Lords Sitting of 20 July 1983

Preamble
The House met at half-past two of the clock: The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
Prayers—Read by the Lord Bishop of Carlisle.
Several Lords—Took the Oath or Affirmed.

Message from the Queen
Lord Maclean: My Lords, I have the honour to present to your Lordships a Message from Her Majesty the Queen. signed by her own hand. The Message is as follows:
"I have received with great satisfaction the loyal and dutiful expression of your thanks for the Speech with which I opened the present Session of Parliament".

St. James's Street, SW1: Pedestrian Crossings
Lord Kilmany: My Lords. I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they are aware that, while motor-cars show commendable restraint at pedestrian crossings in St. James's Street. SW1, many riders of motor bicycles do not, much to the danger of pedestrians particularly at rush-hours; and whether they will cause action to be taken.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Home Office (Lord Elton): My Lords, enforcement of road traffic law in central London is the responsibility of the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. I know that he takes a serious view of infringements of the Pedestrian Crossings Regulations, whether committed by motor-cars motor-cycles or other vehicles. I understand that in 1982 some 4,131 police prosecutions were brought for moving traffic offences at zebra or pelican-type crossings in the metropolitan police district.
Lord Kilmany: My Lords. in thanking my noble friend for that reply, may I ask whether he is aware that not only the street I mention specifically in my Question but man other London streets have pedestrian crossings which motor-cyclists cross without any consideration for pedestrians? Is my noble friend not aware that if a crossing is supposed to be safe but is in fact not safe it constitutes a danger, and that something should therefore be done about it; and is he also aware that the figures which he mentioned do not look as if enough is being done at present?
Lord Elton: My Lords, the Government are aware of the dangers of being a pedestrian in any part of the street. In March 1982 the Government introduced a two-part driving test for motor-cyclists, whom the noble Lord considers to pose the greatest threat. The first part is conducted off the road and is designed to make riders safe and competent on the road. The second part of the test is conducted on the road and is very similar to the previous test. The Government also introduced. in October of last year, a two-year limit on the duration of provisional motor-cycle licences with the object of encouraging learner riders to take training and to pass both parts of their test early in their riding careers.
Lord Belhaven and Stenton: My Lords, is my noble friend aware of my sympathy with my noble friend Lord Kilmany in so far as, on I think the crossing he has mentioned, about two years ago I was nearly killed for the reasons which he mentions in his Question, and that it is only by the grace of God that I am here to ask my noble friend this supplementary question?
Lord Elton: My Lords, your Lordships will all be thankful that my noble friend was spared. I might add that in the last two years there was one reported accident involving pedestrians on crossings. That was on 12th August 1982, when a minibus overtook a stationary vehicle at a pedestrian crossing and hit a 58 year-old man, causing slight injuries. I do not think that that could have been my noble friend.
Lord Elwyn-Jones: My Lords, is it not desirable to protect the pedestrian from the alternative of "the quick or the dead"?
Lord Elton: My Lords, the House is aware that the noble and learned Lord is always quick in every sense of the word.
Lord John-Mackie: My Lords. has the noble Lord any idea of what it would cost to make all pedestrian crossings controlled by lights?
Lord Elton: Not without notice, my Lords—and probably not then, either.
Lord Underhill: My Lords, would the Minister agree that, unless there is something special about St. James's Street, it is not only motor-cyclists who are discourteous; there is such an element in all road users whether they are in private cars or pedestrians, many of whom, do not know how to use the crossings properly; and that this can only be cured by the enforcement to which the Minister referred and also by education?
Lord Elton: My Lords, the police are diligent in enforcement and, as I have said, we are doing quite a lot to encourage education.
Lord Mowbray and Stourton: My Lords, is my noble friend really wise to dismiss the supplementary question of the noble Lord, Lord John-Mackie, in that way? Is there not an example between St. Margaret's Church and the St. Stephen's Entrance to the Houses of Parliament of a pedestrian crossing which is never

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without a pedestrian on it, and where the traffic is seriously held up? Could not a serious case be made out for saying that lights would be safer?
Lord Elton: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord John-Mackie, asked me what it would cost to convert all crossings to light-controlled ones. I think the answer is that it would cost a very great deal merely to discover the answer. If we are considering specific crossings, that is another matter. I will draw the concern of my noble friend to the attention of my right honourable friend.
Lady Saltoun: My Lords, would the Government consider introducing road-crossing tests for pedestrians?
Lord Elton: My Lords, having been a pedestrian, a motor-cyclist and a motorist in my time, I can see great force in what the noble Lady has suggested, although whether it is practicable is another matter.
Lord Polwarth: My Lords, will my noble friend consider advising the members of clubs in St. James's Street to exercise a degree of commendable restraint in approaching pedestrian crossings outside their clubs?
Lord Elton: My Lords, I am sure that all noble Lords who are members of clubs, and particularly those who are members of clubs in St. James's Street, always conduct themselves with very great decorum.

Armed Forces' Medical Officers: Recruitment
2.44 p.m.
Baroness Masham of Ilton: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether it is difficult to recruit medical doctors to the armed forces; and, if so, what steps they are taking to improve the situation.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Armed Forces (Lord Trefgarne): No. my Lords. Officer recruitment to the medical branches is good. In 1982–83 both the Royal Navy and the Army achieved their targets, and the Royal Air Force recruited 95 per cent. of its medical officer target. We do not anticipate serious difficulties in meeting our targets for this year.
Baroness Masham of Ilton: My Lords, while thanking the Minister for that reply, may I ask him whether he is aware that the Navy are short of 12 doctors at the present time, the Army are short of 72 and the RAF 27? Is he further aware that after the doctors have given 16 years' service they get a pension, and the problem could be retaining experienced doctors in the Services? Would he not agree with me that it is important that service personnel, their families and the public—the National Health Service patients whom they serve—get as good a medical service as possible?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, the noble Baroness is right, more or less, in the numbers to which she referred. However, perhaps it is worthwhile getting this matter into perspective. The percentage shortfall is only 4, 12 and 7 respectively. We are for the moment having no difficulty in making up this shortfall by using civilian doctors and others.
Lord Shinwell: My Lords, is it not true that a vast number of doctors are unemployed? In these circumstances, is it not advisable to make some arrangements with the armed forces so that the unemployed doctors, who are anxious to carry on with their profession, should be made available to the armed forces?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords. it is always open to such doctors to volunteer for service in the armed forces.
Lord Campbell of Croy: My Lords, while there arc always some conditions and constraints attached to being within the organisation and discipline of the armed forces, is it not true that there are nonetheless considerable attractions for medical officers? Will the Government extend more widely information about the opportunities which are available for those who possess the necessary qualifications?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, as I was saying, we are really having no difficulty in meeting our recruitment targets in this area, and any doctor who is presently unemployed and wants to serve in the armed forces is of course able to volunteer. But I would not want to encourage a large increase in the number of applicants for places in the armed services which we could not meet.
Baroness Macleod of Borve: My Lords, may I ask my noble friend what percentage of the doctors in each of the services are women?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords. I am ashamed to say that I do not have that answer in front of me; but I will find out and I will write to my noble friend.
Lord Leatherland: My Lords, can the noble Lord tell us whether it is still the custom on the part of Army doctors to prescribe No. 9s for whatever complaint?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, I fancy that a wider range of cures is now available.
Baroness Masham of Ilton: My Lords, may I ask one more question? Does the Minister think that it might be possible to have closer links with the National Health Service and perhaps some joint funding in areas where there are small populations near to a military hospital?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, there are already some links between military hospitals and the local populations, and between military units and National Health Service hospitals. However, the essential difference between civilian and service doctors is that service doctors must be ready to serve abroad—sometimes at very short notice.

The Electoral System: Representation
2.47 p.m.
Lord Mayhew: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they are satisfied that the present House of Commons fairly represents the opinions of the electorate; and what proposals they have for electoral reform.
Lord Elton: My Lords, the Government have no plans to abandon the simple majority system which is well understood by the electorate, provides close and direct constituency representation and contributes to stable government.
Lord Mayhew: My Lords, will the noble Lords answer the first part of the Question? Do the Government reject the widespread view that the election result was unfair to the Alliance parties?
Lord Elton: My Lords. in this country we elect a Government. Under the system, or the variety of systems, which the noble Lord suggests, what is produced is a group of politicians who decide between themselves who shall be the Government. That is an answer which the electorate themselves have not given.
Lord Harmar-Nicholls: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that anyone who played any part in the last election would recognise that the nation was satisfied that the present membership of the House of Commons truly represents the antipathy that they felt to the alternative policies offered by the Government in which the noble Lord served as a Minister and which his present party supported and sustained during a difficult period, and that this has to be in the real interests of this country?
Lord Elton: My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for his intervention. I would add that when the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, implies that a majority voted against the present Government, a very much greater majority voted against the Alliance.
Lord Taylor of Gryfe: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that there are now 81 Peers on the SDP Liberal Alliance Benches and that this makes this House much more representative of the will of the people than the other place, with the distorted electoral system?
Lord Elton: My Lords. I shall not engage with the noble Lord on mathematics. But it is certainly the case that we are very glad to see the noble Lord where he is, although we think it is the wrong part of the House.
Lord Sudeley: My Lords, may I ask the Minister what his view may be of the relationship between the recent vote in the House of Commons on hanging and the opinion of the public at large on this question, bearing in mind the very pertinent article on this problem which appeared in The Times yesterday?
Lord Elton: My Lords. I think that that is another and very large question.
Viscount Eccles: My Lords, can my noble friend tell me what proportion of the total vote must the Alliance get for it to be sensible for them to abandon PR and rally to our single constituency Members?
Lord Elton: My Lords, I presume it is that which gives them a seat on the Front Bench of another place.
Lord Wigoder: My Lords, would the noble Lord regard stability as a virtue if there were a Left-wing Labour Government elected on a minority vote?
Lord Elton: My Lords, I always regard stability as a virtue, provided that it is democratically arrived at, and it is my view that the system we now have is a practical, effective, popular and well-tried democratic system.
Lord Underhill: My Lords, would the Minister agree that it is not only consideration of any possible change in the electoral system that is so important to us, but whether or not such a change would interfere with our political system? Would he also agree that the political system is just as important as any electoral reform?
Lord Elton: My Lords, the political system is indeed important and I share the noble Lord's perception of it, though I do not necessarily share his view as to which party ought to come out on top. But there are other issues, since every variation of proportional representation weakens the link between the representative and his constituents, and we regard that as a fundamental and beneficial aspect of our system.
Lord Morris: My Lords, may I ask my noble friend whether he agrees that to complain about the rules of the game in defeat is almost as unattractive as to wallow in invective?
Lord Mayhew: My Lords. perhaps I may press the Minister on this Question. Will he give a straight reply and say whether the Government share the view, which is very widely held in this country, that the election result was unfair to the Alliance party?
Lord Elton: My Lords, we always sympathise with virtuous people in misfortune, But we believe that the misfortune was necessary as a result of the system. and that the system is an essential part of the democratic government of this country.
Lord Monson: My Lords, would the Minister agree that, if the electoral system were to be altered in the way that the Alliance wish, it might paradoxically lead to an even greater split than exists at present between the House of Commons on the one hand, and the majority of public opinion on the other hand, over such deeply felt issues as the right punishment for the worst forms of murder, and would not such a development pose a threat to democracy?
Lord Elton: My Lords, as I said earlier, a principal feature of the present system which would be weakened by any form of PR is the closeness of the link between the constituency Member and his constituents who are able to know him individually. On a multi-seat constituency basis, or on any of the other

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systems put forward, that link is not only weakened; it is often totally obscured. That provides a very dangerous barrier between the electorate and the elected.
Lord Molloy: My Lords, would the noble Lord agree that there is another element for which the British public appear to have shown complete contempt and that is where people enter either House under one banner and one political colour and then, when they are there, change that banner and that political colour because they do not have the courage to submit themselves to the electorate which sent them there in the first place?
Lord Elton: My Lords, I can only consider the Members of this House, of course, and I have generally supposed—and it has been borne out by experience—that changes in position in the Chamber are born out of wisdom resulting from experience.
Lord Mowbray and Stourton: My Lords, would my noble friend agree that it is only since the Liberal Party were pushed out of second place into third place by the Labour Party that they have been objecting to the system?
Lord Elton: My Lords, that is so long ago that I have really forgotten.
Lord Mayhew: My Lords, is not the position that the present electoral system is widely disliked, as the public opinion polls show—
Noble Lords: Question!
Lord Mayhew: My Lords, is it not a fact that it is widely disliked, as the public opinion polls show, except by the majority of sitting MPs, who owe their power to it and are determined to cling to it?
Lord Elton: My Lords, I disagree with the noble Lord's premises and thus, also, with his conclusion. I am not aware that it is generally disliked. I am aware that if the public are asked, "Would you like a fairer system of election?" they not unnaturally answer, "Yes". But they have not been asked which sort they would prefer, and if they were to examine them they would discover all the weaknesses to which I have referred, and would be entirely of a mind with the majority of Members of both Houses of Parliament in this.
Lord Davies of Leek: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that trying to control the eccentricity of an electorate by involving it mathematically is as impossible as it can possibly be? An example par excellence is Italy, which has had 40 different Governments since the war as a result of this folly of proportional representation.
Lord Elton: My Lords, I should be very reluctant to pass comment on any other country's system of government from these Benches. But I suggest to the noble Lord that it is not, in any case, the function of a system of election to control the eccentricities of the electorate. In fact, it is usually the electorate which has the function of controlling the eccentricities of the Parliament House.
The Lord President of the Council (Viscount Whitelaw): My Lords, I think that this Question has gone for some time and that your Lordships would feel it right to move on. Perhaps I should say to the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, that he will have a chance to joust—if that is the right word—with me tomorrow on a similar subject, and I am looking forward to it.

Nationalised Industries: Codes of Practice
2.56 p.m.
Baroness Burton of Coventry: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether, as legislation would not be involved, they will accept the suggestion that codes of practice governing the relationship between consumers and nationalised industries should be formulated in each industry in consultation with the responsible consumer council; and that these should be given adequate publicity.
Lord Lyell: My Lords, our published proposals for NICC reform explicitly recognise the value of codes of practice in the nationalised industries, and the scope for action by the consumer councils in relation to them.
Baroness Burton of Coventry: My Lords, can the Minister say how many of the nationalised industries have a recognised code of practice which has been agreed with the consumer council concerned?
Lord Lyell: Certainly, my Lords—two. I have one here—gas and electricity. I have another one for telecommunications and a third for the Post Office. If there are any more I shall ascertain which they are and inform the noble Baroness.
Baroness Burton of Coventry: Yes, my Lords, but surely it is the Minister's job to know whether there are any more, and I am asking him a question. May I ask him whether he would tell the House which nationalised industries do not yet have an agreed code of practice with the consumer council concerned?
Lord Lyell: My Lords, I could not do that without notice, because, as the noble Baroness and your Lordships will be aware, there are 43 different consumer councils covering all the sectors of the nationalised industries. But I shall ascertain the answer to the noble Baroness's question as to the ones which have not yet agreed a code of practice and will write to the noble Baroness.
Lord Ezra: My Lords, may I, as someone who has been on the other side of the fence so far as consumer councils are concerned, put it to the noble Lord the Minister that it is highly desirable that we should take this question of consumer representation very seriously, because I believe that the enterprises themselves can gain a great deal by having a responsible, well-organised consumer organisation to help them run their affairs effectively?
Lord Lyell: My Lords, the noble Lord puts the case much better than I could. Indeed, the Government take this question of consumer representation very seriously, as has been borne out by frequent Answers to the noble Baroness, and indeed by Answers to other Questions in your Lordships' House.
Baroness Elliot of Harwood: My Lords, does the noble Lord realise that this Question began way back, about 10 or 12 years ago, when I was chairman of the first consumer council and that it has been kept on the Order Paper for a very long time, notably by the noble Baroness? It would be a great advantage both to industry and to the public if this matter were dealt with far more swiftly. There is no suggestion that it is easy to do, but it can be done and, on the whole, I think that the Government are in favour of it. Can the noble Lord speed this thing up?
Lord Lyell: My Lords, indeed the Government take this question very seriously and, as I am sure my noble friend is aware, my honourable friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department of Trade and Industry is hoping very shortly to receive proposals from the various NICCs—that particular term was explained by my noble friend Lord Belstead about a fortnight ago.
Baroness Burton of Coventry: My Lords, did I understand the Minister to say that there are some 42 or 43 consumer councils for the nationalised industries? That seems to be rather a lot. Can the Minister state whether that is what he said? And may I ask him to answer the second part of my question, as to whether the Government will give adequate publicity to those codes of practice which are already in existence?
Lord Lyell: My Lords, I can confirm to the noble Baroness that my instructions are that there are 43 nationalised industry consumer councils for which the Department of Trade and Industry has responsibility. As for the second point which the noble Baroness raised, the Government believe that the best form of publicity for these councils should be agreed between the nationalised industries and the relevant consumer council in each particular sector. The best examples I believe are the three which have already been mentioned today.

EC Foreign Affairs Council
Lord Denham: My Lords, at a convenient moment after 3.30 this afternoon, my noble friend Lady Young will, with the leave of the House, repeat a Statement that is to be made in another place on the European Communities Foreign Affairs Council held on 18th July.

Mr. Peter Sutcliffe: Press Council Report
3.2 p.m.
Lord Harris of Greenwich Lord Harris of Greenwich rose to call attention to the report of the Press Council on the case of Mr. Peter Sutcliffe; and to move for Papers.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, I beg leave to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper. This afternoon I propose to raise two issues. First, and by far the most significant, is the behaviour of the press in the Sutcliffe case and the judgment of the Press Council on that conduct. Secondly, I want to touch on some of the wider issues involving the Press Council: its general reputation, the attitude of proprietors and editors towards it, and its resources.
First, then, the Sutcliffe case itself. Peter William Sutcliffe was, on 22nd May 1981, convicted at the Central Criminal Court on 13 counts of murder. All had taken place in Yorkshire and Lancashire and had been committed over a period of six years. In the course of this series of attacks, several other women were severely injured but survived. Many of the women concerned were prostitutes, but others included a shop assistant, a civil servant and a building society clerk. The last was Miss Jacqueline Hill, a 20-year old student at Leeds University.
During the period of this murderous series of attacks, many hundreds of thousands of women in the areas concerned had been put in terror of leaving their homes alone at night. Inevitably, as fears mounted, a great deal of media attention was concentrated on these crimes and on the skill—or lack of it—so far as the local police investigations were concerned. Ultimately, in January 1981, Sutcliffe was arrested in Sheffield by two South Yorkshire police officers who were on routine anti-vice patrol. They noticed false number plates on a car and arrested the two occupants, one of whom was Mr. Sutcliffe. Just under 48 hours later, the West Yorkshire police press officer announced that a man was helping the ripper squad detectives with their inquiries. Soon there were television teams stationed outside Mr. Sutcliffe's home, and journalists were pouring into Bradford and Dewsbury from all parts of Europe—and indeed from the United States.
As a result of what happened then—a wave of highly prejudicial pre-trial publicity—the then Solicitor-General, Sir Ian Percival, made a statement warning editors that a person accused of any crime, however serious, must be presumed to be innocent and was of course entitled to a fair trial. However, by this time, or shortly afterwards, bids for the story of Mr. Sutcliffe's wife, Sonia, were being pushed through the letterbox of her home, and Mr. Sutcliffe's father and members of his family were guests of a newspaper in a hotel in Lancashire. As the Press Council indicates in its report, public concern about the conduct of some sections of the media had reached such a point that within three days of Mr. Sutcliffe's arrest the Press Council announced that they would be conducting an inquiry into the behaviour of the media.
Thirteen days after this, following a story in Private Eye making allegations against the conduct of the Daily Mail, the mother of Mr. Sutcliffe's last victim, Mrs. Doreen Hill, gave a press conference in which she condemned the payments made by the media to people connected with the man charged with murdering her daughter. However, the Press Council pointed out in its report that Mrs. Hill's statement, unlike many of the other statements which were made at that time, was made on the very clear understanding

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that what was said would not be published until after Mr. Sutcliffe's trial had taken place.
Finally, following the opening of Mr. Sutcliffe's trial—at which of course the facts were not disputed; the only dispute was his state of mind—a letter was published on 6th May 1981, addressed to Mr. and Mrs. Hill from the Queen's Deputy Private Secretary, expressing Her Majesty's "sense of distaste" if substantial sums of money were indeed being paid to the family of Mr. Sutcliffe for their story. The next day the Press Council announced that their inquiry would be extended to include all press conduct in the case, including the allegations of blood money paid to the accused man's relatives and friends.
I turn now to the way in which the Press Council conducted its inquiry. It invited the views of all concerned—the police, the Attorney-General, and of course all the editors who were involved. It says that it received a very considerable degree of co-operation from many. But in paragraph 2.12 of its report it said this:
"Regrettably the same cannot be said of the reaction of all the editors. While some editors were forthcoming, it required a prolonged and detailed correspondence to obtain from others information, often given unwillingly, about their own newspaper's attempts to buy the stories of people connected with the case".
It is fair to say at the outset that the Press Council had already made its views clear on the abuses of cheque book journalism. Nearly 17 years ago, after the trial judge in the moors murder case, Mr. Justice Fenton Atkinson, made his anxieties known to the then Attorney-General (the noble and learned Lord, Lord Elwyn-Jones) the Press Council said in a statement:
"No payment or offer of payment should be made by a newspaper to any person known or reasonably expected to be a witness in criminal proceedings already begun, in exchange for any story or information in connection with the proceedings until they have been concluded".
This rule was of course breached coldly and quite deliberately by the Sunday Telegraph in 1979 when it entered into a contract with a prosecution witness in the Thorpe trial. It was breached just as deliberately by a number of newspapers in the Sutcliffe case. It was done by the Sun and the Daily Star, but other newspapers were involved as well. Three days after Mr. Sutcliffe's arrest, the Daily Express made an offer of £80,000 to Mr. Sutcliffe's wife—clearly, as the Press Council says, a potential witness and therefore covered by this rule. The Press Council commented:
"The Press Council censures the Daily Express for its breach of the declaration of principle and deplores the attempt it made to mislead the council".
Likewise, the Sunday People was condemned severely, and the Daily Mail even more so. Not only, as the council reported, did the Daily Mail fail to disclose material clearly germane to the inquiry but, with the newspaper repeatedly being in contact with Mr. Sutcliffe's wife for over three months, they deliberately allowed her to imagine that they intended to agree to a lucrative contract, when they had no intention whatever of signing any such contract. The council said in its findings,
"that a group of senior editorial executives including the editor not only set out to deceive Mrs. Sutcliffe, but their conduct had the effect of artificially creating and sustaining a cheque book journalism market in her story".
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The explanation of the Daily Mail, the council said, amounted to a confession of gross misconduct.
I think three questions arise immediately from the findings of the Press Council. The first is the question whether Mr. Sutcliffe could have received a fair trial if he had denied his responsibility for these crimes. As I have indicated, the only issue before the jury was whether the verdict should be murder or manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility. But what would have happened if Mr. Sutcliffe had said that all the allegations of the police were entirely baseless? In view of the pre-trial publicity, I do not think anyone could possibly persuade themselves that a fair trial would have been possible in those circumstances. Of course, I am well aware that the new Contempt of Court Act came into effect after the reporting of the Sutcliffe case, but in the limited period it has been on the statute book it has resolved few of the major issues which were involved in that case. Indeed, in a letter I received from one of the Law Officers since it came into operation, following another piece of highly prejudicial reporting of a case awaiting trial, the then Solicitor-General accepted that the new Act had not by any means found an entirely satisfactory answer to the problem.
I certainly do not favour the introduction of new repressive legislation on the law of contempt, but, just as clearly, what I and I believe many others want is an end to the catalogue of grossly irresponsible conduct chronicled by the Press Council in its report on the Sutcliffe case—conduct which has been repeated, I am afraid, in some less notorious cases since then. I hope that on this issue we shall he able to hear something from the noble Lord, Lord Elton, on the views of the Government. So much for the position of the law of contempt.
I turn now to the second issue which arises from the findings: the question of cheque book journalism. No one, I believe, can read this report, with its stories of scribbled notes from journalists promising huge sums of money being thrust through the letterboxes of the homes of Mrs. Sutcliffe's relatives and friends, without experiencing a deep sense of revulsion at what was done on that occasion. No one, I believe, can read of the remorseless harassment of the bereaved mother of the last of Mr. Sutcliffe's victims without being shocked by the almost indecent conduct of sections of the press.
In the face of the council's fierce criticism of that conduct, one would have expected at least some expressions of regret from the newspapers which were condemned so severely. There were, indeed, a number, but nearly all came from newspapers that had not themselves been involved. There was no significant complaint—indeed, no complaint whatever—against The Times, the Daily Mirror, the Sunday Express, the Daily Telegraph and several others; but the editor of the Daily Mail—one of the newspapers censured most severely—was entirely unrepentant. The editor's response to the report of the Press Council was that it was,
"short-term. short-sighted and smug".
He added that the criticism proved,
"Yet again that the Press Council still does not truly understand the concept of a free press".

