at all. There is no requirement to look at the case of the individual house; there is no requirement to look at the housing scheme in which the house may be situated; there is no requirement to look at the needs of the area in which the housing scheme may be; there is no requirement to look at the needs of the whole district; and there is no requirement to look at the particular village, town, borough or whatever it may be. All local considerations that may have a bearing upon the public good are to be ignored. All that matters is how the individual tenant sees his self-interest. Necessity has no part to play in the scheme under the Bill, by contrast with normal compulsory purchase procedures.
The public good is assumed: it is not proved. Indeed, it is disproved at this stage. However, what is even more important is that the Secretary of State will not allow any evidence to be put before him, or before anybody else, to show that the public good will not be served by allowing purchases of this kind.
To turn to another contrast with normal compulsory purchase, the compensation to the public purse is not fair. The purchaser gets a bargain basement price and can hold that price against inflation, under one of the provisions of the Bill, for two years. He pays a £100 option sum, and he holds the price of the house, at the date when he pays the option, for two years. At the end of two years he can then buy the house for two-thirds or perhaps one half, of its market value price. So there is compulsory purchase without fair compensation to the public purse. Then, the final indignity is that

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the unwilling seller—the local authority—is compelled to lend to the purchaser the purchase price on terms which the Secretary of State has not yet disclosed, although the Bill was printed no fewer than six months ago.
My third and fourth points I can take together. There has been no study whatsoever of the probable effects of the Bill. The consultation with those who have knowledge of these matters in Scotland has been extremely cursory. The advice received from the Convention of Scottish Local Authorites in Scotland, from many individual local authorities, from Members of Parliament, from Shelter and from numerous organisations and individuals has been ignored, because the great weight of that advice is against the central theme of the Bill. This is the most arrogant, ill-informed and wrongheaded manoeuvre since the Charge of the Light Brigade, and as the poor attendance in the House today proves, it lacks even the glamour of that celebrated occasion.
I said that this Bill would, at a stroke, arrest the building of both public sector and private sector housing. Let me seek to make that assertion good. Why should a local authority build houses in the knowledge that it can be compelled to sell those very houses 36 months—three years—after the first tenant has moved in, and not just to sell them, but to sell them at that date at a discount of 33⅓ per cent? Indeed, not just that, but, having sold them, to lend the price, or a substantial part of the price, to those people who are buying them. Why on earth should a local authority spend its resources, which are extremely difficult to raise, on building houses which it will no longer own 36 or perhaps 38 months after they have been completed?
I should like to answer a point raised by the noble Earl, Lord Selkirk. The noble Earl talked about improving houses. Why should a local authority which has a stock of local authority houses, including some poor quality houses, spend substantial sums improving those houses in the knowledge that the only effect will be to encourage the tenants to buy those very houses at one half of the market price? So, it is not just the building of these houses that will be discouraged—the improvement of these houses will also be discouraged.
Lord DRUMALBYN: My Lords, it would be 20 years before he would be able to buy it with a 50 per cent. discount.
Lord McCLUSKEY: My Lords, I think the position is that once he has been in occupation for three years he can buy it at a 33 per cent. discount and then he adds 1 per cent. a year for the next 17 years. So it is 17 years' occupation, I think.
Lord DRUMALBYN: Seventeen plus three, my Lords.
Lord McCLUSKEY: No, my Lords; I think it is 17 including three. None the less, there are a great many houses. The point that my noble friend Lord Ross of Marnock made is relevant here. Many of the most attractive houses—those that were called in the other place "cottage houses" with a front door, a back door and a garden—were built a long, long time ago and have been under the same occupation for a very long period. Many of those houses are the same houses which have required, and in some cases have received, improvement. What encouragement is there to a local authority to improve such houses now when it knows that all it will do is encourage the tenants to buy them?
Let me turn to another point; namely, what effect will it have upon the building of private sector houses? The noble Lord, Lord Hughes, was not able to comment, but the new towns in fact sell off some of their assets. It is very difficult for a private builder to go into a new town area and build new houses, simply because he cannot compete with the prices at which the local authority—the new town corporation—can sell them. Can your Lordships imagine a private builder thinking of building somewhere in an area where there are good local authority houses being sold off at half price? He has no chance whatever of building and selling houses there. He may sell to some people, of course, who do not have the same rights as are conferred by the Bill upon some privileged tenants. But, it is perfectly plain that there will be a substantial discouragement to the building of private sector houses.
So there is a bad effect upon improvement, a bad effect upon public sector housing and a bad effect upon private

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sector housing. Let us look at the substance of the matter. We are talking here in a sense about paper although it has serious effects upon people. The Bill creates no more houses, it discourages the building of houses and it discourages the improvement of houses. The best houses will undoubtedly be those that will be bought. Let me give an example of the houses that will not be bought—the houses, for example, in the multi-storey blocks which, as my noble friend Lord Ross reminded us, started to be built during the 13 years of Conservative rule from the early 1950s to 1964. Will those houses be bought by the tenants?—surely not. There is no evidence that they will be bought. If, in a multi-storey block with 30 or 20 storeys and with all the problems that one gets in those blocks with lifts and graffiti and so on and so forth, a quarter of the flats were bought by the sitting tenants, what would happen if there were a Ronan Point type of disaster and the building required millions of pounds spent upon it to save it? Will the quarter of the people who bought their flats there be required to contribute? Is there some way in which the money can be obtained from them? What will happen? Or will the local authority simply pay for the repair of those flats as well as the local authority's own flats?
There is another point—a point of social discrimination—which is of great importance here. As my noble friend reminded the House, over 50 per cent. of the present council tenants in Scotland are in receipt of some form of public fund assistance for the payment of their living/housing costs. Those people will not be able, one would have thought, to borrow either from a building society or, indeed, under the regulations, from a local authority. So, basically, those who can afford to buy the houses, if they wish to do so, and live in the right type of house, will be the ones who are better off. So the better houses will be bought by the better off, and the houses that will be left will be the poorer houses and will be inhabited by the disadvantaged and the less well off. The local authority will end up as the manager of social welfare housing for the poor and disadvantaged. We have the classic example here of what Professor Galbraith called private affluence leading
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to public squalor. He said that the price of private affluence is public squalor, and that is the tendency to which this Bill inexorably takes us.
I have mentioned the division between the less well off and the better off. There is another important aspect. In some local authority areas in Scotland no fewer that 25 per cent. of the tenants are on the transfer list. It is the ambition of many tenants to move ultimately to the better type of council housing. As a result of this Bill that type of housing will be removed for ever from the local authority housing stock and the ambition of these people will be dashed for all time.
This Bill will create anger among local authorities; it will create anger among those on the transfer list. Inevitably, it will lead, I fear, to defiance of the law and to the kind of resort to the courts, the law of contempt, fines, surcharging, and so on, that followed the Housing (Financial Provisions) Act 1972. It will be a breeding ground for extremism. I should have thought that, whatever one may think of the Government's economic policy, they have enough confrontations and enough economic problems on their hands at the moment without encouraging more in this particular field.
Let me turn briefly and in conclusion to some of the details. Clause 5 is a very badly drafted clause. As I have said, it depends, in no fewer than four places, upon regulations to be made by the Secretary of State. Where are they? Why have we waited six months without yet seeing them? What happens under Clause 5(8), if I may ask the noble Earl, if the local authority will not, in fact, advance the loan?—because the Bill contains no sanction and no compulsion upon the local authority. How will that operate?
Under Clause 7, which provides an escape route, if the local authorities, in fact, defy the law, how many extra staff will be required by the Lands Tribunal, and how can they possibly get through the work that is likely to fall upon them in the first few months after the Bill is brought into effect? I would submit that the Government have immense difficulties ahead of them. What they have done, which is extremely foolish, is to refuse to allow themselves any flexibility. They have built no ground to which to

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retreat into the Bill. If the problems become as immense as I suggest they will be—and many who are more expert than I have asserted that they will be immense—the Government have left no ground whatever on to which they can retreat, and they are making a very unfortunate situation for themselves.
The Government have made an unfortunate situation for the House because this Bill—and I do not know whether your Lordships have tried to follow it—is 83 clauses long and is prefaced by a Financial and Explanatory Memorandum which extends only to 50-odd clauses. That is because the Government for some reason have chosen to print the Explanatory and Financial Memorandum which was printed in front of the Bill that was brought before the House of Commons. That is unfortunate because about 25 or 26 clauses have been added to the Bill since then, with not a word of explanation as to what they mean. It is difficult enough to follow this type of legislation without being treated in that particular way. I would urge the Government to think of some way of issuing an explanatory memorandum by way of supplement in order to explain the consequences of the 26 clauses that were added when the Bill was in another place. Perhaps the way to do it is for the noble Minister to make available to us, and indeed, in the Library, the Notes on Clauses, particularly the Notes on Clauses that he has in relation to these 26 new clauses.
Finally, let me turn to the other parts of the Bill and say a few words on them. Of Parts II and III, I say nothing. They have been dealt with by my noble friend Lord Ross of Marnock. Part IV deals with short tenancies, and nobody believes that this will encourage new properties to come on the market for rent—nobody at all. Indeed, the history of the Rent Act 1957 tends to point in the opposite direction. Furthermore, what is plain is that as the secure tenancies come to an end they will simply not be replaced by other secure tenancies, and the long-term effect will be very deleterious to the rights of tenants.
In introducing the Bill the noble Earl referred to Clause 44, but he did not refer to Clause 37. However, these two clauses taken together remove the phasing
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restrictions on rent increases, and the result of that is that in Scotland rents will inevitably rise much faster than inflation and much faster than wages, and so will tend to ferment further increased wage demands and further bitterness. These are unfortunate features of the Bill, but they do not touch upon the central issue, which is that the local authorities are being robbed of their right to bring their local knowledge to bear and to carry out the job which they have been elected to carry out. It is a Bill which has left the Government no room for manoeuvre; it is a Bill which, if put into effect, will wreak disastrous results across the whole spectrum of housing in Scotland. I beg the Government to think again about it.
5.5 p.m.
The Earl of MANSFIELD: My Lords, I venture to suggest that this has been an interesting debate, not least because it shows up almost more starkly than anything else since I have been in this House the complete division between the parties and their philosophy. From the very first time when I sat where the noble and learned Lord, Lord McCluskey, is sitting now and made what, at any rate at that moment, I thought was a jolly good attack on what we considered to be the vindictive Finance Bill of the day in, I think, 1975 and all that it proposed, speaking personally for a moment, I do not think I have ever seen a Bill which so clearly shows up the two parties and their respective philosophies. The Opposition's one-two attack on the Bill, with two Front Bench speakers, amply illustrates this.
If I may say so without offence, the noble Lord, Lord Ross of Marnock, provided what I might call, going back to the Daily Record, the intellectually "page 3 approach"; that is to say, if you cannot attack what the other side are proposing to do by any other manner, you accuse them personally of being either ignorant or malicious, or a combination of both. Then we have the noble and learned Lord, Lord McCluskey, who produced a considerably more intellectual approach, if I may so call it, but who went far too far when he said that various uncalled for and unhappy consequences would flow from this particular Bill.
First, I should like to deal with the fact that there are not very many speakers and

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that there are not very many of your Lordships in the Chamber. I do not regard that as at all untoward, or, indeed, surprising, because a great many of the principles which are in the Bill have already been discussed—I shall not say ad nauseam—in the very full Second Reading debate on the Housing Bill. As I said when I sought to introduce the Bill, this, in fact, mutatis mutandis, provides the Scottish dimension, putting into effect exactly the same principles as appeared in our manifesto and upon which the election was fought. Therefore, it would be surprising if a great number of your Lordships came to make more or less the same points as were made the other day. One only has to look at the Official Report to see that.
However, there are one or two points which I ought to raise. The noble Lord, Lord Ross, said, "Oh, no, there is no mandate for this sort of thing in Scotland". The noble and learned Lord, Lord McCluskey, said that if only his dear departed assembly had come into being the Bill might have received a different fate or might never have been brought forward. I do not think that it is any good going over that particular ground. We all remember the skill, and at times the charm, with which the noble and learned Lord introduced the Scotland Bill. I am afraid that I never saw the advantage of it, but we know that it was dear to his heart.
The fact of the matter is that we live in a unitary state; we have one sovereign Parliament which has to legislate for each end of the United Kingdom. For many years—from 1964 to 1970 and from 1974 to 1979—the vast majority of English Members of Parliament had to endure a Government which was most uncongenial to them, and it happens that from time to time the representative balance so far as the parties are concerned gets out of balance in different parts of the United Kingdom. But that does not then immediately say that there is no mandate in Wessex for this or that policy. I hope that as these debates go on the noble Lord, Lord Ross, on reflection, will not produce that point too often—I am sure he will, but not too often—
Lord ROSS of MARNOCK: My Lords I will give the pledge that I shall not produce it too often if the noble Earl will
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promise me that in future the Tory Party will not produce a Scottish manifesto.
The Earl of MANSFIELD: My Lords, what I will say to the noble Lord is that as our policies begin to bite and take effect I foresee the situation coming back to 1955, and then the noble Lord will finally be silenced about this business of mandates. I will say no more.
What does this Bill do? Noble Lords have said, particularly the noble Lord, Lord Ross, and to a lesser extent the noble Viscount, Lord Thurso, that these measures are probably unwelcome but certainly uncalled for so far as the sale of housing authority homes is concerned. However, may I just remind your Lordships that since May 1979 when the general consent was introduced there have been over 4,000 sales? Until recently there were 12½ thousand—exactly 12·5 thousand—applications to purchase. Many of those, because of the change of control of local authorities, will not for the moment go through. But it is idle to say anything but that a very large number of what are described as council tenants in Scotland will welcome these provisions—and I am talking now of the sale of council houses, or public authority houses—and will wish to avail themselves of the chance to become owner-occupiers.
The next point made was that in some way the sale of housing in this context will either make it more difficult for young couples, or indeed any would-be tenant, to become one, or in some way that the stock of houses will be diminished in a way which will make it more difficult for people to become tenants in the houses of their choice, so to speak. I would suggest that that is a fallacy. The research that has been done shows that the vast majority of the people who will want to buy their homes, whether in the country or in the urban areas, will be people who would in any event live out most of their lives in those houses. Therefore, if they are forced to continue renting them as opposed to buying them, that is not going to make any difference at all to the stock of council houses, still less deprive others of those houses because they will not move out of them. Even if all tenants were made to go on renting, the fact is that houses would not become available to those on waiting lists at least for another generation, and the position would be as before.

