Lords Sitting of 14 December 1981

Preamble
The House met at half-past two of the clock: The CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES on the Woolsack.
Prayers—Read by the Lord Bishop of Carlisle.

COSIRA: Incentives for New Businesses
Baroness Vickers: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what encouragement they have given to the Council for Small Industries in Rural Areas to create new business and employment.
The Earl of Avon: My Lords, assistance in the establishment of new businesses and opportunities for employment in rural England is central to the functions of the council and of its parent body, the Development Commission. Her Majesty's Government provide the funds for these activities, which have their wholehearted support and encouragement.
Baroness Vickers: My Lords, in thanking the noble Earl for that reply, may I ask him this. In view of the fact that, from 3rd February 1981, COSIRA has been able to act as lender of last resort to small firms in manufacturing and service industries, can he also say how many they have been able to advise and how many have been successful?
The Earl of Avon: My Lords, as my noble friend has asked the question, this information is not readily available, but I can say that COSIRA is in contact
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with some 12,000 small firms employing about 74,000 people.
Lord Northfield: My Lords, have the Government completed their review of the work of the parent Development Commission, and would the noble Earl and the Government welcome a debate on the outcome of that review, since these matters of rural development are of great concern to your Lordships' House?
The Earl of Avon: My Lords, indeed I agree with the noble Lord that these are matters which concern this House very much. Decisions on the main recommendations have been delayed for a number of reasons. However, some review recommendations, such as those mentioned by my noble friend, have already been implemented. So far as a debate is concerned, of course that would be dealt with through the normal channels.
Lord Oram: My Lords, since it is widely agreed that COSIRA is cost-effective in its work, and over the years has built up a valuable fund of expertise, is there not a case for it to have more resources than at present, and for it to be relieved of its present geographical constraints so that it could operate in larger towns and perhaps even in collaboration with local authorities in inner city areas?
The Earl of Avon: My Lords, the Government have provided, and will continue to provide, adequate resources for both the bodies. So far as the regional question is concerned, I am sure that when the review comes out that will be taken into account.

Glue Sniffing
2.41 p.m.
Baroness Phillips: 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 introduce regulations to control the sale of "glue-sniffing" solvents to young people.
Lord Lyell: My Lords, there are no powers under consumer safety legislation to control the sale of glue-sniffing solvents to young people, but even if there were the Government would consider their use unjustified. There is a very wide range of products containing what we call "sniffable" solvents, and of shops that sell them. Enforcement of a ban or other controls would probably prove ineffective, and it would be hard to justify any particular age limit.
Baroness Phillips: My Lords, while I thank the Minister for that reply, I would like to point out to him—or rather to ask whether he is aware—that the regulations on the sale of alcohol and cigarettes, and indeed the sale of fireworks, have contributed greatly, in the case of fireworks, to the prevention of accidents, and, in the case of alcohol and cigarettes, to preventing young people buying them. It cannot be beyond the wit of the Government to devise some way in which regulations can control this very serious matter, from which young people have suffered not only brain damage but other ill effects.
Lord Lyell: My Lords, the noble Baroness is perfectly right to point out that fireworks, alcohol and cigarettes are all readily identifiable. But, as I am sure she and noble Lords will appreciate, the solvents which give rise to these sniffable products are, I understand—not having tried the practice myself yet—from the Government's inquiries very widely distributed indeed. We believe that it would not be in the best interests of the young people, first of all, to publicise the dangers of solvent sniffing, and, secondly, to try to make sniffing illegal.
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, bearing in mind that other forms of medicine have eliminated the noxious contents of the medicine, is it not possible for glue to be made without containing the troublesome constituent, if that is the right word?
Lord Lyell: My Lords, I, too, was interested in this proposition, but I was informed that so wide is the band of products which can give rise to sniffing or other forms of inhalation that even if foul-smelling or other noxious additives were added to these products the substitution effect would be readily in evidence.
Lord Campbell of Alloway: My Lords, is my noble friend the Minister aware that if the Government were to seek to control this practice of glue sniffing young people would only turn to sniffing something else?
Baroness Phillips: My Lords, I should like to suggest to the noble Lord that perhaps that is the discipline of despair. I would ask the Minister whether he is aware that, despite the information he has received, there are in fact certain very popular solvents, and, while the range may be great, it cannot be impossible at least to limit it.
Lord Lyell: My Lords, we believe that any limitation upon the sale of what the noble Baroness describes as popular solvents is best left to the individual trader, or, far better, education by police, parents, teachers and others taking a much more personal line with the possible young sniffers.
Lord Leatherland: My Lords, when the Minister takes some steps to control sniffing, by order, will he leave people free, as they are now, to sniff at the present
Government?
The Earl of Selkirk: My Lords, is it not possible to give some warning notice as regards those sniffable substances which may have adverse effects?
Lord Lyell: My Lords, we believe that that would tend to exacerbate the problem, since to young and fertile minds it would indicate, first, a form of dare and, secondly, the products which put them most at risk.
Lord Harris of Greenwich: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that, although recognising that there are problems in terms of administering any controls that might be introduced, there is grave anxiety among many chief officers of police about the misuse of glue in the circumstances outlined in the noble Baroness's Question? Is the Home Office involved in discussions within Government on this matter?
Lord Lyell: My Lords, while accepting that there may be and, indeed, is grave anxiety on the part of many others besides chief officers of police as regards this problem, I would stress to the noble Lord and, indeed, to the House, that we take the problem very seriously, and, as a first step, the Government have been a co-sponsor of a recent seminar and conference of researchers and practitioners into this very problem at Guy's Hospital.
Lord Balfour of Inchrye: My Lords, does the noble Lord agree that the best way of dealing with this problem is not by prohibition but by parental example and education showing the results of glue sniffing and making the young realise the evils of the substance which they are tempted to use?
Lord Lyell: My Lords, my noble friend has encapsulated everything that the Government would wish to see. Quite apart from parental example, I hope that the noble Lord and parents around your Lordships will not be seen sniffing the solvents themselves, because it can have a deleterious effect upon adults as well.
Lord Molloy: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that young people do not necessarily have to purchase the glue that they sniff? In my experience of being involved with this matter when I was in another place —and I am bound to say to the noble Lord that if he has seen young people who have been glue sniffing he will realise that it is hardly a laughing matter—the trouble is that far too often we never arrive at the frontiers of understanding until we ourselves are personally involved and can see these things. However, is the noble Lord aware that young people can get

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hold of industrial glue from tips and such areas near large industry where the stuff is dumped? They do not even have to purchase it. I should have thought that perhaps an appeal could be sent to industrialists asking them not to tip used glue containers but to destroy them in another way.
Lord Lyell: My Lords, I would stress again that the Government believe that the sniffing of these solvents is best dealt with throughout the community by education and by the persuasion of parents and teachers and health, youth and social workers and, indeed, the police.
Lord Bruce of Donington: My Lords, would the noble Lord agree that it would be a fair summary of his replies to my noble friend Baroness Phillips that the Government are not going to do anything about it?
Lord Lyell: My Lords, one day in the very distant future perhaps the noble Lord may have an opportunity to express a view on behalf of a Government, but until then I would hope that he would be able to read what I have said and allow me to answer the Question.
Lord Swinfen: My Lords, would my noble friend consider the possibility of controlling the sale of instant glues to small children, because they also are extremely dangerous?
Lord Lyell: My Lords, I shall have to take advice on the question of instant glue and the purposes to which instant glue is put. I just wonder whether it is definitely connected with the Question on the Order Paper.

Southern Thule: Argentinian Presence
2.48 p.m.
Lord Mottistonc: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether the Argentinians are still in occupation of British territory in Southern Thule and what action has been taken to expel them since a similar Question, put to the previous Government, was answered in this House on 10th May 1978 [Col. 976].
The Secretary of State for Foreign and Common wealth Affairs (Lord Carrington): My Lords, I can confirm that there is still an Argentine scientific station on Southern Thule. The Government have repeatedly protested to the Argentine Government about this illegal presence. I can assure your Lordships that Britain's legal position is fully protected. This is one of the matters which my honourable friend the Minister of State intends to take up again at his discussions with the Argentine representatives on 18th and 19th December.
Lord Mottistone: My Lords, while I thank my noble friend very much for his full Answer, would he not agree that something rather more positive and robust, as was indicated some three and a half years ago, would be appropriate, particularly to allay the fears of the people in the Falkland Islands, in whose vicinity this particular place is?
Lord Carrington: My Lords, if my noble friend is suggesting the use of force, he will recollect that international law and the United Nations Charter require disputes to be settled by peaceful means. That is what we have been trying to do, but there should be no misunderstanding by the people of the Falkland Islands about what we think of this occupation, this presence, on Southern Thule or of our pledge to the people of the Falkland Islands.
Lord Morris: My Lords, I should like to ask my noble friend the Foreign Secretary whether the scientific personnel on the island of Southern Thule are properly equipped to fulfil their scientific role to a normal standard and, in addition, whether there are any military personnel or personnel in uniform on Southern Thule?
Lord Carrington: My Lords, according to the Argentines, there are 11 people on Southern Thule —seven naval scientists and four civilians, three of whom are radio technicians and one a meteorologist.
Lord Mottistone: My Lords, will my noble friend not agree that there is a need to reassure the people of the Falkland Islands, and could he perhaps give me some pointer on that?
Lord Carrington: My Lords, I do not know what my noble friend wants to reassure the Falkland Islands about. I thought I said in my answer to his original supplementary question that the Falkland Islanders should be in no doubt about the commitment of this country to them and the pledge that we have made to them on a number of occasions.

Wheel Clamps: Use by the Police
2.51 p.m.
Lord Morris: 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 whom they propose to consult before coming to a decision on the use by the police of wheel clamps on illegally parked cars.
The Earl of Avon: My Lords, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Transport has invited views on this proposal from the public generally; from local authority associations and others with an interest in the enforcement of traffic regulations; and from a wide range of representative organisations of road users, including motorists and freight and public transport operators.
Lord Morris: My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that Answer. Are Her Majesty's Government considering consulting the Parisian authorities, who have had a great deal of experience in the use of these particular wheel braces before they actually abandoned their use? Furthermore, is my noble friend aware that the attachment of what most normal people regard as their second most valuable asset would be seen as a repugnant erosion of the freedom of the individual?
The Earl of Avon:My Lords, as I said in my original response, we shall be consulting widely and I shall take note of what my noble friend has said.
Lord Nugent of Guildford:My Lords, is my noble friend aware that at the present time the major traffic arteries in central London are so badly choked by illegally parked cars on yellow lines and double-yellow lines that they are becoming a serious handicap for movement of traffic? Is he aware that some additional measure is now urgently needed in order to check this very high degree of illegal parking?
The Earl of Avon:My Lords, I am, indeed, aware of what my noble friend says, and I am sure that this is one of the considerations which will be taken into account.
Lord Underhill:My Lords, does the noble Earl recall the debate on this matter during the Committee stage of the Transport Bill only this year, when his noble friend Lord Bellwin said he believed that the Metropolitan Police consider that this would be a very useful means of dealing with illegal parking? Is there any possibility of this matter being dealt with in time for inclusion in the forthcoming Transport Bill?
The Earl of Avon:My Lords, indeed I recall the debate on 11th June last during which I think the noble Lord's noble friend Lady Denington raised this question. This is one of the matters which has stimulated the review which is now taking place. As regards whether we can get this in time for the next Bill, that will depend on whether or not it is acceptable to the various parties.
The Earl of Onslow:My Lords, can my noble friend advise the House whether it is true that the number of traffic wardens in central London has diminished? At the moment it is practically impossible to find even a double yellow line on which to park, let alone a parking space. Is my noble friend also aware that the vast majority of people who illegally park do not get tickets, and that unless they get tickets people will continue to park illegally? I am afraid to say that sometimes I have even been known to be guilty myself.
The Earl of Avon:My Lords, I am very sorry to hear of my noble friend's confession in this matter. Of course, I never do so myself. The Metropolitan Police are trying to recruit more wardens, but I am afraid that far too many motorists simply ignore parking tickets. If the police were allowed to use wheel clamps, they would try them out first in areas
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where most of the illegal parking is by persistent offenders.
Lord Paget of Northampton:My Lords, do you not have both through traffic, where a city is used as a through road, which requires no parking, and internal traffic which requires parking? The traffic regulations are not for absolute obedience; they would be an intolerable nuisance if they were. We have zigzag marks which mean no parking. We have yellow lines which mean, park, but it may cost you something. Is the noble Earl aware that, if he included me among those who were consulted, I should immediately go into business to provide a "cutter-off" as a useful accessory to the car, and would use it?
The Earl of Avon:My Lords, I am most grateful for the noble Lord's comments. I am sure that they will be borne much in mind.
Baroness Denington:My Lords, will the noble Earl agree that there is the utmost resistance to road-widening in London? I think that this is perhaps a matter to which every noble Lord in this House would subscribe, because this is an ancient city of great character and we do not want it destroyed, nor do we want houses pulled down. But the traffic problem in London is very serious and some people just do not—perhaps they are not London residents—seem to care for the communal weal. Something must be done about it, even if it means putting a harmless clamp on their wheels.
The Earl of Avon:My Lords, I think that everything would be greatly eased if everyone actually obeyed the laws.
Lord John-Mackie:My Lords, would it not be much simpler and more effective if the police had powers just to let the air out of the tyres of these cars? It is the best immobilisation that I know of.
The Earl of Avon:My Lords, again, I shall bear the noble Lord's comments in mind.

Steel: Assistance to Private Sector
Lord Skelmersdale: My Lords, with the leave of the House, at a convenient moment after 3.30 this afternoon my noble friend Lord Bellwin will repeat a Statement that is to be made in another place on assistance for the private sector steel industry.

Poland: Martial Law
2.56 p.m.
Lord Carrington:My Lords, with your Lordships' permission, I should like to make a Statement about events in Poland.
Martial law was declared in Poland from midnight on 12th/13th December. A Military Council for National Salavation, consisting of military leaders, has been set up under the Prime Minister and Party Secretary, General Jaruzelski. Military commissars

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have been appointed to oversee central and local government. Other steps taken include sealing of the borders, severing of telex and telephone links, imposition of a curfew, suspension of civil liberties, a ban on strikes and gatherings other than religious ceremonies, a takeover of the broadcasting system and suspension of regional broadcasts.
General Jaruzelski announced these measures in a speech broadcast to the Polish people early on 13th December. He stressed that they were intended to be of short duration and would be rescinded when calm and order were restored. He said the measures were intended to preserve the fundamentals of the Polish "Renewal" and that reforms would be continued. We regard these commitments as very important.
There are no reports of danger to the safety of members of the British community in Poland. The British Embassy is in touch with British nationals and as a precautionary measure has advised them to stay at home. This advice has also been broadcast, at the Government's request, on the BBC World Service.
Her Majesty's Government are following developments with the closest attention and with great concern We are, and shall remain, in close consultation with our partners in the Ten and in the North Atlantic Alliance. The next few days would appear to be of critical importance to the future of Poland. We sincerely hope that the Polish Government and people will be able to resolve their problems without bloodshed, by compromise and consensus. We shall observe a policy of strict non-intervention and we expect the same of all signatories of the Helsinki Final Act.
2.59 p.m.
Baroness Llewelyn-Davies of Hastoe: My Lords, the House will be most grateful to the noble Lord the Foreign Secretary for his Statement, because the whole House and indeed the whole country are deeply concerned at the very grave situation in Poland today, and none of us would wish to say anything which could contribute to the dangers of the situation.
We very much welcome what the noble Lord has said about strict non-intervention from all sides, from anywhere in the world. The gallant Polish nation must decide their own destiny. Equally, we in this country cannot be indifferent to their fate. We very much welcome what the noble Lord quoted from General Jaruzelski, that reforms would be continued, which is obviously of great importance.
I do not propose to ask many questions in such a grave situation, but I think the House will regret a little that the noble Lord made no reference to the financial position, which is of the greatest possible importance. As the Financial Times said last week, the negotiations which are taking place about this with the Polish authorities are proceeding with painful slowness, and we surely cannot afford to let that continue. We should be grateful for some observation by the noble Lord on that. May we also ask him about the position of Polish refugees in other countries? Of course, we understand that the frontiers are now sealed, but can something be done to help the other countries who are looking after the Polish refugees?
Lord Gladwyn:My Lords, we, too, should like to thank the Foreign Secretary for this important Statement
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on this grave situation. For my part, I cannot see how the Government could possibly act otherwise than is suggested in the Statement. Is it not a fact that the present desperate economic situation in Poland —against which Solidarity not unnaturally revolted, claiming, no doubt rightly, that the Communist Government was largely responsible—is also largely due to the world recession and to the consequent failure of the programme of industrial development, which has now been financed by western banks to the tune of, I think, 27 billion dollars or £15 billion? The repudiation of this debt would obviously be a world calamity and we must all hope that it can still be averted, but it comes nearer and nearer as the crisis in Poland worsens.
The present choice is apparently between some kind of military dictatorship and anarchy, or even civil war. Should we not therefore all hope that Solidarity will still be able to come to some agreement with General Jaruzelski—who seems on the whole, from what one hears, to be a reasonable man—enabling therefore the debt to be eventually rescheduled, and incidentally all danger of Russian intervention to be avoided, even if on the face of it this would not, from our point of view, be a particularly democratic solution to a grave crisis?
Lord Carrington: My Lords, I am grateful to both the noble Baroness and the noble Lord, and I agree entirely with what the noble Baroness has said. I did not mention the financial position, although I think that all of us—and it was certainly evident in the remarks made by the noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn— recognise that the economic position of Poland is extremely serious indeed. I think we shall all have to think and wait and see what happens in Poland before we make up our minds what it is desirable or possible to do.
With regard to the world recession, this of course has had some effect upon the Polish economic position; but if you look at the situation in Poland it stems to a very large extent from the enormous drop in coal production in Poland itself, which has meant that the earnings in foreign currency of Poland abroad have dropped, and have been mainly the cause of the economic problems which Poland is faced with. The noble Baroness asked me about Polish refugees. I know of no Polish refugees in this sort of circumstance, but if the noble Baroness will let me know exactly what she has in mind I shall certainly look into it.
3.4 p.m.
Lord Kennet:My Lords, while thanking the noble Lord the Foreign Secretary for this Statement and welcoming also the closing remarks in it, at a moment when this is happening in Poland the only way one can restrain one's horror and despair about it is to remember that it is probably an alternative to something worse, and therefore we must join the Foreign Secretary in his hopes that the Poles work out their destiny by themselves.
We also welcome the reported statement from Moscow that this is an internal Polish affair. Could the Foreign Secretary tell the House something else about the 27 billion dollar debt to the West which

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Poland has incurred? Are the Government satisfied with the arrangement they have for liaison with British banks and institutions? Are they satisfied with the arrangements they have for liaison with other western Governments with regard to their banks and institutions which have contributed to these loans which are now in such a questionable condition?
Lord Carrington:My Lords, with regard to what the noble Lord said, and indeed to what the noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn, said about hoping that Solidarity will be able to come to some compromise with the Government, I think we would all hope that that were possible and that the gains that have been made over these last years are maintained. With regard to the rescheduling of debts, of course what happens is primarily for the commercial banks themselves, but we do have very good liaison with them. I think before we make any statement about that, or give any indication of how we think private banks should proceed, or give them any advice, we had better wait and see what happens in Poland.
Lord Derwent: My Lords, may I ask my noble friend one question: Are we having any difficulties from the fact that our ambassador is seriously ill in hospital in Warsaw? As I understand it, as he is in Warsaw, no other member of the embassy has right of access to the Polish Government.
Lord Carrington:My Lords, it is extremely unfortunate and sad that the ambassador should have had a serious heart attack. I am happy to say that he is getting better, but he is in hospital and of course we are deprived of his judgment and his advice. But I am glad to say, too, that there is a very efficient second-in-command there, and he had an hour's talk with the deputy Foreign Minister yesterday, so I do not think there is any question of being deprived of access to the Polish Government.
Lord Oram:My Lords, on the question of refugees to which the noble Lord referred, has not the Austrian Government indicated that the burden that it is bearing in relation to the refugees now in Austria has become more than it can bear? Has it not said that other countries ought to help? Have the British Government received any request in this respect and, if so, what response do they propose to make?
Lord Carrington:No, my Lords, there has been no request.
Lord Campbell of Croy:My Lords, can my noble friend yet tell the House whether the closing of the frontiers to foreigners has had the effect of stopping food and other essential supplies from voluntary international sources? If that is the case, will the Government do their best to maintain essential supplies to Poland during the winter, because this could not possibly be regarded as intervention in the internal affairs of the country?
Lord Carrington:My Lords, I think it is far too soon to say whether or not the restrictions have prevented
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food coming into Poland. I would imagine that these would be very temporary restrictions in the form of ships not being allowed to berth at Polish ports, for obvious reasons. I think we have to examine all of these things, but I have never thought it a good idea to try to starve people out, and if food is to go to a country to help the people, it seems to me that it should go.
Lord Harris of Greenwich:My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that in the debate we had on this matter in this House last week the noble Lord, Lord Home, and the noble Lord, Lord Stewart, and others pressed the Government to take some action to assist British voluntary organisations, Church bodies, and that sort of organisation, in the present difficulties which they are encountering in getting desperately needed food and medical supplies through to Poland? Is he aware that many of us would be extremely reassured were he able to take a personal interest in this matter?
Lord Carrington:My Lords, I really do not think that this is the moment to do that. I think we must wait and see what is going to happen.
Lord Molloy:My Lords, in the situation that exists at the moment, which could be almost disastrous if there were any foolhardy statements, is the noble Lord the Foreign Secretary aware that thinking people, certainly in this country, will approve wholeheartedly of his cool, sensible Statement in this House today? Would the noble Lord use his influence to see that other people that he might be engaged with in other countries copy his example, so that we can with patience perhaps make a contribution to having this situation resolved without any foolhardiness which might, rather than resolve it, only exacerbate it?
Lord Carrington:My Lords, to use the slang phrase, the noble Lord seems to have "wrapped it up
Baroness Llewelyn-Davies of Hastoe:My Lords, after that I am sorry to rise again, but may I ask the noble Lord a final question? One entirely understands his hesitation—nobody quite understands what is going on at the moment. But about the financial position, would it not be prudent for the Ten, including ourselves, with the Americans, to be considering what we might do, provided that the Polish Government can still negotiate with us, on this financial point? Surely it should not be left to the banks alone but should be a matter for Government assistance.
Lord Carrington:The noble Baroness misunderstands the position, my Lords. The private banks have to make up their own minds, but there is a lot of debt which is Government debt which we have agreed to reschedule; it has been agreed over a period of time to reschedule it. I shall be meeting this evening the other Foreign Ministers of the Community over dinner, when we shall be discussing other matters, but we shall be talking about this matter and will have an opportunity then to discuss all these things. Of course, all this has been going on over a period of time and it is only a question whether we go on as we were going to go on or whether events in Poland will make it difficult for us to do so.
Lord Brockway: My Lords, while I welcome the Minister's Statement and the suggestions which have been made from all parts of the House, may I ask whether he will be available to keep us in touch with the changing situation while the House is meeting?
Lord Carrington: I shall be available, my Lords, so long as the noble Lord is available and the House is in Session.

