Lords Sitting of 15 July 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 Lincoln.

Allotment Gardens: Local Authority Reports
Lord Wallace of Coslany: 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 local authorities do not submit periodic reports on allotment gardens under their control to their appropriate committees.
Lord Skelmersdale: My Lords, this information is not available. It is for each local authority to decide whether or not periodic reports are submitted to committees on allotment matters.
Lord Wallace of Coslany: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that this Question is in the nature of an educational Question? Is he further aware that all local authorities submit to their councillors at least quarterly reports of allotments let, allotments vacant and people on the waiting list? To say, as the noble Lord said on a previous Bill's Third Reading, that to give this information to the local associations would be at the cost of excessive manpower is absolute nonsense.
Lord Skelmersdale: My Lords, I am all for answering educational Questions. Under the Local Government, Planning and Land Act, Sections 54 and 59 of the Smallholdings and Allotments Act 1908 were repealed. These placed on local authorities a duty to keep separate allotment accounts and to make an annual report, which is why this information is not available centrally.
Baroness Nicol: My Lords, does the Minister agree that although, as he said in answer to my noble friend last week, the Thorpe Report may be a little out of date, the need for allotments, and pressure from the Government to keep allotments going, is more needed now than it ever has been? Does he not see that because of the high numbers of unemployed in this country and because houses are now being built without gardens, for these two reasons, if for no other, the Government really should be putting some pressure and some thought behind this?
Lord Skelmersdale: My Lords, we are putting a lot of thought and not a little pressure into the provision of allotments; but the point at issue as I understand it from the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, is that this pressure should be statutory pressure. I have made it perfectly clear over the last two years that statutory pressure is not to be considered on the grounds that we have no proof out in the country that local authorities
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are not providing for the demand for allotments which the noble Baroness says is there.
Lord Beswick: My Lords, how can the noble Lord say that he is putting on informed pressure if he is without the basic elementary information on which to exert the pressure?
Lord Skelmersdale: My Lords, if it were apparent to central Government, as it periodically is on all sorts of other matters, that local demands are not being met then central Government will of course act.
Lord Wallace of Coslany: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that he has admitted that, under legislation, local authorities have a statutory obligation to publish an annual report; and that is precisely the information I have been asking for? Bearing in mind the answers that I have received at various times from the Department of the Environment, will he ask his right honourable friend the Prime Minister to transfer the care of allotments from the Department of the Environment to the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, where I am certain that they will have more common sense treatment?
Lord Skelmersdale: My Lords, I am sorry if the noble Lord feels that allotments are not getting common sense treatment from the Department of the Environment. However, as I said earlier, under the Local Government, Planning and Land Act 1980, the duty on local authorities to make an annual report has been abolished.

Southern Africa: Commonwealth Committee Meeting
2.39 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 why they did not support the other nations of the Commonwealth at the emergency meeting in London of the Commonwealth Committee on Southern Africa.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Armed Forces (Lord Trefgarne): My Lords, our representative at the emergency meeting on 24th June joined the others present in strongly condemning the South African attack against Botswana and supporting the Botswana Government. This was reflected in the joint statement issued after the meeting.
Lord Molloy: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that that is not how the press has reported it and not how people who are interested in affairs in Southern Africa generally see it? Is he further aware that on all these questions involving South Africa, with its record of atrocity, apartheid and invasion, the noble Baroness, Lady Young, has made statements which any civilised person could support in full? Why, then, did we let down the particular committee investigating these things when we did not support it at the special meeting that was called?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, the United Kingdom spoke early in the meeting in firm support of Botswana's statement to the committee. This is reflected in the joint statement which followed the meeting. There was no question of the United Kingdom not supporting the other members of the Commonwealth.
Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: My Lords, in view of the serious developments in Namibia, can the noble Lord say what is the purpose of the meeting of the contact group which is shortly to be held here in London and what policies Her Majesty's Government will be placing before that group? In view of the Government's known criticism of the action of South Africa in relation to Namibia and elsewhere as being in contravention of the United Nations Resolution 435, can the noble Lord say precisely what representations Her Majesty's Government have made to the Government of South Africa on this serious matter?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, the meeting to which the noble Lord refers is a routine meeting being held at official rather than ministerial level. It will review the present situation as far Namibia is concerned, and hopefully chart the way forward. I do not want the noble Lord to imagine that some great new insight will emerge from that meeting, because he will appreciate the difficulties that have emerged in the past and the disappointing lack of progress that there has been in this area thus far. As regards our general stance towards this issue, the noble Lord will be aware that we have deplored the violence that has occurred in Southern Africa, from whatever source it came.
Lord Brockway: My Lords, may I ask the Minister seriously whether the Government would reconsider their attitude towards South Africa in view of the decision taken by both the Senate and the House of Representatives of the American Congress and also in view of the fact that in another place a Bill has passed its First Reading for consideration of sanctions? Have the Government any policy which can prevent South Africa from continuing its policy, which has gone on for years and years without any serious attempt at changing it?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, the result of the sort of policy the noble Lord has in mind of course would be to isolate South Africa not only from commerce and trade, which I think lies at the heart of what the noble Lord proposes, but also from the influence that we believe we can bring to bear in seeking to persuade her to modify her actions and indeed to move forward so far as the Namibian matter is concerned. It is for that reason that we do not believe that sanctions would serve any useful purpose.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, the noble Lord and his noble colleague Lady Young have shown great stamina in constantly telling us what representations they have made, what dialogue they have had, and what criticisms they have made. In view of the end product of all these words, can the noble Lord now tell us whether they have any action in mind in order to change the situation, particularly between South Africa and Namibia?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, the truth is that the scope for action, as the noble Lord describes it, is somewhat limited: South Africa is after all an independent, sovereign nation. The way forward, we believe, is by way of persuasive arrangements. We have been involved in that way for a number of years. I agree that the progress has not been significant and we regret that very much, but we are not persuaded that an alternative course would yield any better results.
Lord Oram: My Lords, when the Minister says that the British attitude at that committee meeting was reflected in the statement issued afterwards, does that include agreement by the British delegation with the opinion that full and adequate compensation should be paid by South Africa to Botswana for the damage to life and property? May I ask the Minister what action the Government have taken to ensure that that compensation is being paid?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, yes, we did agree with that part of the statement, and indeed with all of the statement that was issued after that meeting, and we have made our views on this matter very clear to the South African Government.
Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: My Lords, could the noble Lord go a little further and tell the House what proposals Her Majesty's Government will have for the Commonwealth leaders' conference in Nassau in October? Will the question of Namibia be on the agenda and will the Government be prepared to subscribe to economic sanctions if the other Commonwealth leaders agree to do so?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, Namibia is not really a Commonwealth matter; it is of course a United Nations matter, as the noble Lord will appreciate. It is the implementation of United Nations Security Council Resolution No. 435 to which the noble Lord referred earlier, which we believe is the key to success in that area. We shall be seeking to persuade South Africa of that view. I am not sure that is specifically a matter for the Commonwealth meeting in Nassau later this year. As to sanctions, I believe we have made our view clear on that matter. We do not think that they would achieve the result that is desired.
Lord Molloy: My Lords, is the noble Minister aware that, with regard to Southern Africa and South Africa, many of the British Commonwealth countries at this special meeting voiced support for President Reagan? The President has warned South Africa that he will be compelled to seek sanctions if they do not accede to some of the resolutions of the United Nations. When that becomes a reality, can the noble Minister say whether this Government will or will not support the United States Administration?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, the noble Lord asks me to answer what is a purely hypothetical question. Our present position is that we do not believe sanctions would have the effect which the noble Lord desires. I would ask him to reflect on all the occasions in history when sanctions have been applied and have proved to be useless.

Films: Preservation
2.49 p.m.
Lord Graham of Edmonton: 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 propose a conference to consider how to ensure the preservation of nitrate film stock, and will issue invitations to attend that conference to the companies owning nitrate film stock, the British Film Institute and representatives of those employed in the film industry.
The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Minister for the Arts (The Earl of Gowrie): My Lords, this a matter for the British Film Institute, which with the help of substantial Government and private funding, in 1975 started an extensive programme to duplicate its stock of nitrate-based film on to new safety film. During this time the stock at risk has been reduced from 200 million feet to 130 million feet. I am pleased to announce that in August this year the BFI is to start the construction of the J. Paul Getty Film Preservation Centre of the National Film Archive. This will provide increased facilities for the storage and preservation of film and video and will enable the BFI to increase its rate of duplication of nitrate film by 50 per cent. to 7 million feet per year and so complete the transfer of its present nitrate stock within a safe timescale.
Lord Graham of Edmonton: My Lords, will the Minister accept from me that that information is very welcome news indeed, particularly against the background that at present the funds made available to the British Film Institute allow them to treat only 4 million feet? My understanding is that they are required to treat 7 million feet, and that appears to be something for the future. But would the Minister not agree that since there is the prospect of losing some of our national heritage, nothing would be lost by arranging a conference of the entrepreneurs, the workers in the industry, and the British Film Institute to see whether they can produce over a period of time a scheme that will guarantee absolutely the safety of stock which is in danger?
The Earl of Gowrie: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Graham, for his welcome to the considerable strides forward that are being made by Government and individuals in partnership. I have no objection to conferences. But as I said in my original Answer, that would of course be a matter for the industry and for the British Film Institute.
Lord Jenkins of Putney: My Lords, while the noble Earl is to be congratulated on continuing the national scheme started in 1975, is he aware that we cannot altogether divorce ourselves from the deterioration of stock which is held in other hands? Is he also aware of reports that stock held by Movietone and by Pathé is seriously deteriorating? Will he ask those of his officials concerned to have a look into this and give him a report?
The Earl of Gowrie: My Lords, as the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins, implies, there are two major collections of nitrate film held by commercial companies rather than by the British Film Institute for which I am responsible. These two collections continue to generate considerable revenue which I believe the companies could well use to pay towards their duplication on to safety film. I hope that the companies will notice what both noble Lords have said.
Lord Strabolgi: My Lords, arising out of what my noble friend asked, will the noble Earl confirm that none of the more important film classics has been allowed to deteriorate during the last few years?
The Earl of Gowrie: My Lords, I understand that thanks to the good progress we are making this is the case. But I shall of course keep the situation continually under review.
Lord Lloyd of Hampstead: My Lords, as a former chairman of the British Film Institute and the National Film Archive I naturally welcome the statement that the noble Earl the Minister made regarding the progress which, with his assistance, the British Film Institute has been able to make. But is he aware, as I am sure he is, that the two collections to which reference has been made—the Pathé News Library and the Movietone News Library—contain an absolutely unique collection amounting to a visual history of the first half of this century, and that in a very short space of time, perhaps two or three years, they will be irretrievably lost because they are on nitrate? In those circumstances will he indicate that he will be prepared to take some initiative either to goad or perhaps to encourage the two companies which own these librairies—namely, Thorn EMI and Twentieth Century Fox—to take some appropriate effective action to ensure that such a disaster does not occur?
The Earl of Gowrie: My Lords, as I think the noble Lord is well aware, I have myself considerable reponsibilities for trying to avert disaster, as he puts it—and as a fellow film buff I do not think that that is too strong a term—in the British Film Institute stock for which I am responsible. I hope that the two great companies he mentioned will pay heed to his words and I am delighted to encourage them. I understand that the British Film Institute would welcome the opportunity to carry out the duplication on a commercial basis, and, should the companies sponsor this, the institute could apply for an award under my Business Sponsorship Incentive Scheme. So I hope that that too will happen.
Lord Graham of Edmonton: My Lords, may I once more repeat my gratitude to the noble Earl the Minister for his opening statement, which is certainly encouraging? In view of what he has said—that is, in regard to the limited nature of his remit in this matter almost wholly directed to the stock held by the British Film Institute—cloes not the noble Earl the Minister agree that the Government's presence at a conference which he suggests could be called by the British Film Institute would do nothing but good? If in fact that initiative comes forward without financial

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commitment but with encouragement, will the Minister be able to respond helpfully?
The Earl of Gowrie: My Lords, in my answers I have tried to show that I am aware of the importance of this issue in terms of the National Film Archive. As I said, the question of a conference is a matter for the British Film Institute. But should it be interested in calling one, I am sure that I should be most pleased to participate.

Detention Centres: Drill and Gym Sessions
2.55 p.m.
Lord Donaldson of Kingsbridge: 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 it is true, as recently reported on television, that drill and gym sessions are being curtailed as part of the detention centre training programme because the boys enjoy them.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Home Office (Lord Glenarthur): My Lords, PE has not been curtailed, but the separate drill sessions and extra PE included in the experiment with tougher regimes in four detention centres have not been carried into the new regime introduced in all detention centres on 6th March. Many inmates came to find drill undemanding, and the exclusion of these elements leaves more time for activities such as demanding work and education. Under the new regime inmates undergo a particularly brisk and structured initial two-week programme, including extra parades and inspections, and have an average of one hour's PE each weekday throughout sentence.
Lord Donaldson of Kingsbridge: My Lords, in thanking the noble Lord for his reply, which is uncharacteristically less forthcoming than usual, I should like to repeat the basis of my Question. Are these curtailments being enforced because the boys are enjoying the work? I think that it is reasonable to have a centre which is aimed at deterrence. However, I believe that it is very misguided that, when by chance one hits on something which gives the boys a chance to show themselves, to compete and to take an interest in something, one should not follow that up to do the most one can for them.
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, the noble Lord may have seen the "Panorama" programme which indicated that there was a reduction. That was not correct in all that it said. One has to balance enjoyment with the need to introduce self-pride and self-discipline. The regime which is now being pursued is effective. We believe that it will continue to be so.
Lord Donaldson of Kingsbridge: My Lords, with his professional experience as a soldier the noble Lord knows very well that drill in particular is a weapon,
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one might almost say, to get rather sloppy and feckless people into condition to face the rest of life. Surely the idea of enjoyment is a question of achievement, and the idea of achievement is the first thing that one wants for these boys. I am not satisfied that the noble Lord has entirely exonerated the Government from appearing to say, "We cannot do this because they would enjoy it".
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, I think in my original Answer I said that it was the separate drill sessions and the extra PE that were being curtailed. I have details of the weekday routine for detention centres and I can assure the noble Lord that a great deal of PE still takes place.
Lord Donaldson of Kingsbridge: My Lords, will the noble Lord agree that curtailment is still curtailment?
Lord Leatherland: My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord the Minister—and I do so in a light-hearted mood, as a former First World War company sergeant-major—whether these boys are being taught how to form fours?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, will the noble Lord repeat the question?
Lord Leatherland: My Lords, I shall repeat my question. I ask the noble Lord the Minister—and I ask as a former First World War company sergeant-major—whether these boys are being taught how to form fours.
Lord Glenarthur: No, my Lords, they are not.
Baroness Masham of Ilton: My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord the Minister whether he agrees that the programme in question referred to child care and showed boys learning how to look after babies? Does he agree with me that that was excellent since it could prevent child abuse and neglect in the future?
Lord Glenarthur: Yes, my Lords; I think that the noble Baroness has put her finger on an important point. While many of these people already have children when they go to the centre, they come from the sort of background which means that they would not normally have been taught the basic parentcraft which is necessary. The noble Baroness may care to know that the governor has had many letters supporting the activity that was shown.
Lord Hunt: My Lords, can the Minister say whether, in view of the enjoyment that the boys derive from drill and PE during their stay at detention centres, any encouragement is given to them to join one or other of the admirable uniformed youth organisations when they leave, and therefore to come under effective influence in a constructive way? I am thinking of the Army Cadet Force, the Air Training Corps, the Sea Cadets or the Boys' Brigade.
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, I think that the noble Lord puts his finger on an important point. It is important to try to provide the necessary resettlement for boys leaving these centres, and I shall certainly look

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into this, but I am under the impression that that sort of thing is taken care of.
Lord Donaldson of Kingsbridge: My Lords, I do not know whether the noble Lord himself was trained in baby care—I actually was not—but I wonder whether, if the boys began to enjoy that, there would be a curtailment of their courses to!
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, in answer to the first question, no I was not. So far as the general principle of it is concerned, I think that those who were being given that instruction were not necessarily being given quite the easy time that some people imagine.

Scarborough Borough Council Bill
Read a third time, and passed, and returned to the Commons with amendments.
Greater London Council (Money) Bill
Read a third time, and passed.

Local Government Bill
3.2 p.m.
The Minister of State, Department of the Environment (Lord Elton): My Lords, I beg to move that the Commons amendments and Reasons be now considered.
Moved, That the Commons amendments and Reasons be now considered.—(Lord Elton.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
COMMONS AMENDMENTS TO A LORDS AMENDMENT, COMMONS REASONS FOR DISAGREEING TO CERTAIN LORDS AMENDMENTS, COMMONS AMENDMENTS TO WORDS RESTORED TO THE BILL, COMMONS AMENDMENTS IN LIEU OF A LORDS AMENDMENT AND COMMONS CONSEQUENTIAL AMENDMENTS.
[References are to Bill (123) as first printed by the Lords. Commons amendments etc. are printed in italics.]

Local Government Bill

  LORDS AMENDMENT
  1 Clause 6, page 3, line 36, at end insert—
  ("( ) The Secretary of State shall before the abolition date lay before Parliament a report on the steps he will take to secure the full adoption by metropolitan district councils and the London borough councils of those facilities, services, and responsibilities for the protection and enjoyment of the countryside and areas for urban nature conservation which serve the continuing needs of the wider county areas and neighbouring populations.").
  The Commons agree to the above amendment with the following amendments:
  2 Line 4, leave out ("metropolitan district councils and the London borough councils') and insert ("the councils to which functions are transferred by this section in Greater London or a metropolitan county")
  3 Line 8, leave out ("the wider county areas") and insert ("Greater London or that county").
  Lord Elton: My Lords, I beg to move that the House do agree with the Commons Amendments Nos. 2 and
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  3 to the Lords Amendment No. 1. It was on 7th May that the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman, with support from several parts of the Committee, persuaded your Lordships to place a duty upon the Secretary of State that was not in the Bill when it came to us from another place. She persuaded the Committee, although she did not at that stage persuade the Government. The duty that your Lordships put into the Bill was a duty for the Secretary of State to report to Parliament on the steps he was taking to see that the facilities, services and responsibilities of the urban authorities for the protection and enjoyment of the countryside were fully adopted after abolition by the borough and district councils.
  Nearly a month later, during consideration of the Committee's report on the Bill, the noble Lord, Lord Melchett, persuaded the Government to add an urban perspective to the rural perspective covered by the original amendment. In this he was assisted, in particular, by my noble friend Lord Chelwood. The duty that your Lordships proposed to another place thus became a duty not only to report on the steps taken to protect countryside interests, but also to report on the steps taken to protect urban nature conservation areas. Your Lordships clearly shared a general concern, with considerable support from outside the House, that the Secretary of State should not merely take but should be seen to take particular care to protect the natural environment from any adverse effects of reorganisation. I am happy to tell your Lordships that the Government are persuaded that this new provision is a proper one for inclusion in the Bill.
  On consideration, however, we found that the new subsection (2) needed improvement in two respects. First, as drafted it does not include the Common Council of the City of London, which is also to receive functions under Clause 6; and, secondly, it refers to "the wider county areas", which is not apt in the case of Greater London. The Commons amendments therefore substitute references to the authorities to whom functions are transferred under the clause for references to Greater London or a metropolitan county.
  This is far from being the first point, and very far indeed from being the only one, on which the Government and another place have been persuaded by your Lordships to change and improve the provisions of this Bill. This was, in fact, the third of the amendments that we sent to another place. The first and second comprised the major changes we made in the planning provision for London, but they were accepted in exactly the form in which we had drafted them and do not therefore figure on the Marshalled List this afternoon. This, our third amendment, did need tidying up, as my noble friend Lord Skelmersdale foreshadowed when he accepted the addition to it of the noble Lord, Lord Melchett. I am glad to start today's proceedings by asking your Lordships to accept what is, in effect, a small improvement to your Lordships' own improvement to the Bill. My Lords, I beg to move.
  Moved, That the House do agree with the Commons Amendments Nos. 2 and 3 to the Lords Amendment No. 1—(Lord Elton.)
  Lord Stanley of Alderley: My Lords, I wonder whether I may start this afternoon's proceedings on a happy note by thanking the Government for accepting this amendment. I do so on behalf of all those who have their hearts in the country and in the countryside, and, in particular, on behalf of the National Farmers' Union and the Countryside Commission, who were very interested in this amendment. On their behalf, I should like to thank the Government, not only for the amendment but also for the discussions and the letters that have gone on between the Government and those organisations since the moving of this amendment. Perhaps, in a lighter vein, I may say that, despite rumours to the contrary, the Chief Whip has not been pressurising me or my noble friend Lord Radnor in dark corners of your Lordships' House since this amendment was accepted. Perhaps that is because your Lordships threw out a certain Bill a week-and-a-half ago.
  Baroness Birk: My Lords, may I from this side of the House say how pleased we are that the other place accepted the amendments which had all-party support in this House? May I also say that, as I understand it, my Chief Whip is very pleased to support what I have said. We are at least starting off on a happy note. It will probably deteriorate very quickly, but nevertheless it is a good start.
  Baroness Stedman: My Lords, before the position deteriorates, may I, from these Benches, as one of the signatories to the original amendment, say how much we appreciate what has happened—the tidying up that has been done, and the fact that the amendment has been accepted by the Government.
  Lord Elton: My Lords, I am no great believer in weather forecasts, so my pleasure in your Lordships' pleasure is unalloyed.
  On Question, Motion agreed to.

  LORDS AMENDMENT
  4 Before Clause 7, insert the following new clause—
  ("Highway and Road Traffic functions.
  . The Secretary of State shall by order taking effect on the abolition date make provision for the London Residuary Body to exercise the following functions relating to highways and road traffic in London to the extent and in the manner that such order shall provide—

  (a) that the Body shall have a duty to prepare, in consultation with the borough councils, plans relating to highways and traffic in Greater London and the Body and borough councils shall have regard to such plans when exercising their statutory functions;

  (b) that it shall be a duty of the Body to establish and maintain an organisation for the purpose of assembling, disseminating and keeping up to date, information on road traffic and other transport in Greater London and that the Body may commission such research and carry out such surveys as they think fit in fulfilment of this duty;

  (c) that the Body shall have the functions of the highway authority under the Highways Act 1980 in relation to metropolitan roads;

  (d) that not later than 1st April 1987 the Body shall, in consultation with the borough councils, review the existing network of metropolitan roads and prepare and submit to the Secretary of State for his approval proposals for the revision of that network;

  (e) that, as respects metropolitan roads, the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984 shall apply to the Body (for the
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  purposes of traffic management and parking control) as they now apply to the Greater London Council;

  (f) that the Body shall be a local authority for the purposes of section 38 of the Road Traffic Act 1972 (power of local authorities as to giving of road safety information and training);

  (g) that the Body shall be authorised, for the purpose of regulating traffic on metropolitan roads, to exercise the powers of a borough council under the said Act of 1984 as respects roads communicating with or adjacent to metropolitan roads in accordance with procedures to be prescribed by the Secretary of State;

  (h) that, for the purposes of ensuring that the exercise by the London borough council of their powers under the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984 does not have any adverse effect on traffic on roads for which they are not the highway authority, the Body shall be given reserve powers similar to those given to the Secretary of State in Part I of Schedule 9 of the said Act;

  (i) that the Body may exercise the powers of a London borough council or the Common Council under sections 6 and 9 of the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984 for the purposes of prohibiting or restricting such use of heavy commercial vehicles as the Body considers expedient for preserving or improving the amenities of Greater London or some part or parts thereof;

  (j) that the Body shall have a duty to control, manage, maintain and, where appropriate, develop and extend the system of urban traffic control through traffic light signals established by the Greater London Council;

  (k) that the Body shall be a "London Authority" within the meaning of section 50 of the London Regional Transport Act 1984 (travel concessions on journeys in or around Greater London);

  (l) that the Body shall be able to assist, by way of grant or loan, the provision of transport services by a voluntary organisation for the benefit of the public or am class of persons.").

  The Commons disagreed to the above amendment for the following Reason (No. 21):
  Because they are inconsistent with the principle of the Bill to transfer most of the functions of the Greater London Council and the metropolitan county councils to the local authorities in their areas.
  Lord Carmichael of Kelvingrove Lord Carmichael of Kelvingrove rose to move, as Motion 4A, That this House do not insist on their amendment numbered 4, to which the Commons have disagreed for the Reason numbered 21, but propose the following amendment in lieu thereof:
  4B Insert the following new clause—
  (" .—(1) On the appointed day there shall be established for Greater London a body corporate to be known as the London Highways and Traffic Authority.
  (2) The Authority shall consist of members of the London borough councils and the Common Council appointed by them to be members of the Authority.
  (3) The Secretary of State shall by order taking effect on the abolition date make provision for the Authority to exercise the following functions relating to highways and road traffic in London to the extent and in the manner that such orders shall provide—

  (a) that the Authority shall have a duty to prepare, in consultation with the borough councils, plans relating to highways and traffic in Greater London and the Authority and borough councils shall have regard to such plans when exercising their statutory functions;

  (b) that it shall be a duty of the Authority to establish and maintain an organisation for the purpose of assembling, disseminating and keeping up to date, information on road traffic and other transport in Greater London and that the Authority may commission such research and carry out such surveys as they think fit in fulfilment of this duty;

  (c) that the Authority shall have the functions of the highway authority under the Highways Act 1980 in relation to metropolitan roads;

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  (d) that not later than 1st April 1987 the Authority shall, in consultation with the borough councils, review the existing network of metropolitan roads and prepare and submit to the Secretary of State for his approval proposals for the revision of that network;

  (e)that as respects metropolitan roads, the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984 shall apply to the Authority (for the purposes of traffic management and parking control) as it previously applied to the Greater London Council;

  (f) that the Authority shall be a local authority for the purposes of section 38 of the Road Traffic Act 1972 (power of local authorities as to giving of road safety information and training);

  (g) that the Authority shall be authorised, for the purpose of regulating traffic on metropolitan roads, to exercise the powers of a borough council under the said Act of 1984 as respects roads communicating with or adjacent to metropolitan roads in accordance with procedures to be prescribed by the Secretary of State;

  (h) that, for the purpose of ensuring that the exercise by the London borough council of their powers under the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984 does not have any adverse effect on traffic on roads for which they are not the highway authority, the Authority shall be given reserve powers similar to those given to the Secretary of State in Part I of Schedule 9 of the said Act;

  (i) that the Authority may exercise the powers of a London borough council or the Common Council under sections 6 and 9 of the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984 for the purposes of prohibiting or restricting such use of heavy commercial vehicles as the Authority considers expedient for preserving or improving the amenities of Greater London as a whole;

  (j) that the Authority have a duty to control, manage, maintain and, where appropriate, develop and extend the system of urban traffic control through traffic light signals established by the Greater London Council;

  (k) that the Authority shall be a "London Authority" within the meaning of section 50 of the London Regional Transport Act 1984 (travel concessions on journeys in or around Greater London); and

  (l) that the Authority shall be able to assist, by way of grant or loan, the provision of transport services by a voluntary organisation for the benefit of the public or any class of persons.

