Lords Sitting of 30 April 1985

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

The Lord Bishop of Saint Edmundsbury and Ipswich
John, Lord Bishop of Saint Edmundsbury and Ipswich—Was (in the usual manner) introduced between the Lord Bishop of Derby and the Lord Bishop of Ely.

Jasmine Beckford
2.43 p.m.
Lord Harris of Greenwich: 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 action they propose to take following the disclosures in the case of Regina v. Beckford at the Central Criminal Court.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Security (Baroness Trumpington): My Lords, when the independent inquiry into the Jasmine Beckford case has produced its report, the Government will examine it carefully to see whether any lesson can be learnt which might be helpful in improving arrangements for the protection of children. The chief inspector of the Social Services Inspectorate strongly reminded directors of social services on 9th April about their responsibilities in these matters. The report, when published, will be available in the Library of your Lordships' House.
Lord Harris of Greenwich: My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for that reply. Does she not agree that there is increasing public anxiety about the number of such cases, which are receiving a great deal of publicity at the moment? In the light of this, does she not also agree that it is necessary—particularly when a child's life is lost or a child is seriously injured—that there should both be an independent investigation into what happened, and secondly some publication after that investigation as to what went wrong?
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, I well know the noble Lord's concern and I am sure we all share his feelings. We can only do our best to take all possible precautions. The awful thing is that public awareness only occurs after some ghastly tragedy has happened. Governments attempt to cover every eventuality and social workers do their best, but still pitiful children suffer. No amount of legislation will prevent or anticipate everything. We can only try even harder.
Lord Mishcon: My Lords, is the noble Baroness the Minister aware that many of us are delighted that Mr. Louis Blom-Cooper is chairing the tribunal that will inquire into this terrible happening? Is she aware also that one of the serious problems which children face in these circumstances is the complete shortage of the social workers who should be available to try and look after them? Finally, will she very much have in mind—as I hope that the inquiry will—the complaint made by the foster parents at the trial of Beckford; namely, that the social workers had removed the child against the wishes of the foster parents?
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, with regard to the latter part of the noble Lord's question, the guidance used for the criteria when placing children at home is a matter for professional judgment based on the particular circumstances of an individual case.
Lord Grimond: My Lords, leaving aside this particular case which is under inquiry, and bearing in mind that the appalling crimes of cruelty to children cannot be dealt with exclusively by the law, nevertheless does it not appear to the Government that the penalties for assaulting and indeed murdering children appear to be very much lighter than those for similar crimes carried out against adults?
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, it is up to the individual judge as to what penalty he imposes. I do not believe that it would be right for me to continue answering the noble Lord's question.
Baroness Faithfull: My Lords, does my noble friend not agree that although the blame always seems to fall at the door of social workers, nevertheless a case such as this is the responsibility of more than just the social workers? Does she also not agree that what is really required is co-ordinated co-operation between statutory and voluntary bodies, including schools, to deal with such children? Finally, may I ask my noble friend the Minister whether she does not consider it very unfair that some senior social workers have suffered as a result of this particular case, when in fact it is not yet proven that the fault was theirs?
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, I think that I entirely agree with the latter part of my noble friend's question.
Lord Elwyn-Jones: My Lords, returning to the question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Grimond, is it not a fact that the defendant in this case had a sentence of 10 years' imprisonment imposed upon him?
Baroness Trumpington: That is correct, my Lords.
Lord Kilmarnock: My Lords, is the noble Baroness satisfied that sufficient funds are being devoted to the training of social workers with a view to avoiding incidents of this kind in the future?
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, whether satisfactory funds are available is one question, but the responsibility for the scope and content of social work training rests with the Central Council for Education and Training in Social Work, which keeps the content of such programmes continually under review.
Lord Morris: My Lords, just because a judgment was deemed professional, that does not necessarily mean to say that it was sound. What, if anything, can Her Majesty's Government do about that?
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, I hear my noble friend.
Lord Dean of Beswick: My Lords, can the Minister tell the House whether there are any figures to show that the situation has deteriorated since about a decade ago when the Seebohm Report was implemented? As a result, children's departments that specialised in the care of children were absorbed into new huge social services departments. Has that not in fact created a deterioration in the service?
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, there are no national statistics on child abuse specifically; but figures are available showing the number of children committed to care under that section of the Children and Young Persons Act 1969 dealing with child abuse. Over recent years those figures have remained relatively static. However, a recent NSPCC study of children placed on the child abuse register held by the society showed a consistent decline in the percentage of children who were fatally or seriously injured.

Therapy Practitioners: Training and Standards
2.50 p.m.
The Earl of Dundee: 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 plans they have for giving the Institute for Complementary Medicine a grant to support a detailed investigation into the professional training and standards of the major institutions concerned with the education of therapy practitioners.
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, we have not received any recent application from the institute for a grant. We are, however, always prepared to consider well-founded applications for funding but they do have to compete with other bids for limited funds.
The Earl of Dundee: My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that encouraging reply, but should not a small and limited amount of public money be made more generally available to independent and charitably endowed bodies who, in the national interest, set out to improve training and standards as outlined? And although direct dispensation of medical care is no job for the Government, conversely, would not this type of indirect and limited action, if pursued, confirm even more the current impressions that the present Government possess excellent health and good judgment?
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, it is up to each individual body to make its bid, as I said in my original reply. The Government do not favour any one body over others in the field of alternative medicine. However, it cannot be in the interests of either alterna
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tive therapists or patients for there to be so many rival umbrella organisations, each claiming to perform the same function. They should seek to get together and work towards common goals.
Lord Ennals: My Lords, does the noble Baroness the Minister accept that there are in the country increasing numbers of patients who are turning to these alternative methods of therapy, sometimes recommended by their own general practitioners? This is recognised by the BMA itself. Does not the noble Baroness accept that, if people are to turn to alternative forms of therapy, it is extremely important that the therapist should be both well trained and effectively registered?
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, in reply to all the noble Lord's questions my answer is, yes.
Lord Ferrier: My Lords, can my noble friend confirm that the EEC authorities have approved the curriculum of the Anglo-European college of chiropractics at Bournemouth?
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, some alternative therapies have achieved recognition in some other countries. Attempts by Governments in those countries to bring these therapies within the method of treatment covered by their national health arrangements have met with strong opposition from other health care professionals. It is the case, of course, that in some other countries of Western Europe alternative therapists, even those wishing to practise privately, are at a greater disadvantage than in this country where at present they have the right to practise under common on law.
Lord Winstanley: My Lords, while I fully support the theme underlying the Question of the noble Earl, if the Government are satisfied, as I hope they are, that further detailed investigations are necessary, may I ask whether they will see to it that any grants are spread a little more widely, and are not given just to this organisation, the Institute for Complementary Medicine, which, as the noble Baroness said, is by no means the only one in this field? Could they perhaps take in bodies such as the Medical Research Council, which is admirably placed to carry out some of these investigations but which at the moment cannot carry out all the investigations it would wish because of lack of resources?
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, each application is dealt with on its merits.
Lord Prys-Davies: My Lords, what initiative will the Government take to ensure that the public are safeguarded, or better safeguarded, against persons who can open up business with a minimum of qualifications and the minimum of training, if, indeed, any at all?
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, people who seek treatment by alternative practitioners would do well to consult their family doctors and to find out whether the practitioner concerned is a member of a well-established group with professional standards. The department is not in the position to define professional

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standards in this field. It must be remembered that some doctors themselves practise alternative medicine.

VAT Threshold and Small Traders
2.55 p.m.
Lord Monson: 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 why the proposed VAT exemption limit for small traders was increased by less than the rate of inflation in both the 1984 and 1985 Budgets.
The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Minister for the Arts (The Earl of Gowrie): My Lords, the revalorisation of the VAT registration threshold is by reference to the original registration limit of £5,000 and inflation since then. In 1983 the true figure was heavily rounded up from about £17,700 to £18,000 to provide a more convenient level of threshold. With the lower rates of inflation in 1984 and 1985 the figures were rounded up by lesser amounts, producing thresholds of £18,700 and £19,500 respectively. Excluding the elements of rounding up I can assure the noble Lord that the increases in the 1984 and 1985 Budgets correspond with the inflation rates of 5.1 per cent. and 4.6 per cent., for the appropriate periods.
Lord Monson: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Earl the Minister for that reply. Does he not agree that even if one examines the longer period so as to eliminate anomalous fluctuations for individual years, the balance is still not quite right in as much as the retail price index rose by 46.7 per cent. between January 1980 and January 1985, whereas the VAT threshold rose by only 44.4 per cent over the same five-year period? In other words, there was a small fall in real terms.
Secondly, does the noble Earl not agree that it would greatly help redundant steel workers, coal miners, textile workers, and others who want to set up in business on their own account, using their redundancy money, if the threshold were raised to £50,000 as suggested by his noble friend Lord Campbell of Alloway during our debate a fortnight ago?
The Earl of Gowrie: My Lords, as someone who in normal life, if that is the way to describe it, is a small trader, I can say that these limits and the thresholds are very important to me. I shall look at the point which the noble Lord makes about people who are starting businesses and we shall see what is the best that we can do.
Lord Barnett: My Lords, will the noble Earl clarify the Government's position? Are the Government seeking to persuade the EC that the Government should be allowed to increase the threshold beyond the rate of inflation or are they content with the present situation?
The Earl of Gowrie: My Lords, I do not think that it is the nature of Governments to be content with the present situation. I do not know the state of negotiations with the EC, but I shall try to find out.
Lord Whaddon: My Lords, can the noble Earl remind the House of the cost of collecting this tax from the smaller firms? How much in the pound does it cost?
The Earl of Gowrie: My Lords, again, I would need prior notice of that question; but one of the attractive features to Governments of VAT is that it is a very cost-effective method of tax collection because those who pay the tax collect it themselves.

Veterinary Investigation Service: Study
2.58 p.m.
Baroness Elliot of Harwood: 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 action they intend to take to implement the recommendations of the Efficiency Study of the Veterinary Investigation Service report.
The Minister of State, Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Lord Belstead): My Lords, my right honourable friend the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food announced on 15th April his preliminary conclusions on the recommendations in this study. There is now to be a period for consultation with those concerned in the industry, the veterinary profession and the ministry's trade union side. I have arranged for a copy of the report to be deposited in the Library of your Lordships' House. In general, my right honourable friend endorses the main thrust of the report's recommendations, designed to reduce Exchequer costs and increase the efficiency of the service.
Baroness Elliot of Harwood: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for his reply. If these centres are cut, will the Government take account of the added expenses that will be incurred by farmers and vets, since they will have to travel much further to those places to which they are called? Will the further studies be completed before the centres are closed?
Lord Belstead: My Lords, I think that having to travel more miles has not, so it was found when the study was done, deterred farmers from travelling to the veterinary investigation centres. Nonetheless, my noble friend has raised an important point and for that reason I can certainly give her an assurance that there will now be consultations before any final decisions are reached.
Lord John-Mackie: My Lords, is the Minister aware that our animal health record is second to none in the world and that it would be a pity if the Government took any action as a result of this wide-ranging report, with its 35 recommendations, that impaired that

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record? I would emphasise what the noble Baroness said about travel distances when some of the 24 centres there are at present are closed.
Lord Belstead: My Lords, I agree entirely with the noble Lord. The Veterinary Investigation Service is highly regarded and valued by those who use it. The efficiency study is aimed at maintaining the service while providing better value for money for the taxpayer.

Business
3 p.m.
Lord Denham: My Lords, it may be for the convenience of the House if I announce that the Committee stage of the Local Government Bill will be adjourned at approximately 7.30 p.m. for a short period, and that during that adjournment the Town and Country Planning (Compensation for Restrictions on Mineral Working) Regulations 1985 will be taken.

Local Government Bill
The Minister of State, Department of the Environment (Lord Elton): 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.—(Lord Elton).
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House in Committee accordingly.
[The EARL OF LISTOWEL in the Chair.]
Lord Hayter Lord Hayter moved Amendment No. 8:
After Clause I, insert the following new clause:
("London Metropolitan Authority
.—(1) On the abolition date there shall be established a body corporate which shall be known as the London Metropolitan Authority.
(2) The London Metropolitan Authority shall consist of members elected by the local government electors of Greater London in accordance with this Act and the Representaton of the People Act 1983.
(3) As from the abolition date the London Metropolitan Authority established by this section shall be the strategic authority for Greater London.
(4) The London Metropolitan Authority shall only exercise such functions as are vested in it under this Act and shall do so within the financial provision laid down under this Act.").
The noble Lord said: Rising as I do from these independent Benches, I feel somewhat as Daniel must have done as he went into the den of lions. Your Lordships will remember that he had three friends in the city of Babylon; and I have three friends in connection with this amendment—the noble Baroness, Lady Faithfull, and the noble Lords, Lord Plummer and Lord Seebohm.
If your Lordships will allow me, I should like a quick word with the Committee on procedure. It has been agreed among those chiefly concerned that Amendments Nos. 8 and 9 would be more happily debated together, as the issues are to some extent, although not by any means completely, similar. Therefore, after I have moved Amendment No. 8, I
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expect that the noble Lord, Lord Molson, will speak to his amendment before it becomes a free-for-all.
Amendment No. 9: Insert the following new clause:
("Metropolitan Authorities.
.—(1) On the abolition date there shall be established for each metropolitan county a body corporate to be known by the name of that county with the addition of the words "Metropolitan Authority".
(2) Each metropolitan authority shall consist of members elected by the local government electors of that metropolitan county in accordance with this Act and the Representation of the People Act 1983.
(3) As from the abolition date each metropolitan authority established by this section shall be the strategic authority for that metropolitan county.
(4) Each metropolitan authority shall only exercise such functions as are vested in it under this Act and shall do so within the financial provisions laid down under the Act.").
Lord Sandford: I apologise for interrupting the noble Lord so early in his speech, but I hope that what he has suggested about discussing the two amendments together will not preclude the Committee having a further discussion an Amendment No. 9 after this debate. The issues are very different. The metropolitan counties have a different range of functions which are to pass to their boroughs. The scale of their activities is of a quite different order, as is their complexity. The operations of London have repercussions in the Home Counties not to be compared with those of the other metropolitan counties. I therefore hope that we will have a further debate on Amendment No. 9.
Lord Hayter: Indeed that will be so, because after Amendment No. 8 has been dealt with, Amendment No. 9 will be formally moved by the noble Lord, Lord Molson, and his colleagues, and of course there can be further debate at that stage. To come back to Amendment No. 8, this seeks to—
Lord Harmar-Nicholls: I beg the noble Lord's pardon, but there are some of us who do not feel it right that we should enter into the London controversy as we have no knowledge of London. But the metropolitan counties are a different matter. We have views on them from personal contact. I should have thought that to avoid confusion the two amendments ought to be taken completely separately rather than my noble friend's intervention on Amendment No. 9 while the argument will be confining itself to London on Amendment No. 8.
Noble Lords: Hear, hear!
Lord Denham: I think that this is very much in the hands of the Committee. Where there are similarities between two amendments, I think that it would be quite proper for those who wish to speak on the metropolitan counties to come in on the debate of the noble Lord, Lord Hayter, if I may so call it. But when that matter has been disposed of and we then address our attention to my noble friend's amendment, it would be quite proper for noble Lords to address themselves to different issues that occur on that amendment. I do not think that there is any loss to the Committee or disagreement at all on this.
Lord Hayter: I am beginning to feel that I am speaking in another place. Amendment No. 8 seeks to set up a new, directly elected metropolitan authority which would become the strategic authority for London. May I make two points on what the amendment is not about? We are not proposing a new Greater London Council under another name but an entirely different type of public authority. We are not seeking to interfere in any way at all with proposals in the Bill to devolve certain powers to individual London borough councils. On the other hand, we are concerned with the way in which essential city-wide functions of a strategic character would be administered in the future for the good of all London and its people.
This new clause, if your Lordships approve it, is a framework in which we would be able to determine only those functions which should be allocated to that London-wide authority in the course of our consideration of the Bill. The Committee will of course have to consider the financial aspects of that authority. For our part, we feel that it should be under strict financial control.
If I may point out some of the advantages of this amendment, the new clause would, if your Lordships agree, enable us to avoid the unnecessary and expensive dispersal of services such as the South Bank Arts Centre, the Historic Buildings Unit, the Thames barrier, the scientific services, the supplies department, the central computer services and many others which at the moment are going to non-elected quango bodies. Secondly, it would make possible the retention of the fire brigade and civil defence services under democratic control instead of the awkward transfer to a central joint board. Thirdly, it would allow us to keep together the unified, city-wide waste disposal services which have worked so effectively over the past 20 years, instead of adopting the Government's latest idea of several waste disposal groupings which many feel is a most extraordinary idea.
Fourthly, it would preserve devolution to the boroughs in that they would continue to receive those functions which could sensibly be devolved to them. Indeed, in both Conservative and Labour administrations there has been a continuous progress towards decentralisation to the boroughs on the GLC's own initiative over many years, particularly in the case of house management, planning control, traffic management and some parks and open spaces.
As for the cumbersome proposed joint arrangements under which the 32 borough councils would have to decide, for example, upon grants to voluntary organisations, we feel that these can be more conveniently carried out by this new metropolitan authority under whatever terms your Lordships might think fit.
Perhaps most important of all, the preservation of a metropolitan authority would save the heavy costs caused by the massive dislocation and disruption which hasty reorganisation always brings in its train. Like many other noble Lords, I am convinced that the attempt to break up and redistribute the wide range of services administered at County Hall in the space of only a few months between Royal Assent and the
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abolition date next April is courting disaster. We believe that this new clause would enable many useful improvements to be made to democratic London government with the minimum upheaval in essential public services. The people of London are entitled to no less.
Your Lordships will also note in this new clause that we want this new metropolitan authority to be elected by Londoners. One of the strongest objections to the present Bill is that it takes away all the voting rights for several million people over public services in the main urban areas. Many of us feel, nevertheless, that the GLC has far too many councillors, and it might be better if the new metropolitan authority had one directly elected member, say, for each of the 32 boroughs. However, that is for your Lordships to decide at a later stage in the Bill if this amendment is carried.
The issues, to my mind, are quite straightforward. The Ministers say that the GLC is an unnecessary teir of government but they are not removing and they cannot remove the tier of city-wide services. They are merely transferring them to other authorities, to joint boards, groupings of boroughs, new quangos and Government departments. Thus in one way the main question for the Committee to decide is whether these complex arrangements for the upper tier of local government are a better system than that which we now propose. London services are better housed and co-ordinated under one roof than dispersed among a variety of existing and newly created bodies, most of them different in type from one another.
On Sunday last I met an architect who was explaining to me the difficulties that he foresaw with regard to building regulations which, at the moment, are all housed in the GLC and include details of the fire precautions and the means of escape in buildings. These records go back several years, and will continue. The imagination boggles as to what happens when this central library of statistics relating to these matters is split up among 32 boroughs. By keeping a single elected authority for London (albeit a slimmed down authority, as I was explaining), we ensure that there is an organisation to handle the transitions to many other important changes on 1st April next year. Londoners clearly want to keep a directly elected body to represent the interests of the capital as a whole. Who is to say that they are wrong?
All the main professional bodies are critical of the new system proposed in the Bill. Even some of the present Ministers, I understand, were in favour of a strategic authority when they were discussing the matter in the Marshall Inquiry in 1977. Indeed, the noble Lord, Lord Marshall, himself recommended a stronger though rather different strategic authority, in his report which was published the following year.
My sixth important issue relates to charity in the true sense of the word, and to leisure. I wish to re-emphasise that my friends and I are committed to a new metropolitan authority which will continue those sensible policies of the GLC such as its support for those voluntary organisations which do so much to help the poor, the disadvantaged, the disabled and the ethnic minorities in this great city. We are also convinced that this admirable work, like the GLC support for the arts, embraces leisure, and that sport,

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recreation, our heritage and our environment can be much more successfully conducted by a new body under a strict régime of financial control which Parliament is entitled to require of it.
This next subject cropped up during the whole of yesterday. This proposal does not wreck the Bill. On the contrary, it is designed to rescue it. It will rescue the major public services from dispersal. It will rescue the democratic character of London local government from obliteration by quangos and Whitehall. It will rescue the Government from the consequences of hasty reorgansisation.
I started by referring to Daniel. I shall close with another reference to him, because as a child I used to sing with great fervour the hymn: "Dare to be a Daniel, dare to face the foe". However, when I look around this Chamber I do not feel that I am looking at foes. Of course there are serious party political angles in the context of this Bill. Basically we are all trying, in our different ways, to do the same thing, which is to devise a scheme which will serve our London for years to come. Party political policies should be founded on reason and common sense. I am not sure that that is exemplified in this Bill. But it is on reason and common sense that we are relying in putting forward this amendment. I beg to move.
3.15 p.m.
Lord Molson: It was thought by a number of us who are primarily concerned that it might be for the general convenience of the Committee if these two amendments, which to a considerable extent, though not entirely, cover the same ground, could be discussed in a general debate on the two of them. Of course that will not preclude any noble Lord who does not participate in the first part of the debate from rising when I rise later to move my own amendment.
I find myself in very general agreement with the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Hayter. As regards both amendments, we accept wholeheartedly the principle of the abolition of these councils. The amendment I am moving does not aim at creating an MCC Mark 2. It is merely an attempt to provide directly elected authorities to deal with matters which inevitably cover a much wider area than the districts to which most of the powers under this Bill are being delegated.
One of the main differences between London and the metropolitan county councils is that in London the police come under the Home Secretary, and, under existing legislation, London Passenger Transport is a quango which will not be affected by this Bill. It is otherwise in the case of the metropolitan county councils. In discussing this Bill, it is important for us to consider what effect it may have upon those two vital services in the metropolitan county councils.
In my speech on Second Reading I devoted my attention almost entirely to demonstrating that the Government had completely abandoned one of the leading sentences in their White Paper, called, Streamlining the Cities. In that, they referred to the heyday of a certain fashion for strategic planning, the confidence in which now appears exaggerated. All the experience of the last decades has demonstrated the vital importance of strategic planning. If I may offer a definition of "strategy" in that sense, which cannot be
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found in the Oxford Concise Dictionary, I should define it thus: "strategic" means the co-ordination of numerous local initiatives to meet the needs of a larger area.
I am glad to say that the Government not only have adopted the word "strategic" but also in a number of respects they provide for it in detail in the Bill. The only difference will be that instead of the strategic authority being the local authorities which are being abolished by this Bill, the strategic authority will become the Secretary of State. If mistakes have been made by the strategic authorities in the past, that is riot a reason for assuming that the Secretary of State, who is also human, may not also make mistakes. Indeed, he is more likely to make mistakes because of the immense increase in the scope of his responsibilities. I have not personally added up the number of additional powers that he is taking under this Bill but I understand that they amount to 90.
The Bill, as it is, recognises the inevitability of strategic needs being dealt with by central authorities. These are, in the case of the metropolitan county councils, police, fire and passenger transport. They are to be dealt with by joint boards. In addition, there is to be a residuary body exercising other responsibilities which cannot be devolved. The purpose of the amendment of my noble friends and myself is to include among the responsibilities of the elected authority that we are proposing, in addition to the three I have already mentioned, planning, mineral planning and waste disposal. A further two are trad:ng standards, to be dealt with by an amendment to be moved later by my noble friend Lord Drumalbyn, and scientific and technical services, as recommended by a Select Committee report, dealt with by an amendment, I understand, to be moved by the noble Lord, Lord Sherfield and perhaps by my noble friend Lord Cranbrook.
I take planning first, because it really embraces all the others. If your Lordships turn to Schedule 1 of the Bill, you will find that each unitary development plan shall have two parts. Part I,
"shall consist of a written statement formulating the authority's general policies".
The schedule continues at line 25, on page 75:
"In formulating the general policies in Part I of a unitary development plan the authority shall have regard—

(a) to any strategic guidance given by the Secretary of State …

(b) to current national and regional policies;"

I leave out paragraph (c) which is irrelevant, but would mention the next paragraph, which states:
"(d) to such other matters as the Secretary of State may direct".
So there we have it, very clearly set out, the strategic planning so contemptuously dismissed in the first White Paper is reinstated with the Secretary of State as strategist and also having complete authority to deal with tactical matters. I know very well, as my right honourable friend Mr. Kenneth Baker was at pains to point out in another place, that the Secretary of State has long been empowered in last resort to give guidance to planning authorities.
But consider how greatly his responsibilities are being extended under the Bill. Previously his main work was to consider appeals against seven structure plans, the plans of the six metropolitan county

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councils and the Greater London Council. In future he will have to co-ordinate 69 unitary development plans. Under the Bill as it stands at present he will have no strategic advice in that task, except in the case of London where he will have the benefit of the advice of the London Planning Commission. He will also be greatly assisted, I am sure, by the South Eastern Regional Planning Authority, which has rendered such immense service in the past, first under the chairmanship of my noble friend Lord Nugent of Guildford and more recently under that of my noble friend Lord Sandford. It may well turn out, if the Bill goes through in anything like its present form, that something analogous might be found useful in other parts of the country. I can only hope that it will be as useful in those areas as it has been in the South-East of England.
Within the context of strategic planning I pass to waste disposal. This is inextricably connected with general planning and mineral planning. I shall give two examples. I have made them as brief as I can, while setting out the main benefits that they confer. The West Yorkshire Metropolitan County Council has organised and is carrying through a great reclamation scheme. There is a great despoiled area which it is intended to reclaim for agriculture and recreation. The site is a worked out gravel pit. It is to be filled with household refuse from Leeds and Bradford and spoil from adjacent collieries. The infilling material will have to be transported across several district boundaries. Three districts and one nationalised industry are co-operating to get rid of their waste and to fill this worked out quarry in order that it should benefit not only themselves but also the community as a whole. The planning has been done by the West Yorkshire Metropolitan County Council, and it is being organised by that council's engineers.
I should also like to mention briefly—all this, I think, is relevant—a land reclamation scheme of the Tyne and Wear Metropolitan. County Council which embraces both Peelaw quarry and Wardley quarry, involving land in two districts. It seeks to solve problems of the coke industry and to improve the amenities of several residential areas. Great schemes of that kind to reclaim the devastation that resulted from the industrial revolution require to be planned at a high level for the benefit of the districts. Such schemes involve technical experts of several disciplines. They are invariably costly, but are not, on that account, to be condemned.
I am not, of course, disparaging in any way the able and conscientious officials in Marsham Street. But how can they have the local knowledge with which to imagine great reclamation schemes of that kind and carry them out? In addition, I am much concerned to learn that in the last year or so the number of officials in the Department of the Environment has been very substantially reduced, just at a time when it would appear desirable that the number should be greatly increased.
3.30 p.m.
Co-ordination of transport of waste to the nearest dump is of the utmost importance, and under the Bill it is not covered because one of the joint boards will
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deal with passenger transport and not with goods transport. Under the present system, a district may not get planning permission if its neighbour with planning authority over that particular area wants to use the dump for its own purposes. So it may result in the most suitable waste arrangements being precluded because the authority with the planning permission is not the authority which has the most need to use it.
As a result of this, instead of there being a uniform and common charge over the whole of the MCC area for the disposal of waste which can amount to something very considerable, it may well be that the cost of disposing of waste will vary from one district to another and probably be much higher in the case of those in the centre and far from the periphery.
In addition to that, under this system of fragmentation, the total cost of disposal added up by all the districts will probably be substantially more than if it were dealt with by one single co-ordinating authority.
Lord Harmar-Nicholls: Will my noble friend give way? One is interested in the metropolitan counties and what will flow from any alteration. My noble friend is using the words "may happen", and he went a little further and said "would probably happen". Will he tell me what did happen before we had the metropolitan county boroughs interfering? It worked then; what is the reason why it will not work in the future as it did in those days?
Lord Molson: It is very simple to give an answer to that. It is that the previous system was very unsatisfactory and was declared to be so at the time by an impartial inquiry. But, in any case, my noble friend may avail himself of the opportunity of making a speech later when, no doubt, he will have very important points to raise.
It is relevant, especially when the Government attach so much importance to private enterprise, to note that the National Association of Waste Disposal Contractors and the British Road Federation are both critical of these provisions of the Bill. A new and very interesting argument has emerged only in the past week or 10 days. The Prime Minister, with her usual percipience and energy, has noted the very remarkable report called Wealth from Waste, produced by a Select Committee of the other place. She has adopted their recommendation that one Minister—that is Mr. Trippier, I think—should be appointed in order to deal with and organise the recycling of waste. All the evidence pointed to the need for something of that kind, and it is typical of the right honourable lady the Prime Minister, that she has taken note of that and has insisted upon one Minister being given special responsibility for dealing with this important matter.
Under the present arrangements, there will be three separate joint boards. That means that each will have its own budget. From the Chancellor of the Exchequer downwards, people responsible for finance have to decide what priority to give to one service or another: education, housing, roads or whatever it may be. The effect of having three separate joint boards will be that they prepare their budgets separately, without any necessary co-ordination or any established principle of giving priority to one particular service or another.