British Railways (No. 2) Bill
The Bill was read a third time, with the amendments, and passed, and returned to the Commons

Nuclear Industry (Finance) Bill
3.12 p.m.
Lord Skelmersdale: My Lords, I beg to move that the Bill be now read a second time. The object of this Money Bill is to raise the financial limit of British Nuclear Fuels Limited. The limit was set out at £300 million by the Nuclear Industry (Finance) Act 1977, with powers to raise this to £500 million. These powers were exercised by statutory instrument, which came up for discussion in another place on 25th March last. On that occasion the Opposition view that we should put BNFL's financial limit much higher in order to avoid the need for frequent return to Parliament for further authority weighed heavily with us. The Bill therefore raises the limit further to £1,000 million with powers to increase this to £1,500 million, again, by order.
The financial limit on BNFL comprises the amount paid for shares since the company's formation, the amount of outstanding loans to the company by the Government and the company's outstanding loans from non-Government sources which are guaranteed by the Government. I wish to stress that the purpose of the Bill is to increase the amount of BNFL's borrowing from non-Government sources which the Government may guarantee.
It would be appropriate if at this stage I spoke a little about British Nuclear Fuels Limited. Formed in 1971 out of the production group of the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority, BNFL has become in the space of 10 years a major company in its own right. It offers services in all aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle, from the conversion of uranium into gaseous uranium hexafluoride to the reprocessing of irradiated fuel. These services are provided principally for the home generating boards. BNFL is also a successful exporter. Sales last year totalled £349 million, of which exports accounted for nearly £41 million.
BNFL is at present engaged in a major expansion programme. Over the next 10 years, the company is planning capital expenditure of about $3.5 billion in constant money values. On the company's own inflation forecast, capital expenditure could total about £6 billion. These are large sums of money, so your Lordships will rightly wish to know how this capital programme is to be financed. Like any industrial company, BNFL is proposing to do it with funds
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generated internally, largely from profit and depreciation—about 70 per cent, of the capital expenditure programme over the next 10 years will be financed from internal sources—and by borrowing. The company expects to borrow about £800 million in 1981 money values, or about £1.5 billion, again according to its own inflation forecast.
The previous Administration agreed that BNFL could and should borrow in the open market rather than from Government sources. It also recognised that BNFL would require the support of a Government guarantee if it was to do that. The 1977 Act provided the necessary powers. We entirely share the view that was taken here: there is no need to emphasise the desirability that BNFL should seek its funds from non-Government sources. But it may be helpful if I explain the need for the guarantee. This is required because of the political risks to which BNFL is exposed —for example, the possibility that some future Government might, for political reasons, close our nuclear power stations or in some other way take action which affected BNFL's business. There is also the regulatory risk—for example, if it proved necessary on public safety grounds to close down some of our nuclear stations, BNFL's business would similarly be affected. For those factors, quite beyond the company's control and indeed peculiar to the nuclear industry, we consider the guarantee to be necessary.
The guarantee is, however, permissive. For each specific loan for which a guarantee is required, BNFL must approach the Secretary of State for Energy. He and his colleagues at the Treasury must agree to the terms and conditions of each loan before a guarantee may be extended. Further, the Secretary of State for Energy must lay before each House of Parliament a statement showing the extent and character of the guarantee issued and the circumstances in which it came to be given. There is, therefore, ample opportunity at this point for the Government to satisfy themselves as to the liability they are taking on, and for Members of this House or the other place to ask questions about a particular guarantee.
There is the further important question of the soundness of the company's business, and particularly its investments, with which the guarantee is concerned. I wish to point out in this context that BNFL is not engaged in major speculative investment. The company is confident that about 86 per cent, of the investment contained in the current programme is covered by secure contracts which provide, at the least, for the recovery of its costs. I also wish to point out that the investment programme is also primarily concerned with services for nuclear power stations already operating or under construction. Against this background, of course, the Government take all the steps which a prudent banker would take to satisfy themselves as to the soundness of the company's business. This is important, given the size of that business and the amount of borrowing which the Government are likely to be asked to guarantee.
This increase in BNFL's guarantee is related to the company's own borrowing requirement, which I have described, and to the need for regular parliamentary scrutiny of the company's affairs. BNFL expect to reach the present limit of £500 million somewhere towards the end of 1982. Depending on inflation, the

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new limit of £1000 million will be reached probably between 1984 and 1986. At that point, the Government must lay an order in draft before the other place, which must approve it. This occasion provides, clearly, an opportunity for debate of the company's affairs certainly within about four years of the Bill becoming law. That seems reasonable. There is of course a balance to be struck between the necessity of proper scrutiny and the freedom of the company to proceed with plans that are otherwise approved. I believe that the Bill strikes this balance.
BNFL is a successful Companies Act company with plans for a major expansion programme which the Government support. The investments concerned will enable BNFL to continue to provide the fuel cycle services which are essential to our present nuclear programme. I must stress that without those services our nuclear power stations would be in grave difficulty. This is a high technology industry, making profits, and a major employer in the North-West region of England. I therefore commend the Bill to the House.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(Lord Skelmersdale.)
3.20 p.m.
Lord Strabolgi:My Lords, we are grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, for explaining the provisions of this short Bill. As the Order Paper makes clear, this is a money Bill, to alter the financial limit imposed by the Act, and I do not, therefore, propose to make a long speech on general nuclear energy policy, nor indeed to follow the noble Lord in some of the hypothetical questions that he raised today about what a future Government may or may not do. Important as the subject of nuclear energy is, I suggest that a general debate would not be appropriate today.
As the noble Lord has said, British Nuclear Fuels Limited has been a successful public company, with a good export record. Export figures for its fuel cycle services have risen over the last decade from £6 million to £41 million. I am glad to note that all the activities of BNFL are subject to the necessary safety standards, and are carried out with regard to the protection of the environment and to the guidelines on non-proliferation.
BNFL is a good example of a successful nationalised concern—and one of which we can be proud. In view of the Government's all too familiar attitude to nationalisation, will the noble Lord confirm that BNFL is not a company destined to be sold off in the same way that Amersham International was sold off? That was of course another successful state-owned company, but alas! it did not fit in with the Government's ideology for precisely that reason. Will the noble Lord confirm that there will be no privatisation of BNFL? I am concerned about this, not only because of the Government's past record and the declared intentions over privatisation in general, but also because the noble Lord's honourable friend, when dealing with this point, said in another place on 16th November, at column 111 of the Official Report, that,
" there is no present intention, but it would be wrong to rule out such an intention in future ".
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Can the noble Lord give the House a more specific assurance on this point?
3.23 p.m.
Lord Beaumont of Whitley: My Lords, as the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, has said, this is a money Bill and a small Bill, and, as he suggested, perhaps a general debate is not entirely appropriate. However, I think that there are one or two points to be raised on this matter. Although of course the actual finance raising is none of our business in this House, the method that the Government have chosen is a rather peculiar one, though also a very useful one from their point of view. After all, the two main ways in which the Government raise money for nationalised industries and other matters are through Government funding or commercially, and in this particular case we have an unfortunate hybrid of the two—the third method of a Government guarantee. This has a considerable advantage for the Government, in that they are let off the hook of including the money in the PSBR. Furthermore they do not have to persuade the financial institutions that the schemes for which they are raising money are financially sound, because the loans for the purpose will have Government guarantees behind them.
As I say, for the Government this is a very convenient way of raising money, but it gives rise to a number of questions. It raises the question of whether it is right that the Government should be let off the hook regarding the PSBR in this particular case. Presumably in monetary terms some effects will arise from this situation, and indeed if the matter had fallen within the PSBR the Government would not themselves have authorised such money raising in the particular situation. So merely by the accident that by custom, as I certainly admit, and for historical reasons, this particular corporation is excluded from the PSBR, the Government are let off that hook.
Secondly, there is the matter of Government guarantees. I accept some of the special circumstances that the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, mentioned, but I still think that on the whole it is undesirable to multiply the number of instances where the Government guarantee the finance. The noble Lord said that there was the possibility of a future Government reversing the situation as regards this particular industry, and that is certainly a very fair point.
However, he went on to mention some matters that were outside the control of British Nuclear Fuels Limited which to me should not at all be outside its control. If I caught accurately what the noble Lord said, I understand that the safety factors, which at any particular time might lead to power stations being closed down, are beyond the control of British Nuclear Fuels Limited. If that is so, it is the most hair-raising, scaring remark that we have heard about the whole nuclear industry for years and years either in America or here. We have always been told that the safety records were absolutely right, that safety precautions were first-class, that everything was under the control of BNFL. If it is the case merely that that matter is not under BNFL's particular control but is under the control of the rest of the nuclear industry, then I see that there is a technical problem between the two sides.

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But perhaps the noble Lord will clarify that issue when he replies.
I now wish to move on from the money aspect and take only two minutes at the most merely to reiterate the policy of noble Lords on these Benches. We think that this way forward through nuclear means is not the best method by which to produce power to meet the needs of the country. Bearing in mind the forecasts regarding energy production, even in the present cold weather, it appears that in the future not nearly as much power will be needed as was thought to be likely two, three or four years ago. The steps that should be taken to conserve energy and to find different methods of producing power have certainly not been explored or exploited nearly as much as they should have been. It is a very short time since the report of the House of Commons Select Committee on Energy stated:
" We were dismayed to find that, seven years after the first major oil increases, the Department of Energy has no clear idea of whether investing around £1,300 million in a single nuclear plant… is as cost effective as spending a similar sum to promote energy conservation ".
The amount of money that we are authorising here is about half the amount that would be needed to insulate all the buildings of the United Kingdom housing stock for their lifetime. It is our view that considerably more investment in investigations into, and development of, alternative energy sources would be a much more sensible way ahead. However, since the Government have chosen to proceed to raise money in this particular way, I believe that we should pay some attention to the method that they propose. But I hope that in future they will be able to find a way that appears rather more justifiable than the one they have chosen this time.
There is extreme cost in the development of a nuclear programme. It is costly; it is centralising; it is in many ways dangerous. We need a society which is more human and more devolved. We need to pursue alternative energy policies; and, above all, we need to practise fuel conservation. Not nearly enough is being done in either of those fields. My Lords, we do not need nuclear power and we do not need this Bill.
3.30 p.m.
Lord Skelmersdale: My Lords, I am grateful to both noble Lords for the very moderate way in which they have greeted this Bill. My last excursion onto the nuclear front was in June and July of this year, when the Liberal Party (represented on that occasion, not by the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont, but by the noble Lord, Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran) was somewhat more forthright than the noble Lord has been this afternoon. In fact, I must confess that a rather wicked thought went through my mind. I wondered whether the Liberal Party had not (to misquote Portia)" turned a manly stride into two mincing steps". However, we shall see.
The noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, asked whether we intend to privatise BNFL. My Lords, I like to be consistent. On 9th July of this year, at column 896, I said:
"the Government have no such plans at present".
Before that, on 23rd June of this year, at column 969, I said:
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"They"—
that is, the Government—
"have at present no plans to do so".
The position remains exactly the same today. However, having said that, I would add this. In his speech the noble Lord was referring to the Atomic Energy (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill, and he is quite right in saying that the Secretary of State has now been allowed to transfer to himself all the shares in BNFL which were previously held by the Atomic Energy Authority. This means that should an occasion arise it would be possible for him to sell, again according to the Act I have just mentioned, 49 per cent. But I continue to say that there are no plans at present to do anything of the sort, and I hope the noble Lord will understand that that really is as far as I can go on this occasion.
The noble Lord, Lord Beaumont, referred to a couple of things. "This peculiar way of raising money", I think he said; I hope I have his words right. I do not see why it is peculiar at all. We are here talking about a Companies Act company which, as I have said and the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, has reaffirmed, is very successful indeed at doing its job. Any Companies Act company outside the public sector would be expected to go to the money markets to finance that part of their borrowing, if you like, for capital projects that they cannot do from internal sources; and where, as on this occasion, we have this very successful company inside the public sector, why should it be any different?
" The Government do not have to persuade financial institutions of the rightness of the company's borrowing", the noble Lord said. But the company has to convince the Government of it, and the company also has to convince the financial institutions. So I really cannot see why this should be such a damnation.
Lord Beaumont of Whitley: My Lords, the company, surely, does not have to convince the financial institutions once it has a Government guarantee. That is quite enough. It does not have to say another word.
Lord Skelmersdale: That misses the point completely, my Lords. The company does not get a Government guarantee until it has convinced the financial institutions. That is a fact.
The noble Lord also spoke about the safety factors, and, of course, the noble Lord is quite right. I am again going to be consistent. On numerous occasions I and other Ministers in the Department of Energy have said that during nearly 20 years of commercial operation of nuclear power stations in this country no accident has occurred which has given rise to significant public hazard. This is because successive Governments and the nuclear industry have attached paramount importance to safety from the earliest days of nuclear power, and we intend to maintain that excellent record. The nuclear industry as an industry is a very safe one. Any other power industry just would not measure up to the standards of safety that both Parliament and the industry itself have set, and I am absolutely sure that this is the right way to proceed.
The noble Lord again criticised me because in my speech I referred to matters outside the control of

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BNFL. In fact, he saw me shaking my head and nodding it at various moments, and he ended up by answering his own question. So, if I may take it as a rhetorical question to which he has given the answer, I would agree with him in the answer and the conclusion to which he came.
As to whether nuclear power is or is not the way forward, we have developed this programme over 20 years and we are, of course, investigating various ways in which alternative sources and the more conventional fossil fuel sources can be used. But the fact is that we have it, and the guarantee (to go back to the guarantee) is necessary because in the two fields of the fuel fabrication part and the reprocessing of fuel by the company the company has not got overall control. If there are no nuclear power stations, of course, there will be no fuel to be reprocessed or, indeed, to be created in the first place. So I do not think it is fair to blame the company in respect of this one. My Lords, I hope T have said enough to convince the House that this is a soundly based Bill and that it should receive your Lordships' approval.
On Question, Bill read a second time; Committee negatived.

Constitutional Referendum Bill [H.L.]
3.38 p.m.
Lord Alport: My Lords, I beg to move that the Constitutional Referendum Bill be now read a second time. Your Lordships will remember that I introduced a Bill with the same Title at the same time last year. In the debate which followed a number of criticisms were made, but your Lordships were good enough to give it a Second Reading without a Division.
I did not subsequently seek to take the Bill through any further stages in this House, for two reasons. First, in view of the criticisms of the then Leader of the House, Lord Soames, I felt that it would be right to give the Government an opportunity to introduce in this Session a Bill of their own which was more to their liking. Secondly, I felt that it would not be right to ask your Lordships to give time and thought to a Bill which the Government clearly intended to use their influence to defeat in another place when the volume of business inflicted on your Lordships by the Government's own legislation was already making exhorbitant demands on our energies and patience.
However, while awaiting some indication in the recent gracious Speech from the Throne of the Government's intentions for this Session, I took the precaution of asking those who had been kind enough to help me with the drafting of my Bill to advise me as to how it should be redrafted to meet the criticisms levelled at it during last year's Second Reading debate. I therefore present to your Lordships the Constitutional Referendum Bill, Mark 2, which I believe to be a much better Bill than its predecessor.
Before I try to explain it in detail, may I attempt to answer some of the general criticisms which were and may again be made against it? The first criticism is the use of the referendum as a constitutional expedient. The precedents represented by the EEC referendum and the Scottish and Welsh devolution referenda are already very powerful. Since then, the whole question of the
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use of the referendum, it seems to me, has become a matter of somewhat confused thinking. The Labour Party which thought it eminently desirable for the membership of the EEC issue now considers, apparently, that it should not be used to decide the issue of Britain's possible withdrawal from the EEC. The present Conservative Government, whose predecessors had very mixed feelings about the use of the referendum, within the last few weeks have proposed that a referendum should be used not in the a case of some major constitutional issue but to decide the purely local matter of the relevant level of rates as against the provision of local public services—although I understand that this idea has now been abandoned.
I recognise fully the importance of maintaining the powers of decision of Parliament in general and of the elected Chamber in particular in all matters which affect the security and good government of the country. The exception, in my view, is where the issue directly affects the structure and powers of Parliament itself. This was the real issue in the case of both the EEC and the devolution referenda. This would be the issue in the event of a proposal to abolish the Second Chamber or so to emasculate its powers as to produce the same result.
Your Lordships will remember the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor's striking description of our constitution as being an "elective dictatorship". We accept that a Government with a secure majority in the House of Commons can do almost anything, except change a woman into a man; although I am not sure that that disability has not been overcome by recent legislation. But all Governments govern at their peril and retribution can be exacted on them by the voters at the next election. What they cannot do is to prolong their elective dictatorship beyond the five-year life of a Parliament because of the powers which are reserved to your Lordships' House.
This brings me to what I regard as the "myth of the manifesto". There is a general belief that Governments which are elected to power are entitled, and, indeed, obliged, to give effect to everything in their election manifesto. Therefore, if, for the sake of argument, at some future election a party won an overwhelming majority by promising to end unemployment, halve the income tax and double the standard of living and, in the small print of the manifesto, had undertaken to abolish the Second Chamber, they would, according to present theory, be entitled to do so; although your Lordships might kick up a bit of a fuss when the relevant legislation reached your Lordships' House.
I suggest that at elections those who determine the outcome vote, first of all, for people; and, secondly, they vote against parties, and particularly against the party which formed the previous Government if by any unhappy chance their period of administration has not fulfilled their expectations or their leaders are unpopular; and thirdly, they vote in accordance with an amalgam of considerations of self-interest, inherited loyalties and an instinct as to where, for the time being, the national interest lies. What they do not vote for is the small print of election manifestos.
But let me take my argument a stage further. If, at a future election, a Government come to power with the abolition of the Second Chamber as an item in their

