Lords Sitting of 17 June 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 Rochester.

City Action Teams
Lord Rodney: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what progress has been made with the introduction of the city action teams.
The Minister of State, Department of the Environment (Lord Elton): My Lords, a total of 1,810 units have now been completed on the sites. Of these, 1,492 are for owner-occupation. Forty-two per cent of the new occupiers previously lived within the three dockland boroughs.
Lord Graham of Edmonton: My Lords, that is the wrong Answer.
Lord Elton: My Lords, I knew that this would happen one day. There may be a certain sense of déjà vu later.
The city action teams, if I have the subject right, were introduced by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for the Environment, by my noble friend the Minister without Portfolio and by other Ministers at a series of regional launches on 18th and 19th April. The teams operate in the inner-city partnership areas of Birmingham, Liverpool, London, Manchester-Salford and Newcastle-Gateshead. Their task is to improve the contribution of the policies and programmes of my department, the Department of Trade and Industry, and the Department of Employment and Manpower Services Commission in tackling the problems of these areas.
Lord Rodney: My Lords, I thank my noble friend the Minister for that eventual Answer. I was slightly confused when I heard the previous one. May I ask my noble friend whether the Government are spending substantially more money on inner cities than have previous Governments? Also, will these city action teams help to develop the physical and economic facilities of the older cities?
Lord Elton: My Lords, since 1979 the Government have allocated £1,890 million to inner-city areas—and through the urban programme alone. That is more than 10 times what was allocated between 1974 and 1979. We shall continue to give priority to schemes to strengthen the economy, but we shall also continue to help local authorities to tackle social problems through the inner-city partnerships and to address them directly through the programmes of the Department of the Environment, the Home Office, the Department of Education and Science, the DHSS and other departments.
Baroness Fisher of Rednal: My Lords, can the Minister give any examples of how the inner-city teams have been able to use Government funding more effectively than Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester and Newcastle were doing before the teams moved in?
Lord Elton: My Lords, the purpose of the teams is to assist, not to supplant. They have been going for only two months, but there are signs that they are already improving effectiveness.
Baroness Fisher of Rednal: My Lords, my question was whether the Minister could give us examples of any action taken and about what the teams have done. Can the noble Lord give details of any positive schemes that they have set up?
Lord Elton: My Lords, I think the noble Baroness expects these people to go out and do something in a building, on the ground, within eight weeks of being set up. Their function is to improve co-ordination between Government departments and public bodies. That will take more than eight weeks to bear fruit.
Lord Plummer of St. Marylebone: My Lords, can my noble friend the Minister say which particular areas of London will be dealt with by the city action teams and what funds will be made available to them for this purpose?
Lord Elton: My Lords, the answer to the second part of my noble friend's question is that this is an organisational way of spending existing funds better. As to the areas on the ground that my noble friend asked about, I do not think I can give him an accurate answer in the time available at the Box.
Lord Graham of Edmonton: My Lords, while I recognise the ambitions of the Government in this matter, may I ask the Minister whether he will not acknowledge that these teams are very poor substitutes for giving councils, who know their problems well, increased support in the rate support grant so that they can get on with doing the job in their own areas?
Lord Elton: My Lords, there is a certain tendency on the Front Bench opposite to think that any problem is best solved by throwing more money at it. On this side we think it is best to use the money we have more effectively.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes: My Lords, in view of the fact that this situation has arisen over many years, and to some extent in the case of London because of the policy of moving people out of London, does my noble friend the Minister not agree that there is a great reversal of previous policies and that this will take considerable time to effect?
Lord Elton: My Lords, it will take time, but the effects will begin to be seen quite early.
Lord Bruce of Donington: My Lords, is the noble Lord not aware that in an answer to his noble friend he placed a figure on the amount of money that the Government have "slung" at the problem, to use his own term? Is it possible, in the fullness of time, that the House may be presented with a report showing the exact activities in which these teams have been engaged with reference to particular areas? Does the noble Lord not agree that that may be helpful to your Lordships' House?
