Lords Sitting of 30 January 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 Norwich.

Young Offenders in Adult Prisons
Lord Hunt: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government how many young offenders are serving sentences of youth custody in adult prisons.
The Minister of State, Home Office (Lord Elton): My Lords, on the latest available information, some 520 offenders aged under 21 sentenced to youth custody were located in adult prisons in England and Wales. Of these some 370 were either being allocated or serving net sentences of under 21 days.
Lord Hunt: My Lords, I thank the Minister for that reply, which I find very disturbing. Is it not a fact that the youth custody centres, which have capacity for something like 7,000 places, are full to overflowing? Is not the overflow which is referred to due in large part to the fact that magistrates' courts are making much greater use of youth custody than was envisaged in the guidelines supplied to those courts by the noble Lord's department after the passage of the Act? Do not the figures available in his department, and indeed from the survey conducted by NACRO on a year's working of the Act, bear out the fact that the use of youth custody is increasing? Quite aside from that, is it not a negation of the intention of the courts that a sentence requiring a specific and constructive training programme to be carried out in the totally equipped establishment is in fact carried out in the totally unsuitable, inappropriate conditions of an adult prison? Is this not a recipe for recidivism?
Lord Elton: My Lords, I am not certain I can encompass all the questions in one answer. But the general tenor of the noble Lord's query is to the trends in sentencing and the adequacy of provision. The number of juveniles given custodial sentences in the last six months of 1983 was slightly lower than that for the last six months of 1982. The slight increase in the number of young adults given custodial sentences was not out of line with the trend in recent years. Within the overall pattern of custodial sentences for young offenders there has been a shift from detention centre sentences to youth custody sentences. The reasons for this change are probably quite complex. However, I believe that, if the noble Lord examines the breakdown of the numbers of young offenders in adult prisons, he will find that the vast majority of them are there for a very short time and are kept strictly out of contact with adult prisoners.
Lord Campbell of Alloway: My Lords, does my noble friend the Minister agree that the answer that he
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has just given brings into relief yet again the concern expressed by the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chief Justice about being able to suspend youth custody sentences? I know that this matter has been discussed before but would my learned friend—
Noble Lords: Order!
Lord Campbell of Alloway: My Lords, can my noble friend the Minister inform the House as to where we are getting along this line?
Lord Elton: My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for, however fleetingly, calling me a "learned" Lord! As I said in answer to a question which my noble friend asked on 15th January, we have sought the views of interested bodies on this issue. We are now considering the matter in the light of the comments that we received as a result.
Lord Glenamara: My Lords, would the noble Lord say what are the ages of the youngest offenders serving their sentences in adult prisons?
Lord Elton: My Lords, not without notice, but not below 14.
Baroness Faithfull: My Lords, may I ask my noble friend the Minister whether the present situation does not bring the juvenile justice system into disrepute? This is a system whereby some children are sent to prison and some children go to youth custody centres though they have committed comparable offences.
Lord Elton: My Lords, I think that without a full debate on this subject it is difficult to give an exact picture of the complex spread of provision and candidates. I repeat that we have a wide selection of provision. My noble friend has referred to "children" as though everybody from the age of 14 to the age of 20 was in the same category. Of course they are not.
Baroness Masham of Ilton: My Lords, is the Minister aware there is to be a new project in York which will be a day centre for the rehabilitation of young offenders? Might this not be a help in keeping them out of prison?
Lord Elton: My Lords, we are very much aware of efforts being made in the direction of what is called intermediate treatment to keep young people out of custodial sentences. That is why we have committed £15 million to support it.
Lord Elwyn-Jones: My Lords, can the noble Lord say how many persons under the age of 21 who are on remand awaiting trial are held in adult prisons?
Lord Elton: My Lords, at present about three-quarters of the number of young persons under 21 who are on remand are held in remand centres and about one-quarter in local prisons. All remand prisoners need to be held as close as possible to their families and friends, and also to their legal advisers and the courts where they are due to appear. But there are not enough remand centres to accommodate the existing population and to cover all the major urban court centres. The noble and learned Lord asked for an exact figure. I shall write to him.
Lord Elwyn-Jones: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord. Is it not deeply deplorable that remand prisoners, many of whom will be acquitted altogether and some of whom will not receive custodial sentences, are nevertheless held in prison at that youthful age?
Lord Elton: My Lords, I took the opportunity, I think two years ago, to visit a local prison to establish what were the views of these young people. I asked them unloaded questions. I was very much struck by the fact that, with very few exceptions indeed, they preferred to be kept in a local prison, where they were accessible to their families and lawyers, than as little as 20 miles away in perfect conditions.
Lord Glenamara: My Lords, may I take it from the noble Lord's reply to my previous question that there are young people of 15 in prison? If so, is it not an appalling state of affairs, and what do the Government intend to do about it?
Lord Elton: My Lords, the noble Lord returns to an issue. The latest figure I can give does not relate to children of a specific age but simply to juveniles in the juvenile bracket. On the latest available figures, 73 of these are in adult prisons. Thirty of them are on remand—and I have spoken about that. Thirty-eight have been sentenced to youth custody; and they are, I understand, all awaiting allocation. The process of allocation normally takes four to five days, and they are then shipped out on the next bus to an appropriate institution. They are kept separate from the adult population. I believe we have a flexible system, and that it protects the interests of young people.
Lord Mishcon: My Lords, may I refer the Minister to his answer to my noble and learned friend a moment ago as to young people on remand in adult prisons? Does he really feel that an interview that he had some two years ago with young people on their preferences as to where they are to be kept, however helpful and praiseworthy such an interview may have been, is really a social answer to the deplorable situation of young people on remand being put in adult prisons?
Lord Elton: My Lords, the noble Lord is aware as the rest of your Lordships are that the present Government have the biggest programme of this century to expand and modernise the prison system and to bring it up to date after decades of neglect by earlier Governments. We are doing a great deal in this direction. The figures that I have given for those held in positions that the noble Lords think less appropriate, perhaps, than some others show that we are making tremendous progress. I hope that your Lordships will recognise that.
Lord Ferrier: My Lords, will my noble friend not agree that many of the interesting answers that he has given do not necessarily apply to Scotland?
Lord Elton: My Lords, whenever possible I avoid giving answers about Scotland altogether.
Lord Hunt: My Lords, will the noble Lord accept that I, personally, have considerable admiration for the efforts being made by the Government in this matter? Will he not accept, however, that there is considerable concern on all sides of the House, and will the Government not consider that the time is coming to review the workings of Sections 6 and 7 of the Criminal Justice Act?
Lord Elton: My Lords, I gladly accept the first of the noble Lord's supplementary questions. As to the second, it is a function of this House to focus its concern on Ministers and for Ministers to transmit that to the Administration. That I gladly do. Whether I do it exactly in the terms that the noble Lord asked, I shall have to reflect upon.

United Kingdom-Argentine Relations
2.48 p.m.
Lord Paget of Northampton: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they went to war with the Argentine Republic, and if not, why not.
The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Baroness Young): My Lords, neither side recognised the existence of a state of war. Our inherent right of self-defence, as recognised by Article 51 of the charter of the United Nations, was a sufficient basis for our actions.
Lord Paget of Northampton: Oh! my Lords, so there never was an Argentine war. Can the noble Baroness say who will break the news to Mrs. Thatcher? I mean, after Oxford, this will be a terrible shock. She did so enjoy her little war.
Baroness Young: My Lords, the Answer to the Question is as I have given it to the noble Lord, Lord Paget. I am surprised that he would demean himself by asking his further supplementary questions.
Lord Cledwyn of Penhros: My Lords, would not the noble Baroness agree that we should be concentrating on the possibilities of peace and not on the bitterness of conflict? Will she say whether she read the remarks of President Alfonsin in New Delhi yesterday? Can she further say what steps are being taken to secure a resumption of talks with the Argentine as a matter of urgency in order to seek a settlement that is acceptable to both sides?
Baroness Young: My Lords, I entirely agree with the first point that the noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn, has made—that we should now be looking to the future. As Her Majesty's Government have made plain on a number of occasions, we would welcome better bilateral and more normal relations with Argentina, but we are not prepared to discuss the issue of sovereignty over the Falkland Islands.
The Earl of Lauderdale: My Lords, can my noble friend say whether there is yet any sign of Argentina declaring that the state of hostilities is at an end?
Baroness Young: No, my Lords. The position on this matter immediately following the end of the war is that they expressly ruled out declaring a definitive cessation of hostilities on the grounds that this would give legal status to our position in the Falklands.
Lord Gladwyn: My Lords, may I repeat my question of the other day, to the effect that it might be advisable for the Government not to resume negotiations on the question of sovereignty, which is a very general and debatable question, but to agree to discuss the political future of the Falklands?
Baroness Young: My Lords, I do not think that I can give the noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn, an answer other than the one which I gave him to the same question he asked the other day.
Lord Avebury: My Lords, does the noble Baroness agree that the whole of the civilised world condemns the obduracy of the British Government in refusing to discuss the issue of sovereignty, which is is an essential prerequisite to the full restoration of peace? Does not the noble Baroness recognise that this is placing on the shoulders of the British people a financial burden which is almost comparable with the iniquitous Trident project?
Baroness Young: My Lords, we have taken several initiatives to achieve more normal bilateral relations with Argentina, and we remain ready to do this. We have made quite plain our views on the matter of sovereignty, and, as I think I said on an earlier occasion, just as we have welcomed the return of democracy in Argentina and the right of the Argentinian people to vote for a government of their own choice, so we believe that a similar right should be exercised by those living in the Falkland Islands.
The Earl of Lauderdale: My Lords, would not my noble friend agree that the charge of obduracy is better directed at Argentina than it is at this Government?
Baroness Young: My Lords, we do not accept that we have been intransigent over these matters. We have sought, over extensive negotiations in the earlier part of 1984, leading up to the negotiations in Berne in July, means of establishing better bilateral relations with Argentina. That continues to be our policy. It is our wish that we should have normal relations.
Lord Molloy: My Lords, would not the noble Baroness be prepared to accept that the issue of sovereignty ought not to stop negotiations continuing, particularly in the field of commerce and trade? When these matters really get under way they could perhaps make a contribution to a much better attitude and spirit which will resolve the other issue, which is now blocking things altogether.
Baroness Young: My Lords, we should like to have normal trade relations with Argentina: but, as the
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Argentine Government made plain at Berne, they were not prepared to discuss other issues without addressing the question of sovereignty.
Lord Paget of Northampton: My Lords, does the noble Baroness agree that the difficulty about a war that never was is that there are no logical means of stopping it?
Baroness Young: My Lords, the position on a declaration of war is as I stated in the first Answer to the Question. I think that it would be a much more profitable exercise to look now to the future, and that is why Her Majesty's Government are seeking ways to have more normal relations with Argentina.
Lord Morris: My Lords, does my noble friend believe that there can be anybody other than the noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn, who would not believe that "political future" is sovereignty, written in another way?
Baroness Young: My Lords, I think that we have to be quite clear that her Majesty's Government are not prepared to negotiate sovereignty, however it is described.

Arts Funding: Business Sponsorship
2.54 p.m.
Baroness Lane-Fox: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will explain the working of the business sponsorship incentive scheme for the arts.
The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Minister for the Arts (The Earl of Gowrie): My Lords, the business sponsorship incentive scheme aims to encourage a higher overall level of arts sponsorship by adding one-third, subject to an upper limit of£25,000, to any new sponsorship obtained by arts bodies. The scheme is administered by the Association of Business Sponsorship of the Arts, and I am glad to say that in its first three months I have been able to announce awards worth £294,000 in respect of £1.27 million of new sponsorship.
Baroness Lane-Fox: My Lords, I thank my noble friend the Minister for his very interesting reply, and also congratulate the Government on the refreshing innovation of this scheme. May I ask how many actual awards have been made, and how the scheme is publicised?
The Earl of Gowrie: My Lords, I am grateful for the remarks which the noble Baroness has made. I hope that the publicity which is generated by the awards—I myself take every opportunity to get these to the attention of the public, particularly in the regions which have received over half the money—will encourage more businesses to look into the benefit of arts sponsorship. I have not broken down the figures in terms of individual awards; but, as I said, the ratio of three to one is cost-effective in terms of public money spent.
Lord Jenkins of Putney: My Lords, the noble Earl will be aware that ABSA got under way in the period during which I preceded him; therefore I am in support of this proposal and I congratulate him on it. I should like to ask him if he is aware also that business sponsorship can be only a minority support in terms of the general necessity for more generous state sponsorship for the arts? Is he further aware that in the United States there is now a movement away from business sponsorship, which has been found unsatisfactory in a number of respects, and towards state sponsorship for the arts? This is happening in that country as well as here.
The Earl of Gowrie: My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord on his entrepreneurial zeal, which I have been delighted to try to build upon. I was not aware about what he said in respect of the United States, where direct subsidy of the arts is only about 5 per cent. in relation to our figure of 95 per cent. My own view is that business sponsorship is a welcome chance for additional growth into arts funding; but of course the role of the state will remain very important.

America: Trade and Commerce
2.57 p.m.
Lord Molloy: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will seek to initiate a conference with the United States of America and Central and Southern American states with a view to improving understanding and increasing trade and commerce.
Baroness Young: My Lords, the answer to the noble Lord's Question is no.
Lord Molloy: My Lords, is the noble Baroness aware that the cause of all the serious problems in South America which are dangerous to NATO and the West in general is the simple lack of social justice, which has been expounded by the Pope in the past 48 hours? Is she aware that the attitude of the British Prime Minister, who is prepared to see the Vice-President of Nicaragua, is a very welcome and healthy change which contrasts severely with the Reagan Administration's point of view, and that this could be a hopeful step in the right direction of bringing first peace and then some form of ever-increasing social justice in South America?
Baroness Young: My Lords, I am not absolutely clear as to the question the noble Lord was asking. I should like to say that I am glad he welcomes the steps which my right honourable friend the Prime Minister is taking to meet a representative of the Nicaraguan Government. Her Majesty's Government support the objectives of the United States Government of bringing democracy, peace and better economic prosperity to the countries of Central America.
Lord Shinwell: My Lords, would it not be wiser to leave to America this matter concerning the United
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States, South America and the central states? It is better fitted than we are to undertake this task. Of course we are interested in what is being done, and no doubt our American friends will inform us when it is necessary. We are interested, but if we took the initiative it might appear that we distrust the Americans. At this time it is unwise to create the impression that we are not the best of friends with the Americans.
Baroness Young: My Lords, I should like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Shinwell, for what he has said, and to say that I agree with the terms of his question. He is right in stating that the Americans have a major interest in what goes on in Central America, and we ourselves have supported their objectives as well as the Contadora movement.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, would not the noble Baroness make some reservations over her statement, in answer to my noble friend, that the United States Administration is seeking democracy in Central and Southern America, when it is perfectly clear in the United States and elsewhere that, at least in some countries, there is open intervention against the elected governments? Would she agree that even if Her Majesty's Government do not feel inclined to take an initiative in calling a conference, they might very well seek the means, through the United Nations, of taking an initiative to stop the very dangerous escalation of conflict in that area, which is a danger to the whole world?
Baroness Young: My Lords, we have supported the Contadora process, which we believe is a most effective way in which to try to bring peace and democracy to Central America. We have supported the objectives of the United States policy both to bring democracy and to increase the economic prosperity of the peoples of that region.
Lord Molloy: My Lords, I hope that the noble Baroness will view with some sympathy the Question which I put because it is not terribly difficult and ought to be easily understood. Is the noble Baroness aware that the initiative which has been taken by the British Prime Minister is something new? It is far better than the way in which the American Administration have been behaving with their evil CIA which has been condemned on both sides of this House. Therefore, would not the noble Baroness be prepared at least to pursue the initiative which has been taken by the Prime Minister, which might encourage the Americans to come together, so that we could all talk about this matter and try to resolve the problem? Moreover, that would remove another threat to possible world war.
Baroness Young: My Lords, I really do not think that I can give a clearer answer to the noble Lord, Lord Molloy, than I have given already. The Question that he has put down on the Order Paper is a very wide one. I suggest that the subject is more suitable for a debate than for a Parliamentary Question. It would be better to raise it in that forum than to try to answer these complex matters across the Floor of the House at Question Time.

Business
Lord Denham: My Lords, it may be for the convenience of your Lordships if I say a word at this point about the arrangements for this afternoon's short debates standing in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Harris of Greenwich and Lord Mayhew. It is customary in short debates that the mover is allowed a maximum of 15 minutes and that the Minister should rise to reply not less than 20 minutes before the scheduled end of the debate. In the case of the short debate in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Greenwich, this means that all other speeches should be limited to a maximum of five minutes. If any noble Lord should speak at greater length, it will be at the expense of subsequent speakers in the debate. In the case of the debate of the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, the maximum is 12 minutes.

Industrial Development Bill [H.L.]
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Trade and Industry (Lord Lucas of Chilworth): My Lords, I beg to introduce a Bill to make provision with respect to the English Industrial Estates Corporation and to extend the borrowing powers of the Welsh Development Agency. I beg to move that this Bill be now read a first time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read a first time.—(Lord Lucas of Chilworth).
On Question, Bill read a first time, and to be printed.

Drug Trafficking
3.2 p.m.
Lord Harris of Greenwich Lord Harris of Greenwich rose to move to resolve, That this House calls upon Her Majesty's Government to take more vigorous action to combat the rapid deeply damaging growth of trafficking in heroin and cocaine in the United Kingdom and to provide adequate resources both for the law enforcement services and for research, education, prevention, treatment and rehabilitation by statutory and voluntary bodies.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper. I believe that this country is now confronted with a menacing threat from the rapid increase in heroin and cocaine trafficking. The noble and learned Lord the Lord Chief Justice has expressed his alarm—and I am sure that we are all glad that we are to hear from him later this afternoon—and so have the police, the medical profession, social workers and, indeed, many local authorities.
The statistics present a very disturbing picture. In 1983 there were over 10,000 addicts known to exist on the Home Office register. But there were probably between 50,000 and 60,000 further addicts about whose existence the Home Office was unaware. It is not just the number on the register that is disturbing: it is the trend in the number of new addicts that is particularly alarming. Between the end of 1982 and the end of 1983 the number of new addicts rose by no
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less than 50 per cent; and in the nine years between 1974 and 1983 the number of new addicts rose by 500 per cent.
Let me illustrate the gravity of the present situation by discussing the situation facing just one drug dependency clinic in an inner city area—that is, in the London Borough of Hackney. That clinic serves both the City of London and the London Boroughs of Hackney, Redbridge, Enfield and Waltham Forest, with a total population of rather over 900,000. In 1981 there were 52 new arrivals or people with drug problems going to that clinic; in 1982 there were 109; in 1983 there were 232; and in 1984 new arrivals were running at the rate of around 350.
I say "running at the rate of" for a particular reason. By the end of May last year the staff of the clinic were overwhelmed. They were operating in three tiny rooms at Hackney Hospital. They had by then a waiting list which, even for an initial assessment, meant a delay of between six and 10 weeks. The staff consisted of just four people: an associate specialist, who also has to look after the psychiatric day hospital; two social workers who are employed by the London Borough of Hackney; and a part-time receptionist. They decided that so serious was the situation with which they were confronted last May that they could not cope with it any longer. So they had to stop the flood of new arrivals. I am afraid they had been ignored by the DHSS, and so they said that they could take no new patients.
On 22nd May this particular issue was raised in this House during a prolonged series of questions on the heroin situation. It was raised by the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, with the noble Lord, Lord Elton. Their exchange appears at column 137 of the Official Report of that day. The noble Lord, Lord Elton, said:
"I am not aware, without notice, of the particular case".
He added:
"I shall certainly have it read".
I am sure that he did. But despite that, and a series of press reports concerning the matter, the Department of Health and Social Security did nothing. And so a long line of pathetic young men and women had to be turned away from the doors of that clinic at Hackney Hospital.
The doctor and his social workers are caring people. They were deeply distressed by the action that they were compelled to take and at the consequences which, of course, they knew would arise. But all that they could do was to give these poor wretched young people who had got into these serious problems a few words of advice; they took their names and addresses, and promised to write to them when the situation improved.
That situation continued from last May until Monday of last week. Then, belatedly stung into action by continued pressure both in the locality and from newspapers ranging from the Sunday Times to the Daily Mirror, the clinic was told that in February they could have a part-time clinical assistant who would be on a short-term contract, and possibly a nurse. So they were able to open their doors again, but with an immense backlog of cases and with the need, of course, to communicate with hundreds of others who, in acute distress, had heard that the clinic was no

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longer taking any cases and who, therefore, had simply lost all hope that anything could be done to assist them with the problem which they faced.
The clinic has now been told that as it operates in a densely-crowded metropolitan area it will be the basis of a regional drug problem team. That is admirable. But, of course, the establishment of such a team is set out in the report of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs in 1982, published by the DHSS. In paragraph 6.7 it said that the establishment of such a team should be a consultant psychiatrist; full-time junior psychiatric medical staff; social work staff, including community psychiatric nurses or health visitors; a clinical psychologist working on a sessional basis and adequate administrative staff. So even now this clinic is going to be chronically under-staffed.
The same problem exists at the St. Clements Clinic, which serves the London Boroughs of Tower Hamlets, Newham, Havering and Barking; and I fear at a number of other similar clinics in inner city areas in this country. Yet it is in precisely these inner city areas that the problem is most acute. The problem in the past has been that of the isolated user. Now, as we know from the figures, groups of young people have become infected. Many are unemployed, and those who are not soon will be as a result of their addiction to heroin or cocaine.
That being so, what immediate action should be taken? I am sure that later this afternoon the noble Lord, Lord Elton, will tell us what the Government have done. I am sure he will tell us of the existence of an interdepartmental ministerial team headed by his honourable friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Mr Mellor; and indeed of the additional funds which have been made available by the Government—a sum of £12 million over three years has been provided. Certainly all of us concerned with this problem welcome both these developments.
However, the question is a very different one. It is whether nearly enough is being done, and I do not believe that it is. First, although I do not doubt in any way that Ministers want more resources to be devoted to the attack on heroin and cocaine abuse, I am sceptical about the effectiveness of circulars from the DHSS at a time when, as we all know, the resources of the health service are stretched to breaking point. Medical administrators are involved in fierce struggles over the limited funds that are available. I can of course understand—as I am sure we all can—the attitude of doctors who, in reality, are forced to sentence patients to death because they do not have enough kidney dialysis machines, resenting what they regard as unreasonable pressure to give priority to drug dependence clinics.
That being so, I wonder whether all the funds made available to regional health authorities will indeed reach these clinics and the regional drug dependence teams. After our painful experience over regional secure units—and the noble Viscount, Lord Whitelaw, will I suspect remember this from his days at the Home Office—when many regional health authorities simply ignored the clearly expressed views of Parliament, thus ensuring that mentally-ill inmates remained in prison, like many others, I am afraid that I do not have confidence that such resources as are
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being made available will all find their way to the right destination.
There is also the question of law enforcement. Only on Monday the Customs announced that the street value of heroin which they had seized last year had risen from £10 million in 1979 to nearly £48 million in 1984. Unhappily this does not necessarily mean that we are being any more successful at cutting off the supply at source; indeed, I suspect that all it does is to reflect the staggeringly swift growth of international trade in narcotics. Commenting on these figures only yesterday, the Daily Mail said:
"Unfortunately, record seizures are usually an indication of record sales".
It is estimated that the United States Customs may intercept in the region of 10 per cent. of the heroin that is destined for the United States market. Even if we are three times more efficient than the American Customs, it still means that last year probably in the region of £150 million worth of herion flooded into the United Kingdom.
The Government's response to this has been to announce that they will increase the size of the investigation division of the Customs and Excise by around 250 men and women. I am sure that we all welcome that, but I wonder how they can possibly justify cutting the size of the uniformed strength of the Customs and Excise by over 1,100 men and women since they came into office. That is a cut of 25 per cent. in the uniformed strength of the Customs and Excise—our first line of defence against drug smugglers. As a result, the green channels at Heathrow, Gatwick and Manchester airports and at the port of Dover—and that is where a great deal of this heroin and cocaine enters this country—are sometimes manned by only a handful of uniformed customs officers. Sometimes, as was the case on the last occasion I happened to pass through the green channel, they are manned by no one at all. It is as though in the middle of an immense forest fire it was decided to cut the size of the fire brigade by 25 per cent.
When pressed about this during our debate on the Civil Service the noble Earl, Lord Gowrie, winding up for the Government, said that more vigorous action in the green channels, for which I had been pressing, would cause:
"a complete disruption of the present flow of people through our airports".—[Official Report, 5/12/84; col. 1405.]
I think that that is a pretty lame defence. We all know perfectly well why the number of Customs officers has been cut. It is in order that the Chancellor of the Exchequer can make his own contribution to the cuts in the overall size of the home Civil Service. In the situation which we now face in this country, I am afraid that it is just a piece of doctrinaire foolishness, and I hope that at the end of the debate we shall hear from the noble Lord, Lord Elton, that the Government are now reconsidering their position on this matter.
Lastly, I hope that the Government will provide additional help for the police. The police cannot possibly be asked to increase the size of bodies of specialists such as drug squads without being given additional resources to do the job. Of course, the role

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of the police is of crucial importance. For the consequences of a rapid growth of heroin and cocaine smuggling are already facing the police with a most serious situation. Many sophisticated criminals have moved into drug trafficking. It provides very easy pickings. As we know, many young addicts require more than £100 a day to finance their own purchases of drugs; they can obtain such money only by becoming pushers themselves or by burglary and robbery. That is precisely the pattern that we have seen in the United States, where it is estimated that in the region of 70 per cent. of the entire prison population is there because of drug-related offences.
I believe that it is vital to take every step to halt our own dangerous slide towards a situation in which the heroin and cocaine traffickers can do damage to a whole generation of young people and, indeed, to the whole quality of life on these islands. I hope that the Minister will indicate by his reply that the Government not only accept the gravity of the situation, which I am sure they do, but are prepared immediately to provide substantial new resources to equip both our law enforcement agencies and the National Health Service. If the noble Lord does so, we shall of course not press the Motion which I now move.
Moved to resolve, That this House calls upon Her Majesty's Government to take more vigorous action to combat the rapid deeply damaging growth of trafficking in heroin and cocaine in the United Kingdom and to provide adequate resources both for the law enforcement services and for research, education, prevention, treatment and rehabilitation by statutory and voluntary bodies.—(Lord Harris of Greenwich.)
3.17 p.m.
Lord Mancroft: My Lords, as the noble Lord the Chief Whip has told us, time is of the essence and although this is an extremely important debate, I shall confine myself to one point, and one point only. Since the noble Lord, Lord Pitt of Hampstead, who is to speak later in the debate, raised this matter some months ago, there has been a natural upsurge of interest in the horror that is concerned in the drug incidence. Great interest has been displayed by the media: by broadcasts and by letters in the press. All of that is welcome.
However, that has had one distressing aftermath: as far as I can see, there is now an immense amount of contradictory and confusing advice. The question which I ask the noble Lord who is to reply on behalf of Her Majesty's Government is whether, on behalf of his noble friends and his friends in another place, he would be prepared to sit back for a moment and look at the contradictions to see whether he can tidy matters up in order to help those people who wish to assist in this problem.
The reason for the confusion is perfectly clear. It is due to the dichotomy that exists in administration. Two government departments are principally concerned—namely, the DHSS and the Home Office—but three or four more are also involved. Nevertheless, I wish, in a slightly more strongly worded way than the noble Lord, Lord Harris, who
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moved this Motion, to thank the noble Lord and his colleagues for what they have done; I should particularly like to thank the noble Lord's colleague in another place, who has been most energetic. I should also like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Elton, who I know is deeply concerned about this matter.
Who are the principal victims of this confusion? They are, first, the families who are suddenly confronted with the horror of a drug addict in their midst. A victim is something which they do not understand and cannot possibly solve. Where do they turn for advice and help? They turn at once of course to their doctor, their GP. A little too often the GP says, "Look, I have 24 hours a day. I have two hands. I am looking after Mrs. Muggins who was run over by a bus," or "is dying of terminal cancer. I cannot bother with your friend who is suffering from a self-inflicted wound." That still happens. I hope the Government are doing everything they possibly can to stamp upon that. One understands it completely, but it is not very helpful.
In the second case they turn to their GP who is helpful, who says, "Yes, I am very worried about your colleague who is suffering from heroin addiction, but I know nothing about it. I learned about heroin when I was a student. I learned about leprosy. I can no more cure leprosy than I can cure heroin. Go somewhere else." Where does he go? Does he know? Are the Government doing everything they can—I am sure they are—to make certain that the medical profession know which hospitals can now deal with this matter? A large number of unofficial hospitals—very good, no doubt—have sprung up. There is confusion here. There is confusion as to where a patient should be sent. The local authorities, who can help a great deal, are confused. So are the citizens advice bureaux and so are the schools, which have a great deal to do in trying to help the young people from falling into this ghastly trap.
The confusion is also about treatment. I am deliberately not using the word "cure", because you must not use the word "cure" when talking about heroin. I am talking about treatment. People are confused as to whether the National Health Service, or BUPA, or its equivalent, can help them. Are Her Majesty's Government examining what is being done in other countries as conscientiously as they might to see what lessons we have to learn? Do they know about, for instance—I learnt of it only a week ago—the neuro electric therapy system, NET, invented by Dr. Margaret Patterson of Aberdeen University, which is widely thought of in America and hardly known of here? Are they sending people to discover what is being done in other countries?
I ask again whether they are examining the Minnesota Method which has been so successful in America—the Minnesota and Hazelden scheme, which is being copied in this country. I asked a Question about this the other day and got a very hoity-toity answer. It did not surprise me. I suppose if Christopher Columbus had come here and told Whitehall that the world was not flat, he would have been told that this was merely a tiresome answer from a tiresome foreigner, and would he please go away. I hope that the noble Lord will look again at what is happening in the successful Minnesota Method. That is the DHSS aspect.

