Lords Sitting of 22 October 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 Chichester.
The Lord Lindsay of Birker—Took the Oath.

The Miners' Strike: Costs
Lord Bruce of Donington: 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 they intend to finance the cost of the coal industry dispute.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Security (Lord Glenarthur): My Lords, no decision has yet been taken.
Lord Bruce of Donington: My Lords, since no decision has yet been taken, will the noble Lord inform the House whether he is aware of the reports that have appeared in the responsible press over the past three weeks, some of which may have come indirectly from Government departments, that there is going to be a surcharge on electricity bills in order to pay for the costs of the miners' strike? May I also ask the noble Lord to answer this question. When considering this matter, will Her Majesty's Government bear in mind that on 31st July last, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, speaking in the House of Commons on this subject, said that the costs of the strike represented a worthwhile national investment? Will the noble Lord say whether, if that be the case, the whole country would care to participate in that investment rather than the consumers of electricity being required to contribute to any such cost?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, the noble Lord is surmising at what might be done. I refer the noble Lord to the Answer that I gave, which was that no decision has been taken. So far as the surcharge on electricity bills is concerned, this is entire speculation on behalf of the noble Lord opposite. What my right honourable friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced at the end of July was that expenditure was then between some £300 million to £350 million. I have no more up-to-date figures at the present time to give the noble Lord.
Lord Davies of Leek: My Lords, while thanking the noble Lord for that Answer, may I ask whether he can say if the contingency fund, or some of it, would be available for this purpose?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, the reserve to which the noble Lord refers is set at £2¾ billion in last year's public expenditure White Paper. So far, programme increases amounting to some £¾ billion have have been charged to the reserve to meet part of the cost of various other items. There are other potential charges, of which I suppose the miners' strike is one, but amounts are less certain. The total position is being monitored closely.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, will the noble Lord assure the House that when the decision to which he has referred is taken, or before that decision is taken, he will draw the attention of his honourable and right honourable friends to the fact that as long ago as last February, in a report prepared for the present Chancellor of the Exchequer when he was energy Minister, Coopers and Lybrand found that electricity was already being overcharged by up to 10 per cent?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, that is a matter for those who made that assessment. I am sure that that has been noted by my right honourable friend but I do not have that particular statement in front of me.
Lord Beswick: My Lords, will the noble Lord say whether the £300 million is the total cost to all Government departments, to all local authorities and to all those individuals who have lost their earnings?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, those figures that I gave related to the expenditure that had then been incurred. It is not quite what the noble Lord, Lord Bruce, would understand as a book figure because, if we take the total overall cost figure, the figure that I gave is reduced by the stock rundown and cut back in capital investment programmes. So the figures will not actually show up in the profit and loss account. However, I hope that answers the noble Lord's point.
Lord Beswick: My Lords, is the noble Lord saying that the £300 million does not include any police costs, any damage which has been done one way or the other, extra expenses to the local authorities, and so on?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, it includes those costs.
Lord Diamond: My Lords, would it be the intention of Her Majesty's Government, when this decision is made, to issue a White Paper setting out clearly what the Government understand by the word "costs"? There are direct costs, there are indirect costs; there is cash expenditure; there is damage; and there are various other items. It is obviously in the public interest to know exactly what is the total and how the Government view it.
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, I am sure that those responsible will note the noble Lord's remarks. I am well aware of the noble Lord's particular interest and experience in financial matters. The fact is that it is best to wait until the end of the day to establish exactly what has been the total cost.
Lord Morris: My Lords, would this question not be better aimed at the conscience of the President of the National Union of Mineworkers?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, I am sure that my noble friend is quite right.
Lord Bruce of Donington: My Lords, in case the question of surcharging the electricity consumer may be one of the options that is considered by the noble Lord's right honourable friends, may I ask this question? Will the noble Lord bear in mind the remarks of his colleague, the noble Earl, Lord Avon, last year, to which I have already referred, when he said that the Government had no powers or no wish to raise the power prices? Will the noble Lord give the House an assurance that the legalities of the position under the electricity Acts are thoroughly examined? Otherwise there may be a temptation to advise electricity consumers that any extra demands made upon them are illegal and that they should refuse to pay.
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, I am sure that the noble Lord will realise that the Government will of course act within the law when it comes to considering what is to be done about the costs. As I have said, no decisions on electricity price increases have been taken.
Viscount Trenchard: My Lords, will my noble friend agree that, in the end, regrettable, heavy extra
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Government expenditure of this kind can only be recouped either from the consumer or the taxpayer? Will my noble friend further agree that although this will inevitably be a large sum, it would be a much larger sum if the principle of keeping open any form of productive institution at huge losses were endorsed for all time?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, I am very grateful to my noble friend. I think that he is absolutely right. The principle is an all-important one; that is why we must do all that we possibly can to ensure that this dispute is brought to a speedy conclusion.
Lord Leatherland: My Lords, will the Government consider cancelling their decision to close down 20 pits with the result of our having to import coal from Poland?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, I think that the noble Lord will realise that that is a different question.

DHSS Staff: Industrial Dispute
2.44 p.m.
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the first Question standing in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they are aware of the anxiety and hardship caused to recipients and would-be recipients of social security benefits by the refusal of certain members of the staff of the Department of Health and Social Security to do the work for which they are paid; and what action it is proposed to take to remedy the position.
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, we all deplore the fact that the strike at Newcastle has caused such worry and inconvenience to the public. We have, however, managed to maintain a service to beneficiaries, and we are making every effort to end the dispute.
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: My Lords, is my noble friend saying that no beneficiary has been put in any difficulty as a result of this action? If he is not saying that, will he not deplore the action of people who, in order to pursue their own claims, are prepared to impose hardship on the poorest section of our community?
Lord Glenarthur: No, my Lords, I am not. I certainly shall from this Dispatch Box deplore the fact that people are being inconvenienced in this way.
Baroness Jeger: My Lords, can the noble Lord the Minister say whether the services of ACAS have been invited to help solve this difficult dispute? Secondly, while thanking the Post Office staff for all that they have done to help pensioners over this problem, can the noble Lord say how much it is costing the Government to keep this strike going by having to make extra payments to the Post Office for the further work that they are doing? Can he give an assurance that the November benefit increases will be honoured? Will he further confirm or deny that the cost of these

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new arrangements to the staff is a loss of about £10 to £14 a week? Surely, if that is the case, there must be some way of pursuing through ACAS, or by other means, a solution to what seems a very difficult dispute?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, I think the first thing to say to the noble Baroness is that certainly in no way are we doing anything other than to try to bring the dispute to a speedy conclusion. The fact is that ACAS has been involved. The noble Baroness might like to know that this is a move unprecedented in the Civil Service and that the department remains prepared to resume negotiations at any time; and, of course, as I said earlier, we hope for a speedy settlement. I should like to join with the noble Baroness in paying tribute to the DHSS and the Post Office staff, who are making a great effort to allow us to operate the contingency arrangements.
The noble Baroness asked what were the costs of the dispute. All I can say is that the best estimate we can make is that up the end of last month the dispute had cost an extra £30 million to £40 million. When the noble Baroness says that it is only a question of a loss of £12 or £14 a week to the individuals concerned, I have to tell her that all those who are employed at this particular time, and who are affected or could be affected by the changes that have been proposed, will in fact continue to be paid at the rate that is in hand at the moment. It is only those who subsequently join and work the new arrangements who will be affected.
Lord Stallard: My Lords, will the noble Lord accept that those of us who are involved with the problems at the sharp end of this dispute—I am particularly concerned about the effects on United Kingdom pensioners living overseas, who are suffering real hardship—share his concern but do not share his complacency. Nor do we share the premise outlined in the Question. The questioner, may I say with due respect, does not appear to understand the situation. It is not the case that those on strike will not do the work for which they are paid. That is a gross oversimplification. They are being asked to do extra work, to accept different shifts and a different rota, and to accept a number of other changes not included in the Question. Will the Minister take on board, please, the suggestion of my noble friend Lady Jeger that ACAS should be called in immediately to bring the two parties together to find an acceptable solution?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, as I have said, ACAS has already been involved in the strike. As I have also said, we are prepared to resume negotiations at any time. We hope for an early settlement. The fact is that the offer made to the unions means that no existing shift workers need lose take-home pay if they accept the new arrangements. As to the effect of the dispute on overseas pensioners, I can tell the noble Lord that about 300,000 pensioners are affected, of whom approximately 70 per cent. are being paid following application to the overseas branch at Newcastle; and this figure is rising all the time.
Lord Campbell of Alloway: My Lords, may I ask my noble friend whether, apart from the question of ACAS, in an essential service of this kind there is not
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some procedure agreement or mandatory arbitration machinery?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, I am sure that there is. I do not actually have the details with me. The fact is that the normal procedures were exhausted. That is why it was necessary to take the unprecedented step of involving ACAS.
Lord Dean of Beswick: My Lords, will the Minister not agree that, while no one would condone activities or industrial action that create hardship at the sharp end, this problem has its roots in the fact that the present Government, two or three years ago, quite arbitrarily, abrogated long-standing agreements with the Civil Service unions over this type of employee involvement? That is where the roots of the dispute lie. Had we kept to those agreements, there would be no need to involve ACAS.
Lord Glenarthur: No, my Lords, I would not accept what the noble Lord says. In this dispute the unions appear to want the existing shift patterns to be set for all time. Obviously, this questions management's right to manage. This is something that the department cannot, and should not, accept.
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: My Lords, is my noble friend aware, in the light of the supplementary question put two questions ago from the Benches opposite, that the people concerned are refusing to carry out the duties they have been asked to carry out, and in pursuit of their standpoint are apparently quite prepared to inflict a great deal of hardship on people much poorer than themselves?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, yes; I agree entirely with my noble friend. I have had a vast amount of correspondence on the subject. Many people have been very distressed by it. Nevertheless, I think it is true that the emergency arrangements which we put in train for these occasions have been working better and better as time has gone by. I only hope, as I said earlier, that the strike can be brought to a speedy conclusion.
Baroness Jeger: My Lords, I apologise for asking another question, but the noble Lord the Minister has said that ACAS is involved. Can he tell the House whether ACAS has put forward some definite proposition, and which side has refused to agree to it?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, it would take me more than a minute or two to go into the details for the noble Baroness, but I should be very happy to correspond with her on this particular point. The fact is that recently—only last week—my department wrote yet again to the general secretary of CPSA outlining the various factors which were involved and hoping that it would be possible to make some sensible progress. I have not got in front of me the details of the ACAS arrangements, but I can say, yes, ACAS has been involved.
Lord Wallace of Coslany: My Lords, in view of the admitted excellent work carried out by sub-post offices in this situation, would not the Government agree that

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it is necessary to review the threatened closure of many sub-post offices which are at present of enormous advantage to the old-age pensioners?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, we are getting fairly wide of the mark on this, but the Post Office has announced that it would be wrong to close post offices while the additional work resulting from the dispute, which the Post Office estimates at some 25 per cent., was causing long queues and increased waiting times. Further closure of Crown offices will therefore be deferred until the dispute and its aftermath have been resolved. Similarly, in regard to sub-postmasters who have agreed to closure, the Post Office will be seeking to persuade as many as possible to remain open until the dispute is resolved.
A Noble Lord: And then they will get the chop, my Lords!

Diplomatic Immunity for Alleged Offenders
2.53 p.m.
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the second Question standing in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government in how many cases in the last 12 months have allegations of the commission of a criminal offence not been proceeded with by reason of a claim to diplomatic immunity on the part of the alleged offender.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Armed Forces (Lord Trefgarne): My Lords, we have received police reports of 38 serious offences allegedly committed by diplomats since 1st October 1983. "Serious" is defined as applying to any offence in a category where the maximum sentence could in certain circumstances be six months or more imprisonment, although very few of the 38 would in fact have incurred any custodial sentence.
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: My Lords, while thanking the noble Lord for that reply I should like to ask him whether he can confirm that at any rate most of those 38 offences are offences other than traffic offences. Can he also confirm one's impression that there has been a proliferation in diplomatic staffs in London, in particular from the newer countries?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, the present number of diplomatic staff in London enjoying full diplomatic immunity is 4,538. That does not include dependent family members forming a part of the immune person's household. I think that my right honourable friend the Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary gave further details when he addressed the Foreign Affairs Committee. No, I am mistaken; it was my noble friend the Minister of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, Lady Young, when she addressed the Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs Committee on 30th July last. I wonder whether my noble friend will allow me to send him some details of that.
Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: My Lords, I wonder whether the noble Lord will be good enough to tell us what progress has been made in the review of the Vienna Convention, about which there was a great deal of discussion some weeks ago. Secondly, is it the case that his right honourable friend the Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary has sent a letter to the heads of missions in London about this matter, and is it the case that he has told them that the rules under the Vienna Convention will be applied more rigorously in future? Can the noble Lord say what is the reaction to that of the heads of missions or, indeed, their governments?
Lord Trefgarne: Yes, my Lords; it is the case that recently the Permanent Under-Secretary at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office wrote to heads of missions along the lines that the noble Lord has mentioned. I do not think that we expected any formal response to that communication, except perhaps more scrupulous observance of our laws.
Lord Mishcon: My Lords, in order to place before the House some kind of balance on the mutuality, or want of it, in regard to the Vienna Convention, can the noble Lord the Minister give any indication to the House about the number of occasions over the past 10 years on which the United Kindom or its representatives have claimed immunity for our own officials in order to prevent a possible prosecution for criminal offences?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, until recently records were kept only in individual personal files and there was no central record. However, a recent survey of records at overseas posts has revealed that in the last 10 years, as it happens, nine diplomatic service officers escaped prosecution for offences other than minor traffic violations, such as parking offences, by virtue of their immunity.
Lord Mishcon: My Lords, would not the noble Lord the Minister agree that there seems to be a lack of balance in these matters?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, that must be self-evident from the answers which I have given. It does, I suppose, indicate what a high standard of behaviour we have come to expect, and get, from our diplomatic officers serving overseas, but it may also be a reflection of the very considerable size of the diplomatic community in London.

Nationalised Industries and Price Rises
2.57 p.m.
Baroness Burton of Coventry: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they have issued any guidelines to the chairmen of nationalised industries concerning the notice period given prior to any implementation of price rises and any absence of prior consultation.
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, no general guidelines have been issued, but in some cases there is a statutory requirement for industries to consult consumer interests before changes in tariffs are implemented. Additionally, I understand that non-statutory arrangements for consultation exist in a number of industries.
Baroness Burton of Coventry: My Lords, I wonder whether the Minister can comment on something concerning British Telecom and the fact that increased telephone charges are to come into effect next month. My information is that prior consultation with users did not take place and that the very short notice before the charges come into effect has greatly been deplored. Secondly, can the noble Lord tell the House what were the profits of British Telecom as at 31st March this year?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, if the noble Baroness is hinting that BT may not have complied with the conditions of its licence in terms of the recently announced prices increases, I have to tell her that this is a matter for the Director General of Telecommunications. British Telecommunications' profits were £990 million in 1983–84.
Baroness Burton of Coventry: My Lords, is the Minister aware that the first part of his reply is really disgraceful in that the consumer associations were not consulted at all on this matter? May I ask him whether he is aware that the public statement issued by British Telecom stated that the telephone increases were to achieve—and I quote—"a sounder financial footing"? To most of us, a figure of £990 million profit is a pretty sound financial footing. How much more would the Minister suggest is needed before that is reached? Finally, before he answers me on this matter of the nationalised industries, I should like to ask him whether he is aware that British Gas had an operating profit at 31st March this year of £667.9 million, and that the electricity industry had an operating profit of £901 million. Are consumers to go on paying, however enormous these profits are?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, the fact that British Telecom made a profit of £990 million has to be seen in the context of the rate of return that that represents upon the net current cost assets employed. I think, too, that the noble Baroness will realise that when we are talking about a profit of £990 million for BT, BT's massive investments and the massive scale of its business requirements are such that that kind of profit is not as extravagant or as vast as the noble Baroness suggests it is. The fact is that BT accounted for some 2 per cent. of the income-based gross domestic product in 1983. That is a very substantial amount. I think that the figures which I have quoted simply illustrate the fact that the investment and the size of the operation are so enormous.
Lord Bruce of Donington: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that his answers only fully justify the contentions which were put forward at the time of the Telecommunications Bill and various other privatisation Bills that the reason prices were being forced upwards was so that the Government could
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subsequently privatise these assets at the expense of the taxpayer in order to yield a satisfactory return for their rentier friends?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, I remember having many exchanges with the noble Lord, Lord Bruce, over the passage of that Bill. As he will know, BT is a public limited company. It is wholly owned by the Government, operating under the terms and conditions of a licence granted by the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry. There are restrictions on the extent to which BT can increase the prices of certain of its telephone services, but those controls are monitored and enforced by the Director General of Telecommunications.
Lord Morris: My Lords, does my noble friend recall that when the nationalised industries made vast losses, the Government used to be upbraided from all sides of the House? Now that the nationalised industries are making profits, it appears that they are upbraided only by noble Lords opposite.
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, my noble friend is quite right.
Baroness Burton of Coventry: My Lords, is the Minister aware that all these facts—and I call them facts—that he quotes really cut no ice at all with the ordinary consumer, who is absolutely convinced that these enormous profits should in some way mitigate the charges to consumers? Does the noble Lord recall—although he himself did not answer the Question—that we raised this matter as regards the electricity charges earlier this year, and is he aware that we shall be returning to the matter next week, when I hope he will have a better reply?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, in that case I had better wait until next week, but I shall look forward to what the noble Baroness has to say then.
Lord Harmar-Nicholls: My Lords, does not my noble friend agree that, as privatisation is a very important part of the Government's policy, in order to avoid the misconceptions which have been shown in the questions which he has been asked so far, ought not the profits to be shown in terms of profits per share? Until the return on a share justifies people investing, we shall not get the investment—and it is investment that we need in order to deal with the unemployment figures. Ought not that presentation to be looked at as a way of making quite clear to the public the true nature of the business dealings?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, I am sure that my noble friend is quite right. Off the top of my head I am not quite clear how precisely it could be done, but I should have thought that this is a matter which could be given consideration by the industries concerned, particularly when they produce rather easily understood glossy brochures illustrating exactly what their profits have been. I am sure that they will bear my noble friend's remarks in mind.
Lord Diamond: My Lords, if the noble Lord is not in agreement with my noble friend as to the adequacy of

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this service, why does he not tell us what is the return on the assets, and then we could form our own judgment?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, I can tell the noble Lord that in regard to the electricity industry the rate of return was about 2 per cent. and I think that the figure for the gas industry was about 5 per cent., but I might need to check on that.

Business
Lord Denham: My Lords, at a convenient moment after 3.30 this afternoon my noble friend Lord Trefgarne will, with the leave of the House, repeat in the form of a Statement an Answer to a Private Notice Question in another place, on Ethiopia. That will be followed by my noble friend Lord Elton, who, with the leave of the House, will repeat a Statement that is to be made in another place on the bomb explosion at the Grand Hotel, Brighton; and that, in turn, will be followed by my noble friend Lord Avon, who, again with the leave of the House, will repeat a Statement that is to be made in another place on the coal dispute.

Ordnance Factories and Military Services Bill
3.4 p.m.
Lord Denham: My Lords, I have it in command from Her Majesty the Queen to acquaint the House that Her Majesty, having been informed of the purport of the Ordnance Factories and Military Services Bill, has consented to place her prerogative and interests, so far as they are affected by the Bill, at the disposal of Parliament for the purposes of the Bill.
Bill read a third time.
Clause 3 [Operation of schemes]:
Baroness Vickers Baroness Vickers moved Amendment No. 1:
Page 5, line 3, at end insert—
("( ) The Secretary of State shall make a report annually to both Houses of Parliament, and allow time for its debate in both Houses, on progress made on the disposal of any securities issued to him under section 1 (2).").
The noble Baroness said: My Lords, I beg to move the amendment which stands in my name on the Marshalled List. I realise that my noble friend may not be prepared to agree to this amendment being written into the Bill. However, I would be grateful if he would agree that it would be possible to have a report annually to both Houses of Parliament.
My reason for making this request is that the Secretary of State can decide at least 17 times what action can be taken, independent of Parliament. Also, he can decide many times with the Treasury's consent or after consulting the Treasury. A Minister of the Crown can also decide several times. Under Clause 5:
"The Secretary of State may not dispose of any securities or rights acquired under this section unless the disposal is made with the Treasury's consent …
Any expenses incurred by the Secretary of State or the Treasury in consequence of this section shall be paid out of money provided by Parliament".
Clause 7(9) states:
"A statutory instrument containing an order under this section shall be subject to annulment in pursuance of a resolution of either House of Parliament".
Clause 15 deals with repeal, and subsection (2) says:
"The power to make an order under this section shall be exercisable by statutory instrument, and no such order shall be made unless a draft of the order has been laid before and approved by resolution of the House of Commons".
As I understood it, statutory instruments usually had to go before a Joint Committee of Members of the House of Commons and the House of Lords before they could be approved by both Houses. It appears to me that the Commons may have a better chance of safeguarding the industry for the future.
I still consider that to do away with these Royal Ordnance factories and to privatise them will cause damage to Britain's defence, and it is unfortunate that an organisation with 300 years of excellent work and three Queen's Awards should have its future changed. On 19th July the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, made pledges in regard to the pensions and said that the Government would continue to negotiate with the trade unions about them. The noble Lord said that they would continue to negotiate. I should like to see the matter settled before the Bill is passed. Will the Minister agree today to ensure that an unequivocal commitment in regard to pensions is written into the Bill? Will the Minister state that the arrangements made for existing employees who transfer to the new company on vesting day will not be different from those for new employees after vesting day?
I should like to pay tribute to the Royal Ordnance factories' workforce, who have served the nation well for 300 years. If he had had the chance to visit the factories during the war, as I did, the Minister would have seen the excellent work carried out, sometimes under very difficult conditions, by this workforce. I hope that the noble Lord will pay tribute to the part which they have played for over 300 years to keep Britain a free, democratic country. I beg to move.
Lord Graham of Edmonton: My Lords, I should like fully to support the noble Baroness, Lady Vickers. This is a very reasonable and moderate amendment. We agree completely with much of what has been said as regards the genesis of the Bill or the philosophy behind it. We are agin it. But this amendment is not talking about the Bill: it is talking about the Minister coming to the House once a year and telling us the progress or otherwise that he has made in disposing of the assets.
We want a report and a debate. A debate means a discussion. I do not know the parliamentary device that will be used, the peg upon which we shall hang it; but if we are in the process of discussing the dissolution of the Royal Ordnance factories' arrangements then it is reasonable to ask that once a year the Minister should come to the House and tell us how he is getting on, what the problems have been, what the asset realisation has been and so on. This is a very reasonable amendment. In this House the Minister has refused to accept any amendment whatever from this side. He has had amendments forced upon him. This amendment gives the Minister the chance of a lifetime to show that he is reasonable.
Viscount Trenchard: My Lords, perhaps I may detain the House for one minute on this matter. I think that we ought to be satisfied with the many assurances that the Government have given about the objects of privatising the Royal Ordnance factories, which I know to be entirely positive and which are entirely aimed at ensuring that the Royal Ordnance factories flourish as suppliers, not only of Her Majesty's forces in this country, but as is necessary in today's market, of the requirements of allies of Her Majesty's Government abroad. I am quite and entirely satisfied that this has to be done in the private sector and that, in addition to the many Government assurances on the positive nature of their intentions in any privatisation that takes place, there are natural controlling factors which ensure that the long-term interests of the Government, the Royal Ordnance factories themselves and the armed services are bound to coincide in making sure that positive and secure arrangements are made for the future wellbeing of this great organisation.
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, at the outset let me hasten to associate myself with the words of praise which my noble friend directed towards the workforce of the Royal Ordnance factories. I perfectly understand my noble friend's desire that Parliament should be kept aware of what is happening with regard to the privatisation of the new Royal Ordnance company. My noble friend moved an amendment on Report which would have required any disposal of shares in the new company to be authorised by an affirmative resolution of both Houses of Parliament. I explained then that such a requirement would not be practicable, since the details of a flotation could not be finally fixed until a very short time before the offer for sale; and the date of the offer for sale would be variable, since it would depend on many factors. On the other hand, any debate which took place well in advance of a flotation would be lacking those details which Parliament would undoubtedly wish to have. I said that the Government would announce their intention before privatisation took place, and we would do this as close as possible to the event. Any noble Lord who wished to ask questions arising out of such a statement would, of course, be free to do so. It seems to me that this would be much the best way of handling the matter.
My noble friend withdrew her amendment on Report, and now replaces it with this one. On its face the amendment is not restricted to the period during which the Secretary of State holds all the shares in the company. Is it the intention that he should be bound to lay an annual report even while he holds a minority of shares—from which he might at some time or another make further disposals? If so, this obligation could endure for the foreseeable future, long after privatisation takes place. I doubt that my noble friend intends this, but that would be the effect of her amendment as it stands. Clearly, the Government could not accept an obligation of that kind.
In any case, I do not think that an annual report to Parliament is likely to be very informative. Between vesting day, when the new company gets started in business, and the flotation of shares on the market, progress will—I hope—be steady, but it will not be
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spectacular. There is unlikely to be any more information to put in an annual report than would be found in the report which the company will, like most public companies, issue in any event. Any noble Lord may question Government Ministers on any matter arising out of such a report or, indeed, out of the activities of the company generally. I cannot see that anything at all is to be gained from a formal requirement of the kind which this amendment seeks.
I repeat that the Government will announce their intentions regarding privatisation as fully and completely as possible close to, but in good time before, the privatisation, by whatever method that might take place. This is, after all, the usual way of handling these things. Why do we need some more elaborate process? I see nothing so unusual in this case which would justify so radical a departure from the normal course. I hope my noble friend will, on reflection, think that what I have said is not unreasonable. I understand the point she has been making, but I thought that my undertaking regarding a Government announcement to Parliament would meet her concerns. I am sorry if it does not, but I fear that the Government cannot accept what is proposed by this amendment. Therefore, I hope that my noble friend will feel able to withdraw it.
Lord Diamond: My Lords, would the Minister think again as regards what he said about this being a very unusual thing to ask the Government to do? The Government are acting as a steward and the noble Baroness, Lady Vickers, is suggesting that the Goverment should account for their stewardship from time to time and, instead of leaving the time open and vague, that they should account for their stewardship once a year. No specific date is given, and whether it is a week earlier or later than the anniversary of the last report would not matter very much. But at all events, there would be a report. There must be dozens of other reports which the Government lay before Parliament because of the stewardship which Parliament has given them. What is unusual about that?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, if I have your Lordships' permission to speak again, I would say that all that is fairly conjectural. We do not know how long the Secretary of State will be in the position under which the amendment would require him to make such a report. Indeed, as I said earlier, it is not clear from the amendment how long my noble friend had in mind. I believe that the process of the company making its own report in a form with which we are now very familiar is the right way in which to proceed with this matter, and I hope that my noble friend will now think so, too.
Lord Campbell of Alloway: My Lords, before my noble friend sits down, on this Question of accounting for stewardship, is he aware of any precedent in any other legislation of the type of accounting which is proposed by this amendment?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, if I still have your Lordships' permission to speak for a third time on this matter, I must say that I could not answer my noble friend's question without taking some advice, but I have a feeling that he may have put his finger on another difficulty.
Baroness Vickers: My Lords, I am sorry to say that I am not very happy about that reply. The Minister has said that he will answer Questions and I hope that when we put down Questions, either Written or oral, they will be answered quickly and we shall be given some definite information as to what will happen in the future. If that is so, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
3.18 p.m.
Lord Graham of Edmonton Lord Graham of Edmonton moved Amendment No. 2:
Page 5, line 15, leave out subsection (9) and insert—
("(9) Not less than six weeks before the day on which a scheme comes into force, the Secretary of State shall lay before Parliament a copy of the scheme but omitting any material the disclosure of which he considers would be contrary to national security or to the commercial interest of any person, and such copy shall include any Memoradum of Understanding entered into by a Minister of the Crown and the Chairman of the Board of any Company referred to in subsection (4) describing the relationship between the Government as shareholder and any such Chairman.")
The noble Lord said: My Lords, I beg to move Amendment No. 2 standing in my name and that of my noble friend. This amendment was given an airing at the Report stage. The genesis of it is to provide this House and the other place with an opportunity, before a scheme and the memorandum of understanding come into force, to question and debate the contents of the scheme. Time and time again the Minister has said that work is going on and that details are being drafted, and he has agreed that the Government have nothing to hide.
We are inviting the Government to reveal all that up to now they have hidden from public view in the confidence that they have it right and also in the confidence that if they are challenged they will be able to carry the argument. To the best of our knowledge constructive discussions are taking place outside this House on the way in which the will of the Government can be carried forward. But, quite frankly, the Government must believe that from time to time even those outside this House and certainly Ministers and their advisers can get it wrong. We are asking that, six weeks before the date on which a scheme comes into force, this House and the other place be given the opportunity to debate the matter and perhaps to allow the Minister and his advisers the opportunity to reflect. So far as we are concerned the present situation means that there will be a fait accompli when the actual scheme has been created. All the Minister has argued is that the procedure we are adopting will provide for an undue delay.
We are talking about the dismantlement of something which has served this country for hundreds of years. The basis of the organisation is being radically altered. I think the Minister would concede that that is what privatisation means. We are talking in terms of taking up some parliamentary time. What are we talking about? Half a day? Even a day? We are talking about some hours of parliamentary time in order that we can be satisfied that the Minister and his advisers have it right. We believe that it is possible for this Government, or any other government, to have their ideas improved upon by debate in this House.
Although discussions are taking place—and of course we are not privy to them—we have an air of unease that time after time, vis-à-vis even the last modest amendment proposed, the Government are not prepared to stand by the guns which they deploy in arguments outside this House and allow Members of your Lordships' House and Members of another place to have a look at what they intend to do. The Government are well aware of the parliamentary arithmetic which they can deploy here and in another place. We are simply asking the Minister to take this House into their confidence and treat it with the dignity that we believe ought to be extended to other parliamentarians who are anxious to see what is to happen before it actually takes place. I beg to move.
Lord Mayhew: My Lords, there appears to be a typical conflict here between the convenience of the Government and the rights of Parliament. On this issue my noble friends and I know well where we stand. It was a little reassuring to hear in his reply to an earlier amendment the Minister stating that before any privatisation will take place Parliament will be informed. It is the natural and proper course of events to give Parliament the opportunity of expressing its view on privatisation. The Government have to admit that resolute as they have been in resisting amendments throughout the passage of this Bill, they have on one or two occasions taken Parliament's advice, notably in relation to the Ministry of Defence police.
I think they regret that they ever drafted the Bill without Schedule 3; but by allowing Parliament the proper time—and we cannot complain that we have not had proper time—to discuss this Bill the Government themselves were led to make a substantial and important improvement in the Bill. But now they will not allow Parliament to do the same with the scheme. They are going to keep that secret until the last moment, and then they are going to announce it after they have made it.
They are going to prevent Parliament playing the same constructive and democratic process that we have seen ourselves playing in the course of this Bill. I would urge the Minister to think carefully about this. As the noble Lord who introduced the amendment said, the ROFs began 500 years ago as a public service. I really think that six weeks might be spared to enable Parliament to consider the Government's scheme, which is very important. There are the whole principles of valuation, the whole question of intellectual property rights, and a lot of people are going to be seriously changed one way or another by the nature of the scheme which the Government will announce. Parliament has the right to discuss this. We warmly support the amendment with its demand that the Government should give us a chance to discuss it.
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, we have addressed the question of the publication of these documents on a number of occasions during the passage of this Bill. I must say again that the Government are quite prepared to lay the first scheme before Parliament by vesting day and to publish any memorandum of understanding no later than vesting day, should it be ready by then, and I hope it will be.

17
The only reservation we have noted is that information may need to be withheld on the grounds of national security or commercial sensitivity.
I have already explained that the scheme will deal with the intricate detail of the transfer; examination of the scheme will show exactly which title deeds to land, for example, which leases, which plant, equipment and materials, and which cash and bank balances will transfer to the new company. All of that will be laid out for Parliament to see; but I do not see any argument that there will be any individual item or set of items in the scheme which are of such importance on their own that the Government must hold their hand for six weeks while such minor issues are examined.
Parliament has already debated and examined in detail the principles of the transfer, and we are all aware of what is to be transferred in general terms to the new company. The essence of the transfer is that the property currently in the trading fund—and accounted for in the annual reports of the ROFs—together with the property comprised at the former PERME establishments at Westcott and Waltham Abbey will be vested in the new company. That is what is of interest to the work force and to Parliament; not whether a particular slice of land or a particular machine tool which formed part of the generality of property involved should or should not be transferred.
Parliament will of couse be able to examine the propriety of the transfer and to look at the details through its Committee system and otherwise. That will come after the transfer, but it must not be forgotten that we are already asking Parliament for the authority to make the transfer by this Bill currently before your Lordships. The Bill already provides for the publication of the scheme at the appropriate time, when it will have been completed. As I have explained before, to require us to lay the scheme before Parliament six weeks in advance of its coming into force will merely import an unnecessary delay while the new company waits to begin business. I simply cannot see what this amendment hopes to achieve. If Parliament approves the principle of the transfer embodied in this Bill, there is no reason for it to seek to delay the executive action by the Government to give effect to the transfer.
As regards the memorandum of understanding, I have said that this is a matter between the Secretary of State as shareholder and the chairman of the company. As shareholder, the Secretary of State will be responsible for the guardianship of public money, but he is of course answerable to Parliament for that function. Parliament is not restricted in making observations or criticisms of the MoU, in the light of which the Secretary of State will be able to amend or supersede that document.
I must therefore resist this amendment. The undertakings I have given about publication of the two documents already meet the purpose of part of the amendment, and there is clearly nothing useful to be gained by requiring the Secretary of State to delay vesting day by at least six weeks while these documents lie before Parliament. Parliament will have as much opportunity to question the Government about the
18
details of the scheme after it comes into force as before. The amendment is therefore unnecessary.
Lord Graham of Edmonton: My Lords, I am disappointed with that reply. The Minister may well have absolute confidence that when Parliament sees the detail of the scheme, or schemes, it will be satisfied. However, he is saying that whether it is satisfied or not, Parliament will then have agreed to the principle of the transference of the assets in one way or the other. If the Minister is also saying that that for which we are asking is not only unusual but even unique, may I say that I am not just talking about the employees or the national interest; I am talking about the interests of parliamentarians. We do not want to clutter up the Order Paper, but we want to see that as often as possible we are kept advised on how this scheme evolves.
The Minister will appreciate that although there will be certain modes of procedure carried out here which are common, this is something like a unique situation. Not only the issue of the transfer of the Royal Ordnance factories but what is at stake. What we have asked for time and time again is the opportunity to make a comment. The Minister more than once has said to the House—and it was said in another place—that discussions are going on and that in the fullness of time all will be revealed. What we say is that as soon as it is possible to reveal it, it should be revealed to us. The Minister is right, we are asking for six weeks' grace. However, as the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, said, in the totality of what is at stake, what is six weeks in order to provide Parliament with the satisfaction that what we are suspicious about—we are suspicious about some of the details—can be assuaged or argued over? The Minister has not been helpful to the House and I shall invite the House to express its views by a vote on the wisdom or otherwise of the amendment.
3.31 p.m.
On Question, Whether the said amendment (No. 2) shall be agreed to?
Their Lordships divided: Contents, 63; Not-Contents, 96.

