Lords Sitting of 18 November 1982

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

Message from the Queen
The Lord Chancellor (Lord Hailsham of Saint Marylebone): My Lords, I have to report to your Lordships that, in accordance with the Order of Thursday last, the most reverend Primate the Lord Archbishop of York, the noble Baroness the Lord Privy Seal, the Lord Byers, the Baroness Hylton-Foster and the Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos and I waited upon Her Majesty the Queen this morning at Buckingham Palace and presented your Lordships' Address of congratulation on the birth of a son to Her Royal Highness the Princess of Wales.
Her Majesty was graciously pleased to make the following reply signed by Her own hand:—
"I thank you most sincerely for your loyal and dutiful Address on the occasion of the birth of my grandson.
"The Duke of Edinburgh and I are greatly touched by the good wishes that you have expressed towards my family."

Zimbabwe: Alleged Torture of Air Force Detainees
3.7 p.m.
Lord Gridley: 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 intend to make a statement on the alleged torture of certain white army officers while in the service of the Government of Zimbabwe.
The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Lord Belstead): My Lords, we are aware of allegations of ill-treatment. Although some of those still detained are United Kingdom citizens, they are also citizens of Zimbabwe, so Her Majesty's Government are not entitled to intervene formally on their behalf. We have, however, made clear our concern to the Zimbabwe Government that all detainees should be brought to trial as soon as possible.
Lord Gridley: My Lords, while thanking my noble friend the Minister for that Answer and appreciating his difficulty and that of Her Majesty's Government in initiating any interference on the issues which arise, is it not a fact that this arises from the destruction of half of Mr. Mugabe's jet air force at Thornhill Air Base in Zimbabwe on July 25th by Zipra guerrillas; and that in
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that connection Air Vice-Marshal Hugh Slatter and Wing Commander Peter Briscoe were arrested and detained and, my Lords, tortured; and that, according to a medical report, that torture has been confirmed? May I ask my noble friend whether in this matter we can morally stand aside altogether? Would he not agree that the Prime Minister of Zimbabwe, Mr. Mugabe, has surmounted many difficulties since independence? Might it not be helpful if an unofficial approach were made to him or to some other source which might solve the difficulties which now are before us?
Lord Belstead: My Lords, I fully understand the concern expressed by my noble friend. Indeed, during the month of September, on a visit to Zimbabwe, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Defence made it clear that, while we recognise that this was essentially an internal matter for Zimbabwe, we were concerned about reports of ill-treatment. My right honourable friend urged that the air force detainees should be brought to trial soon, and he was given to understand that this would be the case.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, would the noble Lord agree that there is virtually universal condemnation throughout this House, and, indeed, throughout this country, of the inhumanity of torture in any circumstances? Would he agree further that that condemnation pays no attention to the skin colour of the tortured persons? Would it not be unfortunate if, as a result of this Question, the idea were to spread that we were concerned about inhumanity towards people of white skins but not people of other-coloured skins?
Lord Belstead: My Lords, I do not think that there is any such assumption in the Question which has been asked by my noble friend.
Baroness Vickers: My Lords, may I ask my noble friend whether the kind offices of the International Red Cross have been sought?
Lord Belstead: My Lords, I am not aware that this has been done. I repeat—and my noble friend was good enough to recognise the difficulty—that we are in a position where we cannot make formal intervention on behalf of those detained, although informally we have expressed our concern. If I find that the International Committee of the Red Cross has been approached, I promise that I will write immediately to my noble friend.
Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: My Lords, can the Minister say a word about the current military assistance that we may be giving Zimbabwe? Is it the case that they have requested further air force officers and that this request has been rejected, and that army officers are still continuing to be supplied to train the Zimbabwe Army? Is that the position?
Lord Belstead: My Lords, no decisions have yet been taken on the size and scope of our future military aid for Zimbabwe.
Lord Paget of Northampton: My Lords, surely this is not a question of black and white? These are

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distinguished officers of the RAF who took on the Zimbabwe job because our Government advised and, in a sense, requested them to do so, and they took on Zimbabwe citizenship for the same reason. These people are there because we asked them to be there. Surely, in those circumstances we have a right to intervene, and a right to say very firmly that not one shilling's worth of aid goes into Zimbabwe while these men are under detention?
Lord Belstead: My Lords, in a case of this kind, we operate under the Haig Convention on the Conflict of Nationality of 1930 to which we are a party. That is the principle of international practice under which we operate. Having said that, I think that I have made clear to the House that my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Defence in particular has made energetic representations in this difficult case.

NHS: Patient Services and Resource Management
3.15 p.m.
Lord Hunter of Newington: 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 steps they are taking to remedy the effects of industrial action and reorganisation on patient services in the National Health Service; and what will be the effect of Government initiatives to improve the management of resources available to the NHS.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Security (Lord Trefgarne): My Lords, decisions on the best way of providing patient services are for local health authorities to make, taking account of local circumstances as well as of national policies. Government initiatives to improve the use of resources are intended to strengthen and complement the efforts of local management.
Lord Hunter of Newington: My Lords, may I thank the noble Lord for that reply. In the present situation, which is nearly an emergency from the point of view of long delays in operations and consultations, does the Minister not feel that other developments should be deferred? The Government have recently declared their policy that additional resources should be used to improve the treatment of the confused elderly and return mentally subnormal to the community. Do they still think that these should be the priorities under this exceptional situation? Secondly, may I ask whether the Government have had discussions with the medical profession on these matters and have taken advice from the Royal colleges about medical priorities?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, it is, I fear, an inevitable consequence of industrial action such as we have seen recently in the health service that there should be some resultant difficulties like the extension of waiting lists to which the noble Lord referred. As for priorities, the
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noble Lord asks us to accept that, for example, shortening of the waiting list should be a priority at the expense of some other important areas to which we have recently drawn attention. If the noble Lord has visited as many hospitals for the subnormal, for example, as I have recently, he would not so readily point the way in the other direction.
Lord Wallace of Coslany: My Lords, even ignoring the implication of industrial action—the necessity of which of course is regretted—are the Government aware that financial stringency imposed on health authorities is having a serious adverse effect on patient care, as for example the proposed closure of Tadworth Court Hospital?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, the proposed transfer of patients from Tadworth to the St. Mary's Hospital at Carshalton, which has been referred to in the press recently, will of course have to come to Ministers for approval. Naturally, they will want to consider that matter very carefully. On the general question of resources for the health service, it is not true that we have reduced health service resources. On the contrary, we have significantly increased them.
Lord Molloy: My Lords, may I ask the Minister this question: Within the sphere of reorganisation, is he aware that the closing of Tadworth Court Hospital is causing great dismay and great perturbation not only within that particular area but, as the national press of this country has revealed, right throughout the nation? Therefore, does he not think it despicable that the Great Ormond Street Hospital should be played off against the Tadworth Court Hospital, and the choice is that one will be severely cut back or the other abolished? Is he not aware that within the field of cystic fibrosis—one of the most agonising complaints from which a child can suffer—Tadworth Court has done so much? May I plead with him to use his influence to get this decision stopped and allow Tadworth Court Hospital to proceed with the magnificent work that it is doing on behalf of a portion of the children who are so stricken but still are members of our nation?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, nobody will disagree with the noble Lord about the importance of the work being carried on at Tadworth Court. But the fact is that the facilities there are not being fully used. The proposal is to transfer those facilities to the St. Mary's Hospital at Carshalton. The noble Lord will be aware of that. The two hospitals, Great Ormond Street and Tadworth Court, are, as the noble Lord will know, operated by a single special health authority, and it is the proposal of that board—as it is called—that we shall have to consider.
Lord Beloff: My Lords, may I ask my noble friend whether, in looking at the resources, he will look at the position of those specialised hospitals which have to depend for their money on the districts while their patients may come from all over the country and indeed, in cases requiring special skill, from all over the world? It seems curious that this fact was overlooked when the new system was brought in. I am thinking particularly of a small London hospital such as St. Mark's, which has a world-wide reputation in a

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particular branch of surgery which the inhabitants of the district are unlikely frequently to need recourse to.
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, my noble friend puts his finger on an important point. One of the features of the so-called RAWP formula is to provide funds for things called "cross-boundary flows", which goes some way towards meeting the anxiety expressed by my noble friend. I agree that the RAWP formula may not work as efficiently as it should in this particular area, and that is certainly a matter we would want to keep under review. I certainly share my noble friend's admiration for St. Mark's, because that is another of the hospitals that I have visited recently.
Baroness Masham of Ilton: My Lords, may I ask the Minister whether he is aware that there is tremendous patient anxiety about the threatened closure of the breast cancer screening clinic at the Marsden Hospital? Would he please look into that? Also, does he realise that once these specialised services are run down they may never be run up again?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, I am aware of the anxiety which the noble Baroness refers to. Again, it is a case of achieving the best use of limited resources. It is not always wise to spread resources right across the country, in other words, to duplicate facilities all over the place and not achieve their full use anywhere. However, I am certainly aware of the anxiety that the noble Baroness refers to and, of course, that too will be carefully considered by Ministers before any decision is taken.
Lord Byers: My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord whether he will reconsider what he said about duplication? There is no question of duplication in the case of the Royal Marsden. There are only two other units in the country and this is going to be a source of grave anxiety to thousands of women.
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, nonetheless it is a case of using facilities to the best effect. There are other facilities which provide the services at the Royal Marsden, and naturally we need to be certain that they are all used to the best advantage. At the same time, of course, we need to take into account that it is not possible, for example, to have such facilities in one location only.
Lord Molloy: My Lords, may I ask the Minister, bearing in mind what he said about the—
The Lord Privy Seal (Baroness Young): My Lords, th noble Baroness, Lady Hylton-Foster, has risen to speak several times. Perhaps we should take her question next and then, I would suggest to the House, we might move on to the next Question.
Baroness Hylton-Foster: My Lords, would the Minister agree that the local health authorities should be encouraged to bear in mind that those patients who are still waiting for treatments and operations deserve some special consideration now so that their complaints are no longer aggravated by further delay?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, it is, I fear, the case that those who enter the waiting list as non-urgent may, if they have to wait a very long time, then become an urgent case. Then, of course, they are differently considered.

The Falklands: Protection Zone
3.24 p.m.
Lord Balfour of Inchrye: 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, in the light of the Argentine Government's refusal to accept that hostilities in the South Atlantic have ceased, what air and sea restrictions around the Falkland Isles and South Georgia continue to be maintained by our forces.
The Earl of Avon: My Lords, the protection zone of 150 nautical miles around the Falkland Islands remains in force. The Argentine Government were informed on 21st July that any Argentine warship or military aircraft entering this zone may be deemed to be hostile. The same applies to any Argentine forces approaching other British dependencies in the South Atlantic.
Lord Balfour of Inchrye: My Lords, can the Minister give us an assurance that, until the Argentine admits and recognises that hostilities have ceased in the South Atlantic, these sanctions will in no way be diminished or lifted?
The Earl of Avon: My Lords, it is indeed the intention of Her Majesty's Government to keep the protection zone of 150 nautical miles until there is a change of attitude on the part of the Argentine.
Lord Shinwell: My Lords, in view of the obdurate, stupid attitude of those who are responsible for administration in the Argentine, may I ask the Minister why the United Nations does not condemn the inaction of the junta? Is our representative at the United Nations always silent on these matters when they are raised? Surely this organisation, the United Nations, which so many people even in your Lordships' House depend upon, ought to show some action in a matter of this kind and condemn that gang in the Argentine?
The Earl of Avon: My Lords, of course I sympathise, as does the whole House, with the noble Lord, Lord Shinwell, and I will draw his remarks to the attention of my right honourable friend. The noble Lord will, of course, be aware that our representative at the United Nations has indeed been speaking up and saying that what the Argentines proposed was unacceptable.
Lord Bruce of Donington: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that the Argentinian junta, by its own communication to the political parties in Argentina, has already admitted that it itself is responsible for atrocities and oppression within its own country over

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the past years? Will therefore Her Majesty's Government review the whole question of their relationship with a Government which is even more oppressive than those whom many people on the other side of the House regard as the natural adversaries of the United Kingdom?
The Earl of Avon: My Lords, as I am sure the noble Lord is aware, we have no relationships with the Argentine Government at the moment and there is no prospect of an early restoration of diplomatic relations.

The Irish Republic: Rights of British Subjects
3.27p.m.
Lord Belhaven and Stenton: 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 progress has been made on the stated intention of the Government of the Irish Republic to allow British subjects resident in the republic to vote in parliamentary elections and whether this stated intention includes the granting of full rights of citizenship including immunity from the racial discrimination practiced by the Irish Land Commission.
Lord Belstead: My Lords, these are matters for the Irish authorities. But the Foreign Minister of the Republic of Ireland in a Written Answer in the Dail on 15th July said that his Government intended to proceed with legislation as quickly as possible. I am unable to comment on what provisions this legislation might contain. I am not aware of any discrimination by the Irish Land Commission against British subjects resident in the Republic.
Lord Belhaven and Stenton: My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that reply. Would he think that, in view of the campaign which is proceeding in certain quarters in this country to deprive very large numbers of Irish residents here of the vote, there is something that the proponents of this campaign have not thought through? The results of doing this would be rather deplorable. Would it not be a good idea if Her Majesty's Government pressed the Government in Dublin, whichever one it is to be, to get on with implementing their intention of giving British subjects the vote and of giving them the same treatment in Ireland as Irish people receive in this country?
Lord Belstead: My Lords, I entirely agree with my noble friend that the removal of the Irish vote in this country would not be something to be taken lightly. So far as the last part of my noble friend's question is concerned, the last three Governments of the Irish Republic have all expressed their intention to introduce legislation as soon as their parliamentary timetable allows. I think the last undertaking of this kind was by the Irish Foreign Minister, and of course that was before the general election was called. I think
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we have got to wait just a little longer to see whether that undertaking is fulfilled.
The Marquess of Sligo: My Lords, will the Minister say how many British citizens do in fact live in the Republic of Ireland? Can he also say whether he thinks that this query, at this time of difficulties between England and Ireland so far as the Government are concerned, is really rather unnecessary?
Lord Belstead: My Lords, again, I am most grateful to the noble Marquess for the last part of his question, which I am sure is right. I cannot answer the first part of the question as to how many British citizens there are in the Irish Republic who would be allowed to vote if legislation were passed; but I can say that the percentage of the electorate in Britain who are from Ireland and who vote is lower than would be the percentage of British subjects in Ireland if they had the vote there.
The Marquess of Sligo: My Lords, as there are under 3 million people, I can quite understand that.
Lord Belhaven and Stenton: My Lords, would my noble friend agree that my Question is a matter of principle, and that it would not matter if there was only one British subject resident in Ireland? The principle is the same.
Lord Belstead: My Lords, I entirely agree with that. But I was simply responding to the noble Marquess and trying to give him my figures. So far as the matter of principle is concerned, I think that the House will probably join with the Government in welcoming the fact that the Select Committee on Home Affairs in another place has chosen to make this subject part of its current inquiry into the Representation of the People Act 1949.

The Exchange Rate
Lord Kaldor: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question of which I have given Private Notice.
The Question is as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will make a Statement on the level of sterling and the Government's exchange rate policy.
Lord Denham: My Lords, with the leave of the House, my noble friend Lord Cockfield will answer this Question in the form of a Statement at approximately 4 p.m. My noble friend Lord Gowrie will then—again, with the leave of the House—repeat a Statement that is to be made in another place on employment statistics.

Representation of the People Bill [H.L.]
3.32 p.m.
The Lord Chancellor: My Lords, I beg to introduce a Bill to consolidate the Representation of the People Acts of 1949, 1969, 1977, 1978 and 1980, the Electoral Registers Acts of 1949 and 1953, the

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Elections (Welsh Forms) Act, 1964, Part III of the Local Government Act 1972, Sections 6 to 10 of the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1973, the Representation of the People (Armed Forces) Act 1976, the Returning Officers (Scotland) Act 1977, Section 3 of the Representation of the People Act 1981, Section 62 of and Schedule 2 to the Mental Health (Amendment) Act 1982 and connected provisions; and to repeal as obsolete the Representation of the People Act 1979 and other enactments related to the Representation of the People Acts. My Lords, I beg to move that the said Bill be now read a first time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read a first time.—(The Lord Chancellor.)
On Question, Bill read a first time, and to be printed.

Plant Varieties Bill [H.L.]
Lord Denham: My Lords, on behalf of my noble friend Lord Ferrers, I beg to introduce a Bill to amend the Plant Varieties and Seeds Act 1964. I beg to move that this Bill be now read a first time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read a first time.—(Lord Denham.)
On Question, Bill read a first time, and to be printed.

Dentists Bill [H.L.]
Lord Denham: My Lords, on behalf of my noble friend Lord Trefgarne, I beg to introduce a Bill to amend the Dentists Act 1957 and for connected purposes. I beg to move that this Bill be now read a first time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read a first time.—(Lord Denham.)
On Question, Bill read a first time, and to be printed.

Business of the House
Baroness Young: My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.
Moved, That Standing Order 34 and paragraphs 10 to 13 of the Rules for the Conduct of Short Debates set out in Appendix D to the Companion to the Standing Orders apply to the Motions in the names of the Lord Orr-Ewing and the Viscount Rochdale set down for debate on Tuesday the 23rd of November.—(Baroness-Young.)
Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede: My Lords, I wonder whether, in moving this Motion, the noble Baroness is satisfied that sufficient time will be given to the very important debate on the Hunt Report on cable television. I note that already 16 Lords have put down their names to speak in that debate, and I am sure that by Tuesday morning the number will be considerably greater than that.
Lord Shinwell: My Lords, may I ask, as. I have never noted my name included in any committee that has
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been appointed by your Lordships' House, although I have been here for 13 years or so, whether I would be in order in moving that any of those names mentioned here—
Several noble Lords: Next one!
Lord Shinwell: I beg your Lordships' pardon.
Baroness Young: My Lords, I quite understand the point that is being made by the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby. It might be helpful if I explain that, although the Business Motion stands in my name in the normal way, the Business for next Tuesday is not, in fact, Government Business. My noble friends on the Benches behind me have chosen to hold two short debates next Tuesday, and I certainly hope very much that the debate on cable television, which is in the name of my noble friend Lord Orr-Ewing, will be a successful one. If, however, the list of speakers grows substantially before next Tuesday, I am sure that my noble friends and the usual channels will consider the matter. In the meantime, in the light of what I have said, I suggest that it would be sensible to agree to this Motion.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

Procedure of the House
The Earl of Listowel: My Lords, on behalf of my noble friend the Chairman of Committees, I beg to move the first Motion standing in his name on the Order Paper.
Moved, That the Select Committee on Procedure of the House be appointed; and that, as proposed by the Committee of Selection, the Lords following, with the Chairman of Committees, be named of the Committee:—

Airedale. L.

Airey of Abingdon, B.

Ampthill, L.

Aylestone, L.

Brandon of Oakbrook, L.

Byers, L.

David, B.

Denham, L.

Cledwyn of Penrhos, L.

Ferrers, E.

Glenamara, L.

Hailsham of Saint Marylebone, L. (L. Chancellor)

Hill-Norton, L.

Hylton-Foster, B.

Irving of Dartford, L.

Kennet, L.

Maybray-King, L.

Mishcon, L.

Mowbray and Stourton, L.

Nugent of Guildford, L.

Ponsonby of Shulbrede, L.

Renton, L.

Rugby, L.

Skelmersdale, L.

Strabolgi, L.

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Underhill, L.

Wigoder, L.

Young, B. (L. Privy Seal)

—(The Earl of Listowel.)
Lord Shinwell: My Lords, I apologise for my precipitate action. I ought to have been a little more leisurely about the matter. Anyway, I have offered an apology. I have never noted my name, although I have been here for 13 or 14 years, included in any committee appointed by your Lordships' House. I have often wondered what is the reason. I can only assume that it is on grounds of age. On that assumption—it may be an ill-founded assumption, but perhaps not—I suggest that no name should be included in either this Motion or the following one, if the Peer is over 85 years of age. Would that be a reasonable Motion to move?
The Earl of Listowel: My Lords, I have noted carefully what my noble friend Lord Shinwell has suggested, and I will certainly draw the attention of my noble friend the Chairman of Committees to his observations.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

House of Lords Offices
The Earl of Listowel: My Lords, I beg to move the second Motion standing in the name of my noble friend the Chairman of Committees.
Moved, That the Select Committee on the House of Lords Offices be appointed and that as proposed by the Committee of Selection the Lords following, with the Chairman of Committees, be named of the Committee:—

Ampthill, L.

Ardwick, L.

Avon, E.

Beloff, L.

Bishopston, L.

Boyd-Carpenter, L.

Brandon of Oakbrook, L.

Byers, L.

Campbell of Croy, L.

Cathcart, E.

Cholmondeley, M.

Cledwyn of Penrhos, L.

Cullen of Ashbourne, L.

Darling of Hillsborough, L.

David, B.

Davies of Leek, L.

De La Warr, E.

Denham, L.

Diamond, L.

Donnet of Balgay, L.

Eccles, V.

Elton, L.

Evans of Claughton, L.

Ferrers, E.

Fisher of Rednal, B.

Grey, E.

Hailsham of Saint Marylebone, L. (L. Chancellor)

Hampton, L.

Hayter, L.

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Hill-Norton, L.

Hylton-Foster, B.

Ilchester, E.

Jacques, L.

Kennet, L.

Kimberley, E.

Kinnoull, E.

Listowel, E.

Lloyd of Hampstead, L.

Lovell-Davis, L.

Lucas of Chilworth, L.

Mar, C.

Molloy, L.

Mowbray and Stourton, L.

Nugent of Guildford, L.

Orr-Ewing, L.

Ponsonby of Shulbrede, L.

Rochester, Bp.

Sandys, L.

Seebohm, L.

Shackleton, L.

Sherfield, L.

Soames, L.

Strabolgi, L.

Stradbroke, E.

Trumpington, B.

Wells-Pestell, L.

White, B.

Wigoder, L.

