Lords Sitting of 13 June 1984

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

St. Thomas' Hospital: Future
Lord Molloy: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will make a Statement on the future of St. Thomas' Hospital, London, and whether any other major hospitals are at risk as a result of spending cuts.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Security (Lord Glenarthur): My Lords, West Lambeth Health Authority has recently published a consultative document on strategic options for its district for the next 10 years. Various options are proposed for the services at St. Thomas' and other hospitals in the district, but none of these options puts St. Thomas' at risk. It is now for the public in West Lambeth to consider the options and respond to them.
Lord Molloy: My Lords, is the noble Lord the Minister aware that there is grave consternation about all these proposals? Not one of them is acceptable to all levels of staff at St. Thomas' and other hospitals allied to it. It has been maintained all the way through that one of the proposals is for a reduction of about 55 per cent. in the number of beds, which will mean a saving of £8 million a year. It is this kind of proposal which is causing distress to one of London's great teaching hospitals and its allied hospitals in London.
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, I do not accept that St. Thomas' is at risk in the way the noble Lord suggests under any of the options proposed in the district health authority's consultative paper. The options range from a very small reduction in the number of beds—that is, minus 23 at St. Thomas'—to a large increase in the number of beds—that is, plus 163, if South Western and Tooting Bec hospitals were to close.
Lord Vaizey: My Lords, is the Minister aware that, although nationally there has been an increase in the resources devoted to the health service, because of the operation of RAWP there has been a quite disproportionate run down in Greater London? Is the Minister further aware that among the teaching staffs of the great London teaching hospitals as well as among other members of staff there is widespread worry that centres of excellence will be run down? It is urgent that the Minister should make some kind of statement that this question will be looked at in a broader perspective.
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, these matters are looked at in a broad perspective, but the fact is that they are also matters which affect people who live locally, and that is why it is appropriate that they should discuss them locally first, before they come before Ministers.
Lord Ennals: My Lords, does the Minister accept that if St. Thomas' is largely to remain unaffected, it would mean the likelihood of the closure of 1,000 psychiatric beds at Tooting Bec, which is one of the options, and 200 geriatric beds at the South Western in Brixton, which would inevitably place a very heavy burden upon the local authority, Lambeth, which is high on the list for rate-capping? Does the noble Lord not appreciate the appalling consequences for the community if these options are carried through?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, they are not serious in the way the noble Lord suggests. The closure of both the South Western and Tooting Bec hospitals is only one of four options in the document to which this all relates. The other options would involve closure of one or other of these two hospitals, or moderate reductions at all three hospitals in the district. It would not be right for me to comment in detail on the options because they are still being discussed publicly. The noble Lord, Lord Ennals, mentioned in particular the mentally ill, and the intention is, quite rightly, to improve local services for mentally ill people. The services for them will not necessarily be made worse just by closing hospitals, but will be improved by returning these people to the community.
Baroness Lane-Fox: My Lords, does my noble friend the Minister agree that, whether or not it is so designed, the implication of this Question is liable to damage the morale of staff who are carrying out such wonderful work?
Lord Glenarthur: Yes, my Lords, I fully accept that, and I am grateful to my noble friend.
Lord Ennals: My Lords, is it not already the case that morale at St. Thomas' and in the whole district, which is now under threat, is extremely low? If any part of the options is to be carried through will this not also affect the families of those who need care in the community?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, we all have to live within our means, and it is for the West Lambeth Health Authority to consider how best to live within its cash limit and to identify areas of waste and priorities for development.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes: My Lords, will my noble friend confirm that the Resource Allocation Working Party, which was transferring funds out of London, was introduced by a Labour Government because of the departure from London of the central London resident population? Will he also confirm that the teaching hospitals are now having great difficulty in finding normal teaching material, and that students have to go to peripheral hospitals to encounter ordinary cases?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, I am sure that much of what my noble friend says is quite true. RAWP has a history and has sometimes over-provided. It is difficult to forecast exactly how populations will shift. Nevertheless, we have to base plans on something, and it has been done through RAWP.
Lord Brockway: My Lords, is the Minister aware how famous are our leading teaching hospitals in London throughout the world? Is he aware that in America, West Germany, and India I have heard praise, particularly of St. Thomas' and of its consultants? With thousands of pounds now being spent on equipment in order to make St. Thomas' the equal of any hospital in the world, would it not be disastrous if there were any rumours that it was to be closed?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, as I thought I had earlier made clear, there is no risk to St. Thomas' in the way the noble Lord suggests.
Lord Annan: My Lords, would the noble Lord agree that if over 10 years £15 million is to be taken out of St. Thomas' hospital, that will reduce the hospital to something between 400 and 500 beds? As 1,000 beds are necessary to teach 100 medical students, this will mean a complete rethink about the future of the medical school at St. Thomas'. Has the noble Lord information from other right honourable friends in the Government connected with the Department of Education and Science that this is, or is not, in line with the plans of London University for the rationalisation of medical teaching?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, the figures I gave in answer to an earlier supplementary do not go quite so far as the noble Lord, Lord Annan, suggests. The four options vary between a reduction at the least of 23 beds to an increase of 163. Therefore, what the noble Lord says I do not think is necessarily correct.
Lord Molloy: My Lords, is the noble Minister aware that he is quite right when he says that St. Thomas' is not going to he subject to immediate execution, but that there are the beginnings, and they are evident, of the slow, tortuous death of one of London's—nay, one of Britain's—greatest hospitals? Will he recall that it is only 12 months ago that the threat then that St. Thomas' had to endure for a number of months was that its cancer research establishment was going to be drastically reduced, but that because of public outcry that was averted? Is he further aware that all endeavours will be undertaken both in this House and outside to prevent St. Thomas' suffering a slow death and vanishing, because its history is magnificent and we believe that its future could be just as magnificent?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, I really must say that I find the noble Lord's remarks so exaggerated that I do not think that they will help the issue at all. The fact remains that this is out for consultation. It is a matter for local concern to establish the needs, and the concern and interest expressed will be based on the options I have described.
Lord Annan: My Lords, can the noble Lord answer my question about medical education? I am asking whether the noble Lord is aware of the views of the Department of Education and Science. It is of great importance that the right hand in Government should know what the left hand is doing. Which is right and which is left, I would not care to say. May I put a further question to the noble Lord? It is in the plans for the rationalisation of medical services in London to move the Institute of Dermatology from Lisle Street to St. Thomas'. This is naturally a move which will cost some money. Can the noble Lord give an assurance that that plan will not be delayed even in view of the cuts which are obviously going to have to be necessary in that district?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, I cannot give the noble Lord an answer about the dermatology unit but I shall find out and let him know. The main point is that spending on the health service is now at a record level and we intend to increase it still further, but we are also committed, as the noble Lord is aware, to achieving a greater equality of access to health care throughout the country. It is therefore essential that London's health authorities plan for changes in the pattern of services in line with their reduced populations. This was the point brought out by my noble friend Lady Gardner.
Lord Molloy: My Lords, would the noble Lord agree that the cash limit cuts which are going to he exercised by the West Lambeth authority are going to be the largest ever? Would he now please turn his attention to the latter part of my Question, which asks how many other great London hospitals are so threatened?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords. I do not think that it would serve any useful purpose for me to stand at the Dispatch Box and go through each of the London health districts describing what their plans are. I would remind the noble Lord opposite that there were 272 hospital closures under the last Labour Government, which compares with only 184 during the present Administration and a large increase in capital expenditure.

Gibraltar: Airspace Restriction
2.47 p.m.
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they have now received any reply to their representations to the Spanish Government about the restriction on the use of Spanish airspace by aircraft approaching and leaving Gibraltar Airport.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Armed Forces (Lord Trefgarne): My Lords, discussions are continuing with the Spanish Government with a view to the earliest possible full normalisation of relations in the Gibraltar area.
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that moderately hopeful reply. Is he aware

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that a couple of months ago I was in an aircraft which only got into Gibraltar after several attempts, during which the pilots made it clear that they were being handicapped by this restriction? Can my noble friend impress on the Spanish Government that it is difficult to have good relations with, or even treat with respect, a Government which persists in this mean and dangerous little restriction?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, I can confirm to my noble friend that we have lost no opportunity to represent this point to the Spaniards. But I should like to add that, in the event of the safety of the aircraft becoming a consideration, pilots operating into Gibraltar are directed to enter the prohibited area if need be.

Newcastle Polytechnic: Students' Travel Costs
2.49 p.m.
Lord Glenamara: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what consultations the Department of Education and Science has had with Newcastle-upon-Tyne Polytechnic about the new arrangements for meeting travel costs of students and what effect they estimate the new arrangements will have on students in the polytechnic.
The Earl of Swinton: My Lords, the department has not consulted individual institutions about its new proposals for the treatment of students' travel expenditure. However, during the consultative period individual institutions were free to make their views known to the department, and these were carefully considered by Ministers. No representations have been received from Newcastle Polytechnic and I am therefore unable to say what effects the polytechnic believes the new arrangements will have on its students.
Lord Glenamara: My Lords, is the noble Earl aware that more than half, at a conservative estimate, of the full-time students will be adversely affected financially by these proposals? Is he aware that in a big polytechnic like this—and it is one of the biggest in the country—large numbers of students live in the surrounding counties, in this case in Northumberland, Tyne, Wear, and Durham? Many of them have gone from work to the polytechnic and have homes, children and family commitments. They are quite unable to move into the areas round the college and claim a two-homes allowance, and many of them are going to have to give up their courses mid-way. Does he not think that that will be a tragedy? Is he aware, for example, that a student living in Durham City has £200 a year travel costs, and that he will be £90 a year worse off because of the Government's proposals? May I add my plea to that of the—
Lord Denham: No.
Lord Glenamara: I am asking if I may add a plea. May I not add a plea to that of the chairman of the UGC that the Government think again about these proposals?
The Earl of Swinton: My Lords, as I said to the noble Lord, Lord Glenamara, in reply to his first question, I do not think we have received anything from the authorities of the Newcastle Polytechnic drawing attention to these points. In fact, most students will gain under the new proposals. I am sure that the reputations of particular institutions such as Newcastle will mean they will be able to continue to recruit well motivated and able students. Although travel patterns are likely to change as a result of the new arrangements, there will be swings as well as roundabouts on the effect of this on different institutions.
Lord Kilmarnock: My Lords, if the Government have not consulted widely on this, how can they expect to make sensible proposals for travel costs? Would it not be a good idea to ask for the facts from the institutions concerned?
The Earl of Swinton: My Lords, the Government have consulted widely over this. As I said, they have not consulted with individual institutions but the individual institutions were allowed to express any opinions if they so wished. They have consulted with a number of bodies, including the National Union of Students and the Committee of Vice-Chancellors and Principals, and other national bodies.
Baroness Lockwood: My Lords, would the Minister not agree that the survey of the National Union of Students has shown that the majority of students are going to be worse off under this new agreement, and the so-called rough justice which the department was claiming for the change is not going to operate? Would he not also confirm that within recent weeks the Committee of Directors of Polytechnics has expressed very grave concern over the effect of the change on students at polytechnics because of the kind of problem which my noble friend has outlined in relation to Newcastle?
The Earl of Swinton: My Lords, my understanding is different from that of the noble Baroness, Lady Lockwood, in so far as I understand that the majority of students will in fact be better off. We do not collect information of the kind that the National Union of Students have done, but it would in any case be of limited value in relation to what is now proposed as we would expect student travel patterns to change as they arrange their affairs so as to get maximum advantage from the new arrangements. Students have never been under any pressure before because they have been able to claim the money. There are various cheap ways of travelling: cheap concessionary rail fares and bus fares, and perhaps the hire of private transport and various things which they can look at to suit the new arrangements.
Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: My Lords, it appears from the evidence contained in the questions put to the noble Earl the Minister (who has answered very fairly)

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that students may indeed suffer as a result of the change. Was it not clear from his replies that there was no overall consultation of the kind which normally takes place between his department and the polytechnics? In the light of the questions, would he not ask his right honourable friend to look at this matter again to ensure that these students, who are an important part of the future of this country, are not put at a disadvantage at this important time?
The Earl of Swinton: My Lords, as I said before, we did not consult with every single institution in the country; we did consult with those bodies which represent the authorities and we consulted with those bodies which represent the students before we took this action. No, my Lords, I am afraid I am not prepared to ask my right honourable friend to look at this again.
Lord Glenamara: My Lords, if the noble Earl is not prepared to do anything about it, may I ask him what parliamentary action is necessary for this scheme to be implemented?
The Earl of Swinton: My Lords, I do not think there is any.

RAF Trainer Fleet
3.54 p.m.
The Earl of Kinnoull: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government how soon a decision will be announced on the new RAF Trainer Aircraft Requirement and whether the value of the all-British "Firecracker" contender in relation to jobs, exports and value to the industry will influence the decision.
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, we hope to be in a position to decide later this year whether to purchase aircraft to replace the Royal Air Force's basic trainer fleet of Jet Provosts and, if so, which of the four short-listed contenders should be selected. If we do decide on replacement, we shall of course take full account of the broader economic and industrial considerations in assessing all the contenders that meet the specification. I should add that the Firecracker is not in fact an all-British aircraft but contains a significant number of foreign components.
The Earl of Kinnoull: My Lords, while thanking my noble friend for that reply, may I ask him whether it is true that all four contenders have an American engine but in fact the Firecracker is the only all-British design company which is capable of producing an all-British aircraft other than the engine? May I ask whether he is aware that this group is perhaps one of the best examples of British industrial enterprise where they took the specification from the RAF and they designed this project at no launch cost to the Government?
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Would my noble friend also agree that this order is very important to British industry, no only for the RAF order but for the potential export business which could flow?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, I am sure my noble friend is right in saying that this order would be important to the British company, first of all with regard to the Royal Air Force order, if it comes, and, secondly, with regard to any possible export orders which may flow from it. Although, as my noble friend acknowledges, the engines of all the contenders for this particular contract are in fact of non-British design, and indeed of non-British manufacture, it is the case that rather more than just the engine and the propeller are of foreign manufacture. In fact, in regard to the Firecracker no less than 90 per cent. of the equipment in terms of cost is of non-UK origin.
Lord Boston of Faversham: My Lords, would the Minister accept that as part of the Government's campaign to buy British wherever possible it is desirable to set an example? Can he say whether, if this particular alternative is chosen, that would in fact involve new factories in places of high unemployment such as Scotland and Wales?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, I am not certain about that because the company concerned does not in fact have any manufacturing facilities of its own and would need to make some arrangement with an existing manufacturer. So it might not therefore mean immediate new jobs. We have also made clear that, even if we were to choose one of the other designs not of United Kingdom origin, we would expect that that too would be manufactured under licence in this country.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes: My Lords, can I ask my noble friend the Minister this: in view of the reports in the weekend newspapers of Westland entering into agreement to make an Australian aeroplane in Britain, would that produce a second British tender for them?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, first of all, the design of that aeroplane to which my noble friend refers is, of course, an Australian design. I understand that that particular aircraft has not yet flown even in prototype form, but of course it would be manufactured, as my noble friend says, by a British company. Indeed, we anticipate that that would be the case whichever one we chose.
Lord Dean of Beswick: My Lords, is the noble Lord the Minister not aware that there is the possibility that Firecracker, in terms of future job prospects and exports, may not be the best choice? Can I ask the noble Lord the Minister to give an undertaking that the question of jobs and future exports, and increasing or retaining jobs because of the present unemployment level, will be one of the paramount reasons or considerations when the Government do make their decision on this subject?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, I can confirm that the industrial considerations will be important ones, but it will be important, too, to ensure that the chosen aircraft meets the specification that we require and that the price and delivery terms offered are in accordance with the requirements that we have set out.
Lord Mulley: My Lords, will the noble Lord the Minister not agree that the inclusion of Firecracker in the list must mean that it meets the requirements of the RAF? Secondly, may I stress again the importance of a market for Trainer within NATO in the next years? Does he not understand well that no country ever buys an aeroplane which has not been adopted by its own air force? Finally, could I ask him what his right honourable friends would have said if I had announced some years ago that it was my intention to buy Brazilian, Swiss or Australian aircraft for the Royal Air Force?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, I am not sure that I should be drawn down the hypothetical route which the noble Lord suggests, but on the first part of the noble Lord's supplementary question, we have not yet set the precise specification that we shall require. We have issued, as I think the noble Lord will know, an air staff target. The air staff requirement is now being prepared following the general submissions that we have received from the manufacturers, and the air staff requirement will in due course be issued with a view to tenders being sought.
Lord Beswick: My Lords, the Minister said he expects that the decision between the four contenders will be made by the end of the year. Does that mean that the possible development of the Jet Provost has been dropped?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, I cannot yet say that the development of the Jet Provost has finally been abandoned as an idea. That will depend on the results of the tendering exercise that we shall be embarking upon shortly. But I think it would be fair to say that that is becoming less and less likely.
The Earl of Kinnoull: My Lords, will my noble friend say what will be the next stages of the evaluation of this project?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, it will, I hope, be for me to fly them all.

Business
Lord Denham: My Lords, with the leave of the House, I should like to say a brief word about the timing of the two short debates this afternoon. In the case of short debates, it is normal to suggest a maximum length of time for speeches. The principle adopted is that the mover should be entitled to approximately 15 minutes and that the Minister should rise to reply no later than 20 minutes before the scheduled end to the debate. On that basis I should like to suggest that speakers in the debate of the noble Lord. Lord Henderson of Brompton, should limit their speeches to a maximum of nine minutes, and
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speakers in the debate of the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Balhousie, to a maximum or seven minutes. Perhaps I may add that if any noble Lord should speak at greater length, he would do so at the expense of later speakers in that particular debate.

"Health or Smoking?" Report
3.3 p.m.
Lord Henderson of Brompton Lord Henderson of Brompton rose to call attention to the follow-up Report of the Royal College of Physicians entitled "Health or Smoking?" published in November 1983; and to move for Papers.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, it is an honour for me to open a debate that has attracted a member of the Royal Family, His Royal Highness the Duke of Gloucester, to make his maiden speech, well placed from the Cross-Benches. The noble Duke's speech today will, I am sure, be a subject of wide comment in the press and on the radio and television. I only hope that after today the noble Duke will be encouraged to make further speeches, perhaps on architecture, on which he is an acknowledged expert. That might, indeed, induce his noble and royal kinsman the Prince of Wales to take part as well, since he has recently expressed an interest in that subject. That would be a double plus.
This Motion calls attention to the latest in a series of reports on smoking by the Royal College, beginning in 1962. I should like to start by paying tribute to the Royal College for its pioneering report in 1962, when Sir Robert Platt, later Lord Platt, was chairman of the Royal College.
I should like to say at once that I accept the findings of the Royal College, and have ever since 1962, and I accept the findings of the Surgeon General of the United States as well. However, I have certain reservations about some of the recommendations, though I must congratulate the Royal College on the report's appendix, on "Giving up Smoking", where I detect a slightly more flexible attitude than hitherto.
This is a highly complex, intractable and difficult subject. One would have thought that it would be so simple; that it ought to be, as the Royal College hoped in 1962, equivalent to cholera. The House may remember that in the early 1850s cholera was attributed to dirty water, and by 1875 Disraeli had on the statute book his great Public Health Act. Within 25 years, despite a certain amount of opposition, with great persistence he achieved that magnificent Act. But—and this is a huge "but"—no one was addicted to dirty water; no companies made billions of pounds out of dirty water. Dirty water did not provide billions of easily-collected revenue for governments, nor did dirty water, unlike cigarettes, provide hundreds of thousands of jobs. Indeed, it was Disraeli's Act that provided jobs for workers in the water industry. Nor was dirty water, as cigarettes are, an important factor in our balance of payments.
Those are just some of the reasons—psychological, social, financial and political—why, after more than 20 years of certain knowledge that smoking—not tobacco as such, but smoking—is poisonous, no

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government in the world, except perhaps those of Finland and Norway, have succeeded in tackling successfully what the United States Surgeon General, in his report of 1982, called,
"the most important public health issue of our time".
Another illustration of the difficulty of this subject is that almost every idea, however well-intentioned, to combat smoking, seems to be counter-productive in some way. For example, by putting the price up the odds are that the addict will smoke his cigarette to the hitter end. If he stubbed it out earlier, it would be safer. But it is the last bit of the cigarette that is the most dangerous. So by pushing up the price, inadvertently, one is increasing the health hazard.
Let us next take the ban on television advertisements. That led directly to the sponsorship of sporting and cultural events, thereby vastly increasing, at small cost to the manufacturers, public awareness of brand names. That was quite contrary to the intention.
The Government health warning, which we surely all applaud, is, alas, privately welcomed by the manufacturers because if consumers sue the manufacturers for damages, they can no longer claim ignorance. In that highly litigious society, the United States, no product liability case against cigarette manufacturers has so far been successful.
In spite of all these difficulties, there has been some progress. In the great debate which was held in the House in 1962 the present Lord Chancellor (then Viscount Hailsham, Lord President, and Minister for Science) answered for the Government and robustly, and I think courageously at that time, supported what he called the,
"overwhelming body of scientific opinion".
He also neatly encapsulated the attitude of the tobacco industry when he said that it was one of "agnosticism bolstered by scientific doubt".
Incredibly, that attitude is still the attitude of the tobacco manufacturers. But by entering into voluntary agreements, which they did very soon after that 1962 report and debate, they have implicitly acknowledged scientific evidence, whatever the official attitude may be. So, in a sense, that is a gain.
Again I quote the present Lord Chancellor, this time speaking as Mr. Quintin Hogg, in 1964, in the House of Commons. He said:
"I am a smoker speaking in a Parliament of smokers and in a Cabinet of smokers and with an electorate of smokers".
As to Parliament now, I think the House will agree that it is a matter of common observation that those who smoke are the exception. Moreover, I am reliably informed that there is now only a single smoker in the Cabinet. So it is a single smoker in a Cabinet of nonsmokers, which is exactly the reverse of the case in 1964. That must be counted as progress, and what a good example it is to the country. If only all public figures would show such a good example, as well as the teachers and those in the health care professions, as recommended in the Royal College report!
In the electorate there are eight million fewer smokers than there were in 1962, and the habit is becoming socially unacceptable. I agree with the Royal College that the aim must be to create a society in which non-smoking is the norm.
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But against those considerable gains, it is, sadly, true to say that in 1981 as many cigarettes were smoked as were smoked in 1962, when the Royal College first reported. Further, I am afraid that many more women smoke now than did in 1962. There is grave concern about smoking by the young and about the huge increase in smoking in the third world countries, rightly drawn attention to by the Royal College; so there is no cause for complacency.
What can he done? I shall leave to other speakers such important topics as the Government health warning, sales to under-developed countries, passive smoking and the special problems of women smokers. I should like to confine myself to a few questions to the Government, and to concentrate on advertising and alternatives. I would ask the noble Lord the Minister: what is the response of the Government to the joint survey by the SSRC and the MRC into the psychological and social pressures that encourage and reinforce the smoking habit? I believe that that joint survey was due to be published in 1981. At any rate, I should like to know what is the official attitude to it. I am very glad to see that one of the recommendations of the Royal College is for more—far more, they say—research into the nature of tobacco addiction.
I now come to advertising. 1 understand that the Government's policy is still one of control by voluntary agreement. I see the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, here, in a different capacity from that in which he was when speaking for the Government 13 years ago, in 1971. He then said that control by voluntary agreement was their policy "at present". Does "at present" mean "indefinitely"? I do hope not. I would further ask the Minister whether the Government have considered using Section 108 of the Medicines Act 1968. I believe there is a question of its being ultra tires; but I should like to know whether use of that section would be ultra tires, or whether the Government have just failed to use it for political reasons and would still wish to adhere to voluntary agreement rather than to resort to any kind of statutory sanction.
For myself, I should like to see a three-pronged attack on advertisements: first, by voluntary agreement, if voluntary it must be, through the Advertising Standards Authority to restrict or totally ban all advertisements of cigarettes and of sponsorship that relates smoking to sport, sex, travel and culture. Secondly, I should like, as the Royal College says, the budget of the Health Education Council to be increased. The Royal College characterised their budget as "miniscule". Actually, it is £3 million a year. Just compare that with the manufacturers' budget for advertising in this country of £100 million per year. It is £2 billion globally. But if the Health Education Council's budget is miniscule by comparison with the advertising expenditure of the manufacturers, it is even more miniscule by comparison with the "take" of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, which, after the recent increase in the last Budget, is now £5 billion a year. All I am asking the Government to do is to "up" the expenditure on the anti-smoking campaign from 0.06 per cent. of their revenue of £5 billion to 2 per cent. I do not call that asking much. That is what is called "the fairness doctrine", which has been tried in the United States with varying success. I do not see

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why it should not be tried here. And if the advertisers start to cut their expenditure, so much the better.
Thirdly, I would urge the Health Education Council to change their style. For myself, I think that grim warnings and horror stories about health have had little effect. The Royal College now says that the public was deeply disturbed by television programmes recently on asbestosis. No doubt, and quite rightly, they were; but asbestosis is as irrelevant to this problem as cholera. The emphasis, to my mind, should be on how to kick the habit: to make it easier for those who want to do so; and, above all, to make it fun. and not to make people feel guilty. I should like to see leading figures of sport and television, popular heroes, taking part in these programmes. They might even give their services free. I do not see why not. Also, encouragement might be given at local level for members of the public, smokers. to join what could be called "smokewatchers", rather like the very successful weightwatchers' clubs. At all events, if one could only engage the goodwill and attention of popular heroes, one might try to get over to the country that not to smoke is manly, not to smoke is glamorous, not to smoke is sporty, and so on.
I should like to have talked for some time about alternatives to cigarette smoking, but I cannot do so because my time is running out. All I can do is to welcome the change of heart (as I see it) in the Royal College report, because they, I think, make life very much easier for all those who are afflicted with this habit and who have not been able to change. I should like to end by endorsing what Mr. Partick Jenkin said in 1980 in another place—and I think that that was the last time that this matter was discussed in Parliament. He was the responsible Minister; and he said that.
"it is the duty of the Government to reduce the toll of disease and premature death",
and that this is "fully in the tradition of Conservative Governments". Thereby, he refuted those who harp on the "nanny state". I hope that we shall not hear those "nanny" and "governess" arguments in the debate today. My Lords, I beg to move for Papers.
3.18 p.m.
The Duke of Gloucester: My Lords, as I stand here before your Lordships for the first time, I am very conscious that I follow in the path of my ancestors. Many of them took their place here, as I do, and just a few spoke from the Throne. I am aware that the last Duke of Gloucester to speak here frequently battled with his brother-in-law, the Duke of Sussex, over the matter of slavery. The victory eventually went to Sussex, perhaps with a little help from Wilberforce and his friends. I hope today to restore some balance to the honour and prestige of the title that I am privileged to use in this Chamber.
Succeeding generations will regard the issue that we are to discuss with the same disdain we would now reserve for the policy and practice of slavery. Your Lordships may well know that in the 19th century epidemics of cholera decimated parts of the population and that the cause of the problem—polluted water supply—was identified by statistical analysis, enabling Parliament to pass the necessary legislation that totally eradicated the problem.
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Inevitably this process took much longer than necessary due to ill-informed opposition and vested interest.
This debate has been called to take note of the 1983 Royal College of Physicians' report, Health or Smoking? As your Lordships have heard, the first report was published in 1962, and it was as a consequence of that report that ASH was set up—ASH standing for Action on Smoking and Health. It is an organisation of which I am privileged to be the patron. The second report was in 1971, and the third in 1977. All of them have been written by the most eminent and knowledgeable experts in this field, reporting in a straightforward fashion the statistics and the experience of the consequences of the smoking habit. Each subsequent report has amplified the findings of its predecessor and the gaps in the overall picture slowly filled in—a picture which has also been revealed in every other country where similar research has been undertaken. although sadly I must emphasise that this country has suffered the effects of tobacco more than any other, due to our history of high consumption.
The depressing fact remains that virtually none of the recommendations in the reports have been carried out fully, even though everyone now accepts the figures as accurate.
My Lords, this volume may induce in its readers a sense of déjà vu: but this repetition is necessary because of the slowness of the response by the public and its legislators. The reports chart the consequences of the tobacco habit nationally; like a leaky bath tap left unrepaired, the current stain on the tub is inevitably larger and more distinct than that of 1962. If I may quote one statistic from the report, if you take 1,000 young smokers who smoke one pack a day, statistically one will be murdered, six will die on the roads, hut 250 will die prematurely from any of the following smoking-induced diseases: lung cancer, coronary heart disease, chronic bronchitis, emphysema, cancer of the oesophagus, of the mouth, of the larynx, of the bladder, of the pancreas, or strokes brought about by the fact that the human body is not designed to absorb chemicals inhaled through the respiratory system.
The conclusion that the Royal College draws is very plain. Smoking is the single most important cause of preventable ill-health, disability and premature death in Britain today. This will continue to be so for many decades unless there is a much greater change in the rate of consumption. On logical grounds there is a clear case for the total ban of such poison, but there are practical and humanitarian reasons for not doing so. Sixteen million people still smoke regularly, many of whom started when it was still considered a socially acceptable habit. The identification of it as a self-destructive practice came too late for many who were already addicted.
Addiction is an aspect of tobacco smoking that puts it in a very special category. We learn from Government surveys that 60 per cent. of people who smoke wish to give up, and that 70 per cent. have tried to at least once. The power of addiction to nicotine is shown by one dramatic statistic: even after undergoing major lung cancer surgery 48 per cent. of patients (if they survive) start smoking again. For such addiction it is impossible to legislate a ban.

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What is possible is to concentrate on non-smokers, particuarly the young, and make sure that they are fully aware of the consequences of smoking—first to their health, and secondly the strength of the addiction.
It is still fashionable to mention "freedom" when anyone from the health professions tries to take action about smoking. A moment's thought would show that the freedom argument belongs not to the tobacco industry but to the health professions, as most smokers begin smoking when they are children—not a free adult choice by definition—and when as adults they try to give up they encounter unexpected problems.
The new government report on children smoking shows that secondary school children spend nearly £60 million per annum on cigarettes—setting them on an expensive path. In the fifth year, 27 per cent. are already regular smokers. Research shows that these people will experience much greater risk of serious or lethal medical problems than those who start later in life.
It would seem that not only smokers become addicted but also Governments. The tax on cigarettes brings in almost £5,000 million per annum, representing 3.7 per cent. of total revenue. There is no argument I can put to diminish the significance of this figure. The National Health Service only wastes £170 million alleviating those suffering tobacco-induced disease: but then for so many it can do so little to help. The cost to the economy is estimated at 50 million working days due to smoking-induced illness—more than 10 times the number lost to strikes.
Clearly any Government can be persuaded that they need this tax just as badly as many smokers need their nicotine, but there is clear evidence that the Government can raise the tax considerably higher before total revenue begins to fall. I congratulate this Government on raising the tax a further 10 per cent. in the last Budget and for declaring that this was for health reasons. In real terms cigarettes are much the same price in relation to the cost of living as they were after the war. The promise of regular large annual increases could become a plausible disincentive to new smokers.
From the very beginning the College of Physicians' report called for effective public information on the risks of smoking to he disseminated to everyone. Clearly this process is far from complete—for the large majority of smokers grossly under-estimate the risk they run. If you do not believe me, try asking them. Ideally it should be part of every school curriculum for people to be educated about how the human body works and how to treat or mistreat it—regrettably, many schools regard exams as more important.
For more than 10 years now we have had the benefit of the Government health warning. At the time this seemed a major advance, but in retrospect it seems merely to have protected, ethically and legally, both the industry and governments from the consequences of their inaction. Any warning has to be much stronger to respond to the reality of smoking. "Can seriously damage your health" sounds like. "One day you may get a headache, or a bad cough"! What would be more appropriate would be a variety of messages—as adopted in Scandinavia—that actually state facts
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about death, disease and addiction, prominently displayed on the pack.
The tobacco industry spends £100 million a year on advertising. It claims that it does not do so to woo new smokers but to encourage smokers to change brands. But yet in countries where they have monopolies they advertise just as much. Countries like Norway, where they have banned all advertising, have discovered that adult smoking decreased somewhat but that the dramatic consequence was a sharp fall in children's smoking. There is every reason to believe that the same thing would happen here, provided that all tobacco sponsorship was banned as well. Currently the tobacco industry spends around £6 million on sport sponsorship, but it gets fantastic publicity from this—hundreds of hours of television exposure and a marked effect on children's brand loyalty and awareness.
If this advertising could be phased out the results to the media and the various sports involved need not he drastic. Tobacco represents less than 3 per cent. of the total national advertising expenditure. I am sure other companies could take their place, and should, for no other product or service can he compared in any way to tobacco for the damage it causes. To those who fear the loss of their tobacco subsidy I suggest they consider the ethics of persuading people, however indirectly, to do something so clearly identified as harmful.
My Lords, I have ventured on to the uncomfortable question of moral considerations, not just to consider what we as individuals should do but also how others should or should not behave. This report has one chapter that breaks new ground. It reveals the extent that this country is in the forefront of exporting all these problems—medical, ethical, fiscal and social—to third world countries, eager to appear sophisticated but least able to pay in the long term for the short-term advantages brought by tobacco. The battle against international slavery is not yet quite finished, it would seem!
Cholera is a disease that our forbears put behind them through the power of Parliament. On this very day more people are dying of an unnecessary preventable disease than died during the era of cholera. Will indifference, ignorance and vested interest continue to kill off that section of our society that cannot or will not save itself?
3.30 p.m.
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: My Lords, it is a very great privilege and a very great pleasure to be able to be the first to convey to the noble Duke the congratulations of the whole House on a very remarkable, very impressive, and enormously interesting maiden speech. It is characteristic of the noble Duke's high sense of duty, which he has shown in many directions over recent years, that for the occasion of his maiden speech in this House (which all of us know is a somewhat nerve-racking occasion) he selected not one of those anodyne subjects in which we all, with easy consciences, denounce sin, but a highly relevant and very important public issue, not free from controversy. I think we are particularly indebted to him for making that very brave choice. I know that I speak for the whole House when I say that we profoundly hope that, having broken the ice this afternoon, His Royal

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Highness will give us the pleasure of hearing him on many occasions in the future.
Noble Lords: Hear, hear!
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: The noble Duke spoke with great vigour about smoking, but his language was quite moderate when compared with that of his forbear, His late Majesty, King James I, who made an oration on the same subject. His late Majesty observed that the habit of smoking was,
"loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs, and in the black, stinking fume thereof nearest resembling the horrible Stygian smoke of the pit that is bottomless."
Those observations point in the same direction as the noble Duke's speech, but the noble Duke will not mind my saying that they express these truths even more vigorously.
We are greatly indebted to the noble Lord, Lord Henderson of Brompton, for introducing this highly important subject. If I may make one comment, I would say that to some of us it has not been unamusing to see the quiet figure, with the cynical smile, at the Table transformed into one of the most vigorous and articulate Members of your Lordships' House; and we are greatly indebted to him for this.
On the subject itself, I want to say only two things. The noble Duke referred to the role to be played in dealing with the tobacco menace by taxation. I had some experience of this at the Treasury on two occasions: and, indeed, on three occasions we increased the duty on tobacco. It is not unamusing to reflect that on all those occasions—the increases being due, of course, to a desire to raise revenue, rather than to deal with the habit—the learned men in Customs and Excise who advised us said that we were going too far, that the demand would drop and the yield from the tax would drop. For a fortnight, they were right, on all three occasions. But after the fortnight had elapsed the curve of consumption went up again. That confirms what the noble Duke has said to us about the strength of this habit.
Nonetheless, I would suggest that a really swingeing increase in taxation could certainly do no harm and would be morally justified on the basis that it would be a contribution from smokers to the additional cost which they bring upon the National Health Service.
I very much agree with what I think was the theme of the noble Duke's speech and that of the noble Lord, Lord Henderson; namely, that what we have to do is to try to give opinion a lead, in particular opinion among the young.
I can quote one encouraging example from my own experience. Ten years ago, when I was chairman of the Civil Aviation Authority, I took it upon myself to suggest to the airlines that there was a case for having non-smoking sectors in civil aircraft. I was told, as people in my kind of position dealing with trains always are, that I knew nothing about it, that passengers wanted to smoke, that they wanted to have cigarette smoke puffed over them all night, and that, indeed, the airlines did very well out of distributing free cigarettes to them. Nevertheless, one had certain powers, and upon some amount of gentle pressure
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being applied the airlines, though on a very small scale, started introducing no-smoking areas for perhaps half a dozen seats.
Those of your Lordships who travel, particularly long distance, will know that nowadays half the aircraft, or more, is marked as "non-smoking". It has always intrigued me that that small shove, kick, or whatever you like to call it, which I was in a position to administer to the airlines, has produced so large a bruise and that now it is possible to travel about the world without having someone blowing cigarette smoke down your face all through the night.
I suggest that this is an example which might be followed further by those responsible for places of public assembly. More and more it should be laid down that if frequenting public places of one kind or another, that large body of people who do not want to breathe tobacco smoke should not be compelled to do so by the more selfish people who do. 1 am sure that pressure should be put on public authorities of all types, including Government and perhaps local government—I hardly dare mention that after Monday's debate—to induce them to make areas of public assembly and places of entertainment non-smoking areas.
This House can, I believe, set a very good example by holding this debate. I believe, too, that, like all our debates, it w ill have an influence on public opinion, in particular that public opinion which matters: that of the media, the Civil Service, the teachers and the academics—all the people who themselves form opinion. Our debates do, we know, influence them; and I hope this debate will do that and that this House will once again give a lead to public opinion. From the presentational point of view, in this context we have one advantage over another place: we do not have a smoking room.
3.38 p.m.
Baroness White: My Lords. I should like to join in the very warm congratulations already proffered by the noble Lord. Lord Boyd-Carpenter, on behalf of all of us in the House to His Royal Highness the Duke of Gloucester. I do so as a very early member of ASH, which I joined soon after it had been instigated by the Royal College of Physicians in the early 1960s. We have been delighted to have the noble Duke as our patron, but I think that even in our most optimistic moments we did not expect that he would not only choose this particular subject for his maiden speech in your Lordships' House, but would speak so forcefully and felicitously. We are indeed very grateful to him.
We are also grateful to—on this occasion perhaps I might be permitted to say, "my noble friend"—the noble Lord, Lord Henderson of Brompton, for the admirable way in which he introduced the subject. I think one must reiterate how grateful we are to the Royal College of Physicians, because there are very few august bodies of that nature which, over two decades and more, have pursued medical truth, in season and out of season, with the pertinacity which the college has shown in this matter. This, at least, is an area of public concern where there is no need to cry, "Physician, heal thyself'. Medical men have led the way not only in research, but by personal example on

