Lords Sitting of 19 March 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 Truro.

EMPLOYMENT VACANCIES IN SERVICES
Lord BOYD-CARPENTER: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government how many vacancies at present exist for men and women respectively in each of the armed forces, the police, public transport and nursing.
The MINISTER of STATE, DEPARTMENT of EMPLOYMENT (The Earl of Gowrie):My Lords, it is not the practice to give detailed information on manpower targets for the armed forces. The armed forces are, however, presently well below their planned strength. The police service had just under 7,000 vacancies on 31st January, 1980. While it is not possible to give a figure for total vacancies in public transport, 4,931 vacancies were notified to the Employment Service Division of the Manpower Services Commission and 371 to the Careers Service in February 1980. It is estimated that there are about 19,000 vacancies for qualified nursing staff. The armed forces are exempt from the provisions of the Sex Discrimination Act. In the other services mentioned, vacancies are generally open to suitably-qualified men and women.
Lord BOYD-CARPENTER: My Lords, while thanking my noble friend for that reply, may I ask whether he does not feel that it is tragic that there should be this substantial number of vacancies in these important services at the same time as there is a substantial number unemployed, particularly young people? Will he ask the Department of Employment and, in particular, their local offices, who seem to be somewhat tepid in the matter, to show more energy in inviting
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the attention, particularly of the younger unemployed, to the existence of these vacancies?
The Earl of GOWRIE: My Lords, I am altogether in agreement with my noble friend. The paradox of large numbers of unfilled vacancies at a time of high unemployment is partly due to people changing jobs and also to the mismatch of employment opportunities regionally—and many of our worst unemployment statistics are very much regionally located. But we are working with the Manpower Services Commission to try to increase job mobility and opportunities for job mobility to improve the future situation.
Lord DAVIES of LEEK: My Lords, can the noble Earl tell the House whether the increase in pay for the average constable has resulted in a good increase in numbers; and what percentage that increase may be? Is he aware that many of us welcome the move of some chief constables to place on the streets the old-fashioned"bobby" on the beat? While admitting that there is a need for cars in rural areas, in towns the "bobby" on the beat is welcome.
The Earl of GOWRIE: My Lords, on the second part of the noble Lord's supplementary question, again I am in agreement. I think that law and order are best served by the police becoming familiar, as individuals, in their districts. There are problems connected with that and most of the police forces are now motorised in urban areas. I am glad to be able to tell the noble Lord that since the pay increase some of the recruitment difficulties of the police have eased, but we have still a way to go.
Lord INGLEWOOD: My Lords, following the last supplementary question, may I ask my noble friend whether the shortfall of 7,000 in the police includes the Special Constabulary? I think not; but, if not. why did he not tell the House what was that shortfall?
The Earl of GOWRIE: My Lords, I am afraid that I do not have that information off-the-cuff; but I will look into it and let my noble friend know the answer.
Lord LEATHERLAND: My Lords, can the noble Earl tell us what proportion

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of men complete their original terms of engagement in the Army and then reengage for a further term?
The Earl of GOWRIE: Not without notice, my Lords. I think the question probably should be directed towards a Defence Minister, but I will look into the matter.
Lord CAMPBELL of CROY: My Lords, can my noble friend tell the House whether the shortfall in the police is regionally variable and whether I am right in thinking that in Scotland there arc almost no vacancies?
The Earl of GOWRIE: My Lords, it is my understanding that the situation in Scotland is better than in England and Wales generally.

BRITISH LEYLAND: FUTURE OF' MG DIVISION
2.44 p.m.
The Earl of KINNOULL: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will make a Statement on the future of the MG division of British Leyland.
The MINISTER of STATE, DEPARTMENT of INDUSTRY (Viscount Trenchard): My Lords, in the view of Her Majesty's Government, the future of MG is a matter which can only be determined by British Leyland Limited on commercial grounds. It is not a matter, in our opinion, for the Government.
The Earl of KINNOULL: My Lords, while thanking my noble friend for that reply, may I ask whether he is aware that the current MG sales in the United States constitute 55 per cent. of the entire car sales there of British Leyland? Is he also aware of the considerable emotional and practical support for this car; and is he further aware that to many people it seems a defeatist twist by British Leyland to propose to close down this factory in order to assemble Japanese
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cars? Can my noble friend give an assurance that he has conveyed to the British Leyland management the very strong feelings expressed in another place a few weeks ago; that the Government share the concern over the loss of possibly 500 jobs; and that, even within the practicalities of the commercial aspect, the Government will keep a very close watch on the present negotiations going on between British Leyland and a private company?
Viscount TRENCHARD: My Lords, my noble friend has asked at least five supplementary questions. We are aware of the sales position in the United States. I think that everyone in the House and outside it is aware of the emotion—not least engendered by the fact that many of us in the past have had one of those marvellous MGs. The emotion is well understood. I do not think that my noble friend is right to suggest that the BL plan represents a defeatist twist. This must be a matter for BL's commercial judgment, and the Government must be interested in ensuring that BL have a board which is going to take really sound commercial decisions including, in the area of rationalisation, substantially more than one interest in sports cars. Overall, we must be concerned, while we regret the loss of jobs, in their producing a plan which will reduce the losses—which I am informed include losses in the MG division—and which will turn BL into a viable and profitable concern.
The Earl of KINNOULL: My Lords, while accepting my noble friend's reply and his mild rebuke for having put five supplementary questions, could he give an assurance that the Government have passed on to BL management the very strong feelings that were expressed in another place on this issue?
Viscount TRENCHARD: My Lords, British Leyland are well aware of the pressure in all areas, in the other place, in this House and among the public.
Lord SHINWELL: My Lords, may I ask the noble Viscount, who seems very adequately versed in these matters, why he maintains that this is not a matter for the Government? What is the philosophic, economic, ethical, artistic or aesthetic basis for that declaration? Or

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am I to assume that there is a political basis and, if so, why not be frank about it and let us know where the Government stand?
Viscount TRENCHARD: My Lords, I hope I can answer the noble Lord, Lord Shinwell, clearly. The Government stand as shareholders to British Leyland. The normal interest of shareholders is to ensure that the company is well run and commercially run, has an adequate board and, particularly, a first-class chairman. The Government believe that those conditions exist, but they do not believe that a shareholder's function includes going into detail of the rationalisation of different products in the same field. We believe that to be the duty of managements and not of shareholders.
Lord LEATH ERLAND: My Lords, is it not a duty of the shareholders to nag the management when it is necessary to do so? Also, is it not a fact that British Leyland are making a loss of £145 million this year?
Viscount TRENCHARD: My Lords, the figures have recently been announced by Sir Michael Edwardes and I think that is a separate question. Yes, it is indeed the duty of shareholders to nag the management of companies, and we are nagging; we are nagging that they should become commercially sound as soon as possible and get their reorganisation plans completed.
Lord UNDERHILL: My Lords, may I ask whether the noble Viscount would agree that commercial management is not always wise and that interest and encouragement by the Government may avoid a repetition of management failure which lost us the motor cycle industry?
Lord BRUCE of DONINGTON: My Lords, are we to infer from the noble Viscount's reply that the Government will be extremely vocal at the next annual general meeting of British Leyland?
Viscount TRENCHARD: My Lords, in the case of a nationalised industry, the shareholders have plenty of opportunities for nagging, and I assure you that they use them.

SERVICE MARRIED QUARTERS
2.47 p.m.
Lord GISBOROUGH: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government how many Ministry of Defence service married quarters arc at present unoccupied.
The MINISTER of STATE, MINISTRY of DEFENCE (Lord Strathcona and Mount Royal): My Lords, about 21,000 service married quarters are vacant in the United Kingdom.
Lord GISBOROUGH: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for that Answer. Can he give some idea of the cost value of those houses and also of their present-day value? Can he also give the running costs in relation to lost rent, repairs and so on?
Lord STRATHCONA and MOUNT ROYAL: My Lords, the potential value on the open market of our total stock of married quarters is of the order of £1,000 million. The value of the empty quarters is of the order of £200 million and each empty quarter costs around £150 per year in maintenance. If I have done my arithmetic right, I think maintenance of the empty quarters must therefore be costing us about £3 million, in addition to the disposal value which has been forgone.
The Earl of SELKIRK: My Lords, can the noble Lord say whether the Ministry of Defence has authority to lease these houses for limited periods?
Lord STRATHCONA and MOUNT ROYAL: My Lords, my noble friend is a lawyer so I have to be careful in answering his question! They certainly do lease these houses for a limited period and therefore I would imagine they have the authority to do so. The doubt in my mind is as to whether it is done through the PSA or direct through the Ministry.
Baroness SEEAR: My Lords, did the noble Lord say he was careful when dealing with lawyers?
Lord STRATHCONA and MOUNT ROYAL: My Lords, I am enormously careful at all times, and particularly about money.
Lord ELWYN-JONES: My Lords, I hesitate to intervene at this point, but could the Minister say why 21,000 houses are unoccupied? Is it because of unsuitability, or is there some other more satisfactory explanation?
Lord STRATHCONA and MOUNT ROYAL: My Lords, there is no satisfactory explanation, nor is there a brief one. It is an accumulation of a number of factors. The principal trouble at the present time is that increasingly members of the forces feel impelled to get into the property market at an early stage in their service careers because of the escalation in price which they see running away from them if they do not do so. There are a number of contributory factors as to why the Ministry has not reacted as fast as it might have wished on finding itself with this large number of empty married quarters on its hands.
Lord GISBOROUGH: My Lords, bearing in mind the reason given for so many married quarters being unoccupied, would my noble friend consider investigating a scheme whereby soldiers, and even non-soldiers, could buy these houses temporarily, with clauses to sell hack where necessary, so that they could maintain their house value against inflation and, at the same time, give a very positive cash flow to the Treasury?
Lord STRATHCONA and MOUNT ROYAL: My Lords, this is something which has certainly been thought of and has been investigated, though I do not know how exhaustively it has been investigated. The nature of a serviceman's life is such that we do not want to get him too"hefted"—to use a Scottish expression—to any one given place. Mobility is an essential part of the life of a serviceman. The problem with what my noble friend is suggesting is that the administrative cost of continuously buying and selling quarters, on a comparatively rapid turnover, would be very considerable. May I just add the further point that a scheme is now being developed whereby servicemen will have an opportunity to
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buy houses on rather similar lines to those proposed for council house tenants?
Lord CLIFFORD of CHUDLEIGH: My Lords, is it not a fact that, before the reorganisation in 1967 of the way in which a serviceman was paid, there was never any surplus of houses? It was only when the Government of the day brought in this extra pay, and then made the serviceman pay for his married quarters—which he did not have to do before—that this position came about.
Lord STRATHCONA and MOUNT ROYAL: My Lords, if I may say so, I think that the noble Lord is possibly falling into the trap of post hoc propter hoc. It is not necessarily true that the introduction of the military salary, with the consequent rent being charged for married quarters, brought about this situation. We believe that the principal reason was the point that I have already mentioned. The serviceman feels that he must get into the property market, given the rapid escalation in the prices of property, which are overtaking the rate at which he can save against buying a house when he conies out.
Lord WIGG: My Lords, would the Minister not agree that the picture that has been painted to the House, when he was talking about houses, is complete nonsense? Many of these quarters are in places which are inaccessible and in barracks which have often been closed down. As one who has lived in them for a considerable period, I know that many of them would not be in the least attractive to buyers, civilian or military. For the problem really to he understood, the figure of 21,000 needs to be broken down in order to see where they are, the condition of the quarters and whether there is a market for them.
Lord STRATHCONA and MOUNT ROYAL: My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Lord, apart from his opening sentence which suggested that what T said was total nonsense. I could not accept that. His other remarks are entirely in line with the true situation. Sonic of these houses are in areas where it is difficult to dispose of them. They are sometimes connected to supplies which, for example, are linked 'to camps; they are sometimes within the protected

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area of military establishments, and they are sometimes in areas where they would not be attractive to put on the market. That said, we disposed of 3,000 married quarters last year and we hope, and believe, that we may be able to accelerate the rate of disposal this year.
Lord TAYLOR of BLACKBURN: My Lords, may I ask the Minister whether the figures that he has given to the House take into calculation those houses that have been allocated to our NATO allies? For example, in Pembrokeshire, or Dyfed, I know of quite a number of houses that have been allocated to American forces there, hut they have not been taken up and have been lying empty for quite some time.
Lord STRATHCONA and MOUNT ROYAL: My Lords, I am bound to say that I do not know the precise answer to that question. The word"allocated"could be open to some doubt. It is true that some houses have been disposed of to Americans. It is equally true that some houses are earmarked for possible use in the event of a rapid reinforcement or change in the military situation. I think I am right in saying that the 21,000 would apply to married quarters which are still on our own Ministry of Defence books.
Lord SEGAL: My Lords, can the noble Lord say to what extent these unoccupied service premises are maintained in a state of proper repair and, roughly, how many are allowed to deteriorate?
Lord STRATHCONA and MOUNT ROYAL: My Lords, we do our best, where properties are worth maintaining, to keep them in a state of repair. Some of these quarters were not very satisfactorily built in the first place, which has probably turned out to be a false economy. In those cases, the decision should be taken to knock them down, rather than engage in wasteful expenditure in trying to keep them watertight. But those which are considered useful are maintained to a reasonable, if not wholly admirable, standard.

ZAMBIA: RECONSTRUCTION AID
2.56 p.m.
Lord HATCH of LUSBY: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they have yet decided to offer assistance to the Government of Zambia in order to rebuild the communications destroyed by the Zimbabwe-Rhodesian forces and, if so, in what form.
Lord TREFGARNE: My Lords, we offered to make available for reconstruction purposes part of the £10 million project loan to Zambia, signed on 24th January. The Zambian Government preferred the loan to be devoted entirely to agricultural development and we were happy to accept this. We fully supported the European Development Fund's recent allocation of 1· 7 million units of account towards the reconstruction of two of the damaged bridges on the Tazara Railway.
Lord HATCH of LUSBY: My Lords, does the noble Lord the Minister recall the answer he gave me to a similar Question on 20th December, when he said, after agreeing that Zambia had been in the forefront of the troubles in that part of the world, that the British Government were contemplating discussions with the Zambian Government? Are those the discussions to which he is referring, and is he aware that in Zambia itself, despite the poverty which has been increased as a result of the war, a great deal of money has been voluntarily donated in order to repair the bridges, roads and railways that were damaged in these raids?
Lord TREFGARNE: My Lords, I am aware of what the noble Lord says. I can confirm, following on the earlier answer which I gave to the noble Lord, that we made the offer to which I referred in the original Answer.
Lord BARNBY: My Lords, can my noble friend say whether the 350,000 tons of maize, which was recently reported to have been given, has yet been received by

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Zambia? Secondly, is it not a fact that Zambia has already received £167 million of British taxpayers' money?
Lord TREFGARNE: My Lords, with regard to the maize, I can say that significant quantities of it are now flowing into Zambia. I can also add that we have ourselves agreed to provide 13,000 tons. On our aid programme generally, our programme for Zambia has in the past been substantial; and, indeed, in the year 1979–80, under existing commitments, it will be about £30 million.
Lord AVEBURY: My Lords, is the Minister aware that one of the indirect effects of the war has been the inability of the Zambian Government to maintain the rolling stock on the Tanzam railway? Might it not be a good idea to enter into discussions with the Zambian authorities, with a view to offering them the facilities of the British Rail workshops to build new rolling stock for that railway, thus giving employment to people who would otherwise be thrown out of work in this country?
Lord TREFGARNE: My Lords, I am sure that we would be willing for the British Rail workshops to be used for this purpose. But the problem still remains as to who is to pay for the work.
Lord WIGG: My Lords, as the Minister is aware, communications in Zambia were destroyed in operations carried out by Puma helicopters, piloted by South African officers. Although the noble Lord never admitted that they were there, it has now been admitted that the South African aircraft have, in fact, been withdrawn. Would it be equitable to go to the South African Government and ask them to pay to put back that which they knocked down?
Lord TREFGARNE: My Lords, I am not sure that the noble Lord, Lord Wigg, is right in what he says. Action which resulted in the destruction of the bridges was carried out not by helicopters, but by fixed wing aircraft. As for paying for bridge repairs, we have said that we would do what we could, and we have helped in the way that I have announced.
Lord WIGG: My Lords, is it not extraordinary that the Minister now knows that the operations were carried out not by helicopters but by normal aircraft? How does he come to know this now when previously at Question Time he said he did not know?
Lord TREFGARNE: My Lords, there have been a good few changes in that part of the world of late, but perhaps the noble Lord has not noticed.
Lord HATCH of LUSBY: My Lords, does the noble Lord agree in general that Zambia has suffered severely since 1965 and UDI when the British Government asked the Zambian Government to assist in the policy of sanctions? Does he agree that in present circumstances, with many thousands of refugees from Zimbabwe to be looked after by the Zambians—and I can quote the figure of 8,000 orphans who are being educated at Solwezi—it is necessary for there to be an international effort to help Zambia back on her feet, and that because Britain has been responsible for Rhodesia, and now Zimbabwe, it is the British Government who should take the lead in mounting an international campaign?
Lord TREFGARNE: My Lords, we are certainly doing what we can within the limits of our resources. As I said earlier, our aid to Zambia in recent years has been very substantial. As I also said earlier, the programme for this year, 1979–80, will be £30 million—a very substantial figure, having regard to our stretched resources.
Baroness LLEWELYN-DAVIES of HASTOE: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that we very much welcome the aid which Her Majesty's Government have given to Zambia, but does he not agree that it would be difficult to repay the debt owed by the world to that country for maintaining the policy of United Nations sanctions, a policy from which she has suffered far more than any other country?
Lord TREFGARNE: My Lords, I am sure it is true that Zambia suffered as a result of the firm stand which it has taken in the past few years. That is why our aid programme has been so substantial.

EASTER RECESS
Lord DENHAM: It may be for the convenience of your Lordships if I announce that, subject to the progress of business, the House will adjourn for the Easter Recess on Thursday, 3rd April, and return on Monday, 14th April.

THE NHS AND PRIVATE MEDICINE
3.2 p.m.
Lord HUNT of FAWLEY Lord HUNT of FAWLEY rose to call attention to the extent of co-operation between the National Health Service and the independent medical services (private sector) during the past 30 years and to the potential for future co-operation; and to move for Papers. The noble Lord said: My Lords, in opening this short two and a half hour debate on co-operation between the National Health Service and our independent private medical services, I make no apology for dropping this political hot potato into your Lordships' laps this afternoon. It is an enormous and important subject which has been somewhat neglected. I hope that this debate will be a preliminary to the debates which we shall have on the Health Services Bill in the next few weeks and months.
The president of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, Mr. Anthony Alment, in a letter to me recently said:
" I am quite sure the relationship between the National Health Service and the private sector is the most unconsidered aspect of medical practice, responsibility and ethics during the whole lifetime of the National Health Service, and any cool and reasonable debate which examines these issues must surely be helpful to both public and profession.".
When our National Health Service was introduced on 5th July, 1948, many people thought, in an idealistic, almost Utopian, kind of way that it would be so good that private practice would shortly die a quiet and peaceful death. This has not happened. After a trial of more than a quarter of a century, it is now in difficulties—financially, administratively and in some of its labour relationships. Meanwhile, the private sector is developing and expanding, filling some of the gaps efficiently. Although private medicine is still only a small part of our
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country's medical services, if all its different facets, which I shall mention shortly, are included, I believe that it is considerably larger than the very small percentage which the Royal Commission on the National Health Service suggested last year.
I wish to begin by reminding the House of what the leaders of the Labour Party and others have said about private medical practice in Britain during the past 30 years. Mr. Aneurin Bevan made the first gesture to encourage co-operation between the National Health Service and the private sector when he included pay beds in his plans for NHS hospitals: although I believe that he hoped they could be separated later.
Sir Harold Wilson, as Prime Minister, referred to:
"…the important and continuing contribution which we expect and want private practice to make … We expect to see it cortinue, and we want to see it continue, and we shall guarantee it in our legislation."—[Official Report, Commons, 20/10/75; cols. 37 and 39.]
The noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, told your Lordships more than five years ago from the Labour Government Front Bench:
" We are not attacking private practice … There are a number of private hospitals. There may have to be many more… We are not objecting to that. "—[Official Report, 29/7/74, col. 2132.]
Mrs. Barbara Castle, when she was Secretary of State for Social Services, said:
"… we must do everything in our power to ensure that those who wish to practise privately can continue to do so.—"[Official Report, 21/11/75; col. 356.
She added a little later:
" It would be intolerable in a democratic society to prevent people from buying private medical care."—[Official Report, Commons, Standing Committee D, 18/5/76; col. 38.]
The views of our present Government have been put to us recently equally vigorously. The Secretary of State for Social Services, Mr. Patrick Jenkin, said on 19th December last year:
" We believe that it is a part of a free society that patients who wish to seek private medical treatment should be free to do so. We believe that doctors who wish to practise privately should have the right to do so. These views are shared by the overwhelming majority of the people."—[Official Report, Commons, 19/12/79; col. 650.]
He mentioned the results of several recent opinion polls confirming this; he stressed that private practice must in no way harm the NHS; and he put forward six points, which he and the British Medical Association had agreed on, to ensure that.
The three senior Royal Medical Colleges are, in general, regarded as the academic leaders of my profession. I have already quoted the president of one of them. The president of another, the Royal College of Physicians, Sir Douglas Black, supports the continuance of a strong private sector which, in his own words:
" makes a most valuable contribution to medical care in this country …it is no kind of threat to NHS standards.".
He is quite right about that. Our two medical services should work in reasonable collaboration, friendly co-existence and partnership. They should be potential allies with strong links between them. With its incentive, enterprise, flexibility and freedom of choice, the private sector should be able to initiate much pioneer work which could be of value to them both. It should be useful also as an indication of patients' needs, being able to respond more directly and more quickly to patients' demands for services than can the NHS.
The president of the Royal College of
Surgeons, Sir Reginald Murley, wrote to me saying:
" The private sector is an encouragement to raise standards of personal service, as well as proper costing and economical use of resources."
Those are three important points. In general, the independent medical services should be considered as a supplement to the NHS and not as a competitor. In the last sentence of my maiden speech in your Lordships' House, nearly seven years ago, I said that, if this friendly symbiosis and co-operation proved impossible, the two sectors would have to develop separately, which I felt sure would prove in the end to be to the detriment of both. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Smith, immediate past-President of the Royal College of Surgeons, will agree with me on that.
All these senior politicians, doctors and many others in every party have accepted the existence of private practice in Britain, even though they know full well that it can often give a somewhat different personal service to some people, in certain respects,
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than it can to others who are in the National Health Service. Patients who have been provident enough to insure themselves against the cost of illness, often at considerable sacrifice, or those whose firms or trades unions have done this for them, expect and deserve something rather different—such as choice of surgeon and date and place of operation, especially for those who travel much, privacy, with a room to themselves, perhaps with a bathroom and lavatory, a telephone, and so on. Medical or surgical treatment may not necessarily be better than it is under the NHS. No private hospital, for instance, can really have all the equipment of a large teaching or other general hospital, and doctors vary in kindness and efficiency. Very often the clinical standards in both are much the same, but these other amenities mean a great deal to many people, and they are willing to pay for them, even though not at all well off.
What are the things that can interfere with and tend to spoil collaboration between the NHS and the private sector? Occasionally, a few years ago, so-called"queue jumping complicated this cooperation, when a patient who had been seen by a consultant privately—say, in Harley Street—was sometimes admitted at once to one of his NHS hospital ward beds ahead of other patients who had been waiting a long time for admission. That was recognised as quite wrong. It has been stopped now, by consultants and by the vigilance of hospital admission officers. These patients' names now go on to a common waiting list so that, for everybody, medical urgency is the only reason for early admission. But to use the term"queue jumping"still, like one sometimes hears, as a bitter, politically-motivated slogan against all private medicine, is unjustified. To apply that term in a derogatory way to someone who is admitted to a private hospital for treatment, for which he pays because he cannot get it when and where he wants on the NHS, is as unrealistic as it is to use it against someone who drives a private motor car or who takes a taxi, when in a hurry to keep an appointment, at a time when public transport is not running.
Another point which may affect cooperation is whether or not private medi-

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cine robs the NHS of doctors, nurses and ancillary staff and equipment, as is sometimes alleged. We must all share our country's resources and when there is real shortage the NHS should have first pick; but we must do our best to make sure that there is enough for everyone. A few private hospitals are training nurses now, and more will do so. Some doctors and nurses are unwilling to work in the NHS, for various reasons—they may prefer other jobs, such as in industry, or they may want to go abroad —just as some do not care to work for private patients. Neither can be compelled, and we want as few as possible to leave our country. Is there really a shortage of personnel and equipment in the NHS? The late Lord Murray of Gravesend told us on 14th November of last year that, with wards being closed all over the country, there were then 8,000 nurses unemployed.
Now let us look at the many ways in which our independent medical sector has helped the NHS during the last 30 years. The expenses incurred by outpatient attendance at different types of hospitals vary greatly, but it is always a considerable sum of money. The Department of Health and Social Security tells me that, on average, each out-patient attendance at hospital costs about £50. That is taking into account overhead expenses, the salaries of senior and junior doctors, nurses, porters and cleaners, the cost of heat and light, of X-rays, pathology and other investigations, and also of secretaries, administration and transport. For those patients who are admitted to hospital beds, with or without operation, the costs are even higher, but when patients are treated privately away from the NHS hospitals, the NHS is saved all this expense. Then the patient himself, or someone else on his behalf—his employer, or perhaps a trade union, or BUPA or other provident association —foots the bill.
The British Medical Association estimates that there are now only about 400 full-time private general practitioners in Britain who see patients in their consulting rooms, group practices or health centres, visiting others at home and perhaps admitting some of them into private hospitals, nursing homes or into NHS
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hospital pay-beds. There are many part-time general practitioners who do a fair amount of, or very little, private practice, and others who do none at all. Specialists and consultants see private patients in their consulting rooms, in patients' homes and in private hospital beds, too.
One further matter which affects cooperation is the feeling that doctors and nurses who have been trained in the NHS, at considerable expense to the State through university grants and subsidies. should spend their lives in it rather than in the private sector. But many doctors have given several good years of medical work and have made a considerable contribution to the NHS as students, house officers, registrars and later as specialists and consultants. Nurses do much the same in their jobs. Some other countries try to impose a period of compulsory medical national service, a kind of civilian conscription, on their young doctors after qualification. In Russia, when I was there 20 years ago, newly-qualified doctors were being asked to work for two to three years in the so-called"virgin lands ". But several, many of them women, found ways of avoiding this by getting married, becoming pregnant and so on. Even this short period of compulsory employment of professional people, in peacetime, is an infringement of personal freedom.
For other professions it is not necessary to work in the public sector after being trained largely at the State's expense. cannot help asking those who think otherwise about doctors and nurses how they feel about the many thousands who have been trained in medical schools abroad and who work now for our NHS and who do not for many years, if ever, return to their own developing countries which need their professional help so much.
The 30 private hospitals organised by the Nuffield Nursing Homes Trust throughout the country do a great deal for British medicine. The British United Provident Association helps, also, by encouraging health promotion and by arranging screening clinics. Three million people are covered by the umbrella of BUPA, the Private Patients Plan and the Western Provident Association. They are not all contributors themselves. The majority —

