Lords Sitting of 21 May 1984

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

National Seed Development Organisation
Lord John-Mackie: 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 the future of the National Seed Development Organisation at Cambridge.
The Minister of State, Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Lord Belstead): My Lords, in the context of their general policy on privatisation, the Government are examining the possibility of privatising the National Seed Development Organisation. A decision on whether to privatise the organisation will be taken in the light of this exploratory examination.
Lord John-Mackie: My Lords, while I thank the noble Lord for that reply, does he realise that NSDO would be, without going into the dogma of privatisation, one of the most difficult things to privatise, because it is linked up with the research stations in the country—the Plant Breeding Institute at East Craigs in Edinburgh and at Aberystwyth in Wales? How can they privatise them without giving a complete monopoly to some private company to develop public assets?
Lord Belstead: My Lords, so far as the other plant breeding institutes are concerned, the Government's present policy is to maintain the existing arrangements, for financing the production of state-bred finished varieties. I say to the noble Lord that the Ministry of Agriculture will continue to fund those
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activities within our resources for research and development.
So far as creating a monopoly is concerned, all I would say is that the National Seed Development Organisation is a marketing organisation set up to handle state-bred finished varieties. It is an arrangement that has worked well in the past, and the purpose of our examination is simply to decide whether this marketing function could be privatised for the future.
Lord John-Mackie: My Lords, if I may say so, the noble Lord must be aware that there is an awful difference between a public monopoly and a private monopoly. If the Government sell it, for argument's sake, to Dalgety Spillers, I think that Nickerson's would create a fearful row if only one company was to get the monopoly of the PBI's work.
Lord Belstead: My Lords, with respect to the noble Lord who, I know, has a great deal of experience in these matters, there are difficulties with the present set-up of the National Seed Development Organisation. It is not in any way the fault of the people who are in the organisation, who have, of course, discharged all their functions most commendably over the years. But the fact of the matter is that it is very difficult at the moment objectively to assess the financial performance of the NSDO. As the noble Lord will know, the NSDO does not purchase the varieties it obtains for marketing from state-financed plant breeding stations but instead we have a situation where the NSDO in Cambridge pays to the Government an arbitrary 50 per cent. of the royalties it receives. That means that the real costs of Government research and development on material passed to the NSDO are not paid for directly. What I am saying to the noble Lord is that privatisation could result in a more realistic return for Government investment in research and development. I believe that that could be a very real advance.
Lord Walston: My Lords, is the noble Lord or his department. at the same time as investigating the possibility of privatising the NSDO. looking in any way at the privatisation of the actual research which produces the varieties sold by the NSDO?
Lord Belstead: No. my Lords.
Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: My Lords, is it not the case that over a long period of years the NSDO has really rendered a significant service to the agricultural industry? Is the Minister aware that I certainly have heard no criticism of the NSDO in any way and that this appears to me to be a further doctrinaire step by the Government to consider privatisation for the sake of privatisation, without any accompanying benefit to the farmers of this country at all? Will the noble Lord say what is the nature of the inquiry which is going on at the present time? What is the object of the inquiry? How soon will it be before the Government announce the result of the inquiry?
Lord Belstead: My Lords, I cannot agree with the noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn. that this is doctrinaire. I have explained at some length in answer to the noble Lord, Lord John-Mackie, the financial reasons which lie behind our belief that it is right to have an exploration of whether it would be desirable to privatise the NSDO. We have of course kept the NSDO governing body informed and. indeed, the staff of the organisation. I should like to go out of my way in replying to the noble Lord to say that of course Parliament will be informed before any decision is taken.
Lord Elystan-Morgan: My Lords, will the noble Minister confirm that, whatever decision is reached by Her Majesty's Government in relation to privatisation in this context, the level of financing now enjoyed by the Agriculture and Food Research Council will not be further lowered? I am asking that in the specific context of the Welsh Plant Breeding Station, which, as the noble Minister knows, has already suffered cuts of emasculating proportions?
Lord Belstead: No, my Lords.
Lord John-Mackie: My Lords, is the Minister aware that the point that was raised about the staff is a very real one and that all the rumours, investigations and so on are very upsetting to the skilled and devoted staff of this organisation? The Government must think a little more about people and a lot less about money.
Lord Belstead: My Lords, the staff of the National Seed Development Organisation have been told of the possibility of privatisation. There has been no question of proceeding behind their backs. I think that I should perhaps underline what I said earlier to the noble Lord. I think that, if the Government can foster sound management, commercial efficiency, and value for money for the taxpayer, then it will be found that our great organisations on which we depend—and I have made it clear that I believe that the responsibilities of the NSDO have been most commendably discharged—are on a firmer basis for the future. This is one of the points which we shall certainly be keeping in mind in our exploration of this matter.

Motorways and Trunk Roads
2.45 p.m.
Viscount Mersey: 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 miles of motorway and trunk road have been completed since 1978.
Lord Lucas of Chilworth: My Lords, between January 1979 and April 1984. 207 miles of motorway and 512 miles of other trunk roads have been completed in Great Britain.
Viscount Mersey: My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that reply. Could he also tell us what level of capital expenditure there was on the motorways in the four years before 1979 and the four years after 1979?
Lord Lucas of Chilworth: My Lords, not perhaps in those terms: but in the financial years 1979–80 to 1982–83. £2,1 10 million was spent on capital investment compared with £1,410 million in the financial years 1975–76 to 1978–79.
Lord Underhill: My Lords, motorways and trunk roads have to end in conurbations. Can the noble Lord, the Minister say what consideration has been given by the Government to the campaign launched by the construction industry showing the amount of work to be carried through in the conurbations? Have the Government had discussions; and what is the effect on the conurbations' road development of the reduction in the transport supplementary grant from 70 per cent. to 55 per cent.?
Lord Lucas of Chilworth: My Lords, I very much regret to tell the noble Lord. Lord Underhill, that I cannot answer his supplementary questions on local roads since the original Question was on trunk roads and motorways.
Lord Gisborough: My Lords, could my noble friend say when he thinks the M.25 is going to be finished, and whether there are any plans for improving the trunk roads towards the south side of the river?
Lord Lucas of Chilworth: My Lords, the 121.5 miles of M.25 will be completed in 1986 at a total cost of £909 million.
The Earl of Lauderdale: My Lords, can my noble friend say how many miles of motorway are now laden beyond their design capacity, and are consequently in need of repair?
Lord Lucas of Chilworth: My Lords, I cannot answer my noble friend in terms of mileage, but I can tell him that the older motorways—those which are 19 or 20 years of age, and notably the M1—are in need of renewal and repair. There are no motorways that are considerably overladen; that is, past the forecast traffic figures that were projected at the time of construction.
Lord Mowbray and Stourton: My Lords, can my noble friend tell me this? If the intention of the

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Government's White Paper in the early 'seventies had been carried out—an intention to build 2,000 miles of strategic motorway by 1980—would that not have saved millions of pounds, even considering the increase in inflation during this time? My second question is: are the Government learning from the earlier mistakes that were made when we started our motorway programme, as exemplified in the early parts of the MI in Hertfordshire, where the road was two lanes each way while the rest of the M1 was three lanes in each way and where great expense is now being incurred to increase the number of traffic lanes? Has that lesson been learned? I ask because when the Dartford Tunnel was built, it was built with two lanes each way. Will that not create a bottleneck, with the prospect of greater expense in the future?
Lord Lucas of Chilworth: My Lords, in so far as the figure of 2,000 miles is concerned, my noble friend will accept that there are changes in patterns of traffic and that no scheme outlined some 20 years ago can remain absolute in all terms and conditions. Currently, there are 1,404 miles of motorway and 4,826 miles of other trunk roads. There is in the current plan a further 200-odd miles of motorway and some 512 miles trunk road to be completed in the next few years. As far as my noble friend's question relating to the two-lane or three-lane approach to the Dartford Tunnel is concerned, I can tell him that in our view the congestion currently occurring is not due to the narrowing of the traffic approaches but to the tollbooth numbers. These are being increased on both sides of the river at departmental expense.
Baroness Seear: My Lords, does the noble Lord agree that the place for a discussion on motorways is a debate?
Lord Lucas of Chilworth: My Lords, it is not for me to agree or disagree with the noble Baroness. I am here (as one of my noble friends said only last week) to answer to the best of my ability the questions which the House puts to me.
Lord Brockway: My Lords, as one who is very deeply impressed by the construction of the motorways, may I ask how the expenditure on them compares with the expenditure on providing new houses for the homeless and the overcrowded?
Lord Lucas of Chilworth: My Lords, that is another question, but Her Majesty's Government have spent a good deal on providing for the homeless. It is always, as the noble Lord will agree, a question of balance.

Miners: Tax Rebates
2.51 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 by what authority income tax rebates are being withheld from miners on strike.
The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Lord Cockfield): My Lords, the authority is to be found in Section 29 of the Finance Act 1981 and the regulations made thereunder. Any refund due can normally only be made when the employee returns to work.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, in view of the fact that the present Government are continually telling the public and this House that taxation is money belonging to the taxpayer, is not the withholding of the appropriate rebates to non-working miners a blatant act of theft?
Lord Cockfield: No, my Lords. Any rebates due will be paid at the end of the strike when the individual returns to work. The matter was, however, debated in full on the Floor of the House in another place in the course of the Committee stage of the Finance Bill on 11th May 1981, and the reasons for the change then made in the law were very fully explained by my right honourable and learned friend the then Chief Secretary to the Treasury.
Lord Gormley: My Lords, will the noble Lord tell me why in the case of the miners something has gone wrong? What is the difference between the miners and the rest of the people?
Lord Cockfield: My Lords, the change in the law was made three years ago in 1981. There is no difference between the treatment of miners who may be on strike and anybody else who may he on strike.
Lord Stoddart of Swindon: My Lords, is it not reprehensible, especially bearing in mind the reports of manipulation of the social security system against the miners and their families, that the miners should also not now be able to get a rebate of money which belongs to them not only for the current financial year but for the financial year 1983–84? Should not the Government at least pay the amount of money due to the miners for the financial year 1983–84, which would amount to about three or four weeks' rebate?
Lord Cockfield: No, my Lords, the position is very clearly laid down in the Finance Act 1981 and the National Coal Board are simply fulfilling the obligations laid upon them by Parliament at that time. The noble Lord was himself at that period a Member of another place and he will realise that a Division was called and the Government were supported by a substantial majority in the Division Lobby.
Lord Stoddart of Swindon: Yes, my Lords, but this is a question of miners' families now being not on the breadline but very much below the breadline. Would it not be in the Government's own interest to try to assist in this matter? Otherwise, the charge that they are trying to starve the miners back to work will stick?
Lord Cockfield: No, my Lords. That is not so. The change was made in 1981 and it affects everybody on strike. So far as the miners are concerned, the primary responsibility for supporting people on strike clearly rests with the union.
The Earl of Lauderdale: My Lords, will my noble friend agree, since the strike is supposed to be about closures—every one of which is foreseen in The Plan for Coal, agreed by successive Governments, the coal board and the NUM—that the short answer is surely to bring the strike to an end?
Lord Cockfield: My Lords, I appreciate the comments made by my noble friend, but they do of course go outside the ambit of the Question on the Order Paper.
Lord Edmund-Davies: My Lords, I take it that there have been others than miners on strike since Section 29 of the Act of 1981 came into force. For clarification may we be told whether there has been any withholding of rebates from any others than miners since the Act came into force?
Lord Cockfield: My Lords, I made it clear in reply to the first supplementary that the change in the law applies to everybody on strike. There is no differentiation between miners and anybody else in this respect.
Lord Edmund-Davies: My Lords, as a matter of fact, has there been a withholding from strikers other than miners since Section 29 came in?
Lord Cockfield: My Lords, I have obviously not investigated that question, but I find it impossible to believe that, in general, the law has not been strictly followed in all cases.
Baroness Gaitskell: My Lords, may I ask the Minister this question? He said that there was no difference between the work that miners have to do and the work that other workers have to do—
Noble Lords: No!
Baroness Gaitskell: Just a moment. May I ask the Minister whether he has been down a mine? Has he lain on that floor with a ceiling a few inches above him? Has he done that work? Has he brought up the coal? I do not think he has, and I do not agree with him.
Lord Cockfield: My Lords, may I be permitted to reciprocate the noble Baroness's comment in the last part of her question? Of course, I appreciate the point that she is making, but I did not in any way deal with the comparative question of work done by miners and work done by other people. The Question relates solely to a point of tax law and I was saying that, so far as tax law is concerned, there is no differentiation between one group in the community and another.
The Countess of Mar: My Lords, does the noble Lord agree that it is not only strikers who suffer and that a married woman who gives up her employment, and states specifically to the Inland Revenue that she has no intention of returning to work, may have to wait up to 15 months for an income tax rebate?
Lord Cockfield: My Lords, that is an entirely different matter—
Noble Lords: No.
Lord Cockfield: My Lords, I was not aware of the fact that any of the ladies to whom the noble Countess was referring were miners or that they were on strike, and those are the questions that are dealt with in the Question on the Order Paper. But if there is any specific case which the noble Countess has in mind, I shall be only too glad to look into it and to communicate with her.
Lord Bruce of Donington: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware, having already enunciated the taxation principles that are involved in the Question, that there are very often precedents—in fact, there are at the present time—for the taxing statutes to be amended particularly during the passage of the Finance Bill? In view of the fact that the Government have already shown themselves very willing to amend substantially in certain respects the Finance Bill which is currently going through another place, will the noble Lord make representations for this group of people who are on strike and find out whether in the current political, and indeed economic. circumstances it might be wise for the Finance Bill to contain an amendment to the taxation statute?
Lord Cockfield: My Lords, as the noble Lord is very well aware, these are matters for another place and not for your Lordships.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, is the noble Lord the Minister trying to transfer responsibility from the Government to the National Coal Board? In his answer he stated, in an aside, that this was the way in which the National Coal Board was acting. Surely it is the Treasury which is acting in this way and which must take the responsibility. If that is the case, is it not clear that this is one further tactic of the Government to starve the miners and their families into submitting to a policy laid down by this Government?
Lord Cockfield: My Lords, I made it clear that the National Coal Board were simply carrying out their obligations under the statute. The responsibility for the content of the statute is not a matter for the Treasury but for Parliament. Parliament took a vote on this matter. I would suggest that the noble Lord should read the debate which took place on 11th May 1981.
Lord Elystan-Morgan: My Lords, will the Minister tell the House what, to the last available date, is the total sum due by way of rebate to coal miners who are now on strike?
Lord Cockfield: No, my Lords. I am not in a position to give that information. The only relevant comment which I would make is that in respect of the period after 5th April no refunds would have been due. because no tax would have been paid by people on strike at that date.

Austin Montego: Sales Figures
3.2 p.m.
Lord Orr-Ewing: 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 the value of orders British Leyland has received to date for the new Austin Montego.
Lord Cockfield: My Lords, £110 million worth of orders had been received by British Leyland from fleet buyers at the time the car was launched on 25th April. Figures from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders show that up to the end of April, 1,938 Montegos had been registered. I understand from Austin Rover that in the first 10 days of May, the car was the ninth best seller in the United Kingdom, taking over 3 per cent. of the market.
Lord Orr-Ewing: My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that very good piece of news. May I ask him whether or not this has come about because British Leyland has entirely re-formed itself in recent years and now has better designs, better productivity, massive investment, much better co-operation between the 80,000 people who now work there, and as a result there is a buoyant order book which is very good both for Britain and for British Leyland?
Lord Cockfield: My Lords, the comments made by my noble friend are entirely accurate. The car has made a good start and this is a good augury for the future of British Leyland. It is also a matter of some encouragement that in the accounts for 1983, which have just been published, British Leyland showed a profit at the operating level of £4.1 million. This represents an achievement by everybody concerned—the workforce as well as the management.
Lord Bruce of Donington: My Lords, would the noble Lord agree that this excellent performance is in sharp contrast to the four years' performance immediately before the company had to be brought into national ownership? Is the noble Lord aware that in 1971 the shares of the company under private enterprise were quoted at 46.5p and that in 1974, immediately prior to nationalisation, they were quoted at 8.5p?
Lord Cockfield: My Lords, the noble Lord's historical researches are no doubt of considerable interest to himself, if to nobody else. The important point is that after a period of great difficulty this very important company is now showing significant progress. We must all wish this progress to continue.
Baroness Macleod of Borve: My Lords, may I ask my noble friend whether the figures he has just given, which the whole House welcomes, include export orders?
Lord Cockfield: My Lords, I cannot give a specific figure, but last year the Austin Rover group exported 20 per cent. of its total output.
Lord Stoddart of Swindon: My Lords, in the light of the very fulsome and well justified praise that the noble Lord the Minister has just extended to British Leyland, can he give the House an assurance that this successfully publicly-owned company will not now be privatised, either wholly or piecemeal?
Lord Cockfield: My Lords, I am clearly not prepared to give any such assurance to the noble Lord. In any event, his question goes wide of the Question on the Order Paper.

Health and Social Security Bill
3.5 p.m.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Security (Lord Glenarthur): My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time.
Nearly every session of Parliament contains a Bill on health or social security issues. This one is no exception, and the Bill inevitably deals with a wide range of subjects. It represents the Government's continuing commitment to promote the interest of the consumer in the health service and to achieve a more rational scheme of social security provision, making the best use of available resources.
The main provisions of the Bill illustrate these objectives. First, we are taking steps to curtail the monopoly granted to opticians and doctors on the sale of glasses and to permit much freer advertising by opticians. This will result in more competition, more choice, and lower prices. It is a change which will benefit nearly everyone who wears glasses. Secondly, we propose to make important changes in the status, accountability, and structure of family practitioner committees. Thirdly, we are proposing to introduce a new benefit—severe disablement allowance—which will replace non-contributory invalidity pension. It will provide a more logical, fair and acceptable form of benefit for people who are outside the scope of the contributory scheme. Fourthly, we propose to rationalise the rules affecting dependency additions to social security benefits. And finally, we are tackling the wholly indefensible position of "franking", which results in a manifest loss for some members of occupational pension schemes.
The Bill also makes minor or technical amendments to existing legislation, which I think (or at least hope) are uncontroversial. I propose in my speech to deal with the main provisions of the Bill. My noble friend Lord Caithness, having been so recently pitched into this complex area, will deal with any points which arise on both minor as well as major provisions when he winds up the debate.
First, I shall deal with optical services, which are covered in clauses 1 to 4. Clause 1 has two objectives. The first is to relax the restriction on competition for the supply of optical services imposed by the Opticians Act of 1958. Achieving this objective enables us to take forward a second one, which is that, given a more competitive market, it will no longer be necessary to persist with the state provision of glasses. A free private market will serve those who need glasses much better than will the present arrangements.

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Our attack on the restrictions imposed by the Opticians Act had its genesis in the report by the Office of Fair Trading, Opticians and Competition. The study leading to this report followed considerable public disquiet at the high cost of private glasses. Our reform of the Opticians Act tackles two issues. The first relates to advertising. The General Optical Council have the power to make statutory rules regulating advertising by registered opticians. The result has been disastrous for the consumer. A prerequisite of a free market is information. Without comparative information on the range of services and prices of other suppliers, the consumer has no real choice. At present the GOC rules do not allow opticians to advertise their existence, their opening times, what services they provide, what types of frame they stock, or what they charge. They certainly cannot use local newspapers or other normal media to inform the public. The Office of Fair Trading concluded that, in the absence of such information, opticians could virtually set their own prices without regard to the behaviour of other opticians.
Advertising will improve choice for consumers and it will lead to lower prices. Experience in the United States, where advertising restrictions vary from place to place, suggests that prices are nearly 40 per cent. lower in the least restrictive cities compared to the most restrictive ones. We have no reason not to expect significant price reductions here.
I now turn to the question of relaxing the restrictions on who can sell glasses. At present, glasses can be sold only by, or under the supervision of, a registered medical practitioner or a registered optician. This restriction extends, quite illogically, even to empty frames without lenses. The Office of Fair Trading made out a powerful case why this restriction has made glasses more expensive than they need otherwise be. It is the Government's view that a restriction of this kind can he justified only in exceptional cases of public interest. Only in a small number of trades and occupations is it felt necessary to restrict the practice of that calling to those who are professionally registered. We believe that such treatment is justifiable only if the public would otherwise be put seriously at risk by incompetent practice. Expert medical opinion is that "wrong glasses"—that is to say, the wrong types of lenses in glasses—cannot damage adult eyes.
Noble Lords: Oh!
Lord Glenarthur: Most people, my Lords, will themselves be able to reach a judgment about their glasses and tell whether they are significantly "wrong". But the Bill ensures that young, developing eyes, which can be damaged by incorrect glasses, are dealt with only by qualified persons. The Bill requires that all glasses sold by non-opticians shall accord with a written prescription following a sight test. This ensures that all wearers of glasses will have a periodic screening for glaucoma and certain other eye and general diseases which can be detected by a sight examination.
The clause gives a power to impose conditions on the unregistered traders who will enter the market. We are already consulting widely on what these conditions should be, to ensure that safe and serviceable glasses are sold. But the best consumer protection of all is a
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free, competitive market. Those retailers who do not produce serviceable glasses will soon be weeded out by consumer choice. We confidently expect that this reform will increase choice and lower prices, and that it will not lead to a deterioration in the standard of glasses provided.
These reforms of the private market will enable us to tackle the problem of National Health Service glasses. Provision of glasses is unlike most other parts of the National Health Service. New glasses are an infrequent, yet regular, requirement—perhaps needed every two to three years or so—and form an ideal subject for responsible prudent provision by individuals.
The purchase of glasses shares none of the characteristics of services which need to be free at the point of delivery. Indeed, except for a brief period between 1948 and 1951. provision of glasses has not been free. Successive Governments have seen no reason why they should be free. What we are left with, after more than 30 years of the National Health Service, is a range of outmoded glasses which are indiscriminately subsidised by an average of £5 a pair. Most people will undoubtedly get a better overall deal in terms of style, choice and price from the reformed private market than they do from the National Health Service.
But anyone who is on a low income will still be able to get National Health Service glasses. For anyone on supplementary benefit, they will be completely free. If people are above this level, but still of limited means, they will get help with the cost. Children, too, will continue to get their glasses free. No one who is really hard up will have a financial barrier placed between him or her and the glasses he or she needs.
Some transitional arrangements are required and these are covered by Clause 28. For the time being, children and those on low incomes will get National Health Service glasses as now. In the longer term, Schedule 1 gives us the power to substitute financial grants. It is right that once market conditions have stabilised, children and those on a low income also should have the benefits of wider choice. For the small group of National Health Service patients who need expensive lenses, we intend that they will have the option of continued access to National Health Service glasses, at a controlled price. We will not, however, continue to subsidise these lenses indiscriminately. Overall, therefore, we believe that the time is ripe for this antiquated and unnecessary state provision to cease.
I now turn to Clause 5 of the Bill. We intend to publish a Green Paper on future primary health care needs, in order to stimulate an informed debate among the health care professions and the public. Central to any strategy for meeting those needs must be a firm focus for the provision of the family practitioner services. That is what this Bill provides. Our aim is directed at simplifying and strengthening the administrative arrangements for these services by removing the administrative dependence of family practitioner committees on district health authorities and making them fully accountable to the Secretary of State as employing authorities in their own right.
The present arrangements were made in 1974, with the best of intentions. However it has become

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increasingly apparent that the administrative dependence of FPCs on district health authorities has caused problems of delegation and accountability and has led to the creation of an unnecessarily complicated bureaucracy. In the light of experience we have come to the conclusion that new arrangements are required.
The new arrangements will have three main features: the clarification of lines of responsibility and strengthening of accountability; an increase in administrative efficiency; and improved collaboration between family practitioner committees on the one hand and health and local authorities on the other. It was with that last, important objective in mind that last month we published the report of a joint working group on collaboration between family practitioner committees and health authorities. Copies have been placed in the Library of your Lordships' House.
Its most important message is that the new family practitioner committees which this Bill proposes should broaden and develop their experience and technical capacity in order to make a stronger contribution to the planning of health services. It also suggests an annual programme and a profile and strategy statement every five years as part of the process of calling committees to account.
During the passage of the Bill in another place, the Government have also taken the opportunity to introduce a number of other desirable amendments to existing health legislation. In particular, I should refer to Clause 7, which seeks to put beyond argument the remuneration arrangements for the four National Health Service contractor professions—the general medical practitioners, dentists, opticians and pharmacists. It is long-standing and accepted practice that past inadequate or excessive payments are offset in future payments; this is, in the interests of the professions and the taxpayer. However, the legal basis of the practice has recently been challenged by the body which represents the pharmacists contractors—the pharmaceutical services negotiating committee. Although the High Court ruled against the challenge and in favour of the existing arrangements, we wish to make the statutory position clear beyond any doubt. I must emphasise that this clause does not represent any change in Government policy; it is intended simply to clarify the present arrangements, as they have been understood by the professions and the Government for many years.
I now turn to Part II of the Bill, which deals with social security matters, of which the introduction of a new benefit—severe disablement allowance in Clause 11—is the dominant issue. As your Lordships will be aware, it replaces non-contributory invalidity pension—or NCIP—which has been available since 1975 to men and single women who are incapable of work, but who do not satisfy the necessary contribution conditions to qualify for contributory sickness or invalidity benefit. Married women have been able to qualify since 1977, but only if they are also incapable of performing their normal household duties. This benefit has become known as the housewives' non contributory invalidity pension—or HNCIP.
This additional "household duties" test has long been a source of controversy and discontent both on
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grounds of discrimination and because of the nature of the test itself. The proposals in the Bill follow a review which was carried out by officials of the department on a recommendation of the then National Insurance Advisory Committee in 1980.
Unlike NCIP, the new benefit will make no distinction on grounds of sex or marital status.Those who become incapable of work on or before their twentieth birthday will qualify on that basis. Those who become incapable of work later in life will qualify if they are also 80 per cent. disabled.
Everyone drawing NCIP or HNCIP, when severe disablement allowance is to be introduced in November of this year, will automatically be transferred to the new benefit. And, in addition, once SDA is fully phased-in, we estimate that around 20,000 more people will qualify over and above the numbers entitled to the present benefits, at an extra cost of some £20 million a year. In the longer term, since some people who would have qualified for NCIP or HNCIP may not qualify for SDA, these figures may be somewhat lower; and it is estimated that after perhaps 30-40 years there will be around 5,000 extra beneficiaries overall.
Much of the criticism of our proposals has stemmed from an understandable disappointment that we have been unable to adopt the straightforward solution of paying NCIP to married women on the same basis as men and single women. However, the Government have never made any secret of the fact that this was not a viable option. The extra costs would amount to some £275 million a year, and money on this scale is simply not available.
SDA will continue to provide an income replacement benefit payable at the same rate as NCIP and on a simple test of incapacity for work to those handicapped at birth or in childhood who are never able to work and build up a contribution record. The additional disablement test for those who first become incapable of work over the age of 20 is intended to concentrate the available resources on the most severely disabled. In effect, this is what the household duties test does at present. We intend to replace it with a much fairer and more objective test using the same principles of assessing disablement as have been successfully used in the industrial injuries scheme since 1948 and in the war pensions scheme since 1917.
I am confident that severe disablement allowance represents a fair solution to a problem that has exercised successive Administrations. The new benefit represents an important improvement in the general level of cash benefits. It is a significant step towards the Government's long-term aim of a more coherent system of benefits for sick and disabled people.
I turn now to the proposals for changes in the dependency provisions of the social security scheme. Clause 13 introduces Schedule 4 and is concerned with dependency additions in respect of children. There are at present two levels of these additions. One is the rate paid with the short-term benefits—chiefly unemployment and sickness benefit—and the other is that paid with benefits for long-term contingencies like retirement and invalidity. As the level of child benefit has gone up, so the rate of the child dependency addition has gone down and we now have a rate of just

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15p a week by way of child addition with the short-term benefits. At the next general uprating of benefits in the autumn we intend to discontinue the 15p rate so that support for those at work and those not at work because of a short-term contingency will be by way of child benefit, now set at £6·50 a week for each child and free of tax.
Those receiving the long-term benefits get child additions of £7·60 a week—also tax free—on top of child benefit. These are now more readily available because of the changes we have made to comply with the EC directive on equal treatment. We have given some thought to the implications of this change and have concluded that it would be right to introduce a test of child dependency. We intend that where a beneficiary's wife or husband is earning over £80 a week, the dependency addition for one child of £7·60 will be withdrawn and further additions will be withdrawn for each extra £ 10 of earnings. This would only affect new beneficiaries as we shall give transitional protection to those already on benefit when the new rule starts.
There is one further item I should mention about this group of proposals. Several of our dependency provisions are subject to an earnings rule, and we propose in Clause 14 that where a dependant has an occupational pension this should count as earnings in the same way as wages or salary. But I want to make it clear that this will not affect personal benefits and pensions. and, in particular, it will make no difference to the retirement pensioners' earnings rule.
Finally, the Bill contains items which affect occupational pension schemes. Clause 19 facilitates the transfer of accrued rights of groups of earners or their pensions between different occupational pension schemes, while Clause 20 prohibits the practice of franking. Franking is the term used to describe the practice whereby the statutory revaluation of guaranteed minimum pension is achieved by eroding other scheme benefits payable. It is an abuse, and as such it has been widely criticised. In the 1981 report on early leavers, the Occupational Pensions Board recommended that it should be abolished so that:
"It would thus no longer be permissible for schemes to set the revaluation of the GMP on state scheme benefits against other preserved benefits".
Generally, it now seems that there are few who try to defend the practice, and at the conference on early leavers last September my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Social Services made it clear that we intended to abolish franking as soon as possible. This is the first step in our programme to improve the treatment of the early leaver.
In conclusion, this is a wide-ranging and important Bill which makes a number of significant improvements to health and social security provision. In particular, the provisions concerning optical services, opticians and the sale of glasses demonstrate the Government's policy: to put the interests of the user of the service first. I have concentrated on what we believe are the most important provisions. No doubt other features of the Bill will be discussed in detail in Committee. Above all, this Bill is concerned with securing a better deal for the public, and on this basis I commend it to your Lordships. I beg to move.
Moved, That the Bill be now read a second time.—(Lord Glenarthur.)
3.26 p.m.
Lord Ennals: My Lords, first, I am sure the whole House will be grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Glenarthur, for his explanation of this highly controversial Bill. Secondly, I should like to congratulate the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, on his first appearance on the Government Front Bench, to wind up this debate. My only wish for him in the mood of sympathy with which I start my speech is that he had a more attractive Bill to defend.
In fact, this is in my view a ragbag of a Bill, with hardly anything to commend it. I intend to choose just the same five items as did the noble Minister, although I have to say that my conclusions on all of them will be sharply different from those he himself reached. Other points, of course, will he dealt with in Committee, and I have no doubt that my noble friend Lady Jeger who will be winding up for us, will have other points to make.
I therefore start with Clause 1 on which I have had, as other noble Lords will have had, a huge volume of representation from professional organisations including the medical and optical professions, consumer bodies and voluntary organisations, especially those concerned with elderly people. There are, of course, two main issues here. First, there is the decision of the Government to deny NHS support to nearly two-thirds of those now assisted by the optical service of the National Health Service. This is a further chipping away at the National Health Service, which is supposedly safe in the Government's hands. One has to ask: why has this action been taken? The noble Lord says that it will make it cheaper for all. Time will tell. I must say that I have not met anyone who believes that that will be the case, except for the noble Minister who said it. I ask, since the Government are proposing to save £17 million according to the financial memorandum: is there any other motive except to save £17 million?
Does the Minister accept that those principally affected will be the elderly? Of the elderly 22 per cent. have some sort of visual impairment and 75 per cent. of all registered blind and partially sighted are over the age of 65. Therefore, the measure that the Government are putting forward in this part of Clause I will particulary hit elderly people. I resent that, and I hope that the House will resent it. Often cataract patients may need three changes of glasses in the 18 months following an operation. These people, unless they are on supplementary benefit, will suffer financial hardship if they are no longer eligible for NHS glasses.
In my view it would be a step backward if visually impaired people were in future required to pay for their disability. It breaches the very principle on which the National Health Service was created; namely, that it is all of us—the taxpayers—who should pay for those who are sick, rather than that the burden should fall on the sick themselves. I believe that the provision is a mean and a petty one.
Lord Orr-Ewing: My Lords, will the noble Lord give way?
Lord Ennals: My Lords, I am sure that the noble Lord will have his opportunity to make a speech. I want to set out from the Front Bench the many important things that need to be set out. The second issue affects opticians and the public. There is the extraordinary proposal in Clause 1 to end the provision in the Opticians Act 1958 which allows only registered or medical practitioners to sell optical appliances. This proposal has been roundly condemned from all sides. If the noble Lord wishes to point out a side which has not condemned it, of course I will now give way.
Lord Orr-Ewing: My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Lord for giving way early in this debate, because it is desirable. Many of us have had a circular on BMA paper which actually comes from the committee of the ophthalmic group. On following it up, I learn that some of what is contained in it is absolutely untruthful. In fact the full committee of the ophthalmic group has never met since this Bill was published. It has never met since the Bill was published! It is wrong to pretend that the BMA is behind this document. It is not behind it, has not discussed it. and nor has the full committee met. It is true that a few members of the executive of the committee have met under Mr. Gilkes, but it is not right to say that all people condemn the proposal.
Lord Ennals: My Lords, this is grossly unfair. The noble Lord has put his name down to make a speech. He ought not to make such a long intervention. If he wishes to say that the BMA does not know its job, that the doctors do not know theirs and that he knows it better, let him say so in his speech. I have here just what the ophthalmic group committee of the BMA said. It represents all medically qualified optical staff. I have this information on the notepaper of the BMA. Noble Lords keep intervening from a seated position.
This document says three things. First:
"If dispensing by unqualified persons is allowed, there will be no effective control over what is dispensed and no protection for patients if they are dissatisfied with the product".
Secondly,
"The proposed changes could have practical and financial consequences for those with special needs, be they medical (e.g. patients with cataracts or if the prescription is a complex one involving special factors) or social".
Thirdly,
"Since spectacles are a product with a significant health element, we do not feel that it is appropriate for the public to be unduly influenced in their purchase by advertising".
I must say to the noble Lord who was intervening that it is not just the BMA which has made representations. It is all the professions involved in optical services. These are people who have spent their lives in that service and who know far better than the noble Lord, Lord Bruce-Gardyne (who is again intervening from a seated position) the needs of their patients. I must ask the Minister, in view of what his noble friends behind him have said, what consultation there was with the professions before the Government took this further backward step. Perhaps he would like to say now what consultation there was. I will give way to the noble Lord; but he does not want to say. I do not believe that there was effective consultation.
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The BMA has expressed its view. What about the public? The Minister said that the proposal was in the interests of the user. The Federation of Optical Corporate Bodies decided that an independent survey of a nationally representative sample of spectacle wearers provided more reliable information about consumer attitudes towards opticians and their services. A total sample of over 1,000 spectacle wearers was interviewed. The results of the survey showed that 73 per cent. of respondents claimed that they would not want to shop around for spectacles. In terms of factors considered important in choosing spectacles, the most important factor was "professional advice". Twenty-eight per cent. said this was their most important factor; second was "style of frames", followed by "cost". Seventy per cent. rated the overall service from opticians as being "excellent" or "very good", and only three per cent. criticised them as being "poor". Sixty-nine per cent. rated the service received from opticians as being "good value for money". Nearly everyone (98 per cent.) rejected the idea of buying spectacles:
"from mail order or over the counter without any professional advice".
Spectacle wearers have a high regard for opticians—I believe it is right that they should—and the professional treatment received. Correct eyesight is quite clearly regarded as a serious medical requirement, especially among elderly people. The idea that it should go out to the open market, as the Minister put it, is one that most people would find objectionable. I believe that any move towards the supply of spectacles by unqualified sellers will offer cost benefits to some, but they will clearly be benefits dearly won by many others. They will be won by putting eyesight at risk; they will be won at the expense of optimum visual performance; and they will be won by increasing other spectacle prices, as well as by decreasing the general optical service in its vulnerable areas.
Age Concern, with its special interest for elderly people, has set out the case admirably in the letter it sent to the Secretary of State on 2nd February 1984:
"There is no guarantee that the price of non-NHS spectacles will fall if the Bill is enacted. People who currently obtain NHS spectacles and cease to be eligible and who need to change their glasses regularly, could therefore face financial hardship…the price of NHS glasses could rise if the Bill is enacted since NHS lenses are supplied at below cost and the frames benefit from long manufacturing runs.
If non-opticians are allowed to sell spectacles the viability of existing opticians' shops could be threatened and this could lead to a reduction in eyetesting facilities".
It could certainly make it more difficult for people in rural areas to go to their optician. It continues:
"Similarly, the smaller opticians who lack the resources to advertise may also suffer from the competition".
I think that those are very strong arguments.
It is interesting that these feelings are expressed not just by one political party. I was very impressed when Mrs. Jill Knight on 2nd May (column 399 of Hansard) in another place—
Lord Bruce-Gardyne: Hear, hear!
Lord Ennals: Yes, my Lords, she knows what she is talking about on this subject. Perhaps she does not on

19
others, but she really does about this. Her husband is in the profession. She said:
"It is almost 30 years now since the House, in its wisdom, passed legislation to protect the public from the dangers of allowing persons without expert knowledge to dispense spectacles".
She went on to say much more, but time does not permit me to read it into the record. The arguments were there, and I believe that they will be voiced by other noble Lords during the course of this debate.
My next subject is the family practitioner service. I welcome the Minister's statement about a Green Paper on primary health care. Our objective should be to bring the whole of the primary health care services into a closer relationship with the hospital and community services. The Tory reorganisation in 1974 significantly failed to do that. The Minister recognised that fact. The Tory reorganisation in 1982 also failed to achieve integration. The latest proposal would cut them off altogether, presumably to make it easier to make further cuts in primary health care. If that is not so, in this connection may I ask once again in the House whether the Minister who is to reply will say when the Binder Hamlyn report will be published? Why is it being sat on for month after month? Why is the matter not open for debate for those who care about the primary health care services, which I believe are absolutely crucial to the National Health Service in this country?
The new proposal seems to put far more power into the hands of the Secretary of State than ever before. Is it really true that he will himself appoint 3,000 members of the family practitioner committees? How do the Government square that centralised non-democracy with the line that they are taking on democracy in the trade unions? What is the justification for this change which, together with the implementation of the Griffiths Report, is a third Tory reorganisation in 10 years, putting more power to the centre? Instead of this interminable tinkering with the structure, why do not the Government let the National Health Service get on with its job?
I now turn to Clause 7 and professional remuneration in the National Health Service, particularly that of pharmacists and opticians. From my experience gained as Secretary of State, I am only too well aware of the protracted negotiations which take place almost continuously between the Department of Health and these family practitioner contractors who are not fortunate enough to have fixed annual negotiations or a permanent review body. In the case of the pharmacists, the final amount of remuneration due to them is determined according to the best available estimate of their reimbursable costs, such as the cost of medicines, labour, overheads, and so on. But there is no reason in my view why these estimates cannot be replaced by the actual costs incurred at the end of the year in question. Otherwise, what we are doing—and that is precisely what this Bill is doing—is authorising retrospective demands upon the pharmacists. The system requires a more orderly method of annual review in line with the present arrangement for doctors and nurses. On Clause 7, I and a number of noble Lords will table an amendment to limit the retrospective adjustment of remuneration to a period of one year. What the Government are proposing now
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is a retrospective clawback covering a whole period of three years which I believe is going to have a very serious effect upon many of the pharmacists.
My fourth point concerns Clause 13, which, for the sake of saving, according to the financial memorandum, less than £4 million in a full year. takes away the entitlement of child addition for those receiving short term benefit. Fifteen pence a week does not seem very much. However, if one is living on £25 a week, 15p is something. It reduces financial support for children of the unemployed and the sick by 15p per child per week. We have to put this matter in perspective. As a result of changing the basis on which child additions were uprated in 1980, total child support—that is child addition plus child benefit—received by an unemployed claimant is now £1.70 less than under the rules that my Tory successors inherited from me.
The Government's action is condemned by their own Social Security Advisory Committee. I do not understand what impels Government Ministers to act in so callous a manner against the 4 million unemployed. It is as if somehow or other it was their fault. First the earnings related supplement was taken away. Then unemployment benefit was taxed. Next the uprating of unemployment benefit was set below the rate of inflation. Now child additions are being taken out. It seems as though the Government somehow wish to punish the unemployed for their misfortune. I cannot believe this is true. If that is not true, then why come forward with a clause like that in this Bill?
Finally, I want to refer to the severe disablement allowance in Clause 11, referred to by the noble Minister. I must say that this is an issue on which there is very strong feeling among organisations representing people who are disabled in one way or another. People are disabled in many ways. As I do, they all welcome the proposed abolition of the household duties test. But having said that, there seems to be total unanimity among the organisations who have made representations to me in condemning the alternative proposed in the Bill. I cannot find any organisation representing disabled people which supports the Government on this proposal. If I am wrong and I have missed one out, no doubt the noble Minister, when he comes to reply, will tell me which that one was. I ask: why was there no consultation whatsoever with the major organisations concerned? How stupid it is to alienate organisations which have a detailed knowledge of the needs of disabled people. I am thinking of organisations like the Spastics Society, like RADAR, the Disablement Income Group and MIND. These groups are dealing daily with the problems of disabled people. Did they have an opportunity for consultation? No, my Lords. not a little bit of it.
The proposals for the new benefit were announced on the very same day that the Government's interdepartmental report on the household duties test was published. You might say, "Well, of course time was very short.- It had taken three years for that report to be completed and published, and on the same day that it was published the Bill was published saying what it was going to do instead. There was not any opportunity at all for consultation.