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There is one very important matter which I am sure will appeal to any of your Lordships with a legal outlook: the principal responsibility as regards planning in the past has been that the Secretary of State has been what I might call an ultimate court of appeal when, under planning schemes, it appears that some mistake is being made. He will be in an embarrassing position under this Bill when he is responsible at a lower stage for co-ordinating the different unitary development plans and somebody then complains and takes his appeal to the same authority who was responsible for it in the first place. I do not doubt that any Secretary of State will show complete impartiality in a matter of that kind, but it will perhaps be difficult to persuade a disappointed litigant that that is in fact the case, if the Secretary of State upholds the decision that he had given at an earlier stage.
So far I have put the views of the metropolitan county councils who are no doubt biased in their own favour. I could cite numerous responsible independent bodies, but there are only two which I wish to quote. The first—perhaps at first sight surprisingly—is the National Farmers' Union. They point out that they have 1¾ a million acres within these metropolitan county councils. They say that the National Farmers' Union is apprehensive at the potential adverse implications for agriculture of the withdrawal of democratically elected strategic authorities for the metropolitan areas.
The Association of County Councils—and I apologise for the length of this quotation but as a matter of fact their memorandum on the subject is quite masterly and is closely reasoned and no words are wasted—write in their summary:
"My Association … at first sight may seem to have no interest in the reorganisation of local government in London and the metropolitan areas. … This letter is however directed solely at the practical consequences of the present Bill for our own member authorities, principally those shire county councils which adjoin London and the six metropolitan counties, in the context of strategic planning, highways and transportation and waste disposal. As county planning autrhorities, [we] are deeply concerned at the prospect of fragmentation of responsibility for stragegic planning within the metropolitan areas. Instead of the present six structural plans and one Greater London development plan, it is proposed there should be 69 unitary plans".
That brings me to the matter of the green belt. The Government found it necessary to withdraw two of their earlier circulars relating to the green belt and housing and replace them with circulars which met with I think almost universal approval. I am absolutely confident that they will seek to carry out in the spirit and in the letter the policy that they have indicated. But I am concerned that the machinery should be such as to enable them to do so effectively.
The Government started with the idea of devolving authority on the smallest possible councils and I am sure that they did not realise the extent of the consequence—a concentration of power in the hands of the Secretary of State. I have an uneasy feeling that many members of my party have an idea that town and country planning is a socialistic conception. Of course, that is quite a mistake.
The original town and country planning ministry was set up by Winston Churchill during the war and the first Minister was W. S. Morrison—Shakes Morrison—known here as Viscount Dunrossil. The Parliamentary Secretary was Harry Strauss, known
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here as Lord Conesford. They were two Conservative Ministers who began work on what afterwards became the great Town and Country Planning Act, enacted and administered by Lewis Silkin. If I venture to draw attention to some of the preliminary work done by Conservative Ministers, it is not intended in any way to detract from the outstanding quality of the work of Lewis Silkin, which will be familiar to noble Lords in all parts of the Committee.
Therefore, it comes about that in an attempt to decentralise authority as much as possible, if this Bill is not amended it will result in a great concentration of power in No. 2 Marsham Street.
When the Normans conquered this country they set out to replace the rather loose administration of the Saxons by a centralised administration in London. As a means to that end they drew up the Domesday Book with particulars of all cities and towns, and even manors. All that information was made available to London. Much the same thing will result from the enactment of this Bill in precisely its present form. Whereas the Domesday Book of the 11th century has always been associated with the name of William the Conqueror, the Doomsday Book of the 20th century will be associated with the name of Patrick Jenkin.
Lord Elton: I think that it might be for the convenience of the Committee, having heard the proposals of both the noble Lord, Lord Hayter, and my noble friend Lord Molson so lucidly put forward, if I were to give the first intimation of the Government's position on this before we spread into a much wider debate, to which my noble friend Lord Gowrie will reply. The noble Lord, Lord Hayter, said that he felt like Daniel come to the lions' den. I had already reflected that I had wished I had spent ratter more time pulling thorns out of the lordly paws of my noble friends and others in preparation for this afternoon; but I must rely upon the argument, which I do with some confidence.
This Bill, to which noble Lords have given consent by a majority of two-to-one, is a Bill to abolish the GLC and the metropolitan county councils. That principle is not in doubt; it has been decided. This is not a Bill to modify those authorities; it is not a Bill to take away some of their powers or to trim their expenses. It is a Bill to get rid of them altogether. Some noble Lords do not think that the authorities ought to be abolished, and they sit opposite. Some noble Lords think that the authorities should be merely trimmed in some way, and they sit in various places. A few noble Lords even think that the authorities are doing a reasonable job and ought to be left alone, and they do not sit very close to me. Every noble Lord who felt like that had a chance to have a say during the Second Reading debate, and plenty of then did so. Noble Lords heard them out, considered what they said, and voted them down, two-to-one. Noble Lords then gave the Bill a Second Reading.
3.45 p.m.
We are not therefore here to consider whether abolition should take place; we are here to decide how it should be done and who should do the things which the Greater London Council now does in London and which the metropolitan county councils do in the

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metropolitan county areas which will have to be done after they are all gone. I do need to remind noble Lords and noble friends of that because, with the best will in the world, it does not seem to me that to abolish one set of elected London and county-wide executive authorities in one breath and to establish a second set in the next amounts to abolition at all. It is true that both the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Hayter, and his supporters and that tabled by my noble friend Lord Molson and his, leave a good deal to the imagination. They have since told us rather more of what is intended; but the amendments do not tell us much about the bodies which they seek to create, and in a sense that is to their advantage. After all, it is the practice by every good novelist: you leave out all the leading details of the character and appearance of your heroine and hero in order that the readers shall fill in the blanks with what they find most attractive. Even so, in spite of this silence on the subject, I wonder whether they have not told us too much.
What they tell us is the same in both of their amendments, so let us look at them. The first subsection in each case tells us that the new bodies are to be bodies corporate, like the GLC and the MCCs. The second subsection in each amendment says that they are to be elected, like the GLC and the MCCs. The third subsection says that they are to be authorities, like the GLC and the MCCs. The fourth subsection says that they:
"shall only exercise such functions [and expend such money] as are vested in it under this Act".
Those may seem like important restraining words; but are they? After all, the GLC can only exercise such functions as are vested in it by Act of Parliament now, and the metropolitan county councils can only exercise such functions given to them by Act of Parliament now. Neither the GLC nor the metropolitan counties can spend a penny, except as the law laid down by Parliament now allows.
We can narrow the law; we can take out, for instance, Section 137, but we shall still leave the authority an immense amount of discretion, and all the expansionary pressures that operate on the GLC now will operate on it then. Let us look at how those pressures have worked on the GLC.
Since 1981 the average increase on the rates for all English authorities was 27 per cent.; for the GLC in the same time the precept has risen by 102 per cent. That is the result of the sort of pressures to which these new bodies will be exposed. The GLC is a pale shadow of the LCC. Just before it was abolished the LCC was responsible for 50 per cent. or more of the spending on local authority services. The GLC's powers have been successively diminished year after year since long before Ken Livingstone said that he wished my noble friend had gone the whole hog in his report and got rid of it altogether—something, incidentally, which my noble friend told us in a letter to the Daily Mail was not within his terms of reference to do.
That authority is now only responsible for 11 per cent. of spending on local services. So I hope that my noble friends who have fond and justifiably respectful recollections of the LCC will not confuse the two bodies; because it is not the LCC to which we are
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addressing ourselves—it is a different animal altogether.
There is no point in reminding noble Lords of all that the GLC does not do because I did that at considerable length on Second Reading. However, I think that I should pick up a point which the noble Lord, Lord Hayter, made, although at this stage I do not intend to go into too much detail. He read out a long list of services which he said could be dealt with only on a London-wide basis and mentioned most existing GLC services. We do not accept that. Under this Bill responsibility for three-quarters of the GLC's current spending will go directly to the boroughs. There will be need for some co-operation in provision of these services, but that is already beginning to appear among some of the authorities.
The noble Lord, Lord Hayter, also said that his amendment would leave the police under democratic control, if I understood him aright. The noble Lord shakes his head and I understand him doing that. As he knows, and I know, the police have been under the Home Secretary in the Metropolitan area since they were founded; so I withdraw. I concede that he did not make the point and that I misheard him.
The GLC no longer get enough to do to justify their continued existence. Yet they still continue to spend very large sums of money in ways which antagonise large numbers of their own people. It really has come to something, has it not, when they can spend 10 million of ratepayers' money on an advertising campaign against Government policy. It is that kind of spending—and spending on the half-page spread last week which advertised still further spending; spending on an astonishing range of voluntary activities including, I notice, the I think rather offensively misleading suggestion that, for instance, MENCAP would go out of business if this Bill went through—that my noble friends who drafted these amendments clearly and rightly want to stop. But the words in the amendment will not stop it because they add nothing to the law in this respect.
The law can only define areas of activity and types of activity. Within these definitions the new bodies would be as free to act as the old. The amendment does nothing to change them. I noted with great interest that the noble Lord, Lord Hayter, said that he wished to support only the sensible policies of the GLC. Those were his words. I am sure that I did not forget that. The word that interests me is not "sensible", which is not surprising; it is "policies", because you cannot legislate for policies. You can legislate only to produce the machinery by which other people's policies are implemented; so he has not provided the control to achieve what he says he wishes to achieve.
Although these amendments leave much to the imagination they can have but one of only two results. Either the new bodies will have a lot to do, in which case they strike straight at the heart of the Bill because they make a mockery of abolition, or they will have next to nothing to do, in which case they will be seized by the same frustrations and ambitions as the present GLC and have the same opportunities for self-aggrandisement and waste. I apologise for my voice. I am sure that it is neither your Lordships' excellent air conditioning nor our atrocious climate, but merely my

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cold. Whichever the answer may be, either is utterly unacceptable to this Government, and, I judge, to this Committee.
My noble friend Lord Molson addressed several specific themes. I shall be brief on the subject because we are to debate them, but I want to pick him up first of all on the question of planning, where he said that this Bill would provide a concentration of power in the hands of the Secretary of State which we have not seen before. Who is now the final arbiter of strategic planning decisions? Who decided on the M.25 motorway? Who decided on the third London airport? Who has to decide about the Mansion House scheme? Who decided, and will decide further, about the development of London's dock site? Who decided about Vauxhall Cross? In every case the Secretary of State. That is therefore nothing new in this Bill.
Moreover, I have to remind my noble friend, who I know is much more experienced and expert than I am, as I freely admit are many of your Lordships in this highly technical and difficult matter of planning, that even to me it is clear that since Section 35 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1971 was put on the statute hook the Secretary of State has the power to call in any, and every, planning decision which affects the strategy of the region in which it is taken. That is nothing new in the Bill.
I freely admit that in order to do so he needs the best advice. I tell my noble friend, as he well knows, that there are regional offices of my department, but there are also such bodies as Serplan, presided over most ably by my noble friend Lord Sandford, and I hope that when we come to his amendment we may find areas where we can go forward together on this. But that is for later.
I am now looking at the threads of my noble friend's introduction to his amendment. I notice the reference, for instance, to waste. I do not deny for a moment that a great deal that now is done is done excellently from the points of view of both the aesthetics and the hygiene of the operation, but it does not follow that it cannot be done as well under a different system, and co-operation is already developing, even in London, towards that end. If my noble friend is anxious about what would happen if the co-operation is not forthcoming, I direct his attention to the reserve power for the Secretary of State in Clause 9, where he will be able to do exactly what my noble friend feels should be done.
There is in this Bill a place for all the proper functions of the GLC and of the metropolitan county councils. Your Lordships will doubtless test that statement with many amendments, but this I must tell you: if you seek to set up elected bodies to discharge those functions, you will be striking at the heart of the Bill and loading your successors with all the troubles with which we are now contending. We undertook to abolish the GLC, and we undertook to abolish the metropolitan county councils. This is a firm commitment of the Government. That commitment, which your Lordships firmly endorsed at Second Reading, was not to replace the GLC or the MCCs with something a bit different; it was to get rid of them. We shall not do it if your Lordships pass these amendments. I ask your Lordships therefore to uphold
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the principle established at Second Reading and, I regret to tell my noble friend, throw them out.
Baroness Birk: I shall speak to the two amendments of the noble Lord, Lord Hayter, and the noble Lord, Lord Molson. Before doing so I must take up some of the comments made by the Minister who has just spoken. He started off by saying that what the amendments do is just trim what is already in existence, the GLC and the metropolitan county councils. That in fact is absolutely untrue, as I shall seek to show.
He then went on to say that at Second Reading this was all voted down. In the first place, there was no vote at all. We did not vote on the Second Reading. What we discussed on Second Reading was the whole Bill. There was no vote taken on the abolition. The Bill went through on that score. But I would remind the Minister that out of over 50 speakers, the overwhelming majority pointed to things about which they were concerned in the Bill, and they all added up in the greatest extent to matters which were dealing with what the noble Lord, Lord Molson, referred to as matters of vital strategic planning.
Lord Elton: I hate to interrupt the noble Baroness, but it is better to do it now than when she is really in her stride. She will agree, will she not, that what we voted on was a reasoned amendment, and the reasoned amendment addressed itself to precisely what we are discussing now, which is strategic authorities. Therefore, I think it was a fair reference that I made.
Baroness Birk: The noble Lord is quite right; the reasoned amendment referred to a framework for strategic services. That is correct. Nevertheless I and a great many other noble Lords—some of whom did riot support the amendment but afterwards explained to some of my noble friends and myself why they did not—believe that that amendment was treated at Second Reading as a vote of confidence in the Government and a vote of confidence in the Bill. That is entirely different from discussing individual amendments today, once the House is in Committee.
Noble Lords: Hear, hear!
4 p.m.
Baroness Birk: The Minister then went on to talk about abolition, how that had been decided and how anything of this nature was contrary to that decision. I put it to him that in taking the best part out of what one is abolishing, preserving that and improving upon it, one is doing something constructive. This is what these two amendments set out to do. On the other hand, if with the machinery of abolition one gets rid of the good with the not so good or the bad—however it is described—one's actions are destructive.
The noble Lord, Lord Hayter, referred to GLC services. The Minister said (I am not just transposing some of his words) that he was leaving most of the GLC services. This is just not true. Later amendments deal with functions, and if the Minister looks at them he will find under "planning" that many of the present planning functions that the GLC has will not be

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retained under this new structure. The Minister made much of something we have heard many times in this House; that is, the money spent. Here it is usually referring to the GLC rather than the metropolitan counties. He mentioned 10 million of ratepayers' money spent on advertisements. An institution or an authority does not have to be abolished to deal with that. Even if it is to be abolished one does not have to ensure that one does not set up anything as an alternative in its place to deal with that problem. A government can deal with that, if they wish to do so, by legislation. They can deal with spending; they can restrain and restrict. Governments have those powers. They do not have to deal with it in this way.
The Minister also said that one cannot legislate for policies. That is absolutely true. Legislation always arises out of policies and follows policies, but the two amendments are not meant to do that. The Minister also said that the GLC would either have a lot to do or nothing to do. That is going from one extreme to the other. The amendments are correctly seeking to set up structures. The functions would then be decided. When the Minister read out the four paragraphs of the amendment he read out that the authority, whether it be the London Metropolitan Authority or, as in Amendment No. 9, "each metropolitan authority",
"shall only exercise such functions as are vested in it under this Act".
Those functions can be as wide or as limited as Parliament declares. This is what it is about. The Minister also made a rather unfair point that not enough was being said about the structures that were being set up and that perhaps it was wise not to do so. He made some comment about writing a novel. I will not take him up in that because on literary grounds I think he is wrong about that as well. But the structures are what is being set up in these amendments. Throughout the Bill all sorts of functions are mentioned. Some of them, it may be decided, should be part of this elected authority and some of them should not. That is what the amendments are seeking to do.
One considers how the Bill has proceeded in the other place and the attention it has received from outside sources, be they organisations, professions, individuals, commerce or industry. The theme that has gone through it like a running thread (or perhaps I should say a running sore), is the lack in the Bill of any provision for proper strategic planning. This is what these amendments are seeking to put right, in conjunction with later amendments on functions. This can be proved not only by what went on in another place but what has been included in the Marshalled List of amendments before your Lordships' Committee. Amendment after amendment deals with the different functions ranging from county-wide operation of highways and traffic, voluntary organisations, nature conservation and waste disposal to archives. One could go on, but I do not want to take up the Committee's time. It is this that is the key point of the Bill to everybody except the Government, who do not seem to be aware or concerned.
I find it strange that the Government should be so obdurate about this. They are not recreating a GLC or new metropolitan counties. They say their objective is
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to devolve to the boroughs and to the districts. We have been through that at Second Reading and in the lengthy debate we had yesterday on the committee of inquiry. We are all aware, and it has never been denied, that devolution is not just to the boroughs and districts. The devolution is to the joint boards and joint committees, and far more goes in centralisation to the Secretary of State. It is all very well for the Minister to say that of course the Secetary of State has always had powers and that he can do this. He made much of the Secretary of State being able to pick up some of these things. He changed his tune and played it both ways. I do not blame him for that, but he cannot blame me for spotting it. He made great play with the point that the Secretary of State could step in and at the same time said that he had always had all these powers. That is not true. We have counted 123 powers in this Bill. They are not all new. Many of them are far in excess of any powers that any Secretary of State has been given in the past in a democratic parliamentary Government like our own. It is this that concerns most people.
I finally turn to the practical side. We live in an age where technology and science are playing a greater part. It is more and more important that certain services which are absolutely essential to these large populations of people should be carried out on a wide basis. To start breaking up such services is a retrograde step and taking what I can only call a Luddite attitude. It is going backwards, reacting in the worst possible way. The noble Lord, Lord Hayter, pointed to the costliness of what the Government are doing. I pointed out yesterday, when we discussed the committee of inquiry, that the setting up of these joint boards and joint committees and all the consultations involved will cost much more in the end. That has been backed up by people such as Coopers and Lybrand and the efficiency side of PA, the consultants. We have heard much of this, but the Government still need reminding.
Then we come to what is to be done about the capital city. Despite what the noble Viscount the Leader of the House said when he wound up on Second Reading, ours would become the only capital city in Western Europe which does not rest on an elected body. That seems to be absolutely wrong and is felt to be so by many people inside and outside London and in the country as a whole. It is quite interesting that, although the opinion polls on what people feel about this issue have been taken around London—and they make very diverting reading which cuts right across what the Government are doing—this is a matter which affects the whole country. It is not just a London question. It is not just a metropolitan county question. It is a question for the whole country. It is a national question.
If one of the reasons the Government have so set themselves against anything of this sort—which could be a very much better, more fined-down structure on which to conduct the strategic planning, the strategic services—is that they and other noble Lords are worried because they do not want to recreate a GLC in its old image, or even the metropolitan counties as they were, then they are certainly going about it the wrong way. The Government should pay attention to this very reasonable request for directly elected assemblies or authorities, as they are called.

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One need only look at the names of those noble Lords who have put their names to these amendments; one can hardly call them revolutionaries. Certainly, some of them are very loyal supporters of the Government and they must feel extremely strongly to have shown such courage in doing what they are doing today. But if this Bill does not have a central core on which to build for strategic functions, and if the Government do not take this opportunity to produce something which could be better than we have at the present time, I fear that the result will be another change within a decade. That will mean that there will be a new structure which might be built along lines which are nothing like as good as what is being suggested at the moment. If there is a new structure built along the lines of these amendments, there will be an element of permanence injected into the whole thing, which is crucial for the future of local government. If not, there is bound to be another major upheaval within the next decade, possibly even sooner. This could mean that our structure of local government may not survive two disruptions in such a short time and, surely, no Government would want to take responsibility for that.
4.15 p.m.
Lord Plummer of St. Marylebone: I strongly support the amendment moved by my noble friend Lord Hayter, to which I have also put my name. The overwhelming need for a London metropolitan authority is, I submit, irresistibly demonstrated by the Bill itself and is supported by every non-political and professional organisation which is concerned with Greater London's administration.
The reasons that I shall give to substantiate these arguments are briefly as follows and are drawn on my experience as a borough councillor, as a member of the London County Council, and as a member of the Greater London Council, of which I had the honour to be Leader for some six years.
First, the Bill recognises that there are a number of functions which cannot be satisfactorily performed by a London borough acting independently. Thus a separate, London-wide, planning commission has to be created for planning. This is to be forced through despite being condemned as unsatisfactory, less efficient and largely unworkable by no less than the Royal Town Planning Institute, the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors, the Royal Institute of British Architects, the CBI, the London Chamber of Commerce and many other professional bodies as widely dispersed as the National Farmers' Union, the Council for the Protection of Rural England and the London Green Belt Council. The Bill will, in fact, fragment the planning system and place excessive detailed controls in the hands of the Department of the Environment and the Department of Transport.
Secondly, under the Bill a separate London-wide body has to be created for fire and civil defence. Already this is in trouble for, although the Government have called several meetings with some of the London boroughs to try to make plans, only just over one half of them have attended these meetings. Even then they have been unable to agree among themselves and the usual non-co-operation prevails.
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Why not, then, keep this important service within a London metropolitan authority?
Thirdly, a joint board is being created for London-wide waste disposal, if the boroughs do not co-operate by setting up seven groups of boroughs. As the noble Lord, Lord Molson, has pointed out, even if they co-operate, the Association of County Councils—for it is the counties which receive most of this waste—have pointed out in a strongly-worded letter the folly of the Government's plans and say that they are doomed to failure.
Fourthly, there is no specific provision within the Bill to ensure that such services as Scientific, Technical, Computing and Information Technology can be properly sustained as a vital resource to meet the needs of London overall. For those not aware of the size of this department and its absolute need to work alongside other departments providing strategic services, I would give a thumb-nail sketch of its operation. Connected to the council's central computer—of which there are two—are 1,000 terminals from London boroughs and district councils outside London and in the surrounding areas, providing information on things like housing mobility. Further terminals connecting in-house departments of the GLC and ILEA also exist. In addition, another 1,000 terminals are connected to those using the GLC's software, giving services on a whole range of statistical packages on such matters as planning, science, traffic, housing, population, public health, etc.—and the "etc." is not small. Dry stuff, you may say, but absolutely essential to a city as large as Greater London.
Handling the sheer scale of this operation both efficiently and effectively—and I may say that this department was commended as the most efficient in the country by the Audit Commission recently—will be impossible without the comprehensive use of the computer services department. But, and it is a very big but, if the two departments—that is, supplies and computer services—are fragmented, it will reduce efficiency and increase costs.
The Select Committee on Science and Technology in their interim report published this month concluded that,
"The great conurbations require specialist staff and facilities to meet them. Economic, efficient and forward-looking services demand excellence, integration and continuity. The existing services should be improved, not by being dismembered, but by being encouraged to progress. Centres of excellence are slow to develop but easy to destroy".
That is probably one of the few inquiries that have so far been made into this whole matter.
It is no use moving this centre of excellence, to which I have referred, to another residuary body as they cannot carry on their work in isolation. The central computer service provides a single focus in London, so that the direction and management of services can be collectively applied to define and address problems facing London as a whole. It is available to London boroughs and agencies to meet local issues and it maintains the essential links between professional areas and their shared expertise. It maintains a major employment base within Greater London, within which a London metropolitan authority could retain, invest in and develop a centre

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of expertise to assist London's, and the United Kingdom's, economy. It cannot operate in isolation from the services which it serves and it must retain the professional relationships and links which will be lost in the restructuring which is proposed under this Bill.
The supplies department, to which I referred earlier, has an annual turnover of some £180 million, which may, it is said—and they still do not seem to know—go to the Inner London Education Authority, which is surely a recognition of its "all-London" character. This department serves not only the Greater London Council and the Inner London Education Authority, but also 33 London boroughs, Buckinghamshire and several other bodies. It has over 20,000 separate points of delivery and yet the Government do not yet know where it is going.
I come to Thamesmead, in which the GLC and the ILEA have to date invested some £250 million, which has an annual running cost of about £16·4 million and which, during the next five years as a minimum will require a further £34 million for infrastructure and a park and millions more for housing. Who is capable of taking over this giant development by 1st April 1986, with the added problem of staff melting away to find other jobs?
One of the most serious flaws in this Bill is the lack of any effective machinery for carrying out the massive upheaval which is due to take place as soon as 1st April next year. The long list of residuary bodies and hastily assembled groups of boroughs, which this Bill will create, will never be as efficient as a new London metropolitan authority with—and I emphasise this—strictly controlled powers and finances.
The acceptance in this Bill that many functions will be dependent upon co-operation is, in itself, a recognition of the London-wide nature of such functions. That factor, plus the problems inherent in borough co-operation or non-co-operation—and past experience indicates wishful thinking as regards co-operation—surely makes the case for a metropolitan authority. Because the requirements for transport are inextricably linked with land use in a complicated web of cause and effect, the fragmentation and separation of highways, traffic and planning powers will, I strongly believe, negate the hitherto comprehensive strategic planning which is required. A London-wide body is essential to deal with the large and increasing proportions of the working population who cross borough boundaries on their daily journeys between home and work. This is made all the more important because borough boundaries often bear little relationship to the structure of the road network or the pattern of traffic movement.
Lastly, the amendment provides for the London metropolitan authority to be constituted with elected members. Only by this democratic process will there be visible accounting. Why should Londoners be denied the right to vote on all these vital services, which have a major effect on their quality of life? If the Inner London Education Authority is to be elected, why not for the administration of other functions? The noble Lord, Lord Elton, paraded the excesses of the GLC, but Parliament—and I must say again what I said on Second Reading—gave it the powers. It simply
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took advantage of what it could do. Is Parliament really powerless to control local government, so that the only solution is to dismantle it and to remove the elected representatives?
As the noble Lord, Lord Molson, said—and it applies equally to London—the amendment has the added advantage of enabling Parliament, drawing upon 20 years' experience, to delineate what is strategic through its choice of which functions are to vest and how it is to be financed. Add up the number of bodies which, if appointed by this Bill, will be making financial demands on the ratepayers, each with a separate precept or a grant from central funds. Each of them will form its own budget, without regard to the demands of other bodies. Each of them will require separate staff accounting for and administrating similar activities. What a tangle there will be and what, as The Times said, "an expensive mess".
The noble Lord, Lord Elton, and Ministers in another place, as well as my noble friend Lord Campbell of Alloway, have made much of the importance of the manifesto commitment and its effect on the conventions of this House. It appears that they are not aware of a letter in the Hampstead and Highgate Express of 12th April this year from Sir Geoffrey Finsberg, who is president of the Greater London area of the Conservative Party and vice-chairman of the Conservative Party, with special responsibility for London. I should like to read to your Lordships' Committee paragraph 3 of that letter. In it Sir Geoffrey Finsberg says:
"It is clear that we differ on what, if anything, should replace the GLC and I see nothing wrong or damaging in this. I believe that no directly elected body is required and others think it is. This is no split, because the details of the legislation were not any part of an election manifesto".
It is no coincidence that all the capital cities of the countries of western Europe have an authority responsible for a range of public services for all, or at least part of, the area of the city. London, which is bigger than most, must have one also if it is to survive, and I trust that this amendment will receive widespread support.
Lord Evans of Claughton: Perhaps I may say, after that masterly and magisterial speech from the noble Lord, Lord Plummer, that I should not think very much more needs to be said in defence of this amendment so far as Greater London is concerned. My fear after yesterday is that a great deal more will be said. The noble Lord has put it so well that I hope the noble Lord, the Minister will attempt to give a full and detailed reply to those very serious strictures. I hope, too, that the noble friends of the noble Lord who has just spoken have listened to him with very great care.
The noble Earl, Lord Gowrie, yesterday accused me of sitting on the fence. It is at any time a painful operation to sit on a fence, and I must concede that there have been times when the reforms proposed have not met with my approval; nor does the present position. I am very much in the position of the man in Tipperary who asked the way to Dublin, and the person he asked replied "I wouldn't start from here, anyway". That is our position in the Alliance. We would not have started from here to reform local government, though we need reform; and we believe

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there should have been detailed inquiries before there was reform.
4.30 p.m.
However, I say that although I would not have started from here this is the preferred solution of myself and my party to the difficulties in which this Bill has put local government: the semi-destruction of local government, and certainly the destruction of one very important tier. Since, apparently, we must have changes, this seems much the best solution to the problem, and I hope that so far as concerns both the Greater London Council and the metropolitan counties, these two amendments will receive the Committee's support. As I have said, they have both been introduced very clearly and succinctly, and I believe the arguments have been unanswerable.
It is extraordinary, as has been said before, that not only capital cities in Europe but very many of the more built-up metropolitan areas in Europe have strategic, planning, technical and engineering overall elected bodies. They seem to work well in Europe, so I am told and so I have read, and I cannot see why this retrograde step is necessary in this country. Indeed, I think the Government have recognised that there must be overall county-wide authorities because they are setting up battalions of joint boards, joint committees and joint working parties; and they are replacing a very few authorities with a plethora (69 I believe) of bodies. We know already that 67 per cent. of the metropolitan county councils' current spending will be run not by democratically elected bodies, either at first hand or second hand, but by three joint boards; and a further 15 per cent. will be the subject of joint working arrangements which have not yet been fully worked out or presented to your Lordships.
A county-wide administration for strategic services it sought, as I have learned at a meeting which I attended today in this building. It was a technical services seminar which was attended by nearly every professional and technical body within the industry. As the noble Lord, Lord Plummer, says, whether they are private industrial concerns or local government, if they are technical planning bodies they all seem to agree that it is necessary to have county-wide strategic planning and technical services authorities. The National House Builders' Federation, the British Road Federation, the National Association of Waste Disposal, the aggregate construction material industries, many retail consortia and many more, have all agreed. Indeed, the fragmentation of technical and strategic services, built up over the past 10 years, whether concerning waste disposal, transport services or roads, will decrease efficiency and inevitably increase costs. Special teams are in the process now of being broken up because of the fear of reorganisation. Many senior officials in metropolitan counties are losing some of the best members of their staff because of the fear of the break-up that is coming. Once this Bill has gone through your Lordships' Chamber, and if it is not amended very much, those teams will disappear almost overnight as people will seek jobs in organisations which have a longer life.
I remember that on the reorganisation of local government in Merseyside in 1972, we had a Merseyside area land use and transport study, known
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as MALTS. That had done an enormous amount of useful work in studying the needs of the Merseyside area under the terms of the existing all-purpose authorities. The mere fact of reorganisation broke up that team, and it has taken a number of years in Merseyside County Council to re-establish such an organisation. If that happens during the time when a new organisation is being set up on a county-wide basis, how much more likely are such break-ups to occur after this Bill becomes law? Even the CBI and the Association of British Chambers of Commerce have proposed the retention of services at county level. They have not proposed the continuation of elected authorities; but such bodies as normally give strong support to the Conservative Party have proposed that there should be county-wide bodies to run strategic services under a single body.
It seems, then, that the real argument is about whether such county-wide bodies should not only exist but as to how they should exist and whether they should be directly elected or not; whether they should be elected, nominated or chosen from the boroughs. When I was a county borough councillor, my experience of joint boards was that, broadly speaking, they were very difficult and contentious; and minority boroughs are oppressed. My experience of joint boards is not good, and I am sure that many people will remember the old LCC and will recall that some of the joint boards set up under that organisation were not very good. It seems to me therefore that the only objection is not one in principle to the existence, of county-wide strategic services but an objection to elected authorities. That is what concerns me. The Government's philosophy is very good in the sense that they believe there should be county-wide bodies; but they seem to resent the concept of those bodies being elected. It worries me intensely that, because of the accident of geography and politics, most of the metropolitan areas and the Greater London area tend inconveniently from time to time to return Labour-controlled councils; and therefore to get round the will of the people, however stupid that will might be, the Government now seek to abolish a tier of local government which seeks to represent the views of those people. Noble Lords on the other side of the Committee shake their heads. Perhaps they will describe to us later, if they accept the concept of county-wide non-elected bodies, why they will not accept the concept of county-wide elected bodies.
The noble Earl said earlier that I was sitting on the fence. I want to paraphrase something that W. S. Gilbert said about your Lordships' House many years ago; and I shall paraphrase by saying:
"He has said very little up to now but he has said it very well."
I hope that when the noble Earl replies to this debate he will say a great deal more and give positive reasons and answers to the very clearly adduced arguments that have been put to him, and not seek to sweep all the arguments put against the Government proposals under the carpet.
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: I share the view expressed by my noble friend Lord Harmar-Nicholls at the beginning of this debate that it has been a mistake to take together Amendments Nos. 8 and 9, because, although the principle involved may be broadly

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similar, the subject matter is substantially different. The operation and the standing of the GLC on the one hand and of the metropolitan authorities on the other, differ widely and so do their powers. I think that from the point of view of an effective debate it is much better to concentrate first upon one and then upon the other. I shall therefore follow the line that I think most speakers so far have taken—that of dealing solely in my speech with the first amendment: that dealing with the GLC.
The Committee listened, as it always does, with very close attention, and I think on this occasion with some emotion, to my noble friend Lord Plummer in the very impressive and powerful speech which he made against the Government's proposals. The Committee will also share the sympathy which I feel with him as an old friend, if he will allow me to say so, although I disagree with him on this matter. In view of the fact that he built up the Greater London Council and, more than any other single man, contributed to the considerable degree of success that it had in its earlier years, he would be—I am not sure whether to say more than human or less than human—if he did not feel very strongly indeed about its abolition. He speaks too with vast experience of these matters but (I am sure he will allow me to say this) also with the inevitable bias of one who has been very strongly associated with one side of the issue. I must say to him, as I must say to your Lordships, that the enthusiasm which he has expressed for the GLC and its departments is not expressed by the leaders of a great many of the London boroughs.
I quoted to your Lordships on Second Reading the views of the leader of Kensington and Chelsea who said that, frankly, under all leaderships the GLC had been a nuisance to them in interfering with their work. There are other local authority leaders who take the same line. They equally, your Lordships can say—and I shall say it for your Lordships—have the bias of those who have worked on that side of the fence.
I listened with great attention and sympathy to my noble friend and I must confess that in my case he did not carry conviction. One thing that he said I must dispute. He said that to carry this amendment would be not inconsistent with the manifesto on which the party to which both he and I belong was elected at the last election. To refresh your Lordships' memory, perhaps I may be allowed to quote the passage:
"The metropolitan councils and the Greater London Council have been shown to be a wasteful and unnecessary tier of government. We shall abolish them and return most of their functions to the boroughs and districts. Services which need to be administered over a wider area, such as police and fire and education in inner London, will be run by joint boards of borough or district representatives".
I do not expect those words to have very much impact on noble Lords opposite but it is perfectly plain, it seems to me—here I would address my noble friends in particular—that they are completely inconsistent with the setting up of another all-London elected body. It is perfectly plain, rightly or wrongly—this is of course a matter of legitimate dispute—that that is the mandate on which the Government were elected; that is the mandate on which a large number of Conservative Members were elected in London; that is the basis on which the other
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place has carried this Bill; and that indeed is the basis on which your Lordships carried the Second Reading.
I really must, if I may, take up what the noble Baroness, Lady Birk, said about this. The noble Baroness tried to suggest that there was nothing inconsistent between this amendment and the so-called reasoned amendment which your Lordships rejected on Second Reading. Both amendments propose the setting up of a new all-London elected body. It is surely inconsistent with the rejection by this House of a reasoned amendment that asked for just that. The noble Baroness was for once—I do not think I have ever before accused her of naivety—very naive when she said, "Well, we shall set up the framework and then we will find functions which we will put in by later amendments". With respect, that is surely not the way for the legislature—
Baroness Birk: What I said was that these amendments set up the structure. There are further amendments already on the Marshalled List which deal with the functions. In fact, I have two such amendments in my name following. They run all through the Marshalled List of amendments, from all sides of the Committee. We are not making them up at all.
4.45 p.m.
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: There is nothing inconsistent between that and what I said a moment ago. The Committee has yet to consider the amendments which the noble Baroness has put down. It will be her experience that the Committee does not automatically or universally accept amendments which she moves. Sometimes they are rejected. What the noble Baroness is proposing therefore is to set up a structure and then frankly find things for it to do. That surely is the wrong way round. The right way, if one is to consider this rationally, is to identify functions, if you can find them, which it is essential for a London-wide elected body to perform and then set up the body to discharge them—not to set up the body first and then seek to find functions to heap on to it.
I would with respect make the same criticism of the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Hayter. It was in great contrast to the speech of my noble friend Lord Molson on Amendment No. 9. Whereas my noble friend Lord Molson, most generous in his time, gave us a long list of the functions that his elected bodies would perform in the metropolitan counties, the noble Lord, Lord Hayter, left it all very happily vague. He said something to the effect, "Oh, well, we shall try to minimise the upheaval in functions which the dissolution of the GLC would bring about".
I would bring the noble Lord, Lord Hayter, and, if I may, your Lordships, back to the central point. Is it intended under this amendment to set up a body with very considerable powers and functions, or is it not? If it is so intended, surely we are really reversing the decision to abolish the GLC and we are setting up the GLC Mark 2 with all the problems and troubles which will flow from that. If, on the other hand, it is intended that its functions should be small and trivial, why incur the expense and why ask public spirited men and women to spend their time getting elected to it and serving on it? That really is the dilemma which your Lordships have to face.

