Lords Sitting of 11 November 1982

Preamble
The House met at three of the clock: The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
Prayers—Read by the Lord Bishop of Bath and Wells.

Birth of Prince William: Address of Congratulation
The Minister of State, Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Earl Ferrers): My Lords, on behalf of my noble friend the Leader of the House I beg to move the Motion standing in her name on the Order Paper.
Moved, That the humble Address agreed to on 24th June last be presented to Her Majesty the Queen by the Lord Chancellor, the Lord Archbishop of York, the Lord Privy Seal (Baroness Young), the Lord Byers, the Baroness Hylton-Foster and the Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos—(Earl Ferrers.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

Angola and Namibia: Withdrawal of Forces
3.7 p.m.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Masjesty's Government what policy they are pursuing regarding the attempt to link the withdrawal of Cuban forces from Angola with that of South Africans from Namibia.
The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Lord Belstead): My Lords, the matters now under discussion between the United States, Angolan and South African Governments (including the withdrawal of Cuban troops) are not part of the United Nations' plan for a Namibia settlement. But agreement could clinch implementation of the United Nations' plan and contribute towards greater stability in the region.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, I should like to ask the noble Lord two questions. First, can he clarify the statement which he made during our debate on Foreign Affairs on Tuesday night of this week in which he said, at col. 225:
"the crucial question is not whether the so-called linkage exists: of course there is a linkage in Security Council Resolution 435"?
Was the noble Lord misreported by the Official Report, because I understood him to have assured me in answering questions earlier that the British Government did not support the concept of a linkage between the withdrawal of South African and Cuban troops?
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Secondly, is the noble Lord aware that there is intense frustration among Africans in Southern Africa at the number of times that the Contact Group has expressed optimism, only to be followed by sabotage from the South African Government? In view of that, will the noble Lord use his offices within the British Government to reassert the British initiative, despite the fact that it appears that the United States has taken over?
Lord Belstead: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for pointing out what undoubtedly is a misprint in the record of your Lordships' House. There should have been a negative either in the speech that I gave or else in the record which was made at the column which the noble Lord has repeated in his question, because there is of course no linkage between Resolution 435 of the United Nations Security Council and the removal of Cuban troops. But, having said that, while the five representatives of the United Nations, of whom Britain is one, are not directly involved in the current discussions between the American, Angolan and South African Governments, we and our partners recognise the need to take account of regional security concerns in working out an overall settlement. The Five believe that such a settlement could strengthen peace and security and foster economic development in the region.
Lord Thomas of Swynnerton: My Lords, would the noble Minister not agree that it is rather an offence that there should be any Cuban troops in South-West Africa at all?
Lord Belstead: My Lords, I repeat that I think that it will be very much for regional security if we can see a removal of Cuban forces from Angola.
Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: My Lords, has the noble Lord's attention been drawn to the reports in reputable newspapers that the French Government may be prepared to send forces to Angola to replace Cuban forces? Some of the reports have indicated that the Portuguese might be prepared to do that as well, although that is in a slightly more sensitive category. As a member of the Western Contact Group, this offer by France could be enormously important in helping to find a long-term solution to the problem and also to force South Africa into a position to make a final decision and to show the world what she is about. Can the noble Lord say whether there is any validity in those reports?
Lord Belstead: My Lords, I do not think that there is any immediate prospect of such an arrangement and I believe that the French Government have themselves made clear now that they have no intention of taking such action. But I am sure that those directly involved in the negotiations would be ready to consider anything which might contribute to a solution.
Lord Paget of Northampton: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that there are certainly Members of your Lordships' House who will hear with alarm and regret his statement that there is no linkage between the withdrawal of Cuban troops and the withdrawal of South African troops? Is he not perfectly aware that, if

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the South African troops withdraw while the Cubans are next door, the Cubans will move in and take over and so will their masters the Russians? Which side are we on in South Africa?
Lord Belstead: My Lords, if the noble Lord has heard that with alarm and regret, the noble Lord must have suffering from alarm and regret for about the last four years, because United Nations' Security Council Resolution 435 has never had any linkage on this subject within it. But, having said that, I agree with the noble Lord that, to use one's common sense, one must realise that it will help regional security and be for the good order of Southern Africa if we can see Cuban troops beginning to depart from Angola.
Lord Molloy: My Lords, would the noble Lord not agree that in so far as this country is the head of a great multi-Commonwealth, we ought to continue to make transparently clear our abhorrence of the philosophy—the evil philosophy—of apartheid which is practised in South Africa, and that we have a duty, indeed, a responsibility, continually to make that transparently clear in our almost unique role as the head of a great multi-Commonwealth?
Lord Belstead: My Lords, the Government would in no way quarrel with what the noble Lord says, but it is not part of the Namibia negotiations or solution.
Lord Paget of Northampton: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that his answer to me alarmed me even more? Is the implication that the decisions on Her Majesty's foreign policy are taken at the United Nations?—I profoundly hope that that is not so.
Lord Belstead: No, my Lords, but, as one of the Contact Group of Five, who were, of course, the permanent members of the Security Council when the resolution was passed, the Government are loyally trying to put into effect a Security Council resolution which we believe will be for the good order of Southern Africa. I repeat that within that Security Council resolution there is no linkage on this subject. But I repeat again, in case the noble Lord has not taken the point on board, that if the noble Lord and the Government use our common sense, which I am sure we can, we would both be at one in believing that the removal of Cuban troops is desirable.
Lord Brockway: My Lords, would the noble Lord agree that this problem can be solved without linkage to any treatment of independence to Namibia? Is it not the case that the Angolan Government have said that the Cuban troops would be withdrawn from Angola if the South African troops were withdrawn from Namibia and did not invade Angola? Could not an agreement on those lines be reached without specifically linking it with the treaty of independence?
Lord Belstead: My Lords, the Angolans have made clear their willingness to consider withdrawing Cuban forces once a Namibia settlement is achieved and external threats to their security are ended. It is, therefore, a chicken-and-egg situation. These discussions are now going on between the United States and the Angolan and the South African Governments to see whether all sides can agree on this particularly difficult aspect of the problem.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, my Question concerned Namibia. Why is it that members of the Contact Group—the noble Lord is one of the leading representatives of the Government, which are a member of the Contact Group—are always concentrating on the withdrawal of Cuban troops? Why is there not much more concern for the withdrawal of South African troops both from Angola and from Namibia? May I ask him to answer the second part of my question: What is his reaction to be to the growing frustration in Southern Africa? Will he first pledge the Government—as he has done before—that the question of Cuban troops in Angola is a matter for Angolan sovereignty alone, not connnected with the question of Namibia? Will he also pledge the Government to put their whole weight behind Resolution 435 for the withdrawal of South African troops from Namibia?
Lord Belstead: My Lords, I think that the noble Lord. Lord Hatch, would be satisfied if Resolution 435 could be carried fully into effect. May I remind the noble Lord that a very great deal of progress has been made on that by the Contact Group of Five, of whom Britain is one, and that we now have only two problems left to overcome. One is to agree on the electoral system for Namibia in the future, and the other on the composition, deployment and practical arrangements for the United Nations Transition Assistance Group. But, in order to reach that finishing tape, to be politically real about this there must undoubtedly be some agreement about the removal of Cuban troops even though that removal is not linked to Resolution 435. It is those difficult discussions which are also going on at the same time.
Lord Glenkinglas: My Lords, would my noble friend bear in mind that many of us on this side of the House are not particularly keen on apartheid, but we detest the system of Russian penetration through the Cuban troops?
Lord Belstead: My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for that question.
Earl Ferrers: My Lords, I wonder whether—
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords—
Several noble Lords: Order, order!
Earl Ferrers: My Lords, I do not wish to expedite this at all, but we have spent 11 minutes on one Question and if the noble Lord, Lord Hatch, were to put his last supplementary question, I think that we should then move on.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, I am much obliged to the noble Earl. I was simply going to ask the noble Lord the Minister whether he would answer my question as regards reaffirming his agreement that the question of Cuban troops in Angola is a matter for Angolan sovereignty.
Lord Belstead: My Lords, the conclusion of Resolution 435 is one matter; the removal of Cuban troops is another matter. But if the noble Lord will put on his common-sense hat, he will realise that the one affects the other.

The Falklands Campaign: War Disablement
3.20 p.m.
Lord Campbell of Croy: 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 estimate they can now make of the number of members of the task force, wounded or injured during the Falklands campaign, who are likely to be placed indefinitely in categories of 60 per cent. or more in terms of the standard scale of war disablement.
The Earl of Avon: My Lords, I am not in a position to say. Degrees of war disability can only be assessed by the Department of Health and Social Security after a serviceman has been medically discharged from the armed forces. No service personnel have yet been medically discharged from the Armed Forces because of injuries sustained in the Falkland Islands conflict, and decisions on such discharges can only be made in the light of clinical developments in individual cases over a period of time. I believe it could be wrong to try and predict how many might eventually have to be discharged.
Lord Campbell of Croy: My Lords, I thank my noble friend for his Answer, so far as he can go. Will the Government ensure that, in addition to full support financially and medically, rehabilitation services will be available with the highest priority to those whose careers in the armed forces have been ended or impaired? Will the Government also extend the greatest encouragement to them in the light of the experience of the severely disabled from the two world wars who have managed to reshape their lives?
The Earl of Avon: My Lords, I can assure my noble friend that all the considerations he has suggested will indeed be taken into account. If a man has to be medically discharged from the armed forces he is given considerable advice and help in smoothing the transition to civilian life, and this would include expert advice on the various opportunities for training for civilian employment through the service resettlement centres or MOD sponsored courses at polytechnics and colleges of further education.
Lord Shinwell: My Lords, may I ask the Minister whether the term contained in the Question "standard scale of war disablement" is related to the criteria established after the last war? Does it not take into account inflation and increases in the pay of those in the armed forces?
The Earl of Avon: My Lords, the Ministry of Defence guarantees a minimum level of pension for all servicemen invalided from the armed forces with a serious disablement—that is, 20 per cent. or more—which is directly attributable to their service. A basic lump sum is also paid. These awards are related to rank and degree of disability, but are paid irrespective of age or length of service. They are in addition supplemented through the payment of war disablement pensions by the DHSS. In all cases pensions and lump sums are paid tax free.
Baroness Masham of Ilton: My Lords, may I ask the noble Earl whether those people from the task force who remain disabled will be offered continued employment in the services, if they so wish, even though it means changing to an administrative job?
The Earl of Avon: My Lords, yes indeed, wherever it is possible such a thing will happen, and if our advice is that they should go outside we shall again advise accordingly.
Lord Bruce of Donington: My Lords, is the noble Earl aware that on all sides of the House there is considerable anxiety lest any of these gallant young men should be left in uncertainty for a long period of time? Would not the noble Earl consider it advisable within, say, one or two months to make a full statement showing exactly what provision is going to be made for those who served this country so well?
The Earl of Avon: My Lords, we are at the moment of course talking about the people who have been badly wounded. It will, as I said in my original Answer, take a little while before the various states of recovery will be known. Therefore, it would not be possible to produce a statement at any one time, but I can assure the noble Lord, as I assured my noble friend Lord Campbell of Croy, that every single consideration is being given towards looking after these people. Perhaps what the noble Lord, Lord Bruce, has in mind is the South Atlantic Fund, on which I think it might be advisable in the not too distant future to let Parliament know what is happening.
Lord Balfour of Inchrye: My Lords, from listening to the Minister's reply it seems that there is a sequence of operations. First, the serviceman is discharged, and then his assessment as to disability is in the hands of a civil department. Can we be assured that there is no financial gap which will leave a man short of money, because either his pay and allowances continue until assessment is made or he is informed of the assessment before his discharge?
The Earl of Avon: My Lords. I shall certainly bear my noble friend's point in mind and look into it for him.

Homes: Shared Ownership Schemes
3.25 p.m.
Lord Gainford: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they have any plans to increase the funds available for houses built for shared purchase.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of the Environment (Lord Bellwin): My Lords, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for the Environment has invited local authorities to make extra bids for capital expenditure in this financial year. He would be happy to consider bids for

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dwellings built for sale on shared ownership terms. In addition, the Housing Corporation approved development programme for 1982–1983 includes £25 million for shared ownership schemes by housing associations. And in new towns, of some £77 million estimated housing expenditure this year, about £50 million should be spent on new housing available for sale outright or on shared ownership terms. For 1983–84, my right honourable friend has invited local authorities to make separate bids in their housing investment programmes for low-cost home ownership schemes—including shared ownership.
Lord Gainford: My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that encouraging Answer. May I ask him how the Housing Corporaiton is managing to deal with the ever-increasing demand, particularly in view of the take-up of money by housing associations?
Lord Bellwin: My Lords, my right honourable friend has been discussing with the chairman of the Housing Corporation whether the corporation could use additional resources this year. This might enable the corporation to increase expenditure for the remainder of the year on fair rent, hostel and low-cost home ownership schemes, including those for shared ownership. My right honourable friend will be announcing the results of his discussions very shortly.
Lord Nugent of Guildford: My Lords, can my noble friend tell us whether in the Dockland Development Corporation scheme, in the very impressive development of houses for sale which has already occurred in the past 12 months there is a portion for shared ownership?
Lord Bellwin: Yes, my Lords, I am glad to say that that is so. I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Nugent for reminding the House of the very high quality of those schemes. They are available for shared ownership, and I am sure that if any of your Lordships have not seen them they would find it interesting to note what can be done with imaginative design in housing of this kind.

Disused Railway Lines: Conversion to Roads
3.28 p.m.
Viscount Sidmouth: 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 which independent engineers have been commissioned to look into the cost of converting railway lines to roads and what are their terms of reference.
The Earl of Avon: My Lords, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Transport has commissioned Messrs. Brian Colquhoun and Partners, consulting engineers, to consider British Rail's short Woodside to Selsdon route in south London, which is to close next year. Their terms of reference are to investigate and cost the options for
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conversion of this line to roads of varying standards. In addition, my right honourable friend is contributing part of the cost of a study by Professor Peter Hall and Sir William Halcrow and Partners into the feasibility and costs of converting British Rail's closed Woodhead Tunnel route. My right honourable friend's objective in commissioning and supporting these studies is to obtain independent advice on possible ways of using redundant transport rights of way.
Viscount Sidmouth: My Lords, while thanking the Minister for that reply, may I ask him whether he is aware that the New Civil Engineer, the journal of the Institution of Civil Engineers, described the conversion proposals as "preposterous" on both engineering and economic grounds? In view of the evidently controversial nature of the subject, is the noble Earl satisfied that in particular Professor Hall, because of his stated views, is a truly independent person in this matter?
The Earl of Avon: My Lords, I was not aware that these studies had been given the word "preposterous", but I shall bear that in mind. So far as the independent survey which my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Transport has actually commissioned, this of course has not got anything to do with the other names the noble Viscount mentioned. We shall of course bear in mind what the noble Viscount has said.
Lord Underhill: My Lords, could the Minister indicate whether the British Railways Board has been consulted? If so, what were their views on the subject? Would the noble Earl confirm that this inquiry in no way means that there will be any preconceived ideas about the closing of any other rail routes?
The Earl of Avon: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for raising the second point, in particular. I would indeed endorse exactly what he said; this is purely a study for using those routes which are already to be closed and there is no question of the other suggestion the noble Lord made. I believe the British Railways Board does know what is going on, but I do not have the actual facts in front of me.
Lord Somers: My Lords, may I ask the Minister to give the House some assurance that no changes will be made in branch lines, or at any rate the majority of branch lines, until we have had a full-scale debate to examine the possibility of the use of these lines by private enterprise?
The Earl of Avon: My Lords, I am happy to confirm what I said in reply to the noble Lord, Lord Underhill;2/5/2006 this in no way changes any policies about closing lines.
Lord Wallace of Coslany: My Lords, is there any possibility of using these disused lines for food production and particularly for the provision of allotment gardens?
The Earl of Avon: I was expecting to be asked if they could become bicycle paths, my Lords, but no doubt if they are not suitable for bicycle paths, we might grow raspberries instead.

Business
Lord Denham: My Lords, at a convenient moment after 3.45 this afternoon, my noble friend the Leader of the House will, with the leave of the House, repeat a Statement that is to be made in another place on security.
Perhaps I might add, for the benefit of those Members of the House who are members of the Committee of Selection, that that committee, which was to have met today at 3.45, had perhaps better meet as soon as questions on the Statement have been concluded.

Parochial Charities (Neighbourhood Trust) Bill [H.L.]
Baroness Faithfull: My Lords, I beg to introduce a Bill to provide for the better use of parochial charities for the poor by their amalgamation into neighbourhood trusts. I beg to move this Bill be now read a first time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read a first time—(Baroness Faithfull.)
On Question, Bill read a first time, and to be printed.