DIVISION NO. 1

CONTENTS

Ardwick, L.

Donaldson of Kingsbridge, L.

Attlee, E.

Elwyn-Jones, L.

Aylestone, L.

Ezra, L.

Banks, L.

Fisher of Rednal, B.

Birk, B.

Fitt, L.

Blyton, L.

Galpern, L.

Boston of Faversham, L.

Gosford, E.

Bottomley, L.

Graham of Edmonton, L.

Brockway, L.

Grey, E.

Bruce of Donington, L.

Hampton, L.

Buckmaster, V.

Harris of Greenwich, L.

Burton of Coventry, B.

Jeger, B.

Carmichael of Kelvingrove, L.

Jenkins of Putney, L.

Cledwyn of Penrhos, L.

Kilmarnock, L.

Collison, L.

Kinloss, Ly.

Cooper of Stockton Heath, L.

Lawrence, L.

Cudlipp, L.

Leatherland, L.

David, B. [Teller.]

Lindsay of Birker, L.

Davies of Penrhys, L.

Listowel, E.

Diamond, L.

Llewelyn-Davies of Hastoe. B.

19

Lockwood, B.

Ross of Marnock, L.

McCarthy, L.

Seear, B.

McNair, L.

Serota, B.

Mayhew, L.

Stedman, B.

Mishcon, L.

Stoddart of Swindon, L.

Oram, L.

Strabolgi, L.

Phillips, B.

Taylor of Mansfield, L.

Plant, L.

Underhill, L.

Ponsonby of Shulbrede, L. [Teller.]

Wallace of Coslany, L.

Wigoder. L.

Rea, L.

Wilson of Langside, L.

Roberthall, L.

Wootton of Abinger, B.

NOT-CONTENTS

Airey of Abingdon, B.

Ilchester, E.

Alexander of Tunis, E.

Ingrow, L.

Alport, L.

Jessel, L.

Auckland, L.

Kinnaird, L.

Avon, E.

Lane-Fox, B.

Beloff, L.

Long, V.

Belstead, L.

Lucas of Chilworth, L.

Bessborough, E.

Mancroft, L.

Blake, L.

Margadale, L.

Boyd-Carpenter, L.

Marley, L.

Brabazon of Tara, L.

Maude of Stratford-upon-Avon, L.

Caithness, E.

Cameron of Lochbroom, L.

Milverton, L.

Campbell of Alloway, L.

Molson, L.

Carnegy of Lour, B.

Morris, L.

Coleraine, L.

Mottistone, L.

Cottesloe, L.

Mowbray and Stourton, L.

Cullen of Ashbourne, L.

Murton of Lindisfarne, L.

Daventry, V.

Newall, L.

Davidson, V.

Nugent of Guildford, L.

De Freyne, L.

Peyton of Yeovil, L.

Denham, L. [Teller.]

Porritt, L.

Donegall, M.

Rodney, L.

Ebbisham, L.

St. Davids, V.

Eccles, V.

Saint Oswald, L.

Effingham, E.

Savile, L.

Ellenborough, L.

Seebohm. L.

Elliot of Harwood, B.

Skelmersdale, L.

Elton, L.

Soames, L.

Faithfull, B.

Somers, L.

Fraser of Kilmorack, L.

Spens, L.

Glanusk, L.

Stamp, L.

Glenarthur, L.

Strathspey, L.

Gormanston, V.

Sudeley, L.

Gray of Contin, L.

Suffield, L.

Gridley, L.

Swansea, L.

Hailsham of Saint Marylebone, L.

Swinton, E. [Teller.]

Trefgarne, L.

Halsbury, E.

Trenchard, V.

Harmar-Nicholls, L.

Trumpington, B.

Harvington, L.

Ullswater, V.

Hatherton, L.

Vaux of Harrowden, L.

Hawke, L.

Vivian, L.

Hayter, L.

Ward of Witley, V.

Headfort, M.

Westbury, L.

Hives, L.

Whitelaw, V.

Holderness, L.

Wise, L.

Hornsby-Smith, B.

Young of Graffham, L.

Hylton-Foster, B.

Younger of Leckie, V.

Resolved in the negative, and amendment disagreed to accordingly.
Clause 17 [Finance: general]:
3.39 p.m.
Lord Stoddart of Swindon Lord Stoddart of Swindon moved Amendment No. 3:
Page 13, line 39, at end insert—
("(3) This Act shall come into force at the end of the period of six months beginning with the day on which it is passed.")
The noble Lord said: My Lords, a similar amendment was moved at Report stage to delay implementation of the Bill until 1st October, 1985.
20
This amendment was lost by only 16 votes, indicating that a good number of your Lordships were convinced that the Government were not really ready to proceed with the implementation of the Bill in an orderly manner to the benefit of the taxpayer and with proper safeguards for the careers, conditions of service and prospects of the people concerned at Royal Ordnance factories,
I do not intend to repeat at length the arguments for delay which I put forward at the Report stage, although all those arguments still apply. I should therefore simply like to emphasise that no answer has yet been given as to the benefit of privatisation, and the employees have yet to be satisfied on a number of serious and important matters. That is a matter of great concern to us as well as to the employees of ROF.
The memorandum of understanding, to which reference has already been made in previous debates, has not been published, and amazingly the noble Lord the Minister was unable at Report stage last week to give any firm date for the publication of this document; although over three months ago the noble Lord assured the House that the memorandum of understanding was almost finished. It was three months ago when the noble Lord the Minister said that the memorandum of understanding was almost finished. We have still not received sight of it. Indeed, the Minister can still only answer us by saying that it will be ready for publication in due course, whatever that may mean.
The Minister said nothing at all about the current order book situation in the ROFs and the possible announcement of large-scale redundancies at a number of factories, a matter which concerns us, and indeed concerns the trade unions and the people employed in ROFs very much indeed. But nothing has been said. Since these redundancies have arisen while the factories are still part of the Ministry of Defence, can we assume that the announcement will be made before vesting day? If the announcement is made before vesting day, it will give absolute confidence to the staff affected that they would be getting MoD levels of redundancy compensation; but, further, for the mobile non-industrial grades affected by potential redundancies it would ensure that they would have the opportunity of transferring to other jobs elsewhere in the Ministry of Defence if suitable vacancies exist. This will take a while to achieve so that this, too, means that there should be a reasonable gap between the enactment of the legislation and vesting day itself.
Parliament has been given no real details of the financial arrangements—a point which has been referred to earlier by the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew. He was rightly concerned about it. There have been no details of financial arrangements and the sale value of the new company can apparently only be guessed at. The taxpayers are therefore buying a pig in a poke and overall may find themselves in the end paying private entrepreneurs to take off their hands an undertaking making handsome profits for the Treasury. In other words, the taxpayers may very well be handing over good cash in lieu of profits—not in lieu of losses, but in lieu of profits—which amounted last year, if my memory is correct, to no less than £62 million for the Treasury. Yet we may be paying private firms and

21
private entrepreneurs to take these profits off our hands. It is a ridiculous situation.
Even those noble Lords who are in sympathy with the general aims of this Bill must agree that the Government approach is sloppy, ill-considered and hasty in the extreme. It is a rush job which can only do harm. I would urge noble Lords on all sides of the House to support this amendment in the interests of efficiency, the taxpayer, the armed forces, the ROFs themselves and all those who work in them. I beg to move.
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, your Lordships will recall that we amended this clause in Committee to take out of the Bill a provision that the Act should come into force two months after Royal Assent. I must say that I find it disappointing that the noble Lord, having accepted that amendment in Committee, now seeks to replace the two-month delay with a six-month delay. The Government's position remains now as it was at Committee stage, and was explained to your Lordships at that time. We are anxious that vesting day should occur as soon as possible after this Bill receives Royal Assent. Obviously it cannot take place before the Act comes into force, and therefore we sought, successfully, to amend the Bill to allow vesting day to take place as soon as the Act is passed. We cannot accept a substitution of a six-month delay for the two-month delay which we have already removed from the Bill.
The noble Lord advances as justification for this amendment a suggestion that more time is needed in which to solve certain outstanding problems. I accept that there are still some important matters to be resolved, and we hope that we shall be able to resolve them very shortly. But I must tell the noble Lord, frankly, that there is no legal necessity to resolve them before vesting day, because the legal position of employees is already amply secured by the existing provisions of the Bill. Indeed, it is arguable that many of the outstanding problems may be more easily resolvable after vesting day, when the trade unions are dealing face to face with the new company, than before, when inevitably the Ministry of Defence is involved in the discussions as a kind of intermediary.
It has already been necessary to delay vesting day well beyond the period it was hoped it might occur. Both the Government and the company are most anxious that the company should get started in business as soon as possible. Further delay can only work to the disadvantage of everyone concerned, including the employees. Your Lordships will know as well as I do that the inevitable effect of moving a deadline is to dissipate the sense of immediacy attached to having to meet it. There is nothing to suggest that if we amend the clause as proposed we shall be any nearer a solution to outstanding problems in six months' time than we are at present. The disadvantages of this amendment are clear, without there being any apparent advantages. I assure the noble Lord that I share his concern that, if possible, outstanding issues should be resolved before vesting day, and we are doing our utmost to ensure that this is done.
The noble Lord referred to the question of redundancies. This is a matter which was raised last
22
week at the previous stage of the Bill. I shall have some more to say about that when we come to the next pair of amendments, Nos. 4 and 5, but in the meantime I hope the noble Lord will feel able not to press his amendment.
Lord Mayhew: My Lords, I wonder if the noble Lord would reassure the House on one or two points which arose out of his statement. It is quite plain from his statement that a whole mass of work and agreement needs to be done which has not been done. He said that it is just on the verge of being agreed, but I recall that he said that at Committee stage. I am not sure that he did not say it at Second Reading. May we please have from the Minister a clear statement as to what now has been, first of all, agreed with the trade unions—pensions, redundancies and other matters—and, second, what is the state of play with regard to the memorandum of understanding? Is that finally drafted? Can he please tell us in relation to each of these important matters where the Government have got?
We get the impression not simply that the Government are unwilling to postpone—maybe they are unwilling to postpone, but they have done it once already; and they will have to postpone because all these other things are in arrears. It sounded to me from what the noble Lord said that the Government might be very wise to accept this amendment, and might be very wise to postpone the operation of the Act until they have got their whole ploy in order.
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, if I may have permission to speak again, may I answer the noble Lord in this way? First, the question of when we shall reach agreement on these matters is not wholly in the hands of Government because we are discussing these matters with other people. The noble Lord should address his questions to those other people, for example, the trade unions, who are also involved in the discussion. But, as I said during my earlier remarks, it is not in any event absolutely necessary that all of these matters are precisely agreed before vesting day. I very much hope that they will be and most of them, I believe, will be. I have already assured your Lordships about the sort of documents that we shall be able to make available at that time. But I think that there is an important argument to put before your Lordships, which I have already done; namely, that if we keep moving the deadline nothing will ever be agreed. I hope therefore that the noble Lord will see the force of that.
Lord Stoddart of Swindon: My Lords, I am most disappointed at the Minister's reply. It may very well be his own opinion that it is not necessary for all the matters mentioned by me and by other noble Lords to be resolved by vesting day; but I can assure him that there are many people, including me, who believe that these matters should be resolved before vesting day. I am surprised that the noble Lord should have referred to the fact that there had been already a two-month delay in vesting day. He implied, in fact, that that was a concession to the Opposition, but I would remind him that that two months' delay was at the behest of the Government themselves, and certainly not at the

23
behest of the Opposition. Indeed, when the noble Lord was discussing the original plan for vesting day to be the 1st October 1984, he said, at col. 915 on 16th October:
"With the benefit of hindsight I think I can say that we would have had some difficulty in meeting that date, anyway".
Therefore out of his own mouth he confirmed at the Report stage that the original vesting day of 1st October 1984 could not be met. It seems that he has learned nothing since then.
What we are saying is that matters which are of great importance have not yet been resolved and that vesting day coming too early may very well put the Government themselves in a bad position. It would certainly be against the best interests of the taxpayers and of those working in the industry. I hope that even now the noble Lord will listen; but there really is no time. I suppose that he cannot get up and say, "I accept this amendment", but unless he is prepared to do so. I shall have no alternative, in all the circumstances and in the light of what he has said in reply, to press it to a Division.
3.52 p.m.
On Question, Whether the said amendment (No. 3) shall be agreed to?
Their Lordships divided: Contents, 64; Not-Contents, 98.
DIVISION NO. 2

DIVISION NO. 1

CONTENTS

Ardwick, L.

Hampton, L.

Attlee, E.

Harris of Greenwich, L.

Aylestone, L.

Jeger, B.

Banks, L.

Jenkins of Putney, L.

Birk, B.

Kennet, L.

Blyton, L.

Kilmarnock, L.

Bottomley, L.

Lindsay of Birker, L.

Brockway, L.

Listowel, E.

Brooks of Tremorfa, L.

Llewelyn-Davies of Hastoe, B.

Bruce of Donington, L.

Lockwood, B.

Buckmaster, V.

McCarthy, L.

Burton of Coventry, B.

McNair, L.

Carmichael of Kelvingrove, L.

Mayhew, L.

Cledwyn of Penrhos, L.

Mishcon, L.

Collison, L.

Oram, L.

Cooper of Stockton Heath, L.

Ponsonby of Shulbrede, L. [Teller.]

Cudlipp, L.

David, B. [Teller.]

Rea, L.

Davies of Leek, L.

Roberthall, L.

Davies of Penrhys, L.

Ross of Marnock, L.

Diamond, L.

Seear. B.

Donaldson of Kingsbridge, L.

Serota, B.

Elwyn-Jones, L.

Stedman, B.

Ennals, L.

Stoddart of Swindon, L.

Ewart-Biggs, B.

Strabolgi, L.

Ezra, L.

Taylor of Gryfe, L.

Fisher of Rednal, B.

Taylor of Mansfield, L.

Fitt, L.

Underhill, L.

Galpern, L.

Wallace of Coslany, L.

Gladwyn, L.

Wigoder, L.

Gosford, E.

Wilson of Langside, L.

Graham of Edmonton, L.

Wootton of Abinger, B.

Grey, E.

NOT-CONTENTS

Airey of Abingdon, B.

Avon, E.

Alexander of Tunis, E.

Bauer, L.

Alport, L.

Beloff, L.

Auckland, L.

Belstead, L.

24

Bessborough, E.

Kinloss, Ly.

Blake, L.

Kinnaird, L.

Boyd-Carpenter, L.

Lane-Fox, B.

Brabazon of Tara, L.

Long, V.

Brentford, V.

Lothian, M.

Caithness, E.

Lucas of Chilworth, L.

Cameron of Lochbroom, L.

Mancroft, L.

Campbell of Alloway, L.

Margadale, L.

Carnegy of Lour, B.

Marley, L.

Coleraine, L.

Maude of Stratford-upon-Avon, L.

Cottesloe, L.

Cullen of Ashbourne, L.

Milverton, L.

Daventry, V.

Molson, L.

Davidson, V.

Morris, L.

De Freyne, L.

Mottistone, L.

Denham, L. [Teller.]

Mowbray and Stourton, L.

Donegall, M.

Murton of Lindisfarne, L.

Ebbisham, L.

Nugent of Guildford, L.

Eccles, V.

Peyton of Yeovil, L.

Effingham, E.

Porritt, L.

Ellenborough, L.

Rawlinson of Ewell, L.

Elliot of Harwood, B.

Renwick, L.

Elton, L.

Rodney, L.

Faithfull, B.

St. Davids, V.

Fraser of Kilmorack, L.

Saint Oswald, L.

Glanusk, L.

Savile, L.

Glenarthur, L.

Seebohm, L.

Gray of Contin, L.

Skelmersdale, L.

Gridley, L.

Somers, L.

Hailsham of Saint Marylebone, L.

Stamp, L.

Strathspey, L.

Halsbury, E.

Sudeley, L.

Harmar-Nicholls, L.

Suffield, L.

Harvington, L.

Swinton, E. [Teller.]

Hatherton, L.

Thomas of Swynnerton, L.

Hawke, L.

Trefgarne, L.

Hayter, L.

Trenchard, V.

Headfort, M.

Trumpington, B.

Hemphill, L.

Ullswater, V.

Hives, L.

Vaux of Harrowden, L.

Holderness, L.

Vivian, L.

Hornsby-Smith, B.

Ward of Witley, V.

Hylton-Foster, B.

Westbury, L.

Ilchester, E.

Whitelaw, V.

Ingrow, L.

Wise, L.

Jessel, L.

Young of Graffham, L.

Resolved in the negative, and amendment disagreed to accordingly.

Ethiopia: Famine Relief
4 p.m.
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, with your Lordships' permission, I shall now repeat in the form of a Statement an Answer to a Private Notice Question now being given in another place by my honourable friend the Minister of State at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office about the situation in Ethiopia. The Answer is as follows:
"The Government are extremely concerned at the reports from Ethiopia of the desperate situation there. Although our bilateral dealings with Ethiopia have been modest in recent years, we have, on humanitarian grounds, been providing food aid amounting to nearly 40,000 tonnes in the last two years. My right honourable friend the Minister of State for Overseas Development announced the shipment of 3,000 tonnes of emergency grain supplies earlier this month. The Government have also been exploring with our European Community partners ways in which we can jointly help to alleviate the problems.

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"One of the greatest difficulties is in the distribution of food once it has arrived in Ethiopia. Britain is currently providing both lorries and spare parts, and we have asked our ambassador in Addis Ababa to make urgent recommendations about further help of this kind which we might provide".
My Lords, that is the Statement.
Lord Oram: My Lords, I should like to thank the Minister for repeating that Answer to the Private Notice Question in another place. While I welcome the steps that Her Majesty's Government are taking to help relieve the situation in Ethiopia which the noble Lord has reported, may I ask him whether it is not the case that the drought in Africa, and in particular in Ethiopia, has now reached dimensions well beyond the scope of the usual relief measures, whereas I believe that what the Minister has announced can be characterised as being in the normal way of relief? Is it not a major tragedy that Europe is embarrassed by food mountains and bumper harvests while many thousands are dying in Africa, especially in Ethiopia?
Has the Minister seen the estimate by Mr. James Ingram, the Director of the World Food Programme, that nearly 1 million Ethiopians will die unless there is an all-out international effort? Are we not facing a situation where there is not the political will in the international fora to cope with this drastic problem? Do not international efforts, for which Mr. Ingram is calling, have to start with a national objective? Therefore, will the Government take some much bigger initiative than the Minister has announced today—an initiative which will in some measure be commensurate with the size of this problem facing us?
Lord Banks: My Lords, I should like to join in thanking the noble Lord for repeating the Statement, and to say that we on these Benches share the general concern about the very serious situation in Ethiopia, which has been described as the most serious situation for 20 years by the United Nations World Food Programme. If the European Community, which has a surplus, could help, and if the Government can promote such help, then we would certainly welcome that. I should like to ask the noble Lord whether he is satisfied that the all-out international effort, to which the noble Lord, Lord Oram, referred, is likely to emerge; and also whether he agrees that, while there is a problem with regard to distribution, there is also a very serious problem with regard to supply, which at the moment has more or less run out.
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, I am obliged to both noble Lords, whose observations have underlined the seriousness of this situation, which the Government wholly endorse. I think the question of distribution is an important one. That is why we have taken the steps we have and why, too, we tend to deal with the voluntary agencies already in place in Ethiopia, which, of course, already have some facilities at their disposal for the distribution purposes to which I have referred.
So far as the use of the food surpluses within Europe is concerned, this is a matter which is often raised, and, indeed, most of the food aid that has been sent hitherto comes from those surpluses. But it ought to be remembered that that is not the whole solution to the
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problem, because, for example, large quantities of milk powder are really of no value to the people of Ethiopia or anywhere else if they do not have clean water to mix with the milk powder and, indeed, some elementary instructions on how to do that, both of which, I am sorry to say, are very often lacking. Indeed, milk powder wrongly administered to babies can be very dangerous indeed, and therefore there is a limit to the amount of products of that sort that we can send. Indeed, there are limits to some of the other products as well.
But in addition to the items I have mentioned the European Community has been providing some emergency aid worth about £10 million since the beginning of last year, and I understand that some further quantities were agreed in Brussels last week, which will include some of the other less obvious products like vegetable oil and butter oil. The Government are certainly seized of the urgency of the situation but, sadly, the solutions are not quite so easy to see.
Lord Hawke: My Lords, has the Minister thought of providing transport facilities in the shape of trucks under lease-lend to Ethiopia, in order to relieve the severe depression which is going on in the truck-building industry in this country?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, we have already provided some trucks to Ethiopia for this purpose, but, of course, if we were to go so far as my noble friend suggests that would cost enormous sums of money, and I am not certain that that would be the best use of the resources available.
Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: My Lords, as my noble friend and the noble Lord have said, this is a tragedy on a vast scale where at least half a million people are facing starvation. Would the noble Lord not agree that one of the difficulties is that the emergency reserves under the World Food Programme are down to virtually nil? What steps are Her Majesty's Government taking to assist in increasing them, with, for example, our partners in Western Europe? Is he aware, so far as our own surpluses in Western Europe are concerned, that whereas what he said about powdered milk is probably very true, in most parts of the third world they could use flour? It would resolve the situation if the western world could use their surpluses of flour to send to these countries which are now in such dire need, and that is something which Her Majesty's Government should consider as a matter of urgency.
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, we certainly have not despaired of doing more in the way of direct food aid, to which the noble Lord has referred. As I said, we are considering with our European Community partners what more can be done. I understand that there are still some resources available within the Community's aid budget for emergency aid, and we shall be doing our best to persuade our partners that they should go where they are most needed.
Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: My Lords, the noble Lord did not deal with the question of the World Food Programme.
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, I am aware of a number of steps that are being taken within some of the United Nations agencies in this particular matter; for example, the United Nations development programme, which includes UNICEF. I do not have information about the particular programme to which the noble Lord referred. If there is any more information that I can find, I shall write to the noble Lord.
Lord Taylor of Gryfe: My Lords, can the noble Lord tell us how far short we are of the 0·7 per cent. target of the United Nations for overseas aid? If we were to reach that target, would it not go some way to assist the problem of lease-lending transport, helping our own industries in this country and relieving the pressure in Ethiopia?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, if I may say so with respect, that question goes a little wide of the Statement that I have repeated to your Lordships. The fact remains that we are dealing with a particularly special situation in this case, and I do not think we want to be thinking in some high-flying economic terms. What we have to do is to get the food and the distribution arrangements into place in this country just as soon as we can.

Grand Hotel, Brighton: Bomb Explosion
4.10 p.m.
The Minister of State, Home Office (Lord Elton): My Lords, with the leave of the House I shall now repeat a further Statement about the bombing at the Grand Hotel, Brighton, which is now being made in another place by my right honourable friend the Home Secretary. The statement is as follows:
"The House will be well aware of most of the circumstances of the explosion, the purpose of which was no less than to strike a blow at the heart of our democracy by killing the majority of the Cabinet. The gravity of this outrage is reflected in the full-hearted condemnation expressed from all parts of the House and the country at large, as well as from overseas.
"I know that the whole House will wish to join me in expressing our deepest sympathy to the families of our late colleague Sir Anthony Berry, Mrs. Jeanne Shattock, Mr. Eric Taylor and Mrs. Roberta Wakeham, who lost their lives. We wish a speedy recovery to the 32 people injured, of whom six are still in hospital. I know that the thoughts of all the House will be with them, including, of course, our colleagues, the right honourable Member for Chingford and the right honourable Member for Colchester South and Maldon. I also take this opportunity to pay tribute here to all those in the emergency services who responded so magnificently, some of them in conditions of great danger, immediately following the explosion.
"The Sussex police immediately commenced a full, urgent investigation of this crime and this is proceeding. They are receiving assistance from the Metropolitan Police Anti-Terrorist Squad and forensic, technical and computer assistance from the Home Office. I stand ready to provide whatever further resources and help may be required.
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"The task of obtaining evidence about the bomb itself is a formidable one. So far, 31 skips and 750 dustbins full of debris have been removed from the scene. Two hundred and twenty eight police officers are engaged in this operation. High winds and the dangerous state of the hotel structure has made their task more difficult. In addition, more than 200 police officers are engaged in the pursuit of other inquiries. The police are not yet in a position to describe more fully the device itself beyond the fact that it is believed to have comprised about 20 pounds of commercial explosive.
"A number of measures have been set in hand since the explosion. The Chief Constable of Sussex decided to ask the Deputy Chief Constable of Hampshire, Mr. Hoddinott, to conduct an inquiry into the security arrangements in place at Brighton at the time of the party conference. I will receive a copy of that report. At this stage, it would be wrong to anticipate its conclusions. I shall, however, to the extent that this does not prejudice security, report them to the House in due course.
"With regard to the wider implications for security of the events at Brighton, in the first place immediate attention has been given to the assessment of other potential targets and the provision of proper protection for them. I shall not, of course, give details of the changes that have been made and the measures involved. I can, however, assure the House that after appropriate discussions the House authorities have already set in hand new measures to improve security in the Palace of Westminster.
"The Brighton bombing also demonstrates the vulnerability of party political engagements. This applies locally as well as nationally. Local party organisers should be careful to contact the police about arrangements well in advance; and the police service is co-ordinating advice to local forces about how they can best respond. I shall also shortly be in touch with the national party organisations.
"In addition, I have set in hand new arrangements centrally for countering the Irish terrorist threat. The aim is to bring to bear the widest range of experience in assessing Irish terrorist intentions and capabilities, and to advise on, and co-ordinate, the counter-measures required to meet them. These measures will supplement the continuing role of the Metropolitan Police Special Branch as the focal point for the collection and evaluation of intelligence and for police operations against Irish Republican terrorists.
"Total security is impossible in a free, democratic society. Political and other leaders are vulnerable because they must be accessible. Everything which can be done will be done to prevent such outrages and to protect their targets. But we will not be bombed into boltholes by terrorists. Those who believe that terror can prevail against democracy understand neither the Members of this House nor the British people".
My Lords, that concludes the text of the Statement.
Lord Mishcon: My Lords, we are most grateful to the noble Lord the Minister of State for repeating the

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Statement. On 16th October, in terms that were so acceptable to this House when this House alone was sitting, the noble Viscount the Leader of the House made a Statement on this outrage. My noble friend the Leader of the Opposition when speaking for the Opposition, and also in most acceptable terms for the whole House, used these words:
"In a free society, a criminal attack upon one political party is an attack on all other parties".—[Official Report; 16/10/84; col. 885]
It is in that spirit that we receive the Statement which has been repeated this afternoon.
We on these Benches again join in the expressions of deepest sympathy to the families of the four who lost their lives. We are also at one in hoping that the 36 who were injured have a speedy recovery. Especially in our thoughts, as the noble Lord the Minister said when repeating the Statement, are the right honourable Member for Chingford and the right honourable Member for Colchester South and Maldon, whose personal courage meets with the admiration of us all.
To turn to other matters, I believe the House will have been interested to hear that the Sussex Police are receiving assistance from the Metropolitan Police Anti-Terrorist Squad and forensic, technical and computer assistance from the Home Office. This will be very useful. To go further into the kind of inquiries which are to be made would be, in our judgment, neither suitable nor of aid to anybody but the enemies of our people. Therefore we do not intend to try to probe for details. We have the utmost confidence that the Government will investigate this matter with great ability and with all the expedition that they can.
The Statement also dealt very properly, in view of the context in which it was made, with the vulnerability of party political engagements. One noted with sympathy and approval the statement that there will be contact with the national party organisations. I am sure that in the formal or informal contact which is made the senior officers of those organisations will be only too pleased to co-operate in order to ensure that those discussions bear useful fruit.
The Statement ended with words which I thought were very appropriate. They were:
"Those who believe that terror can prevail against democracy understand neither the Members of this House nor the British people".
That is equally true of the Members of this House, on whatever Benches they may sit.
Lord Harris of Greenwich: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that we on these Benches would wish to be associated in every respect with the Statement made by the Home Secretary in another place? I do not want to add to that Statement because my noble friend Lady Seear dealt with this matter at length last week and it would be pointless for me to go over the same ground—except to say that this was a dastardly attack. It was an attack on British democracy and it must be responded to in the most vigorous fashion.
Having said that, perhaps I may ask the noble Lord, Lord Elton, one or two questions. I do not want to press him vigorously for obvious reasons, but I will be grateful if he could give some indication of what the Home Secretary meant by his reference to new arrangements which are going to be created centrally
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to counter the Irish terrorist threat. I only want to press him on this particular point: does that imply that police forces other than the Metropolitan Police are to be associated with these new arrangements? It would be helpful if we could be told that. Secondly, does the noble Lord not accept that the Statement he has repeated today once again emphasises the heavy additional burdens which will inevitably be placed upon the Metropolitan Police, who are responsible in the first instance for dealing with the terrorist threat in these islands?
That being so, may I ask him—and this is a wider question than that covered by the Statement—whether he is not aware of the increasing burdens on the Metropolitan Police in terms of their manpower? Would he and his right honourable friend not be prepared to consider at some stage—but not, I hope, in the too distant future—the question of the establishment of the Metropolitan Police, which many of us feel does not recognise the heavy additional burdens which are now being placed upon that force?
Lord Elton: My Lords, the reception given to my right honourable friend's Statement so far in this House has revealed absolute unanimity on a number of points; an attack on one is an attack on all, and an attack on all is an attack on democracy and will be repulsed.
I welcome the support which noble Lords have given. As to the questions put by the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Greenwich, concerning both the role of and the burden carried by the Metropolitan Police, the role of the Metropolitan Police Special Branch under the new arrangements will be substantially unchanged. The objective of the new arrangements is to provide readier access between them and the various departments and agencies concerned, to discuss and interpret information available in relation to other information—including political developments—which could have a bearing on the security situation.
The question of the establishment of the Metropolitan Police for purposes other than those under discussion now is another matter but I am sure that the noble Lord's views will not go unnoticed.
The Lord Bishop of Chichester: My Lords, may I add a few words from these Benches? The Bishop of Rochester was able to express some of our feelings last week, when I myself was unable to be here. Brighton is in my diocese and I was privileged to be able to share in the service held yesterday morning, and in the afternoon to visit in hospital the two Members of the other House who have been mentioned. I should like to add my tribute to their bravery and courage in facing not only their own physical condition but also the great anxieties which they naturally have about their families.
I would like to pay tribute also to the Sussex Police and particularly to the chief constable, because I believe that they have been placed in a very difficult position and subjected to some unfair criticism. We should realise that the chief constable had to provide the policing of two major conferences within a matter of a very few weeks—each or which might be likely to cause a good deal of controversy and certainly demonstrations of one kind or another. A great strain

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was placed on his force, and then to have this disaster occur at the very end of it all is something which should call out our sympathy for the chief constable as well as for many others, of course. I know from what the chief constable said to me yesterday that he is very anxious that the whole matter of security should receive the most thorough investigation.
I should like to repeat something that I said yesterday morning in church, and recall again that the terrorists could not have the success which they do were they not supported and sheltered by very large numbers of ordinary people who, we may think misguidedly, have nevertheless been brought up with a certain view of history and of culture and who believe that they are ministering to that view. It will take a very long time to break through that, but we must work away at doing so. As we know, there are groups in Northern Ireland—the Corrymeela community and others—who are trying to build bridges, and I hope that we can give them renewed support as a reult of this terrible and outrageous thing that has happened so close to us here.
Lord Elton: My Lords, the right reverend Prelate has added the praise of the Church to the praise of the state for the emergency services, and we are grateful to him for that. I am equally grateful to him for his kind words about the Sussex Police, who have been subjected to one or two unfounded criticisms. I would like to dispel the idea that there is bad feeling between them and the Metropolitan Police, because there is not; there is perfect co-operation, and that is borne out by both parties. We welcome as always—and, I suspect, could not get far without—the prayers of the Church in the resolution of our problems, and the gesture of the churches on Sunday was a heartening gesture of unanimity of all the faiths in pursuit of the defence of democracy and of life.
The right reverend Prelate rightly said that those who give shelter to these assassins do a more evil thing than they realise. There is much yet to be done in explaining to people the extent of that evil and the extent to which it is being combated—not only by the methods available to the state but also by the reconciliatory offices of others in the country where it really matters.
I return to the substance of the Statement. It was a terrible deed. Your Lordships stand against it four square and together; and I am grateful to your Lordships.

