Lords Sitting of 30 June 1983

Preamble
The House met at three of the clock (Prayers having been read earlier at the Judicial Sitting by the Lord Bishop of Norwich): The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
Several Lords—Took the Oath or Affirmed.

Consumer Affairs: Ministerial Responsibility
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 it is their intention to appoint a Minister for Consumer Affairs and, if not, with which Minister the responsibility will lie.
The Lord President of the Council (Viscount Whitelaw): My Lords, the Minister responsible for consumer affairs is now Mr. Alex Fletcher. He will report direct on these matters to the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry within the new department of that name.
Baroness Burton of Coventry: My Lords, I never expected the Leader of the House to answer this Question, and in spite of the honour he has done us might I ask him if he is aware that those of us interested in consumer affairs and in the consumer organisations will find his Answer disappointing? Does the noble Viscount not realise that, without meaning any discourtesy to Mr. Fletcher, we feel the demoting of consumer affairs from being the responsibility of the Minister of State to a Parliamentary Under-Secretary, however able, may reflect the attitude of the Government towards this important area? Can the matter be reconsidered?
Viscount Whitelaw: My Lords, I can assure the noble Baroness that there is no question of downgrading the position, as she fears. Mr. Fletcher has considerable responsibilities in a new and much bigger department. The Government feel that to have a Minister in a much bigger department, responsible to a Secretary of State with wider responsibilities, does give consumer affairs and competition policy the position that they ought to have.
Lord Strabolgi: My Lords, may I ask the noble Viscount the Leader of the House who is to answer for consumer affairs in your Lordships' House?
Viscount Whitelaw: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi. My noble friend Lord Belstead will be taking the lead on trade matters, assisted by my noble friend Lord Lyell. Questions on consumer matters will normally be dealt with by one of them in the same way as other trade matters.
Baroness Fisher of Rednal: My Lords, listening to the noble Viscount the Leader of the House, it might
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appear that the Government feel that consumer affairs will be better dealt with under this reorganisation. However, that is not the view of the general public, who feel constantly that this Government have taken less interest in consumer affairs. Is the noble Viscount willing to accept that the Government's role in consumer affairs and consumer protection has now been taken over by television? All TV channels now run consumer programmes which are seen by thousands and thousands of people in this country. Does the noble Viscount not agree that these programmes show quite clearly that the consumer has to be considered seriously? Is the noble Viscount aware that these programmes clearly expose abuses of consumers, which need remedying?
Viscount Whitelaw: My Lords, I do not accept the view that because a television company or various television channels take an interest in a particular matter it means that the Government are not doing so. That would surely be a very curious doctrine for us to adopt in Parliament as a whole. I maintain that the Government take considerable responsibilities so far as consumer affairs are concerned and consider them to be very important. If the work of the Government and of the Minister for consumer affairs in the Department of Trade and Industry is helped by these television channels, and abuses are brought forward, then that enables him to do his job more effectively.
Lord Winstanley: My Lords, are we to take it from the noble Viscount's original Answer that the junior Minister to whom he referred will now be responsible for important matters such as the funding of the National Association of Citizens Advice Bureaux?
Viscount Whitelaw: My Lords, I do not think that I shall be drawn into that argument all over again. The Minister will be responsible for all consumer affairs; but he will be responsible directly to the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry—and that means that the Secretary of State himself will take a personal interest in these matters.
Lord Morris: My Lords, does my noble friend the Leader of the House not agree that the department of state which has overall responsibility for the manufacturers of goods should also be the department responsible for the consumers of those goods?
Viscount Whitelaw: My Lords, I believe that is a very sound point of view.
Baroness Burton of Coventry: My Lords, might I revert to the point I raised before? Does the noble Viscount not realise the feelings that some of us have? Does he not appreciate that when Mr. Parkinson outlined the duties of the three Ministers of State in his department, we were very worried that consumer affairs were not included in those responsibilities? While, once again, I am not criticising Mr. Fletcher, it does seem to us that this is a dangerous demoting of consumer affairs.
Viscount Whitelaw: My Lords, I assure the noble Baroness that it is not intended to be so. I will of course

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have a word with my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry to ensure that the consumer interests concerned fully appreciate that position, and that he himself makes it clear to them.
Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: My Lords, we are obliged to the noble Viscount for all the information that he has given; but will he be good enough to tell the House what Mr. Fletcher's precise remit is and what Civil Service back-up he will have?
Viscount Whitelaw: My Lords, he will have other responsibilities as well as consumer policies. He will also be responsible for some of the radio regulation and radio frequency policies which were previously dealt with through the Home Office.
Lord Nugent of Guildford: My Lords, as most consumers are also taxpayers, will my noble friend remember that the bigger this department becomes the higher the taxes are likely to be?
Viscount Whitelaw: My Lords, my noble friend has, as always, put his finger on a very important point.

Manufactured Goods: Balance of Trade
3.10 p.m.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: 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 what were the figures of Britain's balance of trade in manufactured goods in the first four months of 1983.
The Minister of State, Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Lord Belstead): My Lords, in the first four months of 1983 the United Kingdom's balance of trade in manufactured goods is estimated to be in deficit by £1 billion.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, is the noble Lord the Minister himself not shocked at having to reveal this figure? Is it not the case that this country depends for its vital imports of food and raw materials on exports of manufactures—which at one time, as recently as 1977, had risen to a figure of £5 billion? What has happened to the Government's claim that British productivity has risen so rapidly over the past year, if we now find that the increase in retail sales is being met by foreign manufacturers?
Lord Belstead: My Lords, I am not shocked by the Answer I have given the noble Lord. Growth of imports is evidence of increased industrial activity and of rising consumer demand, both of which offer increased opportunities to British industry. It is very heartening (as was said by my noble friend Lord Cockfield in yesterday's debate) that the CBI's industrial trends inquiry showed an increase in output and improved order books for the fifth month in succession.
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The noble Lord mentioned productivity and the year 1977. It might be of interest to the House to know that every day £120 million-worth of manufactured goods are exported from this country. That means that over the 12 months to the end of May this year we exported £10 billion-worth more of manufactured goods than in the last year of the Labour Government.
Lord Shinwell: My Lords, can the noble Lord say whether the term "manufactured goods" includes the sale of arms to other countries, and to what extent they have been paid for?
Lord Belstead: My Lords, I cannot answer that question; but, yes, of course, arms sales are included.
Lord Diamond: My Lords, are the figures the noble Lord gives in real terms or in cash terms? Would he be good enough on every occasion in future, as we have had this difficulty with him in the past, to make it clear to the House what information he is giving to your Lordships, lest the House be misled by his answers?
Lord Belstead: My Lords, unless I say to the contrary, the figures I give are in cash terms.
Lord Ezra: My Lords, in spite of the answers given by the noble Lord the Minister, I should still like to suggest that this is a very disturbing trend. May I ask the noble Lord what measures the Government propose to take, either through the British Overseas Trade Board or in other ways, to reverse this trend?
Lord Belstead: My Lords, I think it is fair to say that in the Budgets of the past two years incentives have been given to both new and expanding businesses. Of course, through the work of the British Overseas Trade Board and other agencies I believe that, with output continuing to rise, so jobs will begin to come back.
Lord Molloy: My Lords, would the Minister not agree that in terms of manufactured goods an increase in manufacturing will not merely be good for the country as a whole but, what is perhaps most important, will make a real contribution to bringing down the scourge this country suffers from at the moment—extremely high unemployment?
Lord Belstead: My Lords, in case there is any misunderstanding I must make it clear that manufacturing output in the first four months of this year—the only months for which I have figures—is most definitely up.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that over the past year manufacturing production has been down? Would he answer my previous question as to whether it is not still necessary for this country to have a surplus in manufacturing trade in order to obtain our essential imports of food and raw materials? Could he say what Government policy is going to be when they find the buffer of North Sea oil is beginning to run out?
Lord Belstead: My Lords, the Government do not agree with the noble Lord that it is necessary, or even desirable, to have a surplus in trade on every single

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commodity. We are in surplus on oil and services, and we are in a strong overall position—a £3,050 million surplus last year.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, I am asking the noble Lord about manufactured goods. What is his answer on manufactured goods?
Lord Belstead: My Lords, my answer to the noble Lord remains the same as it was in my answer to his original supplementary question; that is, that growth in imports is evidence of increased industrial activity and of rising consumer demand. There is evidence, whether or not the noble Lord agrees, that British industry is now beginning to take advantage of those opportunities, in contradistinction to other countries in the OECD, which, as my noble friend Lord Gowrie pointed out in the debate yesterday, were on a downward trend at the beginning of this year so far as manufacturing output is concerned, while this country, despite all our difficulties, was on an upward curve.
Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: My Lords, notwithstanding what the noble Lord has said, is it not a distressing fact that we are for the first time in a century importing more manufactured goods than we are exporting? Is that not the problem which the Government have to solve, especially taking into account the fact that oil is part of our exports?
Lord Belstead: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn, is habitually fair, and I am sure the noble Lord would recognise the force of the information which my noble friend Lord Gowrie gave in the debate yesterday. I repeat that at a time when the countries of the OECD, including our leading industrial competitors, were on a downward curve in manufacturing output, this country was at the beginning of an upward curve. When the noble Lord asks what the Government are going to do, we are going to try to keep prices stable, we are going to try to keep interest rates down, and we are going to continue to give adequate incentives to industry.
Lord Jacques: My Lords, if we are so much more competitive, why is it that our figure for unemployment was only half a point more than the OECD figure in 1979 and is now 5½ per cent. more? That surely takes some explaining.
Lord Belstead: My Lords, like all other countries, during the recession it has been difficult to increase manufacturing output. We are now beginning to do so. If we can continue to do so then it is possible that the jobs will follow.

Agile Combat Aircraft
3.19 p.m.
Lord Gisborough: 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 the carbon fibre raw material for the Agile Combat
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Aircraft will be from British, Japanese or other sources.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Armed Forces (Lord Trefgarne): My Lords, the Agile Combat Aircraft is a private venture project by industry, led by British Aerospace, in collaboration with European partners. I understand that the three collaborative partners have chosen a Japanese source of carbon fibre.
Lord Gisborough: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for that Answer. Would he agree that if the Japanese carbon fibre is used for the production of the demonstrator it will be extremely unlikely that it will be possible for the British carbon fibre to be used in the production line? This is a material which has such a great future, and it is one in respect of which we held the lead 10 years ago. That whole lead will disappear and will be transferred to the Orient.
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, I am advised that there would be no technical difficulty in changing to British manufactured material of comparable quality, but the decisions in this matter must be taken by the companies themselves. The noble Lord may be interested to know that for some years we have been financing a demonstrator programme at British Aerospace, Warton. For that work it was agreed at the outset that on technical grounds carbon fibre of United Kingdom origin would be used.
Lord Bishopston: My Lords, does the Minister recognise the seriousness of the point made by his noble friend, especially as regards the British position? Will the Minister say what the criteria were in relation to the alternative sources of material? Further, can he say what aspects were taken into account in reaching this decision, which set a very difficult precedent for British interests?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, I am afraid these were matters for the commercial judgment of British Aerospace and not for the Government.
Lord Beswick: My Lords, would it not be possible to say that suitability and price were the main considerations? Would it not also be possible for the noble Lord and others to pay tribute to the manufacturers for their progressive application of this new material in the new aircraft?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, I think the noble Lord is referring to the aircraft manufacturers, and certainly I can confirm that the availability of this new material opens the way for some exciting developments.
Lord Orr-Ewing: My Lords, is it not particularly important that all high technology equipment, where conceivably possible, should be incorporated and embodied in this aircraft and should come from either Britain or her partners? Is it not sad that carbon fibre, which was invented at the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough, should be one of the high technology composite materials which we now have to buy from Japan—one hopes that this is only temporary—rather than from sources in the United Kingdom, the place it was invented?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, I certainly hope that it may be possible to use a British source for this material in the future, but I must say that in this initial experimental programme it would not have been right to impose conditions of that kind on the manufacturer.
Lord Gisborough: My Lords, will my noble friend express the concern of the House to British Aerospace over this matter, particularly as the United Kingdom manufacturers say that they can meet all the specifications that are required and can match the particular fineness, I think it is, that the Japanese can achieve?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, I am certain that British Aerospace will take careful note of the exchanges in your Lordships' House this afternoon.
Lord Morris: My Lords, while I accept my noble friend's point that this matter is for the commercial judgment of the company concerned, what plans do Her Majesty's Government have for persuading or encouraging the company to buy British rather than Japanese?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, as I have said, it would not be right for the Government to impose conditions on the manufacturer of the kind the noble Lord has in mind. We are always anxious that British sources of materials or components are used when the technical specification is right, when the price is right and when the other conditions, such as delivery, are right.
Lord Sandys: My Lords, will my noble friend say whether there are applications for carbon fibre outside the defence field and British Aerospace? Will the Government give priority to this growth industry, which is clearly one of the industries of the future?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, I imagine there are other applications for this material, but as is so often the case it is the aerospace industry that is leading the way.

The Schools Council
3.25 p.m.
Baroness David: 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 what their intentions are regarding the Schools Council, and how they plan to implement their proposals.
The Earl of Swinton: My Lords, the present Schools Council is to be replaced by the Secondary Examinations Council, which was incorporated on 23rd May, and a school curriculum development body. My right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Education and Science is discussing with the local authority associations detailed arrangements for the latter body.
Baroness David: My Lords, I thank the Minister for that reply, but does he not think that the Schools
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Council has had to go on for a very long time since it was first announced in April 1982 that the Schools Council was to be abolished? That has been a very unsatisfactory and miserable situation for the staff who have been waiting to know what will happen.
May I put a few further questions about the curriculum body which is to follow? Has the chairman been appointed? Will it be Professor Blin-Stoyle, as was rumoured in the newspapers last week? When will the members and the staff be appointed? When will it be able to commission work? Will the new body or the Secondary Examinations Council be framing the curriculum? There was a recent article by Sir James Hamilton, an ex-Permanent Secretary, which suggested that the examination council would establish the framework for the curriculum. Ministers have certainly said that the curriculum would be more important than the examination.
The Earl of Swinton: My Lords, a number of questions have been asked by the noble Baroness, and I hope I can remember them as I proceed. I agree that there has been a delay. I do not think it is any secret that there have been negotiations with the local education authority associations which have not been altogether speedy.
As regards the staff, I know that they have suffered difficulties and I am sorry about it. However, some have already received provisional offers of appointment to the Secondary Examinations Council. It is hoped that the school curriculum development body will take advantage of the experience and expertise of the present Schools Council staff in making appointments. Others have already been accepted for voluntary redundancy.
As regards the chairman of the school curriculum development body, I wish to state absolutely categorically that no approach has been made to any individual to chair the new body. It is to be regretted that the article appeared in last Friday's Times Educational Supplement. It is hoped that the work of the curriculum development body will start in the autumn, but there are a few problems and negotiations are continuing, and it may be somewhat delayed.
Lord Stewart of Fulham: My Lords, can the noble Lord say anything about the various projects and plans for publication now being considered by the Schools Council? Will they be taken on by the curriculum body and brought to fruition? What will happen to the considerable income from royalties that now accrues to the Schools, Council for those publications?
The Earl of Swinton: In the main that will be for the new body to consider, but the Government will ask it to take over the few contractual commitments of the Schools Council which will still be in existence: that is, seven projects out of the current total of 24. I shall have to write to the noble Lord about the royalties but I imagine the position will probably be the same for the new body.
Lord Hankey: My Lords, in view of the controversies about the curricula for British school examinations, may we take it that the new body which has been formed will look at the international

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baccalauréat examination and curriculum which has had extraordinary success in being adopted by international colleges all over the world?
The Earl of Swinton: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Hankey, for mentioning that. As he is aware, he and I sit on the council of Atlantic College, which uses that. I am not altogether sure whether this will come under the heading of schools examination, but I am sure it is a point that my right honourable friend will consider.
Baroness David: My Lords, following up the Minister's answer to my noble friend Lord Stewart of Fulham, has the Minister considered the educational and financial case for continuing certain activities of the Schools Council that it has already embarked upon and letting them go on until March 1984? There is still uncertainty about this. If not, there will be a good deal of educational and financial loss, as a considerable amount of money has been put into the council. The extra money to continue there until March would, I understand be in the region of £80,000.
The Earl of Swinton: My Lords, I have nothing to add to what I said to the noble Lord, Lord Stewart of Fulham. My understanding is that the few contractual commitments of the Schools Council which will still be in existence will be continued—that is, seven projects out of a current total of 24. I understand that the other commitments will have been completed by then.

British Museum Act 1963 (Amendment) Bill [H.L.]
Lord Jenkins of Putney: My Lords, I beg to introduce a Bill to amend the British Museum Act 1963 so as to extend the powers of the trustees of the British Museum in order that international resolutions and obligations may be complied with. I beg to move that this Bill be now read a first time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read a first time.—(Lord Jenkins of Putney.)
On Question, Bill read a first time, and to be printed.

Prohibition of Female Circumcision Bill [H.L.]
Lord Kennet: My Lords, I beg to introduce a Bill to prohibit female circumcision. I beg to move that this Bill be now read a first time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read a first time.—(Lord Kennet.)
On Question, Bill read a first time, and to be printed.

Associated British Ports Bill (formerly British Transport Docks Bill)
Read a third time with the amendments, and passed, and returned to the Commons.
Pwllheli Harbour Bill [H.L.]
Read a third time, and passed, and sent to the Commons.

Privileges: Select Committee
The Chairman of Committees (Lord Aberdare): My Lords, I beg to move the first Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.
Moved, That, in accordance with Standing Order 72, a Select Committee for Privileges be appointed; and that, as proposed by the Committee of Selection, the following Lords, together with the Chairman of Committees and any four Lords of Appeal, be named of the Committee:

Adeane, L.

Aylestone, L.

Beswick, L.

Byers, L.

Campbell of Alloway, L.

Cledwyn of Penrhos, L.

Denham, L.

Ferrers, E.

Glenamara, L.

Hylton-Foster, B.

Ponsonby of Shulbrede, L.

St. Aldwyn, E.

Shackleton, L.

Whitelaw, V. (L. President)

Wigoder, L. —(Lord Aberdare.)

On Question, Motion agreed to.

Statutory Instruments: Select Committee
Lord Aberdare: My Lords, I beg to move the second Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.
Moved, That a Select Committee of seven Lords be appointed to join with a Committee appointed by the Commons to consider—
(1) Every instrument which is laid before each House of Parliament and upon which proceedings may be or might have been taken in either House of Parliament, in pursuance of an Act of Parliament; being

(a) a statutory instrument, or a draft of a statutory instrument;

(b) a scheme, or an amendment of a scheme, or draft thereof, requiring approval by statutory instrument;

(c) any other instrument (whether or not in draft), where the proceedings in pursuance of an Act of Parliament are proceedings by way of an affirmative resolution; or

(d) an order subject to special parliamentary procedure;

but excluding any Order in Council or draft Order in Council made or proposed to be made under paragraph 1 of Schedule 1 to the Northern Ireland Act 1974.
(2) Every general statutory instrument not within the foregoing classes, and not required to be laid

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before or to be subject to proceedings in the Commons only, but not including Measures under the Church of England Assembly (Powers) Act 1919 and instruments made under such Measures;
with a view to determining whether the special attention of the House should be drawn to it on any of the following grounds—

(i) that it imposes a charge on the public revenues or contains provisions requiring payments to be made to the Exchequer or any government department or to any local or public authority in consideration of any licence or consent or of any services to be rendered, or prescribes the amount of any such charge or payments;

(ii) that it is made in pursuance of any enactment containing specific provisions excluding it from challenge in the courts, either at all times or after the expiration of a specific period;

(iii) that it purports to have retrospective effect where the parent statute confers no express authority so to provide;

(iv) that there appears to have been unjustifiable delay in the publication or in the laying of it before Parliament;

(v) that there appears to have been unjustifiable delay in sending a notification under the proviso to subsection (1) of section 4 of the Statutory Instruments Act 1946, where an Instrument has come into operation before it has been laid before Parliament;

(vi) that there appears to be a doubt whether it is intra vires or that it appears to make some unusual or unexpected use of the powers conferred by the statute under which it is made;

(vii) that for any special reasons its form or purport call for elucidation;

(viii) that its drafting appears to be defective; or on any other ground which does not impinge on its merits or on the policy behind it, and to report their decision with the reasons thereof in any particular case.

That the Lords following, as proposed by the Committee of Selection, be named of the Committee:

Airedale, L.

Brooks of Tremorfa, L.

Cullen of Ashbourne, L.

Denington, B.

Dilhorne, V.