Young, B. (L. Privy Seal)

—(The Earl of Listowel.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

Mobile Homes Bill [H.L.]
3.39 p.m.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of the Environment (Lord Bellwin): My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time. This Bill is concerned with the rights of people who own the mobile home in which they live and rent the pitch on which it is stationed from the owner of the site. There are about 150,000 people living in 70,000 mobile homes in England and Wales. Ninety per cent. of those homes are owner-occupied. In Scotland, to which the Bill also applies, there are 4,000 mobile homes, 75 per cent. of them owner-occupied. I shall refer throughout my speech to "mobile homes", rather than to "caravans", because that name better describes the modern and sophisticated homes in which most people concerned now live. Mobile homes are a small but significant source of housing and it is important that those who live in them should have statutory protection. I am glad to be able to say that this Bill will strengthen the protection which is available to them.
The Bill will replace Sections 1 to 6 of the Mobile Homes Act 1975. It is needed because of the way the 1975 Act itself works. The Act, which was introduced by my right honourable friend the Minister for Local Government and Environmental Services as a Private Member's Bill, established a system of agreements between owners of mobile home sites and mobile home residents. The Act required site owners to offer agreements to residents to last for at least five years, with the option of a further three—that is, eight years

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in all. The earliest agreements under the Act will begin to run out at the end of next year and legislation is needed now if those with agreements are not to lose the statutory protection which the Act provided for them.
The Bill which is before your Lordships now uses a system of agreements like the 1975 Act but it does not simply roll forward the provisions of the Act. In the first place, it will oblige site owners to offer new statutory agreements to all mobile home residents, not just those who have 1975 Act agreements—to all those on site at commencement and to those who come onto site subsequently. And the Bill contains several important differences from the 1975 Act.
First, the Bill puts the initiative to offer agreements firmly on site owners. Under the 1975 Act, a resident who came onto site after commencement had to take the initiative himself. He was obliged to notify the site owner in writing before coming onto site of his intention to occupy his mobile home as his only or main residence, in order to qualify for an agreement. With hindsight, it is perhaps not surprising that many residents have failed to meet this requirement, simply because they were unaware of it. The result is that they have not been offered an agreement under the Act. The Bill removes the requirement for advance notification. It imposes an absolute duty on site owners to offer statutory agreements to all residential occupiers.
Second, the Bill requires site owners to give residents, at the same time as they offer an agreement, a notice which we will prescribe by regulations. Our intention is that the notice will advise residents to think carefully before they decide whether to accept or refuse the agreement, to take legal advice and to read a booklet explaining the legislation which the Government will produce. The notice was not required by the 1975 Act and we believe that it can play a valuable part in enabling residents to find out what their rights are.
These first two points of difference between the Bill and the 1975 Act are very important. I have made the point that many residents failed to qualify for the offer of an agreement under the Act because they were unaware that they had to take the initiative in order to do so. In fact, only one-third of mobile home residents have 1975 Act agreements, largely because of ignorance. The low take-up of 1975 Act agreements I think demonstrates the value of the changes we are proposing in the Bill. I am glad to say that they have been warmly welcomed by the National Consumer Council, who take a considerable interest in mobile home matters.
It is not only in the procedures governing the offer of statutory agreements that the Bill improves upon the 1975 Act. The third major difference between the Bill and the Act concerns the security of tenure which it offers. Security of tenure is the most important benefit which agreements under the 1975 Act, and agreements under the Bill, provide for those who take them. I have said that the 1975 Act required site owners to offer agreements to last for five years, with an option for the resident to renew for a further three. The Bill will provide for agreements to last indefinitely, subject to the condition of the mobile home. The site owner will have an opportunity every
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five years to apply to the court, or to an arbitrator agreed by both parties, to terminate the agreement on the grounds that the mobile home will not last a further five years. The other procedures for termination of an agreement, by residents and by site owners, are substantially the same in the Bill as they were in the 1975 Act.
Fourth, the Bill applies to owner-occupied mobile homes on sites owned by local authorities, as the 1975 Act did not. In doing so, it follows the precedent set by the tenants' charter in the 1980 Housing Act. The tenants' charter gave local authority tenants of conventional housing many rights previously enjoyed only by private rented sector tenants. It does not seem right to us that mobile home residents on local authority sites should continue to be denied the rights enjoyed by residents on private sites. This Bill will put right that anomaly.
The final major difference between the Bill and the 1975 Act is primarily a drafting one but valuable for all that. The Bill makes absolutely clear that a resident can challenge any of the terms of the agreement that is offered to him in the courts or before an arbitrator if he finds them unacceptable. A resident can also go to court if the site owner fails to offer him an agreement within the required period—that is, within three months of the commencement of the Bill or within three months of granting a right to a new resident to come onto site. In either case, the court has the power to require the making of an agreement on terms that it considers just and equitable. I think it is fair to say that Parliament intended the 1975 Act to work in this way but that its drafting is a little unclear. The Bill will clarify the position.
It will also remove any doubt there may have been under the 1975 Act about the ability of an arbitrator to resolve disputes between site owners and residents. The arbitrator must be a person on whom both parties agree. If they cannot agree, both sides retain the right to take their dispute to the court. But if they do agree, arbitration may offer a cheaper and quicker alternative to court action. The decision of the arbitrator will be binding, as is that of the court.
The Government believe that these changes which the Bill proposes will significantly strengthen the rights of mobile home residents. At the same time, they will not impose an unreasonable burden on site owners. The last thing that we want to do is to legislate site owners out of business. That is the effect that the Rent Acts have had on landlords in privately rented housing and the people to suffer have been those looking for housing—the potential tenants. This Government will not be responsible for closing down mobile home sites in the way that the Rent Acts have closed down so much of the private rented sector.
We believe that this Bill does strike a reasonable balance in strengthening the protection for residents without at the same time removing the incentive for site owners to provide sites. The Bill has been prepared in the light of the response to a consultation paper we issued in February of this year.The consultation paper invited views both on whether new legislation was needed and on what form it should take. I am glad to be able to tell your Lordships that the response to the consultation paper was a good one. We received comments from several Members of both Houses of

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Parliament, from the national organisations representing site owners and residents, from nearly 100 individual residents, individual site owners and site-based resident associations. And a number of others less directly involved also responded, including the National Consumer Council, Age Concern, Shelter, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors and the local authority associations.
Support for the need for new legislation was almost unanimous among those who replied—among site owners and their representatives as well as among residents and their supporters. It will not surprise your Lordships to learn that there was a variety of views about the contents of new legislation. I will not claim that we have been able to reconcile all the different views in the Bill before us now; it would not have been possible to do so. I will say, however, that the Bill carries forward the wishes of many of those who responded. Most wanted to retain the system of agreements used in the 1975 Act and to improve it. This the Bill does. Most respondents wanted the initiative to offer agreements placed firmly on site owners. The Bill imposes an absolute duty on them to offer agreements. Most wanted agreements to provide more security of tenure than the eight years required by the 1975 Act—subject to the condition of the mobile home. The Bill provides for agreements to last indefinitely but allows site owners to apply to the court, or to an arbitrator, to terminate an agreement, at each five-year point during the life of the agreement, if he believes that the mobile home will not last another five years.
In these respects and in others we have sought to meet the proposals put to us in the very helpful responses we received on the consultation paper. There is, however, one aspect of the Bill on which we intend to invite further views. That is the question of the commission or discount which site owners may charge residents on the sale of their mobile home on site. The Bill carries forward the same procedures as the 1975 Act for the sale of a mobile home. Residents who have agreements will have the statutory right to sell their mobile home on site, and assign the agreement. The mobile home must first be offered to the site owner at a fair market price less discount. Where a mobile home is later sold to a third party, the site owner is entitled to a commission on the sale.
The Bill also shares with the 1975 Act a provision enabling the Secretary of State to prescribe by order the maximum level of commission or discount which a site owner may charge. Under the 1975 Act, the maximum level is fixed at 15 per cent. We have today issued a new consultation paper inviting further views on the level we should prescribe for agreements under the Bill. This subject was one that aroused a good deal of comment in the responses to our first consultation paper. It has also attracted a good deal of interest in the media—particularly in the Daily Star and on BBC radio's "Checkpoint" programme, although I should make the point that the worst excesses which the media have reported have arisen in cases where the residents did not have 1975 Act agreements—so that the legal maximum of 15 per cent. did not apply.
The Government have yet to take a final view on what the prescribed maximum should be. Today's
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consultation paper invites comments both on the arguments that have been put foward for and against the 15 per cent. level and on the level itself. We have placed copies of the paper in the Libraries of both Houses. It is our intention to lay an order prescribing the maximum level of commission and discount for agreements under the Bill as soon as the Bill achieves Royal Assent—to come into force on the same day as the Bill itself.
I have spent some time in my speech outlining the differences between the Mobile Homes Act 1975 and the Bill because I think that the most helpful way to consider the Bill is against the background of the Act. I hope, however, that it will also be useful to noble Lords if I run very briefly through the Bill clause by clause
Clause 1 imposes the duty upon site owners to offer agreements to all residential occupiers of mobile homes, both to those on site at commencement and to those who subsequently come onto site. The clause replaces Section 1 of the 1975 Act and, as I have said, removes the obligation in that section for new residents to notify a site owner in writing before coming onto site in order to qualify for an agreement. Clause 2 provides for the possibility of disputes arising over the offer of an agreement under Clause 1. The clause replaces Section 4 of the 1975 Act with, as I have said, clearer drafting.
Clause 3 provides for agreements under the Bill to be binding on any successor in title of the site owner and to be passed on to any member of the resident's family living with him at the time of his death. It replaces Section 5 of the 1975 Act with substantially the same effect. Clause 4 establishes the jurisdiction of the county court in England and Wales, the sheriff in Scotland. The effect of the definitions of "owner" 'and "protected site" in Clause 5 is to bring local authority owned sites within the scope of the Bill. Schedule 1 to the Bill is in two parts. Part I sets out in precise terms the terms with which an agreement must comply. Part II lists the matters which an agreement must cover. The schedule replaces Sections 2 and 3 of the 1975 Act.
That is what the Bill will do. But, before I close, I should also say a little about what the Bill will not do. The Bill applies to residents of mobile homes who own their home but rent the land on which it is stationed. It does not apply to people who rent their mobile homes nor to those who use mobile homes and caravans for holidays. Nor does the Bill affect two other pieces of legislation which apply to mobile home and caravan sites. It does not bear upon the Caravan Sites and Control of Development Act 1960, which empowers local authorities to license privately owned sites; nor upon the Caravan Sites Act 1968 which protects the residents of mobile homes and of caravans from harassment and illegal eviction, and which was introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, when he was a Member of another House, as a Private Member's Bill. The Bill is concerned solely with the subject matter of Sections 1 to 6 of the Mobile Homes Act 1975; that is with the agreements between site owners and residents.
I hope I have made clear that this Bill will strengthen the position of mobile home residents in a number of important ways. At the same time, the Bill does not

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place excessive restrictions on site owners. I have no doubt that many site owners already do what the Bill will tell them to do. The relations between site owners and residents on most sites are very good. I make no apology for imposing additional duties on bad site owners. But I believe that the Bill does strike a good balance between residents and site owners and that it will enable the industry to develop in a healthy way for the future. I commend the Bill to your Lordships, and I beg to move.
Moved, That the Bill be now read a second time.—(Lord Bell win.)
Lord Leatherland: My Lords, before the noble Lord the Minister sits down, I wonder whether he would clear up a little point of interpretation. We often see at camps where these vehicles are parked that some of them have had the wheels removed. In that condition, do they still come under this Bill under the guise of mobile homes?
Lord Bellwin: My Lords, I wonder if the noble Lord, Lord Leatherland, would allow me to cover this point when I respond to the debate as a whole. I believe there are a number of other points which your Lordships may wish to put and I would like to come to them together if the noble Lord will permit.
3.57 p.m.
Lord Bishopston: My Lords, the House will be grateful to the noble Lord the Minister for outlining the purpose of this Bill in commendable detail. We are grateful to him for outlining also the provisions that the Government have introduced in this measure to deal with what I am sure we all feel to be a pressing and urgent problem. The Minister has provided the House with information about existing legislation, which will be seen to have grown piecemeal over a period of many years, with successive Governments attempting to deal with the problems and attempting also to prevent evasion of the legislation in order to reduce if not eliminate injustices and exploitation.
The noble Lord the Minister has very commendably detailed the causes of the Bill and I do not want to repeat them, except to say something about aspects where we believe there should be some further amendment. The House will appreciate that not only Governments but also private Members have dealt with legislation. I notice in the list of speakers today the name of the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, who has made his contribution, and indeed there are others who are to speak who have also shown interest in various ways.
The Bill will be welcomed for its objectives and for attempting to be fair to all concerned, but there is a fear that it does not go far enough in some ways: either in extending the rights of mobile home residents or in securing adequate security and preventing exploitation or evasion of the rules, and these are important matters. I am sure that many of your Lordships will have visited mobile home sites. Many are idyllic and almost heavenly. Of course, we do not know what heaven is like, yet, but we do know that what appears to be heavenly can be hell if the relationships between the people who live there are far from harmonious. The Good Book is a sure guide to the prospects of
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enjoying a harmony in heaven, but those who live in mobile homes will have to depend for their harmony on this Bill, as well as having some regard to the advice of the Good Book. In any case, I am sure your Lordships will agree that getting on with the site owner will be all important.
Now is the time and the opportunity not only to make a review of existing legislation but to ensure that it is thorough. The chance to review legislation again may not occur for a long time, and many thousands of people in the meantime will suffer grave injustice, insecurity and considerable worry if we do not do our job properly. It may be timely to make a few points to get the picture straight. The term "mobile homes" should not make us think that those who live in them need no more protection than those who live in caravans for a few weeks of the year. The sites which many occupy have permanence with the necessary planning consents, and often they have the features of small bungalows. I think it is very important to regard them as being homes in the proper sense of the word.
Much will be said during the passage of this Bill about site owners and others on whom the mobile home residents rely not only for provision of the site but also for essential services, amenities and a harmonious environment. I am sure that good site owners will welcome this clarification which the Bill can give and welcome any action to reduce friction caused by uncertainty about rights and responsibilities on both sides.
Let us not forget that the role of local authorities in all this is important. Anything we can do to bring harmony in the relationships of all concerned will be welcome, because mobile homes do provide, as the Minister has said, a not insignificant sector of housing stock. Therefore, this review is long overdue and we must ensure that all occupiers nationwide have equally just conditions notwithstanding the form of housing in which they may happen to live. Speaking of local authorities, one most important consideration in this Bill should be the role of local authorities, because legislation which is weak on enforcement is weak indeed. Local authorities are involved in planning and other aspects and should be in close touch with the problems of site owners and residents. Local democracy should demand that both the pitch owners and the residents can go to their local councillors and to the council to sort out some of the problems where the local authority has defined responsibility.
We all know that there have been considerable cuts in local spending and in local services. It is no good for Parliament to pass legislation putting certain tasks at the door of local councils who, because of Government policy, have been forced to reduce spending and their services. If we can clarify the rights and responsibilities of not only site owners and residents but local authorities also, we ought to ensure as well the means by which those duties can be carried out, or the legislation is ineffective and the continuing injustice widespread.
I note that in the Explanatory Memorandum we are told with regard to the effect on local authority manpower that the increase will be very minor, whatever that may mean. I am wondering if, in winding up, the Minister can tell us what is meant by "a very minor increase". Can we be told the difference

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between "minor" and "very minor"? Very minor can mean small, or even infinitesimally small, increases. What does it mean? Can the noble Lord tell us whether there will be adequate resources for local councils to carry out the responsibilities which this Act may place upon them? If the increase in manpower is very minor it may almost amount to a slight decrease, because there is such a fine dividing line between one aspect and the other.
The other point which I think is important is the matter of knowing one's rights. I am very glad to hear that the Minister has placed certain information in the Library, and that information will be available to the wider public about the Bill and what it seeks to achieve. I am sure a word of commendation must go to the Government for the very substantial consultation they have afforded many organisations and individuals in coming to a conclusion as to what should be in this measure.
It may be thought, wrongly I think, that, as the acquisition of a mobile home is comparable to the buying and siting of a caravan, no greater legal safeguards are necessary. I suggest that, as many mobile homes are like small bungalows and other forms of conventional housing, a solicitor might be employed to carry out searches and make inquiries. I think the case for this kind of thing is just as great in either circumstance, and what matters is the extent of the purchase and the investment being made. Due to the inadequacy of past legislation it seems even more necessary for people to seek legal advice, especially if recourse to the courts, which can be costly and time-consuming, is to be avoided. If the legal aspects are to be as watertight as possible the role of the local authority in some aspects of supervision may suffice, but clearly the more information people have about their rights the better for all concerned.
Although it would appear that the number of people who live in mobile homes represents only a small proportion of the population, there is no doubt that occupiers have faced, and continue to endure, a multitude of problems; have very little protection and enjoy (if that is the word) inadequate rights. The aim of the Bill must be to give them the kind of security protection enjoyed by those who occupy and own the more traditional kinds of accommodation. I believe the Bill falls short of that and must be strengthened.
The definition in the Mobile Homes Act 1975 covers those who are mobile home residents, who own their mobile home and rent the pitch from a licensed private site owner. The Minister has already mentioned the extent to which mobile homes satisfy housing needs; I think he mentioned a figure of 150,000 living in such homes. He has already referred to the fact that the Department of the Environment has issued a consultation paper, on 4th February last, and there has been a very good response to the request for views.
Clearly the terrible housing situation, which has grown much worse in recent years with the lessening stock of council houses, the mounting deterioration of existing houses and the high cost of new housing and mortgages, has led many to look to mobile homes as a way out of their difficulties. Many of them fall into the grip of site owners, some of whom have given
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sometimes desperate people what has been termed scandalous treatment. Living in such conditions is like living in a prison camp, if no alternative place is available, if you have nowhere else to go and if the conditions cannot be improved. As I said earlier, I think we ought to get the situation in perspective; this certainly does not apply to all sites, and in fact there are many good site owners, many happy sites where people live in harmony.
It is the job of the House and Parliament to close the loopholes to see that the high standards enjoyed by some may spread to the many. Although many mobile home owners are not really mobile at all, they have none of the security of those who live in equally immobile accommodation. They do not own the land on which they are pitched and often have the insecurity of caravan dwellers, who of course can be expected to move on. It is the young people who want to set up home after their marriage who may find later that they need larger and more permanent accommodation with more facilities when starting a family, and want to move on. There is the problem of those who want to leave a site and go elsewhere. They may not have a place on which to place their mobile home if they move it, and if it is left to be sold to the site owner then, of course, he dictates what price is going to be paid. Similarly, of course, these problems also apply to the elderly, who if they fall ill or want more adequate accommodation face the same situation.
Apart from the large percentage of mobile home residents who own their home and want to rent the site, there are, as I think the Minister mentioned, 10 or 15 per cent. who rent both the home and the site and have very limited protection under the Caravan Sites Act 1968, which is far less than the Rent Act 1977 protection available to other occupiers. So both owners and renters of mobile homes have little or no security or protection, and often they are affected by the site operator, who, living nearby, can seriously harass them day and night, making their life a nightmare if things do not go well. So full protection under the 1975 Act can come only with an agreement with the site owner. As I have said, only one-third of the mobile home owners enter into agreements; and I believe the Minister has given that figure as well. So, really, if more people are not covered, then the injustices remain—and this is a factor which should be looked at when we reach the later stages. The need, therefore, is to protect not only future residents but also those who have endured the injustices and the insecurity of the present system for many years.
The problems which residents face include the fixing of reasonable rents, the need for adequate notice before rents are raised, proper consultation facilities and the right to go to an arbitrator to fix a fair market rent or some other agreed amount. Of course, legal costs are also a problem, and many seek to avoid these, only to get what they think are cheaper standard or printed agreements but for which there may be an even higher charge. Of course, the foregoing depends on the residents knowing who the site owner is, and who to go to with complaints. The seemingly final arbitrator of complaints and grievances, the county court, does not always produce satisfaction, and the local authority may not always be able to deal with matters which may appear to be the concern of private

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actions. The mobile home resident therefore often feels powerless in the face of exploiting site owners who use harassment to get the resident to submit to unreasonable demands. These are aspects which I think should be looked at during the passage of this Bill.
Perhaps I may summarise some of the points which I think might be considered at later stages—and I am grateful to the National Consumer Council for putting forward some of them. The Bill does not deal explicitly with the bringing of rented mobile homes within the provisions of the 1977 Rent Act; with the banning of premiums on the grant, renewal or assignment of statutory agreements; with restricting other charges connected with statutory agreements—for example, excessive charges for agreements and, indeed, for services and other things—and with the inability of the personal representatives of a deceased occupier to transfer a statutory agreement along with the home itself where it passes under the will to a non-occupier. I believe the Minister has said that the mobile home can only be passed on to members of the family or those resident in the building.
Then there is need to give the occupier rights to information such as were suggested in the DoE report of 1977. There must be information about planning permission; a summary of audited accounts (or copies of payments and receipts); a signed copy of site rules; and notices of change of site ownership and of proposals to sell the site. Surely those who live in the area and are partners on the site have a right to this information; and, of course, there must be an acceptance of reasonable rules.
The matter we are dealing with has been one of widespread and growing concern to many, and, as I say, I feel sure we are indebted to the many bodies who know from experience the problems which have to be dealt with and overcome. Numerous associations have been in touch with us all—and also, of course, with the Government, who initiated the consultation procedures—and I believe that the advice we have had must be heeded before the Bill gets to its final stages. I am sure we all appreciate the efforts of all these organisations and the help given to parliamentarians and the Government in taking a comprehensive view and in seeking to enact adequate legislation in the interests of all concerned.
Finally, let us bear in mind that we are not merely talking about mobile homes. They are houses which provide homes where the young people living in them can expect to fulfil their hopes, where the elderly can enjoy their memories and where all may have the right to expect, whether site owners or residents, to live in harmony. To bring about that desirable situation is our duty. I do not think it is going to be easy, but I am sure we shall all do our best to achieve it.