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the part of the great majority of doctors, who either do not smoke or have successfully given up the smoking habit.
As some noble Lords know, my own direct interest in the issues before us arose from my talks with the then chief thoracic surgeon at St. Bartholomew's hospital way hack in 1968, after he told me that my husband, then aged 57, had only a few months to live. He said to me that, while the exact causal connection had not been fully proved, he himself—the surgeon; a very senior and experienced man—had no doubt at all that smoking had been a primary element in my husband's condition.
One aspect of the continuing argument with certain sections of the tobacco industry still sickens me. That is their continued assertion, in the face of all the circumstantial evidence, that because medical research into the causes of lung, throat or mouth cancer and other smoking-related illness has not vet enabled us to describe with precision the way in which certain causal elements work, therefore the industry are justified in claiming that they need accept no moral or ethical responsibility.
I quote from an annual report of one of the largest American companies, who stated that "no conclusive medical or clinical proof has been discovered". They were commenting on the 1979 report of the United States Surgeon-General, who for the last two decades has been even more outspoken than our own Royal College of Physicians. But I suggest that one does not need even O-level qualifications in physics or chemistry to know from experience that fire burns, even if one is not capable of describing the physical or chemical process by which it occurs with perfect scientific accuracy.
Research over the past three decades has established beyond all reasonable doubt a causal connection between smoking cigarettes and certain forms of illness, of which lung cancer is the most dramatic but not the most prevalent or necessarily the most costly to the community, however tragic it is to those men and women cut off in their prime. So I hope that we shall have no more hypocrisy of the "no conclusive clinical proof" variety, because this attitude is at the basis of much of the justification given by the great tobacco moguls for their expenditure on advertising, on sport, on culture sponsorship and so on.
The most difficult matter to resolve is not a medical one, although one hopes that further progress will be made in that field. The real problems are economic and fiscal—problems of a great, complex, multinational industry and its relations with governments. I would remind your Lordships that three of the six major international companies in this area are based in the United Kingdom.
The complexities of these relationships, including the political undercurrents in certain parts of the world, are admirably described in this book The Smoke Ring by Peter Taylor, which is sub-titled The Politics of Tobacco. It was recently published by The Bodley Head—a very reputable firm whose lawyers, I know, spent many weeks checking and cross-checking the references the book contains to make certain of their accuracy. It is not sensationally written—it has no need to be; the facts speak for themselves. But I am
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told that it has been little noticed in our own national or professional press, possibly because—I have no proof of this, but I surmise—newspapers and journals depend very largely on the advertising that they receive from the tobacco and cigarette manufacturers for their financial survival. Nevertheless, to any student of political affairs I commend this book as an extremely interesting one.
I confess that the repercussions of tobacco growing and manufacture in United States politics through the strongly-organised tobacco interests are of a dimension that I had not grasped until I read this hook. In Britain, we do not grow tobacco commercially. Some of our European Community partners do, but not on the scale which, so it is suggested, assisted President Reagan to victory and helped to push Jimmy Carter down the road to defeat.
Tobacco is big business and it is not only the great companies who know where their money comes from. Preceding speakers have already mentioned the immense amount of revenue which accrues to our Treasury, and no doubt to the Treasuries of other countries, from the tobacco industry and hence the understandable schizophrenia of Chancellors of the Exchequer. As I myself discovered some years ago when I tackled the then Chancellor. Mr. Roy Jenkins, on the subject, money can talk louder than health even to the most highly principled ears.
But the frightening prospect for the future lies not in Europe, North America or the more developed parts of the world, where there is perhaps just a grain of validity in the notion that people may choose their own fate. It is to some degree their own fault if they do not realise what they are doing. When I say that, I am in no way unsympathetic to the need suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Henderson of Brompton, for more persuasive methods of dealing with people who have succumbed to the addiction, which are very desirable indeed.
No, my Lords, the really frightening area is the third world, as the noble Duke indicated. Although the great companies are diversifying very considerably into other areas-1 may say that I sold out my Eagle Star shares before they were taken over by BAT—they know how important is their tobacco revenue. Because they recognise that there is some success, at any rate in the more sophisticated world, in persuading people to diminish or give up the smoking habit, they are turning to unsophisticated people. They are advertising in third world countries in a way which I find completely unprincipled.
I believe it is true to say that they have ceased to sell in those countries at a higher level of nicotine and tar content named brands which are sold contemporaneously at lower levels in other parts of the world. No, my Lords, what they are doing is to distribute brands named and advertised to suit the psychology of the counties concerned.
My time is already almost up and I can give only the one example of Nigeria, where I have seen the most persuasive arguments at the lower end of the market for "Bicycle" cigarettes, because bicycles are the aim and ambition of youngsters in the less developed parts of those countries. There are "Varsity" cigarettes to appeal to the up-market, the more sophisticated young

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man. The caption reads, "King-sized cigarettes for the man of the future", who is depicted as a very handsome young gentleman on his way up in the world.
Much as I should like to pursue this, I can make only one further reference, which is from a letter that I had three years ago today, on 13th June 1981, from the British American Tobacco Company's chief officer here in London, in which he referred to a speech that I had made on development aid policy, with some rather detrimental remarks about the tobacco industry. He said:
"For a number of countries, revenue from BAT is one of the larger elements in the national tax income. We are a good employer of labour and a source of trained technicians and managers. Our companies arc directed and managed almost entirely by local people. By successfully providing for the needs of domestic markets, we help to reduce imports and the assistance we give to exports helps increase foreign currency reserves."
Every word of that, I am certain, is true. Would they say the same if the crop were opium poppies? Would they say the same if they were trading in heroin? The difference is only one of degree. Over the long term they are selling substances, advertising substances, distributing substances which can be equally damaging, equally destructive to the health and happiness of the people in the countries of the third world. Many of us were shocked that the Queen's Award for Exports should have been given to one of the three great tobacco companies in this country. What were they exporting? They were exporting sickness and premature death for very many people.
3.51 p.m.
Lord Gisborough: My Lords, I should like to add my congratulations to His Royal Highness for what was undoubtedly a thoughtful speech. It was well researched, constructive and a delight to listen to. I am also very grateful to my old friend Lord Henderson of Brompton for initiating this debate.
The damage to health by smoking is not in dispute. Bronchitis, heart disease, cancer are but three results. There is also the awful thought that pregnant women can damage their unborn infants. His Royal Highness's statistic, that of every 1,000 adults, 250 are killed by tobacco-related diseases, while six are killed in road accidents and one by murder, was interesting. It may be thought that, if people wish to commit suicide by smoking, so he it, so long as they are warned, but the illnesses caused must be a heavy burden on the National Health Service, quite apart from the balance of payments implications because of the cost of tobacco. I thoroughly support the plea for an increase in taxes on tobacco. However, what is so unpleasant about smoking is that others have to share it. At any meeting where there are a great number of people in one room, of whom several are smoking, the non-smokers have to put up with the smell and the damage, and in the morning they have to hang out their clothes to get rid of the smell that has got into them.
The report is vague about sidestream inhalers—that is, those who have to inhale other people's exhaust fumes. Damage or no, it is extremely unpleasant. The worst occasion is at a restaurant, when one sits down for a special occasion and the man at the next table lights a cigar. One has to eat in a cloud of spent fumes.
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As this cannot be hygienic, I believe that there should be more local authority or Government encouragement of restaurants to prohibit smoking, as in our own dining room.
There is also the question of smoking at work. I can think of several workmen at home who, over the years, often took a moment off to light their cigarettes. During the course of the day a lot of time was lost, and their ability to keep going was severely impaired by their lack of breath. I remember one local farmer who was reputed to stand at his potato riddle, look at each potato, light his pipe and then look at the next one. I am afraid that he died young, and he is very sadly missed. But the result is that now I am surely not alone in giving high precedence to the employment of nonsmokers. If this is so, surely smoking must be detrimental to finding a job.
Undoubtedly far fewer people smoke now than was the case a few years back but, peculiarly, it seems that the lower the income the greater the likelihood of a person being a smoker. It seems to me to be amazing that a person who is struggling on a low income should just burn a considerable part of that income in a tube in his mouth, even at the cost of being short when providing for his family.
What can be done? We already have non-smoking compartments in public transport and cinemas, and they are very popular, but all too often they are not large enough. This applies in particular to aeroplanes. In addition to the health hazard notices issued by the Government, the Government should run a publicity scheme to highlight the anti-social effect of smoking on others and the economic stress caused by those who indulge in smoking. In particular, however, the Government should bring this matter to the urgent notice of the young in our schools.
3.55 p.m.
Baroness Masham of Ilton: My Lords, I add my congratulations to the noble Duke. Perhaps I may say that I thought His Royal Highness sounded most at home in your Lordships' House; and I should like also to thank the noble Lord, Lord Henderson of Brompton.
Anyone who knows me well would be surprised if I did not say a few words to welcome this honest report, Health or Smoking? Ever since I can remember, as a very young child, I have been against smoking. I considered it then, as I still do now, as disturbing, unnecessary, dangerous and dirty. There are few things so unattractive as a pile of old cigarette ends.
I had a mother and a father who smoked. I always found a smoky atmosphere most uncomfortable and did my best to escape from it. If one does not smoke but wants to live in harmony with others who do, one has to try to tolerate something which one's natural instinct tells one is wrong. If people say to me, "Do you mind if I smoke?" I tell a white lie and say, "No", but I add, "It will damage your health".
Smoking helped to kill my father at 51. He was a heavy smoker, he coughed in the mornings and he died of coronary thrombosis. We all make mistakes in life. We all take risks. That is what living is about. But why do so many people continue to take the slow road to suicide? The odds are so high that they will damage their health if they are heavy smokers.

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I congratulate the Royal College of Physicians on this report. As doctors, they are telling society of the dangers related to smoking and of the risk that mothers are inflicting on their babies.
Yesterday I attended the memorial service for the late Lord Glenkinglas. He used to come to stay with us and I used to try to get him to realise how dangerous his smoking habits were to his health. His lungs were deteriorating fast. Once when he came he had stopped smoking. His doctor had told him he would be dead within the year if he did not stop. He lasted a few more years, but it was too late to regenerate his failing lungs. I am sure he would be with us today had he not been a heavy smoker.
Some years ago my noble kinsman Lord Swinton used to smoke cigarettes. He developed that awful early morning cough which should be a danger sign to all smokers. I suggested to him that he should stop smoking for a trial period of three weeks and see what happened. His cough abated and stopped. At the end of three weeks he started smoking again. His cough returned. Being an intelligent person, he took the decision to give up cigarettes. He has not smoked one since. But he does, I am afraid, smoke cigars. They do not seem to affect him in the same way.
The report has a chapter on smoking and diseases of the lung. The real examples I have given bear out what this chapter says. Doctors used to smoke a great deal. It is noticeable how many of them have given up, and that the younger ones do not smoke. The evidence collected by the Royal College of Physicians must have had its effect, but there is still grave concern over smoking among nurses. It is stated on page 63 of the report that a factor may be stress, as nurses in the psychiatric units and certain intensive care units, where stress can be considerable, have higher smoking rates than nurses in less stressful posts, such as community care.
I also notice that many disabled people smoke, which must be even more serious, as many of them should be preserving their already damaged health to an even greater extent than those who are not already impaired. Research is needed, but I have a feeling that many people think disabled people should not be deprived of the pleasure they derive from smoking, as their pleasures in life may he so limited. When they gasp for breath and cough and wheeze, surely more effort should be taken to encourage them away from this harmful habit.
The report does not mention anything about the added hazards to disabled people. I hope that the Royal College of Physicians will include this when they undertake their next report. The pressures and continuing research on the subject will, I am sure, continue. The evidence is very convincing.
I am pleased that the report contains a chapter on children and smoking. This is a matter of great concern, as far too many children and young people seem to smoke. They are susceptible to the promotion of tobacco, especially by sports heroes, and to peer pressures. I have offered a prize to the school which my boy attends for the best essay on the dangers of smoking, to encourage the children to think. Young people so often feel that they are far away from the dangers because they are young, adventurous and feel
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well. I wonder if young lungs are more susceptible to the hazards than old lungs.
The Coronary Prevention Group have also published an excellent report on plans for action, and this clearly states the concern felt about children and young people smoking. That report, too, is due to be debated in your Lordships' House. This illustrates growing concern among many responsible health-orientated people. The RCP report states that children who smoke seem to do less well academically, and those who play truant from school smoke more. Perhaps this is because such children arc not fulfilling themselves and think that smoking will give them confidence, as they feel inadequate in a very competitive world.
Over the years, smoking-related diseases have cost the National Health Service millions of pounds. It is encouraging (as stated in the report) that the number of smokers is falling. This shows that health education must be paying off. I hope that health educators will be encouraged, and that health education will continue to tackle this legal form of addiction.
As a non-smoker, I welcome the Scottish Health Education group's slogan:
"Smoking gets right up other people's noses".
As a disabled traveller, I should like to bring to the notice of British Rail that they do not give disabled passengers a choice of sitting in a non-smoking area in a 125 train, where the seats can be removed. Often we cannot escape from the poisonous smoke. In fact, we are sitting targets! On the whole, the vital capacity of paralysed people is very poor. They should not be put at risk by being placed in the position of being passive smokers against their will. At least your Lordships' House is considerate and wise in not allowing smoking in this Chamber. I, for one, greatly appreciate that rule.
The report is encouraging when it states that the number of women who smoke is falling, but it observes that abnormalities and the consequences of low birthweight are apparent in heavy smokers when pregnant. Also, women who smoke are more likely to be infertile or to take longer to conceive; and I believe that 1 am correct in saying that sperms can also be damaged. Research has shown that, when women have cervical smears, the women who smoke are 13 times more at risk of contracting cancer than are the non-smokers.
More health education should take place in prisons and in centres of detention. Many of the people there seem to he encouraged to smoke, rather than discouraged, by the system. They should be given booklets setting out the results of smoking. If prisoners are locked up for long periods at a time, they have plenty of hours for study. Thinking about how to keep healthy is better than dreaming up further crimes for the future. They could pass such information on to their wives or girlfriends, many of whom came from social class 5 and are very poor attenders at ante-natal clinics.
There is plenty of scope for increasing health education so that the good work that is taking effect will be extended to all levels. The dangers of cancer, heart and lung diseases, along with all the other related problems, must continue to be punched home. There

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should be nobody who can say, "I never realised that smoking was dangerous".
4.4 p.m.
Lord Rea: My Lords, I feel privileged to be taking part in this debate in the company of such an illustrious speaker. I am also very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Henderson, for enabling me to speak on this subject. I have spent a vast part of my professional life dealing with the consequences of smoking, either investigating the link between smoking and disease and encouraging and helping people to give up smoking, or treating those who are suffering from diseases caused by smoking; and only too often I find myself supporting and counselling those who find themselves suddenly bereaved because of the smoking habits of their spouses or parents.
Seventeen years ago I was involved in research at St. Thomas' Hospital (whose future we were just anxiously hearing about) which examined the effect of smoking on a number of diseases, particularly those relating to the heart and lungs. I was particularly concerned with measuring the levels of carbon monoxide in the expired air and in the lungs. We confirmed that this poison was present in smokers in proportion to the number of cigarettes smoked and the depth of inhalation. It was suspected then—and it is now known more definitely—that carbon monoxide is the main constituent of cigarettes which contributes to cardio-vascular disease, both coronary artery disease and peripheral arterial disease, and strokes.
At that time the first report of the Royal College of Physicians was just five years old, and all of us working in the field were convinced that Government legislation to control cigarette sales promotion was necessary. Now, after the fourth report of the college, we are still waiting. We are told that still the toll continues, with 100,000 premature deaths each year. About 45,000 (nearly half) of those deaths are due to coronary artery disease.
It is still not widely understood that heart disease is the biggest danger facing cigarette smokers. His Royal Highness the Duke of Gloucester knows this only too well, since his royal kinsman, the late King George VI, died suddenly in his sleep from coronary thrombosis. In his case this was almost merciful, because he was already suffering from two other smoking-related diseases; namely, peripheral arterial disease of the leg and carcinoma of the lung. That was in 1952, two years after Sir Richard Doll and Sir Austin Bradford Hill had published their first paper linking carcinoma of the lung and cigarette smoking in an impeccable statistical study which was nevertheless greeted initially with widespread scepticism by both the medical profession and the public.
I am surprised that our late King's illnesses did not lead to quicker condemnation of smoking, particularly when his father and grandfather (who were also smokers and helped to set the fashion) died prematurely from chest infections. In all probability, if antibiotics had been available they, too, would have survived to succumb to other smoking-related diseases. Because of this sad story, I am all the more delighted that His Royal Highness is patron of ASH.
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He has been courageous in taking this stand, and we should warmly congratulate him for that and for speaking so well today.
I have now been in medical practice again for the past 15 years, and have treated thousands of patients suffering from diseases which are caused by smoking or are exacerbated by smoking. Only yesterday one of my patients, who is a distinguished stage director, was admitted to hospital for his second operation in five years on a smoking-induced cancer of the tongue. We are inclined to talk about the deaths caused by smoking and to forget the conditions caused by smoking which lead to many years of suffering and impair the quality of a large part of people's lives before they die. All doctors have many examples of emphysema on their lists, a disease in which even the slightest effort causes breathlessness; and all of us have many cases of angina. The surgeons are doing very well out of this. We also all have cases of peripheral arterial disease, which may also require vascular surgery—the grafting of new arteries or veins or, if the worst comes to the worst, the amputation of limbs if the condition has progressed too far.
Magnificent surgical work is being done, but I know that most surgeons would prefer to be doing less disheartening work. In Australia recently a health education poster showing a comparatively young woman with her leg amputated caused some protests because it was so shocking, but it has helped to educate and transform public attitudes to smoking in that country. I have just such an example in my own practice. It concerns a woman of 50 who could not give up smoking until amputation was unavoidable.
It is not only people in the second half of life who suffer from the effects of cigarette smoking. Duodenal ulcers, mainly affecting men in their twenties to forties, are twice as common in smokers than in non-smokers and are more likely to lead to severe, or fatal, complications. The babies of women who smoke are smaller at birth and more likely to die at or around birth. Children have more educational difficulties, detectable up to the age of 11. Smoking increases by a factor of about four the chance of thrombosis in women who are on the oral contraceptive.
Other people's cigarette smoke, which we have heard about from the noble Lord, Lord Gisborough—and I fully agree with his views on this—can be simply unpleasant, but it can also damage health. Two studies have shown higher lung cancer rates in non-smoking wives of smokers. Children of parents who smoke have more chest infections, show impaired lung function up to five years of age, and are shorter in stature. This work was done by some of my erstwhile colleagues across the river at St. Thomas' Hospital.
I have deliberately not talked about the additional measures which the Government could take. I have recounted my own experience, padded a little with some research findings. The measures needed are clearly spelt out in the report by the Royal College. I merely mention that legislation to ban advertising and sponsorship—which we have heard is at present the main problem—would be quite simple. Section 108 of the Medicines Act could quite easily be adapted to include tobacco products; and this was very nearly

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enacted during the last Administration. The public are now ready for tougher measures to stop smoking in public places. Smokers are now in a one-to-two minority.
I have a final thought. Recently I was asked to look into the subject of drug misuse, because of the recent escalation of heroin dependence. It is thought that some 50,000 young people are now using heroin in this country. They are in some danger, and possibly 10 per cent. or more of them may die over a period of years. This year nearly 100,000 smokers will die prematurely—twice the total number using heroin. The Government have given £6 million of new money over three years to help combat drug misuse. For the infinitely greater problem of tobacco smoking the Health Education Council, ASH, and the Scottish Health Education Group receive £3 million a year in the face of £100 million spent by the tobacco companies as a counterblast on advertising and sponsorship. Is it not time that the Government made a determined attack on this vast problem in the way suggested by this very reasonable report from some of our most eminent physicians and scientists?
4.13 p.m.
Lord Ferrier: My Lords, I see from my notes, which I made some time ago, that I began with the words, "It is going to be very difficult to know where to begin". But it is easy, in a way, because I can thank the noble Lord, Lord Henderson, for introducing this debate and His Royal Highness for topping it up.
My main criticism of the report to which this debate refers is emphasised by what has been said in this Chamber this afternoon. But I do not think that what has been said picks out enough the importance of cigarette smoking as being the trouble. It is all very well referring to King James VI, if I may say so, and his attitude towards smoking, hut in his case, and in the case of Calverley, who wrote his "Ode to Tobacco", those were the days before cigarettes. Although King James VI may have hated smoking, he was referring to the clay pipe. which was an awfully dirty thing. When Calverley wrote:
"Thou who, when fears attack,
Bidst them avaunt, and Black
Care, at the horseman's back
Perching. unseatest:
Sweet, when the morn is gray;
Sweet, when they've cleared away
Lunch, and at close of day
Possibly sweetest",
he was talking of tobacco before the cigarette came along.
I first smoked when I was 18, in the days of the Wild Woodbine. I bought a pipe in the canteen—I was a private soldier—and I smoked it in my tent. I went on parade and was violently sick. That finished my smoking for some years. Since then I have smoked, smoked and smoked, including 50 years of smoking a pipe. I gave it up for perfectly sound reasons, because was beginning to get trouble with a lip.
It seems to me that nobody has mentioned the importance of snuff. I have in mind an old friend by the side of whose bed I sat while he bubbled out his last breaths because he would not give up cigarette smoking. So many people have said, "It is all very well
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saying, 'Give up smoking', but what do you suggest I do?". It is not like Mark Twain, who said,
"Give up smoking?—it is the easiest thing in the world. I have done it a hundred times."
That is all very well, but I feel that I can give my personal experience to the House that the taking of snuff is an amazing method of assuaging the withdrawal symptoms of tobacco. I think that the noble Lord, Lord Rea, will agree that, medically speaking, a pinch of snuff puts more nicotine into one's blood than does smoking a cheroot, unless it is very heavily inhaled.
In talking of the cost of advertising, I entirely agree with the suggestion that the duty on tobacco, in particular on cigarettes, should be increased. But that is taking place today. I believe I am right in saying that the last increase in tobacco duty did not apply to pipe tobacco.
As regards non-smoking compartments in trains, and so on, it has almost reached the stage where there are not enough smoking compartments for the people who wish to smoke, not cigarettes but a pipe or a cheroot. Kipling referred to Burma cheroots as,
"A harem of dusky beauties,
Fifty tied in a string."
He wrote that before the cigarette, before the Wild Woodbine.
I feel very strongly about this report, our approach to the question of addiction to nicotine, and the difficulties and dangers which lie in paying court to the noble Lady Nicotine. We must be pragmatic and realise that, just as the noble Lord, Lord Rea, has said, the incidence of narcotics in young people, which is so terrifying, indicates that there is some practical trouble over the need of young people to have a little nip of something. It is important that we should be sensible about accepting the use of tobacco in a certain measure.
Even in my own lifetime I remember going to India and finding that my body servant referred to my dinner jacket as my "smoker". Those were still the days of the smoking room and the lovely caps with tassels which were worn when smoking to keep the smell from getting into one's hair.
That is the only contribution I can make; to appeal to everyone—the Government included—to be sensible and pragmatic about this matter. The big improvement which should take place is an encouragement in the use of snuff. It does not offend other people, and it need not. I hope that the results of this debate will flow fully in helping to control the awful scourge of cancer of the lung which arises from the inhaling of cigarette smoke.
4.19 p.m.
Lady Saltoun: My Lords, I, too, should like to add my congratulations to His Royal Highness the noble Duke on a most eloquent and persuasive maiden speech. I hope that less time will elapse before he speaks again than elapsed between his taking his seat and making his maiden speech. It is not their fault that both he and the noble Lord, Lord Henderson of Brompton, have not converted me to single-minded acceptance of the report, Health or Smoking?

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Although I do not smoke at present, I have smoked for a large part of my life. In fact, I beat the noble Lord, Lord Ferrier, to it, because I started with a packet of five Woodbines behind a hedge at the age of 12—and delicious they were, too. They were much better than any modern cigarettes. What is more, I did not feel sick. I felt very well indeed afterwards. So I do see both sides of the question—perhaps more than some more virtuous noble Lords. As the anti-smoking lobby have had it mostly their own way this afternoon, I am going to say a few words in defence and support of poor smokers.
Smoking has several beneficial characteristics. To those who do it, it is enjoyable. I would just at this moment like to point out to the noble Lord, Lord Henderson, that drinking dirty water is not enjoyable unless there is absolutely no alternative whatsoever. Then, tobacco has the property of being able either to soothe or to stimulate, according to the need of the moment. A cigarette can calm an irritated spouse and possibly stop a nasty incident in the home. Additionally, for example, had 1 not given up smoking, I should probably not have gone to sleep and snored in your Lordships' House last week, for I should have gone out and had a cigarette and that would have woken me up. A cigarette can be invaluable in waking up a sleepy driver, and I wonder how many car crashes have been avoided simply by the smoking of a cigarette. But above all, from time immemorial, man has felt the need of some narcotic to help him on his journey through this troubled world. Of all those available, I think possibly that smoking tobacco in moderation is one of the least harmful.
I have never heard that cigarette smoking leads to crime, suicide, lethargy or the use of hard drugs, which is more than can be said for some other things. If you make the smoking of tobacco too difficult, you may drive people to other more dangerous narcotics. Perhaps the export of smoking to the third world has not been altogether pernicious, for it may have become a substitute for other and worse drugs.
Smoking may be responsible for a number of premature deaths. Those of your Lordships who have read The Times carefully for the last three days will have learnt that almost everything they eat or drink, particularly in this House, is even more likely to finish them off than smoking; so do not let us blame everything on smoking, or he too sure that other people's cigarette smoke is going to kill us, until we have real proof.
I do not know what the Government's attitude to this is going to be, but if they are concerned about saving money, which I think that they probably are—because I do not really think they mind if we live or die as long as we do it cheaply—they had much better leave us in peace to die enjoying ourselves at a reasonably young age. If we live longer and longer, getting gloomier and more despondent as our few remaining pleasures are denied to us, think what we shall cost the DHSS in pensions, sheltered housing, medical care, ancillary services, and so on; and to make matters worse, the Government will get less and less in duty on tobacco to pay for it all.
That brings me to the plight of the tobacco industry. If the Government want to stop people smoking by
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increasing the duty on tobacco until few, if any, can afford to smoke, it would be much more honest if they were to say so. To raise the duty on cigarettes by 3 per cent. one year, 17 per cent. the next, perhaps 5 per cent. the next and 10 per cent. the next, and so on, see-sawing about, is very unfair to the industry, which cannot plan ahead, and one of the results of that is unemployment. Another result is, of course, increased wage demands in all sectors of industry, for to many smokers their cigarettes are of more importance than many necessities.
The only argument against smoking that holds any water as far as I am concerned is the annoyance caused by smokers to non-smokers, which is paralleled by the annoyance caused to lovers of classical music, or even of silence, by those who play pop music on transistors in public places and by piped music in aeroplanes, shops, restaurants, and so on; or, to give another example, by eaters of garlic to those who hate the stuff. We can all think of similar annoyances. What it really boils down to is a question of manners. You refrain from doing what may give annoyance to others and hope they will do the same for you. When I was young, one was a little bit careful where one smoked. Indeed, no lady ever smoked in the street. A woman who smoked in the street was not a lady; she was a tart. There was no doubt about it.
Therefore. I suggest that the Government do three things: encourage the provision of non-smoking areas in public places, on transport, and so on, but not ban smoking altogether; encourage the teaching of manners in schools, which may mean starting in teacher training colleges; and, finally, try to persuade the medical profession to be a little more helpful to those who wish to, or for specific reason should, give up smoking. Quite honestly, anything less helpful than the last appendix to the report that we are debating I have never read. I could from personal experience be more helpful than that. But further than that I do not think that the Government should go, if only because I am very doubtful of the wisdom—I was going to say, the morality—of legislating to protect people from risking harm to themselves. I opposed the compulsory wearing of seat belts in motor cars for that reason. Once you start that kind of nannying, you are on a very dangerous and slippery slope indeed, and there is no end to it.
Lord Henderson of Brompton: My Lords, may I interrupt the noble Lady for just one moment? It always used to be said of nannies that they referred to Miss Manners. Is the noble Lady making the speech that I hoped would not be made—the governessy and nanny speech?
Lady Saltoun: My Lords, I am sorry?
Lord Henderson of Brompton: My Lords, is the noble Lady making the speech that I hoped would not be made? That is the nanny speech and the governess speech—the one that refers to Miss Manners.
Lady Saltoun: My Lords. I thought I was making a speech on behalf of naughty little girls who wanted to smoke. But the real thing is that the more I am preached at and told not to do what I enjoy, the more I want to do it, and I think that that applies to a great

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many people. You need to be awfully careful about preaching, especially to the young. If you can, for instance, persuade a girl that she may lack boyfriends if she smokes because they will not like the smell, and vice versa, you will get somewhere, but not by a holier than thou attitude.
4.28 p.m.
Lord Molloy: My Lords, I, too, should like to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Henderson of Brompton, on introducing this debate and indeed on the manner in which he did so. I should also like to congratulate His Royal Highness the Duke of Gloucester on his remarkable speech. I knew his views. I have been a member of ASH. I joined when I was a heavy smoker. 1 am bound to say that it helped, particularly when I listened to submissions by His Royal Highness and others who felt very strongly. I hope that he will be pleased to learn that I have now gone 12 months without smoking a cigarette or a pipe, whereas I used to smoke both rather heavily. The fact of the matter is that smoking is a bad habit. Unfortunately, of course, as the noble Lady, Lady Saltoun, said, all foul and offensive habits are very pleasurable. They give somebody a kick—whether it is dropping a bomb, declaring war or butchering in a bayonet or cavalry charge and slicing someone to ribbons. All these things give some people a kick.
What I found particularly wrong in the noble Lady's speech was when she said that the ladies of the street were those women who smoked openly on the street. When I was a young man, long before she was born, all the ladies who smoked seemed to be the ones who went to Ascot or the highly paid film stars. They were the ones who did all the smoking on the open road, the street and everywhere else. Therefore, it did seem to me that the top echelon of society was giving us all a very, very bad example.
Furthermore we are given a bad example in advertising today. We all know, beyond all peradventure that smoking is bad for the constitution. It is particularly bad for breathing. Any sportsman will confirm what the Royal College of Physicians has said—that you cannot he a 100 per cent. sportsman and a smoker. There has been massive agreement on both sides of the House on that point.
Of course, the Royal College has had to say that, as yet, it cannot in any way match the lavish advertising that goes on within the tobacco industry, with the millions of pounds that the latter can spend. I always feel it unjust and unfortunate that some famous sportsmen lend their names to smoking cigarettes when they know full well that in their prime that was the last thing they would have done. Therefore the only criticism I would make of the Royal College is to ask them whether they have really concentrated on trying to find something that will prevent people smoking, particularly the young, who might be, as I was, foolishly tempted into smoking.
Before I go any further, I think I ought to mention this point, which I do not believe has yet been mentioned. It is that the agony of smoking cigarettes is that its real, insidious danger is that it does not corrupt your lungs, give you cancer of the throat, or give you cancer of the lungs in a year or two: it might take 10
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to 20 years. Because of that indisputable fact about a condition which afflicts millions of my countrymen, I find little room for humour in this debate.
You see people dying from lung cancer. I watched my father dying from it. It was caused through a combination of pneumoconiosis, contracted through dust from the pits, and smoking. When miners came up from the pits they immediately smoked in order to relax. When you have seen a person dying of lung cancer and throat cancer, believe me, although all the cracks of Mark Twain, to which the noble Lord, Lord Ferrier, referred, when Mark Twain said that he found smoking easy to give up because he had done it hundreds of times, are great and humorous, you arrive at the frontier of understanding when someone close to you has just vomited up his lungs, a condition brought about by smoking cigarettes, and you cannot laugh that off. If you do, that is an appalling exhibition of vulgarity.
I have to say that smoking is probably the most important avoidable source of disease. There are lots of things that we do not know how to avoid, and we do not know what will stop them because medical science has not yet provided the answer. But surely it has indicated a way in which we can reduce the risk of throat cancer, lung cancer, severe bronchitis and premature death: by not smoking or by giving up smoking.
The Counterblasts of King James I may be smiled at, but the reasons he gave them are certainly as true today. It seems to me that there has been in the past 30 to 40 years an obsession on the part of mankind in wanting to poison everything. We poison the atmosphere on an international scale. We poison the land with so-called fertilisers. We poison agriculture and horticulture, and we now voluntarily poison ourselves through smoking.
The argument of the Budget and tax of course is very real and I can understand it. I wish I knew the answer but I do not. However, because we do not know the answer does not mean that we ought to stop seeking a solution. It may be fair to say that, whereas smokers provide the Chancellor with a vast amount of money from tax, on the other hand 50 million working days are lost through bronchial illnesses caused, in the main, by smoking.
We have to take account of all views, and there are some people who might argue that it would be much better to cut out cancer through reduced smoking and make a balance to the Exchequer by cutting out cruise. All these things have got to be taken into consideration. But I believe that one cannot and should not try to outlaw smoking. I believe that that would be extremely dangerous and I do not think it would be successful. When the United States of America tried to outlaw the drinking of alcohol, we all know what happened. I am not going to say that something of that nature would happen in this country but, in my judgment, it would be too swift and too savage. There would be undercover smoking and it would not eradicate smoking in any way.
I believe that we have to do it by example. I believe that one of the best ways of doing it is by saying—as is slowly becoming evident, and it is a good thing—that smoking is downright bad manners, that people who smoke are fools and that manners maketh man.

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So, in conclusion, I turn again to advertising and to what can be done. I would not outlaw smoking at all. But I would outlaw and ban all forms of advertising. I do not think it would have very much effect on people who have been smoking for 10 to 20 years, but I sincerely believe it would have an effect and help the young not to start the habit. In conclusion, I simply say that if we fail and the weed wins, that will be a triumph for disease, suffering and anguish.
4.47 p.m.
Lord Broxbourne: My Lords, if I may, I shall start with a triple congratulation, necessarily short because of the constraints of time, but with sincerity in inverse relation to its length. First, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Henderson of Brompton, on introducing this important matter in so interesting and informative a way. Secondly, I congratulate His Royal Highness the noble Duke on his thoughtful, well reasoned, and persuasive maiden speech. We shall all look forward to hearing him again on other topics. I, for one, will particularly look forward to any contribution from him on another subject involving an interest in which we both share and in which he has expertise —architecture. 1 think he is admirably qualified, particularly at this present time, to make a contribution to the current controversy of "trads" and "mods".
Thirdly, I should like to congratulate the Royal College itself on this report. It is everything that a report should be: comprehensive and clear; informed and intelligible; forceful, but fair. Of course, its main conclusion is clear. It is natural that it should be so because this is the fourth report, building on the firm foundations of previous reports extending over more than two decades. But the report does not suggest that there is nothing in favour of smoking. Clearly smoking must have attractions and qualities to have attracted the great following that it has. Page 6 of the report refers to these various benefits, and on page 12 it refers to the subjective advantages of smoking: relaxation, making it easier to do boring tasks, helping stress, and so on.
Three major questions arise on this subject. First, is smoking a danger to health, and, if so, in what respects, and to what degree? Secondly, what is the position of Government and Parliament in regard to corrective action, taking account of claims of individual freedom and personal choice? Thirdly, what practical form, within these parameters, can and should Government action take?
In this debate there has been a tendency for noble Lords to identify their own personal position in this matter. I am, and have been for many years, a non-smoker, but I cannot claim, with my noble friends Lord Boyd-Carpenter and Lady Masham, to be a lifelong non-smoker. Nor can I claim to have become a non-smoker through any act of virtue or exercise of considered judgment. I became a non-smoker by accident. It is a sobering thought how many of the more sensible things one does, one does by accident. I became a non-smoker during a general election when I found that I could not combine a heavy cold, a large number of speeches and cigarette smoking. I gave up smoking for the duration of the election, and, when the election was over, I continued. This gave me the
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advantage that when, some years later, I went to what was then the Ministry of Health, in the early days of consideration of this subject, I had abandoned cigarette smoking and had no personal reason or temptation to resist or qualify the evidence and conclusions of the medical profession.
The years have confirmed my position. The first of my questions is an easy one. The existence and degree of danger to health is what lawyers call an open and shut case. The evidence is marshalled in a succession of authoritative reports and the numerous documents cited therein. It is good to know that this report is approved by Sir Richard Doll, to whom, with Bradford Hill, much praise is due for excellent pioneer work. It would be unnecessary and, indeed, presumptuous of me to enter into technical questions as to health risks. In summary, the three main contributory consequences of smoking are lung cancer, associated bronchial and lung diseases and cardiovascular diseases. In total, we are told, they amount to 15 to 20 per cent. of deaths in our country, with an annual death total from smoking estimated at about 100,000. Those are formidable figures.
The assessment of health risk is necessarily a matter mainly for physicians. But the second question brings us to matters properly and primarily for government and Parliament—questions as to corrective action and the propriety thereof. As with so many questions in politics and government, it is not a matter of putting a good principle against a bad principle. It is seeking to balance and reconcile two principles, each good in themselves, and seeking the highest common factor of compliance with both. The two principles are, of course, the maintenance of the health of the nation and the desirability of preserving so far as possible the freedom of the individual and his right of choice to conduct his own affairs unfettered by state regulation and interference. So we have to seek so far as possible the reconciliation of these principles.
The position as to the first of them is clear enough. The good of the people, said Cicero, is the supreme law. That must include their health. Obviously, it is supremely important for government to promote as far as possible the health of the nation. The other principle leads to more difficulty. It is a strong and favoured argument of smokers and the tobacco industry that there is no reason or justification either in constitutional law or democratic principle to interfere with lawful enjoyment. That, however, puts it in too simple a form.
The doctrine of non-interference with personal enjoyment, although a good principle, is, of course, qualified by what is called the sic utere principle—that is to say, so use what is your own as not to injure others. That principle has a dual application in this matter—the effect on the national resources and the physical effect on individuals. In regard to national resources, it is obvious that the incidence of lung cancer and associated diseases necessarily imposes a heavy burden on the health service and thereby on the taxpayer by the diversion of accommodation and of professional and nursing skill away from other and less avoidable ills. Of course, there is a set-off factor in the financial context by reason of the revenue from taxation, but that does not extend to the physical aspects of accommodation and skills.

