Lords Sitting of 2 March 1981

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

Immigration Laws: Police Enforcement
Lord Avebury: 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 look into allegations that police officers used threats against a person of overseas origin, settled in the United Kingdom, to persuade him to inform on other persons suspected of being illegal entrants; and whether they are satisfied that the Metropolitan Police are having due regard to the Home Office letter of 12th December 1980, reference POL/80 1087/20/32, in which it is stated that "the enforcement of the immigration laws is among the most delicate of the tasks which the police have to perform, and the Home Secretary appreciates that chief officers are anxious to see that it is performed with tact".
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Home Office (Lord Belstead): My Lords, I am not aware of the case referred to. It would not in any case be appropriate for the Government to investigate such allegations against the police. It is open to any person to make a complaint to the chief officer of the police force concerned, who will arrange for it to be investigated in accordance with the statutory procedures. My right honourable friend the Home Secretary is confident that the Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis is conscious, in this as in other areas, of the need to strike the right balance between enforcement of the law and the maintenance of good race relations.
Lord Avebury: My Lords, how can the Secretary of State appreciate that chief officers are anxious to see that their task is performed with tact if he does not make any inquiries whatsoever about allegations of a very serious nature which have been submitted to him? Is he aware that in this case Mr. Seyim Hayon, the particular individual about whom this Question is asked, was twice held in a police station for quite lengthy periods although he was not suspected of any offence, and that tape recordings of the conversations which he had with the officers who questioned him on those occasions show that they were inviting him to assist them by informing on other persons who were alleged to be either illegal entrants or overstayers; and does the Minister consider that this is in accordance with the advice given by the Secretary of State to chief officers?
Lord Belstead: My Lords, I do not understand the beginning of the noble Lord's supplementary question. My right honourable friend carried out a review in consultation with the Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis and the Association of Chief Police Officers into procedures for instituting searches in the case of those who are in breach of the immigration laws, and as a result the circular letter to which the noble Lord referred was sent out. So far as the second part of the noble Lord's supplementary question is concerned, there is a statutory procedure for investigating complaints against the police, and I hope that the noble Lord will encourage anyone with a complaint against the police to use that procedure.
Lord Avebury: My Lords, while acknowledging that it is correct that people should use the complaints procedure—in fact, the individual concerned has done so—may I ask the Minister whether he does not think that the Secretary of State, for his part, has some responsibility to see that the guidelines which he has laid down are being followed? If evidence is submitted to the Secretary of State showing that police officers are trying to use persons who are settled here lawfully to spy on and bring into the net alleged illegal entrants and overstayers, does the noble Lord not think that that is in conflict with the guidelines which the Secretary of State has laid down?
Lord Belstead: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, and I really are not talking from the same base. Parliament has imposed on the police and on the immigration service the duty of enforcing the immigration laws, and the circular—which, after all, contains valuable guidelines—says that the Secretary of State is confident that chief officers will continue to enforce the law without fear or favour, but that, equally, the police will take the need for care in this very sensitive area fully into account. Now if those guidelines are going wrong, if in any way they are being flouted, that is a case for a complaint against the police; and I ask the noble Lord a second time to see that the statutory procedures for this, set down in the 1976 Act, are followed.
Lord Brockway: My Lords, without associating myself with any charge against the police as a whole, the Minister has referred to investigation within the police force. Would there not be much more acceptance of such an investigation if it were by an authority independent of the police?
Lord Belstead: My Lords, there is, of course, an independent element in the complaints procedure—the Director of Public Prosecutions where a complaint suggests a criminal offence and the Police Complaints Board where a complaint suggests a disciplinary offence. None the less, the line of thought which the noble Lord has suggested was mentioned in the triennial report of the Police Complaints Board, and this is the subject of a review by a working party at the present time.
Lord Somers: My Lords, would the noble Lord not agree that the police have a very difficult job to do and that they do it superbly well?
Lord Belstead: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord. It is difficult to find the right balance in this particular, very sensitive area of operations, and I think the police go a very long way towards achieving success.
Lord Avebury: My Lords, the Paddington Law Centre wrote to me and I answered the letter saying that I had advised this gentleman to lay a complaint against the police and that he has done so. But would not the Minister, for his part, concede that many cases of complaint against police officers fail because the matters concerning which the complaint is made are peculiarly within the knowledge of the complainant and the police officers themselves, and that there are no external witnesses? If the noble Lord is satisfied that a large number of complaints are being made, that people lawfully settled in the United Kingdom are being invited to act as spies and informers, does he not think that a matter for the consideration of the Secretary of State?
Lord Belstead: My Lords, the noble Lord made a series of assertions in that supplementary question, and I disagree with all of them.

Victoria and Albert Museum: Slide Loan Service
2.44 p.m.
Lord Plant: 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 arrangements they are making to continue the valuable slide lending library of the Victoria and Albert Museum.
The Earl of Avon: My Lords, my right honourable friend the Minister for the Arts is still considering what alternative arrangements he should make in order to ensure that the slide loan service will continue. He intends to make an announcement as soon as the details are sufficiently settled.
Lord Plant: My Lords, while I thank the noble Earl for that helpful reply, may I ask him whether he is aware that the 6,000 applicants (including the Workers' Educational Association) who annually use this service will be encouraged by that reply, but would wish to know how much longer they must wait before the service is resumed? This is a valuable library and the slides are as much a national treasure as the objects that they depict. I would press the noble Earl on the question of how much longer we must wait before the library service is resumed.
The Earl of Avon: My Lords, I cannot say yes or no to some of the statistics of the noble Lord, but may I remind him that the slide service is still going on. The Government are conscious of the need to maintain it in an uninterrupted form. To permit a period of closure would inconvenience all the users, whether lecturers, teachers, public school pupils, students or
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those who attend adult education. The intention is to ensure continuation of the service in a form which I cannot yet announce.
Baroness David: My Lords, if there is to be a period when the slide service will not be available to the public, will this be at a time of the year when young people will be taking their A-level examinations? There are now 10,000 students taking History of Art as an A-level subject. Will this mean that the slide service will not be available at that crucial time? Is the Minister aware that, unless a definite announcement is made soon, the many freelance lecturers who give adult education classes cannot sign contracts for the autumn and are in danger of losing their jobs?
The Earl of Avon: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness for those remarks. Not only are the Government aware of future contracts being in jeopardy but they know that present contracts are in that situation as well. That is why I said that the Government were conscious of the need to maintain the service in an uninterrupted form.
Lord Strabolgi: My Lords, are the Government aware that, due to the Civil Service staff cuts, up to 20 rooms a day have to be shut at the Victoria and Albert and that the whole museum is shut to the public on Fridays? Will they consider transferring the V and A museum from the Department of Education and Science and putting it under independent trustees like most of the other national museums, which have fared much better in this respect?
The Earl of Avon: My Lords, the Government have confidence in the director of the Victoria and Albert and, on this issue, are trying to find an alternative solution.
Lord Strabolgi: My Lords, are the Government aware that the director of the Victoria and Albert has himself deplored the cuts imposed upon him, which he described as "tragic"?
The Earl of Avon: My Lords, the director has made a decision of his own with regard to the slide museum and one within his own province.
The Earl of Gosford: My Lords, may I ask the noble Earl whether the Minister in another place is thinking in terms of this library continuing at the Victoria and Albert, or going to another museum or being taken over by private enterprise? We are talking in terms of half a million slides worth something like a quarter of a million pounds. If the slide collection is going to another museum, why sack eight people from the V and A and take on eight people at another museum? If it goes to private enterprise and there is a charge to be made for taking slides out and the charge becomes too much and the company then fails, can the Ministry guarantee that this valuable asset will be kept and returned perhaps to the museum?
The Earl of Avon: My Lords, the noble Earl has asked a number of different questions. Perhaps it would be easiest if, with the leave of the House, I repeat what

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was said in a Written Answer on 29th January in answer to a similar Question in another place. My right honourable friend Mr. Channon said that his right honourable friend the Member for Chelmsford had announced on 10th December his decision to ensure that the slide loan service would go on. My right honourable friend went on:
"I fully endorse that decision and am now considering alternative ways of providing the service bearing in mind the particular needs of those who use it ".
That is how it rests, and discussions are in progress at the moment.

Unemployment: Costs to the Exchequer
2.49 p.m.
Lord Beswick: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper, and, in doing so, may I point out that the first figure in the Question should be £340 million and not £350 million as printed?
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether the Treasury estimate of £350 million cost of each additional 100,000 unemployed includes an element of interest charges for the additional money which the Government have to borrow.
The Minister of State, Treasury (Lord Cockfield): No, my Lords. The estimate given in February's Economic Progress Report, which, as the noble Lord himself says, was in fact £340 million for each additional 100,000 unemployed, measured only the direct costs of unemployment to the Exchequer. Debt interest payments depend on the total borrowing requirement and the level of interest rates and hence indirectly on a variety of economic factors. It would be wrong to attempt to attribute interest payments to individual flows of revenue or expenditure.
Lord Beswick: My Lords, in thanking the noble Lord for that reply, may I ask two questions? First, is it not a fact that the extra amount of unemployment created in the last 12 months will, on the Treasury's own estimate, cost some £3,825 million a year and that the interest charges for funding that amount will be not less than £500 million to £550 million? Secondly, if those figures are correct—and they may be higher—would it not be more seemly if Government Ministers would refer to those costs rather than the investments in public sector industries as being a haemorrhage in our economic system?
Lord Cockfield: No, my Lords. I would not accept any of the assumptions made by the noble Lord in the series of supplementary questions that he has asked. First, as was explained in the article in the Economic Progress Report, it is not possible to gross up the cost to the Exchequer of 100,000 unemployed to some higher figure; nor is it the position that the rise in unemployment is due to Government policies. I dealt at length with the reasons for the rise in unemployment in the debate in your Lordships' House about a fortnight ago, and it is unnecessary for me on
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this occasion to repeat what I then said.
So far as the second part of the first supplementary question is concerned, that relates also to an attempt to attribute interest payments to particular flows of expenditure and is not a valid exercise. So far as the second supplementary question is concerned, the Government have given very considerable support to a number of nationalised industries: in particular, the steel industry, British Leyland and now the coal industry. The money thus provided will help to sustain a higher level of employment than would otherwise exist.
Lord Kilmarnock: My Lords, would the noble Lord not agree that apart from the item mentioned in the Question of the noble Lord, Lord Beswick, there are other items which have been omitted from these costs? I refer specifically to payments from the Redundancy Fund and also the loss of indirect tax receipts. It would have been more realistic if these had also been included.
Lord Cockfield: No, my Lords, I would not agree. It was specifically stated in the article that the calculation referred to direct costs only. Once one tries to include indirect costs, one is in the field of examining the reasons for the particular rise in unemployment. If I may give the noble Lord an example: to the extent that a rise in unemployment is due to an excessive level of wage settlements, the tax the Government recoup on those excessive settlements is greater than the amount of tax that they lose as a result of the consequent unemployment.
Lord Mishcon: My Lords, would the noble Lord the Minister consider referring the Government's economic policy to the Monopolies Commission bearing in mind the fact that The Times, the Financial Times and the Economist all regard that policy as completely wrong, misplaced and dangerous, and so do so many institutions in the City? Is it not a matter that the Monopolies Commission should consider?
Lord Cockfield: My Lords, the noble Lord destroys his own argument. The reason for referring any matter to the Monopolies Commission is because of the existence of a monopoly. He is now claiming that there are all sorts of other people offering alternative policies. The fact that those alternative policies are uniformly wrong does not provide a case for reference to the Monopolies Commission.
Lord Mishcon: My Lords, the Minister, with his usual quick, witty reaction, has answered my question by a definition of "monopoly". Does he not realise that I was saying that the Government's view was a monopoly to itself since nobody else was allowed to share it?
Lord Cockfield: No, my Lords, obviously I do not accept that view. This is a very serious matter and I am sorry that the noble Lord should seek to deal with it in a flippant manner. There is nothing flippant about this. The Government have devoted, and will continue to devote, all their efforts to securing a solution of our present economic difficulties.
Lord Morris: My Lords, would not my noble friend agree that to suggest that the Government, as of themselves, are capable of creating employment—and, likewise, of creating unemployment as of themselves—is not only extremely inaccurate but quite wrong?
Lord Cockfield: My Lords, I entirely agree with my noble friend. The solution to our present problems must come through a revival of the private sector, and the efforts of Her Majesty's Government are directed to that end.
Lord Beswick: My Lords, while accepting the qualifications that are in the Economic Progress Report article, would the Minister disagree with the figure that I have given that £3,825 million is the cost within the 12 months' period excluding redundancy payments, other items and the fact that those not on the employment register are not included in the cost? Secondly, while accepting that the Government have in recent weeks made certain investments in the publicly-owned companies to which he referred, could they not have done it with better grace? Could they not have used rather different language and admitted that it would be even more expensive to the taxpayer if all the subsidies went in the cost of the unemployed?
Lord Cockfield: No, my Lords; I disagree with both supplementary questions. The figure of £340 million is a marginal cost for a specific change in the level of unemployment. As I have said before, you simply cannot multiply these figures together and argue that this is the total cost of unemployment of a very much greater order of magnitude. There are so many other variables which come into this figure. So far as the second supplementary question is concerned, I think that it is universally agreed that there is very considerable scope for improvement in the level of efficiency of the nationalised industries. I have made it clear on a number of occasions—I did so in the last speech I delivered in your Lordships' House—that we are very anxious to see an improvement in that level of efficiency. We have been prepared to put a great deal of money in in the hope of securing that improvement in the level of efficiency, and I think that it is legitimate to draw attention to this fact.

DIY Welding Kits
2.57 p.m.
Lord Crook: 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 are aware that there are now being sold imported DIY welding kits which do not conform to the British Standard and do not absorb all the dangerous radiation; and what steps they will take to secure that only items which comply with the British Standard and are so marked are sold.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Trade (Lord Trefgarne): My Lords, if, as I
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assume, the noble Lord is referring to ultra-violet or infra-red radiation, no cases are known where DIY welding kits are supplied and there are not also supplied with them face shields that meet the provisions of British Standard 679 of 1959. If he knows of any such cases, I should be grateful if he would supply details and they will be investigated to see whether any danger to the user exists.
Lord Crook: My Lords, I thank the Minister for that reply. Clearly, I shall provide him with the information that he requests. But may I say that the information is already official knowledge. It is clearly known to the British Standards Institution that these things are being dumped in this country. This is only one of four different things to which this present questioner has had a chance to draw attention.
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, as I say, we do not know of any particular cases to which the noble Lord refers. As I said in my Answer, the problem would arise if these kits were supplied without the necessary face shields.

The Prime Minister's Visit to USA
Lord Denham: My Lords, at a convenient moment after 3.30 this afternoon my noble friend the Foreign Secretary will, with the leave of the House, repeat a Statement which is to be made in another place on the Prime Minister's trip to the United States.

Supreme Court Bill [H.L.]
2.59 p.m.
The Lord Chancellor (Lord Hailsham of Saint Marylebone): My Lords, I beg to move that the House do now resolve itself into Committee on this Bill.
Moved, That the House do now resolve itself into Committee.—(The Lord Chancellor.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House in Committee accordingly.
[The EARL OF LISTOWEL in the Chair.]
Clause 1 [The Supreme Court]:
On Question, Whether Clause 1 shall stand part of the Bill?
Lord Elwyn-Jones: I observe that in Clause 1 there is a change in the law—whether it has a more formal significance, I know not—in that the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor shall be President of the Supreme Court. That is a role that has never, as I understand it, been known before in our administration of justice and I take it this is not meant to be more than a recognition of the fact that the Lord Chancellor is the head of the judiciary. I apprehend that it does not impose any further obligations or duties upon him. That would be intolerable because he has more than enough to do already, if I may say so, from my experience of that office. So I take it this must be a formal recognition of the fact that the Lord Chancellor

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is the head of the judiciary and therefore appropriately described and given the status and office of "President of the Supreme Court".
The Lord Chancellor: I think the noble and learned Lord is exactly right in what he said. It certainly does not impose any new duties upon an already overburdened man. The Lord Chancellor, as the noble and learned Lord is aware, is president of the Court of Appeal, which is the higher of the two divisions of the Supreme Court, and also he is technically the head of the Chancery Division. The Vice-Chancellor's position has been moved up very considerably as a result of this Bill and I think it was thought by the draftsmen that this recognised the status quo rather than altered it.
Lord Elwyn-Jones: I am quite happy with the change, but I thought it was worth noting as we go along.
Clause 1 agreed to.
Clauses 2 and 3 agreed to.
Clause 4 [The High Court]:
On Question, Whether Clause 4 shall stand part of the Bill?
3.3 p.m.
The Lord Chancellor: In case I should be accused of deviousness, I think I ought to remind your Lordships that during this week, and probably tomorrow, I shall be moving to increase the number of High Court judges which are stated in the Bill to be 74. That figure is arrived at by taking the present figure of 75 and deducting one because of the new position of the Vice-Chancellor. It is quite clear to me that this number is inadequate owing to various factors I shall come to when I move the necessary resolution. I think I should give notice that when the Bill reaches Report stage there will be a Government amendment to increase the total number to 80. I think it is only fair to make these points while the Bill is in this stage, lest I should be accused of a rather devious tactic.
Lord Elwyn-Jones: We certainly would not accuse the noble and learned Lord of that. Perhaps therefore we could consider at Report stage the size of the judiciary because it does give rise, as I well know and as the Committee knows, to very serious problems of dilution and of the burden imposed on the judges. However, so that we may proceed with the Committee stage I will reserve my observations until Report stage.
Clause 4 agreed to.
Clauses 5 to 9 agreed to.
Clause 10 [Appointment of judges of Supreme Court]:
3.5 p.m.
Lord Mishcon Lord Mishcon moved Amendment No. 1:
Page 8, line 18, at end insert (" or is a circuit judge ").
The noble Lord said: The Committee will realise that this is an amendment in order to add circuit judges to those who could be appointed as puisne judges, apart from what now stands in the Bill as being
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the qualification of a barrister of ten years' standing. This may be an even more pertinent amendment in view of the announcement that the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor has just made, that in the course of our dealings with this Bill we shall find the recommendation that the number of puisne judges be increased from 74 to 80, showing the burden of work that now falls on the High Court and on judges of first instance.
The Committee might wonder why it was necessary, if you can appoint a barrister of ten year's standing, to ask for circuit judges to be added. I wish at once to be absolutely clear in my explanation to the Committee: it is because circuit judges can be either barristers or solicitors. Therefore this amendment would enable a circuit judge who has been appointed, who is a solicitor and who is looked upon, by virtue of his experience as a circuit judge and by reason of the career he has had as a circuit judge, as being suitable for elevation to the High Court bench.
It may be of interest to note that of the 334 circuit judges, as I believe there are at the moment, 19 are solicitors, and since the Courts Act 1971 six circuit judges have been elevated to the High Court bench. Therefore, if I may say so, this is a very understandable corps of people from which High Court judges may appropriately be appointed.
The Committee may be interested to know what a solicitor has to do by way of qualification and experience before he can become a circuit judge. First of all, he has to be a recorder, and a recorder must be either a barrister or solicitor of at least ten years' standing. Then, after having been a recorder for three years and having shown by his conduct that he is suitable to be appointed as a circuit judge, a solicitor recorder is eligible for appointment as a circuit judge. I hope that the Committee and the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor would feel that it would be singularly wrong, having gone through that judicial experience and quite apart from the practice of being a solicitor, which so much brings one into contact with members of the public and their problems, to exclude from those who can be appointed as puisne judges, those solicitors who have been appointed recorders, and then circuit judges, and who have shown themselves by their merit to be capable of being appointed to the High Court bench. I beg to move.
The Lord Chancellor: I see around me on the Benches opposite and on the Cross-Benches many persons who are in many ways better qualified than I to speak, but I think it might be appropriate if I disclosed my own position before they seek to do so. We had the Second Reading of this Bill before Christmas and this clause, as now drafted, is part of the Bill, and the Bill is a pure matter of consolidation. Rather late last week the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, put down this amendment and I think it does rather more than his brief introduction might lead us to suppose, since it is a breach of the principle upon which High Court judges are selected. Incidentally, I think, without consultation with the other branch of the profession, it is very much calculated to create ill-feeling between the two branches of the profession, upon whose friendly co-operation the whole smooth working of our system of justice ultimately depends.

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As the noble Lord has mentioned, the practising legal profession in this country is divided into two branches: that is a feature of our jurisprudence which has been the subject of criticism from time to time. It is one which I heartily endorse. I remember that when we were discussing the Courts Bill in 1971, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, said that he passionately believed in it. It has since been deeply investigated by the Benson Commission, and endorsed before the Benson Commission by no less a person than Warren Burger, the Chief Justice of the United States of America, who himself has practised in a fused profession, and the Benson Commission came down in favour of the status quo.
It is necessary to explain in a few words the basis upon which High Court judges are selected from those who have practised for 10 years in the High Court. The barrister forgoes a great number of things which are open to a lawyer in other countries which operate under a fused profession. He is not allowed to solicit work directly from the public. He receives his instructions directly from the solicitors' profession, rather on the basis of horses for courses; part of the expertise of the solicitor is to know the kind of case which a particular barrister is best qualified to conduct.
The barrister does no practical conveyancing. In practice, he does not draw the ordinary will. He does not interview witnesses, except his client and experts. He employs a minimal staff, since much of his time is spent in the library, in court or awaiting the calling of his case. His overheads are thus kept to a minimum. He is essentially an advocate, a specialist and an adviser. His value as a separate branch of the profession was endorsed as being in the interests of the public.
In contrast to the barrister, the solicitor is based in his office. He employs numerous staff—qualified and unqualified—legal executives, partners, typists, clerks, costing clerks and so on. His overheads are extremely heavy, and sometimes even enormous, and unless he is office-based he cannot meet them. Much of his income is drawn from conveyancing, drawing wills or conducting business on behalf of his clients. In contentious business, he normally employs counsel when he does not send junior partners to the county court or the magistrates' court, where he has a joint right of audience. In return for his abstention from direct contact with the public, the barrister retains a unique right of audience in the High Court and a joint right of audience in the county court; and in some of the more remote Crown Courts. In practice, he shares this, not with the senior partners of a firm of solicitors, but usually with the junior ranks of it.
In 1971, when I was introducing the Courts Bill in my previous term of office, the eligibility of both branches to the Crown Court bench was actively and controversially canvassed. As a result of a compromise, which was arrived at, largely, I think I may say, due to my personal efforts, the Courts Bill was passed in its present form. At that stage, I made an estimate that very few solicitors were expected to aspire to judicial status in the Crown Court. I expected a few and I expected them to be good in quality, and in each respect my anticipations were then justified. Relatively few solicitors have applied to be made recorders, and relatively few of these graduated to circuit court status.
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Those that did were extremely good.
Their title to be considered depended upon the fact that, particularly in country areas not served by a large local Bar, younger solicitors had experience of advocacy in the magistrates' courts, the county courts and, in a very few cases, the Crown Courts. The experiment has been a success although, in the main, solicitors approach this goal mainly after their career has passed its zenith. Elevation to the bench depends in this country on an experience of advocacy. This is in contrast to the civil law countries, where it is a separate branch of the legal profession and judges are recruited, as it were, as civil servants, from law schools direct, and gradually develop their skills as judges by experience from a lower court to a higher court.
When I decided to make the experiment in 1971, I came under a good deal of criticism in this House and from the Bar. For instance, I well remember that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner—hardly a conservative figure, in any sense of the word, said that he was wearing the mantle of Cassandra and claimed that no good would come of the compromise which I had then allowed. He was a prophet of doom. He thought that I was selling the pass. He realised that matters of principle were then at stake, but I thought that the fact of a joint right of audience in the county courts justified the experiment and, as I have said, in the event, the experiment proved a success—a success in quality and a modest success in quantity. As the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, has said, I think that 19 judges out of a total of something like 350—and not the figure he gave—circuit judges have, in fact, graduated to the Crown Court—
Lord Mishcon: I wonder whether the noble and learned Lord would allow me to intervene, only to my own detriment, but I must do it in the cause of truth. My understanding is that only six circuit judges have been elevated, and not 19. I thought it only right, although it goes against me, to point that out.
The Lord Chancellor: I am much obliged to the noble Lord. I am not quite sure that he is not understating his case, but I will leave it at that for the moment. At any rate, as he rightly says, my point will become a stronger one if he is exactly correct. There never was any question—and I do not think there should be any question today—of putting the divide between the circuit judge and the High Court judge where the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, puts it. Practice in court is the test in this country of selection to the bench. Selection to the High Court bench depends upon practice in the High Court and that is confined to barristers.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, said, on the last occasion when this subject was ventilated, that he could not imagine the purpose of being a barrister if he was not given an exclusive right of audience in the High Court. I think that he then overstated his case. I became a barrister largely because I do not like answering letters, I cannot keep accounts and I do not like looking after other people's money. But, at any rate, that is what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, said. There is, of course, a perfectly good way in which a solicitor can become a High Court judge, and many have done so in the past.

