Lords Sitting of 23 March 1983

Preamble
The House met at half-past two of the clock: The LORD CHANCELLOR On the Woolsack.
Prayers—Read by the Lord Bishop of Southwell.

Lord Richardson of Duntisbourne
The Right Honourable Gordon William Humphreys Richardson, MBE, having been created Baron Richardson of Duntisbourne, of Duntisbourne in the County of Gloucestershire, for life—Was, in his robes, introduced between the Lord Cobbold and the Lord Franks.
The Viscount Bridgeman The Viscount Bridgeman—Sat first in Parliament after the death of his uncle.

Cashless Pay
2.48 p.m.
The Earl of Selkirk: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they agree with the tenth finding of the recent inquiry into the water dispute, which recognises that "wherever possible payment should be made by cheque or credit transfer."
The Minister of State, Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Earl Ferrers): My Lords, the findings of the committee of inquiry are a matter for the parties concerned. Cashless pay offers considerable advantages and, on 10th March 1983, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Employment issued a consultative document setting out proposals for updating the law on the payment of wages, with a view to encouraging the greater use of non-cash methods of payment.
The Earl of Selkirk: My Lords, I thank my noble friend for emphasising the importance to industry that a step of this character could have. Does he understand that, unless the Government take some steps, progress in this field will be very slow? Can he at least give a full assurance that bank accounts are private between the depositor and the bank and cannot be seen by spouses, whether male or female?
Earl Ferrers: My Lords, I can give my noble friend the assurance that the Government will do what they can to encourage the use of cashless pay. But there is no intention of compelling people to accept cashless pay if they do not wish to do so. As regards the rights of spouses to inspect their other spouses' accounts, that is fairly wide of the original Question, but I think that the noble Earl is quite right.
Lord Bruce of Donington: My Lords, is the noble Earl aware that the Government's attitude of caution
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in this matter, in seeking all possible consultation, is one that commands the support of us on this side of the House? There are many complications, some of which may not yet have been thought of, and it is desirable that the widest possible consultation should be held before any definitive steps are taken.
Earl Ferrers: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Bruce of Donington, for those remarks. He is aware that the Government are, at the moment, in the process of consulting with both the TUC and the CBI, and there is a measure of agreement that the existing state of affairs is not satisfactory, How it is improved will, of course, result from those discussions.
Lord Elwyn-Jones: My Lords, is the phrase "cashless pay" a little discouraging?
Earl Ferrers: My Lords, it is certainly very unpleasant, but it is accurate. I hope that it might be found to be a better phrase than what the noble and learned Lord insinuates.
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, would my noble friend agree that cheques will be preferable owing to the weight of the new £1, which will no doubt cause gentlemen's pockets and ladies' handbags to weigh a great deal more than they have done previously?
Earl Ferrers: Of course, my Lords, credit transfers would be even lighter.
Lord Kennet: My Lords, would the Government agree that, while it is clearly desirable to consult the TUC and the CBI, yet it might in the case of this industry now, and of other industries later, as this policy continues, be a good thing if the Government could find some means of consulting precisely the spouses, because without that there is no means of knowing what they think about the changeover to cashless pay? Is it not the case that, in the legal and social structure of our country, wives tend to be dependent, and this should not go without consideration?
Earl Ferrers: My Lords, as 44 per cent. of all employees in the country at the moment are paid by cash, I think that the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, would accept that there would be some difficulty over consulting all spouses.

Cruise Missiles: Launching Authority
2.52 p.m.
Lord Kennet: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether, in the event of the unavailability for whatever reason of the President or the Vice-President of the United States, authority to launch cruise missiles from the United Kingdom would devolve on the Speaker of the House of Representatives, and if so whether, in

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the light of events at the time of the attempt on Mr. Reagan's life, they have discussed these matters with the Speaker.
The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Lord Belstead): My Lords, we have every confidence that our long-standing arrangements with the Americans, under which any use of cruise missile bases in an emergency would be subject to a joint political decision, would work successfully with the President or his successor in accordance with the established United States constitutional procedures.
Lord Kennet: My Lords, I wonder whether I could ask the noble Lord the Minister to answer the Question? Have the Government consulted with the Speaker of the House of Representatives of the United States, on whom the decision would devolve if, for any reason, the President or the Vice-President were unavailable?
Lord Belstead: My Lords, I do not know the answer to that question. The reason I do not know the answer to it is because I do not think that it would necessarily be appropriate.
Lord Bishopston: My Lords, will the Minister acknowledge the importance of this question: that a situation could arise in which, under dual control or dual consultation, the use of cruise missiles from United Kingdom bases may have to be authorised by the President of the United States and the British Prime Minister? Will the Minister say what contingency plans there are if the Prime Minister is again caught, as in the case of the Falklands, by an attack which, to use her words, comes "out of the blue" in a situation where the President of the United States is perhaps at a sporting event while the British Prime Minister is perhaps attending her hairdresser, and someone has to make a decision?
Lord Belstead: My Lords, it would depend upon the circumstances, but we would expect our bilateral arrangements to work in exactly the same way as if it were the President himself or the Prime Minister herself taking the decision.
Lord Mayhew: My Lords, has the noble Lord's attention been drawn to an interesting leading article in this morning's edition of the Daily Telegraph, which suggests that the missiles might be manned and operated by the Royal Air Force and the warhead armed by the United States? Are the Government not going to pay at least some attention to their supporters regarding this matter?
Lord Belstead: My Lords, the answer to the first half of the noble Lord's question is "Yes", while the answer to the second half of his question is "No".
Viscount St. Davids: My Lords, will the noble Lord agree that there is considerable feeling that this question might, on the other hand, be unimportant? Will not the noble Lord confirm that cruise is extremely slow as a missile and therefore could not be used as a first strike weapon? If, therefore, it were
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launched, it would inevitably be launched in retaliation for an attack by the Russians. Surely, then, the question whether one nation or two nations agree to launch it is unimportant. It will be launched.
Lord Belstead: My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Viscount. The Government could not have put it better themselves.
Lord Jenkins of Putney: My Lords, is the noble Lord not aware that sometimes there have been cases in which missiles have almost been launched as a result of false information, given by computer or by other means? Therefore, what is intended to be a second strike can become a first strike. Is the noble Lord not aware of the fact that there is an increasing feeling in the country that it is a gross dereliction of duty by the Government to allow a position to arise in which a matter of life and death to the people of this country can be determined by the action of a foreign national?
Lord Belstead: My Lords, I have made it clear on behalf of the Government previously, but perhaps I should do so again, that the agreements between the United States and this country are reviewed and reaffirmed when a British Prime Minister or a President of the United States first takes office. The arrangements were last reaffirmed by President Reagan and previously by the Prime Minister when she was first elected to No. 10. The Government have satisfied themselves that the current arrangements remain effective.
Lord Kennet: My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord the Minister why he himself would consider it "inappropriate"—I quote his word—to inquire into the arrangements for the American decision to launch these missiles from British soil in the event of Nos. 1 and 2 in America being out of action at the time when the crisis came?
Lord Belstead: Because, my Lords, although I acknowledge that there is a clearly established line of succession in the United States for the office of President, the noble Lord would not expect me to go into details publicly about who might take over presidential responsibilities for the release of nuclear weapons in the event of the President or his successor being absent.

The School Meals Service
2.57 p.m.
Baroness David: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what is their policy towards local education authorities which cease to provide school meals for primary and secondary school pupils; and what alternative arrangements should be made for the care and supervision of pupils during the lunch break.
The Earl of Swinton: My Lords, as I said to the noble Baroness, Lady David, in answer to a supplementary question which she asked me on 10th March, it is no part of Government policy that the school meals service should be abolished. Public expenditure forecasts adequately provide for its continuation. It is, however, a matter for individual local education authorities to determine whether they wish to provide a paid meals service. Equally, it is for individual authorities to determine what arrangements are made for the supervision of pupils at midday in the light of their general responsibilities.
Baroness David: My Lords, I thank the Minister for his Answer. May I ask him whether he agrees that there are some local authorities which are not providing a service except for children who have to have free meals? May I ask him how those children will be kept secret, so to speak? The intention is, is it not, that they should not be recognised as having free meals? If no other children are having free meals, how is this to be achieved? Could the Minister say what the department's view is about what is going to happen to those children who could possibly be wandering around the streets at lunchtime?
The Earl of Swinton: My Lords, so far as the provision of school meals is concerned, to date only three local education authorities—Dorset, Herefordshire and Worcestershire and Lincolnshire—have abolished paid meals, and then only in primary schools. The Merton authority plan to abolish their paid meals service in both primary and secondary schools as from September of this year. However, the Government are not aware of any other authorities which intend to abolish paid meals. So far as concerns the question of dealing—if that is the right word—with the children who get free meals, obviously this is a sensitive issue. It is for individual schools to work out how they are going to do it. Again, it is up to the local education authorities themselves to say how the children are supervised during meal times.
Baroness Jeger: My Lords, if children are let out and go wandering around the streets looking for their dinner in cafes, is there not a danger that this might contribute to truancy? Will the Minister try to monitor what is happening in schools where authorities have abandoned regular school dinners, to ascertain whether all the children come back to school in the afternoon or whether afternoon truancy increases?
The Earl of Swinton: My Lords, obviously children go and find their meals elsewhere, even where education authorities are providing a full school meals service. A survey of the school meals service is being conducted, but which authorities have taken part is confidential. I could not say whether the survey includes the three authorities I have named which have cut down on their school meals service.
Lord Kilmarnock: My Lords, could the noble Earl answer the question about the position in the authorities which have ceased to provide meals for those children who are statutorily entitled to free meals and milk? Would not the Minister agree that as packed lunches are notoriously more expensive than centrally
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cooked meals the recent increase in child benefit will be largely taken up in paying for packed lunches where meals are not provided?
The Earl of Swinton: My Lords, there is a statutory duty on all authorities to provide free meals for those entitled to them. As to whether packed meals are cheaper or more expensive than centrally cooked meals, I am afraid I am not in a position to answer, but presumably Merton think that they must be, otherwise they would not be doing it.
Baroness Gaitskell: My Lords, would not the Minister agree that it is perhaps not so much a question of truancy as, with so many mothers going out to work, of children being hungry unless they are supplied with some kind of hot or cold meal, both of which are good?
The Earl of Swinton: My Lords, this is very much up to the mothers. In fact, before they made this decision the majority of school children in Merton were bringing their meals with them, anyway.
Baroness Ewart-Biggs: My Lords, is the Minister aware that a recent study of 10-year-olds showed that one child out of five leaves for school without an adequate breakfast? Would not the Minister agree that for many of the children of poorer families the school meal is the major meal of the day? Would he not agree that it is of the greatest importance that there should be some level of nutritional value in the school meal, as there was before the 1980 Act?
The Earl of Swinton: My Lords, I believe that we went over this ground about a fortnight ago. The whole idea is that poorer children are provided with free meals. That is the whole reason behind the Government's thinking.
Baroness David: My Lords, does the noble Earl not agree that if the Government had not brought pressure on local authorities to cut expenditure on school meals by 50 per cent. within a short period of two years, the situation would not have been as difficult as it is now?
The Earl of Swinton: My Lords, it is up to anyone to suggest that, if anything is cut, pressures are bound to be there. It is the feeling on our side of the House that cuts have to be made in some shape or form, and this is one of the alternatives available.
Lord Glenamara: My Lords, is the noble Earl aware that many of us think it is a piece of nonsense for him to say that it is not the Government's policy to end school meals, when it was the Government's own Bill, which they forced through Parliament, which is allowing local authorities to do this? Is he not ashamed that, after all these years, school meals are being ended in our schools?
The Earl of Swinton: My Lords, that is a matter of the noble Lord's opinion as opposed to my opinion.
Lord Glenamara: My Lords, will the noble Earl not confirm that it was the Government's Bill, which they put through Parliament against all the Opposition parties, which permits the ending of school meals?
The Earl of Swinton: My Lords, it does not permit the ending of school meals to children who deserve them most.
Lord Glenamara: My Lords, the noble Earl knows what I mean—it is the ending of school meals for all the rest of our children. It is a matter of some importance that hundreds of thousands of our children are being deprived of school meals because of this Government.
The Earl of Swinton: My Lords, I really must argue this with the noble Lord, Lord Glenamara. It will cost about £1,000 million to introduce free school meals for every child in the country, and I do not think that even the noble Lord, Lord Glenamara, is suggesting that. There is money available for local education authorities who wish to provide a meals service. In fact, some two-thirds of local education authorities in this country are providing a school meals service free, even to children above the base limit.
Baroness Ewart-Biggs: My Lords, does the noble Earl not agree that the health of school children can only be safeguarded if there is a nutritional level within those free school meals to which certain children from poorer families are entitled? It is that which worries us, when so much of the cost on local education authorities is going into other areas except food.
The Earl of Swinton: My Lords, I thought that I answered this on 10th March, when I said two things. First, that there is a survey being done on this, which will be available next year. Also, there is no nutrition in food that is being wasted, and a great deal of food was being wasted before this legislation was passed.

Business
Lord Denham: My Lords, at a convenient moment after 3.30 p.m. this afternoon my noble friend Lord Ferrers will, with the leave of the House, repeat a Statement that is to be made in another place on new economic initiatives for Northern Ireland.
With the leave of the House, I should like in the normal way to say a brief word about the timing of the two short debates this afternoon, standing in the names of my noble friends Lord Soames and Lord Harvington. Following the principle that the mover shall be entitled to approximately 15 minutes, and that the Minister should rise to reply no later than 20 minutes before the scheduled end of the debate, may I suggest that other speakers in both today's debates should limit their speeches to a maximum of 11 minutes. Perhaps I should point out that if any noble Lord should speak longer than that, he will do so at the expense of other speakers in the debate.

British Railways (Liverpool Street Station) Bill
3.6 p.m.
The Chairman of Committees (Lord Aberdare): My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a third time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read a third time.—(Lord Aberdare.)
Lord Underhill: My Lords, one is always diffident about speaking on the Third Reading of a Private Bill that has gone through one of your Lordships' committees, but the matters on which I wish to speak are really consequential upon consideration by a Select Committee. Anyone who knows Liverpool Street Station and the area around it will readily recognise that redevelopment is very long overdue, not only because of the number of trains and passengers which use the station but also because of the narrow bottle-neck after one leaves Bethnal Green. This is a plan for the redevelopment of not only the whole of the station but also of the whole of the area around it. I emphasise that because I have no wish to hold up the work of redevelopment.
But redevelopment will involve closure of the adjoining Broad Street Station and building a new station at Worship Street, which is about half a mile from the existing station and away from the City. On 26th January, the Secretary of State announced his consent to the Broad Street closure and that this consent was conditional upon British Rail providing a substitute bus service between Worship Street and Liverpool Street Stations, without charge to rail passengers. The development will therefore affect also the North London rail line which at present runs via Dalston Junction into Broad Street. With the closure of Broad Street Station, the intention is that the line shall end at the new station which is to be constructed at Worship Street. I understand that some one and a half million passengers use the North London line each year, nearly 200,000 of them from the station at Dalston Junction and most of them travelling during business hours on weekdays. It is a very important City rail link.
The position is made more complicated by the proposal of British Rail to construct a new curve at Graham Road, Hackney, so that the North London line will in future continue to the Cambridge line, which then goes to Liverpool Street Station. It is the intention of British Rail that the line from Dalston to the new Worship Street Station, will then be closed, after the Graham Road link has been constructed some years ahead. This part of the scheme has been criticised because there could be a situation arising in which there would be no rail link to the City from Dalston Junction. That is considered to be a very important factor. If this should happen, which seems likely to be the case, there would be the problem of a one and a quarter mile viaduct of arches, where there are employed some 700 people, which would then be lying idle and for which refurbishment is badly needed.
The Transport Users' Consultative Committee for London gave support to a proposal that instead of building the new station at Worship Street there should be the provision of temporary high-level platforms on the existing North London line viaduct until the Broad Street services could be diverted to Liverpool Street, once the proposed new Graham Road, Hackney, link had been constructed. It must be emphasised that the Hackney, Islington, Camden and

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Brent Councils support the provision of temporary high level platforms and the further proposal that there should be a permanent high level platform over the redevelopment site so that the present North London line could be retained.
In his announcement, the Secretary of State stated that, although there are strong arguments against high level platforms, his consent with regard to Broad Street and the building of the new Worship Street Station does not prevent the Railways Board from adopting the high level option, if they wish to consider the matter at some future date. The Secretary of State suggested that the proposal for high level platforms would entail additional cost and delay. But it must be pointed out that the GLC also supports the high level platforms proposal and the retention of the existing North London line, and has offered to fund the proposal at a cost estimated at some £3½ million.
It must also be pointed out that the board would need to meet the cost of the new station at Worship Street, the cost of the Graham Road curve link, and also the provision of the bus service from Worship Street to Liverpool Street. I understand that the GLC has had discussions with British Rail, but there has been no agreement. Whether the cost of all those items would be approximate to the £3½ million cost of the platforms is one on which I have no information, but it cannot be very far from that.
The borough councils involved in the North London line favour the high level platforms, and particularly the retention of the existing line. If noble Lords have had an opportunity, as I have, to read the Third Reading debate in the other place on 1st December, they will see that Members of Parliament from all parties presented a very strong case for the continuance of the present North London line as it is at the moment.
There is also the problem that since 1978 the central Government and the Hackney Borough Council have committed nearly £5 million through the inner city partnership to provide for economic development and environmental improvement schemes within the Borough of Hackney. Some £1 million has already been spent on those schemes in the Shoreditch area. Male unemployment in the Hackney Borough is double the London average. Therefore, these schemes are really vital under the inner city partnership, and the retention of the City rail link from Dalston Junction is considered absolutely essential for these schemes for commercial and shopping redevelopment. I must point out that from Hackney there is no tube connection at all, and, if the present Dalston line to the City is closed, the only alternative, other than going round by the Graham Road link, which has yet to be constructed, would be on crowded streets.
It has been suggested that the Liverpool Street redevelopment scheme will take some six years, at least, to complete. There is no definite timetable for the construction of the Graham Road curve link so as to continue the present North London line into Liverpool Street via that curve instead of through Dalston Junction, and British Rail has said there will be considerable difficulty in moving forward the date of that construction. It will be noted that in the Secretary of State's announcement on 26th January
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there is nothing in the Secretary of State's consent to the closure of Broad Street that provides any guarantee whatever for the future. There is nothing mandatory on the construction of the Graham Road curve, there is nothing mandatory on when the Graham Road link will start, or even to say that it will be constructed. It could be that, at the end of the long period of development of Liverpool Street Station, British Rail may decide not to proceed with the Graham Road link. That presumably would mean that the North London line would finish at the new Worship Street Station as a permanency, or even mean the closure of that vital link altogether. If the Graham Road link is not to be constructed, it may then be far too late to talk of having high level platforms to continue this essential rail link from Dalston Junction to the City. That is why I say these matters arise from the approval of the redevelopment scheme, not the actual redevelopment scheme.
Therefore, it would seem that the Secretary of State should impose one of two alternative conditions. Either the provision of temporary high level platforms to enable the North London line to run on the existing viaduct from Dalston Junction should be made mandatory, as should the eventual construction of permanent high level platforms over the Liverpool Street redevelopment site, which we understand presents no engineering difficulties. Alternatively, the Secretary of State should make mandatory conditions for the construction of the Graham Road curve at Hackney, so that the North London line will eventually be diverted to new low level platforms in the new Liverpool Street redeveloped station.
My Lords, I am not speaking against the redevelopment scheme at Liverpool Street and the surrounding area, but only urging that the Secretary of State should lay down additional conditions so as to ensure that the points I have raised can be given consideration.
3.16 p.m.
Viscount Sidmouth: My Lords, I have no wish to detain the House at this point, but, if I may, I will speak very briefly on this Private Bill. I feel I should declare an interest as President of the National Council of Inland Transport. Let me say at the outset, as Lord Underhill has emphasised, that there is no quarrel with the purpose of this Bill, which is to improve the facilities at present jointly provided by Liverpool Street and Broad Street Stations. Equally, the method of doing this, by providing seven new platforms at Liverpool Street Station at the low level, will not only improve the railway operating side of that station but also make it more convenient for the passengers using it.
I wish simply to raise two points, both of them connected with the North London line trains at present routed via Dalston Junction into Broad Street Station at the high level. The first point is that following the hearing before the Transport Users' Consultative Committee for London in April 1982, the Secretary of State sanctioned the closure of Broad Street Station, but not of the North London line. In doing so, reference was made to what is known as the Graham Road curve, which will in the future provide the access for trains off the North London line into the

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new low level platforms. But, my Lords, there seems to be no firm commitment that this access line will indeed ever be built, nor, as I understand it, is any financial provision made for doing this. Without such a commitment, it is contended that the way would be open in the future not to proceed with this new access line at all, and thus in effect to close the North London line by indirect means, through procedure which was ostensibly concerned with the closure of a station. Your Lordships have heard the number of people using this station at the moment, and you will be aware of the pressure that London Transport commuter services are already under.
I come to my other point. I am sorry to make a technical point, but I think it is important. It is that under the present proposals the scheme provides for a temporary station to be built at Worship Street at considerable expense. It would, of course, be at the high level, and would handle the North London line trains which would temporarily be terminated there. It is 600 yards to the north, and a bus service would have to be provided. It is clear that these temporary facilities will be a good deal less convenient than the existing ones at Broad Street Station, and much less so than the eventual low level ones at Liverpool Street Station. The possibility arises, therefore, that while they are in use they will deter a number of passengers who currently use this route, and your Lordships will be aware that this would be a bad thing for British Rail. The joint effect might be that there would be such a falling off in passengers on these services that when the time came it could be argued that there was no need to provide the Graham Road curve at all and that the North London line should be closed.
To avoid this possibility, it is suggested that British Rail should have another look at the necessity for the temporary station at Worship Street. Although it is not apparent from British Rail's plan JC2, a survey on site seems to indicate that there is in fact more room at the high level than is indicated there. As an alternative to the station at Worship Street, it appears to be possible for British Rail to construct high-level platforms for the North London line trains in the space between the existing Broad Street Station and the western trainshed, using parts of the existing viaduct for the construction of temporary platforms.
I have a copy of plan JC2 on which the actual dimensions of the viaduct and the trainshed have been superimposed, and it would certainly appear from this that such a scheme is possible. Indeed, there seems to be no need to route the track connections to the temporary high-level platforms on the eastern side of the existing viaduct between Worship Street and Pinder Street, where they would interfere with the new works, but tracks for the North London line could be provided on the western side of the existing viaduct and so reach the location proposed for the temporary high-level platforms. I hope that the Minister will ensure that these proposals are carefully considered.
3.20 p.m.
Lord Lucas of Chilworth: My Lords, I am glad that both the noble Lord, Lord Underhill, and the noble Viscount have given a welcome to the development of Liverpool Street Station which is the subject of this Bill. Indeed, the Government themselves acknowledge
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the need for the development and give their support. It is somewhat surprising, therefore, that this afternoon there should be what I might call a rehearsal of the arguments put forward during the course of your Lordships' Select Committee inquiry into this Bill. At the end of the day—if my memory serves me right the Select Committee sat for about eight days—the committee was of the opinion that the Bill should proceed, subject only to the undertakings given at that time.
Perhaps, I may just outline the position. Broad Street Station provides a very limited service for the North London line and for peak services to Watford. The new proposals provide for the closure of Broad Street, and the Secretary of State has given his consent to this while Liverpool Street Station is being redeveloped. In lieu of Broad Street a temporary station—Worship Street—will open and will be used for a period of about four to six years. The noble Lord, Lord Underhill, said that no time had been given. He said that it might well be in excess of six years. I do not quarrel with that, but certainly the estimates that have been provided suggest that a period of between four and six years is more appropriate while that work is going on and until the Liverpool Street accommodation can take care of the new service.
The Graham Road curve which links the North London line with the Cambridge line into Liverpool Street after that station has been redeveloped will necessitate the Secretary of State having to give his consent for the closure of Worship Street temporary station. The Secretary of State will have to give consideration to that at the time the British Railways Board puts forward a specific proposal for that closure. Meantime, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State gave consent to the Broad Street closure subject to a dedicated bus service between the two stations. That consent to the closure of Broad Street made it quite clear that there is nothing in the consent that was meant to prevent the board adopting a high level option if it so wished.
In my right honourable friend's letter of 25th January signifying consent to the Broad Street closure he said, in paragraph 7:
"The consent to the closure of Broad Street is therefore conditional on the provision of such a service which is to be timetabled so that as far as possible each train arriving at Worship Street will be met by a bus, or buses, to take passengers to the vicinity of Liverpool Street station and that a bus, or buses, will leave Liverpool Street at a convenient time to allow passengers to join each train leaving Worship Street. The service is also to allow transfer between train and bus at Worship Street under cover, and it is to be provided without additional charge to those holding valid rail tickets to and from Worship Street Station. Section 54, subsection (5)(b) of the Transport Act 1968 allows the Secretary of State to vary or revoke conditions imposed in connection with the closure. It follows that if the board's experience of providing the dedicated service suggests to them that the use which is made out of it is not sufficient to justify its continuation or that the Secretary of State's objectives could be achieved more satisfactorily by an alternative arrangement, it will be open to the board to apply to have the conditions varied".
Clearly the Secretary of State could not over-ride that power by binding himself at this stage not to exercise the power in that section of the Act. I am, therefore, not able to commit my right honourable friend the Secretary of State to giving a guarantee that the dedicated bus service will be provided for the entire

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time that the Worship Street station is to be used as a temporary station.
If the British Railways Board asks for a variation the grounds would have to be substantial, and it would be for the board to prove to my right honourable friend that a variation is justified. The board itself has a commitment to provide a service between the two stations. I imagine that while there are numbers of passengers or customers of that service who still require it then the need will prevail, and I am quite sure that the board accepts that situation.
That is really as far as I feel I am able to go in responding to the pleas that have been made by the noble Lord, Lord Underhill, and, indeed, the noble Viscount.
Viscount Hanworth: My Lords, I was a member of the committee and nothing has been said in the House this afternoon which was not carefully considered by the committee over a period of some seven days' sitting.
We fully realised the inconvenience of the Worship Street station and we did also think that there might be a falling off of its use due to this inconvenience. We were therefore concerned, as one speaker was concerned, that the Graham Road curve should, in fact, be constructed and that the line should, therefore, ultimately go in to Liverpool Street.
Certain assurances were given by British Rail on this point, with one or two conditions, but we also inserted a condition, which was agreed, that the Worship Street station would continue in use until the Graham Street curve was constructed. This may not be absolutely cast iron, but I think that with the other assurances given by British Rail there will not be any question but that we shall see the line coming in at low level.
This matter was considered by the Commons Committee on very much the same grounds. Nothing very new came in when it came before us. There was some increased emphasis on the importance of the existing railway, possibly to the new development in Hackney. I therefore think that it would be a very great mistake if we were to go over all this ground again. I am not pretending that it was not difficult. Indeed, I said that our decision, whatever it was, was bound to be wrong in the view of some people.
On Question, Bill read a third time, with the amendments, and passed, and returned to the Commons.

World Economy and Currency Stability
3.29 p.m.
Lord Soames Lord Soames rose to call attention to the need for a more active and vigorous world economy and for greater international currency stability as a contribution thereto; and to move for Papers.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper. There are happily some solid signs of incipient recovery in the world economy. Housing starts are well up on last year's figures for January and February in the United States, motor-car manufacturers are seeing
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an upturn in orders, and in a number of industrial sectors the inventory pipeline is beginning at last to fill. If this trend continues it should not be long before the first ripples of recovery are seen on this side of the Atlantic, with the hope that that holds out for the future, particularly for countries like ours who are well placed to benefit from increased demand and increased industrial activity. But we must not forget that a year ago people were saying much the same thing, and in the event the recovery did not materialise in 1982. And though this year the indices point more firmly than they did last towards increased activity in the world economy, and we have the notable added advantage, for some time at least, of lower oil prices, there are still important inhibiting factors of which it would be wise to take notice.
The world economy is still in a precarious state. It is as yet convalescent and no better than that. So in the years to come it is possible that we could be looking back on 1983 as the year which saw the start of sustained recovery in the world economy. On the other hand, if this incipient recovery were to be aborted—if it proves to be nothing more than a will-o'-the wisp—then by 1985 things would look very bleak indeed for the Western world as a whole. So what I had in mind in initiating this debate was a discussion in advance of the Economic Summit at Wiliamsburg on what can be done by Governments who will be there represented to encourage and sustain the momentum of this evident, but as yet incipient, recovery.
In general terms, I suppose that the biggest contribution that Governments can make is to pay attention in their deeds, as well as in their words, to the crucial necessity and the crucial fact of our interdependence, one with another, not only in matters of trade but also in monetary and fiscal affairs. We should all have learnt by now, for instance, that no one country can successfully go its own way without regard to others; no one country in Europe can bring about its own recovery on its own. If we needed any reminding of that, surely we have the example of recent experience in France. No one country can spend its way out of recession; we can only grow out of it together. There can be no such thing as an island of recovery in a sea of recession.
One would have hoped that even the Labour Party would have learnt that by now. But, I must say, judging from the highly inflationary and somewhat ludicrous mock budget they produced the other day, it would appear not. However, I am delighted to see the noble Lord, Lord Lever, on the Front Bench of the Opposition and speaking on their behalf in winding up this debate. Is this a sign, perhaps, that the official Opposition are coming round to his common-sense way of thinking? I should like to think that it was so, but I fear not. I fear that one swallow does not make a summer—even one as bright and as chirpy as the noble Lord.
My Lords, another pre-requisite for sustained world growth must be a high level of private investment, for without that the recovery is doomed to fizzle out. For that, industrialists need confidence that real interest rates will be brought down further and will stay down; in other words, that they will be brought down without raising inflationary expectations. The main contribution which Governments can make to this end

1113
is to show enough discipline not to pre-empt for their own expenditure too high a proportion of available money in circulation. For instance, there is, rightly or wrongly, serious doubt (perhaps fear would be a better word) in the minds of a number of American industrialists as whether the size of the current and forecast United States budget deficit leaves enough room for investment, without interest rates having to be raised again to resist inflationary pressures. And rising interest rates constitute a grave inhibition to investment.
There can be only one effective long-term solution to this problem and that is a sustained rise in world economic activity, enough to create both greater demand for raw materials by the industrialised world and also a greater demand in our markets for the developing world's manufactured goods. But at best that is some way off. Meanwhile, a good measure of success has been achieved in recent months by Governments, central banks and official institutions in a series of major international financial rescue operations for countries in the third world. What once looked like an imminent danger of a seize-up in the world banking system has been averted, at least for the present, helped along by the prospect of lower oil prices and interest charges. But there remains a most serious situation, with precious little margin for error.
There has been, for instance, markedly little enthusiasm—and understandably so—for the extra bank lending in support of IMF adjustment programmes and drawings. If the domestic programmes in the borrowing countries fail to be implemented, do not produce the expected results or, possibly most important, if the world economy proves less buoyant than has been assumed, it will be extremely difficult in the medium term to manage continuing rescue operations. And let us be in no doubt that if the faltering recovery puts these rescues in jeopardy, the financial consequences will in turn rebound sharply on that faltering recovery itself.
So, pending a sustained world recovery—and we have to look at best some years ahead for this to have a major impact on many of the seriously indebted countries—what can be done about this vital problem which could cause, if it were not properly handled, severe damage to our whole banking system? Many banks have seriously over-lent, some to an irresponsible degree, in their determination to maintain their market share of loans at all costs. For that their shareholders will anyhow have to suffer, and the tendency will be for some banks to shy away from yet more lending to the worst-indebted countries. Yet the flow of funds to the third world cannot suddenly be turned off without dire consequences to economic, political and social stability in those countries; and if this threatens, some arrangement will have to be arrived at between these banks and their national authorities.
I come back to what must surely be the first essential in sustaining substantial economic recovery, namely, a significant improvement in co-ordination and co-operation over national economic policies. Since the Versailles summit this has been understood to mean that Governments would follow the same broad objective of containing inflation through sound fiscal and monetary policies with the intention of achieving
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sustainable growth without inflation. But in the event monetary and fiscal policies of different countries have tended to remain essentially inward looking. Also, different degrees of success or failure of national policies and unforeseen developments of all kinds have meant that the interest rates and exchange rates, which are in a sense symptoms or by-products of any one country's individual policies, have had major influences on other countries' policies.
What is needed at Williamsburg, surely, is a decision to take international co-operation on to an altogether higher plane. The essence of successful co-ordination has to be for each country to be ready to take into account in its planning the effects of its policies on others and vice versa, and to make its economic contribution for the common good. Take, for example, the question of exchange rates. There can be no doubt that the volatility in exchange rates in recent years has been a malign factor militating against international trade. Violent changes in parities have been far greater, far more frequent, and far more uncoupled and disconnected from real economic factors than was ever anticipated a decade ago, when the disciplines of the Bretton Woods monetary system were jettisoned in favour of a floating rates system.
Surely, whatever may have been the case in the past, it would now be in the interest of the United States, as it certainly would be for the rest of the world, for the United States Government to be prepared to take some measure of joint responsibility, along with others, for the level and structure of exchange rates. I am not suggesting that there should be any question of defending any particular rates; or of commitment to any substantial intervention. But simply the decision that the pattern of world exchange rates was to become a matter of shared concern and the implied acceptance by the major countries jointly that they no longer regarded it as desirable or inevitable that their authorities should be passive in the face of any exchange rate movements—that alone could not fail to make an important contribution to stability.
Another valuable area of international co-ordination would be to try to agree jointly on the continuation or modification of policies which, carried out individually, country by country, would produce an improved result for the world as a whole. To that end, I would make a positive suggestion: that each of the seven Governments attending the Williamsburg summit should circulate papers in advance of that meeting on what they individually wished to see the others do specifically as a contribution to sustaining growth in the world economy. This could give rise, hopefully, to a more fruitful and effective discussion, on facts rather than on communiquśs, than would the reiteration of purely national aspirations and requirements. Even if the extent of agreement on the co-ordination of national policies were to leave much to be desired, as it has done in past summits, we might at least expect a measure of international commitment on what to avoid doing—like agreement to eschew further protectionism, and also to monitor the implementation of any agreements reached country by country.
The seriousness of the world outlook in default of sustained recovery, and the extreme dangers inherent in it of a political and social character as well as an

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economic character, demand a global element in national economic planning. The fact that all countries represented around that table at Williamsburg need a consistent annual growth of around 5 per cent. before any real impact is made on our high levels of unemployment—and we know that none of us can achieve that on our own—and that fact alone, must stimulate the policymakers at the summit to think boldly, yet responsibly, in truly international terms.
In terms of unemployment, all the countries at Williamsburg are faced with a pretty uninviting prospect for our peoples in the years immediately ahead even if things turn out as well as can presently be hoped, let alone if things go more awry, as they plainly could. It is no exaggeration to say that the outcome of the Williamsburg meeting will have an important effect either for good or for ill on the future of the free world, both in the North and in the South. On what is concluded there—the extent to which the seven countries succeed or fail to agree to co-ordinate their policies for the common good and thereafter match their words with their deeds—will largely depend whether or not the promise of world economic recovery is fulfilled. Hopefully, this fact will concentrate the minds of our leaders something wonderful, and will lead them, for the first time, to make an economic summit both effective and valuable in world terms. My Lords, I beg to move for Papers.