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about 80 per cent.—are covered by group schemes arranged through their employers or someone else. Increasingly, trades unions are negotiating private hospital care schemes for their employees.
We must not forget other important private hospitals, such as the King Edward VII Hospital for Officers (Sister Agnes) and the Royal Masonic Hospital; those of religious denominations, like the St. John and St. Elizabeth Hospital; and also those hospitals, rest homes and rehabilitation centres connected with trades unions like the Manor House Hospital, the NATSOPA Rehabilitation Centre at Rottingdean and the Benenden Chest Hospital. There are many thousands of beds in small private hospitals and nursing homes throughout the country for surgical, medical, maternity, psychiatric and convalescent patients with more in private old peoples' homes for geriatric and terminal care. About 4,000 of these private hospital beds in Britain are available to be let out to the NHS on a contractual basis, through local authorities, when required.
Charitable organisations do an enormous amount of good private work, too. Examples arc St. Dunstan's, which cares for about 3,700 war-blinded men and women (with its own private hospital of 60 beds for them), the Cheshire Homes and the Hospice Movement for the care of the dying, among a very great many others. One must add all the medical care outside the National Health Service that many industrial firms provide for their employees, and one should mention all the work done by the private paramedical and ancillary services and others—private nurses, dentists, physiotherapists, chiropidists, and so on. The work of sickness and life insurance companies is largely private, and so is some industrial medicine.
That is not all. The National Health Service is saved a great deal of money, time, work and responsibility by the advice, investigation and treatment which private doctors give, to so many of our overseas visitors, especially those from the USA and the Arab States, many of whom demand the very best, and at once. The standard of treatment we give them is important for the prestige of British medicine. With their families, they bring much money into our country.
My Lords, it is inconceivable that the National Health Service would want to take on as an extra much of this medical and paramedical work now being done by our private sector, with the responsibilities and the financial and administrative commitments involved. All this work of our independent medical services in Britain must have saved the National Health Service an enormous sum of money. The exact amount is impossible to assess. It may have been thousands of millions of pounds over the past 30 years. For that we should be grateful.
Knowing all this, and what leaders of the Labour Party have told us, it is very hard to understand those who want to abolish all private medicine (as resolutions at many recent Labour Party Conferences have suggested). One cannot agree with Mr. Stanley One, MP, the Opposition spokesman on Health and Social Services, who said recently:
" My objection to private practice is that it is immoral.—[Oficial Report, Commons, 23/1/80; col. 478.]
Nor can we agree with Mr. Andrew Bennett, MP, who spoke of:
" private medicine, which feeds like a parasite on the National Health Service ".—[Official Report, Commons, 19/12/79; col. 712.]
May we now look for a few minutes at the other side of the coin, at how much help the National Health Service has given to the private sector? First, there are the extremely valuable ambulance services and the hospital accident and emergency services, with intensive care and coronary care units, available to every patient and doctor, National Health Service and private. Usually their help is given so quickly, cheerfully and efficiently, at any time of the day or night, and with so much co-operation, that they are a great comfort and reassurance to doctors and to their patients and relatives. Another way in which the National Health Service co-operates with and helps private doctors is when our patients need diagnosis or treatment requiring highly complicated or sophisticated apparatus, such as X-ray or cobalt therapy, tissue transplants, and so on.
This co-operation can work both ways. During the year ended last August, the surgeons at a well-equipped private hospital in London, the Harley Street Clinic, reduced the waiting list of patients for open heart surgery at the Sefton Hospital in Liverpool by taking 24 of its

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NHS patients and operating on them in London, charging less, I am assured, than the operations would have cost the NHS in Liverpool.
Still another chance for helpful cooperation between general practitioners in the NHS and those in the private sector arises when a patient who is registered with an NHS general practitioner in the country near his home is taken ill or wants treatment or special advice from a private doctor when he is away, perhaps in London. Under these circumstances, friendly telephone calls or an exchange of letters between the GPs concerned can often do much to help the patient.
In my experience, all branches of the Social Services are willing to help private doctors and their patients, especially in emergencies, or when they are in difficulty or trouble over long-term treatment. We all belong to the National Health Service and help to pay for it, and the many benefits of the Social Services are willingly shared between the public and private sectors.
Hospital pay-beds, too, help the private sector and are a source of income to the NHS, bringing in, we are told, about £30 million a year. Pay-beds have been discussed endlessly, and I do not propose to describe their pros and cons now. Most of them have been successful but there has occasionally been trouble over labour relations when NHS and private patients have been nursed under the same roof. The last Labour Government phased out some of these pay-beds; our present Government plan to replace many of them soon; and the Labour Party says that it will repudiate that when it next returns to power. I must give a solemn word of warning here about such repeated changes of policy, because the pay-bed question could easily become a political bone of contention or a running sore, which would do nothing but harm over many years to co-operation between the National Health Service and the private sector. All concerned should do their very best to avoid that. The noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Coslany, said to us last year:
" No one in his right mind wants the National Health Service to become a political battleground". —[Official Report, 14/11/79; col. 1365.]
How good it would be for patients,
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doctors and hospital administrators, if some permanent and stable agreement between the political parties could be reached soon on this matter.
In conclusion, my Lords, what of the future? There is no reason why all the points of contact and co-operation which I have mentioned should not be expanded. The Department of Health and Social Security naturally represents primarily the National Health Service, but it serves the whole of British medicine in general matters such as the control of infectious diseases, drug addiction, and so on.
Two important problems will have to be discussed and solved soon. The first is, does the internal structure of the DHSS now allow it to take an adequate, efficient and sympathetic interest in the needs of the private
sector? What are now independent medical services could not and should not be controlled by the DHSS, but I believe that there is now a need for more co-ordination and perhaps some reorganisation at the top, with an influential committee, group, unit or sub-department within the DHSS, encouraging maximum co-operation of the type we have been discussing today, to help to sort out some of the problems I have mentioned.
The second problem is this: are all the different aspects of private medicine properly and fully represented outside the DHSS? Outside the department we have already several groups representing different aspects of our independent medical services, such as the Private Practice Committee of the BMA, the Independent Practice Sub-Committee of the Joint Consultants' Committee, the Association of Independent Hospitals, and the Independent Hospitals' Group, to mention a few. They are all doing good work but there is a need, I believe, for more cohesion between them, and for some of them, perhaps, to join together to improve liaison with each other, with other doctors working privately, and with the DHSS.
From what I have said, it will be appreciated that I am led to believe that there is not now nearly such a deep divide between the two sides of our House over private medicine as there was a few years ago. I feel sure that the prospects for efficient and friendly co-

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operation and collaboration between our National Health Service and our independent medical services are much brighter than they were then. I hope very much that we can ensure that this improvement continues, for the future wellbeing of the whole of British medicine. My Lords, I beg to move for Papers.
3.30 p.m.
Lord SEGAL: My Lords, I feel that the whole House is greatly indebted to the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Fawley, for raising this very important question this afternoon. Indeed, it is a subject which is crucial to the whole future of medical practice in this country. But first may I be allowed to express the deep loss felt in the whole world of medicine by the death of Sir Ludwig Guttmann. The news only came to me a few moments ago. The whole world owes him a debt which is almost incalculable for the pioneer work which he did at Stoke Mandeville Hospital. He came to this country as a refugee from Nazi Germany; he has been instrumental in saving many thousands of lives, not least some of the lives of the most valued Members of your Lordships' House, who are better qualified than I am to speak of the great work which he accomplished. He was instrumental in organising the Olympic Games for paraplegics which caught the imagination of the whole world on behalf of those tragic sufferers, and his name will live not least among the many disciples whom he taught over a long period of years.
I should now like to start on perhaps a rather more optimistic note than did my noble friend Lord Hunt of Fawley. I have no hesitation whatever in calling him"my noble friend," whatever political differences may divide us on opposite sides of the House. It is my own personal conviction that the abolition of private medical practice in this country is as remote an eventuality as the abolition of your Lordships' House. I speak from these Benches perhaps as a somewhat wayward member of the party to which I belong—a party which is quite notoriously tolerant of the unorthodox views of some of its members; and yet may I say, with deep sincerity, that I feel more at home on these Benches than I am ever likely to feel in any other part of the House.
Having said that, may I say that whatever views I may express here are views
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expressed from the Back-Benches, individual personal views which may be corrected by my noble friend Lord WellsPestell, who, when he replies, has to recognise me here as a dedicated schizophrenic, torn between my loyalty to my profession and my loyalty to my party. Whereas I speak of the love for one's profession perhaps more from the heart, in cooler moments and on longer reflection perhaps with my head I sympathise with a great deal of what my noble friend Lord Wells-Pestell is likely to say.
This House has just completed in all its stages the Competition Bill and has passed it on to another place. After 32 years of State medicine we have now come to realise its limitations and its deficiencies, and today even its most ardent advocate is bound to admit that all is not well with the National Health Service. It would be a gross oversimplification to assert that this is due to any one particular cause. Many factors have been at work during this period; shortage of funds, shortage of beds, shortage of nurses, lengthening waiting lists, a widespread malaise which seems to have permeated many sectors of the National Health Service. Indeed, it is quite amazing what triumphs the NHS has been able to achieve, despite all these many handicaps which have dogged its progress ever since its inception in 1948.
In contrast to all that, medical insurance schemes seem to have flourished; in fact, many of us may take the view that because of all these difficulties these insurance schemes have flourished. The demand for private medicine in one form or another, whether to secure priority in queue-jumping whatever the morality or otherwise of that procedure may be; whether to secure special nursing care or private surgery performed by the surgeon of one's own choice, all these factors show no signs of abating. Private medicine has now even infiltrated into the ranks of trade unions, so that today's skilled workers are unabashed in demanding priority in medical treatment and specialised medical care.
This has exploded sky high the theory that it is immoral to condone priority in treatment. It has also made a nonsense of that term of reproach that is sometimes used of the creation of"second-class citizens"where medical treatment

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is concerned. No one today would expect a Minister of Health to take his place in the queue. No one denounces a Cabinet Minister for claiming some degree of priority in National Health Service treatment. In the last resort clinical urgency has to be decided on the basis of expert judgment, and cannot be left to rule-of-thumb decisions by non-medical personnel where human lives are often at stake. Some unfairness may result, errors of judgment may occur, patronage may exist but, like democracy itself, with all its defects, it remains a safer choice than any alternative.
What is sad about private and State medicine today is that they arc allowed to confront each other. So much is to be gained by retaining them both closely in active harness. The cost of a private bed has mounted to over £100 a day in our London hospitals. That, I understand, is to come into being on 1st April next, without, I hope, any significance attaching to that particular date. And with all the inflationary factors at work, the cost of a private bed in a National Health Service hospital is likely to rise even higher. It is small wonder that medical insurance schemes are bound to flourish. Nothing can be gained by suppressing them. Indeed so long as we continue to live in a mixed economy, medicine as a whole is likely to gain in many ways, not least by reducing the length of hospital waiting lists, by working in close harmony with the private sector.
Whatever inherent danger there is in creating a State monopoly, one of the risks that may develop in the course of time is that private benefactions are likely to get less and may even ultimately tend to dry up. The trade union hospital itself is outside the National Health Service, as the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Fawley, has reminded us; it still remains a stronghold of private medicine. Trade unions do not cavil at that. The Royal Masonic Hospital, again as Lord Hunt reminded us, is a source of pride to the members of many powerful masonic lodges and a notable beneficiary of those who are generously inclined.
It is sad to have to preside at the burial at some of our sacred cows, but the sooner we recognise the potentialities of private medicine in effecting a symbiosis with the
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National Health Service, the sooner the National Health Service is likely to raise itself out of the slough of despond which now surrounds it. Let us face the facts. Private medicine has come to stay. It will continue to flourish so long as the demand for it exists. The greatest blow that could be struck against private medicine today would be the formation of a picket line outside a private hospital to prevent any patient from entering. So far as I am aware—and I speak subject to correction—this has not yet happened. Until then, it would appear that private insurance schemes will continue to grow and gain the support of those who cannot afford to wait indefinitely for treatment, or who wish to be operated on by the surgeon of their choice. So long as the private sector is able to maintain the highest possible standards of medical treatment, so long will it continue to survive, just as our private and public schools will continue to survive as long as some parents are prepared to pay, and even to sacrifice in order to pay, for their children's education.
In a mixed economy we have every reason to be grateful for the survival of private medicine, and ought to encourage both the private and public sectors, instead of leaving them to waste their energies at loggerheads with each other. It is of the utmost importance that they should work together in order to alleviate suffering wherever it exists, each supplementing the other and giving of their best to the whole community.
3.44 p.m.
Lord SMITH: My Lords, I had been a consultant for two years upon the inception of the National Health Service in 1948, and I can well remember that, although an enthusiastic supporter from the start, it worried me in those days that it might result in the evolution of two standards of medicine in this country. Such was the naivete of youth, however —not that youth has any monopoly in this respect—that my fear was that the private sector of medicine might not be able to keep up with State medicine, which presumably had access to an inexhaustible purse, a misconception that even now has not entirely disappeared. That there should continue to be an independent sector in medicine seemed to me to he quite essential, and it is, of course,

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apparent that the prime architect of the Health Service, Aneurin Bevan, saw this very clearly. I much enjoyed the account given by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Fawley, to whom we are much indebted for the opportunity of this debate, of the way in which various outstanding personalities have, over the years, acknowledged and emphasised that the National Health Service and independent medicine really must work together in harmony.
Since those very early days of worry about the survival of independent medicine, what has happened? First, there has been an enormous increase in the cost of medicine, particularly hospital medicine, and at the same time an enormous increase in demand for medical services of all kinds. It has, I think, become clear to all that the original objective of a comprehensive Health Service in the original sense of this word —that is, that all services that medical science has shown to be possible ought to be available to all patients—is a mirage. Within the National Health Service the gap grows bigger at an accelerating rate between what medical science could do for patients given unlimited resources and what any State can afford through the taxation of its citizens. Combined with this, there has grown up among many patients and potential patients the belief that payment of National Insurance contributions should entitle them by right to prompt medical care of the highest standard. No wonder a growing number of patients today react with disappointment when a place in hospital cannot immediately be found for them, and that some of these do turn to the independent sector of medicine.
I do not believe it is in any way wrong that a patient, if he wants to, should go directly to a doctor of his choice. Nor is it wrong that a potential patient should seek insurance in case the pressures on the National Health Service should prevent him obtaining prompt treatment when in need. In parenthesis, may I say that personally I except from this general approval of medical cover through private insurance schemes, schemes whereby the personal doctor-patient relationship, on which all good medicine is based, is undermined by an arrangement whereby a patient calling his doctor in an emergency can expect to be visited not by his own doctor, who knows all about him, but by
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some total stranger despatched by an agency, like a radio cab to a diner wishing to return home. This to me is not representative of good independent medicine. I doubt whether sometimes it is even entirely ethical. I hope that perhaps the General Medical Council will give such schemes a good hard look.
Today, through force of economic circumstance we are, I am afraid, back at the unattractive and to me quite unacceptable possibility of two standards of medicine in this country, with the State system unable to keep pace with the spiralling costs of ever more complex medicine, and frustrated patients increasingly seeking an escape from this situation, often through private insurance at a cost. Well, my Lords, what is the solution? Indeed is there a solution? Certainly no acceptable solution can be found by reversing the far-sighted provisions of Aneurin Bevan and others, by saying that in a situation in which standards relatively speaking are falling in the National Health Service, we can avoid two standards of medicine by ensuring that standards in the independent sector of medicine shall fall too. Still less is there a solution by aiming to obliterate private medicine altogether so that patients could be told,"Whatever the defects, State medicine is all you can get—it is that or nothing."
If we were to proscribe or unduly curtail independent medicine, if the idea of two standards is abhorrent, how much more so surely would be a black market in medicine or planeloads of patients taking off on package tours to the Mayo Clinic or medical centres on the Continent of Europe?
There is a solution and I believe that it lies in an acceptance, indeed an expansion, of the principle that State medicine and independent medicine must be interdependent. I am convinced that the existence of a healthy independent sector is much in the public interest, although I would say that it should not flourish in isolation. I believe that for a doctor to spend part of his time practising medicine independently of the National Health Service is less a right than a privilege to be exercised with due regard to the total medical needs of the community.

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I believe that most people today are prepared to accept that the total separation of independent medicine from State medicine is wrong in theory and harmful in practice. However, that is a negative approach. I should like to hear the Government say that they would rather be positive about this and that, particularly at a time when national economic difficulties exacerbate problems which in any event create great stresses within the Health Service, there ought to be a specific and concentrated examination of all possible ways—some old and some new—in which independent medicine can support and sustain the National Health Service.
Private medicine has no wish to mount an assault upon the Health Service and would in no way regard such an examination as intrusive. The doctors who are mainly concerned with the organisation and control of private medicine regard this as completely logical and would join in such an examination with the Department of Health in an entirely co-operative spirit. I hope very much that we shall pursue that course, for through it we can arrive at a system which is best attuned to the needs of patients; that is, a real partnership between the State on the one hand and the whole of medicine (State medicine and independent medicine) on the other hand. We shall not arrive at that situation through some process of natural evolution: it requires not only goodwill, but imagination and hard work. It is surely worth the effort for the prize is great.
Baroness GAITSKELL: My Lords, before the noble Lord, Lord Smith, sits down, I should like to ask one small question. How can the situation be equitable as between the public and the private sectors of medicine when the private sector has equal use of all hospital facilities as the public sector? That is a problem which I had expected the noble Lord to tackle and which he has not tackled in his speech.
Lord SMITH: My Lords, I believe that, in a debate of this length, with individual speakers confined to approximately 10 minutes, it would be totally out of the question to tackle a subject of that kind.should dearly like to see such subjects discussed and that is why I firmly believe
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that it is no good making encouraging noises about the two sectors existing together; I believe that there ought to be a specific examination into how this relationship should work.
3.55 p.m.
Lord AUCKLAND: My Lords, I should like to add my own debt of gratitude to my noble friend Lord Hunt of Fawley for enabling us to debate this very important subject this afternoon as a prelude to what will be a much more comprehensive and no doubt highly controversial selection of discussions when the National Health Service Bill reaches your Lordships' House.
We have had from my noble friend a cogent and clear-cut speech, and we have heard from two eminent members of the medical profession. It is therefore with more than usual trepidation that I rise as one who is not in any way qualified in medicine. However, I have for some years, as your Lordships will know by now, served on a number of hospital committees. I must also declare that I, personally, have never—and nor have members of my immediate family—been a private patient. We are all, let me stress, consumers of the National Health Service and very satisfied consumers of it, although one is bound to say that at present there are features of the National Health Service which cause anxieties, and my noble friend mentioned some of them.
In an ideal world everybody who is ill or injured should have medical or surgical treatment without having to pay for it. None of us really wishes to be ill or injured—or very few at any rate. The real nub of the matter is the question of co-operation. Today throughout industry and throughout most organisations in our national life, we lack—or it is imputed that we lack—co-operation. There is far too much made of the differences between medical practices, between sides of industry and so on, and perhaps too little made of the spirit of co-operation which exists.
The report of the Royal Commission on the National Health Service, chaired by Sir Alec Merrison, is certainly a formidable document. I must confess to your Lordships that I have not read it all chapter and verse, and I presume that many of your Lordships, similarly, have not read every word of it. However,

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there is a most interesting section which deals with the question of private practice and the National Health Service. There is one paragraph which I should like to quote on page 290, column 1829, where it says:
" There is no doubt that the National Health Service has from time to time suffered from shortages of particular groups of staff both locally and nationally. However, bearing in mind the modest size of the private sector it is difficult to believe that such shortages were often due to National Health Service workers leaving for the private sector"
I shall content myself with that quote because of the exigencies of time; but I believe that this is a very important part of the Royal Commission's report. Like myself, many of your Lordships will have sons, daughters or other relations who are nurses or doctors in hospitals, both in this country and overseas. My own younger daughter is a second-year student nurse at one of the big London teaching hospitals and of course her experience so far has been entirely on the National Health Service side of medicine.
I have visited both National Health Service hospitals and also more recently two private hospitals in London, and I learned a great deal there of the cooperation between the two sides of the Health Service. For example, if at a weekend someone happens to be run over or otherwise injured outside or in the vicinity of one of those hospitals, that person would receive immediate treatment without charge. There is nothing in this about which one should make a meal; it is only right that this should take place. However, it is worth mentioning because much is made of the enormous apartheid—if one may use that expression—between the two sides of medicine, which does not really exist.
My late uncle was secretary of the Kingston Hospital at the time when the National Health Service came into being. He had many meetings with the late Mr. Aneurin Bevan. At a meeting of doctors and consultants he related one instance, where the late Minister had some very irascible words to say to the gathering. There was a stony silence, and a short time later he came back in a very much more genial mood, full of apologies that he had not quite understood the situation. I think that from then quite a fraternal relationship grew up,
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even though there were, naturally, deep divisions of opinion.
One of the most important aspects of this of course must be whether, with the growth of private medicine, there is a drain on staffs in the National Health Service. I have gone to some lengths to make inquiries as to this. The Royal Commission, as I have already quoted, largely discounts this. I am quite convinced that for the most part the fact that there is a shortage of nurses and, indeed, doctors in some areas of this country is not due to the growth of private practice. Indeed, an article published in the Lancet on 20th January, 1979, quoted Merseyside, where one of the leading private hospitals treated about 50 patients, who were National Health Service patients, for cardiac troubles. I am certain your Lordships will agree that this is one small example where cooperation takes place.
Obviously, there will be an interchange between the private and the National Health sectors of medicine, particularly among nurses. Is there anything wrong in that? I submit not, my Lords. They obtain more experience of meeting people from other countries; they obtain more experience of different types of technical equipment. Certainly my experience of touring hospitals is that the standard of technical equipment in the National Health Service is invariably of a higher quality than that in many—although not perhaps all—of the private hospitals. I certainly would not question that, but I believe that it needs stating for the record.
As was mentioned in Question Time today, there is much anxiety as to the number of nurses in our hospitals in this country. This can apply as much to private medicine as to State medicine. One of the problems—and I have mentioned this in your Lordships' House before, and it is relevant to this debate—is that of accommodation. There is little doubt that at least in some of the private hospitals better accommodation can be offered to nurses than is offered in a number of National Health hospitals, and even in the London teaching hospitals. Of course, that is perhaps an incentive for girls and, indeed, men to transfer from one to the other. I have heard of these proposed training schemes in the private sector for nurses who take up nursing in that

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sector from their student days. This, too, is I believe something to be encouraged.
I think that the value of this debate will be to highlight at least some of the areas of agreement which there can be between public and private medicine. There will obviously be a gap in some aspects; hut, in my submission, today there is far more in the way of co-operation between the two schemes than there is diversity, about which we hear far too frequently.
4.8 p.m.
Baroness MASHAM of ILTON: My Lords, as I was the person who brought the sad news to the noble Lord, Lord Segal, about the death of Sir Ludwig Guttman, I should just like to add my tribute to a very great doctor who saved the lives of thousands of paraplegics throughout the world, including my own. He worked for the National Health Service and for the private sector. We should rejoice in the expertise and knowledge which he has left behind. Tonight I go to a reception given by the Minister of Health, Dr. Vaughan, for the Stoke Mandeville Hospital rebuilding fund for the spinal injuries unit. This hospital became renowned because of the world famous treatment of spinal injuries pioneered by Sir Ludwig, who was known by thousands of paralysed people throughout the world as"Papa ".
I should like to add my thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Fawley, for initiating this debate. I should also like to confine my remarks this afternoon to one independent hospital, which is a registered charity, and to tell your Lordships how successful the co-operation with the National Health Service has been during the past 30 years. For 100 years the Roman Catholic brothers of the order of St. John of God, which is a nursing order, have had a hospital at Scorton near Richmond in North Yorkshire. Their founder was St. John of God, who started the work of looking after the poor and sick in Granada in Spain. Over the years this hospital in Yorkshire has cared for anyone who was sick, and who could be looked after in their hospital, from all denominations. It served the local community which, in turn, supported the hospital. A French brother became a much loved figure as he visited farms and
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villages collecting for the hospital, and is still a legend talked about by the older people, who would always keep a glass of port for him.
With the inception of the National Health Service a friend of the order, and a local Member of Parliament, Richard Ewert, negotiated with Mr. Aneurin Bevan's Parliamentary Private Secretary, Arthur Blenkinsop, so that the hospital at Scorton would remain private and independent, having contractual arrangements with the National Health Service. This hospital was the first to have such an arrangement in the country. The private and National Health Service patients run side by side. To the order there is no difference, as both the National Health Service and the patients who come paying their own bills are buying the service. There are 125 beds: 100 are contracted out to the National Health Service and 25 are for private patients. There has been no history of industrial disputes. As this is a small institution everyone knows everyone and the management knows staff well and cares for them. There is a team approach.
By using independent hospitals the National Health Service must be at an advantage as it does not have to pay for capital development. This is found by the independent hospital. In a case like Scorton Hospital, which is not profit making, it has a further advantage. While retaining its independence the hospital has moved with the National Health Service for the last 30 years adapting to the changing needs. Much of the work undertaken on a contractual basis is the not so popular job of looking after the senile elderly and the disabled.
Having a hospital like this in the community gives patients a choice. Chemotherapy is not practised so the patients feel safe and have trust. Since 1970 women have been admitted. Before that time it was an all-male hospital. It even now has a mixed ward. Money was needed to build a private wing and a new rehabilitation unit. An appeal was launched. The Queen Mother laid the foundation stone, and within two years £700,000 was raised. The building was completed within a year. My Lords, the appeal was only launched three years ago. That is the difference between the National Health Service, which seems to take years