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I see on the Cross-Benches my noble and learned friend Lord Widgery, who became Lord Chief Justice, no less, having begun as a solicitor. I myself had a pupil who was called to the Bar, subsequently became senior partner in a firm of solicitors and might easily have become president of the Law Society, if he had not become a registrar of the High Court before he could do so.
So that the royal road of promotion to the High Court bench for a solicitor is to practise in the High Court, which he can do perfectly easily by transferring to the Bar, and I think that that is the correct way. I think that the present situation is the more satisfactory one; namely, that 10 years' practice in the High Court should be the test of who becomes a High Court judge. It is no kind of criticism of either branch of the profession that each has its own speciality, so long as, as is now the case, there is a relatively easy road from one branch to the other if you feel that you want to go the other way.
For those reasons, I do not personally feel able to accept the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon. It was proposed as persuasively as he always proposes everything, and he has, very fairly, rather diminished the strength of his own case—I think, possibly, unfairly to himself—by showing what a very rare occasion it is for a solicitor to become a circuit judge, and how many hoops he must go through before he does so. The net result of course is that the chances of his being one of those who move to the High Court bench would be very small because of the age at which he would have to be before becoming qualified. I think in practice the change would be minimal but I think in principle it breaks an important principle.
Lord Mishcon: Before the noble and learned Lord sits down, I think, with great respect and most unusually for him, he has become somewhat confused with his figures. What I said was that six circuit judges had been appointed to the High Court bench and that there were 19 solicitors who were circuit judges. I think the noble and learned Lord, quite unusually for him but possibly because of his poor accountancy which he frankly confessed, has got the figures rather muddled up.
The Lord Chancellor: I do not think I have. I may have indulged in a slip of the tongue but my understanding is that 19 solicitors have become circuit judges and that six circuit judges, though none of them a solicitor, have become High Court judges. If I said anything different I may have been guilty of a slip of the tongue but I was not guilty of a slip of the head.
Lord Foot: In view of the attitude which the noble and learned Lord has taken, it would be clearly foolish to try to pursue the matter any further today, but may I comment upon one thing which fell from his lips. He said at the very beginning about the amendment proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, that he thought it would introduce a new and unhappy ill-feeling between the two professions. I wonder whether the noble and learned Lord would consider this: Is it not rather undesirable that, as matters
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stand, circuit judges in this country should be divided into two categories, first-class circuit judges and second-class circuit judges, the first-class circuit judges being those who may at some time be elevated to the High Court bench while the second-class solicitor circuit judges are for ever debarred from ascending to that high level? I should have thought that that was a state of affairs which might be calculated to cause some ill-feeling between the professions.
My only other observation is that the noble and learned Lord was at pains to point out that under our divided professional system, barristers in this country are subject to limitations upon what they can do. As I understood what the noble and learned Lord said, on that account they ought to have an exclusive prerogative to sit upon the High Court bench. I understand the point of that argument, but is it really right that we should decide this issue upon what the rights of barristers should be rather than upon the basis of what produces the best judges? There are many cases, particularly in America where I understand they have the fused system, and throughout Western Europe where people with no legal qualifications have turned out to be some of the best judges in the superior courts—as, for example, in the Supreme Court of the United States.
Lord Janner: I should like to support the amendment. When the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor speaks I am nearly always entirely in agreement with him, but on this occasion I hope he will take notice of the investigation of this matter by the Law Society. I do not know whether the noble and learned Lord has had an opportunity to discuss the matter with the Law Society, who have gone very carefully into its pros and cons. As a long-practising solicitor, let me say that many solicitors—I am not going to say all of us—have an opportunity to form judgments, an opportunity which no barrister has except when he may try to get the points which are being raised. But behind those points there are human actions and reactions which a solicitor usually obtains and which cannot be penetrated, in my view, other than by those who practise the solicitors' branch of the profession.
As the noble Lord, Lord Foot, has already said, this is a matter which has come up again, and the manner in which it has been presented by the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, is one which cannot be argued against convincingly. For many years the question has been raised of how far the two branches should utilise each other's services. This re-opens a point which has been proved by the appointments which have already been made to the judiciary: that the solicitors' branch is quite capable of and, I think, is extremely helpful in, forming judicial decisions. In these circumstances, I hope that the noble and learned Lord and his colleagues will reconsider their decision and take further advice from the professions.
Lord Diplock: Underlying this apparently simple amendment are matters which are fundamental to the structure of the legal profession and to the career structure of its two branches. On the face of it, this is a very innocuous suggestion. What harm can be done by enlarging the catchment area from which the

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Lord Chancellor can select judges of the High Court? He need only select those whom he thinks are worthy of the office and would fill it well. There is equally a respectable case for asking: Why should not the Lord Chancellor include in that catchment area, at any rate for appellate courts, professors of the law, of whom we have at least two excellent examples in this House? Indeed, if one looks across the Atlantic Ocean to Canada, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada today is an admirable example of how well a professor of the law can occupy a judicial office.
But we ought not to debate this question in isolation from questions which are fundamental to whether or not we in this country should continue to work with a divided profession and to what extent rights of audience in lower courts or the High Court should be extended to the solicitors' branch. These are matters which have been the subject of profound debate and study over the last three years by the commission headed by the noble Lord, Lord Benson. After hearing much evidence, both from this country and from abroad, that commission came down ultimately against fusing the two branches of the profession and against extending the rights of audience of solicitors into the High Court.
No doubt this was a disappointment for many because perfectly legitimate views in favour of one side or the other can be held. But let me say this in answer to the noble Lord, Lord Foot: of course it is essential to our legal system that we should produce the best judges as well as the most competent advocates and solicitors, but wrapped up in the structure of the profession, the career structure of each side, is the production of judges, and the view which at any rate I hold at the moment is that the present system works the best.
I am not generally attracted by what I may call the "thin end of the wedge" argument in opposition to a proposal for a change, but it gains cogency when the subject matter is the administration of the law, because the way the common law has developed over the centuries has been step by step, moving from precedent to precedent. If we can do this, then there is a little more that we can do. The argument for this amendment shows an example of how that process is being made to operate. In 1971 solicitors became eligible to become Crown Court judges. In 1981, they having proved their value there, what harm could there be in making them eligible to be High Court judges? The next step, if solicitors can be circuit judges and High Court judges, surely they are qualified to have arguments addressed to them also by solicitors? If solicitors have been admitted to mount two steps up the judicial ladder, why not a third?
As the son of a solicitor, from a family whose several generations of forebears were solicitors and as one who, though a member of the Bar for many years, has ceased to be one for more than 25 years, I hope that I have not any trade union prejudices (if I may so describe them) on either side, but I urge your Lordships that it is an inappropriate occasion to give a hasty answer to this basic question. It needs much more thought, much deeper consideration of its implications, than is possible or suitable this after-noon, and I hope the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, will
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not force us to a Division. I do not want to go on record as rejecting the notion out of hand, but it requires much more time, much deeper consideration than we have given or can hope to give it and if it were forced to a Division, I should find myself, very reluctantly but quite definitely, in the Not-Content Lobby.
3.32 p.m.
Lord Roskill: My noble and learned friend Lord Diplock has declared that he is the son of a solicitor; perhaps I should begin by declaring an interest as one who is the father of a solicitor and who, for perhaps half a dozen years or more, has been a member of that branch of the profession which the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, has adorned for so long. That interest being already declared, none the less I am not persuaded that the amendment is one which your Lordships' House should accept.
I venture to say that for this reason. There is only one test by which the validity of this amendment should be judged. It must not under any circumstance be judged by any question of a closed shop or trade union principles. There is only one test, and that is: What will enable the Lord Chancellor of the day to select the best available judges for the High Court? As it is some 10 years or more since I ceased to be a judge of the High Court, I may perhaps be allowed to say that I do not believe at the present time there has ever been a period in which the quality of the High Court bench has been higher. My noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Elwyn-Jones, who covered the last 10 years between them have, as I am sure they would be the first to accept, been doubly fortunate not only in their choice but in the willingness of those who, very often at considerable sacrifice, have accepted the offices which have been offered to them. There has never been a period during which the younger part of the Queen's Bench Division, the Chancery Division or the Family Division has been stronger, more intellectually able or more utterly professional and dedicated than it is at the present time. At this moment, to seek to recruit, however deserving and able other candidates may be, is not the right moment, as my noble and learned friend Lord Diplock has said.
But there is another reason for this conclusion, and it is this: I do not believe that any of us who have sat as judges of the High Court would ever have wished to have sat and held the honour of that office unless previously we had had not merely some, but some very considerable, experience of advocacy in that court over a period of years. It is, of course, absolutely true that solicitors have the right of audience in the county court, to a limited extent in the Crown Court now, as a result of the 1971 Act and the matter to which my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor referred, and in the magistrates' courts. I happen to be very proud of still being a lay justice and from time to time I sit in the magistrates' court. There one hears quite admirable advocacy, but there is all the difference in the world between being an advocate in a magistrates' court or a county court and being an advocate in the High Court, with all the complications which are involved. I do not believe that anybody should he invited to preside in the High Court in civil jurisdiction

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unless that person has had not merely some, but very considerable, experience of advocacy in that court.
Some years ago, I had the privilege of being president of the Senate of the four Inns of Court, and during that period, like my noble and learned friend Lord Scarman, who succeeded me, we had many disappointments but we had some successes. One of the successes that we both had was easing the method of transfer between the two branches of the profession—from the Bar to solicitors and from solicitors to the Bar. As a result it is far easier now to move from one branch to the other than it was 10 years ago.
My noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor mentioned the career—and I hope I may be forgiven for referring to it—of my noble and learned friend Lord Widgery. That is perhaps a classic of its type. A solicitor—I hope I have my dates right—until he was 35, interposing a long and distinguished and gallant career as a soldier, and then a meteoric career at the Bar, through Queen's Counsel, to the High Court bench and the Court of Appeal and then to Lord Chief Justice.
At the present time, there are a number of others on the High Court bench (I am not sure whether there is anyone now in the Court of Appeal) who started as solicitors and have reached their present position by that route. They have thereby gained the experience, which I venture to suggest would be lacking in someone who went straight from the county court bench to the High Court bench. That has always been the route and that should remain the route today. By that route, the bench has gained enormously in the last few years, and by that route I am sure it will continue to gain if those solicitors who seek high judicial office pursue that which is far easier for them to pursue than it was when my noble and learned friend Lord Widgery and the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor and I all started at the Bar.
The Lord Chancellor: I do not know whether it would be convenient to let the Committee know that my noble friend the Foreign Secretary is ready with a Statement which he is about to repeat. Would it be in order, therefore, to move that the House do now resume?
Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Motion agreed to.
House resumed.

The Prime Minister's visit to USA
3.40 p.m.
The Secretary of State for Foreign and Common-wealth Affairs (Lord Carrington): My Lords, with your Lordships' permission, I should like to repeat a Statement made by my right honourable friend the Prime Minister in another place, which is in her own words:
"I visited the United States from 25th to 28th February, accompanied by my noble friend the Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary. I had talks in Washington with President Reagan, Vice-President Bush, Secretary of State Haig, Defense Secretary Weinberger and other members of the President's
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Cabinet. I also met members of both Houses of Congress. In New York I had a meeting with the Secretary General of the United Nations.
"The reception given to us in Washington was warm and generous, testifying to the health of the Anglo-American relationship and also to the excellent understanding which President Reagan and I had established even before either of us assumed our present responsibilities. My talks with President Reagan and members of his Cabinet covered all the most important aspects of the international scene. The discussions were particularly timely, since the new Administration are still formulating their policy on many of the issues raised. At this early stage in the new Administration's period in office there was, of course, no question of new commitments being entered into by either side.
"We exchanged views on East-West relations as a whole, and in particular on the speech President Brezhnev delivered a week ago. We agreed that it contains, besides much that is unacceptable to Britain and America, certain points which need to be explained and explored. This applies, for instance, to President Brezhnev's remarks about arms control, which both President Reagan and I see as a necessary complement to defence and deterrence.
"On the Middle East, I explained the objectives of the European initiative stemming from the Venice Declaration of last June. I pointed out that this initiative was intended not to compete with American efforts but to complement them.
"On Southern Africa, we agreed to keep closely in touch, especially in relation to Namibia—a problem to which the United Nations is increasingly turning its attention.
"On El Salvador, the Americans expressed their concern about the developing conflict, and in particular made clear their opposition to the support which the guerilla movement is receiving from external sources.
"My noble friend and I indicated that the British Government shared the American view of outside interference in the internal affairs of El Salvador. We explained that we condemned violence from whatever quarter it came, and that we considered that the people of El Salvador should be able to determine their own future peacefully and democratically.
"The President and I discussed the threat to the stability and security of the Gulf and South-West Asia following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. I said that Britain shared the determination of the United States, and of our other allies, to prevent Soviet encroachment in this region. We discussed the possible creation of a rapid deployment force which would be available for use, if necessary, in an emergency in this or other areas of the world. This matter will be the subject of consultation. I made it clear that if such a force was created the United Kingdom would be ready to contribute to it, in the same way as, in conjunction with the United States and France, we have already stationed naval units in the Gulf in response to the situation arising from the Iran/Iraq war.
"In my discussion with Defense Secretary Weinberger I pointed out that this year and last

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the United Kingdom had increased its defence spending in accordance with the NATO target. The Defense Secretary and I agreed that there should be better balance in defence purchases between this country and the United States. This would lead to more effective use of the alliance's resources.
" On all matters we discussed President Reagan and the members of his Cabinet whom I met expressed their intention of consulting even more closely and frequently than in the past not only with Britain but also with America's other allies. Indeed this is already happening. I naturally welcome the American intention, and I hope that my own visit will have contributed to deepening the understanding on which such consultation must always be based ".
Lord Goronwy-Roberts: My Lords, in thanking the noble Lord for his Statement, may I first of all express pleasure at the friendly reception which he and the Prime Minister received in Washington. The special relationship—and I for one am never chary of using the term—does in fact exist, whether or not everybody approves of it. However, it should never be the relationship of Siamese twins each tied indissolubly to the objectives of the other. Unfortunately, over the weekend many of us have had the impression that there has been a rather hasty, inadequately thought-out British over-commitment to certain exaggerated American objectives. I hope I am quite wrong about this, as I speak as one who firmly believes in the special relationship within NATO. The Statement, however, does tone down the fairly authoritative reports we have had over the weekend, and I welcome the tone of the Statement to that extent.
However, it is still pervaded by a note of strident belligerency in regard to the revival of détente. There are many things in Mr. Brezhnev's latest speech that the West would do well to consider very carefully and favourably. The reports, including this Statement, do not encourage one to think that there will be a positive trust in that direction when the diplomacy is resumed in regard to a resumption of talks with the Soviet Union.
First, on the vital question of the revival of détente and of promoting arms control, we entirely agree that détente must be a two-way affair and that the Soviet Union must make its full contribution to its success. However, we also believe that whenever Mr. Brezhnev or any other authorised Soviet leader makes a proposal we should not instantly react in an adversarial attitude. We must examine and welcome, so far as we can, the positive element of any such declaration. We would have liked a little more clarity and a little less clamour in Washington in relation to the Russian initiative.
We would also like to know to what extent were our partners in the Community consulted before the visit, particularly in regard to the obviously necessary reply from Washington, during the visit, to Mr. Brezhnev's speech. Were our partners consulted? Was there a consensus as to what should be said? All this is extremely important, because if the Community is to mean anything it must grow in grace in regard to political unity more than in any other direction.
Secondly, the commitment of the United Kingdom of forces to a rapid deployment force in the Gulf.
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It seems to me to be rather obviously unthought-out beforehand. The question of intervention in the Gulf is a very complex and a very sensitive one, as I personally know from some years of experience of this matter. The Statement underlines the commitment rather than tones it down. We are, it seems, committed to joining with the Americans in forming a force to intervene, to interfere, in the Gulf. Within hours of that being known, at least three of our best friends in the Arab world reacted in a hostile if not abusive fashion. I suggest that that is not the best way of helping the legitimate and vital interests of this country and the West in the Middle East.
As regards El Salvador, none of us, I hope, would underestimate the sinister implications of Cuban intervention, whether independent or surrogate, in the affairs of Central and Southern American countries, nor indeed its continuing intervention in Africa and its threat to stability in Namibia. However, is it the best and wisest course to strive to counter that intervention by military means? Is it not better to concentrate on economic and political aid and to get at the roots of the disturbance in countries like El Salvador and to cut from under the feet of those who have a vested interest in de-stability in that area, the reasons for that instability?
Moreover, perhaps the Foreign Secretary might tell us how much time was really given during this visit to the urgent need for concerted action to deal with the world recession. What did the other Mr. Reagan, the US Treasury and trade officials have to say to him and to the Prime Minister about the British performance? Were Professor Friedman and his wife present, perhaps, at these discussions? Did they exchange their experience of mistakes or of success? Did they have any exchanges on the vital question of joining together in the West to defeat the worst recession that the world has ever experienced?
Finally, does the reference to the ever closer consultation between the United States, ourselves and our partners refer to all the countries of NATO plus those outside NATO who are, without being members of NATO, nevertheless by interest as well as inclination in agreement with the purposes of NATO? There is much to be hoped for from a reappraisal of the role of NATO—a restrengthening of its political as well as its military structure—and I would hope that the Foreign Secretary, if not today then fairly soon, may be able to tell us that he and the Americans were at one in extending and making more politically effective the consultation between us and our friends in the alliance.
Lord Gladwyn: My Lords, we too would like to thank the Foreign Secretary for repeating the Statement. Obviously we have not had time to consider all its very grave implications, but I would say at once that we are very glad that the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary had such a good reception in Washington and, generally speaking, we of course welcome the Prime Minister's declared intention to support the new American Administration in their policy of resisting aggression, and notably Soviet aggression, anywhere in the world. Apart from that, we welcome the note of caution sounded, I think, as a result of the talks with the President, as regards the relationship of the United States with El Salvador. I

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would only say that I think there is general agreement that, if we want to get the third world and the potentially revolutionary forces in the third world on our side, it is not a very good plan to decrease aid to those countries, which seems to be the present intention. Subject to that, I think that we welcome the note of caution.
It is as regards the rapid deployment force that I think we would have certain reserves, although we note, of course, that there is no agreement on that and that it was only subject to discussion. I hope that it will also be the subject of discussion, and early discussion, with our European allies, and that we shall eventually be able to get some kind of agreement on the possible deployment of that force. Generally speaking, we rather doubt the desirability in the present conditions of sending any such force, either on the part of the Americans or on the part of ourselves. I may be wrong, but the Russians show no present intention of advancing towards the Gulf; and might not the Foreign Secretary agree that, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, the whole present balance of power in the area might be upset—conceivably as a result of revolutionary moves—by the arrival of any substantial, perhaps NATO force, even granted that there would be agreement in NATO on its despatch? I think that that is a question which should be seriously considered, and I hope will be considered, by the Government when they have talks with their allies on the subject. Generally speaking, we also hope that there will be early talks with our European partners not only on this grave issue—the whole question of the Middle East—but also on the attitude that we should take towards Mr. Brezhnev's recent initiative. I am sure that the Foreign Secretary is giving every attention to that.
Lord Carrington: My Lords, I am grateful to both noble Lords who have spoken and I shall try to answer very briefly the questions they have raised. Some of the issues are very wide and it would be difficult to deal with them in question and answer. I do not think that the noble Lord opposite need worry about over-commitments—I do not think that they were commitments. Nothing further was done in Washington about which I think the House does not already know.
There has been no reply from this country to President Brezhnev's speech. What I was reporting was that there had been a discussion between the Prime Minister and President Reagan about it and they found that, although certain things in it were unacceptable, there were certain things that were well worth while exploring and one of them was very significantly the question of arms control. Another was the acceptance—although I think it is a little unclear how far it goes—of the proposal for confidence building measures up to the Urals, although it is not entirely clear how far some sort of reciprocal geographical area is required on our side which might be either impossible or unacceptable. So that there are areas in which further exploration is necessary, but I think it would be very foolish of us, or indeed of the Americans, not to examine these proposals very carefully and to have our policy very carefully thought out before there is a considered response.
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As regards Community consultation, of course we talk continually with our Community colleagues; I talked to my Community colleagues before the Washington meeting and so I was very well aware of what they were doing. My French colleague had already been to Washington and my German colleague is going to Washington next week. We of course are very closely in touch, together with our other colleagues.
As regards El Salvador, the statement which Her Majesty's Government put out on (I think it was) the day we left for Washington very clearly states our point of view. We think that the evidence which the American Administration have as to Cuban and Soviet involvement in Central America generally, not just El Salvador, is very convincing and greatly to be deplored. At the same time we believe that the Government of El Salvador have a duty to have regard to human rights in their own country and to make sure that the forces at their disposal behave properly, and we hope very much that there will be an opportunity for the people of El Salvador to decide their own future. I think that probably the noble Lord opposite will have noticed that these sentiments were echoed by Mr. Haig in Washington a day or so ago. I do not think that there is any difference between us about that.
In so far as the question of the rapid deployment force is concerned, noble Lords will know that the rapid deployment force has been a matter of consultation and discussion over a period of time. It was originally the idea of President Carter's Administration and the Americans have been considering it since then. I do not know whether I misunderstood the noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn, but, of course, the point of a rapid deployment force is not that it is stationed in any area outside the United States, Europe or wherever it might be, but that it deploys rapidly. That is what it means. So there would not be a physical presence. As the NATO Treaty is restrictive in its operation—and undoubtedly there are incidents around the world which affect the West and the NATO countries—it is at any rate a very good idea to see how it is wise to respond in certain cases to prevent any further Soviet aggression. It seems to me that that is a sensible thing to do. No commitments have been entered into; the rapid deployment force is still in the stages of being thought out.
I should have thought that all of us in the West ought to think very carefully how best to deal with a situation such as Afghanistan. I do not believe that our neighbours and our friends in the Gulf need have any fear that the proposal is directed at them or that any action will be taken in their defence for which they do not ask, or that kind of thing. I think that this sort of matter is a matter for consultation, as the Statement has said. Therefore, I do not think that anything was said or done in Washington about which anyone in the Middle East, or, indeed, in this country should have any doubts.
The last question I was asked by the noble Lord opposite was, I think, about consultation. Of course, it is a matter for the United States who they consult. However, there is no doubt that they intend to consult the NATO allies and the European Community. Of course, there are opportunities for consultation with other countries, particularly at the Economic

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Summit Meeting. I have no doubt that we shall all do that. Perhaps we are in an even more fortunate position, in that not only are we friends of the Americans, but we are a member of the Community, a member of NATO and a member of the Common-wealth; of course, we consult all our Commonwealth colleagues in exactly the same fashion.
Lord Campbell of Croy: My Lords, on the concept of an international force for rapid deployment, can my noble friend confirm that it is the intention that such a force would not be deployed in any country except after a request from the country concerned? If he can confirm that, could not that be made public immediately in the parts of the world where there now appears to be anxiety? Can he not also publicise in those areas the fact that, if there were troops and supporting arms in a reasonable state of readiness, such a force should be helpful to them if they felt threatened?
Lord Carrington: My Lords, the object of such a force would be to contain Soviet aggression. If the force is set up and if we belong to it, I cannot imagine a circumstance in which that force would be used against the wishes of a country.
Lord Avebury: My Lords, when the noble Lord the Foreign Secretary said that the Government of El Salvador had a duty to have regard to human rights and that this point of view was echoed by Mr. Haig, can he tell the House the practical implications of that statement? In other words, if, in addition to the 10,000 murders—including the murders of the Archbishop of San Salvador and of the three American nuns—which have been committed by the Government security forces and their auxiliaries, there continue to be massacres such as that described by David Blundy in the Sunday Times last week, does the noble Lord think it right for the American Administration to continue to supply arms to the El Salvador regime?
Lord Carrington: My Lords, I think that questions about American policy ought to be directed to the American Government and not to me. I have made clear on behalf of Her Majesty's Government that I deplore terrorism, from whichever quarter it comes.
Lord Davies of Leek: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that his expression, when he said that there were no real commitments, will have done something to assuage the fears of some of us? I do not remember the exact words, but they meant that. I welcome the statement because it modifies the Statement of the Prime Minister. Secondly, the Prime Minister warned the President to be careful in dealing with the Soviet Union. It does not need a sophisticated nation like the United States of America to be warned by Britain how to deal with a foreign power of the size of the Soviet Union. I do not think that that kind of language helps.
Thirdly, nothing has been heard—but, to be fair, there may have been talk about it—about the Brandt Report. Rather, we heard about factors which, as regards our little country, are dangerous. It is now time that the policy-makers of this Government realise
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that we are only a small island nation and that militaristic, powerful talk by Britain alone, without full discussion with NATO powers or without discussion with the EEC, no longer puts us in the place where we were 40 or 50 years ago. We must now face the fact that, when we talk of Britain alone taking commitments which are beyond our ability to keep, that type of talk is economic, military and political nonsense.
Lord Carrington: My Lords, I sincerely hope that we never do that; that would not be very sensible, as the noble Lord has said. The only commitment that was made—and it was not a commitment—is what the Prime Minister said: that if a rapid deployment force was set up, in principle, we would be prepared to take our share; that is all. With regard to the warning, I never heard the Prime Minister warn the President at all. I never heard anybody warn anybody of anything. I have no doubt that, with his usual assiduity, the noble Lord has been reading all the newspaper reports, which may have translated a conversation into a warning.
As regards the Brandt Report and so on, the Mexico summit was discussed between the Prime Minister and the President, and between Mr. Haig and myself, so your Lordships may rest assured that that was not overlooked.
Lord Kennet: My Lords, is the noble Lord the Secretary of State in a position to tell the House anything about the relation between American and European policies towards a settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict?
Lord Carrington: My Lords, from that point of view I think that the meeting was very useful. I think that there had been—perhaps not so much in the American Administration but in some quarters in the United States—a misunderstanding about the Venice Declaration. The Prime Minister and I took the opportunity to explain, both publicly and to the Administration, what the European Community sought to achieve. As I said in the Statement, we reiterated that we were not in the business to rival, to compete or to undercut what the United States sought to do, but rather that we sought to help in a complementary fashion. I believe that this is much more clearly understood now than it was before our visit.
Lord Duncan-Sandys: My Lords, in view of some of the criticisms that have been made, does my noble friend the Foreign Secretary appreciate how greatly all realistic people welcome the recognition by the two Governments that the dangers to the safety of the NATO countries extend beyond the NATO area, and that closest co-operation with a view to necessary action outside that area is very necessary?
Lord Carrington: My Lords, I am most grateful to my noble friend because, from looking at the situation in the world and at what has happened in the last few years, he would be a very unwise man who did not understand what has happened in parts of Africa, in South-East Asia and, indeed, in the Middle East.

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If I may say so, I do not think that it is wholly wise to be too critical of realistic leaders who seek to devise means to make the world a safer place.
Lord Janner: My Lords, can the noble Lord say what advance was made at the meeting in order to deal with the Middle East situation, as arranged at the Camp David settlement? From what the noble Lord said, is it now to be understood that any violence used in order to achieve an object similar to the one that is at present confronting the Middle East, is not to be tolerated? Will the noble Lord assure the House we are not deviating from the policy that the state of Israel should be recognised by everyone who is participating in the negotiations before it is acceptable that that particular body, whichever it may be, can participate in the negotiations?
Lord Carrington: My Lords, Her Majesty's Government do not believe that the right way to settle international disputes is by force, and we have made that abundantly plain over a period of years. The noble Lord, Lord Janner, will perhaps recollect that in the Venice Declaration it was clearly set out that the Arabs had to recognise the state of Israel and the right of Israel to live in security within its own boundaries. Until such time as that is recognised by the PLO and by all the Arab states I do not believe that it is possible to get a solution. Equally, on the other side of the coin—that is in the Venice Declaration—there is a need for Israel to recognise that the Palestinians have rights.
Lord Goronwy-Roberts: My Lords, before the Committee resumes, I am sure the House will allow me to thank the noble Lord for the great care he has taken in dealing with the points raised by my noble friends and myself and others on this important Statement, and also to congratulate him on the efficacy of his efforts. He has clarified a number of points that troubled Members in all parts of the House, and no doubt in all parts of the country and possibly throughout the West. In particular, we welcome his reassurance that the rapid deployment force is not something meant for the Gulf only. The impression has been created—unfairly and unjustifiably perhaps, but it is there as we heard this morning—that it is something for the Gulf. The reaction from our Arab friends, and among them some of the true friends of Israel, has been instant and hostile. What the noble Lord had to say on the RDF will be particularly welcome in many quarters of the world.
Lord Carrington: My Lords, I am happy to confirm that. The rapid deployment force is a force to be deployed rapidly, not in one particular direction, but where it is needed. May I follow up what my noble friend Lord Duncan-Sandys said. Those of us who look at these things with care, understanding, experience and knowledge should welcome the fact that, with the responsibilities of the United States as the leader of the free world, and as the country with the most military power in the world, such a country is giving a lead in trying to contain what I think is unacceptable Soviet expansion.