The Miners' Strike
4.27 p.m.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of the Environment (The Earl of Avon): My Lords, with the leave of the House, I should like to repeat a Statement which is being made in another place by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Energy on the coal dispute. The Statement reads as follows:
"With permission, Mr. Speaker, I will make a Statement about developments in the coal dispute during the Recess.
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"Between 9th September and 14th September the NCB held negotiations with the NUM in an attempt to reach agreement that would settle this dispute.
"During these negotiations the National Union of Mineworkers refused any formula which would have permitted any pit closures on any economic grounds.
"In September the pit deputies' union, NACODS, decided to ballot their members on three questions. But their members were not asked to give their approval or disapproval on these questions separately but were asked to give their approval or disapproval on all three together with a single, 'Yes' or 'No'.
"Since the ballot the Coal Board have resolved with NACODS two of the issues which had led the union to hold a strike ballot of its members. The third issue, dealing with the reduction in the industry's capacity, resulted in NACODS requesting the National Coal Board to hold meetings with the National Union of Mineworkers under the auspices of the Advisory and Conciliation Service. These talks took place between 11th and 15th October.
"At the start of these talks it was agreed that ACAS would distill the NUM's position and circulate it to the other parties. After the NCB had commented, ACAS, having heard the views of all the parties, undertook to put foward its own text. As the chairman of ACAS, Mr. Lowry, has confirmed, this was the only paper carrying the title of 'ACAS Proposal'. The NCB accepted this ACAS compromise proposal, but the NUM rejected it—circulating instead a further text of their own.
"Subsequent to the talks, Mr. Scargill confirmed publicly that on the key position of pit closures he had not moved his position since the dispute started in March.
"The Government regret the failure to accept the ACAS compromise proposal, which would have enabled the damage being done to the coal industry to cease and the widespread violence that has occurred throughout this dispute to come to an end.
"Over 70,000 men were at work in the mining industry last week, a third of the industry. Most of these men had the chance of a ballot as required by normal NUM procedures. They had decided to work.
"There are substantial stocks of coal at the power stations and I am pleased to inform the House that power station stocks at the end of last week were higher than they were at the end of August. The Government will continue to take all actions which are necessary to protect the life of the nation and to preserve jobs.
"Following the negotiations that have taken place throughout the summer I wish to remind the House of the package that is now on offer to the miners: A wage increase from last November providing earnings way above average industrial earnings and greater than that gained by many groups of workers: An undertaking that any miner who wishes to continue working in the industry will be able to do so: Exceptionally generous provisions for those who choose a course of early retirement when a pit needs

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to close: A capital investment programme more than double that of the rest of the European Community put together, a programme to secure an industry capable of obtaining expanding markets in the future: An amended colliery review procedure which includes all the provisions that have operated under Labour and Conservative Governments for many years past but adds to it provision for an independent review body, whose advice will be given full weight before any decision is made: The creation of the new enterprise company whereby for the first time the Coal Board will be active in financing, advising and providing accommodation to new enterprises and businesses to benefit the mining communities.
"In order that there should be no doubt on the Benches opposite, I repeat that the board not only remains committed to the operation of the colliery review procedure, but is prepared to enhance that procedure. Furthermore, any pit proposed for closure by the board can be examined through the amended procedure.
"This is a package of proposals which is good for the miner, good for the mining industry and I am confident would be accepted by miners had they the opportunity of a ballot on these issues.
"Strife and industrial action can only intensify the damage being done to pits and to markets for coal and therefore to the future of the miner and his family. I hope, therefore, that the miners' union can be persuaded of the good sense of accepting the proposals made by ACAS earlier this month."
My Lords, that concludes the statement.
Lord Stoddart of Swindon: My Lords, I should like to thank the noble Earl for repeating the Statement made in another place, but I have to say that, so far as we are concerned, the Statement is a recitation of events which have taken place and which have been widely reported in the newspapers and the rest of the media, and there seems to be nothing new at all.
Does the noble Earl not agree that in the opening paragraphs of the Statement all the blame is a bit one-sided? In fact, all the blame for the present problems is put firmly on the shoulders of the NUM. Does he not agree that under all the circumstances that is rather unfair? Is it not a fact that Mr. MacGregor and the National Coal Board were also being intransigent at that point in time in issuing, or at least appearing to issue, a hit list of coal mines that were to be closed, quite outside the procedures which were agreed in 1973 and 1975 wherein all proposed pit closures went through a proper procedure and there was no list? Therefore, is it not true that this argument is not quite as one-sided as the Minister made out and that there are certainly faults on the part of the NCB?
Coming to the NACODS dispute, does the noble Earl also not agree that it was sheer incompetence for the NCB to seek to alter arrangements in the middle of the miners' dispute in such a way as so to anger the NACODS members as to lead them to vote by a majority of over 80 per cent. to strike? What are we to hear about ballots under those circumstances? That was overwhelming enough. Indeed, the ballot itself was brought about by the intransigence of the NCB
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and its failure to understand that it was dealing with an extremely able, dedicated and responsible body of people who, to my knowledge, have never before been on strike. Was that not sheer incompetence? What do the Government intend to do about that situation?
On the question of ACAS, is it not true that there were three proposals—one which was acceptable to the NCB, one to the NUM, and another which was acceptable to the NCB only? We have been given only one side of the argument. The general president of the National Union of Mineworkers has put forward another view of what happened at ACAS. It seems to me that we need more clarification as to exactly what went on there.
The noble Earl said that there are substantial stocks of coal at the power stations and that he was pleased to inform the House that power station stocks at the end of last week were higher than they were at the end of August and that the Government will continue to take all actions which are necessary to see that the power stations continue to provide the energy necessary to protect the life of the nation and to preserve jobs. May I first ask the noble Earl to state what is the level of coal stocks at present? Just exactly what is that level? Will he also inform the House, because we are entitled to know, just exactly how the Government intend to keep the power stations going if the NACODS men go out on strike and all coal production ceases in this country? Having a certain amount of knowledge of the electricity supply industry, I take the view that if the coal industry comes to a standstill, there will be only six weeks' stocks of coal in the power stations. That means that there will be power cuts by the beginning of December; that is, unless the Government are prepared to take action to move coal stocks on the ground outside the power stations. Will the noble Earl say whether the Government are contemplating that possibility and, if so, what that will do to the political and social life of our country?
I am coming to a close, but this is an important matter and we need answers. With regard to the pit closures themselves—and we really must move forward—I must say to noble Lords that we are in a most terrible crisis; we must make no mistake about that. The strike has now been going on for nearly eight months. Our coal stocks are run right down. As regard the pits for closure, would it not be right for the NCB to say that in the light of all the circumstances of having no coal production and virtually no coal stocks, or very low coal stocks, there will be no pit closures until those stocks have been built up; in other words, that all proposals are suspended for the time being and for a considerable period forward? Is that not a way forward?
There is no doubt that it is necessary to bring this strike to a speedy end. We concur with the Government on that. That is why we have been imploring them over a long period of time to accept their responsibilities and to intervene in this dispute. I urge them now to accept those responsibilities and to build on what has already been achieved—and there have been some achievements—to ensure that the two sides are brought together, that realistic negotiations take place, and that the strike is brought to a speedy

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conclusion to the benefit of the miners, the miners' families, and the nation as a whole.
4.41 p.m.
Lord Ezra: My Lords, I should like to join the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, in thanking the noble Earl for repeating the Statement made in another place. However, as the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, made clear, the Statement simply summarises what occurred in the mining industry during the recess. What it does not do is indicate what other steps the Government may now have in mind to try to accelerate the conclusion of this unfortunate dispute. It would be useful to hear from the noble Earl what thoughts the Government have in that connection, however difficult it may be.
The noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, referred to the added misfortune of the troubles with NACODS. This came right out of the blue. Apparently steps have now been taken to try to satisfy them and prevent them from taking the ultimate step of joining the strike. Let us hope that they will be deterred from doing that.
We on this side of the House welcome the recently announced appointment of Mr. Michael Eaton, the area director of North Yorkshire. I can say from my personal knowledge of Mr. Eaton over many years that he is a very experienced man in the mining industry and he handles his union relations with extreme skill, in difficult situations. I should like to ask for an assurance that in his present post he will be given every encouragement to use his undoubted ability to advantage.
There has been a lot of talk of winners and losers in this dispute. I should like to put it to the noble Earl that there will be no winners. There will, unfortunately, be one loser, and that will, alas, be the coal industry. The coal industry will lose due to the bitterness which has grown up among personal relationships during the course of the strike and because of the damage which is increasingly being done on a number of faces. That is all the more reason why the dispute should be brought to an end quickly.
In conclusion, what we on this side of the House should like to hear from the Minister is what further initiatives the Government have in mind. For example, the Secretary of State for Energy has repeatedly made known in public statements the positive measures which the Government have in mind for the future of the coal industry. Would it not be helpful if he were now to convene a meeting of the tripartite committee—a procedure which has existed since 1974—and tell the parties concerned in detail what the Government have in mind? Would this not be regarded as a step towards resolving this longstanding dispute?
The Earl of Avon: My Lords, I am grateful to both noble Lords for their reception of the Statement as a résumé of what has been going on during the recess. I would just say to the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, that that is what the Statement was meant to be, and I do not believe it should be criticised for it.
A number of questions were raised. With regard to the idea of all the blame being on one side, I think one
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should look at the last decade, when the noble Lord, Lord Ezra, had much to do with the coal industry, and say that both the Labour Party and this party have agreed on how the coal industry should be carried on. We have agreed that the Plan for Coal should be pursued. The party which is not doing this is the National Union of Mineworkers. Therefore it is not surprising that all the blame may seem to be on its shoulders.
The noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, mentioned a hit list. There is no hit list of pits to be closed. Now under the ACAS proposals all the pits which have been talked about can come up with this added safeguard in the review procedure.
The noble Lord mentioned the NACODS ballot paper. The ballot paper asks three questions and has only one place for "Yes" and "No". Therefore, presumably, unless one would answer the same way to all three questions it would be a difficult ballot to fill in. I should also add that Question No. 3, the dominant question at the bottom of the paper, just before the "Yes" refers to the complete rejection of the board's guidelines in terms of 15th August. The board has already withdrawn these guidelines; so there is no point there. Question No. 2 refers to the board's attitude to the implementation of concilliation procedures. As we know, ACAS has put forward a formula to which the Coal Board agrees.
I think that in paragraph 5 of the Statement it is made extremely clear that there was only one paper put forward by ACAS. This has been supported by the chairman of ACAS, Mr. Lowry. This is the paper which the NCB were prepared to accept and which contained the review procedure.
The noble Lord asked about stocks. I can assure him that there are adequate stocks at power stations. The amount on 29th July was 15.93 million tonnes; at NCB sites it was 22.17 million tonnes. As I told the noble Lord, there has been virtually no change in this figure in the intervening period.
The noble Lord, Lord Ezra, in some helpful remarks, mentioned Mr. Michael Eaton. I should like to add to what the noble Lord said, and to say that we wish Mr. Eaton well. This is an appointment by Mr. MacGregor. It is an internal appointment, and we believe that it is an initiative which should go well.
The noble Lord asked about Government policies and was kind enough to say that my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Energy has put forward his initiative and spelled it out in clear terms. I believe that that is the Government's problem. I should like to say also that my right honourable friend is open to any talks—tripartite or any other form. There is no closed door here.
Lord Taylor of Mansfield: My Lords, while joining the other speakers in welcoming the Statement repeated by the noble Earl, may I say, first of all, that I do not think that it is as up-to-date as it might be and as I personally expected it to be. There was no mention at all, as far as I can recall, of the changed situation in the industry in regard to public relations.
May I now ask the noble Earl this. Is the recent appointment of this gentleman from Yorkshire, whose name eludes me for the moment——
Noble Lords: Mr. Eaton.
Lord Taylor of Mansfield: Everybody in the country knows, through the press this morning and the rest of the media, that there has been something of a change so far as the operations of the NCB are concerned. I am not clear about this point from the information contained in the press and the rest of the media. The question that I should like to ask is this. First of all, with regard to this new appointment, will the Minister tell us whether this gentleman is or is not a member of the board?
Secondly, will the Minister inform your Lordships whether this gentleman is to take part in any negotiations that might—and we all hope very shortly will—take place with a view to a speedy ending of this tragic dispute, or is this newly appointed gentleman merely a personal assistant to Mr. MacGregor, the existing chairman of the Coal Board, or is he just a public relations officer?
The Earl of Avon: My Lords, I actually mentioned Mr. Eaton in my reply to the noble Lord, Lord Ezra, who is not in alliance with the Scargill-McGahey axis would deny. Instead the Government have left it to the Coal Board by Mr. MacGregor himself. I gather that he has until recently been the regional representative in Yorkshire and he has come down to strengthen the London team. He is not at the moment a member of the board.
Lord Wilson of Langside: My Lords, is the noble Earl the Minister aware that there is quite a widespread, and I think well-founded, feeling in the country, which is this? In the role which the Government have adopted throughout this dispute and in the contribution—or lack of it—which they have made to its solution, they have failed the nation. This lies in the fact that their sole overt contribution—and I stress the word "overt"—has been repeated Ministerial rhetorical denunciations of violence at the picket lines, which no sensible person who is not in alliance with the Scargill-McGahey axis would deny. Instead the Government have left it to the police, who do not want the problem, and to Mr. MacGregor, whose talents appear to lie in other directions, to slog it out from week to week and month to month with the National Union of Mineworkers, dominated by Scargill and McGahey.
Do the Government not appreciate that what is needed in an essentially political situation is a positive, political initiative? Are the Government further aware that there is a strong feeling, particularly on these Benches, that what is, in all essentials, I think it is agreed on all sides, a political dispute, should have been discussed in Parliament by both Houses where it properly belongs? Speaking solely for myself, I feel that the Government's attitude towards Parliament in this dispute in refusing to recall it in time is somewhat contemptuous.
The Earl of Avon: My Lords, I really cannot accept most of what the noble and learned Lord said. So far as I am concerned, there has been no lack of discussion. I do not believe that in any way the Government have failed the nation. I believe, quite to
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the contrary, that they have followed a path of considerable understanding. This is not a simple dispute. I would remind the noble Lord that there are 70,000 people in the mining industry working at the moment, that this is a dispute called without a ballot, and, finally, as I said earlier, that the NUM has not moved one inch in any negotiations.
Lord Peyton of Yeovil: My Lords, may I ask my noble friend if he would not agree that to call for public political initiatives is quite easy; to define them is rather harder? I should like to ask if he would not agree that initiatives that consist of compromising the position on the closure of pits that have become uneconomic and initiatives that give some kind of covert approval to violence of an intolerable kind would not be very valuable or useful contributions in the long run?
The Earl of Avon: My Lords, my noble friend is indeed right to underline the difficulties of this particular position.
Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: My Lords, may I ask the noble Earl to clarify one important part of the Statement which says that the board not only remains committed to the operation of the colliery review procedure but is prepared to enhance that procedure. Would the noble Earl say exactly what that means? Is it the case that both the NCB and the NUM were prepared to accept the independent recommendation of a body set up to conduct that procedure? Will he confirm indeed that the Government have in mind to set up a body that would be independent and that would look at any recommendations for pit closures? Is the NCB in particular prepared to accept the recommendation of an independent body to that effect? Secondly, will the noble Earl answer the question put by the noble Lord, Lord Ezra, about the possibility of the Government's convening the tripartite committee, which seems to me a very sensible proposal?
The Earl of Avon: My Lords, I think that I followed the noble Lord's question. It might be easier if I read out the sentence from the ACAS proposal and took it from there:
"The colliery review procedure would be amended to include as a final stage an independent review body whose function would be to consider a reference from any one of the parties to the procedure on any closure matter arising under Clauses A, B and C above about which there is a disagreement".
This has been accepted by the NCB, but unfortunately not by the NUM which put forward another paper after this. This is the quotation from the ACAS proposals. The Government, as well as the NCB, will stand by it. As to the tripartite agreement, I did say to the noble Lord, Lord Ezra, that the door was open in this sphere.
Lord Stoddart of Swindon: My Lords——
Lord Denham: No, no.
Lord Stoddart of Swindon: Oh yes, yes. Briefly, there are a couple of points that arise out of the answer that the Minister has given. Would he not agree that the

39
whole question of the NACODS dispute does not arise from what was on the ballot paper but that it was the board's stupid actions that caused a ballot to be called? Had the board been properly managing the industry, does he not agree that there would have been no ballot among NACODS members and that we should not have had the present problems?
Secondly, the Minister confirms my own estimate of power station stocks at 15·93 million tonnes. He also mentioned 22 million tonnes at CEGB sites. Would he not agree that that coal is not immediately available at power stations for burning and has to be transported? Would he agree that? If he does agree, how does he think that it is going to be transported under present conditions? Would he confirm that, if I am right that that coal cannot be transported and that there are only 15·93 million tonnes of coal at power stations, there are only between six and seven weeks' stocks of coal left? Would he confirm that? Finally, can I ask him whether Mr. Eaton's appointment does not mean and confirm that Mr. MacGregor's appointment was, first of all, provocative and was in fact putting the wrong man in the wrong place at the wrong time?
The Earl of Avon: My Lords, the answer to the first supplementary question is a categorical, No. In answer to the second, the noble Lord does seem to be a harbinger of doom on this particular subject——
Lord Stoddart of Swindon: No; I just want information.
The Earl of Avon: I have told him the amount at the power stations. He has tried to turn my figures around and push them back again. As someone who knows all about power stations, I am not prepared to argue with him across the Floor of the House but to rest on the figures I gave him initially.
So far as Mr. Eaton's appointment is concerned, I have bent over backwards to show that this is an internal appointment of the National Coal Board. I should like to say of Mr. MacGregor that already in his term of office—before the strike happened—he has done a great deal for the coal industry. He offered guarantees; he set up an enterprise board. He was even having success in overseas markets. I wish that the coal industry could get back to a working condition so that he can continue.

Ordnance Factories and Military Services Bill
4.58 p.m.
Consideration of amendments on Third Reading resumed.
Schedule 2 [Employment]:
Lord Graham of Edmonton Lord Graham of Edmonton moved Amendment No. 4:
Page 15, line 43, leave out paragraph 1 and insert—
(" 1. The terms and conditions applicable to any person who, pursuant to a scheme made under section 1 (1)(a), becomes an employee of any company or companies should be no less
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favourable than the terms and conditions which were applicable to that person immediately before the appointed day (as defined in pragraph 2(7) below) under his employment in the civil service of the State.").
The noble Lord said: My Lords, it is the understanding that Amendments Nos. 4 and 5 will be taken together.
Amendment No. 5: Page 16, line 8, at end insert—
("( ) Where, in any redundancy arising prior to the transfer date, the field of redundancy would have been the whole of the Ministry of Defence, then after the transfer date the field of redundancy shall be taken to be the whole company as defined by section 1 (1)(a).").
It is right that there should be one debate. I know, however, that the Minister will understand that both deal with very vital elements in the issue of redundancy. I believe that I heard the Minister say earlier that he intended to say something during the debate on the redundancy issue. Subject to what the Minister says at the end of the discussion, it would not be our desire to press these matters to a vote. In other words, I am really signalling to the Minister that it is what he says at the Dispatch Box today that will be most important. What he had to say in this place last Wednesday was taken by the trade unionists when they met the ROF management the next day as the way in which matters should proceed. I have to inform the Minister, however, that what the Minister says here is not necessarily taken by ROF management as gospel and an indication of how matters will proceed. These are not allegations. But the situation is very serious.
In effect, the Minister and his advisers, the civil servants who are negotiating with the trade unions, are coming to what might be seen to be a constructive outcome over very difficult propositions. Yet, when these are taken forward so that the nitty-gritty can be agreed with ROF management, I have to tell the Minister that I am advised that a totally different view is taken by ROF management from what the Minister believes will be the position before and after vesting day.
For the benefit of the record, let me go through this very slowly. A meeting was held on Thursday, 18th October; that was only two days after the Minister made certain statements. I have the record here and I will quote from it. At that meeting between the unions and ROF management the unions were seeking to clarify the attitude of management to changes in the agreements which currently exist for civil servants employed in the ROFs, in the light of the statements made by the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, on TUPE '81 and other related matters during the Report stage debate on 16th October.
The unions were quoting to ROF management the statements made by the Minister, for example at col. 937 of Hansard, where the Minister said:
"Of course. TUPE applies to the transfer of employment. The effect of this is that there need be no new contract of employment because the old one continues without a break from the former employer to the new employer. The terms and conditions of the contract of employment with the new employer are therefore identical to those of the contract with the old employer, because it is exactly the same contract".
Those are the words of the Minister.
Further on, in the same column, the Minister said:
"First, there may have to be some minor differences in the terms and conditions following transfer, because the transfer is from employment under the Crown. Some aspects of such employment are simply not applicable to employment in the private sector. Subparagraph (2) of paragraph (2) of the second schedule to the Bill deals with this point, and requires, in effect, that these changes be kept to the absolute minimun"—
I stress, to the absolute minimum—
"necessary to make the transfer of employment effective".
This seemed a very clear statement to the unions that under the terms of the eventual Act, on the transfer of civil servants to the new company any changes to the current conditions of employment proposed by ROF management would legally have to be kept to a minimum. However, the ROF management stated at the meeting on 18th October that they had taken advice and that they did not necessarily agree with what the Minster was saying. Management had taken independent advice and were not necessarily agreeing with what the Minister was saying. Managment argued that since the new company would be in such a different situation to that of MoD, then TUPE '81 did not necessarily cover them at all and they could make any changes to the terms and conditions of service for transferred staff immediately after vesting day.
This is a very serious state of affairs. The Minister, I believe in absolutely good faith, guided by his civil servants, who have always been very fair in these matters, is telling the unions, and certainly telling the House and myself and my noble friends, that there is not a great deal to worry about because there will be carried forward after vesting day as far as possible and kept to the minimum any changes in the kind of situations which existed before. What we need from the Minister is not acceptance of the amendments; the amendments in fact are pegs upon which we want restatements of what he has said already. In col. 940 of Hansard, during the same debate, the Minister said:
"if changes to the contract of employment are to be made in respect of employees (whether they be industrial or non-industrial) after vesting day, then that will be a matter for agreement between the trade unions and the company. In my view, the trade unions are fully protected against the anxieties which they have expressed because if they feel aggrieved, they will have the remedy of the procedures to which I have already referred".
By this, the Minister was referring to the right to take legal action against the company. Obviously the unions want to avoid that possibility and want to understand precisely what the Bill means at Schedule 2. Yet the company management are saying that TUPE '81 need not necessarily apply after vesting day. We need to get the Minister to confirm his statements at the Report stage on 16th October. Quite simply, I am asking the Minister if he will say, "Yes, yes", or repeat the statements. I am asking him to confirm the two extracts that I read out, from cols. 937 and 940, as the definitive interpretation by the Minister. Are they correct?
What the unions have been attempting to do in the negotiations with ROF management is to clarify and sort out what changes in the current terms and conditions will have to be made, accepting that certain things cannot be transferred from service in the Crown to a Companies Act company. The unions have been doing this in the light of Schedule 2, paragraph 2(2),
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which states that the changes will be kept to a minimum. Yet ROF management seem now to be arguing that they can make any changes.
Initially, even though a Companies Act company, the ROF organisation will be working on really very similar lines to those under which it has been operating as a Government trading fund. It will be liable to the Government competition policy just as the ROFs are now. It will have lost the preferred source policy just as the ROFs have already lost that. It will be working to commercial accounting practices just as the ROFs have been as a trading fund. Until such time as private capital is introduced into the new company the shares will be wholly owned by the Government just as the Government are the sole owner of the ROF organisation. The unions therefore do not understand how the ROF management can argue that the new company's situation is so drastically altered from the current position of the ROFs as to make TUPE '81 not apply. We need from the Minister the categorical assurance that he gave at the Report stage that the guarantees, in so far as they are interpretable, can be given.
The unions have been seeking to make in a constructive way such changes as need to be made. Quite frankly, we are greatly puzzled that it is possible for the management, who of course are civil servants, to interpret or to dismiss the words of a Minister in this House as not being the words that will bind them when the discussions take place. In Amendment No. 5 we have other aspects of what we are concerned about. The Minister knows that the actual vesting day is crucial to the protection of the employees. My noble friend Lord Stoddart, in an earlier debate, sought to create a kind of cushion after vesting day and before the schemes could be brought in. One of the reasons for that is that for those who are made redundant such a cushion will provide the Civil Service with the opportunity of replacing them before the actual vesting day.
In regard to the possibility of redundancies being announced, the Minister knows of the intelligence that we have been given and I will not belabour the point any more. We have been given intelligence about the likelihood of announcements about impending redundancies. It is absolutely crucial that the Minister is able either to make the statements or to give those who can be affected by redundancy the assurance that, whether the redundancies are announced before or after vesting day, the people concerned will enjoy the same kind of protection. We ought not to have the views of this House or of the Minister on these matters negatived by ROF management. I hope that the Minister will say that he stands by the statement he made at Report stage. If he does that, I shall be very pleased to withdraw the amendments. But at this stage I beg to move Amendment No. 4.
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, as I have explained during earlier stages of this Bill, the Government believe that TUPE '81 provides for the transfer of the existing terms and conditions of employment to the new company, save for the small changes necessary having regard to the fact that the employees will be transferring from employment under the Crown to employment under the new Companies Act company.

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In regard to the redundancy terms the Government firmly believe that this means that the terms and conditions immediately after vesting day will include provision for company-wide, mobile, non-industrial arrangements rather than anything confined to a single works. Of course, it will be open to the new company to seek to negotiate with the workforce changes in the terms and conditions of employment which will apply after vesting day. But the workforce representatives will not be obliged to accept any such changes, and if the management persists in imposing them then the time-honoured remedies will be available to the unions, as they have always been.
I believe, therefore, that I can confirm everything that I said on Report; but, of course, I have to point out that in the end the question of whether TUPE 81 does or does not apply is a matter for the courts. But the Government's view is contained in the words that I have already uttered, which I hope will be of assistance to the noble Lord. That, I think, disposes of the question raised by the noble Lord in connection with Amendment No. 4.
I turn to Amendment No. 5. Of this particular matter the Government are aware, and, indeed, the noble Lord mentioned in his speech, that this point has been raised by the trades unions. While I would certainly not wish to tie the hands of the new management in this or in any other way, I will certainly ask the company to consider whether they can give the assurance which has been sought. However, having said that, I must emphasise that the responsibility for this matter will pass on vesting day to the new company. If the workforce are aggrieved by what the company intends, they will be able to press their views by action under the employment protection legislation, as I believe I mentioned earlier, or by more traditional methods.
I have attempted to express the thoughts that I had to utter in the plainest and most unequivocal terms. I hope that they have met the anxieties expressed by the noble Lord and that he will feel able to withdraw Amendment No. 4 and not press Amendment No. 5.
Lord Graham of Edmonton: My Lords, I am most grateful to the Minister for the robust defence that he has put up of the words that he used. I accept completely that after vesting day we are in a new ball game. That worries us. Prior to vesting day the Minister is wholly in charge. For instance, he is wholly in charge at this moment of what ROF management is saying now. If prior to vesting day—that is, at this moment—the management of the ROFs are saying (and one hears this second and third hand) that they have heard what the Minister has said but they do not intend to operate in that way, then it is a very serious state of affairs. It does not give the trade unions much confidence. Although the Minister, in good faith, and his civil servants and advisers, have been most constructive with the unions in trying to get together a package which will get us through the next period, the unions do not have much confidence that, once they are thrown to the wolves, the words of the Minister, unless they are embodied in an Act of Parliament, will offer a great deal of protection.
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More than once on Report the Minister, in our view, gave the type of assurances which the trade unions were satisfied to accept and which provided them with a basis for taking the matter forward. In attempting to take it forward they have had a rude shock from ROF management. However, in view of the fact that the Minister—and I would be grateful if he would nod his head in agreement—is simply confirming what he said at the Report stage on those two vital matters (and let the record show that the Minister does nod his head) that is as much as the Minister can do at this stage. I very much hope that he and his advisers will seek urgently to convey to ROF management what he considers—and I believe it is something of a minor outrage—is being perpetrated in the discussions.
There are other stages of this Bill, not least in another place. I am sure that my parliamentary colleagues will be kept fully advised of the matter until it goes down there and comes back up here. The matter is far from concluded, but at this stage I beg leave to withdraw Amendment No. 4, and I advise your Lordships that I shall not be moving Amendment No. 5.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendment No. 5 not moved.]
Schedule 3 [Special constables]:
5.15 p.m.
Lord Stoddart of Swindon Lord Stoddart of Swindon moved Amendment No. 6:
Page 17, line 47, at end insert—
(" . After the coming into force of any scheme made under this Act no guard force deployed at any premises falling within paragraph 1(2) shall consist of persons other than special constables appointed in accordance with section 3 of the Special Constables Act 1923.")
The noble Lord said: My Lords, I beg to move Amendment No. 6, which stands in my own name and that of my noble friend Lord Graham of Edmonton. We had long discussions on this matter at the Report stage on Amendments Nos. 19, 20 and 21. I can assure the noble Lord the Minister that I do not intend today to make a further 22-minute speech, although I have to say that the issue is of such vital importance that it should not be simply brushed aside.
Our contention is that the mere change of status of the ROFs in no way reduces the need for security of at least as high an order as before. Indeed, the very change of status itself may very well enhance the need for top-rate security as is provided by the Ministry of Defence police under Government control. I would remind the House that the Government's original intention was that the Royal Ordnance factories should, when privatised, be guarded by, and have security provided by, private contract security guards. Fortunately, through pressure in Parliament and elsewhere, at a very late stage indeed in the Commons the Government discovered the error of their ways and introduced Schedule 3, which empowers the Secretary of State to retain the Ministry of Defence police at such ROF sites as he thinks fit, complete with their full police powers, including the ability to bear arms. That, of course, was progress, and we welcomed the Government's change of mind. But it simply does not

45
go far enough for us, because we believe that the MoD police should continue to guard all ROF establishments in perpetuity, or at least until the matter has been brought before Parliament again after some years of privatisation.
The noble Lord the Minister, in replying to the debate at the Report stage on 16th October, said at column 962:
"We have been at pains to point out that the degree of threat varies from site to site within the ROFs. Some factories contain materials which may be of great use to terrorists but others—for example, those making tanks—do not constitute a serious terrorist target".
The example that the Minister gave—that is, factories making tanks—worries me a great deal, Is he really suggesting that a tank could not be a legitimate terrorist target? A tank in the wrong hands could cause all sorts of havoc. We have seen in recent months and weeks what damage and carnage can be caused by a lorry-load of explosives driven by a terrorist into an army base and an embassy. A tank driven by fanatics—and certainly we have them in this country—could inevitably cause greater havoc and carnage. I was surprised indeed that the Minister gave that example. In fact, it undermines the confidence that we have in the judgment of the noble Lord the Minister and of the Government in these matters. We like the noble Minister a lot——
Lord Graham of Edmonton: Steady on!
Lord Stoddart of Swindon: On an entirely personal basis, my Lords, but the fact of the matter is that he did not reassure us on this issue at Report. Indeed, bearing in mind the attempt to assassinate Her Majesty's Government at Brighton on 12th October and the boast of the vile men of the IRA that they intended to step up their terrorist attacks on mainland Britain, I was surprised that he appeared to show such complacency—I am sure that he did not mean it, but he showed it—about security at armament factories. The fact is that far from lowering our security profile, we need to heighten it. We should not only keep up our guard; we should reinforce our guard in the face of a growing and more violent terrorist threat. Therefore, the Labour Party believes that the Ministry of Defence Police, who have proved themselves over long years to be an efficient, well-trained, responsible and dedicated force, should continue to be responsible for security at all ROF establishments after privatisation. Nothing else will really do. I beg to move.
Lord Mayhew: My Lords, in the course of the Bill the Government have made some concessions to the pressure of the Opposition, my noble friends and my honourable friends in another place, and have come some way to meet us on this security issue. It is a little difficult now to define exactly the difference between the position of the Government and the position which some of us on this side of the House should like to see adopted.
As I understand it, the way is still open under Schedule 3 for those who are special constables to be, simply in another name, factory guards responsible to the private company concerned. I believe that that is still possible under the terms of Schedule 3. But my noble friends and I would want the policing ultimately
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to be a matter for the Government, as it is now. As happens now, the Ministry of Defence Police are answerable to the Chief Constable of Defence Police and through the Defence Council to the Secretary of State for Defence. I think that that is better. It seems to me to be carrying privatisation a very long way if we try to privatise security against terrorism. In practice, so far as I can see this would be the effect of Schedule 3.
I shall not go over all the arguments that we have heard on many previous occasions on the Bill, but I should be grateful if the Minister would answer the precise point that I am making: whether, in fact, Schedule 3 permits the policing of these factories ultimately to be the responsibility of a private company, or whether a police force is still responsible which is ultimately answerable to the Government of the day.
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, I hope I made clear during our discussions on this amendment at the earlier stage that the flexibility permitted by Schedule 3 of this Bill to retain the MoD Police at some or all ROF sites was recognised as a sensible and practical policy by both sides when this was discussed in the other place. The Government will continue to monitor security arrangements at ROF locations with the same stringency as hitherto, in the light of threat assessments and changing circumstances. We firmly believe that this flexibility is necessary so that the response will suitably match the threat at each site. We have of course recognised that some Royal Ordnance factories present a more attractive target for terrorists than others, and we have not proposed to remove the MDP from those sites. But at those sites where we do not need to rely on the full police powers of the MDP, which are quite extensive, then it only makes common sense to have the ability to withdraw them. Equally, changes are not going to happen overnight. We will be reviewing most carefully the appropriate security arrangements at each site, including any necessary improvements in physical security, and only then will decisions be taken. Such a review will of course involve consultation with all the relevant parties.
If I may say so, I do not think that the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, got it quite right. All the special constables referred to in the schedule will be members of the Ministry of Defence Police. Anything else would mean two MoD police forces, and that is most certainly not what we propose.
At the earlier stage the noble Lord, Lord Graham, quoted to me certain parts of the report of the defence committee of the other place. I should like in turn to quote to him from that report. In paragraph 56—and I recognise that this has already been referred to—the report says:
"Armed MDP with constabulary powers are not the only solution in every case. Improvements in physical security could be made to offset their withdrawal from some less sensitive factories."
In paragraph 87, the report says:
"The terms in which the Government announced its new proposals make it clear that flexibility has very sensibly been retained. No deadline has been given for the replacement of the MDP at the ROFs by an in-house security force".