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The way to improve the position of people on the waiting lists—and I acknowledge this, and it is the responsibility of Government and the local authorities hand-in-hand—is first to build more houses, and secondly to ensure that, where possible, existing houses do not lie vacant, and to make provision to remedy that situation. So that, I suggest, gives the lie to the theory that the stock of houses is in any way going to be adversely affected by the right to buy.
The noble Lord, Lord Ross, complained about the abolition of the Housing Advisory Committee. All I can say is that it had fallen into disuse under the previous Government; that its numbers were not made up; that at a time of scarce resources the Government must have regard to the cost of such a body; and that the advice which the Government have received is that the kind of role and advice which the advisory committee could give and be consulted about can be performed equally well on an ad hoc basis. Therefore, I do not think there is anything very real about that complaint.
The noble Viscount, Lord Thurso, asked—and my noble friend Lord Selkirk raised the same point—whether there was in effect any overlap between the two Bills. The answer is that there is not. Each Bill refers to a different part of the United Kingdom. In fact they are going along more or less contemporaneously because it would be extremely inconvenient if they did not. The clauses in the English Bill which apply to Scotland in fact deal with the Housing Corporation, which is a GB body, and these provisions are not duplicated and indeed not covered at all in the Bill presently before your Lordships.
All the provisions in the Bill—that is to say, all those that deal with the sale of council houses, rents, tenants' charters, and so on—are dealt with separately in each Bill. Sometimes, as for instance in the phasing of rent increases, there are differences between the two countries, but this comes about as a result of different circumstances and different desirable considerations in different countries, and for no other reason. Therefore, there is no question of duplication.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord McCluskey, dealt with a number of
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clauses which we can come to in Committee. May I say to him that a revised version of the Explanatory Memorandum will be available for the Committee stage? It is an oversight that it was not already revised for this print of the Bill. I apologise, as I must, for that oversight, which will be remedied. I shall think about his suggestion that notes on clauses should be published, or provided. I hope that he will not think that I am facetious if I say that I am tempted by that proposal if he, in turn, will undertake to get his amendments down in good time. I think the answer to his request is yes, probably.
Lord McCLUSKEY: My Lords, with respect to the noble Earl, the two situations are not quite comparable. In a Bill of this kind it is extremely difficult for either a person like my noble friend Lord Ross, who has a great deal of experience in housing, to understand the technicalities, or a technical man like myself to understand the housing background. Therefore, there is nobody who can come to it with any very clear understanding of what the provisions mean and what their effects are likely to be. The Notes on Clauses do that, and, from my experience, they do it in an impartial way. I would hope that the Government would find it possible to do for this House what has been done in respect of some of the clauses in the other House and make the Notes on Clauses available. Then the House itself will get a better service from those of us who see our main function as being to advise the House as to what its attitude may be. The same applies of course to the Housing Bill in England.
The Earl of MANSFIELD: My Lords, the noble and learned Lord is really preaching to the converted. If he says that he personally, or his noble friend, has experienced difficulty with these things, then I say, so say all of us.
I come back to the other points made by the noble and learned Lord, Lord McCluskey. I know that he did not wish to give any aid or comfort to those who might disobey the law. The beneficial effects of this Bill will not be long in being felt. One would hope that any opposition to the Bill, or to various parts of it, will speedily die away. To harp on and

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threaten, in effect, that misguided people will continue, after the parliamentary battle, to try to thwart particularly in respect of the elected House, what is, after all, the will of Parliament, is a disservice to the community at large and I hope he will agree with me—I am sure he does—that nobody would encourage such lapses to occur.
Lord McCLUSKEY: My Lords, I would ask the noble Earl to withdraw the word "threat". I do not threaten anything. I deplore any breach of the law and I deplore the intention of those, already expressed, that they will not implement this measure. I believe it is the responsibility of elected Members to implement the law, whether they like it or not. So I am making no threat at all and I deplore it, and I am certainly offering no encouragement to it. However, I am prophesying that it is going to happen.
The Earl of MANSFIELD: My Lords, I did not, with respect, accuse the noble and learned Lord of making a threat. I said threats had been made and I was particularly careful in what I said. I know that the noble and learned Lord, who has held high office, would deplore as much as I would any proposal on the part of people not to respect the Bill when it becomes an Act of Parliament.
The noble and learned Lord went a little far when he criticised the Bill in respect of the order-making powers. Regarding Part I, the order-making powers are, in the main, reserve powers for special circumstances, and indeed the only orders to be made in the first instance are the tenants' application form, which is a piece of administrative machinery, and the rules governing mortgages, and it has already been made abundantly clear in another place that they will be based on building society practices.
Lord ROSS of MARNOCK: My Lords, surely the noble Earl realises that, a promise having been made about this, the Government tried to produce something but it was so bad that they had to withdraw it. So erroneous was it.
The Earl of MANSFIELD: My Lords, I am saying that the noble and learned
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Lord, Lord McCluskey, went too far in his argument, and I am not saying anything other than that. It is equally misleading, I suggest—as the noble and learned Lord implied, if he did not actually say it—to say that selling prices would be determined by order. In fact the rules, if I may so call them, about prices are perfectly clearly set out in Clause 1(5). The order-making power in Clause 1(7) is to be used only in special circumstances, and in any case it can be used only in relation to a very limited category of houses. I say that only because opposition to the Bill by the Opposition is—I will not say hysterical—not founded on logic.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord McCloskey, in the same vein, spoke about the Bill being a negation of local democracy and that it was in effect introducing a form of compulsory purchase without the usual safeguards which normally obtain when powers of compulsory purchase are introduced. I cannot do better in summing up the debate than to point to the positive measures of the Bill, not one of which has been acknowledged by noble Lords opposite. What is the Bill going to do? First, it will give a right to council tenants to buy their own homes with a virtual right to a housing authority mortgage if they cannot avail themselves of private finance, so it gives the individual that right. Secondly, it gives council tenants, for the first time, security of tenure. I can remember—I was going to say when I was a boy and the noble Lord was Secretary of State for Scotland, but I must have been rather an old boy—reading in the papers (whether it was the Daily Record, which I read and enjoy every day, or some of the other papers in other parts of Scotland I do not remember) about tenants who were forced out of their homes, for instance for not painting their doors the appropriate colour or for keeping pets which were—
Lord ROSS of MARNOCK: Not the appropriate colour?
The Earl of MANSFIELD:—not approved by the local democrats. That will go. Thirdly, for the first time there is given to the ordinary person, the council tenant, the right of succession on their tenancy; fourthly, for the first time there is a right to a written lease; fifthly,

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a right for the first time to challenge unreasonable tenancy conditions; sixthly, a right for council tenants to take lodgers; seventhly, a right to carry out improvement work, and that applies to both private and public tenants; eighthly, a right is provided for the first time of eligibility for improvement and repair grant; ninethly, a right for the first time of access to other authorities' housing lists if a tenant wishes to move; and tenthly, a right to information about the landlord's transfer and exchange rules.
The noble Lord, Lord Ross of Marnock, wondered in almost his first sentence why this was called a tenants' rights Bill. I hope those 10 good reasons give him the answer to that question; it is a measure which gives ordinary people rights—rights over the local authority tinpot dictators who in Western Scotland have made local authority housing into what can only be described as a scandal for far too long; the right to improve themselves with a sense of security and to lead their lives with their families free from the petty tyranny of the local town hall bosses; and instead of paying rent for years and years and getting nothing from it, free to save their money and pass on something at the end of the day to those who come after them. This is the cornerstone of Conservative philosophy—liberty and rights for the individual.
On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

THE REMAND SYSTEM IN HM PRISONS
5.28 p.m.
Lord HUTCHINSON of LULLINGTON Lord HUTCHINSON of LULLINGTON rose to ask Her Majesty's Government what immediate steps are being taken to meet the severe criticism in the May Report of the conditions under which persons on remand are kept and the length of time they remain untried in HM Prisons. The noble Lord said: My Lords, The Question I raise with the Government concerns that aspect of the administration of the prisons which covers the untried and unconvicted person kept in prison before trial, and I raise it in a wholly constructive and practical spirit as a problem demanding strong political action
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now against a background of grave crisis in the administration of Her Majesty's prisons. That gravity cannot be over-emphasised; the crisis that so many of us prophesied for so long is now here.
Ten years ago The Times—I have a copy of it with me—published a first leader of three columns on this question, the first sentence of which read:
"The overcrowding in British prisons has become both an affront to human dignity and a threat to the efficiency of the penal system".
Lord Mountbatten, in his report in 1966, referred to the prisons as being grossly overcrowded, and on 31st March of this year the prison governors, in an unprecedented public outburst, warned the Secretary of State that the current overcrowding of the prisons was
"threatening the collapse of the whole prison system".
The May Inquiry was set up because of industrial unrest in the prisons among, those admirable and hard-pressed staff the prison officers, caused, as the May Report found, by the conditions in which the staff and prisoners live and work.
The prison population must be reduced, as a matter or urgency, and the first question that I put to the Minister is: is it not now inescapably clear that it is in this area—men and women, presumed innocent, who are swelling the numbers locked up in prisons—that an immediate programme could be devised and implemented? That programme could be intended, first, to reduce the total prison population; secondly, to free the overwhelmingly hard-pressed prison officers employed on massive escort duties, so that they can do the essential work that they have to do in the prisons; and, thirdly, to end the shocking conditions in which such prisoners are kept.
It is gratifying to see how many of your Lordships have survived the series of late-night frustrations and are to participate in the debate. Many of your Lordships know more than I do about penology and about the corridors of power, but few perhaps have had a more intimate connection with prisoners on remand than I have had in 30 years of professional practice.
The May Report castigates as a scandal the conditions in which many remand prisoners are kept, and I know that this

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is true The report says, in relation to the locking up of remand prisoners for the greater part of every day:
"No prison routine is so sterile, degrading and harmful to the prisoner and barren to the staff".
and that I also know to be true.
When governors speak of the collapse of the system, and a distinguished High Court judge speaks of scandal and degradation, I ask whether this Government, like their predecessors, are to sit back yet again and wring their hands? These are the phrases which have caused me to put down this Question: why, I ask, after 10 years or more of incessant warnings, is the position today as bad as it ever was?
We are proud of our legal system, and I am proud to be part of it, but I am ashamed of, and in my submission the country is disgraced by, our treatment of unconvicted prisoners, for whom, after ail, that system partially exists. There is no doubt that, by the standards laid down in the European minimum rules, this country stands condemned before ever someone takes a case to the European Court.
What then are the facts of the unacceptable face of the remand in custody situation? First, out of the crisis prison population of 43,400 people, 6,500, or 14 per cent., are on remand, and, of women in custody, over 20 per cent. are on remand. Secondly, whereas the daily population of prisoners has increased two and a half times since 1948, the population of remand prisoners has increased four times—the highest rate of increase of all groups, save those who are sent to detention centres.
Thirdly, within those huge numbers, no fewer than 44 per cent. of those imprisoned on remand ultimately receive no custodial sentence, or are acquitted. Of course a proportion of these people might be treated leniently because they appear before a judge who takes into account the fact that they have already served a sentence of imprisonment while waiting for trial; but that statistic remains an inescapable indictment of the system which is being pursued.
Each person remanded in custody costs the taxpayer a minimum of £112 a week, plus in many cases the social security
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payments made to the family of a prisoner. The human cost is of course as great, if not as quantifiable: the disruption of families; the loss of jobs; the eviction from premises; the trauma of months of incarceration before coming to trial; the plain waste of money, and the injustice involved—the cost usually falling on the legal aid fund—in regard to lawyers travelling to prisons, booking scarce interview times, obtaining instructions from clients in impossible circumstances, seeking witnesses, and so on. The reforms that I shall suggest to the Minister in a few moments would entail a transfer of cost rather than new expenditure.
In Brixton prison in February of this year 1,050 men were held on remand in accommodation certified for 690. Seven hundred and fifty of those men were sharing accommodation, two or three to a cell which, as your Lordships well know, was built in the 19th century for only one prisoner. Apart from meal times, half an hour's exercise, and slopping out, these prisoners remain in their cells throughout the 24 hours, always from 5.30 in the evening to seven in the morning. Privileges cannot be granted to them as they should be, for one reason only: lack of staff.
The lack of integral sanitation in a Victorian local prison, such as most of these remand prisoners go to, is described in the May Report as "intolerable and unacceptable", and the report goes on to say that the prison officers, who are not responsible for these conditions, bear the brunt of the abuse and the aggression that result from this situation. Remand prisoners, says May, suffer the worst accommodation, when arguably they should have the best. "Arguably", my Lords! These people are the unconvicted and the untried, and all prison governors would agree—and do agree, when one talks to them—that the worst conditions are those which are suffered by remand prisoners. Why?—because one could not administer those conditions for prisoners who have actually been sentenced. Is it not really incredible that the untried should be faced with conditions which are unacceptable for the convicted?
I should like to say a few words about the prison officers. These men, and women, whom I have with admiration watched at work throughout my pro-

