Lords Sitting of 2 February 1983

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

Lord Lewin
Admiral of the Fleet Sir Terence Thornton Lewin, GCB, MVO, DSC, having been created Baron Lewin, of Greenwich in Greater London, for life—Was, in his robes, introduced between the Lord Ironside and the Lord Hill-Norton.
Lord Ingrow
Sir John Aked Taylor, Knight, OBE, having been created Baron Ingrow, of Keighley in the County of West Yorkshire, for life—Was, in his robes, introduced between the Lord Chelmer and the Baroness Macleod of Borve.

Kensington Town Hall
2.45 p.m.
Baroness Ewart-Biggs: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will order a public inquiry into the redevelopment of the partially demolished Kensington Town Hall.
Lord Skelmersdale: My Lords, local planning authorities have statutory responsibility for the day-to-day control of development within their areas. The policy of the Government is that individual applications for planning permission should be taken out of the hands of a local authority only in exceptional circumstances. These usually involve matters of national or regional significance. The issues related to the redevelopment of the Kensington Town Hall site are of local significance only, and call-in of any planning application is not therefore justified.
Baroness Ewart-Biggs: My Lords, I should like to thank the Minister for answering that Question. Does he not agree that, even if this is not an exceptional situation, it is deplorable in that for nearly eight months now the Kensington residents and also the diplomats and tourists who use this very central thoroughfare, Kensington High Street, have been deeply affected by the tragic appearance—if not the eyesore—of the partially demolished Kensington Town Hall? With one planning appeal still waiting to be heard, building work is unlikely to commence for many months to come, so does the Minister not agree that a system whereby an owner is allowed to pull down a building many months before redevelopment planning has been agreed is seriously at fault?
Lord Skelmersdale: My Lords, the situation in this case is that the Borough of Kensington and Chelsea
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has acted all along totally within the law. It is not for the Government to make moral judgments in matters of this kind. As the noble Baroness has said, there is an application in at the moment and the public inquiry into this begins on 22nd February.
Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede: My Lords, although the noble Lord is undoubtedly right that the borough has technically acted within the spirit of the law, is it not also true that, by its precipitate action in knocking down half of Kensington Town Hall, it was in fact acting against the wishes of the local residents who they had been consulting about the redevelopment?
Lord Skelmersdale: My Lords, this is exactly the kind of moral argument which I said I was not prepared to be drawn into.
The Earl of Halsbury: My Lords, does the Minister subscribe to the widely believed legend that this precipitate action was to forestall action by another body? In that case, is it entirely consistent with his comment that these matters are of local interest only?
Lord Skelmersdale: My Lords, I have not the least idea why they undertook the action that they did. All I know is that the action has happened. The town hall, which I visited this morning, is in a totally unsatisfactory state. Therefore, my own feeling is that anything at this stage would be better than leaving it in the way that it currently is.
Lord Kennet: My Lords, does the noble Lord agree that, if he has not the least idea why this happened, he must be alone among the literate population of central London?
Lord Skelmersdale: My Lords, I think that we are straying into the dangerous area of matters of opinion, and I do not think that that is desirable.
Lord Shackleton: My Lords, if the noble Lord is not prepared to comment on the morality of this matter, is he prepared to consider expressing a political or even a social opinion, which is of some concern, I should have thought, to this Government?
Lord Skelmersdale: My Lords, I thought that I had already done that. I do not think that it is a satisfactory state of affairs for the building to be left in the condition in which it currently is.
Lord Wells-Pestell: My Lords, is it not the responsibility of this Government to know why certain things have happened and, when asked by this House why they happened, to give an answer?
Lord Skelmersdale: My Lords, the responsibilities of government, so far as I know, have not changed since the noble Lord was on the Front Bench opposite. If I have acted in any way differently from the way he would have done in the circumstances, I apologise.
Viscount St. Davids: My Lords, is this area not in fact a democracy? Are there not some electors, and is it not their right to comment on this matter in the usual manner in the proper way? What more needs doing?
Lord Skelmersdale: Exactly, my Lords. As I sought to explain in my original Answer, this is a local problem which should be dealt with in the normal, local democratic fashion. The local population are indeed pressurising their council over this particular case. As I understand it, opinions locally are very much divided as to what the council should do; but what they decide to do, as I have said all along, is strictly a matter for them.
Baroness Ewart-Biggs: My Lords, would the Minister not agree that the council, having asked the Royal Fine Art Commission beforehand for their judgment for a replacement building, then disregarded the advice given to them by the commission?
Lord Skelmersdale: My Lords, the position of the Royal Fine Art Commission is quite straightforward, I think. Its advice was sought; it was listened to, but was not in the end agreed with. It is entirely for the council, as the local planning authority, to decide the weight they should give to any views expressed by the commission, by their own electors or anybody else.
Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: My Lords, if the GLC had committed this action, would the Government have taken quite so detached a point of view?
Lord Skelmersdale: My Lords, I would have thought that that was a rather hypothetical question.

Student Grants
2.52 p.m.
Lord Molloy: 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 changes are contemplated in the system of student grants.
The Earl of Swinton: My Lords, the Government are at present considering the possibility of changing from a system of student support based wholly on grants to one involving a mixture of grants and loans. There are many complex issues to be looked at, and no decisions have yet been taken.
Lord Molloy: My Lords, is the noble Earl aware that these proposals could create severe difficulties for many of our young people in getting to university, which means to say that the proposition could very well limit access to higher education? Ought there not to be full discussions before anything like this is implemented?
The Earl of Swinton: My Lords, I think I made it quite clear in my original Answer that this is not a proposition. I repeat that the Government are at present considering the possibility of changing. I do not think that is a proposition. Obviously, when the time comes—that is, if the time comes—there will have to be innumerable consultations; but the Government have not committed themselves to this in any way so far.
Lord Molloy: My Lords, is the noble Earl aware that because of the statements which have emanated from the DES and, indeed, from the Secretary of State himself, there is some consternation, not only among the 300,000-odd students and their parents but among all those who are interested in education? Ought not the Government to come clean and state precisely what they have in mind, so that there can be proper consultations and a proper examination of a proposal which is giving great concern right through the whole fabric of higher education?
The Earl of Swinton: My Lords, I really cannot go on repeating that the Government have not yet come to any definite conclusion. When the Government themselves make up their minds what they are going to do, that will be the proper time for consulting everybody.
Lord Orr-Ewing: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that a number of people, having observed a system of grants and loans working admirably in other free Western countries, think the Government are absolutely right to consider this most seriously and most carefully, and to have consultations on the issue?
The Earl of Swinton: My Lords, I am very grateful for those remarks from my noble friend. There will obviously be consultations, and I imagine that some people will be in favour and others violently opposed.
Baroness David: My Lords, may I ask the Minister whether the Waldegrave plan, which was referred to in the educational press at the beginning of last month with a great many details about what was to be done with the grants system—some people would benefit, the minimum grant would be abolished, and so on—is being seriously considered by the Government, or are they going to come up with some quite different plan? Or was the Parliamentary Under-Secretary talking very freely at that moment?
The Earl of Swinton: My Lords. I can only repeat once more that we are considering the possibility of a change, but the details have not yet been agreed or thought out in any way.
Lord Kennet: My Lords, this is a request for information. Did the House hear the noble Earl aright a moment ago when he said:
"When the Government have made up their mind what they want to do, that will be the time for consultation'"?
The Earl of Swinton: My Lords, I apologise. I should have said "if the Government decide", rather than "when".
Lord Glenamara: My Lords, is the noble Earl aware that many of us would regard this as putting the clock back 50 years, to where it was before the war? Would he not agree that this, together with the abandonment of the Robbins criteria, which the Government are proposing this year, would mean that higher education will become an élitist privilege, as it used to be?
The Earl of Swinton: My Lords, I think that is a matter of opinion. The noble Lord is entitled to

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express his opinion, but I do not think it is in the shape of a question.
Lord Molloy: My Lords, may I say that I am grateful to the noble Earl for the reply he has given, particularly as he has said that everybody will be consulted. Would he please give the House an assurance that representatives of the National Union of Students will be included, because, as I understand it, they look upon the issue as being one of saving money, and they have proposals which need not be of the same type as the Government's but which nevertheless could save money, and which would be acceptable to the NUS?
The Earl of Swinton: My Lords, I cannot give a categorical promise, but I imagine they would be consulted.
Lord Kilmarnock: My Lords, would the Government undertake to issue a White Paper before taking any action? Further, could the noble Earl reassure us that they would not make a pre-emptive strike prior to full consultation?
The Earl of Swinton: My Lords, I am absolutely sure that the Government are going to consult very widely on this.
Lord Alexander of Potterhill: My Lords, is it not a fact that the arrangements for students' grants in this country are probably the most generous in the whole of the Western world? Is it not also a fact that many European countries operate a system of a combination of grants and loans which has operated fairly satisfactorily for very long periods of time, and that certainly the arrangements here are very much more favourable than those in the United States?
The Earl of Swinton: My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Alexander, for what he has said. This is one of the reasons why the Government are considering these possibilities.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, if the noble Earl is now saying that the Government are considering the possibilities of deciding between grants and loans, will he assure the House that the Government will look very carefully at the American model? Because a number of his noble friends and Members on the Cross-Benches are apparently unaware of the fact that those of us who have taught in the United States are appalled by the number of students who have to fall out because they cannot afford to keep up their loan payments.
The Earl of Swinton: My Lords, I am quite certain the Government are looking into measures which are used in various parts of the world.

H-Bomb Tests at Christmas Island
2.58 p.m.
Lord Jenkins of Putney: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they are aware that the Answer given on 25th October 1982 (col. 390) by the Minister of State for Defence Procurement, Viscount Trenchard, on the subject of H-Bomb tests at Christmas Island was inaccurate and whether they will now conduct an inquiry into the increasing evidence that many British service personnel have suffered injury and premature death as the result of their presence at nuclear weapon tests.
The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Lord Belstead): My Lords, the Answer given on 25th October 1982 was accurate. It remains true that only a few claims have been made to the Ministry of Defence alleging that servicemen who participated in British H-Bomb tests at Christmas Island have suffered from ill effects. In view of the publicly expressed concerns, it has been decided to conduct a health survey of all relevant British personnel. This was announced on 12th January 1983. However, it is still considered that no one who participated in any of the British atmospheric nuclear tests was exposed to significant health risks.
Lord Jenkins of Putney: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for that Answer, but is it not the case that, within a short time of this negative Answer being given, the Government changed their mind and decided that they would after all look into the matter and have a survey? Is it not therefore the case—I am not suggesting any personal turpitude so far as the noble Viscount, Lord Trenchard, is concerned—that perhaps he was not adequately briefed on that occasion?
Lord Belstead: No, my Lords, the Answer which my noble friend Lord Trenchard gave on 25th October last year was, as my original Answer said, accurate. Regarding the decision to undertake a health survey, it is tragically the case that about one in five of the male population of the United Kingdom at the present time dies of cancer, so there will be some thousands of people who, understandably, will be able to question whether there is a link between the disease and the tests. The problem is to determine whether or not the incidence of cancer among test veterans is significantly different from the incidence of the disease among those who did not participate in the tests. The announced health survey will be designed to solve this problem. But I must repeat that the measured radiation exposures of personnel in the tests clearly indicate that no significant health risks were run.
The Earl of Lauderdale: My Lords, would my noble friend agree that the Government's response in setting an investigation forward is typical of the sensitivity of democratic Governments, unlike that expected in totalitarian countries?
Lord Belstead: My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for that question.
Lord Shinwell: My Lords, if he has not already done so, will the noble Lord clarify one item in the

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Question? Have there been any premature deaths of service personnel? Will he answer that question?
Lord Belstead: My Lords, the answer to that, so far as we know, is, No, and by that I mean No in the sense that there are no deaths which can be connected with the tests. As to whether personnel who took part in the tests have died prematurely, there were some 15,000 personnel and nobody could possibly answer that question.
Lord Bishopston: My Lords, is not the Minister rather prejudging the survey's findings in his reply? Will he not accept that the fact that the Government are setting up a survey, which I am sure we all commend, is a recognition not only of the public's concern but of the Government's concern on this matter? Will he recognise also that the tests which took place on Christmas Island in 1950 indicate in the time of the H-Bomb that there is a much greater incidence of danger now with nuclear weapons? Will the Government take those aspects into account in respect of civil defence, and also make the findings public in due course?
Lord Belstead: My Lords, I assure the noble Lord, Lord Bishopston, that in no way would the Government be wishing to prejudge the outcome of a survey which they have been very ready to undertake. In order that both Houses of Parliament, and indeed the general public, will be able to make up their minds, I can certainly respond to the noble Lord's other question and say that the results of the survey will be published.
Lord Brockway: My Lords, may I ask the Minister whether, in order to save injuries and premature deaths, the Government are now prepared to support the abolition of all nuclear weapon tests, including those underground, which are now under discussion?
Lord Belstead: No, my Lords.
Viscount Trenchard: My Lords, would my noble friend agree that the Ministry of Defence looked with great care into the Question which the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins, raised, at the time when he raised it, and that even the then Minister of State looked into the details? Would he also agree that it is at the moment at the very least premature to give any inference that there is any connection between the complaints, based upon the incidence of cancer in a few of those who took part in the tests, and the tests themselves?
Lord Belstead: My Lords, I most certainly confirm that my noble friend, when he replied to this Question on 25th October, looked into this matter with very great care. I repeat that, so far as we can see, the tests were conducted safely and there are adequate data for the survey which are available from existing records. But, of course, there would have to be reconsideration if wholly unexpected results came up.
Lord Kennet: My Lords, would the Minister of State agree that almost all those who are informed and concerned about this matter believe that the Government are to be congratulated on so quickly
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announcing a full inquiry, and that the formulations of the Minister of State in describing its terms of reference and the plans for publication of its findings are warmly to be commended?
Lord Belstead: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for that question.
Lord Jenkins of Putney: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that, in view of the successful claims prosecuted by Australian and American service personnel, the Government have very little alternative but to institute a survey, and will he say when the report is to be expected?
Lord Belstead: My Lords, the conclusions which the noble Lord draws from cases of which I am not aware seem wholly unjustified, if I can draw a logical conclusion from those two parts of my reply.
Lord Jenkins of Putney: My Lords, will the noble Lord answer the second part of my question? When is the report expected?
Lord Belstead: My Lords, the inquiry will be conducted as swiftly as possible.

Lesotho: South African Raid
3.5 p.m.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what action they have taken concerning the South African invasion of Lesotho, a fellow member of the Commonwealth.
Lord Belstead: My Lords, we supported Security Council Resolution No. 527 which condemned the raid. We also expressed our views directly to the South African Government through their Ambassador in London. In Maseru last week my right honourable friend the Minister for Overseas Development donated £5,000 to the fund set up for the relief of the victim's families.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, may I thank the noble Lord very warmly indeed for that reply, and will he accept that its contents will give a great deal of satisfaction in both political and non-political circles? May I ask him whether it is the case, as I believe it is, that last week in Lesotho at the summit meeting to which he referred, the British Government put their name to the communiqué which stated that:
"the conference called for the immediate cessation of such interference"—
referring to South African interference? When an incident of this nature occurs, in which an alien country—that is, South Africa—invades a fellow member of the Commonwealth and leaves behind over 40 people dead, do the British Government take any different action from that which they have been taking against other aggressions in other parts of the world? What do they in fact do?
Lord Belstead: My Lords, they support the Security Council of the United Nations and support the United Nations General Assembly. That is what we do, and that is what we did on this occasion. We supported both resolutions—Resolution 527 of the Security Council and Resolution 101 of the United Nations General Assembly. I am delighted to make that crystal clear to the noble Lord. As regards the question on the conference communiqué which the noble Lord put to me, we certainly condemn all external interference which has adverse effects on the economic development of the Southern African Development Co-ordination Conference region.
Lord Gisborough: My Lords, can my noble friend say whether this raid took place just for fun or to wipe out terrorists? If the latter, can he say whether we are also condemning the presence of terrorists on the other side of the border?
Lord Belstead: My Lords, we deplore attempts from whatever quarter to achieve solutions through violence. We have made clear that one of the essential preconditions for lasting peace in Southern Africa is progress within South Africa towards a form of Government based on the consent of the South African people as a whole. That is the general context in which I am answering this Question today.
Lord Molloy: My Lords, is the Minister aware that his reply will give massive encouragement to everybody all over the world—human beings of different skins and different blood mixtures—because they will know that the Government of this island is still paramount in preserving the rights of ordinary people against the most vile régime, far more vile than that of the Soviet Union, that we have ever had to deal with—
Noble Lords: Question!
Lord Molloy: People know full well that, even if they cannot agree with the communism of the USSR, they are not picked on because of the colour of their skins. That is why our Government can win with their attitude.
Lord Belstead: My Lords, we strongly believe that each country must be allowed to decide its own future, and the relations between states in the area should strictly adhere to the principles of non-use of violence and non-intervention in internal affairs.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, will the noble Lord the Minister tell his noble friend on the Back-Bench that women and children, not to be classed as terrorists, were among those killed in Lesotho? May I just press him one stage further in his answers to me? Will there be any further action taken after the resolution of the Security Council? Do Her Majesty's Government propose to suggest any action following that resolution which might prevent the South African Government from perpetrating similar aggressions in the future?
Lord Belstead: My Lords, the noble Lord may have noticed that Article 4 of the resolution requests the Secretary-General to enter into immediate consultations with the Lesotho Government and the United
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Nations Agencies to ensure the welfare of the refugees in Lesotho in a manner consistent with their security. This matter is now in the hands of the Secretary-General.

Transport Bill
Brought from the Commons; read a first time, and to be printed.

Farming
3.11 p.m.
Lord Mackie of Benshie Lord Mackie of Benshie rose to call attention to the impact of modern farming methods and financial pressures on the future of the land and the rural communities of the United Kingdom; and to move for Papers.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, I rise to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper. It relates to agriculture, which may be no surprise to your Lordships. I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Middleton, for withdrawing his Motion in order to discuss it along with mine. I know that he will have something extremely useful to say.
Agriculture—farming—has been very much in the news. Many people are interested in it and have strong views about it. Recently a number of books have been written about it, one by Richard Norton Taylor, a distinguished journalist, whose book rejoices in the name Whose Land Is It, Anyway? That is not perhaps calculated to enhance its sales among the members of the Country Landowners' Association. Nevertheless, the book is full of interesting views. Anything which causes one to think is very good. Therefore I commend this book to noble Lords, even though it may cause apoplexy in certain quarters. Another book, written by a member of another place, Mr. Body, is called Agriculture: the Triumph and the Shame. So far as I can see, Mr. Body has a number of interesting things to say. He is a direct descendant of "Featherbed" Evans.
At this stage I wish to discuss what is happening in agriculture and food production. We are at a most extraordinary stage; we have achieved surpluses of food within the European Economic Community. Food is available to everybody and we are disposing of the surpluses on the export market. That is a considerable achievement. I am certain that the people of Poland would welcome such a situation in their country instead of the appalling shortages which give rise to queues for up to three hours in order to do the household shopping.
This most incredible achievement is due to the technicians, scientists and farmers. In 20 years it has raised productivity in this country by 150 per cent. Consumers are able to buy their food for 21 per cent. of their weekly available wage instead of for 32 per cent. of their weekly available wage as was the case 10 years ago. This achievement is not wholly understood or appreciated in the country generally. The consumer still seems to think that the farmer is getting an enormous price for his products and is living in the lap of luxury while he, the consumer, is paying ever-increasing amounts for his food. But the opposite is the

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case. We must give enormous credit to the technical achievement which has produced this result.
If I may give another figure, home production has risen in the last 10 years from 66 per cent. of the food which we could grow in this country to 76 per cent. Had this increase been repeated throughout the country we should be in a very much better economic state than we are today. The common agricultural policy has, of course, cost money. It costs a total of £8,300 million, of which Britain pays about 20 per cent.
Having pointed to our farming achievements, today I want to look at what we are doing for the future of the land, by which I mean the fertility of the soil. We have plenty of examples of immense dangers. People of our age who campaigned in the Western Desert and came across evidence of the North African civilisations know that for many years North Africa was the granary of Rome. It is now a desert. And the deserts in Africa are growing. We know that the soil of the prairies of America is as nothing in fertility compared with what it was when it was first broken up after many thousands of years of grazing. We are aware of the dust bowls which were created there in the 1930s. We are also aware of the immense achievements of Chinese agriculture. China is able to feed its enormous population because the soil is cared for in a way which I wish could be emulated elsewhere.
We are aware of many other things which can happen. For example, when the potato was introduced into Europe it was thought that it would solve the problems of Ireland. The people of Ireland grew the potato in ever-increasing numbers until it was overdone. Along came disease and the most appalling famine. We know of the tremendous efforts which have been made in Britain to build up our soil in a climate which is not 100 per cent. favourable. Excellent work was done by our forbears. Aberdeenshire was described by travellers in the 17th and 18th centuries as a blasted heath, unequalled in misery. Aberdeenshire, however, was made into one of the most fertile and productive parts of Britain. A great deal of work and thought was put into the care of the land. Over the years, this built up the fertility of the soil and left each successive generation better off.
Although the great high priests of modern farming have put up the yield of wheat from an average of two tonnes to three tonnes per acre and although some of them can grow nearly five tonnes of wheat per acre, the system has sprung from compulsions which I do not believe have done us any good. At one time, if you had high rents you had high farming. You had high farming because of a rotation system which improved and maintained the quality of the soil. Now there are pressures which force people to go for very high yields. I am talking of the cereal farmer. Again let me say how skilful the cereal farmers are. They have chosen to go for a system of monoculture and have had to back it up with an immense application of chemicals: sprays, herbicides, fungicides, pesticides—suicides! It goes on and on. They kill everything.
From one weekly edition of the magazine Animal Farming I have taken out the advertisements which relate to chemicals. Noble Lords can see that there are
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some 20 pages of advertisements. One of the advertisements says:
"Commando is now eating behind the enemy lines. Commando kills. What cereal weed could survive when the harrier strikes?".
They are couched in a language which I doubt represents the right kind of attitude at the end of the day; I doubt it. The achievements are great, but when one gets inputs of anything up to £60 an acre in various chemical sprays, then I believe we should examine carefully what we are doing.
One of the great phrases in modern farming is, "You must get a good burn". To me that appears to be quite the wrong thinking, the burning of something like 6 million tonnes of straw—what is 1 million back or fore? That cannot be a good thing to do. Surely this should he incorporated into the soil, to add its goodness and build the humus instead of being burnt in order to dispose of the pests which the system of monoculture farming is bound to encourage. I know that biological control becomes impossible, but if one starts relying on sprays to cure diseases, the people around you who are farming in a different way may suffer.
I have a fertile farm based on stock and for years I scattered the good seed on the land and it was fed and watered by God's almighty hand, as the children's hymn says. I sprayed it lightly once with a herbicide, shut the gate and then harvested—and we achieved good harvests. But when people started to grow winter barley all around, all the diseases on earth arrived and I had to spray because the people around me were doing so. I am not saying that we must go backwards, but that we must look at what we are doing.
Are the Government really satisfied that the method of control is working as well as it should do? It is done by BASIS, which is the trade association. They are meticulous, and various headlines appear when they place sanctions on chemical firms which have broken the rules. I would like to go further and have us look at the much longer-term effects to see whether we can deal with this matter. Obviously one cannot go back in time. The fact is that this high input method of producing grain, which is going into surplus, is actually doing us harm.
Secondly, I want to look at the financial pressures. In this country at the turn of the century, 90 per cent. of the land was owned by estates and let to tenants; only about 10 per cent. of land was in the hands of owner occupiers. Today, something in the region of 60 per cent. of the land is in the hands of owner occupiers and only just over 30 per cent. let to tenants. The landlord-tenant system really did work rather well. It has done a tremendous amount to enable people to climb the farming ladder. But today the landlord-tenant system cannot survive as we have known it because it is under severe pressure in a whole wealth of ways—mainly because of Government legislation which practically forces the landlord to farm his own land if he is considering the capital value, or indeed is realising the true value of his land. He does not always want to do it and does not always do it very well, but he does it because of pressures. This Government should be looking at the question of making it a very reasonable matter to let land. I will not go further into this because I am certain that the noble Lord, Lord Middleton, will be doing so. I am certain that it is

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practically impossible to climb the farming ladder at the moment. This state of affairs cannot be good for the health of the farming industry.
We have a new landlord coming into the business; the pension funds and insurance companies are buying land. I do not know whether we should do away with the dukes and substitute pension funds. Certainly my party has never spoken well of dukes; David Lloyd-George once described dukes as being more expensive than a battleship and just as dangerous. I am sorry that the noble Duke, the Duke of Buccleuch and Queensberry, is not in his place because, as a Scot, there is no question but that the Buccleuch estates have been a model of what one should have in a landlord-tenant association. Long before any Government scheme, for example, they were operating a lime subsidy which, shared between the landlord and the tenant, was good for both. The Government would do well to look at that today. I noticed the other day that since the lime subsidy was abolished the optimum use of lime has fallen by about 1 million tonnes below the desired figure.
One could look at many figures. It is interesting to look at one in particular. Farming is said to be prosperous because this year its net income has risen to exactly half of what it was in 1975. This is taking real figures, and it is not a very happy state. When one looks at farm overdrafts, and this is money borrowed only from banks, they stand at just on £4,500 million. The total contribution made by agriculture to the GDP is only £4,500 million. The total gross output is in the region of only £7,000 million. When one is borrowing nearly the whole of one's gross output, that cannot be a healthy figure.
The banks, in looking at the so-called total value, including land, and saying that it was a small proportion, were not being realistic. Money is being borrowed on good security but with no prospect of its ever being paid back. Interest rates have done an enormous amount of harm to agriculture in general—certainly in the case of the farmers of Denmark, who are going broke in very large numbers. According to the Danish Commissioner to whom I spoke the other d;ay, nearly all these cases are due to high interest payments on improvements they have made.
In these cases we have to look at our structure and at how things are progressing. We have a saying in Scotland,
"If you have poor land, you should plant factors because they thrive anywhere."
The factors of today are replaced by the big estate agents. Among them are very confident people who know their job, and they do their job well. But is the job they are doing good for agriculture? Their job is to get the big customers. The big customers are the pension funds and insurance companies who know little about agriculture. They are looking for a safe bet for their money, and for a reasonable return combined with capital appreciation. The job of the big estate agents is to find the farms and to put them together. They are thinking only in terms of money and are competing with each other to get the business. Therefore they are pushing up the rents to an extent that a prudent landlord letting his own land and looking to the future would never do. It is that factor which drives people into monoculture and into the
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continuous production of cereals, which is actually making the best and cheapest use of money and shows the highest return on capital.
I think that we should look at the size of the farms. The tendency today is bound to drive towards bigger and bigger units. I do not think that the bigger units show any advantage. Certainly the figures from the north of Scotland and the east of Scotland college show that there is no advantage over 1,000 acres. In fact, they show that the chap who gets on best is the fellow doing well on 100 acres and that he is the fellow who will survive.
When we see large amounts of land taken into hand—eight big tractors and eight tractormen on 4,000 acres of good, arable land, which is the sort of thing one can see—then we are on to my third point, which is the point about the countryside itself. The countryside itself is again of great interest. I see that the noble Lord, Lord Melchett, is down to speak, and he will no doubt be pushing a conservation point, which is of immense interest to many people who have a right to be interested in the land. But I think that when we look at conservation we should be thinking of the countryside and perhaps of conserving the people there more than the wildlife—at least that is my point of view and I am a conservationist as regards wildlife. But all of us know glens, Glen Esk, the back of Bonar Bridge and so on, where the population has fallen to an extent where it is not a viable population any more. We have to look at this as a problem, and one that is entirely different from the problem the CAP set out to cure.
In the days of Commissioner Hallstein the objective was to get people off the land and into factories in order to raise the general wealth of the population—the classic approach. It is a curious thing that that has been enormously successful in Europe. The working population in the country has fallen by 11 million people. That is a lot of people and, funnily enough, it is the exact size of the unemployment problem in the EEC today. I do not suggest for a moment that we can move all 11 million people back into the countryside. That is obviously impossible, but I suggest that we ought to look at the problem in an entirely different way and look at the social side as well as the productive side.
I think that if we do that we shall begin to regenerate the countryside. The only way one can regenerate it is by getting people back there. We should look on small farms with favour. We should have legislation that makes it more profitable to let farms in reasonably sized units than in big units. We should be looking to encourage all sorts of industry, small industry, in the countryside. Even if it loses money and costs a big subsidy it will be worth it at the end of the day.
We ourselves have 3½ million unemployed and I see in the Government White Paper on expenditure that they expect it to cost us £4,910 million in support, simply in cash paid out. I think we should spend such sums of money on the countryside, on the promotion of jobs for people living in the countryside to keep the place viable. We have made tremendous achievements, but I think that great dangers face us. In fact, it might be said that we are riding on the back of a tiger; we are riding it with great skill but we have no idea