Wages Councils (Northern Ireland) Order 1982
3.37 p.m.
Viscount Long Viscount Long rose to move, That the draft order laid before the House on 21st October be approved.
The noble Viscount said: My Lords, this order was originally laid before this House on 20th May 1982 and was then considered by the Joint Committee on Consolidation Bills, as is the procedure with orders of pure consolidation. The joint committee were satisfied that the order was one of pure consolidation in that it consolidated the Wages Councils Act (Northern Ireland) 1945 and the enactments amending that Act. The committee, however, in its report of 25th June recommended that Section 19 of the Wages Councils Act (Northern Ireland) 1945, which deals with schemes for holidays with pay, should be repealed in the order, as it served no practical purpose and there is no record of it ever having been used. On consideration of the advice of the joint committee, the order was withdrawn and relaid with the repeal of Section 19 included. The inclusion of that one amendment means that the order is no longer, strictly speaking, pure consolidation, but it has the effect of making a more coherent statement of the relevant law. The joint committee stated in the course of its report:
"After careful consideration, the Committee are of the opinion that the repeal of Section 19 would have the desirable result of achieving a more satisfactory and tidier consolidation of law and that an Order to that effect, although not pure consolidation, would be likely to commend itself to Parliament for that reason."
In the light of the change based on the recommendations of the joint committee, the order now represents a sensible statement of the law. I beg to move.
Moved, That the draft order laid before the House on 21st October be approved.—(Viscount Long.)
Lord Bishopston: My Lords, I am sure we are grateful for that explanation of the order, which is not controversial and is a consolidation measure, as the noble Viscount pointed out. He mentioned the repeal of Section 19. I note that there are provisions dealing with orders regulating remuneration and holidays; that comes under Sections 10 and 11. They are important sections regarding powers to fix remuneration and holidays by order. They include the publication of prescribed notices to all affected by the proposals and the submission of written representations regarding them. There are also, of course, powers of enforcement.
I understand that some aspects of those sections are new, insofar as they apply to other parts of the United Kingdom and are now to apply to Northern Ireland, particularly concerning backdating. It might be helpful for those interested if the Minister were to comment particularly on the last points I raised, about the applicability of the order and backdating. If these provisions are new, but follow the practice and precedents of other places, I presume they will be acceptable as part of the order. May we be told what consultations have taken place with what bodies and the results of those consultations? Apart from those points, I think the House would wish to support the order.
Lord Hampton: My Lords, I too thank the noble Viscount for introducing the order, and I listened with interest to the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Bishopston. Perhaps I might take this opportunity, the first open to me, to wish the noble Lord, Lord Blease, well, now that he is no longer speaking from the Front Bench. He is the sort of person who gives one faith in the future of Northern Ireland. The order is quite technical, and when the word "consolidation" is used, even with some restraint, I feel inclined to leave it to more eminent heads than mine, and I see no reason for not accepting the order.
Lord Donaldson of Kingsbridge: My Lords, I endorse the expression of appreciation of the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, of the performance of the noble Lord, Lord Blease, on the Front Bench. I was a Northern Ireland Minister at its nastiest time, when Lord Blease was then head of the local industrial organisation, the trade unions there. The trade unions were on our side and the workers in general were not, but he was enormously helpful and it has always been a pleasure to work with him. My only comment on the order is that Section 19 is concerned with holidays with pay. It has been removed. What effect, if any, has that had on holidays with pay?
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: As this is not strictly a consolidation order, my Lords, I think I am strictly in order in asking my noble friend a general question arising out of it. As he will be aware, Ministers at the Department of Employment have in recent months on several occasions said they were reviewing the system of wages councils and considering whether, at a time of high unemployment—and that is perhaps, alas, particularly relevant to Northern Ireland—it made sense to continue a great many of the wages councils. I appreciate that it would be difficult, though not perhaps impossible, to move separately in respect of

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Northern Ireland. But could my noble friend give an assurance that the continuation, by way of this order, of the wages council system in Northern Ireland does not indicate any relaxation at all by the Secretary of State for Employment of his reconsideration of the wages council system as a whole?
Viscount Long: My Lords, I wish, first, to join the noble Lords, Lord Hampton and Lord Donaldson, in the tributes they paid to the noble Lord, Lord Blease. While I was in the Province recently I found that his name stood very high in relation to the work he carried out there, and had done, for many years. The noble Lord was in his place a moment ago and at the outset I wish to join in the thanks expressed to him by those who worked with him over there. I should like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Bishopston, for his kind intervention on the order, and to say to him that both Articles 10 and 11 are in fact not new. Article 10—power to fix remuneration and holidays—and Article 11—effect and enforcement of orders made under Article 10 of the Draft Wages Councils (Northern Ireland) Order 1982—are a restatement of Sections 10 and 11 of the Wages Councils Act (Northern Ireland) 1945, as amended by the provisions of Schedule I to the Industrial Relations (Northern Ireland) Order 1982, which came into effect in May this year. The change effected by the Industrial Relations Order simply enables the wages councils, and not the Department of Economic Development, to make orders relating to remuneration and holidays.
The noble Lord, Lord Bishopston, secondly, asked me whether there had been consultation on this consolidation. In view of the order being one of consolidation, with the exception of the repeal of Section 19 of the 1945 Act, no consultation was in fact necessary. However, as I have already mentioned, the order was in any case considered by the Joint Committee on Consolidation.
My noble friend asked whether, with unemployment as serious as it is in Northern Ireland—even though this is an amendment to the order—the department, through payments and through the wages councils, would continue to look after those who are in need. I shall take that point to my right honourable friend in another place—
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: My Lords, if my noble friend will allow me to interrupt him, I would say that he has misunderstood my question. I asked whether the continuance in Northern Ireland, by means of the order, of the wages councils system in general indicated any change in the policy hitherto declared by the Department of Employment of reviewing the wages councils system with a view to reducing the number of wages councils.
Viscount Long: My Lords, as I understand it, there is no sign of that at the moment. The noble Lord, Lord Donaldson of Kingsbridge, made remarks about payments, and I think that that still goes. He will remember from when he was in Northern Ireland that this does not in any case affect payments at all.
Lord Bishopston: My Lords, before the noble Viscount sits down will he comment on the backdating aspect of Articles 10 and 11, which I thought
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were new? I should also like to join in the tributes paid by other noble Lords to my noble friend Lord Blease for his advocacy of matters of interest and concern to Northern Ireland. I am sure that whoever is appointed to deal with the work that he has been handling will find it a very difficult task to come up to his standards.
Viscount Long: My Lords, I apologise to the noble Lord for not dealing with the point about the backdating. I wonder whether I may let him know about it later.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

The Homeless Young
3.43 p.m.
The Earl of Longford The Earl of Longford rose to ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they propose to take to improve the position of the homeless young.
The noble Earl said: My Lords, since I last spoke in this Chamber, there have been important changes in the leadership of the Labour Party in your Lordships' House. I must offer my most sincere good wishes to our new Leader and our new Chief Whip. I must express my gratitude to the noble Baroness. Lady Llewelyn-Davies of Hastoe, for numerous kindnesses over many years, and in particular I want to pay tribute to the noble Lord. Lord Peart, who has rendered such distinguished service in this House, as elsewhere. I know that wherever he sits—and he will always sit on the Labour Benches—he will be regarded everywhere with respect and affection.
I rise to ask what the Government propose to do to improve the lot of the young homeless, which I am sure they will agree is very serious. A noble Lord who expressed regret that he could not speak today—a noble and clerical Lord, if I may so describe him, though he is not yet a Bishop—hoped that I would bring up the fact that, if the young go wrong, it is to a large extent because they are not being properly treated by their elders. So when we talk about the failure of young delinquents and so on we must bear in mind that much of the responsibility rests on shoulders other than theirs.
When the Housing (Homeless Persons) Act 1977 was debated in the Lords, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London proposed an amendment to the Act which would have given priority need for housing to homeless young people. The noble Lord. Lord Soper—who regrets that he cannot take part in today's debate—and I had urged that in the House a little earlier, in March 1977. The right reverend Prelate's amendment, brought forward in July 1977, was rejected by the Government, and therefore defeated. After five years the overwhelming evidence is that the amendment remains as necessary now as it was then. Indeed, with the horrifying increase in unemployment, which on its present scale was quite unforeseen in 1977, and which has been most distressing among the young in particular, the amendment is now considerably more necessary even than it was five years ago.
I come to a point that I wish to make plainly, and I hope that the noble Earl. Lord Avon—who I am so glad is to reply to the debate—has had advance notice of it. I am not saying that nothing can be done without legislation. Legislation is vital, but there is much that

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can be done without it. The Secretary of State already possesses wide powers to issue amendments to the code of guidance. Local authorities already possess much freedom in drawing up their points system for allocating houses. Nevertheless, legislation of the kind that I have mentioned is vitally necessary if we are to make sure that there will in fact be a major improvement.
I have tried to collect material from a number of sources. Yesterday, I received an extremely interesting report—though I have not yet had time to study it adequately—entitled Housing and Homelessness, which has just been produced by the Social Policy Committee of the Board for Social Responsibility. I have no doubt that, when he speaks later, the right reverend Prelate will help us to appreciate the findings of the committee.
Inevitably, in the first place I have drawn on the experience of the New Horizon Youth Centre, which I helped to found 14 years ago, of which I am chairman, and which I visit more or less daily. The youth centre is linked with a number of agencies, and it is also in close touch with several Government departments. So in that small area it is a mine of information. I spent a good deal of yesterday morning with a group of young people in the centre. All of them were unemployed and homeless. I asked one of them, "Have you been homeless for long?" and the asnwer was, "It depends whether you call 11 years a long time". Perhaps I bought that particular answer, as it were, but I had not intended to obtain it when I asked the question. Of course that would be an extreme case, but all of them intermittently spend the night indoors and intermittently sleep rough. That is the position with this particular group, which is not untypical of the large number of young people who visit the centre.
Your Lordships may ask what effect the Act of 1977, beneficial in its way, has had. So far as we are concerned, taking the experience of the New Horizon, only a handful of people have been able each year to take advantage of it. Those who have taken advantage have all been pregnant girls, apart from two former psychiatric patients. So the Act has not been very much use to our young people. At the same time, the numbers of young people using our centre have much increased. In 1977 the total was 830, and in 1981 it was 2,600—more than three times as many. The reasons for the increase are two-fold primarily. On the one hand, I suppose that as the years have passed our centre has gained a higher and higher repute; and, on the other hand, there has been a more and more urgent need, more and more acute distress, as a result of the much larger numbers without work or accommodation.
Those who are versed in this subject will be aware of the important document published in 1981 by a NACRO study group. I always associate NACRO pre-eminently with the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson, who was chairman for so long, but as he is not here I will not spend any time paying him further tributes, which I shall pay him on another occasion; but, at any rate, NACRO does wonderful work in a number of fields, and this is one of their most valuable outputs. Although the NACRO brief was to examine problems of homeless young offenders, the group were drawn inevitably into the consideration of homelessness among young people generally.
They bring out the fact that young offenders suffer additional disadvantages and are susceptible in a special way to the pressures arising from homelessness. The experience of probation officers in institutions suggests that approximately one-third of the young adults in penal institutions are at the risk of being homeless, or are literally homeless. Being homeless, as we might easily expect, increases the risk of the person turning into a young criminal, and being convicted of crime increases the likelihood of becoming homeless. There is a vicious circle embracing crime and homelessness. But the NACRO report in fact deals with homelessness in general, and this afternoon I am speaking from that angle, not just from the angle of young offenders.
The NACRO report found that there has been no significant change in the overall effect of policies since that disovered by the DHSS working party of 1975–76, which, before the enormous increase in unemployment, was already pointing to the gravity of the situation. The NACRO report, published last year, described the present policies—and I am now quoting them—as:
"characterised by avoidance of responsibility, lack of rights, undue reliance on voluntary organisations, shortage of resources and a fragmented ad hoc range of services".
That is quite a category of failure. I echo those words, but I express the hope that before the end of this debate the Minister will be able to say something which will show that my remarks are possibly on the pessimistic side. I hope that at least he will be able to give us some encouragement. I know he would wish to, and I hope he will manage to do so.
I must touch briefly on the causes of the deteriorating situation. I have already mentioned the growing youth unemployment, so familiar to all of us, and I have no doubt that shortly we shall be returning to that very strongly in this House. Many young people have now much lower incomes, and therefore they lack the financial resources for privately rented accommodation. I asked these young people whom I was talking to yesterday whether, if the houses were there, so to speak, they would be able to rent them; but they laughed at me and said that you would have to put down probably about £150 or £160, so it was really quite out of the question for a young unemployed person to pay for privately rented accommodation.
Meanwhile—and this is less inevitable, so to speak—the supply of lettings from private landlords continues to decline. What is painfully obvious is the absence of a strategy for housing single people. If the noble Earl is able to unfold one at the end of the debate, of course no one will be happier than I. Although single people of all ages account for one in four of all households in England and Wales, there is still no Government policy concerning them. The right reverend Prelate may be able to say more on this subject later, because the Church of England report deals not only with the young homeless but with the homeless generally, and they have a special section on the single homeless.
Local authorities seem to have no idea of the size of the demand from single people for council housing. I would place just one or two points before the House at this stage. Age bars are operated on housing waiting lists. For example, York does not allow a person to register on their housing list until that person is 40 years old. Then, again, in many cases there are local

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regulations which require a person to have lived or worked in an authority's area for some time, or even to have an address or job in the area, before he or she can register. This can have a harsher effect on single people than on other households. A single person forced by a lack of secure housing may have to turn to accommodation outside his home area. Indeed, that is the experience of a large proportion of the young people I see in our centre, and then they are debarred by the regulations I have mentioned. In addition, the traditional method of allocating housing is the points scheme, which is orientated towards families and therefore militates against single people being housed.
My Lords, what must we do? This is not a debate about unemployment—we shall soon be coming back to that great subject again—but one must say without equivocation that the present level of youth unemployment is a scandal, not only in London, of course, but throughout the country. The North-East coast just happens to be in my mind because I was studying the matter there the other day, and I know that a number of noble Lords are very well informed about that situation. Youth unemployment is a shameful reflection on the policies which produce it. But, taking the employment situation as it is, one must list, although briefly, a number of steps which could ameliorate the position.
It is essential that young and, indeed, all single people should have full access to public sector housing. This requires a number of steps, of which I have already indicated one, the removal of an age bar; and, again, there should be a different method of assessing priority needs which would not shut out the young homeless. A change in the Act would make the whole difference, but as I said at the beginning (and I must keep repeating this to avoid the reply. "We cannot do anything until there is legislation, and the legislative programme is full"), even without legislation local authorities could produce a points system which placed young people at much less of a disadvantage.
The peculiar difficulties of young people mean that it would be insufficient simply to supply independent flats. A range of different types of accommodation is required to meet the varying needs of individuals, bearing in mind the high proportion of them who are in fact unemployed. In addition to furnished flats, there is need for emergency accommodation, shared dwellings and supportive accommodation. When I speak of supportive accommodation. I take as an example the small type of hostel. Many of these small hostels are run by voluntary agencies. Our own centre is embarking on one shortly.
Of course, accommodation is not everything. Again, this is not a general question concerning the treatment of the young, but I think most of us take it for granted that great benefit will come to the young people from the provision of day centres and youth clubs; and there will need to be some specialist provision for those with additional problems of drugs and alcohol abuse, and, of course, the physically or mentally ill.
I must not detain the House much longer, but one point I must make with unlimited emphasis. To tackle this enormous problem the statutory services will need to work together. Any joint approach will require participation by the social services departments, the probation service, the youth service and the housing
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management staff. The NACRO report has specific recommendations for this which were worked out at some length in this regard, and I venture to suggest that the House will wish to study them.
The implications of my argument are large for central and local government planning. It ought to be possible to take some immediate action. The Housing (Homeless Persons) Act should be extended to a planned timetable, the first phase of which should be to bring into the category of priority need young people of 16 and 17. The next phase should extend the Act to include everyone of 21 and under.
Strictly speaking, steps of this kind—and I speak subject to correction—do not appear to require legislation. All that they need is an amendment to the codes of guidance by the Secretary of State for the Environment and more enlightened practices and suitable encouragement from the local authorities. Nevertheless, it is only legislation on the lines that I suggested at the beginning of my speech which would make it certain beyond any question that something real will happen. Meanwhile, we are betraying the interests of this large section of our young people.

