Lords Sitting of 25 April 1985

Preamble
The House met at three of the clock (Prayers having been read earlier at the Judicial Sitting by the Lord Bishop of Coventry): The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.

Nationalised Industry Consumer Councils: Guidelines
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 which nationalised industry consumer councils listed in the Written Answer given to the Baroness Burton of Coventry on 12th March (Official Report, col. 162) have now finalised discussions with their respective industries on these original draft guidelines affecting their future; which have still to do so and whether any findings sent to the Department of Trade and Industry are now under discussion.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Trade and Industry (Lord Lucas of Chilworth): My Lords, discussions between the electricity and domestic coal consumer councils and their respective industries have been completed; discussions between the National Gas Consumers' Council and the British Gas Corporation are continuing, as are those on the guidelines for the Scottish electricity councils. The Post Office and nationalised industries' consumer councils are completing their internal consideration of the draft guidelines in preparation for discussions with the industries concerned. All matters referred by the consumer councils to the Department of Trade and Industry have been dealt with.
Baroness Burton of Coventry: My Lords, while we all hope that these discussions will be finalised in the not too distant future, may I ask the Minister whether the comments sent in by the consumer councils, and those still being discussed, cover the original guidelines which were sent out in June last year, the Treasury consultation proposals, which were sent on demand and not upon presentation, and the letter dated 22nd February sent by his department?
Lord Lucas of Chilworth: Yes, my Lords.
Baroness Burton of Coventry: In that case, my Lords, could the Minister help us with one further piece of information on a matter which has caused some concern among the consumer councils of nationalised industry? Could he tell the House which department will be responsible for the proposed legislation dealing with these consumer councils, in view of the fact that the Treasury consultation proposals to the chairmen of nationalised industries covered this matter and that the letter from the noble
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Lord's department on 22nd February was headed "Nationalised Industries Legislation: Consumer Councils"?
Lord Lucas of Chilworth: My Lords, if there were to be any legislation in regard to nationalised industries, it would fall to my department.

The Building Industry: Budget Proposals
3.3 p.m.
Lord Dean of Beswick: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what response, if any, has been received from the building industry to the financial proposals contained in the Budget.
Lord Skelmersdale: My Lords, we have had little formal reaction from the industry. The measures contained in the Budget, in particular the abolition of development land tax and the Chancellor's assurances about VAT, should have been very encouraging to the construction industry. The industry is benefiting from the long-term economic growth which the Government's policies are securing. In 1984 private sector completions were at their highest level for eight years and last year output of private, industrial and commercial work grew by 10 per cent. in real terms.
Lord Dean of Beswick: My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for that reply, but may I ask whether he is surprised at such a lack of reaction? I put that question bearing in mind that in the past the Group of Eight, which widely reflects the views of the building industry, has normally been allowed a meeting with the Chancellor of the Exchequer prior to his Budget, but this year was fobbed off with the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, who did not even stay for the whole of the meeting. Is that the type of shabby treatment that the Government ought to be meting out to one of our major industries?
Lord Skelmersdale: My Lords, my honourable and right honourable friends have constant contact with the building and construction industry, and the fact that the personnel involved were changed reflects no discredit on them.
Lord Bruce of Donington: My Lords, the noble Lord has said that he has had no formal responses from the building industry. Is he not aware that the building industry in its entirety has been almost unanimous in saying that the Government's proposals are inhibiting that industry to the tune of roughly £900 million a year?
Lord Skelmersdale: No; before the Budget, my Lords.
Lord Graham of Edmonton: My Lords, does the Minister recall that the Chancellor and the Government said that this was a Budget for jobs? Bearing that in mind, would the Minister care to tell the House what assessment he and his colleagues have

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made of the impact of the Budget proposals on trying to reduce the appalling national waste of having 400,000 construction workers on the dole while more than a million families are waiting to be housed by councils?
Lord Skelmersdale: My Lords, there may be very good reasons for improving the infrastructure, but employment is not one of the them. In a recent trip to see a sewer renovation scheme I discovered for myself that the contractor had not employed one extra man.

Gipsy Sites
3.5 p.m.
Lord Davies of Leek: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what consultations with local authorities or other efforts they have made to evolve a policy to establish various areas for gipsy encampments in the United Kingdom.
Lord Skelmersdale: My Lords, the Caravan Sites Act 1968, for which my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for the Environment has general responsibility, places a duty on county councils in England and Wales and on London borough councils to provide sites for gipsies. My department and the Welsh Office have regular contacts with local authorities and the Association of County Councils about gipsy site matters generally.
Lord Davies of Leek: My Lords, in thanking the Minister for that reply I am pleased to see that some compassionate approach is made to this ethnic group of people, whose names are inscribed on many a war memorial, despite their ethnic origin, throughout Europe.
Lord Skelmersdale: Yes, my Lords; the noble Lord is quite right, and it is absolutely right that he should be right.
Lord Graham of Edmonton: My Lords, I wonder whether the Minister, who has referred to constant contact with local authorities, would care to tell us what the Government are doing to encourage councils to undertake their obligations under the Act, bearing in mind, of course, that land will need to be acquired and rates will need to be raised at the present time, when this is exceedingly difficult?
Lord Skelmersdale: No, my Lords, because councils get a 100 per cent. Exchequer grant for these sites.
Lord Renton: My Lords, does my noble friend's statement apply to genuine ethnic gipsies only, or does it apply also to the ever-increasing numbers of didicois—people who merely go on to the roads with caravans and live, and move from place to place, sometimes to escape trouble?
Lord Skelmersdale: My Lords, I can tell my noble friend that there is a statutory definition of the word "gipsy" which runs as follows:
"A person of nomadic habit of life, whatever their race or origin".

Trade Union Ballots: Political Funds
3.8 p.m.
Lord Rochester: 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 consider that the balloting procedures under the Trade Union Act 1984 which will determine whether trade union funds may continue to be used for certain political purposes will operate so that they accurately reflect the views of union members.
The Minister of State, Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Lord Belstead): My Lords, voting at inconvenient, ill-attended branch meetings has been one of the most significant reasons why trade union ballots have often not properly reflected the members' wishes. The 1984 Act, by insisting that voting on political funds must be by post or at the workplace, has ensured that as many union members as possible will have the opportunity to vote. In addition, the Act's provisions on secrecy and voting methods will oblige unions to conduct ballots which accurately reflect the views of those voting.
Lord Rochester: My Lords, have not recent events demonstrated that in ballots concerning political funds and the election of all members of the principal executive committees of trade unions, responsibility for the distribution, the counting and the return of voting papers should be in the hands of some suitable independent body? Does not that, in turn, mean that postal ballots should be the norm? Further—
Lord Denham: No. One question.
Lord Rochester: Further, my Lords, do the Government consider that the present arrangements for corporate political funding, as much of the Conservative Party by business interests as of the Labour Party by trade unions, are equitable in the effect that they have on other political parties?
Lord Belstead: My Lords, so far as the noble Lord's first question is concerned, as he very well knows, there are strong arguments in favour of postal voting in union ballots, but there are also dangers of disfranchising large numbers of trade union members unintentionally. That is why, in respect of the subject of the noble Lord's Question—namely, the political fund review ballots—in 1984 we went for the two options of having to vote either at the workplace or by post, but not saying which it had to be. On the noble Lord's second supplementary question, corporate funding at the end of the day depends upon the wishes of the shareholders, and I think that that is fair and reasonable.
Lord Leatherland: My Lords, does the Minister know that many limited companies in this country make huge contributions to the Conservative Party without a ballot and that the only time the shareholders learn about this is when they read the annual report at the end of the year?
Lord Belstead: That is at the annual general meeting, my Lords.
Lord Renton: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that the success of secret balloting depends mainly upon the compilation of full and proper registers by the trades unions, and that it is in the interests of trades unions to have such registers so that they can raise money from their members? Can he say to what extent the compilation of registers is proceeding as it should?
Lord Belstead: My Lords, the compilation of registers is proceeding and we have no cause for anxiety on this particular count.
Lord Molloy: My Lords, if, as the noble Lord has just said, it is quite sufficient for employers' organisations and private firms simply to state that they have contributed to a particular political party, why should it be different for trade unions? Why cannot they do precisely the same? Secondly, to follow the logic of the original Question, ought it not be proper for all the other political parties that receive money from outside sources to do what the Labour Party does and publish where every ha'penny comes from in their annual report?
Lord Belstead: My Lords, the underlying principle of the 1984 legislation was that there should be a convenient opportunity for trade union members to cast a vote in ballots. This is what the 1984 legislation achieved. In exactly the same way, if the noble Lord is a shareholder in a company he can have a convenient opportunity to cast his vote.
Lord Shinwell: My Lords, since the original Question was asked by a noble Lord representing the Liberal Party, may we have a little information regarding from where the Liberal Party get their funds?
Lord Belstead: My Lords, if I may reply to the noble Lord, Lord Shinwell, I am as much in the dark as is the noble Lord.
Lord Tordoff: My Lords, would the noble Lord accept that the Liberal Party publishes its accounts in a much clearer way—
Noble Lords: Order, order!
Lord Tordoff: My Lords, I cannot be out of order. Will the noble Lord accept that the Liberal Party publishes its accounts in a way in which it is entirely transparent as to what is going on—
Noble Lords: Oh!
Lord Tordoff: My Lords, although they do not list individual donors any more than does any other party,
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the Liberal Party's accounts are as transparent as the accounts of any other political party in this country.
Lord Belstead: My Lords, that is a perfectly fair intervention. Indeed, I accept it and I am grateful to the noble Lord for casting light on a confused matter.
Viscount St. Davids: My Lords, would the noble Lord tell me this? Are the Government really as clever as I think they are?
A Noble Lord: No!
Viscount St. Davids: My Lords, have they deliberately left the law in this state so that those members of trade unions who do not mind discrediting their unions are enabled to do so?
Lord Belstead: My Lords, if I may say so, I think that the underlying principle of the 1984 legislation, which is that there should be a proper opportunity for trade union members to vote and that it should be done in secret, has been achieved. Now let us see how we go with the legislation.
Lord Diamond: My Lords, will the noble Lord say why he keeps on suggesting to the House that there is a method by which shareholders of an ordinary company can prevent a company making an individual, political subscription other than by denying the company the right to have its accounts passed and placing the whole of the affairs of the company in chaos?
Lord Belstead: My Lords, ever since this Question started I have been in breach, I think, of what I was told to do a week or so ago by the Procedure Committee. I have been answering a string of questions which have nothing to do with the original Question. I think that now the time has come to stop.
Lord Plant: My Lords, would the Minister agree that trade unions will conduct these ballots in relation to affiliations or whatever it may be in a fair and honest way and that their own members are the best monitors of the system?
Lord Belstead: My Lords, I will agree with the noble Lord that the rules are now going to be very strict. This, I think, is fair and reasonable and I am sure that it will work.

Business
3.14 p.m.
Lord Denham: My Lords, it may be for the convenience of the House if I announce that after 3.30 this afternoon my noble friend Lord Gowrie, with the leave of the House, will repeat a Statement that is being made in another place on the EEC Budget Council.

South Yorkshire Passenger Transport Bill
Read a second time, and committed to a Select Committee.

Business of the House
The Lord President of the Council (Viscount Whitelaw): My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.
Moved, That the debates on the Motions in the names of the Baroness Lockwood and the Lord John-Mackie set down for 1st May and in the names of the Lord Allen of Abbeydale and the Earl of Shannon set down for 8th May shall each be limited to 2½ hours and that Standing Order 35 and paragraphs 10–13 of the Rules for the Conduct of Short Debates in Appendix H to the Companion to Standing Orders shall apply to each debate.—(Viscount Whitelaw).
On Question, Motion agreed to.

Child Abduction and Custody Bill [H.L.]
Read a third time: an amendment (privilege) made; Bill passed, and sent to the Commons.
Road Races (Northern Ireland) Order 1977 (Amendment) Bill [H.L.]
Read a third time, and passed, and sent to the Commons.

Further Education Bill [H.L.]
3.18 p.m.
The Earl of Swinton: My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time. We have seen a good many Education Bills pass before this House during the course of the century and many very great changes have been wrought in the quality and quantity of the nation's educational provision as the result of their passage. These Bills were generally concerned with schools and colleges, teachers and pupils and syllabuses and examinations. This Bill may appear at first glance to be about supplying goods and services, money-lending, local government revenue accounts, limited companies and sex. Your Lordships may well be wondering what all that has to do with education—except, perhaps, for the last item—but I shall seek to convince your Lordships today that these are all issues of real importance to education and ones which the Government hope will, as a result of this Bill's passage, grow in significance as educational establishments play their proper role in our industrial society.
This Bill is intended to release the creative and productive energies of polytechnics and further education establishments maintained by local education authorities. These institutions have always operated very much at the sharp end of the education market, providing skilled manpower trained specifically for the particular needs of industry. As a result, many of them have developed very good links with employers, and over the past few years they have been ready and willing to respond to the challenges of our fast-changing industrial scene. It is therefore somewhat ironic to find that when they wish to take advantage of these links in a way which might bring
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them and their partners in industry some financial reward, they are handicapped by legal barriers. These barriers do not affect the universities or other higher education institutions: they bear only on those institutions maintained by LEAs.
The reason is that, unlike universities, which are incorporated by Royal Charter or Act of Parliament, the great majority of polytechnics and colleges of further and higher education have no separate existence but, like schools, are wholly integrated with their parent maintaining local authority. Local authorities are in general prevented from carrying on commercial trading activities on any significant scale. Inevitably, therefore, their polytechnics and colleges are caught by the same rule. The central purpose of this Bill is to release polytechnics and other further education establishments maintained by local authorities from these restrictions, thereby removing a piece of unfair and largely accidental discrimination against them.
The Bill's other main provision is also about discrimination—but discrimination on grounds of sex in admitting students to teacher training courses in physical education. Section 28(b) of the Sex Discrimination Act 1975 at present permits colleges to offer single sex courses in physical education for prospective teachers. In 1975 there were a number of courses of this kind, but in the intervening years more and more colleges have replaced single sex courses by non-segregated courses, to the point where no college in England or Wales now offers them, and it is intended to move soon towards integrating the remaining two single sex courses in Scotland.
In the meantime, the Commission for the European Communities has issued a Reasoned Opinion to the effect that the exemption made in Section 28(b) of the 1975 Act contravenes the EC Equal Treatment Directive 1976. Although the United Kingdom contends that this is not so, it would not be sensible to have to defend before the European Court of Justice a provision which is in practice already a dead letter. The Government have therefore decided to take this opportunity to remove the offending provision by repealing Section 28(b) but without otherwise affecting any of the provisions of the Sex Discrimination Act.
The Government have been conscious for some years that an untapped reservoir of potential exists in higher education institutions. This was highlighted in a report produced in 1983 by the Advisory Council for Applied Research and Development jointly with the Advisory Board for the Research Council on the subject Improving Links between Higher Education and Industry. Their report, commonly known after its chairman as the Muir Wood Report, recommended among other things that action be taken to amend the law in order to allow polytechnics to negotiate contracts and undertake consultancies. This Bill will do so.
There is a great diversity of activities in which industry and education can be brought together in profitable partnership. Any attempt to list them in full is bound to be inadequate, but we have already seen in universities many instances of fruitful interchange: sponsored research to solve specific industrial problems; joint venture projects; the exploitation of

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the inventions of staff and students; consultancy; testing; and so on. The one factor which is common to them all is innovation, an abundant strength in our educational institutions, which is brought into contact with the other ingredients which are essential to commercial success but which are perhaps rather rarer in the educational world—finance, marketing and managing skills.
It is implicit in these proposals that the enterprise activities thereby permitted should be accessory to and supportive of the establishments concerned. Above all, they must not undermine or supplant the primary teaching and research activities for which the institutions were set up. Nor must these enterprise activities be allowed to become a financial burden on local ratepayers. On the other hand, it would be appropriate, where such enterprises are successful, for the major share of the rewards to accrue to the institution and staff who were responsible.
The Bill seeks to provide a general framework within which these principles are balanced. LEAs will be under a general duty to pursue their best endeavours to secure a surplus on the revenue account which records these financial transactions. But no specific rate of return of assets is proposed, largely because these assets are already in use for other educational purposes, and it would be extremely difficult to determine what proportion of the value of such assets should be attributed to the commercial usage.
In the event that, despite using their best endeavours, the revenue account produced a deficit, it is to be charged in the first instance to any special fund set up by the authority specifically to meet education expenditure relating to the further education establishment or establishments concerned, then to any general fund for meeting education expenditure, and only as a last resort to the general rate fund.
The Government are conscious that some of the services which it is envisaged that further education establishments will undertake as a result of this Bill are already available from business enterprises in the private sector. The Government believe strongly that competition is healthy as a stimulus to efficiency and economy. But competition from subsidised public sector institutions would be anything but healthy. For this reason above all, it is desirable that establishments are required to ensure that each and every contract is priced at full cost or open market value, if higher. This rule is incorporated in the Bill.
The Government envisage that many colleges and polytechnics may find that setting up a limited company would provide the best mechanism for furthering their commercial activities under this Bill. Limited companies offer a tried and tested framework which is in many ways more suited to entrepreneurial pursuits than is that of local authorities. The Bill does not specifically empower local authorities to establish or hold shares in limited companies. But they will be free to do so, using the powers already available under Section 111 of the Local Government Act 1972, once the legitimacy of the commercial activities of their polytechnics and colleges has been established under this Bill.
Before turning to the detailed provisions of this Bill, your Lordships may wish to know a little about the
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consultations which prefaced its preparation. Local authorities and their associations, polytechnics and colleges, industrial interests and trade unions were all invited to comment upon the Government's proposals last year. The responses were overwhelmingly favourable, though naturally there were some differences of view on detail. These have been given full consideration in the course of bringing the Bill to its present form.
I now turn to the main features of the Bill. In the limited time available, I can do no more than summarise its provisions. The first three clauses, concerning commercial activities in further education establishments, relate to England and Wales only. They are intended to enable commercial activities to take place. They in no way impose additional duties or financial burdens on local authorities.
Clause 1 serves to define the circumstances under which goods and services may be supplied under this Bill; namely, if and only if they result from the establishment's educational activities, from the use of its facilities or the expertise or ideas of its staff or students. This causal linkage with an establishment's primary activities is fundamental to the Bill's scope. Any proposed commercial activities which had no relationship whatever with an institution's educational activity as defined in Clause 1 of the Bill would, as now, be outside its powers.
Clause 2 contains the Bill's main enabling provisions, which fall under two heads. First, local authorities are empowered, through their further education establishments, to enter into agreements for the supply of goods and services of the kind which I have already described. Secondly, to facilitate these activities where they are to be carried on through limited companies the Bill goes on to empower LEAs to lend money to any such companies in which the authority holds a significant shareholding—20 per cent. or more of the voting shares.
The remainder of this clause is regulatory and definitional. I have already explained why establishments will be required to price all their contracts at full cost or open market value. But there is an important exception, and an associated reserve power. The exception is for contracts sponsored by research councils, which by longstanding tradition commission work in the laboratories of universities, polytechnics or elsewhere on the basis that the establishments' overhead costs are borne by the institutional budgets rather than by the research council. For this reason the full cost rule is inappropriate in such cases. There is also a reserve power for other public bodies to be designated by statutory instruments to receive treatment in the same way as research councils.
Clause 3 is concerned with the financial and accounting regime within which colleges' commercial activities are to be conducted. It provides that loans by local authorities to companies for the purposes of the Bill are to bear interest at rates of interest no lower than those laid down by the Secretary of State with the consent of the Treasury. It is neither desirable nor practicable for central Government to regulate in detail the terms of each and every loan. The basis on which the general power here sought will be applied will be for discussion with the local authority associations and others concerned.