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It goes on in paragraph 79:
"We acknowledged, therefore, that their replacement may be both acceptable and possible at those of the ROFs where the threat is deemed to be lowest … A much more pragmatic approach is called for, one in which judgements are taken on a case-by-case basis and with a high degree of caution."
Then again in paragraph 80 it says:
"The first step the Government should take is to grade the ROFs in approximate order of sensitivity. At factories producing items of no interest to terrorists, armed MDP can reasonably be dispensed with".
The Committee had recommendations to make about the formation and administration of a company guardforce, recognising that such a force could replace the MOD Police at certain locations. The Government will be making their observations on that report shortly, but I can say now that we can see no objection to our retaining the flexibility which Schedule 3 currently allows for us to re-examine security matters case by case and as circumstances dictate.
I have already assured your Lordships that we take security matters most seriously. If we are to remove the MDP from certain ROF sites, this is not simply a cost-cutting exercise. Of course, it is the Government's aim to reduce numbers and to save costs, but only where this is consistent with maintaining an adequate level of defence and security. This Government give, and will continue to give, security of arms and explosives at the ROFs the most serious consideration. But we are also custodians of public money, and where it makes sense to reduce the involvement of publicly-funded police forces without endangering security, then steps will be taken. Your Lordships need have no fear of that.
As other noble Lords have done on earlier occasions, I have quoted at some length the report of the House of Commons Committee on this matter. As noble Lords reminded me on an earlier occasion, that report enjoyed the support of certain Conservative Members of the other place, but it also enjoyed the support of Opposition Members of the other place. Therefore, I hope that we can agree that the recommendations of that report, to which I have referred, are adequately reflected in the measures that we now bring before your Lordships, and that the noble Lord will see fit not to press his amendment.
Baroness Phillips: My Lords, before my noble friend on the Opposition Front Bench replies, can we assume from the Minister's statement that the Government are now considering the licensing of the independent security organisations? A quarter of a million people are employed in private armies in various security companies throughout the country. If this is to be a flexible affair, as the Minister has suggested, at some stage security companies might be brought in to carry out certain duties. Before the noble Lord rejects this suggestion out of hand, I would remind him that at Farnborough private car firms provide the cars which carry people of high security risk, and I was somewhat shocked to discover that the drivers are often recruited through a simple advertisement about a week before the event. I should like to think that they are all vetted—I am sure they are—but we must recognise that if we are to use
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security which is not part of the state's system, that security must be accountable to someone, and I would hope that this would be a move on the part of the Government.
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, if I have leave to speak again, I have to say that I think that the observations from the noble Baroness go a little wide of the point we are now considering which is whether or not the Ministry of Defence police should remain completely and in perpetuity at the Royal Ordnance factory sites. I think that the site to which she referred was not such a site, if I heard her correctly. The question of licensing security firms for the purposes that the noble Baroness had in mind is a little different from the matters that we have under consideration here. The Government have made their views plain on how we see the future of these matters and I hope we can leave it to rest at that.
Lord Stoddart of Swindon: My Lords, I am afraid that there remains a gulf between us. It is not a yawning gulf, but nevertheless there is a gulf. I appreciate—and indeed it was quite fair—that the Minister should quote to us the House of Commons Defence Committee, and of course to some degree they supported his view, though in many other parts of the paper the Government are severely criticised, as I said on Report stage. But things move on; times change; things happen which change people's minds.
If the defence committee were making their report now, I wonder whether their view would be exactly the same after the outrage of 12th October? It may well be that, bearing in mind these circumstances—these dreadful circumstances—which have created a new security situation, their view might have been quite different and might, on all sides of the committee, have been completely in accordance with the views that we have been putting forward from this Dispatch Box.
It is important that we have public confidence in our security forces and our security measures. I believe that the gulf which exists between us may well reduce public confidence. I would even now urge the Minister and the Government to think closely about this matter. Although I do not intend to press this amendment to a vote, it is a situation that we, too, shall keep our eye on. If we believe that it is necessary to come back to it in various ways with the Government, we shall certainly do so. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
5.33 p.m.
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, I now beg to move that this Bill do now pass. A number of issues have been raised during the discussions that we have had on the Bill and I am grateful to noble Lords, in particular noble Lords opposite, for the constructive proposals that they have brought forward, even if I have not felt able to agree with them. I hope I have demonstrated during our debates that the Bill ensures that the present terms and conditions of service of the workforce—a matter which has been very much in the minds of noble Lords opposite—will broadly be preserved by the application of TUPE 81.

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The employees of the ROFs will also continue to have, as I have said, the protection of other Acts of Parliament in respect of their contract of employment. The Government will continue to talk to the unions with the intention of reaching agreement on the terms of the pension scheme for transferring employees with appropriate benefits.
A great amount of work has been proceeding during the summer on all the issues which fall outside the scope of the Bill. In preparation for the organisation to begin trading, companies have already been formed and registered under the Companies Acts, and work is proceeding satisfactorily on finalising the scheme and the memorandum of our understanding. Our aim is to achieve a vesting date at the earliest possible opportunity. The Government wish to press ahead with their plans in a constructive and responsible manner in order to promote the best interests of the ROFs, their employees, and the country as a whole.
The Bill is a necessary first step towards our goal of increasing our ability to obtain value for money at a time of escalating defence costs. The Government will in due course announce their plans for the eventual privatisation of the company, but the important thing now is for the company to get started in business and begin to improve on the excellent record over the last 10 years of the Royal Ordnance Factories Trading Fund. I beg to move.
Moved, that the Bill do now pass.— (Lord Trefgame.)
Lord Graham of Edmonton: My Lords, at the end of the proceedings in this House, in fact in the dying moments of the passage of this Bill, we have the opportunity to reflect on its changed shape. Before I do so, on behalf of my colleagues I want to pay a warm tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, the Minister in charge of the Bill. He has dealt both expeditiously and courteously with all the matters that have been raised from these Benches. We are grateful.
He may have suspected at times that we took time enough to make our points so as to give him the impression that we were filibustering. He will however accept that some of the issues we raised were those vitally affecting the rights and protections of trade union members. Their livelihood is at stake. Enough at stake to warrant my noble friend Lord Stoddart and I making no apology for wearying the House time and time again with their case.
They are very worried men and women. There has been precious little said by the Minister during the passage of the Bill through your Lordships' House to give them any real and lasting comfort. Our debates have been improved by the contributions of the noble Baroness, Lady Vickers, the noble Lord, Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran, and the noble Lords, Lord Diamond and Lord Mayhew. They have all made excellent contributions, and there were powerful contributions too from the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Carver. I have been grateful for the support they have all given to the points that we have made.
We have had the benefit of receiving the Bill from another place where it had been rigorously scrutinised but hardly altered one jot voluntarily by the Government. The major change there came in adding
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Schedule 3 on policing and security. Without the devastating condemnation by the defence Select Committee it was the intention of the Government to contemplate placing the security of Ordnance factories in the hands of private security organisations. We have moved away from that, and we are grateful. It was an unacceptable situation. But we remain wholly dissatisfied with Schedule 3 as presently drafted.
I remind noble Lords however that in your Lordships' House we have achieved two major improvements, of course against the wishes of the Government. First, the bedrock of the method of transferring both assets and power from public to private hands is the making of a scheme, or schemes, by the Secretary of State. This is an enabling Bill and the Government are asking Parliament to give them the power to make schemes first and ask questions afterwards.
Your Lordships' House supported the view that a scheme would only be made after it had been subject to an affirmative resolution of both Houses. The details would be displayed, discussed, and approved first. The reality of the parliamentary arithmetic should be a comfort to the Government, yet they sought to deny either House of Parliament the chance of discussing their intentions first.
The Government have said that they will take steps to negative your Lordships' view when this Bill goes to another place. So be it. They can do it. But I tell the Minister in clear and unambiguous terms that if that happens we shall be inviting your Lordships' House to stick to their guns, to stand up for the dignity of this noble House, and to demand that parliamentary scrutiny take place before the making of a scheme.
Secondly, I would remind your Lordships' House that we carried a further improvement to the Bill against the wishes of the Government. Given that privatisation is to take place, your Lordships took the view that the transfer should be to one company, and not, as the Government proposed, to a company or different companies. Your Lordships heeded the plea of the workers at all levels that the unity of the Ordnance factories be respected and that they should not be chopped into little pieces.
Again the Government have signalled their intention to negative the decision of your Lordships' House. We do not intend to treat the views of the House with the same contempt as they have signalled they intend. We shall again be prepared to reassert your Lordships' view if need be at a later stage. It is a bad Bill. This Bill is nationally a disaster. There never was a case for it. The Ordnance factories are paying the price for success and profitability: the workers are paying the price for their commitment and their loyalty. The Minister has failed lamentably to meet the legitimate fears of the workers in relation to conditions, negotiated rights, redundancies and pensions. This legislation is a further extension of the Government's obsession with privatisation, regardless of the wider considerations of national security and industrial relations. The Bill came to this House unloved and unwanted: it leaves us for another place in exactly the same state.
Lord Mayhew: My Lords, on behalf of my noble friends, I should like to begin by associating myself

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with the tribute paid to the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne. My only regret is that so much courtesy and industry should be dedicated to such a miserable Bill.
One of the most predictable things in British politics is that a privatisation measure will be supported by the Conservative Party and opposed by the Labour Party. If one rings the right ideological bell the two parties, like Pavlov's dogs, automatically salivate. That is what we have been seeing. On these Benches our reflexes are less conditioned. We salivate less easily, and our view is that a measure of nationalisation or privatisation should be judged on its merits; on whether it offers a practical solution to a genuine problem. I assure noble Lords opposite that if this Bill was really addressed to a genuine problem and offered a practical answer to it, we would support it. But where is the genuine problem? What has gone wrong? Where are the ROFs falling down?
At one stage after another in the course of this Bill relays of Ministers have given their views on the ROFs. What have they said? They have praised them, invariably. They have praised the high standard of their products. They have praised their export record—40 per cent. of their output. They have praised their increased productivity. They have praised the skill and dedication of their staffs; the close and friendly relations the ROFs have built up with the armed services. Ministers have even praised their profitability—£140 million profit in the last 10 years. So why privatise?
I have searched through every Ministerial speech and every Ministerial intervention at every stage in this Bill in both Houses. So help me, I have done it, searching for the reason why these ROFs should be privatised. I have found a few cursory references to something called "removal of restraint". It is never spelled out, and no practical examples are given. No research, committee or authority is quoted. That is all I have found; and any noble Lord who doubts me can go through the same procedure as I have, and he will reach the same conclusion.
Since the war there have been many debates on nationalisation or denationalisation. I have attended many of them myself. But since the war, never has there been a debate in which the case for change has been made so sketchily and weakly, with so little documentation and supportive research. I doubt whether a Bill has ever been put forward which is so exclusively motivated by ideological prejudice. What makes it so deplorable is that it is in the field of national defence, and it is in this field above all that big changes should not be made for purely party political reasons. Particular care should be given not to override the longstanding loyalties of the armed services and the ROF staffs, or to overlook their 500-year record of joint service to the nation in its wars.
Finally, who stands to gain from this Bill? Certain people will welcome it. It will be welcome to the Government stockbrokers; it will be welcome to their legal advisers, to their financial advisers and to the underwriters. It will be welcome to asset strippers and to take-over bidders. I say in all seriousness, in view of the feeble security measures in the Bill, that I think it will be welcome to the IRA as well. It is a bad Bill. My
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party utterly rejects it. We think that it should never have been placed before Parliament.
Lord Diamond: My Lords, I rise to support what has been said, to apologise to the House for not being in my place at an earlier stage last week and to say how grateful I am to the Minister and to others who made courteous references to me in my absence. Your Lordships already know that we on this side of the House, whatever party we belong to, deplore this Bill for all the reasons that have been given. However objective one is in trying to see benefits from the Bill from the Government point of view, one is totally unable to do so. Speeches have been made other than from these Benches echoing what I am now saying. It is regrettable in the extreme that the Government are carrying what is clearly a deep but nevertheless dogmatic conviction to these extremes, and are allowing themselves to do so in an area where anxieties must be caused by their action.
When this discussion started all of us on this side of the Chamber were wholly opposed to the principle of the Bill but had a fairly open mind, given that we could not affect that principle as to how it would be put into effect. Now, instead of having an open mind, we are left with having deep suspicion. The Minister should know that the net result of all his speeches has been that I and I am sure others are deeply suspicious as to why the Government are rushing this in such an unseemly way. No good reason, business or otherwise, has been given, whatever reason could be persuasive from the Government's point of view. Certainly no reason has been given which impressed itself on my mind or on the minds of any on these Benches. I am sure I can associate the Labour Benches with that statement.
We are left, therefore, wondering why it is that the Government are rushing; are unwilling to consult Parliament and are unwilling to delay a step which affects a 400 to 500-year tradition by a total of six weeks. It is so ridiculous. The Minister must not expect to persuade anybody of that without giving the most telling and persuasive reasons. Therefore, all that can be left is our previous conviction that this is an irresponsible move on the part of the Government. It is dictated only by ideological views, however sincere the Government feel; and it can only be that and they have added mischief to unwisdom by the way they have dealt with the detail of the Bill.
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, I do not believe that I need to lengthen this discussion further. I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Diamond, thinks that we have been unduly rushing matters. The noble Lord will recall that, as I said earlier, we originally hoped that vesting day would be some time in October. It is now clear that we shall not achieve that, largely because we have not been rushing this measure through your Lordships' House. If we had rushed we would have sought to get the measure through Parliament before the Summer Recess and would no doubt then have achieved vesting day as originally intended. But we did not seek to do that.
We have taken into account the views that have been expressed, and that is why we are now dealing with this Bill towards the end of October. It still has

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not passed into law, and vesting day will certainly not be during this month. Having said that, I am grateful for the contributions that noble Lords have made and I beg to move.
On Question, Bill passed, and returned to the Commons with the amendments.

Youth Training in the EEC: ECC Report
5.50 p.m.
Lord Seebohm Lord Seebohm rose to move, That this House takes note of the Report of the European Communities Committee on Youth Training in the EEC (24th Report 1983–84, H.L. 282).
The noble Lord said: My Lords, the Motion before the House is to receive the Select Committee Report on Youth Training in the EEC.
The EEC has taken an increasing interest in the problems of education, training and employment of young people in recent years in response to the emergence in the 1970s of youth unemployment as a major problem in most of the member states. Although the focus of attention is on young people under 25, the committee realised that the subject involved the consideration of all education and training of all young people from the beginning of secondary education until maturity and beyond. The committee realised that this would be a mammoth undertaking going well beyond the normal time scale of a select committee and it was therefore decided to concentrate on vocational training for the 16 to 18 age group; that is, the first two years after compulsory education in the United Kingdom.
The inquiry aroused enormous interest and the amount of evidence that the committee received, both written and oral, was of a very high order and illustrated the great concern which exists in this country not only for youth unemployment but for the necessity to review and improve the whole education and training policies in the United Kingdom. The committee are immensely grateful for the contributions that they received and wish to express their thanks for the time and trouble that must have been incurred in the preparation of this evidence. The committee also wish to express their thanks to the special adviser Mr. Ron Johnson without whose help this report would not have seen the light of day.
I would say that although it appears very long and very heavy, the report of the committee, in fact, is only of 37 pages while there are 380 pages of evidence. I hope that people will not be put off by the size from reading what we have said. This report makes some very radical proposals, some of which will be expensive to implement. The committee hope that it will convince the readers that there is really no option in the matter and I wish to say now, at the beginning of my speech, how much I shall listen to the noble Lord, Lord Young of Graffhams's reply as there have already been some indications of ministerial speeches that the general principles that I shall describe are already being favourably considered. I should like also to say at this point what pleasure it must give the whole House that the noble Lord, Lord Young of Graffham, is replying in a maiden speech to this very important
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debate—and, my Lords, who better that he with the experience that he has had? We shall certainly listen to what he has to say with great interest and I, myself, shall listen with great expectation.
I want to stress this about the report. The report is not concerned with short-term issues but with the long-term survival of our economy which means making a start on radical change now before it is too late. What is at stake is not only the future of the economy but the future also of society and the quality of life. The report points out that the situation of unemployed young people is critical not only because they have no jobs but because they have no chance or lack the skills to integrate into society and the world of work. There can be little doubt that a more highly trained workforce generates wealth and helps to create jobs.
There is also the problem of motivating people when they do not believe that there is a job at the end of the day. The EEC objective is abundantly clear. Unemployment on an unacceptable scale will not go away unless there is a highly-skilled workforce fully competitive with other countries such as America and Japan. Nor can it afford to carry laggards in its midst such as exist today. In this report, the committee describes the initiative that can be taken by the Community as a whole but accept that most of the success of the operation will depend upon action initiated within member states. The report describes the various systems of vocational training in each member state. This brings out clearly why the great variety and historical background of each state makes a common system inappropriate, but does not invalidate the acceptance of a common policy. This report therefore concentrates mainly on recommendations for change in the United Kingdom.
I shall now do my best to convince your Lordships of the reasons why action so far as the United Kingdom is concerned is definitely and desperately urgent. Those who are vocationally unqualified in Germany, for instance, amount to about 30 per cent.; those who are unqualified in this country, 65 per cent.; in France, 40 per cent. of the 16 to 18 year-olds are enrolled in full-time vocational training compared with only 19 per cent. in this country. In Germany, only 10 per cent. of those in the 15 to 18 age group fall out of the vocational training net compared with 40 per cent. in the EEC and rather more in the United Kingdom. These figures alone should shake us to the core.
Now I must deal with the main issues that the committee identified. These were, first, the social and material status of young people which is perhaps the most important; secondly, the quality of training; thirdly, the assessment and certification; and, fourthly, careers education and guidance. In so far as the social and material status of young people are concerned, the committee studied the practices in other member states which vary markedly. Choices at school-leaving age are likely to be influenced by estimates of future prospects and immediate financial advantage in ways which do not necessarily reflect the needs of the community or the individual. Decisions at 16 may be taken in the light of financial circumstances at the moment and the family resources available. This militates against rational choice and divides young people into different groups to no useful purpose. It

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also tends to demotivate some young people and to make them feel insecure at a time when they most need self-respect and a measure of self-sufficiency.
After studying various approaches to this problem, the committee strongly endorsed the proposal to regard all 16-to-17 year olds as trainees or students following different groups through education or training programmes to a common goal. One immediate advantage would be to discourage a student or trainee from taking decisions about his future based primarily on immediate financial considerations. This approach is favoured by the Institute of Personnel Management who suggest that for their protection all young people in this age group should be given a defined legal status and the designation of student/trainee.
The main problem here would be to fix the level of income. In Europe, there is a suggestion that it should be fixed at a level which would give young people a measure of independence from parents but not enough to give them total independence. The TUC have recently issued a paper on this subject suggesting a figure of £25 per week for those in full-time education and £34 per week for those in part-time further education and part time in the workplace. Both Germany and France have a sliding scale (which I personally rather favour) starting at a much lower rate and progressing to the rate for the job as qualifications are achieved. The cost should be shared by Government and industry but the burden on industry should not be so high as to discourage it from undertaking training. But, as industry and commerce would be the main beneficiaries, it is not unreasonable to expect them to bear a proportion of the cost.
In Germany, the cost of their three-year programme—for 15–16–17 year-olds, because the compulsory school age stops at 15—is estimated as the equivalent of about £5 billion. In the United Kingdom as the school-leaving age is a year later, the cost would be that much less and the saving in social security and family allowances must also be calculated. In so far as the quality of training is concerned, the committee considered the working of the YTS and look forward to seeing some further analysis of the successes and failures of the first year's working. There is a report of the MSC of 1983–84 period; but that ends in July and that, of course, is too early to do a proper analysis of what had been happening during the first year.
The committee believe that one year must be followed by a second year if the foundation laid by the first YTS preparation year is not to be dissipated. Unless steps are taken to supplement the one-year programme, the United Kingdom is in danger of falling even further behind the other member states. This further training should, wherever possible, lead to a recognised occupational qualification. I have had the opportunity to visit two youth opportunities schemes. The first one was in a large, high technology company, where they had 21 students, youngsters of 16 years of age, completely by random selection, of which only four or five had any qualifications from the school.
It was astonishing, after six months, when I went there, how those who had no qualifications whatsoever had produced quite amazing aptitudes and skills in a
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very short time—aptitudes and skills which so impressed the company that they told me that five or six of them, not necessarily those with any qualifications at all, would be taken on to their permanent staff at the end. They had never taken on school-leavers before. Like many other employers, if they took on people they inquired first of all whether they had O-levels or A-levels. To my mind, this showed how important are two things. First, a second year is absolutely essential so that these motivated young people should not again be disappointed; and, secondly, the whole question of certification should be looked at.
This brings me to the third issue, which concerns assessment and certification. The committee point out that a certificate which describes in nationally-understood terms what a young person has achieved and what he can do is clearly of value when the time comes to seek employment or to undertake further study. An appropriate assessment method has another value. It motivates the young to learn; it helps them to chart their own progress; and it also helps to provide a feed-back on the adequacy of the training or educational programme.
According to the Institute of Personnel Management, the system of profile recording as a means of continuous assessment can itself be a vehicle for learning, and has many advantages over end-of-term examinations, which result in 60 per cent. of school-leavers having nothing to show for the eleven years of education they have received. The committee feels strongly that every school-leaver should be entitled to a certificate of achievement which lists their attainments, even though these attainments do not meet all the aims set out in the course. This should also avoid the appalling "pass/failure" hurdle which commits many to failure even though they have a highly-developed aptitude which does not form part of the examination system. I am now straying, I am afraid, from the 16 and 17 year-olds, but there should be no great break from compulsory education to vocational training, and the artificial distinction between education and training should be scotched at birth.
The fourth and final issue I mentioned concerns the careers education and guidance services. I imagine all would agree that careers education should be an integral part of general education. Young people need from a very early age continuous help in identifying and developing their aptitudes, and in being made aware of the range of choices. This has implications for teacher training and also for the present isolation of the teaching profession, which was pointed out in the evidence from the Policy Studies Institute. It must be difficult for careers teachers to give adequate advice and guidance to young people when they have spent their entire careers in teaching and the school environment. There are some useful schemes in existence, such as UBI, which is sponsored by the CBI and Understanding Industry, sponsored by a private trust; and, of course, there is the new development of the TVEI, which seems to be extremely successful. They are making some impact, but it should not be left to these informal and voluntary initiatives to make all the running. The committee feel that the status and role of the careers service and of careers education should be

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raised and that this service should be available to all those who are at school and all those at university, in jobs or unemployed, at least up to the age of 25.
I now come to our main conclusions. I cannot mention them all as there are rather a lot of them, and there are other speakers who may know more than I do about some of them. I shall deal with three of them. First, the need for an efficient workforce is a matter for the whole of the EEC, which cannot afford to carry member states who are unwilling to take steps to improve their performance. Secondly, every young person should have the opportunity of a training programme lasting at least one year after the YTS foundation year. Wherever possible, this further training should lead to a recognised occupational qualification. Thirdly, a common status for all young people should be the United Kingdom's long-term answer to the problem of the social and material status of young people.
To sum up, the current education and vocational training provision for young people should be restructured with a view to long-term improvement, and this should start now so that there will be, first, a well-trained workforce; secondly, a straightforward system that everyone understands and can benefit from; and, thirdly, the opportunity for young people to be helped to make sound choices on education, training and employment.
I hope I have said enough to convince your Lordships that the time has come to ensure that adequate provision is made, not only to meet academic needs but also the needs of the hand and of the heart. I beg to move.
Moved, That this House takes note of the Report of the European Communities Committee on Youth Training in the EEC.— (Lord Seebohm.)
6.5 p.m.
The Minister without Portfolio (Lord Young of Graffham): My Lords, I rise to address your Lordships' House for the first time with considerable humility and reliant upon the knowledge that your Lordships' reputation is to deal kindly with newcomers. For one who has not come from another place—in fact, from no place at all—the task is formidable, and your Lordships may prefer to regard this afternoon as the first module of on-the-job training in what I can only describe as the Young Training Scheme.
I am indeed grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Seebohm, not only for what he has had to say today but for all the work that he and the other members of the Select Committee have put into the 24th Report, Youth Training in the EEC. The evidence they have taken and assembled will prove to be of the greatest utility to those of us concerned with policy in the field of education and the training of our young. I am sure noble Lords would want to join me in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Seebohm, and all his committee for their work.
Moreover, the report comes at a particularly crucial time. Training and the proper preparation of young people for work have never been more important. Our economic recovery will be threatened unless we get these things right, for only if our workforce is properly trained in the right skills can we produce the goods and
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services which people want to buy, and so generate new wealth and, with it, new jobs. That is why the Government accord training such a high priority. No-one is more aware of that than me, since it was my privilege to spend 2½ years at the head of the Manpower Services Commission. Indeed, it is even more appropriate to hold this debate this afternoon, since almost at this very moment my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Employment is announcing the appointment of my successor. He is Mr. Bryan Nicholson, at present chairman of Rank Xerox (U.K.), with executive responsibility for Rank Xerox subsidiaries elsewhere in Europe. With a long experience of industry, he will bring to the Manpower Services Commission a vision of the needs of tomorrow's world. I hope that in addition to my own I might be permitted to add the warm welcome of your Lordships' House. I well recall my own appointment to the Commission and the help and active support from commissioners and officials alike. I envy Mr. Nicholson the experience. It is a key appointment and, with his experience and ability, I know that he will prove to be an improvement on his predecessor.
As a nation, we have not fully recognised the importance of proper work preparation and vocational training, and the report points out that it is not only this country that faces these difficulties. Rising unemployment, particularly among young people, is a Europe-wide problem. In April 1984, over 12 million people were registered as unemployed in the European Community—an increase of over five million in three-and-a-half years—and young people have been particularly hard-hit, for demographic factors have worked against them and have meant that youngsters have been coming on to the labour market in substantially greater numbers. Technological development and changes in the industrial structure, particularly the shift from manufacturing to the service sector, have at the same time been affecting all the Western economies. The effect of both economic conditions and technological development has been to raise the skill levels which young people need if they are to get employment.
The need for adequate opportunities for training and retraining and for young people to be properly prepared for work has been a proper concern of this Government. We have published two White Papers on the subject, one in 1981 and one early this year. These reiterated the Government's support for the three national objectives set out in the Manpower Service Commission's consultative document, A New Training Initiative. We want to secure, as the first objective, the modernisation of training and occupational skills, and to update apprenticeships. The second objective is better preparation in school and college for working life, and better arrangements for the transition from education to work. This is a field which is largely covered at the moment by the youth training scheme and by the technical and vocational education initiative.
The third objective, which is increasingly of concern, but is perhaps outside the field of this debate, is wider opportunities for adults to acquire and improve their skills. These are ambitious aims, but we must achieve them if we are to build upon the economic advances that we have already made; for

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unless we have a flexible system of training which can respond quickly and cost effectively to the changing skill requirements of industry, we cannot hope to produce goods of the quality and price which the market demands.
For the whole secret of our ability to survive in such an increasingly hostile world is to reduce our unit costs, and for that skill and professionalism is required. Many of your Lordships will, I hope, recall the game played many years ago now at Lord's each season—Gentlemen against the Players. For all too many years we have played for the Gentlemen, but I am afraid that in today's world we have to play for the Players and become more professional in our approach and that means better training.
In that particular sense, training is an investment. It is not an end in itself, but is something which leads to jobs. It pays for itself by enabling people to provide goods and services which they will sell and so create new wealth. And it follows from this that employers have a key role to play in providing training. They decide who should be trained and in what skills. It is certainly no good Government thinking that they know best. We have tried that in the past and it has not worked.
But, of course, there are roles for others. In particular, individual trainees must accept that the training they receive can be costly and should be taken into account in settling the level of pay. Perhaps they could also show enterprise in making use of the many training opportunities today available to them; for example, through the Open Tech programme. And, of course, many individuals already in employment are taking part-time training programmes, for they know that the result of these programmes will boost their earning power.
But I would not deny that there are important responsibilities for Government. Where necessary, we must provide special help for those disadvantaged in the labour market, such as the young, the disabled and the unemployed. We have made great strides since 1981. The youth training scheme, which offers a year of work and training to minimum age school-leavers and to some other people, started life in April 1983 and became fully operational in September of that year. We are now at the beginning of its second year and nearly 50 per cent. more young people have joined the scheme as during the same period last year. They know that it works. They voted with their feet and they are increasingly coming on the scheme. Some 300,000 youngsters were on the scheme at the end of September. Initial indications, too, are favourable and nearly 60 per cent. of young people leaving the scheme are finding work. If you include those going on to further education and training, the figure approaches 70 per cent.
As regards individual schemes, the Construction Industry Training Board, which is by far the largest managing agent, reports that well over 90 per cent. have gone into employment, while the figure for the Clothing and Allied Products Industrial Training Board is 98 per cent. In the case of ABTA, the travel agents' scheme, the figure is 100 per cent. Of course, not all the schemes are on this scale, but it goes to show
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the central thesis of the youth training scheme, that young people with the right approach and the right skills can find work.
The success of the youth training scheme is a credit to employers, the careers service, local authorities, trade unions, voluntary organisations and colleges and even, if I may say so now, to the Manpower Services Commission who run the scheme. We are very grateful to them for all their efforts. I must at least say a word to the Area Manpower Boards, some of whose chairmen are in your Lordships' House.
Within the youth training scheme we have not ignored the new technologies. I should like to pay particular tribute to the ITeCs (the Information Technology Centres) of which we already have 148 open, and the number is still increasing. These have shown that young people without any qualifications can master the mysteries of programming, of boolean logic, and even dare I say it, of maths. These have shown that the deficiencies are in the system, rather than in our young. These have shown the need to restore a better balanced curriculum to our school system—one that motivates and interests all of our young, not just those who are naturally academic. Indeed, if this were not my first occasion before your Lordships, I might be tempted on this issue, if on no other, to be controversial.
It was to remedy this defect that the Prime Minister announced the Technical and Vocational Education Initiative in November 1982. Greeted with a certain amount of suspicion, and some may even say hostility, from a very conservative profession, TVEI has now got off to a flying start. It is about an enriched curriculum—one that provides both general and technical or vocational subjects. If any of your Lordships have seen the enthusiasm of both pupils and teachers alike, the realisation of some of our young that they are capable, that they have abilities, that school means something for them, then you will be as sure as I am that the changes we have encouraged are here to stay. I say "encouraged", because in all of this the teaching profession is ahead of us. My only regret, if I were to be honest, is that there have been some politicians in some local education authorities who have denied their school systems the opportunity of entering the programme. Perhaps they thought that they were harming the Government. Alas, they are harming only their own.
So eight months after it was announced, 14 local education authorities started their pilot schemes and the following year—August and September—43 authorities in England and Wales and a further five in Scotland have started their pilot schemes. I hope that before much time has passed all who wish to will have the resources. In Clwyd, it is already planned to spread the programme across the entire authority.
But that is not all. The Government are encouraging in other ways better preparation in schools for working life. Links between schools and industry are being strengthened. The certificate of pre-vocational education is one of a number of measures designed to improve and better co-ordinate the arrangements for vocational education after 16. In further education, the transfer of some of the resources for the funding of work-related non-advanced further education in

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England and Wales to the Manpower Services Commission will, I am quite sure, help make this type of provision more responsive to the quickly changing employment needs of the future.
And in Scotland important developments in this area are also under way. The committee's report referred to the new courses in the Scottish certificate of education standard grade and to the "16+ Action Plan" of January 1983, under which a flexible system of modular courses leading to a single new vocational certificate is being developed. The more I saw of education north of the border, the more I thought that we should study it further.
We are mainly concerned today with youth training, though in European terms that covers young people up to the age of 25. But action to develop the potential of young adults, as well as to improve the skills of many others in the work force, is just as critical to our economic success. We just cannot afford to let skill shortages hold us back. I was delighted when, as part of the Manpower Services Commission, we developed the adult training strategy and even more delighted when it was announced earlier this year. The cornerstone of this is our belief that employers have the key role to play in providing training and that investment in training pays. That is why my right honourable friend the Secretary of State announced recently that as part of this strategy we are launching shortly a major campaign to bring home to everybody in this country—employers, unions and employees—the vital importance of training for our future.
The Government are playing their part in two principal ways. First, we are putting a great deal of effort into stimulating changes in the training system to make it more responsive to the needs of employers and adult workers—through, for example, our funding of the Open Tech Programme and of projects to promote local collaboration between employers and providers of training. Secondly, we are restructuring the Government's own adult training programmes to make a more cost-effective contribution to meeting the needs of industry and commerce. Through tailoring provision to meet specific needs, by 1986–87 we are doubling to over 250,000 the number of adults who benefit from our training programmes within the current level of resources. About half of those helped will be unemployed people, including some 50,000 of the 200,000 long-term unemployed who pass through the community programme each year. Many of us who have been concerned with the very real needs of the long-term unemployed are delighted that at long last we can include a training element for their particular requirements.
I hope noble Lords will agree that these are considerable achievements. Britain certainly matches up well to the standards set by the European Community which we have helped to influence. For example, the vocational training resolution adopted by the Council of Ministers last year requires member states to do their utmost over the next five years to ensure that all young people may have a minimum of six months of basic training and/or initial work experience when they reach minimum school-leaving age. Our youth training scheme already provides such a guarantee, but for 12 months. Because we do so much for our young people, we benefit correspond-
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ingly from the European Social Fund, from which we receive more than any other member state. The United Kingdom is also undertaking the majority of the pilot projects which have so far been approved under the fund rules and to which, of course, your Lordships' report refers.
That is a brief overview of where we are in the provision of training for our young. There is one final matter that I would like to raise now although I would hope, with the leave of the House, to respond at a later stage in our debate to any detailed points on the report which your Lordships may make. Could I, however, say at this stage to the noble Lord, Lord Seebohm, that we are quite aware of the gap between the amount of initial training and vocational training that is provided in the United Kingdom and Germany. From our point of view, however, our concern is whether or not the gap is closing. The advances that we have made in the last two years are, I believe, very much in the right direction.
One of your Lordships' recommendations in paragraph 84 is to bring together the education, training and employment of young people in a coherent framework, a framework which can be understood by all, in particular by the young themselves. Your Lordships may recall that the Prime Minister, after discussion with the Ministers concerned, asked me a short time ago to chair a committee composed of junior Ministers and senior officials from the Departments of Education and Science, Employment, Trade and Industry and Health and Social Security. This group will look for the very first time at the provision for the 14 to 18 age group—education, training, employment and unemployment. We shall in due course, and before too long, report back to our colleagues.
I should not like to raise the expectations of this House, for it is a formidable task. Your Lordships will recall that the recent youth training scheme review group within the Manpower Services Commission did not recommend a longer scheme at the present time, but there are other matters—for example, the relationship between the Certificate of Pre-Vocational Education (CPVE) and the youth training scheme and in particular the status of certificates under the scheme—which need to be considered and taken into account.
I have no doubt that your Lordships will raise many more points this afternoon. All I will say is that we shall have a good look for the very first time across the whole field of youth activity. I am encouraged by the enthusiasm of my colleagues.
6.25 p.m.
Lord McCarthy: My Lords, first may I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Seebohm, on his excellent report. We on this side of the House agree with almost everything that is contained in it. There are one or two areas with which I disagree. At least, I think I disagree, if I have got it right. It may be that I have not got it right and that therefore I shall find that in the end I agree. I wish also to ask a number of questions of the Government spokesman.
I am very pleased to be the first person who is able, post hoc, to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Young

