Lords Sitting of 1 May 1984

Preamble
The House met at half-past two of the clock: The CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES on the Woolsack.
Prayers—Read by the Lord Bishop of Gloucester.

Army Medical Officers: Under Establishment
Lord Murton of Lindisfarne: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in the name of the Earl of Cork and Orrery on the Order Paper, and I have my noble friend's authority to do so.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government how many units of the Army in the United Kingdom, or of the British Army of the Rhine, are without their establishment of medical officers.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Armed Forces (Lord Trefgarne): My Lords, 16 out of a total of 84 regimental medical officer posts are vacant in the United Kingdom and five out of 94 in BAOR. The fact that the posts are unfilled does not mean that soldiers in those units lack medical care. Where necessary, cover is provided by area group medical practices or by civilian doctors employed by the Ministry of Defence on a full or part-time basis.
Lord Murton of Lindisfarne: My Lords, may I ask my noble friend the Minister two further questions. First, can I have an assurance that when any unit embarks overseas on training, an attached medical officer will be in attendance? Secondly, could my noble friend devise an arrangement whereby units in the United Kingdom which are on field firing and other exercises have adequate medical cover?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, I can assure my noble friend that we always make absolutely certain that the necessary medical care is available in both of the circumstances referred to by my noble friend.
Lord Mayhew: My Lords, can the Minister tell us how many qualified doctors there are in the army now, and can he also say whether the army is making a bigger demand on the civilian medical services?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, I do not have the precise figure of the total number of doctors in the army at present, but it is of the order of 500.
Lord Wells-Pestell: My Lords, may I ask the Minister to indicate to the House the reason for these vacancies?
Lord Trefgarne: Yes, my Lords. The reason is as follows: recruiting is quite good, but the difficulty is that we do not always manage to retain these doctors for as long as we would wish. We are looking at this matter very carefully.

The "General Belgrano"
2.38 p.m.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what is their reaction to the statement in the memoirs of ex-Secretary of State Alexander Haig that the Argentine junta was in the act of considering President Belaunde's peace proposals when HMS "Conqueror" sank the "General Belgrano".
The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Baroness Young): My Lords, as has been made clear on many occasions, we had received no news of the Peruvian peace proposals at the time that the "Belgrano" was sunk. It follows that the Government can have had no knowledge of the Argentine junta's consideration of them.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, is the noble Baroness aware that according to ex-Secretary of State Haig (and I quote):
"Nevertheless, he"—
that is, President Belaunde—
"gained acceptance in principle from both parties".
The second quotation is as follows:
"While the junta was in the act of considering it, the submarine HMS 'Conqueror' sank the Argentinian cruiser 'General Belgrano' outside the blockade zone".
The third quotation is:
"The Argentines, reacting angrily to the bad news, rejected the new peace proposal".
Although I admit that General Haig's dates are confused—
Noble Lords: Oh!
Lord Hatch of Lusby: Yes, the dates are confused, my Lords, but the days are not. This was a report in his memoirs as to what happened on the Sunday—that is, on the morning of 2nd May—when he further said that the agreement was down to words. At that moment our Foreign Secretary of the time, Francis Pym—
Noble Lords: Question!
Lord Hatch of Lusby:—was in Washington. Why did he not know of these negotiations between General Haig and President Belaunde? And if he did know, why did he not relay them to Chequers?
Baroness Young: My Lords, in the first place, I do not answer for Mr. Haig. As to the other points which the noble Lord has made, may I make it quite clear that it was the Peruvian Foreign Minister, Dr. Javier Arias Stella, who first told the British Ambassador in Lima what the Peruvians had in mind? This conversation took place four and a half hours after the "General Belgrano" had been sunk, unbeknown to either of them. The ambassador immediately reported by telegram to London what the Foreign Minister had told him of the Peruvian ideas, and there was no question of Mr. Wallace accepting them in principle.
Lord Orr-Ewing: My Lords, does my noble friend recall that in the "Panorama" programme of 16th April a senior Argentine admiral, when asked if he would have taken this action, said, "If I had been responsible for the British forces and their safety, I should certainly have taken exactly the same action"?
Baroness Young: My Lords, I thank my noble friend for his intervention. I might add that Rear-Admiral Lombardo also made it clear in the "Panorama" programme that the "General Belgrano" was involved in a pincer movement with orders to attack British ships and that when he ordered it to withdraw he ordered it to withdraw to its former position, not to its home port. All these statements are entirely consistent with the British Government's account of the circumstances.
Lord Annan: My Lords, is the noble Baroness as astonished as I am that General Haig should be called in evidence by the noble Lord when General Haig's book shows that the British Prime Minister was always willing to seek compromises at a time when the junta was not? Is the noble Baroness aware that General Haig also reports that the decisions of the junta had to be ratified by local commanders down to corps level? In that case how could negotiations be carried on when decisions, apparently agreed by the junta, had then to be ratified in that way? Finally, is the noble Baroness as puzzled as I am that the authors of the book The Sinking of the Belgrano, upon which the noble Lord has so often relied for his information, appear to be those who would sooner have seen our ships, our seamen, our sailors and our troops at the bottom of the sea rather than that it could have been said that we had failed to obtain a settlement at the 13th hour?
Baroness Young: My Lords, I am much obliged for the question of the noble Lord, Lord Annan, and I agree entirely with what he has said.
Viscount Hanworth: My Lords, does not the noble Baroness agree that in the circumstances there really is no point in pursuing this matter, and that that in fact it may be very harmful to do so?
Baroness Young: My Lords, I believe that I detect a feeling in the House that your Lordships have had quite enough of questions about the sinking of the "General Belgrano".
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, if the noble Baroness has seen the "Panorama" programme to which her own Back-Benchers have referred, is she aware that the Peruvian Foreign Minister told the interviewer on that programme that the British Ambassador in Lima, Charles Wallace, was kept informed by telephone at every step of the negotiations?
Is the noble Baroness further aware that on the same programme the then Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, Cecil Parkinson, said that the War Cabinet was aware of the negotiations, and in particular those of President Belaunde, at the time that they were considering at Chequers the decision on the "General Belgrano"? In this case, is the noble Baroness saying that the Secretary of State for the United States, the
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British Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, and the Foreign Minister of Peru were all lying, or mistaken? Or is it not the case that the War Cabinet and the Prime Minister knew of those negotiations at the time that the decision was taken to sink the "General Belgrano"?
Baroness Young: My Lords, I do not speak for Mr. Haig, and I do not wish to comment further on his book. The facts of the situation are as I have described them this afternoon in my Answer to the original Question from the noble Lord, Lord Hatch of Lusby—and the question has been answered on many occasions before.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords—
Noble Lords: No!
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, as the noble Baroness has already answered a question about the "Panorama" programme from one of her own Back-Benchers, will she be so courteous as to answer my question about the same programme?
Lord Derwent: My Lords, is not the noble Lord, Lord Hatch, abusing the privilege of this House by asking the same question time after time, even though he receives the same answer?
Baroness Young: My Lords, I have answered the questions which have arisen from the "Panorama" programme; and the specific question asked by my noble friend Lord Orr-Ewing—and I have indicated the timing of our knowledge of the Peruvian peace proposals.

Royal Military Academy: Glandular Fever
2.45 p.m.
Lord Newall: 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 many cases of glandular fever there have been at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst in 1983–84; how many cadets were relegated or left the Army as a result; and whether they are satisfied with the level of diagnosis in the early stages.
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, an outbreak of glandular fever occurred in the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, commencing early in 1983. From the onset until March 1984 a total of 55 clinical cases were confirmed on the basis of laboratory tests, and there were a further 18 cases in which laboratory tests were inconclusive. As a result of the disease, 32 cadets were back-termed and two were medically boarded and fell below retention standards. I am wholly satisfied with the level of medical care available at the academy.
Lord Newall: My Lords, I thank my noble friend for his very full reply. Is it not clear that possibly the Army is losing a great many good potential officers? As they are all perhaps under such great stress at Sandhurst,

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would it not be a good idea to lengthen the term at Sandhurst, rather than put these cadets under so much stress in a short period?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, with respect to my noble friend, that is another question. As I stated in my original Answer, only two cadets out of the 55 or more who contracted the disease have had to leave the academy and not continue.
Lord Ennals: My Lords, does not the Minister agree that there is something very disturbing about a situation in which 55 cadets develop a disease? Can the noble Lord explain why he is satisfied with the level of diagnosis? Does he not agree that the situation of this number of young people contracting glandular fever would be considered most peculiar if it were found in any other institution? Is the noble Lord not concerned about this, and ought there not to be further inquiries?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, I am advised that this disease is vey difficult to diagnose and singularly difficult to control. In fact, many cases are never diagnosed. There is no vaccine against it, and some 20 per cent. of healthy adults can be carriers. The disease is carried in the throat and is fed by coughing and sneezing. However, I am pleased to say that there are now only four or five cadets still suffering from the after-effects of this outbreak.

The Self-Employed
2.48 p.m.
Lord Rodney: 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 has been the increase in the number of self-employed people since 1st January 1982.
Viscount Long: My Lords, the latest firm estimates available of self-employed people are for mid-1981, when there were 2,057,000 self-employed people in Great Britain. It has been assumed that self-employment has continued to increase at about 100,000 a year since then; but we will not be able to establish the position more certainly until the results of the 1983 labour force survey become available later this year.
Lord Rodney: My Lords, while thanking my noble friend the Minister for that very encouraging reply, may I ask whether it is possible to assess the extent to which the special measures introduced to help small businessmen have contributed to this favourable trend? Secondly, is it possible to attribute these figures to particular enterprise zones?
Viscount Long: My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for his supplementary question. There are a number of different schemes but I shall bring two to the notice of your Lordships' House. The first is the
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enterprise allowance scheme, which is designed to help unemployed people who wish to start their own businesses but who are deterred from doing so because of the loss of benefit. The £40 a week allowance helps compensate for this loss during the first year, while the new business is being established.
The second scheme which may be of interest to your Lordships is the pilot loan guarantee scheme, under which the Government can guarantee 80 per cent. loans of up to £75,000. This scheme has helped many small businesses which have been unable to obtain backing in traditional ways because of a lack of security or track record. In the period 1st June 1981, when it was introduced, to 31st March 1984, 14,286 firms were helped with a total guarantee value of £469 million. The scheme is currently being reviewed.
I think my noble friend asked a further question about the distribution of places. Places under the enterprise allowance scheme are allocated to each area broadly in line with their share of national unemployment.
Baroness Nicol: My Lords, can the Minister say whether the figures he has quoted include the figures for workers who have formed themselves into co-operatives? If not, are those figures available?
Viscount Long: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, but I have to apologise as I do not have those figures. I will write to the noble Baroness in that respect.
Lord Maude of Stratford-upon-Avon: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that the figure of increase would have been very much larger had not the Inland Revenue persisted every year in forcing numbers of self-employed people to become employees, and that this has resulted in a number of people being unable to start up and expand what would have been useful businesses?
Viscount Long: Yes, my Lords, there has been that problem, of course; but now, with the Government's new schemes, they are trying to help out, with the Inland Revenue not taking too much from their pockets.
Lord Jenkins of Putney: My Lords, is the noble Viscount aware that the percentage increase in bankruptcies under the Government's aegis since 1979 greatly exceeds the increase in the number of small businesses?
Viscount Long: My Lords, I think the noble Lord is moving away from the Question.
Lord Bruce of Donington: My Lords, will the noble Viscount give the House some information as to the extent to which his right honourable friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer gave consideration to the future of those self-employed people who are engaged in the takeaway food business before he imposed the 15 per cent. tax on takeaway food? Will he give the House a further indication of what future effect the Chancellor expects as a result of this grossly excessive tax imposition on the cheaper foods?
Viscount Long: My Lords, I am glad to hear that the noble Lord, Lord Bruce of Donington, likes takeaway fish and chips, as I do. I do not have the answer to the noble Lord, but I will certainly bring his question to the attention of my right honourable friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Lord Diamond: My Lords, with regard to the approximately 14,250 individuals who have benefited under the scheme, according to the figure the noble Viscount has just given, can he say how many of those are still carrying on in business?
Viscount Long: My Lords, I do not have the figure for that. I should imagine it is at least 70 per cent., if not more, but I should not like to give a complete estimate at the moment. I will write to the noble Lord.
Lord Spens: My Lords, now that the national insurance surcharge is in process of being abolished, will Her Majesty's Government give attention to the equally iniquitous Class IV national insurance contribution which is charged against self-employed profits without any part of that tax being allowed to be charged as a labour expense?
Viscount Long: My Lords, I am afraid we are going right off the Question at the moment, but if the noble Lord would like to put down a Question on that subject my noble friend will answer it.
Lord Glenamara: My Lords, is the noble Viscount aware that we all welcome the increase in the number of self-employed but that this is no substitute for doing something about the appalling unemployment figures? Is he aware that in the North-East of England we have overall unemployment of just under 20 percent., with some areas up to 40 per cent.? I hope I have the noble Viscount's attention. Is he further aware that this is a manufacturing country and that our manufacturing industry has been in deficit since the beginning of last year? It is that which the Government should be doing something about: not fiddling about getting more self-employed people, but making a massive contribution towards doing something about the unemployment figures.
Viscount Long: My Lords, I am absolutely amazed at the noble Lord's question. He does not seem to want to help anybody.
Lord Glenamara: My Lords, may I say to the noble Viscount that that remark is utterly stupid? I am speaking on behalf of the many hundreds of thousands of unemployed people in the North of England. I repeat: we have areas with 40 per cent. unemployment. We welcome the increase in the number of self-employed people, but what are the Government doing, of any significance, about unemployment?
Viscount Long: My Lords, I am going to keep to what I have already said; that is, on this Question, to look after the self-employed and help those who want to be self-employed.

Business
Lord Denham: My Lords, at a convenient moment after 3.30 this afternoon my noble friend Lord Swinton will, with the leave of the House, repeat in the form of a Statement an Answer to be given in another place to a Private Notice Question on the teachers' pay dispute.
This will be followed by my noble friend Lord Elton, who, with the leave of the House, will repeat a Statement on the Libyan People's Bureau closure. This will be followed by my noble friend Lady Young, who, again with the leave of the House, will repeat a Statement on diplomatic relations with Libya.
It may also be for the convenience of the House if I announce that dinner will be available at the usual time for a Tuesday of 7.30 this evening.

London Regional Transport Bill
2.57 p.m.
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, I rise to move that this Bill be now read a second time. The origins of this Bill are to be found in two recent documents, the House of Commons Select Committee Report of 1982 on Transport in London and the Government's White Paper of July last year on public transport in London. One message emerged quite clearly from these documents. It was that the arrangements for the political and financial control of London's public transport, established in the 1960s, have not worked well. The Select Committee concluded that a better deal was needed for the passenger in London and that the responsibility for public transport in London should be removed from the Greater London Council.
The two documents differed, however, over who should take control of public transport in London. The Select Committee wanted what it called a Metropolitan Transport Authority, with responsibilities extending over the whole field of transport in London, including roads and traffic management as well as public transport. This was an interesting and radical idea. The Government considered it very carefully, but eventually concluded that it simply would not work. They believed it would reproduce many of the undesirable features of the present system, and that the proposed body would sit awkwardly between the Government, on the one hand, and the London local authorities, on the other. Above all, they believed that the body chosen to run London Transport would have a big enough task to do without taking on the whole of London's other transport problems as well.
By any standards, London Transport is big business. It has an annual turnover of £850 million; assets (as far as they can be valued at all) of the order of £2 billion; and it employs about 57,000 staff (almost as many as the Royal Navy). In 1970, the year in which the GLC took control of London Transport, the size of the undertaking was much the same as it is now, in terms of the number of staff employed. Yet there is one huge difference between then and the present day. London Transport then made little or no call on public subsidy. Admittedly there was a substantial write-off

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of capital debt at the time of the transfer. Indeed, this was one of the conditions laid down by the GLC for the support of the 1969 Act. They very sensibly wished to take over a concern which was financially viable. The transfer took place under those conditions. Indeed, there were no revenue subsidies from the GLC to the London Transport Executive until 1974.
By contrast, this year the GLC are planning to pay revenue subsidies to London Transport of £190 million and total grants, including capital grant, of around £350 million. If we add to this figure support to British Rail services as well, the total subsidy to public transport in the capital is probably in excess of £500 million. So when we say that London's public transport is "of national importance" (and the Select Committee said that too) we mean it in two senses—first, in the obvious sense that adequate and efficient public transport is vital for the economy and well-being of the capital city and, by implication, for the nation as a whole, but secondly in that the public subsidies involved are so massive that they become a significant item of public expenditure in themselves.
Of course public transport subsidies are now taken for granted, and some level of subsidy is likely to be with us for some time. Subsidies to public transport undertakings became widespread in the 1970s. This reflected the steady decline in the numbers of passengers with the rise of car ownership, and the rapid rise in costs especially in this country in the mid-1970s.
Yet, when all is said and done, no one can be satisfied with the performance of London Transport over this period. Since 1970, costs per vehicle mile, for example, rose in real terms by more than two-thirds for the buses and by about 50 per cent. for the Underground. The unit costs of bus engineering have increased many times in cash terms and more than doubled in real terms since 1973. While passenger demand has declined over this period by about a quarter, both capacity in terms of vehicle miles and manpower have remained about the same. In other words, they have gone on running the buses and trains regardless.
During the passage of the 1969 Act through your Lordships' House—and that was the Act that among other things transferred responsibility for London Transport from the Government to the GLC—my noble friend Lord Nugent of Guildford said:
"My advice to the GLC is to shun like the plague a subsidy on current account. I believe nothing is more demoralising and weakening to management than a subsidy on current account."—[Official Report, 10/6/69; col. 543.]
Those were prophetic words indeed. If the overriding aim is always to keep fares down and service levels up, whatever the pattern of demand, then there will never be the right incentives to improve management efficiency. In the end it is the taxpayer and ratepayers who have to pick up the Bill. And that is exactly what has happened.
These financial realities behind London Transport's performance have been a cause of mounting anxiety to successive Governments. But the other main factor leading to the Bill before us today has to do with an important aspect of public transport in London as a whole. That is the question of the relationship between
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the services provided for London by British Rail and those provided by London Transport.
Over the years, these two great transport networks, the trains on the one hand and the buses and tubes on the other, which between them account for some 7 million journeys each working day, have been planned and operated almost entirely separately. There are different fare structures; and different investment criteria. The facilities for passengers when they move between the different modes leave much to be desired. Attempts have been made over the years to establish some measure of co-ordination between the two systems, but with only modest success. The overriding obstacle to progress has been the fact that the two systems are answerable to different political masters and operate within totally different financial regimes. Under these conditions the framework for joint action and joint achievement is simply not there.
The Bill, in Clause 2, imposes duties on LRT and British Rail to co-operate with each other. In fact, the 1969 Act imposed similar duties. The difference now is that the organisational framework will exist under which these arrangements can flourish. My right honourable friend has already announced that he proposes, as soon as the Bill becomes law, to establish liaison arrangements between the Department of Transport, LRT and British Rail, which he personally will supervise.
In the Government's view, the matters I have mentioned constitute good and sufficient reasons for the broad proposals in the Bill before your Lordships. Let me emphasise this by correcting one misconception which has given rise to much debate. This Bill has nothing to do with proposals currently being discussed in another place for the abolition of the GLC. I can assure your Lordships that decisions leading up to the introduction of this Bill were taken before, and independently of, the decisions on abolition. As I have endeavoured to make clear, they are based on arguments about transport policy. The inescapable conclusion to which the Government came when they examined the problems I have outlined was that the Government must themselves take back control of London Transport.
I will not deny that recent events concerning the GLC and London Transport may have confirmed the Government in the rightness of their decision. But that is essentially a different matter.
I believe that the GLC has been extraordinarily provocative, to put it no stronger, in the steps it has recently taken to pack the LT Board with its political nominees, quite contrary to the advice from the chairman, whom it itself appointed; and in the expensive propaganda campaign it has been waging to combat the Government's proposals in this Bill. I suppose we should be politically naive if we expected the GLC to announce, on banners strung up on County Hall (just as they announce most other things), how much they look forward to handing London Transport back to the Government.
However, there are more serious matters to discuss, and I should like to turn to a matter which has commanded much attention both inside and outside Parliament, particularly from opponents of the Bill.