Supreme Court Bill [H.L.]
Committee stage resumed on Amendment No. 1.
4.14 p.m.
Lord Mishcon: If we may revert from the world stage to the rather narrower conception of the Supreme Court Bill, and the even narrower one of Clause 10, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Diplock, disclosed his objective attitude to the amendment by saying that his father was a solicitor. May I say to him at once that this is well remembered with affection in my own profession. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Roskill, said that his son was a solicitor and therefore he must be objective about this. May I equally record that his son is held in great respect in my profession. But I have a double objectivity. I have a son who is a solicitor and a daughter who is a barrister, and therefore I hope that it will be assumed immediately that I too have an objectivity, although I ought to disclose that neither of them has as yet told me that he or she has an ambition even to be a circuit court judge.
May I just try to put the argument not again, because that would weary the Committee, but in some amount of perspective. There is no question of setting one branch of a very great profession, of which all of us who belong to it are proud, against another branch of that profession. It is a profession which in its joint activities serves the public very well. Many of us feel that the division that has existed is a proper division. Many of us feel that we throw up in our midst in both branches of it people who adorn the profession and who have the qualities of being good judges.
I could go off at a tangent, but your Lordships would be angry with me if I did, to discuss whether in our legal history the best advocates—and advocacy has been stressed as a great principle and as almost the foundation for a judgeship—have proved the best judges. Some of us, if we were to read the biographies of great advocates, would find that the reverse was the situation. But that is a statment which does not apply to any of the noble and learned Law Lords now present. The question is not one of advocacy. One thing the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor did not mention, and perhaps it was because he felt it was inappropriate to mention it, is that some of the solicitors who are circuit judges have been sitting as deputy High Court judges despite their lack of experience of advocacy in the High Court; and they have been doing it very well and I understand to the admiration of their colleagues.
The only consideration is one expressed by my noble friend Lord Foot. We are not interested in this day and age in arguments as to whether one side of the profession sacrifices more than the other in the course of doing professional duties. The only principle we have in mind in a changing world of commercial experience, of humble goings on in homes, is who, with their legal learning, with their patience, tolerance, and fair judicial minds, are to fill the 80 puisne judgeships that have to be filled, or have to remain, or be added to in the course of time? It is in peace that I make the suggestion and certainly not in war, and I do not think it is a suggestion that needs a great deal of consideration because, as has been said, it is not a

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question of a right to be appointed but purely and simply the question of whether the Lord Chancellor of the time is entitled to look at a circuit court judge who is a solicitor and say that he is worthy to be put on the High Court bench.
The last thing in the world at Committee stage that I want to do—and I suspect that the noble Lord, Lord Foot, feels the same—is to test the feeling of your Lordships at this point. What I am going to ask of the noble and learned Lord, as I think I am entitled to do, is this: I do not even want to put this down at Report stage unless I find I have to as a matter of principle. This is, if I may put it in parenthesis, a Law Society considered proposal or recommendation; it is not a personal one to me. Would he in his kindness say that he would be prepared at least to discuss this matter with the professional bodies concerned between now and Report stage, to see whether it is possible for this amendment to be agreed to, so that Clause 10 will be so amended?
I ask him for no promise that there will be a positive outcome from that. Could he, with his usual courtesy, tell me first that the consultations would take place? If we can be told whether or not the Government will be prepared to accept the amendment in time to enable us to table another should we feel it appropriate to do so, I shall ask for leave to withdraw the amendment.
The Lord Chancellor: I fear that I cannot be very comforting to the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon. Unfortunately, both branches of the profession have armorialised the unfortunate Lord Chancellor and have taken exactly the opposite point of view the one to the other. I am afraid therefore that the Lord Chancellor must make up his mind what he does, and he is going to make up his mind in favour of the status quo. However, I shall make this concession to the noble Lord: I will inquire of those who advise me as to whether there is the smallest chance of getting a consensus on this point. My view is that there is none, and that is said not inadvisedly but after having made soundings in both directions.
The point I wish to emphasise is of course the service to the public, but it is a question whether 10 years' practice in the Supreme Court should be the choice of the Supreme Court judge, and in my opinion the answer to that is, yes; if people from one profession choose to take that road, transferring from one to the other, so much the better. But I do not think the road via the circuit judge is a good road unless it is preceded by the requisite experience of the Supreme Court.
That is my considered answer, but I shall in deference to what the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, said, make further inquiries of my office. I believe however that this is a point on which the professional bodies have evinced to the unfortunate Lord Chancellor a position the one wholly inconsistent with the other, and the ground between the upper and nether millstone I intend to escape by following my own instincts.
Lord Mishcon: Possibly because I have such supreme faith in the ability of the noble and learned Lord to circumvent all difficulties, as he is prepared to have those further discussions, I beg leave at this stage to withdraw the amendment and I shall see what my
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position is at a later stage in the Bill.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
4.23 p.m.
The Lord Chancellor The Lord Chancellor moved Amendment No. 2:
Page 8, line 19, leave out from ("appointed") to ("of") in line 20 and issert ("to an office mentioned in subsection (1) or as a Lord Justice of Appeal or puisne judge").
The noble and learned Lord said: This, together with Amendments Nos. 3 and 31, is designed to ensure that the Bill does not alter the existing law. The reference in subsection (4) to the appointment as a judge of the Court of Appeal is ambiguous. The expression "judge of the Court of Appeal" is used elsewhere in the Bill in the sense of covering all those listed in Clause 2(2) as well as the ordinary Lords Justices. It is too wide. It covers, for example, any person appointed as Lord Chancellor or as a Law Lord who has not previously been judge of the Court of Appeal.
The Lord Chancellor takes the judicial oath and the oath of allegiance, from custom, twice—once privately as in the Privy Council and once publicly in the Court of Appeal—and I have done so four times, so perhaps that is enough. The Law Lords take the oath of allegiance and in practice, if they previously have been judges, have already taken the judicial oath. It is thought that this does not alter the existing law but could ensure that the present practice is pursued. I beg to move.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
The Lord Chancellor The Lord Chancellor moved Amendment No. 3:
Page 8, line 22, leave out from (" 1868 ") to second (" the ") in line 23 and insert (" in the presence of ").
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Clause 10, as amended, agreed to.
Clauses 11 to 31 agreed to.
Clause 32 [Orders for interim payment]:
4.26 p.m.
Lord Foot Lord Foot moved Amendment No. 4:
Page 25, line 1, leave out subsection (4).
The noble Lord said: This is a very small point which does not deserve to occupy the Committee for more than a few moments. It relates to Clause 32, which deals with the power of the High Court to order interim payments of damages or debt or other sum which a party may be liable to pay to another. If I understand subsections (4) and (5) correctly, they have the effect of making it impossible for the court to make orders for interim payments of costs.
I assume that the ordinary case where this power to make an interim payment order applies is that of a civil action in which the matter of liability is disposed of, and there is judgment on that, but the matter of quantum is still at issue. In those circumstances, as I understand it, the object of giving the court power to make an order for an interim payment is that some payment may be made of the damages, debt or otherwise to the party entitled to it while the decision about the total quantum remains open and in issue.
What is not understood about the clause as it stands—and this amendment has been suggested to me by Justice—is why in principle where there is a judgment or order for costs to be taxed and paid, there should not in suitable cases be an order for an interim payment of costs pending the taxation. It would appear to be unfair that there should be no power to make an order for an interim payment of costs on two grounds; one is that the payment of any costs is necessarily postponed until after taxation and the other is the fact that no interest can accrue on the costs until after taxation is complete. Those who advised me on this included a former senior taxation master. We have not been able to understand why costs have been excluded from the interim payment power. If the noble and learned Lord can help me on that I shall be greatly obliged. I beg to move.
The Lord Chancellor: This amendment was tabled somewhat late last week and those advising me found some difficulty in understanding its object. The principal clause to which it is an amendment, Clause 32, is, as the noble Lord said, a provision the object of which is to make interim payments to parties where either liability is not in dispute or the existence of some liability is asserted. The provision excludes the payment of costs. It does so explicitly. It does so, I should have thought, because, if your Lordships agree to Clause 51, under it the court already has complete discretion as to costs. Under the rules of the Supreme Court, it retains that discretion, subject to certain lines of guidance. So I should have thought that the exclusion of costs from Clause 32 was appropriate.
I do not want to mislead either the Committee or the noble Lord. What he said is exactly correct: that interim payments of costs are extremely unusual, and may be difficult to attain under the rules. I have known cases where such payment has been made, but not in the circumstances envisaged by Clause 32. I have known in interlocutory matters in particular the court to order the costs of a certain application, for instance, to be taxed and paid at once. That is unusual, but it is certainly within my experience that it has been done.
What is not usual, of course, is for costs in general to be paid in advance of taxation, and I should be prepared to concede to the noble Lord that not only in the case of Clause 32, where interim payments are made to the party who is entitled to payment, but in all cases of High Court litigation, the delay in the payment of costs until the taxation is concluded may, in an inflationary age, have the effect of imposing a good deal of hardship upon the profession. However, I do not think that it is at all limited to Clause 32 cases. The noble Lord, Lord Foot, has much more personal professional experience of these matters than I have, but I am advised that where a litigant is an unassisted person, the professional adviser will probably have received an advance from his client, whereas where the person is assisted the professional adviser does not receive an advance. Of course it is in the assisted case that the professional adviser may suffer the greater disadvantage in having to await taxation before he sees the payment of his costs; I quite understand that.
I must also say to the noble Lord that it is precisely
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for that kind of reason that I have to tell the Committee that the burden on the legal aid fund, at any rate in the early years of his proposed change, whether limited to Clause 32 cases or generally applied, would be rather unacceptably high. One of the troubles with which a Lord Chancellor is faced is that of the cascading increase in the cost of legal aid; and now that I have taken on board the hair shirt of criminal legal aid—something that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Elwyn-Jones, did not have to suffer, though I expect he anticipated it—this is becoming a great burden. In the first years of criminal legal aid the total cost was of the order of £500,000. In the current year it is estimated to total £81 million, and civil legal aid has been increasing remorselessly ever since. I am under very heavy pressure, and very legitimate pressure, to increase it in various directions. However, I am strongly dissuaded from accepting the amendment on the purely practical ground that it would give rise to hopes about the payment of legal aid prematurely before taxation—I say "prematurely" and perhaps I am begging the question, and possibly doing so unfairly; but before the conclusion of taxation—which the fund could not bear.
With regard to the technicalities, Clause 51 gives the court complete discretion as to costs, and, if thought right, rules of court under Clause 51 could achieve what the noble Lord would like. As a professional or ex-professional, in this field of work, I would fully agree to see that there is a case for it at some time. However, I do not think that this amendment will be of particular advantage, because I think that the object can be achieved by another route.
Lord Foot: Greatly to my regret I feel that the noble and learned Lord and I are at cross-purposes here, because, if I understand the matter aright, legal aid has nothing whatever to do with it. The case in which an interim payment can arise is where A is suing B, A wins the day and receives judgment on the matter of liability, and the question of quantum is perhaps left open. At that stage the court has power to make an order in favour of A against B, ordering that B shall make a payment on account of the damages which A is entitled to recover. That has nothing whatever to do with costs. But when it comes to costs, the order for an interim payment of costs would relate to the costs which were owed by B to A under the judgment. So, as I understand it, the question of any burden on the legal aid fund does not arise in any way.
With regard to the other matter that the noble and learned Lord mentioned, if one looks at Clause 51 one sees that there the whole question of costs is within the discretion of the High Court and is completely at large. Therefore, the noble and learned Lord suggests that it would be within the competence of a judge making an interim payment order to make an order for an interim payment of costs, if he thought fit. I appreciate that point. But is it not very strange that when one turns back to Clause 32 and looks at subsection (5) one finds the following provision:
"In this section 'interim payment ', in relation to a party to any proceedings, means a payment on account of any damages, debt or other sum (excluding any costs)…".
Does not that place a limitation upon the discretion

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which is apparently given to the court under Clause 51? This is a point on which I am bound to say I do not feel able to speak with any competence at all.
However, I do not feel that anything would be gained by pursuing this matter further, but may I invite the noble and learned Lord to have another look at it to see whether anything that I have said is of any virtue? Subject to that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendment No. 5 not moved.]
Clause 32 agreed to.
Clause 33 [Powers of High Court exercisable before commencement of action]:
On Question, Whether Clause 33 shall stand part of the Bill?
4.39 p m.
Lord Elwyn-Jones: A problem does, I think, arise on Clause 33. As your Lordships' Committee will see, Clause 33(2) of the Bill sets out the powers of the High Court exercisable before commencement of the action and it provides for the documents to be disclosed and produced. As will be seen from Clause 33(2)(b)(i), they can be produced to the applicant, or
"on such conditions as may be specified in the order, to any medical, legal or other professional adviser of the applicant ".
Accordingly, if that provision remained, the court would be enabled to make orders, as indeed were previously made by the Court of Appeal, to the effect that the medical evidence could be disclosed only to the medical adviser, and not to either the legal adviser of the client or the client himself.
This is a matter which has given rise to some judicial difference of opinion, and not for the first time. One can readily see that there are conditions and circumstances in which much could be said for the withholding of the disclosure to the litigant himself of a medical report about him; and in one of the cases, Davidson v. Lloyd Aircraft Services, 1977 1 Weekly Law Reports 1042, the Court of Appeal confined the disclosure of medical notes to the medical adviser on the grounds that the documents might be difficult for him to interpret—he could get the help of his solicitor on that, I should have thought—
"secondly, might include fears about the patient's future prospects which, if disclosed to him, might cause him distress or retard his recovery"—
and I see the point of that—
"might contain statements made by the patient or his relatives which could be embarrassing or distressing if they were disclosed, and might be of a confidential nature so that doctors might be inhibited in their own medical reports thereafter".
In the McIvor case the noble and learned Lord, Lord Diplock, did not find those arguments convincing and took the view that so far as pain or embarrassment to the litigant might be concerned the solicitor could perhaps be relied upon to be an effective sieve to prevent that which could be damaging to his health, or whatever, being brought into play.
At any rate, I think this raises a matter of sufficient importance for me to invite the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor to give further consideration
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to it. I should have thought that, first of all, the production of documents to the medical adviser alone would produce intolerable difficulties for the solicitor acting for the client, and, secondly, I should have thought that in most circumstances it would be something that should be disclosed also to the litigant himself.
The Lord Chancellor: The noble and learned Lord is of course perfectly right in what he says; it is a question of opinion. Offhand, I can conceive of no reason why what is disclosed to a doctor should not also be disclosed to a solicitor, and vice versa. But until the case of McIvor, to which the noble and learned Lord has referred—and I see that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Diplock, who was a party to that decision, is present—it was, I think, a fairly frequent practice in personal injuries litigation to make it a condition of the premature disclosure (and in Clause 33 we are talking about disclosure prior to the commencement of proceedings) that in certain cases and, in particular, where it might interfere with his recovery, the plaintiff himself should not be shown the full details of the medical report.
Sometimes it is particularly distressing to know that you are going to die very shortly and that your condition is bound to deteriorate over the months; and I think it was quite frequently the practice (the noble and learned Lord mentioned the case of Davidson, but I think that was after I had ceased to practise at the Bar, having been Lord Chancellor, and my recollection is that it was not an infrequent practice before then) for a certain limitation to be imposed. In the McIvor case the House of Lords decided that this was ultra vires if it was done; and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Diplock, said, so far as I remember, that not only was he doubtful as to the policy involved—obviously, prima facie, it is a natural right for a litigant to be shown everything that might affect his case—but even apart from his doubts about the policy the words of the statute were sufficiently clear to make the practice ultra vires, even if it was desirable. This provision has been deliberately put in—and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Elwyn-Jones, is quite right—to make it not ultra vires. He is quite right about that; and it is of course for the Committee or for your Lordships' House to say whether this is right or wrong. At one time I did rather a large business in personal injuries cases, and I should myself be sorry if the lay client was always shown everything that the doctor said about his future condition; but I realise that those who are wiser than me do not always agree with me. I do not know, really, what the Committee thinks about it, but it was done deliberately. It is not an accident; and the noble and learned Lord is quite right in thinking that it was done in order to make the words sufficiently wide to justify the withholding of a medical report from the patient.
Lord Diplock: So far as I can see, what this clause does is to give the court a discretion to make an order which in the McIvor case we came to the conclusion was ultra vires. So had the Court of Appeal of Northern Ireland, I think. Since my name has been mentioned in connection with this matter, if I were invited to express a view about this clause I would

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say that I think it adds a useful weapon to the armoury of the administration of justice, and I myself would support it; though whether the discretion should be frequently used is an entirely different matter.
Clause 33 agreed to.
Clauses 34 to 39 agreed to.
Clause 40 [Attachment of debts]:
On Question, Whether Clause 40 shall stand part of the Bill?
4.47 p.m.
Lord Mishcon: The sole point of my talking about Clause 40 for a moment is to see whether or not subsection (3)(b) is really required; indeed, I might almost say the whole of subsection (3). If noble Lords would be good enough to refer to Clause 40 they will see that this is the clause which repeats Section 38 of the Administration of Justice Act 1956, which enabled deposit accounts as well as current accounts in banks to be attached for the purpose of satisfying judgment debts. Building societies are now, when served with garnishee orders nisi, seeking in some cases the protection provided by Clause 40(3)(b), saying that they are banks and that they have got two or more places of business. I am wondering—and I therefore put it to the noble and learned Lord—whether he really thinks on reconsideration that he still requires subsection (3) of Clause 40 in the Bill.
The original 1956 amendment enabled a creditor to garnishee a deposit account, and since that date, as we all know, there have been radical changes in the way in which people operate accounts in banks and building societies. Today, more people are paid by cheque, and many use the Trustee Savings Bank and building societies literally as banks. The Trustee Savings Bank has emerged from a simple savings bank to become a full commercial bank, and the client of the Trustee Savings Bank can now draw cheques and obtain loans. Building societies, as we all know, have developed into High Street banks; and while at the present time they do not provide cheque books to their depositors, they will make out a cheque for a depositor who wishes to pay his rates. The position in regard to the National Savings Bank (which was formerly, of course, the Post Office Savings Bank), which also provides a number of banking services, is protected anyway by the National Savings Bank Act 1971, Section 2(1).
It seems to me that there is no reason now why an account with the Trustee Savings Bank or a building society should be protected from garnishee proceedings while an account at a bank is not. I wonder whether the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor would consider whether or not in the light of what I have said subsection (3) is really necessary; and if again I have unfairly caught him by surprise I shall perfectly understand it if I merely get the reply that what I have said will be considered before Report stage.
The Lord Chancellor: I think I can satisfy the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, to that extent. I do not think
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that he has unfairly caught me by surprise. It is my business to know this Bill, all 150 pages of it, backwards; and so I do not regard it as an unfair situation at all. The fact is that this has been the matter of some consultation between my department and various bodies. We have some sympathy with what the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, has said but the points need further consideration because of the number of interests involved. Perhaps therefore I can leave it as it is at the moment and write to the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, before Report stage if I have something new to tell him. That is the situation as of now.
Lord Mishcon: I am grateful to the noble and learned Lord.
Clause 40 agreed to.
Clauses 41 to 52 agreed to.
Clause 53 [Distribution of business between civil and criminal divisions]:
On Question, Whether Clause 53 shall stand part of the Bill?
Lord Mishcon: I wonder whether the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor will be good enough to give a view, if he can today, on the possible addition to Clause 53(2) of the powers that can be exercised by the criminal division of the Court of Appeal. I say that especially because of the decision in Regina v. Smith which is also cited as Regina v. Martin. That is reported in 1974 1 All England, page 651. There, the Court of Appeal decided that it had no power to consider an appeal by a solicitor from the decision of a Crown Court judge where the judge had ordered that the solicitor pay the costs. It was also decided that the solicitor had no right of appeal to the divisional court or the Queen's Bench Division by way of case stated or for an order of certiorari. One would have thought that the position should be remedied by amendment to Clause 53(2) of the Bill to provide for the court to hear appeals where the Crown Court judge had exercised his jurisdiction to penalise a solicitor as to costs. It seems most unfair, apart from the financial sanction, because it is also very much a professional disgrace and therefore one would have thought that the Court of Criminal Appeal ought to have the right to hear an appeal from the solicitor in those circumstances and that the solicitor ought to have the right to bring it to the Court of Appeal in the criminal division.
The Lord Chancellor: I think the noble Lord has caught me this time without preparation. I think there may be something in what he says, although I doubt very much whether it ought to be a function of the Court of Appeal Criminal Division. I should have thought that he was right in what he says: that the effect of the decision in Smith was that the Court of Appeal Criminal Division had no jurisdiction in the case that he mentions. It is also clearly the case that since the Crown Court is part of the Supreme Court, it could not be the subject in the ordinary course for judicial review; but I should have thought that it was arguable that in some way or by some means the

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solicitor should have some chance of either appeal or review in some shape or form. If I may look at the point again and write to the noble Lord or put down an amendment on Report I should prefer to leave it like that because I have had no previous notice of this but I very much doubt whether an amendment to Clause 53 is quite what is wanted. I will see what I can do about it. I think there is something in this.
Lord Roskill: Would my noble and learned friend allow me to intervene? It would be completely wrong in my submission for this to be dealt with by way of an amendment to the 1968 Criminal Appeal Act for that body only has a right of appeal against convictions or sentences. This is in effect a disciplinary action taken by a Crown Court judge against a solicitor and therefore the right way should be that way in which disciplinary actions against solicitors are dealt with. If there is to be a special provision—and the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, is right: There is agreement here because a solicitor is actually disciplined by a body against whom he has no right at all of appeal. Many of these matters of contempt and so on go to the Civil Division of the Court of Appeal. Saving the presence of my noble and learned friend the Master of the Rolls, I would venture the view that this ought to go to the Civil Division of the Court of Appeal as a disciplinary matter affecting solicitors and has nothing whatever to do with the Criminal Division.
Lord Denning: I remember the case. I think I dissented. It was a case where there ought to have been an appeal and an appeal to the Court of Appeal Civil Division.
Lord Mishcon: I should be more than content with any appeal to the Court of Appeal whether civil or criminal. I am grateful to the noble and learned Lords who have helped me.
Clause 53 agreed to.
Clause 54 [Court of civil division]:
The Lord Chancellor The Lord Chancellor moved Amendment No. 6.
Page 39, line 41, after first (" Any ") insert (" jurisdiction exercisable in any ").
The noble and learned Lord said: This amendment stands with No. 7. They are linked amendments which are designed to amplify the purpose of Clause 54(7) and to make it clear that jurisdiction in relation to matters incidental to appeals may be exercised by a single judge or by the new registrar. This is really to meet a criticism of the Bill which was made—I think, from the Cross-Benches, but certainly was made—at Second Reading. I think the phrase "tucked away" was used in relation to the powers of the registrar of civil appeals. The two amendments Nos. 6 and 7 are designed to meet that criticism.
As a result of the first half of subsection (7) of Clause 54, the part appearing at the foot of page 39 would read as follows:
"Any jurisdiction exercisable in any proceedings incidental to any cause or matter pending before the civil division of the Court of Appeal and not involving the determination of an appeal may if and so far as rules of court so provide, be exercised
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by a single judge of that court or by the registrar of civil appeals; and rules of court may provide for decisions of that registrar to be called in question in such manner as may be prescribed".
The amendments also enable rules of court to provide for an appeal from the registrar's decision, probably to a single judge, in such cases as may be prescribed. This reflects the position laid down to the High Court by Clause 67(4) under which masters' decisions are usually appealable to a judge in chambers. I beg to move.
Lord Denning: I should like to support this amendment. First it is a very good thing, instead of it being tucked away in a schedule, that it should be in the Act itself. Also from the point of view of the administration of the Court of Appeal, if we can and are enabled to have many matters dealt with by a single judge—not necessarily the same one—but a single judge, it would help us to get through the work enormously. I support the amendment.
Lord Elwyn-Jones: I ventured on Second Reading to regret the fact that this important innovation was lost in the entrails of a paragraph in the schedules. It is a phrase I am quite pleased with and I repeat it. I am glad that attention has been paid to it.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
The Lord Chancellor The Lord Chancellor moved Amendment No. 7:
Page 39, line 43, leave out from ("may") to end of line 44 and insert (", if and so far as rules of court so provide, be exercised by a single judge of that court or by the registrar of civil appeals; and rules of court may provide for decisions of that registrar to be called in question in such manner as may be prescribed.").
On Question, amendment agreed to.
On Question, Whether Clause 54, as amended, shall stand part of the Bill?
Lord Mishcon: I hope that I shall not be accused of over-subtlety in bringing up a point on Clause 54 as now proposed to be amended. I am looking at subsection (3) which reads:
"(3)Where—

(a) part of any proceedings before a court has been heard by an uneven number of judges greater than three; and

(b) one or more members of the court are unable to continue,

the court shall remain duly constituted for the purpose of those proceedings so long as the number of members (whether even or uneven) is not reduced to less than three ".
The point to which I wish to direct the Committee is the unhappy situation which arises where unfortunate litigants find themselves before a court with a case part heard and then, through some event beyond the litigants' control, the sittings are not only incomplete but are postponed and further hearings have to take place. This question has been discussed before. The Committee will very probably know that in a recent review of the matter, as I understand it, the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor thought that litigants should insure against the likelihood of the death of a judge. I can only say as a practitioner that this presents problems if the learned judge is not happy to co-operate, because questions of insurance of the lives of judges are personal matters and involve questions of health, and so on.

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Very often when a case is thought to be a long one insurance takes place. Even if it happens to be a case of short duration, the hardship upon the parties is one that the Committee can well understand, It is an expense which frankly is quite wrong for the litigants to have to bear. It is an accident of fate—illness, death or an unhappy event—which may occur which may make the case take the turn of an entirely new trial. It ought to be something which falls (if I may say so with great deference) upon the Lord Chancellor's Department. They may not be responsible for any act regarding this unfortunate happening, but surely it should not be the litigants who, through no fault of their own, have to bear it.
I wonder whether it would be appropriate for us at some stage of this Bill (and I raise it now possibly to save time because I want to hear the noble and learned Lord on this) to insert a clause which would indemnify a litigant in respect of costs incurred or thrown away arising out of circumstances beyond the control of the party liable to pay the costs of the proceedings—for example, the death or illness of the trial judge or the fact that the Court of Appeal have had their numbers reduced below the minimum set out—if, having heard the case, the judge is unable to deliver judgment or the Court of Appeal are in the same position.
The Lord Chancellor: I shall take on board the noble Lord's point. It is perhaps an unfair point to take in this particular connection. This is the one case where provision is made in the statute for the unhappy possibility which the noble Lord envisages. What would happen in the Moonies' case, which is now currently before the High Court, if anything happened to poor Mr. Justice Comyn after seven weeks, I do not know. This particular clause deals only with a five-seven- or nine-judge court of the Court of Appeal. This provides that in one of those unhappy events, so long as there are more than three left after the "holocaust", the court remains properly constituted. I shall take on board the noble Lord's point and let him know whether I can do anything about it, but it will not be here.
Clause 54, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 55 [Court of criminal division]:
5.7 p.m.
The Lord Chancellor The Lord Chancellor moved Amendment No. 8:
Page 41, line 4, after (" division ") insert (" against conviction or any such verdict or finding as is mentioned in paragraph (p)(ii) or (iii),").
The noble and learned Lord said: The Committee may care to note that there is a similar amendment in my name to Clause 141. The two amendments make identical provisions in relation to the Criminal Division of the Court of Appeal and the Courts-Martial Appeal Court respectively and give two-judge courts jurisdiction to deal with all applications for leave to appeal against sentence. Clauses 55 and 141 respectively give the two-judge court power to deal with appeals against sentence. Unfortunately, applications for leave to
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appeal were overlooked by the draftsman. Therefore, I think that I can fairly say that this is a drafting amendment to that extent. I beg to move.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
On Question, Whether Clause 55, as amended, shall stand part of the Bill?
Lord Elwyn-Jones: This clause effects an important change, in that it gives to a court of two judges of the Criminal Division of the Court of Appeal the power to deal with appeals against sentences. I assume that that will be the general pattern if this Bill becomes law, that normally the case will be tried by two judges. I remember being a member of the Donovan Inquiry into the Court of Appeal. Great emphasis was placed at that time, when there was a court of three to determine criminal appeals, on how important it was that in addition to the number of three there should be a Lord Justice presiding at the time.
I take it that the two judges who will determine appeals against sentence could be two puisne judges. That would be a competent court to deal with appeals against sentence. I do not think that I am very happy about that. I do not question of course the quality of the puisne judges; but I think appeals against sentence—which obviously very often raise matters of enormous importance to the appellant—are questions of public policy of a very important character indeed.
I wonder whether it would not be desirable to make a requirement that one of the two should be a Lord Justice. I do not know whether there would be enough Lord Justices available. I hope that the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor will give serious thought to that. This provision as a whole, giving to two judges alone the jurisdiction to deal with appeals against sentence, will give rise to a great deal of concern among the public at large. I appreciate the log jam that has developed in the Criminal Division. I sympathise with the public purpose in trying to reduce the waiting time for appeals. That time ought to be kept within tolerable limits. I agree that at this time the waiting time has become intolerable in the larger number of cases. However, having said that, I would venture to think that the safeguard of a person of the experience and standing of the Lord Chief Justice sitting alongside a puisne judge would be desirable, having regard to this new arrangement for the hearing of appeals, particularly in connection with sentence.
The Lord Chancellor: The noble and learned Lord is in a sense pushing at an open door so far as I am concerned because it happened to me in my first term of office to be asked to agree to a court being properly constituted with either three or two, as the case might be, puisnes instead of a Lord Justice and a puisne or two puisnes. I refused to do so on the basis that that would be a reversion to the old Court of Criminal Appeal under another name and was therefore undesirable.
The noble and learned Lord will not have overlooked the fact that Section 9 of the Administration of Justice Act 1970 empowered a two-judge court to exercise the jurisdiction of the Criminal Division, subject to certain exceptions which were, first, the determination of an appeal; secondly, the determination of an application for leave to appeal to the House