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These consultations will also cover the accounting arrangements for commercial activities under this Bill, which have been kept to the bare minimum consistent with proper accountability. But the specified revenue accounts, which will follow generally accepted accounting principles as they apply to local authorities, will also be important for monitoring the growth of activity in this field. The accounts for limited companies will of course have to conform with company law, and this Bill does not cut across that in any way. Clause 3 also deals with the important question of surpluses and deficits, about which I spoke earlier.
Clause 4, which extends to England, Wales and Scotland, repeals Section 28(b) of the Sex Discrimination Act 1975. Students already admitted to single-sex courses before the repeal comes into effect will not be affected by it: they will complete their courses in the normal way. And we are not proposing to amend Section 28(a) of the Act, which permits discrimination in further education courses in physical training; for example, to allow women's keep fit classes in adult education.
The remaining clauses are minor and supplementary provisions. Clause 5 anticipates arrangements for the repeal in Northern Ireland of the provision corresponding to Section 28(b) of the Sex Discrimination Act 1975; Clause 6 delineates the Bill's geographical extent; and Clause 7 provides for different sections of the Bill to be brought into force at different times.
We do not expect any increase in public expenditure as a result of this measure. On the contrary, it is hoped that the Bill will permit further education establishments to earn significant income, and that this income will be profitably reinvested within the institutions. This may in some cases necessitate some initial investment by the institution which might take the form of some addition to staff complements. But in every such case the cost of additional staff must be recoverable in full by the charges made for supplies in accordance with the Bill's full-cost charging regime.
The Government's hope and expectation is that the Bill will result in the creation of additional wealth and additional jobs in the private sector, both in companies set up specifically by local authorities for the purpose, and in existing businesses as the innovations at present locked into polytechnics and colleges are released for the benefit of the nation as a whole.
In conclusion, I must emphasise that this Bill is an enabling provision. It will, subject to the will of Parliament, forge the missing link in what should be a continuous chain, leading from basic research at the laboratory bench, through investigation and development of specific applications to full-blooded exploitation in the market place. The process will require both intellectual and practical skills at every step along the way. But if the seeds sown today are to bear fruit, staff in polytechnics and colleges of further education must grasp the opportunities offered here for outgoing collaboration with business enterprise. This may call for a corresponding change in practices and attitudes of industrial companies, with an acknowledgment by them that further education
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institutions have expertise and technical skills which would both benefit existing businesses and help generate new ones. Together, education and industry stand to make real gains—both financial and otherwise—which can only be of benefit to the nation's economy and culture. This Bill deserves your Lordships' support; I ask for that support and I beg to move.
Moved, That the Bill be now read a second time.—(The Earl of Swinton.)
3.33 p.m.
Baroness David: My Lords, I should like to thank the Minister for his rapid explanation of the Bill. We wish from these Benches to give a general welcome to this small Bill, which enlarges the powers of local authorities to enable maintained and further and higher education establishments to embark on commercial activities, as described in paragraph 9 of the consultative document. This is preferable to the other option described in paragraph 8 of that consultative document, which would have given appropriate local authority institutions corporate status as limited companies.
There is greater freedom for local authorities in the preferred option, and that is always something to be applauded. Incidentally, the Bill may bring a measure of order into various enterprises which currently exist on the fringes of legality; the noble Earl the Minister mentioned that point.
I am always pleased when public sector institutions are put on the same footing as universities and grant-aided colleges. This measure frees the maintained sector colleges from the constraints which prevent them from undertaking commercial activities in conjunction with industry and using the ensuing income for their own purposes. Anything that encourages communication and understanding between industry and our colleges of further education is a good thing. I believe that in many areas such understanding is very good, but I dare say that it could be improved in others.
As the Government are doing something in this respect to make matters fairer as between the public and the university sectors of higher education, perhaps they will consider going further—maybe by reducing the difference in capital expenditure between the two. For example, in 1985–86 there is a figure of £66 million capital expenditure in the public sector and £134 million in the university sector—twice as much. There is also a big difference in the unit of resource.
The Lindop Report published yesterday on Academic Validation in Public Sector Higher Education asks for legislation to give some polytechnics as much freedom as universities in looking after their own academic standards; so things are moving.
Maintained colleges are now educating as many students as are the universities, it must be remembered. If local authority colleges are to sell their expertise and their research investigations, perhaps Ministers will consider increasing the very small sums devoted to research in the polytechnics. I want to ask the Minister whether any measures will be taken to protect copyright in any inventions that may be made,

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owing to these new powers, and will there be the facility of taking out patents?
As there was general agreement by the local authority associations, and by the rest consulted, that the way forward proposed in the Bill was the right way to go, I am curious to know why the department took so long to draft the Bill. The consultative document was received by LEAs on 27th March 1984. Comments were invited by 30th April—only one month later. Since then a whole year has gone by. Has the Minister any explanation to offer?
The need for enhancing the relationship between higher education and industry was highlighted in the ACARD/ABRC Report, Improving Links Between Higher Education and Industry, published in June 1983, which was mentioned by the noble Earl. It is satisfactory that two of the recommendations in that report are being implemented in this Bill. One hopes that as much attention is being paid by the Government to the report's other recommendations, such as producing,
"an identified amount for research activity"—
that is, in polytechnics—
"analogous to UGC support of universities".
I should like to quote the two recommendations appropriate to this Bill. The first is that,
"The DES in collaboration with the Department of the Environment … should take action to provide … an amendment of the law in order to allow polytechnics to negotiate contracts and undertake consultancies".
That was Recommendation viii(c). Secondly:
"Higher education institutions should normally have the direct responsibility for ensuring that inventions arising from publicly-funded research are exploited. Any proceeds accruing to the institution … should remain with it and not be offset by any clawback arrangement".
That was Recommendation xi.
So far as clawback and financial accountability are concerned, I should like to make a few comments and ask a number of questions. Can the House be told that the total receipts from profitable trading may be used for equipment purposes without counting against the LEAs' prescribed capital expenditure? I was a little shaken at hearing the Minister say in his speech that a major share of such profits would be kept by the colleges. I hope that he will clarify that point when he comes to reply.
There is a major matter of principle in regard to commercial activities. By their very nature such activities may produce losses as well as gains. The first duty of local authorities is to provide money to their establishments for the education of students—not for research and not for consultancy. Losses on the college budget could be borne only at the expense of students, and that would be deplorable. Are there to be any safeguards to prevent that happening? Will there be any safeguards to ensure that revenue generated by commercial activities will not be used to support ordinary teaching posts or posts which are central to the on-going educational function of the institution? It would be wrong for established teaching posts central to courses and their development to be subject to the vagaries of the market.
Will there not be a need for more people to be employed by a college, having the necessary financial
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or administrative qualifications, to exert the necessary financial control? The Explanatory Memorandum states that,
"the costs of such staff should be covered in full by additional revenue accruing to the authority".
Let us trust that that is not just a pious hope.
At the end of the day the local authority itself could have the residual liability, as the Bill says in Clause 3(5). I ask the Minister: will there be the possibility of each institution carrying over gains and/or losses from one financial year to another? Will there be provision for a roll forward? This is very important.
Doubts must still be expressed on whether the Bill will result in the declared aim of the consultative paper, especially as, first, an LEA is still required to return all its income through its general collection account, and, secondly, presumably its trading activities will be liable to VAT. Perhaps that can be answered.
On specific clauses, as regards Clause 2(2)(a), dealing with the power to lend money, assisted establishments are generally registered charities. If they themselves engage in trade at a profit, under Clause 2(4), their charitable status will be at risk. Clause 2(2)(b) would not in itself be able to avoid the charity problem. Most charities seem to have got round the Charity Commissioners by setting up trading companies which covenant their profits to the "parent" organisation. But Clause 2(3), which says that any agreement,
"must be supervised or controlled by a person employed at the establishment"
might make this possibility more difficult as the Charity Commissioners are not always ready to accept this. Perhaps these are matters for Committee.
The local authority associations will have to be consulted further and these matters cleared up. There will certainly have to be a circular or secondary regulations issued by the department to make clear how the Secretary of State intends to use his considerable powers under Clauses 2 and 3, which deal with loans and the keeping of accounts. Can we please have an assurance that there will be thorough consultations with the local authority associations before these are issued?
On the quite separate issue of Clause 4 which has found its way into this Bill and sits rather oddly, I understand that this is introduced—in fact, the Minister said so—in order to catch up with events as single-sex courses for intending teachers of PE are being phased out, and that the clause is so drafted that present students can complete their courses. Clause 7 says that Sections 1, 2 and 3 of the Act,
"shall come into force at the end of the period of two months beginning with the day on which it is passed".
However, paragraph 10 of the consultative document recognises that amendments might well be needed to the articles of government of an establishment involving itself in commercial enterprise and also to the local authority's financial regulations and scheme of further education under Section 42 of the Education Act 1944 (if any exist). Will there be time for this to happen before the two months are up?
As I said at the beginning of my speech, we give this small Bill a welcome. The Minister said that there had

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been a number of education Bills, and indeed there have since this Government came to power. But I would prefer, and I am sure a great many people would prefer, a much bigger Bill dealing with further and adult education, and with all the issues raised in the document The Legal Basis of Further Education published in June 1981. The noble Earl will know how frequently I asked questions in this House, of both him and his predecessor dealing with education matters, about when there would be some action and positive response to that document drawn up by officials from both the DES and from the local authorities and chaired by the Under-Secretary of State at the department, Mr. Noel Thompson.
Finally, I was told there was to be no action. I was greatly disappointed and disheartened, as were very many others involved and interested in further and adult education. It is regrettable, to put it mildly, that the Secretary of State has not seen fit to be bold enough to produce very necessary and positive legislation in this field. Luckily, there is the phrase "and for connected purposes" in the Long Title of the Bill, so I give warning that we may well try to add something at Committee stage in an effort to remedy at least some of the anomalies and fill some of the gaps that there are now in this very important area.
3.44 p.m.
Lord Rochester: My Lords, from these Benches I should like to join in thanking the noble Earl, Lord Swinton, for the way in which he has described the basic purposes of the Bill. As was said in the consultative document issued earlier by the Department of Education and Science, and as the noble Earl has this afternoon repeated, the ability of business to compete and of further education establishments to perform their primary function of teaching might each be substantially enhanced by increased contact between them: educational staff by being better informed about industrial developments and those engaged in business by keeping abreast of academic knowledge in their field.
I have often advocated the need for closer links between education and industry, both as a means of attracting more people of good quality into industry, particularly, I should add, into those organisations most closely involved in the development of new technologies, and more generally in order to increase the esteem in which manufacturing industry is held in society and particularly among students. It seems altogether reasonable, therefore, that polytechnics and colleges of higher and further education should now be enabled, in conjunction with industry, to engage, as universities can and already do, in commercial activities which derive from their own educational function. Short of giving further education establishments corporate status as limited companies, this can only come about if the powers of local authorities, of which most of these institutions are, in effect, departments, are enlarged as under this Bill.
I think it must be recognised that the scope for engaging in activities such as contracted research and exploitation of inventions will in general, as I see it, be much greater in polytechnics than in colleges of higher
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and further education. In case I should be called upon to contribute briefly to this debate this afternoon I took care last weekend to talk the matter over with the principal of the college of further education in that part of Cheshire in which I live. As he put it, in jest, not much commercial activity is likely to be generated in woodwork and plastering. Nevertheless, I was interested to learn at first hand from him that both he and his fellow principals on the ground, so to speak, in Cheshire were of the opinion that it was right for this Bill to have application across the whole field of higher and further education.
In all this, as the noble Earl stressed, it is essential to have in mind that the primary purpose of further education establishments is teaching; increasingly, perhaps, of a vocational kind, but teaching nevertheless. The purpose of industry, on the other hand, is to produce goods and services for the benefit of the community. A yardstick of the success of industrial organisations in doing this is the making of profits. These two purposes are very different from each other, and in my view therefore we need to ensure that if further education institutions are to engage in activities of a commercial and profit-orientated kind, this should never be to the detriment of their fundamental teaching function. In that connection therefore I was glad of what the noble Earl had to say.
As to the financial and accounting provisions contained in Clause 3 of the Bill—and here I come nearer to one of the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady David—I hope that if in the early stages of some project a deficit should arise, local education authorities will find it possible to interpret these provisions in such a way that no unduly harsh penalties are incurred, either financially or by individual members of the staff of some educational establishment inexperienced in commercial matters which finds itself in deficit.
In facilitating the establishment at a university with which I am connected, of a company embarking on certain business activities, it has been found necessary to make special financial arrangements covering this crucial introductory period. As in the setting up of any small firm, risk-taking is of the essence of the enterprise. So I should like to ask the noble Earl, Lord Swinton, to say when he comes to reply whether the Government are entirely satisfied that the Bill as it stands deals adequately with this point.
In relation to Clause 4, which excepts courses designed for teachers of physical training from the provisions of the Sex Discrimination Act 1975 making sexual discrimination in education unlawful, I need only say that this is welcome.
My Lords, subject to the few qualifications to which I have referred my noble friends and I are happy to acquiesce in the provisions of this Bill.
3.52 p.m.
Lord Graham of Edmonton: My Lords, like my noble friend Lady David I rise to give a general welcome to this Bill. All my adult life I have had the pleasure and privilege of enjoying the provisions made available by a number of adult and further educational institutions—the National Council of Labour Colleges, the Workers' Educational Association, the

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Co-operative Union, the Co-operative College and, latterly, the Open University. In a debate of this kind I believe it is not inappropriate to point out the way in which an institution like the Open University has for a number of years been doing the very thing which the Bill sets out to enable others to do.
Although the chief concern of the Open University is in the areas of adult and higher education rather than of further education, its charter gives it an objective to promote the educational wellbeing of the community generally. The role of the Open University should not be overlooked in this debate. The Open University is a major national educational resource which has already made a significant contribution to education at all levels. Although it is best known for its degree programme, through which nearly 70,000 people have graduated—and I have the pleasure and privilege of being one of them—it also provides education in non-degree courses to about 50,000 people annually. It produces high-quality teaching and training materials, many of which are of enormous value to colleges of further education.
Indeed, as the vice-chancellor of the Open University recently pointed out, the university is now the largest training agency in Britain. It has an important role to play in collaborating with local education authorities and institutions of further education. I believe it would be helpful if I gave some illustrations of what the Open University does, along the same lines as the noble Earl the Minister when he indicated some of the things he thought could be done under this new Bill.
Firstly, the updating of college staff in technical subjects may be achieved through the study of Open University courses in scientific and technological updating and management education. Similarly, college staff may also use Open University courses to update themselves managerially, or to obtain specific marketing expertise. A new course from the Open Business School is entitled "Introduction to Marketing". Discussions are in progress with the Department of Education and Science on specific funding to produce case studies of the marketing of educational and consultancy services by colleges—very appropriate to what we are discussing in this Bill. These would be added to the basic "Introduction to Marketing" course to make a college-specific variant.
Another important area of expertise related to what is envisaged by the Bill is the development of teaching materials. The Open University has unrivalled expertise in this area which has been encapsulated in a course entitled "Market Self-Instructional Material for Adults", which is available both for industrial trainers and also for those in the educational sector.
It is also relevant to mention that the Open University is in negotiation with a number of colleges, local collaborative projects and open-tech delivery projects for collaboration in the delivery of its continuing education courses. The envisaged arrangements would involve registered students obtaining the tutorial support necessary for their Open University study from local institutions. From the point of view of the colleges, this arrangement will give them access to the high-quality Open University materials in areas
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such as robotics and software engineering, where there is a dearth of other materials. It will give them a wider range of courses to offer to local clients, and it will give them additional opportunities to obtain consultancy contracts. That is what the Bill is all about.
From the Open University point of view it will boost the numbers studying in these important high-technology areas, and will capitalise on the local college's client base of small firms, which are very difficult to reach on a national basis. This is a very important development in the national training provision, as are the arrangements being made by the Open University to provide tailored in-house courses for companies and other enterprises—arrangements in which there are considerable opportunities for collaboration with local courses.
Since this Bill covers the issue of retention of income, it is appropriate to welcome the fact that negotiations are continuing between the Open University and the Department of Education and Science to revise the rules under which the university's marketing subsidiary operates so that the university may retain income rather than losing it, as now, from the block grant. I was heartened by the words of my noble friend Lady David when she raised at Committee stage—very pertinently, I believe, and perfectly properly—the extent to which we need to challenge what the noble Earl the Minister said about these institutions being able to retain a part but not all of any profit they may raise.
A successful conclusion to these negotiations would place the university in the same position as the polytechnics and other local education authority institutions should this Bill pass into statute, and will help the university to continue to be, in the words of the Secretary of State's visiting committee, a national and international success.
3.59 p.m.
The Earl of Swinton: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady David, and to the two noble Lords who have spoken. They have all spoken in favour of this Bill, and have supported its principles. The noble Baroness made a number of detailed points to which she will doubtless return on Committee stage, and I look forward to that. I can also say that, simultaneously, consultations are being conducted with the local authority associations and others with regard to some of the subordinate arrangements as to accounts, and so on.
We shall have the benefit of this advice as the Bill proceeds through Parliament, although not, I fear, by Committee stage in this place. Perhaps I ought to fire one warning shot across the noble Baroness's bows, because when asked to introduce this Bill in this House I was told by my officials it was uncontroversial. "Oh, yes", said I, "but I am sure, knowing her interests in higher and further education, there will be a number of things the noble Baroness will try and attach to the Bill". She noted during her speech that the Bill referred to related purposes, and that she would therefore be in order. I was told that she probably would not, but we shall come across that in due course. I think that this is a fairly small Bill, as she said, in a fairly narrow field,

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and I cannot, I am afraid, offer her an awful lot of hope that she will be successful in those aims.
There were, however, a number of points on which the noble Baroness and the noble Lord spoke which I am sure they wish me to comment on immediately. I was rather surprised when the noble Baroness said that there was a delay in producing the Bill. I thought that we had done rather well. As I am sure all noble Lords realise, it is not very easy to bring legislation forward, particularly in a case like this, where, as I said, we consulted widely. We endeavoured to take everybody's point of view into account and to reach a consensus which was favourable to all, and I think that we have done that. I may say that there were also a number of departments involved in the drafting of the Bill, so it was not a particularly easy one to draft. Quite honestly, I think that we deserve a pat on the back for the speed with which we have produced it.
I think that the noble Baroness and the noble Lord, Lord Rochester, and, in a slightly marginal way, the noble Lord, Lord Graham, mentioned the question of profits. This is a very tricky one. It is part of the natural symmetry of business that the man who has carried the risk should also reap the rewards. But that is a concept which has proved particularly difficult to impart into the Bill. The crux of the problem is who actually carries the risks. We have done our utmost to build a ring-fence round the commercial activities authorised by the Bill. There are provisions in the Bill for charging deficits, first, to any fund set up for establishments' commercial activities or for their other activities; failing that, to any general fund set up for the purpose of activities under this Bill; and only in the very last resort to the general rate fund.
But I am sure your Lordships realise that in the final analysis it is the ratepayer who stands behind these ventures. It would be in the proper spirit of entrepreneurialism if authorities assume that profits, in the same way as any losses, accrue to the funds in the same order as losses—that is, first to the establishment itself, secondly, to any general fund for activities under the Bill, such as further investments in other similar projects; and only at the end to the general rate fund.
We certainly hope that authorities will follow that pattern, but there is no legal formulation which can guarantee it, and it would be futile to attempt one. Even if authorities were required to credit all profits to the institution, there would be no way to prevent them taking those profits into account when determining the size of the institution's budget next year for its educational purposes. But we are confident that authorities will behave reasonably and responsibly. They will recognise, just as the Government do in respect of universities' private income, that confiscation of the profits will also remove the incentive to earn any more.
Baroness David: My Lords, while the Minister is speaking about financial arrangements, can he give me an answer as to whether the institution will be able to carry on the gain or loss from one year to another—the roll-over principle?
The Earl of Swinton: My Lords, I am afraid that I shall have to write to the noble Baroness on that point.
The noble Baroness also asked about another rather tricky and technical point, and that is the question of patents, copyright and so on. The Bill rests on the assumption that an authority at least in part, owns, and hence can exploit, the results of work carried out by its staff and students. Such rights would include patents, software copyrights, registered designs and other types of valuable know-how. In the commercial world, ownership of such rights is usually established in the employee's contract of service. This may not be the case in relation to teachers' contracts of service; and both in relation to teachers and students the question of ownership may most readily be resolved by individual negotiation taking account of the particular circumstances obtaining in each case. The department will be consulting those concerned with a view to establishing whether it would be helpful to issue guidelines on this matter.
Finally, I should just like to stress that the Bill is enabling. It imposes no additional duties on authorities and does nothing to restrict their powers. The activities which it concerns are, and will always remain, secondary to the main functions of teaching, industrial and vocational training and the carrying out of research for the advancement of knowledge generally. I think that the noble Lord, Lord Rochester, made a very strong point on that. But we believe that polytechnics and colleges have enormous potential which, if developed as a result of this Bill's passage, will bring real gains to the institutions themselves—just as the noble Lord, Lord Graham of Edmonton, said has been happening in the case of the Open University—to their staff and to their industrial collaborators.
Some of those gains may not be reducible to financial terms. A better appreciation by teaching staff of the entrepreneurial spirit which informs the productive parts of British industry and an understanding by industrialists of the environment most conducive to innovation in education and research establishments would be valuable extra bonuses.
This Bill will enable the considerable and productive overlap of interest between business and local authority further education to be expanded to their mutual advantage. I commend it to your Lordships.
On Question, Bill read a second time, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

EC Budget Council
4.6 p.m.
The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Minister for the Arts (The Earl of Gowrie): My Lords, with the leave of the House, I shall now repeat a Statement being made in another place by my honourable friend the Economic Secretary to the Treasury. The Statement is as follows:
"With permission, Mr. Speaker, I should like to report to the House on the outcome of Tuesday's Budget Council in Luxembourg.
"The Council met a delegation from the European Parliament led by the President of the