Lord Elton: My Lords, the question which my noble friend asked was about help which we had given to the inner-city areas, and to that there is a numerical answer. The noble Lord asked whether we will publish further details of progress. I am not aware of what plans there are, but I am sure that if they are not published without his instance, he will put down another Question.
Lord Avebury: My Lords, the Minister said that this was an organisational method of spending existing funds in a better way. Can he say how the city action teams will improve on the measures taken up till now for the achievement of racial equality in inner-city schemes?
Lord Elton: My Lords, the function of the teams is to look at what is called in jargon the interface between
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public bodies and to see that they operate in support of and not against each other. That will have benefits for all members of the community who are in receipt of the effect of public money spent on their behalf, including the ethnic minorities.
Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that there is a tendency on the Front Bench opposite to believe that the setting up of teams and units is something which will resolve the enormous problems that they have created over the past five years, especially in terms of unemployment and the more acute problem that exists in the inner cities? Can he say who works on those teams and what co-operation they have with the local authorities, which, as my noble friend said quite clearly, are the basic hope for improving these inner city areas? Can he say a little bit more about? Does it mean anything other than the setting up of a team?
Lord Elton: My Lords, the teams are made up from representatives of the departments which I listed to start with. The London team has met formally three times and has held meetings with private and voluntary sector interests, including business in the community and the NCVO. The noble Lord asked whether we did not have a tendency on this Bench to provide more organisation, which I think he thought was reciprocal to the tendency which I identified on his Front Bench to provide more money. I think that that is fair. We believe that if one is to spend vast amounts of public money it should be done in an organised and effective way and we should make sure that the left hand knows what the right hand is doing. It has not done for many, many years.
Lord Diamond: My Lords, can the noble Lord enlighten us a little as to what is the status of these teams? Are they set up, as it were, comparable to quangos, or is this merely another example of the Government's determination to insert an additional level of local government?
Lord Elton: My Lords, this is not the insertion of an additional level of anything. It is a way to see that the existing levels work better together.
Lord Leatherland: My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord what he meant when he referred to the CCVO?
Lord Elton: My Lords, I think that it would have been the NCVO: the National Council for Voluntary Organisations.

Polio Immunisation: Statistics
2.45 p.m.
Baroness Lane-Fox: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what is the national annual rate and the lowest inner city annual rate of immunisation against polio.
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, it is estimated that in England 84 per cent. of children born in 1981 and 74 per cent. born in 1982 had been immunised by the end of 1983. The difference in those figures reflects the large number of children who were immunised in the second year after birth. Figures are not available on a district basis for children born in 1981 because of boundary changes in that year. For children born in 1982 and vaccinated by the end of 1983, the lowest estimated rate is 46 per cent.
Baroness Lane-Fox: My Lords, may I thank my noble friend for that reply, which is slightly more favourable than had been feared? Can I ask him whether he is aware that many handicapped polio victims can hardly believe that informed parents would wish to deny their children protection from that dread disease? Is he satisfied that parents realise the mortality rate of such an epidemic, as well as its crippling power to render limbs frail and useless, to twist spines and to paralyse breathing muscles, leaving victims to struggle on without the award of any financial damages such as are received for similar injury through accidents at work and in other places? Finally, may I ask him whether in his view those facts are widely enough known by all those who like himself are too young to have experienced the consequences of a polio epidemic?
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for her questions. If I may rather lump the answer together, yes, the Government are very concerned that we get our policy across on a voluntary basis. We try to explain to parents through various means, with booklets and with the help of educationists, the pros and cons to give them an informed choice and present the true picture.
Baroness Jeger: My Lords, when the Minister is able to target areas that are particularly low in response, can he consider the possibility of undertaking a definite educational campaign in those areas? Is it not a fact that school medical officers are not allowed to distribute the sugar lumps but can only tell parents to take their children to their NHS doctor, and there is many a slip between the advice being given and the children being taken to the doctor? Can we not involve the school medical service more actively?
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, we hope to get the children before they get to the education process. The ideal is to try to immunise all children in their first year of birth, with a further booster between the age of 15 and 19 years, as the noble Baroness will be aware. We monitor carefully what the districts are doing. Where low rates are identified those are discussed with the appropriate regional health authority with a view to remedying the situation. In the area that has the lowest rate, which is in a part of London, we have an agreement with the RHA that the situation will be dramatically improved, and we hope that that will be so in the foreseeable future.