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That, I think, is one of the most disturbing features of the response to the Press Council's report: the fact that newspapers so severely censured—the Daily Mail was not by any means the only one—rejected the findings of a tribunal financed almost exclusively by newspaper proprietors, with half its members representing the newspaper industry.
Third, I turn to what is in some respects one of the most difficult issues of all, and that is the calculated deceit practised by a number of newspapers in their responses to inquiries from the Press Council. For instance, in June 1981 the then editor of the Daily Express told the council that no money was offered by his newspaper to Mrs. Sonia Sutcliffe. A month later he repeated that statement, but seven months earlier one Daily Express reporter joined in an offer to Mrs. Sutcliffe of £50,000 for an interview. A few months later another Express man offered her £80,000, and the following day the deputy news editor confirmed in writing the offer of £80,000, saying:
"This does not represent our final offer".
Two days later the editor himself—the man, of course, who had denied ever making any offer at all—wrote to Mrs. Sutcliffe saying:
"We will be happy to discuss any arrangement you may wish to make".
The House may be interested to know the editor's response when, armed with copies of the correspondence supplied by Mrs. Sutcliffe's solicitors, the Press Council invited him to explain the inconsistency between his repeated denials of having offered Mrs. Sutcliffe money and their own incriminating letters. The editor replied, some months later, that he had forgotten about these dealings. The council said that they found his lapse of memory "astonishing", and so, I suspect, does everybody else.
There was then the case of the News of the World. Their legal manager, a Mr. Douglas, himself a former member of the Press Council, denied that his newspaper had paid, or would pay, any money to Mrs. Sutcliffe. In fact, the correspondence supplied again by Mrs. Sutcliffe's solicitor showed that there had been a series of letters from this newspaper, one mentioning a fee of £110,000. Taxed with these inconsistencies, Mr. Douglas took refuge in bluster. He said that the lawyer of the News of the World had advised him not to enter into any further correspondence with the Press Council, and, indeed, that he had been told that the Press Council had no business reading the correspondence with Mrs. Sutcliffe in the first instance.
To demonstrate that it was not just the national press that was involved, the editor of the Yorkshire Post denied making payments to Mrs. Sutcliffe. The file of correspondence supplied by Mrs. Sutcliffe's solicitor revealed several letters making implicit offers, one estimating that the price could be as high as £1 million.
If any of these newspapers had caught a politician making such wholly untruthful statements, they would have demanded his instant resignation. They seem to apply rather different standards to their own conduct. I think we would be interested, again, in any observations the noble Lord, Lord Elton, will find it appropriate to make on these, I repeat, wholly
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deceitful statements made by a number of newspapers to the Press Council.
I think that the issues I have raised themselves raise a number of important matters relating not only to the press itself but to the Press Council. The council was established just about 30 years ago. following the report of the first Royal Commission in 1949. At first, it had not a single lay representative. Following severe criticism from the second Royal Commission on the Press in 1962, headed by my noble friend Lord Shawcross, the newspaper industry agreed that 20 per cent. of members of the council should be appointed from outside the newspaper industry. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Devlin, became its chairman and the council began to acquire, for the first time, a rather more impressive reputation.
In the third Royal Commission report in 1977, which was presided over by my noble friend Lord McGregor of Durris—who I am glad to learn will be speaking later in this debate—the council was sharply criticised for a number of failings. I fear that many of these failings remain to the present day—but another important change was made: now. 50 per cent. of the council's members come from outside the newspaper industry. But the council's resources, despite the strictures of the Royal Commission, remain severely inadequate to the present day. That is why there are interminable delays before the Press Council is able to publish its own findings, and that is an extremely important matter. Up to the present time, there has been no indication that the proprietors are prepared to make available to the Press Council the resources it clearly needs.
I am well aware, of course, that the press fear statutory regulations. I must make it clear at the outset that I do as well. I do not favour a statutory Press Council. I dislike press laws in principle—whether they provide for so-called communications councils, statutory rights of reply, or a general right of privacy. I am sure that many who favour such an approach are themselves sincere civil libertarians: but a number of the people who favour that approach can certainly not be described in such terms.
It is just because so many of us, in both Houses of Parliament, have opposed statutory regulation of any kind—and, to take just a single example, viewed with the utmost suspicion and doubt the special rights accorded to journalists in the last Police and Criminal Evidence Bill—that we find the conduct of the press so disquieting. The blunt reality is that some sections of the press regard the Press Council with scarcely-veiled contempt. While some newspapers undoubtedly take the views of the council seriously—and that is true of a number of newspaper offices and not simply of the quality press, because they include a number of tabloid newspapers—there is now a minority who care little for the council's views and are, as we have seen in the Sutcliffe case, prepared to say so in the most unambiguous language.
In the circulation war now raging in Fleet Street between the tabloids in particular, in which the defeated will face extinction, a boost in circulation is regarded by some newspapers as far more important than a rap over the knuckles, whether it relates to the Sutcliffe case or to an act of wholly indefensible

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intrusion directed against a member of the Royal Family or against a private citizen. If this process continues—if there are more Sutcliffe cases and more examples of indefensible intrusion into privacy—I believe that there will be increasing demands that Parliament should take a hand.
As I have made absolutely clear, I—and many others, I know—would deeply regret such a development. But it is now time that the newspaper industry—and particularly its three principal proprietors—put its own house in order. If it fails to do so, the industry itself will do great damage to the cause of a free press. I beg to move for Papers.
3.25 p.m.
Lord Ardwick: My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Greenwich, for giving the House an opportunity to debate this important report of the Press Council on the conduct of the press in respect of the Sutcliffe case. I hope the press will take note that the people taking part in this debate are not aristocratic backwoodsmen with a feeble regard for the freedom of the press. The noble Lord, Lord Harrris of Greenwich, served his time as a journalist and retuned to the old "black art" between political engagements. The noble Lord, Lord McGregor of Durris, was chairman of the last Royal Commission on the press and under his leadership it produced a sensible, shrewd and liberal report. My noble friend Lord Jacobson and I have spent a lifetime in newspapers—some of it at the rough end of the trade. We know well the difficulty of reconciling high ethical standards with a need to stay in business when faced with less scrupulous competitors.
We have a pretty good turnout for this debate, but there are some regrettable absences. I am most disappointed that no newspaper proprietors who are Members of this House are taking part in this debate. Nobody wishes to stifle newpaper editors—and nobody wants them stifled by their proprietors—but the proprietors must recognise that they and their editors have a joint responsibility to the public, and the proprietors should take care that their editors conform to the general views of the Press Council in respect of that which constitutes decent press conduct.
I am aware, too, that many people who criticise cheque book journalism dislike not only the dubious cash element but also the kind of information that cash elicits; stories of national betrayal, of violent crime and of sexual depravity in which unregenerate man takes a fervent and indeed legitimate interest. Those of us who are old defenders of press freedom are deeply concerned that a few national newspapers—just four of five—have gone beyond the pale in their search for information about the Sutcliffe case. They have aroused such public indignation that there is a danger of restraining information, which would restrict the freedom of all media. I hope that this debate will serve as a warning of that danger.
The safeguard of newspaper standards is the Press Council, which has produced this excellent and salutary report. I am afraid that the council is being kicked around a little these days, and I am quite sure that in this debate there will be some constructive criticisms suggesting the way in which the council
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could be strengthened. It is said, for example, that the council takes so long to reach some of its decisions on complaints made by individuals that the offence has passed from the public mind before it is redressed. It is also complained that offending newspapers have diminishing respect for the council's judgments against them—indeed, that they are contemptuous of all public criticism—and sometimes fail to give judgments of the Press Council against them sufficient prominence.
If that complaint is justified, as I am sure it is, the only sanction that the council possesses—which is to require the offending newspaper to print the council's condemnation—is eroded, and that is a matter for some public concern. The Economist has suggested that the council should be given legal power not only to compel an offending newspaper to print the council's judgment but also to prescribe the display it should be given. I am a little tempted by this because it is the only legal sanction ever suggested for the council which is barely tolerable. I remember, however, that during the 30 years of the life of the council only one national newspaper has refused to print the council's judgment—and that was the late and unlamented Daily Sketch. A legal sanction of this kind could easily be a first step to less acceptable legal restraints, to totally unacceptable legal restraints. The problem of display could easily be overcome if newspapers would simply accept the convention that judgments should be put at the top of a column on a right hand page in the front half of the newspaper. There they would not escape being read by all their readers.
The Press Council was created 30 years ago by newspapers which were most reluctant, and which agreed only when there was a threat of legislation, to set up a council. This was four years after the recommendation of the first Royal Commission on the Press. I remember well the reluctance—I shared it—because none of us could see how there could be a council unless it was equipped with punitive sanctions; and the idea of control was abhorrent to us after three centuries of struggle for press freedom. In any event, under threat the voluntary press council without legal sanctions was set up with the duty of preserving the freedom of the press and its character in accordance with the highest professional and commercial standards.
Years later, inquiries into the Vassall and Profumo affairs left the press with a tarnished image. "The lesson was clear", wrote Cecil King, then chairman of the Newspaper Publishers Association, "We had to put our house in order. If we did not somebody else might do it for us and that could be crippling and unpleasant". That is the situation again today. If the press do not put their house in order somebody else will do it for them and it could be crippling and unpleasant. So in Cecil King's day it was decided to appoint, at last, a lay chairman and some lay members, because a council consisting entirely of the press could be suspected of forgiving one another's trespasses.
Lord Devlin, the first lay chairman, won a good deal of confidence among the press and the public. If the Press Council has failed, as I am afraid it has, to keep up that reputation, it is partly because, as the noble Lord, Lord Harris, said, the newspapers have not over

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the years provided enough money and staff to enable it to operate with sufficient speed. However, the newspapers have opened their famous cheque books a little more widely recently; they have increased the council's income by 40 per cent. This has made it possible to provide a fast process for certain cases; but I imagine that the criticism is right that the Press Council has need of much more ample funds to run a much more important operation.
But there can be no complaints about the report that we are discussing this afternoon. Sutcliffe was arrested on 2nd January and brought before the court on 5th January. The unprecedented amount of information printed around these events, and the indiscreet press conferences arranged by the police, aroused fears that the media collectively could well be accused of appearing to make a fair trial impossible. At that stage. only two days later, the council announced that it would make an inquiry after the trial. After Sutcliffe's appearance at the Old Bailey a few months later, the council decided to broaden its inquiry into all aspects of the case, including money payments to relations of witnesses. The account in the report therefore deals with three main issues: fair trial, cheque book journalism and harassment.
Of course, publication of the report could not be considered until an appeal to the Court of Criminal Appeal had failed and it later became known that there would be no appeal to the House of Lords. The report was published in February this year, and I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Harris, would have called our attention to it earlier but for the hiatus of the general election.
The report must disturb anybody who reads it, and particularly journalists with a pride in their craft; it must disturb them by its documented account of the cavalier attitude of the media to the rules of contempt, of the cruel harassment of the accused man's wife and of the parents of the last victim, of the hypocrisies of the newspapers flashing their cheque books, and of their subsequent evasions when the council asked them for details.
The council has been wrestling with the problem of cheque book journalism ever since 1963, when Vassall profited from publishing his memoirs in a newspaper. Two years later the council issued a long statement in which it condemned as immoral.
"the practice of financially rewarding criminals for disclosure of their nefarious practices by way of public entertainment"
Then during the terrible Moors murder trial the chief witness for the prosecution said he had been receiving weekly payments from a newspaper under a contract which involved providing information.
The then Attorney-General, my noble and learned friend Lord Elwyn-Jones, said he hoped that,
"even before any Government action is taken Fleet Street will put its house in order."
A few months later the Press Council, after consultation with the editors, made a declaration of principle. The declaration said that no offer of payment should be made by a newspaper to anyone known, or even reasonably expected, to be a witness in criminal proceedings already begun until those proceedings had been concluded. The declaration
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further stated that no payment should be made for articles to people who engaged in crime or notorious misbehaviour,
"where the public interest does not warrant it".
There obviously are such cases, but it could be an escape clause for almost any article of this kind.
Nevertheless, the principle was pretty well observed until this case, and although it is impossible to justify the behaviour—which was outrageous—one can see that the temptation was enormously strong. But that does not excuse it in the slightest degree. This was the murder case of the century. The murderer had gone for five years undetected, in which he had killed 13 people. and it was a state of affairs in which the women of Lancashire and Yorkshire were afraid to leave their homes at night. The justification cannot be sensation. This is not the last sensational case which is going to come before us. One wonders what will happen when the next sensational case comes along. How will the press behave?
The Press Council, contemplating the evidence they had unearthed, could hardly just sit still and publicly lament. I understand the pressures they were under to take some action. They decided to extend their declaration of principle, and they reached their decision this time without any consultation of the kind they had undertaken in 1966. I can understand that, too, in view of the attitude of some of the newspapers; it might have taken years before they could arrive at a publicly acceptable consensus. The council believe that their original declaration about payments to potential witnesses is strong and embracing and does not require amendment. But they give warning that the earlier in the criminal proceedings the question is asked whether this or that person is likely to be a witness, the more unreliable the answer is likely to be.
In this case the editors were taking the decision that the person would not be a witness within a few days of the charge being levelled, in the week after the first charging of Sutcliffe. An editor. the council says, must do his best to assess the ways a case may develop when it comes to trial, and therefore the possibility of particular people being required to give evidence.
The council shares the general public abhorrence for press conduct which enables people to profit from their connection with a criminal. And now I quote:
"It has considered whether the incidence of such offers and the abhorrence and distate there is for them justify the suggestion that chequebook journalism or some forms of it should be banned by law.
The Press Council does not favour further statutory restrictions on the press. It believes a legal prohibition of payments to people for their stories is neither wholly desirable nor likely to prove practicable.
The Council is satisfied, however, that unless the press itself regulates its conduct, calls for such legislation are likely to continue and eventually to prevail. Indeed, unless newspapers demonstrate more effectively than several have done in this case their support for the spirit of the Council's Declaration of Principle the Council itself would find it difficult to argue against statutory restriction of the payments they make for stories or information.".
This very strong point has been supported by some of the newspapers. For example, the Daily Telegraph said:
"The Council is reflecting the public mood about what should be proper behaviour by newspapers. Editors would be foolish to strike attitudes of defiance"—

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which, of course, they have done.
"If voluntary restraint is ignored. they will be playing into the hands of politicians, some only too happy to go along with statutory controls on the Press."
The point The Times made was similar:
"What is worrying is that there appears to be less common acceptance in Fleet Street that codes, more often preached than observed. soon lose any value. Yet every Editor must prefer to operate and compete in a voluntary collaborative climate which imposes certain restraints and responsibilities than one in which the law itself makes most of the Editor's decisions for him.
"This not only concerns contempt and cheque book journalism, but the whole hysteria of Press coverage about some members of the Royal Family and other personalities in the public eye.".
The point was put in even stronger language in the Observer:
"Newspaper Editors will do no good to their cause… if they show bland disregard of the Press Council's findings. Papers which cavalierly invent stories, which hound members of the Royal Family and regard both decency and truth as commercially inconvenient have no right to complain if others seek to clip their ragged wings.".
Finally, I come to the controversial extension of the declaration of principle. The declaration originally did not bar payments to people related to or associated with those engaged in crime. I quote:
"The Press Council has now come to the conclusion that such payments are wrong. It believes that a large body of public opinion shares that view, however common such payments may have been".
So in future the council will judge cases on these lines:
"Just as it is wrong that the evildoer should benefit from his crime, so it is wrong that persons associated with the criminal should derive financial benefit from trading on that association".
The council adds:
"In effect, the stories and pictures are sold on the back of crime. Associates include family, friends, neighbours and colleagues".
It is this extension of the principle which has upset some most reputable journalists. Mr. Charles Wintour believes the council has moved too fast. The Observer has "grave misgivings" about the new guidelines, both in principle and in practice, and recommends that the council should meet editors and discuss how to make its guidelines more workable.
The Daily Mirror, which, as the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Greenwich, mentioned has escaped criticism in the report. believes that the Press Council has gone too far, that its changes are wrong in principle and unworkable in practice.
As I have said before, I think the Press Council was right to take some action to bring itself and the newspapers into line with public opinion. Yet I have a certain sympathy with the critics I have quoted. The Press Council is shortly to have a new chairman and I suggest that he should have a series of individual meetings with editors to discuss ways in which the extension of the principle could be made workable and, because it is made workable, could gain respect.
Editors live curiously cloistered lives. They arrive at their offices before luncheon and often leave towards midnight. Most of their time is spent with other newspaper men. They learn from their messengers a great deal about public opinion on almost every subject. But they seldom have direct experience of how people view the media. There is today among ordinary people a growing general ambivalence towards the media. The media are a Jekyll and Hyde. People are gripped by them and sometimes resent their own enslavement. They often feel that the papers, on
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the one side, and television, on the other, have become a two-headed monster with excessive power. Newspapers may have devoted readers. but the press as an institution has few friends and it might have few defenders if the conduct of several newspapers inspired proposals for repressive legislation.

EC Foreign Affairs Council
3.45 p.m.
The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Baroness Young): My Lords, with the leave of the House, I shall now repeat a Statement being made in another place by my right honourable and learned friend the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs. The Statement is as follows:
"With permission, Mr. Speaker, I will make a statement on the outcome of the Foreign Affairs Council held in Brussels on 18th July at which I represented the United Kingdom and at which my right honourable friend the Minister for Overseas Development was also present. I will also take this opportunity to say a few words about the Special Council which met on 19th July to discuss the future financing of the Community.
"I shall deal first with the discussion about the decision of the United States Administration to impose import curbs on certain special steel products. Coming so soon after the Williamsburg commitment against protectionism this decision has caused great dissatisfaction within the Community. I made this quite clear both to President Reagan and to Secretary of State Shultz during my visit to the United States last week. The European Commission has already taken this up with the United States Administration on behalf of the Community. but there has been no sign of American willingness to reconsider or amend the decision. The Commission therefore proposed to seek consultation in the GATT and also to raise the issue in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
"The Council strongly supported the Commission's proposals and agreed to issue a statement of conclusions setting out the Community's position. A copy of this has been placed in the Library of the House.
"The Council made satisfactory progress towards agreeing its position on negotiations with the African, Caribbean and Pacific countries on a successor to the Lomé Convention, which are due to open in October. There will be further discussions on the outstanding points of the Commission's negotiating mandate at the September meeting of the Council.
"The annual report of the Committee of Permanent Representatives on relations between the Community and the countries of EFTA was accepted by Ministers, who expressed their support for the strengthening of the relationship.
"The Council reviewed progress on Greenland's application to withdraw from the Community. Ministers agreed the need to make progress in the negotiations and, in particular, the desirability of an agreement which satisfactorily balanced the

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development of Greenland's fisheries with the proper needs of the Community.
"In informal discussion of United Kingdom refunds in respect of 1982 and 1983, decisions on which are for the Budget Council which is meeting today and tomorrow. I underlined the need for full and correct implementation of what was agreed in October 1982 and at Stuttgart.
"In the context of political co-operation Ministers of the Ten also briefly discussed progress at the Madrid meeting on the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe and the situation in Central America and in Poland.
"Finally, the ministerial meeting with the Portuguese, held in the margins of the Council, reviewed progress in Portugal's accession negotiations.
"Yesterday, my right honourable friend the Financial Secretary to the Treasury and I took part in a meeting of the Special Council to discuss the future financing of the Community and other issues covered in the Stuttgart Declaration. I explained our views on a number of issues, particularly on a safety net scheme for limiting net contributions to the Community budget and on strict financial guidelines for controlling agricultural expenditure".
My Lords, that concludes the Statement.
Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: My Lords, we are grateful to the noble Baroness for repeating the Statement. We shall need to study the council's full statement, which we note has been placed in the Library. I note that the Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary has made a number of new proposals in the special council meeting referred to in the Statement, related especially to the common agricultural policy and the Community budget. In view of the fact that unemployment is the biggest single problem in this country and in the Community, can the noble Baronesss say how the proposals of the Foreign Secretary will help to reduce unemployment in this country and elsewhere in the near future?
We accept the need to reform the common agricultural policy, but can the noble Baroness confirm that the Government agree with the Commission's proposals to cut CAP spending by 20 per cent.? Do the Government agree that tough quota levels should be imposed on surplus products, especially on cereals, and that a supertax of 75 per cent. should be imposed for all milk produced in excess of 1981 levels? As I understand it, although it is not in the Statement, that is what the Commission is proposing. I think it is very important that the House should be aware of the Government's attitude to what the Commission is in fact saying.
We regard the safety net proposal as very important. Does the noble Baroness think that this has any prospect of success? In what sort of time-scale are the Government thinking? How long does the noble Baroness think that the negotiations will go on?
Again, on the question of the Lomé Convention successor. is it true that a new clause in the EEC aid rules formally linking aid with human rights is to be introduced? I ask that question not because the matter
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is in the Statement but because I read it in The Times this morning. If it is the case, it is something which we on this side of the House, in all parts, would welcome very warmly indeed. Can the noble Baroness say when the council will decide which countries will be suspended from Lome deals? One assumes that direct food aid in conditions of crisis will be exempted from this.
Finally, the Statement refers to progress at the Madrid Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe. Can the noble Baroness say whether the Government are satisfied with the progress which is being made in these talks?
Lord Gladwyn: My Lords. I think we shall all welcome the reaction of the Ministers, and indeed of the Community. to the most unfortunate United States curbs on imports of certain types of steel and wish them well in their efforts to change or indeed discard these altogether. Likewise, we welcome progress towards Lomé 2. I shall be most interested to hear the reply of the noble Baroness to the specific question put by the noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn.
The Statement reveals very little about what happened on the major and considerably more important issues of our contribution to the budget and the future budget of the whole organisation. We have read much more in the press this morning than is in the Statement. In principle I feel that most of your Lordships would be in favour—certainly on these Benches—in the first place, of our duly receiving our agreed refund and, secondly, of our pressing for some reform of the common agricultural policy, without which it looks as if the Community will run out of funds before the end of the present year.
Would not the Government agree to make it clear at once, and here and now, on the assumption that we reach a reasonable solution of both these important problems, that we should favour a considerable increase in the own resources of the Community, thus enabling progress to be made on such highly important matters as a common industrial and indeed a common social policy, designed to place the Community in the forefront of the world's trading blocs, thus contributing greatly to recovery from the present world recession. and indeed, as the noble Lord has suggested, to the diminution of unemployment in this country?
3.54 p.m.
Baroness Young: My Lords, I should like to thank both the noble Lords, Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos and Lord Gladwyn, for their reception of this Statement. If I may deal with the questions they have asked in the order in which they have put them, the noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos, asked a question about unemployment. As he recognises, this is not specifically covered in the Statement, but, as he will know, one of our concerns about the whole question of denying steel imports to the United States is that it affects our steel industry and has an indirect effect on employment in this country. All aspects of our discussions about the budget—Britain's contribution to it, the amount of money that we might receive back from it and of course the regional funds—affect

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employment in this country and are therefore indirectly a part of it.
The noble Lord asked me a number of other specific questions, particularly about the safety net proposal of my right honourable friend and what success this might achieve. It is very early days to comment on how it might eventually be received, but we hope that other member states will accept the basic principle, which is that the more prosperous should bear a larger net budgetary burden than the less prosperous, provided there is an appropriate upper limit on the net budgetary burden which any member state would be expected to bear.
Both noble Lords asked about the renegotiation of the Lome Convention and quite specifically about human rights. The Community agreed to reserve, in the case of extreme violation of human rights, the possibility of ensuring that aid could not be used for purposes of a repressive regime by freezing all aid which did not directly serve the needs of local populations. I think that that is a very helpful conclusion to have reached.
On the CSCE proposals, which I was also asked about, there is at present provisional agreement among 34 of the 35 participants on the text of the concluding document. We hope that a consensus may soon be reached so that the meeting may be brought to a conclusion.
On the last point that the noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn, raised about an increase in our own resources, at the moment we are too involved in the question of trying to resolve our own budget problems without increasing our own resources.
Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: My Lords, I wonder whether the noble Baroness would deal with the question that I asked about the common agricultural policy.
Baroness Young: My Lords, I apologise to the noble Lord for not answering his question. The Stuttgart declaration includes a remit to the Commission to examine "the need for strict financial guidelines", and the review of the common agricultural policy over the autumn is to result in concrete steps "to ensure effective control of agricultural expenditure". We believe that a guideline of some kind is essential if this objective is to be achieved.
Lord Gladwyn: My Lords, I am afraid that the noble Baroness did not quite understand my question. I asked whether the Government would say here and now that, in principle, provided we got agreement on the major outstanding issues, we should favour an increase in the general resources of the Community—not our own resources—in order to finance an industrial and regional policy.
Baroness Young: Yes, my Lords; but I do not wish this afternoon to get drawn into a great discussion about favouring an increase in the Community's own resources. As I have indicated from the Statement that we made, although the Community's own resources may in fact increase, what we have been discussing is the proportion of the common agricultural policy,
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which should not increase as fast as the Community's own resources.
Lord Harmar-Nicholls: My Lords, I hope that my noble friend's last reply to the noble Lord that she did not want to be dragged into talking about increasing own resources does not reflect any weakening on the necessity of not agreeing to the increase in own resources until greater efficiency relating to the common agricultural policy has come into operation. The Statement today is in general terms, but in the reports one has read in the newspapers one sees a couple of sentences from the Foreign Secretary which could give the impression that the Government would agree to increasing own resources before the actual efficiency has been brought into operation. A mere promise to do something is not good enough, in view of the absolute necessity to clear away the wasteful surpluses which flow from the present way that the system is being worked.
Baroness Young: My Lords, I am in general agreement with what my noble friend has said on this matter, but I think that it is very difficult to make a hard and fast rule that one will absolutely resolve the matter of the surpluses before there is any question of looking at the Community's resources.
Lord Diamond: My Lords, is the noble Baroness aware that all of us on these Benches would support the Government to the utmost—I repeat, to the utmost—in their pursuit of the avoidance of protectionism, especially when—or should I say, even though?—the country involved is the United States and is our close ally, having regard to the fact that the United States so recently expressed its determination to do exactly that? Is it not quite incomprehensible that in those circumstances the United States should submit to short-term pressure and should apparently commit a breach of the undertakings given through GATT and the policy expressed so recently by its own Government? Has the noble Baroness any explanation to give us from the United States as to this extraordinary conduct? Since I regard this as so much more important than the other matters that are disclosed in the Statement, I will limit my questions to that single point.
Baroness Young: My Lords, as the Statement makes clear, it was a matter of regret to those meeting at the council that the United States Administration took the decision that it did so soon after the commitment which was given at Williamsburg against protectionism, and, naturally enough, it has caused great concern and dissatisfaction within the Community. We have noted the President's offer to negotiate orderly marketing arrangements for some of the steel products, but there is no disposition on the part of the Community to move ahead on this at this particular stage. I do not think that I should at all like to speculate on what has led the United States Administration to take this view. I believe that overall one must regard this as one question which is a matter for regret, but it does not of course alter our basic alliance with the United States and the importance of that alliance in our general foreign policy.
Earl Bathurst: My Lords, with great respect to the noble Lord opposite, would he not think that it is the ordinary steel worker in Bethlehem. in the United States, who, rightly or wrongly—I do not know—considers that subsidised Common Market special steel is imported into his country? I assure the noble Lord opposite, and I should like to make it clear to the noble Baroness, that very many people in the agricultural industry here would consider that own resource subsidies from Common Market countries would be most unfair to our agricultural industry, which is reasonably efficient, I hope—I think—if no own resources are put in by the taxpayer of this country. I think that the situation would be exactly the same for the steel worker in the United States and the agricultural worker or the farmer in this country if own resource subsidies apply in the Common Market without some kind of, shall I say, protection—not a very good word—or some kind of arrangement to see that subsidised products do not come in unfairly.
Baroness Young: My Lords, I think that what may well have provoked the American Administration to act has been concern about the workers in the steel industry in America. Nevertheless our concern has been about the very serious effect on United Kingdom industry: the stainless steel plate which accounts for the bulk of the British Steel Corporation's exports of special steel to the United States has been subject to the double penalty of an 8 per cent. tariff on top of the 19.3 per cent. countervailing duty, and that would effectively shut them out of the market for this product. Even the new tariffs on sheet and strip metals, which are not subject to countervailing duties, would be very hard to surmount. The effect of this has been very serious on some private producers, in particular those concentrated in Sheffield, who have already contracted to a fraction of their size 10 years ago. So, in effect, we have made ourselves efficient, but we are paying a double penalty as a result of that.
The Principal Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Llewelyn-Davies of Hastoe): My Lords, I should like to follow up with the noble Baroness the Minister the remarks made by my noble friend Lord Cledwyn and by the noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn. Is the noble Baroness aware—I am sure she is—that the House welcomes the Foreign Secretary's attempt to grasp the nettle of the crucial financial difficulties of the EEC, and the fact that it appears that the Government are not limiting their proposals only to the simple issue of the United Kingdom refund, but are continuing discussions on lasting solutions for the whole Community? I think that it would clear up the matter of the Community's new own resources if the noble Baroness could say whether the Government are considering the draft decision of the Commission, and whether the report in The Times today that the Commission's proposals are along the same lines as the Government's thinking is correct.
Baroness Young: My Lords, I think that on these matters I cannot go further than I have already gone in the Statement. Negotiations are continuing, and it would not he the practice to table papers, or any such documents, while negotiations are going on. I have tried to indicate that my right honourable and learned
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friend has in fact made a proposal about a safety net scheme, and that we will be tabling a paper on the common agricultural policy in about two weeks' time. So we are seeking to deal with both the budget question and the common agricultural policy.
However, in making these remarks, I should make it plain that we support the objectives of the common agricultural policy, and we recognise the benefits that it has brought to British and European agriculture. At the same time. we recognise that as it is currently operated it is wasteful and can cause frictions in the Community's relations with its major trading partners, including those in the third world. If we are to secure the achievements of the common agricultural policy and build on them. we must both control expenditure under the policy and adapt the operation of the policy to reduce its structural surpluses.