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of Graffham, upon discharging his first module. It was, as we expected it to be, a clear, encyclopaedic and almost non-controversial maiden speech. I hope to hear from him again on many occasions. Indeed, I know that I shall hear again from him soon. He is, with leave, to sum up the debate. I have always looked upon the noble Lord as the distinguished chairman of the Manpower Services Commission—the last place left in this Government where one can admit that one can learn from trade unions and the last place left where shameful tripartite quangos produce results and sometimes get Ministers to change their minds. It is something left over from the 1970s. I have a great affection for it and also a great admiration for the extremely useful, conciliatory and helpful task which the noble Lord has performed as the Chairman of the Manpower Services Commission.
I turn now to the subject matter of the report and congratulate the members of the committee upon what they have put before us. I do so for a number of reasons. First, within a very short time span, they have summarised, as the noble Lord, Lord Seebohm, said, the incontestable conclusions to which any sensible person must come when he compares the level, scope, form and general standard of training in this country with what is provided by our major competitors. They have shown once again that we do much less training than most of our major competitors and that the training which we provide, compared with that of many of our major competitors, is of a comparatively low standard and on a comparatively narrow base. They have shown how tremendously we need to expand this provision. They have shown the extra special need we have to expand training because of the fact, which is highlighted in the report of the Select Committee, that no post-war Government have yet managed to shift the basic assumptions about our educational system away from the over-domination of the needs of the top 40 per cent.—indeed, I sometimes think it is the top 5 per cent.—to the needs of the bottom 40 per cent. Because of the extreme difficulty of changing that balance, for which the older universities are as responsible as anybody else, it is especially important for us to supplement our classical, liberal education with training which is based upon work. This is spelled out very clearly and straightforwardly in the report.
But the Select Committee have done more than this. They have also shown that the specific tasks which need to be carried out in order to improve training are to be found in one of the great areas left in this country where already there is a very wide consensus of opinion. One of the most impressive aspects of the report is the evidence put forward by the CBI, the TUC, the MSC, local authorities, the Institute of Personnel Management and distinguished academics. It shows a very wide area of general agreement upon the way forward. Although the noble Lord the Minister knows this, I must warn him that he will not find a comforting area of consent and agreement when he moves into his present area of concern: what is to be done about unemployment. At least when we debate what one should do about training and the way forward in training there is to me, as an old consensualist, a comforting area of agreement. For
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example, everybody knows that the first and most important thing to do after the establishment of the youth training scheme is provide a second year of training. Everybody knows that at the end of that second year of training there must be recognised occupational qualifications based on continuous assessment and examination.
Although I shall return later to what the Government are doing in this regard, I believe that everyone in general agrees—and the noble Lord said so in one part of his speech—on the need to do more for the disadvantaged in this context, on the need to do more for the educationally backward, and on the need to do more for the heart of our unemployment problem—the long-term unemployed.
I hope there is agreement that, to some extent, in the immediate future this last objective can only be approached by a greater concentration on what is termed Mode B (1) and (2) of the youth training scheme, or a concentration on the community programme, or on the community industry programme—rather than focus to the same extent we have so far on Mode 1 of the youth training scheme. I say that because I believe it is generally agreed, and it is spelt out in the report, that it is the disadvantaged, the educationally backward and the long-term unemployed—especially the latter in areas of very high unemployment—who find it difficult to become absorbed into Mode A of the youth training scheme.
I should like to ask the Minister for his justification, if he accepts these figures, of the fact put forward recently by Youth Aid that if one looks at the number of places for Mode B which are to be available in 1984–85 as against those available in 1983–84, it is evident that the Government propose something like a 20 per cent. reduction in the total number of places; a reduction from 89,000 in 1983–84 to 70,000 in 1984–85. If those figures are wrong I should be pleased to have them corrected.
Is it also wrong, as Youth Aid suggests, that this reduction in the number of places for Mode B is in no way related to demand for places—for example, in the Midlands, Scotland, and the South-East, where the reductions are rather high—to the success in filling places this year? Indeed, Youth Aid says—and I should be glad to be told that they are wrong—that the cuts in the proportion of Mode B places as against Mode A places are simply an ideological spasm. If it be true as the Minister has said, that he appreciates the need to do more for the disadvantaged and the long-term unemployed, then I should be glad to be told that those figures are wrong.
That brings me to those areas where I am not sure that I agree with the Seebohm report, if I have it right. I am not sure I understand what the report means by a need for a common status and a common income for young people. I am not sure what it means when it refers to a need for a national framework; for a more coherent, clear, rational framework of training. If by common status it merely means that the committee are against parent dependence and want a system of allowances rather than the present system, then I am in favour; I see what they mean. If the committee mean by the common approach that they are against what I believe to be the impractical proposals put forward by

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the Policy Studies Institute for a value added way of calculating the allowance, then I agree with them. But if they are asking—and this seems to me to be the common sense way of looking at the matter—not simply for a common status but for a common rate of allowance, then I would prefer (and I say this now especially because I know that the noble Baroness, Lady Seear, is to follow me) the approach put forward in the report of the Select Committee of this House on unemployment. What we suggested there was not a common rate but a hierarchy of rates; a bottom rate for the unemployed and for full-time education and training—for students, yes, so that there should not be argued for a hierarchical system with a bottom common rate and a top rate for full-time training, and sociology and English literature rather than go on a youth training scheme.
But surely there should be some extra compensation for people undertaking work rather then training and some appreciation of the employer's position so that he will be compensated if the worker is away for training rather than working at his place of work. We argued for a hierarchical system with a bottom common rate and a top rate for full-time training, and rates per diem in between based on the proportion of full-time training or the proportion of full-time work. I must say that I am not convinced that what I think is behind that which is proposed in this report is a better system. I wait to see whether I have understood it correctly.
I shall now go on to the second area, which will not take very long. Once again, the people who study our system of provision in this area find it chaotic. They are quite right to do so. They say it is unbelievable that we should have three or four ministries, a large number of universities, polytechnics, CFEs, local authorities, the MSC itself, the schools council, and so on and so on—all involved in this area. They end up by saying that there must be a better way and that there must be a coherent national framework. I believe that I heard the noble Lord the Minister say that he was going to chair a committee to investigate this coherent, national framework. I also heard him say—and I am very glad that he did say it—that we should not be too ambitious in our expectations.
The example he proposed of the kind of tinkering rationalisation he might produce as a result of this committee reassured me very much. If the Seebohm committee is suggesting a radical change, this was something we considered in the report of the Select Committee on unemployment. We considered four forms of radical change. The late Lord Vaizey was in favour of a monster ministry of training which took everything over. Others were in favour of an elephantine, gargantuan enlargement of the MSC. Others believed in regionalisation and merging the functions of the MSC with the local authorities. And the local authorities gave evidence and said, "Hand it all back to us". When one considers the institutional upheaval involved in any major attempt to change the institutional chaos whereby we provide training in this country, the kind of tinkering which the noble Lord suggested is the best that one can do. I hope that he does not try to do anything else.
I come now to the questions that I should like to put to the Minister. Actually, I should like to ask a number
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of questions about three areas. The first concerns the results of the youth training scheme itself and the proportion of those coming off the scheme who are gainfully employed. If I heard the Minister aright today, the figures he gave seemed to be rather more reasonable. We have heard claims from Ministers that on one occasion 70 per cent. of people coming off the YTS were going back to work. One spokesman for the MSC claimed that 69 per cent. of people coming off the Youth Training Scheme were, "doing something useful". If one looks at how this "doing something useful" was calculated, one finds that it was calculated by taking away the unemployed who answered the sample survey and who said that they intended at some time in the future to apply for some form of training or education. The figure was calculated by taking them off and adding them to those who were "doing something useful". I believe that the figure put forward today—I think he said 56 per cent.—is much more realistic.
On the other hand, as I understand it this was a small sample. All the samples which have so far been held by the MSC to calculate the results of the youth training scheme have been postal samples and it is notorious that with postal samples one gets rather low responses. These were a little above 60 per cent. It is also notorious that the majority of non-responders are non-achievers. They have nothing much to tell you so they do not fill in your form. One need only assume that slightly more than half of those who did not respond did not, in fact, get a job and we have a rate of placement which is under 50 per cent.—something not much better than that achieved by the youth opportunities programme.
I stress that I do not say this in any sense in order to glory at the downfall of the youth training scheme, if it be a sign of downfall. It is a very difficult thing to do. But if we are to run the youth training scheme for a second year and if we are to supplement it, as I hope we shall, with something on the second year, then we must be very hard-headed and realistic and not make over-ambitious claims about what the youth training scheme can achieve. I hope the Minister will say that he agrees.
I shall now say a word or two about the young workers' scheme. The young workers' scheme is the most contentious part of the programme of special measures. It has no training element. It has a subsidy which is inversely related to wages in an attempt to price people into jobs. It has no controls whatever to ensure that there is any net job creation. The 200,000 or so people who have been on the young workers' scheme could, in fact, for all we know, have replaced 200,000 rather older people at the other end. Nevertheless, the young workers' scheme, says the MSC in its evidence to the Select Committee which we are discussing today, has been interfering, or putting people off from entering the youth training scheme. The MSC says in its evidence that it would like to see the young workers' scheme transformed into a second year scheme so that young people are expected to spend their first year on the youth training scheme and the second year on the young workers' scheme.
Interestingly enough, in the evidence of the TUC, at page 140, we find that Mr. Roy Jackson, the secretary

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of the education department of the TUC, actually agrees with this proposal. Therefore, my question is: does the Minister agree? Obviously he agreed when he was chairman of the MSC. Does he still agree that the best way forward for the young workers' scheme is to get out of the way, as it were, of the youth training scheme and provide the basis for a second year scheme? If he does, surely there is a case for considering a system of controls to ensure that there is some positive job creation. Surely there is a case, if there is to be a subsidy, for letting that subsidy be neutral; and surely there is a case for introducing a training element.
Finally, I ask one or two questions about the link between unemployment and training. Do the Government agree with the report of the Select Committee when it states:
"Lack of training is not in itself the main cause of unemployment. There simply are less jobs available"?
If the Government say that, we shall have moved an inch forward. If they do, how do the Government accept that in the light of what was said by the Chancellor of the Exchequer recently when he told Brian Walden on "Weekend World"—or is supposed to have said, according to the Financial Times—that unemployment is a social human problem rather than an economic one. Like the crime rate, it is essentially beyond the power of Government. If that is the case, it puts the Minister in rather a difficult position because he has moved away from an area such as training, where something can be done and where the Government are doing a great deal, to an area where the Chancellor of the Exchequer tells him that his task is essentially beyond the power of Government. If that is the case, I do not see that one can agree with that part of the Select Committee's Report.
I hope that the Minister can say today, or if not today at some time in the near future, that he does not fully accept that the level of unemployment—admittedly, not centrally a matter of lack of training—is something that is essentially beyond the powers of Government; that it is something social and human rather than economic and that it is something, one might say, which really should be the province of the Home Office rather than the Treasury. There is no theoretical justification for this and no practical justification. It will be better by far to assume that something can be done and to assume that something can be done partly on the training side through the excellent provisions in this report, which I commend to the House.
6.46 p.m.
Baroness Seear: My Lords, it gives me very special pleasure to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Young of Graffham, on his maiden speech on a subject which we have discussed, in one way or another, in this House on a number of occasions and which has occupied the minds, and indeed the hearts, of many of us for many years. It gives me very special pleasure, in addition to those more general considerations, because I have had the privilege of sitting under the noble Lord, Lord Young, as chairman of one of his area boards. I have seen him in action spurring the MSC on with new ideas and with a great determination to achieve results.
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Like the noble Lord, Lord McCarthy, I think the noble Lord, Lord Young, is an extremely brave man to take on the task in which he attempts to co-ordinate four Government departments. My own very small experience has been that if one has to deal with more than one Government department at a time it makes one's heart sink. The thought of taking on four at one blow requires the courage of a very brave man indeed.
Running through this report of the EC on youth training there are two main themes which seem to me to be of great importance and on which I should like briefly to comment. The first is the theme of the need for diversity in training. I was delighted to see that the committee is in favour of—indeed, has recognised and the EC has recognised—a much needed change from the idea that there would be an imposed EC standard of training to occupational descriptions; in other words, that we would work out what it was that young people, or indeed adults, were going to be able to do. Having decided that, we would work out in our own way—and this will differ in various countries and may indeed differ within the same country—the training and educational methods by which the standard needed to do the job so described is reached. This is a very important distinction.
Those of us who have been on European committees for some time will remember how some years ago we were bogged down with an attempt to find standards of professional qualifications which were acceptable in all the EC countries. They got into the most ridiculous situation of counting the number of hours that students attended on different aspects of courses. Those of us who have had anything to do with teaching students know very well that the hours that they spend in lectures, especially their own, are probably the least profitable that they spend in training courses. I remember one famous don at Cambridge in my day saying that three hours in the library was worth a term full of lectures. That has always been my view.
Students were suppoed to have attended a particular set of lectures, and if they only put in the hours, whether they had slept through them or whether they had been doing noughts and crosses at the back of the hall, they had attended them. That is what was required. This was ridiculous, and it held up the necessary free movement of labour inside the Community.
I myself believe—and I think that sometimes during the discussion on the report it is to some extent forgotten—that this is an EEC report. I know that a great deal of what has to be done has to be done inside this country and inside member states, but there is an EEC dimension. One of the most encouraging experiences I had in visiting a skill centre was when a man said to me, when I asked him what he thought were his prospects, "Not too bad. Three of them who were with me went off to Germany on Monday to a job"—and this was three years ago—"at £250 per week". The opportunity to go and work in other parts of the EEC will be facilitated because it has been accepted that the training given is training which enables trainees to do the job as described. This contrasts with the existing regulations, which prevent movement within the Community when the training undertaken is not identical with the detailed training requirements laid down at the centre by the EEC.

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But the need for diversity is not limited to diversity as between member states. It is also important to have diversity in the approach to training inside this country. I recognise that it is important that there should be nationally recognised standards. However, I do see a very great danger, if we attempt to move too quickly towards nationally recognised standards, that we shall have fixed standards before we know what training the youngsters really need to have. Once we have those fixed standards, the training will be directed towards meeting the requirements of the standards and we shall move further and further away from recognising that we need to learn far more than we know at present what the youngsters really need to learn in order to do the required jobs.
So I am anxious that we should not move too quickly towards nationally recognised standards and that we should more humbly approach the job by trying to find out how we can do this very difficult job of training the whole of our labour force—because this is what we are now attempting to do. In the past, we have trained—in some cases extremely well—a very small proportion of the labour force. We are now trying to train nearly everybody. This is a quite different exercise, and a very difficult one indeed. One is trying to train people who are thankful that they have left school and who had hoped that they would never see any sort of training or educational establishment again. We do not know how to do this. We have to learn, and we have to learn very slowly.
So there is a question of diversity, of experiment, of finding out how these youngsters with different kinds of interests and ability can learn to be competent for the jobs which they are going to do. This is the nature of the task. So can we not work towards a system in which we recognise that what is being done in one part of the country is in many ways experimentally different in training approach from what is being done in another, but that nonetheless people who have passed through what is approved in a particular locality and have reached approved standards there will not be barred from access to jobs in other parts of the country? It is simply a word of warning against standardisation; because one knows so well that, once there is standardisation, all teaching is directed towards the requirements of that standard and you lose sight of what we are trying to do now, which is to work out how the youngsters can best be trained for the jobs for which in the past they did not get any training at all, and for the new jobs that they have to do. So much for diversity.
The second theme, and the theme of the youth training scheme, as of this report, is the theme of quality. The youth training scheme stands or falls by the achievement of quality. However, quality can only be achieved if we start way back in the schools. The fact of the matter is that to get the quality that we need requires a degree of collaboration between educationists and industrialists which we have not begun to achieve. These two groups are in many cases poles apart. There is a very great deal of suspicion, misunderstanding and lack of appreciation on both sides. Yet, unless this is overcome we are not going to achieve the quality, because the quality is a result of collaboration between the two groups.
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The report speaks rightly about the importance of the careers guidance system. That certainly needs to start far earlier in the lives of youngsters in schools than at present. So often it comes after the key choice of subjects has been made. Therefore, youngsters—and particularly girls—set out on the wrong path because they have been allowed to drop mathematics, they have been allowed to choose the softer rather than the harder sciences. Then, when the job choices have to be made they find that they have been prepared quite wrongly inside the school. After all—and I will not repeat it—we all know that at last women now comprise rather more than half of the population. Their contribution to the economy is of great importance. However, we are still preparing them very inadequately in the schools for the kind of work that they are going to have to do in the future.
So we have this very tough job of getting the people in the education system and the people inside industry to work together. In that connection, may I say how impressed I was when I had the opportunity to visit one of the technical and vocational educational initiative programmes in the area in which I am area board chairman. It seemed to me that this was serving a number of very important purposes. It was providing training and education—and the distinction between the two words is almost by definition lost. It is fused in the very title of "the programme".
But not only was this providing a very good foundation for the youngsters who were taking it: it was forcing the teachers and the people in the industry to come together, both to develop and to work on the programme. So they were sitting around a table, talking to each other, thrashing out the problems, finding out that the people from the other side, as they saw them, were not the people with horns that they thought they were in the past, and that they could collaborate in working out a common programme. So this is educational, not only to the youngsters but, perhaps even more important, to the educators and to the people in industry. Here and in the development of this scheme, I believe there is a great deal of hope.
Also after the school stage, in the training programme, based on work, if we are to get the right educational component it is essential that the people from the educational institutions, colleges of further education, should come to understand what is required inside a place of work, and to develop their courses at colleges of further education to fit the needs of the trainees. My experience is that this is being done in some colleges but too often still there is a standardised course which it is hoped that the trainee will take when he goes along to a college of further education.
My experience of talking to the trainees, admittedly in a limited area of the country, is that what they are finding most difficult to take is the 13 weeks of job training. The one word that they use again and again is a three syllable word which they have all learned—"relevance", or, rather, the lack of it. Until we overcome that we shall not get the integration which is absolutely vital if we are going to have the quality that we want. I will not deal with this in detail but I think there are one or two points in achieving this integration which I should like to suggest should be examined.

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I have come across the point that in assessing the value of the contribution of people in the colleges a great deal of importance is attached to, and points are gained by, class contact—student contact inside the college. But contact inside the place of work, which is surely essential if we are to get collaboration—the person from the college going along to the place where the youngster works and discussing with the industrialist and the youngster himself what are the kind of courses that would really help him—counts very little in terms of valuing what the teacher is doing and what the college is doing. I suspect that pay systems, grading systems and opportunities for promotion—matters which are of the greatest importance to academics—are being governed by an out-of-date view of what kind of things should be going on inside the colleges. This is something that would need detailed discussion with the representatives of the teachers in the colleges. But there is more than a hint, as one moves around, that they are held back from the kind of collaborative developments that one would like to see because of the regulations, controls and antiquated systems under which they are paid and promoted. I suggest that it would be of great advantage to have some detailed examination of the consequences of this kind of problem.
Quality starts in the schools and is continued by collaboration between educationists and industrialists. There will be no quality, no good scheme and no trained labour force unless you make a success of that. But quality also results from assessment of the schemes. Here, I must confess that I have grave misgivings as to whether we have yet learnt adequately to assess whether a scheme is really working well or not. I have great regard and respect for the staff of the MSC. But it is just not possible for the kind of people who are employed in the MSC to give informed judgments about the quality of training going on in a whole variety of different schemes in different industries. I have myself been muddled up with training over a large number of years, but I would not consider myself competent to estimate the quality of a training scheme in industries with which I have no familiarity whatever. Of course, when the MSC staff go round to do their assessment of training, because they are assessing financial competence and the conformity to financial requirements of the people running the scheme as well as the quality of the training, they tend inevitably to judge the schemes on their administrative and financial correctness, rather than on the real quality of training that is going on. That simply will not do as a way of deciding whether schemes are reaching the quality required.
Indeed, some research and interesting work done by the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations very much pointed out that learning often goes on best in some of the most administratively untidy schemes. There is no necessary correlation between the schemes in which all the forms are filled up and the bills paid regularly and the learning achievements of the people in the schemes. It is much more difficult to estimate what is going on in terms of learning achievements than it is to judge what is going on in terms of administrative tidiness. I welcome the development of project review teams in which the different parties to the
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training programme are getting together in a self-critical way with mutual help to try to improve standards. An inspectorial approach is not a helpful one at this stage when we are all trying to learn together.
I also think that we need every possible way of calling on the help of people who really are expert in the training field. I must say that when I sat on this committee, I was horrified to hear one representative—I think it was of the MSC—say, in talking about training, that there were no experts in this field. Perhaps I misheard. I think that it will be found in the record. There are in this country people inside companies and in the training boards, and who have left the training boards, who have a very high degree of expertise in the training field. We need to tap all that skill so far as we possibly can.
Training diversity and quality are the two themes about which I wished to talk. There is, however, one remaining theme on which I should like briefly to touch. The report and, of course, the MSC are committed to equal opportunities. It so happens that by this morning's post I received as, no doubt, did many of your Lordships, a report from Bristol University on ethnic minorities and the youth training scheme. I have not studied it in detail. But it is clear, as most of us would expect, that in some schemes at any rate members of ethnic minorities are getting a pretty raw deal. I do not suppose that in many cases this is deliberate. It happens in so many different ways.
I would simply say that it must be a high priority to see that members of ethnic minorities get full benefit from the youth training scheme. This will not happen unless firms and organisations employing them have well thought out and positive programmes for the promotion of equal opportunities. I say programmes and not policies. For my part, I could manage without policies. They are so often a fig-leaf for disguising the fact that nothing much is going on. But a detailed programme of what one is trying to achieve in terms of the employment and training of members of ethnic minorities, properly monitored to see that it happens, is the only way that the criticisms raised in this report can be met and the MSC's objective of equal opportunities can be achieved.
7.7 p.m.
Baroness Carnegy of Lour: My Lords, this report is about matters of far reaching economic social and political significance for the EEC and for this country. Its subject matter is closely connected, as the noble Lord, Lord McCarthy, has said, with the anxiety that is at the very top of public consciousness at the present time—anxiety as to what can be done to provide what seems to be, in this and in a number of other countries in Europe, a missing link in our national stategy. It is the link between, on the one hand, the vital containment of inflation and increasing of competitiveness, and. on the other hand, the reduction of unemployment through the generation of more jobs. This missing link was discussed, as the noble Lord, Lord McCarthy, said, with the Chancellor of the Exchequer on television over the weekend. My right honourable friend certainly did not brush aside the fact that unemployment is thoroughly bad—bad for those that are unemployed for long periods, divisive,

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expensive and bad for competitiveness. He did say that if there was a lever to pull, he would pull it. The trouble was knowing what that lever was.
This anxiety that exists at the present time is part of an anxiety of a more general kind. People are looking from the EEC and from their own government, for a lead. They know that the old economic ways of the 1960s and the 1970s do not work any more—the noble Lord, Lord McCarthy would say with the possible exception of the MSC. They are looking for a new sense of direction, for positive goals, for shared understanding of what the future might look like and how we might prepare for it. That desire, naturally, has particularly focused on the way that we should be equipping our young people to ensure that they can play their part in the future and to ensure that there is a part for them to play. Vocational education and training and particularly youth training could provide a major ingredient in this new sense of direction, this new hope, that is so ardently sought. So neither the Community as a whole nor any of its member states would be wise to ignore the kind of things that our committee is saying.
I want to speak very briefly on the messages that the report contains for the British Government. I am of course encouraged in so doing by the contribution on behalf of the Government made by my noble friend Lord Young of Graffham, under whose skilled chairmanship of the MSC I, too, have had the privilege of serving. It seems to me that there are at least four major reasons why my noble friend and the Government should take heed of this report and why they could and should take action beyond the considerable amount they are doing already, broadly on the lines the committee proposes.
The four reasons are these. There is increasingly hard and convincing evidence that, for developed countries, economic success comes best when national strategy is underpinned by strong, long-term commitment to vocational educational and training. This fact is borne out by the Select Committee report, by its comparisons between the systems of European countries, by the statistics and by a number of expert submissions made to the committee. It is rammed home even more forcibly by another report produced for NEDO and the MSC by the Institute of Manpower Studies and published during the summer. That report examines the situation in three countries—the USA, Japan and western Germany; their attitudes to and systems of vocational education and training; their level of investment in these things; who pays and why; and how the various parties concerned see their role and responsibilities. It also looks at how all this has affected, very much for the better, those countries' economic performance, flexibility in response to recession, ability to an extent to fend off unemployment.
For us in Britain, all these facts make challenging reading. As my noble friend Lord Young has said, we have made a start in the right direction, but we have a very long way indeed to go in the changes of attitude that are required. The employers in this country are mostly still a long way from seeing their role in education and training as competitor employers see theirs—that, to get training right in quality and
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quantity, employers should take the major part and that this is well worth their while.
Some trades unions, at any rate in local areas, are still some way from seeing their role as the positive supportive one adopted by their colleagues in competitor countries. Likewise the educators and their employers, taxpayers and ratepayers, are not yet fully convinced; and right through the system in this country—some of the evidence to the Select Committee reflected this—there are people in positions of influence in various organisations who can help us all to move on but who still respond to this challenge at the level of small-time political point scoring and defence of vested interest in the status quo. With the evidence there is that far stronger long-term commitment to vocational education and training is not only desirable but essential, the Government have a big responsibility to give a lead in changing attitudes, in getting willingness to re-direct energy and shift resources.
The second reason the Government must act—as my noble friend on the Front Bench has said, a beginning has been made by the forming of the new group—is that it is clear from this report that education and training must come together. The Policy Studies Institute put this really well in their evidence to the committee, and I quote from page 147 of the report:
"Education is not separable from training. Education develops basic qualities, skills and knowledge which enable specific skills to be acquired speedily and with real understanding. Being trained for today's jobs is not as important as being trainable to do the unknown jobs of the future.… Education and training should be seen as a community effort in which employers and parents have not only an interest but a major contribution to make".
This view was endorsed by the memorandum submitted by the Society of Education Officers, who spelt out in some detail—and very helpfully—the educational implications of this kind of change.
Because this coming together involves many people who are used to working separately from one another—not just different Government departments under different Ministers but professionals of different disciplines working in both public and private sectors, and local authorities of various political persuasions—the only way is for the Government to give a strong, convincing lead—a lead which I believe is now desired by all concerned, including all but the least enlightened professionals.
The third reason why the Government should act now is that people are, without question, confused by the system which has already been discussed and are asking for arrangements that are not only easier to understand but are fairer, and if possible enable every young person to get some qualification which is of interest to an employer. This desire happens to coincide with the beginning of much-needed curriculum changes in schools, with great interest in TVEI, in the 16-plus Action Plan in Scotland, with increasing appreciation of the potential of the YTS year as its quality and objectives develop, its potentialities for young people, for colleges and other training agencies, and for employers. It also coincides with the virtual collapse of the old-type apprenticeship, making space now for new, more flexible ways into occupational training, for the possibility of a follow-up year to YTS

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with a qualification as the aim, and the adult training and re-training strategy now being developed and mentioned by my noble friend. The time seems ripe now for that more coherent system that everyone can understand. That must be the subject of Government action.
The fourth reason why the Government should act is the corollary to that last one—the need now for rationalisation of the status and the financial arrangements for 16- to 18-year-olds. To harness young people's enthusiasm; to encourage them to choose a route which is right for them in the longer term rather than producing more money in the short term; to reflect the fact that they are moving into adulthood, want to have their own money, be responsible for contributing for board and lodging, for saving, for buying sensibly, and that this is true whether one is at school, at college, in training, or wherever; to reflect the fact that all are on the way to one sort of qualification and, of necessity, learners for a while, some kind of shared status for all seems the best way, all 16- to 18-year-olds being students or trainees with an allowance rather than a wage but an allowance paid to them and not to their parent.
To conclude, the political imperative in this country as well as all over Europe is a new lead, a new sense of direction especially in relation to our young people. It seems to me that there are at least four good reasons emerging from this report why the type of policies which are proposed should be very seriously considered by the Government, and with all speed. Next year is International Youth Year. Perhaps 1985 is the year for further action. I commend the report to my noble friend and your Lordships.
7.21 p.m.
Baroness Serota: My Lords, as a Member of Sub-Committee C I must first express my warmest thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Seebohm, for the skill, patience and courtesy with which he steered the subcommittee through the masses of both written and oral evidence on all our deliberations which resulted in the presentation of this report this evening. The noble Lord has presented it in his typically clear and concise manner which all of us can only admire. I have of course known the noble Lord, Lord Seebohm, for nearly 20 years. We first met to undertake the inquiry into the local authority and allied personal social services. His skills of chairmanship are always a pleasure to those of us who serve with him on Sub-Committee C. Indeed, the whole House owes him a debt of gratitude not only for the particular report that we are considering tonight, but for all those that have been issued under his chairmanship of Sub-Committee C on education, employment and social policy in the EEC in the years that he has chaired the committee.
I, too, would wish to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Young of Graffham, on his elevation to this House, to the Cabinet and of course tonight on his ministerial maiden speech—a daunting triple, if I may say so—and I also wish him every happiness and success as regards the arduous new responsibilities that he has so recently undertaken. I was glad to note in his
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speech that he recognised that the prospects of employment for young people without marketable knowledge and skills are declining rapidly in all the industrially advanced nations. The noble Lord, Lord Seebohm, quoted to us the stark figures which are set out in Part 3 of the report comparing the spread of training in this country with the younger generation in Western Germany. I shall not delay the House at this late hour by repeating the figures. They were also touched on by the noble Lord, Lord Young.
But looking further afield and clearly expressed in the report which the noble Baroness, Lady Carnegy has just mentioned, are the figures relating not only to West Germany but also to Japan and the United States. It is quite clear from the report of the Institute of Manpower Studies which was prepared for the National Economic Development Council and the Manpower Services Commission recently, that in Japan 96 per cent. of 16- to 18-year-olds are still at school in the broadest sense of the term. The figure for West Germany is 86 per cent. Unfortunately the figure for the United Kingdom is only 52 per cent., which would rise to 60 per cent. if the school-based portions of the MSC's youth programme were included.
I was delighted to hear from the noble Lord the Minister that he too agreed that deficiences are in our system and not in our young. The system is fragmented, and to many quite incomprehensible. In spite of the numerous inquiries stemming way back to the Crowther Report in 1959, which some noble Lords will remember only too well, our existing system of education and training for young people, particularly in the 16 to 18 age range is fragmented and as the noble Lord, Lord Seebohm, said at the outset of this debate, there is an urgent need to bring together the education and training system for all our young people—and we stress in the report "all our young people"—within a coherent and comprehensive framework. The noble Lord, Lord McCarthy, seemed to have doubts about this, but having heard the evidence that came before the sub-committee and the discussions that we held together as Members, I personally have little doubt that the system is extremely difficult for young people to understand and comprehend. Sometimes it seems that it is merely chance which determines which way they go in or out of the system as it presents itself in the local areas in which they live.
The four key problems which we identified in the report—social and material status; the quality of education provided; assessment and certification; and finally careers advice and guidance—have already been dealt with so ably by the noble Lords who have preceded me that I feel that all I need say at this stage of the debate is that I personally attach the greatest importance to the first of those recommendations; namely, that relating to common status, so that young people can proceed through their different paths with equality of status, but perhaps to different goals. I wish to stress to the House that until this particular aspect of our training system is accepted and incorporated we shall still have the inequalities of opportunity that so many of us regret in the present set-up.
The noble Lord, Lord McCarthy, and I think also the noble Lord, Lord Young, touched briefly on those parts of the report that dealt with the needs of ethnic

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minorities, the socially disadvantaged, the handicapped and the disabled. I should like to draw the attention of the House particularly this evening to paragraph 82 where the Committee attempted to set out what it saw as the future policy for these particular groups. They may be minority groups but added together they add up to a substantial minority of our young people who do require special help through recognition, within the wider context of a universal training system, of their special needs. They need perhaps a more flexible age entry on training schemes, more time as regards the period of study, particularly for those who have spent long periods of their lives in hospital, and some of them need different learning situations. For example, under the NACRO youth opportunities programme one in four of their trainees were aged 18 or over. But when these programmes were translated into youth training schemes last year, NACRO could no longer offer its employment training to the immature, older adolescent without any substantial employment experience who might have spent time in residential care or custody but who was beginning to look for help with re-settlement in the community.
The noble Lord, Lord Young of Graffham, will know more about this than I, but I understand that the MSC supported NACRO's proposal for some flexibility in the criterion of eligibility for youth training schemes particularly to include this relatively small number of young people—I believe some 2,000 altogether—who had been in custody at the age of 16 or 17 and who had missed the opportunity of a full year on YTS. Unfortunately, this proposal was rejected by Ministers and I only hope that now that the noble Lord, Lord Young, has been translated—or perhaps I should say has suffered a sea-change—he will, as Minister with his particular responsibility, look favourably upon flexibility of age entry to particular disadvantaged groups.
Similarly, the decision of the Grovernment to reduce the number of places on YTS Mode B community-based projects, which are provided by voluntary organisations for handicapped and disadvantaged young people, reducing them from 90,000 to some 71,000, with the corresponding loss of the special experience and skills of the staff involved in these training schemes, has been widely deplored on all sides. Once again I would plead with the noble Lord the Minister to persuade the Government to restore these most unfortunate and short-sighted cuts and ensure that future training, policy and practice take account of young people with special needs such as these.
It would perhaps be wrong to conclude my brief intervention this evening without recognising that the implementation of the recommendation of the report of the noble Lord, Lord Seebohm, would require increased expenditure by Government, employers and individuals. But I hope that after this debate the House and the Government, which I also hope will study this debate and report in detail, will agree in the light of the evidence and the arguments adduced in the report that merely to improve existing schemes and initiatives is not enough, and that there can surely be no better investment for this country to make at this moment of time than investment in what after all is our greatest,
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our most vital resource—namely, the present and future generations of young people in this country.
7.31 p.m.
Baroness Vickers: My Lords, first, may I offer my congratulations to my noble friend Lord Young of Graffham. I hope that he has brought a magic wand with him because that is very much what this subject needs. I should also like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Seebohm, for the very kind way in which he always runs the committee and also for helping with the report. I should like to thank the clerks and the advisers who have produced this very remarkable report.
I found it very useful to meet those dealing with the youth training systems in the various countries of the EEC and to note that the problem is a difficult one in all the countries of the Community. Most of the points that I wanted to raise have been touched on, but I want to mention two particular matters; namely, careers officers and rural areas, which I do not think have so far been mentioned.
In my view careers officers are very important. I believe that it is very unfortunate that the Employment and Training Act 1973 has not been implemented by the Government, because I understand that this Act lays the responsibility on the local authorities to provide vocational guidance. At present there are plenty of teachers who need work, and it would be advisable if they could be properly trained as careers teachers. I understand that at present written statements are sent to young people containing careers advice, but that is not very helpful. Those statements may or may not be read. They may also not be the right type for the individual concerned.
I gather that a total documentation system which could start in the schools would be preferred. I believe that at present there are only about 3,000 fully trained careers teachers and about 500 untrained ones. I understand that Sir Keith Joseph and the DES think that profiling should take place in the schools. I hope that consideration will be given to encouraging young people to be self-employed. There are plenty of jobs at which they can be self-employed and which very badly need doing. I have in mind chimney sweeping, window cleaning, thatching, jobbing gardening, and so on. All these jobs are quite well paid and are very necessary to the community. But people seem to think that they are not grand enough. Therefore, I suggest that these jobs should be upgraded and put into special categories. I could give a number of other examples which would make very useful careers.
Careers education should be an integral part of general education and should start at about the age of 12. When people have to do jobs which they do not like there are many failures and therefore they leave within a short time. I was interested in what the report had to say about vocational training in France. There the Ministry of Education has a dominant role to play, which I think is very useful. It divides its programmes for apprentices in particular between the ages of 16 and 18, and 18 and 21. About 40 per cent. under the age of 25 are still unemployed, but they have a very good apprenticeship scheme in building and construction work and I gather that there are about 40,000