Henley, L.

Spens, L.

That two be the quorum of the Committee.
That the Committee have power to agree with the Committee appointed by the Commons in the appointment of a Chairman.
That the Committee have power to appoint one or more Sub-Committees severally to join with any Sub-Committee or Sub-Committees appointed by the Committee appointed by the Commons: and to refer to such Sub-Committee or Sub-Committees any of the matters referred to the Committee.
That it be an instruction to the Committee that they do not consider any instrument which is directed by
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Act of Parliament to be laid before and to be subject to proceedings in the Commons only; and that the Committee do not join with the Committee appointed by the Commons in considering any such instrument.
That it be a further instruction to the Committee that, before reporting that the special attention of the House be drawn to any instrument, the Committee do afford to any Government department concerned therewith an opportunity of furnishing orally or in writing to them or to any Sub-Committee or the Committee such explanations as the department think fit.
That the Joint Committee have leave to report from time to time.—(Lord Aberdare.)
On Question, Motion agreed to and it was ordered that a message be sent to the Commons to acquaint them therewith.

Deputy Chairmen of Committees
Lord Aberdare: My Lords, I beg to move the third Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.
Moved, That, as proposed by the Committee of Selection, the following Lords be appointed the panel of Lords to act as Deputy Chairmen of Committees for this session:—

Airedale, L.

Ampthill, L.

Aylestone, L.

Cathcart, E.

Cullen of Ashbourne, L.

Derwent, L.

Hayter, L.

Jacques, L.

Listowel, E.

Murton of Lindisfarne, L.

Nugent of Guildford, L.

Renton, L.

Simon, V.

Wells-Pestell, L.

White, B.

Wootton of Abinger, B.

—(Lord Aberdare.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

Parochial Charities (Neighbourhood Trusts) Bill [H.L.]
3.32 p.m.
Baroness Faithful: My Lords, I beg to move that the Bill be now read a second time. A Second Reading of this Bill took place on 6th May of this year. With the Dissolution of Parliament the Bill fell. The then Government, while not wholly in sympathy with the Bill, nevertheless agreed to a Second Reading, accepting the recommendation that a Select Committee of the House of Lords be set up to look into the position with regard to parochial charities for the poor in England and Wales. I am given to understand that this position is unchanged. In the circumstances, my instinct is to say very little. On the other hand, there are in your Lordships' House today those who were

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not present on 6th May. I therefore crave the indulgence of those noble Lords who have heard this speech before.
I have altered the shading of some of my statements in my last speech due, first, to the publication of the report of the Charity Commissioners of 1982; secondly, to the publication of a consultative document by the National Council of Voluntary Organisations; and, thirdly, to a one-day seminar for trustees organised by the Charities Aid Foundation. Indeed, I was heartened when in answer to a question at that seminar the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, supported the Bill which is before your Lordships' House today.
Parochial charities present a complicated legal and social problem. I am grateful for the help that I have received from the Oxfordshire Rural Community Council, and in particular Sir Charles Kimber; from the Humberside County Council, through the good offices of Mr. Frank Courtney; and from those interested in parochial charities in Wales. Indeed, I know that the noble Lord, Lord Prys-Davies, will speak for those charities in Wales. I am also grateful to the West Yorkshire Charities Information Bureau, the Community Council of Humberside and the South Yorkshire Information Service and the many individuals up and down the country, from Cornwall to Cambridge, who have written to me.
There are in this country 140,000 registered charities. Of course, parish charities for the poor comprise approximately between a quarter and a third. Their endowments bring in millions of pounds; yet at present, with a few notable exceptions, they are largely a wasted asset. This Bill recommends the formation of neighbourhood trusts, whereby a number of trusts in a specified area group together and join their resources to be allocated according to the wishes of the original donor.
It is strange that this was first recommended by the Nathan Report in 1952 and agreed by the then Charity Commission. Again the same recommendation was made in a Select Committee Report on the account ability of the Charity Commission in 1975; and yet again in the Goodman Report of 1976. Yet still no effective action has been taken to deal with the chaotic position with regard to parochial charities in England and Wales.
Far be it for me to outline a social history of this country, but account must be taken of certain events long ago. After Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries, where, in the main, the poor were assisted, the first Queen Elizabeth instigated the Poor Law Act 1601, whereby parishes were made responsible, through overseers, to assist the poor. Alongside this administration, the religious and humane practice grew up for donors who wanted to leave money to the poor to use the parish for the purposes of administration, as was the practice in those days. Except in a few instances, the money was not left to the parish.
With the passing of the centuries came the development of the poor law Acts, social security Acts, national insurance and pension Acts, national health Acts and education Acts; so that in this present age the relief of the poor falls mainly to central and local government. At the same time gradually donors tended to leave money for the poor to national and
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international organisations. Only a few continued to use the parish to administer their bequests.
The Charities Act 1960, based on the recommendations of the Nathan Report, was intended to render outdated charities effective in the new situation created by welfare provisions of the modern state, while ensuring that the money continued to go to the same general purpose which the donor intended. To this end the Charities Act 1960 provided for reviews of parochial charities to be carried out in every county and for review organisers, where possible, to persuade trustees to amalgamate their charities on a voluntary basis, thus rendering them more effective.
In May 1982, in answer to a Written Question, it was stated in Hansard that reviews of parochial charities had been carried out in part or the whole of every county in England and Wales. These reviews were usually carried out by rural community councils, charity information bureaux and a few local authorities. Research has been carried out on eight of these reviews. What did the research reveal? It revealed a generally chaotic position. First, there were the demographic changes in parishes. In the last two centuries there have been great shifts of population. For instance, there is a new estate with a population of 13,000, which was built only since the last war, and this area has only two charities, bringing in £8 a year. In the adjoining parish there are only 800 people, few of whom are in need, and the charity has an income of £3,000 to £4,000 a year, which it is unable to spend in accordance with the donors' wishes. In Dunwich, in Suffolk, once a borough with a Royal Charter, and now with a population of 155 and an income from parochial charity of £1,600 a year, there is a balance sitting in the bank of £11,000.
The research pointed out the number of outdated purposes. For instance, there is one charity where centuries ago a man suffered grievously from a wart on his nose. He left money to anyone suffering a similar disfigurement. This money has rarely been spent. In these days the National Health Service would take care of such a case. This money could more profitably be used for allied medical problems. In the North there is a parish where bread was left for the poor. The vicar distributes a loaf of bread once a month to his parishioners, be they poor or not. I ask: is this what the donor intended? In another parish, the vicar can claim £2 for preaching a sermon, and the church warden 50 pence for listening, and very little of the money goes to the poor—unless of course the right reverend Prelate thinks that the vicar is poor.
The reviews also showed a lamentable neglect of accounts. Of the eight reviews in which research was carried out one-third of the parochial charities had no accounts, and another quarter had kept no accounts for 10 years. The money of a proportion of the parochial charities had not been properly husbanded. Money had not been properly invested, and some trustees of land-owning charities had not revised the rents in accordance with modern standards. In some charities only £12 per week rent was being obtained when the average rent per week should have been £30. Thus, in some instances farmers who rent charity land are the largest beneficiaries of parish charities for the poor. Again, that is surely not in accordance with the donors' wishes.

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I have taken a long time to set the scene. In order to meet the welfare conditions of our modern state, and to concur with the wishes of the donors who left the money for the poor, the Bill recommends that the Charity Commissioners should study the reviews of parochial charities. The commissioners should contact local authorities, which in turn may, as they have done in the past, allocate to voluntary organisations such as community councils the task of grouping parochial charities into neighbourhood trusts with trustees, some of whom will be from the original trusts. The neighbourhood trusts will still be administered by voluntary trustees and will continue to give—and to be—a voluntary service, as hitherto. This will be of inestimable value to those needing to apply. The task of offering advice, help and supervision to the neighbourhood trusts by the Charity Commission will then be a practical proposition.
I am fully aware that there are parishes which resent having to share their parochial charity resources with others, even if they cannot use them in accordance with the donors' wishes. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Norwich may have something to say on this matter. When, due to changing social conditions, it was necessary for the Church to unite three or four parishes under one vicar, the position was accepted. Why, I wonder, do trustees feel unable to amalgamate into neighbourhood trusts?
Another contention is that the county councils would need extra money to allocate to voluntary organisations to carry out the reorganisation. This exercise has been costed, and we reckon that it would cost only £2,000 a year for two years per local authority.
I am grateful to the Home Office for writing to me to let me know its objections to the Bill. I understand that the objections are as follws:
"The reluctance of Trustees to co-operate with local reviews in modernising their Trusts: that Trustees should retain the right to decide what happens to the Trusts they administer and that such Trusts should be allowed to retain their identities".
I do not accept that argument when it means that the money left by donors is not being used as was intended, has been badly husbanded, or is not in some cases being used at all.
I hope that I have shown how unsatisfactory is the overall position in England and Wales. I am bound to ask: for whom are the trusts run? If they are run for the poor, which was the intention of the donors, why cannot this be made possible? I am the first to admit that there are some sound, well-administered parochial charities, but research has shown that they are in the minority. Thus, the Bill makes mandatory the reorganisation into neighbourhood trusts simply because while under the Charity Act 1960 it has been, and is, possible for trustees voluntarily to organise, into neighbourhood trusts, this has not been done except in very few instances.
In my speech of 6th May, I stated that the Home Office was the mouthpiece of the commission. The annual report of the Charity Commissioners (which is in your Lordships' Library) corrects me and points out that the commission, as a quasi-judicial department, is in effect an extension of the High Court, free from day-to-day political intervention. I accept that
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statement. However, I am bound to say that the position is peculiar and strange. If the commission is independent of the Home Office, then with what knowledge does the Home Office speak in your Lordships' House and in another place, and who is responsible for initiating improvements, changes and reforms?
I should like to quote from the consultation document of the National Council for Voluntary Organisations, which has just been published. The document states:
"We have already mentioned the changing landscape of voluntary social action, in response to unprecedented social and economic change. We hold that there are a number of areas where the law is out of touch with modern social conditions".
The consultation document was drawn up by a committee which was established by the National Council for Voluntary Organisations to look into charity law in this country.
Furthermore, whose responsibility is it to see that the work of the commission can be carried out? Last year 4,000 new charities were registered. There are already on the register 143,000 charities which should be looked at every year, and 70,000 are exempted or excepted in regard to regulation. Six hundred letters are received by the Charity Commission every day. Is the Charity Commission adequately and appropriately staffed for this work? If neighbourhood trusts were set up, that would reduce the number of trusts the accounts of which should be seen each year by the Charity Commissioners. At present the Charity Commission seems to have more to do than it can possibly manage.
I end by quoting again from the National Council for Voluntary Organisations working party. The report states:
"The Commission's approach to the modernisation of charities whose purpose has become irrelevant to contemporary social needs has been the object of considerable criticism. Views differ on what is needed: some favour the establishment of neighbourhood trusts; others, the winding up of small out-moded charities; still others a relaxation of the cy-pres doctrine. We believe that a public enquiry is needed into this important area and would welcome the recently proposed House of Lords Select Committee".
My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read a second time.—(Baroness Faithfull.)
3.51 p.m.
Lord Mishcon: My Lords, not for the first time do I look with envy upon the noble Baroness, Lady Faithful She delivered a speech in regard to this Bill on 6th May this year. It was a very good speech, if I may be allowed to say so. She appears before this House again saying, as she was entitled to forecast, that those who heard that speech would be more than prepared to hear it again. Those of your Lordships, including myself, who heard that speech largely made again heard it with pleasure. I do not have any illusions that your Lordships are prepared to extend the same tolerance to me. I followed the noble Baroness on that occasion, and I said certain things in the course of what I believe was a 15-minute speech which I intend, if I may, to summarise but not to reproduce. Then, if your Lordships will allow this latitude, I should like to say a few words on behalf of those on the Benches upon

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which I have the honour to sit as to the general law of charity and the possible need for change.
On the previous occasion I said that I hoped your Lordships would very definitely give the Bill a Second Reading, that it would be referred to the Select Committee and that there were problems within the problems to which the noble Baroness had rightly drawn our attention. There was the question of whether a perfectly well administered small trust, run by loyal, careful trustees, should be mandated to give up the trust that had been reposed in them by some settlor in the past and made to amalgamate the trust in a neighbourhood trust. We do not often exercise mandatory powers where we find that they are not completely necessary.
Secondly, I ventured to say that this was possibly an administrative task, if we are dealing with mandatory matters, both in regard to the Charity Commission and local authorities, which might be rather heavier than had been suggested in the noble Baroness's Second Reading speech. I drew for my reasoning in that connection from the very committee whose findings the noble Baroness found were sympathetic to the Bill that she has presented to your Lordships. I referred to that committee's report in this connection, and read to your Lordships from page 146 of it. This stated:
"we have considered whether it would be practicable to place an obligation on county and county borough councils to review the parochial charities in their areas and to submit proposals to the Commissioners who would then, if they thought proper, make schemes. The formidable number of these charities makes us hesitate to suggest this. It is, we think, too difficult at the present moment to estimate what would be the extent of the task, what other and perhaps more urgent tasks may be imposed on local authorities or whether it would be found practicable to give the Commissioners the staff necessary to deal with the work at the centre".
One wonders whether 1952 was a more prosperous time in regard to the funds of local authorities, their ability to spend and the staff they had available, and also whether it was a better year than 1983 for the Charity Commissioners. One has reservations; one has doubts. The real point is that it is so sensible for a Select Committee to examine these matters, to decide upon them and to make recommendations after hearing whatever evidence can be afforded to them.
If this is to be called the Faithfull Bill, noble Lords will be aware that there is another Bill that deserves the title of the Renton Bill. That was, I know, the inspiration of a very much respected Member of Parliament in another place. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Renton, took the burden of that Bill on his shoulders. In the last Session it was called the Small Charities Bill. I have no doubt that it will have the same name now.
Lord Renton: My Lords, it was in the last Parliament called the Charities Bill. I have taken it upon myself to alter the Short Title and to call it the Small Charities Bill. I like to think of it essentially as Sir Angus Maude's Bill.
Lord Mishcon: My Lords, the noble Lord has spoken with his usual modesty in two directions. First, he has ascribed the Bill to Sir Angus Maude, as I hope I also did. Secondly, with his usual modesty he has made the Bill a Small Charities Bill and not just a Charities Bill. I recognise that at once. I know that your Lordships will listen to the Second Reading
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debate on that Bill with great interest. It deals with the ending of small trusts, and not with the consolidation and continuance of them. That is again an interesting proposition because it makes the ending of them permissive. That, too, is something that the Select Committee will no doubt be examining in due course.
I turn speedily, if I may, to a feeling that your Lordships may share. It is a great pity that we are dealing with an issue by small bites when it is very necessary that it should be considered as a whole. I refer to the present law on charity. I noticed with pleasure that the noble Baroness referred to a very up-to-date document called, "Charity Law—a case for change?", which was the result of very hard work by the Charity Law Working Group. It has just been issued, and it contains many interesting findings and recommendations.
One notices the call in that document for evidence to be given, observations to be made and representations to be put by September of this year. One hopes that those submissions will be made to the working group and so will enable a more weighty series of findings and recommendations to be considered. But the Government, over a period of some four years, have seemed to be saying, in answer to all the criticisms, that charity law is in a fairly satisfactory state. One was glad, therefore, that in the closing moments of the last Government the learned Attorney-General, in answer to a question in another place on 18th April 1983, at column 17, said:
"Charity law is not in chaos. Charity law is of long standing. Many judicial decisions upon which the charities commissioners act are rather old. The law has not, perhaps, kept up with the change in the nature of trusts seeking charitable status. Originally the law was designed to deal with rogues and crooks and the misuse of charitable funds. The law is probably necessary. Perhaps we shall see a way forward after the final decision is taken on the Moonies. It may then be necessary to reconsider the whole of charity law."
It seems that when we are considering aspects of the law relating to small charities, the bad administration of some charities and how we should deal with it and how we should look after the poor in regard to community trusts and neighbourhood trusts that might be set up if the Bill is passed, we should also have a general look, especially at a time when there is no doubt that voluntary effort and voluntary funds coming in to so many worthy objects are a need of the times. There is no doubt about that. One finds that the present state of our charity law and the findings of the Charity Commissioners is that if there is a fund set up to deal with trying to find employment for the unemployed, it is not charitable.
One finds also—and this is as a result of a decision which took place before we were a multi-racial society—that the promotion of racial harmony is not a charitable object. I see doubt creeping upon the face of at least one noble Lord, but I am quoting from an actual decision which has not, in fact, been altered. One finds that the pursuit of the objects of a charity in order to try and change the law which it finds harmful to its charitable object may be questioned by the Charity Commissioners as a proper use of its funds. And here I am not referring in any way to the pursuit of purely political objects which all of us would agree do not and should not come within the charitable arena, but it may be that on some occasions it is very difficult to draw a correct line of demarcation.

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Those are matters that ought to be considered, whether it be by a working party or by another Royal Commission. Perhaps, with the advantage of a continuation of progressive Ministers at the Home Office, one can hope that inspiration and initiative can come from that direction. Whatever it be, there is, first, no question in your Lordships' minds that you would want to give the Bill a Second Reading; secondly, that it ought to go to a Select Committee before your Lordships consider it further so that you may have the recommendations of the Select Committee before you; but, thirdly, ought we not to grapple with this issue and see whether we cannot find it within ourselves to reform the whole law of charity and make it a matter of the 20th century and not a matter of Queen Elizabeth I?
4.3 p.m.
Lord Foot: My Lords, on the last occasion when we debated this matter on 6th May I spoke briefly from these Benches giving all the support I could to the noble Baroness and her Bill. I certainly do not intend on this occasion to try and repeat what little I said on that other occasion. However, I should like to thank her—as I did originally—not only for her initiative in producing this Bill, but now for her perseverance in promoting it again in this new Parliament; and again, as I did previously, I wish the Bill well.
I am quite sure that the whole question of charities is a matter so esoteric and so complicated that one steps on to the ground with some caution and care. It is pre-eminently the type of subject which can be best considered by a Select Committee of this House. It is reassuring to know that although the Government do not approve of the Bill in all its aspects, they are, as I understand it, going to adhere to what they said previously: that is, they are going to support the Bill being sent to a Select Committee. That is the place where these matters can be properly investigated.
I was looking back at the record of the previous debate this morning and I noticed that there were 11 speakers other than the Minister. It is noteworthy that except for a few words of caution from some of the speakers, the 10 speakers who followed the noble Baroness were all in support of the Bill. We had to wait until the Minister rose to his feet to hear the arguments against it. As I understood them, the arguments against the Bill fell into two categories. There was the argument that this measure, by taking mandatory powers to compel our small trusts to join together in neighbourhood trusts, was not in keeping with the spirit and principles of the law of charities. The practical argument was that to impose the burden upon the Charity Commissioners in the first place and upon local authorities in the next place, to produce schemes of neighbourhood trusts of this kind, would be imposing too heavy a burden upon them. Re-reading the debate, as I did this morning, I am hound to say that I am reinforced in my support of the Bill because I think that there is very little of merit in either of those arguments. However, they are supremely arguments that could be properly examined by a Select Committee.
I concluded by making two observations upon two of the matters to which the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon,
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referred. He spoke of his hesitation and doubts about the propriety of using mandatory powers to compel a small, useful, well-administered trust to combine with other trusts, with other charities. I appreciate that, and superficially it is a matter of objection. But the history of this matter over the past 30 years—certainly since the passing of the 1960 Act—has only illustrated beyond peradventure that we are not going to get anywhere by purely voluntary efforts. In the 1960 Act, machinery was created by the authors of the Act with the intention that trustees of small charities like these would be able to produce schemes for amalgamation and getting together. The authors of the Act foresaw that that might be the right road to proceed along. In fact the machinery which was created at that time has proved not only ineffective, but wholly ineffective. On the last occasion we debated this matter I asked whether, if this is not put upon some mandatory basis, we will be in any better condition in 30 years' time than we are today.
The noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, made a general comment upon the law of charities. I of course agree with him that a review of the whole of charity law is long overdue. But I think that the noble Baroness is justified in presenting this little measure in advance of any general reform of charities, and I take that view for two reasons. The first reason is that it is, as I see it, a self-contained measure. It will not inhibit any future action that may be taken by anybody to reform the general law of charities. If she had waited for a general review of the law, then of course she might have waited forever. Therefore, again—as before—I wish the noble Baroness's Bill a fair wind.
4.10 p.m.
The Lord Bishop of Norwich: My Lords, I believe that we all stand in debt to the noble Baroness, Lady Faithfull, for her persistence in bringing this very important matter before us. I particularly take up the phrase just used by the noble Lord, Lord Foot, who said that this is a small matter even though it is detailed and full of various problems. But it is just the sort of matter which I believe a Select Committee of your Lordships' House can examine with a fine tooth-comb, which is what this demands.
I am delighted to take part in this debate and to underline and summarise one or two of the matters which the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London raised from these Benches on 6th May. But I do so with a sense of history, seeing one or two noble Lords from Norfolk and Suffolk present, such as the noble Lord, Lord Melchett. I was delighted to hear that the Dunwich charity is still going so well. I am only the 69th Bishop of Norwich, but I am the 104th Bishop of East Anglia and I trace my pedigree right back to St. Felix of Dunwich. I know that Dunwich is all under the sea now and that you cannot hear the bells out to sea, but he is our saintly predecessor. Of course, your Lordships know that the name "Felix" means happy, and we have sought to keep a happy diocese running all those years. However, I have a slight feeling that the noble Lord, Lord Melchett, who stands firmly for the rights of the individual, may have some sort of a noble spanner, which we shall hear about later, to throw in the works. We can but tell. However, I am delighted to know that Dunwich was mentioned.