  (4) The Secretary of State may by order make provision for the amendment, adaptation or modification of this Act or any enactment passed before this Act as may appear to the Secretary of State to be necessary or expedient for securing the purposes of, or to be incidental to or consequential upon the establishment of the Authority under this section.")
  The noble Lord said: My Lords, perhaps I should explain for the convenience of the House that if the House agrees to my Motion 4A I shall move formally Motions 5A, 8A and 21A, since they are consequential.
  5A That this House do insist on their amendment No. 5 to which the Commons disagree for the Reason numbered 21.
  8A That this House do not insist on their amendments No. 6 to 8 to which the Commons disagree for the Reason numbered 21 but propose the following amendments in lieu thereof—
  21A That this House do insist on their amendments Nos. 9 to 20 to which the Commons disagree for the Reason numbered 21.
  On the other hand, should the House disagree with my Motion 4A, I will not be moving those consequential amendments.
  If I may turn to the substance of the amendments, the Commons have disagreed with your Lordships' amendments which transfer some highways and traffic functions to the residuary body in London and to what were the passenger transport joint authorities in the metropolitan counties. The reason is that these
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  amendments are inconsistent with the principles of the Bill to transfer most of the functions of the GLC and the metropolitan authorities to the boroughs and the districts. We accept the criticism regarding the residuary body made both here and in another place, and my Motion No. 4A regularises the position by setting up a joint authority for London as well. In fact, these amendments not only meet the basic criticisms of the other place but also offer unfettered and meaningful devolution of functions to the London boroughs and the metropolitan districts free of any interference from central Government.
  Perhaps I may refer to the words of the Secretary of State for Transport when speaking to the Bill, at column 202 of the Commons Official Report of 7th November 1984. He said:
  Those joint boards are not quangos. They will consist of district councillors directly responsible to their own councils, and so, in turn, to the ratepayers".
  As such, the amendments are more consistent with the principles of the Bill and with the Government's original manifesto commitment than the Government's own proposal. Let me remind your Lordships of the precise wording of that manifesto:
  "The metropolitan councils and the GLC have been shown to be a wasteful and unnecessary tier of government. We shall abolish them and return most of their functions to the boroughs and districts. Services which need to be administered over a wider area, such as police and fire and education in inner London, will be run by joint boards of borough or district representatives".
  The need for highway and traffic functions to be administered over a wider area is acknowledged by everyone. This point has been conceded by the Government in the Bill and in consultation documents. The Minister of State in the other place stated at the Report stage of the debate that,
  "there has to be overall planning for roads and for traffic control".
  However, the Government completely depart from their own stated principle since they take upon themselves the role of overall planning for roads and traffic by issuing mandatory traffic guidance to the boroughs and districts and by reserve powers to take over the sophisticated urban traffic control systems which are powerful tools for enacting traffic policy. Additionally, in London the Secretary of State proposes to extend the trunk road network and designate roads over which he will have control of traffic policy. To my understanding, this is an absolute reversal of the commitment to return highway and traffic functions to the boroughs. Where is the real devolution that the Government claim and the Government proclaimed as being the desire in their manifesto?
  On the other hand, the amendments now before the House would place the responsibility for highways and traffic planning, apart from existing trunk roads, solely in the hands of the boroughs and districts. The county-wide area element of responsibility for the main road network for which the Government admit that a consistent and coherent approach is necessary would be the responsibility of the authority through elected members appointed by the individual borough and district councils. Highway and traffic matters and all other local roads would become the direct responsibility of the separate boroughs and districts; moreover, in London the authority would undertake a

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  review of the metropolitan road network within one year. The borough representatives would in this case therefore decide themselves, subject of course, as always, to the Secretary of State's agreement, the most appropriate division between local and strategic aspects of highway and traffic planning in London.
  3.15 p.m.
  These amendments thoroughly transfer highway and traffic functions to the boroughs and the districts. They do not erode local democracy by placing overall control in central Government hands. They also, in line again with the Government's manifesto commitments, ensure that those services which need to be administered over a wider area will be run by a joint board of borough or district representatives. The two sets of authorities in London and the metropolitan counties would have broadly similar sets of powers and responsibilities, bearing in mind the historic differences between them.
  Each authority would, as required by order of the Secretary of State, produce a London or a county-wide highway and traffic plan which would be related to land use policies. It would assess London or countywide priorities on the main road network and be able to allocate investment where it was most needed. It would be able to maintain specialist services and staff required to plan, design and construct major highways and bridges and underpasses and tunnels. It would provide an organisation with sufficient breadth and budget to sustain specialist teams with sophisticated computer back-up and data collecting systems to enable them to implement London or county-wide programmes in an effective and economic way. It would integrate teams of highway and traffic planners, highway designers, traffic management engineers, traffic signals engineers and accident prevention experts under one umbrella organisation, thus providing cross-fertilisation of ideas and promoting imaginative, cost-effective solutions to the complex problems of large conurbations.
  All these advantages have been noted in the report on the consequences of the abolition by the House of Lords Select Committee on Science and Technology, under the chairmanship of the noble Earl, Lord Cranbrook. Indeed, the main recommendation of that report, particularly in respect of London, was:
  "to establish a joint authority for highways and traffic in Greater London".
  This amendment complies with that recommendation. The placement of strategic highways and traffic functions into the new passenger transport authorities in the metropolitan counties also complies precisely with the report's recommendation,
  "to make provision in clause 27 for strategic transport authorities in place of passenger transport authorities".
  The Coopers and Lybrand study into the financial implications of the abolition of the Greater London Council stated quite unambiguously that transport and land use were important services which are best carried out on a London-wide basis. I shall quote briefly from their report:
  "The integration of London and a large number of residents who work in one part of London and live in another suggests a need to plan and deliver transport on a London-wide basis. Our review identified strong linkages between public transport planning,
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  highways planning, traffic management and enforcement and development planning and control. The need for Londonwide—and possibly wider still to incorporate parts of the South-East of the country—transport planning is generally accepted".
  These amendments meet the commitments of the Government's manifesto. They maintain local democratic control over roads and traffic. They are consistent, I firmly believe, with the principles of the Bill and comply very closely with the recommendations of the Select Committee on Science and Technology. They have many positive and practical advantages over the Government's proposal, and the House would be failing in its duty if it did not grasp this opportunity substantially to improve this Bill, which I believe is the major function of this House. Therefore, I beg to move.
  Moved, That the House do not insist on their Amendment No. 4, to which the Commons have disagreed, but propose Amendment No. 4B in lieu thereof.—(Lord Carmichael of Kelvingrove.)
  Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Carmichael, has proposed an amendment in lieu of Amendment No. 4 and consequential amendments, Amendments Nos. 6 to 8, which sought to require the transfer of certain GLC highways and traffic functions to the London residuary body. The noble Lord has also urged the House to insist on their Amendment No. 5 and the consequential amendments, Amendments Nos. 9 to 20, which sought to require the transfer of certain metropolitan county council highways and traffic functions to the metropolitan county joint passenger transport authorities.
  The noble Lord's amendments in lieu, however, do no more than substitute a new indirectly elected joint London highways and traffic authority in the place of the London residuary body. They thus share all the disadvantages of the original amendments with which the Commons have disagreed on the grounds that:
  "they are inconsistent with the principle of the Bill to transfer most of the functions of the Greater London Council and the metropolitan county councils to the local authorities".
  For that reason I disagree with the proposed new clause of the noble Lord, Lord Carmichael. I should like to explain more fully the thinking behind our reasoning.
  The proposals in Clause 7 of the original Bill were quite clear: to transfer the highways and traffic management functions of the GLC and the metropolitan county councils to the borough and district councils. Those were in keeping with the overall principles of the Bill: to devolve functions to the lower-tier authorities and so remove an unnecessary tier of local government. The proposed additional clauses are clearly inconsistent with that principle.
  In the Government's view it would be wrong to perpetuate three tiers of highway and road traffic authority in London and even more counterproductive to introduce a third tier in the metropolitan counties where there are only two at present. We regard it as a recipe for confusion and delay to have three tiers of highway and traffic authority. Under the provisions of the original Bill, there would be two tiers of responsibility in all metropolitan areas. Moreover, borough and district councils would only have to consult their neighbours where cross-boundary traffic

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  effects arose, while proposed clauses would result in their having to consult the London highway and traffic authority or the joint authority about almost every traffic management decision.
  The argument for a third tier of highway and traffic authority is based on the assumption that a strategic authority is needed to co-ordinate highways and traffic on the roads within a metropolitan area. I shall return to that point in a moment. However, highway authorities have always made joint arrangements and ensured co-ordination with each other where necessary. I do not understand why there should be such pessimism about boroughs and districts making the necessary arrangements in future. We are confident of the ability of boroughs and districts to develop and carry through large schemes where they are needed. Indeed, boroughs are already the highway authority for nearly 7,000 miles of London's 8,000 miles of roads. They already undertake some major schemes. They demonstrate the competence of local authorities in such matters.
  Moreover, there will be ample opportunity for the boroughs and districts to consider the overall planning and development of the road network in their areas. One forum will be the joint planning committee we have provided for London, and elsewhere the regional conferences. The preparation of transport policies and programmes for submission to the Secretary of State will provide another opportunity.
  Two main concerns underlay the debate on these two clauses. One was whether the new arrangements proposed by the Government would cater effectively for the day-to-day co-ordination of county-wide highway and traffic issues. The other was about the future of expert teams supporting the main statutory functions. I will take the two issues separately, to explain why I believe that the arrangements proposed by the Government are effective and more appropriate than those contained in the two clauses.
  To take first the question of county-wide highway and traffic issues, we understand the fears about whether there will be effective co-ordination where this is needed. We believe that those fears have been exaggerated. Most traffic and highway issues are only local in nature, or at most concern neighbouring authorities. Only a very small proportion affect every borough and district. Why do I say most highways and traffic issues are local? I ask noble Lords to consider whether they regard painting yellow lines, siting pedestrian crossings, providing parking spaces, or banning right turns as county or local issues? We do not need a separate tier for those matters. Such issues are best dealt with at district or borough level. That will bring decisions closer to local people, and will enhance accountability by making local councillors responsible for local decisions. That must be good for democracy.
  Noble Lords may ask whether the new arrangements will cater for those few occasions when wider area highway and traffic issues do arise. We are confident that they will. Paragraph 6 of Schedule 5 places a duty on borough and district councils to consult other councils if their traffic and parking proposals would directly affect traffic in other councils'
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  areas, and in the event of an unwithdrawn objection from such an affected council the proposals will come to the Secretary of State for a decision. Schedule 5 also provides powers for the Secretary of State to issue guidance on traffic management to local authorities in order to ensure consistent standards. If the guidance is disregarded, with the likelihood of adverse consequences for traffic over a wider area, there are powers for the Secretary of State to intervene.
  I should mention that important tool of traffic management, the urban traffic control systems. The Government are fully committed to ensuring that those systems are kept functioning efficiently, and the Bill provides reserve powers for the Secretary of State to ensure that this will be done. If boroughs or districts were unable to reach satisfactory agreements to operate the systems themselves, the Secretary of State would exercise his reserve powers to take over responsibility for urban traffic control systems. My noble friends Lord Cranbrook and Lord Kaberry, the noble Baroness, Lady Masham, and other noble Lords have expressed concern about the future of the systems in our previous debates. I can assure your Lordships that the Government are clearly committed to ensuring that the UTCs continue.
  Of course the specialists working on urban traffic control are not the only centres of expertise in the fields of highways and traffic management, and I should like to turn now to the question of the future of the other various expert teams. This has been a question that has gone wider than just highways and traffic. During the passage of the Bill through this House we debated at some length whether the arrangements made for specialist services and teams were sufficiently explicit, and we had the advantage of being informed by the interim report by your Lordships' Select Committee on Science and Technology, produced under the chairmanship of my noble friend Lord Cranbrook.
  The Government took note of noble Lords' concern on this point and we concluded that noble Lords had identified an area where the provisions of the Bill needed to be strengthened. That is why the Government brought forward amendments at Report and Third Reading to impose an explicit duty on the residuary bodies to review the technical and professional services provided by the GLC and the metropolitan counties. The services may include those provided by the teams maintaining urban traffic control systems, by engineering design teams—such as for bridges—and teams for data collection and analysis, including accident statistics and traffic modelling. The residuary bodies will have a duty to approach successor authorities to determine which of those services any of the authorities want the residuary bodies to maintain for their use while long-term arrangements are being made. The residuary bodies will then have a duty to report to the Secretary of State, who will make the necessary orders.
  My noble friend Lord Elton made it clear that that does not mean all professional and technical services will necessarily be transferred to residuary bodies. The successor authorities may wish to make alternative arrangements immediately rather than use the residuary bodies as a temporary home. I am convinced that most local authorities will come to an agreement

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  among themselves, and it is very important for them to have the opportunity to do so.
  In London, useful discussions with a number of boroughs have led to significant progress being made on working out future arrangements for services such as urban traffic control, data, and bridge engineering. The new duty on the residuary bodies will ensure that all services will be carefully and fully considered. For traffic and highways, this will ensure that urban traffic control systems, teams for collating and analysing data, and specialist engineering teams, will not disappear.
  The thought I would like to leave with noble Lords is that the Government have recognised the concerns that led to these two amendments being passed and have since introduced amendments to the Bill designed to meet the concerns of noble Lords. The Government do not believe that the amendments now under discussion provide a satisfactory solution for handling London or county-wide issues, or for ensuring that the necessary expertise remains available to all highways and traffic management authorities in any area.
  I have concentrated my remarks on what I see to be the fundamental issues underlying the amendments. I believe that the provisions of the Bill are not only in line with the transfer of powers to the boroughs and districts but also provide a more satisfactory framework for the future handling of traffic and highway functions. Noble Lords have played a valuable role in improving that framework. In the light of amendments that have been introduced at the instigation of noble Lords, I urge that the House do not insist on their amendments and resist the amendments in lieu proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Carmichael.
  Lord Tordoff: My Lords, in rising to support this amendment perhaps I may say that I am far from reassured by what has just been said by the noble Lord the Minister. It may be that your Lordships consider that the amendment that has been put before you by the noble Lord, Lord Carmichael, is a better amendment than the one we had last time, in that the authority would consist of elected members of constituent borough councils and would be responsible for a London-wide view on strategic highway and traffic issues, while at the same time local needs would be catered for at the individual borough level.
  3.30 p.m.
  The noble Lord the Minister said that he could not understand the pessimism there was about the ability of borough or district councils to get together. History tells us that that is what is likely to happen. The political diversity between the people who are asked to co-operate simply leaves one to believe that, on an historical basis, it will not happen. The Government have obviously seen the need for integration on a London-wide basis and have stated this in their leaflet, After the GLC, but the abolition proposals provide no specific mechanism for such integration to occur. This omission has been criticised on all sides by professionals and by statutory and academic authorities. A joint authority would plug that gap.
  Secondly, it is important that there is strategic planning for London's main road network. As I said,
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  the idea that 33 individual boroughs will, by voluntary co-operation, get their act together at some unspecified time in the future is simply not good enough. The Government seem to have ignored to a degree the importance of London's metropolitan road network. The noble Lord, Lord Brabazon, has said before, and said again today in different words, that the metropolitan network forms only 10 per cent. of the total mileage of roads in London and therefore can easily be absorbed into the individual boroughs. But the Government must be aware that the metropolitan network carries 40 per cent. of vehicle miles and consumes 55 per cent. of the total GLC and borough expenditure for highway construction. Therefore it is imperative that the network is planned in a coherent way.
  I now turn to my third point, which to me is the most important and, I am sure, more on the minds of the many people who supported it on all sides at earlier stages in our proceedings; that is, the importance of keeping these teams together, with their expertise in highway and traffic management. The noble Lord said that reassurance has been given in relation to urban traffic control, and of course we are grateful for that. It is very important that the urban traffic control systems should be kept together because, as we have said previously, they can save an enormous amount of cost in terms of new road construction, as has been seen both in the GLC and in the metropolitan counties.
  However, the way of doing this is to reserve powers to the Secretary of State, and it seems to me that the Secretary of State is going to be a terribly busy man in the next few years, in view of all the powers that are being given to him. Surely it would be better to have somebody on the ground in Greater London and the metropolitan counties who perhaps has more knowledge than the Secretary of State can bring to bear.
  I also take note of what the Minister said about the other teams: the highway planners with the experience of London's special needs and with knowledge of the cost-effective solutions for them. I refer to the teams of highway design engineers who are backed with the most sophisticated computer programmes in the world; the teams of maintenance engineers with special experience of large structures; and the teams of traffic specialists who have so effectively dealt with many of London's traffic problems, bad though they still are. But again the back-up is the Secretary of State. I repeat: I simply do not believe that the Secretary of State is capable of handling the mass of work which is being given to him.
  If that is in my mind, what, in the interim period, is in the minds of the individuals with these great skills? Will they not be looking for jobs elsewhere? I am certainly aware of a number of people both here and in the metropolitan counties who are already taking up other posts in private industry and with other lower-tier authorities outside their own areas. These teams are already breaking up, and in a sense the proof of what we are saying is already before our eyes.
  The London highways and traffic authority would provide a structure to ensure continuity. It is essential that these key teams should be given a clear indication of a secure future. They cannot be left with an

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  uncertain future; otherwise they will disperse and a great strategic resource will be lost to the country. I believe that this amendment improves the Bill. I believe that we were right on the previous occasion to pass the amendments that we passed. As I have said, I believe that this amendment may even be an improvement, and I hope that your Lordships will sustain it.
  Lord Boyd-Carpenter: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Carmichael of Kelvingrove, has such a beguiling method of speaking that he tends to lull the House—he certainly tends to lull me—into a feeling that this amendment really is not much of a change. However, your Lordships will recall that it is an amendment which goes against the whole spirit and purpose of the Bill, which has now been through both Houses, that wherever possible functions shall be transferred to the boroughs. It proposes to take these very important—I do not underrate their importance—traffic management problems into the second tier of a three-tier structure, and in that way to frustrate the general purpose of the Bill.
  The noble Lord, Lord Tordoff, was, I thought, unusually pessimistic. He said that the boroughs will not co-operate because, among other things, of political diversity. I wonder whether the noble Lord was being quite fair to the boroughs. On issues of this kind, which are largely technical and practical, I think the noble Lord will find that the boroughs, whether Conservative or Labour controlled, will try to act responsibly to carry out the functions which Parliament has conferred on them. They will not let the fact that they happen to disagree with the politics of the majority party in either of them frustrate them from doing their duty by their citizens.
  Lord Tordoff: My Lords, will the noble Lord allow me to intervene? This is surely the problem—that there may be a conflict of interest between the electors in their own particular borough and the good of the conurbation. It is in those areas that conflict arises which is irresolvable save only by the Secretary of State.
  Lord Boyd-Carpenter: My Lords, if there is a conflict of interest in this kind of matter it is not a conflict of interest on general party lines. It will be the obvious and natural thing on the purely practical aspect of whether or not you want trunked a road which goes near your home. That is a very important issue to local people but it is not an issue which raises party political differences.
  I think it is unfair to the boroughs, to those of all parties who serve on them and to their officials to say that, because some boroughs have a majority of one political colour and other boroughs have another, they will not co-operate. The argument goes much further than that if the noble Lord is right. This idea of cooperation between the boroughs is fundamental to the whole Bill. If the noble Lord is right on this point the same arguments apply against all the other provisions in the Bill as they have been worked out and enacted after prolonged debates in both Houses of Parliament.
  Lord Gregson: Hear, hear!
  Lord Boyd-Carpenter: My Lords, the noble Lord is perfectly honest about it. He agrees with me. It is contrary to the whole spirit of the Bill. There is no justification, I suggest to your Lordships, for picking out traffic management and treating it separately from the way in which Parliament in its wisdom has decided all the other functions at present exercised by the GLC or the metropolitan counties are to be exercised under the Bill. Whatever your view on a particular aspect, your Lordships must see that to introduce this one separate element of this overall authority will cause considerable confusion in practice and be thoroughly damaging to the general approach of the Bill.
  Your Lordships will not underrate what is proposed, which is to have a three-tier system in respect of traffic: the boroughs, this body corporate, and then the Secretary of State. Is there any justification for a three-tier system? Is there really any justification for the delays, the bureaucracy and the mass of correspondence to and fro which will result from that elaborate system? If there is, then I say to your Lordships that that is a criticism of the whole Bill.
  The Bill, if it is to work properly—as I think all your Lordships want to make sure it does, whatever the doubts that some of your Lordships opposite may have—must be consistent. If you erect this body corporate as an all-London authority which I understand would have precepting powers on the boroughs, you will create something completely out of line with the rest of the Bill. Therefore I think that the onus of proof falls on those of your Lordships who suggest that traffic management is so different from every other aspect of local government that it must be separately and differently treated, because Parliament in its wisdom has decided that the other functions, with the exception of waste disposal—and we will come to waste disposal in a moment—must be so treated.
  At an earlier stage of the Bill there was an obvious strategy by noble Lords opposite, who wished to preserve as much of the Greater London Council as possible, to pile functions on to the residuary body, no doubt with a view to saying ultimately that if the residuary body had so many functions if must become permanent and perhaps elective. That was the form in which the amendment, which another place dismissed, dealt with traffic. Perhaps prudently, after the failure of that exercise and that strategem, the noble Lord, Lord Carmichael of Kelvingrove, comes forward with this new proposal for a new corporate body. But it is really very hard to see anything other than confusion and expense coming from imposing this middle tier on to this one particular area of the government of Greater London and the metropolitan counties.
  In regard to Greater London, there is a further difficulty. The boundaries of the present Greater London Council area are quite arbitrary. Nowadays they do not even coincide with the limits of the built-up area of London, and it is of course essential that the London traffic system should be geared in properly to that of virtually the whole of the south-east of England. It is no use having fine access roads up to the London perimeter unless they fit into access roads beyond it. In this amendment it is not proposed, and indeed without a crude intervention in the affairs of

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  other local authorities outside London it could not be proposed, that this corporate body should have such powers. The only person who can take the view as to how you are going to fit together all the traffic of south-east England, which is what we are really concerned with, is the Secretary of State. Only he can take an overall view. Introducing a middle tier into the other two tiers of traffic control in local government in London will simply produce a mess. Therefore I hope your Lordships will reject the amendment.
  3.45 p.m.
  Lord Molloy: My Lords, I should have thought that the proposals of my noble friend Lord Carmichael of Kelvingrove, despite what the noble Lord who has just spoken has said, are so congruous with what the Bill is trying to do that they really result in a better idea than we have yet had to make this Bill work. Indeed, it would not be wrong to say that without this amendment the Bill will create difficulties. It would possibly be fair to say that because of this amendment it will be a better Bill than it is at the moment, and that is what I believe noble Lords opposite have to consider.
  We have been through all this before. I can remember, as a leader of the Fulham and Hammersmith councils, when transport was our major problem, that the boroughs simply had to liaise with each other. You cannot have a transport policy for Fulham by itself, for Hammersmith by itself or indeed for Westminster by itself. It you try to do that you will arrive at the absurd situation of having agreed with the noble Viscount the leader of the Conservative Party in this House. I think that this is something which we have to take seriously.
  As I said initially, we have been through this before. For example, there were problems when we had the LCC and it was realised that people were not quite sure when they had left Chelsea and were in Kensington, or when they had left Kensington and were in Fulham, and so forth. It was fundamental that the London boroughs knew precisely the last—or the first—street in their boroughs, and the only way to have a sensible and intelligent transport policy was not to have one for any individual borough but to have a policy which covered all London as a whole—and it worked. I had the privilege, being a representative of those boroughs as a Member in the other place, of seeing both Conservative and Labour Ministers of Transport, with leaders or deputy leaders of councils and members of both parties, work out the changes that were necessary to get a reasonable and cohesive policy for Greater London. The problems of the City of Westminster are still enormous, but the problems ease out as you go further down towards the south, as has been said.
  The next issue that caused us grave apprehension was when it was decided by the Conservative Government of the day that the LCC would be abolished. This caused great worries and there were many improvements put into that Bill later, because of debates in this House as well as in the other place, that made it a good Bill. When representations were made to him, Sir Keith Joseph agreed that you had to have some central force of organisation—of course it would be best if it were made up of elected councillors, with
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  one or two specialists to assist them—to be able to run a sensible, intelligent, cohesive policy for the new body. He was converted. I do not think that anyone would say that Sir Keith Joseph did not stand by the proposals of his party and his Government. He was sensible enough to know when they could be improved upon, and he accepted improvements when they were proposed to him by councillors of all parties from London.
  There is one other point that I shall ask noble Lords to bear in mind very strongly in considering when this new Act will come into force. The noble Lord, Lord Tordoff, mentioned that we are losing men and women of high calibre, who in some instances have already devoted half their lives to transport problems in the metropolitan boroughs as well as in the Greater London Council, and this would be one move to ensure that these talents are not lost.
  In short, I take the view that the amendment moved by my noble friend keeps within the object and design of the Bill. In parenthesis I ask noble Lords in all parts of the House this question: could there exist in Britain a Government who could introduce a Bill proposing massive change and then have the audacity to say that not one single amendment is needed to make it a better Bill? That is the challenge this afternoon. That is what we must consider. It is not a political issue. Conservative councillors, and indeed some former leaders of Conservative councils, also believe that this is sensible. The amendment would improve the Bill and cannot be viewed in any way as political, but it represents good sense and good judgment. I disapprove of the Bill, but I believe that this is a typical British attitude: one can improve another party's Bill. If the Government have good sense they will accept that, as long as the amendment has no political slant.
  I do not believe for one moment that the amendment has even surreptitiously any political intent or content. The amendment is designed so that when the new organisations are created, in the first place, we shall not lose the men and women of high calibre who will be needed to make a success of this part of the Bill when it becomes law. At the same time, approving the amendment would be a response by this House to the desires and intentions of councillors of all parties to see that the Bill is improved in the manner indicated by my noble friend.
  Lord Somers: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Boyd-Carpenter, spoke with great conviction, as he always does, although at the end of his speech I felt a little doubtful as to what it was he was being so convincing about. One point emerged. He felt that the amendment was completely contrary to the spirit of the Bill. Does that make it wrong?
  The spirit of the Bill is not, as one might say, of divine authority; the spirit of the Bill may be entirely wrong. I am not saying that all through it is, but after eight weary days of the Committee stage and five equally weary days of the Report stage, we came to the conclusion that certain things in London must be under overall control. After all, London is a whole. One cannot divide it into a lot of boroughs without considering certain things which must apply to the whole of London. Traffic and road control is most certainly one of those. I think that any idea as to

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  whether it is contrary to the spirit of the Bill to accept the amendment should be put on one side and one thought should occupy our minds solely: is it an improvement on the original provision?
  Noble Lords: Hear, hear!
  Lord Campbell of Alloway: My Lords, I hope that it is in order respectfully to remind the noble Lord, Lord Molloy, in view of something that he said, that, as I understand it, no fewer than 75 out of 98 of your Lordships' amendments were accepted in another place. Had he attended throughout the debates on the Bill, he would perhaps have appreciated the measure of concession from my noble friend the Minister.
  The Motion moved by the noble Lord, Lord Carmichael, as I understand it, covers two amendments. The first is Amendment No. 4B, which seeks to set up the third tier in yet another form, to which the boroughs, as I read it, "shall have regard", with consequential amendments, Amendments Nos. 8A and 21A. It also covers Amendment No. 5A, which seeks to insist on Amendment No. 5, which was disagreed to. The effect of that is inevitably to engender possible conflict with another place—a conflict which at this stage of our proceedings, for all one knows, could well end up with the dissolution of Parliament and a killed Bill.
  It is certainly not my purpose to reopen the arguments on the merits which have been dealt with already. Some of your Lordships may feel that we have already indulged—indeed, over-indulged—in the arduous toil of extravagant repetitions. Many of us, however, irrespective of where we choose to sit and of such reservations as we maintain, would prefer to avoid such a conflict between the two Houses at all costs, perhaps with a sprinkling of indigenous give and take—in other words, compromise—in the higher purpose of avoiding further dispute.
  In this, if ILEA is to serve as the bartered bride to highways, traffic, and waste disposal, your Lordships are entitled—no more, no less—to be satisfied that the dowry arrangement is fair and reasonable; a dowry arrangement seen as a whole and not any particular item or aspect seen in isolation. As to reasonableness, surely that has to be seen in context not only with the concessions made by my noble friend the Minister throughout the passage of the Bill but also with the vast measure of agreement in another place to which I have already referred.
  As to the issue of conflict between the two Houses, surely that has to be seen in context with the reason for disagreement given in the other place—Reason 21—which was "inconsistent with the principle of the Bill". There is not only that; there is the sheer impossibility of the task of the revision entailed in the time available before the end of this Session of Parliament.
  Of course there is ample constitutional precedent for shuttlecock. There are even established rules of the game. But even if we play that game according to the rules, we shall be seen not only to thwart the will of another place but to introduce wanton turmoil and confusion into the administration of local government.
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  A reasonable compromise is proposed by the elected Chamber. To what end shall the non-elected Chamber now importune the gods and presume to tempt the fates with measures of all but immutable preconception?
  Lord Molloy: My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down, may I ask him whether he will be gracious enough to examine Hansard, where he will discover that I have not missed a single debate on the Bill? This is the first time that I have spoken, but I do not think that I have missed any Divisions. Perhaps he will be gracious enough to check those points.
  4 p.m.
  Lord Campbell of Alloway: My Lords, since the noble Lord mentioned my name, perhaps I may be allowed to say that if he was present, I am all the more surprised at what he said a few moments ago.
  Lord Howie of Troon: My Lords, I wish very briefly to comment on only two remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Boyd-Carpenter, in his interesting earlier speech. He said not once but I think twice that Parliament in its wisdom had made certain decisions. That is not quite right. Parliament in its wisdom has not yet decided. One part of Parliament and one part only in its wisdom has made a decision. Another place had made certain proposals in the Bill which came to this House where these proposals were examined and in part amended. The amendments went back. They have been criticised and sometimes rejected. We are now considering what another place has made of our proposals.
  Lord Boyd-Carpenter: My Lords, I wonder whether the noble Lord will give way?
  Lord Howie of Troon: Certainly.
  Lord Boyd-Carpenter: My Lords, the point that I was seeking to make, and which I hoped the noble Lord had understood, was that over the greater part of the Bill Parliament has concluded its discussions. The only issues open are those that arise on those of our amendments which are sent back. The point of my argument was that the main pattern of the Bill has already been decided upon by Parliament.
  Lord Howie of Troon: My Lords, yes, that must be true, but I thought it was hardly worth mentioning today. The part of the Bill which is before us is the part upon which we have not decided. Thus the noble Lord's remark was inessential. We have not decided. Parliament has not decided, and Parliament is now deciding. There is no reason why we should not dissent from the other House, whether we are elected or nonelected.
  The other part of the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Boyd-Carpenter, which I noted—and I hope I shall not irritate him this time—came when he said that the principle of the Bill was that, wherever possible, functions should be passed to the lower authorities. However, that is not the principle of the Bill. Nor is the principle of the Bill that which another place states it to be in its Reason No. 21. That Reason

  521
  does not include the phrase "wherever possible" but states merely that most of the functions should pass from the Greater London Council to lesser authorities. If the amendment of my noble friend Lord Carmichael of Kelvingrove is accepted, most of the functions will pass and the principle of the Bill will be totally intact. Therefore that question does not arise.
  I have only one more thing to say in conclusion. It is that those who propose this Motion and those of us who support it have no intention of thwarting the will of the elected Chamber, as I think the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Alloway, put it. That is not our intention at all. The situation is quite a simple one. After a lengthy period of discussion, debate, consideration and consultation with all kinds of outside bodies a situation has arisen in which this noble assembly takes one view, or has taken one view, and another place has taken a somewhat different view. The proposal before us today seems to me a very sensible and a very sound one; namely, that we should seek as far as we can to reconcile these two differing views, to seek some kind of compromise between them. I think that reconciliation and compromise are absolutely central to the Motion proposed by my noble friend Lord Carmichael of Kelvingrove. I hope that this House will pass it.
  The Lord President of the Council (Viscount Whitelaw): My Lords, we have this afternoon had a short, important debate about the merits of this issue. My noble friend Lord Brabazon has given what I believe to be a powerful account of the reasons why the Motion in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Carmichael of Kelvingrove, is unacceptable. Your Lordships will not wish me to go over that same ground again.
  However, before I come to something else that I wish to say to your Lordships, naturally I shall seek briefly to deal with some of the main points raised during the debate. The noble Lord, Lord Carmichael of Kelvingrove, moved his amendments in a most reasonable way, as I, through a long association with him in another place, have come to expect. I have to say to the noble Lord that so reasonable was he that he might very easily, had he gone on, have converted simple souls such as me. It was not until I heard my noble friend Lord Boyd-Carpenter that I realised that I must come back from my simplicity and look at what was really behind his proposals. I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Boyd-Carpenter for that. It was important.
  I have to say this to the noble Lord, Lord Carmichael—and I want to come very specifically to the important point made by the noble Lord, Lord Somers. I would not necessarily refer to the "spirit" of the Bill, but I think that now, as the Bill stands—and we are considering the amendment against the background of where the Bill now stands—the noble Lord's proposals would be inconsistent with the method of dealing with a good many of the other proposals.
  This House may have made mistakes. The Government may have won on some of the issues when perhaps noble Lords think that they should not have won. However, they did, and the Bill now stands
  522
  in that regard. If one changed this particular proposal, I believe it would indeed be inconsistent with what else is in the Bill. That is a very important point which was made also by my noble friend Lord Brabazon.
  I should like to turn to the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Tordoff. First of all, he fears that the specialist teams might be upset. He makes a very important point. It is one which I certainly believe has been dealt with, is being dealt with and, as my noble friend Lord Brabazon made perfectly clear, will be dealt with. Of course, in a situation such as this a great deal of understanding and compromise will be necessary, but I do not think that the noble Lord should be so pessimistic about that.
  I believe, too, that the noble Lord was overworried about the position of the Secretary of State. As the Secretary of State is responsible for very major matters covering the whole country, the area covered by highways and transport in the London conurbation must be something which is bound to concern him. Matters concerning the overall position in that very large area are bound to come to the Secretary of State. I think that that will be inevitable.
  The noble Lord, Lord Molloy, seemed at one stage to be coming to my aid, and I am very grateful to him. He seemed to be doing so in two ways. I shall come to the second one later. On the first one he was powerfully coming to my aid. He said that when he was conducting these matters—and I am sure that if he told us that it was when he was conducting them, that would be right—when, from another place, he was co-ordinating between the boroughs, all worked very well. Well, if it worked so well before, and if all the planning worked and the co-operation was so satisfactory when organised by the noble Lord, Lord Molloy, why should it not continue in the future? It seemed to me that the noble Lord was encouraging us to believe that if the boroughs would get together and co-operate as they did with him, all would be well. I rather think that that makes the case that I was making.
  Lord Molloy: My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Viscount the Leader of the House for giving way. The point I was making—and I am glad that he agrees with me—was that I represented the nucleus, the idea—which is now part of the amendment moved by my noble friend—which later became a reality.
  Viscount Whitelaw: Do not let us spoil this sudden friendship. I did not quite understand the noble Lord to have said just exactly that. However, perhaps that was my lack of recognition of his arguments.
  My noble friend Lord Boyd-Carpenter made the point that I have re-emphasised—that this proposal, coming as it does at this time in the Bill, would not be consistent with many of the other proposals for other matters which we have already passed. I do not think that proposition really can be successfully disputed.
  The second point that he made is that we were going to impose a three-tier system. And why should we, in this case, impose a three-tier system? Again, that is a very powerful point that is hard to dispute. My noble friend Lord Campbell of Alloway and the noble Lord, Lord Howie of Troon, both covered some ground to which I think it would be appropriate for me, as