London Docklands: Housing
2.49 p.m.
Lord Nugent of Guildford: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the first Question standing in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government how many new houses have been built by the London Dockland Development Corporation, how many have been sold for owner-occupation, and how many of the new occupiers are previous residents in the dockland area.
Lord Elton: My Lords, may I remind my noble friend that the Answer to his Question is as follows? A total of 1,810 units have now been completed on these sites. Of those 1,492 are for owner-occupation Forty-two per cent. of the new occupiers previously lived within the three dockland boroughs.
Lord Elwyn-Jones: My Lords, can the Minister say—
Noble Lords: Order!
Lord Elwyn-Jones: My Lords, I am sorry.
Lord Nugent of Guildford: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble and learned Lord. I am sure he will have his opportunity to speak in a minute. I should like to thank my noble friend for repeating that piece of very good news. Is he aware that the total number of houses built there makes a substantial contribution to London's housing needs? However, is he also aware that the very large number of houses, nearly 1,500, in that particular area which are now owner-occupied is a novelty, an innovation, which is tremendously welcome in that area for the prospects of new businesses, of which there will be so many more? Is he also aware that a large number of dwellings, about 42 per cent., are occupied by local people who have never had a chance to buy their own houses before? In enabling them to do that, the Government have done something for which they are to be most warmly congratulated.
Lord Elton: My Lords, I am grateful for my noble friend's question. When the corporation was established in July 1981, the level of owner-occupation among the total population of its area was 5 per cent. The present level is 15 per cent. The corporation's target is to bring it up to at least 30 per cent., which is, I may add, the average for inner London.
Lord Elwyn-Jones: My Lords, I apologise for former constituency zeal leading me somewhat astray. Can the noble Lord say how much reasonably priced rental accommodation has been made available in the new developments for the citizens of the area? Did not the House of Lords Select Committee stress that the real need was for the provision of publicly rented small houses? Is not that necessity being overlooked in the undoubted desirablility for some owner-occupied accommodation being available?
Lord Elton: My Lords, some 410 units have so far been provided for rent on both the LDCC and privately owned land: 335 units through housing associations, and 75 through council schemes.
Lord Avebury: My Lords, is the noble Lord the Minister aware that some of the most expensive housing in London is that which fronts on to the river? Yet, when one travels downstream from Tower Pier, one sees that most of the premises on the banks of the river are industrial or warehouse in their use. Can the London Docklands Development Corporation not take a significant initiative in making more of the river bank available for housing, whether owner-occupied or rented? Will the Government press it to do so?
Lord Elton: My Lords, of course there are a number of well-known schemes for developing warehouses for residential purposes. However, I shall bring the noble Lord's remarks to notice in the proper quarter.
Lord Nugent of Guildford: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that the major part of these housing schemes is comprised of small, relatively inexpensive houses? Is he aware that I have visited some of them? It is true that I have not been there for about 18 months to two years but their price range was between £20,000 and £30,000. This does not seem to me to be an excessively high price for a house in London. Is my noble friend aware that the noble Lord opposite has quite the wrong impression and should go and have a look at the development?
Lord Elton: My Lords, I see that the noble and learned Lord would like to answer for himself. I am not in a position to complain about the order of business at all; but if I can anticipate him, the corporation intends there to be a proportion of dwellings on each site to be sold at or below £40,000. The proportion varies according to the land value of the site. Where the land value is very high, it is the corporation's policy to arrange equity-sharing schemes wherever possible. This makes a lot of housing affordable.
Lord Elwyn-Jones: My Lords, I shall endeavour not to be taunted by what the noble Lord, Lord Nugent, has said, since I had the honour to represent the area for 29 years. I know it well and still maintain a close connection with it. However, what the noble Lord the Minister has not answered is this. Why has not sufficient regard been paid to the recommendation and view of the Select Committee of this House that the real need was for the provision of publicly-rented accommodation?