Northern Ireland: New Economic Initiatives
3.47 p.m.
Earl Ferrers: My Lords, it might be to the convenience of your Lordships if I were to repeat a Statement which is being made in another place by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. The Statement is as follows:
"I will, with permission, Mr. Speaker, make a Statement on the Government's New Economic Initiative for Northern Ireland.
"Mr. Speaker, the House will need no reminding of the unique combination of severe economic and social problems in Northern Ireland. In recognition of these exceptional circumstances the Government have decided to introduce several new measures to stimulate industrial growth, and to assist viable industrial employment in Northern Ireland.
"First and foremost the Government have decided to introduce a new grant which will reimburse new and expanding industries up to 80 per cent. of the corporation tax paid on profits generated by approved projects. This grant will form part of the selective financial assistance packages administered by the Industrial Development Board and by the Local Enterprise Development Unit.
"A measure of this sort has been widely urged upon us by the Select Committee on Trade and Industry, by the Northern Ireland Assembly (which yesterday endorsed a constructive report on industrial incentives), by the Industrial Development Board and by many others. It will be a major new attraction to potential investors.
"Second, and again in recognition of Northern Ireland's unique economic problems, the existing 75
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per cent. derating of industrial premises will be increased to a full 100 per cent. This will both help new investors and bring valuable immediate relief to existing enterprises. Parliament will shortly be asked to approve an order giving effect to this derating from the beginning of the next financial year.
"Third, an energy conservation scheme will be introduced to encourage industry to increase efficiency and competitiveness. Grants at the rate of 30 per cent. will be offered on a selective basis towards the cost of approved energy conservation projects.
"Finally, the Government intend to introduce two further schemes designed to improve competitive strength and efficiency. There will be a Management Incentives Scheme which will provide grant aid in appropriate cases to companies to help them recruit good quality management. And an Advisory Service to Industry will be established to help Northern Ireland companies to improve their production methods and processes.
"These measures reflect the advice the Government have received, particularly from the Industrial Development Board, and I am confident they will assist the board in its vital task of helping to conserve and create employment.
"A vital contribution is also being made by the Local Enterprise Development Unit, whose new plan for the creation and development of small businesses I approved last year.
"Mr. Speaker, these specific Northern Ireland measures will reinforce the Government's more general steps to assist industry and the economy. Reducing interest rates and the successive reductions in National Insurance surcharge will have as valuable an impact in Northern Ireland as in the rest of the country.
"Over the last few years the Government have accorded first priority to programmes designed to assist industry in Northern Ireland. As we have shown in these allocations and further demonstrated with the measures announced today, the Government will play their part in supporting and promoting the economy of the Province. But a heavy responsibility lies on the people themselves, on their industrial, commercial and labour leaders, and on their public representatives, to bring home just how exaggerated and distorted is the impression which so many outsiders have of the Province; we look to them to demonstrate to the industrialists of the world that Northern Ireland is worthy of their confidence and their investment."
My Lords, that concludes the Statement.
Lord Underhill: My Lords, noble Lords will be grateful to the noble Earl for repeating this Statement, and generally we welcome consideration that is given to any new initiatives which can help to reconstruct industry in Northern Ireland. Noble Lords will recall that during our recent appropriation debate concern was expressed by many noble Lords at the manufacturing position in Northern Ireland: at the fact that there are more unemployed than at work in the manufacturing industries and at the fact that in certain parts of Northern Ireland male unemployment

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is approaching 50 per cent. Therefore, we welcome consideration that is given to new initiatives.
As to deciding whether these are the right ones, one would need to consider them more carefully than simply having a Statement read out this afternoon. At the moment, the proposals for a Management Incentives Scheme and the Advisory Service to Industry are vague. They may be very beneficial, but until we know further details, we do not know exactly how they will work out. I am pleased to note that the proposal for corporation tax has the emphasis on new and expanding industries. But one would need to look very carefully at whether the proposals for grant for corporation tax and the derating will work out.
During our appropriation debate I referred to the programme which had been produced by the Northern Ireland Committee of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, published only in January this year, which urged—and I believe that many other noble Lords take this view—that it is essential that in Northern Ireland we not only take steps to rebuild industry, but also tackle the social deprivation which exists in many parts. They must go together. The Northern Ireland committee of the Irish trade unions urged that there should be a public sector investment programme which would not only assist to reduce unemployment but at the same time would assist in tackling some of the problems of social deprivation. They believed that their proposals would provide an extra 40,000 jobs and at the same time would reduce the very heavy burden which is falling upon the financiers owing to the social service benefits that are required. Therefore, while generally welcoming the initiative, we should need to look more carefully at the actual proposals to see whether they are the right ones to meet the situation.
Lord Hampton: My Lords, I, too, should like to thank the noble Earl for repeating the Statement which was made by the Secretary of State in the other place. We welcome the measures as a token of the Government's concern for, as was said, the severe economic and social problems in Northern Ireland, subject, of course, to further review and consideration. In Britain we are continually being pressed by those in Ulster and elsewhere to do more to help overcome the great distress at present being experienced in Ulster. Now, on the advice and representation of the Select Committee on Trade and Industry, the Northern Ireland Assembly, the Industrial Development Board and others, we are doing just that.
I hope that it will be broadcast to the world that we are glad to help, but we wholeheartedly endorse what the Secretary of State said in his closing paragraph. He said:
"… the Government will play their part in supporting and promoting the economy of the Province. But a heavy responsibility lies on the people themselves",
to show that the Province is worthy of support and trade. It is a vicious circle that must be broken—cut down the terrorism and trade will improve and, in turn, terrorism will be less tempting.
There are just two questions which I should like to ask the noble Earl. First, can he give an estimate of the cost of increasing the existing 75 per cent. derating of
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industrial premises to 100 per cent? Secondly, how do these concessions compare with incentives offered South of the Border?
Earl Ferrers: My Lords, I am grateful to both noble Lords for the welcome which they have given to this Statement. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, that it is very important that everyone in Northern Ireland should do his best to show and to encourage other would-be investors that Northern Ireland is, in fact, a good place in which to invest. As the Statement says, the Government are prepared to play their part in doing that, but substantially much of this depends upon the conduct of everyone in Northern Ireland.
I entirely understand the wish of the noble Lord, Lord Underhill, to study the measures more carefully. The noble Lord wondered how the Management Incentives Scheme would work. The object is to make a move to Northern Ireland more attractive for the manager of a foreign company which the Industrial Development Board is trying to encourage to invest in Northern Ireland, and also to encourage existing Northern Ireland companies to recruit the best possible management for a given job, wherever the recruited manager might at present live.
The noble Lord also wondered how the advisory service would work. In brief, it would serve all manufacturing industries, providing 15 man-days of consultancy free to companies which employ more than 50 people, and five man-days to firms with fewer employees. The noble Lord, Lord Hampton, asked what would be the cost of derating from the 75 per cent. to 100 per cent. The anticipated cost is £7 million. He asked how these measures compare with those measures South of the Border. I can only answer him by saying that it is very difficult to give strict comparisons both North of the Border and South of the Border, because so many different factors operate. However, the grant for corporation tax relief is a very substantial one. In fact, 80 per cent. of the tax payable by corporation tax will be returned by way of a grant to those firms which have gone through certain approved processes and which have actually employed more people and increased their output. That grant will be available for 20 years. I think that that is a very considerable move to attract people to Northern Ireland.
Lord Donaldson of Kingsbridge: My Lords, we should like to welcome this Statement from the Government. Direct intervention of this kind is absolutely warranted by the very difficult state of conditions in Northern Ireland; and, in my opinion, we could do with a good deal more of it elsewhere, but that is another point. I am particularly pleased that the first thing which is suggested—the new grant of up to 80 per cent. of corporation tax payable—has been specifically supported in advance by the Assembly, because this makes the Assembly feel that it is at any rate being listened to by the Government, which is important. We welcome the intervention whole-heartedly. The noble Earl gave my noble friend from the Liberal Benches an estimate for one of the items. Will there be an estimate for the cost of the whole package, because I think we should like to see it?
Earl Ferrers: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson, for his welcome too. He has, needless to say, asked me a question to which I cannot give him an answer which he would find wholly satisfactory, because it is difficult to say exactly what the amount of the corporation tax relief grant will be. It depends on the number of firms who take it up, the amount of extra employment, and the amount of extra productivity. The derating I referred to as being worth £7 million; the energy conservation measures should be worth about £2 million; and with regard to the advisory service and the manufacturing services it is really too difficult at the moment to be able to say exactly what they will cost. I am afraid that I cannot, for the reasons I have given, give the noble Lord a precise reply.

World Economy and Currency Stability
Debate resumed.
3.1 p.m.
Lord Kaldor: My Lords, many of us are grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Soames, for having brought forward this Motion. I hope he will forgive me if I make no attempt to follow his arguments in detail. Owing to the shortness of time I should like to confine my remarks to only one aspect of his Motion: namely, the international currency situation. Since the breakdown of the Bretton Woods system, two things have happened. Industrial growth among the Western countries has greatly slowed down or even turned into a decline, and there has been a greatly accelerated inflation, worldwide in scope and accompanied by a very rapid growth in non-resident bank deposits, a great deal of which were held by non-resident subsidiaries of the major banks in the world in the so-called Euro-currency markets.
There were large exchange rate fluctuations, much of it of a disequilibrating character—as, for example, the large rise in the pound relative to all other currencies up to the end of 1981 which meant that British labour costs, in terms of a common currency such as the dollar, rose by 40 to 50 per cent. in relation to our competitors'. The exchange rate movements in turn were largely governed by expectations which were unstable. They were governed by short-term capital movements rather than the requirements of the current account.
Everyone agrees that the present situation is chaotic, and the frequent changes in exchange rate relativities, whether they come about spontaneously or as a result of an agreement such as the EMS agreement last weekend, are not conducive to a recovery of the world economy. In fact, it can be shown that, in order to have an expansion of demand which is truly international in scope, fixed exchanges are needed and not floating rates.
The Bretton Woods agreement was extraordinarily successful in terms of steady growth and full employment in all the major industrial countries. In retrospect, I think that the success of that agreement was mainly due to the fact that from the early 1950s onwards there was a continued outflow of dollars mainly directed to third world countries (both through
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loans and through unilateral transfers) which in turn meant that the other industrial countries experienced a steady increase in the demand for their exports, and had on the whole favourable balances of payments, and accumulated reserves.
The system broke down when the currency reserves of the industrialised countries were swamped with dollars and there was a growing disinclination to accept any more. This led to President Nixon's dramatic step on 15th August 1971 of suspending the gold convertibility of the dollar, which had fatal consequences which were quite unexpected—even though the step itself was little more than a formality, since the dollar was only convertible in special circumstances after March 1968.
The fatal consequences were in terms of unleashing inflationary expectations throughout the world, and the consequent large fluctuations and greatly enlarged volatility of commodity prices. Now more or less everyone is agreed that the present situation is extremely unsatisfactory. I do not think I can find anyone who would deny that, or that it must be changed. There are those who wish for a simple return to the Bretton Woods system, and there are those who want a return to the pre-war gold standard; and finally there are those who feel that neither of these courses would bring a real remedy and that what is required is a new international reserve currency based on a commodity standard.
There was a time not so long ago when monetary experts appeared to be agreed that a mere limitation in the supply of inconvertible paper money would secure the same stability of prices as a currency which is directly convertible into one or more commodities at fixed rates. I think that this belief has by now been exploded, partly because it has been shown that no one country can control its own money supply in the face of inflationary trends and also because still less is it possible to limit the growth of the world money supply of which the Euro-currencies, which are not subject to any controlling authority, form an ever growing part.
My own solution would be very much the same as that of Lord Keynes, who worked out in the course of the war two plans which he himself regarded as closely related, and he considered the realisation of each to be a precondition to the success of the other. The first plan was for an international clearing union which, in greatly emasculated form, came into existence in the shape of the International Monetary Fund. The second was entirely stillborn, and the true extent of Keynes' involvement in the second plan has only become known recently with the release of secret documents under the 30-year rule and the publication of Keynes' Collected Writings.
The second organisation which Keynes advocated he called International Commodity Control. It argued in favour of the establishment of buffer stocks for each of the major commodities moving in international trade and financed by the issue of "bancor"—which was the name he gave to the new international currency, and which I suppose was conceived as something similar to what we now call SDRs. He envisaged "bancor" as an international reserve currency to be created by this new clearing union.

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Keynes thought that the establishment of such buffer stocks would have enormous advantages for stabilising prices generally, since stable food and raw material prices are a precondition for the stability of the prices of all other goods and services. He also thought that in this way the growth in production of industrial materials and foodstuffs would be greatly stepped up (because with stable prices the producers' risks would be so much smaller) which in turn would make it possible to accelerate very considerably the industrialisation of the underdeveloped parts of the world.
Keynes' proposal met with a great deal of opposition from some unexpected quarters, chiefly the Bank of England, which felt at the time that Keynes' proposals were,
"far too laissez faire inasmuch as they still allow a place for private trading",
whereas the Bank of England were then convinced (no doubt it was a temporary aberration under the stress of the war) that:
"Nothing but output restrictions, enforced by export and import quotas, could solve the problem of commodity surpluses".
They failed to take into account the fact that because, on a worldwide scale, idle manpower exists in super-abundance—whereas capital accumulation is a consequence of the growth of production as much as a cause of it—it is the rate of growth in the availabilities of primary products which, over longer periods, governs the rate of economic growth of world economy.
4.11 p.m.
Lord Roberthall: My Lords, the House will be grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Soames, for giving us the opportunity to debate this important subject. He has spoken about it a number of times in your Lordships' House and we on the Alliance Benches agree with almost everything he said today. We wish him well and we hope that he will continue to say it, although I am afraid that so far he has not received much change from his noble friends, or at any rate from his Front Bench.
In the debate a fortnight ago my noble Leader, Lord Diamond, summed up the criticism of the internal policy of he Government when he said they were turning their back on the whole experience—he meant particularly experience of demand management—of the post-war period. Time did not allow him to go into the international situation, but I shall comment on what I believe strongly in that context, which is that exactly the same can be said about the international economic policy of Her Majesty's Government.
The noble Lord, Lord Cockfield, is fond of telling us that world recessions are inevitable—that we always have booms and slumps—and that the present one cannot be attributed to Government policy. When, many years ago, he and I were colleagues on the Budget Committee, he displayed the most extraordinary memory; nobody could ask him anything to which he did not know the answer. Listening to him in your Lordships' House now, I feel that that ability is still there, though he appears to have a mental blockage on this subject because he seems entirely to have forgotten that since the last recession there have been no world recessions of any substance.
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Taking the trough of the great depression and the trough of the present one—which was in, say, 1982—that was a span of 50 years. Taking off, say, 10 years for the war, there were 40 years with no world recessions worth mentioning. That happened not just by accident. The genesis of it was that at the end of the world war the statesmen had all lived through the great recession and were determined that the world should not again be subjected to the misery, waste and suffering that that had entailed. They all found it hard to defend the spectacle of want and misery on the one hand, and labour and capital rotting away on the other, with no way of bringing them together.
After the war they adopted the objectives of stable exchanges, fewer barriers to trade and the seeking by all Governments of high and stable levels of employment. To that end they set up the institutions which were to co-ordinate and supervise the work of the different Governments; for example, the IMF for exchanges and the GATT for trade. Originally the Economic and Social Council was supposed to supervise the employment pledges, but it became clear that such matters could not be discussed with the Russians. By a great stroke of luck, the Marshall Plan led to the OEEC, which in turn led to the OECD, and that for many years provided the forum in which countries could discuss their general economic situations, including the problems of employment and unemployment, and they could work towards co-ordinated action.
That went on until a few years ago. The last effort of that kind was in 1977 or 1978 when there were discussions which led to the main Governments of the industrialised countries agreeing on a co-ordinated programme of expansion. Since then, it has all gone by the board. The reason was that inflation had reached heights which were frightening and it was felt that something had to be done. In 1979, when the present Government came to power, I said that although for many years I had advocated an incomes policy, it had not been successful and I thought the Government should be given a chance to try the monetarist policy which they have since adopted.
Since then we have seen a tremendous waste of resources—again, on the scale of the 1932 recession—with serious damage being done to the organisations which did so well and produced that long period of world prosperity between the end of the war and a few years ago. The price that has had to be paid for counter-inflation by strictly monetary methods, with the use of unemployment as the instrument of policy, has been very great indeed, and I have come to the view—it is the view of the Alliance—that we should be able to do better.
The noble Lord, Lord Soames, was optimistic—at least, he made a show of optimism—about the prospects for the next summit meeting at Williamsburg. I do not know if he has studied the Chancellor's Budget speech; his right honourable and learned friend was, I thought, forthright about Government economic policy and took pride in the fact that at the Versailles summit last year it was reaffirmed that the control of inflation had to be the top priority. As I understood it, he was looking forward to the same again—to reaffirming that proposition at Williamsburg—and he said that

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nothing could be more dangerous than for countries having had some success in their struggle, to relax in order to ease the position of others less successful; in other words, everybody must take their medicine.
That overlooked the fact that concerted concentration on deflationary measures inevitably produce a vicious downward spiral, a situation in which nobody can win: you produce unemployment, pressure on costs attempts to do what was so much complained of in the 1930s, you export your unemployment to somebody else, they are driven to do the same back and you get what we see now, competitive devaluation and the gradual erosion of the free trade system which made such progress, and we now see all sorts of gnawing away at free trade. Nowadays it is almost obscene to talk about "full" employment. The objective of maintaining concerted high levels of employment has gone completely.
Though we in the Alliance recognise that the control of inflation is very important, we feel strongly that other matters, too, ought to be taken into account. Here, I believe that the plea which the noble Lord, Lord Soames, made—that we should try to revivify and get moving the international institutions—holds the key to what is done. In these circumstances, we cannot get very far by ourselves. I believe that we could stand a certain amount of reflation, and I fully agree with the Alliance programme on that; but if everybody else is pulling you down, you cannot get very far yourself.
Time will not permit me to expand on that point, but I consider that the IMF should be given a lead by the major countries to see whether there cannot be a little more stability in exchanges. The main condition that has changed since Bretton Woods is that rates of inflation are different in different countries. That means that the importance which was attached to rigid exchange rates—there was a terrific uproar if it was necessary to change; I remember in 1949 that we set the world by the ears with our first devaluation—should become less in the system. The major countries should give a firm commitment to stick to the GATT and not to go in for the protection that is now taking place. There should be a concerted attempt to get the world turned round, to get it at least to move in the right direction.
Lord Cobbold: My Lords, I should like to add my voice to that of the noble Lord, Lord Soames, when he stresses that a more stable régime of currencies could be a great help in promoting better worldwide economic conditions. I have little to add to what I said in the debate on this subject a few months ago. I then stressed that today's difficulties in this field are much greater than were those in the 1950s, and earlier. This is largely due to the enormous increase in the amount of volatile funds moving around the world looking for better interest rates and prospects of exchange profits.
In the earlier period there were of course times of crisis when situations of evident over-valuation, or under-valuation, had to be dealt with. But there was not the continuous day-to-day up and down movement which nowadays adds so much to the difficulties of international business. Generally
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speaking, in those earlier days the major central banks had adequate funds to keep a reasonable measure of day-to-day stability; and there were agreements such as the Tripartite Agreement in the 1930s, culminating of course in Bretton Woods, with the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.
Obviously conditions have changed; in particular, as I have said, with the dramatic increase of volatile funds and developments such as the Euro-dollar market. Clearly, to return to Bretton Woods as such is not feasible. But I feel that some lessons could be learnt from Bretton Woods, and that there is an urgent need of some international structure, perhaps based on the International Monetary Fund, and worked up together by the Governments and central banks responsible for the major currencies of the world. To provide more stability in exchange rates, in particular on day-to-day movements, is surely a matter which should be given very high priority indeed in discussions on worldwide economic and financial policy.
4.24 p.m.
Viscount Eccles: My Lords, once again my noble friend Lord Soames has called our attention to the world economy and I am looking forward to the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Lever of Manchester—always pungent and always interesting. I want to say only a word or two about the debts which Latin America owes to the international banks. Those who know well that fascinating part of the world always warn us not to lump together the 20-odd countries in Latin America. They differ widely. They differ in their social mix, in their natural resources and in their forms of Government. However, extraordinary to say, during the last few years international finance has largely submerged those differences and made possible a single pattern of financial crisis.
Whether these economies produce oil, as do Mexico and Venezuela, or whether like Brazil they do not, their Governments, be they dictatorships or democracies, have overspent their revenues and are hugely in debt at home and abroad. Overspending is a disease as catching as the common cold. It has been encouraged by the facility with which developing countries could borrow. The banks, flush with OPEC money, were eager to lend. Nevertheless, looking around Latin America, from where I have just returned, one sees that the main responsibility for the crisis rests with the borrowing Governments and their agencies—which are the equivalent of our quangos—which have also borrowed very heavily abroad, often without telling their central banks what they were doing.
As other noble Lords have said, no doubt the world monetary and banking system could be much improved, and I should like to see a more stable system of currencies. But the monetary system is not at the root of the third world's troubles. The responsibility rests squarely with the Governments and their agencies who have so little to show for all that they have borrowed—except, of course, the accumulation of armaments. To please the military in those countries vast sums have been borrowed and are still being sought to buy arms. Those who sell these arms—in Latin America one notices France and Israel

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in the forefront of this business—make enormous profits and give enormous commissions. All the time the great bulk of the population, increasing rapidly in numbers, remains in poverty and is edged towards that kind of envy or even despair which is fertile soil for Communism. This situation in Latin America is one which the Western world cannot afford to neglect.
Now that most Latin American countries are trying to reschedule their debts—and I hope that they will all succeed—would it not be in their own interests for the creditors to make a condition that the further purchases of arms should be postponed and replaced by goods which would enable the respective economies to become more productive?
In Mexico and Venezuela, for example, the export of goods other than oil has been allowed to fall to a ludicrously low proportion of the total required to pay for their imports. In our own country we have seen what it means to a town or district dependent on a single product—it might be coal, it might be steel—if the demand for that product disappears: unemployment then flattens the whole community. Such disasters are threatening the oil producing countries which have relied so blindly on OPEC to maintain the price of oil far above the cost of production per barrel. If you take a country like Brazil—where coffee more or less replaces oil—there you see that the same overspent and over-borrowed situation has been allowed to develop.
It would be a mistake if Western leaders at Williamsburg were content to cover up the follies of these Governments. We are all partly responsible, borrowers and lenders alike. But the lesson primarily has to be learned by the Governments which have overspent and over-borrowed. Their creditors should give them examples of sound finance at home and, if they did, they might be able then to persuade the Latin Americans to devote any new money to the production of non-oil goods for home consumption and export.
I shall be told that that is the role of the IMF; and indeed it is. But, when you look at the recession in a sub-continent like Latin America, you see that a lead is required above and beyond the bankers and the money men. Your Lordships may think that such a reversal of policies is impossible in the political circumstances of Latin America. My recent visit makes me cautiously optimistic. The press and the media are remarkably free, frank, brave and well-informed on the root of the trouble; that is, the overspending of their Governments. In Venezuela, for example, the leading businessmen, academics and commentators are unanimous in giving the right advice. They are looking for help from outside to persuade their Government to balance the budget. Perhaps I might say that in many Latin American countries the most talented and best educated people do not go into politics. There are many first-class men and women who are as much against military dictatorships as they are against Communism. They need somehow to be persuaded to take a hand in governing their country.
Therefore, I am against covering up the root cause of the crisis. I am against rescheduling these debts in the back parlours of banks with the minimum possible
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publicity. We should come out into the open and admit the mistakes, which are ours as well as theirs, propose sound policies and go forward together to a world recovery. President Reagan, Chancellor Kohl and our Prime Minister could take the lead at Williamsburg and set the recovery in motion. Let them make what improvements they can in the monetary system. It is not the root of the trouble. Let the main emphasis be put where it belongs on the better management of revenues and expenditures by Governments everywhere in the world.
4.34 p.m.
Lord Oram: My Lords, I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Soames, deserves our threefold congratulations; first, for choosing a subject which has become remarkably topical in the last few days in view of the events in Brussels; secondly, for the power and lucidity of his speech; but thirdly, I think, for providing the occasion for what we can confidently expect to be an equally valuable speech by my noble friend Lord Lever. When the noble Lord, Lord Soames, wondered whether the Labour Party is likely to adopt the common sense of my noble friend, I wonder equally whether the Government are likely to adopt the common sense of the noble Lord, Lord Soames. We hope so; and no doubt we shall see later in the debate.
This debate, as a whole, is concentrating our minds on some of the most important issues of the day. They are the issues which have been analysed and highlighted over the past three years by the Brandt Commission and, indeed, by the persistent efforts of the distinguished individual members of the Brandt Commission, not least in this country by the efforts of Mr. Edward Heath. They have been urging over those three years exactly what the Motion of the noble Lord, Lord Soames, calls for; that is to say, a more active and vigorous world economy. The Brandt Commissioners have described, with clarity and vigour, the main elements of the current worldwide depression; mass unemployment and severe contraction both of production and of international trade, all of which is leading to the threat of the collapse of international financial institutions and also to serious political tensions in all parts of the world, with the consequential ruinous arms race and its threat to peace.
In facing these problems, the Brandt Commission has stressed one aspect which seems to me both central and crucial. It is an aspect which was mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Soames, but I think that it perhaps deserves some emphasis. I have in mind mutuality of interests and the commonality of problems shared by the developed and the developing world. It is no longer possible, as, perhaps, it was as short a period ago as 10 years, to speak of the problems of the third world as something distinct and separate from those of the affluent nations. The message of Brandt, and, indeed, the title of its second report, is that the crisis is a common crisis. I echo the words of the noble Lord, Lord Soames, that because we are all in this together the solution of the crisis depends upon co-ordinated action on a truly international scale.
The essence of the solution to the crisis is that we must change direction. The noble Viscount, Lord Eccles, was urging the governments of the South

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American continent to change direction. I hope that he would agree with me that governments on other continents also need to change direction. What we have had, and what to a large extent has caused our problems, has been an excessive reliance on monetarism, excessively high interest rates, increasing protectionism and competitive devaluations of exchange rates. All these things not ony exacerbate the economic situation of developed nations but, at the same time, create even worse troubles for the third world; because world depression leads to low demand and low prices for the commodities which third-world countries seek to sell. They therefore have to borrow.
I agree with the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles, that sometimes the money that they borrow is ill-spent; but, basically, they are in a position of having to borrow, and then high interest rates increase the repayment burden of the money which they have been forced to borrow. Then, reductions in aid (which we have unfortunately seen) retard the economic growth of the developing countries. Not only does this perpetuate the poverty in the third world; it has a backlash effect on rich countries. Defaults on loan repayments from the third world may lead to a knock-on effect, to the collapse of our own banks; and the loss of markets in underdeveloped countries can well cause our own factories to close.
In my view, the financial proposals of the second Brandt Commission Report are the only way in which the world can check this process of mutual economic destruction. Those proposals are set out in the document—Common Crisis—on pages 13, 14 and 15, and I shall not itemise them. But, above all, what they propose is a considerable increase in the lending capacity of the IMF and the World Bank through its International Development Association. Of course, the commission makes many other proposals in the fields of trade, food and energy, but it is the financial proposals which are particularly vital, it seems to me, and which are relevant to today's debate.
Let me conclude with a warning about the grave danger of self-deception and self-justification by governments of the policies they are pursuing. Eighteen months ago, at Cancun, we had a conference which had much publicity, many set-piece speeches, but unfortunately very few results. We now face the danger that the Government will pretend to be doing better in these matters than is justified by the record. They have gone on record as welcoming the Brandt Commission report. Indeed, I noticed that Mr. Rifkind of the Foreign Office, in another place, was listing those recommendations of the Brandt report, which the Government have already accepted. No doubt it was an admirable list.
But when I read those words my mind went back to a quotation, which had struck me forcefully, on page 3 of Willy Brandt's introduction to his second report. He was referring to the words of Harry Dexter White, whom he described as the American counterpart of Lord Keynes, at Bretton Woods. These were Harry Dexter White's words which Willy Brandt quoted:
"Where modern diplomacy calls for swift and bold action, we engage in long drawn-out cautious negotiation; where we should talk in terms of billions of dollars, we think in terms of millions; …
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where we should be dealing with all -embracing economic, political and social probems, we discuss minor trade objectives, or small national advantages;".
Maybe that is what we were doing at Brussels at the week-end. Those words of Harry Dexter White of some 40 years ago are, I suggest, as apt today as they were on that occasion.
The noble Lord, Lord Soames, referred several times to the importance of the forthcoming Williamsburg economic conference which is due in a few months. It will not be a new Bretton Woods—I wish it were capable of being that. But even at Williamsburg it would be heartening to think that some world statesman would emerge able to speak and to act as big as the world's critical situation demands. I hope that that will emerge. My hopes are not very strong, but I do commend once more the noble Lord, Lord Soames, for having brought before your Lordships a real opportunity for us at least to face the reality of the world situation.
4.44 p.m.
Lord Ezra: My Lords, I should like to join with those who have paid tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Soames, for so eloquently introducing this most important Motion. As has just been said, he drew particular attention, echoed by other noble Lords who have spoken, to the importance of the forthcoming Williamsburg conference. There seems to be no doubt about that sentiment in the House.
However, I must say that I was disturbed to read in this morning's press—I am quoting from the Financial Times—that in the communiqué issued by the European Council Meeting in Brussels the other day:
"among the decisions of the council was an instruction to the Commission to prepare positions for the Williamsburg economic conference which will permit the Community to make a substantial contribution to efforts to ensure the recovery of the international economy".
That is fine, but this conference is to take place in Williamsburg in two months' time. If it is only now that the member countries of the European Community have instructed the Commission to prepare positions, when are the member countries themselves to consider those positions? I also note in the communiqué that the next time the European Council will be meeting will be in the month of June—that is, after the Williamsburg conference. I think that we are entitled to ask the noble Lord, Lord Cockfield, when he speaks later in this debate, how seriously the preparations for this conference are being conducted and what steps will be taken, not only in individual Community countries but in the Community countries together, to formulate some positive proposals which can be brought forward to make this conference, to which everyone attaches such importance, a success.
It is quite clear that this conference, the summit at Williamsburg, should be concerning itself with two basic issues; the first being how we can stimulate and sustain as widespread a degree of growth throughout the world as possible, without running into all the difficulties of inflation from which we have just emerged. The second is how instruments and conditions within which such growth can most effectively develop can be created.