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The injury to individuals arises from the effect of "passive", or involuntary smoking, as it is called—that is the reluctant but compulsory intake by non-smokers of "side-stream smoke" in the atmosphere. Here again, the report is very fair. It shows that because there has been relatively little research into the incidence of lung cancer from this cause, you cannot prove it to be a certain fact. What is beyond question, however, is the degree of discomfort, inconvenience, annoyance and irritation inflicted by smokers on nonsmokers, aggravated by the fact, as the report says, that most smokers do not appreciate how much their habit can annoy non-smokers. There is therefore a clear case of injury to non-smokers constituting a breach of the sic utere principle and justifying or, indeed, requiring corrective action without any improper infringement of the rights of the smoker.
Time will not allow me to go in any detail into the third aspect. Fortunately, here again, the report is admirably clear and realistic. On health education, it has a good story to tell. However, on the other sort of action, the position is much less satisfactory. It is sad to read that successive governments have shown regrettable unwillingness to take the sort of action that might at first contain and ultimately overcome the tragic consequences of smoking. The action that the Government must take has been referred to— control of promotion, and the introduction of non-smoking, as far as possible, into public places.
If the Government can do that, they will do much to meet the criticisms made in the report. It is indeed a paradox that, when medicine and science have succeeded in defeating those two great scourges of earlier days, the tubercular and pneumonic diseases, graphically called "the great captains of the men of death", society should now of its own accord bring in an unnecessary and self-imposed hazard. It is for Ministers to seek to correct this unnecessary and damaging situation and for them not only to welcome the report in words but to give effect to its proposals. If they do so, they will bring great benefit to the citizens of today and generations yet to come.
4.47 p.m.
Lord Winstanley: My Lords, I must begin with a brief apology. As noble Lords may or may not have noticed, I had to leave your Lordships' Chamber for a few moments to put in a brief appearance at one of your Lordships' Select Committees. As a result, I missed two speeches and a little bit of another. I am sorry about that, and I shall read the speeches most carefully. I have, however, been present for the remainder of the debate. I am therefore able to say how much I enjoyed the admirable opening speech of the noble Lord, Lord Henderson. We are all indebted to him for introducing this subject.
I should also like to join with others in offering congratulations to His Royal Highness the noble Duke, the Duke of Gloucester, for a truly remarkable maiden speech. I say that advisedly because it is rare to hear a maiden speech in this House that turns out to be the speech that covers the whole subject succinctly yet comprehensively. It has directed our attention to the points of most crucial importance. That is perhaps understandable, because the noble Duke has deep
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knowledge of this subject through his long association with the organisation, ASH.
Let me say at the outset, as a doctor who has practised medicine in and out of hospital for 40 years, that I have not the slightest doubt that smoking is injurious to health. There is no longer any room for doubt about the causal relationship between smoking and lung cancer. Nor is there room for much doubt about the relationship of smoking to arterio-vascular disease, although that perhaps has been less comprehensively and decidedly demonstrated. But the most important injurious effect, from my practical experience in medical practice, is its clear causal relationship with chronic bronchitis and emphysema—diseases from which a great many people, particularly elderly people, suffer in this country.
Of course, thereby hangs one of the difficulties. Many noble Lords have referred to the ambivalent position of Government in that they reap great rewards in revenue from tobacco duty. But there is the other point. The one thing which smoking undoubtedly does every year is snuff out thousands of elderly bronchitics at round about the age of 65. On the whole they are people who have loyally and dutifully subscribed to the national insurance fund for some 50 years, and just when they are on the point of drawing something out, off they go.
In a sense that is another complicating factor which perhaps makes it difficult for the right decisions to be taken. Perhaps it also obscures the question of how much smoking costs the National Health Service. If all those elderly bronchitics remained alive for as long as they would remain alive if they stopped smoking, the health service would be in for a great deal more work. But the real reason for getting people never to take up smoking, which is the most important thing of all, or to stop smoking if they have started, is not because it would save the health service money but because it would be better for the health, happiness and contentment of society as a whole. That is the reason, and let us not obscure it by housekeeping arguments about how much smoking costs the health service, how much it causes fires, or other arguments of that kind.
This is not an easy question, and I say that again as a doctor. The noble Lord, Lord Molloy, in his powerful and brief speech, said that he had given up smoking for 12 months. All I say to him is, "Congratulations". But I say, too, that he is not cured. I say advisedly that once a noble Lord or anybody else becomes addicted to nicotine—it is an addiction in a genuine sense, not just a pyschological dependency but an addiction like any other addiction—he is always addicted. I can speak from experience because I have been a smoker and a non-smoker, then a smoker and then again a non-smoker, and so on. One is never cured, and I think it is important that one should say that.
Those who think they have succeeded in giving up have not necessarily done so. I stopped smoking on Christmas Day in 1966, when I was doing a lot of television programmes on health education. If ever I smoked, somebody would say, "Oh, I see you smoke; doesn't it matter?" I would say it did matter very much indeed but it did not happen to matter to me. I decided

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that that was not a tenable position, so I stopped. After 10 years I thought I was cured. But on Christmas Day in 1977 I said to my wife, "I'll have a cigar after dinner." I did so. Then I said, "I enjoyed that; I'll do that every day and that won't do me any harm—a cigar after dinner". But by the end of the week I could not get through the days in order to come to my cigar after dinner. So it became a cigar before dinner, and then a cigar before lunch, and so on. Since then I have given up several times. It becomes harder to give up again because one has proved that one can give up.
It is a clear and adequate motivation that helps people to give up an addiction of this kind. The motivation could be fear, it could be poverty, but it could also be pride and vanity because one wants to demonstrate that one can give up. When one has given up for 10 years one thinks one has proved something, and then it gets harder afterwards.
I have said all that at some length because I think it is important to understand that the addicted smoker really has a problem. From hearing a bit of the speech by the noble Lady, Lady Saltoun, I thought she had taken this point that smokers need help. I do not think they necessarily need the kind of treatment that they receive from some former smokers, who are rather apt to exude a puritanical self-satisfaction and pursue smokers with a Cromwellian zeal which sometimes turns out to be self-defeating.
Smokers need a little bit more understanding. Therefore I greatly welcome those parts of this report from the Royal College of Physicians which take a slightly different attitude towards assisting people to give up the smoking habit than was taken formerly by the Royal College of Physicians and by others. For example, when first we recommended a reduction in the tar content of smoke—that has been very helpful; there is no question about it—the reaction of some of the anti-smokers and ASH was that if one makes smoking safer people will be less inclined to give it up.
If one can make it safer, and if one remembers that some people do smoke, surely there is a social benefit from having made it safer. That is recognised clearly and explicitly in this latest report of the Royal College of Physicians, and it is a very good thing that it is. If we accept that some people are going to continue to smoke although they should not, and if we can make smoking safer, we ought to do so.
In addition, this report recognises that some people need some forms of assistance. An example is snuff. There are noble Lords who have found the use of snuff a helpful way of getting away from the addiction to nicotine. It is a fact that no medical ill-effects whatsoever have ever been demonstrated in connection with the use of snuff, save perhaps for a little unpleasant discolouration of the nostrils, which is not exactly lethal. But if some people find that by trying snuff, that can help them to get away from smoking, so be it; that is a good thing.
Similarly, when we were introduced to the new nicotine-impregnated chewing gum, people got addicted to it. I knew a young lady who had never smoked in her life but who was one of the doctors testing this nicotine-impregnated chewing gum. She became addicted. The idea of her waking up in the
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morning and reaching for her handbag to find the chewing gum really appals one. An addiction is unpleasant. But if, as this report shows, Nicorette, which was that form of nicotine-impregnated chewing gum, helps some people to give up smoking, then it is doing something very helpful indeed.
The ideal is for people never to start smoking. But, in conclusion, I have to say that, despite all the propaganda and all the educational work—there has been a great deal of it—many young people still smoke. I have done my own research into this. I found that, in my own area of Manchester, research into university students entering university showed that only one in 10 smoked. When I investigated new recruits into industry—into manual jobs—I found that nine out of 10 smoked. In other words, it is utterly clear that the propaganda and the educational information which has been put out has not got through to young people in certain social groups.
If people never started smoking they would not have the kind of problem with which so many noble Lords have had to wrestle in order to give up smoking. The ideal is to make our propaganda more effective in order to dissuade people from starting smoking at all. But I ask your Lordships to recognise that those who have become tobacco addicts have a problem. They need to be helped as far as possible with the problem, and not just pursued and condemned for it. I welcome this debate. I welcome this new and very enlightened report of the Royal College of Physicians, particularly, if I may say so, the appendix on giving up smoking which appears at the end of the report. I regard it as very perceptive indeed. It shows that the Royal College and others are moving in the right direction.
4.58 p.m.
Lord Ennals: My Lords, I am sure we owe a great debt of gratitude to the noble Lord, Lord Henderson of Brompton. Apart from introducing a very valuable debate, he has very nearly produced unanimity in your Lordships' House, with one notable exception. the noble Lady, Lady Saltoun. That in itself is remarkable. But perhaps it was the remarkable contribution by His Royal Highness the Duke of Gloucester which convinced all doubters. I wonder if, speaking not only from this Dispatch Box, I may thank and congratulate His Royal Highness. He is the patron of ASH and I am the patron of the National Society of Non-Smokers; so as one patron to another, but with all the humility that should go with it, I thank him for what I thought was a very courageous and very outspoken speech, and just the sort of speech that a maiden speaker should make in your Lordships' House. The facts are absolutely clear, and His Royal Highness illustrated them in terms of human suffering and human death and the cost to the National Health Service.
No one has actually pointed out that the report we are debating is not called, Smoking and Health, but, Health or Smoking? That in itself is very important. If one wishes to remain healthy, one does not smoke. The unanimity of medical opinion (certainly in this House, but it goes right across the country) about the dangers of smoking is probably unrivalled in any other category of disease or cause of disease. Secondly, the risk to health of smoking is so much greater than all other know avoidable risks to health. Even after the

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recent sharp decline in cigarette smoking, new smokers are still being recruited on such a scale that smoking will continue to be this country's largest cause of preventable ill-health well into the next century. That is why the noble Baronesss, Lady Masham, was so wise to concentrate, as did other speakers, on the importance of education among young people.
Thirdly, smoking is always dangerous. Unlike other major avoidable causes of ill-health which are dangerous when abused—drink can be dangerous, but only when it is abused—smoking is always dangerous. 1 thought that the noble Lady, Lady Saltoun, was almost putting forward the case for a rapid early death. I do not think that many noble Lords and noble Baronesses would subscribe to that view, and I hope that the noble Lady does not accept her own advice.
As has been pointed out by the noble Lord, Lord Winstanley, smoking is addictive to very many smokers. I do not agree with the noble Lord that once one is addicted one is always addicted. I gave up smoking about 15 years ago, and a very easy way to do so is by being appointed Minister of Health. You cannot then go on smoking—at least, you should not! The present one does, but he should not. I have not smoked since. From 1976 to 1979, when I was Secretary of State, we had a very clear strategy, and it is about Government strategy that I want to speak because it comprises a very important part of the report. At that time advertising on television had already, rightly, been abolished, but smokers were in a clear majority in the community. Our objective, and mine as Secretary of State, was so to influence the public that we could achieve an overall majority of non-smokers in society, so that not to smoke was the norm, rather than smoking being the norm.
Secondly, we wanted greatly to extend non-smoking areas in terms of travel, leisure, the work place and public amenities, because at that stage there was little argument about the effect upon other people, whether it was a medical effect or simply the inconvenience and the unpleasantness of having to work in an office where other people smoked.
Thirdly, we wanted so to influence the public that a large proportion of those who still smoked but wanted to give up smoking were helped to do so. This is a very important point, and it was touched on by the noble Lord, Lord Winstanley. A very high proportion (some have said that it is high as 70 per cent.) of those who still smoke today would like to give it up. It is interesting that when a quite short television programme was broadcast setting out the dangers of smoking, people were asked to write in requesting assistance to help them become non-smokers and in return they would be sent special packs. The organisers thought that there might be a response of 15,000; in fact, 650,000 people wrote in asking to receive the packs to assist them to become non-smokers. Therefore, it is absolutely right that one of the purposes of the national society is to help people who want to stop smoking actually to give up the filthy weed.
Thus, there has been a steady reduction in the proportion of men and women who smoke, and we must welcome the fact that over the years, with successive Governments, there has been a steady reduction and that now non-smokers are substantially
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in the majority. We must now ask the Government for their strategy in tackling this problem—how they are responding, and how they will respond. This is the first time that there has been a debate in either your Lordships' House or another place on this extremely important report. So far the Government have not been very clear about what action they intend to take.
In the few minutes at my disposal I simply want to suggest an eight-point programme. First, there should be a Government policy binding all departments to pull in the same direction, rather than just a DHSS policy against which other departments can, and often do, pull in the opposite direction. In saying that I draw on a good deal of experience. From being Secretary of State I know the sort of battles one has to get other departments to agree to this kind of policy.
Secondly, I believe that there now needs to be a complete ban on all promotion of tobacco. As the report of the Royal College said, and as a number of noble Lords have pointed out, this means an end to all advertising, except of course at the point of sale. There should he no effort to influence present smokers, but certainly an effort to stop new smokers. We must tackle what I can only call the scandal of promotions, which was touched upon by the noble Baroness, Lady White. It is interesting to note that in the two-week period during April of this year when the Embassy World Snooker Championship was being promoted the BBC devoted more than 100 hours of television to an event designed to promote Embassy cigarettes and cigarette smoking. The cost to the sponsors in prize money was less than £200,000; the amount of publicity which the tobacco company received was enormous. Steve Davis, himself a non-smoker, who was defending champion, was asked all about it and he said:
"They do it because they get tremendously cheap advertising. Snooker's the cheapest form of advertising out of all the sports".
I believe that this matter must be tackled by the Government.
Thirdly, there need to be much stronger, and more prominent, health warnings, with more specific evidence, such as the kind of facts that were given by His Royal Highness during his outstanding speech.
Fourthly, there must be more intensive public education and information about smoking, especially for young people. I am sure that our efforts must be devoted to stop youngsters from starting, because there is no doubt—and this is made clear in the report—that once a youngster has the habit, he is likely to become a smoker for life. It is the younger generation to whom we must direct our attention.
Fifthly, there must be increased leadership from Government to encourage the development of nonsmoking as the nom in public places, with smoking areas set aside where practicable, rather than vice versa as at present. This is a matter on which I believe the Government need to take the initiative. There are still too many places, including restaurants, where we are subjected to the smoking of others.
Sixthly, there need to be regular increases in the real cost of smoking, regulated by taxation. I do not accept the argument put forward by, I think, the noble Lord, Lord Boyd-Carpenter—and if I am wrong, I hope he will forgive me—that this is not a deterrent. I agree

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with the argument that has been put forward that there should be a substantial increase, and I believe that this may have a real effect upon current smokers—
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: My Lords, will the noble Lord allow me to interrupt him?
Lord Ennals: My Lords, I shall, but I should like to finish the sentence, and I have promised that I shall sit down in one minute. I recognise the achievement of the last Budget in this respect.
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: My Lords, I am sure that the noble Lord did not want to misrepresent me. I did not say that an increase in taxation was not a deterrent. On the contrary, I advocated an increase in taxation on tobacco, but said that past experience had shown that it must be a whacking one.
Lord Ennals: My Lords, in that case I did misrepresent the noble Lord, and I am glad that he has intervened. I absolutely support what he has just said.
My last two points are a progressive compulsory lowering of maximum emission levels for each cigarette tar group—this was emphasised with considerable success during the time of the previous Administration, and we must take it further—and, finally, an end to investment grants and other financial incentives for the tobacco industry, except of course for non-tobacco diversification.
I warmly thank the noble Lord for introducing, and congratulate him on, what has been a most important debate, with almost unanimous views. I look forward to the Government's response to the report of the Royal College. I say again that this debate has been a historic occasion due to the presence of, and the quality of the speech given by, His Royal Highness, who was speaking not only as a Member of this House, but also, consciously, as the patron of ASH.
5.11 p.m.
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, I should like to add my words of congratulation to the noble Lord, Lord Henderson, on so lucidly introducing this important debate on smoking and health. Sadly, as we have heard—and there is no doubt about it—cigarette smoking is still the greatest avoidable cause of illness and death in our society. As such there can be no more important subject in the whole field of preventive health care to bring before your Lordships. I welcome the chance that it has given us to consider an issue which is central to the nation's health and well-being, and to explain the Government's intentions and success.
The other opportunity which this debate has provided has been for us to hear the really excellent maiden speech of the noble Duke, the Duke of Gloucester. It is a particular personal pleasure, for two reasons, for me to he able, from the Government Front Bench, to congratulate him on it most sincerely. First, we were exact contemporaries at Eton, and the penalties for being caught there smoking as a boy, as I am sure he remembers, were somewhat draconian, but no doubt effective, though I do not think that either of us suffered, or indeed deserved to, in that particular
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way. Secondly, his family have a long and valuable association with my former regiment.
Views for or against smoking are held with a considerable degree of personal conviction. There is nothing wrong in that. I associate myself entirely with all those who have said that the noble Duke's first intervention in your Lordships' House was thoughtful and carefully constructed, and was delivered powerfully and with considerable flair. I join fully with all those who said that they hope it will not be long before we again have the benefit of his wisdom and experience in this Chamber.
I, too, should like to pay tribute to the Royal College of Physicians whose latest report we are today debating. It is now some 22 years since the college brought out their first report pointing to the serious dangers of smoking. It is perhaps no coincidence that in that year cigarette sales in this country began to fall for the first time in more than a decade, and with one or two interruptions they have continued to fall at differing rates ever since.
Three further reports have followed at intervals and no one would deny their influence in both shaping Government and medical opinion and helping to increase public awareness of the risks of cigarettes to health. For this we are greatly indebted to the college. The Government have always given the most careful consideration to their reports and recommendations. My right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Social Services recently had a very useful meeting with a delegation from the college to discuss the report. A number of useful suggestions were made, and these we shall he considering further.
The college's report underlines the gravity of the health problem caused by smoking, but, alas, the figures do not convey its full extent in terms of human suffering by the victims and the distress to their families and relatives, which cannot be quantified. As a health Minister I cannot be other than gravely concerned about the terrible toll of unnecessary death, disease and misery caused by cigarettes.
Despite the views expressed by the noble Lady, Lady Saltoun—which I understand, though I do not altogether agree with—I should like to reiterate at the outset the Government's clear commitment to discourage people from smoking. I shall say more about the forms that our policy takes, and I choose the word "discourage" carefully because in a free society the decision whether or not to smoke must in the last resort he a matter of personal choice. That too, I hope, will please the noble Lady, Lady Saltoun.
Faced with these facts, it is easy to overlook the progress which has been made in combating smoking in recent years. We have come a long way in the 20-odd years since the Royal College's original report was published, and it is perhaps worth reflecting on the progress that has been made. In 1962 the majority of adults were smokers and they knew little of the risks they were taking. Most cigarettes had a very high tar content. There were few restrictions on either advertising or where one might smoke. Smoking, as was mentioned by one noble Lord, was accepted as the social norm, and one could even say that it was encouraged.

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Today much has changed. Cigarette advertising is strictly controlled by both a code of practice and voluntary agreements which require cigarette packets and all cigarette advertisements to carry a health warning. There have been tremendous advances in health education. The average tar yield of cigarettes has been drastically reduced. More significantly attitudes towards smoking have changed, and are changing, for the better.
Those who find smoking by others unpleasant—and I count myself among them—have begun increasingly to press for their right to a smoke-free environment, and there are now many more non-smoking areas in public places, on trains and buses, and in theatres, cinemas and restaurants. Only 10 days ago I was delighted to come across my first internal airline which forbade smoking entirely. I, for one, am delighted that my noble friend Lord Boyd-Carpenter, applied the kick which he described earlier.
While I deplore, as do many, the problems associated with passive smoking, I have to say that while it is unpleasant, the extent to which it can damage otherwise healthy adults is, as yet, unclear. In their most recent report the independent scientific committee reviewed the evidence and concluded that tobacco smoke can irritate the eyes, nose and throat and that it may exacerbate symptoms in adults already suffering from certain conditions. This was a point referred to by my noble friends Lord Boyd-Carpenter, Lord Gisborough and Lord Broxbourne.
So far as smoking on public transport is concerned—and the noble Lady, Lady Saltoun, referred to this, as did my noble friend Lord Gisborough—many transport authorities impose regulations and restrictions on smoking on public transport. There are, for example, regulations to enforce no smoking on buses, and most operators impose a partial ban, but the extent of any restrictions must be a matter for the appropriate transport authority to decide, taking into account all the circumstances.
So far as smoking in the workplace is concerned, which also was raised by my noble friend Lord Gisborough, this is the responsibility of individual employers. I agree with him that people who do not want to work in a smoky atmosphere should not have to do so. But I do not think that this is a matter to which hard and fast rules can be applied.
The progress being made can best be illustrated by some of the basic facts and figures, though some of them were referred to earlier by the noble Lord, Lord Henderson, in introducing this debate. In 1962 (the year of the first report) Tobacco Research Council statistics suggested that about 66 per cent. of all adult males were cigarette smokers. In 1972, according to Government statistics—the General Household Survey—that figure had fallen to 52 per cent., and by 1982 to 38 per cent. That was a remarkable fall.
Among women the prevalence of cigarette smoking rose sharply during and after the Second World War and then steadied off at a little over 40 per cent. of adult females. The 1982 General Household Survey statistics suggest that 33 per cent. of adult females are now smokers. The figures on cigarette consumption are even more striking and show a 20 per cent. fall in
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cigarette sales in the last five years. The statistics show that we are moving in the right direction.
So far as Norway is concerned, I have to say that, while the figures show a fall in the proportion of regular cigarette smokers, the conditions there vary somewhat from those of the United Kingdom and direct comparisons are difficult to make. In fact, the figures in 1972 and 1982 for males in Norway showed a drop from 51 to 40 per cent., but in Great Britain it was from 52 to 38 per cent. In that case it appears that Great Britain is doing rather better than Norway.
But there is, of course, still a long way to go. The number of people who smoke in Britain today is about 18 million, and surveys suggest that over two-thirds of them want to give up the habit. Some will have tried in the past without being successful, as we have heard. Given the addictive nature of nicotine, it is important that these people receive proper health advice and encouragement, and I entirely share the views expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Winstanley. I believe that in recent years there have been some encouraging developments in this area.
At the local level many health authorities have established policies against smoking as part of their preventive health strategies. General practitioners are now more geared up to giving help and support to patients wishing to stop smoking, and to stressing the importance of not smoking to their patients generally. Anti-smoking clinics in one form or another are becoming a more familiar feature of health service provisions, while self-help and other mutual support groups are also flourishing. The Health Education Council and ASH continue to provide valuable advice, and I pay tribute to them for that. They provide it in a variety of ways to smokers who are trying to quit smoking. These are heartening developments, and, of course, we want to encourage them and foster them. The Government have contributed directly by their funding of research into helping people stop, and that is through the Addiction Research Centre at the Maudsley Hospital.
The noble Baroness, Lady White, referred to lung cancer deaths. I share many of the views that she expressed. The death figures for 1982 are 26,156 for men and 8,932 for women. The Royal College of Physicians' report estimates that 90 per cent. of all deaths from lung cancer in this country are attributable to smoking. The noble Lord, Lord Rea, talked about smoking and coronary heart disease. The fact is that cigarette smoking is a powerful and independent risk factor for coronary heart disease, particularly at younger ages, and the Royal College report attributes 20 per cent. of all coronary heart disease deaths (that is, about 36,000 deaths in the United Kingdom) to smoking.
We have heard a certain amount about taxation, and few of us would dispute that price is an important determinant of cigarette consumption. The Royal College's report recognised this in calling for a steady increase in cigarette taxation. Your Lordships will he well aware that my right honourable friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer, in raising the duty on a packet of cigarettes by 10p—considerably more than inflation—stressed the health reasons for doing so. This was a point brought out by the noble Duke the

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Duke of Gloucester. I am sure this will help to reduce cigarette consumption further, and is evidence of our commitment to tackling the problem.
One of the most effective ways in which smoking can be discouraged is through health education. This means not just getting across the link between smoking and health which most people now recognise: it means ensuring that everyone fully understands the extent of the dangers and the damage which smoking causes. I should like to say a word here in praise of the Health Education Council's efforts in this field. The council regards the prevention of smoking as its single highest priority. The contribution it has made through both its mass campaign and its activities in support of local health and education authorities cannot be over-emphasised. The Government have played their part here, too, in their funding of the council's work, and this will answer a point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Henderson. We recently added half a million pounds to the HEC's anti-smoking campaign this year. The HEC put a lot of careful thought into planning their campaign, and I am sure it will have contributed towards the reductions I referred to earlier. I hope also that the latest HEC campaign through advertising—which many of your Lordships may have seen—will persuade many more people not to smoke.
As a result of the efforts of the health professions, health educators and Government, it is now far less likely that anyone will smoke without being aware of the dangers to their health, but the Government do have a duty to try to reduce the risk to those who are unwilling or unable to stop. The latest agreement on product modification, announced in March, will help. For those who must smoke it will mean a further lowering of the average yield of tar—one of the most dangerous components in cigarettes. This follows a recommendation by the independent scientific committee on smoking and health, which advises the Government in these matters. I should like to put on record the Government's appreciation of the invaluable work this committee does on the scientific aspects of smoking.
On other scientific matters, the noble Lord, Lord Henderson, asked about the MRC and SSRC recommendations into the psychological and social factors, and factors of attitude. These recommendations were accepted by the Government. A large-scale study was commissioned and carried out by OPCS, and the results were published in 1983 under the slightly different title of, Smoking and Health.
The agreement I referred to also includes a new tar grouping structure reflecting the large changes in the pattern of smoking over the last ten years. The new designations will be introduced next year, and will appear on cigarette packets and other relevant cigarette brand advertising. The Royal College's report recommends legislation to secure reductions in tar, carbon monoxide and nicotine. But the latest agreement is a good example of what can be achieved through co-operation with the industry and without legislation.
The problem of smoking among young people remains a major source of concern to the Government. Clearly the main hope for the future in
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eradicating smoking lies in dissuading the young from ever starting to smoke. Studies show that most of those who go on to be regular smokers first take up the habit in their teens. Persuading youngsters not to smoke must therefore be our main priority.
Recent research has given cause for considerable concern about this. The Government last year sponsored a survey of children's smoking habits carried out by Office of Population Censuses and Surveys. This was the first national survey of its kind, and it revealed some disturbing facts. We shall be repeating the survey later this year in order that we can observe the trend. We are taking a number of initiatives aimed at tackling the problem. We are concerned about the apparent ease with which children under 16 have been able to buy cigarettes. I recognise it may be difficult for shopkeepers to judge whether a person is below the legal age; but clearly this is an area where there is room to tighten up the law. We are having discussions with retail organisations to draw up some simple guidelines and, of course, the maximum penalty has now been doubled to a fine of £400.
Much good work is already being done in schools to combat smoking through health education lessons. A government leaflet was recently introduced at schools throughout England and Wales, and will shortly be issued in Scotland giving the up-to-date facts about smoking among teenagers. This should also help to stimulate further activity in schools. I think we need to recognise that there are limits to what the Government and other bodies can do. The work in schools and elsewhere will only succeed if parents accept their own responsibilities to discourage their children from smoking. Action must always start in the home; although, of course, some children may experiment with cigarettes regardless of what parents say.
The subject of cigarette advertising and promotion raises strong emotions, which have been voiced by many. There is a view that there should be some further control or ban on cigarette advertising. Indeed, it was one of the main recommendations of the Royal College's report. The Government, like their predecessors, have adhered to the view that voluntary agreement is the best form of controlling the industry's activities in these areas. I do not accept the argument that these agreements have been ineffective in helping us to achieve our goals. Indeed, there are good grounds for believing that successively tougher agreements have helped bring about the gradual reduction in smoking which has taken place.
Nor is there evidence to support the contention—voiced by, among others, the noble Lord, Lord Molloy—that banning advertising would substantially reduce total cigarette consumption. The evidence is not by any means conclusive. Certainly, the experience in this country illustrates what can be achieved without recourse to legislation to control or modify advertising. To set out the Government's position, we shall of course abide by the present voluntary agreement, which will last at least until March 1986. But the situation will be reviewed then in the light of all the relevant information.
Turning to the subject of sports sponsorship, many similar considerations apply. Of course, I am aware that there are some who believe it is wrong that

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tobacco companies should be able to sponsor sports in this way, but we must also recognise the substantial benefits many sports have received from this form of sponsorship. We think it right to balance these two points of view by regulating and controlling the amount of sports sponsorship by agreement. The present agreement runs until the end of 1985. Under its terms there will be no increase in real terms in the amount of money the tobacco industry can spend on sports sponsorship, and no new sports will be sponsored without prior consultation. The Government will also be reviewing this agreement at the appropriate time.
A number of other points have been raised. I am afraid I have not time to go through them all, but the noble Lord, Lord Henderson, and the noble Lord, Lord Rea, asked about the Medicines Act and whether that could be used. The fact is that there is a possibility but, as I have said, the Government, like their predecessors, prefer to proceed through voluntary agreements.
The noble Baroness, Lady White, asked about the third world particularly. I understand her concern that the smoking problem should not be exported to third world countries. It must be right for each Government to determine their own policies in the light of the circumstances prevailing.
The noble Baroness, Lady Masham of Ilton, asked about the disabled and the 125-type trains. I am sure this is a point that will be borne in mind by British Railways. On her other point about smoking and pregnancy, the Health Education Council has continued to publicise the dangers for the unborn children of mothers smoking during pregnancy through its education and preparation for parenthood programme. There is other information which I could give her if I had time. Neither, I am afraid, have I time to go into snuff, but I shall let my noble friend Lord Ferrier know about that.
I hope that what I have said today will underline the importance that the Government attach to discouraging smoking and to limiting its damage to health. Today's debate illustrates that while there is general agreement about the aim there is room for argument and discussion about how that aim can best be achieved. I hope that I have demonstrated that the Government's policies are making considerable impact on the smoking problem and that our strategy to dissuade people, especially the young, from smoking by persuasion and consent represents the best way forward in dealing with this most deep-rooted social evil.
Lord Henderson of Brompton: My Lords, I believe I have only 20 seconds in which to thank all noble Lords for having taken part in this debate, which has admirably covered the ground. With that, I beg leave to withdraw my Motion.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

Defence: Staff Centralisation
5.31 p.m.
Lord Cameron of Balhousie Lord Cameron of Balhousie rose to call attention to the necessity of maintaining the morale of the three
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services and their standing in NATO following proposed further staff centralisation in the Ministry of Defence and the consequent weakening of the Chiefs of Staff organisation; and to move for Papers.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, I am most grateful for this opportunity to put before your Lordships an issue which I believe to be of the utmost importance for the present and future defence of this country. This is the issue of the denigration of the Chiefs of Staff organisation and the effect that will have not only on the evolution and the examination of our defence policy, but on the attitude of our allies not only in NATO but internationally.
We have in circulation at the moment, indeed we have had for several weeks now, a discussion document issued by the Secretary of State for Defence. The document is entitled MINIS and the Development of the Organisation for Defence. Your Lordships will remember that MINIS, which means management information system for Ministers, was first applied by the present Secretary of State to his then Ministry of the Environment. MINIS, as the name implies, is essentially a tool for giving Ministers up-to-date information about the effectiveness of their departments.
There is no doubt that a MINIS-type examination of the Ministry of Defence is necessary and perhaps overdue. I am certain that a great deal of overlap of duties, both civil and military, takes place in that large Ministry. I would particularly point a finger at the Procurement Executive which to my mind has delayed and made more expensive some of the great defence contracts that have faced government during the last two decades.
However, it is not the Procurement Executive which I am here to talk about this evening, but the effect the proposed changes are likely to have on the development of this country's defence policy, on the highly significant weakening of the Chiefs of Staff organisation and the effect this will have on the morale and direction of our soldiers, sailors and airmen.
There is also a feeling, which I certainly share, that the present reorganisation, or possible reorganisation, is being carried out at such a speed that the spirit and morale of the armed forces are not being taken sufficiently into account. MINIS may have worked well in civilian Ministries, where there is no fighting force to control, where there are no issues of life and death, where morale may not be so important. But in the armed forces we are totally dependent on the morale and fighting spirit of our three services. It is a considerable factor which must not be taken lightly.
The general theme of the discussion document is more centralisation, more power to the Secretary of State and the Chief of the Defence Staff and the construction of a considerably expanded central defence staff. This general movement to a stronger central organisation for defence is nothing new. It has been evolving in the past two decades or so. It started with the noble Lord, Lord Duncan-Sandys; it continued with the noble Earl, Lord Stockton, and Lord Thorneycroft, with a great deal of encouragement from the late Lord Mountbatten and, more recently, the Nott/Lewin proposals took another step in this direction.
My argument this afternoon is that, yes, in certain areas a deep examination is highly desirable, but in others we have already now gone far enough. The next step, which is removing all the policy-making elements from the service departments and denigrating the Chiefs of Staff, is going too far. The plan is that individual service chiefs will lose their policy staff elements and be made responsible only for the morale and administration of their services—responsibility without power. The chiefs become no more than glorified inspector generals of their various services. This further step has sparked adverse comments from no fewer than four ex-Chiefs of Defence Staff in letters to the press. They have all worked the system and know its strengths and weaknesses; but, as I understand it, they are all against the chiefs being robbed of their limited stategic policy staffs.
I should like to mention a relevant point which the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Lewin, the most recent incumbent of the CDS role, made in his letter to The Times newspaper dated 16th March. He was making the point that it was logical that there should be a further strengthening of the Central Staffs at the expense of the Naval, General and Air Staffs. However, he went on to add—and I quote:
"the single service Chiefs of Staff must of course be left with adequate staffs of their own to fulfil their responsibilities as the professional heads of their services and enable them to contribute considered advice to the CDS on matters of strategy and defence policy".
I agree with that latter sentiment most heartily. What are "adequate staffs" one asks? I must say that I was of the opinion that the present system, when put to the test in the most demanding scenario that could possibly be devised—the Falklands crisis—the organisation, worked admirably under the direction of the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Lewin.
But to start at the top. Constitutionally the management of defence starts with the Defence Council, which is the top level forum for discussing the management of national defence as the name implies. Its membership under the chairmanship of the Secretary of State consists of the other three Ministers involved in defence, the Chiefs of Staff, the Chief Scientific Adviser and the Permanent Under-Secretary. But the fact of the matter is that this top level organisation, which should have a dynamic all of its own, very seldom meets. When it does, it discusses issues of very insignificant moment. I should be most grateful if the noble Lord who may conclude this short debate could explain to the House why this top level decision-making body meets so seldom and what is seen to be its role under the possible reorganisation.
But it is the top policy-making level and, perhaps more particularly, the other end of the spectrum—the morale of the armed forces—that I should like to concentrate on this evening. The Chiefs of Staff is an organisation which has stood the test of war and, I would argue, peace as well. My belief is that the Falklands operation indicated that at times of war and operations it is at its very best. It is often suggested that the Chiefs in peacetime stand by their own corners, fight for their individual services and for their slice of the cake. I personally believe this to be reasonable and understandable, but it must not be allowed to go too
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far and it is not allowed to go too far. After all, the Secretary of State for Defence is the final arbiter. He has the power, if he has the will to use it.
Getting the lowest common denominator solution to a problem is also levelled at the Chiefs by those who do not know or understand the system. But from my considerable experience of the system, I would argue that as far as broad defence policy and planning are concerned, they make sure that every argument and aspect of a particularly difficult problem is well and truly discussed. This must be healthy for the policies of this country and for our defence posture as a whole.
My personal view is that the operation of the Chiefs of Staff in this country is the envy of our colleagues in NATO and elsewhere, and indeed our organisation has been copied by many of them. I realise that in the United States, who also copied our Chiefs of Staff organisation, there is an attempt to bring more power into the centre under the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. My information is that this move is being strongly resisted and will not succeed. It is fascinating to note that Caspar Weinberger is on record during the last few weeks in giving evidence to the Senate Committee on armed services. He said:
"There must be participation in policy making by those who will be responsible for executing it".
As I have said, I believe that the Chiefs of Staff, as they stand at the moment with their own limited policy staffs, can make sure that no arguments or aspects of a defence problem remain unexamined. This is a vital role. CDS has the right to tender his own advice but it goes much, much beyond that. His office is only a few yards from the office of the Secretary of State and he has ample opportunities to make his presence felt. It really is not just a question of putting official Chiefs of Staff and his own views—there is, there must be, a constant dialogue between Secretary of State and Chief of Defence Staff and I am sure that this happens under the present organisation. It certainaly happened in my day as Chief of Defence Staffs. The noble Lord, Lord Mulley, was the Secretary of State for Defence. We are delighted, may I say, to see him in this House with us.
The proposed office of management and budget, which is in the discussion document, also gives me cause for concern. This is really a copy of the United States organisation. We do not yet know exactly how it is going to operate if it comes about but there is every indication that there is going to be almost total Civil Service control with a very limited, low-level military voice being heard. In many ways, it puts the Civil Service and the military again in a confrontation situation. Surely, my Lords, we have seen enough of this in the past. Much, much work has been done to get the "frocks" and the military working together closely in the interests of defence. I would not like to see us return to the bad old days of confrontation.
I would like now to make four points, if I may, about the denigration of the Chiefs of Staff. The first one, and perhaps the most important, is their standing in their own service. To lose policy direction and some of their other responsibilities will make them no more (as I have mentioned earlier) than an inspector-general of their force. Yet they will have the responsibility for morale—responsibility, in this case, without power.