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I now turn to the Home Office, the policing side, where I think the Government have done extremely well. They have sent representatives to Amsterdam and to Karachi. They have done something to help those countries which base their livelihood upon the poppy growing industry. But some people turn round at the confusion here again and say, "Look, isn't this the same as appeasement amongst the Mafia? You pay £1,000 to a man not to break up your shop, not to kidnap your children". Incidentally, what other countries are helping in the countries which use poppy growing as a base for their entire industry?
Are we quite clear—another confusion—whether or not LSD or marijuana, the minor drugs, are really leading us down the primrose path to the everlasting bonfire? We get confusing advice about this. Two days ago an Alsatian dog was shot because it savaged two small children. Alsatian dogs are the one "weapon" for sniffing out drugs at airports, and we are told that we must not use them because public opinion is hostile to them. Well, I do not believe that. The Australians do it out on the tarmac, and they can use them perfectly satisfactorily.
I add my word of praise to the Customs and police for the great success they have achieved. But every success they achieve only makes one think whether this is the tip of the iceberg. One great capture—and they have had many—makes one realise how much deeper is the iceberg below the water. I agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Harris, said about the green gate.
These are all the problems which are causing the confusion. I therefore ask the noble Lord whether he will do everything he possibly can with his colleagues to sit back and try to resolve some of these conflicts which have necessarily arisen. It will give great comfort to those who are anxious, and thoroughly anxious, about this dreadful problem; and what is much more important, it will give great comfort to me.
3.24 p.m.
The Earl of Longford: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, will express the official view of my party when it comes to the end of the debate. In the meanwhile I shall venture to express what I believe to be the strong feeling among all who sit on these Benches about this horror, this new found curse. It is relatively new. I would express also a sense of the total inadequacy of the efforts of the Government. The noble Lord, Lord Mancroft, at times seemed to praise the Government and then at other moments he put some searching questions. I think he has added to the confusion he referred to. It was hard to know whether he was trying to assist the Government or give them stick. Whatever he said, it was very relevant, but I found myself closer to the point of view of the noble Lord, Lord Harris, who gave us a strong lead in this matter.
It is some years since I was intimately connected with drug addicts. I used to share a lavatory with drug addicts who spent some of their time "fixing" there. I do not know whether many other noble Lords have shared lavatories with drug addicts. If they have not, I do not advise them to try the experiment. It is not pleasant. But I was closely associated with them in a centre which I helped to start some years ago.
Now most of the drug addicts in central London go to specialised agencies and the problem has meanwhile
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greatly increased. A young man who was co-ordinator of our centre years ago is now co-ordinator of Scoda, which is concerned entirely with drug addicts of one sort or another, and other noble Lords besides myself have drawn on his wisdom this afternoon. In that sense I am thoroughly up to date.
There is no doubt whatever—the noble Lord, Lord Harris, has given the facts and I do not propose to dwell on them—that it is a new curse which has taken the Government and perhaps all of us—even people such as myself, who knew it when it was incipient—by surprise by the extent and the rate at which it has increased. It is now really becoming a question of whether there is any new and urgent approach.
As the time is passing I must make sure before I am rung down that I make my point, which is a point widely held by most of those who sit with me here. I shall quote the Daily Mirror, which was mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Harris. Whether or not these remarks were dictated by my old friend Mr. Robert Maxwell—I have no reason to suggest they were—or wherever they came from, they are very good words:
"The drug menace has become the single biggest threat to the health of young people. It is the single biggest dread in the minds of their parents. Delay means death, and in the end it will be more expensive to do nothing. The Government knows it must act soon. Why doesn't it do now?"
I cannot agree at all with the noble Lord, Lord Mancroft, that the Government deserve any credit for their exertions in this matter. I do not think they have got round to it. I do not know—who am I to say?—whether any other Government would have got round to it faster. When one of these new curses suddenly appears on the horizon the Civil Service, the Minister, and all the rest are not organised to deal with it, and it takes some years. I hope this debate will force the Government. I hope there will be a Division. Whether or not there is, I hope that the Government will find themselves forced to do far more in the future than they are doing now.
I shall add only one word to make sure that I give everyone else plenty of time to make their points. It is possible to see this awful thing, this drug addiction, first as a sickness. But those closest to the scene do not regard it as a sickness exactly; and yet you cannot call it a crime, you cannot give it a general label. I would see it, though, as a matter of choice. The young people who start to play about with drugs have this choice. Then they go further into drugs, they become addicts, and it is hard for them to come off.
That does not excuse those of us in public life, and not only the Government, who have a responsibility for speaking up as we are trying to speak up today. That places a heavy responsibility on all of us for seeing that a whole generation is not ruined, degraded, corrupted and in many cases killed by the development of this disease. I was fairly close to the drug scene because the drug addicts used to come to our centre more than they do now. They now go to specialist places.
In one particular year 30 of the young men I knew were dead within a year of my first knowing them. That was the situation when there was a relatively small number. It does not become any easier or any happier when there are large numbers; it becomes many times worse.

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I join with the noble Lord, Lord Harris, in expressing horror about the whole thing. It is not a party matter. Those who support the Government naturally want to be loyal to them and be more kind about them than some of us feel, but we are all completely non-party, hating drugs equally, and look to the Ministers to say that they hate the situation also and mean to do something about it.
3.30 p.m.
The Lord Bishop of Chelmsford: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Greenwich, has outlined the tragic situation which faces us today in the field of drug addiction. That is of some interest to me and my fellow workers in the diocese of Chelmsford because Hackney is the only place to which we can send people. It looks as though that will be cut back and will not be able to take anybody from the county of Essex, which is a large county as many well know.
In 1982 the Government took immense pains to publish a report on treatment and rehabilitation by their own advisory council on drugs, a copy of which I have. In it the council took a long hard look at the fact that neither local authorities nor regional health authorities would be likely or even able to provide long-term treatment, and for at least five years there would need to be solid funding by central government. It says in this document:
"because of the difficulties in achieving local funding, there is increasing pressure for greater central government involvement in the provision of treatment and rehabilitation services for problem drugtakers, either through increased grants, by direct central government funding or, in the extreme, by the assumption by central government of full responsibility for such services".
In other words, if the Government rely on the hope that other bodies, voluntary and otherwise, will be able to take over responsibility, the whole edifice of drug treatment will eventually collapse like a pack of cards.
I do not rely on my own experience exclusively for these words. In my diocese of Chelmsford there is a general practitioner who has made this his major work and who was a member of the working party for the guidelines which have been written. He is desperate. I have had to leave certain matters out of my speech, as others have, but I should like to stress the number of people who can give treatment. This doctor in Chelmsford has six other doctors in his practice but he is the only one who is allowed to treat addicts. All the others are overworked, and he therefore has placed upon him the entire responsibility for those who come to him.
It seems that the Government have chosen to ignore the sound advice of this document from their own counsellors and have announced a generous gift of £6 million to be spread over three years, not five. This money was to go on entirely new projects, and was not to be used to back up existing hospital clinics or long-established voluntary work. After three years' short-term pump-priming funding the project would be taken over by local councils, charities or health authorities.
In those days, looking at the drugs field, £6 million sounded a lot of money, and the Government's desire to spend money on badly needed research and training
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projects was altogether commendable, but was not enough. What the country is liable to forget is that this funding, and ad hoc grants announced since, bringing the total to £12 million, is not only short-term but short-sighted, says my doctor. First, the new projects are likely to founder in three years because of lack of support. Secondly, long-established voluntary work is now becoming overloaded. We have one or two voluntary set-ups in Chelmsford and Essex and 14 drug dispensing units, DDUs, set up in the early 1960s to cope with about 5,000 addicts. Now the figure is 50,000 addicts. The University College Hospital clinic for drug dependency has had a 600 per cent. increase in its workload, with no matching increase in resources.
I conclude by stressing once again the importance of having doctors trained for this work. My doctor is particularly vituperative about this. Not only are so few doctors trained to do this work, but there is nobody to train them, so he tells me. We are left with a situation which is constantly retreating from us.
In a recent television appearance which I saw last week a junior Minister for Health and Social Security, Mr. Patten, put the blame for the paucity of Government funding on the shoulders of the medical and allied professions. He said that no-one knows what is the best way of treating drug addiction. If only someone would come up with a method of curing three addicts out of three who are treated, he said, the Government would be able to throw more money at the problem. This entirely ignores the sterling work being done already by self-sacrificing people. If Mr. Patten had used those words about cancer treatment 20 years ago we should be nowhere on cancer treatment now, whereas we are well advanced.
I have here one more document—
Noble Lords: No, no!
The Lord Bishop of Chelmsford: I see, my Lords. My case stands.
Lord Elton: My Lords, I should remind your Lordships with the greatest courtesy that one has had five minutes when the number "5" comes on the screen, not when "6" does.
3.37 p.m.
Lord Lane: My Lords, there are two aspects to this problem, are there not? First, there is the aspect of the death and degradation which are the sequel to the trafficker in this type of drug, and as to those one needs no emphasis. No doubt your Lordships have received letters such as I have received frequently from distraught parents asking whether anything is being done to prevent other children from dying in the same way as their own children have died. That is bad enough.
The other aspect is that already touched upon: the effect of the necessity to buy drugs on the part of the addicts. Let me take even the lowest figure of 10,000 addicts in the country. It requires, at the lowest, £20 a day per addict to feed their addiction. That is £7,000 a year per addict. If one multiplies that by 10,000, that totals £70 million. Those figures can probably be multiplied by four.

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But whether it is £70 million or £280 million, that money has to come from crime; it cannot be legitimately earned. It comes from crime of all sorts. It comes from peddling to other people, thereby creating yet more addicts; it comes from burglary, robbery and so on. All this means a further burden on already overstretched police forces, on courts and on judges—a burden which we can ill afford to bear.
It is a problem which affects us all. It is not perhaps entirely hopeless. There is no use in throwing up one's hands and saying that there is nothing we can do about it. First of all, if one has a pipe leaking in a large number of places, one goes and turns the water off at the source. One wonders how much is being done at the source; and the source for 80 per cent. of heroin is Pakistan. How much effort is being put into persuasion and advice to the Pakistanis as to how to cut down the growing of the poppy, the refining of the poppy and the exporting of the heroin?
The next problem is this. How much is being done by way of research into why youngsters become addicts? Having discovered the answer to that, one hopes, is enough being done to try to educate potential addicts away from it? We have seen a successful campaign against the use of tobacco. Is it beyond the wit of man to devise a similar programme to wean possible addicts away from heroin and cocaine? The question of increased manpower has already been touched upon; and not only in regard to the police. I understand that there has been no possibility of increasing the Metropolitan Police drug squad since 1978. Is enough being done to increase the intelligence services upon which so much rests? Is enough being done, as already has been indicated, to man the channels at Heathrow, Gatwick and other places where this drug mostly enters the country?
Finally, there is the question of punishment. It is not enough simply to impose long terms of imprisonment upon people discovered trafficking in and importing these drugs. It is clear now that the big-time villain has moved away from the High Street bank. He finds it a great deal safer and a good deal more profitable to import and distribute heroin. It is not enough simply to imprison him. What should be done, surely, is to make sure he is divested of every single penny of profit which he has made out of this terrible trade. Unfortunately, the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 was reluctantly interpreted by the appellate jurisdiction of your Lordships' House not to cover this stripping of the importer's or manufacturer's profits. Is it not time that some such legislation was introduced as a matter of urgency to make sure that the profits are stripped from these men? They are very wicked men and they do not deserve very much sympathy, if any. Is it not a case where the burden should be put upon the convicted drug trafficker to show that any assets which he may be seen to have did not arise from trafficking in drugs? That would be described as draconian. I do not generally approve of the principles of Draco being applied to sentencing but, so far as drugs are concerned, there is a good deal to be said for them.
3.43 p.m.
Lord Ferrier: My Lords, I wonder whether the large number of speakers in this debate is indicative of the general acceptance of the importance of this subject
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which the noble Lord, Lord Harris, has so wisely raised or whether—and I hope that this is not the case—there are many more Peers than I know who have been associated with this problem in a personal capacity. Arising out of what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lane, said about research, the gradual process from anorexia nervosa leading to dependence upon narcotics is one of the first problems which I think might be tackled. It is unfortunate that today the time factor means a severe limitation on the depth of the debate and it may be that the usual channels might find that the matter requires another run with a longer debate with more depth. In the light of my experience and that of our closely-knit family, I have more to contribute to your Lordships' considerations than can be covered in a few minutes, so I shall make only one or two salient points.
The noble Lord's Motion is in two parts. He has very vividly dealt with the first part. I turn to the second part because that is the one to which my own experience can apply. It reads:
"to provide adequate resources…for research, education, prevention, treatment and rehabilitation"
seriatim. As to research, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lane, has said, it is open to a great deal more time, care and expense than has yet been given to it. There is more to be done, and I have reason to believe that the medical authorities are working hard at it. Is there any link between a tendency to addiction and the medical history, even from the surgical point of view? Is the process of childbirth connected with any tendency to addiction? Has the production of twins anything to do with the problem?
As for education, is there enough emphasis placed on impressing upon the young that so much as starting an experiment with narcotics is not wise? As Virgil said, "Facilis est descensus Averno". To turn to prevention, there is the ruthless, relentless pursuit of the mischievous, as well as the pursuit to which the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lane, referred—the relentless pursuit of the mischievous or corrupting influence of individuals who are obvious purveyors of evil. Treatment and rehabilitation perhaps go hand in hand. Should there not be more development of facilities to cope with these? The noble Lord, Lord Harris, turned to that. Take Scotland, for instance. The only rehabilitation facilities are provided by voluntary organisations, such as the Church of Scotland. In England there are organisations such as Broadway Lodge and so on, and a great deal of study, I believe, is being given to the care that is being taken in the USA.
It so happens that the state hospital at Carstairs offers outstanding expertise more especially in its influence on delinquents incarcerated on remand. This was a point made by the noble Earl, Lord Longford. I have reason to say that the capacity of this side of the hospital's work in Carstairs is capable of rapid development, and I have enormous respect for it. The Carstairs experiment has proved its worth over a number of years over and over again in many directions.
The next thing is to be wary of "sin-swapping therapy", such as is practised occasionally. There may be something in it; but day centres bring delinquents

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together and in our experience contacts are thus built up which may lead to groups in the future.
My Lords, what I have said is a fraction of what we as a family could contribute. But I will repeat Virgil's words, "Facilis est descensus Averno". I wonder whether television could do anything to continue to press that upon the young.
3.49 p.m.
Lord Perry of Walton: My Lords, my noble friend Lord Harris of Greenwich painted a graphic picture of the drug scene and I can add only that it has been confirmed to me over the past few weeks from many sources ranging from senior medical men to recovered addicts. All share in the recognition of the almost epidemic spread of heroin misuse. All share in the knowledge that most misusers misuse more than one drug. All share in the belief that misuse is more of a sickness than a sign of moral weakness; and all share in the opinion that facilities for coping are woefully inadequate. They do not agree at all about what are the best facilities. Many dedicated altruists, doing yeoman work in the field, are convinced that their method is best; yet none can produce chapter and verse or scientific evidence to support that belief.
But there is one message that I think one most emphasise and that does come through. Although the problems are very difficult and complex, the outlook is not hopeless. There will no doubt always be failures and those who reject treatment, but just yesterday I was told of a private residential treatment centre which admitted only the small number of 73 addicts during 1983 and 1984. Of those, 21 discharged themselves almost all within the first week and of the other 52, 46 are still drug free. That is a remarkable record, and I would take it with a grain of salt. These people were highly self-selected; they came with a lot of family backing; they were people who had enough money to pay; and they were people who were better educated. But still it is a sign of hope that it is possible to get people off drugs. It needs a lot of follow-up and a lot of care from a lot of people. That is the first message.
The best source of information about the current situation is the reports of the advisory council, as other speakers have said. They both show that there is no established base-line; evidence is lacking, and the council concludes that all methods of treatment have a place at the moment and that no one method is intrinsically better than another. They are very cautious about saying that any new treatment should be tried; anything innovative is seen as risky. But things are getting very much worse than they were when the last report was written, and the last report showed that very little had been done in the two years between 1982 and 1984.
The whole tenor of the advice of the council is that all kinds of facilities should be increased and, as I said, they advocate great caution. They advocate—and this is the main point I want to make—leaving things to local institutions, and not centralised co-ordination. They are still prepared to see training left to the professional bodies, despite the fact that, as someone has said, there is an incredible dearth of people who know about the matter. It is everywhere acknowledged that local health authorities, who are short of money,
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as my noble friend Lord Harris said, will relegate drug users to the bottom of the heap. They are still regarded as being somehow to blame for their own misfortunes.
While I sympathise with and understand the reasons for the cautious approach of the advisory council, I am inclined to think that the time has come when a bolder approach must be risked, because the epidemic state of the problem is now such that it is hard to imagine adding to the risks. I should like to see a central initiative where a large increase of funds is earmarked centrally for the control of drug misuse and given locally only for this purpose. I should like to see a central initiative—indeed, a central control—in providing training and education. I should like to see an increased awareness among the public in general of the nature of the problem. I do not want scaremongering, but I do want balanced and dispassionate information, disseminated by as many routes as possible, including the mass media. The public are woefully ignorant.
I do not think that the Government are unaware of or indifferent to these problems, and indeed they have done something about them. I have said that the problems are very complex and the advice they get is very confused. This Motion merely calls upon the Government to intensify their efforts. I very much hope that it will be accepted in this spirit and that a real surge of activity will follow.
3.54 p.m.
Lord Auckland: My Lords, the problems inherent in the Motion which the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Greenwich, is moving this afternoon concern parents, doctors, magistrates, the judiciary and everyone. It is something from which none of us can escape. I recall some years ago, when my wife and I toured a mental hospital in Surrey on whose house committee I then sat prior to reorganisation, seeing a 17 year-old girl who was as white as a sheet and obviously very ill. I remember that we asked the nursing sister, "What is the prognosis for this girl?" She said, "She has about six weeks to live". That pulled us up with a jolt.
It seems to me that the most important part of this Motion is on the educational side. The schools have a major part to play. I believe that even from the primary school stage, if children can be educated, if necessary by visual means and even if it causes a shock, something can be done to bring this menace to the fore.
So far as detection is concerned, I was somewhat heartened by some figures published in yesterday's Scotsman of drugs seized by the Customs. The figure for heroin was 212 kilograms in 1983 and, in 1984, 298 kilograms. My decimal knowledge is not sufficient to transfer that into simple measure, but it throws a little shaft of light, at least, on this matter.
The Customs authorities at the airports do a marvellous job although, as has been mentioned, their staffing at present is far from adequate. Detection is a major problem, and I would submit to your Lordships that, even with increased staffing, detection remains the major problem.
What are the sources of these drugs? In the Sunday Telegraph not long ago I read an article about Colombia and the volume of drugs which comes out of

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that country. They do not come, possibly, directly to this country, but as I understand it they go to Miami and possibly come from Miami to here. I would ask my noble friend the Minister how much research his department has done into the sources—not only Pakistan, but perhaps the lesser known sources—of these drugs.
As I say, our hospitals have a major job to do in treating the addicts who are more seriously affected. I believe that the subject we are discussing this afternoon in all too short a time is one of major importance, and I hope that the Government will take very serious note.
3.58 p.m.
Lord Pitt of Hampstead: My Lords, we are all grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Greenwich, for introducing this subject this afternoon. As the noble Lord, Lord Mancroft, reminded the House, I introduced a similar debate a year ago, and when I was asked by my Chief Whip to take part in this debate I at first thought that I would merely rise and ask the Government what they have done since. Then I changed my mind and decided that I would try to reiterate what I said on that occasion.
It is a fact that there is widespread addiction to heroin and cocaine and that there is plenty of heroin on the street. Two things are needed: the first is trying to prevent the heroin coming into this country and trying to prevent its being distributed. There is also the question of treating the addicts. I challenged on the last occasion the approach to treating the addicts when I said that we were too concerned with restrictions and prohibitions and not sufficiently concerned with treatment and help. Drug addiction is an illness like any other illnesses and should be treated as such. Because it is an illness like any other illnesses, it should be treated on the National Health Service by GPs. That does not mean that there should not be specialist centres, but they should be places to which GPs refer cases and from which GPs get guidance through the greater experience of the specialists in those centres.
In addition, drug addiction is one of the illnesses which require a great deal of time and patience. Therefore GPs cannot tackle too many addicts, because if a GP tries to tackle too many addicts they take over his practice. So GPs should be encouraged to take a certain number of addicts, and to work closely with the specialist centres and also with the voluntary organisations which are doing good and great work in counselling and supporting those addicts. That should be the tripod on which the treatment is based.
It will not automatically end up with lots of addicts being cured, but there will be several cures, and what is more important when an addict reaches the stage where he feels that he wants to kick the addiction, he will be able to get treatment. What happens now is this. Most addicts go through a phase where they want to kick the drug and they go to a centre. But then they are told that there is a waiting list which is sometimes of six weeks and sometimes longer. The doctor does not see that addict after that because he goes back on the street and gets his "treatment". It is not until the addict's next phase when he wants to get off that the doctor will see him. In that phase, he will again he told
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to go on the waiting list, and again the doctor will lose him.
However, the suggestion that I am making is that the addict will go to his GP, the GP will take him on for treatment and the GP will seek help and advice from the specialist centre and from the voluntary organisations, and something will be done. It is easier to get a drug addict off a drug than to keep him off the drug. Most of the addicts with whom I have dealt have been off drugs on several occasions, sometimes for as long as a year or more, and then they go back again.
They need that continuing counselling and support. They need that from their GP and from the other organisations that do this sort of work. I want the Government to recognise that that is the approach required and to see that resources are needed in order that that approach may be effective. I have no doubt that if that is done we can have some success.
4.3 p.m.
Lord Winstanley: My Lords, I would have willingly forfeited my five minutes, instead of distributing them among noble Lords in general, had it been possible to give them to the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chief Justice, whose admirable speech pointed to the very heart of this matter and to precisely those things which the Government should now be doing, and which admirably reinforced the excellent speech of my noble friend Lord Harris.
I shall now come straight to my two points. First, the crucial element in this whole matter is surely law enforcement in relation to the trafficking of drugs of addiction. It is clear that the primary cause of drug addiction is the availability of addictive drugs. Were there no drugs of addiction available, it necessarily follows that there would be no drug addiction. But there are drugs of addiction available and, I am afraid, we have heard that they are now available at a price that is within the means of the most deprived, even if they have to supplement their means by crime or by becoming traffickers themselves.
There are a great many legitimate drugs in circulation for medical reasons. There are something like 5,000 different drugs, about 1,500 of which are effectively different and about 400 of those act directly on the central nervous system. There are three types. First, I would refer to the response reducers, which are drugs like barbiturates. Secondly, there are the response enhancers like the amphetamines, which did such terrible damage in the 'thirties and leading people to heroin. Thirdly, there are what I would call the experience changers, which are drugs like the opiates and which include heroin, cocaine, LSD and cannabis.
I should like to say a word about cannabis. At a time when our resources are overstretched and perhaps inadequate it would be regrettable if we squandered too much in the pursuit of cannabis. I do not say for a moment that cannabis is safe. I say that I do not know. We do not know enough about cannabis. Since the report of the Home Office Advisory Committee on Drug Dependence and that of the committee under the admirable chairmanship of the noble Baroness, Lady Wootton, in the 'sixties, we have learned very little more about cannabis. I know people will tell me that all heroin users have at some time tried cannabis, but