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fessional life, cannot continue much longer in the wholly unacceptable, degrading, and uncivilised conditions of the local prisons. In 1976—and these facts, amazing as they may seem, come from the May Report—2 million man-hours were spent on escort duties, manning docks, waiting around for automatic 8-day remands, sitting all day either in the dock with prisoners, or below the dock waiting for them to come down, travelling around the country in black marias and converted coaches, involving 806,000 hours of overtime.
Every day buses and black marias set off from Lewes Prison to London with prisoners who are to appear in London magistrates' courts. The prisoners are delivered to a central point at Lambeth. They are later collected and then trundled back to Lewes, where they live in the conditions that I have described. From Brixton they trundle to Chelmsford and Southend, making the circuit, setting off in the early hours of the morning, and trundling back in the evening. This merry-go-round goes round and round, with trained prison officers doing this pointless and unrewarding work.
The Home Office estimate to the May Committee was that the total costs of escorts this year would amount to no less than £11 million. It went on to say:
"If only one prison officer less per day at only 50 Crown Court centres could be saved, the financial saving could not be less than £320,000 in the year";
with the result, my Lords, that 1,000 prisoners on remand could be working, if they wished to, rather than sitting rotting in these cells. I would say to the noble Lord the Minister that if this Government mean what they say in relation to cutting out waste, if they believe in efficiency, then in my submission there are huge savings to be made in this area. It is entirely unnecessary to have officers sitting in docks in the great majority of cases; it is entirely unnecessary for so many prison officers to be involved in ferrying inadequates and petty criminals around the country. Much escort work surely could be done by security firms or by the police.
But the obstacle to efficiency and rationalisation in this area, so one understands, is that prison officers at present
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depend on those 800,000 hours of overtime to bump up their remuneration, and because of that one fact hundreds and hundreds of untried and unconvicted men and women in this country are locked up in their cells for 20 hours a day because there is an insufficient number of staff to allow them the perfectly acceptable condition of freedom of association. They are, to use the jargon, "banged up", not for any security reason, as any governor of a prison will tell you, but simply for reasons of organisation. In my submission to your Lordships, that is a scandal, and I would ask the Minister what the Government intend to do about it.
That, my Lords, is the first scandal. The second scandal is the law's delays. Your Lordships have often heard of the time spent by persons in custody awaiting trial before their cases are reached. The national average at the moment is something like 11 to 12 weeks. In London, it is 19 weeks. At the Central Criminal Court, 29 weeks is the average for a plea of guilty, 34 weeks is the average for a plea of not guilty; and, as the administrator at the Central Criminal Court assesses the situation, it will take at least nine months to clear the backlog of cases at that court at this time.
This is surely mainly an organisational question. With the greatest of respect to the noble and learned Lord who sits on the Woolsack, the building of extra courts with continually less efficient judges to man them is surely not the answer. The answer must be that it is a question of effort, of the use of judge-time, of the listing of cases and the exercise of professional skills by lawyers in an efficient and conscientious way. But the fundamental problem is the number of custody remands, which imposes a straitjacket of security across the board, when, as the May Report concedes, only a small proportion of defendants provide a security risk. I ask the Minister: has the time not come for some form of sanction to force the trial of those held in custody within a set number of days?
I now turn briefly to the remedies which I would suggest, and I start with the matter of bail. Are the Government satisfied that too much use is being made of the power to remand in custody and that too little attention, perhaps, is being paid to the provisions of the Bail Act?

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It is, is it not, my Lords, an awesome power to commit a fellow citizen to prison without trial and without any finding of guilt? This power entitles courts to send such people to institutions that cannot properly absorb them. Nowhere else in a civilised society is that power given. Doctors are not given the power to send people to hospitals where there are no beds. But that is the situation in relation to the power to remand in custody. I ask the Minister again: has the time not come, perhaps, when prisons and remand centres should notify courts of their available capacity, and when the courts should be rationed as to the number of custody remands?
Since the Bail Act, the daily population of remand prisoners, having first gone down, has risen annually, and now nearly 20 per cent. of all committals for trials are in custody. No effort, says May, should be spared to minimuse custodial remands. I ask the Minister: what efforts are not being spared at the moment? Have the Government got the Home Office figures showing the percentage of those granted bail who in fact abscond or commit further offences? These are vital figures which we have never had published, if they exist. If the percentage is small, then greater risks must surely be taken in a time of acute emergency.
Just recently, the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police has produced figures in relation to persons arrested for robbery in London. He says that 23 per cent. were on bail. For some mysterious reason, in his statistics robbery includes assaults, damage, being a suspected person and the theft of cars. But one wonders whether this is a helpful statistic, because, of course, there is all the difference in the world between arrests and convictions. My own experience, if I may say so, is that in magistrates' courts and before Crown Court judges far too much use of remand in custody is made: first, because of the lack of information as to the defendant's community ties; secondly, because of the lack of suitable bail hostels; thirdly, because of the absence of legal representation; and, fourthly, I regret to say that such remands are often made for punitive reasons. "It will not do him any harm to see the inside of a prison", is a phrase one has heard; and courts often use requests for medical and social reports which could perfectly well be obtained
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when on bail as an excuse for remanding persons in custody. Of course, a remand in custody can enable a judge to pass a non-custodial sentence, and so save a prison sentence appearing on a man's record. If genuine, this is acceptable, but if not it is an abuse, and I am afraid it is often perpetrated. In my submission, there is here an educative job to be done.
I would ask the Government to consider certain areas in the granting of bail: first, to make legal aid available for applications to a judge in chambers; secondly, to ensure in every major magistrates' court a duty solicitor system; thirdly, in Crown Courts, at every important complex, to ensure that a judge is available in chambers to deal with appeals from magistrates' refusals to grant bail after committal. Further, I ask the Government to consider perhaps setting up a bail court near local prisons such as Brixton or the Ashford Remand Centre, which could save hours of escort time and avoid the necessity, if there was a duty prosecuting solicitor, of police officers attending in every case. I would ask the Minister whether he would consider an amendment of the Magistrates' Courts Act 1952, Section 105, which requires that no remand before committal should be longer than eight days—a provision which had excellent historical justification but which now, with legal aid, could surely be relaxed unless the defence wish to make a bona fide application in the presence of a defendant. Lastly, would the Government consider giving Crown Court judges the power to grant bail pending an appeal?
So far as delays are concerned, I mentioned sanctions. In Scotland, of course, there is the 110-day rule, with acquittal following if the trial is not started in that period of time. I think that might be too draconian in England and Wales, having regard to the courts and judicial resources, but I would suggest a mandatory review of every case, say, after eight weeks, with a necessary grant of bail if not brought to trial during the period. In addition to that, there are a number of sanctions which could be applied over the whole prosecution process, both to prosecution and defence, at varying stages of the case coming on for trial: the service of documents, the drafting of the indictment, the pre-trial review. All these stages could have target dates set, with sanctions of pay-

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ment of costs or the granting of bail which would bring a sense of urgency and order into the whole process.
Finally, I would refer to the treatment of the untried prisoner in custody. Apart from the dangerous and the violent and those held for really serious crime, the great majority of those remanded in custody have no need of the major security of a local prison. Bail hostels have shown the way. There are only a pitiful 250 places in them at the present time. Why not a crash programme to increase them? Why not make lodgings available, with financial incentives? Why not take over large, empty premises, give them a reduced form of security and create remand centres as originally envisaged in the 1948 Act? Only one remand centre has been created for adults in 30 years. It is at Risley, where 950 persons share accommodation designed for 650. The building is falling down and the whole concept there is a disaster.
Why not staff these centres with prison officers in civilian clothes and so enable some of them to get out of the hell of the conditions in these Victorian prisons? Why not use some of the six open prisons which have recently been closed, or hutted camps, for this purpose? There is no need for a large percentage of these persons remanded in custody to have the security, the blanket security, the black marias, the procedures of going into prison and so on which have to be followed whether the accused is an inadequate or whether he is a bank robber.
That really is all I have to say on this subject in introducing this debate and asking this Question. There remains in this country, in my submission, one outstanding social scandal and that is the conditions in our local prisons. The worst conditions in those prisons are those to which the untried and the unconvicted are subjected. This scandal has gone on too long. Now the inevitable revolt is upon us. I ask the Minister, who, if I may say so, has shown much concern and much determination in his department, whether he will give the House now some promise of hard action rather than the soothing syrup of a departmental brief.
5.53 p.m.
Lord WIGODER: My Lords, the whole House will want to express its
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gratitude to the noble Lord, Lord Hutchinson of Lullington, for raising in such a powerful way this sombre problem. It is a problem which has become more sombre as the years have gone by, because the increasing number of people in prison has itself added to the difficulties. The increasing congestion in our courts has added to the length of time those people have to remain in prison, and although your Lordships' House has debated this and associated problems on previous occasions I think it is right that it should be raised again now when the situation has become even worse. I will endeavour to follow the noble Lord, Lord Hutchinson, in making some, in my case, very small constructive suggestions as to how these problems can be ameliorated in some way.
The conditions in our remand prisons need, perhaps, very little further comment. The noble Lord has said it all: the squalor, the overcrowding, the confinement in cells, the lack of any form of privileges—all for people who have not been tried and who are assumed, by our law, to be innocent. Perhaps there is really no more to be said about the actual conditions. They are a disgrace, and anyone who has ever been to Brixton Prison or to one of the local prisons to see a remand prisoner is fully aware of the appalling conditions that they have to face.
That is easy to say. What is very much less easy to say, I find, is what is to be done about it. One can say that quite obviously it is time there were new prisons built to replace the mid-Victorian monstrosities that we have. One can say that there must be far more bail hostels than there are. There is scope for a very large number to be brought into existence. One can say that remand centres are needed, particularly for juveniles, so that they should not have to be sent to adult prisons. One can make all those suggestions without difficulty, but one has to be realistic and to face up to the fact that they cost money. Perhaps it is not very helpful, at a time when the Government have made it perfectly clear that they regard any increase in public expenditure as wholly unjustified, when they have had to take the measures that they have done, for example, in the recent Social Security Bills which were before your Lordships' House, to suggest that this Government, in the present economic climate, are likely to consider favourably

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large capital expenditures of the sort that everyone would recognise would form one of the ideal ways of solving the problems that face us. So I put that out of my mind.
Let me go on to see what can be done within existing resources. I have listened with the greatest interest to what the noble Lord, Lord Hutchinson, said towards the end of his speech as to possible ways of converting existing accommodation inexpensively to provide some of these much-needed facilities. Can I go on from there to look at the question of whether it is possible to reduce the pressure inside our prisons in one way or another? I think it is, perhaps only to a small extent; but every little extent helps in dealing with this matter. First of all, we ought to look very seriously at whether there are not categories of convicted prisoners who ought not to be in the prisons at all. If we can get rid of some of those we can, at least to some extent, improve the lot of the remand prisoners and to some extent make prison staff available to give them the attention that they deserve.
There is, I think, scope for looking to see whether we really ought to send to prison all the drunks, all the prostitutes, all the mentally sick and all those who are in arrears for paying fines, and whether there is not scope there for reducing the pressure to some small extent. I say "to some small extent", because, again, one must recognise that it is easy to say that drunks should not be sent to prison; it is easy to say that detoxication centres should be built. But that costs money. It is easy to say that the mentally sick should not be sent to prison. Of course they should not, but in many cases there is a desperate shortage of secure places in mental hospitals and that, again, costs money. But I believe that some small improvement could perhaps be made in not sending to prison a certain number of people who might perhaps be dealt with outside prison, particularly those in the categories that I have indicated.
One can add, too, that persuasion should be continued upon the judiciary not to send people to prison if it is remotely possible to take another course. Having said that, I doubt whether there is very much scope in fact for substantial improve-
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ment in that respect. I know of very few courts these days that send anybody to prison if any other course is remotely practicable. There is therefore some opening, a little opening, for reducing the number of convicted persons who are sent to prison and therefore for making a little more accommodation available, and perhaps a little more civilised conditions available, to those remanded in custody.
The second approach is to see whether fewer people could be remanded in custody. This again is an issue where it is easy to say that far too many people at this moment are refused bail. But the problems are very real. At the time the Bail Act was introduced, I ventured to say that I thought that it would make no difference to the existing practice so far as good judges were concerned. I do not believe that it has made very much difference to the existing practice. Judges on the whole are still granting bail where they would have granted it before the Act came into force and are refusing it where they would have refused it hitherto. But there may have been a marginal shift in some courts towards granting bail a little more freely.
When it is suggested that bail could be granted very much more freely than it is at the moment, I sympathise with that as an emotion; but I think there are difficulties. There are two schools of thought at the moment. There are those who say that too few people are remanded in custody—and one saw the statement by the Commissioner of Metropolitan Police the other day. There is no doubt that this has been said for years; there was nothing original in his statement. A substantial number of people who are released on bail commit further offences. The noble Lord, Lord Hutchinson, is right when he says that some of those arrested for committing further offences may be acquitted. But a substantial number of them, we know from experience, are not acquitted. The noble Lord, Lord Hutchinson, is right when he says that perhaps the Commissioner did not entirely do himself justice by including in the definition of "robbery", offences that none of us in the ordinary way would regard in that light. Nevertheless, the noble Lord, Lord Hutchinson, must have come across many cases (as I have done) in the courts where people have been released on bail having had substantial