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The single services need someone whom they can recognise as their leader, deciding policy for their service, putting their case strongly to politicians if things go wrong, deciding what sort of equipment their service requires and arguing generally their case for them. And do not let us delude ourselves that the fighting force do not know or care about what is going on at the top level in defence. This may have been true 20 years ago—but not now. They are all better educated and interested and they want to know why certain decisions are taken.
What happens, I ask, when people start getting killed because of bad policy decisions by the central staffs because they have been insufficiently argued? Who carries the can? The central staffs under the proposed reorganisation?—I think not. Here we have "power without responsibility" being a recipe for disaster. The second point is that the word will soon get around NATO, and indeed the world, that the Chief of General Staff, the First Sea Lord, and the Chief of Air Staff have been reduced in status and lost their policy responsibility. There will be misunderstanding and doubt. At present there are many forums and bi-national consultations where the chiefs of individual services meet for important land, sea and air consultations. Our chiefs taking part—that is, if they are even invited eventually—must speak with authority. They will not be able to do this if policy formulation has gone elsewhere.
Thirdly, what will the Chiefs of Staff discuss when they meet in future? If defence policy is on the agenda, will they be able to make a valuable contribution? Will the testing examination of major policy issues take place as it does now? I think not. And I see the Chiefs of Staff Committee meeting less and less with a limited agenda and finishing up rather like the present Defence Council—the board of directors that seldom meets; a withering on the vine.
It is suggested in the Heseltine proposals that there will be a strong tri-service central staff doing away with the separate vice-chiefs and the single-service policy staffs. This tears the heart out of service departments. It also presumes that an officer who may have spent some 20 years in his own service can change his spots overnight. It does not happen like that. All my experience tells me that he will be looking over his shoulder to the day when he returns to his own service. If he has let them down, his career may suffer—and there is, indeed, a precedent. Look at the disaster of the Canadian experiment which they are at present trying to unravel. This issue of loyalty to one's own service does not have quite the same impact perhaps on the operational side. It is the formulation of future policy where the problems will arise, and do arise. I can also scent a significant aggravation factor beginning between the civil and the service officers, a situation which we managed to avoid during the past decade.
My Lords, I would finish by saying that I believe this House has a responsibility to ensure that our soldiers, sailors and airmen are not presented with any policy, any organisation or any action which would cause irresponsible loss of life or a lowering of morale. I personally will take some convincing that the reorganisational steps being taken, or about to be taken, at the highest level in the Ministry of Defence will satisfy these basic and fundamental requirements.
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I am sure that MINIS is an excellent system for cutting out overlapping responsibilities in a totally civil Ministry, and indeed in certain areas of the Defence Ministry as well. But if MINIS gets across policy discussion and service morale in any way, I am against it; and I hope that many noble and noble and gallant Lords will join me in this concern for the health and welfare of our splendid armed forces. I beg to move for Papers.
5.47 p.m.
Viscount Trenchard: My Lords, time, in these short debates, makes restraint on the usual courtesies with which one would like to start one's contribution to this very important debate; but let me briefly congratulate the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Cameron, on the way that he has introduced this important debate, and also let me say to him on behalf of the House how pleased we are to see him back in obviously good health again.
As an ex-Minister who had every reason to want to exclude duplication and to get more teeth for the services at lower cost, I might perhaps be expected to support greater co-ordination of the sometimes fiercely independent services. However, I feel bound to criticise these proposals and to do so fairly emphatically, even though, in the first six months of my two-year stint at the Ministry of Defence, I was certainly looking for ways to make Ministers' lives easier and their tasks easier. But the purpose of a staff is to make its particular organisation or service more efficient. It is not the prime purpose of the three staffs to make advice to the Secretary of State more convenient to him. Neither, in peacetime, is it an advantage for Ministers to receive apparently common advice through only two people. To encourage and to listen to well thought-through policies developed by each service as a whole as to which parts of the threat they could each meet most economically is infinitely more rewarding. Nor should differences between the services be derided as they frequently are in the media in peacetime. Indeed I venture to suggest that they should be encouraged. Progress is dependent on conflict of opinion, just as in the civil sphere nearly all progress results from competition.
Morale as I see it, or fighting spirit as the Secretary of State refers to it, is but the final bloom on a healthy plant growing in good soil. The plant is the efficiency of the service and the soil is the policy of each service. The bloom and the plant will wither without the policy. Policy must be updated continuously by staff with a constant interface with all parts of their service at every level. Without the best naval policy, the Navy, for instance, will not be efficient and without efficiency morale will not last. These aspects of each service cannot be reorganised independently—they are inter-dependent.
The idea in this document of an all-wise, isolated central staff, with members from each service in turn doing rotating three-year stints, as I fancy it will work out, is just not practical. It will break down accountability; it will encourage a bias towards theory; and it will produce more compromise, not less, as lowest common denominators are sought. There will still be a need for top operational and planning staffs in each service. How can it be otherwise? To whom should the

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staff at lower levels report on staff matters if the vice-chiefs are removed?
In industry, which has been my life's main experience, in the era when big was considered beautiful and many disparate companies were increasingly grouped in common ownership, we made the same mistake as is proposed in this document by removing important people from their companies to form central staffs. Costs increased because the companies replaced the people removed. The companies were weakened by the loss of some of their best management. The central staff, without adequate back-up—no man is efficient without his back-up at a high level—were not really able to make a contribution. They quickly became out of touch and out of date. I am not of course referring to small offices controlling overall aspects such as finance. Even in fairly similar companies—for instance, in motor vehicle manufacture—efficiency has only returned to Jaguar, Landrover and Austin Rover volume cars when maximum decentralisation of policy—I repeat, "of policy"—as well as of operations has been returned to the operating companies.
Of course, the centralisation of head office staffs as a prelude to the amalgamation of very similar or totally similar operating companies did make, and does still make, much sense. However, the armed forces' operations in their own elements are much more dissimilar even than the motor car company examples which I have just given. In my view, the development of a balanced single-service policy is the foundation for efficiency and morale. This has nothing to do with the needs of wartime command about which Lord Mountbatten and Lord Montgomery knew so much, and already the example of the Falklands has been quoted by the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Cameron.
The peacetime needs for co-ordination to avoid among other things the appalling escalation of equipment costs are needs which I have described in this House before now, but I believe that the only safe and effective way of meeting those needs is for Ministers to be advised by the CDS, by the Permanent Under-Secretary and by scientists listening to the in-depth plans and claims of each service, even encouraging counter claims, as to the roles they could perform and at what cost. I simply cannot understand the merit of a Secretary of State and four Ministers—a "gang of five" I have to say—wanting to receive all their advice through only two people. It cannot make any organisational sense.
Economies through organisation are available. Let my right honourable friend or MINIS look at the counterparting of civil servants and service officers at every level throughout the Ministry of Defence. Let there be more emphasis on long-term dialogue, 10, 15 and 20 years ahead, to decide how each aspect of the threat will be met. Let this dialogue take place as it sensibly is usually done on a two-service and not a three-service basis. For example, the Russian submarine threat in the Atlantic is a subject as to what mix of naval and air systems can best and most economically meet that threat. In the case of busting attacking tanks or key points behind the lines on the central front, systems advocated by the Army and the
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Air Force are relevant. This dialogue of course on a two-service basis should take place in the presence of many, including the leaders of industry, scientists and civilian experts.
The essential building block for this dialogue and the only sound building block is the balanced, deeply thought through, individual policy of the Air Force, the Navy and the Army, respectively. The supreme need, as the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Cameron, has said, is to keep each of our three fighting services the envy of the world.
5.57 p.m.
Lord Mayhew: My Lords, I am truly pleased to follow the noble Viscount. Lord Trenchard, because so many of your Lordships who intend to speak have personal experience of this difficult and sometimes emotive subject, but I think the noble Viscount must have the most recent experience of all, and that gave his remarks particular weight.
These are proposals to reduce or eliminate the single service input into major policy and operational decisions, and especially—and it seems to me this is the most important and disturbing part of the proposals—to remove the planning staffs from the Chiefs of Staff and to abolish the Vice-Chiefs of Staff of the single services. It looks neat on paper. It is undoubtedly a streamlined structure. It clarifies channels of responsibility, and it would save jobs—and there are jobs to be saved, as I think we all know. We ask: why has it not been done before? Why is it, as the paper itself says, that the 1963 proposals have not in fact been fully implemented?
Some will say that it is because of the war between the three services for a bigger cut of the cake; or it is because of their bloody-mindedness, which is a popular belief. There may be something in that, but the major reason I believe is that the single services often have a legitimate point of view which is different from that of the central planning staff and different from each other, that they have a right to express this point of view effectively, and that they are understandably determined to maintain this right against those who would wish to take it from them.
We are told that the single service Chiefs of Staff are of course on the Defence Council, that they have access to the Secretary of State and that they still have access, I am assured, to the Prime Minister in the last resort; but their planning staffs are taken away from them. What use is their advice and what power does it have unless, in these days, they have an effective research and planning back-up? All the time the difficulty and the complex nature of top-level defence decisions is growing. It is getting worse every day, with the acceleration of the development of defence technology, and it is not possible for them to represent their services or effectively to enter the debate if their planning staffs are taken from them.
Of course, the final decision is taken centrally—no one disputes that—but is it wise to eradicate from that decision the input of the single services? It may well be that the single service view will be inconvenient to the Secretary of State. It may be that it will delay the final decision; but it may also be that there is a vital place in top-level defence decisions for well-briefed, well-informed devil's advocates.

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I note that the paper pays tribute to the White Paper of 1963 and to the reforms there proposed, but it does not point out that the first time those reforms were tried, in the Healey defence reviews of 1964 and 1966, they produced a disastrously wrong judgment. The basic question was: could we afford our defence commitments on a £2,000 million budget? More specifically, could we therefore afford to maintain our commitments east of Suez without any seaborne air power? That was the crunch question.
The Navy, which knew most about it, still had its planning staff there, and it came up with the right answer—that it was not possible. No one would dispute today that that was the right answer. But the central staff, strengthened by the 1963 reforms, had little difficulty in steamrollering the Navy and coming to the incredible conclusion that Britain could maintain all its commitments east of Suez and scrap the aircraft-carriers at the same time. That is a danger that faces us again, and it will not go away. I maintain that we really must not eradicate from these big decisions the well-informed and effective views of the single services.
I note that the Secretary of State sets out three options for forming his central planning staff, and the one option which appears to me to make a grain of sense he dismisses. That is the third option. He suggests that the central staff might be divided into single service groups, and says:
"These groups would be responsible for all the operational and policy functions of that service but working within a single framework and under hgher-level direction".
That might go some way towards meeting the criticisms I have been making; but the Secretary of State in effect throws out this option, and the reason he gives for doing so are interesting. He says (and I quote again):
"The savings in top jobs would be fewer and solutions to common defence poblems would be reached more efficiently".
So he is talking about savings in jobs and more efficient decision-taking—but there are two other criteria. The first is that the right decision should be taken, and the second is that the decision should be reached by procedures that are considered fair by those who have to carry them out.
Neither of those criteria appear in this paper at all, or indeed in these proposals. Anyone with experience either as a serviceman or as a service Minister knows that these go to the heart of real defence planning and real defence requirements. Of course, good management is essential to the armed services; but wars are not won by management consultants, and where matters of defence are concerned what really matters is what actually happens when the chips are down. A defence structure, like the one that is suggested, may be logical and cost-effective: but it can be disastrous if it suppresses honest and well-informed disagreement or if it weakens service loyalty.
6.4 p.m.
Lord Hill-Norton: My Lords, the Defence Open Government Document, which has given rise to this debate, promises that there shall be—and I quote:
"a period of discussion and consultation leading to the working out of proposals for change".
It turns out that there is nowhere better in the country
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today in which discussion could take place than in your Lordships' House, so I do hope that the Defence Secretary will pay attention to what is being said by noble Lords and by noble and gallant Lords today, even if he does not like it.
It must surely be common ground that the morale of the three services is of quite overriding importance to any sensible defence policy. I therefore find it strange—indeed illuminating—that the matter is nowhere referred to in the document we are debating, although this is perhaps not surprising, given the belief which shines through that document that raw, commercial, managerial techniques are appropriate for dealing with people you were asking to die for you. Your Lordships will be well aware that they have not ever been, and they never will be, appropriate.
But I do not fully share the concern of the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Cameron, that the proposals before us will have a markedly adverse effect on the morale of all those men and women upon whom our sure defence depends. Sailors, soldiers and airmen are robust and steady people and they have, on the whole, a fine disregard for the bright ideas of politicians; and for centuries they have contrived to do their job very well despite them. But there can be no doubt that they will greatly resent any political attempt to belittle the professional heads of their services, and quite rightly so.
On the contrary, I entirely share the noble and gallant Lord's belief that the changes proposed, certainly in their present form, will seriously weaken the Chiefs of Staff organisation and, more important, thereby weaken the cutting edge of the services—and not only at the sharp end where it matters most. I have been a strong advocate before, during and after the time I held that great office of Chief of the Defence Staff, of strengthening his position, but neither to the extent nor in the manner which the Defence Secretary suggests.
There is in fact not too much wrong with the present system at the top, as I believe the other four noble and gallant Lords who have done the job in the last 20 years would agree. We have all made the system work, though we would all have wished for certain changes, and those initiated by the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Lewin, have greatly improved the previous situation and probably go far enough, as the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Cameron, said.
There is, nevertheless, ample room below the very top for quite large savings in both time and people, and a little money too, by the elimination of the duplication of functions and by smartening up the amorphous mass of the procurement process and the petty bureaucracy to which the Ministry is subject. Those are the sort of second-order things for which a fairly blunt instrument like MINIS might well be quite suitable.
But to remove the staffs supporting the professional heads of the three services, as the noble Viscount and the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, have just said, would inevitably weaken the quality of the advice available to the Chief of the Defence Staff. Also I must say it would quite certainly lead to hard and bitter divisions between the single services and the centre, just when they are starting to work very well together. And to

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suppose that there is some natural division or distinction between policy and management in the defence business is illusory. The formulation and the execution of policy are indivisible, because policy is only made to enable successful operations of war, or the deterrence of it, to be undertaken. Successful operations demand the right men, with the right weapons, and trained to use them in the right place at the right time. That simple truth encompasses plans, operational requirements for kit, training and logistics and it is quite plainly both impossible and unreal to draw a line within that matrix which neatly and tidily divides policy from management.
Nor can it possibly be seen how the single service chiefs of staff can "manage", as it is called, that business without adequate staffs to support them, much less—as the defence White Paper says at paragraph 214—
"be responsible for their total fighting efficiency and morale",
which of course they are. I must repeat what other noble Lords have already said. Power and responsibility are also indivisible and they must always go hand in hand. The noble and gallant Lord, Lord Cameron, made this point very forcefully and I support him to the hilt.
I hope that a desire for a solution, which merely looks tidy on paper and which seeks to save what can only be trivial sums in the context of a defence budget of £18 billion a year, will not lead to shutting the door on the best military advice, nor to the denigration or emasculation of those lifetime professionals who are charged with organising, training and leading the services upon which our lives ultimately depend.
6.12 p.m.
Lord Mulley: My Lords, I find myself in a difficult situation in that I have been preceded in the debate by two noble and gallant Lords with whom I had dealings as Secretary of State, and I am to be followed by two others. But I should first like to say how much we are indebted to the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Cameron, for introducing this debate and how privileged I feel to follow the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Hill-Norton. We had dealings together in his distinguished period as chairman of the Military Committee of NATO, when he—as did all his predecessors—gave me very good advice when I was faced early in my term of office with a very serious problem of finding a new CDS, arising from the tragic death very early in his term of the late Marshal of the Royal Air Force, Sir Andrew Humphrey, and had to think very hard about the whole problem.
One point needs stressing. I hope and believe that when the Secretary of State says that this is a consultation paper, that is really meant. I hope indeed that, as has already been said, the debate in this House will be treated as an important part of that consultation. When I first read MINIS I was obliged to recall from my rather slender classical education the legendary brigand Procrustes, who had a bed which he carried around with him. If his victims were too small they were stretched to size, but if they were too big they were chopped off. I began to wonder whether the Secretary of State had some ministerial Procrustean bed that he was taking from one department to
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another. I am bound to say, because the services take an interest in form, that looking back at the performance of the Department of the Environment—as this House has had occasion to comment quite recently—does not inspire one with confidence that this system should be installed in the Ministry of Defence.
The other point that needs making very strongly is that the Ministry of Defence is very different from any other Ministry—and I had the honour and privilege of serving in quite a number—for two reasons: first, because it is half military and half civilian it is essential that the two bodies work well together; and, secondly—and there is no escaping this—the Secretary of State for Defence, unlike the Secretaries of State for the Environment or Education, is accountable to Parliament for every penny on the defence Vote. He cannot just threaten to shut grants off to local authorities and the rest. Everything that happens is his ultimate responsibility, and that makes it a very different organisational structure, with a need for the Secretary of State to be informed in all different channels from what seems now to be proposed.
Apart from my more recent experience, I had the unique experience in 1964 of going into the department a few months after it was set up as a tri-service department, being delegated by the then Secretary of State to be responsible for the integration, so far as we could, of the three services under the late Lord Mountbatten. I should like to place on record that, but for Lord Mountbatten's leadership, I do not believe we would ever have made a success of a combined services Ministry of Defence.
It is very important to stress that in this field caution and slowness, frustrating though they might be, are extremely important, because the services are very sensitive to what they may see as threats to their identity. Of course, the quality of the personnel of all our three services is the envy of many other nations and it largely derives from the traditions—from, for example, the regimental structures in the Army.
When I went back in 1976, I found that a good deal had been achieved although, quite obviously, one could wish that more had been done. It seems to me that it is not enough merely to say that the identity of the services must be retained, as the document does when it goes on to suggest that the chiefs of staff of the three services will not necessarily have access to their own Secretary of State. It says nothing about the access, which I deem it important that they should have collectively, to the Prime Minister. I found that a great nuisance, but I would defend their right to have that access and it is important. going right down through the services, that that should be known.
I also think it was a tremendous mistake to suggest that the vice-chiefs should be abolished, because I found that they were the key personnel in all three services. I do not see what function a chief of staff will have if he is not able to deal with operations and policy matters—if he is merely to be a shop steward for his service, although I can testify that they did that job extremely well in my time.
Nor would I suggest that one needs to stick to Buggins' turn, although it is well-known that each service makes it its concern to see that a very well

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qualified officer is available when, on the rotation, their turn would normally come to provide the chief of the defence staff. I accept that one must strengthen the centre, but, as the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Lewin, stated in his letter, which has already been referred to, it is very important that they should have adequate staffs to advise on strategy and defence policy.
Since time passes, I would make only one final point. In my view, it is also a mistake to suggest that the Chief Scientist and the Chief of Defence Procurement should have access to the Secretary of State only through the PUS. I was reminded of an adaptation of the old American saying that "The Lovells speak only to the Cabots and the Cabots speak only to God". I hope that there is no parallel there in what is being suggested as the new structure for the Ministry of Defence.
6.19 p.m.
Lord Beloff: My Lords, as someone whose inglorious military career never raised him above the ranks, I feel a certain diffidence in taking part in a debate dominated by ex-Ministers and by those who have served with great distinction in the services. But it is important to emphasise that we should nevertheless be open-minded about the very serious set of organisational problems which has been submitted to us by the present Secretary of State in the consultation document.
It is also worth remembering that the chiefs of the armed services have not always been infallible in their prescriptions. They defend today with vigour the position of the chiefs of staff. There would have been no chiefs of staff if civilians had not pressed them upon the unwilling armed services of the pre-1914 period. We have heard an eloquent speech from the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Balhousie, as a former Chief of the Air Staff. There would have been no service for him to be the head of if the then admirals and generals had had their way in the post-1918 period. The development of defence has been a collaboration between civilian thinking and military thinking. This ought to make us at least open-minded about a civilian input into the theory of the organisation of the ministry.
My own concern is not with a particular interest. I take the point made by the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Hill-Norton, that the morale of the services is likely to survive even errors at the top. My interest is in how the public views our organisation for defence and whether we can fully defend the present structure against possible criticism. It is not so much a matter of the competition between the various services for the necessarily limited resources that government and Parliament can allocate. It is becoming much more a question of how far defence, as a general category of expenditure and effort, including expenditure on highly trained and able men and women, can be justified and defended. I am not altogether happy about that, and I shall give my reasons, for what they are worth, in the debate on the Defence White Paper which we are to have tomorrow.
The main point is that there is some uncertainty—I believe understandable uncertainty—not merely about the nuts and bolts of the internal arrangements:
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about whether the formal and the informal structure of power within the ministry correspond. The present Secretary of State tells us that they do not. There is also uncertainty about whether the kind of thinking at the centre takes into account an era of change which is so rapid as possibly to make obsolete, almost before they are formulated, any policies, programmes or priorities of individual services. When we are seriously talking about star wars, do the stars belong to a single service?
Similarly, on scientific advice, I strongly agree with the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Mulley, that scientific advice is of exceptional importance. It ought not to be mediated through anybody. The strengthening of that advice ought to be at least as important as the strengthening of financial control, which gets a much larger share of the discussion document. Somebody ranking as a Second Permanent Under-Secretary will clearly carry a great deal of weight in the ordinary way in which ministries operate.
Therefore, although I am willing to be convinced by noble and gallant Lords, who have great experience of these matters, and by others, I remain at the moment prepared to give some credence to a Secretary of State who is interested in and concerned about the way in which his ministry functions. The experience which he brings to it may not be wholly irrelevant. In that case he will clearly decide.
I should have thought that this was a great step forward. I can think of no previous case of this kind, where we have been given a discussion document and are here as one of the Houses of the Legislature to discuss it, and where it is regarded not as some kind of secret (we are always told that the Government are obsessed with secrecy) but as something which the public have the right to know about and to discuss. Therefore I join in welcoming the initiative of the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Balhousie.
6.25 p.m.
Lord Carver: My Lords, the proposals set out in this open Government paper are a reversion to those which were put forward by Lord Mountbatten when he was Chief of the Defence Staff in 1962. They were not accepted then, largely because of the objections of his fellow chiefs of staff. They feared then that such an organisation would mean that the advice given to the Secretary of State by the central staff, particularly if it were integrated with the Civil Service staff, as is now proposed, would be too greatly tempered to suit the political and financial convenience of the Government; that it would not represent the real military need; and that it would lack the realism which derives from responsibility for execution and from the experience of those who have spent their lives in the service.
The current proposals raise the same fears. Nobody now wants to revert to the pre-1964 situation, nor does anyone contest that the Chief of the Defence Staff is responsible for the command of any forces engaged in operations overseas which are not operating under NATO command, that such situations occur rarely, and that they are not likely to be on a large scale. We must remember that the primary task of the Navy is to be prepared to operate with other NATO navies; that the primary task of the Army is to be prepared to operate with other NATO armies; and that the

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primary task of the Air Force is to be prepared to operate with other NATO air forces. In no case will British forces, executing these NATO tasks, be commanded by the Chief of the Defence Staff or by any of the single service chiefs of staff. In Lord Mountbatten's day there were still major joint-service commands overseas which could become involved in operations. That is no longer the case. Therefore the operational need for greater unity has largely disappeared.
Almost all of the business of the Ministry of Defence is concerned with organisation. The so-called policy staffs are principally concerned with how many units there should be—that is to say, combat ships, squadrons of aircraft, army units; how they should be equipped; what is needed to recruit, maintain and train them: and how they are to be accommodated. As has been said by many speakers, policy and management in these fields, the responsibility for which the Defence Secretary proposes to separate, go hand in hand, and are inextricably intertwined. Efficiency and morale, for which the single service chiefs of staff are to continue to be responsible, depend on sound and sensible policy, efficiently managed with expertise and consistency. That depends upon achieving the optimum balance between all the different factors—human, material and financial —which affect both the short-term and the long-term needs of the service.
No central staff, without close links with the units and with the training machine, which has no responsibility for execution, can replace this essential function of the single service staffs. Advice to the central staff must come from the single service source. The Defence Secretary's proposals appear to deprive the single service chief of staff of the means to weigh up all the factors affecting his service and to provide advice, based on that balance, to the Chief of the Defence Staff.
The proposals give total responsibility for management of the single services to their chiefs of staff, presiding over the executive committees of their service boards, which thus appear to become superfluous. This is accentuated by the proposal to establish a central office of management and budget, which would allocate what are called responsibility budgets to not only individual members to the service boards, but also major commands, which are all single-service. This central allocation of responsibility budgets, combined with the proposal to devolve greater powers within those allocations to commands, would severely limit the ability of the single-service chief of staff and his executive committee to "manage" his service. Are the service boards being preserved because it would need legislation and a lot of procedural readjustment to abolish them, or is it intended that they should gradually wither away for lack of any real function?
The proposals as they stand are open to severe criticism, and they have received it. But if they were modified to preserve the essential function of the single-service staffs, they could represent an important improvement, although probably no saving in manpower, senior or junior. There is no doubt that it is still very difficult to obtain a truly objective
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assessment of future needs, particularly in the equipment field.
We all know that sailors are biased in favour of ships, in which they can go to sea, airmen in favour of aircraft, in which they can fly, and soldiers in favour of bodies of men, particularly those with historic associations. Rather than introduce a significant increase in the central staff to achieve this (which is what the Secretary of State is proposing), more use should be made of the defence operational analysis establishment, which should be strengthened. Having originally been the Army operational research establishment, neither the Navy nor the Air Force has contributed sufficiently to it or made enough use of it. The result has been that it has not been able to produce the answers for them in time to affect decisions. I suggest that that might meet the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Beloff.
There is one principle permeating the proposals that I welcome. It is the emphasis on placing responsibility for advice, decisions and execution on individuals rather than on committees. Committees are time-consuming. They are often inefficient and they seldom initiate anything. In technical matters they tend to result in unsatisfactory compromises, which do not provide the optimum technical solution. However, one must not overlook the fact that they are an essential element of the democratic process and that concentration of power in the hands of individuals has its dangers, particularly if it is military power.
I hope that in replying to the debate the noble Lord will be able to assure the House that the proposals as originally set out in March have been modified in the process of consultation to leave the single-service chiefs of staff with sufficient staff, and their boards with sufficient financial authority, to meet their responsibilities both for giving advice to the central machinery and for maintaining the morale and efficiency of their respective services.
6.33 p.m.
Viscount Monckton of Brenchley: My Lords, as the most junior officer so far to speak, I would first remind your Lordships that the services were the first nationalised industry, that they are the one that has never gone on strike and has never wanted to do so, and that they go on doing their duty. Most of this paper, some of which is good, has become known to us only by leaks. This is a complaint I have had against the present Government and other Governments, that there are too many official leaks, and, as a result, there are many unofficial leaks. If that is not bad for the morale of those concerned, I do not know what is. There have been leaks on this very question.
Of course, we must go for common procurement to reduce costs. That is a good concept, and the way of doing it will be discussed and sorted out. From a soldier's point of view, it is good to see an extra armoured regiment—but I will give your Lordships some facts first. At the moment, the armoured regiments in Germany cannot man their tanks even when up to establishment. Something wants sorting out there. The take-home pay of some soldiers in Germany now is less than it was three years ago. That is partly because of the LOA having been reduced. I

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know that there is to be an increase, but it has not come into effect. But not so many of those who are already serving are thinking of signing on.
I do a lot of travelling across the Atlantic, and I saw what happened in Canada. God defend that the same thing should happen here!—a mix-up of services, with everybody wearing green. Also, I see now a change in the United States, where they want to get away from a single military channel of advice and a single civilian channel of advice. They want to have what we have had. But now we seem to be changing, if these proposals come about.
There is a danger that the chiefs of staff, who are officially responsible for morale and management, will be blamed because of what is happening when, as has been said, they have no responsibility for what has happened. As one noble Lord commented, the chief of staff is really becoming an inspector-general—and they were done away with just before the beginning of the second world war. I wonder also how many senior officer posts are being abolished as a result of all this. Again, rumours and leaks say that a large number will be abolished. The pyramid is already getting steep in the services, and it must not get to the point where it is almost impossible to climb. I would have thought that, from the Government's point of view, the more in uniform the better at the present time.
Another rumour that is going around, and has been published in the press, is that the service directors of public relations are to go. I have some experience of that aspect. I had the honour and pleasure of serving under the noble Lord, Lord Mulley, as DPR for the Army: also for Mr. John Profumo and Mr. James Ramsden, with equal pleasure. I also served under the Ministry of Defence public relations officer Godfrey Hobbs. If I was the defence public relations officer today, I could not answer press inquiries about the frigate that hit a bridge on the Thames. The news reported that it performed a three-point turn. To me, that means almost an about turn, but I think it was in fact about 33 degrees. How could a single-service chap, trying to answer on behalf of the whole defence set-up, reply? He could not. The press want to know domestic details about the services when they ring up.
Finally, I believe we are entitled to know when it was that the present Chief of Defence Staff was told or consulted about this paper before it was published; and if and when the chiefs of staff were consulted.
6.37 p.m.
Lord Lewin: My Lords, in the very short time available to me the most useful service I can perform is to describe what the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Cameron, referred to as the Nott-Lewin initiatives of 1981, when changes were made in the responsibilities and organisation of the Chiefs of Staff Committee. My urge to make changes was born of many years of frustration at the inability of the chiefs of staff to grapple with the very difficult problems of strategic priorities and resource allocation. This frustration came to a head in the defence review of 1981, which was carried out at extremely high speed—far too fast for the reaction time of the chiefs of staff organisation. The single-service chiefs of staff, with their dual responsibilities for advising on broad strategy and resource allocation, and with their supreme
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responsibility as guardians of their own service, were fully occupied with defending their single-service interests. As CDS, I found it impossible to get them to grapple with the broader issues of strategy.
In the relative calm of the aftermath of that defence review, I made proposals to the then Secretary of State which were based on five principles. The first was that the Chief of Defence Staff should become the principal military adviser to the Secretary of State and to the Government in his own right, and no longer as the chairman of a committee with collective responsibility. I have nothing against committees—indeed, they are a very useful forum in which to debate matters—but I am against collective responsibility.
From that first principle followed the second: that the Chiefs of Staff Committee would become the forum in which the Chief of Defence Staff sought the advice of his colleagues. No longer would it be a forum of collective responsibility. The third principle preserved the position of the chiefs of staff. They would remain the professional heads of their single services responsible for their morale and efficiency. They would remain responsible for giving advice to the Secretary of State and to Ministers across the whole field of strategy, resource allocation and their own single service matters. They would retain their right of direct access to both the Secretary of State and the Prime Minister, so that if they do not like the advice that the CDS gave they had a way out to represent their own view.
The fourth principle concerned the central staff, which before had been responsible to the Chief of the Defence Staff in his position as chairman of Chiefs of Staffs Committee, and not to him individually. Therefore, the CDS had no staff of his own; he had only a staff which was responsible to the collective body. With these changes the central staff became accountable to the Chief of the Defence Staff in his own right. At last he would have a staff of his own and could set it studies with terms of reference which he did not have to get agreed with all the chiefs of staffs beforehand.
The fifth principle—and a vital one—was that the Chief of Defence Staff should become the chairman of a senior appointments committee which would consist of the chiefs of staffs. This committee would have responsibility for overseeing the promotion and appointments of all three-and four-star officers—Lieutenant-Generals, Generals and their equivalent—and the appointments of some two-star officers to important posts. This is essential to preserve the careers and the promotion prospects of those officers who might serve with objectivity in central staff appointments to the disappointment of their own services and with prejudice to their future careers if they go back to their own services which will be responsible for promotion from then on. In the present situation the chief of staff of a single service is solely responsible, in a situation which existed before 1981, for promotion and appointment of three-and four-star officers in his own service. If one accepts "Buggins' turn"—which I certainly do not—this meant that an individual single service chief of staff was solely responsible for selecting the future Chief of Defence Staff, and that cannot be right.

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These proposals were given wide discussion by the Minister of Defence, endorsed by the Secretary of State and approved by the Prime Minister. The Secretary of State chose a rather obscure way of promulgating them. They were, in fact, communicated in a letter to the Chairman of the Select Committee on Defence on 11th February 1982. They attracted very little attention at the time, but in my view they were the most significant change in a military organisation and the Ministry of Defence since 1964. Six weeks later the Argentinians invaded the Falklands and the new organisation was given a thorough test. The noble and gallant Lord, Lord Cameron, and other noble Lords, have been kind enough to say that it worked.
Now the Secretary of State has published a consultation document for discussion within the Ministry. I understand that there was no prior discussion before that document was launched in the Ministry. Obviously the Secretary of State expects consultation and discussion before detailed proposals emerge and are implemented. I have great faith in the wisdom of the Secretary of State who obviously knows about management, believing that he will listen to advice from within the Ministry of Defence, and indeed to advice that may emerge from this debate tonight.
If I were still in the position of advising the Secretary of State there are three important pieces of advice I would give to him. The first is that in reorganising the central staff I hope that he will not create divisions applicable to single services—Navy, Army and Air Force. This will only perpetuate the worst rivalries between the single services. War is no longer a matter for single services in isolation. We learnt that lesson in World War II. Each service is dependent on at least one of the others. If there are any divisions in the central staff I hope they will be functional and, as far as warfare is concerned. I hope they will be land/air, sea/air or maritime.
The second piece of advice is that I hope he will to the maximum extent integrate the service and civilian staffs. For too long there has been wasteful duplication of service and civilian staffs operating on the same subjects alongside one another. Here, I believe, there is certainly room for savings.
The third and quite the most important piece of advice is—here I echo many of the noble and gallant Lords who have already spoken—that if the single service chiefs of staff are to continue to give valuable advice on the whole field of strategic priorities and resource allocation, which I am sure they should, they must have adequate staffs of their own. This does not mean there is not room for change. I am sure that through history the naval, general and air staffs have been too large and the central staff too small. Those, then, are the pieces of advice that I hope the Secretary of State will heed.
I now turn briefly—and here I regret I must disagree with the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Cameron— to the Motion on the Order Paper which refers to our standing in NATO and the morale of our forces. First, our standing in NATO. The senior military body in NATO is the Military Committee. The noble and gallant Lord, Lord Hill-Norton, was a most effective
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chairman of that body. Its members are the chiefs of defence of the NATO countries and, in permanent session, the chiefs of defence permanent representatives. The single service chiefs of staff have no position in NATO command. NATO operational command is exercised by three major NATO commanders. They are unified commanders who have command of all three services. They have land, air and naval deputies to advise them.
In my view, the sort of changes we have already made and which are likely to emerge from this consultation document will, if anything, strengthen our standing in NATO because they enhance the position of the chief of the defence staff. As to morale, in my experience the man at the sharp end does not look to Whitehall for inspiration. He looks to his immediate operational commander and, through him, to the operational commanders up the line. It was "Bomber" Harris, Monty, Bill Slim and "Dickie" Mountbatten, ABC and Philip Vian who inspired the soldiers, sailors. airmen and the public in the last war; not the people in Whitehall.
The greatest service that the Whitehall organisation can do is to provide the operational commander with clear directives, with the resources to carry out those directives and with timely political decisions based on sound military advice when he needs them. I believe that, wisely implemented, the changes which the Secretary of State is now considering will ensure this.
6.48 p.m.
Lord Kennet: My Lords, I lack the experience or knowledge to take part in the mainstream of this debate but should like to single out a relatively minor matter which is in the MINIS paper and where I hope that the Secretary of State will proceed as he proposes; that is, the setting up of a central defence Arms Control Unit.
I take for the moment the story of Trident. In the first paper setting out the reasons for procuring the Trident force, the Government touched on arms control only in so far as they pointed out that the Trident force would not infringe any existing treaty. The paper did not touch on the question of disarmament at all. The statement on the Defence Estimates which we shall be debating tomorrow does touch upon Trident and disarmament when it says, rather disarmingly, that if there are deep strategic reductions between the United States and the Soviet Union,
"we would want to review our position and to consider how best the United Kingdom could contribute to arms control."
Well, yes, indeed, but of course we do not have the slightest idea how we could, because nobody has given the matter a moment's thought. That is why I hope that this new unit will be set up and will be immediately directed to think about that.
If the unit swiftly reports as follows, the Secretary of State will know that he has a good unit. I mean by that, if it reports, first, that four boats is the minimum number that can ensure that one is always on station, and reduction in that number is therefore not possible; second, that it has already been agreed by the United States and the Soviet Union that any weapon system will be deemed to carry the maximum number of

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missiles, warheads, and so on, that it has been tested with; and, third, that if a weapon system is claimed to be carrying less than that maximum, the claim must be verifiable by the other side. This would require constantly updated on-site inspection, which would be incompatible with the level of security required for the Trident force.
If the unit goes on to report that the British Trident force is, therefore, an intrinsically undisarmable system, and that, if real multilateral nuclear disarmament ever really begins around it, it will face the Government of the time with a choice between sudden and total strategic nuclear disarmament and becoming an obstacle to the whole multilateral process—if the unit reports like that, the Secretary of State will know that he has a good unit.
6.51 p.m.
Lord Mottistone: My Lords, I think that we should all be grateful to the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Cameron. Indeed, I agree greatly with practically everything that he said. I would propose to confine myself to the morale aspects of his Motion, which I do not think have been touched on perhaps as much as they should have been, and to concentrate particularly on Canada, where I had the privilege of being the naval adviser to the British High Commissioner in 1965 and 1966, when the Canadians were introducing their own very similar arrangements—similar in this case in particular in relation to the reorganisation of their staff and the abolition of policy staffs for the three service chiefs, and, indeed, the abolition of the three service chiefs as well.
It is true that they were also put into a common uniform and that Lord Mountbatten, who visited Canada while I was there, thought that that was going too far. But the common uniform was only part of it, and while I was there it had not really been introduced. The point that I think I would ask my noble friend the Minister to convey to my right honourable friend the Secretary of State is that Mr. Hellyer, who introduced this in Canada in 1965–66, subsequently went downwards on the ministerial ladder and never again held as high an appointment.
I have had quite a lot to do with the Canadians. My father commanded the Canadian cavalry brigade during the First World War. I think you could probably say that the Canadian Army grew up during that war. The Canadian Navy was very much under RN control in the intervening peacetime. It grew up, as indeed did the Royal Canadian Air Force, in the Second World War. It had its difficulties. I was in the Western Approaches for practically the whole war and had a lot to do with it. Indeed, at one time I had a Canadian captain in a British ship. He went on to be the equivalent of our C-in-C Fleet at a later stage.
The Canadian Navy had a sticky start because the Canadians multiplied the size of their navy ten-fold during the first two years of the war, and it was extremely inefficient to begin with. But it is fair to say that it came out of the war as a fine fighting force, and it was a splendid partner in NATO in those post-war years. It did some quite impressive work all on its own. It initiated the carrying of helicopters in small ships—destroyers and frigates—before either the
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Royal Navy, or certainly the United States Navy, had even thought of that. It carried out great developments with extensive trials in hydrofoil A/S warships. It was a good, and, when I knew it, a thriving force, full of enthusiasm. Then Mr. Hellyer did his fell deed.
I agree with noble and gallant Lords who have said that the sailors, soldiers and airmen are not directly concerned about what happens to the people in their ministries, but their officers are. If their officers, particularly their local commander-in-chief, is deeply disturbed at what is happening and reflects that, it reflects on the morale of the force as a whole. Certainly back in the late 1960s it was true that the removal of any semblance of coherent operational leadership within the naval service headquarters (which itself had been abolished) knocked for six the morale of the officers and the sailors suffered badly. Only last summer I was talking to a Canadian admiral, now retired, and I asked whether they had recovered from that. He said, "Quite frankly, no". The single uniform has been sort of phased down and it does not appear very often, but the Canadians suffered badly and it affected their morale. They knew that their senior officers did not have the knowledge in regard to policy-making staffs which they could use when they had to argue for their own service.
I know that the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Lewin, has much greater experience in these things. I am surprised that he is quite so enthusiastic about what is suggested here. It would seem to me that the five principles which he spelt out to us are quite far enough to go. It surprises me that the Secretary of State wants to go further.
Turning now to that point (as I think perhaps I have a minute) it seems to me that the area in which the Secretary of State has demonstrated his own skill has been in introducing MINIS into the Department of the Environment and that he has done great things in trying to introduce a spirit of accountability in the Civil Service. The services have their own spirit of accountability. He does not need to carry it further there.
One of my friends who was very senior in the Ministry of Defence told me about six or seven years ago that he thought the efficiency of the Ministry of Defence would improve dramatically if 60 under-secretaries and their supporting staff were sacked from the Civil Service. It is that sort of thing which I think that noble and gallant Lords have touched upon, too. I should have thought that, if the Secretary of State concentrated on making the Civil Service more efficient, and allowed the single-service chiefs of staff to maintain their status by having proper policy staffs to support them, that is the kind of situation with which we want to end up.
,6.58 p.m.
The Earl of Longford: My Lords, I share the diffidence—in my case it amounts to terror—expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Beloff, in venturing to take part in a debate in this exalted company, which of course includes the noble Lord who has just spoken, the noble Viscount, Lord Monckton, and others. I shall speak for five minutes. If I have not said what I want to say by the end of five minutes, that is just too

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bad. But to make quite sure that I make my main point without being closured by the clock, I will say straight away that I am sure that nothing must be done to disturb the leadership provided by the professional service chiefs. That means, of course, that I am entirely, in my respectful way, behind the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, who started the debate. That is to me the beginning, although not of course the end, of wisdom.
But I think that there is a special aspect of this which is just worth touching on in these few minutes. We have to see this in the light of a decline and fall since the war of the service Ministers. They have almost ceased to exist, certainly in the old sense. When I first began speaking for the Government in this House, there were three service Ministers who were members of the Cabinet. By the time I was Under-Secretary of State for War, they had been ejected from the Cabinet, but still they were quite important people.
When I was First Lord of the Admiralty for a few months in 1951, we were again still quite important people. For example, I was a member of the Defence Committee. So the service Ministers still had some power of offering leadership but they were apt to be there for too short a time, apart from any personal failings.
When we appeared again in Government at the time of Mr. Wilson's Cabinet, in the old sense the service Ministers had disappeared. The noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, will remember this all too well because he was the Minister for the Navy and was not allowed to make the representations which he has just laid before the House this afternoon. It would have been much better for all of us if he had been allowed to make those representations to the equivalent of the Defence Committee, but they had been downgraded to the point where this was impossible. The noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, to his eternal credit, resigned from that office. I am sure one of the principal grounds for that was that he did not have a chance to make these views plain.
So the service Ministers have been steadily downgraded. In my opinion this makes the argument for making quite sure that the service professional chiefs are not downgraded overwhelmingly convincing. In any case, the services looked to the professional chiefs more than they would to the rather itinerant service Ministers.
When I was Under-Secretary for War, I remember Lord Montgomery taking me down to the Staff College. I was placed on a platform beside Lord Montgomery and I suppose I was nominally in command of him—but not in any real sense. He gave an eloquent address to all these officers in uniform and I was a rather timid civilian sitting beside him. He finished his address by saying,
"Never forget this, gentlemen: the politicians are our masters"
there was loud laughter at this remark as they noticed the relative confidence of the Field Marshal and myself—
"and it is up to us to lead them up the garden path!"
That was very well received at the Staff College. So even then, when the service Ministers were rather important, even if the Secretary of State had been
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there instead of me, he would not have been in the Cabinet and he would not have cut all that much ice with those staff officers.
So then it was all-important that the professional chiefs should be identifiable because, if they were not going to provide the leadership, no one else was. That is even truer today. I have been quicker than I thought. I have spoken for less than five minutes, and I applaud emphatically the line taken by the noble Lord, Lord Cameron.
7.3 p.m.
Viscount Ridley: My Lords, I presume to intervene among all this noble and gallant top brass for only one purpose, which is to draw attention to the position of the volunteer reserves and cadet forces under this proposed reorganisation. For brevity, I should like to refer mainly to the Territorial Army, or the TA, which is of course the largest component of the volunteer reserves at the moment.
May I remind your Lordships' that the TA provides nearly 30 per cent. of the mobilisation strength of the British Army at a cost of about 1.4 per cent. of the defence budget at the moment. When the planned expansion of the TA is complete by 1990 it will represent about 40 per cent. of the mobilised Army. It is therefore the most cost-effective part of our forces and vital indeed to our defence strategy.
Over the past four years the TA has gone from strength to strength. Overall now it is about 96 per cent. recruited. It is well-equipped and its morale is high. For this we are greatly indebted to the priority given to the TA by Her Majesty's Government and credit is especially due to my noble friend Lord Trefgarne, who has taken a very personal interest in the TA and the cadets. For example, his recent appeal by personal letter to 600 major employers, asking for their support, has resulted in a very encouraging and remarkable response. I am delighted to take the opportunity of thanking him on their behalf.
But the reserve forces are not attractive only on military and financial grounds. They also provide a very valuable element within the civilian community, which brings home the importance of defence and voluntary service. There are 14 territorial, auxiliary and volunteer reserve associations, known as TAVRAs, which cover the whole country and are responsible for the recuiting, housing and administration of the TA and, to varying degrees, the other volunteer forces. These are efficient, low-cost organisations which operate, in the words of the White Paper, on the basis of responsibility budgets. Their membership consists mainly of prominent people from all walks of life who give their services free. It is they who provide the bridge between the civilian and military worlds. I believe they are indispensable to encouraging and sustaining support for the volunteer forces. The work of the associations is being coordinated by their council in London.
Essential to these well-proven arrangements are the close links which have always existed between the associations and their council, on the one hand, and the Ministry of Defence, on the other. I am therefore concerned that any reorganisation should not damage these arrangements. It is especially important that this should not happen at a time when we are in the process of expanding the TA, which is happening now.