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I was told by the Disablement Income Group:
"We think that a debate and consultation of interested parties are essential before such a major change in the social security system is proposed. Had either occurred, we doubt that these most unsatisfactory proposals would have been made…The Bill proposes to abolish the household duties test and end discrimination against disabled married women by introducing a second, and"
—in many people's opinions
"irrelevant test for everyone over the age of 20. Not all disabled married women who would be eligible for the existing housewives' non-contributory invalidity pension will be eligible for the proposed severe disablement allowance"—
called the SDA.
"The Government estimates that about 16,000 disabled married women who are incapable of work, would have passed the household duties test and thus would have been eligible for HNCIP but will not be eligible for SDA."
Older disabled students on a course of study compatible with incapacity for work had been able to draw NCIP while studying. Many will now be ineligible for the new benefit and may have to give up their studies and, as a result, perhaps their opportunities to work.
"Credits towards a pension will be lost by many who will now have to look to supplementary benefit as their main source of financial support rather than NCIP…
"A test of degree of disablement is wholly inappropriate in the context of a benefit for total incapacity for work. Some people who are merely 20 per cent. disabled may be unable to work on account of their disabilities, whereas some people who are 100 per cent. disabled may be quite capable of earning a very good living."
I happen to be 100 per cent. war disabled. I cannot say that the allowances I get at this House are a very substantial financial support but clearly I am able to do, though inadequately, a day's work. There is no correlation between degree of disablement, as measured by industrial injuries or war injuries, and capacity to work and earnings ability. So it is illogical to connect the two, in respect of an incomes maintenance scheme for those whose disability prevents them from doing any work.
This is an issue which has aroused very strong passions. Some of you will have seen what I thought was the very responsible statement by John Cox on behalf of the Spastics Society in the Guardian just a few days ago. He said:
"In principle, the Society cannot accept an age cut-off point for assessment-free claims, which admits the harsh inequity of the two tier test proposed for older people. Furthermore, we believe that the age cut-off could deter young disabled people from taking up further education or training opportunities.
"The Society is keen to see any move towards the realisation of a Comprehensive Disability Costs Allowance and Income Scheme, but we do not believe that the SDA is suitable to meet the needs of congenitally disabled people."
That is just the same conclusion therefore as that at a recent meeting of representatives of disablement charities, attended by many Members of your Lordships' House. Though I am not committing any noble Lords here, the conclusions reached by the organisations were simple and unanimous. They urged the Government to drop Clause 11 at this stage, to consult with the experts such as those who are involved in DIG, RADAR, the Spastics Society, MIND, and the rest, and to come back again with an agreed solution which actually meets the known needs of disabled people. The Government would not lose face by acting in this way. In fact, they would earn considerable credit for taking the proper route by
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which conclusions should be reached. A new allowance is very much needed; but, this time, we must get it right.
3.50 p.m.
Lord Banks: My Lords, I should like to join in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Glenarthur, for his very clear exposition of the contents of this Bill. There is no one general theme, as he explained, linking the different parts of the Bill together which we can say at once that we are in favour of, or opposed to. The Bill was described in another place as a miscellaneous ragbag of a Bill that artificially combines wholly unconnected issues. Unfortunately, that is true of a good many of the social security Bills that come before this House.
I should have liked to have said that this Bill was like the curate's egg, good in parts; but the good parts are rather difficult to find. However, I can begin with one point of agreement. We support, as did the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, the ending of franking that is provided for in Clause 20. It was wrong that, in a contracted-out occupational pension scheme, the obligatory annual uprating for inflation of the guaranteed minimum pension could be allowed gradually to subsume the balance of the pension.
May I turn for a moment to the child dependency addition. I have made it clear in this House before that we approve the gradual elimination of these benefits so far as short-term benefits are concerned, and that we approve also the substitution of child benefit as the single method of providing child support in these cases. But we have objected in the past, and we continue to object, to the fact that child benefit has not been increased sufficiently to compensate for the loss of child dependency additions, as, again, the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, pointed out. It is also a point on which the Social Security Advisory Committee has commented severely.
Child dependency additions will remain, as the noble Lord, Lord Glenarthur, explained, for those on long-term benefits, but they will be subject to a new earnings rule so far as spouses' earnings are concerned. I think I am right in saying—the noble Earl who is to reply will correct me if I am wrong—that a retirement pensioner with a spouse and a dependent child is subject during the first five years of retirement to three earnings rules. First, if the pensioner earns more than £65 a week, the pension is docked, and the principle is that he is deemed not to have properly retired. Secondly, if the spouse earns more than £45 a week, which is now to include occupational schemes, then the spouse's pension is docked, and that is on the principle that the spouse is not a dependant.
Now there is to be the third test, as a result of the Bill, that if the spouse earns, in the case I mentioned, more than £80 a week, then the child dependency addition is withdrawn. There does not seem to be a principle behind that. It is a means test to ration a national insurance benefit. We should bear in mind that this is not supplementary benefit. It is a national insurance benefit, and it would therefore seem that this is, in fact, a breach of the national insurance principle.
I think your Lordships will agree from the example that I have given that the earnings rules, which are

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more extensive and cover other cases than those I have mentioned, are complex and confusing. This point was emphasised by the Social Security Advisory Committee in its second report, when it called for simplification and rationalisation of earnings rules. I shall leave it to my noble friend Lord Beaumont of Whitley to comment further on the proposed changes as they affect child dependency additions.
The proposals for family practitioner committees raise two questions. First, is this a move away from the integration at local level of the different branches of the health service? Secondly—and this was raised by the noble Lord, Lord Ennals—does it concentrate too much centralised power in the hands of the Secretary of State? I shall leave it to my noble friends Lady Robson of Kiddington and Lord Kilmarnock to answer those important questions. I wish to concentrate in my remaining remarks on the proposals with regard to optical appliances and on the new severe disablement allowance. First, I turn to the appliances. The Bill, as the noble Lord explained to us, keeps the free sight test by a qualified person. It keeps prescriptions by a qualified person. But, in regard to dispensing and the sale of spectacles, except where children and contact lenses are concerned, it opens the door for a free-for-all.
This has been defended as the breaking of a monopoly. If anyone talks to a Liberal about breaking a monopoly, they certainly get a good reception in the first instance. I can perhaps remind the House that Winston Churchill, in his Liberal days, said that socialism attacks capital but liberalism attacks monopoly. However, when I come to look at the situation here, it does not seem to me that there is a monopoly. Large numbers of opticians' firms are in competition with each other. and there is no concentration of ownership. Is there a cartel? When I come to examine it, it does not seem to me that there is a cartel. This is emphasised by the statement made by the Minister in another place when he said that the same spectacles could be bought for 102 from one optician and for £42 from another.
There is no cartel, but there is a closed shop. We on these Benches are not very keen on closed shops: but we have always accepted a closed shop based on professional qualification where the protection of the public demands it, as, for example, in the case of doctors. Is it necessary to have qualified dispensers? I would say that the answer is: yes, if you want accurate prescribing and some redress if things go wrong. If you look at the subjects that a consulting optician has to study in a three-year course, I think that your Lordships will agree with that.
The question then arises: does it matter if you get inaccurate prescribing? The Government say: no, it does not, because it will not do any damage to sight. However, the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, in this House on 27th April 1983—that is just over a year ago—speaking on this matter, said:
"Standards of dispensing in the United Kingdom are high. If the need for statutory registration was removed and untrained people could enter the field, standards would inevitably fall".
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This was the noble Lord speaking for the Government. The noble Lord went on:
"Unskilled dispensing is probably not harmful to the eye. However, unskilled dispensing could well result in less than optimal improvement to sight and could perhaps act as a contributory cause to accidents."
A contributory cause to accidents! The noble Lord continued:
"It may well be that this is a very small risk, but I personally would not choose to be driving down the M l behind or in front of somebody who had less than perfect eyesight."
He went on to say:
"I recall also that before I came to your Lordships' House I was a pilot. I had on my licence an endorsement to the effect that I had to wear 'approved correction to defective vision'. I imagine that those of your Lordships, if there are any, who had the misfortune to fly with me would have preferred that the glasses that I was wearing were the correct ones".—[Official Report, 27/4/83; col. 1035.]
On a previous occasion my noble friend Lord Winstanley said that incorrectly prescribed glasses would not harm: "You just can't see", he said. That brings us back to the point made so clearly by the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne. There is sufficient doubt about the possible dangers to convince me that all those dispensing should have a qualification, not necessarily as high as that of dispensing opticians, but sufficient to enable them to know what they are doing.
We on these Benches share the concern about the withdrawal of National Health Service spectacles from all but the poorest and children. We believe that there are many above the limits set in this Bill who nevertheless are still on comparatively slender resources. For example, I think of elderly people with a small occupational pension who will suffer as a result of the withdrawal of these spectacles. The withdrawal reduces the scope of the National Health Service, and on that point the Gloucester family practitioner committee had this to say:
"To restrict the supply of spectacles to patients other than children and those who receive supplementary benefit will deprive the majority of patients in this country from receiving spectacles through the National Health Service. This proposal is in direct contradiction to the many statements in Parliament that the present Government has no intention to reduce the scope of the National Health Service".
That was the view of the Gloucester family practitioner committee.
Some 32 million people per year are affected by this withdrawal and I myself cannot see how the price level is going to fall if one takes out of it the lowest element. To conclude my comments on optical appliances on a less critical note, may I say that we welcome the modification of the restrictions on advertising which are contained in the Bill.
I should like now to turn to the severe disablement allowance. With the noble Lord, Lord Ennals. we welcome the withdrawal of the household duties test for disabled housewives, but we cannot give a similar welcome to the severe disablement allowance. The noble Lord, Lord Ennals, referred to the fact that this appeared to have been introduced without any proper consultation with the disabled or the organisations which represent them. I believe, as he said, that they are all opposed to this proposal. They are opposed to it in the main because it makes the system more complex, because it confuses compensation for disability with income maintenance. As the noble Lord said, someone who is 80 per cent. disabled may

25
be capable of work, whereas someone less disabled may not be capable of work. Some who now qualify for the non-contributory invalidity pension would not qualify, if they were applying for the first time, after the Bill becomes law.
The Bill continues to discriminate against married women. I think that that was implicit in what the noble Lord, Lord Glenarthur, said. The noncontributory invalidity pension is designed to provide for those with no adequate national insurance contribution record. The review of the household duties test states in paragraph 35:
"The overwhelming majority of people who become disabled while of working age and who lack an adequate contribution record are married women".
Two-hundred-and-forty thousand married women are prevented by the household duties test from getting the non-contributory invalidity pension. Some 20,000 extra people are all that will be brought in by the severe disablement allowance.
The noble Lord has told us that £275 million would be the cost of bringing in all those who at present are kept out by the household duties test. The new arrangement is designed to have the practical effect of reducing the numbers of housewives included and keeping down the cost. We on these Benches will continue to press for a disability income which would have two elements—one, an income maintenance element, and the other an expenses allowance element.
May I say in conclusion that while, as I have indicated, there are in the Bill one or two items with which we agree, there is much about which we have strong reservations and much which we strongly oppose. While in accordance with the convention in this House we shall not oppose the Second Reading of this Bill, I think I have said enough to make it clear why my right honourable and honourable friends in another place felt obliged to vote against it.
4.5 p.m.
Lord Rugby: My Lords, I wish to address myself to the Opticians Act. The Bill before your Lordships' House is intended to re-examine and amend where necessary an Act which was introduced in 1958 by a Private Member. It was never introduced by Government. Willingness now on the part of Her Majesty's Government to carry out some amendments represents to me at least a chink of light at the end of a dark tunnel. After hearing the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Glenarthur, I regard it as positive sunshine.
From the outset that orginal Bill was a contentious one. It was fought tooth and nail on the Floor of the House of Commons, where, rightly and justifiably, its motivation was called into question. Throughout the 25 years of its operation it has been the subject of committees of inquiry of various kinds as to the manner of its interpretation and numerous abuses which have gone unchecked and have left the customer defenceless in the face of sharp practice.
I use the word "customer" with a certain reservation because that is the correct word where a willing buyer purchases from a willing seller. Indeed, where a willing person seeks advice of a physical nature from a professional expert, the word "patient" is correct. But for somebody who has no desire for medical or
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professional advice and is more than capable of remedying inconveniences which beset the advancing years and is officially denied a right to a simple aid, then we are in a different ball game. We are in the situation of the alleged Russian who dissents from a discriminatory and unfair law and, because of his dissension, is declared a mental defective. He is subjected to psychiatric treatment and in that instance the relationship involves neither customer nor patient. He is a victim, as is the dissenting presbyope (that is simply somebody with an ageing eye) wishing only to offset a predictable situation with a predictable standard aid, who is denied that right because, in absentio, he has been categorised as a visual defective.
The abuse of Section 21 by the opticians has created many dissidents, many victims. I declare myself to be just such a dissident and just such a victim, and in that I am in excellent company. Recently a shop was opened. It opened its doors to presbyopes like myself, offering a variety of magnifications and frames at realistic prices. The rush to buy while the going was good enabled the owner to open in that short period seven branches.
I said that I was in excellent company and, indeed, I found that leading ophthalmologists were also customers. However, on the specious pretext that the ageing process makes us all visual defectives at some time, and without any shred of justification, many of these branches have been forced to close. I was astonished to hear a leading witness presenting evidence that magnifiers such as presbyopes use are indeed not magnifiers because they are minimal magnifiers and are needed for minimal magnification.
I brought these matters to the notice of this House in an Unstarred Question in 1981. The consequential volume of support for change encouraged me to go the whole hog and seek the repeal of Section 21. At the express wish of Her Majesty's Government I withdrew that Bill, pending an Office of Fair Trading report on the way the Act was working either for or against the public interest. As one would expect, it was a thoroughly researched and a thoroughly professional document. Now, of course, there is a smear campaign, but there is no question that that was an excellent report. There have been many expressions of concern over the years in your Lordships' House which have shown that the fears expressed in that report were fully justified.
Indeed, the report went further by looking at Section 25 of the Act and highlighting the difficulties of the average housewife or pensioner traipsing around trying to discover such simple facts as prices, services offered, speed of service, times of opening and general efficiency. This was further substantiated by a consumer magazine report which highlighted the truly absurd variations in prices—for example, anywhere between £40 and £100 for indentical frames. Such variations are, of course, sustained by an ability to deceive and by nil competition.
Yet another report—this time by the Committee of Public Accounts—highlighted the abuses of value added tax in what was termed delicately as "unintended profits". In other words, under the protective cover of the National Health Service monopoly, there was the practice of buying cheap

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lenses from the Far East and then recovering VAT in accordance with standard rates applicable to the home-produced goods. This had the double effect of squeezing the home industry and drawing an unmerited subsidy from the taxpayer.
In order to satisfy some doubters in your Lordships' House as to the dangers, if any, of buying reading glasses over the counter, some members of the Repeals Group, to which I belong, funded a small survey on this issue with members of the Ophthalmological Society. We owe a debt of gratitude to the fact that nearly 400 of them replied and of those a one-third majority wanted total derestriction on reading glasses. Bearing in mind that many stood to lose financially, it was a highly significant response.
The Government have now once again brought this Bill into the political arena and it is easy to see why. In so doing they have now to look back to the origins of the Act, because—as I read it—what is said in this Bill empowers the General Optical Council to veto and override anything that they do not like at Privy Council level later on. It brings us back to those days when it was openly stated by those wishing to get control of the market that wearing wrongly prescribed glasses was a major cause for blindness. That would not be accepted today; it would not get past the Trade Descriptions Act. But business is not played according to Queensberry Rules.
The Government commissioned the Crook Report. Their recommendations were intended to be the tablets upon which this new faculty of opticians would find its ethos. The aims are clearly set out, and indeed they were to be the pillars upon which an edifice, akin to the medical profession, could be founded. Central to the whole thinking was that eye-testing opticians and dispensing opticians should be entirely separate. That idea stemmed, of course, from the precedent of the medical profession and the inherent dangers manifested in the earlier days of medicine when professional or quack medicos could diagnose in their consultancies merely in order to sell their own cure-alls. Paragraph 66 of the Crook Report says that the public interest is the main consideration for this all-important directive of separating these two functions. It has never been implemented.
Another fundamental directive concerned the formation of ophthalmic optical corporate bodies. Their remit at that time—a dual role of testing sight and dispensing—was to be terminated as soon as expedient and no new corporate bodies were to be allowed. There can be no room for misinterpretation of those rulings. Also, there were explicit rulings given on partnerships being formed with non-professional opticians, because undesirable pressures could, in that situation, influence professional judgment. The whole tenor of the report was to pre-empt the abuses which would inevitably follow unless strict guidelines were set out for a governing body. The General Optical Council was set up and pledged to adhere to those proposals. The rules have been flouted. Why? Why has there been no attempt to implement any part of them?
After 25 years we still have at the centre the General Optical Council, supposedly the guardians of the
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public and of their eyesight. It consists of 26 members in all, 22 of whom are opticians; 13 at least—maybe more—represent corporate bodies which, according to the Crook Report, should not exist at all. The biggest of these by far is Dollond and Aitchison, a subsidiary of the American tobacco consortium, Gallahers. With somewhere around 750 retail outlets in the high street—or so I am informed—they have the lion's share. With such muscle power it is beyond dispute that they dominate the entire trade and the General Optical Council is subservient to them. What this body of people did to the Crook Report was to tear it up—or at least the bits which did not suit them—as soon as they got hold of the statutory reins of power or quasi-autonomy as formulated in the word "quango". With such a central autonomous position they have far greater power than the whole of the medical profession put together, and that cannot be healthy.
No member of the public can escape at some time being branded a visual defective. No member of the trade can compete efficiently and provide a service of a competitive nature without running the risk of being arraigned before a secret court and put out of business. Believe it or not, this comes under the heading of "infamous conduct". Under such total power no government can enact legislation which cannot at a later stage, when it suits them—as with the Crook Report—be torn up, buried and forgotten.
So long as this "Trojan Horse" sits within the edifice of the National Health Service, its members representing only their paymasters, the work of this House and of another place will be rendered nugatory. Before any attempt is made to get some measure of reform into the Bill, and in the light of past performance, I would ask the House that the members of the General Optical Council should now be told to stand down and their places should be filled by a representative body—a body which in fact and in truth is seen to represent the public interest and which is identifiable by the public as representing their interests in what are truly matters of vital concern to them.
4.17 p.m.
Baroness Faithfull: My Lords, I should like very briefly to speak and ask questions on Clauses 11 and 13. Clause 11, as your Lordships know, concerns the new severe disablement allowance which will be introduced to replace the current non-contributory invalidity benefit and housewife's non-contributory invalidity benefit. While welcoming, as other noble Lords have done, the abolition of the housewife's duties test, the new severe disablement allowance is, for many reasons, cause for concern. I am sure that other noble Lords will pursue this subject—particularly the 80 per cent. test; the age cut-off; and the medical and social implications.
I should like to ask my noble friend Lord Caithness, who is to reply, if it is possible to be given the amount of money that is spent now on the current noncontributory invalidity benefit, and what will be the cost to the country of the new severe disablement allowance. I have not given notice of this question and I appreciate that it will not be possible for him to give an answer this evening. But I would be most grateful if I could have a reply in writing.

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Secondly, would not the Minister agree that, as it stands at the moment, the Bill's provisions on the child dependency allowances may militate against the interests of families with children? But if, as the noble Lord, Lord Banks, has said, child benefit is going to be raised, then it may be a different matter. Is it possible for the Minister to say whether, in the review of benefits that is to be made by the Secretary of State, child benefit is to be reviewed? If so, then of course a different complexion will be put on this clause.
Can the Minister also say—and here again I would not expect him to reply this evening, but I hope that he will write to me—what is the present position with regard to expenditure and what will be the expenditure if the new system is introduced?
4.20 p.m.
Lord Stallard: My Lords, I rise to speak on the Second Reading of this Bill and, as was said by the Minister in opening the debate, I am aware that this is the latest in a long series of social security Bills put forward by the present Administration since the election. What the noble Lord did not say was that all those Bills have had one thing in common, which has been openly admitted by the Government; namely, they have all been aimed at reducing the cost of the social and welfare benefits available to people in this country. This has been openly stated in Committee, and I have had the privilege of sitting on a number of Standing Committees in the other place where, in reply to debates on various amendments, Ministers have regularly said that the main purpose of this or that specific measure has been that it is a nil-cost provision.
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords. I hate to interrupt the noble Lord but he is slightly misrepresenting what has been said. What has been said in many cases is that we are trying to achieve better value for money. How the noble Lord can say that we are not spending more money when the SDA is costing another £20 million, I do not know.
Lord Stallard: My Lords, I hope that before the end of the Committee procedure I shall be able to give the noble Lord the Minister lots of answers to that. For the time being, I shall not go too deeply into the history, but I can assure the noble Lord that the exact words "nil-cost provision" have figured in many ministerial replies from that side of the Chamber.
As I have said, in previous Bills benefits have been delayed. They have been reduced, taxed and been subjected to clawback devices; they have lost the advantages of linkage with wages or prices, whichever was the highest; and generally all benefits have become so complex that even the experts are now finding it difficult to administer them. The latest example of that must be the unified housing benefit, which is almost totally out of hand.
This Bill, which in my view could easily have been two or three separate Bills, takes the whole process a step further. As one noble Lord has, I think, already mentioned, there is no apparent linkage, as there was in many of the previous Bills. There is no automatic linkage between some of the subjects covered in the four points outlined by the noble Lord the
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Minister—no obvious link. So this could have been two or three Bills at least, but this Bill takes the whole process of complicating legislation and of the nil-cost provision a stage further.
I should like to comment on just those two aspects, which have already been commented on at length, so I do not have to be too long-winded. I should like to support the views already expressed, certainly from this side of the Chamber, on the effect upon the ophthalmic services. I hesitate to develop that because of the excellent technical address that we have had from the noble Lord, Lord Rugby, and from other noble Lords who have spoken on this aspect. But, because of my close association with Age Concern over a number of years, I, too, felt that they had aptly summed up the problems in the letter that they wrote to the Secretary of State, which has already been quoted in this debate, although I do not recall seeing any reply to it.
However, I was rather worried, and I am still worried, that the Minister and others continue to say that if this Bill is enacted spectacles will become cheaper, that if people are able to buy them from all sorts of outlets, competition will bring down the price, and so on. I imagine that most noble Lords will have received a copy of a document entitled A Dubious Bargain, which has been produced by some members of the ophthalmic profession for our perusal. On page 15 it says:
"The British UKO lens and frames manufacturing company produced the latest 924 frames for 0.30—'there won't be anything coming in from abroad that will be better value, not for that money', says David Wiseman of UKO."
They go on to develop the discussion about the 924 frame and what will happen to it:
"When the government decided on a new NHS frame which was stylish rather than functional UKO took on 30 extra staff",
at their Northern Ireland factory in order to tool up and produce these frames. The document continues:
"Now they are saddled with the frames because the biggest customer, the NHS, is pulling out after next year."
I do not know whether the noble Lord has any better examples of better value for money than the £3.30 frame which has been produced by this firm and which is being made available to the NHS. I think that we should all like to hear about that value for money. I am also worried about the disparaging statements that are coming from all quarters, and which I read in the press, attacking what I have always considered to be the very honourable, highly-trained and highly-skilled profession of opticians and all those connected with the industry. I am worried because it would seem that we are setting the ground for introducing all kinds of semi-skilled, or even unskilled, people to this business of dispensing and providing spectacles.
It is no good people saying that once the test has been taken anyone can dispense spectacles, which was another point raised by a previous speaker. I am also aware of the existence of a machine which literally takes seconds to diagnose the type of glasses required. You simply look into an eyepiece and the operator asks you whether you can see a line; if you say "Yes". he says "Put your other eye there. Can you see it now?" If the answer is "Yes", he presses a button and a small piece of paper comes out, as a bill comes out of a till in a supermarket, and he says, "That is your

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prescription and you must take it along to someone to dispense it". That frightens me. I know that these machines exist, and I daresay that other noble Lords will have seen this contraption for testing eyes. It takes away the skill from the test. The prescription is then taken to Woolworths, Debenhams or even Marks and Spencer to be dispensed.
Then it is said that no damage is caused to anyone by wearing wrong glasses. It seems that we have all been living under some kind of misapprehension for many years that the testing and dispensing of glasses was an important and skilled job and ought to be done properly. We have all been taught by the same people who are now trying to "unteach" us about the difficulties of eye strain, the possibility of accidents and all the other things that can happen if we wear ill-fitting or badly dispensed glasses.
I am simply voicing the concern of all ordinary people, who are not experts in this field but who are worried if we take away the skilled service and go back to the situation which existed pre-NHS, when spectacles were sold on the market stall, where one went along and picked up one pair after another and tried them on and bought the pair that one could see through best. We thought that we had got rid of market stall spectacles of pre-NHS days. This Bill is taking us right back to that situation, with all the problems that then existed.
But what is worse, and what worries me more than anything, is that that situation is now being supported—in fact, advocated—by people who I should have thought ought to have been a little more careful and responsible about that kind of approach. So I certainly look forward to the Committee proceedings on the provisions of these ophthalmic clauses and what happens to spectacles and glasses and the difficulties and dangers in which we shall find ourselves if this Bill goes through in its present form.
I want to spend just a few minutes on the other point—namely, the question of Clause 11, which has been mentioned by speakers on both sides of the Chamber. The clause contains proposals to abolish the non-contributory invalidity pensions and to replace them with a severe disablement allowance. In practice, these proposals will abolish the additional household duties tests which married and cohabiting women have to satisfy in order to qualify for the noncontributory invalidity pension. That has been welcomed. I recall the discussions during the campaign. I am not saying that it was led as well as it might have been by people on my own side at the time, but I can well recall the campaign against the household duties tests, and a very successful campaign it turned out to be. Therefore, I, with others, welcome the abolition of that test.
But the proposals to abolish it followed a review of the household duties test which was initiated in July 1980 after the National Insurance Advisory Committee had recommended that the test should be phased out if a satisfactory non-discriminatory alternative could be devised. This approach had the support of all the voluntary organisations concerned with the problems and of Members of both Houses of Parliament who take an interest in these matters. But
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the inference of this approach was that consultation would be necessary if we were to reach this satisfactory non-discriminatory alternative. This was confirmed by the then Secretary of State in a letter to the Spastics Society in March 1982, when he said:
"We are pressing on with the review in the full awareness that those who have made representations about the household duties test are impatient for results but I canot at present give a date for its completion. When it is, we will, as promised, report to Parliament."
That was followed later by the Minister who was responsible in July 1982, Sir Hugh Rossi, Member of Parliament for Hornsey, who had this to say:
"We intend to publish the results of the review and then to invite consultation."
What happened to the consultation? We have been asking ever since. The review was published on 1st December, the Bill received its first formal reading on the following day, 2nd December. and was published on the 5th. Where was the consultation? Did the Government rush the Bill through in order to avoid consultation? Were they afraid that there may be some embarrassing delays. having in mind the EEC directive, and so on, if consultation took place; or is the truth as was suggested by my right honourable friend Brynmor John in the other place when he spoke during the Second Reading debate on 20th December? He said, at col. 339:
"The only conclusion that we can reach is that the Bill represents the weakest and cheapest scheme that will formally comply with the appropriate European directive".
Again, I hope that we shall be able to investigate those aspects when we come to the Committee stage.
My noble friend who led from the Front Bench went into some detail about the objections raised by all the voluntary organisations. I have had a number of meetings with the voluntary organisations and discussed these matters with them. I can only agree with all the criticisms that my noble friend and they have levelled at the Bill. I hope that we shall be able to substantiate these criticisms and convince the Government that the consultation was necessary, that it ought to have taken place, and. I am convinced. would have resulted in an agreed alternative nondiscriminatory scheme. That is still my aim. I hope that as a result of the Committee procedure we shall be able to convince the Government themselves to bring some constructive amendments to achieve that kind of aim.
4.34 p.m.
Lord Orr-Ewing: My Lords. I want to concentrate on the optician part of this Bill, as did the noble Lord, Lord Rugby. Before I do that, may I say that I had a message at the beginning of this debate from the noble Lord, Lord Northfield, who has been active in this field for about 25 years. Unfortunately, he is ill in bed with a high temperature and wants to offer his apologies for not joining in. He is one of the most robust advocates of a little more freedom. Coming from the SDP Benches he would have been a welcome addition, and we are all sorry that he is not here for this debate.
I am sorry in a way that this particular aspect was not put in a short Bill without lots of other issues. A short, sharp Bill concentrating on optical matters would have been more desirable, but I know from past experience of seven years as a Minister that the

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moment you get a Bill a lot of people rush at you and say, "We have been looking for an opportunity, Minister, to tag this along in some Bill. Would you mind if we hang it on? It is only five clauses and three schedules". Of course that is generally the part that gets the most attention and causes the most difficulty, and you miss the wood for the trees.
We have all received many documents in the run up to this Bill. The press have for many years taken a close interest over the possibility of greater freedom. I received the same document which the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, quoted from, and he quoted absolutely correctly. It says at the end:
"If you have any queries please ring Mrs. Susan Marks."
I promptly did so, and I asked, "Though they are on BMA paper, are they actually the views of the BMA? I understand that the BMA have not met on this issue, but of course it has been decentralised to their ophthalmic group, quite understandably." So I then asked, "Has the full committee of the ophthalmic group met?" The answer was. "No, it has not met since the Bill was published. But some members of the executive committee have met".
That is a slightly different view. I am sorry if I interrupted the noble Lord, but he is a straightforward, honest, and honourable chap, with many years' service in this field, and I am sure that he did not want to get too far down that road quoting, as one might be entitled to quote, something that was never really considered by the BMA, or not considered in full by their ophthalmic committee.
Lord Ennals: My Lords, will the noble Lord give way? I am most grateful to him, because I felt a reluctance in this regard. The noble Lord will be aware that the issue that had been referred to the ophthalmic group committee of the BMA was one that they had dealt with over a considerable period of time. They had been in correspondence with the Secretary of State for Social Services, and copies were made available to the BMA. The BMA is perfectly entitled to refer to one of its expert committees the handling of that particular field of expertise. I think that the criticism that the noble Lord is making of the BMA is an unreasonable one.
Lord Orr-Ewing: My Lords, I did not think that I criticised the BMA. I said that the matter had not come before them. I find it difficult now to be told that they had been careful cohorts with the Minister when the allegation in several speeches has been that there has been very little, or no, consultation at all. What becomes of that argument if we are told that over years they have been in correspondence and have been carefully exercising their minds with the Minister of the day?
Lord Ennals: My Lords, it was not over years; it was 12th December 1983.
Lord Orr-Ewing: My Lords, I still think that it is important that specialist committees should at least meet when an important Bill is published. They have never met since this Bill was published. I get the feeling—and this may apply to others who speak in this debate—that some do not know what is in the Bill.
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I wish to speak to some of the points because I take the view that this Bill, desirable though it is—and certainly it is a good start after 25 years' waiting—ought to go rather further than it does.
It is not liberal enough. How sad I was—and how many old-time Liberals must be revving in their graves—to find the Liberal Party saying that it cannot even accept this mite of liberalisation on a minor issue. It is sad, after the great days of Gladstone and the speeches that lasted three hours, to say that this tiny, little nibble of a Bill cannot have Liberal support.
The two largest optical markets in the free world are in the United States and Japan. In both those huge countries they take infinite pains, as we all know, about health care and eye care. Why is it that in both those markets they allow much more freedom than this Bill is now going to suggest? Why do they find, with all their care over health—and anyone who goes to the United States knows that at the drop of a hat they will give you a test, and probably an enema, too—
A noble Lord: And an X-ray.
Lord Orr-Ewing: And an X-ray, and everything else. Why do you suppose that they have allowed freedom, and why in those markets are spectacles so much more easily and cheaply available, particularly for those who, through perfectly normal ageing processes. need some help in reading? I think that the telephone book found me out first. The prayer book also finds you out. if you do not know it by heart, or they change it; and then there is other small print. Maps, by the way, are absolute hell. But I have not got diseased eyes. I have the kind of eyes which half the people wearing spectacles in this country also have. After the age of 45 or 50, whatever it is, you need magnification of small print. This is not a faulty eye. It is perfectly natural.
In other ways our muscles also do not react quite so well. I cannot jump so high. I cannot run so fast. Whenever I play cricket I am always run out nowadays because of what I thought was a safe one to extra cover, but I forget that I cannot go so fast. My muscles do not react. Exactly the same applies to the muscles of every person's eyes. They cannot focus as well as they used to, they cannot be as alert as they used to be, and they age. I am suggesting that this is a perfectly natural process and is not a disease.
I cannot help at this moment saying that all this sad reflection—I must rag the Front Bench Opposition spokesman on this one—is like "granny in the glen" over the British Telecommunications Bill. We were told that everyone was going to suffer; that everyone from now on would have to wander around with a white stick; and that we were all going to he deprived of rights. We are not. If one reads the Bill one sees that we are not going to be deprived of rights or care. Extra care will he taken. Of course. it does exist at the moment—I feel that some of us who would like a little greater liberalisation would like to do what the United States. Japan. Singapore and the Far East are doing and what Sweden is doing. In the days of Sir Harold Wilson, as he then was, we were always used to having Sweden quoted as the "great socialist country". They have liberated their old controls over the sale of spectacles. They have gone the route on which this