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we must not be misled by the post hoc propter hoc argument. The relationship is statistical rather than causal.
May I explain the difference? If noble Lords went to a strip show in Soho—I do not suggest that they would—they might find the front rows occupied exclusively by middle-aged gentlemen with bald heads. That is a statistical relationship. Were it to be a causal relationship, we would say that observing naked women at close range makes the hair fall out. That is manifestly untrue. There is a statistical relationship between cannabis and heroin that we do not yet know enough about. We do know that in cannabis the molecule of the alkaloid which is active is very similar to the molecule of the alkaloid of the opiates. I think that perhaps there are grounds for anxiety; but let us at least think a little more.
That leads me to the second point that I want to make, which is in regard to research. Research in this matter is essential. As noble Lords have said, we are not going to solve this problem only by punitive measures which may be necessary, purely by law enforcement or by the kind of very necessary steps to which the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chief Justice referred with regard to the assets of drug traffickers. In the end, we shall solve it only if we know a little more about the nature of drug addiction.
The noble Lord, Lord Mancroft, referred to the tragedy of the drug addict in the family. He was right, and it is horrifying. One of the problems is that the family does not know which child is at risk. They came to me as a doctor—as they did for 30 or 40 years—worried about whether Johnny, who was going to Oxford, would become an addict.
But nearly always it was the child whom they were not worried about who became an addict. We must do more research so that we can find out which individual is at risk of becoming an addict and which is not, because we very often find it is unexpected.
We must remember that when we have cured a drug addict the factors in his personality which led him to become an addict, and the factors in the environment which lead to his addiction, will still remain after he has been cured. The answer to many of the problems underlined in this Motion is further research. I make this plea. We must direct much more energy and more resources to research into the nature of drug addiction, into the nature of the substances which lead to drug addiction and indeed into the factors which have led to this sensational, dramatic and terrifying increase in drug addiction in our community.
4.8 p.m.
Baroness Macleod of Borve: My Lords, it is quite impossible to cover this vitally important and escalating subject in the very short time that each of us has available this afternoon. However I seek to show as briefly as I can—certainly within the five minutes—that the Government and the voluntary bodies care and are doing something about it, but I shall take only two examples both of which I personally know about. The first is a statutory centre, to which the noble Lord, Lord Harris, referred, and the second is a voluntary centre.
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The first one is Phoenix House, about which I expect all noble Lords will have heard as being almost a centre of excellence for treating drug addicts. They are referred to the centre or go their voluntarily. This centre is funded entirely by Government money, through he DHSS, the Home Office, the London Boroughs Association and of course the patients' sickness benefit, which is taken and used to help them when they are in residence. There are 65 residents and there are 12 in the resettlement house. It is an 18-month programme, which they are all trying to reduce at the present time. There are 12 full-time staff and one part-time member of staff. There are also volunteers who go in as a support group to help on the psychiatric side with the drug dependent patients.
I am happy to tell your Lordships that Phoenix House now have another branch in Sheffield. They hope to open in South Tyneside in March and they are going to open another branch in Merseyside. The age group at Phoenix House was between 55 and 18; it is now between 24 and 25. The tragedy of what I have learnt in the past 24 hours is that children of 12 and 13 are coming in, hooked on heroin. That is something of which we in this Chamber and throughout the country must all take note. There are also, as noble Lords will know, day centres in London.
Merseyside is one of the worst affected areas in the whole country, presumably because of its proximity to the Liverpool docks. The new Arrow Park hospital, which I visited recently, have a drug centre going but it has existed for only the past 12 months. I must tell noble Lords and my noble friend the Minister that they desperately need funds to enlarge their clinics. They have four new patients a week; 62 per cent. of them have been referred from the courts, the courts having found them guilty of theft and the possession of drugs. A magistrate friend of mine in Merseyside said that recently a referral was made to find out how many robberies in the neighbourhood were connected with drug addiction. The answer was 80 per cent., a terribly high total. The robberies of course occurred at chemist shops to get the drugs, or parents or houses were robbed of money with which to buy the drugs.
In Merseyside, there is a very active parents' concern group which is based on two estates on the outskirts of Liverpool. There is a voluntary organisation called "Compass" which now has 12 training centres dealing with drugs and counselling. Thirty-one counsellors have been lined up to carry out these training programmes to help drug dependent people in the Heswall area.
I know I must not take up any more time, but there are two main problems to which my noble friend Lord Mancroft referred and which I must re-emphasise. First, the patients must know where to go to get help. It should be easy for them to go and get advice. Secondly, I also feel, as do other noble Lords, that, as part of community health education, the schools should initiate advice to their pupils before they leave school. I hope that some of the points that have been mentioned in the House today by noble Lords who know what they are talking about and who do care will be taken note of by the Minister.
4.14 p.m.
Baroness Masham of Ilton: My Lords, this is Youth Year. What value are we putting on youth? They

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challenge society, they can be rebellious, they seek pleasure, they are curious, they are bored and they are unemployed. We must do far, far more.
Addiction has several problems. There is the risk of hepatitis B, a problem about which doctors, nurses and dentists are all very worried. There is the infection of thrombosis and gangrene which comes from injecting tablets. In York alone, last week, there were five cases of hepatitis B. Babies are being born addicted. They cause great problems to the staff in hospitals. Death can happen so easily for those who are addicted. Amphetamines and tranquillisers are a problem, too. So many young people who come into drug centres for treatment are mixing their drugs.
The regional health authorities are not doing enough. I serve on the Yorkshire Regional Health Authority and it has not done what was recommended by the 1982 report. There are 17 health districts and we do not have a regional health authority centre to organise and co-ordinate this work. We have a very good project in Bradford and this idea should be spread around the country. The project gives confidential help to parents, children, professionals and all those coming for advice. It is called the "Bridge Project". We hear throughout the country of all sorts of problems—cocaine at a party given by staff at Cambridge University; ice cream laced with heroin sold outside a school in Liverpool; and jerseys coming in impregnated with heroin and being washed out and the drugs sold.
There is need for more rehabilitation. There should be subtle advertising which will attract young people and tell them where to go—this advice comes from young people whom I know well personally. They do not know where to go. The rich can go to clinics and those sent from court can go to rehabilitation centres, but what of the others? This really is a very great problem.
We must be vigilant. The All-Party Parliamentary Committee on the Misuse of Drugs is working together. This problem of drug abuse must not become a political football. We must work together to fight together; we have a war on our hands. I was once told by a prisoner, "As long as crime pays, we shall continue to do it". We must not let this crime pay, but victims of drug trafficking must be given help.
There is so much we could say. I hope we will have another debate, because it is impossible to go into the subject in depth in such a short time. I know there are other noble Lords who want to speak and others have gone over their time. I shall ask everybody to look carefully in their communities. It is not just the Government; it is the Church, it is the teachers, it is the parents, and it is the police. Last Saturday I was at a conference in York, and the police said, "There is not a problem here". There is a problem. There is a problem in Yorkshire, in Scarborough, in York, in Harrogate, in Richmond, in Leeds, and in Bradford. One can go on; it is a problem for the whole country. We must be united and fight together.
4.18 p.m.
Lord Rodney: My Lords, at the present time, drug misusers are treated as criminals, both within the law and by society in general. A number of committees
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have considered the problem of drug misuse, going back as far as 1926 with the Rolleston Committee, and later on the two Brain Committees, in 1960 and 1965. All of these august bodies recommended, among other things, that addiction should be treated as an illness, and not as a mere form of vicious indulgence. In fact, the first Brain Committee went so far as to endorse the view that addiction should be regarded as an expression of mental disorder, rather than of criminal behaviour, and that the satisfactory treatment of addiction was possible only in suitable institutions. If we can accept that definition, then we should remind ourselves that the mentally handicapped are not usually committed to prison unless they are a threat to society.
At this stage, it would be as well to differentiate between those people who handle drugs to satisfy their own needs only and those who handle drugs purely for financial gain. I make it plain that I am in no way advocating soft treatment of so-called pushers; in my opinion, there is no punishment too severe for them. But in the case of addicts, society's primary object should be to help those unfortunates shake off their habit and resume a normal way of life.
I am fully aware that many drug misusers have inflicted this sickness upon themselves and that while under the influence of drugs they are in many cases extremely anti-social. But we are a caring society and should not simply consign such people to their own purgatory and lock them up in prisons when they are caught possessing drugs. This may sound somewhat idealistic. If it does, then I make no apologies—but there is also a practical side. We hear constantly of overcrowding in prisons, of how much it costs the taxpayer to keep a person in custody, and of the high percentage of first offenders who are back inside prison again within a short time of being released. Add to that the very questionable merits of committing a drug misuser to prison, and then we have a very good case for a complete rethink on how best to restrain and help these sick people.
In 1979 the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs issued a report on drug dependants within the prison system in England and Wales. This stated that all those who were drug-dependent had drugs withdrawn from them during the period of their custody. On the face of it this is very reassuring, but later the report stated that the majority of dependants interviewed declared that on release they would return to their habit. Another real danger is that on release, such dependants will return to the level of dosage to which their systems adapted prior to committal. But, having been drug-free for some time, this constitutes for them a considerable overdose which in some cases has proved fatal.
Probably the most significant argument against prison committal is the lack of specialist knowledge within the prison system and the interruption committal causes to continuous treatment—which may have started before entering prison and which should certainly be continued after release.
In the end, we return to this question: are we to treat drug misusers as criminals or shall we try to help them as much as we possibly can? I recommend much greater use of the parole system, involving compulsory attendance at rehabilitation centres and drug-free

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residential communities. Funding will always be the main stumbling block, but if the Government are really determined to improve the situation, I am sure progress can be made.
An aggravation to the problem is that it is the responsibility of both the Home Office and the Department of Health and Social Security. Evidently, with fewer prison committals, there would be a saving to the Home Office. But if the DHSS is to make available adequate residential centres, which are absolutely essential to this proposal, then they will accrue extra costs.
I urge Her Majesty's Government at least to undertake an inquiry into the feasibility of these suggestions. It may be that the recently-established inter-departmental working party under the chairmanship of the Under-Secretary of State at the Home Office will have the authority to undertake such an inquiry.
4.24 p.m.
Earl Attlee: My Lords, like other noble Lords, I am indebted to my noble friend Lord Harris of Greenwich for initiating this debate. I hope that, as a result, Her Majesty's Government will be forced to take more effective steps to combat the ever-increasing illegal sale and use of drugs in this country. Your Lordships may have read last week the shocking story in the newspapers of a teenager who had an illegitimate child and who, by the age of 15, was on the streets selling her body to earn the £50 a day she needed to buy hard drugs. That was £50 a day seven days a week and 365 days a year. I hate to think how much money is being spent now.
How do young people get on to drugs? Everyone seems to have different ideas. That a bad example should be set is not very surprising when one considers the idols of the young today; a transvestite pop star, female film and television stars who have illegitimate children, and soccer and cricket stars who are often in the newspapers because of their misuse of drugs.
I have argued with young people about drug addiction. Invariably, young people of both sexes will claim that smoking cannabis is not habit-forming, does no harm and is not addictive—but, as my noble friend Lord Winstanley has said, there is some doubt about those claims. And more often than not these young people then point an accusing finger at me and say, "We may smoke pot but we do not smoke tobacco." I admit that I am a cigarette smoker and that I am addicted to cigarettes. But if one smokes cigarettes as I do, where is the downward path? Does it lead to pipes and cigars? It is said that they are less dangerous than cigarettes—so one is gravitating from a dangerous addiction to a less dangerous addiction.
What about the cannabis smoker? It is true that many young people smoke cannabis with no apparent ill effects. But all too many move on from cannabis to hard drugs. It must be difficult for a young person at school to refuse to conform. Their friends smoke cannabis, and if they do not do so then they are made to feel out of it—outsiders. And since the reasoning is that cannabis is non-habit forming and harmless, all too often they give in. Then when hard drugs come on
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the scene, having given in once, it is all too easy to give in again.
My noble friend Lord Harris referred to the deeply damaging growth in the traffic in heroin and cocaine. He is right about that; something must be done, and the Government must do it. They must spend more money detecting drugs being imported. They must spend more money on apprehending importers, distributors and pushers. And they must spend more money on preventive education. Finally, when such persons are apprehended, not only should they receive very long prison sentences but they and their families should be deprived of all their ill-gotten gains.
4.28 p.m.
Baroness Hornsby-Smith: My Lords, like many Members of your Lordships' House, I have torn my speech into pieces today. I am sure other noble Lords agree with me that this debate is too short for so important a subject. The spread of heroin addiction is increasingly affecting the young and destroying their physique—all too often resulting in their death.
I can take your Lordships back to 1949, when the World Health Organisation and the Social Council of United Nations recorded that only seven countries out of the then total of 82 were opposed to dispensing with heroin and urged governments to prohibit the manufacture, import and export of heroin save for scientific purposes. After an intensive investigation in the Ministry of which I was a member, the issue was raised again in a suggestion for strict licensing which was brought before your Lordships' House after a massive campaign against the banning by the BMA. After opposition in your Lordships' House, the Government conceded that the Motion had to be withdrawn. That was in 1955.
In 1958 I represented the Government at the United Nations when, on the item on the agenda concerning the international report of the narcotics committee, I had to report that we had 52 registered addicts in England and Wales and two on Scotland, and that they were all over 40. For six years I had responsibility at the Ministry for mental health. In those days it was difficult to find selected wards with more than four to six patients. The patients were nearly all middle-aged. Today they are nearly all young, and one sees the tragic effects on young lives.
We make a very big mistake when we assume that all addicts are deprived people. Too many acquire the habit away from the watchful eye of their parents while at university, college or boarding school where they would not be if they were not academically qualified. Proud of their abilities and with the exuberance of over-confident youth, they feel that they can try anything once and are often convinced that they will know when to stop. Too many get hooked and cannot stop.
I agree with everything that has been said about additional treatment and clinics, but we have to prevent addiction. It is in the field of education that we have to fight. I am appalled by the trendy attitude of teachers, dons and tutors who have said to personal friends of mine, "I could not possibly warn you that your boy was taking drugs. I would lose his confidence." If they saw that same boy drowning they would be the first to rush to his rescue. Why cannot

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they take the same attitude with a boy who may be killing himself with heroin? We have to work just as hard on prevention and on making the contact between parents and educationists much closer in the interests of the young whom we seek so desperately to serve and save from this lethal drug.
4.32 p.m.
Lord Rea: My Lords, I hope to keep your Lordships for not more than three minutes, I too, having heavily chopped what I intended to say. For the sake of brevity, I shall omit the customary acknowledgements to previous speakers.
It is worth pointing out that to finance adequately the sort of measures we are discussing will not be very costly as Government expenditure goes: say twice the money that has been spent already, but on an annual basis of £25 million or so. It will pay immediate dividends. It is also worth drawing attention to the billions of pounds which come from tobacco and alcohol tax revenue—finance which, incidentally, is hardly used at all by the Government to curb these addictions. I suppose one could say that the Government are showing reluctance to bite the blood-stained hand that feeds them. I ask your Lordships to think what a little extra tax on a packet of cigarettes could provide. A quick calculation that I made on figures given to me by ASH shows that one extra penny on a packet of cigarettes could produce £50 million per annum, which is more than enough to cope with all the measures which people are suggesting for combating heroin addiction.
May I deal briefly with three aspects of the strategy for coping with heroin abuse? First, the training of all professions working in this field—not only doctors, but social workers and the police—must be improved. Several other speakers have mentioned this, and it is a point made by the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs in its report on prevention and also in its previous report on treatment and rehabilitation. This should be done at basic course level, and there should be refresher courses. Noble Lords may be interested to know that at lunchtime today I was running a meeting for Bloomsbury general practitioners on the problem of heroin addiction.
Secondly, I understand that £2 million is proposed to be spent on a large-scale publicity campaign about the dangers of heroin addiction. I consider that this may well be counter-productive. It first needs careful evaluation on a small scale. As the report on prevention says:
"There is a…risk of stimulating interest where none previously existed".
Research is vital—and I very much support the noble Lord, Lord Winstanley, on this—looking into both prevention and the relative effects of the different methods of treatment and rehabilitation. However, the funding of research needs to be long-term, not bit by bit, making people think about drawing up plans for re-applying for their grant every year.
For example, the drug indicators project, which is attached to the University College Hospital Drug Dependency Unit and has produced most of the figures on which Home Office estimates on the prevalence of the problem in the country are based,
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has had to re-apply for fresh funding on several occasions during its four-year lifespan. Again, I quote from the report on prevention:
"The danger of short-term 'pump-priming' exercises is that they lead to a concentration on angling for funds, to a period of uncertainty followed by retraction of services, and this is clearly an inefficient use of public funds".
The drug indicators project which I have mentioned has put forward an excellent plan for a future research programme to look into the relative effectiveness of different approaches to treatment and rehabilitation. I believe that it would be incredibly shortsighted of the Government if this excellent unit had to close down for lack of funds.
4.37 p.m.
Lord Inglewood: My Lords, I am very glad that the noble Lord, Lord Harris, has raised this important and difficult matter this afternoon. He knows a great deal about it and the different sides of the subject. In the course of the very few minutes that we have I shall speak about one side only—the supply and traffic of drugs.
I do not believe that we can clear this up by just putting more powers on the statute book. We must possibly consider more men being made available, not just policemen and customs men but devoted and skilled men from all the agencies that there may be in the country. The police are not short of powers for dealing with drugs but they are short of manpower, and the control of drug supply is very demanding on the time of the customs and the police. It involves the long drawn-out business of what they call surveillance in their jargon, and I do not think that all of us realise how much time can be spent by a squad of men following one particular line.
We have already heard mentioned this afternoon the customs and the police working together. I was disturbed when I heard that the number of customs men in this country has gone down, but it was not long ago that I thought that they were on the increase rather than the decrease. Perhaps the Minister will be able to tell us the position. The customs and police are important and they should be working together at our ports, where this material is imported.
I was disturbed, too, when I heard—although I am not quite sure whether it is right—something about privatisation. British Transport Police are being withdrawn from Associated British Ports, Southampton Docks, South Wales ports and the Humber ports. What can be the result of this? There must be some results. Again I hope that we may hear something this afternoon.
I turn to rural areas. I am told that the offence of holding supplies of drugs and of trafficking is on the increase in the more remote rural areas. Profits can be very large. There are certain long-established criminal elements in this country who work more regularly in the town than in the country. However, I am assured that they are waking up to the fact that very large profits are easily made in the country.
In my last few sentences I have a few ideas to put forward. In most police forces we have drug squads, but not in all. No doubt they have their reasons for organising themselves differently. I wonder whether we could not attack this drugs question on the basis of

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the regions, which are rather larger than the areas covered by most of our rural police forces. Then there is the decision about how many men can be employed on general duties or how many are specialists. That is a problem which is to be found in every police force.
Finally, let us keep up something which is expensive as well as important, because our police officers must travel abroad from time to time to liaise with those in other countries. I believe that has been mentioned briefly this afternoon, too. If this problem is going to be solved, it is not going to be solved by any one country, by America alone or by any individual country in Western Europe: a solution will not be provided by any one country. It is going to be provided by the efforts of many countries working together. I hope that when that happens Britain will be right in the forefront.
4.41 p.m.
Lady Saltoun: My Lords, you cannot search every person, parcel, load, ship, vehicle and aircraft coming into this country; it really would be impossible. Therefore, you have to concentrate on those which you have particular reason to suspect of carrying drugs. A very high proportion of carriers slip through the net. Therefore, I think we must turn to deterrence and to the guidelines laid down by the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chief Justice in Aramah in 1983 for sentences on importers of Class A drugs: that is, seven years' imprisonment and upwards for consignments worth £100,000 or more and 12 to 14 years' imprisonment for consignments worth £1 million or more.
While I should like to see even longer sentences imposed on importers and suppliers of Class A drugs—who, after all, are indirectly guilty of premeditated multiple murder for financial gain—I bow to the wisdom and experience of the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chief Justice. But the guidelines under Aramah do not touch on three points. The first point is the erosion of the sentence by remission. The second point is the abuse of sentencing by the parole system. Taken together, these points make complete nonsense of any sentence a judge may impose. I hope the Home Office will consider this carefully, because the expense involved in keeping these criminals in prison for the full length of their sentences would surely be offset by the saving in the cost of rehabilitating drug addicts, where possible, and of the human misery and crime to which drug-taking leads.
Thirdly, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lane, said, the guidelines make no suggestion that the property of the criminal should be sequestrated, so that he goes into prison with nothing but the clothes he stands up in and comes out with nothing but the clothes in which he went in, and so that there is no question of his coming out to enjoy the fruits of his nefarious trafficking, as he can at present. I should not be too choosy about how his property had been acquired; I should just sequestrate the whole lot.
Finally, I might add that the Government could perhaps spend less on combating cigarette smoking and more on combating hard drug addiction. I have never yet heard of anyone who went out and committed a murder as a result of smoking too many cigarettes.
4.43 p.m.
Lord Bruce-Gardyne: My Lords, I had not intended to inflict myself on your Lordships this afternoon since I did not really feel qualified to enter into the arguments about this terrifying problem. However, may I in passing just pick up a comment by the noble Lord, Lord Winstanley, and one by the noble Earl, Lord Attlee? I must say that I do agree with the noble Lord, Lord Winstanley, that we could with advantage, perhaps, devote rather less of our resources to the pursuit of cannabis and relatively rather more of our resources to the pursuit of the hard drugs.
Similarly, in listening to the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, I was reflecting that I, too, being an addict of tobacco, sometimes wonder whether, if I had to go and buy my cigarettes from a pusher, I should not thereby be more likely to be driven to what is a much more interesting proposition for the pusher—namely, the hard drugs—than I am since I can obtain my cigarettes from a legal source. Perhaps that is also a matter about which we should wonder.
The only reason I have for intervening this afternoon is that, having listened to the noble Lord, Lord Harris, giving a trailer (if I can so describe it) on the wireless this morning of his very important debate this afternoon, I realised that in the context of this debate I was almost in the position of a convicted criminal. That is because I must freely confess that when I was a Minister responsible for Customs and Excise at the Treasury I was involved in the process of encouraging and urging the Customs and Excise to achieve greater economy of manpower. I must confess that in the context of this debate I am on the whole an unrepentant criminal in the sense that I dare to suggest to the noble Lord, Lord Harris, that we need to ask ourselves whether we should in fact achieve a more effective policing of drugs on entry into the United Kingdom by a greater concentration on the uniformed force, such as he has suggested.
Certainly when I was at the Treasury responsible for Customs and Excise, from the information I was given I could not see that the modern methods of importing hard drugs into this country were likely to respond to enhanced police forces or enhanced uniformed Customs forces in either channel at Customs and Excise. When people are bringing in the drugs, as they are, in condoms in the body, or alternatively in highly sophisticated compartments in long-distance lorries and the like, there is no chance whatsoever that this is going to yield at all effectively to random searches in the green channel, or, for that matter, in the red.
Hence I believe that we were right, and I believe that the Government are right today, to concentrate the effort on the intelligence resources so that the Customs and Excise are alerted, as best they can be, to where the traffic is coming from. Frankly, I believe that we could double, treble, quadruple or multiply by ten the number of Customs and Excise officers in the green and red channels and it would not do us a bit of good. We need to have the intelligence and to concentrate the effort there. Therefore, I believe we have been absolutely right to concentrate our resources in that direction.
It is only for that reason that I dare to stand before your Lordships as a convicted criminal, in the context

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of this debate, for the responsibility I had, involving, as it did, some diminution in the number of Customs officers. I do not believe it affected the argument at all in the circumstances of this debate today.
4.48 p.m.
Lord Donaldson of Kingsbridge: My Lords, I should much like to follow the noble Lord's most interesting and convincing speech about the necessity for intelligence, but there is not time. One proposition has arisen today upon which I want to ask the Government to come back to us. That is the perfectly clear proposition put forward by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lane, that convicted drug pushers should be deprived, in some way or other, of their profits and, indeed, so far as possible, of their existing assets. I should like the Government definitely to come back to us here and say what they are doing about this proposition. It is clearly practical and it would clearly be useful.
Otherwise, I want to confine myself to one narrow part of the problem here. The greatest difficulty in doing anything to help drug dependants is that they never ask for help until it is too late. However, in one area, that of the courts and the prisons, they show up involuntarily. Ten years ago at Brixton there was a drugs unit to which everyone about whom there was any suspicion of drug-taking was automatically sent, whatever his alleged crime and wherever he was arrested. The doctor in charge when I visited the unit, I suppose 10 or 12 years ago, said he had no difficulty, as the noble Lord, Lord Rodney, said, in weaning them off drugs. In doing so, he saved them from some of the very desperate withdrawal symptoms that people who are suddenly deprived of drugs can suffer. However, as soon as they were released, they went straight back to Piccadilly and started up again. What he wanted was somewhere—a hostel I suppose—where he could send them for counselling and help in the very difficult process of breaking the habit.
A number of noble Lords have spoken about this. The unit was shut down and hostel facilities have not been provided on a scale in any way relevant to the size of the problem. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chelmsford has already told the House about addicts in Chelmsford who have to go to Hackney for help. My view—I press it on the Government—is that something like the Brixton unit should be reinstated, and immediately reinstated, not only in Brixton, but at a number of other prisons as well, and some effort should be made to provide the necessary follow-up hostels area by area.
I wanted to talk at length about hostels and training of the kind that we give in NACRO but time does not allow. The Brixton unit had a further valuable function. It isolated the drug suspects from normal prison life, where I fear it is nearly as easy today to obtain hard drugs from the tobacco barons as it always has been to obtain tobacco. I hope that the noble Lord the Minister will be able to deny this. If so, I shall be very pleased. But the Prison Officers' Association's excellent report on drug abuse in prisons says that it has developed in prisons into big business, and I can well believe it.
With any problem as widespread and dangerous as my noble friend Lord Harris has shown this to be, one
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must tackle it wherever it shows its head. The courts, the probation service and prison are an area where it shows its head every day of the week. In my opinion, nothing adequate is being done about it. I hope that something adequate will be done.
4.52 p.m.
Baroness Lane-Fox: My Lords, in case my noble friend the Minister needs more proof of public concern about the need for extra funds to combat current drug problems, perhaps I may report on Thames Television's Telethon 1985. I was recently appointed chairman of their trust, in charge of setting up and organising this great fund-raising opportunity. The method is to present on television a star-spangled marathon entertainment over 24 hours, laced with films and statements about selected charities in Thames Television's area, after which viewers will be invited to phone in and pledge their financial support. The last such telethon was an outstanding success, and this time we mean to do all we can to make it still better.
As 1985 is International Youth Year, those who benefit will be the charities dealing with children and youth. And here I come to the reason for my intervention in this debate. Prominent among these will be charities to combat the spread of, and effect of, drugs among young people. The charities will be invited to send in details round about Easter so that they may be considered among many which are expected to stake their claim for selection. Alas, not all will be selected.
My reason, again, for intervening in the debate, is to assure my noble friend the Minister that there is no doubt in our minds that drugs abuse and the desperate need for funds to fight it is sufficiently recognised as a subject to have an absolute claim to the attention of the public and that it should be included as an object for the fund-raising programme.
I am sure that it is the wish of my noble friend the Minister to back up the efforts made to prevent the spread of this vicious disease and to attempt to repair the damage being done. By spending more money on this urgent crisis now, the Government can save a fortune later in hospital and social services, not to mention immeasurable distress and waste in human terms.
4.55 p.m.
Lord Kilmarnock: My Lords, let me try to summarise the situation in five minutes and make five points, giving one minute to each. First, there is greater availability of heroin than ever before. Not long ago it was traded at £60 a gramme, half the price of two years earlier. It can now be bought by teenagers for £5 or £10 in a bag. It is the only addictive substance that has decreased sharply in value since the Government came to power. The record seizures, to which the Government may be inclined to refer, are also likely to be an indication of record sales.
The second point is that the Government are not unaware of the seriousness of the situation. They have pledged £12 million. That is over three years, expiring, I understand, at the end of this year. No doubt, the