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where that tiger is taking us. My Lords, I beg to move for Papers.
3.33 p.m.
The Minister of State, Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Earl Ferrers): My Lords, the House should be grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Mackie of Benshie, for initiating what is a very wide-ranging debate this afternoon. The terms of his Motion quite correctly highlight a number of points which are of concern to all who have an interest in British agriculture—and to many who do not. I thought that it might be helpful if I were to give the Government's view at the beginning of the debate and then reply at the end of the debate, should I have the leave of the House, to any questions which any noble Lord may see fit to put. I thought that it might also be helpful if I were to give some general information on the state of British agriculture, which could act as a background to the debate.
It may seem trite to say so, but it is a fact that British agriculture is a very important national industry. Its net product—that is, its total output less the inputs and depreciation—was worth about £3,300 million in 1981—which is 28 per cent. more, in real terms, not in money terms. than it was in 1975. The figures for 1982 will be published shortly, but it is already clear that there has been a further increase mainly as a result of a good cereals harvest, to which the noble Lord referred.
One consequence of these figures is that our self-sufficiency has been increasing steadily, and we now produce, as the noble Lord said, some 60 per cent. of all our food needs. Of the temperate foodstuffs—that is those which we can grow ourselves—between 1975 and 1977 we produced 65 per cent. of all our needs. We now, some four years later, produce about 75 per cent. of all our needs. That is not only a substantial figure, but a remarkable rate of increase.
These are impressive figures for our densely populated islands, and they help to ensure considerable security of supply for our consumers. In a hungry world—and the world is hungry—this is a real advantage. And one does not have to look very far afield to see the consequences when agriculture is less successful. One has to remember in times of surplus, when criticism becomes fashionable, what happens to prices and to supplies in times of shortage. The noble Lord, Lord Mackie, referred to Poland. I would refer your Lordships back to the 1976 potato shortage—that was a good example of what can happen at times of shortage. The sugar shortage of 1974–75 is another. In agriculture, supply and demand are never in equilibrium.
A strong agriculture benefits the balance of payments. For example, the increase in our self-sufficiency in food since 1979 alone is worth approximately £1,000 million a year to our balance of payments. That is just the increase since 1979. And our exports have increased. Between the early 1970s and last year, our exports of food increased from £300 million to some £2,500 million. In the 1960s, food was responsible for 30 per cent. of our nation's import bill. Now it is only 12 per cent. Ten years ago we were a net
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importer of some eight to 9 million tonnes of cereals. This year we have been a net exporter—of probably some 2 million tonnes. It is right—and good—that the products of British agriculture, like those of any other industry, should find their way into other countries against international competition.
British agriculture is, of course, an important employer. Approximately 630,000 people are directly engaged in farming, and let us never forget that a similar number of jobs are at stake in industries which depend on agriculture, either by supplying it with its requirements, such as fertiliser, machinery, buildings and so forth, or by processing and distributing its products.
The worries about the common agricultural policy, which everyone recognises, and its surpluses encourage some people towards the simple options of saying that we should curtail agricultural production in this country. To them I would say: is it right that, when we in this country still import food which we can grow ourselves, we should deliberately seek not to fill that gap, but let others do so? Is it right so to curtail ourselves, and yet to permit our competitors to expand? And at our expense? Is it right that, notwithstanding the problems of distribution, which must still be overcome, in a world where the population has increased by 50 per cent. since the end of the war and is anticipated to rise by another 50 per cent. in the next 20 years, we should say: "We have enough"? Is it right that at a time of fearful recession, we should deliberately seek to restrict a major industry, and so pull down with it all those upon whom the industry depends and who are dependant on it? And deliberately seek to curtail an industry which has built up a substantial export trade when the exports of other industries, because of international conditions, are suffering so severely?
My Lords, the agriculture industry is important to the economy as a whole. It is also highly efficient, one whose strategic value to the nation should never be underestimated, especially at a time when that particular advantage is not being required. In all circumstances, a thriving agriculture is in my judgment good for the nation.
The noble Lord, Lord Mackie, has referred to increased yields and there have indeed been some impressive achievements. For example, between 1971 and 1981 wheat yields increased by some 33 per cent. and milk yields by some 20 per cent. Over the same period the output per person employed in agriculture has increased by some 33 per cent.—an achievement which, were it transposed throughout the whole economy, would have staunchly strengthened our industrial and competitive position. The industry is becoming more and more efficient, partly because of its record of technical innovation, which is based on substantial research and development, partly because of high levels of investment, partly because of unparalleled good industrial relations, and partly because of the enterprise and entrepreneurialism of our farmers. In other words, the industry is not only making a significant contribution to the national economy but is also setting a very considerable example to other industries.
The noble Lord, Lord Mackie, paid tribute to these achievements, but he qualified his praise a little by

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questioning some of the technical implications of modern farming methods. I do not blame him for that. We are all, in every industry, apprehensive of new techniques. It is natural to fear the unknown. In all industries many view with alarm the advance of the computer and the micro-chip. They do in agriculture too. But these techniques open up a whole new exciting future for us. They advance the capabilities of man—they do not replace them. They ought to be welcomed as an asset, and not feared for their potentialities.
One may regret the advent of these new methods and new practices, if one's idea of industry, or of agriculture, is a romantic one in which there is no change, where life goes on as it used to and demand remains as it always did. But we cannot put the technological clock back. We cannot seriously opt back for a pastoral agriculture and deny to ourselves and to mankind the benefits reaped from research and knowledge and innovation. Life does go on, and we must accept change. If we do not, others will, and we quietly and all too easily slip behind. But, for every technological advance forward there is a price to pay. And it is up to us—society, Government, call it what you will—to check and to watch these changes to make sure that the benefits of change outweigh the penalties of change.
The noble Lord referred to chemicals. Do we know, he said, what we are doing to our land? I would answer him by saying: look at medicine and at the wonders by which new chemicals have helped doctors and mankind. Do they know what they are doing? The answer to both questions is, "Usually; but not always". Anything new, anything human contains an element of the unknown. The fear of the unknown must not blind us to the advantages of the known. But the unknown must be checked, rigorously and constantly.
Farmers are now becoming more selective in their use of chemicals and are not just sousing their crops as a sort of corporate insurance policy. But the Ministry of Agriculture has instituted its own checking mechanism. It is a requirement of the Pesticides Safety Precautions Scheme that, when manufacturers submit data on their products, they must provide information on their residues and on their decay. There is a project at Boxworth Experimental Husbandry Farm where the long-term effects of pesticide use on both the soil and the environment under intensive cereal growing systems is being studied. The Weed Research Organisation has already done work on commonly used herbicides, which has shown that these chemicals have no long-term residual effects.
The noble Lord suggested that biological control might be an alternative to chemical control. Sophisticated biological control techniques have been used extensively on protected crops, but their application to field crops is more difficult.
Then there is the problem of straw. Five million tonnes are burnt annually, because there is at present no alternative use for it. Not only does this appear wasteful, but it is an environmental irritant. Straw ought to be not just a waste product, but a valuable resource in its own right. There are many possibilities and many people are trying to find uses for it. In trying to encourage this, I have recently convened the first of what I hope will be a series of meetings of those
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involved—farmers, manufacturers, the pulp industry, research people, representatives of the Departments of Industry, Energy and the Ministry of Agriculture—to see whether a better and more concerted approach can be made to the alternative uses of straw. There are a number of possibilities, but I am bound to tell the noble Lord that the effect on the humus of returning straw to the soil is very marginal.
In all this advance, everyone questions whether science is not in fact becoming the master of man as opposed to his servant. Research, technology, call it what you will, must be channelled for the benefit of man and must not be permitted to propel him, like a rocket, from the rear. And, as everyone, metaphorically speaking, grips the handrails as we go forward, they ask: what is happening to our landscape, to our wildlife? Conservation is important. But conservation is not preservation. We cannot preserve our history or our countryside like a fossil from the past. But we can, and we must, conserve that which is good and ensure that it has a place in the life of the country in the future.
This has become a matter of deep concern to a large proportion of the British public. The Government have recognised this and, for the first time, have introduced an Act to try and recognise the problem and to regularise the result. I have no doubt that history will show the passing of the Wildlife and Countryside Act to have been a major step forward in protecting both the wildlife and the landscape of our unique countryside. The whole ethos of the 1981 Act was the "voluntary approach" to conservation. Farmers and landowners have been the guardians of our countryside for generations. The countryside is today what it is because of them, and their forefathers. The integration of agricultural development with conservation is not, and need not be, an insoluble problem. Profitable farming and the needs of conservation are not mutually exclusive goals. Land may be a personal possession but it is also a national asset and, because of that, and because of the conflicting demands which are made upon it, we have to understand the nature of the interests of others.
As a result, the Ministry of Agriculture, through the Agricultural Development and Advisory Service, is now advising farmers and the conservation agencies on how best to help conservation. The Farming and Wildlife Advisory Groups have increased in number—and I may say stature—over the years. These are groups of farmers who are anxious to ensure conservation and who want to encourage others to do so too. Over the last seven years, there has been a sea-change in the attitude of farmers, as well as that of the public, over conservation.
Of course, the Wildlife and Countryside Act was a compromise. It was bound to be. Not all interests will have been fully satisfied. I dare say none were. By the nature of the game that was an impossibility. But the whole rationale behind that Act can be summed up in two words, compromise and understanding. And it is these two qualities which must seek to guide all of us who are involved in the countryside in the future. It is true, of course, that, if pursued to the bitter end, the interests of agriculture would be in conflict with the interests of conservation. But life is lived by human beings and, in most people in the countryside, there is

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an admixture of the interests both of agriculture and of conservation. But there are people with determined views at each end of what might badly be called the agriculture/conservation spectrum. I must say quite openly that they do not do their cause, nor that of their fellows, any good.
I deplore farmers who deliberately plough up an area which they know contains material—whether it is scientific or scenic material—which is of deep interest to others, especially when this is done quickly and deliberately before the conservation argument can be considered. They not only bring disrepute on to themselves but, worse, they tar with the same brush all the other members of the agricultural community, who are thereby assumed to think, and to wish to act, likewise if given the opportunity, but who in fact, on the whole, wish to see a harmony of effort between agriculture and conservation. It is the selfish who get the publicity and who shatter the entente cordiale for everyone.
In the same way, I deplore those who pursue the conservation argument with a dedication born of determination rather than of consideration. I deplore those who, before the ink on the Act was even dry, said, "It will not work", who have done their best to see that it will not work and who are already demanding more legislation because they think that their interests need to be more protected. To those I would say: "Let the wine in the bottle settle. Stop pulling the cork out once a month and having a lick to see what it tastes like. Give it time to mature and to condition—and so to condition others".
The countryside is made up of country folk, some in villages and some in remote areas. Some are owner-occupiers, some are tenants, some are landlords. Whatever they are, they all have a love and a knowledge of the land. There are those—and the noble Lord, Lord Mackie, is one of them—who are concerned about the future of the landlord/tenant system. I share the widespread concern at the general decline in the system which has served British agriculture so well over the years.
There are, of course, many factors which have contributed to the decline of the tenanted sector, not all of which can be effectively influenced by Government policy. Nevertheless, my colleagues and I have been carefully considering possible ways of infusing new life into this area. But any changes which are made must be changes which will last and which will benefit the system as a whole. This is because agriculture is a long-term business which relies heavily on confidence in the future on the part of farmers. To be effective, therefore, any changes which are introduced must be seen by the farming industry not only to be sensible but also to be likely to be long-lasting.
Any changes must bring mobility into the market. More farms to let need to come on to the market. The present system, which is widely cherished for its security, is fine for those who are in, but not so fine for those who are not in and want to get in. There must be something wrong with a system, as well as being anachronistic, which encourages landlords to take their let land in hand when it becomes vacant, and so
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farm larger units at the expense of aspiring young men who do not want to own land but merely want to be permitted to till its surface. Landlords must be encouraged, and not discouraged, to let their farms when they become vacant. And this needs adjustment both to the fiscal system and to the tenure system which the agreement reached between the National Farmers' Union and the Country Landowners' Association acknowledged.
Of course, the role of the pension funds and other financial institutions as owners of agricultural land periodically comes under fire, as it did today. The noble Lord, Lord Mackie, referred to it delightfully by asking whether it was good to see the advance of the pension funds and the demise of the Dukes. (I should remind the noble Lord, that Earls have long since had it!) Some preliminary results of research into this suggest that the financial institutions do buy agricultural land, but that their total holdings amount to only some 2½ per cent. of the area of crops and grass in Britain. And it is interesting that the majority of this land—more than 70 per cent. of it—is, in fact, let.
The country has always benefited from the diversity of people who are prepared to invest their time and money in land ownership, and I am sure that the financial institutions will continue to do so. I have a sympathy with the implications of concern which lay behind the noble Lord's observation that anonymity or impersonality of land ownership can be socially undesirable, and that the structure of village and country life can be seriously upheaved if farmers are to be replaced by managers. I merely say to the noble Lord that this has not happened in the past where churches and universities have often been substantial and successful landowners; and there is no reason why it should happen in the future, providing, of course, that landowners recognise the problem and take steps to ensure that it does not.
The decline of population in the rural areas as a whole is, though, a very real problem. It can certainly be argued that the very increases in productivity which have been made possible by larger units, and the acceptance of new techniques, have in themselves contributed to the depopulation of rural communities. On the other hand, it must be recognised that such improvements in productivity were essential if the livelihood of our farmers was to be preserved and our competitive position maintained, and that without a healthy agricultural industry there can be no basis for a healthy rural community. The decline, if not of the rural population certainly of the agricultural population, has been going on ever since the first whiff of mechanisation.
For many years, therefore, a major objective of farm support policy has been to secure the continuance of agriculture in the less favoured upland areas, which is where the greatest risk of depopulation and decline occurs. Special assistance to these areas of the United Kingdom has existed for many years, even before the Community's less favoured areas directive was introduced in 1975, with its declared objective of maintaining a minimum population level in these areas by ensuring that farming activities were economically able to continue. In addition to enhanced rates of capital grant, farmers of beef cattle and sheep in less favoured areas of the United

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Kingdom are entitled to substantial headage payments.
Together, these measures are estimated to provide over 50 per cent. of the average income of full-time farmers in the areas concerned. This is a powerful antidote to depopulation pressures. But many of these areas cannot exist by agriculture alone, and indeed it would be wrong to blame agricultural policy for the wider social and economic problems which face our rural communities. Other measures, which are aimed at giving new life to rural communities and at broadening the base of the rural economy, are now being promoted by the Government.
The socio-economic advisers of the agricultural development advisory service at the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food are giving considerable advice on the diversification of farm businesses. They also know of the help which is available from non-agricultural bodies. Tourism on farms, for example, is now worth around £100 million per year, and as many as 16 per cent. of farmers are involved in it in one way or another.
The Ministry of Agriculture also works closely with the Development Commission and the Council for Small Industries in Rural Areas, which has that curious name "COSIRA". This will increase and diversify farm income as well a create alternative employment in rural areas. The Development Commission has set up a pilot scheme for grant aiding the conversion of redundant farm buildings for craft or light industrial use. They are continuing to do a great deal to bring new life to the rural parts of England by various programmes, including the establishment of small advance factories and workshops. COSIRA's staff are giving considerable help to a large number of existing small firms in rural areas.
I do not think it can be fairly said that our technical progress has been achieved only at the expense of the long-term health of the land or of the countryside generally. But the fact is that unless we have a healthy countryside we will have a depopulated countryside. A healthy countryside can best be achieved by seeking to reconcile the various interests in a way which allows our agriculture to remain productive and efficient. The answer cannot be to impose restrictions on new technology or on the organisation of farming, because the inevitable effect would be artificially to engineer, and in the long-term probably wrongly, one of our largest and most efficient industries. This would be bad for the economy as a whole, just as it would be bad for British agriculture. The best way must be, within broad limits, so to set the scene as to encourage people to want to live in the countryside because of what it has to offer—because of the livelihood, because of the way of life, because of the privilege that man can work with nature. Fortunately, the countryside still has much to offer.
4 p.m.
Lord John-Mackie: My Lords, my noble kinsman has done a great service to this House in raising this subject on behalf of his party, and there could be no more complex a subject, no more complicated a subject and no more important a subject than the one that he has put before us today. I have only one quarrel
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with him—that he has said almost everything that I wanted to say, and, if I am to keep your Lordships' attention at all, then I must say it again in slightly different terms and perhaps in a slightly different order.
The noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, gave us a masterly resumé of the situation. He went through so much information and gave us such a large picture that I do not know how much more can be said in the debate today. However, we look forward to hearing what eveyone has to say. One point upon which I agreed with him very much was the question of food and population. We all know that the population has gone up by 50 per cent. and looks like going up another 50 per cent. We also know from the figures that we have had from various bodies, such as the FAO, that anything up to 1,000 million people are on a diet below starvation level. As the noble Earl has said, to suggest a cutback in food production anywhere is not something to which we should be looking forward.
I should like to deal first with the second point made by my noble kinsman, the structure of the land. I should like to give your Lordships my own experience over the last 55 years, which paints a picture of just what is happening. I was born, as was my noble kinsman, in the centre of Aberdeenshire. My father farmed a 300 acre farm and it must have been quite a good one, because he brought up a family of six, educated them all and gave them all farms—the girls as well. That farm is now amalgamated with a neighbouring farm. The neighbouring farmhouse has been sold and two of the cottages that my father built have been sold. I should like to tell your Lordships the story of those cottages. They were built when the first housing subsidies were introduced in 1923–24. After they were built, my father met Lord Aberdeen—the present Lord Aberdeen's uncle—and he said, "We will need to decide who owns these cottages. I have paid a third, you have paid a third and His Majesty has paid a third". Lord Aberdeen was a very astute man, and he said, "Well, Mr. Mackie, we will cut out His Majesty first". That was the type of relationship that existed between the tenant and farmer in those days and, like my noble kinsman, I regret that it has passed. I do not know whether we will get it back again, but it was a system that worked well.
The farm that I started on—a 220 acre farm not far from where I was born—has been amalgamated with two small farms which were not really viable units. However, the point is that one was farmed by the joiner and the other by the blacksmith. Now they have both gone and left the area, and there is no joiner and no blacksmith in the area. That is a tragedy. I left there in 1930 and my father took a farm of 500 acres in Kincardineshire. A year later, we increased it to 700 acres. My son is now farming that 700 acres and he has taken the neighbouring farm of 300 acres as well, making it 1,000 acres. He is farming not quite the same system as my noble kinsman described, but he has a lot of houses to let, and naturally they are not let to farmworkers.
In 1947, along with two brothers-in-law, I took 1,000 acres in Lincolnshire which consisted of four farms of about 200 to 300 acres each. By the time we gave up that business 21 or 22 years later; we had increased it to 2,700 acres—amalgamating nine farms.

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Since then, I have given up a lot of my farming interests, and fortunately, when we sold Lincolnshire and our other units, we managed, though not from any moral point of view, to split them into five units. I now farm 500 acres in Essex—22 miles from here—and frankly I am a lot happier with one farm and looking after this with my younger son than I was when I had what is called "a farming empire". However, I must admit that I am casting an envious eye on a 250 acre common that may come up to let next year. As my noble friend Lord Woolley said, a leopard cannot change his spots.
I think I have given a fair picture of what has been happening over the last 50 years, and more so over the last 30 years since the end of the war, although of course, as my noble kinsman said, many of the units are much larger than those that I farmed; indeed there are some units of 20,000 acres in this country. I do not think that there is any real pattern as regards how it has happened, except that there has been a completely free market in land.
I shall be interested to hear what the noble Lord, Lord Middleton, has to say about a completely free market in land. If one looks in the farming papers one will see farms advertised in six lots, four lots, three lots, and so on. They are selling off houses, portions of land and everything else, and that is the more so around villages and near towns. In my own village there were two nice 150 acre farms. Since I went there 25 years ago they have been broken up and the houses and cottages have been sold, along with some of the land,—to commuters. Some of the land is just sitting doing nothing. I have great respect for estate agents and it is they who advise the sellers to take this action. Of course, there is a free market in land, but I do not think that this is good for farms around towns and villages.
As has been said. many people are worried about the situation and about the size of farms and the number of farms that have been amalgamated. John Cherrington wrote an article in the Farmer and Stock Breeder the other day, deploring the situation but not giving a solution, except to say that they could control it in Denmark and France. The French system is very complicated, but the Danish one seems to be fairly straightforward. Mr. Huw Watt, who gave an excellent paper at the Oxford Farm Conference, also deplored the situation and wondered what could be done. However, he was insistent that whatever was done must be done by fiscal and not by statutory methods. I do not think that we can get any real progress here without some statutory method.
My noble kinsman remarked that he was saying things that would make Dukes squirm. The only Duke who was here has left and I do not think that he was someone you could make squirm very easily, anyway. I am now going to mention land nationalisation, which will probably make a lot of people squirm. Way back in the Government before 1910, the then Minister of Agriculture, Lord Ernle, who I presume was a Liberal—was proposing some kind of land nationalisation. Last week we had a debate on marketing and I looked through the list of speakers and saw that there was to be a maiden speech by the noble
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Lord, Lord Northbourne. That rang a bell. I went to the Library and looked at his father's book, which was written in 1939 and published in 1940. Observing how Lord Northbourne saw the situation then, in my view he saw what was coming. In a way, it is a rather longwinded book, but it is very interesting indeed, and it gives a picture of the situation. It is entitled, Look to the Land. But on the question of land nationalisation he says:
"For the same reasons the land must be the king's; that is to say, held by the king in trust for the people, and administered on his behalf by his Government. This is the right kind of 'nationalization'. The case for the nationalization of land is as strong as the case for the nationalization of anything and everything else … is weak".
That is what the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, said 43 years ago, and to a certain extent I think that that stands today. But the only thing that would worry me is how we administer the management of the land, not the farming—that I would never suggest. But there is a case for some nationalisation of land. I am concerned about the enormous number of institutions which have bought land over the last few years, a trend which looks as though it is to continue, and I doubt whether it is a good thing. We might be better with some nationalisation of some description to maintain tenant farming.
The second point was the whole question of monoculture. I am afraid I have to admit to it because, as my noble kinsman said, the financial pressures force one into it, but I am not at all happy about it. We all know about the Norfolk four course rotation; many of you may also know of the seven course rotation in the east of Scotland. That has stood for many years.
Perhaps I could tell your Lordships a story about that. A friend of mine was giving his father and mother their golden wedding party. Like all Scots farming people at the end of the last century, they were married on Hogmanay, because the only holiday farm people in Scotland had was New Year's Day. At the party was the father's brother, the best man at his wedding 50 years before, who suddenly announced "George, you think you have been married 50 years. You are wrong. You have been married 51 years". George said, "Arthur's son has the marriage lines". Arthur pricked up his ears and said, "Yes, of course I have", and went to get them. But the brother said, "He can produce any marriage lines he likes. I was ploughing the lea at the back of the stable the night you were married. It is in turnips this year—seven sevens are 49 and two is 51". The marriage lines were produced. The couple had registered the marriage in the year after they were married in the New Year, and the careless registrar had given the same date to the marriage and the registration. So the old seven course rotation in Aberdeenshire was more accurate than the marriage lines. However, that illustrates what we should be trying to do today—to get back to something like that.
Today hundreds of thousands of acres are without stock at all, probably very much more. We come to the question of these acres and the burning of all the straw. The noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, mentioned a figure of 5 million tonnes. I think it is nearer 6 million tonnes and it adds up to a tremendous amount of oil converted into fuel. We push on nitrogen; I know any amount of farmers who push on up to 200 units an acre and spend £50 or £60 an acre on sprays, all of which,

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whether we like it or not, contain a lot of poison. Quite frankly, we do not know where this is leading us.
The noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, referred to Boxworth and ADAS, and said that a lot of research was being done to make this as safe as possible, but I still doubt whether we know. Many people have been at it for a long time and they see no reason why they cannot carry on, as long as the plant breeder is prepared to produce better varieties for this kind of farming, the chemist produces more and more sprays to combat the every increasing diseases, and the fertilizer manufacturer produces plenty of nitrogen at a reasonable price. I do not know, but my instinct suggests that we cannot go on. We have to get back to better balanced agriculture and better balanced farming, where we put back into the soil what we take out, in the shape of farmyard manure.
I was rather surprised at the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, using the phrase "putting back the straw". I do not think that my noble kinsman meant to put back the straw; he meant to put it back as farmyard manure or, to use the more common word, muck. I am perfectly certain that you will then get results which you would not get by just putting back straw alone.
Of course, I am not suggesting that we should not use some fertilisers. I think that a modicum of fertilisers should certainly be used and, of course, assisted by a rotation, with a cleaning crop and a build-up of humus by a pasture rotation, about which I have been speaking. This will not be easy to achieve without major emphasis being placed on the price factor of our produce, so that we have a shift from cereal production to stock. Quite frankly, I maintain that we ignore it at our peril.
This brings me to the changes in the countryside which have been mentioned by the two previous speakers. I think that the change has been quite radical in my lifetime. I have only to think of the village life in the small parishes in Aberdeenshire in the mid-1920s and the situation as it exists today. As the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, said, larger farms with no stock and mechanisation have reduced the population as well as the farming community. One can easily look for examples here. When I came to Essex in 1953 we had a very mixed farm with poultry, pigs and dairy cows and were employing about eight men; today we are employing only three. That gives a picture of the depopulation of the countryside. Of course, houses have been sold and let and there has been a distinct change in the rural population, especially where I live, where we have a tremendous number of commuters, retired people, and so on, and a few who work in what local industry there is.
As my noble kinsman and the noble Earl has said, it would be very difficult to go back. We shall not see the situation that I knew 50-odd years ago, but we must do something about it. Whether or not we can return to small farms I do not know. But if an Oxford University survey is correct, than a return to smaller farms would give a man/land ratio five times greater than that on larger ones. That is a very high figure. I have not seen the actual particulars of that, but if it is so there is a very strong case for getting back to smaller units, as my noble kinsman said. Of course, light
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industry in the countryside would help, as would the use of redundant farm buildings for new industry in the countryside, although I would rather see them filled with stock.
Much more could be said. The noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, said quite a lot about the environment, which is very important indeed. I do not want to go into that; there are plenty of people here today who will open up that subject. I believe that this debate should do a lot of good and show what is happening in the countryside, and I hope that the powers-that-be will take note.
4.18 p.m.
Lord Middleton: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Mackie of Benshie, has been kind enough to refer to the Motion that I was intending to move next week, and it is clear that we shared the idea that an agriculture debate would be timely. Therefore, I welcome his Motion today because it gives me the opportunity to say some of the things that I would have said next week. I was heartened by the firm note struck by my noble friend Lord Ferrers, and I hope to follow him in the same key when I say that the salient point I wish to make is that, whatever the impact of modern farming methods and whatever the financial pressures, the future of the land and the rural communities of the United Kingdom depend upon the prosperity or otherwise of British agriculture.
Taking that as my standpoint, I believe that it is a simple truth that we should grow as much of our own food as we reasonably can. I am not suggesting that we should grow bananas on Ben Nevis, to quote Mr. Body's words, but I am suggesting that we should remain true to the vision of that great Labour Minister of Agriculture, Tom Williams, who was the architect of the Agriculture Act 1947, which had as its goal (and I quote from Section 1):
"a stable and efficient agricultural industry capable of producing such part of the nation's food and other agricultural produce as in the national interest it is desirable to produce in the United Kingdom, and of producing it at minimum prices consistent with proper remuneration and living conditions for farmers and workers in agriculture and an adequate return on capital".
I do not think we should be at the mercy of foreign suppliers, the vagaries of international politics and the accident of climate for basic supplies of food which we could grow ourselves; and I think it would be sheer folly to put ourselves at their mercy through a deliberate act of policy. In social terms, the well-being of rural areas revolves around agriculture. Though the numbers of those engaged in farming may have dwindled, as we have heard already, they are still the heart of a rural community. If agriculture decays, then rural communities deteriorate, population falls, services are withdrawn and neglect and hopelessness take over from care and pride. For jobs depend on an agriculture that is making money circulate.
It is not only those who are directly in farming whose livelihood is at stake with the changing fortunes of agriculture. There is a multitude of businesses and professions who know that the amount of business they transact goes up and down with farming. But, as my noble friend Lord Ferrers has reminded us, it is not

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only in the rural areas that employment is attached to agriculture. Each man in farming produces food for 50 of his fellow countrymen. But he does more than this: he produces the raw material for a much larger section of commerce and industry to work on. Food processing, distribution, retailing and everything that happens to food from the time it leaves the farm gate to the time the housewife takes it home from the shop provide an income for people in our towns and cities who may never have been on a farm in their lives; and now something like 10 per cent. of our total United Kingdom workforce rely for their jobs upon the productive capacity of our farms.
Then, if we look at conservation, there is no doubt that a thriving and efficient agriculture is an essential condition for the conservation of the countryside. Anyone who thinks otherwise equates conservation with dereliction. Conservation requires careful and positive management, painstaking maintenance and a good deal of money. Farmers who were not thriving would not be able to afford it, and farmers who were not efficient would make a hash of it.
May I now turn to some of the questions which the noble Lord, Lord Mackie of Benshie, has raised. He referred to the drive to produce high yields of grain, and he gave us what I thought was a timely warning about the possible consequences of high chemical inputs to achieve this. He also referred to the present grain surpluses. Critics of the CAP point out that the CAP has encouraged grain production at a level higher than that of consumption within the EEC, and that the surpluses then have to be disposed of on the world market at the taxpayers' expense. This is true, but at world level the margin of production over consumption of grain is slim. In 1960 it was 1·68 per cent., and it was still only 2·4 per cent. in 1981—just one week's world supply.
What these figures demonstrate is that though world production of grain has about doubled in the last 20 years, world consumption has kept pace. What is more, in six of the last 12 years world grain production fell short of consumption, the last occasions being as recent as 1979 and 1980—two consecutive years. This can happen again. The Australian wheat harvest this year was a mere 55 per cent. of what it was the year before, due to drought. In Britain we had a drought in 1976. Corn yields shot down and, as my noble friend Lord Ferrers reminded us, you could not buy potatoes that year if you wanted to.
The output of grain in the Soviet Union fluctuates wildly. During the last seven years production has swung from 140 million tonnes to 240 million tonnes, and back last year to 175 million tonnes. Over the last three years the Soviet Union has been importing each year nearly 40 million tonnes, which is about 20 per cent. of the total world trade in grain. Is it too fanciful to suggest that the peace of the world may lie within the silos which store the surpluses from the West's fat years?
The noble Lord, Lord Mackie, raises questions relating to land tenure. He is right to do so in this kind of debate because the shape and structure of land tenure lie at the heart of any nation's agricultural performance. The noble Lord seems to criticise a lack of policy on land tenure in this country. So far as the
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ownership of land is concerned we seem to have been following a clear policy. From the early 1900s the noble Lord's party, under Lloyd George, initiated a system of taxation which was expressly designed to break up large holdings of land, and this policy has been adopted and adapted by subsequent Governments, all of whom have either pursued it actively or, at best, consented to it, so that now we have a totally different pattern of ownership—and the noble Lord has referred to this.
In 1900, 80 per cent. of our farmland was tenanted and 20 per cent. farmed by owner-occupiers. As the noble Lord told us, now only about 40 per cent. is in the hands of landlords and about 60 per cent. is owner-occupied. But who now are the landlords? The private landlords are getting fewer and, as the noble Lord, Lord Mackie of Benshie, pointed out, the institutions are gradually taking their place. The process was examined in great detail by Lord Northfield's committee, which, by and large, gave the institutional owners a good report. I do not think that this afternoon I can add anything to the findings of the noble Lord's committee except that the committee emphasised that the primary role of institutions in agriculture should be as long-term investors in let land, and not as farmers.
I was glad to hear what both the noble Lord, Lord Mackie. and my noble friend said about tenancies, because one of the consequences of the change in the pattern of ownership which I have just described has been many fewer farms to let. Like every industry, agriculture needs new blood. Now no young man can afford to buy a farm without incurring a debt that will shackle him for the rest of his farming career with such a load of debt that his business can never prosper. The traditional way in for the new entrant was by means of a tenancy. Now, thanks to an extremely inept piece of legislation in 1976, very few private landowners and by no means all institutions will let.
The industry awaits with impatience an amending Bill on the lines of the agreement between the National Farmers' Union and the Country Landowners' Association which takes fully into account the criteria which my noble friend Lord Ferrers has laid down this afternoon. I will not disguise my disappointment that the Government have not so far been able to find parliamentary time for it, but the Minister's assurance that he will introduce it at the earliest opportunity has given confidence for the future.
Fiscal changes that remove the tax disincentives against letting will also be needed. This task has been tackled by the present Government, who have made a start in the right direction; but there is more to do. Those of us who were born in the country and who live there, know that the farming community is the most independent, most hard-working and thriftiest section of the population. They are indeed the salt of the earth, but they are becoming fewer and fewer; and the noble Lord is right in warning us of the consequences of this decline and of their effect upon the economy of the rural areas.
It is very tempting, therefore, for nations to look to the kind of farm policy that encourages people to stay on the land. But one of the main criticisms of the CAP is that the price-fixing system, which does just that, is