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manifesto, they then would be entitled to introduce a Bill in the House of Commons to carry out what they would regard as their election pledge. When that Bill came to this House, your Lordships would have to decide whether to let it go through and open the road to an "elective dictatorship" of a potentially permanent nature or to chuck it out and let the Parliament Act operate. In the latter case, your Lordships' action could be, and certainly would be, portrayed as a last-ditch effort to defend the privileges of a largely hereditary, partly nominated, completely unrepresentative and unreformed Chamber against a House of Commons elected by a majority of the nation. It would be the "Peers against the people", literally with a vengeance.
Whatever may be the criticisms levelled at the composition and character of your Lordships' House, we carry out, as the Second Chamber of the British Parliament, a number of important and, indeed, essential functions. We bring to legislation both the opportunity for second thoughts and a variety of personal experience. We are able to initiate and to help refine public discussion on moral and social issues; and, even if, under the benign guidance of our party Whips, we sometimes tend to reflect too closely the party pattern of the House of Commons, there is among the members of all parties in this House a consciousness of personal independence which is unique among the Senates of the democratic world. Above all, we are entrusted with the power to prevent a party dictatorship elected to the House of Commons for the span of a single Parliament of five years from becoming a party dictatorship in perpetuity.
All these functions and responsibilities are vested in this House as the Second Chamber of the British Parliament; they are not derived from our individual right to sit here as Peers of the Realm. However composed, I believe that the Second Chamber should have and would have, powers very little different from or fewer than we have today. It might have more— but that is a different matter.
If your Lordships look at the text of this Bill, you will see that it refers throughout to the retention and powers of a Second Chamber within the structure of the British parliamentary system, not to its composition. Your Lordships will remember very well that a few years ago we in this House voted overwhelmingly for reform—only to be frustrated by the combined efforts of the present Leader of the Labour Party in the House of Commons and the right honourable Member for the Ulster constituency of South Down. This Bill does not seek to entrench the powers and composition of the present House of Lords; it deals exclusively with the powers and continuance of a Second Chamber in the parliamentary system.
If some future Government, fortified by a pledge in its election manifesto, were to introduce a Bill into the House of Commons to abolish the Second Chamber or to emasculate its powers and if this Bill now before us was on the statute book, the Speaker would be required, after the "Abolition Bill" had received Third Reading in another place, to endorse it under Section 1(2) of the Constitutional Referendum Act —if this Bill should become an Act. It could then go no further without a referendum. If such an "Abolition Bill" was introduced, improbably, into this House
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or if the Speaker, for some reason best known to him, omitted to endorse such a Bill or if, as a preliminary to introducing a Bill to abolish the Second Chamber, some future Government were to introduce a Bill to repeal this Constitutional Referendum Act (if it became an Act) then I think it probable that your Lordships would reject such a Bill on Second Reading.
But the grounds for doing so would not be easily portrayed as an attempt to frustrate the will of the elected majority in the House of Commons or to protect the undoubted privileges which we enjoy. On the contrary, our action would be designed to give the people an opportunity, by means of a referendum, to decide whether the only effective constitutional barrier against the perpetuation of a single party in power or a one-party state was to be swept away. It would be the "Peers for the people", and, even if the result of the referendum went against a Second Chamber, it would not be a bad note on which your Lordships' House ended its historic role within the British democratic parliamentary constitution.
When under the leadership of the late Sir Winston Churchill the Conservative Party was struggling to recover from the defeat of 1945, one of the things we did was to organise an exhibition in London to illustrate our ideas. It was entitled: "Trust the People". In our ignorance and conceit we imagined that we had invented the slogan ourselves. Your Lordships will of course know that in his great speech in Birmingham in April 1884, Lord Randolph Churchill said:
"'Trust the people'—I have long tried to make that my motto …"
He went on:
"You who are ambitious and rightly ambitious of being the guardians of the British constitution, trust the people and they will trust you…
That is precisely what this Bill is all about. By a curious coincidence in the second leader of The Times today that slogan, "Trust the People", makes its appearance once again.
You will not wish me to weary you with a repetition of the detailed explanation that I gave of the Bill on the last occasion. Clause 1 enables a Bill designed to abolish or emasculate the powers of a Second Chamber (however composed) to go through all its stages in another place before the Speaker endorses it. This is in response to a number of criticisms of last year's Bill which provided that the endorsement should be made after Second Reading in the House of Commons.
The schedule lays down that the referendum should be held not less than three months' after making the order for it to be held. This will give plenty of time both for your Lordships to debate the principle enshrined in the Bill in a normal debate here and for the electorate to be fully siezed of the nature of the constitutional issues at stake. Clause 2 follows the provisions of the Scottish and Welsh Devolution Acts, as does the schedule.
Clause 3 excludes any Bill intended to amend this Bill—if it becomes an Act—from the operation of the provisions of the Parliament Act of 1911, if the former is rejected by the House of Lords. There is however one part of the Bill which is now before your Lordships and about which I have had further thoughts. If it reaches Committee stage, I should like to take the advantage of your Lordships' advice on this. That is

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the appendix which contains the two questions to be asked in the referendum. It may be all right. However, on the other hand, I have come to the conclusion that it might be better if the questions to be asked in the referendum were not included in the Bill. Instead, it might be better if they were formulated by an impartial committee consisting of, say, the Lord Chancellor, the Speaker of the House of Commons and the senior Lord of Appeal-in-Ordinary or the Master of the Rolls.
There will be other matters on which your Lordships' views and advice will, as always, be of the greatest value. I would of course resist to the best of my ability thing which appeared at a later stage to be a wrecking amendment; but I hope that your Lordships will give this Bill a Second Reading and let it go to Committee so that your advice can be made available. What may happen to it subsequently here or in the House of Commons is a matter again this year for consultation and further thought.
I am, of course, well aware that the Government consider that a Bill of some constitutional significance should not originate from the initiative of a Private Member. As I made clear last year, I am more than willing to hand over this Bill to the Government or, if Ministers prefer to introduce their own legislation along these lines in this session, to withdraw this Bill after Second Reading, if your Lordships approve it.
However, it seems to me to be clear from the speech of my noble friend Lady Young at this year's Conservative Party Conference that the Government have set their mind against the initiative in this matter. In these circumstances, I believe that any Member of your Lordships' House has the right and the duty to promote the enactment of legislation which he believes profoundly will assist in preserving the integrity of the British parliamentary constitution.
My Lords, it is therefore in that belief that I move that the Constitutional Referendum Bill be now read a second time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a—[Lord Alport.)
3.55 p.m.
Lord Jacques: My Lords, may I first congratulate the noble Lord on his tenacity in bringing back an amended version of his Bill and on the lucid way in which he has explained it. He is a man of considerable independence of thought and he pursues those thoughts with courage. I think that meets with admiration on all sides of the House.
I want to deal first of all with a sentence in the preamble:
"whereas it is expedient that the present Second Chamber should be reformed
All history shows that the institutions which cannot adapt themselves to ever-changing circumstances eventually become merely part of history. Adaptability is absolutely essential. If this House were abolished, I have no doubt that it would be said by some people that it was because it was unable to adapt itself to changing circumstances. But what could not be said is that this House has been unwilling to adapt itself to changing circumstances.
There have been three occasions in the post-war
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period when the House showed quite remarkable adaptability. First of all, this House was faced for the first time in 1945 with a Labour Government which had a majority. It immediately came forward with what has become known as the Salisbury doctrine: that it would not oppose in principle legislation for which a Government with a majority in the other place has a mandate. The House has acted in accordance with that doctrine since 1945.
The second occasion when it showed adaptability was in 1968, largely due to the excellent work of the noble Earl, Lord Jellicoe, and the noble Lords, Lord Shackle-ton and Lord Byers, who produced a report setting forth radical changes which the House approved by an overwhelming majority—and that was at least in part due to the eloquence and persuasive powers of the noble Lord, Lord Carrington. We all know that the Bill was talked out in the other place. The reason why it was talked out was quite simple: the abolitionists know as well as anybody else the lessons of history, and because they know the lessons of history and because they want to abolish, they do not want this House to reform itself.
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: My Lords, would the noble Lord allow me to intervene? As I was a little involved in the transaction to which he has just referred, is he aware that so far from this Bill being talked out after a considerable body of discussion had taken place, it was withdrawn by the Government of the day?
Lord Jacques: My Lords, I am aware that it was withdrawn because the talking was going on for ever and other things were being held up in the meantime. If that is not "talking out", I do not know what "talking out" is. The third occasion when this House showed a great willingness to change was in the early 'seventies when we joined the EEC. The House immediately set about changing its methods and making provision for the consideration of directives from the Commission, and it did it so well that the way in which it did it and the work which is being done by the committee concerned have been admired throughout the whole of Europe.
The greatest change which has been made in the postwar period was by Mr. Harold Macmillan when, in 1958, we had the Life Peerages Act. That was the greatest change, but it was one of those changes which was outside this House.
This House is a House of persuasion rather than House of decision. It has no power to decide but it has the power to delay, to give it time to persuade the elected Chamber to make changes which it thinks advisable. So it is essentially a House of persuasion. Some of the most influential leaders of the party opposite have recently advocated that we should have an elected Second Chamber, elected on the principle of PR and, as I understand it, leaving the House of Commons elected, as it is now, on the first-past-the-post principle. I hope they will forgive my bluntness, but if ever there was a recipe for conflict that is it. With two Houses elected on entirely different principles, we would have great conflict and we would do nothing other than fall out with each other. I, for my part, have been looking for remedies which would reduce rather than increase conflict,

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because I think we have enough conflict within our nation without sowing the seeds of further conflict.
A Second Chamber has most obvious advantages which can be stated quite simply and quite quickly. It not only gives an opportunity for fresh minds to be brought to bear upon the issues involved but a Second Chamber also enables consideration of those parts of legislation which may have been neglected by the First Chamber for any reason whatever, guillotine or anything else. But, above all, it allows the Government of the day, no matter what its colour, to have the opportunity of second thoughts in the light of the discussion in both Houses. That, I think, is of paramount importance and also, in the absence of a written constitution, it is a check on the abuse of power.
So long as this House remains a House of persuasion, a considerable case can be stated in favour of its Members being appointed rather than elected. First, it enables us to bring in expertise from outside politics which my experience here has shown me is vital, even when I was a member of the Government. It also enables us to retain the services of those wise and long-experienced ex-statesmen who are past fighting elections. We can retain their services and get their advice within this House.
My own party has had two committees considering this question over the past decade. I have been a member of both and have taken a great deal of interest in the matter. The second committee of two years ago made a number of recommendations. I need only mention the four most important ones. First, it recommended that there should be a Select Committee in the House of Commons with the Prime Minister as chairman, and that it should be responsible for considering and listing those people it thought suitable for a place in this House. Any recommendation to the Sovereign by the Prime Minister would be taken from the lists of that Select Committee.
Secondly, in keeping with the proposals of 1968 we recommended that the hereditary principle should go, that it was now out of date but that the parties could nominate to become life Peers those hereditary Peers who were taking an active part in the affairs of the House, if they so wished. Thirdly, we recommended that there should be 250 voting Peers and that broadly at any point of time they should reflect the balance of voting in the House of Commons because we believe that every Government must have ways and means of getting their legislation through.
Fourthly, on the question of delay, we felt that when there was a difference between the two Houses and the matter had gone back to the Commons a second time, the Commons ought to be able to resolve the matter by a simple resolution, unless it was a proposal to extend the life of Parliament. That, we felt, should continue as at present. The report, with those being the principal recommendations—not the only ones—received the approval of the Peers on this side of the House at their usual meeting.
I come finally to the question of referenda. The referendum, like most things, is all right if it is used with a bit of moderation and a bit of care. I believe we were right in using referenda in the case of the EEC and as regards devolution for England, Scotland and Wales. I believe that referenda should be restricted to those constitutional changes where the parties are
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not in agreement. I am in favour of that because I do not want a constitutional change to be hidden in a manifesto among all the normal day-to-day policy issues which are under consideration. I will therefore support this Bill and I know of no good reason and no formal statement by the party of which I am a member which would prevent any of my colleagues following me into the Division Lobby in support of the Bill; and I hope they will do so.

Steel: Assistance to Private Sector
4.7 p.m.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of the Environment (Lord Bellwin): My Lords, with the leave of the House, I should like to repeat a Statement being made by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Industry in another place. The Statement reads as follows:
" With permission, Mr. Speaker, I should like to make a Statement about the private sector of the steel industry.
" When the 14 major companies in the United Kingdom steel industry were nationalised in 1967 it was recognised by the Government of the day that special measures were needed to ensure fair competition between the public sector, which was expected to represent well over two-thirds of the industry, and the private sector, which would consist of about 100 firms covering the remainder of the industry. Accordingly, the 1967 Iron and Steel Act contained provisions to this end.
" When Britain joined the European Community on 1st January 1973 the steel industry in this country came under the regime of the Treaty of Paris— —the European Coal and Steel Community—and, in so far as products fell outside that treaty, within the industrial articles of the Treaty of Rome.
"Since the competition provisions of the 1967 Act were inconsistent with those treaties, they were repealed by the European Communities Act 1972. Accordingly since then competition between BSC and the private sector has been governed by the provisions of those treaties.
" As the House well knows, the period since 1974 has been one of continuing, indeed intensifying decline for the whole European steel industry. Production in Europe which in 1974 was 156 million tonnes of liquid steel had fallen by 1980 to 128 million tonnes, leaving substantial spare capacity.
" Price competition became increasingly intense. Prices today are lower in money terms than they were two years ago. At the same time, costs— particularly energy costs—have continued to in. By mid-1980, there was hardly a steel company in Europe operating profitably. These difficulties were so great that, although the Treaty of Paris prohibits state subsidies to the steel industry, the Council gave its assent to a decision of February 1980 which allowed the Commission to give temporary approval to state aids linked with restructuring. Towards the end of 1980, mandatory production quotas were introduced by the Commission with the approval of the Council.

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" Despite these measures, by mid-1981 the Community steel industry faced crisis conditions. Prices were well below any possible break-even point for the industry and severe disruption through massive over-capacity and unrestricted competition threatened
" Accordingly, a further crisis package of measures was agreed, comprising the extension of mandatory production quotas for some products, voluntary industry restraint agreements, monitored by the Commission, for others, and strict enforcement of the ECSC rules on pricing transparency by both producers and the larger distributors.
" The measures to stabilise prices and to increase them so that firms may once again move into profitability will, of course, help the private sector along with the rest. But, by itself, this will not be enough. In other Community countries, various forms of aid are available from Governments both to public and privately owned companies. In Britain, help has been confined to the British Steel Corporation. The private sector has received no assistance, apart from regional aids which are also available to BSC. Since 1975, successive Governments have made available to the British Steel Corporation a total sum approaching £5,000 million, partly to fund operating losses, partly to finance investment in the modernisation of plant and partly to meet the costs of closures and rationalisation—mainly redundancy and resettlement costs.
" The British Independent Steel Producers' Association have for some time been making representations to the Government about the extreme unfairness of the system under which they are expected to operate. They have pointed out that steel is unique in that it has its own régime under the Treaty of Paris—something which is not applicable to any other industry. They have pointed out that in no other European country have massive sums of aid been given to the public sector while nothing has been given to the private sector. They have pointed out that the effect of this is that even where Community aid is available it has gone exclusively to the BSC.
" I have been giving urgent consideration to this powerful case. I am pleased to tell the House that I have decided to introduce a scheme under Section 8 of the Industry Act 1972 to help the private sector steel companies in Britain with rationalisation and restructuring projects and with the costs of redundancies. The scheme will offer up to £22 million of assistance to the industry by the end of 1984. Eligible projects will attract grant at the rate of 25 per cent. The scheme will also guarantee 85 per cent of the cost of statutory redundancy payments and provide a maximum contribution of £500 per person to the employers' costs of any ex gratia or severance payments.
" This scheme is intended to cover steel products as defined by the Treaty of Paris with the addition of the drawing, cold rolling and cold forming of steel (excluding the drawing and manufacture of steel wire and wire products). I will publish details of the eligible sectors of the industry in the Official Report, and they are available in the Vote Office. Full details of the scheme will be available very shortly from my department.
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" The scheme has, of course, to conform with the obligations we have undertaken when we agreed to the ECSC decision on state aids promulgated in August of this year. As such, it has to be confined to assisting restructuring, rationalisation and redundancies. Applications for help with restructuring projects must be made by September 1982; No payments can be made after 31st December 1984. As required by the treaty, the scheme is being notified to the Commission for approval, but I do not anticipate difficulties in this regard.
" Quite separately, the steel casting sector has drawn up a scheme to allow the rationalisation of that part of the industry whereby firms reducing capacity would be compensated by a voluntary levy paid by companies remaining in production. To work, the scheme requires front end loading, and I am giving urgent consideration to making a grant under Section 8 of the Industry Act 1972. Any payment would be conditional on a substantial majority of this industry agreeing to fund a significant reduction in capacity, thus fulfilling the requirements of Section 406 of the Income and Corporation Taxes Act 1970.
" Mr. Speaker, the Government are determined to secure the survival of a healthy, profitable and, hopefully, expanding private sector in steel. I believe the measures I have announced are fair and responsible. They can be accommodated without any increase in the allocations to my department. I commend them to the House."
My Lords, that is the end of the Statement.
Following is the information referred to in the Statement:
ELIGIBLE ACTIVITIES
Assistance will only be considered in respect of establishments in the private sector primarily engaged in the following activities:

SIC

Activity ex 2210

Manufacture of the following products, described in Annex 1 of the ECSC Treaty, from ordinary or special steel:

(i) Crude and semi-finished products, including products for re-use and re-rolling (liquid steel for casting; ingots for remelting and forging; semi-finished products such as blooms, billets, slabs and bars; and hot-rolled wide coils other than finished products);

(ii) not-finished products such as rails, sleepers, soleplates, joists, heavy sections of 80mm and over, sheet piling, bars and sections of less than 80mm and fiats of less than 150mm, wire rod, tube rounds and squares, hot-rolled hoop and strip hot-rolled sheets under 3mm, plates and sheets of 3mm thickness and over, and universal plates of 150mm and over; and

(iii) certain steel sheets and strip: namely, tinplate, terneplate, blackplate, galvanized sheets and other coated sheets; cold-rolled sheets under 3mm; electrical sheets; and strip for tinplate.

2235

Drawing, cold rolling and cold forming of steel(excluding the drawing and manufacture of steel wire and wire products). This covers units engaged in cold rolling steel hoop, strip or sheet (over 3mm) from purchased or transferred hot rolled sheet; cold drawing steel bars and shapes from purchased or transferred hot rolled steel bars; and the manufacture of other cold finished products (except wire and wire products) not specified in the ECSC Treaty.

Assistance will not be considered in respect of establishments primarily engaged in the manufacture of raw materials for iron and steel production, pig iron and ferro-alloys, iron products, or steel products other than those listed above.
4.15 p.m.
Lord Bruce of Donington: My Lords, the House will wish to thank the noble Lord for the very lengthy and comprehensive Statement that he has made. I have said "lengthy", but we make no complaint about that. The steel industry in the United Kingdom is one of the sinews of its productive power and we should not cavil, therefore, when some considerable effort is made to help it. Indeed, it may well be thought that the issues raised not only by this Statement, but also by the preparation of the BSC's own report, might provide a convenient opportunity for the House to debate the steel industry as a whole on some future occasion.
We on this side of the House support the measures that have been announced by the noble Lord, even though they amount to some £22 million, which is not a very considerable sum when measured against the real need. At the same time, the noble Lord cannot complain if we say to him that this, of course, represents a reversal of the policy of non-intervention in private industry which, in political terms, the Government are so assiduous in pursuing. He will understand when we say, without complaint, that it represents a minor U-turn. In so far as the penetration of logic has convinced the Government in this instance to abandon a somewhat more rigid instance, we on this side of the House support it.
The noble Lord gave some account of the miseries and the uncomfortableness, generally, of the steel industry in Europe. We now learn, although we were not told before within the political context, that most steel companies in Europe have been making a loss. The general public in the United Kingdom is sometimes given the impression that it is only nationalised industries in the United Kingdom that make a loss. But we are now reassured that all, or practically all, of the steel-producing companies in Europe are making losses or, in the words of the Statement, are failing to reach "break-even point".
The noble Lord has given some reasons as to why the British industry and, in particular, its private sector has suffered. In his Statement, he gave as an example rising energy costs. Yes, my Lords, he can say that again. Up until 31st March 1981, there had been a 20 per cent, increase in electricity prices, a 36 per cent, increase in gas prices—and more are still in the pipeline since that time—and those price increases have been dictated by the Government themselves. In so far as it is dependent on exports, the steel industry has also suffered from a high exchange rate, which, of course, has meant, once again, that European steels have been more competitive. But more serious than that, one of the basic reasons for the decline in the fortunes of the steel industry—and I am talking in terms of the private sector producing some 1 million tonnes less for the year 1980–81 than for 1979–80— has been the fall-off of domestic steel by ordinary manufacturing industry. This is part of the consequences of the general policy of deflation which has been followed by the Government in pursuit of their
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monetary doctrine. We support therefore the grant which is going to be made and the extra percentage of support which is going to be given for redundancy payments.
We are, however, a little anxious to know what is meant by that portion of the Statement which says:
" Any payment will be conditional on a substantial majority of this industry agreeing to fund a significant reduction in capacity, thus fulfilling the requirements of Section 406 of the Income and Corporation Taxes Act 1970 "
Could the noble Lord tell the House what is meant by "a significant reduction"? Is it anticipated that the domestic demand will remain as low as it is now? And is it anticipated that overseas markets will be restricted even more than they are now, bearing in mind the observation of the noble Lord's right honourable friend that a slight increase in manufacturing production (dare I mention it?) of 1 per cent, is anticipated in 1982? When are these projected or promised increases in production going to filter their way through to the steel industry?
In one part of the Statement mention is made of an increase in steel prices as, no doubt, part of the task of restructuring the European steel industry as a whole. Away with the price declines that come inevitably from the practice, acceptable to the Government economists, of free competition in its purest form! Has the noble Lord formed any assessment of how much prices are going to rise? And could he give some indication of the ultimate effect of that price rise on the retail price index? With those few words and apologising to some extent for the critical note that one is forced to adopt on these occasions, we are very grateful for even this small amount of aid which the Government have decided to give by way of intervention in private enterprise.
Baroness Seear: My Lords, we on these Benches would also like to thank the Minister for repeating the Statement. Obviously the objective must be, with our partners in Europe, to move towards a smaller, more efficient, more competitive steel industry. But given the state of the steel industry throughout the Community at present it is, sadly, inevitable that this means assistance to the industry in order to be able to reduce capacity to the state at which it will be possible to build up that more efficient and competitive industry. Therefore, we very much welcome the fact that the Government have decided to take this step.
In the development of the steel industry of the future, to us it is obvious that the private sector should play a considerable—we would hope an increasing role. It is clear also that in the past the private sector in relation to the British Steel Corporation has had a pretty raw deal. We are glad therefore that the Government are intervening in order to help the private sector. We believe that from that part of the steel industry (as well as, we hope, from the public sector) will come the steel industry of the future that we wish to see. Therefore, far from jeering at the Government for a small U-turn, if that is what it is, we welcome the fact that the Government are taking a pragmatic line. We only wish that they would do so on a great many other occasions. I can assure the Government that every time they do we shall applaud rather than scorn them for their second thoughts in this manner. We