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Since its formation in 1908 the TA has always had its own director in the defence Ministry, who has never been below the rank of major general. This enables all elements of management and financial control to be combined under one director, who can concentrate exclusively on TA and cadet affairs and, most importantly, is at the right level. I believe it is vital that this continues.
I therefore, strongly hope that the Directorate of Territorial Army and Cadets remains much as it is now at two-star level within the Army Department. It may be possible, with advantage, to extend the director's responsibilities to accommodate certain selected aspects of the other reserve forces. I personally think that that would be desirable. It may also be possible to delegate more responsibilities to the associations. But beyond this there can be no justification for change, and it must be a mistake to disturb a system which is working so well. I believe that this present situation gives proper recognition to the importance and status of our volunteer forces and also provides the surest way of their continuing as an expanded and operationally effective component of our services into the future.
7.9 p.m.
Lord Hunt of Tanworth: My Lords, the maintenance of the morale of our fighting services is clearly absolutely crucial. But I will say nothing more about that because the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Lewin, has expressed what I feel so much more authoritatively and eloquently than I possibly could. But I do find it very difficult to believe that a prime determinant of morale is organisation at headquarters in Whitehall.
Unlike so many people who have spoken in this debate, I have not served in the Ministry of Defence, but I have had a long association with it, as secretary of the Joint Intelligence Committee, dealing with the MoD and the Treasury, and then for six and a half years as secretary of the Cabinet, including chairing one of the Defence Review steering committees. I do not intend to breach any confidences, or give any examples, but I am left with the profound conviction, that, at least until the Nott/Lewin reforms, the present organisation in the Ministry of Defence did not give either the best service to Ministers in terms of the presentation of policy and resource options or the best service to the armed forces in terms of clear and consistent direction, with sufficient priority given to teeth rather than tail.
Why is this? The underlying aim of the 1963 White Paper was a unified policy-making within the Ministry of Defence. I think most people expected that the amalgamation of the old service departments would be followed by further streamlining and rationalisation. I do not believe that that has happened, and indeed in many ways the old federal structure is more entrenched than ever before.
This is not to say that the Ministry of Defence is inefficient. It is not; though anyone who studied its organisation chart closely would think it a miracle that it worked at all. But, given the virtual unanimity of the people who have spoken in this debate tonight, perhaps to redress the balance I can put my worries a little more bluntly than I might otherwise have done.
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I think there are four weaknesses which stem from the present organisation. First, the Ministry is slow to respond because so many people have to be consulted and there are so many vested interests. This applies particularly to things which go to the higher reaches. I except, of course, something like the Falklands operation, where all tribal loyalties were put on one side and it was all hands to the pump.
Secondly, I think that the present organisation tends to mean that any solution which emerges is a compromise solution, and we all know a compromise solution is no one's first choice and you tend therefore to get something which is second best. Thirdly, once that compromise has been reached, it is extremely difficult to modify or adjust it, or the whole deal comes unravelled. Fourthly, I am convinced that the Ministry of Defence employs too many people, particularly at high level, both civilian and service.
I believe therefore that what was suggested in 1963 and adopted in 1964 is even more necessary now because the services are more interdependent, because hardware is more expensive and takes longer to procure, and because resources are scarcer. Therefore, the need for difficult policy choices and clear priorities is greater than ever before.
I welcome the Secretary of State's willingness to tackle this problem in a radical way. I am not arguing that he has got all the answers right. I do not think, as is evident to anyone who has read the consultation document, that he is arguing that either. I am not altogether clear precisely what role is envisaged for the chiefs of staff. I think that there is some flavour of a distinction between the people who matter at the top, those who deal with all the interesting policy things, and the people who are left to get on with management. We have all learnt, or have been told, in the Civil Service that management is just as important as policy. In any case, in this field, what we are talking about often is not management but leadership.
I believe that there is a crucial distinction, which the consultation document is attempting to make, between an integrated—in every sense of the word—civilian service, an integrated tri-service staff, reporting to the Secretary of State on key policy and resource issues where Ministers are necessarily concerned and have to take an overall view, and, on the other hand, the maximum decentralisation and delegation to individuals who are accountable. I hope very much therefore that the Secretary of State will be able to develop his proposals in a way that will achieve those objectives and at the same time will carry the confidence of the fighting services.
7.13 p.m.
The Earl of Cork and Orrery: My Lords, I remind myself that the intention of the debate is to,
"call attention to the necessity of maintaining the morale of the three services and their standing in NATO".
I take it as axiomatic that the standing in NATO or the standing of any nation in relation to its allies will depend largely on the morale of the services themselves at home. I wonder, therefore, what is the effect of the proposals of the Secretary of State on morale. This is the question that is really before us.
The paper, the MINIS report, has only two allusions

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to morale. The word itself appears, I think, once only, in paragraph 7 of page 4, where it says:
"I envisage that they should continue to be responsible"—
that is, the chiefs of staff—
"for the total efficiency and morale of their Services".
This passage has been quoted once or twice already. It goes on:
"In future, however, I wish them to report through CDS to me for that purpose".
I would have expected that sentence to read, "If it is suitable, it shall happen", or something of that sort, that they shall report through the Chief of the Defence Staff to the Secretary of State. It does not say that. It says:
"I wish them to report‥. to me".
I do not suggest for a moment that the significance of that difference was plain to the writer of the passage, but to me it is powerful enough to cast a shadow over the whole document, I am bound to confess. I read again:
"I wish them to report‥. to me for that purpose".
What is the purpose? We go back one line, It is to ensure,
"the total efficiency and morale of their Services".
The chiefs of staff are responsible for the morale of their services to the Secretary of State.
That tempts me to go back a page to look at the other allusion to morale. The actual word is not used, but I think that paragraph 5 refers to the same subject. He quotes from the 1963 White Paper, Central Organisation for Defence. That was 21 years ago. It seems a long way to go back for an authority. The quotation reads:
"the fighting spirit of the individual man in battle derives largely from his loyalty to his ship, his unit or his squadron".
I dare say that it does. It also depends on such things as loyalty to comrades, courage, resolution, physical fitness and well being, which, in turn, depend on adequate food, clothing, training, discipline and so on. Fighting spirit is not exactly the whole thing that we are talking about.
It is possible that no serviceman now serving will ever see a battle or do any fighting in the whole of his service life. I hope that he will not, and I do not believe that he will. Fighting spirit arises out of the absolute spirit of the man in peacetime, surely. The absolute spirit of the man in peacetime, if I may use that phrase, comes under the general heading of what we refer to as esprit de corps.
That phrase is well enough known and is probably understood, but there is no harm in trying to define it now and again because it is not all that clear. There are two parts to it. Firstly, there is the mental attitude of any individual towards the organisation to which he belongs; that is to say, the effect (the spiritual effect, if you like) that it has on him. Secondly, and the other way round, there is the attitude of mind, the spirit, of the organisation itself as the sum total of all the attitudes of those individuals to whom I have referred; that is to say, the spirit of the organisation as the sum of all the other individual attitudes—and the sum, not for the first time, is greater than the sum of its parts.
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Probably the chief ingredient of esprit de corps is pride. It may well be pride in a ship, a regiment or a squadron. But there is no mention or suggestion anywhere in the document of any awareness that a man may be proud of his service. The sailor is proud of the naval service, the fleet in which he serves. Correspondingly, the soldier and the airman. As the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, I think, said,—he will correct me if I quote him madly wrong, but I do not think that I do—"Do not let us delude ourselves that the fighting forces do not know what goes on at the top". The noble Lord went on to say, I think, that 20 years ago that might have been so, but it is not so now.
I am sure the noble Lord is right. They read the newspapers, they look at television, and they hear the wireless. They know what goes on. Every time the authority of their leaders is whittled away or curtailed—it can happen over and over again—it is experienced and felt as a denigration right the way down the line. Whether or not the fighting spirit of the man is undermined is not the question. The question is whether or not he is affected by the action of somebody outside his service knocking the man at the top and reducing the standing in his eyes of his leaders. This is what I believe is done by the document. I confess that I do not like it.
One of the reasons possibly for the new organisation is the distrust evinced by Minister after Minister, I suspect, of the inter-service rivalry that goes on. It is a harmful thing, possibly, but it is also a good thing. The harmful aspect puts me in mind of a marvellous piece of advice that I heard some years ago from my noble friend who sits just in front of me, my noble friend Lord Whitelaw. I have borne it in mind for years. My noble friend said, "When anything goes wrong—and something will always go wrong—what I do is to see how I can turn it to my advantage".
Lord Graham of Edmonton: He has not changed, my Lords.
The Earl of Cork and Orrery: My Lords, my noble friend is also free to correct me if I have it wrong. This is the exact opposite of what Ministers do when they say that something is going wrong in the organisation and they will therefore get rid of it. Inter-service rivalry is a good thing, and if the inter-service rivals get tiresome then one can get rid of them. As it is, I think my seven minutes are up. I hope I have made the point that I do not like this document. I think I detect in it a great arrogance and a refusal to consider at all the individual soldier, sailor and airman.
7.20 p.m.
Lord Graham of Edmonton: My Lords, we are all indebted to the initative of the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Cameron of Balhousie. His speech tonight has served us very well indeed in a number of ways. I took particular note of one or two of the comments that he made. He talked about responsibility without power; he talked about power without responsibility; and he named names to whom, in his view, that tag should be attached. He talked about the denigration of the chiefs of staff, and in a letter that he wrote to The Times he expressed his concern that a weak chief of defence staff

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and a strong Secretary of State could be a lethal combination. He has given us illustrations of how that could be the situation here today. I took particular note of the comments of the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Hill-Norton. I think I have it right in saying that he damned the proposals powerfully when he called them raw, commercial techniques, inappropriate when dealing with men being asked to die for one.
This short debate is about confidence, or the lack of it, morale, or the lack of it. Noble Lords do not easily or irresponsibly take the time of this House unless they are moved by matters of vital concern, of national concern. That is why we on the Labour Benches have taken very careful note of the reactions in many quarters to the current proposals of the Government to centralise staff at the Ministry of Defence. I want to say at once that we do not cavil at endeavours by any Secretary of State to effect savings in the running of his department. What we expect the Minister to justify tonight is the merit of these precise changes, the effect of these changes. We will await with interest his rebuttal of the main charge in the Motion before us—that these changes are damaging to the national interest and that they weaken the morale of our fighting forces.
There is an attractive ring about many of the phrases in the document. Some examples are:
"moving towards a more coherent structure for decision-making on central issues";
s"The Ministry will need to be strong and resilient and its decisions need to be right";
"We need to strenghten the fighting effectiveness of our forces";
"It is my intention to improve efficiency and to achieve significant savings".
But as the House will have deduced, not once but many times before, it is a case not of what one does or says one will do but of the way that one does it. We shall want to examine closely just how the Secretary of State sets about his task.
We have noted, for instance, that he is consulting urgently with the procurement executive, representing 43,000, responsible for buying £8 billion of defence equipment. How can they be made more efficient? In the Defence Estimates debate on 25th October last year the noble Lord. Lord Trefgarne, told us, at col.
234:
"The Ministry of Defence is by far the largest single customer of British industry. In all, more than 90 per cent. of our defence equipment expenditure is spent here in the United Kingdom, supporting no fewer than 242,000 jobs directly ‥. and 193,000 indirectly. MOD procurement of non-equipment items supports a total of 160,000 jobs, and sales of defence equipment abroad another 145,000".
Those words underline the size and the scale of the defence industry. It is indeed big business, and inevitably there must always be savings to be made. No one on these Benches will take offence at a process designed to get better value for money. But can we be told how much less money will be needed to perform the same tasks? Will procedures be tightened? Will real waste be eliminated? We on these Benches will want to get our priorities right. Can the House be told about the plans mentioned by the Secretary of State in another place on 12th March to improve efficiency and to achieve significant savings?
How are significant savings to be achieved by the document before us tonight? How will the result of this
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review of the future development of the organisation be translated meaningfully into higher spending, for instance, on jobs, on health, on education and on pensions? I believe that the country will want to have from the Government not just phrases or promises but real benefits, if not for the fighting forces then from other aspects of Government expenditure. Can we be told whether, regardless of any efficiency savings, the Government are still committed to fill any gap created with more expenditure, plus 3 per cent.? We want to reduce expenditure on arms. How hard are this Government trying to do just that?
I know that noble Lords in all parts of the House will have noted with great interest the report of a meeting of Foreign Ministers and their decision to re-launch the Western European Union. We shall be glad to have the Minister's comments on this and upon its relevance in relation to NATO. After all, this debate concerns service morale in NATO. It appears to be a French initiative and it needs to be made abundantly clear that it will not weaken or upset the aims and objectives of NATO itself. Some of us noted the highly critical comments of Sir John Nott, but provided there is complete understanding this could be a way of bringing France back into more active participation with NATO. We shall need to think about this again, but the Minister's preliminary observations will be appreciated.
The Minister will have had his attention drawn to certain reports. I quote the Daily Telegraph of 21 st May, which indicated that the chiefs of staff have signed a memorandum expressing anxiety at the major reorganisation of the Ministry of Defence's policy-making machinery. Can we be told if that is true? Can we be told what they said? Can we be told the terms of the ministerial response to them? The Mail on Sunday tells us that there is speculation that unless the Secretary of State modifies his hard line the chiefs may appeal directly to the Prime Minister. Has that appeal been made, and what was the response?
There has been much unease at the intentions of the Minister, best summed up in some newspaper headlines: "Armed Chiefs to Lose Power"; "Heseltine's Surprise Attack on the Forces"; "Concern to Keep Up Service Morale"; "Ex-Naval Chief Attacks Defence 'Utopia' Proposals"; "Need for Care over MoD Dismantling"; "Concern over Heseltine Plan"; "Heseltine Axe Angers Service Chiefs".
The basis for these comments, the unease, the distress, have all been borne out fully in this debate tonight. I believe that we should heed fully the plea of the Admiral of the Fleet, Sir Henry Leach, when he wrote in The Times on 7th May:
"So far throughout the 1980s defence has been in a state of continual turmoil, brought about by a succession of reviews, each more disrupting than the last. What is badly required now is a period of stability in which all concerned can implement a clear policy and get on with the job. Imposing a monstrous upheaval of internal organisation will hardly facilitate this".
Nothing said by interested and concerned Members of this House can match the deep knowledge of those who have spoken from their former or current responsibilities for caring for the morale of our fighting forces. Their right to do so is beyond question. The spirit of their speeches added greatly to the value of

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this debate. They were right to raise the issues. They are joined and supported from these Benches. They deserve some straight answers, and I hope they get them tonight.
7.30 p.m.
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, like other noble Lords who have spoken today, first, I should like to congratulate the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Cameron, on initiating our discussion this evening. Indeed, this debate must be unique in the wealth of knowledge and experience that has been drawn upon in the course of discussion. There can be few occasions when four former chiefs of the defence staff, a former Secretary of State for Defence, and a former Secretary to the Cabinet all speak during a short debate, not to mention three former defence ministers and, yes, one parliamentary under-secretary.
Defence is a matter which should concern every citizen. The way it is organised and managed is a matter of national importance. It is also, as the noble and gallant Lord's Motion before us today suggests, of great significance to our servicemen and our NATO allies.
The proposals for changes in the defence organisation which my right honourable friend announced to Parliament on 12th March, and which we published at that time as a defence open government document, marked the beginning of a period of discussion and consultation on the issues raised. The Government therefore welcome informed comment and advice on ideas at this stage, before they are given final form.
Your Lordships have expressed a variety of views and raised some important questions about our proposals for change. All that has been said we shall reflect upon before we reach firm and final views on how our proposals will be carried forward in detail. However, I hope that this evening I shall be able to add to your Lordships' understanding of the Government's aim and intentions in this important area, and perhaps provide some reassurance to those who have expressed their doubts.
I would ask your Lordships, first, to consider the wider context in which our proposals have been framed. I should like to stress three points. First, this Administration have given the highest priority to the strengthening of the country's defences. Not only has the defence budget risen substantially in real terms since 1979, but we have also, I believe, over that period restored the morale of our services and their confidence about their future. Britain's standing in the Alliance is high. For all of us, the services' military success in the Falklands acted as a reminder—if it were needed—of the brilliance, determination and sheer professionalism of our armed forces. By our defence policies we have shown that the Government's deterrent posture is firm, and that we are determined to maintain strong armed forces, well equipped and properly manned. That is the defence policy background against which the Government's proposals for changes in organisation ought to be considered.
My second point concerns the forces themselves. We recognise—and it would be only sensible for any
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British Government to recognise this—that the country's defence depends principally on three its services, each with a glorious history, each with its own powerful traditions and loyalties, and each determined to serve this country to the best of its ability in the future. We are not embarking upon the Canadian type of organisation, where there are much smaller unified services.
It is the starting point in my right honourable friend's proposals that the separate identity of the three armed forces must, and will, be preserved, and I know that this was very much in the mind of my noble friend Lord Mottistone. The noble and gallant Lord, Lord Hill-Norton, chided my right honourable friend for omitting from this paper reference to the morale of the services, but I would refer the noble and gallant Lord to paragraph 5 in particular.
Thirdly, it is our aim to preserve what is best in our institutions, while striving to improve them where we can. There can he few who regard any organisation as so perfect that it cannot be improved, and so we must keep our minds open to organisational change. The Government have laid great emphasis on defence and we must be satisfied that we are getting value for the money we spend. The taxpayer has a right to expect that the systems for managing that expenditure are subjected to rigorous questioning from time to time. A rising budget must be put to the best possible use, and that must mean, in the case of defence, more resources for the front line, with support services and administration provided at the minimum necessary cost.
These are, of course, not new sentiments, but that must not lead us to be complacent about them. The defence organisation is not just about money: but your Lordships will agree that the allocation of resources between, and within, the services is one of the central issues for the higher defence organisation.
That, in brief, is the context in which my right honourable friend is examining the existing defence organisation, adopting for that purpose the management information system (MINIS) which he had himself developed. As your Lordships know, it is not a new idea in the Ministry of Defence that costs should be cut where possible, that parts of the organisation should be regularly scrutinised, or that there should be annual reviews of long-term plans. What is new about MINIS is the concept of a comprehensive and systematic review by ministers and top management of the work of the middle- to senior-ranking officers and officials.
The conclusions which my right honourable friend reached from his detailed examination of the department at work over the last year are set out in the open government document concerning the structure of the defence organisation. Your Lordships may have noted that the title of this document refers to MINIS and to the development of the organisation for defence.
So far as allegations of over-hasty elaboration of these proposals are concerned, I should like to stress that while the changes we are seeking are substantial ones, they are, as we see it, evolutionary and not revolutionary. We are in no doubt that there is much that the present organisation does extremely well (for example, the mounting of the Falklands campaign)

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and the quality of the staff, service and civilian, is very high.
But there is, we believe, scope for worthwhile improvement, building on past developments and seeking in particular to realise now the aims and objectives which underlay the establishment of a unified defence ministry 20 years ago. We hope thus to ensure that the country's defence needs are met effectively and efficiently.
A number of noble Lords who have spoken have recognised that change is desirable. There are differences of emphasis and view about what should be the changes. It is understandable that some should be cautious in approaching the Government's proposals, because I believe that we have raised some fundamental questions. What form of organisation, we have asked, is required for the formulation of defence policy, the direction of operations by the armed forces, and the efficient administration of the support services? Is there too much bureaucracy? What is the role of the ministry as an administrative headquarters for the services? How does the organisation affect efficiency and morale of the services?
Having described the context in which we have raised these questions. I now turn to some of the key features in the Government's proposals. A central requirement of any British Government must be to satisfy themselves that our forces have the personnel and equipment they need to serve as a credible and effective deterrent to our potential enemies. At the same time, the Government must be able to satisfy themselves that the nation can afford the associated costs. At an early stage in the process ministers need professional military advice. Such advice is, of course, available under the existing organisation and it is of a high quality. We cannot, and would not, expect to look to one man for all our military advice, but we do look to the Chief of the Defence Staff as the Government's principal military adviser. That is already his position, and it was strengthened by the changes introduced during the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Lewin's, term of office, to which he and a number of other noble and gallant Lords have referred.
The changes that we are now considering in the area of military advice relate mainly to the organisation of the staff below the level of the Chief of the Defence Staff and his chiefs of staff colleagues. Since 1964, when the unified defence ministry was set up, it has been the formal position that the naval, general and air staff are part of the defence staff. The late Lord Mountbatten, who, as noble Lords will be aware, was deeply involved in planning the 1964 reorganisation on the basis of his own experience, used to refer to his wartime planning for south-east Asia operations as the "spirit of the hive", where all were concerned to carry out the same plans in a way that was best for all.
The elements of the present defence staff have, we feel, developed along rather different lines. Our concern is that the defence staff is not structured to operate in a way that will ensure invariably that a defence-wide view is taken at an early enough stage when major policy issues, including service budgets and expensive equipment budgets, are considered. As
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a result, the strengths and weaknesses of the argument put forward on behalf of a particular service may not be sufficiently debated, and compromise may have to follow. Hence we have proposed that a new combined defence staff should be formed by bringing together the relevant parts of the work of the present Central Defence Staff and the Naval, General and Air Staff, plus some civilian secretariats who already work closely alongside their military counterparts.
As we have made clear, the new defence staff would be structured from what are termed single service building blocks. I should like to reassure my noble friend Lord Tenchard that this staff will not be isolated. It will rest firmly on a single service experience and expertise. It would, however, be responsible to the Chief of the Defence Staff and, as appropriate, the Permanent Secretary. But it would provide a service for all the chiefs of staff and, of course, for Ministers. Its work would cover defence policy, operations and the military requirements for equipment. I can assure the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Cameron, that the service chiefs of staff would be able to put forward their views on defence staff proposals. As the professional heads of their own services and as members of the Chiefs of Staff Committee they would of course receive the support they need to enable them to carry out their role. I might add here—and this was in the mind, I know, of the noble Lord. Lord Mayhew, and the noble Lord, Lord Mulley—that the service chiefs of staff would under our proposals retain their right of direct access to the Secretary of State and the Prime Minister.
There is no intention in our proposals of reducing the weight which Ministers give to military advice or of diluting in some way its quality. We are sure that military views will continue to be expressed to us with force and conviction. The arrangements we are considering need not inhibit the process. We do understand the importance of the professional knowledge and expertise which only a particular service can bring to bear. We accept entirely the need to ensure that the "single service" expertise is available as required.
We also understand how important it is that the sailor, soldier, and airman should know that decisions which affect him—whether they are about operations which may put his life at risk, as the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Hill-Norton, pointed out, or about his pay and conditions—can be taken only after Ministers have had the benefit of the advice of senior officers of his own service. Such advice may be provided in future via the combined defence staff, which will of course be staffed at the senior levels by officers of all three services. Officers within the defence staff will naturally he able to represent a view on behalf of a particular service and ensure that it is fully weighed in the balance when policy decisions are made. Similarly, I see no reason why an officer of the defence staff should not be able to represent his own service in discussion with NATO and other colleagues. These points are ones that we shall have very much in mind in the framing of working procedures.
The role of the service Chiefs of Staff has been a major theme in this debate. My right honourable friend's proposals assume that the principal concern of each service chief of staff will he the oversight of the

1191
management of his own service. The chief of staff would remain responsible for the total efficiency and morale of his service, but in future reporting to the Secretary of State though the Chief of the Defence Staff for that purpose. Such an arrangement should, in our view, ensure that there is the necessary formal linkage between the development of policy and the vitally important management tasks of the services.
I need hardly remind your Lordships how vast and important these management tasks are with a defence budget this year of some £17,000 million, service personnel numbering in total over 300,000 and a civilian establishment of some 200,000. We shall be looking to the chiefs of staff to draw up programmes of work aimed at streamlining management and devolving day-to-day administration to the commanders-in-chief where possible. In the defence support organisation such as the stores depots and workshops, there are many managers "In the field", service and civilian, and our aim is to delegate greater responsibility to them through a system of "responsibility budgets". The principal of delegation from the top down, coupled with clear statements of responsibilities, is one that I believe your Lordships will warmly support.
A further major element in our proposals is the creation of an Office of Management and Budget. The aim here is to achieve stronger control over corporate planning, the commitment of resources and the monitoring of financial and management systems. To achieve this, the office would bring together in a more formal way many of the existing staff and functions of the Permanent Secretary. The Controller General—who would be the Second Permanent Secretary—would be, as it were, the department's "finance director", and, as such, a member of each of the service executive committees. He and his staff would approve proposals for budgets managed by board members and would scrutinise, on behalf of the accounting officer, new requirements for major equipment projects.
The creation of the Office of Management and Budget would be designed to achieve clear direction and control of the Civil Service staff effort in this area. Clearly there would need to continue, however, to be close and constructive working relationships between military and civilian staffs at all levels. We are certain this will be achieved.
May I now turn to some of the points that have been raised during the course of the debate. The noble Lord, Lord Mulley, asked me about the question of the succession arrangements for the chief of the defence staff generally. As I think the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Lewin, mentioned, the former Defence Secretary, my right honourable friend Sir John Nott, decided in November 1982 that in future the CDS should be chosen from a number of candidates as the most suitable officer available and not necessarily in accordance with a strict rotation between the services. My right honourable friend intends that this procedure should he followed when the next CDS is selected. Certainly there is nothing in his proposals on reorganisation that invalidates this procedure.
Several noble and gallant Lords asked me about the
1192
role of the Defence Council and the Service Boards under these proposals. The constitutional and legal position of the Defence Council and the Service Boards would remain unchanged. This is especially important in relation to certain statutory responsibilities, particularly in respect of service personnel cases with which I am myself much concerned. The service Chiefs of Staff would continue to be members of the Defence Council. The frequency of meetings of the Defence Council and the boards has varied over recent years depending upon the circumstances. As is true of all aspects of my right honourable friend's proposals, we shall be seeking to develop arrangements for decision-making that are practical and efficient to meet the needs of the day.
A number of your Lordships have stressed the importance of support to the chiefs of staff. I can assure the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Lewin, that we shall give particular attention to his advice, and to the provision of support to enable the chiefs to carry out their role, in working out our proposals in detail. I also took careful note of the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Kennet. The Government of course attach great importance to the achievement of realistic and verifiable arms control, and we believe that the proposals for the defence arms control unit will strengthen the arrangements for handling these matters within the Ministry of Defence.
The noble Earl, Lord Longford, referred to the position of service Ministers. The changes to which he referred were made in 1981 with the main aim of increasing the Secretary of State's ability to delegate functional responsibilities to his Ministers and to emphasise the defence as opposed to single-service responsibilities of the department as a whole. Political direction has, I believe, been strengthened as a result, and in particular there can be greater ministerial involvement in procurement matters at an earlier stage than was possible in the past.
My noble friend Lord Ridley referred to the question of reserves. The question of the future organisation for the Territorial Army and reserves who make such an important contribution to our defence effort has been much in our minds. This is a matter that we shall be considering carefully bearing in mind the need, on the one hand, to ensure that there are appropriate arrangements to develop policy generally, and, on the other, our aim to devolve management responsibilities.
We have heard much about responsibility and power, about confidence and morale, but it has pleased me to hear too about leadership. Better definition of roles and clearer lines of responsibility will give extensive scope for leadership at which the services surely excel.
May I now sum up like this, I have sought to explain the wider context in which our proposals for the defence organisation have been framed. I hope that I have reassured your Lordships that our intentions are to improve and to develop the organisation so that Ministers, the services and the tax-payer can be satisfied that the best decisions are taken in the country's defence interest. We do believe that, as the necessary changes are worked through in detail, it will be generally accepted that a sharper definition of roles

1193
and responsibilities and a tauter structure can be achieved without putting at risk the best features of the present organisation or the confidence and morale of the services on which so much depends.
For the present, my Lords, we have not reached final conclusions on the details of the proposals outlined in the consultative document. This debate has therefore been most timely, since it has offered us the opportunity to hear a number of different points of view, many based on valuable past experience. We must not forget, too, the valuable lessons to be learnt from distinguished members of your Lordships' House no longer with us who set their minds to the task of producing the best organisation for defence. I have listened carefully to your Lordships' speeches and we shall reflect on what has been said. Debate upon this important matter is healthy and stimulating, and we shall benefit from it.
Lord Graham of Edmonton: My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down, a number of questions were asked during the debate. I appreciate the constraints of debate, but all questions were asked seriously. Can we look forward to replies in writing?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, I will certainly cull the pages of Hansard and write to noble Lords as appropriate.
Lord Cameron of Balhousie: My Lords, I am extremely grateful to this House for the great interest which the debate has generated. I am grateful to those who have taken part in the debate and have spoken on this very important matter. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, will, as he says, take back to his right honourable friend the Secretary of State what I believe to be the spirit of this debate on some of the issues which affect the chiefs of staff, such as the policy direction, which I believe to be a key issue.
I am very grateful for this debate and I beg leave to withdraw my Motion.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981
7.53 p.m.
The Earl of Onslow The Earl of Onslow rose to ask Her Majesty's Government whether they are satisfied with the workings of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, from both an environmental and an agricultural point of view, and whether they can see any further ways of improving the quality of the countryside.
The noble Earl said: My Lords, three years ago we had a full, detailed and interesting discussion on the Wildlife and Countryside Act. Since then the subject of conservation has never been far from the headlines. So, I took it upon myself to pose this Question to Her Majesty's Government.
Before compiling these remarks I talked to the Chairman of the Nature Conservancy Council, the Chairman of the Country Landowners' Association and the Chairman of the Countryside Commission; I have met senior officers in the Council for the Preservation of Rural England, and conversed with national park officers from several national parks: I
1194
have talked to senior and regional members of the National Farmers' Union; I have talked to the RSPB, whose chairman is my noble friend Viscount Blakenham, and he is to make his maiden speech today. His father, who many of us knew, was a distinguished Minister of Agriculture in other times and my noble friend looked absolutely marvellous in Onslow livery as my father's page at the Coronation! Therefore, I look forward with especial pleasure to what he has to say.
What have emerged from these discussions are some criticisms of the workings of the Act, but also the possibility of future intra-conservationist squabbles which could be brought about by the difference of emphasis between the generalist and the specialist conservationist. Conservation is both very scientific and very precise and is also very subjective when it comes to judgments of landscape beauty and countryside matters. I will embroider this possibility with two illustrations. The first is the story of the Greystoke Tunnel on the Basingstoke Canal, of whose preservation society I am president. The society wishes to restore the tunnel—an 18th century one which collapsed in the 1930s. Excellent, one would think, hut, say the bat lovers, several species of bats have made this tunnel their dwelling place and if it is restored they will no longer have a home there.
The next example is illustrated by a painting of Bletchworth House which shows the North Surrey hills as treeless grazing down. If a farmer applied for a grant to remove the trees from Leith Hill and restore it to grazing down, every single conservationist—and I can promise you that there are very many of them in Surrey—would be up in arms; there would be an outcry. But there is also an outcry that grazing down is disappearing at the rate that it is. Those are snags that I foresee. The criticism over the Act's workings I will come to later.
The second of my impressions is much more satisfactory. It is that for the first time for a long time there is an enormous amount of agreement as to what needs doing and a general consensus on the problems that we all have to face. A sea change has come about in the attitude of the NFU. They have shown that change in the brief for the debate which they have sent to several of your Lordships. They have said that there must be a change from the end price agricultural support system to a country management system. That is a Damascene conversion; it is a change which could have a splendid effect on the countryside. I think it could produce a few more jobs in the countryside. After all, conservation is a labour intensive occupation and farming is a resource intensive occupation. It could result in the lowering of energy use in farming; it could produce less strain on the common agricultural policy and, consequently, less strain on the British budget contribution. Of course, it must be Community-wide.
These are immensely inmportant results. They follow through, in that MAFF must be persuaded to use the common agricultural policy and agricultural funds for the countryside and conservation as well as agriculture. It follow that the present row between agriculturalists and conservationists will be greatly reduced and the source of friction will be removed if this change of attitude comes about. Mr. Holbeche of

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the NFU said to me only the day before yesterday on the telephone that it was up to the industry and politicians to educate MAFF civil servants. MAFF is already using agricultural funds in the Peak District National Park to help a constructive programme of paying farmers to farm in a way that encourages flower-rich meadows surrounded by stone walls instead of paying them to increase the grazing and to remove the stone walls.
In passing, it is worth noting that the Cecils have not missed a trick in 400 years, and one could not expect them to pass up an opportunity to help themselves liberally to public funds which we, the public, in spite of warnings about the dottiness of the system, so generously proffer. I refer of course to the £20,000 a year being given to my honourable friend Lord Cranborne. I did tell him I was going to say this, and he did not seem to mind, so I am not going behind his back. All I can say, is that I wish I had such a singularly spectacular pheasant drive which could be subsidised so generously.
The danger of these large amounts of management payments seems to be that it increases the expectations of the small farmer and then raises his consequent disappointment. This is particularly noticeable in some of the SSSIs which are being formed in the Hebrides.
Through talks to both agricultural Ministers and DOE Ministers, together with reading Kenneth Carlisle's excellent CPC publication concerning the countryside, I think there is a move to pay people to do something rather than pay people not to do something which they really had no intention of doing in the first place, and above all to stop abuse of the system such as that by Fountain Forestry. Here again, I underline that they are doing nothing wrong because only three years ago we set up the system which encourages them so to do. They bought an SSSI with a complicated Scottish name which I cannot pronounce—and applied for a grant of £300,000 to plant it with acid rain-producing conifers. The NCC objected and now they want £20,000 for not having £300,000 to which they hoped they were entitled, thus leaving the SSSI in the state in which we all want it.
This is not a correct use of taxpayers' money. It is very nice for the shareholders of Fountain Farming and it is totally and utterly correct for the directors of Fountain Farming to have taken that attitude. There is no criticism of them.
Also forecast here and in another place was the three-month loophole in the Act which must now be closed. I believe that both the NFU and the CLA would back legislation so to do, as would the conservation bodies. During the three-month period, 11 SSSIs have either been damaged or destroyed following service of a notice under Section 28(2) of the Act. This loophole can be closed by amending Section 28(5) of the Act, the constraint on owners and occupiers to carry out specified instructions, to include reference to Section 28(2) (the prenotification consultation letter) as well as subsection (1)(b) (the formal notification). The effect would be to require owners and occupiers to give notice to the NCC of intended operations during the consultation period as well as after notification of the SSSI.
While a Section 29 order can be made to extend the period of consultation on a potentially damaging operation, called a PDO, the administrative procedures inevitably take time. If this is after the expiry of the statutory three-month period of notice of intention to carry out a PDO, there is no legal constraint on that operation. An additional "stop" power should be introduced to cover the, say, four-week period in which the Secretary of State could reasonably be expected to reach his decision on the order. Tealham and Tadham Moor would probably not have been damaged if the Act had read as I recommend.
One or two minor amendments' would be helpful. The period of notification allowed in Section 28(6)(c) should be extended from three months to a minimum of six months to give a more realistic time for discussion between the NCC and owners. The Section 29 timetable should commence from the date of the order and not the date of the original notice to carry out a PDO. This would require minor changes to Section 29(4)(a), Section 29(5)(c), Section 29(6)(a) and Section 29(6)(b).
Certain national parks, notably North Yorkshire, have refrained from objection to improvement out of financial nervousness. This financial nervousness extends to county councils. One shire county council chairman said to Mr. Derek Barber of the Countryside Commission, "I would love you to have more money but this morning I had to make several teachers redundant". Some farmers are saying that the bureaucracy is too complicated for them to accept management agreements so they go ahead and carry out the improvement without grant. While we are on grants, surely the headage payments should now make way for some other form of hill farmer support: large veterinary incomes are earned by keeping hordes of black faced sheep alive until counting day, when they can all drop down dead because they have had the subsidy.
MSC changes have seriously damaged the conservation programmes of Hereford and Worcester County Council. Section 25 of the Act imposes duties upon these county councils which are eminently suitable for MSC schemes, especially as Whitehall produces no funds for these duties to be carried out. Similar withdrawals have harmed the Glamorgan Heritage Coast project and also the coastal resources unit of the Polytechnic of Wales.
There is concern in the bird world about the different attitude to culling licences of the English and Scottish departments concerned. It is felt that the Scots are still showing the attitude of 19th century gamekeepers, as, I regret to say from the press report it appears, is the noble Lord, Lord Burton. Mergansers, goosanders and cormorants are still being shot in large numbers under licence. The RSPB is unaware if any research has shown serious damage to fish stocks by these birds.
When the noble Lord, Lord Rayner, reviewed the NCC he said that it was understaffed. Thus the notification system of SSSIs is far behindhand. Not surprisingly, as the NCC has only ten field agents, this causes delay in notification and delay in processing management agreements, and consequently an anti-