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I was a little distressed when the noble Baroness said that Henry VIII dissolved all the monasteries which cared for the poor, because I am actually still the Abbot of St. Benet's. I am the only "undissolved" abbot since the days of the Reformation, and on the first Sunday in August every year, at three o' clock in the afternoon, I go down-river to the ruins of St Benet's Abbey, which was founded by King Canute, and there we hold a great service to which, once again, all your Lordships are warmly welcome if you should happen to be sailing on our Norfolk Broads on the first Sunday in August. That is my commercial; I now get on with the work.
I, too, read carefully the speeches made by the noble Lords, Lord Mishcon and Lord Foot, on 6th May, and I am delighted to find that the two key words of those two weighty speeches still appear to be "their mind". At column 285 of the Official Report on 6th May the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, said:
"There is a waste. Let us see what the Select Committee of your Lordships' House has to say."
The noble Lord, Lord Foot, said:
"the present state of these charities, with their multiplicity of sizes … is wholly unsatifactory".
I take comfort from that because I appreciate that the Government, who have a right and I think a continuing responsiblity to care for the freedom of the individual, may look with some nervousness here.
Your Lordships will remember that the noble Lord the Minister entered that careful caveat that we should take particular care to safeguard these charitable trusts and their original purposes as far as practicable. When the purpose of a charity is altered according to the cy-prés doctrine, the new object must of course remain within the spirit of the original donation. I am quite sure that the noble Baroness, Lady Faithfull, has that in her mind in pressing this Bill upon us, because there is no sense in which we desire to overthrow the mind of the donors of years gone by. But I think that the answer to the particular point made by the noble Lord, Lord Elton, last time is that, in fact, the original plans have meant these charities really are not now able to be used and, if anything, the freedom to use them has been inhibited by time and changing social conditions.
Therefore, there is a sense in which this Bill is a liberalising Bill rather than a restraining Bill. I believe that the mandatory aspect needs to be seen within that context. I think that we must take note of the historical fact that the Charities Act 1960 provided a voluntary form of such neighbourhood trusts; but in the 23 years since the passing of the Charities Act, as far as I know (although I stand to be corrected on this) no neighbourhood trusts have in fact been set up on a voluntary basis.
This may mean, of course, that the pressure against a mandatory plan will surface, but I take some comfort from the fact that the principles of seeking to find a mandatory way forward are suitable when all people who are concerned in these areas are willing to agree to the importance of the greater good coming from the lesser deprivation of liberty. I read carefully the speech made by my noble friend and brother from this Bench, the Bishop of London. At column 287 of our proceedings on 6th May he said:
"I believe that the Bill has the general support of those who sit on these Benches. I might add that the representatives of the main
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denominations who sit on the Churches Main Committee, of which I am chairman,…expressed support in principle for the general objective."
As your Lordships know, the Churches Main Committee is an important forum where main general issues of religion are discussed with all the major denominations. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London himself welcomed the setting up of a Select Committee.
I should like to summarise two of his points, which I think are worth remembering, and two of the excellent reasons why he felt that we should go forward in the direction of this Bill with the safeguard of a Select Committee. The first is that the English tradition of adaptation is an important tradition, rather than of abolition. I believe that we are moving towards an adaptation here. The present situation in regard to parochial charities does not really encourage voluntary care at local level. Therefore, it is not surprising that people are now much more disposed to help wide national charities rather than small local ones; and that is the difficulty of these small charities falling into desuetude.
However, the right reverend Prelate made the second point—and I summarise it very shortly—that the Bill is based on the principle of partnership and sharing. He used the analogy of the formation of the Church Commissioners to explain what he meant. Your Lordships will remember that before 1948 there was the Queen Anne's Bounty and there were the Ecclesiastical Commissioners. From 1948 the two bodies were amalgamated into our present Church Commissioners.
The Church Commissioners have always sought to try to deal with parochial-type matters, not in isolation—which, of course, is the present way in which, alone, we can deal with these charitable trusts—but in partnership and in consultation, so that the wider good can be shared. In fact, we contained the Endowment and Glebe Measure 1975 (which I hasten to mention in case your Lordships, with your knowledge of that measure, think that my argument is not sound) within the boundary of the diocese. I think we were right to do so. Within a Church situation a diocese is a major family area, and they are large areas. The Endowment and Glebe Measure is the sharing of glebe and endowment matters within the diocese. I only use that example to show that in the Select Committee which I hope your Lordships will set up we may have to find that there are certain restrictions which will come naturally to the surface in our detailed discussion, but the principle of partnership and sharing is, I believe, a true one here. Therefore, this would not be any new departure in practice if we sought to set up neighbourhood trusts.
The noble Baroness asked if I would refer to the Sheffield Report, in which we are trying to share the clergy of the Church of England more equitably across the whole area of the two provinces of Canterbury and York. Those more favoured dioceses with more clergy should share their clergy. They seem to go down into the bottomless pit of the back streets of Manchester. What happens to the clergy when they get to the back streets of Manchester is still another of those mysterious secrets of the Church of England to which we do not draw attention, but we are trying to share the clergy round better.

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The noble Baroness asked whether the various parishes were happy when they had to amalgamate under a bishop. The noble Lord, Lord Melchett, knows very well that they are not always, except for the loving, persistent, tactful and caring approach of the Lord Bishop for those particular parishes day after day after day until, like it or not, they do come to agree. In fact, they are always happy as long as you put the clergyman in charge of more parishes in your parish. They do not mind then, but it is not easy.
It is sense to rationalise our resources of manpower, of money, and in this case. I believe, of charities. I shall not, therefore, weary your Lordships with further argument on that except to say that in general terms we from these Benches feel that this is a proper way of approaching this matter; that with 140,000 small charities there is waste, there is inefficiency, and there is therefore a strangulation of charity which is there that could be used if, through neighbourhood trusts, we brought this up to date and found a new way forward. I would therefore feel that this is a good Bill, and I hope that we may feel that on these Benches we are solidly in support of it.
4.22 p.m.
Lord Renton: My Lords, your Lordships will have taken careful note of what the right reverend Prelate has said with his immense experience, especially in his own diocese. I shall have reason to express some misgivings about the Bill. Before I do so there is one thing I should say with which perhaps the right reverend Prelate would agree, and that is that an open confession is good for the soul, and perhaps for the mind. I should also say that when defending criminals I always used to say to them that it is better to confess before they are found out. Therefore, let me confess before we go any further that I was one of the authors of the 1960 Act.
Indeed, I had to play some part in its preparation, and I had the responsibility of piloting it on my own but with the assistance of the then Solicitor-General, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Simon of Glaisdale, through its Committee and Report stages in another place. However, that does not mean that my mind is closed to its improvement. Indeed, I think that after these many years it is time that we had the kind of general look at the 1960 Act which the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, has suggested.
We should be grateful to my noble friend Lady Faithfull for, if I may say so, the able and persuasive way in which she has tried to convince us that her Bill should have a Second Reading. Although I have misgivings about her Bill, and she has misgivings about the Small Charities Bill, we have "a knock-for-knock agreement". We have agreed that we will not oppose the Second Reading of either Bill, and that we will support the suggestion that each of the Bills should be considered by the same Select Committee of your Lordships' House. I very much hope that when both of these Bills go before a Select Committee they may be prepared to have a broad look, as the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, has suggested, at those parts of the Charities Act which perhaps could be improved.
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But I give this warning: there was a long period of gestation between the recommendations of the Nathan Committee in, I think, 1952 and the passing of the Charities Act in 1960. A large part of that time was taken up not merely by consideration in the Home Office and behind the scenes of the Government in the Ministry of Education, as it was then called, which had a responsibility, and other departments too, but the Home Office were meticulous—and the noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale, can take some credit for this perhaps—in consultation with the charities and the representatives of the many small charities. May I say in passing that the noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale, is chairman of one of our great charities of which I happen to he president, and so we would have an interest in any general look at the law of charity as well as the interest that arises on this Bill.
I should give notice to your Lordships, those who have not noticed it on the Order Paper, that the Small Charities Bill which, as has been mentioned earlier in the debate, was piloted through all its stages in another place by Sir Angus Maude, will come up for Second Reading on Tuesday week, 12th July. I have not yet placed a Motion on the Order Paper that it should be referred to a Select Committee, but I have every intention of doing so.
Just for the sake of the record may I, with due humility of course, express some misgivings about the Bill before us. The first thing about it is that it is confined to the relief of poverty, directly or indirectly confined to it, and that arises under the definitions in Clause 1 of the Bill. The right reverend Prelate's remarks to your Lordships have to be regarded in the light of the fact that this Bill does not apply at all to ecclesiastical charities, and that may be of some disappointment to him and a matter which may require some detailed attention by a Select Committee. It would seem to be absurd that so many neighbourhood charities which touch upon ecclesiastical matters should not be included when other charities within a parish, within a neighbourhood, are to be specially scrutinised.
Of course, there is a partial bridging operation attempted by my noble friend Lady Faithfull when she says that if it is for the education of the poor, then it is all right; it can be brought within the purview of the review. But so many educational charities, as my noble friend Lord Elton knows well from his long experience in education, are not merely for the education of the poor. Indeed, the definition of "poor" has become one which is now rather difficult in our reasonably well provided modern society. Therefore, I start with that misgiving, that the application of the Bill needs careful consideration.
I was surprised to hear my noble friend Lady Faithfull saying that the cost would be only £2,000 a year for two years for each county council. I should be grateful if my noble friend Lord Elton could say whether that is right or wrong, but I must confess that I have doubts about it. Two thousand pounds a year is about half the cost of a typist. When one realises how paper accumulates and what a lot of coming and going and travelling expenses, negotiation and the employment of specialist officials will be required, that figure seems to me, with the deepest respect to my noble friend, a patent underestimate. There will be a

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manpower burden placed on local authorities. Some burden will be placed on the charities themselves, who will have to incur expenses, perhaps employing expert advice; bearing in mind that there will be compulsion. There will sometimes be doubts about whether the scheme that is proposed for a neighbourhood trust is consistent with the terms of the testator's or settlor's original trust deed. Let us not delude ourselves: there will be a burden.
The burden upon the Charity Commission has been mentioned. I must confess that I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon—and I believe the noble Lord, Lord Foot, also referred to it—that the Charity Commission would appear to be under-staffed. Besides the Royal Society for the Mentally Handicapped, which I was mentioning obliquely earlier, I have had experience in dealing with the commission over other charities. One receives wonderful help eventually. However, very often there are inevitable delays. One noble Lord mentioned to me only today—I am sure he will not mind my repeating this and might well be grateful, though I do not think it would be right to mention his name—that with the charitable trust with which he is concerned he experienced a delay of three weeks for the Charity Commission, which for some reason had to be consulted, to agree to the alteration of some investments, and the market was missed accordingly. The stockbrokers had agreed to a change, had agreed that then was the right moment to do it, but the market was missed.
Quite apart from any reform that may be needed in the law, my right honourable friend the new Home Secretary—who is a lawyer of immense ability; although like me is mainly a common lawyer, my right honourable friend and I have to apply our minds in our practices and in ministerial work to Chancery matters—would do well to take a close look at the Charity Commission. It is possible that some unnecessary burdens are already being placed upon the commission and in some ways it might be able, quite freely, to dispense with the responsibility it is given and allow the charity trustees to get on with the job.
Lord Mishcon: My Lords, I hope that the noble Lord will forgive me, but it may be of help on the point he is making to get this on to the record. Is he aware that it takes months, not weeks, for an application for registration of a charity to be sanctioned by the Charity Commissioners, or even indeed for them to look at it?
Lord Renton: My Lords, I am very sorry to hear about that. My experience has been that it has taken weeks rather than months, but I found that weeks were too long.
One could go on talking about the detail of this matter for some time. I invite the attention, in anticipation of things to come on 12th July, of my noble friend Lady Faithfull and the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, to Clause 6 of the Bill because that envisages, as does the Charities Act 1960, the possibility of particular charities being wound up. Indeed, I do not see how one can make progress in this matter unless one is prepared for charities to be wound up. As the Small Charities Bill inevitably involves that
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in many cases, I hope we shall agree with each other that this is a necessary condition that we have to accept and that it is a waste of time saying that it is a terrible thing, as my noble friend Lady Faithfull said on 11th May, that the funds of a charity should be "dissipated".
If the funds are very small and cannot fulfil their purpose something must happen to them. It should be justifiable to wind the charity up in order to fulfil its purposes and to spend the money, because one might not be able to spend it if one relied merely upon income. Thus, let us understand each other on both of these Bills, that sometimes charities will have to be wound up.
In spite of having expressed these misgivings, which I trust are constructive because we have to consider these matters, I hope that your Lordships will not oppose a Second Reading of my noble friend's Bill.
4.36 p.m.
Lord Prys-Davies: My Lords, we are again grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Faithfull, for her continuing contributions in this field. In response to her initiative it is good to return to this difficult subject, albeit a small subject. In the debate on 6th May I ventured to express the view that the status quo was no longer an option and that the Bill presented by the noble Baroness at least offered a new, practical and relevant approach to the subject.
Re-reading the record of the debate it is clear that there were differences, as one would expect; but I believe that in the main they were differences of emphasis. I have taken careful note of the reservations of the noble Lord, Lord Renton. Then—and I think the same is true of today—we were all seeking to serve the same aims and the same objects. The noble Baroness and my noble friend Lord Mishcon have identified at least two of the most critical problems: trusts whose assets are so small that they are almost useless, and lack of efficient administration by trustees.
There is so much widespread neglect, ineffectiveness and had administration. However, I recognise that there are two difficulties within the problem. There is the parish loyalty, and there is the unique legal status of charities. I have always accepted that there are intense loyalties within a parish and to parish institutions which draw on voluntary principles and which have drawn on the voluntary principle for centuries. Indeed my roots are in a small village in the county of Gwynedd—although parishes no longer exist in the Principality, where, by today, they have been merged to form communities. But the tradition of the parish is very much alive. In my own home, my father had at all times fostered and protected the identity and independence of his parish and wrote a book on its history. Therefore, being my father's son, I fully appreciate the significance and strength of parish loyalties. They are not to be underestimated.
I also acknowledge that charities have a unique legal status, and that for centuries the Crown, through the courts, has undertaken to enforce for ever, so far as practicable, the intentions of the donor's property given for charitable purposes. The courts are not there to kill charities; but charities, it appears, acquired their special status because it was in the public interest that

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provision should be made for the needs of those who were unable to help themselves. But it is also in the public interest in the 20th century that we should get the machinery of the parochial charities right. We acknowledge that the main pieces of the jigsaw were set out centuries ago. But there are other pieces which have been determined and moulded by our own age and day. Inflation and the change in the value of charitable endowments have had inescapable repercussions and, where parishes exist, their boundaries, determined centuries ago, may no longer make sense. However, what does make sense is that the role of the parochial trusts for the poor should be reviewed, and the machinery, where necessary, reformed so that we can try to ensure that resources are concentrated wherever possible in order to produce maximum benefit yet in keeping with the spirit of the donor's intentions.
In the course of the debate on 6th May, reference was made to the power residing in Section 18 of the Charities Act 1960, and in reply to a question the House was told by the noble Lord the Minister that this power had not as yet been exercised. We should not underestimate the significance of this information and it is evident (is it not?) that the commissioners have been reluctant to take a lead. In the course of the May debate I drew attention to the particular needs of Wales which are not met by the Bill; and those needs remain. I mentioned that a steering committee had been established to review the role of the ancient charities in the Principality, and that the steering committee sees the need to restore some of the educational charitable trusts to more effective use. They will be disappointed that the educational trusts are not included in this Bill. They also consider that the time has come to establish in Wales an office of the Charity Commissioners. But I do not propose this afternoon to go over that ground.
I am in support of the principle of the Bill. I consider that the noble Baroness is right in believing that the time is ripe to combine the parochial trusts to form neighbourhood trusts, that a fresh initiative along these lines is called for and that that initiative is required because there is very little evidence that anything has been done voluntarily, notwithstanding the Charities Act 1960, to improve, matters. I see the Bill as the natural place to continue the work of the philanthropists of history and with this kind of initiative, the initiative which this Bill offers, we could be carving out a new base for the parochial charities to build for the future. I am grateful that there are indications that the Government agree that this Bill be submitted to a Select Committee of your Lordships' House.
4.45 p.m.
Baroness Lane-Fox: My Lords, like others of your Lordships, I am grateful to my noble friend Lady Faithfull for introducing this compact and attractive Bill. There seem to me to be, among others, two reasons why no time should be lost in tackling the present, perplexingly, obsolete situation. One that there can never have been a time when more heartrending appeals for funds professionally launched are pressed on the public. The majority of
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the causes are excellent but the sums of money required are an increasing burden on the more generous, not necessarily the most wealthy, sections of the public. When I was launched into the world of appeal, a subtle and conscientious uncle insisted that I take meticulous care in the expenditure of money raised in this way since often it represented a sacrifice.
He prescribed particularly that money given in this way should not be spent on objects for which other funds were available. Parochial trusts, made in such generous spirit years ago and no longer relevant to present lifestyle, can I think be likened to the age of candlelight with that of electricity. The end product of the charitable cause and the end product of light are still the same but the methods of use have changed. There are so many rural and community calls for help. As adviser to a disbursing charity, I am well aware of the wide variety of these causes of poverty, from self-help groups, voluntary care organisations, children's groups, et cetera, that simply cannot afford that there be left in their midst pockets of money sitting idly by. Clearly trusts must be well protected from greedy eyes and hands; but, given that protection. it must be likely that the good people who set up the old trusts in many cases would be the very ones today wanting to support, for instance, schemes designed to alleviate poverty and need. One cannot be sure, but at least it seems logical.
My second reason for gladness that we may get movement on this front is that this may bring into sharper focus the work of the Charity Commissioners. Information about the charities concerned seems to be buried very deep. Delays are experienced—and I agree with other noble Lords who have mentioned this aspect—in finding out information. Getting answers to applications for registration takes a very long time and requests for the right just to set up funds to help as well as to obtain the up-to-date information from the records held by the charities can take an age. Small, new charities, I find, when they are successfully registered. use this status to lend weight and authority to their appeal—which seems, in a way, out of step with the influence that the Charity Commissioners bring to bear on their operations. From an outsider's point of view, now is the time for the files and the records to he shaken free of dust and cobwebs and to be brought, surely, into the era of information technology. With more up-to-date methods, it will surely be possible to get from the commissioners—fairly quickly, can we hope?—more information to get useful, good causes and to feel more certain that they could spot and quash the less salubrious organisations be they cults, crafts. or charlatans. It would appear, however excellent their intention, that the Charity Commission can have the effect of thwarting good initiatives and giving encouragement to the more dubious ventures. Even though discussion of the 1968 Act may not fall within the remit of the proposed Select Committee its work must highlight facts to which I have referred. Therefore, I beg to support the Bill.
4.51 p.m.
Lord Allen of Abbeydale: My Lords, I should like to express my sympathy for the purposes at which this Bill is aimed and to support the proposal that it should be referred to a Select Committee, although, as on a