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are very glad that this is the line they are taking at present.
May I add just two comments. Surely this is an example of the way in which it is highly desirable that in economic development we should work with our partners in Europe. It would be ridiculous for the steel industry of this country to attempt to plan its future without regard to what is happening in Europe. If, indeed, the Labour Party had its way and we had to operate in isolation from Europe, the position of the steel industry would be a great deal more unfortunate than it is at present.
We should also like to suggest that in the private sector steps ought to be taken to encourage a higher degree of employee involvement. We hope that in the future these companies will be profit-making. Would it not be appropriate to suggest the development of schemes so that employees can share directly, through profit-sharing schemes of one kind or another and through greater employee participation, in the well-being, to which we look forward, of this section of the industry?
Lord Bellwin: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Bruce of Donington, and the noble Baroness, Lady Seear, for their support. I appreciate their reluctance in some ways. Nevertheless, I think I understand why. The noble Lord, Lord Bruce of Donington, referred to this as a reversal of the policy of non-intervention. I do not think anybody would quarrel with the statement that the private sector of the steel industry faces very special difficulties in as much as it competes both with a subsidised European industry and also with the British Steel Corporation which is substantially supported by the taxpayer. It is true to say that this applies to no other industry in this country.
The fall-off in domestic turnover is due, the noble Lord, Lord Bruce of Donington, said, to our deflation and monetary policies. This hardly fits with his other observation: his pleasure that I had emphasised that this is the situation in other countries. Not all of these other countries have adopted the same policies, yet they seem to be in the same situation. Therefore we must accept that the reasons for this fall-off are not those which the noble Lord gave.
The noble Lord also asked me what is meant by "a significant reduction"? Well, how long is a piece of string? This will depend upon the part of the industry concerned, the latest demand prospects and so on. It is very hard to do other than to generalise and express, as I have tried to do, the expectations. The noble Lord also asked me how much the increases in steel prices would be and what effect these would have. I am sure he will appreciate that I cannot give him this information now. Indeed, I doubt whether I could even write to him about it, because this is something which will develop as events follow through.
I was appreciative of the remarks made by the noble Baroness, Lady Seear. She said that she hoped that in future there would be encouragement of a high degree of employee involvement in the private sector of the steel industry. I imagine that during the last few years the employees in the private sector have been very glad that they did not participate in shareholding schemes,
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because there are always losses as well as profits. One of the great fears regarding that type of involvement is what you do when there are losses. It is fine when one talks about sharing out profits. But here it is not just a question of profits; it is a matter of losses as well.
I do not think I can add further to what the noble Lord and the noble Baroness have said, but I repeat that I am very grateful for their support.
Lord Beswick:My Lords, is it not a fact that these sums of money which are being distributed through the Brussels organisation are being made available only on condition that there is a reduction in the total capacity in Western Europe at a time when capacity is being increased in other parts of the world? What agreement on this has been reached in Brussels? What is the proportion of the United Kingdom reduction as compared with the agreed reduction in France, Germany and Belgium?
Lord Bellwin:My Lords, at this time I certainly cannot give the noble Lord that information. I will be glad to write to him with that information so far as it is available. I suspect, however, that it is not readily available as such, because I would imagine that the general policy of assisting in the way that is being done in other countries, and which we are now trying to follow, is something which they have done for a while. But I would say again that they do not have the situation which we have here, where their taxpayers subsidise a nationalised sector of an industry in competition with the private sector. I do not believe that it will not be easy to draw exact comparisons, but, if the noble Lord would like me to do so, I would be very glad to give him such additional statistical information as I can obtain.
Viscount Hanworth:My Lords, I welcome this Statement. Some noble Lords may remember that a few months ago I raised the very difficult situation of one company and the most unsatisfactory method which the Government had pursued in relation to them. Would the Minister not agree that at least a large proportion of the trouble with our steel industry has been due to adversary politics between the two parties; nationalise steel, denationalise steel and renationalise steel? How can any firm look ahead when its future has been as uncertain as that? That is one reason— the fact that adversary politics of that nature are no longer tolerable—why I sit where I do today, on the SDP Benches.
Lord Bellwin: My Lords, I really do not think that what the noble Viscount refers to as "adversary politics" is connected with it at all. The fact is that a Government of a certain complexion set out to follow a policy which they believe the right way to help the industry concerned. If events prove to be that, in the opinion of a successive Government, that is not the right way, then they will follow their policy. But I do not think that it is a matter of adversary politics as described by the noble Lord at all. The fact that this situation applies all over Europe means that one simply cannot say, "This is brought about by one Government or another", because one would then have to go to all

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the other Governments of all the other countries and try to apply the same. Clearly, I do not think that I can agree with what the noble Viscount said as to that.

Constitutional Referendum Bill [H.L.]
4.33 p.m.
Second Reading debate Resumed.
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: My Lords, as the debate on the Bill of my noble friend Lord Alport has been interrupted, I believe I can best serve your Lordships if I first of all make two points in reply to the noble Lord, Lord Jacques, before returning to discuss the major issues of policy which my noble friend Lord Alport raised in his speech.
The noble Lord, Lord Jacques, was good enough to give way to me when, inadvertently I am sure, he misrepresented history. He referred to the debates in another place on the Parliament (No. 2) Bill introduced in 1968 and withdrawn in 1969. He used the expression, which as an old House of Commons man he knows has a precise significance, that the Bill was "talked out". The noble Lord will know that a major Government Bill is never talked out because in another place the Government command the time of the House, and he will know as a matter of history that after considerable debate but not, I suggest to your Lordships, debate excessive in view of the importance of the issue, the Government of the day withdrew the Bill.
There was no obstruction. If there had been, it stands to reason that the Government, with a majority of 100 in another place, would, if a Bill they really wanted was being obstructed, have introduced a guillotine. There was no mention of a guillotine. Indeed, the then Prime Minister—the now right honourable Gentleman the Member for Huyton— told the House that the Bill was being withdrawn— and here there is a certain irony in the matter— in order to make parliamentary time available to legislate the effect of the White Paper, In Place of Strife. The noble Lord, Lord Jacques, will remember what happened to that proposed legislation.
Lord Peart: My Lords, may I intervene? It just so happens that at that time I was Leader of the House of Commons and the issue of a guillotine, I can assure the noble Lord, was very important. The difficulty was that if we had put it to the House and had a vote, probably we would have lost because of the filibustering tactics of certain Members whom I will not name.
Lord Boyd-Carpenter:My Lords, I find that intervention one of intense interest because what the noble Lord has said—and I do not think that he has quite realised it—is that, despite their majority of 100, there was so little support on the Government's side in the House of Commons for this Bill that he could not have got a guillotine through in the face of what he describes as obstruction. This is an extremely interesting admission, albeit 13 years late. Does the noble Lord want to add to it?
Lord Peart:My Lords, if the noble Lord, Lord Boyd-Carpenter, reads Hansard he will know that I
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mentioned this when we had our last debate on this subject.
Lord Boyd-Carpenter:Yes, my Lords, and the noble Lord will know that he did not do anything, even though he had a majority of 100. Of course, he knows, with respect, that he did not do anything because he knew he did not have support, even among his own large majority in another place, for a guillotine, because it was generally understood in his party, as in mine, that this was a rotten, bad proposition for a Bill and it was better dropped.
Lord Beswick:My Lords—
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: I am so sorry, my Lords, but I have given way twice. I am dealing at the moment with the noble Lord, Lord Jacques, but if the noble Lord, Lord Beswick, wishes to intervene on something that I say later, then perhaps he would so indicate. The noble Lord, Lord Jacques, said something that astonished me. He said not only that he personally proposed to support this Bill—which, of course, he is perfectly entitled to do as a Member of this place— but that he knew of nothing in it inconsistent with the policy of his party in his so doing. My Lords, it is common knowledge that the policy of the party of which he is an ornament is to abolish this House. This has been affirmed by his party's conference, which I understand is now sovereign in these matters, and repeated by the Leader of his party, whose services on the 1968 and 1969 occasions I would at this point gratefully acknowledge.
My noble friend Lord Alport said specifically on the last occasion that the purpose of this Bill was to prevent this House from being swept away. It is a little difficult to see how the noble Lord, Lord Jacques, reconciles these two things. It is perhaps significant that he did not speak from the Despatch Box, although he opened the debate from that side. He spoke from the second Bench and it may well be that this is an indication that he will shortly be moving three Benches further back.
Lord Jacques:My Lords, there are several points to which I wish to reply. First of all, why am I speaking from the second Bench? It is not customary for a Deputy Chairman to speak from the Front Bench and so I speak from one Bench behind. Secondly, as far as "talking out" is concerned, I used the phrase "talking out" in quite a literal way and in quite a loose sort of way. I was not referring to any particular standing orders, and to all intents and purposes the Bill was talked out. Incidentally, I believe that the leader of the House of Commons on that day was polically wise not to put the guillotine question; to have done that would have been silly. I now come to my final point: how do I reconcile my party's decision to abolish with my support of the Bill? That is quite easy. This Bill is not saying, "Abolish" or, "Don't abolish". This Bill is saying, "Have a referendum". My party has made no decision on that issue and therefore I am quite free to follow the noble Lord, Lord Alport, into the Division Lobby.
Lord Boyd-Carpenter:My Lords, I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Jacques, will always be free to follow

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his conscience, as we all would. But he must recognise that the noble Lord, Lord Alport, takes a different view of the effect of his Bill because he said last year that its purpose was to prevent this place from being swept away; to prevent precisely the thing which the noble Lord, Lord Jacques, knows perfectly well is the policy of his party. But I will leave him to discuss that with his colleagues.
I turn now to my noble friend Lord Alport. There are three basic considerations which I think your Lordships will wish to weigh in deciding your attitude to this Bill. First of all, is it light and sensible at this time to propose a constitutional amendment of this kind? Secondly, if it is, is it appropriate for this to be done by a private Peer? And, thirdly, if the answer to both those questions be "Yes", does this Bill effectively do it? I will not take up much of your Lordships' time on the first two points. They are very much matters of opinion and of judgment, on which noble Lords will form their own views.
My view, for what it is worth, is that this is not an appropriate moment to start seeking to alter the constitution. And I feel even more emphatically that, if this is to be done, it should be done on the responsibility of the Government of the day and after that consultation with all parties which, in my view, is a basic necessity of constitutional change, and which can in practice only of course be undertaken by a Government speaking for the party in power. My noble friend Lord Alport said, quite fairly, that he had invited Her Majesty's Government to do this last year and they had fairly clearly indicated that they were not going to do so, and therefore he felt free—he is, of course, perfectly free—to bring it forward.
My Lords, that does not get out of the practical difficulty that if the constitution is to be altered in a serious matter of this sort an attempt to get inter-party consensus and agreement is really essential. We cannot have a situation in which the constitution is altered from Parliament to Parliament in accordance with the varying ascendency or departure of particular Governments. I do therefore suggest to your Lordships that, praiseworthy though my noble friend's initiative is in putting this matter before your Lordships, there is a very real difficulty in his path, and that is that he does not speak for, nor, as far as I know, represent the opinions of, the Government of the day. I was going to seek to pay him a tribute for the way in which he introduced his speech. Then I looked at last year s debate, and I see that, in winding up, in a reference to me he said that whenever I paid a generous tribute this aroused in him the timeo Danaos syndrome and that he was pretty certain that if I said nice things about his speech I was going to introduce something unpleasant afterwards. As I should hate to say anything unpleasant to my noble friend, I do, therefore, feel inhibited from praising his speech today. I hope that that will quieten his apprehensions.
The third point of substance to which I desire to relate my remarks is whether this particular proposal does in fact make sense. First of all, as I have already mentioned, it is intended, according to my noble friend's words last year, to prevent this place being swept away. But it does nothing about the only direct threat which has been uttered. That is the swamping
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of this House by the creation of 1,000 Peers. It does nothing whatever about that. That is the only specific threat that has yet been issued. As a defence, therefore, of this House, it rather resembles the defences before the war of Singapore Island, with all the great guns facing out to sea and the enemy coming up from behind. It is not in fact an effective defence of this House.
And, it does introduce the referendum. I have, as I said last year, grave doubts about the wisdom of a referendum. My noble friend, in a splendid outburst of rhetoric—perhaps he will allow me to say that—in his winding-up speech last year, said that those who did not want a referendum failed to trust the people, and he referred today to trust in the people. But, my Lords, it is a question of trusting the people to do what? We do trust the people under our constitution, at a general election, to judge between the parties. They there have as material for judgment not only the records and programmes of the parties, they have the personalities of the leaders, the personalities of the local candidates, which I still firmly believe is of very great significance in a great many constituencies. They have a broad spectrum on which to apply their judgment. It is quite a different thing to introduce "the people" in this sense in the middle of the legislative process, to take a vote on one particular day, regardless of what else may be happening on that day, whatever else may be distracting the attention of the people on that day, to take a decision as part of the legislative process, which historically, and I think for good reason, has been the prerogative of Parliament.
It is no indication of lack of trust in the people to suggest that not all the 35 million—or whatever it is— electors will actually have read the Bill to abolish or emasculate this House, or studied with anxiety the Committee stage debates in another place. It is at least possible that some of them might not be able to pass an examination on its detail. Therefore, the task they have is totally different from that which they face at a general election, difficult though that can sometimes indeed be, and wrong though their decisions, as all of us in this House would agree, have sometimes been in the past, though we may differ as to which occasions. It is totally different. It indicates no lack of trust in that sense of the people to say that the referendum as a part of the legislative process is a very inappropriate and dangerous thing.
It is dangerous because it is not clear where it stops. The abolition or weakening of this House is certainly an important matter. So are many others. And, if we accept this as part of the process of legislation and reform of this House, why should it not apply to the Budget, which is very important, or the rates, indeed? They do not seem to have aroused enormous enthusiasm, even in my noble friend, and certainly not with me. What about the levels of national insurance benefit, or half a dozen matters of major import, many of them, let us face it, of even greater import to the people of this country in their own judgment than the future of this House? So I think we must be very wary of introducing the referendum.
Even if we are to introduce it, it is, with respect, in the wrong place—after Third Reading in the Commons, in effect—because the Bill we are talking about will not have passed this House. We are talking

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about doing this after Third Reading in the Commons. This means that the electorate will be called upon to pronounce before the Bill is finalised. It will still, if the vote is favourable, come to this House. It will certainly be amended. It is more than possible that the amendments or some of them may be accepted in another place. Yet the people's judgment will have been taken at the stage when the measure is not complete. It will also have been taken at a stage when this House will not have debated it as a Bill. My noble friend sought to avoid that by saying that we could during the three months' standstill debate the issue. There is all the difference in the world, as everybody knows, between debating an issue and debating a Bill. And it is the Bill which the people will be asked to approve; they will be asked to approve it before this House has had an opportunity of debating it and expressing its views. In these days, when the media treat this House, I am glad to say, very well, when debates here are well reported on the air and in the press, it could well be that debates in this House would influence the people very much. Surely to take the referendum before this House has debated the matter is really to condemn us before we have been heard. Therefore, this does seem to me a very wrong place in which to put it.
There is another difficulty. The Bill will come here only if it gets 40 per cent, on the referendum, plus having got a majority in the Commons. If it comes to us on this basis, may not many of us feel that this measure has the assent of the elected Chamber and has the express consent of the sovereign people at a referendum, and who are we to seek even to amend it? There will be a very strong moral feeling that the whole issue is settled and that we should not exercise our remaining powers in order to seek to modify it or to delay it. Therefore, if we are to have a referendum —and I suggest that it is too dangerous and too bad a precedent to have at all—then my noble friend has certainly put it in the wrong place.
I wish to make two other brief comments, and am sorry to have detained your Lordships. Last year I drew attention to the fact that paragraph 11 of the schedule seeks to exclude the courts from examining whether the vote on the referendum has been properly taken. I asked my noble friend last year why he sought to exclude the courts. He did not, in fact, find time to answer that question. I therefore repeat the question this year because we are assuming a vote taken on a matter of intense party feelings, intense excitment, and it is just in those circumstances that those of us who have fought elections know very well that irregularities, personation and loss of votes take part. And, in advance, to deny to the courts of this land the right to examine whether the vote has been properly taken seems to me a very dangerous error indeed.
Finally, there is the point in the recital to which the noble Lord, Lord Jacques, referred, that it is assumed that this House shall be reformed. Until I know what sort of reform is contemplated I would feel great difficulty in giving support to a statutory statement, on the authority of this House, that it is expedient that we be reformed. It is easy in a woolly sort of way to say that by "reform" we mean the type of reform that we, individually, would like. This is a little ducking the issue. For this House to put on record that it is
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expedient that we be reformed, without the slightest indication of what shape that reform would take, seems to me a very dangerous thing to do. Although, as my noble friend knows perfectly well, his Bill has no chance whatever of passing on to the statute book, it would still, I suggest, be dangerous for your Lordships to affirm this.
4.52 p.m.
Baroness Burton of Coventry: My Lords, a few minutes ago it seemed to me that we might never reach this next speech, but if the time taken has settled the difference between the noble Lord, Lord Boyd-Carpenter, and the noble Lord, Lord Jacques, it probably was time well spent. I should like to return to that point a little later but possibly with a little less erudition on actual principles.
We have, indeed, been here before. It was practically a year ago to the day—Monday, 8th December— when we had the Second Reading of Lord Alport's previous Bill. I should like first of all to renew the appreciation I then expressed for what the noble Lord, Lord Alport, has done. It seems to me that it gives us an opportunity of discussing something which is very important to that overworked word today, "democracy" and parliamentary democracy. I welcome it and I thank him very much for the opportunity that he has given us.
In common, probably, with other noble Lords— because I think there is not a lot of disagreement in this House on this matter—I am not particularly in favour of a referendum and I do not believe that perhaps that is the best possible way of dealing with the matter. But I am entirely convinced that we should look again at the future of this House and I personally would hope that we could do so during this present Parliament.
We on these Benches believe in the reform of a Second Chamber and that is the one plank on which I wish to speak today. I agree with, I think it was, Mr. Macmillan, who said that there were advantages in a speech which dealt only with one point, particularly if one hoped to make progress. One can hope and one does not always make progress, but it seemed to me sensible to try to follow that out.
Today I very much wish to stress that the aim of my remarks is the retention of a Second Chamber, but I am not going to be led astray into saying how I think it should be composed or what should be done about it. In common with the noble Lord, Lord Jacques—I nearly said with my noble friend Lord Jacques, but I expect he will bear with that—he and I were both members of the two groups which merged into one which was set up by the Labour Peers in recent years. We considered the whole question of the future of a Second Chamber and we made certain recommendations. The first group was chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Champion, whom we remember with much affection and who we were very sorry was not able to continue any longer coming to this House. The second group was chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Lee of Newton, who did a first-class job and to whom we all paid tribute at the debate of a year ago. I thought that we produced a good report and one which we hoped would prove a reasonable basis for discussion. Personally, I hoped that it would be discussed by the whole House, quite irrespective of political divisions.