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leading to excessive production., It is also tempting to say—and our thoughts have been pointed in this direction already this afternoon—"If you want more people on the land, you must restrict the size of holdings". There are those who advocate such a policy for this country. The first stumblig block is when you talk in terms of acreage limitation. A farm business growing a high-value crop on 20 acres in the Fens can have an annual turnover that exceeds that of a hill farm of 2,000 acres. The second difficulty is that there is very little up-to-date research—and I mean up-to-date, because techniques have been moving so rapidly—upon which to base a policy geared to an optimum economic size of farm.
There are those who advocate control over farm size through the tax system. This has already been tried, and dropped. When capital transfer tax was introduced, it discriminated against farms over 1,000 acres, but the folly of doing that was quickly recognised, and in 1978 the 1,000-acre limit was abolished. I do not propose to be drawn into a debate on land nationalisation, other than to ask the noble Lord, Lord John-Mackie, to look at some fairly robust things that were said about that subject in the report of the noble Lord, Lord Northfield. However, in reply to another question posed by the noble Lord, Lord John-Mackie, I would say that I believe firmly that attempts to control who may farm, and how much he may farm, do not serve the best interests of farming. The quite extraordinary complications of the efforts to control farm size in France and Denmark, and their crippling effects—in particular, at the moment, in Denmark, to which the noble Lord, Lord Mackie referred —do not set an example that anyone here would wish to follow.
I have emphasised that a healthy agriculture is essential to the well-being of the rural economy, but I echo my noble friend Lord Ferrers in saying that agriculture alone cannot solve the problem of the diminishing population in rural areas. Hope lies in bringing other jobs to the countryside, and local planning authorities must encourage, not prevent, the setting up of new businesses in rural communities. I join my noble friend in paying tribute to the work of the Development Commission and COSIRA to this end.
Finally, I should like to return to my main theme. The success of British agriculture is one of the bright spots in the gloom of the present depression. The facts and figures relating to this performance have been quoted fully by my noble friend, and I shall not repeat them. Suffice it to say that British agriculture is providing us with the very model of a successful home industry, and until recently no one would have doubted that producing more food was among the more praiseworthy human activities. After all, it is better to eat than to go hungry; better to be able to eat your own food than run the risk that other people will not let you have theirs; better to have the countryside looked after than abandoned. All those things are possible only if agriculture is thriving and efficient.
A few years ago that would have been looked on as a blinding glimpse of the obvious. However, in the 1980s it has become fashionable to argue that we should grow less food, not more; that the preservation
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of a particular landscape pattern should take precedence over efficient farming; and that whatever other countries may do to ensure that their agriculture is thriving and efficient, the United Kingdom should revert to a cheap food policy, dependent on imports. The phrase "bumper harvest" has been used in the press as a term of criticism, as though scarcity was somehow better than abundance.
The production of surpluses is a real and very complex problem to be faced. But let us not throw out the baby with the bath water. As I earlier tried to indicate, surpluses are not bad in principle; they are good. Joseph knew that in ancient Egypt. There is in the Old Testament a vast store of wisdom which we would do well to dip into from time to time. We may not have had many lean years in Europe in the last three decades, but surpluses are an insurance against their return. Moreover, the surpluses that we have amount to so little in terms of the number of days' supply that Joseph would probably have criticised them for being too small, not too big.
There is, too, the vexed question of what to do with surpluses in a world where hunger and famine and death from malnutrituion stalk over so much of the face of the earth. This baffling problem is probably the most crucial that faces the statesmen of the world, for unless it is solved catastrophe looms ahead. Only slightly less baffling are the problems of how the EEC's common agricultural policy now operates, leading to overproduction of some commodities, to distortion of trading patterns, and to an unevenly spread and excessive burden on some members of the EEC.
However, these problems are curable, and could be resolved by the creation of a more sophisticated system of financial support. Agreement among the 10 member countries will be extremely difficult to obtain. It would be a great pity if it took an out-and-out trade war with the United States, and its dire consequences, to give the impetus needed for CAP reform.
All these problems are daunting, and I offer no easy solution. What I can say, however, is that there is nothing about them that should divert us from our pursuit of a thriving and efficient agriculture. Rather do they reinforce our duty to keep our agriculture in good shape. We owe that duty to our land, and to our rural communities. I cannot believe that we would be serving them or, indeed, mankind in general if we made it our objective to grow only one ear of corn or one blade of grass where two grew before.
4.38 p.m.
Lord Walston: My Lords, I have to start my speech with a potential apology. I have this evening at 6.30 a meeting, that has been long arranged, which I have to attend, and unless noble Lords who are to follow me speak for a long time, I might not be able to return in time for the end of the debate. I hope that the debate goes on long enough for me to return, but if it does not, I offer my apologies, in particular to the noble Lord, Lord Raglan, and the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers. I assure them that I shall read with interest what I say, if I am not here to listen to it—
Several noble Lords: What they say!
Lord Walston: What they say; I beg your Lordships' pardon. What one says oneself is always more interesting. Good sense, as well as courtesy, demands that I read what they say.
I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Mackie of Benshie, for enabling us to have this debate. It is a long time since we have had a debate on agriculture; if anything, it is overdue. Certainly those speeches to which we have already listened have shown that the debate is well worthwhile. I would make only one criticism at the moment of anything that the noble Lord, Lord Mackie, said: and it is in relation to what he said about monoculture. From my experience I do not believe that there is such a thing as monoculture in this country. Even in the heart of the grain belt in East Anglia, where I live and farm, I have never come across any example of it whatsoever. The most specialised cereal producers have quite a wide variety of crops which they fall into a rotation, and the risks of monoculture as it is known in other parts of the world, to my mind, is completely non-existent.
Although I am speaking from the Benches of the SDP, I am not in a position to enunciate the agricultual policy of my party because we still have not yet come to final conclusions about this. We are very close to it.
Several noble Lords: Oh!
Lord Walston: Obviously, noble Lords are awaiting with anticipation what we have to say about it. They will not have to wait for very long; but I think that I may say without undue arrogance that I am hopeful that a large part of what I say today will be reflected in the policy of my party in the next few weeks.
My Lords, there is in north Norfolk, not very far from Norwich, a small village with a small and very old church which is dedicated to St. Walstan—in those parts the patron saint of farmers. I am afraid I can claim no descent from him. Apart from anything else, he spelt his name differently. But he is apparently an admirable patron saint and probably is responsible for the fact that (if not Norfolk alone) East Anglia as a whole is the leading area in the United Kingdom for agricultural advance. I say that without fear of contradiction even from the noble brothers, Lord Mackie of Benshie and Lord John-Mackie.
But I am afraid that there is a great danger that farmers today are looking for a new patron saint. Their new patron saint is "St. Scargill"—and there were indications that even the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, and the noble Lord, Lord Middleton, are looking on him as their patron saint. As I understand it, Mr. Scargill's philosophy is that if you are a coal miner you have a God-given right to produce as much coal as you feel inclined to produce, regardless of whether the consumer wants to buy it or would rather buy his fuel elsewhere, and regardless of the price of consumption. That is a policy to which none of us who is not a coal miner would subscribe, any more than we would subscribe to a policy which says that those who produce deep freezers have the right to produce as many deep freezers as they wish, regardless of their cost; regardless of the number imported from Italy or Japan and regardless of the price that you have to pay for them; and, if more deep freezers are produced than
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can be consumed in this country, it is the Government's duty to store them at considerable expense and possibly to give them away eventually to the third world.
My Lords, that is not a policy to which any of us would subscribe. We must be very careful that we do not put forward a policy of agriculture which is based on the same premises. I believe—and I have said this before to your Lordships—that the common agriculture policy is a perfectly sound basis on which to work but that it should become a "common food policy" under which the Community states how much food—and that is a matter for wide and severe argument—it wishes to be produced at home within the Community, and that for that quantity of food a remunerative price should be paid. If farmers wish to produce more, it is up to them to get whatever price they can for it on the open market, on the world market. That is the basis which we should follow, and I am very glad to say that it is now beginning to be adopted by the Community itself.
There has been a lot of talk in the past about standard quantities, about quotas, about quantums; but the in-word at the moment is "thresholds"; and now the Community has laid down thresholds on a rolling five-year average for the various main commodities. That is a very substantial advance and one for which we should be thankful. I hope that the noble Earl in his reply, whether I am here to listen to it or not, will tell us that it has the full support of Her Majesty's Government.
My Lords, I have two criticisms of the methods adopted by the Community. The first and the most serious is that, even for those commodities which are today in substantial surplus, instead of gradually reducing the quantity which is required from the Community producers in this rolling five-year programme, they are gradually increasing it. To my mind, it cannot make sense, when you have already more than you can economically make use of, to undertake to buy a still greater quantity in the future. My second criticism is this. For this policy to have the desired effect of putting farmers on notice that in the years ahead they will be getting lower prices on average for what they produce, that smaller quantities of the main crops will be needed from them, this must be widely promulgated and widely understood so that they can react.
So far as I have been able to find, from inquiries among many farmers, no farmers realise this at all. They cannot tell you, and, indeed, I cannot tell you, what the target threshold quantity is for the year 1986 or the year 1987. But, my Lords, that should be widely known. It is not surprising, even if those figures were widely known, that farmers do not realise the full implications of this because of the curious way in which this policy was expressed. I have here a Community document concerning this matter which is the beginning of the proposals for the price review of the current year, where it is written:
"The Commission proposed a series of measures for putting into practical application the principles outlined in the memorandum, Guidelines for European Agriculture, and in particular the modulation of the price guarantees through the introduction of guarantee thresholds in a multi-annual framework with measures for the participation of producers if these thresholds are exceeded".

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I am sure that your Lordships understand what is meant by that, but if you could put yourself in the position of the ordinary farmer in Aberdeenshire, Yorkshire, Norfolk and even in Cambridge, I do not believe that many farmers in those places would really understand what it is all about. So that the two things that are really necessary are to promulgate the thresholds on a five-year rolling average, to reduce those thresholds by a very small amount annually, until such time as world prices and Community prices come closer into balance and to make sure that farmers know what it is all about. The result of that, if it really is put into effect—and it can be, with determination and common sense—will be that eventually less food will be produced but there will be no surpluses to distort world trade.
While it would not be right at this stage to embark upon a discussion concerning world trade, it is something to which we have to give increasing attention. One asks first of all, what is going to happen to the marginal farmers? By "marginal", I do not necessarily mean the farmer on bad land, on marginal land; for it may be marginal because he is not awfully good at it himself, or because he was good or has grown too old, or because he is short of capital, or because his holding is too small. There are a lot of reasons for it. But what is going to happen to him? That is something which, with your Lordships' permission, I shall deal with a little later.
Now I should like to turn to the second point of the noble Lord, Lord Mackie of Benshie, concerning land ownership. I am a firm believer in the landlord and tenant system. I believe that it is the right one for agriculture. We have prospered under it in the past and the growth of the owner-occupier I believe is harmful to agriculture. Two entirely separate skills are needed: the skill of the farmer and the skill of the landowner. It is very rare that one finds those combined in one person. A great deal of capital is needed. If the farmer has that amount of capital, let him use it in other ways, extending his own operations, rather than becoming his own landlord. I should like to see a reversal of the present trend.
One suggestion which has already been made is that of the CLA and NFU which merits very serious consideration. I believe that—with certain modifications perhaps—it should be implemented. I was interested to hear from the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, that he felt exactly the same. One of the differences between the noble Earl and myself—and there are several differences between us but this concerns the present argument—is that for the past four years I have been in Opposition and he has been in Government. He has been a Minister in the Ministry of Agriculture. If he believes that this is a good suggestion, why has he not done anything about it? Why have his colleagues not done anything about it? I think that we are entitled to an answer to that question.
In anticipation of the answer, I would say that I would hope that it will be a favourable answer and that in addition to term tenancies there must also be considerable fiscal measures to benefit not all landowners but those who really make an occupation
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of it, who are themselves professional landowners, not simply those who have a 1,000 acres or 10,000 acres as part of their portfolio. I am not talking about those people.
Here I tread on more controversial ground: I believe also that a national land trust should be set up. That would be a body which would be empowered to buy from willing sellers—there would be no compulsion—their estates and their lands. The trust would administer them as landowners with full regard not only to the interests of agriculture but to the interests of the environment, the town dwellers and the country as a whole. That I believe eventually would find as much favour among the estate owners of the present day as the National Trust does for the owners of historic houses. It would be a means of preserving the estates which have been in families for generations in a manner which will ensure their continuation and will not simply pass into the maw of the institutions where it is part of the portfolio, and when there is an opportunity to cash in on a large and substantial capital gain it would then be sold. Such a trust will make a very big difference—it can make a very big difference if properly administered—to the care of the whole environment.
This leads me on to the third point of the noble Lord, Lord Mackie, and that is the general quality of rural life. In part this is aesthetic, and aesthetic matters are purely subjective. Whatever we may feel about the beauties of the countryside, none of us would dispute that there are certain buildings which have outlived their purpose but which are lovely and which should be preserved. There certainly are very few people who would dispute that the planting of trees, whether they be shelter belts, spinneys, copses or larger pieces of woodland, enhances the beauties of the countryside, even though they may not add to the immediate revenues of those who actually plant them. This is something which we would all like to see happen and which I believe under a national land trust one would see more frequently than under any other system.
Also there is this vexed question of access to the countryside. This is increasingly demanded by townspeople and by those who live in the villages but who are not themselves farmers or landowners. I have already referred to the marginal farmers who will be hit under the system that I have proposed to your Lordships by this squeeze in profits. Here they have a very significant part to play because they can become the guardians of the environment. They can look after and enhance the flora and the fauna and they can give access on their farms to picnickers, to hikers, to those who wish to ride and others who want to enjoy the amenities of the countryside. For that they should and they will be paid. Therefore, their diminished income from their farming activities will be enhanced by the payment they get for making available to the non-farming community—particularly the urban dwellers—some of the privileges that those of us who normally live and work in the countryside get without really thinking about it. Similar access should be allowed by those who are still profitable farmers and possibly larger farmers.
It is not simply the countryside itself, the appearance of the countryside or access to the countryside, that matters. It is the people who live in the

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countryside, who live in the villages and who determine the quality of life in rural areas. Too often we are seeing today young people leaving the villages because there is no work for them to do in those villages and within striking distance of them. Their places are taken by retired people and middle rank executives, who come for a short while because their firms have sent them to that area and then the executives move on. They are good and useful people but they are not the people who can be expected to have the long-term interests of the village community at heart.
Speakers have already mentioned the need for rural industries. I am glad that the noble Lord, Lord Northfield, who did so much work on this aspect, is with us today. I am sorry that he is not speaking. Some 15 years ago I became chairman of the East Anglian Economic Planning Council. The goal I set myself was that in every village in East Anglia there should be within a radius of half and hour's travelling time a variety of work for the young people and the older people of each village. Then they could still go on living in the village where they were born and of which they were part as members of the football team or cricket team, in the pub, whatever it may be, and yet be able to choose from a wide range of activities.
The noble Earl quite rightly—and I give him and the Government credit for it—encourages this: we need to have an increasing number of rural industries, light industries and service industries. I hope that the Government will give even more encouragement and a stronger lead than they have done hitherto in encouraging local authorities to grant planning permission for that type of activity. We cannot have a healthy and a vital countryside unless we replace the jobs which have over the past decades and generations been lost in agriculture by jobs in suitable industries.
In order to make this possible, we must have not only encouragement from central Government but actual financial encouragement for various other essential matters. Public transport is an essential part of rural life. The village post office is slowly disappearing but without it you cannot have a happy community; and, above all, rural schools are being closed every day throughout the country. Without them, people who have young children will move away from the villages because there are no schools for their children. They will move to those areas where schools are round the corner. Those are specific aspects where the Government can implement the wishes that the noble Earl has expressed. I believe that in this manner villages can take on a new life and they will be able in the 21st century to fulfil the role which they fulfilled so admirably in the 18th and 19th centuries.
5.1 p.m.
Lord Stanley of Alderley: My Lords, your Lordships ask whether modern farming methods have had an impact on rural areas. The answer, of course, is, yes; but farming methods throughout the ages have always had an impact both on the rural and indeed on the urban scene. Who could argue, for example, that the Black Death did not revolutionise agriculture? In the conservation field, also, who could argue that farmers
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found it necessary to exterminate the dinosaur? My case is that, although some changes have apparently undesirable facets—and certainly there are some in our modern farming techniques, including, perhaps, the worry of the surpluses mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Walston—we should not oppose change, for I believe that our present farming pattern, which has been encouraged by governments of all parties, is one of the success stories of my generation.
I divide this success into two parts. First, let me look at some of the tangible benefits of modern farming methods. There has been a revolution, as has been said before, in plant and animal breeding which has helped not just the British farmer but also the third world farmer. Secondly, there has been a revolution in veterinary science, which has resulted in an improvement in animal health and care, and has led to the virtual extinction of human diseases such as TB and brucellosis. Thirdly, there has been a raising of educational standards among farmers, resulting in our ability to withstand the 1980 recession far better, I believe, than that of the 1920s.
These factors and others have resulted in increased prosperity, as was stated by the noble Lord, Lord Mackie, and my noble friend Lord Ferrers, not just for farmers, but also for the ancillary industries, the chemical, manufacturing and service industries. Most importantly, there have been vastly increased prosperity and improved conditions of work for our labour force, which has been referred to, I think, by my noble friend Lord Ferrers, and which is outstanding.
It is ironical that those who criticise modern farming forget these tangible advances and stick to the intangible subjective cries of woe that our modern methods have ruined the happiness not only of the farmer but of the rural scene and of the rural environment. I do not agree at all. I see these modern methods as encouraging a desire for knowledge. Most of our young farmers now are educationally far better trained than we were—and do we not suffer from it! I know I do.
Secondly, modern farming has not destroyed the family: far from it. Farmers rank as having the lowest divorce rate—equal, I believe, with undertakers. Thirdly, farmers continue to take their social responsibilities very seriously. Even the Economist (not one of farming's great admirers) is always complaining that we are too well represented on local authorities—I wish that we were—and the same responsibility can be seen in other spheres.
Farmers continue to preserve and to keep tidy our most beautiful countryside and anyone who does the journey regularly, as I do, from here to Anglesey or from here to Scotland by train will see this. It is natural as we get older to look back and think that things were better in our youth. But is it really correct for us to say to the young farmer of today: "No more progress; get back to nature, to the pitchfork and the smock"? I felt that the noble Lord, Lord Mackie, was saying just a little bit of this. Surely, as I think my noble friend Lord Ferrers said, if he looked at a modern engineering or medical journal would he not see the same, or similar, advertisements as he saw in Arable Farming? I might accuse the noble Lord unfairly, but there is an element

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of that about today, and so I hope that your Lordships will not be persuaded to put artificial statutory controls on our industry, such as the size of a holding. That would only be a bonanza for the lawyers, and land nationalisaton, as suggested by the noble Lord, Lord John-Mackie, would not solve his problems or even take away his crocodile tears.
However, I should like to see some alteration, as my noble friend Lord Middleton mentioned, in the landlord and tenant legislation because—and it is "because"—both sides of the industry have agreed it, and that is how we should go on, by agreement. I hope, too, that there will be further relaxation, as the noble Lord, Lord Walston, said, in planning controls, so as to encourage industry and services to reinhabit our villages, if I may use that phrase. That movement, I believe, will be assisted by the modern computer and telecommunications technology. Lastly, I hope the Government will continue to support such schemes as the sheep regimé, which has done so much to help what are called our less favoured areas.
My noble friend Lord Ferrers spoke convincingly about progress, and I am sure that neither he nor my noble friend Lord Middleton really worship the particular saint which the noble Lord, Lord Walston, suggested they did. However, perhaps I could tell him of the case of Professor Gilbert Murray who, in order to get rid of his fellow dons, is reputed to have said to them: "Anyone not believing in progress should get out". My Lords, I hope and believe that your Lordships will remain seated.
5.9 p.m.
Lord Energlyn: My Lords, I should like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Mackie of Benshie, for giving me this opportunity to speak as a geologist who has spent far more years dealing with the intricacies of mineralogy and microbiology of soils than I care to remember. I have, therefore, had a great deal to do with farmers, and it has always struck me that agriculture is really man bending nature to his will.
Basically, too, farmers and farm workers are men who till the soil, sow the seed and harvest the crops, and it is a chosen way of life. No two days are similar. So their lives are indelibly and inextricably associated with the love of animals, plants and the countryside, and no matter how vicious or strong these people are who wish to do this or that to the environment, I do not think that they stand much of a chance in making a dent in the integrity and the love of farmers for their land and their animals. As the noble Lord, Lord Mackie, pointed out, the farmer is also not only at the mercy of the elements but at the mercy of the capricious behaviour of the micro-organisms in the soils.
As industrialisation has developed, another element has entered into the farmer's way of life; namely, Government intervention and legislation. Since the war, each ministry has provided us with food supplies which have never been bedevilled by shortages and at prices which have been the envy of Europe. Now we are involved in European legislation which —I take encouragement from the noble Earl's speech—has temporarily involved us in all kinds of chaotic
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conditions. But from the noble Earl's speech I take great comfort that we are now back on our way home. Also, I take comfort from first-hand experience—sparing the noble Earl's blushes—that with imagination, and with the team he has around him, there is no doubt that the central part of the Motion of the noble Lord, Lord Mackie, about modern methods has been fully understood and pushed, if that is the right word, by the noble Earl and his colleagues.
I am sure that the noble Earl will forgive me if I quote an instance which is, perhaps, not very well-known to your Lordships; namely, the success story of biogas. The noble Earl set up a team of volunteers—and by that I mean real volunteers and not a quango—and we all had the most fascinating time assisting him in the creation of a system, and systems, of anaerobic digestion of animal and vegetable refuse. Within two years this has resulted in placing Britain in the forefront of the world in this new approach to the recycling and utilisation of farmyard materials, because when the organisms have created the biogas, which the farmer can use to run his machinery and to heat his house, the dairies and the barns, what remains is a unique type of fertiliser. The bacteria have created in this process of digestion the enzymes which are so absolutely vital for the roots of plants to assimilate the mineral matter out of the soil. So here we see the beginning of a new era of recycling materials from the farmyard into the fields and back again.
If I may continue in this vein—because I do not want to indulge in an academic lecture—we are witnessing some quite strident changes in the outlook of the farmer. The noble Lord, Lord Stanley, pointed out that farmers today are far more conversant with technology than they ever were in the past. Also, the young people of today are more conversant with technology than we were in our youth. Here is a point that I should like to bring out. How can we attract young people into the technology of agriculture as easily as they are attracted into the technology of the silicon chip or the computer? If we could find a solution to that, it would answer many of the points that have been made as to how to recover the interest of youth in going back to the land.
Also, I feel quite sure that this ministry will be much more receptive to any ideas or suggestions regarding the reclamation of land which has for too long remained unproductive. I will restrict myself to the roughly 60,000 acres which are called maritime lands—and may I remind your Lordships of the history of Holland and the way in which the Dutch came to England and recovered for us land from the North Sea? Why is East Anglia so fertile, why is Holland so fertile and why is the Nile Delta so fertile? It is because they contain sediments which have most recently emerged from the sea. Once the level of salt has been reduced to potable levels, all the trace elements generated by the marine organisms are contained in the soils and these are available for plant growth.
We should, therefore, look to technology to accelerate the desalination of these lands. It took the Dutch roughly half a century to get them into the right condition, but we now have methods by which we can

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accelerate this process—not in the long term but in the short term. We can now do in one year what it took the Dutch 50 years to do, by using technologies like electro-endo-osmosis. That is a very nice piece of technological jargon. What it means is that by using electrolytic control of the soils we can make marsh water move in any way we like, particularly with salt water.
So if we take a case in point, the area between Newport and Cardiff, where there are several hundred acres of land which are exactly like the land that the Dutch rescued from the North Sea, all it needs is to remove the salt and drain it. With the use of these modern techniques, it will be possible to recover that land and the out-to-sea drainage could be made to pass through turbines, which would create the electricity which those agricultural areas would need to have greenhouses and so on. So here we have a technology which is ripe for application to lands like that.
I now turn to the example of a young man called Allan Cooke, who has developed and proved a substance which he calls Agrosoke, which would convert the sand dunes into fertile soils. All one has to do is to level the sand dune, sprinkle it with Agrosoke, cover it over with more sand, and some manure and water, and one has a fertile soil. He has proved this and has received a massive order from the Government of Abu Dhabi. This is a material which could be made to work for us. But, more particularly, it could be made to work in arid areas of the world.
However, it is the principle which I wish to establish; namely, that what Mr. Cooke has done is to follow in theme a long train of research which started some 40 years ago in Cardiff when Professor Quastel invented a compound called Krylium which imitated the fertility of volcanic soils. This was a remarkable compound because it would break clay down into the most beautiful tilth. But could Monsanto Chemicals who produced this compound persuade the farmers to use it? No. In those days they were far too conservative, but thanks—I say this unashamedly—to the present Ministry, farmers today are far more receptive of new ideas. So what we see is a whole train of substances. Agrosoke, for example, could be used in the sand dune area between Merthyrmawr and Port Talbot. One would then have beautiful fertile land in an area which is the climatic equivalent of Holland.
Look at what that would mean in terms of the production of food but, more particularly, in terms of employment. A remarkable example of employment is that which has been created by the Central Electricity Generating Board at the Drax power station in the North of England. They are supplying electricity to ponds in which eels are being grown by the thousand, and also to 20 acres of glass under which tomatoes are grown on a vast scale. But the important point is that that very simple, imaginative exercise has created work for over 60 people in an area of intense unemployment.
Without labouring any further examples of this kind, the question which is uppermost in my mind is how we can relate these scientific innovations to the labour force. In other words, how can we bring back young people to the countryside? This, to my mind, is the service which innovation should give to Britain.
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While thinking along those lines I was reminded of those unsung heroes of the war, the Land Army. I do not think it would be too frivolous of me to suggest to the noble Earl, because I am sure he could do it, that it would not be a bad idea if we had a new Land Army, with these civilian soldiers being paid for by the sideways translation of money from social security to the Ministry of Agriculture. Then one would have a force of intelligent young people who could be as enthusiastic about going into agriculture as about going into an electronics factory. They could be employed to carry out the massive operation of recovering all the waste land which we have in Britain. This would close the gap to which the noble Earl referred of about 20 per cent., or something like it, between what is not and what could be a complete era of home grown food.
5.25 p.m.
Lord Melchett: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Mackie of Benshie, has said that this is a significant period for agriculture. I believe he was quite right in saying that. A considerable debate is going on. both in this country and internationally, about the current agricultural system. I thought it was a pity that the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, who spoke for the Government, managed to avoid mentioning two of the most significant things, one in the national and the other in the international field.
First, nationally, there is the book to which the noble Lord, Lord Mackie of Benshie, referred. Written by Richard Body, it argues a very strong case, from the point of view of those sitting on the Benches opposite, for removing public subsidies from agriculture, for decreasing very considerably the amount of food produced in this country and for importing food cheaply at world market prices rather than at EEC prices, which, on the whole, are a good deal higher than world market prices, thus saving a great deal of public expenditure, which I understand noble Lords opposite are always keen to do, except on defence. That would reduce the price of food for the people of this country. Given this, I imagine from his political point of view, sound advice which came from a member of his own party, it was a great shame that the noble Earl did not have time to deal with the argument.
Internationaily, the Government have been involved, with the rest of the Common Market, in a major argument in the GATT talks on trade about the dumping by the EEC of food surpluses on world markets and the consequences for international trade in general and for exports from the United States in particular. Those of us who were at the Oxford Farming Conference to which my noble friend Lord John-Mackie referred heard a very clear threat from a recently retired member of the Reagan Administration who was responsible for agriculture in that administration. This was the threat of a trade war between the United States and Europe because of the EEC's policy of subsidising the surpluses which it produces and then dumping them on world markets at a cost well below the cost of production. In the argument which took place there and in the public debate since, the Americans have had rather the better of the argument with the Europeans. They have been