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NCC and conservation attitude among the farmers concerned because they say that incompetent bureaucrats are in charge of the scheme.
There is the anomaly that it is an offence to dig up certain plants unless one is a farmer. The classic example of this is the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust digging up a few sundews on a footpath. They were photographed committing an offence, and within the next few days, the owner not only destroyed the whole lot but was also eligible for grant so to do.
To conclude, I hope that we can move to a system of melding the countryside activities into one by proper financial signals which, in turn, will minimise the conflict between conservationist and farmer. Probably one will have to have an extension of the tree preservation order or building order system: after all, I cannot pull down my 17th century tithe barn without permission.
William Marshall said in the 18th century:
"No spot on this island can he said to be in a state of nature. There is not a tree, perhaps not a bush, now standing upon the face of the countryside which is in an identical state to nature alone".
That quotation is the first in the United Kingdom pavilion at the Liverpool Garden Festival. We countrymen owe it to our fellow citizens not only to be farmers, but to be gardeners and gamekeepers as well. So, my Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper.
8.7 p.m.
Lord Oram: My Lords, I am sure that the House will be grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Onslow, for introducing this subject this evening, and particularly for the obviously detailed consultations that he has had with the relevant bodies and the detailed information and criticism which he has put before your Lordships this evening. In view of the long and detailed examination of the Act when it was a Bill before your Lordships' House, I think it is important that from time to time we should take an opportunity of this kind to review the working of the Act. My justification for intervening briefly in this debate this evening is that I am president of the Society of Sussex Downsmen. I am glad to see that my predecessor in that office, the noble Lord, Lord Chelwood, is also proposing to speak in this debate this evening, from his much wider knowledge than mine. For that reason, I shall be anxious to hear what he has to say.
Understandably, the references that I shall make in my remarks are from, and pertaining to, the area of our country which I know best, though I believe that the points that I shall make arising from the Sussex area are not untypical of the rest of the country. A main purpose of the Society of Sussex Downsmen is to preserve the beauty of the Sussex Downs and to ensure that walkers and horseriders can continue to enjoy that beautiful countryside. In doing this, the society has over many years been concerned with just that range of problems with which the Wildlife and Countryside Act deals. For instance, the noble Earl has been referring to the compensation payments to farmers who forgo development. We recall that that particular section of the Act was most controversial in your Lordships' House. Some years before the passing of the Act our society was concerned, in one instance that
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I recall, with the preservation of a threatened area of fine landscape. But it came up against the problem of the cost of the compensation which would be involved.
I refer to the particular society to which I belong, but many other organisations are deeply concerned about the need to preserve the South Downs. For instance, I have recently received correspondence from the Sussex Federation of Women's Institutes, which has expressed deep worries about some examples of recent intrusions of commercial industrialisation into that area of outstanding natural beauty. All this means that constant vigilance on the part of such volunteer organisations is necessary to avoid encroachment into the downland by, perhaps, motorways, housing estates, industrial development and unsuitable farming activities.
During the course of the last two years or so, we have had to deal with two major threats of particular concern to us. The first was the threat of drilling for oil. Application for permission to do so was being considered. I recall that we had a very useful debate on that subject which was introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Teviot. I do not propose to go over that same ground again. The other threat to our downland was a proposed Brighton by-pass which threatened huge stretches of beautiful downland country. We were one of the leading organisations in protesting against that proposal.
I realise that some of the problems that I have been referring to lie outside the strict provisions of the Wildlife and Countryside Act, but since the Unstarred Question of the noble Earl, Lord Onslow, goes broader than the particular working of the Act and he asks the Government about their broader intentions. I suggest that the two incursions to which I have referred are subjects worthy of consideration in this evening's discussion.
In both those cases, battles have been fought by mobilising public opinion and making representations—very detailed and extensive representations—to the appropriate authority. Although in both cases the protesters have, unfortunately, failed in their major objectives, it is worth noting that their protests have had some minor, but useful, effects on the ultimate decisions. In the case of oil drilling, for instance, conditions have been laid down which, it is hoped, will constrain the developers from causing undue damage to the environment. In the case of the by-pass, though no major changes in the plan have been achieved, some of our members were very diligent in ensuring that the plans enabled, or will enable, pedestrians to have access to the downlands behind the by-pass. But for their action of this kind, whole districts north of Brighton would have been prevented from having access to the downland.
My Lords, I make these points simply to show that vigilance and protests can have minor, though worthwhile, results even when the major decisions are of an adverse kind. This vigilance in our society is exercised by a team of district officers. Their annual reports make most interesting reading for those who, like me, love the Sussex Downs.
Two points emerge from a perusal of their annual reports. The first is that there are many problems which can be tackled not in a negative, protesting way,

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but in a positive, collaborative way. They can be solved, and are solved, after consultation and collaboration between the downsmen and local authorities, the landowners, farmers and other developers. This I think is worth hearing in mind because sometimes the issues of conservation become unduly emotional and develop into matters of confrontation between farmers and conservationists whereas, very often, it is a question of balancing conflicting considerations and seeking by consultation to reach a solution satisfactory to both sides of the argument. We have proved in a number of cases that that is a possibility.
The second problem that is revealed by the work of our district officers concerns the maintenance of rights of way, which is a matter with which the Act is very much concerned. It is our society's experience that in the area of the South Downs there is a very considerable backlog of problems concerning footpaths and bridle paths which need official investigation and action. What is holding up things in clearing the backlog is not any lack of interest or will on the part of the local authorities whose responsibility it is, but rather the fact that they do not have sufficient staff to cope with the problem. I believe it is true—and, if it is not, I hope that the Minister who will reply will explain the situation—that the Department of the Environment has issued a circular to the local authorities insisting that no extra staff should be taken on for this purpose. If that is so, then I think it is much to be deplored in the light of the backlog in this matter.
It is because of my concern for the maintenance of rights of way that I have a great deal of sympathy with Mr. Tony Baldry, the Member of Parliament for Banbury, and my honourable friend Mr. Andrew Bennet, who are both seeking to promote in another place Bills providing for greater access to the countryside. Mr. Baldry makes the case that there is a confusing number of authorities concerned with footpaths and that the Wildlife and Countryside Act places a variety of duties on individual landowners and upon the various tiers of local authority. He suggests—and I think that it is a sensible suggestion—that there should be a consolidation of the relevant legislation and a simplification of the procedures and responsibilities. It is only a Ten-Minute-Rule Bill that he is proposing and we know that the likelihood of success with a Ten-Minute-Rule Bill is minimal, indeed. But if, through consistent action, he, Mr. Bennet, or any others (or, indeed, the Government, if they propose to take an initiative in this matter) were to succeed in bringing about such proposals, then, as I see it, many of the problems about which our vigilant downsmen in Sussex are constantly worried would find a much readier solution—and, indeed, would not arise at all.
The noble Earl, Lord Onslow, towards the end of his speech raised the question of sites of special scientific interest, and I should like to say a few words about that before I sit down. I heard not long ago that the number of occupiers of land involved in such SSSIs was 30,000. Each one of them has to have a formal document calling his or her attention to the situation. I am told that in two years it has been possible to issue the appropriate document to only 10 per cent. of those occupiers. This must surely mean that it will take years
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before that particular part of the Act can be properly implemented.
The reason for that backlog is the same as the one I instanced in relation to footpaths, which is that there is a limit on the staff available for carrying out this work. So when the Minister comes to comment, as I hope he will, on the last phrase of the Question of the noble Earl, Lord Onslow, namely that which asks whether the Government have in mind,
"any further ways of improving the quality of the countryside".
I hope we shall hear not only about new proposals, if indeed there are any, but about new resources which it seems to me are necessary in order to implement what has already been agreed under existing proposals contained in legislation which Parliament has already approved and is on the statute book. I hope we shall hear of new resources for preserving Britain's countryside.
8.21 p.m.
Viscount Blakenham: My Lords, in keeping with the traditions of this House. I ask for your Lordships' indulgence as this is the first time I have had the honour of addressing your Lordships. What I am going to say is intended to give support and encouragement to those involved in the difficult task of coping with the different pressures brought to bear on our countryside.
May I start by thanking my noble friend Lord Onslow for his reference to my father who, in this and another House, was fully exposed to these types of pressures, understood them and worked wholeheartedly and resolutely to resolve them. My noble friend also mentioned my connection with the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. I have another non-financial interest in conservation as president of the Sussex Trust for Nature Conservation, and should declare a financial interest in agriculture in that I am fortunate enough to farm in Suffolk, a county which has seen its fair share of the debate on the difficulties of integrating modern farming methods with the needs of wildlife and conservation.
The Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 was a major step forward. It provided immediate protection for individually threatened species of flora and fauna and promised long-term protection for sites of special scientific interest, the key wildlife habitats. It did so against a background of voluntary co-operation and reasonableness of spirit, and all the principal interests pledged their best efforts to make it work. However, a number of problems have arisen in the implementation of the Act. The first is that it is taking far longer than anyone envisaged for the Nature Conservancy Council, whose task it is, to renotify existing special sites and notify potential new sites. This has already been referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Oram.
At the moment, only about a quarter of these sites are protected under the Act and the job of notification and renotification will not be completed until the end of 1986 at the earliest. Meanwhile, damage to a number of these sites is occurring. To how many is not clear, and I believe that the NCC should be encouraged to publish a list of this damage on a regular basis, so that any future debate can take place against an informed background.

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The second problem is that Section 28 of the Act allows for three months' consultation before a site can be notified. Whatever the good intentions of the NFU or the CLA, they can have no direct control over the actions of individual members. Some owners or occupiers are taking advantage of this period of grace to undertake damaging operations before they are legally bound by the Act. So far, the RSPB knows 12 sites where damage has occurred in this way and there are others under investigation.
A third problem is that when sites have been duly notified, potentially damaging operations are sometimes being undertaken without informing the NCC, as required by law. The NCC now knows of 17 such cases. A fourth problem is the potentially large amounts of regular compensation that will have to be paid out of public funds if the Act is to work as it stands without planning controls. It was always known that this would be costly, but the sums involved in a few years' time are likely to be very large indeed, particularly if the Ministry of Agriculture continues to provide incentives to "improve" marginal land and wildlife habitats.
So these appear to be the main problems. What are the solutions? First, the solution to the slow speed of notification is to make additional manpower available to the NCC as the noble Lord, Lord Rayner, has recommended. There was a moment, not so long ago, when the NCC said that it could not handle more staff, but its administration has been strengthened and this is no longer the case.
The solution to the second problem is to close the three-month loophole, when damage can occur while consultation is taking place. A Bill to this effect has been introduced in another place and should be supported as a matter of urgency. In addition, I believe that Section 29 of the Act, which gives the Secretary of State the power to impose an immediate stop order on damaging operations, should he broadened to allow the NCC temporary stop order powers of their own; for at the moment it is taking the NCC two to three weeks to prepare their case and by the time the Secretary of State grants the stop order, the damaging operation may already have been completed.
The solution to the third problem of deliberately flouting the law is to increase the comparatively low level of fines involved and to provide for different levels of fine according to the size and importance of the area affected.
The fourth problem, the question of compensation, is altogether more difficult. For reasons too long to go into now, the financial guidelines have, I am sure, to be reviewed, and further thought should be given to part grant aiding voluntary bodies to acquire and subsequently manage positively some of the important wildlife sites, rather than permanently pay out large slices in compensation to farmers for not doing something. This is not only more positive but can actually be more cost-effective.
I would give as an example the fact that on West Sedgemore over a period of years the RSPB has spent nearly £1 million on acquiring 700 acres which leaves 1,800 acres of the SSSI still outstanding over which the NCC are going to attempt to reach management agreements. If they are successful it will cost them
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anything between £150,000 and £200,000 a year to reach these management agreements. They might be better off giving a substantial sum to the RSPB to help them buy more of the sites and then the cost would no longer be a continuing one.
But, perhaps more important than that, I believe that on countryside matters some integration in terms of both responsibility and budget should take place between the Ministry of Agriculture and the Department of the Environment. I think it is only in this way that a shift from a surplus of foodstuffs to sensible conservation measures should take place without additional cost to the taxpayer, and I would ask Her Majesty's Government to examine the mechanisms by which this may be achieved.
Finally, now that the problems of wildlife and conservation are much more fully understood by the farming community, I think that a considerable responsibility lies with the many conservation bodies to avoid the use of emotive language and to ensure that they are seeking co-operation rather than confrontation. If this can be achieved and the improvements I have mentioned made, then I believe that in due course we may all be pleasantly surprised.
8.31 p.m.
Lord Walston: My Lords, although I cannot claim to have had the father of the noble Viscount as a close friend, I was acquainted with him and had a great respect and admiration for him. I am quite certain that he would have been indeed proud to have listened to the noble Viscount make his maiden speech this evening. It is rare indeed to find somebody who has such a close knowledge of the subject of which he is speaking, who has the ability to marshall his thoughts in such an orderly and concise manner, and, on top of that, is able to express those thoughts in the manner displayed by the noble Viscount. We are very fortunate to have him with us, and I hope that we shall hear him frequently. I should like to think that some at least of his qualities stem from his Suffolk agricultural background—or even his foreground!
My Lords, conservation is a difficult, complicated and emotional subject. There are so many aspects to it. There are, of course, the aesthetic aspects of conservation, which are probably what affect most people. They want to see the countryside as they have known it and as they have loved it; and this is entirely a subjective matter which, as in the case of architecture, can give rise to many arguments and differences of opinion. Then you have the scientific aspect of it, and you find those who wish to preserve the habitat of certain rare species of flora and fauna, unnoticed by the great majority of people and unknown to very many people, but still of enormous significance and importance in our national heritage.
Thirdly, you have the historic aspect of it: the canal tunnels, for example, to which the noble Earl has referred, and various matters of that kind, such as ancient British remains and such matters. Those, too, must be preserved. Finally, and perhaps most difficult of all, you have the problem of' access to the countryside. It is most difficult because so often allowing access to the countryside in itself may destroy or damage those other things which the aesthetes, the historians and the scientists want preserved. So it is a

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highly complex problem, and I do not think we can criticise too much if we find that the Act which we are now discussing has not fulfilled all the hopes of those of us who are concerned in these matters.
How has it worked during the three years that it has been in existence? It certainly has many things to its credit. Above all, it has increased the consciousness of all people about the need for conservation in one form or another and about the threat that exists to many of the things about which we are concerned; and it has made not only the rural people conscious of this but has also increased the consciousness of the urban dwellers possibly even more. Particularly, it has made farmers far more conscious of what their duties are. It has helped in this gradual shift which is taking place, and to which the noble Earl has referred, from food production at all costs to another aspect of the duty of those who have the privilege of owning or occupying the land. It has made them conscious of it, and conscious not only of their duty on this but also of the cost of doing it.
Similarly, it has brought consciousness to the urban dwellers as well. It has made them realise that the countryside is not just something which happens, which is there for their enjoyment—and occasionally. I am afraid, for their vandalism—but something which has to be cherished and looked after, and, above all, which has to be paid for.
I think those are very great achievements by an Act in a relatively short space of time, and I myself have no regrets that it became an Act in the form that it did. But undoubtedly there have been abuses. How widespread those abuses are it is impossible to know. We read about them in the newspapers, and undoubtedly they have taken place; but it may be that if one were able to have a complete statistical analysis of these abuses—and possibly the Minister, in his reply, can give us some figures which it would be very valuable to have—we may find that in fact they are very small. Certainly, in that case we should not condemn the Act because of them, although we should seek to minimise and, if' possible, abolish altogether such abuses.
My own feeling is that it is ony right and proper that those who are going to enjoy the results of conservation should be prepared to pay for them. After all, there is not very much difference between conservation in the countryside, and the various matters to which I have referred, and the provision in the towns and cities of open spaces and of public parks. They are places for the enjoyment and recreation of those who live in the surrounding areas, or for the enjoyment of visitors who come from farther afield. Nobody would expect that a public park in a city should he provided free of charge. Somebody has to pay for it; somebody has to pay for the use of the land on which these public parks are situated, for the care of the gardens, for the cultivation of the flowers, for the absence of weeds and all the other things which lead to one's enjoyment when one goes into a public park.
That is a principle which I think should be applied equally to the countryside. Those who are going to enjoy these amenities should be prepared to pay for them; but that does not mean to say that they should pay more than the actual cost of providing those
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amenities. They should not be expected to pay for the theoretical and hypothetical profit which the owner of that land might have made had he done something different with it. I do not think it is right, and I do not think it is equitable or fair to the taxpayer at large, that a farmer or a landowner should come along and say: "Here we have some wetland, here we have some moorland, here we have some woodland. I was thinking of doing something with it which would have enabled me to earn a very large income from growing daffodil bulbs or any other form of profitable crop"—possibly some of the things that the noble Earl himself grows—"and, therefore, I am being denied a profit of £100 an acre, index-linked for the next 20 years, and you, the Government and the taxpayer, must pay me for it". That seems to me entirely wrong, just as it is entirely wrong for the owner of a listed building to say: "If I were able to pull this down, I could put up a tower block and have an enormous income from it. Therefore, for the privilege of maintaining this building you must pay me the profit I would have got had I put it to some other use".
Whether this Act as it is at present gives an absolute right to farmers and landowners to claim the loss of profit which they might have had, I do not know. If it does, I believe that that should be altered. But I also believe that the farmer or the landowner who owns land which is classified as an SSSI, a site of outstanding natural beauty or anything of that kind, should be compensated to a modest extent for the loss of its present-use value—not its potential-use value—and should also, if necessary, be paid for maintaining it in whatever form of cultivation the experts in this field think is right.
I know that in many cases the conservation societies, the local bodies, do their own maintenance with free volunteers, and that is a far better system if it can be done. But if, for some reason or other, they would prefer to have the farmer do it, then by all means enter into a managment agreement and pay him for the work that he does, but not for the potential profit that he might have earned.
That is my main criticism of the Act as it has operated over the past few years. The objective was right and the means that it adopted were, broadly speaking, right. It has been subject to some abuse, and we must look very carefully to see how great that abuse is and how great it is likely to be in the future. If it is more than a very insignificant amount, steps should be taken to right that particular wrong which has become apparent.
8.43 p.m.
Lord Chelwood: My Lords, I am very happy both be the first on this side of the House to have an opportunity to congratulate my noble friend Lord Blakenham on a delightful speech and to have been able to hear him following with such a firm tread in his father's footsteps. I, too, have the happiest memories of his father, as do so many of us in both Houses. We certainly heard today a very well-informed and very well-delivered speech, and we lock forward to many others.
Perhaps I may also add that, by an odd fluke. I was at one time president of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and was also at one time president

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of the Sussex Trust for Nature Conservation. I did none of the work, but took all of the credit, as presidents usually do. So I feel that I can speak for the members of both bodies—one very small, and one quite large—and say how very glad they will be that their president. and their chairman, in the case of the RSPB, has made such an excellent speech.
I am very glad that my noble friend Lord Onslow has asked this Question at this time. The timing was very good, because I feel that fresh winds are blowing. What I present this evening—and I shall be as brief as I possibly can—will be entirely, my own views though, as some noble Lords know, I happen to be a member of the Nature Conservancy Council, whose long-term strategy is to be launched on the 26th of this month.
When in the course of my few remarks I speak about nature conservancy, I am, of course, speaking of the whole countryside and not just of SSSIs or nature reserves. The area outside the reserves and the SSSIs is all too often ignored, and great damage can be done to it. There is a great deal of habitat loss. It has sometimes been exaggerated, but it is, I am convinced, very serious indeed. There is damage to the whole ecosystem and I see a high risk of unacceptable and irreversible damage occuring if nothing is done to stop it.
So far as the resources of the Nature Conservancy Council are concerned, or perhaps I should say of nature conservancy as a whole, I cannot help feeling that successive Governments have failed to provide sufficient resources. The Wildlife and Countryside Act placed costly added responsibilities on the shoulders of the NCC and other conservancy bodies. But today the NCC's duties are only roughly half matched by their resources and the annual cost, in terms of each person in the population, is rather less than one bottle of Coca-Cola. That is all we are able to spare for nature conservation as a whole in this country, which seems rather ridiculous.
I estimate that nature conservation as a whole needs another £10 million a year—and I have done my sums very carefully—for each of the next five years. That would exclude the cost of land purchase or compensation, which is likely to amount to just about the same annual sum of £10 million. But in that same period of five years, looking forward, agriculture is set to receive over £1,000 million in capital grants and, roundly, £500 million in headage payments.
If 6p or 7p in every pound that farmers can expect over the next five years were paid to them not to "improve" their land or farm it in ways that would damage its scientific value, the farmers would be perfectly happy. Not a penny extra would be needed in taxes and the Nature Conservancy Council, and indeed, all who care about our marvellous countryside —which practically everybody does—would applaud. What are we waiting for, and why are we waiting? I feel almost like asking your Lordships to burst into song and sing "Why are we waiting?" but I shall not.
I should now like to say a very few words about agriculture. The Minister of Agriculture appears to think that we are still living in a siege economy. Grants and subsidies to farmers are largely indisciminate. They cost the taxpayer a great deal of money and they distort the pattern of agriculture in a way which is very
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hard, if not impossible, to justify. It is not only the common agricultural policy which does that; it is our own pattern of support, too.
Yet over the years, under successive Governments, other industries—steel, coal, textiles, aircraft, railways, and so on—have all been under very careful scrutiny and have had to shape themselves accordingly. In spite of this great outpouring of grants and subsidies, a great many farmers are not a whit better off and are in the hands of the banks. So there must be something very wrong somewhere. It is time to question in a radical way all our assumptions about farming and all our assumptions about forestry.
I think, too, that it is time that there was a new White Paper about growing our own food. Over the last six months or so I have put down to the Government a series of Questions for Written Answer on the general subject of producing various commodities here at home, how much we import, and so on. I had a bit of a flea in my ear—a very polite flea, of course—in the replies that I had, because I kept on being told that Her Majesty's Government would continue to encourage the production of barley, wheat, and so on as long as it is "economic so to do." I had the same answer to practically every Question—which did not really answer the Question. I felt that I was almost being told to mind my own business, but I am sure I was not.
But barley and wheat are running out of our ears. We have to sell it at about half the world price to the Soviet Union, while at the same time millions, perhaps tens of millions, of Africans are starving because their Governments have no foreign currency; and even if they could purchase this grain, they have no means of transporting it when it gets there. So I ask again: Why are we waiting?
I said that I felt that fresh winds are blowing. I really do believe I am right in saying that. I believe that my Government will tackle and solve the urgent problems of habitat loss, to which I have referred, the Nature Conservancy Council's resources, and the resources of conservancy bodies as a whole, and that they will look with great care at the proper balance between agriculture and nature conservation and do their utmost to get the balance right. Nothing will be gained by waiting any longer, and a lot would be lost by doing so.
I want to refer to a much broader and complicated question which follows directly from the question that has been asked today by my noble friend. How much easier it would be to solve all these questions, upon which, in the longer term, the success or failure of the Nature Conservancy Council's strategy depends, in an entirely new structure at national and local level, in which land use and land management were never considered without full account being taken, as a matter of course, of their possible environmental and social impacts. How much easier it would be. How easy it is to say that without knowing precisely what the answers are. I appreciate that fact also. But it needs to be, said and it needs to be said a great deal.
If we were to do this, it would mean an end to the sectoral approach. This was the wise advice given in the world conservation strategy, which the Government welcomed. The advice was that economic, social, ecological and cultural questions are

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inseparable, interlocked and interdependent. But to approach the question of nature conservation in this way would mean adopting a completely new philosophy and completely new policies. It would mean a radical re-think of what many people regard as outdated policies. But we have a radical Conservative Government, rooted in the countryside. So I ask for the third time: Why are we waiting?
I make no apology for my serious criticisms of the failure of past governments to face up to these questions. The Nature Conservancy Council—here I speak for my chairman—applauds this Government for introducing the Wildlife and Countryside Bill, much the most far-reaching measure of nature conservation of all time. We value highly the good relations that we have with the Department of the Environment. Especially do we value our relations with my noble friend Lord Skelmersdale, who will be replying to this debate, and with the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Mr. William Waldegrave. We value equally highly the advice and help that we have from their senior advisers. But the job is only half finished. So I ask for the fourth time: Why are we waiting?
8.54 p.m.
Lord Middleton: My Lords, because the happening on the North Yorkshire Moors to which my noble friend Lord Onslow referred was in my part of the world, I am unable to resist the temptation to begin my speech by referring to it. The story makes good copy. I was amused to see it in Kenneth Rose's column in the Sunday Telegraph, where he summarised this horror story.
I am not quite sure what lessons my noble friend would like us to draw from it. The lesson I draw from it is that when you hear a conservation horror story it is well worth looking into it to see what actually happened. Things are very seldom what they seem. Plants are, regrettably, destroyed under most forms of development, whether it be because of the building of a motorway or because of the building of new headquarters for Green Peace. It happens every year when farmers do their routine autumn ploughing. The plants that have grown up in the crop are turned in.
If a site which has got to be developed contains plants which, because of their rarity of their scientific value, should be preserved, the Nature Conservancy Council can intervene. In this case they did not do so because they judged that there was no great scientific value in this site. The developer went through all the procedures correctly. The National Parks Authority acted correctly. When they thought that some rather scrubby conifers required protection they offered a management agreement, which was accepted.
The National Parks Authority, after taking scientific advice from the NCC and from their own ecologists, presumably judged that the value to the community of a developed piece of moorland—in this case the development was to be grass for livestock and a caravan site—was greater than the value of the moorland as it stood. The local naturalists trust, of which I am a member, took a different view, though this view was not backed by the experts. They picked a plant in order to make a point. The only point, it
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seems to me, that they made was that Section 13 of the Act which we are discussing should be either altered or repealed. Section 13 says that you may pick flowers but that if you do so you can be prosecuted, because under that section it is an offence, but that if you do it as part of a lawful operation it is not an offence. As I remember it, that clause received the full approval of your Lordships when the Bill was discussed in 1981. I see absolutely no reason to alter it.
The outstanding effect of the passing of the 1981 Act has been the new climate of opinion which has arisen. I am very glad that my noble friends Lord Onslow and Lord Chelwood and the noble Lord, Lord Walston, have referred to it. Farmers were very quick, if they had not already done so, to take on board the message that most farming operations have a conservation aspect. As the Act came to be administered the NCC also came to understand that most conservation projects have a human aspect. Unless those two basic facts had been understood, the whole purpose of the Act would have been frustrated.
This brings me straight to the matter of cost. Those who criticised the Act said, even before it became effective, that the cost of operating the system could not be met by the Government; therefore the Act could never work. Subsequently it has been alleged that on occasions the NCC has been prevented from carrying out its function of protecting certain sites because funds would not be available. Neither of those things has happened. In no case, I believe, have the Government failed to produce the money that is needed for conservation. For a government to devise a whole system of protection that depended upon voluntary conservation by private individuals, backed up by management payments, and then to fail to produce the funds would be ludicrous—and not only ludicrous but politically foolish.
In Mr. Carlisle's pamphlet Conserving the Countryside—a Tory View, he says in the summary that the compensation offered for management agreements is excessive and that funds will run out. The latest figure we have been given, which was quoted in The Times agricultural correspondent's piece yesterday, is that since the Act has been in operation there has been paid out for the management of SSSIs, in capital sums, £1 million and in recurring payments about £ ¾ million. That is hardly excessive. I know that this is only a beginning. The process of making management agreements, as we have heard tonight, is slow and many sites have still to be notified and considered. My noble friend Lord Chelwood gave the figure of £10 million as the likely cost in five years' time. I have been told that it may well be realistic to suppose that in time the cost of management agreements will be running at about £12 million a year. Is that excessive?
As Mr. Carlisle points out in his pamphlet, this year it is expected that the Arts Council alone will receive over £100 million, and £12 million is about the size of the budget needed to keep the Royal Opera House going. Will NCC funds for conservation be allowed to run out? I doubt it, for the reasons I have given.
With my noble friend Lord Onslow, I think there is evidence that national park authorities may be inhibited from operating Section 42 of the Act. The

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cost of management agreements offered by national parks—except Exmoor, which is a special case—is funded as to 75 per cent. by the Government. There may be unwillingness on the part of the local authority to incur the other 25 per cent. It may make them reluctant to lodge an objection where there is a MAFF grant-aided project on which they are asked to make a comment or object as necessary. It has been suggested that the Government should consider funding of the Section 42 management agreements.
My noble friend Lord Onslow and the noble Lord, Lord Walston. have made much of the need to pay people for managing land when called upon to do so for conservation purposes, and of the undesirability of paying compensation to people for not doing things. I sympathise with them but I must confess that I find it difficult to make any practical recommendation. The whole philosophy behind the treatment of SSSIs is that the owner or occupier will be persuaded by the NCC, on the one hand, to undertake management of a positive kind that will maintain the land's conservation value; on the other hand, to refrain from embarking upon more intensive operations.
By way of encouragement, owners and occupiers were to be offered payment in line with the NCCs statement which was published on 10th August 1982. It was said that the Nature Conservancy Council was comitted to the principle:
"that owners and occupiers should not be unreasonably disadvantaged by any constraints resulting from the notification of their land as an SSSI."
I do not believe that anybody could quarrel with that. The level of payment appropriate in agreements arising out of the Act are set out in the Government's financial guidelines—under which the NCC operates. If noble Lords are unhappy about the result of working under those guidelines, then no doubt the guidelines could be modified in the kind of way that has been suggested—but I am sure the general principles are sound.
My noble friend has spoken also about compensation. I remember very well that when I was presiding over the CLA one of my more agreeable duties was to visit our members and branches in Wales. When I asked how they were getting on and about what problems they had, they would reply, "We had a terrible winter, and have the sheep scab and SSSIs". I quote that not to indicate that our Welsh farmer members were less enlightened than their English colleagues, because very much the opposite is the case. What it illustrates is that restraints on production can be very keenly felt when one is operating on the margin.
It is also a reminder that in Wales one can have very large areas with SSSI status which can engulf numbers of complete farming units. The same type of pressure was felt by some of the small farmers on West Sedgemoor. These are the people who will be most affected by milk quotas, which in turn will affect levels of management payment. These are the people who will need all the encouragement they can be given if they are to restrict their farming for conservation reasons.
My noble friend Lord Onslow referred to the complicated procedures surrounding management
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agreements, but there must be safeguards against abuse. If one wants safeguards, then one must accept a fairly rigorus system of control. My noble friend referred also to the role of MAFF. I am sure that the wider role of MAFF as embodied in Sections 42 and 31 is fully accepted, but if it is the case that ADAS should he strengthened on the conservation side, then I would support that; but I thought they were functioning effectively.
It may be desirable to ask the Minister of Agriculture to consider the matter of notification and prior approval for a limited number of grant-aided schemes—certainly for schemes involving new land drainage. It is very difficult for the NCC to know what is going on, now that the existing power has been scrapped. On the subject of drainage, more attention probably needs to be paid to Section 48, which lays down the duties of water authorities with regard to nature conservation and the countryside. Too much is being heard about controversial drainage schemes affecting our diminishing wetlands.
Nothing I have so far mentioned could not be improved by administrative means. However, there are two specific areas where legislation is called for and to which reference has been made already tonight. I fully agree with my noble friend about the need to tighten up protection of Sites of Special Scientific Interest from the very small number of occupiers who knowingly and deliberately damage them during the notification process. That kind of action is wholly inexcusable.
It is a measure of the new climate of opinion that the severest condemnation of those offending farmers comes from their fellows. I remember very well sending out from the CLA during my presidency our own instructions to site owners, which included these words:
"It is crucial, if the spirit of the Act is to he honoured, that this consultation period should not be abused and that no listed operations he carried out during it".
1 stumped around the country telling farmers that if they disregard this guidance they would be subject to tighter control. We have heard of the 11 sites, out of the 222 notified, that have been damaged or destroyed. Some of the damage has been serious and some less so—but any damage in these circumstances is unacceptable. I, too, support the new legislation of the kind embodied in Mr. Peter Hardy's one clause Wildlife and Countryside (Amendment) Bill.
Secondly, I follow my noble friend Lord Blakenham and others in believing that the gap that exists when a Section 29 order is being contemplated should be closed. I believe that there should be statutory backing for an extension period in that case; or, better still, a standstill order while the Section 29 order is being prepared. Experience has shown that these orders take time to formulate.
It is sad that these two legislative measures seem necessary, but while there remain a small minority of people who are oblivious of their duties towards the countryside we must have them. I would be interested to hear from my noble friend when he replies from the Front Bench what, if anything, the Government intend to do to improve this situation, which I think is serious.