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Clause 1, with Schedule 1, transfers control of London Transport from the GLC to the Secretary of State and renames it London Regional Transport. In other words, the legal persona of London Transport will not change but its name and constitution will. More importantly, a nationalised industry will be created (or recreated) with a board appointed by the Secretary of State. Critics of the Bill have claimed that Londoners will thereby, at a stroke, be deprived of a say in their public transport: that local democratic accountability will disappear under the new arrange-ments. But your Lordships will find that as a basis for serious criticism this argument does not stand up to scrutiny. If, as I have said, London Transport is of national importance, then it is reasonable that its accountability should be to a national body. LRT will be accountable to the Secretary of State and through him to Parliament, like the board of any other nationalised industry.
What is in fact achieved under the Bill is thus the substitution of one kind of accountability for another. At the same time, the regional nature of LRT is recognised many times over in the Bill. My noble friend Lord Lucas will be referring in his wind-up to the framework of planning and consultation included in the Bill. For the present I would just refer to the very considerable influence that the 84 London Members of Parliament will wield on behalf of their constituents' interest in their public transport. It is unlikely to be a less assiduous interest than that taken by the existing 92 members of the GLC.
The GLC are fond of claiming that only they can legitimately represent their ratepayers' interests. Yet, in many ways, Londoners have been offered a false prospectus. Everyone would like to be offered the opportunity of lower fares, all other things being equal. But all other things are never equal. Every 1 per cent. taken off the fares adds about £4 million to the rates bill. Yet these arithmetical facts of life are obscured in the complexities of local government finance. Indeed, it is one of the merits of this Bill that it substitutes for the present local financing of public transport a greatly simplified system, set out in Clauses 13 and 14, in which the ratepayers' contribution to their public transport costs is expressed as a simple percentage of the subsidy. This will be set out in an annual ratepayer levy order subject to the affirmative resolution procedure in another place.
Furthermore, let us not forget in any discussion of local democratic accountability that 62 per cent. of the rate burden in London is borne by the business sector, who have no say at all as voters in the actions of their local government.
There is another aspect of accountability that I must mention. It is one which perhaps most people have in mind when they think of their public transport services. I refer to the consumer aspect and the importance of having an effective body to represent the interests of passengers in relation to the performance of the services provided. This is a vital complement to the accountability of the board for the general stewardship of the business.
It will not have escaped your Lordships that the Bill contains, in Clauses 40 and 41, proposals for greatly
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strengthening the voice of the consumer in the field of London's public transport services. Under these proposals, the existing consumer bodies for London Transport and British Rail services in London will be effectively merged. There are to be statutory arrangements for consultation between LRT and the new consumer body, the London Regional Passengers' Committee. This is another manifestation of the Government's wish to see better co-ordination of the two sets of services. This committee will be able to pay particular attention to the interaction between the different systems and should be a major force for their improvement.
I do not propose to go systematically through the Bill. There will be ample time for scrutiny of the more significant clauses of the Bill as we move to the Committee stage. I have already mentioned some of these, notably Clause 1, which establishes LRT under its new constitution, and Clause 2, which lays down the general duty of LRT.
I would also single out Clause 3, which, among other matters, provides a general power in subsection (2) for LRT to secure public transport services by entering into contractual arrangements with independent operators. These agreements under Clause 3(2) are an important part of the Government's objectives for LRT. They should be understood together with the duty set out in Clause 6 under which LRT will be required to invite tenders for the provision of services by outside contractors where it makes economic sense to do so.
Clauses 12 to 24 set out the financial régime under which LRT will operate. Most of these provisions are the standard ones applying to nationalised industries, except that Clauses 13 and 14, as already mentioned, are concerned with the ratepayers' levy.
There are those who have argued that the Government should not take over control of London Transport themselves and at the same time demand a contribution to its financing from London's ratepayers. But not to do so would put London's ratepayers in an overwhelmingly favourable position compared with ratepayers elsewhere in the country. It would be quite indefensible. Clause 13 sets a maximum ratepayers' contribution of two-thirds of the total subsidy to LRT. My right honourable friend has already said that he hopes that this proportion will be able to be reduced as LRT's need for subsidy is itself reduced.
Clauses 36 to 39 form Part II of the Bill. They provide reserve powers—which will lapse unless activated by order within eight years of the appointed day—to make LRT the grant-paying authority to British Rail for its London services, in place of the Secretary of State. This would represent a radical approach to the problem of the closer integration of London's main public transport networks. It would not be without substantial administrative problems. For this reason we look to the liaison arrangements which my right honourable friend has proposed to achieve the better co-ordination needed between LRT and BR. But the powers in Part II of the Bill will be there if needed.
I come finally to an aspect of the Bill which has perhaps taken up more time in another place than any

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other. I refer to the subject of concessionary travel for elderly and disabled people, which is provided for in Clauses 49 to 52.
Let me say at once that the Government have always recognised the very great value which pensioners and others in London and elsewhere place on the availability to them of concessionary travel. The existence of these concessions means enhanced mobility for a great many people in London and in the other conurbations of this country. It means that such people are not cut off, as they otherwise might be, from friends and relatives and from taking part in the life of the city generally. Concessionary travel schemes provide a means of enriching the lives of many people who do not have access to private transport or who find that the cost of fares is too much of a burden on their limited budgets.
At the same time we must not forget that successive Governments have taken the view that the responsibility and financing of concessionary fares schemes is properly a matter for local discretion. In London and most of the conurbations, the local authorities have in recent years provided generous concessionary schemes involving largely free travel on public transport for those eligible. As fares have risen in real terms, so of course have the cost of these concessions. This year the GLC will be paying some £65 million for the cost of its scheme.
The Government hope very much that the London boroughs will get together and agree a joint scheme when they take over responsibility for concessionary fares from the GLC. They will be able to do this under the powers in Clause 49 of the Bill, which largely re-enacts existing powers.
At the same time the Government do not seek to minimise the problems faced by the London boroughs in securing a unanimous view about the future of these schemes some two years before such decisions have to be taken. In particular, it is difficult for anyone to know the effect on such expenditure of the rate support grant arrangements as they will apply post-abolition. The Government have accordingly included in the Bill, at Clauses 50 to 52, a statutory concessionary fares scheme which will automatically come into operation if, at any time after LRT has come into existence, a uniform voluntary scheme is not in place. I will not go into the details of these clauses now, except to say that the scheme provides free off-peak travel on LRT services for pensioners and disabled people and free travel at all times for the blind. (It is clearly more sensible to restrict a statutory scheme to operate at off-peak times, rather than compel the boroughs to finance free travel at times when the buses and trains are crowded with travellers to work and few pensioners want to travel anyway).
However, even when the statutory scheme is in operation, individual boroughs will be able, if they wish, to purchase additional concessions from LRT, or even from British Rail, including travel during the peak if they so wish. This is the first time that a specific concessionary fares scheme will have been embodied in statute. As I have implied, the Government believe that this is justified in the unique circumstances of London.
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The Bill before your Lordships is a substantial measure of 66 clauses and seven schedules. Over and above the many detailed provisions necessary in a Bill of this kind, the Bill as a whole has a simple purpose and a simple message. The purpose is to provide a balance in the provision of public transport in London—a balance lacking in recent years between the interests of the users of the system, the London passengers, and the interests of those who finance it, the ratepayers and the taxpayers. My Lords, I beg to move.
Lord Hawke: My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord a question before he sits down? Clause 1 mentions "the appointed day". Does he have any idea when the appointed day is expected to be?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, if I may say so, that is a point which might be well dealt with by my noble friend when he comes to wind up.
Moved, That the Bill be now read a second time.—(Lord Trefgarne.)
3.17 p.m.
Lord Underhill: My Lords, a very good description of this Bill was given by a Member (not of my political party) in the other House when he said that it was ill-timed, wrongly conceived and a recipe for muddle, meanness and ministerial incompetence, to which I would add that it is yet one further step which this Government are taking to take away power from local councils and also to remove local accountability. We now have Ministers talking glibly about nationalising London's transport. I must make this comment: how cynical that seems from a Government who time and time again have done their utmost to damage public industries! I find it very difficult to recognise Mr. Nicholas Ridley as a convert to public ownership.
I appreciate the tone in which the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, has introduced this Bill. Any fair person looking at the Secretary of State's speech at Second Reading in the other place will appreciate that he made some highly coloured and politically emotive utterances which seemed to justify at least his reason for this Bill.
Ministers have referred to a mandate. I should like to remind noble Lords that electors in the GLC elections voted for transport policies which have been carried out by the Greater London Council. Those policies were not only prominently featured in its manifesto but were emphasised time and time again throughout that election. A survey in December 1983 showed that 90 per cent. of Londoners want the GLC to retain control of London's transport. The Secretary of State has said that the GLC was mixing up commercial and political matters. He appears to discount the fact that how best to meet the problems of transport is a political matter requiring political decisions.
It has been said that the Bill marks the end of an unsuccessful 14 years' experiment. Very selective extracts have been taken of the House of Commons Select Committee which considered transport in London. We have had, particularly from the secretary of State, a supposed account of the record of London

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Transport from 1970. No one would deny that there are some weaknesses and imperfections but I could give a contrary account of development, progress and improvements achieved by London Transport with the Greater London Council.
Noble Lords should remind themselves as to why a co-ordinated transport organisation was brought into being in 1933. London transport was a mess. I lived in one of the suburbs just outside the LCC area. The first passenger transport board took over 170 rail, bus, tram, trolley-bus and coach undertakings. We should not forget that part.
Reference is made time and time again by Ministers, particularly the Secretary of State, to the percentage of support given from public funds for transport in London. It has been emphasised in many debates from all quarters of the House that it is recognised that public transport in capital cities requires public financial support. It has also been stressed that London receives public transport at a lower level of public support than do most capitals in the western world. In fact the London Transport Executive, in a report on the Government's proposals, states that the Executive still believes that there is a strong case for higher levels of support, since the protected expenditure level is at present significantly below that which would be justified in benefit cost terms. It is rather ironic that only in March it was stated that in Paris—where the transport system has the state as a major shareholder—responsibility for its Metro suburban railways and bus services is to be transferred to local government with the board consisting exclusively of elected regional councillors. They are transferring it from the state to elected regional councillors.
Reference is made to the amount of present public support by the GLC. A figure of £190 million was given for this year. The Secretary of State has fixed the protected expenditure level for that year at £125 million. That is a difference of some £65 million. I will not go into the details but the Secretary of State has in the other place given details of where he can see cost cutting. An emphasis was made on the one-person operator system being blocked by the GLC. Impartial opinion would say that great progress has been made in developing one-person operator bus services on the outside of Greater London. My area is practically all one-person operated. But when I hear a responsible Minister talking about one-person operator buses in service in Central London, then he must have taken leave of his senses. That is one glib comment that has been made. The buses would just delay traffic and add to congestion.
When we have talked about the possible cutting of services and routes, we have been accused of scaremongering. But if there is to be this great reduction from the present public support to the PEL, which the Secretary of State has said he has fixed, then obviously some services must be at risk. We are also accused of scaremongering on the important question of concessionary fares with which the noble Minister has dealt. But let us not forget the Secretary of State has changed his view from that which he expressed so strongly at Second Reading. Then he made absolutely clear that he had no intention of removing control in this matter from the London boroughs or making new
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legislative provision in the Bill. But as we have just heard from the Minister, new clauses were introduced at Report stage in the other place to provide for a reserve power in the event of any London borough refusing to co-operate.
As has been stressed, the GLC concessionary fares scheme is a tremendous boon to some 1 million Londoners. Let us not forget that it replaced different borough schemes with a variety of restrictions and conditions. The survey, which I have already mentioned, in December last year showed that 93 per cent. of adult Londoners support free transport for the aged and handicapped in London.
Naturally we welcome the provision for reserve power but the new clause makes absolutely clear that free travel will not apply during peak hours. The aged and disabled will be expected to finish their journeys by 4.30 p.m. and not go again until after 6.30 p.m.
Lord Trefgarne: That is not true.
Lord Underhill: Well, if it is not true, my Lords, when I sit down I will look at the proposals, and when my noble friend Lord Carmichael deals with it he can deal with whether or not it is true. Moreover, the Secretary of State has not denied the possibility of boroughs introducing charges for the issue of permits, nor has he denied that, in the event of there not being reserve power, there could be a position of the boroughs making other variations in conditions.
The Minister has referred today to the benefit of advice from the Select Committee on Transport in the other place. As I have already stated, some very selective extracts have been made. As he pointed out, the Government rejected the proposal for a Metropolitan transport authority for Greater London. My noble friend Lord Carmichael was a member of that committee which made that decision. He can talk more authoritatively than I on this matter when he winds up for the Opposition.
The Government decided that LRT, as has been mentioned, should be concerned only with public transport. Therefore LRT will work only in a vacuum. It will be cut off from the important aspects affecting transport, such as strategic planning, land use, traffic management, roads, et cetera. It will operate in a vacuum from those matters, whereas at present they are all taken into consideration for transport plans.
Also the Select Committee recommended that the transport authority be composed of members nominated by the Secretary of State, from the GLC, the London boroughs, the shire county district councils, who are within the area of the authority, and also the Public Transport Users' Committee for London. The Select Committee also urged that membership representing the various local councils should comprise half the total. What has the Government put in the Bill? No local council representation whatever. All members will be appointed by the Secretary of State. There will be no local council input, no accountability to people in the area and no reference to local opinions about needs.
It has been mentioned that this can be dealt with by parliamentary accountability. May I, without boring the House, read a very important part from the Fifth

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Report of the Select Committee in the other place, dealing with this question. Paragraph 6.10 reads:
"The transfer of overall transport responsibility from the GLC to central Government would clearly raise questions about the future viability of the Greater London Council as a county authority, since many of its major functions would eventually disappear. More important, however, such a transfer of responsibility would be a major departure from the British tradition of local authority involvement in transport matters, and we do not believe that the transport problems of London are so acute as to justify depriving London's elected representatives, and London's electorate, of a major role in transport decision making for their area".
Then it states:
"It is, moreover, open to question whether the House of Commons would wish to become the political authority responsible for the day-to-day problems of London's transport system or would be prepared to develop the new parliamentary procedures which would be required to fulfil that role".
The Minister never referred to that. I hope, however, that noble Lords will take some notice of that important paragraph in the Select Committee report, to which the Minister has turned in justification for the Government's decision. I find also in paragraph 2.4 that we must have a solution,
"which does not deliver control of these vital services for Londoners and visitors into the hands of a bureaucracy completely outwith the control of London's elected representatives".
That is what the Select Committee said. There is no talk of transfer to the Government.
I find also that the National Consumer Council has expressed concern at the lack of an effective role for local government. The National Consumer Council has reaffirmed the report, which it issued in 1983, that public transport should remain with local government, that it is most effective at county level and that no reason is seen why London should be an exception. Only the other day I received a letter from my home district council, the Epping Forest District Council, which is Conservative-controlled, within the area of the Essex County Council, also Conservative-controlled. I shall read a short extract.
"Both Essex County Council and this Council feel that there should be representation on LRT by locally elected representatives of this Council. They would be in a position to state the point of view of their area with regard to local rather than overall financial needs".
That is not Labour Party opinion: it comes from a Conservative-controlled district council with the support of a Conservative-controlled county council.
Another point has been made by the London Transport Executive in its own response to the proposal. On one aspect alone it comments that,
"there will be some dangers of inefficiency through the potential proliferation of dealings with 33 boroughs instead of a single strategic authority",
as exists at present.
Under the Transport (London) Act 1969, London Transport has a legal duty (which I paraphrase) to provide transport services that best meet the needs of London. Under the Bill, LRT will have to have due regard to the needs. Noble Lords will see that there is a considerable difference in emphasis. I would ask, "Why is this?". The noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, has said that London Transport has gone on running buses regardless. Buses are run because there is a need, not just for profit. That is why London Transport carries on running them. Come to my area! I see elderly
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women who want to go to the Loughton shopping centre. There are perhaps four or five of them who have no transport and who need a bus to get them there. They cannot walk. It is not a question of running buses regardless. It is a question of what are the needs, not whether there is a cost benefit.
The Bill provides that London Regional Transport shall carry out its general duty in accordance with principles approved by the Secretary of State. We heard a lot about principles in the rating debate yesterday. At Second Reading, on 13th December, Mr. Ridley said at col. 866:
"It will have to have regard to the objectives and principles I set for it".
That ministerial view is to take the place of that of representatives of people in the various authorities. I must ask how the Secretary of State will assess the transport needs. It has to be remembered that there is no local council representation, no local council input and no local council accountability. As we have heard, the Government, while taking full responsibility, are not going to meet the cost. Two-thirds will be met by the ratepayers in the local areas concerned. But, again I remind your Lordships, there is no council represent-ation and no accountability whatever.
Also under the Bill the LRT will submit a statement of policies within a year of inception and then from time to time thereafter. But at present the GLC, like all other county councils, submits each year its transport policy and programme, popularly referred to as TPP, on which its transport supplementary grant is based. Do noble Lords recall the long discussions that we had on the 1983 Transport Act? We seem to have wasted a lot of time so far as the GLC is concerned. We spent a great deal of time discussing the question of a yearly plan to cover a three-year period. I must ask again, "Why is there this change from that arrangement under the Bill?" Surely, regular plans are essential.
The Bill also provides for the division of buses and Underground into separate companies. There is a great deal of talk from government circles of the breaking down of a monolithic structure—this at a time when there is more co-ordination between Underground and buses than London has ever seen. Let us recall the introduction recently of the travel cards covering bus and Underground jointly if desired. The demand for those cards exceeded all anticipation by both London Transport and the GLC. Yet we have in this Bill encouragement for each subsidiary to form small companies.
Another clause provides that a local council can fund additional services. The London Transport Executive has commented that if many schemes of this kind were approved by the commissioners there could be problems—and I quote:
"Bus routes in London have not originated on a borough basis and would not sensibly be divisible at borough boundaries".
But the Bill makes it easier to transfer parts of London Transport to private operators. In fact, I gather from the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, that this is to be encouraged by the Minister. I should like to quote again the London Transport Executive:
"The danger is that non-LRT services will be attracted to the profitable routes thereby weakening LRT's income. Inevitably this will lead to reductions in services or fares increases elsewhere to meet the financial target set by the Secretary of State. Whatever

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value there may be in competition, that which does not have to have any regard to meeting transport needs would jeopardise the ability to provide many existing services".
I conclude with the last paragraph in the London Transport Executive's response:
"The Executive's overriding concern is the risk that the desire to increase competition will damage the highly important need for co-ordination and integration of the public transport services".
So within the space of 51 years in London we shall have completed a full circle and be on the way to the unregulated free-for-all transport that existed pre-1933. During the course of the Bill, whatever else we endeavour to do, we shall try to provide for a strong local government input and to remove the exceptional powers that the Bill gives to the Secretary of State.

Teachers' Pay Dispute
3.38 p.m.
The Earl of Swinton: My Lords, with the leave of the House, I shall now repeat the Answer being given to a Private Notice Question in another place on the teachers' pay dispute. The Answer is as follows:
"I very much regret the teacher unions' refusal of a 4·5 per cent. offer which—as has been made quite clear to them—would stretch to the very limit, and for many beyond, their employers' capacity to pay. I am very sorry that the teacher unions should be willing to contemplate action designed to disrupt the education of their pupils. I hope that individual teachers will reflect on the irresponsible and unprofessional course which union leaders are now inviting them to embark upon and that there will be reconsideration by the union leaders of the 4·5 per cent. offer which I understand remains explicitly on the table".
My Lords, that concludes the reply.
Baroness David: My Lords, I must thank the noble Earl for repeating the reply that has been given in another place. But does the noble Earl not think that perhaps the present situation would not have come about if the Secretary of State had not interfered with the negotiations and taken too active a part himself, as became apparent when he was answering questions in another place on 3rd April? Is the best way to have good relations with one's workforce to antagonise them and take what, in effect, is a threatening attitude and say, as he did, that if more than a 3 per cent. increase is agreed there will be less money for books and equipment? Is it right to say that in an effective society pay will reflect supply and demand and that plenty of good teachers are coming forward? Market forces, indeed! Surely a good employer should pay attention to the fairness and justice of the case and show some sympathy.
Since the Houghton award of 10 years ago teachers' pay has slipped very badly. In real terms, pay has fallen by about 30 per cent. since then. To offer only 3 per cent. when inflation is running at 5 per cent. can only seem grossly unfair. It should be remembered that 70 per cent. of teachers earn less than £10,000 a year and the lowest paid get less than £7,000. Has not the management panel of Burnham mismanaged the negotiations so far—in fact, been really inept and
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intransigent? If the 4·5 per cent. had been offered earlier on, almost certainly that offer would have been accepted, as it was in Scotland and by the teachers in further education. Has not the handling of the whole issue been exceedingly clumsy?
It is not surprising that the teachers and all teachers' unions have taken the same attitude. It is not surprising that they should feel aggrieved and angry. The only sensible solution at this point must be to go to arbitration. Now that things have come to this very unhappy state, could not the Secretary of State use his influence with the DES members of the panel to suggest that arbitration is the only possible and reasonable way forward?
Lord Kilmarnock: My Lords, we too should like to thank the noble Earl for his reply. Will he accept that only the other day—I think it was yesterday—Mr. de Gruchy of the NAS/UWT said that if the employers had come up with the 4·5 per cent. offer a couple of weeks ago they would probably have got away with it, but now they have got the teachers' backs up? Are not the Government rather good at that? As the noble Baroness has suggested, the 31 per cent. erosion over 10 years is an obvious fact.
While one must recognise the teachers' position, one must also recognise that the employers are in a difficult position due to the extreme uncertainty into which local government finance has been thrown by the Rates Bill. Will not the noble Earl agree that his reply simply indicates that the Government have really washed their hands of the matter apart from their intervention suggesting a trade-off between salaries and books? Is it not time, therefore—these are my two final questions—for a further review of the teachers' Burnham scale and an encouragement of arbitration when agreement is not reached, coupled with a Government pledge to uphold arbitration awards?
The Earl of Swinton: My Lords, I should like to thank the noble Baroness, Lady David, and the noble Lord, Lord Kilmarnock, for the way they have received this Statement. But I must say that I really cannot agree with either of them. Looking back in retrospect, if the employers had put on the table their final offer of 4·5 per cent. it would have been received badly. After all, when one is going into negotiation one does not start off with one's final offer. The whole point of negotiation is that one negotiates. There have been six meetings of the Burnham P and S Committee this year and, although no advance on the 29th February formal offer of 3 per cent. was made until yesterday, in the interim there were lengthy and substantial private discussions about hypothetical figures; so there have been negotiations going on throughout the length and breadth of it and I cannot accept that this matter has been handled ineptly.
I consider that the management panel was quite right to refuse arbitration. When an offer exhausts an employer's capacity to pay, that employer cannot then go to an arbitrator who, because he does not have to find the money, can regard affordability as just one of a number of factors instead of what it is, the one determining factor. The fact that the employers have come up with this final offer of 4.5 per cent. means

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that that is what they have got to offer. As I said in the original Statement, some of them will be very pushed indeed to find even this. Therefore, one really cannot go to an arbitrator in those circumstances.
I do not think teachers are being asked to make sacrifices so that there should be sufficient books and equipment in the schools. They are being asked to settle at levels of pay which attract and hold applicants suitably qualified for teaching posts—in other words, the level at which labour supply and demand are in balance. As the noble Baroness said, that is the market force.