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Government are going a little too slowly. In the Committee stage of this Bill I very much hope that in all parts of the House we shall look after the people who need to be looked after—that is half the customers in this country.
When I go to the States I know that at this stage in my life my eyes are + 3½diopters in each eye. I go into a store and look at the type of glasses that are there. It is rather like a seaside resort where there are post cards in racks I choose the frame that I want and then look down the frame and it says: l–1½, 2–2½, 3–3½diopters. This is perfectly possible. You are never going to harm your eyes—everyone is now agreed about that.
Lord Ennals: No. my Lords.
Lord Orr-Ewing: My Lords, the noble Lord does not agree? Does he think that eyes are harmed?
Lord Ennals: Both my eyes are different.
Lord Orr-Ewing: I am awfully glad that the noble Lord mentioned that, but are they violently different, because it has been discovered that the human frame. the eye particularly, is far more flexible than people hitherto thought. You can make an allowance. My eyes are slightly different but there is an extreme adaptability. In the States, incidentally, they are doing research because they find that bifocal lenses sometimes cause accidents in that people stumble over a step because they are not looking through the right part of the lens. They now find that it is perfectly possible in some cases—I am not advocating this but it reflects the differences in how adaptable are our eyes—to have the lens in one eye for reading and in the other eye for more distant vision. The adaptability of our eyes and our brain is so great that one can allow for it. Where there is a minor difference it is perfectly acceptable.
This viewpoint is supported by the professional people—the eye doctors, the Ophthalmological Society. The vast majority of them support the idea that the monopoly on sales should now go. Not only would we be bettering the advice of people as qualified as that, but we would be greatly helping the average person. I do not exclude from this the million or so visitors who come to our country. Are they in future to have to carry a prescription as well as their blood groups, their identity cards, their driving licences and their credit cards? Are they in future to have prescriptions because if they break their glasses, as most of us do at some time in our lives, they find it very difficult to get them quickly fixed?
Everyone will benefit if this freedom is allowed. I should like the Government to go a little further and I shall seek to put down amendments and support amendments which show that reading glasses, properly marked, should be able to be bought in multiple stores as they can be in the great majority of countries of this world.
4.45 p.m.
Baroness Robson of Kiddington: My Lords, I wish to deal purely with Part I of the Bill as my noble friend
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Lord Banks has dealt with Part II dealing with the social security provisions. I am delighted that the noble Lord, Lord Glenarthur, has admitted that the Bill is full of different and unconnected pieces of legislation. Before I come to the provisions of the Bill itself, I should like to implore the Government to end that annual production of a Bill dealing with the NHS or with the various aspects of the NHS. The Government have been in power for some time now and they must have come to fairly definite conclusions about the direction in which they want the NHS to move. We would all, I think, welcome a comprehensive Bill clearly setting out the Government's views on the NHS. The present piecemeal fashion of legislation relating to the health service inevitably leaves the Government open to the accusation that they are far from wholehearted in their support of the health service.
Secondly, I also wish that we could have Bills introduced specifically for the National Health Service and specifically for the social security aspects, instead of having them put together in one Bill. I think that both subjects are of such immense importance to the average citizen that they deserve separate treatment.
I return to the Bill. First, I should like to thank the noble Lord. Lord Glenarthur, for his Notes on Clauses and for the very clear way in which he introduced the Bill. I should like also to refer to the statement of the noble Lord, Lord Orr-Ewing, that it must be difficult for a Liberal to come out and speak against the freeing of competition. But may I say that being a Liberal does not necessarily mean that one is laissez-faire and that one does not care about the kind of provision that one provides for people who maybe are not able to discriminate themselves. So, as the noble Lord. Lord Banks, has said, we welcome the relaxation embodied in Clause 1(2) on advertising. We believe that this can only be beneficial to the patient, but we have however grave reservations about Clause 1(1).
Much has been said by various noble Lords about the fact that wrongly dispensed glasses cannot damage your health. I agree that it cannot damage your health but it can cause you enormous discomfort, and I believe can endanger people because they do not see as well as they might. They may not even be aware that they are not seeing as well as they might. There is much much more to the supply of glasses than the actual prescription by the practising opticians.
When you get a prescription and go to your dispensing optician, he has a lot of work to carry out to make certain that those glasses are the right ones for you. He has to measure the width between your eyes so that you focus properly through the lenses. He has to make certain, if you wear bifocals, that the division between the vision is in the right position. depending on the kind of job that you do. All those things require a certain amount of skill. I believe it is essential that people have a certain amount of training before they are allowed to prescribe glasses.
Secondly, in the new system, who is to make certain that the dispenser possesses the right equipment in his premises for the testing and checking of lenses? As noble Lords know, most lenses are produced by prescription houses or laboratories and they are sent to the dispensing optician who then presents them to the

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customer. He must have the proper equipment for checking and double checking that those lenses are correct to that prescription and are meant for that particular patient. There is nothing in the Bill that will ensure that persons selling glasses will have adequate equipment in their premises.
Thirdly, under the regulations that will be laid down, I understand that in another place we have been given the assurance that only prescriptions up to two years old will he permissible for dispensing. But you can envisage a patient who, having had a prescription two years ago, at the end of two years goes to his optician and has a new pair of glasses made. He could, equally, wear those glasses for two or three years; and in all that time he would not have had an eye test. Among a certain group of people in our society, particularly the elderly, it can be very important to have an eye test every year. That is another danger that I see.
Then, too, I am nervous about how the average patient will get redress in cases of complaint. If the General Optical Council or the FPC are going to be responsible for the provision of services, how can they be responsible if there is not a register of the people who are entitled to dispense glasses? Lastly, I should feel very worried about the orders relating to this clause being passed through this House under the negative procedure. I should much prefer it be under the affirmative procedure.
I will now turn to the family practitioner committees. I should like to turn to Clause 5, which proposes the establishment of wholly independent family practitioner committees appointed by the Secretary of State and accountable to him alone. It has never been my experience that three wholly independent bodies make for better co-operation than that obtained from two independent authorities. The problem of getting agreement from a greater number of independent authorities surely must be more difficult. Both the Royal Commission and the Acheson Report agree that there is great advantage in responsibility for the whole range of services in a given area being discharged by a single authority. Only then would it be possible for the barriers between different parts of the health service to be removed.
I was pleased to hear that the Government are producing yet another Green Paper on primary care. I doubt whether we really need so many Green Papers on primary care. We already have documents that set out the aim of primary care. We are a caring community. What we need from the Government is not more Green Papers or more instructions but a certain amount of finance so that we can introduce primary care. The establishment of a wholly independent family practitioner committee charged with the provision, one presumes, of primary care within the community makes one wonder whether in due time the duty of providing community care will be removed from the health authorities and handed over to the new, autonomous FPCs, thereby slowly returning to the pattern of service that we had before 1974, with complete division between the hospital service and the community care services.
Much has been said in another place during the passage of this Bill about the disproportionate amount
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of money spent by district health authorities on the hospital service compared with that spent on community services. That comparison does not take into account the money spent on the family practitioner service: it was related only to the funds available to the district health authorities. I am the first to acknowledge the value of the family practitioner service in this country. We are tremendously fortunate in having a devoted service from our general practitioners, and most people see the NHS as their family doctor because, with luck. that is the one and only part of the service with which they will come into contact.
However, because of the division in the service there is much passing of the buck from one side to the other. Under financial constraints, the hospital service has cut down on drug prescriptions for patients, passing the responsibility to the general practitioner. On the other hand, the general practitioners tend to refer to hospitals patients who, in the past, would have been dealt with by them in their surgeries. I came across an example the other day when a mother took her small 4 year-old child to her general practitioner because she had fallen in the playground and slightly cut her chin. The mother and child were sent to Charing Cross Hospital accident department, and the child had to sit there seeing a lot of very badly injured people for the purpose of having one small stitch put in. That does go on; for every general practitioner is not necessarily doing a marvellous job. And when that kind of thing happens, we increase enormously the cost to the hospital service.
It follows that if we are going to have the right kind of balance we need to have the family practitioner service, the hospital service and the community services under one head. I believe that that can happen only when the family practitioner committees are fully accountable to the DHAs and the regions. Regarding the membership of the FPCs. I also have grave reservations. The provision of four representatives of local authorities and district authorities on the family practitioner committees could create great anomalies. In some instances, there could be four representatives from one district health authority on an FPC or there could be only four representatives to represent more than four districts.
Secondly, those of us who have worked in the NHS know how difficult it is to get a good attendance at health service meetings by local authority members, not because they do not want to attend but because of pressure of committee work in their own authorities —work which is increasing under the present economic and financial constraints. A local authority will now be faced with having to produce members of regional health authorities, members of district health authorities, members of joint consultative committees and members of family practitioner committees. I make that quite a large number of local authority members. Where are they to come from? I do not believe that we shall see a better attendance by local authority members on health service committees by increasing the number that they have to provide. I believe that if we are going to have them truly represented we must have for them (just as we have for the pharmacists) permission for a deputy to attend. I think that is the only way that we shall make certain

39
that there is proper representation of the elected representatives of the people on the family practitioner committees or on any other health authority committee.
There are many more aspects of the Bill that are disturbing. We hope that amendments can be agreed at Committee stage to make some sense out of this hotchpotch of a Bill.
5 p.m.
Lord Molloy: My Lords. may I first express my apologies to the Minister who is to wind up, as well as to my noble friend Lady Jeger. Owing to a promise that I made, I have to attend a meeting later in the evening. At the time I did not know that this Bill was to be debated today. but I must keep my word so I proffer my apologies.
To a few of us who are left and who have been concerned with the National Health Service from its inception by Aneurin Bevan. it is absolutely amazing to see what has happened over the years. The converts are almost incredible. The vast number of Conservatives who have now been converted to the National Health Service equates with the Chinese general who baptised his troops with a hosepipe. That is always a very good thing.
As a former staff side chairman in the Foreign Office. I wondered whether this measure would be accepted and whether Parliament would throw it out. After the most appalling war in Europe's history, we wondered whether this country of ours could introduce something which the world had never seen before. But we did it, and what is encouraging is that successive Governments have maintained the grand principles which were enunciated by Nye Bevan when he introduced this measure.
However. I am a little worried about this Bill, because it departs from anything that has been done before. With Dick Crossman, my noble friend Lord Ennals and other Ministers in the Opposition, I have scrutinised what has happened since 1947. I am bound to say that, while this Bill is really four Bills in one, at best it is a miscellany of miscalculations and at worst it is a deliberate infusion of rising damp in the National Health Service. It is not an outright attack, but it is slow, invidious and cunning, and when one has been involved for many years generally, as well as specifically, one recognises these things almost immediately.
This Bill mutilates rather than constructs. It is not much concerned with the enhancing of health or social services. The quintessential of this measure is to save around £265 million to £300 million for the Government to hand out in tax reductions later on to the better off. This Bill is more of a bad feudal "means" than the Good Samaritan which Bevan created.
Much of the time will be taken up with the opticians' aspect. I listened very carefully to the most informative speeches of the noble Lords, Lord Rugby and Lord Orr-Ewing, and I am bound to say that I have to agree with much of what they said, though I have to disagree on some aspects. For example, very many people, who may think that they do not need
40
glasses. really need them if only to read the small print on some of the documents of private enterprise insurers in the private sector of the health service, because those who have not read the small print find themselves later on in very difficult situations. It would be much better if they had read the small print and had NHS glasses to do it.
However, I understand that the Government do not intend to include contact lenses in their opening up of freedom to the opticians. If that is the case, may I ask why? Is there any difference in my wearing these glasses, which I look down on, and having lenses inside my eye? All they have to do is make me able to see, so I cannot see what the difference is. No doubt I shall be informed later.
What I want to say loud and clear is what is recognised by ophthalmic surgeons and opticians throughout the world, including the United States of America, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, France and Germany. They have one acknowledgement of which we ought to be proud, which is that Britain provides the best quality lenses in the world. That is important and I am proud to be able to say it, so I hope that this Bill does not detract from that remarkable accolade.
There is another aspect which worries me. I do not understand why no Labour Government or anyone else said that everyone should have the best frames. We are now to move into a situation where National Health Service frames will be restricted to the very poor. They will therefore become stigmatised. Adults who wear National Health Service frames in the future, if this appalling Bill becomes law, will be wearing their badge of being poor in this good society of ours. These are some of the matters which Nye Bevan looked at very closely when he had to fight the BMA and the Conservative Opposition. who fought every line of the Bill at every stage. I am very pleased to say that within a few years they were totally converted.
My fear is that under this Bill that great stand. which was made right through to the 'sixties and 'seventies by Governments of both sides. will now start to change dramatically. To begin with, it seems to me that under the Bill there will be a loss of expert dispensing by opticians and. with the introduction of cut-price proposals by big corporations and multiples. it will be a policy combining callousness with real myopia. It will be bad for the public and what is more—and I am amazed that this came from a Tory Government— it will he so unfair to the small businessman and the small firm dispenser. many of whom have written to me expressing their apprehensions. Does this Bill really mean that expertise does not count any more?
I want to ask one question of the noble Earl who is to reply. Will foreign speculators be allowed to enter this country to compete against the British and to bring with them orders from their countries, so that there will be a wide variety of nice, cheap Japanese glasses as well as good solid British glasses? I want that question answered tonight if that is at all possible.
The apprehension is not confined merely to these Benches. I do not think anyone would say that the Sunday Telegraph is a very hard Left-wing newspaper, but it has suggested that elderly people who are now

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paying £35 for complicated lenses will probably be paying around £81 because of the Government's proposal in this Bill. We need to take full cognisance of that.
The noble Lord quite rightly quoted the Office of Fair Trading, who have said—and I think I can agree with this—that opticians should be allowed to provide more information about prices. But the Bill flies in the face of other proposals. I can see that there is an argument for opticians being allowed to advertise and to compete within a limited area. I have no disagreement whatsoever with that and it would be an improvement. But what I am gravely apprehensive about is that other aspects of this Bill fly in the face of the recommendations of the Royal Commission on the National Health Service and of the Acheson Report.
I am astounded that the Government had no consultation with the Association of Optical Practitioners, and did not bring the association together with the Office of Fair Trading to talk about this in a sensible way, so that something could have emerged. A proposition from the Office of Fair Trading and from the Association of Optical Practitioners would have been part and parcel of a clause which would have been acceptable to me and to the noble Lords, Lord Rugby and Lord Orr-Ewing.
Why was this not done? Before the Committee stage, perhaps it will be done. There has been a great deal of argument about the view of the BMA. This was quoted in another place by the Conservative Member for High Peak, Mr. Christopher Hawkins. He said:
"I have no link with the optical industry other than I am a wearer of glasses. But I should like to quote from the British Medical Association ophthalmic group committee, which says: 'While specific harm to the eyes is unlikely to arise from the use or non-use of spectacles, there is firm medical agreement that the correct and appropriate dispensing of spectacles has very significant health implications. The committee cannot accept that after the prescription has been issued optical appliances take on the status of mere consumer durables and feels strongly that when highly skilled and expensive medical or surgical treatment has been provided under the NHS' "—
Lord Mottistone: My Lords—
Lord Molloy: My Lords, I am nearly finished.
Lord Mottistone: My Lords, I intervene for a very good reason, if the noble Lord, Lord Molloy, will allow me.
Lord Molloy: In two seconds, my Lords.
Lord Mottistone: My Lords, it is out of order to quote what has been said by a Member, other than a Member of the Government. in another place. I think that the noble Lord ought to have been stopped a little sooner.
Lord Molloy: My Lords, I am quoting what was said by the British Medical Association. Why are Members opposite so hostile to the BMA? I really cannot understand their attitude, so I had better start again from the beginning. This was said by the BMA. not by a Member of another place. Is this top committee of the BMA not to be heard in this House? As long as I am here, they will he heard.
Lord Mottistone: I apologise to the noble Lord. I got hold of the wrong end of the stick. I thought he was quoting a Member of another place.
Lord Molloy: I accept the apology of the noble Lord, Lord Mottistone. Since I had almost finished, I shall read just the last part of the statement:
"'The committee cannot accept that after the prescription has been issued optical appliances take on the status of mere consumer durables'."
I should not have thought that one needs to be an optician to accept that point. Everybody would accept it as a matter of simple commonsense. I return to my other plea: that if, as indicated by the noble Lord, Lord Orr-Ewing. and the noble Lord, Lord Rugby, there had been consultation with the BMA and with the opticians, the Government would have gone to the other place last December with a clause which would have sailed through the other place. Their objection is very real indeed. I am not an expert when I go to the doctor with a terrible pain in my stomach, or when I go to the optician because I cannot read. If I were, I should not bother to go; I would give myself the tests. Therefore, it would be wise to speak to these people.
I turn briefly to Schedule 3. As my noble friend who spoke earlier said, the Secretary of State will appoint 30 members of all the family practitioner committees instead of. as is now the case, the family practitioner committees electing locally their own chairmen and membership. As has already been stated, this means that the Secretary of State will personally appoint 3,000 people, so 1984 is here all right: Big Brother will decide all. It is an obscenity to suggest that one Minister should be able to make all of those appointments. When one realises how senior officers in the armed forces are appointed, this kind of procedure is absolutely despicable. It is an affront to those people who wish to indulge in the enterprise of the pioneer. Those people will he discarded. The Secretary of State will replace them by the servitude of lackeys. This, to me, is highly distasteful.
May I now deal briefly with the disabled? Speaking for more than 80 organisations, the Disability Alliance describes the Bill as a "mean and shabby measure". I do not intend to go through the whole list of members of the Disability Alliance, but who is it that says that this Bill is a mean and shabby measure? I merely quote what they say. I have a right to quote what these organisations, representing the disabled, think. That is what Parliament is all about. The leaders of the Spastics Society, the Disablement Income Group, MENCAP and the Multiple Sclerosis Society are all astounded at the Government's proposals. The Royal Association for Disability and Rehabilitation is convinced that, if introduced as it is, the new benefit will prove to be a disaster. Why are they so convinced? I am trying to get the Ministers opposite to understand that not merely the supporters of my party, the Liberal Party and the SDP, but renowned and well-respected major organisations are gravely apprehensive. Once again, why were they not consulted? It is not too late to do so.
Since the last war all parties have joined in the building of a fairer society. Both Labour and Conservative Ministers have defended the National Health Service. Indeed, both Labour and Conservative

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Ministers have improved the National Health Service. Sometimes they had to fight to do so. The present Minister gives in with an alacrity that is deplorable. The principle of defending the National Health Service no longer applies. Do the Government, in their search for money, really believe that they have got to do what they are doing? I quite understand that they have got to find more money. In order to give tax reductions to the well-off, they look at the big industrialists and say that they cannot touch them. Nor can the Government touch the big people in commerce and industry, with their big cars and fine homes. That might affect their morale. The Government then look at the City—the prosperous bankers, and so on—and say that they cannot touch any of them. Then they suddenly decide that those they can attack are the cripples, the disabled, the hard of hearing, those with poor sight and the sick. I suppose it requires a great deal of courage to do that. How wonderful to have Ministers with such strength of character that they can indulge in that kind of action.
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, before the noble Lord continues, how does he square his vicious attack on this Government's record on the National Health Service with the fact. which he knows as well as I do, that this Government have increased spending on the National Health Service by about 8 per cent. in real terms, from £7 billion to £17.5 billion, since they came to office?
Lord Molloy: My Lords, the Minister does not seem to realise that most of the money has been squeezed out of those whose standards of living ought to have been maintained—those like nurses and ambulance drivers. The police and the armed forces have left them way behind. Midwives also have had to suffer in order to make this so-called contribution, which makes it even more unjust.
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, the noble Lord's challenges are so excessively wild that I must ask him to sa,, how they have been affected in the way that he suggests.
Lord Molloy: My Lords. may I ask the noble Lord to repeat his question?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, can the noble Lord justify his charge that nurses, midwives and others have been affected in the way that he suggests?
Lord Molloy: I have been doing so for three years, my Lords. Where has the noble Lord the Minister been? Some of my charges have been directed at him. I have been trying to educate him for at least two years. What a waste of time that has been! After that intervention, I am bound to say that it might be more truthful to say of this Government, O tempora! O mores!, because they are pretty hopeless. Over the past four years this House, despite the fact that there is a Conservative majority, has developed a new reputation. It scrutinises more. This Chamber has shown more understanding and, because it scrutinises better and more freely, because it is free of the whipping system, it has shown greater concern. It has
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developed an image which I believe to be remarkable. if not wonderful. This Chamber has become the acknowledged guardian of the people. Perhaps that is right and proper, for it was the barons who forced King John to sign Magna Carta. When we are in Committee therefore I hope that we shall deal this Government a reminder of Magna Carta.
All parties should acknowledge the fact that we have been groping for many years—and this is under all Governments, including Labour Governments against Tory Oppositions and Tory Governments against Labour and Liberal Oppositions—towards a general consensus on improving the great articles of state. such as education and the National Health Service, in the national interest. It would be a great shame if that kind of principle was in any way spoilt by the present attitude of this Government.
I hope that when we are in Committee we shall endeavour to change a number of aspects to this Bill. This House may not be able to influence or gain the support of the ordinary British people. but it can remind the world of the lead given by Britain in shaping and fashioning a civilised society. Despite all our political differences in the past. we have moved forward by doing just that. It now seems that. under this cunning little Bill, we shall be departing from that great principle. I hope this House will ensure that that principle will be returned to when we embark upon the Committee stage.
5.21 p.m.
Lord Suffield: My Lords, I wish to refer today only to that part of the Bill relating to the Opticians Act. While I have sympathy with the object of the Bill—namely, to ensure a reduction in the price of spectacles—I have certain reservations regarding its ultimate effect on both the price of spectacles and the standards of eye care in this country.
When free eye examinations and the provision of spectacles under the National Health Service cease. the availability of a large range of spectacle frames will also cease because manufacturers will stop making them. In the past. supply to the National Health Service has been subsidised by the private sector, and therefore it is quite true that the price of private spectacles should fall—at least. certain of them.
I am informed that the present price of spectacles in this country is among the lowest in Europe and that no other Western country provides spectacles to National Health Service standard at a comparable price. However, although the simple and cheaper private spectacles may become cheaper still, the more complex prescription lenses will probably cost more. Even now, these can cost double the National Health Service charge of £32.
The unregistered supplier of frames and lenses will be interested only in supplying the simpler and more profitable of these: the qualified optician will be left to supply the more complicated and expensive. To this must be added the cost of the eye examination. And what will be the position regarding VAT? If this is to be charged. it will be based not only on the retail price of the spectacle frames but also on the cost of the eye examination and the prescription lenses. How w ill those on low incomes—not. I understand. those on

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supplementary benefit—who require the more complex type of spectacles be able to afford them?
In America, the effect of advertising has been to move the supply away from professional opticians to commercial firms which have a lower standard of patient care. This may lead, in this country, to a change in the pattern of supply away from privately-owned practices, thereby denuding rural areas of ophthalmic facilities.
Although prescriptions will still be provided by qualified registered opticians, the same prescription can be made up in frames in many different ways. They have to be suited to the particular needs of the individual. This care is unlikely to be provided by the large suppliers. Although I can confirm that no medical damage is done to the eyes, incorrect fitting and adjustment can lead to headaches or, in the worst cases, to double vision. The noble Lord, Lord Banks, has already observed that one needs no imagination to appreciate the dangers to drivers and to industrial users where this occurs. Is it not possible to introduce a British Standard for spectacles?
The sale of ready-glazed lenses—not sunglasses —without prescription is illegal under the Act, but their importation must be prevented by banning the advertising of them. Some are now entering the country by mail order. There is also an attempt to outwit the law by calling them magnifying glasses. Advertising by both the profession and by commercial firms should be governed by the rules of the Office of Fair Trading. This point has been mentioned already.
My final question is this: what method is open to a dissatisfied client to obtain redress? The only means at present would seem to be through the Sale of Goods Act. But if the eye examination is carried out by one person, the supply of frames by another, and the lenses by a third, it will he difficult to say who is responsible. Litigation to recover the sum of £30 or £40 would hardly seem worthwhile. That is all I have to say, and I hope that the noble Earl will be able to provide some of the answers.
5.25 p.m.
Lady Kinloss: My Lords, I am greatly concerned about the effects of parts of this Bill on certain sections of the population; effects which appear to me to be adverse. As I have been given to understand, the Government now propose to permit persons with no optical qualifications to engage in ophthalmic dispensing—also, to sell and supply ophthalmic frames and lenses to adults. There are 6,179 registered ophthalmic opticians. There are also 2,879 registered dispensing opticians in the United Kingdom. In almost every city and town, there are several opticians in competition with one another, and no chain which has anything approaching a monoply.
I would ask the Minister this question: what advantage would accrue to myself or to any other individual in this country in going to an unqualified person to purchase a pair of spectacles? I would ask the Minister also: would he himself be prepared to do so? I have no desire to labour these points to the Minister but it is on ground of simple common sense that I question the Government's apparent policy. I can see every argument for securing spectacles more cheaply,
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but surely there are means of doing so available to the Government other than by allowing unqualified persons to dispense.
This Bill also limits the provision of National Health Service spectacles to children up to the age of 16. to students in full-time education up to the age of 19, and to people receiving supplementary benefit. I am sure the Government know that the majority of undergraduates are aged between 18 and 22. Why add one more item of expense to the budget of those supported by student grants? I may add that I wear National Health Service glasses and I do not come within any of those categories. As the Bill stands, a very large group to be excluded will be retired people—many of whom are on small fixed incomes and small pensions. No financial assistance will be given to those people unless they are in receipt of supplementary benefit.
The Minister of State for Health in another place has said that the Government recognise that there was a problem with certain sections of the public and have been considering what should be done to help those people. I was therefore very glad to hear the Minister say that those with the need for special lenses will he able still to have National Health Service glasses, if they wish, if they are in financial need. I urge the Government to consider particularly the needs of partially-sighted people.
With regard to the dispensing of spectacles, I understand from people with a knowledge of this subject that the dispensing of spectacles is very important—especially so with bifocal lenses which require further measurements. These may be small points but they are very important to the health of those people requiring spectacles.
I turn now to Clause 1 1, which concerns the severe disablement allowance. It is 10 years since the introduction of the non-contributory invalidity pension payable to people incapable of work and who have not, for whatever reason, paid sufficient contributions to qualify for sickness and subsequent invalidity benefit. A major problem has been that married women have had to show that they are incapable of normal household duties. Although I welcome the end of the household duties test as being discriminatory against women, for the past seven years this test has been under review. The last review was conducted by the DHSS, and successive Ministers have agreed to a debate on any eventual proposals. However, I understand that the Government published this Bill on the day after the DHSS report. So, far from being able to consider the report, the Bill must already have been sent to press.
I believe it has not been fully realised that this Bill takes away from men and single women a right they have had since 1975. No longer will incapacity for work for a period of 196 days qualify people for benefit. If they are over 20 they will have to show that they are 80 per cent. disabled. MIND has estimated that over 26,000 people with mental disorders will. over a period, lose entitlement to benefit. RADAR has calculated from Government figures that 1.280 additional married women claimants each year will fail to obtain SDA who would have qualified under the former household duties test. This would he because of the 80 per cent. test of disablement and the great

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difficulty in applying it to people suffering from multiple sclerosis or epilepsy—let alone mental health. I am worried that it can seem that too little thought has been given to these proposals. Many voluntary organisations would have liked constructive discussions with the Government on possible alternatives to solving these problems. I cannot say that I feel happy with the Bill as it stands.
5.30 p.m.
Lord Rea: My Lords, it has been no easy matter for me to understand this disconnected Bill, even while wearing my bifocal National Health Service magnifying glasses, which I gather are shortly to become an extinct species. I do own another pair with expensive frames. I was persuaded to get them, against my better judgment—an appeal to vanity, or something—but I have had much more trouble with them. The National Health Service lenses keep falling out of the expensive German frames. It is another example of how the public-private mix does not always work.
I do not think that those who have pressed for an end to the opticians' closed shop, and thus initiated this part of the Bill, ever had this in mind—the ending of the National Health Service provision of glasses. The Government have slipped in this one. The Government are agreeing to pay, as outlined in Schedule 1. for glasses needed by children and those on supplementary benefit. However, as my noble friend Lord Ennals said, I do not think this is a wide enough provision by any means. For example, I consider that it should apply to all pensioners, many of whom, as has been said, have complicated eye conditions such as glaucoma or cataracts where frequent lens changes are necessary. This is an area which I certainly hope can be improved in Committee.
This whole aspect of the Bill—getting rid of a service which was everybody's right without restriction and without means testing—is in every way regressive and I am totally opposed to it. But we have to do what we can to try to improve it until better days come along.
My main concern is the change in the status of the family practitioner committees. Independent status as an employing authority with direct remuneration from the Department of Health and Social Security is regarded as a promotion by the family practitioner committees and, as such, has been largely welcomed, particularly by the BMA which considers that this move will benefit primary health care. Ostensibly the status of primary health care receives a boost to its morale by this change. Until now the family practitioners have definitely had a subordinate role to the area health authorities, as they were, and which are now the district health authorities; although they have had the great advantage of not being cash limited. Ninety per cent. of the expenditure of district health authorities is on the hospital sector which therefore has been their main preoccupation.
At this stage I should like to give your Lordships some of the views of the British Medical Association on this change. It states:
"The DHAs are often prepared to transfer responsibility for patient care to the primary sector, but conscious of their own
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pressing needs they are reluctant to match this transfer with adequate resources. FPCs have been unable to initiate this kind of resource shift and to achieve the resulting savings in total NHS expenditure because they have been subordinate in these matters to the policies of their local DHAs.
"This point is well illustrated by the pattern of care for the elderly. The costs of maintaining elderly patients in long term hospital care are high (at least £40 per day per patient). At present 94 per cent. of the elderly population aged 65 years and over live in the community, whereas the remaining six per cent. are in institutional care. A small increase in the 94 per cent. of the elderly living in the community could yield substantial savings in expenditure on geriatric institutional care. thus freeing resources for other uses. But the transfer of long stay elderly patients to the community (or more realistically, a reduction in the number being admitted to hospitals and other institutions) does require a commitment of resources to community health services, including local authority services and family practitioner services.
"It is natural, because of the level of involvement of DHAs in the hospital sector, that an increased role for primary care in the NHS would only be achieved if it were given direct responsibility to act through its own health authorities. The new FPCs would be able to present the case for family practitioner services both within the NHS and outside it. They would be able to contribute to the planning of growth of primary care in partnership with DHAs, using their own ear-marked funds for developing its contribution to the NHS. In short, they would be able to serve as catalysts, stimulating the expansion of the most cost-effective sector of the NHS. Through their agency local government could he propelled into making a serious commitment to community health services. There is a range of opportunities for change, and this includes accommodation for the elderly/infirm, home helps. meals services and laundry services".
Having said that—and I respect those views—I wonder if that is the best way of integrating hospital and community care. It was only in 1979 that the Royal Commission on the National Health Service recommended that the family practitioner committees should be abolished and that their functions should be assumed by the district health authorities as a step towards integration. During the last parliamentary Session when this same question was being debated in this Chamber—I think during the Committee stage—the then Minister the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, in reply to my noble friend Lady Jeger (who had been consulted prior to the decision to separate the FPCs from the health authorities), wrote to her listing 633 organisations which had been approached. Fifty-six per cent. of the replies favoured a solution as in the present Bill and the Minister implied that that virtually clinched the matter. In fact, most of those who were consulted prior to the decision were statutory or professional bodies working in the professional organisational mould and were, therefore, likely to have an interest in the continuation of the status quo of the FPCs.
The Royal Commission on the National Health Service, which advocated the abolition of the FPCs, made its recommendation on the basis of consultation with 1,300 named organisations and a further 650 individuals—a much wider spectrum than that on which the present decision of the Government to make the FPCs independent is based. It is a pity that when the opportunity for change arose in 1982 the narrower rather than the wider view was taken. I consider also that it is an insult to the work of the distinguished members of the Royal Commission that a decision was taken which flies directly in the face of their recommendations. The Royal Commission was set up by the previous administration, but one must ask whether that is a good reason for overturning such authoritative and well-informed advice.

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However, the family practitioner committees have had their way and it could be that this vitally important branch of the health service should have special treatment and encouragment. I can only say that the family practitioner committees do not enjoy a very good reputation among community health councils and other health workers who have been trying to build up good community health services. They have a reputation for being inward-looking and for self-interest. I can only hope that their better status will be reflected in magnanimity to other branches of the health service, as suggested by the excellent working party whose report was referred to by the noble Lord. Lord Glenarthur, in his opening remarks. I also hope that the hand now being offered directly from the DHSS to family pracititioner committees does not turn into what many fear will be an icy grip, which will, first of all, gradually impose cash limits and, finally, result in a second-rate service.
5.40 p.m.
Earl Attlee: My Lords. I will, if I may, start off on a slightly different tack. On Monday last week in your Lordships' Chamber it was said in so many words that it is not easy to forget the disabled; we do not get a chance to. That is true, but it is wrong in implying that the disabled have made their point and enough is enough. What was said was true because, since I have been attending your Lordships' Chamber regularly (that is, since last October), we have had two Bills on disablement, we have had the Telecommunications Bill, the Housing and Building Control Bill and the Rates Bill—all with a high content about the disabled. At present we have the London Regional Transport Bill going through Committee. Again today we have the Health and Social Security Bill—on which. incidentally, I shall be restricting myself to Clause 1 I . Yes, it has not been easy to forget the disabled in this House, but the reason is very simple. In Bill after Bill the Government have neglected to pay attention to the specific needs and requirements of the disabled.
Also last Monday the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, in talking on the London Regional Transport Bill, said:
"much as we value the help and advice of able-bodied people, we know that there are vital points on the travelling needs of disabled people that the able bodied simply do not comprehend".—[Official Report, 14/5/84; col. 11601
The noble Baroness was right. Who but the blind can comprehend what it is like to he blind, and who but those confined to a wheelchair for life can comprehend what it is like to he so confined? Those of us who speak up for the disabled have in mind their best interests, even though we do not really know what it is like.
My noble friend Lord Kilmarnock, who will be winding up for the Alliance, warned me that social security matters are always very complicated and. oh, was he right! I have read and re-read Clause 11, and I have compared it with the section of the 1975 Act that it is to replace. I have read the copious briefings from which so many noble Lords have been quoting, and I have listened to talks by the experts. Quite honestly, I am not sure that I am not now more bemused than I was before I heard anyone say anything. However, bemused or not, I must say that there are certain
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aspects of Clause 11 that are perfectly clear, even to me
I should like to take first the severe disablement scheme. This is an arbitrary percentage test of disability and will be an additional hurdle towards the incapacity benefit. As I understand it, if the DHSS decides to remove somebody's mobility allowance, that person will have to pass the 80 per cent. test if he is not to lose his SDA. The 80 per cent. test is modelled on the industrial injuries and war pension scheme, which at present operates a graded system of benefits. Your Lordships will note that it is a graded system. For industrial injuries that may be fair, as it means that nobody except those at the very bottom will lose out completely. However, as the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, so cogently said in his opening speech, there are many people totally incapable of being able to work who would fail the 60 per cent. test, let alone the 80 per cent. test, and there are many others who would pass the 100 per cent. test with case but are perfectly capable of working.
The fact is that the industrial injuries scale is inappropriate for assessing degrees of disability in people suffering from a diverse range and mixture of handicaps. It is not only inappropriate. but the doctors operating the industrial injuries scheme have little or no experience of dealing with 80 per cent. disability claims. I have worked out from the figures that I have read that the majority of their assessments average no more than 30 per cent. Here we are asking them to adjudge on something quite different, which is not industrial injuries and works on an 80 per cent. basis. We must remember that it is 80 per cent. It is not 79 per cent. or 794 per cent. It is 80 per cent. unless there is a cut-off.
Apart from the obvious drawbacks, the new system will discriminate among different groups of people on grounds of percentage loss of faculty. age at start of claim and existing entitlement and between deserving and undeserving disabilities. The major discrimination remains against those who for a variety of reasons have become disabled through illness or accident when in full-time further education, in training or when unemployed. They will lose out. With regard to the unemployed, the current high level of unemployment among young people means that many will be at risk even before they have had the opportunity to work and so to meet the first condition of sickness benefit, which is to he in employment. As for the proposed cut-off point, this ignores the growing trend towards early retirement and forced redundancy in middle age, and the severe hardships that would result in people not signing on—for work which is non-existent—and thus becoming incapable of work but being unable to pass the 80 per cent. test.
But apart from any other considerations, the 20-year cut-off is far too low, and the provisions and requirements of SDA could act as a disincentive to youngsters to stay on in full-time education, to enter a training scheme or to work beyond the age of 20. But equally the 20-year cut-off could act as a deterrent to employers. It is difficult enough as it is for the young disabled to get work, but if an employer knows that, if he takes on a young disabled person, within a very short time that person has to make up his mind whether or not he will continue in employment, that is

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a great inducement for him not to bother giving employment to that person in the first place.
I am a trustee of the Countrywide Workshops Charitable Trust. Countrywide workshops markets exclusively products made by the blind and the disabled. I was reading through a draft letter which the trust was going to send out. This is what I read:
"another aim is to encourage the young disabled, by example. By showing what can and is being achieved, I hope that they too will want to try and do something for themselves, and not just be discouraged by the very few job opportunities available to them in the present economic climate".
When I read those words, an alarm bell rang in my head. 1 may be wrong—and if I am perhaps the noble Earl will tell me so when he replies on behalf of the Government—but as I read Clause 11, by encouraging the young disabled to stay on in full-time education beyond the age of 20, and/or encouraging them to learn a trade, and then encouraging them at least to try to find work, we may actually be doing them a disservice, because financially, regardless of their self-respect, it will now be in their best interests to give up and allow the state to look after them for the rest of their lives.
It has been and is being suggested in certain quarters that the Government have been sly and underhand in this Bill especially in respect of married and cohabiting women; that they have tried to give the impression of ending the patent discrimination in the old Bill, while perpetrating it in the new Bill under a heavy disguise. Let me say that we on these Benches do not believe this. The fact of the matter is that the Government have set itself certain parameters in respect of the amount of money they will spend on disability allowances and pensions. All they have done in this new Act is to try and devise an equitable scheme, which will not exceed the financial ceilings or targets they have set themselves. They have done this but I do not believe that they have done it equitably. The fact that the end result is a clause that has hardly anything to commend it. does not in our view warrant the charge of duplicity in the Government.
Because this clause is not equitable. we would urge the Government to withdraw Clause I 1 and substitute an enabling one. This would give them and the organisations representing the disabled breathing space in which to discuss methods of meeting the Government's financial guidelines in a way that would be most equitable to the greatest number of disabled people with the greatest need.
In conclusion, I should like to quote from St. Luke, Chapter 14, Verse 21:
"Go out quickly into the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in hither the poor, and the maimed. and the halt, and the blind".
To which we should add, if Clause 11 is allowed to stand part in subsequent stages. that their ages and national insurance contributions may be checked, so they may be given the 80 per cent. severe disablement test.
5.52 p.m.
Lord Campbell of Croy: My Lords, I seek to take part in this debate in order to express concern about Clause 11. Therefore I shall address myself only to
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Part II of the Bill and to the changes proposed for severely disabled people. In two of the principal changes, the Government's intentions seem admirable. What is worrying is the way in which they propose to carry out those intentions. Clause 11 introduces the severe disablement allowance replacing the non-contributory invalidity pension. This would have the effect of abolishing the household duties test for disabled housewives.
I of course welcome that proposed abolition. Indeed. it would be churlish of me not to do so, having been in print on the subject several times. I have reminded myself that it was three years ago, in writing the book commissioned for the International Year of Disabled People, that I was pointing out that the test was quite arbitrary: that many of the cases in which the individuals had been rejected were then successful on appeal; and that the test discouraged a housewife from trying to carry out her household duties and was therefore a disincentive to rehabilitation. Further, I was pointing out that the national insurance advisory committee had, in the previous year, 1980, recommended abandoning the test.
Last December, the announcement came that the Government had decided to abandon the household duties test. However, at the same time the Government published their internal review and this Bill. Apparently no time was given for consultations with the organisations specialising in different forms of disablement before the Bill was published. That is what the organisations have been telling me and no doubt others in your Lordships' House.
There was no doubt contact between the Government departments and individuals or some of these organisations but we do not know to what extent. They certainly feel that they did not have the consultations which they would have expected before the Bill appeared in print. I suggest that one year less spent on the review and one year more on consultations would have produced more workable results. I concede that this is a very complex subject. It is not easy to construct an alternative system of tests, which will apply fairly to different categories, for example. to disabled housewives, and to different forms of handicap. I submit that because it is complex the Government should not have deprived themselves of the opportunity to obtain good advice in consultations with organisations who specialise in these matters.
In my opinion, the second matter on which the Government are to be commended on their good intentions is that they are attempting to identify severely disabled people who need special help. Again it is the way in which it is proposed to carry out that intention that does not, regrettably. stand up to close inspection. For some time. several of those who are prominent, both in Parliament and outside Parliament. in taking leading parts in this field, have been seeking a definition of such a category of severely disabled persons. After all, those are the disabled persons upon whom we should be concentrating our attention.
For years there has been a percentage system for classification of war disabled and those who have been disabled by industrial injury. Then the Amelia Harris survey, in the four years from 1967 to 1971.