The Exchange Rate
4.4 p.m.
The Secretary of State for Trade (Lord Cockfield): My Lords, with the leave of the House, I will now answer the Private Notice Question asked earlier this afternoon by the noble Lord, Lord Kaldor.
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My Lords, the movements of the sterling exchange rate in the markets this week have been fully reported. Successive Governments have made it their practice not to make statements about the level of the exchange rate. I do not intend to depart from that practice.
There are, however, two points that should be made. First, the noble Lord asked about exchange rate policy. Let me assure him, and the House, that there has been no change in the policy of this Government, which has continued to be that the exchange rate should reflect market forces. Secondly, let me similarly assure him that the Government are determined to maintain firm monetary conditions conducive to success in the fight against inflation. We back that up by determined control of public expenditure, and by reducing public borrowing as a share of national output. As my right honourable and learned friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer made clear in another place, we shall maintain these policies.
Lord Kaldor: My Lords, I am sure all noble Lords will be grateful to the noble Lord for giving us his Answer to the Private Notice Question which I asked earlier. Nevertheless, I should be grateful if the noble Lord would supplement that Answer in at least two respects. The first is whether he would agree that, as the current exchange rate is still very much higher, in terms of relative cost per unit of output between British and foreign manufacturers, than it was in the 1970s or in any earlier period, any downward movement of the exchange rate should have a helpful effect on industrial recovery even though it may delay the pace of reduction in the rate of inflation.
Secondly, in the light of this, the House would be glad to have the noble Lord's assurance that the Government will not allow speculative forces in the foreign exchange market to deflect them from their declared policy to bring down interest rates as fast as economic and monetary conditions permit.
Lord Cockfield: My Lords, as I have said, the exchange rate is determined by market forces; it is not in fact determined by the Government at all. So far as the level of costs in the United Kingdom is concerned, there is a heavy responsibility on both sides of industry to ensure that costs are kept down as far as possible. That is the best way to meet competition from other countries. So far as a depreciation in the value of the pound is concerned, that may have an immediate effect on export prices and prospects, but it equally has effects in the opposite direction. The important thing is to ensure that we restrain increases in our own cost levels, and these are matters within our own control.
The Government will continue to follow a strict financial and monetary policy. That, of course, is really the answer to the noble Lord's second question: that, so far as interest rates are concerned, these are very largely influenced by financial and monetary policy. We shall continue to maintain a strict policy on both these fronts, and that is the best prospect for a continued reduction in rates of interest.
Lord Tanlaw: My Lords, we are grateful to the noble Lord for answering this Private Notice Question. From these Benches, we should like to ask two questions. As Government policy is attempting to

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reflect market forces, will the noble Lord give an undertaking that the Government's policy will do something about those forces when they become too sudden or too violent, as they may have been in these last two days? Secondly, would the noble Lord perhaps now reconsider British entry into the European monetary system, now that the pound sterling is at a more reasonable rate, when this would be more acceptable?
Thirdly, can the noble Lord indicate that, although this is beneficial to many parts of industry, there is one sector of industry where the fall in the value of the pound sterling is particularly non-beneficial—namely, the United Kingdom oil producers and, in particular, Britoil? Will he perhaps, even at this late hour, reconsider the possibility of postponing the launch of Britoil in view of the recent fall in sterling which must, in effect, alter its figures and projections?
Lord Cockfield: My Lords, the noble Lord asked whether the Government would do something about market forces if they produced large movements in the exchange rate. The short answer is, first, that the fall that has occurred is, in fact, a moderate fall; it is a fall of approximately 4 per cent. in the last week. What has drawn so much attention to it is the suddenness with which the fall has occurred. The position is that over the last 12 months the effective value of the pound has fluctuated between about 87 and 93, and the pound is still within that broad band.
As regards the noble Lord's second question, namely, membership of the EMS, the answer is that we are members of the ÈMS. What we are not members of is the Exchange Rate Mechanism. This is a very technical issue. We do, of course, keep it under constant review, but we have not felt that the time is right for our entry into the Exchange Rate Mechanism. Indeed, the substantial movements which have occurred in other currencies during the last few months indicate the difficulties to which membership of the Exchange Rate Mechanism gives rise.
As regards the noble Lord's final question, there is no question of reconsidering the launch of Britoil, which I am sure we all hope will go off very well indeed. In fact, oil prices are set in terms of dollars and not in terms of pounds at all.
Lord Bruce of Donington: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that his statement that the Government have no exchange rate policy is merely an expression of present ambiguity rather than of past history? Is he further aware that in point of fact from the latter part of 1979 it has been the Government's policy deliberately to drive up the rate of exchange by their extremely abrupt rise in the interest rates—indeed, so much so that the noble Lord's right honourable friend the Prime Minister was six months thereafter boasting of the high exchange rate, that the pound could look the dollar and every other currency in the face?
Will the noble Lord also bear in mind that his observations about the lower rate of exchange now having a corresponding effect on imports, are not precisely accurate in the sense that only about 12 per cent.—excluding food—of the country's imports come from the import of raw materials, and that the remain-
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der of the imports, which have been grossly accentuated in terms of import penetration by the Government's policies, is in respect of manufactured goods? Moreover, this will in fact bring a very welcome respite to the manufacturing industries in this country that have been progressively destroyed by this Government's policy and undermined by the exchange rate policy that they have in the past deliberately adopted.
Will the noble Lord answer a further question as to what effect he anticipates the existing rate of exchange—if it is maintained at its low level—is likely to have on the interest rates which, contrary to his observation and assertion, are, of course, fundamentally dependent upon Government policy?
Lord Cockfield: My Lords, I am happy to assure the noble Lord once again that I do not agree with any of his theories on this particular subject. The position is that the Government do not determine the exchange rate: it is determined by market forces. That was so when the pound rose steeply in value in 1980, and it is now the position when the pound has fallen modestly in value. The fact that market forces can result in a movement of the pound in either direction demonstrates clearly that what I say (that the value is determined by market forces) is entirely correct.
The noble Lord then embarked upon the question of the effect of a lower rate of exchange on the economy. I had hesitated to embark upon a long dissertation on this particular subject. This was not because I was unwilling to do so, but because I felt that it was going a little wide of the original Question. The point I was making was that although a fall in the exchange value does appear to have and, indeed, does have, a beneficial effect on exports—although if we are dealing with a 4 per cent. fall the effect is equally modest—it also sets in train other forces which may cancel out that benefit. I was not attempting, and do not attempt now, to make any assessment of what the resulting effect of those varying forces will be.
Thirdly, the noble Lord asked me what effect we anticipate there will be on interest rates. There are a whole variety of factors which go into the determination of interest rates. One of the most important of all is the Government's own financial policy and the level of their borrowing requirements. As the noble Lord will be aware, for the first time since 1977 the planned public expenditure for next year shows no increase as a result of the autumn review. This indicates that we are continuing to keep a tight grip on the level of Government expenditure. Secondly, we are continuing with our policy of reducing borrowing as a proportion of the gross national product, and that is another force which will help to keep interest rates down.
Lord Balogh: My Lords, does the noble Lord not consider that market forces cannot be invoked? Market forces, in one rhetoric of the Government, represent long-term market forces which optimise production and consumption et cetera. There are also market forces which are not of that type, and we are confronted with that type of market forces. However, we saw that the pound fell in 1976 to 1·56 dollars; it then rose to almost 2·40 dollars, and it is now back at 1·60 dollars. In the meantime, what has happened? I

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am able to talk about market forces in the sense that adjustment ought to be made on the basis of those forces—
Lord Denham: My Lords, I wonder whether the noble Lord would put his point in question form?
Lord Balogh: My Lords, as a matter of fact I did so; but if your Lordships wish to hear it a second time, I am perfectly happy to ask any type of question which you cannot answer. Walrusian market forces are not at all easy to neglect. We are in a situation in which the behaviour of the Government has been extraordinary. Not to have accumulated a large stock of reserves, but to let the pound rise, is such a scandalous thing that it is either wickedness or stupidity; I opt for stupidity.
Lord Cockfield: My Lords, numerous explanations have been given by the commentators for the present movement in the exchange rate of the pound. The noble Lord has added his own explanation. As we believe that the value of the pound is determined by market values, we listened to the noble Lord's dissertation, but it does not follow that we agree with it. The Government propose to continue with the strict financial and monetary policy which we have followed hitherto.
Lord Kaldor: My Lords, I should like to ask the noble Lord for a simple interpretation of his remarks; whether he interprets the term "market forces" so narrowly as to rule out any intervention in the foreign exchange market by the Bank of England or the exchange equalisation account.
Lord Cockfield: My Lords, by "market forces" I mean the well-known forces of supply and demand. I was unaware that that was a controversial statement. As regards the policy of the Bank of England, what in fact the Bank does is no more than to smooth out sharp movements which occur in the exchange rate over short periods of time.
Lord Hankey: My Lords, while welcoming greatly what the Government have said, may I ask whether they share the hope of a great many people, that by market forces interest rates can be kept at the low rates which now appertain, and will not receive encouragement to rise unless it is absolutely unavoidable; and that the Government will continue to encourage the Americans to keep their rates low, since in the past they have tended to drag up our rates?—because low rates of interest are vital to the recovery of our industries.
Lord Cockfield: My Lords, I entirely appreciate the points made by the noble Lord. It is not possible, and certainly not our practice, to attempt to forecast the movement of interest rates. There are many factors which enter into this particular equation, including, as the noble Lord so rightly says, the movement of interest rates in the United States of America. What we do is to exercise proper control in the field which, in fact is under our own control, namely, that of our own financial and monetary policy.

Unemployment Statistics
4.33 p.m.
The Minister of State, Northern Ireland Office (The Earl of Gowrie): My Lords, it may be for the convenience of the House if I now repeat a Statement on unemployment statistics, which has been made in another place by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Employment. My right honourable friend's Statement is as follows:
"With permission, Mr. Speaker, I wish to make a Statement about the unemployment statistics.
"In March 1981 a scrutiny under the auspices of Sir Derek Rayner, on the payment of benefit to unemployed people, recommended that registration at Job Centres by unemployed people claiming benefit should become voluntary, since it was not an effective test of availability for work and abolition would benefit both job seekers and the employment service. Acceptance of that recommendation was announced in July last year and it came into effect on 18th of last month. Job Centres can now cut out wasteful procedures and concentrate on their main task of matching jobs and job seekers. Unemployed job seekers who can find work for themselves are no longer compelled to visit Job Centres. Claimants need visit only the benefit office, where a test of availability for work now takes place. This simplification of procedure will lead to savings of 1,350 staff and £10 million a year.
"As a consequence of voluntary registration, the records of people registering at Job Centres are no longer a valid basis for the unemployment statistics. Because of this, the unemployment count has been transferred to benefit offices and based on the records of claimants, which are held mainly on computers. This change was explained in the Employment Gazette in April last year. Attention was again drawn to the forthcoming change in a reply to a Parliamentary Question on 29th July this year and a further article appeared in the Employment Gazette in September.
"The figures for November will be published on the new basis. To enable a fair comparison of past and future unemployment figures, I am today publishing figures on the new basis for the past year. An explanatory note is available in the Vote Office.
"The new figures are more accurate. They give a more up-to-date picture on the day of the count. And, instead of depending on costly manual counts in hundreds of offices throughout the country, they will be based on carefully tested and working computerised systems.
"Although the new totals differ from those which the old system produced, the trend in unemployment shown by the new figures is no less reliable. In the new totals, severely disabled people who were formerly excluded are now included. On the other hand, a count of people who register at Job Centres but who do not claim benefit is no longer possible, and they are not included. Finally, the count is reduced because the use of the benefit computer records removes far more of the people who find jobs in the period immediately before the day of the count. Under the manual system, these could have been recorded as unemployed for up to a fortnight or more after they had started work.

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"Over the past year, the reduction between the new count and the old would have varied from month to month. It would generally have been between 170,000 and 190,000. In October, the difference was exceptionally large at 246,000. Nearly half the difference is the result of the more accurate count which in October removed about 100,000 people who were no longer unemployed. To ensure a fair picture, there will be a special count in the summer of new school-leavers who are not yet entitled to benefit.
"The new figures do not make the problem of unemployment any less serious. They do give more accurate and less expensive statistics."
My Lords, that ends my right honourable friend's Statement.
Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: My Lords, we are grateful to the noble Earl for repeating the Statement. Unemployment statistics are important and sensitive matters at all times, but especially so now when unemployment levels are terrifyingly high. The new method and coverage of presenting the figures will need to be studied very carefully and we shall no doubt have to return to them in debate in due course.
In the Statement the Minister claims that the new figures will be more accurate. We have all noted the Rayner Report, but will not the new method of voluntary registration at Job Centres and the transfer of the unemployment count to benefit offices have the effect of reducing the unemployment figure and the percentage, thus giving a far more favourable picture than is actually the case? A figure of over 100,000 has been mentioned by some commentators. Can the noble Earl say what is the current percentage figure on the old basis as compared with the new basis? That will give the House some guidance as to what the new method will produce.
In his Statement the Minister gives details of savings in staff and money. Can he say how many Job Centres will be closed in the country as a result of this proposal? Will not these closures increase the difficulties of the unemployed who wish to register voluntarily? I understand that the date of publication of unemployment figures is to be nine days later than it was under the old dispensation. Can the noble Earl explain why this is and what advantages will flow from it?
Lord Rochester: My Lords, from these Benches I should like to join in thanking the noble Earl for having repeated this Statement. We realised, of course, that there would be changes in the way in which unemployment statistics were compiled following the Government's earlier acceptance of the recommendation of Sir Derek Rayner that registration at Job Centres should become voluntary, with a consequent saving both of money and of staff. Are the Government satisfied that the greatly reduced staff in Job Centres will be sufficient to give the increasing number of long-term unemployed who may seek their guidance adequate counselling? We are, of course, glad that, to enable a fair comparison to be made of past and future unemployment, figures are today being published on the new basis covering the past year.
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The Statement refers to school-leavers. I think it is generally agreed that along with the long-term unemployed their plight merits the closest attention. May we be assured that under the new method of compiling statistics it will be immediately apparent how many of them are taking part in initiatives designed to help them, such as the youth training scheme and the community programme? Finally, we of course welcome the Government's explicit acknowledgement at the end of the Statement that the new figures make the problem of unemployment no less serious than it undoubtedly is today.
4.41 p.m.
The Earl of Cowrie: My Lords, I am grateful for the response of the two noble Lords. May I start by saying to the noble Lord the Leader of the Opposition that. no, we did not introduce voluntary registration precisely to bring the figures down. I think I could possibly emphasise that with some authority because I was the sponsoring Minister when this decision was taken, and as a spokesman from those Benches in opposition I also urged upon the then Government, of which the noble Lord was a distinguished member, that we should alter our ways of looking at unemployment statistics.
The Rayner scrutiny recommended making registration voluntary, as I have already explained, on the grounds that the existing procedure was wasteful of time and ineffective, and that voluntary registration would improve the efficiency of the employment service as well as achieving staff savings. We are not talking about very significant differences in figures. It is within one percentile point. To answer the noble Lord's question, the old figure would give 13·8 per cent. and the new 13·1 per cent. I have no information that there are closures of Job Centres at present. Job Centres are to some degree market orientated, and obviously therefore are affected, but not by changes in statistical measurements.
May I say to the noble Lord, Lord Rochester, that I was glad that he emphasised, as the debate the other day emphasised and as the Select Committee of your Lordships' House on unemployment emphasised, that the very severe problem remains most severe in respect of the long-term unemployed and the school-leavers. When we are considering issues of unemployment those figures are, in my view, the ones on which we ought to concentrate. They are much too high. They give considerable anxiety, but they are not of course in the 3 million mark. The latter figure is subject to the ebbs and flows of people's movements on and off registration, and it is the latter figure, the less critical one in my view, that will be affected by these changes.
Lord Kaldor: My Lords, may I ask the noble Earl for clarification of his original remarks on one point? If I understood him rightly he said that, while the new figures are compiled on a different basis and generally give somewhat lower figures absolutely than the old figures, their movements will be very much the same. In other words, the new figures will reflect an increased or decreased incidence in unemployment in much the same way as the old figures. Is this consistent with the statement that the basis of the new figures is the receipt of unemployment benefit? Is it not true that

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unemployment benefit runs out after a time, so that with the passage of time there will be more and more unemployed who will not be caught, so to speak, or registered by the new figures, simply because they are no longer able to claim benefit? That would introduce a systematic factor that tends to enlarge the differences between the new figures and the old figures.
The Earl of Gowrie: My Lords, this is not the case because the unemployment benefit offices act as the agents for the Department of Health and Social Security in respect of supplementary benefit. Therefore, the effects that the noble Lord has been anxious about do not obtain.
Lord Kilmarnock: My Lords, we on this Bench would also like to thank the noble Earl for repeating that Statement. I should like to ask the noble Earl two or three questions. Have the Government taken on board the recommendation of the committee of your Lordships' House that registration should be voluntary only for the first month and thereafter become compulsory? Have they given any consideration to our paragraphs 14.30 and 14.45, in which we recommended that voluntary registration should not lead to staff cuts, for some of the reasons advanced by the noble Lord, Lord Rochester?
Finally, I have noticed in paragraph 32 of the Government's response to the unemployment committee that they agreed that the Manpower Services Commission should retain 250 more staff than would otherwise have been allocated, to assist the long-term unemployed. I should like to ask how that figure of 250 relates to the planned cuts of 1,350? In other words, had it not been for this 250 would the staff cut have been 1,600, or in fact is the effective staff cut planned to be 1,100?
The Earl of Gowrie: My Lords, I cannot answer the noble Lord's last question off the cuff, but my suspicion, based on my recollection of my time as an employment Minister, is that the addition would be within the saving, but I will check and find out and notify the noble Lord. We have indeed attended to the Select Committee's report, but in this instance the Rayner scrutiny was designed to cut out wasteful procedures and save money and make life more efficient. It also seemed to us wrong that claimants should be compelled to visit Job Centres, which in many parts of the country was often a wasteful proceeding, and therefore the point that the noble Lord is raising is not, with great respect to him, relevant to this particular procedure, though of course procedures to try to improve the match of jobs to job seekers are very important in another context. In that other context I am glad to say that vacancies in Job Centres are substantially up on last year, and though of course the demand for jobs greatly and sadly exceeds supply the trend is broadly in a better direction.
Baroness Seear: My Lords, may I ask the noble Earl what provision, if any, is being made to reinforce the staffs in the benefit offices since they will now be the only people who automatically have contact with the unemployed, as the unemployed are no longer required to register at the Job Centres? Seeing
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someone to pay benefit is a different matter from giving them the encouragement, counselling, whatever you like to call it, which will urge them and help them to get back into employment, which was what was given at the Job Centres at their best, and what on the Select Committee we were hoping would continue to be given to people who would under our recommendation have gone to Job Centres after a month. Merely calling to get benefit, unless it is accompanied by some action to help people into jobs, is not going to be very productive.
The Earl of Gowrie: My Lords, I do not see that the noble Baroness need have any difficulties in this respect. As she knows, the overwhelming number of those people who are unemployed wish for employment; Job Centres are prominent in pretty well every town in the land and are perfectly available to people who want to go to them. We simply are not convinced that they should be compelled to do so at great cost to the public purse and, if I may say so, with a certain amount of disrespect to them. It seems to me foolish to compel people to go to a Job Centre when they are perfectly able to do so—indeed, the Job Centres are made considerable use of, as the noble Baroness knows.
Lord Balogh: My Lords, does the Minister realise that we have examples and therefore do not have to rely on theories? When unemployment benefit was withdrawn from married women, there was a distinct fall in the figures, and I am sure the Government knew very well that that would be the case. It is also reinforced by the situation in America. I think the whole thing can only be characterised as cooking the books.
The Earl of Gowrie: The noble Lord has something of a reputation for making statements in this House which are both offensive and inaccurate, my Lords, and I am afraid this is one of them.

Mobile Homes Bill [H.L.]
4.51 p.m.
Second Reading debate resumed.
Lord Avebury: My Lords, I too wish to give a partial welcome to the Bill and in particular to some of the points outlined by the Minister in his introductory remarks. We certainly like the extension of the protection of sites of local authorities, the obligation on owners to offer agreements to all residents, the fact that the initiative must be taken by the owner and not the occupier and the prescribing of a notice by regulation which will inform residents of many of the rights they may not have known about in the past.
I first became involved in the question of mobile home residents about 21 years ago when I was a councillor for a ward in which there was a mobile home the ownership of which was transferred from an extremely good landlord to somebody who I can only describe as a villain and a shark who generated a great deal of anguish among the residents, who obviously, in the first instance, came to me as their councillor. At that time I was powerless to assist them with their

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complaints of harassment and evictions. I found that their situation, and that of other people on mobile home sites throughout the country, was precarious in the extreme because they had absolutely no protection at that time against unscrupulous site operators.
Then, in 1965, in the proceedings on the Rent Bill, I sought to argue that mobile home dwellers should be treated under the law at least as well as tenants—that they should have the same protection from eviction, that charges on sites should be regulated, and in particular I suggested that key money or premiums for the grant or renewal of agreements to occupy a pitch on a site should be made illegal. In case anybody wishes to look it up, those proceedings on the Rent Bill were in Standing Committee in 1965 at column 986.
It was appreciated by the Government of the day that abuses were occurring, but, as often happens with the efforts of private Members, they criticised the drafting—I confess that it was probably defective—and they said at that time that it was unlikely they would be able to provide any parliamentary time for legislation. Then, in 1968, I was fortunate enough to draw a place in the ballot for private Members' Bills and I introduced what was an extremely modest proposal for the protection of mobile home owners against eviction.
However, the problem still remains that if a site operator goes through the correct procedure of notifying a resident and obtaining an order in the court, the best the resident can hope for is some delay in the granting of the order. The site operator does not have to state his grounds for wanting possession or satisfy the court that he has met any criteria, apart from the proper termination of the contract. I shall come shortly to the provisions of Schedule 1. I simply say at this stage that the problem is that the criteria which have to be satisfied by the site operator to obtain possession under Schedule 1 do not apply in cases where there is no agreement between the owner and occupier, and that is still the nub of the problem, despite the difference in the balance of this Bill compared with that of the Mobile Homes Act 1975.
I consider that a site operator should now be required to establish that he has compelling reasons for wanting possession, that those reasons should apply whether or not an agreement has been made under the 1975 Act as it will be amended by this Bill, and that those reasons should be confined, for example, to overcrowding of the site, serious arrears in the payment of charges, serious breaches of any terms of the agreement, deterioration of the mobile home to the point where it has become a nuisance or health risk, expiry of planning permission or site licence, or that the resident is not occupying the mobile home as his only or principal residence.
As regards charges, the 1975 Act has not been effective, since, as the Minister pointed out, only one-third of the people on the sites have been able to secure written agreements, and although obviously the present Bill would result in some increase in the numbers who are protected, it still puts the onus on the resident to pursue his rights where the site operator is negligent or deliberately fails to carry out the duties imposed on him under the Bill. I am not sure we shall get very much further, knowing the attitude of some
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site operators, and I would remind your Lordships of what was said on this matter in paragraph 355 of the report of the Mobile Homes Review, the excellent study carried out by the Department of the Environment and the Welsh Office:
"Lack of time, misunderstanding, ignorance, and in some cases fear and deliberate and often successful attempts at evasion, have limited the rights the Act sought to give".
Among the pressures put on residents were the threat of increased site rents, only for those who chose to enter into an agreement, exorbitant fees charged for the agreement itself, and the provision of additional capital sums to be paid annually by future residents to whom an agreement could be assigned. In paragraph 357, the document said:
"The fundamental weaknesses of the Act"—
that is, the 1975 Act—
"stem from the principles on which it is based; it depends on negotiation between two parties when their negotiating strength is in many eases unequal".
and that is still the case. The site owner has powers and the resident considers that those powers are in many cases much greater than actually exist. One need only look at the letters one receives from people on these sites to realise the enormous difference in the psychological position of the respective parties. I am looking at one I received from a person on a site in South Devon, who wrote:
"It must be very difficult for anyone outside a mobile home to imagine how threats, abuse and fear, with worry, can bring about the total immobility of an ordinary person".
That ordinary person has to take action in the courts to enforce the rights given to him under this Bill, and that is a fundamental difficulty; the Bill puts the onus on the resident to pursue his rights in the county court where a site operator has declined to offer him an agreement, and he must do that within the short space of about three months. The owner is supposed to offer the resident a written agreement, but if he does not do so, it is for the occupier, and the occupier alone, to apply to the court for an order making such an agreement. I do not think it is fair to make the securing of the right to an agreement—which everybody agrees he should have—conditional on him taking a quite complicated action. Many people will not be aware that they must take that action, and even if they are aware of it, for the reasons given by my correspondent in that letter, they may be psychologically incapable of taking it.
Noble Lords will be aware, from the paper sent to us by Age Concern, that about one-quarter of the residents of mobile homes sites are over the age of 65. One can imagine that these people in particular may be very nervous at getting involved in legal matters. They may not think that they are going to understand the procedures, and they may fear that they will be taking on a liability to pay solicitors' fees which it will be impossible to quantify in advance if they go to an arbitrator. I am not sure what the position is there; and, if I do not know, I dare say that many of the people on mobile home sites do not know who is going to pay the fees for the arbitrator. Is it going to be the resident or the occupier, or are they both going to share the fees? It does not make that clear in the bill. But why should anybody have to undergo the trauma of court action or of a formal hearing before an