Security: The Case of Mr. G. A. Prime
4.1 p.m.
The Lord Privy Seal (Baroness Young): My Lords, with the leave of the House. I should like to repeat a Statement being made in another place by my right honourable friend the Prime Minister. The Statement is as follows:
"In my Statement on 20th July I informed the House that Mr. G. A. Prime had been charged with offences under Section 1 of the Official Secrets Act 1911.
"He was tried yesterday. He pleaded guilty to the charges under the Official Secrets Act and to charges relating to certain sexual offences.
"He was convicted, and was sentenced to a total of 35 years' imprisonment in respect of the Official Secrets Act offences and a further three years in respect of the sexual offences.
"Prime joined the Royal Air Force in 1956, when he was 18. After service in Africa he took a Russian language course and qualified in May 1964. In June 1964 he was posted to RAF Gatow in West Berlin where his work was of a classified nature.
"His engagement with the Royal Air Force terminated on 31st July 1968.
"Earlier that year he applied from Berlin to join Government Communications Headquarters.
"Although he had been positively vetted while in the Royal Air Force he was positively vetted again by GCHQ. He was certified for access to classified information and joined GCHQ in September 1968 as a Russian translator in the grade of linguist specialist (that is, broadly equivalent to executive officer).
"The highest grade he ever reached was the next grade up (broadly equivalent to higher executive officer).
"He was positively vetted again in 1973, and that was reviewed again in 1974 following the break up of his first marriage.

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"Nothing arose on either occasion to put in doubt his fitness for access to classified information, and his certificate was renewed.
"In the course of his employment both in the Royal Air Force and in GCHQ Prime came to have access to information ranging from the sensitive to matters of the utmost secrecy.
"He resigned from the Government service for personal reasons in September 1977, and has not since then been employed in the public service or in any other position which would give him access to classified information.
"Prime first came under suspicion earlier this year following an investigation by West Mercia police into a case of indecent assault on a young girl. He was charged with this and two other similar sexual offences on 28th April 1982.
"While he was in custody, Mrs. Prime told the police that she thought that he might have been engaged in espionage.
"His home was searched and a quantity of espionage material was discovered.
"Though at first he denied having been a spy, he eventually made a confession, in which he gave an account of his espionage activities.
"In his confession he claimed to have embarked on these activities (to use his own words) 'partly as a result of a misplaced idealistic view of Soviet socialism which was compounded by basic psychological problems'.
"He said that he had initiated a contact with the Russian Intelligence service while he was in the Royal Air Force in West Berlin in January 1968. He told them the nature of his work and said that he wished to give them any information they wanted. During the remainder of his service with the Royal Air Force in Berlin he passed information to the Russians.
"In August 1968, after leaving the Royal Air Force and before taking up employment in GCHQ, he visited East Berlin to be given training and equipment for espionage activities.
"During his period of service in GCHQ he made a number of visits to Vienna for meetings with his Russian controller, at which he handed over material and received money, instructions and further equipment.
"After he resigned from GCHQ in September 1977 there were two further contacts.
"He went to Vienna two and a half years later in May 1980 taking with him photographic material and handwritten notes derived from the last period of his Government service.
"Then he was summoned to East Berlin in November and was closely questioned.
"He was urged to seek further employment in Government service, but did not do so. On one or other of these occasions he was given further espionage equipment, but he did not use it.
"What I have just said summarises Prime's own account of his activities.
"Over a period of 13 years to 1977, during which he was engaged on highly classified work. Prime had access to information of the utmost secrecy; and on his own admission from the beginning of 1968 at
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least until 1980 he passed the Russians a lot of that information, which must have alerted them to the state of our knowledge of certain important aspects of Russian defence arrangements, and to the ways in which that knowledge was obtained.
"It is not only British interests which have been damaged; the damage extends to the interests of the United States Government.
"And of course the damage to our own and United States interests is damage to the interests of the Atlantic Alliance as a whole.
"There is, however, no evidence that Prime had access to any classified information about our own or allied military dispositions or intentions, or about nuclear weapons; or to any information which could have endangered the lives of agents.
"This case raises three major questions. The first is how Prime was able to be engaged and retained upon highly classified work and to escape notice as a spy for so long; and whether this was due to some defect in procedures which remains to be corrected.
"The second question is to ascertain precisely how much and what information Prime passed to the Russians and what damage was done.
"The third question is whether Prime knows of any others in the public service who were or who may have been involved in espionage.
"Investigations so far have yielded no evidence which contradicts Prime's own statement that no others were involved in his activities. But now that the trial proceedings are complete, all these questions must be further and exhaustively investigated.
"I told the House on 20th July that any security issues that arose would be referred to the Security Commission in accordance with the arrangements described to the House on 23rd January 1964 and on 10th May 1965.
"As the right honourable Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition is aware, it was not possible to proceed with a reference while the trial proceedings were pending.
"Now, after consulting the Chairman of the Security Commission and the right honourable Gentleman, I have decided to refer these matters to the Security Commission.
"The terms of reference will be:
'To investigate the circumstances in which breaches of security have, or may have, occurred arising out of the case of Geoffrey Arthur Prime, who was convicted on 10th November 1982 of offences under the Official Secrets Act 1911; and to advise in the light of that investigation whether any change in security arrangements is necessary or desirable'.
"These terms of reference will enable the commission to inquire into all the questions which this case raises.
"The commission's findings will be laid before the House to the fullest extent compatible with national security".
My Lords, that concludes the Statement.
4.10 p.m.
Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: My Lords, we are very grateful to the noble Baroness for repeating the

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Statement. We had read most of the details in today's newspapers and it is without doubt a deeply disturbing case—the worst in this category for about 30 years. A mass of information has been passed to the Soviet Government and, as the Prime Minister said, major questions now call for answers: notably, how so totally unstable a character came to be recruited to so sensitive a post and then promoted in it with access to matters of the utmost secrecy.
The case shows beyond doubt that positive vetting is an inadequate procedure to rely on to such an extent. Prime was positively vetted three times, according to the Prime Minister's Statement. Therefore, may I ask the Government whether they will now consider creating some new system whereby the Intelligence Service is made more accountable to Parliament? We support the reference to the Security Commission and are glad to understand that as full a report as is reasonably possible will be published in due course. Later, of course, the House will expect to debate this matter; but, in the meantime, we thank the noble Baroness.
Lord Wigoder: My Lords, we also are grateful to the noble Baroness the Leader of the House for repeating this grave Statement. If one looks at the first six months of this story, so far as it is known, the first six months of 1968, and the first count to which Prime pleaded guilty, it appears that in January of 1968—I assume after he had already been vetted for the first time; the noble Baroness can perhaps confirm that—he was in contact with the Russians in Berlin. In July 1968 it appears that he sought employment at the Government communications headquarters and was positively vetted for a second time, apparently without any discovery being made of the previous approach in Berlin.
It then appears that at some time within the next month or two, before taking up his employment, he was in East Berlin being trained in espionage by the Russians. Perhaps the noble Baroness can help us as to whether that was before or after the second vetting which took place at the time that he was seeking employment with the Government. It then appears perfectly clear that before the third vetting in 1973 there were frequent contacts with the Russians in this country and it may be—and, again, the noble Baroness can perhaps confirm this—there were also trips to Vienna during that period.
On the facts as they were revealed in court yesterday it is perfectly clear that the positive vettings were a total failure. They failed not only to reveal his activities and his movements: they failed also, of course, to reveal his sexual proclivities, if they indeed existed at that time. They perhaps have very little relevance to this case in the sense that he was not a person, so far as one can make out, who was blackmailed into this activity. Nevertheless, they are the kind of proclivities that should be revealed by an efficient, positive vetting system.
I should like to ask the noble Baroness this. When reference is made to the Security Commission, are they going to consider not only whether—as is almost self-evident—the positive vetting procedures totally failed on the earlier occasions but also whether the existing positive vetting procedures are adequate and whether they can be improved? Thirdly, are they going
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to consider whether it may be that positive vetting procedures in themselves never offer a complete guarantee in matters of this sort? Is there not an urgent necessity that there should be some form of continuous supervision? For example, this man's passport may have contained evidence of his trips abroad. Was that ever looked at and, if so, when and what did it reveal? Is there not clearly a case for the Security Commission to look into the whole of the arrangements for not merely vetting at periodic intervals of several years but covering continuous supervision and control of people who have access to sensitive information?
Baroness Young: My Lords, I should like to thank both the noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn, and the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, for their response to this very serious Statement. In answer to both noble Lords, who are naturally—as are all noble Lords—very concerned about the positive vetting process, I would say that this is a matter on which we shall have to await the advice of the Security Commission in the light of its investigation. That answers the various detailed points that the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, put to me about looking to see whether the procedures are adequate or whether they need improvement. The Commission has already considered the positive vetting process in the course of its review of security procedures last year, and it made a number of recommendations which have been put into effect.
I should like your Lordships to recognise the very important point that no vetting process can be proof against someone who is sufficiently determined and sufficiently skilful to keep his activities secret, unless the authorities are prepared to resort to methods of investigation and surveillance which I believe Members of this House would contemplate only with extreme repugnance.
The noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn, asked about the possibility of a debate. I have noted that and it will be a matter for the usual channels.
On the particular points asked by the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, I can say that Prime was positively vetted in September 1968. He had of course been vetted during his RAF service, but they would not have been the same procedures as when he applied to join GCHQ. On the question about whether his passport was looked at, yes indeed it would have been looked into by the investigating officer when he was positively vetted before joining GCHQ. Regarding the exact dates when these matters took place, I can only say that this clearly will be a matter that the Security Commission will look at. I am sure that they will take note of the detailed questions which the noble Lord has asked.
4.17 p.m.
Lord Shinwell: My Lords, is the Leader of the House aware that the implied criticism by my noble friend the Leader of the Opposition and the noble Lord. Lord Wigoder, about the inadequacy of positive vetting appears to me to be irrelevant? The question that has to be asked—and it has not appeared in the terms of reference—is: who is responsible for what is called positive vetting? Are they going to be brought into the picture? Are those who are associated with the terms of reference going to be informed about the people who were responsible for the vetting? Having undertaken

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the ordinary, normal vetting, is a person about whom there may be suspicion followed up wherever he goes? Is any crime in which he has indulged investigated? Are his family's circumstances taken into account? Are all other relevant matters considered? In other words, it is not so much the vetting—there is nothing wrong with it; it is a question of how it is undertaken and who is responsible. Will that aspect be brought within the terms of reference?
Baroness Young: My Lords, I take the point of the question of the noble Lord, Lord Shinwell, when he says it is not just a question of the procedures for positive vetting but whether the procedures are adequately followed through. I think this is the sort of issue which the Security Commission will look at because it is clearly necessary to follow up what are quite naturally very real anxieties, not only in this House but outside, that there is something further which could or should have been done. It is very necessary that all the procedures should be thoroughly looked at, and this is what the terms of reference will enable the Security Commission to do.
Lord Beloff: May I ask another detailed question? Will the Security Commission be entitled to look also at the arrangements for the physical security of material held at GCHQ and similar places? It seems to be that it is almost impossible, even with the best system of vetting in the world to prevent people retaining things in their heads and communicating them to other people: but in the Prime case, as far as one can gather from the Attorney-General's speech at the trial, actual physical material was removed and handed over to other people. Is it possible to have checks against the removal of physical material, whether by people who have been vetted or those who have not?
Baroness Young: My Lords, the answer to the noble Lord, Lord Beloff, is, Yes. This is the kind of issue which can be, and I have no doubt will be, looked at by the Security Commission. It has been raised obviously not only by my learned friend in his Statement but also in other reports that we have had.
Lord Harris of Greenwich: My Lords, is the noble Baroness aware that many of us recognise the force of the argument that she has just put forward, that if procedures were tightened up beyond a reasonable extent it could create genuine civil liberties problems? I think most of us accept the force of that argument; but would she also not agree that the revelations at this trial have done the most grievous damage to our relations with the United States of America and with the Intelligence community within the United States, which will have a very serious impact upon our security services in this country? Secondly, would she recognise that this matter came to light only because of a particularly painstaking inquiry undertaken by police officers in the West Mercia Force into a number of sexual offences? Had it not been for that inquiry the offences of Mr. Prime would not have been detected?
Also, may I ask several other questions? Would the noble Baroness not agree that it is a matter of serious concern that a person who has access to information which is, as the Prime Minister described, "of the
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utmost secrecy" has been making visits to Eastern Europe without apparently the fact of these journeys having being disclosed to anybody?
Secondly, when the Commission look into this matter—I should be very grateful if the noble Baroness is able to give me a specific answer to this—will they also be invited to look into the resource implications as far as the security services are concerned and the other agencies involved in tightening up existing procedures? Would she not agree there is no point in tightening up procedures unless there are adequate personnel to undertake this work? Lastly, would she not agree that the Statement made today has done grievous damage not only to our relationship with the United States and has also, unhappily, given pleasure to the Soviet Union as a result?
Baroness Young: My Lords, I have not in any way attempted to minimise the seriousness of this Statement or of what has happened. I think that view is shared by all my colleagues in Government. In answer to the question put by the noble Lord, Lord Harris, about our relationship with the United States, the Americans do not regard this speech as catastrophic. They, in common with most other democratic countries, have had their own security problems in the past and I have no doubt that the present close co-operation in intelligence and security matters will continue.
The noble Lord asked also about the resource implications for security matters. As I indicated in my answer to the original question on the whole process of positive vetting, the Government have put into effect all the procedures which were recommended last year. I am quite certain that if the commission felt that the resources for positive vetting procedures, or other procedures which may or may not come out during the course of the investigations required to be increased they would say so, and obviously this would be a serious matter which the Government will have to consider very seriously when we have the commission's report.
Lord Hankey: My Lords, the terms of reference have been very carefully drawn but rather narrowly drawn, if I may say so. May I ask the noble Baroness whether the Government will also look at this very unpleasant case in its wider implications? When I was in the Foreign Service it was strictly forbidden even to mention GCHQ, and I was amazed last winter when "Panorama" put on a programme giving very complete information about MI5, MI6 and also GCHQ, with pictures of the headquarters buildings and a great deal of other information.
I wonder whether we have not been getting a little "wet" about this subject, because information on our intelligence services is absolutely vital to the Russians. An American Communist called Philip Agee, whom we had to expel, has been publishing information designed to give complete details of the CIA and also of the CIA's agents over here and its relations with our own intelligence services—and even at one time with parts of the Labour Party. Do the Government not consider that this state of affairs is becoming embarrassing and damaging to the real interests of this country and will they take advantage of this case to go into the matter more carefully and see whether our

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whole attitude to the security of these intelligence organisations should be tightened up?
Baroness Young: My Lords, I have of course noted very carefully what the noble Lord, Lord Hankey, has said on these matters. Clearly the terms of reference have been drawn in order that the circumstances arising out of the conviction of Prime will be fully investigated. If it is possible to improve the circumstances there, it will be found that it will make it more difficult for others to find out security material, but I think it is very important in the first instance that we should look at the security system and at how the particular circumstances in which Prime was able to reveal this information arose, so that we can deal with them. Then the other matters would follow. The answer to the noble Lord would be that we would not enlarge the terms of reference. I am sure that the commission will note the questions which have been asked following this Statement in your Lordships' House and I am sure they will bear in mind what he has said.
Baroness Gaitskell: My Lords, may I ask the noble Baroness this: is it not important to look into the people we employ rather than the system? It seems to me that where we have gone wrong in recent years is in allowing in people who have really disappointed by their obviously very evil character.
Baroness Young: My Lords, I do not think I can say anything further to the noble Baroness, Lady Gaitskell, than I said in my answer to the original question about the whole process of positive vetting.
Lord McNair: My Lords, may I ask the noble Baroness a question which may be peripheral, but which I hope she will not find irrelevant? According to my information, which, of course, comes only from the press and from the Statement, the unfortunate wife of this spy is showing a commendable resistance to the lures of what we might call cheque book journalism. Does the noble Baroness agree that this is commendable, and can she assure us that, whatever agency there is that looks after the dependants of convicted offenders, it will keep the case of this woman and of the step-children of the convicted man sympathetically and continually under review?
Baroness Young: My Lords, indeed, the behaviour of Mrs. Prime has been very commendable. I have no doubt that she has been through a very difficult and upsetting time. I will certainly note the points that he has made and will pass them on.
Lord Mayhew: My Lords, will the noble Baroness confirm that none of this man's visits to Vienna or to Eastern Europe was known to the authorities at the time?
Baroness Young: My Lords, on the point about Prime's visits abroad, his visits to his Russian controller while he was employed in GCHQ all seem to have been to Vienna, and the fact is that Vienna is not behind the Iron Curtain. However, I have no doubt that it is something which will be examined by the commission.
Lord Greenhill of Harrow: My Lords, may I ask the noble Baroness a rather different question? I have, in the past, been a member of the Security Commission but I do not think that the point which I am going to raise comes within the scope of the commission. The point is this. Will the Government please recall the cases of Blake and the Russian spies, the Krogers, who were wrested from this country by the actions of the Russians, and thereby enabled to escape the consequences of their actions? So long as the Russians can recover from this country the spies that they have employed, it will be an encouragement for further recruitment.
Baroness Young: Yes, my Lords. I am sure that we have all noted that important point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Greenhill, and it is something which not only we should note, but which I am sure the Security Commission will recognise.
Lord Elwyn-Jones: My Lords, has not the Lord Chief Justice put that beyond peradventure in this case?
Baroness Young: I hope so.