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introduced categories of their own when they were carrying out the sampling of all kinds of disablement. That was really the first attempt to place severely disabled people in a category.
The Government are now in this Bill proposing that the category should be 80 per cent. and above, as assessed in the war and industrial injuries examinations. That form of assessment cannot of course be simply and directly applied in other cases for several reasons. First, the medical tests in war and industrial injuries cases do not deal with sufferers from, for example, cerebral palsy or multiple sclerosis. Nor do they deal with any congential impairments such as being deaf and dumb. Hitherto, these tests have dealt with war injuries and industrial injuries and with the effects of military service and the effects of conditions of work.
Another consideration is that the capacity to do a job is not directly related to the percentage of disablement. Someone who is 50 per cent. disabled may be quite incapable of carrying out any job for which he is suited. We all know of cases of people with very high percentages of disablement, by the scales to which I have been referring for war or industrial injuries, who are able to carry out certain jobs successfully.
Another point is that the war disability percentage classification system has not had to consider whether the person is successfully doing a job or not—and rightly so, for the purposes of that kind of examination. Accordingly, considerable extension and adaptation of the existing percentage system will be necessary. I regard these proposals in the Bill as still at a rudimentary stage. I urge the Government to import flexibility into Clause 11. I understand most readily—and applaud what the Government are doing—that having taken the decision at the end of last year, they wanted to proceed immediately and not to lose any more time. Moreover, this Bill was there and was a suitable vehicle for the purpose.
In my view, however, that will be proved to have been shortsighted. It would have been better to have obtained some general agreement on the changes among the organisations representing severely disabled people. What can be done now? We could leave more to be worked out in consultations and brought forward later to Parliament, perhaps in subordinate legislation. I know that this is an unsatisfactory way of proceeding because orders cannot be amended and have to be approved or rejected. However, there are arrangements now in Clause 11 for regulations to be made by Ministers that will no doubt have to come before Parliament later in some form.
Perhaps I may summarise. In my opinion the Government deserve praise for tackling these problems, for deciding to make changes that have been generally advocated as needed. Some of us are worried, however, that a new system is being proposed in the Bill that has not yet been fully thought out and which may simply replace the present system with a fresh set of anomalies.
6.1 p.m.
Lord Prys-Davies: My Lords, I wish to apologise to the Minister for the fact that I was not in the House
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when he introduced the debate. I was caught up in traffic difficulties on my way to the House. The Bill consists of 29 clauses and eight schedules: but, as noble Lords have mentioned time after time, it lacks a single theme. I propose to address myself to two or, if I have time, three clauses, Clauses 1, 5 and 11. I appreciate that the ground has been well covered, and I shall do my best not to repeat arguments already advanced.
It seems to me that when a Government are introducing substantial changes to the NHS we would do well to judge those changes by reference to the principles involved in the basic legislation. The founder of the NHS—or, rather, his vision— encompassed a number of principles. Two of them are very relevant to a discussion of Clause 1. Bevan always advocated that there should be adequate training compatible with responsibility; and that a financial barrier should not be placed between a patient and the skilled services that are available to him. Clause 1 is in breach of the first principle to which I have referred because it will permit non-trained. unqualified persons to be engaged in dispensing spectacles to adults.
Under present regulations, I understand that the course of study lasts for a minumum of two years, together with another year of practical training. Last year, 313 students began this course of study. It seems to me that the Bill devalues professional training. Many of us are worried about how the changes will affect, particularly, the provision of services in rural areas. If non-opticians are allowed to sell spectacles, will this not affect the validity of the smaller opticians in rural areas? If that were to happen. it could lead to a reduction in eye-testing facilities available locally. It may be that the Minister can tell us something about how the Bill will affect the rural areas.
We appreciate that unqualified persons are not to supply spectacles without prescription, and that they are not to supply spectacles to children. But how are these prohibitions to be enforced? The non-qualified optician will not be a member of a professional body, so the professional body cannot take disciplinary proceedings against him. I have searched the provisions of the Bill, but I see no reference whatever to a penalty that can be imposed if the non-optician is in breach of these two important prohibitions.
Clause 2, in the case of many people—I accept not in the case of everyone, but in the case of many—will also be in breach of Bevan's second principle, that there should be no financial barrier placed between the patient and skilled services. I, for my part. accept that the average price of the simplest glasses in the private sector will probably be reduced. That is the Government's hope. Even a Government are allowed to have hopes. But it is almost certain that they will not be cheaper than NHS glasses.
There is considerable evidence—indeed overwhelming, evidence—received not just from the opticians but from voluntary organisations with a special interest in this field, that the price of complicated glasses will increase. We have heard time after time this afternoon that, as a group, old-age pensioners will be the largest single category to be adversely affected by the provisions of Clause 1. Just over a quarter of all elderly people have a visual impairment of some sort. That figure gives us an

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indication of the size of the problem. Often, they need stronger and more complicated lenses. and they will need to change the lenses more often.
There are many elderly people with small occupational pensions and little or no capital, and who do not qualify for supplementary benefit, who can ill-afford to buy glasses in the private sector or to change their glasses as often as they should. We should not be complacent. Many will be vulnerable. That is the considered opinion of Age Concern. If the Government insist on denying NHS glasses to elderly persons generally, then we ask that they should widen the exemption category.
I wish now to deal with Clause 5. The primary health care services have been described as the linchpin of the NHS. The thinking on which the relevant parts of the 1974 legislation were based was that the process of co-operation between the general practitioner services and the hospital services would be speeded up when the general practitioners, clinicians, nurses and others were side by side in the same authority, and when that same authority builds the health centres, runs the ambulances and employs the nurses, clinicians and others. If there was one theme running through the 1974 Act—a theme that was reinforced time after time by the department and by Ministers—that theme was integration. It was agreed that what was required was one decision-making authority to cover the whole field of health care in every district. and with one budget. By Section 5 of the 1974 Act the family practitioner services were brought within the unified local administration, although retaining a degree of independence.
However, we are now asked to assume—I underline the assumption—that the co-operation intended by the 1974 Act has been less than was hoped for because of the degree of unification introduced by Section 5 of the 1974 Act. Is there any firm evidence that because of the 1974 reorganisation purpose-built health centres. the quality of doctors' waiting rooms and the general practitioner services generally have had to compete unfavourably with the tasks and demands that have assailed the local health administrations? Is there any direct evidence, valued evidence, that the structures in the districts created in 1974 have made it more difficult for clinicians, GPs and others to give a higher standard of care to patients? I have come across no such evidence. And even if the evidence were to show that the building up of primary health care facilities has not been as successful as was hoped for, that may he because the 1974 reorganisation itself was far less than integration.
We appreciate that the general medical practitioners fully support the proposals in Clause 2 of the Bill. I value very much the contribution of the family practitioners. and obviously one values their judgment in this connection. But I suggest that the only reliable inference which the Government should seek to draw from that support is that there has been difficulty in planning and monitoring the service in the districts in a way that retains the confidence of the general practitioners and general administrators. That is why earlier on my noble friend referred to the general practitioners welcoming this proposal because it was a boost to their morale. So the evidence perhaps draws
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attention to a difficulty inherent in the task of building up community services and to the fact that hitherto that difficulty has been underestimated.
I understand that the Minister referred to the Government's intention to produce a Green Paper on the primary services. I hope very much that it will address itself to those questions. to those difficulties, and how we can overcome those difficulties. Certainly the evidence cannot be used to provide a case for setting up general practitioner authorities independent of the district health authorities. The total separation of these services could lead to a more fragmented service. I did not hear the Minister's opening speech, but in the other place we heard very little—indeed, we heard nothing—from the Ministers about the risks of fragmentation of the service. We on these Benches consider that integration has considerable potential and that we should strive to make it work.
I turn now to the severe disablement allowance. It is a matter of considerable regret and disappointment that the Government did not consult with the main disablement organisations before rushing into legislation. Time after time this afternoon bodies have been named. They contain men and women with first-hand knowledge of the needs of the disabled. They know better than Government to what extent statutory measures designed to meet the needs of the disabled succeed or fail or are likely to succeed or fail.
These are the organisations which are respected for their vigorous examination of proposals, policies and actions intended to meet the requirements of the disabled, and they all challenge the concept of the severe disablement benefit which is embodied in this Bill. Again, I know of no disablement organisation which supports the proposal. Is not this in itself evidence that the Government have not got it right and even at this late stage should think again? However, if they are sticking to the line which they have adopted. then we are sure that the validity of this provision will be tested in the European courts.
6.15 p.m.
Lord Mottistone: My Lords, I thought the noble Lord. Lord Molloy, expressed surprise that the Conservatives had been converted to the National Health Service. I put it to him that it can be the other way about. I admired the National Health Service from the word "Go" because I was a very poorly-paid naval officer with a large family which had to grow up and the National Health Service was absolutely vital. However, because of the performance and policies of the Labour Party, not least in not paying me very much when they were in power and I was in the Navy, I found myself converted to the Conservatives. So your Lordships can take it that it is the other way round—a national health supporter has been converted to the Conservatives rather than the way round the noble Lord put it.
I must apologise to all three noble Lords on the Front Bench and to the noble Lord, Lord Rugby, for having been otherwise detained at the beginning of this debate and arriving in time only for the last one-third or so of the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Rugby. I am sorry that that should be so. Having missed the opening speech of my noble friend the Minister, I find it difficult to contribute to those sections of the Bill on

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which I have heard consistently "anti" speeches without having heard his undoubtedly very clever "pro" speech, which I look forward to reading.
I propose to concentrate on the section relating to spectacles, where I in part support the Government. For example. I trust that the Government will stick to their position. in particular with regard to the need for up-to-date prescriptions based on a free eye test. I would hope that during the passage of the Bill the House will be able to persuade the Government that they should retain qualified dispensing.
I believe that the structure of the present optical service stems from the wish in the 1950s, 1960s and, indeed, the 1970s to create and strengthen professional bodies. This led to a country-wide acceptance that only a qualified person could do a whole range of activities, in many of which long experience is often of as much value as high qualifications, if not more. I think it is possible that as a result the optical service is more specialised than it need be.
However, we now have the present system and all the opticians I know and who have served me, as it were, are thoroughly dedicated to a first-class professional performance; they are to be congratulated for that. Any moves to change the system we have got now must be made with great caution so as not to destroy what is good in that present system.
As I see it, the changes the Government are proposing are that there will be cheaper glasses for some people and that will he offset by more expensive glasses for others. Nobody quite seems to know who is going to benefit and who is not, but clearly some will not. There is also a question of greater risk to some people, and my noble friend Lord Suffield gave some good and interesting details on important points in this connection. Perhaps that will be offset by the availability of cheaper spare glasses for others, but in many cases with poorer visual performance, especially if they are dispensed by an amateur.
As I seem to have a bit of time, perhaps I may explain briefly my own experience with spectacles, which brings out several of these points. I have had spectacles like this since I was in the mid-40s, because I was a naval officer and had to have perfect eyesight to begin with. To that extent I am exactly the same as my noble friend Lord Orr-Ewing and, as he said, about half the population. These specs are the most suitable because they give one a wide rim for reading. However, there was a happy occasion when my right honourable friend the Prime Minister was made the leader of the Conservative Party. I attended a meeting in this House and had to sit at the back of the room. To my horror, I could not see clearly who was my new, splendid leader, because my eyesight was not good enough.
A noble Lord: Does the noble Lord know now?
Lord Mottistone: My Lords, I cannot tell your Lordships how much I admire my right honourable leader and how much benefit bifocal spectacles have been to me. I went to the optician and he said that I needed bifocals and he gave them to me. I then found that I was able to see noble Lords opposite more clearly, too. However, your Lordships will notice that
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I am not wearing them at the moment because the trouble with bifocal specs is that one cannot read quite so readily because they have such a small reading lens. In any event I think that I know most noble Lords opposite quite well enough without having to look too closely at them.
However, this aspect has a more serious connotation. I am talking of seven or eight years ago when I acquired these specs. I have only had to have one other pair in the interim. Initially, I used them hardly at all. But I then found that I needed them for watching television. I found that they were absolutely ideal and they still are ideal. I am using the same pair as I had about four years ago. I then found—and this is really important—that these spectacles, which fit me perfectly because they have been properly dispensed, are also the ones that I have to use for driving. When driving down to the Isle of Wight from here on the motorway without wearing spectacles and certainly not having had a drink, I found that I tended to go to sleep. That was very dangerous. It alarmed my wife; it sometimes alarmed other motorists and it certainly alarmed me. It then occurred to me that if I needed bifocals for watching television. I would do well to wear them while driving. Since I have adopted that habit within the past six months, I have never felt sleepy at all. I believe that it is very important not only to have absolutely the right glasses. but also glasses that fit properly.
I suspect that if people are allowed to buy their specs over the counter—even within the Government's present rules—there is a very serious risk that only lip service will be paid to the need for recent prescriptions and the need for accurate dispensing. My noble friend Lord Orr-Ewing described how he was sometimes in a hurry to get a pair of specs and he said that it took a long time to get them if one used the other method. I am not saying that my noble friend would do this, but I can see that there would be certain people who would bully the shop assistant—who would not be a qualified person and who therefore could not produce a qualified answer—and would say, "Come on, give me these specs. They look all right". The shop assistant would ask for the prescription and the customer would produce one which was way out of date, and would say that it was all right and he would go off with his specs. That type of thing is much more of a risk to the rest of us—quite apart from the people concerned, who may be bad drivers—than the type of risks about which I heard the noble Lord, Lord Rugby, talking at the end of his speech. So I honestly think that the Government ought to take another look at the business of dispensing. It really is the most important aspect.
The other aspect that must be borne in mind is that of cost. A lot of people say that they can get their specs cheaper. As I understand it, the simplest type of National Health specs now cost £1055. No doubt bifocals cost a good deal more. Of course they will cost even more again because under the new rules they will go up by, for example, another £5, or 50 per cent. or something like that. If we are talking around the £10 or even £20 mark, we are talking about spectacles which cost between one and a half and two and a half bottles of whisky. If you are a normal chap like me and like my noble friend Lord Orr-Ewing, who only has to have new specs every three or four years, you are

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talking—whatever the system may be—about the cost of, say, a couple of bottles of whisky every three years. If you cannot give up drinking for about three days in Lent in order to spare that amount, then surely we are getting the whole matter right out of proportion as regards all the arguments about added costs or not, as the case may be.
Even if one has a complicated pair of specs like those of my noble friend Lord Suffield, which probably cost nearer 100, we can also judge them in terms of bottles of whisky. It is the equivalent of, for example, 16 bottles of whisky spread over two or three years. Really, it is nothing. I chose whisky because that is my favourite luxury. Other noble Lords can choose other luxuries. We must get the cost aspect into perspective. We must ask the Government again to think very seriously about this dispensing business. I shall be right behind anybody who puts down an amendment on that matter.
6.26 p.m.
Lord Spens: My Lords, I do not often oppose the noble Lord. Lord Mottistone, but today I am afraid that I am going to oppose him completely because I support the case made out by the noble Lord. Lord Rugby, and the noble Lord, Lord Orr-Ewing. I am a little distressed to see that the noble Baroness, whose name appears on the list of speakers to reply for the Opposition. is not in the Chamber at the moment. She was not present when either the noble Lord. Lord Rugby, or the noble Lord, Lord Orr-Ewing, spoke, so she will not know the strength of the case which those two noble Lords put across.
I am speaking in my capacity as chairman of a repeals group which we formed some two or three years ago to look at legislation which we thought might well he repealed. One of the earliest matters we looked at was Sections 21 and 25 of the Opticians Act. We came to the conclusion that the whole of those two sections ought to be repealed. We helped the noble Lord, Lord Rugby, produce his Bill, which he was invited to withdraw and which he did withdraw because the Government had decided to send the case to the Office of Fair Trading.
We waited a very long time for the report of the Office of Fair Trading. When it eventually came out we still did not know for quite a long time what the Government were going to do. Meanwhile, we decided in our group to hold a ballot. We balloted the 654 United Kingdom members of the Ophthalmological Society. We received 357 replies—equivalent to 55 per cent.—which was not too bad. We asked them a question:
"Should the present statutory monopoly for opticians (or doctors) to sell simple reading spectacles be repealed?"
Of the replies. 189 said "Yes"; 145 said "No"; and 23 could not make up their minds.
When we sent out that ballot paper we asked the people whom we were balloting to make their comments. We received a lot of very interesting comments. Let me first give your Lordships a selection of the comments made by those who were against repeal. The most important point that was made concerned the importance of the early detection of
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glaucoma. I think that about 50 per cent. of those against repeal made that point. They also referred to the importance of the prescription and the skill of the profession and they also—and this point was made by the noble Lord, Lord Ennals—referred to the fact that different lenses are often required for each eye. But many of those people stated that prices in any event were too high.
Then those who were for repeal said that the present system was far too expensive and that exorbitant profits were being made; they said that there were many charlatans in the business and that false confidence can often be given because opticians often fail to detect glaucoma. They then continued:
"Prior to 1958 [we] came across no cases harmed by over counter sales".
At the end some of them suggested: why not, have a health warning similar to the one on packets of cigarettes?
So I believe that there is a case for relaxing the monopoly on the provision of reading glasses. I do not want to contest what the noble Lord, Lord Mottistone, said about his experiences, but I also wear bifocals. I believe that they are only for presbyopia, which is a natural condition which affects all of us at a certain age. I found that I was unable to get my bifocals on the National Health Service. Whether that was someone telling me a wrong story I do not not know, but they cost me quite a lot of money. The result is that I do not have my eyes tested every two years; I think that the last time I went was about four years ago, and I believe that my present glasses are perfectly satisfactory.
I conclude by telling the Minister that some of us are likely to put down amendments to Clause 1 to try to relax the restrictions which are at present contained in it.
6.32 p.m.
Lord Beaumont of Whitley: My Lords, it has been said that this is three or four Bills in one. Judging from the debate, it is certainly two very separate Bills on two separate subjects and I wish to move the debate slightly away from the optical side, about which we have been hearing in the last few speeches, from the side which can possibly be dealt with by, according to the noble Lord, Lord Mottistone, the non-consumption of a bottle of whisky in three days or the non-consumption of 16 bottles over two years, which seems to me to be a much smaller rate of consumption—I suspect that if he grossed it up he would find it was rather different. I want to deal with the other part of the Bill, which moves to a very different world indeed, a world where there are no luxuries and not even the ability to go out for an evening to a pub among the kind of families about whom we are talking.
Some of the provisions in the clause dealing with social security are unacceptable. Tonight I want to speak as an officer of Church Action on Poverty, a body which is composed of concerned people in all the Christian Churches in this country. I want to make just a few remarks on Clause 8. Clause 8 deals with the final phasing-out of the child dependency additions. At present these are only 15p and, according to the Government. affect only "about 212.000 children",

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and in saying that I would point out that I quote from the proceedings in another place. However, 212,000 children is a great many children, and that number is arrived at by the application of the means test, which, as my noble friend Lord Banks has said, is a breach of the insurance principle, for otherwise the number would be higher. But 200,000 children are worth talking about, and that is what I shall talk about this evening.
There is fairly wide agreement among a large number of people that these particular payments should be phased out. Certainly the party of which I am a member, as my noble friend Lord Banks has said, agrees with that. Church Action on Poverty is not particularly concerned with that problem. What it is concerned with is the result—that poor families will suffer. This appears to be what will happen. No one is against administrative tidying; the trouble is that in the adjustments of the living standards of the already deprived, it always appears to be rounding down which occurs and never rounding up.
The agreed principle is that child benefit should replace CDAs. That is fair enough. But in effect at the end of these adjustments children will be at least 1.70 worse off than they would have been if the old scheme had continued from the very beginning, and some of the spokesmen in another place put it slightly higher than that. The Social Security Advisory Committee, which has already been quoted in this context, in its first annual report said of this scheme:
" the objective is a sound one only if there is no loss of income in real terms to families dependent on the scheme".
There is such a definite loss. Our very real concern about this is heightened by the Government's approach to the whole problem. In Standing Committee A in another place on 6th March 1984 at col. 442, the Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Security said:
"It has never been the perceived view in this country that it is the state's business, even for those on supplementary benefit, to expect to meet from state benefits or through taxation the full costs of bringing up children".
I find that a most extraordinary statement. If people are unemployed and have no financial resources—and these are the people about whom we are talking—where else will the money come from to bring up those children? This is a specific quotation on which I would ask the Minister who replies to this debate to comment. I have not given warning of it; frankly, I do not think I need to have given warning of it. It is a general proposition and one which has been put forward by a Minister of the present Government. I think it either needs to be reinforced, in which case it opens an even greater debate on poverty than society is having already, or it needs to be withdrawn.
Of course the state must support the families which find themselves in this position. That is certainly our view, and one which surely must have universal backing. We are not just talking about the 15p; we are not just talking about the technicalities of moving from one system to another; we are talking about real poverty, real misery and, in the course of the technicalities to which we are driven in discussing this Bill, let us not forget that.
I now quote from an article published in the Methodist Division of Social Responsibility News
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Supplement headed "Focus on Poverty". It is an article by Bob Holman, who is in fact a social worker for the Church of England Children's Society. Before he became a communtiy worker, he was Professor of Social Administration at the University of Bath. He says:
"What are the main effects of poverty on children? There are five main ones. 1. Some children in poor families are now in serious physical want …2. More generally, the children are enduring a climate of family anxiety. 3. The children face the contrast of their emptiness amidst the plenty of others. 4. "—
and this is the only one where I shall quote from the expansion on the sentence—
"Poverty means that children suffer adverse parental treatment."
I think it is a point worth making that poor parents are no worse than other parents but they have a very great deal more to put up with, and research has shown
"that the strains of social deprivations force parents unwillingly to adopt child rearing practices which inhibit the social, emotional and intellectual growth of their youngsters."
Finally:
"the nearly 100,000 children in public care are disproportionately drawn from the families of the poor."
They are the very families which are going to be hit by the changes which have been made, and are now being completed by the changeover in this Bill, and by this clause of this Bill.
We believe that this matter of the responsibility of the state for the poverty of children and families, which was repudiated by the Under-Secretary in that Committee stage in another place, must be covered. Indeed, if we cannot have a pledge that the money will be made up one way or another—presumably through child benefits, if we are going to go on with this particular reform—we hope that noble Lords will oppose, or seek to amend, this clause when it comes to Committee stage.
6.42 p.m.
Lord Colwyn: My Lords, I must apologise for missing some of the opening speeches of our debate this afternoon, particularly to my noble friend the Minister and noble Lords on the Front Benches opposite. However, I think it is unlikely that anything that I am going to say will have been said before. As a practising dentist who spent 15 years working within the National Health Service, I strongly support the Government's plan in this Bill to give family practitioner committees responsibility for their own administrative arrangements. Those practitioners working within the family practitioner services are independent, and it seems to me wholly appropriate that there should be health authorities specifically for this sector of the health service where such a different approach to planning and management is needed.
Having said that, health services need to be planned as a whole. This is true of my own field, dentistry. Health service administrators and planners are not always popular people, but in dentistry we simply have not had enough planning, not enough thinking about what is needed and how we can best achieve it, taking the dental services as a whole. With this in mind, I also welcome the new DHSS working group report on planning collaboration between FPCs and DHAs, especially the emphasis it gives to dental planning.

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It may be asked: what do we need to plan in dentistry? The answer is: all the usual things—services for children, for the elderly, for handicapped people and for people who are housebound: but for everyone else as well including the parents of the children and the children of the elderly. They need National Health Service dental services, too.
Let me concentrate on just one aspect of dental planning which matters for all patient groups. This is the location of dental practices. In general dental practice, unlike general medical practice, there are no central controls on practice location, so general dental practitioners, as I did, have to work out themselves where their services are likely to be needed. This is a sound policy for a profession of independent contractors, but it is becoming more difficult to identify the areas of need as we train more dentists and as more areas have dental services at an adequate level. We need help, and this help is going to have to come from the FPCs and DHAs researching local needs and making the information available to dentists so that the can make more soundly-based decisions on practice location and development.
So then I look at the composition of FPCs, shown in Schedule 3 to this Bill, and ask myself whether these new FPCs are really likely to take this sort of problem seriously. I have to say that I am doubtful, because out of 30 members and 15 contractor members. only three will be dentists. My noble friend the Minister will say that this is the composition now and that it has worked well, but I would disagree and say that it has produced committees which generally have not taken much interest in broader dental issues. They will keep the names of dentists on a list; they will investigate any complaint made about any aspect of treatment; they will ensure that superannuation contributions are paid: but in many areas that is as far as it goes. What I am saying is that I believe dentists are underrepresented on FPCs. They always were: but it matters more now that the FPCs are being asked to broaden and develop their planning activities. FPCs are going to be developing new working methodssub-committees, or whatever—to carry out their new functions, and the dental members are going to have to be involved. If they are not, essential dental matters will not receive the attention they need. The present three dental members are going to have their work cut out.
But there is a particular problem for dental practitioners serving on NHS committees of this sort, which normally meet during the day. Dentists working within the NHS are paid for the items of work they do. To take time off to attend a committee meeting could cause serious financial problems. The income stops, but daily practice overheads still have to be paid for at an average rate of something like £100 a day. So taking part in expanded FPC work is going to be a real problem for most of the dental members.
This problem could be considerably eased by a simple proposal which I hope my noble friend the Minister will consider sympathetically. I suggest that an additional sub-paragraph should be inserted in Schedule 3. paragraph 12. after sub-paragraph (6), to the effect that there should be one deputy dental member of the FPC so that the load can be spread and
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to improve the chance of a dental voice being heard at all appropriate times in an FPC's deliberations. I hope that this will be seen as a relatively uncontroversial measure in the face of a real problem. It is not an ideal solution, as I believe that dentistry is badly underrepresented with only three dental members.
In Gloucestershire, where I used to practise within the NHS. there are 60 per cent. more doctors on the FPC list than dentists. Yet the medical profession has eight members on the FPC and my own profession only three. Ultimately I am sure that there will have to be changes in the numbers balance between the professions in Schedule 3. I am not proposing this at the present time. but I hope that the Minister will give serious consideration to my suggestion, and perhaps even give me an encouraging answer this evening. If he is unable to help at this stage. I shall feel under an obligation to my profession to come back with a suitable amendment at Committee stage.
6.48 p.m.
Lord Pitt of Hampstead: My Lords, one of the advantages of speaking late is that much that you would want to say has been said before, and you can scratch out a lot of your notes. I am in that happy position. However, I want to comment on the Bill on two sections in Part I and perhaps for a little longer on Part II. All the sections I shall comment on have been commented on by other people.
There are two serious aspects of the section dealing with ophthalmic services which are to be deplored. The abolition of the availability of National Health Service spectacles for the vast majority of the population is regrettable. As has been said before, it will cause hardship. particularly to the elderly, but it will also cause hardship to the poorer sections of the community. In the case of the removal of the control over the sale of spectacles. this could have unpleasant results. In my view, the results may be felt most in the poorer sections of the community.
The Minister waxed eloquent about the free market. I am afraid that I do not share his enthusiasm. There are many unpleasant consequences that can flow from the free market. In fact I agree with the opinion of the noble Lord. Lord Trefgarne, his colleague. which was quoted by the noble Lord, Lord Banks. earlier. I hope the Minister and the House will pay great attention to the speech that was made by the noble Lord, Lord Suffield from across the way. It is all very well to be willing to have a free market in the sale of spectacles but there is need for some control and there is a need to maintain standards.
I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Orr-Ewing. is not in his place. I was a little surprised at his outburst. When all is said and done, he is accustomed to organisations. Most organisations delegate powers to their specialist committees. And, in effect, when a decision has been made on principle, it is normal for the committee to deal with it or it can be dealt with at a lower level by a sub-committee or by the officers of the committee. I cannot see that there was any need for the song and dance about whether the whole of the Ophthalmic Services Committee of the BMA had met before this letter was written.
I hope that during the Committee Stage we shall improve Clause 1. Unlike my noble friend to my left.

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I welcome the independence of family practitioner committees. I strongly endorse the views of the BMA which were read out to the House earlier. Primary health care is the most cost effective sector of the National Health Service. Its expansion would benefit patients by increasing the range and accessibility of services and also reduce overall costs of the National Health Service. Until FPC administrators have the same standing as district health authority administrators and the funding of the family practitioner services is separated from the health authority budgets, effective planning is not possible.
The development of the primary care sector requires the establishment of an independent administrator wholly committed to its growth. The FPCs as now established can do this. With their newly acquired status they will have an equal standing in their dealings with health and local authorities, with which they will be able to make at first hand the case for important developments in community care.
The DHAs, as has been said earlier, are, quite rightly, heavily influenced by the hospital sector, because it accounts for the great bulk of their expenditure. As a consequence, it is not as easy as it ought to be for the expansion of the primary care service to take place. It is all very well to talk about integration, but it is wrong to try to integrate services by making one subordinate to the others. The new FPCs will be able to present the case for family practitioner services both within the National Health Service and outside it. 1 think that that is of the utmost importance. As I see it. only the Secretary of State can stand in the way of the needed expansion and improvement of primary care. I really do hope that the Minister will recognise the importance of doing this particular job and give the primary sector the support it deserves.
I end up where I began, by pointing out that the primary care sector is the most cost effective sector of the National Health Service; that it can be expanded; that there can he a shift from hospital to community care, but it must be planned and it must have the necessary resources. If that is done, quite a lot of benefit can flow to the service.
I welcome the proposed Green Paper. I hope it will lead not only to some worthwile discussions but to worthwhile action. I hope that the Government are not merely putting out another Green Paper in order to be able to fob us off with some platitudes.
I turn to Clause 11. I am worried about this clause and speak about it today as a practising GP. Like many other noble Lords, I have received innumerable representations against this clause. At first I did not grasp it as fully as I should but when I subsequently had it explained to me by one of my colleagues who understood it better, I began to share the concern. I understand that it is the need to withdraw subsection (2) of Section 36 of the 1975 Act which made this clause necessary. I believe that we must look at what we are going to lose. The non-contributory invalidity pension has proved a valuable benefit to everyone else except married women and those who have stayed at home to look after their families. I have seen no criticism of its major role in supporting them to justify our submitting them all—because we are doing that
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Vol. 452now—married and unmarried alike, to an additional test which, frankly, has only one purpose—that is, to exclude certain people; people who do not reach this arbitrary 80 per cent. disablement on a specific schedule which, in fact, is more concerned with industrial injuries than with sickness.
I find myself unable to explain this 80 per cent. severe disablement allowance to myself. I find it difficult to explain to myself. Because I cannot explain it to myself I shall not be able to explain it to my patients. I shall have to tell them, for example, that if, when they produce my statment on their incapacity to work to their local DHSS, it is found that their contribution record is insufficient for an invalidity pension. they will have to have another examination which I believe is to be done by two doctors from the DHSS. I shall tell them that they will then have to answer a lot of questions and be medically examined to establish levels of amputation, blindness, deafness, severe disfigurement, none of which happen to be the likely cause of their incapacity because most of the people I deal with come from civilian life.
Another problem I have is that, whether they are qualified by having 80 per cent. disablement or not, they are unable to work. I am satisfied about that—that is why I gave them a certificate in the first instance. Yet I must tell them that the fact that I have given this certificate is perhaps only a way of starting the process; that it is not going to enable them to get the benefit; that they have to have this additional examination—and have to have it with the likelihood that a large percentage of them will fail it.
I have to ask myself this. Do I tell them not to apply for the benefit?—because, in effect, by giving them that certificate, I may well be subjecting them to hardship, embarrassment and stress, which is not very good for them. These are the problems that I find as a doctor which concern me and about which, therefore, I am quite unhappy. What is more. I am not entirely sure that today it is true, as it may have been in the past, that the man goes out to work and the woman stays at home, runs the house and looks after the children. What is more true today is that both parents, the man and woman, the husband and wife, go out to work, and if they are an agreeable couple, in the sense that the man is willing to do his share of the work, both will do the housework. If he is a male chauvinist, then the woman will go to work and when she comes home she will do the housework.
The approach therefore needs to be changed. In effect, I think that the Government have changed it to some extent. For example, no longer do we have the lower-rate insurance. A married woman who is working now has to pay the full rate. As I see it, therefore, the numbers of people who are affected by the present household duties test will gradually diminish and, in fact, in the future, the number of people who do not have contributory pensions and therefore need the non-contributory pension, could be considerably less than today.
I hope that the requests which have been made earlier will be accepted by the Government. I believe that this is a clause that the Government need to look at again, that this is a clause about which the Government need to consult a little more. I hope that.