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On the first point, it seems to me—again I am echoing the words of other noble Lords—have mentioned—that the best contribution the developed countries can make to the resumption of growth is to ensure that there is a degree of practical sustained growth in their own countries, because by so doing not only will they stimulate the economic activity in their own countries but their participation in world trade will be substantially increased. It is the diminution in the level of world trade, particularly as it bears on the commodities produced by the third world, which has created part of the crisis through which we are going internationally.
The noble Lord, Lord Soames, spoke about interdependence between countries, and that is perfectly true. But I believe there is another aspect of interdependence when one considers the resumption of growth: that is, interdependence between public and private investment. I am very concerned about the way in which public investment has diminished in this country below the levels set for it in Government objectives. There is a very close interdependence between public and private investment. Public investment sparks off an enormous amount of private investment in the construction and engineering sectors. The time to be getting our infrastructure right is now, when the resources are available, and not waiting for the time when, in further moves towards growth, those resources are required and inevitably used for other purposes.
I think that as part of our contribution to Williamsburg we should be preparing the ways in which we can tell the other countries how we are trying to stimulate effectively further growth in our own country. When it comes to the conditions under which this growth can proceed, then it is quite clear that there are three basic issues. There is the risk of a return to protectionism; there is the instability of the currencies and there is the problem of indebtedness. One hopes that at Williamsburg these three problems will be very seriously considered.
Many noble Lords have referred to the achievements that arose from the institutions and agreements which were set up in the aftermath of the Second World War. Those institutions and that foresight which led to those agreements meant that we all benefited from something like two decades of sustained and continued growth. And even though conditions today may be different, at least it should be fair to ask whether we should try to learn a little more from what was achieved then, rather than simply say that what was done in those days is no longer valid. Indeed, certain suggestions were made as to ways in which the experience of that halcyon period could be applied to trying to find ways in which the far more violent fluctuations of currency could be diminished; ways in which we could restore the attitude towards trade and diminish the need for protectionism. Of course, protectionism itself can be bred from weaknesses in the economy, so if we correct those weaknesses the pressure towards protectionism diminishes.
Then we have the problem of indebtedness, and there are divided views on this subject. There is the concern, on the one hand, that if the assistance
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provided for these countries is too easy, they will never have the incentive to get their own economies in order. On the other hand,there is the view that they face a very special crisis and need to be helped over it. I am quite sure that the answer lies between those two views. So here is a very firm and definite agenda for the Williamsburg conference. I hope very much that there will be serious preparation for it between the participants and those various countries whom they represent.
4.52 p.m.
Lord Taylor of Gryfe: My Lords, at the time of the last debate, which was on 15th December, the international banking crisis was at its height. Since then there has been the rescheduling of the debts of Mexico and Brazil; Poland's position has been temporarily relieved; there are hopeful signs of increased IMF quotas and the BIS has relieved the pressure by bridging loans. The proposed clearing house for information on the viability of borrowers in Washington has now been established, and even the new Governor of the Bank of England has said, with more optimism than appears justified, that
"we have overcome the crisis—if there ever was one".
I do not believe that the crisis has simply vanished, although I applaud all the steps that have been taken by the international banking community to deal with these matters.
There remain three inter-related problems: first, the third world debts, which are still standing at 600 billion dollars; secondly, the continued contraction of world trade and, thirdly, the instability which arises from the fluctuation of exchange rates. These three problems belong together and I am not certain that, at the moment, we have either developed the will or created the strength in our international institutions to solve them. As each individual nation fights for its own advantage, as has been said by the noble Lord, Lord Soames, whether in steel or in agriculture, we neglect the most important fact in the world today: that we are all bound together in an international trading network and we are dependent on one another.
First, let me say a word about the LDCs' debt of 600 billion dollars. They have been caught in an impossible squeeze with the falling prices of primary products. Last year they fell on average by 14 per cent., whereas their borrowings have been related to the London inter-bank rate and their debt service ratio has gone up from 15 per cent. in 1977 to 30 per cent. last year. While the fall in the price of oil will help a little, except in the case of Nigeria, and a moderate growth in the economies of the Western world will generate some demand for raw materials, I believe that the problem of the LDC debts is a crucial one. While the present situation exists, the commercial banks will be reluctant to take on their books any further borrowings, particularly medium-term or long-term borrowings on which the LDCs depend for reconstruction. Seventy per cent. of the total debts of 600 billion dollars, to which I have referred, are on the books of the commercial banks.
I have been interested to read recently a number of papers which have been considered in the financial community, with regard to relieving the LDCs of some of that debt—at least temporarily. My colleague at

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Morgan Grenfell, Mr. Bill Mackworth-Young, has suggested that the burden of problem bank assets should be moved from the commercial banking system to the international capital markets. This will be done by a new agency supported by the IMF. Or the central banks should purchase these loans at face value and issue, in exchange, non-interest bearing bonds. These could be discounted at central banks, if serious liquidity problems arose. In addition, these central bank-backed bonds could be converted into a second type of paper, which would carry a low interest coupon and would be tradeable on the secondary markets.
Another less complicated scheme has been proposed by the general manager of Barclays Bank International, which would be for the central banks to purchase part of these loans at discount, as a temporary relief measure. In turn, the banks must agree to lend the equivalent amount of new money—perhaps, as export credits—but, at least, to lend it on to third world countries. This would set in motion again the lending process, which has dried up. If the discounted loan was not honoured ultimately, it would revert to the lending bank so that the lending bank would not be totally relieved of its responsibility.
Another scheme that is suggested, and which has some attractions, is that there might be an insurance premium paid by the banks to some central authority to cover these debts. This would have the attraction for the commercial banks that they would be able to charge the insurance premium against current costs and tax liability, whereas, so far, the Inland Revenue has not yet agreed to accept the writing-down of debts as a permissible item. Some of these schemes ought to be examined very seriously.
I am not trying in any way to justify some of the lending which took place in the 'seventies, when LDCs were borowing at the rate of 20 per cent. per annum whereas their economic growth was at the rate of 4½ or 5 per cent. per annum. They were in an impossible position. It was irresponsible borrowing. Some of these countries—for example, Mexico—borrowed in order to develop their petroleum resources, when equity participation by some outside investors might have given a long-term stability of capital which is necessary to develop long-term projects. All I am suggesting is that these schemes and these devices might provide some immediate help for the LDCs, and make a positive contribution to the second problem, which is the revival of world trade.
In this connection, I hope that many noble Lords read the 10-page survey of the situation, written by Helmut Schmidt in the Economist of 26th February. What a pity there is no House of Lords in Germany, so that Helmut Schmidt could continue to play an active role in European affairs. I hope that there will be a forum for that man. And what a pity that the British Labour Party, which flirts with protectionism, import controls, further devaluation and withdrawal from Europe—a commitment that was emphasised on the radio this morning by its official spokesman—does not listen to the wisdom of that great social democrat, Helmut Schmidt. He calls for a stable exchange rate. He says that:
"The quality of an international monetary system can be measured by the criteria of reliable calculable exchange rates, free
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capital flows, stable prices and steady growth in world trade and production. Judged by these criteria, the general unregulated floating since March 1973 has not done well.".
Helmut Schmidt goes on to describe protectionism as "an escape into suicide". He sees the attractions of nations developing protectionist policies. Regions like to protect themselves; it is popular to stick up for yourself, and so on. But it bears no relation to the reality of the world in which we live. Our health and welfare are dependent upon prosperity.
While we are perhaps breathing just a little easier, I believe we should heed the warnings of Helmut Schmidt. I am not sure whether we need new, elaborate international institutions. The experience of the past few months has shown that Governments, central banks and commercial banks can work together. We must keep up the momentum. We must be alert to immediate dangers and be ready with machinery for quick response in the event of any further deterioration of the situation. This involves strengthening the will and the power of existing international organisations like the International Monetary Fund and the International Development Authority.
The suggestion of the Group of Thirty that the IMF should supplement its resources by tapping private markets should certainly be pursued. This might be a device whereby the IMF could increase its power. Let me suggest an agenda for Williamsburg. First, moderating the wide variation between expansion and contraction in the offshore markets for currencies, loans and securities; second, minimising disruptive fluctuations in international capital movements among leading countries; and thirdly, focusing these efforts on limiting erratic or sustained distortions in exchange rates among key currencies, while using co-ordinated central bank intervention in the foreign exchange markets to check disorderly conditions.
5.2 p.m.
Lord Boothby: My Lords, I rise to speak for only one reason. I was talking last week to a group of noble Lords who were kind enough to say that my worst enemy could never accuse me of being a bore. Then, after a moment's pause, one of them said, "Except on one subject". To my dismay they then agreed unanimously that on the subject of monetary policy I was a crashing bore. I had only one defender, my noble friend Lord Shinwell. All the rest said, "No, it is no good. Whenever you get up to speak about monetary policy or gold, we all go back to sleep". I will tell your Lordships why. Nobody knows it better than the noble Lord, Lord Lever of Manchester. I have been talking in Parliament continously on this subject for 60 years. He, poor devil!, has heard a great many of those speeches in both Houses of Parliament—
Lord Lever of Manchester: I would not have missed them.
Lord Boothby:—and he agreed with many of them. Unfortunately, the Treasury and the Bank of England did not agree with any of them. But the fact remains that over all those years I was steadily right, and the Treasury and the Bank of England were as steadily

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wrong. I have now decided that if I go on talking here about the subject I shall only repeat myself. Therefore I had better shut up. However, the Motion of the noble Lord, Lord Soames, has given me the opportunity, which I relish, of boring your Lordships on it for the last time. I am looking forward to it very much. I can promise your Lordships only one thing: that it will be a brief period of boredom, with only a few yawns, because there are only three topics I want to touch on; and they will not take more than a few minutes.
The first point to which I must draw your Lordships' attention is the Genoa Conference of 1922. It deserves the closest study, There had been nothing comparable to it since the Congress of Vienna. As Count Kessler wrote at the time, it was an oecumenical council, comparable to those which the mediaeval church used to summon for the salvation of Christendom; and, as in the Middle Ages, a terror overhung the gathering that failure might portend catastrophe to European civilisation. My Lords, it did.
The Genoa Conference was dominated by two most remarkable men—Mr. Lloyd George and Rathenau, the German Foreign Minister. Rathenau has some claim to be regarded as the greatest industrialist-financier that this century has produced. We know something about Lloyd George. He was a genius, the only real political genius of his time. He was then at the zenith of his powers. He talked to me as a boy and told me of his ambitions. They included revision of the Treaty of Versailles and the abolition of reparations and the inter-allied debts. But Lloyd George was too much for the very pedestrian British politicians who then represented the very pedestrian British people of that time. They took the view—and said—that Lloyd George was a dynamic force, and therefore dangerous; so they threw him out. The Germans went one better. They assassinated Rathenau. All this happened within weeks of the Genoa Conference, which thereupon crashed, together with all its resolutions.
Among those resolutions was the currency resolution drafted by Sir Basil Blackett and Sir Ralph Hawtrey, both now dead. Thanks to Sir Ralph Hawtrey, I have in my possession the original draft of the currency resolutions. It was described by Sir Laming Worthington-Evans, who was at the conference, as "a financial Code, worthy to rank with the legal Code of Justinian". Briefly, the Genoa currency resolutions recommended a gold exchange standard, with the price of gold fixed from time to time, with a view to increasing production and trade all over the world; and with exchange rates devised to fluctuate as little as possible, but not altogether inflexible. There is a mass of other fascinating material in the Genoa Resolution, a copy of which I suppose must reside in some musty corner of the Treasury. When I was Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, they put Sir Ralph Hawtrey in a room at the top of the Treasury and locked the door. They treated him almost as though he were a lunatic. So all that ended and foundered. A great chance of permanent world recovery was missed, and missed for ever.
In what I must say was an unusually foolish reply to a question of mine last week, the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, said how silly it was to go back 40 years to
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see what happened then when one was framing policies for today. How wrong the noble Lord was. I remember Winston Churchill, whose experience was somewhat greater than that of the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, saying to me that the purpose of examining the past, and even recriminating about it, is to ensure better action in the present. Churchill went on to say that the first thing he did as Chancellor of the Exchequer was to put us back on the gold standard at the pre-war parity of exchange, which we could not possibly sustain without the most violent deflation. This continued for about 10 years and resulted in tremendous unemployment and much misery in the coalfields and in all the industrial areas of this country. That was entirely a Treasury and a Bank of England decision.
When I said to Grigg, who was my boss at the Treasury when I was the Private Parliamentary Secretary to Winston Churchill, what a mistake this was, and how I knew that Churchill did not in his heart like doing this, Grigg replied that there was only one man ever who made the Treasury do what it did not want to do and that was Lloyd George; and that there would never be another ever; and, of course, it has turned out exactly that way.
I opposed in another place the return to the gold standard at the pre-war parity of exchange. Then, I could find only the support of Sir Frederic Wise, Sir Frank Nelson, Sir Robert Horne, Sir Alfred Mond (as he then was), Lord Beaverbrook, and, in the City of London, Mr. McKenna, chairman of the Midland Bank—who said that it would be hell but did not do a thing. The only senior figure who did anything, and who resigned from the Bank of England, was a Mr. Vincent Vickers. So the Treasury and the Bank of England had it all their own way, and they had it all their own way for years and years. Long after he left the Exchequer, Winston Churchill wrote me a letter in which he said,
"I have now come around to your view that gold was being used as a vile trap to destroy us",
which was fairly strong language for the Chancellor of the Exchequer who took us back to the gold standard.
Then there came a flash of hope. President Roosevelt raised the price of gold. That was followed by the Marshall Plan. The Marshall Plan saved Europe from economic collapse at a very difficult moment. How did the Americans, do it? How did they finance it? They financed it out of gold bullion at Fort Knox, which was then standing at a very reasonable price. That is how it was financed. It cost nobody anything. It was financed out of liquid reserves, which the world so tragically lacks today. We have no such reserves. Why? Because we were taken back to despair, not by the British Treasury and the Bank of England, but by the Federal Reserve Board and the US Treasury, who appeared to me—and have always appeared to me—to dominate American politics and to act entirely on their own. No doubt they brought down President Carter, and now they look likely to bring down President Reagan. Why? Because they have steadily reduced the value of their gold reserves until they finally demonetised gold altogether and the dollar—and with it, every currency in the world. There is no currency today that is intrinsically worth anything except the paper that it is printed on. Until

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you correct that situation somehow, you will never get sustained recovery in international trade; of that I am certain.
We suffer now more from the lack of liquid resources than aything else. That is why we find difficulty even in coming to the assistance of the starving people of Ethiopia. We simply do not have the liquid reserves. We did have them; we had them in Fort Knox, with gold at a reasonable price. I believe—and I think I have the support of the noble Lord, Lord Soames, and of the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles, in this—that there should be another Genoa Conference; not just a technical IMF Conference but a general international conference. They have the instruments in the IMF and in the central banks, who do not collaborate as they should at present, but who could, under the auspices of the IMF, be made to collaborate.
Unless we are to have a viable international monetary system, and until we do, there will not be sustained economic recovery in this country or anywhere else. The time has come, as Mr. Gordon Tether said in an admirable article, in The Times, to stop treating gold as a relic, and enable it once again to play a valuable part in the urgently needed reconstruction of the international monetary edifice. The world believes in gold and in nothing else—so that is what I plead for and pray for. And this is the last chance.
5.19 p.m.
Lord Kennet: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Soames, has been repeatedly and rightly thanked for choosing this Motion at exactly the right time, with reference to the timing of the Williamsburg Conference. I should like specifically to endorse his idea about how to construct the agenda for that conference; the idea of having papers saying what each member of the conference wants the other members to do seems to me to be an ingenious idea, which I hope will turn out to be productive if it is used.
I shall talk entirely about the IMF, with full provisos about my overwhelming ignorance of the matter. As I go along, I ask your Lordships to reflect upon the extent to which the commercial banks are influenced by—I will not say tied to—the kind of policy and decisions which come out of the IMF through the central banks of the member countries. We can only note with interest and perhaps alarm the increasing unwillingness of the commercial banks to do what the central banks think they ought to do in the matter of loans to relieve third world debt.
We have a whole lot of new phenomena that we have not yet caught up with. One of them in this country is Treasury guarantees, of, for instance, the South Africa standby. This, we have ascertained in this House, is something unknown until recently, that IMF loans and standby should be specifically and individually guaranteed by the people of the individual countries through their Treasuries. We have also the political facts, and I shall talk a lot about politics. Within the last year or two it has just so turned out that Kenya and Tanzania have been refused IMF loans, and South Africa and El Salvador have been accorded IMF loans. We have to form a realistic impression of
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the politics which do prevail in the IMF. These loans have, of course, produced set-piece debates in the Parliaments of many countries and round the table of the IMF itself.
I want to talk specially about the three big countries in South America, leaving aside Mexico for the moment: Brazil, Chile and Argentina. Our old friend Argentina is perhaps the most instructive country for the whole political aspect of IMF operations. They have been bailed out. In recent weeks and months the Argentinians' own inquiry into the Falkland War—their Franks Inquiry, as it were—have described the people in the former military Government, the Government officials who handled the IMF loan and who handled credits in general, as "crooks in white gloves". During the last year or two Argentina has openly proclaimed that it will spend its reserves on arms imports. During 1981 Argentina emerged as I think the only country which in recent years has doubled its arms purchase bill, thereby shooting ahead of the field. And, of course, Argentina, which has a large nuclear reprocessing plant not under international safeguards, is the only country in Latin America to have rejected not only the Treaty of Tlatelalco, which makes South America a non-nuclear zone, but also the Test Ban Treaty and the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty. Nevertheless, they are accorded IMF facilities, and the only comment the IMF has had to make on the nuclear programme of Argentina is that, being in the public sector, it is a bad thing and it ought to be in the private sector. I think one must make what judgment one best can of such values in their practical application.
My noble friend Lord Taylor has reminded us that the third world debt is at present 600 billion dollars, and I think we should also remember that the third world is responsible for 80 per cent. of world arms imports. Here I want to follow rather closely in Lord Eccles' footsteps. That is one reason to think that the politicisation of the IMF might now be due. Another reason is the sheer size of the problem, and the way it may be described, not implausibly, as the "debt bomb". The "debt bomb" is a phrase used by Mr. Maurice Bishop the Prime Minister of Grenada. I see that Lord Pitt is in his place and hope that perhaps time will see Mr. Bishop so converted that he fetches up in this House as well. Mr. Bishop speaks of using the debt bomb. What he means by this is that the debtor countries of the third world should get together and organise a simultaneous default, on what they hope will be their own terms, and just see what happens. His motivation, of course, is not disreputable. It is to force the pace of that redistribution of wealth between the North and South of the world which we all know is necessary if the human race is to survive in order. The extreme formulation has, of course, been rejected by the Non-Allied Conference in New Delhi; he did not get that phrase into the Declaration. But they did adopt something not too far from this general view of the future when they agreed that there should be collective debt negotiations, collective between the third world debtor countries. That is one side of it.
The other side is the manifest thinning of the backing, in the developed world, for these loans by the changing of the rules regarding the amount you have

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to have to back a loan, and also the thinning of the backing required from the debtor countries, and by the revaluation of that which you have to have to back a loan, in many ways which time prevents me going into. I do not want to pitch it too strongly, but I believe that it may be time for the IMF to answer those calls which are heard round the world, and also from certain quarters in Washington, including Mr. Schulz, to go away from the improvisation which has prevailed in recent years and to adopt something which might be called regulatory direction; that is to say, that the recipient countries should be directed in a more qualitative manner what to do about their economies and not so much in a simply neutral quantitative manner.
On the point of restructuring, which I suppose is generally now taken to be a code word for running the IMF and the World Bank and the IBLD together into a sort of super World Central Bank, there is no point, in my amateur opinion, in doing this unless the general political thrust of the lending is at the same time changed. If we are able to change the thrust of the lending it may not he necessary to restructure the machinery; at any rate, it would be pointless to do it without. What I am suggesting is an increase in conditionality or a new interpretation of the word "conditionality". This increase would not be ruled out by the 1979 IMF guidelines on conditionality, where it seems to a plain man's reading that there are plenty of ifs and buts and many hedges; but Article 4 does state in so many words that, in helping members to devise programmes to help the debtors to adjust, the fund will pay due regard to the domestic, social and political objectives of debtor countries. If that is not enough to cover the arms race, I do not know what is. It is a question of judgment by the member countries of the IMF whether that should be used to achieve a desirable effect in world affairs.
I suggest it should be considered by IMF member Governments whether or not this directive, or other documents, could be used to seek to forward a regional arms control agreement in South America, where you have three very large, not extremely poor, but dreadfully indebted countries who are engaging in an accelerating arms race against each other, the fall-out of which has already singed our beard in a way we are not going to forget very soon. If that were so, it would be no more than a widening of the purposes of existing international arrangements, which is always an intelligent thing to do if it can be done. I think in general the moral is that we should not be any longer so terrified of political lending, since, in my submission, a good deal of the lending that goes on now is highly political, not so much by deliberate intention as by default. I hope that our own Government and other similar Governments may use the all too short time before the Williamsburg meeting to see whether such a plan might not be devised, not for immediate adoption—it is going to take quite a number of years to switch in this direction—but, at any rate, it is not too late to begin, if that is the right direction, as I believe it is.
5.29 p.m.
Lord Lever of Manchester: My Lords, even in his absence I must put it on record how deeply grateful the
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whole House is to the noble Lord, Lord Soames, for his thoughtful, constructive speech—I am very glad to record that he is back in his place, in case my previous comment amounted to unintentional libel. The noble Lord's thoughtful, constructive and most stimulating Motion and the speech in support of it seemed to me to put the House very deeply in his debt. It has brought out so many contributions from other Members of the House I hope that no one will mind if I do not manage to include a comment on each one, as I kept finding myself in agreement with most of what was said. I hope that when the noble Lord, Lord Cockfield, replies he will find himself in agreement with the almost overwhelmingly benign and intelligent purposes of the House.
I was very touched by the noble Lord, Lord Boothby, throwing me back into my youth in the House of Commons. I used to hear with great stimulation and satisfaction his courageous and common sense purposes on all these financial matters. At the heart of them he was urging us to apply our minds to the techniques of using monetary issues to relate to the fullest deployment of our wealth-creating resources, and to make, thereby, our monetary mechanisms the servant of our legitimate creative purposes. I am glad to see that he is still of the same mind. Although I do not necessarily agree with him on every single issue, I have agreed with a great many over the years and have always valued his contributions.
I will say just one thing to the noble Lord, Lord Soames, but certainly not with any intention of offending him. He obviously regards me as more than an intermittent and temporary fount of party orthodoxy because of my presence on this Front Bench. Even in that brief reign let me trespass on the preserves of the Bishops' Bench by giving, as it were, a sacerdotal blessing to his purposes and his position. I cannot think of any single issue that he raised this afternoon with which I was not in the fullest agreement. I do not see why it cannot be a consensus in this House that we are all determined that these problems should be faced rather more intelligently than they have been in the past.
There are three central issues in the disturbed world money situation which threaten our recovery. They are three areas of great uncertainty and, I am sorry to say, three areas where for at least the last decade there has been continuous intellectual incoherence displayed by every one of the major Governments, perhaps including those in which I bore some minor share of collective responsibility.
These three areas are: the management of the exchange rates—that is, the parity relationships of one currency to another—the financing of deficits leading to and related to the banking crisis which has been discussed in this House before; and, finally, we must ask whether our leaders of the world will manage to plumb the same depths of inept incompetence in their responses to the collapse of OPEC that they displayed upon its rise, and bring economic miseries upon the world and maximise the difficulties in the world instead of responding adequately.
At the root of this decade of incoherence in these three areas—deficit financing, parity management and response to the oil cartel— is what the noble Lord, Lord Soames, rightly pointed out was a lack of the

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concepts of co-operation necessary for our prosperous interdependence to continue, which it has not. A great deal of that breakdown of co-operative internationalism was glossed over as a sort of Adam Smith view that if everyone looked after himself individually and every country looked after itself individually we would all prosper irresistibly. One gets the impression from some of these didactic spokesmen on behalf of the late Adam Smith that they read him, but carelessly. It is not very likely that if Adam Smith were alive today he would be opposed to traffic controls. He might possibly accept the traffic lights which have recently aroused the ire of the noble Lord, Lord Paget of Northampton, at Hyde Park Corner, but I think that in general he would be in favour of traffic controls and not snarled traffic, in spite of his sturdy belief in the value of individual effort in a market system.
Therefore, the central lesson that I believe we should get from the very wise and instructive Motion today is that if we want to tackle any of these great areas we must tackle them co-operatively. But it is not enough to have a sort of vague feeling of benign agreement. We must institutionalise that co-operation because that was a distinctive factor of post-war prosperity. It was not just some consensual rhetoric that was placed into the world. It was serious institutions like Bretton Woods, GATT and various other institutions which institutionalised the purposes of co-operation and made them durable, at least for a quarter of a century of unique wealth creation.
On the parity question little needs to be added to the many wise comments that have been made. We have to co-operate if we are to have an effective and stabilised parity policy. My brief statement on that is this. As a first step, at any rate, the leaders of the world should agree co-operatively and collectively that they will not permit the ludicrous and damaging grosser distortions of parity relationships that over and over again we have witnessed in the past few years. We all know the Government's position, their theory and practice. Their theory is very simple. If only one has a sound, wise Government that take wise actions, an obedient people who co-operate, and preferably an Opposition that applauds the wisdom of their actions, then the parity is residual; that is, one can leave it to look after itself and it will come to the right price in the market.
I must say that that theory has everything to commend it except that it bears not the smallest relationship to the facts of life of the past 20 years. Apart from that, it is almost irresistible. It is repeated with monotonous complacency by spokesmen on behalf of the Government, including, if he will not mind my saying so, the noble Lord, Lord Cockfield. It is all very well relying on this invisible hand—but it does not work. It produces monstrous and damaging results not only to ourselves but to others. We should have learned by now that one country's invisible hand seeking to correct its own difficulties may land a punch on the nose of another country. That has been notable in recent events.
Of course, the Government deny having a policy, but in fact they do have a policy as is seen from time to time: namely, they intervene when they get
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panicked and they find that their intervention is ineffective. One can hardly expect the Government to say, "Yes, we have a policy but only bring it out now and again when we are in a panic, and it is not very effective when we do bring it out". Obviously the alternative statement that they have no policy—not an impressive statement—is to be preferred.
But no Government in the world can seriously say that they are indifferent to the yo-yo nature of their currency's parity in the modern world. It is an absurdity. Our standard of life depends on it. Our trading relationships depend on it. Our import and export competitiveness depends on it. The value of our savings depends on it, as does even the dynamic of wage and price rises generally and its effect on society. It is an absurdity, and the Government should stop saying that they are indifferent to the parity. They have a strange view and I cannot quite make out what is their intellectual position—if I can dignify it with that polysyllable. Do they say that parities are wrong and that they can do nothing about it, or that the parities are right because the market says so? I do wish that they would tell us.
If they think that it was wrong but inevitable, then there are people who do not think that it is inevitable. It is inevitable if you do not have international co-operation, but you do not have to have your pound rocket up to $2·42 and then find it crashing down to under $1·50 while you tremble. Nobody knows where it is going to go now, by the way: up or down. I do not want to make any predictions, because they might not be particularly optimistic ones. But it is not good enough for the Government to say, "It is inevitable; there is nothing we can do about it". It is even more offensive for them to say that it is right, because the market said that it was right. That really has to be ended. We have to get a collective attempt by the leading Governments at Williamsburg to agree to intervene to prevent this.
I proposed this over a year ago in the House. I may say that, whatever differences of opinion the noble Lord, Lord Cockfield, and I have, he may rest assured that he enjoys my personal respect in the highest degree, whatever views any other persons may hold. I have every reason for saying that. The noble Lord said then that I was an incorrigible optimist because he had a cast iron opposition to this co-operation—America. He said they had declared as a sacred precept that they were not going to agree except in the gravest emergency. He said that I was an incorrigible optimist in believing that they would change their mind. I told him that they would, and they have. We have had the plainest statement from George Schultz, who is leading the world in this direction, and from Donald Regan at the Treasury. There were some noises off from Beryl Sprinkel in the background which give no cause for satisfaction. But he is not the power. You will find at this conference that America, Japan and Germany will all be speaking in the sense that was urged by the noble Lord, Lord Soames, and which I am urging today. I do hope that the noble Lord, Lord Cockfield, can give us some assurance that Britain will have a voice in sympathy and will not drag its heels.
I want to say a quick word on a very dangerous aspect of the world situation—the banking position.

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As most people know, what happened is that the formation of the OPEC cartel at the end of 1973 imposed massive sudden burdens, through the import of oil at the new price, on the poorest countries of the world. The Governments of the world should have sat down and answered the following simple questions: "Do we want to help these poor people to go on buying this oil? Do we want to help them with some investment in their economy, and, if so, how much as an aggregate? And, if we take that aggregate, who is to get it? How much from the aggregate and on what terms?" But this kind of simple, common sense outline strategy is something that our world leaders dislike. While they were pondering what might be done on behalf of the poorer countries, the banks stepped in and recycled the OPEC money. Most Members of this House will know what happened there.
There has, unfortunately, been an abdication by government, because, although everything seemed to be going merrily along from the end of 1973 until a year or two ago, this ramshackle system was defective in many important respects. First of all, only governments—and here I heartily agree with the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles—and nobody but governments, can organise the channelling into the right direction and the inhibiting when it tends to go in the wrong direction of these vast sums of lending. That is not neo-imperialism. That is acting in the interests of those countries to ensure that the purpose for which we are encouraging this transfer of resources—namely, the strengthening of these countries—is achieved. It is horrendous and staggering that so much of the money that was provided in these eight years—something like $650 billion to $750 billion—has gone in armaments, corruption and financing the megalomania of corrupt Ministers.
The sad thing is that in these countries, and in the advanced countries, there is always a lobby for lunacy. There is never a lobby for a sanity. None of the sane proposals are brought into discussion. If somebody wants to have an extra 10 fighter aircraft, there is a lobby in the supplying country and there is a lobby in the corrupt department of war where the Minister and all his acolytes are going to have their cut. The blame for this is squarely on the governments. The effects of this is that we have geared our economies and their economies to an uncontrolled flow of funds, whereby our exports are dependent on their demand, and their ability to keep their fragile political and financial situation going is dependent on this flow of funds. It has all come to a stop.
We are now in danger that our banking system is exposed, world trade is already damaged by the shrinking importations from those countries and political destablisation is proceeding apace there. The first thing that we have to do is to protect our banking system. I have not time now to dismiss all the populist fantasies that readily cross, belatedly, the minds of our leader writers at a time like this, about how it is time that we punished the banks and all the rest of it. The real problem is not punishing the banks; the real problem is maintaining them as healthy, strong, efficient, independent and able to perform their vital function in financing the world recovery on which we are all going to be dependent. Every dollar taken off the capital base of a bank is about $20 taken off its
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lending ability. That should be borne in mind when people are talking about the marginal question of what the banks can contribute.
The main central blame for the financial dangers we face now must lie with the governments. They encouraged this lending, they are the regulatory authorities and they are responsible to us for the safety of the banking system on which all our economies depend. I shall not at this late hour go into the mechanisms which have been explored by the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Gryfe, but whatever they are, we have got to preserve in being a healthy, effective and independent banking system able to do its part not only in financing the poorer countries but in general international finance and in domestic finance for the recovery we require.
Let me say a little about the future and then I have done on that. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Gryfe, who is experienced in these matters, will not foster the illusion that a few magic strokes of the wand and the new lending that is needed in these countries will be forthcoming. That will be to repeat the anarchic abdication of governments in the past eight years.
When I made the proposal to the noble Lord, Lord Cockfield, he added to my other vices: having condemned me for optimism, he condemned me for impracticality when I said that, if you want sound financing, the simple rule must be that there has to be an outline strategy backed by the leading governments. They have to ask, "Do we want to help these poor people?" Some people do not. Some people say that it harms them. I happen to want to help these countries to get on their feet. They have to ask, "If we want to help them, how much, to whom, and on what terms?" If they do not do that, they will restore the same chaotic profligacy and misdirection of lending which has been taking place in the last eight years.
The only way that we can avoid that is not by action by any one country, but by the leading countries of the world sitting down, analysing the problem, agreeing among themselves what they are prepared to contribute to help throughout the world in this way and then formulating the mechanisms—in co-operation with the banking system no doubt, but with the banking system disciplined, as well as supported by, as it must be, these governments, if we are to continue in that role. That is all that I can say in general about that now. Clearly the IMF will play a part. If it is going to play its proper part we have to bring its mandate up to date or, in the jargon, we must open a new window related to this kind of long-term lending, not the emergency lending which is normally employed.
I conclude by saying this. I entirely agree with those noble Lords, including the mover of the Motion, who said that this Williamsburg Summit is going to take place at a crucial time for mankind. On its decisions and on its follow-up will depend whether we really do have the sustained recovery which we so desperately need in the world at present. I would like to feel—and I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Cockfield, can inspire this feeling in me when I have heard what he has to say—that the British Government are going to be prominent in restoring the kind of world co-operation

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in monetary and economic affairs that is so vital for the welfare of the world.
5.51 p.m.
The Secretary of State for Trade (Lord Cockfield): My Lords, I do not think that anyone would dissent from the aspirations expressed by my noble friend in the Motion that he has moved today. He spoke in terms of great moderation as well as forcefulness. His analysis of the situation was a comprehensive one. We have just listened to a speech from the noble Lord, Lever of Manchester, in very much the same vein. It was a speech of great charm and of insight. The noble Lord will not expect me to agree with everything that he says, least of all with the remedies that he proposed. Nevertheless, I must pay tribute to the sincerity and insight with which he spoke.
In the trailer for this debate which appeared in The Times newspaper this morning it was stated by the commentator at the end that:
'What he"—
namely Lord Lever—
"and indeed Lord Soames, will say has probably all been said before, and it is nonetheless relevant for that".
The leader shows a remarkable insight into what noble Lords were going to say, but I feel that its verdict at the end is perhaps less generous than the circumstances of this debate would suggest, because I believe that a great deal has been said this afternoon which has added to our knowledge and our insight into these extremely important problems.
When we look back over the past, we in fact tend to do so through a golden haze of indifferent memory. If I may say so to the noble Lord, Lord Roberthall, when he refers to the world having enjoyed a period of some 40 or 50 years between 1931 and 1980 without a major recession, he rather overlooks the fact that there were quite considerable fluctuations in business activity and in world trade during that period. It is perfectly true that the scale of the present recession is considerable by reference to those earlier fluctuations, but that is because it has been sparked off by circumstances which of themselves are quite unusual. It is true that in the 'fifties and 'sixties we lived through a period of low inflation rates and expanding output. We are all inclined to look back upon those years as the golden years. They were, for the most part, years of Conservative Government, but I shall leave that on one side.
Of course, a great deal of the institutional framework was laid down in the years immediately after the 1939–45 war, the principal institutions being the Bretton Woods agreement, the IMF and the GATT. We ought to remember that both the IMF and the GATT not only remain in being, but in fact continue to do an extraordinarily good job. My noble friend Lord Soames, the noble Lords, Lord Roberthall, Lord Ezra and Lord Taylor of Gryfe, said that we must stand out against the forces of protectionism. But that, of course, is exactly what the GATT has been doing, within what I may describe as very, very difficult circumstances, with a considerable degree of success. The GATT, after all, does bring together some 88 countries, and agreement was
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reached—admittedly after a long period of discussion and negotiation in which the United Kingdom played a very prominent and, if I may say so, an extremely valuable part—that it was very important to maintain the open trading system. It set in hand various studies which were designed to reinforce and extend that open trading system. So we ought not, perhaps, to decry too much the success of the international institutions that we do have.
Let me touch very briefly on the question of the prospects for 1983, because this matter underlies the whole of my noble friend's Motion. There are signs that recovery is now getting under way in the United States, in this country and in other parts of the world. It is true that in 1981 there was the commencement of a recovery which was then cut short, mainly, I may say, by developments in the United States with the rise in interest rates which took place in the autumn of that year. But the prospects now look very much better. In the United States, as noble Lords will know because we have touched on this matter quite recently, the Administration have revised sharply upwards their estimates of economic growth this year. While originally they were expecting a rate of growth of the order of 2½ per cent. by the end of this year, they are now talking in terms of a rate of growth by the fourth quarter of 1983 in the region of 5 per cent. A slower inflation, not only in this country but in most of the leading economies of the world, and lower interest rates, provide the basis for the resumption of healthy economic growth.
What most industrial countries now expect is growth of the order of 1 to 2 per cent. during this coming year. There is reason to hope that the activity in developing countries may also recover. There are, of course, risks and uncertainties, but, nevertheless, taking these into account, the prospects for 1983, provided we stay firmly on course in following a responsible financial and monetary policy, are much better than they have been for many years past.
I turn to the question which has been raised of the international institutions in this field. The uncertain international environment has prompted calls—and these calls were repeated in this debate this evening—for new institutions; for example, a new Bretton Woods. Indeed, this proposition was put forward very informally by Mr. Schultz in a speech which he made towards the end of last year, although afterwards he said that he was merely thinking aloud. Two points really need to be made here. The first point is that no new international institution will solve the sort of problems which arise if there are serious divergencies in economic policy as between individual countries.
That is the first point and it is one of very great importance, because we have seen the result of this in the upset which has just occurred in the European Monetary System. Fortunately, and with considerable credit to my right honourable and learned friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer, those difficulties have been overcome. But if you have divergent economic policies, as you have had in the case of France, on the one hand, and in the case of Germany, on the other, you simply cannot avoid quite massive strains. The fact that these strains have been dealt with is important, but we ought not to overlook the lesson

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which lies there. Of course, it is true—and the point was stressed by the noble Lord, Lord Cobbold—that volatile exchange rates do cause problems for international trade and investment.
The development of forward and future markets has, to some extent, helped to cope with the risks associated with exchange rate fluctuations, but substantial problems remain. At bottom, the position quite simply is that exchange rate movements between the world's major currencies reflect instabilities in the world economy itself, and it would be surprising if it were not so. Massive swings in individual countries' balance of payments have been one cause. Exchange rate fluctuations also reflected differing rates of inflation. Unco-ordinated economic policies—for example, fiscal laxity, which places too much strain on monetary policy—in particular countries have led to high interest rates, and this has affected the pattern of exchange rates. The sharp increases in oil prices in 1973 and 1979 and uncertainty over future prices have also disrupted exchange rate stability.
In the end there is no way to suppress the effects of these instabilities. Attempts to try artificially to do so, either through exchange controls or through intervention in the markets, merely lead to sharp shifts in domestic interest rates and monetary conditions, and these are translating international disturbances into domestic markets. The only way to achieve exchange rate stability is through tackling fundamental instabilities in the world economy, and this can only be done through the convergence of economic performance among the major countries, and in particular overcoming high and varying interest rates in the major economies.
We are clear, therefore, that what is required is not a new institutional framework, but a strengthening of existing institutions coupled with responsible monetary and financial policies in individual states. As regards strengthening the existing institutions, I have already referred to the continuing work which is being done in the GATT in resisting the spread of protectionism, and I am sure that this has support throughout the whole of the House.
I should like to turn briefly to the IMF. On the occasion of our last debate on this subject which was initiated by the noble Lord, Lord Lever, in December of last year, he expressed great reservations about the ability of the IMF to cope with these problems, and he said that what then was needed was some new institution. But, in fact, the IMF has succeeded in coping with these problems, and it has done so without any major default occurring.
Agreement has been reached on an increase of some 47½ per cent. in the IMF quotas and as a result they will go up from 61 billion SDRs to 90 billion. The important thing now is that these quota increases should be ratified at an early date to make the increase effective by the end of 1983. The World Bank, of course, has been another major force in this field and one which does a great deal both to finance and to encourage development in the developing countries. As regards the International Development Agency of the World Bank, the sixth replenishment will total some £5½ billion, and the United Kingdom's contribution of £555 million to this has now been
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agreed. The important thing is that the United States should now agree their increase in their contribution to this fund.
Lord Lever of Manchester: My Lords, is the noble Lord saying that he is satisfied that the existing increase of the IMF and similar funds is adequate to insure us against the developing banking crisis and to ensure the steady flow of the required funds to the previous borrowers?
Lord Cockfield: My Lords, this is the point on which there is a fundamental difference of perception between the noble Lord and myself. As I said in December—and I adhere to this view—the present situation is a cause for concern but not for alarm. This is the difference. Steps were necessary; it was essential to take them. Those steps have been taken. The funds available to the IMF have been substantially increased—an increase of 47½ per cent. is a very large one indeed. The funds of the World Bank have been replenished. The most interesting thing here is the ability that has been shown, both by the international institutions and by the Governments of the leading industrial nations, to work together to deal with these problems. The noble Lord and my noble friend Lord Soames were both pleading, very rightly, for international co-operation, and here we have two instances where that international co-operation has been brought into play, and, if I may say so, has been brought into play successfully.
Viscount Eccles: My Lords, can my noble friend tell me what will happen if the IMF and these institutions lend more money to these third world debtors and all they do is to waste it, as they have wasted the money before?
Lord Cockfield: My Lords, if I may say so, my noble friend takes an unduly pessimistic view of the situation. In fact, the IMF imposes considerable restrictions. When it advances money it requires changes in domestic financial policy. This, in fact, we learned ourselves in 1976 when the then Administration raised funds from the IMF, and for a brief period during that Administration public expenditure had to be brought under control because of the influence of the IMF.
The IMF itself behaves in a responsible manner. I am not in any way saying that the problems which are faced—particularly in the Latin American countries—are not very great indeed. But no one in the world would gain if these economies collapsed. It is very important—and the point has been made during the course of this debate and it was made in the December debate—that these countries follow responsible domestic policies, and the pressures of the IMF are directed to that end.
Because, unfortunately, time is very brief, I now want to turn to the general question of the economic summits, and particularly to the Williamsburg Summit. The Versailles Communiqué in June 1982—and this was after the last economic summit—acknowledged that summit countries have particular responsibility to work for the greater stability of the world monetary system. Co-operation here is essential, and in the pursuit of these policies it is essential to maintain the external and internal values