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able to say that although it may be true that they subsidise some of their own agricultural production, just as the EEC does, so far they have resisted subsidising the dumping of their own surpluses on world markets. This the CAP clearly has not done. Indeed, so far as I can see, it is designed to do exactly the reverse.
The noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, spent some considerable time on the statistics of increased production in agriculture over recent years. Indeed, the statistics go back for some time. The noble Earl is quite right that productivity, both per acre and per person working in the industry, has increased very substantially. But again at the Oxford Farming Conference a senior representative of the food processing industry, where similar gains in productivity and efficiency have not been so noticeable, made what I think is a fair point, and I hope that the noble Earl will comment upon it: that had the food processing industry (this argument would apply to almost any other industry one can think of) had guaranteed markets for many of its major products, the input of technical and other advice, paid for by the state, which agriculture has, a capital grants system covering almost every conceivable capital development which it is possible to imagine in the industry and special support for those parts of the industry which need it, the food processing industry could have achieved just as remarkable strides in productivity and output as has agriculture. I would suggest that the same would be true, or pretty well true, of any other industry in this country.
While, therefore, I do not deny that the achievements have been considerable, it is important for noble Lords opposite—the noble Lord, Lord Stanley of Alderley, and the noble Lord, Lord Middleton, made much the same point—at least to bear in mind that this has not been done by the kind of industries which I understand they are all very keen on: that is, by industries standing entirely on their own feet, with no state interference, with no public money to feather-bed or prop them up. In fact, the reverse has been the case. It has been a remarkable demonstration of the effectiveness of the state working with the industry, of state support and of a good deal of state control and state guidance as to the direction which the industry should take. I say to noble Lords opposite that that ought to be given at least a share of the credit, although I would not expect them to give it all the credit.
Unusually, I suspect, for me and, the noble Lord, Lord Mackie of Benshie, I agree with a great deal of what he said. He expressed the anxiety which I certainly have—for example, about the spiralling increase of inputs into intensive cereal growing, where the higher the demand the more input there is of fertiliser and the greater the vulnerability of the crop, it seems, to attacks by pests and disease. I was sorry that the noble Lord did not express some of the concerns which conservationists have—perhaps because he does not very often feel in tune with those concerns. I believe it would be fair to mention some of them to the noble Lord.
For example, the increase in field size by the removal of hedgerows, which was the major concern of conservationists some years ago in this country, has led directly to a number of these problems. There has been some interesting research undertaken by the
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Game Conservancy Council, which is not in my view particularly pro-conservation in many of its attitudes, which shows that fields much above 30 acres in size remove the cover in which predators overwinter, and therefore increase very dramatically the likelihood of attacks by pests on crops in the field. Thus the noble Lord, Lord Mackie of Benshie, may have more in common with conservationists than he may imagine.
Another point that he did not mention was the question of price support. These higher inputs are justified partly because they increase the yield and partly because of the increased efficiency when capital equipment such as combine harvesters or dryers are used. But they are also justified because of the system of price support, and my noble friend on the Front Bench mentioned this. It is a vital factor. In other words, this process is being manipulated by the Government or the Common Market determining the prices of particular products and in particular the balance between, in this case, cereals and livestock. That is something which concerns many people in agriculture and equally in conservation.
I wish to touch on one particular matter of concern from the conservationist's point of view. It is the question of the development of marginal land—of heathland, of moorland, of wet lands, and of unimproved grass land, et cetera. The very robust and bullish approach which the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, and the noble Lords, Lord Middleton and Lord Stanley of Alderley adopted, seemed to imply that that sort of process should continue at about the same rate as it is at the moment. All the evidence is that that is what is happening. To take just one particularly vulnerable habitat, which is one of desperate importance to conservationists in this country and which also shows tremendous gains from an agricultural point of view as far as the individual owner or farmer is concerned, there is the question of wet grass lands, the RSPB recently issued a report, Land Drainage and Birds in Engand and Wales, which states that every remaining ornithologically important wet grass land in England and Wales is now threatened by a major land drainage scheme or is actually in the process of being destroyed by such a drainage scheme.
This process, taking what to agriculture may be marginal land but which to conservationists is land of essential importance is continuing apace. We know from studies that, even in the Ministry of Agriculture's terms, the cost benefit analysis which is undertaken on these schemes, whenever it is subjected to independent scrutiny—which the Ministry of Agriculture ensures is as infrequently as is humanly possible—it becomes clear that there is no benefit, even in the very modest terms in which the department has to justify its expenditure to the Treasury, which I believe is a 5 per cent. return.
One of the provisions which a sensible agricultural policy for this country should make, and which would be one of the ways of answering the concern which the noble Lord, Lord Mackie of Benshie, has expressed, is to halt the process of intensification of marginal land, whether it be moorland in the uplands or wet land in the lowlands. So far as I have been able to gather in corresponding with the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, on this subject, the only argument put forward from an agricultural point of view is that it is important to the

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whole of the agricultural industry that the new technology should be taken up by the people farming these marginal lands. That seems to me to be a fairly absurd suggestion.
In a letter dated 14th January, the noble Earl actually stated that it was important to the competitiveness of the agricultural industry that the new technology should be taken up by farmers of these marginal lands. I do not believe that the new technology is dependent on people ploughing up a few thousand acres more of moorland or draining one of the half dozen or so remaining wet lands in the lowlands of England.
The other argument is a more telling one so far as the individual farmer is concerned. It is that some classes of farmer would be left as the poor relations of the industry. The noble Earl said that they would be persuaded to take up the technology which would be critical to their continuing livelihood. This is a circular argument. The Government are in fact saying that they can give development aid for the development of marginal lands, for ploughing, for drainage, and what have you. That is the only form of agricultural support available to somebody who currently has livestock grazing on lowland grass land, for example. The Government are saying that one can obtain this public money and can take advantage of the new technology to develop the land, and destroy conservation interests completely—because there really are no half measures or compromises in cases of this kind—but that the recipient will benefit as an individual farmer.
This can only be done because the grant is available, yet it is perfectly possible, and possible under the common agricultural policy, for a government to give agricultural support to ensure that livestock farming in such areas is profitable and provides a reasonable return to the individual farmer, instead of giving grants for the area to be destroyed. I should like to know from the noble Earl why the Government are so determined not to do that. It seems to me that it must be in the interests of the industry in the long run. It really is crazy to be pouring public money into converting marginal lands to produce more products of which the Common market has a surplus and which are causing the international problems that I mentioned earlier.
The noble Lord, Lord Mackie of Benshie, in his aside about conservation, suggested that there was some conflict between what he wants to see in agriculture and what conservationists want to see; that conservationists are in some way "anti-people" and are going to decrease employment. All the measures he suggested, such as support for smaller farms and more support for livestock farming, are exactly in line with those which conservationists wish to see in agriculture and which conservationists are, on the whole, pressing for more strongly than any of the organisations representing agriculture. If the noble Lord, Lord Mackie of Benshie, will join the Small Farmers' Association, if he is not already a member, he will find that it has a great deal in common with conservation organisations in this country.
I am tempted to join the debate about tenant farmers and the future of the tenanted sector, but I will only support very strongly my noble friend on the Front Bench in saying that the only way in which
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noble Lords opposite and the noble Lord, Lord Walston, who want to see the tenanted sector preserved, can be sure that it will be preserved is for the land which is tenanted to be taken into public ownership, as the Labour Party is quite rightly proposing. Even in this House, nobody would have the nerve to suggest that any scheme other than that one will halt the decline in the tenanted sector in agriculture. The NFU/CLA package has been criticised on this basis, and I suspect that it is one of the reasons why the Government will not legislate on it. They know perfectly well that it will not succeed in halting the decline in the tenanted sector, and there is no realistic opportunity or reason why it should do so. If we nationalise tenanted land, at least we shall preserve that land which is nationalised as tenanted land, farmed by farming tenants. If the noble Lord, Lord Middleton, is so keen on preserving the rights of tenants, I hope that, having failed with the Government with his package, he will support the Labour Party's policy, which will at least achieve a great deal more than anything which the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, is likely to put forward.
Lord Middleton: My Lords, I do not believe that I could support their policy without having thought very carefully about how it could be financed.
Lord Melchett: My Lords, I shall be happy to join in a long discussion with the noble Lord, Lord Middleton, about the way in which it could be financed. It is a useful and significant first step in the process of nationalisation of land simply because, as the noble Lord knows, tenanted land would not need to be compensated for at the same level as land owned by owner-occupiers. It would help us on the way to nationalising all agricultural land, as the Labour Party is committed to do.
The noble Lord, Lord Walston, suggested that there was a close analogy to be drawn between the behaviour of the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, and Arthur Scargill. He saw him as the Arthur Scargill of the agricultural industry. There is something very appropriate about the analogy and at the same time not at all appropriate.
Earl Ferrers: My Lords, I do wish the noble Lord to do justice not only to the noble Lord, Lord Walston, but also to me. I think he did not refer to me as the Scargill of the agricultural industry but as the St. Scargill. I have never myself ascribed beatification to that gentleman, but I am quite happy to have it ascribed to me.
Lord Melchett: My Lords, I am not up on my local East Anglian theology the the extent that the noble Lord, Lord Walston, is, and I am quite happy myself to describe the noble Earl as the Arthur Scargill of the agricultural industry, joined as he was in my view, by the noble Lord, Lord Middleton and the noble Lord, Lord Stanley of Alderley. On the one hand, there is something quite appropriate about people who speak, not wearing Country Landowners' Association or National Farmers' Union hats, but with their interests at heart, speaking in the way that a good trade union leader speaks on behalf of people working in a particular industry. That is what Arthur Scargill's job is, that

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is what he is paid to do and that is what he does, in my view, very effectively. There is something wholly inappropriate about a Government Minister taking on that role, and that is what worries me about the agricultural industry and current agricultural policy. The whole place is populated by Arthur Scargills, the whole of the Ministry of Agriculture, all the Government Ministers, the head of the NFU, the head of the CLA, et cetera, et cetera, are all Arthur Scargills. And that is a recipe for disaster, because the interests of the consumer, the interests of countries abroad, the interests of conservationists, all these other interests with whose equivalents Arthur Scargill has to do battle in his world, are not being faced up to in agriculture. All of these people are wearing blinkers and going in the same direction, and that is not a very good outlook for the future of the industry.
5.43 p.m.
Lord Nugent of Guildford: My Lords, I should like to begin by thanking the noble Lord, Lord Mackie of Benshie, for giving us the opportunity to have this very interesting debate this afternoon particularly calling attention to the problems of the impact of modern farming technology on our countryside as a whole.
The three Front Bench speeches, which all commended the tremendous achievements which our farmers have to their credit in food production, I am sure will make very good reading to all my friends in the farming world. There is no doubt about it. The facts are there to record what has been done, and certainly the Mackie clan have in their own personal records added substantially to it.
Turning to the interesting speech by the noble Lord, Lord Melchett which went rather less far than his very interesting speech at the Oxford Farming Conference, which I hoped we might have heard more of today he does at any rate give us a voice of the conservation lobby, although he did not go very far with it today. I would be the first to recognise that this is an extremely important element in national life today, and therefore in Parliament. It is right that it should be reflected. I am not quite sure that I can go along with his suggestion that those who spoke in support of agriculture are all Arthur Scargills someone whose actions do not all seem to me to be entirely commendable but what noble Lords are doing is to support something which has been generally acclaimed now for over 40 years as being very much in the national interest: that is, promoting a policy of full production. It is my belief that that is a policy which is very much to the benefit of the nation.
I shall make one or two points in connection with that as I go along. Dealing with Lord Melchett's point about special conservation and the measures for marginal land, I should have thought that the answer must be that each case must be taken on its merits. There are some cases where it is justified to promote a major drainage scheme if great benefits will be achieved in terms of production and if the loss in terms of the environment will not be so serious as to forbid the development. There will be others when the balance will be the other way round and where the conservation arguments will be so strong, and possibly the production benefits not all that great, that it will not be justified. In present circumstances we can really
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expect that each case will be given a fair hearing. There is certainly no doubt that the conservationists' voice will be heard whenever there is a promotion. I was interested to notice that quite near me on the Arum estuary a large land drainage scheme which, in my judgment, would have been productive, because the land was good there, was turned down because it was thought that the environmental loss would be too serious. I should have thought that that was the answer.
If I may, I will just take the noble Lord up on one other point. He commended to us the Labour Party's espousal of the policy of nationalisation of land in order to ensure that there should be future tenancy. If he will remember the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Mackie of Benshie, referring to his father's experience with his landlord, Lord Aberdeen, this was very commendable in terms of the human relationship and consideration by the landlord for the tenant. No one should think that nationalisation of land would result in relationships between landlord and tenant similar to those which have traditionally existed between landlords and tenants in this country. On the whole, landlords—I do not speak as one, in fact I do not own anything now except the land surrounding my house—have a very good record. There is no doubt that, from the point of view of youngsters entering the industry, the tenancy structure is the best way in. I hope that the noble Lord will take note of that point—that the relationship with a nationalisation authority responsible for holding all land for the state would not be the same personal relationship as with individual landlords.
Lord John-Mackie: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, but the noble Lord, Lord Nugent of Guildford, must admit that, as has been said several times, 60 per cent. of the landlord and tenant system has disappeared in the last 50 or 60 years and is still disappearing.
Lord Nugent of Guildford: My Lords, yes, it has disappeared into the hands of owner-occupiers. Up to a point that is most commendable, and I myself have been one in the past, but the point is that there is a certain amount of land remaining. But what is happening now is that, because of the restrictions of landlord and tenant legislation, landlords, when they get the chance of getting land back into their possession, are not going to let it again, so there are less and less tenancies for young men to take up. That is a point which my noble friend on the Front Bench is well aware of and I hope that before long there may be legislation to make the position a little less tight. That would be for the benefit of everybody.
The point I wish to make at the start of the conservation argument, which has not gone very far, is that there must be an effort from Government and the conservationists to make a sympathetic and understanding relationship between conservationists and farmers, and farmers and conservationists. Any kind of campaigning or crusading spirit by the conservationists will simply arouse antagonism amongst the farmers, and that will not give us a very helpful

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solution to our problem. We must somehow allow intensive farming to proceed and to co-exist with conservation.
I make one point on the benefits of higher production which I think was made by Lord John-Mackie. The world is a very hungry place, and the conservationists should be as aware of that as anyone else. This country, by getting the maximum production from its own land, is benefiting the world population. We are talking of some thousand million people who are either starving or seriously underfed, and any reduction that we can make in our demands on world supplies is to the long-term benefit of everybody as well as a contribution securing our own survival. We should see that the existing surpluses of the EEC and, indeed, to some extent, of the United States, as something temporary in a world scene which will eventually find better systems of distribution so that more of these hungry mouths do get a share. When those days come we in this country shall be very glad that we are getting full production from our fields.
Secondly, let us not forget that we are hard pressed to earn our living in the world, and anything we can do to produce more from our own land helps our balance of payments problems. From the figures that were so lucidly given by my noble friend Lord Ferrers it is quite evident that farmers have made a substantial contribution in this respect. So these are the reasons why Governments of all kinds, ever since 1939, have promoted policies for full production. When I look at noble Lords opposite, although the particular noble Lords I refer to are not sitting there, two outstanding Ministers of Agriculture sit on the Front Bench there—the noble Lord, Lord Peart, and the noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn, who made most notable contributions in this field. Why? It is because when they sat in the seat of the Minister of Agriculture they were convinced that this was something really in the public interest. I really do think that there is no need for us to apologise or to revise policies which, in the long-term, have been of very great benefit to this country. Nor can one chop and change significantly. You can make minor adjustments to policies, but you cannot make significant changes without upsetting the rhythm of production, which in farming is a long-term affair. If it goes up and down, very soon production begins to shrink altogether.
When I started farming in 1929 the scene was very much one of many farms in a condition of decay. In the early 'thirties quite a number of farms were not being farmed at all. This is the very opposite of conservation. They really were a sad scene. When I moved to the point of borrowing some money to start on my own, I suppose I was lucky enough to be able to buy a derelict farm at £20 per acre. What happy days they were! Without support from anyone, I managed to get on my own feet. It was not a day for conservation on the farm because the countryside was a very poor place then. So that is the other side of the picture. Make the farming prosperous and it is possible to make the farming countryside prosperous and look after the interests of conservation.
I would make one other point on conservation. The picture varies very much from one part of the country
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to another. In the part of the world where the noble Lord, Lord Melchett, lives, in East Anglia, there is a very high rate of farming indeed. There we see tens of thousands of acres intensively farmed, with huge fields and with hedges gone. This is all in conformity with modern machinery and highly efficient farming. There the conservationist is going to have a relatively limited time to see what habitats can be preserved and generally what amenity can be preserved. If the noble Lord would come down to my part of the world—and I live only 44 miles from here on the edge of the commuter belt, on the borders of Surrey and Sussex—there you hardly ever see an arable field. The fact is that I live on the weald clay, and it simply is not profitable to plough the land up. Of course, it was all ploughed up in the war, when we needed every ton of grain we could get, but today it is not; it is not profitable to do so. This perhaps gives some indication that the present price levels are not all that bad.
There we have every kind of habitat, for birds and butterflies; the hedgerows are all there, to my delight; and I enjoy them enormously. There is no problem there about habitat. There are plenty of footpaths across the fields; the problem is to get enough people to walk them to keep them open. That is only 44 miles from London. The fact is that taking the country as a whole there are many parts where the habitat is not under threat from intensive farming and there is not a problem in maintaining the kind of conservation that the noble Lord and I would wish to see.
I turn, finally, to one other point about how to deal with the difficult areas. For many years—nearly 20 years—I was chairman of the standing conference for London and the South-East. Our major problem was to preserve the green belt. Before the war London and the surrounding counties had established a green belt to stop the metropolitan sprawl. The major problem is that the developer is for ever attacking the margin inside and outside. Today, if he gets planning consent the value goes up from £2,000 an acre to £200,000, or perhaps £2 million, so the rewards are very great. So he is attacking continually, and very ingenious he is.
The problem of the planning authorities is to defend this line and to keep this green belt. One of the difficulties is that most of this land is farming land, and therefore access is very limited. Although the people who live inside and out, Londoners and those on the outer rim, can have pleasure in looking at fields as they drive along, they do not have any great pleasure beyond that. In the Standing Conference we have tried to promote policies which would improve access. In Herefordshire we have promoted a very good little scheme which has brought in local people to help with the clearing of footpaths and derelict areas, with general improvement of access so that local people can the better enjoy and have access to this farmland, and move through it.
In the process—a fairly diplomatic process—we got farmers interested, too, so that they were prepared to co-operate. This removed many local conflicts that were there before, with the result that the farmers benefited, the townspeople understood their problems better and we improved access and recreation in this important area very considerably. That was substantially supported by the Countryside Commission, and

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it is being commended nationally and extended to Surrey, Sussex and Buckinghamshire, so it is being extended quite considerably.
That kind of co-operation, I reckon, is just the kind of thing we want between town and country, between farmer and townsman, so that they better understand each other's problems, so that they can better enjoy each other's company and efforts together. Teams of youngsters and older people have helped in these schemes, and they have been very successful in terms of conservation and improving amenity for the benefit of everyone. That kind of effort by the farming community and the conservation community promoted by local authorities with the commission is something very valuable, and it shows that with local effort by farmers and townsmen they can live together and there need not be conflict between conservationists and farmer, even in these days of intensive farming. I believe that with methods of this kind we have nothing to fear from intensive farming systems. Of course we have technological problems, but the very important problem of social harmony rather than conflict can, I believe, be avoided.
5.58 p.m.
Lord Tanlaw: My Lords, I am pleased to follow the noble Lord, Lord Nugent of Guildford, and perhaps I will take up a little later his remarks about derelict farms. I am also grateful to my noble friend Lord Mackie of Benshie for bringing the House's attention to these new pressures affecting future land use and population in the rural and upland areas of Britain in which I have a declared interest as a producer of Scotch lamb and Scotch beef.
The NFU in their excellent briefing note, which was sent to some noble Lords, including myself, for this debate, summed up the agricultural situation extremely well in the following words:
"The need for a higher output of agricultural commodities on a diminishing land base, in a period of difficult economic conditions, and with a smaller labour force, has resulted in the widespread adoption of scientific and technological advances to maintain efficiency".
The results of this policy have tended to reduce labour and aggravate the continuation of the movement of population from rural to urban areas. It is not just limited to this country. My noble friend mentioned the effects of this policy, a premeditated policy by the EEC in Europe. The areas of Tuscany and the Dordogne clearly show there are derelict farms which have now become tourist pieces and are taken over as holiday homes. To a certain degree this has happened in parts of the upland areas of Britain.
So much has been said so eloquently on this subject that there is nothing more to add to the comments and views expressed on this theme by other noble Lords. I wish to introduce what I believe is an entirely new threat to the industry and the rural population, in particular in Scotland and the more wild parts of Britain. In doing so I shall be drawing the attention of the Government to three reports which have recently appeared, produced by the West of Scotland Agricultural College at Auchincruive. These refer to the auction markets for fat cattle sales, the production and marketing of beef in Scotland and the marketing of
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milk and milk products in the United Kingdom. I mentioned these reports in a previous debate that we had on the Food from Britain organisation.
In contrast to the findings in these reports I also wish to draw the Government's attention to the recommendations in a report which appeared in Journal No. 17 of the Royal College of Physicians in London, entitled "Obesity". It may appear that there is no direct connection between these three reports, and your Lordships may wonder why on earth they should be referred to in a debate on new technologies and the future of agriculture. I remind the House that reports from the Royal College of Physicians should be taken with extreme seriousness. Do not forget that the college has changed our lives considerably as a result of its pressures and recommendations. I came to your Lordships' House today having to wear my seat belt. I have also given up smoking as a result of its recommendations. Further, I believe I am also a possible candidate for looking in great detail at its report on obesity.
The worrying factor and why I am raising it in this debate is that the Government take these reports with immense seriousness in the sense that they actually take action on the reports that affect our lives. I have just given examples. I should be extremely concerned if the Government, having read this particular report, intend to take similar action of the kind recommended in some parts of the conclusions reached by the Royal College of Physicians.
Without going into detail I wish only to dwell on the recommendations to the Government which the Royal College is apparently making. On page 50 the following paragraph appears:
"There are a number of measures which Government could take to promote a change in the national diet".
Good heavens! They have already changed two or three areas; are they really going to change what we eat or have enjoyed eating? It continues:
"An analysis of the sources of fat in the diet shows that fat associated with meat and meat products constitutes a major source of the daily intake of fat, as do dairy products. Steps could be taken to encourage the breeding of cattle, sheep and pigs with a lower fat content, e.g. a change in the grading system of carcasses".
I have to ask: what changes in the system of grading of carcasses? There is already a perfectly good system for the grading of carcasses which was referred to in the West of Scotland Agricultural College Report and it is quite clear from the bibliography of the report of the Royal College of Physicians that its authors may not have read, or even have knowledge of, the existing system of grading carcasses, the EEC requirements for carcasses, or any literature on the subject produced by the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. The Royal College of Physicians then goes on to say that,
"of the commonly consumed meats, poultry, with its much lower fat content, is to be preferred to beef, pork and lamb. The present fat content of meat products … is far too high, and a substitution … would be more beneficial to health".
I am sure that these comments are very well intentioned and quite correct from a medical point of view. The reason I am again raising them is that the whole future of the hill and upland farming is at stake if the Government take reports of this kind seriously. I am coming on to the marketing and promotion of food in a moment, because it will change our eating

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habits, for better or for worse—possibly the Royal College of Physicians is quite right, as it apparently is in so many other matters—and it will change our diet. That will radically change the whole future of hill and upland farming almost overnight, because there will be a massive drop in consumption of beef and pork. I hope that I have got it wrong and that the noble Earl will assure me that there should be no worries on this account.
I now come to the subject of milk and dairy production of which much has been said in this report. It says that steps should be taken to ensure that milk of a lower fat content than at present marketed in Britain should be promoted. These recommendations will involve major changes for the beef and dairy producers with, as I have said, serious social consequences. These recommendations have also apparently been made without reference to, or knowledge of, the workings of the farming industry. Therefore, I would like the noble Earl in his reply to state quite categorically whether there are any intentions to pursue, as the Government have done in the past, the Royal College of Physicians' recommendations in the areas of beef, lamb and milk production.
I now move away from that report and come back, briefly, to the reports produced by the West of Scotland Agricultural College, which are obviously of a different character in that they have taken immense trouble to ensure that what conclusions they draw are based on the actual facts related to the production and consumption of beef and dairy products. The question I wish to ask the Government today follows on from my intervention last week in the debate in your Lordships' House on the Second Reading of the Agricultural Marketing Bill. I welcomed the Government's intention to assist in the promotion of Food from Britain in that it must in the end be of benefit to the producers of beef and lamb from the hill and upland areas of Britain. Nevertheless, I did ask that these promotional efforts should be based on standards of quality and consistency which are recognised by the trade and by the eventual markets of these products.
I do not believe—and this is what the reports are saying—that this particular position exists today. We are producing beef without full knowledge of the requirements of our beef markets. As producers, I think that is a serious weakness which must be adjusted somehow. I think, in particular, the term "Scotch beer, which I said earlier is the finest in the world, may need more definition than is the case at present; that is, both from the breeders of the cattle and the producers and feeders of the calves. There is not much encouragement if we look to Europe for the sales of beef. I briefly quote from the reports again:
"Comparisons of United Kingdom trends with those in other countries leave no room for complacency. In the 10 EEC countries, per capita consumption of beef and veal rose from an average of 49 lb. per year in the period 1961/65 to an estimated 58 lb. per year in 1980—an increase of 9 lb. per person. In West Germany consumption of beef and veal per person rose by 5 lb., in France by 12 lb. and in Italy by a massive 18 lb. Yet, even in these countries, beef's share of total meat consumption fell—in Germany by 10 per cent., in France by 8 per cent. and in Italy by 17 per cent."
This means that we have to target—certainly in the Food from Britain campaign and promotion—very
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carefully the markets where British beef and British lamb are intended to be sold, both in this country and in the Common Market.
I turn again to Scotch beef, which is a quality product. It should be aimed at the discerning and more prosperous end of the market. Since Scotch beef is derived mainly from the suckler herd any expansion of beef production would not, of course, be linked with expansion of milk production. That is why I believe Scotch beef should be sold and produced at a premium. This is where we need more sophisticated technology, not in the production and in the land, but in the marketing of agricultural products. Therefore, I welcome any advances in this field. For example, in one particular area there is opportunity for the producers of Scotch beef—those farms that produce a hundred or more head a year—to get together in a form of producers' co-operative to work on an agreed standard of carcase that they intend to produce, which they can call Scotch beef and which will be recognised in the trade as such.
To take up one of the points made by my noble friend Lord Mackie about how crazy the world can be, the breed of Aberdeen Angus was show bred in order to get a very small and beautifully proportioned animal. They are now busy trying to breed it back again to make it a maximum size. That is an example of how fashions can change in the agricultural world and have very serious commercial consequences. There is no doubt about it that Aberdeen Angus is the most popular and suitable animal for the production of lean beef.
Finally, the reports from the West of Scotland Agriculture College show that only 20 per cent. or 30 per cent. of cattle from Scotland fill the ideal requirements of the trade. I believe that this is an area in which there is a great deal of room for improvement which can bring added prices and added profits back again to the hill and upland areas of Britain.
I wish briefly to switch to dairy production and the promotion of milk. I want to come back again to the problem that I believe we are having with the views expressed by the Royal College of Physicians. In 1980–81, the Government agencies—and I am speaking mainly in terms of the Milk Marketing Board, which is, I think, a Government agency—spent £7,268,000 on the promotion of milk. I am not being facetious, but are we going to see a day in the not too distant future when every milk bottle will carry a Government health warning because of the fat content? That is the type of thing that we shall be moving towards if we are not careful. We have these recommendations from one section, and their report has gone to all the Ministers in the Department of Health; it has gone to the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers; it has gone to the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne; and, indeed, it has covered the whole of Parliament. Therefore, the report of the Royal College of Physicians is putting pressure on the need to change our diet, and I have given just one example of dairy products.
There is also the question of school milk, which again the Government have an interest in promoting for the trade. Going back to the West of Scotland report on dairy products, it clearly says that the giving of school milk is for nutrition, and also that it