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when we come to the Committee stage and we ask them to do so, they will agree.
7.3 p.m.
Lord Cullen of Ashbourne: My Lords, noble Lords who have taken part in the debates on opticians for the last four or five years will, I am sure, share with me the feeling of relief that the end appears to be in sight. It has gone on for a very long time and, even though I do not agree with everything in this Bill, I am very glad that we have got to this point. There is no doubt that there are parts of the Bill about which opticians are not happy, about which doctors are not happy and about which many Members of another place were unhappy; and about which, from the debate this evening, it appears that many of your Lordships are unhappy. My own views have not changed substantially since the period when I had the honour of being the spokesman in your Lordships' House for the DHSS; that is to say, I fully support the Government in opposing the rather extreme view propounded by my noble friend Lord Orr-Ewing today and frequently propounded in the past by the noble Lord, Lord Rugby, to legalise the sale of ready-made spectacles.
I should like to make one or two comments about the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Rugby. He mentioned the composition of the General Opticial Council, and I think suggested that something like 18 out of the 22 were opticians. I do not have the figures with me. but I know that is incorrect and I look forward to my noble friend Lord Caithness correcting that, because I think it gives a false impression. I can also confirm that the Dollond and Aitchison Group are not represented on the General Optical Council and nor for that matter are even the Federation of Optical Corporate Bodies. So I think that one should clear that up.
The noble Lord also referred in his speech to the seven eye shops opened by a company which employed Peter Risdon, an out-of-work actor, as a frontman. What the noble Lord did not say is that on Monday last Peter Risdon was fined £100 and ordered to pay £500 costs. His activities are not only illegal now but would be so after the Bill if, in its present form. it were enacted. At the conclusion of the case, the noble Lord was reported in the Daily Telegraph as having said that,
"The decision was disappointing and meant that the price of a pair of reading glasses would remain at £80 or £90".
That is misleading information. In fact, properly prescribed reading spectacles are now available (and for some considerable time have been available) at prices round £10 to £14; although anyone can pay more if they wish.
Lord Rugby: My Lords, would the noble Lord perhaps say what the delays are in being able to obtain reading glasses, which sometimes can be as much as three weeks so that people have had to buy private ones? They have been cajoled into buying private ones, at a figure of round about £80 or £90, simply because they cannot wait for that period of time.
Lord Cullen of Ashbourne: My Lords, I have no doubt that the situation varies from place to place and
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from optician to optician. What the noble Lord is suggesting is that everybody has to wait three weeks for their glasses—and that is by no means true.
Lord Monson: My Lords, is the noble Lord, Lord Cullen, aware that at this very moment I am wearing a pair of Mr. Risdon's glasses which cost me £8·50; and that they are perfectly satisfactory in every way?
Lord Cullen of Ashbourne: My Lords, I am very glad to hear that the noble Lord is satisfied with his glasses, but I imagine that he is also concerned that others less educated than himself are not misled by people selling glasses who do not actually know what they are doing.
Perhaps I should again declare my present interest in the Bill as president of the Federation of Optical Corporate Bodies, as a result of which I have somewhat increased my knowledge over the last year or so. I appreciate that the Government no doubt take the view that they are steering a middle course between the extreme view personified by the noble Lord, Lord Rugby, on the one hand, and the views held by the optical profession. In fact, I think the Government have been very astute. In listening to the arguments today, they seem to get somebody to agree on one bit and somebody else to agree on another bit and one or two to disagree on other bits. However, I believe that the Government's proposals to allow unqualified persons to engage in ophthalmic dispensing is itself an extreme proposal put forward without any real justification; and I will come back to that later.
First. I should like to make it clear that, together with many other noble Lords. I fully support the Government's proposals to relax the present restrictions on advertising by opticians, so long as there is no advertising of the professional function of the testing of sight and provided that provision is made to ensure that advertisements of the prices of spectacles are not misleading to the public. For that reason I think it will be important that any price advertisement by opticians should indicate precisely what it refers to—whether it is only the frames, whether it is the frame and lenses and whether it includes any professional fees or charges. Subject to those important qualifications, I know that the federation are willing to accept price advertising in future—and the magnitude of this change and the effect that it will have on competition should not be underestimated.
Secondly, I am prepared to support the Government's proposed changes for the ending of the general provision of spectacles under the general ophthalmic service, subject to satisfactory safeguards to protect the visually disadvantaged. The Government have already hinted at some willingness to provide financial assistance to those requiring more complex lenses, and I hope and expect that we might have some more definite statement from Her Majesty's Government tonight.
The main reason why I am able to support the NHS changes. which I realise some members of the Opposition are concerned about, is that this will end the distortion of the optical market and do more than advertising or any other single measure to reduce the average price of private spectacles, which have in fact already been reducing since the Department of Health

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and Social Security, after years of delay, increased NHS fees. It is often not appreciated sufficiently that approximately 80 per cent. of all lenses are supplied under the NHS at state-controlled prices and approximately 50 per cent. of all frames at cost price. What a loss leader!
I believe that the ending of the NHS provision will enable progressive opticians to provide the public with a better and wider range of budget priced spectacles at costs very comparable to those at present charged under the NHS service. No longer will private spectacle prices have to subsidise NHS work, as has been necessary in recent years, so private spectacle average prices will fall. Perhaps then criticisms of opticians will cease. Even the OFT supported the views of the two Price Commission reports that opticians had not been making excessive profits.
It is my conviction that, if Her Majesty's Government had limited their proposals to allowing opticians to advertise prices and to the changes in the general ophthalmic services, they could achieve both their main aims of increasing competition and achieving a reduction in prices, together with a wider choice of attractive budget priced frames and lenses for the public.
Regrettably, the Government have chosen to swallow completely the superficial arguments presented in chapter 9 of the report of the Office of Fair Trading. Accordingly. the Government are proposing in Clause 1(1) of the Bill to permit unqualified persons to dispense—provided that it is against a recent prescription issued, the Government say, in the previous two years—and those two years we shall have to look at in Committee.
I think it is objectionable that the Government had no proper consultations with the organisations representing dispensing opticians after the OFT report was published, although such consultations were not only requested from but promised by Ministers. Instead Ministers have preferred to rely upon the advice of the Office of Fair Tradng, which was concerned only with the competition issues and had no one on its team with any optical or medical qualifications.
Furthermore, it had been made clear, when the then Minister of State for Consumer Affairs, Mrs. Sally Oppenheim, announced the review, that the report was not expected to come to conclusions on matters affecting the public interest. I believe that the Government's proposal, based on the shaky foundations of the OFT report, to permit unqualified persons to dispense spectacles is very much a matter affecting the public interest.
It is not only dispensing opticians who are concerned about unqualified people being allowed to practise dispensing; ophthalmologists have expressed their concern as well. The chairman of the Ophthalmic Group Committee of the British Medical Association has said:
"While specific harm to the eyes is unlikely to arise from the use or non-use of spectacles, there is firm medical agreement that the correct and appropriate dispensing of spectacles has very significant health implications. The Committee cannot accept that after the prescription has been issued optical appliances take on the status of mere consumer durables and feel strongly that when highly skilled and expensive medical or surgical treatment has been provided
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under the NHS the final rounding-off of such treatment with spectacles or an optical appliance must also be provided by skilled or qualified personnel".
Her Majesty's Government wish to break what is known as the opticians' monopoly and I was very interested in the remarks made by the noble Lord, Lord Banks, who I thought analysed the situation extremely well. This monopoly consists of some 2,900 dispensing opticians and 6,200 ophthalmic opticians, all in competition with each other. It is therefore the case that no optician and no optical company has anything approaching a monopoly. What is so curious is that Her Majesty's Government happily follow the advice of the Office of Fair Trading to allow unqualified and unregistered people to dispense, despite the other suggestion of the Office of Fair Trading that motor mechanics and installers of double glazing should be qualified and registered.
One of the problems when debating these matters is that there are many people, including some noble Lords and, I am afraid, the present Government, who have largely misunderstood or failed to understand the function of a dispensing optician. Some people do not appreciate the difference between a prescription and a specification. Certainly the Government have shown little sign of understanding the difference. My honourable friend the Minister of Health seems to take the view that, since it is normal for prescriptions issued by an ophthalmologist or an ophthalmic optician to be sent to a prescription house where the spectacles are made up, then there should be no problem so long as they are made to British Standards. That sounds very plausible, but it is by no means the full story since it omits the essential stage of dispensing.
What actually happens—and the noble Baroness, Lady Robson, tried to explain this—is that the dispensing optician, after discussing someone's employment, way of life and hobbies, advises on the type of lens form and frame that will be suitable for his prescription. Careful measurements are taken to ensure that the lenses are properly centred and that the spectacles fit the patient's face. A great many more technicalities are involved in ophthalmic dispensing, but I think that this outline is sufficient for my purpose. The dispensing optician then adds all the dispensing details and measurements together with the prescription on the specification, and it is the specification or order which is forwarded to the prescription house or workshop. To send a prescription alone would be quite useless; and, of course, the optician has the final responsibility for the accuracy and fit of the spectacles.
While it may have been excusable for the OFT to fail to understand the importance of ophthalmic dispensing and the training and experience which are necessary, despite all the evidence which it was given on this subject, I find the same failure on the part of the DHSS quite extraordinary and inexcusable. I notice that quite a number of noble Lords are wearing spectacles, and if those wearing bifocals want to get the message about this business of careful dispensing they should move their spectacles just a little bit away from their eyes or a little bit sideways or up and down, and they will find that if they stay like that for a minute or two they will be feeling quite uncomfortable. That is perhaps the best way of getting this point over.

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I believe that the Government, in their boundless enthusiasm for increasing competition, have made a serious mistake and if unqualified persons are allowed to dispense spectacles there could be grave consequences. In a recent letter. my honourable friend the Minister of Health has written that Her Majesty's Government rest their case on two irrefutable facts. The first is that wearing wrong spectacles does no permanent damage to the eyes. While I am not able to judge the weight of medical evidence in this regard, although I have heard it said very frequently, perhaps my noble friend Lord Glenarthur could let me have by letter the full medical evidence on which the Government rely in this regard. The second is that anybody who was supplied with the wrong spectacles would be aware that they were wrong. That is not true in the case of anybody who has had an eye operation, such as a cataract operation.
During the later stages of the Bill I shall urge your Lordships to leave out subsection (1) of Clause 1, unless I can persuade my noble friends on the Front Bench to reach a sensible compromise. What I urge them to do is to proceed as rapidly as they may wish with the removal of any unreasonable restriction on advertising by opticians and implement the general optical service changes, and then judge the effects on competition and prices of these two very major measures over a period of from 12 to 18 months. In the meantime, the proposal to allow unqualified persons to dispense should be withdrawn or put in cold storage. If. as I confidently expect, the prices of private spectacles continue to fall, there will be no need to incur the risk of a general fall in standards of ophthalmic dispensing by unqualified persons.
Finally, I should like to pose a few questions. With regard to enforcement, how do Her Majesty's Government propose to ensure that unqualified spectacle vendors observe any or all of the so-called conditions and safeguards to be laid down by Order in Council? How, for example, will the Government ensure that these unqualified persons do not in fact dispense, except to a recent prescription? How will they ensure that these unqualified persons will not be dispensing to children? Are they perhaps considering the appointment of an optical ombudsman? If the Government's reply is simply that they will be relying on the present law, that hardly seems likely to be adequate.
My second question to Her Majesty's Government is whether there is any other country within the EEC, with the possible exception of Denmark, which does not currently license or regulate ophthalmic dispensing? Thirdly. may I ask whether there is any country in the world which, having once established a system of regulation, has then proceeded to deregulate ophthalmic dispensing? Fourthly, how do the Government propose to enforce the application of British Standards by both registered opticians and unregistered spectacle vendors? Fifthly, I should like to ask Her Majesty's Government whether, in their opinion, permitting unqualified persons to dispense will in any way raise standards for ophthalmic dispensing? Sixthly, do Her Majesty's Government accept that standards of ophthalmic dispensing are a matter affecting the public interest? And I should also
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like to ask why they should be prepared to envisage lower standards than we have at present? Finally, how do Her Majesty's Government intend to prevent the importation and sale of cheap spectacle frames from Taiwan and the Far East made of cellulose nitrate, which, as I am sure your Lordships will know, is highly inflammable.
Unless Her Majesty's Government can provide satisfactory answers to these questions and to the other concerns which I have expressed, at the Committee stage of the Bill I shall wish to propose certain amendments, including an amendment to require any order made under subsection (3)(a) to be made by Affirmative Resolution of each House of Parliament. However, I hope that this will not be necessary and that Her Majesty's Government will have second thoughts and will withdraw that particular subsection. The most important role which this House can play is, I believe, as a revising Chamber, and the very first subsection in the Bill is in serious need of revision.
7.24 p.m.
Lord Kilmarnock: My Lords, we are reaching the end of an interesting but rather disjointed debate. I can understand that it is convenient to the Department of Health and Social Security to get its annual Bill. It might be more convenient for the rest of us, as the noble Baroness, Lady Robson of Kiddington, suggested, if in future we had separate Bills, for health and social services on the one hand and for social security on the other.
May I begin by congratulating the noble Earl. Lord Caithness. on his promotion and by congratulating also the rank and dignity of Earldom as a whole in achieving such prominence on the Government Front Bench, to which I am sure the latest noble Earl to join it will bring additional lustre.
I shall refer only briefly to Clause 1 of the Bill. to which a number of noble Lords have already devoted large parts or, in some cases, all of their speeches. I must say at once that in my view a no doubt praiseworthy zeal for the destruction of monopolies, with which I agree in principle and which is a cherished Liberal tenet, seems in this particularly sensitive field to be leading to unfortunate results for large numbers of our neediest citizens, unless of course the Bill is amended in order to protect them at the Committee stage. It cannot possibly be right that something like 3·2 million people, or 64 per cent. of those at present receiving support for the purchase of ophthalmic services, will lose that support under the Bill as at present drafted.
The object of breaking monopolies is normally to protect the consumer's interest against the producer's, and I accept that many people with uncomplicated prescriptions—the kind of people referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Orr-Ewing, the average user of reading spectacles—are likely to benefit under the Bill. But in this case the interest of some consumers is not the same as that of others, and I must state my special concern for those with complex prescriptions who, it seems, will be paying up to three times as much as they did before the removal of National Health Service support. This point was made by the noble Lord, Lord Prvs-Davies.

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The noble Lord, Lord Glenarthur, spoke of the promotion of consumer interest in the Bill, but I have to tell him that the National Consumer Council do not agree with him. They speak of the need for
"a safety net for those consumers who have less common sight problems and who are unlikely to benefit from more competition because of the small size of the market for the lenses they need".
A little later they say:
"We are particularly concerned about the effect that the removal of the NHS subsidy will have on people requiring special or complex lenses. There is unlikely to be much competition in the supply of such lenses because of the relatively small number of people involved and the individual nature of the lenses they require, so prices of complex lenses will rise when the NHS subsidy is removed".
I find that to be a matter of deep concern.
Furthermore. the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, mentioned cataract operations. It is well known that cataract operations sometimes require as many as three changes of glasses in the 18 months after the operation. This could put an intolerable burden on elderly people at the lower end of the income scale and might indeed mean that they simply could not afford the aids which would assure them of reasonable vision, with a consequent huge decline in the quality of their lives and, indeed, a corresponding rise in the hazards they would be a prey to through diminished vision.
At Second Reading in another place on 20th December 1983 the Secretary of State said at col. 297 of Hansard:
"it has been argued that there are those with the very poorest sight who need complicated and more expensive lenses and I am certainly prepared to consider the evidence on that to see whether they can have continued access to NI-IS glasses".
But by the time the Bill reached Report stage nothing had been done. A wider amendment to entitle all pensioners to purchase lenses and frames under the provisions of the general optical service was defeated, and I find nothing in the Bill as it stands to exempt even the partially sighted. The noble Lord, Lord Glenarthur. spoke briefly of the possibility of a controlled price for complex prescriptions. This was an area about which the noble Lord, Lord Cullen of Ashbourne, also showed concern. May I ask the noble Earl whether the Government will bring forward an amendment at the Committee stage on this point. Unless the Government can give us substantial assurances this evening, this is something which we shall have to take very seriously at the Committee stage. In this respect, the Bill cannot he allowed to go forward as it stands.
On the question of advertising, this is supported by the National Consumer Council. We are not against advertising, provided that there is proper quality control; but such control will not necessarily be maintained by the Government's very proper insistence upon qualified prescribing if there is little or no control over the quality of dispensing. This is something about which the noble Lord, Lord Mottistone, is worried.
Another worrying aspect of this Bill is that it appears to contain no safeguards against negligence resulting in damage or injury. What happens if someone driving a vehicle while wearing wrongly dispensed spectacles causes injury either to himself or to another person? I can find no provision in the Bill for such a contingency. The noble Lord, Lord Banks, offered a
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rather telling quotation from the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, who, at an earlier stage in his ministerial life, was concerned that this might be a contributory cause to accidents.
I believe that I have said enough to indicate our grave disquiet over certain aspects of Clause 1 of the Bill and to warn the Minister of a hefty raft of amendments at Committee stage. I hope that when we come to that stage the Government will listen carefully to what we have to say and will show themselves to be somewhat less inflexible and opinionated than they have been on some recent occasions. Sight is a precious gift, and in the case of the elderly it is doubly so, for as the other faculties necessary for active physical participation in daily life decline, the capacity to participate in the world around by means of observation becomes a priceless asset. I trust that the Government will not seek to sacrifice that asset for the sake of getting their Bill through unamended, or virtually unamended. That would be an inexcusable exercise of political machismo.
I turn now to family practitioner committees, which are the subject of Clause 5. This is a subject we have debated on a number of occasions. I confess that I remain of the opinion expressed by the noble Baroness, Lady Robson. that it would have been preferable to bring the FPC services together with the hospital services under the umbrella of the DHA, as is the case in Scotland. I do not often disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Pitt, but I am afraid that I do in this particular respect, although I agree with him on the outstanding importance of primary care. It must be remembered that one of the main aims of the 1974 reorganisation was to create a more integrated National Health Service, and this clause is a long stride in the opposite direction. However, we have to be realistic and it seems unlikely that we shall succeed, at this late stage in the argument, in converting the Government to our point of view. In all probability, FPCs will achieve their independent status. Having accepted that, it becomes a matter of urgency to ask whether the Government have really thought the consequence through. I want to express my alarm in regard to a number of points and to ask the noble Earl some questions.
First, although the representatives of the medical committee, the local authorities, the dental committee, the pharmaceutical committee and the opticians are to remain the same in number, there are now to be seven free-wheeling appointments in the gift of the Secretary of State. The method of appointment of all members is to to be changed. In future, all members will be appointed by the Secretary of State from persons nominated by the various bodies rather than being directly appointed by those bodies themselves. Furthermore, the chairmen will no longer be elected by the members but will also be appointed by the Secretary of State. This means that local influence on the committees will be further diminished and the power of the Secretary of State will be further increased. I believe someone mentioned a patronage of 3,000 places. I wish to record our fundamental disagreement with this proposal and our intention to come forward with amendments on this score at Committee stage.

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There are other points which give rise to disquiet. As the noble Earl will he better aware than anyone, the strategic plans of RHAs for the next few years envisage a significant shift of resources from the acute sector to community care. How will this be administered, and what pattern of primary care do the Government envisage after this further reconstruction of the service? Concern has been expressed in some quarters that this Bill will open the way for FPCs in the future to employ directly nurses, midwives, health visitors, community specialist nurses for the mentally ill and mentally handicapped, and perhaps other types of professions in the community health field. Is this what the Government intend to do? If so, there are two points to be made.
The first is that any reversal of the 1974 objective of greater integration would carry with it the danger of creating two overlapping spheres of responsibility and two rival bureaucracies. The second point concerns the role of the nursing profession. Nurses would want to see included in the Bill—quite naturally, in my opinion—a facility for nurse membership of FPCs as a distinct category similar to that which exists currently for health authorities. It would of course be possible for nurses to be appointed within the DHA quota in Schedule 2. Part II, paragraph 6(3)(h) or under 6(3)(g), within the seven nominations directly in the Secretary of State's gift. But neither category gives any guarantee of nurse representation, and unless the noble Earl can provide an assurance that such a provision will be made I shall have to return to this matter at Committee stage.
This brings me to the administrative aspect. Clause 5(3) on page 7 of the Bill would seem to pave the way for FPC chairmen to be paid on the present lines of payment to RHA and DHA chairmen. Is this the Government's intention? The responsibilities would not seem to be comparable. Also, will there be a special grade of FPC administrator? If the new system is to work, it will obviously need to attract people of real ability. Would the noble Earl not agree that such people are unlikely to be attracted unless there is a unified, administrative career structure for the whole of the National Health Service, and unless those in it are able to move between FPCs and other types of health authority? Would this not he essential to the preservation of some dialogue and mutual understanding between the two branches of the service? The Royal College of General Practitioners is strongly of the view that unless there is a unified career structure, whatever benefits the Government expect from the new structure will certainly be lost. May I have the noble Earl's comment on that?
On the financial side, can the Government cross their heart and say that they do not envisage a substantial increase in costs to follow the establishment of FPCs as health authorities in their own right, with powers to engage their own staff! Have they never heard of Parkinson's Law? Where is the money to be found, if not at the expense of other branches of the NHS? It is also relevant to ask: what are the recommendations on control of GP spending in the Binder Hamlyn report? The noble Lord, Lord Ennals, asked about this. Why does the report remain
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unpublished? Does it contain some recommendations uncongenial to the Government? Or does it contain recommendations that might be uncongenial to the rest of us? Why all this secrecy? What it there to hide?
What about the Green Paper on primary care? The noble Baroness, Lady Robson, questioned the need for another Green Paper. If the Government decide that there is a need, is it sensible to introduce legislation in advance of consultation? The Government's record in this respect is rather bad. They have received a lot of flak tonight from all sides of the House. The noble Lord. Lord Stallard, was one of those who mentioned this point. I myself feel that the Government should order some embroidered samplers to be hung in every Minister's office, which should read "No legislation without consultation". They are going down the opposite road.
I believe that I have said enough to indicate my believe that the Government have not thought their proposals through. There are other questions, but I shall keep them for Committee stage. However, there is one final question I cannot refrain from asking now. What are the Government's real, underlying motives in relation to this part of the Bill? Perhaps I have a suspicious mind, but I cannot help surmising that fully-fledged independence for FPCs could—just could—be a paving step towards reprivatisation of the general practitioner side of the service and conversion at some time in the future to an item-of-service basis of payment, underpinned by a mutual insurance system covering 80 per cent., say, of the doctor's charge, as in France. That may be pure fantasy, but I shall be relieved to hear from the noble Earl that it is not even a gleam in the Government's eye. I see the noble Lord, Lord Glenarthur, shaking his head, and I am much relieved to see that.
I turn briefly and finally to Clause 1 I of the Bill, which introduces a new special disablement allowance. My noble friend Lord Attlee has already spoken in some detail and very effectively on this point, particularly on the discouraging effect this Bill may have on the young disabled to continue in education and training with a view to securing a job. I will not go into the matter in any depth at this stage. Certainly we welcome, as does the Social Security Advisory Committee, the abolition of the household duties test for married women. This is obviously right in principle. But there are two main provisions in the Bill which. understandably, have excited much adverse comment. These are the cut-off at the age of 20 of automatic entitlement on a simple test of incapacity for work, and the very high threshold of 80 per cent. disability which has to be surmounted to qualify after that age.
Presumably the Government have erected these hurdles in order to make the change to the new benefit cost-neutral, or as nearly so as possible. These are the financial parameters referred to by my noble friend Lord Attlee. But, not unnaturally, a number of voluntary organisations have voiced concern about the effect of these rules on the particular sector of disablement which they represent. From the many statistics and estimates elicited by Written Questions in another place, two figures stand out. The first is that some 16,000 housewives who currently qualify for HNCIP will be unlikely to clear the 80 per cent.

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hurdle. Can the noble Earl comment on what support he envisages for them in the future, and on how much they will lose?
Then there is the staggering revelation—at least, it staggered me—that of the 143,000 claimants of NCIP, 81,500 (or 57 per cent.) are suffering from mental disorders. Of these, it has been calculated—this is, of course, an estimate—that as many as 26,500 will not qualify for the new SDA. If this is true it can be seen only as a severe setback for the Government's proclaimed policy of care in the community. How can the closure of large, old uneconomic hospitals be speeded up, or take place at all, if these people are deprived of the therapeutic earnings at present allowed to them under NCIP? Can the noble Earl tell me how the Government's declared policy is to be implemented if the income of many of those struggling to live in the community is actually reduced? I fail to understand that. This seems to be yet another instance of a direct conflict between the highly desirable concept of care in the community and the Government's actual legislation.
There are many other points, but the evening is drawing on. One of great importance is that the criteria for assessing disability are wholly inappropriate for considering disablement through mental disorder. We shall want to bring forward proposals on that at Committee stage. For example, MIND suggests:
"A possible approach to the level of disability of a mentally disordered person would be for an independent multidisciplinary assessment by a panel including a psychiatrist, social worker and other competent professionals with experience of mental health problems".
That is something we shall certainly have to come back to. The proposed system is totally inadequate as at present written into the Bill.
Our colleagues in another place voted against this Bill on both Second and Third Readings on account of its many flaws, which were not corrected in another place. I understand that the Government are planning to have only two days for the Committee stage. If the debate this afternoon is anything to go by we shall need, I am sure. more time.
7.42 p.m.
Baroness Jeger: My Lords, I have listened with great interest to this debate. Perhaps I may say especially to the noble Lord, Lord Spens—who has only just returned to the Chamber—that I may not have been here for every minute but I seem to have been here for a lot of minutes. I should like to say how happy I am to see the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, on the Front Bench opposite. I hope he will enjoy his new appointment and that we shall enjoy many interesting arguments as time goes by.
The most important statement to be made about this Bill, before one goes into details of the clauses, is that it is another rag-bag of a Bill. It consists of wholly unconnected issues, and this has happened before under the present Government. This is really four Bills in one. I submit to the House—and I say this in no party sense because it is, I think, a constitutional point—that it is very bad to put four Bills into one. It is no way to legislate. We have four Bills masquerading as one. It is undemocratic and disrespectful to Parliament. From a constitutional point of view it is
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much better that the Bills which come before this House should be homogeneous and should deal with single issues. A Bill like this which deals with everything from spectacles to disability and the family practitioner committees is not the way to legislate intelligently in this House.
It is also a bad Bill because it just tinkers once more with the National Health Service. It tinkers again with social security. We have had successive changes in detail which are confusing, expensive to administer, and which often create even more anomalies in the health and welfare services. We understand that the Secretary of State is undertaking four reviews of the system, but it is not clear whether there will be any public discussion or consultation about those reviews. Any radical beneficial changes must also involve the Treasury and broad principles of public expenditure finance, including taxation and contributions as well as benefits. There seems to be no focus at present for this wider political public debate, which must be about philosophical as well as fiscal attitudes. So tonight we have just another example of shifting around old problems and creating new problems without any coherent beneficial policies.
The Bill does nothing effective to resolve the poverty trap or the unemployment trap. It leaves confusion worse confounded. It leaves untouched the hardships resulting from the Government's policy of taxing unemployment and sickness benefit, the collecting of national insurance contributions from people on sick leave, and it leaves the blind allowance at £1·25 a week. When I asked in a Question on 21st March what should be the blind allowance if it was upgraded in conformity with inflation I was told that it should be £8·21 a week. We are leaving blind people with an allowance of £1·25 when even the Government admit that taking inflation into account, and not for any other reasons, it should now be £8·21. I make no apology to your Lordships for talking about blind people, because we have had a great discussion about spectacles and the ophthalmic services. My goodness! I am worried about how many more blind people will be left with this inadequate allowance.
The Government maintain the abolition of the earnings related supplement to which thousands of workers have contributed. They have introduced a disastrous policy of housing benefits. The Government's own Ministers have had to acknowledge the need for a review of that after 18 months. Applicants are made to feel that they are means-tested mendicants. The Government pay them about £4 billion a year while the Government give nearly £3 billion a year in tax relief on mortgages, however well-off the applicants might be. The Government hesitate to make essential increases in child benefits above the present £4.2 billion but give away £3 billion in married men's tax allowance, whether or not they have any children at all.
Therefore, it is necessary to set this context for the Bill we are now discussing. It is apparently the last legislation this Session on social security and the health service, but it omits one of the most urgently needed changes—the provision of long-term benefit rates for the long-term unemployed. The Government's own Social Security Advisory

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Committee, which surely cannot be accused of electioneering, said in its 1982–3 report:
"We continue to regard as our main priority the extension to unemployed claimants of the long-term supplementary benefit scale rate."
On page 2 the report states:
"We make no apology for repeating our firm conviction that the poorest and most vulnerable people in our society should be protected whatever sacrifices have to be made by the rest of the community."
So what do we get tonight instead of these urgent and beneficial changes? We get a Bill which puts the optical services into the market place. We understand that the Government expect to save about £17 million a year by doing this. If the Government are saving £17 million a year that means they are taking £17 million a year away from people who need the services. The proposals before the House might be cheaper for some, but they will inevitably be dearer for those who are now paying about £ 12 for their spectacles.
This is a question which has been discussed in great detail. I do not propose to detain your Lordships long on this aspect of the Bill, but I must ask the noble Earl about pensioners. It was said in another place that there was not to be an exemption from charges for pensioners because not all pensioners were poor. I have to ask the noble Earl whether that is the first step towards the Government changing the prescription exemptions for National Health medicines so that pensioners no longer get their prescriptions free. If they cannot get their glasses free on the basis that not all pensioners are poor, perhaps soon we shall not be able to get our prescriptions free on the same basis.
Will the next step be that prescriptions which come from doctors do not have to go to pharmacists? Will we be able to take our EC10s, or whatever they are now called, to the department store on the ground that that is good competition—we should be able to shop around and pharmacists should not have a monopoly? Is that the way we are going? I note that the noble Lord, Lord Glenarthur, for whom I have a great respect, is shaking his head. I very much hope that he can prove me wrong. I must tell him that many people share my anxieties about this.
I must ask the noble Earl also how we are going to police this situation. Someone with a prescription may go into a shop and get some sort of glasses which are then found not to be convenient and not to be useful. These traders are not accountable to any professional body. Will the patient be able to take those glasses back? Is there any arrangement whereby they have to be changed if they are not satisfactory? Can the noble Earl give us any further information following the statement made on 20th December in the other place? .A question was raised about elderly people with serious eye problems such as cataracts and postoperative problems. I quote from column 297:
"there are those with the very poorest sight who need complicated and more expensive lenses, and I am certainly prepared to consider the evidence on that to see whether they can have continued access to NHS glasses".
That was on 20th December, and I think that it would be useful for your Lordships to know whether that statement has been taken any further.
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I will not go into many details of this debate, because I think that there have been a number of interesting propositions put to your Lordships to which we shall come back at the Committee stage, but I must refer especially to Clause 11. This provides a severe disablement allowance of £20.45 a week for people continuously incapable of work for 28 weeks on or before their 20th birthday or for people continuously incapable to the extent of 80 per cent. disablement. I wonder whether the noble Earl can tell us why the age of 20 has been fixed on? What is there that is magic about 20? It is not the age of citizenship; it is not the age of consent. I do not know what there is about 20 that makes it the age in this Bill.
I also have to ask the noble Earl, why is there the 80 per cent. limit? What is 80 per cent. disablement? Is it two legs off, one leg or one arm? Can the noble Earl explain to the House the point about this 80 per cent. disablement being continuous? Those of us who know something about the problems of disabled people realise that there are circumstances (for instance, when someone has multiple sclerosis) when there may be a remission. The person can get better for a bit. perhaps do a little job for two or three weeks and then have to have a rest. Are we to pin on people an 80 per cent. disablement label, which will mean that they are stuck with that? Surely they must be allowed to try to get better. We are trying to get all these technological aids for disabled people so that they can do a little job. They surely do not have to be either one thing or the other. The 28-week rule will be a disincentive for people to take on a job for a little while.
I want also to ask the noble Earl whether the Government propose to raise the weekly £20 disregard for therapeutic work to help disabled people to do little jobs which are of great benefit to them and to society. What are the Government's intentions regarding the £4 disregard for people on benefit who are able to work for 35 hours a week? I submit that these are fair questions to a Government who have pledged themselves in their last two manifestos to abolishing earnings rules.
The severe disablement allowance replaces the noncontributory invalidity pension. I am glad that it abolishes the household duties test for married women, but let us not congratulate the Government too much. We know that that arose from an EEC compulsory resolution which said that it was unlawful to discriminate between men and women in social insurance provisions. Will there be people who are receiving the present benefit who will be disqualified from this new benefit? I ask this question—I really have done some homework—because on 16th December in another place the junior Minister said, at col. 629:
"it is estimated that about 16.000 married or cohabiting women currently receiving the HNCIP would not qualify for severe disablement allowance".
What is to happen to them? Are they to lose their allowance, or will they be enabled to go on with a preserved right to benefit?
What consultations have the Government had with disabled organisations in order to try to work out some of those things? Many of us, in no party sense at all, have been having discussions with representatives of disabled organisations. I shall quote only one sentence

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from the Royal Association for Disability and Rehabilitation:
"The new benefit would prove a disaster".
I am sure that the Government do not want it to prove a disaster, so why has a situation arisen in which the organisations which are talking to many of us feel that it is a disaster?
I will just quickly go on to Clause 13 with Schedule 4. I am sure that many noble Lords will be surprised to know that some families get a dependency allowance for their children of 15p a week. As I understand it, that is to be discontinued under the Bill. The idea is that these dependency payments should be subsumed into child benefit. Of course that would be absolutely right. The Social Security Advisory Committee said that the proposal to replace the child dependency additions by child benefit:
"is a sound one only if there is no loss of income in real terms to families on contributed benefit".
But there is no evidence in this Bill or in the schedules that that will happen. It seems to us that these families will lose that mean little 15p a week without getting any additional benefit under the arrangements for children.
There is then the question of a spouse, who should not be earning over £80 per week. That is another earnings rule from a government who are supposed to want to abolish earnings rules. Then in Clause 19 we get the proposed taxation of occupational pensions. Occupational pensions are now, according to this Bill, to be regarded as earnings. That their pension should be regarded as earnings for taxation pensions is something which will be unacceptable to many people of all parties and of all attitidues in this House. I am only mentioning a few points to show what a ragbag of a Bill this is, as one goes on from one point to another.
I should have thought that the main objects of any Government should be to try to abolish the poverty trap and to try to abolish the unemployment trap. But now we are going to have a situation where we have a breach of the insurance principle, because these occupational pensions were paid by people's contributions. Now we are going to have this weekly earning limit of£80, plus £10 for each child. I must ask the noble Earl whether this £80, which is written into the Bill, is gross or net. Will it include housing benefit? Will it include family income supplement, taxation, savings and building society interest? Surely the Government are again bringing in a means test for people who should expect their benefits as of right because of their contributions. The Social Security Advisory Committee also said that the idea of replacing the child dependency additions by child benefit:
"is a sound one only if there is no loss of income in real terms to families on contributed benefit."
There are many other faults in this Bill which I know we shall want to take up at Committee stage. I feel that I have said enough today to suggest to your Lordships that there really must be considerable time and effort given during Committee stage to this Bill, which is a disaster as far as the most hard-up and vulnerable people in this country are concerned.
8.3 p.m.
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, we have come to the end of a very interesting debate on this Bill. I am grateful to the many noble Lords for their contributions. Before turning to the more detailed points which have been raised on the various aspects of the Bill, I should like to make some general remarks on the provisions upon which much of the debate has concentrated--namely those contained in Clauses 1 and 11.
Opposition to these clauses has, I think, in general centred on three matters. The first is the liberalisation as regards those who can sell glasses. Secondly, there is the withdrawl of state provision of glasses to most people. Thirdly, there is the the proposed new severe disablement allowance.
With regard to the sale of glasses, I must reiterate that medical opinion is firm that the wrong glasses cannot cause any damage to adult eyes. It is also a fact that most people will be aware if their glasses are incorrect in some way. Faced with these facts. we feel able to relax the total ban on sales of glasses other than by qualified opticians. This does not mean we favour or encourage wrong dispensing. Indeed, the clause makes it a statutory requirement that glasses sold by non-opticians would have to conform to the prescription given by a doctor or ophthalmic optician. We believe that glasses, like most other products, need to be safe and serviceable. However, requiring glasses to be correct does not mean that we need to legislate upon those who can sell them. Many products which are potentially more dangerous than glasses are sold and used.
As an example, I invite your Lordships to look upwards, because you are content to sit under a roof held up by scaffolding. No one has advocated a scaffolders' Bill or a scaffolding council to restrict scaffolding to those registered. I do not want to tempt fate but I believe your Lordships face a greater risk from the scaffolding falling down than from unqualified dispensers. In such cases, safeguards are attached to the products or workmanship not to the sellers.
Nothing I have heard tonight shakes our conviction that this proven way of conducting business cannot be applied to glasses. We are consulting widely with consumer and professional bodies on the content of the orders which will govern sales by non-opticians. We are convinced that conditions can be attached, which will ensure the objectives sought by many of tonight's speakers including my noble friend Lord Suffield and the noble Lord, Lord Molloy—that is, safe and serviceable glasses. One safeguard we already have in mind is to require glasses to conform to appropriate British Standards. Fears of an influx of dangerous, substandard goods. including dangerous frame materials, are therefore unfounded.
I turn to the ending of NHS glasses. It has been suggested that this will no longer permit many people access to affordable glasses. We are sure that this fear is totally unfounded. Many people already pay the full cost of their frames and nearly all the cost of lenses. The average subsidy on lenses is £5. Glasses are changed about every two to three years. Consequently, the proposals contained in Clause I mean that we are

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withdrawing a benefit worth perhaps five pence a week from most people. This benefit is at present totally indiscriminate and is given to all who choose "NHS brand" lenses.
We have heard much about pensioners. I should make it quite clear that pensioners as a group have never had free glasses. Many need simple glasses. Simple glasses are subsidised by about £2. Some pensioners losing £2 once every two years hardly constitutes the destruction of the NHS, despite what some noble Lords would appear to think.
I acknowledge that there is a small minority who are subsidised by greater amounts for special expensive lenses. About 1 per cent. of users receive over £15 per pair. Even this represents a mere fourteen pence a week. There is a fear, however, that the cost of these special lenses may rise disproportionately; that opticians will cut prices of simple glasses and load the cost on expensive ones. We doubt that this will happen. Nevertheless we are proposing to ensure that this minority does not suffer such a fate by allowing the users of expensive lenses to continue to get them through the NHS. Our negotiating strength will be put to their use to ensure a controlled price for these special lenses. To the extent that users of such lenses are on low incomes, they will also qualify for help towards the cost. Many old people needing such lenses will get them free on income grounds or have much of their charge remitted, and, of course, the higher the charges the greater the remission. We believe that no one will be denied access to the glasses they need on income grounds.
I hope I have sufficiently disposed of the rather extravagant suggestion that the new provisions portend the dismantling of the NHS. Perhaps I can also set your Lordships' minds at rest on another erroneous idea that has gained some currency: that free sight tests will be put at risk by this Bill. This is not the case, my Lords. The requirement to provide NHS sight tests is contained in the NHS Act 1977. The Bill contains no provision for a change. Charges could only be introduced by primary legislation. There is nothing in this Bill which affects that position.
Before concluding my remarks on the optical provisions in the Bill, I should like to add a few words on a matter which I know many of your Lordships will be concerned about—and rightly so. That is the question of enforcing the requirement on unregistered dispensers to dispense according to a prescription. Anyone breaking conditions contained in orders made under Section 2 I of the Opticians Act will be in breach of that section. They will be subject to a fine off 1,000. It is open to anyone to lay information before magistrates where they believe an offence has been committed. By the very nature of these offences, they cannot be committed secretly by the trader. They require the active collusion of a member of the public. We believe the risk of breaches is minimal. Traders have started to break the present law because it is clearly too restricting and has lost the necessary credibility with the public which all laws need if they are to be effective. We believe that the vast majority of people will benefit from the package of proposals.
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Moving on now to our proposals for the introduction of the new benefit, severe disablement allowance, there is no intention for there to be any correlation with regard to the incapacity. The first condition for SDA is the incapacity for work. The additional 80 per cent. disablement test is simply intended to direct resources to the most severely disabled. On the question of consultation, the Government accepted the recommendations in the official review, and we therefore thought it right to bring forward legislation as soon as possible to remove the dissatisfaction generated by the present household duties test that has been universally condemned today. None of the other options identified was practical and affordable. A delay in order to consult on the details of the scheme could have meant losing the opportunity of introducing legislation this Session.
My honourable friend the Minister for the Disabled has been consulting for some months. and debates in this House and another place formed part of the scrutiny. None of the orgnisations that have criticised this measure has come up with positive proposals for an alternative to SDA, NCIP or HNCIP other than straightforward abolition of the household duties test. As my noble friend has said, this would cost £275 million. Even if resources were available, I am far from convinced that spending them in this way would be the best means of improving the lot of disabled people. Those who criticise our proposals have made no real attempt to face the issues within present financial constraints. The fact is that we must live—all of us—within the means that the economy can afford.
Suggestions have been made that the age 20 rule should be extended in various ways. SDA, like NCIP. is intended to be an income maintenance benefit primarily for the congenitally handicapped or those disabled in childhood who never have the opportunity to work and build up a contribution record. Given this priority, the logical cut off point for the easier qualifying condition is age 16 rather than 20. We feel that we could not legitimately make a special concession for the over 20s in full time education without making similar concessions for other groups: for example, the unemployed or those looking after children or elderly relatives.
In assessing the level of disablement, we propose to apply criteria which have been successfully applied to both physical and mental disabilities in the industrial injuries and war pensions fields over many years with general public acceptance. In building on the long experience of those schemes. I am confident that the well-tried 80 per cent. disablement test will provide a much fairer and more objective basis of benefit provision than the present household duties test for HNCIP.
On the wider front, contrary to what some noble Lords have suggested today. we estimate that the introduction of SDA will initially bring in an extra 20.000 beneficiaries and that the number who will qualify each year in the future on the 80 per cent. disablement test will be some 10 per cent. higher than the number who presently qualify for HNCIP. I am sure, and I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, will agree, that these are considerable steps forward at a time when resources are severely limited. The extra cost of this will be £20 million a year.