Mr. Peter Sutcliffe: Press Council Report
4.8 p.m.
Debate resumed.
Baroness Sharples: My Lords, I, too, am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Hams of Greenwich, for initiating this short debate which we are now resuming. I speak as a layman, and that will become increasingly clear as I proceed. In May 1981 I expressed concern about cheque book journalism and I then referred to the Sutcliffe case. On various occasions since then I have expressed concern and have received great support in this House. But since the Press Council report could not be published until after the appeal was heard and dismissed, there was no way that we could really discuss it in full.
It takes a sensational series of crimes—horrible crimes—to bring to the surface the extremely unattractive habit of offering blood money, as it is called (perhaps that is a very appropriate expression) to relatives, associates and friends of violent criminals, whether before a trial or afterwards, as we have seen. I can understand the greed—perhaps it may be want, for they may be in dire circumstances: they may indeed be very poor—shown by these individuals when they are approached and offered large, very tempting sums of money to sell their stories for us to read, if we wish.
However, perhaps one of the most unattractive aspects is that absolutely no thought was given to the hurt, misery and disgust felt by the families of the victims. As both noble Lords have said, Mrs. Hill, the mother of the last victim, who may have been the only articulate person among the families—there were a great number of people involved in the killings—showed herself remarkably courageous and has done a great deal to help the Press Council to come to its findings. Another unattractive aspect is that none of the families of the victims was approached because their stories were not worth buying.
As both the noble Lord, Lord Ardwick, and the noble Lord. Lord Harris, have said, the Press Council has changed its declaration of principle to cover such payments to relatives and associates of violent criminals. I wonder myself whether this will result in

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better journalism. I hope so. I feel that we should give the Press Council all the backing it needs, which might mean extra finance to help it to produce some reports more quickly. As the noble Lord, Lord Ardwick, has remarked, there was no delay in publishing this report.
The Press Council has not asked for legislation. If that is its feeling, I think that we should abide by its decision until the press have been given another chance to put their house in order. We live in a very violent world. But we, as individuals, must do all that we can to see that crimes as appalling as those committed by Sutcliffe and other criminals are not rewarded by certain sections of Fleet Street which can afford to pay. When they pay, their main reason is to raise the circulation of their newspapers. The Press Council report is a comprehensive and excellent document into which a great deal of time and trouble has gone. I hope that many noble Lords will read it. I have read it a number of times. It lays down guidelines for the future of the press. I can only pray that the press pay heed to them.
The Earl of Swinton: My Lords, I feel that, following an admirably brief speech by my noble friend Baroness Sharples, I should not make this statement. I believe, however, that it is customary to do so, and I remind future speakers in this debate that, as a result of the 20 minutes' injury time spent on the Statement, the time limits now mean that the debate must end by 5.54 p.m. and that my noble friend Lord Elton must begin his speech at 5.34 p.m.
4.14 p.m.
Lord Wigoder: My Lords, I have no doubt that the announcement of the noble Earl, Lord Swinton, will give me more than enough time to develop the few remarks that I want to make on this extremely important report. It is important because it deals primarily with the administration of justice and with the effects on the administration of justice of certain activities in a particular case, first, by the police, secondly, by the press, and, thirdly, by the Law Officers of the Crown. It also leads us to reflect on the role that the Press Council has played to date and the role that it should play in the future.
In the course of the conflict of interest that arose during the early stages of the Sutcliffe investigation, arrest and committal proceedings, I start out from the fundamental premise that the most important factor by far was that the administration of justice should be pure and totally unprejudiced. I regard this as far more important even than the other important factors that arose in this case, such as the desirability of putting to rest at the earliest possible moment the fears of a large number of women in Yorkshire.
That the administration of justice was grossly impaired as a result of the various activities disclosed in this report is not, I think, in any doubt. But I am sorry to have to say that the first and main responsibility for that arose with the police themselves. I can, of course, understand the feelings of the police force about investigations over many years, painstaking and, as we now know, not extremely competent, and the relief that they must have felt when finally the suspect was caught. But none of those
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feelings justifies the extraordinary steps that the police took at the very beginning of these proceedings. These included the calling of various press conferences—totally unprecedented—and the parading of prosecution witnesses before the press—totally unprecedented. All were understandable in human terms but all gave rise to a feeling among the press generally that the normal standards of restraint were to be abandoned in this case. I believe that the police themselves, in many of the activities that started this matter off, were in contempt of court. It is hardly surprising, when the police began in that way, that the press should have followed suit, as they did. It is clear from the report that the press themselves, on many occasions, involving many newspapers, were in gross and, indeed, grotesque contempt of court, whether defined under the old law as it was at that time or under the new law as it now is under the Contempt of Court Act.
There was a sort of mass irresponsibility that overwhelmed the press. It was due partly, I believe, to a feeling among many editors that is shared by the leaders of the flying pickets—that if enough of them break the law, the law will be helpless. A great many of them, one after the other, deliberately proceeded to break all the rules and regulations concerning the proper treatment of a person who was a suspect. There was comment before the proceedings began in the magistrates' court that went far beyond the accepted norm. There were photographs printed of the suspect at a time when identity might have been an issue for all that anyone knew, and a rather pathetic justification afterwards by one of the newspapers that the photographs that they had printed were not very clear and that the contempt was therefore perhaps not very great. There was reporting of the magistrates' court proceedings in breach of the law at that time. All this went on unchecked over a period of some days.
The press, undoubtedly, were exercising their freedom. There have been occasions when I have been tempted to regard the freedom of the press and the responsibility of the press as being two sides of the same coin. I am not sure that that view is really tenable. I think that, in a sense, they are two quite separate coins and that we should not waste words in indulging ourselves in clichés about how freedom should be matched by responsibility. I have no doubt that all Members of your Lordships' House will agree when I reiterate that we support the freedom of the press, warts and all, because we regard it as the essential prerequisite of any form of free society. But I do not think that it is proper or appropriate to go on to say that therefore that freedom can only be exercised on certain terms or conditions. It does not accord with our own experience. I think our own experience is that the press is always responsible unless there is financial advantage to be gained out of being irresponsible.
I do not say that from any unduly cynical point of view. One must accept that the press consists of a series of commercial organisations operating in a very highly competitive atmosphere, desperately anxious to increase their circulation and to increase their revenue, particularly their advertising revenue. Of course, if a situation arises, as it did in the Sutcliffe case in the very early stages, in which there is increased circulation to

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be gained by flouting all the proprieties, then it is not entirely surprising that many newspapers will succumb to that temptation. Where that is the situation—and it clearly was the situation; that is abundantly apparent from reading the report—it is more than ever important that the law should be enforced. That is why I had to say when I began my remarks that this report raises queries not only about the behaviour of the police and about the reactions of the press, but also about the reactions of the Law Officers of the Crown.
It was right, proper and appropriate that the Solicitor-General should warn the press at a very early stage of the dangers into which it was running. What I must confess I find a little difficult to understand is why, in due course, the Attorney-General decided not to take any steps to deal with any of the newspapers where such obviously flagrant contempts had been committed. Indeed, in due course the Attorney-General replied to the Press Council's inquiry about that matter in a letter that is set out on page 51 of the report. I do not need to read it; I need only say that I find it entirely unconvincing. The Attorney-General's reply was to the effect that as in due course—months later—it so happened that Sutcliffe pleaded guilty, at any rate to manslaughter, and did not dispute the facts of the various killings, it may well be that in fact there was no prejudice and, therefore, the Attorney-General was not going to prosecute for the original contempts. As I have said, I find that unpersuasive and I am bound to say that I find it more than a little unfortunate.
The Attorney-General's view was criticised by the Press Council; and, indeed, one or two responsible newspapers, particularly The Times, indicated how undesirable they thought the conduct of their fellow journalists had been. Unless steps are going to be taken to enforce the law where contempt is as flagrant as this, it will go on, and it has gone on. It is not so long ago since we had another notorious case of a man called Fagan. and once again, no doubt because no steps had been taken in the Sutcliffe case, the newspapers set out on a field-day of prejudicial comment before the trial. In those circumstances it is quite clear that it is only if the law is going to be enforced in relation to contempt that the activities of the press can be held in check. It is idle to regard it as possible that the press can be held in check either by reports of the Press Council or by debates in your Lordships' House.
It was not only contempt of court that arose from the activities of the press in this case: the whole issue of chequebook journalism arose as well. Much has been said about that matter, particularly by the noble Baroness, Lady Sharpies. Let me suggest that the expression "chequebook journalism" requires a little thinking about. Chequebook journalism is in itself a perfectly normal and natural process in the sense that most of us who contribute an article to the press or give an interview on television expect to receive a very small cheque at the end of it. It is not the cheque book journalism in itself, or the payment for contributions, that is being criticised. It seems to me that the criticism of chequebook journalism comes under three quite distinct and separate headings.
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First, there is the approach to people who are witnesses, or are likely to be witnesses, for their stories. That is in itself, in almost all circumstances, likely to be a contempt of court. It is made worse if there is payment to the witness. It is made even worse if the payments are contingent upon the result of the proceedings, as happened in one well-known case during the Thorpe inquiry. That is one type of cheque book journalism about which the Press Council has perfectly properly issued its guidelines.
The second form of chequebook journalism, which is also undesirable—and again the noble Baroness referred to it—is where substantial payments are made either to the criminal or to members of his family for disclosures which do not in themselves (they may not be published until after the trial) prejudice the proceedings but which nevertheless arouse a natural distaste in the community as a whole. That, again, is something that the Press Council has now decreed should cease.
Thirdly, there is a series of other circumstances, very difficult to define, that do not come under either of those two headings, in which, again, cheque book journalism would be regarded by most people as being undesirable. An obvious example of that is a police officer's disclosures recently published in one of the papers for which he has received, it appears, a very substantial payment. That type of activity is regarded by the whole community as being distasteful although it cannot come under any very clear category of improper behaviour.
The only other observation I want to make before I cease to weary your Lordships is as follows. We ought perhaps to reflect for a moment, in the light of this report, on the role of the Press Council itself. It has produced an admirable report. The Press Council's reports are always admirable reports. It makes its strictures about contempt of court, which, as we have seen, have been totally ignored since, because exactly the same type of behaviour took place in the Fagan case subsequently. It makes its strictures about cheque book journalism, as it has done in the past and as it no doubt will have to do again in the future, because there is no real probability that the press will comply completely with the recommendations which the Press Council has put forward—a matter which was referred to in particular by the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Greenwich.
It has also become clear that not only are the Press Council's guidelines ineffective to a very large extent but the Press Council itself is treated with contempt by many of the newspapers. It is quite clear from the account given in the report that over and over again the council's inquiries about, in particular, cheque book journalism were being hindered and impeded by the lack of frankness of various newspapers and their editors. In those circumstances, I do not think it is sufficient for us to say today that we can leave it all to the Press Council because it will sort it all out or it is sorting it all out.
I do not want to suggest that the Press Council should be given statutory powers. On reflection, there are, perhaps overwhelming arguments against that. But I do want to suggest that the law of the land should be used more extensively than it has been used to

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enforce the protection that we ought to have against the various evils that arose in the course of these proceedings. The law of contempt should be enforced. There should be laws against the worst types of cheque book journalism. Only a year or two ago I tried to introduce a short Bill into your Lordships' House. I was met with the objection from the Woolsack by the noble and learned Lord that the Bill was quite unnecessary and that we could leave it all to the Press Council and voluntary regulation. I do not believe that we can do so. I think that the Press Council itself could perhaps take the lead by helping to devise suitable legislation to deal with that evil.
Similarly, as regards the third aspect of the matter—namely, harassment, which I do not want to go into this afternoon—not only are there guidelines that the Press Council can lay down, which we can be confident will be ignored, but there is also useful legislation that could be enacted. The Press Council should play a constructive part in seeing that it produces not only various guidelines but legislation that will ensure that in future the type of evils that took place in this case are not repeated.
4.30 p.m.
Lord Hale: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Greenwich, opened this debate with a very striking and forthright speech, with every word of which I am tempted to agree. I am also tempted to look just a little further and ask, "Where are we going?" The story as told by the Press Council is an appalling one. Perhaps we have not paid enough attention to the part played by the proprietors of the papers and to the part played by reporters who were receiving orders by telegrams every few minutes to obtain more information and to press for it and who, indeed, very often were working with the police either to get information from them or to give what information was available.
I remember this matter being canvassed in the report of the Royal Commission on the Police in 1962, when we had a long discussion (which, at the end, was more or less dropped), in particular about the practice of newspapers—mostly sabbatarian—which contracted with Detective Sergeant Blank and Inspector Blank to publish their reminiscences the moment they retired and to pay a very handsome sum for them, and who thus, in that connection appeared to have acquired an authority which might be dubious.
Most of my colleagues took the view that, on the whole, the evidence went to the point—and this has been pressed quite a number of times—that the association between the police and the press was frequently productive and had excellent results, and that in a system in which Sherlock Holmes has never notably been seen to perform, the evidence in so many cases was supplied by the informer and provided the main source of convictions.
I know it will be said—indeed, I will say it myself—"Yes, the standards of cheque book journalism as shown in this Press Council report are such that this has nothing to do with the normal association with the police". On the other hand, as the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, has pointed out, there were some strange circumstances in connection with this matter which suggested more than a degree of co-operation. I
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believe that the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, touched on the gentleman who has just been writing about the matter. I agree that it is not in the report; it is rather outside the sphere of the report.
The noble Lord suggests—and I agree with him—that when the press arrived on the scene the position of the police was already one of confusion. That that appears to be so is evidence for the fact that people attacked the management of the affair by the police, including I believe a very distinguished officer of this House. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, also said that he mainly attributed the troubles that had arisen to the action of the police. The monthly police journal, Police, dismissed this somewhat cavalierly and said that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham, knew very well that all the editors of newspapers have lawyers to advise them on the law of libel, on the rights to publicity, and so on.
But I notice that in this month's issue of Police a somewhat different view has been taken which I think might appeal a little to the dubieties of the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder. The magazine says:
"Ronald Gregory, if his career as chief constable of West Yorkshire had not included the Ripper saga. might have retired with the knighthood that normally goes with the job, but his memoirs, would hardly have been worth a bottle of Yorkshire Relish to the editor of the Heckmondwike Herald.
Yet because he was the man in charge, and therefore personally responsible for the biggest foul-up in police history, he is to get £50,000 for telling his version of events in The Mail on Sunday."
So in the midst of the biggest foul-up in police history, there may very well be temptations for many members of the press to take such duties on themselves and perhaps to go a very great deal further in doing that than they have ever gone before.
It is only a few days since the press reported the death of Dr. Bodkin Adams. Dr. Bodkin Adams was charged with one or two murders, the press saying that there were others in reserve. He was tried on charges of murder on the proposition of the Attorney-General of the day, the late Lord Dilhorne, that it was murder if death was accelerated by even a minute. That is a very frightening theory for doctors who, in hospitals, are known to be willing to ease the painful passage of a distressed patient who is willing for them to do so.
Dr. Bodkin Adams had to face the united press of the country, with the exception of the reporter from the Daily Express, Percy Hoskins, who is a very old, valued and respected friend of mine, who was threatened with the sack by Lord Beaverbrook for his obstinacy in saying that this case was being grossly exaggerated; that people went to Eastbourne to die, and they have died in the ordinary course and there is no evidence to the contrary. The case of the century was one in which Mr. Geoffrey Lawrence refused to put his client in the box to respond to the allegations, saying just what Percy had said, that there was no evidence at all on which a jury could convict. In the end Dr. Bodkin Adams was acquitted, and already we see the press announcing that "the greatest murderer of the century has just died". I suppose you are entitled to libel dead people, because we have no law against it.
Appreciating the importance of what my noble friend has said and the case he has put, I hesitate. I think that this case is a bad choice to take if you are going to try to enforce the law and the rules of the Press

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Council. I think the words quoted in the Press Council by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Diplock, are magnificent words on the rules of British justice and of the necessity of having access to free courts uninhibited and without pressure. That is a magnificent statement of the law. I am quite sure that the limited time available means that I ought to close my remarks at this moment, and I am grateful for the hearing that I have had.
4.41 p.m.
Lord McGregor of Durris: My Lords, the squalid episode which my noble friend Lord Harris of Greenwich has enabled us to discuss—and I thank him, as have all other speakers, for giving us the opportunity—highlights once again a recurring theme of anxiety about the conduct of the press. Subsequent speakers can only echo my noble friend's compelling opening speech. In particular, nothing further need be said about the appalling irresponsibility displayed in that instance by some newspapers.
It is true that if newspapers are free to be responsible they must also be free to be irresponsible. That is a price which has to be paid for a free press. But with the Sutcliffe case, as documented in detail in the admirably cogent and matter of fact report of the Press Council, a point was reached at which irresponsibility became intolerable. In theory the ethical standards which the press should observe are laid down and enforced by the Press Council. a self-regulatory body set up in 1953 following, as has been said, a recommendation of the first Royal Commission of 1949. That recommendation was not implemented until the Government of the day threatened the press with legislation.
The severe criticisms and recommendations of the second Royal Commission resulted in the introduction of lay members, and a few of the recommendations of the third Royal Commission which reported in 1977 were implemented, although several—and not the least important—have been ignored. During most of its 30 years the response of the Press Council to criticism of the press and of its own role in respect of the press has contained more than a touch of petulance, self-righteousness, and arrogance. Unhappily, my observation is that those who spend their working lives assessing and criticising others themselves lack political judgment when their own affairs are at stake.
In the past 30 years the British press has been reluctant to make concessions to public opinion in proper time and in a becoming spirit. I am certain that in the atmosphere of Britain today only a convincing determination on the part of the press to accept and conform to the rulings of a strong and respected council, which the knowledgeable public see as acting independently of press interests, will prevent the introduction of a law of privacy and a statutory body which can deploy legal sanctions against misconduct by the press. A more critical and better informed public will now insist that the press be responsible, and will see that it is made so.
A fundamental question arising in this debate is: are the objections to a statutory body sustainable? Should democrats fear the use of legal sanctions to impose
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responsibility upon the press? I believe that a recourse to law, however superficially attractive it may appear, would be a dangerous innovation. I am very happy that all other noble Lords who have spoken feel the same way.
The experience of the last Royal Commission may help to demonstrate in a little detail what would have to be involved in legal intervention. At the outset of its deliberations, most members of that commission sympathised with proposals for radical reorganistaion of the Press Council. Some witnesses proposed a press ombudsman modelled on the Swedish experience. Others proposed that it should be replaced by a statutory body appointed by the Government with legally enforceable sanctions for use against delinquent journalists. But, the more we tried to frame concrete recommendations along these lines, the greater the difficulties we encountered and the greater our anxiety at the Frankenstein that we were creating.
What would these sanctions be? Suspension from work? Or fines? If the former, there would have to be a register of journalists. How would they be defined? How would the register be compiled? It is worth remembering that in the past 12 months it has been the policy of our Government firmly to oppose at UNESCO attempts which have there been made to compile registers of journalists in order that they may be protected and given special privileges for which, if they break them and then if they break a code, they can be removed from their occupations.
If we were to proceed by fines what would be the tariff, and against whom would the fines be levied? Against editors? Publishers? Newspapers? Would there be a different tariff for newspapers in heavy debt as compared with those making ample profits? Would someone aggrieved by a decision of the new body have an appeal to the courts? At the end of the day we became so anxious about the potentially dangerous consequences of a council with legal powers and penal authority that we concluded that it would be better to tolerate the objectionable behaviour of a very small minority of newspapers and journalists than to fashion a strong instrument ready to the hand of a Government which might wish to exercise control over the press. Accordingly, the Commission recommended no essential change in the organisation, functions and powers of the Press council, because it was compelled to recognise, however dissatisfied it was with the council's performance, that only a voluntary, self-regulatory body is compatible with the maintenance of a free press. That has been the experience of nearly every other democratic country.
What, then, can be done in circumstances in which, on the one hand, the public will not and ought not to go on tolerating intolerable irresponsibilities on the part of some newspapers, while, on the other hand, the obvious remedy might bring intolerable consequences in its train? It is to be remembered, first, that the problem is chiefly a Fleet Street problem and even there it arises only from the conduct of a small number of newspapers. Do not let us forget that outside London there are something like 70-odd evening newspapers, 17 morning newspapers, 5 Sundays and over 1,000 weeklies, to say nothing of the 5,000-odd periodicals; and from these publications trouble very rarely, in statistical terms, arises at all. What we are

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talking about is a disease of Fleet Street. There is in fact strong resentment, which has been expressed to me, among editors and journalists in the provinces that they are tarred with the Fleet Street brush.
What is needed is obvious. It is a respected and voluntary Press Council supported by the industry, manifestly independent of the industry in policy and action but capable also, because it is sufficiently professional, of securing the confidence of journalists and editors. How can this be secured? There is only one possibility short of direct governmental intervention. The great majority of publishers must isolate and discipline the tiny minority of trouble-makers among publishers and editors. We must not forget to include the editors in circumstances in which the trend of the last 15 years has been running very strongly in favour of securing editorial independence.
If it be said that the Sutcliffe and similar cases are the products of intense competition among newspapers, the answer is that the market is the same for all competitors provided that the same ethical standards are observed by all. Therefore, what I think we must expect from publishers is a series of public commitments. There would be a longish list but I shall mention only two.
The first is that there should be a public commitment to providing adequate funding for the Press Council, in order, among other things, that it may have a staff adequate to deal efficiently with its work. At the moment, the Press Council lives from hand to mouth from year to year, its senior members having to go round the Fleet Street houses and the trade associations with a begging bowl. I think that 1983 was the first year in which the council was given an undertaking that it would be given next year the same income as it had received this year. Adequate regular funding is essential. It must be raised not as a matter of goodwill on the part of the publishers, but by some such means as an automatic levy on circulations; it must be raised by a body separate from the Press Council so that the council, as a self-regulatory agency, has no concern in raising its own money. Those I think are some of the essential features on the side of funding. I do not think that they would be difficult to achieve. They would certainly be difficult to negotiate, but other industries have negotiated similar arrangements and there is no reason why the press should not do so.
The second public commitment that I think must be entered into is an agreement on the part of all publishers to support the Press Council, to undertake to ensure—and this would be on the part of the publishers—that in all their publications editors will be required to observe the Press Council standards. There could be other agreements, too. One important agreement would be to publish, invariably publish, the adjudications of the Press Council. The publishers must act in this way or adopt a similar procedure to achieve the desired result, or we must have legislative action with all the risks thereby entailed.
The final question is this. How can the publishers be persuaded to act in this way? I should like to remind the noble Lord, Lord Elton, of the statement made by his right honourable friend when replying to a debate on the right of reply in another place on 18th February
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1983 (at column 632). He stated that he shared and expressed the widespread dissatisfaction over the Press Council and the conduct of the press and hoped that the debate would be noted by the media and by the Press Council. He then referred to the duty—and I am not paraphrasing the word "duty", for that was the word that was used—of those rejecting statutory rights and obligations to ensure that other remedies were effective.
When the noble Lord replies, will he relieve the anxieties which many feel by confirming that the Government remain opposed to legislative intervention to secure better conduct on the part of the press or, at least, on the part of some newspapers? Will he also ask his right honourable friend to consider whether the Government might now express their earlier dissatisfaction to the small handful of publishers of national newspapers who are in regular breach of standards? Would he consider whether the Government might express this to those publishers in a private but vigorous manner? After all, it was only by such action that the Press Council was set up in 1953 in the first place.
5.p.m.
Lord Jacobson: My Lords, I will join in the gratitude of journalists in particular to the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Greenwich, for having initiated this debate. I also must declare certain interests. I am a life member of the NUJ which, to my mind very regrettably, has withdrawn from the Press Council. I receive a pension from the Daily Mirror group of newspapers and for a number of years I was a member of the Press Council and its Complaints Committee under the noble Lords, Lord Devlin, Lord Pearce and Lord Shawcross. That was about 10 years ago and at that time we thought that, despite under-funding and a very small staff, we were doing a reasonably good job. The adjudications of the Press Council were faithfully reported in most newspapers—they still are—and most newspapers provided the Press Council with the information they needed to come to a decision.
But what had not happened then, of course, was the circulation war, particularly at the tabloid end of the press. That war has now reached a height of ferocity which we did not encounter in my time on the Press Council and it has presented the Press Council with a vast increase in complaints. It has also presented the reading public with a great decline in the standards of popular journalism among some papers. Noble Lords are quite right to point out that this is not a general disease, but is confined to a relatively small number of newspapers in Fleet Street and is hardly applicable to the large number of papers in the provinces.
But we have to be realistic about this. The circulation war is not going to go away and readers are not going to give up reading newspapers because of unfavourable adjudications against those newspapers by the Press Council. Therefore, we have to ask: What are the alternatives? What can be done?Is the press Council, even if it got a big increase in its funds as other noble Lords have suggested—and which is essential—going to be able to cope in these new conditions? If not, is the only alternative recourse to statutory regulation on subjects like payments to