  523
  Leader of your Lordships' House, to refer now. Before doing so, I want to show, as I think I can show, why I believe that there are important considerations which your Lordships should consider in coming to your very proper decision in resolving how to act on these particular amendments this afternoon. My remarks concern both of the amendments and the treatment of both.
  In winding up the Second Reading debate, I accepted on behalf of the Government the important part that your Lordships' House had to play in the process of getting right the detailed aspects of this much needed change. I said then that my colleagues and I on this Bench were very ready to listen closely to the views of this House on such matters, although I also said—and I think many noble Lords would accept this as unarguable—that the Government must stand on matters of principle on a Bill to which they were so clearly committed. That was exactly three months ago. Since then, your Lordships have subjected the Bill to as thorough a scrutiny as any Bill has received in this House for many years.
  This is the nineteenth day on which the Bill has been before your Lordships. I hope that your Lordships in all parts of the House will agree that, throughout the course of your Lordships' consideration of the Bill, my noble friends and I have honoured my undertaking that we would listen to the views of this House. Indeed, I have been very pleased to hear the many tributes paid to the patient and understanding way in which my noble friend Lord Elton has handled the Bill.
  During the hard-fought proceedings on this Bill, the Government suffered four defeats. Your Lordships will have noticed that the Government advised another place to accept the decision of this House on two of these, that concerning reports on the countryside and the power to make changes to the Inner London Education Authority by order. I would suggest to your Lordships that the latter was a most important concession to the House.
  On the defeat concerning waste disposal, the Government made amendments in another place designed to go some way to meet anxieties expressed in your Lordships' House. From what I read in the Order Paper, this conciliatory move does not appear to have been wholly accepted, but I must stress, and stress again, that it was made in good faith. Only on this one amendment which we are now discussing did the Government seek and obtain powerful support in another place for standing on their original position—certainly, as a matter of principle to this Bill.
  No fair-minded person could even pretend to regard such an attitude as that of a dictatorial Government with a large majority in another place riding roughshod over your Lordships' House. On the contrary, it represents a co-operative and understanding approach, not always, or even often, followed by Governments in the past on highly controversial measures. But, my Lords, that is not all. I would remind the noble Lord, Lord Molloy, that a large number of amendments were made to the Bill in this House, a good number of them introduced by the Government to meet points made by noble Lords. As the noble Lord says that he was here all the time, no
  524
  doubt he observed that some of these amendments, indeed a very large number of them, were made during the passage of the Bill.
  4.15 p.m.
  Among the principal of these was provision for a joint committee of representatives from the London boroughs to consider matters of common interest as regards planning and development in Greater London. Provisions were also included to smooth the transition to the new arrangements for trading standards, with a reserve power to establish joint authorities if necessary. The co-ordinating committees and residuary bodies are to have a role in safeguarding valuable expertise and specialist teams—a matter very properly referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Tordoff, on this amendment.
  On the position of charitable organisations, I believe your Lordships welcome the steps to extend the transitional aid for them, to endow a trust, and to augment the duties on those making collective schemes so that they must have regard to the needs of the whole area and keep the arrangements under review. These are all matters on which we have listened, and indeed acted. In our response, the Government have surely demonstrated that we have fully respected the traditional role of this House as a revising chamber.
  In addition, on the two disagreements before us today, this House has given another place the opportunity to think again, a further important part of its traditional role. On this amendment that other place has reinforced its original position, I repeat on a matter of firm principle in the Bill. On the next one, concerning waste disposal, it has made a change in an effort to meet your Lordships' anxieties.
  It is no part of my case to suggest for one moment that those of your Lordships who still feel strongly opposed to these amendments would be acting in any way unconstitutionally or even against the precedents if they decided to press their objections. I am sometimes not so unwise as I seem. On this occasion, I have not neglected a study of exchanges and votes in the past with Governments and Oppositions of all parties.
  But, my Lords, I do feel that the results of the Government's constructive attitude which I have outlined entitles me to ask your Lordships at this stage to recognise what this House has already achieved and so not to press any objections further. For these reasons, therefore, and because, as my noble friend Lord Brabazon so fully explained, the Motion proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Carmichael, is wholly inapproprate to the scheme of the Bill, I ask your Lordships to reject it.
  Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: My Lords, it is a long time since the noble Viscount and I wound up the debate on the Second Reading of this Bill. It seems even longer, as those who have taken an active part in the Committee and Report stages would agree. It was clear on Second Reading that there were profound disagreements about practical aspects of the Bill. These were shared by noble Lords in all parts of the House. We all recall that these doubts came to the surface time and time again as the Bill progressed, and some sensible and necessary changes were made by

  525
  this House. Personally, I should like to have seen more changes. But we can be satisfied that we carried out our function as a revising chamber. I shall return to this in a moment. I believe I can say, however, that the noble Viscount the Leader of the House shares this view; namely, that this House did no more than its duty during the Committee and Report stages of the Bill.
  We are grateful to the noble Viscount for explaining the Government's reaction to the four major amendments carried by this House. There were, of course, other substantial concessions which the Government made in the course of the debates and the noble Viscount has referred to them—for example, planning, housing, trading standards, civil defence, the arts, voluntary grants and so on. I think that, in all, some 90 amendments to the Bill were made in this Chamber. That is a remarkable tribute to those who took part in the debates from all sides of the House.
  However, we are now concerned with the four major changes. Here again, I welcome the fact that, as indicated by the noble Viscount, the Government have accepted two of them; namely, those on education and conservation. However, the Government have reversed the decisions of this House on highways and on waste disposal.
  At this stage there are two points to be considered and they are of great importance. First, on the merits of the argument, are the Government justified in resisting the two changes in question, and, secondly, would this House be justified in insisting that the Government should think again about the two issues? The noble Viscount touched on the two points, but I want to deal with them in a rather different way.
  My noble friend Lord Carmichael has made a powerful case for adhering to the decision of this House on highway and traffic functions. I believe that the Government have been in a muddle on this matter since the start. What my noble friend now proposes in his new amendment is far closer to the Government's own manifesto. In fact, these amendments maintain the local democratic control of roads and traffic. They have very real advantages over the Government's own proposals. Furthermore, as my noble friend has said, his amendment very effectively met the criticism about the distinction between the highways and traffic amendment for the GLC and the MCCs.
  The message from the other place, that the amendment is inconsistent with the principle of the Bill—and this has been repeated again today by more than one speaker on the other side—really does not hold water. Joint boards are one of the central ingredients of the Bill. They are extolled and defended by Mr. Nicholas Ridley, and the noble Viscount himself said in Committee that the establishment of strategic highway authorities is not a fundamental change in the Bill. I think that the case is unanswerable and, despite his undoubted skill, the noble Viscount has not been able to answer it. The noble Viscount has great qualities which we all admire, but he is not "the simple soul" that he described himself to be. In these circumstances, therefore, it would be against the public interest if we were to concede the case to the Government, and that public interest has been fully described in the report of the Select Committee of this House.
  526
  My second point—and the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Alloway, referred to this in his speech—is that we are told that we shall be resisting the will of the Commons. I am very sensitive to this point. The Commons is the elected Chamber and it is the primary Chamber, and we must not forget that. On the other hand, the Parliament Acts ensure that, with their majority in the Commons, the Government can prevail in the end. We are asking the Government to pause and to think again in the light of the argument and the new amendment moved by my noble friend.
  The noble Lord, Lord Carrington, supported this view on more than one occasion, and he had the total backing of noble Lords opposite. He said:
  "In our system we have hitherto taken the view that the will of the elected House must in the end prevail, but that there should be a second House which has the opportunity—in rare cases, perhaps—to enforce a delay in which there can be a reassessment by Government, by Parties and by the people of this country of the rights or wrongs of an issue. If now we decide to use that very limited power, we are not thwarting the will of the people for, in so far as it is represented by the House of Commons, it will and must prevail in a comparatively short space of time".—[Official Report, 11/11/75; col. 1742.]
  Indeed, it is because during the last few years this House has carried out those very duties in that spirit it is more respected in the country than it has been for many decades past. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, and also with the noble Viscount himself when he said on 6th November last that he believed that this House has the duty to make the Government think again. If the Government wish to curtail the powers of this House still further and to amend the Parliament Acts accordingly, that must be a matter for them to decide. However, under the Constitution as it stands, I believe that we also have the duty and right to urge the Government to think again.
  Finally, let me say this. We do not like this Bill. We do not like the way in which the Government have handled this Bill from the start. Nevertheless, we recognise that it will be on the statute book very soon. We also strongly believe that these and the following amendments would improve the Bill significantly in the interests of the people of this country, and we therefore ask the House to support them in the Lobby.
  4.26 p.m.
  On Question, That this House do not insist on Amendment No. 4, to which the Commons have disagreed, but propose Amendment No. 4B in lieu thereof.
  Their Lordships divided: Contents, 153; Not-Contents, 217.

  DIVISION NO.1

  CONTENTS

  Airedale, L.

  Birkett, L.

  Amherst, E.

  Blyton, L.

  Ardwick, L.

  Boston of Faversham, L.

  Attlee, E.

  Bottomley, L.

  Aylestone, L.

  Briginshaw, L.

  Bacon, B.

  Brockway, L.

  Banks, L.

  Buckmaster, V.

  Barnett, L.

  Burton of Coventry, B

  Beaumont of Whitley, L.

  Caradon, L.

  Bernstein, L.

  Carmichael of Kelvingrove, L.

  Beswick, L.

  Chitnis, L.

  Birk, B.

  Cledwyn of Penrhos, L.

  527

  Collison, L.

  Mayhew, L.

  Crawshaw of Aintree, L.

  Milford, L.

  Darcy (de Knayth), B.

  Milner of Leeds, L.

  Darling of Hillsborough, L.

  Mishcon, L.

  Darwen, L.

  Molloy, L.

  David, B.

  Monkswell, L.

  Davies of Penrhys, L.

  Monson, L.

  Dean of Beswick, L.

  Morris of Kenwood, L.

  Denington, B.

  Morton of Shuna, L.

  Diamond, L.

  Mountevans, L.

  Donaldson of Kingsbridge, L.

  Mulley, L.

  Elwyn-Jones, L.

  Murray of Epping Forest, L.

  Ennals, L.

  Nicol, B.

  Esher, V.

  Northfield, L.

  Ewart-Biggs, B.

  Oram, L.

  Ezra, L.

  Peart, L.

  Falkender, B.

  Phillips, B.

  Falkland, V.

  Pitt of Hampstead, L.

  Fisher of Rednal, B.

  Plant, L.

  Fitt, L.

  Ponsonby of Shulbrede, L. [Teller.]

  Foot, L.

  Gaitskell, B.

  Porritt, L.

  Gallacher, L.

  Reilly, L.

  Galpern, L.

  Ritchie of Dundee, L.

  Gladwyn, L.

  Robson of Kiddington, B.

  Glenamara, L.

  Rochester, L.

  Gormley, L.

  Ross of Marnock, L.

  Graham of Edmonton, L.

  Russell of Liverpool, L.

  Gregson, L.

  Sainsbury, L.

  Grey, E.

  Scanlon, L.

  Hampton, L.

  Seear, B.

  Hanworth, V.

  Seebohm, L.

  Harris of Greenwich, L.

  Sefton of Garston, L.

  Hayter, L.

  Serota, B.

  Henderson of Brompton, L.

  Shackleton, L.

  Heycock, L.

  Shepherd, L.

  Hirshfield, L.

  Shinwell, L.

  Houghton of Sowerby, L.

  Silkin of Dulwich, L.

  Howie of Troon, L.

  Simon, V.

  Hughes, L.

  Somers, L.

  Hunt, L.

  Soper, L.

  Ilchester, E.

  Stallard, L.

  Ingleby, V.

  Stamp, L.

  Irving of Dartford, L.

  Stedman, B.

  Jacobson, L.

  Stewart of Fulham, L.

  Jeger, B.

  Stoddart of Swindon, L.

  Jenkins of Putney, L.

  Stone, L.

  John-Mackie, L.

  Strabolgi, L.

  Kagan, L.

  Strauss, L.

  Kilmarnock, L.

  Swann, L.

  Kinloss, Ly.

  Taylor of Blackburn, L.

  Kirkwood, L.

  Taylor of Mansfield, L.

  Kissin, L.

  Tordoff, L. [Teller.]

  Lawrence, L.

  Underhill, L.

  Leatherland, L.

  Wallace of Coslany, L.

  Lincoln, Bp.

  Walston, L.

  Listowel, E.

  Wedderburn of Charlton, L.

  Llewelyn-Davies of Hastoe, B.

  White, B.

  Lloyd of Hampstead, L.

  Williams of Elvel, L.

  Lockwood, B.

  Wilson of Langside, L.

  Longford, E.

  Wilson of Rievaulx, L.

  McIntosh of Haringey, L.

  Winchilsea and Nottingham, E.

  Mackie of Benshie, L.

  McNair, L.

  Winstanley, L.

  Mais, L.

  Wootton of Abinger, B.

  Masham of Ilton, B.

  NOT-CONTENTS

  Airey of Abingdon, B.

  Beloff, L.

  Alexander of Tunis, E.

  Belstead, L.

  Allerton, L.

  Bessborough, E.

  Alport, L.

  Biddulph, L.

  Ampthill, L.

  Boardman, L.

  Annaly, L.

  Bolton, L.

  Annan, E.

  Boyd-Carpenter, L.

  Arran, E.

  Brabazon of Tara, L.

  Astor, V.

  Brentford, V.

  Balfour of Inchrye, L.

  Bridgeman, V.

  Bauer, L.

  Brocket, L.

  Beaverbrook, L.

  Brookeborough, V.

  Belhaven and Stenton, L.

  Brougham and Vaux, L.

  528

  Broxbourne, L.

  Holderness, L.

  Bruce-Gardyne, L.

  Home of the Hirsel, L.

  Buccleuch and Queensberry, D.

  Hood, V.

  Hooper, B.

  Burton, L.

  Hylton-Foster, B.

  Butterworth, L.

  Ironside, L.

  Caithness, E.

  Kaberry of Adel, L.

  Caldecote, V.

  Kemsley, V.

  Cameron of Lochbroom, L.

  Killearn, L.

  Campbell of Alloway, L.

  Kilmany, L.

  Campbell of Croy, L.

  Kimball, L.

  Carnegy of Lour, B.

  Kinnaird, L.

  Camock, L.

  Kinnoull, E.

  Cathcart, E.

  Kitchener, E.

  Cayzer, L.

  Knutsford, V.

  Chelmer, L.

  Lane-Fox, B.

  Chelwood, L.

  Lauderdale, E.

  Clinton, L.

  Layton, L.

  Coleraine, L.

  Loch, L.

  Constantine of Stanmore, L.

  Long, V.

  Cowley, E.

  Lucas of Chilworth, L.

  Cox, B.

  Lyell, L.

  Craigavon, V.

  McFadzean, L.

  Craigmyle, L.

  Mackintosh of Halifax, V.

  Craigton, L.

  Macleod of Borve, B.

  Cranbrook, E.

  Macpherson of Drumochter, L.

  Crathorne, L.

  Crawshaw, L.

  Malmesbury, E.

  Cross, V.

  Mancroft, L.

  Cullen of Ashbourne, L.

  Margadale, L.

  Davidson, V.

  Marley, L.

  De Freyne, L.

  Marsh, L.

  De La Warr, E.

  Massereene and Ferrard, V.

  Denham, L. [Teller.]

  Maude of Stratford-upon-Avon, L.

  Denman, L.

  Dilhorne, V.

  Melville, V.

  Donegall, M.

  Merrivale, L.

  Dormer, L.

  Middleton, L.

  Drumalbyn, L.

  Molson, L.

  Dundee, E.

  Monk Bretton, L.

  Dundonald, E.

  Mottistone, L.

  Eccles, V.

  Mountgarret, V.

  Eden of Winton, L.

  Mowbray and Stourton, L.

  Effingham, E.

  Moyola, L.

  Elibank, L.

  Murton of Lindisfarne, L.

  Ellenborough, L.

  Nathan, L.

  Elles, B.

  Newall, L.

  Elliot of Harwood, B.

  Norfolk, D.

  Elliott of Morpeth, L.

  Nugent of Guildford, L.

  Elphinstone, L.

  O'Brien of Lothbury, L.

  Elton, L.

  Orkney, E.

  Falmouth, V.

  Orr-Ewing, L.

  Fanshawe of Richmond, L.

  Peel, E.

  Ferrier, L.

  Pender, L.

  Fisher, L.

  Peyton of Yeovil, L.

  Forbes, L.

  Portland, D.

  Forte, L.

  Quinton, L.

  Fraser of Kilmorack, L.

  Radnor, E.

  Freyberg, L.

  Rankeillour, L.

  Gainford, L.

  Rawlinson of Ewell, L.

  Geddes, L.

  Reay, L.

  Gibson-Watt, L.

  Renton, L.

  Glanusk, L.

  Renwick, L.

  Glenarthur, L.

  Rochdale, V.

  Gowrie, E.

  Romney, E.

  Gray, L.

  Rootes, L.

  Gray of Contin, L.

  Rotherwick, L.

  Greenway, L.

  Ryder of Warsaw, B.

  Gridley, L.

  Sackville, L.

  Grimthorpe, L.

  St. Aldwyn, E.

  Haig, E.

  St. Davids, V.

  Hailsham of Saint

  Salisbury, M.

  Marylebone, L.

  Sanderson of Bowden, L.

  Halifax, E.

  Sandford, L.

  Halsbury, E.

  Savile, L.

  Hanson, L.

  Selborne, E.

  Harmar-Nicholls, L.

  Selkirk, E.

  Harvey of Tasburgh, L.

  Sempill, Ly.

  Harvington, L.

  Shannon, E.

  Henley, L.

  Sharples, B.

  Hertford, M.

  Skelmersdale, L.

  Hives, L.

  Southborough, L.

  529

  Stanley of Alderley, L.

  Trenchard, V.

  Stodart of Leaston, L.

  Trumpington, B.

  Strathcarron, L.

  Ullswater, V.

  Sudeley, L.

  Vaux of Harrowden, L.

  Suffield, L.

  Vestey, L.

  Swinton, E. [Teller.]

  Vivian, L.

  Terrington, L.

  Westbury, L.

  Teviot, L.

  Whitelaw, V.

  Thomas of Swynnerton, L.

  Wigram, L.

  Thorneycroft, L.

  Windlesham, L.

  Thurlow, L.

  Wise, L.

  Tollemache, L.

  Wolfson, L.

  Torphichen, L.

  Wynford, L.

  Townshend, M.

  Yarborough, E.

  Tranmire, L.

  Young of Graffham, L.

  Trefgarne, L.

  Resolved in the negative, and Motion disagreed to accordingly.
  4.37 p.m.
  Lord Elton: My Lords, I beg to move that the House do not insist on their Amendment No. 4 to which the Commons have disagreed for the Reason numbered 21. I hope that this Motion will be agreed to formally.
  Moved, That this House do not insist on their Amendment No. 4, to which the Commons have disagreed for the Reason numbered 21.
  On Question, Motion agreed to.

  LORDS AMENDMENT
  5 Before Clause 7, insert the following new clause—
  ("Strategic Highway Functions in Metropolitan Counties.
  . The Secretary of State shall by order taking effect on the abolition date make provision for the authority established by section 27 of this Act for each metropolitan county to exercise the following functions relating to highways and road traffic in that county to the extent and in the manner that such order shall provide—

  (a) the functions of the highway authority under the Highways Act 1980 in relation to principal roads within the county;

  (b) the functions of a county council and a highway authority for the purpose of the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984 in relation to principal roads within the county;

  (c) issuing guidance as to the manner in which in relation to non principal roads the councils of metropolitan districts should exercise their powers under the 1984 Act, for the purpose of ensuring that the exercise by such councils of those traffic powers in relation to non principal roads does not have an adverse effect on traffic or any class of traffic using principal roads within the county or any traffic or class of traffic in any area other than the area of the district council, as the case may be;

  (d) the functions relating to the construction and maintenance of bridges within the county which on that date are the responsibility of the highway authority;

  (e) the functions contained in the Road Traffic Acts 1972 and 1974 in so far as the same relate to road safety within the county; and

  (f) the collection, examination, analysis and dissemination of data required for the discharge of those functions.").

  Lord Carmichael of Kelvingrovehad given notice of his intention to move, as Motion 5A, That this House do insist on their amendment No. 5, to which the Commons have disagreed for the Reason numbered 21
  [Reason No. 21: printed earlier.]
  The noble Lord said: My Lords, in view of the decision just reached by the House, I do not intend to move Motion No. 5A.
  [Motion No. 5A not moved.]

  LORDS AMENDMENTS
  6 Clause 7, page 4, line 3, leave out from first ("to") to end of line 7 and insert ("give effect to the transfer of functions relating to those matters—

  (a) from the Greater London Council—

  (i) in part to the London residuary body; and

  (ii) in part to the London borough councils and the common council; and

  (b) from the metropolitan county councils—

  (i) in part to the metropolitan county strategic transportation authorities; and

  (ii) in part to the metropolitan district councils.").

  7 Page 4, line 13, leave out from second ("the") to ("and") in line 15 and insert ("metropolitan county strategic transportation authorities and London residuary authority.").
  8 Page 4, line 19, leave out from ("metropolitan") to end of line 23 and insert ("county strategic transportation authorities and London Residuary Body;").
  Lord Carmichael of Kelvingrovehad given notice of his intention to move, as Motions 8A, 8B, 8C and 8D, That this House do not insist on their amendments No. 6 to 8 to which the Commons disagree for the Reason numbered 21 but propose the following amendments in lieu thereof—
  8B Page 4, line 3, leave out from first ("to") to end of line 7 and insert ("give effect to the transfer of functions relating to those matters—

  (a) from the Greater London Council—

  (i) in part to the London Highways and Traffic Authority; and

  (ii) in part to the London borough councils and the common council; and

  (b) from the metropolitan county councils—

  (i) in part to the metropolitan county strategic transportation authorities; and

  (ii) in part to the metropolitan district councils.")

  8C Page 4, line 13, leave out from second ("the") to ("and") in line 15 and insert ("metropolitan county strategic transportation authorities and London Highways and Traffic Authority.")
  8D Page 4, line 19, leave out from ("metropolitan") to end of line 23 and insert ("county strategic transportation authorities and London Highways and Traffic Authority.").
  [Reason No. 21: printed earlier.]
  The noble Lord said: My Lords, as in the case of Motion No. 5A, I do not propose to move Motion 8A.
  (Motion No. 8A not moved.]

  LORDS AMENDMENTS
  9 Clause 27, page 18, line 18, leave out ("Passenger").
  10 Page 18, line 19, leave out ("Transport") and insert ("Strategic Transportation").
  11 Page 18, line 20, leave out ("passenger").
  12 Page 18, line 20, leave out ("transport") and insert ("strategic transportation").
  13 Page 18, line 21, leave out ("passenger").
  14 Page 18, line 21, leave out ("transport") and insert ("strategic transportation").
  15 Page 18, line 23, leave out ("passenger").
  16 Page 18, line 23, leave out ("transport") and insert ("strategic transportation").
  17 Page 18, line 27, leave out ("passenger").
  18 Page 18, line 27, leave out ("transport") and insert ("strategic transportation").
  19 Clause 38, page 24, line 17, leave out ("passenger").
  20 Page 24, line 18, leave out ("transport") and insert ("strategic transportation").
  The Commons disagree to amendments 5 to 20 for the following Reason (No. 21):
  Because they are inconsistent with the principle of the Bill to transfer most of the functions of the Greater London Council and the metropolitan county councils to the local authorities in their areas.
  Lord Carmichael of Kelvingrovehad given notice of his intention to move, as Motion 21 A, That this House do insist on their amendments Nos. 9 to 20 to which the Commons disagreed for the Reason numbered 21.
  The noble Lord said: My Lords, as I indicated earlier, I do not propose to move Motion 21A.
  [Motion No. 21A not moved.]
  Lord Elton: My Lords, I beg to move that the House do not insist on their Amendments Nos. 5 to 20, to which the Commons have disagreed for the Reason numbered 21.
  Moved, That this House do not insist on their Amendments Nos 5 to 20, to which the Commons have disagreed for the Reason numbered 21.
  On Question, Motion agreed to.

  LORDS AMENDMENT
  22 Clause 9, page 4, line 35, leave out subsection (1) and insert—
  ("( ) On the appointed day there shall be established in Greater London and each metropolitan county a body corporate to be known by the name of the London Waste Disposal Authority or by the name of the county with the addition of the words "Waste Disposal Authority", as the case may be.
  ( ) Each authority shall consist of members of the constituent councils appointed by them to be members of the Authority.
  ( ) The constituent councils in relation to the London Waste Disposal Authority shall be the London borough councils and the Common Council.
  ( ) The constituent councils in relation to a metropolitan waste disposal authority shall be the councils for the metropolitan districts comprised in the county.
  ( ) Each authority shall be a joint authority within the meaning of Part IV of this Act and the provisions of that Part shall apply to this section as if this section were included in that Part.
  ( ) The functions specified in subsection (2) below shall be discharged by the authority in respect of the area for which it is established.").
  The Commons disagree to the above amendment but propose the following amendments to the words so restored to the Bill:
  23 Page 4, line 37, leave out ("authorities") and insert ("councils").
  24 Page 4, line 42, after ("purpose") insert ("before 15th November 1985").
  25 Page 5, line 3, leave out ("that") and insert ("the abolition").
  26 Page 5, line 4, leave out ("may, after consulting the authorities concerned,") and insert ("shall").
  27 Page 5, line 8, at end insert—
  ("(1A) For the purposes of subsection (1) above the Secretary of State shall have particular regard to the need for satisfactory arrangements in respect of hazardous waste.
  (1B) No person shall be a member of an authority established by an order under subsection (1) above unless he is a member of one of the councils for whose areas the authority is established; and any such order may make provision for enabling the Secretary of State to require the authority established by the order to submit to him a scheme for the winding-up of the authority and the transfer to those councils of its functions, property, staff, rights and liabilities.").
  Lord Ezra Lord Ezra rose to move as Motion No. 27A, That this House do insist on their Amendment No. 22 to which the Commons have disagreed and do disagree with Amendments Nos. 23 to 27 proposed by the Commons to the words so restored to the Bill.
  The noble Lord said: My Lords, I beg to move Motion 27A: If the House agrees to it, I shall formally move my second Motion, Motion 31A, since it is consequential. If Motion 27A is peradventure disagreed to, I shall not then be moving to the consequential Motion.
  Motion No. 31 A: That this House do insist on their Amendments Nos. 28 to 30 to which the Commons have disagreed for the Reason numbered 31.
  I believe it would help if I were to start by recalling briefly the history of this subject. When the Bill was sent from another place to this House it provided for the devolution of waste disposal to borough and district councils with a reserve power by Government to establish for all, or part, of an area a single authority. When this was debated at the Committee stage in this House on 9th May in a debate vigorously led by the noble Baroness, Lady Birk, strong arguments were advanced from all sides for the establishment from the start of single waste disposal authorities in Greater London and in each of the metropolitan areas. This was carried by a majority of vote.
  It is with this amendment that another place disagreed on 8th July. The Government, however, in the course of the debate in the other place put forward certain modifications to their original proposals. The first modification was that the date for the exercise of reserve power by the Secretary of State was put back from September to 15th November. Secondly, in the event of any statutory body being set up as a result of this reserve power being exercised, these bodies would be required to submit within a reasonably short time proposals for the devolution of their functions to their constituent councils. Thirdly, there would be separate arrangements on a wider basis to deal with hazardous waste and non-operational matters. It is with these revised arrangements that we now have to deal and we need to decide whether we consider these are satisfactory. I will now advance a number of reasons why I consider that they are not satisfactory and that your Lordships should insist on our original amendment.
  Let me first deal with technical reasons. In the debate in this House on 9th May, the noble Lord, Lord Gregson, chairman of the Select Committee on Hazardous Waste, and the noble Earl, Lord Cranbrook, chairman of the sub-committee of the Select Committee on Science and Technology, advanced strong arguments for maintaining strategic bodies to deal with the question of waste at county level. The main reason why they put forward these proposals is the process that we have developed almost uniquely in this country for the co-disposal of hazardous waste. I read very carefully what was said in the debate in another place when our amendment was rejected. Not a single word was said about this issue. But it is a crucial issue. If I may quote the noble Lord, Lord Gregson, he said:
  "The great bulk of liquid hazardous waste is co-disposed with domestic waste on the principle of dilute and disperse".
  It follows that there can be no separation between the disposal of normal, domestic waste and liquid waste if this successful process, pioneered in this country, is to be continued with. The problem of dividing up these functions is therefore crucial to our understanding of

  533
  this problem. I should like to insist therefore that for technical reasons we should have a single control at regional level of the disposal of all waste.
  Let me turn now, secondly, to financial reasons. The noble Lord, Lord Carmichael, in the previous debate referred to the Coopers and Lybrand report of 1984. That illustrious firm of accountants also studied the question of waste disposal and said this:
  "The metropolitan county councils have established integrated networks for waste disposal across major conurbations. This enables facilities to be better used and costs reduced. The resurrection of local administrative boundaries would increase costs".
  I do not wish to quote any further from their report. What this world-famous firm of accountants said was that costs would be minimised by the present arrangement and increased by any alternative arrangement.
  Thirdly, let me turn to commercial reasons why your Lordships' amendment should be sustained. There is grave concern among all waste disposal contractors about what could happen if the latest proposals reaching us from another place were to become effective. I have here a letter dated 11th July 1985 from the National Association of Waste Disposal Contractors, which is the trade association of that body, and the Institute of Waste Management, which is the professional association of that body. They say:
  "The situation, if anything, appears to be worse than the original Bill after the House of Commons considered the Lords' amendment last Monday and we thought that you would wish to be apprised of the situation".
  They conclude:
  "The situation we find ourselves in does not meet the reservations expressed in the House of Lords. Neither does it meet with the approval of the National Association of Waste Disposal Contractors and the Institute of Waste Management".
  4.45 p.m.
  This very morning I have received a letter from Mr. Martin Laing who is the chairman of John Laing PLC, one of the leading contractors and constructional companies in this country. This is what he said:
  "We were pleased to hear in May 1985 of the House of Lords' proposed modifications of the Government's proposals with respect to the control of solid waste disposal by a regional body. As contractors, we feel that the regional concept of waste disposal would provide the most effective and efficient means of control ensuring a continuing development of the best strategic policy for a given metropolitan area".
  He concludes:
  "We write to confirm our support for the original amendment which we believe would have best served the interests not only of the citizens in the areas concerned but of industry at large and particularly capital works".
  Next I should like to talk about the organisational reasons why the amendment in another place should not be acceptable to us. A great deal of uncertainty has been created as a result of the date on which the Secretary of State has to decide whether or not to institute statutory bodies. Originally this date was set for July 1984. Then it was changed to February 1985 and then it was changed to September 1985—on which we received an assurance from the noble Lord, Lord Elton—and now we are told that it is to be 15th November 1985. What is worse is that, if the Secretary of State should decide upon the creation of statutory bodies, one of the first things that these statutory
  534
  bodies would have to do is to decide on the devolution of their responsibilities; so that situation of uncertainty is further compounded.
  I am sorry to have to say this but I think that what is proposed is an organisational nightmare; that there can be no certainty as to what is to come and that the centres of excellence, to which much praise has been paid by the various professional and other bodies, including your Lordships' Select Committees, will not know whether they are coming or going; and, regrettably, what they are most likely to do is to go. Therefore, I feel that organisationally what is now proposed leaves very much to be desired. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, I think that the proposals that we now have before us equally leave much to be desired in strategic thinking.
  With the uncertainty about the organisations that are to be set up, the uncertainty of the relationship with the private sector contractors and the uncertainty with the staff, it is very difficult to see how any coherent strategic policy can be worked out in regard to this most important issue. Perhaps I may remind your Lordships that we are now talking about seven million tonnes of waste being disposed of by the authorities concerned, and of course that will grow in time; and in addition there will be the best part of a million tonnes of hazardous waste. This is very big business indeed.
  I add to that concern the views of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, whose chairman, Sir Richard Southwood, warned that boroughs and districts which might in future be charged with these responsibilities if the Government's proposals go through, might well ignore the best environmental options because of local pressures.
  I should like to ask the noble Lord, Lord Elton, what is to happen to that very important document on the future of waste disposal which was prepared by the GLC at the request of Government, and which was entitled, No Time to Waste. It was published in 1984 and went up to the year 2003, and it was prepared as a result of the closest possible consultation with all parties concerned. Is that now to go by the board and is all that time to be wasted?
  In conclusion, I should like to say that it seems to me that there is absolutely overwhelming evidence why, for technological reasons, for financial reasons, for commercial reasons and for organisational and strategic reasons, your Lordships should reaffirm the views previously expressed. I beg to move.
  Moved, That the House do insist on their amendment to which the Commons have disagreed, and do disagree with Amendments Nos. 23 to 27 proposed by the Commons to the words so restored to the Bill. —(Lord Ezra.)
  Baroness Birk: My Lords, I rise to support the Motion moved in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Ezra. I think I must start by saying that we are considering now something entirely different from the Motion we have just considered on highways and transport. They are both very important Motions, but I think it is only fair to view them entirely differently and to look at the reasons why we believe that these amendments that were made by your Lordships should be insisted on.