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previous occasion, I have taken some slight alarm at the width of the remit which some who have spoken seem to contemplate for the committee.
As we have been reminded, the last major legislation on charities was in 1960. The Act which was passed in that year achieved a great deal and I should not like to let this opportunity pass without saying just a word of appreciation for the work of Christopher Hill, who died quite recently and who, as I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Renton, will agree, gave great help to Ministers in preparing and piloting the Bill. He was then the first head of the reconstituted Charity Commission. But, as the noble Baroness made clear when introducing the Bill, there are some aspects relevant to today's discussions of the 1960 Act which have fallen some way short of the high hopes that were placed in it. Local reviews have not resulted in voluntary mergers and trustees have not exactly been falling over each other to take advantage of the revised cy-prés provisions in the Act. Also, despite the decision of Parliament that a central register could be set up, there remain considerable gaps in our knowledge of the facts.
All the same, we do know there are a lot of parochial charities with such tiny incomes that they cannot do very much on their own, although they might be able to do something worth while if they clubbed together. We also know there are a number of parochial charities which have substantial funds, thanks to what has happened to land values, and they might have even greater funds if only they charged economic rents to the farmers. We know that for some of these, at any rate, the income is not being usefully applied and indeed cannot be usefully applied without some change in the powers of the trustees. It is this sort of problem that the neighbourhood trusts envisaged by the Bill—and as the noble Baroness, Lady Faithful, explained, this is not a novel idea—are designed to cope with.
Last time we debated this subject, objection was taken that the proposals would involve departing from the original purpose of the individual charity and would mean overriding the wishes of the donors. This argument, it seems to me, is central to the Bill and I should like to try my own hand at explaining the justification for the Bill, as I see it. It is, I suggest, that the donors intended their charity to be used for the relief of the poor, and it is only by enlarging the area of operation that it is now possible to ensure that the money is so used, in a sensible way and in ways not covered by the Welfare State. For the reasons which have been explained, it was natural at the time for the parish to be taken as the unit; but now, the argument goes, it is more in keeping with the intention of the donors to use the money for the relief of the poor over a wider area than to continue, on the one hand, to dribble small amounts away in useless doles or, on the other hand, to divert the income of the more prosperous charities to other purposes within the parish.
It seems to me that there is force in the contention that to use the money for amenities within the parish would indeed be to override the wishes of the donors, who could have left the money for such purposes if they had so wished, and that to ensure that the money
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can be sensibly used for the poor is better calculated to safeguard the original purposes of the donors so far as is practicable and to be perfectly consistent with the cy-pres doctrine, as extended in the 1960 Act.
Objection was also taken to the element of compulsion in the Bill, but I think there is really very little need for me to add much to what the noble Lord, Lord Foot, has already said on this point. I am well aware of the almost complete absence of compulsory powers in the 1960 Act but, without some such provision now, what are the prospects of achieving anything worth while? We have had 23 years of voluntary effort and have precious little to show for it. Also, the Charity Commission, which as we have heard, is not over-generously supplied with resources, cannot be expected to find staff on the scale that would he needed if it were to embark on the task of persuading large numbers of trustees up and down the country to take some initiative.
It was also suggested last time that the Bill would discourage potential donors to charity. I am currently concerned, as the noble Lord, Lord Renton, knows very well, with a charitable appeal and I am only too conscious of the many reasons which are advanced for showing a lack of enthusiasm in responding to an appeal for contributions. But I cannot see why this Bill should be an additional reason for discouragement if it is known that these are sensible moves, designed to ensure that the intentions of the original donors are carried out so far as possible. I must say that at first sight it seems to me a rather more attractive prospect than the prospect in the Small Charities Bill that after 40 years the trustees would be able to wind up the charity altogether. No doubt these are matters we can discuss further on a later occasion.
Speaking of the Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Renton, if I may so describe it, leads me to say that no one supposes that neighbourhood trusts would mop up every single tiny charity. There would undoubtedly remain some small charities which ought to be wound up, as Clause 6 of the Bill contemplates. Whether the figure of an income off £10 per year in that clause is the right figure is something that we could discuss at a later stage; and there are also one or two other points where I have some doubts about the Bill, which again may be more suitable for discussion later. They are indeed points subsidiary to the main issues raised by the Bill, and I go along with those who think that the noble Baroness has made out her case and that her proposals well merit further scrutiny.
There is just one other point that I should like to raise. On 6th May, at col. 306 of the Official Report, the noble Lord, Lord Elton, referred to a local charity review in Lancashire. The gestation of this review has been, prolonged and, now it has started, I gather that it is likely to go on for some years. I am not quite sure, I confess, what its relevance is to the issues that we are debating today and which ought to be settled within a matter of months rather than years, and perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Elton, could enlighten us on this aspect when he comes to wind up. That is all I want to say in support of the Bill. I hope that the House will give it a Second Reading and will then remit it to a Select Committee.
5.1 p.m.
Lord Beloff: My Lords, I should like to take the opportunity of a charities Bill to make some uncharitable remarks. Shortly after the general election was called, each of us present received a personal Writ of Summons to attend this House. We did not have to wait for the suffrages of the electorate. Noble Lords, opposite remain with their numbers undiminished and, some believe, shortly even to be increased. This should lead one to the reflection that this is a continuing body. We are who we were on 6th May. One might have thought, therefore, that the procedures of the House would allow business to be continued.
But let us suppose—and there is good historical precedent for this—that Parliaments, even the Upper House in Parliament, should each be regarded as starting afresh. Then one would have thought that it would still be possible to look back and say, "We had got to this or that point in our work". Obviously, I am talking not of matters of great party controversy, but of matters such as the one that occupies us this afternoon, and one would have expected that there would be a purely formal Second Reading of the Bill of my noble friend Lady Faithfull and a formal moving of the appointment of a Select Committee. We could then have gone ahead as we would have done if Parliament had not been dissolved.
Instead of that, we have had to have a second debate rehearsing the arguments which we heard on the initial occasion. I am not complaining at the joy of hearing the noble Lords, Lord Mishcon or Lord Allen of Abbeydale, which is exceeded only by the joy of hearing my noble friend Lady Faithful! herself. But I think there is a serious point in this, because we would not in fact be having this debate, nor would we be now assured that a Select Committee would be appointed, had not my noble friend Lady Faithfull in the interval been able to carry on rather difficult negotiations with the Home Office to assure herself, and to assure the House, that there was no change in their intentions.
I say that because the original replies which she received from the Home Office—and the noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale, has mentioned in particular the reference to the Lancashire inquiry—suggested that all the objections which had been raised in the past, which had been, in the view. I think, of most of us here, satisfactorily dealt with in the course of our debate on 6th May, were going to be rehearsed all over again. One wonders, indeed, whether the reading of the House of Lords Hansard should be made compulsory upon officials who have to advise Ministers, particularly Ministers newly taking office, before they launch into the business of this House.
That is a serious constitutional point and a serious practical point, because, after all, we are only one House of a two-House legislature. We may have—I hope now, indeed, we are assured that we shall have—our Select Committee upon this Bill. It will emerge in some form, no doubt, and be subject to the remaining stages of legislation. But there is clearly no point in our going through what will be an arduous task for Members of the Committee, and a certain amount of extra time when the Bill, if amended, comes back before us, unless we have some indication that in the other place facilities will be provided to turn this Bill
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into an Act, and indeed in a relatively short space of time, because nothing more important has been said this afternoon than what the noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale, said: that is, that this is a matter which should be cleared up not in a matter of years but, in fact, in a matter of months. The advantages of the Bill are so patent, the abuses which it seeks to correct are so obvious, that there is no serious case for delay and, I believe, no serious need for delay.
If I may make one remark in answer to my noble friend Lord Renton, I think that, when this figure of £2,000 in each of two years was mentioned, that was simply the cost of local authorities equipping themselves with lists of the charities in the areas for which they were responsible. It clearly was not the total cost of the reviews, of the schemes, and so on. This should not be too great a figure, provided one finds that the register which the Charity Commissioners are obliged to keep can be searched on behalf of the local authorities, in order to produce the information which they need. That having been said—
Lord Mishcon: My Lords, I interrupt the noble Lord only so that he can continue, as he always likes to do, with correct facts before him. Maybe he is arguing now as to why we should have a Bill debated again in a new Session, because this Bill provides not that the local councils furnish lists, but that the Charity Commissioners furnish lists to the councils. So that cannot possibly he the cost to the councils of furnishing lists.
Lord Beloff: My Lords, I think that there is a misunderstanding. The council would as my noble friend Lord Renton, pointed out, need to have an official who would correspond with the Charity Commissioners in order to get the list. Presumably, he would have a typist who would type out the list and distribute it to the interested parties. So that there is a cost, even though the basic information is with the Charity Commissioners rather than with the local authorities at present. Therefore, it is not, I should have thought, a very expensive procedure provided that the register is up-to-date. At any rate that is the estimate that we have received. If there are alternative estimates of the cost of the operation then, clearly, it is for the Home Office, with the Charity Commissioners, to supply these estimates. It is curious that, though we have had costs adduced as one of the reasons for scepticism about this Bill, we have not had these costs in figures before us.
So all one can say is that we have had a couple of hours which probably could not have been spent more advantageously at this stage of the Parliament. We are where we were on 6th May, but. I hope, with the reinforced conviction that the Bill is a sensible and desirable one, and with reinforced gratitude to my noble friend Lady Faithfull, for having done it not only once but twice.
5.9 p.m.
Lord Melchett: My Lords, I am not where I was on 6th May, because unfortunately I was not able to take part in the Second Reading of the Bill then. I am delighted for that reason that the noble Baroness has had to bring her Bill back to the House for a second

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time, because it has given me the opportunity to intervene—very briefly, I hope—at the end of a second run-through on this Bill.
I had better declare an oblique interest in the Bill. I am one of those people who have been mentioned both by the noble Baroness and by the noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale, during the course of this debate—a farmer who rents land from a parochial charity. I hasten to add that I am not, I hope, a farmer who rents land at far too low a rent from a parochial charity. I believe we pay a very fair, not to say generous, rent to the charity in our parish.
I also hasten to add that this parochial charity is one that I believe to be reasonably well run, having very consciencious trustees, the interest of a very great many people living in the parish, and which keeps its finances up to date—but it does suffer from the problems of having fairly restricted objects and from not being able to support some of the things in the parish which I believe both the trustees and the local community would like to see supported, with the generous rents which we as farmers of their land pay them.
It seems to me that in discussing this Bill it is inevitable that we should also look at the Small Charities Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Renton. Three interests need to he distinguished. First, there are the interests of the beneficiaries of charitable gifts, which I would say is by far the most important interest. In that case, the noble Baroness, Lady Faithfull, has made an absolutely overwhelming case for the kind of reforms which her Bill proposes. It seems to me that the present situation, involving a scandalous waste of resources and, to some extent, the misuse of resources, is really deplorable. I am very saddened, to put it no higher, that the Government are not more concerned about doing away with this waste of resources and improving matters.
The noble Baroness gave, as she did before, some amusing examples of objectives which people saw as being important many years ago but which are no longer relevant. But the House should be reminded that we are dealing with a scandal. There is a great deal of money which could be and should be spent on very needy causes, which is not being spent at the moment. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Beloff—although I did not expect to hear myself say this very frequently in your Lordships' House—about the urgency for some reform.
The second interest—and I would put it quite a long way behind beneficiaries—is that of the donors. Frankly, I do not find any weight in the argument put forward by the Government on previous occasions—that those interests are in some way threatened by the proposal to amalgamate charities in the neighbourhood trusts. That seems to me to be a nonsense, and the noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale, dealt with that point very effectively.
I find the Small Charities Bill a serious threat to the interests of donors, and I consider that the proposal that trustees should be allowed to wind up the trusts, even if they are very small, is a dangerous one. I personally would oppose it very strongly. It seems to me that the problem which the noble Lord Lord Renton, has identified could be met by allowing
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trustees to transfer their capital, as capital, to a trust with similar objects, with the condition that it remains a capital sum. There may well be other ways of dealing with the problem of trusts having very small incomes without that money being lost as capital-producing interest for charitable purposes—which I believe is a principle that should be retained at all costs.
The third interest is that of the trustees, and I hasten to add that I would put this interest a long way down the list. It is here that I share the concern that has been expressed by my two noble friends about the mandatory element in the Bill of the noble Baroness. There are real grounds for concern, and I do not agree with the noble Lord, Lord Foot, that this is a superficial objection. It goes deeper than that. In particular, my noble friend Lord Prys-Davies made a very strong argument about the interest which many people living in a parish will have in a parish charity. That is certainly true in the case of our own parish, where the land was originally set aside to provide fuel for the poor of the parish, as a fuel allotment. It became known as common land, and although at the present time there are no common rights registered over it, it is still seen as a piece of land over which people in the parish have an interest—and, I am glad to say are still able to make use of by picnicking, walking, and generally enjoying the countryside.
The parish interest that exists in some parish charities cannot be ignored. When this Bill and the Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Renton, are referred, as I hope they will be, to a Select Committee, I believe there will be a need to introduce some softening of the mandatory element. I do not wish to draw analogies which may upset noble Lords on the other side of the House, but it seems to me that the good trade union principle that people should have to opt out of something rather than opt into it—when thinking of the payment of political levies, for example—might be one that we could adopt here. The previous law asked trustees to opt into an amalgamation and it has clearly been an abysmal failure. It may be that this Bill can include something that will allow people to opt out, under fairly stringent conditions, which would make it unlikely that many would. Nevertheless, it would leave that door open and will remove a not important but nevertheless significant objection which a number of noble Lords clearly share to the Bill as it is now drafted.
That is all I have to say about the Bill at this stage. I strongly support the view that it should be referred to a Select Committee. I am delighted that the noble Lord, Lord Renton, and the noble Baroness, Lady Faithfull, have made the deal that they have—that both Bills will go before a Select Committee—because clearly that is the most sensible option. I hope, again in common with the noble Lord, Lord Beloff, that the Government will be prepared to take a rather more openminded view of both the advantages which the noble Baroness's Bill so clearly contains and the significant danger which I believe the Bill of the noble Lord. Lord Renton, contains—although I accept that it also tries to deal with some significant problems to which we must find some solutions.
5.16 p.m.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Home Office (Lord Elton): My Lords, you will share my

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admiration for the energy and persistence with which my noble friend Lady Faithfull has been promoting her Bill, and my gratitude to her for setting out before us the very real problems which exist in this field. I had looked forward to a kind of matinee performance of last May's show. There have been some slight changes in the cast, with the part of the Bishop of London being played by the Bishop of Norwich, and an interesting supporting role written into the last scene for the noble Lord, Lord Melchett. The drama, although similar to the earlier performance, proved to be rather more different than that, I am glad that my noble friend Lord Beloff has not had his way yet, so that I had the pleasure of seeing it again—and of hearing my noble friend's agile entr'acte as well. I say "hearing" rather than "seeing" because. like my noble friend Lady Faithfull, he always persists in performing from the back of the stalls.
Quite clearly, we are all agreed that something needs to be done about certain parochial charities. I fear, however, that enthusiasm for action over some parochial charities can lead to the danger that all parochial charities will be regarded in the same light. Several speakers have voiced doubts about the provisions of the Bill in this respect, and that reflects the Government's own reservations. The noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, has expressed concern on a previous occasion about the compulsory nature of the Bill, and he has referred to this again. Other noble Lords and the right reverend Prelate have suggested amendments which they would like to see made at a later stage. I have noted, for example, a suggestion that well-run charities should be exempted from the provisions of the Bill, and that there should be a right of appeal in some form: the noble Lord, Lord Melchett, was the most recent speaker to advance that proposal.
Wide-ranging and informed as both debates about this Bill have been, one fundamental point still needs to be underlined. This Bill is a measure intended to redistribute charitable resources: to take assets from a particular area designated by a donor and make them available over a wider area. Let us first acknowledge that. if this Bill were passed tomorrow, not a single penny would be devoted to charitable causes that has not already been donated to charity.
It has been said that this Bill is about unlocking charitable funds. That implies that trustees do not already have the keys. The Bill aims at a fairer and more effective distribution of the funds in parochial charities—but I, for one, still have doubts as to whether that is what its provisions would entirely achieve. If we are to have any regard for the wishes of the original benefactors (and I believe it was this interest that the noble Lord, Lord Melchett, put second, although. as he said, a long way second) we must be concerned if the effect of the Bill is to diminish the benefits which a charity confers on any beneficiary identifiable under the original foundation.
I take it that my noble friend would be concerned at that. If she were not, I would be surprised, because she would then be setting her own judgment—or, rather, that of those empowered under her Bill—far above that of those who actually provided the money in question, and saying, in very firm tones, that the "lady from Whitehall" knows best. As the right reverend
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Prelate has emphasised, we have no wish to overthrow, as he put it, the minds of donors of years gone by. They provided the money in the expectation that it would be used as they specified.
Yet it seems to me that the effect of the Bill would quite intentionally be to level out charitable resources in a given district, deflecting them both from the most specific purposes and from the most specific areas chosen by the benefactors. The jam, by being spread more generally, would necessarily be spread more thinly in some places than it had been—something which is perhaps more easily achieved with jam than with clergy. Beneficiaries of charities already being properly administered and fulfilling useful purposes could suffer from their merger with others less well endowed. There may be a mathematical justice in this, but its desirability as a means of disposing of charitable bequests does seem to me to remain very much open to question.
Of course, one cannot be certain how much this would happen, and here I am happy to agree with supporters of this Bill. We know comparatively little about the parochial charities of England and Wales. We know that they form between one-third and one-quarter of the 144,000 registered charities, and we know that many of them have a very small income. There is some information available from local reviews which have been completed and published. The opinion has been expressed forcefully that we should know more. That is one of the reasons why a Select Committee seems to me the right way to proceed in this matter.
We have a very limited knowledge of the subject—too limited to form an accurate general picture. To generalise from specific examples is, I think, especially risky given the scope for idiosyncrasy in the endowment of individual charities and the great variety of ways in which trustees interpret their functions. My noble friend Lady Faithfull has amply illustrated this. Apart from the fact that most of these trusts have been adapted to present-day conditions, it would be wrong to assume in the absence of reliable information that they are in any way typical of the generality of such charities.
I said a moment ago that I was struck by the strength of feeling that something ought to be done about parochial charities. I have also been struck by the strength of feeling about another matter, and that is the Charity Commission, or perhaps I detect a change in that concern and it is now more appropriately directed against the law of charity as a whole. The noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, made a succinct and persuasive speech on this subject, and I shall certainly bring his concern to the attention of my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Home Affairs. We have heard some severe criticisms of the commissioners. We have been told in particular that they should have played a more active part in initiating local reviews of parochial charities and schemes for amalgamations.
It has been asked why it is that they do not keep more information about the charities on the register. Perhaps I may say that although the Charity Commissioners are appointed by my right honourable friend, they do of course act independently of the Government. I think I should refer your Lordships to their