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We come then to the point which has been made once or twice in the opposite sense as to whether you really can limit by statute such a body in what it does. Once you have precepting and election, it is astonishingly difficult to restrict the precepting and elected body from extending its functions. If, as undoubtedly would be the case at the moment, such a body was dominated by the hard Left of the Labour Party, as is the GLC at the moment, then it would undoubtedly exercise all its considerable ingenuity and energy to extending its functions.
Let me remind your Lordships what the GLC itself has already done. It has no authority over the police. It has no police powers or responsibilities at all under the Act of 1965. But it has nonetheless incurred considerable public expenditure on setting up a large police committee with a large and expensive staff. To do what? Simply to seek to interfere in the operation of the police, where it has no business whatsoever. That is a very good example of what a similarly constituted elected or London body would do, however much your Lordships try to tie it down by detailed and precise legislation.
I have not seen—the noble Baroness says she has put down amendments on functions; it may be that she will point them out to me—any of the detailed restrictions which it is suggested could be imposed. Nor have I seen the detailed financial restrictions. One must be left with a very profound suspicion that if this is really to be put into the Bill we shall have basically a defeat of the whole concept of the Bill. We shall establish an elected body for all London which will devote its energies and its expenditure from the ratepayers on extending its functions. For that reason, however attractive it may seem to some of your Lordships, I suggest with great humility that there is a very great danger indeed in this proposal.
I want to deal with only one other matter. The noble Lord, Lord Hayter, suggested in his speech that one of the functions—this is one of the functions he did suggest—of the new elected body should be the support of voluntary organisations. I am glad to see the noble Lord the Leader of the Opposition in his place because he will recall that, at about a quarter to two in the morning last Tuesday week, when he was winding up the debate for the Opposition, he referred to the remarks I had made in my speech a good deal earlier about the way in which it seemed to me that the Labour Party at County Hall were deliberately seeking to alarm charitable bodies.
The noble Lord referred to me and to this issue at quite considerable length. I hope he will allow me to say—and I have given him notice that I was going to raise this matter—that he departed from the normal high standards of courtesy which he shows in your Lordships' House by refusing three times to give way to me when I sought to defend the argument of mine which he seemed to be traducing. I will therefore take this opportunity to defend my argument.
The noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos, said, "It isn't a case of us trying to alarm the good causes and the voluntary bodies. On the contrary, they are coming to us".
Noble Lords: Hear, hear!
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: I see that the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, applauds but that the Leader of the Opposition, who is a wilier bird, remains much more sensibly silent.
The noble Lord's words sounded very well until, perhaps, your Lordships saw the half-page advertisement in The Times inserted at public expense by the Labour majority at County Hall. In that advertisement it was suggested in plain terms that an enormous list of charities will not be able to carry on if the GLC is abolished. That is not the charities coming to alarm Her Majesty's Opposition; that is Her Majesty's Opposition spending the ratepayers' money to suggest to the charities that they may have to end if the GLC is abolished. From any view that is surely an attempt to alarm those charities. They include many excellent charities, such as MENCAP. Noble Lords will be aware that the director-general of MENCAP, which is a splendid charity, has issued a public statement that he regrets this action by the Labour Party at County Hall in seeking to alarm the public and perhaps to undermine the splendid charity for which he works.
No doubt some of the bodies which are recipients of the GLC's beneficence may have cause for alarm. I doubt whether the successor bodies will necessarily make any grant to Gay Teenagers, to the Gay and Lesbian Employment Bureau, or even to CND—bodies which have been well supported by the GLC. But it is introducing an utterly unfair element into this controversy to try to alarm the excellent bodies which are the main recipients by going to the point of placing an advertisement which puts their future continuance in doubt, as the GLC has done. I apologise to noble Lords for having to repeat this—unlike the noble Lord I shall of course give way.
Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: I am grateful to the noble Lord for showing me the usual courtesy. I would point out that on the last occasion, in our Second Reading debate, I was replying to the noble Lord's argument at the very end of my speech. I would normally give way in a debate, as the noble Lord knows, in reasonable circumstances.
Perhaps the noble Lord will allow me to say to him that the criticism I made was not in any way associated with the advertisements placed by the Greater London Council or by any other organisation. They were criticisms we made on the basis of information we received as Members of your Lordships' House. We were fully supported by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Liverpool, who made it plain from his own great experience that there was universal fear among voluntary organisations that, as a result of this Bill, they will be without funds which they now receive.
The noble Lord's argument was that the borough councils will raise rates. He knows perfectly well that local authorities are under considerable difficulty, in view of the policies of the present Government, to raise their rates at all. The case I made that voluntary organisations are deeply concerned stands; there is no question about it. The evidence is independent evidence, and the noble Lord should know it well. It has nothing to do with the advertisements which appeared in newspapers and which were not very good advertisements anyway.
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: I am of course grateful to the noble Lord for that intervention. I shall follow it up if I may. The noble Lord said that the charities concerned were not disturbed by the advertisement. Has he seen the statement made by people who organise several of those charities, saying that they were disturbed by it—including the statement by Mr. Rix of MENCAP? It is not right or accurate for the noble Lord to say that they were not disturbed by that disgraceful advertisement.
If the noble Lord is to justify that advertising—and there has been much more of it but I shall save your Lordships' time and quote only one example—and if the Labour Party is ready to descend to those depths of controversy, and thus alarm good people who are doing good work with an unnecessary charge of this kind, then it seems to me to indicate, as I believe it will to many of your Lordships, how thin they really regard their case. I am grateful now to the noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos. If he had given way on Second Reading I could have spared your Lordships this.
Lord Alport: Will my noble friend allow me to intervene for a moment?
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: Of course, but be careful.
Lord Alport: I have not seen the advertisement to which he has referred but I have plenty of evidence in my own files of letters from organisations in London and from the North. These are voluntary organisations which are gravely concerned by the situation without having been influenced in the slightest way by any of the propaganda to which my noble friend has referred and which, frankly, I have not seen.
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: I am of course indebted to my noble friend—as I must, because of the courtesies of this House, describe him—for that extraordinarily helpful intervention. My noble friend, being a logical and fair-minded man, will accept that if there is a genuine alarm it does not exactly cause it to be reduced by the body involved in London taking space in the newspapers to tell voluntary organisations in terms that they may not be able to carry on. Your Lordships will not feel that that amounts to reassurance, nor that it was intended as such.
The proof of the matter, as your Lordships will fully appreciate, is that when one has been receiving beneficence from a particular body and one knows that in future one will have to go to other bodies to receive it, then naturally one is disturbed and anxious if one is responsibly running a charity. Of course that is so. What I object to—and I believe the noble Lord the Leader of the Opposition, in his heart, is very unhappy about it—is when that anxiety is deliberately played on in the hope of putting pressure on public opinion and upon Members of Parliament to support a particular local government structure.
This is probably the most important amendment to the Bill. It is vital to the whole structure of the Bill. I beg of your Lordships to reflect not only on the important local authority administrative arrangements involved but also on the whole political and public impact, on Her Majesty's Government and on public opinion, if your Lordships were to decide at this stage of this Bill to carry anything of this sort into law.
Lord Mishcon: Before the noble Lord sits down, perhaps he will permit an intervention from somebody who had the privilege of sitting in County Hall for some 18 years under the old London County Council and who was the first chairman of the GLC's General Purposes Committee. My intervention is prompted by the fact that the noble Lord, Lord Boyd-Carpenter, is known in your Lordships' House, as he was known in another place, for being a great debater of more than 40 or 50 years' experience. I do not believe that the noble Lord has had one minute's experience of London government.
I merely want, as somebody who was a colleague on the opposite side at County Hall, to pay my tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Plummer, and say that I agree with every word that he has said even though we were political opponents. The noble Lord, Lord Plummer, spoke out of knowledge; the noble Lord, Lord Boyd-Carpenter, spoke out of debating skill. May I ask the noble Lord, Lord Boyd-Carpenter, as an old parliamentarian, whether he really believes that Parliament is so powerless that it cannot contrive an Act which will limit the powers of a local authority and its powers of spending money?
5 p.m.
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: The noble Lord was polite about my capacities as a debater but his intervention was a singularly adroit, but largely irrelevant, piece of debating.
On his second point, I can only say that I have not so far seen any legislation which has shown itself capable of containing the ambitions and efforts of people of the type now controlling the GLC when they are intent on using their public position, their patronage and their precepting power. I have never seen any legislation which is capable of doing that. If the noble Lord would draft such legislation—he is very good at drafting—I should be very happy to see it.
As regards the noble Lord's earlier personal observations, no one in this Committee can compare with my noble friend Lord Plummer in experience of local government, but I have had considerable connection with local government in London, which is why I spoke about it. For some years I was chairman of the Conservative Party's Local Government Committee, deeply involved in the affairs of London at a critical time; and, just to cheer up the noble Lord, before the war I stood for the old LCC, but as I stood for the constituency of Limehouse the noble Lord will not be surprised to hear that I was unsuccessful.
Lord Seebohm: As my name is on the amendment perhaps I may be permitted to speak. I shall be very brief. I shall not risk being accused of verbosity or filibustering. I should like to start by saying how strangely unmoved I am by the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Boyd-Carpenter. He is probably the most brilliant debater in this Committee but he uses a very different crystal ball from the one that I use. Moreover, I think he has largely misinterpreted the intention of the amendment in using such phrases as, "it is going to be small and trivial", or, "large, unimportant". It is going to be small and very important.
My first reason for supporting this amendment is one which your Lordships might think slightly

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frivolous or emotional. I have spent most of my career travelling round the world and I suppose I have visited all the important capitals in the world. Every time I came back to England I realised that London was the finest city in the world. What frightens me is that this Bill, if it goes through in its present form, may well create in London a badly-managed, headless monster. That must be avoided at all costs. Your Lordships may think that I am being frivolous, but I am not. To me this is an important point.
I have had a certain amount of experience in local government. Some years ago I was working on a committee, which was parallel with that of local government reform, the chairman of which was the then Sir John Maud. One of the things which we found out, and with which a certain member of the Committee on my left will agree, is that London is different. I do not know the pros and cons of the metropolitan counties but I do know that in looking at matters to try to get some universally appropriate scheme for the personal social services of local government we found in every case that London is different. Therefore, I am not going to talk about the metropolitan counties but will talk about London.
The Bill as it stands will delegate all matters of importance to a bunch of co-ordinating bodies. Anybody who has been in local government—I think the noble Lord, Lord Evans, mentioned this point—or, for that matter, in business, finds "co-ordination" or "co-ordinating body" to be dirty words. A co-ordinating body is incapable of managing. It consists of delegates, not elected people, who are looking over, their shoulders at the body which has sent them there. They invariably have to think about how what they are doing will affect their own borough. They have to be jolly careful to see that they do not offend their boroughs too much or they will not get elected the next time. That is what happens. A classic example is the Council of Ministers in the EC. Its members are all delegates and there are at present problems with the CAP. With cereals the position is being completely upset by one country only—that is Germany. To my mind this is a very serious defect and I do not believe that co-ordinating bodies can manage.
I went to a conference three weeks ago. It was a very high level conference in Paris run by the Institut de l'Entreprise, which is the French equivalent of the CBI. There were a great number of people there. We had one session devoted to the EC and at the end of the discussions I asked the panel to say whether they thought there was any hope for the Common Market unless many of the powers were taken away from the Council of Ministers and put into the European Parliament. The answer was even shorter than my question—it was just, no.
As I said, I am going to be brief but I want to refer to the leaflet issued by the Department of the Environment. It is the official document called, After the GLC. It is most disturbing reading. Naturally, I shall not read it all but I refer to question 5:
"Will there still be a strategic overview of London affairs?"
The reply is:
"There are two main spheres where there will be a continuing need for some strategic planning".
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I do not know why they state that there are two, but there it is. They are,
"for the London area: land use and transport.
"A new London Planning Commission will advise the Secretary of State on strategic land use",
and so on.
"The Secretary of State for Transport will provide a framework of guidance on traffic matters that will give maximum discretion to boroughs within a coherent overall approach".
And so the leaflet goes on. The Secretary of State appears many times—too many times—in this document. I have a strong feeling that it is not just decision-making which will go back to Whitehall, Marsham Street, or wherever, but that a considerable amount of administration will go with it, which will enlarge the departments in London. In my view, that is not local government.
The Government have made clear some of their feelings on this when they agreed that the ILEA should continue but that it should be an elected body Why, after all the other things they have said against elected bodies? Are they frightened of it? I think that the only alternative is to have an elected body for London which can take an independent view of all those matters which cannot reasonably be handled by individual boroughs. We have been given the example of voluntary bodies and I am certain that it is an important one. I will not go into that today, but when we reach Clause 47 we shall no doubt have some tough speaking. We have also spoken about waste disposal and I believe the boroughs have been working on that for a long time but are getting nowhere at all.
I end as I began. London is different. I believe that we must have a head to London. I said I would be brief. I do not think I have been verbose and I hope that this amendment will be very strongly supported.
Lord Sandford: I rise to make four short points in support of the amendment. I start by introducing properly to your Lordships the Standing Conference for London and South-East Regional Planning. It has already been mentioned twice, and at the moment I have the honour of chairing it. With the GLC it consists of the 12 Home Counties, the 32 London boroughs and the 98 shire districts in the Home Counties. I will not say any more now about the details of the standing conference except that because its existence bears on 20 or 30 of the amendments that arise in this part of the Bill I have placed in the Library copies of some documents which those Members of the Committee who have so far taken part might find useful.
I support the amendment for a number of reasons, but most specifically because it is the preferred solution for the whole of this standing conference. The conference supports it with no dissentient voice, and I would ask the Committee to bear in mind that of the 12 Home Counties, three-quarters are Conservative; of the 32 London boroughs, half are Conservative; and of the 98 shire districts in the Home Counties, three-quarters are Conservative.
I have only two other points that I want to make. The first is about the thoroughness with which Ministers claim the consultations leading to the manifesto commitment have been discharged. Neither

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of my two noble friends who are now dealing with the Bill were on the scene at the time and so I thought it may be important that somebody who was involved with local government should make that clear, though it pains me and shames me to do so.
The thoroughness of the consultation is of the same character as that which has landed the Conservative Party with a commitment to abolish the domestic rate from which we have been trying to escape for the past 10 years. It is the same thoroughness which led Ministers to introduce the Local Government Finance Bill of 1981 and then to withdraw it when it was half way through the Committee stage in the Commons. This proposal has not been prepared for and thought through with anything like adequate thoroughness, so much so that when the White Paper was produced the existence of the standing conference—and it has been in existence for 20 years—was overlooked altogether.
The last point that I want to make is one that my noble friend Lord Boyd-Carpenter and the Minister raised earlier. It is to the effect that if a new directly elected body for the metropolitan area were to be created, it would be impossible to control its expenditure. That simply is not the case. Almost all the abuse—and, good heavens, there has been enough of it—that has been apparent in the case of the GLC has been by way of an excessive and irregular use of its powers under Section 137 of the main Local Government Act. When under the Local Government (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act of 1981 the power to raise money under that section was increased and extended, it would have been perfectly possible for the Government then or at a subsequent moment to cap the use of Section 137 by the high spending local authorities. Even now they have not tried to do so.
The Lord Bishop of Southwark: Perhaps I may make a few contributions to the extremely important debate on the amendment by way of just commenting on one or two things that have emerged during the course of it. The first is that I noticed the extent to which on both sides we are very much involved with fear. I illustrate that in this way. There is on the one hand fear of a phoenix rising from the ashes. That has been a dominant theme in a number of speeches this afternoon. Outside this House people refer to the danger that the baby will grow again into another monster. It seems as if so many people are concerned about that that they think that that is what must be stopped at all cost, regardless of the consequences.
On the other hand, there is another fear. It is that we shall see the collapse of many good and important things that are currently going on, and, indeed, that we may see a further concentration of powers both in the hands of central Government and to some extent in the hands of non-elected bodies. That fear leads people once again to speak of monsters. We had headless monsters being referred to in a speech just now. I think that the very use of the word "monster" and the fears that are around are making it difficult for us in some ways to see clearly what it is that still has to be decided, and it is that with which I am particularly concerned.
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5.15 p.m.
The Minister in his early speech spoke about the question of who will do the things that remain to be done after abolition. It seems to me that the amendment is primarily concerned precisely with that issue. Those of us who are in favour of the amendment are anxious about some of the things which we do not think will be done or done adequately, and we do not find that the arguments meet the concerns that we have.
One of the primary fears seems to be that one cannot limit the function of a directly elected body to do the particular things that it is asked to do (as subsection (4) states) and that it will almost certainly begin to do more things and take unto itself a great many more powers of one kind or another. I find that very difficult to understand. I am not a constitutionalist, but that does not seem to me to be true of other things. I should be very grateful to the noble Lord the Minister if he could fill out a bit more why it is felt to be such an impossible task to fulfil.
He said that it would be a body that had either too much to do, or, I think I heard him say, too little. I am not sure why we cannot have something which has a clear function that is neither too much nor too little but which has a job to get on with that is best done in that way. It sounded a slightly dangerous argument. It might almost be used as an argument for the abolition of this House; but I shall not press that. But if a body that has, as it were, very little to do is not thought worth having, conclusions might be drawn from that.
Again we were reminded that the amendment in a sense—
Lord Elton: I wonder whether the right reverend Prelate will allow me to say two things? One is the obvious thing that this House has very important work to do. I should have thought that he would accept that the work that he is engaged on now is work of some importance. The other thing is that he is assuming that there are three areas in anything one considers—too much, too little and just right. But the fact is that here we have an area where either there is no point in having a body sufficient to justify its presence, or, if it is justified, it is open to all the pressures that I outlined in my speech at the opening, and therefore it is too much.
The Lord Bishop of Southwark: I thank the noble Lord very much for that. What I was trying to say was that we are a body, I believe, which has very limited powers; yet I do not believe that we have an unimportant task to do. That was the point that I was wanting to make. It seemed to me that that was a valid point to make in this context.
It was pointed out to us that there is a great danger in leaving things to the reader's imagination. Perhaps I may just say that the anxieties which are being expressed and which have led to this amendment are precisely that we feel that there are a good many things in the Bill which, if not exactly left to the imagination, are not clearly enough spelled out.
Perhaps I may pass from that to a particular concern that I want to express, and it is of course that which concerns the voluntary organisations, as an example.

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Clearly it applies to other areas, notably strategic planning, on which a great deal has been said already, and I shall not go over that ground again. But one of the major concerns of the voluntary bodies, as they have been expressing their concerns to me and many others over a long period—it does not have anything to do with recent advertisements—has been about the great help that they have received in having in London a body which has been able to provide policy overview and some sense of long-term planning.
Perhaps that has not always been so. It may be a bonus of comparatively recent arrival. But having once experienced it, it seems very sad if we are now in real danger of seeing that once again disappear, given the nature and extent of some of the problems which we have to face in a great capital city and the need for focusing resources and enabling people to cope with them in the most effective way possible. I want to underline that point, and that is one of the reasons why we very much want to see a body which can exercise that kind of overview.
There is the point that goes with that which is whether and to what degree such a body might have any powers of funding. I just want to draw attention to the fact that, if I understand it correctly, Section 137 allows a strictly limited rate to be raised for general purposes, as it is now. Why would it not be possible for a similar provision to that to allow a very limited rate to be raised for precise purposes to do with the meeting of social need in a great city such as this, across the boroughs? I am not dealing with local funding of local voluntary organisations; I am thinking primarily of the cross-borough needs.
It is here again that I think we need to address ourselves as to what the practical solutions might be. So far, we still see very little that is tangible and definite; just the hope that the two-thirds of the boroughs will co-operate sufficiently to agree a policy and then raise the necessary funds. Many others have already pointed out how very risky that seems, in view of past history.
Thus I should like to stress that this amendment would, for instance, go quite a long way to alleviate some of the acute anxieties that are being expressed by management bodies and workers in this field. I think it is helpful to illustrate it in one particular way so that the Committee can understand why there are these other fears to which we have to address ourselves, alongside the fears that are being expressed about excessive powers, which will lead us back to the very point from which this Bill seeks to take us away.
Lord Stewart of Fulham: Perhaps I may—I beg the noble Lord's pardon.
Lord Hunt: The noble Lord need not have worried because I am going to say only a few words. I shall put them in the form of a question. I am going to raise a question for the Government Front Bench which I suspect underscores the concern of a great many people who are in favour of this amendment. I shall not go over the very long arguments for or against, as to whether this amendment seeks to reproduce the Greater London Council and the metropolitan counties. I do not believe that it does.
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However, what worries me is this. Let us take strategic planning as a broad expression of the needs that have to be met when the GLC, for instance, is abolished. I do not suggest that the Committee is not completely clear about what is involved in strategic planning. However, there is one stage in strategic planning, which, if I may, I shall illustrate by specifically referring to the planning of land uses.
There is an initial stage, what we might call the germination, the gestation and the development of an idea for the imaginative use of land in a metropolitan county. The metropolis of Greater Manchester or the area presently covered by the GLC may be taken as examples. That idea has to be thought up before it becomes a question of co-ordinating and managing to carry on the countywide administration. That is a different stage which I suggest can be carried out if necessary by a non-elected or a not fully elected body. However, the gestation stage is crucially important and it should germinate from the minds and wishes of the people directly elected by the citizens of the countywide area.
I have here details of half a dozen schemes from the Greater Manchester authority. Each started with the planning authority, which is a fully elected body, thinking up a scheme which has become a great success and which is welcome to that city. It is also true of London. Land use is only one example. However, my question to the Government is: whether they are satisfied that under their arrangements this fully democratic germination of the ideas for the uses of land will be continued. Alternatively, will it be that ideas which are supposedly good for the good citizens of London, for instance, are put by a board or a quango to the Secretary of State for him to pronounce what is good for the citizens of the countywide area of London? That is my point. Perhaps the Minister would like to reply either now or when he winds up.
While I am on my feet perhaps I may disabuse the noble Lord, Lord Boyd-Carpenter, of any misconceptions he may still harbour about the depth of concern in the voluntary organisations about their future and about the prospect of particular projects and possibly whole organisations folding in the light of what we presently know about this Bill. I speak with complete knowledge of this.
Lord Elton: I shall be guided by the Committee. I have spoken once. This is not Second Reading and of course I am allowed to speak umpteen times, if I wish. However, I think we want to get on. On the other hand, there is a limit to the number of issues which my noble friend can pick up in the wind up. As the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, has specifically asked me this question, it might just be helpful if I say to the Committee, if the Committee will allow me, that I have already explained that the Secretary of State is already in the strategic authority position that he sees as being necessary. The noble Lord's concern is not for that; it is whether the germinative function can properly be discharged by somebody who is not, as it were, endemic to the area affected by being elected, or however.
What we have in mind for strategic guidance is fairly simple material such as has already been issued on a number of occasions in the form of circulars. I am glad

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to hear the noble Lord, Lord Plummer, say that the final version of one of them was acceptable to everybody. These will be proposals to start with. They will be published. They will be available for consultation. In London there will be the London Planning Commission available to advise the Secretary of State. As a statutory body they will be able to take advice from absolutely everybody, including SERPLAN, the distinguished and useful body of my noble but disaffected friend Lord Sandford, which of course is not a statutory body and cannot be incorporated in the legislation. Thus there is machinery to get to the Secretary of State informed opinion about what should be in the advice and also comment on the advice when it is produced.
If I may go on for a second longer, that is the device for unitary planning. I am sure the Committee are familiar with the idea of unitary planning. Each local authority—and I emphasise the word "local"—will have a plan for its area, in two parts. The top part, Part I, will perform the function of the segments of the existing strategic plan. The bottom part will be the local plan. Thus it will look like a patchwork quilt. The function of the strategic guidance will be to see that it knits together into a proper patchwork. I hope that I have not detained your Lordships' Committee too long.
Lord Stewart of Fulham: It is interesting that in this debate so far nearly every speaker has drawn attention to the fact that in London and in every other metropolis there are certain functions which are unavoidably metropolitan. Sometimes they are of a technical nature, such as fire fighting and waste disposal, and sometimes of a personal nature involving, for instance, the wisest way to give help to voluntary bodies. But that they exist is now not seriously in doubt. All the correspondence we receive, unprovoked by any advertisements there may be in the press, brings that out. The Government themselves admit it by the fact that in the Bill they do not intend to return these functions to the boroughs; they create a hotchpotch of joint boards, Government nominees, advisory bodies and so forth.
Therefore the question at issue is this. Ought the undoubted metropolitan functions of a metropolis to be carried out by an elected metropolitan authority or ought they to be carried out by the kind of patchwork that this Bill provides? We have not been provided with any convincing reasons in favour of the patchwork solution. Originally it was suggested that it would be cheaper. Nobody in this debate has seriously tried to defend that proposition. It certainly would be more complicated. All the history and experience of joint boards indicates that they are complicated, contentious and often ill-tempered in working together. We have no reason to suppose that we shall get a better result in that direction.
So when it comes to the crunch, what is the argument on which all the Government speeches—those of the noble Lords, Lord Elton and Lord Boyd-Carpenter have fallen back? It is that they dislike the policies of the present Greater London Council and that if there is another metropolitan authority it will pursue similar policies. We are warned against that danger.
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5.30 p.m.
This is the argument, if it can be so called, that is repeatedly advanced. It is no good noble Lords shaking their heads. We have all heard them. How can they be sure that they will get what they want even if they press through this Bill? What is to prevent borough councils with views and policies similar to those of the GLC at the present time getting majorities?
There has been a great deal of argument about opinion polls. One thing is quite certain—that this Bill is unpopular in London. Electoral reactions in London, if the Government had allowed them to proceed, would have been far more in favour of the kind of policies now in favour at County Hall than in favour of anything that the Government want.
The only means therefore by which the Government can prevent what they object to is to make sure that there will not be majorities of that sort either on the borough councils or on any of the joint boards that the borough councils create. In fact, the Government have really got the wrong Bill for their purposes. What they wanted was a simple Bill of one clause saying that persons who are reasonably open to suspicion of having a political philosophy repugnant to noble Lords on the Front Bench opposite should not be eligible for election to borough councils.
The Earl of Gowrie: Nonsense.
Lord Stewart of Fulham: I quite understand that the noble Earl, Lord Gowrie, is annoyed. I am showing what the Bill is really about and what we all know it is about.
The Earl of Gowrie: I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. I am not annoyed; I am furious.
Lord Stewart of Fulham: If that is the case, I am delighted. That is what this is about. If the Government had had the nerve, they would have introduced a Bill of that kind and we should have known exactly where we were. It is because they are not doing so that we have this hotch-potch of joint boards and of this, that and the other, which does not stand up to any serious intellectual examination. Those are the reasons which convince me that we should support the amendment.
Baroness Faithfull: As a matter of courtesy to the Committee, although I have put my name to the amendment, I shall not make my speech because all that I wish to say has already been said. I shall simply make a few comments. First, I am a good Conservative. I believe in the policies of my party. I believe in the abolition of the GLC. I believe in the devolution of as many powers as possible to local authorities. I work for a local authority myself. My noble friend Lord Boyd-Carpenter talked about the alternatives in the manifesto. He mentioned joint boards. However, he did not say that the manifesto talked about quangos, devolution of decisions to Ministers, lead authorities and also the creation of ILEA as proposed. I would therefore suggest that the manifesto, with which I agree, did not specifically and in detail recommend how the Bill now before your Lordships' House should be carried out.