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It is getting late, and there is enormous scope for discussion on a subject which I know is very dear to the heart of my noble friend Lord Onslow, so I confine myself to these few matters which seem to me to be most in need of attention. Perhaps I should add this proviso to my reference to the possible need for legislation. If the powers of the NCC are to be strengthened, measures will also have to be taken to make it possible on occasion to move aside the shield of infallibility under which NCC works in order to see what lies behind it. I am thinking of some kind of review procedure for particularly contentious cases.
We must be grateful to my noble friend for putting this Question, not least because it has provided, if I may say so, the occasion for an impressive maiden speech from my noble friend Lord Blakenham. I hope we shall hear a great deal more from him in the future.
9.9 p.m.
Lord Gibson: My Lords, I should like, if I may, to add my voice to those already raised in congratulating the noble Viscount, Lord Blakenham, on a very fine maiden speech. I think the conventions of your Lordships' House prevent me from referring to him as my noble friend, which he certainly is. Perhaps I may call him my noble kinsman by marriage, which he also is. He is also a colleague. We have been together in business for many years, and I can tell your Lordships that the wisdom, experience and perspicacity which he brings to that he will bring also to your Lordships' House. I hope that his major responsibilities in business will not prevent him from addressing us frequently.
Like every other noble Lord, I am very grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Onslow, for giving us this opportunity to review the working of the Wildlife and Countryside Act. I think that what most people feel, and what I find as I go round the country—which I do quite a lot in my capacity as chairman of the National Trust—is that the Act, so far as it goes and in spite of its imperfections and inadequacies, has done a great deal to change the atmosphere, as so many noble Lords have said, and has been a great step forward. Everyone wants to give the voluntary principle on which the Act is based a chance to work. It still has some way to go; hut the voluntary principle is, of course, backed up by reserve powers. The Nature Conservancy Council can ask the Secretary of State to make a nature conservation order, and then the land can be compulsorily acquired. It is rather a complex business, but basically the Act relies a great deal on management agreements, voluntarily entered into and buttressed by these compensation payments.
The main concern is whether the resources are available to underwrite these agreements. Relatively few have been entered into because they take such a long time to process and because the NCC, as has been said, does not have the staff to process them faster. I am told—and noble Lords will correct me if I am wrong—that there are 536 such agreements in the pipeline but that there are only 12 land agents to negotiate them and only about 20 per cent. of those in the pipeline have come through. No doubt there are adequate resources to meet the cost of that 20 per
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cent., but if they had the staff to go faster—at a minimum desirable rate of progress—I dare say the funds would not be there to back up these agreements with the compensation payments necessary. Therefore, one wants to see the resources increased both in manpower and in money if this system is to work. If the resources are not available one must fall back on mere prevention.
I, for one, should like to see the Act given a chance to work, but it needs money to support it. Noble Lords referred to the projects on which we spend money. The noble Lord. Lord Middleton, mentioned the Arts Council, of which I used to be chairman. I am not going to say that I think the Arts Council get too much, but in relation to the needs of the countryside it is absurd that the NCC should be short of £10 million, if that is what it needs to do the job properly. When one considers how dear the countryside is to the hearts of millions of people who do not care about the arts at all, it does seem that we have our priorities strangely mixed up. But for heaven's sake do no let it be thought that I am suggesting that less money should go to the Arts Council—far from it.
The first point, I think, is that the spirit of the Act requires that these voluntary agreements be entered into. In the National Trust we are party to a number of them. I have every reason to think that they will work very well. We do not of course get any compensation. That would be quite wrong; we ought not to—in spite of the principle which, as the noble Lord, Lord Walston, pointed out, has been adopted. I do not think that it is the fault of this Act that it has been adopted—the principle that you pay people for doing things that they never really intended to do, and that you pay them for loss of potential profit instead of actual profit. I agree with him that that is quite wrong. But I do not think that it is the fault of the Act.
My only other point is this. However much the nation should or can afford to pay for conservation, it ought to he seen as part of a single exercise. It seems to me that the care of the countryside, for what it can produce, for the pleasure that it gives and as a habitat for plants and wildlife, is all one exercise, because these things have to he kept in balance with one another. We ought not to separate, as we do administratively, the twin objectives of conservation and food production. It seems to me to follow that we ought to make one Ministry responsible for both objectives. I should have thought that it ought to be MAFF which dispensed such subsidies as may be necessary for food production and compensation for limiting food production in the interests of conservation.
All questions of balance in any undertaking have to be resolved by some one authority responsible for holding that balance. In my opinion, MAFF would do it very well. It is already recognised in statute that the Minister of Agriculture has some duties towards conservation. The 1968 Act enjoined him to exercise his functions with regard for natural beauty and the amenity of the countryside. The 1981 Act, which we have been discussing, says that if he is asked for a grant in respect of land in an SSSI or a national park, he must consider and further the conservation of flora, fauna and other features of interest before responding; and if the Nature Conservancy Council or the National Parks Authority object to a grant being

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made, he must consult with the Secretary of State for the Environment before making a grant. It is not clear who decides.
It seems to me that both in practical and psychological terms we should get better results by making the Minister of Agriculture decide whether to make a grant or whether instead to make a compensation payment for a management agreement. Of course MAFF will not be keen to take on that responsibility. It now has a straightforward job. It is an economic ministry. The people in the ministry are human, and they will not fancy having to perform a controversial balancing act such as that which I have suggested. Nevertheless, in this populous island, conservation is here to stay. To my mind, the logical consequence is an integrated approach to food production and conservation—I say integrated in the hands of MAFF, and I am sure that it would respond.
I have one last point which has not been mentioned this evening. The Question of the noble Earl, Lord Onslow, refers to what else the Government have in mind for improving the amenities of the countryside. I forget the exact wording. There is one thing which to my mind does more harm to the countryside than almost anything else, and that is litter. We are becoming the dirtiest people in Europe under the influence of the packaging industry and of our own filthy habits. I do not think that one should always ask the Government to do everything, and I do not quite know what the Government can do about this, but I have absolutely no doubt that we should try to think of ways in which money can usefully be spent in educating people about litter and doing something in schools. I know that something is done already, but perhaps much more could he done. Perhaps something can be done by way of fines (fiendish fines, I would hope) and by way of rewards, if they can be thought of. I am afraid I have no sensible suggestions to make. But when we are talking about amenity, beauty, and so on, I do not think that we should forget that litter is nowadays disfiguring our countryside in a way that was absolutely unthought of 50 years ago. I hope that noble Lords may be able to come forward with suggestions as to how this awful situation can be improved.
9.18 p.m.
Earl Peel: My Lords, it seems more than three years ago since many of us were here trying to unscramble the numerous problems we were faced with during the course of the consideration of the Wildlife and Countryside Bill. It was during the passage of that Bill that I had the honour of addressing your Lordships for the first time. I therefore have particular pleasure in welcoming the noble Viscount, Lord Blakenham, to the House and congratulating him on his maiden speech. I agree with everything that he said. I know that we very much look forward to hearing him in the future.
I should also like to thank my noble friend Lord Onslow for asking this very important Question. It is perhaps in some respects a little too early to be making accurate assessments as to how the Act is working, but I think it is fair to say that, unfortunately, there are
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obvious problems which I fear are unlikely to rectify themselves without a change in legislation.
I think that on the whole the Bill has been a major step forward in protecting the countryside and helping us better to understand and appreciate the countryside, as other noble Lords have said. I think it has also served to make landowners and farmers better realise the enormous interest and concern that the general public have for the countryside at large. But I think it was the noble Lord, Lord Walston, who said that these problems are complex; indeed they are. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and long may it be so. However, I believe that a great deal more should, and could, be done, not simply through legislation, but by a basic change in attitude, and financial direction, by the Government.
The voluntary approach must be seen to work through a responsible lead from Government, with controls where necessary. However, for this to be effective, I believe more information is required as to what is actually happening on the land itself through modern farming techniques—something about which I feel we do not know much. A far greater co-operation in this particular field is I think needed between the Department of the Environment and the Ministry of Agriculture—so often, I fear, seen pulling in opposite directions. Above all, we need to see a greater personal liaison between those government bodies responsible for the well-being of the countryside and the farmers themselves. There is no substitute at all for this personal contact.
Moving on to the Act itself, it did of course commendably strengthen the role of the Nature Conservancy Council, but the additional work load imposed upon that organisation, and in particular the notification process of the SSSIs, has simply not been matched, I fear, with the necessary increase in staff, as, indeed, other noble Lords have said. Apart from the notifications taking so long, the result is that the remainder of the countryside is being neglected. This position must be rectified.
Furthermore, the fact that sites are still being destroyed during the three-month consultation period demonstrates to me, and I know to other noble Lords, the need to strengthen Sections 28 and 29 of the Act and allow a statutory period of similar length to be imposed on all potential sites where no operation which would damage the area can take place. I think it is important to note that this will not impede in the long-term, the basic voluntary approach which we on this side of the House believe is so fundamental to the workings of the countryside.
However, I am bound to say that some of the lists of damaging operations which I have seen are what I might describe as somewhat imposing and not necessarily conducive to co-operation between the NCC and the farmers and landowners. In fact, they do not always seem to relate to the reasons for the original designation.
Moving on to Section 32, to which other noble Lords have referred, my own personal feeling is that the way it is being carried out at the moment is politically uacceptable. I know it is difficult to work out, as my noble friend Lord Middleton has said, a practical suggestion as to how these levels of

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compensation should be paid, but they cannot go on being paid to people for doing nothing or in respect of something which they may do in the future, with the use of public funds. I therefore ask Her Majesty's Government to look at this urgently and to come forward with a much more equitable solution.
Moving away from the Act itself, but still on the question of legislation I must confess that since I have had the privilege of sitting on the Yorkshire Dales national park committee I have become increasingly impressed by the system of prior notification of agricultural grants and the consultation process which follows. In certain circumstances I think it is fair to say that MAFF have perhaps been a little slow in overcoming the problem of retrospective grants. This is something which I think should be stopped as soon as possible. However. I believe that the system should be extended to the country as a whole. That is a view that I am sure will not be shared by certain noble Lords on this side of the House. I am thinking in particular of the noble Lord, Lord Stanley, and I am interested in hearing what he has to say on that matter.
However, I have been told that the NFU would be in favour of this extension, though I do not know whether or not that is true. I hope it is, because I do not think it would impede sensible farmers in any way whatsoever, and it would bring to our attention more effectively those who are inclined to behave in what I shall describe as an irresponsible fashion.
I have mentioned my concern about the inability of the NCC to involve itself as effectively as it might in the countryside. This brings me to the second half, and in some respects, I believe, the more important part of my noble friend's Question, namely, whether the Government can see any further ways of improving the quality of the countryside. I believe that we are in real danger of having two distinct types of countryside. My noble friend Lord Chelwood referred to this. They are those areas of sufficient scientific importance to warrant SSSI status and the rest. Obviously, this is far too simplistic a view. There are endless examples of where caring landowners and farmers—the majority, in fact—are doing their level best to look after the countryside in a caring and sensible way while at the same time attempting to make a living—a point that is sometimes forgotten.
What is required above all else is necessary information and guidance to carry out these obligations in an effective manner. There is far too much going on agriculturally that we do not fully understand. I feel that more must he done to reconcile the needs of food production and the consequential damaging results on the countryside. Despite the vast increase in the use of chemicals, hardly any work appears to have been done on their effects on the natural environment. We know what they do for agriculture. But that is only half the story. The total reliance on them is frightening, although I suppose that it is fair to say that as we see changes in the common agricultural policy, we may well see a change in the input of this type of operation.
I should like to give an example of one very important project in which I am personally involved as a game conservancy. We have a project known as Cereals and Game Birds, totally funded by farmers. We are monitoring the effects of agro-chemical sprays
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on hedgerows. Blocks of unsprayed headlands six metres from the hedge are being compared to similar sprayed areas. The yield difference between the two areas has proved negligible as, obviously, the growth rate around the hedge tends to be greatly reduced. The weed build-up has been slow. This has been monitored. The results are encouraging. Related to the whole farm—the farm concerned is 2,200 acres—this represents 2 per cent. and an equivalent saving in chemicals of around £1,500 for the farm a year.
After one year, on the sprayed areas, there are five species of butterflies. On the unsprayed areas, there are 21. Partridge chick survival rate has increased by three times on the unsprayed area. It is fair to say that we expect increases in all forms of flora and fauna. Indeed, the British Trust for Ornithology will be monitoring the effect on song-birds. It is extremely optimistic that it will show the same results.
In addition, the scope for the protection of the cereal aphid predators, which of course live in the hedgerows, could be of immense importance in the consequential reduction in reliance on sprays. The production of food and the ecological effects can no longer be regarded in isolation. Research of this type is urgently required and a lead by Government is needed to give farmers and conservationists the right information. I sincerely hope to hear an assurance from my noble friend on the Front Bench that more is going to be done in this direction to serve the countryside as a whole.
In conjunction with this increased information which we require, as I have already said, the NCC must be encouraged to carry out in a more effective manner its role for the countryside at large. But on a budget of £ 1–5 million per annum, and a further £1–6 million for compensation and capital projects, et cetera, I do not believe that it is likely to succeed. We all know that money could be made available; indeed, we have had examples from noble Lords as to where it could come from. If I may, I should like to mention my particular baby: that is, that last year, on drainage grants alone, MAFF spent £35–1 million in England and Wales. Ten per cent. of that figure is greater than the combined figures available at the moment to the NCC. I think that speaks for itself.
We need more useful research, greater financial assistance to the NCC and also a greater encouragement by Government of management agreements, which again is something that has been mentioned by noble Lords. My experience is that many authorities are reluctant to proceed with management agreements because they have no confidence that money will be available. I say to them that there is only one way to find out, and that is to go ahead and do it. The onus is on the Government to come up with the necessary funds.
I should like to refer briefly to the uplands, which is the part of the world from which I come. I know much has been done in trying to prevent the erosion of many of the features in the countryside, but it is no good. Hay meadows, heather and dry stone walls are still disappearing, and in some cases they are disappearing at a very alarming rate. I was delighted to hear my noble friend Lord Onslow say that MAFF were actually giving money for protection of this sort in Derbyshire. All I can say is that I wish to goodness they

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would come to Yorkshire. I am afraid I can see no evidence that MAFF are advising farmers to take heed of conservation matters.
A point my noble friend Lord Middleton made was that things were improving as far as ADAS are concerned. I am sorry, but I cannot agree with him on this because I have seen no evidence at all that ADAS have strengthened their hold over conservation matters. How nice it would be if they could start giving farmers the sort of advice on agriculture and conservation combined for which I believe the Act was attempting to provide. In fact, I would go a stage further. I should like very much to see an ADAS officer attached to each national park authority in the hope of trying to bring together these two conflicting interests. It is a problem that certainly we have in our part of the country, and I know that others have it as well.
I should like to give your Lordships an example concerning MAFF. A tenant farmer of mine and I attempted to get through the Ministry of Agriculture a grant for the reduction of mollinia grass which was coming into an area. The aim behind our application was to try to get heather back—a good conservation move. Unfortunately, this did not work, for the simple reason that we could not demonstrate to MAFF that we were going to produce an increase in stock numbers. I think that sums up the big problem we have at the moment, particularly in the uplands. I would hope to see changes so that the conservation and the farming sides could come much closer together.
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I hope that we shall soon have the opportunity to debate the report of the Countryside Commission on the uplands. As my noble friend Lord Onslow has said, a great deal must be said on that subject, and we cannot go on relying exclusively on the hill livestock compensatory allowance system. There has to be a closer integration of the agricultural, social and environmental sides. But I do not believe that now is the time to debate that particular point.
Finally, the care of the countryside is largely a question of attitude, plus the necessary finance. I believe that even a modest switch in emphasis would go a very long way. I believe that, if we are to succeed, the Government's priorities will have to change and we must start thinking of the countryside as a whole and not just as isolated areas. It must not be neglected. The Act has gone far, of that there is no doubt, but in my opinion not far enough.
Noble Lords have referred to the excellent booklet written by Mr. Kenneth Carlisle, which somehow preempts everything that conservationists would like to say about the countryside. I should like to refer to the foreword, which is by William Waldegrave, the Under-Secretary of State for the Department of the Environment. It says:
"I am absolutely delighted to provide a foreword to this first-rate pamphlet. As usual there is a middle way, and Conservatives who are not johnny-come-latelies in their concern for and knowledge of the countryside in Britain are the only party in a position to find it".
I hope to goodness that they do, and quickly.
9.37 p.m.
Lord Stanley of Alderley: My Lords, first, I should like to say to the noble Lord, Lord Gibson, that if we could pursuade the Government to encourage local authorities to place skips in advantageous places around the countryside, it would help the litter problem enormously. It has certainly helped in my village.
Perhaps I may suggest to my noble friend Lord Onslow that he rephrase his Question to read:
"Do Her Majesty's Government consider that all those involved in the countryside are actively encouraging and helping the 1981 Act to work?"
For it is not the Government who make legislation work; it is we in the sticks who make or break this operation, a point that was made by my noble friend Lord Onslow in a slightly different way. I hope that my noble friend on the Front Bench will reply that there is absolutely nothing wrong, or very little wrong, with the 1981 Act and that the great majority of organisations —particularly the Ministry of Agriculture and the Countryside Commission—and farmers improve the quality of the countryside and actively support the 1981 Act.
Certainly, for a change, John Young in last Saturday's Times thought so and I was delighted to hear my noble friend Lord Blakenham, in an excellent maiden speech. plead for reasonableness between us all. However, I shall try not to he anodyne, and I shall suggest two areas that my noble friend on the Front Bench might care to look at with a view to further improvement. They are of course, first, farmers and, secondly, the Nature Conservancy Council.
All individuals make mistakes and because farming is so open to the public eye, our mistakes—my mistakes—are seen by all, and most of all by the farmer himself. However. I would ask your Lordships to look at the recorded mistakes which some noble Lords have already mentioned. According to my figures, there have been 22 reported cases of damage to sites of special scientific interest—abuses, as the noble Lord, Lord Walston, called them. By no means all were damage by farmers; one, for instance, was by a golf club. But most important, 11 of those 22 cases were offences against the 1981 Act and prosecutions will no doubt, I hope, follow.
These figures prove the futility of those who want more legislation and planning. They demonstrate that we can make laws and regulations, but that it is the will of those who live under them that matters. Everyone knows, or should know, that the carrot is better than the stick. The 1981 Act, thank God, relies on the carrot.
However, as your Lordships know, and many have mentioned. there is a three-month loophole in the Act so far as sites of special scientific interest are concerned. Although the number of farmers exploiting this loophole has been very small. I should be happy. in common with my noble friend Lord Middleton, to see it closed, if possible. Perhaps again my noble friend Lord Skelmersdale would comment on this in his reply. So much for the farmers' sins.
During the passage of the 1981 Act whenever anyone got into a muddle, or had a problem, the cry
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went up, "Let the NCC deal with it". I therefore have much sympathy for the plight in which the NCC find themselves, and if I now utter some hard words I trust that your Lordships will take them as being constructive rather than destructive of the NCC and, in my noble friend Lord Onslow's words, aimed at minimising conflict between the farmers and the conservationists.
The NCC are not capable of doing the job they have been given. They have neither the quantity nor the quality of staff to do it. My reasons for such a statement are as follows, and not because I am suffering, as perhaps my noble friend Lord Middleton would suggest, from either sheep scab or sites of special scientific interest. Far from it; I believe I am less favoured.
The NCC officers come in contact with farmers, and not just those with sites of special scientific interest. It is important therefore for them to appreciate that their appearance on the farm, sometimes preceded by a horrific statutory notice, may cause suspicion, alarm and even hostility, and of course the fear of compulsory purchase. It may not be their intention to do so, but certainly that comes over. I think that when my noble friend Lord Middleton was joking about sheep scab and sites of special scientific interest, that is what my Welsh neighbour was more or less saying.
The NCC staff are usually young, with little local knowledge, and not trained, as ADAS men have been for many years, in getting farmers to co-operate. This attitude can cause a chain of non co-operation—a situation which can be further inflamed if the farmer finds that the NCC have not even bothered to read his case. I can give your Lordships examples of that.
I would reinforce these criticisms by asking your Lordships to look at the series of questions put to the Chief Scientist and his assistant by Sub-Committee 1 of your Lordships' House on 16th May this year, terminating with question 328, which asked whether there had been close co-operation between agricultural and conservation interests. The reply was:
"The relationships 10 years ago were not at all good. They have improved that and particularly at local level. There seem to be problems that, as it goes up the scale in the different levels, then the extent of the breakdown in communication tends to become greater."
I think personally that that was quite an admission, though at least it was honest.
I would therefore ask my noble friend on the Front Bench to look at this problem and also to ascertain whether some members of the NCC really want the 1981 Act to work. I should like to see a statement that all members of the NCC, council and staff—and I am sorry that my noble friend Lord Chelwood is not here—are determined to make the voluntary approach, as epitomised in the 1981 Act, work. I have read encouraging articles by their chairman, but I have grave doubts about some of his council and staff.
I should also like to ask, what is the NCC's attitude to a changing agricultural and rural scene? It appears to me that they want to stop the environmental clock in 1984. Is this really so? Are they not interested in looking forward to a new and perhaps altered environment? I noted with great interest the remarks of the

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noble Lord, Lord Oram, about a forward-looking approach, and I hope that the NCC do too. Perhaps my noble friend Lord Skelmersdale can tell me whether my attitude or view is wrong over this, because, if my reservations on their present attitude are anywhere near correct, I am afraid I would ask my noble friend not to give the NCC a farthing more money until he can assure me that they have put their house in order—my noble friend Lord Blakenham assures me they have—despite the Rayner Report and pleas by other noble Lords.
It is my job, and that of those of us who live in the country, to make the 1981 Act work through the voluntary approach. Any other method is far too expensive and impractical, and I hope my noble friend Lord Skelmersdale can assure me that the Government and the NCC in particular have similar objectives.
9.46 p.m.
Baroness White: My Lords. I should like to add my thanks to those already tendered to the noble Earl, Lord Onslow, for asking this Question, although frankly I wish it had been a Motion moved at three o'clock in the afternoon. It is quite clear from the gravamen of the speeches we have already heard that this is a matter of the most intense interest to a great many Members of the House, and, personally. I have already benefited very much from the very substantial contributions, not least that made by the noble Earl, Lord Peel, who I think has given us an extremely interesting insight into his own direct experience as a landowner, a farmer and a member of the Parks Authority. But it is too late tonight, with other speakers still to come, to go into too great detail.
I begin by saying how delighted I was that the noble Earl. Lord Onslow, quoted from the brilliant satirical article by Lord Bruce-Gardyne in The Times newspaper of 21st March. If any noble Lord has not had the pleasure of reading it. I suggest he goes to the library, perhaps tomorrow, and does so. I am only sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Bruce-Gardyne, is not here to make an equally brilliant oral contribution to the debate tonight.
The noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, who is replying to the debate tonight, may be relieved to hear that although I gave notice to his department earlier on I am not in fact going into the detail of the Halvergate Marshes, which are regarded by a large number of conservation bodies in this country, if not by the farming community, as the touchstone of whether or not this Act can be made to work. I understand that the noble Lord. Lord Renton, who is much better informed than I am on the matter, is going to do so, so I will not take up the time of the House in asking what exactly did happen in the other place this afternoon beyond just reminding your Lordships that as recently as 4th April the Minister. William Waldegrave—for whom I think we all have a very warm regard--stated in another place that he could assure Members that Halvergate was safe for a year. I am hoping that with the encouragement of the noble Lord, Lord Renton, the noble Lord the Minister will be able to tell us that that assurance is still valid.
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I was much entertained to hear about the sheep scab and the SSSIs' affliction in my native country. I suggest that one of the reasons why Welsh farmers have considered that they have had perhaps rather frequent visits from the Nature Conservancy Council in Wales is that I believe we have been much more rapid in Wales than in either England or Scotland in proceeding with notification, or particularly renotification, of sites of scientific interest. But I am now told that the officers of the NCC in Wales have been called to heel and told that they must adopt the more elaborate procedures which are now current in England and Scotland. If the Minister can enlighten me on that I should be grateful, because I understand that we have in Wales already been able to undertake about half of the notification procedures, which is a higher proportion than that quoted for either England or Scotland. I wonder whether it is necessary that in England and Scotland more elaborate procedures should be followed. If I can be enlightened on that, I shall be interested.
Nevertheless, of the sites where damage has been done either three or four are in Wales. The reason that I am dubious about the precise number is that I have details from the Nature Conservancy Council of four sites, but it says of one of them that consultation began on a 10½-hectare proposed site of special scientific interest. Before the consultation period was over three of the 10½-hectares had been ploughed up. This was the key part of the site and therefore the NCC has not proceeded to notify the remainder. In those circumstances, it may not even he a statistic.
There are other sites, not large in number I grant you, which have aroused public concern. For example. I have here details of one of the sites in Cardiganshire. In May this year—this was widely notified in the local press—the landowner had ploughed up 20 acres of water meadow, felled seven acres of trees, thereby destroying over 50 species of plants, some of them rare, and the breeding grounds of curlew's, lapwings and butterflies. I am afraid it did the image of the farming community in the eyes of conservationists no good at all.
Having said that, I should like to echo some of the positive things which were said particularly by the noble Lord, Lord Middleton, and also by other noble Lords, about how we can make this kind of incident virtually impossible by tightening up a relatively small area of legislation—that is, the three months' gap. Most people observe this entirely honourably and conscientiously, but the publicity given to one conspicuous rogue farmer, if I may call him that (he may not have been, and all kinds of circumstances may have made him do it), for one serious and disturbing incident of this kind, may be blow's up by the press beyond justification; nevertheless it does great damage to relationships. If one felt that this gap was stopped and that people could not take advantage of the possible loophole, I think a great deal of good would be done. There is also the question of a shorter stop notice when application is being made to the Secretary of State, which can also be evaded by anybody who for one reason or another is determined to do it. Someone may have a grudge against being approached at all. There are all kinds of psychological

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as well as financial and commercial reasons for doing this kind of thing.
It would be more satisfactory altogether, if we mean the procedure to work, to make it as watertight as possible. I was glad that the noble Lord, Lord Middleton, appeared to me to be in sympathy with that point of view. I hope very much that the Government will accept that this is a perfectly genuine situation where we believe that some relatively minor legislative action could make the situation sure beyond peradventure and avoid these very disturbing incidents which receive considerable publicity and spoil the atmosphere, probably to a much greater degree than the extent of the damage justifies.
I was glad that the noble Lord, Lord Middleton, referred to the difficulties of drainage and prior notification. I gave notice to the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, that I intended to ask him some questions about this, arising out of a response which he made in your Lordships' House on 25th April last year, when we were debating the report of the Select Committee on Science and Technology on the water industry, which, among its various recommendations, referred specifically to Section 48 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act.
We received what appeared to be very satisfactory assurances at that time that the Government were proposing—in relation to land drainage, on the one hand, and to river corridors and proper surveys of the natural resources thereof—to develop a common approach to the carrying out of surveys and to agree funding arrangements and to arrange for coordination between the Natural Environment Research Council, the Nature Conservancy Council and the various water authorities concerned. My informants, who were engaged in these various bodies, tell me that, as far as they can make out, except for a small grant from the NCC, nothing has really happened. This may be incorrect; but, if something really substantial has happened, then I should be grateful if we might be publicly informed thereof.
The drainage situation is one which causes very considerable concern in various parts of the country. I normally refer to the Principality of Wales because that is the area with which I am personally most familiar, but I have friends in Oxfordshire, for example, who were telling me only a couple of days ago of the absolutely disastrous exercise by engineers on a tributary of the River Thames in North Oxfordshire which had utterly destroyed the angling interests in that area: because the engineers had come along, had virtually canalised part of the river, had straightened it all out, had smoothed the gradient, cut down trees, cleared the weeds—everything in order to get better flow, which was all that they were concerned about. My friends said to me: "There were no pools, no shade: there were no holds for the fish and angling had been ruined". The only comforting thing, they said, was that a similar proposition has recently been called in by the Thames Water Authority for further consideration because of the protests of local interests at the insensitive way in which some of the drainage operations are carried out. They are an engineers' dream and an anglers' nightmare.
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This leads me to ask the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, what has happened to the interdepartmental committee which has been sitting for an interminable time examining the internal drainage system? When may we receive the report? When is it going to be published? Is it going to be in the form of consultation? Can he please reassure us about some of these drainage operations which really are among the most damaging and insensitive from the environmental point of view. The water authorities, with the best will in the world, have only very limited control over what can be done by the land drainage authorities which are attached to them.
Finally—there are a great many other points that one could raise—I think that one must, in all of this, emphasise the problem of the inadequate number of staff available both at NCC and with ADAS to carry out adequately the propositions which were contained in the Act. I was very much interested to hear the noble Earl, Lord Peel, say that in his part of the world there are not enough ADAS staff—who most of us believe are the absolutely crucial intermediaries in all this; those of us who years ago gave evidence to the Strutt Committee, and so on, have always said that they are the people who work best with the farmers, who understand the farmers' problems and who, many of them, are already knowledgeable in environ-mental matters and, where not, they could well be further trained in that direction. I know that in Wales there are not enough to carry out the functions in the way that they themselves would wish to carry them out. I was interested to hear from a different part of the country that this also appears to be the case there.
I have some sympathy with the noble Lord, Lord Stanley of Alderley, regarding what he said about some, at least, of the NCC officers. Again, many of them are relatively young people who have had good scientific training, good laboratory training, but they do not know how to talk in the sort of language which will persuade farmers that what they are trying to do is important to the farmers as well as to them. This is where ADAS, if only there are enough ADAS officers available, can usually be more successful working hand in glove with the NCC people who have perhaps more detailed scientific knowledge of what is required.
Those of us who are concerned with the Countryside Commission were very glad to learn that they at least have been allocated five new posts, two of which I think are to be devoted especially to work in national parks, but they have been given no extra money whatever for these five appointments. The money has to be taken from other activities in order to appoint five new members to their headquarters staff.
I will not weary the House at this late hour by proceeding further on this, but if the Government will the way, they really must will the means. This applies most of all, I think, in providing adequate staff resources to carry out the admirable intentions, particularly of the voluntary system which is the philosophy of the 1981 Act.
10.1 p.m.
The Earl of Dundee: My Lords, I should like to begin by congratulating my noble friend Lord

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Blakenham on an excellent maiden speech in which he pointed out so succinctly some of the deficiencies of the 1981 Act and proposed solutions to them. My noble friend has a great deal of experience in business and in administration, and in countryside with wildlife committees. The House has therefore been fortunate to have his advice tonight and it is hoped that we shall be able to look forward to many future contributions from him on all matters.
I should also like to join with other noble Lords in congratulating my noble friend Lord Onslow on introducing this debate. Clearly, a little time needs to pass before the effects of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 can be properly noted—and from the present date it is certainly fitting to attempt to look at these effects.
With any countryside legislation which is recent, it may, however, be cautioned that since different aspects of the land set their own pace, care should always be taken when subjecting them to the same time cycle for the purpose of analysis. While developments such as those in commercial timber can be clearly seen every five years, changes in certain geological features of course may well be noticeable only every 5,000 years. In regard to wildlife and conservation in general, the probable effects of certain plans and measures may often take many years to materialise.
But those measures contained in the 1981 Act are certainly of the type that can, and should, be checked fairly frequently. Although the workings and methods of the Act have been criticised on several grounds, its particular aims retain general approval. These aims were, first, to preserve and protect from damage the 4,000 sites of special scientific interest identified in the United Kingdom and, secondly, to align to the EEC directive concerned and to bring up to date legislation to protect birds, other animals, and plants.
The criticisms of the Act which have arisen have done so on practical grounds and as a result of its voluntary basis. It has been claimed that the procedure for renotification of sites is inefficient, since it takes a long time to carry out and may be disregarded without penalty by the owner. It is further claimed that the level of compensation to which an owner is entitled is too high and the principle of compensation itself even anomalous, since the owner may not have a genuine alternative use for the area of land where he has been compensated.
Following from this, it has also been alleged that the reputation of the countryside is suffering owing to an unfair advantage which is seen to have been given to land occupants as a result of the workings of the Act.
Allegations such as these are always difficult to prove, but I think there is a need in this case for their investigation, where possible, and hence also for the consideration of remedial action, where necessary.
In view of that, and when he comes to reply, I wonder whether my noble friend Lord Skelmersdale will indicate what plans the Government may have to reduce costs of administration and compensation and to increase protection for sites of special scientific interest, while maintaining the present voluntary basis of the scheme.
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Another area of investigation is the use of tax incentives to encourage the sale and hence also affect the management of SSSIs. In this regard I wonder whether my noble friend the Minister can say whether the Government consider that there is a case to improve the existing sales inducement by increasing the tax concession on sales beyond its present level of 10 per cent. Secondly, I wonder whether he can say whether the Government are considering extending this concession to sales agreed between an owner and the Nature Conservancy Council (to which cases it is currently limited) to those sales between an owner and other conservation bodies.
In spite of the present voluntary methods under the 1981 Act, it has also come up against a certain level of mistrust. In Scotland this is particularly so among crofters and other owners in the Highlands and Islands. However, on the credit side much good will has developed between owners and the NCC, and I have some knowledge of the work of its Scottish branch. Therefore I believe that quite a lot of credit should be given to the work of the very small staff of the NCC, as well as to other organisations, such as the forestry, farming and wildlife advisory groups whose voluntary work has recently contributed much useful advice to farmers on the subject of conservation.
But to look further from the protection of SSSIs, with which the 1981 Act deals, to the conservation needs of the rest of the countryside, there is of course a more comprehensive role which any new measures made now might well adopt. Under this heading I wonder whether my noble friend Lord Skelmersdale can indicate whether the Government are planning incentives to achieve better integrated land use by owners and occupiers and, if so, whether he would consider tax incentives related either to income or to capital, to be more effective in achieving this purpose than grant aid.
In this context there is perhaps the comparative advantage which the reward of a tax incentive has over the reward of a grant or compensation payment. If the latter may give rise to the allegation that an owner has been paid public money for doing nothing, conversely, a tax incentive by definition has to affect the level of money an owner pays the Revenue instead; and he qualifies for the benefit of paying tax at a lesser rate only if he can show that he has carried out a useful function on the land. By this, I do not mean to criticise at all the principle in general of grant aid and compensation, but simply to inquire what balance of incentives the Government would propose in any future scheme of land integration. Can my noble friend also say what type of body or joint bodies might be planned to administer any such schemes, so that the potential conflict between the demands of agriculture and those of conservation are kept to a minimum?
In summary, my Lords, in spite of alleged deficiencies in the workings of the 1981 Act, its conservation aims retain national approval, and there is surely scope for correcting any evident deficiencies without altering the co-operative and voluntary nature of its basis. If, in so doing, the Government were at the same time to introduce further conservation measures beyond the remit of the 1981 Act, there could then be encouraging prospects of better integration of land use,

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better relations between Government agencies and owners, and a greater level of confidence and trust between those who work in the towns and those who work on the land.
10.9 p.m.
Lord Renton: My Lords, in his excellent maiden speech my noble friend Lord Blakenham said that the 1981 Act was a major step forward. Indeed, I think that the debate we have had tonight is of itself some evidence of that. It was a major step forward at the time, in spite of misgivings expressed on both sides of your Lordships' House. But, as my noble friend Lord Onslow said, there is a new climate of opinion, and several examples of it have been given. I should like to add the further example of the establishment of the Farming and Wildlife Trust, and I hope that it will receive very wide support from farmers and landowners.
This debate is, perhaps, itself a yet further step forward. It is both a progress report and, alas!, a report of lack of progress in some respects. At this late hour, I will exercise unusual self-restraint and refer simply to one particular matter, to which the noble Baroness, Lady White, referred and said that I would deal with. I want to deal with a serious East Anglian conservation problem—the threat to the Norfolk Broads and especially to 750 acres of Halvergate grazing marshes, in particular, all of which are classified as being of grade one landscape value by the Broads conservation authority. A number of farmers want to drain those 750 acres and to plough them up for growing cereals.
Perhaps I should just mention the background to that urge. It affects the Ministry of Agriculture, whose responsibility in these matters has been mentioned by the noble Lord. Lord Gibson, and other noble Lords. It is a responsibility which we should not forget. because the compensation that is paid at present through the Department of the Environment and the local authorities is really compensation in relation to agricultural policy. Therefore, the Minister of Agriculture should bear his share of the responsibility: indeed, it is arguable that he should bear the whole of it.
The fact is that this, the largest single block of classic open grazing marsh, is of exceptional significance from the wildlife point of view. I will not go into details; it is so well-known. The threat comes from the fact that cereal prices are, and have been for several years, very high. That has transformed the farming economy of a great part of East Anglia from the mixed farming that it was until about ten years ago to essentially one based primarily on cereal production—and very good incomes are being made from it. This has the result that the compensation payments which are paid to prevent conversion to agricultural production have to be proportionately high, because of the requirements of the Act and because of the income from growing cereals that the farmers would receive if they could develop their land in that way.
The other background feature follows from the one I have just mentioned, and it is this. There are 20,000 acres of Broads marshland, and nearly all of them are potentially at risk of arable conversion—conversion to
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growing cereals. But to prevent conversion of only one-quarter of those 20,000 acres would cost no less than £1 million a year of public funds in compensation to individual farmers.
So much for the background. May I now explain to your Lordships—although the facts are not easy to get hold of and are a little befogged—what is actually happening? So far it affects only 750 acres, where I think five farmers gave notice that they wanted to change the traditional marsh drainage—but it is grazing marsh; it is not entirely lacking in drainage —and to convert it into thorough drainage, with pipes, tile drains and properly dug ditches on very level land.
They were approached with a view to compensation agreements being made. I understand that negotiations are still continuing over most of the 750 acres and that the cost will be quite considerable. In the case of 92 acres, the Norfolk Broads Authority, who do not have this sort of money, have made it clear that they are not prepared, owing to their lack of funds, to enter into a management agreement with the farmer concerned over the 92 acres. There is, therefore, an impasse over those 92 acres as well as uncertainty over the rest of the acreage.
This brings me to what I have been asked to say by the CPRE. Perhaps I may make three points. The first is a general point: that if compensation payments are to be offered to farmers at Halvergate. 100 per cent. of the money should he paid either by the Ministry of Agriculture or, failing that, by the Department of the Environment, because the Broadlands authority does not have the money with which to do the job. Indeed, it seems wrong that it should have to bear the cost of what is essentially the support of agricultural policy.
My second point is that I understand that the Countryside Commission has in being an experimental scheme for the management of the Broads for conservation purposes. One would hope that both the Department of the Environment and the Ministry of Agriculture would declare their support for this scheme. It would very much help if that were to happen and it would go some way towards integrating environmental considerations and agricultural policy.
So much for those two general points in relation to the Broads. I now turn to an immediate problem with regard to the 92 acres. We were told by the noble Baroness, Lady White—I did not know this—that in another place my honourable friend Mr. Waldegrave said as recently as April last that the Halvergate Marshes were safe for a year. I do not find that to be a very encouraging prediction for the future.
I would have hoped that, somehow, the Government could get their heads together and make them safe forever, with the help of all these various bodies, whose duty it is to do these things. The 92 acres will certainly not be safe for very long, unless the Secretary of State for the Environment uses a power, which he has the right to use, to remove the permitted development rights for the under-field drainage which the farmer concerned is preparing to carry out. This means that action must be taken very quickly. We all know that there are times when, if a minister expresses the will to do so, the great bureaucratic machines, upon which so much depends in this country, can move quickly. I hope that, even if he cannot give me

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a specific answer this evening, my noble friend Lord Skelmersdale will take that point on board and will tomorrow take immediate action to see that it is passed on.
10.20 p.m.
Lord Grimond: My Lords, I must apologise for rising to speak at this hour. I thought that I had my name down on the list of speakers but I am told that my request did not reach the appropriate authority. I know that there is nothing more depressing than an extra speaker at twenty minutes past 10 o'clock.
However, the part of the world in which I live has been deeply affected by this Act, to which, owing to the excellent initiative of the mover of the Question, we can give some attention tonight. I perhaps take a slightly different view from that which has so far been expressed.
Before I speak about that view, I should certainly like to join in the congratulations to the noble Viscount. Lord Blakenham, who made an admirable speech and reminded us all of his charming father. I should also like to thank the noble Earl, Lord Onslow, for giving us this opportunity for debate.
There are very considerable misgivings about this Act in my part of the world; and I refer to the far north of Scotland and to the islands. They are felt not only by farmers but by the population in general. We hold some misgivings as to the principle of the Act. It appears to us that the Nature Conservancy Council is a non-elected body which is perhaps insufficiently accountable to anyone. Secondly, it seems to us that its officials promote orders which sometimes interfere gravely with private rights, that their reasons for doing so are secret, and that there is no appeal against them. Thirdly, when orders are made, this results in absentee control by people who know little or nothing about the area concerned.
So much for questions of principle. As to the way in which the Act has been administered—and I refer entirely and purely to Orkney—I am told that between 12 per cent. and 16 per cent. of the land area of Orkney has been designated. I am told that in other parts of the Highlands the figure is as high as 24 per cent. I think that that is excessive. It seems to me to devalue the whole purpose of the Act.
When orders have been made under the Act, there has been very considerable interference with rights long-established; rights held by crofters and by udal landowners for which they have fought for generations. I refer to such matters as the right to open new peat banks and the right to make peat roads. I understand that these are now subject to approval by this remote Nature Conservancy Council. Candidly, to my constituents that appears to be entirely wrong.
I know that a lot of the council's work is quite excellent, but some of its officials do seem to be somewhat tactless and forget that they must proceed by goodwill. I should like to point out that least in Orkney and the Shetlands, the farmers and the crofters are not in the least antipathetic to conservation. Many of them are very good naturalists or keen ornithologists. One is astonished to hear that there is inevitably a conflict between all types of agriculture and conservation.
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Furthermore, my ex-constituents are extremely non-destructive people. I can remember one man who was trying to recruit seamen in the Shetlands saying. "It is a peculiarity of the Shetlanders that they never fight with one another and they never throw coal at the seabirds". This is quite astonishing to the English. The divers which nest in Orkney have used the same lochs, owned by the same crofters and their ancestors, for generations. Neither the divers nor my constituents feel that they need a Nature Conservancy Council to come along and remind them of their mutual obligations.
In my own house three years ago, swallows turned up and built a nest in the coalhole. They soon discovered that a more salubrious habitat would be the local farmer's barn. The local farmer had never seen a swallow, but he was perfectly willing to open his barn all summer. But if a man in a bowler hat from Glasgow had turned up and told him, "We've made an order on your barn and you must keep it open, and you must not remove your machinery without our permission", then reluctantly, excellent man though he is, he might have been rather annoyed. They must exercise tact.
I then come to this question of compensation. I was deeply interested in the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Renton. I have read something about this. It seems quite incredible that we are paying £1·25 million compensation for breaking in, as I understood him, a marshland for the purpose of producing more grain. I understand that there is a vast surplus of grain in Europe. That appears to be the economics of Alice in Wonderland. Furthermore, I do not think that my ex-constituents want compensation for behaving in a decent way to the animals, flowers, and so on, which are around them. But they are getting interested in this whole business. When they hear what the noble Earl, Lord Onslow, said about a large landlord getting £20,000 a year for not cutting down a wood I can assure noble Lords that they will prick up their ears. What do they get? I am not aware that small crofters and farmers have been paid any large sums in compensation. I hope that the noble Lord. Lord Skelmersdale, will assure us that the same principles of compensation apply in Scotland as they do in England and apply to the small landowner and crofter as they do to the big chap. There will be a lot of interest in this and I do not remember anything of this sort so far taking place in Orkney.
When we come to the question of what we can do, to my mind the legislation needs to be looked at again, but that will be a lengthy process and nearly all revision of legislation only makes matters worse. But there are a few things which can be done right away. I am sure that the NCC does admirable work, but I ask it to stop designating areas in Orkney and take a look at what has happened and how existing areas are getting on. This may be true of other areas in the Highlands, too. Secondly, we should look at this question of compensation to see that the same rules are applied to the small man as are applied to the big man and in Scotland as in England. Thirdly, some appeal system, even if it is unofficial, should be initiated. Fourthly, the NCC should ensure that its officials know that all this should proceed voluntarily, as has been said, by agreement and that they should exercise tact, remembering that ultimately it all