The Homeless Young
4.32 p.m.
Debate resumed.
Baroness Robson of Kiddington: My Lords, after that very serious Statement, we now return to what, in many cases, is just as serious a subject. I am most grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Longford, for introducing this subject. Like him, I have had some personal experience, because the noble Baroness, Lady Macleod, persuaded me to join one of her voluntary organisations which is called Crisis at Christmas, and which looks after, feeds, houses and clothes 1,000 homeless people in London every Christmas. It was by joining that organisation that there came home to me the enormity of the problem that we have to cope with in the big conurbations in our country.
Many of us who were aware of the problem earlier on were delighted when my honourable friend Stephen Ross in another place introduced as a Private Bill, which was accepted by the Government, the Housing (Homeless Persons) Act 1977. We all thought that it held within itself enormous possibilities for helping us to solve some of the problems that face us. Although we had to accept that the code of practice would be limited to certain categories to begin with, I think we all understood that they would be extended as and when it was possible to do so.
It is true that, at the moment, the code of practice under that Act can include young persons of 16 and 17 years, but only if they are at risk of sexual or financial exploitation. In other words, if you are a girl and become pregnant they might find you a home, but they will not find you one until you can prove that you have fallen on bad times. I would claim, with, I think, many noble Lords, that 16- and 17-year-olds who are homeless are all at risk of sexual and financial exploitation, so that it is really up to the Secretary of State to enforce the Act.

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Like the noble Earl, I have read the evidence of NACRO; but I have also studied another document which makes fascinating reading. It is published on behalf of the Department of the Environment and is called Single and Homeless. It is a document to which they do not put their name, but they funded the research money which went into producing it. The research started in 1977, was completed in 1980, and the document was published in March this year, but I have not heard a lot about it. When a research document is begun in 1977, completed in 1980 and published this year, it seems that there is not enough feeling of urgency in the Department of the Environment to do something about the problem.
Some of the statistics in this document are quite frightening. If you compare in the tables how many years various people have been homeless, it becomes obvious that the number of homeless young women has increased enormously, apart from the fact that the complete number has increased. In 1958, the figures were 20 per cent. male and 8 per cent. female, whereas in 1978 the figures were 8 per cent. male and 15 per cent. female. So that the number of homeless females is going up all the time. Another interesting table in this document is an attempt to analyse what percentage of the homeless young under 30 are suffering from social and medical problems.
The horrifying fact about those tables is that, while only a very small percentage are suffering from any problems at all when they first become homeless, after two years 30 per cent. of them suffer from social or medical problems, and after 20 years 64 per cent. of them suffer from such problems, all of which adds to the cost to the nation, because, in the end, the cost of these problems, many of which could be avoided, falls on the nation.
When you talk about the homeless young generally—not in your Lordships' House, but in conversation with other people—you are often met with the answer, "Well, they are just people who are drop-outs and they have voluntarily got themselves into this position." I believe that that is a terrible thing to say. Again, this Single and Homeless document analyses some of the people who are young and homeless and why they are in that position.
Two-fifths of the young people are homeless because they have rebelled against their family background, because there has been a break-up in the family or because there is a social problem within their own home. But 32 per cent. of them are people who have been disadvantaged all their lives. They are people who have been in children's homes or some other institutions and who have never had a proper background. There must be a large percentage—something like 18 per cent., if my figures are right—who have followed society's advice to them: "If you cannot get a job where you live, move to somewhere where you can get one. Don't sit down and wait for the job to come to you." Masses of young people must have followed that advice without having been given adequate advice about how to cope when they arrive at the place where they will be looking for a job. Unfortunately, the draw of the South-East for the younger members of our population is enormous. We have not quite grown out of the idea that the streets of London are paved with gold. So there are various
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reasons why people become homeless and society must accept the responsibility of looking after them.
I should now like to turn to the tragic fraud inquiry conducted in Oxford some time ago, and about which most noble Lords will have read in the press. I do not wish to discuss the methods used by the Department of Health and Social Security and the police, or whether they were fair and the right way to go about it. I just want to look at the results of those court hearings. So far as I was concerned, they were most illuminating. Not having been in receipt of social security, I was unaware of the anomalies that exist in the social security system for helping the homeless. Part of the problem in Oxford, without a doubt, was that the young homeless were not being given adequate advice. I am not blaming the social security officers; they were short staffed and overworked. This has been a problem in Oxford for some time.
I am sure noble Lords are more aware than I was that if you are a homeless person you can claim social security amounting to £18.60 a week, whereas if you are a lodger or live at home you can claim £25.20, plus your actual rent. The reason why you receive only £18.60 if you have no home, but £25.20 if you do have a home, is that it is claimed that if you are living at home you have the responsibility of paying for your keep. I should have thought that a person who did not have a home would incur higher expenses in trying to feed himself than somebody who was living at home. It is amazing that if you can produce an address, the whole of the rent is paid.
At that time, the maximum rent allowance in Oxford was £42. It came out at the trial that a landlord in Oxford was housing 73 people at £42 each per week, sleeping four to a room. In this case the social security system was making a fortune for somebody who was—well, I do not have words for people who behave in this way and create for homeless people conditions similar to those that these homeless people were living under. However, he is doing it because society has not made proper provision for these people.
This lack of proper provision becomes tremendously expensive. My honourable friend Mr. David Alton, who prior to becoming a Member of the other place was chairman of the housing committee in Liverpool, had the same kind of problems in his town. He used the Public Health Act to get these hostels taken over, cleaned up and made fit for living in by the homeless. There is a tremendous difference between one authority and another when one considers how they deal with these problems. It is up to the Secretary of State to ensure that they all do it in the best, not the worst way.
It is additionally horrifying that if proper accommodation—that is, bedsitters or single room flatlets—were created for these people it would cost society £11 in rent and about £4 in housing subsidy; in other words, it would cost £15 a week as against £42 a week for the kind of conditions in which they have to live at the moment. It seems to me to be bad economics, apart from being inhumane treatment of people who happen to be unfortunate. Therefore, we must amend the code of guidance and the Secretary of State must ensure that it is enforced in all local authorities. Then we must establish much closer co-ordination between the social services, the health authorities, the voluntary organisations and the local

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authorities. They must be given a mandate to provide hostels and shared housing, with or without wardens, and accommodation for the single person to cater for all the different types of people who need to be housed. It is not going to be done for nothing.
Apart from making such provision we must also provide the right kind of information for young people, so that when they arrive in a big city they will know where to go to find out about housing. It is not sufficient for that information to be provided in the place where they arrive. I am absolutely certain that much more could be done to provide that information for young people before they leave home. Much more could be done in schools, youth clubs and social security offices so that when young people arrive in a strange, big town which they have never been to before, they are provided with information about what is required in order to survive in that city.
I have already said that we need all these different types of housing. I should like to pay tribute to the Government for the enlightened initiative they have taken over providing hostels. Last year they set aside £12 million for small, supported schemes. That figure has been raised this year to £18 million. The latest information I have is that this has achieved 2,000 hostel beds. I know that the Salvation Army have very much welcomed this Government initiative. I also know that they feel that it is nowhere near enough to solve the problem of the bad hostels which still exist. But we want the hostels only to be a step towards finding a proper place for these people to live. This is what makes matters so difficult.
I have already said that it is going to be an expensive exercise. The noble Earl also made this point. It will be said (and it could be accepted) that this will be very hard on the ratepayers of a local authority which happens to be an attractive place for young people to go to, and that it might have to carry too great a burden. If we are to finance this exercise on a fair scale, I believe that the Department of the Environment and the Department of Health and Social Security should fund such schemes up to 75 per cent., on the same basis as they give urban aid to local authorities. If one remembers the savings which I have already pointed out—the difference between £15 and £42 per week for a homeless person—that represents a saving to the Department of Health and Social Security.
The Secretary of State for the Environment has suddenly announced a big bonanza for local authority capital development. The money has to be spent before 1st April 1983. I am wondering whether it would not be possible for him to channel some of that money to local authorities which have a particularly high incidence of young homeless, for the purpose of buying up houses and converting them to bedsitters. Even if it does mean shared bathrooms and shared kitchens, at least they would have a room of their own. I believe that would be a good way of spending some of the extra capital money which the Government have suddenly found, and it would help to alleviate this problem.
I look forward with great pleasure to listening to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Bath and Wells, who is to make his maiden speech. I know how deeply the Church feels about this problem and we very much
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look forward to hearing from the right reverend Prelate.
4.50 p.m.
The Lord Bishop of Bath and Wells: My Lords, after the great maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Gormley, yesterday I am sorry to be inflicting upon your Lordships a speech of rather inferior quality, and I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Robson of Kiddington, very much for her kind good wishes. I did ask at rather short notice if I might speak this afternoon to the Question put down by the noble Earl, Lord Longford, because it is a very important question for the Churches. Indeed, only yesterday, as we have been reminded, the General Synod of the Church of England spent most of the morning debating the report, Housing and Homelessness—an excellently documented 50 pages from our Board of Social Responsibility. It is a pity that this morning's edition of The Times, no doubt due to lack of space, gives all its available column inches to another issue to which we gave time at the General Synod yesterday without making any mention of what proved to be a good and concerned debate on the homeless.
Incidentally, because I have to be back for a particular Motion at the General Synod this afternoon. I apologise in advance for any seeming discourtesy to your Lordships in leaving rather too soon after I have finished speaking to you.
I want to make three points—all of them. I hope, expanding a little on what has been said already by the noble Earl, Lord Longford, and by the noble Baroness, Lady Robson of Kiddington. First, perhaps your Lordships did not all know (certainly I did not) the figure given to us by the noble Earl. Lord Longford, showing that just under one quarter of all households in England are single-person households. Twenty years ago, the figure was only one-eighth of all households. As the number of single-person households had doubled in a comparatively short time, it is hardly surprising that, in a catchment area as big as that, the number of single homeless persons has similarly soared. Nor would it surprise your Lordships that a dramatically increasing number of the single homeless are young people. At the Providence Row night refuge here in London there was a 16 per cent. increase in the number of under 25s in the 12 months 1979–80. In one Manchester project there was a 100 per cent. increase in the number of young people in the three years from 1976 to 1979.
Anglican clergy, along with the splendid Church Army and the Salvation Army officers, have so often been the only welfare-orientated people left living in our inner cities at night when social workers have gone home to the suburbs. These people are all agonising about the growing need for help for footloose young people. That is my first point; the rapidly increasing problem, of which we are probably not sufficiently aware.
Secondly, your Lordships may ask whether successive Governments have not realised that there is this growing need and have not managed to meet it, particular with the Housing (Homeless Persons) Act 1977. For young people, as we have already been reminded this afternoon, I am afraid the answer is that the Act hardly helps them if they are fit and well and not pregnant. If they are pregnant or if they are psychiatrically disturbed, then there is a statutory

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obligation, but not otherwise. I suppose that the question of how far a welfare state should be obliged to make any kind of permanent provision for able-bodied young people must remain a matter of disagreement. But surely we would all agree that at least a safety net ought to be available. I would guess that I am not alone in this House in having one of my offspring living in London; in her case, happily, with friends in a flat. She loves it and she is lucky, but one cannot help thinking of the unlucky ones—and there is no statutory provision unless one is unwell or there is a baby on the way. Indeed many councils positively exclude single young people from even registering with them; they do not want to know. This problem is to be found in almost every one of our major towns and cities. It is a very serious gap in the law that there is no emergency provision. Because of this the young, often in desperation, and often against their real wishes, turn to drink and more and more to crime. I am chairman of our county's council on alcoholism and we have much too much evidence, even in the pleasant sounding town of Taunton or across the Avon boundary in Bath, of homelessness leading to dependence on alcohol and a career as a young offender.
As your Lordships will have grasped, one half of the nation's 3 million unemployed are under 25 years of age, so the potential in damaged young lives is reaching quite staggering proportions. Nor are the homeless young people—and I am so glad that the noble Baroness, Lady Robson of Kiddington, mentioned this—all to be thought of as personal failures, but too often they become failures because they are unable to acquire suitable housing through lack of help from the law. So my second point is that the law needs attention and needs updating in view of what is happening all around us. Surely this is what this Palace of Westminster is for—to update the law when that is required.
This leads me to my third crucial point. When will Her Majesty's Government come to realise the urgency of the accommodation issue? With the growing number of young homeless, it is not that there is more housing available for them as one might hope but that there is steadily less. London alone will be losing 6,000 beds in 1983. Low rent property and lodging houses, reception centres and night shelters are being swept away in many inner city areas—and thank God that is so in many cases. I worked in Liverpool for six years in the 1970s, and these often insanitary buildings were going down like ninepins. Indeed, your Lordships will forgive a brief diversion if I tell you that I remember turning up to preach at a church in Toxteth once only to discover that no one had told me that it had been demolished a week before. Insalubrious and of ill-repute as many of these places and surroundings were, and unlamented in their passing though they be, the fact remains that they did cater for the homeless in a rough and ready way. Again, nothing has taken their place. In the latter part of the 20th century big hostels as a concept may be unpopular, perhaps rightly, but if they all go too, without adequate replacement by smaller units of varying kinds, then the scandal of homelessness in our land, so bad already, will be appalling indeed.
I believe that there would be new hope if action were urgently taken now on a sufficiently long-term basis.
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Frequently, both voluntary agencies and councils say to us, "We do not know what funding we shall have available in a few months' time or in a year's time. There are sure to be more cuts than money coming our way. So we really cannot put anything substantial into this". If the voluntary agencies, the local authorities and central Government could combine—and I heard the suggestions of the noble Baroness, Lady Robson, about this matter towards the end of her speech—and if they could all have it firmly on their plate that (a) they have a responsibility to meet the requirements of all young people and (b) they will be given earmarked money for this purpose, then I believe that a great many men and women of goodwill would find new heart in the vital task of investing in Britain's future by bothering about the fast growing number of our young and homeless fellow citizens.
Therefore, my third and final point is that, however daunting the prospect may be to Her Majesty's Government of having to find yet more money in a time of stringency, I appeal most earnestly to them on behalf of the Churches and all caring agencies—and I include in that so many good people in statutory services—that we may soon see actual evidence of action on the part of the Government to improve the position of the homeless young. I beg, therefore, to support the noble Earl, Lord Longford, as strongly as I can in bringing such a vital matter to your Lordships' attention.
5.1 p.m.
Baroness Vickers: My Lords, I am privileged to thank the right reverend Prelate for his excellent speech and we shall pray for his continuing help in this great problem. May the conference to which he is going now be a great success. I should like also to thank the noble Earl. Lord Longford, for having raised this matter and to express my appreciation for what he has had to say.
I personally have been interested in this problem for many years. I should like to explain the difficulties that people who I am concerned with went through, the action that we took, and why we failed. In January 1968 we formed a committee under Alderman Lidal of the LCC, as it was in those days. He was the chairman and we had expert advice particularly from Mrs. Ellison, whom many may remember and who really understood the problem. At that time we were thinking particularly of the 17 to 21 age group. We found that it was approximately that age group who were missing at the time—1968. Therefore, we decided to form a committee to buy some houses and to try to establish hostels ourselves. We went to the stations—particularly Euston and Victoria—to meet girls and to find out whether they had accommodation or not. In that way we could establish the type of boy or girl who needed help. We then formed a management committee and our hostels went under the heading of the London Centre.
We set out that the object was to establish hostels for young men and women in urgent need of accommodation owing to poverty, and to provide facilities for recreation or other leisure-time occupations in the interests of social welfare, with the object of improving the conditions of life for, in particular, young people and others in need of those facilities by reason of social or economic circumstances.