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Amendment No. 8 recommends a managerial structure for the administration of London-wide duties. In the Second Reading debate, my noble friend Lord Whitelaw said:
"We shall … return most of their functions to the boroughs". [Official Report, 15/4/85; col. 582]
With this, I concur.
I come to the point of Her Majesty's Government's terror of GLC Mark 2 arising. I still maintain, like other noble Lords, that the Confederation of British Industry is right in its paper stating:
"Powers of such an authority would be strictly limited by tightly drawn statute so that they can concern themselves with the relevant services and nothing else."
Furthermore, the amendment restricts financial expenditure to those functions laid down by statute. Such an authority legally could not stray into the strange and bizarre fields which the loosely drawn 1962 Act allowed Mr. Livingstone to do. The London-wide authority acting outside the terms of this amendment would be denying the sovereignty of Parliament.
I take up another point made by my noble friend Lord Boyd-Carpenter concerning voluntary organisations. There have been many meetings in your Lordships' House and outside concerned with the worries of the voluntary organsisations. I have not seen my noble friend Lord Boyd-Carpenter at any of those meetings to hear the points put forward by the voluntary organisations. I agree with the right reverend Prelate that they are real. Furthermore, if the committee wished, I could mention voluntary organisations that have already had to close. So the proof of the pudding in that case is in the eating.
If the amendment is carried, we shall have a structure that is understood by the people of London to carry out their services. Instead, as many noble Lords have said, we have a voluminous diffuse, diverse and complicated set of recommendations. No business firm would build its structure in such a way. Her Majesty's Government enjoin efficiency—and rightly so. The people of London are entitled not to a disparate, unrelated set of services, but to a sound and unified structure to carry out the London-wide duties.
Baroness Denington: We have had some magnificent speeches. I pay particular tribute to the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Plummer. If anyone in this Chamber knows about London government, what is needed, what it does—so much of what it does has never reached the light of day—and the services given by expert groups of officers, it is the noble Lord, Lord Plummer. He knows, having been the leader of the GLC.
I shall be brief. I do not intend to go over points that have already been made. I should like, however, to pick up two points. One was the reference of my noble friend, Lady Birk, to the fact that we are talking not just about a London issue but a national issue. It is indeed a national issue. The importance, the prestige and the standing of the nation's capital city is very important to the nation as a whole in the community of nations. I can assure your Lordships, as could the noble Lord, Lord Plummer, and other noble Lords who have been members of the GLC, that the GLC,
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representing London, commands enormous prestige abroad.
Those of us who have been in County Hall have, over the years, received and talked to many people from the cities of this country seeking information about how to deal with problems in a great city and a great conurbation. Year by year, as we know, these problems become more difficult as the complexity of modern living increases and creates new problems. People come to see what is done. If it is not done at County Hall, County Hall has always referred them to the borough where they know that that particular problem is looked at and dealt with very carefully.
It is a matter of prestige. It is not only other people, members of other councils who come to us; it is also a question of this nation's capital city being invited to other world events. The noble Lord, Lord Plummer, will remember that he and I had the pleasure and honour of going to a conference called by the Mayor of Tokyo, when we were both on the council. The conference was for the great cities of the world. Those invited were ourselves from London and representatives from Paris, New York, Moscow and Peking. Peking did not respond, but the rest of us were there. According to my memory, we were allowed only three representatives each. I think that the noble Lord, Lord Plummer, was leader at the time. I went from my side of the council, and there was the chief executive, too. We were to discuss the problems of the world.
Who would be invited now? Truly I cannot imagine; perhaps it would be whoever was the chairman of a group of boroughs, and as we have said here this afternoon, they do not cover all the services. The chairman of one of the quangos might be invited, but he would be representing only a certain facet of London's problems. It is necessary that we have the prestige of an elected—and the word "elected" is so important—authority to represent this capital city of ours and this nation.
The other quotation I want to read to you is very short; it is of Mr. Kenneth Baker speaking in the other place on this very subject. He said:
"If one creates such a body"—
the body we are talking about—
"which has executive functions, it must have the power to appoint staff and to raise money. If one creates such a body, it will inevitably be a mini GLC, there is no halfway house, that is the essential dilemma and the difficulty".
Very clearly, courageously and properly put, and there it is. Surely, unless one has a very dyed-in-the-wool view of this particular problem, the case has been made for an elected authority in London. I sincerely hope, in the interests of the nation again, that that view will prevail here tonight.
What we are asking for is not really a mini GLC—the expression "GLC" has become horribly emotive—it is not a GLC, it is the strategic authority which will carry out these essential, central powers and services for the capital city. I wonder that the Government is so fearful. It seems to me that its abolition has at the bottom of it—what shall I say? I shall not say "fear"—the fact that they have got really rattled by Livingstone across the water. A government has no business to get rattled; it should not get rattled and it is a sign of great weakness if it does get rattled.

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5.45 p.m.
Why does it get rattled? Rates were a great issue on which the Government stood firm and won. They won, so what are they frightened about? We all agree that governments in the end must always win. We cannot have democracy unless that is so. On the rates issue, the Government came out on top. I would say that on the issue we are discussing today—this amendment—if the Government accept the amendment they do not lose, they triumph. Government should not seem to shrink from difficulties instead of facing them and showing that democracy can always win. The answer is in our hands.
Viscount Ingleby: I speak from this position not only from necessity but also from choice. I am sure we would all want to adopt policies which would unite the country so far as possible. Is this amendment not something which the great majority of Londoners would support? I believe that it would be supported both by those who want to see the excesses, the abuses, of power at County Hall curbed, and it would also be supported by those who would like to see some form of directly elected London-wide government to continue. I have come into contact with a good many taxi drivers and I have not found any supporters of Mr. Livingstone; but they all want to see some form of directly-elected government for London to continue.
May I ask your Lordships to think for a moment about the effect of this amendment on the existing council's staff? At the moment they are refusing to co-operate. I believe if this amendment were adopted, the great majority of staff would co-operate with the Government. Without their co-operation, is it conceivable that the transfer of power can be got through in the eight months available? I hope that all Members of your Lordships' House who would like to see people in this country more united than they are at the present time—and I am sure I am counting all Members of the Committee—would share that view. I hope they will support this amendment.
Baroness Fisher of Rednal: I should like to enter into the debate regarding the metropolitan counties. Since 1974 and the reorganisation, the metropolitan counties are what we call the worse half of the two nations. They are in the majority areas where there is the gravest unemployment and the highest amount of industrial dereliction. They are either in development areas or else they are in assisted areas. The Government have recognised the difficulties of those areas, the EEC also, through its regional aid, has been giving them the infrastructure to help regenerate the areas. So when we are talking about the metropolitan counties, in the main we are talking about one half of the nation. Therefore, it is important that their democratic voice and the organisation of local government is comparable with that of the metropolitan City of London, and, as so many people have said in this debate, the capital city which all Britishers love, London. Therefore, I go along with the sentiments expressed, but I would make quite sure that the government which is decided on for the
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metropolitan counties should be considered quite seriously.
There has been widespread concern about the fragmentation of services and I shall not go into great detail about them, but the services that the metropolitan authorities are covering are in a much wider complex than those in the London areas, operating police, fire and consumer services, strategic planning and of course transport policies. Because they operate all those services, there is a need for interdependence of one upon the other. Therefore, with that interrelation of services it is important that the interrelation of services which is operated in the main by paid officials shall be cared for as well, so that the public are vitally interested in it, by a single democratic body which is also carrying out the will of the people living in the metropolitan areas.
I shall not go into great detail because the time of the Committee is limited, but when looking at the membership of the authorities, as set out in the amendment, it is important that we look at the composition of the membership of the authorities in relation to the services to be provided, both in number and in complexity. That will result in a number of people on a committee being required to balance the needs of the area representation against effective discussion and decision-making.
The amendment dealing with the metropolitan counties provides for the Committee to set the limits as the Bill progresses through the Committee stage. During the Report stage in another place the Secretary of State for the Environment said that there is a need for planning, transport and traffic to be considered over a wider area. However, the Secretary of State considers that the wider planning and highway role properly falls to the Government. I believe that this is one of those very serious centralising tendencies of the Bill, especially when the needs that are enumerated are county-wide.
The Government accept that those needs are county-wide but wish to take those needs and their servicing to the centre. How unfortunate that is, because the centre of Government—Whitehall—goes to the metropolitan counties and the very large local authorities in this country for advice, which it passes on to Ministers. It is rather ironic that these same people who are so competent in running services—and many noble Lords have spoken about the effective teams that are in the metropolitan counties—are the teams who supply central Government or the regional officers with this information. These are the officers who we say perhaps will not be useful in the future.
Several of the Government's criticisms about the metropolitan counties could quite clearly also apply to the shire counties. There is a slight overlap in the shire counties, as there is in the metropolitan counties. Therefore, we must ask ourselves whether this is a one-sided reorganisation of local government as we know it. If we abolish the metropolitan counties, the surrounding shire counties, which abut the metropolitan counties, will have to deal with a complex set of relationships with all the districts that surround them that are now in the metropolitan counties. That will make the difficulties much more complex for the shire counties.

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We shall, of course, see a destabilisation of the whole of local government if these proposals go through. We shall find that the larger shire districts will be able to argue with added weight that, since the last reorganisation, the case has been made for an extension of their powers. We can name these large towns that have always felt so neglected because they do not have the status of the metropolitan district councils. Bristol is a very fine example. It believes that it was very badly treated under reorganisation.
Therefore, destabilisation of local government, as put forward in this Bill, will mean future headaches for the Government and therefore we shall see no permanence in this reorganisation. There are seven metropolitan districts with a population of less than 200,000 which, under the Bill, will be given additional powers. That fact will not be lost upon the eight shire districts which have a population in excess of that. Quite obviously, they will want equal standing. Of course, it has been said that direct election of members of the local authority is the most important characteristic of the British local government system. Joint boards and residuary bodies are therefore not part of a local government system because they are not directly elected. Therefore, in this country we have two systems of local government: that which is non-elected, and that which is directly elected.
During the course of the Bill it can be said that the services can be retained at county level, and that if we work hard on the amendments to this Bill fragmentation can be avoided. Our amendment on the metropolitan counties affords the opportunity for combining county-wide functions on a commonly financed basis. We ask that democratic accountability be maintained.
In conclusion, if the metropolitan counties and councils are swept away without adequate thought of replacement, the only way in which they will be dealt with comprehensively will be by central Government and regional civil servants, and not by locally elected members. That is fundamentally unacceptable.
Viscount Colville of Culross: One of the threads—
Noble Lords: The Minister, the Minister!
Viscount Colville of Culross: One of the threads that has run through this debate—and, in view of the cries from the Opposition, I promise to be brief—has been that related to strategic planning. I am bound to say that I am glad I have listened to the noble Baroness, Lady Fisher, because to judge by what she said and to judge by what a number of others have said, including my noble friend Lord Molson, it could be thought that central Government never had anything to do with strategic planning until this Bill came along. The noble Baroness, Lady Fisher, must know that that is absolutely untrue. My noble friend Lord Molson will see that the schedule to the Bill dealing with unitary development plans says that district and borough councils shall have regard to:
"any strategic guidance given by the Secretary of State … and to current national and regional policies".
I am not sure whether my noble friend was suggesting that that was something new. I am sure he knows too much to make any such suggestion.
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As for strategic guidance from the centre, this has been in existence more or less ever since the planning system began. I need not go back any further than the Government of the party opposite—and this is not a party political matter at all, because they operated it in exactly the same way. There were the regional economic planning councils, and a very good job they did. They were abolished in 1980, although it was then said that the regional planning boards of officials would continue in being under the chairmanship of the Department of the Environment regional directors, to whom my noble friend referred, and that they would have a close working relationship with local authorities and with all other appropriate advisory contacts in the regions. As anyone who has ever been concerned with planning knows full well, from time to time strategic guidance has been given in the form of circulars which emanate, after discussion, from the Department of the Environment or the Ministries that preceded it, and which override and give guidance to all those at the stage of preparing development or structure plans and at the stage of dealing with individual decisions.
My noble friend Lord Molson suggested to the Committee that there was something novel in the Secretary of State giving guidance for the purposes of preparing a structure plan and then at the end of the day coming to decide, as the court of appeal, on the individual propositions which were put forward within it. There is nothing of the kind that is novel in this. It has been going ever since 1947 and there is no novelty in its being introduced in the Bill in this respect.
6 p.m.
Then there is the necessity to deal with current regional and national policies. Does my noble friend Lord Molson think that there is anything new in this? No; there is not. This was introduced in 1968 when the concept of structure plans was brought in by the party opposite. It is not party political. It has worked perfectly satisfactorily ever since, and I am sure that it will continue to do so.
That has led, not only in the metropolitan counties and in Greater London but all over the rest of England and Wales, to an interlinked system of structure plans which are the strategic planning for the country as a whole. They have all been approved by the Secretary of State either for Wales or for the Environment, in England, and they all link together. Most of them are comparatively recent, and the structural work and the strategic work has been done. We therefore have a situation where for all the seven metropolitan areas there is in existence a comparatively recent strategically planned structure plan within which they can work.
What then has to be done next? There is a familiar process of revision. There has always been—and this, again, is nothing new—a requirement both in preparation and in revision of structure plans for the authority which is preparing it to consult widely with neighbouring authorities who may be affected. I do not think that this goes back to 1968; I think it goes back to 1947. It is even more lacking in party politics because it is plain common sense. That is what is suggested for the local authorities under this Bill That

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is what they all had to do before 1974, except in London; that is what they all did, and that is what they are going to do again. There is nothing new in this.
Let us take two points which have been raised as specific strategic planning issues. First of all, let us take the green belt. The green belts have been under dispute in individual cases and as a matter of strategy since the circular in 1955. By this time they have crystallised into extremely firm strategic policies which surround a number of the metropolitan areas with which this Bill is concerned. I am particularly familiar with the London one but I also know that which surrounds Birmingham and the conurbation which goes with it.
There is no strategy to discuss any more in relation to the structure plans and the green belt, but what there is is a matter of defining the inner edges. This has never been a matter for structure plans or for strategy. It has always been a matter for the districts, or the boroughs, within which the particular piece of land lies. That will continue to be the case, because under this Bill there is not the smallest change in that respect.
My noble friend Lord Molson also mentioned the question of waste disposal. It is fairly common ground, at least in London and I think in the West Midlands, that there is not room within the boundaries of the counties concerned to dispose, at least by way of land fill, with all the waste that is produced. So what happens? It goes out into the surrounding counties, as indeed the Association of County Councils say in their representations. In the case of London, it goes all over the Home Counties. It goes to Bedfordshire; some of it goes down to Avon, and it goes to any place where they can find a suitable hole to put it in.
There is one extremely important area of strategy which I admit would have to be co-ordinated, and that is who is to be interested in which particular geographical segment of the country. I concede that that is a matter for groupings of boroughs where some sort of agreement surely ought to be able to be reached. If it is not, they will merely be in competition with each other. But it is not the issue of strategy which matters from the point of view of waste disposal. What really matters there are the people who are at the receiving end. If it is suggested in your area that a certain hole should be dug to remove gravel, and instead there shall be dumped 10 years' worth of domestic refuse which is coming from a far distant city, I can tell you that there are many people in the area who will object. This has to be dealt with not by the metropolitan counties but by the county planning authority, the shire county planning authority, in whose area the hole is situated.
Most of these county planning authorities have by this time produced a subject plan relating to minerals and waste disposal, and after public inquiry objection, and everything else they have decided which places are tolerable for this purpose and which are not. That is where the waste disposal crunch comes, but it is not a matter for the metropolitan counties or the GLC; it is a matter for the receiving authorities. There will be no change under this legislation. I just hope that the Committee has not been so carried away by what appears to be the novelty of some of these propositions that it will forget that we are not changing procedures, strategies, and the entire concepts which have underlain planning law ever since the war.
Lord Plummer of St. Marylebone: Before my noble friend sits down—
Noble Lords: Gowrie!
Lord Plummer of St. Marylebone:—can he explain why then the planning process, which he is putting forward as the best one under this Bill, has been largely condemned by all the professional associations, including the London Green Belt Council? In regard to waste disposal, this has also been said by the Association of County Councils to be unworkable.
Viscount Colville of Culross: This is the third debate on the reform of local government that I have attended. On all those occasions practically everybody always opposed all change.
Lord Bellwin: The Committee is obviously—
Noble Lords: Gowrie!
Lord Bellwin: I think it most unfair when people on this side who want to speak for the Government and against this amendment are being denied the opportunity, by shouts from the Opposition. I have sat patiently listening for exactly three hours—not too patiently at times—but I think that I shall pay deference to the feelings of the Committee, which wants to give its decision on this, and I shall not make the speech I had prepared. But there should be no doubt at all in anyone's mind as to where I stand in this matter in that I was one of the people originally concerned with the proposals we have before us, and I shall put down my bona fides as regards service in local government alongside those of anyone else in your Lordships' Committee.
My feelings for the authorities concerned are no less than those of anyone else. I smiled when I heard my noble friend Lord Plummer say, "Is Parliament powerless to control local government?" I smiled even more when I heard the "Hear, hears" from the other side. I remember so well for years the bitter way they have fought every attempt to control local government, and how they have constantly told us how wicked a thing that would be to do. I am not impressed at all by that.
I have said that I shall say only a few words, and that is what I mean. But I should like to say to my noble friend Lord Molson before he leaves the Chamber that I at least am looking forward to the day when the metropolitan counties no longer have the highway function, and when people in my town can decide whether they locally want to have a zebra crossing at the bottom of the street without having to go miles and miles away to some county authority for them to tell us.
I could make a long speech along similar lines, but clearly this is not what your Lordships want tonight. It is what I should like, but not what your Lordships want. I say only this to my noble friend Lord Plummer, for whom I have the greatest admiration and respect. I sat at his feet alongside my noble friend Lord Marshall and the late Sir Frank Griffin when I first went into local government, and of course I have

165
a great regard and respect for him. I would say that the GLC as it is now is not the LCC that my noble friend knew. My noble friend Lord Boyd-Carpenter was so right: the GLC is not even the same GLC as many of your Lordships knew. In the last two or three years it has lost transport and housing. And so what is it that this whole debate is about?
When my noble friend Lord Colville says, as he did, that we are going back in the county areas to what was there before, that is right. To intimate that this will not work is to say that it never worked, and the fact is that it did work. I am one of those who is not convinced that it has worked any better. I know one thing: it costs many millions of pounds more.
Because I am receiving looks from my colleagues on the Front Bench, I will sit down. But I want to repeat my overwhelming rejection of the amendments. I hope that my noble friends on this side, at least, and many of those I hope are my friends on the CrossBenches—and (who knows) perhaps even one or two on the Benches opposite—will join with me in voting against the amendments.
The Earl of Gowrie: The looks coming from the Government Front Bench towards my noble friend Lord Bellwin are of universal love and approbation. He has nothing whatsoever to worry about.
As long ago as 1968 I was one of those who voted in your Lordships' House for the abolition, albeit in the very gentlemanly and phased-out way, of the hereditary peerage. I am very glad as an hereditary peer that it did not get through because I would have missed a debate of great interest and occasional high drama about an important and controversial subject. I hope I may respectfully say to all who took part in it that I think it was a superb debate.
There are three strands to the Government's policies in respect of local government. Perhaps I could quickly put this Bill in a general context. The first strand is to abolish unnecessary tiers of local government in the interests of economy and to avoid duplication and overlap. In respect of planning, this point was beautifully dealt with by my noble friend Lord Colville. If the noble Lord, Lord Evans of Claughton, accuses me of hiding behind rhetoric and not dealing with the arguments, may I say in regard to that argument that my noble friend has dealt with it so well that it would be superfluous for me to add anything to what he said. The other purpose of abolishing unnecessary tiers of local government is to neutralise bodies which, by definition, by the fact of their existence, act as upward motors generating additional public spending. This Bill deals with that part of the strategy.
The second strand is to establish mechanisms to control local government spending and establish some discipline over it, given that over 50 per cent. of local government finance is provided by central Government and by taxpayers generally. This is what is popularly known as rate capping. I should say to the noble Lord, Lord Stewart of Fulham, that that is an important part of the intellectual basis of the whole policy. One of the reasons he made me so cross was that he denied that there was any basis other than a purely instinctive political basis to this policy. The
166
intellectual basis to the policy is argued brilliantly and cogently on page 90 of the book, Inside the Treasury, written by the Chief Secretary to the Treasury in the previous Labour Government.
The third strand is to investigate whether there is a more equitable method of bringing local spending and local taxation into a rather closer correspondence than at present. That is what we are working on at the moment,
In respect of this first policy strand, with which the present Bill deals, very few people in this exciting debate have argued that the GLC and the MCCs are not unnecessary or wasteful tiers of government. My noble friend Lord Bellwin has just reminded us cogently that the old LCC was responsible for 50 per cent. or more of the spending on local services, but the present GLC—this is another point to make to the noble Lord, Lord Stewart of Fulham—is responsible for only 11 per cent. of local services. Yet the GLC's precept has risen by 102 per cent. as against a rise of only 27 per cent. for all other local English authorities. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Southwark was inclined to compare the GLC and the metropolitan county councils to your Lordships' House, of which I believe it was once said:
"They do nothing in particular and they do it very well".
Our objection to this tier of government is that they do rather little in particular and they do it extremely expensively, whether well or not.
6.15 p.m.
My noble friend Lord Elton—recovered from a debilitating bout of 'flu—spelt out in a brilliant speech the basis of the Government's policy as it was approved by the House at Second Reading. It is abolition of the top tier authorities; it is not modification of them. Those who support the amendments claim that the authorities they are proposing in lieu of the GLC and the MCCs are so different that they represent a new start and not a modification. One only has to add up the functions which are adduced for these new authorities to see that that is simply not true. The noble Baroness, Lady Birk, made a general case for a strategic authority and she and my noble friend Lord Plummer referred specifically to the strategy for planning and highways—which was dealt with by my noble friend Lord Colville—for fire and civil defence, for waste disposal, for scientific services, for Thamesmead. The noble Lord, Lord Evans, came smartly off the fence, stunned perhaps by my comments yesterday, and referred to joint authority services—that is to say, police, fire, passenger transport and the like—and scientific services.
If we add all that up, the new London authorities and the new metropolitan county authorities proposed in these amendments would be responsible for strategic planning, strategic highways, strategic housing, fire and civil defence, waste regulation and disposal, arts funding—I am sharply aware of the overlap in that field—sports funding, funding for voluntary bodies, together with such support services as scientific services and supplies. My noble friend Lord Molson added to this list and argued that the new authorities should have in addition police, passenger transport and trading standards.

167
The idea that these amendments and those who support them are not hostile to the principle of the Bill is surely simply wrong. The noble Lord, Lord Hayter, seemed to be asking us to keep the GLC virtually intact. I congratulate the noble Lord on the modest and moderate way in which he introduced his amendment, but nevertheless I must say to him that the phrase "strategic authority" does not in my view disarm the financial timebomb ticking away in any such tiers of local government. I do not think that "Son of Frankenstein" is an immodest or all that inaccurate description of a body in which all the functions I have listed could be found.
Perhaps more seductively, another key point made by those supporting these amendments is that the new authorities would be closely controlled in financial terms. I admired, as I always do, the sheer nerve of the noble Baroness, Lady Birk, given her hostility to rate capping, when she was able to make this point with a straight face. Are the proponents of these new authorities really arguing for detailed and permanent controls over their spending on each of the functions I have listed? Would there be a separate tier of financial controls over and above the financial controls for the districts and boroughs? Financial controls in this field are difficult and contentious enough as it is. Are we really proposing to proliferate them?
International comparisons were made in respect of the issue that has been known in shorthand as the "Voice for London" and the ceremonial representations of our capital city. The noble Baronesses, Lady Birk and Lady Denington, and the noble Lord, Lord Seebohm, referred to this, as did others. The noble Baroness, Lady Fisher of Rednal, made comparable points relating to the MCCs. Of course we should take note of what other countries do. The Institute of Local Government did a study of the practice in 12 metropolitan areas in eight countries. The results were most interesting and varied. They showed that in Holland, for example, there is a directly elected strategic authority for Rotterdam; an indirectly elected non-statutory co-ordinating body for The Hague; but no metropolitan authority at all in Amsterdam. Copenhagen has a small, indirectly elected authority with a very small staff, and 80 per cent. of its budget is spent on transport.
If your Lordships look at the description of the government of Paris in the report, you will find that there is no single authority covering the whole of the conurbation, except the regional government which covers a much wider area and that is indirectly elected. In the conurbation itself, the Ville de Paris—which everyone thinks of as Paris with its mayor—covers only a small fraction of the area and contains only around a fifth of the region's population. That is simply not city-wide government in the sense meant by the proponents of a single successor for the GLC. In Spain, Madrid has simply a co-ordination agency. In Italy, Milan has no metropolitan authority.
As to the ceremonial functions, whatever the qualities of the new chairman-elect of the GLC, the honourable Member for Newham North-West, Mr. Banks, I am quite sure that official visitors will be able to come to London in future without too much disappointment at not meeting him. We are a
168
monarchy; and there is a perfectly good Lord Lieutenant. In fact, we have had an admirable Lord Lieutenant of London sitting on the Opposition Benches in this House for many years.
My noble friend Lord Boyd-Carpenter seemed to me to make the definitive speech on the exploitation of voluntary bodies by the GLC. I have here a letter which was recently received by the Secretary of State from the Matthew Trust, which I think adds an illustrated slide to the sensible and wise things my noble friend said. It says:
"We wish to ask you to satisfy yourself that the grant-making policy of the Greater London Council to voluntary agencies, particularly those in Conservative boroughs, does not rest on the political contributions registered charities may or may not make towards the political compaign of the present Labour GLC to save the GLC. Since this trust received a grant from the Greater London Council in 1983 we have received some 23 indirect invitations from the Greater London Council to participate in what can only be described as political action to save the Greater London Council".
I am sharply aware of some of the shenanigans of this kind that have been going on in respect of the arts.
To sum up, I do not think I could do better than quote the wise words of my noble friend Lord Elton. He said that to abolish one set of elected metropolitan authorities with one breath and to create another set of elected metropolitan authorities with another breath is quite contrary to the whole purpose of the Bill. He said that the GLC does not have enough to do to justify its existence and what it does, it does extremely expensively. He said that the Secretary of State already has the power to pull in all and every strategic decision of any importance affecting London and the regions.
These amendments, by providing for directly elected multi-purpose authorities in London and the metropolitan counties, strike at the heart of the Bill and act as an incentive for additional public spending. They are wrecking amendments. If they are pressed to a Division, the Committee should reject them decisively.
Lord Hayter: I am tempted to reply to the noble Earl, but I shall not. Instead I shall thank all those people who have spoken in this Committee. I would not insult your Lordships by trying to repeat any of the arguments. Most of you have been here throughout. It has been a most interesting debate and I end up with this simple question: are the proposals of this amendment a better solution for the manifold problems of London than the Bill as it stands?
6.25 p.m.
On Question, Whether the said Amendment (No. 8) shall be agreed to?
Their Lordships divided: Contents, 209; Not-Contents, 213.

DIVISION NO. 2

CONTENTS

Airedale, L.

Beaumont of Whitley, L.

Alport, L.

Bernstein, L.

Ardwick, L.

Beswick, L.

Attlee, E.

Birk, B.

Auckland, L.

Birkett, L.

Avebury, L.

Blyton, L.

Aylestone, L.

Boothby, L.

Bacon, B.

Boston of Faversham, L.

Banks, L.

Bottomley, L.

Barnett, L.

Briginshaw, L.

172

Brockway, L.

Kilmarnock, L.

Brooks of Tremorfa, L.

Kinloss, Ly.

Bruce of Donington, L.

Kirkhill, L.

Buckmaster, V.

Kirkwood, L.

Burton of Coventry, B.

Kissin, L.

Campbell of Eskan, L.

Lawrence, L.

Carmichael of Kelvingrove, L.

Leatherland, L.

Chandos, V.

Llewelyn-Davies of Hastoe, B.

Chichester, Bp.

Lloyd of Hampstead, L.

Chitnis, L.

Lloyd of Kilgerran, L.

Cledwyn of Penrhos, L.

Lockwood, B.

Collison, L.

London, Bp.

Cranbrook, E.

Longford, E.

Crowther-Hunt, L.

Lovell-Davis, L.

Cullen of Ashbourne, L.

McCarthy, L.

Darcy (de Knayth), B.

McGregor of Durris, L.

Darling of Hillsborough, L.

McIntosh of Haringey, L.

David, B.

Mackie of Benshie, L.

Davies of Leek, L.

McNair, L.

Davies of Penrhys, L.

Mais, L.

Dean of Beswick, L.

Mar, C.

Delacourt-Smith of Alteryn, B.

Mayhew, L.

Melchett, L.

Denbigh, E.

Meston, L.

Denington, B.

Minto, E.

Diamond, L.

Mishcon, L.

Donaldson of Kingsbridge, L.

Molloy, L.

Donnet of Balgay, L.

Molson, L. [Teller.]

Dudley, B.

Monkswell, L.

Eldon, E.

Monson, L.

Ellenborough, L.

Morris of Grasmere, L.

Elwyn-Jones, L.

Morris of Kenwood, L.

Ennals, L.

Mountevans, L.

Esher, V.

Mulley, L.

Evans of Claughton, L.

Murray of Epping Forest, L.

Ewart-Biggs, B.

Northfield, L.

Ezra, L.

Ogmore, L.

Faithfull, B.

O'Neill of the Maine, L.

Falkender, B.

Oram, L.

Falkland, V.

Paget of Northampton, L.

Fisher of Rednal, B.

Parry, L.

Fitt, L.

Peart, L.

Foot, L.

Perry of Walton, L.

Gaitskell, B.

Pitt of Hampstead, L.

Gallacher, L.

Ponsonby of Shulbrede, L.

Galpern, L.

Prys-Davies, L.

George-Brown, L.

Raglan, L.

Gifford, L.

Rathcreedan, L.

Gladwyn, L.

Rea, L.

Glenamara, L.

Reigate, L.

Graham of Edmonton, L.

Reilly, L.

Greenhill of Harrow, L.

Rhodes, L.

Greenway, L.

Ritchie of Dundee, L.

Grey, E.

Roberthall, L.

Hacking, L.

Robson of Kiddington, B.

Hampton, L.

Rochester, Bp.

Hanworth, V.

Rochester, L.

Harris of Greenwich, L.

Ross of Marnock, L.

Hatch of Lusby, L.

Russell of Liverpool, L.

Hayter, L. [Teller.]

Sainsbury, L.

Head, V.

Sandford, L.

Henderson of Brompton, L.

Seear, B.

Henniker, L.

Serota, B.

Hirshfield, L.

Shackleton, L.

Hooson, L.

Simon, V.

Houghton of Sowerby, L.

Stallard, L.

Howie of Troon, L.

Stamp, L.

Hunt, L.

Stedman, B.

Hunter of Newington, L.

Stewart of Fulham, L.

Hutchinson of Lullington, L.

Stoddart of Swindon, L.

Ingleby, V.

Stone, L.

Inglewood, L.

Strabolgi, L.

Irving of Dartford, L.

Taylor of Blackburn, L.

Jacques, L.

Taylor of Mansfield, L.

Jeger, B.

Tordoff, L.

Jenkins of Putney, L.

Tweeddale, M.

John-Mackie, L.

Vickers, B.

Kagan, L.

Wakefield, Bp.

Kaldor, L.

Wallace of Coslany, L.

Kearton, L.

Walston, L.

Kennet, L.

Wedderburn of Charlton, L.

Kilbracken, L.

Whaddon, L.

173

White, B.

Winchilsea and Nottingham, E.

Wigoder, L.

Willis, L.

Winstanley, L.

Wilson of Langside, L.

Winterbottom, L.

Wilson of Rievaulx, L.

Wootton of Abinger, B.

NOT-CONTENTS

Aberconway, L.

Enroll of Hale, L.

Abinger, L.

Ferrers, E.

Ailsbury, M.

Foley, L.

Airey of Abingdon, B.

Forbes, L.

Aldington, L.

Fortescue, E.

Alexander of Tunis, E.

Fraser of Kilmorack, L.

Allerton, L.

Freyberg, L.

Ampthill, L.

Gainford, L.

Annaly, L.

Gardner of Parkes, B.

Arran, E.

Geddes, L.

Astor, V.

Gibson-Watt, L.

Atholl, D.

Glenarthur, L.

Barber, L.

Gowrie, E.

Bathurst, E.

Grantchester, L.

Belhaven and Stenton, L.

Granville of Eye, L.

Bellwin, L.

Gray, L.

Beloff, L.

Gray of Contin, L.

Belstead, L.

Gridley, L.

Bessborough, E.

Grimston of Westbury, L.

Biddulph, L.

Grimthorpe, L.

Birdwood, L.

Haig, E.

Boardman, L.

Hailsham of Saint Marylebone, L.

Bolton, L.

Boyd-Carpenter, L.

Halsbury, E.

Brabazon of Tara, L.

Harmar-Nicholls, L.

Bridgeman, V.

Harris of High Cross, L.

Brocket, L.

Harvey of Tasburgh, L.

Brookeborough, V.

Harvington, L.

Brougham and Vaux, L.

Henley, L.

Broxbourne, L.

Hertford, M.

Bruce-Gardyne, L.

Hives, L.

Buchan, E.

Holderness, L.

Buckinghamshire, E.

Home of the Hirsel, L.

Burton, L.

Hood, V.

Buxton of Alsa, L.

Hornsby-Smith, B.

Caccia, L.

Howe, E.

Caithness, E.

Hylton-Foster, B.

Campbell of Alloway, L.

Kaberry of Adel, L.

Campbell of Croy, L.

Kemsley, V.

Carnegy of Lour, B.

Killearn, L.