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criminal records, having had substantial opposition from the police to their release on bail and having subsequently committed serious criminal offences.
It is a desperately difficult problem, and it is made no easier by the fact that in refusing bail on the ground that there will be a repetition of the offence, it has always seemed to me that a court is subconsciously trying a person and finding him guilty of the offence for which they are refusing him bail. But there is a real difficulty about granting bail much more freely than is done at the moment. Of course, it is outrageous that there should be the instances that there have been of people being remanded in custody for long periods. There was the case in this morning's The Times of a man who had been in custody for 600 days and finally acquitted. He has no right of compensation from anybody for what is, in effect, two years' imprisonment. Of course, it is right, as the noble Lord, Lord Hutchinson, has said, that half of those who are convicted after being in custody do not receive custodial sentences; but I would go along with him in agreeing that those statistics must be looked at with a little care because, as he and I and many noble Lords will know, the reason why, over and over again, courts do not send people to prison is simply because they have been remanded in custody. I think it does not help very much to produce that figure in itself. I have come to the conclusion that not much can be done in the way of bailing far more people than are bailed at the moment. The balance may be wrong but it is not very wrong.
I have received, as noble Lords will have received, a document from NACRO, an organisation for which I have the highest possible regard. They invariably argue their case extremely well. They have set out at the end of this document 14 points which they suggest might help deal with this problem. One of those, the first, is the provision of bail hostels. I entirely accept that this is a way of dealing with the problem if the finance is available. I must say to the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson of Kingsbridge, who will be speaking later, that, adding up all the other 13 points—which is the best that NACRO can think of—I doubt whether cumulatively they would materially affect the proportion of people who are granted bail at this
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moment. It seems to me to be a very real problem which cannot easily be dealt with.
My Lords, I come to the other half of the Unstarred Question—although the two halves are clearly associated with each other—the length of time that people spend in custody before trial. Some examples of that were given on 15th May this year in a Written Answer in the Hansard of another place. It is quite appalling that people should have spent often up to one year in custody awaiting trial. What can be done about this? I do not think that we ought to pretend that a trial can take place within a few days of a person being remanded in custody. Complicated trials require, for the defence as much as for the prosecution, many weeks of preparation. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that there is a serious backlog in our courts which somehow must he dealt with. Perhaps, to some extent, the provision of more courts, the provision of more judges and the provision of more trained court staff, will help. But, again, this is going to involve an increase in public expenditure.
What else can be done? I received, and the noble Lord, Lord Hutchinson also received, a document from another extremely reputable organisation, the National Association of Probation Officers, suggesting that there should be the same 110 days rule as in Scotland. Like the noble Lord, Lord Hutchinson, I sympathise with this as an ideal; but I must confess that I regard it as wholly unrealistic in our present circumstances.
The Earl of LONGFORD: My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord, since he makes a point of this, why it is possible in Scotland and is not possible here?
Lord WIGODER: My Lords, I think it is possible in Scotland for a reason that I was coming to in a moment; because it is really the one suggestion that I have to make as to how we might deal with the question of the length of remands in custody. That is, that we can best deal with this by, in some way or another, reducing the burden on our Crown Courts. How do we reduce the burden on our Crown Courts? First, we may, I think, pursue the suggestion that Justice, the organisation, is currently concerned with: that of splitting off the technical contraventions from the criminal offences so that we could get rid of the con-

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traventions. They could be dealt with by administrative means—and I refer to such things as people who have forgotten to renew their television licences and so on. We could remove some pressure from the magistrates' courts in that way. That would enable some of the work to be transferred from the Crown Courts to the magistrates' courts.
Secondly, and this is by far the most hopeful line of attack, we can shorten the length of our trials. In this country, unlike in Scotland, we are bogged down by a series of vast criminal trials that take month after month after month and occupy such courts as the Old Bailey for most of the time available to those courts. If we could halve the length of those long trials, we could release a vast amount of court time without any public expenditure of any sort. If we could release that vast amount of court time, we could ensure hat people are remanded in custody for far shorter periods than they are, and we could remove at least some of the outrageous ill-treatment which is very often meted out to people who are unconvicted prisoners awaiting trial on remand.
My Lords, how do we reduce the vast length of some of those cases? I think we must partly take another look—and I am coming now, perhaps, to an extent, to deal with matters more the concern of the Lord Chancellor's Department than of the Home Office—partly at the whole of the Section 1 committal procedure, which has become quite chaotic. In the old days one got a committal for trial on a charge of murder where a man had been arrested and said, "I'm terribly sorry, but I had too much to drink and I lost my temper". There would be three or four statements, a little bundle of depositions; they would be sent to the Crown Court for trial, and the trial would proceed. Now, as a result of the procedure, under which there is no committal in most cases except a formal passing on of the documents, the papers arrive at the Crown Court 100 or 200 pages long. There is an analysis by some pathologist of the deceased's stomach contents; there are pages of bloodstain analysis; there is a mass of evidence about the movements of everybody before, during and after the offence, when everybody knows the trial is going to be
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a perfectly simple issue: "Yes, I did it. I'm sorry, I lost my temper. I didn't mean to. It's manslaughter, but not murder." I take that simple example. The Crown Courts are being cluttered up, I believe, as a result of this procedure which was intended to relieve the work of the magistrates' courts, but instead has resulted in a vast burden on the Crown Courts.
One can approach the question of these lengthy cases also by the means suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Hutchinson: more disclosure, both by the prosecution and by the defence, before trial and by interlocutory proceedings in criminal cases before trial so that the issues are clarified. Above all, I believe it can be approached by, I was going to say, a wholly new approach, but really a reversion by prosecuting counsel to the approach that used to exist in the days when the noble Lord, Lord Hutchinson, and I began our careers at the Bar. The habit has grown up in this country by which the prosecution think it sensible to put into the dock every prisoner they can possibly find who has anything at all to do with the offence, however much on the fringe it may be. They then prefer every charge they can conceive of, after going through the textbooks, so that the indictment contains 20 or 30 counts. They then call every witness who might possibly be able to say anything at all about the subject in dispute, and in the result the cases go on for month after month after month.
I do respectfully agree—and I have said this many times in the past—with what Sir Michael Havers urged the other day, that really prosecuting counsel must learn to be selective; they must choose which are the important charges, which are the important defendants, which are the important witnesses, and get on with it. The vast length of these cases is, I believe, due far more to the way in which they are being presented by the Crown than to any action taken on behalf of the defence.
Lord ELWYN-JONES: Would the noble Lord give way? I wonder whether he could tell us what the Bar is doing about this? This is a lesson I have been preaching time and time again. What is the Bar doing about it?
Lord WIGODER: My Lords, I do not think the Bar is doing very much about it. So far as prosecuting counsel are concerned,

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they go their own way and they are to some extent, I think, out of any direct control in this matter. One can exhort, as the noble and learned Lord did exhort, and as the Attorney General exhorted the other day. I think that somehow a more dramatic way has to be found of bringing this evil to everyone's attention.
Lord RAWLINSON of EWELL: Would the noble Lord accept that the Bar has done a considerable amount? The difficulty usually lies with the prosecuting authority and with the police. The police are always very anxious to see everybody in the dock and the prosecuting authority is, too; and it is very difficult, the obligation on Crown counsel makes it very difficult for them to say, "No, we will not prosecute". They do on many occasions, but the pressures should not be overlooked.
Lord WIGODER: My Lords, I entirely accept that. It comes from the depth of Lord Rawlinson's experience; I appreciate that. I might add that it is to some extent linked with the fact that the Section 1 procedure on committal for trial tends to go right through. Often prosecuting counsel do not get the papers until the trial is about to begin at the Central Criminal Court, instead of being called in to advise at a very much earlier stage.
I ventured to suggest to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Elwyn-Jones, when he was Lord Chancellor, that there was scope for setting up some form of powerful committee that could inquire into the ways in which our trials could be shortened without any need for legislation but simply by practical steps of the sort that Lord Hutchinson and I have ventured to put before your Lordships. I repeat that plea now. I believe that, of all the ways in which we can in practice approach the problems raised by this Unstarred Question, shortening the length of trials dramatically offers the most immediate hope for the future.
6.16 p.m.
Lord HUNT: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Hutchinson of Lullington, has introduced his Motion so fully and so forcefully, and the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, who followed him has joined Lord Hutchinson in making some valuable suggestions, that there seems to me very little that I can add to contribute to this
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debate. Some of the suggestions that have been made by Lord Hutchinson I warmly endorse, being a member of the all-party criminal affairs group which is producing a report to be published tomorrow, which I will not go over now. Other suggestions, which the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, made, I would not be competent to make myself.
Perhaps the only value of my intervention is to rub in and force home the conditions in which remand prisoners are held, which is a subject about which I feel very deeply indeed. It is a matter which is crying out for action and, as Lord Hutchinson has said, that action is long overdue. It has been raised many times before the noble Lord's present Motion; it has been raised many times before Mr. Justice May's Report, on which he has based his Motion, and I think we are all aware of that.
My Lords, I would voice an opinion. It is my opinion that the number of remands in custody has continued to rise, and if the remarks of the Commissioner of Police in his report to the Home Office were a straw in the wind to influence the courts, it might rise even further. It has continued to rise not only because of the growing overload of cases awaiting trial in the courts, not only because of the increasingly long periods spent in custody on that account, and not only because of the capital cost of building hostel accommodation or converting suitable buildings to hostels to comply with the provisions of the Bail Act.
My view is that this classic vicious circle is due in some measure to public ignorance and public apathy, and, in one particular respect, to public opposition. I would say that the great majority of our people do not know, and I venture to suggest that quite a number do not want to know, what goes on inside our prisons. One might just give this instance. The acceptability of men and women on remand, whose guilt has not been established, of men and women who have completed their sentences and whose guilt has been expiated by a prison sentence, in local accommodation is won only after prolonged battles, lasting in some cases a matter of years. Perhaps the only value of my rubbing in this point is to expose, and hopefully to touch,

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the public conscience. I know that your Lordships would not be in this Chamber now if you did not have that conscience about the extent of the scandal, to use the word employed by Mr. Justice May. I shall limit my remarks to Brixton Prison. Although, as the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, has said, everything about the generality has already been said, I am going to venture to say more and in particular. I visited that prison some months ago with some colleagues on the Penal Affairs Group. The numbers detained there have been mentioned. They amount to an overcrowding statistic of more than 40 per cent. I wish that some of your Lordships could be personal witnesses to the conditions in that prison. I wish even more that our judges were to make themselves acquainted with it. I have had the privilege of attending sentencing conferences. It has struck me that part of the programme of those conferences ought to include visits to our local prisons.
Some of your Lordships will have heard a report on Radio 4 (I believe it was last Friday morning that I heard it) on conditions in Britain's largest and most overcrowded prison, Walton, in Liverpool. It is some years since I visited Walton, but I have seen so many of our prisons that I can say with some knowledge that conditions for men in Brixton—and I will refer to women in a moment—who have not yet been sentenced or in many cases tried are worse than is the case of many men serving substantial sentences elsewhere for very serious offences, having been convicted of those sentences.
The cramped squalor of three men in a cell which is supposed to hold one prisoner has to be seen—and I intend no reflection on the inmates who are forced to live in those conditions—and smelt to be believed. The one double cell which we were shown containing six prisoners simply compounded the horror. If one magnifies that state of affairs by a factor of 100 to produce more than 300 men so contained, and add to that 450 other inmates living two to a cell—a one-person cell—one has the dimensions of that scandal.
The noble Lord, Lord Hutchinson of Lullington, has referred to a statement by the Prison and Borstal Governors Branch of the Society of Public and Civil
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Servants. I will quote from it again, because it makes the point just as well as the one he made. On 31st March they said this:
"Even if the numbers stop rising, governors doubt if prisoners and staff can be expected to tolerate the present record overcrowding throughout the summer; particularly if it is a hot summer".
It is just as well perhaps at the moment that the "hot summer" is not yet hot.
Remand prisoners, as I am sure everyone is aware, may receive daily visits from friends and relatives. Owing to the distance involved, it is quite possible that prisoners in Brixton, as in other London prisons, get off rather better regarding visits than those held in some provincial gaols. But facilities for visits at Brixton are so cramped and lacking in privacy that the men sit shoulder to shoulder along a long table with their visitors, friends, girl friends, wives, mothers and so on, sitting in exactly the same serried conditions on the opposite side of the table. Before the interview, some visitors have to wait, because there is no room in the waiting room outside the prison. The day we went there it was bitterly cold and windy. On a day like this it would be raining on them before they could get in. I was reminded forcefully, watching that visit, of conditions in a pre-war troopship plying to and from India, which I experienced on a number of occasions before the war. All this, we were told, will be greatly improved when a new block for visitors had been completed. But the date of its completion is uncertain, and perhaps the Minister will let us know when he replies when that is likely to be.
To add insult to the injury to human dignity, there were at the time of that visit three women held in Brixton in addition to the 1,100-odd men. I went to see them with Mr. Kilroy-Silk. They were detained under conditions of maximum security on charges under the Prevention of Terrorism Act. The only period of the day when they were allowed to be aware that there was a world outside their little landing was during a brief exercise period when they were conducted down an outside encaged stairway into a large top security cage in the prison yard. They were then—understandably, no doubt—the objects of the stares of hundreds of men in the surrounding prison blocks. Again, the analogy with a zoo was quite

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irresistible. I understand that these women have since been moved to establishments where there are other women, and I can only hope in conditions which are less unsatisfactory. I hope that the Minister will give the House an assurance that it is not the intention of the Home Office to detain any more women at Brixton. In saying that, I hope that the House will not accuse me of being soft on terrorists. I have on two unforgettable occasions in my life been involved in dealing with terrorism in various parts of the world. But these girls were not yet tried, let alone convicted. The condition in which, at the time of my visit, those three women had been held for four months awaiting trial was positively bizarre.
I come finally to the one good aspect of Brixton Prison, and it has been referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Hutchinson, and I should like to add emphasis to it. I refer to the governor and his staff. I know the governor is here, because I ran into him in the Lobby. I will not spare his blushes. I will say that no praise is too high for the way in which the management copes with the demands made upon them, and the way in which they do their best to make life bearable for those remand prisoners. We were very impressed with the fact that, despite the unsatisfactory working conditions, morale among the prison officers is high. That was unmistakable. The personality of the governor has no small amount to do with that; and also to do with it is the degree to which officers involve themselves with welfare problems of the inmates on their landings.
The noble Lord, Lord Hutchinson, has spoken vividly about escort duties. Let me give one example to instance the point that he was making generally. We were told that on Maundy Thursday some officers were on duty for 16½ hours, from six in the morning until 10.30 at night. During that time, they had to cope with the task of escorting 256 prisoners to and from various courts—some of them at some distance—and of receiving 247 new inmates. As regards living conditions, we understood that the family quarters of staff along one of the prison walls are overlooked by a prison block and there is no privacy. The officers' club and mess are so cramped and uncongenial that very few officers make use of them. My third and last question to the Minister is to ask
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whether he will give us some information as to when the alternative family accommodation and the new mess and club, which I believe are planned and intended to be built, are likely to be available?
It really is time that steps were taken to remove this blemish on Britain's traditional reputation for justice and humanity. Speaking to the Gloucestershire branch of the Magistrate's Association in 1971, the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor who sits now on the Woolsack —I believe he did at that time—had this to say about remand in custody:
"It is the solitary exception to Magna Carta".
We all know that that exception is inevitable. I am not so starry-eyed as to suggest that it would be entirely removed; but it is essential to keep the exceptions within minimum hounds under optimum conditions. It has now become an exception which has been magnified beyond the limits of toleration by any civilised society.
6.30 p.m.
Baroness MACLEOD of BORVE: My Lords, I shall intervene for only a short time, and first I should like to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Hutchinson, on catching the Chief Whip's eye at long last. I think he has been on the list for some time but now he has caught the Chief Whip's eye. I should like also to congratulate very sincerely the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, and to thank him for a most inspiring speech. Few people in this House know as much about the prison system and prison inmates as he does, and we have been privileged to hear of his own personal knowledge this evening. I should like also to congratulate Mr. Justice May. I happen to have the privilege of knowing him on the parole board and he is a very hard-working person. To produce such a very adequate report in what is a reasonable time took, I know, a great deal of very hard work on the part of he and his committee, and I should like to thank him.
We are talking about prisoners on remand and, from what we have heard tonight, they are the under-privileged people in our prisons today. One of the reasons, of course, is that nobody knows how long any prisoner is going to be on remand, because it is entirely up to the next authority as to when they will be