  535
  The noble Viscount the Leader of the House, when referring to waste disposal, said that the Government made amendments in another place in good faith. I am not questioning that good faith at all; what I am questioning is the efficacy, durability, efficiency and economy of the amendments which were put in place of what was sent by your Lordships.
  To start with, waste disposal was quite inadequately discussed in another place. It came under the guillotine and in fact was discussed for just over 45 minutes. When it was before your Lordships' Committee it was discussed for about three hours, and I think that the vote in favour of the amendment was the largest vote on any of the different amendments here in Committee and also on Report.
  When the other place defeated our amendments under a guillotine and the matter was covered in that very short time, it was fair to ask: What are the Government trying to do? They originally proposed devolution to districts and boroughs and your Lordships, on the basis of independent evidence, passed an amendment which was put forward in the name of the noble Earl, Lord Cranbrook, for whom I withdrew an amendment standing in my name at that time. It was not a party amendment at all. Your Lordships were convinced that in this very important and essential area waste disposal had to be carried out at county level, as it has been for many years now, before which, incidentally, the situation was a complete mess-up. It was for that reason that your Lordships passed that amendment, which then went to another place.
  What the Government were trying to do in the other place was to reverse the position, restore devolution to at least the majority of boroughs and districts and to arrive at their original destination by a rather different route. Indeed, what has now happened is that what we have in front of us today is rather worse than the Bill which we were discussing when we changed it in Committee, because instability is now being created by providing for temporary joint authorities which will be expected to pass their functions back to the boroughs and districts—thus building great instability and fragmentation into the arrangements.
  It also means that the expertise and the skilled teams involved will be quite irrecoverable once this happens. It was on that point that your Lordships were so impressed and convinced when this question was discussed in Committee. Also the amendments which were introduced by the Minister for Local Government in another place have built into them the probability—I would not even say the possibility, because if your Lordshps read the amendment in lieu you will see it is a very strong probability—that any joint authority which is established would be asked to submit proposals for its own demise. The Minister indicated that any orders made would specify that it should be done within 12 months.
  I would ask your Lordships: so what do we have? We have a situation where the boroughs and districts must come up with some voluntary groupings or individual plans by November—and the time has been slipping away, because when we were discussing it the plans were due to come out in September but now it is November. It is said that there may be a joint
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  authority set up, not necessarily county-wide though that may be the case in some instances, or there could be small groups within counties. In fact, there will be no rationale about it at all; it will be completely all over the place.
  If that were not enough, the Minister can in that order make sure that within 12 months it has then to go back to the districts and boroughs again. One could not run any sort of business on those grounds. How can one run in that way what is one of the most important services and functions that any local authority has to carry out today?
  The Government's proposals ignore the basic structure of waste disposal in this country. I do not apologise for repeating in this context what the noble Lord, Lord Ezra, has so rightly stressed: the co-disposal of hazardous with household, domestic and commercial waste. It may be a peculiar method but that is the way we deal with waste disposal in this country, and it has been successful for many years now. But, as has been pointed out, the Minister for Local Government did not even mention this. I imagine that he is aware of it, but there was no mention of it and no discussion. That may have been due to the guillotine, but this is the central point around which the arrangements for waste disposal in this country have to be made.
  5 p.m.
  It has to be dealt with at county level. But the operational functions under the Government's amendments may be dealt with in isolation by some districts, groups of district, or in other cases groups of boroughs, with an almost total separation of powers. I think that it is up to Ministers to explain why the Government are proposing a wholly new course for waste disposal, and, even with the talk of lead boroughs for hazardous waste, the devolution for household waste with the far reaching national implications. I think the Government would do well to remember the words of the noble Earl, Lord Cranbrook, at Committee stage when he said, at col. 759:
  "it is essential to have a firm deposit of non-hazardous commercial and domestic waste in order safely to co-dispose hazardous waste".—[Official Report, 9/5/85].
  The two go together and cannot be separated. This is a scientific view and certainly not a political view because this subject is something which in my view, and in the view of most people, is not a party political subject. It is up to the Government to explain how these changes accord with informed opinion.
  The report of the Hazardous Waste Inspectorate has recently been published, in June 1985. I wonder whether, had it appeared a little earlier, it might have made very much difference to views all around. In paragraph 1.9 it says:
  "The Government has recorded that it fully endorses the words expressed—
  the view of the noble Lord, Lord Gregson, who is the chairman of the House of Lords Committee on Hazardous Waste—
  "that the heart of successful waste management is public confidence and acceptance".
  How can public confidence be increased by the break up of the very centres of excellence recognised as

  537
  important by the inspectorate, and indeed by your Lordships' House when your Lordships voted at Committee stage? In their report the inspectorate says:
  "The Hazardous Waste Inspectorate would view with alarm any prospect of these experienced hazardous waste management teams being disbanded upon the abolition of the GLC and the metropolitan county councils. The Hazardous Waste Inspectorate therefore strongly supports the Department of Environment guidance note issued on 28th March which concluded that hazardous waste management services should be the responsibility of a common unit in each metropolitan area".
  That particular paragraph goes on further, but I shall not weary your Lordships with that. But it is absolutely clear and very strongly worded.
  It is quite extraordinary that we have here something which is almost unique. It is a report from Her Majesty's own Inspectorate on hazardous waste, together with the view of all the independent and professional bodies, and with the expressed opinions of at least two Select Committees of your Lordships' House. Yet the Government for a completely dogmatic reason—it is a rather Pavlovian reaction that, at the mention of a joint authority, we jump with panic and fear—are going along this very unfortunate path.
  The private sector is also united in its condemnation of the Government's so-called compromise. Noble Lords will have received, as the noble Lord, Lord Ezra, has done, and as I myself have done today, letters from the waste contractors' body and the president of the professional institue. They conclude by saying that the situation in which they find themselves does not meet the reservations expressed in the House of Lords; and neither does it meet with the approval of the National Association of Waste Disposal Contractors, and the Institute of Waste Management.
  If we insist on this amendment it will not be a question of doing any harm or offending or challenging the Bill. The Bill will go through. The GLC and the metropolitan counties will be abolished. What we are trying to do is to limit the damage as much as possible. To break up the whole of a working waste disposal system for the sake of not setting up another joint authority does not make sense. Indeed, the Long Title to the Bill, where the Government explain what the Bill is about, in a reference to devolving duties to the boroughs and districts, also says,
  "and, in some cases, to other bodies".
  So this is not contrary to the Bill. I must point out to those noble Lords who made these points in the previous debate that this is not, in fact, at all contrary to the Bill. Joint boards or joint authorities do not offend what is already to take place under the Bill. There are fire, police, and public transport joint authorities. In this House there was a joint planning committee for London. I agree that that is an advisory committee, but again it is a joint committee.
  To reverse the provision in this way seems to me and to my colleagues on these Benches to be something that is destructive. It can affect hygiene and health. It can even be extremely dangerous and result in injuries and death, as we have seen in the past when there has been the odd accident. If this is to be broken up and fragmented in this way, then the opportunity for more accidents and for greater breakdown will be tremendous. With the amount of waste increasing all
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  the time, with the increase in the amount of dangerous and hazardous waste as well as in ordinary domestic and commercial waste, and with the increase in technology, is this the time to start handing disposal back to boroughs and districts, which have neither the manpower or the personnel nor the finance to deal with it? This amendment was a mild, non-political amendment which was passed by this House. All we are asking is that this House insists on this. The Government will have the Bill, but at least let us have some concern for the people of this country.
  The Earl of Cranbrook: My Lords, from this side of the House I am clearly less suspicious of the assurances that are given by Members of the Government from the Floor of either this or another place than perhaps the noble Baroness, Lady Birk. Nonetheless, I am obliged to agree with the noble Lord, Lord Ezra, that the counter-proposals to your Lordships' amendment introduce a series of confusions, of apparently new issues, which I feel need some very clear clarification from the Floor of the House if the amendments are to be accepted.
  May I start by taking advantage of the presence of the noble Viscount, the Leader of the House, and putting to him that these are new proposals? These are not, strictly speaking, a compromise. A compromise might have been merely a revision of the date to allow the opportunity to test for voluntary arrangements to come into existence. But we have apparently new proposals. I wonder—and I say this with all deference to his far greater wisdom and with the humility appropriate to somebody from the Back-Bench—whether it is not perhaps incumbent on us at least to get involved in a dialogue which permits the clarification of these issues if necessary.
  In a sense, I am thrown right back to the circumstances at the beginning of the Select Committee's inquiry into science and technology in local government. The evidence that was given to us in March by the Department of the Environment as the lead department on the role of central government in relation to scientific and technological services has already been published and is available to your Lordships under the reference 99-v. The initial point was made by the Department of the Environment that central government, because it has no direct role in ensuring the adequacy of scientific and technical services provided by or available to, individual local authorities, does not have any clear knowledge of these facilities. It was said that no single department can comment authoritatively on the general question of whether local authorities, collectively or individually, possess or have access to appropriate scientific and technological expertise. This gave us a very clear stimulus to progress with our inquiry, because it was quite clear that we were breaking new ground, doing something and fulfilling a useful function which is not available to central government.
  Those words were said to us in March, but the same words were repeated to us in July in evidence which has not yet been published, but which is available and is technically a public document through your Lordships' Library, saying that the Department of the Environment has no overall view on how many or what sort of specialist staff should support particular

  539
  services, or on how those staff should be deployed. But when we get into the question of waste disposal we are instantly putting on my noble friend the Minister a tremendous responsibility in having to define exactly these issues at the local government level.
  The purpose of the amendment which was passed by this House and moved by myself, following an amendment which, as the noble Baroness, Lady Birk, has mentioned, she withdrew, was simply to do one thing. It picked up a power which was already given to the Secretary of State in the existing Bill and it advanced the date at which that power was exerted. It took away from him the freedom of choice. The obligation then lay in the Bill. It did not, in any sense, strike at the overall intentions of the Bill. It did not introduce a new authority that had not been already provided for. This is why I felt free to support it from the background of my scientific and professional career, rather than from a political point of view, and to urge your Lordships to vote for that amendment.
  As I said the other day, things have happened very rapidly in the months during which we have been debating this Bill. I have greatly appreciated the way in which my noble friends on the Front Bench have adapted themselves to some of the suggestions which have come forward from my quarter and which have received general support in the House. This in itself produces new circumstances. I believe that there has been a mutual learning process. Certainly, I have learned an enormous amount and I believe that other quarters have learned, too.
  There has been, in addition to the report published by the inspectors of hazardous waste (to which the noble Baroness has already referred) an extremely important report published since the beginning of our debates in April 1985. That is the report of the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority, Harwell, Environmental and Medical Services Division, entitled Pollution By Wastes. This deals in great detail with the whole issue of the disposal of hazardous, commercial and industrial wastes and this report, by yet another independent but highly authoritative body, also insists very strongly on the fundamental importance of the combined strategy required for the disposal of domestic, commercial, industrial and hazardous wastes.
  Moreover, this report emphasises the fact that the margin between hazardous and industrial wastes is very slim. It is very frequent that the producer of the waste does not himself fully recognise the hazard. The hazard has to be identified by the waste disposal authority, which requires the laboratory facilities, the technical services and professional support in order to do this job properly. These service already exist in the county authorities and the purpose of our amendment was to ensure their perpetuation as they stand. I believe that it is efficient and economic to perpetuate these present arrangements, and I hope that my noble friend will be able to explain fully how the alternative proposals that are put forward by the Government will be satisfactory.
  If I may make one point, I do not think that the kind of arrangements which can seem satisfactory are the guidance notes that were issued in late March. These are inadequate on scientific and technological
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  grounds. They take little account of anything more than geographical proximity in suggesting the allocation of arrangements that might jointly be entered into. It is very important that assurances should be given that, if it so happens—and I hope very sincerely that it will happen—that the successor authorities, the present metropolitan districts and the boroughs in London, come together and propose to the Secretary of State that their whole existing waste disposal system with its supporting services should be perpetuated, the proposals of the Government will permit this to happen and, moreover, that the Secretary of State will positively encourage the continuation of what at present appears to be a highly efficient, professional, effective and safe service in this country.
  5.15 p.m.
  The Earl of Halsbury: My Lords, as a professional chemist I am naturally interested in the problems of waste disposal, hazardous waste disposal and sewage disposal, of which only the first two are the concern of this Bill. If I do not come to the same conclusions as the noble Earl, Lord Cranbrook, it is not because we differ on technological matters. It is because this Bill is about the administration of technological matters, not the technological matters themselves. When it comes to administration, I always go for a straight line chain of command terminating with somebody responsible for a particular discharge of his duties.
  If you have a number of organisations doing similar jobs, and you impose on them a higher level to correlate what they are doing, you run straight into the line and staff problem and all that that involves, which I have always regarded as the pons asinorum of multi-establishment administration. Do not, my Lords, make a stick to flog your backs with by imposing that upper tier, unless you have to do so; and this Bill is concerned with abolishing upper tiers. This has nothing to do with the possibility of setting up a central service to act, as it were, as a public consultant in these matters.
  The House will remember that, at an earlier stage of this Bill, I pressed the Government to reassure those scientists and other similar workers employed by the GLC that they had a home to go to at the time when this Bill vested and the Government went a long way towards reassuring me on that point. In the sphere of waste disposal they again seem to have come quite a long way from their original provisions and have made proposals for tightening up what was only sketched in the original Bill. Fixing the deadline at 15th November is important, because it renders forward procedures unambiguous in point of time. The fact that the Secretary of State now has the explicit and positive duty to set up arrangements for the disposal of hazardous wastes is an improvement. To sum up the statement made in the other place, if the Secretary of State has not received mutually binding and signed agreements early in November, he will have to step in and impose what he thinks proper.
  Only last Saturday, at a congregation at Brunel University where I was admitting students to their degrees, I was told that five local councils have come together, one of them being a centre of excellence, quite spontaneously. Nobody told them to do it. They thought it a sensible way to manage their affairs on a

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  co-partnership basis. I see no obvious reluctance on the part of people to join in joint enterprises of this kind. If they can be persuaded into doing things voluntarily, it is very much better than imposing authority over them.
  I have one or two questions which I should like the noble Lord, Lord Elton, to answer when he replies. The first relates to hazardous wastes. I think this point has been made before but I should like to come back to it. A note was issued by the Department of the Environment on 28th March of this year recommending that satisfactory arrangements for hazardous waste disposal should be county-wide. I assume that the noble Lord has taken that under his belt, as it were, and will be able to give me a satisfactory reply. I am not quite clear how often the provision for the self-winding-up and transfer of function of an authority is intended to apply. Is it intended to apply only in those cases where they have come forward with a sensible proposal for some better partnership arrangement to be entered into among them?
  We cannot treat these matters as exclusively the concern of local government because the public sector is involved. I think the noble Lord, Lord Ezra, mentioned this. The private sector is heavily and very successfully involved in working as a contractor for waste disposal. The equity in established bargains ought not to be interfered with in any arbitrary way. My Lords, 15th November is only 17 weeks away, of which I should think about half will be taken up by the holiday period, and time marches on. We ought not to be introducing a delay in the process by playing ping-pong unduly with the other place. Of course, there is nothing out of order in today's proceedings, but, whichever way the matter goes today, I hope it will to some extent achieve finality and that we shall be able to get ahead.
  I agree with the Commons amendments and recommend them to your Lordships. For that reason, I cannot support the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Ezra.
  Lord Gregson: My Lords, as the Gregson of the Gregson Report, I think it is very sad indeed that your Lordships' House finds itself once again discussing this issue. I cannot really believe that the Government should be so ill-advised as to pursue such an unsatisfactory course of action. After the reports of two Select Committees of this House, the report on waste disposal of Harwell, the premier research centre in Europe, and, in the past few weeks, the report of the Government's own Hazardous Waste Inspectorate, I should have thought that the Government would see the error of their ways. I find it unbelievable that they have been advised to follow their present course. I can only conclude that somewhere along the line dogma has somehow intruded but this cannot be a political issue because the issues involved are surely far too serious and important.
  I do not intend to repeat the content of my speech on the occasion of the amendment but I think it is important to state the facts of the issue. More than 5 million tonnes of hazardous waste are produced in this country every year. There are 1·6 million tonnes of special waste, defined previously under the Poisonous Waste Act, produced in this country. All this waste
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  must be disposed of safely if industry in this country is to continue to operate. I often wonder whether noble Lords opposite have any idea of what 5 million tonnes of hazardous waste looks like, and what an enormous problem it is to dispose of it safely.
  In addition to the total content, some 85 per cent. of all the hazardous waste produced in this country is disposed of by landfill. I am afraid that I must say to the noble Lord, Lord Ezra, that the figures are even worse than the ones he quoted. As I say, 85 per cent. of the 5 million tonnes of hazardous waste is disposed of by landfill. More than 50 per cent. of that waste arises in the areas of the GLC and the metropolitan counties. They have by far the greatest problem and the greatest responsibility to deal with this problem. They have therefore created in the past 12 years a most effective technical force to deal with the problem. They have been praised throughout the world for their effectiveness and efficiency in carrying out that very onerous duty.
  It is obvious that in order to carry out that duty the waste disposal authorities created in 1972 should in fact be multi-discipline authorities. Underpinning the 85 per cent. of the 5 million tonnes of hazardous waste that has to be disposed of by landfill in this country is the practice of co-disposal, which has been mentioned by several noble Lords this afternoon, with domestic waste—the so-called "dilute and disperse"—a procedure special to the United Kingdom but essential in this highly populated island. This practice is a very delicate and highly critical one depending for safety on absolute standards of management and control. That is why it is rarely practised outside the United Kingdom. It requires detailed knowledge of the domestic waste deposited as well as complete knowledge of the hazardous waste that is later poured upon it. It would be foolish in the extreme to separate the two, but that is what the Government are now proposing. This is what I cannot understand.
  Because of co-disposal, waste disposal authorities are integrated organisations covering both domestic waste and hazardous waste within the same organisation, a combined technical force which covers the whole aspect of the waste disposal for a given area. To separate them after 12 years of development when they have moulded themselves into a highly competent unit would be irresponsible in the extreme. Perhaps I may quote the continuation of the passage of the report of the Hazardous Waste Inspectorate, of which the noble Baroness, Lady Birk, stopped short:
  "The Hazardous Waste Inspectorate attaches great importance to the retention of these experienced hazardous waste management teams and considers that any other action would result in chaos in hazardous waste management. The inexperience of successor authorities shorn of any strategic role in the region would be ruthlessly exploited by those designated by Lord Gregson as the cowboy element. The Hazardous Waste Inspectorate has no doubt that these major urban areas do constitute cowboy country and notes that several members of the metropolitan authority inspection teams have been physically assaulted in pursuit of their duties. In Merseyside, for example, it sometimes proves necessary to deploy inspectors in twos and even in threes, equipped with personal radios, when investigating the activities of some local asbestos strippers and their transfer stations".
  Waste disposal authorities are integrated, highly specialised and highly developed organisations. In my opinion it would be foolish in the extreme to break them up and try, first, to develop a disposal authority

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  for domestic waste in small areas and then, secondly, an authority for hazardous waste. That has never been attempted and it was never intended when the original organisations were set up. I ask your Lordships to support the original amendment of the Select Committee on Science and Technology.
  5.30 p.m.
  Lord Shackleton: My Lords, I rise to speak in this particular debate because I served on the committees of both the noble Lord, Lord Gregson and the noble Earl, Lord Cranbrook. Of all the issues which have come before your Lordships on this Bill, I regard this one as being in some ways the most serious.
  I believe it was the noble Lord, Lord Ezra, who said that this was an area of potential danger. He is of course absolutely right. It is an area of real danger now. The noble Earl, Lord Halsbury, sought to dismiss the case made in the amendment and said that he was satisfied with the proposals on administrative grounds. I have a high respect for the noble Earl, but he must have forgotten some of the administrative principles which he himself sought to enforce in the past.
  I ask your Lordships to take this issue very seriously indeed. The noble Lord, Lord Gregson, made some very powerful arguments. Anybody who is interested in conservation and in the quality of life must reject as second best a proposal from the Government in which they themselves are not confident. The Government themselves, after a lot of hesitation, have come up with a new date by which decisions must be made. Indeed, one might almost say that the Government are in a recidivist state of mind in this connection. I would not call the noble Lord himself a recidivist, but those of us who have followed this argument cannot be other than appalled about this particular issue.
  Whereas I supported the proposals on transport and other matters, I see this matter as being in a special category. In the absence of the Leader of the House, I may say to your Lordships that the noble Viscount was wise not to follow the obvious temptation which confronted him—namely, to say to your Lordships that it would be undesirable to disagree with the Commons in their amendment. The noble Viscount was very tempted to do so, but having rejected that course of action, he said that this was a matter of compromise, that we have accepted some amendments and have rejected others. That is not a sound parliamentary principle.
  I would urge any of your Lordships who are interested in this matter to read the committees' reports—especially that of the Gregson Committee—and to take this issue very seriously. Indeed, I would ask noble Lords to ensure that the Commons amendment is disagreed to. Even if none of the other amendments is disagreed to, this amendment is certainly one to which I should like to see your Lordships disagree.
  Viscount Caldecote: My Lords, at the Committee stage I voted against the amendment to Clause 9, although I felt there was some merit in the amendment that was put forward. But that amendment went completely against the principles of this Bill which were accepted on Second Reading. Since then the
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  Government have moved a long way. The balance of argument is now very strongly against accepting the amendment on its own merits and in favour of accepting the amendments to Clause 9 put forward in another place. However, I believe that some clarification is needed in respect of some of the points we are discussing, and I shall come to those in a moment.
  The noble Lords, Lord Ezra and Lord Gregson, and my noble kinsman Lord Cranbrook, have laid great emphasis on the technical problems of the disposal of hazardous waste. They seem to be saying that some noble Lords do not take this matter seriously. I take it very seriously indeed. There is no one keener on the protection of the environment than I, nor more aware of the problems and dangers of nuclear waste. However, I suggest that this is not a technical problem. It is an organisational problem, as the noble Earl, Lord Halsbury, has made clear to us. The technical factors are not overriding because they are common to whatever organisation is set up. We are searching for the best organisation, the least bureaucratic and the most efficient. Whatever organisation is set up, surely the technical services, the experience and the knowledge of all the people who have been involved in this problem of nuclear waste will still be available in any case.
  There have been three significant changes since we discussed this matter in Committee. They are significant, and they meet to a large extent the objectives of those who propose the amendment to Clause 9, which was carried by four votes at the Committee stage. First, there is the introduction of the deadline of 15th November, by which date the Secretary of State has to be assured that satisfactory arrangements have been made. That is certainly a step forward.
  Secondly, the Secretary of State now has a duty to make an order setting up joint arrangements if he is not satisfied that satisfactory arrangements have been made. It is no longer simply permissive. But perhaps most important of all, as I have already suggested, is the duty on the Secretary of State to have special regard to the needs concerning the disposal of hazardous waste. I do not underestimate the problems, but on this matter it is clear that if people are not satisfied with a decision that the Secretary of State takes, he can be challenged, if there is any question of dissatisfaction or doubt.
  I understand that a number of boroughs and districts have already made detailed plans to run the waste disposal service jointly. It is right in my view that they should be permitted to do so. Even so, there will be no question, as I understand it, of authorities taking on responsibility for this service if they have not made arrangements which are deemed satisfactory by the Secretary of State. I hope that the Minister who is to reply will confirm that.
  Returning to the problems of the disposal of hazardous waste, the Secretary of State now has to pay particular regard to this. As the noble Baroness, Lady Birk, has already indicated, the DoE has accepted that there is a need for co-ordinated action on hazardous waste. I should like to ask the Minister who is to reply whether he can assure the House that that means the Secretary of State will not be satisfied with the arrange-

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  ments made unless they are adequate regionally; that is, that there are adequate county-wide arrangements for the disposal of hazardous waste. In that case, as I understand it, the Secretary of State will be compelled, if he is not satisfied, to make an order which can deal, if necessary specifically, with any particular problems of hazardous waste. That will to my mind provide a complete safeguard on the points which have been made by the noble Lord, Lord Ezra. I repeat that they are not technical points but purely organisational points.
  Some clarification is needed also on the implications of the provisions, to which reference has already been made, enabling the Secretary of State to require any authority established by an order to prepare a scheme for winding itself up. Am I right in assuming—and I hope that the Minister can answer this question—that that provision is included because of the relatively short time available to the boroughs and districts to reach voluntary agreements? I hope that the Minister can confirm that that provision will be used only where there is a prospect of voluntary arrangements being reached which are an improvement on the statutory arrangements which have been imposed by the order.
  As was said by the noble Lord, Lord Ezra, there is heavy private sector involvement in the waste disposal business. If the amendments to Clause 9 proposed in another place are accepted, can the Minister clarify the position in respect of private sector companies with major contracts under the present regime? That is a very important point, and it is one that has been made by one or two other noble Lords.
  Lord Ezra: My Lords, perhaps I may intervene to say that the private sector concern is not only with their current contracts. They are concerned also about the arrangements under which they can make future contracts. They are very concerned about the multiplicity of organisations with which they might have to deal.
  Viscount Caldecote: My Lords, all private sector companies like to have continuity of arrangements. They may find a little difficulty, but that is not a matter of overriding importance when considering this Bill.
  Finally, in my view the boroughs and districts are perfectly capable of running this service, acting jointly wherever appropriate. Surely they are best placed to devise arrangements for acting jointly. It will be far more efficient for them to work out their own proposals rather than have Government and Parliament imposing some bureaucratic arrangements on them. No doubt they will seize that opportunity if it is presented to them in the Bill. Therefore, I hope that the House will agree with the amendments proposed in another place and not insist on our own amendment.
  Baroness White: My Lords, I intervene briefly because I am much disturbed by the speeches we have heard from the noble Earl, Lord Halsbury, and the noble Lord opposite. They are, indeed, distinguished in their own fields, but they are not very knowledge-able about the true nature of the handling of hazardous waste in the totality of the waste disposal system in this country. One cannot disintegrate, as the
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  Government are attempting to do and as the Minister attempted to do in the other place recently, the handingly of hazardous waste from the totality of the waste cycle. It simply does not meet the situation as it exists. It is quite clear that the Minister in the other place did not fully understand the implications of what he was saying,
  Since last Monday, when the other place decided the way that it did, I have been strengthening my own resolve to support, in particular, the attitude of the chairman of one of the two Select Committees—the noble Earl, Lord Cranbrook—by the conversations which I have had in the past few days with leading professionals in both the private and public sectors. I urge upon your Lordships to understand that they are considerably perturbed by the proposals which have been put forward by the Government. They know that the proposals now before us which we are being asked to accept, having abandoned our own convictions as expressed during our earlier debate, will not work properly except in a very few instances and in certain special circumstances.
  A senior director of one of the largest private contractors in the waste disposal business said to me this morning:
  "The Government can approve certain groupings of boroughs but they cannot assure their effective working. They are asking us to accept a pattern which sensible and experienced men with long professional experience know to be wrong. It is an insult to our professionalism".
  That was said to me by a senior director of one of the largest waste disposal companies in this country. He also said that there are still some people old enough to recall the old unintegrated system when the boroughs did, in fact, run the waste disposal arrangements, to which they have no wish to return.
  In the intervening years the need for integration has enormously increased, not least because of the complexities of hazardous waste, but one cannot deal with the disposal of hazardous waste except on a day-to-day basis. It is absurd for the Government to suggest that the treatment of hazardous waste is non-operational. It is operational all the way through. It is true that one needs the scientific direction and the research capability, and so on, but the disposition of hazardous waste in this country, as other noble Lords have fully indicated, is inseparable from the organisation of general waste disposal.
  My chief deep concern is that the Ministers and the Government even now do not appear fully to appreciate this. It was made perfectly clear in a major report at the Department of the Environment issued some years ago. The noble Earl, Lord Cranbrook, referred to more recent reports which re-emphasised this. One does not know how to deal with a situation which has been handled on a political basis which does not connect with reality. This is nothing to do with public or private sectors. For example, ICI has to dispose of considerable amounts of chemical waste. They do a certain amount of that in-house. But what do they do? They obtain domestic waste from the local authorities. All that must be properly organised on a basis which, as the noble Lord, Lord Gregson, said, is very precariously balanced in its own scientific relationships.