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witnesses, criminal associates, the right to privacy the right of reply and so on? Is that the only alternative, or are there others? I believe there are and I should like, if I may, to point some of them out to the House.
The first step, as has been said by the noble Lord, Lord McGregor, in particular and by other speakers, lies in the hands of a small handful of newspaper proprietors and publishers. Two of them are Members of this House. I propose to name them: they are the noble Viscount, Lord Rothermere, of the Daily Mail group and the noble Lord, Lord Matthews, who owns the Daily Express and the Star. The other is Mr. Rupert Murdoch, in particular as regards the Sun and the News of the World. The fourth big tabloid group is the Daily Mirror group, which has a good record in relation to the Press Council, although one of its papers (the Sunday People) was criticised by the report we are discussing. I have no authority to say this, but I believe that the Daily Mirror group of newspapers would associate itself with some declaration of principles and an acceptance of Press Council decisions and some code of conduct, as suggested by the noble Lord, Lord McGregor, and others. Where this initiative should come from is, I believe, from the Newspaper Publishers' Association. The chairman of that association is also a Member of this House, but is not here today. It is essential that any such move should be simultaneous so that no one paper gets an advantage over others and it should be publicly declared. That is the first step.
Some of my old colleagues, like my noble friend Lord Ardwick, might find it ironic that I, who have always feared, resented and opposed proprietorial interference with editorial decisions, should suggest this; but the plain fact of the matter is that proprietors do interfere with the editorial content of their newspapers and here is an opportunity for them, for once, to interfere on the side of the angels.
I do not think that this alone would be enough to re-establish the authority of the Press Council. As I said, the circulation war is not going to abate and things are probably going to get rather rougher; so there is at least a need to re-examine the working and the role of the council and to look for other ways to improve press practices, to protect the public and to protect the press against Government intervention.
Recently a book has been published called People against the Press—a rather provocative title—by Mr. Geoffrey Robertson. Mr. Robertson is a barrister with great experience of media affairs. He has also written and broadcast on media affairs and newspapers. The book is critical of the Press Council but not immoderately so, in my view. It comes up with some suggestions which are at least worthy of consideration by this House and by the newspaper industry.
The Press Council, right from its inception, has always had to wear two hats. One of its duties is to protect the press against political intervention. The second is to protect the public against unfair treatment by the press. The argument in this book—I am trying to summarise it now—is that it has never had the funds or the staff to be able to do both jobs satisfactorily. Therefore, a suggestion has been made. It is not an extreme suggestion because many of Mr. Robertson's ideas are quite moderate; for example, he does not
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suggest that the Press Council should be abolished or that journalists should be fined or expelled from the profession. Nor does he suggest that there should be statutory legislation. But he does suggest that there should be a division of the functions between the Press Council and other bodies. He also suggests that a reformed Press Council should be mainly responsible for formulating and maintaining a code of conduct, and that this code of conduct should be agreed by the newspaper industry by means of a contract between the Press Council and the industry. I believe this idea was first floated about 15 years ago under the commission which was headed by the noble Lord, Lord Shawcross, but it was not followed up. The newspaper publishers entering into a contract with the Press Council would bind themselves to observe the formulated code of conduct and to publish and abide by the adjudications of the Press Council.
The Press Council's role in protecting the press against legislation designed to interfere with its freedom should be taken over by the newspaper industry itself. I am dubious about this idea myself and I think that perhaps the Press Council should also retain some interest because, particularly under the noble Lords, Lord Devlin and Lord Pearce, it fought some notable battles against Governments as regards preserving the freedom of the press in certain respects. However, this idea is drawn up now. This leaves a very large area of activity such as unfair comment, the right of reply, outside the province of the Press Council. To fill this, it is suggested that we should have an ombudsman for the press—not entirely a new idea, but again possibly one worth considering.
The ombudsman, it is suggested, should have the status, the salary and the prestige of a High Court judge and should be assisted by a staff. His primary function would be to investigate complaints from the public against unfair comment based on misrepresentation or mistaken facts. He would have the authority to investigate these complaints and—if possible, by agreement; if not by agreement, then by authority—to order a newspaper to publish a correction in a position and with a prominence ordered by him.
This would remove from the Press Council the very difficult area of the right of reply, which has been discussed in the other House recently, and would give the public an access to an ombudsman, who, after all, is not a new concept in our life. Both of these ideas—the ideas of a Press Council entering into a contract with the newpaper publishers; and an ombudsman trying to reach agreement with the newpaper publishers about correcting comments and mistakes—have this virtue, that they both maintain a voluntary aspect and avoid the need for an edict by Parliament or by the law.
I think that these arguments are highly controversial. I can already hear the shouts from Fleet Street—in which, to be quite frank, I would join if I were still there—about the restriction of the freedom of editors to publish; and I can hear the complaints from the other side that this is not going far enough and that there ought to be statutory legislation. However, I think that these are ideas which ought to be discussed. This is a middle way and the discussion ought to begin, as other noble Lords have suggested,

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within the newspaper industry. It ought to begin urgently, because I am quite convinced that if it does not begin pressure will grow for statutory legislation, which will be a grave restriction on the right of a free press to investigate matters of real public concern.
5.13 p.m.
Lord Elton: My Lords, we are all grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Harris, for providing this opportunity to discuss the report of the Press Council on Press Conduct in the Sutcliffe Case and to do so with such a weight of experienced and authoritative voices. The considerable cogency of the noble Lord's own speech was enhanced by his not inconsiderable journalistic experience. This is an important report dealing with matters of very real public concern. It deals with the standards of conduct and good taste, and of consideraion for the feelings of others, which we really ought to be able to expect from newspaper editors, reporters and others in a society which attaches importance both to free speech and the freedom of the press, and to the effects which their reporting has upon the nature of the society upon which and to which they report.
The sensitive and difficult issue of cheque book jounalism is the main subject of the report. The most objectionable aspect of press conduct in the case of Peter Sutcliffe has been the payment of large sums of money for stories and information to people related to, or associated with, Sutcliffe. The Government strongly share the views of noble Lords and of a great many other people who have condemned this type of cheque book journalism.
It is always wrong for crime to pay. It is both wrong and offensive that it should be made to pay on such a grand scale, whether the profit accrues to the criminal or to anyone else. And it is wrong, offensive and absurd that it should be made to pay by public organs that spend so much of their time deploring low ethical standards in public life and urging the Government to do more in the fight against that crime for which they themselves are providing the rewards. In those circumstances, there is a supreme irony, as the noble Lord, Lord Harris, pointed out, that the not infrequent calls that holders of public office should resign come from those quarters.
With my noble friend Lady Sharpies and others we welcome the firm line taken by the Press Council in condemning the conduct of the newspapers that have done this, and in the light of my noble friend's own experiences I think that her comments were a model of restraint. We welcome the council's action in strengthening its existing declaration of principle on cheque book journalism by asserting that:
"Just as it is wrong that the evildoer should benefit from his crime, so it is wrong that persons associated with the criminal should derive financial benefit from trading on that association."
The council went on to say:
"What gives value to such stories and pictures is the link with criminal activity. In effect, the stories and pictures are sold on the back of crime. Associates include family, friends, neighbours and colleagues. Newspapers should not pay them, either directly or indirectly through agents, for such material and should not be party to publishing it if there is reason to believe payment has been made for it.
"The practice is particularly abhorrent where the crime is one of violence and payment involves callous disregard for the feelings of victims and their families."
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We wholly endorse these views.
The Press Council has made it clear that it does not favour statutory restrictions to control distasteful forms of cheque book journalism. It has however sounded a warning to the press that unless it regulates its conduct by observing the voluntary guidelines, the council will find it difficult to argue against legislative controls. We also want to avoid statutory controls in this field if that is possible, and we sincerely hope that newspapers will adhere to the council's guidelines and regulate their activities by voluntary restraint.
The actual drafting of such legislation would be very far from easy. There would be many questions of definition, both of association and reward, some of them extraordinarily difficult, and many other formidable puzzles to resolve. The noble Lord, Lord McGregor of Durris, has summarised a number of these difficulties with great clarity, and rested upon them—and upon the importance to our national life of a press that is genuinely free—his own rejection of legislation.
So far, we have shared his reluctance to deal with this matter by legislation. We have thought that for the newspapers it is better to rely on voluntary restraint and on the influence of the Press Council, just as in the field of broadcasting we have preferred to rely on the statutory duty of the Independent Broadcasting Authority to safeguard against offending good taste, decency and public feeling, and on similar obligations acknowledged by the BBC.
It has been regarded as a matter of fundamental importance to the tradition of press freedom in this country that the Government should not intervene directly in matters of press conduct. Newspaper editors, provided they keep within the law, are free to conduct their newspapers' affairs as they see fit and to publish what they wish. But there is a reciprocal obligation on the press to maintain the highest professional standards, and this is one of the reasons for the existence of the Press Council which was set up by the newspaper industry. The Royal Commission on the Press recommended that questions of press conduct, which cannot be resolved directly with the journal concerned, should be left to the influence of the Press Council. We are sure this is right and much prefer to see the newspaper industry regulating its own affairs in this way.
We cannot, however, rule out the possibility of statutory controls in this field if serious public dissatisfaction with the conduct of newspapers persists, and if that concern is not adequately met by the present arrangements. There are, as I have said, substantial practical difficulties of definition and enforcement. But no-one should assume that these could not be overcome if the case was strong enough. There is pressure to do so and the strong opinions expressed today make it all the harder to resist them. That consideration must emphasise to the press itself the importance of complying with the Press Council's guidelines.
The publication of the memoirs of Mr. Ronald Gregory, the former chief constable of West Yorkshire, writing in the Mail on Sunday, was referred to. We believe that these articles can only lead to further distress for the victims' families, that they have

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harmed the police service, which needs to retain the confidence and support of the public. Mr. Gregory was made aware of our views before the articles were published. He was also trenchantly informed of the views of many in his own profession by the article in the current issue of Police, to which the noble Lord, Lord Hale, referred.
Under the police discipline code, it is an offence to communicate information gained as a member of a police force without proper authority, but when they retire police officers are no longer subject to it. There was therefore no effective action which could have been taken to prevent Mr. Gregory from publishing his story. As I believe I said earlier in answer to other questions, the whole issue is now under consideration by the Association of Chief Police Officers. They are keeping in touch with us. As the noble Lord, Lord Hale, also reminded us, a good and proper relationship between the police and the press can be very helpful to the public good, and the noble Lord. Lord Wigoder, very properly drew our attention to the importance of the conduct of the police in these cases: that it should indeed be proper.
Since the Yorkshire Ripper case and arising out of the chief inspector's report to the then Home Secretary, the Home Office issued in December 1982 two circulars—Nos. 114 and 115 of 1982. These give advice to chief officers of police on the investigation of a series of major crimes and on relations with the press. They emphasise the dangers inherent in press conferences following the questioning or arrest of a suspected person in connection with crimes in which the media are closely interested. This advice takes full account of the relations between the police and the media during and after the investigation into the Sutcliffe case. It has been welcomed by the police and I believe that we are putting into effect the lessons we have learned.
As to contempt of court, in chapter 6 of its report the Press Council criticised the former Attorney-General's decision not to bring contempt of court proceedings against newspapers which had given extensive publicity to information about Peter Sutcliffe before his trial. The noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, added his own criticism to theirs. My right honourable and learned friend had expressed the view that because of the nature of the plea at the trial there was no risk that the pre-trial publicity had prejudiced the fairness of the trial. The Press Council suggested that the Attorney-General looked back at the issue with hindsight after the trial and applied a test which could not have been applied at the time of publication. The council appeared to overlook, however, the traditional principle that it is not in the public interest for prosecution to follow in every case where there is evidence against someone of having committed an offence. Taking into account, as the Attorney-General did, both the purpose of the law and the harm actually done, the argument that his decision was misconceived cannot, I believe, be sustained.
As your Lordships are aware, at the time of Sutcliffe's arrest the Contempt of Court Act 1981 was still before Parliament. Nothing in the Press Council's report suggests that the Act is deficient in providing protection against the risk of prejudice to a fair trial. In
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our view, therefore, the Sutcliffe case has not given rise to any need for further review of the law of contempt, but we shall certainly be keeping a very close eye on the way the Act in fact works.
A number of your Lordships were concerned with press intrusion on privacy. The Press Council's report condemned as wholly unacceptable and unjustifiable the pressures to which relatives of both the victim and the accused were subjected by journalists and other media representatives anxious either to interview or photograph them or to bid for the right to publish their stories. We share that revulsion. The council stated that:
"As many codes of conduct lay down, the press should do nothing which entails intrusion into private grief or distress".
We entirely concur with that statement. It is to be hoped that the council's opinion will have an influence on the future conduct of journalists. We see no prospect, however, of reinforcing such moral precepts by statutory controls. We share the majority view of the Younger Committee, given in 1972, which concluded, so far as the press was concerned, that it was impossible to devise any satisfactory yardstick by which to judge whether the importance of a particular story should override the privacy of the people and personal information involved. Their view was that these were matters more appropriate for the Press Council.
The council's report also suggested that chief constables should be prepared to offer help to persons being harassed by the press. The council sought the former Home Secretary's views on this subject and quoted his response in full in the report. As explained there, such a move could be controversial and could seriously complicate criminal investigations. Nothing in the published report contradicts these conclusions and we see no need to issue advice to the police on this subject.
Like the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Greenwich, and many others, we have a deep suspicion of what the noble Lord called press laws. The noble Lord, Lord Ardwick, has given ample reasons why this should be so. We as a Government have so far consistently upheld the view taken by the last Royal Commission on the Press in its 1977 report that the press should not be subject to a special regime of law and that matters of press conduct should be left to the Press Council. We are encouraged that the Press Council is prepared to speak out strongly against unacceptable press conduct, as it has done in its report on the Sutcliffe case. There is clearly no lack of resolution on the council's part.
The essential question, however, is whether the council's rulings are seen to carry authority with newspaper editors and, in relation to cheque book journalism, whether editors heed the council's warning of the possibility of legislation if they do not regulate their own conduct. This remains to be seen. We very much hope that editors, in full knowledge of the dangers and possibilities, will act responsibly. It is their council. It is now urgently for them to put their own house in order, and I am sure they will note the very clear comments made on funding and other aspects of this matter by your Lordships during this debate. I do not doubt that the proprietors, whether

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members of your Lordships' House or not, will read with close interest the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Jacobson. Indeed, many of them are such that I shall be studying them closely tomorrow.
We have had a very wide-ranging debate which has served as a vehicle for conveying the concern of the House over a somewhat wider field than that covered by the Press Council's report on the Sutcliffe case. I think I speak for the whole House in saying that this debate will have fully justified itself if it concentrates the minds of those in responsible positions in the press on the very deep and real concern that very many people feel about certain aspects of the conduct of the press. We all know what the commercial pressures are, but to try to justify setting aside these concerns on the grounds that more newspapers have to be sold would be an unworthy and irresponsible reaction. Freedom and responsibility ought, as the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, put it, to be engraved on opposite sides of the same coin.
The noble Lord, Lord Ardwick, asked how the press will behave in the next sensational case. How, indeed, my Lords? The House is justified in firing a warning shot rather close across the bows of the offending institutions. I hope that those concerned will take very careful note of what has been said and will appreciate the dangers in the present situation. If that point alone gets home, the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Greenwich, will have performed a signal service in initiating this debate. The noble Lord can also count on getting a letter or two from me tomorrow. I know that, as he always does, he will say that I have not answered every point. This' is a weighty and serious matter of national interest, and it is of the greatest importance that those most responsible should listen closely to the tenor of your Lordships' voice.
5.29 p.m.
Lord Harris of Greenwich: My Lords, I shall respond only briefly before withdrawing the Motion for Papers standing in my name. The noble Lord, Lord Elton, need have no anxiety that he is likely to experience any reproach from me resulting from his speech. I am glad to say that, with one significant exception, I agree with almost everything the noble Lord said. I suspect that this is also the view of very nearly all those who have participated in what I believe has been a very interesting and rewarding debate. Like the noble Lord, Lord Elton, I hope that not only editors but, as the noble Lord, Lord Jacobson, said, proprietors pay some attention to what has been said in this debate really on all sides of the House.
The only point upon which I have some lingering doubt relates to the law of contempt and the decision of the Attorney-General not to bring contempt proceedings against the newspapers which did flout the law of contempt in the Sutcliffe case in such a quite remarkable fashion. I know these decisions must be exceptionally difficult for any Attorney-General but, like the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, I think it was a profoundly mistaken decision. As the noble Lord, Lord Elton, said, it is a difficult judgment; it is not necessarily right to bring them in every conceivable case, but what we had here was one of the most remarkable. sustained series of breaches of the law of
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contempt which we have seen in this country in the last 30 or 40 years.
I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, that what happened as a result of the failure of the Attorney-General to bring proceedings was that when the Fagan case arose there was another outburst of exactly the same type of conduct by a number of newspapers in Fleet Street. I will not press the point any further, but I am bound to say, like the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, and I am quite sure the Press Council itself, I think that the decision made by the Attorney-General on this admittedly difficult matter was mistaken. I hope he will look at further conduct of this character by newspapers in the future in a far more rigorous fashion than he did on this particular occasion.
So much for the area of disagreement with the noble Lord, Lord Elton. Other than that, I think there has been almost unanimous agreement in all parts of the House about this matter. I think the report of the Press council is probably one of the most disturbing documents it has published since it was set up. I think that the stories of deceit by a number of powerful newspapers when they were practising their deceit on a Press Council financed by the newspaper industry itself are a very disturbing question indeed. The arrogant and insensitive editorials published by some of the guilty newspapers when they were criticised by the Press Council was just as disturbing.
The last point I would make is perhaps this: the noble Lord, Lord Elton—following what my noble friend Lord McGregor said—drew attention to the difficulties involved in a statutory approach so far as the Press Council is concerned—making it a statutory council. I agree with that entirely. I would be very loathe to move to a situation where we started having some form of press laws in this country. The difficulties of definition pointed out by my noble friend are obvious, but quite apart from the difficulties of definition I think there is something inherently undesirable in trying to deal with problems of this kind by means of legislation.
The noble Lord, Lord Elton, said, however, in a very interesting passage of his speech, that the press should take note that if there were continued misbehaviour—and I summarise his argument at this stage—one could not rule out some form of statutory countrol. I hope that some of the people who have been so rightly and severely criticised by the Press Council paid due attention to those words, because I believe they represent a great deal of parliamentary opinion and a great deal of public opinion. If we can achieve that result from this debate. we shall have achieved something. Lastly, after again thanking all noble Lords who have participated in this debate, I beg leave to withdraw the Motion.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

Inland Revenue: Enforcement Powers
5.35 p.m.
Lord Houghton of Sowerby Lord Houghton of Sowerby rose to call attention to the report of the Committee on Enforcement Powers of the Revenue Department: and to move for Papers.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper. There are several reasons why I am raising this matter this evening, more by lottery than by design I may say, although I certainly wished to raise this important report for attention by your Lordship's House if I got the opportunity. One reason is that this report deals with the administration of our tax system which bears very closely indeed upon the rights, duties and liberties of the subject, and these I regard as the especial responsibility of your Lordships' House. Without a constitution, without a Bill of Rights, with an elective dictatorship, your Lordships do have, I think, the responsibility for the especial care of the liberty of the subject.
May I say in this connection that I hope that if and when the Government come forward with proposals to implement recommendations of this committee they will bring them together in one Bill—a sort of taxers' management Bill, similar to the one of 1970, which is not certified by Mr. Speaker as a Money Bill—and not tuck them away in bits and pieces in successive Finance Bills which are so certified. Much has gone through in Finance Bills which relates to administration and the liberty of the subject which should have been discussed by your Lordships' House, but which were outwith our jurisdiction under the Parliament Act.
I think that another reason for raising this issue is that reports of this importance and substance after the lapse of a reasonable time should be drawn to the attention of at any rate one House of Parliament. I have suffered bitter disappointment personally from having served as chairman or a member of several committees and commissions, reports of which have subsequently received very little attention from Parliament solely because they were appointed either to meet a political difficulty or at the peak of some public interest, but when we reported it had all gone; the crisis had passed, the interest had evaporated and nobody cared very much what we had to say. I hope that will not be the fate of this report.
This report was published last March and it was an ideal committee in size and, I think, in composition: small, only five members, two of them distinguished Members of this House; one, the chairman, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keith of Kinkel, who has courteously come to the House to listen to this debate, and my noble friend Lord Allen of Fallowfield; and there was another distinguished member of the committee well known to me, the last holder of the office of Chief Inspector of Taxes in the Inland Revenue, Mr Ernest Simons.
The first thing I would like to do is to congratulate the Keith Committee on the outcome of nearly three years of work and 42 meetings. Just think of it, 42 meetings, on a complex, largely controversial topic, sensitive even where it was not contentious; and I think, if I may respectfully say so, that they have done a highly professional job, undertaken with clarity and skill, and one can only be full of admiration for such a thorough investigation. Not only were facts to be ascertained and considered but judgments upon them had to be made and they are frequently to be found
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everywhere in the report. The Revenue departments, and eventually Ministers, will have to look at the report. They will have a major task before them, because the politics of this report will be by no means unimportant. I shall have something to say about the politics of this report later.
I have a third reason for raising this matter. It is a lighthearted, even frivolous reason. It is, that income tax and your Lordships' House have something in common; both have been threatened with abolition. Gladstone threatened to abolish income tax in 1874, on the ground that it makes for a nation of liars. And Mr. Michael Foot threatened to abolish the House of Lords in 1983—not on the same ground, but for other reasons uncomplimentary to your Lordships. In neither case did the threat materialise, and here we still are. It could be said that such is the kingdom of Heaven.
Even when the committee makes no recommendation and says so, they do so for interesting reasons. Sometimes, it is as important to make no recommendation as it is to make a recommendation. To leave matters alone is a very important decision to take, especially when it is taken by a committee of this kind, who have fingers tingling to change as much as possible.
I ought to confess to your Lordships the fact that I am a former general secretary of the Inland Revenue Staff Federation. I suppose that I should have read this report with more relish than I did. Officials of the federation are well represented in both Houses of Parliament. My noble friend Lord Plant was my successor, and Mr. James Callaghan was my assistant secretary. In fact, both served as my assistant secretary for a time; both rose to the top; one succeeded me and the other became the Chancellor of the Exchequer—one cannot do better than that!
My noble friend Lord Plant might take a more favourable view of some of the recommendations in this report than I do, because he was clammering for these additional powers during his term of office. For myself, I have a humble apology to make: now, I am more on the side of the taxpayer than I used to be. Yet I know from long experience that tax gatherers dislike people who get the better of them. They present a mournful picture of themselves as hapless tax gatherers, constantly following their astute quarry through a revolving door and never coming out in front. This is of course a frustrating experience; they grow impatient at not having all the tools they would like for the job.
Earlier committees and commissions have gone over much of the ground covered by the Keith Committee—not in relation to the more modern taxes administered by Customs and Excise but certainly in regard to income tax. They have covered this ground with varying degrees of pomposity and moral indignation. It has always been the same. Even in 1905, when the rate of income tax was about 10d. in the pound, a committee was deploring the substantial amount of fraud obtaining in the field of self-assessment. The Royal Commission of 1920 waxed very indignant; they mounted the steps of the pulpit and let us have it. The commission made many recommendations which, although drastic, they thought would achieve largely what they set out to accomplish: a clean, efficient and effective taxation system.
The surprise that I had when I read the Keith Report was to find that the committee had produced a recommendation originally made as long ago as 1905. What happened to it all this time? The recommendation, which appears in paragraph 1.7.9, is that:
"The names of the defaulters in the civil fraud category should be published unless they make a full spontaneous voluntary disclosure".
The committee add that the civil fraud category is one in which they recommend that criminal proceedings need not be taken, but a financial settlement reached instead.
The 1905 committee made this very same recommendation in somewhat different terms, because they did not like to see the non-criminal types escape what they described as "public exposure". What is wrong with the stocks, I want to know? Why not revive the stocks and put these rogues and vagabonds in the stocks and throw refuse at them? That is "public exposure" if you please. Why worry about the media, when you have these people in the stocks? Well, I leave that suggestion there, because I cannot see it happening. There are all sorts of reasons why one should not publish matters which are not open to public view and exposure. No, I am sorry—but that is not among the wisest recommendations of the Keith Committee. I only picked it out because I could make fun of it.
Seriously, a point upon which I want to dwell for a minute or two is the distinction between those who collect taxes and those who pay them. This distinction is one that is frequently lost sight of. The collection of taxes on behalf of Revenue departments is widespread throughout the community. To an ever-increasing extent, the state now conscripts unpaid tax gatherers into the system of tax administration. When these conscripts fail, they do not fail as taxpayers but fail as agents for the Inland Revenue; as agents for Customs and Excise; as collectors of other people's taxes. They are traders who collect VAT; employers who collect PAYE; companies who collect tax deducted from dividends. The building societies collect an enormous amount of tax through the composite rate which they pay on behalf of recipients of building society interest. This is to mention just a few of the principal agents the Inland Revenue use for the purpose of this process of collection.
When we listen to pontifical accounts of the weaknesses of the system (which we have done since I entered the Inland Revenue in 1915) I wonder whether we realise that every new tax—purchase tax, VAT, the ill-fated selective employment tax, and every extension of existing methods of taxation in war or peace—has entailed this conscription of more recruits into the army of unpaid tax gatherers.
Purchase tax—introduced during the war—was, unusually, a tax on commodities other than excise on dutiable goods. It added 70,000 pay points for purchase tax. When purchase tax was replaced by VAT, 70,000 pay points became 1,300,000 pay points—and I am sure that many more than that are in existence today.
Thousands of millions of pounds are collected in this way—voluntarily but under duress, so to speak—by people who do so without receiving commission, agency fees, or any discount for prompt
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remittance. When one gets money on those terms, it is enough to make the Prudential green with envy. Where are the inducements to undertake this vast and unpalatable task on behalf of the nation? What do these people get? There is no kudos, little appreciation and no financial consideration. If they fail in the task imposed upon them by law, and not by consent, they are threatened with penalties if they neglect and prosecution if they fiddle. This is the seamy side of this vast undertaking of the collection of revenue, both direct and indirect, under this system.
This army of unpaid tax gatherers is entitled to much more consideration than Lord Keith and his friends have been able to give it. I am sure they are not lacking in appreciation; but I want to say this. If the unpaid tax gatherers had behaved like the paid tax gatherers in 1981 and had gone on strike and called it industrial action, the whole system would have collapsed like a pack of cards, so important and, indeed, vital are their services to the community. They remained loyal throughout that dispute, though they found great difficulty in paying the money into the bank.
My verdict on the report is that it is mildly minatory in tone, disciplinarian in approach and gently coercive in content. That is my verdict on the report. In its introductory paragraphs it puts the Board of Inland Revenue among the "wets". The committee thought that the department was not firmly enough in the saddle, and although it had its feet in the stirrups it did not use the spurs. They said:
"Long experience of the familiar system appeared to make the Department resistant to ideas for more extensive change and modernisation".
I am always a bit suspicious of the use of the word "modern". What is a modern system of taxation? I am left with the impression that, in the minds of the Keith Committee, "modern" meant harder; that modern systems of taxation required or justified a somewhat harder approach.
The attitude of the Board of Inland Revenue appeared to the committee to be too soft. That is what I think they thought. Yet the committee put their finger on the nub of the problem in pararaph 1.9.1., where they say:
"The human element is of paramount importance, and no pains should be spared to secure that the outlook and conduct of individual tax officials is up to the proper standard in their dealings with the public."
My Lords, they have said it, and I want to ask: what are these pains that are not to be spared? Is it a lot more money for the officials in order to improve the standard of recruitment? Is it more training? Is it more discipline for delinquency inside the department? Is it to pay more attention to those who are rude to the taxpayers? There are 70,000 of them scattered throughout the length and breadth of the land. The attempt to get uniformity of administration is difficult enough, but to get uniformity of human attitudes is virtually impossible. This is the biggest problem; and it must not be lost sight of when proposals are being made to apply tighter controls over taxpayers and over the procedures of the Inland Revenue. Almost everything the corn mittee recommends involves officials in further sensitive contact with the public: and if you cannot be sure of that then you have not got