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apprentices in that scheme. They also pay well—about £47 or £48 a month—and they give proper certificates. They give vocational certificates and apprentices certificates, which are very useful for young people to have.
Careers officers need better training and it is well worthwhile the Government spending money on giving them training. So often one goes into a school and sees a notice board displaying all the jobs open to these young people, but the subjects are never spoken about; the young people are just given the papers. I suggest that real training would be one way in which to get more people into employment.
I should like to say a few words about the rural areas. In Germany they have very good agricultural day schools and residential ones. The latter seems to be a good idea because distances in rural areas are often very great and this makes it difficult for young people to attend day centres. Schemes in these areas are often difficult to run. For example, a scheme run in a rural area is based on urban allowances. I believe that they should have a different allowance because of the travelling involved. I have been told by the coordinators of some of these schemes (and I have visited them) that 55 per cent. of a co-ordinator's operating costs and allowances have to be spent on travel. So there is very little left for tools and equipment, which have to be restricted to the bare essentials. Train fares also give rise to difficulties and some trainees bring their own vehicles, which takes up a lot of their money. Although they are reimbursed for any expenditure they incur over £3, it is felt that a trainee in a rural area needs £35 a week.
Another difficulty is the small numbers in some training centres. This is due to the health and safety requirements for specified working space per individual. Town-based project teams for the rural areas each comprise a supervisor and four trainees and supervisors have difficulty in going to the rural areas, and have to provide their own transport. However, one of the areas I visited was quite successful.
Perhaps I may give a few figures. They span the period from 1st April 1983 to September 1984. Between those dates their plans for practical work experience was associated with off-the-job training and during the same period 208 young people left the scheme. Of that total, 85 obtained permanent employment, 43 of whom were girls and 42 of whom were boys The remainder left for a variety of reasons. Twenty-three and a half per cent. had completed their allotted period of time; 7 per cent. were dismissed and 19 per cent. resigned for personal or health reasons; and 1 per cent. went to college.
I believe that that gives an idea of what can be done in rural areas with the different types of young people today. Some have been very successful in obtaining jobs in, for instance, stables. I visited some who were learning to be grooms. This was very popular with the girls. Unfortunately, I had a bad experience when I allowed part of my garden to be used by six young people to grow vegetables. I took no notice of these young people until they were leaving because I did not think that it was my business. But when I asked them why they were leaving they said that they did not like
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gardening and that there was no future for them. When I told them that they could earn about £3 an hour cutting grass they were rather astonished, but I do not think that they changed their minds.
In conclusion, I should like help on one particular point. Can my noble friend ask the Government not to cut the trainees, for instance, in the Royal Dockyards? The Royal Dockyards have always been a large training centre.
They have always trained more people than they need, both girls and boys, with the object of giving them proper training. They have plenty of room to do so, and the trainees go off and get jobs in other places. If this is going to be cut, as we have been told, it will be detrimental to the areas concerned. If the noble Lord could do this little job and persuade the Government not to cut them while there are plenty of applications for the engineering jobs, it would be helpful; and I should like to thank him now for listening and taking some notes.
7.41 p.m.
Baroness Lockwood: My Lords, I too should like to welcome the report of the Select Committee on Youth Training in the EEC. I welcome it for setting out the problems and experience of the different European countries and also for the important and coherent conclusions it reaches. Before commenting on the conclusions, however, I should like to underline how important it is for us in this country to understand the different attitudes to training in different countries.
This report refers to Europe. Other reports have gone wider, and already this evening the noble Baroness, Lady Carnegy, and my noble friend Lady Serota have referred to the NEDO and MSC Report on training and education in Germany, the United States, and Japan. As Geoffrey Holland, the Director of the Manpower Services Commission, has stressed, it is clear beyond any doubt that the United Kingdom's lack of competitiveness, and thus its economic problems, derive to a large extent from our failure to invest in training to the same extent as some of our competitors have done.
The Select Committee comment in their introduction in paragraph 9:
"Lack of training is not, in itself, the main cause of youth unemployment".
They go on to say:
"there is evidence that a more highly-trained workforce generates wealth and helps create jobs".
This is something that Japan would certainly subscribe to not only in the training of the young but also in adult training and life training, on which they place so much importance. Within Europe itself Germany would certainly subscribe to it, and, as has already been said, is investing more in training than we are in this country.
The evidence to the Select Committee showed that the Germans believe that their competitiveness depends on a well-trained workforce. Even in a recession German industry is prepared to continue to pay for it and continue to invest in training. Therefore, the fear of the Select Committee that we are in danger of falling even further behind in industrial skills and competence cannot be ignored even in the context of

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the British programme, as had been outlined by the noble Lord the Minister, Lord Young. Here I too should like to congratulate him on his maiden speech, and welcome him to this House.
If we look at the figures which have already been referred to, the report points out that only a third of the German workforce is unqualified compared with two-thirds of our workforce. This is already. But if we add to that the fact that only about 5 per cent. of young Germans leave school without going into further education or training, then we see that it is absolutely vital that we move quickly.
I would say, and I have said this before, that the YTS is a good beginning, but we must build upon it. Paragraph 129 of the Select Committee's report says:
"Every young person should have the opportunity of a training programme lasting at least one year after the YTS foundation year."
This is the minimum that we should aim for. That paragraph goes on to say:
"Wherever possible, this further training should lead to a recognised occupational qualification."
This paragraph raises the whole problem of the kind of training that should be provided. Much has been said on this, in particular by the noble Baroness, Lady Seear.
I am concerned that we should continue with the broad-based training that YTS has initiated. This was an experiment in training in this country. It is too early for us to say that we should now move over to more occupationally biased training, because again as has been said this evening there are many skills and occupations which we are going to have to train for in the future which we do not yet know of. Consequently it is important that we should provide in this first year a broad-based training which can then be built on in a more specialised way, perhaps then moving on to a more occupationally oriented kind of training. If it is clearly seen to be the case that the basic first year's training is going to lead to other training which in the end will build up skills which are marketable, then I think that young people will be prepared to accept not only the on-the-job training but the off-the-job training element too.
One of the difficulties that has been seen with YTS in this first year is that it is the scheme of last resort; a scheme for those who could not get jobs. Therefore, those who have gone on to the scheme have had the option of dropping out as soon as a paid job appeared, irrespective of whether the paid job really led to a proper career in the future. If our youth training scheme is to be of value to industry and of value to the individuals themselves, it must be seen as the first part of a continuous process in training.
It is because of this that I welcome paragraph 128 of the Select Committee's report, which talks about the urgent need to bring together the education and employment of young people into a coherent framework which can be understood by employers, parents, and educators. The noble Lord, Lord Young, referred to this. My noble friend Lord McCarthy referred to it, but he seemed to have some reservations about it. I think it is to be welcomed because there is a problem about recognising the routes which are available to young people. It is impossible, as the PSI evidence suggested, to divorce the educational element
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from the training element. Therefore, we have to take the two together, education and training, as an inseparable part of the lives of the young 16- to 18-year-olds.
I would say that even those who are studying A-levels with an eye to university entrance are also concerned with their future because they are concerned with the kinds of career or profession that a university education will provide for them. It is essential that we should see those two clearly linked together.
I must say that I have slight reservations about this question of linking the two, particularly when one takes it back to the 14-year-olds. I was somewhat concerned to see in the Times Educational Supplement of 12th October that the MSC is drawing up a plan of action to start vocational education at 14. It depends what is meant by "vocational education". If this means educating young people in the broader aspects of industry and what prospects there are, then I am all for it. If it is a question of introducing young people to technology I am all for that; but I do not think that at this point in a young person's educational career we should be training them or seeking to train them for a specific job. After all, in education we are currently debating seriously the widening of the curriculum for young people and so we do not want to narrow it at one end when we are thinking in terms of vocational training.
I welcome the committee's underlying recommendation that we need a strategy for both education and training. When I heard of the Minister's appointment I was not quite sure whether it was a step forward or a step backwards. As chairman of the MSC he had been able to initiate many things. I wondered what he would be able to do, as a Minister Without Portfolio. However, he tells us that his first task is to chair a committee which is co-ordinating the input of the 16-to 18-year-olds from four departments. I hope the emphasis will be on co-ordination because the German experience and evidence has shown that if a structure is to be successful it needs close cooperation—in the case of Germany from the federal and länder governments, trade unions and employers, and in this country from the Government, the LEAs, trade unions and employers. It seems that the relationship with the local education authorities is one that needs to be considered very carefully so that there can be co-ordination and goodwill on both sides.
The committee report accepts inevitably that an improved and extended system of training needs more money. The MSC has recognised this too, so therefore in this debate we must ask whether the Government also accept it? The recommendation of the committee at paragraph 132, and more fully at paragraphs 92 and 94, endorses a common status and allowance for young people. Here there will be a cost consequence, but I hope that it will be clearly grasped by the Government.
Part of our problem is the divisive nature of society in this country and a common status for young people would help to overcome this; a common status, as the report says, which would give young people the choice of route for that individual's development according to his or her aptitude and preference.

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This one step in itself could do much to unify the system. Despite the reservations that my noble friend Lord McCarthy had on the type of allowance it would be, it is, nevertheless, a principle that has long been advocated from these Benches.
My final point refers to paragraph 130—special help to the disadvantaged. As the House would expect, my concern is with the opportunities for girls and women. Again the committee recognises this problem and it says that the lack of opportunity for girls to move into the occupations traditionally regarded as male is unfair and a waste of potential. But like the noble Baroness, Lady Seear, I think this is much more than just a recognition of the principle. It is a systematic attack on the principle and the attack must be made not just at national level but at local level, too.
When we consider the other programmes that we have experienced so far—the youth opportunities programme as well as the youth training scheme, the Community programme and even TVEI where the principle of equality is firmly stated in the objectives—we have still not come to terms with this problem of training and breaking down the different opportunities for girls and boys. I feel that at all levels within the system we need a recognition of the problem and, as Lady Seear said, programmes to remove the inequality. For this reason, as well as others, I also support very much that conclusion of the committee concerned with career guidance and the need for better training for both teachers and the trainers. Any integrated strategy for education and training based on common standards must, by definition, be concerned with this problem as well. For all the reasons I have outlined, the report is very much to be welcomed and I hope that the Government will act upon it.
7.58 p.m.
Lord Kilmarnock: My Lords, we are all grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Seebohm, for this excellent report and we also have been privileged to listen to the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Young of Graffham. I am not worried about his lack of portfolio because I think it is probably exactly what is required to cover the span of activities which need to be drawn together, and we are fortunate to have him in this House.
There are two aspects of the committee's report on which I want to concentrate. The first is concerned with our own YTS and in particular the Mode B branch of that scheme. In paragraph 82 the committee says that:
"Special help must be given to ethnic minorities, to under-achievers and to the disabled".
I do not want to quote much more of that because it has already been referred to by the noble Lord, Lord McCarthy, and by the noble Baroness, Lady Serota. The crucial sentence is as follows:
"The Committee regret that YTS Mode B appears in certain parts of the country to have been much reduced".
When one turns to the evidence one finds in Questions 150 and 151 the noble Baroness, Lady Faithfull, and my noble friend Lady Seear pressing Mr. Mansell of the Further Education Unit on this point. He admits, on page 127, that:
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"There is some resentment, within the further education system, that these young people are not going into Mode A (the employer-based YTS schemes), and that the further education system is being used, some say, as a dumping ground for these young people".
He goes on to say:
"I would not agree with that term: I think it is a proper role for the further education system to do that".
I applaud his sentiments because it is generally accepted that the education service has not succeeded with the bottom 40 per cent. of compulsory school-leavers, and it would be highly creditable to the FE system if it were to make the amende honorable on the lines suggested by my noble friend Lady Seear. Mr. Mansell says later:
"When we hear that the Manpower Services Commission because of the low take-up of Mode A are thinking of reducing Mode B that does not actually augur very well for this group of young people we are now talking about".
My Lords, this is very serious, and whether Mode B cuts out an ideological spasm, as the noble Lord, Lord McCarthy, says, or whether it does not, it means that many of those who were not well-served during the compulsory stage of education are going to receive a further rejection under the YTS. The Government, I would suggest to the noble Lord, ought to think again here if they do not want to build up mounting trouble and resentment in future. By the end of March 1984, according to my figures, and the end of YTS year one, the MSC had closed 49 community projects and five training workshops, a total of 2,460 places. A further 17,500 community-based places were lost simply by reducing the size of the remaining schemes. The new slim-line Mode B(1) started in 1984–85 with 70,000 places—a reduction of nearly 20,000. The Government have always advanced low take-up as the reason for this reduction, but do the facts bear them out? I suggest not. The latest figures for occupancy available to me, at any rate, were to the end of August. They were as follows. Mode A (that is, the employer-based schemes) 202,679, representing only a 62 per cent. take-up; Mode B(1), 64,389, representing a 92 per cent. take-up. Given the fact that there is always some leakage through changes to another scheme or entry into the labour market, or simply dropping out, Mode B(1) turns out to be virtually fully subscribed.
The 1984–85 plan, I understand, called for 390,000 entrants. We have been told that there are now some 300,000 in place. If the remaining 90,000 come forward, they have little choice but to try for an employer-based scheme, for which many may be unsuitable and may be rejected. There is also the regional dimension. If there appear to be 6,000 places still going begging on B(1), they are almost certainly to be in London or the south. The National Council for Voluntary Services tell me that they know of many Mode B schemes in the northern regions—the regions with the greatest industrial devastation—which have lengthy waiting lists. I therefore want to ask the noble Lord if the Government will not consider restoring the B(1) schemes to, say, for the sake of argument, 90,000 places. If they do not, they will severely damage the credibility of their promise of a suitable training opportunity for all unemployed school-leavers. That includes the ethnic minorities, the disabled and the low achievers.
I turn to another aspect of the committee's report which particularly interests me, and that is the social

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and material status of young people beyond the compulsory school-leaving age and prior to immersion in the labour market. In paragraph 92 the committee recommend their common status approach for all 16 and 17 year-olds with the same basic allowance, irrespective of their particular chosen route. One immediate advantage of this—anyway, advocated by the Institute of Personnel Management—would be to prevent a young person taking a decision about his or her future based primarily on financial considerations, by which I understand immediate financial considerations are the differences between supplementary benefit, YTS allowances and staying on at school and so on.
The Government are committed to choice. I should have thought that it might appeal to them that the choices between various parts should be genuine choices; that is, financially neutral. This neutrality should ideally extend to those wishing to continue in full-time education whose parents at present continue to receive child benefit till their 19th birthday. Many poorer families will want to trade in child benefit for a higher allowance of supplementary benefit, which makes a far greater contribution to the family budget. Also, child benefit paid to mum is hardly likely to accord with the aspirations of young people over 16 to independent status and income.
We should not be surprised by these aspirations, or indignant at them. We have, after all, created the high-consumption society from which they spring. These aspirations will not go away, but, obviously, there are cost implications. As regards educational maintenance allowances, my party has advanced the idea of an education benefit at 16-plus, half of which would be initially assessable for tax against the parents' income. This would go some way towards equalising the choices and might, incidentally, reduce pressure on the more expensive YTS. This is a field to which more attention needs to be devoted. The committee deserve our thanks for again having brought the issue to the surface, as we did at the unemployment committee three years ago. Lord McCarthy is correct in saying that on that committee we suggested a more complicated system which I then supported. I am not sure that I do not prefer the greater simplicity of this approach. Until we get this right and make it fair, there will be a high level of disaffection among the young.
I have two final points, my Lords. Looking through the evidence one is struck by the number of advocates of a two-year YTS. The committee say in paragraph 102:
"every young person should have the opportunity of a training programme lasting at least one year after the YTS foundation year."
I, myself, do not believe that anybody should be fully in the labour market before 18. That is my quarrel with the young workers' scheme, which, as far as I know, contains little or no training element at all. The noble Lord, Lord McCarthy, suggests that this scheme should be converted into a second year of training; and I think that I agree with him on this. On the cost side, there has undoubtedly been a lower take-up across the whole scheme than the 460,000 originally envisaged. Would the noble Lord not agree that this gives the Government some leeway for progress towards a second year? Could he tell us how much the
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Government had earmarked for 1984–85, and if there is an undershoot, as seems probable on present trends, whether they will apply this money to improve or extend the scheme?
My last point is this. The committee say in paragraph 78:
"The variety of approach in the United Kingdom represents a richness. But a more coherent and easily understandable set of provisions need not be any less rich."
In paragraph 84 they say:
"there is an urgent need to bring together the whole education, training and employment of young people in a coherent framework which can be understood by employers, parents, educators, trainees, and, above all, by the young people themselves."
I do not quite know why the noble Lord, Lord McCarthy, objects to this. You do not have to be an advocate of a vast institutional shake-up to want to understand what is on offer. I think I rather tend to agree more with the noble Baroness, Lady Lockwood, over that. The committee repeat this recommendation in paragraph 128 of the conclusions. Given the pluralism and variety of our system, I see it as one of the most important recommendations.
As far as I know, neither the career service nor anyone else has produced a comprehensive and comprehensible chart of the options open to young people and their possible interconnections. By that, I mean where you can change trains, so to speak, without losing the portmanteau of credits accumulated from the previous course or courses. I think that the noble Lord gave us some hope that something of this sort might emerge from the interdepartmental committee that he is to chair. I wonder whether that is a correct interpretation of his remarks, and, if so, whether whatever is produced will be widely disseminated. I also very much hope that the DHSS is going to be involved, because some of its regulations are well-nigh incomprehensible.
I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Young, will take my queries and suggestions in the constructive spirit in which they are made. We applaud the Government for having recognised the need for a proper training scheme in this country and for having laid the foundations, but there is still an awful lot of building to be done.
8.10 p.m.
Lord Young of Graffham: My Lords, may I start by saying that I now appreciate the reason for the reputation this House has for its debates. I have found the comments made today to be very instructive and thoughtful. I have learned a great deal and I certainly thank the noble Lord, Lord McCarthy, for his welcome to me on my first module of 'on the job' training, and I hope he will mark my performance afterwards.
Perhaps I may put the record straight by immediately paying tribute to the trade unions for their work within the Manpower Services Commission and in particular for their part in the launching of the youth training scheme. Of course, not only the unions, but also employers, local authorities and all the parties are involved. This truly is a scheme which could not have been launched without the greatest co-operation of all concerned. If I had any particular regret during

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my period at the MSC, it was really in regard to those organisations which almost made a profession out of criticising or undermining the confidence of young people within the youth training scheme.
The noble Lord referred to the report by Youth Aid on Mode B (1) training under the youth training scheme. One of the organisations and some parts of the report I regretted. But perhaps I may say once more, in relation to the provisions of Mode B (1) places, that although in the very first year of the youth training scheme we had provision for 90,000 places, at no time during that year were more than 55,000 places ever filled. Therefore we have been spending money on 35,000 places which were never utilised. The difference between Mode B (1) and other modes is that the Manpower Services Commission were paying for unfilled places and no less than £70 million that should have gone to the training of young people went to the employment of trainers. When Ministers reduced the number to 71,500 that still left a considerable surplus over the 55,000 places filled. We were responding to much more than an ideological spasm in the market. But I hope very much, as we see today with 65,000 places filled and provision still for 71,500, there will be adequate and suitable provision for all those who will benefit from Mode B (1) training. Ministers have assured the commission and all those interested parties, such as the Association of Metropolitan Authorities and the Association of County Councils, that, should the need be there for more places, they will sanction the funding of them. That understanding still applies today.
I should like also to assure the noble Lord that within the Manpower Services Commission we recommended that the young workers scheme be modified so that it should follow on from a year on the youth training scheme. Ministers accepted the recommendation, and today it is a follow-on scheme. So already we have the embryo, if you like, of a two-vear scheme: young people can stay for one year and then, if they so wish, their employers can apply the benefit of the youth training scheme, their employers get a subsidy, and continue the young people's employment for a second year. I suspect there will be very few young people who will not carry on in employment for the second year.
Finally, perhaps I may comment very briefly on the noble Lord's remarks about my future role. Of course it is only the private sector that actually creates jobs that last, but that does not mean that there is not much that could be done in reducing some of the barriers which Governments themselves have produced over the years to stop the creation of new employment.
May I next thank the noble Baroness, Lady Seear, for her remarks and pay tribute to her skill as the chairman of one of our area manpower boards? I should like to say that I agree with her totally on the need for diversity. There cannot be fixed standards, but there must be a degree of comparability within the various youth training schemes up and down the country. The one thing we must not do is to have too much rigidity in standards, because tomorrow's world, the world of employment, at the moment is very uncertain. We have to set the trainers free, to allow
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them scope for imagination so as to provide the kind of training which they can see will be required tomorrow.
But throughout all this we have to ensure that whatever else happens, the quality of the youth training scheme is paramount. If we do not get the quality, then the scheme itself will fail. This year it is the sole aim of the Manpower Services Commission to improve the quality. It was for this reason that the Youth Training Board decided that they did not wish to change the scheme in any particular, save to make it better.
I would say to those, including those organisations which tend almost to make a profession out of criticising the scheme, that they should perhaps take into account that compulsory education is 100 years old in this country and it is by no means necessarily perfect; the youth training scheme is but one year old. I hope that by the time the youth training scheme approaches a tenth of the age of compulsory education it will have a very high standard and at least will satisfy noble Lords opposite as to its quality.
Of course, there is a great deal to be done to bring industry into schools. In fact, I regret that in the debates which took place some 20 years ago when we were so concerned with the structure of education in this country—the debates that led to the comprehensives—we did not at that time give more thought to the content of education. Somehow during that very process we managed to eliminate whatever vestiges of technical education we had.
I recall, a year or 18 months ago, at a seminar which the Prime Minister called on the subject of innovation, an industrialist making an impassioned speech asking why, why, had we taken all the men and women who would have been good foremen and turned them into indifferent sociologists? If we were to look at what we actually did to ourselves during that period, I think we would accept today that we have considerable cause for regret.
That brings me to another side-effect of the youth training scheme. There is no doubt that colleges of further education must adapt to the demands of today, and that the youth training scheme has imposed considerable demands on them. For the very first time they were taking in young people with no educational qualification, and for the first time they were dealing with people who did not have five O levels or the equivalent in many areas. They have adapted and they are adapting. The principal complaint that came, from young people, out of the first year of the youth training scheme was in fact the lack of relevance of the off-the-job training. It is something which I am sure the colleges have taken note of and I look forward to this as one of the areas which will be improved not only this year, but in the years to come.
May I say just a word about the monitoring which the Manpower Services Commission carries out? It is indeed in two parts. One is proper financial monitoring; that is essential in view of the large sums of public money which are dealt with. There is also quality control, and it is not quite good enough to say of the Manpower Services Commission that they are but civil servants and therefore cannot look for quality. George Tolley, as the man who founded the

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Open Tech, took over at the beginning of this year responsibility for quality and I believe that we will see, from the results of the latest monitoring and from the way in which we are setting up project teams to look at quality, that the quality will improve and the Manpower Services Commission will make itself seen as a proper body to carry out such monitoring.
Throughout it all, perhaps I may say, our constant concern is with ethic minorities. It is not an easy problem to solve, and it is not one which lies totally within the hands of the Manpower Services Commission. The whole essence of the youth training scheme is that it is a voluntary scheme—voluntary for employers and voluntary for young people. In a way, as perhaps it should, it mirrors the rest of society, and when we have solved the problem of the ethnic minorities in the rest of society we will certainly have solved it in the youth training scheme. I hope that the youth training scheme can do something to reverse the process, by starting to lead, rather than to follow.
May I say to my noble friend, Lady Carnegy, to whom I am indebted for introducing me into this House only last week and who was a notable chairman of our committee for Scotland, that this country must have, and this Government certainly have, a long-term commitment to vocational training. I was privileged to be a member of the council of the National Economic Development Organisation and chairman of the Manpower Services Commission when we commissioned the Competence and Competition report. The gap it shows is one which I believe all members of our society are beginning to take seriously.
Of course, there is a difference between education and training. I became a solicitor. I am not too sure whether I was educated or trained in that craft. But what we have to do is to ensure that the fairly artificial boundaries that we created in the past are ones that merge imperceptibly together. I hope that our programmes—and here the Government can give a lead and I thought were—will bring together those in education and those in training, to realise that they have a common objective and a common purpose.
I have heard much during this debate about a shared status for young people—that is an aim that I would share. I may in a moment revert back to income because that poses a different order of problem. May I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Serota, about the fact that prospects for unskilled youth are indeed poor. The prospects for unskilled adults are poor. We live in a world where the prospects for those who are unskilled are, unfortunately, fewer and fewer.
Competence and Competition drew out the spectrum that exists. On the one side, there is Japan which, although it has a general education, has a highly specific and employer-led training programme. On my last visit there, there was pointed out to me by name the one individual who changed his employer—the one. It is a loss of face that is almost inconceivable in any other country. There it is perfectly proper and sensible for employers to invest a great deal of money in training their own employees, for they have the continued use and benefit of it.
At the opposite end of the spectrum is the United States of America, where I would probably have
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pointed out to me the one man who had stayed from the day of leaving school to the day of retirement in one company; where changing jobs is a way of life and where the whole process seems to go more and more towards individuals finding their own training and taking it with them when they leave. We, as in many other things in this world, are in the middle. Perhaps we have employers who are reluctant to spend money on training and we have individuals who are reluctant to assume that burden. That is the central dilemma.
I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Serota, for asking me not to tinker, although I was warned later on that I should tinker and I am not sure how much I should or should not do. May I say to my noble friend Lady Vickers that, unfortunately, I left my wand with me with my budget at the Manpower Services Commission. I come without a portfolio, but with more than good intentions and with some experience in the past and with the opportunity, I hope, to look at a number of the fields which we have discussed this evening.
There is considerable growth within the school system towards the objective of self-employment. No longer is it considered inconceivable or somehow improper that people should work for themselves. I have been to many schools up and down the land where at fifth form level, and even at sixth form level, projects are being undertaken to encourage young people to go off on their own; not that I believe for one moment that they should or could on leaving school, but to instil in them the virtues and objectives of working for yourself.
I believe that we have another problem—not perhaps within schools, but within our culture as a whole—that we should not equate service with being servile. If there is one shortage within the pysche of this country it is that for some reason we feel inhibited about providing service and feel that in some way it is servile. Perhaps the respected profession of a waiter across the Channel is not quite so respected in this country and it is a problem that we have to solve. But I should not like to take France as a model for technical and vocational education, though I much admire what they do. They have a common curriculum, the same subject is taught to the same age group at the same hour each week.
They have national service, but they have entirely different problems. There are some lessons to be learned, but not to be slavishly copied.
I appreciate the problems that we have in rural areas and the Manpower Services Commission and Ministers agreed only a few months ago to increase the travel threshold to £3 a week. That means that the Manpower Services Commission will pay all travel expenses over £3 and not just a travel allowance of £3. I have visited schemes where young people are getting very substantial sums indeed. There is much that could be learned from rural areas and one or two schemes are beginning to consider the use of buses to take the off-the-job training out to young people. I hope this is something that can be encouraged.
I listened very closely to what was said about Royal dockyards. My only immediate comment—and I will undertake to look into the matter—is that it is very important that we train for the skills that are likely to

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be required tomorrow. There are too many good training places in existence in this country, training the type of engineering skills which technology is taking out of utility. May I compliment the noble Baroness, Lady Lockwood, and say to her that her influence in this House is obviously all pervasive. After her days at the Equal Opportunities Commission, I looked at the speakers in today's debate and I realised that there is total parity. I agree with her on that. I agree with her totally on the sheer economic importance of training. If you like, the coin of profit has on one side of it productivity and on the other training, and it is only a combination of the two that will get us through.
It is slightly difficult to compare us with Germany. Germany has a tradition that has carried through with guilds and training, and we have to create one. But whatever training we have, it must be broad based and there must be flexibility for the future. The first year of the YTS is a start. If I may make one point in conclusion, I should like to proffer the advice to the noble Baroness that she should not be surprised by reports in The Times Educational Supplement.
The one theme which has run through this debate is the desire for common status and an allowance. Of course, I hope that we can see our way clear to some form of common status; but I would ask your Lordships to think again on the desire for an allowance. It seems to me that there is a great deal of difference between what a young person has to do in school in perhaps a 32-week year and what someone else has to do on the equivalent of a youth training scheme working three-quarters of a week and doing off-the-job training. The costs of education are very different from the costs of training. The contributions that people make are also different and it is a complex position.
We shall certainly look at it within the committee, but I would find some difficulty with the concept. May I say again that the whole problem of sex stereotyping is not one which I suspect can be solved on the youth training scheme. It is not one which I suspect can be solved in schools. But it is one that starts at the very beginning with life in the home.
Finally, may I say to the noble Lord, Lord Kilmarnock, that, rather as the distant rumbling of a summer storm, we hear again the sound of Mode B(1). The essential difference between the under-utilisation of B(1) and the under-utilisation of Mode A, which is the employer-based scheme, is that, at the most, Mode A would cost the Government £100, which is the managing agent fee, whereas under B(1) we have to ensure that the entire costs of a scheme and an empty place are actually met. I have another concern as well, which is that we ensure that the right people go into the right schemes; that there is a sufficient interchange and that those coming initially on a Mode B(1) type scheme will have the opportunity, not for promotion, but for change to a Mode A scheme, and that those coming initially on to a Mode A scheme have the opportunity to come back to a Mode B(1) scheme. I hope that the balance is about right, but I obtained assurances, which exist to this day, from Ministers at that time that if there is any shortgage it will be put right. That is a matter upon which I am quite sure
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noble Lords will keep a close eye. I have no doubt at all that Ministers and the Manpower Services Commission will hear about it.
In closing, may I point out that the funding of the Youth Training Scheme is slightly misunderstood. It is true that there is a budget and that an amount of money is allocated for it but it is a demand-led scheme. The amount of money which the MSC obtains for it is solely dependent upon the number of young people who enter the scheme. In the first year, the numbers going through it were reduced; because the original estimates were wrong, the figures had to be reduced. Secondly, they were reduced for motive which we certainly cannot criticise: that young people went into jobs. I hope that this year the figures will be closer. However, the only point to concern us is that the guarantee given by the Government that every eligibile young person who wants a place on the scheme will have a place by Christmas, is kept. Last Christmas about 1,500 people were still waiting to go on to the scheme. I hope that this Christmas, the numbers will be even better. This is the one figure which I hope will ensure that every young person who wants a place on the scheme will get it.
I am very grateful for this debate, from which I have learned a great deal. I thank noble Lords for bearing with me on this my first appearance at the Dispatch Box.
Lord Seebohm: My Lords, first may I thank everybody who has spoken in this debate. They have supported the report in, on the whole, an encouraging way. Secondly, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Young of Graffham, for his efforts on his initiation day. We were delighted to hear what he said. This may be the end of the debate in this House but it is only the beginning of the debate outside.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

Welfare Provision: Co-ordination
8.32 p.m.
Baroness Ewart-Biggs Baroness Ewart-Biggs rose to ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to ensure that the relationship between voluntary organisations and governmental and other public bodies most effectively satisfies the needs of the community at large.
The noble Baroness said: My Lords, I am very grateful to have the opportunity to put this Motion before your Lordships this evening. I am even more grateful to those noble Lords who have stayed behind so unexpectedly long in order to make their contribution to the debate. It is a big and complex subject. I can do little more than provide the background and touch upon the role which the voluntary services play and the problems which they face and suggest some remedial action which the Government might take. I hope that from their knowledge and experience other speakers will fill in the gaps which I leave.
There can be little doubt that in today's rapidly changing society it is necessary from time to time to examine the way in which services to the community are being provided. The purpose of the debate is to