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  5.45 p.m.
  The hazardous waste inspectorate has emphasised that suitable arrangements must be made to ensure that enforcement teams are viable. As they say in their recent report, to diffuse them between several authorities, whether grouped authorities or not, would only offer encouragement to those seeking to avoid waste management controls. Disintegration into small groups of boroughs will not overcome the needs and the requirements of the great conurbations which, as we have already been told, are the sources of by far the greatest proportion of the hazardous wastes in this country.
  One can go on pointing to the various gaping holes in the Government's case. If one is talking of organisation, it is not only for hazardous waste, although that is by far the greatest factor in the equation. In the great conurbations one needs maximum flexibility, which only unified administration can provide. For example, fog on the lower reaches of the Thames can completely disrupt London's waste transfer system. With a unified authority one can switch instantly, without inter-group diplomacy or negotiation, to road or rail to minimise the disruption. Groups of councils co-operating in threes or fours simply cannot act with the swiftness required in our great cities.
  We have been asked to overturn the considered opinion of your Lordships' House based, I should have thought, as soundly as any amendment could be based, on the work of Select Committees of this House. As my noble friend Lady Birk said, if we go back to where we were when we last debated the matter, and stand by our convictions, it will cause the Government a slight temporary embarrassment, but neither the Government nor the Bill will be in any danger. There is no reason for this House limply to acquiesce in something which anyone who has studied the matter knows to be wrong.
  Baroness Fisher of Rednal: My Lords, it is essential that this important public service should not become a political football and that its uncertainty should not be clouded, as it is at this moment. We have heard from noble Lords during the course of the debate of the different deadlines when the districts will take over. The later deadline now proposed prolongs the uncertainty with no guarantee that adequate arrangements will be forthcoming, particularly since the districts have not yet met any of the previous deadlines.
  When noble Lords speak about districts and boroughs they have in mind in particular the London area. When I speak about districts I am referring to the districts in the metropolitan counties, and therefore, the co-ordination which is taking place there. As the Minister told us during the course of the debate, while seven groups of authorities are getting together in the London area, no comprehensive proposals have yet been put forward by the metropolitan county district areas. We were told that by the noble Lord, Lord Elton, during the debate. Therefore, the Secretary of State will still have the power to set up partial arrangements covering only some of the waste disposal functions or a part of a county area, with the result that more fragmentation may possibly occur in the
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  metropolitan county district areas. The Minister for Local Government has also made it abundantly clear that any authority established under the reserve power would probably be required to submit proposals for devolving the function back to the districts within 12 months. So there would be two reorganisations, two sets of transitional costs, and even more protracted uncertainty would follow.
  Other noble Lords have said that the waste disposal service can be carried out only on a county-wide basis, and it is important for us to use the best of the facilities and of course to minimise the risks to the environment and to public health. Fragmentation of the service will lead inevitably to the adoption of the "Nimby" principle—the "Not-in-my-back-yard" principle. The results will be chaotic: an under-use of facilities, both public and private, with lower standards, and an unwillingness for one authority to accept another's waste. This is a very serious problem in the large conurbations where there are completely built-up areas. The Government themselves have stressed the need to have particular regard for satisfactory arrangements in respect of hazardous waste.
  I listened very closely to what the noble Lord, Lord Gregson, had to say and one gives credit to Lord Gregson for his great knowledge of hazardous wastes. I made a particular note concerning the West Midlands, which is the part of the country from where I come. The figures that are contained in the report of the Hazardous Waste Inspectorate show that over 20 per cent. of the hazardous waste produced in England is disposed of in the West Midlands; and somebody mentioned a large chemical company which sends its hazardous waste to the West Midlands, many hundreds of miles away from where the hazard in the chemicals originates.
  But hazardous waste cannot be considered in isolation because of the co-disposal approach which is adopted in the counties. We shall have fragmentation of the waste disposal function which, as noble Lords have said, will obviously undermine the viability of the private sector waste disposal operations. I think it must be recognised that many of the large in-fill sites around the country are obviously in-fill sites that belong to private individuals and therefore the in-fill hole, if one calls it that, is in the hands of the private owner.
  I think it is important for noble Lords, who have been listening very attentively to this debate, to listen to the wise words that have been said by the noble Lord, Lord Ezra, by my noble friend Lady Birk and by experts in the field, who include the noble Earl, Lord Cranbrook, and the noble Lord, Lord Gregson. As the noble Viscount the Leader of the House has said, it is important for the House to listen to the arguments and then to make up its mind. There has been much interest from noble Lords who have been listening to the argument; I hope that when the vote takes place they will be able to convince their noble friends who have not been listening to the arguments to vote on this side of the House.
  Lord Elton: My Lords, at least I join the noble Baroness, Lady Fisher of Rednal, in hoping that your Lordships will listen to the argument, and I hope that your Lordships will listen with particular care to that

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  part of the argument which has not yet been deployed but which soon will be, because I think that there are one or two small but important misconceptions on the Floor of the House at the moment.
  The first proposals on waste disposal and regulation which we saw were those sent to this House by the other place. They provided for the responsibilities of the GLC and the MCCs for waste regulation and disposal to be devolved to the borough and district councils. They also provided a reserve power for my right honourable friend, in the absence of adequate voluntary joint arrangements for the discharge of those functions, to impose a statutory joint arrangement by order.
  The next stage was when, against the Government's advice, your Lordships amended these proposals so that waste regulation and disposal functions were to be transferred to a single joint authority in each area. Under the amendment this was always to be done without any opportunity for the boroughs and districts to put forward proposals to assume those functions themselves on abolition, even if they wanted to. Your Lordships did this because, as I understand it, your Lordships were concerned in particular that there should be certainty over the future arrangements for waste disposal and especially for the disposal of hazardous waste. These are concerns which Her Majesty's Government entirely share and that is why in the first place we proposed the reserve power to which I have just referred. We fully appreciate the strong concern expressed both here and in another place that nothing shall go wrong with these arrangements and that the disposal of waste shall continue with uninterrupted efficiency before, during and after abolition day. As I say, it is a concern which we entirely share.
  We are also strongly of the opinion that voluntary arrangements freely entered into by the elected representatives of the people will offer thoroughly satisfactory solutions in many cases. We know that groups of authorities are already preparing to make such arrangements and we have to admit that the voluntary approach has a number of advantages. The first and obvious one, of course, is the enthusiastic commitment of the elected authorities concerned, because it is their own invention after all. Secondly, those authorities are much more closely in touch with their own situations and problems than anyone in Whitehall can hope to be.
  Thirdly they can arrive at mutually satisfactory arrangements in direct negotiation with their neighbours much more quickly than through the brokerage or intervention of a Government department. Finally, they can come together in groupings which are determined by knowledge and convenience and not, as is now proposed from the other side of the House, by rule of thumb and very inflexibly.
  All your Lordships, not only those on the other side of the House or indeed on the Cross Benches, are anxious to defend democracy in this Bill. To those who are most anxious I must make this observation: what we propose is that the elected representatives of the people affected shall be given every possible
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  opportunity to choose the arrangements they want to have; what the Motion proposes is that they shall have none. Further, as may well happen, if some councils feel, like the noble Lord, Lord Ezra, and those who have spoken in support of him, that the best solution is a statutory joint board and they do want it to be set up by order, all they have to do is to ask for it and it will be given to them. The power is in the Bill.
  The London boroughs of Harrow, Hillingdon, Brent, Richmond and Ealing have, in fact, asked for statutory arrangements for the western group of boroughs, and accordingly we shall be happy to make an order for that purpose. I am sure that my noble friends at least will agree that where boroughs or districts want to come together and run their own show, and where the Government are satisfied that these arrangements are satisfactory and will work, it would be a very great pity indeed to stamp out that initiative, push the volunteers away from the drawing board and say, "No, you have to do it like this because we say you should do".
  6 p.m.
  We therefore have three concerns—to permit effective and satisfactory voluntary arrangements where those are made; to provide satisfactory compulsory arrangements where they are not; and of course where voluntary arrangements are made which are satisfactory to start with, we must clearly, if they become unsatisfactory, have the means immediately to hand to substitute satisfactory compulsory arrangements. The proposal that we originally made to achieve those three purposes was to entrust everything to the good will of the councils and the good sense of the Secretary of State. Your Lordships wish to make doubly sure. In spite of my undertaking that we should use the reserve power in the absence of satisfactory proposals by the end of September—and I shall return to that date in a moment—your Lordships decided that joint arrangements imposed by statute would always be best and made Amendment No. 22 on the Marshalled List. That was the second stage in the evolution of those proposals.
  The third was completed in another place, where the Government again sought to devise a way of permitting the councils to work out arrangements that would fit their own varying and particular circumstances in a way that neither a standard device nor central direction could hope to achieve. That looks to me like a search for the compromise which my noble friend Lord Cranbrook says we should be looking for. Our aim was to do so in a way that would leave no remaining doubt that by 1st April 1986, come what may, a safe and effective system will be in place, that hazardous waste in particular will be securely catered for and that effective systems which later fail can be swiftly replaced under statutory power. What we then came up with was a system which I believe meets all the criteria, and it was accepted by another place, which now proposes it to your Lordships instead of what your Lordships sent to it. Unlike those arrangements, it combines the flexibility of locally agreed arrangements, tailor-made to fit local requirements, with the certainty that a properly organised scheme will emerge for every borough and every district before abolition day. It does not weaken what was in the Bill; it strengthens it.

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  We have achieved that in three ways. We have moved from giving the Secretary of State merely a power to intervene, and turned that power into a duty. In any case where satisfactory arrangements are not made voluntarily he will now have a duty to make them himself by order. Secondly, and as a consequence of that, we have moved from the security merely of an undertaking that the Secretary of State would act to the certainty of a duty on the face of the Bill. Thirdly, by inserting a deadline we have made the very precise requirement that satisfactory arrangements should be made and if satisfactory arrangements are not made by that date the Secretary of State must act. I shall spell out in a moment what we mean by satisfactory arrangements, but let me first pick up a point of concern which has been repeated in one way or another two or three times this afternoon.
  When we were debating this amendment when it was last in this House I said that the Secretary of State would invoke his reserve power to make an order if he was not satisfied with what had been done by the end of September. In the proposals now before us from another place the date for making an order—and it is a date for making an order, I must tell the noble Baroness, Lady Fisher of Rednal, and not the date of takeover, which has not changed and was and always will be 1st April next year—we put in the Bill as 15th November. That is one and a half months later than the date to which I referred.
  That is not a slippage of six weeks and it is not a change in our intentions or a weakening in our resolve. It merely represents the fact that we have moved from the Secretary of State having to be informally satisfied that what was proposed would be all right to the statutory duty to know that it would be all right; and that means that he must have a written, signed, mutually binding and legally binding agreement among the co-operating authorities which is enforceable at law on his desk in time to satisfy himself that it is workable by 15th November. If it is not, he has to start preparing his order—the statutory order that your Lordships will want to see if a satisfactory voluntary arrangement is not available. He cannot do that overnight and so he will be inquiring ahead of the date to see what is happening.
  Let me explain. As I foreshadowed in my original undertaking, we shall invite boroughs and districts to submit detailed proposals by 30th September at the latest. We shall let them have our reaction within about 10 days and invite them to draw up the draft terms of a binding agreement. If those terms look satisfactory we shall ask for a signed agreement by early November so that the Secretary of State can take his decision on 15th November. We originally set out the criteria against which the Secretary of State would judge whether those proposals were satisfactory and the considerations which he would weigh in a guidance note issued to boroughs and districts on 28th March.
  I entirely accept, as my noble friend Lord Cranbrook suggested, that that guidance has been overtaken by events. If, as I hope, your Lordships accept the Commons amendments in lieu, we shall therefore bring that guidance up to date to reflect progress made, concerns expressed and knowledge deployed in your Lordships' House by issuing further
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  advice to the boroughs and districts very shortly. I can assure the noble Baroness, Lady White, that that will include guidance on the provision of contingency plans for any interruption in the accessibility of points for the disposal of waste whether by reason of a fog down the river or for any other reason.
  The guidance will also reflect the enhanced role for the residuary bodies in reviewing and possibly employing groups of specialist staff. In working out those arrangements many authorities will have reached a final view on their proposals for employing specialist staff, but some may not have done so and the residuary bodies will be there to take on such staff until final arrangements are settled.
  I shall be as brief as I can, but your Lordships will want me to refer to hazardous waste and will want to know what sort of voluntary arrangements my right honourable friend would be prepared to consider and might find satisfactory. I have already made it clear that we envisage special arrangements for hazardous waste in all the abolition areas, and those arrangements will generally need to be county-wide. In any case, if they are not effective for the whole county, the Secretary of State will of course be obliged to set up a joint authority.
  The noble Lord, Lord Gregson, in particular, and the noble Baroness, Lady White, I think, expressed concern at the creation of a county-wide body to deal with hazardous waste alongside local groupings to deal with ordinary or other waste. That does not imply a basic separation, as some of your Lordships seem to fear. We envisage that both operational and regulatory functions will rest with borough and district councils. Under the special arrangements for hazardous waste we should expect to see central units of specialist staff with specialist resources. Their job will be to give expert advice on hazardous waste problems; to advise a joint committee or lead authority which will administer the control of pollution (special waste) regulations; to monitor compliance with site licence conditions; to maintain common databases and records of the location and movement of hazardous waste; to provide an emergency service to deal with incidents; to give advice on general site licensing matters to the borough or district councils; to underpin their common consideration of general regulatory problems; and to co-ordinate planning and research and development work.
  Lord Gregson: My Lords, I wonder whether the Minister can explain how that will help co-disposal, which means operational activity both in the disposal of hazardous and domestic waste together? What he has described is an advisory body, but that does not seem to meet the case at all.
  Lord Elton: My Lords, I think that it does. I do not want to detain your Lordships but I think it is an important point. The functions will remain with the groups—with the individual authorities—but centrally they will have the expert team and resources to advise them. If the noble Lord reads Hansard he will see that the team will actually be inspecting sites on which the disposal by the co-operating authorities has taken place on its advice. If there is a departure from the regulatory standards which are set up under its

  553
  guidance, it will be for it immediately to report; and if a hazardous incident occurs it will provide the emergency service.
  We are not in Committee. Your Lordships can see by the pantomime that I have not satisfied the noble Lord, and you will not be surprised at that. But I think that your Lordships will agree that the machinery is there. What it needs to work it is good will, and good will will be there when we come to the end of the day. Your Lordships have spent much time considering, debating and improving the arrangements for keeping specialist teams of exactly this sort together and in business. In spite of what the noble Lord, Lord Ezra, said, I am convinced that they will work.
  In spite of the fact that a number of points remain which have been raised on the Floor of the House, I think that I can best reply to them in correspondence. However, your Lordships will want to know that we share the concern about the position of the major contractors which dispose of most of the waste in London and the metropolitan county council areas, and that they should not suffer as a result of abolition. We recognise the importance of the role played by these contractors and the heavy investment involved. We have made clear to successor authorities that any large-scale abandonment of existing contracts would he unacceptable and I am glad to be able to reinforce that. So what—
  Lord Ezra: My Lords, will the noble Lord perhaps indicate why it is that, in spite of those reassurances, the private sector contractors are virtually unanimous in still expressing major apprehensions about the way in which these matters will be handled?
  Lord Elton: My Lords, I am not in the least surprised that apprehension is expressed, not merely by major contractors but also by people involved in the waste industry generally, because of the uncertainty that has been cast upon all operations by news first of all of your Lordships' amendment and then news that your Lordships were about to insist on it—
  Lord Ezra: My Lords—
  Lord Elton: No, I really—
  Noble Lords: Order!
  Lord Elton: My Lords, from tonight that uncertainty will be resolved. From tonight we shall know where we are going.
  Baroness White: My Lords, I am sorry to interrupt the noble Lord again, but what about the assurances to the staff, who have been told that the Minister expects the authorities to provide him with the means for the dissolution of these new authorities, which therefore gives them no certainty?
  Lord Elton: My Lords, the noble Baroness helpfully anticipates the very next point, which I might have left out to save time, and that would have been a disastrous omission. First of all, the staff will know the likely position in September when the Secretary of
  554
  State inquires of the local authority what its outline plans are and those will be known. However, as to the future, there is a misconception. My right honourable friend will, as the noble Baroness and others have said, have power to include in the order a provision requiring the authority established by the order, where he makes one, to submit a scheme for winding itself up. Your Lordships will see in the text of the Bill that here the word is "may" and not "shall". Throughout your Lordships have been assuming that every order will include such a requirement, but that is not the case. I think I should elaborate a little on what my right honourable friend said about it in another place because there is good reason for what we propose and I have discussed it with him. We include the provision because time is, as noble Lords have reminded us, short and because some councils which wish to have voluntary arrangements and have in fact started to prepare for them may simply not be able to get it ready by 15th November. If that happens, the Secretary of State is bound by the Bill as it is now drafted to bring in a statutory scheme of his own. We believe that where that happens, the wish to move to devolution by voluntary arrangements accounted as satisfactory by the Secretary of State ought not to be prematurely thwarted.
  I can assure the noble Baroness, Lady Birk, that we are not therefore preparing to arrive, as she put it, at the same destination by another route, involving the wholesale institution of temporary authorities. I can assure my noble friend Lord Caldecote and the noble Earl, Lord Halsbury, that we shall not use this provision as a means of wholesale so-called voluntary devolution by compulsory means.
  In circumstances such as that this provision will provide both the safe, immediate cover of a statutory arrangement and the means for constituent councils under that cover to complete their plans for their preferred voluntary arrangements to replace it in due course. It is no more sinister than that.
  The Government proposals guard against all the dangers seen by your Lordships at Committee stage as justification for the amendments that you then put in the Bill. In the old form the Secretary of State was only permitted to act; now he is forced to act. In the old form the expectation of his action rested only on the word of a Minister; in the new it rests on the face of the Bill. In the old form he could be satisfied merely by outline proposals; he now needs a signed, legally binding document.
  We have heard that the new group authorities will be too small to be effective. By that standard half the counties in England are too small as well, yet your Lordships have not complained about them. We have heard also that what is proposed is dangerous as regards hazardous waste. Why was it thought dangerous?—because there would be a separation between those who deal with hazardous waste and those who deal with the rest. I have shown to some of your Lordships' satisfaction that these powers and functions remain together and that we have provided in addition for the retention of all the central specialist staff and resources necessary.
  This is a revising Chamber. It was as a revising Chamber that your Lordships asked another place to think again. It has thought again and so have Her

  555
  Majesty's Government. The result is a Bill materially strengthened in respect of the matters about which your Lordships were concerned. No authority can now be left without a satisfactory scheme. The element of doubt has been removed. The sanction of the law has been imposed. The continuation of specialist support teams has been provided for and the date for completion is to be fixed by statute. For I hope the very last time in the long progress of this Bill I invite your Lordships to listen to my advice and to vote "Not-Content".
  6.16 p.m.
  On Question, That this House do insist on their Amendment No. 22 to which the Commons have disagreed and do disagree with Amendments Nos. 23 to 27 proposed by the Commons to the words so restored to the Bill?
  Their Lordships divided: Contents, 154; Not-Contents, 213.

  DIVISION NO. 2

  CONTENTS

  Airedale, L.

  Fitt, L.

  Amherst, E.

  Foot, L.

  Ardwick, L.

  Gaitskell, B.

  Attlee, E.

  Gallacher, L.

  Aylestone, L.

  Galpern, L.

  Bacon, B.

  Glenamara, L.

  Banks, L.

  Graham of Edmonton, L.

  Barnett, L.

  Gregson, L.

  Barrington, V.

  Grey, E.

  Beaumont of Whitley, L.

  Grimond, L.

  Bernstein, L.

  Hampton, L.

  Beswick, L.

  Hanworth, V.

  Birk, B.

  Harris of Greenwich, L.

  Birkett, L.

  Hatch of Lusby, L.

  Blyton, L.

  Henderson of Brompton, L.

  Boothby, L.

  Heycock, L.

  Boston of Faversham, L.

  Hirshfield, L.

  Bottomley, L.

  Houghton of Sowerby, L.

  Briginshaw, L.

  Howie of Troon, L.

  Broadbridge, L.

  Hughes, L.

  Brockway, L.

  Hunt, L.

  Brooks of Tremorfa, L.

  Ilchester, E.

  Bruce of Donington, L.

  Ingleby, V.

  Buckmaster, V.

  Irving of Dartford, L.

  Burton of Coventry, B.

  Jacobson, L.

  Caradon, L.

  Jeger, B.

  Carmichael of Kelvingrove, L.

  Jenkins of Putney, L.

  Chitnis, L.

  Kilmarnock, L.

  Cledwyn of Penrhos, L.

  Kinloss, Ly.

  Collison, L.

  Kirkhill, L.

  Constantine of Stanmore, L.

  Kirkwood, L.

  Crawshaw of Aintree, L.

  Kissin, L.

  Darcy (de Knayth), B.

  Leatherland, L.

  Darling of Hillsborough, L.

  Listowel, E.

  Darwen, L.

  Llewelyn-Davies of Hastoe, B.

  David, B.

  Lloyd of Kilgerran, L.

  Davies of Penrhys, L.

  Lockwood, B.

  Dean of Beswick, L.

  Longford, E.

  Denington, B.

  Lovell-Davis, L.

  Diamond, L.

  McIntosh of Haringey, L.

  Donaldson of Kingsbridge, L.

  Mackie of Benshie, L.

  Donoughue, L.

  MacLeod of Fuinary, L.

  Elwyn-Jones, L.

  McNair, L.

  Ennals, L.

  Mais, L.

  Esher, V.

  Meston, L.

  Ewart-Biggs, B.

  Milford, L.

  Ezra, L.

  Milner of Leeds, L.

  Falkender, B.

  Mishcon, L.

  Falkland, V.

  Molloy, L.

  Fisher of Rednal, B.

  Monkswell, L.

  556

  Monson, L.

  Shepherd, L.

  Morris of Kenwood, L.

  Shinwell, L.

  Morton of Shuna, L.

  Silkin of Dulwich, L.

  Mountevans, L.

  Simon, V.

  Mulley, L.

  Soper, L.

  Murray of Epping Forest, L.

  Stallard, L.

  Nicol, B.

  Stamp, L.

  Ogmore, L.

  Stedman, B.

  Oram, L.

  Stewart of Fulham, L.

  Phillips, B.

  Stoddart of Swindon, L.

  Plummer of St. Marylebone, L.

  Strabolgi, L.

  Taylor of Blackburn, L.

  Ponsonby of Shulbrede, L. [Teller.]

  Taylor of Mansfield, L.

  Tordoff, L. [Teller.]

  Rea, L.

  Underhill, L.

  Reilly, L.

  Wallace of Coslany, L.

  Ritchie of Dundee, L.

  Walston, L.

  Roberthall, L.

  Wedderburn of Charlton, L.

  Robson of Kiddington, B.

  Whaddon, L.

  Rochester, L.

  White, B.

  Ross of Marnock, L.

  Wigoder, L.

  Russell of Liverpool, L.

  Williams of Elvel, L.

  Sainsbury, L.

  Wilson of Langside, L.

  Scanlon, L.

  Wilson of Rievaulx, L.

  Seear, B.

  Winchilsea and Nottingham, E.

  Seebohm, L.

  Sefton of Garston, L.

  Winstanley, L.

  Serota, B.

  Wootton of Abinger, B.

  Shackleton, L.

  NOT-CONTENTS

  Airey of Abingdon, B.

  Crawshaw, L.

  Aldington, L.

  Cross, V.

  Alexander of Tunis, E.

  Cullen of Ashbourne, L.

  Allerton, L.

  Davidson, V.

  Ampthill, L.

  De Freyne, L.

  Annaly, L.

  Denham, L. [Teller.]

  Arran, E.

  Denman, L.

  Astor, V.

  Donegall, M.

  Balfour of Inchrye, L.

  Dormer, L.

  Bauer, L.

  Drumalbyn, L.

  Beaverbrook, L.

  Dundee, E.

  Belhaven and Stenton, L.

  Dundonald, E.

  Beloff, L.

  Eccles, V.

  Belstead, L.

  Eden of Winton, L.

  Bessborough, E.

  Effingham, E.

  Bethell, L.

  Elibank, L.

  Biddulph, L.

  Ellenborough, L.

  Birdwood, L.

  Elles, B.

  Boardman, L.

  Elliot of Harwood, B.

  Bolton, L.

  Elliott of Morpeth, L.

  Boyd-Carpenter, L.

  Elphinstone, L.

  Brabazon of Tara, L.

  Elton, L.

  Brain, L.

  Falmouth, V.

  Brentford, V.

  Fanshawe of Richmond, L.

  Bridgeman, V.

  Ferrers, E.

  Brougham and Vaux, L.

  Ferrier, L.

  Broxbourne, L.

  Fisher, L.

  Bruce-Gardyne, L.

  Forbes, L.

  Buccleuch and Queensberry, D.

  Fraser of Kilmorack, L.

  Butterworth, L.

  Freyberg, L.

  Caithness, E.

  Gainford, L.

  Caldecote, V.

  Geddes, L.

  Cameron of Lochbroom, L.

  Gibson-Watt, L.

  Campbell of Alloway, L.

  Glanusk, L.

  Campbell of Croy, L.

  Glenarthur, L.

  Carnegy of Lour, B.

  Gowrie, E.

  Carnock, L.

  Grantchester, L.

  Cathcart, E.

  Granville of Eye, L.

  Cayzer, L.

  Gray, L.

  Chelmer, L.

  Gray of Contin, L.

  Clinton, L.

  Greenway, L.

  Coleraine, L.

  Gridley, L.

  Colville of Culross, V.

  Grimthorpe, L.

  Cowley, E.

  Haig, E.

  Cox, B.

  Hailsham of Saint Marylebone, L.

  Craigavon, V.

  Craigmyle, L.

  Halsbury, E.

  Craigton, L.

  Hanson, L.

  Crathorne, L.

  Harmar-Nicholls, L.

  Crawford and Balcarres, E.

  Harvey of Tasburgh, L.

  557

  Harvington, L.

  Rankeillour, L.

  Henley, L.

  Rawlinson of Ewell, L.

  Hives, L.

  Reay, L.

  Holderness, L.

  Redesdale, L.

  Home of the Hirsel, L.

  Renton, L.

  Hood, V.

  Renwick, L.

  Hooper, B.

  Richardson, L.

  Hylton-Foster, B.

  Rochdale, V.

  Ironside, L.

  Romney, E.

  Kaberry of Adel, L.

  Rootes, L.

  Kemsley, V.

  Rotherwick, L.

  Killearn, L.

  Sackville, L.

  Kilmany, L.

  St. Aldwyn, E.

  Kimball, L.

  St. Davids, V.

  Kinnaird, L.

  Salisbury, M.

  Kinnoull, E.

  Saltoun of Abernethy, Ly.

  Kitchener, E.

  Sanderson of Bowden, L.

  Knutsford, V.

  Sandford, L.

  Lane-Fox, B.

  Savile, L.

  Lauderdale, E.

  Selborne, E.

  Layton, L.

  Sempill, Ly.

  Lindsey and Abingdon, E.

  Shannon, E.

  Loch, L.

  Sharples, B.

  Long, V.

  Skelmersdale, L.

  Lucas of Chilworth, L.

  Somers, L.

  Lyell, L.

  Southborough, L.

  McFadzean, L.

  Stanley of Alderley, L.

  Mackintosh of Halifax, V.

  Stodart of Leaston, L.

  Macleod of Borve, B.

  Strathcarron, L.

  Malmesbury, E.

  Sudeley, L.

  Mancroft, L.

  Suffield, L.

  Margadale, L.

  Swinfen, L.

  Marley, L.

  Swinton, E. [Teller.]

  Masham of Ilton, B.

  Terrington, L.

  Massereene and Ferrard, V.

  Teviot, L.

  Maude of Stratford-upon-Avon, L.

  Thomas of Swynnerton, L.

  Thorneycroft, L.

  Merrivale, L.

  Thurlow, L.

  Middleton, L.

  Tollemache, L.

  Monk Bretton, L.

  Torphichen, L.

  Montgomery of Alamein, V.

  Townshend, M.

  Mottistone, L.

  Tranmire, L.

  Mountgarret, V.

  Trefgarne, L.

  Mowbray and Stourton, L.

  Trenchard, V.

  Moyola, L.

  Trumpington, B.

  Munster, E.

  Ullswater, V.

  Murton of Lindisfarne, L.

  Vaux of Harrowden, L.

  Nugent of Guildford, L.

  Vivian, L.

  Onslow, E.

  Westbury, L.

  Orkney, E.

  Whitelaw, V.

  Orr-Ewing, L.

  Wigram, L.

  Peel, E.

  Windlesham, L.

  Pender, L.

  Wise, L.

  Perth, E.

  Wolfson, L.

  Peyton of Yeovil, L.

  Wynford, L.

  Portland, D.

  Yarborough, E.

  Quinton, L.

  Young of Graffham, L.

  Radnor, E.

  Resolved in the negative, and Motion disagreed to accordingly.
  6.27 p.m.

  LORDS AMENDMENTS
  28 Leave out Clause 8.
  29 Clause 9, page 5, line 13, leave out subsections (3) to (5).
  30 Leave out Schedule 6.
  The Commons disagree to the above amendments for the following Reason (No. 31):
  Because they are consequential on Lords Amendment No. 22 in respect of which the Commons have proposed Amendments Nos. 23 to 27 in lieu.
  [Motion No. 31A not moved.]
  Lord Elton: My Lords, I beg to move formally that this House do not insist on their Amendments Nos. 28 to 30, to which the Commons have disagreed for the Reason numbered 31.
  Moved, That this House do not insist on their Amendments Nos. 28 to 30, to which the Commons have disagreed for the Reason numbered 31.—(Lord Elton.)
  On Question, Motion agreed to.

  LORDS AMENDMENT
  32 Clause 21, page 15, line 34, leave out ("the first").
  The Commons disagree to the above amendment but propose the following amendment in lieu thereof
  33 Page 15, line 34, leave out ("first such").
  34 Page 15, line 43, leave out subsections (5) and (6).
  The Commons agree to the above amendment and have made the following consequential amendments to the Bill:
  35 Clause 100, page 72, line 11, leave out ("21").
  36 Page 72, line 16, leave out ("21 or").
  The Earl of Gowrie: My Lords, I beg to move that this House do agree with the Commons in their Amendments Nos. 33, 35 and 36, and do not insist on their Amendment No. 32, to which the Commons have disagreed.
  As my honourable friend the Joint Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education made clear last week in another place, the Government accept the amendments made to Clause 21 in this House to delete the requirement for my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Education and Science to undertake an initial review of the new ILEA by 31st March 1991, and his discretionary power to undertake subsequent reviews. The amendments substitute a discretionary power to undertake a review by 31st March 1991. The amendments also delete the power to implement any changes in the light of a review by order. Such changes will therefore require fresh primary legislation.
  The strongest objection to Clause 21, both in your Lordships' House and in another place, has been to the proposal that there should be a power for my right honourable friend to re-allocate the new ILEA's functions by order. We have listened carefully to the arguments, put with great strength and feeling in this House in particular, that if the new administrative structure which we are establishing for education in inner London needs adjustment in the light of experience, then that adjustment should be made by primary legislation.
  On two points, however, the other place made further amendments to Clause 21. Those amendments are intended only to give full effect to those made in this House. First, the clause as amended by your Lordships retains a reference to "such report". There is now provision for only one report, of course, and Amendment No. 33 therefore substitutes a reference to "the report". Secondly, although this House deleted my right honourable friend's order-making power, references to that power remain in Clause 100. Amendments Nos. 35 and 36 delete these references.
  I am sure that your Lordships will agree that these further amendments are sensible and necessary as well as being in line with the express wishes of your Lordships' House. I beg to move.
  Moved, That the House do not insist in their Amendment No. 32, and do agree with the Commons on their Amendment No. 33 in lieu thereof; and that

  559
  the House do agree with the Commons in their consequential Amendments Nos. 35 and 36.—(The Earl of Gowrie.)
  Lord Campbell of Alloway: My Lords, from these Back-Benches may I express my gratitude to my noble friend the Minister for recognising the rectitude of primary legislation. This was the issue which arose between myself and the noble Baroness, Lady David, on which of course, as was inevitable, the noble Baroness was right and I was wrong. However, at least I had the right aspirations. Those aspirations have been recognised by my noble friend the Minister, and I am indeed grateful not only to him but to the noble Baroness.
  On Question, Motion agreed to.

Representation of the People Bill
6.31 p.m.
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, I beg to move that the Commons Reason for disagreeing to certain of the Lords amendments be now considered.
Moved, That the Commons Reason for disagreeing to certain of the Lords amendments be now considered.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

Representation of the People Bill
  COMMONS REASON FOR DISAGREEING TO CERTAIN OF THE LORDS AMENDMENTS
  [References are to Bill (100) as first printed by the Lords. The Commons Reason is printed in italics.]

  LORDS AMENDMENTS
  1 Clause 1 page 2, line 3, after ("date") insert ("subject to subsection (3A) below").
  2 Page 2, leave out lines 5 to 7.
  3 Page 2, line 13, at end insert ("and").
  4 Page 2, leave out lines 14 and 15.
  5 Page 2, line 21, at end insert—
  ("(3A) A person does not qualify as an overseas elector in respect of a constituency on the qualifying date for those purposes unless—

  (a) the date referred to in subsection (3)(b) above fell within the period of five years ending immediately before the qualifying date, or

  (b) throughout the period beginning when he ceased to be resident in the United Kingdom and ending with the qualifying date, he has resided outside the United Kingom in connection with his occupation as a member, officer or servant of a Community institution, or

  (c) on the qualifying date, he is resident outside the United Kingdom to be with his spouse who—

  (i) on that date (if it is the appropriate date for qualifying) or on the appropriate date in the same year as that date for qualifying, qualifies as an overseas elector in respect of any constituency, or qualifies under section 3 of this Act in respect of an Assembly constituency, and is a British citizen, and

  (ii) satisfies the condition mentioned in paragraph (b) above.

  (4) The reference in subsection (3A)(b) above to a person ceasing to be resident in the United Kingdom is, in the case of a person relying on registration in pursuance of a service declaration, a reference to his ceasing to have a service qualification or, if later, ceasing to be so resident.
  (4A) For the purposes of this section and sections 2 and 3 of this Act, the appropriate date for qualifying as an overseas elector in respect of a constituency, or for qualifying under section 3 of this Act in respect of an Assembly constituency, is the date by reference to which the register of parliamentary
  560
  electors or, as the case may be, the register under section 3 of this Act for the constituency concerned is prepared.")
  6 Clause 2, page 3, line 19, at end insert—
  ("(4A) In the case of a person relying on paragraph (b) of section 1(3A) of this Act, his overseas elector's declaration must in addition—

  (a) state that he will satisfy the condition mentioned in that paragraph, and

  (b) specify the Community institution of which he is a member, officer or servant.