London Regional Transport Bill
3.45 p.m.
Second Reading debate resumed.
Lord Tordoff: My Lords, in these circumstances one feels like a piece of salami in a sandwich. It is difficult to carry on a coherent debate on an important subject like London Transport when there are three Statements and nobody is quite sure when numbers two and three are coming through. I understand the problems which the Government Front Bench have and I would ask them to realise that there are problems in other parts of the House as well.
Having said that, I thank the Minister for coming to open this Second Reading debate. From the Government's point of view it shows a level of interest in the Bill. I have to apologise in advance to the noble Lord, Lord Lucas of Chilworth, because I may not be able to be present for the wind-up. In the early evening I have another engagement which has been on the cards for quite a long time, and, although I will do my best to be here to hear what he has to say in reply to the debate, it may well be that it will not be possible. I am sure that my noble friend Lord Attlee will pass on any remarks the noble Lord may wish to make on anything that I have said.
I find it difficult to believe that the Bill is not at least partially a consequence of the Government's desire to dismantle the GLC. I do not find it entirely convincing that this Bill is a determined attempt to meet head-on the problems of transport in our capital city. There is no doubt that these problems exist. We have a road system which can hardly be dignified by the name "system". We have parking restrictions which are largely ignored. We have commercial operators breaking the rules with impunity. We have fines which are enforced to a minimum extent. We have average speeds that are falling. We have very little co-ordination of our public services and we have really no coherent overall investment policy.
The question we should be asking ourselves is how do we provide services which satisfy the needs of both Londoners and visitors to this capital city. The test of this Bill is how far it goes to meet that challenge. I believe that it does not meet the challenge, since it directs its attention to only part of the problem. The Alliance view is that land-use planning and transport policy are inseparable and that the question of London Transport should encompass not only buses and
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Tubes and British Rail but also cars and lorries and, indeed bicycles and pedestrians as well. This Bill singularly fails to integrate all those various aspects.
We believe that integration of services is a fundamental part of creating the confidence the travelling public require before they can trust themselves more fully to public transport. Unless we can create this confidence, people are going to continue unnecessarily to bring their cars into London, causing the congestion we are all aware of; we see it outside this very building every time we come into it. By integration I mean co-ordinating time-tabling as well as a rational fares policy. I include British Rail as well as the buses and the Underground.
I do not believe that the Bill attempts to give answers in any of these areas. In effect the major aim of the Bill is to remove democratic control and to put London Transport into the hands of a nationalised industry controlled by the Secretary of State. One also feels that it will bring pressure to bear to sell off public assets; it is part of the Government's continuing privatisation programme. When the Bill becomes an Act the real power will pass not into the hands of the people of London who need transport, but into the hands of the Treasury resulting in either increased fares or cuts in services—or, I fear probably both.
What we on these Benches would like to see is a metropolitan transport authority which is democrat-ically elected and which covers a wider area than the present GLC area—at least up to the circumference of the M.25 and probably beyond that because the M.25 itself will create a corridor on either side of transport activity which needs to be taken within the ambit of a metropolitan transport authority. It needs to be responsible for all the major roads within its area and it needs to have powers to delegate the secondary and minor road problems to the boroughs and to the districts. It should take responsibility for all public transport services within its area. We are not saying that it should operate those services itself, but rather that it should act as a well-managed holding company by setting standards; by setting the framework of prices, the broad shape of investment plans, the levels of revenue support and the general pattern of services within its area. All that should be done in consultation with the operators. In other words, we are talking of a really decentralised system within a democratic strategic framework.
There would be the opportunity, within this pattern, to give a greater role to some private enterprise and especially to some co-operative operators. But let us make it quite clear that this should not be allowed to undermine the profitability of the public sector. Encouraging the creaming off from the public sector of the profitable parts merely results either in a reduction in services which are needed to subsidise the less fortunate, or in the authority presenting itself with a higher Bill for revenue support. Of course, from these Benches we would ultimately like to see such an authority set within the context of a directly elected regional government along with water and health, and many other facilities which should be controlled at this strategic level. The Bill sadly does not take us in that direction.

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The greatest error, as has already been said, is the way in which the Bill puts more power into the hands of the Secretary of State. Frankly, it is no good saying that Parliament provides a check any more than Parliament provides a check on the British Railways Board: only direct elections will do that. I should like to quote from a speech by a Government Minister in another place, at column 1654 of Hansard on 19th March. He said:
"We feel that no system of delegated elections would by any means prove satisfactory. We believe that it is essential that whoever shall be the representatives of the constituencies … should be checked by the healthy test of direct contact with those who elect them".
That was a speech by a Conservative Government Minister—Mr. Ritchie, the president of the Local Government Board—speaking on 19th March, 1888, during the First Reading of the Local Government (England and Wales) Bill.
So in a real sense the Government are turning the clock back 100 years. At that time public indignation was running so high at the undemocratic nature of the administrative boards that were running London and were subject to corruption and inefficiency, that both Liberals and Tories in Parliament decided that it was necessary to set up the London County Council, and from that developed of course the whole London transport system that we know today. Now that democratic control is to be removed.
I do not propose to go into enormous detail on the clauses today. There will be plenty of time for that during the Committee stage of the Bill. But there are certain points that I would wish to make. Along with the noble Lord, Lord Underhill, we do not like the weakening of the obligations in the 1969 Act: the change from "meeting" the transport needs of London to merely "taking due regard" of the transport needs of London. Nor do we like the removal of the ability to test the statutory obligations in the courts, which was contained in that Act. We do not like the separation of the bus and Underground services because that, coupled with the Secretary of State's ability to force London Regional Transport to sell off assets, may cause it to lose its strategic control and may further undermine the possibility of integration of services.
We believe that the provisions relating to user representation are flawed and inadequate. The link between the consumer and the transport authority has already been weakened by the removal of the role of the elected councillor. I ask your Lordships to bear in mind that the authority will almost certainly sit in secret and not in committees open to the press—something to which my honourable friend the Member for Southwark and Bermondsey drew attention in relation to the Docklands Board, where this is already happening.
We regret the exclusion of consideration by the consultative committee of bus services licensed by the Traffic Commissioners. That seems to us to be a loophole which needs to be closed. We agree with the National Consumer Council, at least, that the representative councils should have the statutory right to be consulted by the Traffic Commissioners on licence applications. We will certainly be supporting at
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the Committee stage amendments to try to obtain proper statutory rights for them to be consulted rather than informed on a whole range of matters including fares and reductions in rail services. At present it seems to us that the consumer watchdog is toothless— particularly in view of the centralised power of the Secretary of State—and that its powers need to be strengthened.
The financial provisions of the Bill are curious in the extreme. The ability of the Secretary of State to precept local authorities embodies a totally new principle which, to my knowledge, is so far unknown to any Parliament in the world. Here we have a virtually unaccountable body levying taxes on those using a service. Indeed, it could well be that fares could be used as a means of raising Government income in much the same way as the present Government are using gas and electricity charges as a means of disproportionately taxing the less well off. The ability to claw back money seems unrestrained by any stated criteria.
We have heard from the noble Lord the Minister that the 84 London Members of Parliament will have the chance to debate this matter in another place. But that really does not have any meaning; it has nothing like the same meaning as the ability of local councillors to be challenged by their ratepayers and by their electorate and to speak up on a regular basis in their councils. We know that there will be a brief annual debate, but everybody knows that the weight of the Tory Members of Parliament coming from outside London will, at the end of the day, determine the decision on this matter. That will lead to tremendous frustration not only among those Members of Parliament, but among their electors.
Finally, I believe that the proposals on concessionary fares are still not acceptable. They allow for a backstop, but a very limited one. We are glad that the Secretary of State has come some way along that road and I hope that we can persuade him in the course of the Committee stage to go further. But it must be recognised that the better off boroughs are, frankly, unlikely to agree with those who are worse off to come into a scheme which crosses boroughs. If people are going to find themselves at the whim of their local borough council as to whether they can travel on concessionary fares merely within their own areas or across London—which of course is what most people want—we shall have a very unsatisfactory situation. In particular it is in those places where there is the greatest need of support for the handicapped and the disabled that rate capping will be at its most vigorous. Therefore, between now and the time when this Bill leaves this House, I hope that the Government will think again on the question of the concessionary fares.
This is a poor Bill. It is a continuation of the sort of dogmatic line that we have seen from this Government on a number of occasions recently, but on this occasion we hope that the Government will do what they do not always do with Bills passing through your Lordships' House: that they will unblock their ears and will listen to what is being said on all sides of the House, and will come to the aid of London Transport during the course of the Committee stage of this Bill.

Libyan People's Bureau: Closure
4 p.m.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Home Office (Lord Elton): My Lords, it may be for your Lordships' convenience if, with the leave of the House, I now repeat a Statement being made in another place by my right honourable friend the Home Secretary about matters connected with the shooting incident in St. James's Square on 17th April. The Statement is as follows:
"On 25th April I reported to the House the facts of the initial incident, and subsequent events up to the time of that statement. Today I shall complete my report of the events. I shall also deal with the public order issues connected with demonstrations and state how I intend to use my powers for the immigration control of certain nationals in future.
"My right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary will then give an account of our dealings with the Libyan People's Bureau and the Libyan authorities in Tripoli. He will also deal with the steps which have been and will be taken in the diplomatic field in response to these events.
"On the afternoon of Tuesday, 24th April, Mr. Bagdadi, a member of the so-called Revolutionary Committee who had not been in the bureau at the time of the incident, was deported. On Friday 27th April, Mr. Matouk, another member of the Revolutionary Committee, was also deported.
"On the evening of 25th April, a representative of the Libyan authorities, Colonel Shaibi, arrived in this country to discuss the arrangements for the departure from this country of those in the Libyan diplomatic buildings in London. The discussions relating to this were also attended by a Saudi diplomat as a representative of the power nominated to look after Libyan interests here after the breach of diplomatic relations. Colonel Shaibi pressed that the Libyan authorities should retain the use of one of their buildings after Sunday, 29th April. But is was made clear to him that all the official premises were to be closed from Sunday night. The Libyans where also told that after midnight on 29th April, when the buildings ceased to be diplomatic premises, the police would require to search them to satisfy themselves that no weapons or explosives were inside and that the buildings were safe. They were told that a represen-tative of the protecting power—the Saudi Arabian Government—could be present if they wished. They were informed that, as a matter of safety, arrange-ments would have to be made to ensure that those leaving the people's bureau building were unarmed; and that they would be asked to answer questions to assist the police in investigating the murder of Woman Police Constable Fletcher.
"During the course of Thursday 26th April, the Libyans removed their diplomatic bags from the bureau building. On the same day some 112 people, consisting of the families of Libyan diplomats, as well as some diplomatic staff from the buildings other than that in St. James's Square, left the country on a Libyan Air Lines flight. Late on the evening of Thursday 26th April, the detailed
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departure arrangements for those inside the bureau were finalised. These arrangements were put into effect on the following day, Friday 27th April. The 30 people in the Libyan People's Bureau left the building in groups of five, beginning at about 9.50 a.m. After they had left the building, the police made sure that they were not carrying explosives or weapons.
"The search was carried out by the use of electronic devices. The whole operation was witnessed by representatives of the Saudi Arabian, Syrian and Turkish Embassies. The 30 people who came out of the building were then driven, accompanied by the diplomatic observers, to the Civil Service College at Sunningdale where they arrived shortly before noon. After an initial explanation of the procedure to be adopted during the remainder of the day, the police then proceeded with their inquiries, witnessed by two of the diplomatic observers. The identity of each of the Libyans was established by reference to their passports and other documents. They were invited to provide a full set of fingerprints, but declined to do so. They were then invited by the police to answer a number of questions. Each Libyan was questioned by two police officers using interpreters where necessary. Throughout the whole of this process the diplomatic observers were free to go wherever they wished in the building.
"With the questioning completed, and the aircraft at Heathrow ready to return them to Libya, the group were escorted by the police to Heathrow, immigration formalities having been completed at Sunningdale. The aircraft left Heathrow at 7.30 p.m.
"At 4.10 p.m. yesterday afternoon the police entered the former bureau building through the back door, which was opened in the presence of a representative of the Saudi Arabian Embassy by means of a rifle shot. The building was first examined by Royal Engineers and anti-terrorist squad explosives experts, who satisfied themselves that it was safe, and was subsequently searched by anti-terrorist squad police officers for evidential purposes. This search is continuing. So far two hand guns and a quantity of ammunition have been discovered in the course of the search of the former bureau premises. Firearms residue has been found on the carpet below the window from which the weapon was believed to have been fired, and a spent cartridge case of the same calibre as the weapon used on 17th April has been found in the same room. Elsewhere in the building the police have found accessories for sub-machine guns of the same calibre.
"As I made clear last Wednesday, the police's view was that they would not be able to obtain evidence to sustain a prosecution for the murder of WPC Fletcher without the co-operation of those concerned in the bureau.
"None of the police inquiries since then, whether at Sunningdale, St. James's Square or elsewhere, or these discoveries, has altered the position. The police remain of the view that there is not sufficient evidence to sustain a prosecution against any

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individual. Nonetheless, they are of the view that it is likely that the murder was committed by one of two people who were in the bureau. Both of these possessed diplomatic immunity. They therefore could not have been prosecuted under English law even if the necessary evidence had been available. The questioning at Sunningdale and other evidence obtained may well, however, provide information relevant to the investigation of bombings in London and Manchester in respect of which some people have already been charged. The information obtained at Sunningdale continues to be assessed.
"Since my last Statement to the House I have been considering whether the law on demonstra-tions and marches, as it applies to such events held by foreign nationals, or generally, can helpfully be amended. Neither the police nor I have power to ban a static demonstration in advance. But the police already have extensive powers, in pursuance of their duty to preserve the peace, to regulate the conduct of demonstrations and to prevent a demonstration assembling, or to disperse one already assembled, if they have reasonable cause to believe that such action is necessary to preserve or restore public order. As to marches, the Public Order Act 1936 provides powers to impose conditions or, if those will be inadequate, to ban the holding of public processions, in order to prevent serious public disorder.
"I understand the feelings which often lie behind suggestions that demonstrations and marches by foreign nationals should be subject to special controls and, possibly, prohibition. I doubt, however, whether it would be right for either the police or the Government to be empowered to pick and choose which demonstrations were permissible and which were not, in relation to either the nationality of those concerned or the subject about which they were demonstrating. We should remember who committed the offence on 17th April: the demonstrators in St. James's Square were the victims, not the perpetrators, of violence.
"But we must be certain that there are adequate powers to prevent warring factions from fighting their battles on the streets of London, as the right honourable Member for Manchester Gorton very properly said last week. The House will know that I have in hand a comprehensive review of public order law, including the issue of the control and regulation of static demonstrations. The conclusion of the review, and the announcement of the results, will now be expedited.
"I have also considered what additional immigration measures can be taken quickly, and within the present rules, to bring home the fact that we are not prepared to tolerate nationals of other countries bringing on to the streets of Britain violence for their own political ends. The House will already be aware of the instructions I have given to my immigration officials in dealing with Libyans following the break in diplomatic relations. I then said that I would not hesitate to use my powers of removal or personal certification if I was satisfied that there was evidence that the presence here of any individual was against the national interest; and I
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can inform the House that I have today signed detention orders against a further six Libyan nationals whom it is intended to deport.
"As far as Libyan nationals generally are concerned, a number of further restrictions will now be introduced for any who, under the rules, might be considered for visas. Visitors will receive permission to stays of shorter duration, adapted to the circumstances of each case; measures will be taken to ensure those admitted observe the conditions imposed. Libyan students who come to Britain must be bona fide students and we expect them to pursue their studies, not indulge in violence. Yet there is reason to believe that some of them have been prone to do just that. I intend therefore to tighten up immigration control affecting them. Any Libyan student who qualifies for admission under the rules will not normally be given permission to stay for more than one term at a time; anyone failing to meet the requirements in any respect will be refused an extension; each application or re-application will be accompanied by stringent checks. In particular we shall have to be fully satisfied that a student is in fact properly pursuing a full-time course of study. Similar restrictive measures will apply to other categories of applicant as the rules allow.
"At present foreign nationals are normally required to register with the police on arrival only if their period of stay is more than six months. In view of the announcements I have made, however, any Libyan national seeking entry under these new restrictions will be liable to register with the police. There must be no misunderstanding by those involved of the swift and serious consequences of future misbehaviour.
"Libyan nationals required to register with the police will be asked to sign a declaration recognising the consequences of their indulging in violence for political reasons, and their intention not to do so. This document will be affixed to the police registration form. This should also be a warning to the nationals of other countries. I am ready to apply similar restrictions to others who demonstrably bring into Britain their own political violence.
"In setting out these measures, which will be supported by appropriate instructions to visa-issuing posts abroad, I have been concerned not to undermine our tradition as a country of safe refuge and asylum. No one from a country to which such restrictions apply who wishes peacefully to express his views in public has anything to fear. But those who abuse our hospitality with violence will cease to receive it".
My Lords, that concludes the Statement.
4.14 p.m.
Lord Mishcon: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord the Minister for repeating the Statement which was made by his right honourable and learned friend in another place. May I say—and I get no pleasure from it on behalf of my noble friends—that in several respects we can only regard this Statement as being unsatisfactory and incomplete in regard to incidents which have brought humiliation in their train so far as

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the annals of this country are concerned. When the previous Statement was made on 25th April, both here and in another place the Opposition took the responsible attitude, while our ambassador and his family and the diplomatic staff were in Tripoli, of using very measured language in regard to the whole incident and in seeing that the difficulties that undoubtedly faced Ministers at that moment were not in any way added to by anything that was said from these Benches.
The Statement has been described as a completion of the record of events. There is no reference to any inquiry, and no reference to the matters which preceded these events. There is no doubt that once these events had occurred there was very little alternative—and this I freely admit on behalf of my noble friends—to the course of action which Her Majesty's Government took, and I refer in particular to the action of the Secretary of State for home affairs.
None of us can swallow without indignation the fact that presumably now there will be no prosecution of the murderer of the gallant young policewoman, in spite of the fact that the Statement reveals what has been found by way of spent ammunition in the very room from which this shot was supposed to have been fired. Indeed, the Statement reveals that apparently the suspects have been narrowed down to one of two persons, both of whom were diplomats.
That has to be swallowed. The Vienna Convention and its rules have to be swallowed because without international law there would be even more international disorder than we now have. But none of these provisions in the Statement for what is now to happen to Libyan students and what is now to happen to Libyan nationals, and what happened at Heathrow Airport, really adds up to a cautious, careful course of conduct in any degree.
This is not hindsight. I am going to remind the Minister and the House, with the leave and the patience of the House on such an important matter, of the background of all this on our own shores, let alone what issued from Libya. In February 1980 there was a declaration from Libya that the opponents of their Government would be liquidated; on 11th April 1980 a Libyan journalist was killed outside Regents Park Mosque; on 25th April a Libyan lawyer was shot dead at his Kensington home; on 17th September three Libyans were jailed for life for murder in London; on 12th November of the same year two Libyan children were poisoned in Hampstead; and on 30th November a Libyan student was stabbed to death in Manchester.
Coming to 1983, the General People's Congress issued an official warning that:
"every citizen is responsible for the liquidation of the enemies of the people's revolution",
and threatened states which "shelter and assist" exiles considered hostile to the revolution. Then, in February 1984—as recently as that—claims of "bourgeoisie lifestyles" led to the storming of the Libyan Embassy in London by "students" who proclaimed it the people's bureau. On 15th April—and we knew this—the Students Revolutionary Committee in Tripoli announced that two students would be publicly hanged for treason. On 16th April the very day before this tragic incident occurred in London
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gallows were constructed next to a portrait of Gaddafi at the entrance to the university in Tripoli and the two students, who were in their twenties, were brought out before thousands and publicly hanged. Between February and April nothing was done in regard to Libyan students. We hear that now, after this tragic event, restrictions will be imposed and inquiries will be made.
If ever there was a case for a public inquiry, even on the score that I mentioned—some independent inquiry, even a independent private inquiry, the result of which would be publicised—it is this one. In addition to that, the mystery has not yet been solved of that radio message that was supposed to have been de-coded and arrived before, so it is suggested, these events occured, and which talked in terms of a direct order for force to be used against those who were to assemble in St. James's Square. The questions go unanswered: did the message arrive? What did it say? To whom was it communicated? What was the interval of time? Was there any chance to take proper action? It must be the responsibility of any Government in these circumstances, your Lordships may think, to have an independent inquiry.
My last point is that following on that, on 20th April, there was that dreadful explosion at Terminal 2 at Heathrow Airport. Fortunately, injuries were limited. Presumably, even after 17th April, security measures had not been taken even to examine the luggage coming from Libya of Libyan passengers. There must be an inquiry to ensure that if there has been laxity—and prima facie there would appear to have been laxity in these matters—it is never perpetrated again and no other policeman or policewoman who guards us as public officials and officers, with great courage, should be endangered in the same sort of way.
Lord Harris of Greenwich: My Lords, in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Elton, for repeating the Statement here, I should like to put two questions to him arising from it. First, is he aware that we on these Benches warmly welcome the Home Secretary's statement that he is to strengthen immigration checks on Libyan visitors to this country? We welcome his statement that Libyan students who come to Britain must be bona fide students and must not indulge in violence. But why have we had to wait four years for this statement to be made? Is he aware that Colonel Gaddafi has made his position on the matter absolutely clear since the beginning of 1980, that he intended to eliminate his opponents in this country and other countries in Western Europe? As the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, reminded him a few moments ago, there has been a series of terrorist outrages in this country, and in the light of that it seems quite extraordinary that earlier steps were not taken to check far more vigorously Libyan visitors to the United Kingdom.
Secondly, is the Minister aware that some of us were surprised by the Home Secretary's Statement on the radio on Sunday that there was no evidence that the Libyan People's Bureau had been used as a terrorist base? Would he not agree on the basis of what the Metropolitan Police have already discovered that it clearly was? Would he also not agree that in the light