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In 1970 we were able to open our first hostel. We were lucky because we got it for a peppercorn rent through the Nuffield Foundation. We began with 13 girls and three staff. There were girls of six different nationalities in the hostel. The hostel was opened by Her Royal Highness Princess Anne and we thought that we had perhaps a very good beginning to the project. Unfortunately, it did not work out that way. We were able to form two other hostels, one in Hammersmith and one in Ealing, and we were in the throes of getting a fourth one when we discovered that we could not get sufficient finance to continue. We tried all the various means available.
I am particularly interested in this type of hostel because the idea was that it took the boy or girl in for a short stay of about four months. If they needed to stay for over four months, then we tried to find them perhaps better accommodation. The whole object was to find them a job and some other accommodation in which they could settle. We did not want to turn them out of the hostels so that they had to go on the streets again.
We raised our money through various Ministries which I shall mention in a moment, and also of course by a great deal of voluntary work, such as concerts. Indeed, Joyce Grenfell was very kind to us and helped us a great deal in raising money. We thought that we were going to have some good homes for these girls and boys.
As I have mentioned, we started well. In fact, some of the young people came back at Christmas. Some, fortunately, got married and even brought their children back to see us. We really thought that we were building up the programme. However, all that has gone. Why has it gone? First, the local authorities were given more authority and therefore they took some of the boys and girls that we would have taken. Secondly, we failed because of the bureaucratic divisions which exist between the housing and social services. Indeed, I think that the noble Baroness brought this point forward in her speech. It was very sad to go to the Department of the Environment and to be told that we could do this, that and the other for the building, but that we could not have any money for the staff, and to go to the other Ministry and be given perhaps different advice or be told that anyway there was not enough money.
Therefore, it is absolutely essential that we take further action at present. We were lucky that St. Christopher's, which was established in 1870 for boys, agreed to take over some of the hostels. They also have a fellowship—established in 1928—which means that they have quite a background of money for investing. Therefore, we were very grateful for the fact that we were, in that way, able to continue some of our work. However, it caused pain and grief to the staff who had taken up this work out of love. To them it was not just a job. Indeed, those are the type of people that we want for this work. It hurt them a great deal.
The hostels that have been taken over are now bedsits. Bed-sits are very nice, but they are not really adequate for the type of person in whom I am interested or the type of person who really wants help. Most of the young people in bed-sits have a job—it may not be a very well-paid job—and most of them are fairly capable of looking after themselves.
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I should like to give an example of the people in whom we are interested. Ben was a young man who had 10 CSEs. He had been in a state boarding school for six years. He then came to London because he could not get a job. He was put into a bed and breakfast hotel where he had to sleep with grown-up men who spoke a language that he did not understand, and so he ran away. Eventually he came back to us for a short time. Then he was taken away again and was missing for some considerable time. He is now, I regret to say, in a remand home. That is just the type of situation that we wanted to prevent.
Therefore, it is essential that we have better education in schools, because I find that young people are not given sufficient training in, for example, careers or the type of life that they may have to lead when they leave school. Often it cannot begin with the parents because they are divorced, or the children are not living with their parents. Therefore, it should begin in the schools. I hope that we may be able to expect schools to take far more interest in the future careers and the welfare of these young people and in what they will have to face when they leave school.
However, I should like to back what the noble Baroness, Lady Robson of Kiddington, has said about the report on the single homeless. I shall not go through the details of May 1982 because she did it so well. I think that there should be an extension of the Housing (Homeless Persons) Act, which the noble Baroness also mentioned. We need the smaller homes and in towns and country areas where there is a military presence I believe that there are quite a few empty houses, i know that on Salisbury Plain there are masses of them which could be very useful in rural areas. I should also like to back the question, which was mentioned by the noble Earl, Lord Longford, of rented property. I am afraid that landlords rather exploit people; there are too many loopholes in the Rent Act 1977.
I turn now to the matter of the youth training scheme and the Job Centres. I am very interested in this. Not much mention has been made of the rural areas and there are problems in rural areas too. Many houses are overcrowded and the young people want to get away to live on their own. In a small way I have been trying to find out how one can create jobs. I do not have a very' large garden, but it is large enough to be used for training young people in gardening. We started off with 10 young men who were quite enthusiastic. I had a talk to them the other day and it seems that not one of them wants to go into gardening. One wants to be a forester, but the others are not at all interested in gardening and do not want to to do it. I think that there should be much more research into the type of work that young people want to do. At first they are enthusiastic about it because it is something to do, but they will not profit by it because they do not want to continue with it because they just do not like it. This happens in a great many jobs that I have investigated, such as thatching, window cleaning, and so on, for which there is great demand in the rural areas.
We understand that, according to the recent count, in London alone there were 18,000 inquiries from single homeless people, 3,000 of whom were between the ages of 16 and 18. Something must be done because they are in a very vulnerable position and are exposed to exploitation in the lower regions of London

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life. In my view, a bedsitter can never take the place of a caring hostel.
Education is essential to help these young people not only to get jobs but to find the type of life they want to lead, whether it be in rural areas or in cities. It is interesting that in Devonport the Dockyard used to be regarded as the least sought-after place for providing work for apprentices. Now, with better education, they are applying. In fact, the trainers there are rather frightened of them because they say that the young people know so much when they arrive and they are frightened they will lose them directly they are trained. But that is what training centres are for. I hope we shall consider that.
Finally, I think that we should get together with the various Ministries—and I say "various Ministries" advisedly—with the voluntary organisations and particularly with the local authorities to sort out this problem. Many of us have worked, and others are working, in this field and we do not feel very satisfied with the present position. If we could only combine together, not only would there be a saving in work for the individuals and a saving in staff, because we would amalgamate, but there would be a saving in money and this would help more people to have a happy way of life. We could then show that we are all together trying to do this and not singly vying with each other over the way in which it can be done.
5.14 p.m.
Lord Auckland: My Lords, I should like to endorse the tribute paid to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Bath and Wells on his most distinguished and moving maiden speech. Last summer my wife and I had the great honour of attending Evensong at his beautiful cathedral, an area where, as the right reverend Prelate said, this problem may not be quite so acute as it is, say, 10 miles from your Lordships' House.
I apologise to your Lordships for not having put my name down to speak on this Unstarred Question, which the noble Earl, Lord Longford, has asked in his usual caring manner. But I was not sure whether I would be able to be in my place when he began his speech. My main interest in this matter is from the point of view of mental health, in which I have had experience, having served on the committee of a mental hospital. It is in this sphere that there is a danger of mentally handicapped people who are not so severely disabled as to have to be compulsorily detained under Section 65 of the Mental Health Act finding themselves in the streets of a big city with no home. They may, for obvious reasons, be exploited. They may find a temporary job but they may not, for various reasons, be able to hold down that job. This is one very serious aspect of this case.
Anyone who walks, as I sometimes do, from an office in the City to your Lordships' House and who passes Charing Cross arches will have seen that it is not only the elderly who sleep and rest under those arches; it is—and I think that this has been increasingly the case recently—the young. This is a very disturbing situation, particularly for those of us who have sons and daughters or even, as in our case, a very young grandchild, because we may sometimes think that it could be a child of our own under those arches.
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I should like to ask my noble friend whether he can say how many young people are registered homeless or whether it is possible to ascertain registration in this sphere. I refer to those who are not necessarily unemployed but who may be working in places such as cafés, restaurants and public houses, some of which, according to reports one reads in the trade magazines, provide living-in facilities for their young workers, and some of which do not. I believe it is fair to say that many of these people live away from their normal homes. Some, alas! may have broken with their families. What is being done about these categories of young people who have employment of some kind, although it is by no means guaranteed employment? These are the people who can quite easily drift into crime if they are not properly looked after. This is a problem.
Obviously there are financial constraints imposed from central Government, but, unless something positive is done under the legislation, the crime rate among young people, which is already unacceptably high in some areas, will increase and thus the cost to the taxpayer will increase. These are just one or two points which I wanted to raise on the very important Question which the noble Earl has asked. It is bound to arise again, but in the meantime I think this is a matter which cannot be put on the shelf, even in these very difficult days when there are tremendous problems facing this and other Governments.
5.20 p.m.
Baroness Jeger: My Lords, we are greatly indebted to the noble Earl, Lord Longford, for giving us the opportunity to debate the subject before us this evening. He gives us all an example of combined idealism with practical help which is most instructive. His interest in homeless young people is only one of the many subjects on which he spends a great deal of his time and energy. It is a privilege to congratulate the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Bath and Wells on his maiden speech. I remember that when I had to make a maiden speech the only comfort I found was the thought that one can only make a maiden speech once in your Lordships' House. It is one of the few experiences of life that can happen to one only once. We shall look forward to hearing many more speeches from him, and we greatly appreciated all that he said.
We have a difficult and complicated problem here, because we are never going to be able to stop young people coming to the bright lights. We should not want to. I should be sad if we tried to destroy what I call the Dick Whittington syndrome that gets young people on the way to the cities, not only of this country but many, I know, to the cities of countries beyond our own. Some of them come like moths to a candle, and like moths round a candle they often get sadly singed and broken. But what we must try to do as a Government, in partnership with the local authorities—and I am glad that all the speakers emphasised this—is to try to remove some of the pressures which compel young people to leave home when otherwise they would not wish to do so. It may be because they are living in miserable slum conditions in cities which have got sadly run down. It may be that they have had the sort of education that has not developed their ambitions or confidence in themselves, or given them enough skills to reach out to worthwhile work. It may be in some of

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their home towns and villages—and some of them have told me this—there is nothing to do. They do not mean just from the point of view of jobs. I have been told, "Well, when we get home from work, there is nothing to do where we live". That compares with the sort of dazzle of London, and the sort of false picture of London and other big cities with which many of them are stuck.
Then there are those—and I am not sure that we have paid enough attention to this point—who come for the serious purpose of study, not only as students but as apprentices, and for training in all sorts of spheres. I was particularly involved with this aspect because I had many colleges of London University in my previous constituency. London University, like several other universities, went in for a policy of kingdom building of their teaching facilities without keeping these at all in balance with the residential accommodation that could be made available to students who came flocking in from all over the world. Many students, especially in Central London, are having terrible difficulty in finding somewhere to live. In fact, there are increasing numbers of homeless students. I know that the National Union of Students has tried to bring this to official attention and to help in any way it can.
I want to ask the Minister one specific point in this connection. I will not go into it again because we are to talk about unemployment next week, but we know that that is one of the reasons for so many young people leaving home and looking for work. When the youth training scheme comes in, will responsibility for housing lie with the careers officers and the training officers? Many of these young people, if they take this course to which they are entitled, will have to leave home. If they live in remote country areas, or if they live in a district where the particular subject in which they want to train is not available, they will have to go away. I can foresee this problem becoming exacerbated unless housing and accommodation for all these young people we hope to train is taken on board as well. I want the Minister to tell me whether such young people will be entitled to the new housing welfare benefit. We understand that they are to be paid £25 a week. If a young person has to move away from home to most places to take up the advantage of training he is not going to get far on £25 a week, which many people think is little enough already.
Some of these problems have to be seen in the context of the total position of the economy, of unemployment, and also of bad housing. I have met many young people in London, as has my noble friend, who have escaped because of the pressure of family discord in overcrowded homes, especially in big families where a teenager finds that not only has he got three or four brothers and sisters but another baby is coming. I have met several girls who have said, "I just could not stand another baby. We have only two rooms and they cry all night", and off they go. There are all sorts of personal difficulties which we have to try to link into the general pattern of housing and social welfare provisions, otherwise many of these young people will not only feel rejected by the family and leave home for that reason, but, as they drift around too often, will fall into a life of crime and waste and feel that the whole world has rejected them.
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I want to deal with the specific point that the noble Earl and other speakers made about extending the homeless families Act to include the compulsory provision of resources. I have every sympathy with this, but it is no use altering the law without altering the money. Many local authorities are stretched beyond bearing with the present cuts in housing provision, with housing starts, and to tell them simply that now they must have a statutory duty for an extended range of people would be unfair to many of them. I am glad that the noble Baroness. Lady Robson, spoke of the difficulties for special areas. It is important that we should not just push this problem on to local authorities. That is why—I hope my noble friend will forgive me—I will not go 100 per cent. with him in putting so much reliance on amending the Act.
There are areas of special problems. There has been a great deal in the press about Westminster and its proposal to close Bruce House. We have had difficulties in Camden where we have a high proportion of that sort of provision. It is a financial strain on the ratepayers who happen to be living in that area. I like the idea that there should be some earmarking of direct Government help for this purpose. Already the local authorities are being stretched by an ageing population, with more and more demands to help disabled people and the aged. We are being pressed as a result of the new attitudes to health, and mental health—and I am glad that the noble Lord, Lord Auckland, mentioned this—to get more and more people out into the community. What is the community going to do? This whole landscape, as it were, has to be looked at as one.
My noble friend also said—and I hope he will not think that I am being especially disagreeable, because I love him dearly—that he thought councils could alter their points system and be more receptive to applications from young people. If one alters the points system without getting any more houses, one only-increases someone else's misery.
When I was chairman of a housing committee I found that one of the most difficult aspects to handle was the points system. We amended it in a variety of ways; for example, we might take the view that a baby with pneumonia living in a damp basement should have more points than an old man with one leg living in a top back room of a building without a lift. These are the mathematics of the problem, the mathematics of misery for many people on our housing lists and for those who try to help them. A large number of hostels in one area is not a very popular idea. It may be a selfish thought on the part of some residents but, be that as it may, councillors have realities to face. They are usually a volatile population living in those areas; they do not get on the electoral register, they do not seem to become involved and nobody can be sure whether or not they are paying rates.
I am, therefore, pleading for more direct Government help. We should not just shift the burden on to the areas which are most popular. And there are obvious reasons for their popularity; what happened in Camden occurred simply because there were three railway stations there. The noble Baroness will have had experience of seeing young people arriving at King's Cross, Euston and St. Paneras. They come out of the station and go straight across the road, perhaps into Camden Town Hall. Westminster has Victoria

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and Waterloo. There is, therefore, a national responsibility. I stress that, and, if that thought remains with the Government after this debate, we shall have done something useful.
We have been generalising about homeless young single people, but I am often bothered by the problem of homeless young married people, and I am sure no-one in your Lordships' House would want to tell them not to get married. It is, therefore, a bigger question than one affecting just the teenager drifting around Soho. Some of them need a type of hostel accommodation, and they will nearly all need furnished accommodation, especially the students to whom I referred, and some, especially if they have been in care or have been in other difficulties, will probably just need a motherly landlady. Much of the problem has a lot to do with that disappearing type of landlady, who used to provide accommodation for so many people, including students. Many youngsters end up, certainly in my area, in squats without any decent amenities, and of course they spend most of their time drifting around because it is so uncomfortable to go home.
I was rather puzzled by one of my noble friend's proposals. If a homeless family measure had to include taking in young people from the age of 16, while that might be practicable for hostels, could they be tenants of council property, bearing in mind the necessity to sign tenancy agreements, to be ratepayers and to be responsible financially? I understand that most of the contractual rights that used to apply at the age of 21 have been reduced to 18, and I am not sure that lowering the age to 16 would be possible. What I am saying is not a reason against implementing the proposal, just something we should have to look at first, and perhaps there might be an alternative way of achieving what we all want to see happen.
As other noble Lords have mentioned, there has been increasing public interest in the subject. In fact, as soon as I heard about this debate, I was inundated with reports and other documentation. There is so much goodwill and concern being expressed that it would be totally wrong to admit defeat. For example, Shelter has set up a special young homelessness group, and there are many other good ideas. I should like an answer to my earlier query about the 1975–76 DHS working party report. Have there been any developments? Unless we can tackle the issue on the basis of central Government co-operating with local authorities and the statutory and charitable organisations, we shall be giving the charities and voluntary bodies an impossible task, particularly in the present situation of serious unemployment, the decline in house building and all the pressures that are on people.
It is unfair for charities and voluntary bodies to be asked to tackle more than their share, and there must be some underpinning of the overall effort. Let them do the first-aid, so to speak, but there must be a serious, consistent and coherent Government policy. And to assure the noble Earl, Lord Avon, that I am not making a party point, I concede—I say this so that he need not remind me—that we did not find the answers to that problem, either. However, it is one that has been exacerbated by the present unemployment and cuts in public expenditure in many directions, and I hope the Minister will be able to give us some good news tonight.
5.36 p.m.
The Earl of Avon: My Lords, the Government, too, are grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Longford, for raising this important topic for debate. Homelessness among young people is a complex problem, with many facets, as has been demonstrated by the diversity of the valuable contributions to this debate from your Lordships. I shall do my best to address my remarks to the many matters of concern to which reference has been made, and I apologise in advance if I shall be found to have missed particular points in my reply. If such is the case, I shall of course write to the noble Lords concerned.
I begin by adding my congratulations to the right reverend Prelate the Lord Bishop of Bath and Wells for what I thought was an excellent contribution and for underlining the fact that this is an increasing problem. I look forward to reading the report of the debate to which he referred and the report which has been published. I thought it was rather brave of the noble Baroness, Lady Jeger, to talk so much about Dick Whittington and about how everybody is coming to London when the right reverend Prelate and myself, so warmly connected with Avon, should be caught in London.
It may be helpful to consider homelessness among the young under two main divisions. First, there is the matter of homelessness among teenagers, now increasingly reported to be affecting some young people at very early stages in their adolescent life, at a time when, as several noble Lords have said, they are at an impressionable age. Secondly, there is the wider aspect of homelessness among single people more generally, many of whom are comparatively young. These are often young people in their early to middle twenties and upwards, who are at a stage in their development when it is more common for them to have embarked upon an independent life-style, a part of which involves a need for independent accommodation.
To take first the case of the very young, here again we may distinguish several facets; and it is important to look at underlying causes of homelessness in their case, and I agreed entirely with what the noble Baroness, Lady Jeger, said about that. Often the causes are serious frictions, or complete breakdown, in family relationships from which youngsters are too readily prone to seek escape to what they imagine to be freedom from intolerable pressures and restrictions. A particular problem is the condition of those young people who seek their escape away from their home areas and move into the central areas of London and other major cities. Sometimes they are in search of employment; there are, too, the elements of adventure and independence which contrast with problems at home and may all too often lead to a sudden and ill-planned move to a large city.
There is no easy panacea for overcoming this problem of adolescent homelessness. Perhaps the one thing that is needed more than any other is that there should be an increased effort on everyone's part to maintain the basic stability of the family. Parents and guardians need to be encouraged and supported in their efforts to exercise more effective supervision of their charges, with greater understanding of their youthful problems and aspirations. It requires a greater consciousness in the community of the