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noble Lord will correct me if I am wrong. I also gather that only £3 million remain unallocated. We shall therefore expect the noble Lord to give an indication of the Government's plans for future funding and its order of magnitude, which will have to be larger than the present tranche. These funds should be earmarked, as my noble friend Lord Perry has said. A writer in The Lancet said in relation to the current £12 million:
"It would be naïve to suppose that it will be sufficient to bring this serious problem within the coping capabilities of the services".
Four million pounds a year means £100 a year per addict or £2 a week if a conservative figure of 40,000 addicts is accepted. Almost all speeches this evening have argued for more resources. In the light of these figures, I hope that the noble Lord will acknowledge that the demands are almost irresistible.
The third point is that the Government have set up an inter-departmental ministerial group on the misuse of drugs, chaired by the noble Lord's colleague, Mr. Mellor, and with participation by the Department of Education and Science, the Scottish and Welsh Offices, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, ODA and the DoE, all of which have an interest. This is clearly to be welcomed, but it is alarming to learn that the bids by health authorities and voluntary bodies for new money have been subjected to long delay. There are only two addiction units on Merseyside, I understand, and one application, for that area of all places, took 13 months to process before it was turned down. The money, I gather, is DHSS money. Can the noble Lord say more about the procedure for getting it? Can he assure the House that bureaucratic barriers will be dismantled?
The fourth point is that £2 million of the Government's £12 million is set aside, again over three years, I understand, for a prevention campaign. I gather that the Government have commissioned market research on target groups and intend next to commission advertising agents to prepare a high profile media campaign. Is this the right way to go about it when there is some evidence that this approach tends to highlight and even glamourise specific drugs and may increase abuse? I think that the noble Lord, Lord Rea, shared this worry. Would it not be better, at least in parallel, to top up the Health Education Council's limited funds to enable them to tackle the problem at the root as part of a general health education campaign in schools, youth clubs and Rotary clubs, etc., for which video films and cassettes are the most suitable vehicle?
The Health Education Council also needs money for research into the pattern and causes of addiction, and for the professional training and updating of doctors and nurses. That was a point to which the noble Lord, Lord Mancroft, referred. I want to hear from the noble Lord, Lord Elton, that the Government will provide more funds for the Health Education Council. I know that they have had £100,000, but this is just a drop in the ocean. I shall listen with the greatest care to the noble Lord's answer on this point.
Finally, some have said that this should not be seen as a political debate. Indeed, there is a very real sense in which it is the concern of all of us regardless of party, as the noble Earl, Lord Longford, said. It
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would, however, be naïve to pretend that there is no political dimension. The epidemic has to be set in the context of youth unemployment. A causal connection cannot be proved, but the correlation is striking as 30 per cent. of known drug misusers are in the 16 to 24 age bracket and 60 per cent. are aged between 24 and 35.
The causes of that unemployment and how it is to be diminished belong to another debate; I seek to apportion no blame this evening. But we cannot overlook the legion of youth without work or very much hope. They are a fact that must spur the Government to take the more vigorous action for which the Motion calls. It means, of course, more manpower and more money. Obviously, we shall listen carefully to the noble Lord, Lord Elton, but unless he can offer some substantial assurance as to the Government's intentions my noble friend may feel he should press the Motion to a Division.
5 p.m.
Lord Mishcon: My Lords, what a salutary oratorical discipline your Lordships have undergone this afternoon! I shall impose upon myself exactly that same measure of discipline in order that the noble Lord the Minister may rise with an appropriate latitude of time for what I am sure will be his welcome speech. It would be churlish, even in a short speech, not to pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Harris, for bringing this matter before us, and to all your Lordships who have spoken. If I may single out the contribution by the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chief Justice, I am sure it will not be thought to be to the detriment of any other speaker.
I think it also would be churlish not to pay tribute to the Government. It may be that some of the Members of your Lordships' House, regardless of party, have tried from time to time to put pressure upon the Government, but nevertheless it would be churlish not to pay tribute to the fact that the inter-departmental group of Ministers has been set up; that some expenditure has been set aside; that there has been an addition to one side of Customs, on their investigatory work. At this stage I would immediately want to echo what the noble Lord, Lord Harris, said and what the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, said about the need, as I understand it, to see that the police and the uniform branch of Customs deal with this matter adequately. It is a very important matter and it is a matter that intelligence alone cannot deal with.
At once I come on to the question of deterrence. There I, too, would feel that the contribution made by the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chief Justice is worthy of the greatest investigation. We are dealing with people who conspire to murder. They do it for the most sordid of motives—that is, gain—and I assure your Lordships that, if legislation is needed, those who sit with me on these Benches will support anything that can be done to take away from them that gain, and to punish them.
My first message, if I may give it, is, "Please give this priority". We are always told in this House that expenditure has calls upon it for so many worthy objectives. There could not be a worthier objective than this one, because we are fighting the cause of a generation that otherwise may suffer so devastatingly if

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this horrible problem of drugs is not dealt with. It has been said that nobody quite knows why there is this addiction at this time. I thought that the noble Lord who has just spoken was so right when he said that it would be common sense to believe that at least one of the causes was boredom, enforced leisure, unemployment. It may be, of course, some sort of adventure.
Having said that, and having pleaded for priority, may I plead also for propaganda? Here again I know that the Government have some intentions. I hope the Government will not be frightened of that warning which is given—that propaganda may lead to some people wanting to experiment. I can only tell your worships—I thought I was in another place! I can only tell your Lordships this: the frightening sequences of drug addiction must be shown to our youngsters, in every shape and form—on television, in the media, at schools, and everywhere else. We have got to take the chance. I hope, with others, that there will be increased expenditure on the treatment centres, which are so necessary, as my noble friend Lord Pitt of Hampstead said, in order that the GPs can refer to them.
My last plea is this. There is now a gap (I believe my noble friend Lord Pitt of Hampstead referred to this) in that those who, happily, are cured—temporarily cured—of drug addiction, have, because of their problems, no counselling whatsoever, be it on the question of being homeless or be it on the reasons for their original drug addiction; and so the need for money to be spent on counselling after the doctors have done their best is so very essential. I know that this House, on all sides—how right to say there are no politics in this—hopes that the Government will prevent a Division tonight by showing that they really have constructive and worthy answers to the debate so well initiated by the noble Lord, Lord Harris.
5.5 p.m.
Lord Elton: My Lords, we are grateful for the opportunity of discussing what is a matter of the gravest importance. That it is of the gravest importance is clear from the terms of the Motion, from the number of your Lordships who have spoken to it, and from what has been said. Indeed, so many noble Lords have spoken that I cannot, within the time permitted, do as I usually do and acknowledge the points made by every noble Lord in his speech; and I shall be writing afterwards to a number of your Lordships.
Drugs misuse sucks from its victims their health, their wealth, their happiness, and sometimes their very lives. It is not a dragon that they are chasing; it is a vampire with fangs that are poisonous. Statistics—and we cannot conduct this debate without statistics—may measure the problem but they do not begin to describe it. You cannot measure sorrow. The son or the daughter lost to the love of parents, lost to health, lost to home, perhaps lost to life, is a tragedy for a complete family; but he or she adds only one solitary figure to one year's total. The threshold of casualties, as my noble friend Lady Hornsby-Smith has said, gets younger. Today we have heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Masham, of 12-year-old addicts and, I understand, even pre-natal addicts. My Lords, you do not need to remind the Government that this is an urgent problem; we know.
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The statistics are, we know, deeply worrying. In 1983 the number of addicts notified to the Home Office went up by 42 per cent. to 5,850. There can be dispute about how many more there are, but it is not disputed that they are many. It is too soon to give a figure for last year, but it seems likely that it has increased again; and the number of addicts who are not notified and of the misusers of other drugs, who are not required to be notified, is of course much higher still.
The Motion directs our attention only to heroin and cocaine. But we cannot look at parts of this problem in isolation. Certainly heroin and cocaine are the drugs which give the greatest concern today; but there are other addictive drugs on the streets and they also carry the seeds of misery and destruction. We cannot afford to ignore any of them, for if we ignore the lesser danger today it may become the greater—indeed, the overwhelming—danger tomorrow. My answer to this debate must therefore go wider than these two drugs.
The problem is very serious, and it shows no signs of getting less. I revert again to statistics to say that the number of new addicts notified in 1983 was 50 per cent. up on those in 1982. Customs seized a record quantity of heroin last year; the provisional figure was 298 kilos, which I think has been correctly quoted, against 212 the year before. I do not entirely accept, though I of course accept in part, that this represents a possible considerable increase in the inflow. I do believe that the measures we are now taking are resulting in a higher proportion of interceptions, for reasons to which I shall return. Nonetheless, the street price of heroin is low and its purity is high. That indicates plentiful supplies. This is a problem that does indeed call (as does the Motion) for vigorous action.
The present Home Secretary recognised drugs misuse as a major issue as soon as he took office. It is a complex problem that cannot be taken on by a single department. The Home Office is the lead department because it is responsible for the police and that is why I am at the Dispatch Box this afternoon. But I speak for many colleagues, and my noble friend Lord Mancroft pointed to this as a possible source of confusion. The Treasury is responsible for Customs and Excise; Education is responsible for schools; Health and Social Security is responsible for the medical and welfare services. All these departments, too, are crucially involved. So are their Scottish, Welsh and Northern Ireland equivalents; and so, in the international field, are the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the overseas development administration. That can lead to difficulty and I shall draw the attention of my honourable friends to the difficulties which my noble friend Lord Mancroft suggested arose from this situation.
I come to my first point. In 1984, the Government set up a new ministerial group, chaired by my honourable friend Mr. David Mellor, to bring together all the Government agencies concerned with drug abuse and to develop policy. The group has five objectives. The first of these goes beyond the terms of the Motion and I shall return to it briefly at the end. The remainder are to strengthen controls on drugs produced and prescribed in this country; to increase the effectiveness of policing; to reinforce deterrence;

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and to improve prevention, treatment and rehabilitation. I shall summarise what we are doing under those headings starting briefly with the work to strengthen controls on drugs produced and prescribed in this country.
My right honourable friend the Home Secretary has acted swiftly, on the advice of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, to subject dipipanone to the same restrictions on prescribing as heroin and cocaine. My right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Social Services has set up an expert medical working group to consider whether we can, and should, extend the same licensing requirement to all opioid drugs.
My right honourable friend the Home Secretary has acted equally decisively to check irresponsible prescribing. Three directions were issued against doctors in 1983 and four last year. Four weeks ago we brought an order into force bringing barbiturates and certain other drugs under the tight control of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971; and, in view of the grave damage that can be done by drugs stolen from places where they are kept in quantity, we are examining carefully the advisory council's recommendations on the security of controlled drugs in pharmacies and hospitals.
These measures will significantly increase our control of drugs produced and prescribed in this country. But as the Motion recognises, home produced drugs are not, at the moment, the greatest threat with which we have to cope. It directs our attention particularly to others and to what we do about them once they have arrived in this country. That brings me to the police.
By 1st January this year every police force in England and Wales had established its own specialist drug squad. There are now some 1,000 police officers in regional crime squads and in drugs squads with a major commitment to investigation of drug related crime. Dealing with this sort of crime is a specific task in the terms of reference of regional crime squads. They form a highly specialised network of experienced detectives, trained especially in surveillance skills. Unlike ordinary units operating within a single force, their structure enables them to cross the boundaries between one police force and another and as drugs trafficking networks spread across the country, their contribution is a vital one. They now spend nearly half their time on drug-related crime.
The attention of individual police forces has also been deliberately focused upon drug abuse by Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Constabulary. In his statement of strategy for 1985, published on 17th January, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lane, will be interested to know that the Commissioner made it clear that drug offences are one of the six types of criminal offences specially listed for priority in detection work by the Metropolitan Police. No doubt he will deploy his forces, which have been considerably increased in recent years, in an appropriate way: that is for him.
We face a rapidly changing problem; and in rapidly changing circumstances, traditional responses and traditional organisational structures from which they come are not always the best or the most efficient. We
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must not rely uncritically on what we have thought to be good enough in the past. Last April therefore the Association of Chief Police Officers set up a committee to review their existing arrangements and to see whether the police are now organised in the best way for drugs operations. They are after the top end of the drug market and that is, very often, a regional matter. But they are also looking closely at the organisation at force level and will be reporting progress in April when the Association of Chief Police Officers holds its next national drugs conference.
These measures make a heightening of police alertness and efficiency in the drugs field. They are in addition to the massive expansion of police strength and resources, and the thorough modernisation of police powers which have occupied the Government since 1979 and which render local police forces increasingly effective against petty local pushers.
The third limb of our policy is deterrence. Catching a drug trafficker or pusher is an important deterrent, but it does not suffice alone. Deterrence also depends on punishing him when you have caught him. That is why my right honourable friend the Home Secretary decided to restrict severely the granting of parole for people sentenced to more than five years in prison for trafficking in drugs—a decision for which I remember the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Greenwich, criticised him very severely at the time. But like my noble friend Lord Rodney, we believe that there is a distinction between the trafficker and his victim. These traffickers are the criminals who have brought upon countless innocent people the dreadful degradation and misery of addiction. I believe that my right honourable friend marked the real feelings of society when he made that decision.
The most lethal drugs are Class "A", and I believe that we again marked the real feelings of society when we decided last October that we should, for further deterrence, increase the maximum penalty for trafficking in these drugs—which include the heroin and cocaine which appear in the Motion—from 14 years to life imprisonment. My honourable friend Mr. Keith Raffan has now introduced a Bill in another place to give effect to that intention. Even if they know that they may first be caught and then be gaoled for a long time, determined traffickers will still, as noble Lords have said, push their wares if they believe that afterwards they will enjoy the rich spoils of their trade. How warmly I echo what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lane, has said in this regard. My right honourable friend has therefore announced that he intends to introduce legislation in this Parliament which will deprive them of the proceeds of their crimes. Those three steps will together constitute a massive increase in our deterrent policy.
In the context of deterrence, I should say that when we have got the offender into prison, the problem is not at an end. I say that for the reasons that the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson, and others gave. I am concerned that drugs do get smuggled into prisons. In order to assess the problem accurately, we have issued new and tighter directions for the reporting of drug incidents and we now have much better intelligence about what is going on. For detection, we find that the trained dogs that we have are exceedingly effective in

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locating the drugs. We are increasing the establishment of those from 28 to 40. All 40 should be at work by the middle of next month. By March we shall have six or eight more in reserve. In addition to the dog searches carried out at the request of individual prison governors, we are also shortly starting a separate programme of searches of all dispersal prisons.
We are also preparing at the prison service college a completely new drugs training package specifically for the prison service. I expect it to be issued to all establishments by next summer. The training we already provide in the prison service about drugs is also being revised.
The prime targets for the police are the trafficker and the pusher. The prime targets for the pusher are the gullible and the weak. For that reason they are particularly apt to prey upon the young and we must put the young on their guard. This brings me to education.
The responsibility for providing education rests with the local education authorities. The first step, therefore, has been to establish what their practices are in these matters. My right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Education has accordingly commissioned from Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Schools a survey of policy and practice in over 400 schools and colleges of education. The results have come recently to hand, together with those of the department's own soundings of the local authorities, and the product of market research commissioned jointly by that department and the Department of Health and Social Security. This is a large and important body of work and will form the basis of further actions that my right honourable friend is at present planning.
The market research undertaken was principally in order to establish possible strategies and target groups for a major education and information campaign aimed at parents and young people. The noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, suggested that something of this kind was needed. In the light of their findings the Government have now appointed an advertising agency to develop proposals for a media campaign. We expect to announce further details next month. I can tell my noble friend Lord Auckland that we shall also be issuing advice leaflets to parents. The Department of Education and Science is also sending a circular to local education authorities inviting them to co-ordinate their efforts locally with other statutory services. We are there dealing with the possibility of confusion at the other end of the administrative pyramid.
However effective our policies may be, we shall continue to have a drug dependency problem and a drug problem generally for a long time to come. Therefore, I agree that we must provide a service for the victims.
I turn to the Department of Health and Social Security. When we debated this subject last year, my noble friend Lady Trumpington spoke of the £6 million which was then being provided by the department to help local projects get off the ground—projects of various kinds to which noble Lords have referred. Since that debate this sum has been increased by stages until it now stands at £10
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million. No fewer than 90 projects have so far been approved for grants to a value of £6,700,000. The department's initiative was over-subscribed and that is why decisions on some desirable applications have taken some time to process. Some of the good projects for which applications have been received will be considered for funding from the additional £3 million to be made available. The guidelines of good clinical practice, which have been issued by the Department of Health and Social Security, direct themselves to the problems outlined by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chelmsford, and others. They are guidelines in good clinical practice in the treatment of drug misuse and were recently issued to all doctors to encourage general practitioners to treat addicts, and to general psychiatrists to advise and assist general practitioners in treating addicts.
Health services are provided by the regional health authorities. In June my right honourable friend the Secretary of State sent a circular to these authorities underlining the priority that he wished them to give to drugs matters. This required them to report back by the end of last month on the extent of the problem in their areas and their preliminary plans for tackling it. All the replies have now been received. The department is following up all these replies and urgently seeking information not yet provided. Ministers will then give careful consideration to the fully developed plans due at the end of March. Where plans seem inadequate they will pursue the matter with the authorities concerned, as they are responsible for the provision of health services for drug misusers.
Your Lordships will notice how often I am saying that we are seized of a problem, are working on it and will deploy the answer shortly. Let me remind the House that scarcely a single gramme of heroin or cocaine has its origin in this country. Virtually all of it comes from abroad, and so do other dangerous drugs. It is vital that we intercept and destroy it as it arrives and that, where we can, we stop it arriving at all.
Your Lordships probably already know that the number of specialist drugs investigators has risen by no less than 75 per cent. since 1979. In addition to that, last October my right honourable friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced both that 60 temporary preventive posts were to be made permanent and that 100 new posts were to be created in 1985–86 specifically to combat drug smuggling. The noble Lady, Lady Saltoun, has understood the problems that we are tackling, and my noble friend Lord Bruce-Gardyne has very aptly summed it up and explained it. These new posts, for reasons which the noble Lady and the noble Lord have given, will be used to reinforce the move away from static controls towards more mobile and flexible enforcement and improved intelligence gathering and targeting, which I can assure the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Greenwich, are far more effective against the increasingly sophisticated drug smugglers, against whom we are operating with increasing success.
This specialisation and this increase in Customs' manpower is a considerable reinforcement of the outward defences of this country. But we have to stop the enemy before he gets here. We are not fighting this problem alone; we are not inside a ring fence. We are part of a worldwide community of nations facing it

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together. The first of the five aims of our policy group takes us beyond the target area of the Motion, because without that aim your Lordships will get a lopsided view of what we are doing about drugs.
Not only do we play an active part in the work of the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs, which oversees the operation of the United Nations conventions and develops international strategy against drug misuse, but we are also active members of the Pompidou Group of 15 European states. In September my honourable friend David Mellor attended a ministerial meeting of the group in Paris which agreed to carry forward a programme under British chairmanship for three years, including studies of the role of the criminal justice system in responding to the problems of drug misusers, methods of depriving drug traffickers of the proceeds of their crimes, on which we shall obviously lead, and ways of reaching young people at risk.
I shall leave out some detail but I shall say this. Our concern includes all dangerous drugs. We have therefore agreed to ratify the 1971 convention on psychotropic substances. In April we pledged a further £1 million to the United Nations fund for drug abuse control to help with the eradication of opium poppy-growing in Pakistan, where we have also helped to finance the strengthening of law enforcement agencies. We have sent expert advisers to several countries under the auspices of the United Nations or under bilateral arrangements. We have established postings of a Customs officer to Karachi and a police officer to the Hague. Those efforts have not been without results. I understand that Turkey has completely eradicated the illegal growth of opium poppies. Pakistan is reckoned to have reduced opium production from 800 tonnes in 1979 to under 60 in 1983, and a massive campaign is now under way against cocaine production in Colombia.
Of course I shall draw your Lordships' valuable and important views and expertise to the attention of all my right honourable and honourable friends. In conclusion and in short, I would support this Motion even if it went further than it does. It bids us do what we are already bent on doing. But it only bids us do it at home—and we are already doing it abroad as well.
5.29 p.m.
Lord Harris of Greenwich: My Lords, briefly, I should like to thank all those who have participated in the debate and who have spoken in difficult conditions where speeches have had to be limited to what in normal circumstances would be an unreasonable length. Secondly, I think that the House has been very nearly unanimous in the views which it has expressed this evening as regards the Government. Given the fact that there has been this element of unanimity, and given the fact that people have not been able to speak at length, as they would be able to in normal circumstances, we shall not press this Motion tonight.
However, having said that, I should like to make just two brief comments. First, I would say to the noble Lord, Lord Elton, that in his speech this evening he has offered the House precisely nothing. He has not announced any new expenditure of public money to
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deal with what is probably the most alarming single problem in the area of criminal justice policy in this country. I think that that is a matter of deep regret on all sides of the House.
All I would say in conclusion is that if in fact we see within the next few months that there is not a dramatic change in expenditure priorities in this area so far as the Government are concerned, we shall come back to it on a Motion of a very different character. I do not propose to press this tonight, and therefore, with the leave of the House, I beg leave to withdraw the Motion.
Noble Lords: No!
The Deputy Speaker (Lord Alport): The Question is, That this Motion be agreed to? As many as are of that opinion will say, Content? … To the contrary, Not-content? … The Contents have it.
Motion agreed to.