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of Lords; and, thirdly, the refusal of an application for leave to appeal to the court unless it was an application which had already been considered and rejected by a single judge. The point there is that it is the settled practice of the court to grant leave if any one judge so decides, and these provisions ensure that every application shall be considered by a total of three judges. Thus a two-judge court cannot deal with an application for leave to appeal to the House of Lords but may otherwise deal with any application except an application for leave to appeal to the court which has not already been refused by a single judge.
Pressure on the judges of the Criminal Division—that is to say, Lords Justices who also man the Civil Division and Queen's Bench judges who take civil actions and criminal trials and also deal with divisional court business—has continued to mount. The result is that there are serious delays in the disposal of all kinds of judicial business over which they have jurisdiction. For example, in the Queen's Bench Division the average interval between setting down and hearing is 9·7 months and in the divisional court the arrears until very recently have been such that some cases have had to wait over a year or even two years to come on for a hearing, as the noble and learned Lord will know—he will have read what Lord Donaldson said the other day about the excellent efforts which have been made which have virtually wiped that off. But in the Criminal Division itself the number of cases awaiting hearing before the full court has increased and now stands at 969 as compared with 672 at the end of 1979 and 701 at the end of 1978.
In the circumstances, it is clearly necessary to make the best possible use of the time of the judges of the Criminal Division. One way of saving their time is to extend the use of two-judge courts so as to enable them to exercise jurisdiction which as the law now stands is exercisable only by three-judge courts. The obvious candidate for this is the appeal against sentence.
It is estimated that appeals against sentence constitute 41 per cent. of the business disposed of by the full court of the Criminal Division. In 1980 in the region of 900 such appeals were heard and determined by three-judge courts. The scope for saving judges' time, if such appeals could be disposed of by two-judge courts, is estimated to be about 160 judge-days, though obviously the actual saving would be less because some of the appeals against sentence would still have to come before three-judge courts. Moreover, the Bill itself provides—and this is something which I think the noble and learned Lord should bear in mind—for an appeal on which a two-judge court is evenly divided to be re-argued in front of a three-judge court. Therefore, as the noble and learned Lord does not need telling, in fact this means the appeal can be re-argued in front of a three-judge court if the two judges are equally divided, and, if the two judges agree, they would constitute a majority of any three-judge court that could be assembled. So I think there is a safeguard built in.
There is no doubt that a greater use of two-judge courts, even if it cannot effect the maximum theoretical saving of judges' time, must have a considerable effect, and the Bill accordingly provides for a two-judge court to have power to hear and determine an appeal against sentence only. An appeal against conviction, and
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therefore an appeal which is against both conviction and sentence, a fortiori will still require a three-judge court. There will be other savings which I should perhaps mention, namely, staff time in preparing and checking a third bundle of documents and photographic resources amounting to 20,000 to 27,000 pages per annum.
In view of the remorseless increase of crime and the undoubted increase of delay in hearing appeals against sentence, as I am sure the noble and learned Lord already knows from his own experience in the matter, letters come from prisoners almost daily to Members of Parliament, saying, "We shall have served a substantial part of our sentences before our appeal comes on". One has to deal with the matters as one finds them: and, if the cost of having a three-judge court every time for the hearing of an appeal against sentence only is to keep people whose sentence is in doubt in prison serving sentences for weeks or months longer, I am sure that as a lesser evil a two-judge court, with a provision that if the two judges differ from one another the appeal shall be re-argued, is a price worth paying.
We are not living in an ideal world but in the world which we find, and the world which I find is one in which the delays in the Court of Appeal Criminal Division are such as to justify this provision. Of course, if crime reduces in quantity and if for any reason the two-judge provision in this Bill proves unsatisfactory, it is something which can be reconsidered; but I know that the Lord Chief Justice attaches a great deal of importance to this provision and, although I share some of the noble and learned Lord's doubts and would certainly consider very seriously that one of the judges should be the Lord Chief Justice or a Lord Justice—I will certainly consider that further—I think I must stand by the provision.
Lord Elwyn-Jones: I suppose, with that consideration, that it might be possible to identify cases which might require the presence of a Lord Justice but, having said that without giving it sufficient thought, I can see the difficulties in carving out a territory which ought necessarily to have a Lord Justice. Perhaps the noble and learned Lord will consider the matter again. I cannot recollect for the moment how many Lords Justices there are and how the distribution could be extended. I am sure—
The Lord Chancellor: There are 18, are there not?
Lord Elwyn-Jones: I am sure that the Master of the Rolls will not show any enthusiasm for this suggestion that we shall require a Lord Justice to sit on a two-man court, but I am grateful that it is going to be looked at again.
Lord Roskill: May I say one thing about what my noble and learned friend Lord Elwyn-Jones has said? The present two-judge court in the Criminal Division has always had a Lord Justice presiding over it. I have done so myself on a very many occasions when I was a member of the Court of Appeal. One has suffered from time to time from a sense of acute frustration. The device of the two-judge court, if I may use that phrase, was one started by Lord Parker when he was

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Lord Chief Justice in order to deal with a large number of cases where the single judge had refused leave to appeal against sentence and the renewed application was really in the vast majority of cases without merit; but from time to time you get a case where the single judge may have missed a point or a new one has come up, and in those cases one wants desperately to be able to do something at that two-judge court stage, and one cannot as the law stands. Sometimes one has literally gone into the corridor, asked someone else to come in and given him 10 minutes to read the papers, in order to save time. Otherwise, the matter has to be dealt with at another time, before a differently constituted court, with the most appalling waste of udge time. It is that which the Lord Chief Justice is very anxious to stop at the moment; in other words, instead of having two bites at the same cherry, having one bite at two cherries. That is what this amendment is aimed at.
As to the desirability of always having a Lord Justice, there always has been one hitherto. I did not know it was proposed that the practice should change. There never has been a statutory requirement that a Lord Justice should always preside, if the Lord Chief Justice does not preside. But, as a rule of practice, it has always been so, in order to prevent any suggestion—as my noble and learned friend will remember from his membership of the Donovan Committee—that it was not right that equals should always sit upon equals. That is what led to the introduction of Lord Justices sitting.
Lord Denning: May I just say a word, because I was very sorry when Lord Justices on the civil side were taken away so much to preside on the criminal side, even when there was a two-judge court. But, of course, we do manage it, and it works very well. I am sure that, in practice, even when it is a two-judge court in the Criminal Division, there will be a Lord Justice sitting. I do not think it needs any amendment for the purpose.
Lord Elwyn-Jones: I am very gratified and reassured by the contributions of the two noble and learned Lords who have just spoken. We must be very careful in limiting, for reasons of administrative difficulty, the facilities and rights that have previously existed to those who come before the courts. I know that you can dismiss a lot of things by calling them mere administrative difficulties. Here it is not merely administrative difficulty, but the prospect of a man spending months and months in gaol, perhaps unnecessarily. I think that what is said to be a practice ought to be spelled into this statutory provision as a statutory requirement. Perhaps we can revert to it on Report. In the meantime, perhaps the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor will give it further thought.
The Lord Chancellor: I will certainly give it further thought. I very much doubt whether it is suitable as a statutory requirement. I think that the goodwill of the Lord Chief Justice and the Lord Chancellor should be a sufficient guarantee and, anyhow, it can be done by practice direction. But I would say to the noble
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and learned Lord that we must not just talk about administrative convenience as if the delay in hearing appeals against sentence is only a matter of administrative convenience. What I was talking about was weighing the man in prison, who is kept in prison awaiting his appeal because a Lord Justice cannot be found, or because a third judge cannot be found, and the right of the man when he does come on to have three judges listening to his case, when there is a provision for rehearing if the two judges cannot agree. So I do not think one should speak pejoratively of administrative convenience in this context.
Clause 55, as amended, agreed to.
Clauses 56 to 66 agreed to.
Clause 67 [Exercise of High Court jurisdiction otherwise than by judges of that court]:
On Question, Whether Clause 67 shall stand part of the Bill?
Lord Mishcon: I have a very brief point. Clause 67 deals with the exercise of High Court jurisdiction otherwise than by judges of that court. If the Committee will be kind enough to refer to subsection (1)(c), it is seen that, by rules of court, jurisdiction may be exercised by masters, registrars, district registrars or—and these are the words on which I should like the Committee to concentrate—" other officers of the court." Can the Committee assume that only those officers of the court who are referred to in Schedule 2 as having appropriate legal qualifications, are intended here? If that is so, should the Bill not say so and, if not, is it not wrong?
The Lord Chancellor: I cannot find the answer in the brief, so I am afraid that I shall have to write to the noble Lord. He will see that it is simply an enabling provision for rules of court to be made in which these characters can exercise their jurisdiction and, therefore, Parliament will retain control, whatever can be said. But I will see what is really intended and write to the noble Lord.
Lord Mishcon: I am most grateful. It will save the Committee's time if I say that in other places in the Bill the words "officers of the court" are mentioned, without any reference to legal qualifications. I shall not burden the Committee with a repetition of my point each time it occurs, but possibly the noble and learned Lord would look at it from the point of view of the use of that expression throughout the Bill.
Clause 67 agreed to.
Clause 68 [Trial by jury]:
5.26 p.m.
Lord Roskill Lord Roskill moved Amendment No. 9:
Page 46, line 25, leave out (" ordered to be ").
The noble and learned Lord said: I beg to move this amendment which stands in my name and in the names of my noble and learned friends the Lord Chief Justice and the Master of the Rolls. The Lord Chief Justice asked me to express his apologies to your Lordships

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because he is unable to be here, but I am glad to see that what I have to say will be reinforced by my noble and learned friend the Master of the Rolls.
If this amendment to Clause 68 and the clause as it stands at the moment were to form the subject of a separate statute, it might be called the Juries Protection Act. What this amendment is designed to secure is relief for jurors from the quite intolerable burden which, from time to time, they have to put up with in civil cases in the High Court. What has been happening (I am very anxious to choose my words carefully so that no particular case can be identified) is that cases come along and an application is made—and, very often, it is a case where there is an absolutely unfettered right to trial by jury—for such a trial by jury and the order is made. An estimate is made and it may be a month or it may be six, or even eight weeks.
A jury is summoned and the jurors are told what is the likely length. They are asked whether they can manage it and they may say "No, we are very sorry but we have other commitments. May we be excused? "—and of course they are. Then what happens is that it transpires that there has been a gross mis-estimate of the length of time. There may be fault involved; there may not. There was one case not very long ago in which, after eight weeks, a jury were moved to send a protest to the judge, but the judge could do nothing about it. After the end of the case, they wrote again and said "We realise that we have got landed with this "—and they did their duty most magnificently, as juries do—" but, please, can something be done to see that no future jury gets landed in the same position? ", because they were there in the High Court for something of the order of 10 or 12 weeks, if not longer.
That is a burden which ought not in a civil case to be cast upon our fellow citizens. It may be inevitable, nowadays, in criminal cases where there is a trial by jury as of right in every trial on indictment. But it is quite unnecessary in civil cases, and the Lord Chief Justice and, I know, my noble and learned friend the Master of the Rolls are anxious that juries should not have this additional burden cast upon them. This amendment is designed to secure that there shall be an additional exception upon the absolute right to trial by jury in civil cases beyond those presently mentioned in the Bill. I beg to move.
Lord Denning: For centuries all civil cases in this country were tried by juries. In the United States, there is still, by constitution, a right to trial by jury, but we have departed from it. Indeed, 12 or 13 years ago, in an important case, we said there was no right or presumption of trial by jury in the ordinary run of civil cases, whereas previously, when I was called to the Bar, personal injury cases were mostly tried by juries. As a result of the decision 12 or 13 years ago, none is now tried by a jury and the great bulk of our civil jurisdiction is tried by judge alone, to the satisfaction of all concerned. Here we are concerned with just two or three exceptions—a charge of fraud against a party or a charge in respect of libel and slander—where there is still a right to trial by jury.
Mr. Justice Faulks' Committee on Defamation recommended that there should be no longer a right to trial by jury; it should be at the discretion of the judge
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whether or not a jury should be granted. I have long thought that there should be such an amendment to our law; that whether it is fraud or whether it is defamation, it should be at the discretion of the judge whether or not to grant a trial by jury. But that has not been done. There is still the right to trial by jury in the cases which I have mentioned.
In any event, please let us have an amendment to the very limited extent which is suggested here where the probable length of the trial makes the action one which cannot conveniently be tried by a jury—in other words, when it is going to be a long case which will take days, weeks or even months. It is such a burden on a jury, so unfair to them, that it seems to me to be right that the judge should have the discretion from the beginning, when he sees that happening, to say that the case should be tried by a judge alone. I support the amendment.
The Lord Chancellor: I personally accept this amendment with the greatest of pleasure. It is of course on paper an important departure. Therefore, I thought it right that it should be proposed by those who originally put it before me.
Without breaking the rules which rightly inhibit us in the discussion of matters which come before the courts, I can give the Committee some facts which illustrate the strong need that there is for this change. Your Lordships will remember that service on a jury, from which your Lordships are happily exempt, is compulsory for those who are not exempt. They can be sent to prison if they do not turn up. In January, I had a letter from the Lord Chief Justice asking me to agree to this amendment and I told him that I would, but I urged him to have it proposed from the Cross-Benches.
At the moment, a case is going on in the High Court which, when the pleadings were closed, it was estimated would take three days. Three days was the estimated length of that case. But after a bit, before the case came on, that estimate was changed to six or seven weeks. In fact, it started on 6th October of last year and it is still going on. Seventy-two witnesses were called for the plaintiff. Indeed, there were some more, I believe 90 witnesses were to be called for the defendants. So the judge had to tell the jury that instead of the seven weeks during which at the commencement of the trial they were expected to abandon all their business and do a full time job in the High Court, the likelihood was that it would possibly be until this Whitsun before they could be released from their task. They did say that they hoped that no other body of people would ever again be asked to do this.
I think I am right in saying, but I am speaking now without a note, that the maximum which I am allowed to pay by way of compensation to a jury is £14 per day for a juror's services—and of course his travelling expenses. It really is not good enough in 1981 for two parties who happen to disagree about a matter of civil litigation, whatever the virtues may be of a criminal indictment, to be able to compel 12 members of their fellow countrymen, at a maximum of £14 a day, to sit from October in one year until Whitsun in the next listening to their case. I wholeheartedly agree with the amendment and hope that the Committee will accept it.
Lord Wigoder: Might I only ask the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor to make it abundantly clear that if this amendment is written into the Bill it will in no way be used as a possible precedent for suggesting in the future that therefore long criminal cases involving fraud might be dealt with by with-drawing the right to trial by jury? Those long criminal cases are a very different sort of problem. There are ways of dealing with those cases while still retaining the right to trial by jury. I am anxious that this amendment should not be misunderstood as indicating that in relation to criminal cases there is any intention whatsoever of weakening the present position.
The Lord Chancellor: All I can say is that criminal cases are based upon quite different suppositions and that I would never treat this as a precedent. That is as far as I can go.
Lord Elwyn-Jones: I am glad that those last two exchanges took place because I know that those who like to misrepresent these changes will say that this is another attack on the jury system.
Lord Mishcon: I wonder whether I may be permitted to put a contrary point of view, only so that the Committee hears one word against the amendment. If somebody were courageous enough to put down an amendment to the effect that no civil case should be tried by a jury except with the leave of the judge, who would then be expected to go into all the issues on the pleadings and to deal with the matter on the basis of justice between the parties, one of whom presumably has applied for a jury, I should be content. What makes me most unhappy is to give the right to some people and to debar others on the basis of the estimate of time that a trial may take.
There are important issues in these three cases. In the two which the noble and learned Lord the Master of the Rolls mentioned—fraud cases, libel and slander—matters of reputation are involved. What worries me very much indeed, because one comes across this in practice, is that one of the parties may be most anxious that the matter does not go before a jury but goes before a judge alone. In those cases, one has found that there have been other reasons for it: the question whether a long, protracted case might lead to a settlement. It leads to people overestimating-I am using that word advisedly and without any offence—the number of witnesses who might be called and the length of their testimony. The learned judge has to decide that issue after listening to learned counsel who are instructed by solicitors, who in turn are instructed by clients. How is the learned judge to decide at the time when he has to make an order as to whether or not there should be a jury whether the estimate given to him of a very long trial is in fact correct?
All of us in the legal profession have known learned judges who have been able to turn what was forecast to be a four week case into a three-day case because, with their natural ability, they have been able to get to the kernel of the matter. And may I whisper that within the profession there have also been known to be judges who have been able to turn what ought to have been a three-day case into a four week case. This
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question of the estimation of time upon which this issue depends is one which from a practical point of view is very dangerous.
As I have already said, I am putting a contrary point of view, not for the sake of putting a contrary point of view but because, as a practitioner, I happen to believe in what I am saying. I repeat: if somebody had followed the brave line of the noble and learned Lord the Master of the Rolls I should not be making this speech now. That is not, however, the amendment before the Committee.
Lord Roskill: Everyone must sympathise with what the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, has said, but here the public interest should prevail.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
5.40 p.m.
Lord Roskill Lord Roskill moved Amendment No. 10:
Page 46, line 26, after (" opinion ") insert (" (i) ").
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Lord Roskill Lord Roskill moved Amendment No. 11:
Page 46, line 28, at end insert ("; or
(ii) that the probable length of the trial makes the action one which cannot conveniently be tried with a jury.").
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Clause 68, as amended, agreed to.
Clauses 69 to 71 agreed to.
Clause 72 [Appeals and committals for sentence]:
The Lord Chancellor The Lord Chancellor moved Amendment No. 12:
Page 49, line 17, leave out from (" which ") to end of line 21 and insert—

(" (a) a person concerned with a decision appealed against is to be disqualified from hearing the appeal;

(b) a person concerned with the committal of a person to the Crown Court for sentence is to be disqualified from hearing proceedings on the committal; and

(c) proceedings on the hearing of an appeal or on committal to the Crown Court for sentence are to be valid not-withstanding that any person taking part in them is disqualified.").

The noble and learned Lord said: I do not think we need spend much time on this. It is basically a drafting amendment. It is clear that a magistrate should not hear an appeal from himself by sitting in the Crown Court as a Crown Court judge and that is what, unamended, the Bill would achieve. On the other hand, overlooked, I think, was the fact that he might, for all the Bill prevents it, sit on a committal from himself when a man was committed for sentence and I should have thought it was obvious that he should not be allowed to do so. I beg to move.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Clause 72, as amended, agreed to.
Clauses 73 to 78 agreed to.
Clause 79 [Bail]:
5.43 p.m.
Lord Foot Lord Foot moved Amendment No. 13:
Page 52, line 7, at end insert ("; or
(f) who has been refused bail by a magistrates' court and remanded in custody.").
The noble Lord said: In moving this amendment I should like to speak also to Amendment No. 14. These two amendments are concerned with the matter of the refusals of bail in magistrates' courts. It has been the case for a long time past that if anybody is refused bail and held in custody from a magistrates' court their only redress, if they are aggrieved, is to apply to a judge in chambers in the High Court for the grant of bail. The object of these amendments is, first, to allow an "appeal", if I may use that word for the moment, against such a decision in the magistrates' court to be made direct to the Crown Court and, secondly, to enable criminal legal aid to be made available to anybody who wants to make such an application.
The noble and learned Lord said about my earlier amendment that it had been set down on the Marshalled List at a late stage. I am afraid that the same applies to this amendment, and I apologise to the noble and learned Lord for that, but I hope it has not taken him entirely by surprise because the fact of the matter is that the present procedure—the only way in which one can get redress is by going to a judge in chambers—has been the cause of concern for a very long time, I think not only among solicitors but also at the Bar and certainly to the Law Society. It was several years ago that the Law Society set up a committee to investigate the workings of the application to a judge in chambers procedure, and at that time they came to the conclusion that to say the least it was highly unsatisfactory. As the noble and learned Lord may remember, it had indeed been my intention to promote a separate Bill, with the help of the Law Society, in order to deal with this very point. But when this Supreme Court Bill came up we then saw that we might achieve our whole purpose by an amendment of the kind proposed here.
Clause 79 specifies the persons to whom bail may be granted by the Crown Court and the object of Amendment No. 13 is to seek to add a further category or class of persons to that list; that is to say, persons who have been remanded by the magistrates and have been refused bail. Amendment No. 14 seeks simply to make criminal legal aid available in suitable cases to persons who want to make an application of that kind to the Crown Court.
I should like to make two observations but I will not detain your Lordships for long because, although I regard this as a very important matter I hope it is one on which the noble and learned Lord may be able to indicate that he is prepared to give it consideration. I certainly do not want to waste the time of the Committee in argument if I am indeed pushing at an open door. I do not think that anybody, least of all the noble and learned Lord, the Lord Chancellor (because I have heard him speak most eloquently on this subject, particularly when we were discussing the Bail Bill) will under-estimate the importance of applications for bail by persons who have not yet been tried and against whom not even a prima facie case has been found. No one will under-estimate the importance of such applications for bail being fully and openly and satisfactorily considered. I venture to think also that very few people—and possibly no one—would really believe that the present procedure, by which a person aggrieved can only apply to a judge in chambers, is anything like satisfactory.
If I may just explain, for the benefit of those members of the Committee who are not entirely familiar with this procedure, how the procedure of applying to a judge in chambers works. There are two forms of procedure. There is one called the Crown Office procedure, which enables a defendant who has been refused bail in the magistrates' court to go to the High Court and be represented by counsel, instructed by a solicitor. But that procedure is only used in a very small minority of cases, for the good reason that the defendant has to pay for it and it can be very expensive. It is true that theoretically civil legal aid is available for an application of that kind to the High Court, but it is almost never granted because there is an alternative procedure, which is the procedure known as the "Official Solicitor procedure". Under that Official Solicitor procedure what happens is that—and I really do not think this would be disputed—the defendant is at an almost hopeless disadvantage. First, he has to fill up, more or less unaided, a form which is put before him. Most parts of that form are purely formal but the vital question, which comes at the end and to which he is expected to frame his answer, is this:
" Mention any special grounds on which you think that bail should be allowed ".
That assumes that this unaided applicant is going to know the sort of grounds which might affect the mind of the High Court judge before whom the matter eventually comes.
But what happens to the form when he has filled it up? It goes along to the prosecuting police and they then frame their reply and they frame their objection. Then they post all the documents on to the Official Solicitor and the Official Solicitor in due course appears before the judge with the documents. The defendant has been told on the form he filled up that the Official Solicitor will act for him if he wants him to. In point of fact, that is entirely misleading, because the Official Solicitor does not act for the applicant; he merely acts as a servant of the court in presenting the documents to the court.
In the result the defendant does not appear before the judge; he has no knowledge of the opposition that has been put forward by the police; he has no opportunity of questioning the police. And, indeed, the whole matter is decided in his absence. It is not surprising, is it, that with a procedure of that kind, according to one of the surveys which has been carried out into this matter by the Cobden Trust some years ago, only about 8 per cent. of the people who apply and use that procedure ever get any satisfaction or success?
What these amendments propose is this. The "appeal"—again I use that word in inverted commas because it is not really an appeal; it is an application, if you like—against refusal of bail should go direct to the local Crown Court, where it could be dealt with either in chambers or in open court. Secondly, legal aid should be available in appropriate cases; where the applicant comes within the terms of legal aid it should be available to him, and as a sort of quid pro quo civil legal aid should no longer be available for an application to a judge in chambers.
May I suggest that that procedure would have manifest advantages, from the point of view of the law, from the point of view of the applicant, and indeed from the point of view of the High Court, which would

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then be very largely relieved of these applications with which it has to deal. First of all, it would allow the defendant to instruct a solicitor both to frame the form of his application and indeed to plead for him on the hearing of the application. It would allow cross-examination of the police as to the objection which they put forward, and it would allow the whole matter to be conducted in the presence of the defendant so that he could see precisely what was going on.
It would be a very much cheaper procedure than the Crown Office procedure because when an application to go through that procedure is granted it involves very considerably more expense than would be involved in a solicitor or counsel appearing for a man before the Crown Court. So I commend these amendments to your Lordships. I hope I have not taken up too much of your Lordships' time, but I believe that this is a matter of considerable consequence, and it would be a great pity if we were to miss the opportunity presented by the vehicle of this Bill of putting right something that has been wrong for a very long time. I beg to move.
The Lord Chancellor: There is a certain amount of merit in this amendment and I have a good deal of sympathy with it, and of course it could be said by the noble Lord, Lord Foot, although he has not said it, that the Royal Commission on Legal Services made a not dissimilar recommendation from what the noble Lord has said. It is a matter which I am considering but I have to consider it in the light of the financial situation, and unfortunately there are, as I have said earlier today, very serious competing priorities for criminal legal aid. The figures have risen only in the last 12 months, in the financial year 1979–80, from £62.9 million to an estimated 1980–81 provision of £80 million. There are therefore very serious financial implications in any proposal for the increase of criminal legal aid, and I am afraid I have to look at this in the light of competing priorities. This is not, I think, a matter of the most important priority in the grant of criminal legal aid.
I do not share entirely the critical approach to the status quo which the noble Lord, Lord Foot, has made. He, I think, under-estimates the fact that magistrates are constrained by the Bail Act to grant bail except in a number of very limited sets of circumstances. The application for bail can be renewed on committal, and of course the Crown Court under criminal legal aid can entertain an application for bail at any time after committal. The situation to which the noble Lord, Lord Foot, refers arises when a person is in charge of the magistrates' court either for a summary offence, in which case the situation arises, or for an indictable offence pending committal, and that application can be renewed before the magistrates' court on a change of circumstance at any time during the time that he is in custody.
In addition to that he can make application through the Official Solicitor. I do not think that the noble Lord, Lord Foot, was quite fair to the position of the Official Solicitor in such matters. No fewer than 900 persons thought it right to take that line of approach during the past 12 months. I cannot say what proportion of them were successful or what proportion ought
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to have been successful, because, after all, it is only when the magistrates have refused bail that the situation can arise at all. In addition to those 900 who have approached the matter through civil legal aid, and have nothing to pay, enother 500 took the alternative course, which is to get legal assistance for a written application to the Crown Court in which the grounds on which bail is sought can be obtained from a solicitor.
It is, of course, true that the solicitor, representing the defendant who is on remand for either a summary or an indictable offence, cannot appear, as matters stand, orally in front of the Crown Court judge in chambers to make his application for bail. But I think it would be a very strange solicitor who did not in fact perfect the grounds on which the application was made, even if he had to do it for nothing—and I do not think he would have to do it for nothing because I think he could invoke the Act of 1972 in order to do it. I do not think the situation is quite as serious, therefore, as the noble Lord, Lord Foot, has stated. But I would like to say that I consider that there is merit in this amendment, that it is a matter which, given the financial constraints upon me, I should like to give effect to at some time.
Consideration is being given to the matter, although it will have to compete with other priorities and with the constraints upon me at present. I wish that I could be more sympathetic than that. I realise that there is an element of lack of sympathy in what I have said, but there is also an element of sympathy which is not the less warm for being cautiously expressed. I think that is as far as I can take it this evening.
Lord Mishcon: I wonder whether the noble and learned Lord would permit me to deal with two points that he raised in answer to the very persuasive argument of the noble Lord, Lord Foot, in support of the amendment down in his name with which he has also allowed me the privilege of associating my name. The noble and learned Lord has said that in principle he sees merit in the case, but there are two matters which he commented upon in particular. The first was the possible unfair attitude towards the Official Solicitor, approach to this matter, and the second was the question of expense.
I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Foot, did not want to be unfair in the slightest, but there are some statistics on the Official Solicitor approach which are rather interesting. A report was published by the Cobden Trust in 1971 entitled Bail or Custody, which indicated that the success rate for bail applications through the Official Solicitor was about 8 per cent., while the success rate for applications through the Crown Office was no less than 38 per cent. I realise that figures can be misleading and cases may not be like for like, but it so happens, if one cares to listen to America for only one moment, that there was a study of the Official Solicitor procedure by the Vera Institute of Justice of New York in 1976 and the report came to a similar conclusion to that of the Bail or Custody report. I shall only quote a little from the Vera study, which said of the Official Solicitor procedure:
"this paper procedure, in which objections to bail … either are not or cannot be answered, in which the applicant is ignorant of the case against him, and in which no hearing permits the Judge to probe the facts and to seek conditions of bail as a non-