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of the scale of the terrorist attacks committed by Colonel Gaddafi's agents in the last four years the implication of the Home Secretary's statement raises serious questions about the quality of our counter-terrorist intelligence operations in this country? Would he not agree in the light of that that it is now most urgently necessary to have a vigorous independent inquiry into this whole situation, and that this should be pursued as urgently as possible?
4.25 p.m.
Lord Elton: My Lords, in thanking the noble Lords, Lord Mishcon and Lord Harris of Greenwich, for their response to this Statement, I will not follow the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, in the rather philippic style in which he addressed the subject. I entirely understand that there is a sense of aggrievement and frustration, which I entirely share, as does my right honourable friend the Home Secretary, over the fact that we are not in a position to apprehend and punish the perpetrator of this foul deed. But we have to look to the future as well as to the past.
As to the past, the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, adduced a chronology of alarms and excursions which preceded this foul event. Coming from Tripoli there has been for a long time a series of sounds and gestures which can only be called, "Wolf, wolf!" Such warnings as we had of the events of 17th April, as I told your Lordships on 25th April, were routine in their nature. As to information of another sort about which the noble Lord inquired, I can only repeat what we said to your Lordships last time that we had no indication, prior to the events, that events of that sort were about to take place.
Both noble Lords have suggested an inquiry. We do not believe that an inquiry of the sort that has been suggested would serve a useful purpose. My right honourable friend the Prime Minister has already written to Dr. David Owen in these terms. Any kind of external inquiry into intelligence matters would risk compromising sources and damaging operational effectiveness and the operational effectiveness and value of the services. Such risks should be run only when there are overriding reasons of public policy for doing so and in the present case we are clear that it would not be justifiable to incur these risks.
Your Lordships, I think, have two things in mind: one is an understandable wish for vengeance. The other is a proper wish for deterrence. The second half of the Statement dealt with the measures which my right honourable friend is taking, and has taken, to control the threat, now its nature is more precisely known. I am glad that he was able to welcome them—
The Earl of Kimberley: My Lords, may I ask my noble friend whether he has any information about the Libyan school, the Kingsley School in Glebe Place, Chelsea, and whether that has yet been searched?
Lord Elton: My Lords, I have nothing to add to what I said on 25th April, which was, if your Lordships will remember, that it was under observation and that we had no reason to suppose that it was improperly used in the sense which my noble friend infers.
Viscount Mountgarret: My Lords, does not the history of the past few weeks give rise to the question that it may possibly be time to consider banning the existence of embassies, particularly those of countries of somewhat dubious propriety, occupying our charming buildings in the heart of London, to the potential detriment of the building, harm and disturbance to the public and general inconvenience to all? Could we not perhaps arrange some place on the outskirts of our city where these embassies could be contained and looked after, if necessary, without interfering with our daily lives?
Lord Elton: My Lords, your Lordships will know that my noble friend Lady Young will be making the Statement on the Foreign Office side of this matter and, although I am sorely tempted to join in argument with my noble friend, I think that I had better leave it to her.
Lord Mayhew: My Lords, the noble Lord has detailed a number of acts of violence against Libyan nationals for which the Libyan Government are responsible, but he has not referred to the aid given by the Libyan authorities to the IRA in the past. These are acts of violence, in effect, against nationals of this country. In what sense is it possible for the Government to tolerate aid given to the IRA by foreign governments? Will he say something about this?
Lord Elton: My Lords, I am not in possession of information about aid which may have been given to the IRA. Only do I know that on numerous occasions the threat of doing this has been adduced by Libyan diplomats seeking to achieve their own ends about how their affairs should be managed with this country.
Lord Mayhew: If the noble Lord will allow me, I do not believe that it has been denied by the Libyan authorities that they have given arms and other assistance to the IRA. This is a most important aspect of the case and I should have expected him to refer to it.
Lord Elton: My Lords, I would not expect them to deny anything of that nature. I would not wish your Lordships to be in any doubt that we regard such support as being entirely intolerable and an act of the greatest hostility to this country. But I have no chapter and verse to give to the noble Lord. If some comes to hand, I will let him have it.
Lord Soames: My Lords, in view of the rumours that have been rife recently in the press, would my noble friend confirm that no intelligence was received by the Government which might have led them to believe that violent action would be taken from the Libyan People's Bureau against the demonstrations that were going to take place the following day?
Lord Elton: My Lords, I can repeat what I said before: that we had no such information to lead us to expect that to happen.
Lord Boston of Faversham: My Lords, will the noble Lord the Minister reconsider one point which he made in one of his replies just now—that is, the outcome which is sought by Members of your Lordships' House? Many of us would hope that vengeance would not form a part of British law, however proper that feeling within us might well be. What is sought, I should have thought, by all Members of your Lordships' House is justice. Can he say more specifically whether the two persons who have been identified, one of them as having been likely to have committed this outrageous crime, were subjected to the customary scrutiny that any proposed occupant of a mission, even one of this kind, should have been and customarily is subjected to, and whether in the course of that any shortcomings were revealed?
Lord Elton: My Lords, the two people about whom the suspicions are harboured were both accredited diplomats who had been through the proper process for the appointment of diplomats. No diplomats were accredited to the Libyan People's Bureau after 5th February which, your Lordships will remember, is where events started to take their more sinister turn.
Lord Somers: My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord whether there is any truth in the account printed in one of our daily newspapers that the Libyan authorities themselves have stated that they can name the person who committed this murder?
Lord Elton: My Lords, I do not know the answer to that question. I should not be surprised if it were true. I should not expect to be able to endorse it.
Earl de la Warr: My Lords, could my noble friend help me by commenting in any way on an announcement that was made on the radio today, on London Broadcasting, to the effect that the Prime Minister had ordered an inquiry but that the results were not going to be published?
Lord Elton: My Lords, I did not hear the broadcast. The Government are acutely interested in the whole of these proceedings and they will not neglect to look at them. As to the setting up of a formal inquiry, I have already given the answer.

London Regional Transport Bill
4.35 p.m.
Second Reading debate resumed.
Baroness Lane-Fox: My Lords, the London Regional Transport Bill has very great relevance for everybody who is disabled, although I think that I would have chosen a more suitable moment to say this than between two such important announcements.
If this was not obvious before, the mammoth lobby by every description of disabled person during the debates in another place left little doubt of the interest in it felt by those who are less than mobile yet wish to be active. Let me make it clear that the recent increase in appreciation of our difficulties leaves me personally spellbound. This Bill gives the chance to get the
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improvements firmly entrenched. In some quarters there is still concern that the Bill does not give enough weight to meeting the travelling needs of disabled persons and that these should be more clearly written into the Bill. That said, there is no doubt that the Department of Transport has a specially good record among Whitehall departments for its work for disabled people over the past few years.
Now, this work is guided by the panel of advisers on disability appointed by the Minister of State, members of which are all experts on different aspects of disability. Seminars and conferences on many transport issues are planned which aim to get together the transport operators, planners and designers with disabled users or would-be users of transport. There is an active research programme on many aspects of the improvement and, not least, the Department of Transport's work on the design of the new generation of London taxis able to accommodate chairborne disabled people in their wheelchairs.
The department is very active on the community transport front, such as in helping to encourage proper development of that dreamy service, Dial-a-Ride. Dial-a-Ride consists of vehicles provided through the boroughs in order that wheelchair people may ring up and book suitable transport to accommodate them while still in their wheelchairs. As one who has too often been washed up and unable to find any vehicle to shift me, the news of this advance is of huge importance. The National Advisory Unit for Community Transport, funded by the department, is going to fund the London branch of the national advisory unit to concentrate on developing special services for disabled people in London. Enormous improvements have been made by transport operators in recent years. For example, a stimulus has been provided by the department and by the notable addition to the scheme of people such as Claudia Flanders, a consultant on disability problems to the National Bus Company, and Bill Buchanan, special adviser on the disabled to British Rail.
In the National Bus Company and coach scene, many National Bus Company and other municipal PTEs and private operators now provide ramp or lift equipped vehicles as well as innovations such as lower steps and better hand-rails to help elderly and other ambulatorily uncertain people. On British Rail, all major main-line stations are now equipped for wheelchair access as well as providing many aids for passengers with impaired sight or hearing. All new inter-city rolling stock is now able to accommodate wheelchair-bound passengers in first-class compartments, and there are many more improvements under way in inter-city and surburban services.
As an observer with experience in harder travelling eras, I am astonished by the speed of improvement. It is particularly pleasing to note the degree of current research, through the National Advisory Unit for Community Transport, towards door-to-door travel. Link-ups with bus, train and special vehicles or taxis sound really very much like a fairy tale to a hardened old traveller like me.
Mark you my Lords, this is compared with the past; and there is still good reason why some younger disabled less forged with patience from experience of

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earlier lack of facilities, still see today's travelling difficulties as appalling and probably vindictive towards their career and future. Many are very worried that, without GLC backing all the plans for Dial-a-Ride will be brought to naught. Nevertheless many enthusiastic comments have been made by the Government about the scheme, and I understand that their present stance is that London Regional Transport will go all out on co-ordinating provision, though actual funding will depend on the boroughs. No doubt the Minister will put me right about this point.
I know that the Royal Association of Disability and Rehabilitation for instance, is one of the bodies which believes that the travelling needs of the disabled public are not firmly enough entrenched in the Bill, and I plead with the Minister therefore to think about this. Here we have an inspired service, fit to change the lives of so many, and while it has been encouraged by the Department of Transport it has depended so much on voluntary effort and initiative. It seems to me that this is a service deserving of every spot of help available, always providing that the boroughs and organisers manage it in a thrifty and sensible way. Of course, it would be a disaster if it were wrecked by over-lavish plans made in the belief that someone has to pick up the bill, whatever the cost. While heartily congratulating the organisers, I appeal to them to watch the cost more carefully in these days of scarce resources.
I am told that the new C2X taxis will be in use by the end of 1985. Although I fear that I am one of the 3 per cent. of wheelchair users who are too tall to be accommodated by its design—I weep about that myself—it is still excellent news that it will solve the problems of so many. I am, for instance, advised that there is little hope of any full-blooded overall adaptation to buses to take wheelchairs in the foreseeable future, so the prospect of door-to-door transport depends so very much on these taxis and on Dial-a-Ride.
It is reassuring that the Bill provides that the annual report made by London Regional Transport to the Secretary of State will include an account of progress made on improving access and facilities for disabled people. What is more, Ministers have said that the Board of London Regional Transport will have one member with special responsibility to ensure that the needs of disabled people continue to be a priority. Remembering the department's record of the development of services for disabled people, I have every confidence that this will be recognised as a continuing and integral part of transport development in London.
Perhaps most of all I welcome the fact that the consumer body, the London Regional Passenger Committee, is to have at least one person specifically to represent the interests of disabled people. But I have to say that those of the more unwise disabled people who are less believing of the Government's good intent will require these matters to be stated in the Bill before they are convinced of it. As there is so much wrong with London Transport, as catalogued by the noble Lord, Lord Tordoff, the very least I could do would be to give every good wish to the present LRT Bill and to the LRT, as I hope it will be in the future.

Libya: Diplomatic Relations
4.44 p.m.
Baroness Young: My Lords, with the leave of the House, I should like to repeat a Statement being made in another place by my right honourable and learned friend the Secretary of State for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office on the foreign relations aspect of the subject on which my right honourable and learned friend the Home Secretary has just made a Statement in another place. The Statement is as follows:
"The so-called Libyan People's Bureau dates back to 2nd September 1979. At that time a series of self-styled revolutionary committees took over Libyan Embassies in London and in at least eight other Western European capitals. After long negotiations with the Libyan authorities, we and the other Western governments concerned, working together, in June 1980 recognised one official in each people's bureau abroad as equivalent to a Head of Mission. At the same time we and the other countries agreed to treat the people's bureaux as diplomatic missions.
"During this period Her Majesty's Government took firm action against those Libyans who infringed our laws. In June 1980 Mr. Musa Kusa, the newly-accredited Secretary-General of the Libyan People's Bureau, stated publicly his approval of the killing of a Libyan dissidents in the United Kingdom. On the following day my predecessor required him to leave the country forthwith. With the co-operation of the Home Secretary, three other Libyans were also expelled.
"In November 1980 the two children of a Libyan dissident were poisoned in Portsmouth. As a result of that crime, four Libyans—none of whom had any diplomatic status—were convicted and sentenced to long terms in prison. In purported retaliation, the Libyans expelled three members of the British Embassy staff in Tripoli and an attempt was made to burn down the embassy building.
"Throughout the next three years, the behaviour of the Libyans remained unpredictable and sometimes very difficult. On many occasions, the Libyans made hostile threats in characteristically intemperate language. There were, however, no further incidents of comparable gravity to those of 1980.
"Then in the middle of February this year, a group calling themselves the Committee of Revolutionary Students announced that they had taken over control of the Libyan People's Bureau in London. Since that date no member of the new revolutionary committee, nor any other Libyan, has been given any form of diplomatic status. We made it plain to the Libyans, both in London and Tripoli, that unless and until they took steps to establish a customary diplomatic mission, we would not be willing to deal with them on a normal basis.
On the 10th and 11th March there was a series of bomb explosions in London and Manchester. In close consultation with my right honourable and learned friend the Home Secretary, and with the police and prosecuting authorities, these events were

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thoroughly investigated. Four Libyans are now in custody awaiting trial on serious charges. Six more were deported by my right honourable and learned friend the Home Secretary. I must emphasise that none of these people had any form of diplomatic immunity, and that there was no firm evidence linking the people's bureau with these incidents. Nevertheless, I made it clear on 11th March, both in London and in Tripoli, that the use of British territory for acts of terrorism by any foreign group was totally unacceptable, and that any repetition of incidents of this kind was bound to have serious effect on our relations.
"I now come to the period immediately before the murder on 17th April. Around midnight on 16th April two members of the Libyan People's Bureau came to the Foreign Office. They told the duty officer that they had come to protest against a demonstration to be held next morning and to say that the Libyans would not be responsible for its consequences. This information was immediately passed to the Home Office and the Metropolitan Police who both already had knowledge of the planned demonstration.
"Our ambassador in Tripoli was also summoned after midnight that day to hear a similar message from the Libyan Government that they would not be responsible for the consequences. As my right honourable and learned friend told the House on 25th April such language has been repeatedly used by the Libyans in that context. The House should know that summonses to the Foreign Ministry after midnight were by no means unusual. When the ambassador commented that threats of violence did not impress the British Government, the Libyan official said that no direct threat was intended.
"The following day we were confronted with an unprecedented act of violence conducted from the diplomatic premises in the heart of London. My right honourable and learned friend has reported on the events which ensued and on the action subsequently taken. I should like to add my own profound expression of sympathy to the family of Yvonne Fletcher, who so tragically lost her life.
"As my right honourable and learned friend has already told the House, the expulsion of the staff and occupants of the Libyan People's Bureau was completed on 27th April. On the same day our own embassy staff and families were also safely withdrawn from Tripoli. I should like to pay tribute to the calm and courageous way in which the ambassador and his staff, and their families, have conducted themselves throughout. I should also like to express our thanks to the Italian Government for agreeing to act as protecting power.
"The House will wish to know that the embassy premises in Tripoli, which are the property of the Libyan Government, have been cleared of all classified material. The premises are now in the hands of the Italian Government as protecting power. The Libyan authorities have conducted a search of the premises. I have so far received no report that any damage has been done.
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"We have made clear to the Libyan authorities that we hold them responsible for guaranteeing the continued safety of the British community. Two British Embassy officials have remained behind to man the newly established British Interests Section of the Italian Embassy. Their first task has been to continue to press for the release of those British citizens who are unjustifiably detained in Libya.
"The Italian Ambassador yesterday reinforced the urgent representations which had already been made on numerous occasions by our departing ambassador.
"We are urgently reviewing all existing contracts for the supply of defence equipment to Libya. There can be no question of allowing any fresh exports of that kind. We have also terminated the training of two Libyan official cadets at Dartmouth.
"These brutal and unprecedented events underline dramatically the changed world in which we now live. The implications of international terrorism, of course, spread far beyond the diplomatic field. In this recent case in London the basic problem arises from conflict between those supporting the Libyan régime and those opposing it. We cannot and will not permit foreign countries to export their internal disputes to the streets of London in this way.
"My right honourable and learned friend the Home Secretary and I maintain close co-operation, which we have had throughout, to deal with this threat.
"I turn now to the questions most directly concerned with diplomatic relations. As my right honourable and learned friend the Home Secretary told the House last Wednesday, I have instituted a full review of the Vienna Convention, its operation and enforceability. I shall report the outcome of this review to the House. The Select Committee on Foreign Affairs may well wish to study the same question, which I would welcome.
"But it is not enough simply to await the outcome of the review.
"We are therefore taking immediate unilateral action to strengthen control over the operations of foreign missions in this country.
"The ultimate sanction is of course the complete severance of diplomatic relations, as has been done in the present case. But this is an action which should only be taken in the plainest possible case. This is not a question of diplomatic nicety. This concerns the way in which Her Majesty's Government discharge their responsibility for the protection of many thousands of British subjects who live their lives, often in the furtherance of Britain's worldwide trading interests in every corner of the globe. In all too many places, the conditions which they have to face are anything but safe. It is precisely in such places that the protection of Her Majesty's Government is most necessary.
"There are up to 10,000 Britons resident in Libya. That is the second largest European community in that country.
"I recognise very plainly the anger which every British citizen must feel in the present case. I share

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that sense of anger. That is one good reason why decisions of this kind should only be taken after a full and proper appreciation of the interests of our country and our citizens around the world.
"This explains why the severance of diplomatic relations is such an exceptional event. No British Government have done this previously in response to abuse of immunity.
"The House may be interested to compare our reactions to Libyan provocation with those of some other countries in a similar plight. The United States Embassy in Tripoli was burnt down in December 1979, yet it was not until 1981 that diplomatic relations were suspended. Even then they were not broken.
"The French Embassy in Tripoli was burnt down in 1980. Libyan and French troops to this day confront each other in Chad. Yet diplomatic relations continue. In the case of more than one country the Libyans have taken hostages, who have been exchanged for convicted Libyan prisoners without provoking a break in diplomatic relations. The British response in the present case has been stronger than that of any other country in comparable circumstances.
"It is obviously right to consider whether other measures short of a break in diplomatic relations may be appropriate on such occasions. It has, for example, been asked whether effective measures can be adopted to prevent abuse of the diplomatic bag without requiring any amendments to the Vienna Convention. The convention provides that diplomatic bags shall 'not be opened or detained'.
"The question of scanning bags is not expressly covered. There is argument whether this is permitted or not. The practice of nearly all states is in fact not to scan.
"Our own practice hitherto has been never to allow our own bags to be scanned, nor to scan the bags of others.
"This topic is currently on the agenda of the United Nations International Law Commission. We have more than once considered whether any change of practice is desirable. Any such change would inevitably take place on a reciprocal basis. We have to decide in these cases how best to protect British interests, in particular the security of our essential communications.
"Another sanction is the expulsion of any diplomat who abuses his status.
"We can take similiar action against other staff of a diplomatic mission who do not have full diplomatic status but nevertheless enjoy immunity. Normally we take such action where there is evidence of personal conduct incompatible with diplomatic status. From now on, we shall go further. We shall be ready to use this power as an exemplary measure against any mission which the Government have good reason to believe is responsible for unacceptable activities in this country.
"We also have the power to set limits to the size of diplomatic missions and to refuse to accept as having diplomatic status any premises of a mission
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which are not in our view being used for diplomatic purposes. We now face a wider threat from international terrorism.
"From now on, we shall not hesitate to use our powers to prevent the abuse by missions of their diplomatic status in connection with terrorist activities.
"We have ourselves decided upon this action in response to the changing threat of international terrorism. But we do not propose to leave the matter there. I have already raised the issue with our European partners, and shall be pressing it again at the Foreign Affairs Council in Brussels next week. My right honourable friend the Prime Minister also intends to raise the question for consideration at the London Economic Summit in London in early June. The most effective answer to international terrorism is international action taken collectively by the major countries.
"We have taken the firmest action so far of any country faced with these threats, and shall continue to press for similar action on an international basis".
My Lords, that concludes the Statement.
4.59 p.m.
Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: My Lords, we are grateful to the noble Baroness for repeating the Statement, and we also endorse the tribute which is paid in the Statement to the ambassador and other officials and their families who have been under great strain in Libya over the last few days. Of course, we also join with the right honourable gentleman and the noble Baroness in our sympathy for the family of Yvonne Fletcher.
This was a very long Statement and I shall try to ask some brief questions. In view of the reference in the Statement to a review of the Vienna Convention, can the noble Baroness say what parts of the convention the Government regard as defective and in need of amendment? Can we assume that the noble Baroness and her right honourable and learned friend are chiefly concerned about Articles 22 and 27 of the convention relating to the inviolability of foreign embassies and of diplomatic bags, to which she has just referred? Further, as there are as many as 141 signatories to the convention, is it not inevitable that any attempt to amend the convention will take a very long time indeed?
The Statement refers to the United Nations International Law Commission in Geneva. It indicates that the matter might be raised there, but can the noble Baroness say whether the Government have any firm proposals to make in addition to the unilateral steps which she has described and which the Government are proposing? Can the noble Baroness further say whether the Government are being consulted by the United States Government about the possibility of increasing pressure on Libya and whether similar talks have already been held with our partners in the European Community?
We fully support the action taken in severing diplomatic relations wiht Libya, but can the noble Baroness say whether the question is likely to be on the agenda of the NATO meeting which is to be held in Washington at the end of May?