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annual report for 1982, just published. In this they say that although they have tried to make their functions clear to the public it seems that
"there is a fairly widespread misunderstanding of our constitutional position and of our powers and duties".
I would not suggest that such a misunderstanding exists in your Lordships' House, but it is helpful to recall the terms of the Charities Act 1960, which established the Charity Commission in its present form and set out what are still its duties. Under that Act, the Commissioners have the responsibility of,
"promoting the effective use of charitable resource by encouraging the development of better methods of administration, by giving charity trustees information or advice on any matter affecting the charity".
They must also,
"so act in the case of any charity (unless it is a matter of altering its purposes) as best to promote and make effective the work of the charity in meeting the needs designated by its trusts".
It may now be thought that the commissioners should have been given wider powers—powers to compel amalgamations of small local charities or to force local authorities to carry out reviews of charities within their areas—instead of the power they have under Section 13 to carry out amalgamations at the request of the trustees, and their present duty under Section 11 to provide information from the central register to any local authority which is compiling an index of local charities. Under Section 12 of the Charities Act local authorities may carry out local reviews, and, as we have heard, all have at least started, but this is an entirely voluntary operation.
The noble Lord, Lord Foot, asked whether, under voluntary procedures, we shall be any better off in 20 or 30 years' time. The commissioners already assist in carrying out voluntarily what my noble friend wants to achieve by compulsion. Your Lordships should perhaps know that in the year 1978 to 1981 an average of 700 charities were grouped or amalgamated, and last year that number rose to 854. That is perhaps faster progress than some of your Lordships might have expected.
That we now find it inconceivable that wider powers of compulsion would be misused by the commission is a tribute to those who have served as the commissioners. It is understandable that when establishing this new body, as it then was, there were fears that it might become too powerful and ride roughshod over the views of trustees in pursuit of what it perceived to be the right course for their charities to pursue. The powers were therefore balanced so that the commission would operate in an atmosphere of co-operation, and I believe that probably that is the only way—and almost certainly it is the best way—for such an organisation to carry out its functions. The Charities Bill was formulated following the extensive work of the Nathan Committee. At that time the very fact of establishing, a central register of charities (as required by Section 4) was an important and valuable advance on what had happened before. The Charities Act may not be perfect, but it seems to us in Government that it commands more general respect than perhaps would some of the reforms that have been proposed.
I return to the Bill itself. The Government's views on this Bill are generally known, so I will be brief in setting them before your Lordships. The compulsory
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amalgamation by the state of voluntary organisations offends in our view, and I rather think in that of the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, against the spirit of charity law. Charity is voluntary giving and charity law is based on the importance of preserving that principle. It is the task of central and local Government to examine social needs and problems and to deploy their resources to tackle these problems in a rational and efficient way. We all hope that voluntary efforts will follow the same principles; but we in the Government do not accept the view that there should be any kind of Government compulsion to achieve that. Charity trustees should continue to exercise the right they have always had, to administer their trusts as they think fit, subject to the safeguards already contained in the Charities Act.
It must be realised that this Bill is largely indiscriminate in its application all pre-1948 local charities for the poor would come within its scope, even those which have sufficient funds to carry out a relevant purpose. I know that this element of the Bill is objectionable to some of their trustees; we have received letters from a number of them pointing out that their charities are well able to carry out their functions. Trustees guard the independence and tradition of their local charities and would be resentful of being forced into amalgamations regardless of their own performance and the effectiveness of their charities. Doubtless an escape clause—as some noble Lords, including the noble Lord, Lord Melchett, have suggested—might be an object of help here. Balanced against the gain of effectiveness charitable resources that the Bill promises, there might also be a loss of active parochial charities, and possibly of able and committed trustees as well.
Even if there were not objections in principle to the Bill, I should remind your Lordships—and this has been ventilated this afternoon—that there are cost implications which cannot be ignored. The expense would be not inconsiderable. I am told that the number of parochial charities for the poor has been estimated to be between 35,000 and 45,000. There are 53 county councils to carry out the reviews. This suggests that an average council would need to carry out reviews of between 700 and 900 charities. I have to say with my noble friend Lord Renton that I find it barely credible that the figure of £4,000 which was put forward by my noble friend Lady Faithfull as the figure needed by the local authorities to do this would go very far in reviewing that number of charities, even with the help of local voluntary organisations. I will read with care what my noble friend Lord Beloff said. If he was saying that there must be other work than that costed in that figure than I think he must be right.
I know that local authorities have already expressed their doubts about these figures. There would also be considerable resource demands on the Charity Commissioners themselves who would need to employ many extra staff to carry out the duties proposed for them by the Bill. Those of your Lordships who say they are understaffed will accept that argument, I am sure.
Before I conclude, may I remind your Lordships that on this occasion, unlike the last time we discussed the Bill of my noble friend Lady Faithfull, there is another Charities Bill in your Lordships' House, and it

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is a great relief to me to be able to refer to it. This Bill, tabled by my noble friend Lord Renton and ably advocated by him this afternoon, also seeks to unlock those charitable funds that are locked up by reason of the smallness of the parcels or pockets in which they are held. We find that Bill preferable to this one if only because it lacks the element of compulsion which is the hallmark of the measure now before your Lordships. It also rests upon a principle accepted as necessary by the noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale, in his interesting speech and rejected with vigour by the noble Lord, Lord Melchett, in his interesting speech.
There may of course well be different features which others of your Lordships find make it less attractive, and I say only that it would be a great pity to rule it out of consideration by proceeding separately with another Bill ahead of it on the Order Paper. There are elements in each Bill which will I think, be found to be compatible with the other, and this seems to provide very strong grounds for referring both of them to a Select Committee of this House. That is a course which commends itself to my noble friend, and, she tells us, to the NCVO, the report of which was published only yesterday—and my noble friend will forgive me as I have not yet read it.
This has been a very useful debate and has served to illustrate many aspects of the problems that face us. It has been helpful to hear from the noble Lord, Lord Prys-Davies, on the particular concerns of Wales. The contribution of my noble friend Lady Lane-Fox was, as always, lucid, relevant and concise.
The noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale, asked about the review in Lancashire, I think his question was about its relevance to this afternoon's debate. The answer is that it will not be concluded for a year or two and that it is not directed specifically to this debate but at the larger question of discovering what is going on in parochial charities throughout the country. If he wishes to press me further on the matter I shall have to write to him because I cannot help him more at this stage.
While I cannot support the Bill in its current form, it has served a valuable purpose in directing our attention as a matter of urgency to the difficulties surrounding parochial charities and we must be grateful to my noble friend Lady Faithfull for this opportunity. There are no easy solutions in matters as complex as these; but perhaps the conclusions of a Select Committee would provide us with valuable insight into what should he done, and I am very glad that she also sees that as the proper way forward, as does my noble friend Lord Renton.
5.34 p.m.
Baroness Faithfull: My Lords, may I first thank all noble Lords who have again taken part in a debate on this subject, and the noble Lord, Lord Melchett, who has taken part for the first time. I am indeed grateful, knowing the time and work that is involved. If your Lordships will forgive me, I do not intend to reply to the points made by each of the speakers. I shall merely make one or two of my own comments. First, I think that every noble Lord who has spoken is agreed in principle that we need to use to the very best of our
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ability, and effectively, money that was left in years gone by—even St. Benedict's Monastery—which at the moment is not being used. We are therefore, agreed on the principle of the Bill. What we are not agreed on is how this could best be achieved.
My second point concerns the call by the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, for a wider review of the parochial charities. We have had wide reviews over many years. There was the Nathan Report, the Select Committee report and the Goodman Report, but nothing has happened. I thought that, in considering this Bill, if we were to isolate a small section and work out principles in that small section it might well lead to the same principles being extended on a wider scale. However, I hope that if we have a Select Committee it will not go the way of so many Select Committees in the past, as was said by the noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale. It was for that reason that we isolated that one field; in order to carry out the principles of the right way to deal with unused charities.
My third point is that, although it seemed from the speech of my noble friend the Minister that he supports this Bill being committed to a Select Committee—and we are grateful for that—I wonder whether he is more interested in the trustees and what they think and feel than he is in the donors and the recipients. I wonder whether the Law Commission is not very much taken up with the position and the feelings of the trustees.
I am extremely grateful to my noble friend Lord Elton for all his help and what he has said today but my final point is that he has said what is wrong but not how it can he put right. The figures he has given sound very impressive and suggest that much has been done. I shall not quarrel with that. Much may have been done, but there is much yet to be done. It is what must be done on which we are concentrating today. Again, I am very grateful to your Lordships for the interest shown and to those who have spoken in today's debate.
On Question Bill read a second time.
Baroness Faithfull: My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.
Moved. That the Bill be committed to a Select Committee.—(Baroness Faithfull.)
On Question. Motion agreed to: Bill committed to a Select Committee accordingly.

The Probation Service
5.38 p.m.
The Earl of Longford The Earl of Longford rose to ask Her Majesty's Government whether they agree that the role of the probation service should be much expanded.
The noble Earl said: My Lords. I rise to ask the Question standing in my name. I am very grateful to all noble Lords who propose to take part in this debate. They are all highly qualified in different ways. Some of them apply the law and other have tried to spiritualise the law—we have two leading ministers of religion; one a Bishop—and others have suffered from the law. At any rate, they will all no doubt make important contributions.
I am sorry that two of those to whom we have listened with special attention on this subject are not able to be with us today. The noble Baroness, Lady Macleod of Borve, especially asked me to express her general sympathy with the propositions I am unfolding and the same is true for my noble friend Lord Wells-Pestell who spoke about these matters in a recent debate and who, of course, was himself a probation officer for many years. I am only sorry that I have not been able to obtain the assistance of the noble Baroness, Lady Trumpington, who has given a lot of attention to prisoners and their problems. She has now been raised to higher spheres of being and we wish her well in the stratosphere.
There are two issues relating to the financial provision of the probation service with which I wish to deal. The first is the present under-financing of the service and the second is the expanded role which I and others believe the service should possess. With that must go the necessary financing.
As we all agree, the probation service makes a vital contribution to the criminal justice system. I venture to assert that this contribution has never been quite so, important as now. Crime goes up and up. There is an increasing understanding of the criminal mind in some quarters; in others, less enlightened but more numerous, I think we see misunderstanding. There is an urgent need to deal with more offenders in the community and to increase the provision to the courts of constructive and positive measures which can act as alternatives to custodial sentences. There is no doubt that Britain imprisons more people than almost any other country in Europe, yet few of us believe that we have more violent crime or that we are more violent people. Who would be prepared to say that we really have more criminals who are a threat to society?
Opinions might differ on where to draw the line. In the foreseeable future those who are a danger to society must be restrained, and with our present state of knowledge we do not seem able to improve on prisons. But beneath that layer of serious and dangerous crime there are thousands of other prisoners whose offences are of a minor nature. We must urgently consider means of releasing them—we have all said this many times; I think that almost everybody who speaks on these matters in the House, whether from the Government Benches or otherwise, has said this at some time—and developing a strategy for avoiding incarceration of others like them in the future. Certainly a humane Minister like the noble Lord, Lord Elton, would echo those sentiments privately, if not publicly, unless I am much mistaken.
We know that far from rehabilitating the offender, so that on release he does not re-offend, the usual effect of prison is the opposite. I am not saying that no one has ever benefited from prison, but I do not think that anybody who has a friend or relative who committed a crime not of the most serious order would wish to see him sent to prison in his own interests. We also know that many—perhaps a high majority—of those who go to prison have gone through life under great disadvantage. If we have any conscience, Christian or Humanist, we must believe that there are better ways of helping them than incarcerating them in goal.
The Government have stated on many occasions that they wish to provide a humane criminal justice system and they have stated their commitment to the
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probation service. I am sure that, being honourable men or ladies, when they say that they must believe it; but there is not much sign of that in practice. Some growth of the probation service has been allowed. I shall give a few figures but I do not want to dwell too much on the statistics. In 1982–83 a 3 per cent. growth was forecast, and in 1983–84 a 1 per cent. growth is promised. This extra is welcome as far as it goes, but it does not go very far. It represents a rather feeble recognition of the efforts made by the service.
Such increases fall terribly short of full compensation for the increases in workload achieved. Between 1979 and 1981 (which provide the latest figures available to me) the service took on 28 per cent. more probation orders and 78 per cent. more community service orders and prepared 16 per cent. more reports for the courts. The rate of financial growth for 1983–84 of 1 per cent. Corresponds, only to the expansion planned as long ago as 1980. Not even the introduction, welcome though it is, of community service to 16-year-olds is to attract additional vital funding.
Before asking, as I shall do, for an increase for a genuine expansion in the service, I wish to focus attention on things as they are. I must press the Government to fund the probation service much more adequately for the tasks it already performs. The service calculates that it will need £1 million to implement community service for 16-year-olds. How is the service to manage its already tightly stretched budgets if appropriate staffing and financing are not made available? What will be the consequences of a patchy and poor service if probation committees are unable to meet the demands of the courts? I am sure that these are questions which exercise the mind of the noble Lord, Lord Elton, who I am very glad to see back in his proper place; I do not mean that it is the only position to which he has any right to aspire, but for the time being it is one which he fills to the great satisfaction of the House. Surely the Government do not wish to undo their own stated intentions by shortsighted parsimony.
Let me turn for a moment to the lessons that can be learnt, and ought to be learnt, from the upsurge in work which the probation service has undertaken. The service recognises that it could improve on its previous figures, and a policy initiative, supported by the service as a whole, led to reappraisal, reorganisation and redoubled efforts. The House will realise that I am speaking with a great deal of assistance from the probation service. The events since 1979 have proved three important points: one, that through a deliberate policy initiative the probation service can expand its role—the job is there to be done; two, that the results of such a drive can make a very large impact; and, three, that the momentum of such an initiative can be sustained only if adequate funding is provided.
Let me return to the fact that we can see that there are substantial numbers of people sent to prison who cannot be regarded as a danger to society. In 1979, 62,611 persons were sent to prison. Of those sentenced by magistrates' courts, 61 per cent. of all males and 78 per cent. of all females who were sent to prison received sentences of six months or less. A detailed breakdown of the prison population at 30th June 1979 showed that 6 per cent. had no previous convictions.

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Of the total prison population, 70 per cent. were serving sentences for offences which did not involve violence, sex or robbery. Such figures must surely challenge the unjustified assertion that we as a nation imprison only those for whom no alternative exists.
However, in today's climate, leaving out for a moment the ethics—although ethics sometimes, but not always, have a way of going hand in hand with economics—perhaps the costs involved ought also to be brought to light. Here I turn to a subject which a number of us have touched on before now in this House. There are strong enough arguments without recourse to economics but the economic arguments are also compelling. The average weekly cost of keeping a person in prison in 1979-80 was £136. That means that a six-month sentence, allowing for full remission, costs over £2,000, and if someone spent a year in prison they would cost the state over £6,000. That figure does not allow for associated costs such as keeping the prisoner's dependants on state benefits or the long-term cost of damage to the prisoner's future prospects.
Of course, I have to admit—the noble Lord, Lord Elton. if he were not such a generous while at the same time shrewd debater might raise this point—that if only one prisoner less goes to prison, the savings are not noticeable. Larger savings can be made only by a policy initiative which results in very substantially fewer people being imprisoned. The cost of a probation order in 1979–80—we have said these things before, but we must try to come up to date if we can—was calculated to be £400 per year. The cost of a community service order is about £250, while, as I said earlier, the cost of putting someone in prison is £6,000, or more.
Let me take an individual case in point, the details of which have been supplied to me by the probation service as being typical. A 46-year-old man was convicted by summary trial of an offence of shoplifting goods to the value of £6. I repeat that the value was £6—not £60, £600, £6.000—but £6. He had eight previous convictions, none of them for shoplifting, and his last conviction had been three years previously. For the shoplifting offence he was sentenced to 28 days' imprisonment, and he was refused bail pending an appeal against sentence. No probation report had been prepared. That case has been supplied to me by the probation service as being a reasonable example of how things can go wrong in practice.
Let us pause to consider that the cost of producing a social inquiry report is only £90 and that the report might have assisted the court to make a non-custodial disposal and relieve the burden on the prison. It might have retained the man in the community, where he would have maintained his social and family links, and possibly his employment. But in fact he was sent to prison. As is known by everybody, including the distinguished magistrate sitting below me, the noble Baroness, Lady Birk, who is to wind up the debate, the provision of social inquiry reports is a vital part of the role of the service. It also indicates that there is a substantial group of offenders with whom the probation service has indicated its preparedness to be involved.
I should like to say one word—and it must not be more than one; I have been going round saying that the speeches were much too long yesterday, and so I had better be careful about my own. I see that I have now been speaking for 14 minutes, but the House will not be asked to listen to me for very much longer. There is a further point that I should like to make in connection with public opinion. It is often said that public opinion wants to take it out on prisoners, that public opinion on this matter reflects what many enlightened people would regard as a thoroughly unenlightened attitude. Such claims about public opinion must be looked at rather more carefully than they sometimes are. A recent public opinion poll conducted by the Prison Reform Trust, in conjunction with the Observer revealed that of those questioned, 53 per cent. favoured non-custodial sentences for burglary, 65 per cent. favoured non-custodial sentences for vandalism, and 93 per cent. favoured non-custodial sentences for shoplifting. So I hope that the Government, or others whom I would regard as hard liners, will not argue that public opinion justifies steps which would not be justified on moral grounds.
The picture which I wish to draw to the attention of the House is grim. As we all know, as we have heard a hundred times in this place, the prisons are full to bursting. They are full because we have not been active enough or firm enough in ensuring that prison is used only as a disposal of last resort. In finding alternatives the probation service has worked vigorously and to breaking point, and today the service finds itself bemused by the messages of encouragement from the Government which are not backed up by adequate funds.
As I said at the beginning, there are two issues relating to the service. The first is that recognising the intrinsic value of the probation service, the Government should provide the funding necessary for the present tasks. The second issue is that the work should now be greatly expanded and the necessary finance for that purpose should also be provided. The present Government, any other Government in this country, we ourselves—the citizens—are very fortunate in possessing a probation service which is certainly unsurpassed anywhere in the world. We are proud of what it does, but if we wish to do it justice we shall give it much better opportunities and much more support than we do at present.
5.55 p.m.
Lord Harris of Greenwich: My Lords, I am sure that we all join in thanking the noble Earl, Lord Longford, for the opportunity that he has given us today to discuss the work of the probation service. I participate in the debate with particular pleasure because for five years. I had ministerial responsibility for the service, and for a further three years as chairman of the Parole Board I had the opportunity of seeing the work of the service, as did my noble friend Lord Hunt before me. I think that both of us, and indeed all our colleagues on the Parole Board, would join in an expression of appreciation of the very high quality of work that we experienced from members of the service.
This evening I want to discuss three issues: first, the workload which is at the moment being carried by the service—a point touched on by the noble Earl, Lord

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Longford; secondly, the character of that work; and, thirdly, the question of the relations between the probation service and Government. Given the fact that I propose to make one or two observations on the last point, I should at this stage say that I am president of the National Association of Senior Probation Officers.
I turn first to the workload of the service. I believe that all of us recognise that at the moment the probation service is under exceptionally heavy pressure; but so of course is the entire criminal justice system. We are continuing to experience a remorseless rise in the level of crime, in particular serious crime, and that of course carries with it direct implications for every part of the system—the courts, the police, the prisons, and the probation service. Any Government, whatever their political persuasion, would find the resource consequences of such pressure disturbing; and this must be even more so in the case of a Government such as the present one, determined to make harsh cuts in the overall level of public expenditure.
It is of course true that the present Government have made additional resources available for the criminal justice system. Police strength has continued to rise as a result of both generous pay settlements and the savage reduction of employment opportunities for the young. As undoubtedly the noble Lord, Lord Elton, will be telling us in an hour or so at the end of the debate, more resources have certainly been made available for the probation service. But substantial additional resources were also made available to both services by the present Government's predecessors—a point which perhaps the noble Lord might not emphasise with the same degree of vigour. But unhappily the situation at the moment is that so far as the probation service is concerned the additional resources that have been made available by the present Government are simply not keeping pace with the increased pressure of work which is now facing the service.
I should like to give some illustrations. As we can all see from the probation statistics for 1982, which were published by the Home Office last week, there has been a further increase—albeit this time a rather more modest one—in the numbers commencing supervision under the probation service. Since 1978 the total doing so has expanded by no less than 35 per cent. As the noble Earl, Lord Longford, mentioned a moment or two ago, there has also been a very substantial increase in the number of community service orders made in the courts. I welcome this, as I am sure we all do. I think it admirable that the courts are using non-custodial disposals far more extensively. But, sadly, resources are not expanding at anything approaching this rate, and we are now experiencing the consequences of that failure.
Let me give some examples. Community service has now been extended to 16-year-olds. This, indeed, is essential if we are to avoid more boys being committed into custody, but I am told by a number of chief probation officers that they will be unable to extend this scheme to their areas because the resources are simply not available. The result of the scheme not being extended to those areas is that many youths will be sentenced unnecessarily to terms of custody. That, I believe, is deplorable.
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Even worse, I am told that in a number of areas, including the West Midlands, the probation service has to inform the courts from time to time that it is unable to accept any more community service orders, that is, not 16-year-olds, but community service orders generally, because it simply does not have the staff to supervise the offenders concerned. It is compelled, in short, to turn off the tap so far as community service is concerned. So, at a time when there is intolerable pressure in the prisons and at a time when hundreds of remand prisoners are having to be kept overnight in police custody, often, as we know, in shocking conditions and at considerable expense to the taxpayer, courts are being compelled to send people to prison because the probation service is being denied the resources to staff adequately these community service schemes. To put it as politely as possible, that does not seem to be a particularly sensible policy. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Elton, will deal directly with it when he speaks.
Secondly, I should like to turn to the character of the work now facing the probation service. I am well aware, of course, that many members of the probation service enjoy their work in the civil courts. But, as the probation statistics for 1982 show, the amount of this work is now increasing at a considerable pace. The number of reports prepared in 1982 for non-criminal courts relating to custody of, and access to, children was 6 per cent. higher than in 1981. This followed similar increases in previous years. The number of other non-criminal reports primarily relating to guardianship inquiries and work for the county courts was no less than 14 per cent. higher in 1982 than in the previous year. Again, this followed the pattern of the two preceding years.
At a time when the probation service is being denied adquate resources to perform its work in the criminal courts, the Government must, I believe, make up their minds whether they are prepared to allow this increasing flow of work to be diverted in this way from the social service departments of local authorities to probation, which is primarily a criminal justice service. Unless some sensible order of priorities is established, we will continue to see people being sent to prison because the resources are not available to supervise them in the community while, at the same time, a wholly uncontrolled rise is taking place in probation work in non-criminal courts. I hope, again, that the noble Lord, Lord Elton, will deal with this point this evening.
I hope he will say what the Government propose to do about it. If he argues that the service is simply responding to the demands of the non-criminal courts, why are different standards being applied to the criminal courts which are constantly being frustrated because of lack of resources of the probation service, as I have indicated? I must tell the House quite bluntly that if we see a continuation of this pattern of rapidly increasing work in the non-criminal courts and a continuation of the rise in the level of crime—there is no indication at the moment, unhappily, that it is turning down—and, at the same time, a strict limitation on growth in the probation service, we shall simply not, as a society, be able to provide the range of non-custodial alternatives to imprisonment that is essential if we are to prevent the deplorable conditions in our prisons deteriorating still further.