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of currencies. The pursuit of soundly balanced and consistent monetary and fiscal policies contributes to external stability. Large fiscal deficits reflected in high interest rates can spark significant capital flows with consequent exchange rate instabilities.
The noble Lord, Lord Lever, is wrong, if I may say so, in saying that the Government are indifferent to the exchange rate. The policy has been stated by my right honourable friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer on many occasions. The exchange rate is one of the factors taken into account when interpreting domestic monetary conditions and taking policy decisions. But the one thing we cannot do is to ignore the effects of the enormous changes wrought by the increases in the price of oil in 1973 and in 1979. Nor can we ignore the effects of the fall in oil prices which is now occurring. The increase in oil prices in 1979 was followed by a big rise in the pound, and the fall in oil prices has been followed by a fall in sterling. These are simply the facts of life, and there is nothing that the Government—either this Government or any other Government—can do to stop the effects of massive changes of that sort feeding through into exchange rates.
Perhaps I may come specifically to the Williamsburg summit. This, of course, is attended by the heads of the seven major industrial countries. If I may make the point to the noble Lord, Lord Ezra, the President of the European Commission attends as an observer. He is not in fact a member of the summit, although there are large numbers of discussions which take place between the heads of governments and the President of the European Community. The discussions will include the outlook for the world economy. The summit will consider the policies necessary to ensure international stability and to help the recovery become firmly established without provoking a renewed upsurge in inflation.
It is particularly important for the major countries together to agree over the need to maintain prudent medium-term fiscal and monetary policies and to sustain their counter-inflationary thrust. The benefits of this policy are now evident in terms of lower inflation and lower interest rates. It would be misleading to believe that by adopting expansionary policies governments, either individually or collectively, could dramatically improve longer-term prospects for the world economy. Indeed, such policies would only serve to rekindle inflationary expectations and to undermine the basis of recovery.
But, of course, we have to recognise that we are dealing with sovereign states whose perception of their own internal interests and of international interests may, and do, differ from one another. Important examples in the past are the United States and France. This is a matter of real significance. It is a matter of real significance that both these countries are modifying their policies in a way which is helpful to world recovery. But the very existence of summits is testimony to recognition of the need—
The Deputy Speaker (Lord Ampthill): My Lords, the time allotted for this debate has now elapsed. Does the noble Lord now wish to withdraw his Motion?
Lord Soames: My Lords, I wish to claim a little "injury time", if your Lordships will allow me.
Lord Denham: My Lords, I am afraid that the House, by its own rules of order, is not enabled to grant my noble friend "injury time". I am afraid all my noble friend may do is to withdraw his Motion.
Lord Soames: My Lords, I think that there has been a good deal of "injury time", and it is a shame that we cannot take this debate on for literally another couple of minutes to allow the mover of the Motion to say a few words, if only in response to the Front Bench. But, of course, if my noble friend tells me that all that is possible—
Lord Denham: My Lords, I am afraid that these are the rules of order, and your Lordships are careful not to go beyond your rules of order, particularly on the short debates. I am extremely sorry for my noble friend, but my noble friend Lord Cockfield was interrupted once or twice. He had the bare minimum allotted to him by the rules, and I am afraid it is just not allowed.
Lord Soames: All right. Who am I, in view of the times I have asked your Lordships to stay within the rules, to go outside them myself? By farce majeure I beg leave, unfortunately, to withdraw this Motion in the hope that it will, in the event, have achieved some purpose.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

The Partially Deaf
6.16 p.m.
Lord Harvington Lord Harvington rose to call attention to the plight of the partially deaf; and to move for Papers.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name, and say at the beginning that I feel like Antonio in the Merchant of Venice when I say, "Alas, I am the unhappy cause of all this quarrel". I have been making some inquiries into how noble Lords have dealt with the matter which I propose to raise this evening, and I find that for some time now the noble Lord who has raised it has always prefaced his remarks with the desire to declare an interest; namely, that he was affected by hardness of hearing himself.
I am afraid that I am no exception to this rule. I have to ask for the same favour from your Lordships as other noble Lords have done in the past. In fact, if it were possible for 25 per cent. of this House to raise this matter they would all have to ask for the same indulgence. I made some statistical inquiries into what the probable deafness, to some degree, of this noble House is, and I find that it is verging on 30 per cent., which is perhaps more than your Lordships had realised.
After the 1981 International Year of Disabled People we moved, in 1982, to our own Government's Information Technology Year, and now, in 1983, we see the early days of the United Nations' International

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Year of World Communications; wonderful opportunities to focus attention upon the invisible handicap of deafness, which, in all its degrees and conditions, means a fundamental breakdown in human communication.
The Medical Research Council Institute of Hearing Research has reported that preliminary results of a national study show that some 10 million people in the United Kingdom have a significant hearing defect. Moreover, one in ten of those examined who believed their hearing to be perfect had a disorder that amounted to some degree of disability. This study, showing, as it does, that one in five suffers from hearing loss to greater or lesser extent, presents a challenge to us to try to overcome some of the problems.
I do not, however, in the limited time at my disposal this evening intend to raise issues concerning the difficulties of the education of children, nor areas relating to care and provision for profoundly deaf people, tremendously important though they are. Much valuable and dedicated work is being undertaken by the professionals in a wide variety of disciplines. The devoted and effective work which has been done by the right honourable gentleman, the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South, Mr. Jack Ashley, is a shining example to us all.
By far the greatest number of people with hearing loss are middle-aged or elderly, and I suggest to this noble House that not enough is being done to help them. Certainly hearing aids are provided free of charge under the National Health Service, if you can get them; but you have to wait a long time. However, there is a widely mistaken impression that all conditions and degrees of hearing loss can be remedied solely by hearing aids. But a hearing aid does not give back normal hearing; it is not a hearing restorer. For very many people, wearing a hearing aid is like spending one's life communicating on a very had telephone line. When he speaks in the debate my noble friend Lord Balfour of Inchrye will, I think, deal with some technical aspects of hearing aids, and we shall be interested to hear from him.
There is much encouragement in the developments undertaken by both the BBC and the IBA to provide sub-titled television programmes for deaf people. How often do we stop to think that sub-titles on TV are as important to deaf people as is radio to those who are blind? The sub-titles can be provided as an extension of the TV Teletext systems, but the cost of the Teletext sub-titling component is over and above that of the regular television set itself, and therefore it is out of reach of the vast majority of the people who have need for it. The Royal National Institute for the Deaf has established a Television for the Deaf Fund, to provide this kind of set for people who have other handicaps besides being deaf, but, unhappily, the fund attracts very little attention or public support.
I was much struck by a report in The Times on 5th January about Government provision of an extra £6 million to be spent over three years, to boost mental health care for the elderly. The report added that about half a million elderly people suffer from dementia. In this connection it is important to bear in mind some of the effects of hearing impairment on the lives of old people. They amount to a form of sensory
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deprivation and lead to social isolation. Social isolation is, in turn, associated with a number of other unmet needs in older people, and I am advised that sometimes the sensory deprivation is of such a severe degree that the person's mental state becomes impaired; for example, the acute confusional state known as dementia.
What now needs to be done to improve the hearing ability of older people? There is the problem of early ascertainment of disease in the elderly, and this is most important. This is a general problem, and in the case of deafness it is known that over half of the elderly have never had their hearing tested, and very many of them have no hearing aids. No doubt screening programmes in the elderly population must rest primarily with medical care and depend on the work of not only general practitioners but also health visitors and other community workers. This situation would call for further developments to the audio-logical centres. Perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Winstanley, will say something on this aspect of our problem.
The Royal National Institute for the Deaf is actively considering a number of these issues, but there is a limit to what a voluntary organisation can do. Ideally many more forces—statutory and voluntary—should be looking at the multifaceted problem of deafness in ageing as one of high priority. Many of the difficulties that I have outlined would be eased if there were greater awareness of the problems of deafness on the part of the general public and professional people associated with the care of the elderly. The elderly themselves surely have the right to better expectations of the alleviation of their problems. How encouraging it would be to break this important and bleak acceptance of the effects of ageing; and indeed the cost would be in inverse ratio to the benefits conferred. Much of what I have suggested would cost at any rate some money, but funds directed towards positive programmes earlier in people's lives could probably relieve the costly care and provision later in their lives.
I should like to draw your Lordships' attention to the Sympathetic Hearing Scheme launched last year by the Royal National Institute and other organisations in the sphere of deafness—with financial support from the DHSS—which aims to make everyday activities, such as shopping, simpler for everyone with hearing difficulties. The scheme uses the international ear symbol, which is being widely displayed wherever people with hearing difficulties can obtain special service. I should like to ask the noble Lord whether his department is likely to make available further funds for the continuation of this important scheme.
There is such a lot that can be done to help the deaf and hard of hearing people in everyday life which does not require the allocation of large sums of money. The Sympathetic Hearing Scheme, to which I have referred, promotes guidelines to be followed when dealing with anyone with hearing problems, and I should like to think that these guidelines can become an established code of practice and can be widely taken into account in schools, clubs, community organisations, et cetera, throughout the country.
Now I should like to draw your Lordships' attention to the following helpful points, in the hope that each of

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you will, in turn, mention them and commend them to others. I also hope that my noble friend will consider them as being suitable to form a simple code which would be available on a takeaway basis in general practitioners' waiting rooms or in chemists' shops. The first and most important point to remember is to get the attention of the person to whom you are speaking. Secondly, on no account shout. To shout is a common reaction, but it does not help, and only causes embarrassment. Speak slowly and clearly, but do not exaggerate your facial expressions, or distort your face. Try to face the light as well as the person to whom you are speaking, and try to cut out as much as possible of the background noise. Do not smoke, eat, or do anything that involves putting your hand in front of your face. Lip readers especially must be able to see your mouth. Use plain language. Many words look the same to lip readers. The more common the word, the better. If absolutely necessary, write down essential words. Those are some of the ideas—and I am sure that there may well be others—which I believe we can all put into practice with deaf people and which I should like to see in the form of an official code issued from the ministry.
I do not want this opportunity to pass without referring to the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act, which has done so much to improve provision for handicapped people in general. As a result of that legislation, there has been wide discussion upon the many and special problems which handicapped people have in everyday life. This has resulted in marked public concern about mobility, self-care and so on. Sadly, however, into these discussions there rarely enter the problems of deafness—which, to my mind, seems to remain the Cinderella of the incapacitated. The much higher expectation of life will produce these problems in ever-increasing numbers. We want to achieve wide public awareness of deafness and to harness it.
Two hundred years ago, Doctor Samuel Johnson called deafness the most desperate of human calamities. It is still a desperate calamity. Deafness is not a killer but it is a destroyer. It destroys so much that is vital in our everyday lives. Relationships within the family, with friends and with those with whom we work are constantly under strain when there is a breakdown in easy communication. We are impatient and uncaring when sufferers misunderstand or seem outright dim. Rejection and isolation follow. It need not happen if there was more thought and sensitivity to what it means when one cannot hear normally. I beg to move for Papers.
6.32 p.m.
Lord Pry's-Davies: My Lords, we are all particularly grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Harvington, for having given us the opportunity of debating the problems of the deaf. The noble Lord puts the figure at 10 million people; the Royal Commission puts it lower at between 2½ million and 3 million people and from some 125,000 to 130,000 children and their families. They are people who are in isolation, who no longer hear the ticking of the clock or the song of the birds. My reading has taken me back to two basic documents, the 1975 Report of the Sub-committee on
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Rehabilitation of the Deaf and the 1976 and 1981 Reports of the Sub-committee on Services for Deaf Children, both documents having been addressed to the DHSS. Both sub-committees expressed surprise that more had not been done for the hearing impaired in the preceding years and that the service for the deaf was not more highly developed.
For example, the reports and the NHS commission drew attention to lack of collaboration between the NHS and the local authorities in the provision of services. The rehabilitation sub-committee found that there was even a lack of co-operation between the public and the voluntary bodies and a lack of access to centres of treatment and rehabilitation. The children's sub-committee called in particular for early screening of children, for screening to be administered to ail infants at about the age of eight months and for a review about the time of the child's third birthday. It emphasised the conclusion which is obvious to all: that delay in diagnosing hearing defects of young children can lead to permanent impairment of a child's development of language and speech.
The rehabilitation sub-committee criticised the almost total absence of follow-up caused by the lack of adequately trained staff in the NHS to carry out the skilled instruction that is needed by a large proportion of patients who could and should benefit from the services for the deaf. We have been reminded by the noble Lord, Lord Harvington, that due to the ordinary processes of ageing the elderly are probably the single group which makes the greatest demand on the services for the deaf.
All of us tend to get deafer as we get older and, although this interference with the quality of life goes on day in and day out, this can lead to social isolation. Nevertheless, the elderly are often slow to consult a doctor about the deterioration of their hearing. It is very difficult to educate the elderly to accept technological aids. It would be revealing to know how many patients have never used their hearing aid, although family and friends have prevailed on them to have one. One may well ask why spectacles are an acceptable aid but hearing aids are not.
The reports to which I referred, those of 1975, 1976 and 1981, focus the problems facing the services for the deaf. Because they focus the problem, this should by now have led to better facilities. I was chairman of the Welsh Hospitals Board between 1968 and 1974. I cannot now recall a single meeting when the board reviewed and set its priorities for its services for the deaf. Unfortunately, deafness ranked relatively low among our priorities—partly because there was little or no acute awareness of the problem but also because by the late 1960s (as your Lordships will know) the field was littered with critical reports calling for urgent reforms in facilities for the mentally ill, for the mentally handicapped and the elderly. The NHS had to respond urgently to these new pressures brought upon it.
I accept that the escalating pressures which exerted themselves at the end of the 1960s and the early 1970s have still not levelled off. Nevertheless, I think we are entitled to ask what improvements have been made in the service for the deaf during the last few years. The 1975 rehabilitation report called for the appointment of a new worker who would be called the hearing

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therapist. To this the DHSS made some little response. In the DHSS chief medical officer's report for 1981 we are told that there were 20 hearing therapists then in post and that eight students had commenced training in 1981 at the City Literary Institute.
By any standard this is a tiny number. How many are under training in 1982–83? How many are likely to be under training in 1983–84? Can the City Literary Institute train more students? If not, can more students be trained elsewhere? The children's sub-committee recognised the health visitor as being the ideal person to undertake screening for children under five years of age. Does the health visitors' scheme of study now include training in screening techniques for infants as recommended by the sub-committee? Can we ask when the last national survey of screening for defective hearing in pre-school children was carried out and what were the results? Has the number of health visitors been increased, as was suggested by the subcommittee?
In passing, may I mention that I understand that some parents have to effect an insurance in respect of hearing aids given to, or loaned to, their children by the area health authority; and they pay an annual premium of £24. Is this too heavy a risk for the NHS to carry?
Living, as I do, about a dozen miles from Cardiff, I appreciate the contribution made by the Institute of Hearing Research established at the University Hospital of Wales in 1979. There are related units at Southampton, Glasgow and Nottingham. I am informed that the unit at Cardiff has made a significant contribution to the deaf in South Glamorgan.
Can we be sure that the quality and range of service available at Cardiff, Nottingham, Southampton and Glasgow, is also available to the country in general? Beyond the reach of these four centres, how long is the waiting list? I understand on good authority that there is at least one district authority in my part of the world where people are kept waiting for two years between referral by the GP and appointment with a consultant. This appears to me to be too long. In passing, might I say that it is to be regretted that waiting lists are not published.
More and more emphasis is being properly placed on the prevention of handicap and impairment generally. During the last two decades the medical profession has become more aware of the damage to hearing that may be caused to people working in noisy conditions. Can we be assured that full weight is being given to this risk? What steps are being taken to ensure that noise levels at the place of work are being reduced, in alerting working people to the effect of noise, and in ensuring that the industrial worker who is exposed to excessive noise is adequately protected from the conditions in which he has to work?
It is not uncommon for industrial workers, who suffer a deterioration of hearing, like the elderly, to be slow to seek advice. Kemp and Kemp, the authoritative work on Quantum of Damages for Personal Injuries, in its stop press issue published in February this year, referred to the dearth of reported court awards for loss of hearing, but pointed out, and here I quote:
"There are apparently a large number of cases involving loss of hearing likely to come before the courts in the near future".
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In a judgment in the Court of Appeal in 1980 it was said that there were 2,000 writs outstanding against one large employer alone for compensation for damage to hearing, and no doubt the same kind of claims are being made against other employers in industry.
This brings me to technology and my final point. I understand, and probably we shall hear more of this this evening, that the main difficulty which the deaf experience with a hearing aid is that it is unselective and that it amplifies and distorts the noise in a room. It lacks the discrimination mechanism that allows the person who hears normally to distinguish the voice which he is looking for, or to distinguish clearly what is being said when two or three people are talking at the same time. But I also understand that, using micro-electronics, it should be possible to bring the same kind of selectivity to the impaired of hearing who relies on his deaf aid. Is the Minister able to confirm whether this by-product of micro-electronics is feasible within the next few years and at a reasonable price?
I appreciate that I have asked a large number of questions, and if the noble Lord the Minister is unable to come up with detailed information this evening, I should be grateful if the questions were noted by the department. As I have said, I am also grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Harvington, for having given me the opportunity of asking the questions.
6.43 p.m.
Lord Winstanley: My Lords, recollecting the recent brief argument we had in your Lordships' House about our rules of order and bearing in mind the advice recently given to us by the Select Committee on Procedure, I must not be too fulsome in my thanks to the noble Lord for introducing this subject, save to say he has introduced a very important subject indeed. I entirely agree with him that it is appropriate that this subject of the partially deaf should be raised in your Lordships' House.
I wonder how many of your Lordships recollect the noble Lord on this side of the House who was making an interesting speech, when he was suddenly interrupted by a loud voice from some remote recess in your Lordships' House with the words, "Speak up, please". The speaker stopped in his tracks with the words, "I am so sorry, my Lords, I had no idea anybody was listening". Noble Lords do listen; they listen with great care, but it is nevertheless a fact that some of them do not hear quite as well as they would like to do.
The noble Lord has focused his Motion on the general question of the partially deaf. I think it is right and sensible to do that because, in an era in which the age of our population is increasing, there is no doubt there will be a continual increase in the numbers who are partially deaf. It is entirely right that the problems of the totally deaf, or those who are tragically deaf from birth, are very different, very much more complex and perhaps much more difficult to deal with.
It is a fact, as has already been underlined, that the deaf are, in a sense, doubly handicapped. They are obviously handicapped merely by the fact that their hearing is impaired—which is a handicap in itself—but many are further handicapped because

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they suffer educationally as a result of their hearing impairment. It is an important subject and therefore I ask: what can we do?
First, we must look at the action we can take, and perhaps should take, in order to reduce the incidence of impairment of hearing. That means that we must pause, whenever possible, to look at the causes. I think I should be right if I underlined one of the causes and put it near the top of my list—that is, noise. I have no idea whether life exists on some other planet out in space. I doubt frankly whether the noble Prelate who is to speak shortly would know that. But, if there are other people up there somewhere else, they will know we are here. They will have heard us. We live on a very, very noisy planet indeed. I think there is some evidence that the result of noise in society is in part responsible for the increasing incidence of impairment of hearing. I hope we shall look at that.
We must also look at diseases of one kind or another which themselves contribute to the impairment of hearing: complicated and difficult subjects like Ménière's disease, which is arising with increasing frequency and perhaps increasing severity; disturbing things like tinnitus, and so on. More and more research needs to be done into those matters, their causation, their treatment and, if possible, their eradication. We must look again into the progress which is being made, although perhaps only marginally, into the incidence of genetic factors which are known to contribute in some way to the incidence of deafness in our population.
If we accept that we cannot always prevent deafness arising, certainly in an ageing population in which some deafness is merely part of the general degenerative process of age, deafness will obviously still arise. We must therefore turn to the action we should take to minimise the consequences of hearing impairment. First of all, I should underline something that has already been said. We must all learn to speak with much more clarity and we must also learn, as the noble Lord, Lord Harvington, has said, to make sure that when we are speaking, I hope with more clarity, especially to elderly people or people we suspect may have some impairment of hearing, we face the hearer.
It is remarkable how many people with partially impaired hearing lip read to an extent without perhaps always understanding that they do lip read. The noble Lord is entirely right in saying that we should not shout. It is rather odd that one has only to be in a wheelchair when one finds that everybody shouts. They seem to think that because one is disabled in one way one must be deaf as well. The noble Lord is right: shouting does not help, but clarity of speech does.
Here one must make a particular plea to the very young, who seem to me to speak with less and less clarity and less and less precision of articulation than perhaps we did in the past. My own grandchildren frequently tell me their grandpa is getting deaf. I say "No, it is just that you all mumble". They do mumble, and I hope that the schools will do something to improve the articulation of our children. If they do that they will certainly improve the lives of those children's grandparents. This apples not only to the young, but also to all those who work with the elderly. I think that among social workers there is not yet a
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sufficient understanding and realisation of the importance of clarity of diction and of articulation, and of facing the hearer when speaking and giving messages.
Let me turn now to the general question of hearing aids, which has already been referred to. It is an area in which we have made immense progress, though it is true that hearing defects vary. Some are more susceptible of assistance with a hearing aid of one kind or another, but many do benefit, and benefit very profoundly. It is a fact that we have now pioneered and developed much more acceptable hearing aids which are less obtrusive and more easy to wear.
I am very glad indeed that throughout the National Health Service, and through our audiology clinics, we now find it possible to issue the very small behind-the-ear hearing aids to a much larger number of people than was formerly possible. Nevertheless, it is still the case that, sometimes, the private sector can provide, privately, hearing aids which individual people find preferable and more suitable to their needs. I hope we shall make sure that the public sector, and the provision through the National Health Service, keeps pace with the very best in the private sector.
Let me now turn briefly to the question of subtitling of television programmes, films and things of that kind. That is admirable and it must be encouraged. Speaking as one whose hearing is not dramatically impaired, I would much rather listen to an Italian opera in Italian, with English subtitles, than listen to the same opera translated into English. This tendency to subtitle programmes is very helpful indeed to the deaf, but is is also quite acceptable to some who are not deaf.
Progress is being made in the television world, and there is an increasing recognition of these needs. If I may say something personal, as many noble Lords know, for nearly 14 years I have presented for Granada Television up in the North-West a kind of television information programme very much aimed at the elderly and at the under-privileged. Some five years ago, we started signing those programmes; in other words, in a little box at the corner of the screen we have a delightful and accomplished lady who signs the programme for those whose hearing is impaired.
Sign language is very attractive—very much like ballet, in many ways—and if one watches it one learns it. It is quite helpful. We have been signing those programmes for over four years without any damage to the programmes for other people, but to the great benefit of those whose hearing is impaired, and I venture to hope that many others will follow the example which we set many years ago up there.
Perhaps I may add to the general question of a little more research and effort into the provision of other forms of equipment and aid for those whose hearing is impaired. A great deal has been done. British Telecom have done some splendid work with the adaptation of telephones with volume control switches on them, and devices which in some cases can regulate the pitch of a telephone so as to make it very much more audible to people whose hearing is impaired. Work has also been done with the provision of doorbells, which are accompanied by a visual message of a flashing light, and devices of that kind, which are of great assistance to the elderly.

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That is British Telecom. But what of British Rail? When the station announcer says, "The train now standing at platform so-and-so", those of us with the most acute hearing in the world cannot hear what is being announced. Would it not be better not only for the deaf, but for all of us, if, simultaneously, a visual message went up, so that we could all read it, whether deaf or not, and so that we all knew what the message was? So I hope that we shall add visual advice, as well as purely aural advice, in all those places where advice is given to citizens on one matter or another.
Leaving the question of action of various kinds in order to minimise the consequences of hearing impairment, let me just touch briefly on the subject which has already been referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Prys-Davies—the question of hearing defects caused by noisy work situations. Here there really is a problem. Over and over again, I have found that people who have been working in very noisy situations, and with very noisy devices, have not been wearing ear protectors which they ought to wear—probably because education has not been adequate to impress upon them the need to do so.
But I have one fear, which perhaps the noble Lord the Minister may be able to allay when he replies. I have the impression that, from time to time, we perhaps lag a little behind some of our European partners in our recognition of deafness as an industrial disease caused by industrial processes and, therefore, qualifying for compensation of one kind or another. I should like some reassurance on that point, because, certainly, we lagged behind some years ago and we may have caught up.
Finally, and to summarise, I should like to put one fairly general question to the noble Lord the Minister. It is a general question concerning resources and Government initiatives in general, and it is in a number of parts. I should like to know from the noble Lord whether there is a commitment from the Government to put effort, if not further resources, into the elimination of noise in our society. It is a factor. Some years ago, I carried out audiology tests on a whole lot of young people coming into industry, and we discovered quite a worrying degree of hearing impairment at certain pitches. I tended to think that it came from the level of noise to which they chose to listen in the discos in which they spent their evenings. I do not know. But we ought to do something to try to eliminate noise, whether it is aircraft noise, traffic noise or any other kind of noise.
Let us be clear, my Lords. What is noise? Noise is unwanted sound. For example, to me the Tannhaüser overture of Wagner is beautiful music. To others, it may just be noise. There are some youths to whom the desperate noise of a motor-bike is music. To me, it is just noise. So I hope that the Government will do what they can to eliminate noise, in the sense of its being unwanted sound, from our society.
Next, I should like to have some reassurance on the extent of support for research into the means of preventing deafness and of preserving hearing. I should like to hear a little about an increase in resources for the provision of aids of one kind or another for those whose hearing is impaired. That
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means not just hearing aids, but also the other aids which can make life a little safer and a little easier for those who are deaf. I should like to have reassurance on our standards of compensation for those whose hearing has been irreparably damaged as a result of working in a very noisy environment; for, despite the disappearance of the cotton trade and the old weaving sheds, there still are some very noisy working environments.
Finally, I should like to have some reassurance on the Government's backing of education for the community as a whole into the needs of the deaf and into ways of minimising the consequences of deafness. That means, surely, education aimed at higher standards of articulate speech among our society as a whole, and encouraging the public as a whole to understand the problems of deafness. If this short debate, which has been introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Harvington, has done anything to spread a greater understanding of the problems of hearing impairment, then it will have served a very useful purpose.
6.59 p.m.
The Lord Bishop of Southwell: My Lords, I, too, am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Harvington, for initiating this debate. It is a difficult debate because it is not easy to define its scope. I am told that there are very few people who are totally deaf. The great majority of people have a tiny capacity for hearing, even if it is almost indistinguishable. At the other end of the scale there are few people who do not have some hearing deprivation, however small. On any estimate, therefore, the number of people we are talking about this evening is very large indeed—as the noble Lord said, about 10 million. As we are not talking about the profoundly deaf, for whom there is a lot of sympathy, let us note that we are talking about a sizeable minority of the population who do not stand out from the crowd, because, quite largely, there are so many of us that we are not noticed.
One of the things about the hard of hearing is that among their number are people with a wide range of hearing ability, a great difference of age at which their loss of hearing began, great differences in methods of communication, different attitudes towards their handicap, different intellectual capacities, personality traits and aspirations and, of course, very different sociological backgrounds. Unfortunately, society at large forgets these differences. People who have impaired hearing are regarded as just deaf, more or less. But the fact that they are real people with a wide variety of accomplishments and interests is generally forgotten, and part of the plight of the partially deaf is a vast ignorance of their problem on the part of the unthinking public.
Secondly, the plight of the partially deaf is also increased because of the lack of people trained to improve communiction between the hard of hearing and the rest of us. Some effort is made to help the hard of hearing to develop skills in lip reading and speech reading, but little effort is made to encourage the rest of us to learn how to communicate with the hard of hearing. We expect the hard of hearing to accommodate themselves to us while we make little effort to develop the necessary skills to talk to them. This is a

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legitimate complaint that the hard of hearing sometimes level against us.
Having said this, I believe there is need for a great increase in the number of people who are capable of teaching those who are becoming increasingly deaf to acquire skills in lip reading and speech reading. Some of those whose hearing is impaired or who have lost most of their capacity to hear acquire an expert ability to lip read or speech read, but even with such an expertise they experience severe limitations in their ability to get the full meaning of what is being said to them, as noble Lords have already pointed out. I am told that in fact in lip reading a relatively small proportion of the movements of lips and tongues are visible—probably not more than about 50 per cent. The speech reader has to rely on the context, the sense of appropriateness and even guesswork to determine what is being said. And, as has been pointed out, differences in the way in which people speak also contribute to the difficulties of speech reading. Talking too rapidly, or too slowly, or with very little movement of the lips, makes one very hard to understand.
In view of the tremendous obstacle to oral communiction, it is remarkable that so many people with hearing impairment make such sustained efforts to talk and understand what is said. We need many more people to train those with impaired hearing, and much more is needed to train the trainers. It would be ungenerous of me not to applaud what is already being set in hand in this field. In Nottinghamshire, which is the part of the country from which I come, there is in the University of Nottingham a Government-sponsored Institute of Hearing Research under Professor Haggard. The university's psychology department is also studying the psychological problems of deafness.
In our provision for further education in Nottingham there are at the moment only three full-time teachers of lip reading. Now, under the auspices of the Manpower Services Commission, there is a community enterprise project in the Bassetlawe district of Nottinghamshire which is using young people in a survey to discover how many hearing impaired people of all kinds there actually are. I mention this because in the country districts such people are very often not known to the social services, and certainly provision for helping them is less than in the big conurbations. My experience is that social workers employed by local authorities in this field are very dedicated to their work. My praise for those I know is unbounded. Most hearing impaired people nowadays have access to a social worker and, as has already been pointed out, there is an abundance of electronic aids. But despite all this there are many things still to be done, and in conclusion I should like to mention two or three of my anxieties.
First, while a lot of effort has gone into helping the physically handicapped—and quite rightly so—the hard of hearing, who come into the category of the disabled, come very low in people's priorities. While buildings are altered to accommodate wheelchairs, for instance, few buildings which have a public address system have an induction coil loop system to enable those with hearing aids to hear what is going on. All
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public buildings, including churches, should have this simple system installed and local authorities should be urged to give it a higher priority.
Secondly, mention has been made of the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act 1970 which enables local authorities to make contributions to hearing-impaired persons, but this Act has recently become virtually a dead letter because of the cutbacks in Government expenditure which mean that town halls have little money to apply to this particular cause. More money must be made available as soon as possible to help those with impaired hearing if they are not to suffer very real deprivation. Thirdly, it is vital that the Government should give real encouragement to the voluntary societies working in this field. There is one particular situation which requires swift Government action. Voluntary effort has pioneered the Council for the Advancement of Communication amongst Deaf People, a project to which, incidentally, the churches have given their full support. It is a project which I believe is expected to be attached in due course to Durham University and it has the universal support of all the voluntary societies working in this field.
The council has, however, sufficient funds to continue its work for only three months. After that its work will cease. This council seeks to train interpreters, to keep a register of interpreters, to train lip readers. And—this is the important point—in all this they are involving deaf people themselves on the council on a 50:50 basis and are using them to train and assess these communicators. I believe that about a year ago the council approached the Department of Health and Social Security for help in funding this work, but nothing has so far been done. Only about £40,000 a year is required to set up and maintain this project. That is the sort of sum of money which voluntary societies find it very difficult to raise. It will be sad if the projects which have been set up under this council all over the country are all put in jeopardy. Cannot something be done to help this imaginative initiative which the voluntary societies together have set up?
The hearing-impaired are a truly remarkable group of people. Their achievements testify that it is possible to meet the challenge of this severe handicap. To do so is, however, very far from easy. Indeed, observational and experimental research indicates that it is extremely difficult for those with this disability to adjust to their environment. The failure in the past of some individuals to adjust adequately and the prospect of certain conditions worsening in the future are evidence that we need still better understanding of the problems created by deafness, better services and facilities for solving these problems, and perhaps better acceptance of situations which cannot be changed. I hope that this debate will encourage the Government to review their attention to the plight of the partially deaf.
7.10 p.m.
Lord Balfour of Inchrye: My Lords, I should like to thank my noble friend Lord Harvington for having initiated this debate. I must, of course, declare a most acute interest in the particular subject we are discussing this evening. I believe that in many cases