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custodial middle ground, seems likely to frustrate reasoned and fully-informed decisions. At best, the procedure for applying to the Judge in Chambers through the Official Solicitor appears suited to rectify the rare case in which an error of magisterial discretion is obvious from the barest facts. At worst, it appears a waste of time for the judges themselves, for the police who prepare the reports, and for the prisoners who apply ".
I put it no higher than that there is a case for saying that it does not look as though the Official Solicitor approach has received the unqualified approval of those who have looked at it, as the most efficacious method.
Let me quickly, and lastly, refer to the question of cost. I know that the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor will take it as axiomatic that, if one saves costs in other directions, it is sensible not only to look at the matter but to look at the narrow aspect of legal aid. We all appeciate the huge costs involved and the many disadvantages that I need not go into, because your Lordships have already dealt with the matter, where people are kept in prison when they could be out of prison. The saving in costs that might be effected as a result of better procedures here will obviously be of a rather substantial amount.
Finally, may I merely say that on the question of costs and the question of legal aid I cannot pretend to give the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor a really sound estimate, but I can tell him of the calculations that have been done. They have been clone on the following basis. The Crown Courts in London allow costs of between £15 to £30 for a bail application. On his figure of 900 defendants in custody using the Official Solicitor procedure each year, one could imagine that at least the 900 might use this procedure. It would seem that even if it rose to a figure of 1,500 defendants who might be desirous of using the proposed procedure, and on the basis that it was £25 per application—which is what the Crown Court now allows—we would be dealing with a figure by way of legal aid well below £50,000. I should have thought that if we take that together with the question of the saving of space in our prisons and so on, it might be a worthwhile financial exercise. I merely beg the noble and learned Lord to make that financial exercise possible if he can.
The Lord Chancellor: Unfortunately I have done so and the cost that I have reached is £650,000. However, shall, of course, report what the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, has said. Between £50,000 and £650,000 there is quite a considerable difference.
Lord Wigoder: Might I ask the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor to consider the possibility that where an unrepresented defendant—someone who has not employed the services of a solicitor—wishes to make an application for bail to the Crown Court, it might be done on the basis of a legal aid certificate for counsel only? There is really no difficulty about a man being brought to court and being allotted a barrister by the court and, in the space of 10 minutes or a quarter of an hour, sorting out sufficient information to enable a perfectly adequate bail application to be made in the defendant's presence.
The Lord Chancellor: I shall take that on board too, but speaking for myself and bearing in mind that Crown Courts take place in different parts of the
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country, I would prefer to go the whole way with the noble Lord, Lord Foot, in principle than necessarily to follow the noble Lord about counsel only. However, I think it is a suggestion which certainly ought to be taken into account.
Lord Foot: I am a little horrified at the gross discrepancy between the calculations of the noble and learned Lord's department and the calculations that have been made by the Law Society. It is true that the Law Society's calculations were made, I think, in 1976, but I hope that inflation has not been so outrageous in the intervening period that the figure has climbed up to £650,000. I wonder whether between now and the Report stage the noble and learned Lord would allow the representatives of the Law Society to consult with his department upon the matter of cost, because I think that the Law Society might be able to make some useful suggestions on how the matter might be dealt with.
My noble friend Lord Wigoder suggested just now that we might have counsel alone and keep down the expense. Equally, we might very well allow the application to be made by a solicitor. Solicitors have the right of appeal upon guilty pleas and so on, and it would be a very simple matter to allow them to represent a defendant in these circumstances in a bail application.
There are very many ways, I would suggest, in which economies could be made and there is the following to be considered. Under the present procedures, the Crown Office procedure, the calculation is that the costs, when a person has to pay for them, amount to well over £100. One must bear in mind that those costs would not be thrown away if this procedure were adopted. I hope that the noble and learned Lord will be prepared to allow us to discuss the matter with him and with his department during the interval and I should like, if I may, to reserve the right to refer back to this matter on Report, because it certainly would not be satisfactory to think of taking a matter of this kind to a Division. In view of that, and with the leave of the Committee, I beg to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendment No. 14 not moved.]
Clause 79 agreed to.
Clauses 80 to 99 agreed to.
Clause 100 [Deputy district registrars]:
The Lord Chancellor The Lord Chancellor moved Amendment No. 15:
Page 63, line 36, leave out ("district") and insert ("county court").
The noble and learned Lord said: I do not think that we need spend a great deal of time on this matter, either. This amendment is designed to enable all retired county court registrars, and not just those who have been district registrars, to act as deputy district registrars in the High Court. That is simply the purpose of the amendment. If a London county court registrar retired to the country it would be convenient if he were eligible to deputise in a neigh-

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bouring district registry. I think that the amendment speaks on its own merits and, therefore, I beg to move.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 100, as amended, agreed to.
Clauses 101 to 140 agreed to.
Clause 141 [Amendment of Courts-Martial (Appeals) Act 1968]:
The Lord Chancellor The Lord Chancellor moved Amendment No. 16:
Page 80, line 35, after ("Court") insert ("against conviction or any such finding as is mentioned in paragraph (a)(ii) or (iii),")
The noble and learned Lord said: I beg to move. I have already dealt with this amendment.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Clause 141, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 142 agreed to.
Clause 143 [Amendment of law relating to county courts]:
6.12 p.m.
The Lord Chancellor The Lord Chancellor moved Amendment No. 17:
Page 82, line 11, after (" 205(3) ") insert (" and (9) ").
The noble and learned Lord said: This amendment goes with Amendment No. 43 and is purely a drafting amendment. It is designed to include Section 205(9) of the County Courts Act 1959 among the provisions which are repealed by Clause 143(2) of the Bill. As I may explain, the reason that we want to include it for repeal is that it is now spent. I beg to move.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
On Question, Whether Clause 143, as amended, shall stand part of the Bill?
Lord Elwyn-Jones: Clause 143 raises a matter to which I made reference on Second Reading; namely, the power it gives to the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor to prescribe cases where an appeal is to be restricted. It may be convenient to consider the clause along with the schedule to which it relates, Schedule 3. Your Lordships will see that under the terms of Schedule 3, paragraph 8, Section 108 of the previous relevant Act is substituted by the provisions in paragraph 8 and under sub-paragraph (2) it says:
"The Lord Chancellor may by order prescribe classes of proceedings in which there is to be no right of appeal under this section without the leave either of the judge of the county court or of the Court of Appeal.
(3) An order under subsection (2) of this section—

(a) may classify proceedings according to the nature of those proceedings; and

(b) may classify proceedings according to the amount or value of the money or other property which is the subject of those proceedings or according to other similar financial criteria;

(c) may provide that the order shall not apply to determinations made before such date as may be specified in the order; and

(d) may make different provision for different classes of proceedings ".

I do not know whether there is any precedent for this somewhat arbitrary power. Of course, it would
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not be exercised arbitrarily by the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor; but there is no guidance as to the principles that are to apply in the requirement for different provision for different classes of proceedings to be made. One of the additional worries that one has about this is that the power to make an order under the subsection is exercisable by statutory instrument, subject to annulment only, and not to Affirmative Resolution. The right of appeal is an important right and we should think many times before, if I may say so, letting this go through as it stands.
In the Second Reading debate, I also expressed some concern about what may be regarded as a crucial test in deciding which cases should go forward to appeal; and what the amount or value of the money or other property which is the subject of those proceedings may be. There are some cases where, in the case of the putative appellant concerned, a small amount of money may be of very great importance indeed. Of course, the issue turning on an amount of money or a value of property which may be small, may also be of considerable public importance and interest. Therefore, I should like the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor to express further thought on these points.
The Lord Chancellor: I think that we argued the point about the money on Second Reading. The question of the stake and whether it is right to pursue à outrance a dispute about a tiny sum of money, which may take place between relatively expensive clients, may be attractive to the legal profession, but I doubt whether it is justified in the light of the event. A great deal of one's time as counsel—and probably of the noble and learned Lord's time as counsel—has been spent in obtaining the disapprobation of one's clients by pointing out that, even if they win, they will be out of pocket. This is also true of the time and trouble of the court. If, of course, a general point of importance is involved, I hardly think that the leave of the county court judge and of the Court of Appeal would, alike, be refused.
Of course, the schedule relates to cases where it can only preclude an appeal if both are refused. If either is granted, the appeal in civil proceedings would be allowed. I do not feel as doubtful about this as the noble and learned Lord. The march of business in the civil courts has reached a stage when delay is becoming almost tantamount to a denial of justice. As lone as I and my successors submit to parliamentary control in these matters, as the schedule provides, I do not think that any harm is done.
I know that those who are responsible—that is to say, the judiciary—attach very great importance to these provisions. I am sure that very careful note will be taken of what the noble and learned Lord has said about his misgivings, both by my department and by the judiciary. I shall consider the matter further; but I know that the judiciary do attach very great importance to this particular provision and, therefore, I cannot hold out very great hopes that a different decision will be reached.
Clause 143, as amended, agreed to.
Remaining clauses agreed to.
Schedules 1 and 2 agreed to.
Schedule 3 [Amendments of County Courts Act 1959]:
The Lord Chancellor The Lord Chancellor moved Amendment No. 18:
Page 91, line 4, leave out ("a direction") and insert ("an authorisation").
The noble and learned Lord said: I apologise for the rather formidable appearance of the amendments to Schedule 3, which appear in my name. They are almost all of a drafting character, and I shall try to pick out the one or two which are not. The object of most of them is to prepare the County Courts Act for consolidation. They are amendments designed to pave the way for consolidation, and No. 18 is one of them. It is a drafting amendment to correct the provision which is to be inserted as the new Section 22(3) of the County Courts Act 1959. I hope that the Committee will accept this in the spirit in which it is offered. I beg to move.
On Queston, amendment agreed to.
The Lord Chancellor The Lord Chancellor moved Amendment No. 19:
Page 91, line 41, at end insert—
(" 3. In section 56 (Admiralty jurisdiction) after subsection (7) insert—
"(7A) No county court shall have jurisdiction to determine any claim or question certified by the Secretary of State to be a claim or question which, under the Rhine Navigation Convention, falls to be determined in accordance with the provisions of that Convention; and any proceedings to enforce such a claim which are commenced in a county court shall be set aside.
(7B) In subsection (7A) above "the Rhine Navigation Convention" means the Convention of the 7th October 1868 as revised by any subsequent Convention.".").
The noble and learned Lord said: This amendment goes with Amendment No. 34 to Schedule 7. This also is drafting for the purpose I have indicated. I beg to move.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
6.21 p.m.
The Lord Chancellor The Lord Chancellor moved Amendment No. 20:
Page 92, line 50, at end insert—
("(11) Where an action is transferred to a county court under section 75A of this Act, any vessel or other property which has been arrested in the action before the transfer shall, not-withstanding the transfer, remain in the custody of the Admiralty Marshal who shall, subject to any directions of the High Court, comply with any orders made by the county court with respect to that vessel or property.").
The noble and learned Lord said: This is not purely drafting although it is partly drafting. To understand it one needs to take Amendments Nos. 20, 21, 33, 36, 37, 38 and 39 together. The object of these amendments is to repeal no fewer than 13 clauses of the County Courts Act 1959 and to re-enact them in a new and simplified form. It deals with the transfer from the county court to the high court of certain actions which are considered more suitable for the high court, and the transfer from the high court to the county court actions which are considered to be more suitable for the county court owing to the fact that they are within county court jurisdiction, or for other similar reasons.
The new and potentially controversial feature in these amendments is that, in place of the originating application depending solely upon the initiative of one or other of the parties, the novel feature is that the
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court may come to the conclusion of its own motion that transfer is desirable in either direction. Personally, I favour it, but I should be wrong if I described that as a mere drafting amendment, because it is not. I beg to move.
Lord Elwyn-Jones: Presumably the parties themselves could apply for such a transfer if they wanted to?
The Lord Chancellor: Yes.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
The Lord Chancellor The Lord Chancellor moved Amendment No. 21:
Page 93, line 15, at end insert—
("5A. After section 75 insert—
"Transfer of proceedings from High Court to country court.
75A.—(1) At any stage in any proceedings to which this section applies, the High Court may, in accordance with rules of the Supreme Court, either of its own motion or on the application of any party to the proceedings, order the transfer of the whole or any part of the proceedings to a county court if—

(a) the parties consent to the transfer; or

(b) the High Court is satisfied—

(i) that, after allowance has been made for any payment, set-off or other amount admitted to be due, the amount remaining in dispute in respect of the claim is within the monetary limit of the jurisdiction of the county court; or

(ii) that the amount recoverable in respect of the claim is likely to be within the monetary limit of the jurisdiction of the county court; or

(iii) in the case of proceedings not involving an unliquidated claim, that the subject matter of the proceedings is or is likely to be within the limits of the jurisdiction of the county court; or

(c) where only a counterclaim remains in dispute, the High Court considers that the amount recoverable in respect of the counterclaim is likely to he within the monetary limit of the jurisdiction of the county court; or

(d) the High Court considers that the proceedings are not likely to raise any important question of law or fact and are suitable for determination by a county court.

(2) Subject to subsection (3) of this section, this section applies to all proceedings commenced in the High Court which a county court would, apart from any limitation by reason of amount or value or annual value, have jurisdiction to hear and determine if commenced in that court.
(3) This section does not apply to the following proceedings, namely—

(a) matrimonial causes;

(b) applications under the Guardianship of Minors Act 1971: and

(c) applications under the Children Act 1975.

(4) Proceedings transferred under this section shall be transferred to such county court as the High Court considers to be convenient to the parties.
(5) Where proceedings are transferred to a county court under this section, the county court shall have jurisdiction—

(a) to hear and determine those proceedings; and

(b) to award any relief, including any amount of damages, which could have been awarded by the High Court.

Transfer of proceedings from country court to High Court.
75B.—(1) At any stage in any proceedings to which this section applies, the High Court, on the application of any party to the proceedings, may order the transfer of the whole or any part of the proceedings to the High Court, if the High Court thinks it desirable that the proceedings should be heard and determined in the High Court.
(2) At any stage in any proceedings to which this section applies, the county court may, either of its own motion or on the application of any party to the

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proceedings, order the transfer of the whole or any part of the proceedings to the High Court if—

(a) the court considers that some important question of law or fact is likely to arise; or

(b) the court considers that one or other of the parties is likely to be entitled in respect of a claim or counterclaim to an amount exceeding the amount recoverable in the county court; or

(c) any counterclaim or set-off and counterclaim of a defendant involves matters beyond the jurisdiction of the county court.

(3) Where—

(a) the county court has ordered that the proceedings on a counterclaim or set-off and counterclaim be transferred to the High Court, but the proceedings on the plaintiff's claim and the defence other than any set-off are heard and determined in the county court; and

(b) judgment on the claim is given for the plaintiff, execution of the judgment shall, unless the High Court at any time otherwise orders, be stayed until the proceedings transferred to the High Court have been concluded.

(4) This section applies to all proceedings commenced in a county court or transferred to a county court under section 75A of this Act, other than—

(a) matrimonial causes;

(b) applications under the Guardianship of Minors Act 1971; and

(c) applications under the Children Act 1975.".").

On Question, amendment agreed to.
The Lord Chancellor The Lord Chancellor moved Amendment No. 22:
Page 94, line 21, after first ("to") insert ("6 and 8 and").
The noble and learned Lord said: This is drafting, but not part of the series that we have just dealt with. I beg to move.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
The Lord Chancellor The Lord Chancellor moved Amendment No. 23:
Page 94, line 23, leave out ("document") and insert ("enactment").
The noble and learned Lord said: This is drafting. It goes with Amendment No. 48. I beg to move.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
The Lord Chancellor The Lord Chancellor moved Amendment No. 24:
Page 94, line 25, leave out ("7 and Case") and insert ("6 and").
The noble and learned Lord said: This is consequential. I beg to move.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
The Lord Chancellor The Lord Chancellor moved Amendment No. 25:
Page 94, line 39, at end insert—
("10A. In section 124 (goods which may be seized) after subsection (1) insert—
"(1A) Any reference to the goods of an execution debtor in this Part of this Act includes a reference to anything else of his that may be lawfully seized in execution.".
10B. Before section 134 insert—
"Effects of warrants of execution.
133A.—(1) Subject—

(a) to subsection (2) of this section; and

(b) to section 138(1A) of this Act,

a warrant of execution against goods issued from a county court shall bind the property in the goods of the execution debtor as from the time at which application for the warrant was made to the registrar of the county court.
(2) Such a warrant shall not prejudice the title to any goods of the execution debtor acquired by a person
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in good faith and for valuable consideration unless he had, at the time when he acquired his title—

(a) notice that an application for the issue of a warrant of execution against the goods of the execution debtor had been made to the registrar of a county court and that the warrant issued on the application either—

(i) remained unexecuted in the hands of the registrar of the court from which it was issued; or

(ii) had been sent for execution to, and received by, the registrar of another county court, and remained unexecuted in the hands of the registrar of that court; or

(b) notice that a writ of fieri facias or other writ of execution by virtue of which the goods of the execution debtor might be seized or attached had been delivered to and remained unexecuted in the hands of the sheriff.

(3) For the better manifestation of the time mentioned in subsection (1) of this section, it shall be the duty of the registrar (without fee) on application for a warrant of execution being made to him to endorse on its back the hour, day, month and year when he received the application.
(4) For the purposes of this section—

(a) "property" means the general property in goods, and not merely a special property;

(b) "sheriff" includes any officer charged with the enforcement of a writ of execution; and

(c) a thing shall be treated as done in good faith if it is in fact done honestly, whether it is done negligently or not".

10C. In section 135 (sale of goods where claim made therein)—

(a) in subsection (3), for "in" substitute "Subject to subsection (4) of this section, in"; and

(b) add after that subsection:—

"(4) The goods shall not be sold if the registrar decides that, in all the circumstances, the decision of the judge on the claim made to or in respect of them ought to be awaited.".

10D. In section 138 (execution out of jurisdiction of court) insert after subsection (1):—
"(1A) The original warrant shall bind the property in goods of the execution debtor which are within the jurisdiction of the court to which it is sent as from the time when it is received by the registrar of that court.
(1B) For the better manifestation of the time mentioned in subsection (1A) of this section, it shall be the duty of the registrar of the court to which the warrant is sent (without fee) on receipt of the warrant to endorse on its back the hour, day, month and year when he received it".
10E. After section 138 insert—
"Information as to writs and warrants of execution.
138A.—(1) A sheriff shall on demand inform the registrar of a county court, by writing signed by any clerk in the office of the under-sheriff of the precise time of the delivery to him of a writ against the goods of any person issued from the High Court, and a bailiff of a county court shall on demand show his warrant to any sheriff's officer.
(2) Any writing purporting to be signed as mentioned in subsection (1) of this section and the endorsement on any such warrant shall respectively be sufficient justification to any registrar or sheriff acting on it.".").
The noble and learned Lord said: This also is drafting. It should be read with Amendments Nos. 32, 41 and 44. I beg to move.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
The Lord Chancellor The Lord Chancellor moved Amendment No. 26:
Page 95, line 5, leave out ("10") and insert ("11").
The noble and learned Lord said: This also is drafting to correct an oversight. I beg to move.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
The Lord Chancellor The Lord Chancellor moved Amendment No. 27:
Page 95, line 14, at end insert—
("14. In section 201 (interpretation) after the definition of "officer" insert—
"part-time registrar" and "part-time assistant registrar" have the meanings assigned to them by section 22(3) of this Act;").
The noble and learned Lord said: This, also, is drafting and should be read with Amendment No. 42. I beg to move.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Schedule 3, as amended, agreed to.
Schedule 4 agreed to.
Schedule 5 [Consequential amendments]:
The Lord Chancellor The Lord Chancellor moved Amendment No. 28:
Page 96, line 11, at end insert—
("SMALL DWELLINGS ACQUISITION ACT 1899
(c. 44)
For section 6(5) substitute—
"(5) Where the local authority are entitled under this Act to take possession of a house, possession may be recovered in a county court, whatever the annual value of the house for rating.".").
The noble and learned Lord said: This is in Schedule 5. It is to be read with Amendment No. 37, which is in Schedule 7. The purpose of the amendment is to incorporate the provision in Section 48(2) of the County Courts Act as a textual amendment in the earlier Act which it seeks to amend. I beg to move.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
The Lord Chancellor The Lord Chancellor moved Amendment No. 29:
Page 104, line 6, leave out ("24") and insert ("34").
The noble and learned Lord said: This is to correct an error. Paragraph 1 of the amendment's Judicial Pensions Act 1981 should substitute a new subsection (2) in Section 34 of that Act instead of in Section 24. The amendment puts this right. I beg to move.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Schedule 5, as amended, agreed to.
Schedule 6 [Transitional provisions and savings]:
The Lord Chancellor The Lord Chancellor moved Amendment No. 30:
Page 104, line 35, at end insert—
("Continuance in office of Vice-Chancellor
. On and after the date of the commencement of this Act the person who immediately before that date is Vice-Chancellor by nomination under section 5 of the Administration of Justice Act 1970 shall be deemed to have been appointed as from that date to the office of Vice-Chancellor under section 10(1) and to have duly taken the oaths required by section 10(4).").
The noble and learned Lord said: This is technical. It makes a transitional provision whereby the present Vice-Chancellor, when the Bill comes into force, will automatically become the new style Vice-Chancellor without the need to be appointed as such or to take afresh the prescribed oaths. I beg to move.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Schedule 6, as amended, agreed to.
Schedule 7 [Repeals]:
The Lord Chancellor The Lord Chancellor moved Amendment No. 31:
Page 107, line 25, at end insert—

("31 & 32 Vict. c. 72.

Promissory Oaths Act 1868

In Part II of the Schedule, the entries relating to the Lord Chief Justice and the Master of the Rolls.").

The noble and learned Lord said: This has already been dealt with in a paving amendment. I beg to move.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
The Lord Chancellor The Lord Chancellor moved Amendment No. 32:
Page 107, line 37, column 3, leave out from ("26") to end of line 40.
The noble and learned Lord said: This has also been dealt with, and is consequential. I beg to move.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
The Lord Chancellor The Lord Chancellor moved Amendment No. 33:
Page 108, line 22, at end insert—

("10 & 11 Geo. 6. c. 44.

Crown Proceedings Act 1947.

In section 20(2), paragraph (b) of the proviso.").

The noble and learned Lord said: This is also consequential. I beg to move.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
The Lord Chancellor The Lord Chancellor moved Amendment No. 34:
Page 108, line 31, column 3, leave out from beginning to ("II") in line 39 and insert ("Parts I and").
The noble and learned Lord said: This is equally consequential. I beg to move.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
The Lord Chancellor The Lord Chancellor moved Amendment No. 35:
Page 108, line 47, colume 3, at end insert—

("In section 39(1)(c), the word "seduction.").

The noble and learned Lord said: The purpose of this amendment is to delete a reference in Section 39 of the County Courts Act 1959 to a form of action which can no longer be maintained. Formerly an action could be brought in tort for the loss of services caused by the seduction of a parent's child. Such causes of action were abolished by the Law Reform (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1970. It is highly improbable that any actions for seduction are now outstanding. I beg to move.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
6.30 p.m.
The Lord Chancellor The Lord Chancellor moved Amendment No. 36:
Page 108, leave out lines 48 to 51 and insert—

("Sections 43 to 45.").

The noble and learned Lord said: This amendment is consequential.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Alport): I understand that, in addition to Amendment No. 36, reference has already been made to Amendments

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Nos. 37, 38 and 39. With the permission of the Committee, I will put those en bloc
The Lord Chancellor The Lord Chancellor moved Amendments Nos. 37 to 39:
Page 108, line 55, leave out from beginning to end of page 109, line 9, and insert—

("Section 48(2).

Sections 49 and 50.

Section 51A(4).

Section 54.

Sections 58 and 59.").

Page 109, leave out lines 15 to 22 and insert—

("Section 63.

Section 65.

Section 67.").

leave out lines 42 to 47 and insert—

("Section 115.").

On Question, amendments agreed to.
The Lord Chancellor The Lord Chancellor moved Amendment No. 40:
Page 109, line 53, at end insert—

("Section 118.").

The noble and learned Lord said: This amendment repeals Section 118 of the County Courts Act 1959 relating to mandamus. Section 118 restates the present law as to mandamus to require a judge or officer of the county court to perform an act. The section is now unnecessary in view of Clause 21(1) of the Bill and therefore may safely be repealed.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
The Lord Chancellor The Lord Chancellor moved Amendment No. 41:
Page 109, line 54, column 3, at end insert—

("In section 120, in subsections (1) and (2), the words "and chattels".

In section 124(1), the words "or chattels" and "and chattels".

In section 130(1), the words "chattels or effects".

In section 131(1), the words "chattels or effects".

Section 134.

In section 136(1), the words "or chattels".

In section 138, in subsection (1), the words "and chattels", in both places where they occur and in subsection (3), the words "or chattels".").

The noble and learned Lord said: This amendment is consequential and drafting.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
The Lord Chancellor The Lord Chancellor moved Amendment No. 42:
Page 110, line 3, column 3, at end insert—

("In section 201, the definitions of "whole-time registrar" and "whole-time assistant registrar".").

The noble and learned Lord said: This amendment is consequential. I beg to move.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
The Lord Chancellor The Lord Chancellor moved Amendment No. 43:
Page 110, line 5, column 3, after ("205(3)") insert ("and (9)").
The noble and learned Lord said: This also is consequential.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
The Lord Chancellor The Lord Chancellor moved Amendment No. 44:
Page 110, line 38, leave out ("(1)(b)").
The noble and learned Lord said: This amendment is drafting and consequential.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
The Lord Chancellor The Lord Chancellor moved Amendment No. 45:
Page 110, line 46, at end insert—

("1967 c. 56.

Matrimonial Causes Act 1967.

Section 6.").

The noble and learned Lord said: This repeal is consequential upon Schedule 3(9) to the Bill which repeals Section 109 of the County Courts Act 1959. Section 6 of the Matrimonial Causes Act 1967 amends Section 109 and is accordingly no longer necessary.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
The Lord Chancellor The Lord Chancellor moved Amendment No. 46:
Page 113, leave out lines 31 to 34 and insert—

("(c) subsection (7).").

The noble and learned Lord said: The purpose of this amendment is to extend the repeal effected in Section 16(7) of the Administration of Justice Act 1973 to include the repeal of the whole subsection. The provisions which relate to county court registrars are therefore affected and Section 16(7) is now spent.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
The Lord Chancellor The Lord Chancellor moved Amendment No. 47:
Page 113, line 35, column 3, at end insert—

("In Schedule 2, paragraphs (a) and (b) of Part II.").

The noble and learned Lord said: This is consequential on the amendments introducing the new provisions for the transfer of proceedings to which I have already made reference.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
The Lord Chancellor The Lord Chancellor moved Amendment No. 48:
Page 114, line 15, at end insert—

("1980 c. 51.

Housing Act 1980.

In Schedule 25, paragraph 10.").

The noble and learned Lord said: This amendment is consequential. I beg to move.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Schedule 7, as amended, agreed to.
House resumed: Bill reported with amendments.