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sent for. Therefore they have no amenities for education, as have other convicted prisoners. Also, as one speaker has said, there are far too few officers to cope with anything other than the ordinary statutory requirements.
The number of remand prisoners has increased enormously, as we have been told, from 1947 to 1978—they have increased more than fourfold. I have written down the word "alarming", because this is a terrible indictment of many kinds of people. It is an indictment of the judges, an indictment certainly of the magistrates' courts and also perhaps of the Home Office and those who have to do with making prison places available for this large number of people. But to reduce the numbers on remand is a very different thing, because in order to make conditions better it would seem that three things will be needed. First, there will have to be an increase in the numbers of prisons and remand centres. Secondly, it will be necessary to increase the efficient working of the judicial system which, in turn, would mean inevitably more high courts, more judges and more court staff. That, in the course of time, would help with the backlog. Thirdly, perhaps we could make available more non-custodial places. Bail hostels are what, with my very limited experience, I favour. However, as the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, has said, all this will take not only time but money.
The bail hostels could be of great help when a prisoner is charged with an offence which is serious enough to warrant sending him for trial from a magistrates' court, but is not of such a nature that if he were to be released into a non-custodial setting he would not immediately go out and re-offend. It is primarily the latter category who are on remand in custody awaiting trial. From my 24 years' experience, I would say that it is quite wrong to allow a defendant out on bail if he is a burglar, an armed robber, a mugger, a child assailant or if he has committed any crime of violence. It seems, however, that there are many people in the country today who have little or no idea of the viciousness and sheer ruthlessness of some of the criminal fraternity. When one is occasionally prematurely at large and described by the officials as "dangerous",
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that is true and if, having served their sentence, they re-offend, I think it is absolutely essential that the court should remand them in custody to await trial.
On the other hand, as the report exhorts us to do, we should rarely send to prison on remand or to serve a sentence those who have been charged and found guilty of defaulting on maintenance, if they are mentally disturbed offenders, alcoholics or petty persistent offenders or, as the noble Lord said, those who have been guilty of having no television licence. I have been checking up with the noble Baroness, Lady Phillips, who has been a magistrate for as long as I have, and neither of us has even contemplated sending anybody to prison as a result of alcoholism and certainly not as a result of having no television licence.
Lord WIGODER: My Lords, may I interrupt the noble Baroness for one moment? I think I failed to make myself clear. I was suggesting that technical matters such as failing to renew one's television licence should not be dealt with at all by the magistrates' courts but by administrative means. I was not for one moment referring to the question of sending such people to prison.
Baroness MACLEOD of BORVE: My Lords, I must apologise to the noble Lord. I thought I was listening to every word he said but I did not realise that, and I am sorry. Such persons obviously add to the overcrowding and the difficult conditions in prisons if they are sent either on remand or to prison following conviction. I would make a plea for bail hostels to my noble friend the Minister. I have a feeling that this will come out loud and clear from the debate this evening. It is a half-way house; it is somewhere people could be sent without suffering the indignity of being in prison. In such a place, one hopes, they could be kept securely but not in prison surroundings, and one would hope that they would be there for only a short time while awaiting trial.
Finally, I should like to add my tribute to that of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, to the dedicated prison staff, to the probation staff inside and outside prisons, to the prison visitors, to the members of the local review committees and to the

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auxiliary volunteers. Without the hard work and interest shown by each and every one of them, our prisons and their inmates would be in an even more perilous state.
6.38 p.m.
Lord ALLEN of ABBEYDALE: My Lords, it is quite a thought that since the first attempt to debate this Question some two months ago, something like 9,000 prisoners unconvicted or unsentenced must have been received into the prisons of England and Wales. It is an even more solemn thought to think that there must have been several hundred who, at that date in April, were awaiting their trial or their sentence and who are still in prison, still waiting. It is thoughts of this kind which underline, to my mind, the significance for the liberty of the subject of the Question which the noble Lord, Lord Hutchinson, is asking tonight. I am grateful to him for giving us the opportunity of commenting on it. Perhaps I could begin by assuring him that officials, as well as Ministers, are gravely concerned, and have been gravely concerned for some time, about these problems.
I propose in my few remarks to follow the path laid down by the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, and speak in the main about relieving the pressure on our prisons rather than dealing with the length of time which prisoners spend in custody and the conditions which they have to endure, although all aspects are inextricably mixed up with each other, and although, as a former prison commissioner of many years ago, I can well remember the problems which these issues were causing to us, even in those dim and distant days in the past.
I have spent most of my career, in one way and another, in dealing with the police and I should like to make just one preliminary point. I do not propose at this stage to comment on the anxieties which were recently expressed by the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. Although, as the noble Lord, Lord Hutchinson, said, to deprive an unconvicted person of his liberty is, indeed, a grave matter—graver than some of the leader writers perhaps appreciate—nevertheless, the fact is that there are quite a lot of people who, once they have been arrested
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and charged, ought beyond dispute to be kept in custody until they are tried.
Perhaps there is just a faint echo here of the original purpose of our gaols, which, by and large, was to keep in custody accused persons until the assize judge came around to clear the gaols, imprisonment being rather a later invention as a penalty of itself, when such possibilities as transportation for various reasons fell into desuetude. I shall not pursue that point any further and will instead turn to my main theme.
In recent years, for obvious reasons, there has been a steady increase in the numbers brought before the courts. But without in the slightest degree minimising the problem, it is appropriate to point out that it would be wrong to conclude that there has been a remorseless increase in the actual numbers remanded in custody. For reasons I well understand, we have to cope with statistics which are, not quite up to date; and, indeed, the last authentic prison statistics go no later than 1978. But those figures show that in that year some 5,600 fewer people were received into custody on remand than in the previous year—a drop of over 10 per cent.—and that between 1975 and 1978 there was a fall of between one-fifth and one-quarter in the various categories of remand prisoners received into custody. There was a slight fall, too, in the proportion of those remanded in custody who, in the end, were not given a custodial sentence.
I realise that this proportion is still pretty high, but I go along with the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, in suggesting that some caution should be applied in interpreting these figures; and I personally have never seen any close analysis of the number of cases in which the courts decided not to impose a custodial sentence, simply because they thought the individual had already spent long enough in prison. I suspect that those cases, if they could be identified, are not all that rare, and they seem to me to stem directly from the kind of issue which we are discussing this evening.
It is difficult these days to open the papers or one's morning post, or indeed, with respect to the noble Earl, to turn on the radio, without hearing some fresh comment on these problems, and probably

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coming across some fresh set of figures, and it is not all that easy always to reconcile all the figures which are quoted. But perhaps I could just mention one statistic which comes from the unimpeachable source of the Criminal Statistics for 1978.
This volume shows that, although the number of committals for trial from magistrates' courts more than doubled between 1968 and 1978, the number of committals in custody increased relatively little. In 1968, some 32 per cent. of those committed for trial were committed in custody. Ten years, later, the figure was not 32 per cent., but 19 per cent. The May Committee took alarm at the fact that this figure of 19 per cent. was two points higher than it had been in the two previous years, and did not seem very much impressed by the fall over the decade as a whole; at least I do not think they were. They did not actually include an index in the report, and it is not all that easy to be sure that one has spotted all the relevant comments—
The Earl of LONGFORD: My Lords, may I ask this, simply on a point of information? If that is so—and I know that any figures supplied by the noble Lord are 100 per cent. correct—how is it that remand prisoners, over a longer period than that we were told about earlier, have increased in number faster than any other group of prisoners, except those in detention centres?
Lord ALLEN of ABBEYDALE: My Lords, that is a point to which I hope to come a little later. But they are not my figures; I claim no credit for them. They are taken from an official publication. Although there has been a percentage fall, they are a percentage of an increasing total, and, certainly, there is not the slightest ground for complacency.
But I think it is clear that the circular which the Home Office issued in October 1975, suggesting guidelines as to the conditions for bail, and then the coming into force in April 1978 of the Bail Act itself, had quite an impact. Sometimes, no doubt, the magistrates, however conscientious, get it wrong, as the police frequently suggest. But it must be equally true that the Bail Act has, rightly, kept out of prison quite a number of people
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who ought not to have gone there, and who might have gone there had the Act not been passed. I think f go a little further than the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, and suggest that the change has been a little more than marginal.
It is a very difficult course for the courts to steer, and it is particularly difficult when the courts know that a decision to remand in custody may mean that an unconvicted person has to spend a very long time in custody; on the one hand, because you have the "hawks", who think it absolutely terrible that anyone should be let out on bail and commit a further offence, and, on the other hand, because you have the "wets"—to use a fashionable word—who think it terrible that 40 per cent., or whatever the figure may be, of those awaiting trial or sentence in custody should end by not receiving a custodial sentence. On the whole, in this very difficult area it seems to me that the courts do pretty well.
But there is one other development, quite apart from the Bail Act, to which I should like to refer this evening. It is not so spectacular, but I think it is quite significant. For many years, one wrestled with the problem that defendants who had no settled address were at risk of being remanded in custody, simply because of the doubt about their answering to hail and about being available for the purpose of reports to the courts.
Reference has been made to bail hostels. My own calculation is that, with the probation hostels, they offer perhaps rather more places than the noble Lord, Lord Hutchinson of Lullington, suggested. Although a great deal of credit for this development goes to the Government—to successive Governments, indeed—and to after-care committees, I should like to pay particular tribute to the fact that the experiment of providing bail for those of no fixed abode was started entirely by voluntary effort. It was the charitable trust set up by Mrs. Xenia Field which conceived the idea of trying this out in accommodation provided by the Salvation Army—in the face of a good deal of scepticism on the part of the experts.
It seems to me that one of the most valuable roles of voluntary effort in this country is to experiment, in the knowledge that if the experiment succeeds the

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Government may take it over and develop it, and in the process perhaps forget how it all started. Since the noble Baroness, Lady Faithfull, is on the list of speakers, I am sure that I need say no more about hostels.
There are just one or two other cutting down experiments about which I should like to ask, notably the experiment which was carried out at Camberwell two or three years ago. This is a busy city court. As in other busy courts, remands often followed police evidence only. The police might well have had no time to check a defendant's background and might well have felt bound to ask for a remand in custody. In the experiment, voluntary workers, under the supervision of ancillary probation staff, took emergency steps, in suitable cases, to verify a defendant's social ties so that on the morning of his first appearance the magistrate could be given relevant information about him upon which to consider bail. I thought that this was a most promising idea, and I cannot for the life of me understand why it has not been more widely taken up. If the Minister can throw any light on this, I, for one, will be very glad to hear about it.
I should also like to ask whether the bail and legal aid unit at Brixton is still functioning, and whether it has been able to set some individuals on the right course for obtaining bail. Without in any way trying to minimise the position, I think it is only right to say that there are some slight gleams of comfort to be had as regards the actual numbers of unconvicted and unsentenced persons committed in custody. It is very difficult at present, however, to see much encouragement as regards the length of time spent in prison by those who are committed in custody. I think that the daily average population in 1976 and 1977 fell a little compared with 1975, but the 1978 figure was back to the 1975 level and since then, as we have heard, it has gone up quite a lot. There must be more than one reason for the increase, but I am fairly sure that a principal cause is that those who now go to prison on remand spend even longer there than they used to. We know that the Government are very much concerned about the problem of justice delayed, and I hope that when he answers the debate the Minister will
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be able to give some encouragement about possible courses of action.
It seems to me that until more can be done—and a good deal more—it is unrealistic, as the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, has said, to contemplate copying, South of the Border, the Scottish provision that the accused must be released if not brought to trial within 110 days, even though this seems to work in Glasgow, a city which I am given to understand is not entirely without crime. But it is tempting to reflect, as I sit down, that if it were possible tomorrow to introduce such a provision here, the release of those who had already served more than 110 days would at once achieve an immediate and noticeable drop in the prison population.
6.56 p.m.
The Earl of LONGFORD: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale, who is always listened to with so much attention on these matters, tried hard to find some gleams of comfort. I do not think that many people will have shared even the limited measure of optimism that he permitted himself. He followed the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, in saying that anybody who really understood these things would understand that we could not just copy the Scottish system. The noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, was going to explain later in his speech, when I raised that point, why it cannot be done here although it is done there. We have now been told again why it cannot be done, but I am still going to ask the Minister, in the absence of any other answer, why we cannot adopt the kind of limit to the time spent in custody which has been adopted in Scotland. If I may say so with enormous respect to those who have told me that it is childish, almost, to think that such a thing could be done here, this is not quite a sufficient answer, so no doubt the Minister will give us a better one.
I remember that a famous man who was once asked to speak after Edmund Burke, the greatest orator of his day, rose to his feet and contented himself with saying, "I say 'ditto' to Mr. Burke". The House might hope that I am going to content myself with saying "ditto" to the noble Lord, Lord Hutchinson of Lullington, and that then I shall sit down. I am going to say "ditto" to him, but I