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May I put this very important question to the noble Baroness: can she confirm or deny that our trade with Libya, and the trade of Libya with other EEC countries, is a factor which may influence any action which may be taken against Libya? Would not the noble Baroness agree that it would be wrong to allow economic considerations to stand between us and an adequate response to the events in St. James's Square?
In addition, can the noble Baroness say what reply-has been received from the Soviet Government following the representations made by our ambassa-dor in Moscow about the totally one-sided coverage of this incident in the Soviet press and media? We note and support what is said in the statement about the supply of defence equipment to Libya. I should be very surprised to hear that any defence equipment has been supplied to Libya in recent years. I must confess that I was surprised to note that until the St. James's Square incident there were Libyan cadets at Darmouth.
Further, is the noble Baroness satisfied that the measures taken to ensure the safety of British citizens in Libya are adequate? Have they, for example, been told that they are there at their own risk? What advice and guidance has been given to British citizens about their continued presence in Libya?
Finally, as my noble friend has already indicated in the exchange on the previous statement, one of the most worrying aspects of this unhappy story seems to be the way in which the intelligence and the warnings were responded to by the Government. One appreciates that ministers have to make a difficult judgment in cases of this kind, and I have every sympathy with that point of view, but for the sake of the future security of the country is it not essential that an inquiry of some kind should be held?
Lord Gladwyn: My Lords, we, too, should like to thank the noble Baroness for repeating this very long statement. We also wish to be associated with the tributes which have been very rightly paid to our ambassador and his staff, whose conduct throughout the whole of the recent period seems to us to have been impeccable. I myself do not wish to criticise the actions which the Government have taken since the terrible incident in St. James's Square, but I believe that many noble Lords will join me in thinking that the Government should have acted when the embassy was taken over by students, so-called, pretty evidently intent on murder—no doubt on the instructions of Colonel Gaddafi, who apparently had already authorised many outrages and had announced his support of the IRA. Surely February last was the moment when our diplomatic relations could have been suitably broken off by the Government? If they had been, one terrible thing which happened would not have happened: the murder of an unfortunate policewoman in St. James's Square.
Now, however, what we need is an indication of what the Government's future policy will be. Collective action, as is said in the Statement, is no doubt desirable, but even in the Council of Ministers of the European Economic Community this will be difficult to achieve. The French have to think of their relations with the colonel in connection with Chad. The Italians have still, I believe, 40,000 nationals in
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Libya and are very much dependent upon Libyan oil, so it will not be very easy to get any collective agreement there. If pressure, possibly economic pressure to start with, is to be exercised at all on somebody who appears, on the face of it, to be in a state of undeclared war with the entire Western world, it might best be organised in NATO, as mentioned by the noble Lord who has just spoken, under the leadership, presumably, of the United States. I do not say that we should be parties to what might be called CIA methods of coping with the colonel, methods which have already achieved prominence in certain organs of the press, but it is to be hoped in the general interests of civilised society that the colonel's reign will shortly be ended, preferably by some coup on the part of his own armed forces, which recent history has shown to be the usual way, in the long run, of coping with dictators of all sorts.
As to revising international law so as to prevent flagrant abuse by assassins calling themselves diplomats, it is obvious that, whatever our hopes may be, general international agreement on amendments to the Vienna Convention is hardly to be expected. Indeed, it is practically impossible to imagine that such an agreement would be obtained. Perhaps, however, the countries of the Western world might, as is hinted at in the long Statement which the noble Baroness has repeated, agree among themselves to take certain measures to limit diplomatic immunity with regard to certain specified countries which have, in our opinion, put themselves outside the present scope of international law and where it might not matter so very much if there was reciprocal action by the countries affected.
All these matters might well be considered in the Council of Ministers of the European Economic Community and also in NATO and perhaps elsewhere. If these consultations do take place I hope that the Government will not hesitate to consult Parliament before they take any decisions regarding them.
5.8 p.m.
Baroness Young: My Lords I should like to thank both the noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos, and the noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn, for their response to this very serious statement. It is a long statement, but we felt it was right to set out the full facts and our proposals for dealing in the future with the situation. First, may I say that I was very glad to hear the tribute paid by the noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos, to our ambassador and his staff in Tripoli. The noble Lord asked a number of important questions, which I shall do my best to answer.
The noble Lord first asked about the review of the Vienna Convention. I should like to confirm that not only will our review cover Articles 22 and 27, which deal with diplomatic bags and embassies; it will also deal with other articles. It will be a thorough review. I would draw the noble Lord's attention to that section of the Statement which makes clear that not only are we having a review of the Vienna Convention but that we are taking immediate unilateral action to strengthen the controls over the operations of foreign missions in this country. The statement lists a number of important steps that we are taking.

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The noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos, asked about consultation. The matter has already been discussed in NATO. We have not asked the European Community to break off diplomatic relations, nor have we asked for a joint statement. We have to consider Italy's position as a protecting power. Nevertheless, we have had valuable support during this crisis, including support at Tripoli. All civilised countries have an interest in opposing the abuse of diplomatic immunity by acts of terrorism.
The noble Lord asked me whether trade with Libya was a factor which influenced our action. When considering what action we should take, we were, of course, and must always be influenced by the fact that there are so many British residents in Libya. As the Statement makes clear, we have broken off diplomatic relations, which is the most serious action that we could take. It is the first time that that action has been taken in circumstances such as these.
As to the reaction of the Soviet Union, our ambassa-dor in Moscow has expressed our displeasure to the Soviet authorities about Soviet press reporting of the whole incident and of what happened. The noble Lord asked me also about defence training, and he was surprised that we should have Libyans at Dartmouth. I would like to confirm that in recent years a small number of Libyan junior officers have been given basic training of a limited and non-controversial type which is not inconsistent with British trading interests. This answer was given by my honourable friend in another place last March when the subject was raised there. I can confirm that we have terminated the courses of the two Libyan students at Dartmouth and no new defence training is to be offered.
Finally, the noble Lord asked me about the position of the Libyan community in the United Kingdom. My right honourable friend the Home Secretary has already told the House of Commons that he will look very carefully at any evidence that the presence of any Libyan is not in the interests of this country and that, where necessary, he will have no hesitation in deporting such an individual. But I should like to confirm that those who obey our laws may remain here in freedom and safety, just as we hold the Libyan Government responsible for the safety of British citizens in Tripoli.
The noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn, also asked a number of questions. He first asked whether or not we had taken any action when the students took over the Libyan People's Bureau in February. Initially, we refused to deal with the revolutionary students. We insisted that the Libyans name a new head or secretary of the Libyan People's Bureau. That name was confirmed orally to us. No new additions have been accepted to the Libyan diplomatic list since the takeover in February. We knew, of course, who were accredited members of the Libyan People's Bureau but not who was inside the bureau on 17th April.
The noble Lord asked me also about collective action. I indicated in my answer to the noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn, what has happened in the community. The Statement made clear that my right honourable friend the Secretary of State will be raising this matter in Brussels next week, and my right honourable friend
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the Prime Minister will be doing so at the London economic summit. We have tried to mobilise world opinion, and ambassadors and high commissioners were instructed to lobby governments on 19th and 22nd April on the ground that all countries have an interest in opposing the misuse of diplomatic premises for terrorism. We sent a personal message to heads of government with influence over Libya, and we have been grateful for the public expressions of support by a large number of our friends and allies—notably the United States, Canada, Belgium, Norway, Australia, Ireland and France.
The noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn, asked me about economic pressure. I confirm that we are not at present considering economic sanctions against Libya. He made various suggestions about the future which I shall read with interest, but I hope he feels that the steps we are taking, and the steps outlined by my right honourable friend the Home Secretary, represent a very strong response. In the case of the breaking off of diplomatic relations, that is a response which has not been made in similar circumstances before.
Lord Boston of Faversham: My Lords, can the Minister throw further light on the events between the outrages in March and those on the 5th and 17th April? I believe that the Statement deals with matters up to the middle of March, when the March outrages took place, but it then goes straight to the events of 17th April. The noble Baroness has already implied that the Government indicated to the Libyan authorities—I think the words were—that they would be unable to continue to deal with them unless the mission in London was placed on a firmer footing. Was any kind of deadline set by Her Majesty's Government on that point, as to the length of time allowed to put the mission on a proper footing? And between those dates—that is to say, between mid-March and 5th April, and indeed 16th April—was any further pressure exerted by the Government on the Libyan authorities to put matters right at the Libyan bureau?
May I also ask the Minister, and while welcoming the extra controls, and the additional safeguards outlined by the noble Lord, Lord Elton, on immigration matters, whether it is envisaged that the extra unilateral measures concerning the diplomatic bag are likely to be taken within a limited time? If so, can the noble Baroness say how long?
Baroness Young: My Lords, on the timetable, the noble Lord, Lord Boston, is referring to the action following the bombings on 10th—11th March. In respect of that particular matter, official Libyan involvement was suspected. As already stated, six Libyans have been deported and four more are awaiting trial. But the link between those responsible for the bombing and the Libyan People's Bureau was not clearly established. However, we made a strong statement to the Libyans that a repetition of the 1980 incidents would have a serious effect upon our relations and that we expected the Libyan authorities to do everything in their power to prevent criminal acts by Libyan residents in this country.
On the question regarding whether we had any further control after the takeover of the Libyan People's Bureau by the revolutionary students, we did

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insist—as I indicated in my answer to the noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn—that the Libyans name a new head of the bureau. This, as I understand it, was necessary for acceptance of its diplomatic status. A name was confirmed orally on 9th April, and this was something that we accepted.
On the question concerning the diplomatic bag, this is, as I have indicated, one of the issues that will be considered in the review of the Vienna Convention. The Statement makes plain that so far we have felt that we would not want our own diplomatic bags to be scanned and have not therefore scanned the bags of others. However, this is a matter for further consideration.
Lord Harris of Greenwich: My Lords, perhaps I may ask a question on the last point made by the noble Baroness, concerning the scanning of diplomatic bags. Does she not agree, in the light of the explosives which were in the Libyan People's Bureau, that it is almost certain that diplomatic bags were used to introduce ammunition and guns into the United Kingdom? That being so, does not the noble Baroness agree that we shall obviously have to review this matter? In the light of the general situation she has described, can she provide some indication of the countries which do scan diplomatic bags? I believe it will be helpful to the House to have that information. As I understand it, those countries are able to scan the content of diplomatic bags, notwithstanding the requirements of the Vienna Convention.
Secondly, on the question of defence equipment, while I am sure we all welcome her statement that no fresh exports will be permitted, does not the noble Baroness agree that some of us are entitled to bemildly surprised that we have been making defence equipment available to the Libyans—first, because of their terrorist attacks in this country; secondly, because of the training sessions they have been laying on for members of the Provisional IRA in Libya?
Baroness Young: My Lords, perhaps I may take the questions of the noble Lord in the reverse order to which he put them and first say something about defence sales. As the noble Lord has noted, I have referred to this subject. There is, of course, strict control over the sale of arms and paramilitary equipment at home and overseas. All such sales require export licences, which are considered on their merits. Licence applications for Libya are subject to particularly close scrutiny, and no offensive equipment is sold. There have been no new licences for defence equipment and, of course, the existing licences are being reviewed.
The noble Lord's first point was about the diplomatic bag. My understanding is that the only country which does scan bags is Kuwait. The noble Lord asked whether or not this is something which should be looked at. Our practice has always been not to scan bags even of those countries—there are three: Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain—which have reservations to Article 27 of the convention. A change in practice, which we would have to give due notice, is something we have to consider. As the Statement makes clear, it is a matter for careful consideration as
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to whether we should do this. As I have indicated, it is one of the matters being looked at in this review.
Viscount St. Davids: My Lords, can the noble Baroness answer a question which surely must have come to the minds of many people? It is clearly going to take a long time to amend an international convention, but surely diplomacy is mostly conducted on a bilateral system. We send to a country an ambassador and that country sends one here. Is it not possible to start doing something at once simply by asking countries to keep to a code of conduct which we would be happy to keep to ourselves in our own embassies? That would make considerable headway and possibly pave the way for the final changes to the convention by thus setting up a number of bilateral situations which would, in those areas at least, clarify the matter.
Baroness Young: My Lords, that is why the Statement makes plain that we are taking unilateral and immediate action to strengthen our control over the operations of foreign missions in this country. We are doing this while the review of the Vienna Convention is taking place.
Baroness Hornsby-Smith: My Lords, would my noble friend tell us if there are any Libyan consulates sited around the country? We have not heard of their personnel being expelled. If there are any in existence, what steps are being taken to see that the terrorist activities of the bureau are not transferred to those agencies?
Baroness Young: My Lords, my understanding is that there were four Libyan premises in London. Diplomatic immunity on all four has ended but we have an obligation under the Vienna Convention to protect and respect the buildings. Of course, the property which belongs to the Libyan Government now no longer enjoys diplomatic immunity. There are no consulates outside London.
Lord Mayhew: My Lords, does the noble Baroness agree that the vast majority of Moslems and Arabs regard Gaddafi as a disgrace to Islam and to the Arab world and that there is a fair prospect in due course that he will be overthrown by his own people? Indeed, the wildness and violence of his attacks on his enemies is significant from that point of view. Does the noble Baroness agree that policies of intervention designed to destabilise the réegime, perhaps led by the United States, are unlikely to succeed and might well be counter-productive?
Baroness Young: My Lords, I have no doubt that Arab countries, as other countries, condemn these acts of terrorism which offend against the international community. On the second point made by the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, I do not wish to speculate on United States policy.
Viscount Mountgarret: My Lords, may I now ask the question which I inadvertently put earlier to my noble friend Lord Elton regarding the possible undesirability of the location of embassies in the heart of central London?
Baroness Young: Yes, my Lords, I apologise to my noble friend Lord Mountgarret. I had meant to answer the question he put earlier on the Statement read by my noble friend Lord Elton. I hope that the Statement not only makes clear that we have severed diplomatic relations with the Libyan Government, but goes on to say that there are a number of other policies which we can follow to strengthen our position. I quote again from the Statement:
"We shall be ready to use this power"—
that is, to take action on conduct which is incompatible with diplomatic status—
"as an exemplary measure against any mission".
I hope that the noble Viscount will feel that that answers his point about diplomatic missions that offend in central London.

London Regional Transport Bill
5.25 p.m.
Second Reading debate resumed.
Lord Mountevans: My Lords, there is an expression in transport called "the tidal flow" and the tides have certainly been flowing in and out with a vengeance this afternoon. At the outset, in bringing us back to the London Regional Transport Bill, I should like to apologise to the noble Lords, Lord Trefgarne and Lord Lucas, and to those of your Lordships remaining, for not being able to stay until the debate is concluded. I must leave early for engagements relating to the Liverpool International Garden Festival which is opening tomorrow. At the same time, I express my sincere thanks to officials in the Department of the Environment and the Department of Transport for their willing and timely help with several facts not apparent from the Bill or from its preceding stages in another place.
I strongly welcome the Bill before us this afternoon. I had reservations about last year's Transport Bill but this Bill goes a long way towards meeting them. As a non car owner, ratepayer and taxpayer, I am a committed user of, and payer for, public transport. I support the Bill because I feel that it takes several steps towards the public transport system which I should like to see enjoyed by Londoners as well as visitors—British and foreign—to our city.
I think that we are all in agreement on the need for some form of public transport. There are social grounds, such as the immobility of those many who lack access to cars. There are energy grounds. Public transport is, by most yardsticks, the most efficient user of a dwindling, perhaps even finite, resource. There are environmental arguments for public transport. The question is really one of what degree of public transport we need and to what extent its users should be subsidised. So far as I know, no public transport system in the world makes a profit purely by means of fares, so one comes to two issues: the source of funding and its application.
Many concerned with the source side will argue that subsidies, from whatever source, should be as generous as possible and that fares should be as low as possible in order to maximise usage. The logical extension of
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that argument is totally free transport. In that context I remind your Lordships of a formidable array of facts marshalled by the noble Baroness, Lady Gardner of Parkes, on the Second Reading of last year's Bill. She was very persuasive and demonstrated that the commercial sector—the major source of tax and, as the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, pointed out, of rate subsidy—enjoyed no say in how its contributions were spent and could see its viability being threatened by the ever-increasing burdens being inflicted upon it, particularly in this context, in terms of rates. I totally accept her arguments and would only add to them by pointing out that many of those who are canvassed—and on at least one occasion this afternoon has been mentioned—are Londoners who are in favour of this, that and the other, or who have voted, when called upon, for cheap transport, but who have no ratepayers' interest in the subsidising of that transport.
I raised this thought as an aside last year and have been given some figures, admittedly nationwide, which suggests that perhaps 20 per cent. of domestic rate income due is in fact central funding laundered through the social security system. Similarly, perhaps 20 per cent. of the rate income due is funded by the unemployment benefit system. I accept that these are national figures but I still feel that, trading off inner city deprivation in London against a lower than national level of unemployment one might well find that a third of those who voted for Fares Fair—perhaps more who. when polled by the public opinion polls, supported such policies—were not going to subsidise that policy from their own pockets. They were getting all the fun without the risk; and, being human they were bound to vote, if not for something for nothing then certainly for something for not a lot. I feel that the one-third central subsidy and two-thirds ratepayer subsidy initially proposed in Clause 13 of the Bill is an equable one for a capital city.
The real hope that I have of this Bill however, lies not in the source of funds which it specifies but in the application of those funds. Although London has by any standard a high proportion of farebox revenue as a share of the total costs of its transport system, I remain unconvinced that the funds thus spent, or indeed the subsidies, are generating value for money. There are a number of welcome developments in London Transport, such as the increasing use of one-man buses as opposed to crewed ones. This step is helped by the spread of travel-card usage—something in which we seem to lag behind most of the rest of the world. Further sectors of the Underground, too, are going over to one-man operation. But the Underground still parallels bus routes in far too many instances. Tickets are still checked when we board a train and collected when we leave the system, and yet there is opportunity for fraud—a topic which, surprisingly, is not covered in the Bill.
Buses designed for one-man operation are all too frequently crewed by two people. Is this. I ask myself, an efficient way of spending the farepayers' money and the subsidy money, wherever that money comes from? The answer, to me. is. "No"—a "No" amplified by the fact that, in spite of Fares Fair, senior citizens' passes, travel cards and all manner of other inducements and incentives, only some 25 per cent. of London

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Transport's offer of bus seat miles is taken up, and perhaps 30 per cent. of its tube seat miles. Those figures are from the most recently available annual report.
Put another way, some 75 per cent. of bus seat miles and 70 per cent. of tube seat miles offered on the Underground are, whatever the incentives, irrelevant to London Transport's customers. No commercial business, I feel, could survive if the product or service it was selling was offered without due consideration for the existing demand for that product or service. The present system does not suggest a degree of efficiency, nor does it suggest to me that I am getting value for money. It is failing to appeal to its captive or its potential users. They are rejecting it on grounds of, perhaps frequency or reliability, of convenience or of perceived value.
Against that background I hope that when this Bill reaches the statute book the Minister will take a long hard look at the use to which London Transport puts its money and at the excess of supply over demand. I hope that its officials will take the same look at the Tyne Wear system, which has so many strengths where London Transport is weak: one man operated buses kept out of the city centre with passengers encouraged to use the metro; and good park-and-ride facilities at suburban stations which are themselves unmanned—a system which I believe to be a model of its kind and a tribute to those who conceived it. I also hope that the Minister's officials will examine how other major conurbations outside Britain have sought to minimise costs, to tailor supply to demand and to maximise their effectiveness.
As I said at the beginning, I welcome this Bill because it goes some of the way to giving London and its hinterland the efficient and cost-effective transport system which I believe it needs. There are still steps to be taken, and these are signposted in Part II of the Bill. In pursuit of increased efficiency and value for money, I hope that the Secretary of State will consider using his powers to produce better integration between London Regional Transport and British Rail, and not simply to encourage the formation of liaison committees. It seems undesirable to have parallel routes operating to different remits; parallel routes subsidised in one instance by the means outlined in Part I of the Bill and in the other by means of the PSO grant to British Rail. Both London Regional Transport and British Rail have an essential role to play in moving us all to and fro, but it should be an integrated role in pursuit of a common objective and one played by the same set of rules. If that comes to pass we shall have a public transport system both efficient and commercially attractive to users, and one that is, I hope, viable.
5.35 p.m.
Baroness Denington: My Lords, I thought it might be helpful if I were briefly to outline how the present position of London Transport has developed from 1964 to the present time; that is, a bird's-eye view of one who was a member of the GLC, a bird's-eye view from inside. In 1964 the GLC was brought into being. At that time London Transport was under the control of the Government through the London Passenger Transport Board. Transport services in London were
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run down. Londoners were vociferous in their complaints about it. It was perfectly clear that control from Whitehall was not successful. Neither Ministers nor civil servants were close enough to the problems; nor were they interested enough in the complexity and the detail of them. Nor were they able to give enough time to the matter to make it the vital, attractive, and successful service that the capital city must have.
The new leader of the GLC, Mr. Fiske, later Lord Fiske, knew that transport is a service that needs to be closely integrated with the policies for roads and traffic management. He was determined to bring control of London Transport to the GLC, to effect this integra-tion and to provide London with a good service. After negotiations with Barbara Castle—and I might say that Barbara Castle was only too glad to get shot of the thing—the transfer was agreed and the Act effecting it was passed in 1969.
How curious it is that the Government are now determined to take back control. 1 think they are no more likely to succeed with it this time than they did before. It is a service that needs involvement and understanding by locally elected councillors; that is, directed by those responsible to the main users—the electorate—and part of the total transport plan for vehicles and roads of the capital city.
The efforts between 1969 and today have been to achieve just that, starting from a poor and depressed base left by the Government of the time. Curiously, by 1969 the GLC had changed from Labour to Tory, and Mr. Plummer (now Lord Plummer, a Member of your Lordships' House) was leader of the council. He refused to take over London Transport unless the outstanding debt was written off, and all of us must be grateful to him for fighting that fight and for winning it. The Government gave in and London Transport was transferred debt free.
In 1973 Labour regained control of the GLC. Transport had been a major issue in the election as it was still in a deplorable state after six years of Tory rule and the GLC. I speak from absolute inside knowledge because I was landed with the task of being chairman of the transport committee in 1973—and I say "landed with it" because it was never a thing I ever sought. The transport service had to be drastically improved. Traffic congestion on the roads was acute. It was clear that commuting by car had to be reduced, and this could only be achieved by the improvement of the public transport service in frequency, reliability and atttractiveness in every way, including the level of fares.
The situation of the service at that time was as follows. As chairman I asked why we could not have more buses. People were waiting hours for a bus and everybody was up in arms. The answer was that there was an acute shortage of staff, and there was a shortage of staff because the rates of pay of London Transport staff were so low that, even though vacancies were advertised, nobody would do the work. We then started to negotiate and got the pay moved up. We then had the staff. All that time there was no staff and the buses that we needed on the roads simply stood in the garages month after month.
We had the staff. We got the buses out of the garages but they were not roadworthy. They were in a