Strategic Defence Initiative
5.31 p.m.
Lord Mayhew Lord Mayhew rose to call attention to the political and economic implications for global stability and peace of the Strategic Defence Initiative of the United States Administration; and to move for Papers.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, as the controversy about cruise and Pershing dies down we are faced with a new dispute about the Strategic Defence Initiative. This can also have a divisive effect on East-West relations and between, and within, NATO countries. However, the critics of the Strategic Defence Initiative, among whom my noble friends and I must count ourselves, must concede a number of points to begin with.
First, the project aimed at destroying incoming nuclear missiles is in human and moral terms much to be preferred to a project aimed at destroying cities and people. No one can fault the initial statement made by President Reagan when launching this initiative in moral terms. He said:
"I call upon the scientific community who gave us nuclear weapons to turn their great talents to the cause of mankind and world peace: to give us the means of rendering these nuclear weapons impotent and obsolete".
Even though the statement has since been shown to be wildly utopian, it is not ignoble in intention or in spirit.
We must also concede that the initiative helped to persuade the Russians to resume arms control talks. We must admit, too, that the Russians are already well advanced in anti-ballistic missile defence. Indeed, they are the only country in the world with a system in place and operational at this time, and they started major research in space-based weapons defence as well. Pentagon officials have estimated that within a few years the Soviet Union could be able to destroy about one-fifth of incoming American missiles.
Finally, we must bear in mind that SDI, like cruise, presents the Russians with an admirable opportunity of dividing the West; of exploiting differences of opinion between hawks and doves throughout the Western world. This does not mean however that to

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preserve the unity of NATO the critics should remain silent. When the Prime Minister met President Reagan to discuss this it was announced:
"The Prime Minister was able to tell the President, as she had earlier made clear to Mr. Gorbachev, that we would not allow others to create divisions between ourselves and the United States on these important questions".
I take this to mean that critics will not be inhibited from pressing their strong views on the United States but simply that they would do so in a manner acceptable between allies.
It would have been reassuring at that time if the President had felt able to make a similar statement that he will not allow his strong support for SDI to create divisions between the United States and the other NATO allies. The fact that he did not do so is another unwelcome reminder of the rather one-sided nature of Euro-American relations within NATO.
All the President has committed himself to, of course, is a research programme, admittedly on a vast scale and at vast cost. Nobody can be sure at this stage what is, and what is not, practicable in anti-ballistic missile defence. But we know that the Americans have succeeded in intercepting and destroying a missile on re-entry a hundred miles up at a closing speed of six kilometres a second.
Those who, like I did, attended the recent elaborate presentation of star wars by the High Frontier Organisation in London are probably disposed to believe that by miracles of skill and organisation, and at vast cost, the Americans will equip themselves, or can equip themselves, before the end of the century with a capacity to intercept and destroy a proportion of incoming ballistic missiles. What the project cannot do is to protect the United States population.
Last year the United States Office of Technology assessment declared that the prospect of leak-proof defence
"is so remote that it should not serve as the basis for public expectation or national policy".
We need not doubt the estimate of the Union of Concerned Scientists that penetration by only 5 per cent. of current Soviet warheads would result in 60 million American deaths. These calculations, of course, only refer to ballistic missiles. There is nothing whatever in SDI which obstructs the obliteration of the United States, especially its vulnerable Eastern seaboard, by submarine launched cruise missiles, which the Soviet Union could develop easily and quickly and at a fraction of the cost of the Strategic Defence Initiative.
Therefore, we are not talking about protection of the United States; we are talking about protection of a proportion of American missile sites and other key defence installations. The question we have to ask ourselves is whether building up this capacity is worth it for the United States, Europe, the rest of the world.
The first objective, it seems to me, is that to the extent that this initiative is effective and is not balanced by a similar Soviet project, it is destabilising. By partly protecting American first-strike capability it would give the Americans a nuclear edge over the Russians. In the West, as sensible people, we are quite confident that the Americans would never launch a first strike against the Soviet Union, but the Russians
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are not so confident. Their first official reaction—though of course it should not be taken wholly at its face value—no doubt reflects a good deal of genuinely held opinion in the Soviet Union. At that time Mr. Andropov stated:
"The strategic offensive forces of the United States will continue to be developed and upgraded at full tilt and along quite a definite line, namely that of acquiring a first nuclear strike capability. The intention to secure the possibility of destroying, with the help of the ABM defences, the corresponding systems of the other side, that is of rendering it unable to deal a retaliatory strike, is a bid to disarm the Soviet Union in the face of the United States nuclear threat".
No doubt there is a lot of propaganda in that. But for people brought up from their earliest years on the doctrines of Lenin, Marx and Stalin—doctrines that capitalism in its death throes will lash out against the socialist enemy, and other dangerous rubbish of that kind—those fears, though ridiculous to us, can be genuine, and we have to take them into account. At best therefore the star wars concept will increase East-West tension, and at worst it could persuade the Russians to contemplate pre-emptive action of a disastrous kind.
There is a further objection, and it is this. Granted that the initiative could give some protection to some American missile sites, what protection could it give to missile sites such as cruise and Pershing in Western Europe? It appears that last year Mr. Weinberger informed the European Defence Ministers at a meeting of the Nuclear Planning Group that a full-scale American ABM system would partially protect Western Europe, but the primary burden of deploying European terminal defence would have to be borne by the European members of NATO. That is not a very attractive prospect. I hesitate to ask the Minister what provision there is in the British defence budget for anti-ballistic missile expenditure? I think it would be foolish even to ask him. It is not a very kind question.
But the fact is that SDI will not protect much of the United States, but it will protect more of the United States than of Europe. It therefore undermines that concept of equality of risk which lies at the heart of all good alliances and it presents us in a new form with the old and dangerous problem of decoupling.
We can be sure that if the initiative goes ahead the Soviet Union will react in two ways. First, it will modify and increase its offensive nuclear capacity. Secondly, it will redouble its efforts to develop its own ABM capacity. Like the Americans, no doubt, it will be unable to cope with a full-scale nuclear attack. But by the end of the century it seems very likely that it will be able to intercept and destroy a number of incoming missiles. How many it is hard to say; quite possibly, though, as many as could be launched by the British independent nuclear deterrent.
The Secretary of State for Defence was arguing yesterday in the other place that Trident will be deployed before the Soviet Union can make it obsolete, but we would be paying a very large sum for very few years of operational effectiveness. When the Secretary of State went on to talk about the finance of Trident it became clear that, even though Trident might be deployed before being made obsolete, it will be made obsolete long before we have finished paying off the capital cost of the product. It is plainly time that the Government started to respect the opinion of all

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well-informed people and scrapped the Trident project. This is absolutely clear.
A further serious objection to the initiative is that its development and deployment would breach the 1972 ABM treaty. Mr. Weinberger stated that the Americans are prepared to abrogate or renegotiate the treaty if it were to stand in the way of the initiative. But this treaty is one of the rare successes of multi-lateral arms control negotiations and to destroy it in this way is another important objection to proceeding with the initiative.
Finally, this is only a research project. It does not deal with development, procurement or deployment, but is due to cost 26 billion dollars and is bound to produce a reduction in the United States defence resources committed to NATO; fewer tanks, fewer aircraft and fewer ships in Europe, a lowering of the nuclear threshold and, I suppose, an even greater American deficit on the budget and even higher American interest rates.
To sum up, therefore, on the one hand the aim of destroying incoming ballistic missiles is not ignoble and within strictly limited limits is likely to prove practicable and the initiative has helped to persuade the Soviet Union to resume negotiations. On the other hand, it cannot protect more than a proportion of American missile sites; it cannot protect the American people; it cannot protect either the missile sites or the people of Western Europe. It is politically divisive both between the United States Government and NATO Governments and within NATO countries. It would worsen East-West relations, increasing the Russians' morbid suspicions of American intentions, and would persuade them to develop counter-measures of a substantial scale. The testing and deploying of the missiles would breach the 1972 treaty and, finally, the cost is immense and will weaken NATO and lower the nuclear threshold.
Can proceeding with it be justified on bargaining grounds, a bargaining weapon in arms control negotiations? Since neither the American nor the Russian research project is even remotely verifiable bargaining about research will be extremely difficult. But testing and deployment could be verifiable and here results are possible. The two nations might agree to renounce testing and development of space-based ABMs, and perhaps in exchange the Russians might be willing to offer something more. That would be a worthwhile achievement, but is this the aim of the United States Government? I particularly ask for a reply on that tonight. This is where we need reassurance. Do the United States Government regard the Strategic Defence Initiative as a bargaining weapon or as a moral and strategic imperative?
Last Sunday, the New York Times published a full length feature on the Strategic Defence Initiative written by three distinguished Americans. It took an optimistic, indeed a propagandist, view of the possibilities of strategic defence. It took an entirely defeatist view of the possibilities of reaching agreement on arms control. The authors concluded:
"We favour energetically pursuing arms control negotiations and seeking to achieve credible deterrence, but these options by themselves are unfortunately not as likely to provide a more secure future as the alternative strategy of mutual security combining defence against missiles with retaliatory offence".
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In other words, SDI is likely to provide more security than arms control. A disturbing feature of the article is that one of those authors is Mr. Max Kampelman, who has been placed by President Reagan in charge of the arms negotiations. We are driven to the conclusion that the chief American negotiator on strategic defence would prefer those negotiations not to succeed.
However, let us suppose that President Reagan ignores the views of Mr. Kampelman and decides to bargain seriously about SDIs. The question arises: will he be able when the time comes to withstand the immense pressures built up of powerful political, scientific and industrial interests urging him to go ahead with the project? This is where we expect action from Her Majesty's Government and the European governments. The initiative has immense implications for Europe, and European governments must insist that the Americans take these negotiations seriously. They might start by requiring proper machinery for consultation.
Why were the European governments not consulted when this initiative was launched? In what form is the European view of the initiative being formed and expressed at the present time? What assurances have we that the United States Government are genuinely committed to reaching agreement banning the testing and deploying of space-based anti-ballistic missiles? In the months ahead the Government will be increasingly pressed by Parliament and by the public to give clear answers to these questions. My Lords, I beg to move for Papers.
5.48 p.m.
Lord Birdwood: My Lords, I shall be exceedingly brief. This is not the time to restate the arguments for and the principles of nuclear deterrence. I note from my records that the last three times I have spoken in this House I have gone through those principles. Even so, I should like to remind your Lordships that these arguments of deterrence are complicated, long, and logical and they work.
The SDI has its place in such arguments and does not introduce new unstable options. We shall certainly be hearing later from far better-informed individuals than I about the technologies, the political tensions or the impact on USA-Europe relations.
As an aside, I should like to comment on the remark made by the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, that the SDI risks a decoupling of USA-Europe relations. It is a word that is going around. He then went on to give objective evidence of the fact that decoupling has taken place in all but name, and I suggest that this process has been going on for at least the last five years. Consultation is fine. I do not think that we have been consulted. I think that there is a hard lobby in America that America should go it alone. I have read numerous articles in the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post to this effect and I think that this is getting through. I think that the French have been extremely realistic about decoupling; and that has contributed to the present French nuclear posture. I am particularly looking forward to the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Chalfont, who, I hope will be exposing the fraudulent accounting of the groups ranged against the SDI development. I hope that he will also detail the effect

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that SDI has had on bringing the Russians back to the negotiating tables.
In no way could I suggest that I can put things more logically than the leader writer of the Economist; and I propose to quote briefly from that periodical:
"It is also necessary to understand"—
this was published on December 22nd—
"the main lever by which Russia might be prised out of its preference for more warheads and unsafer ones. This lever, though the anti-nuclear movement will hate the thought, is Mr. Reagan's plan for an American anti-missile system.
"The full version of Mr. Reagan's…project—a missile-proof roof over the whole of the United States—may be beyond the capacity even of American technology, and of America's purse. But a more modest version, protecting the American missile silos, is almost certainly workable".
Paraphrasing the remainder, the mere possibility that America might create such a system but would abandon or modify it if Russia were more reasonable about warhead numbers is the most powerful card in the West's negotiating hand, because the Russians do not yet have a similar card of their own. I agree with every word of that.
We shall be hearing, certainly from later speakers, that the scheme is money wasted because no system can be truly leak-proof. I suggest that that is irrelevant to going ahead with the scheme itself. We will hear the most plausible arguments against SDI and it needs a conscious effort of will to distance oneself from those. I should like to propose that we would not be debating this at all if we lived in a society whose defence technology was developed in secret, a society which did not have to vote funds; and neither would we be debating it if it had not been announced as a single homogeneous package, if the development had continued in small, even increments spread out over the time-scale, as has been suggested, of five or six years.
This is to some extent a by-product of the freedoms of democracy. Funds do have to be voted, people do have to be persuaded and won over, projects have to be talked through in the blaze of publicity and I propose that this reflects well on us. I am glad that we are able to debate it, but I am also concerned that once again in this House we have heard the reluctance to pressure the tender sensibilities of the Russians, to whom such a debate would be incomprehensible.
I want to make just two points. The technology of SDI, out of all military technologies contemplated in recent times, has the most bearing on peaceful uses. Power storage in space, propulsion systems, communications, systems management—all of these spill over into the next thrust of exploration for mankind itself. This has not escaped the Americans and it is a matter of observable fact that it is a great deal easier to vote to retain funds for defence projects than for non-defence uses. Like it or not, we occupy a technology escalation. We cannot "not invent" the cross-bow. It was inevitable that missiles would become more accurate as the guidance systems improved—and again I have touched on this in the past, pointing out that increased accuracy brings the use of nuclear armaments closer to battle decisions rather than political decisions. It is inherent in technology that if something is conceived somebody will make it reality. There is no way back. The noble
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Lord, Lord Mayhew, was gracious enough to concede that this is a 100 per cent. shielding system. Dr. Edward Teller has remarked that we now have swords only. Surely, it is slightly more civilised to suggest that we have swords and shields.
If I had not been already convinced that SDI is not only desirable but inevitable, there was a brief piece in yesterday's newspapers—it was very brief—which would have cemented my belief. The crew of Soyuz, as an experimental manoeuvre, were recently put in charge of a Russian battle group. It is highly logical. Any general's idea of perfection is occupying the high ground. The idea that through lack of will and through timidity in negotiation we should hand over on a plate, as it were, the impregnability of battle command and control to a potential enemy is unthinkable. That little item describing how as an experiment the crew of Soyuz were given a battlegroup to command was reason enough for me to give my personal support to the principle of High Frontier.
5.59 p.m.
Lord Zuckerman: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, for having introduced this debate. It is a most important matter, and I am sure that we shall hear about it again—and it may be we shall also hear various views about it. I apologise to your Lordships if, despite my wish to remain to the end the debate, I fail to do so.
Since President Reagan's speech in 1983 this subject has generated an enormous amount of debate and literature. I have followed the arguments very closely. I have a considerable library on the subject, and I must confess to your Lordships that I added to it only last week in a big review in the New York Times Literary Review.
Much of what has been written has been highly critical of the SDI programme, and that has been indicated in the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew. One needs to ask why this is so. After all, what the President has in mind—and it was a promise to the American people—is the noble aim of providing a defence which would prevent any nuclear missiles ever hitting US territory, with the ultimate aim of making nuclear missiles, as he says, "impotent and obsolete". There is nothing wrong with this aim, and we should all be grateful to our Prime Minister for having been given the assurances which she sought from the President: first, that the United States was not embarking on a fruitless effort to achieve so-called nuclear superiority; secondly, that if it ever came to deployment the United States would negotiate with her allies; thirdly, that nothing would be done to undermine deterrence—a most important point—and, finally, that East-West negotiations should have as their aim the preservation of mutual security at a reduced level of nuclear armaments.
The noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, has dealt with some of the political implications of the subject, and I shall not burden your Lordships with the technological arguments. As most know, the idea is that the United States should devise a three-layer defence. In the first, Russian missiles will be attacked as they blast off from the ground by lasers or particle beams from space platforms. In the second, the multiple warheads and

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the decoys of those missiles which would not be destroyed in the launch phase would be attacked in the course of their ballistic paths outside the atmosphere. Finally, in the third phase, those warheads which managed to penetrate the atmosphere would be dealt with by a terminal defence.
Little of this technology is possible today, and we would be deluding ourselves to suppose that it is. That is why we are dealing essentially with a research and development programme. But the basic argument is whether any part of the system could ever be achieved in a way which makes stategic sense. I have read much and had many discussions with those who are directly concerned with this problem. I believe I must say here that Mr. McGeorge Bundy, Mr. Kennan, Mr. McNamara and Mr. Gerard Smith, who negotiated the SALT I and then, fruitlessly, the SALT II agreements, were justified when they wrote in a recent article that those technical experts on the subject who have neither been silenced (and I quote) nor "muted by co-option" are convinced that there is no possibility that the research programme will prove successful.
The issue, therefore, is not whether the separate components of a possible system can work in isolation. Reference was made to the fact that a single missile was knocked down by an anti-missile. That is not the point. What matters, as was the case in the technical discussions in the 1950s and 1960s about the feasibility of defensive systems against aircraft, is whether the separate components can work when combined into a single system.
A second critical point is whether any part of the system could become effective given that the USSR were to decide, as they almost certainly would—and here I would agree with the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew—to take precautionary counter-measures. And, indeed, they have already published what they would propose doing.
In addition to Mr. McNamara, who associated himself with Mr. Bundy, Gerard Smith and Kennan, two previous Secretaries of Defense, Mr. James Schlesinger and Dr. Harold Brown, have powerfully attacked the SDI concept as being impossible of achievement. Of all the holders of that distinguished office, it would be fair to say that Harold Brown, with whom I have had close relations for some 25 years, is far and away the most experienced scientifically, technically and managerially. As a young man he ran one of the two big nuclear weapons laboratories. For years he was America's Director of Defense Research and Engineering; then he became Secretary for the Air Force; then he became President of the California Institute of Technology—all this still at a pretty youthful age—and then he served for four years as Secretary of Defense.
In a recent address he acknowledges—and this is important—from his personal dealings with the five Presidents whom he served, how much the fact of American vulnerability has eroded the confidence which its political leaders have in United States nuclear policy, and how it affects (and there I quote).
"all of our national security policies and limits our military and diplomatic behaviour."
But, having analysed the technical issues—and he took
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his time—he concluded (as also did Mr. Schlesinger in another outspoken address which I had the opportunity to hear in the middle of a meeting opened by General Abrahamson, the director of the programme) by saying that,
"the combination of limitations—scientific, technological systems engineering, cost, and especially the potential counter-measures, make the prospect of perfect or near-perfect defences negligibly low."
Like others, Dr. Brown also draws attention to the fact that, since it was made, the idealistic goal of the President's challenge to make nuclear weapons impotent and obsolete has taken on a new complexion, should the USA deploy,
"active defences with more limited objectives and capabilities"
so as to enhance mutual nuclear deterrence, so as to generate uncertainty about retaliation, so as to restrain the arms race.
While not so forthright, Dr. Brown here agrees with the conclusion stated by Schlesinger and by Bundy and his colleagues that this goal is also unattainable. The nuclear arms race will go on if SDI goes on; for no one supposes that the Russians will stand still as the SDI R & D programme gets under way. They are going to devise ways to defeat the defences; they will increase the size and variety of their offensive forces so as to overcome defence systems. And everyone admits, including Mr. Weinberger and General Abrahamson, that some warheads will always get through, and any warhead would cause immeasurable damage. There can be no stragically effective defence of cities.
The one thing which has not changed in the whole of our debate, in the 25 or 30 years in which we have been dealing with nuclear weapons, is the destructive power of a single nuclear weapon. The danger, therefore, is that the SDI R & D programme will lead to counter R & D. That means destabilisation, and that, I understand, is what our Prime Minister was concerned about. That is why I was heartened by her determination to get an assurance from the President that nothing would be done to undermine, as opposed to enhance, deterrence.
Mr. Weinberger has been given the difficult responsibility for the research programme. He, like General Abrahamson, who is in executive charge, now recognises that no anti-ballistic missile umbrella could keep out cruise misiles or aircraft. Not surprisingly, therefore, we have heard in the last few days that he has decided to reinforce what he hopes will emerge from SDI R & D by updating the radar installations and other defensive components of the air defence system which the USA largely abandoned some years ago when it became clear that the main threat was from missiles.
Obviously, research and development is going to go on; and so it should. But as it does, nothing should happen which is in defiance of the 1972 ABM Treaty. This the President has promised; and one must hope that his promise to the American people that they can be defended against nuclear attack will not enhance the unreal fear which so many hold that the Russians would deliberately launch a first strike. I wonder whether the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, is correct in believing that the Russian leadership might be mad enough to do such a thing. It knows that from the

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moment the USSR and the USA developed a triad of nuclear forces the whole concept of a first strike became totally irrational. They know that whoever struck first would be struck in return.
Ever since 1957 we in this country have accepted that there is no defence against nuclear attack, that we are defended by the fear of an adversary that we could retaliate. In the abstract, one might say that part of the price we pay for being defended in a nuclear age is the prospect of annihilation. So be it. One cannot evade the facts of nuclear hardware: they have no political edges.
The stand-off environment of mutual nuclear deterrence is infinitely safer than what would happen if we entrusted our security to an automatically-operating imperfect complex of artificial satellites, lasers and computers, in which there was neither place nor time for the exercise of human judgment.
We must remember that the nuclear arms race is, and always has been, a race in R & D. The technological people who work in weapons laboratories—whether American, Russian or our own—are not going to slow it down. The race can be slowed down and monitored only by political decision. America's allies should use whatever leverage they have, in order to see that the race does not get out of hand. If it does, there will be nothing to hope for.
6.11 p.m.
Lord Ardwick: My Lords, it is a privilege to follow the noble Lord, Lord Zuckerman, who for so long has devoted his scientific and philosophic mind to these problems. It is also rather intimidating. I must also thank the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, for initiating this debate. My speech will be rather a pale, thin echo of his speech. Where he is confident, I merely ask questions. I am also looking forward to the speech, which follows mine, of the noble Lord, Lord Chalfont, who I think is less sceptical than most people are about the Strategic Defence Initiative.
This SDI, this ballistic missile defence, poses a series of questions that it is impossible to answer now and may indeed remain unanswerable for the rest of time. The first question, however, is whether R & D is feasible, and the second is: if it is feasible, is it desirable? If it meant the end, or approaching the end, of a nuclear war, it would be most desirable. But nobody imagines that ballistic missile defence could ever be perfect, or indeed could ever be universal.
The current nuclear logic is difficult enough to grasp and is certainly imperfect. It works best at its most simple, at its most crude. It is the view of the man in the street: If they have nuclear bombs and we have nuclear bombs, they will not destroy us, because they know that we could destroy them in return, and we cannot destroy them, because we know that it would mean destroying ourselves. So we get to the paradox which so many find disturbing, that both sides are spending vast fortunes on more and deadlier weapons, whose use would be suicidal for both the aggressor and for the defender.
As Mr. Brzezinski and his colleagues put it in an article in the New York Times which the noble Lord quoted, and which the International Herald Tribune reproduced on Monday—it is available in the
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Library—the conventional view is that nuclear stability is based on two contradictory pursuits: the acquisition of increasingly efficient nuclear weapons and the negotiations on limits and reductions of such weapons. But the argument that these writers are using is that, as there is a profound unease in the world, that in itself undermines stability and we all see this unease reflected in the strength of the various peace movements which may yet, I fear, undermine the Atlantic Alliance.
Part of the unease is moral; part of it is based, I think, on rational and technical grounds. The problem of arriving at an effectual arms control agreement becomes more difficult as mobile weapons of greater precision and with multiple warheads are developed by both sides. So these distinguished writers quoted in the New York Times believe that we should look beyond deterrence and examine the idea of basing security on the ability to defend, which of course means anti-ballistic missile defence.
But, of course, the concept is still in its infancy. It is still in an early phase of research—not just research, but an early phase of research—and though we are most aware of it in the United States of America, it is also apparently going on in the Soviet Union, if the reports which were given to us a few months ago at the North Atlantic Assembly are correct. We have no idea whether or not the Russians are ahead of the US in their experiments and there is no certain way of finding out. What one fears is the start of a new, expensive and impoverishing arms race with defence as part of the race.
In some ways, the problem is not unlike the one which was posed all those centuries ago when men discovered gunpowder. Was it possible to devise armour that would withstand the new weapons? I think that we have been trying to do so ever since, and we came up with the tank. But the search for anti-tank weapons has been successful and today the tank is probably as vulnerable as the original body armour was against the first bullets. It is one of the arguments of the philosopher-scientist that as fast as ways of destroying nuclear missiles are found, new ways of frustrating the defence will be found. We shall perhaps be starting on another and interminable arms race.
President Reagan, either with considerable political skill or with holy simplicity, or a combination of these things, certainly started something in March 1983 when he called on the scientific community to give him the means of rendering nuclear weapons impotent and obsolete. But we are not only very far from that; it is most doubtful whether it will ever be reached. Even if the theory is successful, as noble Lords have pointed out, the difficulties of proceeding to an operational system will be very great.
It looks, even to many people who want to go ahead with this, as though it will be possible only to protect certain points or even limited areas at the most. But to defend a country! That is a problem of so much wider dimensions that it seems to be absolutely impossible and hopeless to think of that. Counter-measures in the new no-man's land of space would add to the already enormous difficulty of detecting, tracking, finding and intercepting.
The optimists believe that the deployment of BMDs would allow the world to embark on a transition to a

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new kind of stability, as mutual assured destruction was replaced by mutual assured survival. The optimists, or rather the opponents of BMD, see it as destabilising. Even with a 99 per cent. Effective defence, the super-powers could still inflict terrible damage on one another through the gaps in the defensive screen and by the use of non-ballistic delivery suystems, such as cruise missiles and even bombers. And there will be a temptation in times of crisis to eliminate the BMD defences orbiting in space.
The hypotheses, the questions, that all this arouses, are endless and unanswerable. It looks, however, as if it is impossible for scientific man to be deterred. He will go ahead with research and, as the problems of feasibility are being solved, we must be examining the dangers of deployment.
There is also the delicate question which the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, raised of the effect of BMD on the alliance, which even today is less strong and more disturbed than it should be. If the Soviet Union and the US felt more secure behind BMD, would they exercise less self-restraint? Would it increase the chances of a conventional war in Europe?
I am sorry that my noble friends who speak in this House for CND have not taken part in this debate. It would have been extremely interesting to hear their points of view on these subjects. Perhaps they might have dared even to suggest what somebody has suggested, which I hardly dare to repeat, that perhaps one happy day the Soviet Union and the United States will share one another's secrets of missile defence.
6.20 p.m.
Lord Kennet: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Zuckerman, has told us why it probably cannot be done and my noble friend Lord Mayhew has told us why it should not be done even if it could be. I am going to give a few more reasons in support of my noble friend.
We are still talking, and we must never forget it, about the original High Frontier concept, the great balloon in the heavens, which it is hoped in due course will prevent any and every ICBM from hitting the United States or any other country it is destined to protect. We have also to observe that at the same time the United States is going hell-for-leather for anti-cruise missile defence and is greatly upgrading its defence against bombers. The policy from the top is still the maximum one. At the same time we have to notice that the United States is developing no fewer than six new means of offensive strategic delivery of nuclear weapons; MX and Midgetman—both ICBMs; Trident D5, which we know all too well to our cost; and two bombers—the B1 and the so-called "Stealth"; and lastly long-range cruise missiles.
Let us go back now for a moment to President Reagan's original speech of March 1983. He said:
"I clearly recognise that defensive systems have limitations and raise certain problems and ambiguities. If paired with offensive systems, they can be viewed as fostering an aggressive policy, and no one wants that".
These words seem to have been forgotten. They are "paired with" the development of "offensive systems"
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and they are "viewed" by the Soviet Union "as fostering an aggressive policy". But it seems that some people, including the President himself, still want the full SDI.
Now, of course, the Soviet Union is also developing about six new offensive strategic delivery systems. It is also researching into ABM. Here we have no alternative, boring as it is, but stand back a little and look at the history of the matter over the past few years. In the 1960s, as I reminded the House, I think, the last time we debated it, the Soviet Union thought that the general canopy of ABM would be a good idea to protect its people, and it was talked down out of this high folly by the United States, which pointed out that it might look like a first strike capacity. They then negotiated on the matter and in 1972 they signed—thank God; and it is perhaps the greatest achievement yet of arms control between the super powers—the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, the ABM Treaty, which, incidentally, allows research.
In the 1970s, notwithstanding that, the Soviet Union did some interesting research into ABM. They did it hoping to avoid detection, but they did not avoid detection. They were caught out, playing grandmother's footsteps. In 1981 and 1982 the United States began to think what it ought to do about the fact that it had caught the Soviet Union out playing grandmother's footsteps. An American general called Keegan took the lead in urging extreme responses. Throughout those years and until now, the Soviet Union has carried on quite slowly, although now it is seen all the time by the United States, doing what it was doing; the most obvious example being the famous radar array at Krasnoyarsk in Siberia.
Between 1983 and the present day the United States has begun to gallop in research at perhaps the greatest speed and at the most rapid expenditure for any element of the arms race which has yet taken place. It can look only as though it will be ready to develop before that vast research programme is finished. I strongly suspect that there is development in it. There is the ability to procure within that 26 billion dollar, four-year programme. The Soviet Union is already beginning to respond to the American gallop by going into long-range cruise missiles—it has said so in so many words—and other counter-measures, and of course it will in the future, if it has not done so already, be jacking up its expenditure on ABM research and development. When the Soviet Union does this, the United States will no doubt deem it a reason for calling upon the extreme national interest provisions of the ABM Treaty and abrogating it. We shall then be in a full-blown ABM arms race by both sides, at which point, as Lord Zuckerman has eloquently put it, there will be nothing to hope for.
This moment is a snapshot of the arms race taking a violent upward spiral. We should ask this of our American allies: if the Soviet Union acquired a high frontier ABM system first, would the Americans not be alarmed at the first strike capability that that would give them; because an effective High Frontier would enable you to knock out any retaliatory rockets which might come at you, and would thereby give you perfect security for a first strike? Would the United States not be alarmed by the Russians getting there first?