EEC Environment Policy: ECC 5th Report
6.35 p.m.
The Earl of Cranbrook The Earl of Cranbrook rose to move, That this House takes note of the report of the European Communities Committee on EEC Environment policy (5th Report, H.L. 40).
The noble Earl said: My Lords, this report has been produced by the Select Committee in response to a long and detailed document which was issued by the Commission. That document assessed progress made in connection with the Community's environment action programme. The Commission's document was presented to council in May of last year. It was then debated by the Council of Environment Ministers in June 1980 and I draw the attention of the House to the fact that the opening statement by the Minister, Mr. Tom King, is published in Annexe 2 to the report.
The Community's document has been further considered by the Commission and officials of member states on subsequent occasions. The topic that it concerns—that is, the third environment action programme—is likely to come forward for decision by council later this year, during the presidency of the United Kingdom which commences on 1st July. The Government are therefore in a very strong position to influence the progress of events, so I have particular interest this evening in listening to the remarks of the noble Earl, Lord Avon, in due course.
I remind your Lordships that at Brussels environmental matters are not a present incorporated into the system of directorates general but are tackled by the Environment and Consumer Protection Service. That service—it is referred to in the report for convenience by its initials, ECPS—was created in 1973 in direct response to a request of the heads of state meeting in Paris in October 1972. Following that, in November 1973, the council adopted a declaration which defined the objectives and principles of the Community environment policy. Your Lordships' Select Committee considers that this declaration is of fundamental importance, and for that reason the major and significant part of the text of that declaration is reprinted in Annexe I to our report. The declaration provides the guidelines for the first four years of environment action by the ECPS.
The next stage came in 1977 when a further resolution by council approved the continuation of action for a further four years. That, which can be called the second action programme, is now duly drawing to its close. The purpose of the Commission's document (which is referred to by its reference number as 7040/80 throughout the report) is to appraise the progress of the action programme to date and, at the same time, to assess the proper course of the direction of the action programme in future; that is, to map out the course of what can be called the third environment action programme.
The review of the document produced by the Commission was carried out by Sub-Committee G of the Select Committee. Oral evidence was received from representatives of the European Environmental Bureau, industrialists representing both national and European industrial groups, the National Water Council, the Institute for European Environmental Policy and from the Council of the Royal Society. Written submissions were also received from those sources and from nine other bodies, all of which are listed in the report. In all deliberations the sub-committee was assisted by Mr. R. E. Boote, former director of the Nature Conservancy Council, who acted as specialist adviser, and I wish to record the unanimous thanks of the members of the sub-committee for his
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advice and help in the preparation of the report.
As the Commission document shows, the action of the ECPS in connection with the first and second environment action programmes has been extremely diverse. The service's progress report is correspondingly wide-ranging and lengthy. The Select Committee's review, which is 134 pages long, is to some extent a contribution of commensurate weight. Committee members felt that, to be fair and also constructive, the review must respond to all the subjects covered, as far as possible in matching detail; and on those grounds we excuse the length of the report.
The main body of the report, which constitutes paragraphs 22 to 139, consists of a section by section commentary and evaluation of the Commission's document. I think that tonight it would be tedious and unnecessary if I were to lead your Lordships through the paragraphs one by one. So I shall be content to pick out one or two topics of particular significance, and I shall then turn to the main proposal which is contained in the report.
On the first of the topics that I should like to mention I would say that many witnesses saw a need for the Community both to improve the quality of the scientific data on which its environmental directives are based, and at the same time to be more open in making sure that all such data are available for public assessment and discussion. Similar sentiments have been expressed on several occasions during debates in this House, especially by the noble Lord, Lord Ashby. The idea of a Community-wide, independent consultative body of scientific experts is attractive, but it clearly needs refinement before it can be attained in practice.
At present it is probably more fruitful for the ECPS to concentrate on the improvement of links with existing national and international scientific bodies. At the same time, if they wish to be heard, members of the scientific community must come forward and must be available for consultation in an identifiably European Community form. The Royal Society has taken initiatives in this direction which are exemplified in the report, and is to be commended on that account. Open lines of communication must also be maintained between the Commission and Community-level bodies representing interests in land, industry and commercial concerns whose activities affect the environment. In the opinion of the Select Committee, it is also important that there should be with non-governmental organisations concerned with environmental conservation, again at the European level in particular.
Secondly, pollution control is obviously a topic of central importance. Select Committee members recognise that the terms of the EEC Directive 76/464 place the Commission under an obligation to eliminate pollution by the substances that are known as List I substances. But they are also concerned that the potential list now stands at some 1,500 substances, and they feel that rationalisation is imperative. A way must still be found to accommodate a system of compatible controls acceptable to those (such as the United Kingdom) who seek to work to environmental quality objectives, as much as to those who favour uniform emission standards—that is to say, most of the other member states. This controversy is another that has been well aired in your Lordships' House.
Thirdly, the sections of the Commission's document that deal with the protection and management of land, the environment, and natural resources illustrate very strikingly the enormous diversity of action that has been embarked upon by the ECPS. In fact few of the projects have yet progressed beyond their preliminary stages, and adverse criticism from the Select Committee may seem scarcely fair. All the same critical opinions must be registered. The plans for ecological mapping duplicate efforts of the Council for Europe—a body that some people might think more appropriate to undertake this task. The draft system of indicators of urban environmental quality is said by our witnesses to be superficial and likely to be of less value than a local initiative. Case studies on integrated planning in coastal areas are also being carried out in parallel to the Commission by national institutions such as the Countryside Commission for Scotland.
So there is a suggestion that the Community effort may in fact be wasting its time by reduplicating efforts that are being made at the same time by national or international institutions. The 1979 directive on the protection of birds has been widely welcomed, but again other initiatives in wildlife protection are liable to duplicate the activities of other international bodies, such as the Council for Europe. So this, too, is an area where the sub-committee feels that concern should be registered.
Fourthly, on a more hopeful note, the sub-committee feels that there is scope for a new Community fund for environmental objectives, and would welcome it. I remind your Lordships that last year the Budget Committee of the European Parliament approved proposals for an environmental fund of 4 million units of account, but that particular entry was dropped from the budget when it was finally published. But I think it relevant to note that on 26th February—a few days ago—the Commissioner who is responsible for environmental affairs, Mr. Narjes, gave an undertaking to the European Parliament's Environment Committee to press the other members of the European Commission that an item of between 5 million and 8 million units of account should be included in the draft 1982 European Community budget for the purposes of such a fund. That would be welcomed by your Lordships' Select Committee, although it felt somewhat less sanguine about the outcome of such a request and was not certain that the funds would in fact be available at this particular juncture.
At this point I want to stress that the ECPS and the general policy of the action programme receive firm support from the Committee. The Minister, the right honourable Mr. Tom King, in his statement at the Council of Environment Ministers (which is published in this report) has said that the United Kingdom wants a worthwhile environment programme. In my mind there is little doubt that in the Community at large all citizens are concerned to protect the environment and to improve conditions where these are at present unsatisfactory. The Select Committee believes that future progress is best assured through a Community environmental strategy and that now is the right time for the Commission to prepare such a strategy. That is the leading conclusion of the Select Committee and one to which I wish to give prominence.
Among the benefits that we could expect to flow from the formulation of such a strategy are the following. First, a strategy would identify areas of concern appropriate for attention by the Community. It would differentiate these from the problems that are soluble only in the wider international field or from problems that are more amenable to solution at national, regional or local level.
Secondly, a strategy would identify priorities in relation to the resources that are available in Europe, in the Commission and in other Community institutions. It would refer on the one hand to international bodies, and on the other hand to national or local resources, whether they be governmental or voluntary.
Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, the strategy must take account of the activities of all other Directorates-General within the Commission that have environmental implications. When one looks at the list of the Directorates-General one realises that a very large number of them clearly have environmental implications arising out of their actions; examples are DG VI on agriculture, DG VII on transport, DG VIII on development, as well as others on fisheries, regional policy and energy. It is perfectly clear that there are many Directorates-General the activities of which have a powerful impact on environmental matters.
It is the opinion of the Select Committee that only through the formation of an environment strategy encompassing all relevant Directorates-General can there be harmonisation and integration of environment-related policies in the Community and in member states. The lack of integration or consistency is already a matter of concern. During the debate on the Wildlife and Countryside Bill we have heard repeated concern expressed over the conflict, for instance, of the Common Agricultural Policy and wildlife conservation.
It is in this area, in particular, that benefits are likely to arise most directly, even during the course of preparatory work for such a strategy. In our report, in paragraph 151, we refer briefly to experience gained in the United States of America in preparation of the report Global 2000. In amplification of the few lines in our report, I should like to read out a few brief abstracts from the preliminary statement of this report. It is discussing at this stage the capacity of the United States Government to formulate a strategy, and I quote:
"Overall, the Federal agencies have an impressive capability for long-term analyses of world trends in population, resources, and environment …
"Currently, the principal limitation in the Government's long-term global analytical capability is that the models for various sectors were not designed to be used together in a consistent and interactive manner. The agencies' models were created at different times using different methods, to meet different objectives. Little thought has been given to how the various sectoral models—and the institutions of which they are a part—can be related to each other to project a comprehensive, consistent image of the world".
It goes on to say that in the preparation of the global study
"Inconsistencies arose immediately from the fact that sequential projections are not as interactive as events in the real world…For example, the Global 2000 Study food projections assume that the catch from traditional fisheries will increase as fast as world population, while the fisheries projections indicate that this harvest will not increase over present levels on a sustainable basis…
"Difficulties also arise from multiple allocation of resources. Most of the quantitative projections simply assume that resource

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needs in the sector they cover—needs for capital, energy, land, water, minerals—will be met. Since the needs for each sector are not clearly identified, they cannot be summed up and compared with estimates of what might be available. It is very likely that the same resources have been allocated to more than one sector ".
If these problems are encountered in a single advanced nation such as the United States of America, how much more are they encountered and are they creating obstacles to environmental planning, and to all planning, in Europe, where the European states and the European Community are drawing on environmental resources?
Community concern with environmental issues arises out of a 1972 Council initiative, as I have explained. This initiative came from the heads of member states meeting together and identifying an area of common concern. The Community has legislative capacity through the directive to act for the common good of all Europeans. I should like to urge the Government, through my noble friend on the Front Bench, to take a lead now in promoting a new Council initiative in 1981, during the presidency of the United Kingdom, to lead to the integration of all environmentally-related activities of the Community through the preparation of an environment strategy. My Lords, I beg to move.
Moved, That this House takes note of the Report of the European Communities Committee on EEC environment policy (5th Report, H.L. 40).—(The Earl of Cranbrook.)
6.54 p.m.
The Principal Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness White): My Lords, I should like most warmly to congratulate the noble Earl opposite for the admirable way, if I might say so, in which he has introduced the report of his sub-committee. I must also, I am afraid, apologise both to him and to subsequent speakers, and not least to the noble Earl the Minister. Some of your Lordships will perhaps realise that yesterday was St. David's Day, and tonight we have the most important social gathering of the London Welsh, for which I shall have to leave, I am afraid, as soon as I have concluded my few remarks.
But I felt that this was an important occasion for those of us who are concerned with environmental matters, and I speak as one of a small band in your Lordships' House who have followed the work of the Environment and Consumer Protection Service of the European Community almost from its inception. Personally, I welcome the progress record of the ECPS, which is dealt with in the report of the Select Committee which the noble Earl, Lord Cranbrook, has introduced, and would congratulate M. Carpentier, the director of ECPS, and his colleagues, on the remarkable amount of work which has been undertaken by staff which has always been too small for the very wide remit with which it has had to deal. In the European context we should remember that the term "environment" covers a very wide area indeed, subsuming much of what we should call planning control as well as pollution control, conservation, waste management, clean technologies and the like.
The progress report takes sector by sector, under the headings of "Objectives", "Achievements", "Difficulties" and "Prospects", what it has been working on in this environment programme which
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comes to an end with the end of this year, 1981. I find much of this analysis most interesting and enlightening (obviously, one does not always agree with it) but, of course, it has been undertaken from the point of view of the Commission at the centre, rather than from the experience at the periphary of individual member states. Where particular states are referred to, they are not named; so the report does not provide a comparative evaluation of achievement, or lack of it, in attaining the Commission's objectives by the different member states in the various fields. To my mind, without some such evaluation it is difficult to judge how far the Commission's work is effective, or to compare activity in one's own country with that of one's partners, or to learn from their experience.
So far as I know, only one major comparative study has been published; namely, the ten-volume report on the quality of surface fresh water in the Community, based upon information supplied in 1976 by each state, together with a synthesis. It appeared only a few months ago—I think I am correct in saying that paragraph 100 of your Lordships' report has not caught up with it—but the delay in publication means that much of the information is now out of date and therefore of diminished value. Nevertheless, it is to my mind a useful and interesting exercise. Clearly, only specialists would wish to peruse all 10 volumes, but possibily wider publicity might be obtained for the synthesis, or for a summary of it, which could be aimed at the intelligent lay reader. After all, many of us who are not ourselves specialists are interested to know how we are doing, as well as knowing what is happening on the other side of our neighbours' fence.
I think this illustrates one of the underlying challenges of the work of ECPS. It has to operate at a political level, reasonably intelligible to the members of the European Parliament, for example, or of the legislatures of the various member states, and also members of the many interested organisations, as Lord Cranbrook mentioned, who follow closely the work of the European Commission in the environment field. But at the same time its work must be based on accurate and extensive scientific knowledge. The validity of this scientific basis has been strongly questioned from time to time, but as the noble Earl, Lord Cranbrook, mentioned, an encouraging development has been the recent efforts to bring together some of the most distinguished scientific workers in the member states with appropriate representatives of ECPS to ensure that the necessary scientific expertise is to hand.
Our own Royal Society has taken a leading part in this initiative, and I think that in his absence—I know he is sorry he cannot be here tonight—we should mention the debt that we owe in this respect in particular to Lord Ashby for his contribution, arising directly, I think, from his long experience on your Lordships' Select Committee. Meetings which started in London are now being held in other European capitals with the collaboration of the appropriate scientific organisations in the various countries.
At a different but important level, a more formally-structured organisation has been set up by the local authorities dealing with refuse and waste disposal including chemical and toxic wastes, energy conservation and the like. Known as STCELA—the Standing Technological Conference of European Local Auth

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orities—it has an ambitious programme of exchange of information on how best to carry out many of the EEC requirements at a practical, local level. Again, some of the initiatives came from the United Kingdom, not least in the person of Sir James Swaffield, chief executive of the Greater London Council, as first President of STCELA.
Among the various international bodies concerned with the environment, including OECD, UNEP and so on, the European Community is the only one with the power actually to legislate. This clearly gives its work a much sharper edge and emphasises the concern we must have for what it does and what it proposes to do. Our own report rightly emphasises one of the most outstanding problems—how to define one's priorities in so broad a field and how best to relate these priorities to the limited resources available.
The task is not made easier by the inherent conflict in the EEC approach. Without going into the vexed question of vires, which we have debated in this House, and which may or may not be ultimately resolved by amending the Treaty of Rome, there is clearly some incompatibility between protection of the environment for its own sake and efforts to use environmental regulation as a means of harmonising trade. This dichotomy makes the choice of priorities even more difficult but also even more important. A recurrent theme among our witnesses has been that the ECPS tries to do too much with too little, that it should be more selective in its efforts and should concentrate its resources on the subjects and areas which matter most in an international and a European context. Of course, this is much easier said than done. But, to give one of the most glaring examples already referred to by the noble Earl, Lord Cranbrook, on page 3 of Annexe I of the EEC progress report, we have the statement:
the Commission, following up the studies it has conducted, has sent the Member States a list of 1,500 substances qualifying for inclusion in List I (the ' Black List ') of the Directive on the discharge of dangerous substances to the aquatic environment ".
One would have supposed that even in Brussels they would have realised with what a shrugging of shoulders such a list would be received!
I am sure that other speakers will have much to say on this central theme of priorities so I will pass to one of the other major challenges to which the noble Earl also referred; namely, how to ensure that other EEC directorates take the environmental dimension into account. We are very far from solving this problem in our own national administration. But I am sure that if it is to prove successful and convincing in the future ECPS must find ways of persuading the directorate concerned with agriculture, energy, transport, industry and other fields to recognise that the environment matters? An outsider's impression of Brussels is that directorates there take even less account of one another than do departments in Whitehall.
Nevertheless, one must acknowledge that the energy and dedication of the ECPS staff, and, in particular, its director-general, must have made an impact on the Brussels scene. It has built up a strong position for itself in its relatively short existence. In spite of our many detailed criticisms and our one major difference of principle in the field of pollution control, we in this House who are concerned with environmental matters
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warmly acknowledge that things have been done which might have been ignored or postponed without some stimulus from ECPS in Brussels. One must assume that this must be true in other member states as well. The influence is there and with careful guidance it will grow. Without the discipline of such guidance, however, much effort and goodwill could be dissipated. I hope that the next Environment Programme, due to start in June 1982, will realistically focus on activities where this stimulus can most effectively be exercised and where its value will be increasingly accepted and acknowledged.
7.7 p.m.
Lord Northfield: My Lords, before my noble friend Lady White leaves for her dinner, those of us who have the privilege of attending Sub-Committee "G" would like to pay tribute to her leadership of this Sub-Committee in its earlier days. She is still a regular attender and a great contributor and now those of us who attend that committee benefit from her being chairman of the full parent committee, where I am sure she keeps a very favourable eye on all that happens in Sub-Committee G. We should like to thank her very much for this leadership that she gives and which has given this sub-committee a great deal of momentum in its studies. We should like also to thank the noble Earl, Lord Cranbrook, for he has slotted into the chairmanship of this committee with great distinction and dedication and it is certainly a pleasure to be able to attend such a workmanlike committee.
In taking part in this debate I declare an interest. I am a part-time adviser to the Commission in Brussels on draft directives concerning the environment. I am afraid that some of the drafts that come before your Lordships have a little imprint of mine somewhere on them and I accept my share of blame. I shall be speaking in as detached a way as I can. This is a very complicated document—a full review of six years' work and a look ahead at the content of what might be in the next programme. Like the noble Earl, Lord Cranbrook, I would not want to spend a great deal of time on the detail. It would, as he said, be tedious to do so.
Therefore, I shall not talk about pollution control in water, atmosphere, noise, chemical products, land areas, ecology, mapping, flora and fauna, waste management, pollution taxes and "the polluter pays" principle. All that I will leave on one side. I will mention only three relatively important points. First, there is concern about disagreement and incompleteness of scientific data. However, I take some exception to the remarks in parts of the document—and I do it as one who watches this from outside—to the effect that there is a tendency in the Commission to pick up any itinerant professor (as somebody said) and take his advice on delicate matters of science and measurement of pollution. This is not so. A great deal of trouble is taken by the Commission to find the right kind of people.
The difficulty is that they do not agree among themselves. When they meet, the British at the scientific level find that they take a different view from their colleagues in science in other countries. It is a fairly new science and disagreement is inevitable. I am

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sorry that this sort of disagreement tends to make people in this country feel that the advice taken by Brussels is taken lightly and without seeking out the right people. As my noble friend Lady White has said, a great deal of effort is now being put into getting agreement at a higher level among scientists about the work of the environment programme, particularly thanks to the initiative of the noble Lord, Lord Ashby.
Secondly, I should say that it is not true (as was hinted in some evidence) that the Commission does not consult enough with industry. It does so at the expert stage; it consults a great deal with industry; certainly in calling in experts from various countries it is entitled to believe that those experts have consulted the industry in their own country. One has to set a limit somewhere to the amount of consultation that can take place.
The third smaller point that I should like to mention is the idea of Green Papers suggested in the report. This is a good idea. In a sense it is being approached in one way that is unexpected; namely, we were on the (was it the 20th or 30th?) draft of the environmental impact assessment—in other words, subsequent drafts were amended in the light of public consultation of an informal kind—before a final draft was placed before the Council of Ministers on environment impact assessment. In a sense, a whole series of drafts became an approach to the idea of a Green Paper. Perhaps that can be developed.
I come to three or four of the main issues with which I should like to deal in my remarks this evening. Is it the case that the programme so far has been a success. It is important to look at that issue. All the witnesses that came before the sub-committee strongly supported the programme and were surprised that a small compliment of 70 staff—out of several thousand, after all, in the whole Commission—and not a fully-fledged directorate, could have such a great impact and achieve such a great deal.
No success can be judged simply by the number of legislative texts agreed by the Council and now in operation. After all, the number is impressive. About 60 are now agreed, 15 on water pollution, 10 on air pollution, seven on waste, eight on noise and several on the protection of the environment including such diverse things as birds and whales. This is a very impressive record in a small number of years for a small and dedicated staff.
There are other signs of success. Witnesses from the European Environmental Bureau put their finger on something when in talking to the committee they pointed out that the Treaty of Rome was formulated in the early-post war years when increased production almost without regard to environmental cost, was the goal. Now however with the Brandt Report, the World Conservation Strategy, Global 2000, and all these things mentioned in the report, we see that the Treaty of Rome is actually deficient and understand that present policies of industrial development are threatening the very ecological basis of the world's and Europe's economy. Moreover, we realise that it is desperately urgent to get the environment measurement and environment dimension written into all the work of the European Community.
The ECPS, the service in Brussels, has done a great
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deal to awaken us to this deficiency in the treaty and to give a focus as well for the voluntary bodies to put on their pressure for progress. Secondly, it is true to say—as comes out in the report—that the programme has led to action which otherwise would not have taken place. I suspect that witnesses were correct in saying, quite apart from the legislation, that the sheer pressure of the existence of this service has forced the United Kingdom into avoiding backsliding on the Control of Pollution Act. It is probably true that it made us issue the regulations under Section 17 of Part I of the Act relating to records on hazardous wastes. It made us for the first time work out our real water quality objectives for mercury. It focused attention on the problem of waste from disposable beverage containers whatever we may think of the final fate of that draft directive. It has given us "push" all the way towards dealing more effectively with problems of the environment.
Abroad—apart from this country—witnesses mentioned that Germany, for example, would not have had a chemical law so soon or so comprehensive without what is called the sixth amendment on dangerous chemicals, one of the directives. It mentions in the evidence that there is no environmental impact assessment system in half of the member states; but now they are all thinking about it thanks to the draft directive put forward by the Commission. The Environmental Bureau says that the Italian Bird Society thinks that the
"… whole attitude of the Italian Government"—
presumably in this respect alone—
"has changed on these matters as a result of the Birds Directive".
So one could draw all sorts of examples where it is the case that the activity of the service has forced a new momentum into environmental protection in Europe. It has done its share towards pressure for things like cleaner technology rather than pollution control, and many other new things which are coming now into active consideration. Therefore, we can claim that this service has been a success.
I turn to the second issue that I want to mention. There is concern about the overlapping of activity in international agencies. The noble Earl, Lord Cranbrook, mentioned this and he complained, as the committee is complaining to some extent, about the fact that some things are being done in the European Community or suggested by the Commission, which overlap with the work of the Council of Europe. This is a very difficult subject, and I speak after being rapporteur on this issue to the Council of Europe, so I have a delicate situation before me.
We should realise that before 1974 the field was clear for the Council of Europe, on the one hand, to concentrate on the natural environment; and for the OECD, on the other hand, to concentrate on the industrial problems of the environment, with some further activity in the Economic Commission for Europe dealing mainly with long-range air pollution, and to some extent also in NATO, but much less in the latter two. It was after 1974—when the EEC began their own environment programme—that the allegations of overlapping began to occur. I suggest that a great deal of it is inevitable and not to be deplored. First, you have varying membership. The OECD,

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after all, with Japan, the United States and Canada as members, must continue with its work on pollution and on certain pollution controls that are related to technical barriers to trade because they are worldwide problems.
At the same time, the EEC must concentrate on some of these issues at home in Europe. So the overlapping is inevitable. The EEC must get ahead because there is a binding treaty. The Commission, Parliament and the Council all have statutory force, and providing a driving force for binding legislation rather than the relatively pious recommendations and conventions that can come out of other bodies. I say to the noble Earl, Lord Cranbrook: Why do we complain about the birds directive? It was not getting very far in terms of real immediate action until it became actual legislation in the European Community. One of the things that we must always bear in mind is that with a treaty as a background and a whole legislative process it is bound to be the case that the EEC must get ahead and often can bring quicker results, more definite results, by doing so.
There was a recommendation from the Council of Europe—and I have given the noble Earl some notice of this question—that despite what I have said, it may be a good thing for the extent of overlapping to be looked at. The Council of Europe have suggested that a detached expert from outside—and I mention the name of Dr. Von Moltke who would be very good at this—should have a look at this area of overlapping and make some recommendations about whether it could be reduced and what the different bodies should concentrate upon as their main work in the years ahead. I should like to know whether the Government have thought about this resolution of the Council of Europe and whether they favour it.
The second issue is the problem of whether the Community's programme should, in the years immediately ahead, switch to programmes which foster activities preventing pollution rather than dealing with it when it has occurred. It is interesting and instructive to look at the first policy in 1973. The first principle of that policy said that the best policy consists in preventing the creation of pollution at source rather than subsequently trying to counteract its effects. We have not done much about that in the Community so far. It has been mainly a case of curing pollution when it has occurred; and I agree very much with the noble Earl when he says, as the report says also, that there is now a need to integrate environment policy into all sectors of policy making.
Some small advances have occurred. Certain technical barriers to trade have been looked at in this respect, and there is a mention somewhere that in setting up these new programmes for the less favoured agricultural areas—the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, will have seen this—the action in those less favoured areas with money provided by the Commission must be compatible with the protection of the environment. So there have been small beginnings of this, but the Committee is absolutely right. Looking at the evidence in this document before us as regards transport, would the transport policies that are emerging in Brussels on lorry noise, the road infrastructure and all those things really have been the same had the environmental considerations been in on the ground floor
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in the making of those policies?
The need is desperate, given the sorts of study we were talking about—Global 2000, the World Conservation Strategy, the Brandt Report—to get ahead with this and it must be soon that the Commission looks at this idea of how it itself sets an example by integrating the environment strategy into all the Directorates-General. I commend very strongly to your Lordships the paragraphs dealing with that in the report before us. It would be interesting to hear from the noble Earl, Lord Avon, whether Her Majesty's Government are also thinking along the same lines, because we must not expect to happen in Brussels what we do not do here, and I should like to think that environment considerations are in on the ground floor in a number of our own policies. I doubt very much whether they are.
Secondly, in this possible new idea of switching from tackling pollution to making pollution-free activity, we have to look, as the report suggests, at the whole area of clean technology and how we promote it. There is some evidence of this in our own national approach; we have voluntary agreements for sectors of industry. There are also the French Contrats de Branche, as they are called, originally with a subsidy. I have read with interest a paper by M. Potier of OECD, in which he cited an example in France where nitrate of ammonia in a particular plant led to a lot of ammonia in residues and where the company, with profit to its own concern, has now installed equipment which is paying off handsomely in recuperating that ammonia and saving it from harming the environment. And it is purely economic for it to have done so. So I hope that we and the Commission will look more and more, as the reports says, at how these clean technologies can be promoted in the years ahead.
Here again I ask a question of the noble Earl: would it not be a good thing, as evidence to the Committee suggests, if perhaps the proposed environment fund were able to help in promoting clean technology and in creating habitats for wildlife? That would reduce the need for agricultural production in those areas and would be a way of using imaginatively a small amount of money in an environmental fund. What would be Her Majesty's Government's view about such a fund?
My last point—a delicate one—is: should the programme in the years ahead switch from directives to recommendations? This is a perpetual complaint in Britain. In the hearings as I read them—I was not present at most of them—there were fascinating exchanges between my noble friend Lady White and the CBI which your Lordships can read on page 38. It was pointed out that our position on environment is evolutionary and based a great deal on common law, whereas the rest of Europe, as one witness said, is a dirigiste society, operating under the Napoleonic Code—and I quote:
"With them the King—the law giver—gives the law at the top and lays down the fixed emission standards, if you like, that must be met by everybody, whereas we proceed in a pragmatic way, doing what we can in the light of all the circumstances of the case".
As the noble Baroness, Lady White, pointed out, we cannot transport our history and our approach to Europe. We must really stop being so insular about all this. We are one of 10 or 12; could we please try to