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condition where they needed a lot of repair. We found that there were no spares. We went up and down the country to every possible available source. Meanwhile I had the staff whom I had recruited playing cards in the garages as we could not use the buses. We applied abroad for buses and did everything else that we could. We at last succeeded in getting more buses and began to improve the bus service. I wanted to explain the situation when in 1973 the Labour Party took over that most important service. We ordered new buses. We had many buses with a one-man service to go to the areas that had been badly served or were not previously on bus routes, and so on.
The Underground was in a deplorable and rundown state. It was fantastically overcrowded. People were so crushed in the tubes coming to work that they could hardly breath. I know of firms that moved out to the expanding towns simply because their workers said that they could not travel any more. They moved out and the workers went with them because they were not prepared to use public transport as it was in such a state. Not only were the trains overcrowded; the stations were deplorable and some still are. They were utterly depressing and sordid. We ordered new trains and had a station improvement programme, which included renewal of the escalators and installing new ones. We planned new lines. The Jubilee Line relieved a lot of the overcrowding. That was its whole purpose and it did that. The link to Heathrow was started.
There was the acquisition of station car parks. The GLC had to go outside London to the peripheral areas to purchase land for car parks in order to get park-and-ride on British Rail and at some LT stations. We had to purchase land to do that. At the same time, in order to discourage cars from the roads, which we were trying desperately to do, we purchased derelict sites in London which were being used for car parking by people coming in in private cars.
It is perfectly plain to anybody who thinks for five minutes that such a programme could not possibly be embarked on without incurring a great deal of expenditure. Of course it could not. We had transport supplementary grants from the Government, which helped, but the GLC rate had to finance a large proportion of the expenditure, and it still has to. Nor did the GLC embark on this without realising the consequences. I remember vividly a meeting with the London Transport Executive. Its top people came over to County Hall and went over with us the financial implications of the programme that we were embarked upon. It was quite alarming. I remember going to talk to Sir Reginald Goodwin, who was the very sober-minded leader of the council and who had been finance chairman. He was no wild man. Not a Ken Livingstone—not that I really think that Livingstone is as wild as some people say: sometimes very misguided.
We saw where we were going. We saw that year by year the subsidy would increase, and increase very seriously, but we were the authority responsible for public transport and for enabling business to thrive in the capital city of this land. We knew that we had a duty not to fail it. That is what we were trying to do.
Lord Fanshawe of Richmond: My Lords, I am most
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grateful to the noble Baroness for giving way. I have listened with fascination to her description of events during the past years since 1973, when she held a position of great responsibility in the GLC. During this entire period I represented a London seat in the other place and watched the deterioration of London Transport until 1973. After 1973 it deteriorated even more. I do not remember any sign of this great improvement, better management or a better life for Londoners travelling by rail or bus after the magic period of time when the Labour Party came into power in 1973.
Baroness Denington: My Lords, I am describing the programme we embarked on. Nobody on this earth can wave a magic wand and immediately in 1973 see all the improvements. You are planning ahead. That is what I am saying. We were looking at the financial implications which would build up year by year as the programme built up and the service improved. I cannot agree with the noble Lord. There has been some improvement, although not nearly enough.
The London Transport Executive people were very worried, and so were we. They pressed us at that time to increase the fares to bring in more money because of the rising subsidies. From their point of view, they were perfectly right. Of course they wanted more income and were very frightened of the rise in subsidies that they saw coming in year by year, but from the GLC angle they were not right and we were. We had to improve public transport, get cars off the roads and keep fares down, because as fares go up you lose riders. We had to get more people on to public transport.
Here is the true dilemma. For London to thrive as a business centre, it must have an efficient, adequate and attractive public transport service to get its workers to their destinations in a state fit to work, and the fare level must be such that the service will be used by as many as can be induced to use it. If the service is not adequate, people will take to their cars. That has been proved over and over again. London's roads are totally inadequate to cope with the level of traffic that they have to carry even now. They must be relieved of private cars as much as possible. This is the basis of a policy. Traffic jams affect all activities. Workers do not get to work on time if there are traffic jams and goods do not get delivered.
This is the nub of the problem. The service has to be good, which demands a great subsidy. Fares must not go too high or you lose your ridership. The Government think they have a magic formula to solve the problem. What is it? It is breaking up London Transport into bus and Underground operations. I think that is fatal. Privatisation is the magic word as far as the Conservative Party is concerned. I suppose they think that privatisation will make the service more efficient and therefore save money. I do not know what they think it will do, but I must say that I am exceedingly worried about it.
May I return for a moment to Mr. Livingstone? I think the Government would do well to try and look very carefully at what he did with London fares. I think he ought to be given very full marks for never giving way to the very strong Labour Party lobby that was on him to have free fares in London, which would

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have been quite disastrous. He did not give way to it. It is very useful to read carefully and to study what has happened under his fares policy. When the fares went up again, public transport lost travellers—ridership. When the fares are low, then people leave their cars at home and they use public transport. It is no good pretending that the level of fares is not exceedingly important.
What nobody has yet arrived at is exactly where the blame lies, the particular point at which you hold your ridership. What Mr. Livingstone was doing was really very interesting in that particular respect, because that is the key to the situation. If one could reach that position and if one could then increase subsidies in line with inflation, or the rate subsidy in line with inflation, one might really get a stable policy. That is something I was trying to get at, but I was there as chairman for only two years and that did not give me very long. I do not want to go on for too long but I thought that perhaps some history from the inside and the way I saw it might be useful to some people's understanding of the matter.
There is only one other point I want to make, and that will take me half a minute. It is one detail on which I am in line with other people. It is the question of free fares for the elderly. I have great pride in having started the present system. In my view they should remain free, totally free. I would hate to see boroughs here and there charging 25p, or £1 or more, or something like that, for the permit. It ought to be a totally London-wide policy, and it ought to stay with the Post Office. We started it off with the boroughs. Pensioners had to go to the town halls to get their passes. We very easily transferred it, for certain reasons—partly that, but not entirely—to the Post Office. They were most co-operative. It is a marvellous thing for the old people. They all, or nearly all, go to the Post Office to collect their pension every week, and it is so easy for them. I would beg the Government to do all they can with the boroughs to see that it remains a free service, a London-wide service, and that it stays with the Post Office.
5.53 p.m.
Lord Molloy: My Lords, may I preface what I have to say by stating quite clearly that I am one of those who strenuously resist the bawlings of the past drowning the whispers of the future. Nevertheless, in a moment on behalf of millions of Londoners, I am going to acknowledge the great debt they owe to the noble Baroness, Lady Denington, for magnificent work she did, both in housing and on London Transport. I have some authority so to do, having held nearly every chair in local government in London. At the time the noble Baroness, Lady Denington, was chairman of the transport committee, I was one of those who harassed her in my high, official capacity as leader of the Fulham Borough Council.
I can remember the same arguments being advanced by Tories then as have been advanced today. The situation, indeed, was the same. I listened to the noble Lord who spoke just before the noble Baroness, Lady Denington, when he was somewhat apprehen-sive about the subsidies that were going to be paid. It was the same situation then as it is today. The very well-off in this country get more relief from taxes and
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proportionately pay less taxes than sometimes the old-age pensioners and the very poor. Yet in my days as leader of the borough council it was those people who were the biggest bellyachers, as indeed they are today.
First there was the LCC, of which the noble Baroness, Lady Denington, was a member. Then later there was the GLC. We all know why the GLC was created. It was because the Tories thought they were never going to win if it remained the LCC, so they chopped it all round. Sir Keith Joseph did that, but it failed after a while. The Government said, "We are not having this lot running London", so out they went. Now the Conservatives are in the position of saying, "If you get an LCC, there is the danger that wicked Labour will run it; if you get a GLC, there is a danger that wicked Labour will run it; there is only one course left—abolish it altogether and appoint bureaucrats to run it". This is the massive democratic Conservative Party.
I believe this is something that is a distasteful mark on society, whipped up by sometimes ill-informed journalists and also by party propagandists who know full well there is no need to tell the absolute truth because the mass of people will not really check up on it. We did check up on it, and we found that that was a fact. I have checked up on it recently. Members on the other side know very well that there are people exceedingly well-off who proportionately pay less income tax than some pensioners and the very poor at the bottom of the income scale. In my judgment that deserves just one word—disgraceful. When they resist having to pay a subsidy in their rates, that is an abomination and we should say so loudly and clearly.
Reading the Bill, as I have had to do over the weekend, I have discovered that what I have to be careful about is to make very certain that 1 do not slip into making Committee points. When it comes to Committee I will be involved in that, and I hope I shall not be making any Second Reading points. This is the dilemma. It is indeed the hallmark of an appalling, rotten piece of legislation. Look all through the legislation that has passed through the other House and through this Chamber. This is what people like Winston Churchill, Aneurin Bevan, Harold Macmillan and a few others have said, that that hall-mark is so clear on rotten legislation. I mince no words: this is indeed a piece of rotten legislation.
One realises and has to acknowledge that there have been members of both parties in the GLC who have striven to resolve the many problems that afflict London Transport. LCC Conservatives and LCC Labour people—and it was the same with the GLC—all knew that what they were trying to deal with was 20th century traffic on 18th century roads. The moment they tried to make better and bigger roads to carry the transport through London they found that the costs were enormous and that there was no real solution at hand.
I can remember when it was possible to travel on trams from Fulham up through Hammersmith, and right across to the East End of London, for a couple of bob, and to do it faster than you could by any bus today. I believe we made a great mistake in abolishing the trams. It seemed to be an absurdity that years later—yes, under a Labour administration in County

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Hall—we brought back the safe lanes for the buses to travel in. It would have been much easier if we had left it as it was with the trams, when we were able to get so very surely from one place to another.
But I believe that over the years the endeavours of all GLC councillors, in both the major parties, who have held office—and sometimes when they have not held office; by their opposition, Conservative opposition to Labour councils and Labour opposition to Conservative councils—have been to strive valiantly to try to find a solution. I believe that they are really making an effort now to get to that position and to hold that desideratum, because the facts are these. We in Britain are always a little loath to show what we are good at. It so happens that, of all the capital cities in the world—and 1 have travelled in most—probably the best form of public transport is that in Greater London, and we should acknowledge that, because foreigners acknowledge it.
This Bill, if it ever becomes law, will stop dead in its tracks the gradual resolving of very difficult problems. The real offence of the GLC, I believe that I can say to the Benches opposite, is that it has been too successful in resolving some of these problems. Of course "Fares Fair" was attacked right, left and centre. One of the borough councils was put up to bring the whole matter to this Chamber for the judges who sit here to decide upon. They decided that it was illegal. What a heinous offence! Fancy putting down the fares for nearly five million Londoners and half a dozen Law Lords say that it must not be done! It therefore had to be done another way, but that is not how a sensible and civilised nation should behave.
I could well understand if it was a bunch of company directors on the make who were doing a bit of tax evasion. I could then understand the Law Lords intervening. But there is not one blemish on the conduct of either Opposition or the majority party councillors in the GLC who debated this great issue. Many of the Conservatives supported the proposals that came forward. Here was an almost unified Greater London Council that had produced a great scheme. That was to its credit. What happened—this is the mark of irritation—is that there were fewer cars on London streets, less pressure on parking, and suddenly more revenue. Why? Because there were more passengers. This was the result of an intense examination by councillors of both parties and particularly by those of my party who knew London and the problems of Londoners. It is they, not any Secretary of State nor bureaucrat in the office of the Secretary of State for Transport, who have continued to find the answer. The Secretary of State and his officials are too remote from the running of this capital city.
The other distasteful aspect about it all is that discussion will be superseded by the diktat of a Conservative Minister. Nearly everyone agrees, in the other place as well as in this House, that the Government have developed an obsession with attacking the GLC and also the poor and particularly the elderly. Your Lordships can speak to any old age pensioner. 1 meet them in various capacities as chairman of a number of tenants' associations and as chairman of the metropolitan area of the Royal British
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Legion, which includes the equivalent of 40 towns. Those soldiers, sailors and airmen a few years older than myself find that living in London with the pass is a boon. That is no longer safe. Indeed, nothing much is safe in the hands of the Government.
The agony is that there are a million people who find that the sort of solution which the GLC has worked out helps them enormously. Now it is to be sacrificed on the altar of cuts. This is an Act, if it comes about, which will be mean and unworthy. It will reverse the principle embraced at one time by all parties that we should seek to establish the caring society and not supplant it with the callous society.
Civic pride is to be surrendered to personal greed in the field of privatisation. I have never met any ordinary Londoner who wanted to own London Transport, who wanted to own trams or buses. He could not even afford a car. What Londoners were prepared to do was to work and to give whatever they could to have an efficient London transport system. If privatisation is carried to its logical conclusion—I think that the Minister should answer because Londoners want to know—will the day come under Conservatism when the roads will be privatised and we shall be back to paying the old tolls? That is the logic. The question has already been asked and should be answered.
The future of London will always depend on the millions on the move every day. They travel by bus, by train, by lorry, by taxi, by cycle, on foot, and in some cases on horseback in this wonderful city that we know as London. They do so for a variety of reasons. Under this Government, under Toryism, many do it looking for work. Millions of Londoners, young and old, are looking for work. Many of the problems are the result of the unplanned entrepreneurial, money-grubbing, helter-skelter growth that was taking place in this great capital city some 70 or 80 years ago. At that time there was no responsibility for civic pride and no responsibility for care for the future.
Should this Bill pass into law, London's transport will surely move into chaos. In saying "London's transport", I do not mean the executive. I mean all the people who drive the buses and the trains and so on and so forth. I am talking of the mass of millions of Londoners who have to move about to go to work, to see their loved ones or to go out for pleasure. Under the Bill, all that will degenerate into chaos, or they will have to pack it in. It seems to me that the Bill, with its concentration on centralisation while dishing out the possibility of some money to be made by private entrepreneurs who probably support the Tory Party, is a mix-up, a sort of myopic Chairman Mao's reading.
With over-centralisation through the Ministry and a few handouts to those who make financial contributions, the Bill will vent its bilious spleen on millions of Londoners who will receive a lower subsidy for public transport. For many, this means that they will not be able to travel at all. This proud city which, with all its faults, has the most efficient public transport of any European city, will slowly slip into the mire.
The Government are now more or less the vampire of local democracy. They are draining the lifeblood of all the resources of local government and using them

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in central Government, and cutting with their incisor the arteries of democracy. Two years ago, we did not take much notice. However, as the process moves relentlessly on. we can see what is happening. I believe that it behoves all in this House, even if they agree with the Government, to say "Take care, we may have to oppose you on a number of issues". If I was a Conservative I would say this.
I am gravely apprehensive about the constant threat to elected democracy and a form of government that is older than our national government—British local government. This is something that we have to beware of. I hope that before the Bill becomes law there will be a number of proposals that will prove attractive to Members on all sides of this ancient Chamber. We have a responsibility to this great city. It might be said that I am arguing a point that only supports the socialist cause. The fact is that many of the things that we have recommended in Labour-controlled boroughs have been supported time and again by Conservative Oppositions. I have led delegations of Conservative and Labour councillors to both Labour and Conservative Ministers. If it happened to be Fulham or the GLC, we put those authorities first.
It would be a good idea, when this Bill is examined in detail in Committee, for us to take full cognisance of the views of members of all parties serving on the GLC and to acknowledge that they, too, have a contribution to make which might ease the savageness of the Bill and not damage too much the dignity, as well as the great efforts that have been directed towards its development, of London Transport. Slowly but surely it has moved to find an answer. It would be a great shame if that movement towards a solution was halted by an injudicious and not particularly wise Bill.
6.10 p.m.
Lord Teviot: My Lords, before I start on my own intervention I must mention that my noble friend Lady Gardner of Parkes was obliged to attend a meeting of the special health authority of which she is a member. Today's meeting is dealing with a particularly urgent matter for which her presence is essential. Therefore she was unable to take her place in this debate. She greatly regrets this and has asked me to explain it to your Lordships.
She has also asked me to raise one point which has been touched on by the noble Lord, Lord Mountevens, and which she had intended to discuss because she believes it to be highly relevant to this Bill. There is for London Transport each year a major loss of revenue which is due to fraud, to a large extent passenger fraud. Very large amounts of money are involved, certainly millions of pounds. The recent London Transport report shows that progress to reduce fraud is being made but it remains a great problem. My noble friend believes that the transport authority requires further powers to eliminate passenger fraud and that there should be a provision in this Bill for imposing immediate financial penalty. All major continental cities have on-the-spot fines for these situations. Perhaps we might call it an instant surcharge for those without a ticket or with an invalid ticket, or a deliberate over-rider paying a minimum fare only. My noble friend has asked me to place this matter before your Lordships so that the Minister can consider it, in view
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of her intention to introduce an amendment at the Committee stage.
Now I start on my own speech. I welcome this Bill. As your Lordships will know, I have had a long interest—at one stage direct—in the transport industry and it would be hard for me to remain silent on a Bill of such fundamental significance for the future of transport in London. The progress of this measure has not been without controversy in another place, and one appreciates that the situation here will be the same. But I hope that I can speak today in a bipartisan way and attempt to approach the issue from the standpoint of a transport person and as a passenger.
Like other noble Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Trefgarne for outlining so clearly the provisions of this Bill. I welcome the Bill as an opportunity to secure real improvements in the provision of public transport for those who live in London, those who commute and those who visit, either from this country or from abroad— improvements which have so sadly eluded us in the years since the war. I hope therefore that I will have his and the House's forbearance if I spend a few moments indicating ways in which I believe the Government could best give the lead in securing practical improvements for the passenger and in encouraging the operators to respond in the most positive way to the possibilities opened up by the passage of this Bill.
I am sure it is common ground between us that London's public transport was the envy of the world in the 1930s. Sadly that is no longer true. Commuters in Paris, Brussels, Hamburg, Lille, Washington and increasingly in the dynamic growing cities of the newly industrialised world in South East Asia would be disappointed by the age, the appearance, the service, and—to use a modern phrase—the lack of user friendliness of much of London's public transport.
I do not wish to analyse in depth the reasons for this sad decline. But much of the blame must go to the absence of common objectives set for the principal operators in London, London Transport and British Rail, who have been attempting to work to different financial regimes against a background in the past 10 years or so of increasingly bitter political debate about the role of public transport and the financial resources which should be allocated to it. This debate has blocked the way for dynamic change despite the considerable efforts of the operators to work more closely together and despite some of the initiatives, which I applaud, to simplify fares and encourage the use of transport free from artificial barriers.
That is why I believe the new structure that is proposed, with London Regional Transport as well as British Rail reporting to the Secretary of State for Transport, will for the first time, with the exception of a few years during the days of the British Transport Commission, enable common objectives to be set for both enterprises working to the same financial master.
It has been said by some that the net result of all this will be simply to reduce the net cost of public transport to the taxpayer and ratepayer irrespective of the level of service. Clearly cost reductions will flow from more efficient operation. Both London Transport and British Rail are separately seeking significant economies through the more effective use of resources,