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Does the United states plan to get it first? If so, it is up to them to explain why the Soviet Union should not be equally alarmed. The acquisition of this capacity by the two sides will not be simultaneous unless they agree to make it so; but if they can agree that, they can agree to call the whole thing off and save the billions.
I have read that the world is now spending 1 million dollars a minute on arms. Any noble Lord with a calculator in his pocket can work out at 26 billion dollars in four years how much a minute the United States will be spending on this research. It is quite a perceptible portion of that. I come back to the question: can this be all research? Must there not be development tucked away in it in the later phases? What we have to do, and what I hope European statesmen will do, is to help those in the United States Administration who are trying to talk the President down from his High Frontier, which is destabilising, to an increased hard point ballistic missile defence in protection of retaliatory capacity which is, if anything, stabilising. Some of the research needed would be the same as for the great destabilising programme.
The Prime Minister went to Washington recently and came back with her four points. The more I reflect upon these four points, the more I think that they were a remarkable achievement of diplomacy and will have a profoundly beneficial effect in lessening the dangers of the next few years. I commend to noble Lords who may not have seen it an article by John Barry in The Times on 24th January, the third of three pieces, in which he spelled out what is not visible to the layman's eye—namely, the full diplomatic effects, the extremely binding diplomatic effects, of the Prime Minister's four points. We are lucky she got them; and if we want to know how lucky, we should read John Barry's excellent article.
We are told that the Russians are or will be splitting us; that they will be trying to drive a wedge between European and United States NATO. They have not done much about it yet, but maybe they will. Before reacting to that, before making our judgments about that phenomenon, we must see what it is that we think is true. We must ask ourselves, "Is SDI a good idea? Is it a better idea in one form than in the other form? Does it contain dangers? What in our view is the truth of the matter?"
If we find that what we consider to be true is also considered by the Russians to be true, that does not stop it being true. I believe that the alliance will not be split on this matter, any more than it has split during the many difficult moments it has already lived through. All of us are old enough to remember the multilateral force, when the United States was wrong. There was sharp disagreement, but it did not split the alliance. We remember the neutron bomb, when the Soviet Union was wrong. We remember the Soviet SS20 deployment, when the Soviet Union was wrong. We remember the dual track decision of NATO, when the whole alliance was at least half wrong as regards Pershing 2—although it may not have been wrong as regards the cruise missiles. We remember the Soviet walk out from the Geneva negotiations only last year, when the Soviet Union was wrong.
It is with those memories—and sure in the confidence we have that, if those matters did not split the alliance, this will not—that we have to face the
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SDI, where, if we look at its major version, the United States is unfortunately wrong.
The alliance will not split but it is imperative that we and the other European countries should put our weight behind those of the President's advisers who are trying to talk him down from his high dreams to the relative safety of deterrence conditioned by treaties—namely, SALT I and the ABM treaty, with possibly some increased terminal hardpoint ballistic missile defence, with consequent treaty changes to be agreed in Geneva.
It is not enough for the American Administration and for the friends of High Frontier to tell us that we shall favour it when we fully understand it. We are still awaiting their explanations. They have not come, and it seems to me that they have not come because they are not there. I believe that the European governments and parliaments have understood the arguments which have been forthcoming and have rejected or are rejecting High Frontier—but are accepting those arguments which point solely to hardpoint BMD.
I believe that the alliance will survive this Administration, although I am not sure that the Initiative will do so. After all, it is a vast piece of Keynesian expenditure for the benefit of the arms industry; will Congress approve it?
In conclusion, I should like to quote from a statement by General Abrahamson, who is the commander of the Strategic Defence Initiative programme. He has said that the industrial spin-off possibilities could help the SDI programme to pay for itself. He speaks of,
"applying production-line techniques to satellite manufacturing, probably driving costs down exponentially; production of multi-purpose satellites, differentiated and customized through use of plug-in modules; long distance, low cost transmission of energy by laser beams; rockets powered by particle beams; space-based solar cell arrays for generating power to remote or under-developed areas; miniature, parallel processing computers; and a low-cost nuclear waste disposal system made possible by ferrying the waste to harmless destruction around the sun".
All this, he says, can become practical reality.
"So too"—
he continues—
"perhaps, can Krafft Ehricke's"—
whoever he is—
"novel concept of subdued terrestrial illumination, including street lighting, through use of bands of space-based mirrors".
So we have not only $26,000 million of public expenditure on research, but the United States also wishes to conscript capital investment by private industry in what is probably the first part of the arms race to be overtly privatised.
6.34 p.m.
Lord Chalfont: My Lords, before I make my brief contribution to this debate, it would be proper to remind your Lordships' House that through my business directorships of a multi-national computer company, a London merchant bank and a business consultancy, I have close associations with defence and aerospace industries in the United States, in Western Europe, and in the United Kingdom. This I know will immediately qualify me in some quarters for the description of merchant of death, but perhaps in compenstion I might claim that it does give me a

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fairly detailed and up-to-date knowledge of some of the technological developments which are taking place at this moment in areas such as the Strategic Defence Initiative which we are debating this evening.
This is, as the noble Lord, Lord Zuckerman, has said, not the time—nor have we the time—for detailed technological analysis. I will make just a few general points. First, I will emphasise that we are talking about a research programme only. If we can all bear that in mind then some of the more apocalyptic visions of the results of the Strategic Defence Initiative might be somewhat mitigated.
The research programme does not breach any existing arms control treaty. It is not in breach of the anti-ballistic missile treaty of 1972. It is not in breach of the outer space treaty. And it is not in breach, as some have claimed, of Article 6 of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.
If there were to be development as a result of the research, that position would be changed—but we are not talking about development. As noble Lords have already said—and made much of it—the agreement which the Prime Minister secured in her discussions with President Reagan at Camp David included the undertaking that there would be no such development without further consultations with the allies. So my first point is that we are talking specifically about a research programme and that we are not yet contemplating the possibility of development, procurement, or—least of all—deployment. If those moments should come then the debate would be in an entirely different dimension.
I come now to the aspect of the debate which was most eloquently highlighted by my noble friend Lord Zuckerman. I feel somewhat reluctant to take issue with my noble friend because on many issues of this kind we tend to agree. But when he quotes such authorities as McGeorge Bundy and Harold Brown, and other distinguished Americans, as saying that there is no possibility that this system can be successful, then I have to point out that President Reagan assembled 50 distinguished American scientists and put them to work for several months full time simply to decide whether a programme of research offered any possibility of success.
The conclusion of those scientists was that a successful system was possible. They did not say that it was certain to be achieved or even that it was probable; they said that it was possible. I am more inclined to take note of people who say that things are possible than of those who say they are impossible.
For almost as long as technological history relates, people have been saying that this or that is impossible. Television was once thought to be quite out of the question. A distinguished British scientist said once that placing a man on the moon was a ridiculous concept. I am deeply sceptical of people who, in an age of explosive exponential technological development, say that this or that is impossible. However, let us again return to the fact that this is a research programme to find out whether the system is possible or not. It would be foolish at the beginning of such a programme—which is still going to be undertaken, however much we may debate it—to say that the
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system is impossible, especially when faced with the evidence of 50 distinguished American scientists who say that it is possible.
My next point concerns the frequently rehearsed argument about vast costs. We hear this argument being used continously. I think it perhaps derives from some of the arguments and conclusions put forward by a body called the Union of Concerned Scientists in the United States of America which published a report on the strategic defence initiative and which was conspicuous largely for its extraordinary number of inaccuracies, tendentious statements and false assumptions. If the concerned scientists had been more concerned with the facts they would not, for example, have said that a strategic defence would require thousands of satellites, because it will not. It may require hundreds, but it will not require thousands. They would not have said that you would have to put a 42,000 tonne vehicle into orbit—clearly an attempt to bring the whole concept into ridicule—because you do not need anything of that size to place in orbit even the kind of advanced technological weapons now being discussed.
The fact is that when we talk about a 26 billion dollar research programme that is not an inconsiderable sum of money, but when one considers that over the same period the United States will be spending on its space and military budget alone between 2 trillion and 3 trillion dollars—that is, my Lords, a figure of three with twelve noughts on the end of it—the question of vast cost comes somewhat more into perspective. So far as the Americans are concerned this is an expensive project but one which they believe, if I may use the modern jargon, to be cost effective. Before we start using phrases like "vast cost" we should try to put the whole matter into its proper perspective.
I come now to this argument about the so-called leak-proof defence. It is important to recognise two things about this. First, what we are talking about in strategic defence is not a war-fighting capacity. We are not talking about fighting a nuclear war in which "X" number of missiles will get through. We are talking about a concept of improving deterrence and making it less likely even than it is now that war will ever occur. The way of doing that, according to the concept of strategic defence, is to prevent as great a proportion of attacking missiles as possible from getting through—which must, as everybody says, make practical sense as well as good moral sense—but also to retain a residual retaliatory nuclear capability.
In spite of what the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, said, we are not talking about a totally leak-proof defence, a total protection of the United States against nuclear weapons. Whatever President Reagan may have said in his original speech, or what he may have said since, the scientists of the United States who are working on this project at the moment do not contemplate anything like a leak-proof defence. What they contemplate is a layered defence, in four layers. Perhaps I may put a gloss on the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Zuckerman, and say that they are working on four layers, whereas the noble Lord mentioned three layers. They have divided the mid-course into early mid-course and late mid-course. They contemplate the possibility—the possibility

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only—that in each of those four phases if one can gain a 50 per cent. interception rate of offensiveness, a simple sum of arithmetic will show that, at the end, one will get 95 per cent. success, give or take a percentage point. If one can do that, surely the deterrent effect of having that must improve the deterrent posture of the United States and the West very considerably.
I come back to the point which I want to make, which seems to have been missed in most of the debate. What we are talking about is not an attempt to disarm the Soviet Union but an attempt to do what we have always tried to do—to deter the Soviet Union from attacking us at all by restricting the number of their options, complicating their calculations, and therefore making it less likely even than it is now that they will resort to military force as an instrument of foreign policy.
We have had, too, a good deal of argument about the Soviet reaction to this. We have heard that it will create a new spiral in the arms race. Yes, my Lords, it might. If the Soviet Union decided that its reaction to this was so to improve its offensive capability that it could saturate this kind of defence, that would indeed be a spiralling of the arms race. I suspect, and I suggest, that it would be an extremely unwise and unproductive option for the Soviet Union to take. What I think the Soviet Union is much more likely to do is to increase its strategic defence initiative. Indeed, your Lordships will recall that President Reagan said—I think somewhat quixotically, but he said it—that if strategic defence research turns out to be successful, he is willing to share it with the Soviet Union. If the Soviet Union goes in for this kind of strategic defence I entirely fail to see why we should be so worried. As the noble Lord, Lord Ardwick, said, surely mutually assured survival is preferable to mutually assured destruction, which is the posture we are in at the moment.
There is no doubt that, however much we may debate the rights and wrongs and the possibilities and impossibilities of this initiative, a good deal of future strategic thinking must take place in the context of space. In that respect, I congratulate the Government on the recent announcement that they are to set up a British National Space Centre. In my view that is a long-overdue policy decision. I also congratulate the Government on their activities inside the European Space Agency because I believe that what we should now be doing, inside the alliance, is calming down our rhetoric about arms control, instability, spiralling arms races, and so on, and collaborating with the United States of America in discovering whether or not this research is feasible.
Space is already militarised. Those who say that the Strategic Defence lnitiaitive will militarise space seem to forget that of the 8,000 or so pieces of hardware, pieces of ironmongery, whch have been put into orbit in space since the first one was launched, the vast majority are there for a military purpose. They are reconnaissance satellites, surveillance satellites, navigational satellites, weather satellites, targeting satellites, and as the noble Lord, Lord Birdwood, said, more recently there are the satellites used to house, activate and control the command and
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communications of Soviet land forces. Space is already militarised.
I conclude by saying that these are extremely complicated matters. It is in a way sad that we should commit them to a 2½ hour debate in your Lordships' House. I only say at this stage: let us not prejudge the results of this research. We have had, as I said earlier, too many examples of people saying this or that is impossible. Moreover, let us not be besotted with the idea of arms control as an end in itself. Arms control is only desirable if it increases our security. If it does not do that, it is not desirable. I believe that we should now be organising our minds in the context of this initiative so that we begin to abandon and cast out outmoded habits of thinking and recognise that the inexorable advance of technology is going to revolutionise military strategy in the twenty first century; and we had better be ready for it.
6.50 p.m.
Lord Beloff: My Lords, we have acquired, perhaps unintentionally, a new measuring rod for the interest which the public at large is likely to take in our debates. That is provided by whether the cameras are switched on or switched off. This afternoon we have seen them switched on for a debate about drug abuse in this country—a serious problem for government and for society—and switched off for a discussion of events which, on some apocalyptic judgments, might mean the end of humanity as a whole, when even drug abuse would cease to concern us.
I believe that the broadcasting authorities were thoroughly right in their judgment, for this reason. When, earlier this afternoon we were discussing drug abuse and the measures to take against it, we were discussing something which is, at any rate, within the reach of government. By taking measures outlined to us by the Minister, by spending more money as was urged by some other noble Lords, our own Government can at least hope to handle the drugs problem. But when we talk about the Strategic Defence Initiative it is of course true that it affects diplomacy and that we can, to some extent, as allies of the United States, perhaps make some difference as to what they do, but it is not something for which either our Government or this House is or indeed can be responsible.
I think the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, when introducing this debate, particularly in view of the divisions that have emerged over the technologies, was probably right to concentrate on the political implications of such research. However, as I often do, I find it somewhat difficult to follow parts of the noble Lord's argument about the Alliance. I think that he cherishes a view which is understandable but Utopian. That is the view that in an alliance, properly conducted, risks must be equal. In my view risks cannot, in the nature of things, often be equal, and in the Atlantic Alliance they are not equal at all.
In order to illustrate my point, let me suppose for a moment that the noble Lord, Lord Zuckerman, is wrong and that somehow or other, by some breakthrough which cannot at the moment be foreseen or understood, this kind of total defence—which is what the President first talked about—was achieved by the United States (and, if achieved by the United

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States, clearly also by the Soviet Union). Let us suppose that by a fortunate chance (as they might both see it) they simultaneously arrived at this position of total defence. What would then be the position of the world in the strategic sense? Surely it would be that the preponderance of the Soviet Union in conventional forces and in other forms of warfare, which, at the moment, while threatening, is not a dire threat to our security, would become one. That is because the nuclear weapons of the two sides cancel each other out; we would be left neighbours of a highly-armed Soviet Union, and the United States would be on the other side of the Atlantic.
This is to put it only in its most graphic terms, but it is an inescapable, geographical fact that Europe is the neighbour of the Soviet Union and, except in Alaska, the United States is not. It is also an inescapable fact, as I have ventured to remind your Lordships before, that the interest of the United States in the defence of Europe—in, let us say, keeping Europe out of "Sovietisation", or even "Finlandisation"—is diminishing, and is bound to diminish with the change in the interests of the United States. The Pacific Basin is, more rapidly than one would have thought, replacing the Atlantic Basin as the focus of American attention. In these circumstances, the arguments for treading very carefully to avoid American susceptibilities seem to me arguments for prudence which, on this occasion, have been observed by the speeches of the noble Lords but have, on some such subjects, not been wholly observed in the past.
The question I should like someone to answer is this. As has been said—and I think no one has so far denied it—the Soviet Union clearly has the capacity to embark upon research of this kind, and probably, as the noble Lord, Lord Kennett, says, has made some steps towards anti-ballistic missile defence. Whether or not this amounts to a formal defiance of the treaty is perhaps a matter for argument. In the light of this, what interests me is what the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, perfectly correctly said. That is the fact that we have to admit that the announcement of the Strategic Defence Initiative was an important fact or, perhaps conclusive, in bringing the Russians back to the negotiating table at Geneva. Why are they so worried about this development if they themselves have the capacity to match it?
It can hardly be—and this would be horrific—that they seriously think that this is a prelude to an American first strike, because there is no conceivable reason why any sane person should believe that. Is it because they feel that to embark competitively on the development of systems of this kind would, for economic and financial reasons, cripple them to an extent to which the more expandable economy of the United States would not be crippled? What is the reason? What is the reason why, after having rejected opportunities—after having, indeed, rather put themselves into a corner by saying that they would never discuss arms controls so long as intermediate-range missiles were poised in Western Europe—they have suddenly come round to this?
I think we must keep asking ourselves what is the Soviet position on matters of this kind. I think this
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raises questions upon which one should like to have a feeling that more information existed. I do not know what is the answer. I find it difficult to work out potential answers, even, other than the economic one which I have mentioned and which I am inclined to dismiss on the ground that the Soviet Union has always given (and, in my view, so long as it continues under its present régime, will always give) priority to political considerations over economic ones.
Lord Kennet: My Lords, this is not to answer the noble Lord's question, but would he bear in mind, when thinking about it, that the announcement from Washington of SDI took place many months before the Soviet Union even left the negotiations, let alone before they came back?
Lord Beloff: My Lords, yes, that is an interesting comment, but it somewhat undermines the position of the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, which I was exploring. That is because he said that he thought that this was the effective reason for the Soviets returning to Geneva.
I think it is important, perhaps, to keep in mind both the susceptibility of the Soviet Union to worries about its security—which I am sure are genuine—and also the difficulties which it finds in backing up its willingness to discuss arms control in terms of hardware with any kind of what one might call ideological arms control. We have seen this recently in the divergent preparations being made in Western Europe and the Soviet Union to commemorate the end of the war in Europe. It is rightly urged upon us in this country to choose it as a moment for reconciliation and for remembering the contribution of our allies. It is used in the Soviet Union to deny the importance of the contribution of the Western Allies and to place it in the context of alleged American expansionism.
In the light of this, and in the light of what the noble Lord, Lord Ardwick, said—that, on the whole, history suggests that people will go on probing the balance between offensive and defensive weapons—I think that all I could say in conclusion is, "Let us tread very carefully. Let us discuss this, but let us discuss it quietly and not too often".
7.1 p.m.
Lord Caccia: My Lords, we should be grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, for bringing forward this subject, even if only in a short debate, and particularly for the terms in which he started it. The noble Lord pointed out clearly that there was nothing ignoble in the President's original thought. Indeed, in another part of the speech which he made on 23rd March 1983, the President said:
"The human spirit must be capable of rising above dealing with other nations and human beings by threatening their existence".
I do not think that, on the moral side, we have anything to complain of. I gather that this is also the view of the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, of the President thinking in these terms. We then come to the question, "Was this thought likely to be practical?" Here, I think, for the non-scientifically trained, it is perhaps difficult to come to a final conclusion. We have had two slants on this matter from my noble friends sitting on this Bench. They have their counterparts in the United States.

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As the noble Lord, Lord Chalfont, said, the President set up a team of 50 distinguished scientists. At the end of their deliberations, the scientific adviser to the President, Dr. George Keyworth, concluded that the system "probably could be done". No sooner had he come to that conclusion, than, on the other side, Dr. Hans Bethe, a distinguished Nobel laureate in physics, said bluntly, "I don't think it can be done". Very soon after this he was backed by a report, to which the noble Lord, Lord Chalfont, has referred, sponsored by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), and a little later by a report prepared for the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) of the Congress.
I have listened most carefully to what the noble Lord, Lord Zuckerman said. I should, however, be grateful if the Government felt able to comment on this divergence of scientific advice in the suggested development of laser and neutral particle beam technology. It is not only on scientific advice that divergencies have arisen. The financial burdens to achieve the results have been as marked in their differences. For instance, the UCS report sought to show, as the noble Lord, Lord Chalfont, said, that the number of satellites needed to protect the USA would be "in the thousands". This report, at first, put the precise number at 2,400 satellites which would cost in the trillions of dollars. Per contra, the careful computer studies done at the Livermore Laboratory claimed that 90 satellites would survive or even, in certain circumstances, maybe 45. That would cut the cost from many trillions of dollars to a level that could be met with the amount already earmarked for spending on American strategic forces during the next 10 to 15 years.
In sum, it seems that we are inescapably faced with a debate of what to do in circumstances, totally or quite seriously unclear and about which there can be no immediate finality. If that is anything like the situation we are faced with, I would have agreed entirely with the noble Lord, Lord Beloff. Is it not wise to tread a little cautiously before going in and accusing the United States of risking the three Ds for danger—the risk of decoupling, destabilisation and the diversion of resources?
And would it not be more prudent at this stage to rely on the assurances that the Prime Minister has achieved in her latest conversations with the President of the United States? I was glad to hear the noble Lord, Lord Zuckerman, say that he welcomed these assurances. If the state of science and the costs involved are as uncertain as I have sought to show, surely that is all that, at the moment, it is reasonable to expect from the President of the United States.
7.7 p.m.
Lord Gladwyn: My Lords, as noble Lords may conceivably be aware, I have publicly expressed my dislike of the whole idea of star wars ever since it was first proclaimed by President Reagan in March 1983, so it follows that I agree entirely with the criticisms of the project advanced by several noble Lords, notably my noble friends Lord Mayhew and Lord Kennet, and also Lord Zuckerman, and, perhaps, to a certain extent, too, by the noble Lord, Lord Ardwick. My short contribution to the debate will therefore be
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chiefly concerned with what I believe to be the ill effects of the apparent abandonment by the United States Administration of the whole concept or philosophy—call it what you will—of what is technically known as mutual assured destruction. For this concept, more popularly referred to as "deterrence" or "the balance of terror"—it all comes to the same thing—is, as I shall hope to show, in spite of what the noble Lord, Lord Chalfont, said, simply not consonant with SDI, as I see it. Therefore, what is it exactly? And why is its maintenance so important?
Well, ever since the Soviet Union achieved in the early 1960s what is known as nuclear equality, there has been, pending general disarmament, a tacit recognition of the fact that since each side already possessed the assured capability of inflicting totally unacceptable damage on the other side, even on a second strike, there should be no attempt by either side, in the first place, to achieve any kind of nuclear superiority—a fact, I think, recognised by the Prime Minister—by building up sufficient nuclear weapons to eliminate all the strategic weapons of the adversary on a first strike, or, in the second place, to construct any overall anti-ballistic missile system capable of destroying all, or most of, such missiles before their target is reached. This understanding, sometimes, as I say, known as the balance of terror, accompanied, and was fundamental to, such notable achievements in arms limitation as the Treaty on Outer Space of 1967, the famous ABM treaty of 1972, SALT I of 1972 and SALT II of 1979. It is quite true that the Russians—possibly through fear of being dominated, though conceivably as the result of a desire to dominate—have been building up, over the years, a nuclear armoury that far surpasses that required for any reasonable nuclear security under the concept of the balance of terror; and that this fact, coupled with a series of disastrous acts and policies about which we all know, eventually resulted, not surprisingly, in the emergence in Washington of a régime resolved to stand up to the Soviet Union in all fields, and notably to embark on a very large rearmament programme, more especially nuclear.
We, the European members of the North Atlantic Alliance, as is known, went along with this tendency by agreeing, in principle, and pending negotiations, to the stationing of nuclear weapons in Europe capable of countering, to some extent, the Soviet SS 20s, which might otherwise, I suppose theoretically, obliterate at least the Federal Republic, without any particular comeback, always supposing of course that the two super powers decided not to indulge in an exchange of strategic nuclear missiles as between themselves.
The trouble has been, I suggest, that while the Russians, for whatever reason, have certainly been endangering the balance of terror, the Americans, by overreacting, have lately been endangering it too. The noble Lord, Lord Kennet, dwelt on this to a considerable extent. Still, until March 1983, though endangered, the famous principle of the balance of terror remained very much alive, seeing that both super powers undoubtedly retained the assured ability to destroy each other on a second strike, even if, idiotically enough, each was able, and each is able, so to destroy the other many times over, once presumably being quite enough if the theory of deterrence is to continue to operate.