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depends on the goodwill of the local people, which in my part of the world is too readily forthcoming.
I wholly agree with the noble Earl who tabled the Question that the type of agricultural legislation which we have had should be altered and should take account of conservation. The public authorities should also take care when they are every year taking over acre upon acre of good land. No doubt some of it is essential for housing, and so on, but they are still going on taking more land than they need. They are still cutting the verges quite unnecessarily in many parts of the country.
I want to conclude by saying a word about the Royal Society for the Preservation of Birds. This society is now the biggest landowner in Orkney. Furthermore I want to pay them a compliment. Their local staff are quite excellent and they did a most remarkable job on Fair Isle, where they benefited not only the birds but also human beings. That was largely due to the genius of George Waterston who, alas, is dead, and to some extent to Ian Pitman. However. I must say that absentee landlords are to my mind a little dangerous. While we may admire the RSPB, it should give up, for the time being, acquiring land in Orkney. I also say to it that I think it is time it promoted a change in the schedule of birds attached to the Act we are discussing. The great skua of Bonxa is becoming an absolute menace in Orkney and Shetland. It has driven Richardson's skua out of Foula and it is a plague upon the mainland of Orkney. If people are worrying about duck and divers it is the great skua which is going to finish them off, not the Orcadian crofter.
Conservation is vital but, not unnaturally, it must be tackled in different ways in different places. We are not suffering from vast industrial developments. We are not suffering from the iniquities of the local farmers. I am afraid it is the enthusiastic bird watchers, and so on, who trample all over the place who are, if anything, damaging the environment. Different treatment is required in different places and I hope that that will he realised and that we shall go from strength to strength, learning from our experiences up to date.
10.29 p.m.
Lord Winstanley: My Lords, my noble friend Lord Grimond having had a good go from this Bench, it necessarily behoves me to be as brief as possible, though I think I should make it absolutely clear that the fact that his name was inadvertently missed from the speakers' list was due to no fault of his. I agree entirely with my noble friend. I have grave suspicions of non-elected bodies exercising unaccountable power without adequate scrutiny. But that is one rather general matter. I am sorry to hear from him that the harmonious spirit of co-operation which has begun to develop between the Nature Conservancy Council and landowners, farmers and others in the countryside in England and Wales has not yet crossed the Pentland Firth. I think we must hope that that mood of co-operation finally arises within the Orkneys, and. indeed, in Shetland, too.
Like other noble Lords, I must thank the noble Earl, Lord Onslow, for bringing us back to a subject on which we spent so very many long hours. I think, some
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years ago. Some noble Lords will recollect that at that time I had the honour to be chairman of the Countryside Commission, a position which is now held with very great distinction by Mr. Derek Barber, with whom I had a discussion about this debate earlier today. It necessarily follows that I took an active part in those debates, as did many noble Lords who are here with us today, and thus, like other noble Lords, I am very interested in the outcome of the very hard work which we did those many years ago.
As a former chairman of the Countryside Commission, my interest has necessarily been rather more towards the countryside than the wildlife aspect of this Act. I think it is right to say that the two are not entirely the same. In that connection, I would say that I very much agreed with Mr. Heseltine, who was, Secretary of State at the time, when he took the decision not to amalgamate the Nature Conservancy Council and the Countryside Commission. It seemed to me that in order to discharge its statutory duties the Nature Conservancy Council has necessarily from time to time to keep people out of the countryside, whereas the statutory duty of the Countryside Commission is to promote access to the countryside: in other words, to get people in. It has always seemed to me that it is rather better for these two bodies to act harmoniously, but separately, in partnership, as they now do, rather than their being amalgamated, which I think perhaps could have resulted in certain difficulties.
In general, I think it is perhaps a little too soon for us to say whether the Act is right or wrong, or whether it requires altering this way or that way. I understand that the Countryside Commission is going to present a full and considered report on the workings of the Act at the end of three years of its existence. I have no doubt that the Nature Conservancy Council will be doing likewise. Possibly at that time in your Lordships' House we might very well have a much fuller debate, rather than just a debate on an Unstarred Question, although I am sure that we are all grateful for this.
Having said that I think it is too soon to make final judgments, we can in the meantime make preliminary assessments. My assessment, like that of most noble Lords who have spoken in this debate, is, I would say, broadly optimistic. I appear to have detected a change in mood. This has been referred to by many noble Lords in their speeches. I think that there is an increasing realisation by people in the countryside —both those who work in it and those who merely visit and use it—that the productive use of land, whether agricultural land for producing food, forestry land for timber, water production, or whatever else, can go hand in hand in harmony with conservation and recreational use. We have seen that develop over the years.
If we look at the history of the Forestry Commission, there was a time when people certainly could not picnic on Forestry Commission land. To talk to forestry commissioners now, you would almost think that they had actually invented picnic sites and not that they were something in which they had reluctantly acquiesced. They knew perfectly well that people were going to come to the forests, and, if they were, it was much better that they should be provided for and that they should come to those places which

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were best for them. That has happened. We have seen the same development with the water authorities. Noble Lords will remember the time when we were not allowed anywhere near reservoirs. We might do objectionable things in the water, or perhaps our dogs might! Now we are able to fish in them, swim in them, sail on them and in fact visit and walk round them.
There is an increasing realisation by those who manage land productively in the countryside that land management and production can go hand in hand with recreational use and with conservation. The realisation by those involved in agriculture that conservation is not necessarily antagonistic to profitable agricultural productivity has certainly grown apace. I think more and more farmers are realising that conservation itself can perhaps be profitable and enjoyable and can form a very proper part of farming, and can, indeed, be properly integrated with farming in the more usual and customary sense.
One particular matter upon which I would comment is this. As some noble Lords may remember, I was fortunate enough to persuade your Lordships to introduce an amendment into the Bill (as it then was) to protect areas of limestone pavement from the point of view of their being very unusual landscape features of immense attraction and as well as immense importance in conservation terms. At the time that I used to visit those particular areas, in North Yorkshire, I found this fascinating area of limestone pavement, which many noble Lords will have seen. I found that lumps of limestone from those pavements were being carted away, mostly by people with lorries, in order to deposit them in rockeries in towns throughout the length and breadth of the country. When I visited the same area recently I could see no further signs of that kind of devastation. Therefore that is one part of the Act which, from my own observation, I can say appears to be working very satisfactorily.
As noble Lords have said, there are of course difficulties. As has been said over and over again, the main difficulty is that of funding—a point very clearly made in the admirable speech of the noble Earl, Lord Peel. He made a very similar point in his maiden speech, when we were discussing the Bill (as it then was) at a very much earlier stage. The point was made very effectively, too, in an outstanding speech by the noble Lord, Lord Chelwood. Personally, I should like to endorse very heartily his plea that sooner or later we should establish a carefully thought out, long-term integrated land use strategy for the whole of Britain. That is an immensely important matter, which I think would justify a full-scale debate in your Lordships' House, rather than merely a few remarks in this particular debate. It was a very important point in a very important speech.
The noble Lord, Lord Middleton, made the point about the 25 per cent. required from the national park authorities for the funding of management agreements. He expressed the view that that was too much for the national park authorities to bear at the moment, unless they are to be financed in a very different way, and he suggested that perhaps the percentages should he changed and that central resources should bear a much bigger proportion of the funding agreements.
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Many noble Lords referred to the time factor. Indeed, the noble Viscount, in his admirable maiden speech, referred to this matter. It is the matter which the noble Lord, Lord Stanley of Alderley, referred to as the 3-month loophole. As was said, there is no doubt that damage can be done to areas during the consultation process before notification. That is something about which we might like to hear from the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, when he comes to reply. So there are two points—funding, and the question of the time factor.
There are a couple of minor points which have been brought to the attention of more or less all noble Lords. Noble Lords will recollect that five years ago we spent a great deal of time on the Bill discussing the whole question of bulls and the running of bulls in fields through which rights of way exist, and so on. It is my view that the Act, as we finally got it, was right. However, it would appear from the information we are now being given by the Ramblers' Association, that either the Act is not always fully understood by those who own the hulls and run them in the particular areas, or perhaps it is not being operated properly. I do not think that there is much that is defective in the Act, but it seems, from what the Ramblers' Association tells us, that it is not working very effectively at the moment in this regard.
The association also makes the point about the ploughing up of footpaths on rights of way and states that though the law requires restoration of those footpaths after they have been ploughed up, many are not being restored. However, those are minor matters.
We have a very difficult task ahead of us. Somehow or other we must reconcile two conflicting national policies, both of which are of immense importance. Land in general and countryside land, in particular, in this country is in very short supply. Indeed, there are few parts of the world where it is in shorter supply. Not only is land and countryside land in short supply but it is also coming under ever increasingly heavy demands. Somehow or other, we have to reconcile two conflicting national policies; first, the need to maximise the productivity of our land be it for food, forestry or whatever, and secondly, to preserve outstanding areas of landscape or natural habitat at the same time. There is a conflict, and it is my view that all conflicts can be resolved at a price. I hope that we shall hear that we are prepared to pay the price for resolving this particular conflict.
10.40 p.m.
Baroness Nicol: My Lords, at this hour, with so much said, I shall try not to repeat any of the major points that have been made. We are grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Onslow, for bringing forward this debate. It is particularly timely in view of the Halvergate discussion that I, too, had come well briefed to cover. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Renton, for saving me the task of going through it all again. I could perhaps say, however, that the reference by the Minister in another place appears in column 954 of the Qfficial Report of 4th April. I have little further information. At this moment work has begun on the 92 acres. Excavators are on site and are preparing, if they have not already begun, to deepen

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the ditches. If, therefore, the noble Lord the Minister is to make any impact on the situation, he must do so quickly. If there is to be an Article 4 direction, which I hope there will be, it will need to be made immediately.
I should like to offer congratulations to the noble Viscount, Lord Blakenham, on his excellent speech. In another part of this House in another context, the chairman referred to the leaders of the RSPB as being descended directly from Saint Francis. We therefore treat him with great respect, and I am sure that that respect is carried on in the House this evening.
The debate has been extremely valuable. Since the Act was passed, there is no doubt that concern for conservation of the environment and the protection of wildlife has continued to grow. The noble Lord, Lord Walston, said that the Act has caused this, and I too am sure that the Act has been largely responsible. However, we must give credit to the BBC for its very sympathetic, informative and sometimes exciting programmes on wildlife which have reached wide audiences and which have heightened public awareness of the value of our natural heritage and the need to be vigilant in its protection. We should give credit, too, to the responsible press reporting of particular issues that have brought environmental problems increasingly to public notice. The noble Lord, Lord Stanley, pulls a face. I did refer to the responsible reporting that takes place, and not to the more exciting press that is not always fair in its descriptions.
We must now examine whether the Act needs to be amended. Part I has not received a great deal of attention except from the noble Earl who opened the debate and from the noble Viscount, Lord Blakenham. Two main problems seem to arise from Part I. The provision to obtain a licence to kill birds that are causing serious damage to agriculture or fisheries is being used responsibly in many cases. But there is evidence that in some cases, especially in Scotland, licences are being issued almost on demand and the subsequent shoots are being used as sporting events, very often profitably. This is prohibited by the Act and by the EEC directive on bird conservation. The proper management of birds causing damage to crops is well established and is being operated successfully in some areas. There is no need for mass killing and DAFS in particular should be called upon to prove the need for their generous issuing of licences. These licences should be issued as a last resort.
The second item in Part I is the important new provision in the Act for the register of birds of prey in captivity. It is now over 20 months since registration started, but no statistics have been issued to show how many birds have been registered, how many are held illegally or how many illegally-held ones have been discovered. Thefts are continuing, and we need to know what progress is being made. Perhaps the Minister can provide answers for those questions.
I turn now to Part II, which has had a great deal of attention from most speakers tonight. I will not dwell on the three-month loophole, though later on I will mention it once more. Obviously it is something that needs to be plugged, and this needs to be done before
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much longer. I have a letter from the National Farmers' Union which draws attention to this very point. It says:
"The NFU understands that eleven new sites"—
I believe the RSPB think it is 12, but we will not quibble over that—
"have suffered some damage during the consultation period before notification, and before the legal requirements to notify operations can apply. In order to prevent this occurring, the NFU had indicated that it would support a short amending bill to require occupiers to follow the procedures presently applicable to notified SSSIs during this period".
The letter goes on to say:
"The NFU believes that the Act should be properly enforced, for example through the prosecution of deliberate offenders".
I understand that there has not been a single prosecution of offenders under this Act, and I think one must ask, "Why?"
I believe the NCC are so worried about the effects of the loophole that we have just discussed that many sites which await notification are being left on ice purely because the NCC fear they will be destroyed if they notify them formally. Surely that is the very opposite effect from what the Act intended, and it is a great pity if that is happening. Therefore, we need to see stronger action taken against people who are offending and in favour of plugging the loophole.
The majority of the existing SSSIs are still not renotified and thus are not protected by the Act. I understand that the NCC estimate that they will not complete the task until the end of 1986 at the earliest. Here I can give noble Lords one example of what is happening for lack of renotification. I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Stanley, for one, will be relieved to hear that this is not the act of a farmer. In a village in Cambridgeshire there is a chalk quarry in which a rare man orchid was growing. It has been a nature reserve since 1948 but has not been renotified, for the usual reasons of pressure on time and because everyone supposed it to be safe because it was so well known.
This quarry was let to a rifle club which has now bulldozed the site—not simply ploughed it or pruned it in any other way, but bulldozed it. Although the local authority in question is to take action against the club, that does nothing to lessen the plight of the orchid, which is unlikely to survive. There are a growing number of incidents, even on renotified sites, of owner-occupiers carrying out damaging operations without consulting the NCC as they are required to do. I understand that, to date, the NCC know of 17 of these, but still there are no prosecutions.
During the Second Reading of the Bill there were a number of questions raised on Part II. Some of them included the SSSIs, and I think it might be useful to refresh our memories on these and to see how they have fared. I understand that at that time there were in the country 4,000 SSSIs, of which 2.000 were considered to he at risk. My noble friend Lord Melchett, who, incidentally, very much regrets that he cannot be here this evening because he is out of the country, made a calculation that with 4 per cent. to 5 per cent. being destroyed or damaged each year at that time, by the end of four years—that is, now—25 per cent. would have gone. I must ask the Minister: has this fear proved correct? Do we have the figure for

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this? Can he say how many have been destroyed or damaged in the last four years?
Much has been said about the philosophy of continuing compensation and, indeed, about the grant system generally. I was interested to see that it was during the Second Reading debate at col. 1050 that the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, himself asked this question. He is now in the happy position of being able to answer his own question. I hope that when he replies he will be able to give us a well-considered answer on the value of continuing compensation.
One other point which arose on Second Reading which is worth mentioning, which did not find its way into the Act and on which perhaps we could also be informed, was the question of marine reserves. They were excluded from the Act. We should ask whether that exclusion is still justified. Perhaps I may remind the House that the Berne Convention on the Conservation of European Wildlife and Habitats and the Bonn Convention on the Protection of Migratory Species make it a duty to protect marine environments as well as those on land. Are the Government satisfied that we are not in breach of these conventions? Perhaps 1 may remind the Minister that of the 30 estuaries in Europe and North Africa that harbour wintering birds, half are British, and it seems to me that we have a great responsibility.
The Earl of Onslow: My Lords, I believe that marine reserves were included in the Act in Committee.
Baroness Nicol: My Lords, I beg your pardon. I failed to find this in spite of my search. However, my question still stands. Perhaps the Minister can tell us whether that too is working. There is no need to say any more on the question of compensation, so I should like to touch very briefly on Part III of the Act, which the noble Lord, Lord Winstanley, mentioned.
The Ramblers' Association has raised the point about hulls. I trust that we shall receive an answer from the Minister on that matter. However, I should like to go a little further on the question of reinstatement of ploughed footpaths and suggest that, in fact, the law needs to be strengthened, and that it is not simply a question of the existing law. I think that the law should be strengthened to the extent that members of the public should have a right to prosecute those who unlawfully plough up rights of way. Perhaps the Minister would comment on that.
I shall conclude my remarks fairly briefly. The question was raised by the noble Lord, Lord Gibson, about the need to bring all these policies under one hat, and he suggested that it should be that of MAFF. I think that environmentalists may be forgiven if their blood runs a little cold at this suggestion, because the approach of MAFF so far has been patchy, to say the least. There would need to be a distinct change of MAFF policy and a much greater understanding of the needs of conservation before that would be an acceptable solution. Indeed, reference has been made to the Forestry Commission. Although Forestry Commission policies may have become more enlightened in regard to picnic places, they are anything but enlightened in regard, for example, to the replanting of broad-leafed trees and the selling off of particular
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pieces of land, though I know that that was under Government direction. However, I do not think that we should take too kindly to bringing all those responsibilities under one hat without a very distinct policy being spelt out.
There appears to be no doubt at the end of this discussion that amending legislation is needed—first, for the three-month loophole and secondly, to give power to the NCC to obtain an injunction restraining activity pending negotiations on a Section 29 conservation order. I think that that is too urgent to wait for the results of trials, because damage is being done. Indeed, this particular protection should apply to national parks as well, which I understand are not covered by it at the moment.
Thirdly, there is the point made by the noble Viscount, Lord Blakenham, that increases in penalties for offenders need to be very much greater than they are now. They were peanuts even in 1980 and they are certainly not worth considering now. There needs to be a considerable increase in penalties. We need to strengthen the law in relation to ploughed-in rights of way, and no doubt if we were to embark on the path of amending legislation there would be many other suggestions forthcoming.
I am assured by the official Opposition in another place that it is willing to make some of its parliamentary time available for the introduction of amending legislation, and is willing to co-operate with the Government in every way to speed the process of an agreed Bill. This is a generous and unusual offer, and we hope it will be acted upon by the Minister, and with the urgency that this evening's debate has shown to he necessary.
10.56 p.m.
Lord Skelmersdale: My Lords, I hope I can speak for the whole House and say that it seems strange to be speaking in a debate on this subject without the advice from behind me of the late Lord Glenkinglas, an acknowledged expert in this as in so many other fields. He is sadly missed by your Lordships. However, I am delighted to welcome the maiden speech of my noble friend Lord Blakenham, with his experience as chairman of the RSPB. I hope we shall hear him again soon and often when he feels he can spread his wings but still refrain from the controversy on this regrettably most controversial of subjects.
In welcoming my noble friend Lord Onslow's Question this evening I am particularly pleased that it refers both to the environmental and the agricultural point of view. Under normal circumstances my noble friend Lord Belstead would be on the Bench beside me to hear, for example, the interesting and rather firm, almost radical, speech of my noble friend Lord Chelwood. He has asked me to apologise to the House that a long-standing ministry engagement outside London prevents this. However, he agrees with me that the Government's job must be to examine the matter in a balanced way and also to prevent those involved from taking up entrenched positions.
Conservation at all costs can no more be right than defending to the last the farmer's right to do what he will with his fields and hedgerows wherever he may farm. Neither attitude is helpful to constructive

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discussion; nor, indeed, is the fact that hardly a day goes by without an article attacking the Wildlife and Countryside Act being published. That being said, I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Nicol, that there are many balanced and informative programmes on the television, and articles in the press. We in Government also seek a fair balance. The Government yield to none in the strength of their commitment to conservation of the countryside. Our efforts to bring the Wildlife and Countryside Act onto the statute book are ample proof of that.
At the same time—and I take the point of the noble Lord, Lord Walston—we have responsibility for the continued prosperity of the farming industry, and that responsibility cannot be dismissed lightly, as some of our critics would, it seems, have us do. Farming is as much a business as, say, making ball-bearings. Safeguarding the means for farmers to achieve high productivity and earn a decent living is important, and it is unreasonable to say otherwise. The Government firmly believe that these two objectives need not be irreconcilable.
The 1981 Act represented the best safeguards for the countryside which could at the time practicably be achieved. It emerged, a 4-winged imago, from a chrysalis matured in your Lordships' House by my noble friend Lord Avon, who was the best possible (I might almost say fortuitous) choice: a man who was neither a farmer nor identified with the conservation lobby. He was therefore in the best position to weigh arguments dispassionately and to present them to colleagues. It would not be untrue to say that he did this often overburdened with ideas for improvements from all sides of the House.
Lord Renton: My Lords, I think that in justice my noble friend should mention that my noble friend Lord Onslow farms a great deal of his own land as well as being a keen conservationist, and therefore perhaps he was an ideal person to introduce this debate.
Lord Skelmersdale: My Lords, I take my noble friend's point, but I think I ought to get on with my speech. It would not be untrue to say that my noble friend Lord Avon—or, indeed, anybody speaking from this Box at that time—was often overburdened with ideas for improvements from all sides of this House: ideas which were not practical at that time because the agreement of all those involved—conservationists, farmers, Government departments, your Lordships and Members of another place, not necessarily in that order—was not forthcoming.
Many of the disagreements which arose during the passage of the Bill have resurfaced since and were, I thought, exemplified by the two adjacent speeches of my noble friends Lord Chelwood and Lord Middleton. But there is no doubt in my mind that we could not have had this balanced debate which we have had today during the passing of that Bill or, indeed, at any time up to the present day. The message I have received tonight is that your Lordships have a general desire to make the Act work. At least, I confess
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I had drawn this conclusion until I heard the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Grimond, which rather threw me.
The most often perceived failing of the Act is not actually in the Act at all. I refer to the vexed question of management agreements and the money for them. I answered a Starred Question from my noble friend Lord Bruce-Gardyne on this subject last month. I was able to explode the myth that they were already too expensive. But the noble Baroness, Lady Nicol, and other noble Lords, made the point this evening that a vast queue of these agreements is building up.
We are, of course, well aware of the situation and undoubtedly the annual financial burden under the present arrangements will increase significantly. We shall, incidentally, need to review the financial guidelines for compensation in due course—it was always understood that we would. But there is no sign vet that management agreements will present an impossible burden. Such scare stories can only erode confidence in management agreements. Let us have no more of it, my Lords.
Nor should we give credence to the myth that farmers have conservationists over a barrel. The argument runs that a management agreement is nothing more than an ill-disguised grant to a farmer for not doing something which he in any case had no intention of doing. Or to put it another way, it is the farmer trying it on. That is to under-rate the know-how of the conservation agencies which have the job of making these agreements. Their staff—for example at the Nature Conservancy Council—have a good deal of experience in dealing with farmers. They have the job of making a management agreement to further the interests of conservation when, and only when, they consider it necessary. They may feel that some other way is better—possibly a straight purchase of the land, or possibly, though I understand this to be rare, a non-financial understanding. And one should not forget Section 39 of the Act, which gives local planning authorities generally the power to make management agreements for conservation and amenity purposes anywhere in the country.
Going hack a sentence or two, I think the case of Troutsdale Moor, to which my noble friend Lord Middleton referred, was in fact an unfortunate example of a speculative application for grant, because in January 1982 a prospective tenant consulted the National Parks Authority over a proposal to plough and reseed 200 acres of moorland, and from that single application a big brouhaha (I think that perhaps is the expression) erupted in the press. It subsequently transpired that the owner of the moor had never had any intention of letting his land in the first place, so the improvement never took place. So although the National Parks Authority turned down the management agreement, or did not pursue it—and they did this, as I understand it, before they had contacted the owner of the land—they were in this case perfectly correct.
Now critics can fairly say that it is risky to call a farmer's bluff, because it would be disastrous if one got it wrong. I acknowledge the point—there are risks in this—but let us not exaggerate the situation. Are we to suppose that all over the country there are farmers who would have no intention of farming their land

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more profitably if denied a management agreement? In individual cases, inertia might prevail. In the generality of cases, it would be against nature. Moreover, the farming community is well aware that the voluntary approach to conservation is very much on trial. They know full well the adverse publicity which would follow if cases went adrift because signals were wrongly given or wrongly interpreted during negotiations. They know that the likely consequences would be the introduction of compulsory controls through fresh legislation. It is not in the interests of the farming community itself that the voluntary approach should fail.
To believe otherwise is merely to give substance to that other myth, the big bad ogre of popular imagination, the farmer. It is almost a truism that before the public in general became aware of the problems of conserving the countryside, it was the farmer who produced the countryside as we know it today. The countryside has not taken care of itself, at least since the enclosure Acts. Putting it in a glass case has never been an option, and it is not now. The fears of my noble friend Lord Stanley of Alderley regarding the Nature Conservancy Council's attitude are unfounded.
If this glass case were an option, it would force me, at least, to emigrate from the country. Farming practices of the past have produced important elements in what is now regarded as our heritage—dry stone walls, spectacular moorland, the Norfolk Broads, to name just a few. I wonder, in parenthesis, what would have been the attitude of conservationists had grants been available for dry stone walls at the time of the enclosures. I wonder what future generations will regard as the equivalent contribution of current farming methods. Change has a habit of spawning new traditions, new likes. Whether this is an improvement of the countryside is a matter for individual taste. The Government—any government—are not the arbiters of taste. Let us not be complacent about changes to the countryside, but, equally, let us not be too fixed in our ideas. Let us try to be practical about what can be achieved.
The noble Lord, Lord Grimond, still appears to misunderstand the Act. The objectives of SSSIs are not to turn the clock back, nor to prevent any change of use. They are to prevent damaging new operations in sensitive areas. I would tell the noble Lord and the House that the Nature Conservancy Council is accountable because under paragraph 17(1) of Schedule 3 to the Nature Conservancy Council Act 1973 the NCC is required to present an annual report to the Secretary of State for the Environment. This is then laid before Parliament under paragraph 17(2). So there is double protection and double responsibility of the NCC. I agree with the noble Lord that it is only right that that should be so.
My noble friend Lord Chelwood produced a further myth which sent shudders through my soul. "MAFF lives in a siege economy", he said. I believe that the contrary is true. While the ministry does an excellent job in promoting an efficient and competitive British farming industry, it also commits substantial resources to the promotion of conservation and the protection of the environment, through both the Agricultural
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Development and Advisory Service and its capital grants scheme.
I take great pride in being a member of a Government who have reduced the rate of inflation from 22 per cent. to 5.2 per cent. and interest rates from 18 per cent. to around 9 per cent. Even with a comparatively low retail price index, any proposal for change in management agreements has to fit in with one's general ideas on the economy. Every penny that the Government raise has to come either from borrowing, which puts up interest rates, or the taxpayer, which puts up personal taxation. Both, as a last resort, increase the rate of inflation.
Anything which calls for large sums of new money is not an option. But let us be quite clear on this point: conservation has a cost. It also has a priority which must be balanced against other priorities, though I was interested by the comment of the noble Lord, Lord Gibson. I think he would be a brave man who would distinguish between priorities as regards grants for the arts and grants for the environment.
Any money taken from elsewhere in the economy for conservation or anything else will inevitably reduce the share of the cake of those who are currently getting it. However, I agree with my noble friend Lord Middleton that if Parliament wills the ends, it must also will the means. I can assure the noble Lord, Lord Winstanley, that the Government have every intention that it shall.
There is no way that I can satisfactorily answer all the points that have been mentioned in this debate this evening. Indeed, I could make a complete speech in answer to each of your Lordships, so deeply do I feel about this subject. However, I shall carefully comb through the Official Report tomorrow and, with permission, will write to those noble Lords who I have treated less well than I might have done in other circumstances.
But there are one or two important points which I must speak about. Like my noble friend Lord Onslow, I recognise the immense value of the Manpower Services Commission schemes for environmental improvement. Indeed, both the Brecon Beacons and the Peak District National Parks have benefited very substantially from the availability of Manpower Services Commission labour. However, the schemes are managed by local area manpower pools comprising representatives of local industry and trade unions. It is for them to decide on the allocation of resources in their areas. Re-allocation of the MSC labour pool on Offa's Dyke or anywhere else is a matter for them.
But the most pressing case of today is undoubtedly that of Halvergate Marshes, which was mentioned by both my noble friend Lord Renton and the noble Baroness, Lady Nicol. I can tell the House that there is no question of a breakdown in the arrangements whereby a standstill has been negotiated with certain landowners for a year pending consideration of a more permanent arrangement for protection of the Broads now being considered by Ministers. Notification was originally given of intention to plough 784 acres this year, of which 475 acres were regarded as of high landscape value. Of the latter, 383 acres have been safeguarded. This leaves 92 acres, which, it appears,

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will soon be ploughed. The landscape policy of this area has been marred by the previous ploughing of adjacent land, and the Broads authority have taken the view that, in these circumstances, it will be totally unreasonable to conclude a management agreement at a higher price than in neighbouring areas.
On the subject of conservation vis-à-vis the water industry—a point raised by the noble Baroness, Lady White—I can tell her that a series of research studies relating to the methodology of surveying aspects of river corridor wildlife has recently reached reporting stage. The time is now ripe for my department to set up a meeting with the interested parties. Although no agenda has yet been circulated, papers developed from the research reports received are in preparation to provide guidance for the committee at its first meeting, which is planned to take place in the early autumn. A linked but separate question of the noble Baroness concerned the outcome of the review by the interdepartmental committee on land drainage. I can tell her that this outcome is a consultation paper which the Government intend to publish during the summer.
My noble friend Lord Onslow mentioned the problem in Creag Meagaidh (if that is the way to pronounce it). The application made by Fountain Forestry Limited for grant aid for their proposal to plant some 900 acres is before the Secretary of State for Scotland at present. I am sure that he will take into account—and I will make sure that he does—the points made by noble Lords in this debate before he advises the Forestry Commission of his decision.
The noble Lord, Lord Oram, will. I am sure, forgive me if I do not follow him too deeply into the subjects of national parks and the Access to the Countryside Act 1947, which first introduced areas of outstanding natural beauty. I am having quite enough trouble as it is with this particular Act this evening. I would say that on his question about the Department of Environment Circular 1/83 (which was issued when Part III of the Act, concerning footpaths. came into force) it contained the following words:
"The provisions described in this circular are not considered to necessitate any additional local authority manpower or increased expenditure".
Before the noble Lord leaps to his feet, I would say that the Act introduced the system which has enabled some reviews started under the old system, but not completed because of the large number of objections received, to be amended. The new procedures will enable continuous progress to he made in keeping definitive maps up to date. No extra staff should therefore be needed by local authorities, although we recognise that surveying authorities may be faced by large numbers of applications for modification orders in the early years of a new system; but as an ongoing commitment I do not think that new staff are necessary.
My noble friend Lord Peel spoke about extending prior notification arrangements for grant to the whole countryside. He will remember that prior approval for capital grants through the whole country was abolished in 1980. One reason for this was to save manpower, and indeed it has—400 man years. However, prior notification does still apply in SSSIs and, as he said, in national parks. My noble friend
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Lord Dundee suggested changes in the tax structure, which I shall certainly look at and compare with grant aid. I would not, however, like to follow him down the road of yet more official bodies in the countryside.
My noble friend Lord Peel asked about renotification and notification of sites of special scientific interest. The Nature Conservancy Council tells me that in terms of actual work done the programme of notification is about half finished and is on schedule to be substantially complete throughout Great Britain by the end of 1986. I believe that the programme in Scotland is running ahead of that in England and may be completed earlier, perhaps by the end of next year.
The noble Baroness, Lady White, spoke about the renotification of SSSIs in Wales. I do not have the figures, so perhaps I might be allowed to write to her on that.
The noble Baroness, Lady Nicol, was I think the only Member of your Lordships' House to bring up the subject of court proceedings. I must confess that it was getting rather late at night and I did not follow her completely. I shall read with great interest what she said. My first reaction is that if any damage was done during the three-month period, which I think she may have been talking about, but I am not sure, there would of course be no prosecutions as it is not illegal. The noble Baroness also talked about marine nature reserves. Provision for marine nature reserves (my noble friend Lord Onslow was quite right; they were included: my memory said Report stage, but I am sure that he is right and it was Committee stage) is in Section 36 of the Act. Orders are made by the Secretary of State on an application by the Nature Conservancy Council. No applications have yet been made, but I understand that the Nature Conservancy Council has at least one under consideration, that for the Isles of Scilly.
I cannot leave this debate without saying what is the Government's attitude to the Wildlife and Countryside Act. I would say initially it is much the same as that of most noble Lords who have spoken this evening. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Winstanley, and other noble Lords that it is rather early to be passing definitive judgment on the success or failure of the Act, because it came fully into effect only a little over a year ago with the publication of the statutory financial guidelines. But I believe that we have seen enough to indicate that the present system is not fundamentally flawed as some would have us think, but management agreements are coping with the pressures placed upon them and will continue to do so, particularly if we can continue to foster mutual understanding between conservationists and farmers; and this, I believe, we are now beginning to see happen.
Conditions are now better than they were three years ago. Indeed, at Question Time in another place today my honourable friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary offered to meet the official Opposition spokesman, Dr. David Clark, on this particular subject. I could not have seen that taking place even three years ago. I hope that this invitation, which was genuinely and generously meant, will be taken up as soon as possible.

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I believe that there is a genuine will among everyone involved to break the logjam between the needs of conservation and of agriculture. As well as persuading farmers to be more aware of what they can do for conservation, we need to do more to educate conservationists in the requirements of the farmer. A great advance in this respect—I agree with my noble friend who made the point—are the inelegantly named FWAGs—Farming and Wildlife Advisory Groups—which from comparatively modest beginnings are now in most counties, and recently the group formed its own trust to further its objectives.
The formation of these FWAGs is an expression of confidence in the future. But if that is the encouraging side of the coin, I would be naïve in the extreme not to acknowledge that there have been conservation losses since the passing of the Act. Having said that, I should have to be very sure, before pointing a finger, that the losses I have been talking about have happened since the commencement of the Act.
It is no good talking in this context about losses over the last 10, 20 or 30 years or indeed, as the noble Baroness, Lady Nicol, did (as I think she said, on the inspiration of her noble friend Lord Melchett), about the losses of the last four years. What we are talking about is whether this Act is actually working to reduce conservation losses and whether it can be further strengthened and amended to prevent those losses which are still going on and which have been identified.
I shall not try to pretend that the workings of the Act are wholly without their problems. For instance, we recognise that one immediate cause for concern is the so-called three-month loophole in the arrangements for notifying SSSIs. I am most concerned about the way the loophole has been exploited, as my noble friend Lord Stanley has admitted, albeit by an extremely small number of people. Indeed, it is more than significant, as my noble friend Lord Onslow has said, that agreement on closing it is now closer by a million miles than it was only three years ago.
In this connection, like other noble Lords, I note that the Wildlife and Countryside (Amendment) Bill to amend Section 28 of the Act we are discussing has been introduced and is due to have its Second Reading in another place on 6th July. It would be quite improper for me to pre-empt that debate by an announcement tonight of the Government's position in your Lordships' House.
Lord Chelwood: My Lords, may I put one very quick point to my noble friend? I feel sure I am right, from my experience of another place, that a Private Member's Bill, even if it is not particularly controversial, introduced at this stage, even if it were to gain a Second Reading (which is perhaps unlikely) has little chance at all of getting on to the statute book. If I am right in thinking that the Government would like to see quite minor, but very important, amendments made, would my noble friend at any rate give me an assurance that the Government will give thought to providing Government time for this Bill or even taking the Bill over?
Lord Skelmersdale: My Lords, as I sought to say—and of course I bow to my noble friend's superior knowledge of proceedings in another place-1 do not think it would be proper to make an announcement before the Second Reading of that Bill, which I am assured will be happening on 6th July.
I do not think that, at this time of night, the House would appreciate my going into the third part of the enormous subject of further ways of improving the countryside. But I would sum up by saying that the Government will continue to keep a close watch on the way the Act is working as a whole, while recognising that many of the present worries can be solved by administrative means. I can assure your Lordships that we shall not hesitate to take further measures if these are shown to be necessary. If our monitoring of the working of the Act should lead at any time to the view that there is a case for amending legislation, we should of course take into account the eloquent pleas made by noble Lords this evening.
Baroness Nicol: Before the noble Lord sits down, did I understand him to say that the 92 acres at Halvergate are in fact to be sacrificed on the grounds that they are peripheral and adjoin land which is already ploughed and that they are therefore not to be sold?—because does he not see that, if that is so, there will be a domino effect and they in turn will become the periphery of the next piece, and that could be the end of the Halvergate?
Lord Skelmersdale: My Lords, the noble Baroness did understand me correctly, but I disagree with her that there will be a domino effect, for the simple reason that on one side of this land there is ploughed land and on the other side there is a railway line. I think my noble friend Lord Renton, who obviously knows the area, would confirm this. Therefore I see this as a totally isolated piece of land.

Housing and Building Control Bill
Returned from the Commons with one of the Lords amendments to a Commons amendment disagreed to but amendments proposed in lieu thereof; with the Commons disagreement to the Lords amendment on which the Lords have insisted and the Commons amendments in lieu thereof not insisted on but with an amendment to the said Lords amendment and with consequential amendments to the Bill; with Commons amendments to a Lords amendment to which the Lords have disagreed not insisted on; with certain Commons amendments to another Lords amendment to which the Lords have disagreed not insisted on but amendments proposed in lieu thereof; and with the remaining Commons amendment to the Lords amendment to which the Lords have disagreed insisted on with a reason for such insistence.
Aylesbury Vale District Council Bill [H.L.]
Reported from the Unopposed Bill Committee with amendments.
Bournemouth Borough Council Bill [H.L.]
The Queen's Consent signified; Bill reported from the Select Committee on Unopposed Provisions with amendments.

Capital Transfer Tax Bill [H.L.]
Reported from the Joint Committee without amendment, and recommitted to a committee of the Whole House.
House adjourned at twenty-four minutes past eleven o'clock.