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a system that you can use, because the human factor is the ultimate right throughout the piece and there is no substitute for it. No computers will deal with taxpayers who require consideration and attention, and to whom some measure of discretion or of consideration may be due.
Another thing is for the Government to avoid speaking with two voices. At the present time I think a lot of people feel that the Government apply the carrot of the Department of Trade and Industry in front and the stick of the Inland Revenue at the back. For example. I think the Government ought to study very carefully indeed whether there is some inconsistency between their encouragement to small businesses, on the one hand, and the Inland Revenue's congenital mistrust of the small businessman as a taxpayer, on the other. I saw in The Times on Monday last that a survey done by Shell UK Limited found that, in spite of the emphasis placed by the Government on the role and contribution of small firms, the vast majority feel that relations between the Government and small firms have worsened. It is no good having a big reorganisation of the Small Business Advisory Service if the Inland Revenue are going to spoil it all at the other end. So these are important considerations. You are either going to use the tax system and its administration to help, or you are going to regard it as a cashier's job in order to get the money into the Treasury by any reasonable means possible.
Before I finish I want to consider two of the rather important matters which the Keith Committee was asked to look at. The first is the use of powers granted to the revenue departments, one a long time ago in the case of Customs and Excise the other more recently in the case of the Inland Revenue Department—the right of enforced entry into the premises and the homes and apartments of the taxpayer, the right to interrogate members of his family, the right to take away documents and material belonging to members of his family, and so on—where there is good reason to suspect that fraud may have been committed and the necessary warrant has been granted by the proper authority. In the case of the Customs and Excise they have been at this for a very long time. They were boarding ships many centuries ago; they were in the business of contraband and smuggling—these important and exciting jobs which, in my day, any civil servant coveted when he entered the service. They told me, "You go into the Customs and Excise; they all get drunk in the bonded stores or they get drowned trying to get on ships in the Thames estuary, and the rate of promotion will be much higher than in the Inland Revenue, where they live for ever". I did not get into the Customs and Excise; I went to the war instead.
I myself raised some doubts about these powers a little earlier. In the case of the Customs and Excise they can get a warrant from a magistrate; but in another place they jibbed at a magistrate and said it should be a circuit judge for the purposes of this kind of warrant for the Inland Revenue. The committee rightly recommend that the warrants in both cases should be from a circuit judge so far as England and Wales are concerned. I am glad to see that the committee recommended better rules for the conduct of this unpleasant exercise. They are rare occasions, but very
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difficult and grievous occasions indeed when they occur.
I have always felt that civilian officers ought not to be allowed to do the work normally undertaken by the police without very careful consideration of what they are up to. They are not police officers. They have not been trained as police officers. But they have to be subjected to the Judges' rules. They must have a code of conduct and of behaviour, but they are not acting frequently enough to become used to their responsibilities. Therefore, they ought to be under very strict discipline and control.
For one thing, in the past when a raid has taken place all one could see was the warrant, which said little or nothing about the underlying purposes of the raid. Another aspect was that one had no control over the numbers of people involved. It was possible for the Inland Revenue to have people in columns of four, march them onto one's premises and in they went like animals into the Ark. Then, when they got busy inside one did not know who they were. One had no idea of who was the real raider and who was a gatecrasher. It was difficult to fix any responsibility on any individual. Those who suffered from this experience were bewildered, angry, annoyed and, naturally, greatly distressed.
I raised this matter in your Lordships' House when one or two cases were occurring. I sent a copy of my speech to the committee in the hope that it might see what I felt were some of the points it ought to watch. I think the committee watched them all. However, I dissent from the Committee's recommendation that the identification of the individual officers need not be continued. I think it should. No individual police officer or civilian should have the right to forcibly enter premises without an identification that can be seen and enable one to see what is his authority to be there. It is not enough to go to the leader, who is probably decorated with authority, and ask, "Is that bloke over there your man or is he a cleaner?" Surely that is an elementary right so that if someone does overstep the mark, as has been done in some cases, the aggrieved taxpayer can lodge a complaint.
I agree that civilian officers should be trained, but I have already referred to the difficulty of doing that. A unified code for Customs and Excise and the Inland Revenue might be all right up to a point, but let me add with full respect to Customs and Excise men that they are a tougher breed than the Inland Revenue men. They have been doing their work for so long and have had to do such rough work in the course of their experiences that they are not quite the gentry that one finds in the Inland Revenue. Therefore, I believe a unified code needs to be looked at with great care lest the Inland Revenue try to live up to the reputation of Customs and Excise, and that might be a pity.
I concede that the Committee has dealt with this most difficult problem with perception and understanding. One must acknowledge that the raiders have come out of it without serious criticism. Nevertheless, the need to use every alternative to this ultimate step should be uppermost in the minds of the Revenue authorities, even though they need additional powers to enable them to achieve what they want not by forcible entry but by more peaceful means. That is

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how I sum that up. The committee makes recommendations which it hopes will achieve that purpose.
I come now to casuals—moonlighters; the black economy. Do we have to go on calling it a "black" economy? We have to be a bit careful about "black". Is it a black economy? Who says it is a black economy? Why should it be black? I will not suggest what it should be. But this is a big social problem which cannot be considered solely in the context of tax enforcement. We all know something of the measure of this problem and why so many workers want tax-free income from jobs that they do after working hours and over weekends. We all know also that life would become a great deal more difficult for many people if the supply of this help dried up.
The committee lays down the principle in paragraph 6.3.4:
"The only individuals who should be entitled to receive payments gross should … be the genuinely self-employed providers of services."
So here we go again; more conscripts to the vast army of unpaid tax gatherers. What the committee suggests is that all who use this casual work should identify those whom they employ, deduct tax from their pay, notify the tax people and account for the tax deducted. The casuals exposed to tax deductions would have to claim a refund from the tax office if they happened to be tax exempt in order to get their money back. The department reckon that there are between 500,000 and 1 million—one cannot say how many there might be—who would be brought into the net of tax administration by this suggestion, and many of them would be exempt.
Unless I am very much mistaken I reckon the Keith Committee had a lot of cold water poured on this idea by the Inland Revenue. If they did not the Inland Revenue must have been asleep. The committee proposes that
"a universal scheme for casual workers involving information reporting and deduction at source … be introduced as soon as practicable."
This just shows that the tax threshold is so low that the trawl for the small fish can become either impractical or ridiculous. The present system of the almost universal coverage of direct personal taxation is an inheritance from the war when the restrictive conditions of the wartime economy and the disciplines of civilian work, military or national service, were accepted. We are in a vastly different situation today. The range of this tax, its refinements, and its relationship to the new earnings related national insurance contributions puts the whole mammoth exercise into an entirely different perspective. No amount of manpower, no new set of rules for enforcement with its checks and penalties, can be marshalled against the tide of feeling, engendered politically I have no doubt, which is now rising against bureaucracy. More police powers and more Revenue powers would be strong medicine for any Government to introduce in the year 1984.
I believe that the Keith recommendations, believed by the committee to make our tax system workable, effective and to satisfy minimum standards of efficiency, will depend upon whether it is practical or not. The politics of the matter are whether this array of greater discipline and coercion will be tolerable and
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acceptable. Otherwise it becomes almost impractical. I do not think that this is by any means a question of whether the taxpayer will take it. It is more a matter of whether the additional multitude of unpaid tax gatherers that will be required will agree to act. I doubt whether they will.
I have a concluding peroration to make. Taxation is now a part of the delicate fabric of popular government. It may reflect the attitudes and aims of the kind of society it has to serve. It may help to promote social contentment and industrial peace and bring about a fairer and happier life for some sections of the community, or it may do the opposite. It may unite, or it may divide, the nation. The art of government includes the art of administration, and that is why bureaucracy must sometimes be denied all the sharp-edged tools it wants to do the job. That is my verdict on the report of the Keith Committee. My Lords, I beg to move for Papers.
6.10 p.m.
Lord Diamond: My Lords, I am indebted to the noble Lord, Lord Houghton of Sowerby, in two ways. First, because he has enabled your Lordships' House to discuss this report and, secondly, because he has made me read it much more thoroughly than I should otherwise have done. I am bound to say to the noble Lord that I find it a much more acceptable report than he does. I am impressed by and agree with the general thrust of the report. There is one underlying principle which I know that the noble Lord shares but which he did not express: namely, that the whole of our tax paying and collecting system depends on public goodwill. The public goodwill will not be there if an increasingly large proportion of the public (particularly those who pay tax at source under pay-as-you-earn) feel that they are bearing a disproportionate share of the tax burden that we all need to share because so many others are getting away with it in other respects and in other fields. The noble Lord referred to small businesses; there may be others.
I share the view of this eminent committee that, in order to make, as the noble Lord terms it, the system practicable—to make it work and to enable it to continue to have the general support of the public: albeit nobody pays tax with a song in his heart, it still has to have that large measure of support—Parliament must give the Inland Revenue the appropriate powers to discharge the responsibilities which Parliament places upon it. I agree with the report that criminal proceedings should be kept for only the worst and most obvious cases of deliberate fraud. They should not be the appropriate remedy in cases of negligence, and even of gross negligence, where a far more appropriate remedy is penalties and action over commercial interests.
I agree with all that and particularly with the extract that the noble Lord, Lord Houghton of Sowerby, quoted (which saves me quoting it yet again) about the importance of the human element. I must say that I do not think that the noble Lord did the report justice. That sentence was worded in such a way as to make it clear that those unanimously signing the report thought that this was the most important issue of all—and so do I. I think they were right in coming to this conclusion. My view is that that human element,

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as the report calls it—the human relationship between the tax gatherer and the taxpayer—can be improved. I say that notwithstanding that we start not from a low but from a very high level. We start with a very efficient tax gathering machine, which succeeds in raising taxes at very small cost and, I imagine, more successfully than in any other European country. Notwithstanding that it is a great achievement so far, I think that the human element can be improved. It can be improved in three ways which I shall illustrate.
First—and the noble Lord underlined this—the Revenue has a tendency to take for granted that it is the duty of the taxpayer to pay tax and the duty of many to collect tax and pass it to the Inland Revenue. I think the Inland Revenue tends to take that duty for granted, but though it is a clear duty placed upon the citizen, a little appreciation goes a long way. For example, I see on my tax form, "If you want to bother the Revenue to send you a receipt, please put the letter "R" in the square bracket". When the receipt comes, it is a jumble of figures and references. Without the taxpayer having to ask, a collector could occasionally write to say, "I am asked by the Chairman of the Board of Inland Revenue to thank you for your prompt payment of your tax liability". It is almost unimaginable. but why? We do that in ordinary commerce. If somebody pays a bill you say. "Thank you very much". Every practising professional man, when a bill is paid, says, "Thank you". He has given a service, but he has also been paid.
In appropriate cases, a note could be written to say, "The Chancellor of the Exchequer will be interested, helped and assisted by your payment, which will enable him to undertake more readily the onerous task of managing the country's finances". It would make the large taxpayer feel that he had done something, as indeed he has. Rather than relying implicitly on the subject's responsibility to disclose himself and to declare and pay his tax under statute, occasionally, and in appropriate cases, a more human view could be taken by saying. "Thank you" and showing appreciation.
Secondly, the Revenue could more often—it does it only very occasionally indeed—volunteer information which would be of assistance to the taxpayer. I heard of one case the other day which is very relevant. A taxpayer sends in his return. The Inspector of Taxes sees that it would be beneficial to the taxpayer to ask for the application of a certain section of the Finance Act and knows that there is a short time limit of only three months and that it has nearly expired. He rings up the taxpayer and says, "You will be wanting to do so and so. I am ringing you to let you know that you will have to do so in the course of next week or you will lose the benefit of the section". That is courteous, helpful and well within the duty of the Inland Revenue. Such an action would be remembered always by the taxpayer in question. As accountants know full well, there are many occasions where the Revenue can, in discharge of its duty to collect the right, and not an excessive, amount of tax, be helpful to the taxpayer and take the initiative in doing so. That again would substantially improve the human element to which the report refers.
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The third example that I wanted to give concerns something to which the report does not refer. I take it that in tax evasion, as in other forms of criminality, the evader—the criminal—relies on not being caught. I assume that in tax evasion the greatest deterrent would be the knowledge that he is likely to be caught. I think it is the duty of the Inland Revenue to make much clearer than it has done so far that in most substantial cases the tax evader is caught. The general view that the tax evader gets off for all time is quite wrong.
The position is that a taxpayer has income that he does not disclose. He deliberately wants to evade paying tax on it. He has this cash. What is he to do with it? He can either spend it or keep it. If he spends it, his lifestyle is seen to be out of context with the income that he declares. The Revenue has powers which it exercises of deep investigation in cases which arouse its suspicion for the kind of reason that I have just described, and the taxpayer is unable to explain how he can live so comfortably on the income that he discloses. One thing leads to another, and the result is that the individual has to pay more in tax and penalties than had the income been declared in the first place.
The alternative is not to spend the income, but to keep it. So what is he to do with it if he keeps it? Is he to invest it? He cannot do that because the investment will produce income, and the probability—not the certainty—is that the income will come to the notice of the Inland Revenue through one of the many ways in which it gathers information. He might make a mistake, as those who evade paying tax generally do over the course of years, because their memories are not good enough to enable them to keep on what they would call the right course, which is really the wrong course.
If the individual in question seeks to evade tax completely, he is not able to put the cash in income-producing investment. So he has to put it into something which does not show any income and does not indicate anything to the Inland Revenue; and he must remember that. He can do that for year after year, and he thinks, "Right, I got away with it". All he has done is to pass on to his widow a legacy of trouble and liability for penalties and interest.
What happens mostly—and I am talking about substantial cases—is that in the typical scenario a widow finds that she is left lots of money by a caring husband, and all is declared for estate duty purposes, or the modern equivalent. The Revenue examines the returns and finds one or two things which cannot be explained in relation to the tax returns which have been made by the individual over a vast number of years. Inquiries start. It is a case where there has been some non-disclosure of income; some cash has been received in some way or other but not disclosed over a period of years. There are many such examples. The widow is faced with a double penalty. She is faced with not only the penalty that arises from the nondisclosure, which clearly was an attempt at tax evasion, but also the penalty which arises from questions which cannot be answered satisfactorily because the man who could have answered them satisfactorily is no longer there to do so.
So the typical situation is that the widow is not as badly off as would have been the taxpayer had he been

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found out at that stage; she is worse off. She has all the anxiety, the trouble and the heartache. In addition to all that, she, or the estate, has to pay the tax, the penalties, the interest which need not have been paid had the tax been declared and paid in the first place.
I am not describing an unusual circumstance. I am describing a series of circumstances that are likely to arise in the case of serious attempts at substantial tax evasion. You do not succeed in evading. You succeed in postponing payment, and leaving to your widow at best an enormous problem.
So I say that that is a third example of the way in which the Revenue, by publicising the position, by making clear to everybody that it has enormous sources of information and investigatory powers to carry out the duties imposed upon it by Parliament, could improve the relationship between the taxpayer and the tax gatherer. It could do that by making it clear that it simply does not pay to evade tax. I am sorry to put it at that level, but it is a relevant level when one is discussing the pure payment of taxes by an individual to the Inland Revenue. In the long run it simply does not pay to evade tax. That point is in line with both the many suggestions made in the report as to greater publicity of the Revenue's powers and the report's general thrust, and so I welcome the report very much indeed.
Lord Polwarth: My Lords, I do not suppose that when this Motion first appeared on the Order Paper many of your Lordships imagined that such an apparently dry subject could have been opened up in such a down-to-earth and entertaining manner as it has been by the noble Lord, Lord Houghton of Sowerby. I am not sure whether or not it is fair to say that we have with us a gamekeeper turned poacher. I thought that the noble Lord himself said that more or less, if not quite. But whatever that position may be, he gave us the benefit of his very great experience of the practical problems in this thorny subject.
I do not intend to wander into this jungle—always obscure, sometimes sinister—of which we have been given a glimpse by the two noble Lords who have already spoken. My sole interest is as a member of the accountancy profession, albeit no longer in practice—in fact, very definitely out of practice—and I cannot claim to have read through the 804 pages, the product of the labours of my noble and learned friend and his committee. However, I would say that, though I have not read through the report, no matter what other views may be expressed I am perhaps heartened by the first reaction of one leading tax practitioner: that the report is very tough, but fair. I think that that is only to be expected from a committee guided by my distinguished fellow countryman, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keith of Kinkel. At one stage of the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Houghton, in particular when I heard the word "minatory", I thought that he was leading up to his depicting a hanging judge at work directing this committee. That, I can assure your Lordships from personal experience, is very far from being the truth.
The one question that I should like to ask the Government is concerned with what happens next. Of the many bodies which gave evidence to the committee, probably the one most intimately
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concerned with the subject-matter of the report—with the obvious exception of the Inland Revenue—is the accountancy profession, represented by the Consultative Committee of Accountancy Bodies. This body gave its evidence to the committee, and it has set up a working party on the subject, which is still in existence. I simply wish to ask the Government to assure us that before legislation is introduced there will be further consultation with this body, as indeed doubtless there will be with other bodies. This is a body which is uniquely placed to represent the position of the taxpayer and, I believe, to give a fair view of the public interest.
Secondly, following from that, how soon may we expect such discussion and consultation to begin? The Government might reply that we should wait until the publication of Volume 3. I think the main ground has been covered in the two volumes so far published. The taxes remaining to be dealt with are (shall we say?) the more esoteric ones. I do not believe there is a need to delay further, and it will expedite the final legislation if the consultation can begin as soon as possible and while those who have been so concerned with the subject still have it in their minds.
I would further support the noble Lord, Lord Houghton in his plea that, in the interests of proper discussion and of ease of interpretation, any legislation should be completely distinct and separate from the normal Finance Bill. I would even hope that perhaps the Government would consider circulating in advance some draft clauses at the time of the consultative process. In any case, I would sincerely hope that in approaching legislation on this apparently somewhat tiresome and tedious subject the Government will pay full heed to the sensible and practical words of the noble Lord who introduced the debate.
6.30 p.m.
Lord Grantchester: My Lords, after some two and a half years of investigation, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keith of Kinkel, and his committee have produced two volumes of their report on the enforcement powers of the Revenue departments. Clearly, much thought and effort have gone into this production. I understand that a further volume is yet to come in relation to Customs and Excise duty. However, this is a suitable time to discuss the recommendations made in relation to the taxes dealt with in the report administered by the Inland Revenue, and value added tax. The noble Lord, Lord Houghton of Sowerby, is to be thanked for focusing our attention thereon in such a witty manner.
Although the first two volumes of the report run to more than 790 pages, the text concentrates on the enforcement powers of the Revenue and does not trespass on matters of chargeability. If so much paper has to be devoted to what is only a section of our tax law, is there perhaps something fundamentally wrong with the whole system? The enforcement powers of the Revenue are little more than an untidy array of powers that have accumulated over recent years, partly as taxes have extended their catchment area and partly due to the fact that, unlike most other countries, we have two Revenue departments with separate boards of management. That fact alone tends to result in an untidy system with separate enforcement agencies

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using differing procedures. The sheer weight of the report, dealing with one section only of the subject raises in my mind the question whether we should start by simplifying the tax system rather than modernising purely the enforcement power.
Let me start developing this thesis by drawing attention to the committee's terms of reference. The basic thinking is contained in the last sentence. This, amended for clarity, reads:
"To consider whether the enforcement powers of the Board of Inland Revenue and the Board of Customs and Excise are suited to their purposes having regard both to the need to ensure compliance with the law and to avoid excessive burdens on the taxpayer".
What, to my mind, this envisages is that it is both necessary and desirable to establish and maintain a fair balance between the powers of the Revenue Departments on the one hand and the burdens placed upon the taxpayer on the other. One must not give to the Revenue departments sledgehammer powers to crack nuts just because nuts can most effectively and efficiently be cracked by a sledgehammer. Alternatively, if there are nuts which require to be cracked, one must give the Revenue Departments a nut cracker which can do the job whatever type of nut may be in season. So there is at all times the necessity and desirability of establishing and maintaining a fair balance—a balance that the taxpayer will acknowledge to be fair and that will not allow a Revenue Department to use its powers by oppressing taxpayers unduly or unfairly.
In considering whether or not the existing tax laws or any proposed amendments thereto, in relation to enforcement powers, exhibit a fair balance, one must always bear in mind that, when a Revenue Department issues a demand—that is to say, an assessment—the burden of establishing that no tax is payable or that the assessment is excessive lies upon the taxpayer. I see this daily. The Revenue department, having inspected the books of a taxpayer, will allege that the books cannot be correct, that he must have done more business or taken more money than he has stated. Faced with such an allegation, it is for the taxpayer to establish that he did not do the additional alleged business—to establish the negative. He starts at a disadvantage.
Next, taxpayers are not computerised machines carrying on a business according to the latest manuals. They can carry on a business competently or sometimes incompetently. They can keep their books and records competently or sometimes not so competently. They can suffer accident, illness or other misfortune. But we have not yet imposed a tax on incompetence, such as failure of the small shopkeeper to limit shoplifting in his small store or to record detailed transactions by way of sale after a hard day's work. The introduction of value added tax has itself imposed burdens on the small shopkeeper. One has to consider the difficulties of running a newsagent's, tobacconist's and confectionery business making £50,000 to £100,000 a year for three months and producing, at the end of that period, an accurate tax return, taking account of the different types of liability for the goods sold and the differing choice of special schemes available for retailers. In these circumstances,
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taxpayers—except those who are clearly fraudulent—should not be threatened.
If one gives excessive powers to a Revenue Department, it will tend to use them. As an example, I shall read out the standard form of wording of a letter from one of the Revenue Departments to a small trader who has made supplies for the first time in excess of £6,000 in a three-month period during his year's trading but has not notified the department of that fact within 10 days. The standard form of letter reads:
"Although failure to notify your liability to be registered within the prescribed time limit is an offence under the Finance Act, section so and so"—
I may say that the penalty there is £1,000—
"the Commissioners have decided to take no further action".
That is the standard form of letter. Faced with this consideration of a need for a balance of power, I put forward two questions. First, before we impose penalties and charges for interest on taxpayers and attack moonlighting and the black economy, should we not simplify the tax laws so that they can be understood by the ordinary man in the street so far as those tax laws directly affect him? Secondly, before we impose any further duty or obligation on a taxpayer or threaten him with additional penalties and interest, should we not satisfy ourselves that we are not thereby imposing an excessive burden on him?
As to the first question, I throw out the suggestion that what we should replace our existing income and corporation tax laws with are two basic new taxes. The first should be a personal tax, charging simply salaries, casual earnings, dividends and other distribution of profits, with allowances, in terms of tax, so as to enable a negative income tax to be introduced, incorporating eventually social security payments; and this personal tax should be a liability of men and women on an equal basis—a simple tax just on that basis. Secondly, there shold be a business tax charging both supplies made in the course of a business and profits resulting therefrom. It is at this stage and in relation to this tax that the more complicated provisions can be introduced, as one will expect that such a tax will be administered by knowledgeable tax officials working on friendly terms with members of the accountancy profession. Then, when members of the public, individuals, can easily deal with their own personal tax liabilities, the problems of moonlighting and the black economy can be tackled effectively. Is this not better than imposing penalties and interest in an attempt to enable the Revenue to threaten and coerce taxpayers who plainly cannot be expected to understand the present complicated system?
The report recommends that the revenue departments, especially the Board of Customs and Excise, should have powers to impose default penalties and interest. It will then be left for the taxpayer to establish, if penalties are imposed upon him, that the penalties are unjustified and should be mitigated or removed. Are we satisfied that this will not cause an excessive burden of liability on the small shopkeeper, the small trader, the small business struggling to keep going, required to maintain elaborate records and faced with visits from the Revenue officers, whose duties are to find fault with the books and the returns?