Carnock, L.

Kinnaird, L.

Cathcart, E.

Kinnoull, E.

Cayzer, L.

Kintore, E.

Chelmer, L.

Lane-Fox, B.

Chelwood, L.

Lauderdale, E.

Chesham, L.

Layton, L.

Clitheroe, L.

Lindsey and Abingdon, E.

Coleraine, L.

Lloyd-George of Dwyfor, E.

Colville of Culross, V.

Loch, L.

Colwyn, L.

Long, V.

Cowley, E.

Lucas of Chilworth, L.

Cox, B.

Lyell, L.

Craigavon, V.

McAlpine of Moffat, L.

Craigmyle, L.

McAlpine of West Green, L.

Croft, L.

McFadzean, L.

Dacre of Glanton, L.

Macleod of Borve, B.

Davidson, V.

Malmesbury, E.

De Freyne, L.

Marchwood, V.

De La Warr, E.

Margadale, L.

Denham, L. [Teller.]

Marley, L.

Denman, L.

Marshall of Leeds, L.

Digby, L.

Masham of Ilton, B.

Dilhorne, V.

Matthews, L.

Dormer, L.

Maude of Stratford-upon-Avon, L.

Drumalbyn, L.

Dudley, E.

Merrivale, L.

Duncan-Sandys, L.

Mersey, V.

Dundee, E.

Middleton, L.

Eden of Winton, L.

Monk-Bretton, L.

Effingham, E.

Montagu of Beaulieu, L.

Elibank, L.

Mottistone, L.

Elliot of Harwood, B.

Mountgarret, V.

Elton, L.

Mowbray and Stourton, L.

Enniskillen, E.

Munster, E.

Erne, E.

Murton of Lindisfarne, L.

174

Napier and Ettrick, L.

Shannon, E.

Nelson of Stafford, L.

Sherfield, L.

Newall, L.

Skelmersdale, L.

Norfolk, D.

Soames, L.

Northesk, E.

Stanley of Alderley, L.

Nugent of Guildford, L.

Stodart of Leaston, L.

Onslow, E.

Strathcarron, L.

Orkney, E.

Swansea, L.

Orr-Ewing, L.

Swinfen, L.

Pender, L.

Swinton, E. [Teller.]

Penrhyn, L.

Terrington, L.

Perth, E.

Teviot, L.

Peyton of Yeovil, L.

Teynham, L.

Portland, D.

Thomas of Swynnerton, L.

Radnor, E.

Tollemache, L.

Rankeillour, L.

Torphichen, L.

Rawlinson of Ewell, L.

Townshend, M.

Reay, L.

Trefgarne, L.

Redesdale, L.

Trenchard, V.

Remnant, L.

Trumpington, B.

Renton, L.

Vaux of Harrowden, L.

Renwick, L.

Vivian, L.

Rochdale, V.

Ward of Witley, V.

Rodney, L.

Weinstock, L.

Romney, E.

Westbury, L.

Rotherwick, L.

Whitelaw, V.

Rugby, L.

Wilberforce, L.

St. Aldwyn, E.

Windlesham, L.

Salisbury, M.

Yarborough, E.

Saltoun of Abernethy, Ly.

Young, B.

Sandys, L.

Young of Graffham, L.

Selkirk, L.

Zouche of Haryngworth, L.

Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Motion agreed to.

Resolved in the negative, and amendment disagreed to accordingly.
6.38 p.m.
Lord Molson Lord Molson moved Amendment No. 9:
[Printed earlier: col. 122.]
The noble Lord said: I have no intention of making another speech, but several noble Lords expressed their disappointment at the informal arrangement that has been arrived at and perhaps they will wish to speak on this amendment. So I move it formally. I beg to move.
6.39 p.m.
6.52 p.m.
Clause 2 agreed to.
[Amendments Nos. 10 to 11B not moved.]
Clause 3 [Local planning authorities]:
Baroness Stedman Baroness Stedman moved Amendment No. 12:
Page 2, line 17, at beginning insert—
("the metropolitan county planning and passenger transport authority is the county planning authority for the county and ").
The noble Baroness said: In moving this amendment, I should like to speak also to Amendments Nos. 13, 14, 15, 17, 18, 20, 26, 42, 57 and 120.
Amendment No. 13: Page 2, line 19, at beginning insert—
("the London Planning Authority is the county planning authority for Greater London and ").
Amendment No. 14: Page 2, line 20, at end insert—
("( ) In that Act "metropolitan county planning and passenger authority" means an authority of that name established by section 27 of this Act.
( ) In that Act "London Planning Authority" means the London Residuary Body established by section 55 of this Act.").
Amendment No. 15: Page 2, line 21, leave out subsection (2).
Amendment No. 17: Page 2, line 25, leave out subsection (3) and insert—
("(3) Notwithstanding any other provisions of this Act, from the abolition date this Act shall have effect so as to transfer the functions relating to the receipt, consideration and determination of planning applications for mineral extraction and waste disposal, from the Greater London Council and the Metropolitan County Councils to the London Planning Authority and Metropolitan County Planning and Passenger Transport Authorities respectively.").
Amendment No. 18: Page 2, line 36, leave out subsection (5).
Amendment No. 20: Clause 4, page 3, line 4, at beginning insert—
("( ) Part I (Strategic Plans) of Schedule I to this Act shall have effect with regard to strategic plans made by the London Planning Authority and each Metropolitan County Planning and Passenger Transport Authority.").

175
Amendment No. 26: Schedule 1, page 74, line 4, at end insert—

STRATEGIC PLANS
Preparation of strategic plan
1. The London Planning Authority and each Metropolitan County Planning and Passenger Transport Authority—

(a) shall keep under review matters which might be expected to affect the planning and development of its area, and, if it thinks fit, institute a survey or surveys for examining those matters;

(b) shall prepare, and submit to the Secretary of State for his approval, a strategic plan for its area complying with the provisions of sub-paragraph (2) of this paragraph; and

(c) shall keep any approved strategic plan for its area under review and submit to the Secretary of State proposals for such alterations to that plan as from time to time appear to it to be expedient.

2. The strategic plan for any area shall set down matters of general policy and guidance to assist—

(a) each local planning authority in the area to produce a unitary development plan;

(b) each highway authority in the area to formulate policies and proposals for highways and the management of traffic; and

(c) the Metropolitan County Planning and Passenger Transport Authority, or the London Regional Transport Authority as the case may be, to formulate policies and proposals for public transport.

3. When preparing a strategic plan, the London Planning Authority or Metropolitan County Planning and Passenger Transport Authority, as the case may be, shall consult the local planning authorities in its area, the highway authorities in its area, the body responsible for public transport in its area, the local planning authorities of adjoining areas and other bodies and individuals as the London Planning Authority or Metropolitan County Planning and Passenger Transport Authority thinks appropriate, or as may be prescribed, about the general policies and guidance it is proposed to include in the plan.
4. In formulating the general policies and guidance in a strategic plan the London Planning Authority or Metropolitan County Planning and Passenger Transport Authority shall have regard—

(a) to current policies with respect to the economic planning and development of the region as a whole;

(b) to the resources to be made available; and

(c) to such other matters as the Secretary of State may direct it to take into account.".).

Amendment No. 42: Page 89, line 16, leave out sub-paragraph (1).
Amendment No. 57: Leave out Clause 6 and insert the following new Clause:
("Land reclamation, countryside and intelligence services.
6. From the abolition date this Act shall have effect for transferring functions relating to National Parks, planning, improving and managing the countryside, land reclamation and specialist information, research and intelligence services from the Greater London Council and the Metropolitan County Councils to the London Planning Authority and the Metropolitan County Planning and Passenger Transport Authorities respectively.").
Amendment No. 120: Leave out Clause 27 and insert the following new Clause:
("Metropolitan County Planning and Passenger Transport Authorities
27.—(1) On the appointed day there shall be established for each metropolitan county a body corporate to be known by the name of that county with the addition of the words "Planning and Passenger Transport Authority".
(2) The planning and passenger transport authorities established by this section shall be known as the metropolitan county planning and passenger transport authorities.
(3) Each metropolitan county planning and passenger transport authority shall consist of members of the constituent councils appointed by them to be members of the authority.
(4) The constituent councils in relation to a metropolitan county planning and passenger transport authority shall be the councils of the metropolitan districts comprised in the county.").
In the light of that, I do not know whether the noble Lord on the Front Bench opposite might think this the time for an adjournment before we start such a large debate.
Lord Elton: The usual channels are slightly out of reach: but so I think is dinner.
Baroness Stedman: This group of amendments seeks to keep important town planning and environmental services together. Without these amendments the town and country planning responsibilities of the metropolitan authorities would pass either to the Secretary of State, as with the strategic planning guidance, to be fragmented between district and borough councils, as with the unitary plans, or be neglected and probably lost, as with countryside and other environmental work. If they are approved then the county wide town and country planning responsibilities would be placed with passenger and transport authorities in each metropolitan county area and with the London residuary body in Greater London, which is why we are proposing that they should be renamed as the metropolitan county planning and passenger transport authorities and the London Planning Authority.
The bodies we are proposing would also tackle major countryside projects, reclaim eyesores and maintain specialist information services. Because each one would look after a county as a whole, it would be well placed to employ and make good use of the small numbers of specialists needed in such fields. There are just the same problems with planning and control of waste disposal and the extraction of minerals—but in these fields the wider view is essential to enable the employment of specialists and also to balance the localised environmental problems with the wider need to dispose of rubbish in a proper controlled manner or to obtain building stone or other materials.
The amendments before the Committee do not attempt to bring waste disposal or highways responsibility and traffic management into the same arrangements. We wanted to see at this stage if your Lordships would make what we believe to be a very worthwhile improvement over the current proposals in the Bill by retaining the strategic planning services as a unit. I am sure there will be other opportunities over the next three weeks or so to make arrangements for other related services if your Lordships should feel it appropriate. Unless we can persuade the Committee to accept these amendments, the responsibility for strategic town and country planning and environmental improvement will be fragmented and divided between the metropolitan districts and the London boroughs.
If the district and borough unitary development plans—69 in all—were to be prepared without the context now given by the six structure plans and the Greater London development plan then the complexity of the system would be greatly increased. Delay and conflict would inevitably follow the establishment of an almost powerless planning commission in London and non-statutory planning conferences in the metropolitan county areas, while the establishment of joint boards to deal with public transport issues in isolation from other services could lead to many opportunities being lost.
At present the metropolitan counties are able to tie in waste disposal, land reclamation and countryside planning as part of their wider approach to improving the environment. Under this Bill the co-ordination of

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services county-wide would be less effective with planning, transport, waste disposal and land reclamation being dealt with by a wider range and a greater number of authorities.
We believe that the proposed fragmentation of services would mean that the district councils would be competing for jobs and housing and would make excessive land allocations in their development plans. This would mean that overall priorities would suffer. It would also be difficult to co-ordinate major land use changes with transport investment because of the proposed division of planning and transport responsibilities between small authorities, with district councils able to promote their own pet schemes without any guidance from the wider land use and transport framework. If the Bill is unamended in this respect, I believe that the districts may be over optimistic about what they could achieve. That would lead to a waste of both private and public money.
In our recent discussions on the winding up of the New Town Corporations and again at Second Reading, I referred to the tragedy of breaking up the close-knit specialist teams. The same comments apply to this Bill because individual districts will not be able to retain those skills. The districts will inevitably try to do what the metropolitan counties now do so effectively and efficiently on behalf of all their authorities. There will be duplication of effort and the economies of scale are likely to be lost.
7 p.m.
Without a county-wide direction, many aspects of planning will suffer. I am thinking particularly of land reclamation, of conservation, of countryside planning, of mineral extraction, and of waste disposal. Without overall direction, the urban regions will also lose the specialist experts on economic, social and environmental matters.
There are also the problems associated with more centralization, with the Secretary of State being more involved. It is he who will issue the strategic guidance to districts for their unitary development plans—but there is no provision in this Bill for that guidance to be questioned or challenged in an independent public forum.
The Secretary of State will be the arbiter in any dispute between districts. This will make the Secretary of State more involved in the detailed day-to-day planning of all our major conurbations. He may step in and require plans to be prepared, determine their time-scale, and try to ensure compatibility. En effect, this Bill places the Secretary of State in the position of the present metropolitan county planning authorities—but without the same degree of democratic local control and local accountability. That is why we believe that this group of amendments is so important.
In the metropolitan counties and in London, a different system of planning would be established from that in operation in the shire counties. The metropolitan areas, with their greater scale and intensity of problems, are to lose a vital means of tackling them—and yet strategic planning is to be retained in the shire counties.
What will be the effect of the proposals in this Bill on the shire counties? It is bound to have direct effects on
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neighbouring shires—especially those adjacent to the metropolitan areas. The Association of County Councils has expressed its concern to me about the vacuum which will exist in strategic functions—and perhaps it is even more concerned about the prospect of that vacuum being filled by increased centralism, especially in the planning field.
The Association of County Councils is not noted for its disapproval of Government measures, but it has voiced its worry about planning to me; it is worry about cross-boundary issues. The association lacks faith in voluntary co-operation between London boroughs, between metropolitan districts with their respective areas and between those authorities collectively and the surrounding authorities on cress-boundary matters. The association lacks faith because it knows that unless the statutory framework for strategic issues is right, and that these matters are in the hands of an authority large enough to have the specialist advice and to take a geographically detached view, then it will be difficult for county councils to establish sound, strategic policies which will enable authorities to come together voluntarily at an even wider cross-county level.
For example, if there is no statutory authority which can take an overall objective view of mineral extraction over a whole metropolitan county, there will be little hope of a voluntary coming together of the surrounding shire counties to formulate a policy for mineral extraction over a whole group of counties.
The Association of County Councils believes that this Bill acknowledges a vacuum, in that Schedule 1 establishes a planning commission in London and provides for strategic guidance for authorities preparing unitary plans in London and in the metropolitan counties. But that also causes the association concern; concern that such new central institutions will be used, that they are largely bureaucratic, and that they are not very accountable.
The association also fears the consequences for the central/local balance in the planning system as a whole if decisions on strategic matters which are at present rightly in the hands of locally-elected people with direct local knowledge pass into the hands of or are dominated by a centralised organisation. It is feared that this concept might eventually extend over the whole country and throughout the shire counties.
The association believes that if there are no longer to be directly-elected authorities responsible for strategic matters over the whole of each metropolitan area, then there should at least be joint boards—either as they stand or with some variation—which would put strategic planning, transport and waste disposal (either collectively or individually) within joint statutory authorities for each of the metropolitan areas.
Many professional bodies associated with planning have expressed their concern, and reference has been made to many of them today. They include the Royal Town Planning Institute, Royal Institute of British Architects, Regional Studies Association, Council for the Preservation of Rural England, Institute of Landscape Architects, and Town and Country Planning Association. All these bodies in the field of planning support the amendments we have tabled, and I recommend them to your Lordships.
Lord Broxbourne: I welcome the opportunity to say a few words on this impressive fasciculus of amendments moved so cogently by the noble Baroness. I was not successful in making a contribution to the previous debate—a deprivation which your Lordships will no doubt be able to endure with commendable equanimity.
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: No, no!
Lord Broxbourne: My noble friend speaks with the kindness of an old friend. Had I been able to speak, I should have been able to explain with voice as well as, subsequently, with vote that I am in favour of the principles and objects of this Bill but that I have certain reservations about the machinery of it; more particularly in the context of town and country planning, with which these amendments are concerned.
Town and country planning is of course a function of local government which has increased in importance over the years. I have long taken an interest in it, mainly in my professional capacity but not exclusively so, and I contributed to debates in another place from time to time. Indeed, I have some hereditary interest, as my father spoke for one and one-quarter hours from the Back-Benches on the Second Reading of the Town & Country Planning Bill 1931—an occasion possibly remembered by my noble friend Lord Molson, who made such an impressive contribution to today's proceedings. I hasten to reassure the Committee that I do not intend to emulate my father in point of time—nor am I in a position to emulate him in point of erudition.
This Bill makes very extensive changes to the machinery of town and country planning. One can refer to the amendments to the principal Act of 1971 listed in paragraph 16 of Schedule 1 and to Clause 3 to see clear evidence of this. We should of course ask ourselves whether those changes constitute an improvement: will they serve better the purposes and practices of town and country planning?
In order to judge that, one must of course identify what those purposes and practices are. They are to be found in a long sequence of legislation from 1909, 1932, 1947, 1968 and 1971—which is now the principal Act embodying the present law in its 295 sections and 25 schedules. That will be of some comfort to those of your Lordships who may think that the Bill we are now considering is a relatively lengthy Bill.
The evolution of our town planning law and practice shows a progress from the more negative concept of detailed control to a more positive concept—the stimulus of desirable land use and development in addition to imposing constraints on undesirable development. There has been a broadening of the scope, with large planning units designed to provide a framework in which policies and decisions can reflect expert professional guidance combined with democratic accountability and popular participation.
This philosophy was behind the new pattern of structure and local plans originating in the 1968 Act and now embodied in the 1971 Act; the broad picture and strategic guidance being in the structure plan and the detailed application in the local plans. The Bill
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changes that. It substitutes unitary development plans for structure and local plans in Greater London and the metropolitan areas. I must ask the question: does this mean the reversal of this evolutionary trend of which I have been speaking which led to the pattern in the 1971 Act? Does it mean a departure from the philosophy which inspired it?
On the face of it, there is a possibility that this may be so. There is a danger of fragmentation of the machinery of planning at the local end and the difficulty of combining the functions of structure plans and local plans in a single plan for a smaller area. Then, designed as a corrective to these possibilities, there is another innovation: the concentration of planning control at the centre, referred to by several noble Lords in the preceding debate and evidenced by the general powers of guidance given to the Secretary of State in formulating unitary development plans in Schedule 1, through the London Planning Commission which is his instrument and is responsible solely to him.
That these are real apprehensions is evidenced by the joint submission of the professional bodies referred to a moment ago by the noble Baroness. These professional bodies do not confine themselves to criticism. They make a number of constructive suggestions. Their preferred option is a joint authority for metropolitan planning and transport, now reflected in Amendment No. 14 of the noble Baroness which we are discussing. It is not a revolutionary proposal, since there is already provision in Clause 27 for metropolitan county passenger authorities, and the same machinery could readily include strategic planning responsibilities. I should think that prima facie that is sensible, as transport necessarily looms very large in structure planning.
The same machinery already prescribed in Clause 27 and recommended in the White Paper, the appointment of members by constituent councils, could serve for the London Planning Authority proposed in these amendments. I would not want to be dogmatic as to the adoption of particular proposals when the professional bodies list so many. Town and country planning is always a complex and difficult matter. I would not put it in quite the same category as what an eminent lawyer and parliamentarian said about the Rent Acts. He said that anybody is very fortunate if they are ever right about anything about the Rent Acts. The law of town and country planning is, I know, a complex and difficult matter and not one to dogmatise upon.
So, these professional bodies have put forward proposals. I should perhaps tell the Committee that I have an interest to declare, although not in the technical sense. I am an associate of a Royal institution. If I may be pardoned for reminding the noble Baroness, we are the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors. It is the Royal Institute of British Architects, but the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors. However, I have no professional expertise, save in cross-examining these gentlemen. It would be a very unwise person who invited me to take off any bills of quantities or make any valuations. However, I highly respect that body and these other bodies who have made this objective and authoritative suggestion as to the various options open to the Government to

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improve the machinery for town and country planning in this Bill. I shall await with interest what my noble friend the Minister says in reply. There is certainly a case to answer, and it is a formidable one.
Therefore, I ask my noble friend the Minister, when he replies, to say that Ministers will have a further look to see whether it is possible, through one or other of the options—either that expressed in Amendment No. 14, or one of the options described by the professional bodies—to improve the machinery of town and country planning without sacrifice of, or prejudice to, the purposes and principles of the Bill.
7.15 p.m.
Viscount Esher: I must confess that I support this group of amendments without any great enthusiasm. One cannot regard them as anything better than an exercise in damage limitation. If the amendment proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Molson, had been carried—and it very nearly was—my noble friends and I would have been only too pleased not to have proposed this group of amendments at all.
We are in one of those situations common in political and, I suppose, in personal life when one has to decide whether half a loaf really is better than no bread. Would it be better to let the system proposed by the Bill disintegrate and have to be amended, which it certainly will be, with all the waste of time and money and contention that this will entail? I doubt whether this ever is the right answer.
Therefore, for three reasons I support this group of amendments. My first reason is that it will at least hold together the group of services which, if split apart as the Bill proposes, would throw away all that we have learned over the past 40 years and ignore the advice of all those who work in this field. The Redcliffe-Maud Commission in 1969 wrote in its report:
"All services connected with the physical environment must be in the hands of one authority"—
The commission believed, of course, that these environmental services could be carried out by the large unitary authorities that it proposed.
The commission continued:
"everywhere except in three extensive and heavily urbanised areas for which we decided the term 'metropolitan' was the best description".
Everywhere except in those three metropolitan areas, says the commission, and, in passing, I agree about the three. I think we could have done without Tyne and Wear and South Yorks, but now that they are there I certainly would not destroy them.
If the Bill passes, we shall have across the country exactly the opposite of what the commission—that brilliantly led and authoritative commission—proposed. The arguments for the integrity and the indivisibility of this environmental group of services are very familiar to us all by now. I think that they have been familiar to many of us over the years in which we have built up our experience of them. We first learnt that strategic planning and transportation are indissolubly linked when we saw the expansion of London in the 1920s and 1930s, almost wholly shaped by the decisions of the London Passenger Transport Board. At the other end of the scale we know that the
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existence or the disappearance of a rural bus service has powerful effects on the location of people in the countryside.
It is equally clear that mineral workings, waste disposal and land reclamation and conservation in both town and country must be dealt with by one authority. They cannot generally be dealt with, as I think noble Lords in this Committee all agree, within the boundaries of a single borough. So the first purpose of this group of amendments is to protect the integrity, the indivisibility, of the planning package, which incidentally would in the case of the metropolitan counties be identical with the package at present operated by the shire counties. I doubt whether am, one could dispute that, even though there will be boundary problems, since the best operational areas for each service will not necessarily coincide.
My second reason for supporting these amendments can be summed up in the word "continuity". We have a tendency in this country to take everything apart every few years, and I think that is one of the things which has most damaged our industrial performance and created an atmosphere of general cynicism among our people. In these last weeks in which we have been considering the Bill many of us, I think in all parties, have become aware, if we were not already, of what confusion ensues if one tries to remove a large part of the machinery of government without adequate investigation and consultation.
The fact is that after 10 years the metropolitan counties—and I wish mainly to speak of them—are a going concern. Over these long hours of debate I have yet to hear or read of any noble Lord finding fault with their performance. We have heard a lot about the GLC; we have heard very little about the metropolitan counties and no criticism of them at all that I can remember. Their structure plans are complete and operational, whereas I may say that half the local plans of the boroughs and districts have not yet even reached the stage of public inquiry. Even if they had, and were statutory, they would not cover the whole of the metropolitan areas, and there would be a nasty patchwork of gaps.
If I may instance one metropolitan county out of the six—Greater Manchester—here are some of the things which it has achieved on the ground in the 10 years of its existence. It has restored, relandscaped and opened to the public nine river valleys, including 11,000 acres of land which it now owns and manages. It has created 11 country parks and 860 smaller schemes. We should remember that that is in Greater Manchester alone. It has restored to productive use 5,000 acres of derelict land and it has plans for another 6,000, if it is allowed to survive. It has planted 10 million trees. It has created a green belt which takes 47 per cent. of the county area. When one thinks of the nature of Greater Manchester that is a remarkable figure. It now has 120 conservation areas and it had only 37 when it was set up. It has attracted £20 million in grants from the EC for environmental work of that kind.
That is how the environmental package, as I have called it, works in practice on the ground in those parts of England which—and I think that we must all agree about that—most need it and which are most subject to urban stress, dereliction and unemployment. I ask noble Lords opposite to protect those activities. So my second point is the point of continuity.

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Thirdly, the amendments that I support obviously do least damage to the central purpose of the Bill. Indeed, they reinforce it by making it workable instead of unworkable. Personally, as I said in my speech on Second Reading, I am no believer in joint boards. Nobody could be who has studied the past history of those boards as recorded and researched recently by the Institute of Local Government Studies at the University of Birmingham. I think that we know their failings. Nominees from constituent authorities feel obliged to fight their corner, everything becomes politicised and decisions are apt to be feeble compromises emerging from horse-trading.
Obviously as an agency for action in difficult areas the development corporation is infinitely more effective. As we saw after 10 years of comparative inaction in the London docks, we have in the past two or three years seen remarkable progress as a result of the setting up of the development corporation. But I know that to many noble Lords because of its undemocratic nature that solution is ruled out.
But in case there are any noble Lords who still believe that the boroughs and districts as unitary planning authorities could cope with the environmental problems of the conurbations, I should perhaps briefly remind them of what happened when that was tried. Every local authority wants to increase its rateable value. Every authority wants more housing and does not want to be the one which takes the rubbish dump. In the 1920s when that kind of fragmented system operated enough land was zoned for housing to accommodate 350 million people in England alone. In the 1970s the boroughs and districts in Greater Manchester each had their own road programme and, when they were put together, they were costed at £2,000 million. That was the kind of parochial planning that made it necessary to create the LCC in 1888, the GLC in 1965 and finally the metropolitan counties in 1974.
If we have to revert to that kind of situation, we shall find the fringe land taken for housing just as it was in the 1920s, when, I may say, the built-up area of Greater London was doubled for a gain of only one-fifth in the population. We shall not have wastelands in the inner cities reclaimed for housing simply because it is obviously more difficult and less marketable. That, incidentally, is why the conservation and rural interests—the NFU and the CPRE—so strongly oppose the Bill. It is one of the first matters on which they have been wholly united. I find it impossible to believe that the Secretary of State or his officials really want to be involved in bullying all 69 of the metropolitan boroughs and districts and all 32 of the London boroughs into not making that kind of piecemeal mistake and into doing the right thing.
I have mentioned the Redcliffe-Maud Commission. I should like to read one more passage from the report:
"In modern conditions, where everything is bigger than it used to be—industrial organisation, financial needs, popular demands for services—central Government's increasing power calls for increasingly strong local government, otherwise local government will be swamped by the pressures and the powers of the central authority and a highly centralised form of government will result. To most people in England this is wholly unacceptable but if there is no adequate counterpoise it must come".
I ask noble Lords opposite to consider what they
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would feel if that kind of power was in the wrong hands from their point of view. It is because of the fear of this that members of all parties in the Committee have supported the amendments that have been proposed today. I ask them to support this much more modest one, which will at least hold the fort and will be much better than no amendment at all.
7.30 p.m.
Baroness Birk: I rise to support this series of amendments, to which I have added my name. I feel that they have been very well spoken to in the first place by the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman, who moved them, and then by the noble Viscount, Lord Esher, who expressed so much better than I can the way I feel about these amendments.
They are inevitably a very far down second best to what we were trying to obtain in the earlier amendments this afternoon. The noble Viscount, Lord Esher, put the matter very well and I entirely share his feelings about this. The only reason for supporting these amendments is, as he feels, because it is better than leaving the Bill as it is at the moment. As he put it, these amendments protect the integrity and the indivisibility of certain aspects of planning. His views about joint boards are views which we on these Benches share. It does not give me any pleasure to be able to say "Yah boo!" at them, because it looks as though they will now be in this Bill and create all the trouble and mischief that will go along with the arrangements that are now in the Bill.
As the noble Viscount, Lord Esher, pointed out, the boroughs and districts will neither be able to take it over, nor will they do effectively what is being given to them to do because of the competition between them, the problems that exist and the need in this area. That is in spite of what the noble Viscount, Lord Colville (who is not in his seat), felt on the previous amendment would now be covered for strategic planning.
I turn to what these amendments do. So far as London and the metropolitan counties are concerned, I would say this. There is a difference between them. I agree with what the noble Viscount, Lord Esher, said about what appeared to be lack of concentration on or interest in the metropolitan counties, when, although we were meant to be debating both amendments and I was addressing myself to both of them, the debate came down very much more upon London.
However, these amendments seek to try to improve the position in one way. It is perfectly true, as the noble Viscount, Lord Esher, put it, that one either leaves the Bill as it is and says, "A plague on the Bill and the House which produced it and let all the chaos which will come out of it reign", or one tries to do something about it.
In this series of what I agree are modest amendments, we are trying to do something about it. We are trying to correct a fundamental weakness in the Bill in relation to the lack of provision for the preparation of strategic planning. We are trying to deal with the related activities both at London and at metropolitan county level, which would ensure an improvement in the beneficial use of land and of the countryside. We are trying to keep some of the specialist teams, within both the GLC and the metropolitan

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counties, dealing with minerals planning, waste disposal planning, land reclamation, pollution control and ecology. These could be helped and saved by these provisions, together with those in some of the other amendments which come much further on.
As far as both London and the metropolitan counties are concerned, it would also allow the continuous use of research, which is very important. Some of the skilled staff would be kept together. Furthermore, the Secretary of State would not have to involve himself in local matters as much as he has to under the Bill as it stands at the moment in order to resolve inter-authority disagreements over the production of unitary plans or the provision of refuse disposal sites.
Strategic planning can maintain its role as a guiding hand as to how best to use society's scarce resources in the country's major, yet declining, conurbations. Finally, land use planning would be able to promote policies which are conducive to economical and effective transport operations.
Having said that, I can only repeat that in spite of that there will be fragmentation. There will be complete vacua in what should have been an easygoing system.
It is also true that when the metropolitan counties were first established by the Conservative Government, they were established against the goodwill of and certainly without very much encouragement from the opposition at that time. They were very unloved by almost everybody. However, over the decade that they have been there they have developed skills. They have developed enormously. They have made a niche for themselves. That is why it is such a pity that an alternative has not yet been found that will enable the best of the work that they do to be conserved, or preserved, rather than leaving it as it is at the moment.
Though it is with a rather heavy heart, I support these amendments. As they do not involve any elected assembly, I hope the Government will find it possible to accept them.
Lord Elton: One of my happiest memories, as a Member of Her Majesty's Opposition some years ago, was seeing the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman, take her place opposite me and in authority, and listening to her lucid grasp of detail with which she deployed her arguments from the Government's Front Bench as a Member of the Labour Party. I only preface my remarks by saying that now that she is a Member of the Opposition and a Member of the Social Democratic Party, she has lost none of her grasp of detail or, indeed, her perception of the strategic issues.
I should not wish the noble Baroness to be too encouraged by those remarks, because the remainder of what I have to say may be less to her taste. The noble Baroness has brought forward, with the support of the noble Viscount, Lord Esher, and the encouragement of my noble friend, Lord Broxbourne, a very carefully considered and complex group of amendments which strike the Bill in a number of places and in a number of ways.
The group is designed to recreate indirectly elected metropolitan county counties, county planning and
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passenger transport authorities, and an apparently appointed London planning authority which will be charged with the task of keeping development in its area under review and making a strategic plan to assist each London borough or metropolitan district in producing its unitary development plan. That is the broad gist of what the noble Baroness proposes.
With the agreement of the Committee and of the noble Baroness, I think I ought to concentrate very much on the broad gist of what she proposes, because the important but separate parts to which she and her noble friend and my noble friend have referred all depend for their importance in this debate on the way in which they fit into the overall proposal.
As I say, the overall purpose is to reinstate certain aspects of the GLC and MCC planning functions. I must say at the outset that I agree with my noble friend on one matter at least. That is that town and country planning is an exceedingly complex matter for somebody coming fresh to it to understand. I shall frequently, no doubt, be put right by him and by other noble friends and sometimes, no doubt courteously, by the noble Baroness herself. They have suggested, on the one hand, that in the metropolitan counties, the host for the functions that they propose to transfer should be the passenger transport authorities. My noble friend spoke in favour of that. I can see that there is a certain similarity. Managing a large and complex operation that goes beyond the confines of a particular borough or district and that requires consideration of some planning matters to be held in mind has a certain affinity with what the passenger transport authority does. It is not, however, a great affinity. I am sure that the noble Baroness would agree that giving it this extra function would entirely change the body on to which it had been grafted
As for the London residuary body, which is a boa rd of trustees for a transitional purpose mainly concerned with the payment of debts, the management of property and the disposal of staff, I doubt whether the graft would take very well. But that is not the prime purpose of the amendment. It is merely the way that the noble Baroness has sought to carry out the prune purpose. Our first concern must be the same as hers and that of her noble friends and also the noble Baroness, Lady Birk, who ably supported them. It is to consider the broad principle of a metropolitan-wide or London-wide planning authority. I recognise that some exceptions are made. Broadly, however, the effect of the amendments as drafted is to transfer all planning responsibilities of the abolition authorities to these slightly surprising successor bodies.
Before looking at how these proposals would work, we need to be convinced that the things designed to get done need to be done in the first place. If we are to have an upper tier authority that is to interpose itself in the planning process and that will conduct correspondence with the lower tier and necessarily generate a great deal of extra work—this is one of the principal complaints we constantly receive about what we now have—it must surely be needed to take important and far-reaching decisions. It is the work of the abolition authorities that the amendments seek to perpetuate. So let us consider what their work has been.
When we look at this, what do we find? We find that it has always been inevitable that most of the really