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We worked under the considerable disadvantage— and the noble Lord, Lord Boyd-Carpenter, has referred to this—of knowing that it was, and is, Labour policy to abolish this Chamber and install single chamber government. That is the official policy of the Labour Party at present. The great majority of my noble friends—and I hope that my past noble friends will not mind being referred to in this category when I am making this speech, because I believe we feel alike on this matter—the vast majority of the Labour Peers in this House, wished to see reform and not abolition of this House. I took note of the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Jacques, earlier today when he said that if this matter went to a Division he would support the Bill. He hoped that it would receive a Second Reading and I took it as meaning that he was not in support of the abolition of a Second Chamber.
I have read once more the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Peart, of a year ago and it was obvious, I venture to suggest, that he was no supporter of single chamber government, either. I do not want to go into who withdrew what or why it was withdrawn, but I think it was withdrawn because the votes were not there. I have gone back to 1968, and the noble Lord, Lord Peart, gave us the actual voting figures in 1968 when the White Paper was debated in another place. Those voting for reform and in support of the White Paper numbered 159, and those against, 270. In this House approval was given by 251 votes to 56. I think that those figures speak for themselves.
A year ago the noble Lord, Lord Soames, as Leader of the House, told us that this Government—this present Government—were totally committed to the maintenance of a Second Chamber. Indeed, at column 628 in our debate on 8th December, speaking of the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor and of himself, he said:
" he and I, and of course our predecessors before us and those who will come after us, are bound to have a constitutional bias in favour of the independence of a Second Chamber. If the House of Lords is under threat, if that be true, it is not simply a threat to this House but to what this House represents; something of a guarantee of constitutional government in this country ".
That is exactly what I, from a much less exalted position, tried to express in our original debate, and it expresses what I feel today.
Is it under threat today? I am quite sure that the great majority, I would think the overwhelming majority, of your Lordships' House believe in the existence of a Second Chamber. That must apply to the Government Benches, to the official Opposition Benches, to the Liberal and to the Independent Benches, and to our new party, to which I am proud to belong, the Social Democrats.
Where, then, is the threat? The threat, of course, comes from the extremists in another place, which of course means—and I regret the remark being made here—from the present official Opposition. They have no room for parliamentary democracy as most of us understand it, and this is being underlined day by day, not only by what they say but is being made evident by the steady drift away of so many of us who served the Labour Party for many years and who left it with great sadness. This extremist attitude and the refusal over many years to fight against it, is the reason for the existence of we Social Democrats,
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and it is the reason, I believe, why we offer hope today to so many disillusioned people.
Reverting to my question of whether or not this House is under threat today—is it? If the main thrust comes from an extremist minority, should we leave it and just hope that it will go away, or be defeated? Other noble Lords may have had longer in Parliament, but I have had 30 years in both Houses of Parliament and I know this extremist element. Rest assured, it will not go away. Then, if it will not go away, will it be defeated? Yes, I think that it will be defeated at the next election; but one never knows, and what you and I mean by parliamentary democracy must, I suggest, be maintained until both Houses of Parliament and all Members of both Houses can look at the reform not only of this House but of procedure in general.
So what is the attitude of the Government? I hope and believe that it is what was expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Soames, in my quotation from 8th December. But, of course, we did not get the action for which the noble Lord, Lord Alport, was asking. On the other hand, when the noble Lord pressed his Bill to a Division, the Government did not appoint Tellers and the noble Lord, Lord Alport, won by default.
So I repeat, what is the attitude of the Government today? Speaking in advance of the final speech from the noble Baroness, Lady Young, the Leader of the House, I do not doubt that their attitude remains the same; that is, a total commitment to the maintenance of a Second Chamber. But I want to be sure. We want reform but, speaking for myself and I am sure for my noble friends on these Benches, we do not want to run the slightest risk of abolition before constitutional reform can be discussed in the detail which is necessary for so important a step in this Parliament.
I have not heard the noble Baroness, Lady Young, speak on this issue, but I have a copy of the report in The Times of 17th October stating what she said in reply to a Motion calling for reform of the House of Lords made at the conference of the Conservative Party. If I may quote—and I trust that the report is accurate—the present Leader of our House said:
" that reforms could not be achieved in the lifetime of the present Parliament…that major constitutional reform, which was far-reaching and fundamental, could only proceed on the basis of all-party talks. Those would need in turn to be on the basis of agreement on the type of reform which might take place, and there was no sign of that agreement ".
The noble Baroness, Lady Young, went on to remind the conference:
" that, in case she sounded too pessimistic, when there had been all-party agreement for reform in 1968 it foundered on an unlikely alliance of Michael Foot and Enoch Powell, who objected for totally different reasons ".
Many of us will remember that disappointment— successful largely because of considerable skill on points of order and procedure permitted in another place which made progress impossible. I think that the vote was not there, but that the points of procedure contributed very greatly to that defeat. I know that the noble Baroness concluded by saying that the Government would continue to search for changes in the House of Lords which could be widely acceptable to all parties.
But I come back to the point where I started: the

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one point that I am after. And here I use the same word as I used a year ago—despotism—and I use it deliberately. I am firmly convinced, as are my noble friends, that single Chamber government would spell the end of parliamentary democracy in this country, irrespective of whichever party was in power. Because of that belief we on these Benches support the Bill put forward today by the noble Lord, Lord Alport. As I said at the beginning, a referendum may not be the best way, or the only way, of maintaining the existence of a Second Chamber, but at least it is a practical proposal and the only one which we have had before us up to now.
Apart from anything else, I see considerable difficulty in framing the right question to be asked in the referendum. The noble Lord, Lord Alport asked those of us who were speaking today to say whether we felt that it would be wiser—he definitely used the term "wiser" —not to include the appendix as set out in the Bill with the suggested questions. My humble opinion is that it would be much better not to include them, and I do that for a cowardly reason: that I do not like either of those questions and I cannot think of a better one. I think that it would be very difficult to ask a question which the public really understood—and I am not being insulting to the public—for they would not have a clue as to what type of work we do in the House of Lords. I think that to do so would be pointless. So I would suggest that we do not include any questions in that respect.
For many of us who do not want a referendum the giving of a Second Reading to this Bill would mean an opportunity for further discussion, and that we would welcome. I was very glad to hear the noble Lord, Lord Jacques, make a point that I had not heard made before; namely, how willing we in this House had shown ourselves to adapt ourselves when possibilities came forward. I hope the majority of people will not believe—but some will say it—that we are speaking here simply to preserve our own existence, but rather because we really believe that we have a job of work to do and that it would be useful if we were here to do it.
I should like to put one further suggestion to the noble Baroness the Leader of the House. Would the Government feel able to offer all-party constitutional talks to take place during the lifetime of this Parliament? Included in such talks could be the future of the House of Lords and also—something very important—the improving of relations between our two Chambers. My noble friends on these Benches believe that this constitutional problem should not just be left in abeyance. I hope that the Government will agree.
Perhaps I may end oh a strongly held conviction. I believe that the British people do not want a Government of extremists, either from Right or Left. We are not an extremist country and single Chamber government would open the way to such extremism. We on these Benches, and I believe the whole House, would oppose the destruction or the erosion of our parliamentary democracy. But I would beg the Government to realise that goodwill is not enough, not with the people who are lined up against us. We have all seen what inaction has done to the Labour Party, and I would not want that to happen here.
5.8 p.m.
Lord Reigate:My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend on having shown a degree of persistence in, again, bringing forward the Bill, a slightly different Bill from that which he brought forward last year. I supported him last time and I shall support him again this time in, I hope, the Division Lobby. If he is slightly despondent at having to go through this more than once, he can take some comfort from my own experience when I introduced the Bill to establish what is now known as the National Heritage Fund. It was rejected twice by Governments, it was subsequently adopted by a Government, which gave, I thought, singularly little credit to your Lordships' House for its initiative.
It is a year since we last debated this subject, and much of the debate then related to reform rather than to the referendum, and some of the debate has today. I do not propose to discuss reform myself. I think that it is quite right that my noble friend's Bill should include the expediency of reform in the preamble; but, if I may say so, I think that he is copying the precedent —not a very good precedent—of the Parliament Act 1910, which also includes a reference but that, of course, would make one rather depressed about the prospects for reform. I think it would allay some of the suspicions of my noble friend Lord Boyd-Carpenter.
The majority of speakers last time and I think today, with one notable exception, favoured the Bill. Even last time there were only two who were wholeheartedly against. There were one or two speeches—I re-read them the other day—where I am not certain on which side they came down, but I think on the whole they were in favour. In fact, there was clearly a general consensus throughout the House and across the parties in favour of the Bill.
A number of objections have been raised to the Bill, and I shall deal with one or two, and with my noble friend Lord Boyd-Carpenter. Is a Bill of constitutional significance appropriate for the initiative of a Private Member. I am tempted to repeat what my noble friend Lord Alport said, "Yes, of course, if the Government will not do it". I hope the Government will take the Bill over. But if they are not prepared to do it in this House we shall have to persist until we persuade them to.
Secondly, and the much more cogent argument, is the one raised in the words of my noble friend Lord Boyd-Carpenter on the last debate.
"… no attempt yet to obtain the measure of inter-party consensus which is so enormously desirable when you start amending the constitution? "—[Official Report, 8/12/80, col. 603.]
It is enormously desirable, but it is not absolutely essential. There is nearly a consensus in this House, and that consensus should be the authority for this House to proceed further with the Bill. And anyhow I can hardly think that the Parliament Act of 1910 or 1911 was passed as a result of consensus, if my memory is right. Even the Life Peerages Act of 1957–58 was divided on in another place. The House may be interested to know that—and I looked it up today— there was a Division on that. There was no consensus. What was fascinating was to find that, of those who voted against the Second Reading of the Life Peerages Act, no fewer than 45 are at present

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Members of your Lordships' House. I am sure there is a moral in that, but I am not sure what it is exactly.
Another argument I have heard quoted is that this Bill would entrench an unreformed House. I should have thought that that would have commended itself to my noble friend Lord Boyd-Carpenter, who does not seem very enthusiastic about reform at any stage. But I do not accept that that really is an argument. The Bill contains a preamble about reform. Reform will come, if it is going to come, regardless of whether this Bill is passed or not. What we are seeking to do in this Bill is to prevent its summary abolition. The Bill would add an extra stage to the process of enactment, but if it justifies being described as an amendment of the constitution it is certainly not of any great permanent substance.
My noble friend Lord Boyd-Carpenter gave us his interesting views on referenda. I should have thought that it was by now fairly well accepted that referenda are only acceptable on constitutional matters. Most of us do not want to have a referendum for the sake of having one. If you have a difficult constitutional position it seems wise to go back to the people of the country and ask for them to confirm it. I do not think it is a matter on which the people should not be consulted because they have not read the Bill as it stands.
Another argument was put forward in the debate last year that abolition of the House was not very likely, to which I comment I have not been burgled but I still have an insurance policy. My noble friend Lord Eccles said that it does not look as though abolition of your Lordships' House is a winning political card. I hope that my noble friend is right. I hope I am not buigled, but I still maintain my insurance policy.
If this optimism is justified, then at worst what is the result if this Bill becomes law? At the worst you have yet another piece of obsolete legislation which ultimately has to be removed from the statute book. There are plenty of examples of that, as I found once when I was defending a Bill. But if our worst prognostications are true, the Act would at least be an impediment and a tripwire to the summary abolition of this House.
My noble friend Lord Boyd-Carpenter, in his exceptionally able speech—and I am always reluctant to cross swords with him because he is such a good arguer—said that it does not solve the problem of the House being swamped with Peers. Of course it is true. If my noble friend can bring in a Bill to prevent that happening without the people being consulted, I am sure he would get warm support from the country and from this House, but that does not dismiss this Bill as an important step forward.
I appreciate the dilemma of the Government. I can almost visualise the traumatic feelings of my noble friend the Leader of the House at having to deal with this matter. Their reservations and hesitations in this respect were well expressed last time by my noble friend Lord Soames. I hope that my noble friend the Leader will be able to give us more encouragement on this particular occasion. I hope she will be more encouraging and forthcoming than we have had previously from the Government.
I should like to put one small point forward for
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consideration. I was going to say that I do not put it forward with any great enthusiasm, but I should not mind if it was rejected by my noble friend in particular; that is that instead of going to a Committee of the whole House in the ordinary way after Second Reading consideration might be given to its going to a Select Committee. A Select Committee has the power to call witnesses, and can deal with what you might call the side issues which have been brought in during the debate. It would be interesting to have a Committee representing a consensus of opinion in the House, one hopes, which could deal with the matter of the question to be put into the referendum, although I find the present question acceptable.
If such a Committee achieved agreement it would demonstrate the required consensus of opinion in the House. I offer this as a tentative suggestion for consideration but not necessarily for decision at this stage. Meanwhile, we have to come to a decision. I shall support my noble friend warmly and with enthusiasm, but I hope that those who oppose the Bill will on this occasion choose not only to voice their opinions but to stand up and be counted, as will those who support the Bill. In short, I look forward to supporting my noble friend Lord Alport in the Lobby.
5.18 p.m.
Viscount Mountgarret: My Lords, I too wish to add my support to Lord Alport's underlying theme and principle behind the Bill, which he has done so well to bring to your Lordships today. The principle and attitude I feel must surely be right, but I have reservations over the means that might be used in justifying the end. The noble Baroness, Lady Burton, rightly said, "Have a point, and stick to it", and her point was the justification of the second Chamber. My point this afternoon is the question of referenda as a whole.
I have severe reservations about the real dangers of allowing referenda to govern our lives on matters which are admittedly of the widest and possibly the most far-reaching importance. I realise that it can be argued that it is only right and proper that the country as a whole should have the right to consider what action should be taken in relation to matters of supreme national importance. It is partly for this reason that general elections are held, and various political parties put their manifestoes forward on principles to the people to allow them to judge whether they will give their respective political parties a mandate to carry out that which they say they have every intention of so doing. Once a political party has gained the necessary majority, it should be left to that party in Parliament to carry out the undertakings, insofar as it is possible or indeed desirable, having regard to change of circumstances during their tenure of office, and I am doubtful that it is right for any government from time to time to decide quite arbitrarily that they should go back to the people to ask their views on what they propose to do, presumably having told them already in their manifesto.
There is, however, one major snag to this theory. Let us consider a hypothetical situation. Suppose the time is the present and a general election is due to be held, and the state of the political parties as they stand today is the same. Let us suppose that the opposition

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parties combined all decided to fight an election on the basis of the issue of proportional representation, which, again let us suppose, all the opposition parties strongly supported but which the Government opposed. A situation could develop whereby, say, 20 million people in the country were very much in favour of a change of selection of Members of Parliament, and were strongly in favour of PR. While I would agree that a fair proportion of those 20 million might be supporters of one or other of the opposition parties, some might well wish to subscribe to many other policies for which the opposition parties might stand. Those electors would then be placed in a most invidious position whereby they either had to choose to vote for a major constitutional change, and vote for a party or parties with whom they did not in broad principle agree, or they would have to support the party that they have traditionally supported but knowing full well that they would not achieve what they would like to see. And, of course, this works the other way round; namely, a large number of people might not support the principle of proportional representation, and yet did not support the Conservative Party either. This would make it very difficult for the electors to come to any satisfactory choice on election day and is the strongest argument against what I have always generally felt; namely, that decisions by the people should be made at election time and not by referenda.
Let us now consider the effects of allowing referenda to become increasingly more part and parcel of our political way of life. At present, there is no laid down guideline on specific areas and matters when referenda might be held. In the past, over the question of the European Common Market and devolution for Scotland and Wales, it was decided to hold a referendum on each of those issues, and rightly so. It suited the Government to do so and it helped them to carry out what they themselves believed was the right thing to do in the one case, and not in the other.
On this subject, I suspect that the majority of people in this country would vote in favour of leaving the composition of our House largely alone, leaving things as they stand—that they would let sleeping dogs lie, although that possibly is not parliamentary language. Change for the sake of change is not popular—like, for instance, the change in county boundaries—and I have heard no argument of any substance to justify a substantial change in the composition or functions of your Lordships' House. There are, however, other areas and matters on which the people should perhaps be consulted by referenda, if the principle of such activity is to be accepted and used more frequently in the future, which is a tendency which might come; one might call it the thin end of the wedge in that we have had two referenda, we might then have a third and that would lead to a fourth, and so on.
Sometimes these matters may not be to any Government's liking because they may feel that if a referendum was held, the decision of the people might go against what the Government would wish to see. I refer in particular to the issue of capital punishment. I am sure that if a referendum was held on the issue of whether capital punishment should be restored for most types of murder—and corporal punishment, for that matter, for thugs and bullies, so that a stick across the backside might do a good deal more good than a spell
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in an overcrowded prison—there is little doubt that such a referendum would be carried overwhelmingly in favour of such restoration. But on any occasion when these issues have been considered in Parliament they have, for one obscure reason or another, been turned down. In other words, all Governments of recent years have frankly funked this particular issue of referring back to the people, because the result is highly likely to go against the grain of what most Members of Parliament have, in their own Houses, decided upon.
To turn to this Bill and this issue, I am sure that such a major possible constitutional change must receive the overwhelming support of the country as a whole, and it would be quite wrong to leave the decision to either a small committee from both Houses or indeed a decision of MPs alone. One major problem, though, is that if a referendum was held on such issues, for people in the country who have not had the benefit of hearing the arguments for and against put forward—the deliberations which we in Parliament have—it might occasionally be unfair to expect the people to reach a decision on a matter about which they have not had the opportunity of hearing all the arguments thrashed out.
While I feel the Bill should receive a Second Reading, I feel that serious consideration should be given to whether we should accept that on certain issues referenda should be held, but that it should not be left to the Government of the day to decide whether or not to call such a referendum. I wonder if it is perhaps possible for a working party to study various issues of major national importance on which it would be mandatory for the Government in power to hold a referendum, or alternatively there might be a suitable body of representatives from all political parties to consider applications made either by the people through their MPs, rather like applications to the Ombudsman, for the Government to hold a referendum on a particular subject, and then, if they so decided that it was a suitable matter, the Government would then be bound by that decision. I therefore feel that, while we should give the Bill a Second Reading, the whole aspect of holding referenda should be more thoroughly investigated and not used just as and when the Government feel so inclined.
5.28 p.m.
The Earl of Selkirk: My Lords, two words will stand out in my memory of this debate. One is "integrity" as used by one of my noble friends when he referred to "the integrity of the constitution". The other is "adaptability" as used by the noble Lord, Lord Jacques, adaptability which we are quite willing to undertake. We have prided ourselves on being the Mother of Parliaments and on having had a form of parliamentary government for 700 years. We have tried to copy that form of constitution and send it to 40 or 50 countries all over the world. They have adapted it in many ways and, on the whole, they have wanted to copy the way in which we conduct our affairs. Indeed I would say that we are still regarded with envy. Yet here we are worrying about how we should govern ourselves. It might therefore be worth casting our minds back rather further than even the Government of Lord Attlee when he formed it in 1945

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Looking at the English genius, perhaps particularly from north of this island, one notices the ability of England to have strong government without dictatorship and to do that without ever bothering to write down the constitution on a piece of paper. Why has that happened and how have we succeeded in doing that? My answer is that we have had in this country a sort of tripartite government, the Monarch and two Chambers of government. They are quite independent of each other and that is why I would regret a House nominated by the other Chamber. The independence of the House, however it is formed, is of the greatest importance, and the noble Baroness, Lady Burton, made that point with absolute force.
We have had in England a number of insurrections— the Peasants Revolt, the War of the Roses, the Chartists —but each time the country has come back to its basic structure, It might have been the Monarch, the Commons, or the Lords, but this tripartite structure has always continued. I believe that the importance of this situation has never been better stated than in the well-known words, which I venture to quote, of John Stuart Mill, when he spoke of:
" The evil effect produced upon the mind of any holder of power, whether an individual or an assembly, by the consciousness of having only themselves to consult".
Richard Crossman was a man of very powerful intellect, with an extremely curious mind, trying to open up passages. From reading his examination of our constitution, it appears that he was always looking somewhere or other for a power house, somewhere where somebody could make a decision which would be carried into effect. Of course he never succeeded in finding it. The reason for that is that power is diversified over a wide sphere.
The noble Lord, Lord Jacques, emphasised the importance of consultation and persuasion, and I am sure that that is the basis on which we have been able to govern in this country. Today that is being challenged. We are living in a world of fluid ideas. Indeed, I think we can say that it is full of ill-digested theories, many of which would not work in the least in practice. If we are to gain a leadership from Parliament, we must also reckon that outside Parliament there are very powerful influences which might well gain the upper hand. I do not want to make too much of this, but take television, for instance. It provides probably the most important, formative influence on ideas in this country. It is very colourful, very exciting, but I cannot say that it is full of mature ideas and thoughts.
I should like to go back to the one occasion on which the situation of which I speak has been broken— that was of course at the time of Cromwell. Cromwell's case is an extremely interesting one because once his period was over, the country immediately bounced back into exactly the same form of Government that it had had previously, with a Monarch and two Chambers, and, so far as I know, there was no question at all about that.
What is even more interesting is to examine what Lord Morley said in his very interesting life of Oliver Cromwell. He said:
" There is no branch of the political industry that men approach with hearts so light and yet that leaves them so dubious and melancholy as the concoction of a second Chamber. Cromwell
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and his Parliament set foot on this pons asinorum of democracy without suspicion of its dangers ".
That is a warning to us to go on—Morely knew fairly well what he was talking about.
We of this generation have a duty to maintain the quality of our constitution in this country. There is never a simple solution. No Government are ever wholly successful. There is no Government in the world of unqualified excellence. But we can try to see that our structure remains intact. It is essential to see that we have a system of consultation and of structure which enables political change to take place, but which seeks to provide Government by consent, strong enough, but without undue weight of either party or political ambition. Those I believe are the principles for us to proceed on, and if we can find a way of adapting a Second Chamber to them, we will do well. It will not be an easy task.
5.34 p.m.
Viscount Eccles:My Lords, I welcome very much what my noble friend Lord Selkirk has just said. I, too, think that our institutions should change, and I am wholly behind what the noble Baroness, Lady Burton of Coventry, said: namely, that we are now in a situation where inter-party talks are badly needed in order to discover whether we should reform—and, if so, in what way—or not reform, the Second Chamber.
I am rather astonished that so far the debate seems to have been something of a re-run of what we had a year ago. The subject is the same, but the background has changed dramatically. In December 1980 inside and outside Parliament it was widely believed that the Labour Party might win a big majority at the next election and come to power mandated, and eager, to abolish your Lordships' House. Your Lordships may remember that Labour had a substantial lead in the opinion polls, and, despite the gallant efforts of the noble Baroness, Lady Llewelyn-Davies of Hastoe, to which I pay tribute, the Labour Party voted with enthusiasm for abolition.
How unpredictable and fascinating is the course of politics! Here we are, only 12 months later, watching the Labour Party destroy itself with astonishing rapidity—
Baroness Llewelyn-Davies of Hastoe:And the Tory Party.
Viscount Eccles: The Social Democrats and the Liberals are now on the crest of the wave. We cannot tell what will happen when they begin to slide down the other side, but at least we know that, apart from the Left-Wing Labour Party, all of us are committed to two-Chamber Government. The fear, which reverberated around this Chamber a year ago, that abolition was a real threat in the next Parliament has disappeared. So 1981 is very different from 1980. Today we are free to consider the composition and powers of the Second Chamber as problems which should be solved before we attempt to entrench the House more firmly in the constitution.
My noble friend Lord Alport made an excellent parliamentary speech, and I think that he must have had these changes in mind in the recital part of the Bill, where it is stated that it is expedient to reform