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partial deafness is to some extent due to our own past faults; that we have brought it upon ourselves. All we can do now is to regret our past errors and that we have done those things that we should not have done as regards the preservation of our hearing, and endeavour to warn the youth of this country of the dangers they face unless they take good care of their God's gift of hearing. Unless we do that we are neglecting our duty as sufferers from partial deafness.
All that we can do, now that we are getting on in years, is to avoid becoming social bores with our deafness in a world of swift and precious communication. Finally, we shall have to rely, as our deafness increases as the years go on, on the affection and tolerance of our friends and our families, because we shall be living in a social world divorced from the ordinary conversational world of other people.
It is for that reason that I believe in the acute need for education of the young, so that they will realise the precious gift about which I have just spoken. Progress has been made, but not enough. Today, in the age of the aeroplane, the danger of noise is at last appreciated. In the early days of flying—it was nearly 60 years ago when I started—we did not appreciate the danger of noise. We used to climb into an aeroplane, without goggles or a flying cap, and fly around. We were carefree. We enjoyed it. If you put an engine on a broomstick in those days, we would have taken it up. The RAF today is very different. The RAF makes it a very serious offence if an aviator, pilot or crew—or indeed a mechanic attending to an aircraft on the ground—does not use the properly supplied protective ear apparatus. That is the evidence of progress we have made in one direction. We should make progress in other directions, too.
We could make progress in the area of shooting. Shooting is not done by just one class. It is done by agriculturists at every social level. We used to shoot and shoot until our partial deafness was absolutely sure. Many of us had the choice, when we went to have our ears tested, of giving up shooting, as we were advised, or to continue. I confess that I said I would continue shooting. I am probably suffering for it now, but I had an awful lot of fun while I was shooting.
There ought to be proper education about the maintenance of standards of hearing. I should like to see the National Health Service embrace regular ear testing for young folk and so give them warning if their hearing is starting to deteriorate. I believe that school lectures are required, not ramming the dangers down their throats, but occasionally bringing home to the youth of this country the dangers of the real risk in their later lives unless they take care of their hearing now.
Finally, I wish to put a question to the noble Lord the Minister. Today we have hearing aids, but as was said by another noble Lord, hearing aids intensify sound but do not analyse sound or the direction from which it comes. I hope that the noble Lord the Minister will be able to tell us that progress is being made in improving the selectivity of hearing aids. I hope that I may look forward to a future in which the deaf can have an aid with a switch whereby all sound except that beaming down from one particular individual will be washed out; but, by moving the
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switch the other way, one will be able to hear noise coming from all quarters.
I believe that this technique of sound selectivity is something that we shall see being developed in the future, and I hope that the noble Lord the Minister will be able to tell us tonight that progress is being made in this particular direction. I hope it will come about that the deaf person will be able to take part in conversation apart from the noise outside and then, when he requires, embrace all the other forms of noise. That is my hope, and I trust that the noble Lord the Minister will be able to give us some small comfort in that direction tonight.
7.17 p.m.
Lord Clifford of Chudleigh: My Lords, it was 13th May 1981 when I raised this subject in this Chamber by way of an Unstarred Question. I was declaring my interest, and in doing so I explained that I was the deafest Member of your Lordships' House. This was followed the next morning by my being tackled in the bar by the noble Lord, Lord Balfour of Inchrye, who practically challenged me to a duel for making that claim. So this evening, in declaring an interest in this subject, I will start by saying that I agree to share with the noble Lord, Lord Balfour of Inchrye, that particular honour. I should also add a declaration of interest in that I happen to be president of the West Regional Association for the Deaf, and president of the Devonshire Association of the Hard of Hearing Clubs.
When I last raised this subject two years ago, the debate was limited at that time to the various hearing aids which were available for the deaf. On that occasion we mentioned those aids which we were all hoping would get some boost, such as the television aids for the deaf; Ceefax, Oracle, and Teletext facilities. There have been other developments of great assistance, but these developments can be of use only if the Government are going to give some assistance, because they are expensive. If these aids are going to be left just for the few who can afford them, they will never achieve the object behind them. For the very deaf there is the Link, an essential telephone aid, the electronic mail via the telephone, writing on the television set, Vistel. There must be a Link for the people who have got to the furthest stage, and that is what a lot of people interested in this subject are worried about now. If you can get the Link, add that to the Vistel, the electronic mail, you have got a part of the deaf world who can communicate with their fellow beings.
The Sympathetic Hearing Scheme, to which Lord Harvington referred, is of great help, but it is not widespread. The loop has been mentioned. Before we used the loop—when I say we, I am talking about the annual general meeting of the Devonshire Association of Hard of Hearing Clubs—imagine me, as a deaf person, taking the annual general meeting; it was the fun o'Cork! Nobody knew if anyone else was talking, and if they did they did not know what he was talking about. There were people on the side doing sign languages and others doing lip reading. It was impossible. I thought, "It is no use my going along any longer". At any rate, the year before last I went along as usual to our hall in Exeter, and in came a man with this apparatus. For those who do not know, the loop is

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a coil which is put around the room, a little box of tricks; it is plugged in with half a dozen microphones. Then deaf people can switch their hearing aids across to the telephone. It was the first meeting that, as a result, ran smoothly. I then found out where I could get one and installed it at home. Now I can sit down by the fire in the evening, my wife can pick up one of the two microphones we have, and something gets through, instead of her having to bang her head on the floor the whole time. Life is a little more normal.
Another advantage is that one can have a switch-down attached to the television set. That enables one to adjust the sound to what is wanted without blowing ordinary people out of the room by the noise. Might I suggest that we should have that in the television room here? I think that the loop would be a much better thing in this House than the equipment we have now. These are all things that are of interest to the deaf. But what I am interested in more than anything else is that they should get down to the ordinary people, the ordinary old-age pensioners and so on, whose lives are so cut off.
With regard to lip-reading schemes, we need more lip-reading teachers. I was fortunate in having the same teacher as Jack Ashley, so I have heard a lot about what goes on, because she was one of the trainers of lip-reading teachers. Unfortunately she has now retired. Turning to sign language, I may say that we have a number of sign language teachers, but we need more in order to enable so many of the population, as there are now, to communicate and to get together, because there is a very great deal of misery in the country from loneliness caused by deafness. I am certain, from my experience, that it is only through the hard of hearing clubs, and so on, that we have saved many suicides.
Operations are now coming into effect. In Australia they have invented a bionic ear through a 2·2 million dollar Government grant. I hope the noble Lord will take the hint. In America they have had a similar device, invented by the University of California, which is used by the University College Hospital over here. Here it is funded by a private charity. I am hoping before long to have a talk with Dr. Ellis Dovek of Guy's Hospital to see if I can persuade him to extend his operation successes, again not to the totally deaf but to, so to speak, the fairly deaf.
The trouble about all these devices is that they are useful only for the low notes; and the high notes are what most of us miss and are the ones that need to be heard. Years ago I asked a doctor whether I could not have an operation for deafness. He said, "There has been one experimental one on dogs in America and it cured their deafness". I said, "So there is hope?", and he said, "Yes, but they all died of spinal meningitis". So we want to know a little more than the odd things we read in the Reader's Digest or the New Scientist. My Lords, if one is blind one is cut off from things; if deaf, one is cut off from people. We deaf people have a large chip on our shoulder apropos the blind; we feel that they have had a proportionately larger slice of the cake than we have.
Finally, I think it would help if people could realise that if they want life for deaf persons to be not too
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unbearable, there should be some education. I went to a mixed oldies-youngies fancy dress party about 10 years ago. All I did was put a notice round my neck saying, "Deaf, not daft". One of my sons crossed out the "not" and put "and", but that does not matter. Before he went back to school I took a young son to a barber's and left him there while I parked the car. There were two barbers, George and Bill, and as I came in my son said, "George died last week". I heard it in some other way and said, "Jolly good show!", and of course the other barber dropped the scissors down his neck. These things go on all the time. We talk too much; it is a defensive mechanism; it is so much easier for us to talk than to listen. That makes us rather unpopular. At other times we are considered rude, or else we interrupt unknowingly. I got ticked off by the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, once. I turned to him and saw that his lips were not moving and said something. He gave me hell; he said, "Can't you see I am talking to so and so?". I had not seen that; I had seen that he was not talking, but he was listening.
Another trouble is that we either talk too loudly or too softly, and that depends on the hearing aid. Perhaps I may close in emphasising that point by telling your Lordships a story of the old Irish lady who was very deaf. She went to confession. Her battery was down, and she shouted her sins so loudly that the whole church heard it. The priest arranged that the next time she came she should hand in a list. So, six weeks later she handed in the list. There was a long pause and then the priest said, "But this is a shopping list". "Holy Mother!" she said, must have left my sins in Tesco's".
7.30 p.m.
Baroness Nicol: My Lords, I consider part of my allotted time well spent in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Harvington, because I think we have had a most useful discussion. I hope that it will eventually have some effect, although I was rather depressed to be told today that these debates are seldom taken up and used. I hope that does not prove to be so in this case and that there will be some result from it.
We seem to have had different figures given to us about the number of people affected by partial deafness, but we are all agreed that it is a very large number. My own figure is that, of those over the age of 70, 50 per cent. will be suffering some sort of hearing disability. That in itself is a frightening enough assumption. We now have 9 million pensioners. Happily many of them will live well beyond the age of 70, but it is a very sobering thought that 50 per cent. of them will need help. We have had a very fair coverage of the difficulties suffered by deaf or partially deaf people, but one that has not been mentioned, except indirectly, is the depression which is a very real part of being deaf or partially deaf. I understand that this applies to all age groups and social classes. Depression is a very real and tangible effect.
I want to come to all that is left to me after the excellent speeches made so far: that is, some practical suggestions about what we can do to help deaf people generally. If there is nothing wrong with one's eyes one can go to an optician, and there is an optician in almost every high street. Why can we not have some sort of hearing aid centre, or a centre for not just

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hearing aids but environmental aids as well? If a person needs help with his hearing he can go to the hospital, but the hospital only deals with hearing aids. It does not deal with environmental aids. Quite often a hearing aid is dished out to someone who, in fact, only needs a television amplifier, a flashing door bell or some other much less expensive and much less difficult to follow-up means of being helped. So why can we not have these centres? I remind your Lordships that the cost of hearing aids came down dramatically when the National Health Service did some bulk buying. Why can we not have bulk buying of these other aids, which would bring the cost down not only to the National Health Service but also to the private sector? There would be benefits all round.
The area of training technicians has been well covered but I highlight one reason why we need more technicians and more investigation. It has been discovered in research that the very old do not take kindly to being fitted with hearing aids. However, if people with a disability at its early stages get help and are fitted with aids they will continue to use them and will upgrade them as necessary right into their old age. Therefore, it is very important that people should be attended to, not necessarily in their youth because one hopes they will not need it, but in their 50s and 60s when these disabilities begin. They should establish the habit of wearing hearing aids, getting attention and not being self-conscious about it. We need much more ease of approach for those with hearing difficulties and we need many more technicians, not only to attend to them in the first place but to follow them up afterwards and make sure that the aids they have been given are properly used and not just discarded.
We underestimate other aspects of being deaf and perhaps I can mention them because it does not hurt for those of us who can still hear quite well to be aware of them. I refer to the danger to people when they cannot hear. Alarm bells cannot be heard. Traffic horns cannot be heard. All kinds of difficulties at work arise; workers are unable to hear changes in the machinery note which would be a warning to those who can hear but is not heard by those with hearing difficulties. We should bear those difficulties in mind and press the National Health Service, or employers, to make sure that visual aids are available as well as warning sounds.
Finally, what is mostly needed is somebody, or something, to co-ordinate these efforts because at the moment they are fragmented. In 1981 ACSHIP existed—the Advisory Committee on Services for Hearing Impaired People. This, for reasons which I have not discovered, was disbanded in 1981. Perhaps ACSHIP was not the best thing that could have been done, but something like it is still needed, if only to make sure that the money that is available in the health service and elsewhere is properly spent. The Government would do well to consider replacing that body, or setting it up again if that is the best thing, but certainly give someone the responsibility for co-ordinating the services for the deaf.
At the beginning of the debate the noble Lord, Lord Harvington, said that our civilisation depended on communication, and so it does. If we are to cut off about 10 or 20 per cent. of our population from that civilisation, then we are failing in our duty and I think
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that, if nothing else, this House has done well to draw attention to that.
7.38 p.m.
Baroness Vickers: My Lords, I am very pleased to have the opportunity of speaking in this debate because I am chairman of a new organisation called Cued Speech and, like the right reverend Prelate, I am in desperate need of money to keep it going. It is the newest method from America and it is working very well, having been going for two or three years, but we are existing from month to month. I did even more than the right reverend Prelate about seeing the Minister from another place. I even had him to lunch, but unfortunately that was wasted money because we have heard nothing, and that was nearly a year ago.
One of the difficulties is that most people are kind to disabled people but deaf people look perfectly splendid. One does not realise that they have anything wrong with them at all. That is one of the difficulties. If people do see a hearing aid they are perhaps shy of going up to speak because they do not know how to tackle it. Fortunately, I am not shy and I have been well trained by my noble friend on the Front Bench to speak up and to take an interest.
One is apt to think, as has been found in this debate, that most deaf people are rather elderly. As a matter of fact there are over 2,000 schoolchildren who are partially deaf. They are the children we must think about for the future. About 6 per cent. or 7 per cent. of the 10,000 children who have already been tested have hearing defects and they therefore need special education, but there is not enough special education or trained teachers to do this.
The statistics also show that there are educational, social and emotional problems with these children that are of very deep significance. Of these children, 95 per cent. could be properly trained if they had the opportunity of having further education. But they do not. Only 23 per cent. get further education after the age of 16. It is also considered that communications between schools and the outside organisations are very poor. The agencies that could help these young people to get jobs are not tackled.
The Rowson Report on deafness to the DHSS referred to a departmental inquiry into promotion and research. I am afraid that very little promotion and research is going on in a big way. It is very badly needed. I hope that noble Lords in their areas will press for this and will also continue to press the Minister. I think that it is one of the bad spots in our education at the moment of partially deaf children.
For the younger ones, for babies shortly after they are born, there are some instruments: boxes with little cradles in the middle. I have been to Hillington Hospital to see these. I think that there are only three of these in the country at the present time. They are for babies of a week old or more. Two little pegs can be put in their ears. If the baby flinches at all, you know that it is all right; if it does not flinch, you know that it needs its ears attending to. This can be done straight away when the baby is about one week old. I have watched the babies; they do not mind a bit. It does not worry them. They do not cry.

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Children with average hearing loss (that is, of less than 65 decibels) have a very poor reading attitude. Children aged 16 have a reading ability of only an eight to 10 year-old. I agree with noble Lords that television is a great asset. In the West Country they have a little box for the old fashioned fingering. I want to get away from the old fashioned fingering and get new methods into teaching the deaf. Some of them are protesting. I have little battles with them. Some of these methods have been used in this field for over 100 years, but I do think that it is now time that we had new methods. The method that I am interested in is cued speech. I have had several demonstrations here to show noble Lords and other Members who are interested. It is easy to learn. The French have taken it up in a big way and even the Indians in Bombay have a very good school for this.
It is excellent that we are really thinking of something. This, regrettably, is done in America. It is regrettable from our point of view. They can get the money to carry it out. They do not have perhaps so many old institutions and they are very much keener than we are on this. There are to be—and I have seen them on videotape—spectacles which at the moment cost 850 dollars a pair. People will be able to read speech through their eyes. They would take a long time to explain, and I have not got many minutes, but there are little boxes on either side and little tapes and wires going up either side of the nose to the glasses. They reflect the speech of the person. They will be absolutely excellent. I only wish that I had a pair here. At the moment I cannot afford to buy a pair and, indeed, there are only the three or four pairs going. I hope to show the videotape again when we have our annual meeting here in about two or three months' time. I hope that anybody interested in this will come to see it.
In regard to the question of the cost for television, I gather that the difficulty is that it would cost over £1 million to do what people want. They say that it would need £400,000 to pay the people to work it: the engineers, clerks, et cetera. That does not seem a great deal when it could give enormous pleasure not only to the deaf people but to others who could look at the television at the same time. If it is worked out properly, you would not have to have two televisions. I hope that today we shall consider new methods and interest more people in the deaf.
I can tell what I think is a rather sad story, in a way. I belong to the Royal Commonwealth Society for the Blind. We get over £1 million a year through the voluntary organisation. We started one for the deaf and we had to close it down because we could not get enough money to keep it going. People are not sympathetic to the deaf, not because they do not wish to be, but there is nothing to show them the need. This is the trouble, I think. I hope that today's debate will highlight the great importance of this. As one or two people have said already, there will be many more deaf people later on, especially if they go on playing in those very noisy dance bands. Some of them are already having trouble with their ears, which is another point we have to remember.
I am very grateful to my noble friend Lord Harvington for introducing this debate. I am looking
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forward to talking to him nicely over the week-end in Jersey, as he is coming to a conference that I am having there. I should now like to ask the Minister whether he can give us a very favourable reply indeed.
7.44 p.m.
Lady Kinloss: My Lords, we are indeed indebted to the noble Lord, Lord Harvington, for introducing this debate today. It is time that this subject was ventilated, because, as others have already said, deafness, partial deafness or some loss of hearing is likely to afflict most of us sooner or later. There are many and various ways in which the hard of hearing can be helped today. The British Association for the Hard of Hearing is a registered charity. Through a network of 220 local clubs, social, eduational and community activities are organised and ideas, experiences and information are exchanged.
It is self-evident that people who have problems with hearing cannot read other people's minds, but with training and help they can read lips, and this or anything else which helps communication is obviously a help. It not only aids in overcoming a feeling of isolation—being cut off from their fellow human beings—but also helps in getting to know people. Mr. Peckford, who was senior social worker for the deaf in North Yorkshire, has said about lip-reading, and I quote:
"It seems to work for some people. It doesn't really matter what can be proven technically about a person's lip-reading ability before and after a set period of instruction. What's really important is the way an individual feels about it; if he feels he now has the confidence to enter into a conversation which previously he would have gone to considerable lengths to avoid".
Surely, this is important. Lip-reading tuition has long been recognised as an important part of rehabilitation for people who have become deaf in adult life. In many areas lip-reading classes are charged for at the LEA class rates: surely they should be free for these disabled people. They may not be so obviously at a disadvantage, such as the blind with a white stick or a guide dog, or those unfortunate enough to be in a wheelchair, but they can be in just as great a danger from traffic, to take one example.
In North Yorkshire, where I live, lip-reading with adult education classes is free, as it is regarded as rehabilitation rather than further education. They also have two social workers especially trained, who give signing classes, and they find that there is a growing demand for these classes. They go wherever they are needed, not only to community centres; they also visit families at home if the facilities are suitable, especially those with profoundly deaf children. They find that for the family continually trying to communicate with a deaf child is a great strain, but there is a desperate need for them to do so if the child is not to feel cut off and unloved, and this for a family is a very real disability. North Yorkshire social services find themselves in the unusual situation of needing two more social workers who have the additional training in communication skills. They have the money for one more, but cannot find even one with these special skills. I wonder whether the Minister can help.
Current research has shown that as many as one person in five may have a significant hearing loss in one ear. One of the causes, among others, is excessive noise. Gone are the days, on the whole, of commuters

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having to put up with transistor radios. In their place are stereo headphones. For as little as £10 the young can plug into a portable boogie box, as I understand they are called, and enter their own private world of harsh noise. Peaceful as the world may be for those such as parents who no longer have to put up with the noise, there is great hidden danger for the young person who uses these headphones.
There is evidence coming to light that the continuous high-level noise blasting straight into the ear can cause permanent damage to a person listening for a long time. Would the Government consider having a warning put on the advertisements for the sale of these headsets of the danger of possible future impairment of hearing for those who use them, such as the health warning they now have on packets of cigarettes? Not only can the noise cause impairment; it can just as much cause death if a young person crossing a road does not hear the ordinary traffic sounds. That also applies to those riding bicycles who wear them.
One area in which great advances have been made is the sub-titling of films by the television authorities. The All-Party Disablement Group, of which I am a member, were given details of the development plans for the sub-titling of programmes by the BBC, but only viewers with television sets capable of receiving Teletext can obtain these sub-titles. It was hoped that by the end of a five-year expansion programme the BBC would be sub-titling all pre-recorded programmes broadcast at peak hours on BBC 1 and BBC 2. They also hope to experiment with sub-titling football matches and other public events with the use of live interpreters as well as what is called palantype. I think the BBC are to be congratulated and this must be of great encouragement not only to the hard of hearing but to all of those who either teach or are involved in any way with the hard of hearing.
On Sunday night we had a very touching broadcast from Mr. Terry Scott; I trust that many saw it on BBC 1 at 6.35 p.m. He said, however, that a Teletext set cost £50 more a year to rent than ordinary television sets. In the discussion with the All-Party Disablement Group, which I have already mentioned, we were given to understand that it was only about £30. I wonder whether the Minister who is to reply could enlighten us on which is the more accurate statement. Perhaps the difference is between the hire of a colour television and a black and white one. I am sure that he will readily understand that the difference between £30 and £50 means a lot to pensioners and others on small incomes in that one is nearly double the other. Once again I express my gratitude to the noble Lord, Lord Harvington.
7.52 p.m.
Lord Wallace of Coslany: My Lords, I, too, would like to express my very grateful thanks, as I am sure the whole House does, to the noble Lord, Lord Harvington, for introducing this debate. He has been rather quiet lately, but I remember him as a very excellent Chairman of Ways and Means in another place. Perhaps he might give the Government some financial advice on finding the ways and means to provide some of the things that people have been asking for in this debate tonight.
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This is an important issue and it concerns a handicap which is not often discussed. There are many people suffering from deafness who are too embarrassed to admit it and consequently they are not receiving proper treatment. Mention has been made of discos. I am not a disco fan, but I think that some of the excessive noises in discos present a considerable danger to people's hearing. Some years ago in Sierra Leone we were given a farewell reception by the parliamentary people and that reception included a very loud band called the "Guinea Girls" from New Guinea. The ceiling was low and, frankly, apart from my ears being affected I felt my chest going in and out with the pressure of noise. I think that excessive noise is a considerable social danger as far as hearing is concerned.
I come to the point which was made by the noble Baroness, Lady Vickers, who is obviously involved with some of these very highly technical new developments. This subject was also mentioned by my noble friend Lord Prys-Davies. I am referring to the very important question of checking deafness at an early age. The Department of Health and Social Security, as the Minister indicated when he almost interrupted the noble Baroness, has a number of auditory response cradles on test at one or two NHS hospitals. I understand that the screening by this method began in 1978. It is, indeed, a revolutionary development in testing the hearing ability of a very young baby. Detection of any defect in hearing ability at an early age is of prime importance for the child's future care and education as well as of help to the parents, removing often extreme anxiety. The equipment is not too costly, and the Minister will probably confirm that it costs about £8,000 per piece of equipment. Compared to the beneficial results which can be achieved, it is money well spent. I wonder whether the Minister can give the House any further information on this project? How is it going on? Has the department approved it and, if so, although expenditure control is, I know, a problem, is it possible in any case that voluntary organisations such as hospital friends (with which I am very much involved) could assist in the provision of such equipment? Such a facility can be of vital importance.
I turn next to the older deaf children. So far as schoolchildren are concerned, even slight deafness can affect a child's ability to absorb a teacher's work. Teachers in the main are very alert in detecting signs of handicap such as deafness, partial or otherwise, and refer the child to the school doctor and thence on to the family GP for possible further treatment. In this field, however, a very serious problem arises when the child is found to be in need of training at a special school for the deaf. I understand that it is becoming a real problem to find places for children in such special schools due to economy measures and for other reasons. Unfortunately, I must admit that this is not a new problem, but it is one that must be handled with a sense of urgency. Special schools can achieve remarkable results and it would be a pity if such valuable work were undermined because of mere financial considerations.
I now come to the general problems of the partially deaf. In this connection I am raising points which have been submitted to me by a lady who is partially

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deaf—the very charming wife of my noble friend Lord Underhill. Lady Underhill has given me a number of points which she thinks I ought to raise—and who am I to say no? For those equipped with a deaf aid living in outlying areas some distance away from a hospital, there is a need for easier facilities for maintenance and other problems associated with the aid. On the whole our postal service is good, but to use it is not always convenient, especially if the deaf aid has to be surrendered for repair. I realise that it is a question of expense, but in fact every patient should have a spare aid, particularly in the circumstances I have just mentioned, but also in case a fault arises. People regularly wearing spectacles normally have their previous pair readily available and it is wise to make sure that they are readily available or indulge in a spare pair. But normally this is not the case with a deaf aid.
So what is the position? Is it possible for spare aids to be made available particularly for those people who have to travel and be away from home from time to time? There is also the need for uniformity in aid design—that is, on/off switches and volume control switches should always be in the same positions. My informant complains about the "Madescro" aid which is worn on clothing. It is claimed that this type of aid should be scrapped or issued only on request. It is also claimed that they are socially unacceptable, especially to sensitive people. Every body or clothing movement is amplified, reacting noisily to certain materials more than others. Has the department received any similar complaints? Another complaint is about the need for an ear mould that fixes more easily. Some aged or somewhat infirm people find it difficult to know how to insert it and this sort of confusion detracts from the benefit of an aid, as well as causing worry and frustration.
I now move away from the complaints submitted to me, and I should like to make some general points, many of which have already been mentioned. For example, there is the loop system which is vitally important and which is now being installed in quite a number of theatres, especially new civic theatres. This, of course, is a tremendous advance. But deaf aids are only part of the story, particularly for the person living alone or alone for part of the day. There has been mention of door bells and the need for a flashing device. Some people have them. Then there is the alarm clock problem and, again, the need for a flashing device or a vibratory system. Telephones are another hazard unless assisted by amplified hand sets, extra earpieces, extra bells, or today even visual telephones. Mention has been made of Teletext, which is proving a great boon to the deaf.
All this and other things must mean additional expense to obtain a reasonable everyday life for a deaf person, an expense which a great many are unable to afford. I must admit that many items are zero rated for VAT purposes and in some cases are free of VAT. But even so the question of expense remains. I should like to ask—and I am almost putting forward a begging bowl—whether there is any way in which assistance can be given on the financial side to help those people who are unable to afford some of these vital and necessary additional aids. Also, is it possible that such
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expense can qualify for tax relief, of course where a person is in a tax-paying position? Indeed, perhaps the end solution is a comprehensive handicap allowance.
Returning to the general subject of deaf aids, can the Minister say what is the present supply position and what measures are being taken to overcome any shortfall in supply? In the National Health Service there always seems to have been a supply shortage of deaf aids. I agree that some people can secure their own aids privately, but, private or public supply, no one with hearing problems should attempt to obtain an aid without previous medical tests or advice. I say this because I have always maintained it as regards spectacles and it also applies to deaf aids, because in the testing some other physical defect might be revealed. The choice of National Health Service or private is one for the individual, but it would be unwise, as with eyesight, as I have already said, to go ahead without medical advice or examination.
Finally—and I am anxious to give the Minister ample time for reply because I have a hint that he might have some goodies for us; I hope so—as with many other forms of disability, voluntary organisations play a vital part in service to the deaf. Nationally we have four main bodies generally known as the Panel of Four, all doing excellent work. Apart from these there are many other local organisations; and, like the noble Lady, Lady Kinloss, I should like to pay particular tribute to the British Association of the Hard of Hearing, run, as it is, by deaf people for themselves. Its admirable efforts in providing clubs and so on are to be welcomed and supported.
However, I am not sure what system of co-ordination exists between the DHSS and these bodies, if any. But there should be the closest possible link-up to assist not only those unfortunate people whose hearing is impaired, but also to educate and advise the fortunate majority of the general public on how they can deal with communication with the deaf and the social problems which necessarily exist today mainly due to ignorance and lack of understanding. Once again, I should like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Harvington, for raising this very vital subject—and it is about time.
8.4 p.m.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Security (Lord Trefgarne): My Lords, although there is a good deal of time left, I understand that it is the convention that even so the Minister does not try to speak for the 40-odd minutes or so that are left. I have a good deal of material in front of me and I hope, therefore, that your Lordships will forgive me if I go at a fair pace. Any point that I fail to take up now, I shall naturally try to deal with by correspondence at a later date.
I should like to begin by adding my thanks to those of the rest of your Lordships to my noble friend Lord Harvington for initiating this important debate on the plight of the partially deaf. It is difficult to get to grips with the problems of those whose hearing is impaired because they are by no means a homogeneous group. Hearing impairment, however serious, is an invisible handicap and does not often attract a great deal of sympathy from the general public. If this applies, as it does, to those people who are unfortunate enough to

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be born profoundly deaf, with all the difficulties they face through never having heard the human voice, it certainly applies to those who—late in life perhaps—lose their hearing to a greater or lesser extent.
To understand their difficulties requires an effort of sympathy and imagination which those of us who are more fortunate often seem unwilling to make. We are uncertain what to do when we meet someone whose hearing is impaired. We want, I hope, to do the right thing and to smooth the way as best we can, but we lack knowledge of the problem and we need guidance as to the best approach to make. But when we consider the difficulties of those whose hearing is impaired, the loneliness and sense of isolation which some elderly people in particular suffer, we must do something about their plight. If they cannot even hear a knock at the door, if they are unwilling even to seek help—and this is not rare—then we in the hearing world have a duty to do as much as we can to improve their quality of life and break down their social isolation.
I have indicated that there is a lack of public understanding of the problems and needs of partially deaf people. A survey conducted by the OPCS for the Department of Health and published in 1981 found that the general public were sensitive to the needs of deaf people, but they did not know how to deal with them and did not know how to communicate with them. For example, this communication barrier creates a particularly distressing obstacle in public places, where failure to hear an announcement over a loudspeaker or public address system can have serious consequences. The public need to know more about what it means to be deaf and how they can provide positive help in day-to-day contacts with deaf people. Sometimes all that is needed is a little time, patience and effort, but it also needs to be said that hearing-impaired people will often not admit to having a handicap and do not seek help.
As in so many aspects of social welfare, the voluntary organisations have shown the way in the field of hearing impairment. As a Government, we are determined to foster and support a strong and progressive voluntary movement, for the charities can often do what statutory organisations cannot. Great praise for their efforts over many years is due to both local and national organisations helping deaf people. Not surprisingly, given the fact that deaf people are, as I have said, not a homogeneous group, there are several organisations in this field, and they can be most effective, especially when they combine their efforts to mount projects which are of help to all deaf and hearing-impaired people. My honourable friend the Minister for the Disabled meets the four national organisations who comprise the so-called Panel of Four formally every year and there is constant contact between them and the various Government departments which are concerned with aspects of the problem of deafness.
The Panel of Four comprises the Royal National Institute for the Deaf, the British Association of the Hard of Hearing, the National Deaf Children's Society and the British Deaf Association. A shining example of the way in which they have worked together recently is the Sympathetic Hearing Scheme referred to by more than one noble Lord. This aims to make
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everyday activities like shopping simpler for everyone with hearing difficulties.
The scheme uses the "ear" symbol, which looks like this and which has been adopted by organisations for the deaf throughout the world. It is displayed wherever people with hearing difficulties can get special service. British Telecom have been putting it in telephone kiosks, where it indicates that the hand-set is fitted with an induction coil for hearing aid wearers. Shop owners display the symbol to show that they are prepared to help and encourage deaf and hard of hearing people to use their shop. Plastic cards displaying the symbol have been produced for people whose hearing is impaired. Members of the public are asked, when shown one, to give the holder a fair and sympathetic hearing. On the back of the cards are the basic appeals:
"Please speak clearly and not too quickly.
Turn towards the light and face me.
Cut out as much background noise as possible.
Don't be afraid to write things down."
The Sympathetic Hearing Scheme was promoted and financed jointly by my department and the Panel of Four. It was launched in 1982 by my honourable friend Mr. Rossi, and the department initially provided £20,000 towards the scheme. The purpose is to increase public awareness of the problems and needs of people with impaired hearing, and the scheme has had a successful start. For example, it has been taken up as part of the Duke of Edinburgh Award Scheme for the community service element of the Silver Medal.
The Panel of Four are now again combining to give a greater impetus to the scheme and are seeking more support from sponsors in order to advertise and develop it further. They have appealed once again to the department for financial help and I am pleased to announce here tonight that my honourable friend has decided to award a further grant totalling £200,000. This substantially increased sum is being given in the light of the initial success of the scheme. We are confident that the scheme will go a long way to help those who are hard of hearing and enable the general public to know how to help them in a useful and friendly way.
My noble friend Lord Harvington in his opening remarks suggested that the Government should introduce a special code for communicating with deaf people. I have already referred to the code which appears on the back of the Sympathetic Hearing Scheme card. This covers many of the points to which my noble friend referred. I feel that it might be as well to wait until we see how successful this has been before deciding whether the Government might introduce something further.
One of the most effective ways of helping is the provision of a hearing aid. Your Lordships will share my pleasure that in recent years it has been possible to improve considerably the range of hearing aids available under the National Health Service. No longer are people restricted to the old body-worn aid, although for those who prefer it and those for whom it is most suitable, this is still available. Now one can obtain, free of charge, the small and powerful models which are worn discreetly behind the ear. The range of hearing aids generally available under the National

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Health Service now meets the needs of all but a very few patients, and for these, local health authorities have the power to purchase a special model. I have to agree, however, that hearing aids are not selective enough. One or two noble Lords referred to these difficulties. But we need to know more about the fundamental mechanisms of the impaired ear before the opportunities offered by modern micro-electronics can be utilised.
There is, however, still need for improvement, as I have said. I myself have been very much aware of the inadequacies of present generation hearing aids as used by small children in particular, and I have myself asked the Medical Research Council to consider them in particular in the context of its forthcoming work on design requirements for hearing aids. But in this country we can now say with pride that we have a comprehensive hearing aid service for everyone. The noble Lord, Lord Winstanley, referred to the provision of hearing aids on a private basis, and the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, referred to that too. But, as I said earlier, local health authorities are empowered to buy whatever special hearing aid may be necessary and available, without necessarily having to draw upon one of the aids more generally available through the National Health Service.
Of course, improving the range of hearing aids available under the NHS is important, but it is important too that patients should be enabled to make the best use of their aids, and that those who have special difficulties in adjusting to their impairment should be given further help. Recognising the importance of follow-up care, my department has provided central funds in order to set up the new profession of hearing therapists. They are mainly concerned with the rehabilitation of adults suffering from acquired deafness. There are now nearly 30 in post in England and a further ten commenced training in September 1982. This was particularly on the mind of the noble Lord, Lord Prys-Davies, when he was speaking earlier.
The hearing therapists' scheme has been a pilot scheme which is now being examined to see how effective both the training and the service provided are. Once we have received the results of the research we shall decide whether, and how, the scheme should be extended. But no matter what the extent of hearing loss, it is vitally important to discover it as soon as possible. The department emphasises the need to screen children at an early age so that action can be taken quickly to diagnose, assess and treat any child in whom a hearing loss is suspected. Screening of children at 8 months, 3 years and at school entry is continuing. Its effectiveness is being examined, especially that done by health visitors. I can assure your Lordships that training in such screening is given to health visitors. We are examining this in training to ensure that the highest standards are maintained. That too was on the mind of the noble Lord, Lord Prys-Davies.
Auditory screening tests on tiny babies are difficult to perform and are not always effective. Now I come to the interest of my noble friend Lady Vickers. Recently, however, there has been a most interesting development in this field, and my noble friend referred
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to it during her speech. With the help of Government funds a device has been developed which can test the hearing of newly-born babies. That is called the Linco-Bennet Auditory Response Cradle, which uses a computer to analyse the baby's response to sounds delivered automatically. The cradle provides an objective test. It should improve coverage, since testing would be conducted in the maternity unit before the mother returns home with her baby.
I visited a hospital recently where research is being carried out on the cradle—and I think my noble friend said that she had been there too—and I was able to announce on the occasion of my visit that the Government are purchasing eight more cradles to enable the evaluation programme to be speeded up. The noble Lord, Lord Wallace, asked whether even greater acquisition of cradles could not be moved forward. We are still in the stage of evaluating this cradle and it might be wrong to encourage leagues of friends, for example, to acquire great numbers of these devices before the evaluation is complete. However, I should say that the initial results of the evaluation are very encouraging indeed.
One of the most important issues affecting hearing-impaired children is their education, and I must say something about this. Education is central to their development and has a great bearing on the kind and quality of life they will lead as adults. With the implementation of the 1981 Education Act on 1st April the educational category "partially hearing" will disappear, together with the other nine statutory categories of handicap into which children needing special educational treatment are currently divided. The Act, of course, follows the concept recommended by the Warnock Committee of making, where necessary, a multi-professional assessment of the child's educational needs as a whole rather than concentrating on his specific disability.
The Act, as a Bill, was given considerable time in your Lordships' House, and I shall not, therefore, dwell on the benefits which it will bring to all children with special needs. Under its provisions the hearing-impaired child will be educated in ordinary schools with his hearing contemporaries where that is the right thing to do in his particular case. But special schools, or units, equipped to deal with the hearing-impaired, will continue to be available for those children who need them. The disappearance of the "partially hearing" label opens the way to a broad, more flexible approach to educating these children. It does not imply in any sense a less clear recognition of their need for help or any impoverishment of the provision we are making for them.
For children suffering from any significant loss of hearing early identification is critical, and the sooner intervention and education begins the greater will be the likelihood of positive and lasting benefit. The Act opens the way for educational arrangements to be made without delay wherever they are required. It also requires health authorities to inform local education authorities of children under five who come to their notice and who seem to have special educational needs, thereby providing a framework within which early identification and action are encouraged.