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While on this aspect I should like to pose a subsidiary question in relation to the report. As regards the balance between the Revenue departments and the taxpayers, what recommendations are there in the report to alleviate the duties and obligations imposed upon the taxpayer? Are the recommendations as a whole not causing an undue and excessive burden upon him? Perhaps this appears clearly in one sentence from the report which I should like to cite. It says:
"enforcement powers are therefore necessary not only to coerce the dishonest and the neglectful, but to encourage the honest and conscientious".
Do the recommendations sufficiently encourage the honest and conscientious?
I hope that the report will be looked at in the way in which I have suggested—not merely from the point of view of easing the duties and obligations upon the Revenue departments so as to maximise the collection of money, but also from the point of view of the taxpayer and the burden cast upon him. I conclude by asking: do the Government regard the recommendations as maintaining the fair balance to which I have referred?
6.45 p.m.
Lord Kagan: My Lords, I shall as usual try to be as brief as possible. My noble friend Lord Houghton mentioned that the Government speak in two voices. The Department of Trade and Industry encourages small businesses to start and to build up, and once they are doing that the tax authorities and the Revenue, under the rules under which they have to operate, act as a brake and very often not only intervene, but slow the process down.
It has been accepted that the taxing of earnings, basically, is counter-productive to wealth creation, and that taxing spending has always increased incentive. Yet this country has for a long, long time moved in the area of increasing the taxing of earnings instead of the taxing of spending. Of course the authorities can only operate a system as laid down by Parliament, and so the concept of taxing earnings rather than taxing spending is really the fault of Parliament. It is a strange situation.
I am told that it has been done in the cause of fairness, yet in the socialist countries, in the Soviet Union, there is only one tax—not an increasing tax. It is 8 per cent. on income irrespective of whether you are a cleaner on a factory floor or a general serving out in the Far East. Is the reason for that that the Soviet Union is not left wing enough or concerned with fairness enough, or is it that it realised that the creation of wealth—and the purpose of taxation is to create revenue for the Government—can only be achieved by increasing incentive? That is one of the points that I want to make.
Secondly, listening to the previous speakers and their comments on enforcement, it should be remembered that those countries where there is most enforcement have many more problems in enforcing obedience to the law. The amount of taxation collected depends on the co-operation of the taxpayer and the wealth creators and on their acceptance of its fairness.
Lord Bruce of Donington: My Lords, the House will be grateful to my noble friend Lord Houghton of Sowerby for having afforded it the opportunity to discuss this very comprehensive report. It is to be hoped that the Government will take very careful note of the views that have been expressed this afternoon. We think it is important that this report and the voluminous information that is contained within it should not be lost. Therefore, what we would suggest is that the Government themselves should give the report very careful consideration indeed and should then publish their own views upon it, because it is not only the views of the Members of your Lordships' House and those of another place that are important it is the Government's attitude towards it. Then we can all know the reasoned arguments, from the Government's standpoint, that can be put forward either in support of or in contention with the main recommendations of the report.
I find my attitude towards taxation somewhat ambivalent. On the one hand, when I endeavour to take account of the public services from which I derive some benefit—public expenditure on the environment in which I live, and public expenditure on the preservation of law and order and on the provision of the various other amenities, including the National Health Service, whether these services are provided by the Government or by local authorities—part of me is immediately convinced that I am getting very good value for money in everything that I enjoy and possibly take for granted in comparison with the taxation that I pay. That is one side of me. But the other side exhibits a curious reluctance and a disinclination to pay the tax when I am presented with an assessment and the demands arising from the assessment. Possibly we all feel a little like that.
Indeed, in our relationship with the Inland Revenue many of us may to some extent sympathise with the sentiments expressed in a letter which was published in the Standard not so long ago. It was a letter sent to the Zimbabwe equivalent of the Inland Revenue, the Zimbabwe Inland Revenue Service, in which the recipient of an income tax return from the Zimbabwe taxation authority replied as follows:
"I regret so grave I am unable to complete the form, as I do not know what is meant by filling this form. However, I am not interested in this income service. Could you please cancel my name in your books, as this system has upset my mind and I do not know who registered me as one of your customers."
Many of us may, indeed, sympathise with those sentiments.
Some critical comments have been made about the Inland Revenue service this afternoon, and I do not think that personnel in the Inland Revenue service would take them amiss, particularly as they come from my noble friend Lord Houghton of Sowerby, who has been described as a gamekeeper turned poacher. However, there has been serious criticism of the Keith Report itself, and I hope that the noble Lord who is to reply will accept my assurance that I seek to make no party political capital out of this at all.
However, I should like to quote an observation on the Keith Report which was made by Conservative Central Office, because it contains criticisms that we

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ought to consider. This is what the small business section of Tory Central Office issued in June:
"What the tax Inspectors and their colleagues in Customs and Excise need to learn is a different attitude. Instead of being superior in their understanding of taxation and accounting systems and sure that those who make mistakes are doing so deliberately, they might remember that every penny that is available to tax gatherers, is earned by people with different skills from their own and that it would certainly be much better to assume an honest mistake and make it easy for the taxpayer to discuss it with them than to elaborate the sanctions and penalties hanging over the businessman. In this light the Keith Report should be read. From this angle it should be fought.".
That is a formidable critique, and in some ways one aspect or another of that criticism has been dealt with by successive noble Lords who have participated in this debate.
Therefore, it ought to be borne in mind that the Inland Revenue is not responsible for the injustices in the taxation legislation; neither is the Inland Revenue—nor, for that matter, the Customs and Excise—responsible for its complexity. As many noble Lords have pointed out, the system of taxation in this country is extremely complex, and even within the ordinary ambit of income tax and corporation tax there are very considerable differences not only in the law itself but in the administration of different parts of it.
My noble friend Lord Houghton of Sowerby referred to the unpaid tax gatherers. In connection, for example, with Schedule E—taxes on employment and income—the taxpayer himself has very little control over the manner in which the tax is collected from him. It is deducted weekly from his wage or from his salary on the basis of a code notified to the employer by the Inland Revenue. Two things have to be borne in mind about that. First, in comparison with other taxpayers, businessmen or companies, the tax is paid month by month, thereby contributing enormously to the liquidity of the Inland Revenue and presumably the reduction of the sacred public sector borrowing requirement. On the other hand, the tax of those who are assessed under Schedule D in connection with their businesses or professions falls due some months after the end of the year in which their final profits are determined. So the Schedule E taxpayer pays promptly and the Schedule D taxpayer delays payment of his tax. The latter is indeed very privileged thereby, and, likewise, apart from the consideration of advance corporation tax, so is the company.
The Schedule E taxpayer has very little control over the total amount of tax that he pays. As I have said, the notice of coding goes from the Revenue to the employer, and it has been admitted that one in every 10 notices of coding is wrong. This is a matter which is a cause of some irritation to the ordinary wage-earning taxpayer in this country. In the first place, he cannot always understand the complexities of the form itself. The notice of coding is very simple to anybody who knows anything about tax, but it is not always so very simple either to the wage-earner, who is provided with a copy of it, or to the person dealing with it in the firm concerned.
To get it corrected is a very long process. Some wage-earners do not even know that they have the right to have it corrected if it is wrong. So there are
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inequities in the administration of tax which are inherent in the taxation laws themselves. It is those to which I think the Government ought to direct their attention.
In connection with the Inland Revenue, the taxation burden is not spread quite as equitably as it is sometimes thought. Large public companies have a notional rate of tax of 52 per cent. and smaller companies, within certain profit limitations, have a rate of 42 per cent. In fact, the actual rates that are suffered vary quite considerably from those figures.
The Government themselves have admitted on more than one occasion that precisely owing to the granting of first year allowances, where 100 per cent. of all capital expenditure on plant and machinery is offset against profits, the average rate in certain areas of the country paid by the larger companies is not 52 per cent. but somewhere nearer 16 per cent. to 17 per cent. Whereas companies, whether they are large or small, which have very little capital expenditure but which may be just as large tend, exactly because they are not entitled to the 100 per cent. first year allowances in respect of a decreased capital expenditure, to pay probably nearer the actual rate. These are all inequities within the system.
The Schedule E taxpayer too tends to suffer certain disabilities in addition to those which are suffered by small businessmen or the self-employed. The rules for the admissibility of expense are a continued source of friction between the Inland Revenue and the taxpayer. I am bound to say that the Inland Revenue themselves can do a lot to eliminate that friction by not pursuing, or not opening up, avenues of further disallowance or avenues of further taxation by working on the margin.
Perhaps I may illustrate the point by saying this: brewery workers, for example, allowed 12 free cans of beer each per week, are likely to have to pay tax on the monies' worth because the beer can be taken away and sold. No tax charge will be made if the beer is consumed on the premises. This is one irritating and completely unnecessary imposition on taxpayers who fall into that category.
Then again the Revenue at the moment is keen to find out how much top anglers take home from competitions. A highly successful angler may be considered to be fishing on a professional basis and his winnings would be assessed. It is a question of extent, according to the Inland Revenue. These are irritations in the enforcement of the tax laws that can easily be avoided.
There are other cases too. As, for example, a teacher who did some spare time teaching work was called back to her job and had to incur extra travelling expense in order to perform the job. That was disallowed by the Revenue. Subsequently, owing to a case brought in the courts, the decision was reversed and she was allowed the expenditure for tax purposes. But for a long time thereafter, and still in some districts, the Inland Revenue endeavoured to enforce that rule, because of course under Schedule E, unlike Schedule D, every bit of expenditure incurred by an employee has to be wholly, necessarily, and exclusively incurred in the performance of their duties. The revenue tend to interpret that very rigorously indeed.

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This is not the fault entirely of the Revenue. It is the fault of the way in which the legislation is drawn. It would be a good thing if some effort were made to simplify tax legislation. When I was an articled clerk, the taxation text book, which was largely founded on the provisions of the Income Tax Act 1918, was about half-an-inch thick. The case law in the years between the wars arising from the Income Tax Act 1918 was minimal. Since that time, and particularly since the war, tax legislation has become very complicated indeed. So much so that instead of having half an inch the textbooks now are anything between a foot-and-a-half to two feet wide, and they are becoming of ever-increasing complexity, and the ordinary taxpayer cannot possibly be expected to understand them.
These things are not the fault of the Inland Revenue. They are not the fault of the Inland Revenue at all. But there has been a tendency in recent months, particularly since the Ramsay case passed through the Judicial Committee of your Lordships' House—the Appellate Tribunal of which your Lordships' House is from time to time—there has been a tendency on the Inland Revenue's part to take Ramsay to practically every extreme. Your Lordships will recall that the main essence of the Ramsay judgment was that although every transaction in a whole series of transactions was quite unexceptionable from the taxation standpoint, if the collection of the transactions taken as a whole was seen to be for the avoidance of income tax then the particular scheme which was devised for the precise purpose of tax avoidance could, in fact, be ruled void for tax purposes and the normal taxation liabilities would follow. I am paraphrasing the judgment very much, but there still is a tendency to open up the area which was revealed by the Ramsay decision and to apply it into spheres for which it was not specifically designed.
The other way in which Inland Revenue enforcement perhaps oversteps the mark is the endeavour to reopen past cases. There have been cases which have been negotiated out over the years between accountants representing their clients and the Inland Revenue, and a settlement has been arrived at. In more recent months there was one such case, the case of R. v. IRC ex parte Preston in which it was sought to reopen a whole series of tax settlements which had been arrived at some years before on the grounds that in a subsequent Act the arrangement arrived at four years before could not have been entered into. The judge very properly decided in that case that the Revenue were bound by the earlier decisions which they had reached in agreement with the accountants concerned.
The whole of the taxation system in this country, whether it involves the Inland Revenue or the Customs and Excise, depends on a certain degree of mutual trust and mutual goodwill. It is to be hoped that settlements, once arrived at, are not thereafter reopened on any grounds whatsoever.
One other word should be said, and it is this: unlike the popular impression that possibly could be derived of Inspectors of Taxes, they are probably the best tax administrators and the fairest tax administrators in the world. One can say with confidence that if there is a person with a small income, or whose affairs are comparatively minor, and they find themselves in tax difficulties, they can with confidence go themselves to
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their local inspector. He will, in most cases, bend over backwards to be as helpful as he can to the problems of the taxpayer, and may indeed—and he frequently does—open up avenues of claim which the taxpayers themselves had not thought of. These things should always be borne in mind.
I hope—and I think your Lordships will hope—that although we may look forward to taxation simplification, we shall not greatly disturb the method of administration of our taxation system as it exists now and certainly not without the Government coming out with a detailed White Paper as to their attitude and the Keith report; and, as the noble Lord, Lord Polwarth, has said, by due consultation with the consultative committee of accountancy bodies. This I think would be of great advantage but I feel—as many of your Lordships may feel—that we should not tamper with the system for the sake of change. We should change it only if we are convinced, after full consideration of all the factors, that it continues to preserve the fair balance between the taxpayer on the one hand and the Revenue or the Customs and Excise on the other. I hope that the debate which my noble friend Lord Houghton has initiated this afternoon, and the contributions that they were made to it by your Lordships, may enable the Government to approach the whole subject on those lines.
7.12 p.m.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Security (Lord Glenarthur): My Lords, I have listened with great interest to the contributions to this short debate from all sides of the House. The noble Lord, Lord Houghton, has done your Lordships a service by calling attention to this significant report, and in doing so in what I think we all agree was an entertaining way. I am a little conscious that my contribution may be rather dryer but not very long. I am also afraid that what I have to say is a little constrained, but not so constrained, I think, that I cannot start by quoting the obvious, with which everyone would agree, in the preamble to the noble and learned Lord's report, in which he says:
"Tax gatherers have been unpopular everywhere throughout the whole course of history".
He goes on:
"The payment of taxes is accompanied by a degreee of reluctance, greater in some persons that in others".
All the issues raised by the report are matters to which Ministers are giving considerable attention and study, so that I associate myself with the welcome given to the report in another place by my honourable friend the Financial Secretary, who said:
"We are grateful to the Committee for its work. The Report is a very substantial document. It deserves careful study and full consultation. This will inevitably be a long process"—[Official Report. Commons, 24/2/83; col. 1047]
Before I deal with specific matters raised in the debate, perhaps I may briefly remind your Lordships of the scale of the ground covered by the Report of the Committee on the Enforcement Powers of the Revenue Departments. Volumes 1 and 2 alone, which were pulished on 23rd March 1983, run to over 550 pages of closely argued text, together with a further 250 pages of summary and background notes. The

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scope includes, for Inland Revenue, the enforcement powers applying to income tax, corporation tax and capital gains tax. For Customs and Excise, the VAT powers are covered.
The committee have not yet finished their deliberations. A further volume (Volume 3) expected later in the year will be concerned with (for Inland Revenue) development land tax, capital transfer tax, petroleum revenue tax and stamp duty. For Customs and Excise, the topics to be included are customs, excise, betting and gaming duties and car tax.
It follows that, in one sense, our debate today might be thought a shade premature, in that we have not yet had the committee's last word on the totality of tax enforcement powers which they were set to study. That view is not shared by the Government. We are always ready to listen to views and we welcome authoritative comment. The contributions made by those of your Lordships who have taken part in this evening's debate will be carefully considered by the Government.
We recognise that the powers in respect of the taxes which were covered in Volumes 1 and 2 of the report are those which have attracted the most public interest and debate in the past. Indeed, my Lords, I cite as illustration the fact that, as he said, the noble Lord, Lord Houghton, himself has taken a prominent part in previous discussions of the Inland Revenue's power to enter premises under warrant and search for evidence of tax fraud under Section 20C of the Taxes Management Act 1970, which was enacted in the 1976 Finance Act. That power, together with the equivalent search power under the VAT code embodied in Section 37(3) of the Finance Act 1972, was examined in great depth by the committee, which devoted some 50 pages to it: Chapter 9 is concerned with criminal investigation of trading taxpayers.
The search powers to which I have referred represent one particularly sensitive area of both Revenue departments' enforcement activity, Other areas that have given rise to a measure of public disquiet include control and investigation techniques which can involve "in depth" examinations of trading taxpayers' affairs, and the application of such tests as rate of gross profit to purchases. On the other side, anxiety has been expressed in your Lordships' House and elsewhere about the loss of revenue in the black economy.
We now have the considered views of the committee, which sat for some two and a half years before producing Volumes 1 and 2 and took evidence from 64 organisations, including all those representative bodies which are particularly interested in taxation issues. The committee have helpfully signposted in their introductory chapter their broad impressions upon the topics which have excited some controversy. Here, it might be helpful if I quote from relevant extracts from the report. First, in respect of the Inland Revenue, I am quoting from Chapter 1, Paragraph 4.2, which reads:
"Our conclusion [on in depth accounts investigations] is that the broad approach of Inspectors is reasonable and appropriate, although we consider that much more should be done to describe to taxpayers the nature of the procedure and the reasons that underlie and justify putting questions to them both about their business and their private life styles".
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"As regards the use made by the Department of the power to search under warrant for evidence of tax fraud, the few occasions upon which it has been invoked since 1976 [16 cases in total] do not, in our view, amount to an oppressive exercise of power against the business community in general or small businesses in particular".
My Lords, on matters concerning Customs and Excise, the report says at Chapter 1, Paragraph 4.4:
"As regards the aspects of VAT enforcement that have given rise to most controversy, we have concluded that control visiting should continue to be the principal means of checking compliance. We are satisfied with Departmental instructions about, and the overall conduct of control visiting. We are however recommending modifications to the relevant powers and enhanced safeguards. We have also satisfied ourselves that the general practice on making assessments 'to best judgement', including mark-up assessments, is satisfactory in the great bulk of cases and that the avenues for review and redress are appropriate, with effective and modern independent appeal machinery. We have noted that the Departmental guidelines for exercise of powers by the VAT specialist investigators have been developed and strengthened over the years since the start of VAT in the light of experience. It is our impression that the current incidence of justified complaints is low and not such as to justify a recommendation to change the present arrangements. As regards search under warrant, we have noted that the use of the power is turning up evidence of substantial frauds in more than nine cases out of ten, and we have concluded that its use by Customs and Excise is responsible and not indiscriminate and that the execution of the warrants is generally well conducted".
The Government have taken note of the findings of the committee in these sensitive areas. It is right that debate should now be joined in a wider forum, both inside and outside your Lordships' House. With a report of the scale and depth of this one, well-informed debate would not be best served by rushing in with first impressions. The report has now been in the public domain for just four months. The Institute for Fiscal Studies mounted a half-day seminar in June, and the report forms a major part of a two-day conference planned by them for September. The College of Law devoted a morning seminar to the report as recently as 10th July. The Government welcome the expression of considered views on the report now that some reasonable time has been available to read it and think about the issues it explores. The views of those professions and interest groups affected, such as accountants and small businesses—accountants being what my noble friend Lord Polwarth, in particular, referred to—will be especially welcome.
Finally, I am grateful to have this opportunity to express the Government's appreciation of the considerable efforts that the noble and learned Lord. Lord Keith of Kinkel, and his colleagues have put into their report. The report is an impressive document which reflects the noble and learned Lord's personal qualities of clarity and incisiveness. It is right that such a lengthy and thorough piece of work should be considered in its entirety, and your Lordships will understand that it is still early days for the Government to form a considered view. However, the comments expressed this evening have been extremely useful and, as I said earlier, will greatly assist us in coming to our conclusions. May I therefore end by saying that we are all indebted to the noble Lord, Lord Houghton of Sowerby, for giving us the opportunity to consider the matter this evening.
7.22 p.m.
Lord Houghton of Sowerby: My Lords, I am very grateful indeed to noble Lords who have taken part in this debate. I think it has been worth while to have this

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preliminary discussion on the report and to give some first reactions to it. I count myself very fortunate in being a kind of "curtain-raiser" to the debate on this report, and I very gladly gave way to more temperate counsel when I had finished my speech.
Four professional accountants have taken part in this debate. Not always is the close alliance between the professional accountants and the Inland Revenue to be welcomed, but at least it is instructive. The noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, speaks from great experience as chairman of VAT appeals tribunals. He made some comments which I am sure will receive careful consideration. The noble Lord, Lord Diamond, told a moving story of how the follies of husbands can be visited upon their widows. I would respectfully suggest that the duties of the Inland Revenue, vast and extensive as they are, hardly go so far as saving widows from the follies of their husbands. Their job is to look after the revenue and not to look after the financial tribulations of widowhood. Husbands are supposed to have a sense of responsibility towards their widows, and if they go on fiddling and put themselves in a real jam at the time of their death, then if there is any way they can listen to what happens afterwards they must surely be full of remorse for what they did!
My noble friend Lord Bruce made the familiar plea for simplification. Winston Churchill appointed a simplification committee many years ago. It lasted nine years; it killed three chairmen; and it produced a brand-new income tax Act which flabbergasted everybody, including the Inland Revenue. In the end people allowed it to be known that they preferred the devil they knew to the one they did not know, and no more was heard of it. Then, of course, we had a Chancellor of the Exchequer, the late Sir Kingsley Wood, who badly wanted to make income tax understood by the people; but he, tragically enough, died on the very day in 1943 on which he was due to introduce, in another place, the Second Reading of the Finance Bill which started Pay-as-you-Earn. So history is full of interesting events on the question of simplification.
The answer is that taxpayers are so obsessed with the refinements of "fairness" that their demands make for complexity in taxation; and when we say that the general public are not responsible for the complexities of the taxation systems imposed upon them, the answer is that to a very large extent they are. They want differentials and they want refinements. "Fairness" is the plague of the British people. Life itself is unfair, but they do not believe it. The various forms of bureaucracy and public administration are believed to bring fairness into our lives, and people grumble if they do not. The realism of life should really be clearer to many members of the public than is the case today.
I have had my say. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Glenarthur, and I welcome him as a kind of new financial Minister. Those who are on the Front Bench opposite become jacks of all trades and masters of quite a few. We look forward to his further contributions to the debates when the time comes. Allow me to say to him that he has done all that could be expected of him today, because obviously we understand the position of the Government. Prematurely to have made declarations about their
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own attitude would have been quite unsuitable, and that is why I personally refrained from asking him any questions. I thought I would leave it to the noble Lord's own discretion as to whether or not he commented on my speech. He did so quite generously. That is all I could expect of him, and I am very grateful to him and to all other noble Lords. If we found a debate on the enforcement of the powers of the taxation authorities entertaining in some degree, then I am sure we can look forward to further debates with anticipation, and these debates might be even more exciting than those on the Data Protection Bill or the other responsibilities that are currently before us. I beg leave to withdraw my Motion for Papers.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