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am going to add a few further thoughts. The noble Lord certainly delivered one of the most powerful speeches which we have heard in this House for many a day. I think all of us, even my noble friend Lord Allen of Abbeydale, agree that the number in custody is far too large. Some of us have very little hope of greatly improving that number, but the path pointed out by the noble Lord, Lord Hutchinson of Lullington, would lead to very big results quite quickly.
I strongly support any rational suggestion which would lead to many fewer prisoners being kept in custody awaiting trial, and I think that we have got to ask ourselves whether or not too many people are being denied bail. When I say "fewer" I do not mean one or two fewer. Are we, in fact, refusing bail to a much greater extent than it should be refused? I think it could be said that there have been differences of opinion on that matter. Certainly I follow the noble Lord, Lord Hutchinson of Lullington, very strongly on that and on a number of other matters.
I shall try to avoid undue repetition and therefore will bring in a bit of my own experience. I, and others, were responsible, about 10 years ago, for starting in Soho a centre for young people with problems. It has grown quite large. In the course of a year we help, or try to help, perhaps 2,000 young people, although a much smaller number than that is using the centre at any one time. A high proportion of them have been in trouble with the law, though the centre is not confined to delinquents. A good many have experienced more than one period of awaiting trial in prison, possibly up to a year. In view of this debate, I have talked to some of them again about their experiences.
Those who are trying to help these young people, and other young people—and I see the noble Viscount. Lord Amory, and I cannot help reflecting that no one has done more for youth than the noble Lord, no one in this Houseanyway—but those who are trying to help young people are only too well aware of the damage done to their vulnerable personalities by the barbarities of the present situation. That I think is a matter of fact. What is arguable, if you like, but in my own opinion is beyond argument,
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is that a lot of this damage is unnecessary: we are damaging these young people unnecessarily.
At the present time, just to take our quite small centre, three of our young people are remanded in custody for minor offences, petty theft or kicking a car when drunk. It is almost certain that they will eventually receive fines; they will be in the 44 per cent. who are not sent to prison. I am bound to ask the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, or anybody who doubts whether many more people could be given bail, why these people are not given bail. I would submit that it is unnecessarily cruel to deny bail to people of this kind. If I may take another example that came to my notice recently, there was a 17 year-old pregnant girl who was charged with theft and spent four months on remand in Holloway. The police case rested on identification and on her inability to produce a substantiated alibi. The girl maintained her innocence throughout, and when the case came on finally the judge threw it out. By this time the girl was eight months pregnant and there was a growing fear that her child would be born in prison. Who is going to say that it was right, that it was a wise decision for some magistrate or judge to retain that girl in prison? I am saying that bail is not given anything like freely enough. That is a matter of opinion or conviction or whatever, but I disagree totally with the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, who has such confidence in the legal system that he considers that by and large we are granting bail about as often as it would be prudent to do so.
Lord WIGODER: My Lords, would the noble Earl complete the story about this unfortunate girl by telling the House which of the criteria in the Bail Act were used by the magistrates in order to justify remanding her in custody?
The Earl of LONGFORD: Well, my Lords, of course I have not got that information, but as one used to say when one was a Minister, if the noble Lord is really interested, I will write to him about it. Of course I have not got all the details to that extent. I merely know the case. If the noble Lord really wants to know what lay behind it of course I can find it. I am just giving a few cases and I am saying

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that there are a very large number of these cases.
It is a matter of opinion or conviction, or whatever you like to call it, that we are not providing bail anything like freely enough. That, I would have thought, though I may be wrong, was the kind of attitude that the May Report came to; certainly it is the kind of attitude which we may hear from the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson, who will be speaking later, and I would have thought it was the kind of attitude Lord Hunt adopts. But if we do not take that attitude we are not going to alter the situation very much; that is one thing that is quite certain. I recognise the value of more than one of the original suggestions made by the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, in an area where of course he is far more proficient than I am. But we have got to persuade ourselves at the end of this debate, or on some other occasion, either that we are providing bail about frequently enough or that we are denying it much too frequently.
I shall not dwell on the details of life in a place like Brixton, though like other noble Lords I have visited Brixton. I have visited it many times over the years, and like the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, I visited it not so long ago. The conditions there were very eloquently described by the May Report and have been described at least as eloquently by the noble Lord, Lord Hutchinson, earlier this evening. Certainly I join in tributes to the governor and the staff. I do not think the governor would be the kind of man who would want too many tributes. I think he might like about one, but he is the kind of man who would want to get on with the job and would do it, I am sure, whether we pay tributes or not. I would just join in this tribute.
As the noble Lord, Lord Hutchinson, and others have said, prisoners are spending roughly speaking 23 hours out of 24 in their cells, though I realise they are trying to make things a little better for them by allowing them to move from one cell to another. I am not quite sure whether even that is within the regulations. At any rate, they do what they can. But those are the conditions, which are quite appalling. Assuming for the moment that the number of prisoners on remand must be regarded as a given quantity, which I do not assume for reasons given earlier,
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the question arises, can we do anything to make life in Brixton, for example, and other places more tolerable?
I remember Victor Stonham, and no Home Office Minister—if I may say so to the noble Lord, Lord Belstead, who is already so much respected—ever showed quite such enthusiasm for penal reform as Lord Stonham. I can remember Lord Stonham before he was a Minister denouncing Brixton as a hell-hole in a debate started in this House. I remember it very well because the late Lord Morrison was sitting beside him and he muttered "Don't go for the headlines, Victor", which perhaps was not the most generous of comments, but then Lord Morrison had been Home Secretary himself and he did not like that way of talking of one of his prisons. But the fact is that it was called a hell-hole perhaps 16 or 17 years before the Labour Government was formed. I think if we used the same expression now we would not be accused of plagiarism.
At any rate, what can be done, given this apalling number of prisoners? I think we could do something to redistribute the prisoners, move some of the prisoners out of Brixton into other prisons, where they would, of course, have to live alongside convicted prisoners. But I think something could be done there. By and large I would agree with what is in the mind of the noble Lord, Lord Hutchinson, who has called my attention to the fact that the May Committee urged that there should be a concentration of resources; they said that as a priority there should be a concentration of resources on capital expenditure on accommodation for remand prisoners. So, if I may say so respectfully, even if one is going to say that there are not going to be a lot of new resources available, at any rate if there are going to be new resources—and we know the Government have a building programme—there should be a serious effort to concentrate them in this direction. I would submit that respectfully.
I asked someone well qualified to judge how the money could be spent in Brixton. I suppose no one could be better qualified than this gentleman to offer an opinion. What he actually said was that if we have only a limited sum the first priority should be a library so that prisoners can adequately prepare their case, there should

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be classrooms for educational purposes, particularly to help the large number of prisoners who are illiterate or who know little English; then there should be accommodation for association, which does not exist at the present time, and there should be a dining room and other facilities. His deeper belief was that if the right amount was available a new purpose-built remand prison should be built on a dockland site with easy access to the Old Bailey. But I would agree that that perhaps is not very likely at present.
In conclusion, I should have thought that the noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale, and others who do not appear to give the impression that very much can be done in the way of offering bail more freely, would agree—at least I should hope they would agree—that the condition of remand prisoners is a scandal. That is the view of the May Report and I hope that the noble Lord would agree—
Lord ALLEN of ABBEYDALE: My Lords, I refrained from interrupting the noble Earl earlier when he talked about my speech as being optimistic. I was merely presenting a few historical facts to demonstrate that there were a few chinks of light in the general gloom. I certainly said nothing to dissent from the conclusion that it is a scandal which ought to he dealt with.
The Earl of LONGFORD: My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Lord. At any rate there is a fairly widespread and almost unanimous opinion in the House today that it is a scandal. There are other noble Lords who are down to speak and who will give us their ideas. However, when the Minister comes to reply, I hope that he will tell us how he proposes to deal with this crying scandal.
7.12 p.m.
Baroness FAITHFULL: My Lords, as the seventh speaker in the debate, it really lies to me to underline what has already been said. However, we all feel so strongly on this matter that I cannot say "ditto". I must, in order to satisfy perhaps my own deep feelings, make points made by other noble Lords.
We are all most grateful to the noble
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Lord, Lord Hutchinson of Lullington, for initiating this debate. We have had several debates on prisons in your Lordships' House. We have had the Butler Report and the Mountbatten Inquiry and we have had the May Report concerning our over-crowded prisons. We have even received a warning from the Home Secretary himself that we are at crisis point. Therefore, "the time has come", the walrus said, "for something to be done".
Perhaps the most notable and constructive action taken in the past years was taken under the Criminal Justice Act 1972 which brought the community service order, as recommended by the noble Baroness, Lady Wootton of Abinger. I must point out that since 1973 46,000 community service orders have been made, of which 75 per cent. were completed satisfactorily. Your Lordships will therefore see that I am rather widening the debate this evening—and I hope that I may ask for your Lordships' indulgence —to include not only prisoners on remand but the total prison population.
I should also like to ask the Minister about the 110-day rule in Scotland. Here, prisoners must be brought to trial within 110 days, or be released. I appreciate that this applies only to prisoners charged on indictment—that is, of course, charged with serious offences to be tried by jury. I know that the 110-day rule does not apply in summary cases for which there is no limit. The noble Earl asked why, if it applies in Scotland, which has Glasgow, which has the highest delinquency rate in the country, indeed in Europe, can it not be tried in this country? I made inquiries at the Scottish Home Department and I understand that in Scotland they do not keep complete statistics, but the average time on remand for a prisoner is 70 to 80 days.
It would be quite unnatural if we did not talk about our own prisons. In Oxford Prison there are today 24 inmates who have been in custody awaiting trial since 21st February this year; that is, 110 days from today. In addition, there are 17 in Reading Gaol who are there because of the overcrowding in Oxford Prison. Therefore, there are 41 in all on remand awaiting trial in Reading and Oxford Prisons. If the 24 who are awaiting trial in Oxford Prison had been dealt with in less than 110 days, there would have been

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a reduction of 70 per cent. of the prisoners who are now three to a cell. I feel that I must bring the point home from a domestic point of view as regards just one prison, although many noble Lords have spoken about other prisons.
In August 1979 two young men were charged with murder. They were not brought to trial until April 1980. They were in Winchester and Bristol Prisons respectively, because Oxford Prison is a local prison. They were, therefore, awaiting trial for approximately 200 days. They were finally found not guilty. The national average is worse, and I think that this has already been referred to by other noble Lords. The average daily population in our prisons and remand centres is 5,000, and over half of those do not receive custodial sentences.
I wish to come to what I might refer to—and to what has already been referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Allen—as the "hostel strategy". This has already been mentioned most ably by the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder. I was privileged and was asked to speak only about a fortnight ago at the annual general meeting of the National Association of Voluntary Hostels. That meant that I had to look into the coverage of hostels throughout the country. I suggest that in this debate we should not be concentrating only on what should be done now and in the future as regards the prisoners or the inmates of prisons—those on remand—but we should also be looking at preventive measures.
When I looked into the whole situation with regard to what I call the hostel strategy, which I think commenced, as the noble Lord, Lord Allen, said, with the remarkable woman who started the hostel concept, I found that administratively hostels in this country were very difficult to set up. There are two departments in the Department of Health and Social Security: one dealing with alcoholics and one dealing with supplementary benefits. Then there is the question of getting a grant from the Home Office, if you are concerned with another sort of hostel that is to help the prison population. Then it is usually recommended that you go through the housing corporation, which means the Department of the Environment; and then very often it gets down to housing associations.
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Those of us who worked and knew about the old Poor Law remember the casual wards. This may sound strange coming from a social worker, but I think that one of the tragedies of our country is that we closed the casual wards. When they were in operation a tramp could walk from John O'Groats to Cornwall, knowing that every 20 miles there would be a casual ward where he could put up. When I was a very young student, I spent Christmas in a casual ward. Various people came to that particular casual ward for Christmas. We no longer have the casual wards, but I learned then what it meant to the homeless, the rootless, those who were on the edge of crime and those who perhaps would not commit a crime if they had a signpost to somewhere where they could ultimately go.
We do not have those casual wards, but I would suggest—and it may be, as the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, rightly said, minimal—that we ought to have a hostel strategy in this country for the alcoholics, the drug addicts, those who are homeless and those who at present go to prison. As the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, has already said, they could well be in a hostel. I speak particularly of political deportees and foreign nationals awaiting trial. Should they be in prison? Could they not be in hostels? Could we not have a hostel strategy? I am sure that the National Association of Voluntary Hostels should hold a seminar for all those involved from all parts of the country so that we could set up a hostel strategy, not exactly on the lines of the casual wards, but covering the country and covering all those who could be prevented from going to prison.
I should like to mention with very real feeling and sorrow the young people who are going to prison—the young people who are remanded in prison—who cannot by law receive a custodial sentence. Can the Minister say what is being done to prevent many of these young people—difficult as they are; and I know how difficult they are—from being sent to remand centres, even prisons? I could make very many more points, but they have already been made by noble Lords.
There is, however, one point which I should like to make, and which must seem strange. I admired enormously the request of the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder,