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the Second Chamber. Is it expedient? We do not know; it is a matter of opinion. It is hardly suitable to put that opinion in a Private Member's Bill, the purpose of which is to strengthen the position of the House of Lords as it is. It can hardly help us in our search for agreement on reforms for the Second Chamber.
Look, my Lords, for example, at Clause 1(2)(b). The Speaker of the House of Commons is to call for a referendum if a measure which provides for any diminution of our present legislative powers has been read a third time in another place. That prejudices the issue of reform. That is not the way to start inter-party discussions. It puts the other place on notice that we in this House are against any reduction of our powers. I do not believe that the other place would vote for a Bill that contained such a proposition.
I do not propose to comment further on the text of the Bill itself, which my noble friend Lord Boyd-Carpenter dealt with, and which no doubt the Leader of the House will mention later. In my opinion it has several other defects. I want, instead—
Lord Elwyn-Jones:My Lords, would the noble Viscount forgive me for interrupting him? Will he indicate where in the Bill there is reference to a proposal to strengthen the powers of your Lordships' House?
Viscount Eccles:Not the powers, no, my Lords; the noble and learned Lord has got it wrong. It is to strengthen the position of the House within the legal framework of the constitution. That is something quite different.
I do want, though, to ask this question. Whether your Lordships favour some kind of reform or whether you think things should be left pretty well as they are now, having in mind the changes that have followed from the introduction of life Peers (a revolution in this House), having in mind the growing appreciation by the public of the work we do and having in mind the undoubted difficulty of getting any major reform of this House through another place when embodied in a Bill—whether, that is to say, you are for reform, for modest reform or for no reform at all—ought not a matter of such importance to be considered between the parties before Parliament is asked (and I hope the noble and learned Lord will appreciate my use of the words) to strengthen the legal position of the House within the constitution? Are we not fortunate that the threat of abolition has so far receded that we now have time to undertake all-party discussions?—and the discussions must be all-party, since no reform Bill would be permanently acceptable to another place unless there had been agreement beforehand.
It is said that so many and so various are the opinions about whether or how to reform your Lordships' House that agreement between the parties, or most of them, is impossible. I do not believe that. We cannot know until we try. We have not yet tried; and now we can try in the knowledge that the abolitionists are a dwindling minority. We should try again, because there is in the country a fairly widespread feeling that some changes, at least in the composition of your Lordships' House, are overdue. It is therefore our duty to show, either that the desire for change is not
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justified, taking into consideration the role of your Lordships' House at present—that is to say, that it is not in the best interests of parliamentary government to make any major changes—or that it is justified, and that we are searching for agreement on what to do about it. Let us decide first, before we ask another place to consider a referendum Bill.
In conclusion, I should like to make two further short points. What chance would this Bill have of acceptance in another place? None at all, my Lords, unless the Government were willing to take it over and make it official policy. My right honourable friends tell me that they have not any intention of doing that. They do not believe that a referendum should be enacted before the problem of reform (as the noble Baroness, Lady Burton, has said) has been much more carefully considered. I completely agree with that.
So if this Bill were sent by your Lordships to another place, it would have to be moved by a Back Bencher. What kind of reception would it get? I ask this question most especially of noble Lords sitting on the Labour Benches. Do they think that the speeches that their right honourable and honourable friends would make on this Bill in another place would help to create the climate in which we could search for an all-party or most-party agreement on the reform of this House? Of course they would not. Much predictable abuse would be thrown, and many people who might have been willing to come into those conversations would probably hold back. So if we send this Bill to another place it will be killed in confusion, and there will be many speeches which will do nobody any good. We now have the opportunity to get things in their right order: first to see if we can agree on any reforms, and afterwards to strengthen the legal position of the House in the constitution.
Last year I hoped that my noble friend would withdraw his Bill because I thought it offered the abolitionists exactly the platform they needed. This year I hope he will withdraw it for a very much better reason. We can now discuss reform in the knowledge that abolition at the hands of the next Parliament is not a serious threat.
5.46 p.m.
Lord Peart:My Lords, I believe we have had as equally a good debate as we had on the previous occasion—a debate which was outstanding and was referred to earlier in the House by the noble Lord, Lord Boyd-Carpenter. I shall never forget him because he generally likes to put the barb into others as well, and today he scored a political point. But I tell him sincerely that the consideration that I had to face when that other Bill was going through the House of Commons was a very difficult one for the reasons I mentioned. However, there it is; one can argue about it.
I think we have had an excellent debate, but may I make my first point? I think this is too important a matter to be dealt with by means of a Private Member's Bill. However, we welcome the opportunity to debate the issue. After all, debates are still going on in many places. I have just read today that
" Labour Left-wing urges Benn to fight again for deputy leadership ".

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At one of the meetings at which this was mentioned there was a call by Mr. Benn for extra parliamentary action, and Labour Peers, including the Front Bench, were urged to pull out of the House of Lords. Then it goes on to say (thank goodness!)
" His speech infuriated some of his colleagues at Westminster ".
Mr. Anthony Wedgwood Benn, when he was a noble Lord, had some wonderful things to say about us. I have quoted this on many occasions:
" I ask noble Lords to read a fine Fabian tract, The Privy Council as a Second Chamber, which goes on to argue against the abolitionists' point of view. May I use this passage: 'To sum up, the case for a Second Chamber rests on the fact that the Commons alone simply could not cope with all the work now done by the Lords. This would be particularly important when there is a really heavy legislative programme. Paradoxically, therefore, a Labour Government needs a Second Chamber more than does a Conservative Government' ".—(Official Report, 8/12/80, col. 627.)
Who was the author of this? It was Mr. Anthony Wedgwood Benn. I say to my colleagues who are interested in this matter that they should read this pamphlet very carefully.
As I have said, this, I think, is too important a matter to be dealt with in a Private Member's Bill. However, we welcome the opportunity to debate it. Why does the Bill come into operation, I should like to know, from the Third Reading of a proscribed Bill rather than from the arrival of the Bill in the Lords? The Labour Party, broadly speaking, is generally in favour of referenda on constitutional issues; for example, the Welsh and Scottish devolution and our continuing membership of the EEC. It would not be sufficient simply to put the abolition of the Lords in any manifesto. This, I believe, would put the Sovereign in an invidious position, and would provoke a constitutional crisis.
There is another point. We must not be unmindful of the fact that these issues have implications for the Monarchy, and none of us would wish to deal with them without very long and careful study. This is why I have always been in favour of a Royal Commission to enable expert evidence as well as the views of leaders in our society to be presented and discussed by an important body of that kind. I think that that is the sort of approach which would be better than the approach which is now proposed.
There are problems, no doubt, in relation to what I said earlier. There are constitutional precedents for this: For example, when the Lords refused consent to the Reform Bill of 1832, William IV asked for a general election prior to granting Earl Grey's request to create 50 new Peers. Similarly, in 1910 King Edward VII informed the Prime Minister that he could not contemplate the creation of new Peers until a general election had been held. A Bill of this kind is therefore unnecessary and could foster resentment to no good purpose; so that I believe we must be careful. Broadly I support the referendum. I think it worked well in relation to the EEC. I remember making my way there to see the count, but unfortunately I was involved in a train crash and never got there; but that is a minor point. My Lords, all I would say is that the Bill is a good Bill. I believe that the mover of the Bill, the noble Lord, Lord Alport, deserves to be supported, but I still think we must be careful in our approach. There are various approaches. Long
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before this Bill has a major effect in shifting political opinion in your Lordships' House I believe the time will come when inevitably we will have to make a final decision; but I think we should be cautious. In principle, I believe in the referendum; it has worked and I must regard that as a guideline. For that reason, most noble Lords who have spoken have broadly supported it. My noble friends have produced a very good White Paper—if I may call it that— and I should like to congratulate my noble friend Lord Lee. He has not been well and I am sure we all wish him a quick recovery. He spent so much time with Lord Champion on working out positive proposals for the reform of the House of Lords and for us to put them to the electorate, and also for the House to debate them properly in Parliament. I believe this has been a very fine debate and, looking at the issue, I think that the noble Lord, Lord Alport, deserves to have his Bill.
5.53 p.m.
The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Baroness Young): My Lords, at the beginning of my remarks I should like to thank my noble friend Lord Alport for giving us a further opportunity to debate this important matter. I am sure the House listened with great interest to the way in which he introduced his Bill and the care with which he put his arguments. More particularly, I thank him because he has enabled me to take part for the first time as Leader of your Lordships' House in a debate touching on the House of Lords as a whole and the role it plays in our constitution. I can assure my noble friend that I listened carefully to what he and other noble Lords have said; and if what I have to say about the Bill from the Government Front Bench is not as encouraging as he would wish, this does not mean that we consider the wider constitutional issues raised to be anything but of the most fundamental importance. Indeed, the Government have given a good deal of thought to these issues since the Bill was debated a year ago.
I must begin by echoing the views of all speakers today in stressing once again the Government's total commitment to the maintenance of a Second Chamber. The noble Baroness, Lady Burton, was good enough to quote at least part of what I said at the Conservative Party Conference in reply to a debate on the House of Lords; but perhaps I may quote what I said then about a Second Chamber and the House of Lords in particular.
" The House of Lords is an essential safeguard for individual liberty. The House of Lords is the only constitutional guarantee that general elections must be held at intervals of not more than five years. We have in our country no written Constitution so that the majority party in a single-chamber House of Commons could so easily become, as Quintin Hailsham so aptly put it, the elective dictatorship. The House of Commons could extend its life indefinitely, the classic route to tyranny throughout the ages ".
I believe that, above all, that is the justification for the House of Lords and, in particular, for a Second Chamber, although there are many other reasons, which have been advanced this afternoon and on other occasions.
In case what I have said might sound as if I am repeating great constitutional arguments and am not

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speaking from any personal experience, I should like to say that, as a Member of your Lordships' House for just 10 years I have come to recognise its value. It is true that I have spent almost all of those 10 years on one or other of the Front Benches, but I am bound to say that the time has been exceedingly full, interesting and rewarding. I prefer not to think of how many Bills I have taken through this House or opposed. I fear that I may have played far too active a part in at least three all-night Sittings; and although I am a relative newcomer I can say that I have become devoted to this House, to its customs, to its experience, to its remarkable ability to regulate itself, to its tolerance and to its friendliness. And to these must be added the powers which the House of Lords possesses and which have been referred to.
My Lords, there are two specific points about the House of Lords which strike me as particularly important. The first is that it is simply not true to say, although the belief is still widely held, that Governments of my own political persuasion cannot be defeated from time to time in your Lordships' House. I have the dubious distinction of having secured the biggest defeat of all. Secondly, the House has changed out of all recognition, certainly since the Parliament Act 1911. We should not forget that. Early reform of the Second Chamber was proposed then as it has been now in my noble friend's Bill. As the noble Lord, Lord Jacques, so aptly said, the House of Lords has adapted itself as times have gone by.
The House of Lords has changed most dramatically since the Life Peerage Act 1958, but I have discerned further changes since 1971 when I came to this House; and the increased daily attendance figures speak for themselves. In 1957–58 the average daily attendance was 124 and the total number of Peers eligible to sit was 885; in 1970–71 the average daily attendance was 265 and the total number of Peers eligible to sit was 1,078. Ten years later, 1980–81, the average daily attendance is 290 and the total number of Peers eligible to sit has risen to 1,179. But I think the significant figures are the average daily attendance which shows a marked increase and shows that the House of Lords is changing all the time.
I would not necessarily suggest that all the changes have been for the best. When noble Lords rise and talk of "this late hour" they mean, these days, some time between 10 p.m. and 3 a.m. Twenty years ago, I understand, they would have meant 6.30 in the evening. But I believe that the two points that I have made— the myth of the House of Lords dominated by one party and the concept of gradual change from within— are points which both a small minority of abolitionists and those who favour wholesale and speedy reform would do well to reflect upon. There is one further point that I would add. It is at least arguable—I put it no higher—that if this Bill were enacted at the present time it could be interpreted by some as weakening rather than as strengthening our total commitment to bicameral Parliament. Whatever result from the referendum that we in this House would hope for and expect, it cannot be denied that my noble friend's Bill would hang a permanent question mark over the existence of your Lordships' House.
My Lords, I turn now to the Bill itself. First, may I compliment my noble friend on introducing a number
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of changes to last Session's Bill. The omission of any certification procedure in the Lords, the introduction of two alternative questions rather than one for the referendum, and the fact that the whole referendum exercise will now be triggered off after Third Reading in the Commons instead of after Second Reading, are all changes which take account of criticisms voiced during the Second Reading debate last Session. It would be churlish of me not to say that these changes make it a better Bill.
There are, as some of my noble friends—particularly my noble friend Lord Boyd-Carpenter—have pointed out, still defects. I shall confine my remarks to the more general difficulties, some of which perhaps inevitably arise in any attempt to impose a referendum procedure during the passage of a Bill through Parliament. It is surely wrong that the referendum verdict on an abolition Bill introduced in another place should be received before any consideration of the Bill at all in this House—a point well made, I believe, by my noble friend Lord Boyd-Carpenter. I can think of few Bills on which noble Lords would be more entitled to express their views; and to hold a referendum before the Bill even arrived here would, in my view, be both misleading and premature.
It would—as my noble friend Lord Boyd-Carpenter said—mean that the country was making judgments about a Bill before the measure was complete; and, in any event, before your Lordships had had an opportunity to express a view about it. As my noble friend Lord Soames said a year ago, even if a referendum procedure were to be introduced, it should surely be held after all the parliamentary stages of the Bill had been concluded.
I should also make two points on the question posed for the referendum in the schedule to the Bill, although I recognise that the noble Lord, Lord Alport, in the course of his remarks, suggested that the appendix should not be included in its present form and went on to suggest another procedure.
I have considerable doubts as to whether the questions could possibly be understood in a way which would lead to a decisive result at a referendum. Let us take the second question, which reads:
" Do you want the legislative powers of the Second Chamber to be diminished? "
I must say that even I would have some difficulty in explaining accurately and concisely to a layman what are the precise powers of the House. I wonder whether we could really expect a high turn out were such a question to be asked at a referendum. It was the late Lord Esher, in a debate in this House in 1963, who said that we were fortunate to have inherited an institution which we should certainly never have had the intelligence to create. I feel sure that he would be the first to agree that the work and significance of the House of Lords cannot be reduced to a single question. Then, my noble friend's second question provides no opportunity for the expression of a view in favour of a limited change in powers or composition. At the very least, a voter who believed in the Second Chamber but who also believed in the need for reform would face a dilemma.
Lastly, under the Bill the Speaker must certify whether a Bill in any way diminishes the powers of this House. He would have to do so and the referendum

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procedure would automatically have to follow even if a very minor limitation of powers was proposed. I offer these points not because I wish in any sense to score debating points on a Bill but to elucidate some of the practical problems which arise and which I hope will be of help to the House. They do, I believe, reflect the very real difficulties involved in superimposing a referendum procedure upon parliamentary consideration.
As to the general Government reaction to proposals for statutory protection for the House of Lords, the House will know that in reply to a Starred Question by my noble friend Lord Alport in May of this year we announced our decision not to come forward at that time with proposals of our own. I regret that I can go no further today, and I must say that the Government do not now propose to pursue any form of protection or entrenchment legislation, whether by referendum or otherwise, during the present Parliament. I am sure that my noble friend Lord Alport will accept that legislation dealing with constitutional matters of such importance cannot make progress on the basis of a Private Member's Bill. It would only be right for me to tell the House that I cannot extend any Government support to him.
On the wider question of the Government's attitude towards House of Lords reform, which was raised by several speakers today, I can say that we shall continue to search for changes which would be widely acceptable to all parties. But such changes can only proceed on the basis of all-party talks which must in turn depend upon some measure of agreement on the type of reform which might take place. At present there is no sign of this agreement and I would go so far as to say that this has been reflected in the debate in your Lordships' House this afternoon. I listened with great care to the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Jacques, who set out— I thought very fairly and clearly—the proposals from his own group of Labour Peers on a possible reform for the House of Lords. I have myself read the document and I understand the sincerity and strength of the feeling behind those proposals.
But the noble Baroness, Lady Burton, carefully prefaced her remarks by saying that she was going to concentrate on the principle of a bicameral legislature. I do not wish to be unfair to the Social Democratic Party, but perhaps she was somewhat more coy about saying what her proposals or her party's proposals for a Second Chamber actually are. So we did not hear —
Baroness Burton of Coventry:My Lords, I do not wish to interrupt the noble Baroness. I do not mind being drawn on that. I think the noble Baroness may have forgotten that I said that I was copying what was said by Mr. Harold Macmillan: that it was better to keep only to one plank and concentrate on that.
Baroness Young:Yes, my Lords, I did hear what the noble Baroness said very carefully, and of course the plank that she has kept to is a plank on which we can all agree that there should be a Second Chamber. The argument at the moment is: What form should reform take? It is not meant, again, simply as a debating point. It would be helpful to know what view
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the Social Democratic Party actually take on the kind of reform that they would like to see. I must tell the noble Baroness that she did not enlighten us this afternoon on what is her party's view about this important subject.
My noble friend Lord Reigate argued in favour of Lord Alport's Bill and he, if I understood him correctly, said that he believed that there was sufficient agreement in your Lordships' House to the principle of reform. But he knows—because, after all he was a Member of another place—that it is essential to get some measure of agreement of Members of another place if we are to proceed with a major reform of this sort.
My noble friend Lord Mountgarret also supported the Bill, although, if I understood him correctly, he was against this particular form of referendum, feeling that it should not be left to another place to determine when there should be a referendum, but that there should be some other mechanism for deciding when this should take place. Here—if I may put it in these terms—on a relatively smaller issue of reform we have a wide variety of opinions expressed and it is, I believe, very difficult indeed for a Government to proceed where there is so much diversity of opinion, particularly when it comes to any kind of major reform of the House of Lords.
I should like to conclude by saying again that I believe that we have had a most valuable debate this afternoon, and that the House of Lords have discussed a most important issue—an issue which I believe is not just important to your Lordships' House but important to the country as a whole.
I am afraid that I have not been very forthcoming to my noble friend Lord Alport and I hope he will realise that his two Bills, this Session and last, have given us an opportunity in this House to consider the possibility of some form of protection for the House of Lords. I hope he will also realise from what I have said that his Bill stands virtually no chance of reaching the statute book. In these circumstances, I hope he will feel able to withdraw the Bill, or at least not to proceed with it further, after Second Reading. But of course, as usual with Private Member's Bills, ultimately this must rest with your Lordships' House.
6.10 p.m.
Lord Alport:My Lords, I should like to start by saying how very grateful I am to all those noble Lords and Baronesses who have taken part in a debate of this sort in climatic conditions which arouse great apprehension among all of us as to how we are going to get back tonight. Therefore, I do not want to be very long in trying to reply to the many points which have been put forward. I should like to say first, if I may, that I had a message from the noble Lord, Lord Wade, from the Liberal Party, to say that unfortunately he was unable to take part in this debate although he would like to have done so on behalf of his party, because he is deep in snow in Yorkshire at the present time. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Jacques, for his contribution and for his support.
This Bill has nothing whatever to do with reform. The Preamble refers to "reform" in the sense that the importance of the reform of this House, as has been twice pointed out during this debate, has already been agreed by your Lordships by an overwhelming majority

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of your Lordships a few years ago. It would be very interesting to find whether there were any of your Lordships who, if the question had to be voted on as to whether or not this House had to be reformed, would vote that it should not be reformed.
I was somewhat interested in the point made by my noble friend Lord Eccles. I thought it was a very encouraging speech from the point of view of the Social Democratic Party. My noble friend seemed to be saying that whereas a year ago there was a fear that the abolitionists, represented by the official Labour Party, possibly would be able to form a Government in the not far distant future, now that fear, from our point of view here, has receded. If there is going to be no alternative to a Conservative Government, are we to assume that a Conservative Government will go on indefinitely? That may be the case, for all I know; but if there is to be an alternative to it, it must, I should have thought, be the alliance, the Liberals and the Social Democrats. I must say that if that is my noble friend's view it is an interesting one and we shall see whether it works out in practice when the time comes.
But I also remember a leading article in The Times in 1945—and here I would like to encourage my noble friends on that side of the House—which said, according to that editorial, that they did not think there would be another Conservative Government at Westminster within the confines of the twentieth century. Six years later we were back in power and it is quite possible that the party opposite may be back in power, and although I do not imagine that many of your Lordships on that side are abolitionists, we must remember that in fact the official policy of the Labour Party is the abolition of the House of Lords, and that is a policy which is being strongly supported by a powerful element in that party at the present time.
I do not want to be in any way offensive to my noble friend, but I do not think we can afford complacency in this matter. The object of this Bill is simply to provide a fail-safe procedure in the event of a government getting into power which, without having put it specifically, except in the small print of a manifesto at an election, finds itself committed to abolishing the second Chamber and converting our Parliament into a unicarmeral Parliament. They must go to the people first of all.
My noble friend Lord Boyd-Carpenter, in one of his usual very eloquent speeches, made a number of points, most of which were replied to by my noble friend Lord Reigate. There was one point which he did not reply to and one which I did not reply to last year, but I do so now. That was the question as to why the results of the referendum, according to the schedule, should not be referred to the courts. The fact is that it was in the Scottish and Welsh referenda. I merely put it in because I thought there was a good precedent. If we go to Committee stage it would be quite possible, if the House thought it advisable, to take it out. The whole object of taking this Bill to the Committee stage is to get your Lordships' views on certain details of the Bill.
My noble friend Lady Young, who is always very gracious and kind on these occasions, has indicated that the Government are not going to let this Bill through. Frankly, I did not expect they would; but that should
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not inhibit a Private Member from asking your Lordships to support a Second Reading of the Bill and I do not think it should inhibit a Private Member from introducing such a Bill into the House. My personal view is that if, by any unhappy chance, there is not a Conservative Government after the next election then there will not be another opportunity of providing our constitution and this Chamber with the fail-safe device which is proposed. So what I would ask you to do this evening—and I will not keep you any longer— is to give this Bill a Second Reading and to take it through Committee. I will undertake one thing, which is to try to ensure that any further stages do not place an unbearable burden on the proceedings of this House or on your Lordships' energy and time; but I should be very sorry if this Bill were defeated on the Second Reading because I am quite certain that that fact would be very seriously misunderstood in the country at large. I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time.
On Question, Bill read a second time and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