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I should like to put one particular suggestion to the Government as a means of dealing with this disquieting position in relation to non-criminal courts. At present, the service draws 80 per cent. of its money from the Home Office and 20 per cent. from local funds. Why is the service supported only from the Home Office Vote when that department has no responsibility whatever for the non-criminal courts? Why, at a time when the resources of the probation service are stretched to breaking point, does the Home Secretary not invite the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor to make a contribution towards the cost of the probation service from his Vote? In this way the divorce and county courts could continue to draw on the resources of the probation service without threatening the work of that service in the criminal courts. Again, I would be interested to hear what the noble Lord, Lord Elton, has to say about that suggestion.
Lastly, I turn to the issue of relations between the probation service and Government. It would be idle to pretend, in a year that has witnessed the first national strike by probation officers, that relations between the probation service and Government are particularly good. There is some suspicion of the motives of the Government among some members of the service and no doubt irritation among Ministers that the service is behaving in what they regard as a foolish manner. Having had, as I have indicated, some responsibility for the probation service in the past without having experienced any of the problems confronting the present Government, there is, I suppose, a slight risk that, viewed in retrospect, one might persuade oneself that this was the golden age of probation. Let me reassure the noble Lord that I would not, in fact, suggest that. There were at that time quite sharp arguments between the probation service and the then Government. One obvious example was resources. But, of course, at that time the pressure on the system was a great deal less severe than it is at the moment.
There was also the beginning of trouble between the leadership of the National Association of Probation Officers and the Home Office. Then, the issue that caused conflict was the decision by NAPO to call on its members to refuse to supervise so-called political offenders. In the aftermath of the Grunwick dispute and the affair of the Shrewsbury pickets, this was entirely unacceptable. We told NAPO so in the bluntest of terms. However, the area of dispute has now widened considerably, as the noble Lord, Lord Elton, will he well aware. There has been the one-day strike called in protest at the Government's decision on probation students' salaries. There is now the follow-up to that strike, the call by the National Association of Probation Officers to its members to decline to collect probation statistics. There is also the demand by NAPO that its members should refuse to have anything to do with one element of last year's Criminal Justice Act, the night restriction order.
I have no intention this evening of discussing at any length the merits of the arguments deployed by the Government and NAPO on each of these issues. As I have made clear, I do not believe that the question of probation students' salaries was handled with good sense by the Home Office. It certainly was not, but I
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have equally made clear that I believe that the decision to call the strike was a profound error.
The strike was, of course, ineffective, being ignored by many members of the probation service. It was also damaging to the interests of the probation service. Probation officers are seen by members of the public to be members of a caring profession. That reputation is not enhanced when probation officers leave their posts and deliberately render themselves unavailable to their clients, frequently troubled and disturbed people who may want to contact their supervising officer at a moment of acute personal crisis.
At a time when we want to do everything possible to encourage the growth of non-custodial alternatives to imprisonment, it was deeply disappointing that NAPO took action which was bound to lead to doubts by some courts about the sense of responsibility of some members of the probation service. I am well aware of the continuing ill-feeling about probation students' allowances. However, I hope that probation officers will hesitate long before they follow their leadership's call to refuse to collect probation statistics. This is a particularly silly idea. Without these statistics it will be quite impossible to measure the increased workload being carried by the service; and without that information it will be difficult for the Home Office or, indeed, even for NAPO itself to make a serious case for increased resouces for the probation service. Therefore, I very much hope that NAPO will think better of this and will withdraw its particularly ill-judged suggestion to its members that they should cease collecting probation statistics.
I must say, too, that the Government cannot be acquitted of all responsibility for this deterioration in relationships. Not only was the issue of students' allowances mishandled, as it was, but they were also most unwise to force the issue of night restriction orders on to an unwilling probation service. Here I refer not simply to NAPO but to a very large number of other experienced probation officers who regarded this as one of the silliest proposals in last year's Criminal Justice Act. Of course, NAPO is entirely wrong to call on its members to ignore the law of this country, which is a particularly inappropriate suggestion coming from an association representing, as it does, officers of the courts. But for the Government to have imposed this provision against the almost unanimous opposition of the probation service was, I believe, an act of quite extraordinary insensitivity.
If the probation service is to take on additional responsibilities I believe it is essential that the Government should now make a major effort to rebuild an atmosphere of trust and co-operation with the overwhelming majority of members of the service who are responsible, dedicated men and women. There is no desire among that majority for senseless, endless confrontation between the service and the Government. What they want, I believe, is just two things. The first is that Ministers will listen seriously to their views. No one expects them always to be accepted, but they do believe that if Ministers want to create a climate of co-operation then they should have a decent regard for the views of the service. Secondly, they believe that they are simply not getting the resouces that they require to fulfil the duties passed on to them both by

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Parliament and by the courts. I believe that on that matter they are entirely right. I hope that on both those important matters the noble Lord, Lord Elton, will tonight be able to bring us some message of encouragement and hope.
6.14 p.m.
The Lord Bishop of Norwich: My Lords, we all stand in debt to the noble Earl, Lord Longford, and we listened with the greatest of care to all that the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Greenwich, has told us from his wide experience on this very important subject. I wish to confine myself to quite a narrow area of this very wide field. First, I should like to glance back historically and remind your Lordships that the phrase that the noble Lord, Lord Harris, used about probation officers being a caring profession is true and historical. I believe that the debate in this House will encourage probation officers, both young in training and old in years of experience, to continue to strive for those high standards. The pressures on them are immense, but they are caring profession and it is right that we should honour them as such.
Historically the probation service goes back to the old Police Court Mission. The Police Court Mission itself was one of the great and early "comings together" of a strong Christian conviction and a breadth of social caring. No doubt the noble Lord, Lord Soper, who follows me on the list of speakers, will, from his very deep experience, speak in those terms; I know not, but I should be surprised if he did not do so. The Christian thread that runs through the probation service is still true today even though now it is a very much larger affair, fully professionalised, and so on.
When preparing to take some small part in a debate like this from the Benches of the Bishops, it is sometimes helpful to see what is the particular Christian content in a wide social field such as this one. I have been in touch with a few of my probation officers who are themselves in my diocese and men not only of great professional ability but of very strong and clear Christian conviction. Some of the things that I shall say, although not all, are based upon their material The say:
"We want to encourage society to accept offenders while disapproving of their offences".
That is a very difficult tightrope for the probation officer to walk when he is dealing with his client.
It is even more difficult for us to face among the general public when we cannot help but be shocked and saddened by news of particular violent and terrible crimes like the crimes reported in the past few days in the public press. Such crimes begin to make many of us think that among the more simple-minded—and I use that phrase technically—the unrestricted use and present growth of video films is beginning to have a definite impact upon people with violent tendencies. I think of the case that has been reported in the papers during the past few days. Therefore, our probation officers have a very difficult task in seeking to keep to that narrow central line of encouraging society both to love the sinner and also to disapprove strongly of the offences.
I think of Michael Whitaker who was a distant kinsman of mine who died recently and who was the
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moving force behind victims of violence. He was well known to the noble Earl and I know that he gained great strength and was much encouraged in the very lonely work that he sought to do by the noble Earl, Lord Longford, when he was particularly caring for the victims of violence. It is into that setting that many probation officers find themselves thrown and they face enormous emotional problems.
So although, of course, I agree with much of what the noble Lord, Lord Harris, has said in his very temperate criticism of our probation service, I think that in this Chamber we would do well to remember that they themselves are out at the very sharp point of confrontation with humanity in its weakness and in its sinfulness; and yet as a Christian one must say at its possibility of redemption.
Another probation officer was telling me how he went to Holland in the 1970s and found that the Dutch people in both their phlegmatic and Christian way seemed to have come to this balance of more readily accepting offenders and yet objecting to their crimes than perhaps we do in this country, and thus making more possible the development of both the community service ideal and the non-custodial sentence pattern of the future.
There is a sense in which we cannot easily press beyond the conscience or, if you like, sometimes the prejudice of contemporary society. I am not as firm a believer as the noble Earl in objection to—and I use his word—"incarceration", which is a long word meaning to put in "jug", but I shall look it up when I get home. "incarceration" has a certain pejorative phrase about it. I am not as opposed as he is because I believe that there is a sense in which, in Christian justice, someone who has done something wrong has a just sense of knowing that he deserves punishment. I believe that the pattern of a short period of punishment and then a real attempt at reclamation, leading to the kind of probation officer care which is a comforting one, is the way in which in general terms we should seek to reclaim those who have committed especially violent crimes.
I use the word "comfort" because I am glad to say that in your conservative way your Lordships have a great love for the Book of common Prayer. You will remember that there are comfortable words in the Book of Common Prayer and, of course, the word "fortis" or "strength" is at the heart of the word "comfortable". There is a sense in which our probation officers have to be "comforting" officers; they must not just be soft with people, but strengthen them in their new resolve for the future.
When thinking in wider terms I suppose that all of us find it hard not to he anecodotal, but I can think of cases in which men have said to me when I visited them in prison, "I do not think I ought to come out yet; I do not think that I deserve to come out yet". I can think of a follow-up to that. A particular probation officer—a man of great experience as well as strong Christian conviction—was helping a man who had been in prison for a serious crime to come to terms with himself and to forgive himself as a necessary adjunct to being able to find a forgiveness from God and then forgiveness within society. I will not go further with that story because I think I shall be in danger of opening up unnecessary confidentialities, but it had a very happy ending.

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Therefore it is very practical to keep before us the fact that the probation service has always had this historical Christian line running through it, and I hope it always will. I think that this will be even more difficult as we liberalise our care for those who have been offenders within the community. Our probation service is supported by the Government and obviously by funds. As the noble Earl has made plain to us, it is actually much cheaper to care for an offender when he is beyond that point by a community-type of care rather than by custodial care. So we would be helping the Government to save money—which I think will appeal immensely to the noble Lord the Minister—by pressing upon him the need to increase the probation service so that there can be more community work.
I have one last point to make and, again, I pick up what the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Greenwich, said when he spoke of the non-criminal courts. Probation officers have told me that they are becoming more and more involved in divorce, in the break-up of families and in care cases, which is the custody of and access to children. In fact, in our part of the world we are seeking to work on a system whereby on a Saturday we offer the services of church people to take the children from one estranged parent to the other estranged parent at the very point where the parents cannot bring themselves to get the children from A to B. The work of caring for those children and both the parents having the right and proper access to them is very difficult and we seek to provide "godfathers" and "godmothers" in that area.
But however much voluntary work is done, there is a sense in which we still have to rely upon our probation service to do the main work. Our officers have told me of the need to stress again the sanctity not only of human life but of marriage and family life, because they know in practice, and we know in theory, that where there are broken homes, like it or not, children are at risk. This is not the time to discuss that at length, but it is another of the matters that we press upon our probation service.
I like to visit Norwich Prison on Christmas Day as well as on other days in the year. I celebrate Communion and then I go on to visit the youngsters at their remand centre. I give them Christmas cards and meet them all and receive glorious hisses when I say that Norwich City Football Club is the finest in the world, because all the youngsters who come to Norwich from elsewhere have the chance of hissing at me during the sermon. It is good for them to let off steam. A year or so ago on Christmas Day I asked who was the youngest there. I was told that there was a 16-year old and two 15-year olds. I asked the governor whether it would be possible—with of course proper permission from the courts—to place those three boys in secure homes for Christmas Day, and return them the following day, with responsibility being taken for them. He said, "Maybe, but we cannot send them back to their own homes because those three boys have no homes and have been in care for most of their lives".
That brought home to me this business of the care of children, the sanctity of the home and the fact that there is a sense in which our probation officers are being brought into these tragedies. Therefore there is a
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sense in which we not only have gently to chide probation officers if they appear to be acting unwisely or even irrationally, as the noble Lord, Lord Harris, has rightly done, but in which we have to support them, because they are our representatives in a pretty real and murky world. I am sure that much of what is being said in this debate will be of encouragement to them. I am grateful to the noble Earl for making it possible for us to debate this matter, and we look forward immensely and with interest to hearing what the noble Lord the Minister has to say to us.
6.30 p.m.
Baroness Birk: My Lords. I am sorry I am separating the right reverend Prelate from my noble friend Lord Soper. There was a mistake on the list. I also should like to thank my noble friend Lord Longford for initiating this debate. I remember his encouragement to me many years ago when I made my maiden speech in this House, and that was on penal reform at that time. I do not think I need in this debate to be very long on the state of our prisons. It is only too well known, and we are concerned with a rather different subject, although obviously one cannot avoid saying something about the prisons.
It is true that many of those in prison are in fact rather pathetic human beings whose offending stems often from personal disorganisation and their own troubled lifestyle. There are also of course still those who are imprisoned for quite petty offences. The tragedy of many prisoners is that they become recidivist. Perhaps it was not so in the particular case referred to when the right reverend Prelate was talking about prisoners who thought that it was not yet right for them to come out, but I found in my experience as a prison visitor and lecturer at Holloway Prison that there were a certain number of people who found the prison almost a sort of womb and somewhere which cosseted them, perhaps not in a particularly pleasant way but it took away the responsibility and need of making decisions. That is why the repetitious sentencing of petty offenders is meaningless, wasteful, and completely counter-productive.
I also learned from my experience of Holloway that if there is any deterrent in a prison sentence it is usually in the first sentence, and possibly in only the first few days of that sentence. It is the initial shock. Many of the women, and certainly some of the young girls, were quite ready to tell me that. For that reason alone it must be clear that imprisonment must be the disposal of last resort. As my noble friend and other speakers pointed out, there are unfortunately offenders whose crimes are serious enough, if they are crimes of violence, who will have to be sent to prison. But it must be at last resort and for the most serious of crimes, because if it is an ace in the penal hand it can be played effectively only once.
The problems with which the Government are faced will not he solved by a massive building programme for the prison estate. I am quite sure that the Minister realises that. It is irrelevant to assuage our consciences by merely ensuring that those who are imprisoned are properly accommodated, as yet again even in the most modern of prisons there remains a strong likelihood, some say even a certainty, that what we shall be doing

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is introducing more modern and better equipped universities of crime.
To remove an offender from his community, to place him in prison, return him later to fractured or broken relationships, to a community in which he will find no employment, in a society which will not be sympathetic to his plight, is a sure-fire recipe for that offender to continue his offending behaviour, simply because by then he has little else to lose. For these reasons it is imperative that, wherever possible, offenders are dealt with in the community, as my noble friend and other noble Lords who have spoken so far have said, so that their family and social ties may be preserved, and their chances of finding employment, however limited unfortunately these days those chances are, may be preserved or even improved, and so that the institutional experience is avoided.
In order to achieve such a wholly desirable end the Government—and I say his, I know, with the support of my noble friend the right reverend Prelate and the noble Lord, Lord Harris, and I am sure the speakers who follow me—must look to the probation service for the provision of community-based alternatives to custody, and also, I would add, to crime prevention, in which many probation officers are not involved, by involvement in the broader based community initiatives. For example, in the inner cities. This again is a question of time, resources, and personnel.
In the process of dealing with offenders there is, of course, an earlier stage of involvement for the probation service, and that is the preparation of social inquiry reports, to which my noble friend referred. As a magistrate I am very aware of the vital and unique importance of social inquiry reports. I find it is the most important tool of our work in order for us to make decisions. My noble friend Lord Longford gave an excellent example of the way in which the preparation of such reports may assist the court in making a non-custodial disposal.
As a result of the Criminal Justice Act the court must consider now the social inquiry reports before imposing a custodial sentence on anyone under 21, and similarly for those who have not had previous prison sentences a report has to he made, or the reasons stated. The estimated national cost of this is £200,000. This is in addition to all the reports which are asked for on all other occasions. I am quite sure that I am not the only magistrate who does this, but many of us ask the probation officer whether he knows of anything that will be helpful to the bench when we are discussing somebody, and a certain amount of communication takes place even before the asking for an official report. I should like to see this work expanded even further.
Yet what can we do when the service has not got the resources on which to base a non-custodial recommendation, even where you can stretch them sufficiently to prepare a report on any occasion which requires it? Increasingly the avenues to non-custodial disposals are becoming culs-de-sac. Like the noble Lord, Lord Harris, I understand that in many areas—for example the three I know, Cumbria, South London and Manchester—the probation service is having to operate a quota system for community service orders. Inevitably any quota system will mean that some persons will go to prison who would not have done so if there had been adequate facilities in the area and the necessary resources.
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I find it difficult to over-estimate the value of community service orders. When they can be properly applied, when there are the resources and the proper work for people to do, they really give us an alternative, which it is a great pity is not being used more and which is having to be restricted because of lack of funds. Then there is the actual outcome; the things that are achieved in my area. I was at a probation liaison committee meeting this morning, and we had a report from our local community service officer. All the things that had been done in the way of decorating, making a community centre out of a building owned by the YMCA, restoring another building which will be used as a special centre for alcoholics, helping those with a handicap, were positive, constructive occupations. They make the offenders themselves feel they are contributing to something, and help to recreate their own self-respect, as well as being of infinite value to the community. But to be done properly it needs careful and specialised supervision. It is a question of deciding where resources are badly needed.
At the present time community service orders are used in only 4 per cent. of indictable offences. Under the Criminal Justice Act they are now available for 16-year-olds as well, but only 12 out of the 56 probation areas have yet introduced the scheme. We have not done so yet in my area in Middlesex, or I think indeed in Middlesex at all. As noble Lords have pointed out, to do it properly the estimated cost would be £1 million a year.
The probation service stands as a symbol of social responsibility and humanity, and we need it now more than we have ever needed it before. But if it is to be a substantial service it must have a wide range of options to back it up. It is not only a question, which is time and energy consuming, of communication and the person-to-person talking and working out of problems with the individuals. What the service needs is to be backed so that it can find accommodation; and so that we are not left in this dreadful position of having to remand people in custody because we have not a viable alternative—when we feel badly about it and know it is wrong.
The service needs to be backed by remedial places available for alcoholics and drug addicts. It needs to be backed by day centres. Here, again, this has not yet been done in Middlesex because of a lack of resources. All this would reduce the numbers remanded in custody and would be a positive step in trying to deal with delinquency. We also need the probation service to offer proper and thorough care to those who have to be imprisoned, and we need it to inform us of the needs, in prison, of those we have imprisoned.
I hope the Minister does not believe that the small growth which has been allocated to the service leaves it all square. It certainly does not. In the first instance, the Government have failed so far to provide the service with the resources to cover the implications of the Criminal Justice Act 1982, which requires not only the extra social inquiry reports and the community service orders to which I have referred, but which also includes the negative conditions which some of us tried to remove from the Bill at the time, as the noble Lord the Minister may remember, though I believe his colleague was sitting in his place then. A curfew, and the condition not to go to certain places, all need monitoring and supervision.