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My Lords, may I just turn now to a few of the points made during the course of the debate this evening. The noble Lord, Lord Prys-Davies, in his speech referred to the delays at hearing-aid centres. Temporary factors have indeed created some difficulties for hearing-aid services throughout the country, and where there have been additional local problems the backlog of work in some cases has become rather large. Part of the problem has been the shortage of trained staff to take audiological measurements and to fit hearing aids. However, of greater importance has been the extension of the range of aids available through the centres, especially the higher power models, which has created additional demand. I am informed that these problems are past their peaks, and it is now agreed that steady improvement can be achieved in the health authorities concerned. The Government prefer to leave it to the health authorities to manage their resources according to local needs and priorities.
The noble Lords, Lord Prys-Davies and Lord Winstanley, referred to the occupational deafness scheme. Occupational deafness was first included in the schedule of prescribed industrial diseases in 1974, but cover was, however, limited to certain very noisy occupations mainly in the shipbuilding and metal-working industries, and to people who were substantially disabled by deafness.
More recently, in November 1982, a further report by the council concluded that, although some constraints will have to be maintained, there is scope for widening the range of occupations still further and easing the restrictions imposed by the 20 years' and 12 months' rule. The council has therefore recommended that occupational coverage should be extended to include work with high-speed woodworking machinery and with chain saws, and people working in the immediate vicinity of most prescribed processes. The council has also recommended that the 20 years' rule should be reduced to a minimum requirement of 10 years' employment in one or more prescribed occupations, and that claims should be permitted up to five years after leaving any prescribed occupation, instead of 12 months, as at present. Those recommendations are all under consideration. I am afraid that I cannot tonight announce any Government decision on them, but I hope that an announcement will be possible before long.
The noble Baroness, Lady Nicol, asked me about the Advisory Committee on Services for Hearing Impaired People. The Advisory Committee—ACSHIP, as it is called—was set up in 1974 to advise the Secretary of State for Social Services on aspects of health and personal social services for the hearing impaired. It did not address itself to technical aspects of hearing aids or audiological equipment, which were the subject of separate advisory committees—one called the Advisory Committee on Audiological Equipment. ACSHIP set up five committees, which reported on specific topics and produced recommendations for the statutory authorities and for practitioners. ACSHIP was wound up in 1980, when it had completed its final report on services for hearing impaired children. Ministers now receive advice from medical and other professional advisers within the department, who keep in contact with professionals in the field, including service members of ACSHIP.
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Several noble Lords mentioned aids such as visual doorbells, inductive loops, and similar gadgets. These are listed and described in a report produced by my department, and perhaps I may place a copy of the report in the Library of your Lordships' House.
The noble Lord, Lord Winstanley, and my noble friend Lady Vickers referred to research into hearing impairment. On the subject of research, let me first say that I was very heartened to learn that a recent survey of research projects in the United Kingdom relating to hearing and speech and their disorders, identified no fewer than 395 separate projects current in 1982. This is a very encouraging level of research activity.
The noble Lord, Lord Winstanley, asked in particular about research into prevention of hearing disability and preservation of hearing. Much hearing loss is of course the consequence of ageing, but work continues on studying identifiable causes of deafness, with a view to their elimination. Several noble Lords referred to the difficulties in discos, and I should not be surprised if in the fullness of time that noise turns out to be a cause of deafness in later life.
The noble Lady, Lady Kinloss, asked me about the difference between prices for ordinary and Teletext television sets. I am sorry that I do not have in front of me information about that, but perhaps I may look into it and write to the noble Lady.
The noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Coslany, referred to the possibility of supplying spare hearing aids to hearing impaired people. These are made available in a very limited category of cases—for example, to those people with additional visual handicaps—but it would be extraordinarily expensive to extend that provision to people using hearing aids generally, and I fear that I cannot give an undertaking that we can offer any real prospect of doing that.
Time marches on. I do not think that I have spoken for quite so long as the board indicates, but I hope that what I have said will serve to underline the Government's concern for the plight of those whom we have been discussing this evening. Much has been done to ease their problems by both statutory and voluntary services, but I am sure that more could be done to improve their quality of life still further. However, I hope that the points that I have sought to make tonight, not least the announcement that I was able to make just now, will serve to convince your Lordships that the present Government—indeed, like their predecessors—care for these people and are making important and improved provision for their welfare.
Lord Harvington: My Lords, I think that it would be the wish of your Lordships if I were to express your feelings on the debate that we have had—it has been most interesting—as well as our gratitude to the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, for dealing so fully with the points we have made. But perhaps above all I should thank him for hard cash, because it is not very often that a debate such as this ever results in any Government announcing hard cash. Although I have been in one or other of these places for 45 years, I have never before seen it happen quite like that. So, on behalf of us all, I thank the noble Lord, and following upon that, I beg leave to withdraw the Motion.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

Criminal Trespass on Residential Premises Bill [H.L.]
8.25 p.m.
The Earl of Onslow: My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time. For several centuries notices have been placed outside private buildings threatening, with gay abandon, to prosecute trespassers. All lawyers, but not always the general public, knew that that was all bluff. Trespass is a civil tort, and damage has to be proved. Sometimes it is possible to obtain injunctions against individuals to stop a trespass, but it is not possible for them to be fined or imprisoned for behaving in the kind of anti-social way that Mr. Fagan adopted last year. The self-same Mr. Fagan blew the gaff: he showed to all and sundry who read the press or watched television that even the most undesirable form of trespass can be committed with impunity.
Article 601 of the California Penal Code—the penal code of another common law country, and a country which in some ways has much stronger traditions of constitutional protection of the individual than do we—states:
"… a Trespasser entering or occupying property or structures without the consent of the owner, his agent or person in lawful possession thereof shall be guilty of an offence".
Article 601.5 goes further. It states:
"…anyone who enters or remains in any non-commercial dwelling house or apartment or other such place without consent"—
et cetera—
"shall be guilty of an offence".
I am certainly not advocating the breadth of the Californian law, even though California has not experienced the difficulties postulated by the Home Office consultation paper, to which I shall refer later.
I want to emphasise that my Bill applies only to private residences or private rooms in other dwellings. It does not apply to agricultural land, industrial, or business premises. It is designed to close what is, after all, only a very narrow gap in the law. I think that it is important to show why my Bill is necessary. To do so, I give two examples of really very unpleasant behaviour in my own neighbourhood, and I believe such behaviour to be not uncommon elsewhere. A man, well known to the police, prowls around and looks for an open window, through which he climbs, without using force. He enters a bedroom and by just standing there wakes up the woman or couple. Needless to say, all hell then breaks loose. The intruder flees; the police are called, and invariably he is ambushed on the way home. He immediately admits what he has done, but so far he has not been convicted, as in law all that he has done is to trespass, however undesirably.
The village where I live would, by some people, be called an outer metropolitan suburb. In one of its small housing estates, peopled by executives and professionals, a trespasser has been visiting. The houses are of a type which could be appropriately let to foreign diplomats. The reason that I refer to foreign diplomats is that simple trespass on the premises of foreign embassies is already an offence under Section 9 of the Criminal Law Act 1977. Therefore think, my Lords, of the feelings of those executives or other
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people if, after he has pranced through their houses, the trespasser is prosecuted for simple trespass in the garden of their putative foreign neighbour. I would suggest that there their sentiments of outrage and sense of injustice would be totally understandable.
This morning I had a meeting with a very senior Surrey police officer, in order to ask him what would be the views of his police force. I believe that his views are of interest to your Lordships and, with his consent I shall pass them on to you. He feels that the Bill would be useful for the following reasons. Firstly, in the first of the cases I mentioned—in other words, that of the prowler who goes into the bedroom—the public feel that the intruder has committed, or ought to have committed, a criminal offence. Thus, when the police are found to be powerless it harms the police/public relations. The second reason is an even better one. It is that, if a potential thief climbs through the window of a house without breaking or entering, and is disturbed or found before he has stolen anything and if he has no outward evidence such as tools to commit a burglary (or whatever may be the technical term when an offence is committed), he may say, "All I was doing was curiously trespassing and looking around". Now it is known much more widely, as I said earlier, that trespass is not a criminal offence, and that man will get off.
He will either get off or, what is much more dangerous, a police officer knowing that the man is a criminal (because he could know these things) may be tempted to bend the law and the evidence. If it is a simple case for this sort of person to be convicted of an offence, then I would suggest it makes the law clearer and it removes a temptation which we would not like to be there.
When my noble friend Lord Elton made a statement on Royal security in this House last July, the need to legislate was put to him by my noble friend Lord Renton and by me, and probably also by other noble Lords. My noble friend and I even tried to amend the Criminal Justice Bill, which was then going through Parliament. Unfortunately, we were told that our amendment was outside the Long Title. Since this Bill has been announced, I have had a certain amount of correspondence and a certain amount of press comment which has been very favourable. In August, my noble friend Lord Renton and I discussed the matter and he sent to the Ministers concerned a simple draft Bill which would have treated trespass in people's homes in the same way as Section 9 of the 1977 Act treats trespass in foreign embassies.
On October 14th, Mr. Mayhew wrote saying that the Government's own review of the law was not quite complete, and we were asked to have patience. As there was no mention of it in the gracious Speech, we saw him on 15th November to stress the urgency, in our view, of legislative action. We were again asked to be patient pending the issue of the consultation document. Again, being good, loyal Conservatives, we did exactly as our Minister asked us. Meanwhile, in December, a summary of 474 of the Conservative's Party's discussion groups on "Crime and the Community" stated:
"Quite a number of groups was horrified to learn that entering homes uninvited was not considered an offence as such and said that the law should be changed".

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The Home Office consultative document, published eventually at the beginning of February, acknowledges public concern in its opening pages and most specifically in paragraph 16, which says:
"the ordinary citizen who finds an intruder in his home would rather involve invoke the protection of the Criminal Law and the assistance of the police than involve himself in a physical struggle or litigation".
That is an observation of the utmost common sense and reasonableness. The document sets out the present state of the law where it applies entry into people's homes, together with options and difficulties to which I will refer later. The document asks for comments by 3rd May and these, I presume, will be from such bodies as the Magistrates' Association, the chief constables, the National Council for Civil Liberties and other interested parties, as well as the general public.
Why then, my Lords, do I move the Second Reading of this Bill today? The answer is twofold. First, it is inconceivable that the consultation process should be completed without hearing your Lordships' views; and this Bill provides an opportunity. Secondly, if the Bill is acceptable in principle to your Lordships, to the Government and to the rest of us, we should have until Committee stage (I hope as soon after 3rd May as reasonable) to consider any improvements in detail or in drafting which the Government consider necessary in the light of the debate or any comments received meanwhile by the Home Office. Therefore nothing will be lost and much could be gained by the introductin of this Bill. If we get it right in this House, it would not need much encouragement from the Government or much time for it to pass quickly through another place. Sometimes that happens.
I now turn to the Bill. It has the merit of being short, in plain English, containing no cross-references to previous legislation. The method used in it is to take Section 9 of the Criminal Law Act 1977 and apply it to residential premises, adding a requirement that the prosecution must prove that trespass caused, or was likely to cause, "fear, distress, harrassment or serious annoyance", to anyone in lawful occupation of residential premises. It is the qualification part of that clause which is so important. This is the very filter which meshes out the small boys and the cricket balls, et cetera, to which the consultation document refers. It filters out the innocent. All the prosecution has to prove in the case of a foreign embassy is that the accused knew it was an embassy or building occupied by foreign diplomats covered by diplomatic immunity.
In my Bill, the prosecution also has to show that fear, et cetera, has been caused or is likely to be caused before a trespasser is guilty of an offence in a private house. I think it is certain that magistrates would have no difficulty in applying this part to ordinary life. After all, he who was so beloved of the 19th century judges, the "man on the Clapham omnibus" would, I suggest, have no difficulty at all. Criminal law requires value judgments to be made and the application of objective tests.
As to the provisions of the Bill, it starts with an interpretation clause, which says in subsection (2):
"the purpose of this Act is to protect people in their homes or other living quarters from intrusion".
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Then it defines "residential premises" in detail and, in doing so, it attempts to cover the many different circumstances in which people live and should have their privacy protected. There are several twilight areas; for example, the common parts of blocks of flats. These are excluded by Clause 1(3)(b). The parts of stately homes to which the public are admitted are dealt with in paragraph (c).
It may be necessary to amend the Bill at Committee stage to exclude fire escapes from the common parts but to include mobile homes among the types of private residence. I can think of nobody having any possible reason for being on a fire escape other than nefarious ones unless the house is burning. Lest anyone should think that the outdoor surroundings of residential premises are too widely described in paragraph (d), I must point out that no offence is committed unless fear, or distress and so on is caused or is likely to be caused. That will not happen unless the trespasser is close enough to the house. With that in mind, your Lordships will realise that, in practice, paragraph (d) would not give rise to any anxiety that the definition is too far reaching. There is no risk of a child whose ball goes over a garden wall committing an offence when going to retrieve it.
As for the example, given in paragraph 34 of the consultation document, of someone who passes through a neighbour's garden to gain access to his own allotment or land, no offence will be committed unless the person concerned causes the sort of trouble defined in Clause 2.
Clause 2 is the main clause of the Bill. It creates the offence and is, I trust, self-explanatory. It makes it clear that it is punishable only on summary conviction by a magistrate. The maximum sentence is 6 months imprisonment or a fine of £.1,000 or both. This is the same as in Sections 6, 7 and 9 of the Criminal Law Act 1977. In all maximum sentences, it is intended to cover the worst types of case; all other cases will involve the lower sentences. It is extremely rare for any maximum sentence to be passed.
Clause 3 provides the defence of lawful justification or a reasonable excuse for being on the premises, a necessary precaution to prevent people from being convicted when they have an innocent explanation of what they were doing. The belief by a person entering that he had a genuine right of entry would thus be a sound defence.
Clauses 4 and 5 give the same powers of entry and search as have been given to the police and those helping them by the Act since 1977. Clause 8 makes it clear that the Act applies only to England and Wales. We hope that it may inspire my noble friend the Lord Advocate, whom we are delighted to know will be speaking in the debate, to propose something similar for Scotland.
An Englishman's home is his castle, but the law so far in a minor extent has left a hole in its ramparts. With your Lordships help we can enable that Englishman to enjoy the privacy of his home, be it large or small, permanent of temporary, a palace or a council house, a nurses' bedroom or rooms in college. It would be very wrong to give protection only to palaces or Prime Minister's residences. Protection

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must be for all. Castles must not be selective. Castles must be for all.
My noble friend, Lord Renton, who has drafted this Bill tells me that I should claim credit for it, for its merits, and he will answer for its defects in detail. He is far too over-generous. It is his Bill as well as mine, for which I thank him very much. My Lords, I beg to move.
Moved, That the Bill be now read a second time.—[The Earl of Onslow.]
8.42 p.m.
Lord Mishcon: My Lords, if one Michael Fagan had not most wrongfully intruded into Buckingham Palace in June and July last year, I wonder whether this Bill would be before your Lordships today, with an invitation that it should be given a Second Reading. But it is absolutely true that when that event occurred the public was aghast and worried. Indeed, it came as a great surprise to many people, including some lawyers, that no criminal offence had been committed when somebody had wrongfully trespassed into a residence unless the intent of the entry was to commit a criminal offence or unless in some way it was associated with the perpetration of a criminal offence or an act of some violence. I can well understand, therefore, why this House and the nation at large should be very much interested in the matters that are being debated this evening.
The Home Secretary to his great credit, and moving with a speed to which the noble Earl did not pay sufficient homage as a loyal member of the Conservative Party, set up a consultative process with the help of the Lord Chancellor and the Attorney-General. What then transpired was that a very useful, interesting and clear document, written in admirable English (which is not always the virtue of documents which issue from Government departments) reached the public only last month, entitled Trespass on Residential Premises. That document deals with the various difficulties that face anyone who wishes to deal with an innovation in our law, as it would be, namely, to make trespass of the kind defined in this Bill an offence.
This trespass is not associated with the intent of committing a criminal offence or violence, but merely deals with a trespass which has an effect, or is likely to have an effect—to quote the exact words of the Bill:
"causes or is likely to cause fear, distress, harassment or serious annoyance".
Comments were invited from the public and from all interested bodies that the noble Earl mentioned. He mentioned the Magistrates' Association, the chief constables; I am sure he had in mind also such distinguished bodies as the Bar Council and the Law Society. He invited those comments to be received by 3rd May this year.
If I may say so with great respect on behalf of the Opposition, having appreciated, as I did, the lucid and powerful speech made by the noble Earl, I can well understand that there was a desire to have the views of this House. I should have most respectfully suggested that those views are much better obtained if one is
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without the benefit of all the comments that will be made by various sections of the community. They would be much better obtained under the procedure of the House, either by putting down an Unstarred Question or by taking that glorious gamble, open to all Members of your Lordships' House, of participating in the ballot for short debates such as we have had this afternoon and this evening. I most respectfully query the wisdom of putting something before your Lordships for a general decision on principle, which is the purpose of a Second Reading of a Bill of this nature, when your Lordships have not had the benefit of the observations upon this discussion document.
Your Lordships may well have noticed the possibly significant absence of any Law Lord in the Chamber tonight and certainly the absence of any Law Lord on the speakers' list, with the exception of the distinguished lawyer, the Lord Advocate, whose address we shall hear, I have no doubt, at the end of this debate. I should be very surprised if he did not take the view that this is a rather premature stage at which your Lordships should be asked to come to a decision.
As this is a Second Reading, I promise I shall not enter into any point of detail. I shall not even tempt your Lordships to smile with me at the description of residential premises as being,
"research establishments, Inns of Court, or any other residential premises of a similar character".
Many of us work in the Inns of Court and do not necessarily regard them as principally residential premises. That would not be the normal lot of a research establishment, either. But I shall not go on to Committee points. I should like to deal (very shortly I promise your Lordships) with matters of general principle.
One thing the document does say in its introduction—the noble Earl could not be expected to quote extensively from it, but he did not include this quotation, although I know that that was not deliberate—is this:
"The Government believes that any extension of the criminal law in this area would represent an important development which ought not to be undertaken without the fullest possible consideration".
What your Lordships are invited to do, whether this Bill be amended or not, is to say that you are going to approve of an addition to our criminal law which has not been deemed necessary for century after century and which certainly did not follow upon the Royal Commission's report of 1976, which culminated in the Criminal Law Act 1977 to which the noble Earl referred. It may be a right thing to do, but is it the right thing to pass that as a matter of principle on Second Reading, before all the views have been accumulated and considered by your Lordships on this very discussion document to which I have referred?
The document itself, too, sets out three principles to be observed before embarking upon the dangerous act of adding to the criminal law and adding to imprisonable offences, especially at this time. This discussion document raises three vital criteria which should be looked at before one creates a new criminal offence. The first is,
"that the criminal law should be used to prohibit or to contain only that behaviour which is seen as meriting society's explicit disapproval to the extent of criminal sanctions to deter people from it and to punish those who are not deterred"—
Lord Foot: My Lords, would the noble Lord tell us the paragraph from which he is quoting, because I want to follow it?
Lord Mishcon: My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Lord for asking me to do that. I am reading from page 7, paragraphs 18, 19 and 20. The document continues:
"A second principle is that in general criminal sanctions should be reserved for dealing with Undesirable behaviour for which other, less drastic, measures of control would be ineffective, impracticable or insuffcient".
The third and final principle, to which the document calls very special attention, is:
"It is important that a new offence should be enforceable. Respect for and compliance with the criminal law as a whole depend on its being enforced".
I pause there for a moment, in no way yet attacking the principle of this Bill, but merely raising a big question mark as to whether we are yet able to deal with a Second Reading. Can your Lordships imagine the number of private prosecutions that there could be, with people taking others to court for what they regard as wrongful intrusion, and the defendant then being made to discharge the onus placed upon him under this Bill—because he will have to appear before a court—of proving before a court that, in his view, he was there for good reason, and that his action was justifiable? All of us lawyers know that there are enough disputes brought before the court in regard to title, or by people who have orders for possession made against them in the court, and who feel entitled to go back to the landlord and tell him that he is being merciless and ought to extend the 28 days which have been given by the court for possession, and so on.
There is a second consideration. We were all appalled by what happened in the Fagan incident—appalled because of the lack of security and appalled because, from our point of view, this was, as it were, striking at the heart of the nation, with the embarrassment and—but for her courageous disposition—the fear that there might have been installed in the Monarch by an incident of that kind. The noble Earl referred to the fact that some of us are wondering whether or not it would be sensible—I am not expressing a definite view—to add to the list mentioned in the Criminal Law Act 1977 and put the Royal residences, and possibly some other establishments, on exactly the same basis as diplomatic premises, and make it an offence to trespass upon those premises.
It is absolutely true that there is an argument against that, but you would not need this Bill for that. The argument against it, if I may take the noble Earl's phrase, which he did not originate—as he will be the first to admit—is that every Englishman's home is his castle. It may be that the answer to this is that every Englishman is entitled to regard his home as being Windsor Castle, with exactly the same privileges. That may be the answer, but you cannot just except certain premises. That is a matter that must be carefully considered, after all the comments have been received on this discussion document.
I freely say to your Lordships, on behalf of the Opposition, that my noble friends and I have not made up our minds on these issues, and we shall not do so
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until we hear what the public, the institutes, the organisations, the police and everybody else have to say. I am not going to accept the verdict of the Deputy Chief Constable of Sussex—for whom I have admiration, even though I do not have the privilege of knowing him—as the view of the police.
So I come to my conclusion. I believe that the noble Earl, Lord Onslow, and the noble Lord, Lord Renton, are to be thanked for allowing us to express a view tonight. It must be a provisional view; I do not think it can be a view on principle. From the Benches where I sit, I shall certainly not ask this House to divide on the Second Reading. But after what I have said, I most respectfully suggest to the noble Earl and the noble Lord that it might be very wise—if I may say this most humbly—not to put to the House the Motion for a Second Reading tonight, but to withdraw the Bill. The First Reading has already been passed and there is no reason why the Second Reading, if they want it, should not take place at another date after 3rd May, or after the Government have had time, and after we have all had time, to consider what is really involved in an addition to our criminal law which may, or may not, be necessary.
8.58 p.m.
Lord Foot: My Lords, about one matter there is no doubt. Everybody who listens to this debate and who takes part it in will respect the motives that have prompted the noble Earl, Lord Onslow, and the noble Lord, Lord Renton, to promote this Bill. Secondly, I am at a very considerable disadvantage in speaking immediately after the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon. It is hazardous at any time to follow him, but it is particularly hazardous when we are discussing a matter of legal importance, and he has managed to say practically everything that I was intending to say. Therefore, my speech will be, very largely, simply a matter of underlining very briefly some of the points which he has already made.
The first of them is the fact that this Bill is being brought forward in bland disregard of the advice and the warning which was quoted by the noble Lord from the introduction to the consultative paper. The Government there emphasised the importance, as they saw it—and I entirely agree with that—of there being the fullest possible consultation with everybody concerned before any decision was made. By bringing the Bill forward before the consultation process is complete—one only has to wait until the beginning of May for the full returns—the noble Earl has pre-empted the issue.
As the consultation document makes clear, there are three conceivable options. One is the option provided for by the Bill. Another option would be to introduce a law making it a criminal offence to trespass upon certain limited, vulnerable and important properties, in the same manner as the 1977 Act makes it an offence to trespass upon a diplomatic mission. The third option is to do nothing at all but to leave the law as it is and as it has been for the last many centuries. I cannot accept that bringing the Bill forward at this time enables this House to express a general view upon the various options, because the Bill goes for one option only and does not, therefore, provide us with a satisfactory form in which to discuss

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all the issues which are here involved.
The second reason for my doubt and objection to the Bill is that it creates a new criminal offence, one which has never been known before. As the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, rightly said, surely it is very odd that at this time, of all times, when the general feeling of the informed public is that it is desirable to reduce the number of criminal offences and the number of offences which put people into gaol, we should be confronted with a Bill which is designed to extend the area of the criminal law. I would suggest that such an extension of the criminal law could be justified only if it could be shown beyond doubt that here there was some grave social evil which is not caught by the present law. Until we know the result of the consultations I do not believe that there is any evidence to show that there is such a grave social evil.
My third objection, again like that of the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, is what I might call the provenance of the Bill. Surely it is perfectly true that nobody would ever have thought of introducing a Bill of this kind had it not been for the Fagan incident in the summer of last year. That event, which seemed almost incredible to the public at the time, was of so unusual and exceptional a nature as never to be repeated. Supposing that this Bill had been the law of the land before Mr. Fagan intruded into the Palace, does anybody believe that he would have been deterred and that the Queen would have been protected because a law had been passed to this effect? It is strange, is it not, that this Bill, which owes its existence to the Fagan incident, would have been ineffective in averting the mischief that was done on that occasion. It was an occasion never likely to be repeated. It would never have happend at all if the security arrangements at the Palace had not been grossly deficient. We are now asked to assent to a major change in the law. The incident of last summer is said to be justification for making a sweeping change to the criminal law of this land as it has been for so many years past.
The other defect of the Bill, it seems to me, is that it ignores the fact that the question of trespass and whether trespass on residential property should or should not be a criminal matter was fully considered by the Law Commission in 1976. The Criminal Law Act 1977 put into effect at that time the recommendations of the Law Commission. When the Law Commission were considering these matters they provided that there should be criminal sanctions in one or two very strictly limited areas. One of them was to enable a displaced householder to recover his property from a squatter. Another made it a criminal offence to trespass upon a diplomatic mission.
What was the criterion which the Law Commission thought fit to apply when they were considering making exceptions to what had always been the law—that trespass upon private property should be a civil, not a criminal matter? The criterion which they adopted is set out at paragraph 9 of the consultation paper. Perhaps I may read the relevant words.
"Important exceptions to the general rule that the criminal law does not involve itself in disputes over possession of property were created by the 1977 Act. The exceptions were made because of the degree of hardship which would arise if an immediate action could not be taken to restore to a displaced occupier the use of his living accommodation".
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These are the words to which I draw your Lordships' particular attention:
"The general principle reflected in this legislation, therefore, is the need to protect the most pressing and urgent interests of people who are severely affected by the actions of others".
We have no evidence to suggest that this proposed law is necessary in order to meet that criterion. I will not pursue the matter further.
I believe, with all respect, that the authors of this Bill are mistaken in bringing it before the House at this stage. I hope that they will accede to the very forceful argument of the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, that the Bill ought, even at this stage, to be withdrawn. If the authors had held their hand, and then after the completion of consultations had initiated a debate in your Lordships' House on the whole issue raised by the consultation paper, that would have been a very valuable service. As it is, they have jumped the gun, and I am afraid that they have jumped the gun to little purpose.
9.9 p.m.
Lord Campbell of Alloway: My Lords, I would wish to associate myself, without any qualification whatsoever, with everything that has been said by the noble Lords, Lord Mishcon and Lord Foot, including the tribute to the sincerity and motives on the part of my noble friends Lord Onslow and Lord Renton. If the concept of this Bill is truly reflected in the purpose clause—that is, to protect people in their homes or other living quarters from intrusion—the scope of this Bill extends far beyond the purpose clause. It extends to premises in which no one resides—
Lord Renton: No, my Lords.
Lord Campbell of Alloway: My noble friend, from a sedentary position, says, No.
Lord Renton: My Lords, as my noble friend has given way, I must point out to him that if he reads carefully the definition of "residential premises", he will find that they are essentially premises in which people do reside; and that in what my noble friend Lord Onslow calls the "twilight areas", the Bill says that they should not be regarded as residential premises.
Lord Campbell of Alloway: My Lords, I gave way to my noble friend because I had not, even at that stage, begun to develop the reason for what I had said to your Lordships. I repeat—and I shall explain and hope to satisfy your Lordships—that the scope of this Bill extends to premises in which no one ever resides; gardens, yards, lawns, drives, and so on and so forth, but I shall come to that point later.
The Bill also does not exclude accidental trespass. Whatever my noble friend Lord Onslow may have said, the Bill does not do so. That is an aspect, with the difficulties involved, to which paragraph 25 of the consultative document refers. This extension of incidence beyond the ambit of the purpose clause gives rise to serious reservations on questions of principle, to which it is proper to draw your Lordships' attention on Second Reading. These are reservations, the rectitude of which—
The Earl of Onslow: My Lords, if my noble friend will give way, he says that accidental trespass is not excluded or is not a defence. I would have thought that the words,
"or reasonable excuse for being on the residential premises"
meant that if a man says, "I am very sorry, but I lost my way on my way to see somebody", then any reasonable magistrate will regard that as being a perfectly valid and reasonable excuse.
Lord Campbell of Alloway: My Lords, I was trying to move away from the details of this Bill's drafting owing to the embarrassing position in which I find myself vis-à-vis my noble friend Lord Renton. But as I am compelled to deal with it, I shall stand my ground and make good my submissions.
The rectitude of some of these matters is dealt with in paragraph 3 of the consultative document. The reservations which I have expressed relate to the creation of an offence established by proof of subjective criteria as a matter of causation, where the defence of lawful justification or of reasonable excuse does not, in terms, apply to unintentional trespass. It is not, with respect, as was stated by my noble friend Lord Onslow, an objective test; it is a subjective test. We are not, as was stated by my noble friend Lord Onslow, concerned with the man on the Clapham omnibus. That is only relevant to civil litigation; we are concerned with criminal litigation. Furthermore, these criteria, which are subjective, oblige the magistrates to consider what causes, and what is likely to cause but does not cause, any of the four statutory emotions. My Lords, in context with this Bill, a somewhat refined and esoteric exercise.
Of course, there are precedents in the law for the use of "likely to cause" in other statutes, as the broad equivalent of "calculated", in circumstances which are always designed to exclude intention as a constituent element of the offence. But why exclude intention? In my submission, it is not appropriate to eviscerate intention; it ought to be a constituent element of this offence. Why? Because it affords the only effective safeguard against injustice by accidental trespass.
This is not just a case of the estranged husband trudging up the driveway of his father-in-law's house to seek a reconciliation with a reluctant wife, against the express wish of the father-in-law, or the tramp cooking his breakfast in the stable yard without lawful justification or reasonable excuse. Suppose the owner or occupier of a house goes on a business trip, leaving his servant in charge, and he says to the servant, "Admit no one". The servant admits his brother-in-law, who happens to be a drink-sodden ex-pugilist addicted to drugs. The owner returns unexpectedly and is confronted by the brother-in-law and suffers one of the statutory emotions, say fear. Is there lawful excuse, reasonable excuse, lawful justification?
Suppose a visitor to some stately home unwittingly strays into some part of the house or the garden—I emphasise garden because under paragraph (d) that is included—which exceeds the area of his authority or his invitation, and so causes distress or serious annoyance to some aged aunt who is at work on her tapestry. The offence is committed. Suppose, for example, the aged aunt is so engrossed in her tapestry that she fails to notice the intrusion and so in fact is
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caused no distress or annoyance—but, of course, if she had noticed she would have been caused, or would be likely to have been caused, such emotion—and the intrusion was noticed by some guide, who suffered none of the statutory emotions, nor was likely to, who reported it to the owner.
I mention these matters not in order to be disrespectful in any sense to those who are concerned with the drafting of this Bill, but to show really that it does not sufficiently safeguard against accidental trespass. Although I do not doubt the sincerity of the assertion of my noble friend Lord Onslow that he thinks it does, I submit that it plainly does not. One really comes to this. If we are to prune these drafting provisions to conform with the shape of that purpose clause, to remove some of these legal and metaphysical problems with which magistrates might well be confronted, what should be done?
I am no draftsman and I make no pretence to be one, but may I advance some tentative suggestions on matters of principle; although of course I accept that it is possible to entertain many views. They are very simple. First, on residential premises. On Clause 1(3)(a)—the long paragraph (a) at the beginning—why could not one revert to the simple concept of permanent or temporary living quarters used for private habitation? Why not delete Clause 1(3)(d) altogether with the driveways, the tennis courts, the yards, and so on? On the offence, to ensure that the offence is only committed if the accused is aware that he is on residential premises without authority, or remains there knowing that he has exceeded such authority, why not quite simply substitute for lines 16 to 18 just this:
"Any person who knowingly trespasses on residential property shall be guilty of an offence.".
With the simplicity that that involves one provides a fair and reasonable protection against accidental trespass.
The possible advantages of adopting the suggestions which I have tentatively put forward would be to create an offence where the accused knew he was, without authority or having exceeded such authority, on premises used for private human habitation. This would have the further advantage of rendering the lawful justification or excuse provisions wholly otiose; they would not be necessary. Once one makes the offence one of intention, that the accused knew he was on residential property without authority, there is no need whatever to have the defence clause at all. There would be other advantages. As regards residential premises the conflict, as I see it, between Clause 1(3)(d) and Clause 1(4)(a) could be removed. As regards the offence, problems associated with causation, the "likely to cause" which does not cause, the qualitative distinction as regards annoyance and the unwitting trespass would all be resolved. The third advantage would be that as regards due administration there would be simplicity.
I assure my noble friends that I have advanced these proposals in only a constructive spirit, but are any of these counter proposals apt to prevent the mischief embodied in the basic concept of the purpose clause? If so, as a matter of principle, will these counter proposals be acceptable to your Lordships and, what is much more important, will they be acceptable to Her