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in planning and putting off taking decisions and the independent sector, which goes ahead and gets things done.
Every year there is a dance, which is over-subscribed. The proceeds this year went towards a new operating theatre. The local community for miles around gets great pleasure in supporting this hospital and having the freedom to do so. Consultants enjoy working there because if they ask for a bit of new equipment they need, they know they will get it. In every method this hospital works in a most ecumenical way. When there is a Church festival an Anglican choir sings, and one of the senior consultants originates from Northern Ireland and is not a Catholic. For the past 30 years there has been the same harmony with the National Health Service. I hope it will be the Government's wish to continue these good working relationships with independent hospitals like this one.
May I ask the Government what will happen if the health authorities propose more cuts? Will they cut the contractual beds? If this happens, they will rob patients of their chance to choose, which may he the only thing that is left that matters in their lives.
4.16 p.m.
Baroness ROBSON of KIDDINGTON:My Lords. may I first apologise most deeply to the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Fawley, for not being present when he began to address the House. Unfortunately I was engaged in an appointments committee to appoint a senior member of my region, and inevitably I got stuck in the traffic and was therefore a few minutes late. I very much regret having been late, but I did arrive in time to hear at least half of his speech. From these Benches we should like to join in the feeling of regret at the announcement that the noble Baroness, Lady Masham of Ilton, has just made, and to say how much we appreciated the work that was done by this great man, and how much, as a nation, we owe to him and his memory.
I do not want on this occasion—and I notice that no other noble Lord has done it either—to take part in an argument about the size or the relevance of the private sector vis-à-vis the National Health Service sector. I think all of us realise and accept that the private sector
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is here to stay; that it has a lot to contribute to the National Health Service, and equally that without the National Health Service the private sector would, as I believe, have a difficult time today. The two sides complement each other, and to a certain extent they are dependent on each other for equipment, for staff, for training, and for all the things that go into creating the kind of Health Service that we would like to see.
I was sad to hear the noble Lord, Lord Smith, say that the standards in the National Health Service are falling. It is a statement that is made all the time, and I think quite unjustly. Of course one is prepared to admit that everything is not well within the service. But I believe that we in this country have a duty to try to support the people working in the NHS, and to try to boost the morale of people working in the service by acknowledging the good things they do, which are manifold, and without which we in this country should not be able to live. I was therefore delighted that the noble Lord, Lord Auckland, said that he had nothing but good to say about the NHS.
I wanted to say that before we proceeded any further because I am the first to admit that we have many things in the NHS in our collaboration with the private sector for which to be grateful. I had for instance in my own region in West Sussex—and I must inevitably relate most of what I say to what happens in my own region—an enormous problem about orthopaedic operations. The waiting list has been created largely by industrial troubles from all parts of the Health Service personnel, not just the ancillary workers. The waiting list had grown beyond what one could accept. We approached the King Edward VII Hospital and asked them whether we could use some of their facilities; whether they would take some of our patients in order to help reduce our lists. They were very willing to do so, and on every occasion when they had spare beds, or spare accommodation, they contacted us and offered us further facilities, and we were therefore able to reduce our waiting list enormously. Of course we paid, which was correct, but it was also the correct decision to make use of unused facilities in the private sector to lower the waiting lists, rather than to increase

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the facilities in our area, because in the long run we will not be needing them. That was a sign of great co-operation from the private sector.
I was pleased that the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Fawley, referred to the great willingness with which NHS hospitals open their doors and equipment to private patients when that is necessary. A question was asked as to whether that was ethical— that a private patient should have the use of this equipment. So far as I am concerned anyone who needs lifesaving and the investigation equipment that exists in this country has the right to use it, and I would not stop anyone from doing so. I do not think we can argue about that, but I am glad the noble Lord appreciates that the NHS is trying to help and is being as helpful as it can.
We help the private sector in many ways. For instance, we in the Health Service supply all the blood from our blood transfusion centres to the private sector, and in my region we supplied enough blood last year for 370 patients in the private sector to have open-heart surgery. That is a lot of blood. I would ask the private sector to think not about the cost of that blood, because people give it free, but about the fact that it is difficult to keep the nation's hospitals supplied. I would therefore like the private sector to think about the demands they make on the blood transfusion service, and perhaps think of ways and means of helping us to get more people, including private patients, to give of themselves for this service.
I was pleased to hear of the possibility of a dialogue, under the wing of the DHSS, between the private sector and the NHS. That is highly necessary because people who work in the NHS are worried about the growth of private medicine and private practice. This was referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Auckland, and while I may not have agreed with his conclusions, it is a fact that whenever there is a planning request for a private hospital somewhere near a NHS hospital, the main objection by the NHS is that our staff will be attracted into the other sector.
It is difficult to be certain whether the NHS loses a large number of staff in that way, but it is certain that the NHS trains
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practically 100 per cent. of the nurses we have in this country. This is costly for the NHS and it is becoming increasingly costly with the change in the education pattern; no longer is the student nurse a pair of hands, and rightly so, and therefore the cost is greater. I believe that the private sector, if we are to co-operate fully, should consider how it can contribute to the cost of nurse training. It could either fund a certain number of places at a nurses' training school or it could by some means be done on a levy system, because it must be recognised that this is an additional cost which the NHS has to carry but which the private sector does not.
The same thing applies to medical education. With the many eminent doctors present, perhaps I am treading on the toes of medical schools in saying this. I find in my region that, as a result of the decision to increase the medical student intake, I have problems finding pre-registration places for young doctors, and even SHO placings for students. I have an arrangement again with the King Edward VII hospital; they take two of my pre-registration students. I am wondering whether that situation could not be widened very much more, of course with the agreement of the medical schools. By that means we would be able to give wider experience to some of our medical students. What concerns me about medical education is the fact that a particular type of clientele, with some rather rare diseases which are not common in this country, tend to go to private hospitals when, in the past, they used to come to NHS hospitals. This precludes our students in many cases from ever having experience of those conditions, and that is a matter which should be considered.
The one point about which I am most nervous of an excessive growth in private medicine is the fact that I would not want to see the National Health Service left with practically nobody but the long-stay and geriatrics, but that is a danger. Surgical cases, particularly minor surgery, and physical medicine, can all be and are provided for by many private hospitals. I have not seen the same desire to provide a private service for the geriatrics and mentally ill. There is a danger of an imbalance here if we are not careful. This is another subject which perhaps this committee under the wing of the

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DHSS could look at, to see where we could have more co-operation between private practice and the NHS.
4.27 p.m.
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, this is really a rehearsal of one scene from a many-act play which will take place in the not too distant future when the National Health Service Bill comes before your Lordships' House, at which time we shall have to deal with the matters before us this afternoon and the many matters which will be covered in that Bill. I think the best thing I can do is to try to answer some of the points that have been raised today as they affect the Opposition. because the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Fawley, drew attention to a divide between the party opposite and my noble friends. It would be idle for me to pretend that there is not a divide. In fact, there is a very great divide.
I was a little surprised that the noble Lord, who is the most generous of people —I know that personally—suggested, ifonly by implication, that the National Health Service was sort of dying on its feet; those are my words, not his. That is not a view which the Royal Commission shares with him, for the Royal Commission went so far as to say:
" The National Health Service has achieved a great deal and embodies aspirations and ideals of great value ".
It will not die if that is in the forefront, as it is, of the minds of the people who are responsible for the NHS. I recall it could be 18 months or two years ago—the only statement by the Secretary of State for Health and Social Security, Mr. Patrick Jenkin, of which I have ever approved. That was his defence—a very forthright defence—of the National Health Service, which he made when he was in America.
What is there between we on this side of the House and, shall I say, the majority on the other side of the House? It is not that we are against the private sector. I have made it abundantly clear in your Lordships' House on many occasions that this is a matter of principle; that we Social Democrats believe in a mixed economy; that we believe that in a democracy people must have the right to choose; and if the chioce is to pay for something, they have the right to do that. What we object to
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is the opportunity and the position that privilege affords and that money can buy.
It is all very well for noble Lords to say,"Well, you know, the private sector does not really impinge upon the National Health Service so far as its personnel are concerned." There are about 1,220 private hospitals, clinics, and nursing homes in this country. Where would the doctors and the nurses for those establishments come from, if they were not already in existence? Is anyone suggesting that all those doctors, consultants, registrars, and nurses would otherwise be unemployed? Of course they come from the National Health Service. It may be that some of them have never in fact worked in the National Health Service, but if there had not been a private sector they would have been in National Health Service hospitals. I am not quarrelling about that; but do not let it be said that the private sector does not in point of fact take staff from the National Health Service.
The noble Lord, Lord Auckland, quoted from the Royal Commission, which stated:
" There is no doubt that the NHS has from time to time suffered from shortages of particular groups of staff both locally and nationally. However, bearing in mind the modest size of the private sector it is difficult to believe that such shortages were often due to NHS workers leaving for the private sector ".
The Royal Commission went on to say:
" A number of the private hospitals we visited employed a high proportion of married women. They argued that the NHS was unable to provide sufficient opportunity for part-time employment ".
But what did the Royal Commission say? It said:
" We did not find this argument wholly convincing …".
It must be obvious to every sensible person that if there was not a private sector there would be a large number of doctors and nurses who wanted work, and they would work in the National Health Service. I do not wish to dwell on that point too much.
Let us consider the position if there is a private sector in this country. I am glad that the noble Baroness, Lady Robson of Kiddington, touched on this point, and I hope that she will forgive me if I appear to cross her"t's"and dot her"i's "; I am not trying to do that at all. The point that she made is one that I want to make—and want to make very strongly. I say

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to the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Fawley, that if there is to be a private sector, let it provide everything that it needs to treat its patients. As we have been told, all the medical and nursing personnel in the private sector are trained at public expense and they receive their initial experience in the National Health Service.
That is not the only point. In addition, the private sector takes its administrators, works managers and other essential staff from among those who have trained in and worked in National Health Service hospitals. The private sector uses National Health Service facilities, but rarely pays the true cost of those facilities. The capital cost of equipment and building is rarely fully costed in the charges. Even when charges are levied on private patients who enter National Health Service hospitals, many of them leave without paying their bills; and not only do they owe the hospital, but very often they owe the fees of the consultant surgeon or consultant physician.
One of my complaints, which is shared by my friends, is that junior doctors are often expected to attend private patients when they are in National Health Service hospitals, but these doctors do not get paid for this work, nor is the time spent by them away from the National Health Service wards reimbursed to the National Health Service. The noble Baroness, Lady Robson of Kiddington, pointed out that there is no private sector source of blood for blood transfusions, and blood donors might be surprised to find that they supply blood for the private sector with no charge made by the National Health Service.
If the private sector wants to claim to provide a skilled, competent and comprehensive medical service for private patients, it really must face up to the cost of it. So far as I know, there is not a single private hospital in this country that provides an intensive care unit. Intensive care is provided, yes, but on an individual basis; there is not an intensive care unit, and often private patients who need this skilled 24-hours service in an intensive care unit have to be brought into National Health Service establishments. Of course the noble Baroness, Lady Robson of Kiddington, is right: no one would say"No"to this. But it ought to be paid
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for. It is paid for so far as the bed occupancy is concerned, but it is not possible to take account of all the other overhead expenses in their entirety.
I return to what I said originally: if there is to be a private sector, it really must face up to providing everything that it wants. If it cannot do that, there ought to be a definite arrangement with the National Health Service for a very substantial payment. I believe that the Royal Commission found that about £200 million is spent each year on private medical care. That is a very large figure. I should like to see part of it go as a lump sum to the National Health Service.
When speaking about private insurance schemes and private care, what are we really speaking about? That service will not help people who suffer from a chronic illness or a chronic mental or physical disability; and I think I am right in saying that if a patient requires treatment, it is available for not more than 180 days in any one year. The National Health Service does not stop at the end of 180 days. It does not stop because you have some chronic illness—and this is the difference. What I am saying is that if the private sector wants to provide medical care for people who can pay for it, then it ought to he prepared to cover the whole range and field of facilities that the National Health Service provides.
We are concerned about the whole question of pay-beds. Again, I say that if the private sector finds it necessary to use beds within the National Health Service, it ought to think about itself providing the beds. When we closed 1,000 pay-beds, we closed them because they were never used by the private sector. There was an arrangement whereby the private sector should have access to something like 4,000 beds, but in fact they were never used in their entirety. The Royal Commission calls attention to the number. I think in 1979 it was not much more than 2,000. So when we closed 1,000 beds we were not depriving anybody in the private sector of help of any kind. When the Bill to put an end to the Health Services Board goes through the other place and comes here, this Government will be doing, I believe, a great disservice to the private sector, because it was the responsibility of the Health Services Board to look at the

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situation in every region and to say to the Secretary of State,"Beds are needed here, and they are not needed there ".
It was a board under (if I may say so, because I believe this to be so) a very distinguished Member of your Lordships' House, Lord Wigoder, who, with two representatives of the trade union movement and two representatives of the medical profession, did a magnificent job and, I think—and I am sure your Lordships will allow him to invervene if he wants to—did it without any acrimony at all and with a good deal of goodwill. That is to go, and the discretion is to be given to the Secretary of State, who cannot possibly exercise it on his own. He has got to be advised by, not one person but a group of people; and I believe it is his intention to have a panel. Why not let the existing Health Services Board go on? What is going to be solved by sacking them (because that is what it amounts to) and putting other people in their place, when they have accumulated an enormous amount of knowledge in this field? The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, said that Nye Bevan agreed to the pay-bed principle. Nye Bevan would not have been able to get the National Health Service through the House of Commons and through Parliament generally unless he had given that undertaking. It was a question either of agreeing or of having no National Health Service; and, as a rather wise individual, he accepted that. But he did not accept it in the sense that he was happy about it.
My Lords, we are concerned about a common waiting list. I am informed that there is a kind of understanding between the private sector and the National Health Service that, in an emergency, then, of course, provision will be made for the use of the National Health Service to meet that emergency and that situation. But whichever way you look at it, it is very galling when the vast majority of people in this country know that, because the money is not available to equip the National Health Service as one would like to see it equipped, they have got to go on a long waiting list, while other people with the same complaint, with the same problem, can go into a private hospital within a few days and have it put right.
There was what I thought was a classic example reported in the newspaper quite recently. I do not know how true the
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report is, but it told of an elderly man who was having certain difficulties which necessitated his getting up about 12 times during the night, and who was told that only an operation could put it right but that such an operation could not be performed for at least a year. He could not wait, the report said, and so he went in as a private patient. It cost something like £700, and he sent the bill to the Secretary of State. I have not heard the result of that yet; but it is just as necessary to him, at his age, as it is to a man who can afford, as I say, to by-pass the large number of people who are waiting for similar treatment— and, you know, in a caring society that is not really the kind of situation which should exist.
But having said that, I am not against a private sector. In a democracy I think we have got to provide a choice; but I want to say to the noble Lord, Lord Hunt—and I have said it to him already—that if the private sector wants to provide a medical service it must face up to providing a comprehensive service which is entirely and completely independent of the National Health Service. If it cannot do that, I hope he will take the advice given to him by the noble Baroness, Lady Robson, and see whether there cannot be a very substantial sum—but it will have to be a very substantial sum—to compensate the National Health Service for the various services which it supplies.
4.48 p.m.
Lord CULLEN of ASHBOURNE: My Lords, it gives me a great deal of pleasure to respond to this short but stimulating debate. This is the first time in this Parliament that this House has had an opportunity for a full discussion of private medicine, and I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Hunt of Fawley for instigating this debate. I am particularly pleased with the precise form of his Motion—to call attention to the extent of co-operation between the NHS and the independent medical sector during the past 30 years, and to the potential for future co-operation. That is right: it looks both to past achievement and to the future. It also allows us to approach the subject of private medicine and its relationship with the NHS in its widest sense, not confined to the narrower issue of pay-beds. My noble friend followed his own lead with a very wide-

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ranging and positive speech, and other contributions have gone similarly wide.
Before I respond to some of the points made in debate and deal with some other specific issues, I should like to take my noble friend's lead and speak in very general terms about this Government's attitude to the private sector. Reference has already been made to the Health Services Bill, currently under discussion in another place, and this House will shortly have an opportunity to discuss its detailed provisions, as the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, has mentioned. I am sure this House will bear with me if I leave my response to some of the points noble Lords have made on the Bill until these forthcoming debates. What I should like to do now is to set out some of the general principles behind our approach; the context in which the detailed provisions of the Bill should be seen.
Our approach to private medicine is based on two beliefs: one is a fundamental principle, the other is based on observation of practice. The first, the fundamental principle, is that there is absolutely nothing wrong, morally wrong, with the existence of private medicine. The second, the practical observation, is that private medicine poses no general threat to the NHS. It neither threatenes the concept of the NHS nor prejudices its ability to function. Indeed, for reasons I shall come to in a moment, we believe that the reverse is the case: that the existence of the private sector can strengthen the NHS, not weaken it. Our commitment to the NHS is in no way undermined by our belief that there is a place for private medicine and private provision and that both should be facilitated and encouraged. But, first, I should like to deal with that fundamental principle.
It is very simply stated. We believe that people have a right to decide to spend their own money on health care and that there is nothing morally wrong either with this or with the creation of private services to meet this demand. It seems to us fundamental that people should be free to do this. To deny anyone the freedom to seek aid outside the State-run system is to interfere in a basic liberty. I know that not everyone can afford private medicine; although I believe (and the evidence supports this) that private medical
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insurance, the means under which, increasingly, private medicine is obtained, is by no means limited to the so called"rich ". Indeed, it is a cause of some embarassment to certain people that that is the case. There are deep divisions in the ranks of those who formerly held that private medicine should be opposed. As I say, not everyone can afford it, but that is no reason to deny it to those who can. That brings me to my second point: that there is added reason not to deny private medicine to those who want it when it poses no threat to the State system.
In his speech, my noble friend Lord Hunt emphasised the positive contribution to health care made by the private sector. That is right. For far too long, discussion on private medicine has been bedevilled by the attitude of"them"and"us"—the private sector versus the NHS. This was an attitude which was fostered by the previous Administration; and their policy of no co-operation between the private sector and the NHS and their attempted severance of the institutional link of pay-beds between the public and private sectors attempted to put this into effect. As my noble friend has shown, this policy flew in the face of the first 30 years of the NHS.
Since its very beginning, the NHS has had power to use non-NHS facilities to provide NHS services. This includes arrangements with independent hospitals and nursing homes to provide accommodation and services for NHS patients. At present, there are about 4,000 such contractual beds in private establishments in Great Britain—mainly, but not exclusively, for the elderly and mentally-handicapped. Also over 20,000 outpatients were treated by the private sector on a contractual basis.
It is for health authorities to negotiate such contracts. We will give them every encouragement. Where the facilities are available at an economic cost and to equivalent standard, then it makes sense to use them. The Department of Health is currently discussing with representatives of the private sector how the general guidelines under which these contracts are arranged can be improved. The aim is to allow authorities and private institutions as much flexibility as possible in negotiating contracts. Private facilities

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are as much part of the health care resources of this country as NHS ones, and we will do all we can to encourage the NHS to use them where that makes good sense.
We hope that co-operation between the NHS and the private sector will extend beyond this: that as the private sector expands so co-operation will extend to other areas. Health authorities, through their responsibilities for the registration of private nursing homes and hospitals, are already closely involved in the early stages of private developments. We would hope that these discussions would be widened to deal with the overall planning of health facilities in a particular area. The private sector is as yet small compared with the NHS. There are only some 34,000 beds in private hospitals and nursing homes and only about 5,000 of these provide acute facilities, compared with 160,000 acute beds in the NHS. Even is the private sector were not growing, even if it always remains small relative to NHS, it is still important to ensure that the two sectors each know what the other is about. Our aim here, as throughout, is co-operation to ensure the best use of resources.
My Lords, I now turn specifically to answer the point that is sometimes raised that the existence of a private sector is harmful to the NHS. We simply do not believe that to be true. There may be areas where individual private hospitals can pose problems for local NHS hospitals —and I will deal with that in a moment—but generally we believe that the private sector adds to the total health care resources available in this country. It is a small but vital supplement to the NHS. Opponents of the private sector often speak as if the private sector was a single entity. That is not so. It is made up of a variety of bodies: hospitals and nursing homes, managed and financed in a variety of ways. Many are run on voluntary lines, others are non-profit making. They are used by a wide variety of people, from all walks of life. This is no monolithic service, used only by the rich, that is sapping the strength of the NHS. Nor is the contribution of the independent sector confined to the glamorous acute services. Some 30,000 of those private beds are for long-term care, particularly for the elderly. The private sector does not consist, as
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some would have us believe, of"healthcare Hiltons"catering for the rich. How would the NHS cope if all 34,000 private beds were closed down and the patients transferred to the NHS? The answer is that it could not. The NHS would be very foolish to believe that any of its problems are caused by the existence of a private sector; and I do not believe it is so foolish.
Private provision relieves the NHS. We are not forcing anyone to use it but we see no reason why we should not encourage those who wish to to make use of it. The problem for the NHS, as we all know, is one of infinite demand and all-toofinite resources. The private sector helps to close that gap. Thus, every time a person decides to opt for treatment in a private hospital, this frees the NHS facilities which they might otherwise have used. This point was made by my noble friend Lord Hunt.
Why then, if there is no threat, does the Bill propose retention of some of the powers in the 1976 Health Services Act, and, indeed, modify them in one important respect? The main changes proposed are an increase in the threshold for authorisations of developments to hospitals with 120 beds throughout as against the current position of 100 in London and 75 elsewhere. Also, the Bill proposes a new reserve power enabling the Secretary of State to designate areas where all private hospitals would need authorisation. This is designed to meet the point made by the Royal Commission that a number of small hospitals could jeopardise the NHS as much as a large hospital. Only if there is a proven danger of harm will the development not be authorised. We see this power only as a safeguard for the NHS—not as a control on the private sector. Thus our commitment to the NHS goes hand in hand with our support for the private sector.
One of the main points on which applications for private developments turn is the effect of a new private hospital or the NHS' ability to staff local hospitals. This takes us to the more general points already referred to in debate about staff training in the private sector. It is a common criticism of the independent hospitals that they drain staffing resources from the NHS, and put nothing back. First, on a point of principle, because a

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person has been trained in the public sector there is no reason why he or she should have to work there. There is no proof that those nurses and other staff who have left the NHS for the private sector would not have left the NHS anyway—for example, to go abroad, to go into industry, or to enter other jobs, and so on.
Also, many doctors work both in the NHS and privately. Allowing them to do private work may help to retain them in the NHS. If we deprive them of ability to combine private and NHS work or ban private practice, they may leave the NHS or the country. I would also refer to the nursing home side of the private sector: these homes are often run and staffed by nurses who have chosen this form of nursing and who would not want, for various reasons, to come back into the NHS. These nurses are providing a vital service which the country and the NHS would be hard put to do without.
My noble friend Lord Hunt referred to the statement made by Lord Murray that there were 8,000 nurses unemployed. In fact only about 3,500 of those are qualified nurses. The problem is that these nurses are not necessarily in the places where the many NHS vacancies exist. However, we do recognise that the Health Service does have a particular staffing problem, and I am pleased to be able to tell the House that that is accepted by the independent sector themselves. At local level, a private hospital development could cause difficulties for the staffing of adjacent NHS hospitals—especially so far as nursing staff are concerned. As I have already said, this is one of the main reasons why the Government are retaining the powers of control on the development of private hospitals. But a more positive response is that the private sector should itself try to train staff. It is right that the private sector should make a positive contribution to the training of staff, a view which is shared by many within the private sector, and by several speakers this evening.
There is already a fair amount of training and education, mainly for nurses, carried out in private hospitals. Basic nurse training courses approved by the General Nursing Council are provided at such hospitals as the Royal Masonic Hospital;
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St. Andrew's, Northampton; Cheadle Royal Hospital; and King Edward VII Hospital, Midhurst. In addition to those formal courses, the independent sector provides a range of in-service and developmental training for nurses. The independent sector are considering, in consultation with appropriate bodies, ways in which their contribution to staff training might be developed further.
I have concentrated mainly on the private sector and its relationship with the NHS. I should now like to turn to that narrower issue to which I referred earlier: the issue of pay-beds. We will of course be discussing this when we consider the Health Services Bill but I should like to say a few words now. The Government believe that the policy of phasing pay-beds out of the NHS was wholly misconceived. It was of no benefit to the NHS; and the Bill, if passed in its present form, will end compulsory phasing out and allow the Secretary of State to authorise new pay-beds.
What of the arguments—often heard—that the existence of pay-beds in NHS hospital prejudices the treatment of other NHS patients? In his speech, my noble friend Lord Hunt mentioned one of the main criticisms—that pay-beds enable those who can pay to"jump the queue ". I should like to add something on this. We are committed to allowing private patient use of NHS facilities and to protecting the interests of the NHS: the two are not incompatible. We are convinced that private practice can be encouraged within the NHS without interfering with the provision of services to NHS patients. Just as our proposals on the retention of powers of control of private sector developments are designed to safeguard the interests of the NHS while allowing the private sector freedom to develop, so the proposed arrangements for private practice in NHS balance the two interests.
There are two parts to this: one statutory, one non-statutory. The statutory safeguard is that the Bill retains the legislative provision that pay-beds will only be authorised where this does not prejudice NHS services. The non-statutory safeguard lies in the agreement which my right honourable friend has reached with the medical profession on six principles about the arrangements for private practice in the NHS.