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Secondly, if we are to retain the high quality and calibre of the service for the future with no diminution in the quality of its work, we have to be particularly careful about our treatment and selection of those who train to be probation officers. I think that in announcing their intention to reduce the pay of trainee probation officers by up to 25 per cent. the Government have created much trouble, anxiety and antagonism—for what? I gather that the saving is about £90,000 in one year and £250,000 over three years. It is such a drop in the ocean, and the effect of it is so strong and so bad, that one can understand the very deep sense of aggrievement felt by the probation officers. I understand that police cadets' pay is higher. Trainee probation officers are, on the whole, people of a higher age range than that at which people normally come into social welfare work, even. Many of them are in their late twenties when they come into probation work.
I hope that we shall hear from the Minister this evening a positive commitment to an essential and constructive service: a commitment that the service will be properly funded so that it can be expanded to meet the ever-growing demands for effective responses to offenders. I understand that the Home Office is at present engaged with the service organisations in reviewing the role and future of the probation service. Again, I should like to know from the Minister how far this exercise has gone. I should also like to feel that the Government take the view which I and, I imagine, everybody who has spoken or will be speaking in this debate will take, and that is that dedication should not be financially exploited. If people are caring people I do not think it is right to take financial advantage of them. We have seen that in other professions, and it is a blot on our social and human landscape.
The problem with the funding is that the metropolitan authorities, particularly outside London, are very reliant on the contribution made by the local authorities. However sympathetic local authorities are, they have been penalised by the sanction on the so-called high spenders which is hitting the probation service; and although the will is there, the funds are no longer. I very much hope that the Minister will be able to say this evening—I say this seriously—that the 1 per cent. growth in real terms, which is the figure that has been mooted so far for 1984-85, has now been recognised as being totally inadequate, and that he will be able to tell us that the figure will be something much nearer 3 per cent. than 1 per cent. I would hope to have seen it at 5 per cent. But, that may be pushing it a little too far. But, certainly 1 per cent. is quite unrealistic.
I suggest that the Government must ask themselves: what do we want our probation service to do? Do we want it to mark time or to move forward? If it is to move forward, it is moving forward in a period when there is an expanding clientele from the ranks of the unemployed. Unemployment is rising all the time. I have school-leavers coming into my court, as all magistrates have. One asks the defendant, "What are you doing?" and the answer comes, "Unemployed." "How long have you been unemployed?"—"Since I left school." these youngsters are 18, 19 and 20, and so one has young people who have been unemployed for 3 or 4 years, who have never had a job since they left school.
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In our rapidly changing society we are now in the age of electronic revolution. Even when unemployment starts to recede, as we all hope it will, there will still be a decade when the youngsters leaving school will be unable to get jobs until we come to terms with this new form of society. In the meantime it is essential that creative activities and constructive projects should be available to them; otherwise, we shall create generations of lost people, many of whom will become delinquents.
The investment must be considerable to make an impact because the probation service, as well as acting on its own, acts as a broker between the voluntary agencies and its clients. About 5,600 probation officers is a very small force, and it is quite remarkable what it achieves. It is not an enormous investment that one is asking for, but it is one the need for which economically, socially and in human terms, we cannot afford to ignore.
6.47 p.m.
Lord Soper: My Lords, the backcloth of this debate is the prevalence of crime of various kinds and the indubitable increase of this particular malevolence, behaviour and practice. Separated as I have been on the list of speakers, I am, nevertheless, in complete agreement with my noble and ecclesiastical friend the right reverend Prelate that this is pre-eminently a moral issue. Being a moral issue, your Lordships will perhaps allow me to comment very briefly on one or two aspects that were presented by the right reverend Prelate. It so happens that my father was one of the first to take part in this particular enterprise many years ago, and I remember with affection and a very great respect the kind of attitude that he not only shared with those who took part in that same kind of activity, but was generously shared by the Church. We are often accused of being irrelevant. This was an occasion on which we were probably the advance guard of an essential element in the custodianship of virtue or, at any rate, the prevention of crime.
Coming as I do hot foot from the Methodist Conference, I bring to your Lordships from that august assembly the general and enthusiastic commendation of the general intention of this debate. I came from the conference only this morning and I am able to convey that message.
I am very grateful indeed to my noble friend Lord Longford for introducing into this debate the general application of what we believe to he a civilised society to the prevalence of crime, the insistence that the probation service is a practical and efficient method of doing some of the things which are imperative if we are to stem that increase.
I hope that the House will not regard this as cynical, but I confess myself somewhat perturbed at the coincidence of the events of the past week politically and the emergence, re-emergence or resuscitation of the clamour for capital punishment. I regard this as retrograde and therefore come with a greater comfort to a debate of this kind which seems to me to offer a much more reasonable—and, indeed, a much more Christian—approach to the problem which I confess and recognise as being extremely dangerous and liable to become more dangerous. I will not rehearse what has already been said so eloquently and so efficiently

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by other speakers. I shall endeavour to extrapolate from some of the general considerations, one or two of those matters which, to me, take pride of place; and I cannot but begin where I have begun many times before, by deploring that most dangerous of all the elements in the present custodial system: the fact that in many a cell built all too small for one person to inhabit there are two or three people. This is an abomination.
I have seen in my own background of social work the permanent effects of this kind of incarceration in circumstances which are deplorable morally, disgracefully emotionally, and in many cases temperamentally almost conclusively bad. If there is anything that can be done to reduce the population of our overcrowded prisons then, if there are no other reasons to prevent it being done, let it be done and let it be done quickly—because you are cursing (with a great many youngsters, in particular) the whole prospect of a future life when they emerge from such incarceration. I ask the House to believe that I am not speaking sentimentally but out of some experience of the intolerable conditions under which many people in prisons are now compelled to live in the crowded —nay, overcrowded—situation of the multiple-occupation cell.
If by this increase and expansion of the services that we call the probation services we can reduce the number of inhabitants of prisons, we shall have done something which in itself, quite apart from the overcrowding of the cells, is to be welcomed. I do not believe in the prison service. I recognise how many gallant and splendid people are involved in its procedures and who endeavour to do the best they can for it. I have said before and I will not weary your Lordships with repetition that my own conviction, as a chaplain over the years and as one who is in constant touch with these things, is that the whole prison service is itself degrading and, though it may well be that for the time being there is nothing very much better that we can do, anything in the realm of probation service which can alleviate the conditions—even to some small extent—anything which can lead towards another kind of semi-custodial treatment for those who have gone astray—and have gone very far astray—must be preferred, particularly to the block system of our more 19th century prisons such as Pentonville, Wandsworth, and others.
Therefore, I welcome anything which can be done in this field and urge upon the Government that here is, from prudential as well as moral standpoints, the opportunity to put more money into the kind of effort which, I believe, will have a cumulative effect not only in reducing the number of prisoners but in providing a very much larger expectation of wellbeing for those who, in other forms of incarceration, semiincarceration or treatment by the probation services, will have a very much better chance of recovering from the iniquities in which they have been involved, and becoming responsible members of society all over again.
May I make one point here which has not yet been raised and which I think is very important. A criticism which is very often missed in the condemnation of the prison system is its basic artificiality. The longer a man is incarcerated in a prison, the less he becomes
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acquainted with, and acceptable to, the society to which he must necessarily return unless he is going to be put in prison for life. The artificiality of the prison service, however benevolent those who try to operate it are, is, in my judgment and in the experience which has come my way, a very poor and a very dangerous method of so conditioning those who are within its walls. They will find it very much harder (when at some time in the future they are released) when finding themselves in the real world to find their ability to live in that real world.
That is perhaps the greatest of all the virtues which belong to the Probation Service: that it keeps the criminal within the framework of the real society in which. finally—unless, as I say, he is imprisoned for life; which is a totally unacceptable penalty, in my judgment—he must return. It gives him the chance of keeping in touch with that world in which, sooner or later, he will have to find his place again. This has been a very interesting debate, a great many points have been made and I will not rehearse them; but I want to make an appeal for the Probation Service itself. I can think of nothing which is more demanding than for a probation officer to endeavour to deal with a rebellious youth of about 19 who has not had a job since he left school, who has had practically no relationship or contact with the Christian Churches; who has probably lost, temporarily at least, the dimension between right and wrong—and I have found many youngsters like that. I find that. in London—so the evidence has come to me—the workload has increased individually for every probation officer by about 10 per cent. over the past three years. What is more, 50 per cent. of those who are under the probation service are aged under 21.
I cannot imagine anything more difficult than that the probation officer should be able to give enough time and enough expertise to this intensely personal problem unless he is much better supported than he is now. It is in that regard that the simple and most effective beginning to that support is a large increase of resources; that he can be better trained; and that he can be put into closer relationship with other voluntary organisations. Above all, he should feel the dignity that is given by the sense that what is offered by him is recognised and valued by the community.
It is in that regard that I take comfort in the prospect of the expansion of this particular service. I believe that it is the best available method within the possible future of (shall we say?) the next 20 or 30 years, of so improving the prospects of rehabilitation and recovery, as well as the need, so to punish as to recognise the basic principles of civilised life. I believe that this expansion, above everything else, is to be regarded with anticipation and hope. Once again, may I finish by thanking my noble friend Lord Longford for reintroducing this problem for perhaps the ninth or tenth time, and reintroducing it with a livelier hope that this time there may be even better results.
7 p.m.
Lord Hunt: My Lords, if I were now sitting on the Bench occupied by the noble Lord the Minister—which, I am thankful to say, I am not—I think that I should be asking myself whether everything that needed to be said has not already been

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said and whether it is strictly necessary to continue. I know the Minister is a more patient and charitable man than I am. I am asking the same question of myself as I rise to speak. I promise to be strictly practical and to avoid the moral issues. I think three dissertations of a moral nature might be too much, for myself at any rate, much as I have enjoyed the speeches that I have heard.
The noble Viscount Lord Whitelaw, when speaking in the other place in December last described the policy of the Government in regard to the probation service as being—and I quote—"to provide convincing alternatives to custody". I have pulled out that quotation simply to lay stress on the word "convincing". It is axiomatic that if a major shift is to be made from the use of custody by the courts to alternatives in the community, it is the courts which have to be convinced; and they will not be convinced unless adequate resources are provided for the probation and after-care service.
Like other speakers, including my noble friend Lord Harris of Greenwich—and we have not colluded in this matter at all—I have made inquiries of a number of chief probation officers as well as of the National Association of Probation Officers, who, as I think they would agree, represent in the main the main grade officers. The chief probation officers and NAPO very often do not speak with an identical voice, but on this issue they are unanimous that the provision planned by the Government for the increase in the service in the next few years is totally inadequate. My noble friend Lord Harris has chided me as regards the National Association of Probation Officers and I hope he will not mind if, in the same sense as the right reverend Prelate, I give them a word of commendation. I think that the document prepared by NAPO, The Case for Growth, is excellent. It makes the case succinctly and convincingly and it is in the best tradition of that association speaking in its professional capacity.
The points in support of growth for the probation service beyond that 1 per cent. which is planned for this year and the next year have mostly been covered already. I should now like to make a few allied points. The point has been made about the sheer quantity of present work and the increase in the use of probation orders that has gone up by 29 per cent. There has been an increase in the use of community service orders, which we all enormously welcome and regard as most significant, to the tune of something like 80 per cent. between 1979 and 1982.
The point I want to make is that in regard to the future increase in community service orders and their application to 16 year-olds—the noble Baroness and my noble friend told us that there is already a hold-up in that development and it is deplorable—it is common ground in the whole service, no matter whether it is a chief probation officer or a main grade officer, that these youngsters are going to require closer supervision in carrying out those orders than is generally the case at present for older offenders. That means that the quality and quantity of the work is going to increase.
With regard to probation officers, I should like to quote the words of the chief probation officer for
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Lincolnshire, the officers of whose service are carrying the fourth highest caseload in England and Wales. Referring to the fact that there is not a sufficient increase in the service, he writes this:
"This fact produces pressures against recommending more orders to the courts. We reckon we require five more officers in 1983 to bring caseloads near to the national average".
He goes on to say:
"The 1 per cent. growth limits our increase to less than half of one officer".
If taken literally, that conjures up a most titillating temptation for a cartoonist.
Turning to a point which has not been dealt with, if, as we all hope, parole is to be increased by lowering the threshold of eligibility for parole—I understand it is to be nine months—this will add a further 2,000 parolees to a probation officer's caseload. The point is that many of those parolees will be more difficult offenders in the community to handle than is the case at present. Probation officers are already—this point has been made—handling increasingly difficult offenders, and over a decade or more the number of those who receive probation orders as first offenders has steadily declined. From Cambridgeshire I have a significant figure to show that that greatest increase in difficult clients has speeded up in the last two or three years between the national figure of 23 per cent. of those who were first offenders in 1979 and received probation orders to only 15 per cent. in 1982. That means, in penal jargon, that clients have moved up-tariff: they have become more difficult people to manage.
The noble Baroness, Lady Birk, mentioned project work and the value and importance of this. That is becoming increasingly recognised, as the results come through. It means that most offenders involved in group programmes are working in groups. You might think that means less work, but on the contrary it means more intensive and higher quality work. There is the finding, planning, and setting up of a whole variety of different projects. There is the complex and often costly business of providing equipment and premises, and there is the very important need to collaborate with the other agencies in running these projects and in eliciting support from the community.
Reports to the courts—this point has again been made—have increased substantially and, under the terms of the new Act, chief officers I have consulted estimate that the social inquiry reports required before any young offender is committed to custody will cause a further 16 per cent. increase in the reporting to the courts. It is true that the new Act will result in shorter periods of supervision; but there are two points to be made. One is the not unlikely circumstance that the courts will impose more short sentences to give short tastes of custody, referred to by the right reverend Prelate, with, I think, something approaching approval. Therefore, there will be more people to be supervised when they come out for more intensive periods, even though they are shorter.
My last point, which I picked up from chief probation officers, is the most important. It is the fact that all this diverse work and the many other tasks—whether they stem from the criminal courts in which probation officers are involved, day in and day out in unsocial hours—severely limit the time needed

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to review the work they have been doing and to look ahead. I will quote a cri de coeur from the chief probation officer in my own county of Berkshire, who writes as follows:
"Now more than ever all of us feel starved of thinking and planning time. We have no spare capacity".
I should like to end with one more quote—and I make no apology for using these quotes because they come from the proverbial horse's mouth and should carry more weight than any words of my own. Several chief officers have told me that they may not be able to operate new schemes, as has already been said, for the time being because they lack resources. I should like to quote the chief probation officer for Cambridgeshire, who says this:
"I am bombarded with demands for the service to initiate a conciliation scheme".
My Lords, who would quarrel about the importance of such a scheme? She goes on to say:
"The only way of meeting such demands is to shift resources from work with crime".
The Government's reply to the Question of the noble Earl, Lord Longford—and I should like belatedly to thank him for putting it down—will be seen, at any rate by me, as a test of the sincerity and good faith of the Government and of their intention or otherwise to match their words by deeds, by increasing the establishment and making more adequate financial provision for the probation service.
At the end of the debate on home and social affairs two nights ago, the noble Lord, Lord Elton, said:
"the probation service…is a vital and constructive element in the criminal justice system".—[Official Report, 28/6/83; col. 234.]
I would add that that element has never been so important as it is today. I predict that the services which maintain law and order, to whose support the Government have committed themselves in the Queen's Speech, will be under severe strain in the next few years. It is quite certain that the strain will increase, if the Government fail to heed the warning plea uttered from their Back-Benches in another place last night. On those grounds, I hope that the Government will think again about the planned 1 per cent. increase for the probation service.
7.11 p.m.
Lord Kagan: My Lords, I shall endeavour to be very brief, and I shall not detain your Lordships more than is necessary. I shall certainly endeavour not to repeat anything that has already been said, and better said. May I draw attention to one aspect—the relationship between prison officers and probation officers? I come back to the Dutch example. When a Dutchman applies for a job in the prison service, he has to pass an exam which will qualify him almost totally for the probation service. If he does not qualify for that, they will not accept him in the prison service. In other words, in Holland a prison officer is potentially a probation officer. In our prison system they are segregated by the rules, and a prison officer is in breach of the rules if he establishes a relationship with a prisoner. The prison officer is purely a disciplinary officer. I know that in a small number of establishments an experiment has started to change that. But if we took an example from the Dutch and, in the training of a prison officer, introduced the same
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standards, it would, first, upgrade the standards of the prison officer, and, secondly, it would enable a prisoner to establish a relationship after prison through the probation service.
Although I certainly cannot disagree with any of my noble friends about the increased use of resources, I think that a change of attitude towards the probation service, in the direction of involving voluntary assistance from the community, would help. We have a prison population of 40,000 people and we have 50 million people living in this country. If one in 1,000 adopted a prisoner and took a continuing interest in him, that man's re-entry into the community, which my noble friend described so eloquently and which is so necessary, would have a much better chance than now. It is true to say that when a prisoner is released and is left to his own resources under the present system he is almost condemned to a return to crime. The involvement of the community and voluntary assistance to the probation service, which could be organised under the supervision of the probation service, would not cost a lot of extra money and would be very cost-effective.
In France, the prison population has been reduced by one-quarter. What is most significant, the churches are encouraged to play a much bigger part in the prison system. In the prison in Paris they have keys, they can walk about and there is a very personal relationship. The Dutch, too are proceeding on similar lines. I am sure that, with co-operation between the churches and the probation service, volunteers could be recruited to expand the activities of the probation service without a tremendous increase in costs. I should have thought that the inspectorate of prisons, which is independent, would be in the best position to look at what is being done abroad (where, admittedly, they do such things better) and to apply them here. I do not want to detain your Lordships any longer.
7.15 p.m.
Lord Wilson of Langside: My Lords, I want to say just a brief word about the Scottish dimension of this problem. I do not know whether I succeed in showing it, but when your Lordships are considering a problem which has a different shape, or perhaps somewhat different aspects, as between Scotland and England, I am always reluctant to raise the Scottish dimension partly because (as I have said before, perhaps to the point of tedium) I am a great believer in the Anglo-Scottish symbiosis. When, in discussions in your Lordships' House and perhaps in the other place as well, one produces the Scottish dimension, one presents the Minister concerned, and perhaps one's colleagues, with something of a distraction which may be irritating, particularly for the Minister. He has enough to think of in the English dimension without these wretched people from the North introducing a new element. I appreciate that the noble Lord, Lord Elton, has no responsibility for the Scottish situation, and I did somewhat belatedly, because I had not thought to take part in this debate, inform the Scottish Office yesterday that I would raise some of the problems which are peculiar to that country.
The Social Work (Scotland) Act 1968, which was enacted by a Government of which I was a member

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and of which we were very proud, was, we thought, an imaginative and constructive measure. It made radical changes in the probation service in the North. I must confess—and I take no joy in the thought—that I did not foresee the very serious problems that it would present for the operation of the probation service up there.
What the Act did, as I am sure most of your Lordships know, was, first, to take children out of the criminal courts. Those aged 16, plus some aged between 16 and 18, were taken out of the criminal courts unless they were taken there on the instructions of the Lord Advocate—and they were the exceptional cases. Secondly, the Act set up children's panels to deal with the cases which had previously gone to the criminal juvenile courts. The duties of the probation officer, statutory and otherwise, were transferred to the social work departments of the local authorities, and the probation officers were absorbed into the social work departments as generic social workers.
The immediate effects of this change when it came into operation—I do not say so far as the children's panels are concerned, because I am not informed on their operation and they may have been satisfactory; and I must emphasise that in the less densely populated rural areas the situation continued to be satisfactory—certainly in Glasgow, where I worked, and I think in other parts of the densely populated central belt, were, if not disastrous, extremely disturbing.
I am not going to pretend that it was the golden age of the probation service in Glasgow in the 1950s and 1960s, when I was there, but we had a very good working service and we had a first-class working relationship between the bench and the probation officers. It may be that we did not sit until 10 o'clock in the morning and that we rose not very long after 4 o'clock, but both before we sat and after we rose, more often than not, we were engaged from the bench in discussions with probation officers. If the probationers were young (or even if they were old) we sometimes had discussions with them, too, about the progress they were making. If they were young probationers, their parents might be there. This was part of our job.
Of course, the probation officers' case loads were far too large. This I well remember. We used to ask, "What can you do with a case load like that?" It was a perennial problem, but at least we were all working as a team. We came to know one another. One came to know the strong probation officers and the weaknesses of others—and no doubt they came to know our strengths and weaknesses, too. We learned from one another in a continuing and valuable working relationship in the Glasgow courts, where the problems were greatest.
All that pretty well went by the board when the Social Work (Scotland) Act 1968 came into operation, so far as these busy criminal courts were concerned. Remember, I am not saying that this applied to children's panels, because I am talking about the criminal courts. I am not suggesting that this applied all over the country, either, but it did apply where the problems were the most serious.
Matters were then complicated by local government reorganisation. The vast Strathclyde region took in
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almost half the population of Scotland and was responsible for social work. Before, if one had a problem, one could lift the telephone and speak to the individual probation officer or the head of the social work department without great difficulty. But with this immense Strathclyde region one was up against all the problems of bureaucracy. I am not criticising the people there, because they were trying hard. They knew that there were problems, but arranging a meeting to discuss them became a major exercise.
We worked away at this problem. For a long time I thought that the best thing we could do was to revert to the old set-up and take probation back to being a separate service. I believe there are still some sheriffs who think that; but, today. I do not believe this would be the answer. On reflection, I do not believe it would be sensible to attempt to put the clock back; but something effective must be done.
I was last involved in 1977, when matters had got much better; but there were still shortcomings, due to a lack of resources. There were still shortcomings; and although matters have much improved since then they still have not returned to the point they had reached, so far as effective working is concerned, before the Social Work (Scotland) Act 1968 was brought into operation. This, at least, I am told.
This is a very unhappy situation. I had some responsibility, although it was not departmental responsibility, for the Social Work (Scotland) Act, so I am not just blaming other people. We ought to have foreseen these problems and have taken steps to ensure that matters did not go this way. Obviously a great many people have been working very hard to get it right, including many devoted probation officers who are now social workers. But still more has to he done, and they cannot do it on their own; and nor can it be done by the sheriffs on the bench. Although other courts are involved, it is the sheriff courts in Scotland which really count in this context.
The Secretary of State for Scotland has a dual responsibility under two heads in this respect, because, first, he is responsible for giving guidance on the way in which the social work departments of local authorities should operate, and that is under the Social Work (Scotland) Act 1968. He is also responsible, under the Sheriff Courts (Scotland) Act 1971, for the speedy and efficient disposal of business in the sheriff courts. To some extent that is tied up with an efficient and effective probation service.
It is not for me to suggest how the Secretary, of State for Scotland should deal with this matter, but he needs to take a look at it. He might wish to put this question to the Advisory Council on Social Work under the 1968 Act; it might be for them to look at this matter and to advise and guide him. But everyone must be consulted—not just the directors of social work and not just the local authorities, but also those who sit on the bench, the sheriffs and the sheriffs principal. They must be asked to give their views in order that the resources which they say they need—and this affects community service orders, in particular, in Scotland, as well as everywhere else—may be put at their disposal.
7.27 p.m.
Lord Elton: My Lords, we are all most grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Longford, for providing an