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arbitrator to enjoy a right which Parliament has agreed for some years that he ought to possess? Perhaps the Minister can tell the House what representations have been received about the weaknesses of this particular provision, and what suggestions have been made for strengthening it. One possibility which occurs to me would be to make any variation in the charges or in other conditions which are implied in the grant of a licence to occupy part of a site unenforceable in the absence of an agreement; so that there would be some positive financial penalty involved in the site owner failing to offer an agreement—not one called into being by an action taken by the occupier, but it would be an automatic penalty because, unless he offered an agreement, he would not be able to increase the site charges or to vary any of the other terms of the agreement. I think that that might be some incentive to the unscrupulous operator to make the offer which he is required to make under this Bill. In passing, I may say that we are not claiming that 100 per cent. of the site operators are unscrupulous or brutal in their treatment of the occupiers of mobile homes on their sites. We are talking about what is a tiny minority which in the past sometimes has given a bad name to site operators as a whole; it goes without saying, or it should, that Parliament is legislating in these matters for the exception and we all agree that the vast majority of site operators would normally observe the legislation which Parliament has enacted. But even if it is made as certain as can be that agreements are offered, if there are no restrictions on the terms and the courts are given no guidance, there is I think a danger still that unreasonably high rents will be demanded in the proposed agreements and that premiums will still be demanded for the granting or renewal of an agreement.
That of course has been illegal for some years in the case of tenants and I think it is an example of the way in which mobile home residents are treated worse under our law than are people who live in bricks and mortar houses. Therefore, what is needed is a prohibition on key money and a procedure for arbitration within fixed guidelines where the site owner and the occupier fail to reach agreement. The noble Lord will say that there is provision for arbitration. But there are not any rules set out here as to how that is to be done. There is no formula or indication to the parties concerned as to how the calculation should be conducted.
In the 1965 Rent Act it was provided in a formula there that the rent officer had to have regard to the age, character and locality of a dwelling-house and its state of repair. Here we are talking about a plot of land, so that the criteria will have to be quite different. But one can imagine the kind of factors that might be included in the guidelines that would be given to an arbitrator or to a court of law in determining what is the proper level of charges on a mobile home site. One might consider the amenities of the site, the obligations that the agreement imposes respectively on the occupier and the owner and the location of the site. I believe, also, that rent officers would be capable of doing the job if given this sort of guidance and that, therefore, it would be better to employ rent officers than arbitrators. It would make the procedure more informal and obviously free of any cost.
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I know that it will be said by the Minister that rent officers have no direct experience. This is true but they are certainly better qualified than county court judges and I believe that they would evolve standards in the course of time based on these guidelines, which are precisely what is needed. As the DoE Welsh Office study pointed out in paragraph 43.13:
"Security of tenure is of little value if charges can run free".
But it is argued that because of differences in the way that sites are financed, it is hard to devise a system that will be fair to both owners and occupiers. Apportioning the capital values will be unsatisfatory, it is pointed out, as the cost of these are derived from expected incomes, so that the calculation would be a circular one.
The actual costs of the owner would not necessarily be any better because this would allow charges to be raised every time the site changed hands at a higher price.
Some of these arguments also apply to houses; yet they do not create insuperable difficulties for the system of rent officers and rent assessment committees, which, broadly speaking, has functioned satisfactorily since the Act of 1965.I think that it is the objective merit of the accommodation under that Act which determines the amount of rent that can be charged. Presumably, what we want to aim at in the case of mobile homes is the objective merit of a particular pitch on that site which should determine the amount that the occupier reasonably should be expected to pay.
I think that, with inflation, more frequent reviews would be appropriate for both houses and for mobile homes; but the closer the systems for determining charges between the two sectors the better. I think it is unfortunate that the Bill contains no provision for dealing with unreasonable site rules. They can be just as harsh a burden on the occupier as the level of charges. I hope that perhaps the Minister will see his way during the course of the Committee stage to accepting amendments on that matter.
Finally, dealing with the question of free sale, which has been a bone of contention as long as I can remember, this Bill allows the occupier to assign his agreement to any person approved by the owner but the provisos at paragraphs 2, 3, 4 and 5 greatly weaken that right. Why should the occupier have to give the site operator first refusal when he sells? Why should the owner get a statutory profit every time the mobile home changes hands? I was glad to hear the Minister say that this is a matter on which the Government are still open to representations. I would suggest to him that it is the obligation of those who wish to retain the system of discounts to establish their case and not the obligation of those of us who seek to abolish discounts to uphold their case. It seems to me fundamentally inequitable that the owner, who already gets a profit when he sells the mobile home on this site and who is achieving a recurring profit from the charges that he makes for occupation should then expect an additional statutory bonus every time the mobile home changes hands. There is no logic in this at all. He is not offering any service for the money he receives in those instances.
I really wish that the Government had accepted the whole of the programme of action which was set out in

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the admirable DoE Welsh Office report. That set out, some five years ago, a far more comprehensive list of proposals than is to be found in this Bill. That list, I think, was endorsed by most of the respondents to the consultation. Hopes as the Minister has said, have been raised and a great many individuals and organisations, have put a lot of effort and work into making constructive and detailed suggestions. It is disappointing that quite a few of these have been ignored and we end up with a measure which does not justify the excellent work that the DoE and all the organisations have put in during the past seven years since the 1975 Act. So this is really, I am afraid, a mouse of a measure to which we on this Bench at any rate can give only two cheers at the most.
5.10 p.m.
Baroness Elliot of Harwood: My Lords, I speak with some diffidence on this Bill. In the many long years in which I was on the county council, I never had to deal with mobile homes, certainly in the area in which I operated in Scotland. Furthermore, far from being in a mobile home myself, I feel slightly guilty because I have lived in London in the same house for 52 years and therefore my experience of mobile housing is nil.
However, the importance of the subject is obvious and I have listened with great interest to the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, who is obviously a great expert on this subject, not that I agree with everything he said. He has certainly had the kind of experience which I have not had. I should like to support the Government and I think that this Bill is going to be a useful one; it is one which is overdue and it is excellent that it should come so early in the new Session of Parliament.
One of the curious things I thought when I studied the document that was sent to me by the Consumer Council was that, although mobile homes are called "mobile", far the largest proportion are immobile and therefore produce a very different problem to the people who live in ordinary houses or to some of the people who live in caravans which are, of course, mobile. It is the opposite of the general order of housing where the tenant rents the house but does not own it. In the case of the mobile home he owns the house and not the site where it stands. Therefore, that leads to many problems which the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, has mentioned.
I also inquired as to how many people live in these mobile homes. It is not an enormous number, thank goodness! It is between 100,000 and 150,000. Most of them are retired persons or young couples waiting for a proper house in which to start their married lives. In both cases, finance is a vital part of their lives. Old age pensioners have not the money to spare at the end of their lives and young couples have not had time to earn enough money to buy their house.
This Bill is therefore of great importance to those who own and live in mobile houses and are in the category of persons that I have just described. The Bill insists that the site owner must make a fair and proper agreement with the owner of the mobile home which safeguards the owner against unfair action by the site owner and vice versa. It seems from experience that a number of caravan owners suffer unfair treatment by site owners and have not the money or the experience
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to go to the lawyers to get justice. So they suffer and according to the information which I have received from the Consumer Council, who have made a great study of such cases, they are very often badly treated by the site owners.
These quarrels are obviously very difficult to manage and very difficult to control. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, that the people who should deal with these are either the local authorities through their rent officers or some other arbitrary person who does involve the law or in any sense a criminal cause. In any case, it is vital that the agreement between the two parties should be written in simple and understandable terms and not in the legal wording which the ordinary person cannot understand.
One of the safeguards for the home owner is in the Bill: namely, that unless an agreement is made between the two parties, the landowner should not be allowed to collect charges until it is agreed that the charges and the conditions are fair. If that is adhered to, it will be a great strength for the mobile home. This would make the site owner keen to have a proper agreement which would comply with the law.
There is one other difficulty which can arise. If the occupier wants to move to other premises, he will want to sell his home and should the site owner not approve of the buyer, he can refuse to agree to the sale. This could lead to many problems for the owner. It is one of the problems which I think we should discuss in this House in Committee. It is necessary to examine a lot of these difficult problems as they alter the balance of fairness between both the parties involved.
I think that it is a valuable Bill—one that we should deal with and support. I welcome it. It is a very useful measure which will be of great value to people who live in mobile homes. I congratulate the Minister on his presentation and on the content of the Bill.
5.16 p.m.
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, the only odd thing about this Bill is its title because as has been said a mobile home is certainly not mobile. For many people the purchase and occupation of a so-called mobile home has been an attractive choice. They seem to have a particular appeal to young couples at the outset of a marriage and to the elderly. In many cases, it seems that retired couples concerned with the high cost of maintaining their homes have sold these and have invested part of the proceeds in the purchase of a mobile home. That investment may well be considerable. A modern mobile home, new, may cost as much as £15,000. Most people living in mobile homes are clearly satisfied with the choice that they have made. I understand that research carried out in 1976 by the Building Research Centre has indicated a solid degree of contentment. But it I also clear that mobile home occupiers are a uniquely vulnerable group of people, and that in some cases their vulnerability has been exploited by less scrupulous site owners. It is often the site owner who sells the original caravan, who receives the pitch charge and sometimes other charges too, and who may well be interested in selling replacement caravans at regular intervals.
The normal rules of competition would not seem to operate very effectively on some mobile home sites. Moreover, if the occupier wishes to leave the site, the

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site owner may well insist on purchasing the caravan, often at a derisory price, or on taking a commission on any sale to a newcomer. The weakness of the mobile home occupier stems from the fact that this is the only housing situation where the resident owns the home but not the land. For the occupier, the mobile home is a wasting asset. Its value decreases with age. More seriously, without a permanent site on which it is placed, its value may be minimal. This means that without some guarantee of the right to occupy the site, a person who has made a considerable investment in purchasing a mobile home may be forced to accept intolerable provisions in order to avoid crippling financial loss and the prospect of being homeless.
As my noble friend the Minister has said, the nature of the problem was recognised when the Mobile Homes Act 1975, which began life as a Private Member's Bill, was enacted. That Act gave a measure of security of tenure and protection against unreasonable terms. Unfortunately, the weakness of that Act was that its provisions only came into effect if the intending occupier served notice that he intended to use the mobile home as his residence. In many cases, occupiers were ignorant of this requirement and failed to serve the notice. In other cases it seems that occupiers were dissuaded from seeking agreement under the Act, sometimes being faced with a higher pitch fee if they insisted on such an agreement. The Government are to be congratulated for their timely recognition that there is a pressing need for legislation. I am delighted to join the broad welcome which has been given to this Bill.
The fact that the initiative to offer an agreement is to be firmly placed on the owner is a vital innovation. We must take great care not to create a framework of protection which is so rigid or restrictive as to drive this useful form of housing off the market. At the same time it is important to make sure that the protection which is going to be available really will be effective in practice. Above all, this means (a) making sure that site owners really do offer agreements which comply with the new Act, and (b) ensuring that residents are not faced with manifestly one-sided agreements. It is only 13 days since the Bill was published, and it will be necessary to look very closely at the Bill during Committee stage to ensure that it will be effective in meeting its objectives.
The National Consumer Council has drawn my attention, together with that of many other noble Lords here, to a number of features of the Bill on which it has reservations. It may well be necessary to pursue all or some of these points in Committee and, strange to say, I find myself in almost total harmony with the noble Lord, Lord Avebury. It is important to make sure that there will be no opportunities for the less scrupulous site owners to impose on their occupiers arrangements which will let them off the hook. I am concerned, for example, that the Bill would appear not to bite if the arrangement between the owner and the occupier purports to forbid use as a residence. What is needed is some form of objective test as to whether or not there is genuine residence; and here I see difficulties. I think it is worth pointing out that people like the clergy, members of the Armed Forces and others whose occupations entail living in what amounts to a tied cottage—people without
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sufficient capital to buy houses—may buy mobile homes which they use when they have holidays but which have in reality been bought in anticipation of their owners' retirement—and why not?
The Bill provides that owners should be under a duty to offer an agreement which complies with the Act. The only sanction appears to be that the occupier may apply to the county court if the owner fails to do so. I wonder how realistic this is when a site owner blatantly disregards his duty. Perhaps a more effective sanction would be to provide that the site owner should not be able to claim pitch or other charges for so long as he fails to honour this legal duty.
Once an agreement has been offered it is important that it should be fair to both sides. The Bill provides that certain minimum provisions should be covered in an agreement, but leaves to the site owner to decide how these and other points are to be covered. The only recourse of the resident is to appeal to the county court or to an arbitrator. This must be done within three months which, as the noble Lord. Lord Avebury, said, is a very short period. It will also be too late if the significance of an unreasonable term is not realised until after the three-month period.
We know how reluctant people are to go anywhere near a court. They are fearful—and I agree with them—of the cost involved, and are frightened of the prospect of going to court. The danger is that most residents will not challenge an unfair agreement. We do not want to see these occupiers faced with onerous or restrictive agreements which comply with the Act but which no fairminded person would consider to be reasonable. I hope that the Government might be persuaded that a better approach would be to lay down model terms in the Bill itself and to provide that it should be for the site owner to initiate court action if some sort of variation is needed.
A particular problem arises over the pitch charges which are to be paid. The Bill provides that the agreement must provide for the yearly review of charges—an unusually short contract between the two parties involved, I would have thought. The only opportunity for the resident to have a say on charges is to challenge the method of fixing these within three months of the original agreement; otherwise he may well be at the mercy of the arrangements put into the agreement by the site owner. Charges are a sensitive issue, but I hope that the Government will be persuaded that a maximum limit should be laid down by the rent officer or some similar authority.
I certainly do not wish to delay the House. I have already suggested that the Bill might lay down model terms. However, if the present approach is to be retained, I am bound to say there are some features in the schedule which lay down the minimum standards for statutory agreements which cause anxiety. I believe in due course it will be necessary to consider amendments to provide that only the court should be able to terminate a statutory agreement, to tighten up the grounds on which the agreement can be terminated and to remove, or at least dilute, the very favourable rights which the Bill gives to the site owners on resale.
Finally, my Lords, there are a number of points which the Bill could and should cover but which it does not. In general, these are benefits available to

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other groups of residential occupiers but not to mobile home occupiers. Here I am referring to such matters as the right to information, for example, about service charges, restrictions on unrealistic domestic regulations and prohibitions on premiums.
Let me conclude by repeating my welcome to this Bill. There are not many people living in mobile homes and not many of those are unhappy; but those few who are exploited are unhappy indeed. These people are rarely versed in the ways of the law and are not well placed to secure their own interests. Their bargaining power is usually weak. The Mobile Homes Bill represents a socially useful reform, intended to redress the balance. If the reservations I have mentioned can be overcome, I am sure that all sides of the House will wish to give the new law their wholehearted support.
5.27 p.m.
Lord Campbell of Croy: My Lords, I should like to thank my noble friend Lord Bellwin for the very clear way in which he introduced this Bill. I understand the main reason for it, and that is to bring in a new and improved system of agreements. With that objective I fully agree. The provision of sites for mobile homes is now an important element in the nation's variety of accommodation. There is a need for this kind of accommodation—indeed, there is a demand for it—and I believe it should be catered for. That, I think, seems to be generally agreed.
The legislation should be clear and equitable to all concerned. I should like simply to draw the Government's attention to three matters which, I suggest, need further examination. If my noble friend can say anything in reply later this evening—and, as I think he is due to follow me immediately, I say straight away that I do not expect him to be able to reply to my points, although I have given notice about them—then that would be helpful as clarifying the Government's intentions and the purposes of the Bill. However, I shall entirely understand if he is not able to give any information this evening, and I hope that I will have been helpful simply in drawing attention at this early stage to these matters.
The first point I wish to raise is the effect of Clause 1 taken with Schedule 1. Is this placing an obligation on an owner to make an offer, or is it an obligation for him to make an agreement? I do not think at present this is absolutely clear. It is stated that an offer must be made, but I note that a copy of the proposed agreement must accompany that offer. There are likely to be situations in which a completely new agreement may not be necessary. For example, I understand that some existing agreements are for 99 years. In some cases the occupiers may not wish to alter existing agreements with which they are perfectly happy, and they may be confused about changes. In such cases the agreements may comply with all the requirements in Schedules 1 and 2 which the new agreements alter. So I ask whether the site owners will in every case have to go through the whole procedure of concluding a new agreement in such circumstances. Presumably the offer must be in writing. The offer is clearly very important and, if so, I suggest that that ought to be stated in the Bill.
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On that point, too, there is an offer to be made on the sale of a mobile home—this is in paragraph 8(2) of Schedule 1—and I think that that also should be in writing, and it should be stated that it should be in writing. Both of these times of offer are extremely important and the time when the offer is made must be clearly registered. So my question on my first point is: what is the obligation imposed by Clause 1? Is it to make a formal offer, or is it to conclude a new agreement with an occupier at the stipulated time after the entry into force of the Bill?
The second matter which I should like to raise is on Clause 3, which deals with successors to occupiers. An agreement that is in existence can be continued under that clause by any member of the occupier's family residing with the occupier at the time of his death. I ask: how close is this family relationship to be? If I may illustrate my point, in Scotland—and this Bill applies to Scotland, in the same way as it does to England and Wales—there is a clan system, and in Northern Scotland, where my home is, there are many people who are distantly related as cousins, but who are very much aware of their family relationship. I give that as an extreme example.
I think it is necessary to state what closeness of relationship will be the one which limits the effect of this Bill. It may be that a definition, or a reference to a definition elsewhere in the statutes, will need to be added. This also applies to a gift and assignment. The member of a family is mentioned in paragraph 9 of Schedule 1. That is qualified by the need for the approval of the site owner to the new occupier. But, nonetheless, I suggest that the question of the extent of the family relationship should be made clear.
The third matter is the procedure for resiting mobile homes, which is dealt with in paragraph 10 of Schedule 1. The conditions intended to apply are set out there. There is some doubt, in reading that paragraph, about the words "broadly comparable". When a mobile home is moved from one pitch to another, the other land to which it is to be moved has to be broadly comparable and all costs and expenses are to be paid by the site owner. I suggest that it may not always be possible, or at all easy, to carry out this kind of move.
I understand that local authorities require owners to develop—and therefore, presumably, to improve—parts of their sites, and this requires the owners to carry out improvements at times that are not necessarily of their own choosing. Furthermore, it leads to different parts of a site achieving different standards. Therefore, an owner may find that a mobile home is moving from one stand to another but to land of a different standard, through no fault of his. In such situations, it may be inequitable for the owner to be made responsible for all the expenses of such a move. So I would ask the Government to look again at the arrangements in that part of the Bill, in the light of the kind of situation which I have described. I hope I have given my noble friend and the Government some notice of matters which I think require examination, so that they can be looked into before later parliamentary stages of the Bill are reached.
5.34 p.m.
Lord Bellwin: My Lords, I begin by thanking those who have participated in responding to the Second Reading debate. I am gratified that just about everyone has given a welcome to the Bill, although, perhaps, some more so than others. I suppose that the two cheers of the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, are a plus on what I normally get from the noble Lord. They are, perhaps, one more than usual. I am sorry that he is not in his place, but I am sure that when he reads Hansard he will understand what I have said. I see that the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, is now here. I should like to repeat what I have just said, but I am sure that the noble Lord will read it in Hansard.
Lord Stone: My Lords, will the noble Lord say it again for him?
Lord Bellwin: Any measure which sets out to achieve a balance between parties where there may be a difference of view is bound to mean that someone, somewhere along the road, will feel less happy than another. I suppose that that really covers some of the points which the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, mentioned. But I am sure that he will not hesitate to bring them forward at the later stages of the Bill; and, of course, it is right that he should do so, because what we are interested in, as always, is to get the very best Bill that we can. This matter was looked at in 1977. Nothing really has been done since, but, hopefully, we shall go a long way down the road this time.
I think that this has been a valuable debate. It is clear that most of your Lordships share the view, which I expressed in my opening speech, that mobile homes provide a small but significant source of housing in this country, and that it is important that we provide a workable statutory framework for those who live on mobile home sites, and for those who run them. I will respond as best I can to the points that have been made. If I do not cover all the points, I know that your Lordships will understand that this is a normal procedure in Second Reading debates. I am certainly most grateful to my noble friend Lord Campbell of Croy, who gave me notice, because that enables me, in the best traditions of this House, to give him at least some initial responses now in a way that I might not otherwise been able to do, and I will try to do that as I go along now.
Our intention is that the Bill should strike a balance between the interests of the site owners and the residents. We believe that the changes which the Bill proposes to the existing legislation will improve the position of residents in a number of ways, and I say again that I have been glad to hear the welcome that has been given to those changes. At the same time, we consider it vital that the duties which we impose upon site owners should not be excessive. We have noted the points that have been made about aspects of the Bill which it is felt should be strengthened, and, of course, we will carefully examine all that has been said and the detailed amendments that are put before us during the passage of the Bill. But I should make it clear at the outset that we will resist amendments to the Bill which, however well-intentioned, will, in our view, impose too onerous a burden on site owners; or,
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conversely, any which would significantly weaken the protection for residents.
The noble Lord, Lord Bishopston, referred to the need, as he thought, for a Rent Acts type of régime. In introducing the Bill, I said that we had no intention of applying Rent Acts legislation to mobile home sites. It would not be in the interests of residents to see site owners driven out of business by excessive restrictions on their freedom to operate or to make an income. The history of the private rented sector this century has shown how dire the effect of restrictive legislation can be. Of course, there have been other factors in the decline of the private rented sector, but I do not think that even the supporters of the Rent Acts—and, in many ways, I myself am certainly one of them—can really deny that restrictions have played their part, and I believe a major part, in contributing to that decline. This has made a lot of people unhappy, and not just the landlords who have found themselves stuck, sometimes for ever, with tenants with whom they thought they had a six or twelve months' contract, but also potential tenants looking for accommodation and being unable to find it because landlords are no longer willing to let. I do not want to go too deeply into that now, but I certainly do not want us to fall into that pitfall with this Bill.
As regards the point of the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, about model terms—and it was also mentioned by my noble friend Lady Trumpington—as I have just said, I hope I have explained why we have not used the Rent Acts as a model for this Bill. Nor have we used the system of implied terms which the Rent Acts apply. Agreements under the Bill will be voluntary for residents but for site owners it will be compulsory to make the offer of an agreement to all existing and future residents. Our arrangements will ensure that residents will have the opportunity to find out just what are the implications of accepting or refusing the offer of an agreement, but it is quite possible that some residents will not want to accept the offer of a statutory agreement. If, for example, they plan to be on a site for only a short time—or if for some other reason they do not want an agreement—it does not seem to us that they should be forced to have one. The vital thing is to ensure that they have the opportunity, and this the Bill will provide.
I mention here the point made by my noble friend Lord Campbell of Croy about the offer of agreements. Let me say only this for the moment, although I shall gladly expand on it with him later. The Bill imposes an obligation on site owners to offer statutory agreements. It is up to the residents to decide whether or not to accept. The agreement must be offered in writing to all residents, whatever agreement they already have. As I have already said, we have also decided against the use of model terms for agreements, which I know some organisations would favour.
The Bill already lays down, in Part I of Schedule 1, a number of important requirements with which agreements must comply, and Part II lists those points which agreements must cover. Beyond that, it is not clear that model terms would achieve a great deal. We would not wish to be involved in deciding what should be the site rules for every individual site. For example, it is not for us to decide whether dogs and cats are to be permitted. Nor would model terms take us very far