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I think this House will find it useful if I state these important principles in full. They are: first, that the provision of accommodation and services for private patients should not significantly prejudice non-paying patients. Secondly, subject to clinical considerations, earlier private consultation should not lead to earlier NHS admission or to earlier access to NHS diagnostic procedures. Thirdly, common waiting lists should be used for urgent and seriously ill patients, as at present, and for highly specialised diagnosis and treatment. The same criteria should be used for categorising paying and non-paying patients. This principle extends common waiting lists to patients needing special diagnosis and treatment.
Fourthly, after admission, access by all patients to diagnostic and treatment facilities should be governed by clinical considerations. This principle does not exclude earlier access by private patients to facilities especially arranged for them if these are provided without prejudice to NHS patients and without extra expense to the NHS. Fifthly, standards of clinical care and services provided by the hospital should be the same for all patients. This principle does not affect the provision on separate payment of extra amenities nor the practice of the day-to-day care of private patients usually being undertaken by the consultant engaged by them. Lastly, single rooms should not be held vacant for potential private use longer than the usual time between NHS patient admissions.
The principles are designed to ensure the equitable operation of private practice in the NHS, and have been endorsed and accepted by the medical profession. This agreement is a notable achievement by the Government. It goes beyond what the previous Administration achieved and is a product of co-operation and negotiation.
My noble friend, Lord Hunt referred in passing to the fact that no one is compelled to work on private patients if they do not want to. While this is certainly true, in the sense that no one is compelled to work in the private sector, I feel it is important to make sure that our view on this, as it affects NHS staff involved with private patients in pay beds, is quite clear. Our view is that, where
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pay-beds exist in the NHS, then all staff are expected to treat or look after those private patients in the same way as they treat any other patients. Once it is decided that there should be pay-beds in a particular hospital then that becomes a service provided by that hospital and its staff. This is something we can no doubt deal with in more detail when we discuss the Bill.
I should like to end by endorsing a small but important point which was raised by my noble friend Lord Hunt. I am glad to tell him that three of the main representative groups of the private sector—the Independent Hospital Group, the Association of Independent Hospitals and the Registered Nursing Homes Association—have formed a Joint Liaison Committee. This is of inestimable value to Government. It helps liaison with the DHSS. We are not looking for a single voice from the private sector—they have many and varied interests—but I fully support my noble friend, Lord Hunt, when he says that cohesion is needed in the private sector in representing itself to Government. This is vital if we are to be able fully to discuss the role of the private sector in health care. With such co-operation, I believe we can heal the rift caused by the policies of the previous Government.
I conclude by saying that we are corn-mined to the NHS but we are also committed to health care as a whole, and in that the private sector has a role which should be recognised and fostered. In conclusion, I wonder whether the philosophy of the Government could have been better put than it was by the noble Lord, Lord Smith. Such wise words from the Cross-Benches were, I believe, welcomed on all sides of your Lordships' House. It is perhaps not realised by many people that of the 1,150 or so Members of your Lordships' House, there are now 212 Cross-Bench Peers. What better forum than your Lordships' House could there be for debates on subjects which relate to the health of all our countrymen, and what better example of this than the words of the noble Lord, Lord Smith?
5.10 p.m.
Lord HUNT of FAWLEY: My Lords, I should like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Segal, for his kind words from the

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other side of the House. I agree with him about inflationary factors raising the cost of the private sector, but that also applies to the National Health Service in everything it does. There are still some generous private benefactions coming in. In, I think, today's paper, it is reported that £600,000 has been given by two donors to the Papworth Hospital to encourage their open heart surgery, and that is very generous indeed.
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Smith, for his support. He stressed the need for medical care of a very high standard in both sectors and I am sure that he is right. I am glad that the noble Lord, Lord Auckland, spoke largely in favour of co-operation, which is what the whole of my speech was about. I was also very glad to hear him say that the shortage of nurses in some parts of Britain is not, in his opinion, due to the work of the private sector. I must thank the noble Baroness, Lady Masham, for the very good example that she gave of most excellent cooperation.
I am sorry that the noble Baroness, Lady Robson, could not be here for the first part of my speech, but I hope that she will read the report of it. I was pleased to hear her encouraging words about the need for co-operation. I am sure she is right that everyone should help to boost the morale of all those working in the National Health Service. Her mention of the Blood Transfusion Service was very close to my heart. I had a patient the other day who was bleeding very badly. I rang up a private hospital, but they had no blood and could not get it. I sent the patient to a large National Health Service hospital which gave a transfusion right away and in a few days gave 20 pints. I quite agree with the noble Baroness that the private sector should pay something or should help towards collecting blood when this is in short supply.
I think that the noble Lord, Lord WellsPestell, misunderstood some of the points I made. I had no intention of saying that the NHS was"dying on its feet ". I never thought that, and I do not think I said it. But the NHS certainly needs some help, and the private sector can give some of that. In my maiden speech in 1974, I said that the National Health Service was one of the finest conceptions
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that has ever come out of this country and I wanted to help it in any way I could. The noble Lord said that the private sector should produce everything it needs, but it must be remembered that everyone in it also belongs to the National Health Service, and while they do that they are entitled to some of its benefits. What he said about intensive care units was, I think, wrong. The best intensive care unit in Britain is in a private hospital—the Wellington—and, very shortly, nurses are to be taught in that unit. The Harley Street Clinic also has a very good intensive care unit. Certainly, all that the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, said supports my contention that more co-operation is needed between the National Health Service and the private sector.
In winding up this debate, I shall say little more, except to thank all those who have taken part. As your Lordships have already heard, several of the points which have been raised will be discussed in detail when we debate the Health Service Bill in a few weeks' time. All I want to do now is to beg leave to withdraw my motion for Papers.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

ENERGY CONSERVATION
5.15 p.m.
The Earl of LAUDERDALE The Earl of LAUDERDALE rose to call attention to the need to conserve energy as a scarce resource and the need for effective Government policies to this end; and to move for Papers. The noble Earl said: My Lords with 14 speakers named for a debate of two-and-a-half years—I mean hours—it is clear that we must all be selective. So I propose to omit any further reference to depletion policy as belonging to the supply side, which I am not going to focus on, nor shall I argue the case for or against Mr. Gerald Leach's low energy strategy. I mean to focus on the demand side—the supply side at the consumer end.
Recognising that frugality is a handsome income and that economy is the poor man's mint, I draw attention to four fundamentals. Rising energy prices help, if they are rising in real terms, but the market economy works properly only in a perfect world. Secondly, investment is surely justifiable when the net present

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value of savings expected exceeds the capital cost. A good example was when, at one of the BP refineries, a sum of £2½ million was invested which brought about savings on input of £1· 8 million a year. Thirdly, the investment context is the general expectation that energy prices will double in real terms by the end of the century; that is, at about 3 per cent. compound per annum, roughly the rate of real return on manufacturing investment in the past decade. Finally, wiping up waste and saving energy merits appraisal as an investment option alongside any programme for new power stations, which will cost not a penny less than £1,000 million each and involve a 10-year lead-time.
The set-up inherited when the present Administration took office last May was described in the White Paper of 1975 (Cmnd. 6575): an inter-ministerial and inter-departmental committee, of no fewer than 11 Ministries, with which, in typical Whitehallese, we were told the Treasury would"keep in close touch "—you bet it would!—would be advised by an Advisory Council on Conservation, with the Department of Energy conservation unit as—again, in the best Whitehallese —the"focal point ". All this to do no more than"promote and encourage ". There was not a word about an investment programme. But you cannot carve satisfactorily in butter.
Some attainments there have been. By July last, some 40 per cent. of local authority houses and some 53 per cent. of owner-occupied houses are believed to have been insulated Several big building firms, such as Bovis, Barratt and New Ideal, have adopted the Medallion design sponsored by the Electricity Council, which is estimated to cut the electricity use of an 80 square metre house by something like a half—that is, the design as improved since 1975. But I must add that some other building firms are not doing so.
As to offices, the Yorkshire Electricity Board has set a fine example by designing new offices which, in their turn, cut electricity use down to 200 kilowatts per annum per square metre. In the area of shops, they have again promoted the use of heat pumps which, as against the conventional package of air conditioning and ventilating, have brought savings in elec-
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tricity consumption of up to 40 per cent., with little more than 10 per cent. increase in the capital cost of the installation. An example, I am told, is the Mothercare shop at Woking. The chemical industry has cut consumption per unit of output by 8 per cent. in the period 1975 to 1978. Generally in industry sodium lamps are replacing high-pressure mercury and fluorescent lamps, and automatic lighting controls are coming in. Perhaps the most significant changes relate to the road where the motor manufacturers have covenanted to ensure that new designs improve the mileage per gallon by about 2 per cent. each year, starting five years ago and looking five years hence. There have been some enterprising local authority initiatives, such as the recycling of refuse in Manchester and elsewhere to generate heat, and the glass industry has developed an enterprising bottle-bank scheme.
But is is no good trying to satisfy a tiger by feeding it on cat's-meat. Between 1975 and 1978 the total energy consumption of this country, including losses on conversion, was up 5 per cent., and last year it was believed to have been up another 5 per cent., but the statistics are not yet complete and no doubt the heavy winter had a part to play. The domestic figure shows that consumption per head went up 4 per cent. in the period 1975 to 1978, and possibly by as much as 9 per cent. last year.
Let us deal with the miscreants, sector by sector, in the period 1966 to 1978. In industry the growth has been 35 per cent.; in domestic use 42 per cent.; in commercial use 73 per cent.; in public buildings 75 per cent.; and in offices 121 per cent.
One is told by those in business that the domestic building regulations are trailing behind the rise of energy prices and are way behind the level at which it would be economic to push further improvements. The current housing regulations, under Statutory Instrument No. 723 of 1975, took two-and-a-half years to gestate. The latest Housing Regulation proposals put out for consideration could, it would seem, be much stiffer in terms of loft and wall insulation given the most recent rises in energy costs in real terms, and apparently they ignore the insulation of ground floor flooring and the question of draughts. They fall completely short of the Medallion standards pioneered by the

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Electricity Council, and the same is true of building regulations for commercial buildings.
There are many opportunities for savings. In regard to road transport, what about speed limits? Our limits are higher than those on the Continent. What about petrol sales? In some countries, with rough justice, petrol sales are limited to alternative days according to one's registration number; even numbers on certain days and odd numbers on other days. It has the effect of cutting down petrol purchase. What about restricting cars in town centres? Little has been done about that so far. How about the suggestion of equating the tax on diesel and petrol so that they are level, and therefore encouraging rather than discouraging transfers to diesel, which in road traction can mean a saving of 25 to 30 per cent? Then one must consider the encouragement of petrol additives supplied by such firms as Chalbar and others.
Let us consider opportunities for savings on the railway. British Rail uses 5 per cent. of the transport energy for 7 per cent. of the country's passenger miles, and 16 per cent. of the country's freight ton miles. A medium electrification scheme to take between 22 and 31 per cent. of the network would add about 2,000 to the present 2,300 GWH electricity consumption in a year, but would cut diesel consumption from 170 million to 80 million gallons a year. A greater scheme to take electrification up to 50 per cent. of the network would add only 2,700 GWH electricity consumption per year, but would cut diesel use to 30 million gallons a year.
What about combined heat and power? The gossip in Whitehall—I am not claiming that there is a particular Conservative leak in my direction, although there seems to be in many other directions—is that the Cabinet are approaching a decision on the Marshall Report about whether to identify a suitable site for a pilot scheme. Surely the critical question in this area is the flexibility available to the CEGB to buy and resell surplus energy already generated by industry for its own use and surplus to its needs.
What about amending the Electricity Act of 1947 to put heat sales on a level with electricity sales? Of hospitals it is
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commonly said that there is tale after tale of ventilation and airconditioning equipment being badly maintained and leading to extra consumption. There is certainly tale after tale of boiler and furnace instruments in the smaller factories being either not maintained, or ignored if they are working. There is surely need to push the heat service contractors who are in business to advise companies on saving energy, so that they may live on the profits they can make out of it by having something to sell. There are one or two such contractors who are very well known. Providers of additives, such as Chalbar, come to mind in that connection.
Let us consider electricity and gas tariffs. Is it absurd to think in terms of regressive tariffs so that the more one consumes the still higher one pays? What about relating tariffs to the steps taken by consumers to insulate their properties? The suggestion has been made on many occasions that company law should be amended to require manufacturing companies to include an energy audit, that is to say per unit of output in their annual accounts. The bottle-bank scheme to which I referred could surely be matched in regard to tin cans, bottle tops and newsprint.
Some remedies are tactical; some are a question of exhortation; some-I respectfully submit in view of my remarks about investment—are mistaken. I refer to the withdrawal of relatively small grant schemes which, since they were not fully taken up. do not offer all that great savings. Then there are some remedies that relate to incentives. The critical decisions are strategic. They are way beyond the capacity of the set-up inherited last May—the kind of decision to save, let us say, a £1,000 million power station and to allocate a comparable amount of investment to serious efforts of energy saving.
What can be achieved is determined entirely by our horizons. Last December the Prime Minister, addressing the Foreign Policy Association in New York, listed this as one of the eight top priorities for the whole Western World. I quote:
" to conserve our energy resources, especially fossil fuels ".
I believe that we need to separate responsibility for this right away from the Department of Energy's job to see that energy is generated. It needs to be handed

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over to the sort of task group urged five years ago by the Select Committee on Technology in another place whose recommendations I quote in these terms:
"…. effective conservation policies are unlikely to emerge without an appropriate machinery … in view of the urgency of directing and co-ordinating a range of diverse activities, we favour an interdepartmental structure … The essential feature of any new body must be to get things done and to mobilise public support. It must therefore command sufficient resources and political status "—
I commend in particular those words"and political status "—
" within Government for the task in hand ".
The report continued:
" In view of the lack of direction at the centre, we recommend that a task force ' of Ministers, officials and a few outside experts… should be set up: (i) It must essentially be full-time, it should be directed at Ministerial level and should report directly to the Prime Minister "—
I draw noble Lords' particular attention to the requirement that the task force should report directly to the Prime Minister.
" (ii) It should absorb and replace the Advisory Council on Energy Conservation. (iii) It mustbe given a clear target to aim at…".
There are all sorts of proposals that can be made. There are all sorts of arguments to be deployed. Rut without the right structure and access to the Prime Minister, and responsibility laid within her reach for critical strategic decisions in this field, I believe we shall get nowhere. I beg to move for Papers.
5.33 p.m.
Lord STRABOLGI: My Lords, I am sure we are all very glad that the noble Earl, Lord Lauderdale, has put down this Motion, since conservation must play an important part in any future energy policy. When the noble Earl said, with a charming slip of the tongue, that he hoped the debate would not last for two and a half years, I was reminded of one noble Lord, now long since dead, about whom it used to be said that his speeches seemed to last for three weeks although in actual fact they only took 10 days. I congratulate the noble Earl for having managed to attract a good many speakers to his Motion. I shall try not to be guilty, and to speak as briefly as possible.
Whether we rely on increased coal production, or on nuclear energy, or on both these sources—as I believe we should
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—we need, as the noble Earl has said, to save and husband our resources, and to plan ahead as much as we can. This will be particularly important during the next few decades when the world's oil, including our own North Seal oil, begins to run out. Shell recently published a report on energy efficiency which concludes that, even with existing technology, 30 per cent. of our energy could be saved by technical improvements.
There is scope for a wider use of combined heat and power systems (which are widely used in Scandinavia). I am sure that we were very interested in what the noble Earl said about this, and we hope that the noble Earl, Lord Gowrie, will have something to say about it in his reply.
I agree, too, with the noble Earl that there should also be a much more rational use of our transport, both road and rail, for passengers and freight. Private cars account for a very large consumption. There are more than 300 million passenger cars in the world, with 40 per cent. of them in the United States. I am glad to see that efforts are being made in the United States to reduce the size and fuel consumption of private cars. Indeed, already we see rather fewer of those enormous limousines that we used to see in the 1960s, which seemed to stretch on for ever and to take up the parking space of several cars. I believe that over here the Society of Motor Manufacturers are working on this problem. Perhaps the Minister will tell us what the Government are doing to encourage the better and more economical use of private cars.
The noble Earl also mentioned the glass industry and the bottle bank scheme. I am very glad that he did, because in my professional life I had quite a lot to do with promoting this scheme. I know the amount of energy saving that the glass industry is able to make by recycling Gullet, as it is used to produce new glass.
In the case of freight, only about 10 per cent. is carried by rail and water, which is much less than in many other industrial countries. Perhaps we should be thinking really seriously about reviving our canals and about ways of diverting more freight on to the railways. Lady Castle made an effort at this when she was Secretary of State, but nothing very

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much happened. We hope that the present Government may be more successful. I think that this is something which should be considered very seriously for the future. We need to do rather more than to rely on market forces and rationing by the purse.
The Government must also do more to encourage home insulation. Indeed, I am sorry to say that at the moment the result of their policy is positively to discourage it. It seems almost unbelievable—and I would not believe it of any other Government but this one—that they should choose this time to propose a cut of 50 per cent. in the budget for private sector insulation under the Homes Insulation Scheme during the current financial year and to merge the local authority allocation for insulating council houses into the already drastically reduced housing insulation programme.
The Government, continuing on their blinkered course, have also decided not to carry on with the plan for advisory centres on insulation; and, to cap it all, the Department of Industry have decided not to renew the scheme to subsidise investment by firms in more efficient energy-saving equipment when this comes to an end in June. Rather than cutting out the grant scheme altogether in this somewhat ham-handed way, it would surely have been better to have reduced the qualifying figure from £3,000 worth of insulation to, say, £1,000 worth per application. This would at least have been some help to small businesses which the Government are always saying they want to encourage. I agree with the noble Earl that what we want is a task group to co-ordinate this between the different departments—preferably, as he said, under the control of the Prime Minister.
We are falling behind other developed countries in the amount of money we spend on energy conservation measures. Last year I believe we spent about £115 million, but a small country, such as Denmark, spent £275 million—over double. The Dutch plan to insulate 80 per cent. of their housing stock by the end of this year. Their subsidy level is about three times that of ours. We shall have to pay for the Government's shortsightedness in the future, since homes built under the proposed new regulations could be under-
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insulated at the very start of their 60 year life, and will cost more to insulate later. Then, of course, those householders who are public-spirited enough to install insulation or solar heating find that the rateable value of their house is increased, so that they have to pay more on the new assessment.
In the United States of America householders who improve their homes in this way save tax, but here they are penalised. I tried to do something about that when I was with the Department of Energy. I was not successful because it was the responsibility of other departments like those of Energy and Environment, and of course the Treasury came into it as well, which is another case for having the noble Earl's overall co-ordinating body. Therefore, I hope that the noble Earl, Lord Gowrie, will be more successful because really think that something should be done to improve what is a anomalous situation.
The Government's short-sighted policy seems to extend to North Sea oil. May I ask the noble Earl whether the Press reports are true, that the Government are proposing to sell off the exploration and production side of BNOC to the private sector in order to help to reduce the PSBR? By all accounts, BNOC should be making profits of over £1 billion by about 1985 and North Sea oil is a continually increasing asset. Only rakes or fools sell off their assets to finance a deficiency in income unless there is really no alternative.
There is a further objection to the dismantling of BNOC, and it is this: How can we have a sensible depletion policy without the production side of BNOC? We may need to hold back production one day in certain fields to the level of our own needs. It might be advantageous—I do not put it any higher than that—to leave some of the oil where it is, on conservation grounds. That is one of the reasons why we need BNOC, which is in a better position to afford the delay in revenue and to cover its investment. I hope therefore that the Government will not sell off this great capital asset for short-term reasons of expediency or on ideological grounds because they cannot bear to think of any part of the North Sea production being owned by the State.

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In the case of coal, half of the coalfields in South Wales were recently under threat of extinction because BSC had been importing large quantities of coking coal from abroad. Happily, that danger has been averted by a short-term agreement negotiated between the National Coal Board and BSC, whereby BSC has agreed to avoid any increased import commitment during this year. However, that is only a temporary respite and there will still be some surplus in South Wales. Further negotiations will be necessary for the period beyond this year.
The Coal Board believes, and I agree with it, that imports should be supplementary to, and not in place of, United Kingdom production. The coal industry's general productivity has been rising over the last year, and last month saw the highest output for six years. That shows, I think, that the massive investment in collieries by the National Coal Board during the time of the last Government, at the cost of about £500 million a year, and the new incentives scheme are beginning to pay off.
However, for coking coal the position is different and our industry cannot compete with foreign imports without a subsidy. The position has become even more precarious since the closure of so many steel plants. I think a Government subsidy would be preferable to the closure of pits. Most other ECC countries take the long view and subsidise their coking coal production, West Germany by £12 a tonne, France by £15 a tonne and Belgium by £24 a tonne; but in Britain the subsidy is only £1 a tonne. The National Coal Board and the National Union of Mineworkers want a subsidy like other ECC countries, and I believe the amount suggested is £10 a tonne. Twenty pits in Wales are under threat. Once a coal mine is closed it cannot be opened again and we may need all of our indigenous coal one day. We have the best working seams of coal in Europe and we must conserve this great energy source and not let it become the victim of short-sighted, monetary fanaticism for which future generations will not thank us.
5.45 p.m.
Lord TANLAW: My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Earl for instigating
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this debate at this time, because the energy argument must press forward and step-by-step we are emphasising different aspects of it. I am only sorry that due to a long-standing formal engagement I shall be unable to remain until the end of this debate. I shall look at Hansard with great interest because I think that the noble Earl has put forward one of the main criticisms that we would put forward from these Benches to Her Majesty's Government, that there does not appear to be a clear investment programme in conservation as such. I feel, also, that the suggestions that the noble Earl put forward in the course of his opening speech are the objectives towards which we from these Benches are working; an energy-efficient society based on the most efficient use of energy-producing raw materials in which the conservation of all energy will make a considerable contribution by the year 2000. We, too, believe that 30 per cent. is a reasonable figure and we agree with Shell that it is attainable, provided that the Government offer the correct incentives.
I feel that part of this programme of conservation will mean having to look again at all of our raw materials from which energy is produced. I think, in particular, what has been said by the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, is relevant in regard to coal. We think in 20 years' time that coal will be considered too valuable to be burnt for the production of electricity. It will have many other uses; the liquefaction and gasification processes will open up new fields; coal may not be used for electricity production. Therefore, I would be interested to know what is the Government's view of substitution, first, through conservation and, secondly, through alternative energy strategies.
I believe—although I stand to be corrected—that the new costings on the Severn Barrage are beginning to show that it will be an economical project; in spite of its huge capital size it will produce benefits on a substitution basis. The combined heat and power already mentioned is another area of investigation for which we have pressed from these Benches, and we are relieved to see that it is being taken seriously at last.
If those points are accepted, then in our energy efficient society I believe that there must be an acceleration in what has

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been really rather a boring subject, which is labelling. I maintain, and I have said this before in this House, that one cannot expect consumers to conserve energy if they do not know the correct rating or efficiency of the machine that they are using, be it a motor car, a house, or an appliance in the home.
I should like to take this opportunity of making a correction. When we had this discussion on labelling in Hansard on 24th July 1979 and the reference is to column 1709—it has been pointed out to me that I gave the energy efficiency figures for a heat pump instead of for an electric oven, and I should like the record to be corrected because it does not make much sense. They are two entirely different ratios, as some noble Lords are aware.
What this debate is really about, and we hope to extract from them the information, is whether the Government have a conservation policy and programme other than that of price. While we accept that price is a very real way of achieving conservation, it is not clear whether the Government are actually increasing the prices for other reasons, and the Treasury has been mentioned as one of the causes, rather than as part of a specific programme of which a step-by-step price ladder is being worked out by the Government for the future.
Home insulation has been mentioned by both the two leading speakers. We too are extremely concerned about the lack of grants that are available fully to insulate a home for the ordinary householder to achieve his own private conservation policy. The latest figures that were available to me before the debate show that it is possible to obtain through the local authority 60 per cent. of the cost, up to a maximum of £50. Our calculation is that to do a proper job on a house will cost up to £250 and we should like to see two-thirds of those costs met by some form of grant in order that householders may do the job properly because in our view to do the job improperly is a waste of £50. If we are going to insulate a house we might as well do a proper job.
We also feel, with the noble Earl, Lord Lauderdale, that the building regulations are not adequate and that indeed the future anticipation of the Government still makes
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them inadequate by European standards with regard to insulation. Again I feel that there should be some indication by Her Majesty's Government as to whether they agree with this policy or whether they are prepared just to let it go for the time being, because we believe, with the noble Earl, that perhaps there is not as much time as the Government give the impression of there being at the moment.
With regard to transport, we feel that further electrification of the British Rail system is a matter of some urgency which must be decided within the next two or three years if it is to be implemented at the time when it is most required, which I think is between 15 and 20 years from now. There is a minor point of which some noble Lords may not be aware—and I have declared my interest in electric traction before—namely, that the law regarding the use of electric traction vehicles within an urban environment is about 50 years out of date. It is a technical point regarding earthing and the cables required for this. We feel that if the trolley bus—which is making its comeback in many cities of Europe now as being the most practical, clean and efficient form of urban transport—is to make an impact in our cities in this country then we must look again at the law regarding the use of electric vehicles in an urban situation. Although some enlightened councils are testing out vehicles on private tracks, they are unable to do so on a route in order to get a proper assessment of its use because of the law as it stands today. So perhaps the Government will look at this matter. I think it would be possible to develop a form of trolley bus—or indeed a tramcar—which would not need a great tangle of wires which environmentalists (in some ways rightly) do not want to see come back to our cities again. Nevertheless, it is a much cleaner and more efficient way of doing it, such as is done in the City of Melbourne and which is not unattractive and provides a very efficient service for the public there.
On another point, the creation of a national energy authority is a part of Liberal policy which is going to be discussed in the Scottish Liberal conference tomorrow when I go up to Scotland; we are recommending a national energy authority to cover all spheres of energy production in this country. I think (and