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important and fundamental role of the family and of the value of the network of statutory and voluntary support services in helping the family to sustain that role.
Social services authorities have powers in child care legislation to intervene and offer families support. A recent research report—to which the noble Baroness, Lady Robson of Kiddington, referred—published by the Department of the Environment, on the problems of single homeless people, drew attention to the importance of intervention with help and advice from those sources at a stage early enough to be effective in maintaining some existing family links, since at the early stages of homelessness there was not generally a complete breakdown in family contacts. It is important, too, that danger signals are recognised and that young people are discouraged from putting themselves at serious risk by leaving home prematurely and perhaps losing contact with their families. This can be a hard road which, for some, can lead to a state of long-term homelessness.
I do not believe that it would be realistic to expect complete success in prevention at source. There will always be youngsters who will not be discouraged from early home-leaving and who will not always have made prudent arrangements for their accommodation before doing so. For those under 18, social services are able, in a few cases where appropriate, to help a young person settle by underwriting a tenancy agreement. Young people who find that they have housing problems can usefully go to local housing aid and advice centres. The Government support a number of such centres in London and other major conurbations through their Urban Programme. There are also a number of centres run by voluntary organisations, and Citizens' Advice Bureaux can be a good source of information.
The Government provide financial assistance under the Housing (Homeless Persons) Act to a number of voluntary housing aid and advice centres which operate nationally, or, in the case of London, on a region-wide basis. One of these, in London, the Housing Advice Switchboard, specialises in providing a 24-hour telephone emergency service to single people with accommodation problems. Assistance is also given to CHAR (the campaign for the single homeless) which, among other activities, performs an educational, training, and co-ordinating role in respect of a great number of affiliated local voluntary groups concerned with single homelessness.
I should like to remind the House that local authorities also have powers under the same provisions of the homeless persons Act, and may use them, as many already do, to assist local advice centres as well as the national bodies.
Another aspect of homelessness among the younger element is the position of those who do not have much choice in the matter of leaving home. I refer to those who may have been in the care of a local authority, or in some institution, and who have come to a stage when they are about to be discharged. Noble Lords will be aware of the widespread concern for the prospects of young people coming out of care finding a home and making a successful transition to independent living, and indeed of concern for the prospects of any people returning to the community from institu-
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tional care. The Government share this concern and are active in it. The Department of Health and Social Security is funding two voluntary projects intended to stimulate statutory and voluntary help for youngsters' problems, including the problem of finding accommodation. One project is undertaken by the National Children's Bureau, and the other by the organisation known as Home Base.
For homeless young offenders there is a variety of hostel accommodation provided either directly or indirectly by the Probation and After-Care Service of the Home Office. That department also provides grant aid to voluntary sector after-care hostels and to schemes providing a variety of other forms of accommodation, including bed-sits.
I now turn to the other main strand of the problem. This concerns those more mature young single people who are at the stage of seeking an independent lifestyle and who, though not hampered by difficulties of immaturity or background, nevertheless find that access to independent accommodation is not easy, for a variety of reasons. The problems and difficulties of the single homeless in the matter of accommodation were highlighted in the study that we have been talking about—Single and Homeless. Its findings and conclusions were debated in the other place. One of the purposes of the study was to discover for what proportion of single people the primary need was for accommodation rather than for personal care. An important finding of the report was that for a significant proportion the only need is convenient accommodation, and that some measure of independent living would be the choice of the majority.
One of the most fundamentally important conclusions of the report is concerned with the need—to which I have already referred—for intervention at an early stage; for example, by local authorities, voluntary bodies, or perhaps even more important by families and friends, to prevent homelessness which appears imminent from becoming a reality. The report found that the most usual immediate reasons for homelessness were concerned with personal, family or social crisis. It went on to say that provision of advice and support for people in these circumstances would do much to prevent the homeless process, since at that stage a majority of those of whom inquiries had been made in the survey had been employed, and were largely free from the problems that develop during protracted homelessness.
I should now like to turn to areas in which the Government have been active in promoting better housing provision for single people, including young people starting out independently. I have already referred to some particular ways in which the Government have helped financially with the problems that we have been debating. I now turn to the ways in which suitable accommodation can be made available. First, there is the question of provision for those young people who perhaps find themselves alone in a strange area, and who would benefit from accommodation which has a communal atmosphere. For these there is a need for modern hostel, or shared housing, accommodation.
To meet the need for modern hostels, the Government launched in 1980 the hostels initiative, to which the noble Baroness, Lady Robson, has already paid tribute. This has brought about the first major

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expansion in hostel provision for many years. Under the initiative we are tackling the problems of obsolete hostels, and providing for a variety of people, including the young single homeless, many of whom would not have used traditional hostels.
In recent years housing associations have become especially active in providing hostel accommodation either by themselves or, increasingly, in collaboration with voluntary organisations and self-help groups which manage them. We have encouraged collaboration of this kind, which can be particularly fruitful. The success of a hostel depends on the right physical provision and therefore on the development skills of a housing association. But it also depends crucially on those aspects on which voluntary bodies and self-help groups can bring their skills to bear: a clear insight into the needs of the young people who will be using the hostel, and the whole style of management once it is in operation.
There can be no set pattern for a hostel. In some cases virtually all that is required is shared accommodation, plus a warden. In other cases additional care and support will be required. Many of the new smaller hostels, cluster flats, and group homes that are now springing up are catering for peviously unmet needs. These are often imaginatively planned, and have a management style that is sensitive to the needs of residents. They are also increasingly linked with projects which meet the wider needs of residents, such as workshops, training facilities, or advice centres.
The Department of the Environment is discharging its responsibilities towards the many different groups which use hostels by creating the conditions in which local initiatives can flourish. As has already been noted, in 1981–82, for the first time, we gave a specific allocation to the Housing Corporation for hostel provision, totalling £12 million. The voluntary movement responded with such enthusiasm that in 1982–83 we boosted the total provision to £18 million. The total value of shared housing projects approved by the Housing Corporation this year is expected to be around £42 million, and it expects to approve hostels which will provide accommodation for over 3,000 more people. The comparable figure for 1981–82 was 1,595.
Under the hostels initiative we have simplified and improved the administrative framework under which the grant scheme for supporting shared housing projects is administered. In 1981 the ground rules governing eligibility for housing association grant for such projects were published so that associations could be clear as to what types of scheme would be eligible for grant. We have recently extended the scope of the arrangements to cover projects to accommodate youngsters of 16 or over in voluntary homes, or those of this age group who are coming out of care but are still the subject of a care order. This will help youngsters who local authorities need to be assured are ready to cope with more independent living before revoking their care orders.
There are many projects coming forward under the initiative designed in particular for young homeless people. A good example of these projects is a self-catering hostel with seven places for youngsters leaving Dr. Barnardo's, provided by East London Housing Association. The young people will have the opportunity to acquire the basic skills necessary for
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independent living, and a resident warden will provide advice and support. Dr. Barnardo's is providing topping-up funds to meet the difference between what the young people can afford to pay and the cost of providing the extra support necessary.
Another project recently approved is a hostel with 26 places in the Kings Cross area which Circle 33 Housing Trust are providing with the "Alone in London" service for the young single homeless between the ages of 16 and 25. "Alone in London" have booths at Euston and Kings Cross stations, where they give help to young people looking for accommodation. Much work with homeless young people in London has been carried on by the various members of West End Co-ordinated Voluntary Services for Homeless Single People. One group, Intake, are successfully running a hostel near Kings Cross with Community Housing Association for 19 people in the 16- to 25-year age group, and another of the groups. New Horizon, are in the process of setting up, with New Islington and Hackney Housing Association, a hostel scheme for young people.
There are also numerous similar schemes in other parts of the country where specialist voluntary groups are working with registered housing associations to provide accommodation for young people. Some excellent projects for coloured youngsters have also been given the go-ahead. We appreciate that many homeless youngsters will wish to move from hostels and the close-sharing arrangements associated with small accommodation, and provision has therefore been made this year in the Housing Corporation's programme for priority to be given in the funding of new schemes providing for people who are moving on from hostels. We envisage creating over the next few years a reasonable availability of accommodation designed to help people move into a halfway home between hostel accommodation and completely independent accommodation. In the case of the majority of young people, however, the prime need is for convenient independent accommodation. Thanks to the Government's determination to widen people's choices, there is now a variety of options in the housing field, many of which are of particular appeal to young people.
In the private rented sector the Government have taken a number of measures that should help young people who are looking for somewhere to live. In the 1980 Act we introduced shorthold, which gives landlords the right to let for between one and five years with a guaranteed right of repossession at the end of the term if they so wish. During the term tenants have full Rent Act protection. Shorthold is an important initiative in our attempts to halt the decline of the private rented sector, which still provides a major source of accommodation for the young.
It had become clear that the Labour Rent Acts, by conferring security of tenure on tenants for up to three generations, had deterred landlords from letting. It is in no one's interest that accommodation which could be made available is held back, least of all from those who are looking for it. Shorthold was designed to encourage landlords to let. It is a form of tenure that can be particularly suitable for the young, who may only need short-term accommodation but do need the ability to apply for a fair rent. Shorthold has already begun to make a useful contribution to the supply of

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privately rented accommodation. I very much hope that the Labour Party will withdraw their threat to repeal these provisions.
There are other measures in the 1980 Act which can directly benefit young people who require temporary accommodation because they encourage owner-occupiers to sublet all or part of their homes. The Act makes it easier and quicker for resident landlords to regain possession. Similarly, we have simplified and accelerated the procedures by which temporarily absent owner-occupiers and the owners of retirement homes who let their homes can regain possession when they need them. These measures are of course designed, in the first instance, to encourage potential landlords to let. If they do so, homeless young people will benefit. No one will benefit if the property stands empty. We have encouraged what is known as the North Wiltshire Scheme, under which local authorities can lease empty private accommodation for an agreed period with a guaranteed right of repossession for the private owner.
I fully appreciate that home ownership will not be a realistic option, at least in the short term, for many of the young homeless people. However, we cannot ignore the fact that there will also be many who do have home ownership aspirations, even those on comparatively low incomes. The latest figures (for the second quarter of 1982) show that of those first-time buyers using ordinary building society mortgages, half had incomes below the national average and 21 per cent. had incomes of less than £6,000. Twenty-one per cent. of all building society borrowers were under 25. One of the leading building societies has started a low-start mortgage scheme to help first-time buyers.
The Earl of Longford: My Lords, I do not want to interrupt the noble Earl, but I do not know whether he is going to say anything about the position of the unemployed. I mean, home ownership or, indeed, renting accommodation is just fantastic in their case.
The Earl of Avon: Indeed, my Lords, I was coming on to answer some of the noble Earl's points, but, of course, the very subject of homelessness covers a great number of different people.
Perhaps I may say just a word on shared ownership, which is also an excellent and increasingly available option for those who cannot afford the jump that I have just been talking about. I have referred to some private sector options for helping the homeless young. However, I would accept, as the noble Earl has just said, that a major contribution has to come from the public sector.
Local housing authorities are of course entirely responsible for allocating and managing their rented housing stock in accordance with their own perceptions of local needs, and this includes setting the conditions for entry to their waiting lists. Much of that stock consists of family-size units which it is sensible to let for family use. However, many authorities have empty or difficult-to-let family units which could be brought into profitable use by being let to single young people, either by sub-division or to a group under shared arrangements. I should like to remind your Lordships that the present system of rent rebates and allowances has been extended so that those who are in
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shared accommodation can now benefit. This arrangement will continue under the housing benefit provisions, which will themselves provide necessary financial assistance with rents for those on low incomes.
The Housing Act 1980 gave most public sector tenants a number of important new rights. Among these was the right to take in lodgers and, with their landlord's consent, to sub-let part of their home. This obviously opened up a lot of new housing opportunities for young people and encouraged fuller use of the public housing stock.
The noble Earl, Lord Longford, asked particularly about the priority need categories. The Government have given careful consideration to the representations we have received both for and against extending the categories of priority need under the Act. We have concluded that no change should be made. While we are fully aware of the problems of single people who are homeless, we are also aware of the serious housing difficulties of those who are at the top of local authority waiting lists but who are not actually homeless, which I think was a point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Jeger. Any further widening of the priority of categories under the Housing (Homeless Persons) Act would in effect be at the expense of those at the top of an authority's normal waiting list, and we concluded that this would not be equitable.
I think it was the noble Baroness who mentioned the subject of vulnerability. Of course, the Act also defines as being in priority need a homeless person who is vulnerable for any one of several reasons, and the code of guidance which is associated with the Act, and to which a local authority is required to have regard, refers, among other issues, to the problems of homeless young people. It specifically asks authorities to treat as vulnerable any such young people who are at risk of sexual or financial exploitation. I should perhaps remind the House that Section 6(2) of the Housing (Homeless Persons) Act 1977, together with Section 113(2) of the Housing Act 1957, which it amended, requires authorities to give a reasonable preference in selecting their tenants to those they decide are homeless.
Some reference was made to funding, and perhaps I should say that my right honourable friend has been discussing with the chairman of the Housing Corporation whether the corporation can make use of additional resources this year to enable it, inter alia, to lift the current restrictions on tenders and to bring forward the construction of some schemes which would not otherwise have started until next year. My right honourable friend, I understand, will be making a Statement about this in another place shortly.
The noble Earl, Lord Longford, mentioned in particular the NACRO report, which has indeed been received with interest. Its recommendations, as has been noted, are wide-ranging and cover the interests of a large number of Government departments and other agencies. Officials of the main Government departments concerned—the DoE, the DHSS and the Home Office—are currently considering its recommendations with the intention of meeting NACRO officials for discussions in due course.
The noble Baroness, Lady Robson, asked a number of questions on supplementary benefit, and I shall certainly pursue these, though she will understand that

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I have not got the answers at my fingertips. My noble friend Lord Auckland asked about official statistics. I understand that the official statistics on homelessness are provided by local authorities, which the department then publishes. These cover families, the elderly as well as single people and the figures can only be supplied by local authorities in relation to those they assist under the Housing (Homeless Persons) Act. Special surveys to obtain information on the number of single homeless people would be difficult and it is also questionable whether they would provide accurate information. For example, they might cover categories of people from those sleeping rough to all those using hostels, lodging houses, houses in multiple occupation and Government resettlement units. The department, because of these difficulties, have concentrated on more qualitative and in-depth studies of the needs of single homeless people.
If I may, I should like to pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Jeger, in her excellent contribution which I thought was very constructive and helpful. I was particularly interested in what she was saying about the youth opportunities schemes and how their accommodation would work out. As she can appreciate, that is a different department, but I will pursue that with them and find out what the answer is. So far as the housing benefit scheme is concerned, the Secretary of State for Social Services has made regulations affecting people, including hostel-dwellers, who would not be regarded as occupying a dwelling as a home simply because of the short duration of their occupancy. Such people, nevertheless, will be eligible for housing benefit after two weeks' continuous residence and eligibility will be back-dated to the date of the claim.
I hope that what I have said will assure the House of the Government's deep concern that the homelessness among the young needs to be tackled vigorously and that the Government are doing this in a variety of ways. We are indebted to the noble Earl, Lord Longford, for having given us this opportunity to demonstrate our commitment to this task.