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on such matters as the level of pitch fees, unless they were accompanied by controls on the level of fees, which we do not intend to introduce. I appreciate the thinking behind the proposal for model terms, but I do not think the approach would achieve what those who support it would wish.
As for arbitration, which the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, mentioned, the provisions in the Bill carry forward those of the 1975 Act in their application to the pitch fees which site owners may charge. That is, the site owner must stipulate in the agreement that he offers to all his residents the level of the initial fee, and the agreement must provide for the pitch fee to be renewed annually. If a resident is unhappy with the initial fee or with the basis on which the site owner proposes to review it, he may challenge those terms before a court or an arbitrator within three months of being offered the agreement. We have clarified the power of the court, and the arbitrator, to hear such challenges and to require the making of agreements on terms that they consider just and equitable.
As for the point of the rent officer arbitrating, as the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, suggested, I should be the very first to acknowledge the quality of the service which rent officers provide within their own terms of reference. But their job is to register fair rents within the Rent Acts. I respectfully suggest that that is a very different matter from assessing the level of pitch fees that the owner-occupier of a mobile home should pay to a site owner. Still less, in my view, would a rent officer be the right person to settle other disputes which might arise under the Bill—for example, concerning the age and condition of the mobile home—for which the Bill provides that freely agreed arbitration is available. If resident and site owner wish to use arbitration to settle a dispute between them, it will be open to them to appoint an arbitrator of their choice. Only if they cannot agree can they then take their dispute to the court.
I now refer to the successor or family point which my noble friend Lord Campbell of Croy mentioned. The Bill contains two references to "family": in Clause 3 and in paragraph 8 of Schedule 1, Part I. In neither place does the Bill define "family". It will be for the courts to decide who is or is not "family" in each individual case, as they have done in cases under the Rent Acts. I am sure your Lordships will take the point that, if we attempted to define too closely who are the members of a family, we should run the risk of excluding somebody unfairly. My noble friend's illustration of the clans in Scotland made me tremble—and made me very glad, too, that we are taking the line that we are. One would hate to have to sort that one out.
The wording of Clause 3—the inheritance provision—follows that of the 1975 Act. The provisions for the gift of a mobile home to a member of the resident's family in Schedule 1 are new. They will enable a resident to give his home and assign his agreement to a member of his family without paying commission. In this case a site owner has added protection against sham gifts. He has the right of approval of the beneficiary. His approval must not be unreasonably withheld; but if he thinks that a gift is a sham, that would seem to be a reason for withholding approval—initially, at least.
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The noble Lord, Lord Avebury, and my noble friend Lady Trumpington were anxious about the period of three months to accept or to challenge an agreement. We shall certainly have to talk about this when we reach the later stages of the Bill. If your Lordships will allow, I shall not proceed with that point tonight. My noble friend referred to the fact that the Bill may contain a loophole which might enable a site owner to evade the duty to offer an agreement under the Bill by granting a "restricted right" to a resident—that is, by granting a right to a resident which does not allow him to occupy the mobile home as his only or main residence, when both site owner and resident know that that is precisely what he will be doing. We do not accept that there is a real problem here. In the first place, it is our understanding that most residential mobile homes are on sites for which the site owner's planning permission stipulates residential use, either on the site as a whole or on the relevant part of the site. Secondly, it will be open to a resident to claim that he is entitled to the offer of an agreement if the "restricted" right he has been offered is a sham, and to press his claim in the courts.
More fundamentally, I think it must be said that the whole idea of loopholes of this kind does not come from experience of mobile homes. It comes from the Rent Acts. It is said that landlords of conventional housing attempt to avoid the effects of the Rent Acts by offering sham holiday lets. But this Bill is not imposing Rent Act control on mobile home site owners. It is not giving them onerous new duties which they will be desperate to avoid. It is offering a system of agreements which we believe to be fair to both residents and site owners.
The third point my noble friend Lord Campbell of Croy mentioned about resiting is referred to in Schedule 1, Part I, paragraph 10. I am aware of the concern which some site owners have expressed about the provisions for the resiting of mobile homes in Schedule 1. We shall look at the point that my noble friend has made, although at this moment I must say we do not think that this is a problem. The provision is similar to that in the 1975 Act, except that the Bill spells out the obligation on the site owner to meet the cost of resiting if the move is at his initiative. I should have thought that that was not unreasonable. Nevertheless, as with all the other points which have been made, despite what I am saying now we shall certainly look at the point most carefully.
I want quickly to cover one or two of the other observations which have been made. The noble Lord, Lord Leatherland, asked about mobile homes without wheels. The Bill applies to mobile homes without wheels. When the noble Lord, Lord Leatherland, speaks I never know whether or not he has his tongue in his cheek. I think he usually has. But I must take his question seriously. Indeed, I always take his questions seriously. The definition which the Bill uses comes from the 1960 and 1968 Acts and requires that the homes should be capable of being moved—for example, on a large lorry. I can just imagine what the noble Lord would say about that if he were in his place. But the homes do not have to have wheels.
The noble Lord, Lord Bishopston, referred to the problem of local authority manpower and asked: "How minor is 'minor'?" and "How very minor is

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'very minor'?" We expect the effects of the Bill, in giving protection to residents of local authority sites, to be very small indeed on local authorities. If the noble Lord asks me how much is "very small indeed", he will have to use his imagination. The majority of local authorities behave towards their residents as well as private site owners are required to do. Therefore a problem which he perhaps fears I really believe will not be a problem of any significance. He asked, also, about people being aware of their rights—and we entirely agree. It is crucial, and in fact it is one of the themes running through this Bill that residents should be made aware of their rights. That is why—and I say it again—we will prescribe the notice to be given to residents in the agreement. We should not forget the 1968 Act and its provisions on harassment, nor the role of local authorities under the 1960 Act. These Acts are also important for residents.
This Bill is at the beginning of its passage through Parliament. We believe it is a good Bill and have been pleased by the welcoming reception which in general it has so far received. It may well be that we will have to improve it further as we go along, in the light of the examination it will receive in your Lordships' House and in another place. One essential feature we will maintain, however, is the balance which the Bill achieves between protection for residents and the interests of site operators. That balance is crucial if the provision of mobile homes is to continue to thrive, perhaps even to expand; if sites become available in the future. What we are seeking to create is a statutory framework for mobile homes that will work for many years ahead. The Government believe that this Bill can provide that framework, and I invite your Lordships to give the Bill a Second Reading.
On Question, Bill read a second time, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

Immigration: Proposed Revision of Rules
5.51 p.m.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Home Office (Lord Elton)The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Home Office (Lord Elton) rose to move, That this House takes note of the Command Paper Proposals for revision of the Immigration Rules (Cmnd. 8683).
The noble Lord said: My Lords, the White Paper sets out the Government's proposals for changes in the immigration rules. The immediate reason for this White Paper is that the British Nationality Act 1981 will come into force on 1st January 1983. The Act changes the categories of nationality and renders the existing rules obsolete. The new rules, therefore, need to come into force at the same time as the Act.
The White Paper was published last month to allow time for a proper study of the changes before the debates here and in another place. My right honourable friend, the Home Secretary, made it clear that we would give time for these debates because we wished to have the views of Members of both Houses of Parliament before the final statement of changes in the rules is laid later in the year.
The function of the rules is to lay down the practice and procedure to be followed by immigration officers and by officials acting on behalf of the Home Secretary, in the administration of the Immigration
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Act 1971. They apply to every person who is subject to immigration control. Some changes have, as I said, to be made in the rules because at present they are expressed in terms of our present citizenship law. Specifically, they refer to citizens of the United Kingdom and Colonies; a status which will disappear when the Act comes into force. The present rules will also be obsolete in that they are silent on the position of children who are born here but who are subject to immigration control because they are not British citizens.
Some changes therefore have to be made. Those which I think may interest your Lordships most are those in the rules governing the entry of foreign husbands and male fiances who wish to join women in this country. Under the present rule, a husband or fiance is admitted if his wife, or fiancee, is a citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies who was either born here or of whom one of the parents was born here. There are also tests relating to the marriage itself, which I shall come to later, but so far as the woman herself is concerned she has to qualify by her citizenship and by birth.
Under the previous Government's rules, any woman settled here could be joined by a foreign husband or fiance subject only to limited tests of the nature of the marriage. It offered an open door, which undermined immigration control. Marriage was being used by men as a means of obtaining settlement here; more men were being admitted as husbands than under the work permit scheme.
When we took office we made clear our commitment to firm immigration control and to limiting the number of primary immigrants to the minimum. By primary immigrants, I mean heads of households coming here for settlement. But we did not think it right that in exercising that control we should compel a woman who had substantial ties with this country to choose between either living in a foreign country (which might be quite alien to her) or living apart from her husband. If she had close ties here, then we considered she should have the choice of staying here with her husband if she wished.
When we changed the rules in 1980 we therefore gave the right to bring in a husband or fiance to women who had a close connection with this country; we did not give it to others. Our nationality law contained no definition of people who belong here. We therefore had to devise a separate test to identify them. This is the one in the present rules. Some change now has to be made in that rule because of the changes which have been made in nationality law. Our approach to this issue remains none the less the same. It is that the right to bring in a husband or fiance must be confined to women who have a close connection with this country. To explain the Government's approach I want to refer briefly to the Act.
I think it is generally recognised in this House that the 1981 Act is one of the most important pieces of legislation to have been passed in recent years. Nationality is fundamental to society; it is not often that we legislate on it. Indeed, it is over 30 years since the present law was passed. It was based on a state of affairs—the days of empire and colonial possessions—which has long since ceased to correspond with our position in the modern world. The 1948 Act created a common citizenship for

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everyone in the United Kingdom and Colonies. Of course, there was an assumption underlying the Act that people would, by and large, stay put. But over the years it became essential to control the immigration of people who held our common citizenship, but who had no close ties with this country. As a result, citizenship and the right to live here parted company. A person could be a citizen and not have the right to live here. Conversely, a person could have the right to live here without being a citizen.
The British Nationality Act 1981 replaces the present citizenship of the United Kingdom and Colonies with a new scheme of three citizenships. The first category of citizenship is that of those who belong here. They are British citizens. They have the right of abode in this country. Those who have no close ties here are either British dependent territories citizens or British overseas citizens. The rules we are now considering do not and cannot alter those categories. The function of the rules is simply to lay down the procedures for controlling the movement of people in and out of this country when the Act comes into force; they respect and apply those categories—they cannot change them.
The 1981 Act has created a rational and sensible framework for nationality law. It defines quite clearly who those people are who actually belong here, and it thus provides a far better basis than there has been in the past for an effective and consistent immigration policy. And it serves, of course, to identify as British citizens, among others, those women who have a close connection with this country. We therefore propose that, subject to the safeguards I shall mention, all female British citizens shall have the right to be joined here by a husband or fiancé. We propose that they should have that right regardless of whether or not they were born here. To distinguish according to the place of birth would mean that some British citizens would have this right and others would not. We do not believe that it would be fair or consistent to discriminate between British women citizens in this respect. They should all be treated alike.
It will doubtless be said by some that the rules should go much further and allow women who are settled here to bring in their husbands even if they themselves are not British citizens. We believe it is right to insist on a woman having a substantial tie with this country. The test of that substantial tie is her citizenship, and it is open to women who are settled here to acquire it. They will have to be resident here for five years and satisfy the relevant tests. Under the present rules there has been what has been described as a Catch 22 position under which a married woman could not acquire citizenship. We have changed that practice. A wife will have to demonstrate that her long-term intention is to settle here. Where she can, and if she meets the other tests, she will be able to qualify. But it will take that important step of acquiring our citizenship to demonstrate her commitment to this country.
A woman who is settled here but who is not a British citizen does not have the same ties with this country. Her status here is simply that she is a resident. She is subject to immigration control and if she goes away for more than two years she does not have a right to be
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re-admitted. She will still have the citizenship of another country, and it is reasonable to assume from her retention of that citizenship that her first loyalties lie there and not here. Equally, we consider that if she marries a foreign man the couple should expect to live in the country of which one of them is a citizen. We see no reason for them to look to this country.
In saying this, my Lords, I enter a reservation. Sometimes there are cases of special hardship. My right honourable friend made it clear in 1980, and it applies equally now, that he is willing to consider exercising discretion outside the rules in certain cases. These would be cases in which undue hardship would result for a woman who could not meet the requirements—that is to say, the present requirement of birth and citizenship—or the requirement we now propose that the woman must be a British citizen. The changes we are proposing should. I think, make such cases less frequent. But there could still be some. An obvious example would be if there was no other country where a couple could live together. In any case of special hardship, where the woman has close ties here, even though she is not a British citizen, my right honourable friend will continue to exercise his discretion to allow a husband to enter.
I said just now that our proposal to allow British women citizens to bring in a foreign husband or fiance was subject to certain safeguards. They are necessary, they are as follows: We intend to retain all the existing tests against marriages of convenience. This is important. We strengthened the tests in 1980 because we were concerned about the way in which the rules were being abused. Under the rules a man is not allowed to enter as a husband or fiance if the marriage is primarily for immigration reasons, if one party does not intend to live with the other, or if the parties have not met. Fiances are allowed to come for only three months in the first instance. At the end of that time they must produce a marriage certificate to prove that the marriage has taken place. They are then permitted to remain for a further 12 months. Husbands are allowed to come in for only 12 months in the first instance. At the end of that time there is a check to ensure that the marriage is still subsisting. All these important safeguards will still apply.
My Lords, a number of people have tried to stir up anxieties about this proposal by making exaggerated estimates of the number of men who may, as a result, be admitted to this country. It is not in fact possible to give any precise estimate of the number. Any estimate must be based on many uncertainties because one is speaking of people's future intentions. All I can say is that we think that there might at most be as many as 2,500 to 3,000 extra applications a year by men in the Indian sub-continent, and some of these applications would not succeed. This figure is certainly a maximum, and we would expect it to be less.
Another criticism of the proposals is the claim that the rules discriminate unfairly against women. Our proposals would in fact remove one of the main differences in treatment; but there remains the difference that while men who are settled here, but who are not citizens, may bring in wives and fiancées, we are not proposing to extend this concession to women in the same category.
I come back to the point I made at the outset concerning the Government's commitment to limiting primary immigration. We are living in times of high unemployment. Neither we nor any other country can accept an unlimited number of extra breadwinners coming here to compete for scarce jobs. And men still are the principal breadwinners, my Lords, particularly in the families we are now talking about. The effect upon employment of the immigration of husbands and wives is, therefore, very different. Our immigration rules have to reflect economic and social reality. In short, the fact that we have in the past made generous provision for wives and children does not mean that this country can now afford to treat husbands and fiancés in the same way.
Baroness Jeger: My Lords, before the noble Lord leaves that point—
Lord Elton: My Lords, if the noble Baroness could contain herself she will have an opportunity to speak or intervene, and I shall reply to questions in the wind-up rather than in my introductory speech.
Before leaving the subject of the rules on husbands, I should refer briefly to complaints which are now before the European Commission of Human Rights. Three cases have been ruled admissible. That is to say that the only decision the commission have reached on them is that they raise an issue to be considered under the convention. They have not yet reached any decision on their merits. The views of the commission are, in any case, as your Lordships will know, only advisory. The final decision will be either for the Committee of Ministers or for the European Court of Human Rights. One of the cases concerns a woman who will shortly qualify to become a British citizen. The other two women are settled here but are not citizens. In each case the husband is a citizen of another country and there is no obstacle to the couple living in that country.
My Lords, I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, will wish to contribute to the debate later on, but I hope he will allow me to complete my own speech first. These are the brief facts. The proceedings themselves are confidential. We have always said that we believe there are strong arguments to justify the rules if they are challenged under the convention. That remains our position. The rules are being changed, as I have said, because of the changes made by the British Nationality Act 1981.
I turn now to the position of children born here who are not British citizens. Your Lordships will recall that in the British Nationality Act we moved away from the idea that any person born here was automatically a British citizen. This was consistent with our idea that citizenship should signify that a person had a close connection with this country. Under the Act most children born here will be British citizens. But if their parents simply happen to be passing through, as visitors, for instance, or as students, they will not. Under the Act one of the parents will have to be a British citizen or else to be settled here for the child to become a British citizen at birth.
I might add that by allowing a child of a settled parent to benefit we are offering qualification on a less stringent basis than any other country in the European
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Community. Where a child does not become a British citizen at birth he will normally have his parents' citizenship. It is quite wrong to suggest that he will be stateless. Some people have suggested it, but the House will not expect me to go over ground which was covered in our debates on the British Nationality Bill. All I need say is that, bearing in mind that the parents are here only temporarily, then it is reasonable in the very rare case where a child is stateless to expect the country of the parents to put that right on their return. Nonetheless, if the child stays here, then he will be able in due course to acquire our citizenship.
My Lords, all this is set out at great length and in great detail in Schedule 2 to the 1981 Act, which keeps us in full conformity with out international obligations. That is the position as regards the nationality of the children concerned. During the debates on the British Nationality Bill we undertook to make specific provision for them also in the immigration rules. Our proposals for doing so are set out in two new sections in the draft rules now presented for your Lordships' consideration.
Our aim, broadly speaking, has been to treat them in exactly the same way as their parents. If they stay here they will not need to apply at all under the Immigration Rules; but if they or their parents wish to apply, then they will be given leave to remain here for the same length of time as their parents. The leave is not necessary. It is provided only as a means of reassurance for people who may feel uncertain of their rights.
My Lords, if the children leave the country they will have to obtain permission to re-enter. The rules take account of the fact that, unlike other people coming through our immigration controls for the first time, these children will be returning to a home already here. It never was our intention to create obstacles in the path of a child already established here returning to his home, after perhaps quite a short trip abroad. Therefore, the rules waive various requirements which would otherwise apply as regards maintenance and accommodation, entry clearance and the presence of both parents. But once a child is away for more than two years it is reasonable to regard him as having lost any special connection with this country, in the same way as a returning resident loses any special claim to enter after two years' absence. Therefore, he would have to qualify to enter, in the same way as any other child under those circumstances.
These rules are consistent with what we said we would do for these children. They will put them in line with their parents. They are designed to avoid difficulties for parents who are lawfully here; and there is special provision for exceptional, compassionate cases. But that apart, children of persons who are not lawfully here will not be given leave and will be liable to be deported with their parents. This will allow us to exercise a more consistent and effective immigration control.
Your Lordships may think that the other changes in the rules are relatively minor, and I shall therefore deal with them much more briefly. People wishing to enter as businessmen, self-employed people or persons of independent means are already required to have a certain minimum amount of capital or income in order to be admitted. The reason for admitting people