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I hope) it would report direct to the Prime Minister, and it would offer an opportunity to clear up some of the cross-departmental delays that occur and misunderstandings —and indeed unfairness—vis-à-vis. Consumers, But the most important thing from my point of view is that it may be possible, through such an authority, to clear up once and for all the long-term funding of the energy industries. It seems to me extraordinary that an industry as large as the electricity or the gas industry has to negotiate its capital programme on a year by year basis. No business ever does that; it is impossible to do it. One either agrees a capital project and works it out on a discounted cash flow basis over a five year period or the period of construction and then it goes ahead step by step. But if one has to agree how much money is available each year that is perhaps the least efficient way to create a capital programme, because on a stop-go basis every time the capital programme is stopped the cost of restarting it is enormous and of course escalates to the extraordinary total sums that are being created when we build some of our power stations.
So perhaps the Government will look at capital funding and I think a relationship will be found between that and the increase in prices which has just occurred through the Electricity Council to consumers, of approximately 16 per cent. When we had this debate on the gas price increases the argument was put forward that the demand was exceeding supply and therefore in order to cut demand. prices had to be increased and people were asked to conserve. I think the argument has been wrongly put in the Press; but the argument which appears to have been put forward by the Government with regard to the increase in electricity prices is that demand has dropped and supply has increased over demand. Therefore there is a loss of income to the industry and they have to increase the prices in order to balance that loss. Perhaps the Government can give some guidance as to their policy. My own view is that the increase in electricity prices is entirely due to a target set by the Treasury of 1.8 per cent. return on profits on current cost accounting assets. I think that is what is known in the City as"inflation accounting ". As I understand it, the electricity industry has to increase
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prices on inflation accounting and has to take account of inflation; and, in doing so, it has to increase its prices accordingly. That in itself is inflationary so year by year, by using these inflation accounting methods, the industry will he having to increase its prices, which will be adding to inflation, and so on. We shall get galloping inflation in the energy industries and a direct, sudden and quite unnecessary increase in wages, due to an accounting point of view taken by the Treasury.
I think we must accept that we are not at the moment economically in our prime on a national basis and this surely is the moment to look at this and to make a contribution towards lowering inflation which would simply be a way of approaching the energy industries and saying:"We are going to drop your inflation accounting targets in order that you may price in relation to market forces and not in relation to Treasury accounting ".
My Lords, I may not have made myself clear but I think we are getting into a silly position here which is nothing to do with energy prices and nothing to do with supply and demand; it is due to demands by the Treasury on the methods of bookkeeping in a great industry. Perhaps if the Government will look at that we may get somewhere.
Finally, above all I think we should have to reconsider the problem of energy as a whole. Both the noble Earl, Lord Lauderdale, and the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, have suggested this and we are suggesting from these Benches that the time has come to consider a council of the type which I have suggested and which other noble Lords have put forward in their own ways.
5.58 p.m.
Lord BALOGH: My Lords, I also wish to thank the noble Earl for having brought this extremely difficult matter to our notice. I am of course glad that I find myself largely in agreement with him and I only hope that this will not harm him in his career in the City and elsewhere!
The use and pricing of petroleum is one of the most difficult questions with which we have to deal and one of the most tantalisingly complicated problems. I think this can be best demonstrated by the fact that so great a guru as Milton

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Friedman predicted in 1974 that the price of oil could not be held at 10 dollars per barrel because the whole cartel would break down. That was some prediction, given the fact that the price of petroleum multiplied by 12 in the period from just before the prediction and the present time. Demand for it is very stolid; how stolid it was can be seen by the fact that an unparalleled increase in the price hardly stopped the rise in the demand for oil. Of course, any disagreement about price, any breach in the unanimity of the cartel, did not bring about a fall in price but a rise in price.
This very odd phenomenon can be easily explained; of course, the real theoretical monopoly price (because that it is) for oil is, roughly speaking, according to my calculations, between 80 and 100 dollars per barrel. One may well ask, why should the Arabs not raise their price to the true theoretical price? The answer is, of course, political. The Arabs depend as much on America as the Americans depend on oil from the Arab countries, and the Arabs would not wish to antagonise the most effective protector they have. I do not know how good a protector it is, but it is the one they have.?
It is clear that to rely on the market to get the development we desire, the saving of energy, would be courting disaster. We are here confronted not with a situation where the most profitable price will be prevailing, but the price which for political reasons the main producer decrees. If economic affairs worsen still further I cannot see any possibility of fulfilling our obligations under the Energy Agency in Paris without rationing. I think there is no doubt that without it we will not get the sort of redeployment of resources which we need.
Thus substitutes have to be found. But where are those substitutes, and what do they amount to? Coal, of course, is a good substitute, and it is to be hoped that the temporary losses made by our coal mines will not lead to closures and permanent diminution of productive capacity. It is very probable that oil prices will go up and the price of coal will go up. Therefore I think a bridging period is necessary. Unfortunately, that is not now likely, because of religious
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reasons, of monetarism. There is very much loose talk about substitutes. There is, for instance, the problem of electricity from the winds. But how many of your Lordships would like to have windmills, 150 to 200 feet high, with the noisy propellor rattling morning, noon and night? I think some of the enthusiasts of non-conventional instruments have not taken into account the political realities of their plans.
So we are driven for considerable saving to propaganda."Save it"was invented when I was a Minister. I did not think it would do any good, and it did not. Much more likely is an American recovery, because they have shale and they have tar sands; that is a possibility. The most important thing—and Governments, both under the previous regime and now, have not put enough steam behind it—is fusion. If we could solve fusion I think our main difficulties would be over for a very long time to come. The relative advantages of electricity and gas will, of course, change.
The noble Earl spoke about the possibility of subsidising the insulating of houses. Perhaps I am putting a different interpretation on his words from the one he meant.
The Earl of LAUDERDALE: My Lords, I was saying that I thought the subsidy for insulation was a pretty small scheme anyway. Since it was not very greatly taken up the saving is even smaller I was not advocating subsidy as 'such, but I am advocating investment in general in energy conservation.
Lord BALOGH: My Lords, I quite see that. It seems to me that what could be done and what might help is to have a surcharge on the rates of houses which are not insulated, progressive and at the lower end subsidised. The other possibility would be to reverse the charge system for gas and electricity. At the moment we have charges arranged in two or three ranges, and the first range is quite considerably higher than the next one. It seems to me that one could, so to speak, take a standard consumption level based on the number of light and power points, and increase the charges heavily from the second range onwards. There is a great deal of antagonism to

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this. People say that some householders are locked into an unsuitable energy source. It seems to me that human ingenuity could overcome that. I think at the end of the debate we shall be wiser but sorrier, because we shall begin to realise the difficulties facing any suggestion.
6.9 p.m
The Earl of KINTORE: My Lords, I want first to thank the noble Earl for giving us the opportunity of discussing the enormous subject of energy. The only thing is that in a short debate you cannot really do more than talk about very few aspects. I think I agree with almost everything he said, in particular his remarks about a co-ordinating body. This appears to me to be very lacking. There are a number of obviously cost-effective opportunities for saving fuel and money. Are they being pursued with vigour? It does not appear to me that sufficient vigour is being deployed.
The Grampian Regional Council, of which I used to be a member, has had some startlingly successful cases due to the application of heat pumps for heating and ventilating five of their education department swimming pools. Although they serve a small population the example is there, but I do not know how many times it can be multiplied. The results so far obtained are better than those predicted. For the five new pools into which they put heat pumps for recirculating the air, the capital cost was roughly £190,500. That gave an annual saving of £64,206 or about a 34 per cent. return on the money invested, or a pay-back period of the order of two-and-three-quarter years.
The engineers critically looked at the costs and savings obtainable in five other old-established pools in which the Grampian Regional Council has a controlling interest, and a computer study shows that for a capital cost of £71,000 an annual saving of £30,672 should result. That saving can be made by converting those pools to heat pump operation. There are at least another 10 pools under various ownership in the region and at an intelligent guess the possible annual saving would be as follows; for a cost of £141,000 there should be a saving of £52,000. Therefore, it seems that in our small region, with a population of half a
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million, we could save in the order of £146,878 per annum for an investment of £402,500. I stress that it is only a small district of half a million people.
What about the rest of the United Kingdom? I do not know how many pools there are, but if we can make this saving in Scotland, I see no reason why it should not be done throughout the United Kingdom. As the population of the United Kingdom is 50 million or thereabouts, it is worth looking at the sums that are lying on the plate to be grabbed and saved.
It appears to me that such studies and schemes should be pushed much more vigorously than they are at present. These days they seem to get through a council more or less by mistake. Councils are very keen on whether there should be two miles of free bussing or one mile, or what the fees should be and so on, but"economy"is still a dirty word in local government. It is an unfortunate situation, but it exists. In this respect, we want a lead from the Government or some body and it must be a co-ordinated lead.
I think that the experience which we have had with heat pumps—although it is a small aspect—shows the situation clearly. One has only to think of the amount of heat that pours through the roof of a paper mill. They then buy new heat to put under the rolls. It is admitted that the amount of saving that could be made there with the application of a heat pump would be terrific. If one talks to the industrialists in these paper mills one finds that they are sitting back doing nothing—they are waiting for the best handout that they can get from the Government to carry this work out. It is deplorable. It should be done on its own merits. The proof is there. It is being done in Germany and I believe largely throughout Europe.
It is deplorable that one has to go to Germany for nearly all the equipment. No one makes these things here. A heat pump is a proved piece of equipment. It is not experimental. Basically, it enables one to regain solar energy which is stored in the earth. Instead of having all the solar panels and so on, which are fine when the sun is out, but not so fine when it is not, the principle is that the earth has the heat in it and a heat pump

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enables one to tap that enormous amount of natural energy and apply it as one likes. The Germans even have a production line for a heat pump for domestic use which will produce all the hot water necessary for an average house. Such a thing has never been heard of here and one cannot get it. Why not? The answer is that nobody is urging it. If one goes to industrialists they say,"If you give us the market; if you buy the first 300,000, we might think about it." A lead must come from somebody. It is not coming from individuals and it is not coming from industry. These type of matters need to be pushed.
The Earl of LAUDERDALE: My Lords, I am sorry to intervene, but is my noble friend suggesting that heat pumps cannot be bought in this country? If so, he is misinformed. In fact, the Electricity Council is pushing heat pumps very hard.
The Earl of KINTORE: My Lords, the heat pumps that we had to utilise up North had to be obtained from Germany. I do not say that they are not obtainable here, but one can get a better deal—at least so it is deemed—from Germany. That is a matter which requires to be looked into. I am not saying that one cannot get a heat pump in this country—of course one can. However, t hedevelopment of the heat pump is lacking.
The North of Scotland Hydro-Electric Board is also pursuing the hare of heat pumps, but it has not as yet come to any real conclusions as to what overall savings could be produced. It appreciates individual savings and is keen as regards that, but an overall picture is lacking. I believe that a positive lead on these aspects and the enormous area of possible energy savings, should be pursued by some co-ordinating body as suggested.
18 p.m.
Lord HINTON of BANKSIDEMy Lords, we have had many debates in which figures for energy supply have been given, and there is no reason why I should spend time repeating them. I intend only to amend them by saying that the forward position in regard to two out of our four major energy resources seems to be worse than it was when we last discussed them. There are a great many people
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who suggest that our salvation lies in the renewable source of energy. I think that it would be a good idea to look at those to see whether we can get a realistic view.
If one considers wind, which has already been mentioned, the maximum likely output of a wind-powered generator would probably be about 10 megawatts. Therefore, to supply the electricity needs of this country one would need 4,000 windmills. I do not think that 4,000 windmills would he tolerated on land, and the only way in which we could install them would he offshore on the Goodwin Sands or the Dogger Bank; and there they would cost about four times as much as conventional power stations, which will in any case be needed because the wind does not blow all the time.
The World Energy Conference calculated that by the year 2020 not more than 10 per cent. to 15 per cent. of the world's electricity demand could be met from solar cells. They also calculated that the contribution of low-temperature solar energy would not be more than 3 per cent. to 5 per cent. of the world's energy demand. Our position in this country, because of our climate and latitude, is below the world average.
Turning to nuclear fusion, it is no more than a sparkle in the eye of the scientists, and geothermal heat is likely to give only a marginal contribution. Before one arouses enthusiasm for wave energy, I suggest that it is a good idea to talk to some of the people who were responsible for the design of the Mulberry Harbours and to learn of the difficulties that were experienced there. The output of tidal power is being examined. I shall be surprised if it is more than 5 percent. of our total electricity requirements.
The noble Earl, Lord Lauderdale, has already mentioned the book by Gerald Leach, in which he forecasts that we can have a rising standard of living up to the year 2025 without increasing our energy demand. His statistical documentation in that book is excellent, but I cannot accept the logic of his arguments. Optimistic as he is in other ways, Leach agrees that renewable energy sources can make only a small contribution.
One of Leach's assumptions appears to be that we shall divest ourselves of those

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industries that are heavy energy users and substitute light industries. But can we really believe that we can do this within the postulated time, and that we can sell enough of our new range of products to pay for the more energy-intensive materials that we shall have to import? Another of Leach's assumptions is that all the changes which he recommends can be made effective immediately. His allowance for lead times is totally unrealistic. Moreover, the book appears to take no account of the fact that if, as he claims, the standard of living is rising, people will have more money to spend and so will buy more goods and thus neutralise some of the economies which he is predicting.
I think that it is much more realistic, dismissing his figures, to look at the figures which have been published by the Department of Energy, which show that in the year 2000 the demand for energy would he 40 per cent. above its 1978 level. That figure is roughly the same as the figure independently produced by the World Energy Conference. Little more than our present supply of energy is likely to be available at the end of the century. Therefore, we shall be 40 per cent. short. I suggest that harsh conservation measures immediately applied and changes in social habits, with the sacrifice of some things that were luxuries not so long ago but which are now thought of as necessities might achieve the economies that are necessary. It is worth while to remember that as recently as 1960 our per capita consumption of energy was 20 per cent. below its present level, and in 1910 it was only two-thirds of the present level. Therefore, we can live with lower energy consumptions.
We must, I think take immediate and, I am afraid, unpopular steps to bring our energy demand as nearly as possible into line with the probable availability of energy in the year 2000. If we fail to do this, we risk a crisis. Indeed, it might be worse than a crisis. In his 1975 Fawley Lecture, Lord Ashby said:
"Are we facing a crisis or a climacteric? A crisis is a temporary malfunction of society. Temporary sacrifices, temporary hardships, some violence: and the crisis is over; society emerges into a fresh phase of stability. But if we are approaching a climacteric, these expedients will not work".
I am sadly certain that we are approaching a crisis. I believe that only by determined
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efforts and by harsh sacrifices can we avoid a climacteric. To quote Lord Ashby again:
" It would be an historical anomaly if our present economic and social system were not to go the way of the Mayans and Minoans".
I believe that we must act quickly to conserve energy if we are to postpone the date when that happens.
6.26 p.m.
The EARL of AVON: My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Lauderdale for introducing this short debate today, and I am happy to follow the noble Lord, Lord Hinton of Bankside, in virtually everything he said. The debate is very timely because today constant attention and discussion are needed to remind everyone of the need to conserve energy on both a personal and an industrial basis; and also for pressures to be kept up on all Governments—be they North Atlantic, African, South American, Far Eastern; in fact, world-wide—for the need for co-ordinated policies towards this end. I should like to concentrate my brief remarks on the international scene, for I believe that an international group—very much on the lines put forward by my noble friend Lord Lauderdale for this country—is needed to co-ordinate a policy.
After the dramatic oil price rises in the early 1970s, most countries, in fact, most peoples—albeit some more than others—took urgent steps to combat the rising prices by conservation and by promoting study on alternative energy research. But somehow this stimulus has died down. I should like to pick up my noble friend's remark when he told us about the idea of having alternate number plates for motor cars so that one fills up an even-numbered car on one day and an odd-numbered one another day a week. When I was in the United States last year someone I knew had bought a second car so that he could fill up on both days of the week because his other car had an odd number-plate. This is what I mean by stimulus dying down.
The recent oil price increases did not lead to a similar outcry to the one we had before, but rather to a shrug of the shoulders. I believe that the price rises will automatically be absorbed—this is what people are saying. They may be

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absorbed today, but inactivity on research and idleness in conservation will mean a heavy price to pay in the future. Reaction to OPEC price increases has meant the formation of the International Energy Agency and it has led to the Paris conferences, in which Saudi Arabia was an active participant. However, international co-operation on energy matters seems to have cooled rather as Governments' and peoples' reaction has cooled.
The cost of energy affects us all on a global basis. Over the past decade it has caused slow growth and recession; it has caused inflation and unemployment; it has meant the squeezing of profits. Energy is now the most important factor in an economic policy; and, because it is such an unpredictable factor, this makes it all the more frightening. But not only is it economic. It is also, as we have discovered, a political factor. The OPEC countries have their problems caused by their new wealth; many highly diverse social problems have to be overcome, and extremely sensitive political decisions have to be made. Recently we have witnessed a Canadian Government being defeated basically on an energy policy. There are difficult decisions ahead as to how much oil to leave in the ground: many OPEC counties feel that this is crystal gazing into the future.
Co-operation has resulted in some restraint; also co-operation has led to countries being able to absorb recent structural changes such as produced by the Iranian revolution. At best, this can be called a delicate balance in what I call a continuing crisis. Closer economic reaction to the changing problems of energy is needed, and a concerted policy to increase public awareness of the energy shortfall.
Conservation and economies are required. Education in the efficient use of energy is needed, and the promotion of other sources of energy could mean survival. I should like to speak for a minute on this latter subject. Great Britain has coal—and we have heard the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, on this subject—and the expanding world use of coal is a study in itself. The Government should actively encourage this. On nuclear energy, about which we have heard little so far in this debate, this
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country was at one time a leader in this field: we arc losing our lead. The economies that the Government are making across the board to put the country's finances on a sound basis are, I believe, correct. But it would be folly to cut back in any way on anything which would lead to the putting back of the clock either in the coal indistry, the field of nuclear energy or, for that matter, gas. Cutbacks could lead to economic disaster, while promotion could produce enormous dividends in the future.
I have not mentioned solar or wind. but these have been covered by other noble Lords. The work in Brazil on producing alcohol from vegetation is but one of the many projects being carried out in the world today which to me are fascinating. No Government policy in itself can work without overseas cooperation. Countries are in this together. The word "interdependence "is once more applicable. Sheikh Yamani has recently said that there is a need for closer co-operation between producers and consumers, to reassure the former about the purchasing power of their income and the latter of continuing supplies. He went on to say that separate discussions could be held between Europeans and the producing nations to improve their relationship and move away from confrontation.
More recently still the United States Secretary of Energy, Mr. Charles Duncan, is reported as saying that his talks in Saudi Arabia were very successful. He was confident that Saudi Arabia would continue to ensure sufficient oil production to sustain world economic growth. I doubt that this is in any way possible, but any way that they could keep it equal would help. My point is that here is the will: Cannot we accept this in good faith? Where should we go from now? I should like to suggest three possibilities. First, there is the Independent Energy Agency. This was set up as a kind of answer to OPEC. OPEC looked upon it as a confrontation. That is now over and it is an accepted agency. Could the IEA not do more, perhaps with OECD, to co-ordinate Western countries and talk to the OPEC countries at an increasingly high level of representation?
Secondly, there is NATO. Including, as it does, countries in Europe, with our-

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selves and Norway producing oil, with highly industrialised countries needing oil, embracing Canada and the United States with their individually unique situations, could not this organisation try to promote a common policy and devise contingency plans for energy—conservation in particular? Thirdly, following up the Paris talks which they had on energy some few years ago, we need to keep a dialogue with OPEC countries about future oil prices and world stability. I do not believe that a new conference would do any good. I had the impression when I recently visited Riyadh that there had been enough talk already, but is there not scope here for perhaps my noble friend the Foreign Secretary to start a diplomatic initiative? If, after discussion, a paper could be produced jointly by, say, Great Britain and West Germany, sent to Saudi Arabia for initial reactions, and then returned for broader consultations with NATO partners on the one hand and the OPEC members on the other, whilst keeping diplomatic contact with other industrial and Third World countries, we might be able to improve relationships, ease confrontation, and move towards energy price stability and thereby economic stability and, for many countries, political stability. There is no doubt in my mind that whatever can be done to conserve energy and promote other sources of energy within our own shores will greatly add to our argument in any dialogue between the West and the OPEC countries in the future. My Lords, I support the Motion.
Lord MOWBRAY and STOURTON: My Lords, may I just intervene at this moment? There are only something like 44 minutes between now and when my noble friend Lord Gowrie wishes to start answering at 7.20 p.m. If noble Lords could try to limit themselves to speeches of about seven and a half minutes on average, that would be very helpful.
6.37 p.m.
Lord RITCHIE-CALDER: My Lords, thank you very much, I shall take the hint and keep to seven and a half minutes. It is only two minutes less than I usually speak. I want again to embarrass the noble Earl, Lord Lauderdale, by saying how much I agree with him. He is going
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to be in great difficulties presently when my noble friend Lord Balogh and I and others here approve of his sentiments. His sentiments on this occasion I find practically irreproachable.
First, I would take issue, with great hesitation, with the noble Lord, Lord Hinton of Bankside. I would if we had time. You cannot do it in seven and a half minutes. You cannot do it with anyone of his eminence with less than a very considered reply. While I agree with him that in A Lower Energy Strategy for the United Kingdom—that is the Gerald Leach book he referred to—we probably have an over-optimism, I feel that in that is spelt out for our close attention, and for the very close attention of any council on energy, including that led by the Prime Minister, the things that we ought to be getting on with. Here we have a situation which is either a crisis or a climacteric—and I happen to think that it is the climacteric in this case, because I think we are going through a crisis situation which in fact is historically changing the nature of our society, and not just pressures which are being put on us. Therefore we should be looking at the situation which in fact is becoming cumulatively more dangerous, but also, for heaven's sake, looking to the possibilities which we are definitely neglecting today, or not doing enough about, which will in fact become absolutely imperative.
Nearly 20 years ago in Rome we had a rather ironical conference of the United Nations called the New Sources of Energy. It was a very impressive conference, except for one thing: I think we had one paper on nuclear energy, because that had been dealt with at the Atoms for Peace Conference at the United Nations, but every other paper was on what we are now calling the alternative sources of energy. Each one of them was one of the oldest sources of energy we had. Solar power, wind, sea, waves, and this and that were all dealt with, and it began to be extremely embarrassing because all the eminent authorities, including Nobel Prize winners from Britain and America, and so forth, got up and wagged their fingers solemnly at all the underdeveloped countries and said,"Now, be warned, you go out and make your windmills with rattan sails. Weave your sails ". But while we were talking to them—remember, this was 20 years ago—about what they should be

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doing, our scientists and technologists were completely neglecting the very things we were telling them to do. We cannot afford to go on like that. Therefore, when we are stressing the need for solar and wave energy, heat pumps and the rest, they are the very things we shall need, in combination and probably in small scale rather than large scale, as a nation and internationally as well. They are the developments which we might begin to use and harness.
While sitting here waiting to speak I was thinking back 40 years to a time when, in the 1930s, I made a film about the mining industry. In one shot in the film were eight retired miners whose working lives in the pits totalled 400 years. Of that time, 360 years of work had gone up the chimney in wasted energy. Methods are now far more efficient, but noble Lords will see what that demonstrates. Life was cheap, as was work, and therefore coal was cheap because life and work were cheap, and those resources could he squandered. Now, however, we are talking about shortages with which we must cope, and we must cope with them urgently. What we unquestionably need is an overall view and, whatever we call it—a council or an energy agency—it must form a strategy which allows us to judge, as I genuinely believe we are not yet capable of judging, what amount of nuclear energy we will need or what our commitment to nuclear energy should be 10 or 20 years from now. But we must get on with it now because that is how we shall educate the people in how it is to he done; we cannot blame people for not doing what they do not know.
I am reminded, on the whole question of insulation and so on, that I can boast that I slept, not naked but undressed, in an igloo in the Arctic. That is a perfectly normal statement to make, as I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Tweeeds-muir, another old Arctic hand, will tell your Lordships. There is nothing curious about what I did. I slept on a snow bench in an igloo with a caribou quilt underneath me and a caribou cover over me. It was a completely congenial experience and the temperature in the night was quite adequate. Why? We might remind ourselves that an igloo is not an ice house but a snow house, and snow is a very good insulator; once it turns to
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ice one gets a transfer from cold to insulation and an igloo can stay very warm simply by the nature of the insulation. Unfortunately, I cannot build or buy an igloo, but we should learn the lessons which other people have learned for themselves throughout the world. They should be a lesson to us as to how we can conserve energy. I have spoken for seven minutes and, as promised, I will resume my seat.
6.45 p.m.
Lord MILNE: My Lords, I echo the sentiments of noble Lords as to the value of this debate. In the housing industry, of which I have some knowledge and must declare an interest, the possibilities in this direction are huge, as any householder can confirm. For brevity, I propose to take one instance; that of double glazing. At present, only a tiny fraction of housing stock is so equipped, yet it has been shown that if all new housing stock was so fitted, more than £200 million sterling could be saved annually by that alone, and that is at 1978 figures.
I do not know what the figures are for the many other devices, but taken together the total potential saving must be asolutely immense. Although some measures can be taken anytime, plans to install double glazing on any scale are clearly better taken at the planning stage, since consequent design improvements can be incorporated which will further improve cost-efficiency. The trouble is that all these additions cost money and the added cost in a competitive market without grant aid or mandatory force is unlikely to appeal to cost-conscious designers.
To maximise fuel saving, a positive Government policy of encouragement is indeed necessary. In a minor way this exists, but the treatment is very inconsistent. As we have heard, grants are available for roof and wall insulation, but VAT is payable. Double glazing, on the other hand, receives no grant, but at the moment it is zero-rated for VAT if professionally installed, and even this, I believe, is under review. Abroad they are far more positive. In Europe and America, as has been stated. grants are available for double glazing, while in many countries it is mandatory at the time of building.
Any such policy here or any reduction in the initial differential between single

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and double glass, which is fast becoming important anyway, would have a considerable repercussion in the industry. It would clearly expand greatly the consequent job creation; the effects, even if they were not enormous, would certainly spill over into allied industries. On the other hand, any increase in the differential, as for example in VAT, as was I believe mooted, without an equivalent grant would be extremely damaging, discouraging and counter-productive to any saving of energy.
6.48 p.m.
Lord HENLEY: My Lords, I will, if I may, bring the debate a little nearer home; in fact right back to the Palace of Westminster, and to the heating here, which in my humble opinion is quite excessive. A little remembrance of Matthew, chapter VII, verses i-v and that sort of stuff about motes and beams might not go amiss. I wish in particular to refer to three Questions which my noble friend Lord Hylton and I asked at different times earlier this year for Written Answer. First, I asked the Leader of the House this Question, which was answered by his deputy because the Leader was apparently doing more important things:

(i) at what temperature the interior of the Palace of Westminster is maintained during the winter and in particular what are the minimum temperatures maintained in the Library and chamber of the House of Lords;

(ii) what is the total cost per annum at today's
prices of heating the Palace;

(iii) what would be the saving if all thermostats were set (a) 5 degrees fahrenheit or (b) 2·5 degrees fahrenheit lower during the winter.