Diego Garcia: Minority Rights Group Report
6.2 p.m.
Lord Brockway Lord Brockway rose to ask Her Majesty's Government what is their response to the report of the Minority Rights Group on events in Diego Garcia.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, I beg to ask the Unstarred Question standing in my name on the Order Paper. It is unusual to initiate a debate in this House on the report of an unofficial committee but the Minority Rights Group is very authoritative. Its sponsors include the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, and Mr. Jo Grimond of the Liberal Party. Its chairman is Professor Roland Oliver and its council includes Sir Robert Birley. Its director is the respected Ben Whitaker who gave up a parliamentary career because he was so dedicated to this subject. Its report won the attention of every circle in this country; the quality papers gave it the first leading article. It cannot be dismissed. I shall treat it with some of the fullness which it deserves, but I want to make it clear that it is with no pleasure that I refer to deplorable events. I do
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so only because I think we must take their warning. I shall conclude with certain proposals which I believe are relevant to the present time.
It was in 1965 that the British Government offered Mauritius its independence but it did so only on the condition that Mauritius surrendered the Chagos Archipelago. Diego Garcia is the largest atoll in that archipelago. It is 14 miles by four miles. Compensation of £3 million was offered to the Mauritian Government. This was the period of decolonisation but, unlike other colonies which were given their political freedom, the people of the entire territory of Mauritius were not included in that independence. The United Nations General Assembly met on the subject. It carried Resolution No. 2066XX which invited Britain:
"to take no action which would dismember the territory of Mauritius and violate its territorial integrity".
There was considerable opposition in Mauritius to the acceptance of independence on those terms. The Mauritian Government reluctantly accepted.
This was followed by an extraordinary event. The British Government, without any consultation of the people, incorporated Diego Garcia into a new colony—the period of decolonisation and yet a new colony established—the British Indian Ocean Territory. It is known as BIOT and I shall be referring to it as such for purposes of brevity. The object of this strange manoeuvre became clear the following year. Britain signed a defence agreement with the United States of America leasing to them BIOT for 50 years with the option of a further 20 years. Again, there was no consultation with the people concerned. The United States wanted BIOT, and particularly Diego Garcia, because it had been selected by the Pentagon as an ideal place to monitor the Soviet Navy. At that stage it was only to be an area of communications.
May I just refer to the population of Diego Garcia? They were 1,800 in number; they were coloured people, 60 per cent. of African origin from the continent itself and from Madagascar and 40 per cent. Indian. There was only one employer on the island. He had a copra plantation. The other inhabitants were harvesters of coconut and fishermen. As I have said, they were not consulted in any way when they were, first, transferred from Mauritius and, secondly, incorporated in the new colony. They were just tossed about at the dictate of Whitehall.
The Pentagon made it clear that they did not want any persons on the island except the American servicemen. Britain was required to remove the residents, the islanders. African and Indian, yes; but British citizens. The first action of the British Government to accomplish this was to prevent the return to Diego Garcia of any visitors to Mauritius. Many went on holiday, for medical treatment and to buy various articles. They found that there were no ships available for them to return to Diego Garcia. They were left stranded on the quayside. The report indicates that others in Diego Garcia itself were tricked to leave on ships to Mauritius never to be allowed to return. British citizens by the action of the British Government became refugees. There was no provision for them. Many of them starved.
The next stop of the British Government to empty the island of its residents was to stop employment. In 1967 BIOT bought out the sole employers of the copra

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plantation. It was to close down by 1973. The manager used these words:
"It was not very pleasant telling them they had to go. It was a paradise there. We told them we had orders from BIOT. I am talking about five generations of the Ilois who were buried there."
It is also alleged in the report of the minority group—I confess that I find it a little difficult to believe this—that the next step was to cut off food supplies to the residents at Diego Garcia. It states that from 1968 onwards no food supplies were sent to the people. They had their fish which they caught. They had coconuts. They had vegetables which they grew; but no supplementary foodstuffs, according to the report, were permitted, in order to starve them out.
The first American servicemen arrived in Diego Garcia in 1971. The residents, the Ilois, were told that they did not have the right to stay. In September the last of the Ilois left. One of those deported said:
"We were assembled and informed that we could no longer stay on the island because the Americans were coming for good. We did not want to go. We were born there. So were our fathers and forefathers who were buried in that land."
They were given two weeks to leave. BIOT transferred them in its own ships. The Foreign Office said then, and it has repeated quite recently in this House:
"All went willingly and no coercion was used."
I ask you to judge, my Lords, from the facts which I have given. Strangely, at that time this situation was not known in this country: no publicity: no debate in Parliament. The truth was only recorded in 1975 in an article in the Washington Post by its investigator, David Ottawa. He told how 1,000 Ilois were forcibly removed and were living in abject poverty in Mauritius. A week later the Sunday Times had a three-page exposure. It revealed what had not been known before; that the United States had given Britain an 11.5 million dollar discount on Polaris submarines to establish BIOT, which enabled Diego Garcia to become under military occupation of America. The Sunday Times said:
"The Ilois were the islanders that Britain sold."
This Ilois arrived in Mauritius with no plans to provide for them. There were no homes for them, no jobs and no money. They were left in dire poverty for five years without receiving any compensation. The Sisters of Mother Theresa, and other charities, gave them a little help. A nun said:
"They do not have enough food, children are undernourished, they need medicines and clothing."
The Comité Fraternelle reported deaths through hunger and suicides, and that a large number of the women and young girls—some aged 13, 14 and 15—left their husbands and parents to become prostitutes in order to obtain a living. It was only when Ilois on the last boat from Diego Garcia staged a sit-in that the Government acted. Then some of them were accommodated. A little assistance was given to 74 families and pensions to 57 of the aged.
I turn to this question of compensation: in 1973 the British Government agreed to pay the utterly inadequate sum of £650,000 to the Mauritian Government for the relief and resettlement of the Ilois. The Foreign Office said—and repeated many times later—that this,
"represented a full and final discharge of Her Majesty's Government's obligations".
In fact the Ilois did not receive their compensation until 1978. The Mauritian Government itself has a certain responsibility for delaying its distribution, and in any case the amount was utterly inadequate. Each adult received 7,590 rupees—about £650—and the children received between 356 and 410 rupees. That is not enough to rent, and certainly not enough to buy, a house or even to buy food and clothing. Any attempt by the more able to start businesses for themselves became completely impossible.
Agitation at last began in this country as well as in Mauritius. A Methodist named George Champion commenced it, and I pay my tribute to the Methodist Church for coming out in defence of the Ilois. Even the Mauritian Government pressed our Government to increase compensation, and in 1979 Britain offered to add £1·25 million to its offer, but only on the condition that the Ilois abandoned all claim to return to their island home. It was sheer poverty which compelled them to accept, though there was so much controversy about it. I claim that acceptance compelled by hunger has no moral authority.
There were continued demonstrations and hunger strikes. These were so disturbing that the Mauritian Prime Minister flew for talks with Mrs. Thatcher in April 1981. It was then agreed that the two Governments and Ilois representatives should meet in June. The Ilois asked for compensation of £8 million. Britain only offered an additional £300,000 in technical aid, and again said that this was "a full and final agreement". No agreement was reached in those talks.
Protests continued, and they were so strong that in March Britain offered an additional £4 million and the Mauritian Government offered land to the Ilois to the value of £1 million. Once more the British offer was "full and final". The Ilois, despairing, accepted even though the agreement included a clause precluding them from returning to their island.
That is a summary of the report. Commenting on it, The Times on 10th September said:
"It is unacceptably shameful that this was done in such a mean and dishonest way."
The British Government deny that the United States has now established a base in Diego Garcia. I do not know the military definition of a base, but last year Britain gave the United States permission to undertake a 1,000 million dollar expansion, accommodating B52 bombers, a mile-long jetty, provision for aircraft carriers and barracks for 4,000 marines. If that is not a military base. I do not know what it is.
There is a development now which is disturbing. The High Commissioner for Mauritius says that the establishment of a base violates an undertaking given by the Labour Government that the island would be used only as a communications centre. He did not even rule out an appeal to the World Court. This year an election brought a new government in Mauritius, demanding that there should be an end of the American base and a return of the archipelago to Mauritius. The issue, clearly, is not ended.
Briefly, I end with my own conclusions relevant today. First, there is evidence that the confrontation between the West and the Soviet Union, ostensibly in defence of democracy and freedom, rides roughshod over these values in order to obtain military advantage, as in Diego Garcia.
Secondly, these events continued to the eve of the Falklands crisis when military action, loss of life and immense expenditure was accepted to maintain the right of self-determination by 1,800 white residents—exactly the same number as the African and Indian British citizens deported from Diego Garcia. I ask: would they have been deported and would there have been this haggling over compensation if they had been white?
Thirdly, all the Governments surrounding the Indian Ocean, except Oman and now Somalia, are demanding that the ocean be made a zone of peace. That would mean an end of the American base in Diego Garcia as well as of the Russian presence. If the British Government sincerely desires disarmament in the world, cannot it support this demilitarisation?
Fourthly—and this is the last of my conclusions—would not this facilitate the return of Diego Garcia to Mauritius, as the new Government are demanding, and even the return of the islanders to their homeland? My Lords, I beg the Minister not to retort by saying that it was a Labour Government which began this crime against the islanders of Diego Garcia. Tory Governments since have aggravated it. Freedom and justice are not playthings in party partisanship. We have all been guilty and we should all seek to right the wrong.
6.30 p.m.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, I believe that the House is grateful to my noble friend Lord Brockway for raising this issue tonight. I think that the House should also be grateful to the minority group for publishing the report on which this debate is based, and I pay tribute to them for so doing.
This is a most shameful incident in British history. It is shameful to those who were instrumental in the original acts and it would have been wise for the noble Lord, Lord George-Brown, and the noble Lord, Lord Chalfont, who were responsible for the original treaty, to have attended this debate, as it is a debate concerning the consequences of their acts when they were at the Foreign Office. It is no pleasure to have to condemn one's own party, but there are times when it is essential for the honour of that party that some of us within it should condemn the actions that are taken in its name, and this is one of those occasions.
I differ from my noble friend Lord Brockway in one respect only. I do not think it is the case that protests have been made only from outside this country, nor that it was not until the 1970s that protests were made about this action. In fact, I should like to pay tribute to the agitation conducted by Mr. Tarn Dalyell from another place, who has consistently from 1965 condemned this action and brought it to the attention both of the public and of Parliament.
I do not envy the noble Lord who is to reply to this debate. I do not envy him for this reason, that he must know that in many parts of the world, and particularly in the Third World, the words just uttered by my noble friend Lord Brockway have been echoed very widely; that there is a parallel between British action towards the inhabitants of Diego Garcia from 1965 onwards, and the actions of the British Government in 1982 towards the inhabitants of the Falkland Islands. One cannot expect people from the Third World, with different coloured skins from our own, to fail to draw
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the distinction between the actions of the British Government when the British citizens concerned have white or pink skins, and their actions when their skins are of a different colour.
As my noble friend has pointed out, the inhabitants of Diego Garcia were descended from Africans, from the people of Malagasy and from Indians. They were coloured people, or they were people of a different colour from the white skin. Yet can the noble Lord, who is to reply to this debate on behalf of the Government, tell us where the difference in principle is concerned—and I emphasise the word "principle"—between the incident of 1965 onwards and that of 1982?
Surely the principle involved is whether or not all people have the right to live where they choose under a form of government of their own choice, and to participate in the determination of the form of society within which they live. Was that not the principle on which the British Government claimed that they had to send the task force to expel the Argentinians who were denying the people of the Falkland Islands that right? If it is the case that the British Government sent the task force to the Falklands in order to expel those foreigners who are interfering with the lives of the inhabitants, then how can this or any other British Government justify the actions which have been taken towards the inhabitants of Diego Garcia?
My noble friend has pointed out that the basis of these actions was an agreement with the United States Government. That agreement was a treaty which was signed in December, 1965, by the noble Lord, Lord Chalfont, on behalf of the Foreign Secretary of the time, the noble Lord, Lord George-Brown. I understand that that treaty included one particular provision and I should like to ask the noble Lord directly about this. I understand that within that treaty there was the provision that, wherever possible, the building of the American base, communications centre—call it what you will—should be by the use of Mauritian and Seychellois workers. I should like to ask him how many Mauritian or Seychellois workers have been used in the building of that American base.
However little publicity there has been about this shameful act by successive British Governments from 1965 onwards, it would appear that, at least, certain Americans have greater moral scruples over the issue than has been shown—at least at all widely—in this country. I should like to give two quotations from the report which point home the issue that I have just raised. When the United States Congress was conducting its hearings on Diego Garcia, Senator John Culver from Ohio had this to say. He complained that no witness in previous hearings had mentioned that there had been inhabitants living on the island—some for generations. He went on to say:
"simply put, these people were evicted from their home only when and because the United States wanted to build a military base. We add nothing to our moral stature as a nation by trying to sidestep all responsibility for these people."
And, I should like to add, nor do we.
Secondly, during questions which were put to the Director of the Office of International Security Operations, Senator Larry Winn, Junior, of Kansas had this to say:
"I just have the feeling all the way through this hearing that the American negotiators and the people involved have said, 'This is all a British problem, and let the people sink or swim and just let the

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British worry about'. I don't know where any human concern shows up on your part or in your report or anything else. I can't understand why we arc so damned interested in this thing as a military base that we don't have some type of input, or ask questions, or check on the human beings that are living on this island before we kick them off at our request through the British".
If American Congressmen and Senators can feel so deeply about this outrage, I would suggest that our responsibility is one hundred times greater.
May I conclude by picking up one of the last points made by the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, which I was very pleased that he included in this debate: who are we to determine that the Americans should have a military base in the middle of the Indian Ocean? Have there been any consultations with the Government of India as well as with the Government of Mauritius? We know that there have been discussions with Mauritius, but what about India? Diego Garcia, in rough distance, is just as near India as it is Mauritius, and India has a very great stake in everything which goes on in the Indian Ocean. It is the Indians who have led the way in attempting to make the Indian Ocean an ocean of peace, a nuclear-free zone and a non-aligned sea.
This is a very important matter—I think the noble Lord will take this point—for the Commonwealth. The Commonwealth has discussed the future of the Indian Ocean. The Commonwealth has discussed the passionate desire of the Indians and of other Asians to prevent the Indian Ocean from becoming a scene of conflict between the great powers. But here Britain, a member of the Commonwealth, is taking positive action to bring one of the major powers, in a military form, into the centre of the Indian Ocean.
I know that he cannot give a final answer tonight, but I should like the noble Lord to consider and to take back to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office the proposal that because this is a Commonwealth matter there should be Commonwealth consultations about the future of the Ilois, who have been turned out of their homes and thrown out of their homeland, and also about whether Diego Garcia should be a military base for anyone. I reiterate that this is a matter which concerns the Government and the people of India and the rest of the Commonwealth citizens of Asia, as well as the Mauritians, even more than it concerns ourselves and that we should be prepared to withdraw from the position of openly opposing the declared policy of our fellow Commonwealth members in their ocean by bringing in one of the great powers against their wishes.
May I make the proposal to the noble Lord and ask him to give serious consideration to it, along with his noble and right honourable friends in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. If this kind of action is going to be characteristic of British Government policy, then there is very little hope for British influence in the Commonwealth. I believe that members of the Commonwealth have a responsibility and a desire to discuss the whole issue of Diego Garcia and that that discussion should be held within the Commonwealth as well as at the United Nations. However, I particularly recommend to the noble Lord further Commonwealth consultations about the future of the island, the military significance of the island and the future of the refugees whom we have made refugees from their own homeland in Diego Garcia.
6.46 p.m.
Lord Hale: My Lords, this debate has gone on for some time, but it is a very important one. I should like to say at once that I can do no more than agree with every word spoken by my noble friend and with nearly every word spoken by his seconder. Some of the little divagations into American mental attitudes and so on might have been more appropriate from the noble Lord from Peterborough, the noble Lord, Lord Harmer-Nicholls, who persistently rails at me as anti-American. I have a very good friend in this House who is a member of a society of friendship with America. I find very little to blame America for in this, if their military advisers think that the defence of the Indian Ocean will be strengthened by the construction of an American-dominated defence station in the Indian Ocean. They were very hesitant about it and had it almost pushed on them by British Ministers—let us make no mistake about that; the evidence is overwhelming—and, as my noble friend justly said, they were the first to hold a public inquiry and raise some of the problems, such as the destruction of the rare, large tortoises on that particular island.
There is much that is incredible and sheerly indefensibly immoral and contemptuous of human rights coming from a Labour Government and Labour Ministers. I do not believe that anybody like Michael Foot would ever have tolerated this kind of serious and monstrous abusage of human freedom and human liberty.
Names are mentioned in the report, so I need say only this. I came into this by chance on October 14th 1975, when my noble friend and I had each put down a Question on Diego Garcia. My noble friend put a number of supplementaries to his Question, and I put a number of supplementaries to mine. I must say that these were very hostile questions and were received with much more courtesy than I expected. I was asked not to press the questions but to indicate them in detail and to wait for a Written Answer. This duly arrived and, curiously enough, I still have it today—it is an important document. It is signed by my old friend Goronwy Roberts, whom I deeply respected. I do not believe for a moment that he was ever involved to the fullest degree in this matter. I do know that he was distressed at the situation in which he found himself; a situation in which he was having to take the responsibility for his own Government and for some of the things they had done—but not, I believe, with his knowledge. After all, he was still a junior Minister at the time, although he held an important post. It was not very long after that that we lost him. That was a great loss to this House and to the Party.
If one examines this report, one finds that underlying it all is a cynicism which will appal Members on all sides of this House who read it. The figures are almost invariably false. The method of giving absolutely false figures was that if one asked for figures for the number of people in Diego Garcia one would be given the figures for the number of people who were in the Seychelles. Or if one asked for the figures for the Seychelles, one would be given the figures for Diego Garcia. There is scarcely an accurate figure throughout these communications. Meanwhile, people of high reputations, with their own religious beliefs and their own customs, and with their reputation, which does not involve criticising them on