  (4B) In the case of a person relying on section 1(3A)(c) of this Act, his overseas elector's declaration must in addition state—

  (a) that he is and will on the qualifying date be resident outside the United Kingdom to be with his spouse, and

  (b) that his spouse will, on that date (if it is the appropriate date for qualifying) or on the appropriate date in the same year as that date for qualifying, qualify as an overseas elector in respect of a constituency, or qualify under section 3 of this Act in respect of an Assembly constituency, and be a British citizen and will satisfy the condition mentioned in section 1(3A)(b) of this Act,

  and specify the Community institution of which his spouse is a member, officer or servant.").
  7 Clause 3, page 4, line 21, after ("date") insert ("(subject to subsection (4A) below)").
  8 Page 4, leave out lines 23 to 25.
  9 Page 4, line 31, at end insert ("and").
  10 Page 4, leave out lines 32 and 33.
  11 Page 4, line 39, at end insert—
  ("(4A) A peer does not qualify under this section in respect of a constituency on the qualifying date for those purposes unless—

  (a) the date referred to in subsection (4)(b) above fell within the period of five years ending immediately before the qualifying date, or

  (b) throughout the period beginning when he ceased to be resident in the United Kingdom and ending with the qualifying date, he has resided outside the United Kingdom in connection with his occupation as a member, officer or servant of a Community institution, or

  (c) on the qualifying date, he is resident outside the United Kingdom to be with spouse, who—

  (i) on that date (if it is the appropriate date for qualifying) or on the appropriate date in the same year as that date for qualifying, qualified as an overseas elector in respect of any parliamentary constituency, or qualifies under this section in respect of any constituency, and is a British citizen, and

  (ii) satisfies the condition mentioned in paragraph (b) above.

  (4B) The reference in subsection (4A)(b) above to a person ceasing to be resident in the United Kingdom is, in the case of a person relying on registration in pursuance of a service declaration, a reference to him ceasing to have a service qualification or, if later, ceasing to be so resident.").
  12 The Commons disagreed to the above amendments for the following reason:
  Because it is not appropriate to extend further franchise for overseas electors beyond the five year period by reference to a person's occupation.
  Lord Tordoff: My Lords, I beg to move that this House do insist on their Amendments Nos. 1 to 11 to which the Commons have disagreed for the Reason numbered 12.
  For those who do not know the long history of this series of amendments, it amounts to one amendment and a number of consequential amendments. The noble Baroness, Lady Elles, moved an amendment at the Committee stage of this Bill in which she explained to the Committee that she wished British citizens

  561
  working for the European Community to have the same rights as diplomats serving overseas and members of the Armed Forces serving overseas—namely, that they could vote in elections in this country and in elections to the European Parliament.
  At the Report stage the noble Baroness sought to move an amendment which would include spouses, and at that point the Government said that they would pick up these two amendments and, together, bring them back at Third Reading, which indeed they did. Therefore, the amendments which were first agreed—the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Elles, at the Committee stage which was agreed by your Lordships, and the Government's substitute for that amendment and for the other amendment about spouses—are the ones with which the Commons have disagreed. It is not some nasty, violent, Left-wing, anarchist amendment from these Benches, but a Government amendment with which the Commons have disagreed.
  At this stage I should also point out that when the amendment of the noble Baroness was first agreed to it had the support of the Front Bench of the Labour Party in this House in the shape of the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, who I am sorry not to see in his place tonight. However, doubtless the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart of Swindon, will be substituting for him—poor chap!
  When the Bill returned to the other place the Labour Party apparently did not like that amendment. As noble Lords know, the Labour Party believes that many people who live and work overseas are criminals and tax dodgers, and although it does not actually say that to the Members of the European Community, it does not believe that the franchise should be extended to those people who do not pay tax in this country. That is a curious concept because I am quite sure that a number of Labour Party supporters in this country do not pay tax in this country, and I hope that the Labour Party will not suggest that in future those people should be disfranchised.
  We have this extremely curious situation where an arrangement was reached by the Government Front Bench and the Opposition Front Bench in another place in order to remove from this Bill the franchise which your Lordships had granted to people working for the European Community. Therefore, we have to consider whether we ought to send the Bill back again to the Commons.
  I am told—and let me say straight away that I have no evidence whatever for this—that one of the reasons the Government acceded to this was that the Opposition in another place (that is to say, the Labour Party Opposition) warned the Government that if they did not remove this provision from the Bill, they would get nasty on the Bill dealing with sports grounds and alcohol, and that they would not allow it to go through the other place in one day. Whether or not that is true I do not know, but I should be interested to hear whether that is the case from both the Government and the Labour Party.
  Even if it is not the case, the fact is that there was an arrangement between the two Front Benches in
  562
  another place which has cost servants of this country working for the Common Market their vote, not only in elections in this country but also in European elections. As the noble Baroness, Lady Elles, pointed out at an earlier stage of this Bill, after the five-year period has come to an end they will remain the only people working in Brussels who will not have a vote in elections to the body for which they work. That is clearly scandalous and a mistake, and it is clearly the duty of your Lordships' House to put it right.
  When it comes to the question of elections in this country, it might be said that the House of Commons is the place that should decide who are the people who shall vote for them. To my mind there is very little which is further from the truth at the end of the day. In the strange electoral system that we have at the moment—and I shall not go into that yet again—it is possible to have an elected dictatorship; and this Chamber remains the final backstop against a contrived decision, a cosy getting-together of two large parties determined to remove the rights of minorities to vote in elections to the Parliament in this country.
  It is on those grounds that I beg to move that your Lordships resist this move from the Commons and that we insist on the amendment that we passed at the Third Reading stage, which I repeat, was a Government amendment.
  Moved, That this House do insist on their Amendments Nos. 1 to 11 to which the Commons have disagreed for the Reason numbered 12.—(Lord Tordoff.)
  Baroness Elles: My Lords, I was hoping that the noble Lord the Leader of the Opposition would speak next so that we might know what the Opposition view is this time round. However, since neither the noble Lord the Leader of the Opposition nor the spokesman on behalf of the Opposition has seen fit to speak, I thought that I would take the floor now.
  We seem to have reached a rather farcical situation where a Government amendment is being resisted in this House. I totally accept that at no time did my noble friend the Minister give an undertaking that that amendment would be supported. In fairness to my noble friend I must make it quite clear that, although the Government took over the amendment, it was on the basis of drafting and not on the basis of policy behind the amendment.
  In this case I have been given to understand from the Opposition Benches that, instead of them voting with us, they will be voting against restoring the amendment to the Bill. However, that again is hearsay, and of course we shall wait to hear whether the noble Lord on the Opposition Front Bench changes his mind, as they changed their minds in the Commons. Therefore, there is no reason why he should not change it this time.
  On the other hand, this situation may be farcical in constitutional terms, but it is a disaster for those officials who have seen their right to vote, which was passed in this House by quite a large majority, being taken away for reasons which, frankly, are not serious or do not have a solid foundation. I consider that this is disrespectful to those officials who are working in the Community.

  563
  What surprised me more than anthing else were—if I may use the word without any disrespect to Members of the other place—the fatuous arguments which were put forward when the amendment was rejected. The arguments were that it was not fair to discriminate against British citizens working as officials in the Community as opposed to those working for ICI or other companies. However, the fact of the matter is that both your Lordships' House and another place had an opportunity to vote to give those people the vote in national and European elections, and in both Houses that was rejected. Therefore, that argument is no longer valid.
  Those of us who daily or quite frequently have to work with British officials in the institutions of the Community, from the President of the European Court of Justice downwards to the last clerk in the Commission, are continuously having to consider vital British interests. That seems to have escaped most people.
  These servants of Britain are working in Community institutions, and not of course entirely for Britain because they are international civil servants. But I would ask: which French, German, Italian, Dutch, Danish or other official is going to work all night and all day to do their best for British interests? The only officials who will be doing that will be British officials. I therefore find it lamentable that this vote should not be given to them.
  It is not a question of discrimination. This was recognised in the British Nationality Act. Their position as servants was recognised within the context of being put on a level with serving diplomats outside this country, and with those in the services overseas. That was recognised in the British Nationality Act, and I cannot see why any grounds have been put forward to deny similar rights in the case of voting.
  The issue of voting is fundamental. I am sorry that British citizens other than British officials did not get the right to vote. It was a Labour Government which ratified the international covenant on civil and political rights in which it clearly says that every citizen shall have the right to vote in elections—and that does not state whether they happen to reside in the country of their nationality or any other. Every citizen of a country has a right to vote. This was one of the covenants ratified by a British Labour Government. I am sorry to see that they are reneging on an undertaking which I should have thought was fundamental to democratic rights.
  Having said that, all is not lost. Although a majority voted on 28th March this year to deny British citizens their rights, and in another place on 26th June British officials were denied their rights, I am happy to say that on 28th and 29th June this year, at the Milan summit, the United Kingdom Government, as one of the members of the European Council, in fact supported the proposals of the People's Committee, which was set up after the Fontainebleau summit.
  In that communiqué, which came out supporting the People's Committee, it says that every effort must be made by all member states to ensure that member states grant the right to their citizens within the European Community to vote in at least European parliamentary elections. I am therefore particularly
  564
  sorry that between 28th March and the 28th and 29th June the Government seemed to have changed their position and did not take up the opportunity to vote on the amendments which were before this House and which went back to another place.
  In view of the fact that it was supported in the Lords and rejected in the Commons, I, personally, should like to keep it that way and make it known to the British officials that I work with that this House supported their democratic rights and that they were taken away in another place. I hope that the Government will see fit to introduce legislation which will give British officials and all British citizens resident in the Community a right to vote as British citizens.
  Lord Howie of Troon: My Lords, I have no idea, either, how my Front Bench is going to vote in this matter, but I, for one, as a member of the Labour Party, voted for this amendment the last time round, and I propose to do so again. There is a simple issue involved here, and it is one which should be close to the heart of the Labour Party. It was close to the heart of the Labour Party in this House not so long ago, but we seem to have been overriden by our colleagues in another place. They are not going to override me.
  As members of the Labour Party and socialists in a quiet way, we are democrats; and the essential feature of democracy is that as many people as possible should be entitled and enabled to vote. That is central and crucial to our democratic system. We should be trying to extend the franchise as far as we can.
  Older members of the Labour Party will remember that this principle was of great help to us in 1945, when Mr. Attlee's great Labour Government were brought to power to a large extent on the strength of the overseas vote of the British forces. The same principle applies whether people are in the forces or whether they are servants of government in Brussels or elsewhere—or, incidentally, whether they work for ICI or anybody else, although that is not the question really before us tonight. The question is a simple one. We were right when we voted on this the last time around. The other place has been wrong to attempt to change this amendment, and I hope that we carry it again tonight.
  6.45 p.m.
  Lord Monson: My Lords, I confess that I have no strong feelings either way about whether or not British officials working overseas for the EEC have the vote in United Kingdom elections. I have never been an enthusiast for Britain's membership of the EEC, as I have stated on earlier occasions. What I feel strongly about is horse-trading and back-door deals between the Front Benches of the two main parties in another place to the exclusion of representatives of all other parties and to the exclusion of Back-Benchers of all parties, and not least Conservative Back-Benchers, to say nothing of your Lordships. Unless we can be assured that there was no back-door deal, I hope that noble Lords will support the noble Lord, Lord Tordoff, in the Division Lobby.
  Lord Stoddart of Swindon: My Lords, it seems that I am in great demand this evening. That is something

  565
  quite new so far as I am concerned. I am certainly going to enjoy it while I can. I have listened to the arguments which have been put forward so far. I noted that the noble Lord, Lord Tordoff, seemed to imply that these were Government amendments which the House passed. Of course, they were not. All that the Government were doing, as the noble Lord well knows, was tidying up what the first amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Elles, did. The Government were putting it in proper order, and I think we should not complain about that.
  The noble Lord also said that the Labour Party did not believe that the franchise should be extended to tax dodgers, criminals, etc. That is absolutely right: we do not. Who does? I hope that nobody in this House believes that people of that sort should be allowed to vote. But the argument is rather different. The argument was put by the Minister, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Mr. David Mellor, in another place on 25th June, when the House of Commons considered the matter. If I may quote from a couple of paragraphs, he said at col. 883:
  "It is common knowledge that some Conservative Members wanted a more generous extension of the franchise to British citizens overseas than the five years contained in the Bill. It is equally clear that some Opposition Members would have preferred more modest proposals to succeed than those agreed by the House. In the proper spirit which I think should guide us when discussing issues relating to the electoral rules, a compromise was reached, and the five-year provision was agreed."
  A compromise was reached by the House of Commons, and there was no Division at Third Reading. He goes on to say, in the same column:
  "Secondly, there is the question whether it is appropiate for the House to make further distinctions between officials and people working overseas privately.
  "We honour what has been dignified by a historical position in our electoral arrangements—the privilege of voting accorded to members of the armed services and of the Diplomatic Corps".
  He goes on:
  "I should be hard put to it to say that someone who works for the European Community and undoubtedly does valuable service, as do about 1,500 of our fellow citizens, is necessarily any more worthy of being permitted to vote in a British election than someone who represents in Brussels the interests of ICI, ICL or any of our other great companies".
  I will conclude here. He said:
  "In logic, it is impossible to defend the Lords' amendment. If we are prepared to drive that wedge into the five-year proposal we should accept the hon. Gentleman's proposition".
  That, in fact, is what the Government said. I believe that there is logic in it and I hope that this House will agree that there is logic in it. It would be quite irrational, indeed absurd, to select a given number of people from among many thousands more and give them a privilege that the other thousands did not enjoy. I think that that is the rationale of the Government's position and the rationale of the Opposition's position. An agreement was come to. Make no mistake about that. There was an agreement and I believe that the Labour Party is honour bound to keep that agreement; and I shall make plain in a moment what we shall do this evening.
  But before I do that I should like to say to my noble friend Lord Howie that we believe that as many people as possible should be allowed to vote. I think that he drew a completely wrong comparison when he mentioned the forces overseas who were entitled to
  566
  vote in 1945. That is a purely false comparison to draw. Those people were resident in this country and would have been delighted to continue to have been resident in this country and did not want to go overseas to fight the Germans or anybody else. They were in quite a different position from people in the EC who have decided to make their residence, to pay their taxes, to make their way and make their earnings in another country and not this country. They decided not to reside here, many of them on a permanent basis. I think that the five-year period in which they are allowed to vote is a good enough test, and in fact a good enough concession.
  Baroness Elles: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. He is aware that the services still have the vote. It was not only in 1945; they continue to have the vote whether they remain resident in this country or not. Secondly, is not the noble Lord aware that there are many people who are working in the Commission—indeed, to give one example, the President of the European Court of Justice—who are requested, earnestly requested, by the Government of the day to go and serve as the British representatives in the various bodies of the European Community? It is these people who are being deprived of the right to vote. They are serving British interests daily. It is not a question of being somebody in a business capacity who is there to earn a living and make a profit.
  I proposed an amendment that these people should have had the right to vote. The Labour Party had the opportunity, if they thought that that was right, to vote; but it was the one case in your Lordships' House where the Labour Party were against that opportunity. So I think that that argument is not a valid argument for the noble Lord to use. But I would remind him again that there are people in the European Commission and in the European Court of Justice who are beseeched by the Government of the day to go and serve as Britons in these jobs. It is not quite the same as anybody going there to earn their living.
  Lord Stoddart of Swindon: My Lords, that was a very long intervention by the noble Baroness and an interesting one. The position of the British forces is surely that they are serving Her Majesty's Government and, indeed, they are serving Her Majesty. They are not serving the Community as such or any other body. They are serving Her Majesty. They are in quite a separate and different position. In regard to the other officials, they serve the Community and they do so for their career purposes and prospects; but nevertheless they have decided to take that career, to earn their living in another country and have no intention of coming home to this country.
  Lord Tordoff: My Lords, I wonder if the noble Lord will give way because I believe he is in error. Surely, the provisions in the Bill preclude people who have decided to live permanently abroad because people have to make a declaration that it is ultimately their intention to return to this country, within the terms of the Bill as it stands with or without the amendment. To say that these people have decided permanently to live abroad—which I think is what I heard the noble Lord say—is incorrect.
  Lord Stoddart of Swindon: My Lords, the five-year limitation applies and they will be entitled to vote for five years. I think I am right. It is only if they decide to absent themselves from this country for a period of longer than five years that they would lose their vote. I think that that is the true position. I do not think that I have misunderstood it at all and I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Tordoff, agrees.
  If I may continue to answer my noble friend Lord Howie, the Labour Party does believe that the franchise should be extended to as many people as possible who are in law entitled to vote. But that does not necessarily mean that we believe that the franchise should be extended to people who have decided to move their residence, almost permanently, or permanently, outside this country. Indeed, the Bill itself extends the franchise and in that respect and for that reason the Labour Party supported the Bill.
  I can well understand that the noble Baroness, Lady Elles, was disappointed because her amendment has not been accepted by the other place. But I think that we have to accept that the provisions of the Representation of the People Bill are—and I repeat this—the result of an agreement between the Government and the Opposition without very much, if any, dissent from the other parties in the House of Commons.
  A noble Lord: That is totally untrue.
  Lord Stoddart of Swindon: My Lords, it is not totally untrue. If you read the record you will find that it shows that. As I said at Report stage in this House, it is far better that alterations to electoral arrangements are made with a large measure of agreement; and although your Lordships may very well have been perfectly entitled to express a view, as indeed you did, over votes for British employees of the EC institutions, it would in my view be unwise and perhaps improper to insist—
  A noble Lord: No, no!
  Lord Stoddart of Swindon: Yes, perhaps improper, to insist on that view in the face of the overwhelming opposition of another place.
  As an unelected body we really cannot insist that the Commons accept our view of the electoral arrangements for election to the other place and to other assemblies. It seems to me that there might have been some case for pressing our view a little further, but only a little, if the voting in the other place on our amendment had been finely or more evenly balanced. But it was not. The Commons voted to disagree by 327 votes to 13. In face of such an overwhelming rejection of our amendment, it would be foolish, I think, and unproductive to insist upon it.
  A noble Lord: Oh no!
  Lord Stoddart of Swindon: My Lords, the noble Lord wanted me to get up and to have my say. Now let me have my say. How about that? The noble Lord will have his turn in a minute. I have to say this. I have to remind the SDP and the Liberal Benches that during the Bill's passage through the Commons neither the Liberal Party nor the SDP proposed any amendment
  568
  to improve the voting rights of EC employees. They did not do that at all in the House of Commons. Neither in fact was there any discussion of the issue at any stage of the Bill in the other place, so that the House of Commons in fact had decided that this was not a relevant issue and the issue was therefore raised by the noble Baroness in this House. It was taken up by the Liberals and by the SDP Members here.
  Baroness Elles: My Lords—
  Lord Stoddart of Swindon: My Lords, it was responded to by my own party certainly, but we are talking at the moment about the Liberals and the SDP because the Liberal Party, in the form of the noble Lord, Lord Tordoff, has taken up the cudgels tonight and therefore we are entitled to examine their record on the issue we have examined just one part of it. We know that in the House of Commons they sat back and did nothing about this great cause they are espousing tonight. I repeat: neither the Liberals nor the SDP did anything about it.
  What did they do on the 25th June when the Lords amendment was voted upon in the House of Commons? There were only 10 Liberal Members present, including the tellers; about half their strength. There were only three SDP Members present at that time; less than half their strength. The issue was considered so important by the SDP in another place that the Leader of the SDP did not bother to turn up. That was how important it was to the SDP and the Liberals in the House of Commons when this amendment, which we passed in this place, was discussed. That showed the commitment of the Alliance to our amendment. So I hope that they will not attack the Labour Party, because in fact the Labour Party came to an arrangement and it now wishes to honour that arrangement, and that is what we propose to do tonight.
  I have to say that if your Lordships insist upon the amendment tonight, there could be quite serious consequences, not only because there would be a deterioration in the relationships between ourselves and another place but also because I understand that if the Commons, too, decide to insist, the coming into operation of the rest of the Bill would be delayed. In that case the many very desirable parts of the Bill and the many desirable provisions in it, on which there is unanimity, would be delayed for up to a year. Do we really want to see that? I think not. I therefore hope that having made his point, and the noble Baroness, Lady Elles, having made her point, the noble Lord will decide this evening not to press his luck and not to press his Motion. I have to say to your Lordships that if he presses it, I shall recommend my noble friends to vote against it.
  7 p.m.
  Lord Harris of Greenwich: My Lords, I think that was one of the most remarkable speeches I have had the good fortune to hear since I became a Member of your Lordships' House. The one thing the noble Lord did not explain was why he took exactly the opposite position when this matter was debated and voted upon on the last occasion. I see from the Division List on the "absurd" amendment (as described by the noble Lord,

  569
  Lord Stoddart of Swindon) that his name appeared as one of those who favoured giving the vote to officials of the Eurpean Community. Therefore what is absurd today was apparently wholly sensible on the last occasion when this matter was debated in your Lordships' House.
  Lord Stoddart of Swindon: My Lords, will the noble Lord give way?
  Lord Harris of Greenwich: Of course.
  Lord Stoddart of Swindon: My Lords, I said that it would be absurd for this House to press its point.
  Lord Harris of Greenwich: My Lords, the noble Lord apparently did not take that view on the local government legislation that we were voting on a few moment ago. I notice that there has been a rather remarkable change in his position.
  I now turn to what is presumably intended to be a serious speech made by the noble Lord. I think the one thing we would all agree upon is that there was an agreement entered into by the Labour Party and the Government in the House of Commons. But, if I may say so, that was not wholly related to the merits of the proposition. What the Labour Party said in the House of Commons was that if the Government did not agree to make certain amendments to this Bill on the lines that they wanted, they would block progress on the Bill. That was a very powerful weapon in their hands because this was a constitutional Bill which had to be taken at all stages on the Floor of the House of Commons. And so that is what this great understanding and agreement is all about.
  In fact, it was a piece of parliamentary pressure. One can argue, if one likes, that it was legitimate and no doubt the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart of Swindon, would certainly choose to use that language about it; but some of us might perhaps describe it rather differently. Certainly I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, were he here, would want to refer to it very differently. Unhappily, he is not with us this evening, just as was the case on the Third Reading of the Bill when the position of NATO officials was discussed. Their position of course is rather similar to that of EEC officials. Perhaps I may quote to your Lordships what the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, said, speaking from the Opposition Front Bench on this amendment. I quote from col. 1181 of the Official Report of 28th March:
  "I have had the privilege when visiting various institutions of the European Community and its Parliament of meeting some of our officials in Europe who have brought great distinction to the Community itself and its service, and if I may say so, to this country. The more British people we can send to be officials in this institution while we continue to belong to it—and many of us are in favour of continuing our membership, while some of us are not quite so fervent—"—
  one can certainly say that again!—
  "the better. I am only going to say that, having been in the Community for the number of years they have, to deprive them of a vote seems to me to be completely and absolutely wrong. I would put them in line, as did the noble Baroness, Lady Elles, with the members of the Armed Forces and the Diplomatic Corps. This is an amendment to which the Opposition would give favourable consideration".
  570
  How the Front Bench of the Opposition can pretend that those stirring words delivered by the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, from that Front Bench represent now exactly the opposite of their true position really beggars the understanding of any person who adopts a rather balanced attitude to the question. Certainly, speaking for my noble friends on these Benches, we will vote in exactly the same way as we did on the last occasion. The implications of what the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart of Swindon, said about the EEC officials represented in my view one of the least happy parts of a very unhappy speech.
  Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, I certainly need not detain your Lordships with the history of these amendments. In their original form they were moved in Committee by my noble friend Lady Elles and they were carried, against the Government's advice, on a Division. As a matter of courtesy to your Lordships, as the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, said, I moved further amendments on Third Reading to make sure that the Bill was fully in order; rather complicated amendments, as it turned out. However, I did my best to make it clear that those amendments were entirely without prejudice to the advice which my right honourable friend might give to the other place when the Bill returned there, and I am grateful to my noble friend Lady Elles for acknowledging that.
  I must say that I found the speech of the noble Lord opposite one of the most entertaining and revealing speeches for the noble Lord to make, speaking on behalf of his party, that I can possibly imagine. I admire his persistent batting on what, for him, must have been a very sticky wicket indeed. But it is not my task now to discomfort him any further.
  The Government certainly mean no disrespect to British citizens working in the institutions of the European Community. There can be absolutely no doubt about their commitment to British interests or about the earnestness of their desire for the right to vote. But the same is true of so many other people who would not have the right to vote under this Bill. The way to make progress on this matter is to extend the period during which British citizens may qualify as overseas electors across the board, not to single out particular groups because we happen to think that they are especially worthy. If any of your Lordships should feel that these views are held only by Government Front Bench spokesmen I recommend that they look at the proceedings in another place—which clearly has been done—and there your Lordships will find that the same sentiments are expressed from the Back-Benches by those who had originally voted for an extension of the franchise to all British citizens resident abroad no matter how long they had been away.
  My noble friend Lady Elles expressed the hope that further legislation might come forward in due course. She referred to the Milan summit; and the People's Committee. I can confirm that the Government backed the Milan agreement and that the Government remain committed to a further extension of the franchise at a future date. But that extension must treat British citizens in the public service and the private sector in exactly the same way. My right honourable friend has now made clear on several occasions his personal commitment to a further

  571
  extension of the franchise, but my noble friend will understand that in the nature of things I cannot put a timetable on that commitment this evening.
  When these amendments were previously before your Lordships some felt that they would be given a fair wind if only because the matter had not been considered in another place. The view was also expressed—and I think I may say that it is the traditional view, despite what the noble Lord, Lord Tordoff, said—that representation of the people is not a matter on which your Lordships' House has the final say, however important our role in revising and improving the legislation that comes before us. The matter has now specifically been considered in another place and its view clearly and decisively expressed.
  Baroness Seear: My Lords, does the noble Lord the Minister not agree that this House does not have the final say on anything, and that this Bill is in no way different from any other?
  Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, at the end of the day, the matter of representation and election is more a matter for the other place than for your Lordships' House. I have nothing more to say. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Tordoff, will agree that it would be inappropriate to press his amendment further.
  Lord Tordoff: My Lords, I notice that I have not had a reply to the suggestion that this deal had something to do with the drink at football matches Bill. But we shall let that pass. Clearly the other place has the final say. Clearly on matters of representation of the people this House also has a say. Were it, for instance, to be decided between the Front Bench of the Government and the Front Bench of the Opposition to delay the period of voting in a parliamentary election, then this House would have a big say; and so it should. It would have the final say, as my noble friend reminds me.
  I am not at all convinced that we have had anything to ameliorate the position of the people for whom we are arguing. I know that both the Government and the Opposition are painted into a corner. I know that they will march through the Lobbies together hand in hand. But, frankly, this is one of those occasions where I do not care by how much we are beaten because it is a matter of principle and we shall, therefore, divide the House.
  7.15 p.m.
  On Question, That this House do insist on their Amendments Nos. 1 to 11, to which the Commons have disagreed for their Reason numbered 12.
  Their Lordships divided: Contents, 44; Not-Contents, 142.

  DIVISION NO. 3

  CONTENTS

  Airedale, L.

  Burton of Coventry, B.

  Alport, L.

  Chitnis, L.

  Ampthill, L.

  Crawshaw of Aintree, L.

  Attlee, E.

  Darwen, L.

  Aylestone, L.

  Diamond, L.

  Banks, L.

  Donaldson of Kingsbridge, L.

  Barnett, L.

  Falkland, V.

  Beaumont of Whitley, L.

  Feversham, L.

  Broadbridge, L.

  Grey, E.

  Brockway, L.

  Hampton, L.

  572

  Hanworth, V.

  Ogmore, L.

  Harris of Greenwich, L. [Teller.]

  Ritchie of Dundee, L.

  Rochester, L.

  Hooper, B.

  Seear, B.

  Houghton of Sowerby, L.

  Simon, V.

  Howie of Troon, L.

  Stedman, B.

  Hunt, L.

  Taylor of Blackburn, L.

  Kilmarnock, L.

  Tordoff, L. [Teller.]

  Lloyd of Kilgerran, L.

  Walston, L.

  Mackie of Benshie, L.

  Whaddon, L.

  McNair, L.

  Wigoder, L.

  Meston, L.

  Winstanley, L.

  Monson, L.

  NOT-CONTENTS

  Beaverbrook, L.

  Kinloss, Ly.

  Belhaven and Stenton, L.

  Kinnaird, L.

  Beloff, L.

  Kirkhill, L.

  Belstead, L.

  Kitchener, E.

  Bernstein, L.

  Lane-Fox, B.

  Biddulph, L.

  Lauderdale, E.

  Boyd-Carpenter, L.

  Layton, L.

  Brabazon of Tara, L.

  Lindsey and Abingdon, E.

  Bridgeman, V.

  Long, V.

  Brougham and Vaux, L.

  Lucas of Chilworth, L.

  Broxbourne, L.

  Lyell, L.

  Butterworth, L.

  McFadzean, L.

  Caithness, E.

  Macleod of Borve, B.

  Carmichael of Kelvingrove, L.

  Malmesbury, E.

  Carnegy of Lour, B.

  Mancroft, L.

  Carnock, L.

  Margadale, L.

  Cathcart, E.

  Marley, L.

  Cledwyn of Penrhos, L.

  Massereene and Ferrard, V.

  Coleraine, L.

  Maude of Stratford-upon-Avon, L.

  Collison, L.

  Cowley, E.

  Merrivale, L.

  Cox, B.

  Middleton, L.

  Craigavon, V.

  Monk Bretton, L.

  Craigmyle, L.

  Montgomery of Alamein, V.

  Crathorne, L.

  Morton of Shuna, L.

  Crawford and Balcarres, E.

  Mottistone, L.

  Crawshaw, L.

  Mountevans, L.

  Cullen of Ashbourne, L.

  Munster, E.

  David, B.

  Nicol, B.

  Davidson, V.

  Oram, L.

  Dean of Beswick, L.

  Orr-Ewing, L.

  Denham, L. [Teller.]

  Peel, E.

  Dilhorne, V.

  Poltimore, L.

  Donegall, M.

  Ponsonby of Shulbrede, L.

  Dormer, L.

  Rankeillour, L.

  Drumalbyn, L.

  Rawlinson of Ewell, L.

  Dundee, E.

  Redesdale, L.

  Dundonald, E.

  Renton, L.

  Eden of Winton, L.

  Renwick, L.

  Effingham, E.

  Rochdale, V.

  Elliot of Harwood, B.

  Romney, E.

  Elton, L.

  Ross of Marnock, L.

  Ferrier, L.

  St. Aldwyn, E.

  Fisher, L.

  Saltoun of Abernethy, Ly.

  Fraser of Kilmorack, L.

  Sanderson of Bowden, L.

  Gallacher, L.

  Savile, L.

  Galpern, L.

  Selborne, E.

  Glanusk, L.

  Sempill, Ly.

  Glenarthur, L.

  Shannon, E.

  Graham of Edmonton, L.

  Sharples, B.

  Gray of Contin, L.

  Silkin of Dulwich, L.

  Greenway, L.

  Skelmersdale, L.

  Grimston of Westbury, L.

  Southborough, L.

  Halsbury, E.

  Stoddart of Swindon, L.

  Hanson, L.

  Strabolgi, L.

  Harmar-Nicholls, L.

  Suffield, L.

  Harris of High Cross, L.

  Swinfen, L.

  Harvington, L.

  Swinton, E. [Teller.]

  Henley, L.

  Teviot, L.

  Heycock, L.

  Thomas of Swynnerton, L.