ECC 39th Report: Water Pollution by Cadmium Discharges
6.18 p.m.
The Earl of Cranbrook The Earl of Cranbrook rose to move, That this House take note of the Report of the European Communities Committee on water pollution by cadmium discharges (39th Report 1980–81, H.L. 257)
The noble Earl said: My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper. The 39th Report of 1980–81 of the Select Committee on the European Communities deals with the problem of cadmium in the aquatic environment. This report was prepared by Sub-Committee G of the committee, and I am grateful for support in this debate of other members of the sub-committee, notably the noble Baroness, Lady White, and the noble Lord, Lord Ashby, both of whom are former chairmen of the committee and whose profound experience lends great weight to their words. I shall also listen with interest to the contributions of other noble Lords who speak and, in particular, the reply of the noble Earl, Lord Avon, on behalf of Her Majesty's Government.
I should like, too, to take this opportunity to thank the specialist adviser to the committee on this occasion, Professor Ron Edwards, and also to thank the Clerk, David Beamish, who has now been transferred to another office in this House on a progressive step— whether sideways or upwards I am not altogether sure. We miss him and we wish him luck in his career. We are also grateful to witnesses from the Department of the Environment, the National Water Council, the Water Research Centre, the CBI and the Institute for European Environmental Policy who came before us or submitted written evidence to us.
This report deals with a proposal from the Commission for a third directive in the series which devolves from Directive 76/464 on pollution of the aquatic environment, which is often known in a familiar way as ENV. 131. The first of this family dealt with the "drins". This has not yet been accepted by council, but is working its way slowly through the procedural system. The second in the family dealt with mercury,

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and I understand that this was agreed with certain amendments at the Environmental Council on 3rd December. Because that directive on mercury is very relevant to the directive on cadmium, I hope that the noble Earl, Lord Avon, will find time to give us details of the agreement that was reached in the Environmental Council.
The third, as I said, is concerned with the pollution of water by the heavy metal element, cadmium. Cadmium is a comparatively rare element, but it is widely distributed in the earth's crust. It tends to be concentrated in association with other metallic ores, notably those of zinc and lead and, to some extent, copper. It is also present in other rocks. If is present in coal and in oil and, as I said, is very widely distributed. Cadmium can be taken up by many kinds of living organisms, both plants and animals, but it serves no known biological function and is, in fact, poisonous to many creatures at concentrations that are really very low.
Where man is concerned, cadmium can be absorbed through the alimentary tract or the respiratory system and it is excreted principally in the urine. With healthy kidneys, the rate of excretion is generally less than two millionths of a gramme per day, so that any intake which exceeds this very microscopic amount can lead to an accumulation in the body. This accumulation occurs progressively from birth onwards and peaks at an age around 50—a somewhat critical age as I approach it—at levels of about 10 to 55 mg. concentrated in the kidney cortex. It is higher in smokers and therefore, I hope, lower in non-smokers, on average. But this level of accumulation in the kidney cortex is something like one-twentieth to one-quarter of the load at which medically adverse symptoms begin to appear. So your Lordships will see that the balance in the human body can be very critical.
The symptoms of cadmium poisoning are generalised and very unpleasant. So it must be agreed by all of us that it is very right that industrial emissions should be closely controlled and that the European Community, like successive administrations in this country, have been concerned to prevent pollution of the aquatic environment by this substance and its derivatives. There is, therefore, widespread and general support among your Lordships' Select Committee for the draft directive.
The report also welcomes certain new features in this directive which did not appear in its predecessors. First, this directive is non-sectoral. With one exception —and this, admittedly, is a very significant exception— the draft directive deals with all direct industrial discharges of cadmium to water. Secondly, within the compass of one directive, it permits alternative approaches. These alternative approaches are, first, that favoured in general by Continental states of the Community—the approach that takes fixed limit values. The alternative is that generally favoured in this country of setting environmental quality objectives which are related to the use to which the receiving water is to be put.
Thirdly, your Lordships' committee found this directive realistic in terms of the water chemistry, both in analysis of sampling results and with reference to the various forms in which cadmium can occur, sometimes
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in soluble form and sometimes insoluble. Fourthly, it was gratifying to note that in this directive the re-commendations are backed by references to scientific and research literature which could, therefore, be consulted.
Nonetheless, the committee still saw problems which it is hoped that the representatives of the United Kingdom will pursue in negotiation on this draft directive. The first problem to which I wish to draw your Lordships' attention is the stipulation that for all new plant cadmium emission levels should be set in accordance with the best technical means. This stipulation raises several problems, not least of all the definition of "new plant". It is also objectionable to insist on the highest of high technology if the results are, in environmental terms, unnecessary. It is objectionable, because it is expensive, and it puts unnecessary demands and unnecessary costs on the industry concerned.
Thirdly, of course, this stipulation is objectionable, because in effect, in time, it would phase out the environmental quality objective alternative which the directive asserts is offered. This same stipulation in respect of new plant also appeared in the draft directive on mercury. I understand that an acceptable compromise was reached in discussion, and I shall listen with interest to whatever the noble Earl, Lord Avon, is able to say to us on this matter this evening.
A second point of concern to the committee is the omission of cadmium as related by the rock phosphate industry from any form of control under this directive. The excuse that is offered is that of technological difficulties, and it is clear that there are problems. One of the problems is the great variation in the cadmium content of rock phosphate from different sources. For instance, that from the Soviet Union can be very low, whereas rock phosphate from Senegal can be two orders of magnitude higher in its burden of cadmium. There is also a problem in separating cadmium from the bulk waste that is produced in the treatment of rock phosphate: that is, from phosphogypsum. It is not impossible to separate it, but it is technically difficult and very expensive.
On the other hand, it appeared to us on the committee that there are solutions to this problem. One solution is to dispose of the phosphogypsum in an environmentally non-harmful fashion by effectively preventing it from leaching into the aquatic environment. Moreover, where it is disposed to water, if it is disposed to sufficiently large bodies of water and if the environmental quality objective approach is adopted, it can be shown that such disposal does not raise cadmium levels to an unsafe degree. In fact, I have been in contact with a major industrial producer of phosphate in north-western England, and I have been assured that the discharges which are made to sea over the year average only 0.4 parts per million, which is within, or close to, the most stringent 1986 limit values that are proposed in the draft directive.
A third issue is that limit values set on discharges to sewers are no different from those set for direct discharge to the enviroment. Here again there are clearly arguments on both sides. On the one hand it is necessary to control discharges to sewers. On the other hand it is the general experience in the United Kingdom that treatment works can effectively remove most cadmium and can yield an acceptable discharge from sewage works. Discussion is needed on this

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point, but some recognition must be made of the role of sewage treatment in reducing the cadmium load of discharges.
Fourthly, I draw your Lordships' attention to paragraph 26, where the Committee pass observations on proposals related to the environmental quality standards for fish. The main difficulty here is the scarcity of sound information based on field research among wild fish populations. It is to be hoped that this research can be supported and that in due course it will provide sound guidance to realistic quality standards in these waters.
As a fifth issue, the salt water standard that is proposed is on the one hand unnecessarily stringent; on the other hand, it is somewhat ludicrous in the permitted exceptions. It is proposed that, where naturally occurring cadmium is found, the standard shall be in effect a margin above the naturally occurring concentration. Without any basis whatsoever, it therefore appears that this regulation implies that natural cadmium is in some way safe and non-poisonous, whereas only added cadmium is toxic.
The final point in this report to which I should like to draw the attention of your Lordships is that concerning monitoring and analysis. Monitoring is obviously an essential part of any series of regulations. This is not merely from the legal aspect, to ensure compliance; it is also necessary because cadmium is a nasty poison and we must strive to limit its circulation in soluble form in the aquatic environment. But it was clear to members of the committee that reliable analysis of chemical substances such as cadmium, or cadmium derivatives, at low concentrations in water, particularly if that water is already contaminated with other related substances can be both difficult and expensive. It is certain that there will be arguments about where and on whom the burden in terms of manpower and finance should fall. I feel that support for this directive will be stronger if analytical targets are seen to be realistic and if the monitoring requirements are seen to be reasonable in view of the potential hazards, which are recognised.
In closing, I must draw your Lordships' attention to paragraph 13 of the report, which is headed Legal Implications At present in the United Kingdom, emissions of cadmium to water are fully controlled in respect of fresh water—that is, inland waters—and to sewers. Discharges to estuaries are controlled if these discharges are new, since a relevant handful of Acts of the 1950s and 1960s apply, or if the discharge is covered by a tidal waters order. Our coverage of discharges to the estuarine environment is not therefore all-embracing. Discharges to sea, which will also be covered by this directive, will only come under legislative control if or when Part II of the Control of Pollution Act 1974 is implemented. The noble Lord, Lord Ashby, has given notice that he will pick up this lead. However, I must point out to your Lordships that, although the legislation exists on the books, as it were, it does not yet exist in fact to permit the United Kingdom to accede to this directive, were it to be implemented now. I beg to move.
Moved, That this House take note of the Report of the European Communities Committee on water pollution by cadmium discharges (39th Report 1980–81, H.L. 267).—(The Earl of Cranbrook.)
6.35 p.m.
Baroness White: My Lords, first I should like most warmly to thank the noble Earl, Lord Cranbrook, for his, as always, lucid and comprehensive exposition of the matter which is before us. I am also delighted to know that the noble Lord, Lord Ashby, has struggled from Cambridge to be present. But I much regret that my noble friend Lord Wynne-Jones has found the climatic conditions so adverse that he, alas! is not with us. Therefore the scientific input into our debate is thereby diminished, which I am sure we all greatly regret.
As the noble Earl, Lord Cranbrook, said, I hope the Minister will be able to enlighten us a little further as to the situation arising from the recent discussions at the environment Ministers' meeting on the cognate directive relating to mercury. Some of your Lordships are aware that we had originally intended to debate this report, which appeared last July, a little sooner than today. We restrained ourselves because it was felt that until the mercury directive had been satisfactorily disposed of it did not make very much sense to proceed with discussing the directive on cadmium, which is closely related to it and which comes under the same framework directive.
My understanding of the position is that after considerable disputation, but more particularly with our French colleagues, a compromise has been reached, partly by redrafting Article 3(3) of the draft directive on mercury and partly by the addition of two Council declarations on the interpretation to be put on the term "best technical means available". These declarations are not in any way legally binding in the way that a directive is. Nor, of course, is there anything binding in the statement made by the French delegation, as I understand it, that the compromise reached on mercury should not be regarded as setting a precedent for other substances dealt with under the parent directive. Nevertheless, one must warmly hope that our French and other colleagues will accept the compromise which has now been reached, and will not expect their colleagues to go through the same kind of hassle over every other substance in the parent directive as we have experienced over the directive on mercury.
The other point I wish to make is that when one has what one might call glosses on directives contained in a declaration or even in Council minutes, it is extremely important that they should be made freely available to those who are concerned. I say this because my attention has been drawn to two earlier environmental directives, where it appears that non-binding but important conditions referring to the subject were embodied in Council records but were not published in a manner readily available to those concerned. I refer in particular to the Plant Protection Products Directive, about which a Question was recenty asked by my noble friend Lord Melchett, and the directive dealing with emissions of S02 and smoke to the atmosphere. In this instance a condition was included in the Council minutes, so I understand, which was not, of course, legally binding but which was directly relevant. I believe that it was inadvertently published in the United Kingdom in a departmental circular but was not so published in many other member states.
The point of all this is that where mercury and, very likely, cadmium are concerned, agreement on a binding

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directive simply has not been possible without accepting some ancillary conditions. We must realistically recognise this situation. Nevertheless, it is very important that the terms of any such additional conditions should be fully, accurately and properly known. I very much hope that the Minister will be able to give us an assurance that Her Majesty's Government will endeavour to ensure that this will be the case. This is, perhaps, merely a procedural point, but it does seem to me to be important that, having reached the situation on the mercury directive, we should know exactly where we stand in relation to what will no doubt be a series of comparable directives on other substances.
If I may revert to the more general position, as the noble Earl, Lord Cranbrook, said, cadmium has come to the centre of the stage only in the past few decades. I think he would agree that we still do not know fully the effects of cadmium on human health beyond knowing that it is cumulative and damaging to the kidneys. As with mercury, the classic instance of a major health disaster through cadmium pollution took place in Japan where it was shown that the worst sufferers were likely not to be men over 50 but women, which gives me a particular interest in the matter. However, the disaster of 1935 is most unlikely to be repeated anywhere in the world and I do not believe that one should allow it to influence one unduly. Notwithstanding this, there is no doubt whatsoever that cadmium is a substance which has to be taken very seriously, and as a lay person I was particularly grateful to the Department of the Environment—a department towards which I do not always have feelings of gratitude—for what seemed to me to be an admirable description of the nature and effects of cadmium on the environment and its significance to man in their Pollution Paper No. 17, which was published last year and which I warmly recommend to other lay Members of your Lordships' House.
In the EEC context it is noteworthy that, as I understand it, since 1970 the European Community has overtaken the United States as the biggest global consumer and producer of cadmium. I believe it is true to say that West Germany is, relatively speaking, by far the heaviest user of cadmium, but within the Community Denmark is notable for making virtually negligible use of it, and the United Kingdom comes somewhere in the middle. It is encouraging that within the past few years in the United Kingdom we have a record of steady progress towards the diminution of cadmium pollution. I should like in a moment to give a couple of examples of the recent efforts made by water authorities in the United Kingdom to deal with the problem.
In doing so one must note that, as is customary with pollution directives which are based primarily on fixed emission levels—although after much arguing and persuasion, not least by the noble Lord, Lord Ashby, the European Commission has agreed to include the alternative of environmental quality objectives—this directive deals with only one part of the problem. As the noble Earl, Lord Cranbrook, pointed out, it is not as restrictive as the mercury directive, which confined itself to pollution by one industry only—the chloralkali industry—and ignored all other sources. The cadmium directive does deal
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with the full industrial spectrum, other than phosphate rock, but it does so only in the aquatic environment.
It seems to me that, leaving aside airborne cadmium, it is confusing to deal in this directive only with direct discharges of industrial effluent, when one of the main sources of pollution by cadmium is through the deposition of sewage sludge on land, or by the dumping of sewage sludge at sea, when these are alternatives with an element of choice. I understand that work is in progress on a further directive on the disposal of sludge to land and there are the Oslo Convention controls already extant on dumping sludge at sea. In the context of the European Community, we seem to have no guarantee that those concerned will look at this problem "in the round", considering the environmental effects synoptically instead of adopting the fragmentary approach which is encouraged by the use of fixed limit values. This difficulty goes to the roots of our environmental quality objective philosophy. We believe that one should study the total effect of a polluting substance and not take it in isolation.
I do not intend to pursue this argument further, but I should like to refer to another matter which was touched upon by the noble Earl, Lord Cranbrook, and that is the discussion we had with our witnesses on the provision in the present document requiring that industrial discharges to sewers should be regulated at the point of discharge into the sewer and not at the point of discharge into the receiving water, when the sewer was connected to a treatment plant; the latter seeming to some of our witnesses to be more logical.
I was interested in this point and made some further inquiries. It seems to me that opinions vary with the circumstances. In a heavily industrialised area such as the West Midlands, it pays the water authority to process the effluent at its own sewage works and charge for so doing, whereas in an area with perhaps only one or two sources of such polluted effluent, it is much more practicable to insist upon the industry undertaking its own clean-up before discharging into a sewer. It seems to me that the sensible way of dealing with this puzzling problem is that the directive should allow for both situations, which it does not do at the moment.
If one examines recent experience in the United Kingdom, it is encouraging to find that we have already adopted practices whereby contamination by water-borne cadmium has been to a very considerable extent brought under control. If I may quote from a note which I have received from one of the more industrialised divisions of our Welsh Water Authority,
" Considerable improvements have been achieved in this area during the past six years; the result of pursuing a determined trade effluent control policy. The only remaining discharge of cadmium…",
that is, in the district concerned,
" is a company engaged on Ministry of Defence contracts which continue to require cadmium plating ".
Maybe the noble Earl who is to reply could take that up with one of his colleagues and see whether it is really necessary. The note goes on:
" In plants which used to discharge, new processes are now in use which enable cadmium to be isolated and re-used or sold to a metal refining company ".
I am told that levels of cadmium in what used to be one of our badly polluted Welsh rivers now appear to be

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within the proposed EEC quality objective, and in disposal to sewers the level has been reduced to around one-tenth of that which prevailed as recently as four or five years ago. This is evidence, I believe, that we are taking this problem of cadmium pollution seriously and dealing with it successfully. Similarly, the Thames Water Authority has published figures indicating that between 1973 and 1979–80 the amount of cadmium in the digestive sewage sludge at one of its main works has been reduced by well over one half— surely a very good record for such a period.
I would next draw attention to the River Quality Survey for 1980 which was published last week by the National Water Council, which does not deal directly with cadmium pollution but which does indicate the general improvement in the quality of our rivers, which I believe to be encouraging in itself and an indication that in practical term0, the methods which we adopt, based on our philosphy of environmental quality objectives, are by and large successful. It is quite true that the report on river quality also makes it clear that unless the resources are available some of our rivers where improvements have been made may revert to their less satisfactory conditions, because it will not be possible to deal adequately with out of date sewerage plant and treatment. We cannot in any sense be complacent, in spite of our recent good record. A great deal will depend on how much in the way of finance and other resources are permitted to be used to maintain the progress which we have already made and to seek further improvements.
I would like to say just one further word about the report itself. I can do so, although I am a member of Sub-committee G, because the credit for this particular report is undoubtedly due to the chairman, Lord Cranbrook, and to the specialist adviser and clerk to whom he very properly indicated our gratitude and appreciation. I believe there is a great deal in this report which is of considerable interest to those concerned. It is critical on a number of points which will have to be negotiated by our representatives in Brussels, but I hope and believe that the work done on this rather abstruse subject may be of very great value in our pollution control policy in this country.
6.52 p.m.
Lord Ashby: My Lords, the noble Earl, Lord Cranbrook, has given your Lordships a very clear and complete account of the material in the report, and the noble Baroness has put it in its European setting. There is nothing that I need to do except add a few crumbs of opinion, and at this time of night not many crumbs. But it is a topic which is worth keeping your Lordships here for a few minutes to talk about. All of us today have asborbed between 25 and 60 microgrammes of cadmium, and we do that every day. It is 10 times more toxic than arsenic or lead. About 1500 tonnes of it are used every year in Britain. The recovery rate of cadmium is less than 1 per cent., and being a metal it cannot be destroyed; it accumulates.
Therefore, it is important for us to consider whether this directive is meeting the problem. I believe it is but I think it is a directive that must be taken seriously. One should welcome it, and it is absolutely right that the Commission should put out some directive which will stringently limit the consumption of cadmium. As
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the noble Baroness has pointed out, fortunately, Her Majesty's Government have had the very best advice they could have about the problems of cadmium. That report to which the noble Baroness referred is a masterly account of the present state of understanding of cadmium, and it is in some ways a pity that the Commission did not take more note of it when they were preparing their report.
Finally, I think it is worth quoting one sentence from the Department of Environment monograph. It says at the end, about the use and disposal of cadmium, that it should be
" based on the philosophy that man's intake should be kept as low as possible ".
So we all welcome this directive, but there are still problems which remain even after eight years—I think this is the 25th environment directive from the Commission—of discussion, argument and negotiation between Britain and the other European countries. It is worth perhaps pausing for a moment to see just how far we have got in resolving this difference of philosophy which emerged, and which your Lordships who follow these debates on environmental directives will have noticed, the differences of policy that have emerged between the countries, and to ask to what extent we have now reached a stage of some reconciliation. My feeling is that, yes, we have made some progress, but not enough, and that there are faults on both sides which are holding up progress.
There have been three main criticisms of the environmental directives. One comes from the noble and learned Lords who are on the Committee that deals with the legal aspects of Community regulations, who regard some of these as ultra vires altogether. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Diplock, put the matter very clearly when he said that he feared that if we did not take some note of this point that the noble and learned Lords were making it would be the beginning of the emergence of a federal constitution for Europe under which all legislative power is potentially exercisable by the federation. That is a matter which I think must be left to the noble and learned Lords within the House to keep an eye on. The main contribution that your Sub-Committee G can make is to look at the contents of these directives and if possible try to improve them.
During the last eight years your sub-committee has had two main criticisms of these directives. The first is that many of them have been founded either on bad scientific evidence or on good scientific advice which has not been taken. There is in fact an example in this report. The scientist who was engaged as consultant to the Commission to advise on the toxicity of cadmium recommended a quality objective of 10 microgrammes per litre—that is 10 parts per million —in sea water. The directive disregards this advice from its own expert and prescribes a quality objective of only one part per million, a level ten times more stringent than the expert advised.
This rejection of expert advice has happened several times. It happened over sulphur dioxide in the air. It happened over the oxygen content of water for fish. There are, of course, occasions—and your Lordships, I am sure, would wish to recognise this and be sympathetic about it—where for policital reasons the directives have to disregard some of the scientific