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in these categories is that their wealth can be of benefit to this country. The best means of establishing this is to have minimum financial limits, and we introduced these in our 1980 rules. The limits need to be raised from time to time to preserve their effectiveness. The income limit was in any case rather low when it was set. The present change in the rules gives us an opportunity to increase those limits now. If your Lordships wish to consider any other of the remaining changes, I shall do my best to deal with them when I reply to the debate.
In conclusion, I would remind your Lordships of the context within which the new draft rules must be considered. The Government are firmly committed to effective immigration control. We demonstrated this with our rules of 1980, which were made after a comprehensive review, and they led to a strengthening of immigration control in all respects. The number of people accepted for settlement has dropped sharply since we took office. The figure for the 12-month period ending on 30th June of this year was the lowest for any 12-month period in the 20 years since the passing of the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1962. The British Nationality Act has provided a settled and logical framework for the future. Because of that Act we now have to change the Immigration Rules. The proposals in the White Paper are, we believe, the right ones in the new circumstances created by the Act, and I invite the House to take note of them. My Lords, I beg to move that this House takes note of Proposals for the revision of Immigration Rules, Command Paper 8683.
Moved, That this House takes note of the Command Paper Proposals for revision of the Immigration Rules (Cmnd. 8683).—(Lord Elton.)
6.14 p.m.
Baroness Birk: My Lords, I think my first impression on listening to the Minister explain the proposals before us tonight—and he explained them with as great a clarity as he could command—was how complicated these rules are. I am sure that all of us in this House, on all sides, were listening very carefully and felt some sympathy for the Minister, having to explain something which even people who have taken an interest in this subject and perhaps know a little about it find extraordinarily complicated. If this is so, then how much more complicated is it going to be for immigrants themselves and for those people who are attempting to advise them?
May I then start with something which is very much simpler in words, and much clearer? That is the statement in the Conservative Party Manifesto of 1979, at page 20. It says quite simply:
"The rights of all British citizens legally settled here are equal before the law whatever their race, colour or creed, and their opportunities ought to be equal, too".
That is admirable: brief and clear. However, it then goes on to say on the same page:
"We shall end the concession introduced by the Labour Government in 1974 to husbands and male fiancés".
Perhaps I may take up a minute to put this in the historical context of what has happened in relation to immigration. From 1969 to 1970 the Labour Government had a blanket ban on all husbands or fiancés. This was sex-discriminatory. It would be quite wrong
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of me not to agree that it was, and in that way it was wrong. It was not, however, racially discriminatory, so at least it scored on one half of this very difficult problem, though not on two.
Indeed, in April 1974 my noble friend Lady Jeger introduced a Bill in another place which sought to amend the law so that non-British men marrying British women should have the same rights with regard to settlement and citizenship as non-British women marrying British men. This was not opposed by the Conservative Opposition at that time. An election intervened, and the new Labour Government then introduced rules along the lines of the Bill which was presented by my noble friend and which received its Second Reading. These rules were then reversed by the Conservative Government, and now we have these rules.
It would be churlish of me not to extend a welcome to the relaxation which has been put into these rules as far as husbands and fiancés are concerned and which has caused such a furore in the Minister's party. He himself I think referred to the Tory Back-Benchers who are bruising the Home Secretary at the moment by describing their claims as "exaggerated". I hope the Home Secretary is not being bruised by them, or at least that he will not give way to them.
The fact is that these people are frightened that giving rights to female British citizens will bring in waves of black men. They are not looking at the quality of family life; they are not particularly concerned with the human emotions involved; what they are concerned with is the colour. It is the colour which counts here; and so far as they are concerned, black is out.
Let us look, then, at the present complicated proposals which have just been explained to us. In paragraph 50 it sets out the point about the wife having to be a British citizen and not United Kingdom born, or having to have parents born here, as under the previous Government. The Minister said that the reason for this is that the rule must be confined to women who have a close connection with this country. How can he explain the difference between somebody who has been able to become naturalised and has not been in this country for many years, probably less than a decade, and people who have been settled here from the time they were children but who, though they have not taken out British citizenship, nevertheless have a very close connection with this country? If that is the criterion, then in that case I think one can knock that one.
The Minister will no doubt reply that such persons, if they wanted to become British citizens, ought to have done something about it. I think there are two answers to that. In the first place, it costs £200, and you do not get a grant from supplementary benefit to help cover the cost of naturalisation. Secondly, it is true that it does not occur to numbers of people. They do not think about it. They just go on living as they are, and they consider themselves British. That is the point. They are even taken by surprise. It was quite clear, throughout the long and unhappy discussions on the Nationality Act, that there were people—examples were given from all sides of this House—who were not even aware that they had to take out British citizenship or would have to do so under this new Act, until

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suddenly it hit them in some way and they found that they were not British citizens.
The Minister made a great point of saying that the Home Secretary would certainly consider cases of special hardship. In view of the fact that he has himself admitted that the numbers involved are not very great, what he is saying is that there will be more administration and more administrative problems, more bureaucratic pen-pushing, and above all more anguish. Talk about a sledge-hammer for a nut. I would say, with great respect, that that is not a very good argument for making the legislation so restrictive.
There will be a tiny number of women involved—probably around 1,200, but nobody knows the exact figure. Again I repeat that the tests of British citizenship exclude women who are settled here but who are not British citizens. In 1982–83 it is estimated that the Home Office will make £1.2 million profit out of the fees it charges for naturalisation. If that is something—the Minister laid stress on this—which people who want to become British citizens should make the effort to take up, then it should not be something out of which the Government make a profit when there are so many people who will find it difficult to pay it.
When we come to the tests as regards men applying, which are covered in paragraph 50 and some of the conditions in paragraph 126, we find that they are very stringent tests. They are carried out at two points. First, when an application is made for an entry clearance in the country of origin and, secondly, when the person arrives and has an entry clearance to this country, then the immigration officer can make a decision.
Basically., the conditions are more or less the same, namely:
"that the marriage was not one entered into primarily to obtain admission to the United Kingdom".
I think that that will be very difficult to show once a marriage has taken place and a wife is over here. Secondly, it must not be the case:
"that one of the parties no longer has any intention of living permanently with the other as his or her spouse".
It seems to me that it would be very odd if they came over and that were immediately the case. However, if that were so, then there is a point in it. But as regards a number of marriages in this country or any other country, it would be difficult to say that they were going to last permanently. If one were faced with an immigration officer who asked one whether one was married unto death, one would say that one hopes so, but one could not really state one's life on it.
Clearance will also be refused if:
"the parties to the marriage have not met".
We went over that point at considerable length when we discussed the immigration rules in December 1979 and it also came up during our discussions on the Nationality Act, It seems to me that it is a sign of intolerance if a society cannot sustain the different customs and cultures of other societies. Where there are arranged marriages—and they are quite a small percentage of the whole and there is a difference between that type of marriage and a marriage of
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convenience—it seems to me that one should have respect for people's customs in the same way as one does in other fields. That is the mark of a civilised society and a democracy.
In the end, it comes down to the following: After very exhaustive tests, conditions and interviews which take place in the country of origin and which can in some cases go on for 18 months, two years and up to five years, men will come over with an entry clearance. They will then be at the mercy of an arbitrary decision of an immigration officer here. That does not mean to say that the immigration officer sets out to stop people coming in. However, the whole aura, the whole climate, in which this has been conceived seems to me to put the onus much more on trying to show the negative rather than the affirmative on the part of the officials interviewing these people. Even with the best will in the world people make errors. As we are also aware, the whole system and machinery of appeal is cumbersome, long-winded and can also turn out a tremendous number of injustices.
Even when the man, the husband, gets here—and that is provided that his wife is a British citizen—he then is allowed to remain for 12 months in the first instance. That puts marriage on probation for 12 months. Let us assume that it is a genuine marriage; they have a child and the marriage breaks down. That happens to many marriages—it does not have to be an immigrant marriage that breaks down even after a year. In those circumstances the child will be left fatherless. It could be much worse for children if this restriction were extended to two years.
There have been a great many rumours and a tremendous amount of press comment since the abstentions in another place last week, that the Home Secretary is being pressed very hard to tighten up these rules rather than, as we would prefer, to relax them further. I ask the Minister—and I would like an answer when he replies—whether consideration is being given to the view which I understand is held by some people that the Home Secretary is considering that the restriction on the limit of stay should be extended to two years, which might be a sop to the people who are opposing this? I would like to know whether the noble Lord can say that he knows that or that there is definitely no intention of this or whether it is being considered.
Apart from the effect on marriage, there is also the effect on employment. We know that we have problems of unemployment, but there are other problems—which we are not dealing with tonight—concerning why there are certain jobs which are not filled by some of the people who are unemployed who may be trained or skilled in other jobs. London Transport—which has always employed a number of black people many of whom were born in this country but many of whom are immigrants—will not employ men who have a limit on their stay. Therefore, if the Government are considering extending this restriction it will affect the employment of immigrants here who will then become an even greater burden on the state because at some point some benefit would have to be paid out to them.
The Minister tried to make out a strong case as to why there should be a difference between the rights which have been given in the past to men to bring in

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foreign wives or fiancées and now the restricted right given to women to bring in foreign husbands or fiancés. The Minister said that the Government were limiting primary immigration. I wonder whether those Peers who perhaps are not quite familiar with the following quotation could guess where it came from. I quote:
"Women are not necessarily bound to compete for employment and are unlikely to be breadwinners. Women as breadwinners are unusual, for society still expects the man to go out to work and the woman to stay at home".
Your Lordships may think that that came from some opposition to the suffragettes at the beginning of this century. It did not. It came from the Home Office as part of its defence which it presented to the European Commission on Human Rights in May 1982 when arguing the case against extending the rule in the way in which the European Commission on Human Rights wanted it to be extended. As the Minister said, they decided that there was a case to answer in the three cases brought before them on the basis that we could well be breaking the European Convention on Human Rights.
The Minister did not mention EEC citizens, where an entirely different situation applies. For instance, an Italian woman settled in this country who wants to marry, say, an Indian, is in an entirely different position. The Indian can come over here and she can marry him. This, of course, is our problem with the European Commission. So we are even as regards our partners in the Community.
With respect, I think that the Minister was wrong when he said that under these rules there would not be any stateless people. We had this argument at very great length on amendments during the passage of the Nationality Act. In particular, my noble friend Lord Pitt—who I am sorry to see is now not speaking in the debate tonight—made out an unanswerable case to show that this could be the result in certain cases. It was a case that went unanswered by the Government. In the end, when the vote came, that is what happened.
I turn briefly to children, which is the other area where we think that this is so grossly unfair and so wrong. The Nationality Act did away with the concept of jus soli, which is something which we bitterly opposed. Because of that, those children born here now who are not British under the Nationality Act have no absolute right of residence in this country. It is to the credit of your Lordships' House that a tremendous battle was waged during the passage of that Act. In fact, I believe that the relevant amendment was moved by a bishop from the Bishops' Benches and supported by many of us on all sides of the House. In fact, with that wide support the amendment was nearly won. I hope that tonight the House will show the same sense of compassion and common sense, because the Home Secretary said that he would read carefully what happened during the debate in the House of Lords before these proposals were turned into rules.
Taking into account that we now have the Nationality Act, the least the Government can do is to give the children a clear immigration status. Briefly, I shall take the example of a Cypriot child. Between 1974 and 1982 Cypriots were given yearly leave to stay. By the middle of 1982 a substantial number was
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refused an extension of their leave on the basis that it was safe for them to return home. I want to take the situation of a Cypriot child where neither parent has current leave to stay but both of whom are in the process of appealing. If that child leaves the country to stay with his grandmother in Cyprus, he is in danger of being unable to return. Paragraph 65 of the Immigration Rules says:
"If a child does not qualify for leave to enter under paragraph 63 because neither of his parents has a current leave (and neither of them is a British citizen or has the right of abode) he will normally be refused leave to enter. However he may"—
and I stress the word "may"—
"be granted leave for a limited period only, if both of his parents are in the United Kingdom and it appears unlikely that they will be removed in the immediate future, and if there is no other person outside the United Kindgom who could reasonably be expected to care for him."
There are two points to be made here. Surely the word "may" when it says:
"he may be granted leave for a limited period only"
should be "shall", because already it is made conditional. By putting in "may" it makes the uncertainty even greater.
Secondly, this could go against the last sentence where it says:
"… no other person outside the United Kingdom who could reasonably be expected to care for him".
It could be said of the child who goes to Cyprus to stay with his grandmother, who is living in an unoccupied part of Cyprus, that there is someone outside the United Kingdom who could look after him. Yet he has gone on a visit to his grandparents and the place he should be is at home with his own parents. Therefore, there is doubt about that. It is known that so much doubt will occur over these cases that advice has already been given informally that it would be safer for children to have something in writing when they go abroad for any reason, so that they can be sure of re-entry when they return.
If indefinite leave were given to children, it would take away the fright and muddle that parents and children are in; it would disperse this aura of uncertainty; it would also reduce a tremendous amount of expensive bureaucracy. For a Government, that are always saying that they want to cut down the number of civil servants and to cut public expenditure, to increase public expenditure and the continuous use of a large number of personnel for such a very small problem is almost beyond me.
We have read recently of the papers and objects that have been buried in Castle Howard to be dug up in 2,000 or 3,000 years' time. I only hope that a copy of the Immigration Rules will be among them, because it will give people a very interesting insight to what went on in our society in 1982. If, of course, the child stays and the parents go, the child can stay more or less forever, particularly if, after the age of 10, a child born here becomes a British citizen if he applies. So we are in the theatre of the absurd. The parents can go and the child, as a child, has the right to stay here on his own. It really is too absurd.
I just want to take a couple of minutes to turn to the point on which the Minister did not spend much time, that of businessmen. Here I would quote from the Economist of 30th October this year:
"As a sop to the anti-immigrant faction, the rules for admitting businessmen who want to live in Britain are also to be tightened.

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To qualify, the intending immigrant will now have to show control of £150,000 instead of £100,000; and the minimum private income qualifying an otherwise unqualified would-be immigrant for entry is raised from £10,000 to £15,00 a year. The gateway to Britain is one needle's eye that the rich can squeeze through without slimming. It's harder for lovers."
I do not know about the line saying that it is harder for lovers, but that is in line with the Labour Party's view on the question of businessmen and professional men and also the financial conditions that have been imposed. We believe, as it was in the past, that as long as people can show that they either have independent means or that they would not be a financial burden on the state, they should be allowed in. The Economist, which is not a Labour newspaper, points out the iniquity of upping it in this way.
Finally, the rights of Britain's immigrant population extend to the right to have a secure family life. One concession for British women to have husbands or fiancés, which other women who are generally resident will not, cuts right across this particular concept of dividing the citizens from the rest. In my view, it is no good spending money and using masses of words trying to deal with problems in our inner cities, talking about the integration of immigrants into our community, trying to improve relationships between various sections (whether it is the police, Government officials or whoever)—between the immigrant population and the resident white population—if at the same time one is creating uncertainty, and hardship right in the centre of family life for the fathers, the mothers and the children. It is so counterproductive that, in view of what we have seen happening in our inner city areas, it is amazing that the Government have not grasped this point.
I would like to think that the Government will make a further relaxation, but I doubt whether they will. But we want a clear and loud assurance from the Minister that the Government will not be forced by their own rebels to retreat and make the rules more race and sex discriminatory. This would be a bitter blow to immigrant communities and a loss of faith in the fine words addressed to integration, security and a sense of belonging to a country of which they rightly feel a part.
6.40 p.m.
Lord Avebury: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Aylestone, asked me to say that he was sorry that he could not remain for the debate. He was good enough to indicate to me the sense of what he had intended to say, and particularly on the questions of husbands and children we found ourselves in broad agreement, and he authorised me to say that the remarks that I am about to make on these matters coincide with his own views.
May I take up where the noble Baroness, Lady Birk, left off. Your Lordships may remember that on 11th December 1979 I moved,
"That this House deplores the White Paper Proposals for Revision of the Immigration Rules as racially and sexually discriminatory, incompatible with our international obligations and contrary to the principles of natural justice". [Col. 1022.]
I ventured to suggest then that we were likely to be dragged before the European Commission on Human
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Rights for denying entry to the husbands of women belonging to a class which is mainly of other than European ethnic origin while allowing entry to husbands of the remainder, who are mainly white.
The noble Lord, Lord Belstead, then dismissed the whole of the argument put to him in that debate with a single sentence, and I should like to remind your Lordships of what he said in that debate at column 1126:
"We believe that we have strong arguments with which to justify those proposals if they should be challenged".
The noble Lord, Lord Elton, repeated that almost verbatim this afternoon. But when pressed to say what these arguments were, on several occasions Ministers have always refused to answer. In behaving in this manner the Government showed then, and continue to show now, a contempt for Parliament which undermines one of the main pillars of the British constitution, which is that the proposals of Governments should be subjected to fair and searching examination in both Houses of Parliament. I do not think it was good enough to plead the confidentiality of proceedings at Strasbourg because they had not been initiated at the time that the noble Lord, Lord Belstead, spoke. But if the level of argument being adduced by the Government in Strasbourg is on a par with the quotation which the noble Baroness, Lady Birk, produced, then I am not surprised that the Government should wish to conceal their arguments.
If only one side of the case is heard, as it has been, and the Government decline to enter the lists, then we may never fully expose the weakness of their case before the public. It may well have been assumed by many people that there really were things to be said on the other side, even though the Government would not disclose what they were. But now we know that so far as one large group of complainants and potential complainants are concerned the Government have nothing to say at all, because of course they withdrew at the last minute in a case that was to have come before the European Commission at Strasbourg.
The Government then proposed to exclude the husbands of women born outside the United Kingdom if both the woman's parents were also born outside the United Kingdom. Now of course they are prepared to admit those husbands where the woman concerned is a United Kingdom citizen, but still not where the woman is merely settled. I have to maintain that the new stand is also racially and sexually discriminatory. The man who is settled here may bring his wife in to join him, and that has always been the rule; but the woman who wants to bring her husband in has got to be a citizen, and that is plainly discriminatory on the grounds of sex. I do not believe that the Government would attempt to deny it, and the noble Lord, Lord Elton, virtually gave us an admission this afternoon.
On the other hand, they have always pretended that their policy for husbands was not racially discriminatory. The fact is that the proportion of women belonging to certain ethnic minorities who can comply with the rule is in its new form, as in its old one, substantially less than the proportion of native white women who can comply with it, which is of course 100 per cent. Therefore, I believe that the European Commission of Human Rights is bound to find against the United Kingdom in the cases which are still before

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the commission, and thus also on the others awaiting the decision on the test cases.
I should like to ask the noble Lord, Lord Elton, when he replies what is the number of cases pending of which the Government have been notified. I know that the Home Office are masters of procrastination, as they demonstrated so ably in the case of Mrs. Dahanayake, as well as in some of the cases which have been brought against the Government by prisoners, which they managed to string out for years by manipulation of the procedures. But what is the likely result of the policy in the long-term in the case of these women? The victims of discrimination presumably will have to be offered a higher amount in settlement of damages. As time goes by there will be more and more of them.
I said that the Government have withdrawn from the field in the case of Mrs. Dahanayake, but they are still fighting another case of a citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies which the noble Lord, Lord Elton, mentioned; the case of Mrs. Balkandali, who is going to be entitled to bring her husband in as from 1st January anyway, and I cannot see the point of continuing to resist that case. All that is going to be achieved presumably is an increase in the amount of compensation that will have to be paid to her.
Perhaps I could also mention the case of Mrs. Arcely Cabales, who is a citizen of the Philippines resident in the United Kingdom now for 15 years, and who works as a state enrolled nurse in the Bethlem Royal Hospital. The noble Lord will be aware that Mrs. Cabales' case was found admissible by the European Commission on 10th May, and it is not true, as I said in an intervention when the noble Lord was discussing this, that no obstacle exists to this lady returning to the Philippines. Mrs. Cabales has not seen her husband since April 1980 when they were married over there, and the separation is an enormous strain on her. She would like to travel to her country of origin to be with her husband but she cannot afford the fare. Her work is as a psychiatric nurse, and that obviously adds enormously to the strain she has to endure, but she is a woman who is very committed to her vocation. If she gave up her nursing career and returned to the Philippines, she would be unable to work in a hospital there because, as the noble Lord probably knows, the state enrolled nurse qualification is not recognised almost anywhere else in the world, and certainly not in the Philippines.
The Tory Party constantly declares its commitment to the family. But surely the first duty, as the noble Baroness, Lady Birk, said, of anybody who seeks to uphold the ideal of family life is to ensure that husbands and wives are able to make their homes together. We brought Mrs. Cabales here because, as a nation, we wanted her, and many people similar to her, to work in the most unpopular corners of the National Health Service which were shunned by the indigenous population. We gave them a training which made them unemployable almost anywhere else in the world, and now, in effect, we are trying to kick them out after having used them for 15 years. This is a despicable way to behave, and I hope that the Ministers responsible for this policy feel some twinges of remorse as they contemplate the trail of ruined lives that they leave behind them.
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I want to mention two particular cases. One is the case of women who are British overseas citizens and who come here on quota vouchers and who of course are not able to get married while they are still in the country where they were resident before, because as soon as they do that they then forfeit the right to be considered under the quota voucher scheme. A woman who is in this situation may have had to wait for five, six or seven years in the queue overseas. When she is finally admitted to this country we are, in effect, telling her that she cannot get married for another seven years because it will take her five years to acquire the right to apply for registration as a British citizen, and then another two on top of that for the application to be considered and granted. A woman in this position is being told that she is not entitled to have a husband from overseas where she may have been brought up until she may have reached the age of something like 30.I do not consider that that is fair or just. I am sure that most people, if it was put to them, would say that it was an unacceptable feature of the rules as we now have them before us.
Secondly, there is the case that the noble Baroness touched on of the person who comes here, perhaps as an infant brought by her parents from the country of origin. The country of origin may have become independent while she is in this country, and she automatically acquires that citizenship without even knowing it. The noble Lord, Lord Pitt, went into this subject in some detail when we were talking about the Nationality Bill. When she grows up and starts to look for a husband, she finds that, unlike all her contemporaries and peers, she is unable to seek a husband from the country of her origin.
Take, for example, the case of a girl who came from Guyana in 1963, the year before independence, with her parents, who became Guyanan citizens, as she did. She is now aged 20 and has spent 19 out of the 20 years of her life in this country, so she has established, in the words of the noble Lord, Lord Elton, a very close connection with the United Kingdom. I cannot think of anything much closer than that—having spent 19 of her 20 years living in this country—but now she is being told that she is not able to enjoy the privilege that citizens can exercise, of marrying whom she likes. That is quite intolerable. Whatever a handful of extremists may say about the changes that are being proposed, they do not go nearly far enough and we must insist that the Government review them more closely than they have.
I come to the provisions for children which are a direct consequence of the infamous Nationality Act. We are talking about children who were born in this country to parents who were not settled at the time of their birth. That means, for example (the Minister gave two examples) students, businessmen or—a particular category that I mentioned in the proceedings on the Nationality Act but which the noble Lord did not give—applicants for refugee status, as well as those who asked us for refugee status but were given the lesser status of asylum or were granted exceptional leave to remain.
There is no time to consider all of the categories, so I will take the last one I mentioned. Many people who managed to escape from the Ayatollah's régime in Iran, for instance, cannot prove they are refugees in the