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opportunity to discuss the role of the probation service. By casting his speech as a plea to take steps to reduce pressure of numbers on Britain's prison service, the noble Earl chose a theme with which he could be sure of my closest attention. The noble Lord, Lord Harris of Greenwich, came in with the same rythmn but in a different key, if I may so put it, with the subject of prisoners in police and court cells—another subject very close to my concern. The right reverend Prelate—contrapuntally perhaps—reminded us that punishment and even imprisonment can be seen as being just, and even constructive, by those who undergo it, and made it clear that that view is consistent with the passion that motivates the probation service itself.
The reverend Lord, Lord Soper, returned, fortissimo, to the noble Earl's theme and asserted that imprisonment is never a suitable sentence, and I only wish that I could agree with him there. Perhaps I ought at this stage to abandon these musical metaphors and merely thank the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, for a speech full of direct representations from the field, to which I will refer but which I and my honourable friend will read with great interest and respect tomorrow, although the noble Lord may feel that I do it less than justice tonight.
The noble Earl's own speech and the whole debate make very clear the extremely high regard in which we hold the probation service. The Government share that regard, and we are fully committed to furthering the work of the probation service. It is not a large service compared with others in the criminal justice system, such as the police or the prison service, but it has developed a role of an importance out of all proportion to its size; it makes a major contribution to the way in which society deals with its offending members.
The probation service makes a contribution by providing information and advice to assist the courts in sentencing; by operating a wide range of facilities which afford alternatives to custody and which seek to divert offenders from criminal careers; by assisting prisoners to cope constructively with their problems while in custody; by helping them to prepare for their own release, and after their release to make as successful an adjustment to ordinary life as they can. There is no doubt about the importance of the work of the service in dealing with the problem of crime.
Before we look at the future, let us look first of all at the practical support which is already given to the probation service, and which the noble Earl and many others find inadequate. As your Lordships will know, the main expenditure of the service is met by 80 per cent. specific grant from central Government. The other 20 per cent. is the responsibility of local authorities; and that 20 per cent. is of course grant-related expenditure and ranks for block grant which also originates from the Treasury and not from the ratepayer. In addition to this Government funding of current account expenditure, the Home Office also initially meets the full cost of purchase, adaptation and equipment of premises for use as probation and bail hostels. Only 20 per cent. of this is recovered from local authorities. It is paid by means of flat rate payments spread over 20 years. The salaries of probation officers working in prisons are met in full by
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central Government. In addition, the Home Office has allocated £5 million in 1983-84 for accommodation and day care schemes in the voluntary sector. That gives the proportions and the origins of the money.
We are, as the House knows full well, living in times of necessary restraint in public expenditure, and your Lordships are well enough aware after yesterday's debate of the reasons for this and I will not repeat them. But I ask noble Lords to remember that that is the context of what has been done in recent years. In that context we should consider whether the noble Earl, Lord Longford, is right to refer in such disparaging terms to what has been done. Between June 1979 and December 1982 the number of administrative and clerical staff increased by nearly 10 per cent.; the number of probation officers increased by over 10 per cent.; and the number of ancillary workers rose by over 36 per cent.
In 1982 alone 130 additional probation officers and 133 additional ancillaries were recruited. There is provision for further growth in this financial year which is estimated to enable the recruitment of a further 100 probation officers and a further 125 ancillaries. The law and order services of the police, prisons and probation service have not been exempt from the search for economies; but I think it is fair to say that the priority which the last Government attached to them has been reflected in the resources they have been allocated.
It might also be noted that relative to its size the probation service has grown more rapidly in the past five years than either the police or the prison service. That is an emphasis which some of your Lordships will find surprisingly welcome. While the precise extent of provision for growth has necessarily been variable over those years, the fact of growth has been constant. That is hardly an example of short-sighted niggardliness; nor, in the noble Baroness's phrase, marking time.
The Earl of Longford: My Lords, if I may intervene, I will interrupt the noble Lord only once. He will no doubt be saying something about the increase in crime which has gone ahead very rapidly during this period. This generosity of the Government hardly matches the increase in crime.
Lord Elton: My Lords, I am so glad that the noble Earl is restricting himself to a single interruption this evening. I am perfectly happy to concede that crime has indeed increased markedly over this period, and of course a great deal of effort by the Government has been directed towards coping with the results and trying to reduce it. The noble Earl is right to strike a balance which he is afraid I might neglect.
Of course, one can always argue for more. The reverend Lord, Lord Soper, did so in absolute and global terms, while the noble Lord, Lord Harris, was rather more particular. The National Association of Probation Officers have the best—and I should emphasise the most respectable—reasons for doing so, and they have not been idle in this respect. In a recent letter to my right honourable friend they asserted that the growth in the number of probation officers, which they put at 3.9 per cent., does not match a 29 per cent. increase in the number of probation orders. A number of your Lordships have reflected a similar

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mathematical approach. I ought to point out first of all quite simply that the actual increase in the number of officers between December 1979 and December 1982 was in fact 6 per cent. and not 3·9 per cent.
I would also make this further comment, which is in no way contentious but is also simply a matter of fact: anyone is entitled to make the best use of statistics and that goes for the Government as well as anybody else. Part of the art is choosing the base line which throws up the most striking movement in the direction that you wish to illustrate. In saying there has been a 29 per cent. increase in probation orders, but only an increase of 3.9 per cent. (or more exactly 6 per cent.) in probation officers, the National Association of Probation Officers have very sensibly fixed their baseline in the period from December 1979 to December 1982.
If we go back only a little further and consider the whole decade of 1972 to 1982, we find that both figures are rather different. The overall increase of probation officers was not 6 per cent. but over 40 per cent., and the increase in probation orders was not 29 per cent. but under 10 per cent. It could even be said that on some occasions growth actually outstripped workload. It is quite evident from that that I am not seeking to make a political point, but I am making a statistical one.
But none of that is meant to belittle either the quality, which is admirable, or the volume, which is considerable, of the work which probation officers are doing. Nor do I wish to suggest that their association is obstructively contentious on the subject. The noble Lord, Lord Harris, asked what I had to say—I do not know why I have interpolated it here, but it is the way the speech is constructed as one goes along—about his idea that I should go to my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor and ask for some of his Vote for my department's duties. I can barely say more than that I should just like to hear what my noble and learned friend himself would have to say. The noble Lord, Lord Harris, is familiar with the methods of Government. He is making a serious point and it is one that I will certainly take on board and reflect on. As always, one is put in boxes when considering money, and very often the divisions between the boxes come in an inconvenient place. The noble Lord suggested there should be communication between the two compartments.
Lord Harris of Greenwich: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for saying that he will look into this point with his right honourable friend, and I hope with the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor. I was not suggesting that the Home Office should ask the Lord Chancellor for money to carry out their responsibilities. I was suggesting the Lord Chancellor, department made a contribution to the Vote so far as this aspect is concerned because the probation service is fulfilling his department's responsibilities.
Lord Elton: My Lords, I shall try to advance the case with the greatest tact available to me. As I said, I am not suggesting that the association have been obstructively contentious on the subject of finance, or, indeed, of running the service. Quite the contrary: I should like
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to say how helpful we have found the association's paper already referred to, Probation: A Case for Growth. A preliminary examination of it was included in a wide-ranging discussion at the Home Office between senior officials and senior representatives of the association about the future of the probation service. This was part of a series of such discussions that officials are having with organisations representing the service.
That meeting, and a subsequent meeting of the Standing Committee on Probation Manpower Needs, on which the National Association of Probation Officers, chief officers and probation committees are all represented, proved valuable both in clearing the way for further talks on where the emphasis of probation work should be placed in the years ahead and in considering possible resource needs in the more immediate future. On this last point, your Lordships will understand that, given the discussions about to take place within the framework of the annual public expenditure survey, I must hold myself in check.
Let me now refer to the ways in which we have developed the role of the probation service by recent legislation. Two of the main aims of the Criminal Justice Act 1982 were to provide courts with more flexible powers in dealing with offenders and to provide community-based alternatives to custody wherever they were appropriate. The probation service clearly has an important, indeed a crucial, role in the latter. This relates closely to one of the noble Earl's anxieties and, indeed, to those of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt. There are now statutory requirements for social inquiry reports; that is the point relevant to them. Unless the court specifically decides otherwise, it will now be required to consider a social inquiry report before imposing a custodial sentence on an offender under 21 years of age or an offender 21 years or over who has not previously served a prison sentence. I do not think that precisely meets one of the cases brought forward this afternoon, but it is clearly a matter of great importance.
The preparation of these reports has been a major task of the service for many years. In 1982, for example, over a quarter of a million reports were made. Because of the resources and efforts involved in preparing such a large number of reports it is essential to ensure that they are provided only where they will be of real value and the intention of the 1982 Act is that there should be greater selectivity rather than a greater expansion in the volume of reporting.
We should therefore like to see reports being made on offenders who are actually being considered for custody. We also hope to increase the effectiveness of reports by various improvements in the way they are written. The guidance we have recently issued on this has been welcomed by both the courts and the service. Increasing the effectiveness of social inquiry reports will, of course, increase the influence of the probation service itself.
Baroness Birk: My Lords, perhaps I have misunderstood the Minister. He said that the reports should be strictly where custody was being considered. But surely it is not the intention to cut down on reports where one wants to see whether the offender is suitable for probation, a fine or a community service order?
Lord Elton: My Lords, on the detail I must write to the noble Baroness, but the intention is to concentrate the reporting in the areas where it will be of most constructive use to the court. Plainly that must include those about to be sentenced. The terms of this concentration and where the margins come are I am afraid, a refinement which escapes me and on which I may be illuminated later today. I will write to the noble Baroness because she has certainly made a point that requires consideration.
I come now to the supervision of juveniles. The 1982 Act confirms the role of the service in that supervision. Probation officers will continue to take a proportion of supervision orders in accordance with local arrangements made with social service departments. It is important that any proposals made by probation officers to the court about activities to be undertaken as part of supervision in the community are directed particularly at the more difficult juvenile offenders. The juvenile age group with which the probation service is usually concerned is the 14 to 16 year-olds. We see the main justification for the involvement of the probation service with these juveniles in their ability to deal constructively with those who may otherwise be entering on a criminal career.
I must now refer to the curfew or, as I prefer to call it, the night restriction requirement, as the noble Lord, Lord Harris, intervened on this subject. I also refer to the so-called "negative requirement" in both supervision and probation orders, in which the noble Lord was joined in his concern by the noble Baroness, Lady Birk.
I do not wish to go over that ground again in detail. Noble Lords will recall the exchanges last year during the passage of the Bill. Briefly, there have been objections that the inclusion of curfew or negative requirements will be unenforceable and will damage the relationship between the supervisor and the offender. The Government have taken careful note of these objections, which we well understand are made on professional grounds. We have discussed the issues with the National Association of Probation Officers, and have consulted the other probation organisations and the Magistrates' Association. I am glad to say that, following these exchanges, we were able to issue a circular of guidance about supervision orders which emphasises the importance of consultation locally between magistrates and probation officers so that there is a mutual understanding of the circumstances when such requirements may be necessary. It also stresses the need to look at each individual case on its merits rather than approaching it with predetermined views. I am sure this is the right way to approach the issue and will ensure an appropriate use of these orders.
A further extension in the role of the probation service with juveniles is in community service for 16-year-olds. The right reverend Prelate, like other speakers and myself, preferred non-custodial treatment where it is appropriate and he emphasised the importance of community service. The rise in the number of offenders on community service and the operation of schemes are impressive, as the noble Earl made clear to us. The experience gained in dealing with those aged 17 and over encouraged us to bring in
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the lower age group, Here again, there is an opportunity for the service to divert offenders from custody at a vulnerable age. Arrangements for 16-year-olds to work under community service orders are being introduced gradually, just as community service was originally in the 1970s. The noble Baroness, Lady Birk, may be glad to know that they will be provided in 14 areas by the beginning of July. By this autumn it will be available in half the probation areas. The remaining areas should follow in the next financial year. I have a note, which I shall endeavour to deal with later about the particular areas to which the noble Baroness referred.
Finally, under the Act we have clarified the statutory provision about requirements in probation orders. These provisions mark an important extension of the role of the probation service in a number of ways. An important result of this is that it has increased the range of offenders for whom the courts are able to consider probation as an appropriate disposal. Courts will have greater confidence because they will know what to expect from the period of supervision. They also know that the probation officer has a better opportunity to spell out clearly to the offender exactly what is expected of him. That is particularly helpful where, as is so often the case, the offender is immature or unrealiable—in fact, almost always. The probation service deserves a great deal of credit for the way in which it has seized these new opportunities, and I am sure will exploit them further in the future.
Many of the activities and centres being used in this way are in fact provided by other agencies in the community, and I believe there is an increasing and very healthy openness developing in the service. There is a new awareness in it of the resources outside its own provisions. In a sense, this has brought it closer into the community which it serves.
These developments also show the awareness that the probation service has of the wider social context in which it works; and they open up the possibility of providing a service not only to the courts and offenders but in some measure to the wider community as a whole. It would then be the business of the service to take note of the needs of the local community and to seek ways of encouraging measures to meet those needs. This should not divert the service from its primary concern with offenders. It would demonstrate, rather, that in performing that task it could at the same time respond to a wider constituency.
I was to say at this point a word about victim support schemes, but I feel I must curtail my remarks. We recognise that if probation officers are to supervise offenders in the community, then they must gain the confidence of that community by showing that they understand its concerns and problems. For their part, the Government certainly recognise the opportunities which lie ahead for the probation service. We have therefore begun a wide-ranging series of discussions with the probation organisations, to which I have already referred, about the future direction of the service.
These discussions are still at a comparatively early stage, and I do not wish to pre-empt further consideration of the issues by anything I say tonight. But I

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should like to indicate what lies behind our initiative. We believe the time is appropriate for a statement of the national objectives and priorities of the probation service in the criminal justice system. There have been so many changes affecting the service ever since the late 1960s that we think the service itself, the courts and everyone else concerned would find such a statement helpful. It would also be appropriate because I believe there is today more realism and more self-confidence in the service than there has been since the 1970s.
I have a lengthy response here to what has been said about the reduction in the salaries of the probation students, but I hesitate to deploy it all. Your Lordships have heard it at least twice in this House and frequently seen it on paper. We are discussing the salaries of people up to the age of 34. The noble Earl is concerned about the more mature entrants, as are we. I think that they, at the top end of the scale, suffer a 0.45 per cent. reduction. They are virtually in the same position. It goes down to a point which leaves the students in a position which I think is favourably comparable to other students in other disciplines of a comparable nature. It does not refer to anybody already in studentship. Everybody knows what they are taking on when they join. Neither does it affect the salaries of anybody who is a probation officer. It has nothing to do with that.
I say that, and welcome the fact that the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Greenwich, expressed anxieties about the dangers of a confrontational development of this, which I and my right honourable and honourable friends are anxious to avoid, although we do have a duty, and are pursuing it, to administer the service efficiently. There is a slightly larger sum of money at stake than people perhaps realise, and a principle as well.
May I now turn quickly to those who I have so far disappointed and pick up individual points. The noble Lord, Lord Harris of Greenwich, referred to the West Midlands, where there has indeed been a temporary ban on community service but only in certain petty session areas and for a short time. We actually support the wish of the chiefs of probation officers not to expand numbers at a rate which would prejudice the good discipline and quality of the work by bringing the change in too quickly. We believe in controlled growth. The West Midlands has already introduced community service for 16-year-olds, and I can now tell the noble Baroness, Lady Birk, that Middlesex applied for community service for 16-year-olds to start in September and this is now under consideration. It has already been introduced in Cumbria and South East London. Morale in Middlesex is, I understand, high, and exciting work is being done among various racial groups. The Hillingdon intermediate treatment centre, jointly run by the probation and social services, is an example of what is being done in this area.
There has been recent growth in conciliation schemes which help couples to part amicably, thus helping to resolve questions about custody of and access to children, which I suppose are about the most painful issues for the children concerned and the resolution of which helps not only them but reduces the work of the service and the courts subsequently. I
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am delighted to acknowledge the work done by the Churches in this area. The probation service has played a constructive part in many areas in promoting this scheme. The Lord Chancellor's department has set up an interdepartmental committee to examine the conciliation issue. This committee's report is being studied at present. The noble Baroness's point about resources will be borne in mind, as indeed will that of the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Greenwich.
I listened with great interest to the observations of the noble Lord, Lord Kagan, about the training of prison officers. He frequently and properly reminded me of the need to know what is going on in other countries. Although the figures are not collected centrally, I understand that the probation service is in touch with about 10,000 people prepared to act as voluntary associates.
My last contribution of any substance is in response to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wilson of Langside. He introduced the Scottish dimension with charming but unnecessary diffidence. It was unnecessary because he gave sufficient warning to the relevant department to enable me to discover what I ought to say in reply. For that I am grateful. I should add that the department in question does not have a very high opinion, it would seem, of the academic achievements of Sassenach Ministers, since everything I have to say has been written in big capital letters which have not been joined up.
The noble and learned Lord raised the subject of responsibility for probation services in Scotland. This is something which has been the subject of close attention both by the Scottish Office and by others both before and since the passage of the Social Work (Scotland) Act 1968 which gave the responsibility for probation and after-care to local authority social work departments. I can assure the noble Lord that we have considered the arguments carefully. The inclusion of responsibility for supervision of offenders as part of the statutory task of local authority social work departments is something which, in our view, enables the needs of the individual offender to be met in the wider context of his family and the community. This consideration—that an offender remains a member of the community with rights, duties and family responsibilities—has led us to the view, which we still maintain, that it would be a backward step to extract work with offenders from the mainstream of social work in Scotland and to create a separate specialist service which would in relative terms be very small and in danger of isolation if it were to deal with that field alone.
I should add that we are not complacent about the present position. We are aware that criticisms have been and are being made about the proportion of staff and resources that local authorities are devoting to offenders, as reflected in supervision and after-care. We know of the pressures and difficulties which they face. I should, however, make the point that local authorities are making very considerable efforts to increase the scale and quality of the services which they provide for offenders. As examples of this I should instance the fact that there are now more social workers in prison posts than ever before and that the number of community service orders made by the courts, which involve supervision by local authority

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staff, has been increasing very rapidly in recent years, community service schemes being now available over 75 per cent. of Scotland.
We are keeping developments in this area under review. A joint working group of the Scottish Office and the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities has recently begun a review of services for offenders in Scotland, which may serve as a basis for future thinking. But I think it is fair to say that neither we nor the local authorities envisage that the creation of a completely separate service for offenders of the kind foreseen by the noble and learned Lord would be a realistic measure.
We have had an interesting and stimulating debate. We shall take note of what has been said and consider it in the light of our future discussions with the service. May I say again that we welcome this opportunity to reflect on the work of the probation service. I am grateful to the noble Lords who have made contributions, even those to which I have not referred. They will be read with care. I hope that what I have said in answer to the Question of the noble Earl, Lord Longford, will reassure noble Lords that we are fully aware of the opportunities for an expanding role and shall not fail to grasp them.
House adjourned at four minutes before eight o'clock.