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advice given or overrule it. But when they do that we have pleaded with them, so far not successfully, to say that they have departed from scientific advice and if possible give the reasons why they have done so. I feel that these directives would be more welcome in your Lordships' House if more respect was given to some of the scientific advice which the Commission now gets. There have been great improvements in the quality of the directives and to this extent there has been some reconciliation of the difference in philosophy between our practice in Britain and the Commission's practice. Scientific advice is better, and sources are quoted.
The other technical criticism is one your Lordships have heard so often that I wonder sometimes whether we should not ask the editors of Hansard to keep the quotations set in type for regular use. It is the Commission's own definition of pollution in water, and then their apparent disregard of their own definition when they come to write the directive. I must bore your Lordships for a moment by reading the turgid definition so that we have it on record once again. It is the discharge by man:
" of substances or energy into the acquatic environment, the results of which are such as to cause hazards to human health, harm to living resources and to aquatic ecosystems, damage to amenities or interference with other legitimate uses of water ".
The rationale which should follow that mouthful of a definition is that unless substances are present in such quantities as to cause harm or be liable to cause harm then, by definition, they are not pollutants—they are just contaminants and the directives, therefore, should not apply to them.
In Britain we are still having to repair the damage done by the Industrial Revolution and, to that extent, it is impossible to clean up the environment in the wholesale way in which all of us, I suppose, would like to see it cleaned up. So it has been the policy of Her Majesty's Government—and I am certain a correct one—to take account of the use to which a river is being put. For instance, if we were to take all the cadmium out of the Mersey—and it has more than it ought to have in it—that would not benefit the environment greatly if all the other pollutants are left in the Mersey. Therefore, the use to which the Mersey is at present being put becomes enormously important.
That is a point of view which the Commission has not yet felt able to accept. As the noble Earl has pointed out, and as the noble Baroness also explained to your Lordships, we did manage to get one concession, an important one, from the Commission—namely, that instead of relying upon fixed emission standards we could choose instead to base our policies on environmental objectives. We were therefore offered that choice and have, in fact, been offered it in the present directive on cadmium. But when we come to compare the standards which are required in this choice we are driven to the conclusion that either the Commission has got its arithmetic wrong or it is deliberately weighting the choice heavily in favour of what it likes— fixed emission standards.
The fixed emission standard for cadmium, for the factories which are using it like, for example, factories doing electro-plating or making batteries, yellow plastics, pigments and so on, is two milligrams per litre; that is, two parts per million in waste discharged
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from the sewer. But that discharge has to be diluted by something like a thousand times in order to reach the environmental quality standard which it is British policy to take as a basis. That thousand times dilution certainly does not occur in a great many rivers. So there is a miss-match, as there has been before, between the fixed emission standard, which the Commission would certainly like us to have, and the environmental quality standard which is the very basis of the philosophy of environmental control in Britain.
However, we can in fact, as we look back over these eight years, sum up the prolonged negotiations by saying that there have been some successes. The scientific advice is better, the sources are quoted and there has been the offer of an option although we have not yet managed to persuade the Commission to regard it as a satisfactory option. In fact, twice in the preamble to this directive on cadmium they only admit grudgingly that environmental quality objectives should be used. Twice they say "as an exception" environmental quality objectives may be used as a basis of control.
I said that there were faults on both sides in this unreconciled difference in policy between the Commission and Britain. On our side we have made a great deal of fuss about the need to match the degree of pollution control with the use to which the river has been put, and I think rightly so. But when the Commission said to us, "Let us see a schedule of the uses to which you are putting your rivers", we have not been able to give more than a very evasive answer until, as the noble Baroness mentioned, last Friday when fortunately the National Water Council's 1980 Survey of British Rivers was published with the reclassification of them which does take account of their present potential uses.
As the noble Baroness mentioned, the report makes very encouraging reading. Roughly 69 per cent, of our rivers are suitable for the provision of drinking water, carry game fish and have high amenity value; and only 9 per cent, of our rivers are of poor and bad quality, suitable only for low grade industrial use.
I think that it is a measure of the deficiencies in the Commission's control of the statistics from its member states that to get comparative figures for other states is extremely difficult. The Chemical Industries' Association recently published one comparison that they were able to make between the British rivers and those in Germany and the Netherlands. Whereas only 9 per cent, of the British rivers are of poor or bad quality, 27 per cent, of the rivers in Germany and Holland are of poor quality. So, despite our economic plight, there is evidence that a great deal of trouble has been spent on the quality of rivers and we are now at last, I do not think well enough or clearly enough, backing-up our policy of making use a basis of our classification of rivers by beginning to have schedules of what those classifications are. But I think that more is needed. I think that the Commission want to know what final intentions we have about the 3,600 kilometres of rivers in Britain which are still of poor or grossly polluted quality.
The other fault on our side is the pretence—and I do not hestitate to call it a pretence, because it is becoming that—that we have a comprehensive Control of Pollution Act. The Minister sent Sub-Committee

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G a memorandum on the cadmium directive and there was a heading in that memorandum, "Impact on UK Law". The statement made was that no additional legislation would be required. Our colleagues in Brussels read that and they rgeard that as an act of sheer hypocrisy because they know that, although we have a comprehensive Control of Pollution Act, we have not yet brought in—and show no signs of bringing in—certain sections of that Act. Until Section 2 of that Act is brought in, it simply is not correct to say that the law is at present adequate. A law which has not been implemented is not an adequate law, at least to a Frenchman.
I come back again to the point which the noble Earl made at the very beginning. Cadmium is a very nasty and dangerous poison. It is about in the world in quantities which, in local places, can be quite alarming. It has not yet been shown to have any serious effects on health in Britain, but then the same is true in other countries—in Japan and in Sweden some years ago. Therefore, if there is a case for being overcautious in environmental legislation it is the case when we are dealing with heavy metals like lead, mercury and cadmium, because they are indestructible and because there may be a 30-year delay before the effects turn out to be edited.
I think that it would be a great pity if the slight shortcomings in this directive were to hold it up and I hope that three things can be done to hurry the reconciliation of the British and the Commission's points of view and in particular to get this directive through. The first is to insist on mandatory quality objective levels which really are consistent with the fixed emission standards— not utterly different as they are at present. The second —and this is a very important point which the noble Earl made—is to make sure that something is done to take account of the main discharge of cadmium which is 11 tons a year going into the sea from the manufacture of phosphate rock. The third is to do something at last about the Control of Pollution Act. I am sure that the noble Earl when he replies will have to explain to us that there would be very great financial implications if Part II of the Control of Pollution Act were brought in, and that it is in the present circumstances lack of money which is holding up that implementation. If that is true, I think that we owe it to our Common Market partners, and we certainly owe it to the growing number of critics in Britain who are getting very dis-stressed about this, to have from the noble Earl, or his honourable friend in the other place, a very clear statement as to what the cost will be, in pounds, of implementing those parts of the Control of Pollution Act which are not implemented. If the cost runs to hundreds of millions, then our partners will understand and will probably be patient; if it is a trivial amount, they may press us even harder to do something about it. I know that, if we were to ask the noble Earl to give some undertaking that the Control of Pollution Act would be fully implemented, he would be unable to do so. I am asking him for something much more modest. Will he tell us what it would cost to do it if the Government intended to do it?
7.11 p.m.
Lord Mottistone: My Lords, in what I have to say to your Lordships, I am advised by the CBI. My
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only earlier contact with this splendid report was as a member of the Select Committee, and I assisted our noble chairman, Lady White, in agreeing to it being published. Therefore, it is with great pleasure that I can tell your Lordships that the CBI were not only most grateful to be given the opportunity to give evidence, both oral and written, to Sub-Committee G, but that they also wish to congratulate the Select Committee and its sub-committee on its comprehensive and detailed report. In fact, they say that industry has no criticism of the report's findings and conclusions and believes the report has highlighted all the major points of concern to industry, although the CBI does not share the belief that the exclusion of the manufacture of phosphoric acid from the directive is an omission. It believes that it is simply a realistic appreciation of the difficulties associated with controlling these discharges. If I heard him aright, my noble friend Lord Cranbrook made that point; I think that he is at variance with the CBI in that he thinks that the difficulties can be overcome, whereas I think that the CBI believes that they cannot.
Industry supports, and continues to support, the Government's agreed policy that discharges to the aquatic environment should be controlled on the basis of environmental quality objectives, and not on the alternative limit value approach. The CBI believes that there is still an area of conflict with other member states, and considers that the Government should continue to impress on our overseas counterparts the validity and justification for our approach. Other noble Lords have said much the same thing. I was heartened by the figures which the noble Baroness, Lady White, gave us about the high quality of our rivers as compared with Continental rivers and, indeed, by the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Ashby, in the same area. It would be helpful if my noble friend on the Front Bench could give us some sort of encouragement that they are still seeking to persuade other member states that our approach to these matters is perhaps worth looking at.
As your Lordships are aware and as my noble friend Lord Cranbrook said, the first "daughter" directive— as I believe it is called, and I do like this phrase—of the parent Aquatic Environment Directive relating to the discharge of mercury has already been agreed. It will be interesting to hear what my noble friend Lord Avon has to say about that. The only point that the CBI would make is that, being the first daughter directive, it could set a precedent for future directives such as cadmium, and I think that they have slight misgivings about that, though the noble Baroness, Lady White, did rather indicate to us that she does not believe so.
Baroness White: My Lords, if I may interrupt the noble Lord, there was an elder daughter called "drins".
Lord Mottistone: My Lords, I gather, if I may put it this way, that she is so far stillborn. The United Kingdom's environmental quality objective approach controls all sources of the substance under consideration and hence industry has opposed, in these directives, a specific reference to discharges from "new plant". However, it has been recognised that, if a complete impasse is to be avoided, some compromise

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will be necessary, and, at the recent Council of Environment Ministers' meeting, this took the form of specifying controls of discharges from "new plant" which will include a reference to the "best technical means" of reducing that discharge. The "best technical means" concept can be misconstrued— and from what he said I think that my noble friend Lord Cranbrook will agree with that—so as not to give adequate regard to local environmental circumstances or to financial/economic factors. The CBI is, therefore, worried that the compromise agreed in relation to the chloralkali directive—where application is limited—could, despite Government assurance, set an unfortunate precedent.
The worry is compounded by the fact that under the compromise the member state has to explain to the Commission, before granting authorisation to discharge, why the best technical means will not be applied in any particular circumstances. The new plant provisions, as now contained in the chloralkali directive, could create considerable practical problems if extended to control over the more widespread discharges of cadmium, imposing substantial financial and administrative burdens. It would be most helpful if my noble friend Lord Avon could reassure us that, whatever erosion of the United Kingdom's environmental quality objective philosophy has occured in relation to the recently adopted chloralkali directive, it will not be repeated in subsequent directives.
I trust that that is clear to my noble friend. It is only just clear to me. I thank your Lordships for allowing me to put some points of view from the CBI, who, on the whole, were extremely pleased with what they saw. I hope that the Government will be able to take note of those points that I have passed on from them.
7.17 p.m.
The Earl ofAvon: My Lords, I am pleased to be speaking this evening for the Government in this debate on the 39th Report from Sub-Committee G of the Select Committee on the European Communities. I think that the highest praise which I can bestow on the 39th Report of the Select Committee, concerning the draft directive on the discharge of cadmium, is to say that it is up to the committee's usual standard. And as you are well aware, that standard is one of excellence. The authority and quality of Sub-Committee G's opinions on European Community proposals for environmental legislation is, as I have said before in your Lordships' House, well-established not only in this country, but also through the Community, and particularly in Brussels.
The Government fully expect the 39th Report of the Select Committee to have a strong and rightful influence on the negotiations concerning the draft cadmium directive. The Government welcome this report, so admirably prepared by my noble friend Lord Cranbrook, and his sub-committee, and so eloquently and clearly presented by my noble friend this evening. The Government thank the Select Committee for its report. They agree with it.
The Select Committee's report mentions four respects in which the draft cadmium directive is an improvement on the two previous proposals (on the 'drins and mercury)
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born from the 1976 framework directive on the discharge of dangerous substances. The improvements, with which the Government concur and which, therefore, I stress, are: first, an attempt to treat all sources of discharge of a dangerous substance in one and the same instrument—I say "attempt" because the Commission have found themselves unable to set limit-values for one major source; that is, of course, the manufacture of phosphoric acid from phosphate rock. I, like the Select Committee, regret this lacuna, but fear that it may be a deficiency which is endemic to a system based entirely on limit-values. The second improvement is the incorporation into one text of both the limit-value and quality objective approaches. Thirdly, the Select Committee endorses the specific nature of some of the technical requirements. By and large, the Government agree but will need to look further at how compliance is judged—an average might be better than a 95 percentile. Fourthly, the references to scientific literature are, indeed, welcome but a more rigorous interpretation of the evidence—for example in setting a quality standard for sea-water—would have been even more welcome.
I now turn to those features of the draft directive which the Select Committee found unsatisfactory. The first of these was the obligation concerning new plant. Article 3(4) of the proposal stipulates that all new plant discharging cadmium shall have emission standards set in accordance with the best technical means available. The Select Committee rightly sees such a provision as wrong for a water pollution control régime based on quality objectives, such as we operate in the United Kingdom.
Here, I should like to refer your Lordships to another directive born from the same mother directive—we are getting into a family way—as the cadmium proposal; I am speaking of the directive on mercury discharges from the chloralkali electrolysis industry.
Now, as my noble friend Lord Cranbrook has asked me, I turn to what happened on 3rd December when this directive was agreed by the European Communities' Environmental Council, subject to formal adoption. The issue which had held up agreement until then was this very same question of new plant. Certain member states were very firmly of the view demonstrated by the Commission in the cadmium proposal— namely, that new plant must be controlled exclusively by limit-values, or something tantamount to them. However, I am pleased to report that those member states did not get their way. Some 10 days ago we were successful in persuading them to agree to a provision which fell short of imposing a binding limit-value or indeed a binding obligation to apply the best technical means available.
The obligation for mercury is to ensure that authorisations for discharges from new plant contain a reference to standards corresponding to the best technical means available. Under such an obligation, our prime control under a system based on quality objectives will continue to be dictated by the quality required in the receiving waters.
There is good reason to presume that something along the lines of the mercury solution will be incorporated into the cadmium proposal, and indeed into subsequent directives. Nonetheless—and I hope this will satisfy my noble friend Lord Mottistone—we

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shall need to look at the detail with some care, because there is no guarantee that what is apt for mercury discharges from the chloralkali industry is equally apt for the various industries discharging cadmium.
All the signs in Brussels are that the Commission would be prepared to see their cadmium proposal aligned with what was agreed for mercury—not only on the new plant issue but on other contentious points as well. I hope that to a degree this will satisfy some of the fears of the noble Baroness, Lady White.
I have already said that the Government shared the Select Committee's views about not setting limit-values for the manufacture of phosphoric acid from phosphate rock. We also share the committee's views that the "greylist" rules of framework Directive 76/464/EEC should in any case apply throughout the Community; namely, control by quality objectives. That is our approach in this country.
The Select Committee's point about sewers is also well made and one with which the Government agree. It is unreasonable for the draft directive to impose the same emission standard for a discharge going for effluent treatment at a sewage works as for a discharge going directly to the aquatic environment. This takes no account of the purification effected by the sewage treatment plant. We shall attempt to get this amended during negotiations.
As to the report's comments about the annexes to the draft directive, the Department of the Environment cannot but concur with the views of such an emminent body of scientists. I can assure your Lordships that we shall press the Commission to explain the illogicalities which the Select Committee has noted among the figures which appear in the Commission's proposal, with the aim of shaping the annexes into provisions which are scientifically based and, especially in the case of quality objectives, environmentally justifiable. As to the structure of Annex II (the one pertaining to quality objectives), we look forward here, as for new plant, to the propitious influence of the now agreed mercury directive.
I should like now to turn to one or two of the points raised during the course of the discussion, and, first, to express my personal regrets that the noble Lord, Lord Wynne-Jones, was unable to be here. I am sure that he would have asked me some searching questions which would have me on my mettle. However, the noble Baroness, Lady White, certainly competed very well on his behalf.
The first point that she raised that I should like to take was about the availability of the text and declarations agreed for mercury, and I think that this is a good point. The Official Journal of the Community will in due course publish a text and at least one of the declarations. The Government will undertake to make available in this country any part of the agreement— that is, any other declarations which may not be published in this way.
The noble Baroness said that she wished that the Commission had taken a more global approach to combat cadmium pollution instead of concentrating on just one medium and on the limited number of potential sources. Indeed, we have a great deal of sympathy for the views of the noble Baroness on this point. I hope that her words will be heeded by the relevant officials in
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Brussels when they read the report of our debate tonight, as I am sure they will.
The noble Baroness mentioned the control of cadmium in sewage sludge. There are two aspects to this problem. First, to restrict the amount of cadmium getting into the sludge, and, secondly, to control the disposal of the sludge. Neither of the two aspects, in the Government's view, falls within the ambit of the draft directive that we are considering tonight. Nor, indeed, do we regard sludge control as a priority task for the Community as distinct from individual member states. We know that the Commission have in preparation a proposal on the use of sludge in agriculture. We have already expressed our doubts to the Commission about the wisdom of their approach, since we do not think that rigid Community rules are appropriate for this kind of control. Our thinking on this point coincides with that of the World Health Organisation's working group on sewage sludge.
To underline something else that the noble Baroness said, we do treat the problem seriously and act accordingly, and regional water authorities imposed restrictions on cadmium-bearing discharges going for treatment at their sewage works, and cadmium levels in sludge have fallen accordingly. The dumping of sludge at sea, as the noble Baroness said, is strictly controlled by the international rules of the Oslo Convention under licence issued by the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. For the disposal of sewage to land there are formal guidelines from my department agreed with the Ministry of Agriculture and the water authorities. Following the publication by the DoE of the Pollution Paper No. 17, Cadmium in the Environment and Its Significance to Man, the department concluded that environmental concentration of cadmium should not be allowed to increase. Working groups have been set up to consider how the use of cadmium can be reduced. One is dealing with cadmium plating and the other with the manufacture of cadmium pigments and stabilisers for plastics and the uses of these compounds. The groups contain representatives of Government departments, but the majority of the members are from the cadmium-handling industries, and the CBI are also represented. They have been meeting throughout 1981, but neither has finalised its work. I am sure that this progress will show that the Government are interested in the amount of cadmium we have around.
The noble Baroness, Lady White, and the noble Lord, Lord Ashby, referred to the river quality report. I should like, also, to make my comment about it and to repeat what my right honourable friend the Minister said. He said:
" It is encouraging to see the continuing improvement in river quality in England and Wales ".
It was providential that this paper came out so recently. The noble Lord, Lord Ashby, asked what are our final intentions about the 3,000-odd kilometres of rivers still classed as poor or grossly polluted. The water authorities have published in the last year or two longer-term objectives showing plans, first, to eliminate all grossly polluted river lengths and, secondly, to upgrade many poor lengths unless physical problems —for example, urban run-off—would make this prohibitively expensive.

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In response to some of the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Ashby, I can say that the Government will press in negotiations for the mandatory environmental quality objective levels annexed to the draft directive to be amended in line with the scientific evidence. As for the disposal of cadmium from phosphate rock, I would certainly expect the Commission to make every effort to fill this obvious gap in their proposal. I accept the noble Lord's view that river classification alone is not enough to be the base of the quality objectives system. Use of the waters in question is the essential here. To this end the Department of the Environment and others are working with the Water Research Centre to produce certain use-based quality standards which would eventually allow the production of a schedule on the lines indicated by the noble Lord.
I have taken careful note this evening of the wishes forcefully expressed about the implementation of Part II of the Control of Pollution Act. Indeed, this is becoming almost a regular occurrence when I am speaking at the Dispatch Box, and I am only sorry that my noble friend Lord Craigton is not here to needle me as well. I hope the noble Lord, Lord Ashby, will be pleased when I say that I do not think it is necessary to produce the financial figures to which he referred; I can give him a personal assurance to transmit the strength of feeling to my right honourable friend the Minister of State, who I know is already giving the matter serious and urgent consideration, and I hope the noble Lord will take that as a step forward compared with having to produce the financial figures.
The essence of the Government's response to the report of the Select Committee is clear; it is one of thanks and general agreement. Now that the mercury directive has been agreed, negotiations on the cadmium proposal can be expected to begin in earnest. I have no doubt that the report of which we are asked to take note tonight will have an important influence on those negotiations.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

Greater London Council(General Powers) Bill
The Bill was reported from the Unopposed Bill Committee, with amendments.
Derbyshire Bill [H.L.]
The Bill was returned from the Commons agreed to, with amendments; the amendments were considered and agreed to.