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establishes a pattern and that very early on in a child's life milk becomes part of the diet. We are getting the recommendation from the Royal College of Physicians that milk is not good for us and that it is not good for children as it is presently constituted in Britain today. We must be wary of these reports because if there is going to be any change in Government policy, in production methods or in the consumption of milk, the industry needs to know a very long time ahead in order that it can handle such a change of diet and perhaps a reduction of fat in order to be acceptable to the medical fraternity.
I am really putting the case forward from these Benches as a Liberal, because unlike the Royal College of Physicians I do not see the role of the British Government as a cross between the great British nanny and a Roedean games mistress. They also encourage more physical jerks as well, as part of the national campaign that the Government should enter into. These matters should be pointed out to us as adults, and not as children. We should have a choice as regards a bottle of milk with a full fat content.
Those of us who are possibly overweight—and I include myself—should clearly be made aware of the dangers, but I still think that we should have a choice as to whether we have fatty pork or fatty meat or lean meat. The choice should be put before us. No pressures should be brought to bear by the Government and translated into action, as has been the case with seat belts and smoking, to affect that area of choice. I am saying this as a Liberal as well as a farmer, and I shall be extremely interested to hear the Government's reactions to the recommendations in the reports that I have mentioned this afternoon.
6.15 p.m.
Lord Margadale: My Lords, the hour is getting on and there are still a number of speakers on the list. Nearly all that I might have said in a very short speech has already been said much more eloquently than I could hope to say it. Therefore, I have just scribbled on a bit of paper one or two salient points which I have come across. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Tanlaw, in what he said about the West of Scotland Agriculture College. I agree that it is a first-class set-up which is very helpful to the farming community. Anything they say should be read, digested and considered useful. I have not read their report and, therefore, I cannot comment further. I should like to add my thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Mackie of Benshie, for initiating this debate. It is nice to see two brothers, not only smiling at each other but laughing at their own jokes, too. I have two sons in another place, and although they sit on the same Benches they sometimes disagree.
I entirely agree with the excellent contributions of my noble friends Lord Ferrers, Lord Middleton and Lord Stanley of Alderley, whose speeches combined nearly all the things that I might have said. I should like to pick up two points raised by the noble Lord, Lord Mackie, who initiated the debate. I felt that he was a little anxious about the contents of some of the chemicals put on the land. While our scientists do a wonderful job and have increased agricultural production enormously, we must be careful to ensure
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that sometimes some of the chemicals put on the land do not do something that they are not supposed to do, because if they were to do so it could lead to trouble later.
The noble Lord also mentioned conservation, thinking of the human factor and the social side. I am all for conservation provided it is sensible conservation, but it must have the support of the population and the farming community—particularly in the Western Isles, where times are pretty difficult for farming. We must get them to think along the lines of the Wildlife and Countryside Act. Within the last three weeks I took the chair at a meeting on the island of Islay, which I know well. The nephew of the two Lord Mackies was the guest of honour, and he made a very good speech. But if the people at that meeting had heard some of the views which have been produced by the keen conservationists, I say with respect to the noble Lord, Lord Melchett, that the assembled company would have been pretty upset. We must get the crofters, the smallholders and the small farmers with us.
On that point, I remember that in another debate the question was raised by the noble Lord, Lord Melchett, that machair should not be messed about with in any way, and that to accept a grant for helping agriculture, which means in some instances ploughing up, could cause disturbance to the machair and the loss of nesting places for corncrakes or landrails, whichever one likes to call them. The corncrake is a very nice little bird, but to my knowledge it has decreased in numbers very considerably and one does not see them nearly as often as one used to. But I cannot help feeling that if the machair was ploughed up a bit it would produce more cover and edible material for them, and it would only mean that they would have to move their nesting places a very short way. Indeed, it might mean more corncrakes rather than less. That is only a guess, but it should be mentioned.
Lord Melchett: My Lords, it may be a guess, but I hope the noble Lord will accept from me that it is a completely wrong guess, and that if he goes to the Western Isles and looks at areas of the machair which have been drained recently, and compares the number of corncrakes nesting there next spring with the number in areas which have not been improved in that way, he will see how wrong he is.
Lord Margadale: My Lords, the other point I want to make—a point which affects my own part of the world, the island of Islay in Argyllshire—concerns geese. At the moment geese are rather a sore point, because a great number of them eat a great deal of grass, particularly the early type, and it is impossible to grow any form of winter corn on the island because the geese stay long enough to eat it all before returning to the north.
As a farmer, my animals have experienced foot and mouth disease once, and it is a sickening sight to see. I am glad to say that it occurs very infrequently, and I hope now not at all. But the geese come every year and cost the small farmer a very considerable amount of money. I hope that a happy solution can be found whereby the geese can come in reasonable numbers

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but not eat all the grass on which the small farmer's living depends.
6.21 p.m.
Lord Woolley: My Lords, I, too, should like to join in expressing my appreciation to the noble Lord, Lord Mackie of Benshie, for initiating this debate. Like the noble Lord, Lord Margadale, I should like to say how pleasant it is to see the two brothers batting at No. 1 and No. 3. We need some good batsmen at the top, and I think we have them today. What a delight it was to listen to the Minister, the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers. In years past I have had to spend time trying to expound the great virtues of agriculture, but today it was a real pleasure to listen to the Minister doing this and giving us such a wide-ranging survey.
Most of what I want to say has already been very well said, and therefore I do not propose to tread already well trodden ground more than I can help. I do not indulge a great deal in looking back; I find it much more inspirational to look forward. But occasionally a glance astern is useful and justified, if it is only to see whether some of those nasty things from the past might be catching up with us again. I have heard it said that the future flies over our heads out of the past. I do not know what truth there is in that generalisation, but at least there are things that one learns over the years on which one needs to keep an eye.
I started farming in the years of depression. It was in 1925—perhaps even a little earlier than some of the speakers today—and I do not suppose that that is a record; nothing could ever be a record in your Lordships' House. It is interesting to contemplate that probably no one under the age of 60 or even 65 has any real active participating experience of agriculture before the war, and virtually before the present thinking came into being. Those were the days of laissez-faire. Those of us who experienced those days, days before there was any constructive agricultural policy, know that any attempts that had been made at such a policy had been washed away, including corn production Acts, and so on. Then we had the marketing Acts in the 1930s which were a tremendous boon, and in particular put milk production on a sound basis. They also worked very well for other commodities.
Then we move on through the war to the 1947 Act, to which reference has been made, which I have always regarded as the agricultural charter. Modern agriculture in this country has grown from that base. As the years went by it was amended and modified according to the changing conditions, because conditions are always changing. As has already been said, you cannot put the clock back and you must adapt to new circumstances. As we have already heard, agriculture has had a very good performance; in economic terms it has been a remarkable performance, and I think has greatly benefited the country as a whole and, of course, agriculture. I am quite sure that the changes have been for the better for those who work in the industry, even though they may have meant a considerable reduction in the rural population and many of the features about which we have heard today, perhaps some of which we regret; for example, changes in the landlord/tenant system.
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That has been a very good system and I think that action should urgently be taken to improve the present position because, if not, I believe there is a real danger that the landlord/tenant system may gradually disappear altogether. That would be a great loss and I certainly do not regard land nationalisation as a good alternative. I do not think that the record of nationalised industries has been such as to commend it to the agricultural industry.
In listening to the noble Lord, Lord Walston, I was interested in his suggestion of a land trust; he compared it with the National Trust. It seems to me that they are two rather different concepts. As I understand it, the National Trust is to take into ownership areas and buildings of great national heritage value. But I would not regard the setting up of a land trust voluntarily to negotiate and purchase land as a very practical suggestion, unless the land was of some particular and special value from an historical point of view in the nation's life. However, we shall wait and see.
Overall, I think that we have a great deal to be thankful for. In our industry we have been extremely well served by the Ministry of Agriculture, which is of course now called the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. I had considerable experience of it as the Ministry of Agriculture, and, although one engaged in many struggles—particularly over price reviews—I have always had a great and abiding respect for the work of the Ministry and for the work of its advisory officers. who have given great service to agriculture and its ancillary industries through the NAAS and now ADAS.
There are many sources that have flowed into the main stream of agricultural production, that have enabled us to give the sort of performance to which reference has been made today. We now face some problems; the problems that are always there, always have been. No sooner is one over one fence than one is approaching the next. That is how life goes, certainly in agriculture. The great thing is to be able to cope with the problems and not let them overpower us. So far they have not overpowered us. At the moment I believe that the main economic problem is that of the common agricultural policy of the EEC. It is not easy to find a solution to those problems. It is never easy to contrive a balance in agriculture. We cannot close down whole factories. I know that the Americans have this "set aside" policy, whereby they set aside land. I suppose that that is the nearest equivalent to closing down a factory. But it is very difficult to achieve a balance by any management processes. Eventually supply and demand cannot be resisted, and therefore one cannot ignore them. Apparently we are running up against the problems of supply and demand and we must also have regard to the international aspects of this problem.
The USA aspect has already been referred to this afternoon. In the EEC it is necessary to look at these things as flexibly as possible. It is a rather ambitious programme to try to run it in the way that it has been run with the same theoretical degree of identity for all countries, and this has led to many efforts at evasion in one way or another by different countries.

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It may well be that for it to survive it will have to become somewhat more flexible. It may have to go to the point where different countries can, within a general policy, administer their own affairs in the way that best suits their circumstances. There would be many objections and difficulties in doing that within the general concept of the EEC, but my feeling is that unless there is some flexibility of this kind then the common agricultural policy may well be in danger of breaking itself to pieces, and indeed of causing great damage to the EEC as a whole.
We have heard about the landlord and tenant problems. One of the great difficulties, as has been mentioned a great number of times today, is the difficulty for young men to get into agriculture. It always will be difficult, because if one takes the size of the population in this country and the amount of land, the number of farms, and if one assumes that a reasonable proportion of the population will always have a desire to farm, it is bound to be difficult to meet that demand. The amalgamation of farms is rather unfortunate to the extent that it is going on. It is the result of economic pressures, and of course people will always do what it is most profitable to do. If we think otherwise, we deceive ourselves. I think that the landlords have reacted quite naturally to the circumstances in which they find themselves.
I hope that the Government will speedily bring in legislation, if not in the exact form of the NFU-CLA package then along those sort of lines, because that would ameliorate the situation. It is not easy to see an ultimate solution to this problem. If farms are bigger, as has already been said many times, one should be careful about interfering with the natural development and, by statute, limiting the size of farms, and so on. Of course, there are other ways. I have heard it said that in Germany and perhaps in other countries in Europe they have the policy of favouring the smaller farmers. We used to have something of the same kind in milk, where the first quantum of gallonage was paid for at a higher price than the remainder. I am not commending that system, but all things of this sort should be in the ring for consideration against the problem that we have of the number of people wanting to get into farming who find it impossible to do so.
As regards the capital requirement, this is extremely difficult. I do not know what one can do about that. The banks have been helpful to farming. What has been achieved could not have been achieved without the banks. Of course, they have had good collateral because they had the Agriculture Acts, which provided excellent collateral for the banks. They responded, and perhaps in recent years sometimes a little too eagerly and encouraged young men to invest rather more by loan than they could service. However, all these things are part and parcel of agriculture today. It is an industry that is going well. It is in a healthy condition. The young people in agriculture are first class, and the future is good.
I would just say one word about conservation. I agree with most of the remarks that have been made on this subject. What interests me is to see how many of the bigger farmers as well as some of the smaller ones are interested in conservation. Reference has been made to the farming and wildlife advisory groups. I was talking to the chairman of our group in
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Cheshire. He himself is a farmer. He is an arable farmer, and he said that he had pulled out great lengths of hedges and so forth, and having done this he then became conservation minded and he has been planting up all sorts of areas; and he is now the leader of the conservationist band in the county. He said that even in the two or three years they have been going they have had more than a hundred inquiries quite voluntarily. They are not going out to try to sell this but it is passed on by observation, by farmers talking to one another, and it is going very well indeed.
It has already been said that the people who have conserved the British countryside have been the landlords and farmers. This is true. We have, of course, our areas of natural wild beauty, but for the most part this country has been conserved by those who work in it. I would entirely endorse what a noble Lord said earlier about the difference in the aspect 60 years ago as one travelled through the countryside and the aspect of the countryside today. There is no comparison. That is because agriculture has been prosperous. Of course, all sorts of things have helped us. Overall, it is a very interesting debate. I would repeat my gratitude to the noble Lord, Lord Mackie of Benshie, for introducing it. It has been a great pleasure to listen to the excellent speeches that we have heard this afternoon.
6.38 p.m.
Baroness Elliot of Harwood: My Lords, I have listened to all these speeches with enormous interest. I should like to pay my tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Mackie of Benshie, and to the noble Lord, Lord John-Mackie. I think that it was the noble Lord, Lord Woolley, who mentioned the early days of farming. I vividly remember, when my husband was Minister in 1933–34, being taken to see the two Mackies' father, Mr. Mackie. The reason was that he was so much ahead, and doing such a marvellous job in Aberdeenshire, that the Minister of Agriculture, who was also a personal friend, was taken there in order to see what was going on. I can say, with my knowledge of the Mackie brothers, that they have carried on in this marvellous way and are two of the best farmers we have in Scotland. Therefore, it is splendid that the noble Lord should have inaugurated this debate and given everybody a chance to take part.
Now many things have been said, and I am not going to repeat them because I agree with so much that so many people have said. I should like to say, as I live in an area where the landlord-tenant principle is still working successfully, how glad I am that the noble Lord, Lord Mackie, mentioned the Buccleuch estates. I live surrounded by the Buccleuch estates. They are marvellously organised, and are a great example of how this system has gone on for generations and is still a highly successful method.
I back up all those who have spoken about agriculture being not only one of the most important industries that we have—possibly the most important —but also having another function, and that is of providing for the people in the countryside employment as well as, I believe, happiness. I live in a small village, and I know every single person in the area very well. I consider that agriculture is vital to the

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happiness of people in rural areas, as well as to the development of those areas.
What might happen if production were to be reduced in an area such as mine, or that of the noble Lord, Lord Tanlaw? In my area we have hill farming and hill sheep and cattle. What if it were suddenly said, "That must now be abandoned because it does not pay, it is too expensive, or it requires subsidy"? If one were to say that, one would be knocking not only farmers but everyone in the countryside in a way that I believe would be absolutely disastrous. I do not see any reason why at any point such a thing is likely to happen.
I considered the speech of the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, to be simply, splendid. He gave a great many statistics, which I shall not repeat though I probably looked them up before the debate. I think that what the Government are doing is proving extremely successful.
In my opinion agriculture is an all-party industry. I have found this to be so during all the years that I have been associated with it, going back to 1934, when I married a Minister of Agriculture, and when, as the noble Lord, Lord Woolley, said, the great marketing schemes all began. Many of those schemes are still operating, such as that run by the Milk Marketing Board; and there are others, too. Agriculture has always been a vital part of our community. On both sides of politics, on the Conservative side and on the Labour side, we have had absolutely first-class Ministers of Agriculture. After the war we had Tom Williams, who was absolutely first-class; and then we had the noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos, who was also absolutely first-class. We have had the same kind of helpful Ministers on our side, and I am sure that today we would all agree that our present Minister has done extremely well, and is being well backed up by the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, and his assistants.
So I do not propose to take any kind of party political view. The point about this industry is that it covers the interests of the whole country, and whether or not one thinks that it would be improved by land nationalisation—personally, I do not think that it would be—we are still keen to see agriculture prospering. It has prospered, and is prospering still, though, as one or two noble Lords have said, we are rather dependent on the banks. Undoubtedly the banks are a very strong feature of our agriculture today. Nevertheless they are on our side, and we are lucky in that.
One point has not yet been stressed strongly enough in the debate. It is the fact that today we are producing more of our own food than ever before. I think the noble Lord said that it is 75 per cent. I can remember way back when we were lucky to produce about 30 per cent. of our food. We are now producing 75 per cent., and from a much smaller area. Think of the amount of land that has been taken over for urban development, roads, and all the other needs that have nothing to do with agriculture. Yet farmers have managed to keep up their production, and indeed to increase it. That is an extremely good achievement.
Many people have been talking about changes. I agree that there have been enormous changes in the
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arable areas, but consider the hill country, the areas that are described as the "less favoured" areas, though personally I think they are best of all. In such areas one will not find an enormous change. One will find that improvement in hill land has been carried out—and I believe very successfully so. The percentage of lambing in hill areas is going up every year. The amount of cattle that we can produce is also going up. Our techniques are improving. But the look of the land is the same as it has always been; it is still as beautiful as it always was.
Reference has been made to difficulties that certain people have experienced with the conservation lobby. I would only say that I do not think we have had any trouble at all. That is not because we have not changed our methods to a certain extent. But we have got on very well with the conservationists. As I think the noble Lord, Lord Woolley, said, co-operation between the conservationists and the farmers could well be brought about, and I am sure that it is very important.
It is also important that we continue to support the hill areas. I am speaking now as someone who farms in hill areas, and so I have a personal interest. But the real reason for saying that is that if there are not enough store cattle and store sheep, the people who want to fatten these kind of animals will find that there is a shortage. Today we are not being cut back in any way. Every animal that we produce on the hill land has a market. This is one of the things with which the Government have helped very much, and I should like to acknowledge that and to thank them for it.
Equally, we must not overlook the tremendous help that we have all had from the EEC. I know that there are a certain number of people who are always "knocking" the EEC, saying that it is very expensive and we do not get our fair share out of it. Here I would disagree very strongly. In your Lordships' committee which meets every Wednesday morning, we are continually discussing the EEC and the help that it has given to agriculture. It would be the greatest possible mistake if we were to pull out of Europe and suddenly try to run our farming independently. It would not work at all. I believe that that is one of the things to which our Government are today committed, and I support it very strongly indeed.
So much has been said, all of which I agree with, that I shall not delay your Lordships much longer. But I should like to stress that there are other social developments in the countryside that we should encourage. There is, for instance, the development of tourism, riding, hill walking and so on. In my area we have another development which is proving extremely useful and valuable. It is an education centre to which children can go in term time or during the holidays for a fortnight. They can go around all the hill areas and study what is going on in the sheep and cattle world. The children are all of school age. The Northumberland Education Committee started the scheme, but it is now being operated in other areas as well, and I believe that it could be developed further. Such study centres in agricultural and rural areas are valuable, and I hope that they will continue and increase.
I do not agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Tanlaw, pointed out to us about the reports to which

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he referred, which I have not read. I do not see why anybody should dictate to us what we should eat. I was brought up on the principle that a little of what you fancy does you good. That is the motto that I would follow, and under no circumstances would I agree that children should not be given school milk. The two Mackie brothers will remember that the original school milk scheme was started by Lord Boyd-Orr and my husband, who made a tremendous analysis of the importance of providing school milk for growing children. This revolutionised the health of children.
To say now that because milk is not good for you at my age or at the age of some of your Lordships then it is not good for you when you are aged between six and 15 is, to me, completely wrong. If any doctor said that to me, I should point to these inquiries that were made many years ago. After all, children are the same and milk is the same; and if it did good then, it will do good now. One of the things which I think the EEC has said and which I support is that the organisation of the milk-in-schools scheme should continue for another five years. I think that is very important. I will say no more except that I strongly support what my noble friend Lord Ferrers has said, and I hope very much that we shall continue to support this industry because I think it is absolutely vital to the whole country.
6.51 p.m.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, I do not propose to follow the noble Baroness except in the very last point that she made. I think I have some right to do so because I, too, worked very closely with Lord Boyd-Orr many years ago. May I suggest to her that if she is concerned about the provision of milk to school children, she should speak to her own Prime Minister, who was the first, at least, to dent the principle of free school milk, rather than to Members of your Lordships' House.
Baroness Elliot of Harwood: My Lords, if I may interrupt the noble Lord, I will say that I have already done so. I have spoken to the Conservative Party about this and have said how much I disagreed when they cut down the milk-in-schools scheme.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: All power to the noble Baroness's elbow! I hope that she will go on speaking so.
I do not profess to be an expert on agriculture, but having been brought up in a highly marginal farming area in the Pennines, and now living in the very rich farming area of Lincolnshire, and having at one time been a candidate in the far north of Scotland for the seat that my noble friend Lord Mackie later represented, I have had a little experience; and I am speaking simply from my experience particularly on the social side of the agricultural communities. Throughout this century the mechanisation of agriculture proceeded slowly until the Second World War. Since then it has speeded up very considerably. There has been intensified production and a continually greater use of marginal land. This seems to me to present a problem, a problem which has been touched on by many noble Lords this afternoon, but which perhaps has not been quite clearly visualised by those
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who have been talking about the rural areas within which agriculture takes place.
If you are going to use more and more marginal land, then this in itself is a stimulation to the use of mechanised agriculture. The use of machines then reduces the number of agricultural workers. Most of those workers go to the towns because there are very few, far too few, rural industries that can offer them employment. Having gone to the towns, you then get the double problem of rural depopulation and an increasing urban demand for food, which in its turn increases the pressure for greater mechanisation and again for fewer labourers.
But there is another pressure which goes the same way because, as has just been pointed out by the noble Baroness, you also have the pressure of the loss of agricultural land, the annual loss of agricultural land (I understand the loss comes to something like 50,000 acres a year) for the use of urban development of various kinds—roads, railways, housing and so on. That is an extra pressure which increases the pace of this vicious circle. Then, at that stage, the Government seem to come in; and I want to say a word or two about the role of Government because, like my noble friend Lord Melchett, it amazes me that this Government of all Governments can support a policy of intervention in what, after all, is one of the major industries of the country and claim it as part of their policy and of their success.
Why is Government intervention in agriculture any different from Government intervention in steel? If steel had been given the kind of protection that agriculture has been given the British steel industry would be in a very different position. The figures are astounding. I know that one can use figures in respect of different years, but I am using the latest ones I have. I know that 1980–81 (this is the latest figure I have) was a somewhat exaggerated year, but in that year the Government were contributing in one way or another to the agricultural industry 166 per cent. of the farmers' net income. I accept that the Government have not done that every year, but they have contributed a very substantial percentage of the farmers' net income. It is estimated that at present the Government are using taxpayers' money to contribute £3.35 billion a year to the farming industry.
This may increase, and has increased, labour productivity in the industry. Certainly so. But has it increased capital productivity? Could not at least some of it have been used to promote those same rural industries which so many noble Lords from all sides of the House have this afternoon regretted are conspicuous by their absence? Certainly if the amount of money that has gone into agriculture had been invested—and we are talking about Government money—in any of the other major industries of this country it would have had a very extreme effect upon the future of those industries.
So we have to admit that agriculture is a very privileged industry. What follows from that? Who does it help? Does it help the farm workers? The farm workers in this country used to have wages something like 50 per cent. above the average on the Continent of Europe. Now they are below. Does it help the farmers? We have heard again of the very strong

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tendency towards the amalgamation of farms and towards their increased size—and therefore towards reduction in the number of farmers.
We have also heard that in the mechanised farm you need larger fields for the use of machinery. What does this produce? I have seen it all over Lincolnshire. One can see the ripping up of hedges and the cutting down of trees, and as soon as the dry period comes one can see the blowing away of the top soil in clouds of dust. It is also the case that because of the protection which the industry has been given by the Government—and I am talking not of this particular Government but of Governments of all parties—the price of land has substantially risen, and is still rising; and so are rents. As a consequence, it is more and more difficult—again, as many noble Lords have pointed out—for young people to enter the farming industry. It is becoming more difficult for the sons and daughters of farmers to go into the industry.
Has it helped the consumer? I wonder how generally it is known in this country that the tax on imported wheat is nearly 100 per cent. and the tax on maize is over 100 per cent.that the consumer in this country is estimated to lose £3 billion a year simply because of the difference between world food prices and food prices within the EEC? It seems to me that the way in which Governments have protected this industry—they have protected others, but a tremendous amount of taxpayers' money has been paid into the agricultural industry—has been for the benefit largely of the giant subsidised units, and the financial institutions which own many of them, including in particular the import-intensive fertilisers and chemicals and the firms like ICI, BP, Shell and Fisons, which have made a very good killing out of the industry so protected.
Lord Mackie of Benshie: My Lords, before the noble Lord continues, perhaps for the record he will tell us where he gets the figure of £3.35 billion assistance to industry in one year.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, the figure I gave was £3 billion a year. I said that the consumer is £3 billion a year worse off because of the difference between world prices and the EEC. I took that figure from the book—I think I am right here—which was mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Mackie of Benshie, written by Mr. Richard Body, who is the Conservative Member of Parliament for the constituency next to where I live.
I was going on to summarise the effect of rural depopulation caused by the mechanisation of agriculture on the social life of the community. It means of course that as the population becomes smaller so there are fewer amenities, so there are fewer facilities—and many noble Lords have spoken of this this afternoon. The small industries disappear; but, above all, today—and this is the responsibility of the Government—what is disappearing most of all is the service industry in the rural areas. The bus services are of tremendous importance, particularly to old people, disabled people and people who have to go to hospital. The train services disappeared years ago and now the bus services are disappearing. Schools are being closed
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down. I made a speech about this last week so I shall not repeat it now.
The rural areas of this country, the rural communities, are under a very clear and direct threat. I believe that most Members of this House would wish to do what they can to protect them, but you can only protect them if you can provide employment within the rural areas; if you can emphasise—as has been mentioned earlier this afternoon—the importance of the small farm rather than the big, massive, faceless farm, and the industries connected with farming.
Briefly, I should like to conclude by trying to broaden this debate for a moment. The noble Earl who spoke for the Government mentioned a number of international points, some of which I should like to take up. May I set the scene by pointing out that it is the Food and Agriculture Organisation which has estimated that by the end of the century an additional 200 million hectares of cultivated land will be needed to feed the population at the beginning of the 21st century. Yet, half of the world's arable land remains uncultivated. We have to face this challenge. Certainly we are not facing it by the dumping of EEC and United States surpluses on the world market. When the noble Earl speaks of the export of agricultural produce from this country, I hope that he is not referring to this dumping that has gone on which has not been for the benefit of third world countries at all but has certainly had a very bad effect on the world price system.
Nor are we facing this challenge if, as appears almost certain following the breakdown of the last GATT meeting, we wage a bitter war with the United States, which from all reports is a very real danger. I would suggest that, although there are success stories within the agricultural field of this country, we are not looking at the relationships of agriculture within this country and between this country and the rest of the world. Is it not in our interests as well as our moral duty—particularly, is it not in our interests—to help third world countries to produce more food on that unused half of the world's arable land as well as to provide food aid? I believe that food aid should be provided when there is starvation, but it is much more important to provide the means by which food can be grown in other parts of the world.
May I ask the noble Lord, Lord Middleton, this. When he says, as he did in his speech, "It is better to eat your own food rather than run the risk that others will not let you eat theirs", does he apply that principle to the rest of the world? If he does, then we are not going to have much tea or coffee to drink or cotton in this country. That surely is a blind argument. I am suggesting that one of the important issues in the whole planning of our agricultural system of this country should be to assist this country as a member of the world community in the methods of growing, marketing, pricing, storing, distribution and perhaps using correctly some of the fertilisers that are so badly used here. Perhaps we shall then use them more rationally. I believe that it is the case today that more fertilisers are used on the golf courses of the United States than in the whole of India.
I do not profess to be able to offer a perfect prescription for meeting these challenges. I believe the challenges are there and are recognised on all sides of

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this House. I believe, too, that the party of which I have the honour to be a member has the right approach (I do not personally like the word "nationalisation") when it talks about the necessity for public ownership of, at least in the first instance, tenanted land as a step towards the public ownership of all land, which I believe to be the possession of the people who live in the country of which it is part.
My noble friend Lord Melchett mentioned this, and was challenged as to where the money was coming from. I have one suggestion. It is only one of many that could be made, and one that has been made for many years by some of my colleagues. There is a very good fund available for such an action, and that is the National Pensions Fund. That could be used to put under public ownership—not under public management—at least the tenanted land that is now being farmed in this country. As my noble friend said, that is the only way to guarantee that tenancy farming will continue in this country in the face of the development we have seen here, on the other side of the Atlantic and in other countries by way of the infiltration of the financial institutions as landowners.
Secondly, everything that I have said would lead me to suppose that really our agricultural policy is not planned. There is no thought or planning, and there is no vision of the future in the way in which we are going. I believe that in the interests of the people of this country, and in particular in the interests of the people of this country as members of the world community, we have to do much more thinking. We must have more debates of this kind—and I acknowledge the debt of all of us to the noble Lord, Lord Mackie of Benshie, for having introduced this debate. We need to discuss this subject more, and to bring out the social and economic problems of the rural communities in this country. But we have also to remember that in the last resort we are a trading nation. We depend on recognising, and getting our children and grand-children to recognise, that we are also citizens of a world community.
Lord Brougham and Vaux: My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down, I wonder whether he could quantify a statement he made earlier. I think I heard him rightly. He said that there was more fertiliser used on golf courses in the United States than was used in India. I was wondering whether he could quantify that.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, I am sorry. The noble Lord asks whether I can elaborate further?
Lord Brougham and Vaux: My Lords, could the noble Lord quantify his remark that there is more fertiliser used on golf courses in the United States than there is in India? There is a vast tonnage used in India.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, my authority for quoting that, so far as I can recall—I would not be exact—is the World Food and Agriculture Organisation.
7.14 p.m.
Lord St. Just: My Lords, I should like to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Mackie of Benshie, on
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introducing this debate, which has covered every aspect of farming and the environment. Due to the financial pressures, traditional livestock farming has generally been replaced by arable where it is practicable. With less grass, there has been a trend towards short rotations or no break crops at all. To maintain yields, it has been necessary to rely heavily on nitrogen and chemicals for the control of weeds, pests and diseases. Continuous cereals, for example, lead to a predominance of the weeds, disease and pests which are associated with a particular crop. The materials required are derived from oil, and the future of such cropping, with the inputs required, is closely linked with the cost of energy. Recently, this has been a major cause of cost-inflation in agriculture.
The continuous "barley barons" and the large arable farmers have been responsible for substantial amounts of hedge and fence removal, with the result that the very large fields that they have created are more suitable now for one form of farming only and, for example, would be most unsuited to livestock farming should the future require a change. It seems there has been a decline in mixed farming and in the flexibility of production, which leaves our agriculture less well equipped to adjust in the future.
Perhaps I may say a word or two about financial pressures. The practice of good husbandry no longer gives the importance it should to the preservation of landscape, wildlife and access by the public. Today's farmers have to maximise production of crops and livestock first, in order to survive in business. As a result of capital taxation and cost-inflation, landlords and owner-occupiers have been forced to economise drastically on investment in agriculture. They have cut back on repairs to less efficient traditional buildings, with the result that we now notice large new asbestos or pvc-coated tin roofs and we see fewer and fewer roofs of thatch, tile or slate. Modern building materials will probably have a much longer life and therefore a good cost-benefit for the future. Financial pressures surrounding investment in buildings must have improved investment decision-making in agriculture.
The run-down of the landlord and tenant system, accelerated by legislation on succession, has resulted in a reduced influence on the future of the land by traditional estate owners. They used to stipulate the amount of ley grassland and permanent pastures retained, and they controlled rotations to a degree through the tenancy agreements. Not all these controls were for the good, but the best landlords used to have more influence on the quality of the farming and therefore on the future of their estates. In fairness, rents were probably lower but there was a better overall balance.
High rents and high interest rates have forced tenants to crop every last fraction of an acre with cash crops. Many owner-occupiers fall into the same category, having substantial mortgages to fund instead of rent. For example, footpaths are ploughed up, hedges removed or sawn off to the ground, just to make available perhaps another four furrows for cultivation. Where landlords are responsible for repairs on let farms, VAT is now an added cost that they cannot recover except by higher rents, and that therefore leads to more pressure on tenants to pursue