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that we do not ask for money. Let us look at this question of money overall. The trouble is that we always look in columns in one department; we do not look at the overall cost to the country. If we were to give more money to the small, voluntary organisations—and I emphasise "small"—which set up simple, small hostels, I would suggest that we would be saving the country an enormous amount of money. I shall not attempt to computerise it—I am no computer—but I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, that at this time it would be wrong to ask the Government to spend vast amounts of money, especially to build another prison. But, provided that there is an overall strategy, we could well give the small, devoted, voluntary organisations money to set up small, simple hostels that could be used by social workers, probation officers and the courts.
My last point is this. Many noble Lords have paid tribute to the staff of the prisons. It is a disgrace that we have cashed in on the skill and the devotion of prison staff. They have prevented troubles in our prisons; because they have prevented troubles, there have not been troubles; and because there have not been troubles, we have done nothing. I believe that the time has come when not only should we pay tribute to the prison staff, but we should actually help those staff in the ways which have been suggested throughout the debate.
The noble Baroness, Lady Trumpington, asked me to raise a matter in my speech, but I believe that she could raise it so much better than I and, therefore, I wonder whether I could ask for the indulgence of your Lordships' House to allow her to speak after me.
7.23 p.m.
Baroness TRUMPINGTON: My Lords, I should like to thank your Lordships very much indeed for allowing me to speak. I knew that I was going to be visiting Broadmoor today and, rather naturally, I was not sure whether I could get back in time for this debate, so I did not put my name down to speak. However, as this is a subject which is of very deep interest to me, I am very grateful to the House for allowing me to speak, and
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I should like to thank my noble friend Lady Faithfull for suggesting that I should.
First, I should like to put in a good word for magistrates. In my experience JPs do their utmost not to send people into custody on remand, but there are times when there is absolutely no alternative but to do so. Of course, there are categories of people for whom prison is quite the wrong place, but until adequate accommodation is provided for those people, from time to time one is left with no alternative. Therefore, I think that I would disagree with the noble Earl, Lord Longford, and say that it has been my experience right from the very first day when I became a magistrate that JPs show the utmost mercy.
As a JP, I find that our lists are very often overcrowded so that cases of people on remand have to be put back. In the courts in which I sit, every afternoon is spent on traffic cases. Why cannot failure to pay parking fines be dealt with through the post, so that we can deal with people? Very often we have to deal in one afternoon with 114 or more cases of failure to pay parking fines, and it seems to me that that is a waste of the court's time.
I should like to support some form of court situated near to prisons, if a hearing could not be held in prisons, so that men and prison officers do not have to spend hours once a week waiting for a one-minute appearance in court. This stretches the prison officer's time and is a thoroughly disruptive process. I wish that there was a more practical way of doing it. On the other hand, I have wasted a large amount of time. Having left a whole day free in order to sit in the Crown Court, I am sometimes sent home at mid-day or even earlier—particularly on Fridays—because the cases on the list have collapsed. Could there not be a better back-up so that other remanded prisoners' cases could take over when the cases on the list collapse?
In Pentonville Prison the board of visitors, of which I have the honour to be a member, is encouraged by the fact that the time being spent by persons on remand has decreased from a maximum of a year or over to some nine to six months. It is quite disgraceful that we should feel encouraged by such dismal

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figures. Of course, I would wish to join those who have commended the fine work done by people working in our prisons, and I am very proud indeed to be associated with all those who work in Pentonville. I fully agree with the remarks of my noble friend Lady Faithfull that we should be helping those who are working in prisons. Year after year the board of visitors at Pentonville has included in its annual report pleas that the time spent by people on remand be reduced. I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Hutchinson of Lullington, for helping us to bring this matter perhaps a little nearer to a more satisfactory state of affairs.
7.30 p.m.
Lord DONALDSON of KINGS-BRIDGE: My Lords, I thought that, to be perfectly frank, my noble friend Lord Hutchinson of Lullington made a devastating speech, and not a word that has been said since has relieved my mind in any way as regards the attack he made. I think that this nation has to decide whether we are prepared to let this situation go on more or less exactly as it is—because what is being suggested at this moment will not have any very great effect on it—or whether we are prepared to pay the price of improving it, which is to accept some diminution in security in the treatment of petty offenders. I must say at the beginning that I have every sympathy for the Metropolitan Commissioner. His job is to catch criminals and shut them up, but our job is to deal with them when they come out again. Most of these petty criminals have short sentences, and really might just as well be let out after 110 days.
By the end of two hours I get as bored as the rest of the public, and I want to go to my dinner, and I shall not take very long. I shall talk only about the two or three small but practical suggestions which seem to me to have emerged from this debate. Most of them come from my noble friend's speeches, but they have been repeated by other people. First of all, both he and the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, said that something ought to be done about procedure in the courts. My noble friend Lord Hutchinson said that there ought to be sanctions. The noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, talked about the necessity to shorten trials. Now I know nothing about this. I do not know
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any lawyers except as friends; none of them, I am glad to say, as professionals as yet, and I have absolutely no idea how this can be done. But do not tell me that it cannot be done. Of course it can be done with the faintest effort by a few people. If the Home Secretary and the Lord Chancellor get together and set up a powerful committee, of course it can be done, and please let it be.
The second thing concerns the 110 days. I will not accept from anybody that this is an impossibility. First, let me explain to the noble Baroness, Lady Faithfull, that if I understand the Criminal Justice (Scotland) Act correctly, she is wrong. It is not only on indictment 110 days; it also says under Section 14(2) that a summary offender shall not be detailed for more than 40 days. Better still. I do not insist on doing that yet. I think that in our case it would be more difficult because of the crowd, but it is something we might have in mind. But we simply have to have this 110 days, and I will not accept "No" for an answer from Lord Wigoder, or Lord Allen of Abbeydale, and least of all from Lord Belstead, who has a rough job today because he is as worried about these things as we are, and so are his colleagues. This is a very difficult problem, and I know it. But unless you are prepared to accept some plan which is going to have some effect, then give the whole thing up and let them rot.
The difficulty about the 110 days is a simple one. The police would be desperately worried if you suggested letting some people out after 110 days, and so should we. Nobody wants to let serious criminals out at all. We want to have them sentenced and put away. It seems to me that if you accept this, one has to have a list from the police of those criminals whose crimes were so serious that they could not be considered for release after 110 days, and give them priority of hearing. You have to get them heard before 110 days. This in fact is what happens in Scotland today, but they are not under the same pressure as we are. There is a difficulty here, because such a system would be unfair on the less serious criminals. One has to remember that there are many who are not petty criminals but who are white collar offenders, and people of that sort, who are quite undangerous but who have committed a crime and have a longing not to be kept waiting.

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You would have to sacrifice that bit of fairness in order to achieve this.
I think this is something that I would be prepared to do. I would be prepared to say that between the clerk of the court and the police priority should be given to those people for being heard in court who cannot conceivably be regarded as sufficiently undangerous to be let out without trial and with a clear, not conscience, but a clear record, because the record is expunged in Scotland. I believe that this could be done, and there is a price. It is perfectly easy to see what the price is. I would accept that price, and I think that we all ought to do so.
The noble Lord, Lord Hutchinson, said, and so have other people, that there should be a high level committee, a working party, operating between the Home Office and the Lord Chancellor deciding how this can best be done. Let me say that not only do I, as President of NACRO and on behalf of NACRO, recommend this, but so does the Howard League. Well, both of us are rather suspect do-gooders, I admit, but NAPRO—the National Association of Probation Officers—have adopted it as their specific policy. They are in an absolutely different world and are entirely professional, and are not to be ignored. The noble Lord suggested that if this is too much for people to swallow—and it should not be—then at least let me have mandatory bail after 110 days. This should be a small step forward.
The second thing I want to look at is the question that the noble Lord also raised, which is escort duties and the reasons for them. One of the reasons why conditions in remand prisons are so intolerable arises from escort duties. I went to Brixton with my noble friend Lord Hunt. I went to Lewes with my noble friend Lord Hutchinson. We found a dedicated staff in each case. The governor at Brixton, who has already received a compliment—I think he was out of the room when it was paid—impressed us all enormously as someone who was working really hard in more or less impossible conditions to do what was right, and who had his staff 100 per cent. with him.
I found exactly the same at Lewes,
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although there were two remand wings in Lewes, one of which was all right and the other was not owing to conditions and not because of the prison staff. I have seen all this. One of the main reasons why people are occasionally—and mind you, not always—"banged up" for 23 hours a day (more often they are allowed out in association in the corridors for a good many hours) is clearly through lack of staff, as has already been said. The staff are absent because they are performing these ridiculous escort duties.
This is something which, with determination between the Home Office and the Lord Chancellor, could be dealt with, and at almost no expense. There are three causes for escort duties. The first is that the accused must be tried in the district in which he was charged. This means that if he is in the major remand prison in the South of England, which is Brixton, and he commits a crime on somebody, say, in Chelmsford, and he has a 10-day trial, every day he leaves at six o'clock in the morning, gets to Chelmsford with a prison officer, probably handcuffed, has his trial, and comes back that evening with the prison officer. The whole thing is simply ludicrous. It is not acceptable to a serious society, it seems to me, and in my opinion no effort has been made by anybody to deal with this, and it is high time it was dealt with.
There is a perfectly good answer, of course. The answer is simply, as I think the noble Baroness, Lady Trumping-ton, suggested, that you either have a remand prison near every court or you have a court near every remand prison. It does not take tremendous brains to work this out. It is just a total apathy through lack of money in the whole combination of the Home Office and the Lord Chancellor's Office which allows these things to happen. I see absolutely no reason why, to the extent of about 75 per cent., that particular part of escort duties should not be got rid of. The prisoners would have to go across the road, and there would have to be an escort, but that would be the end of it.
The next reason is—and it is a salutary one—that a prisoner on remand should be exhibited once every eight days in the court whence he was remanded. This is to prevent his languishing forgotten in jail

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like Fidelio, and also for his demand for bail, if he wants it, to be reconsidered. Once again, if the court were near the place of remand or vice versa this would not be so bad. But the commonest journey, as somebody already announced here, from the remand wings at Lewes is to Pentonville or to another London court or prison.
Surely this sensible and necessary safeguard—and it is a sensible and necessary safeguard that men should not be buried in prison and nobody asks questions about them—could be met by a weekly letter from the governor of the remand prison to the court saying that X was in good health, waived his right to come himself to court and either did or did not apply for bail again. I can see no difficulty whatever about that. It is lack of will and determination that is causing these things not to be done.
In August and September 1972 the noble Lord, Lord Foot, and I discussed this matter in the deliberations on the Criminal Justice Bill. Lord Foot moved that it should be changed from eight to 20 days. The noble Viscount, Lord Colville of Culross, who was answering for the Government, put in a neutral clause—he was not necessarily backing the suggestion, but he had no objection to it; actually he put in for 21 days—and then my noble and learned friend Lord Gardiner, who is a stickler for liberty, frightened us so much that we were detracting from the liberties of the subject when in prison that I withdrew my support and the provision failed to get through. That was eight years ago. Matters have got a great deal worse, and if we could get an opportunity of making that alteration today I should support it wholeheartedly.
One other form of escort is very important. When I first went to Pentonville, I suppose 20 years ago, nobody moved round the prison except in groups with two prison officers. Today—the Minister will tell me if I am right or wrong—if you want to go from one wing to another, you get the proper permission and then go by yourself. That does not happen in all prisons, although it could, and that would help to get rid of the escort problem. So much for escorts. It seems to me that a great deal could be done here that is not being done through lack of will and not because of any other major reason.
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The third detailed suggestion I wish to consider is that for less serious offenders for whom the police oppose bail there should be brought into use large London, suburban or even country houses, and perhaps one or two empty open prisons which, with a few double locks, could be made quite difficult to get out of but which could afford less crowded and more decent accommodation for the less serious petty offender and reasonable facilities for visits and legal advice. Clearly, this is not a solution—I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Macleod of Borve—for suspected hoodlums, rapists, muggers and people of that sort who must be kept securely in prison. But changes of that kind would go some way to seeing that the wait before trial of those people who must be kept in prison was reduced.
On this suggestion there would be four categories of remand. The first would be remand on bail with no conditions. The second would be remand to a bail hostel, and we all agree there must be more bail hostels; the total number at present is quite ridiculous in relation to the demand. The third would be remand to a semi-secure house of the type I have just described, and the fourth would be remand in prison, and those people who needed to go to prison would be the same sort of people who could not be let out after the 110 days; there are a number of professional and serious criminals, and none of us in the penal reform world wants to have them with us, but we want to have some of the petty offenders because we think they are fairly harmless.
The hour is late and I shall not go on, although I should love to talk for hours on this subject. This evening has produced a number of practical suggestions. At the very least I hope we shall get two committees formed, one of which will be the Home Office and Lord Chancellor's committee to look at the 110-day rule and the other of which will be a high-powered committee to look at the delays in trials and how to shorten them. I started talking like this 25 years ago and since then virtually no improvement has taken place in the penal reform world, but I hope that under the able leadership of the present Home Secretary and the noble Lord, Lord Belstead, we shall make a little progress.
7.45 p.m.
The PARLIAMENTARY UNDERSECRETARY of STATE, HOME OFFICE (Lord Belstead): My Lords, I am sure it is right that the noble Lord, Lord Hutchinson of Lullington, should have asked this Question today, because many of the problems affecting remand prisoners in England and Wales—to which, because of the responsibility of my right honourable friend the Home Secretary, I shall confine my remarks—which were highlighted by the May Report are a symptom of the problems which affect sentenced and unsentenced prisoners alike.
Your Lordships have concentrated on the problems of remand prisoners, and to some extent on unsentenced prisoners, and these difficulties are deep-rooted. They are, as all noble Lords have recognised, the long-accumulated effect of a steep rise in crime, old buildings and shortage of staff. It cannot be pretended therefore that there are easy answers. However, the criticisms contained in the May Report are matters which the Government intend to tackle, and my reply to the first question which the noble Lord, Lord Hutchinson, put to me is that we accept that the conditions of unconvicted prisoners have a particular claim on our vigilance.
It is, I suggest, the unconvicted and unsentenced who have, during the last 30 years, represented the biggest single cause for concern in the prison population. The length of time before trial is part of the problem—and forms part of the Question which the noble Lord has asked—despite the strenuous efforts of my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor and his predecessors. But the main problem has been the dramatic increase in convictions for crime since the war. The May Report acknowledged that convictions for indictable offences had more than trebled in the last 30 years and that the total average prison population had increased by more than two and a half times over the same period.
At this hour I shall not go into a great number of statistics, but I thought your Lordships might like to know that the latest figure I have for the end of May shows that the prison population stood at 43,438, and of those 6,511 were remanded awaiting trial or sentence. Mercifully,
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the first of those figures represents a very slight reduction over the very high level achieved in February and March, but of course it is a figure which must cause all of us, wherever we sit in this House, the very greatest concern because it represents nothing more or less than a considerable surge in the prison population, placing a great strain on the local prisons, which were built for comparatively small numbers awaiting trial and those serving short-term sentences. That really is the problem, and many of your Lordships have put it much better than I have this evening.
In asking his Question, the noble Lord asked for a firm promise instead of soothing syrup, and I will try to respond, especially as the words of the noble Lord were accompanied by some kind words about me. This is what we intend to do: because of the disproportionate increase in juvenile crime and the particular concern, which has been expressed by many of your Lordships today, for young people in custody, a limited amount of new accommodation specifically for unsentenced young prisoners will become available at two of our newest establishments, Glen Parva, which is a borstal, and Thorp Arch, which is a remand centre, later this year. Work is also due to start during the next three years on the building of two young male offender establishments. From projects already in progress, the prison building programme is expected to produce 4,200 new and refurbished places by the end of the financial year 1985. Lest your Lordships think that this is a case of Parkinson's law all over again, and that the more we build, the more we fill, I am most anxious to make the point that what I have just been saying must be set against the need to repair and modernise the existing accommodation.
Work is due to begin in 1981–82 and in 1982–83 on two new training prisons, and together with the two young offenders establishments which I have mentioned, they will provide a further 1,500 places. Projects for 1983–84 are still at the planning stage, but we hope to be able to continue the programme along these lines. I hope that your Lordships will take the view of the Government that in time a programme of this kind should in turn relieve pressure on the local prisons and therefore on unconvicted prisoners. We are also examining the categorisation procedures and arrange-