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behave in a little more communautaire fashion?
The CBI have, in common with the rest of us, a very great responsibility, as my noble friend Lady White said to them in evidence, to use a little more imagination when they appear in Brussels. I am sure that that is right. We must fight for our system but let us not block a procedure proposed in Europe when the others feel it is part of their historical approach to tackling a subject. Provided we can get along in our own way very much unhindered and safeguarding our traditions in these matters, let us try to be slightly less insular in the future.
That is the whole point about directives. This is the first issue: it is understood better in Europe, and recommendations are regarded as less important. Secondly, if you want things to be binding and really operated on then you must go for directives. Recommendations can be disregarded. I give the noble Earl, Lord Avon, one example. The OECD passed in 1973 a recommendation on mercury in the environment. Does anybody know what has been done as a result of that? Very little, I suspect. Certainly it would be hard to give chapter and verse about any tangible results. Probably only when there is a directive from Brussels will the tightening up take place.
Thirdly, it is inevitable that under ENV 131, the parent directive, we shall, unless the Council changes its mind, have to go on spending a lot of time eliminating the blacklist substances from our environment in directives in the years ahead. I think we must be more balanced about this idea of directives but I accept that there is a possible middle way.
Mr. Tom King, who is quoted in this report, talks about "less elaborate legislation". That may well be the way ahead, but I would see one great difficulty about this. Our European partners, if we go in for more outline legislation with less detail in it, will ask, "Who is going to enforce it? Who is going to stop backsliding countries, the recalcitrant ones and those who want to slip between the small print when it is not as definite and as binding?" I suspect that the price of more flexibility and more outline agreements in legislation will be that we shall have to increase the monitoring and policing force of the EEC environment service in order to check that these agreements and this less elaborate legislation are actually adhered to in all the countries. Otherwise—and one can think of the fisheries policy, where there is a similar issue at the moment—other countries will be saying, "We carry it out but we are never sure that anybody else does ". So there will be a price to pay in increased staff if we go for this less elaborate legislation. We have come back to staff, and I will ask my last question of the noble Earl: do the Government support the view of the European Parliament about a modest increase in the staff of the environment service?
This is a very interesting report that the Sub-Committee has drawn up. I would underline the main point which was made by the noble Earl in introducing it. Call for a strategy now. This service has grown up and gained great experience in the past six or seven years. In the next programme but one, as the report says, we must ask: what have we learned? What is really practicable? What can be attained in the years ahead through all the directives and through the Service, now that we have learned our way into a
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European Community Environment Service, and how are we to apply that strategy which takes into account resources as well as hopes and aims for the next programme but one? This would be a very worthwhile aim and, if nothing else were to come of this document here, it would have been worth doing the work for that one recommendation alone. I hope that it will be taken to heart in Brussels and that Her Majesty's Government will strongly support it.
7.30 p.m.
Lord Nugent of Guildford: My Lords, I am speaking now because the noble Baroness, Lady Robson, has been kind enough to allow me to take her place; not because I shall be hurrying off to dinner somewhere but because I shall be succeeding my noble friend who is sitting on the Woolsack, and unless I do it fairly quickly I shall not be able to speak at all. So my warm thanks for her gracious act.
My late arrival on the sub-committee last year makes it possible for me to be very wholehearted in my praise to the noble Earl, Lord Cranbrook, as chairman, and to the members, and our incredibly hard-working clerk, Mr. Beamish, on producing this report. It is a very good report. I know of the number of drafts, re-drafts and further re-drafts that were done, and I warmly congratulate my noble friends on the tremendous labour which they put in and at the end of the day, on the general soundness of the report.
To make a 10-minute speech on a report of this size is impossible and I can make only a fragmentary comment on it. But let me start by paying my respects to the Commission and to its very distinguished Commissioner, M. Carpentier. They have, indeed, given great impetus to environmental matters and conservation in Europe, as all noble Lords have said. I thank and praise them for it, and much valuable work has been done. Impetus has been talked about, but information has followed, discussion has followed, and there is no doubt that a great deal has been done which will benefit the lives of all of us in Europe.
I want to pick up only two points in this wide-ranging report. The first is one with which the report deals and the other is not really quite dealt with, but they actually interlock. The first point is the need to integrate the resource policies of the Commission with the environmental policies. Secondly, I want to suggest that when the Commission have identified a major environmental problem for attention, they should start by commissioning an inquiry in member states to discover, first, the precise incidence of the problem, in each state, and, secondly, the measures needed to solve it.
On the first point, the implementation of directives for improving the environment is invariably expensive—usually, very expensive. It is obvious that it would take member states a long time to implement some of these directives, and some states an extremely long time. While I listened with interest to the noble Lord, Lord Northfield, with his great technical knowledge of the subject, talking about the value of directives as opposed to recommendations, I think it will be a long time before some of the directives we already have are implemented.
Each state has many demands on its limited resources. Priorities have to be established and, inevitably, some improvements, however desirable, get a low one and

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may wait so long as to make the EEC directive meaningless. I suggest that perhaps the Commission, in wishing to give impetus—which they have done—have given more thought to correcting environmental defects than to the resources available to do so; and let us not forget that the conservation of resources is part of the Treaty of Rome.
My second point is that, in the face of an environmental problem, the Commission should start with a technical inquiry in member countries; and here I am on to the theme which the noble Lord dealt with and dismissed, preferring to stick with the directives. Whether it is better to have a directive that is not observed, or a recommendation which might be paid attention to, is a matter of taste. Anyhow, I think this is something which should be considered, and considered very much in drawing a strategy for the future: first, to discover the precise incidence of the problem in each member country and, secondly, to decide on the measures needed to correct it.
I suggest that the Commission might engage professional consultants—probably it would have to be an international team—in order to carry out the inquiry. Certainly I do not favour the Commission setting up its own scientific staff. I am sure that that would cause more problems than it would solve. The report from such an inquiry would, of course, require very careful presentation, because it will show in all cases what our own backyards look like. But certainly it should be published with any comment that the Commission thought appropriate about future action to be taken. It might well indicate that a directive from the Commission should be made; but, on the other hand, it would often indicate that that would be premature. But the mere publication of this report, with perhaps some recommendations, would be stimulating and helpful to all member states; perhaps, after a sufficient preparatory period, a prelude to a directive later on.
I am familiar with the world of water and, in that connection, there have been eight or 10 directives in the last eight years. In my judgment, several of them would fall into this category and will take very many years before they are fully complied with. But I would take one example to illustrate my point, and that is the directive with regard to the pollution of sea and freshwater for bathing. A survey by professional consultants would certainly confirm that the Commission were shooting at the right target.
In the post-war era the pollution of the coastal waters of the Mediterranean has become increasingly serious. For the past 30 years I have usually spent my summer holiday somewhere on this attractive coastline and, as I enjoy long-distance swimming, I have first-hand and, one might say, first-body experience of the increasing pollution of these attractive coastal areas, mostly with urban sewage and, to some extent, with oil. It is now very bad in some areas and, since the directive, there is no sign of enforcement.
The pollution of coastal waters has grown with the rapid increase in waterborne sewage systems and bathrooms in coastal towns, but the outfalls have, in most cases, remained unchanged. Treatment works are unknown and the outfalls are just long enough to get the sewage into the sea. The Mediterranean is
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relatively tideless, so the tendency is for the organic matter to accumulate until eutrophication sets in in the worst places. There is no doubt that serious damage is being done to the environment and that it is worsening every year. So the Commission are to be congratulated on calling attention to this very serious problem.
But simply to prescribe by directive certain desirable standards of cleanliness of the water is to beg the major question. How on earth are the states concerned to find the resources to correct this major defect? In most cases where coastal population is at all heavy, major treatment works must be constructed so that the treated effluent can be discharged into the sea to an acceptable standard. In smaller communities, a long sea outfall would be sufficient to discharge the raw sewage far enough out to sea, so that it will dilute and, with the oxidation of the salt water, be rendered harmless. When I say "far enough out", I am talking of miles rather than metres in a tideless sea. The cost of building each one of these long sea outfalls would be several million pounds. Treatment works would cost several tens of millions of pounds to build. It is obvious that we are considering a programme which would cost many billions of pounds to complete. Such environmental improvements, however desirable, must take their turn in the long list of human and social objectives which every Government must consider when allocating funds.
It is, then, evident that this programme will take decades rather than years to complete. A technical survey would have revealed all this and also would have revealed that a directive establishing standards of cleanliness was much too optimistic and premature: that the states concerned cannot conform with it for years and years. Publication of a scientific report with recommendations would, in my judgment, have done all that was possible at present. Incidentally, a survey would also have shown that the effluent standards required to prevent the build-up of pollution round the coasts of Britain and the western coast of France, washed by the powerful Atlantic tides, are completely different from those in the tideless Mediterranean.
I believe that this example is not untypical and serves to illustrate the validity of the points I am making. first, that the Commission should be concerned with the conservation of the resources of the Community as well as with the conservation of the environment; secondly, that often the first step should be the setting up of a Community survey to judge just how action should be taken.
Lord Northfield: My Lords, I was very interested in the noble Lord's example and feel strongly about it, because I myself caught hepatitis when swimming in the Mediterranean. But is it not equally fair to say that a directive was needed to force the pace of countries which were being very slow in getting on with the job of cleaning up the Mediterranean and that a recommendation may never have got so far?
Lord Nugent of Guildford: My Lords, I should like to debate this matter at length with the noble Lord; he obviously feels as keenly as I do about it. But time runs on. I would only say that it is a matter of judg

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ment and that my judgment is that it will take so very many years before anything happens in most of these cases that it is down-grading the value of Commission directives to issue a directive on a matter like this which will not be acted upon. It cannot be acted upon; with the best will in the world, the states concerned simply do not have the resources. I make the point—I think it is not untypical—because it is important that there should be the right balance between directives which have great value in the right cases and recommendations which will be better as a prelude, anyhow, in others and generally will be related to the absolute necessity to relate the conservation of resources to the conservation of the environment. Again I thank my noble friend for his admirable leadership in this report. I feel that it makes a valuable contribution and I have much pleasure in giving it my personal support.
7.43 p.m.
Lord Sandford: My Lords, I have listened with great interest to the debate so far, in particular to the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Northfield, who was speaking from the Front Bench. I could not help comparing his own enthusiastic, not to say fulsome support for the Community, and the ECPS in particular, with his colleagues, not so very far away, who are so disillusioned with the whole thing as to want to withdraw completely from it. But it may be that we see opposite to us Social Democrats, not Members of the Labour Party.
To turn to the report, whatever the Treaty of Rome may once upon a time have said, there is no doubt now that we do want there to be in the Community a thorough EEC environment policy. I should like to add my voice to those of others who have welcomed the initiative taken by the Council of Ministers in 1972 and 1973 and who have thanked M. Michel Carpen tier for the achievements which he and his small staff have scored so far in implementing it. This fairly hefty report, 7040/80, is of course a review of their work. And our report—this red one—is, in one respect, a review of that review, sector by sector. As our chairman, my noble friend Lord Cranbrook, has said, it would be tedious to go through that review of a review sector by sector, though I think it is valuable to have got it all on the record. In another respect, our report is an attempt to judge the success or otherwise of the ECPS against the principles set them by the Ministers in 1972. My inclination, prompted by the time available, is to follow that second theme.
I start by noting that there is nothing in those original 11 principles, set out in Annex 1 to our report, which requires the ECPS to proceed by legislation alone, though I think this is what they have largely done. There is nothing in those principles which requires them to concentrate chiefly on the control of pollution, though again that is what they have done. And there is nothing in those principles which requires the ECPS to proceed merely by their own direct efforts at Community level, though this is largely what they have attempted to do.
First, I should like to stress from our report that there are many people, both individuals and organised in voluntary bodies, that there are many institutions, notably our own Royal Town Planning Institute and many others in all the 10 member states, that there
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are very many reputable firms, particularly the multinational firms, and that there are, as well, most of our Governments which make up the Community, all grappling with their environmental responsibilities. All these have daunting responsibilities to face as we live on this shrinking planet with its dwindling resources and its swelling populations. Everybody is now concerned to come to terms with these problems.
We see the EEC environmental policy—and we share this view very much in the terms in which the Minister expressed it last June—as providing a valuable framework for all those other activities: as a focus for them and as a drive for them. We feel that the ECPS is particularly well placed to ensure that the best brains in Europe are directed to the solution of these problems and that the problems are addressed by research of the very highest quality.
We are not concerned solely to proceed by legislation but by all the more enlightened influences at work in industry, by more foresight in planning—the forthcoming directive on environmental impact assessment will help here—and by more prudent husbandry of all resources. One has only to look at the problems of fishing, energy and timber in the Community to sec how necessary it is for other directorates to have regard to these environmental principles. More professional skills must be brought to bear, and in particular greater public awareness and alertness. So it is at least as much a matter of changing attitudes as it is of enacting legislation. I think our report has made that point abundantly clear.
This does not mean that M. Carpentier and his staff have no role in this different approach. Their ideas are of value; their influence will be of value; their advice is of value; their criticisms will be of value. And their support, particularly their financial support, will also be of value in speeding up and driving forward activities, of the kind I have just been describing, directed to changing attitudes. The upshot of all this is that we argue for a strategy, as my noble friend has said, which incorporates a more varied approach on a broader front than can be achieved by legislation alone, though of course with carefully selected priorities and in a more co-operative and less combative spirit.
I would add two further points. Every proposal for environmental control and protection has to have a price tag. A number of the directives which we have received have been lacking in that respect. Principle No. 1, set for this service by the Council of Ministers in 1973, was that they must seek the maximum environmental gain at the lowest possible cost. Unless a price tag is set to each of their directives, we shall not be able to see whether that is going to be capable of being achieved. In a number of directives its achievement has been hampered by confused objectives, by lack of proper consultative procedures beforehand—a point that my noble friend Lord Nugent of Guildford was making—and a certain access of haste and impatience to get these directives out.
The second point which I think should be added as an element in this new strategy—it has been mentioned by several speakers before me and it is stressed in the report—is that we must seek for some kind of progress report. The noble Baroness, Lady White, the chairman of the Select Committee, was the first person in this debate to make the point. We must have some

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form of succinct accounts called for from the member nations by which we can compare each other's performance and each other's stewardship of our own parts of the European environment, so that we may compare each other's performance in cleaning up our rivers, in suppressing fumes and noises and in protecting the best of our environment. Let us have a report, say, every three years whereby we can compare the progress we are making in enhancing and raising the quality of life of our populations.
7.52 p.m.
Baroness Robson of Kiddington: My Lords, I should like to join with other noble Lords in congratulating the noble Earl, Lord Cranbrook, and his committee on the report which they have presented to us for debate. The moment one gets involved in environmental questions and becomes absorbed in them one realises that almost everything we do and everything that happens around us has to do with the environment in which we live. Although we have to start somewhere, the environment is not only a question of pollution and noise, and the ecological balance of nature, but it is to do with the whole habitat of the human race and our relationships to the community in which we live.
It took the Commission some time before they set up the Environment and Consumer Protection Service. It happened in 1973 and this body is still very small, as has been mentioned by most noble Lords—and it is not a directorate. The noble Baroness, Lady White, said that perhaps directorates and the Commission are talking less to each other than to departments in our own country, and I then began to wonder whether it should be a directorate or whether it should remain a service. It is difficult to decide which is more effective, because directorates by themselves tend to become isolated and to work in their own fields, and the essence of the environmental service, as is mentioned in the report, is that it is concerned with such a large number of resource directorates within the Commission and that it is important that its communication with those directorates is as close and as easy as possible. I would be in favour of the directorates concerned with resources having to have an environmental impact assessment made before they issue directives to the European Community. I agree with what has been said by other speakers about the need for a feedback.
As a member of Committee C, I know that some years ago we used to have quite a large number of environmental directives submitted to the committee for comment, and it was always very difficult to find out what was going on in our fellow Community countries; and the feedback on the impact of legislation and of directives was not adequate. So it is of the utmost importance that we should improve the feedback and the quality of information for member states. I also welcome enormously the proposal for improved environmental research and development. But surely one of the greatest problems is the lack of an environmental fund—financial support for this body.
Noble Lords: Hear, hear!
Baroness Robson of Kiddington: So long as we have an imbalance in the way we use the Community budget we shall never be able to get enough money into an environmental fund in order to deal effectively with many of the problems that we want to tackle. So long as the CAP takes such a large proportion of the Community's funds we shall not be able to achieve it. I know suggestions are being made that we should increase the percentage of VAT that goes into the Community fund, but I believe that it will not happen that way; so we must look at how we can change the balance of support for agriculture towards environmental policies.
At the moment in the CAP we pay farmers to produce mountains and lakes—there is no doubt about that—but the farmers themselves have to make a living out of their land, and certainly in this country they are not making a very good living, despite the amount of money that is going to the CAP fund. By nature, because they live on the land, farmers have an understanding of the land, and I do not think they want to destroy the ecological balance of the countryside; but they frequently have to because they have to make the utmost income from their land. I believe that we should look—and the Commission should look—at new systems of paying an environmental subsidy to the farming community to prevent them having to drain wetlands and to grub up hedges. This should be done on a European basis and the Environment and Consumer Protection Service should make propaganda within the Commission towards that end.
I find it interesting in the report that the first three aims in 1973 were largely the control of pollution, and enormous strides have been made in that direction. I believe there are two reasons for that: The average person understands and can see the results of the improvement, and there was tremendous public pressure in all counties towards the removal of pollution within our society. It is much more difficult to get the same co-operation for the additional aim, included in 1977, of the non-damaging use and rational management of land; the environment and natural resources. It is more difficult for the average person to see and understand the impact of the misuse of those resources than it is for them to see the effect of pollution. So the information and the pressure from the Commission will have to be much greater on this issue than it had to be on the issue of pollution. The action is needed on all three levels, internationally, within Europe and nationally; and every nation has a responsibility—within Europe and within the world, but particularly within Europe—to do the best it can within its own country, to begin with.
We have had a debate in this House, the Committee stage of the Wildlife and Countryside Bill, going on for weeks, with many amendments of the utmost importance. One of the most vital ones, in my view, was related to the need to preserve sites of special scientific interest, so that we do not kill off part of our heritage in this country. I hope the noble Earl, Lord Avon, will be able to tell me that since the Committee stage finished the Government have had second thoughts on the subject and that we can put some of these things right on Report stage, because unless we preserve, and take reserve powers to preserve, these sites, we shall certainly damage the ecological balance in this country

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for good. If we do not after all achieve a change of heart on the part of the Government in this House there is always the possibility that it can be done in another place.
I said at the beginning that environment impinges on everything we do, on the whole of our lives. In the action programme for the next four years, Aim No. 4 is to look for international solutions for certain problems. That gives me the courage to talk about something which I believe we should concentrate on in Europe at this moment. Since the war we have largely satisfied consumer demand within Europe, large parts of Europe anyway, and we have become a consumer-orientated society. But what have we produced of lasting value to enhance the quality of life? Of course, we have raised the standard of living, but we have not produced anything, or very little, to beautify or enhance our environment.
If we look at our inner cities, if we look at the silted up canals of this country, we might ask: What have we done in an environmental sense ourselves, and what have they done in Europe? We have at the same time arrived at a state where we have 2½ million people unemployed. We have the chance, by using the labour force which everyone now admits is not going to be necessary for productive industry, to create a beautiful Britain and a beautiful Europe. I was, therefore, delighted when I read in the paper about the Government scheme for the unemployed young between 18 and 25, the scheme for £332 million, the prime target being environmental effort. There is one thing I do not agree with in what they have done. It is a small step in the right direction, but what worries me is that it has been created to solve the unemployment problem of the young people in this country. That is of course a right kind of aim, but it has been done primarily for that reason and not because we wanted to clean up the environment around us.
I find their figures very disconcerting, because it sounds as if it is a very expensive exercise to improve our environment. They claim that it costs £4,000 to put one man to work. The direct cost to the Exchequer is £1,600, but that direct cost is arrived at before one takes account of the improvement created by using the labour force which is otherwise idle. One's imagination does not have to be very vivid to realise what improvements in the environmental field we could make if, as a country and a Community, we concentrated on using labour we have idle at the moment. The reason I mention it is that I believe this will not happen unless we have capital creation within the Community—funds towards assisting nations to use their labour in this way, so that it is part of the environmental programme of the European Community. I believe that if we used our resources in that way we would go a long way towards making both Britain and Europe a more beautiful place.
Although I realise that this is a very young body and that it has a long way to go, I think as a nation our contribution should be to widen the influence of the Environment and Consumer Protection Service, to make it an environmental service for Europe, and that we should set an example both in our own legislation and in our advice to the Commission.
8.5 p.m.
Lord Craigton: My Lords, I would like to add my
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word of thanks to my noble friend Lord Cranbrook for chairing Sub-Committee G and for the preparation of his constructive and penetrating report. I would also like to thank him for his agreement to help the non-government organisations in this country by taking the chair at CoEnCo's Pollution Committee, which will act as a watchdog to see that its policies and instruments about pollution are being complied with.
Although the Treaty of Rome makes no mention of environment—and that is not for the want of trying on the part of some of us—the EEC Environmental Action Programmes have established an important area of Community policy. Now, as my noble friend said, the momentum must be maintained and followed up with a third programme. We can hope to make progress during our own presidency of the Council of Ministers later this year. I was very pleased to see the published statement produced by the CBI recognising the need for such a policy and wishing to play a full part. It is early, as the noble Baroness said, but the threads are gradually being gathered together.
Like nearly every other speaker, I, too, am concerned about the integration of conservation and other areas of policy. The Select Committee in its report makes this quite clear; environment policy still seems to be treated by the Commission as a separate subject. It is essential to treat it as an integral part of every other Community policy. To do this effectively the Environment and Consumer Protection Service, as the noble Lord, Lord Northfield, and the noble Baroness, Lady White, said, should perhaps have its staff strengthened and increased. It seems to me one of the ways out of the difficulty.
On the question of the protection of flora and fauna, the Wildlife and Countryside Bill implements in Britain the EEC birds' directive, the only non-pollution directive in the programme so far agreed, unless you take whales as well. This is greatly to be welcomed; a start at least has been made. The noble Baroness, Lady Robson, spoke of SSSIs. I did not think SSSIs were very appropriate for this debate, but my word! she has my entire, 100 per cent. support for her views on that matter, as my noble friend on the Front Bench knows only too well.
There is talk of a European Environmental Fund, and I was very heartened by what my noble friend Lord Cranbrook said. We hope this will soon be set up. CoEnCo can think of a lot of ways in which the money can be spent and have suggested some to the NCC already. My hope, which I add to the hope of others, is that the Government will support the whole idea of a European Environmental Fund.
I like, too, the suggestion—the noble Baroness, Lady Robson, was the first to say something about it—of a small percentage of the CAP fund being paid to farmers to recompense them for worthwhile protection of wild and beautiful habitats on their land. It would not interfere in any way with the profits of the farmers. It might even reduce the commodity surpluses, and it will certainly save many creatures and places from destruction.
I should like to raise a short point on education which has not so far been mentioned. The Council for Environmental Education (CEE), of which my noble

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friend Lord Sandford is president, and the Council for Environmental Conservation (CoEnCo) are both active about environmental education—the CEE in school and the CoEnCo Youth Unit out of school, and the members of the CoEnCo Youth Unit Committee are also active in out-of-school environmental education. In particular two members of CoEnCo are very much engaged in in-school education and I am speaking, of course, about the RSPB and the World Wildlife Fund. The start of public sympathy and understanding is in education, and I just wonder whether the Commission ought to think more about doing something for education as an ally to its cause.
Finally, CoEnCo very much supports the call for the Community to develop an environmental resources strategy, as required by the World Conservation Strategy. The harmonising of environment and development in a European-wide and comprehensive strategy is a task in which the Commission should take a lead. With reference to the World Conservation Strategy, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has announced that its governing council will, at their 10th session in May 1982, consider reports and information from member Governments about the activities of Governments and other organisations which contribute to the implementation of the strategy. There will be a report to UNEP in May 1982.
The World Conservation Strategy was launched a year ago this week. There is a little more than a year to go before we make the report to UNEP. I wish I could feel that the year already past had been used to the best advantage. What, in fact, has been done so far? All the CoEnCo members—and they comprise nearly every NGO in the country—took part in a "Plan for Britain". All took some positive action last year as their contribution to the World Conservation Strategy. A report on that action will be published by us this year. All of the Non-Government Organisations with the co-operation of the NCC plan a conference in autumn 1982; that is, after the report to UNEP. But that will, I hope, take the nation a step further.
So to complete my very short speech, I wish to ask the Minister a question. In view of the EEC's obvious support for the principles behind the World Conservation Strategy and its obvious intention to take account of it in its environment action programme, what action do Her Majesty's Government intend to take to implement the strategy?
8.14 p.m.
Lord Nathan: My Lords, I am particularly glad to take part in this debate on broad environmental matters within the EEC, both because in a professional capacity I have been concerned in some aspects of how the Commission works and because I have the honour to be Chairman of the Environment Committee of the Royal Society of Arts and a member of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution.
It is indeed heartening to find that the Select Committee has come down so firmly in favour of a strategy in relation to the EEC environment policy, and that is more than welcome. But it is really not to the first but to the second of their recommendations in paragraph 153 that I should like first to refer. That is the
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recommendation concerning:
"a comprehensive approach throughout its Directorates-General to integrate environmental policy in other relevant policy sectors".
That, after all, is crucial and, to my mind, is important above all else in the policy which should be pursued by the EEC both in relation to the environment and as to the organisation which it should have in order to implement that policy.
Obviously, in order to integrate environmental considerations it is necessary that they should be governed by a broad policy or strategy, which is the subject of the report. It has been suggested that the environmental service (ECPS) might better be constituted as a Directorate-General. That point has been touched upon in this debate, but has not really been examined, and I thought that a few remarks on that subject might be relevant. My experience of Directorates-General is that, due partly to their vertical structure, there is very little contact between them and they sometimes act in conflict with each other. For example, in this period of recession, contradictory policies have from time to time been pursued by those concerned with industry and those concerned with competition, and they appear to have been initiated without any consultation between those concerned. In the formulation of directives on company law there is no contact with those concerned in other fields such as industry, trade and economic and social affairs.
The legal service serves the whole Commission including all Directorates-General and it would seem desirable that the environmental service should maintain the same position and be concerned at all stages in the formulation, development and implementation of policy by all Directorates-General. I believe that only by such a means can the objects which are envisaged by the Select Committee in the second sub-paragraph of the paragraph which I have mentioned, be achieved. Therefore, the first point that I would make is that the environmental service should be maintained as a service and not be converted to a Directorate-General, albeit its devoted staff, whom many of us have met, should be somewhat strengthened.
The other matter to which I should like to refer is wholly distinct. In an admirable report, if I may say so, one of the matters which has not, I believe, been given its proper emphasis is the benefit arising from voluntary co-operation and voluntary effort. The point that I wish to make is distinct but obviously related to the reference which the noble Lord, Lord Craigton, made to contact with the NGOs.
In November last the Royal Society of Arts held a conference on the principles of pollution control, at which distinguished contributions were made by the noble Lord, Lord Ashby, and the noble Baroness, Lady White. One of the other speakers was Professor Moore of the Nature Conservancy Council, who outlined the Pesticide Safety Precautions Scheme which has achieved much by voluntary co-operation between Government and industry. I understand that to be a scheme under which standards are set by which the industry voluntarily abides. Those standards include agreement that pesticides shall not be sold until approved by agreed procedures and laboratory testing.
There are at least two great advantages in voluntary co-operation of that kind. First, there is no law and,