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extreme patterns of farming which may keep them in business in the short term.
The high cost of working capital has reduced the beef and sheep sectors, where it costs upwards of £300 per acre to provide the stock necessary to grass it. Rent and interest charges can now easily total £80 to £100 per acre for what was a traditional form of farming in the grassland areas. When inflation was severe, there was understandable and keen interest in investment in agriculture as an inflationary hedge. This undoubtedly helped to raise land values markedly, with the result that genuine farmers were faced with an increase in the price of their raw materials of trade which did not reflect farmers' demand for land alone. It can be argued that the future of the land has been affected by the vagaries of inflation and the widening of sources from which agricultural ownership and capital are now derived. Institutional land ownership was almost unheard of 20 years ago.
I want to turn for one moment to the rural communities. I live and farm on the Wiltshire-Hampshire border, midway between Salisbury and Andover, and about four miles from Salisbury Plain. We are in a rather extraordinary position, because, while we have to the north and south of us two fairly large farms, to the east of us we have Porton, the bacteriological establishment, which marches right along one side of my estate, and on the other side, some three miles away, we have Boscombe Down, which is the Ministry of Defence airfield for testing new aircraft.
Porton has been there for a very long time. It is not divulging any secrets when I say that it was the gas school before it was the bacteriological warfare establishment. The local people mix fairly freely and easily with the various scientists and others who work at Porton. Boscombe Down has always been totally different. There, quite naturally, the people are very highly-rated engineers and scientists, together with a great many test pilots who are American as well as English. They live in a total cocoon of their own, very much as one imagines the Americans do in camps over here. A lot of the people at Porton live in two villages just up the valley. They now mix fairly well with the local population, the locals having realised that it is no good trying to ply them with extra drinks and hoping to get some fascinating information out of them, because that just does not work.
But, as in all other parts of the country, there is a tendency for the young to work in the towns and they do not enjoy their leisure hours anywhere in the vicinity; they are off to Salisbury or Southampton, though the middle-aged and older people take part in village activities. This is a problem which one hopes will not get worse, and it may improve as more and more effort is put into local amenities.
7.24 p.m.
Lord Somers: My Lords, I appreciate the difficulties of the noble Lord, Lord St. Just, as I used to live not far from where he does. Much has been said during this debate on the question of conservation, but I should just like to make one point. What could add more to the landscape than a beautifully ploughed field or a lovely field of wheat? One forgets that a farm, in itself, can be a very beautiful thing.
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I must admit at the beginning that I am not a farmer. However, I spent most of my early years on a farm, my father was a farmer and I have worked on a farm, so I think that I know something about it. I want to concentrate this evening on intensive farming, which was mentioned by my noble friend Lord Nugent. I must call him my noble friend because, although we sit on different Benches, we are friends and I hope he will remain so, even though he is sitting on the Woolsack.
Intensive farming is a method of farming which I do not think we should encourage. During the last good many months, I have been making a translation of a French book on that very subject. Its great value is that it is entirely objective. The question of emotion does not come into it at all. A thorough examination has been made of the whole system. The book occupies nearly 400 pages and every single detail has been gone into by the three authors, one of whom is a veterinary professor, another a Nobel prize winner and the last a well-known journalist. I want to concentrate not on the humanitarian side, as some of your Lordships may think, but on the quality of the products.
The products of these batteries and intensive farms are far below standard. One of the conclusions of this book is that the food we eat, when produced by this method, is not good for one's health. There is no doubt that animals farmed in this way are treated with various drugs and hormones which are conveyed to us by the meat. In fact, one drug—I am afraid that I cannot remember its name, but if anybody is interested I will look it up and write to him; I am not sure whether it is still given to calves—was definitely proved to be cancer producing.
If your Lordships will allow me, I should like to quote a little from this book a propos of the giving of hormones, which is always stoutly denied by those who practise this method. The book states:
"Everyone knows that hormones have been added, in one way or another, to calves, hens, etc. The SNIA"—
that is, the National Society for Agricultural Industries—
"says too much, even if it is correct (which remains to be verified) that foods manufactured by the enterprises which it has taken over should not contain hormones. That peremptory statement concerning the absence of hormones has one purpose: to prove that the composite foods are marvels, as it were miraculous recipes with only a sprinkling of hormones.
"The truth is quite different, and those who work in the animal food industry know that their products do not possess the 'natural' efficacity or quality which they pretend they have".
That is the decision of experts, not of an emotional Member of your Lordships' House who gets up and starts speaking on something which he does not know anything about. That is absolute fact. Owing to the bad effects which this food may have on the population as a whole, it should be made quite plain that that is not the system to use.
A great many people think that the enormous amount that is produced by this method will ease the situation of food production. In France, however, about which these authors are writing, it is quite the contrary. It has done nothing of the kind. Food is sold to the European market, not to the hungry nations. Incidentally, an enormous quantity of cereals is devoted purely to the manufacture of composite foods.

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Those cereals are the very products which the third world nations badly need. That theory can therefore, I believe, be exploded at once. I hope what I have said will carry a little conviction, even with those noble Lords who may not be very willing to think as I do.
7.31 p.m.
Viscount Mountgarret: My Lords, to be put in to bat at number 11 in a team of first-class cricketers is a very pleasant experience, because most of the runs have been scored by the time one gets to the crease. I can follow my noble friend Lord Margadale by saying that my prepared script has more or less gone into the wastepaper basket and that I am now left with a few notes scribbled on a piece of paper.
The three points I wanted to make have been more or less covered. I was delighted to hear my noble friend Lord Ferrers say that he shared the concern of those who spoke after him about the landlord-tenant system in this country, which has been seriously undermined by the Agriculture (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1976. A considerable amount of criticism—probably unjust criticism—has been levelled at the Government for appearing to fail to pay a great deal of attention to what has been done by my noble friend Lord Middleton and the President of the National Farmers' Union, Sir Richard Butler. That is somewhat unfair. Just because something is not being done does not mean that it is not being listened to. The present Government already have so much on their plate that they have to get their priorities right. However, I hope they will feel that next time round there ought to be early legislation on this point.
I was surprised, to say the least, to hear the noble Lord, Lord Hatch of Lusby, arguing for the small tenanted farms and regretting the fact that they are on the decrease. I say I am surprised because this problem would not have arisen if the party to which the noble Lord belongs had left the landlord-tenant system intact. I hope that in due course we shall try to unravel it.
My noble friend Lord Middleton referred to taxation. This is a genuine and serious point. As I am sure noble Lords know better than I, landlords and, indeed, the larger farmers in the rural communities used to spend very considerable sums of money for the benefit of the communities and societies in which they lived. This money came out of their own pockets. It happened in the days before so much benefit was derived from the welfare state. This was a delightful thing. They looked after the old and the retired, they built almshouses, and so on. This was because they had great confidence in the fututre. They were confident that they could hand everything on from one generation to another. They believed that they could build up a business and that it would continue.
Over the last 80 years, however, taxation—first in the form of death duties, followed by capital taxation which today verges on the point of being penalistic—has done nothing whatsoever to benefit the nation or the agricultural industry. It has served only to undermine confidence. Unless this system of capital taxation, in so far as it relates to land and agriculture, is modified there is a real danger that the future
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prosperity of British agriculture as a whole will be undermined and, with it, the thriving continuance of some of the smaller rural communities. I know that the Government are very well aware of the problem and that much has already been done to try to alleviate some of the worst aspects of it. In an adverse economic climate one cannot do too much too quickly. I hope, however, that the Government do not feel that the problem has been entirely solved. It is regrettable that it has been allowed to become quite so bad as it has.
May I mention one point which no speaker has raised. I hope that it is not entirely out of context in this debate. I wish to refer to the Rent Act 1977 in relation to the rural communities. I am very unhappy about the way in which landlords have their hands tied behind their backs when there are vacant farmhouses, and so on, in their villages and communities. With the advent of modern machinery and improved productivity, the labour requirement has necessarily been reduced. Therefore, the requirement for cottages and houses on the various farms and estates has diminished. It may be argued that if the requirement has diminished then to that extent these properties should be sold. Nevertheless, one always wants to keep, and should keep, a proportion of dwellings available for use from time to time.
For instance, it is understood that a farm worker or a horticultural worker will be provided with accommodation in which to live; and having given many years of good service, the presumption is that he should be allowed to stay on in that cottage, or another one, after he retires. Two cottages, therefore, are generally required for one job in agriculture in order to look after the old and the retired. This does not mean that these properties will always be occupied. Consequently, one ought to be able to let them. Unfortunately, however, if they are let at a reasonable, commercial rent the Rent Act provisions make it impossible for a landlord to regain possession of his property in order to house another worker. That is a rather short-sighted policy. The landlord, therefore, feels that he cannot let the property.
The shorthold tenancies legislation of a few years ago has done quite a lot to alleviate this problem. However, it has led to distress because the provisions of the Act require that after a property has been let to a particular individual for two or three years he should be asked to leave altogether. Somebody else then comes to live in that property. This seems to me to be counterproductive.
In the context of benefiting rural communities, I hope it will be thought to be desirable that, in so far as it relates to agricultural holdings, the Rent Act 1977 should be amended. Then, by means of a fair agreement between the two sides—suitably devised, duly stamped, legal, and all the rest of it, so that there is no Rachmanism about it—these properties could be fairly let to people for whatever period of time the landlord feels he is able to make them available. Then there would be no problems about such lettings. That might be a contribution to keeping rural communities in being instead of having the number of vacant houses that there are at present. My Lords, I was going to make one or two other points, but another debate is to follow. Therefore, we might be well advised to proceed.
7.40 p.m.
Lord Raglan: My Lords, the lack of noble Lords on this side of the House with farming backgrounds has propelled me to the Front Bench. In preparation for this honour I have, of course, equipped myself with a clean pair of shoes. I wish only that it would be as easy to provide a short speech which did justice to the interesting and important subject which the noble Lord, Lord Mackie of Benshie, introduced this afternoon with his usual élan and thoughtfulness, based on his deep knowledge from a long association with the farming industry. The subject has been discussed from many angles during the course of a series of very interesting speeches, and I am not aware that there is any particular party line on this subject. This side of the House tends to be more urban in its origin, but nearly all agree it would be objective of maintaining a healthy agriculture.
The noble Lord, Lord Mackie of Benshie, spoke of the amazing increase in agriculture production which has been made possible by the activities of plant breeding stations, agricultural research stations and, as the noble Lord, Lord Woolley, mentioned, ADAS—as well as there being some extremely skilful farmers who can put all this knowledge into action. He and my noble friend Lord John-Mackie and other noble Lords also mentioned the move towards even larger farms which has been associated with this increase in production. For example, the noble Lord, Lord Middleton, and other noble Lords expressed some anxiety about the height of the lowest rung of the farming ladder and about how hard it is to get on to that ladder. Some of these points are discussed in the European Select Committee's recent report on the Community's socio-structural policy. I commend that report to your Lordships but I shall take the opportunity today to make a few observations about the report.
It is said that economic pressure demands even larger farms. That happens either through amalgamation or through cannibalisation, where two or three neighbouring farmers will buy a farm and divide it up between them. But also, for decades it has been Government policy to encourage this process of enlargement in the belief that it encourages efficiency. I do not know which of these two forces—the economic force or the force of Government policy—has been the more influential; but I am inclined to agree that Government policy, which in this case has reflected received farming opinion that bigger means more cost effective, in the form of amalgamation grants and prejudice against part-time farming, and so on, has exerted more influence than has been given credit.
Some observers of the farming scene have long been concerned at this trend, for they have certain doubts about the value of the large farm. I agree with that even though—or perhaps it is because—I myself have for many years farmed a comparatively large number of acres. The doubt arises because, although the large farm may be impressive, looking agri-business, it is capital hungry and requires a steady high return on investment, whereas the small family farm—probably working older equipment and not having to find wages, and where farming is a way of life as much as
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it is a business—is more resilient because when the pinch comes it can accept a lower return.
I happen to think that the common agriculture policy is not very costly for what it provides. Expenditure on it is always in imminent danger of getting out of hand. It teeters on the brink but so far disaster has been staved off. In any case, critics of the policy should have a care when alleging that it is anyway only an expensive prop for inefficient peasants, when it may well be that it is the supposedly efficient large farms which really need propping up. Many noble Lords voiced this concern about the reducing number of farms, and if there is something to this opinion, and farmers and landowners as well as the Government rethink the way in which matters have been going, that should in time have a profound effect on farming and on the vigour of rural communities, which ought to be to the benefit of farming and farming areas.
I will now say something about the effect of farming on the landscape because this question has attracted several mentions this afternoon. It is true that the pursuit of cheaper and more convenient production has led to enlarged fields. Speaking as a westerner, the impact of this has been most noticeable in the purely arable areas of the Eastern Counties, some of which look extremely bleak—some look bleaker than ever. I think that Lincolnshire, or at least the lowland areas of Lincolnshire, always looks a bit bleak. However, I find it impossible from where I live in South Wales to agree with the laments about the look of the countryside. Certainly in order to accommodate tractor and harvester I and my neighbours have removed hedges and trees, but those that remain seem to point up the beauty of our sharply rolling fields rather than conceal it as they did before.
Of my neighbouring counties, to my eyes there is not a more romantically beautiful site to be found than where the treeless chalk downs sweep down to meet the wooded Somerset clay and Meare and Stour Hill. That is a landscape created and maintained by farming. To me, the other neighbouring counties of Hereford, Glamorgan, Shropshire and Gloucestershire —which are all heavily and profitably farmed—remain in their own ways some of the most beautiful places in the world, and full of alluring habitats for all kinds of creatures. The tragedy here of Dutch Elm disease caused more change to the countryside than any measures taken by modern farming. All in all, I do not fear for the landscapes in these areas.
Where modern farming has produced a bleak landscape, it has been mainly in the Eastern Counties. I have been told that the commission in Brussels is at this moment considering what they call an environmental impact assessment, and how it can be integrated into all aspects of policy making, including farming. That is quite a thought, if it can be made to work. An assessment of this kind would perhaps take in the appearance of modern farm buildings—many of which are very ugly, though luckily they are not as permanent in their construction as the old ones. But quite as objectionable. I find, are the hideous houses which have been thrust so insensitively into previously attractive towns and villages. That may be another subject, but one does need to look at the landscape as

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a whole. Planners are far from having made a very good aesthetic job of townscape and I think it would be wrong to believe that they would always do the best thing for the countryside. Nevertheless, I do not think that planning control should be entirely absent from the countryside, though there is certainly plenty of room for argument about how it might be exercised.
Thinking along the lines that the noble Lord promulgated about the effects of modern farming, I am concerned about the impact of heavy machines upon the soil structure, although in my area we have learned in the last 20 years to be more prudent in their use when we go on the land with them. Then I remind myself that few machines have the compacting ability of a dairy cow pressing all her weight upon a few square inches of hoof. This is not exactly a new problem but is one which the onlooker to the countryside might not be aware of. We are having to take steps to improve our compacted fields, though, because carrying the increased number of cattle per acre exacerbates the problem and, in the end, self-interest will require us to overcome this and to combat this penning.
For the same reason I really do not know how worried one should be about monoculture, which was mentioned by my noble friend Lord John-Mackie, though I think that there is room here for a certain amount of argument about terms. The noble Lord, Lord Walston, said he did not think that there was any such thing as monoculture. I have got news for him because in my part of the world it is not economic to practise any other culture but the monoculture of grass. It does very well, but the problem is to know what to do with it. On some sandy or brashy soils it is possible to practise a kind of hydroponics using the soil to act only as a matrix for the roots of the crops, which are sustained by chemical fertilisers. But I must say that on just the sort of soil where one would have thought this method might work the noble Lord, Lord Walston, who, I think, farms on Cambridgeshire chalk, finds that it pays to have a rotation, so perhaps my noble friend Lord John-Mackie might also find that rotation pays. I do not think he need be worried, however, because I remember 10 years ago going to see a farm where the farmer had grown a crop of Pioneer barley on the same field for 33 years. It looked extremely healthy and for all I know he is still doing it. My conclusion is that one may be able to get away with monoculture, in which case it may not he doing any harm at all. Alternatively, the land will rebel, it will become uneconomic and the weeds and pests will get you, too. I think only time can tell and perhaps this is the nub of the problem which we face.
There is always so little time. It is no longer accurate to speak of the march of technology. It has broken into a double. Hardly has one technique become established or put forward than it is being replaced by another. There tends to be a lack of accumulated practical experience to draw upon when one is in trouble. If I see a peculiar effect which I think a certain chemical is having on a crop, there is no saying that I will be able to find anybody who can tell me for sure what the trouble is. That is not disturbing in itself. A listener to "Gardeners' Question Time" will often hear technical questions which even the sages on that programme cannot quite find an answer to. Many
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gardeners, as well as farmers, are only too ready out of curiosity to try what is new. So I do not think it is only financial pressure which drives farmers into the unknown.
What can be disturbing, I agree, is that frenetic sense engendered by drug and chemical firms, and even by certain farming magazines, that one must keep up or suffer the ignominy or poverty of being left behind. I was not sure whether the noble Lord, Lord Mackie, was suggesting that perhaps the Government might intervene in some way over the rash of vastly technically complicated chemicals which keep being put on to the market. But I think it is really up to the individual farmers to take a relaxed attitude and to discriminate between what is only novelty and what is genuine advance.
I am not sure that I accept that there is a pressure to increase production at any cost and that that is leading to bad farming. There tends to be an assumption that the higher the output the greater the profitability, but it is my observation and it is the view of the Ministry that when the margin narrows the production eventually reduces. I think there may be something to be said for the approach that lower inputs may well leave acceptable margins without the extra hassle and cash involved in producing the very highest yields. However, in preaching that theory, one is up against a very long and honourable tradition where to have the highest milk yield or the highest crop yield or even the largest vegetable marrow has always commanded respect from one's neighbours.
One must expect that farming is going to see even greater changes than it already has. New techniques of breeding, of genetic engineering, of being able to squeeze more and more out of every acre, will have a big effect on farming economics. There are artificial sweeteners such as isoglucose; there are developments in microbiology, which the noble Lord, Lord Tanlaw, referred to. We may begin to eat meat made out of textured processed cereals, and that will affect the western and upland areas which at present produce our meat. It is already possible to produce milk direct from herbage without the medium of the cow. If these processes begin to take over from the present ones, that will have a dramatic effect not only upon farming but also upon the farming community and upon the landscape, which depends on farming to retain its present aspect or it will return to scrub. I think it behoves us to keep an eye on such developments and I hope and believe that the industry will have the ingenuity to adjust to the changes which these developments will present to it as and when they come.
7.59 p.m.
Earl Ferrers: My Lords, I wonder if I may, with the leave of the House, answer some of the points which have been put to me. I have had the privilege of making a speech earlier and therefore, so far as is possible, I will answer those points that have been made. If I may, I will say at the outset that I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Raglan, that very often people think that the moment a hedge or a tree is cut down that is a bad thing. But of course all plants and all crops have their life and to cut a tree down is not necessarily bad. Very often it exposes the beauty of others that still

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remain and very often one forgets the amount of planting that is done by those in the agricultural community off their own bat and of their own volition.
The noble Lord, Lord Walston, asked what was the Government's attitude about production thresholds. The application of threshold arrangements will be a matter of discussion in the context of the 1983 common agricultural policy price-fixing negotiations. We continually seek improvements in the operation of the CAP which are designed to tackle the problem of surpluses. The noble Lord asked me whether I thought that farmers should be attuned to lower prices. I would remind him that, in Brussels, it has always been the view of this Government that there should be restrictions on increases in prices for those products which are in structural surplus.
The noble Lord also referred, as did my noble friend Lord Stanley, the noble Lord, Lord Woolley, and my noble friend Lord Mountgarret, to the problem of landlord and tenant. The noble Lord, Lord Walston, wanted to ask me a specific question: as we had been in government for four years, why had we not done anything about it? I think that comes pretty hard from a person who was a member of the Government which introduced the 1976 Act, which did more than anything to discourage landlords from letting their farms. But I would tell him that the reason is this. My right honourable friend said that he would not introduce legislation until there was agreement between the CLA and the NFU, and in fact they found it very difficult to come to an agreement. They eventually did come to an agreement, but the only time it would have been possible to bring in legislation was during the current Session of Parliament.
I would remind your Lordships that there has been very considerable pressure, and it has not been possible to find time in this Parliament to introduce that legislation. From the department of which I have the honour to be a Minister there are already no less than three Bills going through: the Agricultural Marketing Bill, the Pig Industry Levy Bill, the Plant Varieties Bill. My right honourable friend the Minister of State in another place said that it is the Minister's intention to introduce a Bill as soon as possible on Spanish vessels. The answer to the noble Lord's question is that there has not been time in this present Session of Parliament, but my right honourable friend has said that in his view legislation on the lines of the agreement should be introduced as soon as possible.
The noble Lord, Lord John-Mackie, said that it was his view and that of the party he represents that tenanted land should be nationalised. The noble Lord, Lord Hatch of Lusby, said so, too. It is interesting to know, and the country will wish to know, that the Labour Party sets out with the deliberate intention to nationalise tenanted land. I wonder where they are going to find the money. The noble Lord, Lord Hatch of Lusby, suddenly thought of an idea. He asked: what about the National Pension Fund? I do not know whether the Government have a lot of money under the bed unused, but as far as I know they have not. I assume that the National Pension Fund is using its money in some considerable and useful way, and if it is extracted from that to purchase land that would cause a problem somewhere else. If I may say so, it
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does show the slack thinking of people who say, "Let us nationalise this". In the end, the money has got to be found. All I would say to the noble Lord, Lord Hatch, is that if they are going to start setting up a fund for the nationalisation of land it will require a very substantial amount of money and public funding, which in itself is inflationary.
The noble Lord, Lord Walston, said that he thought it would be a good idea to have some form of land trust to buy the land and administer it. This, again, would cost a very substantial amount of money. He said it might be rather like the National Trust, but as the noble Lord, Lord Woolley, said this is a very different form of funding, because of course the National Trust very often requires endowments. Who is going to endow their land when it is taken into the land trust? I really think, with great respect, that noble Lords who suggest this substantial form of additional funding to the countryside will have to do their mathematical sums fairly clearly.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, if the noble Earl would allow me, could I ask a question? He is making the general statement that additional Government expenditure for this purpose would be inflationary. Is it, then, inflationary for the present Government, according to the estimates published yesterday, to increase defence expenditure by the very large amount that they have since 1979 and apparently are going to do to an even greater extent in the future?
Earl Ferrers: My Lords, with the greatest respect, I simply cannot see that that has any bearing on the subject whatever. The noble Lord has asked me the question, and he must allow me to answer. How the Government fund defence is a totally different thing from how you nationalise a certain asset, whether it is a railway or land. If I may say so, it is typical of the views that are sometimes expressed by people in favour of nationalisation. They say that the principle is right and therefore the money must be found, and they do not in fact look to see how it will be found. With land having the value that it does, your Lordships will find that it is a very substantial form of funding which would have to be arranged. If the noble Lord thinks defence expenditure is unjustified, all I can tell him is that this would be additional to that.
My noble friend Lord Stanley asked whether we would support the sheep meat regime. Yes, we will. I was interested in Lord Energlyn's interesting contribution with regard to the desalination of soils. I thought that was an extremely good example of how modern methods and ideas can be put to use.
The noble Lord, Lord Melchett, made a characteristic speech—characteristic of his modesty and humility—when he declared that everyone was wrong, that we are all blinkered, particularly in the Ministry of Agriculture, and that only the noble Lord was right. He went on to ask why I had not said anything about the book of Mr. Body specifically. I did not think it required me to mention it. Very well; if the noble Lord will contain himself, I will give him my view upon arguments of that kind. I am bound to tell the noble Lord that it astonishes me that he accepts arguments of the kind put forward.
Lord Melchett: My Lords, the noble Earl is being even more unfair than he was earlier. I do not accept any of the arguments. I do not accept the main thrust of the argument which Mr. Body puts forward. The Labour Party is committed to public expenditure going to agriculture, and for that to continue. It is Mr. Body and other people in the Conservative Party who are not.
Earl Ferrers: My Lords, that is an interesting slant. I did not pick that up from what the noble Lord said, nor from what the noble Lord, Lord Hatch, said. I think he was rather in favour of that. Let me just say this on the general principle. There are those who take the view that too many people have left the land. The noble Lord, Lord Hatch, said that, and that this was bad. He said that if there were no support there would be a return to livestock farming on pastures, the farm workforce would be higher and it would be generally an idyllic countryside. I believe there would be gross unemployment in the countryside. Incomes would drop, and the purchasing power of people would drop. If the support for agriculture were to go, the purchasing power of farmers and farm workers would drop. Villages would become depopulated and poverty would soon abound, just like the 1930s.
As to the industries which are dependent upon agriculture—agricultural engineering, the fertiliser supply industry, the chemical people, the corn merchants—what would happen to them? The noble Lord, Lord Hatch, keeps on making remarks from a sedentary position. He referred to this, and he thought it was bad that the countryside should be denuded of people. I agree with him; but if those views which were expressed in the publication to which Lord Melchett referred were pursued, you would find a devastated countryside, and that is why I would not agree with them at all.
Again, there are those who ask why we do not buy food on the world market at cheap prices. The noble Lord, Lord Hatch of Lusby, said that it costs, I think, £3 billion. If support for agriculture was allowed to drop and if output from agriculture was allowed to drop we would have to import food from abroad. The price of food from abroad would go up and that would wreck our balance of payments. The idea of having cheap food which we can lay our hands on simply is not a fact.
The noble Lord, Lord Hatch of Lusby, may have forgotten that in the early 1970s cereal prices doubled in nine months, but because we were members of the Community we were able to import grain at Community prices and not at world prices which were considerably higher. The noble Lord may have forgotten that in the 1970s the world sugar price rose by about £600 a ton. Our traditional suppliers could not supply us, but we were able to obtain sugar from within the Community. Again, in 1980–81 the world sugar price went well above the European Community price. So the world price of food is not always below that at which we ourselves can buy it. One of the staunch arguments for having a thriving agricultural industry is that we do not depend upon volatile and insecure supplies of world food.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, the noble Earl has not even approached the central issue which my noble
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friend Lord Melchett and I asked. What is he arguing now? It is for Government intervention. But this Government have always said that they do not believe in Government intervention; they believe in market forces. The noble Earl is now arguing against market forces. He cannot have it both ways.
Earl Ferrers: My Lords, it is a funny thing, but sometimes I can have it both ways. The noble Lord, Lord Hatch of Lusby, may have forgotten that we are members of the Euopean Community. He may have forgotten, although I cannot believe that he has, that one of the fundamental and even controversial parts of the European Community is a common agricultural price system. If we are members of the Community we are members of the common agricultural policy. That means that it is part of the Community's policy to support a successful agricultural industry. The noble Lord may disagree, but we are members and we therefore go along with being part of the common agricultural policy.
The noble Lord, Lord Tanlaw, asked whether the Government intend to implement the Royal College of Physicians' report on obesity. It is correct to say that people ought to take note of the report, but we do not intend at the moment, so far as I know, to make it illegal to drink fat milk or whole milk. The noble Lord has only to die once and if he wishes to do it by eating fat lamb, fat pork or fat beef he may do so. If he read the Royal College's report and is persuaded not to do so, it might be the better for him. If he wishes to kill himself by smoking, he can do that. But I am bound to say that in motor cars he must belt up. That will prevent him from being killed unnecessarily.
I had a great deal of sympathy with the noble Lord, Lord Hatch of Lusby, if I may say so, in one thing that he said. He said that the trouble with machines in agriculture is that they sent people to the towns where they earned more money and that they have to be provided with houses. I have always thought it a curious symptom that people go from agriculture to the urban environment and, as the noble Lord, Lord Hatch of Lusby, said, one then has to build more houses for them which takes good agricultural land; but the first thing that the people want to do is to get out into the country in order to enjoy it and are surprised to find that there is no more country to enjoy because it has all been made into towns. That is a fact of the curious situation in which we live. There is nothing immediate that one can do to prevent that. Many people go to the towns because of either the lure of what they thought were higher wages or the attraction of the towns. Many of them like to go to the country which is part of our heritage.
I take note of the point of the noble Lord, Lord Somers, about the intensive systems of agriculture. While many people accept his view, there would be no point in the United Kingdom's directly curtailing our forms of production if we are then prepared to accept imports from other countries in the European Community which are produced by the very systems which we might have banned. What we are trying to do in the United Kingdom—and we are leaders in this respect—is to persuade the Community as a whole to accept more reasonable and more suitable forms of intensive production.
8.17 p.m.
Lord Mackie of Benshie: My Lords, it has been an interesting debate and noble Lords have run fairly true to form. The Minister said that the Government are doing jolly well and noble Lords behind him have said that of course the Government are doing very well. We have had the wisdom of the Ministry rather than the wisdom of the Minister, but that is his job and that is what he is paid for. That is right and proper. Nevertheless, many useful things have been said. I spoke at some length on chemicals and the rash use thereof. I was, of course, accused by the noble Lord, Lord Stanley of Alderley, of donning my smock and running to the misty romantic past. However, that might be a little better than donning one's space suit and shooting into the unknown future without taking the precaution of checking where one is going.
I appreciate the Minister's reply that at Boxworth experiments and tests are being carried out to check the effect of pesticides, and presumably herbicides, and that a good deal is being done about that. I think that the licensing scheme, which is not a statutory scheme, works fairly well, as I pointed out. It is working, and one sees firms being disciplined. It is a useful scheme. However, I believe that we should watch what is happening the whole time. I pointed out the large number of advertisements to show the rush of stuff on to the market and the fact that as soon as chemical firms find a new chemical they rush to find out what it will kill and get it approved as soon as possible so that they can put it on the market. I may be old fashioned and I may be wrong, but many of my friends who are modern farmers, growing bigger crops of grain than the noble Lord, Lord Stanley of Alderley, are a little worried about it and I think we in this House might well say that we are a little worried about it, too.
I was also fascinated by the arguments on conservation. It is obvious from the tremendous arguments in the enjoyable speech by the noble Lord, Lord Melchett, that it is a live and real issue. There is no shadow of doubt that we must look at it and do a lot about it because many people are asking that we do so. I do not think that there is much between myself and the noble Lord except that, on balance—it was the case in the Western Isles—the small benefits to the people there of improving the machair, and so on, should have had first consideration instead of the benefit to the wildlife, which (perhaps the corncrake included) I am assured by other experts would benefit a little from more cropping.
The noble Lord, Lord Energlyn, made a fascinating speech. What might happen if his friend goes to Abu Dhabi with his magic mixture and levels out the dunes is that immediately the noble Lord, Lord Melchett, will be after him for destroying the desert mouse. Perhaps that is being a little unkind, but we must keep a perspective in these matters. I share the complacency of noble Lords opposite that we are doing rather well, but I do fear for the changes that are to come, in that I believe the whole situation has changed.
Noble Lords spoke about sending surplus food to the third world, but that, if I may say so, is a lot of boloney. Masses of evidence is now coming forward that the worst thing we can do, except in cases of genuine famine, is to send food aid to a third world
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country. I have a friend, who is Speaker of the House in the Cameroons and who was Prime Minister before the two states joined up. Two American ships arrived with food and that country had the guts and the wit to send them away with the result that they are now in a position, having developed their own agriculture and protected it, of exporting food to their neighbours who have destroyed the will of their agricultural population to produce.
Talking in the broader sense as regards our obligations in the EEC, the worse thing we can do in the EEC is to export and subsidise a great deal of food on to the world market, and thus destroy the price and subject ourselves to great accusations of producing dear food when in fact that is not the case. We must find a solution to producing so much food that we have to push it out on to the world market to people who do not want it. This has been a very fascinating debate, my Lords, and I thank all noble Lords who have taken part. I beg leave to withdraw my Motion.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