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ascertain that through complementing each other the correct balance is held between the voluntary welfare agencies and governmental and other public bodies. Such an analysis seems to be even more crucial at present when the services of the voluntary bodies are under ever-increasing demand while their funding is rendered insecure through the rate-capping legislation and the proposed abolition of the Greater London Council and the metropolitan councils.
First, there can be little doubt that even in those early days the midwives of the welfare state, having put into operation their giant rescue operation for Britain's needy, must have believed that the state should do what the state alone can do; namely, ensure an appropriate allocation of financial resources and, that done, leave as much as possible to the initiative and enterprise of the individual. They recognised that many people are able and willing to serve the public and that to reject that help would mean delaying social advance and inhibiting self-criticism, experiment and innovation. The old-style concept of paternalism and philanthropy was acutely defined by Lord Beveridge when he said:
"Philanthropy springs from social conscience: the feeling which makes men who are materially comfortable mentally uncomfortable as long as their neighbours are materially uncomfortable".
Although we live in a very different world, those basic principles surely remain true today.
Before commenting on the main theme of the Motion, may I say a few words about the volunteer in order both to remove the confusion which sometimes surrounds his precise circumstances and also to describe how his function is developing. The volunteer is a person who gives his or her services for nothing and who is active in both the voluntary and statutory sectors. The voluntary and charitable welfare organisations, on the other hand, like any other concern, employ some paid workers along with the unpaid volunteers.
There is little doubt that we in Britain are fortunate in having such a high proportion of people who give their services for nothing. The figure from the volunteer centre shows that with men and women volunteering on an equal basis, one in five of the population volunteer on a regular basis—that is, monthly. It must therefore be recognised that the old prototype "do-gooder"—the middle-class lady in her flowery hat and covered basket ministering to the needy—has been joined by a wide range of additional people: for instance, young people who have grown up with a greater sense of caring and many retired people who wish to continue to make a contribution to society. Volunteering is being increasingly rcommended to unemployed people, 10 per cent. of whom, it has been ascertained, find some solace in voluntary work. It is also recommended to those who are revovering from depression and mental illness and who find helping others to be of therapeutic value to themselves.
There is no doubt that to protect our present system of employment and so on and to make full use of the services of this greater band of unpaid workers, adjustments must be made. To mention but a few, the voluntary service unit at the Home Office has now become inadequate and its resources and manpower
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need to be increased. The unit, instead of playing a passive role, could be made more into a development unit sponsoring experimental programmes.
Secondly, more funds are needed for research into ways of better co-ordinating the work of volunteers. Recognition that volunteers now often come from low income group needs some form of compensation, such as travelling expenses, insurance cover, lunch, et cetera. These have all become necessary. But there is another aspect. I am sometimes astonished by the patronising and sometimes almost scornful attitude shown by some members of the community towards, as they call them, the "do-gooders", almost as if they would prefer the opposite, the evil doers. I feel most strongly that those who so generously put themselves at the service of others at least deserve the support and admiration of their fellow citizens.
What of the voluntary welfare organisations themselves? What is their true role, representing one important arm in the structure of provision as they now do? First, they can undoubtedly complement the work of the stautory bodies through themselves not being bound up in the same bureaucracy. This applies in particular to advice bureaux. It is indisputable in our complex society, with its equally complex set of rules and benefits, that consumers increasingly require expert advice and assistance on matters of individual concern. This increases the role played by advice agencies.
Secondly, not only can voluntary organisations take advantage of modern technology to spearhead new methods of helping people, but through innovation they are in the best position to experiment. Indeed, it is only the voluntary bodies who can work on the basis that, out of 10 initiatives, if seven fail then that must be seen in the light of three successes. For the state to incur such a high failure rate would provoke a public outcry—and rightly so. So this is the realm for voluntary organisations.
Thirdly, voluntary organisations, working as they do close to the ground, are far better placed to identify the true needs, and consequently they can provide a more sensitive pattern of service. Equally, they can often respond more quickly to needs than can state bodies, without cumbersome bureaucratic machinery. Finally of course voluntary organisations provide a greater choice of welfare provisions to the consumer.
I should like to give one example of the problems facing voluntary and charitable welfare organisations before I conclude by suggesting ways in which the Government might meet these problems and build that better partnership to which they appear to aspire. The example I have taken concerns problems facing the Women's National Cancer Control Campaign, of which I have just become chairman. I believe the problems are very typical. This organisation was set up 20 years ago to provide health education concerning cancer risks to women and provide screening programmes for early detection of cervical and breast cancer. The need for early detection has been proved by the fact that 98 per cent. of women who die from this form of cancer were never screened. These programmes are carried out in mobile units set up at the gates of factories or in the town or village square. It has now been proved that women—especially older,

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working class women, who are in fact most at risk—prefer to be screened in a mobile unit rather than by their general practitioner or at a health clinic.
The Women's National Cancer Control Campaign has now become a victim of its own success; the more women hearken to our warning, the more clients we have for our screening programmes. Consequently, our costs have escalated while our DHSS grant has remained unchanged. Like other organisations, we are forced to turn more and more to the public and grapple with the time-consuming and highly specialised task of fund-raising rather than responding to the real needs of women.
My other example concerns citizens advice bureaux, whose importance, as I have said, cannot be underrated in today's climate of rising unemployment, rising rents, and the increasingly complex web of social security and welfare benefits. The citizens advice bureaux, of which there are 900 in England and Wales, employ fewer than 10 per cent. paid staff—the rest being volunteers. In 1983–84 the bureaux estimate to have dealt with about 5 million inquiries and received £10 million cash grant aid from the local authorities.
The bureaux estimate that inquiries will increase at a rate of 500,000 a year from 1985–86 but their finances risk being severely curtailed. £6 million of the £10 million could be affected by rate limitations and £2·5 million is very likely to be directly affected by rate capping. And the 1986–87 GLC and metropolitan counties abolition Bill will affect approximately £1 million local grant aid to CABs. But of course, it will be the 600 bureaux in Greater London which will be mainly affected by both rate capping and abolition. How will these bureaux continue to offer adequate advice services? Already there is a great deal of unfulfilled demand, when one realises that only 48 per cent. of the families with two parents and dependent children who are entitled to housing benefit actually claim it.
I shall conclude by putting forward a few suggestions to the Minister. It is obvious that more money is needed by the voluntary sector to meet their increased workload—but in order not to become a target for the social services secretary, who was reported a few weeks ago to have called for,
"an end to these rather self-centred and totally sterile wrangles about who provides",
I suggest that the minimum acceptable standards of provision in health, housing, education, etc., should be established and that the Government accept the obligation to ensure that those standards are provided. Following this, an assessment could be made as to which of the agencies available would be the most effective providers.
Secondly, the Government have said that they do not want to see the voluntary sector impeded by rate capping and the abolition proposals—but still they have not put their words into effect. And from the point of view of the security of voluntary organisations and their forward planning, surely when organisations are shown to be making a really valuable contribution, they should be given enough assurance of long-term support to enable them to plan and build up professional staff.
For example, funding programmes should be on a three-year minimum basis, and one year nonrenewable programmes should not be introduced. Furthermore, the Government should recognise the absurd cash-flow problems caused even to quite large voluntary organisations by the Government's tradition of always paying their agents well in arrears and bureaucractic delays in negotiation and payment. These have become legendary. No business organisation would tolerate such a system for a moment, because it makes for extreme inefficiency and insecurity.
My third point is that charities must one day be relieved of the burden of VAT. This is constantly under discussion but it has never actually happened. Fourthly, surely voluntary organisations should be consulted more. They have the enormous advantage of being close to the ground and knowing what is going on. From another aspect, should not the Government consult them before introducing major policy changes which will bring severe, unforeseen disruption to their work?
Lastly, with the voluntary sector playing such an important role in the provision of services, there can be no doubt that there should be a junior Minister particularly responsible for co-ordinating its work. This would be of immeasurable value to both efficiency and morale. I believe that changes such as these could go a long way to rescuing the voluntary sector from its present dilemma and demoralised state. This condition is further aggravated by the Government sometimes managing to give the impression that they regard caring agencies as a rather soppy province of the unreliable Left wing. The changes I have suggested would also contribute to establishing the effective partnership and correct balance between voluntary bodies and the state which the Government claim they wish to see but which, in the view of many of us involved in this work, they appear to have done so little to implement.
There is no doubt in my mind that the spur for many of those in the voluntary services who work so hard to bring assistance to Britain's least fortunate citizens is a sense of social justice and compassion. The Government have still to prove through their actions that they are governed by the same compulsion.
8.48 p.m.
Baroness Faithfull: My Lords, we must all be grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Ewart-Biggs, for raising this subject in our debate today. It is a timely debate, in as much as the voluntary sector feels under threat. It is this threat that is of deep concern not only to the voluntary sector but also to the statutory sector.
In Hansard for 30th April 1984, my noble friend Lord Bellwin is quoted as saying in a debate on the Rates Bill:
"May I say at the outset that the Government need no strictures at all on their role in connection with, or support for voluntary organisations. The Government's record over the last five years stands so far ahead of anything done previously for voluntary organisations—I make that statement categoricaly".—[Official Report, 30/4/84; col. 381.]
In some areas I have much cause to be particularly grateful for the partnership between the statutory and the voluntary sectors. I quote but two examples. As a member of the Dr. Barnardo Council I would point

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out that we are in partnership with the Department of Health and Social Security in making arrangements for the mentally handicapped children being brought up in mental hospitals to come into the community. This partnership has been most effective with the financial help and encouragement of the Department of Health and Social Security. In addition, I am also a governor of two schools for maladjusted children. In both cases the Department of Education and the Department of Health have worked in partnership with the schools in providing better facilites for such children. Those are examples of two organisations only. It is easy to have a partnership between one authority and another authority.
However, the position with regard to voluntary organisations now, with the pending debate on the abolition of the Greater London Council and the metropolitan county councils, presents a very real problem for the voluntary sector, as the noble Baroness said in her speech. I have read with care the yellow document The Abolition of the Greater London Council and the Metropolitan County Councils issued by the Department of the Environment. I suggest that we should consider the way in which we discussed the paving Bill some months ago. Her Majesty's Government felt impelled to bring in a paving Bill before actually passing the Bills in connection with the abolition of the metropolitan counties and the Greater London Council. By the same token the voluntary sector thinks—rightly so—that at the moment it should be preparing for this change should it come about. This is where we run into trouble.
There are very real difficulties. First, is there to be the money for the transition stage? Secondly—and the noble Baroness has already referred to this—who is to have the overall responsibility for both facilitating and maintaining grants and support to the voluntary organisations? The noble Baroness suggested that there should be a junior Minister who would be responsible. In the debate that we have just had on the EC report of Lord Seebohm, regarding the employment of young people, the Minister replied that he was setting up a committee of four ministries in order to get the four ministries working together. If it can be done in one area, it should be possible for it to be done in another.
The real difficulty for the voluntary sector with the proposed legislation, which I admit had not yet come in, is the number of people involved and how one is to get them all to face in the same direction. That involves the support of the voluntary sector, which Her Majesty's Government so much recommends. For example the Citizens' Advice Bureau, to which the noble Baroness referred, receives a grant for the central running of its office from the Department of Trade and Industry. The local offices get their grants, or it is expected they will get their grants, from the local authorities in whose areas their local offices are located. Let us suppose that the local authority—not necessarily a rate-capped authority, because there will be only 17 rate-capped authorities—has not had experience of the extraordinarily good and splendid work of the citizens' advice bureaux and decides that it has the capacity to deal with the inquiries itself. What then becomes of the citizens' advice bureau?
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There are other voluntary organisations which have already fallen because they are not supported by their local authority. I can quote two examples. One is in a local authority area where there was a foster parent agency which found foster parents for children in care. In another local authority, really difficult families were helped. This body's work was not understood by the local authority and the grant was withdrawn.
Do the Government not feel that a very strong lead is required from them? If a local authority has an ideological attitude not to support the voluntary sector—and I have to say that there are some such authorities—where do the Government stand from the point of view of supporting the voluntary sector? There is great deal of division. How is this to be woven together to support the voluntary sector?
The noble Baroness referred to the numbers, and I shall refer to them again. The citizens' advice bureaux have 12,000 volunteers, with only 1,000 paid staff. That figure can be multiplied through all the different voluntary organisations. Therefore, I suggest that a very strong lead, of a very positive nature, is required from Her Majesty's Government if they want to support the voluntary sector. I support the noble Baroness in saying that there needs to be a structure, which does not exist at the moment, with one person, one Minister in one place, who is responsible for sponsoring the voluntary movement.
The noble Baroness has referred to the Home Office volunteer service unit. She referred to other ministries. Add to that the local authorites throughout the country and the local authority associations, and I agree with her and support her wholeheartedly in saying that there should be one person responsible for supporting and encouraging the voluntary sector and encouraging those who should be employing the voluntary sector.
8.58 p.m.
Lord Kilmarnock: My Lords, the Question of the noble Baroness refers to the relationship between voluntary welfare organisations and governmental and other public bodies. Before concentrating on that I think it is worth drawing attention to the very important and developing role of voluntary bodies in local economic development and job creation.
A report issued only recently by a joint working party of the three local authority associations and the NCVO, sponsored by the National Westminster Bank, gives some very interesting instances of these developments, and I recommend it to your Lordships. It can be obtained from the NCVO. Incidentally, I went to the launch of this document, which received all-party support from this House. The noble Lord, Lord Rochester, was there for the Liberals, the noble Lords, Lord Sandford and Lord Boardman, for the Conservatives and myself for the Social Democrats. There were Labour speakers, too. That, of course, is not really the subject of this debate. I just wanted to give a plug for this document, which is rather good.
We are extremely fortunate in having in this country an active and growing voluntary sector. It is deeply rooted in our traditions. It not only operates in the chinks and crevices of the social structure where statutory bodies neither can nor should penetrate, but

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is also playing an increasingly important role in joint action with the statutory services and as agents for them.
At a time of terrific pressure on public resources it can never be stressed too strongly—the noble Baroness, Lady Faithfull, seldom misses an opportunity to make this point, but she did not make it today and so I shall make it for her—that voluntary bodies are extraordinarily cost-effective. This seems to be almost a self-evident truth, as much of their input is free. Yet we should not think of voluntary organisations only as associations of amiable and-worthy amateurs depending entirely on charitable trusts and donations. Many are now highly professional. The voluntary movement as a whole employs something like 160,000 paid employees who provide the professional framework for the delivery of the service. So funding from a variety of sources is essential if standards are to be maintained and new needs are to be met.
I have here another useful publication by the Charities Aid Foundation of charity statistics 1983–84, which tells us a great deal about the sources of funding for voluntary bodies. In 1983–84 the top 200 grant-making trusts provided £208 million to the voluntary sector. The top 200 corporate donors, headed by Barclays Bank with £ 1,724,000, provided a total of £34 million. This source appears to be slightly on the increase again after the slump in 1981–82, but still only represents 0·21 per cent. of profits in 1983–84. I understand that there is a movement aimed at securing 1 per cent. of corporate profits, but of course this still has a very long way to go.
The total central Government grants in the last year for which figures are available, that is 1982–83, amounted to nearly £151 million. This figure has been increasing quite sharply, mainly due to the urban programme, but it will be recalled that 75 per cent. of that vitally important programme is local authority funded. Unsuccessful attempts were made in this House during the passing of the Rates Bill (now an Act) to protect their contribution from rate-capping. There is thus a real effect to some of the very valuable schemes being run by charities under this programme.
It should also be remembered that central Government contributions have risen, both in real terms and as a percentage of grants from official bodies. Local authority contributions have declined from something like four times those of central Government to only about twice those of central Government. So the ratio is changing dramatically.
I am not entirely sure that that is a desirable trend. One must always remember that charities working in the welfare and social security field depend overwhelmingly on local government contributions. The big national charities will of course always survive, but there are myriads of small local charities which may well go to the wall.
This brings me specifically to the local authority input to the voluntary sector. Much of this is channelled through the social services department in the form of grants and fees. Actually, fees are four times the amount of grants. The total payment by social security authorities to voluntary bodies in
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1981–82 amounted to £173 million. Extracting the shire counties alone, this sum amounted to £61 million in 1982–83, representing approximately three-quarters of their payments to voluntary bodies for all purposes, and indicating beyond doubt the reliance that they place on the voluntary sector in carrying out their welfare programmes.
Most of the authorities to be rate-capped fall outside the shire counties. So there must be a fear that the grants and fees amounting to some £112 million made by social security departments, other than those of the shire counties, will be specially at risk under the Rates Act.
The statistics do not go down to borough and district level. However, if—I say if, because it has not happened yet—the metropolitan counties and the GLC are abolished, there must be serious doubts whether the smaller authorities will be able or willing to fund even a small proportion of the contributions previously made by the strategic authorities.
This brings me to the question which I was going to put to the noble Lord, Lord Glenarthur, of which I have given him prior notice. Your Lordships may recall that during the passage of the Rates Bill (which is now the Rates Act) through your Lordships' House, the risk to local authority grants to charities was widely recognised on all sides of the House. Various attempts were made to secure exemptions from rate-capping for such grants. The discussions were to my mind somewhat sidetracked by the prominence given to the GLC's payments to certain bodies felt not to be proper recipients of public funds. But they were a tiny minority of all recipients, and I think most sensible people recognise the value and cost effectiveness of most of the voluntary sector projects receiving support.
A compromise was eventually reached, promoted by the noble Baroness, Lady Faithfull. I hope she does not think I am poaching on her ground here, but it was supported by myself, by, I think, the noble Lord, Lord Seebohm, and the noble Lord, Lord Ennals. That compromise now appears as Section 3(9) of the Rates Act. In fact, it was mentioned, with some rather high hopes I think, by the Charities Aid Foundation in the introduction to their book of statistics. I quote this:
"The Government has apparently accepted Lady Faithfull's amendment to the Rate Capping Bill in the House of Lords to allow the creation of special appeal procedures where cuts lead to the withdrawal of grants from a local authority to the voluntary sector".
I do not know whether it is the recollection of the noble Baroness but it is certainly my recollection that in the debate the Government undertook to issue guidelines on how this subsection is supposed to operate. I am not aware of any having appeared yet. I understand, or I have been told, that the Secretary of State has written to the councils about this, although I have been unable to obtain a copy of the letter, if it exists. The only thing that I have been able to obtain from the Department of the Environment is a press notice and a memorandum on the proposed transitional arrangements, to which I think the noble Baroness, Lady Faithfull, was referring, on abolition of the strategic authorities, in which they propose collection funding between the boroughs, which will be triggered off by a two-third majority of the boroughs agreeing or wanting to fund a particular

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charity. And there is going to be a limit of £10 million in respect of Greater London and £3 million in respect of all the metropolitan counties together—I cannot quite believe that. This may be of interest to the noble Baroness. I shall be very happy to pass her a copy of it or to let her see this one.
Baroness Faithfull: My Lords, would the noble Lord give way? May I just say that I did go into all this. I am very grateful that the noble Lord has brought up this matter. What I think the noble Lord, Lord Bellwin, the Minister at that time on the Rates Bill, said was that he would consider issuing guidelines. Then when I went to him at a later stage he said that there were going to be other arrangements and therefore guidelines would not be issued. The document to which the noble Lord now refers relates to the arrangements for discussion with the voluntary organisations.
Lord Kilmarnock: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness for that intervention. What I am saying, I think, is that this is something that we shall have occasion to discuss in the future. I understand that legislation will be required to bring these transistional arrangements into effect. I also want to say that, so far as I can see, this does not help us on the specific point I am making about the noble Baroness's amendment. All that is clear to me is that the procedure provided for in Section 3(9) can only operate if an authority applies for redetermination under subsection (4), in which case charities can write to the Secretary of State in support of their case. However, it appears that not a single rate-capped authority—I have checked this today—has applied for redetermination for the coming year. So where does that leave charities which find their grant reduced or eliminated?
The noble Lord, Lord Bellwin, whom we miss because he really tried to meet us on this, said at column 76 on 18th June that they could:
"make an independent case if the authority was proposing to reduce their support".
But what, I want to ask the noble Lord, Lord Glenarthur, is the situation if their authority has not applied for derogation either on their behalf or for any other reason? I suppose that there is nothing to stop them writing to the Secretary of State, but he presumably has no right to oblige a local authority to apply for re-determination to maintain its grant expenditure. Indeed, the noble Baroness, Lady Faithfull, referred to possible ideological objections by some authorities against doing this. Is it not therefore possible and perhaps even likely that this subsection may be much less effective than its promoters imagined or the Government intended? I may be wrong. I hope that I am. But it is important to get this clear. That is why I am asking for enlightenment. I know that this is not the noble Lord's department. I hope, however, that he has been able to seek advice from his colleagues in Marsham Street.
Finally, why is this matter important? Why are these matters that we are discussing this evening important? The noble Lord, Lord Bellwin, provided the answer on 18th June at column 75 when he said:
"Because grants are often small and short term they may seem easy to cut; but to the organisations which rely on them, and whose
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scope for savings may be very limited, they can be far more damaging than cuts in larger services".
There is also the larger consideration which the Government simply must take on board. If the policy or, if you like, the ethos of care in the community is to be effective, it must rely to a considerale extent on the voluntary sector. It has been estimated that the charitable sector accounts for 25 per cent. of all expenditure on social welfare. If that is reduced and even the public sector funding stays level, there will be a net loss of welfare at a time of increasing demographic pressure. All the signs are that both sectors face a reduction. If that happens, you might as well scrap the concept of community care, the closing of all those gloomy Victorian hospitals and all the other things that the Government say that they want to do. We are fortunate to have an active and deeply-rooted voluntary sector in this country. Goodness knows what we should do without it! Let us make sure, at a time of growing needs, that it can operate with maximum effectiveness.
9.12 p.m.
The Lord Bishop of Chichester: My Lords, at this hour I shall try to be brief. I should like to begin by recalling that the voluntary societies and organisations have a long history in our country. Back to the time when I was Dean of Worcester. I was ex officio master of almshouses founded by Saint Oswald in the 10th century. It is in that area that the Church has particularly contributed throughout the history of our land. I suppose that since the middle of the 19th century we have seen a great expansion of this work, with the starting of Dr. Barnardo's Homes in 1867 and other work for children; Waifs and Strays, now the Church of England Children's Society, and so forth; and, more recently, organisations for the provision of housing and shelter for the mentally and physically handicapped. At the same time, while this has been going on there has been a growing dependence on public funds as people in general have become less able to make substantial financial contributions from private sources. That is an important element to be recognised.
I hope that I can speak from a rather less controversial area of the country. The GLC does not extend into Sussex. Nor do we have any metropolitan authorities there. All the local authorities in Sussex, I think, are Conservative-controlled. We have a very valuable partnership with all the local authorities in Sussex. I think particularly of the main centre of population in Brighton and Hove, of St. Gabriel's family centre in Brighton, founded by the Church of England Children's Society and run by joint funding between that society and the Brighton borough, which also houses the Portage project where parents are helped to teach handicapped children basic skills.
I think also of the St. John's day centre in Hove where part of a large church has been set aside, in co-operation with the borough and the county, as a day centre for the elderly; plans we have for something similar at St. Patrick's Church in Hove; the Brighton Housing Trust which has a special concern for the housing of the single homeless, those who have been released from mental hospitals, the elderly—and we have many elderly people living often in deplorable

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conditions. All of this is run by a splendid partnership in funding and co-operation between mainly the borough council but also the county councils and the voluntary organisations.
But now there is a very great anxiety—an anxiety which results from financial uncertainty. The voluntary bodies ought to be able to do forward planning. They ought to be able to employ their staff responsibly. They ought not to have to divert the energies of skilled people into fund raising when they could be so much better employed in using the skills that they have for the help of those in need. There is a need constantly to be able to respond to changing conditions and the perception of fresh needs.
That part of the funding which depends on voluntary giving is always bound to have a large element of uncertainty about it. It becomes all the more necessary that the Government and local authority funding should provide the essential element of stability in the work. It is that which is now feared to be in question, partly through the cuts but particularly at present, as has been said already, through the rate-capping and the fear of what will happen as a result of the abolition of the metropolitan authorities in other areas.
Our own local authorities in Sussex—county and borough—are very careful spenders. They are more usually criticised for under-spending than for overspending. They want to be supportive but they fear that they run the risk of being penalised if they are. There have been a number of occasions in the course of this year when I have been in discussion with one or other authority about various projects which they would be only too delighted to support because they can see the need for them and the importance of them; but every time there has to be this caution, "Well, we've got to look at our expenditure as a whole and we fear that if we go in on this we shall be penalised".
I hope very much, therefore, that the Secretary of State for the Environment, who one understands is now conducting an internal Government inquiry into local authority finance, will take this problem into that inquiry and give the closest and most serious attention to this problem of funding and giving support to the voluntary organisations on whom so much of our provision for the welfare of those in need depends.
9.19 p.m.
The Earl of Longford: My Lords, it is a real pleasure to follow the right reverend Prelate. As someone who lives in East Sussex I know that he is exceptionally well qualified to speak on these matters. I heartily congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Ewart-Biggs, my friend and colleague, not only on promoting this subject but on the way she has made us all think about it afresh. My trouble is that I spoke on this subject better in 1949 than I am ever likely to speak about it again. If I say I spoke at that time for the Government in the first main debate on voluntary action after the war, and if I say that I spoke for 46 minutes, your Lordships will realise that in those days the House was more tolerant and long suffering than it is today.
However, at that time it was quite important that a clear speech should be made on behalf of the Attlee
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Government, the first Labour government after the war, in favour of voluntary action. There were many doubts, not least among Labour supporters and also elsewhere, as to whether the principle of the welfare state was compatible with the principle of voluntary action. I hope that those doubts were somewhat allayed after I had spoken. I have always been interested in voluntary action, like most other noble Lords; but if it had been just a personal effort it would have been of no significance. In fact, Herbert Morrison, then Deputy Prime Minister, took an enormous personal interest in the subject. He was determined that the Labour Party should be fully committed to the whole principle of voluntary action. He supplied me with what were probably the best phrases in that speech. When it was over he circulated it to all Labour Ministers and made sure that from then on it was Labour Party policy to support voluntary action along with the welfare state which was then being built up.
The debate on that occasion was initiated by the Liberals, by Lord Samuel and Lord Beveridge, who were already addicted to those principles. So in that sense it was an important occasion. I shall quote only a few sentences, but they are better than I can deliver now. If the noble Lord can say something better at the conclusion of this debate, then good luck to him. I have every reason to hope that he may be able to do so. What I said on 22nd June 1949, at col. 119, when speaking for the Government was:
"We consider that the voluntary spirit is the very lifeblood of democracy"—
I remember that coming from Herbert Morrison—
"We consider that the individual volunteer, the man who is proud to serve the community for nothing, is he whose personal sense of mission inspires and elevates the whole democratic process of official Government effort. We are convinced that voluntary associations have rendered, are rendering, and must be encouraged to continue to render, great and indispensable service to the community".
As I have said, I hope that the noble Lord will be able to improve on those words, but I think that he might find it quite difficult. At any rate that has been the official attitude of the Labour Party ever since that time. The Liberal Party were already committed and I shall have a word to say about the Conservatives later.
Let us come to the present day. I hope that there could be some general agreement about voluntary action in principle. But voluntary bodies today are full of alarm. I and others said a good deal about this during the debates on the GLC and the abolition of the other metropolitan bodies. Those fears which the noble Lord, Lord Kilmarnock, and others have brought out have not been allayed at all since that time. I hope that by the end of this debate some anxieties will be reduced, but I do not know whether or not that will turn out to be the case.
As regards the Government's general policy, they really must not be surprised if there is much nervousness in the circles of the voluntary bodies. The Government cannot have it both ways. I understand that they take pride in the fact that they are attempting to cut public expenditure. They are not cutting defence, and I am not personally suggesting that they should cut defence. But if they are not cutting defence

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it means, in practice, reducing the social services; it means at any rate reducing them below what they would be if the Government policy were not being pursued, although with the greater number of old people and unemployed it is difficult to know whether the total amount spent would go up or down. But the Government are engaged in a policy of reducing public expenditure. If I am mistaken the noble Lord will put me right. If that is so, it must mean that the total of welfare provision will be less under their auspices, and that more will be left to the individual and the principle of self-help than would be the case under some different philosophy. So much for the welfare state. We are not dealing with statutory bodies; we are not arguing about them now; we argue about them often enough.
However, tonight we are discussing the voluntary bodies, the third arm if you like, taking the state bodies and the local bodies as the other two. Here I venture to think that in principle there might be more agreement. The philosophy of the noble Lord's party, particularly under the present dispensation—it might not be so under some wetter form of Conservatism—is that the present Government want individuals to stand more on their own feet and to have less done for them by the state. That is the philosophy on which they have been elected twice, and if they like they can take pride in the fact that up till now the public seem ready to swallow that.
However, that does not affect the question of the voluntary bodies because there the Conservatives ought surely to be as sympathetic as Socialists and Liberals. The principle of charity—and I am not at all ashamed of using that word; I think that it is very creditable to anyone who is charitable either in the technical sense or in any other—and the principle of mutual self-help are surely principles which we can all applaud irrespective of party. So in this area there is no ideological difference as there is or must be when it comes to deciding how much the state will do in providing welfare. Here I would hope that there was at any rate a starting point of agreement. Therefore, I have some hopes that the noble Lord will say something encouraging tonight.
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I conclude by making a comment on one remark that fell from the noble Baroness, Lady Ewart-Biggs, and also from the noble Baroness, Lady Faithfull—the suggestion that there should be some sort of Minister who will play some useful part in connection with voluntary bodies. If I say that that is not a new suggestion, no-one will think that I am disparaging it, but in 1949 that was a suggestion put forward from the Liberal Benches by Lord Beveridge, supported by Lord Samuel. They put forward the idea of a Minister guardian (he was not exactly a full Minister) for the voluntary bodies. Up till now that idea has never been adopted.
Of course, there are obvious objections to such an idea. The noble Lord who is to reply is an accomplished debater, and he will not find it difficult to point to some objections, so perhaps I could point out one or two of them in advance, and that will spoil his speech! I admit that there are objections. I favour the idea, but I believe that it needs careful working out for this reason. We have all mentioned bodies with which we are particularly connected. I shall take as an example a youth centre which I helped to found and of which I am the chairman. One way or another we take the hat round to four or five Government departments. I am just trying to think how this Minister guardian, or whatever he would be called, would help us. I suppose that he would be a sort of ally at headquarters; but when it came to going to the particular departments we would hardly go through him. Therefore, it is a little hard to see how he would help us, but there he would be. I should like to think that he had all of his time to devote to this matter.
I raise those points only because I am sure that the noble Lord the Minister will mention them if I do not. There are fairly obvious difficulties and no doubt they have prevented the establishment of any such Minister from 1949 until the present day. It is a tremendous subject. I think that my noble friend Lady Ewart-Biggs has done extraordinarily well to raise it and I hope and pray that the noble Lord, Lord Glenarthur, will be able to say something encouraging.
9.29 p.m.
Baroness Masham of Ilton: My Lords, I wholeheartedly thank the noble Baroness, Lady Ewart-Biggs, for giving us this opportunity to debate what I consider to be a most important subject. Perhaps I should declare a personal interest as I am associated with several voluntary welfare organisations and also serve on some public bodies. I am very well aware that good co-operation between the voluntary and statutory organisations must be of benefit to the people in the community who need assistance. Voluntary organisations very often act as a safety net for those people who fall through gaps in the statutory services. They also supplement the statutory services. They also sometimes provide a choice. If people have a choice they often tend to be more satisfied with the service provided. The problem so often is that there are so many demands on our welfare services, be they voluntary or statutory bodies, that they may be hard-pressed to fulfil their aims of helping those they are there to serve.
It is wrong if voluntary organisations are considered cheap options for statutory bodies which have a commitment to provide a service, but many voluntary organisations do an efficient job and are covering some aspects of welfare work where there is no Government provision. Many of these services cover the most difficult and demanding welfare work such as alcoholism and drug addiction. I must here pay a tribute to the Salvation Army whose members often work with people and in places which others fear to cover.
Many voluntary welfare organisations are most grateful to the Government for the grants they receive. Many of these bodies would find it difficult to pay their staff and run their offices if it were not for these grants. I was one of the founders of such an organisation. Ten years ago we founded the Spinal Injuries Association. Before that time some of the most severely disabled people in society did not have a voluntary body to support them, and the lack of this was very evident. Our full members are those people who have had damage to their spinal cord and have remained paralysed. Associate members are relatives and friends and interested professional people.
Our service gives support, information, advice, and our welfare service provides a care agency for severely paralysed people who need a specially-trained person to go into the home and take the place of the carer in an emergency. No such provision existed, and the anxiety among some of our high-lesion tetraplegics—these are people who have broken their necks and have remained paralysed from the neck down—was very great indeed.
We also have some specialised holiday facilities such as two adapted narrow boats so that a family can go on holiday with the disabled member who can steer the boat. The Spinal Injuries Association helps families to piece together their world. It acts as a bridge between paraplegic problems and interested bodies such as hospitals. Government departments, employers and local authorities. It seeks to break down the barriers that some people find when trying to get on with life. We run a quarterly newsletter, organise scientific research, and we have a legal department. We try to
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encourage statutory and voluntary improvements in access, mobility, housing and employment.
This year Her Royal Highness Princess Anne has become our patron. This gave our members and our hardworking staff a great boost. Her Royal Highness works exceedingly hard and we are particularly pleased to have her taking an interest in our work. As this debate covers "other public bodies", I thought that the Royal Family deserved a mention for their immense patronage and the help they give to voluntary associations.
We are also pleased to have interested medical personnel from the DHSS whom we hope are interested in our work. We are pleased when they come to our meetings, and delighted when they give us advice. I was recently told that the noble Lord, Lord Glenarthur, had visited the spinal unit at Southport during the Summer Recess. I should like him to know that his visit was welcomed and that it boosted their morale.
My Lords, this summer I submitted a Question for Written Answer asking how many people this year had broken their necks and remained paralysed from diving accidents. There have been far too many, and these are all young people. Our association is also interested in accident prevention. The Answer came back that no such information was held centrally.
We try to satisfy the needs of the community. We try to look into current anxieties. Perhaps it would be easier to promote accident prevention if the Government departments co-ordinated more relevant information, for I believe that this would help the needs of the community. If we could devise an accident prevention drive to help young people become aware of some of the dangers, it might alleviate these problems.
Fund raising takes a great deal of time and energy for most voluntary organisations. We are lucky in this country that we have such generous people who support all sorts of fund raising activities. I should like to pay a special tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Crawshaw, who has helped most generously with the Smiths Charity Trust.
I have the honour to be president of the North Yorkshire branch of the British Red Cross Society. Since 1870 the British Red Cross has been helping to relieve suffering in health and welfare. The Red Cross flag is known throughout the world as a symbol of hope and trust. The Red Cross helps in many different ways in the welfare field. It runs hospital libraries and picture libraries, trolley shops, meals on wheels, stroke clubs, escort duties and so on. But one of its most important functions is to train people in first aid and home nursing. In the aftermath of the horrific Brighton bomb outrage, first aid should be one of our priorities. The correct first aid procedure cannot only save life, it can help to prevent long-lasting injury.
With so many people staying a shorter time in hospital, home nursing is as important now as it ever has been. So many people are discharged from hospital on a Friday. What could be more dreary than returning alone to a cold, empty house with no food? We need more committed volunteer workers to bridge the gap between hospital and getting well in one's own