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Majesty's Government, because without their acceptance and support we shall all toil in vain?
I should have preferred my speech to serve in lieu of comments to the Home Office for consideration along with other speeches which your Lordships have made and will make in this debate. I should have preferred the due process of consultation to continue so that my suggestions could be properly considered. Perhaps they are wrong, and I know that my noble friends on either side of me disagree with me, but we cannot entertain a serious and constructive discussion here. I should have thought, with respect to your Lordships, that this is a matter where reservations should be leisurely entertained and properly considered. That certainly would have avoided the dilemma in which I find myself tonight.
9.25 p.m.
Lady Saltoun: My Lords, I very much welcome the Bill of the noble Earl, Lord Onslow. We have needed some legislation of this kind for a long time. In fact, when I realised what the present situation was, I was quite horrified. I think that the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, spoke for myself and everybody else in the country when he underlined that fact. I therefore very warmly support the intention of the noble Earl's Bill and I very much hope that, if the Government cannot accept it with some amendment, they will very soon produce a Bill of their own which will put things right.
I am in the unfortunate position of not having realised until too late this evening, so that I might get hold of it and read it, that there was a consultative document. Therefore, I find myself at a certain disadvantage compared with the rest of your Lordships. However, I have considerable reservations about various parts of this Bill. The noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Alloway, has, I think, mentioned all my reservations about Clause 1(3) paragraphs (a) and (d) and Clause 2. Therefore, as he has already said everything I was going to say, only he put it very much better, and the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, has also spoken at some length about this, I shall not repeat what I was going to say. But I do very much hope that this Second Reading, if it turns out to be such, will be helpful, if not to the birth of a new law as a result of this Bill, then in enabling the Government to bring in a Bill of their own which will deal with the situation.
9.27 p.m.
Baroness Phillips: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Alloway, said that he found himself slightly embarrassed. I can assure him that he is no more embarrassed than I am at once again having to disagree with my noble friend on the Front Bench, who speaks so firmly for the Opposition that I assume that this has been discussed among the Opposition. I would just reassure the noble Earl, who by this time must be feeling rather depressed, that I at least am not going to criticise his Bill. I feel that we have once again, with the exception of my noble friend who has just spoken, been listening to the Law Lords: the legal experts. I think that it is useful that occasionally in debates of this sort we hear from the people who have not had the advantage of studying the law in the same way as my noble friend Lord Mishcon and the noble Lords, Lord Foot and Lord Campbell of Alloway.
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It was a profound shock to many people to learn that an intruder who gets through the security defences of Buckingham Palace can confront the Queen in her own bedroom and cannot be prosecuted for this offence on its own. I would say to noble Lords who have suggested that this is exceptional that I had a very similar experience when I woke up and found a man in my room. He compounded the matter by stealing my handbag, so he had at least committed an offence. But I would say to your Lordships that the matter of intruders getting into houses is not exceptional. We are not dealing with something that is a one-off. It may be a one-off to get into the Palace, hopefully, but it is certainly not generally an exceptional circumstance.
If a gate-crasher attends your private party and refuses to leave, as I understand it you may use reasonable force to eject him. We come back once again to the definition of "reasonable force". What is "reasonable"? What will be defined as "reasonable"? If you call the police, the policeman may assist you but it is not his duty to do so, and indeed he can be protected by saying that it is not his duty to do so unless you can prove that a breach of the peace was about to be committed. This is not easy. Strange events occur nowadays.
Quite recently a group of protesting prostitutes occupied a church and refused to leave because the police had no powers to take action against them—in other words, they were trespassers. Squatters occupied a house in my own borough. I would point out to the noble Lord, Lord Foot, that there is one slight defect in the law relating to squatters which was shown up by that incident. They occupied a house that was not already occupied by the people who had bought it. But is was intended to be converted by a group who had bought it for the use of mentally handicapped young people. They were in the process of converting it when the squatter got in. I should not say this as a magistrate, but I was delighted when six unknown persons went in and threw the squatter out, thus committing an offence, although the squatter had not committed an offence. I understand that they also put his belongings in the front garden, very thoughtfully covering them with plastic sheeting. Those belongings were interesting, bearing in mind that he was a squatter and unable to pay rent. They included very expensive video and camera equipment. That is an interesting comment on the kind of people who are unable to pay rent.
I would only draw your Lordships' attention to the fact that ordinary people have the great feeling that they are not getting natural justice, and that is the matter about which we must be concerned. We have heard a great deal about how we should have waited for the consultative document. I am amazed that my noble friend on the Front Bench used this argument, because the noble Earl drew attention very subtly to the fact that when he talked about bringing forward the Bill, the consultative document mysteriously appeared. We all know the fate of consultative documents. Indeed, the noble Lady did not even know that there was a consultative document. If there is any kind of consultation how many people will know about it? How many people will reply to it? Ultimately, how quickly will the Home Office act when they receive the consultations? We must not

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place too much reliance on the mass of evidence that is going to flow to the department as a result of the consultative document.
I would draw attention—and I hope that this will comfort the noble Earl—to the fact that I should like to see an extension of the Bill. I appreciate that this is impossible, because the consultative document and the Bill refer to residential premises and as I understand it, the church to which I have referred would not be covered by the provisions of this Bill when it became law. There are many commercial and industrial premises where a trespasser, as described in the Bill, certainly causes fear, distress, harassment or serious annoyance. I could give your Lordships a number of examples, but I shall give just one. The shopkeeper opens his premises evey day to the public who are invited to view the goods on display and "treat"—that is the phrase—and buy them. Unfortunately it is becoming all too common for individuals and groups to enter the shop not with any intention of viewing the goods, treating or indeed buying, but with the intention of causing harassment and irritation to the legitimate customers.
Perhaps some of your Lordships do not go into supermarkets—there are times when I wonder whether your Lordships go into the real world at all, in view of some of the discussions that we have—but I am sorry to say that this happens in all shopping precincts, and I invite your Lordships to go to one on a Saturday afternoon. Gangs of youths jostle, harass and generally annoy the genuine shopper, who not unreasonably decides that she will go elsewhere. These people are not committing any offence until they actually do something. The noble Lord nods his head. I do not speak without some knowledge of this. When the police are called they have to prove that a breach of the peace is about to be committed and, generally speaking, they are unable to do just that. If there is some way in which we can get round this, perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Foot, will be able to advise some of the people who constantly call to me for help. The shopkeeper has the right to invite the trespasser to leave the premises. If the trespasser resists his invitation, he has the right to use reasonable force to eject him. This is a very difficult business in which very few shopkeepers will engage.
A public restaurant is another very common example where this could happen. One suffers irritation by people who rush up and down committing no technical offence; they have been invited to come in, so they are not even trespassers in the sense that they have gone into someone else's premises. But they do make life difficult. It is just another example, from which we suffer all the time, of the tiresome minority who make life more and more difficult for the majority who want to move about their business and pleasure without interruption.
I feel very strongly in this matter and I think that the consultative document will be a good start. This Bill is a good follow up. I am quite sure that your Lordships, with your usual ability to sort through every word, will be able to deal with it in the way we have heard this evening. There is a sense of natural justice which must be satisfied. If people intrude on premises which are private, they are entitled to be ejected or at least to be dealt with under some kind of law. Some noble Lords
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have suggested that this law would be too severe. The noble Earl made the point that it is very unusual for people to receive the maximum penalties of the law. Indeed, in relation to six months' imprisonment, some people would say that this is now becoming increasingly unusual, even for theft, unless it is accompanied by violence. Therefore, I wish this Bill a fair passage. If, eventually, the Government have the moral courage to accept the Bill, that would be excellent. If at the end of May they receive a mass of evidence which they can incorporate in the Bill, equally, that would be good. But this is a start.
9.37 p.m.
Lord Renton: My Lords, after the three no-hope speeches which preceded them, I am sure that your Lordships will be gratified and enthused to hear the warm support given to the Bill of my noble friend Lord Onslow by the noble Lady, Lady Saltoun, and the noble Baroness, Lady Phillips, who stated more vividly than perhaps any mere man could have done the need for the Bill, which, as I have found since the Fagan incident last summer, is felt by so many of the women of this country.
The noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, supported by the noble Lord, Lord Foot, said that we should await the consultative document and asked why we had introduced the Bill. I hope that I am not saying anything rude about the Home Office, for which I have a great regard. Indeed, I spent four and a half of the best years of my life there, and in my first session with the late Lord Butler of Saffron Walden we got five Bills onto the statute book before Easter. They have all stood the test of time. One of them was the Life Peerages Act, to which so many of us owe our presence in this House. So I am a pro-Home Office man.
However, I must say on this occasion the feeling of my noble friend and myself was that, unless we took some initiative, nothing would be done. After all, I sent in too simple a Bill in August last, and it was not until we saw my noble friend and my honourable and learned friend, as we call him in the other place, Mr. Mayhew, in mid-November that there was any suggestion of a consultative document at all. Instead of being chided for ignoring the consultative document, perhaps some appreciation is due to us for having helped the Home Office to get a move on. After all, when the period for consultation ends on 3rd May, that will, if my arithmetic is right, be no less than 10 months after the Fagan incident.
As the noble Baroness, Lady Phillips, mentioned, it was surely not just the Fagan incident that has caused concern. There have been many cases of other circumstances which have come before the courts. Of course the point she makes about shops is, in a sense, a separate point, and we have not attempted to deal with it, but no doubt the noble Baroness will wish us to consider it when we come to the Committee stage.
I say to the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, that we have had debates in your Lordships' House on consultation papers and on White Papers, and we have done so before the Government have been able to collect all the opinions expressed outside. Both the Green Papers on trade unions we discussed well before the end of the

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consultation period, and I think that both Front Benches were glad that that was done.
Lord Mishcon: My Lords, I am sure that the noble Lord would want to be fair to the point that I made. I said how welcome it would have been if there had been an Unstarred Question, or the gamble had been taken of a short debate. My point was that it is not usual to bring a Bill before the House during a consultation period.
Lord Renton: My Lords, I was just coming to that point. I venture to suggest that if we had waited to have a short debate on the ballot, or an Unstarred Question, it would not have enabled the progress to be achieved which could be achieved, if the will is there, by this Bill receiving a Second Reading tonight, the Committee stage not being taken until after 3rd May, and the Government and all concerned meanwhile having the opportunity to consider improving the drafting of the Bill. After all, my noble friend Lord Onslow and I were only enthusiastic amateurs when it came to drafting.
I feel that, instead of being chided in the way we were by the noble Lords, Lord Mishcon and Lord Foot, some appreciation might have been given for the, shall I say, gentle spurring and the progress which may result from a Bill being introduced at this stage in your Lordships' House. After all, it would mean progress because, if we had waited until the end of the consultation period and then the Government had perhaps either drafted a Bill or handed it to a Private Member in either House, or introduced it themselves, it would have been more difficult to get it on to the statute book this Session than if your Lordships give it a Second Reading tonight. Therefore, my advice to my noble friend would be not to withdraw the Bill. Especially after the speeches of the two noble Baronesses, I hope he will not do so.
It would be tempting to attempt to answer the various points of detail and drafting that have been made, but perhaps I may say to my noble friend Lord Campbell of Alloway—he is indeed a friend in the best sense of the word—that the points which he made and described as points of principle seem to me to be mainly points which can be attended to in Committee, and some of them were drafting points. I go so far as to say that it was clear to me that in some respects he misread the Bill and was not aware of precedents. I cannot blame him for not being aware, because he is not an author of the Bill, whereas as an author of it I endeavoured to study the various precedents. Precedents have to be adapted. In trying to fill this narrow but serious gap in the criminal law we are breaking new ground. But to the extent that there are precedents I think that it would be helpful to mention them, very briefly.
I refer, for example, to the Matrimonial Homes Act 1967, in which, I am glad to say, there is a compendious description of a dwelling-house. It is stated to include:
"any building or part thereof which is occupied as a dwelling…".
What the Act then goes on to state answers the criticism that my noble friend made of Clause 1(3)(d). The Act then states:
"and any yard, garden, garage or outhouse belonging to the dwelling house and occupied therewith".
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There are various ways in which residential premises are described—all of them I agree more compendiously—but we felt it right on this occasion, if only to put all our cards on the table, to go into some detail in the description of residential premises. I hope that it will be felt that it was right for us to do so. I should be glad if parliamentary counsel could find a compendious way of describing the various circumstances in which people dwell, but excluding those circumstances in which it would not be right to consider a person to be a trespasser, and in which there is no real threat to privacy. I deeply respect my old friend—though not in the strict sense, my noble friend—Lord Foot, because we have known one another for more years than we should like to say. I respect his views about the right to privacy. One might have wished that sooner or later Parliament would have had on the statute book an Act dealing in a general way with privacy, but meanwhile surely it cannot be wrong for us to legislate in this simple way on the most serious threat to privacy with which we are faced.
My noble friend Lord Campbell of Alloway referred to the inclusion of the words "or likely to cause" in the description of the offence. There are of course precedents for that phrase—good precedents, and fairly numerous ones. The Factories Act 1961 refers to
"… a contravention which was likely to cause the death of, or bodily injury to, any person …".
Section 50 of the Road Traffic Act 1930 refers to leaving a vehicle in a dangerous position
"in such circumstances as to be likely to cause danger to other persons using the road";
and goes on to state that the person concerned
"shall be guilty of an offence".
One could multiply the examples, near examples, and analogies which are to be found in the statute book.
However, it all comes to the point that the magistrates are accustomed to having to decide issues involving the subjective state of mind of an accused, issues involving the subjective state of mind of a victim—and reference has been made to that—and the objective situation which arises as, for example, on the use of the words "likely to cause".
Between now and the Committee stage one will be glad to consider the detailed suggestions that have been made for the improvement of the Bill. I would believe that there is an answer to most of them. But there it is. The parliamentary counsel will, I hope, be instructed by the Government to consider this matter, not necessarily waiting entirely until the conclusion of the consultation period but getting on with it meanwhile; because many views will be expressed, no doubt, between now and 3rd May. I have great confidence in parliamentary counsel. They will, no doubt, produce something different from what we have said. I only hope that it will also be something better. In conclusion, may I say that I feel that my noble friend Lord Onslow deserves credit for his desire to influence your Lordships and the Government and to get this serious gap in the Bill filled, so that, as noble Baronesses have said, the public can feel easier about the state of our law.
9.52 p.m.
The Lord Advocate (Lord Mackay of Clashfern): My Lords, may I first say how grateful we are to my noble friends Lord Onslow and Lord Renton for giving us this opportunity to discuss such an important subject and one which has occasioned a great deal of public concern. Reference has already been made to the incident which so dramatically focused public attention and concern on this area of the law. An immediate consequence of the incident was that steps were taken to tighten up security. I hardly need add that my right honourable friend the Home Secretary is continuing to keep a very close watch on the operation of security measures to protect the Royal Family.
For our purposes tonight, however, the lesson which many people took from that disturbing incident was not the need to improve security at Buckingham Palace, vital though that was, so much as that it revealed, apparently, a loophole in the criminal law. How could it be that no charge could be preferred against the intruder save that relating to his consumption of wine not belonging to him? It was absolutely clear, from the volume of correspondence subsequently received by my right honourable friend the Home Secretary, as well as from comment in the press and generally, that large sections of the public had thought the criminal law already dealt with that situation and were shocked to learn that it did not.
My right honourable friend the Home Secretary, recognising the depth of public concern, decided that the law in this area must be closely examined, and this he arranged to do in consultation with my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor and my right honourable and learned friend the Attorney-General. The Secretary of State for Scotland has set in train a parallel review in Scotland. As your Lordships know, the upshot of it was that my right honourable friend the Home Secretary intimated on 11th November that he proposed to undertake a process of consultation. I think that my noble friend Lord Renton visited my honourable and learned friend Mr. Mayhew on 16th November, and the consultation paper was issued on 2nd February, setting out a number of issues on which wider debate seemed necessary.
I am greatly obliged to the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, for the very kind comments he made about the consultation paper and the way in which it was written. I believe that these comments were very well based and deserved. The debate tonight is a valuable and constructive contribution to that debate and I am glad that one consequence of it at least has been that it has brought the existence of the consultation paper to the attention of the noble Lady, Lady Saltoun. I should like to say how useful it has been that others than lawyers have taken part in this discussion. I welcome particularly what was said in that connection because these are matters of concern to all of us. Lawyers are apt sometimes to get too engrossed in technicalities and it is always refreshing to hear what was described as an ordinary person's comments—although the person was really a very extraordinary person.
Against the background I have described it is perhaps the more surprising that the criminal law has
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not hitherto been deployed in relation to trespass as such on residential premises. I say the criminal law has not penalised trespass "as such" because there is, of course, a considerable body of criminal law designed to protect the ordinary citizen in his or her home from unwelcome intruders, even though the act of trespass itself is not a criminal offence. So, for example, when the trespass is accompanied by the use or threat of violence to secure entry, and the trespasser knows there is someone on the premises opposed to that entry, or if the trespasser is carrying a weapon, he is liable to prosecution under the Criminal Law Act 1977. It is also an offence to enter property with intent to commit an offence. If the intention is to steal, to indict grievous bodily harm or commit rape, or to do unlawful damage, then that is burglary, punishable with up to 14 years' imprisonment. And, of course, the general criminal law applies to a trespasser on residential premises who commits theft or criminal damage, or any other offence, as it does elsewhere.
I have described the criminal law in this area in some little detail because I think many people may not have been aware of its full extent. People who have picked up the impression, following the Fagan incidents, that anybody can come into their homes and behave just as they please, can take, I hope, some reassurance from what I have said—namely, that there are provisions to deal with those who have some criminal motive or whose conduct is criminal in any respect.
In other cases, however, this is a matter which traditionally has been the province of the civil law. Before the Fagan intrusions, it was, I suppose, generally accepted that people did not go uninvited into other people's homes unless they had crime in mind. The danger now—to which some of your Lordships have referred—is that certain types of people, realising that they will not be liable to prosecution, may be tempted to emulate the behaviour of Mr. Fagan, not at Buckingham Palace but in ordinary houses, and to do so just for the fun of it. I do not know how serious the risk of what might be termed "copycat intrusion" is but I wholly sympathise with concern at any such prospect.
Your Lordships have also referred to other situations which may not at present be covered by the criminal law but should be. I can see the difficulties encountered by the police when, for example, an intruder is discovered before he has actually committed an offence, and that they would prefer perhaps to be able to arrest him and deal with him without having to wait for an offence to be committed. But these situations surely also existed before Mr. Fagan's notorious escapades. Should we not then ask ourselves why it was possible for us to manage for so long without the criminal law in this area, with no apparent ill effects, until, that is, the events of last summer? Normally when one asks that in other contexts the answer is simply that the law is the same as it has been for many, many years and has just not adapted to the conditions and requirements of modern society. But this cannot really be said of this particular piece of the law. The law in this area was—as the noble Lord, Lord Foot reminded us—thoroughly overhauled as recently as the Criminal Law Act 1977, which followed much

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deliberation and an inquiry by the Law Commission into the law of England and Wales.
We must, therefore, look elsewhere for an explanation. The answer, I believe, is probably two-fold: first of all, that hitherto no one saw much need for the criminal law to extend beyond the realm of burglary and the other offences which I have mentioned; and second, that the criminal law was not really seen as an appropriate instrument to deal with acts of trespass as such—what I shall call for convenience "simple trespass", to distinguish it from trespass, associated with a definite criminal motive, or other criminal conduct. Now, however, we find ourselves in a situation in which we must reassess whether the involvement of the criminal law is required to deal with the situations which noble Lords have described. This raises not just issues of technical drafting and detailed administration but also issues of general policy, which I suggest are not as clear-cut as has occasionally been suggested.
Parliament is rightly cautious about creating new criminal offences, and certain general principles have been evolved over the years, which I think may be helpful here. As the consultation paper issued by my right honourable friend the Home Secretary suggests, the criminal law should not be invoked in every case to redress a private wrong, but only where it is established also that the public interest requires it. That is an essential precondition, if you like; and some of your Lordships have argued forcefully that it is met in this particular instance.
In additon, we require of statutory criminal offences that it should be clear that respect for the law cannot be maintained if people are genuinely uncertain of its boundaries. If the law is not clear, and people are uncertain of its boundaries, respect for the law is thereby undermined. We also require that the criminal law should be enforceable—as sound common sense, as well as principle, demands. We cannot put the police into situations made impossible by the very nature of the law involved. And, lastly, we need to ensure that any new criminal offence does not have unintended side-effects, by, for example, catching those whose behaviour was not at all the target at which the legislation was aiming.
Leaving aside points of detail, I turn to examination of how the Bill measures up to the broad principles I have sought to describe. Your Lordships will have your own views, based on your own experience and what you may have heard from others, on the extent of the need for a criminal offence in this area. I think it is common ground between my noble friend Lord Onslow and ourselves that there is a gap in the law, and that this can result in some extremely alarming forms of behaviour escaping without criminal sanctions. My noble friend has given some examples of these, and the consultative document, at paragraphs 23 and 24, gives some further examples of patently offensive and unreasonable behaviour which might not be caught by the criminal law.
I do not think there can be any doubt that a strong argument can be put for saying that these warrant the use of criminal sanctions. As the consultation paper
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also points out, however, the difficulty lies in distinguishing between these and other more innocent or trivial forms of trespass, about which many may feel a good deal less strongly. It is this wider context which causes the Government the greatest concern and, as I shall explain a little later, makes us anxious to ensure that any new offence would not have undesirable side effects.
The next point is whether the boundaries of the proposed criminal offence are clearly enough drawn to avoid genuine uncertainty over whether or not one is committing an offence. Illustrations have been given about that by my noble friend Lord Campbell of Alloway in relation to this Bill. As to enforceability, I do not think we are yet really in a position to judge whether the offence would give rise to insuperable difficulties for the police and the courts. I do believe that it might often place the police in a difficult position where, for example, estranged relatives each accused the other of trespass and causing serious annoyance. It would not always be possible for the police, on the spur of the moment, to unravel the rights and wrongs of such a dispute. But might it not be feasible—and a sensible step for them to take; allowing tempers to cool—in the first instance merely to advise the parties of their rights, as the police might understand them, to take civil action? The weight attached by the police or the courts to such potential difficulty is one of the crucial matters on which I know my right honourable friend the Home Secretary is looking to his consultations for guidance. It is interesting to see that my noble friend Lord Onslow, in making preparations for his very interesting speech tonight, thought it right to consult a senior officer of the police force of Surrey, as he told us.
The last principle that I enumerated was the need to avoid unintended side effects. There I have a question to put to your Lordships and it is this. Can we be sure that the Bill will not allow the criminal law to be drawn into matters which all would agree are better dealt with outside it? The remarks of my noble friend Lord Campbell of Alloway, are again relevant to that question. What, in fact, will prevent a party to a dispute—for example, over property—using the threat of prosecution merely to frighten or irritate the other party? I entirely accept that in such cases a conviction would be unlikely, but I am quite confident that a good deal of trouble could be caused before that result was reached.
I know that my noble friend Lord Onslow has made a brave attempt in Clause 2 of the Bill to meet this point by in effect restricting the offence to circumstances in which fear, distress, harassment or serious annoyance is caused or is likely to be caused. I think we must recognise, however, that even with such a tightly drawn provision the risk is still there. It needs to be recognised that there may be a price which has to be paid for creating a new criminal offence on the lines proposed. I entirely recognise that we could by such means catch the notorious kinds of cases described by my noble friend. The question which needs to be answered is; is this of a sufficiently high social priority to justify the sort of risk I have just described? There may well be many who will answer, Yes; and there may be some who will be impatient that the question

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even needs to be asked. But I submit that the Government would be in dereliction of their duty if they did not ask people to address their minds to this important consideration which has implications not only for civil liberties but also for the work of the courts and the police.
This is why I say that the noble Earl's proposals have implications for policy as well as for mere drafting. The question is very much—and in the best of all possible senses—a political one. It requires balancing the need to cope with an obvious and manifest abuse against the dangers of creating an offence which, however tightly circumscribed, might affect activities which are quite unsuitable for being dealt with by way of the criminal law.
The Government fully recognise that informed opinion and the public in general may well come down in favour of proposals something on the lines of those put forward today by my noble friend. It is far from self-evident, however, that this will be everyone's opinion, and in the Government's view it was only right that these issues should be put out for the widest possible consideration and comment.
As noble Lords know, a deadline of 3rd May was set for comments on the consultation paper. This was the shortest period consistent with the time required for internal consideration and discussion by the organisations consulted, some of whom have large and scattered memberships. We are concerned, however, to ensure that in this area of the law affecting individuals' rights and their privacy we get any change that is required absolutely right. That is why we have taken the trouble to set out the issues in the consultation paper, which is not the sort of document that can be produced overnight. Now we have that document and have put people to the trouble of considering it—I am sure they are glad to do so, given the importance to many of them of these issues—but now that we have taken this step, we as a Government feel bound not to reach final conclusions in advance of having the benefit of the advice we have sought and which we know will have been very painstakingly considered.
So far we have not received very many replies from those who were asked to comment. As noble Lords might expect, after an initial flurry of instant comment things settle down until very near the end of the consultation period, when longer considered contributions start to be received in greater numbers. From the replies received to date, however, no clear picture has emerged from those whom we specifically consulted —certainly not such as to add to the value of your Lordships' debate.
In all these circumstances, the Government find themselves at this particular time unable to commend the Bill to the House unreservedly. We do recognise, however, that the Bill has considerable merit and I certainly applaud the work which has so clearly been put into its preparation by my noble friends Lord Onslow and Lord Renton. We are, I need hardly say, in complete sympathy with the need to ensure proper protection for people in their own homes.
From what I have already said, however, it will be apparent that we are not yet as confident as the Bill's sponsors that it has resolved all the difficulties arising in this area. Whether in the course of its passage
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through your Lordships' House it can be improved to enable it to do so remains to be seen. For the Government's part, we would certainly not wish to oppose its Second Reading and we shall watch its progress with interest. We shall, I hope, be able to give a more definite indication of our views during later stages of the Bill.
In the meantime, I would repeat our thanks to my noble friends for giving us such a valuable opportunity to discuss these important questions. The debate has provided us with a most helpful indication of feeling in the House. My right honourable friend the Home Secretary will certainly take full account of the views that have been expressed in this debate in reaching a conclusion on the course of action that he should follow in this very important matter.
Lady Saltoun: My Lords, before the noble and learned Lord sits down, may I ask him whether the Scottish Office has produced a similar consultative document, of which we have never heard and which we have not been offered on the little pink slips that we are sent?
Lord Mackay of Clashfern: My Lords, the answer is that the work of preparation is going ahead in the Scottish Office but has not yet been completed. The Scottish Office is slightly behind the Home Office on this particular occasion. I hope that the consultation paper will be issued fairly soon.
10.11 p.m.
The Earl of Onslow: My Lords, I must first thank all noble Lords who have taken part and I will try, if I can read my own writing, to answer some of the points raised by noble Lords who have spoken.
The unfortunate part of Mr. Michael Fagan is that what he has done has let the cat out of the bag and the bag is no longer catproof. So by his terrible act, which was so widely publicised, he has changed conditions which have applied heretofore. There was also a slightly unattractive aspect in what happened to Fagan, in that, when the authorities realised that he could not be prosecuted, they tried to throw the book at him; but it was rather a bent book and it missed. Finally, he was sent to a secure mental hospital, which I strongly doubt would have happened had he just been caught trespassing at No 2 the Grove, Upper Sodbury-on-the-Marsh. I believe that would not have happened. This is not to impugn the honesty or integrity of those people who did that but it left that slight impression in my mind.
I believe it is true that society has shown explicit disapproval of that sort of behaviour. My noble friend—and I use that word totally advisedly because he made the nicest remarks about my maiden speech to me—Lord Foot raised the point, which is a very valid point, about showing a need to introduce new criminal offences. This may not be an exact parallel, but some months ago a Bill went through your Lordships' House protecting the rights of trainers on Epsom Downs. It produced a fine of, I think, £50 if people rode their ponies on the trainers' ground. I

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suggest to your Lordships that that is a much less serious offence—although admittedly the penalty is not six months' imprisonment or a £1,000 fine—than the offence that I have described, which was committed in the locality of a home by a man who has persistently gone around entering people's houses. It appears that he has been convicted under the Vagrancy Act, and the unlawful purpose that has been construed by the magistrates is that he was likely to cause fear; that was an unlawful purpose. I do not want to go too deep, but I suspect that that might be overthrown on appeal. So there is the danger that on an occasion such as this, there is a temptation to try to find a law that is not there—which carries a greater danger in justice than one relatively simple one.
I was very interested in what my noble friend Lord Campbell of Alloway said. He proceeded to go through the Bill and make a lot of, from his point of view, perfectly reasonable drafting points, and said it produced innocent trespass, et cetera. He then proceeded to recommend a far wider offence than he was accusing us of introducing in this Bill. He said that anybody who knowingly goes into a private residence should be guilty of an offence. That is Article 601 of the California Penal Code. I specifically said, and I think my noble friend Lord Renton specifically said, that we do not want to go as far as that. I do not think public opinion would accept that we should go as far as that.
A lot has been made of the effect this is going to have on the police. The police have very wide discretionary powers which they use on a great number of occasions. Several of your Lordships, I would suggest, have been caught in a built-up area going at more than 30 miles an hour and have not been prosecuted. I have a suspicion that that noble Lord who murmured may have been prosecuted. But the police do have discretion not to prosecute, and they use it on the whole very wisely.
The possibility that we should consider legislating for people to have what I may call privileged trespass—in other words the Windsor Castle, 10 Downing Street syndrome or the Russian Embassy syndrome—I think is abhorrent. I think we should not suggest that certain people only should have protection. The protection must be for all, and in a way it is the weaker members of society, the old, the frail and the frightened, who need protection more than somebody who is living in privilege and has the use of guards, et cetera. In no way am I trying to say that what happened at Buckingham Palace was not appalling, because it was appalling. But I think the protection must go to No. 2 The Close, Upper Snodbury, as well as to Buckingham Palace and 10 Downing Street.
My Lords, my noble friend Lord Campbell made great play of the fact that Clause 2 contains "metaphysics". I think that was the word he used. I would suggest that the criminal law is full of metaphysical judgments. Danger is something which is a metaphysical judgment. Some people would think riding over large fences when fox hunting is dangerous and some would think it not dangerous. There is an element of judgment that has to me made. When someone is accused of careless driving, "careless" is
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not an objective word; you have to make a subjective judgment.
Lord Mishcon: My Lords, I interrupt the noble Earl only for one purpose. Sitting behind the right reverend Prelate, as he is, is he quite sure that he is correctly using the word "metaphysical"?
The Earl of Onslow: My Lords, absolutely certainly not. I have always wanted to know what it means. The noble Lord, Lord Campbell, used it originally, and I was assuming that it meant what he was talking about—fear, et cetera. If I was using the word "metaphysical" in the wrong sense, of course I apologise to your Lordships. However, I think I have made the point that there are occasions when the criminal law has to make value judgments.
I agree with my noble friend Lord Renton that his and my actions have put the spur to this document. The reason we did not wait until after 3rd May is that it is possible that this is the last moment when a Bill such as this could get on the statute book before the next election—assuming that to be in October or even early in the New Year, but certainly in this Parliament. If as a result of the consultations which arise it is shown that the received view in our approach is totally wrong there is no way that this Bill can become an Act of Parliament. If, however, the consultations show that there is merit and force in the method that we are adopting, then I suggest that this is a helpful move.
We will, of course, listen with great sympathy to any amendments that are put forward within the global context of the Bill. When we come to the definition of private residence—where the clause refers to Inns of Court and research establishments—it seems to me crystal clear, because it says "part of" earlier, that it does not apply to the laboratory, and so on. It applies to the flat where the professor might live. In a school, for example, it applies to the caretaker's flat. In the Inns of Court it applies especially to where my noble friend Lord Renton lives. It applies to the residential part of buildings, which may include all the other things which are left out.
I again thank your Lordships for the attention that you have been kind enough to give me. I thank your Lordships for your comments, and with that I beg to move that the Bill be now read a second time.
On Question, Bill read a second time, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

The Environment
10.23 p.m.
Lord Ashby Lord Ashby rose to ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they propose to take to introduce the principle of "best practicable environmental option" into their policies for protecting the environment.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, at this time of the evening I have to begin by thanking your Lordships for remaining in the House. I can be brief because I am really a curtain raiser for my noble friend Lord

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Flowers who can speak with much more authority than I on this matter. I am very glad that he has been able to partner me in putting this Question tonight and asking the Government to give some kind of reply.
I shall make only two points. Early in 1974 the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, under the chairmanship of my noble friend, decided to study the environmental effects of nuclear power. They had to postpone this because the Secretary of State requested them to make a rush job and to report if possible within a year on this remit:
"To review the efficacy of the methods of control of air pollution from domestic and industrial sources, to consider the relationship between the relevant authorities and to make recommendations".
The reason for the hurry was that the Health and Safety at Work Bill had almost completed its passage through Parliament and one provision in that Bill was to transfer the Alkaline Inspectorate from the Department of the Environment into the newly created Health and Safety Commission to work under the Health and Safety Executive.
The Royal Commission urged the Secretary of State to hold up this transfer until they had reported. This advice was disregarded. When the Royal Commission did report 16 months later, they strongly argued that the Alkali Inspectorate, which by this time had been transferred, should be put back into the Department of the Environment. That was in January 1976, seven years ago. The response from the Government was silence. Despite the Secretary of State's request for a rush job, no comment was made, no action was taken. This was a discourtesy to a Royal Commission on which some Members of your Lordships' House served; but let that pass.
The delay caused unease in other quarters. In July 1981 the Secretary of State received a letter signed by the president of the CBI, the president of the National Society for Clean Air and the president of the Institution of Environmental Health Officers. They deplored the fact that the Government had made no reply in five years and they went on to urge the Government to remove the Alkali Inspectorate from the Health and Safety Executive and to bring it back to the Department of the Environment. Eighteen months later, last December, a response from the Government finally came but not in the form of a discussion document. It was in the form of one of the series of technical pollution papers which come from the Department of the Environment, many of them excellent. This was paper No. 18. It reaffirmed the decision to keep the Alkali Inspectorate under the Health and Safety Executive.
Why does it matter that the Alkali Inspectorate, which is now renamed the Industrial Air Pollution Inspectorate, should not work under the Health and Safety Executive? I suggest that the answer is very simple. To keep it there contradicts a principle of environmental policy which has been painstakingly developed over the last 120 years. The purpose of the first Alkali Act in 1863 was not to protect man from hazards in the environment; it was to protect the environment from hazards caused by man. That has been the principle of the Alkali Inspectorate's work ever since that first Act: to protect the environment—the farms and the woodlands in North-West
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England. I am sure that the alkali inspectors will continue, as they have for over a century, to show this concern for the environment as being their prime purpose, but now they have to do it under an organisation which has a totally different and sometimes conflicting purpose. They do at present retain their identity but there are signs that they may slowly become merged into the Factory Inspectorate.
The Royal Commission spelt out the danger of this very clearly indeed, and it is particularly disappointing that this dismissive document has come from the Department of the Environment in this case. Paragraph 254 of the Royal Commission's fifth report makes the point that there may be—indeed, there certainly are—many cases of conflicts of interest between a body whose chief purpose is to ensure safety and health in the working place and a body whose chief purpose is to deal with environmental quality. It is too late now to expect a Government to take the advice of a Royal Commission supported by the presidents of associations dealing with industry, pollution and health, so I make this point only to put on record a widespread dissatisfaction with this decision and with the way in which it was made.
But I have one question to ask. The Department of the Environment, evidently uneasy in its own conscience, has added at the end of Pollution Paper No. 18 an appendix with the title "Memorandum of Understanding". This is a memorandum of understanding between the Department of the Environment and the Health and Safety Commission and its executive. It sets out in a vague sort of way the conditions for co-operation. I ask the noble Lord who is to reply to this Question to tell the House exactly what is being done under the terms of this memorandum.
I now come to my second point, and it is my last point. It concerns the main recommendation which the commission made in its fifth report. It endorsed the flexible policy which has proved so successful in the control of industrial emissions to the air since 1863: the criterion of using the "best practicable means". The Royal Commission proposed that this principle should now be extended to cover the control of wastes going into water and on to land; indeed, that there should be a policy in Britain of choosing the "best practicable environmental option" rather than just the best practicable means in air, water and land.
How could this be done? It could only be done if there were some small expert body which would act as the Alkali Inspectorate has acted over the control of emissions into air; deciding the strategy for the disposal and recycling of wastes in Britain; deciding whether air, water land was the way in which they should be disposed.
The response to this very imaginative and carefully thought-out recommendation was seven years of silence, broken only by the publication of Report No. 18 last December. In this paper the Government accept the strength of the Royal Commission's argument. The logic, say the Government, is "unassailable"; the Government say that the best practicable environmental option is a concept,
"of considerable power and utility".
Then the government response goes on to suggest that in practice it would not be much use anyway. Let me read the relevant paragraph. It says:
"It is not easy to assess the real benefits that might accrue from its application … there is probably not a large number of situations in which major choices exist in practice regarding the forms in which pollution arises".
This is something very familiar to those of us whose lives have been spent in the academic world. The response—I am far from convinced—means: I cannot find reasons to counter your argument but I propose not to vote for it. It says that there are no real benefits, or very few. Let me give one example.
The alkali inspectors have no legal responsibility or statutory power to exercise the best practicable environmental option, but in fact they are quietly doing so informally. For example, the Bankside and Battersea power stations were formerly washing sulphur dioxide out of their flue gases with water from the river and this was polluting the Thames. In consultation with the Alkali Inspectorate it was decided to abandon this process and to use tall chimneys on the grounds that this would be the better practicable option—neither of them good, but better than polluting the Thames. There are many other cases; for example, the incineration of certain nasty organic materials in which the alkali inspectors have deliberately chosen the best practicable environmental option not requiring people to dump them in the ground where they might be a danger.
It was to develop just such an overall strategy as that, that the Royal Commission made their proposal for Her Majesty's Pollution Inspectorate to determine the strategy. They underlined the fact that this inspectorate would in no way infringe the powers of the regional water authorities or the waste disposal authorities, but would consolidate the strategy of getting the best practicable environmental option. Report No. 18 turns that down. What do they put in its place? I shall read your Lordships their alternative:
"The Government therefore look to all pollution control authorities to take account of the principles enunciated in the Royal Commission's report … The Government will initiate discussions with representatives of the authorities concerned in order to provide a forum for discussion".
It is a pretty example of Whitehall dialect, but hardly the way to ensure a national strategy. It is just as well, for instance, that the Government do not just "look to" the Army, the Navy and the Air Force to co-ordinate their defence policy. Noble Lords will note that the Government say that they "will initiate" discussions, after the commission's report has been in their hands for nearly seven years.
So I ask the noble Lord who will reply: precisely what steps have been taken by the authorities that the Government have already "looked to"? What discussions have been initiated? In brief, what is the Government's policy about protection of the environment? What are their principles when they come to discuss environmental policy with the European Community? These are the questions that I hope will be answered at the end of this discussion.
10.36 p.m.
Baroness Nicol: My Lords, coming to this scene, I too was a little perturbed at the way in which a very
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thoughtful and hard working report was seen to be dismissed after such a long silence, really almost in an off-hand manner. The noble Lord, Lord Ashby, has, I think, highlighted the most important aspects of this. I have one very short question which I should like to put to the Minister. On the planning issues, in paragraph 51 of the response, the Government acknowledge the importance of planning contributions to pollution control, and in paragraph 52 the Government agree about the importance of consultation between planning and pollution control authorities. But they do not consider it necessary that consultation should be mandatory. The Question is: why not? There is no attempt to explain this. It is just brushed aside as a matter of small importance.
Authorities vary widely in their approach to pollution control according to the interests of their members, the training of their staffs and whatever happen to be the economic pressures and the employment pressures in their area at the time. Pollution is not a local problem; it crosses all boundaries, be they political, geographical or physical. To say that there need not even be consultation of all authorities at a regional level is just nonsense. Public disquiet about the long-and short-term effects of pollution is growing and this response does nothing at all to allay the fears. I hope that the Minister in his response to our questions tonight will do something towards that.
10.38 p.m.
Baroness Robson of Kiddington: My Lords, I hesitate to take part in a debate with two such leading experts on the subject, but I cannot refrain from mentioning one aspect which perhaps is not directly relevant to the introduction of the noble Lord, Lord Ashby; but I believe it is something, particularly today, about which we should think. For many years in my own political party I have been interested in environmental questions, and I was delighted when I heard of the setting up of the Royal Commission and when I read its findings. Like other speakers, I have been very depressed at the lack of action by successive Governments since the Royal Commission reported.
I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Ashby, that the Alkali Inspectorate had served this country well and that it should have remained independent of the Health and Safety at Work Inspectorate. I think we can give it credit for achieving enormous advances in pollution control in this country. We have managed to create reasonably clean air in this country. We have done it through the high stack policy mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Ashby. But in doing so we have created pollution in other parts of the world. We spent the early part of today on an economic debate on co-operation to get the world out of its economic problems, because we need co-operation, for we are all interdependent. The same applies to the question of cross-boundary pollution over national boundaries—not only over regional boundaries within our country. It is now fairly well known and accepted that the acid rain falling over Scandinavia, and particularly Norway, is to a large extent created in this country. It is estimated that 40 per cent. of the acid rain emanates from Britain and only 10 per cent. emanates from Norway itself, and the rest comes from central Europe.