  Hives, L.

  Thoraeycroft, L.

  Home of the Hirsel, L.

  Townshend, M.

  Hylton-Foster, B.

  Tranmire, L.

  Ironside, L.

  Trefgarne, L.

  Irving of Dartford, L.

  Trenchard, V.

  Kaberry of Adel, L.

  Trumpington, B.

  Kimball, L.

  Vaux of Harrowden, L.

  573

  Vivian, L.

  Wynford, L.

  Wedderburn of Charlton, L.

  Yarborough, E.

  Westbury, L.

  Young of Graffham, L.

  Windlesham, L.

  Ypres, E.

  Wolfson, L.

  Resolved in the negative, and Motion disagreed to accordingly.

Industrial Training Levy (Engineering Board) Order 1985
7.22 p.m.
The Minister Without Portfolio (Lord Young of Graffham): My Lords, I beg to move that the draft Industrial Training Levy (Engineering Board) Order 1985 laid before this House on 17th June be approved. The order is before your Lordships today because levies in excess of 1 per cent. require an affirmative resolution of each House under Section 12(6) of the Industrial Training Act 1982. Your Lordships will be aware of the importance of the engineering industry, which remains the largest manufacturing sector in terms of employment. Engineering output rose in 1984 by 4·2 per cent. and the fastest growth was in the electronics sector, emphasising the need for high level skills training in the industry. It is important to ensure that all firms play their part in training and we must ensure above all else that economic growth is not hindered by skill shortages as has sometimes happened in the past.
This levy is expected to raise about £156 million before taking exemption into account and about £20 million after exemption. The levy will cover a period of 12 months to 31st August 1985 and is in two main parts. First, in the mainstream engineering establishments, with a levy of 1 per cent. of payroll in respect of establishments with 1,000 or less employees, 0·06 per cent. of this levy is non-exemptable. In larger establishments, 0·06 per cent. is non-exemptable in respect of the first 1,000 employees and 0·054 per cent. is non-exemptable in respect of the remainder.
The non-exemptable levy will be used to meet the major part of the board's operating costs. Your Lordships will be pleased to learn of the continuing reduction in non-exemptable levy which only two years ago stood at 0·065 per cent. The product of the exemptable levy will be used for training grants and initiatives considered necessary by the board. Establishments where the number of employees does not exceed 40 will be exempt from levy, but may still qualify for certain grants from the board.
We have establishments in the mechanical and electrical engineering construction industry sector, where the levy is in two parts. For off-site employees, no levy is payable by establishments of up to 30 employees; for establishments of more than 30 employees, 1 per cent. of the total wages is payable of which 0·15 per cent. will be non-exemptable. For site employees, no levy will be paid on the first £50,000 of emoluments and for emoluments over £50,000 a nonexemptable levy of 1·12 per cent. will be payable. That is the reason for the necessity for the affirmative resolution which is before us today.
The employer and employee members of the Mechanical and Electrical Construction Industry
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Sector Committee agree to the levy unanimously and the proposals were subsequently endorsed by the board without dissent. Letters of support have been received from the two employer organisations in the sector. There is thus consensus in the industry for the proposals, as required by the 1982 Industrial Training Act. I therefore recommend the order to your Lordships. It has widespread support and is very necessary to meet industry's future training needs. My Lords, I beg to move.
Moved, That the draft Order laid before the House on 17th June be approved. [26th Report from the Joint Committee.]—(Lord Young of Graffham .)
7.26 p.m.
Lord Dean of Beswick: My Lords, in speaking to the Motion, which was so well put and so well detailed by the Minister, I take a point that he mentioned. It is related to the engineering industry, which, as the Minister said, is our biggest single employer of labour. It is a fact that over the last 10 to 15 years the engineering industry has, in total, lost more jobs than mining and steel put together. If the country is really to put its act together on the question of the export potential of manufacturing industries, this is the major industry that has to be able to take the lion's share of that.
Of course, the training under the Engineering Industry Training Board's schemes is rather different from what it was some years ago when I myself was in engineering, both in the locomotive sector and in the turbine manufacturing sector, and when we were dealing with the more traditional forms of engineering. The journeyman or the tradesman on the job very often then took it upon himself, by his own self-appointment, to train some youngsters. But we are now dealing with a very rapid advance in technology with which we have to keep up.
I believe that the measure goes a long way towards what I think is a desirable situation. We can always say that it could have been more and it could have been earlier, but that is not the case and, anyway, we do not live in that type of world. Only today, I was discussing these proposals with a Member of your Lordships' House who was a very distinguished chairman of the Engineering Industry Training Board, my noble friend Lord Scanlon, who probably knows as much about the background and the origins of these schemes as any Member of your Lordships' House. He said that this is the sort of thing for which we have been fighting for years. It has, perhaps, come a little later than it might have done and it is not, perhaps, of the dimension that one would have wanted. Nevertheless, it is a step in the right direction.
It is a fact that, unless we train our youngsters in the new techniques that are coming in, such as new computers, ribbon techniques on machines and so on, we shall lose out to our competitors. My one worry, and I am sure that it is the worry of all your Lordships as well as of the nation as a whole, is that it will be a tragedy of immense proportions if, after the training is complete, it is wasted because there are no worthwhile jobs for these youngsters to move into. Nevertheless, I think it is a move in the right direction. It is an attempt to nurture and encourage our seed corn, and on that basis, I welcome it.
7.30 p.m.
Lord Rochester: My Lords, from these Benches I should like to join in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Young, for the clear way in which he has introduced this order. Perhaps I may say at once that we too are happy to accept it, our only doubt being whether a levy based normally on only 1 per cent. of payroll is adequate to meet training needs in engineering.
I recognise that this is not the occasion for a further general debate on industrial training, following the debate we had three months ago on the report of your Lordships' Select Committee on Science and Technology on education and training for new technologies, but I cannot allow this opportunity to pass without reminding the Minister that in their report the Select Committee stressed that in this country the link between training and commercial profitability is not recognised sufficiently to encourage widespread investment in training. The committee called for an effective national training policy together with a clearer indication of where responsibility for the funding of training should lie. More to the point—this is highly relevant to the order now before us—they recommended the introduction of a national training levy, with remissions for those carrying out training of the required standard, not simply in the engineering sector but in all areas of industry and of commerce.
The noble Lord, Lord Young, does not need to be reminded that there are many parts of industry in which there are no longer training boards, and where in my view training is inadequate in both quantity and quality. I remain firmly of the opinion that we need to return to some form of overall statutory framework for training in order to ensure that as the economy picks up and unemployment at last falls (as, irrespective of our party allegiance, we must all hope soon happens) skill shortages will not again hold us back and local training needs fail to be filled.
In replying to the debate on the report of which I have spoken, the noble Lord, Lord Young, undertook to consider this matter carefully. I must now ask him what further action the Government propose to take by means of tax remissions to firms, statutory sanctions or in any other way, to ensure that our training standards, not only for young people—I pay tribute to what the Government are already doing in this field under the youth training scheme—but also for adults, enable us to remain internationally competitive.
Lord Young of Graffham: My Lords, I am grateful for the great degree of unanimity expressed this evening and for the welcome to this order given by the noble Lords, Lord Dean of Beswick and Lord Rochester. It is indeed a matter of congratulation that everyone, not only in industry but in your Lordships' House, should be in favour of this small extension in the amount of training that takes place in engineering. But engineering is a fast changing field and the establishment of a vital skills agency alongside the engineering industry training board shows that at long last the engineering sector is beginning to take training seriously and is beginning to adopt a professional approach to this most vital of areas—vital if we are to create the future as we should all like to see it.
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I am very glad that the noble Lord, Lord Rochester, reminded me about the earlier debate. It is a responsibility of my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Employment, but nevertheless it is worth reminding the House that since that debate took place the very foundation of training in this country, the two-year youth training scheme, has come in—again, unanimously welcomed by the CBI, the TUC, by those in education and by local authorities. I hope that in the future that will be seen to be a watershed in the way in which we look at the training of young people. Only yesterday the chairman of the Manpower Services Commission announced that the new adult training strategy was now beginning to have effect as it comes in up and down the land. But more than anything else I believe there is a growing awareness that training is something in which we must all indulge and look at with great seriousness. I, for one, am not too sure that industrial training boards are the right answer; but the right answer we have to find. That matter is with my right honourable friend, and I hope very much that we shall hear from him before very long. In those circumstances, I beg to move.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

The Licensing Laws
7.35 p.m.
Viscount Montgomery of Alamein Viscount Montgomery of Alamein rose to ask Her Majesty's Government when they will consider some more general reform of the licensing laws.
The noble Viscount said: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Unstarred Question standing in my name on the Order Paper, and in doing so perhaps I may say that I am most grateful to the Front Bench for having made time available to take this short debate and also to the various noble Lords and noble Baronesses who are to speak later.
This Question, and the reason I speak tonight, arises to a certain extent from an Unstarred Question which was put down and debated by the late Lord Spens in May 1983. Perhaps I may in passing pay tribute to him as it is to a certain extent in his memory that I carried on the work that he started so ably in trying to seek reform of the licensing laws.
Noble Lords: Hear, hear!
Viscount Montgomery of Alamein: My Lords, he was a man of great vision and enterprise and I was very privileged to work with him—indeed, I worked with him until his untimely death.
At that time there was a growing feeling that the licensing laws were increasingly out of date and no longer relevant to the needs of modern society. What has given inpetus to the need for change is the impact that liberalisation would have on both tourism and employment. Many areas of our national life are affected by the licensing laws, and various noble Lords will emphasise different aspects, but I want to concentrate on two sectors that are very close together but where the requirements are totally different. The first is the on licence trade—in other words, the public houses. This has been stimulated a great deal by organisations in that field such as the Brewers' Society

577
and the National Union of Licensed Victuallers. I have the impression that both these organisations which speak for a very large section of the industry are in favour of flexibility.
How flexibility can be achieved is obviously a matter for legislation but there seems little doubt that the experience which Scotland has had over the past few years has shown that flexibility is a great success. Independent surveys have shown that there is no connection between pub opening hours and alcoholism. Indeed, it may well be that alcoholism and other related problems such as dangerous driving have declined as a result of flexibility and freedom of choice in Scotland. I know that the Government have been conducting an experiment, and it seems to me high time that the report was published and that the rest of the United Kingdom was brought into line with what is happening in Scotland where things have obviously gone very well since flexibility was introduced.
It is also estimated that if flexibility was introduced in the rest of the United Kingdom on the same basis as in Scotland something in the order of 25,000 new jobs would be created; a conservative estimate but an important and useful contribution to economic activity.
The second area of activity that I should like to mention is the restaurant trade. Here I must declare an interest. I hold an honorary position as president of the Restaurateurs Association of Great Britain. That association, normally referred to as the RAGB, is a small but growing association representing independent restaurateurs as opposed to large hotels and other catering groups. It has done sterling work in the promotion of increased standards of catering and in improving quality in the trade.
There was a time when English catering had a low reputation. That has changed completely. I believe that English catering now competes very favourably. Indeed, the RAGB has participated by stimulating competitions to improve the quality of catering among British restaurateurs.
The position of the restaurant trade in the licensing scene is quite absurd and completely out of line with the rest of Europe. People visit a restaurant not to drink, but to eat. In this case drink is an accompaniment and a complement to the food. It is quite absurd that one cannot take wine, beer or other alcoholic beverages at any time of the day other than when one happens to be eating. This rather bizarre practice in the United Kingdom at present strikes all overseas visitors—and I emphasise that the restaurant trade and the whole of the beverage industry is an important part of the tourist trade—as rather archaic, as indeed it is.
It therefore follows that if the restaurant trade is an important part of the tourist trade, we ought to bring it into line with the rest of Europe. It is calculated—and again these are only estimates—that liberalisation of the licensing laws would create some 50,000 jobs in the hotel, restaurant and catering industries. I could go on for a long time, as there are many other examples, but I am sure that other noble Lords will mention them.
Before concluding, I wish to mention one specific point. In February my noble friend Lord Harmar
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Nicholls introduced a Private Member's Bill to make some very small modification to the licensing laws. His very worthwhile Bill has now passed all it stages. However, my noble friend's Bill touches only the tip of the iceberg. The whole issue of licensing reform needs to be tackled on a much wider scale. It is this point which I hope the Government will be addressing in a more positive manner.
What I hope I have done in the remarks I have briefly made is to illustrate that reform of the licensing laws is an area where the Government could create jobs at zero cost, and provide increased freedom of choice in an area where it is obviously much needed and long overdue. I hope therefore that Her Majesty's Government will be able to indicate that they propose to introduce legislation in this very area in the near future.
7.44 p.m.
The Viscount of Falkland: My Lords, I should like to thank the noble Viscount, Lord Montgomery, for giving me an opportunity to speak yet again on the subject of changing the licensing laws of this country. I spoke to the Bill introduced by the noble Lord. Lord Harmar-Nicholls, to which the noble Viscount has just referred. Since that time—in fact, only this afternoon—I learnt of a very interesting piece of information which I believe is relevant. It comes from a booklet published by the Brewers' Society which some noble Lords may have read. It reveals a very surprising fact, and that is that the United Kingdom is an example of moderation in drinking habits. In the light of recent events in football grounds and so on many of your Lordships may find that surprising. However, among 28 countries having similar standards of living, and so on, this country ranks twenty-first in terms of per capita consumption, and twenty-seventh in terms of the death rate count from cirrhosis of the liver. Those figures may provide grounds for some people to be complacent, but they surely give one grounds to deduce that the kind of abuses of alcohol and the patterns of drinking in this country which have given cause for alarm recently are probably and almost certainly due to a fairly small minority of people.
We might perhaps also deduce that such abuses are part of the pattern of drinking to which the present licensing laws contribute. I refer of course to the kind of concentrated drinking that takes place in the evening when people go to pubs, which have historically been places having an "Andy Capp" image—if I may use that expression—where people spill out at a late hour. Only last evening I was disturbed by three Irishmen playing skittles with three bottles of beer at a late hour. I had to call the police and have them removed. They had emerged from the pub totally insensible and had obviously consumed a great deal of alcohol in a very short time. That is what makes us different from other countries in Europe, from some of the other countries having the same standards of living to which I have referred.
If the only benefits from liberalising hours of drinking were those connected with tourism and employment which the noble Viscount, Lord Montgomery, has given, and if there were no appreciable change in the abuses, I am afraid that I

579
would not be able to support further flexibility of drinking hours. However, I refer now to the recent experiment in Scotland. Although no official statistics have been published, the voluminous packet of material I received from the Brewers' Society today included some revealing and very encouraging results from the Scottish experiment. The number of indictable offences connected with heavy drinking has decreased dramatically. There has been a dramatic decrease in the number of road accidents resulting from the heavy consumption of alcohol. When I speak of significant reductions, I mean reductions of the order of 30 per cent. to 40 per cent.
Cirrhosis of the liver is not so much a factor in our islands because the kind of drinking that takes place here probably does not lead to the kind of liver diseases which are more prevalent in France and some of the Latin countries where there is a high consumption of wine.
What is very alarming about this country is the high level of social disorder resulting from heavy drinking. I speak not only of the more obvious examples, such as the football violence which has led to the Bill now being considered in your Lordships' House. I took the trouble this afternoon to telephone the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. I discovered from them that a very high proportion of cases of child battering take place in an environment of either heavy alcohol drinking or post-heavy alcohol drinking. I discovered also that the incidence of rape after heavy drinking has been on the increase. I learnt too that wife battering—which goes across all classes and is not exclusively the province of working people but occurs among the middle classes as well—is often associated with bouts of heavy drinking.
Without labouring the point, it seems to me that it would be well worth examining the Scottish experiment very closely. If we can reduce the incidence of such highly anti-social aspects of heavy drinking in this country, it would be worth while considering a liberalisation of the licensing laws. This would perhaps make those places where drinking takes place—the public houses, and so forth—less of a domain, as it were, for the males who, in many cases, are alienated males, and more like places for family and social activity. I have in mind something on the lines of the cafes in France and Italy.
To revert to the Andy Capp image, for too long we have seen the enormous concentration of drinking which takes place—and not just in the evenings. Anyone who has been unfortunate enough to be on a Tube train at Christmas time, will have seen the way in which people celebrate in the trains in a quite disgraceful manner some two or three weeks before Christmas. Anyone who has travelled on a ship will have seen (as I did when I worked for a shipping company and travelled on its ships) the way in which the crew were conditioned, at their first port of call, to go off on a bout of uncontrollable and alarming drinking, resulting in extraordinary behaviour which was often uncharacteristic of the people themselves.
This reminds me of my Irish neighbour, who says that in Ireland you do not get fighting among the Irish. This might be an Irish tale, but my Irish neighbour says that in this country he is now too old, at the age
580
of 43, to go into Irish pubs because you have to drink with your right hand and punch with your left, or the other way round. He assures me that this is because of the concentrated drinking which has to take place within the hours prescribed by our laws. In Ireland, apparently, one can drink in a much more relaxed way. The grocer will bring your groceries to you at the bar. No doubt there are other social aspects to this pattern of drinking, but it seems to be less violent and less anti-social.
It is that aspect which concerns me. If a relaxation of the licensing laws reduces the violence in our society and increases family activities, then I am all for it. If it benefits tourism and the civilised reception of foreign tourists in restaurants as well, that is an additional bonus. I shall certainly support any legislation to that effect.
7.52 p.m.
Lord Ardwick: My Lords, in following the noble Viscount I must say that I think he showed a singular innocence about what happens in public houses in Ireland. I noticed the look on the face of the noble Lord, Lord O'Neill. I have seen some strange things indeed, even in Northern Ireland.
I thank the noble Viscount, Lord Montgomery of Alamein, for giving us the opportunity to debate this subject. However, I wish that he had been more candid in his Question. I think we might have had more noble Lords attending the debate if it had read:
"To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will consider extending the licensing hours".
We might have had rather more noble Lords in the Chamber, perhaps including some of the Bishops.
I spent 40 years in Fleet Street. I have a peculiar knowledge of pubs and of drinking habits. I have enjoyed very many drinking parties. I have witnessed, in my long life in journalism, many alcoholic tragedies. That is the one side of me. On the other side, I come from a family of abstainers. At the age of 13, before I had reached the age of discretion, I was the Chief Templar administering the oath to other 13-year-olds and getting them to promise not to drink beer, wine, cider, spirits or any alcoholic or intoxicating drink. Then I counselled them, "Touch not the poisoned chalice", "Beware of the first drop", and "Wine is a mocker". I then invited them to sing the old tune, Shall we gather at the river? It all remains very vivid, and it was all very realistic in Ardwick as a boy. The drunkenness was horrible.
The licensing laws certainly strike foreigners as absurd—like many other things in English life, such as driving on the left, cricket, and perhaps even our ceremonial introductions in this Chamber. But our absurdities are cherished institutions, including our remarkable licensing laws. They are all due to World War I. The situation before then was that the public houses were entirely free. Men on their way to work at 7.30 in the morning would have a dram of spirits, perhaps sometimes with a cup of coffee, just as they do now in certain continental towns; and the pubs were open morning, noon and night. The drunkenness in Britain was horrible. However, drinking was to some extent curtailed by poverty and by long hours of work.
Then came the war and the highly-paid munitions workers with nothing on which to spend their money

581
except fur coats, pianos and drink. Lloyd George shortened the hours. He cut out the afternoon drinking and made a rule of no treating. I believe, as a result of long experience, that treating in public houses is one of the great promoters of alcoholism in this country. It is so deeply engrained in the British people that during the first world war, when they could not buy a round of drinks they would pass the money around to each person in the school so that they could buy themselves a drink. When each person's turn came to buy a round he simply passed the money around and they ordered a drink individually. That was done in order to preserve a custom. However, the consequence of Lloyd George's reform was that the consumption of drink was cut by one-half.
For many years after the war drink was no longer a problem, but I think there is an opinion now that it is coming back and beginning to be a problem, particularly a health problem. Figures were given on the radio recently, before I knew I was to take part in this debate, which showed the amount that it is costing the National Health Service to deal with alcohol-related illnesses. They are certainly increasing, and are increasing among women. We all know from our own observation that middle-class drinking is much heavier, partly as a result of expense account lunches and partly because of the cheapness of liquor. Like most other things, cigarettes are now twenty times dearer than before the war. If whisky was twenty times dearer it would cost over £12 a bottle, but it is somewhere between £7 and £8 a bottle.
Today, people have much more discretionary money. There was a time when one gave a party for ordinary suburban friends and provided half the amount of liquor that one would provide for an equivalent party of journalists. Now one's ordinary suburban friends drink like journalists drink, or as they used to drink. There are a number of reasons for this. One is the convenience of supply. The off-licences have multiplied. Brewers have off-licence chains under fancy names. The forecourts of petrol stations are being licensed. Small mixed businesses are applying successfully for off-licences, and there is this vast trade in cash-and-carry from the supermarkets. This expansion of convenience has a great effect on consumption, not only of drink but of everything. Cadbury's always maintained wide margins so that every little retailer would be a seller of chocolate, because Cadbury's knew that the company would sell more chocolate the more retail outlets it had. It is the same thing with drink: the more the convenience, the more people tend to drink.
This new pressure to open public houses for longer hours does not come from the consumers. There are not any candidates in by-elections going around saying, "Vote for me and keep the pubs open all day". They know that that would not win any votes, and that they would lose a lot of votes, particularly from women. This is the reason why the noble Lord and those who support him in this debate are knocking at a closed and bolted door. No Government of this country are going to bring about a big reform in the licensing trade—small reforms perhaps, and maybe something could be done about restaurant licences. I find it incredible that this should have any effect upon tourists. Have any American lawyers stayed away this
582
week because they said, "We will not be able to go into public houses between 3 o'clock and 5.30 p.m."? Do the French not come here for this reason? I should have thought that if we were really concerned to help the tourist trade then we might have a law to insist, as our friends do on the Continent, in Rome and in Paris, that all the bedrooms in hotels should be marked with their fixed legal price or that all the bars should have the price of drinks displayed. That would help. That would show the tourists that we were really concerned about their welfare.
As for the Scottish example, I do not think anything at all of it. The statistics are not in any way convincing. They are full of post hoc propter hoc fallacies. They do not take into account the fact that there has been a substantial increase in unemployment and a lot of poverty. I think it is just possible that one day Parliament may consent to some kind of relaxation of the licensing laws, but that would be on a free vote for both Houses. If it does that, I think it will be absolutely essential to have a long-term experiment in some highly varied districts so as to have some real sociological and statistical evidence that there had been no increase in illness or in social problems as a result of the new lenience.
I am sorry to be so strongly opposed to the noble Viscount, and I do not know what my noble friend will say, but traditionally throughout Europe our Labour movement has always had the idea of temperance in mind. In fact, the Scandinavian socialist parties began as temperance parties. This is a very old tradition. It used to be true of the Liberals at one time, and when you went to a Liberal Party conference you could find no one to drink with because they were all pink-faced non-conformists. All this has changed. The whole world has changed, but I still do not think, changed as the world is, that it is time to have drinking from morn until midnight.
Lord Monson: My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down, may I ask if he is suggesting that the Government which sanctioned the sweeping licensing reforms in Scotland a few years ago lost electoral support in consequence? I am very sure they did not.
Lord Ardwick: I do not know, my Lords. But if it was a Conservative Government, I do not think they seem to be doing very well in Scotland.
8.5 p.m.
Lord Simon of Glaisdale: My Lords, it is with considerable temerity that I address your Lordships on this issue, because it is now a quarter of a century since I had political responsibility in any way touching on this, but the responsibility which I had then, and in particular relating to two matters, has convinced me—and thinking it over since has maintained my conviction—that the bulk of our licensing laws is hopelessly anachronistic and could well be swept away. The noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, will know very well that the leading textbook on this branch of the law—I think it is the only text book, namely Paterson on Licensing Laws—runs to over 1,700 pages. Does anybody believe these days that that is the sort of legislation that we should put up with in modern society? That legislation belongs to quite a different age, an age where the legislature arrogated to itself the

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right to determine what was good for others and to enforce it restrictively; and, with reference to what the noble Lord, Lord Ardwick, had said, that particularly related to an arrogation of the right to determine how the lower classes should conduct themselves. No doubt there is a strong argument in favour of restricting the sale of intoxicating liquors to children, but so far as adults are concerned, what we have is really a hangover from the nannie state, which tells other people how they should conduct themselves and how they should live.
I shall not deal with the economic aspect of this matter, because that was dealt with admirably in the first two speeches with which your Lordships were favoured and I shall be followed by my noble friend Lord Harris of High Cross, but I should like to deal briefly with the social and legal background to it. At common law there was no restriction at all on the sale of intoxicating liquors. The Mermaid, where so much was created, was not licensed premises. Sir John Falstaff drank an intolerable deal of sack compared with the bread that he consumed, but no one suggested that his example—abuse as it was, and the noble Viscount, Lord Falkland, referred to the aspect of abuse—was any excuse for introducing a general system of licensing. That did not come in until the 19th century. Earlier than that, justices could locally, in some cases by special Act, license fit and proper persons to conduct public houses, inns, taverns and victualling houses. It was not until the restricting moral climate of the 19th century that that practice was made general, and became increasingly restrictive, culminating in the Act of 1911.
I mention the two occasions in particular which brought me to your Lordships' House this evening. The first was when I first occupied the office that the noble Lord who is to reply to the debate now occupies. I found there the most extraordinary state of affairs. I think that the noble Lord, Lord Ardwick, referred to it, though not by name—the Carlisle scheme. That arose, as he indicated, out of conditions in the First World War. There was a special body of immigrants of a quite peculiar character engaged in two special areas of vital importance to munition production. The solution was not to extend licensing, because there was already licensing, but to have state-controlled public houses in those areas. One of them disappeared in the early 1920s, but when I went to the Home Office in the late 1950s, the other scheme—the Carlisle scheme—was still in operation.
Of course it was entirely irrelevant to conditions then. There was no special body of immigrants with nothing to spend their money on except drink, as the noble Lord, Lord Ardwick, so picturesquely and strongly put it. There was no special problem of production in the Carlisle area. But could any alteration be made? The answer was, certainly not so far as an Under-Secretary of State was concerned. One was immediately led to know that that was—I trust that it is no longer—the lowest form of political life!
In fact the Carlisle scheme of state-controlled public houses went on until 1971 when it was abolished without anybody suffering the least anguish. In view of that your Lordships may well be on guard lest the noble Lord the Minister has been provided with a brief
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in favour of inertia—the sort of inertia that led to the prolongation of the Carlisle scheme—and will watch carefully what he has to say.
The second episode was after I left the Home Office, but as a Law Officer I was asked to assist with the legislation which became the Licensing Act 1961. What I found then were very powerful pressure groups against any liberalisation, including some most unlikely coalitions—for example, the Blue Ribbon Brigade with the licensed victuallers. That Act was undoubtedly a liberalising measure, but the Minister in charge, the late Lord Runcorn, and myself each felt that we ought to have gone considerably further. We went as far as we could, supported by the mass of opinion in the House of Commons, but we were frustrated from going further by the virulence of the pressure groups, to which again the noble Lord, Lord Ardwick, referred, although not in those opprobrious terms. If the lesson of the first encounter is to beware of departmental inertia, the lesson of the second is to beware of pressure groups!
I said that the present law was anachronistic. The noble Lord, Lord Ardwick, has explained the background on which one can say that that is so, and that is the enormous growth of off-licensing, particularly the supermarkets and the very efficiently organised mass retailers. He went further and described other outlets. That means that anybody virtually can buy what he wants and consume it at home. So far, so good, but where he cannot consume it is in the social and neighbourly atmosphere of clubs and pubs. I hope that at the very least we shall hear from the Minister that there will be early legislation to bring the present law of England into line with that of Scotland, as to which it seems to me that there is an unanswerable case.
I should like to know that the Government were prepared to go further, but I am not sanguine and I shall be content if they will go just this little further and say that the whole problem of licensing, and particularly licensing hours, should be looked at again in a modern context. I end as I began by expressing gratitude to the noble Viscount who introduced the debate. It seems to me to be an important issue because it is an issue of personal freedom which should appeal to all your Lordships.
8.17 p.m.
Baroness Sharples: My Lords, I also wish to thank my noble friend Lord Montgomery for introducing the debate. I can speak only from my experience in owning a pub in a small village and being a licensee for about two-and-a-half years, until in fact February this year. Like many others, we were a small business trying to provide a meeting place and a social club with service and certainly value for money. Like many others also, we tried to introduce new ideas to entertain our customers. I was prepared to work much longer hours than are now permitted. One has to work long hours to succeed, as it is a very competitive business.
I do not believe that longer drinking hours will result in more alcoholism. I saw quite a lot of the business in that time, and I consider that people were restricted in the amount that they could spend. That is obvious. A pub is a meeting place and a social club, especially in

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a small village, and tradition counts in the country. If people had longer hours in which to drink, I do not think that they would drink more and I do not think that there would be any problem.
As the noble Viscount, Lord Falkland, said, tourists simply do not understand. We had a restaurant licence. The dining room was alongside the bar. In the restaurant they could drink until 3 p.m., but if they were having a meal in the bar, they could drink only until 2 p.m. That is nonsense. Landlords in pubs take on great responsibilities in running a good establishment. If bad behaviour on the part of our customers is reported by the police or the public, we risk losing our licence. It is the landlord who knows what the customer wants; the customer jolly well tells him. I think that landlords should be given every encouragement. Under the restrictions that are imposed at the moment, life is very difficult for them.
As your Lordships know, food is served in a great majority of pubs now. Food has certainly improved enormously. A little plug for myself: we won two awards in the two-and-a-half-years we were there and got into one well-known guide. Families visit pubs for the relaxed atmosphere. They like to take their children. Children find it difficult to behave well in places where they are perhaps told to be quiet. In pubs, this does not happen. All right, one must have a children's room that must not be part of the bar. I agree with that. I agree with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Simon, that it is quite wrong that children should be next to those who are drinking in a public or lounge bar. The customers themselves do not necessarily enjoy this. Children also like to go to pubs which, like ours, have play areas.
I feel very strongly about this matter of the flexible hours and I wish to urge the Government to move on it soon. We have waited a very long time. I sincerely believe that it is not a licence for more drinking but an encouragement to entrepreneurs to attract business. Truly, they can do this only under more relaxed regulations: the present rules in this year of 1985, I feel are far too restrictive. With the commitment of Her Majesty's Government that they will help small businesses, surely legislation should be brought forward to help relieve what I consider to be grossly unfair restrictions on the permitted hours under which we operate at the moment.
Lord Ardwick: My Lords, before the noble Baroness sits down, will she say what hours she would like the village pub to be open? When should it open and when should it close?
Baroness Sharples: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Ardwick. While I can speak only from a personal point of view, I think that the hours might not necessarily be longer but that they should be allowed at the discretion of the licensee. I think it is up to the landlord. He knows his business. There may be farm workers who want to visit pubs. In the winter, they finish work at 4 o'clock. They might want a beer on their way home and now they cannot have it. I think it should be more flexible. I do not think one should open at 10 o'clock in the morning, or even 11 o'clock. One might want to open at 12. It might not necessarily be longer but I think it should be flexible at the discretion of the licensee.
8.23 p.m.
Lord Harris of High Cross: My Lords, it is a great delight to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Sharples, whose teachings from long practical experience seem to me to be more representative than the somewhat alarming memories of the noble Lord, Lord Ardwick, of life among his fellow journalists. I should like to thank the noble Viscount, Lord Montgomery, for raising the Question. I should also like to follow him in paying tribute to my late noble friend Lord Spens, who, as the tireless chairman of our non-party repeal group, raised the last debate we had—
Lord Ardwick: My Lords, as the noble Lord has referred to me, perhaps I may tell him that I have had a good deal of personal experience of the licensed trade and I am very much concerned about the licensed victualler and his need for a couple of hours off in the middle of the day.
Lord Harris of High Cross: My Lords, we shall pick up that point a little later. The tribute was to Lord Spens who raised the last debate we had on this issue, which was on 9th May 1983. I can only say, along with my noble and learned friend Lord Simon, that I hope that we shall have a more constructive and fruitful response from the Government than on the last occasion.
The first national legislation on the sale of alcoholic drinks can be traced back to a Tudor statute of 1495 to restrict gaming in alehouses as a diversion from the more serious business of archery. I am sure that the noble Viscount, Lord Montgomery's distinguished father would have approved of that order of priorities! The modern power of the justice of the peace to license premises and to choose licensees dates from as recently as 1552. If we look at the intervening four-and-a-half centuries, we find that the law has oscillated between periods of laxity—as after the Restoration and again following the Napoleonic wars—and periods of severity, as after the Proclamation against Vice and Immorality in 1787 and again over the past 70 years.
Today, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Simon, said, the law is of the utmost complexity, with separate licences for sales on or off the premises and intricate, arbitrary discrimination between different forms of drink and whether they are sold in residential premises, restaurants or clubs. I should like to say from the Cross-Benches that, even as a classical liberal of what I might call the highest proof, I would accept that licences to sell alcoholic refreshment to adults should be confined to what the law calls "fit and proper" persons who conduct their business in conformity with what the Erroll Report called,
"public order, safety, health or amenity".
What I cannot accept is that there need be any control over the hours at which such well-conducted business is carried on between willing buyers and willing sellers. The first restriction on hours came, back in 1619. However, it was the first world war which provided the pretext for the most unprecedented austerity over the whole of that period. Under emergency regulations in 1915 the Central Control Board restricted opening to two-and-a-half hours at lunch and three hours in the evening. This draconian regime was eased in 1921, when opening was extended