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Turning now to other and additional matters raised by your Lordships, I shall try to respond to the main points, but if I overlook any of the issues raised, I can promise that I shall check the Official Report and write to those noble Lords I have not answered. The subject of family practitioner committees was debated at length in the spring of last year and many of the questions raised tonight were answered in debate. I shall endeavour to mention them briefly again. Our proposals are not a fragmentation of the primary care service. That criticism, we believe, is a misconception of what we are about. The committees already exist and have done so in one form or another since the inception of the NHS. Our object is to make them accountable to Ministers by directly appointing them and, secondly, to make them more efficient by enabling them to employ their own staff and to become responsible for their own administrative budgets and, as necessary, called to account. The appointment of all members of FPCs by the Secretary of State is designed solely to ensure that accountability.
Lord Ennals: Appalling.
The Earl of Caithness: My noble friend, Lord Colwyn, mentioned the question of dental deputy members for FPCs. It is a long established principle adopted in respect of deputies that provision should be made for only one where the profession or other group has a single representative on the FPC. To go beyond that would be to open up the possibility of deputies for all parties. This would obviously have undesirable results so far as continuity of experience is concerned.
Certain of your Lordships believe that our proposals will make collaboration between the districts and the FPCs more difficult. We do not believe this. On the contrary, it is expected that FPCs and DHAs will continue to collaborate closely in the provision of primary care as the Bill makes it a requirement for them so to do. Additionally, the Bill provides for automatic FPC representation on local joint consultative committees. Family practitioner committees in Scotland are administered by the health hoards. However, the situation in England, with its much larger number of patients and practitioners and generally higher population densities than Scotland, is different and admits to a solution that we have adopted. Some points have been raised about the membership of the comittees. I should like to remind noble Lords that we have taken powers to enlarge membership of committees in certain circumstances and after consultation.
Moving on to the child dependency addition, the point has been raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Jeger, that the proposed earnings rules for long term child dependency additions are simply a back door way of means testing national insurance benefits. That is not the case. There has always been an earnings rule to determine entitlement to the extra benefit for an adult dependant.
With regard to occupational pensions, I should make it clear that the Government do not wish to impose a full-blooded means test, and we do not wish to penalise the thrifty. We wish simply to draw a distinction between pensions for which a past
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employer has substantially contributed, and which probably featured in the conditions of employment, and income deriving from voluntary investment.
The noble Lord, Lord Ennals, and my noble friend Lord Cullen of Ashbourne asked what consultation took place with the optical profession before the introduction of the Bill. All organisations involved were consulted. They were invited to a meeting with my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Social Services on 8th November 1983. Since the Bill has been published, there have been consultations at official level.
The noble Lords, Lord Ennals and Lord Banks, my noble friend Lady Faithfull and the noble Baroness, Lady Jeger, raised the the short term CDA problems. They expressed concern that withdrawal of the short term CDAs would hurt the poorest and most vulnerable. However, the withdrawal will take place at a time of up-rating and no one will be worse off. In addition, two-thirds of those who will lose the short term CDA are in receipt of supplementary benefit. The withdrawal of the CDA will simply mean more supplementary benefit.
The noble Lord, Lord Ennals, asked which groups supported us when it came to the SDA. The Social Security Advisory Committee, for example, generally welcomed the proposal. I should also like to illustrate the age 20 rule. Between the ages of 16 and 19, a young person will be prevented from drawing SDA only where he is undergoing normal full-time education. Beyond that age, further education will only be a bar to entitlement if the type of course being followed is inconsistent with the finding that he is incapable of work. The noble Lords, Lord Ennals and Lord Kilmarnock, raised the question of when the Binder Hamlyn report will be published. I can only tell them that it is expected to be published at the same time as the Green Paper.
Lord Ennals: When?
The Earl of Caithness: In the future, my Lords. The noble Lords, Lord Banks and Lord Beaumont of Whitley, raised the question of the introduction of an earnings rule as a means test for the long-term CDA. I covered this point a moment ago. There is no intention of means testing national insurance benefit. There always has been an earnings rule to determine entitlement to the extra benefit for an adult dependant. The proposed earnings rules for CDAs simply ensure that the extra benefit for a child goes only to those beneficiaries for whom it was intended. I am sure we would all agree that that is very laudable.
The noble Lord, Lord Banks, asked why there are three earning rules for pensioners. The earnings rules are for different purposes. The £65 personal earnings rule is to establish that the pensioner has actually retired. The £45 earnings test for a wife is to establish that she is really dependent on the pensioner. The new £80 rule is in line with the concept of defining dependency hut at a higher level. To put the proposal in perspective, a family consisting of a pensioner, his wife and a child could have earnings of more than £100 before affecting the entitlement to the personal pension and the adult and child dependency addition.

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The noble Lords, Lord Banks and Lord Kilmarnock, referred to the speech of my noble friend Lord Trefgarne. At the time the speech was made my noble friend was speaking against the total repeal of the safeguards in the Opticians Act. The Government are keeping registration of opticians to give an informed choice of supplier. They are making it a requirement that all glasses sold accord with a recent prescription. Lord Trefgarne was speaking against self-selected glasses. The Government are not proposing this, although some noble Lords have suggested that we should. We are also consulting widely to ensure safe and serviceable glasses. This was my noble friend's objective and it is still the Government's objective.
We are grateful to the noble Lord. Lord Rugby, for starting a public debate on the matter of glasses. He raised a point with regard to the GOC. The GOC is concerned mainly with the education and registration of opticians. In respect of its rules on publicity it has strayed into areas where it has affected competition. We believe that it is necessary to regulate its activities in this area. We do this in the Bill. However, we believe that in other work it can safely be left to regulate the profession.
The noble Lord, Lord Stallard, raised the question of what we call the 924 glasses, saying that these will disappear. Of course, they will not disappear, and other NHS frames that are popular will not disappear. If they are good value for money, there is no reason to suppose that they will not hold their own in the free private market.
My noble friend Lord Orr-Ewing and the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, referred to the letter of 15th May from the BMA. 1 have seen the letter to which the noble Lords referred. They may well be correct that the letter does not represent the views of all BMA members or even all 'ophthalmologists. However, the Government judge all such representations on their merits. It is not whether the views are those of the BMA or of just a few individuals which influences us, but rather whether there are any substantive arguments which need to be considered.
The noble Lord. Lord Molloy, raised the question of the Secretary of State's appointments of all the FPC members. Although local authorities will no longer appoint four members, four of the lay appointments will be made from their nominations, and similarly in the case of DHAs. Some of the other seven lay members may also be chosen from local authority or DHA nominations, especially where more than four such authorities respectively are involved.
The question of contact lenses and the need for special treatment was also mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Molloy. There is virtually unanimous support for the view that, unlike glasses, badly fitted contact lenses can damage the eyes. This is why we are proposing in Clause 2 to strengthen the law.
The noble Lady, Lady Kinloss, asked why NHS glasses should not be available for those over 19 years of age in full-time education. NHS glasses have only ever been supplied free to those under 16, or those under 19 if in full-time education. Those over 19 in full-time education have always paid for their glasses unless they were on low incomes. If persons over 19 in
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full-time education are on low incomes they can be assessed and get their glasses either free or at a reduced cost. This will continue.
The noble Earl, Lord Attlee, suggested that SDA was a disincentive to employers to take on disabled youngsters. We believe this to be wholly speculative. Disabled youngsters capable of work obviously want to work, and experience, particularly after the International Year of the Disabled in 1981, suggests that employers are not discriminating against them.
The noble Lord, Lord Beaumont of Whitley, mentioned a comment in Standing Committee A in another place. I can take this opportunity of saying firmly that there has been a misprint. It was either a slip of the tongue or a misprint. The word "even" should have been "except". The quotation should now read:
"It has never been the perceived view in this country that it is the state's business, except for those on supplementry benefit. to expect to meet from state benefits or through taxation the full costs of bringing up children".
My noble friend Lord Cullen. the noble Lord, Lord Kilmarnock, and the noble Baroness. Lady Jeger, raised a problem relating to cataract patients. Cataract patients are treated by hospitals. It is customary for hospitals to lend glasses to those who need frequent changes of prescription. There is no need for an amendment in relation to the problem of expensive lenses, as this can be tackled in regulations.
I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Cullen for letting me have advance notice of the points he raised. His point about standards of dispensing was raised also by the noble Lord, Lord Ennals. We do not believe that permitting unqualified dispensers in itself will raise standards. However. competition between qualified opticians and other retailers will have this effect. Competition is the best enforcer of standards. We do not accept that permitting unregistered retailers to sell glasses will lead to lower standards. New entrants may not be trained to do all the things a dispensing optician can tackle. However. this does not mean that they will not perform adequately the jobs they have agreed to tackle.
As I have said, I will write to other noble Lords who have raised points. I would conclude by reiterating what my noble friend said earlier. This is a far-reaching and significant Bill, which represents the Government's continuing commitment to promoting the interests of the consumer in the health services and to achieving a more rational scheme of social security provisions. Therefore I have great pleasure in commending the Bill to your Lordships.
On Question, Bill read a second time, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

Child Abduction Bill
8.30 p.m.
Baroness Faithfull: My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time. Before embarking upon my speech, let me say how glad we are that the noble Lord, Lord Meston, is to make his maiden speech in this debate today. We are. indeed, fortunate in that he is a barrister and therefore well versed in the law.

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I am glad to speak to your Lordships about a measure which is non-political and is to protect both children and adults from the acute fear and distress caused by the taking away of a child. As your Lordships may know, this Private Member's Bill was introduced and taken through the other place by Mr. Timothy Wood, the Member of Parliament for Stevenage, who is to be praised for picking up the torch of a similar Bill unexpectedly knocked out of the hand of Mr. Rhodes James, the Member for Cambridge, by the general election last June. Mr. Timothy Wood is particularly to be congratulated as he piloted the Bill through the other place in the first Session of his first Parliament.
When the Criminal Law Revision Committee, whose chairman is Lord Justice Lawton, looked at the present state of the law concerning child abduction, it exposed how vague and anomalous it was. As was stated by the Minister in another place, Lord Justice Lawton is owed a debt of gratitude for the work of his committee, both on the subject of child abduction and on this Bill.
The Bill deals with two kinds of child stealing, and while they are distinct and the motives and results relating to them are distinct, the common factor is the abduction of a child and that is what we are seeking to control by this Bill. So this measure seeks to deal with matters of the utmost gravity: the safety and welfare of our most vulnerable members of society, and the very dangers to which their vulnerability lays them open.
The history of this measure lies in the necessity under current law to show that a person who takes a child away is doing so by force or fraud and with the intention of permanently depriving the parent of possession of that child. Two kinds of cases have led the Criminal Law Revision Committee, in its report on Offences Against the Person, to conclude that the law is inadequate and to recommend changes along the lines proposed in this Bill.
The first is the "tug of love" case, in which a parent removes a child from this country's jurisdiction altogether. Under Section 56 of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861 it is an offence called child stealing for a person to abduct by force or fraud a child under 14 with intent to deprive any parent, guardian or other person having the lawful care or charge of the child, of the possession of that child. But a proviso to that section makes it clear that:
"no person who shall have claimed any right to the possession of such child, or shall be the mother or shall have claimed to be the father of an illegitimate child, shall be liable to be prosecuted"
for an offence under that section.
The Criminal Law Revision Committee recommended that the criminal law should be extended to parents who abduct their children with the intention of taking them out of the realm. The committee's reasoning was as follows:
"If the child is taken by a parent who does not intend to leave the country … this is best dealt with by, courts having family jurisdiction as a breach of a court order and not by the criminal courts. However, the law does need to be able to act quickly if a parent abducts his child with the intention of taking him out of the country without the consent of the other spouse. Such situations cause severe distress to those having lawful control and, once the child has left the jurisdiction, obtaining his return is costly, usually slow and on occasions, impossible".
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Debates on this Bill in another place highlighted particular cases of great sadness and distress in which one parent had taken a child abroad in circumstances such that the other parent was unlikely ever to see his or her child again. This can happen even where custody has been awarded to the parent who remains in this country. I think your Lordships can imagine the amount of fear and suffering that can be caused, both to the deprived parent and also to the child who is snatched from a loving home. We must always he careful about extending the criminal law to domestic matters or family conflicts, but we are talking here about a real evil that challenges human ties between parents and children.
The effect of Clause 1 is to make it a criminal offence for someone closely connected with a child to seek to take or send him beyond the jurisdiction of the courts without the appropriate consent of others with equal ties. It does not bring within its scope simple custodial disputes between individual parents in England and Wales; nor, as I have said, does it seek to impose criminal sanctions in cases where the child remains in this country. Perhaps your Lordships will bear with me if I go through the provisions of the main clauses with some care, as I think that although it has been heartening to see that in another place this measure united all parties—as I hope it will here—it is an important measure and we must get it right.
I have described the main effect of Clause 1. Subsection (2) of the clause sets out the persons who are connected with the child for the purpose of the clause. They are: the child's parents, his guardian, a person with custody of the child under an order made by a court in England or Wales, and, in the case of an illegitimate child, a man in respect of whom there are reasonable grounds for believing that he is the child's father.
Subsection (3) of the clause defines "the appropriate consent" as being:
"the consent of each person—,

(i) who is a parent or guardian of the child; or

(ii) to whom custody of the child has been awarded … by an order of a court in England or Wales:"

or the consent of the court which made the custody order in respect of the child; or,
"the leave of the court granted on an application".
under either of the Acts mentioned in paragraph (c). These provisions enable a child's parent or guardians who are unable to agree on any question affecting the child's welfare to apply to the courts for a direction about the matter in dispute.
Subsection (5) of this Bill has been the subject of much sincere and informed debate. It is important that Clause 1 should bite on those who intend to abduct their children abroad: but it is also very important that innocent travel arrangements between parents and children should not be unduly hindered by the need to protect the minority of children from parental abduction. Accordingly, the Bill makes it clear that the burden falls on the prosecution to show that the defendant did not come within subsection (5). However, it will be for the defendant to adduce sufficient evidence to raise an issue as to the applicability of the subsection.

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Subsections (5) and (6), taken together with the requirement of the consent of the Director of Public Prosecutions for a prosecution for an offence under Clause 1 should ensure that a parent will not have to go to inordinate lengths to contact an estranged spouse before, for example, taking a child on a trip to France. But, although it is right that a parent who stands charged with a criminal offence in respect of his own child should have proper safeguards in respect of where the burden of proof lies, it is also right that the offence, as formulated in the Bill, should exist and be enforced to catch abductors in "tug of love" cases.
Subsection (7) merely defines relevant terms, but subsection (8) is of considerable interest, as it protects a child who is in the care of a local authority or a voluntary organisation from abduction, subject to the provisions of the schedule to this Bill. Perhaps detailed consideration of the schedule should await this Bill's Committee stage. I am sure that none of your Lordships would dissent from the general principle of extending the protection of the criminal law to these children as to others.
Perhaps I may invite your Lordships to look at Part II of the Bill as it relates to Clause 1. It has been important to ensure that there should be a similar offence of abduction by a parent of a child under Scots law. This effect is achieved by Part II of the Bill and means that it would not be possible, for example, for a parent to abduct a child in England and go to ground for some time in Scotland before taking the child abroad.
The second risk to children which the Bill addresses is the one against which every wise parent warns his child—that of staying or going away with a stranger. I urge noble Lords to note that there is at present no offence with which a stranger who keeps a child away from those who should be looking after him can be charged, unless the abduction involved force or fraud or there is further dreadful assault whose intention can be proved. But there is intrinsic harm in the abduction iself, both because it is morally wrong and because of the grave emotional consequences to the child victims and to the adults from whom the children are taken, who are themselves victims of a grievous loss.
The fact that a stranger entices a child away with promises and bribes rather than fear or force makes the activity no less dangerous and is wrong. It is to this activity that Clause 2 relates. Under Clause 2, it will be an offence for a person not connected with the child in the way defined in Clause I to remove him from or keep out of the lawful control of any person who should be looking after him. There is. of course, a defence of "reasonable excuse", so that no one looking after a lost child or rescuing a child from danger should run the risk of prosecution.
In addition, there are further defences relating to the person's belief as to the age of the child or his relationship to the child. Where a man believes that he is the father of an illegitimate child a successful defence against a charge under Clause 2 would probably place him well within the ambit of Clause 1, where he commits an offence if he intends to take the child out of the country. Clause 3 of the Bill amplifies the reference to taking, sending and detaining in
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Clauses 1 and 2 to include those responsible for causing a child to be abducted. It is obviously right that, where a parent or a stranger has employed or threatened others to do the dirty work, these people should also be liable to prosecution for abduction.
Clause 4 gives the penalties for an offence under Clauses 1 or 2 of the Bill. The maximum is a term of imprisonment not exceeding seven years. There will, of course, be many cases with mitigating circumstances where the courts will impose much less severe penalties; but maximum penalties must be adequate for the worst cases, and I believe that these are about right. In addition, Clause 4 provides that no prosecution for an offence under Clause 1 shall be instituted without the consent of the Director of Public Prosecutions, and I have already mentioned the desirability of treading lightly in relation to prosecutions about activities within families.
Part III of the Bill embodies the consequential amendments and repeals with which I shall not trouble your Lordships in today's debate. I should. however, make it clear that both offences under the Bill will be extraditable under the Extradition Act 1870 and that those convicted will also be returnable to Commonwealth countries under the Fugitive Offenders Act 1967. This should assist in some cases where the parent has abducted a child abroad, but I should stress that our hope is that attempts to commit a criminal offence of this kind will be frustrated by the criminal law before the child is actually removed.
This Bill is necessary. The increase in the divorce rate, the greater freedom of international movement, the growing number of international marriages, the increasing number of separations, and the greater number of cases involving the snatching of children are important reasons demonstrating the urgent need for this measure.
To conclude, perhaps I should commend to your Lordships a spirit of cautious optimism in taking forward this measure. There is no question about the need for such a measure or about the inadequacy and antiquity of the present law. Nor is there any question about its importance or its contribution to the strands of the criminal, civil and international law which must be woven together fully to protect our children. I am confident that the measure will control some of the worst attempts at child abduction.
But a note of caution should not be omitted. This Bill is but one strand in the net that I have mentioned, which must be closely woven in order to protect our children. Work is being taken forward with the Law Commissions on reciprocal enforcement of custody orders, and international agreements relating to kidnapping and abduction must be pursued with vigour. I do not think that it would be right to say that if this Bill is passed, there will be no sad cases of child abduction, but I do think that the Bill is an important part of the armoury of legisaltion, enforcement and agreement which we need. I hope that, as in another place, your Lordships will feel able to support this Bill without any political reservations, so that its smooth progress through this House will ensure that it becomes law without delay. My Lords, I beg to move.
Moved, That the Bill he now read a second time.—(Baroness Faithfull.)
8.49 p.m.
Lord Meston: My Lords, in addressing your Lordships' House for the first time, it is my hope that I shall be as brief and uncontroversial as is this Bill. This Bill is welcome. Clearly, considerable thought has gone into its drafting and it fulfils two objects. First, it fills the gap which may have been exposed in the law relating to kidnapping. Secondly, it replaces the prolixity of Section 56 of the Offences Against the Person Act, which requires proof of fraud or force.
It covers a wide range of abductions from the angry, thwarted parent to the sexual pervert to the mentally unbalanced. It covers the long-term abduction through to the short-term snatch. It may even cover the distresssing case of the demented or deranged person who may remove a pram from outside a shop. The main reason why this Bill is so welcome is that any legislation which inhibits unilateral action of this sort by parents or by other people must be valuable.
If I concentrate on Clause 1—that is, abduction by parents out of the United Kingdom—I hope that I shall be forgiven. It is a mischief of which I have some knowledge as a practitioner in this area of the law. If I may agree with the noble Baroness, not only is the Bill welcome, it is necessary. There is an increasing problem because of the speed and mobility provided by international transport, and also because of the growing rate of marital breakdown. The problem of course is most acute where the breakdown of the marriage involved is between parents of different cultures and different nationalities.
It is hard to describe the anguish of a mother—and it is usually a mother but not invariably—when she realises that her child has gone, and gone to a foreign country whose legal systems may have no respect, or no great respect, for a British custody order, and whose society has no respect for a mother—at least as against a father. It has been described as rather like bereavement without the certainty of death.
It is hard to convey the fear of parents who believe that their child, or children, may be abducted. It is a fear which can linger for years undiminished by the passage of time. undiminished by expedients such as changing names, moving home, changing schools. Above all, it is hard to assess the impact on the children themselves. It is not always a great adventure to be taken away; it is often traumatic. One must remember that these children are children whose parents have already done them the great disservice of separating, often acrimoniously, and sometimes violently. For those children therefore the fixed points in their lives become of greater importance, the home and the school, and of course an abduction deprives them of those fixed points. Any measure which diminishes those cruelties must be welcomed.
The second main reason why this Bill is welcome is that it takes the sole responsibility of bringing the matter before a court from the aggrieved parent, and now that responsibility is to be shared by the prosecuting authorities. If I may echo the noble Baroness, one hesitates before any extension of the criminal law into the sensitive area of family law, and I venture to suggest that few parents who snatch children are being consciously vindictive or deliberately using children as pawns, which is often an
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unhelpful phrase. They are often motivated by more complex emotional responses.
Furthermore, there are existing legal and administrative safeguards and procedures. I shall not list them all; they are quite well known. But the reason why the criminal law needs to be introduced into this area is, first of all, despite all the existing safeguards, the problem of abduction continues. It still happens and it is still all too easy to get a child out of the United Kingdom. Indeed, it is not always safe to mention in public the means by which that is done. Secondly, it is welcome because it is not just a private matter between a mother and a father. The public interest should intervene to prevent and punish this kind of misbehaviour. A welcome side effect may well be that the police will become more willing to get involved in what hitherto they would have regarded as domestic disputes.
Thirdly, it covers what is sometimes called the prelitigation snatch. Fourthly, hitherto bringing the matter before the court, or a court—which means the civil court—has depended upon the resolve and the funds of the aggrieved parent. Not only did the parents face the expense of proceedings but may also in many cases have faced the emotional constraint. There must have been many a mother, advised of her right to apply to the civil court to commit the father to prison for contempt, who has felt the fear that she would come to be seen by the child as having been responsible for having had the father sent to prison.
Despite the desirability of criminal sanctions, it is certainly my hope that the abducting parent will still be first and foremost answerable to the court whose order has been flouted. No doubt where the parent has been dealt with for contempt of the order the Director of Public Prosecutions will not expose him, or her, to the double penalty of a prosecution under this legislation. I hope also that a warning of the criminal offence hereby created under Clause I will appear with some prominence on all custody orders.
Unfortunately in the last analysis a determined parent will not worry about criminal sanctions if he feels that he can get away with it. Prevention and detection must always be better than punishment. Extradition can be a cumbersome and protracted procedure; but this Bill is nevertheless welcome, in the noble Baroness's phrase as one strand in the net. The way ahead, however, lies with international conventions directed to the speedy return of children to the countries of residence.
There already are in existence the Council of Europe Convention and the Hague Convention, yet to be ratified by this country. There is clearly a pressing need to consider whether the advantages of such conventions in their present form outweigh the disadvantages, and there are disadvantages in particular with relation to the wrongfully imported child. That particular disadvantage which has troubled many people is the obligation imposed on this country to return, without any due inquiry, a child to countries where the welfare of that child is not the paramount legal consideration.
I venture to suggest that the advantages of ratification nevertheless outweigh those disadvantages, particularly if it is one more means of achieving the

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speedy return of children to this country, being the country of origin. Meanwhile, the sooner this Bill becomes law the better.
8.58 p.m.
Lord Mishcon: My Lords, in the course of what many of us thought was a most creditable first performance from the Dispatch Box, the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, asked us to envisage at least the possibility that the scaffolding in this roof might fall upon us. If that is a fate that has to befall your Lordships' House, I am so glad that it did not occur before the noble Lord, Lord Meston, made his notable maiden speech. It is a pleasure for a professional colleague to congratulate upon his maiden speech someone who is a barrister, and. if I may say so, the son of a very reputed and notable lawyer whose publications, indeed, included commentaries upon many Acts of Parliament which have helped fellow practitioners understand them all the better. To hear a son follow in his father's footsteps and speak from his own experience at the Bar for the benefit of your Lordships' House on this Bill was a pleasure that we look forward to being repeated many times in the future.
We are also very grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Faithfull. Not for the first time is she coming forward with measures of humanity. The Bill which she is introducing into this House commends, as she rightly said, support from all sides of your Lordships' House. There are no politics in this, and if there were I should like to believe that it would be a political unity in any event that welcomed this Bill—which is necessary, if I may summarise it, for three main reasons.
First, there was a case in the Court of Appeal, Regina v. Daily, which made it abundantly clear that no criminal offence was committed if a parent took away his own child under 16 in any circumstances, and between the ages of 16 and 18 if the child was unmarried. In those circumstances no criminal offence at all was committed; and that is the present state of the law. Secondly, in regard to any third party, not a parent, we have to go back, as your Lordships have already been told, to the Offences Against the Person Act 1861, Section 56 of which makes it a necessary ingredient to have either fraud or force before a criminal act is committed. The third reason for the necessity of this Bill, quite apart from your Lordships having been reminded of the present unfortunate state of the multiplication of divided families, separation and divorces—not a matter of which society and our country can be proud—is that nevertheless, in that atmosphere, one has to admit that where any one of these offences occurs in regard to a parent who has run off with a child and taken that child abroad, extradition is impossible but will be made possible by this Bill. That means an effective way of dealing with a situation where no such way exists at the moment.
So this is a necessary, humane and sensible Bill. But that does not mean that there are not matters dealt with in this Bill which will merit your Lordships' concentrated concern. If I may, I am merely going to mention three of them, and I shall do that very shortly. Reference was made to your Lordships of the fact that
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this Bill is really the product of the Fourteenth Report of the Criminal Law Revision Committee in respect of Offences Against the Person. As the noble Baroness, Lady Faithfull, rightly said, we owe a great debt of gratitude to that committee and to the chairman of the Criminal Law Revision Committee, Lord Justice Lawton.
When the committee considered the aspect with which we have been dealing under Part I of the Bill—namely, in regard to parents and in regard to third parties abducting children—the committee came to the conclusion that the upper age limit ought to be 14, and not 16 as in the Bill. I am going, if I may, to quote just a few sentences from paragraph 239 of the committee's report, where they say:
"We consider that an age limit of 14 is appropriate for these offences. If a person unlawfully detains a child above that age without the child's consent he may of course be charged with unlawful detention. If, however, a child over 14 consents to be taken away from his or her parents, we do not consider that any offence should be committed, unless the taking is for unlawful sexual purposes. Practical reasons have led us to fix the age at 14 since parental control after that age may be difficult or non-existent".
The age under Part I of the Bill is 16, and not 14. That, therefore, has gone against the recommendation of the committee. When one looks at the age of 16, one wonders whether at least it ought not to be debated with great anxiety by your Lordships in due course, as to whether the age of 16 is right and convenient; because of course, as we all know, in the Family Division orders are made in respect of children until the age of 18 and there is also the question of local authority care and orders in that respect, too, which are made up to the age of 18. So when we come to further stages of the Bill I think we shall have to consider very carefully, hearing in mind especially that we are going against the recommendation of the Criminal Law Revision Committee in this respect, the question of age.
There is another respect in which, in this Bill, we vary the recommendations of the Criminal Law Revision Committee. It may look as though it is a very minor matter, but when we are dealing with a parent who has taken a child out of the United Kingdom and who commits a criminal offence under this Bill—and previous speakers have stressed how necessary it is to be very careful before one starts making criminal offences relating to purely family matters, as between parents and children and wife and husband—there is a defence under Clause 1 of the Bill. I am looking at subsection (5)(c) of that clause, which reads:
"the other person has unreasonably refused to consent."
That means that this Bill does not merely apply to people who have been before the Family Division for any reason at all, or who, indeed, have gone to any court in respect of the custody of children, or access to the children. That means that this Bill—and I appreciate that the Director of Public Prosecutions would have to sanction a prosecution—can relate to where a husband and wife living perfectly peacefully together; where the husband is offered a job in France, let us say, and wants to take his son aged 15 with him: and where the wife says, "I am not leaving England because you have a job in France. I love England. And you are not taking the boy with you!" The father, in respect of a family which, as I have said, has never been before any court at all, and where no matrimo-

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nial proceedings have been necessary or have been brought, thereupon takes the son, feeling he is quite entitled to do it, to France, where he is going to be employed for a number of years.
We are suddenly bringing into a criminal act a situation where the Director of Public Procecutions, upon the complaint of a mother and a wife, in those circumstances, has to adjudicate, presumably as to whether or not the wife was reasonable in her refusal; and, furthermore, if he does authorise a prosecution, that is a matter which comes before a criminal court. At the moment, I do not see where, in those circumstances, a father can go for guidance, because there is no civil proceding in respect of the family differences at all: there is nothing by way of a divorce or a judicial separation which has occurred or, indeed, is wanted by either party. So that is another matter that we shall have to look at with some concern, anxiety and care in the future stages of this Bill.
Lastly, I ought to point out to your Lordships, because it may not be apparent, that this Bill differs from the report of the Criminal Law Revision Committee in one other respect; and that is in the penalties which are to be imposed under this Bill. They are in fact greater than the Criminal Law Revision Committee recommended. I think that your Lordships will find that I am right, and that the Criminal Law Revision Committee had in mind, in one case, a maximum sentence of three years if the matter went on indictment, whereas this Bill recommends seven years, and in the other case they had in mind two years and, again, this Bill recommends a greater sentence than that. These arc matters to which we shall have to give some amount of care in the future stages of the Bill. But on Second Reading, without any hesitation from these Benches, I commend it to your Lordships' approval.
9.11 p.m.
The Lord Chancellor (Lord Hailsham of Saint Marylebone): My Lords, if she will allow me to say so, my noble friend Lady Faithfull has done a real service by bringing this Bill before your Lordships' House and has done it so well that it will render my task in expressing the view (which I am about to do) that the Government consider it an admirable Bill, much easier and, I hope, my speech much more succinct than it might otherwise have been. I must next congratulate the maiden speaker—on an unusual topic, if he will allow me to say so, for a maiden speech. He showed us a command of the technical considerations which make this Bill necessary and desirable which did him credit. I hope that on other matters, both in this field and in others, he will enlighten us again. I should like to take the opportunity of wishing him a long and happy membership of this House.
To the noble Lord, Lord Meston (who raised, very properly, the question of the Hague Convention) I think I am in a position to say that it is my intention to introduce legislation to enable the Hague and European Conventions to be ratified so soon as a legislative opportunity occurs. To that extent I thank him for giving me the opportunity of saying that.
The problems connected with child abduction have had a rather curious and chequered legal history into
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which I shall not go in any detail. But I think that perhaps, in view of the fact that the ground elsewhere has been fairly well cultivated, I should like to say a word or two about it. There was the Offences against the Person Act of 1861 which, in Section 56, limits the offence to cases where there is force or fraud and provides that parents should not be liable to prosecution under it. The latter seems to me to he an odd exclusion. My own view, for what it is worth, is that children are just as much deserving of the protection of the criminal law in this field as in any other. Experience has—at least in my judgment —established that parents ought to be liable to criminal penalties in serious cases no less than any other class of person because there is a growing field of case in which the child needs protection against the unilateral action of a parent. Incidentally—although it has not been explicitly said in this discussion, it has been implied throughout—the other parent has feelings and rights to be protected against the spouse who takes unilateral action.
I feel therefore that it is right that we should legislate in this field. It is also right to make the consent of the custodial person in question the criterion, rather than force or fraud, and rather than the other more esoteric criteria which might otherwise be introduced. As regards a stranger, I think it is right to make the absence of lawful excuse the right criterion under Clause 2.
Going on with my discussion of the existing law, the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, referred to the case of Daily in the Court of Appeal. As he rightly said, the Court of Appeal after a rather unusual hearing decided two things: first, that the law of kidnapping, to which I shall come in a moment, did not apply to children under a certain age; and, secondly, that parents could not be guilty of it under the age of 18, with a minor exception, even if the children were otherwise protected. That case is, in fact, under discussion in your Lordships' House. It was heard two or three weeks ago and I presided at the Appellate Committee. It is expected that the report of the Appellate Committee will give rise to a judgment fairly soon.
I can tell the House—because these hearings are held in public and the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, will be able to infer what I mean—that their Lordships of the Appellate Committee did not think it necessary to call upon the appellant to reply to the respondent's argument. So that the law of kidnapping is another parameter—if I may borrow a phrase that is popular nowadays—in the calculation which we must make.
The law of kidnapping is a very old common law offence indeed. It can be punished by imprisonment for life; that is to say, there is no limit to the sentence of imprisonment which can be imposed. Everybody agrees that this offence exists, from the earliest textbooks to the most modern, but it has this peculiar history, that between about 1680 and the 20th century there were no prosecutions at all. Since about 1970, prosecutions have been fairly frequent, usually, but not always, at the instance of the Director of Public Prosecutions. But it has had this curious result: that the long abeyance into which the offence fell in practice has led to a certain imprecision and doubt about the necessary ingredients of the offence.