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Here, however, we do come up against the President's celebrated dream, or, as some malign sceptics might possibly say, his brainwave. How intolerable, he seems to have said to himself, for the world's greatest nation to cower permanently under the threat of extermination and to allow its freedom of action to be in any way curtailed by such a threat. Can we not break out of this insane embrace? Why, yes. All we have to do is to get our scientists to think up a system which will protect us—and our allies, too, if possible—from any nuclear assault of any kind. Since American resources are practically unlimited, this can no doubt be achieved, in time. And, after all, it will in no way be a case of warlike preparations. Oh, no. If no missiles can threaten America, and since America, being pacific, will never threaten anybody, then we shall all be at peace and humanity will be saved from the present threat of extinction. Surely, therefore, all right-thinking people must welcome such a great idea as this.
Given a prospect, for many years ahead, of work on world peace and not on war, it is not very surprising that at least some qualified scientists assured the President that, contrary to the views of others, there was at least some likelihood, by the end of the century, of placing great platforms in space from which Soviet missiles could be shot down by laser beams shortly after leaving the ground. Needless to say, the project, or at least the devotion of 26 billion dollars to research, was also welcomed by the universities, the research centres and the business interests involved. But what real validity is there in the claim that SDI is the key, or a key, to world peace? Alas, very little, for the following reasons.
Supposing—first assumption—that, with their far greater resources, the Americans do achieve complete, or almost complete, nuclear immunity by the end of the century and the Russians do not. Is it not obvious that in the event of war, or the threat of war, the Americans, if they so desired, would have the capacity to inflict unacceptable damage on their great adversary without fearing any substantial retaliation? Would they not, in other words, have the Russians at their mercy? We might ourselves be quite happy with such a development, but is it not obvious that the Russians will do everything possible to prevent what from their point of view would be a calamity? And it is also pretty obvious what they might do if they really felt that they were going to be cornered.
Supposing, however—second assumption—that the Russians, as the result of inconceivable and no doubt crippling effort, were more or less simultaneously to achieve nuclear immunity. What then? Would peace break out? Hardly, for, apart from the whole problem of proliferation, it is really impossible to imagine that SDI would be able to cope with short-range cruise and very low trajectory weapons or shells, nuclear shells. Thus, Western Europe would still be devastated by the Soviet Union when the Soviet Union itself would be immune from nuclear attack. However—and this is a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Beloff—even assuming that Western Europe could be adequately protected against any nuclear assault, what is to prevent its being at the mercy of some great Soviet superiority in conventional weapons? We might all,
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under this hypothesis, therefore, be involved perforce in conventional hostilities, with the Soviet Union in a strong position to win.
In spite of poor prospects of success, would the Russians then still feel obliged to catch up with the Americans on ABM? If they did, the effect on their already ailing economy would be pretty devastating, I should have thought, and that is, I am afraid, what at least some of the advocates of SDI, more particularly perhaps in America, have in mind. Might not the Soviet Union, in effect, disintegrate under the strain, leaving the West, and notably the Americans, as the equivalent of victors in a third world war?
This would surely be a most dangerous assumption on which to base Western policy. Nor would it be compatible with any serious effort to arrive at arms limitation, always supposing that that is desirable. We have every reason to dislike and distrust the Soviet régime, but it is there and it is quite unlikely to go away. We should therefore at least try to imagine how the Politburo would react in any given circumstances and not despair of eventually arriving at some acceptable form of co-existence; that is, if it is indeed our intention to avoid and not, perhaps unconsciously, to promote some ultimate recourse to force, which, in a nuclear age, can no longer be held by any sane man to be, as the Romans said, the ultima ratio regum, or the final choice of princes.
I do not know whether, in a necessarily very compressed statement of a case, I have carried any conviction with your Lordships. So I would end by saying only that if Her Majesty's Government are by any chance persuaded that SDI, even in its early research phase, is a dangerous project, more especially because of the accompanying demise of deterrence as the guiding principle in East-West relations—a point which was so successfully brought out by the noble Lord, Lord Zuckerman—they would surely be well advised to rally their European partners in friendly opposition to it and then to explain to the Americans what exactly our common apprehensions are and how desirable it would be to bargain star wars against some real concessions in arms negotiations by the Soviet Union, which I think would be quite possible, given that the Soviet Union has obviously come back to the negotiating table because of fear of star wars going ahead.
I suggested in my own last speech on this subject, on 16th January, that if we were able to combine our remonstrances with some offer to increase and strengthen our own conventional defences, notably, as I should think, and as my noble friend Lord Mayhew would doubtless think also, by abandoning Trident, that would no doubt add very greatly to the persuasiveness of our arguments.
In conclusion, I would add only that I should not of course expect the Government to reveal the cards which they will no doubt soon have to play in a difficult and perhaps even a dangerous game. I would only ask them not to dissent publicly from the belief that the principle of mutual assured destruction—the balance of terror—though naturally not ideal, is still something that, pending general disarmament, cannot safely be abandoned, least of all by the Western Europeans, who might well be the first, and possibly the only, victims if it were abandoned.
7.21 p.m.
Lord Graham of Edmondon: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, and his party have rendered a service to the House and I believe also to the Government in using some of their precious time—and party time is very precious in the House—to expose some of the questions which arise from this latest phenomenon as regards defence and security. Many who are taking part in this debate also took part in the debate on 16th January. Therefore, many of the matters raised on that occasion must still be fresh in our minds. I am sure that we can all recall the previous debate which took place within a week of the conclusion of the Geneva talks. There was an air of optimism. Some might have been sceptical, but there was an air of optimism among those who took part in the debate and I certainly played my part in injecting some optimism into the matter at that time.
We need to ask the following question. Is it only three weeks since the Geneva talks? I recall the powerful and thoughtful speech in the debate on 16th January by the noble Lord, Lord Chalfont, to whom I always listen with respect, and indeed to whom I listened with respect again tonight. Early in his speech, at column 983, he confessed that we did not know enough about the Strategic Defence Initiative to condemn it. I suggest that nor did we know enough about it then to endorse it. However, the noble Lord did so tonight. So he has used the last three weeks very fruitfully indeed.
I trust that we can acknowledge that the SDI has at least the merit of refocusing our attention on what the Motion of the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, underlines—namely, global stability and peace. When we discussed a defence matter in the House the other day the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, used the expression, "a jaundiced view". He said that he took a more jaundiced view that I did. Jaundice is contagious. I must tell the noble Lord that his strain of jaundice has spread horizontally to the Labour Front Bench as regards this particular issue tonight.
I take the view that the SDI has already served a major purpose in helping to create the climate which led to the Geneva talks. That strong possibility was referred to not only by the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, but by others in the debate. The potential, the value or the importance of those talks was such that the Russians felt compelled to begin the dialogue once more across a wide range of defence and security matters, after breaking it off when the West proceeded to place its cruise missiles in situ earlier.
Bluntly, I shall need a great deal of convincing that in time the SDI will be seen as other than the latest initiative to be probed, got round, improved or broken in the same way as other initiatives over these past 40 years have inexorably led to the circumvention of the latest wonder ingredient in the search for parity, balance or domination. The noble Lord, Lord Ardwick, made the same point, and he made it most effectively.
The Motion before us calls attention to the political and economic implications of SDI. These are important and worthy of the time of the House. The extent to which the SDI can sow dissension—and this was referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew—is well illustrated by John Barry's articles in The Times
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that were quoted by the noble Lord, Lord Kennet. I have with me the article that appeared on 24th January. The noble Lord, Lord Kennet, and all others interested, will know that he was talking then about the Camp David talks and their aftermath. The noble Lord, Lord Kennet, highly praised the shrewdness and perception of this series of articles and I would certainly agree with him. However, in my view we ought to examine a little more closely what John Barry said in his article. He said:
"The agreed statement made after their meeting was a masterpiece of ambiguity. In return for very partial blessing of Reagan's present plans. Mrs. Thatcher was able to announce agreement on four policy guidelines which mean as much or as little as either side wants".
Earlier in the same article he was very perceptive in posing one of the problems that was referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, about sowing dissension in the West. John Barry wrote:
"Ronald Reagan's power as a political leader is his ability to persuade the American people to share his dreams. Right now, as his inaugural speech once again showed, he is in thrall to his vision of a world made safe by anti-missile defences. And he presides over an economy rich enough to pursue it.
"Margaret Thatcher, by contrast, leads a country inclined by nature and history to manage the status quo rather than seek some dramatic new order, and her frugal soul is appalled by the mountain of money the Americans propose to gamble in search of one".
He goes on:
"President Reagan was genuinely saddened to learn of her doubts at Camp David".
As regards Mrs. Thatcher, John Barry said:
"She talked and talked, lectured him about her worries. And he realised she was just a European like all the others".
So we can see the opportunity for mischief between the alliance. I use that as one of the threads of the political implications of the SDI talks that have been referred to in this debate.
I am conscious of the fact that we are long on questions and short on answers. I make no complaint, no strong, positive assertion; but again I find that the SDI gives us cause for reflection and re-examination. The fact is that both sides need to spend less money on defence, but Russia needs to do so even more than America does. It is a certainty that Mr. Chernenko's problem is that, with an economy half the size of America's, he has to spend twice as much per Russian on defence just to keep even. The squeeze on the Russians' hopes for a better standard of life will become worse when their generals demand for the Soviet Army the new precision weapons that America has already developed.
The depressing economic consequence of the SDI is that every dollar, every pound, every rouble that is spent even on research is a dollar, a pound or a rouble less to spend on hospitals, homes and factories. We know that Geneva came forth with a package of initiatives, but in the meantime, until we reach that happy state when there is universal agreement to reduce and eliminate arms of all kind, current programmes are scheduled to proceed without let or hindrance.
Yesterday in the Commons the Secretary of State for Defence told us that the cost of Trident has now reached £9.285 billion. That was calculated on the basis that the pound was worth 1·38 dollars. We all know that that calculation is a patent nonsense—the

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rate is now 1·12 dollars. I can share the optimism that the pound will rise. But my honourable friend Mr. Denzil Davies was spot on when he recalculated the Secretary of State's figures to show that the sum is now in excess of £10 billion and rising. What an economic body blow that programme is? For all the many reasons that were outlined by the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, I certainly share the noble Lord's view on the future of Trident—which is that it ought to have no future at all.
In this debate we are trying to examine consequences—political and economic—which are largely guesswork and based on a premise: the Strategic Defence Initiative, which has yet to be researched. We have to hang on to the fact that we are talking about a research programme, a point so effectively made by the noble Lord, Lord Chalfont.
We are in the earliest days after Geneva. Both Russia and America have acted with commendable speed. Teams of negotiators to take the next steps forward have already been announced and a date to begin negotiations has been set. I remind your Lordships that the aims for those talks have much to commend them. They are to work out effective agreements aimed at preventing an arms race in space; to work out effective agreements to terminate the arms race on earth; and to reach an effective agreement designed to achieve the complete elimination of nuclear arms everywhere.
The noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, has taken his own initiative in so ably leading us in this debate tonight. It has served a good purpose and we are all the better informed for it. The noble Lord deserves our thanks and I give them to him without reserve.
7.31 p.m.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Armed Forces (Lord Trefgarne): My Lords, I add my words to those of other noble Lords in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, not only for giving your Lordships the chance to discuss this matter, but for giving me the opportunity to explain the Government's policy towards the United States Strategic Defence Initiative, a subject of such obvious importance that I hope your Lordships will allow me to return to some of the points which my noble friend Lady Young addressed on 16th January in response to the noble Lord, Lord Molloy's Motion on disarmament. The noble Lord, Lord Graham, also referred to some of those points.
On that occasion my noble friend mentioned the very thorough and extensive discussion of the prospects for arms control which my right honourable friend the Prime Minister had with President Reagan last month at Camp David. During the course of that discussion they naturally touched on the subject of this debate, the Strategic Defence Initiative.
It is not surprising that a large measure of agreement emerged from that meeting, and my right honourable friend was able to tell President Reagan, as she had earlier made plain to Mr. Gorbachev, that there is no question of allowing wedges to be driven between the United Kindom and the United States on this subject. She also made clear that the research into defences against ballistic missiles being conducted under the
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SDI programme is of course permitted under existing treaties between the United States and the Soviet Union; and, as your Lordships are aware, the Soviet Union already has extensive and long-established programmes of its own in this field. Indeed, it should be remembered that the Soviet Union already has in service the only operational ABM system anywhere in the world.
Four specific points of agreement emerged from the Camp David meeting: first, that the aim of the United States and the West was not to achieve superiority, but only to maintain balance, bearing in mind developments in the Soviet Union; secondly, that in view of treaty obligations, any SDI-related deployment would have to be a matter for negotiations; thirdly, that the overall aim behind the SDI was to enhance deterrence and not to undermine it; and, fourthly, that the aim of East-West negotiation, including the forthcoming arms control talks between the United States and the Soviet Union, should be to achieve security with reduced levels of offensive forces on both sides. These four points are the basis of Her Majesty's Government's approach to the question of the SDI. They speak for themselves and I shall not seek to elaborate on them.
I should however reiterate the welcome we have given to the negotiations between the United States and the Soviet Union, which are due to begin on 12th March in Geneva and which will address the whole range of nuclear and space arms. Her Majesty's Government fully share the objective agreed by Mr. Shultz and Mr. Gromyko on 8th January:
"To work out effective agreements aimed at preventing an arms race in space and terminating it on earth".
The prospect of serious negotiations, coming after so long an interval in which the Russians simply refused to talk, is a clear vindication of the steadfastness with which the alliance has sought a resumption of the East-West arms control dialogue. There are certainly grounds for satisfaction but not euphoria. As President Reagan has said, the need for patience and perseverence will be as great as ever if this fresh opportunity for arms control is also to prove a positive turning-point in arms control history.
Yet listening to some of the criticisms levelled by several noble Lords this evening, I feel bound to rebut the charge, apparently laid at the Government's door, of complacency in the face of this historic challenge. I can assure those of your Lordships who fear the development of an arms race in space, that the Government's concern on this score is by no means new. Our view has often been made clear that such unrestrained competition, taking the arms race quite literally into a new and infinite dimension, would benefit no one. My right honourable friend the Prime Minister herself stressed the need for negotiation and mutual restraint if the urgent challenge posed by costly new space technologies is to be met.
Lest any of your Lordships should think that this is little but a belated recognition of developments that have only in recent months begun to attract extensive public and parliamentary interest, I would recall the speech made by my honourable friend, the Minister of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Arrairs, Mr. Luce, to the First Committee of the United Nations General Assembly, as long ago as October 1983, in

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which he amply brought out the complexities involved in arms control in space. He said:
" Much attention has rightly been paid to the problem of arms control agreements in space. The argument that progress in arms control is easier to achieve when the weapons concerned have not yet been fully developed, let alone deployed, is a good one, which the history of disarmament to some degree endorses. But we must not forget that in outer space some military developments can have a positive effect on international security. The use of satellites to monitor arms control agreements is an obvious case in point; and there are others. We should therefore beware of the quick fix, the easy option which could complicate rather than resolve the issue. That however is no excuse for ignoring obvious opportunities for agreement which would truly enhance security".
In parenthesis, I should add that much confusion in the debate about arms control in space is caused by those who call glibly for the total "demilitarisation" of space or blanket bans or moratoria on "space weapons". A more rigorous approach that acknowledges the beneficial nature of some military uses of space would save us from some of the intellectual blind alleys with which discussion of this subject is afflicted; it would permit a better appreciation of what arms control measures might truly benefit international peace and stability. In the propaganda campaign that will no doubt accompany the Soviet return to the negotiating table clear-sightedness will be essential.
Nothing could be clearer, despite Soviet propaganda, than that the Strategic Defence Initiative will be on the table in the negotiations along with everthing else. President Reagan said so in those very words on 9th January. Britain has welcomed on numerous occasions United States readiness to discuss with the Russians research programmes on strategic defence. To catalogue those occasions, when the American offer appeared to be falling on wilfully deaf Soviet ears, would be tedious.
But as I have pointed out, United States undertakings are not limited to current SDI research: at Camp David, President Reagan and the Prime Minister were in full agreement that, in the hypothetical future event of any SDI-related deployment, in view of treaty obligations this would have to be a matter for negotiations. Anyone who is inclined to confuse the SDI research programme with the script of "Star Wars" should reflect on the following extract from a statement issued by the White House on 3rd January this year:
"Developments of defensive systems would most usefully be done in the context of a co-operative, equitable and verifiable arms control environment that regulates the offensive and defensive development of the US and the Soviet Union.".
Those are not the words of an administration hell-bent on taking war into space. As for the present situation, I am sure your Lordships will recognise that a measure of Western research into defences against ballistic missiles is prudent insurance against the possibility of a unilateral Soviet breakthrough in this field. To ban or constrain laboratory research through international arms control agreement would clearly not be an easy matter. Nor is it certain that such an intrusive approach would be welcome to the Soviet Union, given its activities in this sphere and its past attitude to verification.
The question of "linkage"—between ballistic missile defence and offensive nuclear arms—is a complex one and fundamental to the forthcoming
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negotiations, which will address both areas. There is a clear and logical connection between the two, which last year the Russians sought strenuously to deny but which they now openly acknowledge. Sufficient unto the day, perhaps, is the propaganda thereto. Undoubtedly the SDI has been a factor in persuading the Russians back to the negotiating table. The Americans have made clear that the SDI is intended to complement efforts to reduce nuclear arms. But we must not be misled into seeing it simply as a crude negotiating level or bargaining chip. A creative and imaginative approach by both negotiating partners to the interconnected problems of nuclear and space arms ought, we believe, to lead to progress in both areas, and would help achieve what both we and the Americans have long been pressing for—enhanced security with greatly reduced levels of forces on both sides.
The maintenance and enhancement of deterrence, prudent research into ballistic missile defence, balanced and verifiable reductions in nuclear weapons—these are surely uncontentious aims. Naturally we are determined to preserve the greatest possible cohesion of the Western Alliance in support of these objectives. We shall do everything necessary to achieve this. Divisions between us on these important issues would serve the interests of no-one but our adversaries. The United States continues to consult its allies about SDI developments. Critics of the alliance would do well to heed the Prime Minister's warning against attempts at wedge-driving, which cannot succeed in the face of effective consultations among free allies.
Some of your Lordships have rightly drawn attention to inherent features of the SDI programme that have been the subject of hot debate on both sides of the Atlantic. One such feature is the technical feasibility of the basic aim under investigation—in the mind of the noble Lord, Lord Caccia, and others this evening—to defend against ballistic missiles. On this, I would only say that President Reagan himself acknowledged in his original SDI speech of March 1983 that the technical task was indeed formidable and would take decades of effort to accomplish. The technical problems involved, which include that of likely countermeasures, are obvious, and present research is designed to do no more than to establish what may be possible and desirable. It will be several years before decisions are taken on whether or not to proceed from there.
The same applies to the question of cost, to which the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, has referred. At present all that can be said is that the United States Administration is engaged in requesting Congressional approval for research funds of 26 billion dollars over a five-year period, of which very little has yet been approved and allocated. As the SDI proceeds, cost factors will need to be carefully weighed. Were an extensive system of anti-missile defences, if feasible, ever to be deployed, it would undoubtedly be very expensive.
May I turn now to one or two of the points which have been raised during the course of this debate. The noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, asked particularly about the effects upon the United Kingdom nuclear deterrent. As my right honourable friend the Secretary

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of State for Defence pointed out in another place as recently as yesterday, Trident will be in service long before any deployment of comprehensive ballistic missile defences, assuming of course that such defences prove feasible. In short, Trident will provide the best possible means of ensuring the continued effectiveness of our national nuclear deterrent well into the future, regardless of Soviet ABM programmes. No comparable expenditure on so-called conventional weapons could possibly prove of the same deterrent value.
The noble Lord, Lord Graham, referred to the cost of Trident 2 following the announcement of my right honourable friend yesterday. I would remind him that the great bulk of Trident expenditure will fall several years from now, and I am simply not in a position to anticipate what the dollar exchange rate might be, for example, at that time. Therefore, any calculations which may be made on today's rates, or rates which existed recently, are not likely to have much relevance when the time comes.
Lord Graham of Edmonton: My Lords, if it is not possible to calculate the future dollar/pound ratio, what was the basis on which the 1·38 dollars figure was arrived at in order to make the present calculation?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, I think that was the rate applying at the end of June last year. It has been the historical fact that we have always published the revised costings based on the rate at the end of June of the previous year. There was nothing unusual about that.
I was pleased that several noble Lords drew attention to the continued need for nuclear deterrence whether or not we acquire a ballistic missile defence. The United States leaders have explicitly recognised this. As the noble Lord, Lord Zuckerman, pointed out, President Reagan reaffirmed it at Camp David.
With respect to the noble Lords, Lord Mayhew and Lord Kennet, the SDI should not be confused with High Frontier ambitions of replacing deterrence with defence, leak-proof or otherwise. The noble Lord, Lord Kennet, asked me, too, about the timescale of SDI. I think the noble Lord had it in mind that the SDI programme would move into the hardware procurement stage within the next four years. I think that that is extremely unlikely. The programme is, as the noble Lord, Lord Chalfont, rightly pointed out, a research programme only at this stage. Development, let alone production, could not begin, on the most optimistic assessment, for very many years yet.
Finally, I must address perhaps the most serious aspect of the SDI—its implications, in the words of the Motion, for "global stability and peace". In this context, the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, signed in 1972 by the United States and the Soviet Union, is of clear relevance. The Government have repeatedly said that we regard the treaty as an important element in preserving international peace and security, and as a fundamental part of the current strategic situation. It is therefore important to note that neither side has signalled any intention of breaking the treaty. It should also be clear that the treaty permits research into defences against ballistic missiles, and, therefore, that
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United States research, as President Reagan confirmed on 9th January, is consistent with existing obligations.
But stability goes beyond the question of treaty compliance. To those who argue exaggeratedly that SDI research implies the overthrow of current strategic doctrine, I would reply that the Americans, including President Reagan, have repeatedly stressed that their aim is not to undermine or erode deterrence but to enhance and strengthen it. This was explicitly reaffirmed at Camp David and is a point of paramount importance. I know that some of your Lordships remain unconvinced by the evidence of their own experience of a generation of stability, but the fact remains that deterrence has helped keep the peace for forty years. Whatever prospects—good or bad—that may exist for expanded defences against ballistic missiles, and however fruitful or otherwise SDI research proves to be, there is no doubt that we shall need to sustain and strengthen deterrence into the foreseeable future. That, my Lords, is fundamental to the strategic stability on which both East and West depend.
Lord Mayhew: My Lords, I should like to thank all noble Lords who have taken part in this interesting debate. I thank the Minister for setting out the position of the Government in his usual careful and accurate manner, treading his usual narrow path between the platitude on the one hand and the indiscretion on the other.
I cannot resume my seat without one further brief comment. I thought until this evening, after more than 30 years of experience in Parliament, that I had suffered every humiliation to which a parliamentary speaker can be exposed. This evening, however, in the middle of my speech, the television lights went out. I attributed this to a technical fault or possibly union restrictive practice. I can think of no other credible explanation! I am most grateful to the broadcasting authorities for broadcasting the first half of my speech, However, I would offer them one word of advice. They do not have to televise the speeches in extenso of noble Lords, but if the television lights are on when a noble Lord begins speaking they should still be on when he resumes his seat.
My Lords, I beg leave to withdraw the Motion.
Motion, for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

Buses: Assaults on Staff
7.51 p.m.
Lord Belhaven and Stenton Lord Belhaven and Stenton rose to ask Her Majesty's Government whether they are satisfied with the results of the campaign, recently launched by London Transport and the Metropolitan Police, to step up the policing of London buses with the aim of counteracting violence and threats of violence to bus drivers and conductors; and whether they consider that in evaluating the nature of these assaults and devising counter-measures sufficient notice is taken of the views of drivers and conductors themselves.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, first, as I am not allowed to do it at the end, I should like to thank those noble Lords who have put their names down to speak.

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I do not see them all here. I am sorry to say that I have had a message from the noble Lord, Lord Grimond, that he is unable to speak although his name is on the speaker's list. That is a great pity because I enjoy listening to him and I enjoy reading his many articles.
The only interest I have to declare in this debate is as a fare-paying passenger on London Transport buses. I dare say that that must be an interest that all your Lordships have, unless indeed any of your Lordships present are multi-millionaires, which I doubt.
Baroness Trumpington: Or are old-age pensioners, my Lords.
Lord Belhaven and Stenton: My Lords, at the outset I should also like to pay tribute to the courtesy I have always met from bus-drivers, conductors and other people employed by London Transport. This is a fairly general experience and, considering the job they do, I think their good manners and friendliness deserve all credit. While on this subject I should like to pay tribute to bus drivers in particular who have always seemed to me to be the safest drivers on the roads of this city. If only car drivers, lorry drivers and, I would single out in particular, coach drivers could drive half as well as London bus drivers London would be a much safer place to go about in.
The rising incidence of assaults on bus crews cannot be separated from the increasing lawlessness of the times in which we live. That could be the answer which my noble friend might give to my question: "What is all this about? It is happening everywhere!" I have thought about this, but for the life of me I cannot see that it would make things any better. Try saying that to a bus conductor who has just been beaten up. In my view, we all have to think very hard about this violence. We have to think harder than we have been thinking. But that does not mean that I intend to attack the authorities who, so far as I can see, are doing their best in a difficult situation. Nevertheless, it is fair to say that so far they do not appear to have the answer. Here I would say that perhaps there is no solution, but I think that is too pessimistic an assumption and I do not subscribe to it.
My object in asking this Question is to call attention to a grave and scandalous situation and to elicit a reply from my noble friend, to which I look forward with interest. Also, with some humility, I shall put forward a few suggestions myself.
We should try to see what the situation is about and for that purpose I quote briefly from the London Weekly News of 14th July last. The quote states:
"This year up to 3,000 ticket collectors, bus drivers, conductors and station supervisors will be assaulted while going about their business. If you are a ticket collector on London Underground's Saturday night shift you have a one in fifty chance of being beaten up".
I could quote more but that is enough. It shows a situation which is—or ought to be—beyond the bounds of public tolerance. I do not know how much more of this there has to be before our public transport system begins to break down, but it is clear enough to me that the public servants are carrying a burden of fear and stress which we have no right to impose upon them. There is a clear obligation on every one of us, not just on Her Majesty's Government and the police,
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to do everything we can to protect these people who are serving us and the public interest with courage and loyalty.
I now come to the second part of my Question, which is how much notice is being taken of the views of the drivers and the conductors. I expect that my noble friend will tell us that these views are being listened to. The unions are in close consultation and, as representatives of the workforce, they in turn talk to the management and listen to their members. I do not doubt any of that, but I enter a small caveat; that is that I am not sure that this is how unions are regarded by their members nowadays—that is, as representatives and tribunes of the people. I suspect that there is a growing tendency to lump unions and management together as "them". I am sure that this is so. It may be unfortunate; it may be yet one more example of the cussedness of human nature, but it is none the less something which should be taken into account when dealing with this problem.
I know that measures are being taken, and my noble friend will no doubt tell us what they are. Safety screens for drivers are one of the devices I have seen, but I have to say—not because I want to say it but no discussion of law and order at this time can be complete without its being mentioned—that there are people, happily not in your Lordships' House, who do not appear to be so well disposed as the Government, the police and the unions involved.
The political attack on the police has been gathering momentum for the last few years. This is something quite new to our body politic and to me it is utterly deplorable. It does no service in this situation to equate criminal violence with the police violence necessary to contain it. Yet this is being done all the time. There has also been the fact that violence in the miners' strike has denuded police forces all over the country, and that must be to the detriment of our hard pressed public servants in this city.
There is an imperative obligation on all those in public positions to protect those who serve us. Politics should not enter into it and in the past they never did. Those who seek to challenge public order on questionable gounds of workers' solidarity or on any other grounds whatsoever bear a heavy burden of responsibility.
I do not pretend to be any sort of expert on counter measures. I can only make one suggestion which has occurred to me personally. I was in New York in 1979, which is some time ago but I imagine they still operate the same system on their buses. From memory the bus driver was in a sort of cage. I do not think anyone could have assaulted the driver even if he had wanted to. There was a machine beside him for coins and a turnstile. One had to put two quarter dollars into the machine and move through the turnstile into the bus. If one did not have two quarters in one's pocket one could not travel. Once on the bus, a passenger could travel two stops, 70 stops or as far as the bus went for those two quarter-dollars. No change was given, and to change buses one had to go through the whole procedure again, so it would cost one dollar to take two buses.
From what I have learnt of incidents in London a lot of trouble comes from the large variety of fares charged. I have seen a report from London Transport