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Parliament, M. Pfimlin, to hear the Parliament's views on the proposals contained in the Commission's Letter of Amendment No. 3 to the 1985 Preliminary Draft Budget.
"An essential feature of the Draft Budget from a United Kingdom viewpoint is its provision for payment of the United Kingdom's 1984 1,000 mecu abatement on the revenue side of the Budget. This will take place when the Own Resources Decision has been ratified by all member states.
"On the expenditure side the Council agreed on additional provision of 1,955 mecu of agricultural expenditure. The total figure agreed for agriculture in the 1985 Budget is consistent with the Commission's price proposals for 1985.
"The Council increased food aid appropriations by 26 mecu to compensate for changes in world grain prices in order to ensure the fulfilment of commitments on levels of food aid made at the Dublin European Council in December. In the light of the European Council's agreement in March, provision of 70 mecu was entered into the reserve Chapter 100 for Integrated Mediterranean Programmes.
"In response to a request from Belgium the Council agreed in conjunction with the Commission to re-examine estimates of the VAT tax base for 1985 in each member state to verify the accuracy of the existing figures. The results will be reported to the Council in due course.
"Consequent on decisions taken by the Budget Council the total supplementary finance required in 1985 in excess of the Community's own resources is 1981 mecu. This figure is nearly 1,000 mecu lower than that originally requested by the Commission. In accordance with the Conclusions of the Foreign Affairs Council on 17th to 21st March the Budget Council confirmed that this supplementary finance of 1981 mecu would be made available in the form of non-reimbursable advances through an Inter-Governmental Agreement. I will place a copy of the text in the Library as soon as the definitive version is received.
"I made it clear that payment by the United Kingdom under the Inter-Governmental Agreement would be dependent upon the prior approval of Parliament. This is recorded in the text of the agreement. Member states' contributions to the Inter-Governmental Agreement will be related to their VAT rates in the Budget. Based on the estimated United Kingdom 1985 VAT share of 21.34 per cent. the United Kingdom's gross contribution will be some 423 mecu. This will be partially offset by additional receipts and our remaining net contribution will qualify for the two-thirds Fontainebleau abatement.
"The Council concluded by establishing a draft budget for 1985 and sent it to the European Parliament.
"The agreement provides a realistic basis for the 1985 European Budget and is a satisfactory outcome for the United Kingdom; the overall figures both for agricultural expenditure and for the Inter-Governmental Agreement were lower than had been sought by other member states; and the net cost to
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the United Kingdom will, as a result of the Fontainebleau mechanism, be significantly less than the net cost of the last year's Inter-Governmental Agreement."
My Lords, that concludes the Statement.
Lord Stoddart of Swindon: My Lords, I should like to thank the noble Earl for repeating the Statement which was made in another place. First, may I ask him this. Would it not be preferable in future if figures in Statements relating to EEC finance were given in pounds sterling, which we all understand, rather than in mecus, which in fact we do not?
Is this not yet another huge injection of cash—£1,200 million, I believe it is—to feed the gargantuan, insatiable and monstrous CAP? Can the noble Earl confirm that the total gross cost to the United Kingdom will be £245 million? Will he explain in detail if possible how that is to be rebated, and what the actual net cost to the United Kingdom will be?
Can the noble Earl also say why the Government, who are so stringent in their budgetary management at home, and are even now planning to cut benefits to the poorer sections of our community, are so ready to agree to enormous increases of expenditure by the EEC?
Furthermore, does he not agree that it is a scandal that the EEC is now spending £20 million a day on destroying and dumping food surpluses, to the detriment of our own Commonwealth and the third world countries, when it is doing so little, in terms of its size, to assist the starving in Ethiopia and elsewhere?
May I also ask the noble Earl what arrangements there will be to obtain parliamentary approval of the Inter-Governmental Agreement? I ask him that because I think he will agree that we do not want a repetition of what happended last December, when the Government were challenged by Mr. Oliver Smedley through the courts. Will we have a Bill and will both Houses have an opportunity to debate the agreement properly?
May I also ask the noble Earl when we are likely to receive the £600 million rebate agreed at Fontainebleau? Will the Government give the assurance that the European Assembly will not be allowed by the Government to dictate how that is spent?
Finally, concerning re-examination of the VAT tax base for 1985, which was referred to in the Statement, how do the Government expect this to affect the United Kingdom overall net contribution?
Viscount Chandos: My Lords, on behalf of these Benches I, too, should like to thank the noble Earl, Lord Gowrie, for repeating the Statement made in another place. We on these Benches welcome the agreement of the draft Community Budget for 1985 and the satisfactory outcome for the United Kingdom itself in the form of the 1 billion ecu abatement in our contribution. I also welcome the opportunity to respond to the noble Earl on an occasion when I think his wrath will be directed more in the direction of other Benches than in the direction of myself.

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The modest reduction in the share of the Budget taken by agricultural expenditure is particularly welcome. I am sure many parts of your Lordships' House will agree there are still many areas outside agriculture in which the European Communities have a substantial contribution to play in the economic, industrial and social life of not only the United Kingdom but also all other member states.
In view of the United Kingdom's estimated theoretical commitment under the Inter-Governmental Agreement, of over 400 million ecu, which represents more than 5 per cent. of the Government's projected borrowing requirement, I wonder whether the noble Earl can tell us whether time can be given, at the earliest opportunity, to debate the report of the European Communities Committee on the decisions of future financing for the Community. Secondly, I wonder whether the noble Earl can give any figure for the increase in aid to developing countries under the terms of the Lomé Convention, at a time when the plight of developing countries is so acute that it must eclipse even the need for financial stringency within the Communities?
Finally, in view of what the Government themselves have described as the satisfactory outcome for the United Kingdom of these budget negotiations, and in view, at the same time, of the continuing volatility of the exchange rate and the widespread desire in industry for greater stability of those exchange rates, would not the political gesture of the United Kingdom becoming a full member of the European monetary system not now be wholly appropriate?
4.16 p.m.
The Earl of Gowrie: My Lords, I am grateful to both noble Lords for their reception of the Statement. Perhaps I am a little more grateful to the noble Viscount, Lord Chandos, than to the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart of Swindon, not least because it surprises me, indeed, perhaps it rather gratifies me, that I appear to cast such terror into the bosom of the noble Viscount, Lord Chandos, though I had not noticed it previously.
I do not think that this is the time or place to debate agricultural support systems or the common agricultural policy. I am not even sure whether I would be the appropriate person. However, the shortcomings of the common agricultural policy and the persistent, and in many directions successful, efforts of the United Kingdom to reform it are well known.
I should just say to noble Lords, including those who are considerably more expert in agricultural matters than I am, that all agricultural support systems—including native ones which we have known in this country under successive Governments—produce imbalances and yet most of us are agreed that free markets in food do not work very easily. Thus it is a constant and uphill struggle.
Nevertheless, I think that the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, was too stringent. The total figure for agriculture is rigorous and realistic and is certainly lower than that sought by other member states. The increase was unavoidable, mainly in order to finance the rundown of intervention stocks from their present high levels, which are the result of setting support
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prices too high in the past. What matters now is to prevent intervention stocks building up again by reducing the real level of support. The Agricultural Council took the first steps last year, for example with the milk levy. The Commission's price proposals this year are a further step in the right direction.
I rather share the irritation of the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart of Swindon, with Euro-speech and Euro-figures. However, we have to use common terms. He is right to say that the deficit to be financed by the Inter-Governmental Agreement is £1·2 billion.
In respect of ourselves, the United Kingdom share is £245 million. However, given the Fontainebleau agreement successfully negotiated by the Government, we enjoy an abatement of two-thirds. Therefore, although I cannot give an exact figure, our net contribution is about £40 million, which will be lower than our contribution to the inter-governmental arrangement last year.
Both noble Lords asked me about foreign aid, not least to Ethiopia. It has of course been considerable. There has been considerable European response and, I am glad to say, very considerable response from this country to that tragedy. However, I do not think that this is a direct common agricultural policy, or European budgetary issue; but I shall try to find out what are the figures that the noble Viscount, Lord Chandos, sought.
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart of Swindon, asked me whether the House would be asked to approve the inter-governmental arrangement. My advice is that Parliament will indeed be asked to approve it, but I do not yet know in what form the Government will be seeking parliamentary approval. Last year I think it was in a money Bill, so it did not come before your Lordships' House. I do not yet know what the arrangement is for this year.
Baroness Llewelyn-Davies of Hastoe: My Lords, while I quite understand that the noble Earl thinks this is not a suitable opportunity for a debate on the CAP, may I ask him a question about the Community farm prices? The House will know that these negotiations are still being carried on. Can he tell us something about what effect, if any, the outcome of these negotiations may have on the new budget and on the inter-governmental agreement?
The Earl of Gowrie: My Lords, I will certainly endeavour to do so. My advice is that the Council has now agreed a draft budget for the whole of 1985. That will now go before the European Parliament. Our judgment is that this is a rigorous and fair budget in respect of the agricultural contribution but that inevitably, as you seek to go down, there are some costs in the first year. This is why we have had to increase the overdraft, so to say, in this year.
I apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart of Swindon. He asked me one question which I did not answer, as to when we are going to get our abatement for 1984. The agreement at Fontainebleau was that the 1,000 million ecu abatement would be recieved by the United Kingdom before the end of calendar 1985.
Lord Bruce of Donington: My Lords, now that the draft budget of the Community for 1985 has been

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firmly established, is the noble Lord prepared to give the House and, indeed, the public the reasons why Her Majesty's Government were able to agree proposals contained in the budget for the expenditure of 3,771 million ecu, or £2,187 million, on the public and private storage of invervention stocks in the Community—a gross waste of public money, of which some £459 million is being subscribed out of the pockets of the British taxpayer? Will he say, in view of all the talk there has been about the imposition of budgetary discipline, particularly in the light of Article 2 of the Fontainebleau agreement, what active steps Her Majesty's Government will take on behalf of the people of Great Britain as a whole for avoiding and abolishing this grossly wasteful and entirely unwarranted expenditure of public funds?
The Earl of Gowrie: My Lords, I think the noble Lord, Lord Bruce of Donington is making, even by his standards, a curiously hysterical intervention. The fact of the matter is that this is a rigorous settlement which the United Kingdom has been in the lead in negotiating. Our own share is less than it was last year, and intervention stocks are on their way down. There is no system of agricultural support known to me which will not provide imbalances and surpluses in some years. One only has to look at the problems that other economies around the world have in this respect to know that. That will be the case unless we all go back to fundamentally agricultural economies, and I do not think that even the noble Lord is suggesting that we should do that.
In my respectful judgment, it is a mistake to talk down this settlement, which, as I say, is a rigorous one. It is the kind of settlement which, in no less trenchant tones, the noble Lord was demanding only last year.
Lord Gladwyn: My Lords, perhaps I may say that, subject to eventual agreement on agricultural prices—which I believe is being held up because of objections by the German Government and efforts of the German Government to protect their own small farmers in Bavaria—on these Benches I share exactly the view of those on the Benches immediately behind us that this Statement is broadly satisfactory. I think that the Government have done what they could in the circumstances.
Perhaps I may ask one question. I understand that the Council met a delegation of the European Parliament to hear the Parliament's views on the proposals contained in the Commission's letter of amendment. What happens if the Parliament does not agree? It is probable that the European Parliament will agree, but what happens if the European Parliament does not agree?
4.25 p.m.
The Earl of Gowrie: My Lords, I am very grateful for the welcome given by the noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn, with his knowledge and experience of the issue. He has posed a hypothetical question to me. I do not think the Parliament would be so foolish as not to agree, but if they do not agree, we do not have a budget.
Lord Harris of Greenwich: My Lords, may I ask the noble Earl one question? He may recall that my noble friend Lord Chandos asked him specifically what the attitude of the Government now is going to be in the light of the current situation so far as the European monetary system is concerned. Can we now have a reply to that?
The Earl of Gowrie: My Lords, I perhaps should have referred to the noble Viscount's question; I apologise to the House. I would have referred to it by saying, very respectfully and gently, that I think it is another issue. It is, indeed, another issue which we are going to discuss next week, and I suspect I shall have drawn the short straw once again in respect to that debate.
Lord Molloy: My Lords, the noble Earl, Lord Gowrie, was quite right when he said that this is hardly the time to have a debate on this subject, despite the fact that it involves the Government spending multi-millions of the taxpayers' money. Some of us are really concerned that the noble Earl, Lord Gowrie, is so very complacent about that, and that, when someone feels a little upset about it, he borders on terms of being offensive when he describes my noble friend Lord Bruce as being hysterical. If I may say so, I think my noble friend is very well-armed with facts, figures and experience in the European Parliament and, indeed, with regard to the EEC. So I wonder whether the noble Earl, who is a fair-minded man, will take back to the Leader of the House the feeling that on a subject of this importance we ought to have the sort of debate that he himself seemed to indicate we ought to have.
The Earl of Gowrie: My Lords, I am naturally very glad that the noble Lord, Lord Molloy, is taking a stern view about the use of taxpayers' money. In respect of domestic politics I wish he took a similarly stern view from time to time. Of course, European expenditure affects domestic economies as well. I think "strictures" is probably too strong a word, but I was responding to what seemed to me to be perhaps an exaggeratedly aggressive tone on the part of the noble Lord, Lord Bruce of Donington. I thought that he might for once be rather pleased with what we had succeeded in bringing off, but I suppose that was naïve of me.
Lord Stoddart of Swindon: My Lords, may I thank the noble Earl for the pretty full way in which he has answered my question; but there are a couple of points which I should like him to answer upon which he did not touch. I asked him whether he could give the assurance that the Euro Assembly will not be allowed to determine how this £600 million rebate will be spent. I mean it in this sense. I believe that rebate is the property of the British Government, and although I might not agree with the way they spend that money, by God, I uphold their right to spend it in accordance with our own constitution.
Secondly—I appreciate he may not be able to answer this one now, but perhaps he will write to me—on the question of the re-examination of the VAT base for 1985, how is this likely to affect United Kingdom overall net contribution since, if the VAT tax base was increased considerably for the United Kingdom, it could affect our contribution very

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considerably? Perhaps the noble Earl will write to me if he does not have the answer to that last question.
The Earl of Gowrie: My Lords, on VAT, the agreement so far is that the VAT rate would go to 1.4 per cent next year, but there is the Fontainebleau abatement, where the United Kingdom is concerned, which will work in our favour. The noble Lord will also be aware that my right honourable friend the Chancellor, in his Budget speech, ruled out changes to the VAT base. The noble Lord, Lord Stoddart of Swindon, is indeed right in saying that it is the British Parliament which will dispose of the expenditure.

Education (Assisted Places) Regulations 1985
4.31 p.m.
The Earl of Swinton The Earl of Swinton rose to move, That the regulations laid before the House on 20th March be approved. [16th Report from the Joint Committee.]
The noble Earl said: My Lords, these draft regulations consolidate the previous regulations (as amended) governing the detailed operation of the assisted places scheme, and propose some limited further amendments. The scheme, which was established to widen the educational opportunites available to children from less well-off families, has now been running for four years, and noble Lords may have observed that the full set of regulations and amending regulations was just beginning to seem unwieldy. It would, I am sure, be to the convenience of noble Lords and also to all the schools in the scheme if they could turn to a single set of consolidated regulations. That is what has been prepared for the House to consider today.
For the most part, there is little change from the regulations as previously approved. There are some very minor technical changes, with which I will not weary noble Lords. I shall just draw out the main changes. Regulation 4 has been slightly changed, in line with recent changes in the mandatory awards regulations, to extend eligibility to those who, though not technically refugees or having asylum, nevertheless have formal permission to stay in this country. Regulation 11 provides for the normal allowance against parental income for a dependant, when working out contributions to fees, to be increased from £850 to £900, which is broadly in line with inflation. It also provides for the actual amount of any contribution to a dependant's mandatory award to be deducted where this is greater than £900, removing an anomaly which affected very few but which was an injustice for them nonetheless.
Regulation 15 provides for the income scale for assessing parental contributions to be set out hereafter in a separate schedule. This is done purely for the convenience of those handling the regulations as a working document. However successful the Government may be in keeping down inflation, the income scale will need regular review in order to keep the burden on parents constant as far as possible in real terms.
If I may turn to Schedule 2, noble Lords will see that it proposes a modest uplifting of the scale in line with the modest inflation we are in fact enjoying. It should continue to ensure that something like 40 per cent. of pupils come from families with gross incomes that entitle them to full fee remission—that is, in this case, below £6,376 all told. Probably 80 per cent. of them will come from below average income families. As I said in my opening remarks, this has always been, and will remain, a scheme for children from lower income families.
The only other provision in the regulations to which I should draw noble Lords' attention is Regulation 24. As it stands, it is entirely technical. But noble Lords should be aware that Regulation 24 from the previous regulations, as amended, is being omitted. This prohibited participating schools from employing barred teachers. It is being omitted now purely because of technical doubts as to its vires. The prohibition is being introduced instead to schools' participation agreements, and Section 71 of the Education Act 1944 can anyway act as a fail safe device. So the omission of the previous Regulation 24 should have no practical effect. I only refer to it here for the avoidance of misunderstanding. I believe that I have referred to all the changes of any substance against earlier provisions, but if any noble Lords wish further clarification on these or any other matters in the draft regulations, I shall do my best to answer them in closing. I beg to move.
Moved, That the regulations laid before the House on 20th March be approved. [16th Report from the Joint Committee.]—(The Earl of Swinton.)
Baroness David: My Lords, I thank the noble Earl for explaining the regulations. I agree that it is convenient to have the amended regulations all together in one place along with what remains of the old ones. One cannot object to the changes that have been made. However, as the noble Earl may remember, I was very critical last year of the relaxation in the conditions governing applications for assisted places since the first regulations were laid in 1980 so that more pupils could more easily be syphoned off to private establishments. The safeguards that had been written into the 1980 Bill were being gradually whittled away. There do not seem to have been any more changes of that sort this year to make it easier for pupils to transfer, I am glad to say. That does not mean that I can give a general welcome to the regulations because our opposition to the scheme remains as strong as ever.
The financial arrangements have been updated, as the noble Earl said—and generously, as before. The allowance for dependants is increased to £900 from £850, an increase of 5·9 per cent. The level of income at or below which fees are to be wholly remitted is set at £6,376 instead of £6,046, up by 5·5 per cent. The figures in the table in Schedule 2—the scales of remission—are similarly increased by 5·5 per cent. Why, I ask the noble Earl, should the parents of assisted places pupils be treated so much more kindly than students whose grant is to be increased by only 3 per cent., well below the rate of inflation, estimated now to be at least 6 per cent. It seems grossly unfair.