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ments for recategorisation of prisoners to a lower security category during the course of their sentence, with a view to trying to speed up procedures.
The strain upon prisons containing a substantial number of remands in its turn affects prison officers—and I am still attempting to lay before your Lordships what we are actually trying to do. A high proportion of staff in these establishments is required to be outside the prison during the day on court duties, a situation which the noble Lord, Lord Hutchinson of Lullington, understandably described as a scandal. As the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson of Kingsbridge, urged, the Government, in consultation with the Lord Chancellor's Department, are considering how best to give effect to the May Committee's recommendation that more economical use should be made of existing prison staff who currently provide this escort service. Both the Government and prison staff together must squarely face the problems arising from the demands of court duties.
The noble Lords, Lord Hutchinson of Lullington, and Lord Donaldson of Kingsbridge, mentioned the need to establish bail courts near remand prisons, and I think I am right in saying that power to transfer remand hearings to a nearby court already exists in Section 41 of the Criminal Law Act 1977. I realise that your Lordships are seeking something more definite than that from the Government, but at the moment I am not in a position to say any more on that particular point—
Lord DONALDSON of KINGS-BRIDGE: My Lords, I should be interested to know, not necessarily now, but perhaps in a letter, how often that transfer is demanded. It seems to me that if there is the power, this could take place quite often.
Lord BELSTEAD: My Lords, I shall have to write to the noble Lord on that point.
Lord DONALDSON of KINGS-BRIDGE: Of course.
Lord BELSTEAD: My Lords, the problem of prison escorts is one that we must get right. It is a problem which highlights the need for increased recruit-
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ment to the prison service, and I am happy to say that there has been a marked improvement in recruitment since the autumn. In short, in the six-month period from 1st October until 31st March of this year there has been an increase of 67 per cent. over the same period of a year ago in applications to enter the prison service. I believe that that is an encouraging justification of the policy of exempting prison outstation staff from reduction in the size of the Civil Service. To the increasing numbers of men and women who are applying, it cannot be repeated often enough that the work of the prison service is vital to the criminal justice system and is very worth while.
Your Lordships will remember that the May Committee put forward the concept of "positive custody", and for an example of this I invite your Lordships to look to Brixton, which has been mentioned by so many speakers in the debate. Given the difficulties at Brixton, which the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, spoke about, many features of the welfare facilities reflect credit on the skill and concern of the prison staff there; this is of course work that is reflected in so many other establishments throughout the country. For instance, I can say to the noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale, that prison officers at Brixton are still involved in assisting prisoners with their arrangements to apply for bail. In addition, prison officers on the wings share in the work of the welfare staff, and I understand that this proves particularly valuable for prisoners admitted to custody for the first time, in helping them to clear up as quickly as possible a number of practical problems in their lives.
The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, asked me some detailed questions about Brixton. I should like to tell him that urgent consideration is being given to ways and means of reducing the pressure upon this prison. Meanwhile some relief will be afforded by Pentonville, which is taking more remand and trial prisoners from Brixton, as its own population of inmates held pending deportation is transferred to Ashford Remand Centre—
Baroness TRUMPINGTON: My Lords, in that event may I ask my noble friend what relief is to be given to Pentonville?
Lord BELSTEAD: My Lords, the relief given to Pentonville lies in the fact that the deportees who were there have in turn gone to Ashford Remand Centre, which was not full, and I understand that the prison, at which my noble friend is a member of the board of governors, hopes ultimately to absorb 200 to 230 prisoners from Brixton.
The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, asked me about the completion of the visiting centre at Brixton. Anyone who has seen it, and who realises the difficulties with which the staff and indeed visitors and prisoners have to deal, will regard that as a most understandable question. The answer is that we hope that the centre will be completed by the spring of 1981. I hope that the noble Lord will forgive me if I say that, in view of the time factor, I should like to write to him on the other questions that he asked.
I should like to turn for a few moments to the working of the Bail Act, which was particularly mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Hutchinson of Lullington. I was interested in the view expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, on how he felt the Act has worked, and I listened carefully to the views of my noble friend Lady Macleod of Borve, the noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale, and the noble Earl, Lord Longford, on what should be done in future. For the Government's part I should say that the first year of operation of the Act has been monitored, and the Government intend to ensure that the results of the analysis are published and are easily available once they are to hand.
The noble Lord, Lord Hutchinson of Lullington, was critical of the number of bail hostels provided at the moment. Other Members of your Lordships' House have spoken on this subject; my noble friend Lady Macleod of Borve made a plea for more hostels. The Government are at the moment completing a programme of building bail hostels, as recommended in the May Report as a means of avoiding cases where defendants are remanded in custody simply because they have no fixed address. We believe that when this programme is completed, bail hostel facilities will be available to most major areas of population. However, I give your Lordships an assurance that the
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programme will be reviewed further when the effects of the Bail Act have been analysed.
Several noble Lords have spoken of the need to reduce the number of those who are in prison, which must of course have a general effect on what we are debating today. My noble friend Lady Faithfull spoke of the necessity of hostel provision in order to prevent people from going into custody, and mentioned, too, the desirability of simple accommodation for this purpose. I hope that my noble friend will approve of the initiative that my right honourable friend the Home Secretary has taken in making available a small pump-priming grant in order to encourage, so far as the Home Office is concerned, provision of short-term shelter for habitual offenders who have alcoholic troubles.
May I say on this general point that, like the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, the Government believe very strongly that the courts must have a range of options for sentencing, which I think was implicit in what the noble Lord said. We believe that each particular form of supervision has its part to play in diverting offenders from custody. I know that this is not the occasion on which to discuss the relative merits of these matters, except to say two things, if I may. The first is that the improvement in police recruitment makes it the more possible to expand the number of attendance centres; and one reply I would give to my noble friend Lady Faithfull, who asked me how we prevent young people going in increasing numbers into custody, is that this is one of the ways —by providing more attendance centres (we are doubling the number of junior attendance centres) instead of seeing youngsters going into custody in that way. The second thing I should like to say on this is that I am sure that the probation service can expand the scope of its work, and can assume responsibility for more offenders who are not a threat to other people but who would otherwise go to prison.
My Lords, may I quickly turn now to the second part of the noble Lord's Question. I agree that the second main contributory cause of the present peak in numbers of unconvicted prisoners is undoubtedly the increase in the length of time they are awaiting trial.
Lord HUTCHINSON of LULLING-TON: My Lords, before the Minister leaves the question of bail, is he in a position to reply to the question I put to him asking whether he is in possession of the statistics as to how many persons on bail commit other offences or abscond? One has always understood that these statistics were being kept in the Home Office, but have never seen the light of day.
Lord BELSTEAD: My Lords, I am afraid that I am not in possession of those statistics. During the course of the debate I asked, in case I could reply to the noble Lord. If, after the debate, I find that I have the statistics at the department—they are certainly not here at the moment —and they can be provided to the noble Lord, then, of course, I will most certainly see that they are provided.
Lord FOOT: My Lords, before the noble Lord moves on from that, he tells us that there is a programme in the Home Office to provide more bail hostels. Could he give us an indication as to how many places will be available under this programme, and what the time-scale for the programme is?
Lord BELSTEAD: My Lords, the existing programme is at the moment a provisional programme. This provisional programme extends over the next three or four years, and will provide more places; but, as they are not absolutely firm—in other words, the places are not absolutely firmly in a programme, but are provisional at the moment—I should not like to be drawn on the exact number. But I should like to repeat what I said to the noble Lord, that it is the intention of the department and of my right honourable friend that at the end of the programme the major centres of population will be served by bail hostels; and, as the noble Lord may remember, I gave an assurance at that moment in my speech about the reviewing of the programme in the light of the working of the Bail Act.
My Lords, in view of the time, may I omit that part of the speech I was going to make about problems with the courts, because, really, when at least two Queen's counsel (maybe more) have spoken in the debate, I think that perhaps it is better that your Lordships should have heard from Lord Hutchinson and Lord Wigoder than
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that your Lordships should hear from me, except that I think I must remind your Lordships of this in passing. My noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor, not only as a legacy from his predecessor, also, is in the middle of pushing forward with a very considerable court-building programme which we hope will provide, by the end of 1982, 36 more permanent and emergency court rooms for London and the South-East. My noble and learned friend has also been approaching members of the judiciary to ask them whether they will sit in the London area, and indeed I understand that some 50 judges have been good enough to respond.
Perhaps I may go straight on to the Scotland point, which has been put to me by certain noble Lords. Incidentally, I understood the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson, to say that NACRO and the Howard League felt deeply about this point, and that perhaps he ought to lend his voice to this because they might be suspect organisations. As NACRO and the Howard League have very close connections with my right honourable friend's department, even though we in the department do not always necessarily agree with all the expressions of opinion which come from those two organisations, I cannot let the noble Lord in any way denigrate certainly one of the organisations, with which he is very closely connected. I should just like to say that in passing, though I know that that really was not the noble Lord's view. It is certainly not the view of the Home Office.
With regard to the Scottish point, my answer is that in most parts of the country prisoners in custody are in fact dealt with in 110 days or appreciably less—and I have statistics if your Lordships would want them. But, of course, in London, as your Lordships will know, because of the enormous burden of work, this is not possible. The long and the short of it is that if we simply introduced a 110-day rule for custodial remand cases, in some areas the courts would have to concentrate on such cases to the exclusion of others. I think what was said, certainly by the noble Lord, Lord Allen—that it is absolutely necessary, before one takes the step of imposing a ceiling of a certain number of days, to look at how you are

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building your courts and whether you have both the judiciary and the administration to man those courts—is an absolutely necessary putting of the cart in the right place in relation to the horse. It is for that reason that I was anxious to say to your Lordships what it is that my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor is doing before I said just those few words on the Scottish point.
My Lords, there have been questions which have been asked of me, and, if I may do so very quickly, I shall answer just one or two of them. There was a point which the noble Lord, Lord Hutchinson, put to me about legal aid for bail applications, and, if I may, I shall write to the noble Lord. I may give the noble Lord satisfaction on that, and I think he will not object to the reply I shall give him. However, I must, if I may, give a reply to a point which has been raised, not only by the noble Lord but also by the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson, regarding the extension of the present eight-day period of remand in custody. I think I must say that this has of course been considered by Parliament three times in recent years, and has been rejected on each occasion, the main objection to the change being the possibility that in some cases an extension from the eight-day remand period to, say, 20 days would lead to delay in the preparation of the defence case, and would result in longer periods in custody, to the prejudice of the defendant. All I would say this evening is that I think that, in taking on board what noble Lords have said on this subject, the Government must also bear that point very much in mind.
My Lords, if I may limit myself to just three answers, the second relates to a question that the noble Lord, Lord Allen, asked me about the bail information schemes. Indeed, I think the Camberwell Green Magistrates' Court experiment was held, by people who knew about it, to be successful; and the Home office circular on bail procedures issued in 1975, the noble Lord will remember, suggested that courts might consider introducing bail information schemes. But, of course, responsibility for establishing these schemes rests with individual courts. The noble Lord may like to know, though, that inquiries are now in hand from my right honourable friend's department about
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the spread, cost and effectiveness of bail information schemes.
Finally, my noble friend Lady Trumpington made a point, which I think rang a bell with many of your Lordships, as to why magistrates' courts, which also in their turn are having troubles about waiting time, are dealing with certain matters—and my noble friend instanced road traffic matters—which could perhaps be dealt with in other ways. My noble friend may like to know that an inter-departmental review of traffic law has been set up by my right honourable friend the Minister of Transport and by the Home Secretary, and it is looking at the possible extension of the fixed penalty system and at the totting-up procedures.
My Lords, perhaps I may express my thanks simply to your Lordships for taking part in this debate: not thanks for asking me questions, because they have not really been very easy to answer, but thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Hutchinson, and others, for raising a matter which is of great concern, I think, to us all.

BRITISH TRANSPORT DOCKS BILL
Brought from the Commons; read 1a, and referred to the Examiners.