Lead in Petrol: EEC Action
8.22 p.m.
Baroness Ewart-Biggs Baroness Ewart-Biggs rose to ask her Majesty's Government what initiative they are taking to persuade our European partners to agree an EEC directive requiring the phasing out of lead in petrol throughout the member states.
The noble Baroness said: My Lords, first I should like to say how very grateful I am to have the opportunity this evening to look again at the whole position regarding the lead additive in petrol and to be able to present some of the anxieties that are felt by so many people about the health risks involved. I should also like to say how very grateful I am to the noble Lords who are to contribute this evening. I know that it is rather late and I am extremely grateful that they have stayed for the debate. I hope to present as briefly as possible some kind of balance sheet about the present situation, and I feel quite sure that they, with their more specialised knowledge, will add the facts which I am unable to give myself.
First, it must be said that the concern felt about the dangers of using a lead additive in petrol is not a new one. Discussions about this have been going on for a very long time; campaigning has been going on for a very long time, and countless studies have been carried out over the years. As noble Lords know, the objective of these studies has been to try to assess the degree of lead additive which comes out of car exhausts, what degree of this is absorbed into the human blood, and, finally, the degree of harm caused to human beings as a result.
As noble Lords are also aware the exact degree of health risk has always been a very controversial point. It is a highly complicated subject, and many serious scientists now believe that we never shall have any conclusive evidence. But what they do agree on is that children with too high a lead level are more likely to be among those with reduced intelligence, reduced ability to concentrate, an inclination to non-adaptive behaviour and hyper activity. But as I have said, they cannot come to any agreement as to how much of that

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is due to exposure to the lead in petrol as opposed to the lead coming from other sources. Therefore, with an issue of such great importance as the mental health of our children, and more especially the health of our children, in the inner cities, whose whole lives are so much undermined anyhow, and in view of the ever-accumulating evidence on this subject, there is every justification for looking at the whole matter again this evening to decide whether retaining lead in petrol is a risk that we should go on taking, and whether we should concern ourselves with our children's health or concern ourselves with our motor and oil industries.
I know that statistics relating to this whole issue have been flying around for a very long time and that sometimes they have been deployed rather selectively depending on which interest group is using them. Nevertheless, I will try to use just a few statistics which I consider to be non-controversial to describe the present situation in Britain regarding the lead levels as compared with other countries. Then I will put forward what seem to me to be the most relevant medical findings and finally I will suggest what options the Government have to choose from and what the public's feelings are about those options.
Your Lordships will recollect that it was the Lawther Report which gave rise to the Minister's decision in May 1981 that lead levels in petrol be reduced to 0.15 grams per litre at the end of 1985. This level is the minimum allowable under the present EEC directive, which sets 0.4 grams per litre as the top limit. Thus, within the Community countries petrol cannot be sold containing less than 0.15 grams per litre or more than 0.4 grams per litre. While that is the position within the EEC, countries outside have come to very different conclusions; indeed, several countries have found that the total elimination of lead from petrol is not only desirable but also perfectly practicable.
Russia headed the field by eliminating lead from petrol as early as 1957. Then in the early 1970s the United States decided that all new cars should be manufactured to run on lead-free petrol, and at the present time 60 per cent. of cars in the United States are doing so. The Americans appear to be proved entirely right in their decision by recent studies which show that blood lead levels in the United States fell by 36.7 per cent. in the first four years of the programme.
In Japan the present position is that only 4 per cent. of its cars now use leaded petrol. And, from the point of view of the motor industry in Japan and of the motorist, it should be noted that their industry appears to have continued to thrive, while the petroleum industry contrived to introduce lead-free petrol without incurring any kind of increased cost to the motorist.
Finally, Australia has taken the same decision to phase out lead from petrol from 1985 onwards. Thus these major countries with important powerful car and petroleum industries, have decided that the health risk caused by leaded petrol was one too great to take.
Now let me put forward one or two medical points about the harm that lead exposure does to children, and the medical view as to whether it is indeed the lead in petrol which provides the main source. In the first instance it must be remembered that the Lawther
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Committee based their report on the assumption that there was no health risk attached to children with blood lead levels of less than 35 micrograms per decilitre. Yet, in direct contradiction to that, subsequent studies carried out in Britain, in the United States and in West Germany found a marked IQ difference between children with above and below 13 micrograms per decilitre of lead in their blood. Indeed, one study revealed as high as a seven point IQ difference. Thus these revelations would most certainly put in doubt the Lawther safety threshold of 35 micrograms. Indeed, as a result, Professor Michael Rutter, a key member of that committee, has now totally abandoned its findings and come out against the Government's present aim to lower the lead level in petrol to the proposed 0.15 grams as being an unacceptable compromise.
Thus there can be no argument that lead is a health risk to children. But, as I said, what proof is there that it is really the lead which comes out of petrol which is the main problem? After all, as we all know, lead is a multi-source problem and as has recently become very clear, much firmer measures should be taken about lead in water and no doubt also about lead in paint. However, studies trying to assess the contribution that petrol makes to the whole body lead burden indicate estimated proportions between 25 per cent. and 46 per cent.—the highest petrol lead contribution, of course, being attributed to some inner city children. So, again, these findings can hardly be disregarded; it can be argued that this percentage comes from the lead that comes from petrol.
In addition, there is accumulated evidence of the importance of lead in dust, and I do not think that there is any controversy about the finding that over 90 per cent. of all airborne lead comes from car exhausts. Perhaps at this point we should recollect the very simple fact that it is children and, indeed, people in invalid chairs who are in a direct line with the exhaust pipes of cars and who consequently are the most vulnerable to the lead which is emitted.
Therefore, from what I have said and the few statistics which I have given, I am sure that your Lordships will accept that there is a very strong case indeed for eliminating this particular source of lead pollution. For, although research cannot quantify the exact harm that lead coming from petrol causes, there is unequivocal proof of the health hazard from lead exposure generally. Therefore, the decision to eliminate this particular source of lead is based on a knowledge that our children are suffering as a result of widespread pollution by a dangerous poison, and the less of that poison there is around the less that risk will be.
As to the options before the Government, Associated Octel—manufacturers of the lead additive to petrol—have put forward one option. Understandably, not wishing to eliminate lead from petrol, they have devised a system whereby a filter which reduces the lead content in the exhaust gas is put into the exhaust system of cars. However, not only have Japan, the United States and Australia, after very serious consideration, rejected this alternative—for the reasons, first, that it does not pick up all the lead; secondly, that there is a disposal problem; and, thirdly, that this device starts to work less well when it is older

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and there is no possible way of making motorists renew it—but, in my view, the very fact that Associated Octel have introduced this method provides certain proof that they recognise the health risk of the lead additive.
As far as the petroleum and car manufacturing industries are concerned, I understand that they have acknowledged that they could introduce lead-free petrol within a reasonable time, and the petroleum industry has indicated that low octane lead-free petrol would cost the consumer only a few pence extra a gallon. Our motor industry, ever conscious of its export business and knowing that in the United States and Japan there are cars running that need lead free petrol, would, I believe, readily welcome a date for the conversion operation to start. In addition, I believe that the manufacturing process of that conversion would cost no more than a sum equal to the recent subsidy that the taxpayer gave to British Leyland.
Finally, that other major interest group—the British public—ever mindful of environmental health risks, have made their views very clear indeed and have shown themselves overwhelmingly in support of banning lead from petrol in spite of any additional costs involved. In fact, some opinion polls that have been conducted have shown that nine out of 10 people want to see this pollution removed. Furthermore, during the past year almost every relevant national organisation has proposed to the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution that concern about lead pollution is justified, and most have proposed the elimination of the lead additive.
Therefore, put as briefly as I possibly can, that is how the position stands at the moment. The purpose of this short debate is to ask the Government not only to respond positively towards this particular problem, but also to respond in a particular way. In my view—and I am sure that others will agree with me—this is an issue on which all the Community countries have a common interest. Concern about the environment, the pollution of inner cities and children's health, and the fact that we sell each other's cars and petrol on a vast scale, all point to the advantage of action at European level.
Indeed, this process has started, in that last week the Environmental Committee of the European Parliament agreed in principle to a programme to eliminate lead in petrol throughout the EEC. This unanimous decision received all-party support in the Parliament. It might well become the responsibility of member states to support any such proposal put to the Council of Ministers by the European Commission. These proposals could well present a programme requiring all EEC countries to cut the maximum amount of lead allowed in fuel for cars now on the road to 0·15 grams per litre. This would, of course, bring all Community countries into line with a target already announced by our Government for the end of 1985. But, in addition and more importantly, the Community proposal would also require lead-free fuel to be made available and new cars would have to be manufactured to run on it.
Therefore, I am asking the Minister to give us some commitment that his right honourable friend the Secretary of State for the Environment will not only
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support such a recommendation should it come before the December Council of Ministers, but will also play a leading role to persuade his European colleagues to do likewise. For surely it must be true that in years to come it will seem incomprehensible that the phasing out of lead in petrol did not come immediately after discovery of its dangerous effects on young children. Surely we must never forget that the children most affected by this poison are those in the inner cities, who already are among the most disadvantaged of our children. Is it not—in my mind it is—a moral obligation for any present-day Government to take positive action to get rid of this poison once and for all?
8.37 p.m.
Lord Tanlaw: My Lords, I am sure that your Lordships' House is grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Ewart-Biggs, for drawing our attention to this important question. Her presentation this evening clearly shows that there is an even stronger case than that which was made many years ago in this House, for I recall as far back as 1972 taking part in a debate initiated by the noble Lord, Lord O'Hagan, who has done so much for this cause. I must also apologise to the noble Baroness for the fact that my noble friend Lord Beaumont of Whitley is unable to be here due to a long-standing engagement, and I am taking his place on this occasion.
After the noble Baroness's presentation, there is very little extra that I can add to which the Government ought to pay attention. There is, however, one point about which we should remind ourselves. It is: what is the lead additive in petrol for in the first place? I understand that it is to increase the acceleration of the internal combustion engine and of the motor vehicle. The main pollution and poison effect of lead in petrol is felt in the urban environment, in semi-enclosed spaces, and that is within the 30-mile limit. There is no need, there, for a rapid acceleration from zero to 60 miles per hour in under 10 seconds. Therefore, in an urban environment the lead additive in petrol is of no use to the motorist.
I also agree with the noble Baroness that there is no problem at all. As I understand it, when this question was put by myself and my Leader, my right honourable friend Mr David Steel, to an oil company, they said: "There is no problem here; we only need instructions and directions from the Government". The medical evidence for the case against the lead additive in petrol is not 100 per cent. proven, but I do not think that that is the point. The point is—and it was touched on by the noble Baroness—that people are worried about it. It is as simple as that. They are worried about their children and about the poisons being emitted from the exhaust gases of motor vehicles in cities, and lead is one of the main poisons that is emitted.
Not only is a car a lethal instrument when in motion: it is also quite lethal when stationary with the engine running in an enclosed place. It is deadly poisonous. In semi-enclosed spaces, which the cities are, the higher the buildings get the more difficult it is to get the air changes necessary. This is especially the case in Tokyo and in Los Angeles, and it is occasionally becoming the same situation in London as traffic blocks increase.

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That is all the case is that has been put forward by the interested parties. We are not putting forward a highly scientific case, that the Government have to do it because of a, b and c. It is because they are worried. In the past, when people have been worried but have been unable to produce the proof at that moment, Governments have resisted and said, "Show us the proof and we will take action"; but in the end that proof was forthcoming. I have no doubt that it will be forthcoming so far as lead poisoning in exhaust emissions is concerned. I am sure it will be clearly proven in some years to come. But why wait that long? The Government should not be all that hesitant about taking up the recommendations of the noble Baroness, for the reasons she has given.
There is one other point that I should like the Government to consider. It is a point touched on by the noble Baroness, and it concerns the disabled. In the debate on a recent Transport Bill I suggested that in every urban environment or city there should be a special lane for cyclists and disabled people in order that they may avoid the main poisons of traffic. Those of us who have bicycled in the city, and those who use cars for the disabled, realise that they are breathing in at the direct level of motor vehicle exhausts as they travel along the road. There is a strong case for segregation. If you wish to bicycle in a city or wish to travel safely in a car for the disabled, powered or unpowered, there should be special areas in order to do this. I hope to pursue this on another occasion for other reasons besides the ones which I and the noble Baroness have put forward.
There is not much more to add to what has been said already. If the Government do not wish to take up the advice or recommendations of Professor Rutter and other members of the medical profession who have been hesitant about the conclusions reached to date and who continue to have doubts about the wisdom of ignoring the evidence that exists of lead in petrol, then the noble Lord who is to reply will have to back up his hesitation with some solid reason why action should not be taken now rather than waiting until later, when I am sure the evidence will be forthcoming to show that it is necessary as well as agreeable for improving the environment in which we all live today.
8.43 p.m.
Baroness Hornsby-Smith: My Lords, I, too, should like to congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Ewart-Biggs, on her initiative in introducing this debate and on the advocacy she has presented. I support absolutely fully her intention to eliminate the danger to health from lead pollution. Where I disagree is that I believe that a substantial and expensive campaign is being launched on the wrong targets. As the noble Baroness has fairly said, the petroleum and motor car industries have embarked on a four-year programme, now half way through, to cut the former 0·4 per cent. content of lead down to 0·15 per cent. by 1985. I could only wish that other far more serious lead polluters were taking such progressive action.
Cars have to be adjusted. It is somewhat unrealistic to expect all current owners to jettison their cars within a short term of years, or for motor car manufacturers,
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fighting for their existence against foreign imports, to re-jig and re-tool their production at enormous expense very quickly. It is easy for the executive car to be replaced. It probably is every two years, anyway. But the cars owned by millions of retired people, or the family man in a council house, last a long time, and to require them to be changed is to impose a serious penalty. One also has to recognise that the importation of the large quantities of crude oil we should have to import would place a substantial burden on the country.
The conservationists are adept at directing their campaigns against a group, or a firm, or an industry which suffers from a certain antipathy—in this case the love-hate relationship with the oil industry and the motor car owner. In relation to lead pollution I am distressed that what could be an invaluable campaign to lessen the danger from lead pollution, particularly to children, is being centred solely on petroleum fuel to the exclusion of other and, in my view, far more serious sources of lead pollution. I should like to see the conservationists and the health protagonists go for the prime targets and not pursue, as in my humble opinion they do, the "Slug the oil companies and the car owners" syndrome. From the quite substantial evidence from medical authorities in the United Kingdom that I have studied—and, to be honest, I trust some of the UK studies more than I trust some of the US ones—the most guilty parties are those in which the individual can do a great deal to help himself, but it is so much easier to go for a great institution than to say, "This is my responsibility".
When three such diverse inquiries as those conducted by the Department of Health and Social Services, the Director of the Technical Committee of the Clean Air Council, and the Director of Child Health at Westminster Hospital, all quite independently of one another, conclude that airborne lead is a minor—and one says insignificant—contributor, I believe that the campaigners would do a real service by widening their claims to the wider target.
The Clean Air Council express what is substantially my view. They say:
"Campaigns to remove lead from petrol cannot prevent the kind of damage to health which is attributable to lead in their bodies even if they are completely successful. The causes of lead poisoning lie elsewhere, and it is much more important to find them and make people aware of them than pretend that significant relief can come from removing lead from petrol".
I regret having to say so, but in my view to concentrate basically on this is to mislead the public into a false sense of security so that they think that by eliminating lead out of petrol they are home and dry, and they have no personal responsibility for what they can do.
Parents could do a great deal themselves. Who has not seen a child sucking a pencil? Who has not seen a child sucking the edge of his pram, his cot, or his leaden toy? A far greater contributor in many parts of the country is the combination of soft water and lead pipes. Noble Lords in Scotland, with their delightful soft water and thousands of miles of lead pipes, will know better than I do the extreme seriousness of this problem in Scotland.
In the Industrial Revolution when great industrial cities emerged—Liverpool, Manchester, Glasgow, Newcastle and London—pipes were made of lead.

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Many of the factories have been replaced, but vast blocks of Victorian flats remain. Hospitals, mental institutions, schools, and prisons still have old lead pipes—not to mention the plumbing in ancient castles and mansions. For years the water authorities have been trying to identify a solvent to treat water supplies and dissolve the lead. Here I think it is right to congratulate the authorities in Glasgow. Alert to the extent of pollution, which was very serious in their city, they have very energetically pursued research and made inquiries, and with no small success are still pursuing experiments to this end.
I was interested to read a report from the Plumbers' Federation, which was distributed this week with the House magazine that one obtains from the other place. The report, while admitting that the old type soldering of joints could cause lead pollution, emphasises, to console us, that it probably takes 40 years before it is significantly dangerous. My Lords, how many thousands of Victorian blocks of flats, houses, and institutions were built over 100 years ago and are still in existence, with their old lead pipes? I live in one such block of flats, and when I return from holiday, after my flat has been empty for three or four weeks, I have to run off gallons of water before the supply is clear enough to use.
Last year the Government got their priorities right. They highlighted the danger of lead pipes and introduced home improvement grants to replace lead plumbing. We should be pressing householders to protect their families by taking up the grants, remembering that every cup of tea, every boiled vegetable, every stew, and every teeth-cleaning process adds far more to the lead intake right into the body than do airborne petrol fumes. Here I should like to ask my noble friend whether the grants apply only to individual homeowners, or are they available to the owners of the vast blocks of flats? In particular, are we helping in this way the huge Victorian mental hospitals, which are miles away in the country, with beautiful clean air? In many cases they are nowhere near petrol pollution. But they still have lead pipes that are 120 or 150 years old. I ask this bearing in mind in particular the menace to health that can arise from the lead that can come from soft water that passes through lead pipes, as well as the progressive danger of lead poisoning to the brain.
The pharmaceutical industry in this country is alert to the lead hazard, but some foreign exporters are not; and I do not think that the Government are doing enough about imports. When a highly attractive cosmetic pack, made in Taiwan, aimed at the teenage market and costing only a £1, was exported to this country, it was found to contain an absolutely horrifying level of lead. Legally we could do nothing, but through the help of the media the DHSS put out very substantial and severe warnings and retailers immediately withdrew the packs from their shelves.
We import tons of tinned food. Is there any legislation that we can enforce to control the lead content of imported tinned goods? It terrifies me when I see old-age pensioners buying deteriorating cans from the "bargain bin" in some supermarket. The noble Baroness may feel that some of my opinions are a little jaundiced when compared to hers, but I assure
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her that I am with her in wanting to see lead pollution eliminated. However, I think that the campaigners, with an expensive campaign, on which they are spending a great deal of money, should widen it, so that the individual can do something for himself. The campaigners should do this rather than merely have a slug at the love-hate relationship with oil, thinking that this might bring in more money.
The campaigners rightly say that their primary concern is the health of children. So, too, is mine, and I believe that they would achieve a very great deal if they widened their campaign to persuade individuals to take up grants for the removal of lead pipes, and also if they pressed for more to be done about food, and in particular paint. How many parents keep their children out of the area when they are sanding off old paint? How many of them hoover and hoover again until every single lead particle has been removed from the room? A child can fill its lungs with lead paint dust particles over a period of two or three days, and that could be absolutely lethal.
In Islington last year an EC blood/lead survey was conducted. Volunteers who had been exposed to petrol-lead in the notoriously heavy traffic area of Archway had blood levels typical of those to be found in any part of inner London. But two paint strippers were found to have horrifically abnormally high levels. I believe that the Government have circulated local authorities with guidance leaflets on using paint with the lowest practicable lead content. I hope that they will continue to press this message home and ensure that contractors use the paint specified.
Let us work on a wider span to eliminate lead pollution, but let us also concentrate on the really important targets, where individuals can do so much for themselves. I believe that we would then achieve more in preserving the health of our children than we would by aiming our efforts exclusively against lead in petrol.
8.57 p.m.
Lord Hunter of Newington: My Lords, I should like to add my thanks to those already expressed to the noble Baroness for initiating the debate. Fatal cases of industrial lead poisoning have now been almost completely eliminated, but fatalities still occur from time to time among young children who eat items containing lead. I had only one case during my active professional career in medicine. It involved a baker who drunk warm water out of a lead pipe tap in his bakery. But to confuse things he made his morning tea in lead-lined tins in which had been delivered apples for the making of apple charlotte. We never discovered which of the two possible causes was the actual cause in that case.
However, plenty of evidence has accumulated over the past 35 years—and that is a long time—to establish the brain-damaging properties of lead at doses below those which prove fatal. No one would deny this. Controversy begins when attempts are made to define a dose of lead below which brain derangement does not occur. As your Lordships know, over the past decade there has been a progressive downward revision of recommended concentrations of lead in food and water, and the efficacy of this has been

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gauged by measuring blood levels of lead which, of course, reflect the level of lead in the blood, not the content of lead in the body, and can be misleading.
Most adults take lead in food and drink, and from the air. Children have two additional methods of lead ingestion, eating non-footstuffs and licking their fingers. The ingestion of old paint contains up to about 40 per cent. of lead and it has been recently implicated in most serious cases. Now, because of the national agreements, lead in paint and in pencils is rigorously controlled. It is an offence in our country to market surma, the traditional eye make-up of Asian children, which contains a very high proportion of lead. Until a few years ago it was considered, as stated in a Government publication in 1974,
"impracticable and almost impossible to assess the relative pathways of lead in man".
In other words, which was the important one? Recent work, although controversial, particularly in the United States, has tended to show that petrol-derived lead is an important source of lead. The critical evidence is the substantial fall in blood-lead concentrations in school children in Omaha, in the United States, following the introduction of lead-free petrol in 1973. And it is also claimed that a reduction of urban environmental lead in Germany in 1976 followed the low-lead petrol Act.
For many years it was believed that wild plants and animals contain equal amounts of industrial and naturally derived lead. This is now shown to be false. In a remote valley in Yosemite Park, California, it was shown that the annual input of airborne lead exceeded 100-fold the lead circulating naturally in animals and plants. It was shown that 97 per cent. of the lead in the valley holes was of industrial origin.
One begins to imagine that further consideration of lead emission from petrol and other industrial sources should be considered seriously and urgently. However, attention to dietary sources of lead is as urgently needed, and the removal of lead solder used to seal food cans, the removal of lead water pipes in areas of soft acid water or the artificial hardening of the water. Attention to diet is also important. Calcium, phosphate, iron, vitamins C and D all have an important role in diminishing the toxic effects of lead.
The possibility that lead intoxication is a factor in the cause of mental handicap has by no means been eliminated. The difficulty is that, apart from the measurement of lead in blood, most of the studies have been concerned with supposedly normal children. The investigators depended on the detection of minor differences in intelligence, behaviour, educational attainment and neurological functions. It is probable that in man the measurement techniques that are available are insufficiently sensitive for the purpose for which people are trying to use them. In case controlled studies it is almost impossible to allow for the known factors that can influence children's mental attainments, many of which are so well known to us. The evidence therefore is conflicting; but if the evidence is conflicting the question is, should we really demand the evidence or should we remove a potentially dangerous substance from the urban environment? I think that we should remove lead so far as we can from the urban environment, not only for
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children, and should progressively reduce the risk from lead in food and water.
9.4 p.m.
Viscount Hanworth: My Lords, this subject tends to be an emotive one in which some people take extreme positions, often not in the best interests of what they are trying to achieve. It is now generally agreed that any increase in the lead intake by the population, particularly by children, is to be avoided. How far the present average intake is producing undesirable effects is still very debatable. Some recent research tends to show that the present position may be unsatisfactory and that the uptake of lead from the air might represent more than 10 per cent. of the body's total lead intake—which, of course comes largely from food, as has already been said.
An interesting study made in Frankfurt before and after reducing the lead in their petrol, with a corresponding 60 to 80 per cent. decrease in vehicle lead emissions, showed only a small reduction in blood-lead levels. This reduction applied only to roughly half the population; in the other half there was no change. We are faced with a situation where a lot of research is extremely conflicting. I think it behoves us to keep an open mind about how serious the lead threat is today.
Certainly, the Government's plan to reduce the lead in petrol from 0.4 to 0.15 grams per litre by January 1986 is a sensible precaution. An EEC directive allowing lead-free petrol would seem to be reasonable. I am not suggesting that that should necessarily be advocated, but there should not be a ban going below the 0.15 level.
Nevertheless, this reduction that we propose will have its economic penalties. Most cars need 4-star petrol, and to maintain this octane rating will require some alterations to refineries, estimated to cost around £200 million. Moreover, there will be an increase in the amount of crude oil used in refining—about 500,000 tonnes, representing a 2½ per cent. increase. The sensible long-term approach would seem to be to design all new cars to run on 3-star petrol. When the lead in petrol is reduced to the 0·15 level, no grade problem or cost will be faced by the refiners in the production of 3-star petrol. The only penalty will be a small increase in cars' petrol consumption due to having a lower compression ratio. Comparing like with like, this would be in the region of 3 per cents.
However, if it were ever decided to eliminate lead altogether a large number of problems and costs would have to be faced. It would be virtually impossible to produce four-star unleaded petrol without an additive, and all car engines would have to be redesigned, not only to run with a lower compression ratio but because the lead additive lubricates the valves. The only solution would appear to be to resort to two-star petrol—that is, 91–92 octane fuel—which is what has been done in America. They started redesigning the engines to run on this unleaded fuel in 1970, and still only half the fuel used today is leadless, so there is a long lead time. It is worth emphasising that the reason for the change to leadless fuel was that lead poisoned the catalyst needed to conform with their exhaust emission regulations.