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significant strategic development proposals already come to the Secretary of State for decision. I shall truncate what I could say on this because I have already deployed the examples not only of the M.25 and Stansted, both of which closely affect London and over which London as now constituted had no authority whatever, but also the Mansion House, the National Gallery, the dockland developments, the short take-off and landing airport projected for the London dock area, Vauxhall Cross, Coin Street, and so on.
In the metropolitan districts, I could refer to the industrial technology park proposed next to the National Exhibition Centre and clearly a strategic matter. I am sure that if the noble Baroness had been standing at this Dispatch Box she would have been arguing fiercely for this to be in the hands of the Secretary of State. It is an issue that goes beyond the area of the body she describes. It is not merely such obviously national matters as that. What about the 14 superstore planning applications in Solihull alone? That, again, came to the Secretary of State. I have already reminded your Lordships this evening—the noble Baroness needs no reminding but there are perhaps one or two noble Lords who do—that under Section 25 of the 1971 Town and Country Planning Act the Secretary of State already has the right and indeed needs to use the right to call in all matters of strategic importance.
So the discussion really is where the strategic authority should rest. The first batch of examples I quoted to your Lordships showed clearly that the strategic consideration very often lies outside the area in which the development is taking place, not merely outside the borough or the district but outside the metropolitan county or the Greater London area.
7.45 p.m.
What the noble Baroness proposes would not enable that consideration to be taken in any way other than it is now or in any way other than is proposed in the Bill as drafted. It would go inevitably to the Secretary of State. I have shown in the second batch of examples that I gave that even where the development is within the area, the Secretary of State still has to be involved. My noble friend Lord Colville—I am sorry that he is not here to support me because he would have done so better and more quickly—pointed out conclusively in the debate on the last pair of amendments that there already exists a secure matrix of regional and national planning, strategic planning and strategic information both in the development plans we already have and in the powers and the resources of the Secretary of State which is entirely sufficient and appropriate to keep the unitary plans in accordance one with another.
I used in a brief and perhaps ill-timed intervention earlier the simile of a patchwork quilt, because that is very much how I see it. The unitary plan will be developed in two stages by the local authority. The top half will correspond broadly with the present structural plan and will be held in conformity with its neighbours by the strategic advice of the Secretary of State who will be informed by the processes that I described earlier. The lower part, which is bolted directly on to it, if I may so describe it, will be the local
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decisions, reached on local issues by people locally elected. That seems to me a preferable system to one that will re-introduce, with the exception, I note, of examinations in public and public inquiries, almost the whole of the elaborate machinery that we now have. This means endless correspondence about parking lots. I could cite examples of hundreds of days lost in such correspondence on trivial matters. Why are these trivial matters advanced by this senior authority? Because all the strategic issues that should be its proper meat and drink, if it were a strategic authority, are already in the hands of the Secretary of State.
I believe that I have said almost enough to cover the main thrust of what the noble Baroness and her noble friends have said. There is much more that I could have said but I should like to leap forward to reassure my noble friend—I am not sure that it will be a reassurance and I do not see my noble friend smiling with anything more than uncertainty at my back as I say this—that I have a view (I have expressed it already) that there is an amendment on the Marshalled List that we would be able to pursue with more profit. It is in the name of my noble friend Lord Sandford. I do not propose, as our soup is cooling on the table, to go into that debate now. I am sure also that my noble friend, although he may have had his soup, may prefer to wait until after the coffee.
Lord Sandford: Yes.
Lord Elton: Good. That is I think the proper way to proceed. Although therefore I cannot give the undertaking that my noble friend Lord Broxbourne wants me to give—that we regard parts of the noble Baroness's proposal with favour, because I regret to say we do not—I hope that, however disappointed he feels now, he will be a little reasured when we come to amendments after dinner. In the meantime, I regret that I cannot advise your Lordships to accept these amendments.
Baroness Denington: My I ask the noble Lord the Chairman for guidance? Looking at the Clock, are we trying to take a vote now before some of us go for a meal? Or are we going to adjourn and then continue later with the same amendment?
Lord Skelmersdale: It is not in the Government's hands whether or not we have a vote. The procedure is that we shall continue and that I shall seek to resume the House after this amendment has been disposed of.
Baroness Stedman: I am grateful to the noble Lord for the kindly and courteous way in which he expounded. It was rather a long and detailed speech. I should like to read it carefully in Hansard. Some of his arguments make the point to me. There are others that I should like to consider again. If it is with the agreement of my noble friend Lord Esher and of the noble Baroness, Lady Birk, I should like at this stage to beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Then I can look at the matter again and perhaps have some conversations with the noble Lord. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Lord Skelmersdale: My Lords, I beg to move that the House do now resume. I think it has been agreed through the usual channels that we will not return to this particular Bill until ten minutes to nine o'clock.
House resumed.

Wildlife and Countryside (Amendment) Bill
Brought from the Commons; read a first time, and to be printed.

Town and Country Planning (Compensation for Restrictions on Mineral Working) Regulations 1985
7.51 p.m.
Baroness Cox: My Lords, I beg to move that the regulations laid before the House on 27th March 1985 be approved.
Your Lordships will be aware that these regulations were approved by a Committee of the other place last Wednesday, 24th April 1985. The regulations make provision for the abatement, in certain prescribed circumstances, of the amount of compensation payable by local authorities in respect of loss, damage or abortive expenditure arising from an order to restrict mineral working. Your Lordships will be aware that the framework of the regulations, the principles of abatement and the circumstances in which abatement may be made, were extensively considered by Parliament in 1981, during the passage of the Town and Country Planning (Minerals) Act 1981 which inserted the compensation framework into Section 178A of the Town and Country Planning Act 1971.
Mineral extraction is of course subject to the same general planning law as other forms of development. However, unlike other forms of development—for example, building construction—mineral extraction can continue for decades, during which time the conditions attached to the original planning permission, if any, can easily be overtaken by changing economic or industrial circumstances, or by increased public sensitivity about the sort of working practices which are considered environmentally acceptable.
As your Lordships are aware, the history of these regulations starts with the Stevens Committee which was appointed in the early 1970s to consider the operation of the general planning system in relation to the special problems of mineral extraction. The committee's report, made in 1975, recommended a number of important new measures to enable old minerals permissions to be brought into line with modern day standards. But the committee recognised that it would not be reasonable to expect the local authorities, or their ratepayers, to bear the full financial burden of bringing old minerals permissions to modern standards in the way which is usually required by planning law when established rights are altered. They recommended that, in view of the special characteristics of mineral extraction, the minerals industry should accept reasonable additional costs arising from the changes in conditions.
Because the compensation arrangements were recognised as fundamental to the operation of the 1981 Act, there was considerable debate during the
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passage of that Bill about what proportion of the additional costs it was reasonable to expect the industry to bear. In response to concern expressed in the other place, my honourable friend Mr. Giles Shaw, who was the Minister then responsible, introduced an amendment to Section 16 of the Act which effectively defined the amount by which compensation might be abated as either the prescribed sum or not more than 10 per cent of the notional value of the site.
When this House debated that amendment on 3rd July 1981 my noble friend Lord Bellwin explained how the Government proposed to flesh out the skeletal framework in the regulations. A key element would of course be the calculation of the notional value of the site. The Government's approach to this, he explained, would be essentially similar to that proposed by the Stevens Committee. The notional value would be the product of two factors: the annual value of the right to win and work minerals on the site and a capitalisation factor to take account of the estimated future life of the working which would be based on an 81¼ per cent. single rate. Taken together, these two factors provide a rough and ready assessment of the notional value of the mineral working on which the industry's contribution to the cost of updating the relevant planning conditions could be based. This was the package which was accepted by Parliament in passing the 1981 Act and which can now be implemented by means of these regulations.
It is a statutory requirement of the main legislation that interested parties should be consulted before these regulations are agreed. Informal consultation began in 1980, culminating in a formal consultation exercise in February of last year. Some might suggest that this was a protracted consultation period. I must admit that I cannot dispute that. However, a glance at the provisions of the regulations explains how this came about. The formulation of these regulations within the framework of the 1981 Act proved an enormously complicated task. Inevitably, there were a number of conflicting interests. A great effort has been made to achieve a reasonable accommodation of those conflicts, and although this has taken rather longer than had been expected I hope your Lordships will feel that the time has been well spent. I commend these regulations to the House.
Moved, That the regulations laid before the House on 27th March be approved. [18th Report from the Joint Committee.]—(Baroness Cox.)
Lord Graham of Edmonton: My Lords, it falls to my lot and is my pleasure to be the first Member of this House to respond to the first ministerial speech by the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, from the Government Dispatch Box. From the noises of approbation all round the Chamber it is quite clear that, whatever the merit of what she said, from the way she said it and certainly from the very close attention she has always shown to the affairs of this House, she is held in the highest regard. I simply say that I wish her well—not too well, perhaps—in her new duties.
The issue is fairly uncomplicated and I believe well understood by those who are deeply and directly affected by it. But there are a number of questions which I should like to put to the Minister, and I shall be happy if I need to be written to with the answers.

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Reference was made to consultation with persons and bodies who appear to the Government to be representative. I wonder whether the Minister would care to give us either a long short-list or some illustrations from the list of the kind of bodies concerned. I would have in mind, for instance, clearly the representatives of the quarry owners or the landowners, the Country Landowners' Association, the Association of Metropolitan Authorities, perhaps, and other local authorities. I wonder whether the Minister would care to tell us who were actually consulted. I am intrigued by the fact that, whoever was consulted, the National Coal Board appears in some special way—no doubt the Minister can tell us what it is—to be singled out not to be able to claim compensation nor, I should imagine, to be consulted.
Perhaps I may draw the Minister's attention to a series of Questions that has appeared on the Order Paper in the names of my noble friend Lord Stoddart and myself. The purpose of the Questions can be seen from the drift of them. We certainly recognise that the value which is under the ground needs to be exploited before the ground is built upon. I live in the Lee Valley, which, over the last 30 or 40 years and in fact for longer, has been a prolific source of aggregates. I certainly subscribe to the view that they need to be taken out before housing is put up. It was at one time called "glass" country, because there were glasshouses. Then the glasshouse industry went down, and the glasshouses have gone. The gravel has been extracted and housing will be put up.
Is the Minister in a position to say something about the drift of the Questions? I am not saying for a moment that the countryside around Enfield, Hertfordshire, the Lee Valley and Essex is spoilt. We know of other parts of the country where it is quite horrific, with the lagoons which have been created in one way or another. However, my noble friend Lord Stoddart and I wonder why this is so when spoil is available on top of the ground which is substantially capable of being used for the purposes for which gravel is extracted. There are limits to what minestone can be used for. However, my information is that minestone is capable of being used for many things, particularly road building and railway embankments. Is the Minister in a position to say something helpful about the Government's intention to use what is, quite clearly, a national asset? Earlier in today's debates reference was made to a Minister for waste. I imagine that this is a matter which the Minister for waste would need to examine very carefully, or could examine very carefully, in order to encourage a better use of national resources.
Can the Minister give us some idea of the amounts of money which are likely to be paid in compensation to people who accept a proscription on their ability to take the aggregate out of the ground? Are we talking about millions of pounds? Can the Minister tell us how much compensation has been paid in the last year or so and what this change is likely to involve? Can the noble Baroness give the House one or two illustrations why the Government do not wish aggregates to be extracted? I readily agree that I would rather leave the land unmined and unspoilt. At the same time I accept the logic that if someone has a piece of land which is valuable below the soil, he is entitled either to extract
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and be paid by the large contractors or to receive compensation in another way.
Certainly we on this side are not in any way restrictionist; we recognise that people whose land is valuable are entitled to exploit it. Reference has been made to the Countryside and Wildlife (Amendment) Bill to which this House has just given a First Reading, and I think the Minister should appreciate that there is a slight unease about this. The original Act contains many provisions for compensation as regards management agreements where farmers decide not to exploit; for instance, sites of special scientific interest. We are finding ourselves in the odd situation where people are being paid public money not to do things which they otherwise would do. This is of a similar character. We on this side of the House accept and support the thrust of the instrument.
Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran: My Lords, it is a great privilege and pleasure for me to be in the position of congratulating the noble Baroness the Minister on her maiden speech from the Front Bench. She has been introduced to her new duties on a subject of great difficulty, and we have heard much about the difficulties associated with town and country planning matters today. From the competence and charm which the noble Baroness has shown in making her speech, I am encouraged to say that her success in her new duties is inevitable. I hope that she will find the duties interesting and that they will bring her a great deal of happiness.
Like the noble Lord, Lord Graham of Edmonton, I am interested to know something about the people and institutions which have been invited to comment on these matters during the last four years or so in which the regulations have been gestating, if that is the correct term to use. I am particularly interested—and no doubt the Minister will write to us about this—to know of the sort of consultations which went on with institutions and bodies in Wales. I have found these very complicated, nine pages of closely printed words rather surprising, but I am interested that in Regulation 4 it says that compensation can be claimed arising out of:
"depreciation of the value of an interest in land".
I had the privilege of making a few speeches about a Mineral Workings Bill recently and I endeavoured, without any success, to encourage the Government to introduce a parameter in claims in regard to compensation—that the parameter should be the depreciation of the value of the land in certain instances. Nevertheless, we see those happy words in this complicated regulation.
Mineral Bills and reference to mineral planning appear to be rather popular these days. It is a very important matter indeed. Can the noble Baroness the Minister indicate whether these regulations have any impact on the Mineral Workings Act which passed through this House a few weeks ago? I mentioned this to the noble Baroness, and the information probably is that they are not relevant at all; but if she has some information, I should like confirmation.
Clause 3 of the Local Government Bill indicates the importance of mineral planning. Subsection (3) gives some definitions of what is meant by "mineral planning authority". Can the noble Baroness indicate

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whether these regulations have any impact in the context of the Local Government Bill, assuming that Clause 3(3) stays essentially the same? If the noble Baroness writes to the noble Lord, Lord Graham, perhaps she will send me a copy of her letter on these general matters.
8.8 p.m.
Baroness Cox: My Lords, I am most grateful to noble Lords for their contributions. Before I begin to try to answer their questions, perhaps I may especially thank them for their kind and generous words of welcome and reassurance. I also wish to apologise in case perhaps they feel a little hard done by through having such a novice to respond to the points that they have made. I confess that I cannot think of anything harder on which to cut my teeth than minerals, but perhaps I may assure the noble Lords that if I do not answer their questions adequately, I shall naturally be pleased to write to them subsequently.
Before I turn to the matters which have been raised by the noble Lords, I should like to clarify a point which I know would have been raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Nicol, had she been here tonight, and I promised her that I would put this point on the record. As your Lordships are aware, approval of this order will clear the way for implementation of the important new provisions of the 1981 Act which derive from the recommendation of the Stevens Committee. Among those new provisions will be Section 10, which inserts into the 1971 Act Section 51 A, and that new section will for the first time enable authorities to make orders prohibiting the re-opening of old, apparently abandoned mineral workings.
When this House debated the new Mineral Workings Act earlier this year, the noble Baroness, Lady Nicol, was very concerned that the Northamptonshire County Council and other authorities in the Midlands ironstone district should be able to prevent developers from re-opening restored ironside workings for the extraction of limestone and other associated minerals, as is still theoretically possible under some old ironstone planning permissions. The noble Baroness pressed my noble friend Lord Skelmersdale to make provision for the abatement of the amount of compensation which authorities would have to pay on making a prohibiting order I hope that the noble Baroness, Lady Nicol, will find it helpful if I draw attention to Regulation 4(4) of this order, which provides that the amount of compensation payable on making an order under Section 51A shall not include the value of any mineral remaining unworked on the site in consequence of the order. That is a very significant concession, which honours the promise given by my noble friend Lord Skelmersdale to the noble Baroness during the passage of the Mineral Workings Act through this House.
The noble Lord, Lord Graham, and the noble Lord, Lord Lloyd, mentioned the parliamentary Questions which were tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, last week about the Government's policy in respect of the use of alternative aggregates for construction purposes and the implications of that policy for the granting of new permissions to work traditional aggregates.
I understand this concern, especially given the noble
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Lord's association with the Lee Valley area. However, I am advised that Written Answers to two of those questions were provided yesterday by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for the Environment, two more are being answered by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Transport, and the final two fall to be answered by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Energy. I hope that the noble Lord will forgive me if I do not rehearse each of those answers this evening.
In so far as the noble Lord's comments relate directly to the order now before us, perhaps I may say that naturally I share the noble Lord's concern that fresh mineral workings should not be undertaken where suitable and economically viable alternative supplies of the mineral in question may already be available on waste heaps.
Lord Graham of Edmonton: My Lords, perhaps the noble Baroness will allow me to intervene simply to say that I understand that there are literally thousands of millions of tonnes of unvaluable and unviable waste from pits on the ground. It strikes me as odd that perhaps we are in the process of taking out the equivalent number of millions of tonnes of aggregate, particularly if it is possible to equate their value. I was simply saying that perhaps the Government should look closely at this. The reply stated that the response of an interdepartmental committee is due to come out shortly.
Baroness Cox: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord. I was just going to refer to the fact that the interdepartmental committee is hoping to make its report available shortly.
I turn to one or two other questions put by the noble Lord, Lord Graham. The noble Lord asked with whom consultation had taken place. I understand that all local authorities have been consulted, as has industry. For example, the CBI, the Sand and Gravel Association, the CLA and the NCB were consulted. I have a full list of those consulted, which I should be happy to send to the noble Lord if he would like to receive it.
Lord Graham of Edmonton: Yes, my Lords.
Baroness Cox: My Lords, the noble Lord also asked about compensation amounts. It is not easy to give an estimate of those amounts. The noble Lord should perhaps be aware that the regulations we are debating do not apply to any new permissions which may be granted in the Lee Valley or elsewhere.
I think the final question of the noble Lord, Lord Graham, related to the Lee Valley and the use of minestone there in the Lee Valley. As we have just indicated, that is being considered by the interdepartmental committee. A reply is expected shortly, but I should like to reassure the noble Lord that Government policy is to support the use of alternative materials, where they are suitable, as a substitute for natural aggregates.
I turn briefly to try to answer one or two of the questions of the noble Lord, Lord Lloyd. The noble Lord asked about consultation with Wales. I am informed that the Welsh Office has been consulted and

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the Welsh local authority committees, and bodies such as the CLA and the NFU may well have consulted their members in Wales. The noble Lord, Lord Lloyd, also asked about the impact on the minerals Act. There is no direct link between the regulations and the Mineral Workings Act 1985. I think that I should prefer to write in reply to the other question that the noble Lord asked.
Finally, the drafting of these regulations, I am sure it will be appreciated, was an ambitious project, and probably even more ambitious than was realised when the compensation provisions in the 1981 Act were discussed. As I have already observed, it took a good deal longer than had been hoped to produce these regulations and, thus, to implement the important environmental measures in the 1981 Act.
I hope that your Lordships will agree that the order now before us provides for a reasonable apportionment of the costs of updating old mineral permissions within the framework already contained in the 1981 Act. I therefore invite your Lordships to approve the regulations this evening so that we can implement without further delay the provisions of the 1981 Act which depend upon them. I commend this order to the House.
Viscount Long: My Lords, I beg to move that this House do now adjourn during pleasure until 8.50 p.m.
[The Sitting was suspended from 8.16 to 8.50 p.m.]

Local Government Bill
House again in Committee on Clause 3.
The Chairman of Committees (Lord Aberdare): Amendment No. 13, Baroness Stedman.
Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran: As I am a member of the same party as the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman, I think I can without much danger say that this amendment has been covered by the previous discussion and is therefore not moved.
[Amendment No. 13 not moved.]
Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran moved Amendment No. 13A:
Page 2, line 20, at end insert—
("save in the case of Holland Park for which the Department of the Environment shall exercise the powers of a local planning authority." ").
The noble Lord said: The management of the parks in London, hitherto managed by the GLC and certain countryside areas in the metropolitan districts, appear to be anxious about their future situation because they seem to be left high and dry by the Government's proposals for the abolition of the GLC, the metropolitan district councils and other existing authorities.
It is fortunate that today I read a leader in The Times which referred to the problems of future management particularly of London parks including
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Hampstead Heath and the famous historic area known as Holland Park. Although that area is not referred directly in that article it is referred to as one of the parks other than Hampstead Heath. To shorten my speech I should like to incorporate part of that article into my remarks this evening. The Times says this:
"London's parks … are a public resort, tourist attraction and beneficial inheritance of the philanthropy and the municipal self confidence of earlier generations. As the Local Government Bill—the measure for the abolition of the Greater London Council—moves into the committee stage this week, the fate of some of the capital's best-loved parks is worth the closest oversight of peers of all parties".
With that introduction, for which I am grateful to The Times, I find myself for reasons which I need not elaborate as a kind of advocate on behalf of the Kensington Society, a distinguished society concerned with the welfare of Holland Park. I have no other interest in Holland Park except as a member of the public.
I feel that it is my duty to describe this historic area known as Holland Park because I anticipate that many noble Lords here tonight have come a long way to be present and therefore will not be aware of the pleasures and beauty of Holland Park. It is of more than ordinary interest and possesses some unique features. The property was bought by the London County Council in 1952 for £¼ million. To make it available for the enjoyment of a much wider public a number of changes had to be made, and since then there has been further development in keeping with the general character of the grounds. Some of the most attractive features, however, date back to the original estate and have been carefully restored. It is an area of just over 54 acres, and though only part of the original estate most of the distinctive features of the grounds have been preserved.
Horticulturally, surprisingly enough in these days, Holland Park is still an interesting place. I am told that in 1901 there were 4,000 separate species and varieties of plant recorded there and many still survived in the neglected grounds in 1952. These have been carefully conserved and increased and there are now well over 3,000 different plants still in this historic area. It includes 1,500 varieties of trees and shrubs. A new collection of native British plants was started in 1959 and this now amounts to about 400 plants.
Amendment No. 13A is a probing amendment. One of my difficulties was to decide in what category Holland Park should be assessed. Should it be assessed as a conservation area or should it just be considered as a London park, one of many London parks in general terms? Holland Park has also an interesting history in the past few years. In 1968 the question arose whether Holland Park and other parks in London should be transferred to the boroughs in which they are situated. A distinguished member of your Lordships' House, Lord Hurcomb, who was the president of this Kensington Society, wrote to The Times in February 1968. To shorten my speech, I shall read again from The Times of February 1968 extracts from the letter written by the noble Lord, Lord Hurcomb. It reads:
"Strong arguments against such a transfer"—
that is a transfer of Holland Park and other parks to

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the boroughs in which they were situated—
"have been advanced in favour of leaving things as they are on Hampstead Heath.
"Much the same considerations apply to Holland Park. Its history, its extent, its natural interest as a remnant of the country still surrounding inner London even a century or so ago, and its present character as maintained by the late Lord Ilchester, and by the admirable care of the London Council, all make Holland Park an open space comparable to the Royal Parks themselves.
"Like the Royal Parks, it is used constantly by vast numbers of Londoners who do not live in the Borough, and the importance of keeping unimpaired its natural appearance, so different from that familiar in most municipal parks"—
I stress that this park differs in its aspects from most municipal parks—
"distinguishes it from most open spaces which may properly be subjects of transfer to local management."
That is an adequate selection from the letter to support my case that some different way of dealing with Holland Park should be introduced by the Government.
The question arises: what kind of management should be adopted for this purpose? It could be considered to come within the ambit of the Historic Buildings and Monuments Commission perhaps. It would be in a very happy position if it could become a Royal Park, but I am sure that is impossible. Nevertheless it is and has been controlled similar to a Royal Park under the administration of the GLC. I have ascertained that Royal Parks are directly managed by a division of the Department of the Environment. Therefore, when it is being considered in this clause who should be the planning authority, it should be not the borough in which this park is situated, but—in the words of my amendment—the Department of the Environment which shall exercise the powers of a local planning authority.
9 p.m.
This is a probing amendment. I am aware that there are discussions going on about the position of Hampstead Heath. I know that the Common Council has been consulted as to whether it should take over the administration of Hampstead Heath. It has been suggested that perhaps Holland Park would be a place for the Common Council to take over, although one of the trustees of the Kensington Society is, like myself, a past master of a livery company and he assures me that perhaps the Common Council is not quite the body to take it over.
Therefore, I should like to emphasise the unique nature of Holland Park and respectfully to suggest that Holland Park—together with some other London Parks—is in a unique position, being open to the public, a public from a far wider area than the borough in which it is situated. In the special circumstances of Holland Park the Department of the Environment should exercise the powers of a local planning authority when, or if, this Bill passes through both Houses. I beg to move.
Lord Elton: I should like to start by saying to the noble Lord, Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran, that I share his admiration for Holland Park. For a long time I lived quite close to it. I was a frequent visitor to its charming facilities. It does not in any way resemble Hampstead Heath. Holland Park exists within the confines of one London borough. Hampstead Heath is within the
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confines of three. I suspect that it was for that reason, and perhaps some others, that it was not mentioned in the article to which the noble Lord referred at the beginning of the debate.
Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran: I thank the noble Lord very much for giving way. If he reads the article, he will see that it refers to London parks, although it emphasises and particularises Hampstead Heath solely.
Lord Elton: And one or two others, I think. But that is not the point. The point is that the noble Lord is concerned for the future of Holland Park, which he believes is now very admirably served and protected by, for instance, the planning authority within the area which it is to be found. That planning authority is already the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea and it is within the care of that planning authority that the Bill will leave Holland Park. There will therefore be absolutely no change in what he proposes.
Amendment No. 13A to Clause 3 seeks to make the Department of the Environment the local planning authority for Holland Park. Clause 3 of the Bill provides for the borough and district councils to be the local planning authorities for their areas. Under Clause 3, as I say, Kensington and Chelsea will as at present be the local planning authority for Holland Park and responsible for development control. In this respect nothing will change. The Royal Borough's intended new responsibilities as owner will of course be circumscribed, just as those of the GLC's are now by virtue of the London County Council (Holland House) Act 1952. The park is held, and will continue to be held, for use by the public as an open space. I hope therefore that I can reassure the noble Lord on what I think is the central point of his concern: that there is absolutely no threat posed to Holland Park by the provisions of Clause 3 of the Bill or any other part. I can also tell him that the borough council welcomes the fact that the park will remain within its borough and will be content to look after it.
Therefore, I am not sure that there is a great deal of point in my running through the other items in the noble Lord's list of amendments which will create, for instance, a special rating panel for Holland Park—I am not sure whether that was his intention, but that is what it does—or make the Department of the Environment the surveying authority for Holland Park, which is the effect. I remind him that a surveying authority is responsible for the preparation of any definitive map or statement of public rights of way for the area. Under paragraph 7(6) in Schedule 3 to the Bill this function is transferred from the metropolitan county councils to the metropolitan district councils. By virtue of Section 58 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, however, the requirement to prepare a definitive map and statement does not extend to the former area of the LCC, the present inner London boroughs. Instead, each London borough at present may already adopt by resolution the relevant provisions of the 1981 Act in relation to the whole or any part of their area. The amendment which specifies the department as the surveying authority for Holland Park could not therefore take effect unless Kensington and Chelsea adopted the relevant provision. I would emphasise that Kensington and Chelsea already have