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the basis of character, are tricked in the manner of a confidence trickster. They are told that it will all be all right and that they have only to wait. They are told to step on a boat and that their interests will be looked after, but some of them have very great difficulty in ever getting off that boat again. They are deported to areas of conflict and dispute.
They starve. It is an odd thing that people can starve, even in a fruit-growing country, if they are pushed together in a heap and left. Your Lordships may have seen the film which I believe was shown on ITV some time ago. It showed what was left of these 1,000 decent people. As far as money is concerned, they did not get any money for years. When any money was paid it was not paid for the victims—it never is. Let me recall from memory the period not very far off from this when we were dealing with the problems of the Gilbert Islands and the Banabans. Time after time there was this same sort of deceit and the same sort of vague talk about compensation. I have no doubt that the Americans urged for the payment of some more compensation because of the shameful treatment of these people. I believe that to be true. After all, it is hardly a country that can afford or wish to save a few coppers at the expense of a starving tribe. But it went on. I myself am ashamed. I do not know why I seem at the end of October 1975 to have dropped out of this business for quite a time. I only saw the report yesterday and I accept a great deal of blame for not trying to ascertain the truth at the earliest possible moment. This is not a matter, if there be a solution, which should be forgotten, even in these overcrowded islands, after so many Ilois have died (some of them having committed suicide) and after little girls have gone into prostitution.
It seems that there is an island which, happily, was discovered by some British sailors who wanted to go to Diego Garcia but who were refused and who journeyed to another island some 140 miles away, where, they testify, most of the advantages which the Diego Garcians enjoyed in their early days on Diego Garcia are also available. It is virtually an uninhabited island where these people might be accommodated if they were willing and if they were given adequate compensation.
If the Americans want to go on with this massive project—and I do not believe that they do—I do not think that this is the moment to go into the question of views which certainly verge on pacifism. I do not believe that this is the moment when we ought to be criticising the military government or otherwise of this island. The attempt to rescue the American hostages from Iran was to be staged by President Carter in full secrecy from Diego Garcia. It is a long way away, but that factor—the necessity of keeping that absolutely secret for a long time—was one of the difficulties about seeking other alternatives until the day had passed when the attempt failed. Let us have a full inquiry free from unnecessary rancour, seeking to pay the debt we owe to those unfortunate people who were the victims of trickery of a like that we do not often see in British international affairs.
With those observations I shall leave out very many of the matters that I wanted to mention. I approach the situation still without bitterness and rancour because I know that I failed myself, and often do.
7.1 p.m.
Lord Strabolgi: My Lords, we are grateful to my noble friend Lord Brockway for tabling this Unstarred Question for debate this evening. I know that the House has been impressed by his moving speech. This has been very much a Labour debate and I cannot help regretting, with my noble friend Lord Hatch of Lusby, that no noble Lords from other parts of the House have taken part, except, of course, the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, who is to reply for Her Majesty's Government.
As has been said, Diego Garcia was formerly a dependence of Mauritius. It was ceded to Britain, and detached from Mauritius, before independence was given to Mauritius. It is generally believed that the island has been leased by us to the United States for 50 years—indeed, I have seen this widely reported in the press. On the other hand, I understand that the Foreign Office maintains that Diego Garcia is not leased to the United States—rather that the island has been "made available" to the United States, for defence purposes, for an initial period of 50 years, with an option for a further 20 years.
May I ask the noble Lord who is to reply to define the legal position and to describe the difference, under international law, between "leasing" and "making available"? May I also ask the noble Lord whether it is a fact that the United States' contribution, or payment if you like, took the form of the waiving of about £5 million of surcharges owed by the United Kingdom on the purchase of the Polaris missile system, which was also alluded to by my noble friend Lord Brockway? May I further ask if it is true that, in addition, Britain is receiving rent for Diego Garcia from the United States of about £½ million a month?
I am not clear why the creation of naval and military facilities required the removal of the entire population. This removal appears to have been carried out, according to the report of the Minority Rights Group—if this is accurate—in a very shabby way. As has been said, first the island was detached from Mauritius. Then the employing plantation company was bought up and closed down so that the means of livelihood of the Ilois was lost. Food imports are even reported to have been cut off. Families were then persuaded to take a holiday in Mauritius, many with offers of a free trip, and they found when they got there that they were not allowed to return home. By "winkling out" in this way the population had been reduced from 1,800 to about 800 people by 1971. These 800 souls were then removed to two neighbouring islands and two years later they were sent to Mauritius.
It appears from this report that no provision for resettlement had been made, and little was done to alleviate the hardship on arrival in a strange island of those we had exiled. Each family was allowed to take only one crate of belongings and we have had other moving examples described tonight by my noble friends. The result was that these unfortunate people had to live in poverty and squalid conditions. I understand that nine committed suicide and others died through poverty.
May I ask the noble Lord why no provision was made to resettle those whom we had uprooted, in a more fitting way? If the reports are true—and I hope that they are not—then this country bears a heavy

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responsibility. True, compensation was offered in 1973—some £650,000 initially—I suppose the smallest sum the Treasury thought they could get away with. In order to qualify, the islanders, many of them simple people, were asked apparently to sign a form renouncing irrevocably their right to return to Diego Garcia. Any adult not in possession of supporting documents to establish a claim was, it is reported, given the paltry sum of £650.
But the people were not as simple as that. Her Majesty's Government were obliged in the end to offer considerably more. May I ask the noble Lord if it is true that the agreed total sum is now £4 million—a long way from £650,000—plus a grant of land worth about £1 million from the government of Mauritius? It would have been more honest, I think, and more dignified, surely, if we had offered generous compensation at the outset. Why did we not do so? Was it meanness, incompetence, or indifference; or a mixture of all three?
I accept that the island is important for defence purposes, in view of its central position in the Indian Ocean—and here I differ from my noble friend Lord Brockway. But why was it necessary to remove the inhabitants? I do not know of other defence bases, or stations, which have required the removal from adjacent areas of the whole native population. In many stations as we know, the local inhabitants provide useful ancillary and support activities. Employment is provided, and the local people can often earn good money. Perhaps the noble Lord will say why Diego Garcia is the exception. Why did its setting up as a defence base have to cause so much reported suffering to the unfortunate people—the Ilois—many of whom had lived on Diego Garcia for five generations, with their own distinctive way of life, as several of my noble friends have said this evening?
The report by the Minority Rights Group is a disturbing document. I submit that the Government's views on it should be given to the House this evening. I therefore ask, in company with my noble friends, what is the Government's response to this report?
7.9 p.m.
Lord Skelmersdale: My Lords, as I see it, my job here today is not to explain away the failures of past Governments or to lay the blame on any particular individual for the current position with regard to the Ilois people. Suffice it to say that I am not—to pluck a convenient phrase from broadcasting history—one of yesterday's men. This story was a fait accompli when this Government came to power. However, I am here, as the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, has just reminded me, to answer the timely question from the noble Lord, Lord Brockway—namely:
"To ask Her Majesty's Government"—
this one, today's Government—
"what is their response to the report of the Minority Rights Group on events in Diego Garcia".
It is timely because the noble Lord has given us an early opportunity to debate a report which was published only in August this year. It is also timely because, as I have sought to illustrate, I am able to explain the actions taken by this Government since 1979.
From listening to the noble Lord, Lord Brockway,
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this evening no one can doubt his sincerity and concern for minorities. We have all known his concern to be unquestionable over a great period of years, some of us for a rather shorter time than others. Nor can anyone doubt the sincerity of the Minority Rights Group or of John Madeley, author of the report to which the noble Lord has drawn attention. I should say at the outset that we have the greatest sympathy for the hardships undergone by many of the Ilois in the past decade. Nothing that I say in response to points raised by the noble Lords who have spoken in this debate can detract from that. At the same time. I think it is helpful to look at the problems of this community in a longer time-frame than that of this decade, which is what the debate has tended to do.
Ever since the first of the islands were discovered in the 16th century they have attracted interest for two reasons: the strategic convenience of Diego Garcia's lagoon in the middle of the Indian Ocean; and the products of the coconut palms which flourish on the islands. Indeed, the Chagos were for long known as the oil islands. The economy of the archipelago depended entirely on the marketability of copra and coconut oil and underwent many vicissitudes. I shall not weary the House with a detailed history of these commodities. Suffice it to say that the market has for many years been in long-term decline and the lack of competitiveness of such small and isolated production units was bringing the economic viability of the islands seriously into question by the time that fresh interest was being shown in their strategic possibilities. Even before the last war a settlement on one of the islands had to be closed down.
The other aspect, the defence aspect, also has a long history. In the latter part of the 18th century when French and British fleets were struggling for mastery of the Indian Ocean. Diego Garcia was, because of its position in the route to India, a bone of contention until, together with Mauritius and other dependencies of Mauritius, it was ceded to Britain in 1814 under the Treaty of Paris. In the Second World War Diego Garcia again showed its military value, mainly as a staging post for flying-boats.
There was, therefore, nothing surprising or novel in the idea that the Chagos should again contribute to the defence of the West in the fresh circumstances of the second half of this century. Your Lordships are, of course, familiar with the agreement we made with the United States in 1966. The text is in Command Paper 3231 of 1967. I make no apology for the fact that this Government, like the Government of the day which signed that agreement, think it important to make available a facility in that part of the ocean to our principal ally. Indeed, developments in the north-west of the Indian Ocean and, above all, the threat posed by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan reinforce the need for a support facility in the region.
The noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, and, indeed, the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, asked me why we call it a "support facility" and not a "military base". Essentially, a base is a self-contained place with its own defences and forces installed. This particular one is rightly described as a "support facility" because that is just what it is. It has a runway, it has fuel stocks, and it has a communications capacity. It will have a deep water berth, but there is no permanent force deployed there, naval fleet based there, or any aircraft based

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there. This is, of course, a reason why it would be inappropriate for islanders not belonging to the facility to be there for any length of time.
The noble Lord, Lord Hatch, asked about the building of this facility and who was to be used in building it. He obviously has in mind Article 7(a) of the 1966 agreement. This provides that:
"The United States Government and United States contractors shall make use of workers from Mauritius and the Seychelles to the maximum extent practicable, consistent with United States policy requirements and schedules".
In recent years there have been over 200 Mauritian workers employed at the base for building purposes.
It is very much in our mind to ask, what about further expansion plans for the base? The situation has not changed since my right honourable friend the Minister of State said in another place on 30th July 1981 that:
"… previous United States Administration consulted us [Her Majesty's Government] about plans for a programme to expand the facilities on Diego Garcia. This programme involves numerous construction projects extending over several years. They include improving the services and utilities on the island, including refuelling arrangements, expansion of storage, warehousing, maintenance and wharf installations, and the upgrading of runway and other airfield support facilities to a standard which would allow use of the facility as required by a wide range of heavy aircraft including B52s. We [Her Majesty's Government] have agreed to these plans.
The present United States Administration have confirmed that they intend to proceed with the development plan and are now seeking budgetary authority to set work in hand. Projects expected to start in 1981–82 include the construction of a new aircraft taxiway and parking apron to B52 specifications and the construction of extra accommodation for United States personnel. The Government welcomes these plans to improve the facilities on Diego Garcia which fills an important role in the protection of Western interests in the area."
I shall return to this point in a minute.
As has already been mentioned, this is there directly because of the creation of the British Indian Ocean Territory in 1965. I must emphasise that the Chagos Archipelago was detached from the administration of Mauritius with the full agreement of the Mauritius Council of Ministers to form part of that territory. The report makes the astounding suggestion that this was conditional upon our agreement to Mauritius independence. Search as I could, I could find no trace of any evidence whatever for the claim that the then Colonial Secretary, who visited Mauritius in 1965 to prepare for the constitutional talks to be held later that year, made any suggestion or condition. His visit was undertaken to ascertain the views of the then Mauritius Prime Minister, Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam, and other party leaders on the direction which the constitutional development of the islands should take. The United Kingdom Government did, however, agree to pay the Government of Mauritius £3 million in compensation for the detachment of the islands; and we have also undertaken to cede them to Mauritius when they are no longer required for defence purposes.
I should mention in parenthesis that when the BIOT was first formed, it also included certain islands detached in a similar way from the then colony of Seychelles. When it was clear that those islands would not be needed for defence or other purposes they were returned to form part of the new Republic of Seychelles upon its independence in 1976.
It is the people involved, the Ilois, who have, rightly,
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been a major focus of concern of noble Lords who have taken part in this debate. I should perhaps remind your Lordships what the term—the noun—"Ilois" actually means. It is a term that has grown up over the years to describe that part of the Mauritian people who lived or have lived on the Chagos Archipelago. Nothing more and nothing less.
While the majority of those who worked on the copra plantations were returned to Mauritius or the Seychelles upon the expiry of their contracts, a proportion remained on these islands for the greater part of their lives. These were referred to as the Ilois. Noble Lords will recognise that the term is far from precise, but, whatever the degree of their connection with the Chagos, the fact is that the Ilois were brought to, and remained on, the islands purely on the basis of their contracts. Traditionally the plantation owners did not look upon the workers as settled residents in any one place but moved them according to commercial necessity. There seem to have been considerable fluctuations in the level of habitation in the islands. Neither the employees nor those who were permitted by the plantation owners to remain at the end of their contracts owned land or houses in any part of the archipelago. The point I am making is simply this: the inhabitants of these small atolls did not constitute a settled and self-sustaining community with its own institutions and civil administration.
The noble Lord, Lord Hatch, brought up the subject of the Falklands and tried to compare the two situations. Now, in contrast to what I have just said about the archipelago, in the Falkland Islands (an area, incidentally, incomparably vaster at some 4,700 square miles) a self-sustaining society had established itself, with its own civil administration, as early as the 1840s. From this base the Falkland islanders gradually built up the economy and their institutions to the levels with which we are all familiar. They, unlike the Ilois, were separated from their near neighbours by language, culture and tradition. It is purely to do with self-sustaining peoples, and nothing more and nothing less. I cannot be more dismissive of the suggestion that this is anything at all to do with racialism.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, will the noble Lord give way?
Lord Skelmersdale: My Lords, if the noble Lord will allow me, I am trying to make a speech out of a large number of incoherent notes. I listened to the noble Lord in silence although at times I was tempted to argue with him. Perhaps I may continue with my speech and make it in my own way.
With the establishment of the British Indian Ocean Territory, the plantations were purchased by the Crown and all were eventually closed, beginning with those in Diego Garcia. The settlements in Peros Banhos and Salomon were kept going as long as was practicable and the workers from Diego Garcia were given the option, which a considerable number took, of working on Peros Banhos or Salomon for as long as possible. However, the total land area of these two groups of islands is something like six square miles. It seems unlikely that the plantations on them would have been economically viable in the long term, even with the substantial injection of new capital that would have been required. In any case, the islands were also included in the 1966 Exchange of Notes, and thus

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potentially available for defence purposes; and this further diminished their commercial attractiveness.
I come now to a poignant, perhaps the most poignant moment in this history. As in any final leave-taking, the departure of the Ilois from the island settlements must have been a sad and distressing occasion. But the report's description of these occasions as an act of mass kidnapping is grossly exaggerated and I suggest tendentious. There is no evidence of force having been used.
Lord Strabolgi: Nobody says so.
Lord SkelmersdaleLord Denham: My Lords, I beg to move that this House do now adjourn.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: Before the Minister sits down—
Several noble Lords: Order!
Lord Denham: I have moved that the House do now adjourn, my Lords. We are in very grave difficulty with an Unstarred Question if it is allowed to turn into a debate after my noble friend has answered.

Committee of Selection
The First Report from the Select Committee was made and ordered to be printed.
House adjourned at twenty-nine minutes before eight o'clock.