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therefore, there is no law to get round. Secondly, the standards set can be improved and varied by agreement between Government and industry, quickly and without elaborate formulation. Of course, such voluntary arrangements arc likely to be satisfactory only where there are comparatively few manufacturers or operators in the given field. I doubt, for instance, whether it could work in relation to restrictions on the quantity of pesticides used by farmers—they are too widely spread and do not fit into a scheme of this kind.
Voluntary co-operation, I suggest, is a fruitful means of progress and should be regarded as the best way forward where it can be applied. Its field of application is inevitably limited and one must recognise that. But I think that it would be a pity if the Commission, in considering, as I very much hope it will, with the greatest care the report of the Select Committee, did not give some consideration to this means of achieving the objects desired where it is practicable to do so.
I referred earlier to two matters: voluntary cooperation and voluntary effort. By voluntary effort I mean effort by voluntary organisations concerned with the environment. This relates to a further aim under paragraph 153, item (d) of which reads:
"promote the widest public awareness of the European environment and Community aims and measures …".
A widespread membership has in itself an educational effect and the ripples move outward. Voluntary organisations of this kind are perhaps the most effective to promote public awareness in relation to the environment, and this has been proved over and over again. But such voluntary organisations can also act as pressure groups to improve environmental quality. It is in this context that they have a bearing on voluntary co-operation, to which I have referred. For the natural tendency of industry is to adopt the most economic standard which is acceptable environmentally. Improvement in that standard is likely to be best achieved by public pressure. Thus, the "best practical means" will constantly be improved by pressure of organisations such as these.
The difficulty about detailed regulations is that they are inclined to ossify and remain the standard required long after vast improvements have been, or could be made, and regulations are always difficult to alter. Therefore, detailed regulations tend to pull down standards shortly after they have been enacted.
As one of the few who have spoken in this debate who is not in any way connected with the Select Committee, may I say that it has established a reputation for being the most thorough body of its kind in any of the Parliaments of member states in scrutinising environmental legislation? I trust that the Commission will give to this report the consideration that it deserves.
8.23 p.m.
Lord Buxton of Alsa: My Lords, I intend to be very brief and to raise only one point which has not yet been mentioned. In thanking and congratulating my noble friend Lord Cranbrook and his committee for this very valuable and thorough report, I should like to add that I imply absolutely no criticism of him or of his committee in drawing attention to what I believe to be a very remarkable omission. But, of course, his committee was reporting on the Commission
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document, and that is where, in my view, the omission occurs.
It seems to me to be very extraordinary that in the whole of that document there is practically no reference, or only the scantiest reference, to the North Sea. In my view, and I believe in the view of every child at a primary school, the North Sea is surely an integral part of the European environment. I simply do not understand how it could be considered as anything else. Furthermore, for the United Kingdom it is even more than that. Apart from the atmosphere, it is the factor which relates us and joins us to Europe. Therefore, for it to be apparently of no very important consequence in the whole of their environmental policy and strategy is, I think, something that needs looking at very carefully in order to discover what the reason can possibly be.
In the Commission Document 7040/80 there are indeed references to the creation of an ad hoc committee as a permanent structure for the exchange of views and the establishment of an information system, and the means of combatting the discharge of oil, and so forth. We have heard all that before. It is very loose and does not go very far. Certainly the North Sea has not received the same very fundamental and important attention with which so many other aspects of environment are concerned. On many occasions in debates in this House I have urged that the North Sea must be treated as a special case; and there is a precedent for it, because, as I have previously said, the Mediterranean is treated as a special case.
The only reference of any significance in the documents about which we are talking is in the evidence submitted by the Nature Conservancy Council and contained in the report of the noble Earl, Lord Cranbrook. In a passage under the heading "North Sea" they say:
"The Mediterranean is coming under closer attention from EEC and the North Sea should rank with this. The economy of the North Sea is necessarily based on its ecology and the failure of the existing fragmentary and ad hoc management of the North Sea to cope with growing conflicts of interest threatens both. There is a need for an intergovernmental agency, not limited to EEC countries, to create and supervise the essential co-ordinated management of the North Sea …",
and so on. I could not put that better myself and I am glad to say that it is very close to what I have said on various occasions in debates here.
I wonder whether the reference to intergovernmental co-ordination not confined to EEC countries may possibly be at the root of the problem. For not all countries bordering the North Sea are members of the Commission. But, of course, as we all know, it is manifestly absurd in terms of nature and the environment for territorial boundaries to be the be-all and end-all of policy and strategy. There is no way that the Scandinavian countries—Norway and Sweden—can be said not to have problems which relate to the European coastline and the coastline of the British Isles. We are all in it together. Although I have been reminded once or twice in replies from the Government that the North Sea is not a private pond belonging to Britain, it is nevertheless a private pond shared by a great many countries; and other nations are, of course, allowed to use it.
But we have the very serious problem that although 85 per cent. of the world's tanker fleet is extremely

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reputable and very well run, the remaining 15 per cent. consists of what are sometimes called "rogues"—substandard tankers with substandard crews. Unless we combine together as a group—and I believe that somehow the Commission must take the initiative—there is no way that those offending parties will be contained or dealt with.
I should like to recommend that there should be a North Sea convention. The precedent already exists in the Rhine Convention. If the only problem about having a North Sea Convention is that all North Sea countries are not members of the Commission, surely it is not beyond our wit and imagination to find a way through that. I raise this tonight because, as this country will have the presidency of the Commission this year, we shall have an excellent opportunity to take the initiative and try to get something going through the Commission. I would urge my noble friend the Minister to convey to the relevant department or Secretary of State that this provides an opportunity for the Commission to take the initiative as one party; in other words, the Commission would act as a single party and try to form a group, including those countries that are not in the Commission and, of course, particularly Norway and Sweden. In that way, we might arrive at a North Sea convention similar to the Rhine Convention, with comparable momentum and impetus as is now developing in the Mediterranean.
I simply wish to avoid seeing the North Sea treated as if it were the same as any other part of the oceans. It manifestly is not. It is enclosed. It is contained. It is a shallow shelf. It has an appalling amount of usage, which is always increasing. Every time this subject is mentioned in this House something ghastly happens about a week afterwards, whatever is said in reply. I hope that that will not be the case on this occasion, but I have absolutely no doubt that within a matter of days, weeks or months something awful will happen. That does not mean something like an "Amoco Cadiz" or "Torrey Canyon". Things happen every day and they relate to the European environment, the policy and strategy, and somehow I should like to have it on the record that we have the opportunity this year to do something about it through the Commission.
8.31 p.m.
Lord Winstanley: My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Buxton of Alsa. How glad I am to see him returned from his foreign travels in time to take an extremely active part, I hope, in the further stages of the Wildlife and Countryside Bill when it returns to your Lordships' House.
It will not have escaped your Lordships' notice that I was not able to be present in the Chamber in time to hear the earlier speeches in this interesting debate. Therefore, it would be both impolite and wholly inappropriate for me to say all the many things I should have liked to say about this important report. I would have withdrawn my name altogether had I not felt that as the recently retired chairman of the Countryside Commission, I perhaps have a duty to welcome this enlightened, imaginative, and immensely encouraging report, and also to thank the noble Earl, Lord Cranbrook, for the sympathetic and understanding
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way in which he and his colleagues have dealt with these many matters.
I shall be very brief indeed. I shall try to be as brief as the noble Lord, Lord Buxton. I should like to begin by underlining something he has already said; namely, that the EEC itself is not enough; that if we are to tackle effectively the immense problems of the protection and the conservation of our environment we need to look wider than the EEC. How right he is. For some time I have been connected with a body—not a wholly successful one, but an interesting one—the European Federation for Nature and Nature Parks. It is an interesting organisation in that it embraces countries from both sides of the Iron Curtain; Western European and Eastern European countries. Their representatives are able to sit down perfectly happily and harmoniously and talk about these important matters in total agreement. These are people who otherwise find it difficult to sit down together at all.
I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Buxton, is right, quite apart from the considerations of the immediate problems of the North Sea, to draw your Lordships' attention to the fact that we can solve some of these immense problems only if we look at them not just on a national basis but on an international basis. As has already been said by my noble friend Lady Robson, in general this report perhaps points to a change of direction or perhaps a change of emphasis so far as the EEC's policies with regard to conservation are concerned.
Hitherto, for very understandable and proper reasons, the EEC has devoted its energies and resources in the main to immediate, narrowly-focused problems of pollution. That has been right and necessary. Indeed, we have had interesting debates in your Lordships' House on the subject of the EEC's activities so far as pollution is concerned, but this report seems to indicate that the time has come for a change in direction, or at least a change in emphasis towards conservation rather than purely dealing with pollution. How timely that that change of direction should occur at a time when your Lordships' House is dealing with the Wildlife and Countryside Bill, and also at a time when Great Britain may very well be playing a very important role indeed in the conservation and environmental activities of the EEC.
Noble Lords whom I have heard in this debate have already underlined the fact that if we wish to achieve any success in these various directions there is always a price to be paid. This was a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, by my noble friend Lady Robson, and by the noble Lord, Lord Craigton. Of course there is a price. There is a price which has to be paid individually and nationally, but perhaps a price that can better be paid at the end of the day if it is done collectively in a larger grouping.
It was the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, who made an immensely important speech to your Lordships' Committee on the Bill to which I referred, in which he directed your Lordships' attention to what the grant-aiding functions of the EEC and the Commission could possibly do in order to assist Britain in preserving moorland, and matters of that kind. That was a speech to which insufficient attention was paid. This report underlines many of the things which the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, in fact said to the Committee

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on that occasion.
Not only is there a price to be paid, but there are always conflicts to be resolved. The problem is that so often these conflicts do not just exist between different groups of people—between farmers and ramblers; ramblers and pony trekkers; but they exist within one and the same person. So far as pollution is concerned, we all want cheap and plentiful goods and we also all want clean air. We are entirely right to want and demand both, but we can only have both if we pay the price.
This report deals, though not very lengthily, with noise pollution. I recall from my days years ago in another place when I represented a constituency in which was sited one of Britain's largest international airports, receiving a letter from a constituent complaining about the intolerable noise to which he was subjected from Manchester Airport at Ringway. It made it impossible for him to sleep or do any work at home at night. His wife was ill and constantly under medical attention. His children were failing their A-levels or their 0-levels, whatever levels it was: they just could not exist because of this intolerable nuisance of aircraft noise, and when were the Government going to do something about it?
I wrote back to this constituent and said that there is a price to be paid for siting airports away from centres of population; a price to be paid for pioneering and developing quieter aircraft engines. When enough people demonstrated that they were willing to pay that price, perhaps the Government would act. About a year later the same constituent wrote me another letter. This time it was from his business address in Stockport. I am quite sure that he wrote not with his tongue in his cheek but wholly sincerely. It was a letter complaining of the inadequacy of the flight schedules from Manchester to Düsseldorf, which were a very severe impediment to his important export business. I repeat, he was right both times. The conflict exists within us all. We can resolve those conflicts only if we pay the price. Sometimes it is a very heavy price indeed; a price which can only be paid on an international basis, and can certainly be better paid on an international basis than purely nationally.
I shall sit down now. I should merely like to say that, so far as the action programme for the next four years to which my noble friend has referred, is concerned, I honestly believe that Britain sets an admirable example in the kind of institutions which it has developed for dealing with these matters. Bodies such as the Nature Conservancy Council and the Countryside Commission are unique in European terms. They have no real equivalent. I honestly doubt whether the voluntary conservation bodies, which command such enormous support in Britain, have an exact equivalent in Europe. I merely felt that it was right to say that I think Britain is uniquely placed to take a lead in the EEC in this new direction which the Commission may be taking, and I earnestly hope that Britain will take that lead.
8.39 p.m.
The Earl of Avon: My Lords, the Government are most grateful to the Select Committee for the work that they have done in producing this report. It is a
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very thorough analysis of the Commission document with many thoughtful recommendations. I should like to add my tribute to them for the high standing in which their reports on environmental matters are held, not only in this House but in the country and in the Community, as I think the noble Lord, Lord Nathan, so ably said. I should also like to thank my noble friend Lord Cranbrook for his clear and concise introduction, which has helped this debate this evening.
I believe that this is the first time that this House has had the opportunity of debating the Community Environmental Programme as a whole. People today look much more to the environment in all its fields, and this debate underlines that new interest. I should like to say that the Department of the Environment has many connections in this field. The noble Lord, Lord Nugent, was worried about the Mediterranean. Only last week I greeted two delegates from the local legislature in Sicily who were being shown around a conducted tour of the full body of the Environment's departments.
The establishment of the Environment and Consumer Protection Service in 1973 was an extension of Community policy into an area not envisaged in the Treaty of Rome. As we approach the end of the second Community environment action programme, the Commission document which formed the basis of the committee's investigations attempts both to take stock of the experience of the past and to consider directions that future policy should take. I found the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Northfield, particularly helpful, especially his remarks about past works. But while we now have a much greater wealth of experience regarding the environmental needs of Europe, and the best ways of dealing with them at Community level than did the originators of the Community environment policy in 1973, we are less fortunate than them in other ways, as several noble Lords have pointed out; the current review of the environment action programme takes place in a rather bleak economic climate, at a time when the European Communities are facing the challenge of adapting to a worldwide recession.
It is vitally important that the environment programme should adapt itself to these new challenges. It must be organised in such a way as to make the most effective use of available resources. The Government therefore welcome many of the recommendations of the Select Committee which are aimed at increasing the effectiveness of the environment action programme. Before turning to the points raised by the committee's report, it may help the House if I describe the process by which the environment programme will be reviewed and the way in which the committee's views will be taken into account in the formulation of future policy.
Environmental Ministers had a preliminary discussion of the Commission's report at the Council on 30th June last year. They asked senior officials from member states to discuss the report in depth and three such senior level meetings, chaired by the Commission, have taken place, one quite recently. The next stage is for the Commission to prepare a formal proposal for the continuation of Community environment policy. We expect that a document will appear around the middle of the year, which will then be discussed

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in detail by member states with a view to its adoption by the Council of Environment Ministers. In that next stage of moving from general discussion to a concrete proposal, the committee's report can be expected to have an influence in two ways.
First, the Select Committee as well as noble Lords, and particularly the noble Lord, Lord Northfield, have developed direct links with the European Commission; I know their report has been read with interest in Brussels and it will have a direct bearing on the Commission's thinking. Secondly, in the next stage the Government will be discussing a formal proposal from the Commission to the council. In that discussion we shall take full account of the Select Committee's report and what has been said in this debate. In many areas the report before us will greatly help the Government in the forthcoming talks.
The Select Committee's role in the formulation of the Community environment policy does not, however, end with this debate today. The formal proposal for a renewal of the Community environment programme, which we expect in the summer, will of course be subject to scrutiny by both Houses in the normal way. Your Select Committee will have the opportunity of examining both the Commission's proposals and the attitude of the Government towards them. It will be possible, therefore, for the committee to assess the impact their report has had on the Commission and to recommend what line they feel the Government should take in the discussions to which I have referred. All this is in the future, but it is important that we all appreciate that the committee's work will have a direct bearing on developments and that there will be further opportunity for comment in the future.
I return to the present and the report before us today. I shall deal first with the most striking point of the report—the suggestion that the Community should develop a comprehensive environment strategy —and then outline the Government's attitude towards future Community environment policy, and finally turn to some of the points raised on specific areas of policy. I do not, however, think it wise to devote much time to individual areas of action, and here I follow the advice of several noble Lords. The paramount need, as your committee have identified, is for strategy, and it is strategic thinking which should be the main consideration in evaluating what has been said. My noble friend Lord Cranbrook rightly attaches much importance to the committee's interesting suggestion that a wide-ranging environment strategy be prepared by the Commission, and that view is developed in the conclusions of the report in paragraphs 140 to 153.
In their discussion of a Community environment strategy, your Select Committee has drawn attention to the valuable insights afforded by the preparation of a World Conservation Strategy. My noble friend Lord Craigton also made direct reference to that, and asked if the Government were prepared to make a statement on the World Conservation Strategy. To digress from the subject of the European Community for a moment, I shall answer my noble friend. The Government welcome the World Conservation Strategy as a realistic and unemotive restatement of the evidence that conservation of our natural and living resources
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is essential to the economic and social welfare of society and is entirely compatible with sustainable development. This proposition has informed and will continue to inform the conduct of our policies. The European Community environment programme should take account of the World Conservation Strategy in a similar manner.
It is fair to say that in the past the Community programme has been long on detail but short on strategy. There has been little attempt to look over the whole field and consider relative priorities. The Environment and Consumer Protection Service itself now recognises there should be more emphasis on considering the environmental implications of other Community policies. This is a move we have welcomed. It would link with a general trend towards emphasising the collegiate nature of the Commission, which was one of the themes of the Spierenburg Report. Quite apart from the general arguments in favour of this approach, it would clearly be helpful if there were greater liaison between the various parts of the Commission in the environmental field. This should be a two-way process; environmental proposals should take account of economic factors and economic policies, which are the heart of the Commission's work, should take account of the environmental dimension.
A strategy of the kind advocated by the Select Committee would clearly help here. Whether it is necessary to go to the length of preparing a specifically Community strategy is a point on which the Government would like to suspend judgment for the present. The same objective might be achieved by encouraging the Commission to take account of work done by other bodies and to give greater emphasis to the development of a collegiate approach. But the concept of a Community strategy is certainly a challenging one which I am sure will stimulate thinking in Brussels.
The Government have also identified the need for a more strategic approach, and this ties in with some of the ideas put forward by the Select Committee. In our experience there are three main fields to which attention needs to be focused in order to increase the effectiveness of our environmental policy: the need to draw up priority aims; the consideration of the most effective forms and levels of action required to achieve those aims; and the need to ensure that proposals for action are soundly based and justified. I shall deal briefly with each of those and then comment on what is perhaps the most crucial question for the future, namely the relation between preventive and curative environment policy. First, the assessment of priorities. The committee identifies the need to reappraise the work on pollution control. It also recommends, in relation to action on dangerous substances, that the Commission should concentrate its efforts on a
"small, carefully chosen number of substances of pan-Community significance".
The thinking behind that observation is of significance for the programme as a whole. Future policy must focus on clearly-defined priority areas. The Environment and Consumer Protection Service must be sure that the problems it is addressing are of real environmental significance, and—equally important—they must be appropriate for Community-level action. The Community should not be considering action

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which is better taken either by national and local authorities or by other international organisations.
That brings me to the appropriate forms of action, and here I am heartened by the committee's recommendations that links with industry, commercial bodies and non-governmental organisations should be strengthened, a point underlined by my noble friend Lord Sandford. There is an important role for non-legislative forms of action, such as voluntary agreements, in certain areas. And that is a point that we have made to the Commission on numerous occasions.
Where Community legislative action is needed, the committee recommends suitably flexible directives; and I very much take the warning of the noble Lord, Lord Northfield, on this particular point. In the Government's view the emphasis should be on the word "flexible". A great deal of effort has been devoted to producing legislation which has sometimes been over-detailed and over-rigid. If the Community is to be successful in its environment policy, greater consideration must be given to the differences of practice and of philosophy among member states that require flexible treatment. Our aim must be environmental protection and environmental improvement, but that does no necessarily mean harmonisation.
In considering the form of action, the Commission's criterion must be, What will result in the greatest environmental benefit? It follows, incidentally, that in monitoring the implementation of legislation, attention should be directed at the actual environmental improvement which has resulted, as well as to the detailed legal instruments adopted by member states. This, too, was a point raised by other speakers.
Thirdly, I come to the justification for action. Here it is important that decisions on selected areas of action and proposals for individual measures are based on the best available information, and, in particular, taken on the strongest possible scientific grounds. It was no doubt with this in mind that the Committee recommends the strengthening of the ECPS. I should add however that in the present economic climate there would be some difficulty in obtaining such strengthening.
There are, moreover, other ways in which we could improve the scientific basis for our action. The Committee has identified one possibility when it recommends that the Commission should be assisted by an informal international panel of experts. Another possibility is that experts from member states could be consulted before the Commission engages research consultants, rather than being called in only after the research consultants have completed their work. We also endorse the Committee's recommendation that the Community research programme should be an important part of the scientific basis for the Environment Action Programme and its proposals.
Along with ensuring the best possible scientific justification for action, we must also ensure that the choice of action is itself judicious. Regard must be taken of the economic costs of proposed actions. It is difficult, perhaps even impossible, accurately to measure economic cost against environmental benefit. None the less, such an assessment should be attempted as part of the initial investigation of most individual measures. It is also important to ensure that the resources available are directed to the problems on which they can have the greatest effect.
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Let me now turn to the other crucial issue for future Community environment policy—the movement from cure to prevention, particularly as regards environmental pollution. The Government agree with the Select Committee that the time has come to start to shift the emphasis away from pollution control towards preventative action. We must be careful, however, to avoid two risks inherent in such a change of emphasis. First, we must ensure that important pollution control problems of Community significance are still tackled, and, secondly, we must beware of directing Community policies into preventive areas which are not suited to Community action. As regards pollution control, the Select Committee recommend that this should occupy a smaller proportion of the total environmental effort and that it should alter in character and scale.
The Government agree that there is a case for shifting emphasis away from measures to combat pollution and towards more general action, particularly of a preventative kind. But controlling pollution will continue to be a major concern, and the Government would not want to see the existing programme commitments neglected in order to extend the programme into other areas. They would rather see a change of approach towards forms of action which would be more manageable than hitherto, thus allowing resources to be used for other areas of concern. We should, for example, like to see less legislation, and this we believe is a view shared by other member states.
I note with interest the suggestion in the report that industrialists should be encouraged by the Community to assume more responsibility for reduction and control of pollution themselves. There is much merit in this kind of approach, particularly if we are looking for a two-way flow between environmental and other concerns, about which I have already spoken. But we need to consider just how we would put this into effect at Community level. There is no doubt that a streamlined, more efficient, pollution control programme is needed. That would release resources and enable the Community to enter into other forms of action, particularly of a preventive nature. But here the scope for Community action becomes less clear. Much must be for the national Administrations, but there may still be a need for an agreed framework at Community level.
As noble Lords will know, preventive environment policy is not a totally new field for the Community. Member states have recognised the need for collective action in, for example, the Sixth Amendment to the Classification, Packaging, and Labelling of Dangerous Substances Directive, and the so-called "Seveso" proposals on major hazards from industrial activities. Both are early warning measures, the first being intended to reduce the danger of environmental damage from new chemicals, and the second designed to minimise the danger of accidents such as the Seveso and Flixborough catastrophes.
In those cases there was a clear justification for Community-wide preventive measures. In other areas in which the Commission envisage taking preventive action, such as rational land use, the justification is not perhaps so clear. As the Select Committee report points out, thorough consultation with member states will be needed to ensure that the Community does not undertake measures best carried out by local and national authorities. Once again, the keynote should

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be strategic thinking. The expansion of preventive policies must be carefully planned. It must take account of the priorities for action; it must seek, where possible, to integrate itself with the control of pollution programmes, and it must endeavour to maximise the effect of Community resources and deal with Community problems.
A number of noble Lords, in particular the noble Baroness, Lady Robson of Kiddington, asked about an environment fund. The idea of using Community funds for environmental purposes is still very much in embryonic form. There is no provision for such use in the current budget, and the Commission now seem to be looking very much as to how best to make use of their existing funds. Certainly any proposal for a new means of financing would be tied up with the broader issues of the Community budget as a whole. Until we know more about the objectives of such a fund, how it might work, and the likely breakdown of expenditure between functions and between member states, I do not think that it is possible at the moment to express any firm view. I took particular note of the most interesting ideas of the noble Lord, Lord Northfield, and I am sure that they will be read in Brussels with great interest.
The noble Lord, Lord Northfield, also raised the subject of the relationship between the OECD and the EEC. I think that this is a suggestion worthy of further exploration, and here again a two-way process of influence and information exchange exists at present. I think that it exists for environmental issues of any consequence, and I understand that the Community and the OECD have worked closely together in the past. The Government hope that the existing relationship between the EEC and the OECD will continue to develop effectively.
My noble friend Lord Buxton of Alsa—
Lord Northfield: My Lords, before the noble Earl leaves that point, may I say to him that the thinking behind the Council of Europe resolution on this matter was that the practitioners, the officials, in the OECD and the EEC, who meet frequently or regularly —as the noble Earl says—are, in a sense, the last people who can be detached from the work that they are doing and examine how much is overlapping, unnecessary and duplicating. Therefore, the suggestion was that an outsider, who nevertheless had considerable knowledge of the environmental problems of Europe, might look at this question in a better way than would the practitioners at their regular meetings. I hope that the noble Earl will have another look at the suggestion from the Council of Europe about having an outsider to look at the overlapping.
The Earl of Avon: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for clarifying his point. I must confess that I had an answer to that, but I seem to have missed the point. I know that his comments on that subject will be read with interest. My noble friend Lord Buxton of Alsa mentioned a North Sea convention. I am sure that this, too, will be taken on board, and I see no reason at all why such a convention should not be called.
A number of noble Lords spoke about information,
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and there is certainly much in what has been said on this subject. Perhaps in this regard I can couple information with education and say that the Government very much agree with the remarks that have been made in the House this evening. The Government have been saying so in discussions with the Commission. We believe that reports of the kind mentioned, such as those now being produced on water quality in the Community, deserve wider circulation, although they perhaps could be in summary. The Government would add that we would also appreciate wider availability of the reports on which the Commission bases its proposals. The Government would develop this thought further by arguing that information of this kind can first point to where action is needed, both nationally and at Community level, and, secondly, it can act as an incentive without recourse to legislation for further action.
A number of noble Lords mentioned the Wildlife and Countryside Bill. I think this is an example of something which this country is doing. The noble Baroness, Lady Robson, mentioned SSSIs. I think that perhaps we ought to wait until we rejoin the debate on that next week if we may, and not take it this afternoon. Similarly, the wise remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Winstanley, on the Countryside Commission were very much taken aboard; and I did recall the remarks of my noble friend Lord Sandford very clearly when he spoke on moorlands some few days ago.
The noble Baroness, Lady Robson, mentioned the implications for the Common Agricultural Policy. In answer to the noble Baroness I would say that the Government recognise that there is concern that the formulation of Community agricultural policy should take environmental considerations into account, and it would appear that this has to an extent been recognised in Brussels as well. The less-favoured-areas directives, which provide special Community assistance to farmers in certain parts of member states, are an example of this, the need to conserve the countryside in such areas being covered, as I think the noble Lord, Lord Northfield, himself mentioned, by the directives themselves.
I have tried to keep my remarks not too long, but it was a fairly wide-ranging debate. I should like to conclude by saying, with the Select Committee, that the Government can confirm their belief in continuing a Community environment programme; but it must be a programme which, to quote from the original programme, will
"improve the setting and quality of life and the surroundings and living conditions of the peoples of the Community".
It must have clear, limited priorities, dealing with problems of real environmental significance which justify Community-level action. The Government believe the way to do this more effectively is to concentrate less on legislation, and we support the Select Committee in looking for more preventative action.
In the longer term the Government see the value of a general strategy encompassing other policy areas, but we would hope that this would evolve as part of the greater integration and close co-operation within the Community which will be needed if the Community is to achieve its full potential. Much of the discussion of the proposal which comes from the Commission will,

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as the Committee record, be taking place during the United Kingdom presidency in the second half of 1981. I know that the Select Committee's Report which we have discussed tonight will be an important contribution to future discussions, and I am grateful for the opportunity it has given the Government to hear the views of the House.
Lord Northfield: My Lords, before the noble Earl sits down I wonder whether he could answer one other question about which I gave him notice and which I think has been raised by practically every noble Lord in the debate, and that is the problem of the very small number of staff of the environment service in Brussels. The position is that the European Parliament last year voted an increase of staff for this service, but in the subsequent rows over the budget in the Council the precise designation of funds for this purpose got lost, and nobody was clear whether it was going to be given to the environment service. The only question I am asking is whether Her Majesty's Government put some weight behind the recommendations of the European Parliament on this issue. I think it was only nine members, or only a small number which was involved, but that at least that sort of modest reinforcement ought to be given to this service.
The Earl of Avon: My Lords, I think I possibly rather purposely skated round the noble Lord's point when I said that the current review of the environment action programme takes place in a rather bleak economic climate. However, I am aware of his question on this and I will find out what the correct answer is and let him know.
9.4 p.m.
The Earl of Cranbrook: My Lords, the European Community was founded on great ideals. If we look at the map we may not consider that it is a natural geographical unit for environmental concern, but it is a natural political unit for environmental concern because it has, as has been emphasised by noble Lords in the debate this evening, the legislative teeth to implement its directives. Speaking personally, I should like to associate myself with the thanks that the noble Lord, Lord Northfield, expressed to the noble Baroness, Lady White, who unfortunately has had to leave us this evening, for her past chairmanship of this sub-committee, and express my own personal gratitude for the considerate way in which she eased me into the chair as her successor.
Speaking for my sub-committee, if I may be so bold, I thank those noble Lords whose wide range of interests has brought them to take part in the debate tonight. The contributions of those noble Lords who are not members of our sub-committee have greatly enriched our thinking on the whole topic. I think I probably speak for the whole House when I emphasise with what great interest I listened to the remarks of the noble Earl, Lord Avon, and how very much I shall enjoy reading them at leisure, at a slower pace, tomorrow morning, when I see them in print.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

Wallerawang Collieries Limited Bill [H.L.]
Examiners Certificate that the further Standing Orders have been complied with: ordered to lie on the Table; Bill committed to an Unopposed Bill Committee.