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formal sense of complying with Article 1 of the United Nations Convention on Refugees because they cannot produce evidence that they have a well-founded fear of persecution as individuals, even though they may belong to a group which has suffered persecution in Iran, such as the Armenian Christians. So these people may often be given exceptional leave to remain, one year at a time, but they never become settled and therefore their children are not British citizens when they are born in this country and they are subject to immigration control, in common with all others in the same circumstances.
The parent may apply for leave to remain if the child goes abroad and returns, though the parent is not obliged to do so. It would be much simpler—this is a suggestion I should like the Secretary of State to consider—if the child were to have indefinite leave to remain on the basis of his birth in the United Kingdom, so he can come and go freely so long as he is not abroad for more than two years. I realise that that suggestion was floated in another place, and the only objection then raised by the Minister was that the child would be able to re-enter the country without the parent. So he would, but what parent, having returned to the country of origin, would send her child alone to the United Kingdom?
I suppose one might construct an artificial example where the mother, having returned to the country of origin, sends the child back to be, say, with an uncle who is settled here and to join his parents overseas at intervals, but never being absent for more than two years and thus maintaining the right of residence here. Such an upbringing would obviously be very unsettling for any child and it is a scheme which I believe would be unlikely to appeal to more than a handful of families, and thus the risk which the Minister suggested in another place is not one we need entertain. In any case, as the noble Baroness, Lady Birk, pointed out. if the parents are so determined that their child should acquire permanent residence in the United Kingdom, they could easily do that by leaving the child here when they return overseas because, when he reaches the age of 10, he can be registered as a British citizen.
The Minister said that only a handful of people would be stateless under the provisions we are discussing. But the position of the illegitimate child may be very different, as we tried to show during the proceedings on the Nationality Act. If the person I mentioned—who was granted exceptional leave to remain—has a child fathered by a United Kingdom citizen to whom she is not married, then of course the child is not British, and unless her country of origin has a citizenship law which provides for the transmission abroad through the female line, the child is born stateless and must wait until the age of 10 before he or she can acquire British nationality. If, before then, the mother returns overseas taking the child with her, the child will have no right of re-entry, even if a court of law grants access to the father.
No legal right of transfer of citizenship exists in respect of female citizens from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. I have not had time to go through all the list of Commonwealth countries from which many people may come here, but it is obvious to me that we
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shall be faced with statelessness. I am not able to measure exactly the scale on which it will occur, but I think the Minister would be deluding the House if he did not accept that we have a serious problem here which arises directly out of the Nationality Act and these rules.
Another serious problem which we raised in the proceedings on the Nationality Act is the question of what happens to a child who is treated as a British citizen on the assumption that one of his parents was settled, and it then turns out that the parent in question was in fact an illegal entrant by virtue of having failed to disclose some material fact to an immigration officer maybe many years before. That child, who was British from birth and was treated as such, and who may even have a British passport issued to him or her, is then deprived of that status when the mother is declared an illegal entrant by a Minister at the Home Office, and there is no appeal. That was made clear by the noble Lord, Lord Belstead, in a Written Answer that he gave me to a Question two days ago. Thus, this child was born in the United Kingdom and everybody thinks it is a British citizen, then years later the parents are declared to be illegal entrants and the child forfeits that status and the passport is immediately taken away.
One of the main anxieties expressed to us during and after the passage of the Nationality Act was the enormous difficulty likely to be suffered by people in ascertaining whether, and, if so, precisely how, they will be affected by these provisions. To use the words of the noble Lord, Lord Elton, the provisions are set out at great length and in great detail in the schedule to the Nationality Act—I use his words, not mine—and that is particularly the case with children. We have substituted a number of rules which are opaque and complex for a single rule which everybody understood, and the result will be confusion and stress for the individual as well as a huge increase in bureaucracy.
There is one other matter on which I wish to touch. It is contained in the rules, although it was not altered on the last occasion. I refer to the position of elderly parents who are not primary immigrants within the meaning which the Minister mentioned; they are not heads of households coming here to settle, nor are they to be included in the unlimited number of extra breadwinners whom he feared. These are old people—people aged 65 and upwards—whose children in the United Kingdom have shown that they are able to maintain them, that they have adequate accommodation for them and that there is no danger of their becoming a charge on public funds.
In the last set of changes made by the Government, a new requirement was erected that these people must have no close relations in the country of origin to whom they could turn for support. This has created an almost insuperable barrier for these people, particularly from the Indian sub-continent, because they must have some relatives in the country of origin, and the adjudicators have determined that even in the case of a brother or a similarly close relative whom the person may not have seen for many years and may not in practice depend on at all, that is sufficient reason for their exclusion, ignoring the custom of the Indian sub-

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continent that it is the primary duty of sons to look after elderly people.
As the noble Baroness, Lady Birk, mentioned, in designing our nationality requirements and immigration rules, we should have some regard at any rate for the customs of people who will be affected. Everybody knows that in the Indian sub-continent, unlike in Great Britain, sons look after their elderly parents. They do not put them in an old persons' home. They believe that this is a filial duty which they must carry out. It is not a duty of daughters or of brothers or of sisters. Yet, with the rules as they stand, the adjudicators have got to exclude and refuse applications by elderly parents who comply with all the other provisions on the grounds that they have some relative in the country of origin.
I recently took a case before the adjudicator where an elderly mother wanted to come here to stay with her two sons. The two sons have the means to maintain her, they have the accommodation and there were strong compassionate grounds, in that the elderly mother had recently had a serious accident, had broken her femur and had been hospitalised. I took the case before the adjudicator—and I will not weary your Lordships with the long arguments about proving that she was wholly or mainly dependent and the difficulties which arose there, but on which we were able to satisfy the adjudicator. However, at the end of the day he had to say that, because this lady had a brother who was resident a day's journey away from the village where she lived and to whom theoretically she could turn, he was unable to grant the application under the rules. At the end of his determination, the adjudicator said that this was a case which ought to be submitted to the Secretary of State for the exercise of his discretion.
The noble Lord, in talking about the wives, underlined the compassionate attitude of the Home Office to hard cases. I must admit that, in some of the cases that I take to Mr. Timothy Raison, he is extremely compassionate and humane. But, in these particular cases of the elderly parents, for some reason they have got the knife into them—because I was told in the answer that I had from the Minister, when I appealed to him at the suggestion of the adjudicator, that the Tory Party in its election manifesto had decided that immigration must be reduced and, unfortunately, this elderly lady had got to be the one who was to bear the brunt of that policy.
I conclude with these words. The policy that we are now looking at, generally speaking, is a policy which derives from the election manifesto of 1979, even though in some respects the severity of it has been mitigated by common sense. But I do not believe that the Secretary of State is going to read the remarks of your Lordships and change his mind, as the noble Baroness, Lady Birk, suggested. He is under pressure from all sides, he is under pressure from his own Right wing to maintain the purity of the election manifesto. In the end, this may be the factor which determines what happens in respect of these rules, but there are many other people in this country who are either themselves going to be affected by the proposals or who belong to communities whose members will be affected, and in whose minds there will be anxieties
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created absolutely unnecessarily as a result of what we are doing now, and particularly what we are doing with regard to the children. I believe that it is the voices of those people and not the voices of your Lordships which may ultimately perhaps secure some change of attitude on the part of the Government.
7.4 p.m.
The Lord Bishop of Rochester: My Lords, in the debate on the Address earlier this month, I ventured to point out that there was no mention in the gracious Speech of community and race relations and I said that I felt this was particularly unfortunate because the British Nationality Act comes into operation on 1st January next year and there is still much anxiety in certain places about its implementation, as other noble Lords have indicated tonight. In his reply to that debate, the noble Lord, Lord Elton, in acknowledging my concern for confidence in our society on the part of what he called its minority members, assured me that the party for which he spoke is founded upon the principle that we are one nation. He went on to assert with some firmness that Her Majesty's Government remain unshakable in their support of that principle.
I warmly welcomed the Minister's statement and I hope that he will keep this in mind when he responds to this debate and especially to the suggestions that the rules of which we are being asked to take note are open to the charge of discrimination and to impeding the promotion of that true family life for which, as the noble Baroness, Lady Birk, reminded us, the Prime Minister and others have more than once declared their support.
I should like to suggest that there are three principles which must be considered when we are discussing these matters. First, I believe that it is always better to have clear rights established in any set of rules and that discretion (especially when it is to be exercised by officials of Government) should be kept within very well defined boundaries and should always be accountable. Secondly, I believe that we must be careful to safeguard our long legal tradition based on the principle that the prosecution must prove its case, and that if error is to be entertained, it is always better to err in favour of the innocent. Thirdly, not only Christians of all traditions but many others as well will, I believe, want specially to emphasise the duty of the law to encourage people to hold to their properly contracted obligations—and rules which undermine marital and family obligations are, I believe, particularly questionable.
I feel bound to say that, notwithstanding the welcome concession made to the husbands and fiancés of women who are British citizens, these immigration rules seem to me to raise questions in relation to each of the three principles which I have mentioned. I believe that this particular set of rules arouses anxiety in many quarters because of the amount of discretion given to immigration officers. I believe that there is further anxiety because there is a tendency for the boot to be put on the other foot and for people of sound intention to be denied their rights, often through a variety of mistakes and misunderstandings. I cannot but believe that, by their very complexity, especially in regard to children, these

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rules are going to put certain families at risk rather than to strengthen their unity and their happiness.
My Lords, I do not need to remind you that the Churches of all denominations were profoundly unhappy about the British Nationality Act. The Bishops of the Roman Catholic Church were united in strong opposition to it at various points, and their views were frequently supported by those of us who sit on these Benches. We continue to be greatly concerned about the way in which this Act is implemented. We believe that the Ministers concerned and all the officials who operate in their name will need to exercise sensitivity and humanity if confidence in the principle that we are one nation is not to be further undermined. It will be important also for those whom the Minister called its "minority members" not to be alarmed and bewildered and made to feel that they are second-class citizens rather than equal partners in the one nation of which the Minister spoke. I hope that he will pay very close attention to the various points made by other noble Lords in this debate and that he will be able to give your Lordships a firm undertaking that he will secure the further revision of these immigration rules in the interests of both the parents and the children.
7.10 p.m.
Viscount Massereene and Ferrard: My Lords, when the noble Baroness, Lady Birk, started her speech she said that the only reason—I hope I am quoting her correctly—why certain Tories objected to any more immigration was because it was black and we were not concerned with the quality of life. With due respect to the noble Baroness, she was talking nonsense. We are very much concerned with the quality of life.
Baroness Birk: My Lords, I wonder whether I can correct the noble Viscount. I did not say "the quality of life". I referred to the quality of the people concerned. I said that, whatever the Tories were concerned with, they were frightened they were black, I did not say "the quality of life" but I can quite understand how I used the word quality", and one often thinks of the quality of life.
Viscount Massereene and Ferrard: My Lords, I apologise to the noble Baroness if I misunderstood her. I should like to point out—and we never hear it mentioned in this House—that we have about the highest density of population per square mile in the world. Actually, Belgium just beats us. If you deduct the Highlands of Scotland, where there are only about 250,000 people, then we have the highest density in Europe and a higher density than exists in the subcontinent of India, and that is counting Bangladesh, Pakistan and India. I do not think that ours is quite so high as Indonesia, but one must remember that in Indonesia, Java and those islands, the quality of life is very, very poor—indeed on the poverty level—as are many of the countries in the Far East. In this country we have an amazingly high standard—one of the highest levels of living in the world. The Government must therefore have some control on immigration. If I understood the right reverend Prelate aright, he would allow immigrants from all over the world to come here willy nilly.
The Lord Bishop of Rochester: I said no such thing, my Lords.
Viscount Massereene and Ferrard: Well, my Lords, that is how I understood the right reverend Prelate, and I imagine some newspapers may also have so understood him. Regarding the European Convention on Human Rights, why is it that France, which has a Socialist Government, has far stricter immigration controls than this country which has a Consérvative Government? She has taken no notice of the European Convention on Human Rights. I am all for compassion where there is great anxiety or harshness or unfairness. Well, of course, you cannot have that, but the immigration officers have to decide these matters.
The figure of 2,500 or 3,000, which the Minister mentioned, of extra immigrants who may come in, husbands and fiances of women in this country, does not amount to much. But of course it adds up considerably over the years. I am frightened of the abuse of those privileges. In the past there has been great abuse despite the devotion of the immigration officers to their duty.
How can an immigration officer tell 100 per cent. whether an Asian marriage was one entered into primarily to obtain admission to the United Kingdom, or that one of the parties had no longer any intention of living permanently with the other as his or her spouse? It is almost impossible for them. One would have to be psychic, have a crystal ball, in order to be completely sure that the fiancé or the husband was genuine. One would need to use some form of lie detector.
May I quote from a letter written to me from the London and Counties Tenants' Federation. I have had so many letters, but I cannot read them all. They say that to judge from the opinion of an Asian lawyer, as stated in a newspaper cutting which they enclosed, about 50 per cent. of Asian men who came to Southall to marry had deserted their wives and were seeking permanent separation. There are many such instances. It could appear that many of these men are using the Immigration Act as a subterfuge to enter this country. I am sure that the immigration officers are alive to this, but of course there will be abuses. There is no doubt about that.
Regarding family life, one does not want to do anything to destroy that. I am a great believer in family life. But if, owing to immigration, our population grows and grows, we are destroying family life, because this country can support only a certain number of people. We have 3,500,000 unemployed and the more population we have the more expense there will be on the welfare state, which will destroy family life, as the standard of living goes down. We must be practical on this matter. In genuine cases we have always been almost a fairy godmother to the rest of the world, and I suppose that so far as it is economically possible we ought to try to continue doing this.
My Lords, I shall not speak further on this subject as we have had some very long speeches. I support the Government in this White Paper, but we must make sure—and this will be very difficult—that these privileges are not abused.
7.18 p.m.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, I should like to follow the noble Viscount immediately in the central issue of his theme regarding the standard of living and the quality of life of this country as he referred to it. Does he realise that a great deal of the quality of life of this country over the past 30 years has been due to the work carried out by immigrants, who have been either voluntary immigrants from poor countries in the ex-Colonial Empire or who were recruited deliberately by organisations like London Transport in order to do the kind of work which many British people were less and less willing to perform?
If he has had the experience, as many of us have, of periods in British hospitals within the National Health Service—any aspect of the health service—I would have thought that he would be paying tribute to the great contribution to the standard of living of the people of these islands that has been made possible by immigrants, both men and women.
Viscount Massereene and Ferrard: My Lords, I am quite prepared to say that some immigrants have helped this country: of course they have. That is why I was rather surprised when the noble Baroness, Lady Birk, said it was only the rich businessmen, immigrants, who have, I think, a capital of £150,000, who are going to be allowed in. Of course, immigrants who are businessmen and executives are, and have been, a great help to this country, and I agree with the noble Lord about that; but there are hundreds and thousands of immigrants who have not. I am not making any criticism of them, but it is a fact.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, perhaps the noble Viscount's definition of "facts" would differ from mine. I certainly doubt whether he could prove in any way that what he has just stated is a fact, and that there are hundreds of thousands of immigrants who have been, as he would say, "of no use to this country". But I want to pass on from that issue quite naturally to what seems to me to be the state of almost unbelievable hypocrisy which has come from the opposite Front Bench tonight, and which came from the Government Front Bench in another place just a week ago. When Government Ministers are claiming, as they are today and as my noble friend Lady Birk has already pointed out, that they are the party of the family and then they make proposals of this kind which are going to split couples and to divide children from parents, that seems to me to be the ultimate in hypocrisy.
When the noble Lord says that these proposals arise out of the British Nationality Act, this is really just a cover-up. Let me refer him to Clause 50 in the White Paper. What is there in Clause 50 that arises out of the British Nationality Act? In practice, what is happening is that the one concession which is made in these proposals—the concession contained in Clause 50—arises out of the cases that have been submitted to the European Court. That is why the Government have had to face the wrath of a section of their Back-Benchers, as they did just a week ago tonight, as the noble Lord must know, when a number of his honourable friends refused to support the Government in these proposals, on the basis, as the noble Baroness, Lady Birk, said, of the manifesto on which the Conser-
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vative Party fought the last election. She quoted the sentence:
"We shall end the concession introduced by the Labour Party in 1974 to husbands and male fiancés".
It was not until the issue was taken to the European Court at Strasbourg that the Government found themselves entrapped in this web and had to bring in this concession.
Let me remind your Lordships of the way in which the Conservative Party has applied the principle that they laid down in that manifesto. First of all, they were going to apply a literal application of the principle they had stated; they were going to end the right of husbands and fiancés to enter this country. Then what did they find? They found it would then affect white British women as well as black. So what did they do? They changed the rules. They said that British women who are either British citizens or who have at least one parent born in this country should have the right to bring husbands into the country. That was in practice racial discrimination because it was the white British women who were allowed to bring their husbands into the country, being either British by birth or British by having at least one British parent. But the black women, women who were British by registration, were forbidden this right.
These proposals are trying to rectify this part of that situation and everybody on this side of the House supports that proposal within the White Paper. What we cannot understand, and what I totally fail to understand, is how it is possible for Ministers—who after all are honourable men and women—to deny that the proposals contained in this White Paper are not based upon sex discrimination. The noble Lord's right honourable friend in another place denied that there was discrimination. Will the noble Lord tonight deny that there is discimination? When he got to that part of his speech, his argument was so feeble and distorted that it cannot have been equalled since Lewis Carroll.
As I understand it, the best he can do, after all these weeks of thinking, is to tell this House and the country that the reason why a man, who has been settled in this country but is not a British citizen, shall be allowed to bring a fiancée or wife into this country, but that a woman in the same position—settled for as long and with as close a relationship with this country—shall not be allowed to bring in her husband or fiancé, is because there is high unemployment.
I could not detect any other argument than that—just because there is high unemployment. Is he saying that unemployment is simply a male prerogative? Or is he saying that it is only males who have the right to employment? Or is he saying that only the male shall be allowed the right to live in this country, without citizenship but with a wife? What is his argument, and will he give us a direct answer tonight? Does he accept that this provision is based, clearly and solely, upon sex discrimination going back to the 19th century—not just the 19th century, but the 1930s in Germany—when the woman's place was in the kitchen and the bed, and that it is the man who is the rightful, and the only rightful, breadwinner?
Of course, that is not what the noble Lord himself thinks, nor, do I believe, is it what his right honourable friend the Home Secretary thinks. Why, then, is there

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this discrimination? Quite simply, it is because the noble Lord, or his masters in another place, are frightened to death of the people behind them—not the people over here, not the people in the country, but the 50 or so people behind them who abstained in the other place last week. They are frightened that they will be attacked by the Right-wing of their own party—they have already been attacked—and that they will be held to have broken the manifesto on which they were elected. But, after all, as they have broken so many other aspects of that manifesto, why be so concerned about this one, which is an issue of humanity which concerns the family? I should like the noble Lord, when he comes to reply, to answer a direct question. Does he admit that the proposal, so far as the change in the rights of British women citizens is concerned, is a proposal which can only be described as one of sex discrimination?
There is one other point which I should like to draw to the noble Lord's attention for his reply. We are presented with a White Paper and, therefore, we are entitled to discuss all the issues in it—not just those issues which are proposing changes in the law. I want to refer the noble Lord's attention to the appendix on the back cover page of the White Paper, in which there are listed the conditions and provisions for the granting of visas for the United Kingdom. I want to draw his attention to one point on this and ask him for an explanation about it. This is a list of countries which are exempt from having to grant visas for the entry of their nationals into the United Kingdom. I want to ask him why this list includes the Republic of South Africa. Why is it that citizens of the Republic of South Africa do not have to obtain a visa to enter this country? It seems to me that one of the very few things that one could expect this Government to do, in support of their frequently professed detestation of apartheid, would be to insist that South African nationals entering this country should have to apply for a visa.
But I shall give one even more practical and serious support to this suggestion. We know, and the Government know, that there have been many South African agents sent to this country. We know, and the Government know, that there are in this country agents for the security forces of the South African Government. We know that they are in this country. We know that they are all over Europe, some of us have had friends who have suffered at their hands. Many people know of anti-apartheid property which has been damaged by them.
May I suggest to the noble Lord that he brings to the attention of his right honourable friend the very small, but very important, measure which could be taken, and which arises from this White Paper, which is that South African nationals wishing to enter this country should have to apply for visas, in the same way as so many other nationals have to do, so that some control on the immigration of South Africans into this country can be exercised by the immigration authorities. That control can be exercised not in any racial way, not in any prejudiced way, but in order to keep out those who are doing the very dirty work of the South African security forces, such as has been seen in London and other parts of this country over the past few months.
7.38 p.m.
Lord Monson: My Lords, before I proceed to the more contentious part of these proposals, may I ask the noble Lord, Lord Elton, a brief question about paragraphs 72 and 146, which have the effect of absolving EEC nationals who are resident in this country from having to report at periodic intervals to the police. I think that there ought to be total reciprocity in these matters. Can the noble Lord assure us that there is now no EEC country where resident United Kingdom citizens have to report periodically to the police? If such a requirement should persist in any EEC country, then, surely, nationals of that country who are resident in Britain should, in turn, have to report to the police here. If the noble Lord does not have the answer by the time he comes to wind up, perhaps he could very kindly write to me.
Many noble lords have mentioned the desirability of compassion and. in theory, of course, that is admirable. The difficulty is that, as a history don at Bristol University, in a most stimulating article in The Times confirmed only the other day, the irresponsibility of the Establishment, one might almost say their criminal irresponsibility, in allowing such excessive primary immigration—and I stress the word "excessive"; I am not suggesting that there should have been none at all—20, 25, 30 and 35 years ago, against the wishes of the majority of the people, whose fears were sneered at. has, sadly, but inevitably, led to a hardening of hearts against borderline cases, such as those cited, in particular, by the noble Lord, Lord Avebury.
There are one or two exceptions to this general public attitude; for example, the Vietnamese boat people. The boat people have been readily accepted, partly because of the horrendous nature of their plight, and partly because, like other South-East Asians and the Chinese, as well as the Poles and the Hungarians before them, they are happy to take this country as they find it and do not ask for special laws or dispensations.
The first thing to be said about the male fiancé proposal, as other noble Lords have pointed out, is that it breaks an election pledge, just as the failure to set up a register of dependants breaks an election pledge. Of course, there are occasions when totally unforeseen events necessitate the breaking of election pledges, but the present state of affairs cannot have been entirely unforeseen and there is bound to be a suspicion that there was never any serious intention of fulfilling these particular election commitments in the first place.
I have asserted on more than one earlier occasion that as many as 15 marginal seats were won by the Conservatives in the 1979 general election on the strength of Conservative promises—and even more on the strength of Conservative hints—that a really tough line would be taken over immigration, and I have never been contradicted. Some might now claim, though not I, that these seats were won under false pretences.
The blame for the volte face is laid partially upon the European Commission. But the European Court has not yet ruled, and when it does there is no guarantee that its decision would be unfavourable to this country if the law were to remain unchanged. The attitude of