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The estimated cost of the scheme for 1984–85 is, I see, £22,512,000, an increase of £7·5 million over the 1983–84 figure of £14,995,000. In 1985–86, it is estimated to go up by another £8·5 million to £31,137,000. The Government are providing a huge subsidy to the private sector. I was horrified to read an answer to a Written Question put by Mr. Freud in which it was estimated that by 1988 47 schools will have over 20 per cent. of their pupils paid for under the assisted places scheme, 50 schools over 30 per cent. and 40 schools over 40 per cent. The subsidy is clearly extremely important to the survival of these schools. I should like to know the total number of schools now in the scheme.
It is all the harder to bear the increase in expenditure year by year on this scheme when the maintained schools are so hard-pressed for money for books, equipment, the upkeep of their buildings, and so on. Only a week or two ago, the Educational Publishers Council announced that school book sales had fallen by £2 million in 1984 and that a cut in cash of this size means, in real terms, against the general rate index, that schools had over £5 million less to spend on books than in 1983. This comes after repeated reports from HMIs of the shortages and the difficulties that this causes for the education of children. Standards in state schools should be the Secretary of State's first consideration. These cannot be raised as he constantly says he wishes them to be raised if the tools of learning are not available to the pupils.
I should like to know how many assisted pupils are now in sixth-forms, and how many transferred at 16 in September 1984. I should also like to give the noble Earl and the House some information about what is happening in my own area of south Cambridgeshire, where we have two excellent sixth-form colleges. Last September, 86 pupils transferred from private schools at 16, 9 per cent. of the total entry at 16. Applications for September 1985 are 133, again 9 to 10 per cent. of those applying. These are students of very high ability transferring to do A-levels, mostly from the two Perse schools and St. Mary's Convent, Cambridge.
I understand that over the country as a whole, where the number of sixth-form and tertiary colleges is increasing, private schools are losing about one-third of their 16-year-old pupils. I hope, therefore, that the Secretary of State will be proud of the quality of the maintained schools and say that he is proud, and that he will not relax any more of the conditions of the assisted places scheme but will see that adequate funds go into the maintained sector for books, equipment and, above all, teachers.
Lord Ritchie of Dundee: My Lords, I, too, should like to thank the noble Earl the Minister for his presentation of the draft regulations, 1985. I am prepared to go along with the Minister a certain distance in agreeing that the scheme is showing some success within its own limitations. It is, I understand, giving help to certain needy sections of society, and notably one-parent families and families suffering from the impact of unemployment. I believe also that a high proportion of the children of clergy are benefiting from the scheme. These are indeed good sales points. One can appreciate furthermore the
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argument that in considering educational matters it is individual children who matter, and if certain individual children are benefiting one should not quibble too much about the rights and wrongs of the principle.
However, we on these Benches do not like the flavour of it. One recalls the headmaster of Westminster School's dictum that it was like trying to cope with a famine by sending a small party of children to the Ritz for lunch. Dr. Rae also described the scheme as a piece of old-style social engineering. It reminds me of a friend of mine from the war-days who said that when peace came he was going to put a donkey in the middle of a field with the lushest grass imaginable and feed it on ambrosial apples and celestial carrots to make up for all the ill-treatment, brutality and burdens that the donkeys of the Mediterranean area have had to endure down the ages.
However, to be serious, we feel that it is a retrograde step to be siphoning money and talent out of the educational framework within which 94 per cent. of our children have to work. In this latter regard one is particularly concerned about sixth forms. Anyone who has worked in a school, as I have spent my life doing, knows how important are the oldest and ablest children in a school. They set an example, they draw the standard of their juniors up towards their own level, and they determine the image of the school. Even the loss of two or three children of that calibre can adversely affect a school's quality. Of course it may be that the loss of a few from a sixth form may mean the abandonment of a whole course of study. In the year 1983–84 the numbers of sixth form assisted places filled was in excess of 1,400. Presumably, the number will have gone up in the current year. I believe that the take-up this year has been 79 per cent.
One also has to consider the psychological effect on all the children in a school when one or more of their number is lifted out of it. Again from experience, I know the disastrous effect of dividing a class of children into sheep and goats. The good ones will do computer studies and the rest will go on with their adding and subtracting. The most spectacular result of that is a total collapse of confidence on the part of the adders and subtracters. How far is this happening—this tendency for the children left behind to devalue themselves? I suggest that some assessment should be made of it by the headmasters of schools which have lost pupils.
Another loss that a maintained school may suffer as a result of the removal of a child is the loss of one lot of concerned parents who might otherwise have made a valuable contribution in PTA work. Our battered educational system needs nurture and care and money spent on it, rather like the railways and the roads. I suppose that it could be described as part of the infrastructure. To spend money—something like, I believe, £31 million in the coming academic year, a sum much needed for text books and equipment—in a process which favours the few only will increasingly tend to subvert it rather than support it.
It is said that the effect on the maintained sector is minimal owing to the small number of children involved. However, one fears for the future. There are some 20,000 children currently in assisted places. How will it be when the number has risen to twice that figure? I understand that is the intention of the

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Government. The take-up rate among 11 to 13-year olds increased on the last occasion from 87 per cent. to 91 per cent.
I come to the main question that I should like to ask the noble Earl the Minister. Is it correct that when the scheme is fully implemented the number of children enjoying assisted places will be something in the region of 40,000 and no more? I should also like to ask whether the noble Earl can confirm that the system is in fact under-subscribed in that 674 places have not been taken up in the current year, and that this figure would be higher if the stipulation that a participating school should take 60 per cent. from the maintained sector had not been relaxed?
Finally, as a former teacher of English, I should like to ask the noble Earl whether he can do anything to improve the prose style of the compilers of such documents as the one we have before us. I have received some very strange offerings in my 40 years of teaching but none to beat some of the gems in this, which I have had the utmost difficulty in decoding. Perhaps I may give just two examples. The first extract is as follows—and, mark you my Lords, the paragraph has no commas and so I shall read it as it is written. It says:
"Nothing in this Regulation shall prevent a child from being selected for an assisted place in advance of its being ascertained that such a condition is satisfied if the selection is subject to the condition being satisfied".
I think that means as follows: provided it is realised that these conditions must ultimately be fulfilled, there is no reason why a child should not be provisionally selected for an assisted place.
The other extract to which I should like to draw your Lordships' attention is this piece of officialese:
"It shall be a condition that the child … either shall have attained the age of 11 years or, in the case of the child who, if selected for an assisted place, would be provided with education with pupils the generality of whom would have attained that age, be of such age that he will have attained the age of 11 years before 1st August next following the beginning of his first assisted year".
That—if your Lordships would like me to attempt to decode it—I think means that the child must either be 11 years old or, if younger, must be able to work with 11-year olds and must in any case reach his 11th birthday by 1st August in the first assisted year.
4.48 p.m.
The Earl of Swinton: My Lords, it is a real pleasure to welcome the presence of the noble Lord, Lord Ritchie of Dundee, to the Alliance Front Bench, especially after the very good common sense which he expressed as regards the use of the English language in publications. I can only say in my own defence that I take enormous trouble when I write to your Lordships to ensure that the letters are correct grammatically. I am afraid that I do not have the time to go through publications put out by the DES in a similar way. However, we are very pleased to see the noble Lord sitting on the Front Bench and I hope that we shall be crossing swords—if that is not too strong a term—from time to time.
It comes as no surprise to me at all that both the noble Baroness and the noble Lord on the Opposite side should once again use the opportunity of the
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debate on these regulations to attack the scheme as a whole. As the noble Baroness, Lady David, said, this is becoming something of a habit. I cannot understand why the noble Baroness persists in her opposition to the scheme: now into its fourth year, its success and popularity are transparent.
Noble Lords opposite have often enough complained about the exclusivity of the public schools. The assisted places scheme has changed all that. On average, about a third of each intake in a high proportion of the best independent schools in the country now come from low-income or very low-income families. That is all thanks to the assisted places scheme. There are now over 17,300 pupils benefiting from it, and nearly three-quarters of them are from families with below-average incomes. I am delighted to confirm what the noble Lord, Lord Ritchie of Dundee, said—namely, that the majority of these come from single-parent families or have parents who are unemployed. I must say that what the noble Lord said about the children of clergy was news to me. However, I am sure that I would take his word on that. Indeed, perhaps I may answer one of the noble Lord's questions at this stage. When the scheme is fully working we expect there to be about 34,000 children in it. I think that the noble Lord mentioned the figure of 40,000, but it will be slightly less than that. A full 40 per cent. of these children come from families whose gross combined income is less than £6,000. Those who complained—and I must confess that I was one of them—that the scheme would be little more than a subsidy for the rich have long since lost the argument.
Neither is the scheme a means of sustaining those, albeit of lower income, who would somehow have had their children at independent schools anyway. Schools are asked, under the principal regulations, to ensure that at least 60 per cent. of their assisted pupils attended maintained schools immediately before taking up the place. In practice some 70 per cent. of pupils admitted to assisted places come from maintained schools. The scheme is plainly achieving its objective of opening up the best independent schools to children who almost certainly would not otherwise have been able to look on them as an option. Its success has been conspicuous, its popularity widespread and still growing.
The noble Baroness asked me a number of questions. There are 226 schools, I understand, partaking in the scheme at the moment. She asked me about the comparison with student awards. The 3 per cent. increase in awards relates to the amount of the full grant, not the parental income assessment. The parental income assessment, as in the APS, is related to increases in earnings, and the uplift figure is quite similar, allowing for differences in the base from which the two happen to be measured.
There was some consternation expressed by both the noble Baroness and the noble Lord, Lord Ritchie, about the expenditure on books and equipment in maintained schools. I fully accept that there is concern about provision for books and equipment in maintained schools, although provision for pupils rose substantially between 1981–82 and 1982–83, and again slightly between 1982–83 and 1983–84. But we share this concern and have made clear that we regard this as an area which will be given priority within the

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resources available to local authorities. The Government's expenditure plans provide scope for this, but choices ultimately lie with local authorities and the schools themselves.
The noble Baroness asked me about the number of sixth-form pupils, and I think that the noble Lord, Lord Ritchie, did also. The figures I have are that in 1983 there were 745 entrants, and in 1984 817 entrants. I must stress that the number of places across the country for sixth-form entrants is so small that it cannot have much impact on maintained sixth forms.
No assisted places school can recruit more than five pupils a year to assisted places in the sixth form. We have found that only a relatively small proportion of those that are admitted come from maintained schools. It is unusual for any single maintained school to lose even one, let alone more than one, pupil to an assisted sixth-form place.
I believe that I have answered all the points which were raised, but if when I read Hansard I find that I have omitted any, I shall write to either the noble Baroness or the noble Lord concerned. In the meantime, I beg to move.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

Police (Complaints) (Informal Resolution) Regulations 1985
4.53 p.m.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Home Office (Lord Glenarthur): My Lords, I beg to move, That the draft regulations which were laid before this House on 26th March be agreed to. It may be for the convenience of your Lordships if we discuss at the same time the draft Police (Complaints) (Mandatory Referrals Etc) Regulations 1985, and the draft Police (Anonymous, Repetitious Etc Complaints) Regulations 1985, which were laid before this House on 26th March and 4th April respectively.
These three statutory instruments, which have been examined by the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments, are part of a set of seven which are required to allow the Government to bring into force, on the 29th April 1985, Part IX of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984. Four of these—the Police (Discipline) Regulations 1985, the Police (Discipline) (Senior Officers) Regulations 1985, the Police (Complaints) (General) Regulations 1985, and the Police (Appeals) Rules 1985—do not require the formal approval of the House before they can come into force.
It may assist your Lordships if I briefly set the draft regulations we are debating in the context of the new scheme established by Part IX of the 1984 Act. The most important effect of these provisions will be to abolish the Police Complaints Board and establish in its place the Police Complaints Authority with greater powers set out in the Act and in the regulations to which I shall refer in a moment. Before doing so, I should like to pay tribute to the excellent work done over the past seven years or so by Sir Cyril Phillips, the chairman, and his colleagues on the board, and their predecessors. They have laid an invaluable foundation on which the authority will be able to build.
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The new authority will have as its chairman Sir Cecil Clothier, previously the Parliamentary Commissioner for Administration, who needs no introduction from me. He will be assisted by two deputy chairmen, Rear Admiral John Bell, who is at present deputy chairman of the Police Complaints Board, and the right honourable Roland Moyle; and by a further nine members who will bring to the authority's work a variety of background and professional skills.
Part IX of the Act will also introduce a system of informally resolving complaints. As their name indicates, the draft Police (Complaints) (Informal Resolution) Regulations 1985 will deal with this.
The Act provides a more formal framework of responsibility than exists at present for the investigation of complaints against officers of a rank higher than chief superintendent, which is set out in the Police (Discipline) (Senior Officers) Regulations, to which I referred briefly earlier. Finally, the Act provides for officers of chief superintendent rank and below to be legally represented at hearings where they face the three most serious punishments available to a chief constable—dismissal from the force, requirement to resign, or reduction in rank.
The first draft instrument before your Lordships—the Police (Complaints) (Informal Resolution) Regulations—will apply in the case of complaints which do not require the full complexity of a formal investigation. No complaint is trivial to the person who makes it. Nor, given the high standards of conduct we are entitled to expect from police officers, is any complaint trivial in terms of police discipline. But situations can arise in which a member of the public wants not so much to complain as to draw an officer's actions to the attention of his superior officers and to seek an explanation or even an apology.
A vital prerequisite to informal resolution is the Act's requirement that the complainant must give his consent to the use of the informal procedures. This means that even if the police are perfectly satisfied that a particular complaint might be informally resolved, the complainant can insist on a full investigation of his complaint.
Before a complaint may be resolved informally the draft regulations will require that both sides of the story must be obtained. Similarly no apology may be offered on behalf of a police officer who is the subject of a complaint unless he has admitted that the conduct complained of actually occurred. Beyond these requirements it is for the officer conducting the procedures to decide how to proceed.
The regulations do not lay down a rigid procedure. If the complainant is satisfied with an explanation of the law or of police procedures, that can end the matter. If the officer concerned is ready to offer an apology, that, too, is all right. Moreover, we have framed the regulation so that if the officer in charge of a station believes that a complaint could be resolved on the spot, perhaps by bringing the complainant and the officer together immediately after the incident, he may do so. He will report to the officer responsible in the force for informal resolution, who may take a second look at the circumstances and decide whether or not to treat the complaint as indeed resolved.

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I turn now to the draft Police (Complaints) (Mandatory Referrals Etc.) Regulations 1985. Section 87(1) of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act already requires referral to the Police Complaints Authority of all complaints alleging that the conduct of a police officer resulted in the death of, or serious injury to, some person, and Section 89(1) of the Act requires the authority to supervise the investigation of such complaints. The regulation before the House deals with other types of complaints which must be referred to the authority; but in these cases it will be for the authority to decide whether to supervise the investigation.
First, a complaint which alleges conduct amounting to assault occasioning actual bodily harm or an offence under Section 1 of the Prevention of Corruption Act 1906 must be referred to the authority. Secondly, any complaint alleging a serious arrestable offence as defined in Section 116 of the Act of 1984 must also be referred to the authority.
Perhaps I should remind your Lordships that "serious arrestable offence" encompasses a variety of offences including rape and certain other sexual offences, kidnapping, certain explosives and firearms offences and causing death by reckless driving. I am sure that your Lordships will agree that an allegation of conduct of this kind is bound to reflect adversely on the police service and ought to be considered by the authority as a candidate for the supervision of the investigation.
I should also draw your Lordships' attention to draft Regulation 5, which allows the authority to impose any reasonable additional requirements as to the conduct of the investigation as appear to them to be necessary. However, the Director of Public Prosections' consent must be given to any requirement relating to the obtaining or preservation of evidence. This is necessary to ensure that the authority does not accidentally impose a requirement which would adversely affect the admissibility of evidence at a criminal trial or make adequate evidence hard to obtain. The regulation also requires the authority to consult a chief officer before imposing any requirement as to the resources he should make available to an investigation and to have regard to any representations he might make.
Finally, my Lords, I come to the draft Police (Anonymous, Repetitious Etc. Complaints) Regulations 1985. These re-enact part of the Police (Withdrawn, Anonymous Etc. Complaints) Regulations 1977. They allow the authority to dispense with the requirement that a complaint should be investigated in three separate circumstances: where a complaint is anonymous; where a complaint is substantially the same as a previous complaint and contains no fresh allegations or evidence not previously available; and where it is not reasonably practicable to complete an investigation. In all of these cases, a chief officer has to explain to the authority why he feels they should grant a dispensation under these regulations. It is a matter for the authority's discretion whether to grant that dispensation.
These then are the three sets of draft regulations before your Lordships. As I have indicated, they need
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to be viewed as part of the wider system of procedures which offer a workable and fair approach to complaints against the police. I commend them to your Lordships and beg to move.
Moved, That the draft regulations laid before the House on 26th March be approved. [17th Report from the Joint Committee.]—(Lord Glenarthur.)
5.3 p.m.
Lord Mishcon: My Lords, I should like to thank the noble Lord the Minister for the clear way in which he has explained these regulations to the House. I wonder whether I may be permitted to comment upon them, first, in general terms and then in somewhat more particular terms. Shades of the debates which took place on the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 I have no doubt are present in this Chamber this afternoon; happily I do not speak of the shades of those who participated in that debate, because, so far as I know, they are all alive and well. It would be idle of me to pretend that there was unanimity in the House when the new procedures for the reception of complaints against police were debated in your Lordships' House. No one would therefore expect me to talk in terms of an ideal solution having been reached, but as Parliament has had its say it would be wrong of me to do anything other than to examine the situation as it now is.
I join with the Minister on behalf of my noble friends in paying tribute to the chairman and to the authority that has now passed from the scene. Within the difficulties with which they were undoubtedly encompassed, they worked well, with complete integrity and, as far as they could, they did an extremely good and able job. All of us wish the new authority and its distinguished chairman well. He was a former Ombudsman, if I may give him the more familiar title, who earned the respect of the nation.
I wonder whether the Minister in the other place was wrong or whether the noble Lord was wrong in giving us the numbers of the membership. He said in his remarks that there was a chairman, two deputy chairmen and nine others. I have before me the Official Report of 16th April in another place when these regulations were being debated, and, reading from col. 230 I read as follows:
"The authority will be composed of a chairman, two deputy chairmen and 10 members".
I wonder whether when he replies the noble Lord can tell us which is the reliable figure which ought to be before the House when we are considering these regulations.
Speaking in terms of membership, it would be quite wrong to suggest to the House that those members—I do not know whether the noble Lord can give us information about who those members are—should represent various interests. I know the suggestion has been made. It is not a suggestion that appeals to me, if I may humbly say so. I have reason to believe that I know the answer to this question, but what I hope is that within the ethnic minorities in this country, whose interests are much involved in this matter (which is the way I should like to put it), there are personalities who fulfil all the requirements that one would want for membership of this new authority. I believe that the

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Minister in his wisdom has found one such person to be a member of the authority, but I hope that the Minister will tell me whether I am right or wrong. If I am right, I express my delight. If I am wrong, will the Minister kindly consider that position because it would bring an amount of respect for those ethnic minorities that I believe all Members of the House would want to accord them, especially in regard to this matter. I see that the noble Lord wishes to rise—
Lord Inglewood: My Lords, I do not wish to interrupt the noble Lord until he has finished.
Lord Mishcon: My Lords, in those circumstances the noble Lord will not be interrupting me. Nevertheless I thank him for his courtesy. I thought he was trying to interrupt me and I wanted at once to give way as I always would.
So much for the general comments that one has to make at this stage upon these regulations. I now turn to the particular comments that I have to make. I am grateful to the Minister for his sense, if I may put it that way, in taking all three regulations together, because they have a common theme. It obviously saves your Lordships' time. The first set of regulations concerns the informal resolution of complaints. I notice that in paragraph 4(2) of these regulations there is a stipulation that the appointed officer shall not, for the purpose of informally resolving a complaint, tender on behalf of the member concerned an apology for this conduct unless he has admitted the conduct in question.
We are dealing with a way of reducing quite informally the number of complaints. I hope that the words do not mean that it is impossible to dispose of an informal complaint by somebody in authority on behalf of the police saying that he feels that the words chosen by the police officer were not particularly apt or courteous and that the police officer has been so informed. If we were to stop that kind of very polite communication to a member of the public, it would be a wrong step, especially in relation to our wanting to achieve informal resolution of complaints in regard to small matters.
The Minister was very careful not to use the word "trivial" because they are not trivial matters to members of the public. This concerns small matters. I hope that this regulation does not mean that, if a police officer says, "I'm very sorry. I don't want you to apologise", that the police authority cannot itself decide that an apology is due because the words, for example, were really not very well chosen. The meaning of paragraph 4(2) of the regulations is not absolutely clear, and I should like therefore to make that comment.
I move at once to the next set of regulations, which are the Police (Complaints) (Mandatory Referrals Etc.) Regulations. My first comment is on paragraph 4(2), which deals with mandatory referrals. There is a strict time limit here which is consequential upon a decision by an authority, which I would have thought was vague; and, in any event, the time limit here, I would have thought, was quite unreasonable. As I said, it is tied to something which is almost academic, and, if I may, I invite your Lordships to look at paragraph 4(2) of these regulations. It says:
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"Where a complaint is required to be referred to the Authority under paragraph (1) above, notification of the complaint shall be given to the Authority not later than the end of the day following the day on which it first becomes clear to the appropriate authority that the complaint is one to which that paragraph applies".
We ought to have regulations which mean something. Who is to know when it first becomes clear to the authority that this is a complaint to which it applies? Is there to be a minute, so that it ought to say, in order to fix this time limit (somewhat absurdly one might think): "It has now become clear to us that the complaint is one to which the paragraph applies"?
But apart from that, and not wishing to raise academic points (although I think there is possibly reality in this), if there is a time limit, to make it literally a matter that is incumbent upon the authority to give this notice,
"not later than the end of the day following the day on which it first becomes clear",
and so on, really seems to me an absurd time limit. No doubt the noble Lord the Minister will be able to defend that time limit, or to say what it means, in a moment. I am sure your Lordships realise that in raising these points I am obviously in the position, as are your Lordships, of not being able to give notice of an amendment to a regulation—as I understand it, we either have to approve the regulation or we do not—but it does give the Government time, if one raises these points, to consider whether they would not wish to amend the draft regulations in question.
I would have loved the noble Lord, Lord Ritchie of Dundee, to have been in his place. In regard to the regulations we were discussing a moment ago, he drew attention to the English which is sometimes employed in regard to these matters and to other Government publications. It is very cheap merely to take up time by complaining about language and laughing at it, without paying tribute to the Civil Service and the draftsmen for the generally good job they do. I hope, therefore, I shall not be thought guilty in this instance, any more than the noble Lord, Lord Ritchie, of a cheap jibe. But, really, I must say that it is a bit grim when you have wording such as I shall now quote—and I refer to the last six words of paragraph 5(2) of these regulations. That paragraph reads:
"Without prejudice to their powers in relation to the appointment of an investigating officer, but subject to paragraphs (3) and (4) below, the Authority may, where they undertake the supervision of an investigation of a complaint or other matter to which these Regulations apply, issue directions"—
So far it is absolutely clear—
"imposing such additional reasonable requirements as to the conduct of the investigation as appear to them to be necessary"—
that is all absolutely clear: and then the last six words are—
"as are specified in the directions".
I do not know what those words mean or why they are there, because it obviously ends at the words, "as appear to them to be necessary". The directions have been dealt with, and I do not know what the words "as are specified in the directions" mean. I will not go on, because really nobody wants to spend time on language. One merely points out that these words—and I speak personally now—are, if I may say so most respectfully, meaningless and otiose, and should not be there.