I was told in reply:
"(i) During the winter average temperatures within the Palace of Westminster are maintained as close as possible to 68°F; the minimum temperature in the Library is 68°F; and in the House of Lords Chamber 70°F.
(ii) The total cost per annum of heating the Palace is approximately £220,000; this includes domestic hot water.
(iii) By setting all the thermostats at (a) 5°F or (b) 2.5°F lower, savings of up to approximately (a) £20,000 or (b) £10,000 might he achieved ".—[Official Report, 15/1/80, col. 96.]
Secondly, my noble friend Lord Hylton asked Her Majesty's Government about the insulation of the Palace of Westminster, and about what considerations had been given to improving its thermal efficiency. He received an Answer which appeared in Hansard of 25th February. My noble friend was told, at column 1138:
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" The Palace of Westminster is substantially insulated by thick stone walls "—
any of your Lordships who live in castles might know that there is some truth in
that—
" but large windows and the cast iron roofs contribute to some heat loss."
There had been carried out an infra-red aerial photometric survey of heat losses, which was being analysed, and the Answer added:
" The modernisation of the heating will produce significant energy savings ",
which I shall greatly welcome.
The third Question to which I want to refer was also from my noble friend Lord Hylton. I do not know on what date the Question was set down, but he received an Answer on 27th February. Following my earlier Question, my noble friend asked, as reported at column 1501 of the Official Report, why on the morning of 14th February the thermometer in the Peers' Entrance recorded 76°F, while the thermometer in the Lords' Library—located between the first room one enters, where the newspapers are, and the next room to the left—recorded 74°F. I can assure your Lordships that those temperatures are by no means unusual. I have done a little survey, and I have found that the temperatures are normally well above 70°F. The noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, answered this Question, too. My noble friend was told:
" The Peers' Entrance is served by the steam radiator system "—
I presume that is rather old-fashioned—and that therefore the heat could be only on or off; there could not be an in-between setting. Might I ask whether the heat could be permanently switched off?—because, after all, the Peers' Entrance is only a cloakroom, and I see no reason why a cloakroom need be heated.
According to the Answer, although the Library is fitted with thermostats, controlled by the staff, the
" ambient temperatures "—
whatever they might be—
" and the lighting and electrical equipment may keep temperatures above 68°F ".
I wonder whether that problem might not be solved if it were attempted to keep the temperature at 63°F. If the temperature is normally 5 or 6 degrees higher when the setting is for 68°F, perhaps the

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ideal temperatures would be attained by doing what I suggest. The Answer concluded:
" This difficulty will be removed when the planned air-cooling programme is implemented ".
I should like to ask just one question about this air-cooling programme. Will it use up further fuel?—because what my noble friend Lord Hylton and myself are worried about is not so much the heat, which is excessive, but the use of energy in producing this heat.
Having referred to those three Questions, I wish merely to add that I have mentioned the Palace because it is a public building, and I presume that other public buildings are heated to a similar extent. The Palace is a showcase which people see, and if we do not reduce our heating a little, I do not see why anyone else should be expected to reduce theirs. It seems hypocritical to debate the subject of conservation in a Chamber in which we need not wear any clothes at all, though that would raise other problems. Finally, I believe that we might all be rather more healthy if we reduced our heating a little. It is not only a question of saving energy, though obviously that should be the first priority——
Lord MOTTISTONE: My Lords, before my noble friend sits down, may I ask whether he is aware that having attended the debate for his speech and that of the noble Lord, Lord Milne, I have only just regained a reasonable temperature after having walked for a quarter of an hour in order to come down to the House? It has taken me all that time to get properly heated up.
Lord HENLEY: If my noble friend walked a little faster, my Lords, I think he might be warmer.
6.54 p.m.
Viscount HAN WORTH: My Lords, this is one of the few occasions on which I should have liked to speak for more than 10 minutes, but I cut my speech because I thought that we were short of time, though apparently we are not. However, what I have to say should take only about six minutes. I have raised in this House several times recently the matter of better house and industrial
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insulation, and the replies that I have received seem to me quite extraordinary, and to lead to only one conclusion: that the Ministry are simply not interested in this, one of the most important potential energy savers. I regret to say that some of the arguments which they have put forward either arise out of ignorance or, frankly, are intellectually dishonest. One example of this, which I fear I must quote, concerns the danger of condensation. If a house is insulated more highly, one cuts down the condensation. The only instance in which this is not so is if the ventilation is decreased. To put this forward as an argument against better insulation is to my mind simply intellectually dishonest.
From a recent report by Shell, it appears that by bringing all our buildings, both domestic and industrial, up to an economically justifiable standard of insulation, there would be achieved a 50 per cent. saving in the energy used for heating. This saving represents about one quarter of the nation's total energy requirement, costing some £3,500 million.
Much as I deplore it, I can just understand the logic of cutting the home insulation programme in order to reduce public expenditure. What I cannot understand at all is why the Ministry refused to raise to any reasonable level the building standard requirement for the roof and wall insulation of new houses. Their present proposals are still the subject of consultation. In the case of roofs, an economic standard would be almost double what is proposed; that proposed for walls is rather better, but still much too low. There is none whatever for ground floors. Worse still, it is not proposed to implement an improved standard for walls for two to three years. The extra cost for meeting the Government's proposals is only about £230 on a new three-bedroom house, and the payback on saving on fuel bills is under three years.
On a previous occasion I refrained from arguing in more detail the case for better insulation, but pointed out that it was very uneconomic to insulate walls and floors after a house was built, and that we were saddling future generations with unsatisfactory housing—in particular in the context of what is inevitable: rising fuel costs. I now realise that

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many noble Lords would have liked me to give more information about benefits and costs of insulation. In comparison with those on the Continent, our houses are extremely badly insulated. Your Lordships might think that this difference could be accounted for by the harsher Continental climate. It is true that the Continental climate is more extreme than our own, but the picture is very different if one takes the number of days on which we need heating and multiply that by the temperature difference between the outside and the required inside temperature. The answer to that is known as"degree days ".
For instance, we in London must heat our homes 331 degree days more than those people living in Paris, yet France's insulation standards are well over a third more stringent than ours. France has improved its insulation standards by almost 250 per cent. in recent years, and along with most of the other Continental countries will be again improving these standards in the near future. The insulation standards that our Government have proposed are just equal to the standards that France has at the present time—and France finds them unsatisfactory. Britain, if the Government's proposed improvements are passed, will remain far behind the rest of Europe.
Great Britain has a great deal to gain from a reduction in national fuel consumption, but the individual householder stands to gain much as well, and in a relatively short period of time. Fuel prices rise at a much faster rate than do insulation prices, therefore making it a more economically-sound investment to insulate than to continue to pay increasingly expensive fuel bills. Take, for example, a three-bedroom house with no roof insulation—and there are quite a number of them. If it were to be insulated with 10 millimetres of fibre-glass insulation, the material would cost about £45. A genuine profit as a result of the savings in fuel bills would result in just over a year's time; and by insulating the walls—and this is not at all expensive with cavity wall insulation—it would pay off in only a very little longer period. As fuel prices continue to rise in real terms, this pay-back period will be even shorter.
My Lords, there is one point I should like to raise in connection with double-
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glazing. Professionally installed double-glazing has almost always been counted as an alteration, and as such has been zero-rated for purposes of VAT. Last year Customs and Excise issued a discussion document referring back to a case brought originally by Mecca, in which Mecca had lost a case concerning VAT on other alterations and the judge had suggested that Customs and Excise were were rather too liberal in their interpretation of the word"alteration ". This led to a Customs and Excise discussion document listing many aspects of building work where it was felt zero-rating for VAT purposes could now be terminated. One of those areas would be double-glazing. This is quite unacceptable, and I hope that the Government will take action on this matter seriously.
7.3 p.m.
Baroness SHARPLES: My Lords, I, too,I am grateful to my noble friend for initiating this debate. I am surprised that there has been hardly any mention of nuclear energy. What of the future beyond 2000? There is so little time, and so many ideas that take years to be of national use. I am more scared of the effects of groups such as Friends of the Earth than 1 am of any possible dangers from a nuclear reactor. Surely, in this country, we must show by our example that we are not afraid to build nuclear power stations. The emerging nations will need even more power than we ourselves to industrialise their countries; and, with the price of fuels—coal and oil—already out of their reach and bound to rise, the only feasible hope is in nuclear fuel. There can be no improved prosperity without more energy.
In the USA it took five wasted years and over £25 million for the Sohio Pac-Tex project, which hoped to carry Alaskan crude oil from West to East and which was cancelled because there was no time limit to the objections. This could happen here. Fred Hoyle, in Energy or Extinction, shows that if we do not really lead the way—and quickly—resentment in under-developed countries—and I have no doubts about this—will build up very rapidly against prosperous countries, and environmentalists will have a great deal to answer for if we arrive at this situation.
7.5 p.m.
Lord ENERGLYN: My Lords, I shall endeavour to compress 30 years of research into three minutes. I think that is a good example of conservation. I, too, should like to thank the noble Earl, but in thanking him may I say that I wish he had perhaps added the term "utilisation ", because that is another way of looking at conservation. We in this country have become too ready to discard industrial processes because the cost of energy appears to render them unprofitable. Governments have listened too readily—and I repeat, too readily—to economists in arriving at the decisions to close down industry on energy evaluation. They have not given the technologists a chance to look at the industries in peril and to offer alternative methods of utilising energy to make those industries profitable again.
Time will permit me to take only one example—one which is very much in our minds at the moment—and that is the production of iron. This is an energy-intensive process, and, because the price of coal and oil has seemingly made the smelting of low-grade ores uneconomic—and I would draw your Lordships' attention to the fact that it is uneconomic, apparently, only in this country—the Government are condoning the closure of furnaces which were designed to smelt low-grade iron ore produced in this country. Consequently, we are condemning places like Corby, Scunthorpe and such like, whose birth was based upon low-grade iron ore, to becoming ghost towns, simply because it is claimed that the energy input in terms of metallurgical coal is too great to make them economic. Metallurgical coal is becoming increasingly scarce throughout the world, and every iron and steel complex in the world is searching around for metallurgical coal. But there is coal and coal, as I shall come to in a moment.
In looking at the energy values employed in the making of iron, the furnace itself loses about 40 per cent. of the heat that is generated within it. That amount of heat could generate enough steam to develop a power station. With this utilisation of thermal energy, we have in our hands a source of cheap electricity. To make aluminium we need
a source of cheap electricity. With cheap electricity
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derived from the furnace, we then have the next factor, which is that in order to make aluminium or iron we have to render the ore into a molten condition—another big energy-intensive process. In both cases we have molten rock—lava, if you like, my Lords. Electrodes put in the lava will extract the alumina, the aluminium, from the slag which is to be generated in the steel furnace. What I am saying is that the original iron furnace now becomes an aluminium furnace as well. Having taken the aluminium out, we still have electricity, which we then begin to use to process this lava—it is still lava—for the silica, the metal of the new silicon age. Finally, there is an end product which becomes a building material. Pour it into water, and pumice is produced. So here we now have Corby and Scunthorpe, not being iron and steel centres but becoming metal factories. None of this would be possible if there were not some co-ordinating system. Every country in the world is searching for an energy policy. By good fortune, most of the producers and consumers of energy in this country have been nationalised.
Might I make a suggestion to the Government for their serious consideration? It is to form an energy council composed of the chairmen of all the nationalised industries—and also the TUC—and that these chairmen be charged with the responsibility of equating and calibrating the cost of units of energy, thermal, physical and human, so that industry can look to the future with some certainty. To make this council work, as the noble Earl has pointed out, you need somebody in authority. Possibly the Prime Minister will be too busy, hut I suggest that certainly a Minister of State should be the chairman of this energy council, composed—and I repeat—of the chairmen of all the nationalised industries. Thus we can put an end to all this horse-trading and duplication in search of energy values throughout the country. With this, I suggest that we would have a renaissance of engineering development in this country because we would be producing metal factories and not simply iron mills.
7.11 p.m.
The EARL of GOWRIE: My Lords, a friend of mine who is a writer, an anarchist

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and a publisher had the idea some months back of publishing for distribution among anarchist organisations a debate in this House in the name of the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, about flying saucers. He has made a handsome book about it which I hope to present to your Lordships' Library. But, entertaining though that was, it would be a more practical thing if the last three energy debates in this House could be collected and published for wider distribution. They have been remarkably concise and remarkably expert. The only trouble with them is that they usually have to be answered by me and I have to follow people like the noble Lord, Lord Energlyn —appropriately named in this matter—who knows a great deal more about the subject than most of us in Government and for whose counsel we are always grateful. But I cannot pretend to be able even had I the time, to flee to the Box to take up his suggestion about iron ore-related energies until I can consult other experts about it. I suspect that the noble Lord is well in advance of the field here; but we will attend closely what he has to say.
My Lords, it has been a most interesting and valuable debate, one that affects and is deeply related to the future prosperity of our country and the wellbeing of all who live here. As my noble friend Lord Avon and others have said—and I should like to congratulate my noble friend on an immensely wise speech—it has great international implications for the world as a whole. It is very hard now to separate foreign policy and energy policy. There is no difference between the Government and my noble friend Lord Lauderdale, whom I congratulate on the way he opened the debate and for the attention that it commanded. There is no difference between us in our view of the importance of energy conservation and the need to continue it. There are those who wonder why we, in the United Kingdom, should be so concerned with conservation; and their puzzlement is understandable perhaps when one reflects on the fact that we are a highly successful energy producer—far and away the largest producer of primary energy in Europe. Our coal industry is the largest in the Community, with reserves to last several hundred years at current rates of consumption. I say particularly to my noble friend Lady Sharpies that we have a substantial and expanding nuclear
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power industry with an unsurpassed safety record. We are a major oil producer and we can look forward to self-sufficiency for the coming decade.
We have a strong position and one which we intend to maintain, but I think that a measure of the interest and responsibility of this debate is that there is no evidence that that position is allowing those in Government, those in the legislature, in this country to be complacent. Our plentiful resources do not let us isolate ourselves from the international problems of security and availability of energy resources. Recent events in Iran and Afghanistan have emphasised the precarious nature of existing energy supply lines and the vital role of energy in ensuring economic prosperity and national security.
On the overseas point, I would say that, of course, the noble Sheikh, Sheikh Yamani, were he here—and I have the great privilege and pleasure of lunching with him in this House at the invitation of my noble friend Lord Bessborough this summer; and he was most interesting on all these topics—I think that he would say that his policies were a form of imposed conservation on the West. And we must not underestimate them in that regard. In the longer term, North Sea oil and gas reserves will be declining by the mid-1990s and we will have to re-enter a world market in which supplies are likely to be increasingly scarce and expensive. All other industrially developed countries will be seeking to import growing amounts of energy. Our energy strategy takes account of these long-term prospects and places emphasis upon three main areas, all mentioned in the debate; coal, nuclear power and energy conservation.
Energy conservation is, therefore, a vital part of this tripartite policy. Our concept of conservation is not the essentially negative one of using less energy, which could be achieved by lower industrial output or by reduced standards at home. On the contrary, we see conservation as a very positive policy of increasing the efficiency with which energy is used so that less energy is needed for a given level of industrial output or of comfort in the home; and it will not surprise your Lordships that, as one whose responsibilities are primarily in the employment field. I would see in conservation considerable outlets for raising employment levels; and

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the Government are studying these most closely.
We have changed some emphases as your Lordships will be aware. A change of emphasis is reflected in the replacement of the"Save it!"campaign by what we think is the more positive slogan,"Make the most of Energy ". We feel that the key to effective energy conservation is economic and realistic prices which reflect the real long-term cost of supply. The price message makes consumers aware of the scarce and finite nature of energy resources and, in our view, is the most effective incentive to the efficient use of these resources; and, let there be no doubt about this, the pricing mechanism is also an inseparable part of the logic of getting public spending under control and maintaining firm monetary objectives.
We recognise that rising fuel costs may not be easy for some consumers, particularly the old and the poor. That is why we have introduced a new scheme of assistance with heating costs announced last autumn by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Social Services, which is designed to provide worthwhile help for those in most need. In addition, we are currently reviewing the whole range of help available to assist consumers with their fuel bills and we intend to make extra provision next winter to help those elderly and low-income consumers in most need. That is a commitment. Our proposals will be announced as soon as possible and I can assure your Lordships that they will be announced in good time to enable people to plan in advance how they can manage next winter.
It is important that the price message is accompanied and reinforced by information and advice to the consumer which emphasises the need to use energy efficiently and informs consumers how they can achieve this in their particular circumstances. The Department of Energy has a substantial programme of information and advice to energy users in industry and commerce, in the home, on the road and at school. About £12 million have been spent since 1975 on national Press and television advertising, booklets and leaflets, films for industry, exhibitions and on the production of educational material. In the current financial year, over £2 million will have been spent, providing sound
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practical advice to the public, using the slogan, as I said earlier,"Make the most of energy ". Spending on the Government's advertising campaign in the next financial year will increase to over £3 million.
At this point, I will try as best I can and as rapidly as possible, consistent with giving as full answers as I can, to turn to some points which were made during the debate. My noble friend Lord Lauderdale mentioned the need—and this was also echoed by the noble Lord, Lord Tanlaw—for the separation of responsibility for energy conservation from the Department of Energy. He talked about"a task force with resources, reporting directly to the Prime Minister ". The noble Lord, Lord Energlyn, also said something about that. Energy conservation is a central part of energy policy and so it must be developed in balance with other energy sectors, as I have already suggested. It is therefore appropriate to locate it in the Department of Energy. There is now a full division dealing with conservation on a par with the divisions developing supply policy. I have attended Cabinet committees and meetings, and my experience there has been that the effects of energy pricing and energy policies are talked about as a matter of urgency pretty well every week. There are few items of Government policy which are not affected, so I do not think there is any sense of remoteness or of its being hived off to one particular Ministry and not taken account of by others.
Again, my noble friend and the noble Lord, Lord Tanlaw, talked about the restructuring of fuel tariffs. He is not here tonight, but I know that that is dear to the heart of the noble Lord, Lord Kaldor. It has been studied on a number of occasions but, generally speaking, the conclusion has been that tariff restructuring is not the most satisfactory way of helping poor consumers with their fuel costs. It tends to benefit small consumers, whether rich or poor, while doing significant harm to a considerable number of poor consumers who already face high bills. Your Lordships may have seen a recent statement on energy pricing policy issued by the Nationalised Energy Industries Consumer Council, which also concluded that tariff restructuring is not the answer to the problems of poorer consumers; so that is something we are rather sceptical about. I can tell my

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noble friend that a response to the Marshall Report is expected shortly, but I do not have it as yet.
As regards building regulations for dwellings, a matter which was raised by a number of speakers, the proposed level of loft insulation is a minimum level which is appropriate to the average expected use of houses. The level takes account of the expected energy price increases in real terms to the end of the century. The level set for the Medallion Homes reflects the higher cost of heating by electricity, but I would emphasise, as I said at the beginning, that every householder has a marked financial incentive in high energy prices to insulate his or her home.
The noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, mentioned the ending of the Department of Industry's energy conservation scheme. That scheme was intended by the previous Administration to last two years. Now that economic realism is introduced for energy prices, there is good incentive for industry as well as the domestic consumer to invest in energy conservation. I do not think it should be the test of a Government's serious commitment to a policy simply to measure the amount of taxpayers' money it throws at it. It is in the interest of industry itself to conserve energy and insulate buildings, and I am sure industry is perfectly well aware of that.
The noble Lord, Lord Tanlaw, who gave me early warning that he would not be here, talked about the home insulation scheme and the need for a grant of up to £200. We feel that most houses can be insulated for less than £100 and the average grant applied for is still well below the £50 limit. Obviously, in the interests of good housekeeping and economy, we are watching that.
The noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, also raised the question of improving the energy efficiency of motor cars and encouraging the energy-efficient design of new cars. Last June the Society of Motor Manufacturers announced, following discussions with the Government, a scheme for British manufacturers to improve the overall average mileage per gallon of new cars by 10 per cent. by 1985. An improvement of 1.9 per cent. after the first year was announced on 6th March, and I think it was the previous Govern
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ment which required that the petrol consumption of cars had to be announced on anything advertising them. We certainly endorse and would continue that requirement.
I would say to the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, that it is not the general policy of the Government to encourage the movement of freight traffic from one mode to another, whether by subsidy or any kind of restrictive licensing. If one form of freight uses more energy in transporting goods, that will show up in the costs which hauliers will have to charge their customers and therefore in the relative attractiveness of that mode. In all the transport debates to which I have listened or in which I have participated in your Lordships' House, there has on all sides been agreement that we need plural transportation systems, and I think it would be wrong for the Government to interfere there. We would certainly agree with the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, about the potentially significant energy conservation to be obtained through the wider use of diesel-engined vehicles, but potential fuel savings need to he weighted against the higher capital cost of the diesel engine as compared with its petrol equivalent; and in the present industrial climate your Lordships will not be surprised if I say that we are very sensitive to the capacity of British industry to meet an increase demand for dieselengined vehicles without the usual sad increase in imports if that were made a requirement.
On the subject of imports, the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, mentioned imports of coking coal. The Government certainly welcome the agreement which the National Coal Board have reached with the BSC. We do not think it necessary for he Government to step in to stop future coking coal imports. The problems of 1981, after the end of the present agreement, should, in our view, be solved in the same way; but we are, of course, in a sad situation in this industry at the moment and it would be in its own interests and the interests of the whole country if the difficulties in South Wales and in the steel industry could be settled as rapidly as possible.
The noble Lord mentioned de-rating energy conservation improvement in houses. The payback on domestic instal-

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lation measures is very good even when re-rating takes place perhaps five years later. Our view is that the immediate return in savings to the householder is the best incentive there.
The noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, raised two more points about recent changes in the home insulation scheme and the public sector housing insulation programme. If noble Lords think that I am giving the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, more than his fair share, in fact I think that others raised these points as well. Changes have recently been made to the two insulation schemes, and they were announced by the Secretary of State for the Environment. First, the allocation of funds for the home insulation scheme has been reduced from £25 million to £12½ million in 1980-81, to reflect more closely the actual level of take-up which occurred during the first 18 months of the scheme. Secondly, the public sector housing insulationprogramme has not been given a separate allocation. This decision is in line with the Government's decision to allow local authorities to decide their own priorities. The Secretary of State for the Environment told authorities that he hoped they would still give priority to insulating public sector housing, in the interests of conservation.
On the question of the"privatisation"as it is called, of the BNOC, the noble Lord said, witheringly, that only rakes or fools sell oft their assets to finance a deficiency of income. I would certainly agree with that sentiment where individuals or even companies were concerned, but Governments have the priceless asset of being able to impose taxation. Therefore, comparisons between Governments and individuals or companies seem to me to he misplaced. It is our intention to give the public an opportunity to participate directly in the BNOC's oil-producing activities, and we are currently considering the options for achieving this. I must say to the noble Lords, Lord Strabolgi and Lord Balogh, that public sector deficits and attempts to clear them are not, in our view, short-sighted monetary fanaticism. They are good housekeeping and, as such, should commend themselves to conservationists.
The noble Lord, Lord Hinton of Bank-side, mentioned renewable sources of
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energy and the noble Lord, Lord Tanlaw, mentioned the Severn barrage and so on. The Government are, in fact, taking this seriously. They are spending about £7 million in the current financial year on renewables, and this is commensurate with the stage of development of these new technologies. I agree with the noble Earl, Lord Kintore, who said that there are instances where"economy"is still a dirty word in local government. I hope the fact that we are stabilising, and being more stringent in, rate support grant, will make it a cleaner world indeed.
I have already mentioned the remarkable and clear speech from my noble friend Lord Avon. He mentioned the issue of producer-consumer relations. Certainly, faced with the prospect of an increasingly tight oil market in the long-term, there is urgent need to establish fuller international co-operation between oil producers and consumers. We need, in particular, to prevent sudden and steep rises in oil prices which do so much damage to the world economy and therefore, as I think one noble Lord pointed out, to political stability. We support useful international initiatives; for instance, the proposed Community-Gulf meeting, which may lead to progress in this area.
The noble Lord, Lord Milne, and the noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth, mentioned double glazing. The proposed revision of building regulations for wall insulation makes allowance for the energy-saving benefits of double glazing. Our Department of Energy publicity points out that double glazing is worth having in some circumstances, but is, overall, less cost-effective than insulation. The question of VAT, which both noble Lords raised is being studied inter-departmentally at present.
My noble friend Lord Henley said that we must attend to the beam in our own eye rather than the motes in others, and raised questions about the heating of the Palace of Westminster. My original brief said, with an air of relief, that this was a matter for the Department of the Environment. I said that that would not wash at this end of the Palace of Westminster, so we went back to the DoE. Apparently, the villain of the piece is our archaic steam radiator system. Many people outside this House perhaps think of this House as being in toto an archaic steam radiator

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system, and those are the people who I wish would study your Lordships' contributions on energy, to see how go-ahead they are. We recognise, with my noble friend, that a more modernised system would give substantial savings. But I would ask your Lordships to cast your minds back to the very hot summer of 1976, when, I think because of the stained glass, this was the most pleasant place to spend the afternoon all through that time.
The noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth, excoriated the delay in revising building regulations. A three-year period for the implementation of higher standards in walls has been suggested, in order to give the building industry time to adapt their construction techniques.
Finally, pricing, together with information and advice, and with judicious but generous help to those who are most in need, is therefore the cornerstone of our energy conservation policy. We do not accept, as many people seem to think, that a Government's commitment to conservation can be measured by the amount of taxpayers' money that it is prepared to hand out in subsidies. It seems to us absurd that taxpayers' money should be freely used to subsidise the energy conservation investments of people who should be making—and, indeed, all the evidence is that they are making—such investments in their own interest and should continue to do so.
We think that the best way to measure conservation is by results, rather than by programmes. We are already seeing some results, and I can tell the House that the consumption figures for the last quarter of last year, when temperature-corrected, are below those of 1978, while petroleum consumption was, indeed, about a full 5 per cent. lower. We are also seeing substantial energy savings in certain sectors of industry, and in particular companies. Now that we have introduced realism into energy pricing we can, I think, expect better and more widespread progress. But we are not complacent, and I assure the House that we shall study everything that has been said.
7.37 p.m.
The EARL of LAUDERDALE: My Lords, the House will be grateful to my noble friend Lord Gowrie for giving us 27 minutes of interesting information, some
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of which was of course prepared about a week in advance of the debate, and some of which related to things said during the debate. I think that my noble kinsman Lord Milne, and also the noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth, deserve an accolade for raising something that we were told is under examination; namely, the VAT implications. My noble friend Lady Sharples, in three minutes flat, pinpointed a matter of great importance about the environmentalists, to which I do not think my noble friend Lord Gowrie found time to reply.
I think one should just underline one or two points that were made. The noble Lord, Lord Tanlaw, referred to the need for an investment performance programme with regard to an energy-efficient society. It is something which I myself had meant to say, but forgot to do so. By the same token, I thought that my noble friend Lord Hinton did not at all over-egg the pudding, when he spoke about our approaching not a crisis but a climacteric, and I was glad to hear the noble Lord, Lord Ritchie-Calder, say the same. It is the emphasis which those noble Lords, who have great experience in the energy field, have put on the climacteric, which they and I believe we are approaching, and which is historically critical, that makes me feel that the debate in itself was worthwhile. But I am sorry that I cannot say quite so much about the agreeable, polished, urbane reply which we have just had from my noble friend Lord Gowrie. It was an essay, rather like the old Foreign Secretary's tour d'horizon, which was customary for every Foreign Office debate. It was a kind of survey in nice, genial terms. I think one might describe it as"folded with soft wings ". What alarmed me—and I say"alarmed"advisedly—was that there was no discernible reference in his reply to the need for an investment approach to the programme of energy savings.
The Minister told us—I was fascinated because I thought that we were about to hear some leaks—what goes on in the Cabinet when these matters are discussed from time to time. He did not give me the impression that these were serious discussions on the balance of public sector investment, or investment in general. I was not surprised—but I was sorry—that he did not take up the point that was made five years ago in a distinguished