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both materials and labour. Both the taxpayer and the ratepayer expect and have a right to expect that their services are produced as cheaply as possible.
But they also expect, and have a right to expect, better services; and this is an expectation which I am sure the Secretary of State will not wish to ignore. I understand that he is committed to speedy action in establishing London Regional Transport once the measures that are now before Parliament move onto the statute book. The speediest way he could convince the London passenger that this is not simply a cost-cutting measure and that real benefits will flow would be to give his encouragement to the extension of the Travelcard system of zonal flat fare travel to British Rail services within the present GLC boundary. The success of the Travelcard is not in dispute. London Transport estimate that as a result of Travelcard alone, journeys increased by 8 per cent, and had a positive effect on receipts.
Both operators, I understand, are keen to extend it, given the necessary financial arrangements. On simple grounds of equity it would do much to convince the minds of those who live south of the Thames, many of them excluded from the Underground network, of the benefits of London Regional Transport. By this single step of fares integration, the Secretary of State could do more than anything else to ease the natural fears and anxieties about this Bill and secure public goodwill and support for this re-organisation. I believe this is so important that I should like to ask my noble friend who is going to reply to the debate for an assurance that the Government will give early and favourable consideration to this step.
Fares integration along these lines—and both British Rail and London Transport have been working closely together for a number of years on extending through ticketing between their services—will, I believe, do much to remove the artificial barriers to travel resulting from queueing and inconvenient interchanges, and throw up interesting new travel patterns. Transport made easy for the customers will produce more customers. This in turn could do much to create a new climate in which to consider, without any institutional barriers, opportunities for selective new investment which could improve modal interchange and mobility; not that we need delay considering new investment which is so necessary for the refurbishment.
In the early days of railways in London, such barriers were less of a problem. For instance, Great Western trains ran through on the Metropolitan line to Aldgate—a practice, incidentally, which continued until well into this century. Trains from south of the river could also run north from Blackfriars through Snow Hill tunnel to connect up with services coming in from the north of the City. There was even a service that went from Liverpool Street and round the East London line down to the south-east. There are other examples.
I believe we now have an unrivalled opportunity to look afresh at the possibilities. Imaginative schemes, modest in comparison with the expenditures in other cities, could revitalise the role of public transport. I believe the operators would respond positively if encouraged to work up such schemes. The growing
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commuter belt of the Thames Valley could benefit from swifter links through to the city, and in the more distributed patterns of work and leisure there could be a powerful commercial as well as operational case for improving access between the northern and southern suburbs via a re-opened Blackfriars-Snow Hill line.
It is not insignificant that British Rail's plans to close Marylebone and develop services into Paddington and on London Transport into Baker Street make for more sense when looked at jointly by those organisations than individually. By the same token, schemes to expand travel opportunities will look far more sensible in the round and I look to the Secretary of State, in his crucial role of co-ordinating London Regional Transport and British Rail, to encourage a creative approach and ask for proposals. I am sure he will not be disappointed and that schemes could be developed which were modest and cost effective when viewed against alternative expenditure. There are many who believe that relatively limited forms of investment in public transport can avoid the need for high expenditure on road investments designed to relieve congestion. I should also like to ask my noble friend for an assurance that the Secretary of State will take steps to encourage operators to look positively at such proposals.
I have little more to say. However, I believe that there is room for slight improvement in this Bill not as regards the underlying principles, but as regards tightening up certain areas. One such area concerns ensuring that the procedure for co-ordinating LRT and BR has teeth. I believe that this could be done by making a small but important amendment to Clause 34 which would stipulate that a specific measurement of progress towards service and integration will have to be expressed in the annual report.
The second amendment—of which I will give my noble friend advance warning at the earliest opportunity—is dealt with in Clause 44 of the Greater London Council (General Powers) Bill and I feel that it should be brought forward in the present Bill. In fact it strengthens Section 35 of the Public Passenger Vehicles Act 1981.
I do not believe that I have mentioned buses. However, in my view they have a great future and should be promoted. One of the ways in which that could be done would be by making maps or other directional aids more acceptable to people. I was fortunate because as a child I travelled with my mother who had a great aversion to the Underground. Thus I learnt where all the buses went, and I believe that my noble friend on the Front Bench is also an expert in the matter. However, generally very few people are experts. Some people find maps totally impossible to learn. London Transport has produced some maps depicting various diagrams to make travel fairly easy; but those maps are only for those who can understand them. Somebody could be enterprising and write a charming, witty and funny book to make the situation easier.
I almost feel that I should sit down at this moment. I have been tempted to take up many points with those noble Lords opposite who have debated the Bill so vigorously. I am sure that they felt that they could have stood up and interrupted me on many occasions, but they have declined to do so. However. I look forward

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to having splendid arguments when we try to improve the Bill in the Committee stage.
6.23 p.m
Earl Attlee: My Lords, I must begin by declaring a pecuniary interest because when I retire I shall be in receipt of a minuscule pension from British Railways having worked on the Southern Region for seven years. I believe that, at today's rate, that pension will buy me approximately one pint of beer a week.
It is interesting that of all the speeches that I have heard today not one has mentioned the problem of the commuters who live 40 or 50 miles outside London and who commute into London every day. I should like to spend a little time on this matter; but before doing so I should like to take up the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Mountevans who admittedly apologised that he would not be present for the conclusion of the debate. The noble Lord quoted bus-seat miles and train-seat miles and explained that British Railways and London Transport were very inefficient. Why was that so? The noble Lord said that the reason was that approximately 70 per cent. of these bus-seat miles were not utilised, and if they were efficient they would be utilised. I do not wish to be rude to the noble Lord, but this is the trouble with people who do not actually know what they are talking about when it comes to transport. If we take British Railways, the Tube, or the buses in the rush hour we find that they are packed solid. What will the transport companies do outside the rush hour—not provide a service at all? No, they must provide a regular service. Therefore, we will see buses and trains travelling with only one or two passengers, and of course that will be inefficient.
However, as regards British Railways there is a different problem. In the morning thousands of trains come into London from the coast and from the suburbs. To bring those passengers into London the trains have first to go out of London empty in order to collect them. Therefore, all those empty seat miles are tallied against British Rail. I may be biased in favour of the Southern Region, but in fact it is the most highly-utilised railway system in the world for commuters and it could only be that because it is the most efficient. The fact that after seven years British Railways and I parted not on exactly the best of terms, is no reason why I should not tell your Lordships the truth.
What will the Bill do for commuters who live outside London? As most—maybe 70 per cent.—travel by public transport this is a very important question. It is impossible for British Railways to lay on more trains in the rush hour, for London Transport to lay on more buses or for the Underground to lay on more Tube trains. Therefore, the only alternative will be some means of clearing the streets of central London so that we can bring in more coaches. I have a nasty feeling that this Bill will fail abysmally not for the reasons that the noble Lord, Lord Molloy, mentioned, but for the reason that at the moment there are far too many questions which are unanswered. If one contacts the various transport organisations and asks them for their opinions on the Bill or for any suggestions that they may be able to
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make, they normally cannot be specific and say, "We just do not know. So much is up to the Secretary of State". For example, what will be LRT's sphere of influence? What about the fringe areas of Greater London? Will its influence reach out to there and then stop, or will it start meddling outside that area?
What worries me is that in the Bill there is reference to privatisation. Normally, when the Government talk about that matter, they are thinking of selling off the profitable sectors. If that were to happen it could be guaranteed that, however willing LRT may be to provide a good service for Londoners, it will fail because all transport organisations rely on the profit-making lines to support the non-profit-making lines. If we sell off the good lines, we are left with the bad ones and the service will go.
Why does the Secretary of State require reserve powers for the transfer of functions between LT and BRB? Why are they put into the Bill if they are not necessary? I am sure that the noble Minister will say: "It is just in case. Of course we would not do anything; we just want them there". But the danger is that whereas we can trust the noble Lord the Minister today, can we always trust those Ministers who will follow him? I should like to know why they want these reserve powers.
What we really require in Greater London is an integrated transport system. Personally, although I have no time for the GLC I cannot agree with the noble Lords who say that the service has gone down since the GLC took over. I normally use the Underground to travel to your Lordships' House and I have seen new trains, new rolling stock, brighter stations, new escalators and a wonderful mechanism whereby we get a dot matrix annunciator system so that we know in advance where the next two or three trains will be going and even at what time they will arrive.
Certainly these cost money but, as has been said previously, if we do not spend money on our transport system, we will lose more and more money. Buses are a typical case in point. If buses run regularly they will get custom. However, if one goes out on a cold winter's day to catch a bus which is due at 11.35, and at 12.15 it still has not arrived, one may follow that practice for two days but then one will become fed up and will not use the bus. A few days later the bus may come on time, but there will not be any passengers in it because they will all have given up. Therefore, with the use of modern computers, cameras, and all the rest, surely buses at least could be punctual—they do not have to be on the minute but they should be punctual to within five or possibly 10 minutes.
Lord Somers: My Lords, if I may interrupt the noble Earl for a moment, will he not admit that in the centre of London, at any rate, punctuality is practically impossible because no bus driver can say to what extent he will be held up by traffic lights, traffic jams, or goodness knows what?
Earl Attlee: My Lords, I agree that it is impossible at the moment; but I am reliably informed that with the use of electronic pick-ups, the position of every bus could be monitored in a central control, so that one could see where buses are being delayed. The centre

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would be in touch with the bus drivers by radio. A great deal more could be done; but at the moment very little can be done. We have micro-computers in cars which tell one to shut the door, turn on the lights or fasten one's seat belt, so surely computers could be installed in buses which tell the driver "Joe, slow down a bit", or something like that.
The travel card system has proved immensely popular. For people to be able to pay one fare and travel on one ticket on British Rail, on the Underground and on the buses is a wonderful scheme. British Rail have told me that they would like to see this scheme extended, certainly to their suburban services south of the Thames. I also believe that this would help to reduce fiddling. The sums quoted are guestimates. On the Southern Region they used to talk about £3 million or so a year being fiddled. My own belief is that over the Greater London area as a whole the amount is probably £10 million or £15 million.
I am concerned about one or two other matters, but the main question that we must ask ourselves is: will this Bill meet the genuine needs of Greater London? I am sure that the noble Lord the Minister will say, "Yes"; but from these Benches I have to say that we believe the answer will be. "No".
6.33 p.m.
Lord Carmichael of Kelvingrove: My Lords, so far we have had a long debate and a long series of very important Statements. Therefore. I shall endeavour not to delay the House too long. I am also sure that this Bill will be greatly discussed in Committee. It affects many of us. for from wherever we may originate or wherever we happen to go at the weekends, nevertheless we use London Transport throughout the week. Therefore, practically all of us are thorough experts in the whole question of London Transport.
The noble Earl. Lord Attlee, has made a number of very important points. He raised the matter of empty buses. I think that the noble Earl will agree that his speech was directed towards the transport maxim that, if one can get a seat at a busy time on any transport undertaking, that undertaking is really in trouble. It means that everyone is going in the one direction and, therefore, inevitably the bus or the Tube train is going in the other direction. The noble Earl was absolutely correct, and I am glad that we shall have his support on many Committee points.
The noble Earl said that the Bill contains far too many unanswered questions; he said that he has spoken to a number of transport experts and those involved in transport who believe that there are too many imponderables for them to be able to give a reliable opinion on the Bill as it stands.
The other matter which is axiomatic to transport is that the two most single important aspects of transport are the level of fares and reliability. Reliability, particularly for buses, is inevitably tied up with much wider questions than merely the mechanics of the bus or the quality of the driver and is a matter which I hope we can discuss in a few moments.
I do not think there is any doubt that London Transport is improving. It has certainly greatly improved since I came to know it with any intimacy as
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a traveller some 20 years ago. When I first came to London the Northern line was a joke, the reliability of the escalators and many of the other parts of the system were, to say the least, problematic, whether one was attempting to walk through the turnstiles or use an escalator. All those things have been improved.
If one uses something regularly, it sometimes takes a little while to realise that, because one has been inconvenienced for so long, things are now improving. This is the point which the noble Baroness. Lady Lane-Fox, made when she spoke about the problems of the disabled. She said that she was older than some of the people who are disabled and has experienced the problems that bit longer. She said that she could see improvements; but, quite rightly, she said that the younger disabled were impatient at the rest of us not spending a great deal more in order to speed up the improvements.
I have seen a great many improvements. When the Minister replies I hope that he will be able to guarantee that there will be no curtailment of the Dial-a-Ride service, and that wherever possible there will be an endeavour to standardise the system. Although it is good that some of this should be left to people who are willing to go a bit further, if this is to be paid for separately by boroughs, the London Regional Transport Executive should at least set minimum standards. If boroughs wish to go beyond that, they can improve the position considerably.
While the idea of all buses being adapted for the disabled is very desirable, it would greatly cut across the very point which the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, made when she said that it was important that there should be cost-effectiveness even for these buses. Therefore, although we should not stint this, a large extension and a proper use of the Dial-a-Ride service is the correct way in which to proceed.
The noble Lord, Lord Tordoff, speaking for the Alliance Party, made many comments about the Bill with which most of us on this side of the House are agreed. Again, I think that we can rely on him for contributions in what promises to be a very construc-tive Committee stage. The speech of my noble friend Lady Denington will be well worth reading. Perhaps the history of London Transport should be written up more fully. I am not trying to make party political points here, but I think that transport has always been regarded as a bit of a Cinderella by most parties. Ministers for Transport have always had great trouble in getting money, not only for London Transport, but for transport as a whole. Therefore, the work that the GLC did from 1973 onwards was work with which we should be very pleased. There is no doubt that London Transport has generally improved over the past few years.
When he introduced the Bill the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, spoke solemnly and seriously, in keeping with what I believe is the importance of the subject. He was trying to introduce a Bill of great importance to a very large number of people. If the noble Lord had read the speech of his right honourable friend the Secretary of State in another place, he would see that it was a question of chalk and cheese. The Secretary of State seemed to relish his destructive and dramatic role in destroying London Transport. I know the Secretary of State extremely well. We met on many

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instances when I was in the other place, and I think he takes great relish in this. He has almost a one-track mind on the whole question of privatisation. I was surprised when he talked about Whitehall knowing best. It was probably because he could not find any other solution that was more palatable to him. He had to get away from London Transport.
In fact, the noble Lord who opened let slip a few phrases that could have come from the Secretary of State. He said, "They have gone on running the Tubes and buses regardless". He said it almost in that way, although perhaps not as dramatically as I tried to say it. He also said, "The Government had to take control of London Transport". They were almost the type of words that would be used by his right honourable friend the Secretary of State. The sort of thing that is left hanging by the Secretary of State is privatisation, where we are left with a big blank. What does he mean by privatisation? What is going to be privatised? While we shall later discuss this in Committee, we are entitled to get general parameters about it in a debate such as this.
The sort of thing we have been told about—although I believe that it has been denied—is that routes like the Heathrow to central London line would be offered for privatisation; certain of the Green Line buses would be offered for privatisation; perhaps the dockside line, when it comes, would be offered for privatisation. If this is the case we should be given a general indication—obviously we cannot ask now for details—by the noble Lord when he winds up as to where the boundaries of privatisation will be. We should also be told about all the other things that noble Lords and noble Baronesses have spoken about tonight; the question of concessionary fares; the question of transferability of fares—and not just concerning British Rail, because we are dividing even more. If we start privatising we do not merely have British Rail and London Transport; we have them and many others who are running various services. The Minister should give us some idea of the general thinking of his right honourable friend as to whether there will be transferability to these private services when they come.
The point that I take most sorely from the Minister who opened—and the Secretary of State referred to it in his Second Reading speech to a lesser degree than did the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne—concerns the report of the Select Committee on the nationalised industries. My noble friend Lord Underhill indicated that I had been a member of that committee, which is absolutely true. That committee looked at London Transport.
The important thing to remember is that the report was not on London Transport—and this is of key importance; it was a report on transport in London. There is a clear distinction between transport in London and London Transport, which is what we consider to be the London Underground, the buses and perhaps the green buses with a bit of British Rail thrown in. I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, has read the report. We spent a great deal of time discussing some of the points mentioned here. We discussed the streets of London, the planning of London, and the rights of transport in London. In other words, we were not talking merely about the
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mechanics of London transport, and that is important. We were discussing transport in London; the whole of London.
I do not expect the suggestions made in the Select Committee report to be all totally taken up by any one Minister. But when you get a committee, an all-party committee, with even a preponderance of Conservative members—and I think we were all reasonably hardworking—and they produce a report, I think it should be looked at. Instead of which this Bill has plucked out one or two of the lesser ideas from the report, distorted them and regurgitated them in the form in which we have them today.
We set ourselves the question: how should we deal with transport in London? We decided that there ought to be set up a metropolitan transport authority—not one controlled by the Minister; appointed by the Minister—but we all emphasised that the Secretary of State should make the majority of members on the authority the directly-elected representatives of the people. As my noble friend Lord Underhill said, Paris, which has arguably one of the best transport systems in the world, has decided at this stage to start municipalising its transport undertaking and give away much more power.
We discussed the policy objectives required for London transport as a whole; the targets, objectives and the whole system. We discussed the appointment of a London Transport executive, which would be the management. The metropolitan transport authority would be the political arm, and the executive would be the managerial arm doing the day-to-day work, closely intermingled with the metropolitan transport authority. We discussed the development of action programmes—and this is important—for roads and for public transport infrastructure and investment. We discussed approval of long-term investment for principal road networks and for main public transport operators in London. We made a big point of the fact that London is not just the Underground and the buses.
I am a Scot, and come from a city, Glasgow, that—although I am always criticised by our civil engineer—has probably more roads per head of the population than we need; but I believe that London, on the other hand, as regards the amount of money spent in the last 20 or 30 years on its road system, has been quite badly served. There are a lot of reasons for this. We shall go into this, and I am sure that the noble Lord knows a great many of the reasons.
We also considered that you could not look at London transport unless you discussed things like traffic management policies, and the role of the police. We were urged by the London business associations that they needed more traffic wardens—those terribly unpopular people—because one of the important and interesting points I discovered from the London business community is that so much of central London is now so automated with complex machinery that it is vital that important service people get through at particular times or there is real chaos. The responsible business community in London are anxious that the streets should be kept as clear as possible. In other words, they want as much parking off the streets as they can get.