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I come now to my last substantial point, and then I shall finish. I have no comments to make on the (Anonymous, Repetitious Etc. Complaints) Regulations, which are the third set of regulations. The last direction in this series of regulations relating to mandatory referrals says:
"The Authority shall not, under paragraph (2) above, impose any requirement"—
paragraph (2) refers to making directions—
"relating to the resources to be made available by a chief officer for the purposes of an investigation without first consulting him and having regard to any representations he may make".
That means that in an investigation which is to be conducted by the authority, before they make directions as to the resources to be made available for the purposes of the investigation—and these investigations are in regard to very serious matters under these regulations—the authority have to consult the chief officer (and the chief officer is defined as the person who may be acting as the chief officer). That is absolutely right, and if it had ended there I would have been content. But it goes on to give the chief officer almost, if not definitely, the last word on the resources to be made available to the authority to conduct an investigation, because they not only have to consult him but they have to have regard to any representations he may make.
I can remember trying to suggest to your Lordships in Committee, as had many of my colleagues on all sides of the Committee, the addition of words after the word "consultation". Time after time I was told, "Look: you consult; you do not need to say anything else. 'Consultation' means you consult, and you ought to have some regard, obviously, to what is said by the other party with whom you are consulting."
I do not like words being added in this way, which seem to give the chief officer the power to say to the authority, "Not only are these my views, and not only must you look at those views about the resources to be made available to you to conduct your investigation of the police force and of the complaints in regard to a terribly serious matter, but you have to go further than that: you really have to take that as a final word". I hope that is not so, because as regards the resources to be made available on important and serious investigations, as it is definitely envisaged by these regulations that these inquiries will be, there ought to be the right to say what resources it is reasonable to put at the disposal of the authority so that its independence in these matters should be preserved.
Having said that, my final word is this. We are talking about the police. The police have often been criticised in your Lordships' House, in another place and in the media. I want to take the opportunity to say this on behalf of my noble friends. This complaints procedure is envisaged against a minority of a truly great force with wonderful traditions, and I think we ought to look at these regulations with that thought in mind.
5.19 p.m.
Lord Harris of Greenwich: My Lords, on behalf of my noble friends I welcome the regulations with very little reservation. It is probably appropriate for me to say a few words about them because I was responsible
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for the introduction of the first Police Complaints Bill. I welcome one feature of the current situation, and that is that there is, I believe, genuine bipartisan support for the work which the Police Complaints Authority is to carry out on behalf of the public.
When the first Police Complaints Bill was introduced in another place, the Conservative Party opposed it in principle at one stage on the grounds that it went too far. It is ironic that they have now introduced a new system—and I warmly welcome this particular part of the Act—which goes a great deal further than did the Labour Government's police complaints procedure.
Apart from that, I would echo very largely what the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, has said. I think that there is now an urgent need to end this debilitating argument about complaints against the police. It does no good to police morale to have a constant argument going on about the precise way in which complaints against the police should be investigated. I very much hope that responsible people in all political parties will now give the new authority an opportunity of getting on with its job. I believe that it carries a great deal of support even from many who would prefer it to be armed with greater powers. I think it right to say, too, and I think the Government have done well in appointing the chairman, a former Ombudsman who I believe will carry considerable confidence. And speaking as a former ministerial colleague of Mr. Roland Moyle, I am delighted that he is to be a deputy chairman. I had a lot to do with him when he was Minister of State at the DHSS. He was a highly conscientious Minister and I believe that he will do an excellent job on behalf of the public and the police service.
The only point that I should like to ask the Minister about is this. The regulation dealing with informal resolution of complaints—and this is one of the issues which arose at the time of the Scarman inquiry—is highly desirable and, indeed, I believe it is a considerable improvement on the previous procedure; there is now to be some way of getting rid of some of these complaints on an informal basis. I think that is wholly sensible.
But I must say that I have slight doubts about one particular feature of this; I think it was raised by the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon. It is the obligation that no apology should be made without an admission by the officer concerned. I have two questions about that. First, in the event of an informal resolution of a complaint being effected, will there be any entry on the officer's records within the force concerned? I think this is an important matter to have clear. In other words, if some form of apology is made on behalf of an officer, is that going to be noted in his personal records within that particular police force? One of the problems, as I am sure the Minister will appreciate, is that there is often an argument—let us take a good illustration—between a motorway patrolman and a driver. The driver says, "The officer said, 'x'" and the policeman says, "I said 'y'". There is some dispute—and perhaps they may both be truthful people—about precisely what was said. Clearly it is desirable to get that matter informally resolved.
What I am not clear about relates to where the supervisory officer, the superintendent or whoever it may be, believes that it is possible to say to the

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complainant, "Well, there is some argument about precisely what was said. If by some chance our chap said what you think he said, then obviously we are sorry about it". Does that statement have to carry with it the approval of the policeman concerned? If it does, I think that it may well be that a number of officers may be rather hesitant about giving their approval if there is going to be an entry on their service record as a result of that admission made on their behalf by a senior officer. I am aware that the Minister may not be able to deal with that this afternoon and I shall well understand that. Perhaps we can clear it up through correspondence.
With that single question, which I am sure he will deal with satisfactorily, all that I will say on behalf of my noble friends and myself is that we welcome these regulations and express our very best of good wishes to the new authority; and we should like also to be associated with what was said about the excellent work which has been carried out by the members and the chairman of the former police complaints board.
5.26 p.m.
Lord Inglewood: My Lords, my comments will be very few, and I shall also put two or three questions which I spoke about when the noble Lord, Lord Glenarthur, met me before. But since he has given clear answers to the larger part of my questions, I shall not do other than cut right back as far as I can, because I do not want to be repetitive. When I was looking at these regulations I came to the conclusion—and I think that the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, would agree with it—that they were not all that easy to understand for anyone, certainly not the man in the street. I would simply make this remark. We have in this country at the present time a very wide interest in policing, probably wider than we have had for a number of years; and we have in one of the later clauses the provision for consultation. Therefore, I hope that those responsible members of these committees will do their best to explain some of this to the general public, which will widen their understanding and, I think, be of advantage to us all.
There is one point that I should like to mention again. We have a spate of regulations today. I think that we have three regulations which now require an affirmative resolution; and there are four which are waiting for their time to run out; so that we have seven regulations. One thing that I think is rather strange is that the two most important of the regulations—one a general one and the other dealing with senior officers—both wait on the Table until someone raises the Question in the House and possibly prays against one or the other. To me, those two seem more important than the others which are awaiting an affirmative resolution.
Of these two, one is particularly interesting in that it affects senior officers only. I have had correspondence with the Minister over about two years on the preparation of this regulation, but I think that it is fair to say that after all these discussions they now have regulations which are more satisfactory than had been the case. That I think is important.
I wonder how far these regulations affect the Metropolitan Police and the county forces. Perhaps that can he made plain; because they frequently
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operate under a different system. There are other forces which come under the Home Office. Are these regulations applicable to those forces of some size which operate under different Ministers?
My Lords, my last point is this. We have a number—in fact, an increasing number—of special constables in this country. When looking through these regulations I could not find reference to them at all; but when we bear in mind that a sworn-in special constable has exactly the same powers as any other constable, I should think that he should have some code of discipline which guides him; and it should not be something like hire and fire, which should be entirely in the hands of chief constables. Going further, what I should like to see is more consultation here through the committees which are now working very well in some parts of England. I hope that the noble Lord will give all the encouragement he can, because we want in this country the police to be in a position where we can assure them of proper understanding.
Lord Mishcon: My Lords, before the Minister rises to reply, I am conscious of the fact that I threw some points at him without any notice. If he finds himself in the slightest degree embarrassed becauses of lack of notice, I shall well understand if he wants to write to me, so long as, obviously, the usual procedure applies of the letters being available in the Library.
5.29 p.m.
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, I am grateful to all three noble Lords for their comments about the regulations and to the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, for his last remark. I hope that I can cover most of the points he raised but if I cover them inadequately, or upon reflection feel that I could cover them more fully, I shall write to him.
The noble Lord started by paying tribute, as I had, to the outgoing chairman and looked to the future with the new chairman, Sir Cecil Clothier, with some confidence. He asked about the membership of the board. The number of appointments so far is nine, but we expect to include a further appointment to the authority in due course. The noble Lord asked me about the membership. In addition to those three whom I mentioned earlier, I can tell him that the others are: Mrs. Eva Crawley; Mr. Maurice Hazelwood; Mr. Bernard Moor; Brigadier Pownall; Mr. Edward Taylor; Mrs. Rosemary Vickers; Mrs. Rosemary Wolff; Mr. Vernon Clements; and Mr. John Lyttle. As to ethnic representation, one of the members, Mr. Vernon Clements, is from the ethnic community. Another has long experience of community and race relations matters. I hope that that will give confidence to the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon.
Paragraph 4(2) of the informal resolution regulations precludes an apology on behalf of the officer himself where he denies the offence, but this does not prevent an apology on behalf of the force. I think that that is probably what the noble Lord was trying to draw out, and I hope that that answers that case. With regard to paragraph 4(2) of the mandatory referrals regulations, it may not be immediately apparent to the appropriate authority that a particular case is one to which reference applies. For example, it may depend upon a medical examination which shows

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that an apparently trivial injury is in fact more serious than at first appeared to be the case. Once it does so appear, the time limit begins to run, as I understand it, and there must be some time, albeit perhaps a short time, for the force procedures to get the case 'to the authority's attention.
The noble Lord developed his argument rather more fully than perhaps I have answered, but I should like to study his point. I believe that what I have just said meets the point with which he was particularly concerned.
Lord Mishcon: My Lords, if the noble Lord the Minister will permit me, it may very well be that further reflection must be given to this. My point was twofold. Of course I understand that somebody would have to consider very carefully medical evidence and everything else, but if you have a time limit you have to be very certain as to when the time limit starts. That was my first point. How anyone will know in fact when it first becomes clear to the appropriate authority that the complaint was one to which that paragraph applies, to me, if I may say so humbly, is certainly not clear. Indeed, I do not know how anybody can ever tell whether that was the day or whether it was not.
The second point is that, even if I am wrong on that, is not 24 hours as a deadline a terribly short time limit? This cannot be answered this afternoon and this is not the time to debate it, but I hope at least that the noble Lord the Minister and those who are associated with him in this matter will at least consider the two points.
Lord Glenarthur: Yes, my Lords, of course I shall look at it and I shall look at the noble Lord's remarks and perhaps write to him more fully explaining it in due course.
The noble Lord then turned to paragraph 5(2) of the same regulations. The words to which he referred,
"as are specified in the directions",
at the end of paragraph 5(2) make it clear, I think, that the authority must spell out in their directions the additional requirements they wish to impose on the conduct of the investigations and cannot simply rely on generalisations on them. I believe that that answers the noble Lord's point, but again, if it does not, I shall have to study more fully his remarks on this fairly complicated subject and let him know.
With regard to resources in paragraph 5(4) of the mandatory referrals regulations, the chief officer has responsibility for the deployment of his resources. The complaints authority must have the final say in directing the resources to be made available to the investigations. The regulations do not preclude that. But it is right to require the authority to consider seriously the problems which the chief officer might present as showing that he simply does not have the manpower and so on available to supply the full quota of officers requested.
The noble Lord, Lord Harris, generally welcomed the regulations, and for that I am grateful. He asked two questions. The first concerned informal resolutions and the recording or not on the officer's record of the business. The Home Office guidance to chief officers—there is a fairly substantial guidance
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which will go out to chief officers and which probably contains many of the answers to the questions which the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, has put to me—states that no entry relating to the attempted or successful informal resolution of a complaint should be made in the personal record of the officer concerned. I think that that meets the noble Lord's point in full.
Secondly, the noble Lord asked whether, when a supervising officer believes it possible to say to the complainant that there may be a case, this carries the approval of the policeman concerned. It is open to the investigating officer to say something to the effect, "There is clash of evidence here. If the officer said those words, then I apologise on behalf of the chief constable". That seems to me to be a fair way of dealing with the problem and I hope that that answers the noble Lord's point.
My noble friend Lord Inglewood said that he thought that the regulations were difficult to understand. I note the point of the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, about English. I am not sure about the six—apparently, in his eyes—superfluous words at the end of that regulation but I shall certainly look at them. My noble friend stressed that there was a wide interest in policing in the United Kingdom and I certainly share that view.
The disciplinary regulations apply in toto to the Metropolitan Police, as I understand it. The senior officers' regulations apply to senior officers of the Metropolitan Police up to the rank of assistant commissioner, above that, evidently, they do not. With regard to non-Home Office forces, it is open to these private forces, if "private" is the right word to use, to make an arrangement with the police complaints authority as they could previously do with the board, applying the provision of Part IX of the Act to their officers.
Special constables are not members of police forces. The complaints and discipline provisions provided under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act therefore do not apply to them. Nevertheless, the Home Secretary's guidance to chief officers on complaints and discipline procedures suggests that chief officers may well consider it appropriate to investigate complaints against special constables as if those complaints did indeed fall within the provisions of Part IX of the provisions of the 1984 Act. Thus a special constable would benefit from the safeguards which the system provides for regular officers although the decision on disciplinary action would not be referred to the police complaints authority.
I hope that that answers most of the points which have been raised by those who have spoken this afternoon. I shall certainly study the remarks they made with great care. With that assurance, I beg to move.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

Insurance (Fees) Bill
Brought from the Commons; read a first time, and to be printed.

Police (Complaints) (Mandatory Referrals Etc.) Regulations 1985
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, I beg to move.
Moved, That the draft regulations laid before the House on 26th March be approved. [17th Report from the Joint Committee.]—(Lord Glenarthur.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

Police (Anonymous, Repetitious Etc. Complaints) Regulations 1985
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, I beg to move.
Moved, That the draft regulations laid before the House on 4th April be approved. [18th Report from the Joint Committee.]—(Lord Glenarthur.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

Water (Fluoridation) Bill
5.41 p.m.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Security (Baroness Trumpington): My Lords, I beg to move that the House do now again resolve itself into Committee on this Bill.
Moved, That the House do now again resolve itself into Committee.—(Baroness Trumpington.)
Before the Question is put, I should like to draw your Lordships' attention to an error in the Official Report of our proceedings during the first day of Committee last Thursday, 18th April. The reporting error occurs in column 859, eleven lines from the foot of the page. What I actually said was—and this is verified by the tape recording of the proceedings:
"It [Amendment No. 32] proposes that health authorities should be obliged to give in a local newspaper at least three months' notice of proposals for fluoridation in order that interested local bodies, which will clearly include local councils and individual citizens, can make their view known to the health authority prior to a decision being made.
"The Government do not however accept that district councils can be given the power of veto over decisions of health authorities, whether on fluoridation or any other matter".
The effect of the misreporting in Hansard was to reverse the intention of what I actually said. I should just like to add that my admiration for all those who work for Hansard continues unabated.
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House in Committee accordingly.
The LORD NUGENT OF GUILDFORD in the Chair.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Nugent of Guildford): I should point out to the Committee that Amendment No. 28 has been debated:
[Printed 18/4/85; col. 891.]
Unless any noble Lord wishes to continue the debate, I shall proceed to put the amendment.
Lord Houghton of Sowerby: On a point of order, when the Deputy Chairman says that any noble Lord
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may continue the debate, does he mean that anyone who spoke to this amendment on the last occasion can speak again? Is that "to continue the debate"?
The Deputy Chairman of Committees: Yes, certainly; on Committee stage any noble Lord can speak as many times as he likes.
Lord Houghton of Sowerby: I beg the Deputy Chairman's pardon; I had not realised that one could speak as many times as one liked at the Committee stage. I may have spoken more than once on occasions but I was unaware that one could speak a lot of times.
I have spoken to Amendment No. 28. I made some facetious remarks about it. When I heard them reported on the radio, I recalled that many years ago when I was broadcasting, the BBC advised me how difficult it was to be sarcastic on the radio. They said, "you will be taken seriously". I fear that some listeners probably did take me seriously and really wondered how people could get their money back if they were not satisfied with fluoridation. This shows how unwise one can be to extend one's sense of humour beyond the four walls of your Lordships' Chamber.
The question of compensation was fully dealt with, so far as I was concerned, on the last occasion. I notice that my noble friend Lord Monson has resumed his seat; I believe it was his amendment that was moved in Committee and he may wish to say something about it.
On Question, amendment negatived.
Lord Sandys Lord Sandys moved Amendment No. 29:
After Clause 1, insert the following new clause:
("Warning on containers.
. The Secretary of State shall by regulation prescribe that all containers of fluoride for use in any application made under section 1(1) shall carry a warning that the contents are poisonous.").
The noble Lord said: This amendment deals almost exclusively with the matter of the labelling of containers. I wish to draw the Committee's attention to the fact that fluorosilicic acid is listed in Schedule 1 to the Petroleum Corrosive Substances Order 1970, SI No. 1945.
I believe it would be beneficial for the Committee to have details of what the manufacturers, Messrs. Fisons, advise in their instructions. If I may be allowed to quote them, they say:
"Care must be exercised while handling this material. The vapour must not be inhaled. Due to the highly corrosive and toxic nature of the product, particular attention must be paid to ensure that only suitably constructed storage and handling is used and that the vapour is not inhaled".
Under the heading Health Hazards, the instructions advise:
"The vapour irritates all parts of the respiratory system and can cause severe lung damage. The TVL"—
that is, the threshold limit value—
"for fluorides is 2.5 mg/m3 of air".
that comes from the Health and Safety Executive Note EH 15/76. We are becoming somewhat technical but a final quotation is necessary, and this comes under the heading of Liquid in the same detail:
"Fluorosilicic acid burns the eyes severely and also the skin. If swallowed the acid would cause severe internal irritation and damage. Note that symptoms may develop after several hours".

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I am sure that I have said sufficient to emphasise most particularly how extremely toxic this substance is. With that, I beg to move.
The Earl of Caithness: I am very grateful to my noble friend Lord Sandys for putting down this amendment as it gives me the opportunity to state categorically that the aim of this amendment is already precisely met by existing regulations. The majority of water authorities use hexafluorosilicic acid solutions for fluoridation, and some limited use is made of sodium hexafluorosilicate.
Hexafluorosilicic acid solutions are usually delivered in bulk by road tankers and, as they are corrosive in concentrated form, are subject to the Dangerous Substances (Conveyance by Road Tankers and Tank Containers) Regulations 1981. The tankers need to be placarded to warn of the corrosive properties of the solution unless diluted to a safe level. The placarding includes the hazard warning sign for a corrosive substance together with other information for the emergency services in the event of a fire, spillage or other accident.
Sodium hexafluorosilicate is a powder and is delivered in sacks. These have to be labelled in accordance with the Classification, Packaging and Labelling of Dangerous Substances Regulations 1984 to show the toxic properties of the undiluted substance. The label would carry a danger symbol and the risk phrase "toxic by inhalation, in contact with the skin and if swallowed". It would also include prescribed safety advice. Personnel operating fluoridation plants are required to wear rubber gauntlets, chemical eye protectors, PVC overalls and safety boots.
I would stress that these precautions are aimed at safety and conveyance during use of the two chemicals and have absolutely no bearing on water supplies treated with any small amounts of these substances. The equipment used in fluoridation schemes in this country is specifically designed so that the amount of the chemicals that can enter the supply at any one time is severely limited, and fluoridation schemes in this country have been operated with complete safety to the public.
With that, I hope that my noble friend will find that we have already covered the point he raised and will withdraw his amendment.
Lord Houghton of Sowerby: It is an extraordinary commentary on this Bill that a substance which is to be put into the nation's drinking water should fall within the provisions of the dangerous substances legislation and have to be labelled "Poisonous". Does the noble Earl know of any other substance that has to be labelled "Poisonous" and which is poured into the nation's drinking water, or is this the only one? A gentleman arriving from Mars would wonder what sort of crazy business all this is: that the nation's drinking water has to be doctored with a substance which in more intensive conditions is poison and has to be labelled as poisonous to safeguard the health of those who have to handle it. I find the whole thing so extraordinary that I wonder whether any Government in their senses should be forcing this on the public.
The Earl of Caithness: I am a little surprised that the noble Lord, Lord Houghton, is not slightly better informed. That is unusual for him, because at our previous Committee stage I mentioned some chemicals which are already added to water, and there are over 50 of them. I suggest ammonia, chlorine, hydrochloric acid and sulphuric acid as examples. I promised that a copy of the list would be put in the Library, and that has been done. Therefore, fluoride in itself is not a one-off in this case.
Lord Sandys: I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Houghton, for emphasising fluoride's poisonous nature, and the object of this amendment was to do that. I am also grateful to my noble friend Lord Caithness for detailing the manner in which these chemicals should be transported in this country. However, I should like to have one further assurance from him: that under the international carriage of goods the same regulations apply, both within the EC and outside the EC, for carriage by sea. If he can give me that assurance, I shall certainly withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes: Before my noble friend the Minister replies I should like to say that there is a certain mischievous element in the wording of this amendment, and particularly in the comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Sandys, who said that he is delighted that the noble Lord, Lord Houghton, has emphasised the poisonous nature of the substance. As was emphasised in a reply already given from the Front Bench, this is not a situation applying to a diluted substance. Most of the substances used in the purification of water are extremely toxic in their undiluted form. I have pointed out previously in this Chamber that every drop of water that we drink in the House has been used seven times before. I can assure noble Lords that they would not drink the water if it had not been treated with these chemicals.
The Earl of Caithness: I am grateful to my noble friend Lady Gardner of Parkes for those helpful words. Referring to my noble friend Lord Sandys, I can assure him that there are appropriate regulations covering the point he raised. They are not the same, but they are appropriate.
Lord Sandys: I am grateful to my noble friend for assuring the Committee on this matter. With that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 2 [Power to vary permitted fluoridation agents]:
The Earl of Kinnoull The Earl of Kinnoull moved Amendment No. 30:
Page 2, line 43, at end insert—
("Save that no reference to another compound of fluorine shall be added except where such compound has been tested to the satisfaction of the Secretary of State as to its having no adverse effects on any person likely to receive it.")
The noble Earl said: This is a small amendment which I regard as important. My noble friend will have realised from the discussions we had on the first day of Committee that a number of us find this Bill very contentious, indigestible and corrosive to our feelings.