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[The Earl of Lauderdale.]
Select Committee report in another place about an energy task group reporting directly to the Prime Minister. I had the feeling that perhaps reality was being wrapped in illusion.
If my noble friends on the other side—in energy subjects we are all friends together—thought that I was politically embarrassed at their support, and I here I refer to the noble Lords, Lord Balogh, Lord Ritchie-Calder and Lord Straholgi, to say nothing of the noble Lord, Lord Tanlaw, on the Liberal Benches, who all supported my general approach, I must tell them that any embarrassment I might have felt momentarily was matched by the pleasure of the spectrum of consensus in all quarters of the House.
This debate still leaves us with a question which we shall have to go on asking: how serious are the Government on this topic? How much do the Government listen to the House of Lords? Perhaps they are listening a little more this week than they did last week. I know that my noble friend Lord Gowrie will not take it amiss if I remind him that, although we greatly appreciate his replies and his efforts to obtain suitable answers from a department to which he does not belong, that we look forward to the time when the Government take this matter more seriously and when they have in this House a Minister on the Front Bench who speaks from inside that department. Knowing what thou knowest not is in a sense omniscience. Perhaps it is worth my noble friend remembering that problems worthy of attack prove their worth by hitting back. The Front Bench will not be too sure after my remarks in this debate that next time I shall seek leave to withdraw my Motion for Papers. However, on this occasion I beg leave to withdraw it.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

VILLAGE SCHOOLS: GOVERNMENT POLICY
7.43 p.m.
The MARQUESS of SALISBURY The MARQUESS of SALISBURY rose to ask Her Majesty's Government what is their policy in regard to the closing of small village schools. The noble
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Marquess said: My Lords, I first became interested in this matter when a school with which I am associated was threatened with closure in view of falling numbers on its roll. On looking further into the matter, I found that there were a great many other schools that found themselves in the same position. In many country districts this was a matter of considerable concern. Therefore, I feel justified in raising this matter tonight.
I wish to group my remarks under roughly three sections: first, the educational grounds; secondly, social matters; and, thirdly, financial effects, and I wish to say a little on each topic. First, in regard to the educational considerations, I understand that the present policy is based on the recommendations of the Plowden Report 1967 which, in paragraph 480, recommended that,
"Schools with an age range of 5-11 should usually have at least three classes, each covering two age ranges."
However, since that time, Lady Plowden has changed her mind and on Border Television on 29th March 1976 she said:
" Since the report I have come round to thinking that small country schools should be kept open because of their social value and because of the continuity of community involvement they provide ".
The first question I wish to ask my noble friend Lady Young is whether the recommendation in paragraph 480 of that report is still accepted by her Department as a basis of policy. I know that it is accepted by certain local education authorities. The criteria as to whether a school should be closed appears to rest on two issues. The first is the cost per pupil, on which I shall say more later, and the second is the teacher/pupil ratio. On this point my information is that the closing of all one and two teacher schools would have a minimal impact on savings if all the teaching staff were retained. For instance, in Oxfordshire it would make a difference of 0.3 of a pupil. In Cumbria, which has many small schools, the ratio would only drop from 23 to 22. 1t is unlikely that a reduction in staff will be achieved because most small schools normally carry out their remedial and ancillary work within their own staff, whereas the larger schools do not.
The present policy takes little account of the quality of education. There is a suggestion, however, that larger schools

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with better facilities and a wider curriculum provide higher standards of education. This is not borne out by the results achieved in the small schools. For instance, in Oxfordshire a study made in 1969 on the reading standards of 11-year-olds found that on average pupils attending schools with fewer than 50 pupils on roll were five months ahead of pupils attending larger schools. I understand that this is an average quotient of 108 against 104, using the Holborn reading scale. It would appear that there is little significant difference, but it would not be true to say that pupils in the smaller schools are educationally at a disadvantage. This is also borne out by a study carried out by Her Majesty's Inspectorate in Westmorland in 1958, by the Rural Educational Unit of Bangor University in 1978, and by Dr. Edmonds in Cheshire.
I feel that the wider curriculum provided by larger schools for smaller children is largely a red herring. What really matters is a thorough grounding in what used to be called the three Rs, and in particular in learning how to learn. It is not necesssary to have many aids for these purposes, and, although I suppose it would be fair to say that this applies more to schools with an age group of five to 9 rather than five to 11, I think that it is fundamentally true of both.
It has been further objected that the spread of age range in classes in small schools is a disadvantage because it is more difficult to teach, and because of lack of competition between pupils of similar age. However, this does not seem to be borne out by results. Indeed, Mr. Coe, adviser on primary education in Oxfordshire, considers it a positive advantage, as do many of his teachers in the small schools. However, there may be one reason for closing small schools, and that is that fewer and larger schools are easier to administer. If this is the case, it does not seem to be a good reason for closing them.
One of the administrator's first jobs is to forecast population trends, a singularly thankless task at the best of times. I believe that current thinking is set out in the DES Circular 5/77, which is based on the assumption that the birth rate will continue to fall until at least the mid-1980s. In the event, indications are that the birth rate is already beginning to rise
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and that circular may well already be out of date. It seems, therefore, a mistake to close a whole lot of schools because of a temporary drop in numbers to meet a very short-term problem.
I should also like to ask the Minister what views are held on alternative schemes for small schools, such as federation and grouping. Experiments are already going on in Cambridge—and, I think, Norfolk—where there is a sharing of a head teacher, of equipment and of specialist tecaching. The advantage is that villages retain their schools and that teachers do not become isolated. This seems to me to be a way of dealing with the problem in rural areas.
May I now say a word about the social considerations. Here, if I may, I should like to quote from an article by Mr. Cooper in the September 1979 issue of Town and Country Planning. I should like to take two quotations from his article, the first of which is as follows:
" For villages already deprived of their public house, general store, pharmacy, and bus service, the loss of their school represents a final blow to the village fabric. A school is vital to the persistence of a healthy community, often referred to as the hub, pivot or linchpin of village life "
He goes on to say:
" The strongest argument for preserving the village school is undoubtedly its role in the community. Journeys to school are short and parents can meet and become involved in school-based activities. Educationally, pupils benefit from generous teacher-pupil ratios and a family atmosphere which allows younger children to learn from older ones. There can be a close contact with parents and discipline problems are minimal. The young children grow up as part of the village, reinforcing social ties and village traditions ".
This puts the situation in a nutshell. It has also been found that pupils from village schools are less prone to vandalism and all that arises from it. This is confirmed by a study made by a Home Office research unit.
May I turn for a moment to bussing, which your Lordships discussed at great length last week. I will make only two small points. Research in Devon indicates that children, especially infants, showed poorer social and emotional adjustment when bussed than when walking. I should like to say a word about walking. As noble Lords well know, walking in the country can be very dangerous for small children; the roads are often

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[The Marquess of Salisbury.]
narrow lanes and constitute a great hazard, especially for the very young. With the increasing number of closures of small schools, this danger will be greatly increased. Often children will have to walk from one village to the neighbouring village. I feel that this is a major problem and one that should be kept to a minimum. I hope that it will be given considerable weight when future closures are considered.
As to cost, I accept that this is a most important consideration today. I fully accept also the need for economy. However, with regard to primary education, I would suggest that too much attention is paid to the cost per child and that consideration should be more widely based. Calculations should include, for instance, social service costs where there is an interrelationship. The cost per child is largely a question of cost per teacher and therefore relates to the pupil-teacher ratio. But as I pointed out, cuts in the number of teachers are unlikely to be significant on redeployment. For instance, in Cumbria, according to the county treasurer, if all one- and two-teacher schools were closed, there would be a saving of approximately a halfpenny on the rate, and his comment is that this is not cumulatively significant.
It may be, however, that equality of expenditure is a consideration. In this case, other costs should surely be taken into account. It is estimated in some quarters that in rural areas the ratepayers receive 10 per cent. Less per capita than do the ratepayers in urban areas. This is because they do not benefit from certain services, or do not need them—services such as nurseries, youth services, community centres and community homes, all of which are expensive. If this is to be the criterion, it would seem that rural areas are less well off than their urban counterparts.
If, however, the overriding need is for economy, I should feel more convinced that the Government are serious about this if they showed signs of tackling administrative costs more vigorously. In a Written Answer last July, the noble Baroness indicated that administrative staff had just about doubled over the last 40 years. Although she said that the figures for local education authority staff were not available, I should be surprised if they also had not increased substantially
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even if not at the same rate. Surely there must be room for a considerable saving in this area. And is it not preferable to make cuts here rather than in the number of schools and in the number of staff, with adverse effect on teacher-pupil ratios?
A large proportion of the rate-borne expenditure is met from central funds through the rate support grant. The size of the grant, as your Lordships will know, depends on a formula. Within this is what is known as the"needs grant ", and in this again there is a school child factor. This is weighted with regard to sparsity of population. Would it not be possible, at a very small cost, to increase this weighting to help these areas? Alternatively, perhaps the rural areas should be treated as in need of a subsidy on social grounds. Their problems are clearly set out in the County Councils Association's report on Rural Deprivation, and there are precedents for this type of subsidy in the case of both the depressed areas and the hill farming subsidies.
In conclusion, I would say that for the reasons I have given there is a good case for retaining village schools, although I would of course accept that in some specific cases closure will be justified. I therefore hope that in her reply the noble Baroness will be able to indicate a fresh approach to this problem.
7.58 p.m.
Lord MACKIE of BENSHIE: My Lords, the House will be very grateful to the noble Marquess for asking this Unstarred Question. He covered the ground extraordinarily well in exactly 15 minutes. I particularly liked the shape of the noble Marquess's Unstarred Question. He asked Her Majesty's Government what is their policy in regard to the closing of small village schools.
I do not think that we have had a policy for country education. We are only beginning to have such a policy, or to think about one—witness our debate in this House the other day on an EEC report in which a lot of new factors were brought out and in which a lot of suggestions were made about having a positive return for the country: a positive need for people to live in the country instead of the country simply accepting

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the decline in agricultural work and in rural industries, and the fact that more and more people will have to live in towns.
I have a little knowledge of the difficulties facing the convenors of education in rural counties in Scotland when dealing with this problem. For many years my brother was convenor of education in Aberdeenshire and eventually he was convenor of the county. He lost his seat purely because he had to close a large number of rural schools, a policy which was extremely unpopular. But one is driven to it simply by the fact that the pupil-teacher ratio goes down and there is no other way that local education authorities can see except to close the schools and bus the pupils.
I am sure that the policy, or lack of policy—the acceptance of a suburban system of education—is quite wrong. I have had a good deal of experience of that in the County of Sutherland, which I represented in another place, and where this problem was extremely serious long before it became serious in other counties. Children were taken for their secondary education to the East Coast, which was hardly a busy, bustling surburban metropolis itself. They were taken from the West and often the parents—shepherds, fishermen or people in many other jobs—would rather leave their jobs and the area than have their children taken away from them, in spite of the fact that many of the English and others pay large sums to be parted from their children.
In that case, I had to look into a number of other systems, particularly in Norway, Australia and Canada, and I received a lot of help from the Professor of Education in Aberdeen. I found that the arguments about competition, about the big schools and the specialist teachers, were a lot of bunk. In any system of rural education which was properly applied and where imagination was used—films were shown and travelling teachers were employed, and so on—the children did as well as and, in many cases, better than the products of the conventional school. I may say that I made no impression on the authorities; they continued to close as many schools as they could get away with closing, and they moved the children who were left in smaller and smaller numbers over to the East, or bussed them to schools some
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distance away, which the parents"liked as little ", because very often the children had to get up so early in the morning and travel for such a long time that it was extremely harmful to their education.
Therefore, my experience in the Highlands—where the problem has probably been much greater for a longer time than anywhere else—leads me to plead with the Minister to adopt a more positive policy towards rural education. I cannot think that it will be more expensive because there is evidence, I understand, that some counties with a great number of rural, one- and two-teacher schools, spend less on education than counties concentrated much more in urban areas, apparently without any detriment to the education of the children. Also, I know that in these areas in the Highlands—because, whichever authority it was, it looked upon them simply as a nuisance—good teachers did not want to go there. It was purely a dead end; people who were keen on fishing, bird watching, or even on drink, applied for posts in these schools simply to get out of life and not to take part in a lively and vigorous system of education.
Therefore, I ask the Minister if there is some positive thinking on applying the practice that is commonplace in Norway, in parts of Canada and in Australia to country schools, so that children could stay there at least until they reached the age of 11 or 12 and then go to the larger secondary school, where the evidence shows that they could do as well. The subject has been well covered; there are some extremely knowledgeable speakers to come; I will not take up any more of your Lordships' time.
8.3 p.m.
The Lord Bishop of TRURO: My Lords, I too should like to welcome the opportunity that has been given to this House to debate this matter through the initiative of the noble Marquess. I welcome it partly because of concern for the education of children in rural areas, but also from equal concern for the future of our rural communities. In these days of economic difficulty, I do not wish to appear in any way to minimise the economic aspect of this issue. Although it is a matter for debate, and I shall be showing later how we can actually assist

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in the cost of maintaining small schools, I accept that in some cases there may be additional costs. I suggest, as a Bishop who has large rural areas in his diocese, that I cannot but be very conscious of this aspect of finance, not least because I am always conscious of the financial need to subsidise incumbents in small parishes.
I do that gladly and willingly, and I am happy to say that other parts of the diocese support me, because I believe that the rural parts of my diocese contribute enormously in many ways to the life of the diocese as a whole and that I cannot look at the smaller parishes in purely economic terms. I think no-one would dispute the importance of our agricultural industry and the vital place it has to play in the welfare of our nation. Perhaps I could claim to be slightly more conscious of the significance of that than my predecessors, in that I am the first Bishop of Truro to have been elected President of the Truro Fatstock Show, but my point is that the agricultural industry depends upon a viable rural life, and we must not adopt policies that would appear to treat the land as if it were a kind of impersonal resource, and view with equanimity the prospect of the land becoming a vast factory for the production of meat and grain, but denuded of any population. That is not a viable way nor, I believe, the right way in which to look at rural communities and the countryside in general.
The rural community is vital to the well-being of our nation. It has qualities which are needed by everyone. The noble Marquess has already referred to the evidence that in the rural communities the proportion of children in care, those in need of child guidance or those on probation, is lower than that in urban areas. mention that because I believe that in the preservation of the rural community, the village school plays a vital part. It plays a vital part in many ways, I think, mainly because it achieves that continual relationship between the children and the adults in the community. I do not want to develop this at length. but I believe that it is one of the most important aspects of the importance of the village school, that there is that continual relationship which ceases to exist
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when children are taken to their school a very considerable distance away. It can be very considerable.
In Cornwall a proposal to close one village school of about 30 children has recently been reversed by the County Council because it was made evident that some quite young children would spend more time away from home than their wage-earning parents. If they are taken away, they may relate to the adults in the school: they will have very little relationship with the community in which the school is situated, and they will not have much relationship with their own community in which they live, and I believe that is a very important point.
One other point about the future of the village schools is that the absence of the village schools clearly has a part to play, but so does uncertainty about their future, and that can hasten depopulation. Only recently I was talking to a young couple with a family: good solid citizens who would have been a great asset to the village to which they were thinking of moving. I found that they were no longer contemplating doing so, and the reason was that they had discovered that there was uncertainty about the future of the village school. As a result that village has lost the very considerable benefit which it would have gained from the movement into it of that family. That is not an isolated case.
I do not want to go into details about size because the noble Marquess has already made many of the detailed points which I had in mind to make myself, but do want to emphasise the fact that the educational and social advantages of the smaller schools are being increasingly recognised and I believe it is a grave mistake simply to consider the future of the village school on very limited criteria. I further believe that to press for a reconsideration of their future is not to acquiesce in lower educational standards. I am not a trained teacher although I have had great experience of schools, but my chaplain is a trained teacher. He frequently accompanies me on my pastoral visits, during which almost invariably I am invited to visit the village school and he. who has come from experience in comprehensive schools in London, repeatedly expresses his satisfaction with

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The standard of work and the standard of life of the school when he has come from such a visit.
The noble Marquess has already referred to the fact that Lady Plowden has changed her view since the publication of the report, and I hope that in the answer to be given by the noble Baroness, Lady Young, there will be some indication that we may expect Government guidance to reflect that view rather than the view which Lady Plowden held in 1967. There is at the moment grave uncertainty in many villages about their schools, and that has a very bad effect. It creates uncertainty about staffing. I believe there is a genuine increase in the number of teachers who want to teach in small country schools, but some are put off because of the uncertainty about the future. As I said earlier, uncertainty about the village school also affects the question of housing—of people buying houses and moving into the village.
It also often affects the question of whether or not there is a village shop. Last year I took the chair at a consultation on the future of the rural community. We had people representing the retailers and we were told of the problems of financing village shops, and so on; but what interested me was that the presence or absence of a village school was quite a significant factor in deciding whether or not a village shop was viable and whether it should continue to exist.
Perhaps 1 may tell your Lordships one interesting point in this connection. There is one village in Cornwall where the village shop is run by two probation officers who gave up that work in the Midlands and came down to run the store. They told me when I visited them that they thought they were doing far more for the community in the long run by caring for that store than by their previous work, because (and admittedly it was known that they were probation officers) continually people were talking to them about their children, and from their previous experience they were able to use their expertise and give advice at a very much earlier stage, when difficulties were beginning to appear, so that in many cases the question of probation did not arise. I include that reference simply to illustrate the effect that a local institution can have. However, there is uncertainty and why I
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very much welcome this Question is because of the effects that such uncertainty is having.
We in Cornwall, as a diocese, negotiated a programme in 1971 based upon the Plowden Report, in which for various reasons, including working on Plowden and in order to secure a proper choice of schools, we agreed to the closure of a number of ours and the building of new ones. We have in fact built nine new area schools, but of course the existing schools still remain and uncertainty is hanging over them. It is that uncertainty that I should like to see removed, so far as possible. I know that there will always be some uncertainty, but so far as it is possible I should like to see it removed.
I realise that the decisions are ultimately those of the local education authority, but there is clearly a need for central guidance as well, and I hope that such guidance could first give some help towards the acceptance of a recognised way of costing. One of the problems in talking about village schools is that too often the method of costing is in a sense adapted to suit the hoped for result of any survey. The costing of village schools is difficult because, as has already been said, there are many hidden assets in any village school which cannot be given an immediate value in pounds sterling, but I hope some guidance may he given in that respect.
I hope also that some encouragement might be given for the closest co-operation between all those who are involved in the rural community, including, for example, such bodies as CoSIRA which has done a splendid job for us all. It is no answer to say that Section 13 notices are published and there is a chance for objection. I believe that there ought to be positive encouragement for the closest co-operation between all the bodies which are involved in the rural community when the future of the village school is at stake.
I also hope that the policy can take clear account of the alternatives to closure. Some have already been mentioned; for example, the possibility of grouping under one head. That is nothing new for us. In the Church we have had to do very much the same kind of thing in regard to our very small country parishes. It can be done. It is not always popular but it can be done, and it is a way of enabling a

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rural institution to continue; and that, of course, can do a certain amount to offset the effects of Burnham and the financial discouragement which comes from that for the heads of small schools. But there are other alternatives; for example, the use of mobile resources for crafts, art, music and physical education. There is the community use of buildings in which the responsibility can be shared for things like adult education, help for the senior citizens, which is particularly the case in a village where there is a considerable number of retired people. These things need to be examined. They are not always possible, but very often they are a way of avoiding the closure of a village school while at the same time giving real help to the rural community as such.
There is one specific Church point which I feel I must raise. We are very sensitive in regard to the question of the closure of schools because the provisions of the Education Acts in effect mean that closure of a Church school is virtually irreversible. This situation does not apply in the case of a county school. This puts an added strain upon us. That is why I would ask that the policy should, as it were, recognise that fact and be sensitive towards the pressure which it does lay upon us.
As I say, I am very grateful for this debate. I do not believe it is simply about village schools and standards of education there, although those are very important. I believe it is ultimately a debate about the quality of life in our rural communities. I very much hope that the answers which the noble Baroness gives will reflect that, and that what she says may help to dispel some of the uncertainty from which our village schools are suffering.
8.21 p.m.
Lord POLWARTH: My Lords, we have heard speakers from places as far apart as Caithness and Devon, and of course the noble Marquess, to whom we are so grateful for asking this Question, spoke from the heartland of England. The problem is, therefore, widely spread throughout the country. I think his Question is most timely, following in the wake of your Lordships' decision last week on the question of school transport. His Question speaks of village schools.
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Perhaps, speaking as I do for the Border country of Scotland, I could point out that we have very few villages. We have isolated and scattered communities, in our case up and down the length of a valley some 15 miles long. There is no village. The focal point of the community is a grouping of the kirk, the manse, the village hall and the school and schoolhouse. They, together, are the heart of the community. I know the school fairly well; over half a century ago I was a pupil there. In those days the noble Baroness, Lady Young, would have had no problem over school transport because there was none. We walked, or, in my case—I suppose I was privileged—I rode there on a pony. That school today has just as excellent a teacher as the one who at that time dinned the three Rs and a good deal else into my thick head.
A few months ago in the very necessary search for economies our Education Department put out a proposal for the closure of 10 county primary schools in the Border region. When that proposal was made public there was a storm of protest, not just from the parents and the communities affected but from far wider, even from the town. It was one of the most spontaneous demonstrations of sincere feeling that I have ever seen. I am happy to say that democracy triumphed and the regional council in their wisdom decided to reprieve nine out of the 10 schools for the time being. Of course economies are needed; we all know that. But the figure we were given of the amount to be saved by these closures was minimal in relation to the education budget. Of course, it was a nice clean amputation and would appeal more to the official mind than a more arduous search for small economies throughout the educational system, not least in the administration.
It is not just a question of education, as others have said. These institutions are the heart of the community. They are interdependent. The closure of the school, I am certain, would have plucked out a vital part of the heart and it would have hastened the decay of the whole. The country areas have suffered a steady running-down in the services they enjoy and this has made life in the country more and more of a struggle, particularly for the old and those who cannot afford to run their own transport. For the young it increases the attractions of moving

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to the town. Take away the schools and you give one more discouragement. Young children will have to have long bus journeys. They will have to hang around after school waiting for the older classes to come out, and they will be exposed to what at the least I would call the perhaps less decorous and desirable habits to be picked up in town. The whole future of communities of this kind is, therefore, in the balance.
I think we should ask the question, do we want to preserve these communities and the way of life that they offer? I would say a thousand times, yes. We want to keep a sound farming industry, particularly in the hills, the raising of sheep and cattle, the maintaining of forestry in those areas, and the provision of recreational facilities. More and more people from the towns want to go to these areas, but they do not want to go to a desert; they want to go to a place where people live and work. Our own authority has been very active in this field, I am glad to say. I received an invitation last week to the opening of a riding route in the forest at the head of our valley, a very charming invitation addressed to me and my horse. Regretfully, owing to another commitment I had to reply that I was unable to accept, and my horse, who I have no doubt would be delighted to do so, would if unaccompanied he more likely to turn it into a rodeo than a ride-in.
If we want to keep this life of the communities and keep people living there, able to bring up their children in that environment, learning skills of their trades as they grow, along with the character and the qualities which so happily distinguish our country folk, then we have to do something about it. The key to keeping this state of affairs is that we do keep a framework of primary schools in the country, so that children at that most impressionable age are given the chance to learn the precious lessons of the countryside and to acquire a desire to live and work there, with all that can give, to complement our over-sophisticated and over-crowded urban life.
The noble Baroness may well say in her reply that this is primarily a task for the local authorities rather than central Government. That I can understand, and to a large extent it is indeed so. But I
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hope that she and her colleagues in Government, whether English, Scottish or Welsh, will give every possible help and encouragement to local authorities to pursue these very difficult tasks. If 1 may give one specific small suggestion that might be considered in conclusion, it is this. In our area a number of parents in the town have taken advantage of the freedom to send their children out to schools in the country. I know there are problems of transport, but some of them will do it at their own expense. I believe this is a policy which, if actively encouraged and if people were told it was possible, might lead to maintaining a viable population in a number of these country schools that might otherwise be closed.
8.29 p.m.
Lord DE CLIFFORD: My Lords, I also must thank the noble Marquess for raising this subject, which is one that is very dear to my heart. I can perhaps introduce another part of rural England and that is the Border counties of Wales. The vital part of this closing down of schools is in fact that when you close a school you condemn a village to its death. The county council come along and offer free bussing to the local school just for the time that the pupils who are there are still attending school. Anybody who comes in after that will have to pay. As the noble Lord, Lord Polwarth, said, this discourages any new person from coming in, because they have to educate their children. Also, in these Border counties, where the weather can be extremely rough, they do not want to expose their children to the hazards of the morning and evening movement.
I know that we shall be told by the noble Baroness that we must make economies and that the country must make cuts. Perhaps the noble Baroness will be kind and bear in mind, and perhaps, through her Department, she could convey to the county councils, that it would be very nice to see those cuts take place throughout the whole range of the administration of the Education Act. At present in our part of the world there is no knowledge of what actual cuts in staff, casual administration, or anything else, have been made by the county. It was said to me the other day that the cuts were all very well, but it had not been noticed that anyone had left the county hall. In fact, the particular gentleman said:"If