Human Rights: Violation
7.27 p.m.
Viscount Buckmaster Viscount Buckmaster rose to ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will define their attitude towards the continuing violation of human rights in Asia (less the Soviet Union), Africa and Latin America.
The noble Viscount said: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper. In doing so I am conscious of the immensity of my task and of my own inadequacy in attempting it. Indeed, I feel like a hill-walker who has hitherto tackled nothing more challenging than the Pennine Way, now confronted with the great panoply of the Himalayas.
In fact, the Question we are considering tonight is far beyond the scope of most Unstarred Questions. Over the last year—in fact it was exactly a year ago when I tabled a Motion in this sense—I have collected enough material on human rights violations, on the basis of press reports, media reports, reports from Amnesty International and, above all, the testimonies of friends, to cover at least four Unstarred Questions. However, I think your Lordships will agree, in the light of the very interesting and wide-ranging debates we have had recently in your Lordships' House on Communism and world hunger, that these wide-ranging debates are particularly valuable when dealing with the problem of human rights. I feel that this human rights problem is far more terrible and far more tragic than that of hunger, if only because its solution lies wholly within the power of mankind.
Somewhat surprisingly, I have discovered that there has been no wide-ranging debate of this kind on human rights either in your Lordships' House or in another place over the past few years. We have of course had numerous debates; there have been Starred Questions, Unstarred Questions and Questions for Written Answer on the legal and other aspects of human rights. But I propose tonight to consider this question in its starkest human terms, clothing the bare bones of the statistics with the flesh of suffering humanity—scars, scabs and all. In doing so, I am quite convinced that my presentation will be inadequate and probably inaccurate; but I hope your Lordships will not accuse me of exaggeration because that would surely be the greatest crime to commit in a speech of this kind.
One thing that has impressed me as a result of my researches is that, whether the violations of human rights in the areas that we are considering increasing or decreasing—they may be increasing in some areas and decreasing in others—nevertheless, they are continuing and continuing on a vast and terrifying scale. In fact they have been continuing since time immemorial and we can perhaps see a direct link between the massacre of the innocents by Herod and the slaughter of innocent civilians at Mai Lai by Lieutenant Calley in Vietnam—or more terribly the slaughter of 300,000 in Kampuchea by the armed forces between 1975 and 1979, of 500,000 or so in Indonesia between 1965 and 1966 and of many hundreds of thousands slaughtered by Amin in Uganda between 1971 and 1979. And so with torture. The rack and the thumbscrew of the Middle Ages have been replaced by electrodes attached to human genitals, and other diabolical devices.
However, I must give a more precise analysis of the situation. According to the latest report published by Amnesty International, in October 1982, which is nearly a year out of date now, violations of human rights which take the form of extra-judicial execution, abduction, imprisonment without trial and torture in prisons, were reported in 48 out of a total of 53 countries in Africa, in 32 out of a total of 39 in Asia and in 19 out of a total of 24 in Latin America which, if my geography and my addition are right—and they may not be infallible—gives us a total of 99 countries which are violating human rights out of a total of 116. If one were to prepare a blacklist of the worst violators, that would include Iran, Uganda, Guatemala, El Salvador, Chile, Pakistan, Kampuchea, Argentina and the Philippines—not necessarily in that order.
But these facts do not present the full picture, partly because Amnesty International is not able to obtain material about every country where violations are taking place, partly because there is another and important aspect of this problem which Amnesty International does not cover.
I need not remind your Lordships that we are within a very few days of the 150th anniversary of the death of William Wilberforce. A recent report in the press, which some of your Lordships may have seen, came to the astonishing conclusion that slavery is now more widespread even than it was in the days of Wilberforce. I find that hard to accept. Nevertheless, in this so-called civilised world of ours the most terrible things are happening in the sphere of slavery.
First, there is the exploitation and abuse of children. We learn from reliable evidence that in India no fewer than 16 million children between the ages of five and 15 are working for up to 12 or more hours a day in appalling conditions. In Iran and Turkey, little girls of five—and I think in some cases even less than five—are employed in the carpet factories: again, working long and tedious hours for a pittance, and they are employed because their nimble little fingers are more adept at stitching.
Then we have Morocco, where young boys—and some of your Lordships may have seen this—are employed in the tanneries, their bodies stained with dye in the same way that chimney-sweepers in Britain
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had their bodies encrusted with soot. Perhaps I can remind your Lordships that, although we no longer send children up chimneys, the caseload of battered and abused children handled by the NSPCC has increased by no less than 23 per cent, over the past year.
Then there is the very important problem of debt bondage which is widely practised in India, Mauritania and elsewhere. For example, in India there are supposed to be something like five million people who are now indebted to moneylenders, and this debt bondage extends in some cases to as many as nine generations. I could also mention the growing rate of female infanticide in China, the widespread practice of female circumcision in Africa and elsewhere, the burning of young brides in India and a recent report to the effect that over the next few years something like 5 million people in the Philippines are likely to die as a result of the Government's policy directed against the tribes.
One of the problems that we face—and it is perhaps the most important one of all—is lack of adequate information. Perhaps I may illustrate this by asking your Lordships to imagine a tapestry. somewhat like the Bayeux tapestry, extending from the Table to the Throne. On it one would see a mass of scenes showing the violations of human rights which are going on now, or which have taken place over the past few months. Most of this tapestry is in darkness, but here and there we have a little scene illuminated by the spotlight of a press report or perhaps the testimony of a person who has been there recently.
Let me start with Iran, where a bloody and insensate fanaticism still rules, and our first scene is of a secondary school where we see a group of soldiers rushing in and seizing some students, some of them in their early teens, dragging them off, protesting, to serve as cannon fodder in the army. In Iran, too, we see a group of Baha'is who are going to their execution, because they refuse to renounce their faith. As your Lordships may be aware, the persecution of the Baha'is has continued even since the Question in your Lordships' House on 28th June. But this persecution is not limited to Baha'is. It is not limited to Moslems. For example, in the Philippines we find widespread persecution of the Christian Church. Its leaders are being arrested and detained and in some cases tortured.
Let me now turn to Uganda. Here I must pause for a moment, because that is the area with which I am most familiar. I served there about 12 years ago and I have been responsible for maintaining certain Ugandans who have had to flee the country as a result of earlier persecution.
Your Lordships will be familiar with the situation from press reports, since Uganda has attracted more attention from the media than any other country in Africa or, indeed, in the third world. What has been happening is that the army have been running amok. They have been rampaging around, in most cases unpaid and unfed. They have been menacing and attacking civilians and have been doing so under the guise of eliminating guerrillas. But many of the young people killed and arrested were no more guerrillas than any of your Lordships' teenage sons. I was also told by

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a Briton who came back recently from Uganda that there are also what are known as "safe houses" in which rich businessmen are imprisoned and in some cases tortured until they can pay a ransom. Finally, there are, as your Lordships will be aware from recent press reports, something like 100,000 refugees herded into camps: people who have fled from the terror of the villages. To my horror, I heard from this source that the army had even been attacking the refugees in these camps.
We must be balanced and patient. We must accept that President Obote wants to restore order, and we are giving him support. I feel sure that the noble Lord the Minister will be able to enlarge upon this point. But it is perhaps a little difficult for the Ugandan Government to maintain that the terrible excesses of the army are committed without their knowledge when torture is widespread in prisons which are within a few miles of government headquarters.
Finally in this survey of our tapestry, we turn to Buenos Aires, where we find a mother grieving over the loss of her son—one of the 90,000 people who, we understand, have disappeared from Argentina, Chile and Mexico. Perhaps my noble friend Lord Chitnis will be able to enlarge upon this.
One very disturbing aspect of this human rights problem is that so many religious leaders, in particular state leaders, justify their policies on the basis of their religion. President Rios Montt of Guatemala claims to be a "born again" Christian, yet this does not prevent him allowing his army to commit the most terrible excesses. Exactly a year ago there was a report from an American missionary of a group of 89 people in Guatemala who were herded into a camp, shot or beaten to death and then burned; of the babies, tied to their mothers' backs, going, living, into the flames. Again, if this report is to be believed, young children were roped together and dragged into the flames. All of us would agree that the apartheid policy in South Africa is the very antithesis of Christian teaching, yet there are South African leaders who justify their policy on the basis of the Bible.
I turn now to Judaism. We find that President Begin justifies his policy of attacking the opponents of his régime—the Palestinian Arabs and so on—on the basis of the tooth for a tooth and the eye for an eye policy. And how often has he taken a whole jawful of teeth for one tooth, a whole fateful of eyes for one eye? But one learns from the Torah: "Who is strong? He who makes of his enemy a friend". Leading Judaistic divines tell me that this policy of a tooth for a tooth and an eye for an eye is now wholly unacceptable.
Thirdly, I turn to Islam, a religion which I have studied in some detail. Some people may say that President Khomeini's policy of executions and mutilations is justified by the Koran. If noble Lords read the Koran, as I have, they will find that the words coming through most forcefully are: "God is merciful, compassionate". They shine like a great beacon through the fog of obscurity which clouds so much of the Koran. What is even more important is that we read:
"And the recompense of evil is punishment like it; but whoso forgives and amends his reward is with Allah".
Is not that perhaps the most terrible of all the problems now facing human rights? Throughout most of the
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world the element of forgiveness is nowhere to be found.
Let me examine, too, the theory that suffering ennobles. In that context, I must speak particularly of the Ugandan martyrs. Forty-six of them went to their deaths in 1885 because they refused to renounce Christianity. They were marched from Kampala to a hill outside the city and given five days in which to collect firewood for their pyres. They died glorifying God. The spirit of those martyrs lives on now. It is found in the death of Archbishop Luwum, whose martyrdom was commemorated by the Pope on his visit to Britain. It is found throughout much of Uganda now. I have found the most moving examples of it. Some of the finest Christians I have met in the world have been Ugandans.
A visitor from outer space might indeed be amazed. He might well ask what is the correlation between the suprahuman which we find in this world and the sub-bestial: between our Luwums and our Schweitzers, our Hitlers and Amins. And would this visitor not also say that we have got our priorities wrong? We discover the mysteries of the atom, yet we use atomic energy to produce what Milton would call "great engines of war". We explore the mysteries of the moon and the marvels of Mars and yet we fail to light those little lanterns of love, those humble candles of mercy, tolerance and compassion which, if lit widely enough throughout the world, would surely transform it. Those lights remain unlit. Meanwhile, the violations of human rights continue, week after week, month after month, year after year—the terror, the torture, the senseless slaughter, the degradation and the despair, creating, as it were, a cacophony of sound even more horrendous than the Mars movement in Holst's suite "The Planets".
And what do we do? What is our reaction? Most of us, I fear, retreat, unable to bear this horror, eyes tightly closed, hands over ears. But surely, as human beings, we must show understanding and compassion. Having served for 30 years abroad, I feel that the things which unite us are more powerful than those which divide us, that the universal brotherhood of man is not just an empty concept, "like sounding brass or tinkling cymbal". It is something real and meaningful, for which we must all work.
I know that our sphere of action is comparatively limited, but perhaps I may briefly put to the noble Lord the Minister four proposals which I feel are worth considering. First, I feel that we must instil in our Foreign Service personnel a greater realisation of human rights problems. During the whole of my service, it was only in the last two years that I was given any directions at all about this matter, although the most terrible violations of human rights were occurring all around me. All too often I fear that the Foreign Office has used the provision in the United Nations Charter of Human Rights against interference in the affairs of foreign states as a convenient hedge under which to shelter from the harshest blasts of cruelty and intolerance.
Secondly, stemming from that, I would recommend that we give closer consideration to the human rights records of states with which we are in relationship. This may perhaps involve some modification of our

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trade or aid policy, but I cannot go into that now. Thirdly, I would submit that we should complain to the UN Commission on Human Rights, where complaint is justified, in concert with our EEC partners. Fourthly, I would recommend that we give every possible assistance to the promotion of the many organisations, most of them unofficial organisations like Amnesty, and so on, a great many all over the third world, working for human rights. There is now a charter, The African Charter on Human and People's Rights, which has been set up under the Organisation of African Unity which will achieve that. Unfortunately, this charter has so far been ratified by only seven African states. Might we not perhaps consider sowing the idea of such a charter among the Arab League states?
Finally, I would quote from that very lovely poem of Arthur Clough:
"And while the tired waves vainly breaking
Seem here no painful inch to gain,
Far back, through creeks and inlets making,
Comes silent, flooding in, the main.".
Have we not all stood on the shore wondering whether the tide is turning? I feel in my bones that the tide is turning. There are signs that it is, not least in the recent Madrid Conference between East and West. There are signs all over the developing world that the tide is turning, and the day may not be far distant when those waters of mercy and compassion "come silent, flooding in" to fill the creeks and inlets throughout the world to cover the harsh boulders of cruelty, the jagged rocks of intolerance; and we, although of course the movement of tides is outside human control, must surely do all we can to bring about the return of compassion and reason. Our voice can still be a powerful voice, especially if used in conjunction with the voices of our friends in the United States and Europe. It will be listened to, and it must be heard.
7.53 p.m.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, I believe we would all agree that the noble Viscount is doing a public service in asking this Question and in initiating this debate tonight. There is only one point in his speech which I would pick up, and that is where he hinted at the powers of darkness which have been mobilised by the developed, industrialised world. It is not simply the anniversary of Wilberforce that we are thinking of today: we are also within a few days of the 38th anniversary of the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima. Nothing could be more certain to abolish all human rights than the waging of a nuclear war which was initiated by the developed, not the developing, world.
I want to concentrate on one area tonight, and I want particularly to probe the Government's mind—because that is the purpose of this Question—as to their actions, as distinct from their fair words, in relation to the issue under discussion. I should like to say, first of all, that I hope and trust that nobody will misinterpret anything I say tonight as a justification for the horrors, the cruelty and the barbarous acts which I know of and have witnessed time without number on the continent of Africa; but I believe that it is more important, particularly for the Government and for us as Members of both Houses of Parliament. to understand first, before condemning.
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It was that notable statesman Lee Kwan Yew who said a few years ago at an international conference in Africa that one of the major failures of British colonial rule was that we had left no structure of security within those states which attained independence, and I believe that to have been proved and proved again, time without number, over the last 25 years. Those of us who have been in close contact with the men and women who have had to deal with the agonising problems of the newly-independent countries can only sympathise with them in the terrible choices with which they have so often been left. I am particularly recalling an evening on which I had to discuss for many hours with a president, who was an old friend of mine, whether or not he should confirm death sentences on a number of men, all of whom had been our friends—friends of both the president and myself. The choice, as he saw it, was between following his own humane instincts and the danger that, if he did so, he would be considered a weak man, opening the way to further disruption and possible civil war. That was a choice which should face no human being.
It is not surprising that in the continent of Africa at this time and in this generation there should be a great deal of violence, a great deal of cruelty and a great many human rights denied to millions of people. It is not surprising if one knows the slightest facts about the history of the continent. That is a history which over the last 500 years has been dominated, first of all, by the slave trade imposed from without, from Europe and Arabia—there was no slave trade in Africa itself as we know it; there was domestic slavery, but not chattel slavery—and by the removal and consequent disruption of whole communities; generations of young men and women taken from their countries.
That was followed by the division of the continent between European states; by the accompanying brutality, such as that in the Congo which shocked the world, and the domination of alien peoples and alien systems; and by the introduction of totally new concepts of political life. Then there were the wars of liberation, such as were to be seen particularly in the French and Portuguese colonies, which concluded with a continent divided totally artificially, divided completely according to European considerations, with profound divisions between ethnic communities, between economic communities and between geographic regions. It is not surprising, I suggest, that the consequence is a great deal of violence, a great deal of chaos and a great deal of terror.
Then, following independence, there was the introduction of the market place; of a consumer society; of the open encouragement to the entrepreneur. There was the large scale destruction of the egalitarian state. These are not excuses and they are not justifications—they are facts. They are facts which could only lead to tragedy.
But Africa is a continent in a state of transition and experiment. All I will add to that which I have said about the continent as a whole is that in those experiments, we must understand much more shrewdly than is common in this country or in Europe that, for example, the single party state—when it is conducted in a democratic fashion. as it is in Tanzania, Zambia and in a number of other countries—may very well fit into the needs of the

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people of those countries at this present stage. It is not necessarily undemocratic. In some ways, it is even more deeply democratic than the imposition of a Westminster model on societies which have not developed along the same lines as our society in this country.
I will finish by asking the Government a question concerning their attitude to a country in Africa for which I believe we in this country still have a major responsibility. That country is South Africa. Why "a major responsibility"? Because it was Britain who imposed and devised the original South African constitution in 1909–10. In that constitution, it was the British Parliament which, for the first time, introduced constitutionally the provision that only those with white skin colour should be allowed to legislate. This was the first time in the history of South Africa that this provision had been laid down as a constitutional principle and enshrined in the constitution.
Some of the brave Afrikaners of the time, such as Mr. Schreiner, came and petitioned Parliament to reject the constitution. As they saw it, Britain was devising a constitution for South Africa which could only lead to a denial of basic human rights for the vast majority of the population. Within three years of the acceptance of that constitution, the South Africans had devised land settlement—a settlement which left 13–7 per cent, of the land to nearly 80 per cent, of the African people and the remaining 84·3 per cent, of the land to the white people.
It is ridiculous to talk about apartheid as though it is something new to South Africa. It is the logical conclusion of a trend and process which goes right back into South African history—and certainly right back to the British constitution of 1910. From that time onwards, there has been a struggle in South Africa for human rights. The first basic human right is the right to participate in the government of one's own society. That is a right which we have enshrined in the phrase "No taxation without representation". That right has been denied to nearly 80 per cent, of the population of South Africa since 1910. That right is still denied. It is denied even more firmly today than it was in 1910. Rights have been progressively taken away from the Africans, from the coloureds, and from the Asians in South Africa ever since. Now, the nonwhite population is being still further discriminated against by being expelled from urban life. Literally millions of Africans have been moved from their homes over the past few years—compulsorily moved to settlements in the so-called Bantustans. Those are settlements where they cannot sustain themselves, and where it is estimated by one South African professor that 30,000 children die every year; this, in the richest country in the continent.
I have deliberately given a short précis of this issue because I wish to tackle the question: what can the Government do? It is not enough to say that we are against apartheid. The fact is that under the pressures of apartheid, a resistance movement has inevitably developed. Perhaps I should declare an interest because I have been banned from South Africa for 24 years now. But I was in South Africa when the great congress took place which proclaimed the Freedom
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Charter. The preamble to the Freedom Charter stated quite simply:
"We the people of South Africa declare for all our country and the world to know that South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white, and that no Government can justly claim authority unless it is based on the will of all the people".
Surely, that is the first human right. In Africa the second—perhaps equal—right is the right to own one's land. That is a right which, as I have shown, has been denied to the vast majority of the people of South Africa for the past 70 years.
As a consequence of the resistance, we find again, inevitably, that there are tortures in the prison cells; that there are deaths in police offices; that there are massive trials; that there are bannings; that there are restrictions. One finds that friends with whom I worked, such as Nelson Mandela and Walter Sisulu, have been incarcerated for 20 years, and have spent most of their adult lives in gaol. These are deliberate refusals to provide the basic human rights which the African people are demanding.
When one denies human rights to people, they inevitably—as all peoples have done—fight back. In that fight, there are martyrs and there are victims. This is the society which was initiated along those lines by Britain. It is a society which is sustained with the aid of British capital. British trade, and with the support of some leading members, as we saw only last week in the cricket world, of the British establishment.
I should like to ask the Government what they intend to do about the growing, dangerous international repercussions of the situation in southern Africa—a situation in which the fundamental human rights, as the Government I know will admit, are denied to the vast majority of the people. I repeat, it is not enough to say that we disagree with and dislike, or even abhor, apartheid. What are the Government going to do when the international community has constantly demanded action against that regime which is destroying the human rights of the vast majority of the South African people?
May I finish with a quotation, which some of' your Lordships will have heard before, because I think it symbolises the real issue as it is seen through the eyes of the majority of Africans within South Africa, within a South Africa which is the only country in the world that I know of that denies human rights on the grounds of birth, on the grounds of the skin colour that a baby is born with. Again I will quote from my martyred friend Nelson Mandela who, when he was sentenced at the Rivonia trial to life imprisonment because of his opposition to the regime, had this to say—and I believe it is a text for all who fight on behalf of the human rights of the world community. He said:
"I have fought against white domination and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and see realised. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.".
That is the spirit of the African resistance movement in South Africa. I should like to know where the Government stand in this war which now has been waged certainly over the past 20 years: I should like to know where the British Government stand in the middle of this war for the human rights of the majority of the South African community.
8.12 p.m.
Lord Chitnis: My Lords, I too am grateful to the noble Viscount for introducing this Question tonight, and particularly because I want to talk specifically about E1 Salvador, congratulate him on its timeliness, because it is at the end of this month that the American Administration has to certify yet again whether there has been an improvement in the human rights situation in E1 Salvador thus to justify continuing sending military aid to that country. President Reagan has just set up his commission on the long-term problems of Central America, and former President Duarte has just visited this country. I would say in parenthesis that I am glad the Government gave him a warm welcome. I do hope that while they did so they reflected that without the ill-conceived and unnecessary election in E1 Salvador last year he would still be the president of that country. Secondly, I should like yet again to echo his request to the Government that a British embassy may again be established in E1 Salvador.
Although it is seven months since I was last in that country. I have had recent first-hand contact with it in a long conversation I had two or three weeks ago with Ana Margarita Gasteazoro. She is a prominent member of the Salvadorian Labour Party, the MNR, who was detained two years ago. She was tortured at the National Guard headquarters there, and has been in prison since then until she was suddenly released on 23rd May this year. I would like to say two things about her. The first is to thank those people in this country who worked so hard for her release. When she was first detained, I, together with a Labour and a Conservative Member of another place, wrote to the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, who was then Foreign Secretary, and asked him if he could do anything to help in this situation. He did say that he would make enquiries and I believe that a British diplomat did visit her when she was in prison. I am glad, though a little bit surprised, to see that the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, is answering the debate tonight. I am glad because he was a Minister for about half the time that she was in detention, and on the assumption that there must have been considerable efforts made by the Foreign Office to secure her release, I think that appreciation should be expressed.
Nonetheless, one should remember, as she herself said, that she may have been released and others may have been released with her, but those who were released were quite arbitrarily chosen. Many prisoners still remain in political detention, and many of them have been detained longer than she had been. The other thing she made very clear was the deep fear of those who have been released but who, unlike her, have been unable to leave the country. They are marked, they are living in an atmosphere of the death squads and they are obviously very frightened people indeed. In fact, in a sense those who are in prison in E1 Salvador are the lucky ones, because outside the prison the picture continues to be dreadful.
In the last period of seven days for which I have detailed information—and this is about five or six weeks ago—there were 37 civilian killings and 18 disappearances. Do remember, with regard to these figures, that we are talking about a country with a
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population one-twelfth the size of the United Kingdom. Among the dead was a man called Pablo Torres. The significant thing about him was that he was a beneficiary of a previous amnesty. It gives point to the fears of those who have recently been released that at any moment the same thing may happen to them. Among the other dead or disappeared within these few days was a former promoter of the Agrarian Reform Agency, a doctor who was a former MNR (socialist) activist, a professor from San Salvador and the secretary of the Catholic University of the West. In case anyone harbours the unworthy thought that it is only the Left that gets damaged in E1 Salvador, the Christian Democrat headquarters—that is, the Salvadorian equivalent of Central Office—was sprayed with machine gun fire, and Ray Prendes, who is a distinguished Christian Democrat politician in E1 Salvador, who is trying to work within the system and could not by any stroke of imagination be called a Left-wing guerrilla, blamed the extreme Right. I do emphasise that those are events that happened in just one week in El Salvador.
In these circumstances it seems to me that to certify that there has been an improvement of human rights in that country is impossible. But of course it will be done. President Reagan is determined on his policy of military aid to the E1 Salvadorian Government and he will simply tailor the facts to suit his case. While I wish the commission he has set up success, the negative terms in which it was announced do not seem to me to augur very well. In other words, I consider American policy in E1 Salvador to be both blinkered and inadequate. I hope that the Minister tonight, and the British Government in future, will at best dissociate themselves from that policy, but at least express some reservations about American policy in E1 Salvador, because what is happening there is so damaging to the cause of human rights the world over.
8.18 p.m.
Lord Whaddon: My Lords, we have heard an appalling catalogue tonight of the abuse of basic human rights, on the grounds of colour, very forcibly put by the noble Lord, Lord Hatch, and I would certainly like to associate myself with the feelings that he expressed, on the grounds of politics, as expressed, by the noble Lord, Lord Chitnis. The noble Viscount also drew our attention to abuses of human rights on grounds of religious belief in various parts of the world. I should like to associate myself with that and to reinforce what he said.
It seems almost beyond belief in this century that people can be oppressed because of simple religious belief, and yet it is happening. Possibly the prime example at the present time is the continuing appalling suppression of the Baha'is in Iran, in spite of so very many protests. One has only to meet a few of the Baha'is to realise what peaceful, tolerant, co-operative people they are. Their attitude to their fellow men is always most impressive. One cannot mix with them for more than a few minutes without feeling that here is a touch of godliness. whether it is our religion or not. Speaking for myself, and for everyone else I know who has had anything to do with them, there is a feeling of sickness and disbelief that the persecution of these

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people can be tolerated in this world, but it is happening.
The Iranian constitution is most extraordinary. It lays down an Islamic state as being fundamental in Iran. But it tolerates certain nominated groups as well. It names Christians as a tolerated minority. It also names Jews as a tolerated minority. However, unless a group is mentioned in the constitution, its members are simply non-people with no rights whatever as human beings. This is an astonishingly blinkered attitude. The Baha'is are not mentioned although there are about 300,000 who live in Iran, and have done so for many generations. They do not exist legally because their religion is not mentioned in the constitution. Because of this they are denied every decent human right. Their marriages are not recognised and because they are not recognised any Baha'is who marry under the Baha'i rites are regarded as living in immorality and are liable to all sorts of penalties. They are subjected to deprivation of educational opportunities. They have no property rights. Their property is liable to confiscation at any time. This has been going on for year after year.
A number of recent incidents have particularly stuck in my mind. In the city of Shiraz, 80 Baha'is were recently arrested simply for being Baha'is. They were subjected to enormous pressure to convert to Islam and to recant their own faith, but they refused to do so. Out of the 80 who were arrested 22 were condemned to death. The astonishing cruelty of that persecution is shown by the fact that the authorities, although having condemned 22, did not name which 22 were to be executed. So far 19 have been executed. Presumably another three of the survivors remain under sentence of death, but they do not know who they will be. What greater cat and mouse game can one imagine—and this is done in the name of God!
In the village of Ival recently 130 Baha'is were rounded up and driven into a walled field. They were left there without food or water under the blazing sun. They were told they would be let out only when they were converted. They refused to be converted. After three days and nights of exposure they were eventually let out, but they were abused, stoned and chased into the woods. Of course, they still refused to be converted.
An incident which possibly more than any of these touched me recently was when a Baha'i husband and wife were subjected to extreme pressure to renounce their religion. Understandably, the husband changed his religion and was pardoned. The wife refused and was executed. It is believed that the husband has since developed an extreme psychological disturbance, which is not surprising. What ghastly, impossible pressure that is to put on families—again, in the name of God! It is absolutely right that we should express our revulsion at such abuses.
President Reagan appealed to the Government of Iran to pardon the Shiraz Baha'is who were condemned to death. In spite of his appeal, many of the sentences have been carried out. What a pity it is that the rest of the leaders of nations in the world did not associate themselves with President Reagan's demand.
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Her Majesty's Government have a good record on the admission of Baha'i refugees. I pay tribute to the Government for having taken that attitude, and I appeal to them to continue with that attitude because I have a strong feeling that the flow of refugees will continue and increase. Perhaps we can also press the United Nations Commission on Human Rights at its meeting beginning in August to renew its appeal to Iran to take a more civilised attitude. We should renew the pressure on the Secretary General of the United Nations to send his envoy to Iran in order to make representations on the spot.
Possibly the best pressure that could be exerted on the Government of Iran would be from the Moslem nations. There are a number of Moslem nations in the Commonwealth with whom we should have a special influence. The Moslem religion is one of the world's major religions and the overwhelming majority of Moslems are godfearing and good living people for whom one must have the deepest respect. But surely every Moslem should realise that the events in Iran and the outrages being committed against the Baha'is in the name of Islam are besmirching the reputation of the whole religion, whether or not they themselves are associated with it. Therefore, it is very much in the interests of the whole of Islam that all Moslems should condemn the abuses in Iran for the sake of their own religion. Her Majesty's Government should perhaps press this point of view with Moslem members of the Commonwealth.
In saying that I am certainly not taking a holier-than-thou attitude. The Christian religion in its time has committed some appalling abuses. We do not forget the Inquisition. But possibly we have had time and the benefit of history to learn the lesson that the martyrdom of one's opponents is not only wrong but it is absolutely counter-productive and reinforces the will of the people that one is trying to suppress. At present the suppression of the Baha'is is drawing sympathetic attention to that religion throughout the world. In Iran there is no doubt that it is inserting steel into the very souls of the people who are being persecuted. History shows us that persecution cannot and will not succeed. The question remains: how many innocent lives will be sacrificed before the persecutors realise that their efforts are simply digging a grave for their own beliefs?
8.28 p.m.
Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: My Lords, we are indebted to the noble Viscount, Lord Buckmaster, for initiating this debate on a subject of the highest importance. I believe we have had a wide-ranging debate, which, albeit short, has been one of considerable significance. Surely one of the saddest aspects of a world in which remarkable advances are constantly being made in science and technology is man's continuing inhumanity to his neighbour in so many parts of the globe. Man has gone to the moon and is exploring the mysteries of space, yet he does not recognise that other men have basic rights to freedom, justice and a peaceful existence.
People are imprisoned without trial in the most appalling conditions. They are starved, beaten, tortured and killed without compunction. In some cases medical science is used to inflict torture, and in