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the option of adopting the requirement to prepare a definitive map and statement of public rights of way for their area in any case.
The noble Lord's amendments therefore would not in practice achieve any useful change or protection for Holland Park. But I think what is needed here, and I am glad to give it, is an assurance that the future of Holland Park is in no way threatened by the provisions of the Bill which will have remarkably little effect upon the planning and protective provisions on the statute book with regard to it. It is a question of the management; and I do not think the ability of the Royal Borough is in question as to that. I hope that the noble Lord will be reassured.
Lord Graham of Edmonton: I rise briefly to say that when the Minister closed his notes and spoke from the heart he gave more reassurance in his last two or three paragraphs than he did in reading out how this matter is seen in another place. I am bound to say that the point which the noble Lord, Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran, has raised could smack of special pleading and of introducing a reason for making special arrangements in certain circumstances. Although in this instance the normal arrangements for looking after the interests of an area which has a special place in the hearts of many people are adequately taken care of, and the borough recognises its special responsibility in making sure that in all sorts of ways the interests of Holland Park are well looked after, I hope that the Minister will also be prepared to listen to every case which might smack of special pleading and assure the Committee and the pleaders that their misgivings are unfounded.
I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran, for drawing attention to one or two comparable areas such as Hampstead, in regard to which he mentioned a possible solution and the caveats. There are complicated planning issues which are capable of being dealt with, provided that we apply a certain logic, but this is an attempt to create a special set of circumstances. I am never afraid to be quite open if a special case has to be made in certain circumstances, but I wait to hear what the noble Lord will do. As we proceed through the amendments on this clause and in the schedules, we may get a clearer idea of what we want; and of course, there are the later stages of the Bill.
Lord Banks: If I may add to what my noble friend has said on this matter, it seems to me that the two matters which concern the Kensington Society, who are worried about the future of Holland Park, are, first, whether the borough will have the resources necessary in order to deal with that park, which is more than just an ordinary park and therefore might make a drain on their resources which an ordinary park would not. I wonder whether the noble Lord the Minister can assure us that the resources are available, and that there will not be any lessening of the amenities which at present exist on account of financial stringency on the part of the borough.
The second point, which I also believe—and I quote from a letter from the president of the Kensington Society—is that:
"Holland Park's numerous and large enclosures, kept in their
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natural state, with many fine trees and a wealth of bluebells and other wild flowers, require a treatment and a specialised knowledge not normally possessed by those whose job it is to see to the cutting of grass and the planting of tulips".
That point was elaborated by the president, Lord Hurcomb. I wonder whether the noble Lord the Minister can assure us that the specialised knowledge to which he referred is available to the borough, in order to deal adquately with what is required to maintain the amenities in Holland Park.
Lord Elton: In answer to the two specific points raised by the noble Lord, Lord Banks, and also in answer to the noble Lord, Lord Graham of Edmonton, I am obviously anxious to reassure everybody who is needlessly alarmed. I am involved in a series of discussions on a whole range of what to others may seem minor issues, but which I regard as important for that purpose. On this issue, I can say that allowance will be made in the grant-related expenditure assessment, or GREA, for the borough, which will mean that the resources should be available. Of course, I am not myself the Royal Borough and I cannot undertake the way in which they will look after the park. But I have seen enough of their work to feel that the noble Lord need not be disquieted. If he is disquieted, I suggest that he talks to the leader of the council, or to some other person at the centre of things, who will be able to tell him what they propose.
Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran: I thank the noble Lords, Lord Graham and Lord Banks, for their support in this matter, and I am grateful to the noble Lord the Minister for the lucid way in which he has approached the matter and particularly for the details he has given me relating to this park. But the point I am raising and the difficulties that my noble friend Lord Banks raised with regard to resources and specialised knowledge have not been dealt with by the noble Lord the Minister. I would ask: how can he give any assurances—and he was very careful not to—with regard to the resources that will be available in respect of Holland Park?
Lord Elton: I thought I had done so in terms: there will be provision in the GRE for this function.
Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran: There will be provision adequate for the purposes of maintaining Holland Park in at least its present condition and that specialised knowledge will be available through the GRE arrangements?
9.15 p.m.
Lord Elton: The GRE is a quantity of money and that obviously does not represent expertise. What I was trying to say was that it will be for the borough to decide how it looks after the park and who it entrusts with the care of the park. That will be the expertise, will it not? They can also have recourse to advice from other sources. But unless the noble Lord is more precise, I do not think that I can be more precise; and if he is more precise, I suspect that the further questions he will ask me will be questions which he could properly ask, from his distinguished position, of the people who will inherit the responsibility and the care of the park, which I am assured they are happy and able to do.
Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran: I have a very high regard for the noble Lord the Minister and in his reply to my speech he indicated his great sympathy with the area. However, I have developed the case that this is one of the unique parks in London and therefore, in those circumstances, it requires special attention. What the noble Lord is saying to me is, "We have now a borough who I or my right honourable friends will go along and see and we will ask them what they are going to do". Surely that does not take me anywhere on the point that I raised. This is an area of great national importance and of great historical interest which requires special attention in order that resources shall be provided at least to maintain the area in its present condition.
Lord Graham of Edmonton: Will the noble Lord allow me to intervene?
Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran: Certainly.
Lord Graham of Edmonton: I wonder whether it is within the memory of the noble Lord that the Royal Borough of Kensington, I believe, lost no time at all in knocking down its town hall to avoid its becoming a listed building. It is experience of that kind that I believe the noble Lord, Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran, is entitled to bear in mind when listening to what the Minister has to say.
Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran: I am deeply grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Graham, for mentioning that. I was fully aware of that unhappy situation, the details of which I do not know now, in which a historic building (the town hall) was pulled down rather rapidly at very short notice and destroyed by the present Royal Borough of Kensington. I did not want to introduce at this late stage of the evening any acrid atmosphere of municipal or borough controversy in relation to the past; but I ask the noble Lord the Minister to recognise that although he agrees that resources should be available and that the Government also agree that resources should be available, he has said that the matter is entirely in the hands of the borough. The borough may change, of course; we may even have an Alliance borough there one day. I do not know what would happen in those circumstances, but I am certainly not being tempted, in the presence of the right reverend Prelate, to make any prophecies on these matters. Nevertheless, I am afraid that the Minister has not adequately considered the fact that this is a special area and that in view of its unique position it should be more closely within the control of the Department of the Environment and that the Department of the Environment should be the planning authority. I do not think I am going to get very far this evening on this point—
Lord Molson: You are not.
Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran: I am unhappy to see the noble Lord nodding his head in agreement with me over the fact that I am not going to make any headway, but—
Lord Elton: I do not wish to seem discourteous to the noble Lord, but I really have gone to the limits of reassurance that any Minister could give without
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committing a local authority to a policy which ought properly to be in its hands. The noble Lord may have some great scheme to entrust every piece of greenery in the whole of the metropolis to the Department of the Environment; I know not. But he put a scheme in his amendments on the Marshalled List to which I addressed myself. I thought I had dealt with them both courteously and effectively, if I may say so. I have also given him every reassurance that the Government will see that the GRE system provides the resources that he says should be available and that is not in their hands but in the hands of others. But once those resources are given to the successor body the noble Lord would not expect me to tell that body how to conduct itself. I could do that only if I were the Minister responsible for all the green spaces in London. If he would like me to be that, that is a separate amendment and of course another debate.
Baroness Stedman: The noble Lord has given some reassurance by saying that there is some money, or there will be some money, allocated through GREA. Is he also able to tell us how the Royal Boroughs, GREA and target act one against the other, because there are occasions in the counties and the boroughs throughout the country where their GREA is much higher than their targets and they then come to be rate capped?
Lord Elton: I think that the noble Baroness is trying to lead me, unwilling, suspicious and with flared nostrils, into the subject of rate capping and suchlike. I do not think that that applies to the Royal Borough of Kensington. That is the first point. I am sorry, the noble Baroness asked about targets. I do not think that the sort of intersection between the two sets of figures which the noble Baroness fears would apply in this case, but I really think that after dinner is not the time to embark upon the complexities of the target system.
Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran: May I agree with one matter? The noble Lord has dealt with my submissions very courteously and in a great deal of detail and he has given certain assurances. I am sure that the noble Lord will not mind me saying that in my view those assurances do not go far enough in relation to this matter. The noble Lord the Minister gives his case away when he refers to me as perhaps having an ulterior motive in this—
Lord Elton: That was not me. It was the noble Lord opposite.
Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran: The noble Lord the Minister suggested that I might be here—not necessarily tonight but perhaps later on—trying to get some protection for all green spaces in London. When he refers to Holland Park merely as a green space, he really gives his case away. But I am not proposing to pursue this matter any further. I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendments Nos. 14 to 16 not moved.]
Lord Graham of Edmonton Lord Graham of Edmonton moved Amendment No. 16A:
("(2A) In the case of applications for planning permission for the development of land of any class described in Schedule (Planning consultations), consultations shall be carried out by the relevant local planning authority in Greater London or a metropolitan county with local planning authorities as specified in that Schedule, and in the event that any authority consulted under this subsection objects to the grant of planning permission for such development, then the local planning authority shall hold a local public inquiry into the matter to which such an application relates before determining it.
(2B) For the purposes of subsection (2A) above Part I of Schedule (Planning consultations) shall have effect in relation to applications for planning permission for the development of land in Greater London and Part II of that Schedule shall have effect in relation to such applications for the development of land in a metropolitan county.").
The noble Lord said: I move the amendment in the terms in which it appears on the Marshalled List. The aim of this amendment is to illustrate the complete lack of any mechanism in the Bill for dealing with planning applications which have an impact across borough boundaries. Indeed many types of development have a wider than borough impact and are currently referred by the borough council to the GLC under regulations made by the Secretary of State for either direction or decision because they are considered by the Government to raise issues of more than local interest.
London is well understood in this Committee as a very large complex metropolitan area in which borough boundaries make no sense in planning terms, as is true of Paris, New York, Rome, Tokyo and many other cities. The present planning regulations define the types of planning application which must be referred to the GLC for direction or decision. Broadly, they are developments which impact across borough boundaries or even beyond—for instance, shopping centres—which require consistent attitudes in decisions—in other words, green belt—or need more specialist expertise or knowledge to consider them—for instance, traffic generation. They are a source of inter-borough conflict which needs to be resolved by a London-wide authority, a role which the GLC presently performs in respect of less than 1 per cent. of all planning applications in Greater London.
Currently, arbitrations over developments such as these are the responsibility of the GLC. Under this Bill, however, the boroughs will not have the remit, nor, very likely, the inclination, given the differences in political control, to take a wider view. Effectively this Bill will institutionalise conflict between boroughs with the potential situation that the 33 planning authorities in London will follow divergent and disparate approaches to the type of major development to which they grant planning permission.
The Bill provides for the Secretary of State to call in these planning applications, but the record of the present Secretary of State's intervention is that it has been ad hoc and arbitrary. A public inquiry would, in our view, at least provide an opportunity for local authorities, residents and other interests to argue their case. I suggest that this would be a small concession to public accountability as an extension of local democracy.
At Committee stage in another place on 15th January, Sir George Young argued (at col. 290 of Hansard) that the General Development Order sets out the procedures to be taken by a local planning authority in consulting with other authorities on certain types of planning applications. However, the schedule defining the types of development is essential because 33 boroughs will have different ideas about what is of more than local significance.
The schedule with the amendment broadly reflects the current regulations but with amendments to make them more useful given the other provisions of the Bill. Moreover, the amendment proposes a means of solving inter-borough disputes—a local public inquiry—which is not provided for in the Bill and which would avoid the Secretary of State's involvement. A mechanism for resolving issues such as that outlined in our amendment needs to be provided because as the Royal Town Planning Institute, the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors and the Royal Institute of British Architects wrote in their joint submission to the Commons Standing Committee (and I quote):
"No amount of voluntary co-operation or advisory bodies can form an effective substitute for an authority having defined statutory responsibilities and adequate professional staff and financial resources".
I beg to move.
Lord Skelmersdale: I recognise the fear expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Graham, in this matter, but I hope I can show that his fear is unfounded. Amendments Nos. 16A and 25A would substantially increase the complexity of the existing planning system.
Amendment No. 25A: Before Schedule 1, insert the following new schedule:

SCHEDULE
PLANNING CONSULTATIONS
1.—(1) In the case of applications for planning permission of the classes listed in paragraph 2 below the local planning authorities shall consult all the local planning authorities whose areas adjoin its own area.
(2) In the case of applications for planning permission of the classes listed in paragraph 4 below the local planning authority shall consult the local planning authorities specified in that paragraph.
Consultations with contiguous planning authorities
2. The classes of applications referred to in paragraph 1(1) above are applications relating to—

(a) any development of land within the Covent Garden Action Area other than a material change of use from any one of the classes V to IX of the Schedule to the Town and Country Planning (Use Classes) Order 1972 to any other of those classes;

(b) the erection or material alteration of any building having the capacity to accommodate more than 2,500 persons which is to be used as an exhibition or conference centre, a lecture hall, concert hall or arena, or for any other similar purpose of public assembly;

(c) the use of land as a ground for sports or games or as a racing track having in such case the capacity to accommodate more than 2,500 spectators;

(d) the erection of any building or the carrying out of other works for the purposes of the establishment or extension of a railway terminus, a station for public service vehicles, an airways terminal, an airport or a heliport;

(e) the erection or construction of any building or the carrying out of other works for the purposes of the establishment or

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extension of any system for the movement of traffic by monorail or hovercraft;

(f) the erection, extension or alteration of a building so as to provide more than 2,025 square metres of floor space (including any existing floor space) to be used as a shop within the meaning of the Town and Country Planning (Use Classes) Order 1972;

(g) the erection, alteration or extension of a building, or the material change of use of a building, if the development would provide more than 465 square metres of floor space to be used as an industrial building within the meaning of the Town and Country Planning (Use Classes) Order 1972;

(h) the erection, alteration or extension of a building, or the material change of use of a building, if the development would provide more than 280 square metres of office floor space within the meaning of that term as defined in section 75(3) of the Act;

(j) development of any of the following classes on land any part of which is within 67 metres of the centre of a relevant road—

(i) development which includes or involves the making of a new means of access or the alteration of an existing means of access to a relevant road or would, in the opinion of the council dealing with the application, result in a material increase in the use of any existing access to that road;

(ii) the erection of a building, other than a building which is within the curtilage of an existing building and is to be used for the same purpose as the existing building;

(iii) the extension of an existing building or the erection, within the curtilage of an existing building, of a building to be used for the same purpose as the existing building, so as to provide, in either case, additional floor space having an area of more than 50 per cent. of the area of floor space in the existing building, or more than 465 square metres, whichever is the less;

(iv) the extension of an existing building or the erection, within the curtilage of an existing building, of a building to be used for the same purpose as the existing building, so as to provide, in either case, additional floor space of a lesser area than that specified in the last preceding subparagraph, if the development involves building in advance of the line of that main wall of the existing building which is nearest to the relevant road;

(k) any development of land which, in the opinion of the council dealing with the application, ought to be developed together with adjoining land in order to restrict access to a relevant road or to segregate traffic serving the land which is the subject of the application from through traffic on a relevant road;

(l) any development which, in the opinion of the council dealing with the application, would result in a material increase in traffic using a relevant road;

(m) the provision of a public car park for more than fifty cars;

(n) any development of Green Belt land other than the erection on agricultural land (as defined in the Agriculture Act 1974) of a building requisite for the use of that land for the purposes of agriculture or the alteration of such a building;

(o) any development of land within 200 metres of the high water mark of the River Thames below Teddington Lock and within 100 metres of the bank of the River Thames above Teddington Lock;

3. For the purposes of paragraph 2(j), (k) and (l) above a "relevant road" means any trunk road in Greater London or any road designated by the Secretary of State under paragraph 5 of Schedule 5 to this Act.
Consultations with all local planning authorities in Greater London
4.—(1) The classes of applications and the authorities to be consulted under paragraph 1(2) above are—

(a) the erection or extension of a building to a height exceeding 39 metres anywhere in Greater London other than in an area which has been specified by the Secretary of State by order under head (b) below;

(b) the erection or extension of a building to a height exceeding 46 metres in an area in any of the City of London, the City of Westminster, the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea and the London Boroughs of Camden, Hackney, Islington, Southwark, and Tower Hamlets, specified by the Secretary of State by order;

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(c) the extraction of minerals from a site having an area exceeding 2 hectares in Greater London.

(2) In the case of a development falling within sub-paragraph (1) above the local planning authority shall consult all other local planning authorities in Greater London.

PART II
Metropolitan Counties
5.—(1) For the following classes of applications for planning permission the local planning authorities shall consult with all local planning authorities affected by the application—

(a) when the development is not in accordance with the provisions of a development plan and consists of am, of the following—

(i) the erection of dwellings on land exceeding 10 hectares;

(ii) the erection of buildings to be used as industrial buildings within the meaning of the Order of 1972 on land exceeding 10 hectares;

(iii) the erection, alteration or extension of a building, or the material change of use of a building, if the development would provide more than 2,785 square metres of floor space for use as an office;

(iv) the erection, extension or alteration of a building so as to provide more than 2,785 square metres of floor space to be used as a shop within the meaning of the Order of 1972;

(v) any development of land which is allocated for Green Belt in the development plan;

(b) the erection or material alteration of any building which would, on completion of the development, have the capacity to accommodate more than 2,500 persons and which is to be used as an exhibition or conference centre, a lecture hall, concert hall or arena, or for any other similar purpose of public assembly;

(c) the use of land as a ground for sports or games or as a racing track having, in any case, the capacity to accommodate more than 2,500 spectators;

(d) the erection of any building or the carrying out of other works for the purpose of the establishment of a railway terminus, a station for public service vehicles, an aerodrome (as defined in section 64(1) of the Civil Aviation Act 1971) or an air passenger terminal (whether within or outside an aerodrome);

(e) development which it appears to the local planning authority is likely to create or attract traffic which will result in a material increase in the volume of traffic outside the area of the authority or which will otherwise have a material effect on existing traffic management arrangements outside that area;

(f) development consisting of the winning and working of minerals other than coal on land exceeding two hectares;

(g) development consisting of the use for waste disposal of land exceeding two hectares;

(h) development consisting of or involving the erection, alteration or extension of a building or the use of land for the purpose of the manufacture, processing, keeping or use of a hazardous substance;

(j) development consisting of or involving the erection, extension or alteration of a building for use as an electricity generating station;

(k) development of any class contained in this Schedule which the local planning authority itself proposes to carry out:

(l) development of any other description which is agreed between all the local planning authorities in a metropolitan county;

(2) In this Part of this Schedule—
"hazardous substance" has the same meaning as in the Town and Country Planning General Development Order 1977;
"the Order of 1972" means the Town and Country Planning (Use Classes) Order 1972;").
They would not only lay down statutory procedures for consultations over and above those which already exist, but they would also require local planning authorities to hold public inquiries into various kinds of application if any of the authorities consulted objected to the development proposed. This would clearly slow down decisions on planning applications to the detriment of all Londoners.
In essence the two amendments in this group would require consultation on specified classes of application. If any of the local authorities consulted object to the proposal, there would have to be a local public inquiry. In some cases the consultation required would be with all other boroughs, even if they were nowhere near the site involved. Of course I appreciate the importance of ensuring that there is adequate consultation over potentially controversial developments. But I have three major objections to the proposed amendments.
First, there is already adequate provision in the planning system for consultation. The General Development Order (known as the GDO)—the statutory instrument which, among other things, lays down much of the procedure to be followed by local authorities in handling planning applications—lays down a long list of bodies who have to be consulted before particular classes of applications can be permitted. There must be consultation with the Secretary of State over development which will increase the volume of traffic entering or leaving trunk roads; or with the National Coal Board over erection of buildings in areas where coal is being mined (which I accept is not very likely in the centre of London); or with the water authority in a long list of cases which might affect water quality. I name only a few at random.
But first of all in this list is a requirement for the local planning authority to consult with any other authorities whose land is likely to be affected by the development in question. And there are provisions in the order which would enable us to issue directions requiring consultation with other bodies or persons on other classes of application, if that became necessary.
As far as consulting the general public is concerned, there are a number of sorts of development—again laid down in the GDO—which have to be publicly advertised before they can be granted. Any representations received on these must be taken into account by the local planning authority who decide the application. And it is open to anyone to inspect the public register of applications and to make representations on these applications. Moreover, where any application would involve a departure from the development plan, the local authority are required to advertise it in a local newspaper (if they do not propose to refuse it) and to take into account any objections they receive as a result. So there are more than adequate opportunities for all relevant interests to put their views. Given all these arrangements, I see no need for further statutory provision.
9.30 p.m.
Secondly, even if the present arrangements were not adequate, I would see grave disadvantages in enshrining the list of consultees or the subjects on which consultation should take place in primary legislation. It would inevitably become unwieldy and difficult to alter in the light of changing circumstances. Our present approach is generally to deal with such matters in subordinate legislation; in this case, the GDO. I am convinced that this is the right approach, with greater flexibility; indeed, with greater opportunity for discussion by Parliament.
Thirdly, the amendments would complicate the planning system and slow down development. Our general policy is to simplify planning controls where we can, not to increase them—certainly not to increase them by requiring consultation with all other London boroughs. We do not need all these extra consultations and inquiries. The boroughs and districts already have wide experience in development control. They will be fully capable of identifying the issues involved in particular applications and balancing the arguments for and against them; including of course the arguments put forward in the course of the wide consultations which the present system already requires. Our system aims to strike a balance between different pressures: pressure for necessary development and change and pressure for the conservation of the natural and built environment. In terms of policy, I believe we have the balance about right. In terms of procedure, we must constantly strive to speed things up. Lengthy rounds of additional statutory consultation and provision for a new system of public inquiries into applications can only delay development—development which will often be in the interests of the whole community—with the net result that in many cases developers will be discouraged from making proposals. We cannot afford this as a country. We need the planning system to operate effectively and quickly, in everyone's interests. These amendments would all hinder that vital objective.
The noble Lord cast aspersions on the activities of the current Secretary of State for the Environment and described his calling-in procedures as arbitrary; and he used some other slightly defamatory term. All I can say is that the Secretary of State acts under the law and is required to account for his decisions to Parliament. I urge the Committee to reject these amendments.
Lord Graham of Edmonton: The missing term was "ad hoc".
Lord Skelmersdale: I thank the noble Lord.
Lord Graham of Edmonton: Granted. The noble Lord rests his case on "better do it quick than right". "Simplified" is a word that the Minister used. "Speed" is another word he used. The Minister drew our attention to the existing way in which those we are seeking to protect by requiring adequate consultation under the GDO do have adequate protection and opportunity for redress. I am genuinely seeking advice from the Minister. The amendment states that,
"in the event that any authority consulted under this subsection objects to the grant of planning permission for such development, then the local planning authority shall hold a local public enquiry".
That is the nub of it. We say that if all else fails and there is an objection then a public inquiry should be held. Can the Minister tell us if a neighbouring authority objects to what is proposed, after having been consulted, what length of run does the local authority have in seeking redress? We are saying that if they are not satisfied the local planning authority shall hold a local public inquiry into the matter. I genuinely want to know what the future position is if an authority which is seeking to change the planning matters, consults, receives objections and as I see it

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having adequately consulted, then decides to go ahead. What can be done to stop that?
I presume that the Secretary of State has the power to intervene. But he is a very busy man, and his staff are busy people, too. We are saying that planning matters of this scale, particularly where the issue cuts across or affects boundaries and where buildings of some height and scale are concerned, should be settled much more fairly.
The Minister talks of the complexity of the procedure that we suggest. But we are genuinely seeking to compare what is being lost with the procedures that the Government seek to have instead, and we can see blemishes and flaws. I can well understand the Minister trying to take, if not a short cut, the easier way out. Of course public inquiries will cause delay. They require inspectors and staff and a certain veneer of bureaucracy. They can be irritating. But if at the end of the day the outcome is a greater measure of satisfaction with the planning system, I genuinely believe the Minister should look at the proposal.
I shall look carefully at Hansard to see what the Minister said and consider my future action, but I wonder, first, whether he can genuinely tell us what redress an aggrieved local authority has other than the planning inquiry we are asking for. I appreciate that he may not be able to do that now and we could come back to it at the next stage if he is not.
Lord Skelmersdale: I think that I ought to say three things in answer to the noble Lord's speech. The local planning authority in control receives the application, for example, to develop, and at the end of the day, whatever may happen in the meantime, grants the application. Secondly, the Secretary of State is well aware of what is going on. He has various forms of information. As was pointed out earlier this afternoon, he has the regional offices in various parts of the country. He has the opportunity to read the press reports, and if he does not read them personally someone in his department will very soon point them out to him. There is also the power of Parliament. The noble Lord since he arrived in this House has constantly questioned the Government on the subject of planning.
Baroness Birk: He is absolutely right to do so.
Lord Skelmersdale: I agree with the noble Baroness that he is absolutely right. We have talked about the Sussex Downs and we have had debates about Cornwall and, I seem to remember, about other things, and I have no doubt that we shall again. That is another way that Parliament can bring matters of concern to the attention of the Secretary of State.
The third point which perhaps I ought to make to the noble Lord is that a local authority, if it is objecting, will be in the same position as any other objector to the LPA in control, as I call it. There is no automatic right to a public inquiry in cases where objections are made. However, as he well knows, there is the local public inquiry procedure.
Lord Graham of Edmonton: "However, there is the local public inquiry procedure". I should be grateful to the Minister if he could elucidate, and I shall carry on speaking while the nod comes from the Box. The local public inquiry procedure is apparently the answer. I want to know what the local public inquiry procedure is, what its statutory remit is and what its ultimate powers are. I am talking about one local authority being aggrieved by a neighbour's intention to grant a planning application, and it takes objection, registers it and sustains it in responsible terms. We are saying that in those circumstances it ought to be statutorily obligatory on the grant-giving authority to hold a public inquiry. The Minister is saying there is the local public inquiry procedure for one neighbouring authority in respect of another. I should like the Minister to tell me what that means.
Lord Skelmersdale: As I understand the matter, the local inquiry procedure is involved where, for example, the decision, or the proposed decision, of the local planning authority goes against its plans, either its structure plan, or in the case of this Bill its unitary development plan.
As the noble Lord will equally know, an application may be called in by the Secretary of State and he may hold a public local inquiry. If it raises issues of wider than local significance—I am afraid that this note simply does not make sense. Therefore I think it would be wise of me to perhaps pray in aid my noble friend Lord Sandford who knows this subject very much better than I do.
Baroness Birk: It warms my heart to hear the noble Lord say those words because on one occasion when I was sitting on his side of the Chamber a note arrived and I said, "This does not make sense". So then a further note arrived and I could not read the writing and I said, "This makes less sense". Thus I am glad to hear that we all get into the same box at times.
Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran: I congratulate the Minister on his frankness on this matter. In order to save him considerable trouble I wonder whether he will take this matter back in order for it to be reconsidered. The noble Lord, Lord Graham, has raised a very serious matter in relation to the community. I did not intervene. I suggest that this matter be taken back by the Minister to reconsider it on another occasion.
Lord Graham of Edmonton: I am perfectly willing to withdraw the amendment. The Minister quite clearly appreciates that we shall read the record of the proceedings. There is a later stage in the course of this Bill when, perhaps after discussions, I may be in a position to bring back for the consideration of the Committee what I shall seek to attain in another way. Thus, without embarrassing the Minister or making any point because I understand that it needs some thought, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendment No. 17 not moved.]
Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran moved Amendment No. 17A:
Page 2, line 31, at end insert—
("( ) It shall be the duty of every mineral planning authority in Greater London and each metropolitan county acting jointly with contiguous mineral planning authorities periodically to review mineral workings in the respective areas, in accordance with the provisions of section 264A of the Town and Country Planning Act 1971 except that the relevant period in relation to the need for a review under that Act shall be three years and not five years.").
The noble Lord said: I beg to move Amendment No. 17A, and with the leave of the Committee in order to save time perhaps I may also speak to Amendments Nos. 17B, 17C and 17D.
Amendment No. 17B: Page 2, line 31, at end insert—
("( ) On receipt of any application for planning permission, involving the extraction of minerals from land within Greater London or a metropolitan county the relevant mineral planning authority, before determining such application, shall—

(a) carry out consultations concerning the application with bodies appearing to the relevant mineral planning authority to represent the aggregates in industry, with other mineral planning authorities in Greater London or the metropolitan county and with any contiguous mineral planning authorities not in Greater London or the metropolitan county, as the case may be;

(b) take due account of the overall conditions of supply and demand for minerals of the kind to which the application relates in Greater London or the metropolitan county.").

Amendment No. 17C: Page 2, line 31, at end insert—
("( ) It shall be the duty of mineral planning authorities in Greater London and the metropolitan counties—

(a) when granting planning permission under the Town and Country Planning Act 1971 for development involving the extraction of minerals from land to impose conditions relating to the use and maintenance of such land after minerals have been extracted so as to ensure that such land may be satisfactorily reinstated; and

(b) to issue an enforcement notice as defined in section 87 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1971 where it appears to the relevant mineral planning authority that there has been a breach of any condition of the kind described in paragraph (a) of this subsection whether such condition was imposed on a planning permission granted before or after the passing of this Act.").

Amendment No. 17D: Page 2, line 31, at end insert—
("( ) Without prejudice to any other powers of mineral planning authorities in Greater London or a metropolitan county under the Town and Country Planning Act 1971, such authorities in Greater London and the metropolitan county shall have the duty within ten years of the coming into operation of this section, to take steps to secure the restoration to a standard to be specified by the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, and the return to beneficial use of all land in Greater London or a metropolitan county formerly worked for the extraction of minerals.").
All these amendments relate to fundamental matters relating to the environment in Greater London and the metropolitan county areas. The importance of mineral planning is emphasised to some extent by the way in which those words are introduced into the Local Government Bill. While Clause 3(2) refers to the "local planning authority", the next subsection refers to definitions of a mineral planning authority, indicating that mineral planning in itself is of great importance.
As the Committee will be aware, there are instances, particularly in the Greater London area, of acres of land, or hectares of land to use a modern term, which have been despoiled.
Amendment No. 17A seeks to ensure that the Bill makes it incumbent upon every planning authority in
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the Greater London area and the areas of the metropolitan county councils to carry out a review of mineral workings within three years of the Bill being enacted. There is currently no duty on mineral planning authorities because while in the Town and Country Planning Act 1971 and the Town and Country Planning (Minerals) Act 1981, powers exist for this to be done within five years of an order being made, no order has yet been made.
There is a substantial backlog of despoiled land in London. It is imperative that a high standard of service should be maintained and that these reviews should be carried out. The amendment seeks to do just that by requiring the boroughs to work to the same timetable in which the GLC proposes to carry out the review.
9.45 p.m.
Amendment No. 17B is directed to an omission from the Bill. No machinery is provided to prevent boroughs taking decisions on applications to extract minerals based on purely local considerations. This amendment points to the need to assemble a strategic information base. It does this by making inter-borough consultation and consultations with the aggregates industry a statutory requirement. It also requires that the overall supply and demand for minerals be kept under review. I do not want to press this matter for too long. But without the amendment, there could be a number of complicated administrative difficulties. The British Aggregate Construction Materials Industries have argued—I quote their response to the White Paper, Streamlining the Cities, of January 1984:
"We fear that on the dissolution of the GLC … devolution of strategic functions will lead to a lack of co-ordination, inefficient deployment of available skills and a need for more frequent recourse to the system of planning appeals".
Amendment No. 17C seeks to ensure that present standards of reclaiming land after the extraction of minerals and its return to viable use, as the GLC and metropolitan counties presently achieve, are maintained after abolition. As the legislation stands at present, the imposition of planning conditions on mineral workings is discretionary. Subsection (a) removes this discretion and imposes a duty on mineral planning authorities to impose after-care conditions and also, for the first time, conditions suitable for after use of the reclaimed land.
The object of Amendment No. 17D is this. There are some 1,300 hectares of land in Greater London that are damaged or derelict due to the activities of mineral extraction. Little of this land is covered by any statutory requirement to restore it and no general duties exist in mineral planning authorities to secure restoration of land in their area. The Bill does not introduce any requirement to this end. The GLC, as mineral planning authority for all mineral extraction proposals of over two hectares, has taken upon itself to restore land primarily to agricultural use of the highest standards. This work is carried out in close association with the Ministry of Agriculture and the minerals industry.
I spoke to the noble Lord the Minister as to the procedure for dealing with these highly technical

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amendments. He agreed with me that it would save time if I were to make a short introduction to each of the four amendments, as I have done. I could expand at great length because these are very important matters relating to the environment. In the circumstances, however, I think that I shall await the Minister's reply to my submissions. I beg to move.
Lord Skelmersdale: I am most grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran, for the way that he has moved this quite large block of amendments. I was most interested to learn from the noble Lord's speech that there are some 13,000 hectares—
Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran: Thirteen hundred.
Lord Skelmersdale: I am sorry. I should have said that there are 1,300 hectares—I took it down wrongly—in Greater London that have been damaged by former mineral workings. That might well be so. But these amendments seek to make different provision for mineral planning in Greater London and the metropolitan counties from that applying elsewhere in England and Wales. I really cannot see any good reason for this. It has been suggested, not by the noble Lord but in another place and elsewhere, that such different treatment is appropriate because mineral development is particularly significant in these areas. But from April 1983 to March 1984 only 41 mineral planning applications were decided in the whole of the GLC area and the metropolitan counties put together. That is not a very great many. Moreover, in another place it was authoritatively stated that the Greater London Council employ only four officers on their mineral planning responsibilities and my information is that only about 25 staff are engaged on the function in all of the metropolitan areas. No one, in these circumstances, can say that mineral extraction is a major activity in these conurbations.
Following a point made by my noble friend Lord Colville of Culross some hours ago, I do not therefore see any justification for amending this Bill to change the provisions which apply elsewhere in England and Wales. There is no justification therefore for treating them any differently from other minerals planning authorities in England and Wales, many of whom have far greater minerals responsibilities.
Therefore, when I turn to the specific provisions proposed by the noble Lord's amendments, I must admit to some slight confusion. The purpose of Amendment No. 17A appears to be to introduce in the metropolitan areas a more lenient regime than applies elsewhere. It would require the London boroughs and the metropolitan districts to conduct periodic reviews of only these mineral sites worked or authorised during the previous three years instead of five years, as elsewhere.
If the noble Lord regards mineral extraction as such a significant factor in these areas, I rather fail to see the purpose of introducing a more relaxed review regime. Furthermore, the amendment seeks to alter arrangements under the Minerals Act 1981 which have not yet been tried. Section 264A was added to the 1971 Act by the Town and Country Planning (Minerals) Act 1981. It is not yet in operation and will not be until a commencement order which was debated this evening
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in your Lordships' House has been properly put. We do not "put" commencement orders onto the statute book, but there is some procedure for making them operable.
I would therefore argue that we should wait and see how these arrangements will operate before considering whether it is necessary to make changes in respect of their application, let alone changes applying only to particular geographical areas which. I say again, would, under these amendments, differ.
The next amendment in this group, Amendment 17B, appears to seek to impose new conditions on authorities who are determining applications for the extraction of minerals in the metropolitan areas which do not apply to authorities elsewhere. It would require those authorities to consult bodies appearing to represent the aggregates industry. Why only them? Aggregates are not the only minerals worked in the metropolitan areas and other mineral interests may be more significant. In any event, the aggregates industry is already represented on the regional aggregates working parties whose policy advice is taken into account in considering individual mineral applications. The amendment would also require an authority to consult all other mineral planning authorities in the metropolitan areas as well as neighbouring authorities outside the relevant area. However, Article 15(1) of the Town and Country Planning General Development Order 1977 already requires any planning authority to consult any other planning authority whose area is likely to be affected by the development in question. Surely that is a better approach.
Finally, the amendment would also require the authorities to take account of the overall conditions of supply and demand for the minerals in question in Greater London or the metropolitan county.
I could go on at some length, but I must say that the noble Lord so far has failed to explain to me why the differences of approach should be made as a result of this Bill. It is quite possible that they should be made anyway, but I fail to see why they should be made as a result of this Bill.
Lord Graham of Edmonton: Perhaps I may give my view. There is an opportunity here to do something and the noble Lord and those who have sought his assistance in this matter are providing it. The fact is that the noble Lord, Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran, provides the opportunity. I make no aspersion against the Minister's department; it faces enormous pressures and priorities. However, I think the Minister should take on board the point that there is a growing unease among a wide section of the population that the industrial wastelands that have been made by man over the past 100 years are being tackled very, very slowly.
We certainly had a syndrome in those areas where coal had been extracted from the ground, where the tip was stark and hideous, and a great deal of money and attention has been paid to this by Government, local and national, and by other interests. I live in Hertfordshire, and as you go into the Essex and Hertfordshire countryside you come across many areas where gravel has been extracted. Whether it is