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We do so for two reasons which we went over before and which I shall reiterate because they are part of the amendment.
First, there is no democratic process in the Bill—and I hope that we can persuade my noble friend to put that right—on the decision to introduce fluoride in any area throughout the country. Secondly, it permits for the first time—and whatever anyone says to the contrary it is for the first time, as was explained fully in another place—a deliberate medication to be added to the public water supply.
My noble friend will appreciate that the arguments deployed on the first day of Committee indicated that medical arguments on either side of the fence differ about the correctness of adding fluoride to water. The arguments are split. Those who are concerned about the Bill have given names of scientists and doctors. Indeed, one sees eminent technical papers on the subject. For instance, in May 1983 the New Scientist—and my noble friend has probably read this article—quoted John Emsley of King's College, London, who said in 1981:
"A warning bell has sounded: through the agency of the strong hydrogen bond fluoride can change the chemistry of many compounds. What it may be capable of doing in the living cell whether for good or ill remains to be discovered".
I do not think those words should be lightly tossd aside. I am not qualified to advance those arguments, but it is one's duty in Committee to put them to the Government.
The purpose of this little amendment is what I call a "comfort" amendment. It is simply to place a duty on the Secretary of State—after all, he is the Minister responsible—to see that any additional compound which might subsequently be introduced through this Bill is properly tested. My noble friend may say that that will be done anyway, but there is nothing wrong in writing it into the Bill. In fact, there is a lot right, because it gives comfort to the consumer and lays a duty on the Secretary of State. I think it is time the Secretary of State took a duty in this Bill and not just passed it on to the regional health authorities.
I hope my noble friend will share the purpose and feeling of this amendment, and that the Government understand the legitimate worries of people and will continue to exercise the proper precautions that should exist. I beg to move.
The Earl of Caithness: My noble friend Lord Kinnoull mentioned a number of points before coming to the meat of his amendment, and I shall try to reply to those. We understand the very strong feelings on this matter. They became very apparent in another place and they are very apparent in your Lordships' Committee. We have very carefully considered the arguments both for and against this measure because there are equally strong arguments.
To say that fluoride is safe and has been proved medically safe is a fact that we believe. Although, as I said, the more eminent the scientists the more they tend to disagree—like lawyers—the overwhelming weight of opinion is that there is no harm, at the levels we are talking about, in adding fluoride to water. However, notwithstanding that, if I were a scientist, I would be wanting to drive a hole in that argument.
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That is what the scientists are trying to do, but so far they have failed.
6 p.m.
My noble friend also said that we were introducing something new; we are not. We are only clarifying the law as we thought it existed for 30 years and as it has been operated by all Governments during that period.
With regard to the measure being undemocratic, I shall leave that to my noble friend to deal with when we get on to deliberate medication, which is another point. That appears in a later amendment. However, I would say that fluoride has been added for 30 years. It also occurs in a natural state and some 500,000 people in this country and 100 million people worldwide have been taking it for generations upon generations.
There are some 50 separate inorganic chemicals and numerous products based on nine groups of organic chemicals (including ammonia, hydrocholoric acid and sulphuric acid) which may be used in the treatment of water for human consumption. These chemicals have all been approved by the DOE Committee on Chemicals and Materials. No chemical or product is approved unless the committee considers it to be unobjectionable on health grounds, and it is used in accordance with the manufacturer's instructions and at acceptable concentrations and points of application. The two chemicals used for fluoridation, hexafluorosilicic acid and sodium hexafluorosilicate have both been approved by the committee.
At the suggestion of the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont of Whitley, during Committee stage on the 18th April, I have placed a list of the 50 chemicals in the Library—the point I mentioned earlier to the noble Lord, Lord Houghton of Sowerby.
The DOE committee when considering a chemical will seek evidence concerning toxicity and possible harm to the environment, to human health and to the materials it comes in contact with. DOE chemists, DHSS and independent medical advisers and water industry experts are members of the committee. Water undertakers recognise the committee's recommendations as authoritative and will use only chemicals approved by it. The legal sanction on a water authority is its statutory duty to provide wholesome water. If the chemical makes the water "unwholesome" as defined by the court, the undertaker would be in breach of this duty. This system has worked entirely satisfactorily and there are no grounds for laying upon the Secretary of State a specific statutory duty in relation to chemicals which may be compounded with fluorine. I must therefore ask the Committee not to accept this amendment, though it is well intentioned, because I believe that the matter is well covered.
The Earl of Kinnoull: My noble friend started off by giving me a crumb of comfort when he said that the Government understands the feelings against the Bill. He went on to say something that we have heard more than a few times since the first days of the Committee—that there were overwhelming medical arguments in favour of this medication. At that point I was depressed by his reply because what I am seeking in this amendment is not a suggestion that the noble Lord the Minister would not act properly or that his

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advisers or his experts would not be cautious and careful. They have always been cautious and careful. But it is a fact that we are breaking new ground in this Bill, so we want some assurances; we want a duty laid down. We have never had it before in this kind of legislation, so far as I know. When it is a contentious Bill and a lot of people are worried—and there is a lot of worry about it—to see a duty written into the Bill, I think is not asking a great deal of government. It does not harm the Bill in the slightest, damage it, or change it in any way at all, but it gives the assurance to those—not only consumers but also those who have the technical knowledge, as I tried to point out earlier—who feel that there is a doubt about the wisdom of this Bill.
Lord Brougham and Vaux: Perhaps I may interrupt on the point about new ground. The noble Lord the Minister said that these powers have been in existence for 30 years; so it can hardly be breaking new ground.
The Earl of Kinnoull: I did not explain myself correctly. I am talking of breaking new ground with this Bill adding compulsorily, for the first time, with no choice for the consumer, a compound which has never before been put in in this way. This is the first time it has ever been done.
The Earl of Caithness: I really cannot accept that. We are not breaking new ground on this. We are merely putting the law back to the situation that on both sides of the Committee we have believed it to have been for the last 30 years.
The Earl of Kinnoull: I am sorry to disagree with the noble Lord the Minister. I remember the Scottish case very well and the judgment of Lord Jauncey, which came down to the question: what is the test of wholesome water? The test was that wholesome water did not require this Bill and that is why he came down against this legislation, saying that the water authorities did not have the power to add something in addition to wholesome water. That is the argument. I am concerned that the Government are not prepared to make even a minor adjustment or to give an assurance.
I really feel that I should take this away and look carefully at what my noble friend has said. I reserve my position for the next stage of the Bill. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn,
Clause 2 agreed to.
Baroness Trumpington Baroness Trumpington moved Amendment No. 31:
After Clause 2, insert the following new clause:
("Continuity of existing fluoridation schemes.
.—(1) Where, in pursuance of arrangements entered into by a statutory water undertaker before 20th December 1984—

(a) a scheme for increasing the fluoride content of water supplied by the undertaker in any part of England and Wales was in operation immediately before that date; or

(b) work had been begun by the undertaker, before that date, for the purpose of enabling such a scheme to be brought into operation;

the undertaker may, while the conditions mentioned in subsection (2) below are satisfied, operate the scheme.
(2) The conditions are that the arrangements under which the scheme operates require—

(a) fluoridation to be effected only by the addition of one or more of the compounds of fluorine mentioned in section 1(4) of this Act; and

(b) the concentration of fluoride in the water supplied to consumers to be maintained, so far as is reasonably practicable, at one milligram per litre.

(3) Where a statutory water undertaker is operating a fluoridation scheme by virtue of this section—

(a) subsection (6) of section 1 of this Act shall apply in relation to the scheme as it applies in relation to any scheme operated in exercise of the power conferred by that section;

(b) the scheme shall cease to have effect upon the appropriate authority giving to the undertaker reasonable notice of the authority's desire to terminate it; and

(c) the arrangements under which the scheme is operated may be varied to take account of any amendment of section 1(4) of this Act made under section 2.").

The noble Baroness said: The purpose of this new clause is to meet concerns expressed in another place by the Opposition and my honourable friend Sir John Page, speaking on behalf of the water industry, that the Bill should provide specific legal vires for existing water fluoridation schemes. The amendment before us gives these legal vires, provided the schemes concerned conform, as they all do, with the concentration of fluoride and the compounds of fluorine provided for in the Bill.
Subsections (3)(a) and (c) of the new clause provide for the existing schemes to be subject to the arrangements already embodied in the Bill for emergency supply of fluoridated water to a non-requesting area and for changes in the authorised compounds of fluorine.
Subsection (3)(b) contains a similar provision in relation to Clause 1(2) which enables a health authority to terminate an existing fluoridation scheme provided that reasonable notice is given to the statutory water undertaker. This new clause is entirely in keeping with the philosophy behind the Bill of providing specific legal powers for the existing practice with regard to water fluoridation. I hope that your Lordships will approve the new clause. I beg to move.
The Earl of Kinnoull: Perhaps I may just ask my noble friend about the words "reasonable notice" in subsection 3(b). I wonder whether she can explain a little more clearly why the Government did not choose a specific time period. "Reasonable notice" is very reasonable, but I am not sure who judges what is reasonable notice, or how one judges it. Can the noble Baroness explain?
Baroness Trumpington: The noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, has answered his own question. "Reasonable notice" is very reasonable.
The Earl of Kinnoull: I think that is a good answer, but it does not actually answer the question. Is one week reasonable, or two weeks, or three weeks? There must be a period of time considered to be a reasonable period.
Baroness Trumpington: Ultimately it would be the courts.
Lord Sandys: We are looking at an astonishing situation at present, as I understand it. The position is this. The law as portrayed in the Water Act 1945 was

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held to contain a provision whereby water hoards and water authorities may fluoridate in their area, subject to the approval of the health authority, and now the district health authority.
This obtained until the Jauncey judgment in 1983. This Bill, which derives directly from the situation as founded, is seeking powers from Parliament to ensure that all those existing schemes may now continue. We are therefore being asked in this Bill to make good what was held to be the state of the law hitherto. I believe that it requires rather greater examination than giving our approval just like that to an amendment which stands in the name of the noble Baroness. Where the law was previously held to be one thing and was found to be another, that is surely a fault much more than a lacuna in existing statute law.
I am no lawyer but I believe that a serious omission must have been made in the intention of the then Government in 1945 if they believed that they had powers and for all those 40 years that has been considered to be the law and has now been disproved.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes: I think that this is typical of many situations and is in fact the way that the law operates in this country. Bills eventually become Acts, people believe that they have certain rights but when it comes to a test case it is found that that is not necessarily so. There is a classic example about which I have just put down a Question. A court has just found that an owner-occupier who lets his home when he goes abroad will not be able to get it hack again. No one would want to leave that situation as it is. I hope that the Government will change it.
In this case the authorities which have been putting fluoride in the water, from which people have been benefiting all these years, have believed—and I think quite rightly—that they were legally entitled to do so. The court case that came about was unbelievably long. In fact those who opposed fluoride were seeking to prove that it was poisonous, but no mention has been made of the fact that the judge specifically ruled that it was not. However, he ruled that there was this grey area and a degree of legal doubt as to whether those people were entitled to put fluoride in the water.
The amendment is clearly to make legal the actions of people who have been doing this over the years to the benefit of their community. I strongly support it. I think that it is wrong that there should have been that degree of doubt in the law, but it is only when test cases are heard that such matters are uncovered.
Baroness Trumpington: I am most grateful to my noble friend Lady Gardner, who has absolutely hit the nail on the head. The amendment applies only to England and Wales, and Lord Jauncey's judgment applied only to Scotland. Fluoridation has never been found illegal by courts in England and Wales, and the purpose of this amendment is, as my noble friend said, to put the law beyond doubt.
Lord Merrivale: May I just ask my noble friend one question? I am no expert on this matter but I am rather concerned about fluoridation and its being extended in England and Wales. In effect, I think the risks will be greater. The clause is headed:
"Continuity of existing fluoridation schemes",
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and subsection (2) states:
"The conditions are that the arrangements under which the scheme operates require … the concentration of fluoride in the water supplied to consumers to be maintained, so far as is reasonably practicable, at one milligram per litre".
Will monitoring be extended and this matter very carefully taken into consideration?
Baroness Trumpington: I think that my noble friend was not present when we started the Committee stage of the Bill. This ground has already been covered. Monitoring will most certainly take place. If he cares to look in Hansard he will see that there has been talk of this already. I would just point out to him that fluoridation is not being extended. The position is being put straight after 30 years of its being in use.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
6.15 p.m.
Baroness Trumpington Baroness Trumpington had given notice of her intention to move Amendment No. 32:
After Clause 2, insert the following new clause:
("Consultation etc.
.—(1) A health authority shall, at least three months before—

(a) making or withdrawing an application; or

(b) terminating a scheme which may be operated by virtue of section (Continuity of existing fluoridation schemes) of this Act (a "preserved scheme");

publish details of the proposed application, withdrawal or termination in one or more newspapers circulating in the area affected by it.
(2) Where, in compliance with subsection (1) above, a health authority have published details of a proposal they shall, in determining whether or not to proceed, have such regard as they consider appropriate to any representations which have been made to them with respect to the proposal.
(3) The Secretary of State may direct that subsection (1) above shall not apply in relation to any proposal of a health authority to withdraw an application or to terminate a preserved scheme.
(4) Where, at any meeting of a health authority, consideration is given to the question whether the authority should make or withdraw an application or terminate a preserved scheme, section 1(2) of the Public Bodies (Admission to Meetings) Act 1960 (which would have allowed the authority to exclude the public from the meeting in certain circumstances) shall not apply to any proceedings on that question.").
The noble Baroness said: I am not now proposing to move Amendment No. 32. It may be helpful to your Lordships if I give a very brief explanation.
Since I tabled Amendment No. 32, my noble friend Lord Sandys and other noble Lords have tabled an amendment regarding the procedures for publicising a health authority's intention to consider fluoridation. I have given careful consideration to my noble friend's amendment and I feel that my own may not go far enough. I therefore propose not to move my amendment this evening, and I hope to be able to bring a revised amendment before your Lordships at Report stage.
[Amendments No. 32A and 33 not moved.]
Lord Sandys Lord Sandys moved Amendment No. 34:
After Clause 2, insert the following new clause:—
("Public consultation.
. Before any health authority makes an application in accordance with section 1(1) it shall consult the public, including elected bodies, in the area the subject of the proposed application.").
The noble Lord said: We return to this all-important matter of public consultation. First of all, I should like to draw your Lordships' attention to the speech of the noble Baroness at the Committee stage a week ago on 18th April. If I may be allowed to quote her, at column 859 of Hansard she said this in regard to the subject:
"I should add that the new Government clause, Clause No. 32, about which I have already spoken—which noble Lords—
Baroness Trumpington: Will my noble friend forgive me? Noble Lords who were present at the beginning of this evening's debate will have heard me mention that there was an inaccuracy in the reporting of what I said which was fully confirmed by the tape recording. He should not be quoting from that paragraph therefore because it is inaccurate.
Lord Sandys: It is a published record. I apologise to the noble Baroness. Nevertheless, the point that I wish to make is this. If there is to be a corrected version, I hope that she will ensure that it is in the bound copy of the proceedings of Parliament, so we are clear that no inaccuracy will be carried forward.
Baroness Trumpington: Yes.
Lord Sandys: We have that assurance. The same arguments which apply to Amendment No. 4 apply to this amendment. I believe that it would be tedious to rehearse in detail the precise arguments which I related to the Committee at that time. Nevertheless, there are a number of matters which I am sure your Lordships will be somewhat distressed about, particularly the fact that Amendment No. 32 is not to be discussed before the Committee this evening. Of course when we see the amendment at Report stage we shall have only one opportunity to speak individually. That stage does not have the great advantage of the Committee procedure in your Lordships' House when as many speeches may be made as are convenient to your Lordships.
Further, I feel that this incorrect version of what the noble Baroness said which has been published in the Official Report has given cause for concern. I am glad that she has taken the opportunity to correct it this evening. However, it makes one further difficulty for the Committee to manage this amendment satisfactorily.
If I may say so—and I shall draw my remarks somewhat rapidly to a conclusion at this stage—it is apparent that there is a wide gap between the word "consultation" and the expression in the existing amendment before the Committee. I was very interested to read again—and I hope that this is an entirely correct version—the interpretation of the noble Lord, Lord Nugent of Guildford. This is what he said at column 858 of Hansard in regard to the same subject:
"My noble friend has put down Amendment No. 32, which requires the local health authority to publish in complete form any proposal either to start or to stop a fluoridation scheme. Having done so, with the appropriate three months' notice, it requires the authority in reaching its decision to take into account the result of the publication that it undertakes in various ways so that the locality and everybody in it is aware of what is proposed. That would be an adequate way of consulting local opinion".
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I had entirely the same view as the noble Lord, Lord Nugent of Guildford, that what is proposed, as we see the Government's intention at the moment, is to make a publication in local newspapers and to leave it at that. We shall be very interested at a later stage to see the noble Baroness's amendment. However, I hope it will be very much broader than what was clearly the intention at an earlier stage. I beg to move.
Lord Prys-Davies: I should very much like to support Amendment No. 34. I, too, wish that we had had a discussion on Amendment No. 32, because it would have given us an opportunity of identifying the weaknesses that we see in Amendment No. 32 as framed. I welcome this clause in particular for two reasons. At least the word "consult" appears for the first time in one of the clauses. "To consult" means that we seek advice from the people with whom we are consulting; whereas the Amendment No. 32 did not impose a duty to consult: all that the health authority would have to do would be to circulate, in one or more papers, particulars of an application without an invitation for the reader to offer advice or to offer counsel. Thus we think that is important. The Minister might say, "Well, that is implied in the amendment" but we would wish this to be expressly spelt out in the amendment when it comes before the Committee. Thus I certainly welcome Amendment No. 34 for that reason.
Secondly, we think there ought to be a specific duty placed on the health authority to consult with the local authority; not merely with the public at large (though that is important) but with the public authority, a democratically-elected authority. Unless there is consultation with the locally elected authority there will be no consultation on this very important and controversial issue with a representative body. After all, the members of the local authority will know their neighbourhood and have some knowledge of the wishes of the majority who live in it.
There is another reason why the local authority should be involved in the consultative procedure. The representation will have to be made vigorously to the management of the health authority. The locally elected authority is accustomed to participating in consultative procedures. I should have thought that the local elected authority is therefore in the best position of all to ensure that the representation is made vigorously. Thus, for those two reasons in particular, I should wish to support Amendment No. 34.
The Earl of Kinnoull: Before my noble friend replies, I wonder whether I may just say this. I find it most important to get right the clause on consultation in this Bill. I support everything that the noble Lord has just said. I think he spoke very clearly. I was encouraged by my noble friend that, in withdrawing her amendment, she used the words, "it may not go far enough". That is most encouraging. It certainly does not go far enough.
If I may analyse three things in the amendment, they are these. First of all, there is the duty to publish in one or more papers. I think under planning legislation there is always a duty to publish in at least two papers, certainly not just one because it is quite possible that people will not see that. Thus I hope that that will be