Lord Elton: My Lords, I think that the noble and learned Lord's assumptions are open to question. There is a proportion of affordable rented accommodation available. As always, I shall draw his remarks to the attention of my right honourable friend.
Lord Nugent of Guildford: My Lords, on a personal note, is my noble friend aware that my comment was not directed to the noble and learned Lord on the
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Front Bench but was directed to the noble Lord sitting behind him, who had referred to the highly expensive housing, which of course is not typical of this scheme?
Lord Swinfen: My Lords, can my noble friend tell me what proportion of these new houses has been designed specifically for physically disabled people?
Lord Elton: My Lords, not without notice. However, it is a perfectly proper question and I shall put the answer in the Library.

London Docklands: Employment
2.55 p.m.
Lord Nugent of Guildford: My Lords I beg leave to ask the second Question standing in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government how many new jobs have been created in the Dockland area since the advent of the Dockland Development Corporation, and how many are in an enterprise zone.
Lord Elton: My Lords, the corporation was formed in July 1981. Between then and 30th November 1984, 4,129 permanent new jobs had been created in the Docklands areas. Of these 1,302 were located within the enterprise zone. In addition, an average of 1,500 people were employed on construction work at any one time.
Lord Nugent of Guildford: My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that welcome Answer. Is he aware that in that particular part of London, the derelict Dockland area, where there has been a steady rundown of employment now for decades, to get an increase of over 4,000 jobs is really a complete transformation? May I ask whether he is aware that it is immensely to the credit of the Government? Is he also aware that this was done in the teeth of the most fierce opposition from all the local authorities there? Is my noble friend aware that that is all the more to the credit of the Government for going ahead with it?
Lord Elton: My Lords, I am always happy to answer any question to which the answer can only be, "Yes".
Lord Bellwin: My Lords, are the Government aware of this fact and, if so, will my noble friend take steps to ensure that it is more generally publicised? The areas to which my noble friend's questions are directed actually cover an area half the size of Manhattan Island. Is my noble friend aware that it is fast becoming the greatest example of urban regeneration that the world has ever seen? Is he aware that it is a magnificent example of what the private and public sectors can do when working together, to turn areas which were for many years previously sterile and derelict into something which is becoming a great success story all round?
Lord Elton: My Lords, I believe a very great deal of what my noble friend wishes is achieved by the annual report and accounts which are generally available. I shall make further copies available if they are needed.
Lord Graham of Edmonton: My Lords, are any figures available to show how many new jobs are really new? If it is felt satisfactory to produce figures to record the number of employees on enterprises operating in enterprise zones as newly-created jobs, may we be told how many of the jobs are simply transferees from enterprises outside the zones? Those are enterprises such as distribution and warehousing, which have moved into the enterprise zone simply to take advantage of the rate and planning benefits, which of course are real benefits but which are unfair to those operating outside.
Lord Elton: My Lords, the jobs which I referred to as new jobs are new jobs. I am not aware that there is any evidence to show that there is a kind of vacuum being filled in the zone, represented by vacancies around it.
Lord Harmar-Nicholls: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that people would be surprised, and it is inexplicable, that an Opposition which puts unemployment figures on the top of its list should be so sour and lukewarm about the help that the Government have been able to give in that particular field?
Lord Elton: My Lords, I remember from my days in Opposition that one never had much joy from giving credit to the Government of the day.
Lord Northfield: My Lords, since we are talking about development corporations, is it not the case that this side of the House has been fully in favour of these kinds of development corporations throughout the 'sixties and 'seventies, and even the 'eighties? Is not the Docklands corporation another example of showing how the success of the new towns is now being applied in the urban situation in a special form? Since it is now an ongoing success, are the Government giving consideration to applying this success in a purely urban regeneration situation to other parts of Britain that could do with some help from development corporations?
Lord Elton: My Lords, I acknowledge at once the noble Lord's special experience and authority in the matter of new towns. However, it is not for me to answer for the policy of previous Governments. I accept that this is a very major development in existing urban renewal. I do not doubt that we shall continue to profit from the lessons therein. I hope opportunities will arrive for us to do so on a wider scale.