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through carelessness or lack of enforcement, the fact is that many of the conditions which are laid down are not enforced or carried out.
I accept that no case is made out as to why London should be treated differently from elsewhere. However. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran, has drawn the public's attention to the fact that this Committee is concerned to make sure that we do not allow the careless operator to get away. Just two hours ago, during the dinner break, the noble Lord and I took part in a debate on compensation to owners of land who had the value of the gravel and the aggregates in the ground gainsaid for community purposes, and that was very amicable and well understood.
Therefore, I think that the amendments have served a useful purpose in telling people outside that we are concerned with a very small matter. If I say that they will see that the Committee leaves no stone unturned, I think that they will get the message.
Lord Harvington: I should like to ask the noble Lord why this should be so. A number of my noble friends in this House have had their land used for opencast coal mining, and it has looked pretty terrible when it has been carried out. To my certain knowledge all that land has been restored and today looks as though it has never been touched. How does it come about that a situation exists, which does not seem to be denied by the Government Front Bench and which has been put forward by noble Lords opposite, that there are such areas in central London? Can anyone explain to me why it is that in other areas of the country these matters have been put right and yet have never been touched in an area so full of people and where amenity is of such great value that it seems impossible to believe that such a state of affairs could exist? I should like to know the answer.
Lord Graham of Edmonton: One answer might be that the restoration of the land after coal has been extracted from it has been the responsibility of a nationalised industry, the National Coal Board. I cast no aspersions. I have used the words "careless"—in other words, the lack of proper enforcement by private companies which have enjoyed the benefits and paid for them, and have accepted the planning authorities' conditions; and sometimes these matters are not put right. I simply use my own very limited experience of the Hertfordshire and Essex area. Large lagoons are created. The fact that they are not filled in provides an opportunity for leisure. Many areas in Buckinghamshire have large leisure facilities which have been born out of this.
I do not make a severe criticism; we are simply trying to take the opportunity of this Bill to put right this matter. I accept the Minister's argument that the case has not been made out for special, separate treatment for London. What we want for London we want extended to the rest of the country.
10 p.m.
Viscount Colville of Culross: I just wonder whether we do, just as simply as that. The noble Lord, Lord Graham, has just said that when it comes to open-cast workings the requirements for restoration may or may
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not have been fulfilled. I do not know how familiar the noble Lord is with the workings of the 1958 Act, particularly as the responsibility has just recently been transferred from the Department of Energy to the Department of the Environment. However, if the noble Lord were to look into this in any detail, I think he would find that the deemed planning permission which was granted by the 1958 Act included planning conditions about restoration which, as the years have proceeded, have become increasingly complicated and comprehensive and have certainly brought in the Ministry of Agriculture's special attention, because they in fact supervise these sites for five years.
I can tell him from long personal experience now that the restoration procedures have improved quite enormously from the days when this was done under the defence regulations, and even leading up to the introduction of the 1958 Act. If he were to look at this in greater detail I think he would agree that it would be a mistake to generalise from that particular aspect of mineral extraction, where there have long been attached to the deemed planning consent formidably complicated restoration conditions which are enforced, and to extrapolate those to other things.
I appreciate that it is a good thing to discuss this type of matter, and both he and the noble Lord, Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran, are of course right to take any opportunity they can, but there are two other matters in this group of amendments that I wonder whether we ought just lightly to say should be floated upon parliamentary opinion without any further consideration.
In Amendment No. 17C(b) we, for the first time in history, require an enforcement notice to be issued. Goodness knows how many people have tried since the planning legislation was introduced to force local planning authorities to take enforcement action about something or other that they do not like in their area. It has been a constant, underpinning system of the enforcement notice procedure that it is discretionary upon a local authority, taking account of the development plan and all other relevant circumstances, whether or not they wish to issue enforcement proceedings. Here, for the first time that I have ever heard of, is a mandatory duty which would be enforceable in the courts.
It is a huge step because these matters are immensely sensitive. There is every gradation in the world involved in possible enforcement proceedings from the absolutely minute and petty to the vast and terribly important. Can we lightly, at the Committee stage of something which, to be perfectly honest, I doubt goes centrally to the issue of the whole corpus of town and country planning legislation, introduce for the first time a mandatory procedure of this sort? Goodness knows what it would lead to. I think that the noble Lord, Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran, will himself wish to consider seriously what he is introducing by way of a precedent.
Then, in Amendment No. 17D, everybody knows that there are elderly planning consents going back sometimes even before the 1947 Act where the restoration conditions are wholy inadequate, or which for one reason or another have not been complied with, and the whole system has of course become

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increasingly improved. But can we suddenly in this legislation introduce something—and it is not said who is going to pay for it—which puts right the derelictions and the defects of a statutory system, and indeed a local government system, which existed a long time ago?
We all know better now, but if we look at some of the mineral extractions which have taken place and look at some of the conditions which were imposed, and the interpretation of them, and try to work out upon whom lies the duty to restore, and whether they can, and whether it could be enforced and, if so, who pays for it, it is just a little short in some of the necessary detail to put it in the way that 17D does.
It is important to grasp the opportunity, but these things happen in Bedfordshire, they happen in all sorts of places outside the metropolitan areas, and it is just as important to people there to get it right. Although I would be happy to discuss it, I think, with the greatest respect, that this is a little in the way of scratching the surface without getting down to some of the more fundamental issues.
Lord Molson: Your Lordships have listened to the contribution from my noble friend Lord Colville of Culross. Just as in an earlier debate today he fired broadshots into me which were very damaging, he has made a contribution to this debate which is of outstanding importance. As the lawyer that he is, he recognises that these matters cannot be dealt with within the ambit of the present Bill. But he has, in confirmation of some of the things that have been said from the Opposition Benches, mentioned how inadequate has been the enforcement of conditions that have been applied in the past. In view of the free ways of discussion in this Committee, where strict relevancy is not enforced as it is elsewhere, I wonder whether the Minister will give an undertaking that the department will consider the interesting points that have been raised by my noble friend Lord Colville with a view to seeing whether at some more convenient time something could be done to deal with these obsolete provisions which apparently have not been enforced.
Lord Skelmersdale: I do not want to prolong this discussion, but I give readily and willingly the undertaking that my noble friend Lord Molson has just asked of me. In doing that I am, as we all are, immensely grateful to my noble friend Lord Colville. I should point out that we recently debated this matter at some length (which is why I have truncated my speech), when we were discussing what is now the Mineral Workings Act. The noble Lord, Lord Graham, the noble Lord, Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran, and I all took part.
In answer to my noble friend Lord Harvington, there are two reasons why land in London looks a good deal worse than land in other parts of the country when it is despoiled. This is because London has the mixed blessings of lying on a bed of sand and gravel which are all removed and that tends to make an immediate hole in the ground which has to be filled. In other parts of the country coal is more prevalent and
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that is in a thin seam, so there is only a dip in the land and subsidence.
The last matter I wish to point out is that noble Lords opposite have no superiority, if that is the word—
Baroness Birk: Yes, we have.
Lord Skelmersdale: The noble Baroness should not leap so fast. She might leap more slowly and get more effect out of her interventions. However, I was about to say that (to rephrase it) noble Lords have no monopoly of compassion in industrial wastelands. That is why we have the urban development grant. Ministers in my department who are specifically charged with the responsibility for such subjects are continually wandering around the country looking at it and doing their very best to improve the situation. There is one last point and that is that local authorities, for reasons we all know, are not necessarily builders; so for derelict land there has to be a planning application in the first place. Having said that, I am grateful to everybody who has spoken.
Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran: We have had a most interesting and very helpful debate on these four amendments. I express my gratitude to the noble Viscount, Lord Colville of Culross, for his expert advice. We are all grateful to him for giving this real expert advice, free of charge on this occasion. The only thing I can say to him is that if I have taken the step for the first time, taking the first step is nothing to involve a penalty. But, as he knows quite well, I am not an expert in planning matters as he is—one of the most distinguished advocates in that field. However, he knows that I have in Mr. Robbins a son-in-law who is a junior at the town and country planning Bar. I shall give an undertaking to consult his expertise to see whether he agrees with some of the things that the noble Viscount, Lord Colville, said.
I am also grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Molson, for having extracted a very useful undertaking from the Minister in regard to a consideration of the matters that have been put forward by the noble Viscount, Lord Colville.
As to the helpful intervention of the noble Lord, Lord Harvington, I, like him, was very surprised when I found that there was so much despoiled land in the London area and that there was so much lack of consultation between the council and industry in various areas. I am grateful for the helpful intervention of the noble Lord, Lord Graham of Edmonton, with all his experience of London affairs.
I should, if I may, like to pay a special tribute to the Minister on this occasion. He has dealt with a difficult matter very explicitly, lucidly and thoroughly. I am very grateful for what he has done on this occasion. I shall read with very great care what he has said, but at the moment I beg leave to withdraw Amendment No. 17A.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendments Nos. 17B to 17D not moved.]
[Amendment No. 18 not moved.]
Lord Sandford Lord Sandford moved Amendment No. 19:
Page 3, line 3, at end insert—
(" ( ) The London borough councils shall be required to establish a joint organisation for the purposes of achieving co-ordination and coherence in their planning policies and of enabling them jointly to participate in regional planning for the South of England as a whole.").
The noble Lord said: I beg to move Amendment No. 19, and I wish immediately to assure my noble friend on the Front Bench that I have no intention of pressing it. Perhaps I may take this opportunity to move the first amendment in my own name and to congratulate my noble friend on the dexterity with which he has picked up the complexities of the Department of the Environment and left behind the simplicities of the Home Office. Perhaps I may also offer him a little advice, free of charge from an old hand at the Department of the Environment; that is, to keep off the subject of local government finance for as long as he possibly can. Any efforts that he makes in that regard will have my wholehearted support.
I have tabled this amendment for the contingency that has just occurred; namely, the defeat of Amendment No. 8, although I never expected that in the process the Government's majority would have fallen from 126 to 4. It is designed to secure a debate on the future strategic planning in the Greater London area in the absence of any single body, elected or otherwise, covering the whole area.
I should like to start by setting the scene for that debate by quoting from a letter that I wrote in January—after the Bill had started its progress in another place—to the Secretary of State on behalf of the Standing Conference for London and South-East Regional Planning, which, perhaps, from now on we could refer to as SERPLAN. In that letter I wrote on their behalf:
"Conference believes that the fundamental requirement, for effective planning for the South East region and for the capital itself, is that Greater London should have a properly-constituted and representative body capable of taking, and expressing, a strategic view on land-use and transportation planning matters generally and on particular issues such as minerals planning"—
the issue which we have just been discussing—
"waste disposal, the enhancement of the environment and protection of the Green Belt. The essential characteristics of such a body are that it should be accountable, comprehensive—embracing all the London Boroughs—and assured of resources sufficient to enable it to deploy an adequate and competent staff, able to gather and analyse data and to assist it in the development of policy. Its functions would be to examine and advise upon strategic issues of concern to Greater London, taking full account of the regional context; and to ensure that its findings were given due weight it would be necessary to place certain duties upon the London Boroughs, including a duty to consult with it, to have regard to its advice in the preparation of their unitary development plans and to indicate, when appropriate, why they had found it necessary to depart from the advice given".
10.15 p.m.
In that letter, I then went on to say that it was essential, in the view of the conference, that arrangements should be given a statutory basis. I said that the conference remained of the view that a directly elected body would be the best solution, but that is one which we have now abandoned. I went on to say that:
"at the very least the Secretary of State should be given power in the Bill to require the London Boroughs to form and maintain a joint
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body for strategic planning purposes on the lines we have described. The London Fire and Civil Defence Authority affords a possible model, though other arrangements could be devised".
My amendment represents one of those.
I then said:
"Recognising your preference for voluntary arrangements, we have carefully considered whether joint working by the London Borough Councils without a statutory basis would produce what is needed. We have no confidence that voluntary co-operation in this field would be as comprehensive or effective, dependent as it would be on full and continuing participation of all the London Boroughs".
After describing precisely how we were getting on in discussions with the London boroughs at that time, I then said:
"It is clear that the London Boroughs find it extremely difficult in present circumstances to devise workable voluntary arrangements and there is no assurance that they will succeed in doing so."
I have to say now that we are making a certain amount of progress, but we have by no means established the kind of body that my amendment describes.
I ended on behalf of the conference by saying to the Minister:
"I think I can assure you that, were a body to be established on any of the lines we suggest, the member authorities in the shires would do all in their power to facilitate its full and active participation in regional planning affairs; and, while we would not presume to prescribe how or where the Secretary of State should seek advice, we would see the creation of such a London-wide planning body as diminishing, perhaps even eliminating, the need to set up a London Planning Commission. We should welcome an opportunity to discuss these ideas with you".
I did that with my noble friend on Tuesday of last week.
That is all I want to say about London, but before sitting down I should like to say a word about the other metropolitan counties in the light of our experience in London.
The first point I want to make is that there is no need for anything that is anywhere like as large, as complex or as extensive as SERPLAN anywhere else in the country. None of the other metropolitan areas is anything like as large; in fact, London is larger than all the rest of them put together. None is so complex and in none of the metropolitan counties are there repercussions as great or as far afield into the surrounding shires as is the case in London. But if the metropolitan counties are taken out of the scene and no other single body is put in their place, there must at least be some framework for the collaborative working together of the remaining metropolitan boroughs, and I have to say that there is very little at present.
I have some information on what the situation is and the only one which could be described as remotely satisfactory is that in Greater Manchester where there is an association of the metropolitan authorities. It is a voluntary organisation—unstatutory like SERPLAN.
"All 11 authorities meet on a regular cycle and seek common ground … over the years there has been a desire in a number of areas to allow local views to take a back seat in order that a Greater Manchester view could be pursued. Many of us believe that the Greater Manchester Association of Metropolitan Authorities will be able to play a vital role in the same way after 1st April 1986. There are a number of functional areas where GMAMA can provide the forum whereby the ten districts can agree their approach to service provision which would benefit from inter-district discussion and from the application of a joint and consistent approach."
In West Yorkshire, all I am able to discover is that there are informal meetings of the leaders of councils and their chief executives, but there is no formal structure. There is nothing in the West Midlands or South Yorkshire. In Tyneside there is no framework for discussion at the metropolitan district level, but some meetings between the shire counties and the metropolitan counties. There is no formal structure in Merseyside.
I appreciate my noble friend's difficulties here. The metropolitan authorities, which should be helping his department and this Committee by telling us more of the collaborative arrangements that they have in mind and that they intend to take, are refusing to make any constructive contributions at all to our deliberations or to the planning in the Department of the Environment. I should like to take this opportunity of urging them to change their stance, if only for the sake of their own employees. My fear is that, in the absence of any preparation of structures for collaborating over planning and in the absence of any contingent arrangements among the other metropolitan boroughs, they will find themselves on 1st April 1986 in a very sorry state and they will find themselves summoned, convened together and presided over by the head of the DoE regional office. That is not something which members of SERPLAN would ever commend to elected bodies anywhere else in the country.
Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran: Before the noble Lord sits down, if I may say so, I found his speech very interesting, but, entirely through my own fault, I did not gather to whom the letter he referred to at the beginning was sent, nor what it was. I missed his explanation of who wrote the letter and who was to receive it. I was wondering also, in trying to follow what he was saying, what was this conference to which he referred. I am sorry that I did not quite gather all that the noble Lord had said.
Lord Sandford: I am very sorry if I did not make myself clear. The conference I was referring to was the Standing Conference for London and South East Regional Planning. I did not elaborate that any more because I did so when we were dealing with Amendment No. 8. The letter I referred to was one that I wrote on their behalf, actually on 30th January, by which time the Bill was already progressing through another place; and it was addressed to the Minister for Local Government.
Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran: I am very much obliged to the noble Lord.
Lord Elton: I am most grateful to my noble friend, first of all, for the extremely kind remarks with which he opened his speech on this amendment—slightly kinder, I think, than I deserve—and, secondly, for the word of warning which he gave me. I can assure him that it was something approaching the superfluous: I have no intention of ever discussing local government finance when the circumstances do not dictate that I must.
I am also grateful to my noble friend for instruction in another form, because he has held office in the department where I now newly serve. He gained great
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experience there and has subsequently gone on to put that experience to very good use in the public service, I think one can only describe it as, in his present role of SERPLAN—which I believe used to be called something else—
Lord Sandford: SEURP.
Lord Elton: That is right. My noble friend's amendment relates to London but he concluded his remarks by some observations about arrangements outside London, which I shall read with very great care and attention. I would only seek to echo what he said about non-co-operation, because he strikes a chord which has been resounding in my breast ever since I picked up my responsibilities and discovered that there are people who are convinced that they can in some way forward some useful interest, even after both Houses of Parliament have committed the legislature of this country to abolish the metropolitan and the Greater London county councils, by making no preparation for the arrangements that will follow abolition and allowing none of their staff to discuss them. I do not want to become tedious on the subject: I merely repeat that that is flatly contrary to the interests of the employees of those authorities. You cannot plan careers when you do not know if there is going to be employment; and you cannot tell if there is going to be employment until you discuss arrangements. It seems to me a cynical way to treat the careers and futures of people who very often have given their lives to their employers. What a way to treat employees! But we are concerned at this juncture not so much with the employees as with the electorate and with the people who have to live in the areas in question. That brings me back to the main theme of my noble friend.
There is no difference between us on the need for the boroughs themselves to play a proper role in regional planning for the South-East as a whole. I have already spoken about the strategic role of the Secretary of State and I stand by all I said, but I in no way diminish the importance that I attribute to the contribution from the boroughs because there must be an input to the regional strategy. This is what my noble friend is advising me to arrange. There must be an input from the very local level of the boroughs.
The noble Lord has already received assurances that we recognise as important liaison between London authorities and those in the rest of the South-East region, and I have recognised the importance of his role as chairman of SERPLAN, in which role he will be fully aware that the Government are anxious that SERPLAN should play as participative a role as possible in the new planning régime. I see this as being particularly directed towards liaison with the London Planning Commission, with whom I hope they will be able to establish a close relationship.
I am confident also that the boroughs will want to play their part in SERPLAN. My noble friend tells me that there are increasing signs of co-operation. I believe that they are more willing to take up their new responsibilities than is sometimes suggested by the opponents of the Bill. I would certainly welcome any steps they may take towards voluntary joint arrangements for liaison, as and when necessary, with

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neighbouring authorities both within Greater London and in the Home Counties. Such steps could also encompass London-wide research and information functions under the new powers we are providing in the revised Clause 86, which my noble friend may have seen we have put in the Bill as Amendment No. 140A to provide strengthened arrangements in response to suggestions made by the boroughs themselves.
Like my noble friend's amendments, such steps would not in any way disturb the new unitary development plan arrangements; nor would they constrain the boroughs except to the extent that they themselves collectively decide in the exercise of the planning and other powers being devolved to them under the Bill. This is clearly of paramount importance and it is why, in responding to the debate on the amendments of the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman, earlier today, I indicated that if any statutory revisions are needed it would be preferable to build on my noble friend's amendment to take account of some of the concerns voiced in that debate. As your Lordships will know, we believe that decisions should properly be taken at the borough and district level.
Against that background I should prefer—I think your Lordships also may prefer—not to impose upon them statutory arrangements without proper consultation with those authorities themselves. I do however undertake to consult the London Boroughs Association and the Association of London Authorities, if they are forthcoming, on whether they would wish to see formal arrangements of some suitable kind built into the Bill to facilitate the degree of co-operation between them that we all consider desirable. My state of knowledge of the art is not sufficiently advanced for me to be more precise, but I give my noble friend this assurance. We are prepared to go into this consultation with an open mind, and in a less formal chamber I shall consult my noble friend further as to how he can give me wisdom on the way I should proceed.
Baroness Birk: I have—
Lord Elton: I was about to give a nicely rounded period to which my noble friend could respond, but I see another response is required so I shall simply sit down.
10.30 p.m.
Baroness Birk: I have considerable sympathy with what the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, is attempting to do. He is obviously trying to find a mechanism for selecting one voice to represent what might be 33 quite disparate voices gathered together over this question of co-ordination and coherence in planning policy.
I can see that there are problems here, apart from what the Minister has just said. The amendment is by its very nature rather vague but the noble Lord has attempted to strengthen it by using the word "shall" instead of making it voluntary. Although I cannot say that we are very enamoured of the amendment as it stands, we appreciate what the noble Lord is trying to do; at least he is introducing a positive power, whereas
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the voluntary joint arrangements which the Minister just suggested would not I think work very well. The noble Lord, Lord Sandford, has considerable experience in this area and that is precisely why he proposes to make this provision mandatory.
The Minister referred to the amendments moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman, and the noble Viscount, Lord Esher. I may point out that when the Minister was replying to those amendments, he did not say anything about a number of the points raised—particularly by the noble Viscount, Lord Esher—concerning specialist teams. This is of relevance to the amendment that is before us now; but those points received no reply in our earlier and rather more wider-ranging debate.
In showing sympathy for this proposal, the Government are conceding the need for some form of county-wide view of planning—although in a rather minimal way. The joint organisation, if it comes about, will presumably have no powers and no resources—nothing is said about these aspects in the amendment and I do not know whether the Minister has any views about them. It is meant to replace the London planning commission that is currently in the Bill, but if it is to be an organisation having some teeth then it must be able to do something with those teeth—and have some bite as well, in order to employ its teeth.
The noble Lord is attempting, very laudably, to find a way of dealing with the problems we now face. We would have been in a far better position had Amendment No. 8 been passed; we would not have found ourselves in this round-the-houses position. That is absolutely true—it can only be a fact.
There is one other point, and it is one in which the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman, also has an interest and she may wish to comment on it. It concerns the position of the metropolitan counties. The noble Lord, Lord Sandford, mentioned that there was an attempt in Manchester to draw some boroughs together. I believe he also mentioned Birmingham, but I gather from my noble friend Lady Fisher of Rednal that there is a forum in Birmingham. How would that fit in? It seems to me that any such organisation would need to be stronger, less vague, and not voluntary. Also, it must apply to the metropolitan counties as well as to London.
Lord Hunt: I, like other members of the Committee, was most interested in what the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, put to us; and no one speaks with greater authority as regards the district councils and the borough councils than himself. I hope that the noble Lord will forgive me if I say that at this stage of our discussion I am a bit of a Doubting Thomas—strictly in the context of this amendment. The noble Lord refers to a planning organisation, and quite understandably he was no doubt anticipating the demise and fall of the earlier amendments which would have set up what would have been called an Authority. He admitted that these 32 or 33 very disparate London boroughs—disparate in the nature of their populations and their politics and in other ways—are beginning to show signs of a willingness to co-operate beyond their borough boundaries. However, I think he implied that there is a very long way to go.

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He described this organisation as advisory, hoping that there will be voluntary co-operation. He has certainly not convinced us of his own conviction that there will be total agreement. What worries me is that with the prospect, as I see it, if not the certainty, that there will not be total agreement once such an organisation has been statutorily set up, there will be lacuni, gaps, in certain vital areas. I particularly have in mind the green belt. What happens—and l put this only as a question —if several of the boroughs having a patch of their borough boundaries within the green belt area decline to agree in their consultations and discussions of an advisory nature within this organisation? Surely the whole concept of the totality, the integrity, of that aspect—and there must be other aspects—will be in jeopardy.
Baroness Fisher of Rednal: My noble friend mentioned the Birmingham area. The West Midlands forum of county councils covers all the areas, including the travel-to-work area of the West Midlands county. Their greatest concern is that with the abolition of the metropolitan county, the chief strategic part of the whole West Midlands conurbation, which includes not only the county but also the shire counties around it, will be the West Midlands county. It includes the motorway network of many major roads going north, south, east and west.
The forum are concerned that that major strategic authority will be lost completely under the Bill. Therefore, they are saying that if they cannot have democratically elected representatives to be part and parcel of the forum with the officers, obviously they will need to keep the strategic influence of the West Midlands county because the other areas are so dependent upon it for major re-routing. It is not, perhaps, the same idea that the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, enunciated, but it is as important, and I should have thought that the Ministry of Transport would have agreed that it is as important because of the motorway service that runs right the way though the Midlands area.
Baroness Stedman: There is an opportunity of working on the proposition put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, but I agree with my colleagues on this side of the Committee that we need to know more about the organisation and how it is to be funded. Although the Minister does not want to get into local government finance we need to know how it is to be funded and staffed and what sort of powers it will have. It is no good just setting up another voluntary organisation. It is a mandatory organisation which needs to have the necessary powers and it needs to have the means and the strength to carry out the powers given to it.
The Minister also said that it was something worthy of further consultation and that it was not something to be rushed into quickly tonight. But if there is to be further consultation, like other speakers from this side of the Committee, I should like to see it extended to the metropolitan county areas as well as to London, because there is just as much need there for them to have some co-ordination as there is in the City of London itself.
Lord Sandford: I am most grateful to noble Lords for the short debate that we have had and to my noble friend on the Front Bench for what he said about his willingness to have further consultations before the next stage. The terms of my amendment were not at all even an attempt at producing a definitive solution to the problem. It was just, as I said at the beginning, designed to produce a useful debate, and I am glad that it has done that.
If I may respond to what the noble Baroness, Lady Fisher, said, of course I was aware of the West Midlands forum. The structures that I was referring to and pointing out the need for were fresh structures within which the metropolitan boroughs could co-operate. The West Midlands forum is now a doughnut, as it were, consisting of the shire counties surrounding the West Midlands and nothing in the middle, and it is how to fill up that middle area to which we need to address ourselves.
There are a number of ways of doing it. I cannot from my experience with SERPLAN argue that it is absolutely essential to have a statutory body, because SERPLAN has existed and attracted the support of the 12 Home Counties, the 32 London boroughs and the 98 shire districts on a voluntary, non-statutory basis for 20 years; so it can be done. The ability to do it now depends almost exclusively on the willingness of the AMA to participate. All the bodies that do not have structures and need to come into and form structures or else be obliged to form them by statute are members of the AMA. It is their failure to co-operate which is causing the difficulties that we are in at the moment.
But, leaving that to one side, I think that Parliament has to take a view before the Bill leaves us on whether we can in the circumstances afford to leave this on an entirely non-statutory basis or whether statutory powers of some sort are required to be incorporated in the Bill or a statutory power left to the Secretary of State to use if the collaborative measures do not arise in a voluntary way at some later date. But I think that we have now covered the subject adequately—
Lord Elton: My noble friend is most gracious. May I just use the opportunity to reply to a specific point which I was asked? I was asked to say something about specialist teams, which one noble Baroness or the other suggested that I should have done. I could at an earlier stage have said that we look to district and borough councils to make such arrangements for local co-operation as they see necessary where reclamation concerns more than one authority. There are already cases where that happens. For example, in the Black Country, co-operation is already taking place. The Government have made it clear that they will use their good offices to assist in the establishment of such arrangements.
Clearly the determination of opponents of the Government's policy to prevent constructive discussions is unhelpful. The Government have, however, made it clear that should that attitude prevent permanent arrangements from being made in time, the residuary body might maintain existing services, such as a reclamation team, for a transitional period. So far as planning research and information

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are concerned, our new Clause 86, to which I have already referred, provides for a scheme which could well include a specialist unit.
In conclusion, perhaps I may say that the situation is, as I see it, this, and that I think that it has been a useful debate. My noble friend has put down an amendment. It is a probing amendment but it contains two elements. The first is that the borough councils shall be in some way required to establish a joint organisation for the purposes of achieving co-ordination and coherence so that what they propose goes together. The second element is that they shall then be able jointly to participate in regional planning for the South-East of England as whole. My noble friend and I are at one in wishing to achieve both this coherence and that contribution.
My noble friend has suggested by putting the not altogether innocuous word "shall" in place of the quite innocuous word "may" that this might be made in some way compulsory. I have said that we recognise that there may be a need for something more formal than we have now proposed. Whether the word "may" or "shall" will be in it is no doubt something for discussion. But I have said that this is something that we see as directly concerning the boroughs in question, and we are prepared to talk with them about this informally and soon in the person of the two associations which now aspire to represent the boroughs. I think that that is where we left it. I am most grateful to my noble friend for giving me the opportunity to reply.
Lord Graham of Edmonton: Before the noble Lord sits down, is he in a position to say anything about the comments made by the noble Baroness, Lady Fisher, on the ability to extend the principle which is contained within this amendment to the metropolitan authorities? In other words, are the purposes and aims which are sought to be served by this amendment capable of being applied to the metropolitan authorities?
Lord Elton: Of course I shall always listen with the closest interest and I shall read, again with the closest interest, what the noble Baroness has said. However, the amendment to which I responded and on which I was briefed related only to London, so I do not think the noble Lord will expect me to go further.
Lord Sandford: I am most grateful. I have only two very small points to make. I do indeed think it would be useful if, in the discussions we have, we bear in mind not only the needs of London but also the needs of the other metropolitan counties. I do not think it is for me to formulate amendments about metropolitan counties in which I have no particular stake. I should not want to take that on. However, I should very much welcome an initiative of that kind coming from one of those areas and from the AMA.
The only other point I want to make is this. After the debate that we have had, I think we can leave this topic, fairly safely assuming that some way will be
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found of bringing the metropolitan authorities together. Therefore it is possible to conceive of bodies like SERPLAN coming into existence to take care of strategic and regional planning in the absence of the metropolitan counties. In those circumstances, I think it is possible, when we reach them, to look at amendments to Clause 6 with the possibility of some of the functions about which noble Lords are anxious on those amendments being added to the agendas of the strategic and regional planning conferences.
Lord Elton: Perhaps I may say this rather timorous word. That does not give us much time to get any fruition from the first round of consultations. It may take us until Report to come to a conclusion. I only say that in case my noble friend expects me to come up with a complete answer by Clause 6.
Lord Sandford: No. I am sorry; I did not make myself clear. I was assuming that we certainly would not be able to resolve this matter by the time we reach Amendment No. 52. What I was saying was that in the absence of any resolution of the matter, I think I would be safe to go on the assumption that we shall reach a conclusion by Report. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 3 agreed to.
Lord Skelmersdale: I beg to move that the House do now resume.
House resumed.
House adjourned at thirteen minutes before 11 o'clock.