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It is natural in any environmental policy, or policy decisions, first of all to look at one's own country and try to clean up one's own surroundings. We happen to be fortunate in our situation in Europe. We are not exposed to the same pollution from other countries as the people in Scandinavia. We should therefore have a particular responsibility to see that we are not offenders. Despite the Alkali Inspectorate, we have failed to implement solutions that could help the Scandinavians in this way. Technical means are now available to clean air in a different way. The high stack policy has not helped to solve the problem European-wise, although it has helped us. The European Community is an excellent group of nations which can, between them, help to solve the pollution problem in Europe. I want to ask the Government why they are always so reluctant to take part in discussions and accept recommendations which come from the European Commission.
On 15th March an unusal international treaty came into force in the shape of a Geneva convention on transboundary air pollution. I found that out by reading the third leader in The Times. This convention was set up for the purpose of achieving a reduction in the high levels of pollution in rain experienced by some countries in the world. But both Germany and Britain were insistent on watering down what might have been in that international treaty. Britain was reluctant to accept, for instance, that even reports of new installations and of an increase in the sulphur emissions from country to country should be compulsory. In the end I believe it has been agreed to. Germany was equally at fault. But since Germany now has a problem of its own from the acid rain, and the forests of Germany are endangered, they have become more co-operative. This country and this Government should show the rest of Europe that although we do not suffer in this way we are co-operating to the fullest by installing the kind of cleaning arrangements that can now be installed in sulphur-emitting plants.
It is disconcerting, when one's concern is with the environment, to find, first of all, that not only on the international level but also on the national level a report such as the Royal Commission's report has not been taken up and the advice accepted by the Government, particularly that relating to the Alkali Inspectorate and to the best practicable environmental option. One becomes disheartened and feels that the Government are not a hundred per cent. behind an environmental policy for this country and for Europe—and, for that matter, for the world. I hope that the noble Lord will reassure us that Britain will co-operate in the European Community and in the Geneva international treaty.
10.45 p.m.
Lord Flowers: My Lords, I hope that the noble Baroness, Lady Robson of Kiddington, will forgive me if I do not follow her speech, except to say how important was the point that she raised about acid rain, but at the same time to add how misleading it is to try to discuss it unless one also refers to the enormous cost of replacing the high-stack policy to which she referred with a policy which removes the sulphur pollutants at source.
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I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Ashby for tabling this Question and for setting out so cogently some of the principal recommendations of the Fifth Report of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, and for commenting on the Government's disappointing response to them. My noble friend was the founder chairman of that Royal Commission and he enunciated many of the principles that it has tried to follow ever since. It was a tremendous challenge to succeed him as chairman in 1973. It would be even more so today, because in the meantime he has become the leading authority on the history of clean air legislation and on air pollution control. That was, I believe, evident from the way in which my noble friend put his Question.
Briefly, my noble friend's case is that the Government have accepted the objectives set by the Royal Commission but have failed to provide the tools. They have agreed that the concept of "best practicable means", which has served this country so well for the control of air pollution, should now be extended to the "best practicable environmental option" for the unified control of pollution which more generally may affect water and land as well as air. But the Government have denied the means to carry out this generalisation; namely, a unified pollution control inspectorate—Her Majesty's Pollution Inspectorate, as we called it, or HMPI, as it is known for short—under the aegis of the Department of the Environment. That would have been modelled on the highly successful Alkali Inspectorate in the field of air pollution, but with responsibilities extended to cover all forms of emission from works which present difficult problems of pollution control. I shall not spell it out; my noble friend has already done so with great clarity.
Is it not ironic, though, that what we proposed for England and Wales already exists in Scotland, in Her Majesty's Industrial Pollution Inspectorate, as it is called there; and that the Government accept the rightness of these superior arrangements north of the Border, while confidently rejecting them to the South? Do they think that the thistle needs more protection than does the rose, or the leek, or that other countries with their environmental protection agencies have got it wrong? No, I suspect that it was another border that was involved—the border between the local authorities responsible for waste disposal, water quality, and environmental health, and the national inspectorates; the one not wishing to surrender powers to the other, as they may have seen it, despite our efforts in the fifth report to show that there was no real conflict of interest.
The Government wish to replace the unified inspectorate by a vague system of consultation between the various authorities concerned with the determination of the best practicable environmental option. With my noble friend, Lord Ashby, I beg leave to doubt whether that will work, except in trivial cases for which it is not really necessary. But I do not despair; the history of pollution control is a long one. I believe that HMPI may yet have its day when we have more experience of the best practicable environmental option in action, and I was interested to see that the Government leave open that possibility.

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I should like to add a few words about standards in the sphere of air pollution, because there has been much confusion about this point, especially in the context of the European Community. Do we want emission standards or air quality standards? Behind that question lies a confusion of means and ends. In the Fifth Report we made a clear distinction between emission to air, which is what goes up the factory chimney or escapes through the roof, and air quality which results from the emission returning to earth. Although the one is obviously the cause of the other, the two should not be confused. The link between them may be difficult to establish in circumstances where the air quality in one locality may result from many sources of emission or may be affected by topography or weather.
The object of air pollution control is to produce an acceptable level of air quality. The means for bringing this about is control of what is emitted from the works and the manner in which it is emitted, such as the chimney height. After exhaustive examination we upheld the Alkali Inspectorate in its determination—and I will quote the famous phrase, if I may—
"to use the best practicable means for preventing the emission into the atmosphere from the premises of noxious or offensive substances and for rendering harmless and inoffensive such substances as may be so emitted."
We pointed out, however, that this presupposes, for example, in determining the height of a chimney, some idea of the levels of air quality desirable on the ground. We did not believe in air quality standards as a means of control, but we put forward the concept of air quality guidelines to indicate whether the practice of best practicable means is falling short of what is desirable by way of air quality or, on the contrary, is subjecting industry to unnecessary restrictions and expense.
There is no paradox here, although I know that it sounds a bit complicated. Adopting the best practicable means implies the control of emissions, and it is expected to take into account economic, social, national and local circumstances. The air quality guidelines are intended as one of the indicators of local circumstances; namely, a measure of the air quality actually being achieved. In no sense, however, should air quality guidelines—or even air quality standards—be confused with emission standards, which have no regard to local circumstances and which are favoured by the European Commission on the grounds that they provide fair competition for industry. They do indeed—but at the expense of quite unfair variations in the local environment. The polluted should be treated fairly as well as the polluters.
We were thus in favour neither of uniform emission standards, nor of air quality standards as a means of control. We favoured control over emissions according to the best practicable means, having regard to the levels of air quality actually achieved relative to those that are desirable for the locality.
I was relieved to find that, broadly speaking, the Government accept the Royal Commission's views about standards and the superiority of best practicable means. Naturally, they have been influenced in their actual response by the Community directives on air
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quality. On the whole I would say that in matters of pollution control the United Kingdom and the Community are closer together than was the case 10 years ago, and I am glad if the Royal Commission's efforts have contributed towards that reconciliation, as the Government seem to believe is the case. I also note that it is the Government's intention in the light of these and other developments, and of our more detailed recommendations, to conduct a comprehensive review of air pollution control legislation. Perhaps the noble Lord the Minister will forgive me if I say, "And about time, too!" Perhaps he will tell us when he hopes that review will be completed.
The Fifth Report makes 94 recommendations, and we cannot deal with the Government's response to them all today, especially at this time of night. The last 20 of them, however, deal with the relationship between pollution control and the planning system, and I should like to say a few words about that. We recommend that local authorities should embody pollution policies in their structure plans and develop them in subject plans; that they should consult with each other in order to establish a broad expertise; that the Government should issue suitable guidance for this purpose and that specific responsibility should be laid on local authorities to conserve and improve the environment.
Once again, broadly speaking, the Government have accepted the principle, but have denied the means to put it into practice. They are apparently willing to issue some guidance to local authorities. They are also in favour of voluntary consultations between all and sundry, but they want nothing to be compulsory, as the noble Baroness, Lady Nicol, has already emphasised. Of course, when everybody is behaving intelligently there will be a great deal of voluntary consultation in any case—for instance, between an industrial developer, the local authority in which the development is to take place, and (where appropriate) the alkali inspector.
The question is, what to do when not everybody is behaving intelligently?—and we saw many examples of this in the course of our inquiry. Those were usually the instances that had given trouble. We came across the case—I swear it is true—of a large petrochemical works which, very sensibly, had been built well away from human habitation because of the likelihood of its giving rise to substantial air pollution. Some years later a housing estate was built close to the plant for the convenience of those who worked there. But the pollution turned out to be quite heavy and the eventual occupants of the estate naturally complained about it. There ensued the usual difficulties. We discovered that in the local authority those responsible for housing and those responsible for pollution control had not consulted each other about the housing development. When we asked them why, they replied that there was no regulation that required them to.
I can only hope in these circumstances that the Government's new guidance will be quite precise, because it should not be assumed that it will invariably be accorded intelligent interpretation. In particular, I would have thought that in a case like the one I have just described, a buffer zone around the plant within which consultation had to be compulsory would have

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had distinct advantages; but, alas, the Government will have none of that.
A further example of the need for compulsory consultation concerns a district which is approaching its total pollution capacity, perhaps due to the combined emissions of several polluting works—one can think of many examples in the industrialised North. What happens when application is made to develop another polluting works? Especially if air quality standards are imposed, the application must either be rejected or some of the existing works will be put to some trouble and expense to lower their hitherto acceptable emissions to make way for the new development. I am glad to see that the Government recognise that the problem exists, although they appear to deny the means to deal with it.
I will not say any more about the relationship between planning and pollution control. Many of your Lordships will know better than I how complicated the planning system of this country has become. It was one of the wonders of the world when the first Town and Country Planning Act was introduced in 1947. Since then the planning system has had to be adapted and extended to meet many new demands. Pollution control is only one; but both the fifth report and the Government's response to it suggest that all is not well with the planning system.
It may therefore be of some interest that the Nuffield Foundation, of which I am a trustee, has recently announced a major inquiry under my chairmanship into the whole of the town and country planning system—what its objectives were, to what extent they have been achieved, how it has been adapted over the years, what the objectives should now be and whether there should be some consequent revision of legislation. I should be surprised if the Nuffield inquiry does not explore further the interaction between the planning system and pollution control. I would say that the well-tried concept of "best practicable means" is an essential feature of that interaction at present, and that the extended concept of "best practicable environmental option", which I am delighted to know the Government have accepted, will imply a development of that interaction, and perhaps some modification to the planning system itself.
11 p.m.
Lord Mottistone: My Lords, it is a privilege to follow the noble Lord, Lord Flowers, particularly when one sees his name in large print on the front of the fifth report. Before addressing your Lordships, I consulted the CBI and will give you, as briefly as I may, industry's view of the matter that is the subject of this Question. The noble Lord, Lord Ashby, has explained well the basis of the Question and the noble Lord, Lord Flowers, has enlarged on most of the more important points. I shall turn my attention to one or two particular administrative points, upon which industry has a strong view.
But perhaps before doing that, I might give your Lordships industry's view of what is meant by "best practicable environmental option". We do not see it as meaning the best technology or the same technology for one or more similar industrial plants, and the CBI believe that the definition must embrace local environ
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mental circumstances, age of plant and financial and economic factors. I am sure that that is the general view, as expressed in the report, but I think it necessary to state it again. Flexibility must be preserved to avoid wasting valuable resources and choices.
The number of processes where removing one form of emission gives rise to another type of waste is clearly large, but these transfers are generally easily managed and do not often require additional expert advice or enforcement. What industry sees is needed, is independent technical advice, embracing all forms of pollution control—and I stress the word "advice". This would help both with any residual problems, as suggested, and with presenting co-ordinated advice to Ministers, to control authorities and to industry. As industry sees it, we do not need a control inspectorate with executive powers solely to oversee the implementation of the "best practicable environmental option", but an advisory body.
As explained by the noble Lord, Lord Ashby, the Royal Commission recommended for this sort of purpose a new national pollution inspectorate, which would subsume what was then called the Alkali Inspectorate—now, we understand, called the Industrial Air Pollution Inspectorate. While agreeing with that, in principle, I suggest an alternative title—to emphasise what I believe to be its main purpose in an advisory role—of the National Pollution Advisory Council. The Royal Commission also advised that what is now the Industrial Air Pollution Inspectorate be restored to direct control by the Department of the Environment. That has been mentioned by other noble Lords and I strongly support that obviously sensible move. I cannot see why, for all the explanation made, the change was made in the first place.
From that, it is recommended that a small advisory unit be established within the Industrial Air Pollution Inspectorate, which could form the core of the proposed new National Pollution Advisory Council, together, for example, with an advisory element of the recently proposed Hazardous Waste Inspectorate. I suggest that the size of the National Pollution Advisory Council be kept as small as is consistent with covering all necessary engineering and scientific disciplines; for example, water engineers, industrial engineers, chemists, botanists, meteorologists—you name them, but still keep it small. The council should be established as independently as practicable, and I should have thought it might have been on the lines, as we have been discussing recently, of the new data protection registrar, who is given the maximum possible independence, about whom any of your Lordships who are interested can hear on the Third Reading of the Data Protection Bill tomorrow. This new body should be subject to parliamentary control through the Secretary of State for the Environment. Not only would it provide advice to industry and to Government and to other controlling bodies on the best practicable environmental options in the United Kingdom but it could provide such advice in relation to appropriate EEC proposals and actions.
I agree most strongly with the noble Baroness, Lady Robson of Kiddington, that the EEC is all too much neglected in this area and can, in its own way, be a considerable threat to us in proposing unnecessary

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actions which are not applicable to this country. The need for such a body appears to be so obvious that I am puzzled about why successive Governmentrs have failed to act on the particularly well informed Fifth Report of the Royal Commission. In this context I would not entirely agree with the noble Lord, Lord Ashby, if I heard him aright, that it is too late to expect the Government to act. The mere fact that we have had to wait for seven years does not mean that the Government will not act. I am sure there are many examples of where a little prodding and pushing gets governments to act, even if the report in question was made more than seven years ago.
My belief is that this delay is perhaps because there have been thought to be no pressing pollution problems in the last few years. But this cannot always be so. Lead in petrol has been mentioned. Acid rain has been mentioned. The dumping of waste at sea and on land also spring to mind. There is no doubt a host of other subjects which might reach more serious levels of importance, for which the Government will need the best co-ordinated and independent advice that they can get. This might apply whether it happens in this country or in the European Community. I hope, therefore, that my noble friend will say in reply that action on the lines I have suggested will be looked at with the greatest possible care with a view to its implementation as soon as practicable.
11.7 p.m.
Lord Melchett: My Lords, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Mottistone, that some of the previous speakers took a rather gloomy view of the prospects of getting some movement out of the Government, although I am afraid it would be unrealistic of us to expect very much movement from the noble Lord on the Front Bench opposite this evening. However, I certainly agree with Lord Mottistone that this is not something upon which we should give up. The logic of the case is so strong, as the Government themselves admitted in their response, that sooner or later, it seems to me, they will have to give in to it. Indeed, everybody seems to accept that the best practicable environmental option is the most sensible way forward.
The Government's response says that the logic of the approach is unassailable, that the Royal Commission have identified a genuine problem and, indeed, that there are almost certainly cases where the optimum control of pollution from a works has not been realised. Therefore, even if one takes the case on the Government's terms it is an extremely strong one, although, as the noble Lord, Lord Ashby, said in opening the debate this evening, the Government's response to this unassailable case is extremely dismissive in the document which they published last year. Indeed, it is not just dismissive of the best practicable environmental option, the concept put forward by the Royal Commission, but, as my noble friend Lady Nicol said, it is extremely dismissive about something which the Government agreed was important; namely, consultation between the planning and pollution control authorities. And in what must be just about the most unsubstantiated assertion ever to appear in a Government document, the same
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paragraph, paragraph 52, goes on to state that the Government do not consider it necessary that such consultation should be mandatory. As my noble friend said, there is not a word of explanation of why that should be the case or what the Government intend to do about it in the absence of any mandatory requirement.
It seems to me to be clear that the concept of "best practicable environmental option" is not something that is being argued about, but the means of achieving it, is. The Government's argument seems mainly to be that it will be wrong to change something that was set up in the mid-1970s; a quite extraordinary argument, and one that I do not believe the Government would apply to many other matters on which they have legislated, if indeed they have applied it to anything that was set up in the mid-1970s.
In the foreword, which is in some ways the most interesting if the vaguest part of the document, the then Secretary of State for the Environment, Mr Heseltine, stated that the Government,
"will encourage the various existing pollution control authorities responsible for clean air, rivers and the safe disposal of wastes to land or sea to work together to achieve the best practical environmental option".
How they will achieve that is difficult to discover from the document, unless it is meant to reside in what the noble Lord, Lord Ashby, called the vague appendix. I must say that I could not put my finger on it there. This is in the face of difficulties which the Royal Commission identified in a particularly telling way in paragraph 265 of the Fifth Report, where the Commission said:
"Most of the Alkali Inspectors and Environmental Health Officers we spoke with had no contact with their opposite numbers in water and waste disposal authorities, nor had they recognised the need for it. An argument they advanced in discussion on this matter made a virtue of this lack of contact".
It is not just that there is no contact but that the people concerned actually think it is a good thing that there is no contact. In the light of that attitude of those on the ground, the Government seem to be relying on exhortations contained in a foreword written by the then Secretary of State—and clearly, that cannot be good enough. I hope that when the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, replies to this debate he will be able to take matters a little further in that respect than does the Government's response.
Reading what the Royal Commission had to say about this, it seemed to me rather as if the Government were suggesting that it would he a good idea when a firm came to the Government with a new project—let us say for opening a new factory involving a multinational based in another country—for the Government to deal with this by telling the firm, "Go to the Department of Employment and discuss your manpower requirements. Go to the Department of Industry and discuss industry schemes and what is available in terms of investment. Go to the Department of the Environment and elsewhere to discuss planning and other matters. But we will make sure that none of these departments speaks to each other. None of them will consult with each other. Indeed, we see it as a positive advantage that they do not, because then the multinational will bid one department against another, in the hope of getting a better deal; this is a sensible way of dealing with the

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matter". Clearly it would not be a sensible way of dealing with the matter in that case; and clearly it is not in the case of the problems identified by the Royal Commission.
I want briefly to take up a point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Robson of Kiddington, about acid rain. I noted, again, that in the foreword, written by the then Secretary of State, contained this statement:
"We no longer face acute air pollution in the United Kingdom but we still have significant problems".
I place emphasis on the words "in the United Kingdom" because it does seem that there is now increasing concern in Europe, if not in this country, and certainly among many of those concerned with the environment, about the problem of acid rain. It seems to me that were the "best practicable environmental option" approach to be adopted, and were the Government to provide the means to ensure that it could be, this should include looking at problems created in other countries as well as making a sensible balance, as the Royal Commission suggested, between problems that might be created by disposing of waste in one way rather than in another; in the air rather than in the river, or what-have-you.
If there is not to be a unified inspectorate, I wonder who is going to do this. The noble Lord, Lord Flowers, mentioned the enormous cost of dealing with the problem, and clearly it would be expensive. But at the moment we have not even reached the point of working on the cost. I hope the noble Lord, when he comes to reply, will confirm this. As I understand it, no one is obliged at the moment to consider the effects on other countries outside the United Kingdom. The memorandum which is in the appendix to the Government's response does not seem to me to make any reference to this, and one would have thought, given the controversy and the hot water which the Government have managed to get this country into over this issue, that that might be something which could be referred to in the memorandum.
On this issue, this country, I believe, is now seen as one of the worst air polluters in Europe—certainly the least caring. It is seen by many people as being largely responsible for the lack of progress in Europe, and, at home, by those who are concerned about it, it is seen simply as interested in cutting the research budgets of those who would be doing work on this in this country, rather than, as it should be, increasing those budgets. I hope the noble Lord, if he cannot go further than the vague and inadequate Government response to the Fifth Report of the Royal Commission, will at least be able to give us some information about what the Government are doing to deal with the problems of acid rain which the noble Baroness and others have referred to.
11.16 p.m.
Lord Skelmersdale: My Lords, at this time of night I feel, not for the first time, as though I am answering an examination paper set by the noble Lord, Lord Flowers, after having completed five years of tutorial on Sub-Committee G by the noble Lord, Lord Ashby. However, I am delighted to have this opportunity to respond for the Government to the important points made by various noble Lords about the Government's
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response to the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution's Fifth Report on Air Pollution Control.
I think that this is quite important because we are talking about a very specific subject. This is the first occasion when the subject has been debated in your Lordships' House, or indeed in another place, since our response was published last December. This Fifth Report was as clear and unequivocal as the Royal Commission's seven other most authoritative reports to date. It was unfortunate that, for reasons at least partly beyond the control of this Administration, the Government response took so long to prepare. Virtually every noble Lord has commented on this. I hope that they will believe me when I say that we regret this as much as they do. But I can assure the House that we have not simply put the reports to one side to gather dust on the shelf.
The recommendations made in all the reports of the Royal Commission can be relied upon to go to the very heart of our systems of pollution control. They have required careful consideration and much discussion and consultation with other interested departments. In the case of the Fifth Report there was, as we know, a change of Government at about the time when a response might have been expected. I hope that noble Lords will feel that our prolonged deliberations have eventually been worthwhile, Nonetheless I do, of course, accept that they have taken too long.
In our response we were able to accept a great many of the recommendations which the Commission had made. In particular, we welcomed its support for the basic features of our system of air pollution control—namely, the "best practicable means" principle, and that for maintaining a sensible division of responsibilities between local authorities and a central inspectorate. And we endorsed enthusiastically the emphasis on the need for an open-minded approach to pollution control, in which pollution control authorities would seek to achieve the "best practicable environmental option" for the disposal of pollutants. Indeed, in his foreword to the Government response, the then Secretary of State for the Environment—who, I must say, has been slightly maligned this evening—highlighted this as the most important contribution of the report. Clearly then there is nothing between the Government and the Commission in terms of the overall objective. The difference lies in the means to be adopted to achieve that end.
It was the specific organisational proposals which caused us some difficulty. We fully accept that there are cases where the reduction of pollution in one form can give rise to an unacceptable increase in another—for example, if a requirement for a solid smokeless fuel plant to reduce its pollution of the atmosphere is met at the expense of an even less tolerable effluent flow to a river. But, having considered the issue very carefully, we decided against setting up a central inspectorate to prevent such things from happening. Our response set out in detail the reasons for this. They boil down to four.
First, we are not convinced that the extent to which there is a real choice between methods of disposing of pollutants is sufficient to warrant the establishment of a new tier of administration. We recognise that it is technically possible to dispose of many pollutants in various ways. The noble Lord, Lord Flowers,

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mentioned the disposal of sulphur. These ways can be to land, water or air. But the decision is often dictated by the nature of the local—and I stress the word "local"—receiving environment. This is not to say that, where a choice does exist, no action should be taken. As I have stressed, we strongly support the principle of best practicable environmental option, and I shall explain how we propose to carry the approach forward.
Secondly, the Royal Commision's proposed solution was a central inspectorate with the emphasis on the "central". We consider that the situations where a choice of routes for pollution disposal exists are essentially matters for local decision—indeed the BPEO solution to a pollution problem in one area may not be the same as it is for a similar problem in another.
Thirdly, there are already in existence a large number of local panels or committees which provide precisely the sort of co-ordinating function which the Royal Commission has indicated is lacking in many areas. The Industrial Air Pollution Inspectorate, for instance, is represented on such local committees up and down the country, of which the most well-known example is perhaps the Coventry Pollution Prevention Panel. We feel that bodies such as these are best placed to make decisions about BPEO in given circumstances, although it is of course important that their membership is broad enough to represent adequately all the relevant interests.
Finally, the existing organisational arrangements for pollution control have only recently become fully established. In spite of what the noble Lord, Lord Melchett, says about Governments of a different persuasion overturning the decisions of other Governments, in this particular case we do want to give them a chance to work.
It has never been the policy of this Government to have a centralist control body of the sort that we understand is suggested, but I freely admit, on consideration of tonight's debate, that we may have got it wrong. We shall have to consider the speeches made by noble Lords tonight with great care. When we read the Royal Commission's report we had more than an impression that there was suggested in it a centralist control body. We do not feel that the report makes a good enough case for this as yet, if indeed that is what it intended to do.
That is why we announced in our response our intention to initiate discussions with the pollution control authorities in the first instance. This, I am glad to say, is well under way. We have been in touch with the local authority associations, the National Water Council, and the Industrial Air Pollution Inspectorate. I am delighted to say that the responses received so far are unanimous in welcoming the conclusions of the Fifth Report, and specifically the principle of best practicable environmental option. But they have also pointed out that, although important in principle, the option approach may be of comparatively limited application in practice.
The next step will be for a meeting, which I hope can be arranged in the near future, where the different options for co-ordination can be discussed at greater
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length. I should tell my noble friend Lord Mottistone that we shall naturally also be involving industrial interests in our discussions before reaching a final decision. I have good reason to believe that a practical consensus will emerge from the discussions. I think we would all agree that we should not try to achieve any objective by rigorous central control, with all the shadowy remoteness that it inevitably implies, when the same goal can be achieved by voluntary local co-operation. The noble Baroness, Lady Nicol, cast some doubt on whether this was a feasible possibility. The Government are determined to try. We have not in our reply, or our reply this evening, firmly closed the door on what the Royal Commission was suggesting.
Pollution control is a prime example of the sort of problem where the local man really is in a better position to judge what is right for a particular area than the expert, however well-qualified, who spends his days in a tower block in the centre of London or wherever. The former can see what is best for the local environment, and he or she, I would suggest, is far more likely to get it right.
I note that the form of the Question before us asks how we propose to introduce the best practicable environmental option into our policies for protecting the environment. I have concentrated in my response so far on the application of the option to pollution control, but I am sure that all noble Lords who have spoken will agree that we should endeavour to bring this approach to all aspects of the environment. We try hard to do this, believe it or not. I cite as my example the original decision on Belvoir last year, which seems to me to have exactly that approach in mind. But the Royal Commission report has given the concept authority, and I am sure that it will become of much wider application in our policies generally. The pollution control authorities have already drawn attention to the point and it is among the subjects which we shall be discussing with them shortly.
The matter of the review of air pollution control legislation is very much in the minds of all of us. Noble Lords who have spoken in this debate will need no reminding about the complexities here. We have not only to consider the adequacy of our national legislation, in particular in relation to the powers of local authorities; we have also to consider the arrangements for control in the United Kingdom in relation to new requirements emerging from Brussels, a question which has been raised this evening. You may be reassured, my Lords, that we instigated this review on publication of the Government's response to the Royal Commission's Fifth Report and are pressing on with all due speed.
The noble Lord, Lord Ashby, has told us that the Alkali Inspectorate was transferred to the Health and Safety Executive in 1975. We recognise that emissions from scheduled processes can be damaging to the environment, but there is no question of the Industrial Air Pollution Inspectorate acting in total isolation from the Department of the Environment or contrary to its wishes. The inspectorate is physically located in Romney House, the same building as most of the Department of the Environment officials who are concerned with air pollution policy. There is frequent contact between the two, and the definition of responsibilities that relate to their air pollution

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functions has now been formally set out in a memorandum of understanding appended to the Government response. The inspectorate serve the Secretary of State for the Environment in relation to the wider environment, as well as the Health and Safety Commission in relation to the work place and its immediate surrounding.
We think it desirable that the professional groups that deal with industrial health and safety should work as far as possible within a common organisation. It makes it easier to establish a consistent basis for pollution control both inside and outside a works. We regard this as a convincing argument for retaining the present arrangements, underpinned, as I said, by the new memorandum.
The problem of acid rain was referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady Robson of Kiddington. As was pointed out by the noble Lord, Lord Flowers, this is of course a truly international problem, not least because all countries emit sulphur and most countries have their own air, as it were, polluted by emissions from other countries. The Government are participating actively in the work of the Geneva Convention and work in the Community to develop effective and equitable solutions to the acid rain problem.
I mentioned rather sketchily the Memorandum of Understanding referred to earlier by the noble Lord, Lord Ashby. The memorandum is governing relations between the Government and the inspectorate itself. The commission have consulted environment Ministers about their plans. As I have already said, the Industrial Air Pollution Inspectorate is located in the same building as the Air Policy Directorate of the Department of the Environment. Frequent contacts and exchange of views between the Department of the Environment inspectorates therefore can and do take place.
The noble Lord, Lord Ashby, in introducing his Question this evening, I felt answered the Question himself. The Alkali Inspectorate has for years been practising "quietly"—his own words, not mine—what the Royal Commission have been asking for in this report. So we do not need a new body, whether advisory or otherwise, for this purpose. But the question is rather whether, as the noble Baroness, Lady Nicol, has said, we can really rely on local co-operation. As I have said, we shall see.
I was also asked what steps have been taken by the bodies consulted on the "best practicable environmental option". I regret that I cannot report on any tonight, not because no steps have been taken but because these will be spoken about in the discussions which I have already announced are about to be forthcoming. I would not like to prejudice anything along those lines.
The noble Lord, Lord Melchett, who knows—although he may have forgotten—the Department of the Environment rather better than I do, will know that, so far as international affairs and pollution are concerned, we have a branch concerned with international relations in environmental matters. Countries rarely take account of pollution in other countries. This problem is at the centre of a number of Community arguments, and there have in the past
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been many in Sub-Committee G, and I have no doubt that there will be many more to come.
In conclusion, may I say that this has been an excellent debate on a subject which we can ill afford to overlook. The Royal Commission have made a valuable contribution to this and, like the Royal Commission, we in Government are determined to make a success of the "best practicable environmental option". We differ from them only on the means to achieve that end. As our response makes clear, and as (if I have done nothing else this evening) I have made clear, we have not finally closed the door on their preferred solution, but we feel that we may have found a better way.
I have no doubt that this subject will arise in your Lordships' House before very much longer, and that I or one of my noble friends will be asked to report on this well within the next five years.
Lord Flowers: My Lords before the noble Lord sits down, would he agree with me that the unified inspectorate proposed in the fifth report was modelled very closely on the working practices of the Alkali Inspectorate, which, centralised or otherwise, in principle has as its most important officers the individual alkali inspectors in the field who operate with a very considerable amount of authority, and therefore in a rather decentralised way?
Lord Skelmersdale: My Lords, yes, but they have, if you like, a decentralised approach from a central body which is already in existence. What I am still not convinced about is whether we need a new central body as well as the Alkali Inspectorate.
House adjourned at twenty-six minutes before midnight.