Lord Bruce of Donington: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware, if only for the avoidance of doubt, that we on this side very much support any effort that is made by Her Majesty's Government, whether in collaboration with a development corporation or with a local authority, to increase employment in this country? The fact that they have only just made a modest beginning in this respect, which we hope will be
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extended, does not mean that our full enthusiasm is not behind the efforts by way of Government intervention that have been made.
Lord Elton: My Lords, I look forward with great pleasure to the enthusiasm which the noble Lord promises us in support of our efforts.

Business
3 p.m.
Lord Denham: My Lords, it may be for the convenience of the House if I say that after 3.30 p.m. this afternoon my noble friend Lord Lucas of Chilworth will, with the leave of the House, repeat a Statement that is to be made in another place on British Leyland.
It may also be for the convenience of the House if I announce that the Report stage of the Local Government Bill will be adjourned at approximately 7 p.m. for about one hour, and that during this adjournment the Second Reading of the Rating (Revaluation Rebates) (Scotland) Bill will be taken.

Weights and Measures Bill [H.L.]
The Lord Chancellor (Lord Hailsham of Saint Marylebone): My Lords, I beg to introduce a Bill to consolidate certain enactments relating to weights and measures. I beg to move that this Bill be now read a first time.
Moved, That the Bill now be read a first time.—(The Lord Chancellor.)
On Question, Bill read a first time, and to be printed.

Copyright (Computer Software) Amendment Bill
Read a third time, and passed, and returned to the Commons with amendments.

Local Government Bill
3.2 p.m.
Lord Elton: My Lords, I beg to move that the Bill now be further considered on Report.
Moved, That the Bill be further considered on Report.—(Lord Elton.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
Clause 42 [Reorganisation of functions]:
Lord Mishcon Lord Mishcon moved Amendment No. 80AA:
Page 26, line 22, leave out paragraph (a).
The noble Lord said: My Lords, with the permission of the House, I shall also be speaking to Amendments Nos. 80AD and 80AG. Also, in order to save your Lordships two speeches from me, I shall in the course of my remarks introduce the relevant matters to Amendments Nos. 80AB, 80AE and 80AH.

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Amendment No. 80AB: Page 26, line 25, leave out paragraph (b).
Amendment No. 80AD: Page 26, line 40, after ("functions") insert ("except functions relating to police").
Amendment No. 80AE: Page 26, line 40, after ("functions") insert ("except fire and civil defence functions").
Amendment No. 80AG: Page 27, line 2, leave out paragraph (a).
Amendment No. 80AH: Page 27, line 11, leave out paragraph (b).
I shall be asking for the opinion of the House to be taken (unless, of course, the Minister, with his usual conciliation and adjustability, in fact accepts these amendments) in regard to the police force as distinct from the fire and civil defence authorities.
Lord Elton: My Lords, will the noble Lord help us further? I ticked off what he said. I understand that he is not proposing to speak to Amendments Nos. 80AC or 80AF. The understanding I was given after midday today was that the grouping would run from Amendment No. 80AA to Amendment No. 80AH, and that only Amendments Nos. 80AJ and 80AK, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Birk, were to be taken on their own. Having been given that information very late in the day, it is slightly disturbing to have it altered at this stage.
Lord Mishcon: My Lords, no. If I may follow, as I hope I do, the noble Lord the Minister, my understanding is that my noble friend Lord Carmichael will be speaking to Amendments Nos. 80AF, 80AJ, 80AK and 80AC. I shall be speaking to the rest of the amendments until Amendment No. 80AH. I shall, however, be asking for the opinion of the House to be taken in regard to the police separately from that in regard to fire and civil defence. I believe that the House would wish to take those matters separately, although the case for them may be very much the same.
In talking particularly to Amendment No. 80AA, I hope the House will agree that there is no one who could say that these amendments hit at any of the principles behind the Bill. I believe this to be a submission that not even the noble Lord, Lord Boyd-Carpenter, would make; nor the noble Lord, Lord Harmar-Nicholls, if he were in his place, or the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Alloway, if he was in his. They are the three great proponents, if I may say so, of answering any amendment that they feel can be so appropriately answered by saying that it infringes in some way the principle of the Bill. There is nothing in these amendments that does that.