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the Commission to sex discrimination is by no means consistent. For example, I understand that it has specifically ruled that differing retirement ages for men and women are not discriminatory, yet no greater form of sex discrimination can be imagined than compelling a man—in particular an unskilled man occupied in a heavy labouring job—to work until his 65th birthday, while a woman can retire on full pension at the age of 60. Nor in those countries where national service is still compulsory, as it is in most Continental countries, has the commission or the court ruled that girls should be equally liable to conscription, whether for military or civil purposes. So I do not think that the European Commission argument is entirely valid.
Why are the "fiancé proposals", as we might call them as a form of shorthand, objected to by so many—and not only by right wing Conservatives, as the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, alleges? I think the noble Lord will accept that not only the majority of Conservative voters but also, according to public opinion poll after public opinion poll, the majority of those who vote Liberal and the majority of those who vote Labour also believe that immigration has in the past been excessive, whatever their leaders may say or think at any given time.
The first objection concerns the numbers involved in this new source of primary immigration. It has been claimed that only an extra 2,500 or, at the most, 3,000 new immigrants are likely to enter each year if these proposals are implemented. Indeed, the noble Lord, Lord Elton, repeated that assurance this afternoon. The trouble is that the Home Office has so often underestimated the figures in the past that nobody has much faith any longer in its projections for the future.
More important is the possibility and, indeed, the probability of abuse. Some countries have a static or declining population. This applies, among others, to all Western European countries, with the exception of the Republic of Ireland, and to all Eastern European countries, with the exception. I think, of Rumania. But there are many other countries where the fall in the death rate, consequent upon the introduction of modern medicine and modern hygiene, has not been matched by a corresponding fall in the birth rate. As a result, these countries have a growth in population of 3 per cent. per annum compound, or even more. This being so, it is almost a law of nature or, at any rate, a law of physics that the overspill from the pressure cooker of over-population is bound to force its way in the direction of those countries with static or declining populations, unless all possible loopholes are plugged. The Americans are finding out that the Rio Grande is a loophole which cannot be plugged. The influx of Mexicans, other Latin Americans and now Haitians, is reaching flood proportions. Of course, one cannot feel too morally indignant about all this. No doubt if one were in the position of these people one would do the same thing oneself, but happily we are not in the position of these people and our primary duty, surely, is to put our own country and our own countrymen and countrywomen first.
That abuses persist and are likely to go on persisting cannot be doubted. On 30th January 1979, Mr. James Callaghan, who was then Prime Minister, told the
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House of Commons that it seemed that marriage was being used by many young men of working age as a means of entering, working and settling in this country, which he went on to describe as an abuse. The noble Viscount, Lord Massereene and Ferrard, quoted briefly from a newspaper report in the Middlesex County Times concerning the views of an Asian solicitor who said that he was fed up with the abuses of the immigration laws, particularly in relation to marriage. He went on to say that, once the men have had their passports stamped and are legally allowed to stay in Britain, they ask for a divorce. And within the last few days we have read about the Lovers Marriage International Bureau of Lahore.
If there has to be any new primary immigration, why can it not be confined to husbands—in other words, excluding fiancés? If a woman takes the trouble to go abroad for her wedding, it is fairly conclusive evidence—not cast-iron but fairly conclusive evidence—that the marriage is a genuine one. It is with fiancés, or alleged fiancés, rather than husbands that abuses are likely to occur. Even the admission of husbands would represent a backtracking on the Conservative election commitment, but a backtracking which might just be made acceptable to the public.
7.47 p.m.
Baroness Lockwood: My Lords, I have some sympathy with the Minister this evening. I am sure he must feel that he has been here before, with, on the one hand, pressure on him to be careful and not to go too far and, on the other hand, pressure on him to extend the changes that are envisaged in the White Paper. It may be some consolation if I tell him that perhaps I can claim to have had a longer history than he in this connection. It was in 1976 that as chairman of the Equal Opportunities Commission I first made representations to a Home Secretary on this matter. Referring to nationality and all related administrative procedures, I said on that occasion that the commission's sole concern is for parity of treatment for men and women within the Government's overall policy in relation to numbers. It is in that context that I want to speak tonight. It is also in that context that I must declare my interest as the chairman of the Equal Opportunities Commission. The commission has assumed that one of its statutory responsibilities is to press successive Governments to bring about a state of equality between the sexes in relation to nationality and immigration. The purpose of the White Paper which we are debating this evening is to bring the immigration rules into line with the new British Nationality Act. In so far as its proposals give rights to British citizens, whether or not they were born here, I welcome it, but I must point out that if the immigration rules are to be logical then they should follow through the principles of the British Nationality Act.
If we look at this White Paper, there are, as the Minister himself has admitted, some differences in the treatment of men and women. I would refer to three of them. The first is one to which the Minister himself and many other noble Lords have already referred. Although the Nationality Act, in principle, gave equal rights to women as citizens of this country, the immigration rules are not going to give equal rights or

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parity. They will be imposing on women three tests which are not imposed on men. In his opening remarks the noble Lord the Minister made reference to the need to stop primary immigration. I believe I am quoting him correctly and that he said we cannot admit more men to compete for scarce jobs. He was of course saying that primary immigration means men, and he went on to say that men are still the principal breadwinners in the area we are discussing. We are discussing the area of British citizens; of women who have British citizenship.
I suggest that, if the Government do want to control numbers, then they should not seek to do so by limiting the rights of British women to bring in husbands and fiancés and impose upon British women tests which are not imposed on British men. Nor should they try to hide behind the outdated concept of "head of the family", because even among the Asian and West Indian women who are living here as British citizens, the whole concept of a man being the head of the household is disappearing in the same way that it is disappearing in other groups.
The arguments which the noble Lord the Minister used apply also to what he was saying in relation to non-British citizens who are settled here. Again, there are differences in the treatment of non-British citizens who are women and non-British citizens who are male. In that connection, I was very interested to hear the Minister talk about our right to insist upon a substantial time with this country; if a person does not have a substantial time with this country, then that person should not seek to bring in a husband or fiancé. That is, if the person happens to be a woman, but if the person happens to be a man it would seem that the time with this country is not so important. Here again we preach a fundamental principle.
The third area to which I want to refer is one which I would have thought had no significance at all in terms of the numbers and areas which the Government are concerned about. It is those groups of people who are allowed to come into the country for specific purposes—such as students, people coming in for employment and who are permitted to come in for employment, business people or people of independent means. Here again there is no attempt in the White Paper to amend those sections of the immigration rules at present in existence which admit, and I quote, "a wife and children". In other words, men in these groups are able to bring into the country a wife and children but women who come into these groups are not entitled to bring in a spouse and children. I do not see any justification in any of the arguments which the Minister has put forward this evening to substantiate those discriminatory rules.
I know that the Minister and his colleagues are being subjected to a great deal of pressure but the Government really do need to sort out their principles. I would remind the noble Lord that, while I am saying this to this Government, I have said the same to previous Governments. Our principles do need to be sorted out and if we are giving rights under our nationality laws or immigration rules then they should apply evenly to both sexes. While I would give a limited welcome to the White Paper, in that it does take us a little further, I hope that the time is not far off when we can really treat this matter on the basis of equality of the sexes.
7.56 p.m.
Baroness Hornsby-Smith: My Lords, I must apologise for the fact that I did not put my name on the list of speakers because I was not certain that I should be here. I wanted to speak tonight because I get more and more saddened as I listen, as I have listened over the years, to many immigration debates (in which in the other place I had officially to participate quite often). This country is always depicted as the monster. I get a little tired when I realise that there is no country in the Commonwealth which has been more generous over entry nor more sympathetic than has the United Kingdom. We should not forget that a very large proportion of the Asian population now in our midst are here simply and solely because their African brothers threw them out. We should not forget that we have made a great humane contribution to problems not of our making. We too often give the idea, which is so quickly taken up by our enemies abroad, that we have inhumane Governments—whether they be of the present party or of others. We over-exaggerate our self-condemnation from time to time and forget the good which respective Governments of both political parties have done.
On the general principles which my noble friend is presenting in the White Paper, I fully agree as a woman that it is right that UK citizens should be treated equally whether they are men or women. I therefore agree with the basic justice of the proposals he has outlined; that a female citizen should be able to bring in her spouse. Where I do have reservations is in the field of abuse. I was for three years with responsibilities for immigration at the Home Office before we widened the regulations as they had been under successive Governments since the 1960s. I saw what devious tricks were entered into and what efforts were made by people who desired to set foot in this country and stay here by one means or another. Some of them were crooks. Some of them were dope-peddlers.
I do not believe that any section of the Civil Service gets more abuse than our unfortunate immigration service, which does an outstanding job. One never hears about the undesirables they have kept out but only about the hardship cases which they have not let in. We do an injustice to the service and I am sure that Members on the other side of the House who have held office in the Home Office appreciate far more fully how difficult the job is and how sincerely the immigration officers carry it out. It is about time we recognised how difficult their job is.
I have reservations in regard to abuse—first, as regards the African and Asian ethnic groups. We cannot ignore—and it amazes me that the Council for Civil Liberties does seem to ignore it—the fact that it is in itself discrimination against women where there are arranged marriages. Had my noble friend Lady Vickers been able to be here, she would have participated in the debate tonight, giving examples of weeping young women who have come to her appalled that this legislation is going to allow their fathers to arrange a marriage for them. One in particular was being packed off to Singapore in order to meet the husband found by the uncle of the family. I have met young women, highly educated, born in this country, educated in this country, brought up in our environment, some of them now 18 or 20, who are terrified

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that they will have to bow to the family decision. They will be sent out to India to meet the young man under the strict aegis of the family. I think we are forgetting an aspect of the equality of women if we turn a blind eye to what, in our idea of equality, our idea of the way of life in this country, are the rights and liberties of those young women.
I also regret that any debate on immigration is always polarised as if it affected only the coloured population. Here, I would disagree with my noble friend on the Front Bench, because I think we have underestimated the abuse that there will be. I am almost willing to bet that there will be just as much abuse by white, by Latin, possibly by Arab, and by people who are not coloured at all, some coming from countries where they have a harsh régime, some thinking there are pickings in the great city of London, some involved in nefarious activities who will use every opportunity. It may be a romantic ploy to some young woman they meet on holiday; it may be hard cash with somebody this end arranging it. We are living in cloud cuckoo land if we do not think it can happen. I therefore hope very sincerely that, where we are not certain that the girl is willing, there should be some organisation which will interview these girls without the parents, so that we can be sure there is not the sexual discrimination which I am sure we all deplore. I believe it will be extremely difficult to carry through this legislation and minimise the abuse, because to many people this is still a very advantageous country to come to. I think there will be efforts towards as much white abuse as there might be from those who are African or oriental.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, before the noble Baroness sits down, will she tell the House whether she agrees with the Government on the issue of sex discrimination between the settled non-citizen male living in this country and the settled non-citizen female?
Baroness Hornsby-Smith: My Lords, I think we have got to draw the line somewhere, because throughout the world the husband, or in some cases the father, still chooses the bride. Whether it is from a Latin Mediterranean country or from an Asian or African one, the girl has not the same dominance that an independent Anglo-Saxon girl in this country has in making her own decision. I think it would widen the abuse. I think that the Government have gone as far as it is reasonable to ask them to go at this moment of time. I think we should see how these regulations—which I believe at the moment are fair and of enormous help to those who quite genuinely should be here—work.
8.4 p.m.
Lord Elton: My Lords, I am grateful to all of your Lordships, whatever the colour or temperature or direction or pressure of your contributions to this debate. Perhaps I should make that clear at the outset in case some of my responses to individual interventions are less generous than that. My Lords, this is a "take note" debate; it is therefore, if I may so put it, a take away debate. My principal function is to take
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away from this place the attitudes which your Lordships have revealed and the criticisms which your Lordships have made of the White Paper which I put before your Lordships some time ago. I will try nonetheless to respond as best I can to a range of the points your Lordships have brought forward. If I do not respond to them all it does not mean that they have fallen on barren ground, at least in the extent that the ground will be cultivated; whether they will sprout depends on their quality.
My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Birk, was much displeased with the rules as a whole. I would like to set her mind at rest at the outset on one particular thing. We are not engaged on a profit-making exercise. Certainly it is true that receipts in the last year from naturalisation and registration fees exceeded by £1·2 million the costs to which they gave rise. But this was a once-for-all exercise, and it occurred because of a change in procedure under which fees are now being collected when an application is made, whereas previously they were collected when an application was granted. As a result, two years' fees have been collected in one year. Obviously this will not happen again, and our policy is as she said it should be, to set fees at a level which will cover costs and no more. I shall return to the noble Baroness.
The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Rochester reminded me, quite properly, of my party's commitment, which I reiterated in the debate on the humble Address in reply to the gracious Speech, our dedication to the philosophy that we are one nation. In much of what he said he suggested that the way in which the rules are framed and the Act implemented would destroy the confidence of what I think we now both for the purposes of this discussion term the minority members of our community in the rest of the community. I understand what he says; I will bear his concern to the proper quarter. But I hope he will understand that Government must be concerned not only with the confidence of one part of our community but of all parts, and that includes the majority, and without mutual confidence we will never have a relaxation of tension. We need to establish in the public mind, therefore, that immigration is controlled, and that it is controlled in a logical manner on logical principles.
My noble friend Lord Massereene and Ferrard has demonstrated better than I could that this is perhaps a task which needs careful consideration. My noble friend did, however, agree with the right reverend Prelate that compassion is necessary in the administration of these rules. I think I should say that a great deal of care is exercised and will be exercised, not only by Ministers but also by officials, in deciding difficult individual cases.
I would like now to express my heartfelt gratitude to my noble friend Lady Hornsby-Smith for giving voice, from the position of experience, to the astonishing amount of work which officials and indeed Ministers have to do, the amount of care which they take with individual cases, and the number of brickbats they receive for their recompense. Where there are special compassionate circumstances Ministers are willing to exercise discretion outside the rules. I should say that my right honourable friend the Home Secretary personally dealt with about 10,000 letters, a number

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of them emanating from the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, in the past year. I have experience of that; for three weeks I was dealing with these letters, and I am amazed at both the volume and the detail, and the compassion which they reveal.
This has been particularly true in the case of applications by women wishing to be joined here by a foreign husband or fiancé, where we have taken careful account of a woman's connection with this country and whether she would suffer undue hardship through living in her husband's country. At the same time, discretion has to be confined to cases where there are exceptional compassionate circumstances, and there will always be hard cases on the borderline. But to exercise a wider discretion would be to undermine the rules and would be unfair to other applicants. I think my noble friend Lady Hornsby-Smith was right to emphasise the fact that we have a scope of accessibility to this country which is rarely acknowledged; and it is, as my noble friend Lord Massereene and Ferrard said, a country with a very high level of occupancy already.
Perhaps I may now turn to the category of statelessness of which the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, spoke. In particular, I come first to the illegitimate child of a non-British wife whose home state does not transfer citizenship through the female line. If the mother is settled in the United Kingdom at the time of the birth, the child will be a British citizen at birth. If the mother becomes settled or becomes a British citizen after the child's birth, the child will be able to acquire British citizenship.
The noble Baroness, Lady Birk, asked me to state the position of the Home Secretary on a possible extension of the probationary period from one year to two. I think I can best reply to this by quoting his actual words in another place when opening the debate there, in which he said;
"I shall listen with care to suggestions that may be made here and in another place for modifications in these proposals. After these debates, and in the light of what is said in them, I shall lay a statement of changes in the rules . . .". [Official Report, Commons, 11/11/82, col. 692)
I can scarcely go further than that, and I hope the noble Baroness will be content to see what he does.
The noble Lord, Lord Avebury, also referred to children of refugees. I can tell him that the child of a refugee or of anyone else who is given an extension of leave for a year will qualify for an extension of leave in line with the parent. There is no question of the child being required to leave. Should the parent be granted settlement, the child would qualify for settlement too. In order to qualify for British citizenship, a person must have lived here for five years and been granted settlement for the last year, as well as satisfying certain personal requirements. Where the parent of a child born in the United Kingdom becomes settled, the child himself has a right to be registered as a British citizen.
As to the marriageability of women refugees and British overseas citizens, a woman who is accepted as a refugee or is granted asylum will be granted settlement after four years. She can qualify to naturalise as a British citizen after five years here. She must be settled for the last year. I do not think it is unfair to expect such a woman to live here for five years herself before she can qualify to become a British
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citizen and to bring her husband or fiancé into this country. The same is true of a British overseas citizen who is accepted for settlement.
If I may revert to the noble Baroness, Lady Birk, she referred with some heat to paragraph 65. Paragraph 65 regulates the admission of children to this country to join their parents. While I will read again with care what she said, I ought perhaps to remind her and your Lordships that the parents here referred to are parents who are not British citizens, who have not settled here, who have no leave even to be here themselves, and in respect of whom the expectation is, of course, as indeed is the law, that they will leave.
Baroness Birk: My Lords, if I may interrupt the noble Lord, my point was that it could be—and I think I am right about this—people whose leave has ended and who are appealing. It is while their appeal is pending that this could happen and the child could be affected. Also, while the noble Lord is answering that, I would like his comments on what I suggested, that "shall" should be substituted for "may" on that particular point.
Lord Elton: My Lords, on the first point, which is narrower than I thought, I will think about it and write to the noble Baroness. She has, by putting this on the record, performed the purpose that this debate is supposed to serve, anyway. As to the words "shall" and "may", many long and fascinating hours have been spent between these Benches on the subject of which words should be used where. Where it is a discretionary power, I should have thought that the word "shall" was a contradiction of the word "discretion", but I will also look at that. The speech of the noble Baroness was rendered charming, I thought, not only by her own personality but by the theme that it ought to be at least as easy for lovers to come here as it should be for businessmen, which I think appeals to our hearts perhaps a little more than our heads.
The noble Lord, Lord Avebury—and it is the shuffling of these papers which has brought the two Peers into alternate positions—referred to the Strasbourg cases. In addition to the three cases to which I referred, there are about 20 other cases pending before the Commission complaining about the rules on husbands. Of the three cases referred to by the noble Lord, those of Balkandali, who will become a British citizen, and of Cabales have been declared admissible by the Commission, together with another one which is known as the case of X. Mrs. Dahanayake's case was declared inadmissible by the Commission. My right honourable friend decided to allow her husband to remain on the recommendation of an adjudicator.
The Government do not accept that the present rules are either sexually or racially discriminatory; nor that the rules infringe the Convention on Human Rights at all. The Government similarly do not accept that the rules we now propose are discriminatory on these grounds and would violate the convention. At this stage I am not going, as the noble Lord would like me to do, to deploy the arguments which we shall need to deploy on that.
The noble Lord, Lord Monson, if I may refer briefly to his question, mentioned police registration. I

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cannot, I am afraid, say what the position is in other European Economic Community countries. The reason we have proposed that Community nationals should not normally have to register with the police is that we have found that registration causes duplications of work with no significant benefit to the immigration control. The noble Lord will know that EEC nationals here for more than six months have to obtain a resident's permit from the Home Office anyway, and that has very similar effects.
As to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Hatch, about South Africans being allowed in without visas, the question of making visas necessary has been considered not only by this Government but by previous Governments and rejected because so many South Africans have dual United Kingdom/South African citizenship that it would be ineffective in any case, and the work involved would be largely unproductive.
My Lords, as the noble Lord, Lord Hatch of Lusby, bestowed on me a literary accolade, I think I owe him a compliment of some sort. He said that what I had said equalled the works of Lewis Carroll. May I say that, certainly in his interpretation of our motives, his equals those of Freud? I hope he will take that compliment and be as pleased with it as I was with his to me.
But our motives are not all sexist—and I must say this to all those interested in this aspect. It is indeed no good the noble and charming Baroness, Lady Birk, saying that things are different from what they are. There is a notable difference, and it is an economic difference, between heads of households and their dependants. Some of your Lordships may regret it, but all of us must recognise the fact that in our society the head of the household (by which I mean the principal breadwinner) is still more likely to be a man than a woman. The noble Baroness, Lady Lockwood, may regret this, but it is the case. In the society of the Indian sub-continent, from whence the vast majority of these applicants will come, it is infinitely more so.
The first reason that I advance, therefore—it is made infinitely more pressing by our present uncomfortably high level of unemployment—is that we simply cannot afford to let an indefinite number of breadwinners into this country at the same time. To admit a finite number, a maximum of 3,000 a year as we now propose, is one thing; but to add unquantifiably to that would have an adverse effect on the economy—indeed, not only on the economy but on public confidence in the rules which, as I said to the right reverend Prelate, we cannot sensibly afford.
Equal treatment to men and women could, of course, be achieved by levelling down if entry were restricted to women coming to join British citizen men. But such a restriction could not be introduced for wives and fiancées of men settled here before 1st January 1973 by means of these or of any other rules. It would require an Act of Parliament to amend the Immigration Act and it would in any case mean breaking pledges which have been given by Governments of both complexions. It would result in very many unsatisfactory decisions and I might add that it would make it more difficult for this country to attract skilled people as work-permit holders, businessmen and so on.
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I have heard reference in this debate—as I expected—to the manifesto pledge. I will only say that the undertaking given in the manifesto was to end the concession introduced by the Labour Government in 1974 to husbands and male fiancés. That concession was granted to all women settled in this country. We have revoked it. We do not propose to reintroduce it. What we propose to do is to give to women who will be British citizens the right, under strictly supervised circumstances, to be joined by the men to whom they are married or to whom they intend to be married. The supervision which I have already described extends not merely to establishing the bona fides of the men before their arrival, but to verifying the genuineness of the marriage when it actually takes place and even to ensuring that it subsists a year after it is entered into. That is a very different kettle of fish from the general permissive rules which it will replace.
The British Nationality Act 1981 has introduced fundamental changes in a central area of our national life. For many years we have had a citizenship which did not give us a definition of who actually belongs in this country. Now we have one, it will give us a far better basis for effective and more understandable immigration control. We should build on the framework provided by the Act and this is what we have done in the rules. We will take careful note of what your Lordships have said, but I now ask the House to take note of our proposals which I am confident are the right ones.
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House adjourned at twenty-three minutes past eight o'clock.