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firmed up in any amendment that passes through the Committee.
Secondly, I think the noble Lord is absolutely right, that there should be a duty on the health authority to consult the local council. That really is an absolute must: "a duty to consult". To say, in the words of the amendment, "have … regard … to representations" is to use the vaguest words one can possibly devise. I hope that my noble friend would import the words "a duty to consult local councils", and indeed to firm up what rights other representations have.
One is bound to enter a situation where the health authority has a duty to consult and takes account of representations, and finds that all the body of opinion is against bringing in the scheme. The question then is: what do they do? Do they accept that criticism, or do they just go blindly ahead? I hope my noble friend can cover that point because it is very important.
The third matter concerns not excluding the public. I think this was an amendment that the noble Lord moved on the first day, as far as I remember, as an amendment to that Act. I cannot remember the name of the Act. However, it was basically to allow the public the right of access to a hearing discussing this point, whereas they do not necessarily have the right at the moment, for instance, to attend a health authority's meeting. I think that is correct.
I hope that will be coming. I am not sure what effect it has because I assume the public are not able to speak; they simply have the right to attend. I do not know whether my noble friend can answer me this question, which is whether the press would have the right to be in attendance on any discussion that the health authority has. I hope that they do. It is very important that they should do. There should never be any secrecy in that light at all. I hope that my noble friend can reply to those points.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes: I should like to support the point that it would be good to have consultations with the elected local authority. I am very much for elected authorities, particularly at local level. However, there seems to be a misunderstanding about the actual wording of this amendment. I hope that when the Minister brings back an amendment it will be a better one.
First of all, I should say this about consulting the public. Surely the way in which all health authorities consult the public is through the community health councils. That is the existing machinery for public consultation. Most community health councils are extremely active and spend a great length of time in discussing the matters within their own community health council. They represent the local people. Also at most district health authorities they are allowed to speak. Usually the representative of the community health council is allowed to speak and is often invited to do so. Thus I think there are certainly adequate ways in which public consultation is already in action within the health service. Indeed, these meetings are certainly open to the public, as the noble Lord has questioned. I have been to many which are open to the public.
I hope that when the Minister brings back an amendment she retains some power within the
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amendment that if the meeting gets totally out of hand, the health authority could take such action as to continue the meeting correctly. On quite a different issue from this, my husband attended a district health authority meeting which they had moved from the normal room to a much larger roon in order to enable some hundreds of members of the public to attend. Members of the authority felt totally intimidated throughout by the vast proportion of the public there interfering with the proper conduct of the meeting.
Therefore I think this is very important. Although I am all for public consultation and I support the general principle of this, I do not think the wording in this amendment is correct and I hope that the Minister will see that powers are retained to conduct the meeting in good order.
Lord Somers: I support entirely what the noble Baroness had just said. Elected bodies are no doubt elected and I should not wish them to be anything else. However, if there is anything wrong with one's health, one goes not to an elected body but to a doctor. Dentists are not elected, but if there is anything wrong with our teeth we go to a dentist—I can say that from experience because I went to one this morning! Therefore, election surely does not make you an expert on any subject; and this is a particularly scientific subject.
6.30 p.m.
Lord Houghton of Sowerby: I think the noble Baroness may find she can deal with this matter more satisfactorily if we all have our say on it. It seems to me that it will form part of the more comprehensive consideration of consultation when we come to this later stage. We cannot very well discuss Amendment No. 32 because it has not been moved. We cannot very well discuss the revised version, the correct version, of the noble Baroness's speech earlier on because we do not have it before us; so we really have to take this amendment as a basis for a fairly wide consideration of the subject of consultation.
I would put this point to the Committee. This subject is different from any other subject that can be considered by the health authority; it is quite separate and distinct. It is different in kind from anything else with which they have to deal. Therefore, the consultation that they should have is likely to be much more controversial than that on any other subject. The noble Baroness, Lady Gardner of Parkes, who has just spoken, has given us a glimpse of what may happen when consultation takes place with local authorities or with community health councils to which the public are admitted. Yet the public have a right to be admitted, and I stress the point that we must regard consultation as meaning taking into account the volume of protest, because that is what it will be. It will not be to consider representation in any sort of gentle and rational kind of way: it will be to consider the emotional reaction of a lot of people towards something against which they are profoundly opposed; so I do warn the noble Baroness.
May I refer to the state of mind of the Government by quoting from Amendment No. 32? That says that a health authority shall,
"in determining whether or not to proceed, have such regard as they

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consider appropriate to any representations which have been made to them with respect to the proposal".
So the health authority is put in the lofty position of being able to consider the representations they regard as appropriate.
I think that some health authorities will have something more to think about than the rather placid consideration of representations. This is a very important aspect of the whole question of consultation. When elected representative bodies of the public are deprived of a statutory voice in reaching a decision on a matter of this kind, naturally there is going to be a volume of frustration on this matter that does not occur on other questions.
What does a health authority generally do? It takes care of the health of the community. But this is not a Bill to take care of the health of the community. This is not a Bill to ensure that the general health of the community is cared for. This is a proposal to do something to the water, with the specific purpose of having an effect upon a section of the community. Nobody pretends that this Bill is to make the water better for grown-up people. This is not to improve the health of those who may have all sorts of conditions which may respond unfavourably to what they are asked to drink. No; if they are in difficulties they must seek a remedy elsewhere or not drink the water that is offered them. They can drink anything they like, but they will have no option regarding the content of the water which is laid on through the statutory authority.
I should be glad if the noble Baroness could tell me of anything that the health authorities do which is in the same class as this health measure. It is not a health measure in terms of the health of the community. It is an alternative to parents' care of their children's teeth; it is an alternative to parents' care of their children's diet; it is an alternative to parental responsibility. That is really what it is. This Bill is intended to cure by this means something which parents themselves do not look after sufficiently. That is the answer.
This is not a matter of the health of the community. It really should not be in the hands of the health authority at all. This is a matter for democratic decision, because the niceties of the conflict of opinion between scientists and experts on one side or the other will scarcely occur to many people. They will object to this in principle. If they object to it in principle, their representations will not be of a calm or rational variety. They will be representations of protest, of demo, of making life difficult. You might say it is almost equivalent to protests against motorways going through certain parts of the country: they will react to what is being done in a very unpleasant way.
I conclude by suggesting to the noble Baroness that she has an awful lot to think about in bringing forward the more comprehensive measure here. My noble friend who spoke from the Front Bench a moment ago made a very good point when he referred to the fact that the word "consultation" now appears in this Bill for the first time. The original Bill did not appear to care tuppence about representations; there was no mention of them. This does show that the Government are at least realising now that, with the deprivation of any effective voice of the local authorities, they have to take a great deal more care of
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consultation. That is my humble advice to the noble Baroness. I am sure she does not want a rocket at the Report stage on the subject, so there is a little thinking to be done between now and then.
Lord Prys-Davies: May I impose two further burdens on the noble Baroness? When the amendment sees the light of day, I should be grateful if the stage at which consultation is to take place could be clarified. In the Second Reading debate the Minister said that the Government would bring forward an amendment to ensure that there was consultation
"in advance of a decision being taken by the health authority."—[Official Report, 26/3/85; col 967.]
It seems to me that the health authority will take two key decisions. There will be a decision that it ought to put fluoride in water. That is the first decision. Then there will be a second decision: that it will apply to the water authorities for fluoridation. I would hope that the amendment will make it clear that there will be consultation before the authority decides that it ought to fluoridate the water. The views of the public, the views of the local authority, ought to be one factor in front of the health authority before it decides on balance that it will fluoridate the water supply. That is important. We fear that if there is no consultation at that stage, and if consultation is only introduced after the authority has decided to apply to the water authority, it will be found that the health authority has taken a view and that it will stick to that view irrespective of the representations received by the authority.
The second point arises from Amendment No. 32, in its last paragraph, and Amendment No. 33, which have not been moved. It is important that there should be sufficient public notice of the time and the place of the meeting at which the health authority decides to put fluoride into the water. I understand that the Bill incorporates the Public Bodies (Admission to Meetings) Act 1960. The requirements of the 1960 Act will be fully met if notice of the meeting is posted at the offices of the health authority three clear days before the meeting or, if the meeting is convened at shorter notice, then at the time it is convened. There is no obligation to include in the notice the agenda of the business. There is no obligation in the Act to ensure that the notice is exhibited in a conspicuous part of the offices and is readily available to the public. I would therefore be grateful if the Government would consider whether they are satisfied with the provisions in the 1960 Act for giving notice of the public meeting.
The object of a public meeting is that members of the public can attend. They can see what arguments are being advanced; they can see how a decision is arrived at. According to my understanding, there need not be even three days' notice of the meeting. There need not be notice of the agenda. I would have thought that Members of the Committee would say that the provisions of the 1960 Act are not good enough and that they should be strengthened and improved.
The Earl of Kinnoull: Is the noble Lord saying that procedures that have been so well used under planning legislation should be adopted where this is sensible? The procedures in planning provide for statutory duties of notice and all the matters that the noble Lord has mentioned. Is that what he is suggesting?
Lord Prys-Davies: There are the two issues of the timing of consultations with the local authorities and the public. We suggest that there should be thorough consultation before the authority decides, on balance, that it should apply for fluoridation. Secondly, we are saying that the public should have ample notice of the date and the place of the meeting where the decision is to be taken and of the agenda that will be placed before the members of the authority.
Baroness Trumpington: To start with, I should like to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Houghton, on the eloquence of his Second Reading speech. The noble Lord talked about protest. Your Lordships may care to know about a peculiar case in New Zealand which seems to me to demonstrate both the effectiveness of anti-fluoridation propaganda and its lack of respectability. In Hastings, New Zealand, in 1953, the authorities announced the final date of the implementation of a fluoridation scheme. Publicity was distributed by a number of anti-fluoridation groups telling the townspeople that they would be poisoned by the scheme. A number of citizens duly recorded the symptoms listed in the literature and complained about them to the council. The fact that the claims were essentially psychological is best demonstrated by the fact that the scheme was delayed by a technical hitch and had not even started. The New Zealand Commission on Fluoridation discussed the case at some length. Its conclusion was:
"We have no doubt that the propaganda material which has been distributed in Hastings and elsewhere or acquired by citizens for their own information has done much to arouse fear of fluoridation in the minds of receptive persons and to create an emotional stress in which people become unduly responsive to the suggestion that they were suffering due to fluoridation".
I understand that there was a similar occurrence in this country when parts of Leeds were fluoridated.
6.45 p.m.
The Earl of Kinnoull: Will my noble friend say from what article or report she was quoting?
Baroness Trumpington: It was, I believe, the New Zealand Commission on Fluoridation. Yes, that is right. I am assured of it from on high.
I turn to another point raised by my noble friend Lord Kinnoull with regard to the right of the public to attend meetings. The public already have the right to attend health authority meetings on fluoridation subject to certain possible restrictions in the Public Bodies (Admission to Meetings) Act 1960. The Government propose to clarify the legal position on this but, in practice, public admission already takes place as a matter of course.
In answer to the noble Lord, Lord Prys-Davies, it is the Government's intention that consultation should take place before any application is made under the Bill for fluoridation. The local press will ensure that there is much publicity. The Government are in broad agreement with the thrust of the amendment that health authorities should be obliged to consult local opinion before reaching a decision on whether or not to seek water fluoridation. The present position is that health authorities are advised to do this in departmental guidance, and in particular they have a statutory duty, as my noble friend Lady Gardner of
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Parkes has said, to consult community health councils, which are set up to reflect consumer interest, over fluoridation.
However, we shall be moving our amendment on Report on this issue. In revising Amendment No. 32 for your Lordships' consideration we shall also be taking into account the views expressed regarding the position of local councils on fluoridation policy. The noble Lord, Lord Prys-Davies—I hope that he is also my noble friend—will understand that I would not wish to elaborate further at this stage as we are still considering the terms of the future amendment. I hope that my noble friend will in due course agree that my amendment will meet the spirit of his amendment and that he will therefore withdraw his amendment.
Lord Sandys: I had not anticipated that my noble friend Lady Trumpington woud say more this evening on the subject of Amendment No. 34. I am most grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken at length and very much in support of the general thrust of the amendment. I was naturally glad to hear from my noble friend that the Government accept that general thrust. I was also glad that my noble friend Lady Gardner supported the amendment and that she did not describe it as a mischievous amendment. That was her description of my earlier amendment.
I believe that it would be for the benefit of your Lordships' Committee if my noble friend Lady Trumpington could bring forward her amendment sufficiently in advance of Report stage to enable noble Lords to study it. It would be greatly to the benefit of noble Lords who have spoken to the amendment now under discussion if they could see that amendment of my noble friend in advance, bearing in mind that all of us have been suffering from the after-effects of the postal strike and that no less than 20 million letters are now rapidly, we hope, being dispatched on their way. Nevertheless, there are problems of communication between Committee and Report stages. I hope that if I withdraw my amendment I shall have the assurance of my noble friend that she will do her utmost to see that the Committee is informed sufficiently in advance of Report stage to enable us to have time to examine the amendment, to which we all greatly look forward. With that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Baroness Trumpington Baroness Trumpington moved Amendment No. 35:
[Printed 18/4/85; col. 846.]
The noble Baroness said: I have already spoken to this amendment with Amendment No. 9. This is purely a technical amendment, which I hope your Lordships will accept. I beg to move.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Clause 3 [Short title, commencement and extent]:
Lord Monson Lord Monson moved Amendment No. 36:
Page 3, line 4, leave out ("Water fluoridation Act 1985") and insert ("Compulsory Mass Medication (Fluoridation) Act 1985").
The noble Lord said: The purpose of this amendment is to alter the Short Title of the Bill, so that its effects may be described more accurately. It cannot be denied that for all practical purposes the

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ingestion of fluoride will be compulsory once a particular health authority has decided that fluoride is to be added to the public water supply. This is all the more so now that the Government have, alas, resisted all our very reasonable amendments designed to ensure an alternative water supply for those who are at risk or who feel themselves to be at risk from fluoridation.
I pointed out last Thursday that only millionaires or possibly even multi-millionaires could in practice exempt themselves from the practical effects of this legislation. The proponents of fluoridation point to legislation requiring certain additives to be made to common foods. However, nobody, in the last resort, is obliged to buy a Mother's Pride sliced loaf to which sundry vitamins and minerals have been added—they can make their own wholemeal bread. Nobody is obliged to buy margarine to which vitamins A and D have been added, when for a few pence more they can buy butter. Nobody is obliged to buy salt to which iodine has been added—they can instead opt for sea-salt.
However, water is a very different matter. Whereas quite a few people can afford bottled spring water to drink on its own or to mix with spirits or fruit concentrates, how many people could afford to boil their potatoes or their cabbage in bottled water? How many people could afford to stew their rhubarb in it? How many people could afford to check through every item of frozen, tinned or bottled food and every bottle of beer or soft drink, to ascertain whether fluoridated water has been used in its preparation? We all know full well what the answer is, and for that reason the word "mass" is as appropriate as the word "compulsory", which leaves us only with the word "medication".
Last week the noble Lord, Lord Winstanley, denied that fluoride was a medicine. Yet the Collins English Dictionary in our Library defines "medication" as, "Treatment with drugs"; and it defines the word "drug"as:
"any synthetic or natural chemical substance used in the treatment or prevention of disease".
The noble Lord, Lord Winstanley, and those who think like him, believe that fluorides prevent or ameliorate the disease—if disease it can really be called—of caries. Therefore, logically they should endorse the inclusion of the word "medication". I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Winstanley, is not in his place to express an opinion on what I have just said. Perhaps the noble Lord would prefer the word "prophylaxis". If so, no doubt he will suggest the substitution of that word at the next stage of the Bill.
However, as one eminent West End dentist has pointed out, fluorides in water can only be prophylactic for those aged six or below in the case of ordinary teeth, or those aged 11 or 12 or below in the case of wisdom teeth. Above those ages there is some speculation, but no positive proof, that the ingestion of fluoride does any good. It is noteworthy that the noble Lord, Lord Jauncey, conceded that fluoride was a medicine in his judgment, albeit not one covered by the Medicines Act. I beg to move.
Lord Sandys: I am very glad to support this amendment and I should like to quote from an interesting document which will be available to your Lordships. I am referring to the Expenditure Committee, Social Services and Employment Sub-Committee Minutes of Evidence for Wednesday 10th March 1976, before which the late Lord Douglas of Barloch, who was such an eminent authority in this field, appeared. He was asked the following question which appears at column 218 and which is numbered Question 1027. He was asked:
"Can you tell us what is the difference between adding fluoride to water and, as you heard the previous witness say, adding calcium to bread"—
a point mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Monson—
"or vitamins to margarine, which we do for health reasons? You heard the previous witness reject the idea that it is mass medication. He said that it was adding a nutrient to water that the human body needs".
Lord Douglas replied:
"Let me take the last point first: it has never been demonstrated that fluorides are essential nutrients for human beings. Nobody has ever demonstrated that. The Central Health Services Council some years ago, when it was considering this matter, admitted that it had never been proved that they were essential nutrients".
I think that an essential fact to bring forward before your Lordships' Committee is that the process is mass medication. I was very glad to read over the minutes of evidence and I am particularly glad that the noble Lord, Lord Monson, put down this amendment. It would be tedious to enlarge upon it, but having drawn the Committee's attention to this particular matter, I feel that it deserves your Lordships' consideration.
The Earl of Caithness: The Government do not believe that fluoridation represents mass medication in the sense in which that term would normally be used. The benefit of fluoridation was first discovered by observing the dental health of people living in areas where the water supply contains natural fluoride at the required concentration. It is arguable that these people are not subject to mass medication and that there is no significant difference between people living in areas where fluoride is naturally present at the optimum level—and that is about half a million in this country and 100 million worldwide—and those people living in areas where the fluoride content has been increased in order to replicate this naturally occurring level of benefit.
The noble Lord, Lord Monson, raised a number of points. He said that fluoride was a medicine and went on at the end of his remarks to admit that, it was not within the Medicines Act and he, therefore, answered his own point. The noble Lord mentioned bottled spring water. It was only a week ago that I was saying to noble Lords that if they drink Vichy water, they are probably getting a higher concentration of fluoride than they would if they drank tap water. We must also bear in mind that fluoride occurs naturally in all water supplies throughout the world at different levels and, therefore, to rectify the situation to bring it up to the optimum level does not seem to me in any way to be mass medication.
The point which the noble Lord, Lord Monson, tends to forget when he puts forward an argument such as the one he tried to put forward just now is that this is an enabling Bill to put the situation back to what we

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always believed the law to be. It enables the water authorities, on advice from the health authorities after due consultation to rectify the level of fluoridation, should they so wish. If, after consultation, the health authority says that it does not recommend it, the water authority does not need to do it. That is the difference.
7 p.m.
Lord Houghton of Sowerby: I apologise for being absent from the Chamber for a little while, but I was called out by the daughter of the late Admiral Lord Keyes who has handed to me a file of her experiences of arthritic fluorosis. I am bound to say, from a preliminary glance at what can happen to people who have an unfavourable reaction to fluoridated water, that I shall have to refer to this at a later stage in the proceedings.
This is medication. There is no doubt at all about it. It has to be distinguished from either obscure description or a complete disregard of what it is really going to do. It is extraordinary when we hear, and have been hearing throughout the discussions on the Bill, that no harm can come to people and yet here I have evidence of a person who had to be put, by the National Health Service doctors, on what was called a fluoride exclusion diet, and had to go on to non-fluoridated water as the only hope of arresting the deterioration of an arthritic condition.
That suggests that we might have to have an amendment at a later stage of the Bill which will protect people who, for good reasons and on medical advice, require an exclusion diet, and make provision for it. This lady told me that she was unable to afford what she would otherwise have had, and that was bottled water free of fluoridation. While this is before us I thought I might take the opportunity of another intervention on Committee stage to give some hint of things to come.
The Earl of Kinnoull: The noble Lord has raised a serious issue. What he had done, for me anyway, is confirmed something which is always at the back of one's mind, but when one listens to my noble friend Lady Trumpington quoting from this New Zealand report one almost thinks that we are all crackpots and unbalanced. But when one hears evidence like that—
Baroness Trumpington: If I may just intervene, my noble friend has not heard any evidence.
The Earl of Kinnoull: Perhaps evidence is too strong. The noble Lord has been given something—and it is obviously at too short notice for him to verify everything—which is deeply disturbing. I think we had an amendment on the first day which said that for those who medically should not receive fluoridated water there should be an alternative supply, or some compensation so that they could purchase water which did not have the content of fluoride in it.
My noble friend Lady Trumpington is putting up a pretty tough defence for her Bill, for which we of course admire her, but I hope that she will take this serious point which the noble Lord has just made into consideration when we all I hope meet again at Report stage.
Lord Colwyn: May I briefly say that there has been expensive research on this subject that we are discussing of the possible connection between fluoridation and arthritis. Some years ago Ansell and Lawrence took a comparative study of the incidence of rheumatism in Leigh and Watford—which are among the United Kingdom fluoride study areas—and they found no difference in the amount of rheumatoid athritis, osteo-arthritis, spondylitis, gout or disc degeneration between the two towns. In fact, there were significantly fewer complaints of rheumatism and less incapacity due to rheumatism in Watford, which is fluoridated, than Leigh. But the authors were cautious in attributing this to fluoride. There is no evidence.
Lord Swinfen: So far as I understand it, we are discussing the Short Title of the Bill. I have always understood that it was customary for the Short Title to be as short as is convenient, and to the point. The title in the Bill before us has only two words, one is "Water" and the other "Fluoridation". That is precisely what the Bill deals with. The proposed title in this amendment is far too long and quite unnecessary.
The Earl of Caithness: I was interested in the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Houghton. Doubtless he will let my noble friend have a copy of that report this evening so that we can take a look at it too. I was grateful for the comments of my noble friend Lord Colwyn. I can tell him and the rest of the Committee that besides the evidence that he stated there was a report of the Royal College of Physicians which reviewed the studies relevant to claims that fluoridation caused harm through osteo-arthritis and other musculoskeletal disorders. They concluded:
"There is no evidence that the prevalence of any musculoskeletal disorder is increased in areas with fluoride at a concentration of 1 milligram per litre in water. Certain evidence suggests that osteoporosis and its complications are less prevalent in high-fluoride areas but it may be noted that some of this evidence refers to levels in excess of 1 milligram per litre".
Therefore there are certain benefits to be derived from fluoride according to the Royal College of Physicians' report. However I shall certainly read Lord Houghton's papers with interest, and look forward to debating them with him at a later stage. Going back to the precise amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Monson, there is nothing that I have heard from the rest of noble Lords in Committee which makes me change my mind that we are right to resist this amendment. I hope that the Committee will do so.
Lord Sandys: Before the noble Lord makes a final decision on his amendment, I should like to express my pleasure at hearing Lord Houghton's speech because he brought forward the fact that he was going to give evidence. We have almost repeatedly throughout the Committee stage heard from my noble friend Lord Caithness about the absence of evidence. I have been through the record and I discover that he said on 18th April that there was "no evidence" at column 842, and that there was "no concrete evidence" at column 843, and at column 880: "We have found no scientific evidence".
When we come to Report stage we shall no doubt have considerable evidence from the noble Lord, Lord