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everybody in the county hall sneezed at once, the damn place would fall flat ". Until one can get over to the people on the ground that these cuts are being started where they are being imposed on them, we shall never get anywhere with anything. That is absolutely vital.
The Development Commission are doing splendid work in our area. They have built factories everywhere. They are extremely well equipped and so on. But what are they doing? They are spending this money to put those factories in an area where the population is aging. They were put there to develop and bring on the young people in the area and provide them with employment so that they would not have to go to the urban areas for work, for their future and for their children. Continually, all down the Border areas and in Wales, where we have seen some very fiery protests, villages are being transformed into holiday areas and into commuter areas. Families are vanishing. The names in my area, such as Beddoes, Biggs and Link, are literally an aging population and they have been there for generations. One does not like to see them die. This will happen throughout the rural areas in England. They have been the backbone of this country, and the backbone of all the villages turns out to be the village school. When the noble Baroness replies, will she please give an explanation so that the people who live in these areas can understand why these things are being done'? At present it is right over their heads and there is a great deal of scepticism about everything that is being said.
8.34 p.m.
Lord INGLEWOOD: My Lords, not having put my name down on the list of speakers I shall try to be very brief and not repeat what other noble Lords have said. I have had the experience of being both a manager and, for many years, chairman of the type of small school about which the noble Lord, Lord Polwarth, has spoken. That school was founded 250 years ago and endowed by people of the parish and has been of immense importance to this small scattered community for that length of time. It was paid for by the local people out of their own pockets, and they even put a little aside, leaving us with a small endowment.
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Yet there appears nowadays to be no safeguard against the changes of policy which we have experienced over the past few years. Ever since the war, or so it seems to me, there has been a change of policy about these small schools every three years or so. This cannot be good for education any more than for these small communities. Underlying that, there has been the feeling, certainly among certain officials, that big is better; but I do not believe that it is so. The noble Marquess, Lord Salisbury, has spoken about it. I believe that the feeling still exists, although it may not be as strong today as it used to he. The figures produced to local boards of managers when the closure of these schools is under consideration sometimes seem to lack the honesty that one would like to see in British administration. The base figures on which these calculations are made are chosen so that they favour the case of those who wish to close village schools.
I think that a great hope rests in what has been called"federation ", a certain moving around both of teachers—we have done this for music for long enough, and I do not see why it should not continue—and of children when it is necessary to have elaborate equipment for the particular instruction which it is uneconomic and foolish to repeat in, say, every one of three schools when it seems best for one school to have a room so fitted out and the children taken there in turn.
I also feel, along with many parents of young children, that it must be bad for small children to travel long distances in a rowdy bus, and I underline"rowdy ". Hardly a school bus in this country is not a rowdy bus. Surely, for very small children, it is best that they should know their school well: it should be part of their life; it should be near their home and a place where their parents go to and meet them from time to time.
I must not take up any more time. I only want the noble Baroness to tell us that she is clear about the future of these village schools. We must have an end to this chopping and changing, about whether we shall close fewer or more, and whether it will be this year, next year or sometime. That can only be bad for education and we have suffered from it for too long. The convenience of teachers

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and officials is something that we must not overlook, but I am sure that it should not be allowed to come in front of the education of children and the general effect on country life.
8.38 p.m.
Lord NEWALL: My Lords, I owe the House an apology for not putting my name down on the list of speakers, but I was not sure that I would be back in town in time for the debate. I must admit that I agree with every speaker so far. I live in a very small village in the country, quite near to where my noble friend sitting on the Front Bench lives. We do not have a school; we do not have a pub; we do not have a shop, and now they are talking of closing down the school in the next village.
At this late hour I do not want to go into details of the enormously excellent scholastic record of this school, or to discuss the way the parents have painted the school, or even to say how useful the school building is to many other aspects of holding the village together. But I want to generalise slightly in my belief that the village is an essential part of our life today. There is a quality of life in the country which one cannot find in the towns. There are long distances to be covered; there are large open spaces; there are very few taxis; the buses run very infrequently and everything is rather far away from everything else.
If we refer particularly, as I shall, to the five to nine year-olds who are less able to look after themselves, I wonder how, when these village schools are closed, they will be looked after properly. They will often be asked to catch a bus that arrives at the school half an hour before the older children arrive and often half an hour before the teachers arrive. Who will look after them? If they become sick, how will they get home? There is probably only one car in the family and the father may well have taken that to work. How will they cope with that situation? The playgroups will not happen. The after-school activities will only happen for those children whose parents have the time, energy and possibly the money and resources to take their children to those schools. There will be a great many more problems
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In my opinion the local school has a family atmosphere. It is often allied to the church, although it need not be denominational. I believe that it does a lot of good for handicapped children and can cope with them where a larger school cannot. To my mind the school is the core of a village. I agree with so much that has been said about the transportation of young children with older children, which has just been mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood. Why should these young children he subjected to the unruliness that is hound to take place with older children?
I hope that this evening my noble friend can give us some encouragement for those children who have to start their early life in a rural atmosphere so that we do not shove them into some distant, crowded school. If we believe in educating our children, it is essential to prevent the erosion of village schools, for the consequences will spread into a great many areas and homes and cause much resentment and often hardship.
8.40 p.m.
Baroness DAVID: My Lords, I am sure that we are all extremely grateful to the noble Marquess for having asked this Question this evening and for his extremely well-informed speech. I am sure that no one wants to close village schools. They are cosy for the children, convenient for the parents, and centres of community life for the village. There are very many advantages, many of which we have heard tonight; the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Truro mentioned many of them, and the importance of a school in that it may encourage the village shop and so on. The young mother, who may be a newcomer to the village, will meet other mothers as she takes and fetches her child to and from school; she will make friends who will prevent her feeling lonely. The children can mix easily, both in and out of school; the playground and equipment can he used out of school hours and at weekends—at least I hope that that would happen.
Politicians and councillors do close schools, but it is always reluctantly because closures make them very unpopular and they lose votes. Parents, of course, do not want their small children to have to travel by bus (this point has been made

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[Baroness David.]
several times) and this is inevitable if a village school is closed. Almost inevitably the distance from home means that the child cannot get home for a mid-day meal, which is not only cheaper for the parents but much more restful for a small child; a long day with other children is exhausting for five to seven year-olds.
Quite recently, I heard of a meeting of East Anglian chief education officers where the subject of small schools was discussed. It seems that although there are very many small schools in Suffolk, Norfolk and Bedfordshire, the councillors simply will not face the problem at all. Apparently Bedfordshire has 15 schools which have under 30 pupils on the roll and it has one school with only nine pupils. However, the chairman of Cambridgeshire County Council is at least keen to examine all schools with fewer than 50 pupils on the roll.
The noble Marquess mentioned the Plowden Report recommending a three-class school of 50 pupils as the minimum effective unit under normal circumstances. I am aware that Lady Plowden has since changed her mind a little. I do not know whether the whole committee has changed its mind or whether it is simply her personal opinion, but I shall be extremely interested to hear what the noble Baroness, Lady Young, has to say about this. As 1981 approaches, with new county council elections, I fully expect there to be an even greater reluctance to look seriously at the problem and there will probably be fewer schools closed. However, I agree with very many speakers that the uncertainty needs to be removed, and we look forward very much to hearing what is the Government's policy.
I shall be so bold as to say that I think there is a problem, both educational and financial. I should like us to look at it, first, from the point of view of the staff, the children, and the learning opportunities of the children. Of course, a village school can be of quite a reasonable size, but as the subject of this debate is the closing of small village schools, I am thinking of numbers in the region of 30 to 40. A school of that size would probably have two members of staff and maybe, if lucky, a little bit of part-time help. It is unlikely that those two staff members can be expert in every subject that our very
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good primary schools cover nowadays; one thinks of music, science, arts and crafts, physical education as well as the three Rs. The staff 's opportunities for discussing their work with their colleagues, as happens in larger staff-rooms where there can be lively and informed exchanges, will be limited.
I was talking to a friend who had been chairman of the Cambridgeshire Primary Committee when about 30 small schools were being looked at in depth. She said that one of the things that struck her most as she went round—and it was commented on often—was how isolated the heads of small schools felt. The staff's opportunities for co-operating in team efforts, as can be done when there is a fairly large staff, will again be limited, so that flexibility in size of teaching groups will also be limited.
As for the children, their opportunities for social relationships on a broad front will be restricted. The impact of different personalities on them will be reduced, as there will be few adults to relate to professionally. There will be less likelihood of benefiting from the particular skills of subject teachers. A poor teacher, or one with limited horizons, will have a proportionately greater effect because of the length of time and extent of contact with a child. If there should be incompatibility between child and teacher, the effects will be greater because there will be little chance for the child to get away from the teacher. Of course, the opposite is true if you happen to have a very good teacher, but you must look at the other possibilities too.
The children's opportunities for participation in general school activities—for example, in an orchestra or team games—will be restricted, as will clubs and groups for children with similar interests, because of the small numbers of children and staff. As for equipment, larger pieces may well be too expensive to be bought out of capitation and may, even if bought, not be fully used. There will often be limited facilities and equipment for the practical subjects.
Therefore, educational opportunities may well be much poorer in a very small school. I was told by an education officer not long ago of a visit he paid to a school near Newmarket with 20 on the roll and with two members of staff.

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That, of course, is quite extravagant for 20 children. If you have to provide two teachers for 20 pupils, other larger schools may have to manage with a not so good pupil-teacher ratio. However, to return to the small village school, one of the staff had eight infants in one room, and the other 12 children, aged from seven to 11 plus, were in the other. The education officer said that at one table in the room where the older pupils were, were four children—one aged seven and another, a great tall, strapping adolescent lad of 11 plus. It would have to be a very able teacher, indeed, to manage both those at the same time. And what opportunities would there be for that boy to have any chance to play games with his age group? So much for educational opportunities.
Now for cost. It is impossible to have just one member of staff for even the smallest school. Arrangements must be made to cover the possibility of a child having an accident and having to be rushed off to hospital. Therefore, financially, small schools bear a high cost. I am in total agreement with many speakers who have said that accurate costing is very difficult, but I think that we can get somewhere near it. I remember a year or so ago that we had debate on rural deprivation, when the noble Baroness, Lady Elliot of Harwood—who unfortunately is not here tonight—told a story of when she was chairman of the Education Committee, and she said that reluctantly she had had to close a small school because she found that the cost per pupil was about the same as that of sending a boy to Eton.
At the weekend I found a paper on the size and organisation of primary schools; in fact, it was a paper written about four years ago, and it gave the estimates of annual costs. Although it is some four years old and the figures may be out of date, I am sure that the ratio between those figures is about the same. The estimated net cost per pupil in a junior mixed and infants with 480 on the roll was £273: 28, and for a junior mixed and infants with 80 on the roll it was £412: 38—more than half as much again. I have some figures from Bedfordshire, a county which I mentioned earlier. In 1976–77 at one of their schools with 16 on the roll the average cost was apparently £880 per child and the average for all primary schools in the county was £371.
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I would say that the educational and financial disadvantages of the small school have to be weighed very seriously against the benefits of a school close to home, with the intimacy which that gives, the confidence to the child and the adverse effects on the life of small communities if the school closes. There are, of course, opportunities for experiment, and I think that they should be taken. In Cambridge-shire four or five years ago we tried a federation of four small schools in neighbouring villages to which the noble Marquess referred. There were then 30 to 40 children in each school and the federation worked under one head. That worked well for two or three years, but I have just heard that the total numbers are now down to 100, that they are expected to drop to 70, and that two of those four schools will shortly have to close. But that of course is no reason why similar experiments should not be made. Cluster schools, they are sometimes called.
Some LEAs have introduced different schemes to help village schools. Minivans act as mobile resource units or classrooms for art, music, crafts and remedial work, providing extra resources. Peripatetic teachers travel round supplementing the existing teacher force, and I believe that we shall have to ask teachers to move around very much more to help with the subjects where special expertise is necessary, like music. Groups of small schools can get together themselves to share experience, or sophisticated equipment and staff. Northamptonshire has set up a Small School Enrichment Project whereby £50,000 was allocated to seven small schools to build up a central pool of equipment, including a tine-camera and a minibus. Cumbria has a teacher resource centre for isolated schools. Schools can use their spare capacity to become educational and social centres for the whole community, providing nursery education, play groups, adult education, and recreation and other facilities for youth. But admirable and delightful as it is to have a community school, for that is what such schools are called, it does not solve the immediate educational problem of the fives to elevens.
Closure should obviously be handled with great care and delicacy, and the issues explained clearly to parents and those involved. Some heads fully under-

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stand the problem and co-operate: others resist, as you might expect. Timing is important. The retirement of a head is a good moment. Pressure groups will press. The national Press may be brought in. In a case where I was involved with the closing of Madingley School—Madingley is a village about three miles from Cambridge—there was quite a lot in the national Press and a lot of pressures were brought to hear. There were then 21 children on roll and 10 of them, it turned out, did not live in the village; they were driven out from Cambridge by car every day. Perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Polwarth, would approve of that.
But the very university people who had fought successfully against planning per-mission to be given to build more houses—houses that would have provided more children in the village—saying they would spoil the beauty and character of the place, were of course the very first to complain, and the loudest to complain, when the threat came to close the school. The Minister did in fact support closure. There was an excellent new school just two miles away with plenty of space for the children. but a private buyer bought the old school building and Madingley School is now being run by private enterprise, and it will be extremely interesting to see how it fares over the next few years.
There can be no doubt that local education authorities and councillors face very tough opposition almost always when they tackle closures. But we do have to look at the facts. The primary age population is projected to decline from 4.9 million in 1973 to 3 3 million in 1986. In 1977, 88 primary schools were closed; in 1978, 77 were closed, and 49 of these were in rural and 28 in urban areas. Last year 46 were closed; 21 in rural, and 25 in urban areas. So the problem is not just in the villages.
There must always be a clear assessment of the educational, the social, the financial advantages and disadvantages of keeping very small schools open, and these were the criteria that the noble Marquess mentioned. I think that they should be assessed in that order: educational, social, financial. I shall be interested to hear what line the Government take about the financial advantages of closure, and remember those really rather extraordinary Bedfordshire figures that I quoted.
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I should like to say one thing about administrators. They have been attacked. They were attacked during the debates we had on the Education Bill last week, and they have been attacked tonight. 1 think they need standing up for a bit. Certainly the ones I have worked with work extremely hard. They have taken severe cuts. They seem to work an enormous amount of overtime, and I do not think they are so bad as they are very often painted. I have some sympathy for them. I have no doubt that we shall hear from the Minister about the heavy cost of bussing children to a neighbouring village, but I suspect that on educational grounds there can often be very good reasons for closure of the very small primary school; and I think I am probably in a minority tonight when I say that
8.55 p.m.
The MINISTER of STATE, DEPARTMENT of EDUCATION and SCIENCE (Baroness Young): My Lords, I share with other noble Lords who have spoken this evening the gratitude of us all for the opportunity presented by the noble Marquess, Lord Salisbury, to debate the important issue of the closure of village schools. I am grateful to him for writing to me and giving me notice of the questions that he wished to raise this evening. This subject is frequently raised in correspondence from all parts of the country, and I have many letters to write on the subject, and I have seen a number of deputations. On the size of schools, I am reminded of one I saw recently; a deputation from a primary school for children aged five to 11 in which there were only 18 pupils. This was being defended very strongly. It was complete with the most attractive hook of photographs of the entire school in all their activities, plus a petition signed by every single one of them.
Everybody understands the attachment which people feel to these schools. If I may say right at the start, I much admired Lady David's brave speech. Having attempted something in your Lordships' House last week. I feel it is exceptionally brave of me to get up and say anything again, but perhaps it would be right if I attempted to set out at the beginning of my remarks some of the problems which confront local education

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authorities and some of the reasons why they close small village schools. It is not, I can assure your Lordships, out of any malice aforethought, or desire to do people down; it is a most difficult, a most unpopular, and a most complicated process to go through, and no one would embark on it if they did not believe that it was something which ought to be done.
Your Lordships will be aware that a dominating concern in current educational policy is the continuing decline in pupil numbers. By the end of the decade the size of the school population will have fallen by a quarter. Changes on this scale present wholly new challenges and problems to the education service. Inevitably the number of school places has had to be reduced substantially over the country as a whole; and the Government's expenditure plans assume that 750,000 surplus places nationally will have been taken out of use by 1982. However, and this is most important, of these there will be many in the urban and surburban areas where the fall in the population will be the greatest. However, rural areas will necessarily be affected as well.
It was against this background of falling numbers that Circular 5/77 was issued by the Department of Education and Science in June 1977. This asked local education authorities to make the most realistic assessment possible of future school population trends in their own areas and then, in consultation with all those concerned, to examine systematically the educational opportunities offered to children in their schools, and to consider how the premises might best be used.
There is no reliable data on the number of village school closures before 1978, but the estimate is that around 1,000 village based schools were closed in the 12 years preceding the Plowden Report in 1967; that is to say, between 1955 and 1967. About 660 were closed between the publication of the Plowden Report in 1967 and 1974, and about 275 since then. These figures would suggest that the number of closures of rural schools is declining. Indeed, the figures that the noble Baroness, Lady David, has just given, which I confirm, show that there were 49 rural schools closed in 1978 and 26 in 1979. This was compared with 39 urban schools closed in 1979.
Lord POLWARTH: My Lords, are those figures solely for England, or England and Wales, or do they include Scotland?
Baroness YOUNG: I apologise, my Lords; I should have made that clear. They are for England and Wales only. I am sorry but I do not have the Scottish figures. What the figures show for England and Wales is that the rate of decline of village schools is levelling off and that there is an increase in the coming closures of schools in urban areas, and I think the reason for the decline in the population of urban areas is not only the general fall in the school population but the movement of the population out of the inner cities into the suburbs, which compounds the fall in the school population.
I greatly sympathise with all those who are concerned to preserve what is best in small schools. I have had the opportunity over the last nine months to visit a number of such schools and I have been greatly impressed by what I have seen. There are undoubtedly great advantages in small village schools, and indeed every noble Lord who has spoken has referred to these. Many children flourish in their caring atmosphere; teachers get to know their pupils extremely well and smaller classes give more opportunities for individual attention. Such schools are often centrally placed in the village so that most children can walk there and have time to return home for lunch, although a substantial minority live in outlying areas. Parents, too, benefit from the regular social contact with other parents and the teachers, which can happen very easily when the school constitutes a focal point in the community.
All these things are very important indeed to a small community straining to retain its identity in times of severe external pressures which often tend towards the break-up of village life. I felt it was an important point made by the right reverend Prelate the Lord Bishop of Truro that vandalism was much less frequent in the villages, and that too, I think, shows the advantages of life in a village and of the value of the village school.
Village primary schools, therefore, can be very good schools indeed, but one

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must be realistic and say that this is not the condition of every one of them. The fact is that a small number of teachers in a school makes it difficult to provide a full curriculum and it makes it particularly difficult to provide sufficient expertise in all parts of the curriculum. I am only too well aware that expert opinion can vary, and I listened with great care to what the noble Marquess gave in the various reports he quoted. But the recent survey by Her Majesty's Inspectorate of primary education in England concluded, on the basis of very wide-ranging investigations, that there was clear evidence that the performance of children suffered when classes of mixed age groups of 25 or more children had to be introduced, and this of course is frequently the case in small village schools.
The small classes of some rural schools make it possible to reduce the disadvantage of mixed age groups, but at the expense of very favourable and costly pupil-teacher ratios. It is especially difficult in these small schools to compensate for the lack of stimulus from a sizeable and varied peer group unless, and again it is expensive, frequent opportunities are given for children from two or more schools to meet, work and play together. Staffing, as well, in these schools can present problems. There are some excellent teachers in small rural schools and, where there are, the children are doubly fortunate. In other places the resignation of one out of two or three teachers can cause considerable upheaval and, at the other extreme, the whole staff of a school can remain unchanged for many years and in some cases grow to discuss and develop some new ideas. Teachers need contact with other teachers and they need to be stimulated to think of new ideas. So, whereas if you have a good teacher you can be very fortunate indeed, a poor teacher can mean generations of children suffering in a difficult situation.
At this point it might be helpful if I said something about small rural secondary schools, although the numbers of closures of these is very small indeed, four in 1978 and none in 1979. The advantages of such small schools are similar to those of the small primary schools; teachers can get to know their
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pupils extremely well and the school can become a focal point in the community. The disadvantages are the restrictions which may be placed on the curriculum unless the local education authority is able to provide very generous staffing. The recent Survey of Aspects of Secondary Education in England carried out by Her Majesty's Inspectorate produced evidence that the smallest comprehensive schools were more generously staffed than larger schools of the same type.
However, the range of subjects offered in years four and five was restricted in these very small schools, which were able to provide only limited opportunities in modern and classical languages and the separate sciences. Small schools did not always have the specialist teachers to teach these subjects and, where they did, much of their teaching time was devoted to the relatively small numbers of pupils who wished to take these subjects and were capable of doing so. It must be recognised that a small school which has only a very few able pupils may not always have the appropriate specialist teachers to meet their potential needs. As with primary schools, therefore, in considering the closure of small secondary schools it is necessary to set any social or other problems which may arise against the wider educational opportunities which can be offered to the pupils in a larger school.
I turn to the question of finance. Small schools are costly to run. Where they are retained, therefore, parents should recognise that the subsidy afforded to their children's schools is at the expense of other schools and other aspects of the education service within the authority. I was asked for some figures, and great cost arises on unit costs in these schools. Recent research indicates that unit costs rise very rapidly for schools with 50 or fewer pupils on roll, and they may be summarised in this way: 50 or more on roll, under £400; 40 on roll, £425; 30 on roll, £550; 20 on roll, £625; 10 on roll, £950; and fewer than 10 on the roll, £1,200 or more. This gives some indication of how very rapidly unit costs rise as the numbers of pupils decline, and of course in a situation in which local education authorities arc having to look at their expenditure, having schools with empty places, they will inevitably look at these kind of figures.

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May I once more say a few words about administration. The fact is that local education authorities spend only 3½ per cent. of their budgets on administration, and that over the last five years expenditure on administration has fallen nationally, by some £40 million, or 10 per cent. So I think it is only fair to say that local education authorities, in looking for economies, have indeed looked at administration among other matters that they need to consider.
In all this it is very necessary to think positively about what is the best way to proceed. The noble Marquess, Lord Salisbury, the noble Baroness, Lady David, and other noble Lords talked about the experiments that are being conducted at present to federate a number of primary schools as a single school under one head, but which continue to use a building in each of the participating villages. This kind of scheme is being tried by a number of authorities. The most well-known is the one based on Cheveley, in Cambridgeshire, to which many of your Lordships have referred. In this scheme teachers travel between the schools and the children come together for some group activity, such as sports. I was interested to hear what the noble Baroness, Lady David, said about this particular scheme, because the fact is that with the fall in the school population, even under these arrangements there can come a point when numbers run down to such an extent that in one or more of the schools it will not make educational or economic sense if the pupils are not transferred to another school. Nevertheless, the Government welcome these experiments, and believe that they should be encouraged, as indeed should any other experiments of this nature, which enable us to keep in being groups of village schools which otherwise would have to be closed.
The noble Lord, Lord Polwarth, suggested that one of the options against closing a school might be to allow parents to opt for that particular school, and he will I am sure be interested to know that in the Education (No. 2) Bill, currently going through the House, we make provision by statute for parents to be able to express a preference for a school and for there to be automatic recoupment between authorities. This could well help some of these schools.
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I am sure that these experiments are worth making. There may be no great financial savings involved, and indeed many are more expensive to run than the original schools, but they provide a way of overcoming some of the educational disadvantages of isolation found by both teachers and pupils in the very small village schools. A number of noble Lords referred to the uncertainty about the future of village schools, which causes such anxiety to parents. I am only too well aware that proposals to close a school cause considerable and understandable local reaction. Small village schools often have a long and honourable history, and have contributed greatly to the area the children of which they have educated. However, I must make it clear to the House that it is the local education authorities, not the department, nor indeed the Secretary of State, or any Ministers, who make proposals for closure of schools. It is for the local education authorities to do this, and they do so I believe with the interests of the local area in mind.
I should like to say that following the proposals, the publication of the notices and the opportunity for objection, the Secretary of State, in deciding such proposals, looks at each one on its merits, and in every case the overriding consideration must be the educational welfare of the
children concerned. In coming to this conclusion all the arguments that I set out earlier in my remarks must be considered, so as to include the value of the small village school, as well as the problems that are created by having very small numbers of both pupils and teachers.
We are all concerned that closures should not lead to a reduction in the quality of educational provision. Therefore, consideration must be, and always is, given to any social and denominational factors or other considerations which may arise. The decision to make a proposal to close a village school does not lie with the Secretary of State; it is a local decision. But we must recognise that there arc circumstances in which the decision has to be made. I am encouraged, and I hope that other noble Lords may be encouraged, too, by reports of parents who originally opposed a school closure, but who now accept that there is a better opportunity for their children in a larger school, even if it is a little farther away from where they live.

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The debate has ranged over a far larger number of questions relating to the countryside beyond those connected with the village schools. It has touched upon rural deprivation and on the whole future of village life. This is not I believe the moment to discuss these matters, and I hope that on another occasion the House may have an opportunity to debate the wide range of issues. I believe that one of the difficulties that we are suffering today arises from the fact that we are reaping the cumulative effects of a very long process which started possibly with the Industrial Revolution, and which we feel today in the way that has been shown. All sorts of problems are raised by the whole question of village life and the country, but I should like to assure the House that in considering any closure of a village school the Secretary of State balances carefully the needs of the village and its community as well as the educational needs of the children involved.
Lord MACKIE of BENSHIE: My Lords, before the noble Baroness finally sits down, would she tell us whether the school at which they took the pictures and where everyone signed the petition is still open?
Baroness YOUNG: My Lords, I think the school is still open. I think I am right in saying that it was during the statutory period of objection that this information came to the department.

WESLEYS CHAPEL, CITY ROAD, BILL
Brought from the Commons, read la, and referred to the Examiners.