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When the Appellate Committee delivers its judgment—which, as I say. I trust will not be long—we hope that some of the imprecisions and doubts will have been removed. But there are some points, at any rate, which will not be available to the House in its legal jurisdiction to make certain, owing to the nature of the facts which were then before it. For instance, the question of the desirability or otherwise of having the director's consent necessary in a prosecution for kidnapping, as well as child abduction under this Bill, would not be open to the Appellate Committee or to this House in its appellate jurisdiction to entertain one way or the other. This is a matter which we may have to consider.
My noble friend Lady Faithfull has covered the ground so fully that I can, I think, say very little more about the content of the Bill. I shall say a word or two to the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, though the three points which he raised can probably more usefully be dilated upon at the Committee stage.
In passing, I should like to say—this bears on the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Meston—that I am one of the many who hold the view, which I believe the Criminal Law Revision Committee share, and probably the Court of Appeal in Daily, that in ordinary cases of not very great seriousness the family jurisdication of the civil courts is probably adequate to deal with child snatching. But there are very many cases one knows of, both of kidnapping and of child abduction, which are clearly within the field of public law, with criminal sanctions being absolutely imperative.
If I may trespass upon the time of the House in relation to the facts in Daily, the father in that case, who subsequently got off free, had committed two (not one) abductions—one in 1978, so far as I remember, and one in 1981. On the first occasion he came upon the mother, when the child was only two, with three hired bullies (who subsequently got three years for their pains) armed with knives and other weapons of offence, dragged the child away and took it to New Zealand. The mother, with persistence, followed the child to New Zealand and got it hack by the process of law. But after another three years, in 1981, the child then being five, the man came back again—this time alone—and took the child, kicking and screaming in its pyjamas, away from its mother's arms to Dublin. Any of your Lordships would, I believe, say that if that is not against the law, it ought to be. This is a matter which will be against our law, if the Bill is passed.
Part II of the Bill deals with the situation in Scotland. Clause 2 deals with strangers. Let me give an example of where Clause 2 might be of importance. In 1972 the defendant in a case had the well-known name of Jones. He was aged 40. He met two girls aged 10 at the local swimming baths. He travelled with them on the same bus and paid their fares. The girls bought sweets with their bus fare money. The man then suggested to the girls that they should go for a walk
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with him. They agreed. He told the girls to go home and change and to hurry up, and that he would give them some sweets when they returned. They returned to the house of one of the girls and her mother, because she noticed that the girls were eating sweets, asked them where they had been. They told her the truth. The police were informed and went to the rendezvous where the defendant was waiting. The defendant admitted that he had intended to commit an indecent assault. He was charged with an attempt to commit an offence under Section 20 of the Sexual Offences Act. The judge rightly had to direct the jury that they would have to acquit the defendant because of the rules relating to proximity.
This kind of case illustrates the point that one is trying to make; namely, that a revision of the law, more or less on the lines recommended by the Criminal Law Revision Committee and Lord Justice Lawton, is overdue. Conduct which is socially criminal and connected with an evil intention shows I believe that we should seize this opportunity to enact this piece of legislation.
I would say this to the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, on one of his three points, which he might care to ponder before the Committee stage. He gave the example of a father finding employment in France and being the father of a boy of 15 whom he, unilaterally, intends to take away against the will of the mother and who asks what he can do to protect himself. It is very clear that in such a case the child ought to be warded, and that the courts ought to decide the matter under the family jurisdiction. If after that the father unilaterally took the child away, the necessary consequences would follow.
I am not wholly convinced that 16 is a worse age than 14, but we can go into that matter later. I am very glad indeed that all noble Lords have taken such a friendly view of the Bill. I hope that it will now be given a Second Reading.
Baroness Faithfull: My Lords, I will first congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Meston, on his clear knowledgeable, thoughtful and compassionate speech. It was the kind of speech which Members of this House welcome, and we hope that he will speak often in your Lordships' House.
I am most grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, for all the points he has made. I concur with him that. although we agree on the basic principles of this Bill, there are points to be discussed at Committee stage. I am most grateful to him for having brought forward these points.
To the noble and learned Lord, may I offer my thanks for the fascinating history he has given us in respect of abduction, kidnapping and child-snatching. I could have done with even longer, to hear all that he has to say on both the past and the present. I thank all noble Lords, and the noble and learned Lord, for taking part in this debate.
On Question, Bill read a second time, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

Hong Kong: Future
9.26 p.m.
Lord Fanshawe of Richmond Lord Fanshawe of Richmond rose to ask Her Majesty's Government what is their current approach to the negotiations with the People's Republic of China on the future of Hong Kong, in the light of the recent visit by the Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary to China and Hong Kong?
The noble Lord said: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order paper. The reason I have raised this problem this evening is the need felt by many people that your Lordships' House should make some comments on the situation which now faces the people of Hong Kong following the lengthy negotiations, which are still continuing. between Her Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom and the People's Republic of China. The thoughtful and sensitive debate in another place last week, about which we have read, underlines the need for this House also to put forward its views.
All parties and all Members of both Houses of Parliament here at Westminster wish to show the People's Republic of China and the people of Hong Kong our deep concern for the future of the territory. At least 10 noble Lords have put down their names to speak to this Unstarred Question, which underlines the point I have made. I am particularly glad that the noble Lord, Lord MacLehose of Beoch, will also be speaking. He is an old personal friend of mine and everybody who knows Hong Kong will be well aware of the fact that he was not only the longest-serving Governor of Hong Kong but also, in my view and in the view of most people who know Hong Kong, the greatest. most far-sighted and most successful Governor that Hong Kong has had during its 142 years of history.
My interest stems from the occasion when I visited Hong Kong for the first time 22 years ago, as a young Member of Parliament in another place, and as Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Secretary of State for Air. I was fascinated at the time by the extent to which and the speed at which the then colony of Hong Kong was developing. And I was surprised and rather shocked at the lack of interest in that dynamic place that I found here at Westminster.
Soon after, I formed the Anglo-Hong Kong All Party Parliamentary Group. I became its first chairman, and I remained chairman for six years until 1970. In 1970 I was honoured to be made a Minister at the Foreign Office after the general election, with responsibility for Hong Kong.
Soon afterwards I commenced negotiations for the exchange of ambassadors between Great Britain and the People's Republic of China. These negotiations were concluded at the end of 1971 and I flew to Peking in June 1972 as the first Western Foreign Office Minister to visit the People's Republic of China since the revolution which took place in 1949, and I signed the agreement in Peking at that time.
I think my few words will indicate my interest and my concern for the future of Hong Kong. Of course, there must be many doubts in Hong Kong at present. I know from experience, having been in Hong Kong
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and Macao at the time of the cultural revolution in 1967, and having seen what occurred during that unfortunate period, that there are understandably deep worries and that different ideas—some realistic, some not so realistic—are being put forward at present. No one likes change. I suspect there are one or two noble Lords in the Chamber this evening who would prefer not to see changes of any kind taking place—not just in Hong Kong or the Far East but perhaps in their own personal lives or in this Chamber as proposed by some people outside.
I should like briefly to make a few points and to put forward a few thoughts at a time which I realise is extremely difficult and sensitive in the negotiations now taking place. Mr Chi Peng-Fei, who is leading the ministerial team in China at present, was Foreign Minister of China at the time I was in the Foreign Office, and I grew to know him quite well. Indeed, he visited my house in the country in England. I hope that he and his team will listen carefully and take into account the views expressed here by noble Lords tonight and the views expressed last week in the other place.
The time-scale of these negotiations is very tight. The impression at the moment is that the Chinese Government would like to see these negotiations finished by September. I ask my noble friend whether she will comment in her reply on the fact of the parliamentary timetable, which, as all of us know in this Chamber, entails both Houses of Parliament rising for the summer Recess at the end of July and not returning until October. This will inevitably make it impossible for Westminster to give its opinion—its very important opinion—on whatever agreement is reached.
It is very important that the right agreement is reached. That agreement must be right and workable if it is to function in Hong Kong and, from the point of view of the People's Republic of China, it may be that this agreement could be a guideline for use in other negotiations affecting other areas, not necessarily Hong Kong, that they might have in years ahead.
I believe that this agreement must be set out in great detail in order to create that confidence which is necessary for any such agreement to work. I certainly wish to he satisfied that aspects covering security and finance are fully covered in addition to other aspects such as the law, freedom of religion and freedom of speech which have been mentioned in the debate in another place and will no doubt be mentioned by many of your Lordships tonight.
We in the United Kingdom and, I believe, Her Majesty's Government, have already made clear the determination of the British people and their Government to fulfil our moral obligations to the people in Hong Kong. In that context, I should like to pay tribute to the members of the delegation of unofficial members of EXCO and LEGCO who have been in London during the past few days. I believe that this delegation has cleared the air. Some of them are old friends of mine who I have known for many years. They and their predecessors over the past 20 or 30 years, in giving their time and their effort, have

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managed to help and guide successive governors and the people of Hong Kong into the development that has taken place today.
A few honourable Members in another place, in my view, were casting quite unwarranted aspersions upon this delegation in the debate last week. I do not believe that in any way any of us—certainly in this House—would wish to cast aspersions on their good faith and hard work. Their views may be controversial, but that is the stuff of politics. That is what it is all about. We are now trying to seek a way forward. Inevitably certain views given and put forward by some people may well be controversial.
We must all try to achieve a realistic outcome to these talks. Although noble Lords in this Chamber are not involved in the day-to-day discussions or the detail of the negotiations (which are of course a matter for governments), I personally feel that we should try to strengthen the democratic representative structures within Hong Kong.
At the same time, I should like to put down a warning that such representative structures, unless devised with great care, could entail dangers and strains, with the establishment of political parties from the extreme left to the extreme right and with all the pressures and difficulties that could follow and the spill-out on relationships with the People's Republic of China over the last few years of the lease.
What is on offer? What is on offer is a remarkable new idea. It is a remarkable solution—that is, two different political systems working side by side in one country. Many of your Lordships will, I know, have visited some of the new economic zones which have been set up along the borders of the People's Republic of China. I myself visited the economic zone of Shen Zen, which is now working and working quite successfully, but this is an economic free enterprise zone within the political ambit of China. What is now being put forward is both a political and an economic zone, which will be a political system and an economic system very different from those in other parts of the Chinese People's Republic. I believe personally that that is an imaginative and workable concern, provided that all the details are fully worked out.
What is our strength in this negotiation? Nothing in international life and international affairs will guarantee that any agreement reached between nations is kept to. There is no one who can produce that sort of guarantee, but there are two aspects which I think strengthen our arm in these negotiations. As was said in the other place, China, under many different régimes, since 1911 has never breached any international treaty. It has never breached any of the treaties made with us over Hong Kong, even though it did not recognise those treaties and maintained that it was forced to sign them. Therefore is it not unlikely that there will be a breakdown of a new agreement freely negotiated now. even though the present regime may change in the years ahead, even though the men in Peking may be different in 10 or 20 years' time from the people who are there today?
The second strength is the great, invisible trading assets of Hong Kong; the confidence; the skill; the working people—the Chinese people who have built up Hong Kong to be what it is today under the
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guidance and leadership of devoted British officials. If this is dissipated, Hong Kong will no longer be Hong Kong as it is today: it will become a desert. That will not be what Peking—or Beijing, as it is now called—would wish to see. Therefore it is not in Beijing's interest nor in Hong Kong's interest nor in Britain's interests to see these discussions fail.
Perhaps I should say that we should be careful of doubting the sincerity of those with whom we are negotiating. There are great dangers in this. If you are going into a negotiation, whether it be a business negotiation or a political negotiation, and if you start by doubting the sincerity of those to whom you are talking, you may as well pack up and not even start the negotiation at all.
So in conclusion, the views expressed tonight will be studied in great detail in Beijing and Hong Kong. I have no doubt that during the talks our negotiators, led by our ambassador in Beijing, a very skilful expert on China. Sir Richard Evans, helped by Sir Edward Youde, the Governor of Hong Kong, will mix care with their realism, never forgetting our commitments to the people of Hong Kong.
9.42 p.m.
Lord MacLehose of Beoch: My Lords, it is a great pleasure for me to follow the noble Lord, Lord Fanshawe, with whom I had the honour of working when he was Minister responsible for the Foreign Office and I was Governor of Hong Kong. I do not remember disagreeing with him often then. I certainly do not disagree with anything he has said tonight, with the exception of what he has said about myself.
I am certainly very pleased that he has set down this Unstarred Question because it gives us an opportunity to comment on the Government's approach to the future of Hong Kong as set out in the Foreign Secretary's statement, first in Hong Kong and then in another place on 16th May. I should like to say straight away that I think he was absolutely right to say that the concept of British administration after 1997 was now unrealistic. Palatable or unpalatable, it was an inescapable conclusion. Now it leaves those concerned to concentrate on defining alternative arrangements which both Governments believe will be realistic and which will allow everyone to know what their future prospects are.
It was most remarkable and helpful that it was the Chinese Government itself, which, from the outset. recognised that the object for successor arrangements in Hong Kong should be continuity, that it should be managed quite differently from the rest of China and that the essentials of present systems and freedoms, including the capitalist system. should be maintained.
The Foreign Secretary defined very well what these essentials are. While a great deal will depend on the detail contained in the eventual agreement, surely we can welcome the objectives towards which both governments are working. Nevertheless, a great many people in Hong Kong are deeply worried about their future. We have had a visit of the unofficial members of the executive and legislative council to explain to us

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what they believe these worries are. I should say that in the circumstances I think it was their clear duty to do this. I associate myself with everything which the noble Lord, Lord Fanshawe, has said about them. I personally am deeply indebted to many of them.
It is very important that these worries of the people in Hong Kong should be met, so far as possible, by us, by the Chinese Government, or by the Hong Kong Government, or by an adjustment of attitudes of the people in Hong Kong. I suggest that for our part first we can do our best to ensure that the agreement which will be signed between Britain and China contains sufficient detail for future arrangements to be clear. I feel sure that this is exactly what we are doing.
Surely, the Chinese Government, too, will accept the importance of including in an agreement the detailed implications of the very imaginative ideas that they have put forward. Secondly, people in Hong Kong want to be sure that the arrangements will last. Chinese leaders have said that they will last for at least 50 years after 1997 and it is, of course, very important that this, too, should be included in the agreement. But additionally there is concern that the basic law which will eventually define Hong Kong's administration under the constitution of China may detract from the arrangements in the Sino-British agreement. The Secretary of State has spoken of a binding international agreement. It would be helpful if the noble Baroness, the Minister of State, would confirm that we have no reason whatever to anticipate that the provisions of the basic law will breach the provisions of the agreement.
Many people in Hong Kong are anxious to obtain assurance piled on assurance about their future. This is understandable and for historical reasons that are well known. But I am afraid that the assurance that an international agreement can ever provide cannot be entirely complete whether in this case or any other. However, one can say that there is every prospect of this agreement holding up—and this is for a very wide variety of reasons so well put in the debate in another place that I will not repeat them tonight. although the noble Lord, Lord Fanshawe, did refer to one very important aspect.
Secondly—and I must say this—a chorus of distrust from Hong Kong would be the worst possible approach to the future. After all, its success is inextricably bound to a close, positive and, I should hope, productive relationship with the Chinese Government. Some people in Hong Kong would say, "Very well. We will work on the best assumption, as you suggest; but where can we go and who will be responsible for us, should we try to go there if things go wrong?" It is very important that the community of Hong Kong should stick together during the run-up to 1997 determined to make a success of the future as it has of the past. For my part, I think that people are more likely to stay in Hong Kong and not to leave if they have some assurance, first, that they will be free to leave, if leave they must, and, secondly, that Her Majesty's Government will do their best to ensure that the effective rights that holders of British dependent territories citizens' passports now have will be no less after 1997 than they were before.
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We may think these contingencies too remote to consider at this stage, but they seem much more immediate to people in Hong Kong. I do not expect the noble Baroness, the Minister of State, to cover these matters tonight, but I ask her to note that, on these questions, something from the British Government could make an enormous difference to maintaining confidence at the time the agreement is published, as we hope it will be, later this year. Far from inviting an exodus, I believe that it would go a long way to forestalling it.
Moreover, one must remember that in the interval between 1984 and 1997 a great deal will become clearer to people in Hong Kong, and indeed here. The Chinese Government and their actions in and about Hong Kong should provide the best possible proof that current fears are groundless—if, as I believe, groundless they are. Meanwhile, I urge the Hong Kong people, and in particular those in the public services which are so vital to continuity, to wait and see how things develop and not to be panicked by rumour or instant commentators into attitudes or assessments that must be premature and in all likelihood will be proved baseless. Much now depends on the good sense and determination of the people of Hong Kong and their unofficial leaders. They can talk themselves into despair and self-defeat or, as I am sure they will do, overcome their anxieties and uncertainties to build firm foundations for their own future.
I am sure that the Secretary of State was right in foreseeing a move to a more representative Government in Hong Kong. The local talent in the public services and among unofficials is there in abundance. The machinery and practice of an electoral system based on adult suffrage are also there. The power and influence of both can be increased in whatever way and at whatever speed the Hong Kong Government think best. To steer Hong Kong through the transitional phase, a more obviously representative Government could well be a great help.
Hong Kong is one of the most productive communities and best situated harbours and pieces of real estate in the world. It has a population second to none, very well able to run its own affairs, and a history of great economic success and rapid technological advance. If the principles of the present approach can be embodied successfully in a satisfactorily detailed agreement, I have no doubt that the combined sense of the Chinese Government and of the people of Hong Kong will ensure that the future is as successful as the past.
9.52 p.m.
Lord Kennet: My Lords, I speak with the utmost modesty and trepidation after the speeches by the noble Lords, Lord Fanshawe and Lord MacLehose: Lord Fanshawe with his own individual experience of those crucial phases which he himself handled back in the early 1970s, and Lord MacLehose, than whom no man in this country knows more about Hong Kong or is better qualified to give an opinion about the most likely way of getting through the next 63 years to the satisfaction of all parties concerned.

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First of all, on behalf of all my colleagues on these Benches I should like to endorse heartily what the noble Lord. Lord MacLehose, has said by way of words of advice—not that we are entitled to give it; he is—to the people of Hong Kong in the meantime. China has been in a state of virtually uninterrupted revolution or revolutions since the middle of the nineteenth century, and since 1911 has been engaged in an uninterrupted progress of recovering bits of Chinese territory which were taken from it under the so-called unequal treaties. It is important that the British Parliament and people should bear this in mind.
We know Hong Kong as a fabulously successful little British colony with an enormous Chinese population which somehow or other—we do not quite know how—came to be under our rule and turned into an economic miracle. The Chinese Government and people know it as the last of the territories which were taken from them by European invaders, in our case as the fruit of burning down quite a sizeable bit of their capital city. When we speak of an unequal treaty we ourselves must think how unequal we would consider it if somebody had taken a hit of England from us after having burned down Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle. We should consider it unequal even a hundred years later; and that is the fact for them.
What sets the framework of our present possibilities is the fact that 92 per cent. of the territory of Hong Kong—though not, of course, 92 per cent. of its population; far from it—is the subject of a contract between the Chinese and British Governments. It is a lease which, like any other lease, is no more than a contract between people or peoples, or nations, and that lease terminates in 1997. There is nothing unequal about it; or, rather, there was something unequal about the way in which it began, but there is nothing equivocal about the way in which it is to end. We have always agreed; we signed on the dotted line. It ends in 1997.
That will leave 8 per cent. of the territory, although much more of the population, which was taken as a result of the European invasions and colonisations of China. All the others, with the exception of Macao next door, have long since (many from the 1930s and before) been rectified from the Chinese point of view. It is impossible in the case of the lease of the new territories to change the ending date. It is impossible in the case of Hong Kong Island itself to look beyond 1997 for British rule in terms of a simple movement of world history, and one which is understood and endorsed as fully by those people in this country who know what is happening as it is by the people of China.
In the meantime there is the question of political and economic confidence, and we must be careful what we do about that. I suppose that in the last few years the two matters which have shaken it the most have been, first the Prime Minister's speech in Peking in 1982, when, flushed with the Falklands victory, she seemed for a moment to have lost sight of the difference between the Falkland Islands and Hong Kong. Secondly, there was the recent decision of Jardine's to transfer their centre of operations elsewhere. We must deplore them both, but to the
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extent to which we deplore the former at least, we can only welcome the unglamorous but extremely useful and effective performance so far of the Foreign Secretary in pulling the Prime Minister's chestnuts out of the fire. Who wants to be glamorous when he can be useful? And that, I submit, is what the Foreign Secretary has been in recent months.
The question arises: what will be the relation between the installation or introduction of democracy in Hong Kong after 1997 and the maintenance of political and economic confidence and stability there during the same period? That is not a very easy question to answer. I repeat: we can only admire the skill with which Sir Geoffrey Howe has so far been speaking about it, and hope and express our confidence that what he is actually doing about it (which is unknown to us) is as skilful as what he is saying about it.
We have had two delegations: one delegation was from the unofficial members of the Executive and Legislative Council; and the other delegation was from the Hong Kong Federation of Students and others. Those delegations have been to London in the last few weeks. I should like to echo what has been said. We in the Alliance are extremely glad to have had the opportunity to meet both delegations and to hear their views. It is not only the right but probably the duty of those people, as the noble Lord. Lord MacLehose, has said, to come here and tell us how they analyse the situation, and what they want.
In favour of a rapid and far-reaching introduction of democracy is the fact that it would avoid the danger of Britain handing over the sovereignty of an unopened package to China in 1997. Nobody really knows with certainty what are the wishes and intentions of the people of Hong Kong for themselves under the new dispensation. They can only be ascertained—and we discovered it ourselves in the 17th century—to the satisfaction of British people, at any rate, by the introduction of a measure of directly elected representative democracy. On the other hand, the rapid and far-reaching introduction of that would appear to carry certain dangers with it, particularly the penalty of a possible resurgence of doubts in Peking, which could happen quickly if the exuberance of a newly or too rapidly introduced democracy were to become overvisible and overworrying to everybody concerned, to all three parties: to the people of Hong Kong themselves, to the Government of China and to the Government of this country. Therefore, it seems to me obvious—and I imagine that it is even more obvious to the Government—that the introduction of democracy must be by stages which carry at least the tacit agreement of Peking, if not the explicit agreement. The latter should be preferred if it is possible to obtain it.
I shall not press the Minister of State to confirm this, but we understand that it is already in the bag between Britain and China that Hong Kong should form a kind of extra-special enterprise zone under, or related to, Article 31 of the Chinese constitution, and that there should be passport and customs control at the frontier between Hong Kong and the existing special enterprise zone, which constitutes the present frontier of Hong Kong. We understand that for 50 years the people of Hong Kong, while forming part of China, would be allowed and encouraged to continue their present legal

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system and their present economic system, and that there should be some form of words which vaguely expresses their present way of life, whatever that is. But if it comprises both legal system and the economic system, that is coming very close to saying, "way of life". We understand that the Chinese phrase is that Hong Kong would be "a separate entity", and another Chinese phrase is that there would be "two systems within one nation".
I imagine that the House would also hope that we can get separate or in some way distinct or semi-distinct Hong Kong membership of various international organisations: first, GATT, which we understand China herself is joining; as well as GATT, the IMF. the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank; and, perhaps most important of all, the Multi-Fibre Agreement. If it cannot have separate or distinct membership of the Multi-Fibre Agreement, then perhaps it can at least have a kind of inflected Chinese membership. If the convertibility of the Hong Kong dollar can he guaranteed well in advance of 1997 to be maintained thereafter, no doubt that would also perform wonders in easing the transition of sovereignty.
Mention has been made of the problems of emigration from Hong Kong after 1997. There are problems, and they are extremely complicated, and by anything I say I do not wish to exacerbate them. But I should like to mention that it is displeasing—and I do not know what the remedy is—to know that in the Hong Kong press at the moment advertisements are appearing for Hong Kong people to emigrate to various countries in exchange for a certain specified capital investment in the economy of those countries. We read that the figure for Canada is a quarter of a million dollars, and that the figures for a whole raft of other countries, going downhill from that, end up with Haiti at something like a tenth of that figure.
This is surprising and disquieting to learn. I do not know the answer, but at all stages we should remember that the Hong Kong population, though immensely successful economically, does nor consist entirely of rich people. It was also disquieting to read the remarks of one Government supporter in the House of Commons the other day who said that precisely the same thing should be done by this country. I think we would all agree that the Commons debate last week, which also took place late in the evening, was an extremely helpful one for the Government. It was clear that every speaker intended to be helpful to the Government, and in my amateur judgment they probably were. I am sure that what has taken place so far tonight, the first two speeches, will also be helpful to the Government, and I believe that our debate as a whole may be. I am sure that I speak for every Member of this House when I say that that is our intention in speaking tonight.
The tripartite enterprise of devising a future for Hong Kong—tripartite between the people of Hong Kong and its Government, the Chinese Government, and the Parliament and Government of this country—must be an extraordinarily taxing one for the Foreign Secretary and his colleagues. They are dealing quite simply with the peaceful transfer of sovereignty over a population which shares our economic system but not our race, to a nation which
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shares their race but not their economic ideas or system. It will be a great achievement by all three Governments if it can be done successfully. Let us hope that we shall be able to continue over the next two generations to note, as we can note tonight, that it is being done successfully.
10.6 p.m.
Lord Rhodes: My Lords, we are indebted to the noble Lord, Lord Fanshawe, for raising this subject on an Unstarred Question tonight. It is an important one. In rising to speak I wish to make it clear that much of what I am going to say represents the views of my noble and disappointed friend Lord Kadoorie, who has come all the way from Hong Kong to speak but unfortunately has not taken the Oath in this Parliament, without which it is impossible to sit and speak in your Lordships' House. Much of what he had to say is being said through me.
So much has been said and written about Hong Kong over the past few days that it is difficult to avoid repetition. Consequently, I shall confine my remarks to two points where further clarification might be useful. We are all aware of the recent visit to England of UMELCO from Hong Kong, but it is as well to redefine the meaning of this word. UMELCO stands for Unofficial Members of the Executive and Legislative Councils of Hong Kong. As unofficials they are to be contrasted with the officials who sit alongside them in the colony's ruling bodies; the executive council, akin to a cabinet, and the legislative council. similar to Parliament. While the officials are civil servants, the unofficials are members of the public appointed to public office by the Governor. They are the nearest thing Hong Kong has to Members of Parliament.
Members of UMELCO, though not elected in the sense that this word is understood in England, are in close contact with all sections of the community and have no hesitation whatever in expressing both the minority and majority views of their constituents. They sit on no fewer than 300 committees and are able to gauge opinion at all levels. Their honesty of purpose and devotion to Hong Kong and its welfare cannot be questioned. Perhaps what is more important in the context of the future survival of Hong Kong as we know it is their personal association with industry, their knowledge of world markets, their power to create work and, with it, prosperity.
The second point on which there could be misunderstanding is that the 2.5 million people of Hong Kong with British dependent territory citizenship would all wish to emigrate to the United Kingdom before the 1997 deadline.
This is far from being the case. The vast majority of Chinese living in Hong Kong have neither the means nor the inclination to leave their homes to settle elsewhere. There is no question of an invasion of the British Isles by a Hong Kong "boat people". Hong Kong well knows the burden of overcrowding and all that this entails, and has no intention or desire to add to the problems experienced in this country. All that the Hong Kong British are asking for is the retention of those basic freedoms inherent in a British constitution—freedom of thought, freedom of speech,

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freedom of choice, freedom to work and freedom of movement.
Upon expiry of the lease, when Hong Kong is no longer a British dependent territory, those ethnic Chinese who so wish will no doubt be able to obtain a Chinese passport: but what of those who are naturalised and the many expatriates born in the Far East who hold Hong Kong passports and who will be left stateless? Surely the United Kingdom owes them the freedom of movement and protection available to British subjects in all parts of the world. Perhaps a compromise sufficient to satisfy the United Kingdom immigration authorities could be found by allowing holders of British Hong Kong passports to have a separate passport which would give them the full protection of a United Kingdom passport anywhere in the world, except that the holder would have to obtain a visa if he wished to come to England, and a work permit if he sought employment in this country. Such a passport could be limited to the 50-year transition period promised by the Chinese.
My Lords, you have all had a copy of the statement issued by the Unofficial Members of the Hong Kong executive and legislative councils, "The Future of Hong Kong". I fully appreciate their contention that Parliament may cede sovereignty over the Territory, but it cannot by the same Act deprive British nationals of their national status. They expect, with good reason, Parliament to honour its moral and legal obligations to the 2.5 million British passport holders which declare them to he British Hong Kong in international law. Hong Kong belongers are citizens of a British dependent territory now destined to become a special autonomous region of the People's Republic of China. Britain has pledged that no agreement will be signed unless it can be commended to Hong Kong people as a internationally registered agreement that assures their stability.
The Chinese Government have repeatedly stated that Hong Kong's life-style will continue, and that they wish existing systems and freedoms in Hong Kong and the free market economy to remain fundamentally unchanged for at least 50 years after 1997. However, we must remember that we are living in an era of rapid change where flexibility is essential. In such a climate it is not realistic to think of an agreement that provides for continued British administration in Hong Kong after 1997, and in these circumstances—and particularly before the contemplated devolution of power from the Central People's Government to the Hong Kong special administrative region via a basic law to be promulgated in the early 1990s—it is unpractical to ask for firm long-term agreements in specific terms; rather should we look to clearly stated heads of agreement based on the goodwill of the parties involved.
Today, our aim must be to search for the highest common factor between a socialist and a capitalist society. Common ground may be hard to find but this should not be impossible between the parties concerned. Hong Kong is renowned for its adaptability, and after all, the United Kingdom is the most knowledgeable Western country on China; and China, through Hong Kong, has considerable experience of the practical side of Western capitalism.
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Hong Kong, as the world's most important joint venture, has been a success in the past and I see no reason why this cannot remain. Both China and the United Kingdom wish for the continued prosperity of Hong Kong and its people. This augurs well for understanding. Today, optimism and pessimism vie with each other for credulity. But one thing is certain: a mutually satisfactory agreement can never be reached without trust between the parties concerned. Past experience in the immediate post-war period and under different circumstances does not necessarily presage the future.
Co-operation rather than confrontation will create that confidence so essential to prosperity. Bland British assurances, unilateral Chinese declarations and rumours fuel fear of the unknown; but, upon reflection, there is a strong mutuality of interest and little reason to doubt the ability, good faith and common sense of those at the negotiating table. Consequently, both as a friend of the noble Lord, Lord Kadoorie and a Member of this House. I look forward to the future in a spirit of quiet optimism.
10.17 p.m.
Lord Geddes: My Lords, in any context, but particularly that of Hong Kong, it is an awesome privilege to follow such eminent and experienced speakers as the noble Lords, Lord MacLehose and Lord Rhodes. I also regret most deeply, as I am sure w ill your Lordships, the fact that we are not able to hear the noble Lord, Lord Kadoorie, this evening with all his wisdom and experience of Hong Kong. However, awesome though it may be to follow two such august speakers. it is both my lot and my slot and I shall not shirk it as I believe that this is an enormously important debate which will have significant implications, particularly for the people of Hong Kong. My noble friend Lord Fanshawe is to be congratulated upon tabling his Unstarred Question.
The key issue for Hong Kong has always been confidence. Hong Kong has one, and really only one, resource—its people. Without them and their confidence in the system, Hong Kong basically is nothing. It has no space, it has no mineral resources, no self-supporting agriculture and, perhaps most extreme of all, nothing like enough water to sustain its population. As has been mentioned so many times—and most recently tonight and in another place last week, on 16th May—the logical goals of the parties concerned in these negotiations are, by and large, common. The need for confidentiality is, I think, widely understood, as is the de facto existence of three rather than two interested parties: Beijing, Whitehall and, as has been mentioned this evening, Hong Kong. The common goal, within the constraints of transfer of sovereignty, is, surely, to keep Hong Kong after 1997 as closely resembling Hong Kong before 1997 as possible.
As the noble Lord, Lord Rhodes, said, we have heard an enormous amount about Hong Kong, particularly over the last 10 days or so, but I make no apologies for repeating some of the facts and opinions that have been mentioned over those days and, indeed, already in your Lordships' House this evening. They are, I suggest, the quality of Beijing's word and the

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post-1997 administration; clarification that the Basic Law, as it is now called, or mini-constitution, will reflect the terms of the agreement, since the latter will almost certainly predate the former; the maintenance of existing systems and the law; the continuance of a negotiable currency and of freedom of speech, of religion and, perhaps most important should all else fail, of travel. There are so many interwoven issues involved that it is difficult to find the beginning of the thread, and no one yet knows exactly where, when and, indeed, in what condition the end of that thread will appear.
The representatives of UMELCO, who visited London last week and some of whom are indeed listening tonight, have done us all a real service in bringing some of those issues to a head. As your Lordships are aware—again, as has been mentioned this evening—they are not the democratically elected representatives of the people of Hong Kong, but let no one doubt their value, nor that they can and do, in fact, have a good feel for the pulse of Hong Kong. I echo remarks made by other noble Lords already this evening, that their partial castigation in another place five days ago was unjustified, unwarranted and, on occasions, distinctly discourteous. UMELCO can, and should, have a significant role in shaping Hong Kong's future, at least until 1997.
I return to the key factors. Both jointly and severally, they spell out the paramount necessity for confidence. I again make no apologies for repeating that word; it will not be the last time that I use it. Can Beijing's word be trusted and, indeed, what is that word? By all past precedent, yes, it can, should and must be trusted. It has stood the test through some truly turbulent times since 1949—already 35 years. Having said that, it would of course be naive to assume that anything in this world is absolutely categorically certain. As to what is that word, I urge my noble and right honourable friends to do their utmost to impress on their opposite numbers in Beijing just how important written detail is and will continue to be in Hong Kong. Again, I say, "confidence".
From first-hand experience as a businessman, I know just how astute the Hong Kong Chinese are in commerce. They are accustomed to an internationally recognised and freely convertible currency. They are at home with an occidental approach to business. They have grown used to the importance of both the large and the small print of a contract. Beijing is perhaps not so accustomed to, and, indeed—again, from my own experience—may tend to brush aside the importance of written detail. I ask Her Majesty's Government to do their utmost in the negotiations to impress upon Beijing that, in everyone's interest, the more detail on both specifics and assurances the better. Hong Kong will then know much better where it will stand and the people will become the more confident. Surely, fear of the unknown is the greatest fear of all. If confidence even begins to slip away, that slip could well become a landslide and Hong Kong knows all about landslides, particularly in typhoon conditions.
It is, I therefore suggest, vital to all concerned to maintain and, if possible, increase confidence over the next 13, but particularly perhaps over the next five years. If confidence goes, then there could—and I only say "could"—be an exodus. If that exodus were to
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involve only the very top, the very wealthy, it would be bad enough. If it were to include what might be described as senior or middle management, it would be disastrous. Generally, such managers are already, or are eligible to become, British dependent territory citizens.
My second specific request to my noble and right honourable friends is therefore to ensure that the agreement with Beijing has written into it some form of dual Chinese and British nationality after 1997. Some noble Lords may recall my interest during the course of the British Nationality Bill throughout 1981. I did not then, and I do not now, advocate any radical change in this country's immigration laws. I am advised that statistically (here I take just minor issue with the noble Lord, Lord Rhodes) there are, excluding Her Majesty's Forces, some 18,000 British citizen passport holders in Hong Kong—18,000 only. They have the right of entry into and abode in the United Kingdom.
In addition there are currently about 1.1 million British dependent territory citizens who are passport holders. They have the right of entry into and abode in Hong Kong but not in the United Kingdom. They are, however, entitled to British consular protection and can travel without visas to most Western European and Commonwealth countries. There are also a further 2 million who are eligible for BDTC passports but who have not yet applied, of whom 1 million—one-half—have no travel documents of any kind. Finally, statistically, there are a further 1.1 million who have just travel documents, mainly certificates of identity, under which holders are not entitled to British consular protection and have to apply for visas for all countries.
On 2nd July 1997 it would appear, as other noble Lords have already commented, that British dependent territory citizenship will cease as far as residents of Hong Kong are concerned, for the very good reason that Hong Kong will no longer be a British dependent territory. I am advised that this situation was brought to the attention of the Chinese authorities on 3rd May of this year—that is, just 18 days ago. Mr. Cheung Yan-Lung, a member of Hong Kong's legislative council, asked Mr. Chi Peng-Fei, whom the noble Lord, Lord Fanshawe of Richmond, has already mentioned, Mr. Chi being the head of the Hong Kong and Macao Bureau, about the status of Hong Kong British dependent territory citizens after 1997. Mr. Chi is reported as having replied that on the basis of Hong Kong's historical situation and precedent, China would be prepared to make an exception for Hong Kong British dependent territory citizens to have dual nationality after 1997. Mr. Chi is further reported as having been more specific in stating that, as far as China was concerned, those in Hong Kong who had previously held BDTC passports could, for two generations after 1997, hold British overseas citizens' passports as well as Chinese passports, provided that Her Majesty's Government agreed.
My question, therefore, to my noble friend on the Front Bench is: would it be acceptable to Her Majesty's Government to write into any agreement with Beijing that all British dependent territory citizens of Hong Kong on the date of hand over would automatically become British overseas citizens for