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We talked also about a survey and study of needs and demands, and the need to look at the main functions that such an authority would have. I have said all these things not because this committee produced its report on tablets of stone but merely to show that we looked at a great many things. We looked at other countries and other cities in Britain and the world. We looked at the history of London Transport. We met people using London Transport at all levels and for all purposes, and people using the roads of London as well as the public transport system, and we produced this report. I feel disappointed and offended that a Bill such as this should be published, which tries to claim that attention had been paid to a report such as the one I have endeavoured to describe.
This Bill is trying to solve a very simple, narrow problem instead of considering the problem in a much larger way. As other speakers have said today, I believe that in the end the Bill will not work. In the next few years we shall be starting again with another Bill. I believe it will be even more costly because to save face, if a Conservative government are still in power, the Government will want to pour more money into the infrastructure of the London transport system. While we shall be dealing with this Bill at some length in Committee, at this stage we have a great opportunity to do something about London Transport, in co-operation—and it must be in co-operation—with the elected representatives of the people of London. A great opportunity has been lost. Most of us who have spoken in the debate will try to change and improve the bill in Committee, but it would be far better if the Bill had never been born.
6.51 p.m.
Lord Lucas of Chilworth: My Lords, let me start by expressing some sympathy with the noble Lord, Lord Tordoff, with my noble friend Lady Lane-Fox and the noble Lord, Lord Mountevans, since each of them was interrupted. The House will accept that the interruptions were of great seriousness and importance. Nevertheless, it must have been somewhat offputting for them. Although each of them told me that they had other engagements I am sorry that they are not in their usual places this evening. I have spoken of the seriousness and the importance of the subject matter of the Statements, but I have to say, as the noble Lord, Lord Tordoff, did in his opening remarks, that the Bill before us is equally as important. Lord Tordoff specifically mentioned that when he referred to the opening remarks of my noble friend Lord Trefgarne.
It is customary to say that we have had a long and interesting debate on the matter. I should like to begin somewhat differently. To me the debate this afternoon and this evening has indicated a number of areas: first, ideology and, secondly, detail. There is little that I can do, I suspect, about the former; but there is something I am quite sure that I shall be able to do with your Lordships' House on both sides about the detail as we move along.
First, I return for a minute or two to the theme on which my noble friend opened the debate. London is a unique capital city. It is quite different from the capital cities which were referred to earlier: those on the continent, those in America, and so on. So we have
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to look at schemes and systems which meet that uniqueness. London has a public transport system of far greater relative importance than almost anywhere else in the country and almost anywhere else on the continent. For those who work in the inner London boroughs public transport is the main mode of travel for more than two-thirds of the journeys made. Between seven o'clock and ten o'clock in the morning passengers arriving in Central London number 293,000 by Underground, 391,000 by rail and 99,000 by bus. That puts it into perspective. The last figure, in case the noble Lord would wish to challenge, is 235,000 by private motorcar. It was the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, who brought this out in his remarks about British Rail.
We pay dearly for these services. In spite of some of the reductions over the past year or so, fares on London Transport are still higher in real terms than when the GLC took over in 1970. As an indication, if one took a 1970 index of 100. we find that in April of this year the figures for the bus have moved up to 123; indeed, just two years ago the figure was 165. The Underground figure moved up to 136 in April this year. Over that same period the total subsidy to London Transport rose from £6,500,000 to £360 million. My noble friend Lord Trefgarne added to that the subsidy that goes to British Rail, amounting, as he said, to something over £500 million.
Whoever we are, whether we are fare-paying passengers, ratepayers or taxpayers, we are paying a good deal more than we ever used to. Both the noble Baroness, Lady Denington, and the noble Lord, Lord Molloy, raised this point. I ask—rhetorically I admit—who pays for these increases? It is certainly not the fare box; it is somebody else. When the noble Baroness talked about the electorate she asked, "Is it not right that the electorate in the boroughs should have some say in all these matters?" Sixty-two per cent, of this kind of subsidy figure, is found from people who do not have a vote.
Baroness Denington: My Lords, I might say that that is a defect of the rating system. That is what we from this side of the House are asking to have a study about and to have it revised.
Lord Lucas of Chilworth: That, my Lords, is another matter. I shall be happy to debate it when we come to the appropriate clauses. It is a very different matter, but whatever matter it is it is a lot of money.
Lord Molloy: My Lords, will the noble Lord explain something that I do not understand?
Noble Lords: Order!
Lord Molloy: My Lords, I am seeking information. The Minister said that so much is paid by people who do not have a vote. Who are they?
Lord Lucas of Chilworth: My Lords, they are the commercial enterprises, the business houses in the area. I think I should get on with my speech; we have a Committee stage and I should be happy to take these points on board.
Lord Molloy: My Lords—
Lord Lucas of Chilworth: My Lords, the noble Lord asked a simple question, and I have given a simple answer and also a truthful answer.
Faced as we are with the evidence of this financial burden, and an increasing financial burden, we are entitled to look carefully for the underlying causes. The noble Lord, Lord Underhill, mentioned this. As my noble friend Lord Trefgarne said, external events have played a part as they have done for public transport services elsewhere. Yet we cannot overlook the fact that all has not been well with London Transport itself. As an example of this I looked no further than the recently published report of the Monopolies and Mergers Commission on London Transport's bus maintenance operations. What it reported was not good and it was certainly not reassuring.
As an illustration, I picked out a couple of points. Thirty-nine per cent. of the buses subjected to spot inspection in the first nine months of 1983 by my department's vehicle examiners were issued with prohibition notices; a position perhaps not too different from the reference made to the past by the noble Baroness, Lady Denington. The report went on to say that in October 1983 London Transport's main stores for bus maintenance represented 37 weeks' cover against a budgeted target of 29 weeks. Thus we had some 30 per cent. more spare parts available than was budgeted for. Again, a somewhat different story. More generally the report said that London Transport's main works at Aldenham and Chiswick, which together employ some 2,500 staff, were found to be too large for London Transport's current needs.
London Transport has stated that substantial savings are obtainable. Some £65 million a year was identified in the recent three-year plan to the end of the period 1986-87. Although the noble Lord, Lord Underhill. often quotes reports, so far as I recall tonight he did not quote anything from London Transport's three-year plan. I am going to quote two things that they say.
"The role of the railways in providing for radial, line haul and central London journeys will be developed, and the role of buses concentrated on suburban trips, feeder services and specific markets as well as local movements throughout London. Market decline will be positively attacked by improving reliability, keeping real fares levels stable, simplifying access and ticketing, and providing better information"
—a point that my noble friend Lord Teviot mentioned. They say that all kinds of fraud should be reduced—and I want to return to that later—and both staff and passengers protected from violence.
So London Transport are able to identify many of the areas in which they know that positive action must be taken. We believe that under the present arrange-ments such savings and such actions as I have described are unlikely to be realised, since those who currently have the financial and policy control of London Transport appear to believe that London Transport exists sometimes more for the benefit of its own employees than of the passengers who use it.
A Noble Lord: Oh!
Lord Lucas of Chilworth: My Lords, I thought that that might provoke comment from noble Lords opposite. I should like to hope that these remarks will not be misunderstood. I would not seek this evening to
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argue that London Transport in the near future could be run without subsidy. Nor am 1 saying that social service elements in London Transport operations should be sacrificed on the altar of commercial principles. Those of your Lordships who are really interested will be reading the debate tomorrow. I remind your Lordships what my noble friend had to say about concessionary fares, about caring and the need to look after the elderly and disabled. And we mean it!
The noble Baroness, Lady Denington, said she would like to see free services for old and disabled people. That goes against the general philosophy which her party has always maintained; that it is for local authorities to determine the need of the elderly and disabled in their areas. We, indeed, hope they will do that. I say again that, at the end, whether it is free or whether it is supported centrally or additionally by local authorities, somebody has to pay. In London alone that is now amounting to £65 million. Somebody has to pay. Is it out of the fare box, or is it the taxpayer or the ratepayer? There has to be a balance.
Lord Mulley: My Lords,—
Lord Lucas of Chilworth: My Lords, I think I—
Lord Mulley: My Lords, if the noble Lord does not wish to give way, I will not press the point. I was going to say that the noble Lord is incorrect in saying that in the metropolitan areas it is Labour Party policy that the local authorities should pay. The scheme is uniform for all the areas concerned.
Lord Lucas of Chilworth: My Lords, what I said was that the noble Baroness, Lady Denington, will remember that, as regards the responsibility for looking after the needs of the aged and disabled, it has always been the policy of the party opposite that it should be the responsibility of the local authorities. It is for them to determine. That is what I said. Nothing more.
I move on, if I may, to Clause 2 of the Bill, which states quite clearly that London Regional Transport must have due regard to the transport needs of Greater London. Furthermore, it will be its financial duty, far from requiring to make a profit in the commercial sense, merely to break even after grant. In this way the Bill makes it quite clear that there is this important social element in the provision of public transport; and a continuing subsidy will be necessary if these needs are to be met.
This is not incompatible with a more businesslike approach to the running of London Transport. There are questions that have to be raised and to be answered. The noble Earl, Lord Attlee, asked a few such questions. Given that subsidies will be needed, we have to ask first, these questions. Where is this need for subsidy being generated? Where are the loss-making services? What can be done to improve financial performance without penalising the passenger? What can be done to improve the engineering service? And there are a host of others. The Government believe that the answers to these questions have not been found because the right incentives and right structure have been lacking.
This is the reason why the Bill contains, in Clause 4, a requirement for bus and underground operations to be split into separate companies. There needs to be a

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clear and proper picture of what each part of the system is costing, including its management overheads. One of the ways of increasing efficiency is the encouragement of competition. Noble Lords may read into "competition" privatisation. So be it! Among the numbers of things that I would be looking for in competition are the Clause 3(2) licensing arrangements, the chartering and the use of other operators described by my noble friend.
The noble Lord, Lord Carmichael, asked if I could be a little more forthcoming about this. I envisage offers for tender for the supply of cleaning services, of garaging services, of engineering services, of some particular services, perhaps the running of special services for the disabled. It is in these areas perhaps that another organisation may be better placed. Clause 44 breaks new ground, allowing operators, if they wish or if they are unable to reach agreement with London Regional Transport, to apply to the traffic commissioners for a road service licence to operate independently of LRT. The licence must be granted unless the commissioners can show that it is against the public interest to do so.
The noble Lord, Lord Underhill, and the noble Baroness, Lady Denington, both spoke of the mysterious role of competition. We do believe in principle that this will dilute the statutory monopoly that London Transport has held for 50 years. Equally, the Government do not think it right to exclude competitive services from London on principle. They believe that the introduction of such services can be a valuable addition to the totality of services that are provided for the benefit of London travellers.
Before I finish I want to say something about planning but I think that this might be a reasonable time to reply to some of the specific questions that have been asked. There have been very many, I think all noble Lords would agree. If I do not get through all of them this evening I will certainly read Hansard tomorrow and provide more answers before we move to the next stage.
The noble Lord, Lord Hawke, asked of my noble friend at the end of his speech: "When is the appointed day?" The appointed day is just as soon as possible after Royal Assent—in a matter of days; because, as each day goes by without this Bill, thousands of pounds are, in our view, squandered and wasted.
The noble Lord, Lord Underhill, asked about the Essex county councillors who felt that they should be represented on the London Regional Transport Board. This is a business operation, not a political operation. The managers must be people who have the right kind of qualities to run professionally a huge and complex business operation. If the county councillor he has in mind has these qualities, I am quite sure my right honourable friend the Secretary of State will be glad to hear. The noble Lord also said that OMO (one-man-operated buses) could not work in central London. The answer really is that it is for London Transport, and not the GLC, to determine who runs the buses. They want to increase one-man operations from the current 53 per cent. level to at least 65 per cent. That in itself is going to save £6 million a year; but it is the GLC and its nominees at the present moment who stop this.
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The noble Lord, Lord Tordoff, suggested that there were inadequate consumer arrangements. No doubt, we shall discuss consumer representation when we get to that stage in Committee. I can say tonight that the arrangements as represented in the Bill are the result of extensive consultation with all the existing consumer bodies, and they have strongly supported the provisions in the Bill.
My noble friend Lady Lane-Fox spoke warmly—and I am most grateful to her for what she had to say—about my department and about what has been done—though perhaps not specifically within this Bill—for the disabled. I am also grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Carmichael, who endorsed so much of what my noble friend said. But we are disinclined to put too much into this Bill because, as my noble friend said, so much has been achieved in London and around the country without a specific statutory duty. We would rather leave that position as it is. However, a firm commitment has already been given in another place that London Regional Transport will be directed to develop their own vehicles and infrastructure with the needs of disabled persons in mind. In addition, there is a requirement for a statement to be included in the annual report on the progress made in meeting the needs of disabled people. Both the LRT Board and the London Regional Passengers' Consultative Committee will include a member charged with looking after the interests of the disabled. My noble friend asked me to confirm that.
The noble Lord, Lord Mountevans, and my noble friend Lord Teviot both spoke about fraud. Let me say straight away that the great improvement which London Transport have made in the reduction of the deficit has been made by tackling fraud—which has been of a disastrous nature—from both sides of the counter. I accept that. This has concerned us so much that during the passage of this Bill in another place we have given this further consideration, and it may be that during the Committee stage we may wish to bring in an amendment to see what can be done about that. Specifically, the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, asked why there was to be a power to transfer functions between London Regional Transport and British Rail. Clause 46 does in fact reproduce some existing legislation. It is unlikely to be used but it could be useful: for example, if a line is transferred from one body to the other.
The noble Lords, Lord Underhill and Lord Tordoff, and the noble Baroness, Lady Denington, have all commented on London Regional Transport being cut off from strategic planning. This has gone through the speeches of several other noble Lords as well. I want to deal with the planning regime: namely, the planning framework in which London Regional Transport will be operating. In Clause 1 the Bill removes the GLC's overall responsibility for transport planning in London. In its place there must be some kind of strategic assessment of London's transport needs. But the view which was fashionable in the 1960s, that as many things as possible must be co-ordinated and integrated within a single body has—I think rightly—been discredited. Big is no longer beautiful. One might almost say: "Small is sweeter".
Here I should say, first, that the Government accept that there are legitimate links between public transport planning on the one hand, and strategic development

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planning on the other hand. During the Committee stage we propose to table amendments to Clause 7 in order to give effect to this by requiring London Regional Transport to have regard to development plans in the areas in which it operates.
Next, there is the general relationship between LRT's plans and general transport planning in London. My right honourable friend the Secretary of State has already made clear the lines along which this will develop. He has said that he will be responsible for setting guidelines for London Regional Transport and for British Rail. He is already responsible for a large part of the strategic network of trunk roads for London. When the GLC is abolished London's network will be tidied up and he will issue general guidance, in consultation with the London boroughs, about major traffic management policies. Under Clause 7, London Regional Transport will be charged with producing a three-yearly strategy statement. They will be required to consult British Rail, the London Regional Passengers' Committee and the local authorities, so maintaining links with planning, highway and traffic authorities. This will ensure a co-ordinated approach to transport policy.
As regards the detailed processes of planning and consultation within London Regional Transport itself the noble Lord, Lord Underhill, referred to them very strongly indeed. I have already mentioned the Clause 7 statement which will be published with full consultation with all those concerned. Besides this, the Bill contains a number of proposals which are designed to ensure the accountability of LRT to its regional community. Under Clause 29 LRT will be required to publish an annual business plan. Under Clause 30 there is a statutory requirement to inform local authorities and the passengers' committee each year about their plans for fares and services. Under Clause 34 an annual report will have to be laid before Parliament; and under Clause 13 there will be an annual order on the ratepayers' levy which, as my noble friend Lord Trefgarne said, will be subject to the affirmative procedure. In addition, Clause 43 requires LRT to consult all the relevant local authorities when it wishes significantly to alter the existing pattern of bus services. Additionally, there is to be the new passengers' committee which the Government expect to be a powerful voice in the securing of better public transport facilities throughout London.
I believe that these proposals amply refute any claim that Londoners will be losing their ability to influence those who provide them with their public transport. I believe also that they refute the suggestion made by the noble Lord, Lord Molloy, that London Transport will be under the diktat of the Minister. As my noble friend said, there are 84 London Members of Parliament, who will have the opportunity of reviewing and debating the operation of their transport system.
The Government in this Bill have ensured that London Regional Transport will be subject to the most comprehensive statutory regime of planning and consultation. There are already welcome signs that the professional managers in London Transport are keen to show that London can once more have a public transport system to be proud of, if they can only be given a policy and a financial framework which lays
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down clear objectives and then lets them get on with managing a transport business.
In this Bill we bring London Regional Transport and British Rail within the same political direction; and the omens are good. Indeed noble Lords will remember that only last autumn my right honourable friend the Secretary of State gave the new chairman of British Rail a clear set of objectives, and he will do the same for the chairman of LRT. British Rail are working successfully to those objectives and we want to see London Regional Transport going down the same road. Under this Bill, I believe that we will. My Lords, I commend the Bill to your Lordships.
On Question, Bill read a second time, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

Cycle Tracks Bill
Brought from the Commons, read a first time, and to be printed.
7.20 p.m.

Trade Marks (Amendment) Bill
Lord Campbell of Alloway: My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time. This Bill, notwithstanding a somewhat chequered career, still bears the imprint of its origins. It passed your Lordships' House; it was taken up from the Table in another place but it fell with the end of the Session. My friend Mr. Stephen Dorrell, kindly consented to adopt this orphan and to present it in another place under his parentage. It survived there a Second Reading, to undergo subsequent extensive surgery at the skilled hands of parliamentary counsel. After a relatively short period in intensive care, it now comes before your Lordships' House with what I understand to be the support of Her Majesty's Government.
It is, however, appropriate that this erstwhile orphan should at all events acknowledge is true parentage, for indeed it still reflects the spirit of your Lordships' House which brought it into existence. Without support from the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, spokesman for Her Majesty's loyal Opposition, the noble Lord, Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran—I am delighted to see him in his place—the in-House expert on these affairs, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Scarman, who is chairman of Sub-Committee E, this Bill would have been hard put, let us face it, to survive a Second Reading. Then there was also the acknowl-edgement which I wish to make to my noble friend Lord De La Warr, my noble friend Lord Portland and all the other noble Lords who spoke in our debates. This should be recorded as a fair testament to the vast measure of acknowledgement that is due.
The Bill in its present form still bases itself upon the provisions of the Trade Marks Act 1938, but instead of the needle and thread tacking technique adopted in the original Bill, using the Australian legislation as a precedent, a new parallel structure devised to accommodate service marks as such has been erected. This is achieved by two schedules, the first of which modifies the Act in its application to service marks and the second of which amends the Act in its application to trade marks of goods. In this, due account has been taken of the intangible nature of services, of the difference in legal status between unregistered trade

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marks and service marks and also the need to provide for an adequate basis for cross-searching, to ensure that different proprietors cannot register confusingly similar marks bordering upon each other.
Although I am advised that the Bill in its original form would have been workable by the registry by the application of common sense means of implementation, this informal means of implementation has been reduced to statutory form in the Bill as it before your Lordships now. Furthermore, a series of cross-comparisons between services and goods at every level at which confusion might be caused if use of the same mark were permitted has been erected.
In addition, concepts, which though meaningful in relation to goods lack meaning in relation to services, have not only been altered but widened to accommo-date services. Furthermore, account has been taken that a service mark, although it may be physically attached to goods, makes a statement about an activity. In addition, problems arising not only where service marks are used but also at the place where they are offered for acceptance are recognised. Special provision is made to avoid conflict between the structure of this Bill and the Trade Marks Act 1938.
In all this the debt to parliamentary Counsel, a veritable master of his esoteric art, must be acknowledged, for by a painstaking and penetrative analysis, by sheer innovative genius, he has produced a Bill to protect our service industries which is far advanced beyond similar legislation anywhere else in the world. The vital economic significance of such a measure, and the need for the introduction of legislation in the United Kingdom, have already commended themselves to your Lordships in the original Bill. They now, as I understand it, commends themselves to Her Majesty's Government in the form of this Bill.
I shall be brief. This is a complex, technical subject. At Second Reading it is hardly appropriate to condescend to any detailed consideration of clauses or schedules, though if noble Lords have any points to raise, I have sought to inform myself in the hope that I might be able to answer them. But on the point of principles, perhaps it is fair to add that in another place considerable concern was expressed about possible postponement of implementation until 1st October 1987 under Clause 2(2) of the Bill, a concern reflected in many trade quarters and indeed, as it happens, in a letter dated 30th April from the Retail Consortium, delivered by hand to your Lordships' House.
The hope is that the spirit, which commended itself to your Lordships' House on consideration of the original Bill, now that it has been re-distilled to the greater potency of the essence, may still receive the same favourable reception as was the case on the previous occasion. My Lords, I beg to move.
Moved, That the Bill be now read a second time—(Lord Campbell of Alloway.)
Lord Mishcon: My Lords, I am sure the House will have appreciated the noble Lord's creation of metaphors. First of all we went from needle and thread to surgery, from surgery to intensive care, from intensive care to parenthood, and we ended up with the pathetic straits of some poor orphan. But, even
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more than an appreciation of his creation of rather fine metaphors, we all owe him a debt for his persistence. One can remember the question that was originally put down in your Lordships' House in June 1982, when the noble Lord asked about the possibilities of legislation, bearing in mind that the Mathys Report was then some years old and nothing had been done about it and our service industries were lacking in this protection. From that point of view they were unfairly treated in regard to their competitors overseas.
Then my memory goes back, as the memories of many Members of your Lordships' House who have attended this Second Reading debate may go back, to the Bill which he presented to this House, the Second Reading of which took place in December 1982. On that occasion, and on the previous occasion, the Government—and I say this with great deference—had reasons for no legislation or delays in legislation. Those various reasons were put forward, and those of us who participated in the exchanges endeavoured to persuade the Government that the reasons they were advancing were not very substantial.
In this campaign, the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Alloway, played such a prominent part that it is a pleasure to see the Bill before us in an amended and doubtless very much improved form. If something satisfactory occurs, it appears to me that beyond, in very courtesy, expressing thanks, there is no call for a long speech. As this is a very satisfactory outcome of the campaign in which we on these Benches were happy to join, I need do no more than say that we welcome the Second Reading of the Bill and hope that it will have the support of your Lordships' House.
Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran: My Lords, those who. like me, have spent decades dealing with the jurisprudence of intellectual property, particularly in relation to trade marks, greatly welcome the Bill. I, too, shall be brief. I join the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, in congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Alloway, on his persistence and on the artistic way in which he has presented his case. May I also congratulate the Government for supporting the Bill, as I understood the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Alloway, to say is the case.
There has been a lacuna in the jurisprudence relating to trade marks by reason of the omission of the right to register service marks in the same way as ordinary trade marks. That lacuna has now been filled, and I hope that it will not be very long before the Bill becomes law.
The Minister of State, Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Lord Belstead): My Lords, when my noble friend Lord Campbell of Alloway introduced a similar measure to your Lordships' House in 1982 the Goverment felt that they could not support the Bill, and in characteristically courteous terms your Lordships have referred to that point this evening. However, over the past 12 months or so the Department of Trade and Industry has received many helpful submissions from companies, individuals and others on the need to move towards a registration system for service marks.
Ministers have had the opportunity to discuss the issue with those directly concerned. Another place had the advantage of the honourable Member. Mr. Stephen Dorrell introducing the Bill very ably: and this

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evening we have had the advantage of hearing my noble friend Lord Campbell of Alloway put forward the case for the Bill succinctly, powerfully and with his customary clarity. As a result, I confirm that I am in the happy position of being able to say that the Government now support the Bill which is before the House.
Perhaps every cloud has a silver lining. As the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, was good enough to say, the Bill which now, we hope, is proceeding towards the statute book is in fact in an amended and much improved form. Again, the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Alloway, made that very clear in his generous remarks about parliamentary counsel, a matter upon which I believe we all would join with my noble friend.
May I make only one very brief point about timing? The Bill which is now before us specifies an operative date of 1st October 1987, or such earlier date as my right honourable friend the Secretary of State may by order appoint. This delay will allow the trade marks registry to bring the backlog of applications down to manageable proportions and to get itself into shape to take on this additional work. The fact that the registry will be in a position to do this is due not least to the fact that it has undergone a Rayner scrutiny and feels that it is able to take on this extra work. At the same time, I am advised that if the situation improves more rapidly than we can foresee at the moment we can bring the measure into effect earlier.
The effect of the Bill will be that the law which now applies to marks for goods will also apply to marks used for services provided in the course of business. The existing provisions of the Trade Marks Act will likewise be effective in denying registration to certain marks in certain circumstances. The classes of goods under which trade marks are registered are laid down in the Trade Marks Rules of 1938, as noble Lords will know better than I, and the Bill will necessitate the extension of the classes to take in services.
In conclusion, I simply say that, should the Bill be enacted, the amendment of the rules will be undertaken by the Department of Trade and Industry. It is my earnest hope that the Bill will indeed be enacted, for the Government very much welcome it.
Lord Campbell of Alloway: My Lords, no trite expressions of gratitude should be expressed to all noble Lords who have spoken. Although there have been only a few speakers, it is the quality of the noble Lords and the quality of the speeches which matter. If I may, I shall take one minute to thank each noble Lord for what he has said.
I am most sincerely grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, not only for what he said but for the most charming way in which he said it. Of course, I shall take to heart his advice and in future will watch some, though not all of my metaphors. I am equally grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran, not only for having found the use of some of my metaphors artistic but also for once again having given us the very real benefit—let us not underestimate it—of his expertise in this highly technical and complex subject.
Lastly, I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Belstead, and in particular to the Department of Trade, which has not only fostered a really fine production in this Bill but which has given me personally every assistance by way of explanation of
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the new format so as to enable me to explain this matter to your Lordships.
On Question, Bill read a second time, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.
House adjourned at twenty-three minutes before eight o'clock.