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Apart from an increase in crude oil requirements by the refineries and the higher price of unleaded petrol in the USA—about 12 per cent.—there is also an increase in fuel consumption of about 6 per cent. because of the lower compression ratio. So we would have to pay something approaching 20 per cent. more for fuelling the car than we do today if we were to go down to this two-star petrol. A possible way of producing higher octane leadless fuel might be to use some other additive or an extender such as the addition of alcohol; but in spite of considerable research no reasonable solution on these lines is at present available.
There is, however, the interesting development of the lead trap silencer which can reduce lead emission by at least half, and considerably more in town driving. If this were fitted when the lead level in petrol goes down to 0·15 grams a litre it would not have to be any larger than the existing silencers and could easily be fitted to nearly all old cars, thereby reducing the lead time for it to become fully effective to perhaps two or three years. Its cost is estimated to be twice that of a conventional silencer, but its life would be double.
With the 0·15 lead level and a lead trap silencer, lead emissions from cars would be reduced to about one-fifteenth of the present level in the United Kingdom today. I cannot help wondering whether those with extreme views on this subject—and I do not think anybody has expressed any extreme views this evening—realise that the intake of lead from car emissions is only, according to the best estimates, about one-tenth of that from other sources. It might be much more cost effective and important—and this point has already been made—to tackle lead pipes in soft water areas, and to monitor more carefully emissions from factories using lead. Even with our copper piping today some of the joints are soldered, and there is quite a worry that as that solder contains lead you can get a considerable amount of lead in your water.
To sum up, I believe that the Government's policy is right, and on the present evidence there is no case for entirely removing lead from petrol. I think, however, that we must keep an open mind and see what further research produces. When it comes to spending money—and I think I have made this point—there is a very considerable cost in trying to produce lead-free petrol, not only for motorists but for industry and elsewhere, and we might well consider other things which could be done to improve the quality of life and avoid its potential degradation. There are many such things on which we should like to spend money, and I really think it is time that we considered some of these on a cost-effective basis and not emotionally concentrated on one or two.
9.13 p.m.
Lord Rea: My Lords, I also should like to add my thanks to the noble Baroness, Lady Ewart-Biggs, for bringing this important subject up for discussion. My contribution will be going along somewhat parallel lines to that of the noble Lord, Lord Hunter, but I think that the two sets of facts we will have produced are complementary rather than repetitive.
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I believe it would be reasonable to say that the present concern about atmospheric lead is a continuation of a long story of the public health movement, which has played an important and unique part in our history over the past 150 years. Although British pioneers in the mid-19th century such as Edwin Chadwick and John Simon, the first medical officer of health for London, showed the way in sanitary reform, they faced tremendous difficulties in getting their proposals accepted. For example, in London the eight joint stock companies which in 1850 produced an intermittent water supply of extremely dubious quality, managed to avoid being taken over and grouped under a single water authority for 50 years. This they did by various intrigues such as mobilising pressure groups with parliamentary influence. In fact, in 1854 they managed to force Edwin Chadwick's forward-looking Board of Health to be dismissed, despite the opposition of Lord Palmerston, who was then Home Secretary.
It is relevant to our topic tonight that when the sanitary movement began in the middle of the last century there was no scientific proof that contaminated water was responsible for cholera or typhoid. There was a widespread belief that polluted water and disease were associated, but the bacterial causation of disease and its transmission by water began to be proved and accepted only over the subsequent half-century. At this point, it is very relevant for us to consider how lucky we are to have such an efficient water supply in London and perhaps to congratulate those who have designed it, because we are receiving a pure water supply, quietly and efficiently, despite the strike.
Similarly, although it has been known for the past 15 to 20 years or more that our atmosphere is invisibly polluted with low concentrations of minute lead particles, it is only recently that scientific observations have begun to demonstrate their effect. The poisonous effect of high concentrations of lead in food, drink, industrial dust or fumes has long been appreciated, as the noble Lord, Lord Hunter, has pointed out to us. Legislation intended to control this is on the statute book, but there is still a need to be vigilant. The noble Baroness, Lady Hornsby-Smith, who is no longer in her place, pointed this out, and we still have further to go. For instance, as other speakers have mentioned, there are possibly millions of houses which still have lead pipes, including some in soft water districts, and it is highly probable that lead absorbed from these pipes is assimilated into the bodies of the residents. I hope that the noble Baroness, Lady Hornsby-Smith, will be reading Hansard tomorrow, because I should like to ask her to urge her noble friend the Minister to mount the sort of campaign she suggested, to encourage householders and others to take up the grants available to replace their lead pipes. I think it is for the Department of Health to do this rather than to rely on individuals themselves.
However, it is worth remembering that lead in the air is not the only source of lead in our bodies. Lead pipes, paints, cosmetics and industrial waste have been mentioned, as well as tin cans. Atmospheric lead, of course, is not due only to emissions from motor vehicles: quite a lot comes from industrial sources, especially from small metal foundries, and from the

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domestic burning of wood and coal. But it does appear that about two-thirds of the lead in the atmosphere—and here my information appears to be different from that of other noble Lords—comes from leaded petrol. It is amazingly ubiquitous. While, of course, the concentration is higher in towns and along main roads, it is also present in rural areas, crisscrossed as they are with roads. The noble Lord, Lord Hunter, has mentioned that even the Yosemite National Park contains a high level. Perhaps that is because it is a deep valley and a lot of Americans visit it in their cars. It is only in mid-ocean that the atmospheric level of lead approaches what it probably was in pre-industrial times.
While some atmospheric lead is directly inhaled, its main effect comes from ingestion after it has fallen to the ground and been incorporated into vegetables, other food products and water supplies. It is probable that about half the level in our bodies comes from petrol, but this varies from area to area. In this connection, the American study which has been quoted, showing a 37 per cent. reduction in body lead since the introduction of the lead free-petrol scheme, is extremely important.
The effect of lead in low concentrations on the intellectual performance of children is the present main cause of concern. This is an extraordinarily difficult parameter to measure, depending, as it does, on so many factors and being such an elusive quality to describe objectively. Many factors in addition to lead are responsible for variations in measurements of IQ, such as cultural, genetic or environmental influences, and it is very difficult to allow for all of these in any study of normal children, so association of blood lead level with intelligence measures may not point to a causal relationship. If associations are found, these may be because high lead levels are associated with some other factor that is also correlated with intellectual performance, pollution levels at the place of residence being the most likely. To date, most of the studies on this aspect have been carried out in America, where concern about this problem began and where there is the highest use of petrol per head in the world.
In this country, however, the Department of Health and Social Security is at present backing a new study on this problem, having had results from a pilot study published in 1981 which suggested a connection between comparatively low levels of blood lead and low IQ in Greenwich schoolchildren. The levels of lead concerned are considerably lower than that regarded by the Lawther Report of 1980 as toxic. But, as I have said, the relationship may not be one of cause and effect directly. We await the results of the larger study with interest. However, experimental studies in animals, and work using human red blood cells, have clearly shown the deleterious effects of lead in quite low concentrations on important metabolic processes which may well play a part in the development of the central nervous system and, hence, in the intellectual and behavioural aspects of young children.
For all these reasons, I feel it is right that the Government should follow the lead of the United States of America and urge the EEC to enact a new directive, bringing to an end, in a reasonable time, the use of lead in petrol. It would be wrong that this
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country, which for so many years led the world in promoting public health measures, should seem now to be dragging its feet.
As we have heard, technological problems in eliminating lead from petrol are not insuperable. In fact, I consider that they present an interesting challenge to the ingenuity of our petrochemical and automobile engineers—one which I think many of them would be quite glad to take up. I would give a warning with this plea for eliminating lead in petrol, that other sources of body lead which have been mentioned, and which may be equally important, must also be carefully monitored and eliminated. The petrochemical and motor industries should not be the only ones which have to change outdated practices.
9.24 p.m.
Lord Nathan: My Lords, I join others of your Lordships in expressing my gratitude to the noble Baroness, Lady Ewart-Biggs, for introducing this debate. I have the honour to be a member of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, which is presently engaged in a study of lead. The commission is likely to publish its report some time after Easter. It would, therefore, be entirely inappropriate if I were now to say anything about the conclusions which the Royal Commission is likely to reach in relation to the vexed question of lead in petrol.
The Question, which is the subject of this debate, asks the Government
"what initiative they are taking to persuade our European partners to agree an EEC Directive requiring the phasing out of lead in petrol".
It has been put to me, not within this House but outside, that there is nothing unlawful in selling unleaded petrol, and that such a directive would not be necessary in order to enable the Government to pass such legislation as is here indicated. I thought it might be helpful if I touched upon a subject which has not been touched upon in our debate this evening.
The question which I seek to answer very briefly is what the legal situation is under EEC law and, in that context, what steps would have to be taken by Her Majesty's Government if—I repeat "if"—they were to decide that it was desirable to phase out lead in petrol. Under the relevant directive, 78/611/EEC, the lead content of petrol sold in member states is limited to a maximum of 0·4 grams per litre. The directive goes on to provide that a member state may prescribe a limit below 0·4 grams per litre but not lower than 0·15 grams per litre. I would emphasise that the directive prohibits a member state from prescribing a maximum limit lower than 0·15 grams per litre. There is nothing in the directive which prohibits the sale within the Community of unleaded petrol.
It follows from the provisions of the directive that United Kingdom legislation prescribing, for instance, the sale only of unleaded petrol, either immediately or after a period, would be in conflict with the directive, with the consequence that the Commission of the EEC or another member state could challenge this legislation before the European Court of Justice. There is, of course, also the possibility that somebody might seek a remedy before a court here.
It has been suggested to me that the provisions in such legislation, if enacted, would be warranted by

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health considerations and that Article 36 of the Treaty of Rome could be invoked. This article provides that Article 30 of the Treaty of Rome and other articles relating to quantitative restrictions
"shall not preclude prohibitions … justified on grounds (among other things) of the protection of health".
It seems clear, however, that Article 36 could not be invoked in this case, for it has been established by the European Court, in Case 148/78 (generally known as the Ratti case), that where a directive made pursuant to Article 100 of the Treaty provides for the harmonisation of measures necessary to ensure the protection of health and establish community procedures to supervise compliance, recourse to Article 36 ceases to be justified. We are dealing here with just such a directive. For these reasons, if the Government desire to phase out lead in petrol by legislation, this can, in my view, only be done by agreement with the other members of the community.
It may be asked why the directive which all states, members of the community, agreed was formulated in the way that it was. It seems that the upper limit was effectively determined following the progressive reductions introduced in various member states for health reasons. The idea of the minimum limit apparently arose because it was considered that if member states prescribed maximum levels below 0·15 grams per litre they would create technical barriers to trade with members whose motor industries were geared to higher limits. Apparently 0·15 grams per litre has tended to be regarded as the lowest practical level of lead to meet current European engine technology and other technical factors.
There is no doubt that in the Community pressures have been building up, instigated in part by the European Parliament, for the adoption of a policy leading towards lead-free petrol. Evidence of this is, for instance, to be found in the recently published Third European Community Environmental Action Programme, approved by the Council of Environment Ministers as recently as December of last year, which contains the following passage:
"The Commission will study how to strengthen the measures to control pollution from motor vehicles. It will in particular study, together with interested parties, the possibility that all new cars put on the market after a certain date be required to use anti-pollution devices or fuels which considerably reduce the present level of exhaust pollution, and make appropriate proposals. It will draw up long-term guidelines for the motor vehicle sector in general and in so doing take account, inter alia, of the need for the European motor industry to meet the strict environment protection norms laid down by its major competitors such as the USA and Japan".
A year previously, in December 1981, the European Commission had set up a working group known by the acronym ERGA, which stands for Evolution of Regulations, Global Approach—Air Pollution, to consider exhaust emission limits set by an earlier directive in 1970. This directive had nothing directly to do with lead, but it seems that one of the means of reducing exhaust emission from engines is to introduce a catalyst with which lead is not compatible. This was the original reason for the policy adopted in the United States leading to the introduction of lead-free petrol. So the question of eliminating lead from petrol is not related to the direct effects, if any, of lead on health.
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A good deal of emotion has been introduced into propaganda for the elimination of lead from petrol but the question of whether or not this is desirable is one for quiet assessment of the various factors involved on the evidence, or on such evidence as is available. Some of the factors which are involved might be summarised as follows. First, does lead in petrol itself produce a health hazard? If so, what would be the cost of its elimination? This in turn gives rise to questions relating to the oil and vehicle industries and the costs in terms of both money and energy of making the change. If lead in petrol does not constitute a health hazard, is it nevertheless worth the cost of eliminating lead on the ground that there are substantial markets such as those in the United States of America, Japan and, shortly, Australia where only vehicles capable of running on lead-free petrol may be sold?
The question of phasing out lead in petrol is not only of widespread concern but raises questions over a wide field. Like other Members of your Lordships' House, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Ewart-Biggs, for initiating this debate. When the Royal Commission's report is published. I hope that it will make some contribution to providing answers to at least some of the questions which arise.
9.33 p.m.
Lord Underhill: My Lords, I, too, must thank my noble friend Lady Ewart-Biggs and congratulate her for raising this question, which has aroused a very interesting debate. I should also like to congratulate my noble friend on the excellent and comprehensive way in which she opened this debate. As my noble friend has said, there is increasingly public concern on this issue and the pressure for speedier action leading to lead-free petrol has secured widespread public support; my noble friend indicated the figures in a recently published opinion poll.
Efforts in this direction have been supported not only by environmental bodies but also by health bodies, considerable medical opinion, local authorities, and the Association of Metropolitan Authorities, of which body I have the privilege of being president. All have urged quick steps to move towards lead-free petrol. We have also heard some very valuable medical opinions in our debate this evening.
It would seem there are three main reasons advanced for not moving towards lead-free petrol. First, there is dispute about the medical and scientific evidence available. Secondly, it is said that the change would be too costly. Thirdly, the motor industry will find it difficult to cope with the consequential problems which would arise. It is obvious to noble Lords that I have no medical or scientific knowledge. I have to rely upon information available, as I am certain do the majority of Ministers in the Departments of the Environment, Transport, Energy and Industry, all of which are involved in this question of lead-free petrol. But there would appear to be general acceptance that lead in all forms, whether in food or water or airborne, presents a health hazard.
The noble Baroness, Lady Hornsby-Smith, and others have stressed various important matters other than the question of airborne lead in petrol. But it seems common sense that if all these other issues,

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including airborne lead, present a danger, then exhaust emissions must also present some danger, particularly in conurbations with very heavy traffic.
My noble friend in her opening speech said that there was no conclusive evidence, but is it a risk not worth taking? Other noble Lords have stressed that there is nothing conclusive. But was not the situation clearly set out in a letter sent to senior colleagues on 6th March 1981 by Sir Henry Yellowlees, chief medical officer at the DHSS; a letter which has received a great deal of publicity and which was quoted in The Times in February last year? Referring to suggestions that further research was needed, Sir Henry wrote:
"it is therefore doubtful whether there is anything to be gained by deferring a decision until the results of further research become available".
Later, he wrote:
"as Chief Medical Officer I have advised my Secretary of State that action should now be taken to reduce markedly the lead content in the United Kingdom. The risk to children is now shown to be too great for me to take any other course."
Sir Henry added a footnote to the letter, which read:
"The health evidence, persuasive though it is already, cannot yet be described as conclusive. The important thing is that new evidence is accumulating all the time—and it always points in the same direction as existing evidence, so that the health case becomes steadily stronger and stronger."
We must ask why, if there is no danger, did various Governments act to reduce the high level of 0.84 grams per litre in 1972 to the present level of 0.4? It was steadily decreased. The Government themselves introduced new proposals to take effect in 1985. Frankly, from the Opposition, we congratulate the Government on that step. Moreover, following the Statement made in the House on 11th May, 1981, the noble Lord, Lord Bellwin, replying to a question, said the new limit was the furthest the Government could go if a possible delay of 10 to 15 years was to be avoided. He said:
"We think the need is a great and immediate one now."
[Official Report, 11/5/81; col. 350.]
The urgency to tackle the problem was reaffirmed by the noble Earl, Lord Avon, when replying to another question on 29th March last year:
"The Government chose this option as the quickest way in which to achieve the largest reduction in lead emissions."—[Official Report, 29/3/82; col. 1151.]
Those two statements would suggest to me that the Government considered this question of lead in petrol as so important that they had to move as quickly as they possibly could and that is why they put forward the proposals in the Statement made in 1981.
Therefore, we have to look at the two other reasons advanced for not moving to leadless petrol; that it would be too costly and that it would present problems for the motor industry. The noble Lord, Lord Bellwin, also pointed out something we all accept: that the great majority of existing engines cannot run on lead-free petrol and that planning for lead-free petrol by both the motor and oil industries would have to wait until at least all Community members had agreed.
We are grateful for the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Nathan, dealing with the question of the EEC/Directive in this matter. If what the noble Lord, Lord Nathan, says is correct, that lends support to the Question my noble friend has set down for debate.
That is the reason why the Government must take firm action with member states to ensure that there is some agreement. I would ask this question. If there is felt to be a serious health hazard in this country as a result of lead in petrol, surely we should not wait until there is an EEC directive on the matter. We would need to act ourselves.
The point has been made with regard to the oil industry that there is no problem. I noted that the marketing director of BP said that it would cost the companies very little to convert to lead-free petrol, and that this would add very little to the cost. I think most noble Lords would accept that the accepted reason for a lead additive in petrol is that it helps the anti-knock qualities of fuel. I will not go further into this, because I am sure the noble Lord who is to reply, Lord Lucas, as an automobile engineer, could leave most of us standing if we endeavoured to question this matter
I think we all accept that engines would need to be re-designed and that there would have to be modifications in engines if lead-free petrol was introduced. But already some British car manufacturers produce cars for sale in lead-free markets, such as the United States. This was confirmed by the Under-Secretary of State for Industry, speaking in the Commons on 13th December last. Admittedly, he said that these were largely specialist or luxury vehicles, but the fact is that they are being made in this country for export.
My noble friend Lady Ewart-Biggs referred to the experience of other countries, and other noble Lords also went into that. She referred to the experience of the United States, and I would draw your Lordships' attention to an article in the Sunday Times on 23rd January this year, which dealt with a memorandum said to have been sent from the First Secretary for Science in our Embassy in Washington to the Department of Industry in London. This referred to new regulations issued by the United States Environmental Protection Agency under which the lead in petrol used in older cars will be cut to just one-fifth of the United Kingdom's new target level, which will not take effect in this country until 1985. An Illustration was shown in the Sunday Times article. It said that those who are compaigning on this issue in this country would be able to cite this decision as moving to a 75 per cent. reduction in lead emissions on what the United States already has in older cars.
Certainly there would appear to be absolutely no technical problem to prevent the modification of car engines. Mr. John Wardle, spokesman for the British Automotive Parts Promotional Council, is reported in the press as saying:
"This industry has the technology; all the car manufacturers have engines which will run on lead-free petrol. We do not stand in its way; in fact it could mean more business for us."
Other noble Lords may have received, as I have, useful documents from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders. I readily accept what they say, that the industry will do whatever is required by Government regulation and will provide engines to run on whatever fuel is authorised. But they say quite clearly that there is no technical problem in making engines run on lead-free petrol. As other noble Lords have pointed out, what they have stressed is the cost that might be entailed. If those figures are correct, I

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would still draw your Lordships' attention to the fact that quite a number of regulations on construction and use entail changes in car manufacture, require modifications and entail cost, but those changes in construction and use regulations are considered absolutely essential. The society states that in its view at least five years will be needed from the date of any Government requirement before new engines can be generally available. If, therefore, it is considered that action should be taken this, surely, is the reason why there must be an early Government decision on the whole issue.
Some noble Lords have referred to the exhaust filter put forward by the Octel Company. It is interesting that other literature put out by the same company appears to criticise the expressions of danger arising from lead in petrol. Nevertheless, it has been compelled to put forward its proposals for its new exhaust filter which it claims has been researched through Harwell and suggests that 90 per cent. of lead emission could be trapped as a result of this special exhaust filter.
It is noticeable in documents from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, although dealing with a number of other alternatives to lead additives, that no mention was made at all of the Octel proposal. Your Lordships may recall that on the 2nd August last I asked a supplementary question in your Lordships' House regarding the possibility of research into this Octel exhaust filter to be undertaken possibly by the Transport and Road Research Laboratory and by the motor manufacturers themselves. The noble Earl, Lord Avon, replied that investigations were going ahead on a broad basis. I ask the Minister whether such research is taking place and when are we likely to have a report? If such research is not taking place into this proposed exhaust filter, why not? In any event, the claims of Octel must be thoroughly tested.
I put five questions. Would the residue of 10 per cent. lead be considered satisfactory, or would that still present a danger? How often would the exhaust filters need to be changed? What would happen to the discarded lead-filled filters? Would they still present a hazard? Would it be possible for regulations, presumably construction and use regulations providing for such filters, to be enforced? There would need to be periodic exchange of the filters if the product is to be successful. What would be the estimated cost to the motorist? I see none of those questions answered anywhere.
In May last the Labour Party, for whom I speak, following a study group of its own put forward a statement. I have already mentioned the position of the AMA which represents authorities covering nearly half the population of England. Both these bodies take the same view, that it is not a question of alternative options—either a reduction programme or lead-free petrol. Both these bodies take the view that Britain must proceed on both programmes with a date fixed by which all new cars manufactured in this country must be capable of running on lead-free petrol.
I conclude by quoting from a document which I received from the Association of Metropolitan Authorities. The document concludes:
"The Association's position is that the harm to children from current levels of environmental lead may never be proved conclusively. The issue at stake is whether the probability of harm is such that it is worth acting upon. We believe that it is and that to eliminate lead from petrol would be a single important step towards the eradication of the lead problem. The fact that it would be a gradual process before all cars ran on lead-free petrol makes it all the more important that a lead-free programme is introduced without delay."
That would appear to be the point in my noble friend's Question that the Government should bring pressure in that direction on other member states of the Community.
9.50 p.m.
Lord Lucas of Chilworth: My Lords, first, I echo all your Lordships' words in regard to the Question of the noble Baroness: it is timely that we are having a debate on this matter. I want to answer precisely the precise Question: What initiatives are Her Majesty's Government taking to encourage Community member states to move to lead-free petrol? I must tell the noble Baroness—not a lot;and I want to explain as shortly as I possibly can why not. This is not to say that we totally disregard the Community or what the Community are doing. In fact the Commission have established a working group which is currently looking at all vehicle emission problems, and that includes lead gases and so on. It is due to report to the Commission in June. We have taken an active part in providing technical and other information. It is absolutely vital that any consideration of environmental standards for vehicles must take account of all the relevant issues. Those issues include need; the medical and energy implications; costs; technical feasibilities and so on. The Commission understand this and they have charged the working group with examining those issues. What the Commission do with the report or any other information when it comes out, is largely up to the Commission. Of course we would take note of the report.
A number of noble Lords and, indeed, the noble Baroness, have described the current situation. I do not think that there is really any point in my repeating what happens in various and other countries; it is sufficient to say that most of the European countries are moving down to the 0·15 gram per litre level.
It might be as well if I dealt at this stage with the most interesting question which the noble Lord, Lord Nathan, raised with regard to the directive, in that it sets both maxima and minima. The noble Lord will not be surprised when I say that I do not know the legal position of Her Majesty's Government, and I am unlikely to know it this evening. However, I will certainly see that the views of Her Majesty's Government with regard to that matter are communicated to him.
Frankly, the most important matters for us to have in the forefront of our minds when looking at lead emissions in the United Kingdom are two figures. First, during the 1970s, when the campaign for lead-free petrol or for a reduction of lead in the atmosphere was at it highest, we were emitting about 7,500 tonnes per year—that is an enormous amount and that is what prompted many of the studies and reports. In 1981, the levels were reduced and we came down to a 0·4 gram lead content per litre in petrol and the total emission was reduced to 6,700 tonnes. With the advent of the 0·15 gram lead content per litre of petrol in 1985—only two years off—we expect and calculate that the total emissions from then on will be at a level of something like 2,300 tonnes. This means that lead emissions from vehicles will very soon reach a level less than one-third of that which prevailed through the 1960s and the 1970s.
Added to that, the noble Lord, Lord Underhill, said—a number of noble Lords have mentioned it and I shall touch upon the individual questions a little later—that it was in the urban environment, with its
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dense traffic, that the danger was at its greatest. I have to tell him that that is not necessarily so. Heavy traffic on its own does not necessarily produce more gaseous emissions, because, in fact, today's generation of engines is so very much more efficient. First, they burn less fuel, so fewer exhaust gases are emitted. Therefore, because the volume of traffic in a particular area has gone up, it does not necessarily mean that the level of emission has gone up.
There is another perspective with regard to lead in petrol. The publicity given by pressure groups campaigning for the removal of lead is such that people might be forgiven for thinking that this is the major source of lead, and of course it is not. A number of noble Lords and my noble friend Lady Hornsby-Smith, in a very robust speech, drew our attention quite sharply to the other dangers that are all about us. The Lawther Working Party, which was set up during the time of the last Labour Government, went into the matter at great length and their estimate at that time was that in most circumstances only about 10 per cent. of people's body lead came from lead in the air. However, they did say that most of that was derived from petrol-driven vehicles. Again, in some areas, we have achieved figures lower than the level which Lawther reported as dangerous. So great strides have been made there.
The fact is that it is no longer sensible to go on talking as if the total abolition of lead in petrol in the United Kingdom would make a major contribution to reducing the hazards of lead pollution. It might have been possible to talk in those terms a few years ago. but the amounts that I have described—from 6,700 tonnes per annum in 1980–81 to approximately 2,300 tonnes in 1985–86 and onwards—make it unreasonable to suppose that any other change, such as total abolition, would make anything other than a very small difference to the overall situation.
If we went along the road of the campaigners and got rid of it, very little would be achieved as we see the state of the art at this moment of time. In fact, I do not think that that is the point at all. The noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth, made a most interesting speech—and I rather wish that I could have made that speech, because it was a very good exposition of the technical state of engines and its relationship to the problem. But the industry can produce what is required. What we have to decide is whether it is cost effective to ask the motor car industry and the oil companies to produce engines that will operate on lead-free fuel. They could do it, but we do not think at this moment that it would be right to take this path. In fact, we think that it would be slightly counter-productive, in that it would close the door on a number of promising developments in engines, silencers, filters, and so on.
For example, if one goes into the lead absorbing silencer, by 1985, 1986 or 1987 there is a much better chance of that being much more effective than is currently proven, because, of course, when we get to 0·15 grams of lead per litre of petrol, at that time we are going to collect less lead, so the effectiveness of a filter or a collector will be that much greater. It becomes even more cost-effective. It means that if we find at that time that it is necessary to reduce even further the lead content in petrol, then we have the technical means to do it.

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It is important to reiterate what my noble friend Lady Hornsby-Smith said about lead from other sources. Over 80 per cent. of the average person's body lead content comes from paint—the most common source of lead poisoning, particularly in children—and through water pipes, food cans, and from a great number of other areas. I can confirm that the home improvement grants are now available for the replacement of lead plumbing to drinking water taps and piping. The noble Lord, Lord Rea, raised the question of millions of houses, and could there be a campaign to advise people of this grant situation. He makes a good point there. I shall certainly ensure that my right honourable friend is made well aware of the noble Lord's thoughts of the need to raise a campaign.
In so far as flats are concerned, landlords can apply. There are separate rules for landlords of large blocks, householders and, indeed, tenants, but all are provided for in one way or another. I do not think that the noble Baroness would particularly want me to reiterate this evening details of the regulations, but they are available. It was the noble Lord, Lord Hunter, who raised the question of food. The position here is that the last regulations limiting the lead content of foods were made in October 1979. There is, however, a report on canned foods from the Food Additives and Contaminants Committee which was received last week. This is being considered now, and I have no doubt that a report will be made. Lead-soldered food cans are being progressively displaced by other types of containers.
It might be convenient if I quickly try to answer specific questions. I have to refute the arguments that the campaigners for lead-free petrol adduce as to Japan, America and Australia. Their use of such petrol is for totally different sets of circumstances which do not apply in this country or, indeed, in Europe. That is particularly so in Japan, and more specifically in the United States. Indeed, in the case of the United States experiment, to which the noble Lord, Lord Hunter, referred, there is evidence to suggest that the reduction of lead in people's blood was more marked in the country areas than in the cities, giving the lie, as it were, to the heavy congestion of traffic theory. Australia, rather naturally, because of their keen association in that part of the world with both America and Japan in trade and other relationships, followed suit; and they have a similar geographical problem in some cities.
I refute the suggestion that the proportion of 0·15 grams of lead per litre of petrol, to which the Government propose to move in 1985, is anything like a compromise. It is not. It is a sensible, calculated decision to achieve the maximum that might be currently achieved. The noble Baroness and the noble Lord, Lord Underhill, raised a point regarding the response of the British public. I have not seen anything to suggest that the British public are up in arms or are wildly excited about this matter. We have produced some figures for the last seven or eight months, from June 1982. At the Department of the Environment (which my noble friend behind me looks after) and at the Department of Transport we have received communications, in the case of the former department
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totalling 164, and in the other case, 117. These have been from Members of Parliament, members of the public, schools, and local authorities. To me that does not suggest that there is wide and growing pressure.
The noble Lord, Lord Tanlaw, asked, why have lead in petrol at all? I am sure that he listened to the noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth, who I think gave the best answer to that question that might be given this evening in the House. Of course, the oil companies say that there are no problems, as does the motor industry; given a sufficiently long lead-in time, and the money to overcome the difficulties, it can be done. Why do we wait? Well, I have explained. We do not think that we are waiting. We are moving in the next two years. Four years was the lead time to get to 0·15. Two years have passed. We are nearly there. It is the most practical and sensible way to move.
My noble friend Lady Hornsby-Smith spoke about the cost to the car industry. But of course this is not at all a cost to the car industry. It is a cost to us who buy the motor cars. It is a cost to the housewife who goes to the shop to buy the goods that are carried in a van that has an internal combustion engine. So this is no internecine war between environmentalists and a lobby from the motor industry or the petrol industry. We the public will pay, and we have to work out what kind of payment we want to make. A figure of £371 million, I think, was mentioned earlier this evening as being the cost to the public in terms of petrol alone. We are not just talking about a few pence on a gallon of petrol. If we went in for lead-free petrol, we would spend a minimum of between £350 million and £370 million out of our own pockets in buying the new petrol, added to which there would be a cost arising from using more raw material. That would affect the balance of payments, taxation, everything. So again, that is an element that has to be brought into the equation.
I think that I have dealt with the particular points raised by the noble Lord, Lord Hunter of Newington. I was glad to note that he accepted that the evidence was rather complicated and complicating. He wanted, however, to go one way, despite that complication. We do not think that it is absolutely necessary.
I think that I have dealt with the questions of the noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth, but I wish to say again that his exposition was absolutely splendid. I was glad to hear that he supported the current policy of Her Majesty's Government; and he said that we have to be very careful where we spend the money.
At the end of his speech the noble Lord, Lord Rea, said that he would like us to follow the United States to "lead-free", and he urged us to give support to the EEC in moving that way. I do not think at this time the Government would like to commit themselves to such a move, for basically the reasons I have given.
As far as the noble Lord, Lord Underhill, is concerned, I have dealt with his question with regard to the public; also with that on heavy traffic areas and with the cost element. He quoted the motor industry. The motor industry can give the public anything they want; technology is highly advanced. But are we prepared to pay the price? It is not just money; it is resources, including human resources. I do not know the answer with regard to the question of changing

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construction and use regulations so far as his list of five questions was concerned. I shall look at the construction and use regulations. On those five points that he raised, I think it would be more useful if I wrote to him after considering them properly.
I should like to conclude simply by saying that the physical effects of a move to lead-free petrol in terms of reduced quantities of lead in people's bodies would be minimal. Campaigners have made much of the argument that low revels of lead such as are normal in school children in our cities may have an adverse effect on behaviour and intelligence. We agree that that possibility has to be very seriously examined. That is why we have supported a number of studies—and some of those studies have been mentioned. They are by both Government agencies and outside agencies. These studies are specifically to watch this probem.
The first thing is to establish whether the lead levels which we now consider acceptable have significantly adverse effects, and, if so, how children can be most effectively helped. I want to make it clear that Her Majesty's Government are committed to programmes of reducing blood lead levels. I described them in food, in paint and so on. Local authorities have been splendid with regard to painting of houses and schools and so on. There is no complacency on the part of the Government. Present evidence gives no strong grounds to believe that the problems exist; but if it were to be established beyond reasonable doubt that the amount of lead normally found in our children is affecting their intelligence, the Government would need to review the whole question of lead in the environment, not just the lead in petrol issue. It would be quite naive of us to suppose, if we went further than we are proposing at this time, that the removal of the small residual amount of lead in petrol could solve any problem of this nature, if indeed the problem exists.
House adjourned at fourteen minutes past ten o'clock.