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Houghton, and indeed others. What it brings out is that the principal document on which the Government base their entire case is the 1976 report by the Royal College of Physicians entitled Fluoride of Teeth and Health. No report by 18 eminent physicians can be more greatly disputed because of course they have closed their eyes to so many of their colleagues. I could say much more about that, but I shall refrain from doing so.
The Earl of Caithness: I am sorry that I have to repeat so often that there is no evidence, but it really is restating the case as a result of matters put to me by noble Lords. With regard to my noble friend's last point that that report was the sole basis of this Bill, I can assure him that it was not. There is a mass of evidence, including the recent Knox report and many other studies, which has convinced us that, I say it again, there is no evidence.
Lord Monson: I am most grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, the noble Lord, Lord Sandys, and the noble Lord, Lord Houghton of Sowerby, for their support on this amendment. The noble Earl, Lord Caithness, told us that artificial fluoridation came about because it had been observed that children's teeth were better in areas with above average concentrations of fluoride naturally present in the water supply. He omitted to mention that concentrations of magnesium and calcium are also very much above average in those same areas.
Who can be sure whether the relative state of the children's teeth can be attributed to any one of those three elements on their own, or possibly in combination? He also talked about an optimum level of fluoride, and not for the first time. This is surely begging the question. Is he really suggesting that people above the age of 13 would come to any harm whatsoever if there were no fluoride in the water supply? Surely not. He spoke of Vichy water containing fluoride. Vichy water is not one of the bottled waters that I personally like, not because fluoride is present, but simply because I do not like the taste. There are many other bottled waters which contain very small proportions of fluoride indeed.
The dictionary definition of "medication" is as I stated. It is a perfectly correct word to use in the title of this Bill, if the Committee were so to decide, but I do not think this is perhaps one of the most important amendments that we want to stick on. There are more important things to concentrate upon and therefore for the time being I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Ampthill): Before calling Amendment No. 37 I should point out to the Committee that if it is agreed to, I cannot call Amendment No. 38.
Baroness Trumpington Baroness Trumpington moved Amendment No. 37:
Page 3, line 6, leave out subsection (2).
The noble Baroness said: The effect of this amendment is to bring the Bill into immediate effect upon Royal Assent. The justification for this is to be
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found in the new clause which provides for continuity of existing fluoridation schemes. The Government have considered representations made in another place and have concluded that it is, indeed, right that the legality of existing schemes should be put beyond doubt as soon as possible without there being an intervening period of two months after Royal Assent. I understand that we have the support of the water industry in this and I commend the amendment to your Lordships. I beg to move.
The Earl of Kinnoull: We shall not have a chance to speak on the next amendment, proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Monson, if we agree to this one.
Amendment No. 38: Page 3, line 6, leave out from ("force") to end of line 7 and insert ("one month from the date on which the Council of Ministers of the European Economic Community agree that fluoridation of all public water supplies shall be the policy of the Community.")
I should like to support his amendment on the grounds that having flown back from Strasbourg this morning at dawn from the Council of Europe, I am getting a taste of becoming European. What the noble Lord's amendment does is to provide that a decision of this nature should be considered by the Council of Ministers. I think that is its purpose.
I inquired at Strasbourg as to how many other Western European countries have fluoridation. I think I am correct in saying, though if I am wrong, my noble friend Lady Trumpington will correct me, that no other Western European country has fluoridation. We are now into Europe. We are dealing with a very important subject. With electricity supply crossing the Channel from France it is quite possible that we shall have a supply of British water going to France. At this stage we would be negated if we tried to do that.
I have always been a tremendous admirer of Welsh water. They charge far too little for what they supply to Birmingham. It is a wonderful, clear, beautiful water. If they were trying to export water and the area water authority had fluoridated it, there would be no question of their being able to export to Europe. The noble Lord, Lord Monson, has a strong point in his amendment, which I hope he will discuss as well, because as we move closer to Europe it seems crazy to be out on a limb on a serious and important subject such as water.
7.15 p.m.
Lord Houghton of Sowerby: May I ask the noble Baroness a question? The noble Baroness explained that the purpose of this amendment was to cover the health authorities where fluoridation is already in operation. I can well understand that they want to be legitimised at the earliest possible moment, and this amendment would do that. I do not think we want health authorities to be in serious jeopardy for any length of time. They may have been acting illegally up to now. They are probably lucky to be at large. But we will forgive them because they did not know what they were doing when they did it and the law does not really legitimise what they have done, now that they have done it. But is it necesary to cover future schemes in this way?
Is it not possible to give full effect to what the noble Baroness moved earlier in Amendment No. 31?

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Amendment No. 31 deals with continuity of existing schemes. Could not the Bill provide that the continuation of existing schemes is covered with immediate effect after the passing of the Act? Is there any reason why new schemes should not wait while local health authorities get into position? I am not sure what is the purpose of the amendment if it is only to cover the continuation problem, when previously it had apparently been understood that there would be a lapse of time between the Bill becoming law and its being given effect. Am I wrong about this? We do not want to give health authorities the starting pistol for new schemes. We do not mind covering them for old schemes. Am I not talking a little sense? The noble Baroness is looking at me and I am not sure whether she is wondering what I am saying or whether she is taking it all in? Is the noble Baroness with me?
Baroness Trumpington: On this occasion I am not with the noble Lord. He knows how fond I am of him and what immense repect I have for him. He said he was talking a little sense. I fear he was taking a little nonsense. When the Bill is enacted it will have no effect on new schemes because they will take the course that they have to take to come into effect. The places which already have fluoridation obviously will want to get going. The effect of the amendment is to bring the Bill into immediate effect so that they can all start again as soon as possible. But new schemes where there has been no fluoridation could not possibly start immediately.
Lord Houghton of Sowerby: But, with great respect and affection, the noble Baroness is in error, surely. The Bill as printed states in Clause 3:
"This Act comes into force at the end of the period of two months beginning with the day on which it is passed.".
Why was that put in the Bill? The noble Baroness is seeking to delete this provision from the Bill because she says that it would leave the health authorities with existing schemes without statutory authority for what they are doing. For that reason she wishes to remove it from the Bill altogether. But the existing schemes appeared not to be covered adequately in the Bill as printed, and that is the reason for the amendment moved by the noble Baroness, as Amendment No. 31 has been put into the Bill, to clear up that doubt about where existing schemes come under the Bill.
The noble Baroness says that this does not really matter for future schemes because the coming into force of the Act does not do anything. What it does is to enable health authorities to set in motion their process—
Baroness Trumpington: That is right.
Lord Houghton of Sowerby:—to make applications and to advertise and all the rest. But why was this delay of two months put in the Bill? Why did she want to delay the starting pistol for two months for new schemes in the Bill as it stands, whereas now she tells me when I want to keep it in for future schemes that it is all nonsense? There is either a misunderstanding or there is some lack of appreciation of what the point is. Probably the noble Earl might have a go.
The Earl of Kinnoull: Before my noble friend considers her reply, she did explain, in fairness to her, when she moved this amendment that it was specifically to assist those health authorities which had existing schemes to legitimise; but of course it does not cover Scotland. Scotland has no schemes at all; they will be all new schemes in Scotland. I would support the noble Lord and I should like to ask my noble friend: why are they plucking this out of the Bill now in Scotland, when they are all new schemes?
The Earl of Kintore: The question of European water has been raised and I should like just to mention that from Aberdeen we supply many thousand tonnes of water to Russian trawlers and also to all kinds of shipping. At the moment it is not fluoridated. There is another point that I should like the noble Baroness to take note of, and that is that, for instance, in the Grampian region there are something like 80 different sources of water. There is the question of the practicality of fluoridating a small water supply if you are told by a health authority that you have got to do it. I hope this is only a local argument which will be decided by the regional council and the regional health board. I hope it is not an overall direction which can just be walloped on to us, because in some cases it is not impossible but it would be totally uneconomic to fluoridate a supply for, say, three crofts or something of that sort.
Lord Swinfen: Perhaps when my noble friend considers her reply to those questions she will confirm that the Council of Ministers in Europe have already in fact agreed to the fluoridation of water.
Baroness Trumpington: I should like to say to the noble Lord, Lord Houghton, that the amendment allows existing schemes to continue in England and Wales: they have not stopped. No new schemes will come into immediate effect anyway. Time is required for planning, consultation and so on. There is no reason why the provisions of the Bill relating to the new schemes should not come into immediate effect. With regard to the remarks of my noble friend Lord Kintore, may I say that the answer to his question is that it will be up to the local water authorities.
I do not think it would be strictly correct for me to answer questions on Amendment No. 38; but, as we have talked about it intermittently and if the object of Amendment No. 38 is to suggest that the EEC do not consider the concentration of fluoride used in our fluoridation schemes and provided for in Clause 1(5) of the Bill is safe, I can assure the Committee that that is not the case. Indeed, the Council of Ministers has approved the EEC directive relating to the quality of water intended for human consumption, which covers this point among others.
The directive, which comes into effect this year, provides for a maximum admissible level of 1·5 mg per litre of fluoride in the water supply. That is precisely the maximum level that we already observe in water fluoridation schemes. It is really quite wrongheaded to suggest, as the amendment does, that this country should not adopt preventive health measures by its own choice but should do so only if they are implemented by the European Community as a whole. There is no basis at all for such a suggestion.
Lord Monson: I had originally intended to rise on this amendment only to—
Lord Houghton of Sowerby: On a point of order, which amendment are we talking about? I addressed myself to Amendment No. 37, and that is the one which I thought was before the Committee at this stage. We drifted on to Europe in anticipation of the next amendment, which has not yet been moved.
The Earl of Caithness: May I say that the point is that the next amendment cannot be moved if this one is accepted, and therefore my noble friend was merely trying to help the Committee in her normal generous way?
Lord Houghton of Sowerby: I apologise if I misunderstood the mission that she was on at that particular moment, but it is a second or two since she said that there was no reason at all why there should be any delay in the effective date of this Bill when it became an Act of Parliament. All I can say on that is that it was in the Bill, it is in the Bill and it is now proposed to take it out. Very well then: the noble Baroness ought to get up and say, "It was in the Bill; we have changed our minds; we have made a mistake and we propose to take it out."
Lord Monson: I had originally intended to rise to speak on this amendment only to make the point which has just been made by the noble Lord, Lord Houghton: that is, why the alleged necessity for this Amendment No. 37 and why had it not been introduced earlier while the Bill was going through another place? Subsequently of course I realised that once this amendment goes through, as it almost certainly will, there will be no opportunity to speak to the principle of my amendment, Amendment No. 38, which I think does deserve an airing—and at this stage, what is more, since we are going to be very busy at the next stage.
I have myself never pretended to be an enthusiast for Britain's membership of the EEC, but in this I realise that I differ from most of the Members of this Committee. I know that if there is one ambition that fires "Euro-enthusiasts", if I may use that term, it is the desire to harmonise British laws, British customs and British practices as closely as possible with those of the other member states of the Community. Indeed, one of the arguments deployed for making the wearing of seat belts compulsory was that this move would harmonise our laws with those of the other EEC countries, excepting only Greece and Italy. The legislation was duly passed—the only difference being that, for some reason, the maximum penalty for non-compliance here was fixed at a draconian level about 15 times the EEC average.
Logically, then, noble Lords who favoured adhering to the EEC norm in the matter of seat belt compulsion should also be in favour of following the EEC in the matter of fluoridation: in other words, they should oppose this Bill. Instead, somewhat illogically I cannot help thinking, a number of noble Lords have done the precise opposite. It cannot be emphasised too strongly that virtually every EEC country, with the exception of the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland, opposes compulsory fluoridation at a national
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level no matter what EEC directives there may have been. They include not least those countries which have experimented with fluoridation on a trial basis.
Fluoridation is either not employed or positively banned in all the continental EEC countries: that is to say, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Denmark, West Germany, Italy and Greece, as well, incidentally, as Norway and Sweden, which are of course outside the EEC. I mention these two countries as the Scandinavian countries are not only what one might call medically and scientifically scrupulous countries: they are also countries which are never traditionally averse—
The Earl of Caithness: May I interrupt the noble Lord? We are strictly out of order in debating Amendment No. 38. My noble friend raised the point that she did on Amendment No. 38 for the benefit of the Committee. I hope that the noble Lord will be brief in concluding his remarks.
7.30 p.m.
Lord Monson: I can certainly give the noble Earl that assurance. The Scandinavian countries are countries which are not averse to producing dirigiste or maternalist (one might say) legislation when they consider it essential. In other words, if those Scandinavian countries thought that fluoridation was safe, they would have had no hesitation whatever in introducing it. Instead, of the EEC countries, we see that Belgium discontinued one small experiment in fluoridation; in Denmark, fluoridation is forbidden by law not only in water but also in food; in France, the government does not allow fluoridation as its safety has not been sufficiently proved; in West Germany, fluoridation was discontinued in 1971 because of health and legal considerations. There is no fluoridation in Greece, there is no fluoridation in Italy or in Luxembourg, where the official view is that the method is naive and utopian without practical effect. In the Netherlands, after an exhaustive—
The Earl of Caithness: The noble Lord did say he would be brief. I think he is now abusing the privileges of the Committee.
Lord Monson: I will not go any further except to point out that a committee set up by medical people with considerable qualifications, including biologists, pharmacologists, dermatologists and so on, has come out against fluoridation. In consequence, permission to fluoridate was revoked by Royal decree on 31st August 1976. The point is this. Can we really claim that we and the Republic of Ireland are right and all the other EEC countries wrong? Surely not!
The Earl of Kinnoull: The noble Lord, Lord Houghton, made a good point, as always. The reason, as I understand it, why Acts always are given a time lapse before they come into operation is to ensure that people have time to digest the provisions; that their advisers have time to digest the Act. It is very unusual, unless there is an emergency reason, to bring in an Act straight away.
My noble friend has explained her reasons for withdrawing subsection (2) as being really to legitimise the existing schemes. I do not quarrel with that. I

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quarrel when it comes to Scotland; because we know that there are no existing schemes in Scotland and I know that people do not always read Hansard and do not always follow what is happening in the Houses of Parliament. I think that there is a case for making a special exception for Scotland, because it is an exceptional position, to allow the two-month period which was the original purpose and which, rightly, was written into the Bill. Scotland should be the exception. I hope that my noble friend will consider this favourably with a view perhaps to putting down an amendment at the next stage.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes: I certainly support this amendment and I think that all this talk about needing two months' thinking time is quite unnecessary. This is simply an amendment to ensure that those authorities presently fluoridating their water will be acting legally that much more quickly. We have had considerable debate in the Committee and the Minister has told us that she will be bringing back an amendment to allow adequate public consultation. My experience of public consultation is that anything under two months would be totally impossible and that two years are more likely to be needed for public consultation. So that all this alarm at the thought that every authority is going to go rushing through a fluoridation of water scheme within two months is quite unnecessary. I support the amendment as it stands.
Lord Houghton of Sowerby: If I may say so, with great respect to the noble Baroness, Lady Gardner of Parkes, she is sometimes more ministerial than the Minister. She rises effectively to put a kind of three-line whip under the observations of the Minister to emphasise their importance and their conclusiveness. I think that the noble Baroness still has to justify wanting to take out of the Bill something that was put in in relation to new schemes. The point about continuation would be met if her amendment were to exclude from Clause 3(2) those schemes that are dealt with under the amendment that she moved, Amendment No. 31, which refers specifically to continuation schemes.
I would say this. To give the starting pistol at the moment when this Bill is passed into law would enable a health authority to get going very quickly; and the passion behind pushing fluoride into the water is so strong in some areas that they want to get on with it quickly. There must have been some reason for the two-months delay. Right from the beginning in the Bill, with two months' delay and three months' notice there is at least roughly six months before matters come to the crunch. If your take those two months away, schemes can begin two months earlier. I warn the noble Baroness that this will appear to be a manoeuvre to curtail the period of consultation and discussion locally and to give the health authorities the green light to get on with the job. I think that would be a great mistake. As far as I am concerned, I would divide the Committee on this amendment rather than let it go through.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes: I should like to say that my comments come purely from the fact that I have served on health authorities for a good many years and
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I know just how long and slow are all sorts of consultations. That was the basis of my comment.
Baroness Trumpington: This amendment is consequential on Amendment No. 31, which the Committee has already passed. If noble Lords will read Hansard, they will see that I have answered their various questions in my original speech. I see nothing that I can usefully add. We are going round and round the mulberry bush at the moment.
7.36 p.m.
On Question, Whether the said amendment (No. 37) shall be agreed to?
Their Lordships divided; Contents, 44; Not-Contents, 6.

DIVISION NO. 1

CONTENTS

Auckland, L.

Inglewood, L.

Belhaven and Stenton, L.

Kintore, E.

Bethell, L.

Lawrence, L.

Birk, B.

Long, V.

Brabazon of Tara, L.

Lucas of Chilworth, L.

Broadbridge, L.

McIntosh of Haringey, L.

Brougham and Vaux, L.

Molson, L.

Caithness, E.

Mountevans, L.

Carnegy of Lour, B.

Moyne, L.

Colwyn, L.

Ponsonby of Shulbrede, L.

Craigavon, V.

Prys-Davies, L.

Crathorne, L.

St. Aldwyn, E.

Dean of Beswick, L.

Simon, V.

Denham, L. [Teller.]

Skelmersdale, L.

Diamond, L.

Stewart of Fulham, L.

Elton, L.

Strathcona and Mount Royal, L.

Faithfull, B.

Gardner of Parkes, B.

Swinfen, L.

Glenarthur, L.

Swinton, E. [Teller.]

Graham of Edmonton, L.

Trumpington, B.

Henderson of Brompton, L.

Westbury, L.

Hornsby-Smith, B.

White, B.

Hylton-Foster, B.

NOT-CONTENTS

Houghton of Sowerby, L.

Sandys, L.

Kinnoull, E. [Teller.]

Stoddart of Swindon, L.

Monson, L. [Teller.]

Yarborough, E.

Resolved in the affirmative, and amendment agreed to accordingly.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Aylestone): I cannot call Amendment No. 38.
Lord Monson Lord Monson had given notice of his intention to move Amendment No. 39:
Page 3, line 7, at end insert—
("( ) This Act shall lapse twelve months after coming into force unless before that date its continuance is approved by a resolution of each House of Parliament.")
The noble Lord said: This amendment is self-explanatory. However, partly because it has occurred to me since tabling the amendment that 12 months is perhaps rather too short a time to evaluate the practical effects of the Act or to evaluate the most recent scientific studies drawing attention to the possible dangers of fluoridation, and partly because of the heavy workload that faces us in Committee next week on the Local Government Bill and because of the lateness of the hour (I am sure that, like me, the noble

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Baroness is looking forward to a stiff whisky to which a dash of unfluoridated water has been added) I do not propose to speak to this amendment tonight, but will come back with a revised amendment at a later stage. Therefore the amendment is not moved.
[Amendment No. 39 not moved.]
[Amendment No. 40 not moved.]
Clause 3, as amended, agreed to.
House resumed: Bill reported with amendments.

Lloyds Bank (Merger) Bill
Returned from the Commons with the amendments agreed to.

National Bank of New Zealand Limited Bill
Returned from the Commons with the amendments agreed to.
House adjourned at fourteen minutes before eight o'clock.