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from a total of five-and-a-half hours to eight-and-a-half hours, roughly between 11 in the morning and 10 in the evening, with a compulsory afternoon break. As we have heard, there was a further modification in 1961 when an additional hour's opening was added in the evening.
Thus the restrictions, justified 500 years ago by the call to archery, and tightened 70 years ago in the battle against the Kaiser, have lingered on, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Simon, said, like a legal hangover from the legislative excesses of war.
I was struck by a surprisingly sober tract recently produced by the Campaign for Real Ale. It was called Licence for Change, and it shows to my satisfaction that England and Wales are among the most severely restricted countries outside the Moslem world. Most of civilised Europe, the United States of America and Japan permit all day opening and sale of alcohol. Sweden, as might be expected of a socialist paradise, is the most regimented. Its eight million population is served by only 316 state shops, apparently dispensing state alcohol from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., although the evidence that the Swedes, after all, are human is suggested by the extent of illicit brewing and distilling.
Our native Cromwellian controllers should ponder that even such severe restriction in Sweden has not prevented deaths from cirrhosis of the liver in that country increasing fourfold in the last 20 years and incidents of alcoholism increasing eightfold. This black record is rivalled only by the legendary tales of Australia, where there was a one-hour evening drinking session at 6 o'clock in many states and that did not prevent—indeed it rather provoked —widespread drunkenness, which has declined since the opening time was relaxed to between 10 in the morning and 10 in the evening.
Although the 1972 Erroll Report brought no action in England and Wales, the 1973 Clayson Report brought liberalisation to Scotland. As we have heard, since 1976 the licensing authorities have been given wide discretion in permitting late night opening to midnight and regular afternoon extensions. In contrast to the restrictive Swedes, the Scottish record shows a quite remarkable reduction over the last seven or eight years in every index of alcohol abuse. Indeed, the local police have strongly endorsed liberalisation as having brought a change in habits with civilised drinking and improved amenities in place of the old spit and sawdust drinking dens that some of us can remember. If freedom can have this effect on the Scots, I ask what miracles it might produce among the already civilised English.
Alas, the continuation of these antique restrictions on opening has recently been marked by the declining fortunes of many of our traditional pubs. They have to contend not only with increasing wine drinking and a higher excise on beer but also with increased competition from multiplying off-licences, registered clubs and licensed restaurants. Yet there lies ahead enormous scope for improved business, not least in serving more appetising food and catering, as we have heard, for growing tourism, holiday and leisure trade. Under freedom, the choice of opening hours would vary with locality and time of year. Each pub, as the noble Baroness, Lady Sharples, indicated, could shape
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its pattern of opening to suit the convenience of its customers, who would no longer have to go abroad to have a drink when it suited them.
The general political and philosophical case for restoring freedom and choice is powerfully reinforced by the economic gains that we may reap from adaptation, expansion and growing employment in one of Britain's major service industries. We have then to turn to the preoccupation of the noble Lord, Lord Ardwick, and his anxieties about the social effects of freedom on the evils of drunkenness and alcoholism. In the time available, I would simply join others in asserting that for all the emotional rhetoric, these real ills have no logical link whatever with relaxed drinking in the controlled environment of a British public house or a licensed restaurant. Like others, I have shared the anguish of knowing a good many young people, and some not so young, who are caught up in alcoholic excess. I have reviewed the cases in my mind and find that not one of them depended on a pub either as a source of supply or for the opportunity of indulgence. My personal experience is confirmed by the empirical evidence from Scotland, and further afield from Sweden and Australia, which shows that restriction may intensify excessive drinking while liberalisation of the law encourages more civilised behaviour in the supervised social setting of an attractive public house.
I would, in conclusion, urge the growing number of fellow reformers not to settle for minor modifications of the oppressive English law on licensing hours, as we have heard happened in 1961. Let us set our sights, as with the Shops Acts, on the real prize of repeal rather than reform. We shall in any event have to battle against a mountain of prejudice, misplaced fear and obfuscation. Let us not end up by producing a miserable mouse.
8.33 p.m.
Lord Harmar-Nicholls: My Lords, in typical kindliness, the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, has said that although my name is not on the list, he does not object to my making one parliamentary point to my noble friend the Minister. My noble friend Lord Montgomery referred to the Private Member's Bills that I have been able to get through both Houses over recent years. He said very properly that these dealt with the tip of the iceberg and that they were only tiny and insignificant in their scope. The reason for that is that if as a Back-Bencher one intends to use the Private Member's procedure, any proposal has to be modest. Any measure has to be of tiny proportions if it is to get through. If, however, it is intended that we face up to the points that have come out in this short debate, it will be necessary to have Government support.
I should like to make an appeal to my noble friend and ask him to pay a great deal of attention to the formidable contribution made by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Simon of Glaisdale, a former Home Office Minister who also has experience as one of our leading lawyers and as a former Law Officer of the Crown. The noble and learned Lord did not hesitate to show that the experience that he had gathered while at the Home Office and as a Law Officer made him feel that it was now time to examine the ramshackle set-up that goes under the heading of our present licensing laws.

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I was interested in the comment of the noble Lord, Lord Ardwick, about candidates and the question of attracting votes in terms of any extension of the licensing laws. I have fought 18 elections—a pretty high figure, I should have thought, for any Member of either House. I should like to inform the noble Lord, Lord Ardwick, that if I—or any candidate—had gone to the polls saying that I would close public houses, I would have been in a darned sight more difficult position to get elected.
When a similar debate took place in another place late last year my noble friend's honourable friend, who was replying to the debate, gave some indication that the Government were perhaps thinking along the lines of sensible reform to meet the present day and age. In his speech he suggested that those taking part in the debate should bring out any little quirks, as I endeavoured to do in my Private Member's Bills. Beyond that, however, he gave me the impression, on reading his speech, that he was perhaps saying something along those lines. I should like to tell my noble friend that the three little quirks with which I was dealing were only three out of 300, 400 or 500 similar quirks. If we have to wait for Private Member's Bills to straighten out those quirks, it will never be done.
I believe that following the Erroll Report and the experience of Scotland, and certainly following the testimony of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Simon of Glaisdale, I should like to feel that the Government will give some indication that this matter will figure on their list, if not in the next Session—I understand that they have a shops Bill in the next Session which I have no doubt will take up much parliamentary time—then in the final Session, if that is what it will be; I mean the Session following the next one. I hope that this will figure on the grounds on which it deserves to figure.
The existing position hinders the development of many small businesses. There is a need for action to meet the demands of tourism. The time has come for any risk, if there is a risk, to be taken by the Government and for them to give the leadership that is necessary. I should like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, for allowing me to butt in when my name was not on the list.
8.37 p.m.
Viscount Hanworth: My Lords, I owe your Lordship's House two apologies: first, for not having put down my name to speak and, secondly, for not having heard all the speeches, though I have listened to a number of them. I should not take more than three minutes over what I wish to say. Yes, our present licensing laws, by any standards, are anachronistic. But is there a real advantage in altering them? I do not believe that they constitute any real inroad into the freedom of anyone. What one has to consider when altering anything are the side effects. There has already been reference to the possibility of greater alcoholism, the possibility that the commercial chap will spend longer in the pub, will leave at 4 o'clock and will be even more drunk on the road. That is certainly something we can think about. I do not wish, however, to argue that point tonight.
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I wish to put only one argument—that the English pub is something quite exceptional and something that people coming from abroad admire. Our publican works almost harder than anyone else. There is an added advantage. Wherever they go, travellers and people coming from abroad know when the pubs are open. Our climate is not the same as it is abroad. The garden is appropriate for only a very limited time in a good summer. What are you really achieving? Are you simply saying that the laws are anachronistic? That is the burden, I believe, of many of the speeches made by noble Lords tonight.
But that is not the point. Will we gain any real advantage by altering the laws? My opinion, on the whole, is that we shall not. I believe that we would be destroying, or potentially destroying, something that is uniquely English for something that is no better. That is the only matter which I would ask your Lordships to consider. I do not have a view violently one way or the other.
8.40 p.m.
Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran: My Lords, I hesitate to intervene at this time without having put my name on the list of speakers, and I apologise for not doing so. However, if anything inspired me to say a few words, in spite of the scowling—I beg your pardon, the look which the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, gave me as I presumed to stand up—
Lord Mishcon: My Lords, I am afraid that the noble Lord mistakes a look of deep affection for something quite different. I do not know what he would think if I really did disapprove of him.
Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran: My Lords, I am obliged to the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, for explaining what the passionate look on his face really meant when I rose to my feet. There is one other reason I want to speak tonight. There is not a single Liberal down to speak on the list, and I cannot see a Liberal in the House at the moment, except the very distinguished Deputy Speaker, Viscount Simon, who I am sure must be neutral on this occasion. Furthermore, no one has spoken about Wales. Wales has a history in relation to licensing laws, especially on Sundays. Therefore, I am sure that the noble Viscount, Lord Montgomery, has spoken about the history.
However, what has encouraged me to speak is that for the first time in this House I can endorse every word spoken by the noble Lord, Lord Harmar of Nicholls. To me, that is a great event.
Lord Mishcon: My Lords, I must intervene. I do not know whether the noble Lord, Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran, is himself influenced by the drink about which we are talking, but the noble Lord's name is not "Lord Harmar of Nicholls".
Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran: My Lords, I am so sorry; I put in a preposition too many. It is of course merely "Lord Harmar-Nicholls".
I should have been delighted to hear the speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Sharples, with all her expertise in this matter. However, there is a very significant matter that I should like to raise. I am sorry that I did not hear the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Ardwick, but from my experience on the bench elsewhere, drunkenness is often not dependent upon

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whether the pub is open at all. It is dependent upon other social reasons. Therefore, I support the noble Viscount, Lord Montgomery, in suggesting that there should be a drastic change in our licensing laws.
8.44 p.m.
Baroness Macleod of Borve: My Lords, I must apologise to all noble Lords for not having put my name down on the list of speakers. I was not sure what time this debate would come on this evening, and so perhaps noble Lords will forgive me for intervening for what will be much less than five minutes. One of my late husband's favourite quotations was, "Set the people free". It is that phrase around which I want to build a few words tonight.
Other noble Lords have said that our laws are archaic, and in this day and age I would entirely agree. We must have more flexibility in our approach to life and the way we live our lives. Our young people are much more flexible than we were brought up to be. I speak as an old-age pensioner and therefore perhaps my memory is longer than that of some other noble Lords in this House. However, we must be more flexible; we must be more relaxed in how we approach the way we live in our country.
Noble Lords have asked whether, if the pubs are allowed to stay open as and when it is necessary or helpful, that will lead to more drinking. In my opinion we are a conservative nation. The women do not like drunken husbands; we do not like drunken men. The laws of our country do not like people who have taken on board more drink than they can cope with. A person is very quickly picked up in the street if he is drunk; a person is very quickly picked up in the street if he is drunk riding a bicycle; a person is very quickly picked up if he is drunk driving a car. You are certainly not welcome if you come home drunk from the pub.
I would submit that, if the licensing laws are relaxed, for a very short time there will be a certain amount of extra drinking by some people in this country. But I would also submit that that will not last for very long. In supporting what my noble friend Lady Sharples has said, I would say that to a lonely person, to someone who wants someone else to talk to, a pub is very often the only place to which he can go. It is not always something that one wants to do between, for instance, seven o'clock and eleven o'clock at night. A person might be very lonely and very worried at three or four o'clock in the afternoon. For that reason alone I think that licensing laws should be derestricted—if that is the word I am looking for.
We all know that public houses are hard work, but they offer companionship and goodwill to many people who need it. That is all I have to say. I should like to conclude with another quotation that my late husband liked so much: "Trust the people".
8.47 p.m.
Lord Mishcon: My Lords, if the noble Viscount, Lord Montgomery, did nothing else this evening but give us some amazing pictures of our colleagues who have participated in this debate, he would have been worthy of our appreciation. We learnt from the noble Viscount, Lord Falkland, that he appears to have an absolute obsession to be near the Irish, whether in a public house or his neighbouring residence. We
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listened to my noble friend Lord Ardwick and found, as one would have expected, that he started off with a most innocent and praiseworthy youth, and we were a little disappointed to hear that there would seem to have been a downward slope as he went through that extraordinary place called Fleet Street. When we listened to the charming Baroness, Lady Sharples, I think we would all have guessed that she had received many awards during her lifetime, which has been dedicated to public service; but had I been asked to guess whether the awards were for serving meals in a country pub, I confess that I would have been unable to do so. However, it is extremely fine to know that, among her many other awards, that was one.
When I saw the four colleagues who forced their way aggressively through the gap I immediately thought of the very gallant and distinguished father of the mover of this Motion who would have thought their tactics absolutely in order. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Simon of Glaisdale, asked me whether I could think of the well-known textbook on licensing law which goes to over 1,000 pages. I must tell the noble and learned Lord that I am a little chary about the writing of textbooks and their authors ever since I was told that the great authority on wills, Theobald, died intestate.
Perhaps I may now turn to the subject under discussion. Let me say at once what I think is the view of all noble Lords. We do not have restrictive laws for the sake of having restricted laws. I would say without any doubt at all that my party believes in freedom unless, for one reason or another, in the nation's interest and in the people's interest there has to be a measure of control.
Therefore, one looks at this subject of licensing laws not in a vacuum. One has to look at the question of what really is the social picture. When looking at the social picture, I ought to have mentioned, when I was mentioning other names, the name of the noble Lord, Lord Harris of High Cross. It was such a delight to hear somebody who is so well known to us as an economist turn tonight into an historian, and a master, so it would appear, of social expertise.
However, can we look at this situation in a vacuum and without looking at the whole effect of the licensing laws, and the cause of the licensing law, in regard to our people? This is not the only occasion on which Parliament has looked at this subject, and done so quite recently. All of us recognise that there are absurdities, anomalies, and anachronisms, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Simon of Glaisdale, said. There are all those things. There are examples which were not quoted to your Lordships.
I wonder how many of us know that you cannot serve somebody who is drunk without committing an offence in a public house, but you may do so in a supermarket. Do your Lordships know that it is an offence for a minor to serve anybody with intoxicating drink in a public house, but that it is not an offence for a minor to serve intoxicating drink in a supermarket?
Of course, there are all these anomalies, and of course the Government—any Government of whatever complexion—ought to look and see that our licensing laws are brought into the age of 1985. But we have to look a little deeper than that before we decide on the extent of liberalisation or reform.

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There was a debate in another place in November 1984—not a long time ago—on a Motion of the honourable Member for Kingswood:
"That this House believes that the liquor licensing law in England and Wales should be revised".
If your Lordships look at Hansard to see the effect of the various contributions made in that debate you will find, as I did, that it was brought out that there is strong evidence that between 50 per cent. and 75 per cent. of those appearing before magistrates in inner-city areas had been drinking before they had committed their offences; that 50 per cent. of those committing homicide did so under the influence of drink, and that 50 per cent. of the victims of homicide were also the victims of drink.
There is not the slightest doubt—the noble Viscount, Lord Falkland, referred to this: I believe he said that he had actually taken the trouble to consult the NSPCC—that anybody going into our criminal courts and hearing those dreadful tales of the battering of children would hear that in so many of them the parent, or the step-parent, has been involved in drinking bouts before any of this shocking cruelty occurred.
Wife bashing has been mentioned. If we look back in our own recollection, as we can do, of friends we have known, people we have admired, people whose autobiographies we have read, lawyers who started off with so much promise, actors who were before the world's stage in a pre-eminent position, we have sometimes learned—I am not in any way trying to preach a temperance sermon—that their family lives were ruined by drink. That does not mean—and I am not trying to put it to your Lordships—that that is an excuse for outdated, absurd licensing laws. All I say is that we ought to know a great deal more about where those people got their drink, and whether they would have been subject to drink in the same way if our licensing laws were altered in some respects.
Only last week this House was engaged in considering the provisions of the Sporting Events (Control of Alcohol etc.) Bill. We knew that we were not solving the problem of violence at football matches. But we decided that a Second Reading should be given, and a Committee stage should be passsed, of a Bill which banned alcohol, except in certain limited measures, in regard to our games of football. We did it against a tragic national background. If we did that, and did it as an emergency measure, is it not obvious that the sale of alcohol in certain circumstances must be watched with the greatest of care?
On 5th July another place considered the Licensing (Amendment) Bill, which started in the Lords, and to which the noble Lord, Lord Harmar-Nicholls, referred, and indeed of which he was the rather proud parent. He deserves to be proud for the way in which he piloted that measure through your Lordships' House. At that very Commons sitting, at column 685, Mr. David Mellor, the Minister at the Home Office, said:
"As to the more general reform of the law—I refer here to the much-debated issue of flexible licensing hours—hon. Members will be aware that it is currently under review"—
words that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Simon of Glaisdale, prayed would not be used of themselves by the Minister on this occasion without any further
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enlightenment. He went on:
"My right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary has made it clear that, before reaching a decision, he will wish to consider carefully the reports of the surveys conducted by the Office of Population Censuses and Surveys into the effects of the extension of permitted hours brought about in Scotland by the Licensing (Scotland) Act 1976, together with all relevant data on the indicators of alcohol abuse. The full report, which will include the results of a survey of public house licensees about their attitude to licensing legislation, will be published later in the year".
I am sure that that promise by the Minister will be kept. Is it not sensible that we wait hopefully for all that information and report, and then decide to ask the Government to do what is necessary to bring up to date our licensing laws in the light of real information, which will then be before us?
Viscount Montgomery of Alamein: My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down, may I ask him one question? The noble Lord mentioned in the earlier part of his interesting remarks that he recognised that there were certain anomalies. Would the noble Lord not agree that the anomaly of the licensing situation in the restaurant trade, particularly, is rather exceptional, and that this might perhaps fit into the pattern to which he referred?
Lord Mishcon: My Lords, I find it difficult to disagree that some of the laws appertaining to restaurants are illogical or are not really fit for 1985, but I must condition what I say by an ignorance, until I see reports, of the effect that any alteration would have upon employees in the restaurant trade and of the effect that it might have upon places which are described as restaurants but which, in certain circumstances, could become places where drinks could be obtained at any time that anybody wanted to go into such a place and say, "Please, can you give me a bag of chips? That's my meal—but I am really here for drink." All those things have to be considered. That is why I ended my speech as I did.
Lord Monson: My Lords, before the noble Lord finally sits down, I wonder whether he can confirm that it was under the Government of his right honourable friend Mr. Harold Wilson, as he then was, that Scottish Licensing laws were so drastically liberalised, with such beneficial effects upon alcohol-related crimes.
Lord Mishcon: My Lords, in exactly the same way I could quote the fact that there was legislation passed in Scotland banning all liquor from football grounds—which legislation we borrowed last week. All I am saying is this. I understand that the Secretary of State for the Home Department is trying to get really reliable statistical information as to the effect that that Act has had upon drinking and crime in Scotland. In our debate today we have surmised the result. Let us know what it really is.
9.3 p.m.
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, as has been said, it is rather more than two years since it fell to me to reply to the last debate that we had on the prospects for reform of the licensing law. On that occasion it was the late Lord Spens, who we much miss and in respect of whom I share the feelings of my noble friend and

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others, who asked a Question about flexible opening hours for public houses in England and Wales. Today it is again my pleasant task to reply, but first I should like to thank my noble friend Lord Montgomery of Alamein for providing us with another opportunity to debate the subject. His Question has generated worthwhile and lively debate, and the expression of some powerfully held convictions and some equally powerfully expressed anecdotes, and we are indebted to him for that.
My noble friend has disclosed his interest in the licensing laws as president of the Restauranteurs Association of Great Britain. He has drawn attention, in particular, to the restrictions on the permitted opening hours of licensed premises in England and Wales—restrictions which affect public houses, hotels and wine bars as well as restaurants—and to the problems they create for licensees, who have to explain to overseas tourists why they cannot enjoy a glass of wine or a glass of beer at 3 o'clock or 3.30 in the afternoon. We have heard, too, of apparent inconsistencies in the law. These arguments, and others, have been used to suggest that a general reform of the licensing law is now necessary, if not overdue. Against that, other noble Lords, notably Lord Ardwick and Lord Mishcon, have sounded notes of caution on the grounds that we must have regard to the serious problems arising from the misuse of alcohol, and that any reform of the law which would have the effect of increasing its availability must proceed in the full knowledge of the likely consequences.
The various arguments for and against radical reform of the law have been rehearsed on many previous occasions. The report of the departmental committee on liquor licensing, under the chairmanship of my noble friend Lord Erroll of Hale, which was presented to Parliament in 1972, recommended fundamental changes in the law. If all its recommendations had been implemented, we would have today a very different licensing system and one which gave licensees and their customers a greater say in when and where drinks should be available. But many of the committee's proposals proved controversial, particularly when viewed against the growing concern about alcohol-related problems. Those problems are no less serious now. Indeed, there have been increasing demands on health and social services over the years as a direct result of alcohol misuse. I say that despite the remarks of the noble Viscount, Lord Falkland, about per capita consumption and cirrhosis, which to some extent I found quite encouraging.
Successive Governments have reacted cautiously to demands for relaxation of these laws, for fear of adding to the substantial social and economic costs of misuse, which are estimated at over £1,500 million a year—a staggering figure. The Expenditure Committee on Preventive Medicine in another place and the Advisory Committee on Alcoholism both stressed in 1977 that any relaxation of the licensing laws should be approached with caution. So did the 1979 report of a special committee of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, which urged that there should be no further relaxation of the broad range of licensing provisions.
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Dampening to my noble friends' enthusiasm though it might sound, I thought it important to say something about the obstacles in the path of licensing law reform, some of which were well put by the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon. I do not wish to give the impression, however, that the Government are irrevocably opposed to reform in the future. It would be misleading to suggest that. We are, however, concerned about the effects of increased consumption and we must therefore be satisfied that any changes in the law, modest or radical, will not have undesirable consequences.
We have heard references to the Scottish licensing system, to the extended opening hours it has brought about, and to its benefits in terms of sensible drinking. Perhaps I ought to declare my interest as one who lives in Scotland and is therefore in a position to benefit; but the fundamental difference in the licensing systems north and south of the Border lies not so much in the prescribed permitted opening hours for licensed premises, for those are broadly the same, as in the facility in the Licensing (Scotland) Act 1976 whereby licensees can apply for extensions, on a regular basis, to those hours.
We have heard that these substantial changes in the law in Scotland have been the subject of surveys commissioned by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Scotland and undertaken by the Office of Population Censuses and Surveys. The preliminary results of one survey on drinking and attitudes to licensing in Scotland were published in May. Those results showed that in the period 1976 to 1984 the average weekly amount of alcohol consumed rose by some 13 per cent. The increase was almost entirely contributed by women, with the increase most marked among women aged between 26 and 45. The OPCS concluded that since consumption by men did not rise in the eight-year period, the increase in women's drinking is unlikely to be a direct consequence of the changes in the licensing laws. Instead, it is more probable that it results from a change in Scotland to a more relaxed attitude towards drinking in general, and in particular to women's drinking.
Additionally and perhaps not surprisingly, 73 per cent. of those questioned agreed that the present licensing laws are an improvement. 79 per cent. agreed that because public houses were open longer, people did not rush their drinks as they used to (and that was the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Monson). But a significant 40 per cent. felt that the longer licensing hours encourage people to drink more.
The information which has been published so far is no more than the preliminary findings of one survey. Those results are being analysed more extensively and will be published, together with other material from the general population survey and the results of a small survey of public house licensees, in the main survey report later this year, as my noble friend Lord Montgomery said. It is important that we consider that full report in detail, together with all available data relating to alcohol-related harm, before considering whether similar relaxations in the law should be introduced in England and Wales. This must be the sensible way to proceed, but I assure your Lordships

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that we will take account of all relevant information before coming to a conclusion.
The area of the licensing law in England and Wales which attracts the most demand for change is that of permitted opening hours, and that theme has been stressed tonight. Certainly most sectors of the drinks industry and the licensed trade seem to favour the introduction of more flexibility. But that, my Lords, is probably the extent of the agreement. It is when one comes to consider how the law might be amended that one finds that there are fundamental differences of view among the various interested parties. My noble friend's association seeks an amendment to the law which would enable restaurants to serve alcohol with meals at all times, 24 hours of the day. The British Hotels, Restaurants and Caterers Association shares this view. Other members of the licensed trade seek less radical reforms. Some favour a system similar to that recommended in 1972 by the Committee chaired by my noble friend Lord Erroll of Hale, which would have allowed individual licensees to determine their own opening hours within the period 10 a.m. to midnight. Again, others believe that the maximum number of opening hours should remain at 9½ hours a day but that licensees should be free to choose their hours up to that limit. There are other permutations; and indeed the noble Viscount, Lord Falkland, pointed out the dangers of concentrated drinking hours, as did the noble Lord, Lord Monson.
These examples show the range of views expressed by members of the licensed trade. But theirs are not the only views to be taken into account. The tourist boards favour flexible opening hours and point to the criticism by overseas visitors of our present system. The police and the magistrates can be expected to hold their own strong views on any proposal which would have the effect of increasing the availability of alcohol. And of course members of the public will be affected by any change. Indeed, the Home Office has received a number of letters from individual members of the public who are concerned over any suggestion that public houses should be allowed to remain open until midnight. Their fear is that the noise and nuisance caused by the departure of customers would become intolerable if the closing time was extended by another hour. In our consideration of the licensing laws we must have full regard for the views expressed by those directly affected, particularly by those living in the vicinity of licensed premises.
Lord Simon of Glaisdale: My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord why he thinks that the law of nuisance is not sufficient to deal with that problem?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, I am afraid that I am not as familiar as perhaps I ought to be with where one can draw the line with the law of nuisance; but I think that the relevance of licensing laws to the general problem of nuisance caused by people who frequent pubs, and might do so late at night, really does bear thinking about. The noble Viscount, Lord Falkland, referred particularly to the question of skittles with bottles being played late at night. I think that what I have just said indicates that there are many others who might be affected by the sort of problem to which this might lead.
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But my noble friend's Question goes wider than licensing hours: it asks when the Government will consider some more general reform of the licensing laws. I have to say that we are not contemplating a review of the entire licensing system. The present arrangements have evolved over a long period of time and although they may be imperfect in some respects, and seem unnecessarily complex, they do nevertheless fulfill a necessary function. Few would argue for the abolition of the requirement to hold a justices' licence for the sale of alcohol or indeed for the removal of many of the licensing requirements which exist for the protection of the public and the maintenance of law and order.
The noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, rightly raised the question of alcohol and crime. We have heard disturbing figures on alcohol and crime. There is no doubt that there may be a connection between the two. Perhaps I might also say that most of those who drink do not, of course, commit offences. That is an important point to get across. But we must not underestimate or ignore the real problems which the minority can cause in this respect.
The noble Lord, Lord Ardwick, mentioned petrol stations. Yes, concern has been expressed recently about the grant of off-licences to petrol stations. What I can tell the noble Lord is that the Government have the matter under review.
I am glad that my noble friend Lady Sharples, and indeed the noble and learned Lord, Lord Simon of Glaisdale, raised the question of children in public houses. As my noble friend Lady Sharples said, the basis of the prohibition on entry to bars of young people under 14 is to protect children from too early an introduction to the risks of alcohol, and from what might be considered an unacceptable environment. Similar restrictions exist in many other countries. While we recognise that many responsible parents would like their children to accompany them into pubs, it would not be easy to relax the restrictions on the entry of children in these circumstances without also putting at risk those other children who might then be permitted entry to bars without the benefit of a responsible adult.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Simon of Glaisdale, made a most robust speech describing what he felt was the anachronistic—"archaic" was the word used by my noble friend Lady Macleod—posture of our drinking laws. He referred to the Carlisle scheme. I believe that it was called the Carlisle state management scheme. But the noble and learned Lord was quite right that that scheme no longer exists. I think I am right in saying that the scheme was wound up in the seventies—I do not have the precise date. But there are therefore no longer any additional controls on licensed premises in the Carlisle district.
The noble Lord hopes that I am not motivated by a brief which is based on inertia. He at least balanced that by saying that he hoped I would not be bullied by the pressure groups. I shall try to fall into neither difficulty. But I do not want to leave the impression that the Government refuse to contemplate any amendment to the licensing legislation. That is not the case. I shall have to ask my noble friend Lady Macleod in this case to trust the Government.

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I have explained the Government's view on relaxations in the permitted opening hours. That door has not been closed. My noble friend Lord Harmar-Nicholls can point to his attempts, so far very successful, to amend sections of the 1964 Licensing Act relating to late night entertainments on Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter Saturday. I am sure that my noble friend will acknowledge, as my noble friend Lord Montgomery said, that his Bill is a modest measure—the tip of an iceberg as it was referred to earlier—and it may not go as far as the noble Lord, Lord Harris of High Cross, would like. But it nevertheless shows that the Government are not opposed to amendments to the law when these are shown to be desirable. This I think again takes on board the theme of the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Ardwick. Nor are we afraid to impose new controls on the availability of alcohol when the need arises.
I need not add to what the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, said just now in relation to alcohol and sporting events. I realise that my reply to the Question of my noble friend will not have been as positive or as encouraging as he and others would like. I recognise, and have every sympathy with, his arguments in support of licensing law reform, and indeed those of others who have spoken in support of him. But I am sure he will appreciate the force of the opposing views, equally serious and sincerely held as they are. All deserve to be heard. I am therefore grateful to him for providing the opportunity to debate the matter again, and the views which have been expressed will be taken into account as consideration of this develops further.
Viscount Montgomery of Alamein: My Lords, before my noble friend sits down, can he be a little more specific about the date for the publication of the full report on the Scottish experiment? He said "later in the year". I wonder whether he can explain precisely what that means.
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, it is difficult to be much more precise, but I should hope that it will be some time in the autumn. But, equally, I should hope that my noble friend will not tie me to that date.

Birmingham City Council Bill
British Railways Bill
Brought from the Commons; read a first time, and referred to the Examiners.

Alexandra Park and Palace Bill
C-Poultry Company Limited Bill
Plymouth Marine Events Base Bill
Returned from the Commons with the amendments agreed to.
House adjourned at twenty-one minutes past nine o'clock.