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others trials in court are rigged to try to put a cloak of respectability over a monstrous travesty of justice. These things are done in the name of the state or, even more odious, as the noble Lord, Lord Whaddon, has just said, in defence, or in the name, of religion or to advance some tyrant's ambition. They are done in the name of freedom as well! The noble Viscount has given us examples of these crimes against humanity in some parts of the world. I shall refer briefly to some examples which cause grave concern.
Perhaps I may start with Latin America, not only because of our long association with many parts of the sub-continent but also because of the inevitable involvement of the United States there. I listened with great interest and respect to the short but important speech of the noble Lord. Lord Chitnis. We recognise the concern of the United States about all political developments in Latin America and especially in those countries which are, so to speak, on her doorstep: nor do we forget that the United States is a close friend and ally. This is why aspects of American intervention in E1 Salvador and Nicaragua are distressing. Human rights are not a conspicuous element there.
In the war in E1 Salvador between the guerrillas and the Right-wing Government, it is the defenceless population which is suffering at the hands of the security forces, which are amply supplied with arms from the United States. The Church there estimates that about 40,000 civilians have been killed in the conflict. A human rights commission was set up by President Mangana last December, but the killing still goes on. As we know, elections were held in E1 Salvador and were said by Government representatives to be fair, although again we must take account of what the noble Lord, Lord Chitnis, said in his report. He took a very different view of those elections, which, if I recall his words, he described as "fundamentally flawed".
The European Council which met at Stuttgart on 17th June made it clear that:
"the problems of Central America cannot be solved by military means but only by a political solution springing from the region itself and respecting the principles of non-interference and inviolability of frontiers".
The Council supported the initiative of the Contadora Group. We shall be glad to have the Minister's comments on any progress being made by that group.
The bipartisan national commission set up by President Reagan to advise on the problems of Central America must be warmly welcomed. Dr. Kissinger, with his great experience, will be an ideal chairman. We hope that he and his colleagues will be able to start their work soon. Doubtless they will consult with the Contadora Group. We have noted that the four presidents in the Contadora Group have also issued a statement in the last few days listing specific proposals for peace in the area. They reiterated the two elements in the conflict, as they see it. The first was that foreign intervention must come to an end and the second that the crisis in the region has its origins in deep-rooted social injustice. These are matters to which we have drawn attention before in the House.
As the House is aware, the situation in Nicaragua is equally disturbing. Here again, human rights have
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been trampled underfoot and thousands of innocent people have been killed. I read a note from a number of British nationals who are working in Nicaragua and who appeal to the British Government to come down clearly in favour of peace in the region, and join those countries which are working for a negotiated settlement advanced by Mexico and supported by France, among other countries. The danger is that the United States. whose historic concern for human rights has been a shining light to so many, and who fought a bitter civil war in defence of human rights, should now be seen to be unnecessarily involved in a cruel war.
The British Government must take care not to get themselves into an impossible position of condemning the violation of human rights on the one hand but rigidly adhering to the foreign policy line of the United States on the other. We must seek to be independent and objective in these matters. Furthermore,
"those who come to equity must come with clean hands."
It certainly weakens the attacks made by the United States when they condemn human rights violations in Poland while at the same time actively supporting Right-wing dictatorships which are guilty of massive crimes in certain Latin American countries.
There is of course a lively awareness of this in the United States. The House Foreign Affairs Committee of Congress has expressed its anxiety on several occasions, especially about human rights conditions in Chile, Guatemala, the Argentine and El Salvador. But the anomalies in Government attitudes both in the United States and in this country are confusing, to say the least. Let me give some examples.
First, the Government assert officially that things in E1 Salvador are improving: other witnesses, including Amnesty International, to which I pay the highest tribute, take a different view. Quite apart from our relations with the Argentine, the Argentine still regard themselves as being in a state of war with us. They have a grim human rights record, with 15.000 people missing there. Yet British banks contributed £100 million towards the international loan to that country. Again, in Nicaragua, Mr. Arana, a spokesman of the FDN guerrilla movement, said that they had had informal talks with the British Government. This I read in the Guardian on 13th July. I should like the Minister to confirm whether that is true. If it is, what is the object of talking to Mr. Arana and his colleagues?
The point must also be made that the attitude of the United Kingdom to Chile over the last few years, and especially since the Falklands conflict, has been questionable. The flavour of the Government's developing policy can be obtained in the statement made by Mr. Peter Rees during his visit to Santiago in September last year. when he said:
"the Pinochet regime is a moderating and stabilising force in Latin America".
with which Britain is:
"interested in deepening and strengthening political relations".
I must say that that would be a curious relationship for us to be fostering.
Furthermore, the Government's ambivalent—and I choose the word with some care—and hypocritical

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conduct in the United Nations deserves rather more attention than it has thus far received. Last December the United Kingdom Government supported a United Nation's resolution condemning the Pinochet regime's human rights record, while on the other hand downgrading the human rights issue by proposing the removal of the special rapporteur, thus relieving the Chilean Government of constant international embarrassment. On the one hand we make the right noises about human rights; on the other we hold out a helpful hand to a dictatorial Government in Chile.
The noble Viscount, Lord Buckmaster, also dealt with a number of countries in Africa. Two things may be said about that great continent in the context of this debate. First, human rights, as we understand them in this country, or indeed as they are defined in the United Nations Charter, are completely disregarded in South Africa. The doctrine of apartheid operates against human rights. The doctrine of apartheid, or something like it, has been practised in many countries over the centuries, and it has always brought disaster in its wake. It is wicked, unchristian and indefensible. The evidence of the cruelty and torture which it sets in train is incontrovertible.
I have before me a document, Torture in South Africa, published by the Catholic Institute for International Relations, the British Council of Churches and the International Commission of Jurists, and it makes grim and sad reading. It gives details of the way in which prisoners and political detainees are treated by the South African Government, the manner in which the security police there behave and the general attitude of South African Ministers. The document refers to:
"the widespread and systematic use made by Security Police of assault and torture during the interrogation of detainees".
The Detainees' Parents Support Committee have assembled the evidence in a report containing 70 affidavits. On 27th April of last year they met the South African Minister of Law and Order, presented the evidence to him and made a very modest request—namely, that there should be a code of conduct for interrogators and an independent system of monitoring the behaviour of interrogators. The Government's response was to reject the evidence, and the South African CID told the committee that they might even be prosecuted if the allegations were not proved.
The physical and psychological abuse to which detainees are subjected is carefully documented in the report itself, and it makes grim reading. Page 11 of the report refers to:
"Deprivation of sleep in at least 20 cases, some for periods of many days and nights. In one case involving lengthy sleep deprivation the police made payment of substantial damages arising out of their treatment of the detainee culminating in her being found in a comatose condition by the district surgeon".
The report also refers to:
"Deprivation of food and drink whilst being interrogated.
"Deprivation of toilet facilities … Enforced standing and arduous physical exercises in over 28 cases for long periods, sometimes days and nights…
"Exposure to cold in 25 cases by being kept naked for long periods …
"Enforced suspension is reported in 11 cases …
"In 54 cases, including six women, hitting with fists, slapping, kicking, beating with sticks, batons, hosepipes, gun butts and other
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objects, crushing of toes with chairs or bricks, dragging by hair, banging head on wall or table …"
and so on. The report goes on to state:
"Suffocation is reported in 25 cases, mostly by hooding with a hag made of canvas or plastic…
"Electric shock is alleged in 22 cases…
"Attacks on genitals are reported in 14 cases"—
and so the evidence goes on. It is a deplorable record, and one that must be condemned in the severest possible terms.
The committee has made a request for minimum rights, and it seems to me to be reasonable. It is asking for simple things which we take for granted in this country: access to a lawyer, access to relatives, access to a doctor of choice, access to reading material. Furthermore, there should be an enforceable code setting out standards of interrogation. This is what it is asking for—simple rights, which have been granted in civilised countries for very many years past.
What is the Government's reaction to apartheid and to South Africa generally? Here again, the Government have used words of condemnation, but they have not always matched them in their relations with the South African Government. For example, they have turned away from any action when South Africa has attacked her neighbours, some of whom are members of the Commonwealth. They voted in favour of a 622 million dollar loan to South Africa by the IMF. They have allowed British radar equipment with a clear military potential to be supplied to South Africa, and they have given permission for British officers to resign their commissions to join the South African Army. It is not easy to reconcile protestations of abhorrence of apartheid on the one hand and these supportive measures on the other hand.
My second point on Africa is that there are black African governments which practise measures which are in total contravention of decent, civilised conduct. Because they were at one time colonies, because they are black, there is a tendency to be somewhat less critical of them. That is a dangerous attitude. Tyranny is tyranny wherever it occurs. Imprisonment without trial and torture are as wicked in a black country as they are in a white country. We are often told that a move away from democratic practice with free elections and free opposition parties is something natural, and even desirable, in African countries, and that a one-party state is a development to be expected and even defended.
I listened with care to what my noble friend Lord Hatch of Lusby said in his speech, and I agreed with most of what he said. But on this particular question I must disagree with him fundamentally. Let me not mince words about these developments. We are not talking about Westminster Government, or European Government. We are talking about the essentials of democracy, and a move away from a democratic government to a one-party state is a retrograde step towards an unpredictable future. They destroy—
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, will the noble Lord allow me to intervene? Will he not agree that, provided you have a choice of candidates for the electorate, you have democracy without having a multi-party state?
Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: My Lords, I cannot agree with my noble friend. I do not believe that you can have democracy if you deny opposition parties the opportunity to stand for elections, to be elected, and to make their point of view clear.I recognise the struggle of many of the presidents to whom my noble friend has referrred. They are friends of his, as they are friends of mine. I am thinking in particular of President Kaunda and President Nyerere. I have a great admiration for them. They are benevolent men, they are good men, and they are doing a remarkable job in difficult circumstances. But what I am saying is that, so far as I am concerned, they do not operate democratic procedures as I understand them. That is all that I am saying. These men are, of course, benevolent men; these countries are fortunate.
But movements in that direction tend to destroy freedom. They elevate the state, or some ambitious individual in the state, and within a measurable time the prisons are full, the newspapers are controlled, and people walk in fear. I recall that a good deal of tolerance was shown to Idi Amin when he took power in Uganda. That former British Army sergeant was a cold-blooded megalomaniac, if ever there was one.
I believe that when we give aid to countries where we know human rights to be at risk, we should wherever possible use the occasion to ameliorate the lot of those who are in peril, and I warmly welcome the EEC initiative linking aid to human rights.
Finally, I should like to follow the noble Viscount to the Middle East and two other Asian countries. First, Turkey, a member of NATO and the European Council, is showing a frightening disregard for human rights. General Evren has gaoled dissenting politicians such as the former Prime Minister. Mr. Suleiman Demirel. Since the 1980 coup all political parties are barred and hundreds of political leaders are barred from political office. The present Government are an improvement on their predecessors, but repression and even political killings continue there. I read in The Times on 16th June that the Government had been officially held responsible for the death under torture of a person detained by the police. It was reassuring to note that it was Turkey's highest administrative court, the Council of State, which gave this verdict and described the case as an infringement of human rights. What view do the Government take of any action that the EEC might take in relation to aid to Turkey? NATO exists to defend human rights and personal freedom, and its members should not themselves traduce them.
Perhaps the Minister will also comment on the position in Bangladesh and that country's record on human rights. It is a military dictatorship, and I hope that the Government are satisfied that funds given to Bangladesh for civilian purposes are not diverted to military use. Will the Minister be good enough to confirm that the Government are satisfied on that point?
Mention was also made by the noble Viscount, Lord Buckmaster, of the Philippines, and attention has also been focused on those islands in recent weeks. There is substantial evidence that human rights are violated on an increasing scale in the Philippines, and what is disturbing is the information that the Commonwealth
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Development Corporation is spending large sums on a project in Mindanao. Is this expenditure of £6 million justified in the light of what is happening there in relation to human rights?
The noble Viscount referred to the continuing misery of debt bondage in India, and to Iran, and Uganda, and we heard the moving appeal of the noble Lord, Lord Whaddon, about the Baha'is, with which I am sure the whole House sympathises.
The sad fact is that one could go on to other countries, to Vietnam, to Korea (North and South). to Indonesia, and Cambodia—the list is a long one—where men and women are suffering untold cruelties, and where death is often a happy release. The noble Viscount gave us some of the terrible statistics. The report of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights in Geneva, states that 2 million people have been executed without proper trial over the last 15 years. Independent observers think that the list must be headed by Uganda and Kampuchea, with an estimated 300,000 people killed in each of those countries during the 1970s.
What can we do about it? We talk about it. We hold out our hands up in horror, and sometimes we forget about it. But we all hope that somehow, some day, it will come to an end. There is some evidence that almost all governments now recognise the validity of a growing body of international law that spells out the basic rights and obligations they owe their citizens. World public opinion is developing very slowly. Like individuals, countries want to be respected. Governments such as our own must do all that they can, through aid, through diplomatic action, through honest dealing, through our own conduct of affairs, to influence the course of events, and to help those who do not enjoy the freedom which we prize above everything else.
8.49 p.m.
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Viscount, Lord Buckmaster, for reminding your Lordships of the appalling violations of basic human rights which are widespread in so many parts of the world. The noble Viscount's Question referred to Asia, Africa and Latin America. and some of the tragic abuses of human rights are indeed to be found in these continents. But it remains a sad truth that grave abuses are to be found in Europe also. They can occur whenever those in authority harbour the delusion that they somehow have a right, in the name of some dogma or straightforward self-interest, to override the basic freedoms which we cherish so highly. They can occur when authorities fail to control the excesses of their officials. The Government deplore all such abuses regardless of the reasons with which their perpetrators attempt to justify them.
We have repeatedly made clear our concern about human rights and, like our predecessors and other Western Governments, we have insisted that violations of basic rights are a legitimate matter of international concern, debate and action. Some countries still take the view that any such expression of concern is an unwarranted interference in their internal domestic affairs. But one of the more heartening developments in recent years is that this argument is now widely seen as hollow special

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pleading when it relates to abuses which clearly contravene the fundamental standards of decency expressed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The practice of the United Nations, particularly over the past 10 years or so, has endorsed this view and the United Nations and its subsidiary bodies, notably the Commission on Human Rights, have increasingly expressed concern and tried to take action where there is evidence of gross violations of human rights. The United Kingdom has been in the forefront of these developments and the international community can be in no doubt of our unequivocal position on these matters.
The difficult question of course which faces all Governments which share our concern, is how best to act on this concern in the interests of those we are trying to help. The test which we try to apply has to be a practical one and is simply stated. Are our efforts likely to help reduce human misery and repression or do they simply give us the satisfaction of having done something, when in fact they may have made the sufferers' position worse? It is easy, indeed understandable, and in many ways admirable, for people to call on the Government to make strong condemnations of human rights violations in particular countries, or even to apply sanctions against those countries. I think that the noble Viscount, Lord Buckmaster, was suggesting that we do not go far enough in this direction, and I would not want to claim that we always get it exactly right. But I would warn that one can often exaggerate the effectiveness of scoldings from afar. Very often, a public condemnation of the abuse will harden attitudes, not only damaging our relations and the hope of further influence, but causing a Government to react even more harshly against those we were attempting to help. There is, unfortunately, no shortage of evidence that this does happen.
We have to judge in each case the right way to make known our concern in a way that will achieve improvements. There is no one answer on how to do this, as the problems and attitudes differ from country to country, as do our relationships with those countries. In some cases, direct pressure in public may indeed be useful; in others, it may be counter-productive. In many cases, where we do judge it helpful to make direct representations, these are best made privately. I can assure your Lordships that we do this quite frequently. The results are inevitably varied, but there have been some successes. This sort of action can often be the more effective when it is concerted with our partners in the Ten and a great deal of effort goes on behind the scenes on this.
The noble Viscount, Lord Buckmaster, suggested that we should do more to foster the activities of human rights groups in countries where abuses occur. This is an area where your Lordships may agree that we should move with great caution. Many Governments are prone to see opposition, subversion and dissidence at work when their citizens appeal for an end to persecution and for the local application of universal rights. Further, some Governments want to persuade themselves that such activities do not reflect authentic national feelings but are, rather, orchestrated by hostile powers abroad. Such accusations can have serious consequences for those involved.
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As I have said, the United Kingdom has played a substantial part in bringing human rights to the fore in the United Nations and in drawing attention to particular abuses. I should like to pay tribute at this point to the outstanding work of my noble friend Lord Colville of Culross, who has represented the United Kingdom at the Commission on Human Rights for the past four years. He has not only maintained and enhanced the standing of the United Kingdom in the field of human rights but his tireless work has undoubtedly made a real contribution to the relief of suffering. For example, in 1980, largely as a result of a United Kingdom initiative, a working group was set up to investigate the question of "disappearances". Since it began work, this group, under the chairmanship of my noble friend, has successfully convinced the Governments concerned that it is not moved by a desire to score political points. Although difficult to quantify, it is likely that some lives have actually been saved by the intervention of this group, and Governments can no longer behave in the belief that no one will notice or act.
My noble friend has also recently been appointed special rapporteur to the Commission on Human Rights on Guatemala. We, and the international community, look forward to his report on that unhappy country, a country to whose human rights record we have often drawn attention in United Nations debates. At the most recent meeting of the commission, the United Kingdom expressed its concern about huge increases in the number of refugees and other grave reports of continuing violations of human rights. We hope that my noble friend's report will give the international community the facts on which it can judge the record of the new Guatemalan Government.
I do not think that I can hope to cover all the countries to which reference has been made in my speech but it is more than pleasing to be able to report that the situation in Bolivia has greatly improved since the establishment of the democratic Government of President Siles Zuazo. The United Kingdom accordingly had no hesitation in co-sponsoring a resolution endorsing the recommendation of the special rapporteur that consideration of Bolivia at the Human Rights Commission be terminated.
In another part of the world however we remain deeply concerned about reports from Afghanistan. Under the Soviet-backed puppet regime of Babrak Karmal, the Afghan people are deprived of even their most fundamental rights. Freedom of speech and assembly are non-existent. There have been numerous reports of tortures, detentions and summary executions. It has been estimated that 3,000 to 4,000 political prisoners are held in Kabul's main prison alone. We are appalled by the massive and flagrant violations of human rights which have been inflicted on the Afghan people during the three and a half years of Soviet military occupation. In short, the Karmal régime's record on human rights is deplorable. In excess of 100,000 Soviet troops continue to prop up a puppet régime, depriving the Afghan people of the fundamental human right of self-determination. The increasingly brutal attacks by Soviet and Karmal regime troops against civilian targets deserve the strongest condemnation.

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We have given full support to the successive United Nations resolutions on Afghanistan, both at the General Assembly and at the Commission on Human Rights, calling for the immediate withdrawal of foreign troops, the restoration of Afghanistan's independence and non-aligned status, self-determination for the Afghan people and the return of the refugees in safety and honour. At the recent meeting of the commission, the United Kingdom drew particular attention to the massacre of 105 Afghan civilians by Soviet troops in Logar province in September 1982. Soviet attacks on the Shomali region, north of Kabul, and the city of Herat in the spring were condemned by Ministers of the Ten in a statement by the West German Foreign Minister, Herr Genscher, on 15th May. We shall continue to call on the Soviet Union to honour its obligations under the United Nations charter and withdraw its forces from Afghanistan immediately.
I now turn to Iran, where the position of the Baha'is is particularly serious. This was referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Whaddon. My noble friend Lady Young has already expressed our abhorrence at the execution of 16 Baha'is, including 10 women, to your Lordships on 28th June. Following reports of the execution of Baha'is in Shiraz, our representative in Tehran has made known to the Iranian Government our concern at renewed persecution of the Baha'is in Iran. We have also sought the views of our partners in the European Community on the possibility of joint action in relation to the Iranian Government in Tehran. We shall, of course, bear in mind the importance of using other bodies, particularly the United Nations and its specialist human rights machinery, to bring home to the Iranian Government concern outside Iran at the degrading and inhuman treatment meted out to the leading Baha'is. We are, of course, in close touch with representatives of the Baha'i community in Britain.
Many of the peoples of Africa also suffer from violations of human rights in various forms. The system of apartheid in South Africa is an abhorrent form of institutionalised discrimination, and the Government have made clear their objections to it and the repressive measures used to enforce it. I can perhaps do no better than refer to the words of my right honourable friend the Prime Minister, speaking in the other place a year or so ago, when she said:
"The policy of apartheid, with its emphasis on separating peoples rather than bringing them together, and all the harshness required to impose it on the South African population is wholly unacceptable".—[0ffical Report, Commons, 25/7/79; col. 629.]
That remains the Government's view. But it is no use exaggerating what Her Majesty's Government can do in that situation. We clearly cannot declare war on them. We do not believe that sanctions are effective because they tend to hurt black Africans inside South Africa much more than they do the white people. We know from our own experience that, in any event, these sanctions are often not effective. But we do express our condemnation; we do try to encourage peaceful changes and we do take direct action when we can—for example, with the European code of conduct for transnational companies operating in South Africa.
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The noble Viscount, Lord Buckmaster, was particularly concerned about the position in Uganda. We are, of course, concerned about allegations of human rights abuse in that country. We take every opportunity to make clear to President Obote and representatives of his Government, both in London and in Kampala, the importance we attach to the observance of human rights. The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs raised the matter with the Ugandan Prime Minister on 6th July, and my honourable friend Mr. Rifkind also put our concern to the Ugandan High Commissioner here on 6th June and emphasised our concern during his recent visit to Uganda in July.
The Ugandan Government are therefore aware of our concern and of international concern, and have recently implemented some corrective measures. These include the gazetting of all detainees, the establishment of a review tribunal and the provision of stricter punishments for army and police personnel, found guilty of violations of human rights.
I turn now to the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Chitnis, in particular with regard to E1 Salvador. At the recent meeting of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, to which I have already referred, we drew attention to disturbing reports of violations in E1 Salvador. We recognise the difficulties of the Government in that country in their task of imposing a reasonable rule of law in a country where factional violence is widespread and where opposition to the Government is expressed through violence and murder. We wholeheartedly condemn these violations, by whomsoever they are committed. We urge the Government to continue their efforts to restore civil peace and protect the population from human rights violations. They have recently set up a peace commission and a human rights corn mission to investigate the situation. This, and the amnesty law which resulted in the release of some 300 political prisoners, are steps in the right direction, but only steps.
The noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn, also referred in his speech to the position and the problems of Central America. I should say that Her Majesty's Government support the efforts of the Contadora group of countries to bring about peace in the region, and we are of course aware of those proposals. But it is too early to say what progress they will be able to make.
The noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn, also referred to the position with regard to Chile. Her Majesty's Government have consistently made clear their concern about the human rights situation in that country. We have never left the Chilean Government in any doubt about our condemnation of the continued violation of human rights there. Our position was amply demonstrated by our support at the United Nations Human Rights Commission for the resolution on Chile which expressed international concern and renewed the mandate of the special rapporteur. I think the noble Lord thought we had opposed that, but that is not the case: we supported the reappointment. When my honourable friend the Member for Woking, then Minister of State at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, visited Chile in April, he made clear the Government's concern to the Chilean Government and called on Cardinal Silva and

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the acting chairman of the Chilean Commission for Human Rights.
The noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn, also referred to the position in Bangladesh, and I should like to touch on that matter. Under martial law, the constitution has been suspended and open political activity is banned at present. Several leading politicians were arrested briefly during student disturbances in March. General Ershad, the head of the military Government, has said that he will hold free elections as soon as possible. Some laws controlling political activity have recently been relaxed, and indoor political meetings are now allowed. The Government of Bangladesh are aware of our hope that democracy can be restored as soon as possible and that human rights will be respected.
The United Kingdom has also played a full and constructive part at the CSCE meeting in Madrid. I am sure your Lordships will join me in welcoming the provisional agreement that has been reached among 34 of the 35 participants on the text of a concluding document. We hope that consensus may soon be reached on the text so that the meeting may be brought to a conclusion, at which point we shall be able to give a final assessment. Meanwhile, it records useful if modest advances on the Final Act, including proposals to hold meetings on human rights and human contacts.
I am afraid that I have not had time in this short debate to survey the whole of the area covered by the noble Viscount's Question, nor indeed to consider in detail the depressing range of violations of human rights that occur. I hope, however, that I have said enough to assure your Lordships that this Government, like their predecessors—and this is the last area where there are party points to be made—deplore these violations wherever they occur. The action we take is sometimes highly visible, sometimes not; but on occasion it is successful.
Before concluding, and again in thanking the noble Viscount for having given us this opportunity for a debate, I must pick up one further point from his speech. He suggested that our representatives overseas should be given clearer instructions on what and how to report on human rights in the countries they cover. There are in fact standing instructions for all posts overseas on the need for and the importance of including the situation of human rights in their countries of accreditation in their normal round of reporting. Because the situation varies so widely from country to country, officials inevitably have to exercise their judgment on how and what to report. Although reliable information is sometimes difficult to obtain, the need to report it is well understood. We do not see this as a problem, but I can undertake that the reporting instructions will be kept under review.
The sheer scale of human rights' abuses in the world presents us with appalling evidence of what man is capable of doing to his fellows, and individual cases forcibly remind us that cruelty and torture are continuing evils and not aberrations of the past. At the same time the bravery of those who are prepared to suffer rather than compromise their freedoms and their beliefs must inspire us to keep faith with them and never to condone by our indifference the actions of their oppressors and tormentors.
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Faced with these enormities, it would be easy to become disheartened and the Government remain convinced that the power of continued persuasion is the best weapon we have in this field. Our aim is to contribute to a climate of opinion in which all those in authority will come to see that they have much to lose and nothing worth while to gain by disregarding or violating basic human rights.
House adjourned at ten minutes past nine o'clock.