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home. Most convalescent homes have closed down. In rural areas district nurses often do not work after 6 p.m. When the hospitals were small and more community-based, it seemed easier to get the Red Cross nurses and voluntary aids trained in hospitals. Since the loss of the matron and medical superintendent and the depersonalisation of hospitals, this has made matters much more difficult. We have some splendid doctors and nurses who instruct and train, but sometimes we are short of instructors to train. We provide first aid courses for industry and many other groups.
I hope that the Government will look into the need to provide adequate places for volunteers to be trained when Government institutions are needed to provide their facilities. I admit that there are problems such as our volunteers being more generally free in the evenings and at weekends, and hospitals being sometimes very technical with a quick turnover. But if care in the community for a large section of the population is to be possible then I hope that the hospitals will be more willing to help give basic training to those who need it. Training could also be given by district nurses and health visitors. It is so often at the GP and district nursing primary care level that volunteers are needed to supplement the service. In Leicester the Red Cross run a medical loan service so efficiently that it does the job administering the statutory provisions. It also runs a bureau for information which is greatly used by the community at large.
In a developing and changing world new and different needs continue to emerge. The Red Cross keeps looking at its training programmes and hoping to have modules attached to the advanced certificate such as mountain rescue, mental health, first aid, and so on. Health care is so important that I feel it should be taught to all children at every school. There has been an experiment in Seattle in the United States of America in cardiopulmonary resuscitation; CPR. The basic training for this mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and cardiac compression takes about five hours. It is said that it can be done in three hours. About 20,000 people have already been trained in Brighton. It is said that this could cover all of England by 1986 because the public want it.
There seems to be a great deal to do. In my branch in one village a volunteer Red Cross physiotherapy service is run using a paid trained physiotherapist. This gives a choice to people who just cannot face a long journey to a big hospital. I visited it a few weeks ago and every patient was more than grateful for the service received, including the cup of coffee, homemade biscuits and a friendly reception. The patients are all referred by their general practitioners. They pay what they can afford. Some are covered by insurance. It is a service and not a profit-making project. It takes place in a village hall near their homes.
A high proportion of statutory services developed from voluntary initiatives because it was recognised that the certainty and continuation of provision were essential for the welfare of the country; and the statutory services developed and took on many of these functions, such as the probation service. In some
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instances, such as child abuse, they provide a partnership with statutory services fulfilling statutory obligations. The NSPCC seem to be working in close co-operation with local authorities far more than they did in the past. This must be to the good of the community at large.
There can often be confusion over voluntary agencies and volunteer groups. The volunteer groups give valuable support and assistance but are additional to the basic provision, and many of these are counselling services and self-help groups. Voluntary organisations with paid staff are very professional in their work, and match to some degree the pay and conditions of the statutory services. Their staff are often more committed and do without some of the benefits that the statutory organisations have. Many voluntary organisations do use volunteers. Where the organisations are good, they will carefully select and train these volunteers.
There is great variation among voluntary welfare organisations. So often the voluntary sector helps to identify needs and pioneers new methods. There is a growing problem of glue sniffing and drug and alcohol abuse among young people. There is a great concern in the community over this. Voluntary support groups and organisations are growing like mushrooms. I was pleased that the Government had asked health and social service authorities to report by Christmas on the problems of their districts. The picture that they receive may not be a very full one. It sometimes takes a considerable time before addiction presents itself to an authority. There is a vital need for voluntary and statutory organisations to pool their knowledge and efforts to combat the cause and treat the conditions of the individual. Educational programmes for all who need and want them should be available. No effort should be spared as our youth of today are our backbone for tomorrow.
Most of the residential rehabilitation facilities are provided by voluntary organisations, as is much of the day care and counselling in the drug scene. There is concern that grants will be lost for some of these vital welfare services when the metropolitan counties and the GLC go. Could the Minister give some assurance tonight that they will be safeguarded? Are the Government going to review their proposals for the funding of voluntary organisations?
I should like to pay a tribute to many of the boys from youth custody establishments who work so well helping in residential, voluntary homes for handicapped people. These boys provide a very necessary service, and the co-operation between the Home Office establishments and the voluntary homes must be congenial. Last week, I was told of a boy from a youth custody establishment who had worked so well at a home to which he went out by the day that the director had offered him a job when he left. He is now in full employment doing an excellent and useful job. There is no doubt in my mind that good co-operation between voluntary welfare organisations and other bodies, putting aside professional pride, most effectively satisfies the needs of the community at large.
9.45 p.m.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, my noble friend's Question refers to the community at large. I hope she will forgive me if I refer in what I have to say to the community "at small" and to the needs of small communities and the relationship between those small communities and local authorities. I know that it is only part of the problem with which this very valuable Question is concerned but I believe it is an important part.
The history of local authorities' involvement with the voluntary sector goes back as long as the history of local government. I do not propose to take the House that far back, but I should simply wish to observe two or three of the most important trends that have taken place in the last 20 years. The first was the introduction in two stages, first for London and then for the rest of the country, of much larger local authorities than had existed heretofore. Those larger local authorities found it difficult at the outset to maintain the local contact which their predecessors, the urban district councils, the rural district councils and so on, had succeeded in keeping with local communities. Some of them were very well aware of the difficulties they had in keeping contact with local community needs. I served on a London borough council at that time and it was the constant preoccupation of our larger committees, for the larger areas to retain the contact which our predecessor authorities had had.
Recently there have been a number of initiatives in local government which have contributed to its ability to meet local community needs. They are not always well publicised—in fact some of them are not publicised at all—but I think it is worth making some reference to them. First, there has been a movement in some local authorities, particularly urban local authorities, to decentralise their welfare, housing and other personal social services. Boroughs such as Walsall have set up area offices which cover a very large part of the contact between the authority and local communities. They provide a much more convenient access to local services than used to be provided by travelling all the way to the town hall—or the civic centre, as they are grandly called nowadays. There is no doubt that this kind of decentralisation has led to an increased awareness of local needs by the council and also to an increased demand for welfare services, because the two go very much together.
Secondly, there has been a move in a number of local authorities towards new styles of governing. I shall not pick out particular examples of that, but there is a tendency towards having special committees alongside the operational committees to deal with the needs of women or the needs of ethnic minorities, and so on. I know that these bodies are very often laughed at and sometimes the grants they give are laughed at, but they perform a function of providing within local authorities a critique of the traditional ways in which local authorities, with their large budgets, have gone about their business. Also they provide another opportunity for local communities and those in need in local communities to make their views known to the local authority.
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The third type of change that is taking place was referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Kilmarnock; that is, economic initiatives. I know that it is not the subject of the Question tonight, but many of the job creation activities of local authorities are not simply a matter of providing subsidies to private industry; they actively involve the voluntary sector. I think particularly of the City of Leeds, whose Estates and Industry Committee is providing a considerable amount of training for and with the voluntary sector—training and financial encouragement for job creation activities by the voluntary sector.
All these seem to me to be evidence that local authorities are aware of their limitations, of the problems they have by being really too large for community action, and of the possibilities that are open to them to make a real contribution together with the voluntary sector.
Unfortunately, we come now onto the policy of the present Government towards local authorities. A number of noble Lords have referred to rate capping. If it were only that—as the noble Baroness, Lady Faithfull, said, it applies in the first instance only to 17 authorities—that would not be too serious. But the history of the last five years has been the history of a series of attacks not just on local authority expenditure, but particularly on the ability of those local authorities who have the most of their population in need of both public and voluntary help to meet that need.
The first series of attacks, soon after the 1979 election, was the fulfilment of an election pledge to transfer the resources of Government grant from the cities, and particularly from the inner city areas, to the shire counties. It was a conscious and explicit policy, but the result was that the resources of the local authorities in the areas of greatest need were that much less. Then, long before rate capping, we had the system of penalties being imposed; not just the withdrawal of grants, but actually penalising those local authorities which exceeded the Government's views of what should be spent. That may not seem on the face of it to be particularly aimed at the welfare services and the collaboration between the welfare services and the voluntary sector. But if we consider the proportion of local authority expenditure which is either tied down in the form of meeting debt charges and that part of local authority expenditure which is in fulfilment of statutory obligations laid on local authorities by Government, it can be seen that the welfare services which do not fall in either of those two categories are particularly at risk when there are penalties being imposed.
Then we come to rate capping and it is not just 17 authorities with which we are concerned, but there is in the Rates Act the threat of general rate-capping powers to follow and I assume that the Government did not put those powers in lightly. I assume that they really meant to use them if they decided that, by whatever standards they applied, expenditure in other authorities was going to be excessive. That is a very severe threat, as some noble Lords have said, not just to expenditure on welfare services in collaboration with the voluntary sector, but on the security which the voluntary sector needs over a period of more than one year in order to make decisions about staffing and

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the obligations it takes on. The noble Lord, Lord Kilmarnock, made this point very effectively, and I believe it is critical to the harmonious working of the relationship between local authorities and the voluntary sector. So the rate capping is much more serious in potential than for the 17 authorities who are likely to be affected in the first instance.
Finally, we have the Bill which is to come before Parliament in the next Session for the abolition of the Greater London Council and the metropolitan authorities. This Bill itself is not intended to be an attack on the voluntary sector and is not intended to be an attack on the welfare services, but it is a fact that both the Greater London Council and a number of the metropolitan councils have made it part of their policy over the past years to extend the possibilities of grant to local communities and to contribute very substantially to the work of the voluntary sector through their grants policies. The noble Lord, Lord Kilmarnock, referred to a figure—of which I was not aware and I am grateful to him for it—of £173 million in grants from local authorities to the voluntary sector. That is a very large sum in relation to the amount of money which can be raised from charitable and other sources. It would be a very severe blow to the voluntary sector if the continuation of the Government's policies towards local authorities were to put that sum at risk.
I know that the noble Lord, Lord Glenarthur, is personally sympathetic towards the welfare services and the voluntary sector. I hope that in his reply he will be able to show the House that in supporting those services he is not swimming vainly against the more powerful tide of the Government's continuing attack upon local authorities and local authority expenditure.
9.56 p.m.
Lord Shackleton: My Lords, I hope that noble Lords will forgive me for intervening in the debate at this late hour. However, I have been very moved by the debate and wish to congratulate my noble friend Lady Ewart-Biggs for initiating it. May I also congratulate my noble friend and all those whose services to voluntary work are so great.
My reason for intervening is partly because of the reference made by the noble Lord, Lord Kilmarnock, in his interesting speech, to the amount of money provided by industry. I should like to speak from that standpoint. Almost on a weekly basis I have to decide how much money to give to what charity. I have also been stimulated to take part in the debate because of having seen today A Guide to Company Giving, published by the Directory of Social Change. It is made clear in that guide—and it is important for people to realise it—that the published figures are very incomplete.
The noble Baroness, Lady Seear, who is to speak next in the debate, serves on one of the trusts which has been set up by my company. Excluding trusts, we give away between £300,000 and £400,000 a year. This does not include overseas gifts. This is an important figure but it is quite inadequate for the needs of the voluntary services today. We are flooded with requests. I am bound to say to the Government, who are apt to regard the public as thinking of the
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Government as a milch cow, that industry is also regarded as a milch cow but that it does not have the resources to provide what is needed.
May I give an example. The consequences of Government policy with regard to the universities and their research budgets have been serious shortfalls. There are now constant applications not just from bodies like the Salvation Army, which one regularly supports, but from other good causes. The very large number of applications which we have to turn down simply because we do not have the resources is terrifying. It is therefore important for the Government to realise that there is no substitute for the role of both Government and local authority in support of voluntary and charitable causes. Many of us in industry give a great deal of thought to it because we are worried about it. We have carried out investigations, and there are those who argue that industry should not be giving away shareholders' money—that this money is not theirs to give.
I was glad to hear my noble friend Lord Longford quote the views of my old boss Herbert Morrison on charity. I believe that corporate activities should act as good citizens. It is in the interests of both our employees in industry and of our shareholders that causes such as the Salvation Army should be supported. But industry provides only a fraction of the money that is needed. Much more is provided by sponsorship schemes, a great many of which are not included in any published figures.
May I add that the company with which I was previously involved, the John Lewis Partnership, never sought publicity or any return for its altruism. It simply took the view that it was in our best interests as citizens that we should live in a good society. But it is no good expecting industry or the private individual to replace the role which the Government and local authorities should play in this field.
10 p.m.
Baroness Seear: My Lords, at this late hour the House will be looking first and foremost for brevity. But may I say, in thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Ewart-Biggs, for launching this debate, that she has in fact raised a vast question. It has been raised in the form of an Unstarred Question but it is an issue which needs a great deal of thorough investigation; indeed, some kind of Select Committee would not be inappropriate for examining the implications of the matters which have been raised tonight.
The fact is that we are in the midst of a major change in social policy. In the years immediately following the Beveridge Report and the reforms of the Attlee Government, the welfare state was taking on vast responsibilities. Voluntary bodies then were seen as entirely marginal to the main work of maintaining the wellbeing of the individual. There has been a change for a variety of reasons, which I am certainly not going into at this time of night. But I believe it is widely accepted that what we now need is a partnership between the statutory and the voluntary bodies. We are not going back to the purely welfare state approach but are moving on to what Beveridge always said he wanted: not a welfare state but a welfare society. As I

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see it, that means collaboration between the statutory and the voluntary agencies, with a great deal of local and neighbourhood initiative support for the services which people require.
If that is true, it is no use tinkering with the kind of way in which the voluntary bodies have been financed in the past. All those of us who are involved in voluntary bodies know that they are extremely hard up. I serve on a number of various committees and seem to spend all my time trying to find ways to raise money. It seems to me that the committees never do very much of the work they are meant to do because they are forever devoting their time to chasing money. Personally, I dare not sign any more letters to either trusts or companies asking for money because I have done so much of that in the past. I am sure that goes for everybody in your Lordships' House.
We need to take a fundamental look at the financial implications and the tax implications of the collaboration between government and voluntary bodies. The noble Baroness, Lady Ewart-Biggs, raised the question of VAT on charities; that is just one part of it. There is also the whole question of encouragement for giving by both individuals and public bodies of one kind or another. We need to explore in a much more fundamental way the financial implications of the kind of partnership about which we all talk so glibly.
The only other thing I want to do tonight is to cheat somewhat by raising an issue which might have been more appropriate for the previous debate. It concerns the voluntary bodies in relation to employment and job creation. Much of this flows over. There is no hard and fast line between the job creation activities of voluntary bodies and many of their other activities. Many of the community projects for job creation also involve the provision of services of the kind which could well have been provided in the past by statutory bodies. So there is not a sharp distinction between what the voluntary bodies do in the area of welfare services and what the voluntary bodies do in connection with job creation. The two flow into one another and should be seen as a whole.
This involves people of a quite different kind and in a very different economic position from the people who in the past were associated with voluntary bodies. As we all know, there is a vast number of unemployed people. Those of us who have been connected with the voluntary project programme of the MSC know that it uses unemployed people and creates opportunities for unemployed people to contribute work of value to the community. That is a fine idea, but it does not pay their expenses. It is not very much good telling unemployed people that they can be of use to the community if they are going to be out of pocket in the process. Therefore, there are a number of ways in which we need to re-think how we are using people who are now available for voluntary service.
I know that we need to keep the voluntary element, but these schemes would be so much more effective if it were possible to offer some kind of greater financial assistance to the people who take part in them. This need not be a wage, but at least out-of-pocket expenses of a reasonably generous kind.
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The other point I want to make on collaboration between statutory and voluntary in the community project area is that if these schemes are to be successful—and some of them have been very imaginative and creative—they must be allowed to have some security and some continuity. The way in which in the past the MSC has agreed to help for only one year is making it almost impossible to run these schemes in a sensible way. One cannot expect people of any competence to run these schemes which provide job creation and services in the community if they have the expectation of working for only a year. Nor, in my opinion, is it sensible to take people from unemployment knowing one has to get rid of them at the end of the year.
The fact is that the people running the schemes, naturally, as they get towards the end of the first year and probably about halfway through a scheme, are busily looking around for something else to do. That is no way to run effective schemes of this sort. I want to see—and I fly this idea as a kite this evening—community projects very carefully and professionally vetted, before they are accepted and financed, by people who know about the particular kind of work that is to be done. They should then be told that unless something goes disastrously wrong they will be financed for, say, 10 years—some people may say that that is a little too long—but that the money given to them will be gradually reduced over that 10-year period. They will then know that there is to be continuity.
If we really want community schemes to work, then in the interests of people with very little financial resources who can now contribute in the same way as people who did voluntary work previously but who did not need that kind of assistance, there must be financial resources and continuity. There must be the certainty that if they are making a success of a project the assistance will continue for a reasonable period of time.
I am trying briefly to say that we are feeling our way towards a new kind of relationship and a new kind of work to be done by collaboration between the voluntary and statutory sectors. We shall not find the answers just by making a small change here and a small change there. We need to take a fundamental look at the sort of relationship we want to see and at all the financial and tax implications of developing that relationship properly.
10.8 p.m.
Baroness Jeger: My Lords, my noble friend Lady Ewart-Biggs has put the House in her debt tonight by raising this very important subject. I am sure that the House appreciated the wisdom and experience of all who have spoken. My noble friend Lady Ewart-Biggs, we all know, gives very unselfishly of her time, as do many other Members of your Lordships' House, and so they are speaking from practical knowledge.
The subject raised by my noble friend goes far beyond the limitations of tonight's debate and I will not weary the House by trying to deal with all aspects of this complicated subject. I am sure that the Minister will be relieved to hear that. I support what the noble

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Baroness, Lady Seear, said about a Select Committee, or some other machinery for further investigation, being set up so that we can go beyond tonight's debate into what should be a very serious study which reflects all the fundamental social changes in our society.
When some of us were young, good works were rather the prerogative of what used to be called the gentry. They used to be married ladies who did not go out to work in the sense of paid work. Now the whole pattern of life has changed. We have to involve all ranks of society in activities which need to be nearer to good neighbourliness and good social understanding, rather than in any kind of patronising, charitable work in which so many of these organisations originated in the last century. Everybody recognises that those days are over.
However, if we are to put that recognition into effect, we must take some steps towards fundamental changes in the allocation of responsibility, in taxation and in matters such as VAT, to which the noble Baroness referred. We must try to find this very difficult balance between statutory duties of the Government and voluntary work which individuals can do. I think it is very important to try to work out where the emphasis must be. In my experience it is very important to start off with some pump-priming, so that an organisation is helped to start.
Then we have to ask the Minister what is happening about the Voluntary Services Unit at the Home Office and what view they can take of longer-term help. Other speakers have referred to the fact that it is really difficult when an organisation or an individual knows that there is only to be one year's help and then it is to be reviewed. That is no way to encourage people to give of their time and ability. It is no way to run an efficient organisation. I do not think anyone who is experienced in business would try to run a chip shop on that basis.
Who is to have the future responsibility? The noble Baroness, Lady Faithfull, whose knowledge we all respect, raised this as a very important point. There is no doubt—and we have all been speaking away from party politics tonight—that there is the gravest anxiety among the voluntary organisations about the results of the Government's policies on rate capping, and the changes which are to be made in local authority responsibilities. It is no use Ministers thinking that those who express these anxieties are taking a purely party point of view, because I have had representations, as I am sure have all Members of this House, from people of all political views, and those of no political views at all, who are deeply anxious about the future of the work that they are trying to do.
The noble Earl, Lord Longford, was absolutely right to stress that there is a very real nervousness among the voluntary bodies who see a reduction in social spending which is going to make their work more difficult. I am sure we were all impressed with the words of the noble Baroness, Lady Masham, who herself does so much work in this sphere. I absolutely agree with her that the voluntary agencies must not be regarded as a cheap option for statutory services which are trying to make economies. That is most dispiriting to people who are prepared to give their time and ability.
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It does not do much good for a bright-eyed young boy or girl who is prepared to help in some way in the community to begin by having a collecting box thrust in his or her hand and being told that he or she has to organise a coffee morning or run a jumble sale. That is not going to get these schemes off the ground. The voluntary organisations depend on people who give of their time, ability and kindliness. They should not have to be diverted to such a large extent into raising funds which are necessary. That causes a loss of spirit among the people involved and does not make for their full potential being used in the way that is most useful. So much of the work does not show, and it is often very difficult for organisations to present themselves in a way most favourable to those who are more concerned with the financial aspect of things. There are, for instance, many societies which cross local authority boundaries. They are particularly worried about what is to happen if one local authority continues sympathetic to their work while the one next door is capricious and takes a different view. This is a point that needs to be taken on board.
I know that there are many examples which all of us could quote. I shall just mention one. We have in London a very enterprising voluntary organisation called dial-a-ride. This is inventive and new. It is largely run by young people, partly, I think, because young people like driving. It is a scheme by which people who are house-bound can telephone and ask for transport. It has enabled hundreds of them to visit a theatre, attend a concert or just to go for a ride for the sake of getting out of the house. It is the sort of organisation which must be a growing point. It involves young people. It contributes so much by way of its money's worth in the return that the people who benefit from it enjoy.
I hope the Minister will be able to answer some of the questions. I do not envy him his job tonight. I hope, however, that he will be able to put many anxieties at rest. Where there are detailed questions that cannot be answered tonight, I know that he will study them further. I hope, in particular, he will stress to his ministerial colleagues the views of many in this House that a Select Committee or some other way of earning forward tonight's necessarily short debate can be established.
10.17 p.m.
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, I certainly echo the views of all those who have expressed gratitude to the noble Baroness, Lady Ewart-Biggs, for raising this important matter this evening. I do so because the Government have always recognised that the contribution of the voluntary sector is an essential complement and supplement to the work of the statutory services. I would be the first to agree with the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chichester about their long history in this field. A significant feature of the Government's policy has been to encourage greater co-operation between the statutory and voluntary sectors. As my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Social Services said when addressing the social services conference at Buxton recently, the increasing pressures which we face in the health and personal social services make it essential for

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us to seek the most effective use of all the resources that can be brought to bear on them. It is a matter of common sense, therefore, to stimulate and support the efforts of the voluntary sector, as nearly all those who have spoken tonight have advocated, to extend the services provided to patients and clients as well as to the unseen army of carers who carry the burden of looking after elderly or handicapped relatives, friends and neighbours.
I must first mention, as the noble Baroness, Lady Ewart-Biggs, indicated—and it is a matter to which other speakers have also referred—that the Home Office's voluntary services unit is the body with overall responsibility for co-ordinating the Government's interest in the field of voluntary services. My noble friend Lady Faithfull, the noble Earl, Lord Longford, and the noble Baroness, Lady Ewart-Biggs, suggested that an individual Minister should be responsible. Indeed, the noble Earl, Lord Longford, anticipated some of the difficulties of actually attaching a handle nominally to any particular Minister who might have this responsibility. I think that all those who have spoken would perhaps like to know that the Minister with responsibility in this area is my honourable friend Mr. Waddington. He is the Minister with particular responsibility there.
The Earl of Longford: My Lords, in practice, how does that work out? If one is trying, as many bodies do try, to obtain help from a number of different departments, where does the Home Office Minister come in?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, if I can just continue with what I was going to say, I hope that might be clear to the noble Earl in a moment. While not superseding the close links which individual voluntary organisations have with the Government departments with which they deal, the Voluntary Services Unit is the core funding body for organisations whose activities cover the interests of several departments, for example, the National Council for Voluntary Organisations and the Volunteer Centre. Organisations like these provide the essential networks for Government initiatives in the voluntary sector. These bodies, such as the NCVO and the Volunteer Centre, do liaise with all departments as my noble friend Lady Faithfull would like them to do.
Of course, my department and the Department of the Environment also liaise directly with the Home Office, which is what I think the noble Earl is asking me to confirm. My department has, of course, the major interest in organisations active in the health and personal social services field. Our commitment to such organisations is demonstrated by the fact that we have increased our financial aid to these organisations from £10 million in 1979–80 to about £34 million this year.
The largest single element is our general scheme of grants under Section 64 of the Health Services and Public Health Act 1968. Section 64 grants are usually made to help meet the central costs of national voluntary organisations, but they can also be made to help fund local innovatory projects which have potential national application. This year we have made £11.5 million available for grants under this
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scheme compared with £10.2 million last year and we are helping 220 organisations. It has been suggested that three-year grants make much more sense across the board than one-year grants. I quite agree with that view, and indeed more and more Section 64 grants are now given on a three-year basis.
In addition to our general support under Section 64, we have launched a number of initiatives and programmes in areas of particular social need. It might be helpful if I describe some of these, or at least some of the more important ones. Time will not permit me to go into them all, nor will time allow me to comment on the many schemes such as the Red Cross, which was referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady Masham; although I should certainly like to pay tribute to her and all those others in your Lordships' House and elsewhere who have such a high reputation and do so much work in the voluntary sector.
To start with the youngest, we have made £6 million available to 1986–87 for an under-fives initiative, to help stimulate voluntary sector provision for disadvantaged families with pre-school children. Fifteen major voluntary child care organisations are involved in managing some 110 projects with support from initiative funds all over England.
Also in the field of child care, the National Council of Voluntary Child Care Organisations has, with grant-aid and help from the DHSS, mounted a series of regional seminars. The theme of these seminars, and the purpose in setting them up, is to consider local authority child care needs and the way voluntary organisations and local authorities can work together to provide these in a more cost-effective way.
In the field of mental handicap, too, voluntary bodies play a prominent part in helping to provide for the needs of mentally handicapped people and their families and for exploring new ways of helping to help them in the community. My department helps many of these voluntary bodies through our scheme of Section 64 grants, ranging from large ones like MENCAP to smaller ones like "Contact a Family". As part of the children's initiative, which aims to get all mentally handicapped children out of long-stay hospitals, we have made available £1 million on a £1-for-£1 basis to voluntary bodies to help with the capital and setting-up costs of providing care in the community. Seven projects have been funded in this way.
I should like to refer briefly to the intermediate treatment initiative which was announced in January 1983 and designed to promote close relationships between the voluntary and statutory sectors. The Government have provided substantial resources—some £15 million over three years—for setting up new intensive intermediate treatment facilities for use by courts as alternatives to custody or residential care for juvenile offenders. Local authorities were asked to designate voluntary bodies which could provide such facilities for them in their areas. The voluntary organisations—some national, some local and some newly-created locally—run the facilities under inter-agency management committees.
The noble Baroness, Lady Masham. referred to drug misuse—a subject about which we all feel strongly, and rightly so. In response to this growing problem we

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have made available £7 million over three years to encourage health and local authorities and voluntary organisations to bring forward more quickly than might otherwise have been possible projects for the provision or improvement of services for drug misusers.
Voluntary organisations have traditionally played an important role in providing services for this particular group, which is not always a popular one, and over £2 million has already been approved for 39 projects submitted by voluntary bodies. Under the initiative, the department needs to be satisfied that proposals from voluntary organisations have been discussed with relevant health and social services authorities and that these authorities will in appropriate cases give consideration to future funding. The guidelines on the initiative remind the statutory authorities that they have powers to make grants and second staff to voluntary bodies.
We have also asked health authorities to assess the prevalence of drug misuse in their areas in consultation with local authorities, voluntary organisations and others, and to report by the end of the year on their plans for urgent action to tackle this problem. As your Lordships will know, my right honourable friend the Minister for Health announced on 10th October a proposal to commit £5 million more to expand our efforts in prevention, treatment and rehabilitation.
The voluntary sector also has a central part to play in the development of additional community care facilities. Under the joint finance scheme health authorities can support personal social services, provision of education for disabled people and housing. As part of the Care in the Community initiative we have given health authorities greater freedom to transfer their funds with a view to getting out of hospital long-stay patients who would be more appropriately cared for in the community. We look to health authorities to develop a partnership with voluntary organisations and to carry out an enabling role—mobilising the total resources of the community, including formal and informal voluntary service.
As a concrete move towards involving voluntary organisations in the planning and operation of health and community services, and to demonstrate the Government's resolve, we changed the law to give voluntary organisations representation as of right on joint consultative committees of health and local authorities. Arrangments should be completed by 1st January. The choice of representatives is to be made entirely by the voluntary organisations themselves, and we hope that this will lead to fuller participation by voluntary organisations at all levels.
As part of the Care in the Community initiative, we are providing additional finance for a programme of pilot projects designed to show how Care in the Community can be made a reality. Almost all of the 13 projects selected for the first round involve some form of voluntary effort, including housing associations. We shall be watching these projects closely to see how, among other things, collaboration
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with voluntary organisations develops, and what lessons can be learned for future projects.
The noble Baroness, Lady Seear, raised the problems of employment and job creation, and their connection with the voluntary sector. Through our successful Opportunities for Volunteering Scheme we are channelling £5 million a year through national voluntary organisations to local voluntary projects. The projects, of which over 1,000 have been supported since the scheme was launched in 1982, cover the whole range of local health and social services activities and look like enabling 40,000 volunteers, mostly unemployed people, to make a contribution to the health and welfare of their fellow citizens. I hope that this might go some way towards replying to the remarks which the noble Baroness made about job creation and employment, but I should like to study the remarks that she made and write to her.
Under our new helping the community to care programme, which I do not think has been mentioned tonight and which was announced in July, we are making available £10.5 million over the next three years primarily to assist the voluntary sector. I shall not repeat what my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Social Services has already said, but this programme is aimed at enabling volunteers, families, neighbours and others to provide informal care more effectively and with greater confidence. Part of the money will be earmarked for the preparation of information and training materials for carers and to provide training courses for voluntary workers in specific fields; and part will be directed to the mounting of a number of demonstration projects. Some of the schemes will be focused on particular problems—for example, training for participants in "home from hospital" schemes for elderly people: training for those providing care in the community for mentally handicapped people: and the development of models for co-ordinating after-care for schizophrenic patients.
Baroness Masham of Ilton: My Lords, I should like to ask the Minister who will be the trainers of the carers for these schemes? In the Red Cross that is what we are interested in. We are short of trainers.
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, I note the point which the noble Baroness makes. I am not quite sure what the answer is, but perhaps I can let her know.
Other schemes in this particular field are of a more general nature. Each of the schemes is being carried out at present with voluntary organisations who will be managing different parts of the programme. We will announce details of the various schemes as they are settled.
The noble Lord, Lord Kilmarnock, raised the matter of the urban programme. For the urban programme as a whole about £50 million went to the voluntary sector in 1982–83 and for 1983–84 more than £62 million was allocated. Three-quarters of all

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local authority spending on approved urban programme projects is paid for by central Government grants. Quite understandably, much of this debate has focused on the concern felt by those who fear the Government's proposals to abolish the GLC and the MCCs—and indeed the effect of rate-capping—and I should now like to make a few points on that.
It is the Government's firm desire that worthwhile voluntary activity should not be harmed by abolition. The recent consultation paper contained proposals for helping local authorities in the abolition areas take on the increased financial responsibility for supporting the voluntary sector. These include providing a statutory basis for collective grant-giving where a voluntary body serves an area wider than one local authority; where, although the organisation is essentially a local one, it has previously been funded wholly or partly by the GLC or a metropolitan county council, the Government are proposing to provide transitional support of £5 million a year for four years to meet up to 75 per cent. of the cost of a grant made by an individual borough or metropolitan district council.
On the question of rate-capping, I can of course understand the concern which was expressed—perhaps particularly by the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, and the noble Lord, Lord Kilmarnock—that local authority funding for voluntary bodies might be cut back as a result of rate-capping. My noble friend Lady Faithfull referred to this as well. It was for that very reason that provision was made in the Rates Act for a local authority to apply for its funding for charities to be considered as a ground for redetermining its expenditure level. The fact remains that so far no such application has been made.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. Will he agree that the proposal that he has just described is a good deal less effective and comprehensive than the exemption of expenditure on charitable bodies, which was carried by this House and then overturned by the Government at a later stage?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, I do not think that I could usefully follow the noble Lord down the road which he seeks to take me at the moment on this theme. Perhaps I may say that the Rates Act makes ample provision for any authority which considers that it cannot live within the expenditure level determined for it to apply for such a redetermination. If, however, an authority chooses not to apply for a redetermination, we can only assume that it does not do so because it considers that it can live within the external limit determined for it, and then the Secretary of State is denied that opportunity to have regard to contributions to charities in reaching a decision as to the authority's expenditure level.
It would be wrong for the Secretary of State to be able to dictate the detailed destination of local authority funds or the amount local authorities should donate to funding charitable organisations. That is a
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matter for local decision. My noble friend Lord Bellwin said on 18th June at column 76:
"where an authority was considering cutting its support to charities because of the pressures of the expenditure level, the charities concerned would be in a strong position to press the council to apply for a redetermination simply because of this amendment".
I am sure that it is the right course for them to take in present circumstances. The selected authorities' failure to apply arises, I believe, largely from political motives, regardless of whether they think they have found a sound financial case.
Baroness Faithfull: My Lords, when this point was discussed under the Rates Bill several of us—the noble Lord, Lord Kilmarnock, being one—asked whether local voluntary organisations could be informed that they could apply to the Secretary of State if they were cut and whether he would consider the financial position of the local authority. The Minister later said that he could not send out letters such as that to the voluntary organisations. Therefore it is not surprising that nothing has been received because the voluntary organisations know nothing of this.
Secondly, when the Minister says that Mr. Waddington has overall responsibility, has Mr. Waddington responsibility over local authorities which have refused voluntary organisations their grants?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, regarding the first question, for obvious reasons I have not in front of me the relevant quotations for all the debates which took place in your Lordships' House. I shall study my noble friend's points and let her know the answer, and I shall read the remarks to see what was said on those occasions. As she indicated, the debate goes far wider than just the DHSS, the Home Office, or indeed the Department of the Environment.
My noble friend went on to ask whether or not my honourable friend Mr. Waddington would be in a position to negotiate with local authorities in the way that she wants. The Home Office would liaise with the Department of the Environment in this case. Exactly what the mechanism is I cannot tell my noble friend, but I shall look into it and communicate with her.
Lord Kilmarnock: My Lords, will the noble Lord also write to me about the specific question I asked him on the precise mechanism of the operation of Section 3(9)?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, I certainly shall.
I have described a number of particular programmes and initiatives in some detail because it is important to emphasise the relationship between the statutory and voluntary sectors and the role of central Government in stimulating and improving that relationship. We shall continue to explore new ways of strengthening these relationships. It seems to me from what has been said this evening that there is a general wish that these relationships should be strengthened—and strengthened to the benefit of the community at large.

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My right honourable friend the Secretary of State gave an indication of the way we hope the social services departments will develop their role of enabling, seeking the most effective use of all the resources of the community to help those who need support. He said this in his speech last month at the social services conference at Buxton.
My right honourable friend is now considering the form of a consultative document to promote a wider debate and I hope that that, at least, will give comfort to the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, who raised a point not dissimilar from it.
There is a need for more work to be done before it can be truly said that the needs of the community are fully or most effectively being met, but I am confident that we are moving in the right direction in seeking new ways of mobilising the vast resources which have been referred to tonight which are represented by the voluntary sector in the community.
House adjourned at nineteen minutes before eleven o'clock.