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such a period, under the terms of Part III of the British Nationality Act, 1981, as suitably amended to include such persons?
Such an agreement would not—and I do emphasise "not"—in any way open the floodgates of immigration to this or any other country. As now, each such passport holder would have to apply as an individual for entry and right of abode to the country concerned. Such British Overseas Citizenship would, however, I am convinced, be seen as of real benefit to those eligible in Hong Kong. Just as important, it could well tip the balance in pursuading those who might have thought otherwise to remain in Hong Kong both up to and beyond 1997, thereby maintaining in turn that all-important confidence.
Hong Kong thrives on its commercial industry and its commercial independence, neither of which would exist without confidence by its people in themselves and in Hong Kong itself. I mentioned at the beginning of my remarks that this was, and is, a vitally important debate. Clearly, Hong Kong regards it so; your Lordships have only to look around the gallery this evening to see many familiar Hong Kong faces.
The Financial Times—surely an independent organ—commented on 18th May:
"Some brokers attributed the easier Hong Kong Stock Market to British Foreign Secretary Sir Geoffery Howe's statement at the House of Commons debate on Hong Kong".
On the following day, 19th May, the Financial Times commented:
"Analysts said they expect further downward pressure on prices when the UK Upper House of Parliament starts its debate on the Hong Kong issue next Monday".
There are those who are listening to us. I urge my noble friend the Minister of State to do her utmost in her closing remarks to bolster Hong Kong's confidence—and particularly to comment regarding British Overseas Citizenship after 1997 for those who will have been, up to that date, British Dependent Territory Citizens.
10.32 p.m.
Lord Shepherd: My Lords, I am sure that the noble Baroness the Minister of State will agree that since September 1982, when the issue of Hong Kong became of singular importance, the British Parliament has been not only restrained but also highly sensitive to the seriousness and delicacy of the negotiations taking place between Her Majesty's Government and the Government of the People's Republic of China.
These negotiations are without parallel. You have Her Majesty's Government negotiating on behalf of the people of a colonial territory; a people who do not have any democratic structure through which their voice can be known and heard. You have a British Government seeking, through discussions, the best accord for the future of some 5 ½ million people.
On the other hand, you have the Government of the People's Republic of China, who have always looked upon Hong Kong as theirs, and who have always rejected the treaties under which Hong Kong was ceded to Britain. And yet the Government of the People's Republic of China, although they have claimed sovereignty, have been willing to enter into a
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great act of statesmanship; they have been willing to sit down with a colonial power and discuss the best way in which the stability and the prosperity of the people of Hong Kong can be assured. I believe this is without any form of parallel—at least in my knowledge of history. In a sense it is that statesmanship and the consistency of the approach of the People's Republic of China that gives me the greatest confidence for the future of the people in Hong Kong.
A few weeks ago I would have hesitated on whether we should have had a debate, but the statement of the Secretary of State on Good Friday was a watershed in these negotiations and I think that it is absolutely right to have this debate. Reading carefully all that was said in another place, and listening to what has been said here so far this evening, I do not believe that anything said would in any way create discord in the negotiators in Beijing.
I must refer to one aspect which has been touched upon on a number of occasions this evening and also in the debate in another place. Reference was made to the members of the executive council and the legislative council, and I look to the noble Lord, Lord MacLehose, who was a Governor, to endorse what I now say. They are appointed not so much as a parliament but as a branch of the administration to give guidance and advice to the Government on the ministration of Hong Kong. They have a very valuable role and I would not wish, in terms of confidence, for it to be seen in Hong Kong that there is anything but united support for their presence here during these past few days while the question of Hong Kong has been debated in both Houses. I would say that if they had not been here then I would have been very critical of them. Although some of us may know Hong Kong a little bit more intimately. I think it is right that we in Parliament should be able to have an understanding of the fears and uncertainties that exist in Hong Kong today.
One needs to speak with confidence. I must say that although I have a great deal of sympathy with what has been said in regard to passports and the British Nationality Acts, I do not think that that is a matter we should seek to pursue now. If one does, one raises a question in one's mind as to what is the settlement and what trust one places in that settlement. We have heard a great deal about guarantees. Those of us who have been in political life long enough know that there are no guarantees whatever today. The only guarantee one has is the judgment one makes of the people with whom one enters into agreements and a belief that they will acknowledge them and implement them.
The People's Republic of China, even in the darkest of days of relations between Britain and China, has always acknowledged and fulfilled its agreements. I remember one occasion, in the very depths—I believe in 1967—when there was a very acute crisis and Hong Kong was desperately short of water. We relied upon the water to come through from China and nothing gave me greater satisfaction than to get the message that the water was coming through the tunnels, dead to the minute of the hour of the day of the contract. It did not need to do it, but that is China.
In the Chinese approach to this agreement one of the most significant things is that they speak of an

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agreement for 50 years. If they said 25 years, we should be highly suspicious. If they said an agreement to eternity, we should be highly suspicious. But to those of us who know China, 50 years has some significance. It is a period which is attainable. I have no doubt at all that in their minds 50 years is 50 years.
I read the Secretary of State's speech with very great care. It was in many ways a masterly exposition; hut you could read through it his own belief that a settlement was not only possible but that it could prove satisfactory not only to Hong Kong but, more importantly. to this British Parliament. If you read what he says, and you read again and again the consistency of what the People's Republic of China has been saying, it is very interesting to see that there is a broad thrust of agreement.
I suspect that the greatest difficulty will be in the implementation—the nuts and bolts—of such an agreement. It seems to me that the greatest danger for Hong Kong will lie in the next 12 to 18 months. My view—and I would not press it hut I would express it—is that a statement of broad agreement, if it can be achieved, would he most welcome as early as possible. I believe that if broad agreement of principles could he announced. it would put many of the fears and anxieties, I will not say completely, but largely at rest. I think that the nuts and bolts and general complexity of this agreement will take many months. if not years, not only to negotiate but to design and to implement. Therefore I would not wish for an agreement to be prolonged in order that the nuts and bolts can all be dealt with before it is announced. I believe that a broad statement of principles is desirable—I will not say when, but as early as possible.
I hope—and this is a hope—that something imaginative could also be agreed, not necessarily within the agreement but seen side by side with it. I think that the noble Lord. Lord MacLehose, will understand what I am saying. One of the difficulties today is over the question of Crown lands. The period in the New Territories—13 or 12 years and a hit—is very short if you are thinking about land development. There is no doubt that a great deal of development is being held up.
I do not press the Minister tonight, but is it not possible for an imaginative gesture both by Her Majesty's Government and by the People's Republic of China for a move to be made in the releasing of land and for land to be lent for development on a much longer term than now exists, which I think is 12 years or so? If an imaginative gesture of co-operation could go alongside a broad thrust and principle of agreement, I think that we should see a transformation in the spirit of the people of Hong Kong.
One could speak for much greater lengths but I would hope a message will go out from this House to the Government of the People's Republic of China and to the peoples of Hong Kong that they have so much in common interests, although so much now rests upon the responsibility and statesmanship of the People's Republic of China. There is so much common interest that what we now need to see is the matter resolved on paper. resolved as an agreement but recognising that the spirit is clearly there. I saw on the tape only this very afternoon, the statement of a
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senior official of the Foreign Office in the People's Republic of China, speaking about the great future ahead for Hong Kong within the thrust of their own policy. I believe that there is a great future for Hong Kong.
My last words are these. We live in a period of recession. In March, Hong Kong showed a 62 per cent. increase in its exports and re-exports over March of last year. It showed a 52 per cent. increase for the first three months of this year. It is a thrusting economy. It has a great future. If we can only resolve this political problem, which I believe is attainable, then the future of Hong Kong is undoubtedly great.
10.46 p.m.
Lord Tanlaw: My Lords, I think we should all be grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Fanshawe, for giving us an opportunity to express our views and hopes about the future of Hong Kong. It is a special pleasure to speak after the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, with his knowledge and confidence in the good intentions of the Government of the People's Republic of China, which I completely share, and indeed his emphasis on the need for a broad agreement first, before we get down to details.
I hope to elaborate shortly on this, in my brief personal intervention, which I am proud to make from these Benches and in which I will declare an interest in the long association that my family has had with Hong Kong during the past hundred years. This is with a company which I am pleased to say has every intention of remaining in Hong Kong for many more years to come. Hong Kong has always been, and always will be, the gateway for trade with mainland China. If the Government of the People's Republic of China were ever far-sighted enough or courageous enough to open up all their eastern seaboard to free trade with the West, then I think not only would Hong Kong gain in importance geographically as a container port but it would become even more firmly established as the major commercial and financial centre of the Pacific Basin area. This is definitely not the moment for Hong Kong trading companies to fold up their tents: it is a time to invest in the future of Hong Kong and the prospects of a consumer market of a billion people on the Chinese mainland.
While it is my intention to speak up for the people of Hong Kong in this debate, it really is very difficult to discover who can constitutionally represent, or indeed speak with authority for, the people of Hong Kong. Therefore. I believe it is now up to us, as Members of Parliament, to do our best to ensure, as many other noble Lords have said. that the people of Hong Kong obtain a fair deal in the intermediate years, between now and 1997 and thereafter.
Perhaps I am fortunate in that, through my lady wife, who speaks six Chinese dialects. I can as a Parliamentarian, at least, listen to the views of both the Hong Kong Chinese and the People's Republic of China. They are views which are expressed in their own language, in their own phraseology and which have been represented to me, at this moment in time, as a genuine willingness to see the handover of Hong Kong in 1997 go through successfully and with the minimum disruption in the ways of life of either

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country. I am convinced that that is the declared intention of both Governments, with their respective Foreign Ministers. I must endorse also what other noble Lords have said about the efforts and approach made by the right honourable gentleman our own Foreign Minister.
This brings me on to the mystery men and women (as I call them) of UMELCO, who have expressed their worries and doubts about the future of Hong Kong in some extraordinarily articulate and well-drafted documents, and, indeed, verbally to me. I am not clear whether these views represent the official policy of the Government of Hong Kong or just the views of some citizens of Hong Kong. But they have been put fairly and squarely, and I hope to pursue some of the points that have perhaps not been taken up by other noble Lords, as well as the case of the BDTC passport holders.
Before coming to that, other noble Lords have spoken in various ways about the unofficial members of the Hong Kong Government. But I should like to ask the noble Baroness the Minister of State about the official members of the Hong Kong Government—that is, the civil servants—and about what is the policy of localisation. Is it really going fast enough to give the confidence to local Hong Kong Chinese, who have a future only in Hong Kong rather than a retirement home in. say, Sevenoaks? Are they given the confidence and the responsibility that they are fully capable of taking? I should like to hear whether there is any policy to accelerate the process of what has been called localisation. I believe that there are 850 expatriate civil servants who are on long-term pensionable contracts and another 2,300 who are on two-and-a-half-year contracts, which can easily not be renewed, and who can be replaced with local Hong Kong Chinese. However, these remarks are really addressed to those expatriates on long-term pensionable contracts, and aged over 40.
I come back now to the problem—the difficult problem, as everyone has recognised—of the holders of the BDTC passports, and their worries as to their validity or renewability in 1997. I do not believe that this is the moment to remind Her Majesty's Government of the anticipated difficulties which these passports will create for their holders—anticipated, as many noble Lords will recall, during the long passage of the British Nationality Bill through this House. I believe that it is incumbent on us, as Members of Parliament, to do our best to fulfil some unfulfilled obligations in this direction, and primarily to the holders of these passports. One solution that I put forward to the noble Baroness the Minister of State is that BDTC passports are converted into travel documents which are recognised internationally for visa purposes and which would provide some validity to the promise of freedom of travel after 1997 given by the right honourable gentleman the Foreign Secretary and his counterpart from the People's Republic of China. Furthermore, I believe that such a document need not necessarily have any rights of abode attached to it. But it could provide just the insurance policy required by the holders of BDTC passports in the form of a permanent exit visa from the territory if they
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wished to use it as such or as a business travel aid after 1997.
I come now to the main question that still remains unanswered by Her Majesty's Government, and which was touched upon by the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd. It was not really clarified in the excellent debate last week in another place, so far as I could see. It concerns the nature of the agreement which we, as Members of Parliament, will be asked to ratify in the near future. There seems to me to be some confusion as to what are the intentions of Her Majesty's Government and those of the Hong Kong Government. If the agreement to come before Parliament for ratification is concerned only with principle, I. like the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, and various others, foresee no difficulty. If, however, it is Her Majesty's Government's intention to put a detailed agreement before Parliament which includes all the basic law, I cannot see how such an agreement can possibly be drawn up within the time available.
I am therefore asking the noble Baroness the Minister of State to define clearly what form she hopes this agreement may take. If it is the former—that is, the broader one that I have described—I believe that there is every chance that the details can be worked out amicably in due course of time. The basic law that would presumably incorporate the principles of such an agreement could be made workable, given time and good will on both sides. If, on the other hand, it is Her Majesty's Government's intent to dot the "i"s and cross the "t"s before presentation to Parliament for ratification, I can foresee the appalling delays that this will create, which can only aggravate the uncertainty as to the future of the territory and seriously undermine the confidence of its people.
Furthermore, I think the commercial organisations which at this moment in time are attempting to make plans for the future, including 1997 and beyond, would also see this as a serious set-back in their longterm future. I am equally sure that such a policy would be interpreted by the Government of China, rightly or wrongly, as a delaying tactic, which would not be conducive to a successful outcome of the current negotiations.
Assuming that the noble Baroness will confirm that it is only the heads of agreement or the broad agreement which will be ratified by Parliament, then I should like to propose the following suggestion for her consideration. It is that after ratification a working committee be set up which would not have any constitutional rights but which would include Members of this Parliament, the Hong Kong Government and representatives from the People's Republic of China. The object of this joint committee would be to implement the ratified agreement principles through the establishment of practical and detailed laws and systems by which the territory can operate in 1997.
These are really the nuts and bolts to which the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, referred. I believe that the nuts and bolts of the agreement should be worked out above board: that the negotiators should be asked to come out of the closet. They have been in there far too long, and I think we should have a look at them and see them at work. I believe that this would be possible

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only after we had ratified the broad principles. Let us have a look at what they are doing, because it is very difficult to make a speech of any kind on Hong Kong and its future when one really has no idea what the negotiators are up to.
Giving them the benefit of the doubt, I am sure they are working their hearts out for a successful agreement. Very well; let us have a broad agreement, but then let us have a working committee that can show the people of Hong Kong that it means business and can show the people of Hong Kong that representatives from the People's Republic of China have their hearts in a successful negotiated finality of transfer in 1997, as indeed they have. If the secrecy continues for the nuts and bolts negotiations, I foresee some difficulties and some misunderstandings such as have crept into some of the speeches and some of the representations we have had so far.
Finally, in one intervention in the debate in another place there was a reference to comparisons between the decline of the Roman Empire and the present situation in Hong Kong. I do not believe that there are any valid comparisons here, although there could be some similarities with the problems that this created for statesmen in the fifth century A.D. Hong Kong has been part of two empires, both of which have faded away and been replaced by a new understanding that all of us are now citizens within a global society. Our responsibility as parliamentarians should reflect this change. In this context it may be fitting to quote the final sentences from Stewart Perowne's classical work, The End of the Roman World. Therefore, I conclude with this thought for all those of good intent who are involved in the future of the people of Hong Kong:
"There are greater institutions than empires. When they dissolve, those that dwell in them combine in new associations, both national and international, material and spiritual, but men remain what they have always been and always will be, potential citizens of the true Augustinian Eternal City".
10.59 p.m.
Lord Oram: My Lords, like others who have spoken in the debate, I should like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Fanshawe of Richmond, for giving us this opportunity of having a debate to follow up the excellent debate which was held last week in another place. Already it has become apparent that in this House we have a number of noble Lords with particular knowledge and experience of Hong Kong, and therefore for me this has been a particularly welcome opportunity to hear them expound their views. I hasten to add that I exclude myself from that category of peers specially knowledgeable on this subject. We cannot of course expect the noble Baroness, Lady Young, to add a great deal to what the Foreign Secretary said in his speech in another place last Wednesday. But we shall listen with particular interest to her comments on the notable speeches that we have heard.
Last week there were two very welcome statements concerning the future of Hong Kong. The first was the reaffirmation by the Foreign Secretary of the statement which he had earlier made in Hong Kong that he now accepted that British administration in Hong Kong cannot continue after 1997. As the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, reminded us, those wise words by
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the Foreign Secretary have done a good deal to repair the damage which was done by the Prime Minister during her visit to Peking in September 1982. The second welcome reaffirmation last week was by the Chinese Prime Minister when he stated at the Chinese National People's Congress that Hong Kong will retain its status as a free port and as an international finance and trade centre, and that the economic system will be preserved for 50 years after 1997—a statement which has been referred to by a number of previous speakers.
I believe that those two statements, taken together, one by the British Government and one by the Chinese Government, surely lay the foundation of an acceptable treaty about the future of Hong Kong—at least for the kind of broad agreement of which my noble friend Lord Shepherd was speaking, and he had the support of the noble Lord, Lord Tanlaw. I believe with them that this is the kind of agreement at which we should be aiming, and that the "nuts and bolts"—to use Lord Shepherd's expression—should be left to later, more detailed, negotiations.
In his speech last week the Foreign Secretary said that Hong Kong is a unique society calling for a unique solution. It is indeed unique—unique in the history of the decolonisation of the former British Empire. Major parts of that empire only reached independence after a history of turbulence and struggle. But in the case of Hong Kong it is to be hoped that the situation will be different. In no other case of the granting of independence has there been a deadline accepted by both sides which provides for such a long period of preparation for independence. In no other case that I can recall have the negotiators reached such a measure of basic agreement in principle so long before the point at which the transfer of power is projected. Therefore, although we may only have a short period to conclude the treaty, we have a long period to prepare for the actual transfer of authority.
I suggest that the big question that follows from that is: how are we to use that period of preparation? The Chinese Government have declared that they want to see Hong Kong people administering Hong Kong. I believe that on all sides that can be taken as a very desirable objective. But the question is: how fully and by what means will the people of Hong Kong be able to administer their territory? It was on this point alone that I found myself in some difficulty when I read the Foreign Secretary's speech. Although he said that within the next few years the government of Hong Kong will be developed on increasingly representative lines, he obviously regarded the nature of that development as something for the Hong Kong Government themselves to determine. That troubles me when I recall that the Hong Kong Government are not a democratically elected government; they are a government which are appointed from above. They are not themselves democratic, and therefore in my view they cannot be the best judge of how democracy in Hong Kong can be brought about.
In the coming years it seems to me that we need the utmost encouragement of the growth of democracy from below. There have been a number of references to the delegations from Hong Kong that have been speaking and writing to us in recent days. I should like to refer to the unofficial delegation which was led by

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Dr. Ding. He and his colleagues have put forward what seem to me to be modest and sensible proposals for a step-by-step approach towards direct elections to the executive and legislative councils. I believe that we would do well to give serious consideration to those suggestions that that delegation has put forward.
However, I would go further than Dr. Ding and his colleagues in seeking democracy for Hong Kong. They have in mind elections to the various parts of the machinery of government. But whenever I think of democracy I have in mind very much more than that, because I believe that democracy is fragile unless it is underpinned by a range of social and economic organisations, such as trade unions, student organizations, co-operatives, voluntary social service groups, women's organisations and neighbourhood committees. That kind of organization, of which we have a vast number in our own democratic society, must be there to underpin the electoral system for the machinery of government. I hope that from now on the maximum encouragement will be given to developments of that kind.
It is sometimes suggested—indeed, several speakers in another place raised this point; and I believe that the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, this evening also made reference to this—that the creation of a truly democratic Hong Kong would be unwelcome to China and might therefore hinder the process of preparation. Such a view, it seems to me, fails to take into account the changes which are currently taking place in the People's Republic of China itself under the leadership of Chairman Deng and his colleagues.
I should like to say a few words about those changes. A few months ago I had an opportunity of an intensive study tour, particularly in rural China, when I was able to appreciate the extent to which the peasants are now being empowered to conduct their own affairs to a vastly greater degree than was possible during the years of the cultural revolution and during the period when they were organised in massive communes. It is sometimes said that China, through adopting these measures, is abandoning its socialism. In my view it is doing no such thing, but it is taking important steps towards a much more liberal form of socialism.
In weighing up the relationship between mainland China and Hong Kong I think that we ought to have these developments in China very much in mind, because with such developments proceeding on the mainland I do not believe that a democratic Hong Kong will be anathema to the Chinese leaders. In these discussions it is too readily assumed that the economies of Hong Kong and of mainland China are so different that, like oil and water, they cannot be made to mix. That I believe to be a much too pessimistic view, as other speakers have suggested, and particularly my noble friend Lord Rhodes.
If we have in mind what I have described as the liberalising process in China and also again a matter that has been referred to by others, the fact that China is establishing special economic zones in the coastal regions in order to encourage foreign investment, and in order to open the Chinese economy to the rest of the world, and if we take those things all together, then I believe that we and the people of Hong Kong can face
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the future with that optimism that I am glad to say has been expressed in almost every speech in this debate. I am confident that a modus vivendi between these different ways of life can be found, and in fact will be found.
Only last week the Prime Minister of China, in a speech to which I have already referred. indicated further steps in developing the so-called "responsibility system" through which Chinese workers are not only reaching decisions about their working lives, but are rewarded in proportion to the success of their efforts.
11.12 p.m.
Lord Mulley: My Lords, the House is again indebted to the noble Lord, Lord Fanshawe of Richmond, for introducing a debate which is both topical and of long-term importance, although this week it is on rather a different aspect of our heritage from the debate last week, which also attracted vast experience and a large number of speakers despite the lateness of the hour. I know that he, as a former Whip and Minister in another place, and I should not regard this as a late hour. but as a junior Member of your Lordships' House I would ask that we do not follow the bad example of the other place in the matter of the hours that they tend to keep.
Unlike most people who have spoken but perhaps like my noble friend Lord Oram, I cannot claim the great personal knowledge that has been brought to bear on the subject. because my visits have been only three or four in number and of fairly short duration. In between the visits I noticed enormous changes. There must have even been big changes since the noble Lord, Lord MacLehose, took me around in his helicopter to see the developments about five years ago. One can only conclude after seeing how Hong Kong has coped with that enormous expansion of population, many members of which were unsought—and, I may say, since I was deploying a lot of soldiers to try to stop them coming in, unwanted—that Hong Kong has coped extraordinarily well with the situation.
When I was there of course I was more concerned with defence than with constitutional matters. I remember well my first visit, when my host took me to his house via an appointment with his tailor, which indicated that, as I found frequently, the senior military personnel always had their priorities right. There is no question but that Hong Kong is a unique society. It is now in a unique international legal situation and it requires a unique solution. I think that it would be easier to get agreement about the nature of the uniqueness of the society and of the legal and historic situation than to get unanimity about the precision of the unique solution that we should all like to find.
But we are privileged tonight in having heard the speech of the noble Lord, Lord MacLehose, who brings to bear an unique experience of Hong Kong and China after not only his eleven years of most distinguished governorship but also a previous period as a political adviser in the colony. I am sure that noble Lords were as disappointed as I that the noble Lord, Lord Kadoorie, was unable to give us personally the benefit of his long and distinguished career and

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experience, but we are indebted to my noble friend Lord Rhodes for acting as his voice in this matter, at the sacrifice, I fear, perhaps, of some comments by Lord Rhodes from his own considerable experience (noble Lords will know that he led with great distinction three or four parliamentary delegations to China and in fact did as much as anyone in recent years to improve the bilateral relations between our two countries).
Quite clearly, from the historical survey that the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, succinctly gave us, it is not going to be easy—probably impossible—to satisfy all the parties and all the aspirations of those concerned—the people of Hong Kong, and the citizens of the People's Republic of China, with their concerns about Taiwan and their northern neighbours, as well as their commercial concern with Hong Kong as their outlet to the wider world. However, while there are these problems, I believe that there is a strong community of interests, as many noble Lords have said, which should make it possible to get a satisfactory agreement.
There are also, more particularly for the concern of the United Kingdom Parliament, possible problems of immigration, although I would tend to follow the advice of the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, rather than that of the noble Lords, Lords Geddes and Tanlaw, who want to get very detailed answers to some very difficult questions tonight when we are not far into the details of the very delicate negotiations that are ahead. Quite clearly, as appeared in the very good and bipartisan debate in the other House and. I believe, in our equally good and informed debate here tonight, we must recognise that the actual conduct of the negotiations must be left to the Government. I think that we need to stress too that Hong Kong is really only a colony in terms. That I know is one of the problems of its relationship, and the concern of the People's Republic is to remove what they may feel is a stigma, but Hong Kong does enjoy an immense amount of autonomy, as I am sure the noble Lord, Lord MacLehose, would endorse. I found, when I tried to talk to them about a little greater contribution to their local defence costs, that we certainly had no revenue benefits from the territory. So any idea that we want to stay for any commercial or revenue purposes can certainly be put to rest.
There is a difficulty that has been expressed by a number of speakers that there are not democratic institutions and there is probably not time to develop them before at least the first stage of the negotiations has to be concluded. One has heard many people speak about a deadline of September next, which is not very far away. Maybe the noble Baroness the Minister can tell us to what extent the Government feel bound by such a deadline. As has been said, it is very important that the opinion of the people of Hong Kong should be fully taken into account; although, clearly, there is the difficulty as to how one can obtain that opinion. I endorse what the noble Lords, Lord Fanshawe, Lord Shepherd, and others have said about the valuable contribution that is being made by the unofficial members of the Executive and Legislative Councils and underline the fact that we welcome their coming here to brief us on their views and the issues as they see them in Hong Kong. But at the same time, as I am sure they would agree, they are not, and cannot
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be, fully representative. It is very difficult to see how in the short term—although I agree very strongly with my noble friend Lord Oram that one should seek to develop it in the years ahead when, as I hope, there will be an agreement of a satisfactory character—there will be democratic institutions necessary to put it fully into effect.
The idea of a referendum has not been raised here tonight, but it was raised, I think, in the other place. I do not feel that a referendum would be appropriate and I think our own experience of referenda has not been exactly encouraging; but certainly it would imply that the referendum was the decision. I think that we must certainly disabuse anyone of any idea that the people of Hong Kong will be the final arbiter in the matter. I hope the Minister will confirm again tonight that the final decision in any agreement must rest with the United Kingdom Parliament. I think that the Foreign Secretary has already said this, but I believe it is important that that should be clear.
Of course, I think that we must avoid at all costs the mistake that I recognise was made by successive Governments over the Falklands, where the sovereignty of the United Kingdom Parliament was handed over not only to a parish council but to a pretty small parish council at that. We cannot say that no agreement will he made without the consent of the local people in Hong Kong even if there was some way of ascertaining that opinion. Obviously, their views and their interests are vital, but the final decision I believe must rest with the United Kingdom and Parliament.
It seems to me that, after the rather diastrous start in 1982 to which reference has been made, negotiations now seem to be on a basis which could and should lead to a satisfactory outcome. I think it is necessary to say that full and detailed proposals will be necessary before either the people of Hong Kong or this House or another place can give a decisive view. I would stress this to the Government and I would ask our Chinese friends to understand it as well. Indeed, I hope they will heed, both in Hong Kong and in Beijing, the very wise speech, the very measured speech, of the noble Lord, Lord MacLehose, on these points. I believe that it is necessary to have detail in order to allay the fears and to sustain confidence in Hong Kong itself.
I warmly welcome the improvement in bilateral relations with the People's Republic. I had some dealings myself when I was Secretary of State for Defence with delegations here from China; and I formed the view that they had genuine and sincere desires not only in the trade field but for closer relations over a whole range of industrial and commercial policies. I would strongly endorse what has been said by a number of noble Lords—Lord Rhodes, Lord Geddes and Lord Shepherd—about the great importance of making it clear that we do accept their sincerity and trust and that this is the basis on which all the negotiations must be carried through. I acknowledge the great experience of my noble friend Lord Shepherd as a negotiator, particularly in Hong Kong, and in the Far East generally.
We should acknowledge the imaginative approach of the Chinese leaders. As the Foreign Secretary said, it was put to him what they were seeking was to get two

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systems within one nation. That is fine as a general principle, but, if I may take the engineering metaphor of my noble friend Lord Shepherd a little further, I would not be so demanding that I would want to know all the nuts and bolts of an agreement, though I do not think general principles—a blue-print, to carry on the engineering simile—would do. What we must certainly have, if we are asked to form a view, is a prototype of the kind of regime that will succeed British government in 1997.
Of course. it is prosperity, not only in the future but now, that is important both for China and for the people of Hong Kong. I believe that there is a need for confidence to sustain that prosperity, to sustain the very remarkable figures that my noble friend Lord Shepherd gave us as their increased exports at a time of world recession. I think he said 62 per cent. in March this year as compared with March 1983. I only wish that we could have some small portion of a percentage of that character.
If I may, I shall conclude by a quotation from the South China: Morning Post nine days after the Foreign Secretary's press conference in Hong Kong, when the immediate impact had begun to die away. It reads:
"However, if China was prepared to accept Hongkong for 143 tumultuous years despite massive changes, why should it not also honour an international agreement covering the next 50 years?
Let us acknowledge it had to come to an end one day. And what we have to be certain about in making this transition is not to bemoan our fate and stand aloof from change, but to make sure that the Hongkong spirit continues regardless of what flag flies."
It is in the Government's power, in their talks with the Chinese Government, to ensure that the Hong Kong spirit survives as predicted in that editorial, and I hope that the noble Baroness, the Minister of State, will be able to confirm tonight that that is Her Majesty's Government's objective.
11.28 p.m.
The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Baroness Young): My Lords, I am sure that I speak on behalf of the whole House when I say that we are all very grateful to my noble friend Lord Fanshawe for tabling this Question this evening and giving the House an opportunity to debate this important issue of Hong Kong's future. I should like to assure your Lordships that it is a matter of the highest concern to Her Majesty's Government.
I think we would all agree that we have been fortunate this evening to hear from so many noble Lords who have very considerable personal experience of being in government in Hong Kong, having business interests in Hong Kong, knowing Hong Kong from visits or having visited China. I should like to share with the noble Lord, Lord Mulley, our disappointment that we were unable to hear from the noble Lord, Lord Kadoorie, but I think we were all grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Rhodes, for putting Lord Kadoorie's points for him. I shall, of course, draw to the attention of my right honourable friend the Secretary of State what has been said in the debate this evening. We shall study it carefully.
Many noble Lords who are present this evening know well the remarkable community which is Hong
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Kong. Anyone who has visited the territory will have been impressed by its economic and social achievements. It is unique in its historical background, notably the fact that 92 per cent. of its land area is covered by a lease which expires in 1997. It is unique, too, in the negotiations which are now under way to assure its future.
It is natural and understandable that the people of the territory should feel anxiety about their future. Some noble Lords have no doubt met the groups which have recently visited London to express the concern of the Hong Kong people and their views about the way in which the territory should evolve. It is our intention in the negotiations to do everything possible to allay those concerns. I hope that this meets one of the points which was raised by my noble friend Lord Geddes.
Her Majesty's Government are also deeply aware of the anxieties and frustrations caused by the confidentiality of the negotiations. We believe that this confidentiality, upon which both sides are agreed, provides our negotiators with the best basis on which to operate. But we have thought it right, without breaking the confidentiality of the talks, to give as clear a description as we can of the general approach of the British Government to the important problem at stake.
This was first done during the visit which my right honourable friend the Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary undertook to the Far East last month. In Peking he held detailed and serious talks with the Chinese leaders on all aspects of the future of Hong Kong. His aim was to review the course of the negotiations which are under way at diplomatic level, to sum up the progress made and to give them a fresh impetus. In Hong Kong my right honourable friend held discussions with the governor and the unofficial members of the Executive and Legislative Councils, as well as meeting representatives of various strands of local opinion. He also made a public statement on the Government's approach to Hong Kong's future. Copies of that statement have been deposited in the Library of the House.
In that statement the Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary described his clear conclusion that it would not be realistic to think of an agreement that provided for continued British administration in Hong Kong after 1997. Every possibility had been fully explored before that conclusion was reached, but it was based on experience in the negotiations themselves and on the reality of the expiry of the lease over the New Territories in 1997. Instead, we have sought to explore other ways of securing the assurances necessary for continuity in Hong Kong.
There is a good basis on which we can build. The Chinese Government have made it clear publicly that they recognise the special circumstances of Hong Kong and that they want its social and economic systems and lifestyle to remain unchanged. We have therefore been examining with the Government of China how it might be possible to arrive at arrangements that would secure for Hong Kong, after 1997, a high degree of autonomy under Chinese sovereignty and that would preserve the way of life of

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Hong Kong, together with the essentials of the present systems.
It is indeed possible to foresee a situation in the future in which Hong Kong would, as part of China, enjoy a high degree of autonomy which would last for at least 50 years from 1997. In such a situation, that autonomy would extend to administration, the making of laws, the maintenance of Hong Kong's system of justice and responsibility for public order in the territory. Under such arrangements, the laws of Hong Kong, including the written and common law, would be based upon the present system. Hong Kong would manage its own public finances within which taxes levied in Hong Kong would, as now, be employed in Hong Kong for the benefit of the Hong Kong people. There would also be a place for outside people—from Britain and elsewhere—to go on working and making a contribution to life in Hong Kong.
What is of particular importance is that under such arrangements Hong Kong would continue to operate as an international financial and commercial centre, as it does today. Hong Kong's extensive and direct economic relations with its trading partners all over the world would be allowed to continue and develop. Arrangements would need to be made in co-operation with other countries concerned to ensure that Hong Kong remained an important participant in regional and world economic institutions such as the Asian Development Bank, the Multi-Fibre Arrangement, and in particular the GATT.
My noble friend Lord Fanshawe asked about the detail of the agreement. In this context, I should emphasise the high degree of autonomy already exercised today by the Hong Kong Government. The day-to-day life of the territory is determined by decisions taken in Hong Kong, not in London. Those who live in Hong Kong and all those who have dealings with the territory will be looking for an assurance that such autonomy will be maintained after 1997. That assurance can best be provided by a detailed and binding agreement clearly describing arrangements for the future.
A number of noble Lords—including my noble friend Lord Fanshawe and the noble Lord, Lord Kennet—asked about the democratic structure of Hong Kong. A related point is the degree to which the administration of Hong Kong will be in the hands of local people. The Chinese Government have made it clear, publicly, that after 1997 Hong Kong people will administer Hong Kong. This would be in line with the process of democratic development in Hong Kong which is already under way and which Her Majesty's Government fully endorse.
At the local level in Hong Kong, proposals have recently been made which will strengthen the existing elected element in government. In the summer the Hong Kong Government will be publishing a Green Paper setting out proposals whereby the representative status of the two central government institutions—the Executive Council and the Legislative Council—might be developed in the years to come. For their part, the British Government will provide—up to 1997—a firm framework within which the Hong Kong Government, in consultation with the local people, can
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administer the territory and plan for its future. As they contemplate the future, the Hong Kong people naturally have questions in their minds. They are looking for assurances that an agreement will be observed. They are asking how they can give their views on the terms of an agreement. Some are concerned about their nationality status. I shall address these questions in turn.
My noble friend Lord Fanshawe and the noble Lord, Lord MacLehose, spoke of the implementation of the agreement which can never be absolutely guaranteed. But there are very powerful incentives working for the upholding of an agreement on Hong Kong. First, there is the fact that the international prestige of two sovereign governments—parties to a binding agreement—would be at stake. Secondly, there is the common interest of both parties, publicly affirmed, in Hong Kong's continued success. This was a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd.
Thirdly, there are the excellent relations which exist between Britain and China. These would underpin our objective of a binding international agreement in which arrangements for Hong Kong's continuing prosperity and stability, based on a high degree of autonomy, would be formally recorded. I believe this meets the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Mulley.
The noble Lords, Lord Tanlaw, Lord Shepherd and Lord Oram, asked about the nature of the agreement. With regard to the proposal of the noble Lord, Lord Tanlaw, only an outline agreement of broad principles should be agreed and presented to Parliament; I cannot go into detail on the exact form which may emerge. However, I have been impressed by the arguments which have been put by other noble Lords that to sustain confidence a package of proposals should contain sufficient detail to show people in Hong Kong how it is envisaged that continuity should be maintained.
I was asked by the noble Lord, Lord Tanlaw, about the localisation of the Hong Kong Civil Service. I should like to say that there is already a substantial majority of Hong Kong local people in the public service. The number is increasing and there are in particular growing numbers of Hong Kong Chinese in senior posts. Her Majesty's Government fully support this policy of the Hong Kong Government.
The noble Lord, Lord Rhodes, asked about consultation. Our consultation with the people of Hong Kong has been a continuous process from the beginning of the negotiations. It takes many and varied forms. Such debates as this one allow the process to be intensified and taken ahead on a more informed basis. We shall continue to take Hong Kong views fully into account. In due course the people of Hong Kong will have a full opportunity to make their views known on the terms of an agreement. We are considering actively what method might be adopted: but I have to say now that a referendum would have very real drawbacks.
Nearly every noble Lord referred to the question of nationality. Her Majesty's Government fully understand the concerns of the Hong Kong people, particularly the BDTCs, which have been so clearly expressed, notably by the noble Lord, Lord MacLehose, the noble Lord, Lord Geddes, and the noble Lord, Lord Tanlaw, about their position after

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1997. We realise their desire that their position should be protected. I know that noble Lords will understand that I cannot go into any detail on the negotiations with the Chinese Government on this or other points. I can confirm that we are looking for arrangements that will allow Hong Kong people to enter and leave the territory freely while looking forward with confidence to a secure future there.
The Government understand the concerns of people in Hong Kong with British nationality, the great majority of whom are British dependent territory citizens, and their wish to retain that nationality. I have to say that I do not believe that either this Parliament or a successor would favour changes which stimulated emigration from Hong Kong to the United Kingdom or elsewhere. That is a further reason why we are looking for arrangements which would allow Hong Kong people to enter and leave the territory freely and at the same time provide a secure future for them there.
On the question of timing, to which a number of noble Lords referred, where the timetable of our negotiations is concerned there can be no question of rushing Parliament. It is too soon to say precisely when a draft agreement might be published, but we are working to a timetable in the talks which takes account of Chinese wishes and of all our own requirements. We are aware of the Chinese desire for an announcement in September. At the same time we recognise that any arrangements negotiated must subsequently be debated by Parliament. taking into account the views of Hong Kong.
Perhaps I may make it clear to the noble Lord, Lord Mulley, who raised this point, and to others who asked, that as far as the British Government are concerned it is Parliament which will make the final decisions on Hong Kong's future. Meanwhile it is our intention to keep our responsibility for administration up to 1997.
Let me try to sum up. We realise that the unique circumstances of Hong Kong require imaginative solutions. The territory is home to a highly individual community which has evolved its own institutions and its own distinctive lifestyle. We want to see the essence of all this endure. We see our good relations with China and our common interest in Hong Kong's stable future as a basis on which to build the continuity of a society in order to provide a secure home for its inhabitants and a major centre serving the world economy.
Our complex and difficult negotiations with the Chinese Government continue. Although a good deal of progress has been made, we are still some way from an agreement. A number of important points still have to be resolved, but we believe that on both sides there is a will and a commitment to overcome the remaining obstacles and to achieve an agreement. Our aim is a binding agreement which will secure a high degree of continuity for Hong Kong under Chinese sovereignty, which will preserve the essentials of the present system and way of life in Hong Kong and which will be acceptable to the people of Hong Kong. It must be one which we can honourably commend to Parliament.

London Transport (Tower Hill) Bill [H.L.]
The Queen's Consent signified: reported from the Unopposed Bill Committee with amendments.
The Lord Kadoorie—Took the Oath.
House adjourned at thirteen minutes before midnight.