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News relating to assaults on staff at Cricklewood and Willesden garages, where it is stated that in 1983 there were 61 assaults on staff at these two garages, more than half of which involved disputes about fares. This is a high proportion and I urge my noble friend to consider the possibility of charging flat rates with no change given. I have no doubt that this would be unpopular to start with, particularly with those going on long journeys, but it appears that the citizens of New York have got used to it and perhaps the citizens of London and other cities in this country might, too.
We have all the machinery of crime prevention, of creating systems which seek to avoid violent situations or confrontations, and on the police side there is the business of catching criminals and improving methods of doing so. However, I cannot avoid the problem of what happens when the criminals are caught and convicted. Only last Thursday in this House the matter was raised by the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor and by the noble Baroness, Lady Phillips, in an excellent speech. To my mind, and I believe it is a view widely held, sentences on criminals, particularly on violent criminals, are not severe enough in this country. Noble and learned judges and magistrates in your Lordships' House told us last week that this is not so; but they are there in the courts. They are doing the sentencing, and they ought to know what they are talking about better than we do. I understand what they are saying. Come to think of it, it is exactly what they would say.
I realise that I am on rather dangerous ground here, but I might risk reminding our noble and learned judges that in this instance they are judges in their own cause. Of course, they think it is all right because they are the people who are doing it; they are honourable men and women, and they would not pursue a course if they did not think it was right. Nonetheless, it is the case, as I have said, that there is grave public concern about the leniency of sentences. The noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor told the House on Thursday that complaints about this were reaching him in increasing volume. To paraphrase what he continued to say—and I hope that he will not mind if I put it as an implication—he implied that there was no smoke without at least some fire.
Noble and learned judges, and notably the noble and learned Lord, Lord Denning, blamed this concern on press reports of proceedings. But my experience is that it is not only that. I have heard people directly concerned, who have been involved in these barbarous incidents and in the court proceedings which followed them, saying exactly the same thing. They may not have access to confidential files on the accused, but they do have access to the victims and they know of their suffering. There is a gathering feeling—and I know this to be true—that innocent victims of crime are sentenced by their assailants far more severely than the criminals are sentenced by the courts.
But, of course, I am on a sticky wicket here because I am supposed to be asking my noble friend what he intends to do about it. Having listened to the debate last Thursday on Clause 22 of the Prosecution of Offences Bill, the answer seems to be, "Very little". Even when the Government come up with a mild and (one might say) half-baked proposal like that in Clause
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22, they are instantly assailed in your Lordships' House by the whole weight of the legal establishment. Our legal procedures are so deeply engrained that it seems to me that nothing short of a revolution would change them—and from where I sit I certainly do not want a revolution.
Perhaps a little humility might help here, my Lords. I wish we could stop hearing noble Lords and others saying that we have the best legal system in the world. That may or may not be so: but all I would say here is that if that is so, and judging from my personal experience of our legal system, God help the rest of the world! As things are, and in relation to the widespread view that sentences on violent criminals are not severe enough, it seems to me that the only answer, if we agree that we do not think that sentences on violent criminals are severe enough, is to go on saying so. I would ask my noble friend this one question: Does he agree with this; and, if he does agree with it, will he go on saying so?
I shall finish where I started. This matter of assaults on public transport employees is a most serious one, and it will not just go away. At its worst—and we may come to this, though I hope we do not—it could result in the breakdown of our system of public transport. After all, a man or woman employed in the public service on a bus or a railway should not feel every day that he is "going over the top". This is not, and cannot be allowed to become, a war situation. Yet the stress imposed at the present time on many of these people is such that it is a very close imitation of war. I realise that the Government and the authorities involved are taking the situation seriously, and I await with great interest, and indeed with hope, the reply of my noble friend.
8.5 p.m.
Lord Underhill: My Lords, I am certainly grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Belhaven and Stenton, for putting down this Unstarred Question. I hope that it will not only draw attention to the seriousness of the problem but I hope also that it will give some reassurance as to the steps that are being taken to deal with the situation. I was particularly pleased to note the tributes that the noble Lord paid to the staff of London Transport buses, and I think that that will be very much appreciated. The Question deals with London. Although the problem exists throughout the country, the severity of the assaults and the number of incidents are greater in the London area.
On this matter, I am advised, and have been advised, by the Transport and General Workers' Union, and I had a helpful consultation the other day with two of their most responsible officials who deal with the transport crews in the London area. I was particularly pleased that they were not only concerned with the situation as it affects bus crews but also as it affects passengers. I understand that assaults on London buses have exceeded 1,000 every year over the past six years. In fact, in 1982, the figure was 1,240; and in 1983 it was 1,157. They have analysed the assaults for the first six months of 1984 which amounted to 455, and as the noble Lord implied the largest number were disputes over fares, over passes, and so on.
However, of particular concern is that 109 of the 455 assaults in the first six months of last year were

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muggings and hooliganism—the hooliganism particularly of groups refusing to pay. The issue is raised, I am assured, regularly at union branch meetings. All the assaults are monitored by the union, and the union's four divisional officers meet the management of London Regional Transport every fortnight to discuss the question of assaults. This is proper representation and they are very appreciative of this opportunity to discuss the matter regularly with the management of London Regional Transport. But the issue affects recruitment and also affects the retention of staff. I am told that the turnover of bus staff is 10 per cent. a year. When one considers the training that is given, particularly for drivers, a turnover of 10 per cent. is a bad waste. Not only do we have the problem of unsocial hours which affects bus crews but we have the problem of the increasing severity of assaults.
An interesting point was given to me that over the past five years, 90 per cent. of the unofficial strikes on London buses have been occasioned as a result of assaults and only 1 per cent. because of schedules. I can assure noble Lords that it used to be the problem of schedules, of timekeeping, on which there were always short unofficial strikes.
I was pleased to note that the union officials—and these are responsible officials in the London Region—paid a tribute to what they said was the enormous assistance given to them by the Metropolitan Police. Every garage has a Metropolitan Police inspector allocated for liaison purposes and the garage can contact that inspector at any time. It was particularly emphasised by the union officials—and they welcome this—that when new constables are enrolled part of their training is going down to the local bus garage to talk to the crews and to the union representatives. Also they are asked to take a look at what they refer to as the "moving beat"; in other words, to get on the buses and talk to the crew. I think this is excellent. It builds up confidence, and I hope that that can be encouraged.
London Transport introduced emergency radio links and alarms. I was pleased to see that in the business plan, which was published in December, of London Regional Transport (which has now taken over from London Transport) they confirm that all buses are now equipped with emergency radio links and alarms. I am assured that there is what they call the "red code" where the driver can contact directly the control at Baker Street and, at the same time, another inspector is alerted at Scotland Yard.
All this is encouraging; but I was concerned to note from the London Transport report for 1983—which I re-read—when they were commenting on the move to install radio links (and they had already been fitted at that time in quite a number of buses) that although the number of assaults in 1983 fell by 7 per cent., the severity, as measured by the number of cases resulting in absence from work, worsened significantly.
I am assured that the fear of conductors about the actions of passengers started to develop in the early 1960s, but the problem has now transferred to passengers themselves, who are being assaulted, and not just the crews of the buses. Assaults most frequently arise from questions involving fares collection. The union tell me that in 1982 47 per cent.
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of cases arose from various aspects of the collection of fares. In 1983 the figure was 49·5 per cent.
Obviously, the development of travel cards is of great help, because it means that there are less cash transactions. I do not know whether the noble Lord the Minister can tell me whether consideration is now being given—because he will recall that in the 1984 Act, we approved an amendment (and the GLC wanted this inserted)—to cover the problem of collecting penalty fares. Regarding collecting penalty fares—when already we have the terrific problem over the collection of ordinary fares—the noble Lord would be a very brave man in the circumstances to attempt to deal with that.
Many incidents occur at night as the public houses and other licensed establishments close. I think that is fairly understandable. They also occur when discos close. I do not know what arrangements there may be to find out when these discos are closing or what plans can be made to deal with the problem.
Many of the worst assaults in terms of seriousness of the injuries, take place at that time of night. However, what is also of great concern is that very substantial numbers of incidents take place between 3 p.m. and 6 p.m. as the schools and colleges are closing. The union has suggested that ways and means ought to be considered of getting schools involved. Visits could be made to schools to try to get a community attitude to their own local routes and efforts could be made to encourage pupils to visit the local garage and talk to the crews. Other ways ought to be considered of tackling these problems, in view of the growing number of incidents involving students taking place between 3 p.m. and 6 p.m. when the educational establishments close.
Muggings are increasing, and in the past two years the staffs have been greatly worried about the increasing use of knives—not just being used physically, but being used as threats. Statistics show that the incidents are highest against conductors—and I think we can understand that—it becomes a particular problem with double-decker buses. There are still many double-decker buses with conductors on them, and there is a need for some form of quick communication between the conductor and the driver to indicate when there is trouble. I do not believe there is such an arrangement at the moment and perhaps this is a matter which could be considered.
I am told that there are now 5,000 buses within London Regional Transport, of which some 3,000 are one-man operated. These buses are on 63 per cent of the routes; but that does not mean that they represent necessarily 63 per cent. of all buses. The problem is that two thirds of the one-man operated buses are double-deckers, and generally the driver is safer. However, I am told that on many routes even the driver will think very carefully before he challenges people who come to him to pay fares, or he will avoid getting involved in arguments.
Obviously, on all double-decker buses, the passengers are increasingly at risk, whether the buses are one-man operated or not. It may be thought that the one-man operated buses provide the most safety because the doors are operated by the driver; but there has to be an emergency switch fitted to the doors and

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it has to be one that can be seen and it must be accessible. Some of the villains know this. Therefore, groups will antagonise passengers and there will be attempts to mug them. The emergency switch is operated by the gangs and they are off the bus before anybody can do anything about them. I understand the problem is that, despite the close liaison with the police and all the measures that are now being taken, only some 20 per cent. (or one in five) of the persons involved in the assaults are apprehended.
The Question does not deal with the Underground, but I should like to raise one point in this connection, because I believe that the Minister and London Transport will have to give serious consideration to the development of unmanned Underground stations and the problem of developing one-man operated trains without guards—because we could find ourselves really inviting the same sort of thing which exists on many of the New York underground routes. There will be the problem of the unmanned station, with only three or four persons getting off the train, and muggers will be about.
I welcome, and I know the union welcomes, the committee that has been established by the Home Office to look into these matters, I understand on a national basis. While we do not want undue haste so that the thing is skimped, I would urge the need for speed and would echo what I believe the union has pressed for—that the Department of Education should be involved in the Home Office committee. That ought to be done, in view of the problem that we have of students being involved in many of the incidents. I understand that the union has submitted a memorandum, but I will not go into the details of it tonight.
One point, however, I am concerned about and the noble Lord, Lord Belhaven and Stenton, raised this point—the point of having a physical barrier between the driver and the passengers so that the driver can deal with a cash transaction but there is a barrier of some kind. Many drivers do not want this segregation from the passengers and I think it is a matter that will have to be considered with great care. I hope too that the Home Office committee will seriously consider what sort of publicity campaign can be conducted in the radio, television and other media. A lot of care will have to be taken over this, but I believe it is a matter which ought to be considered.
There is one last point, my Lords. The cost of equipment and all these other matters, as well as the cost of sick pay and compensation falls on London Regional Transport. I understand that the figure is approaching £2 million a year, when everything is taken into consideration. Should this fall upon LRT, or should the Government make an additional grant of some kind?—for this is, after all, a social problem and while London Regional Transport are attempting to cope with it, with the assistance of the police and other bodies, it seems to me that this is something which ought to be done. I think everyone will agree that everything possible should be done. We cannot expect men and women to have to accept assaults as part of their normal job. Somehow, we must encourage a situation where passengers can use buses and, I hope, Tubes, without the fear of assaults and attacks.
8.19 p.m.
Lord Mountevans; My Lords, I, too, should like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Belhaven and Stenton, for the lucid way in which he has introduced his Question this evening. I share his interest in the fare-paying passenger and heartily join him in paying tribute to the London Regional Transport staff. I am no less grateful, as I am sure many of your Lordships will be, to the noble Lord, Lord Underhill, for pre-empting many of my thoughts this evening.
My first approach to the topic is made against a number of preconceptions—the behaviour of the drunk after closing time, which has been touched on; robbery as a motive; gangs of youth out for an evening in pursuit of what they conceive to be fun. We have all read and heard of such violence. We have heard of the Kilburn Triangle. But as both the noble Lords, Lord Belhaven and Lord Underhill, have demonstrated, the facts are really very much different.
The problem arises not only out of over-consumption and the licensing laws, not only out of fare disputes nor even out of intent to rob. As has been said, it has two peaks, schools finishing and pubs closing, but it goes on all day long. In terms of schools closing, I wonder whether it is not violence in response to what, perhaps, should not in this Chamber be called peer-group pressure, but violence in reaction to the disciplines of the classroom or perhaps, sadly, to the lack of such disciplines.
Is the violence a reflection of frustration—the frustration brought about by having somewhere to go and something to do, but no means of achieving one's objective because there are no means of getting to the point that one is trying to reach? The bus is a long time coming and when it does come the assailant takes out his anger on the first LRT employee he sees, and thus one has another instance of the violence that we are discussing this evening. Better policing can counteract this threat, but does not the answer lie to no small extent in a better service?
I should like to ask the noble Lord the Minister whether he can shed any light on the motives which underlie the attacks which we are discussing tonight, and also whether he can confirm or amplify the contention of the noble Lord, Lord Underhill, that although this problem is not unique to London it is very much more frequent in London. If this is so, does one reason not perhaps lie in the fact that services outside London are often very much more reliable than those which we enjoy in the capital? While a recent campaign to step up policing is to be welcomed, I wonder whether it is not a palliative for a regrettable situation rather than an attempt to get at the underlying problem. I am convinced that a more efficient and reliable service would make a similar contribution to reducing the frustrations of travel in London and would thus serve to give our bus crews a safer working environment.
8.23 p.m.
Lord Inglewood: My Lords, I am very glad that the noble Lord raised this Question this evening and I am also very glad that we shall shortly hear from the Minister about the progress of this campaign described in the Question and about what they propose to do to

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make travel by bus less risky and to clear it of violence. We are concerned in the main with the bus staff but I should not like to say that we can distinguish the staff from the public and from the passengers, who are all concerned with the same problem although the question is more precisely drafted.
The key, in my view, must be policing at its best. People need not think that you can solve any problem of this sort just by thinking, "more men, more power". That is not enough. It has to be a wiser plan than that. Buses which are on difficult roads are notorious to police everywhere and policing such routes is very difficult in manpower. Those concerned have to decide how much money they are prepared to spend on those services in comparison with other services.
For example, men cannot do the same job at the same time. Men in uniform may be necessary, to appear in popular streets where there is a lot of traffic, shopping and people walking. They want to see men in uniform. On the other hand, in plain clothes they will not catch thieves. They may drive certain thieves away but they will not catch thieves, and this is not a job for one man alone. Very often a police constable does not know how many men there are kicking up a fuss on a bus. And, lastly, we have to think of the poor staff.
Think of the problems that a police constable in plain clothes may find when he gets on to a bus because there is trouble. You can just imagine the situation when there is one woman conductor who does not know what to do when she has identified a thief or has two drunken men on top. It is a problem which has to be met by instant policing.
Over the last few years we have heard that the position has been transformed by the two-way radio. I think that I heard a noble Lord say that the whole fleet is now equipped with these radios. I thought that the scheme was only part of the way through. But it is very important and it must be of enormous advantage to the morale of the staff, who feel that they can rely on it.
I am not being critical. I never was, but until recently the British transport police were just not strong enough to do the whole job everywhere in London. It was not expected that they would do because the job would be shared with the Metropolitan Police on many of these busy routes. It was just the same when I went to Washington DC two years ago and found two forces both policing in the same streets; one was the City of Washington Police and the other was what they called the Metro Transit Police. The system is simpler than ours but I think it is a better solution than just having one main force responsible for the buses on main streets—not that that prevents any constable who notices what is going on from doing what he considers is his duty.
I want to make just one suggestion. We ought to make more use of special constables. I have seen them used of an evening in our Midland cities wearing uniform and in pairs on the popular streets when there are a lot of people around. I think that they could be of very great help to morale because the public complain that they never see a blue uniform. I am sure that if they are properly looked after and given adequate training they will be very happy doing that job and will be extremely useful, so I hope that that suggestion will not be forgotten.
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This whole business of policing is very costly and we are all inclined to underrate the difficulties and the costs of solving the problems, which will take some time. But this is something on which we have clearly made progress this evening and we are grateful to the noble Lord. I hope that it will not be too long before we have another occasion like this when it will be possible for us to hear again of further steps forward and to hear that improved figures are very much on the way.
8.28 p.m.
Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, I am most grateful to my noble friend Lord Belhaven for raising this important topic and for giving us the opportunity to respond to the points that he and other noble Lords have raised. First, I should like to express the Government's very deep concern about the incidence of assaults and violence on public servants of all types, and I shall be explaining later the action being taken to assess the problem more generally and to consider what action might be taken to alleviate it.
However, the Question asked by my noble friend relates particularly to London Regional Transport bus staff, and it is an unfortunate fact that they are among the front line as regards assaults and violence to public servants. This is a matter which the Government and London Regional Transport take very seriously indeed. I should say at the outset that there is no simple solution—if there were, it would have been adopted long ago. The fact is that assaults and violence reflect the society in which we live, and it is an unfortunate fact that violence against the person has been on the increase in recent years. As regards London Regional Transport, I was appalled to learn that there are nearly 1,200 reported assaults a year on buses in London and that about 800 result in time off work. The noble Lord, Lord Underhill, gave us some more detailed figures which I must admit I did not have. I can assure the House that the Government support London Regional Transport in taking any measures it feels appropriate to deal with this problem.
I come now to the first part of my noble friend's Question about whether the Government are satisfied with the actions of London Regional Transport and the Metropolitan Police as regards the policing of London buses with the aim of counteracting violence to drivers and conductors. I should explain that prior to 1984 the formal responsibility for policing the buses rested with the London Regional Transport section of the British Transport Police, who were responsible for policing both the Underground and the buses. I understand that in 1983 in the region of 20 officers were allocated to policing the buses. However, with effect from 1st January 1984 responsibility for policing the buses was transferred wholly to the Metropolitan Police and, since that time, a number of actions have been taken to help combat the problem of assaults to bus crews.
In the first place, following a successful experiment in North-west London the Metropolitan Police now encourage their officers to "hop on a bus" during the normal course of their duties. This is a complete reversal of previous policy and has had the effect of considerably increasing the police presence on buses during 1984. In addition, the Metropolitan Police

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have regular liaison meetings with LRT at all levels; all assaults on bus crews are monitored, as the noble Lord, Lord Underhill, mentioned; policemen are encouraged to visit local bus garages; the training of the Metropolitan Police includes developing an understanding of the problems relating to assaults on bus crews; and LRT training staff have visited the Metropolitan Police training establishment to discuss the problem. I should also mention that the Metropolitan Police enjoy free travel on the buses during their off-duty periods, which is also of some benefit in providing moral support to the crews.
I think it is clear from what I have said that the responsible bodies directly involved with this issue, London Regional Transport and the Metropolitan Police, are doing all they can to ensure that, in so far as policing can help alleviate the problem, relevant action is being taken. I understand that as a result of this activity a number of arrests have been made which would not otherwise have been made. It would be misleading, however, were I to suggest that this action has had a dramatic effect by way of a reduction in assaults on bus crews. It is too soon to know what the long-term effect will be. The fact is that the incidence of these assaults cannot be predicted, and, as I am sure your Lordships will recognise, it is just not physically possible to maintain full police surveillance of all buses.
What I can say, however is that from the point of view of the morale and confidence of London Regional Transport staff the campaign has shown considerable success. London Regional Transport and the police hope that the campaign will result in more tangible benefits in the future. As I indicated at the start of my speech, however, there is no simple solution and increased policing is only one aspect of trying to alleviate the problem. There are many other steps which are being taken by London Regional Transport, or which are currently being evaluated, which it is hoped will bring about a reduction in assaults.
In the first place, as the noble Lord, Lord Underhill, mentioned—and I can assure my noble friend Lord Inglewood on this point—all London Regional Transport's buses are now fitted with two-way radios which enable assistance to be called if needed. They also have an alarm sysem involving flashing lights and a klaxon horn which can be operated by the driver. Secondly, all new entrants undergo a special course in public relations attitudes to prepare them for the potentially violent situation and to suggest means by which such situations could be defused.
As was mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Underhill, London Regional Transport is experimenting with the use of screens to protect the drivers of one-person operated buses from assault. There are obvious advantages of such screens in respect of assault protection although reservations have been expressed about possible safety hazards from the driving viewpoint. The design and use of such screens is being carefully evaluated by London Regional Transport.
A further measure which can help reduce assaults is the introduction of more one-person operated
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vehicles. The noble Lord, Lord Underhill, quoted some statistics. I have some statistics, but I am not sure whether they entirely tally with what was said by the noble Lord. My statistics show that while conductors currently form only 30 per cent. of operating staff they experience about 71 per cent. of assaults, with little distinction being shown between men and women. A comparison carried out by LRT of conductor buses with one-person operated buses showed that conductors were more than four times more liable to assault than driver operators. London Regional Transport currently has 54 per cent. of its buses under one-person operation and aims to increase this proportion to 66 per cent. by the spring of 1986. Consideration is being given to extending that proportion further, but only where it is suitable for the particular routes.
The statistics also show that by far the largest area of dispute leading to assaults and violence is the issue of fares and change. Clearly, therefore, a fares structure which is as simple as possible will help considerably in reducing the opportunity for disagreement. As your Lordships will be aware, London Regional Transport has introduced a simple zonal fare system which, together with a considerable increase in off-sales of bus tickets and the introduction of photocards for children between the ages of 14 and 16, should help considerably in reducing the areas of potential conflict. My noble friend Lord Belhaven and Stenton suggested that a flat fare, as in New York, with no change given, may help to alleviate the problem. I am grateful to him for that suggestion. I believe, however, that there are a number of difficulties in the way of adopting it. The problem with London is its geographical spread and the fact that many of the routes are very lengthy. In order to have a flat rate, it would be necessary to increase the minimum fare considerably. This, in turn, would discourage short-hop journeys, which at present make up the majority. The implementation of such a proposal would require a very considerable increase in subsidy. I understand that LRT has experimented with my noble friend's other suggestion about accepting only exact fares on the buses. It found, however, that this can cause great annoyance to the public and is likely to increase the likelihood of assaults.
I have mentioned only a few examples of the type of measures which are being taken or are under consideration by London Regional Transport in trying to alleviate the problem. In evaluating these measures, to return to my noble friend's Question, I understand that full and regular consultation takes place between LRT management and staff. Apart from formal negotiations with the unions, there is a London Bus Committee consisting of full-time union officials as well as lay representatives of the drivers and conductors who are directly elected by the platform staff. This committee meets LRT bus management at district and head-office levels monthly, and more often if need be, to discuss any matters affecting the buses. There is therefore full opportunity for the views of drivers and conductors to be represented, and these are taken fully into account by London Regional Transport.
My noble friend Lord Belhaven raised the question of tougher penalties. I can tell my noble friend that persons convicted of serious offences of assault are already, liable to a maximum penalty of life

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imprisonment. It is also now the case that prisoners serving sentences of more than five years for offences are unlikely to be granted parole. It is sometimes difficult for courts to take account of the long-term effects of injuries when deciding the appropriate penalty. Victims should therefore give the best infomation possible at the time of the hearing. I hope my noble friend will forgive me if I do not comment on the progress of the Prosecution of Offences Bill through your Lordships' House, particularly of Clause 22.
The noble Lord, Lord Underhill, raised a number of points. Penalty fares and the question of the implementation of penalty fares is still under consideration by LRT; as he said, it was in the 1984 Act. As the noble Lord indicated, it will need to be handled with great care and LRT is taking into account all the very difficult considerations that go with it.
The noble Lord, Lord Underhill, mentioned visits to schools. LRT has from time to time sent representatives to schools either at the request of the school or where problems were being experienced in particular areas. There is no continuing programme but this is one of the matters which will be considered by the working group. On the proposals for unmanned Underground stations, again I can say that LRT will carefully consider the question of possible violence in any proposals relating to bringing these in.
I cannot give the noble Lord much encouragement with regard to special grants to LRT: we have no plans to do that, as the noble Lord no doubt expected me to say. The trouble with special grants is that they too easily develop into general grants under another name. The Government feel that the planned level of grant is adequate for all LRT's functions.
The noble Lord, Lord Mountevans, mentioned discipline in the classroom and the frustrations resulting from that. I have covered the question of visits to schools, but when the noble Lord says that a better service might perhaps help, it is LRT's objective to provide as good a service as they can and that is one of the features in the plan—to improve the service and reduce waiting times at stops. We hope that will be achieved.
My responses have been concentrated on London Transport because the Question was directed to the action being taken by LRT and the Metropolitan Police. As I mentioned at the start of my speech, however, this problem is wider than London. In these days, it is wider than the problem of assaults on transport workers. In response to a request from the TUC for an inquiry into the problems of assaults on public employees, the Government have set up an inter-departmental committee under the chairmanship of the Health and Safety Executive to consider the problems, and in particular to stimulate joint consideration by managements and unions in the sectors affected of measures taken so far and likely to be effective in the future.
As part of that exercise, the problem of violence to staff on railways is being examined by an advisory committee on railway health and safety. In the case of bus staff, the Department of Transport has set up a working group with representatives from trade unions, bus operators (including LRT), the police, and
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relevant government departments. I can confirm to the noble Lord, Lord Underhill, that the Department of Education is among them.
I understand that it is the intention that the final report of the working group will examine the best practices currently in use by bus operators to combat violence and perhaps offer some new suggestions which individual operators, including LRT, may wish to consider adopting in the light of their particular problems, organisations and resources.
I will say again to my noble friend who raised this Question, and to noble Lords who have taken part, that I am most grateful. We have heard some very useful suggestions and I can assure noble Lords that consideration will be given to all the views expressed.
House adjourned at seventeen minutes before nine o'clock.