The amendment, together with its brother amendments, if I may so call them, does what this House always wants to do: that is, accepting for a moment all the aims and principles of the Bill, to see that the Bill properly carries out sensible and reasonable provisions, that it does no harm and that, if possible, it does some good.
These amendments relate to Clause 42 of the Bill. I wonder whether I may be permitted to remind your Lordships of what the clause seeks to do. It seeks to do something to fundamental activities for securing the safety of the state and (if I may use a phrase beloved of the Government and, indeed, fully supported by the Opposition) to matters that deal with law and order and security. All of a sudden in Clause 42, a power is
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given to the Secretary of State which I shall quote. The clause reads:
"The Secretary of State may by order make provision for any of the following purposes".
I concentrate on paragraph (a), which states:
"the constitution of a metropolitan district or of the county of Northumberland as a separate police area with its own police force and police authority".
In other words, this clause seeks to give permission for the fragmentation of a police area to be vested under the Bill in a joint board.
I do not need to remind your Lordships that when the Secretary of State does something by order he does it with the approval of both Houses of Parliament. It is done by affirmative procedure or negative procedure. This is to be done by the affirmative procedure. Your Lordships will know that, certainly in regard to this House, it is almost unprecedented that a vote is taken even on an affirmative Motion to approve an order. Your Lordships will most likely consider that if any case at all is made by the Minister for this long-stop power, one should see, when dealing with the police force, that when an area, happily and satisfactorily developed over the course of years, is to be upset, it should be done by primary legislation and not by an order of the Secretary of State.
Having said that, I should like to quote several passages this afternoon. I do not usually quote so many passages as I shall this afternoon. However, before I indulge in these quotations, perhaps your Lordships will allow me, as the person on these Benches privileged to have the responsibility for home affairs, to beg your Lordships to consider the matter from the point of view of home affairs' responsibility, regardless of party and regardless of what Government may be in power.
With your Lordships' permission, I shall indulge in some quotations in order to see just where we had reached before Clause 42 found its way into this Bill and before your Lordships at the Report stage. As a matter of courtesy, as you would expect of me, I have given the noble Viscount, Lord Whitelaw, notice that I should be quoting what he recently said in an interview which he had with Mr. Barry Loveday of the Birmingham Polytechnic, who was carrying out a certain inquiry.
On 18th January 1985 the noble Viscount was interviewed by Mr. Barry Loveday. We all know the noble Viscount's great experience at the Home Office, quite apart from the other offices of state which he has dignified by holding. The noble Viscount said:
"I would stand up for the Police Authority. I think it is going to be a difficult problem getting the Police Authorities right after the Metropolitan Counties are over. I think this is going to be difficult. I always thought that was one of the difficulties of doing this. It is, and I don't think you would find anyone in the Home Office who does not accept that".
How right is the noble Viscount, Lord Whitelaw, and how chary one must be before dealing with these police areas and police authorities after this Bill has passed. The difficulties facing police authorities are being deliberately increased by the inclusion of the secession option in Clause 42, and it is not too dramatic to say that the Sword of Damocles is now hanging over them because of this residuary power of the Secretary of State.

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Before I deal with the opinion of the chief constables and Ministers, let me first deal with the view of the experts. PA Management Consultants were called in by the six metropolitan counties to examine what might be the position relating to various matters, having regard to this Bill. They issued a report. I should like to quote from their report. It says:
"the Government's proposals to allow districts to opt out of Joint Boards will introduce a strong element of instability into their arrangements … The wish on the part of districts to opt out will colour their attitude to the Boards from the start".
3.15 p.m.
Let me now deal with the Government's own expert views as set out in their White Paper entitled Streamlining the Cities. At paragraph 2.18 of that White Paper the Government stated that they were,
"satisfied that the present general structure of police authorities is working well and that it would not be appropriate now to consider breaking up existing police forces".
In order to save making two long speeches I have said that I would include the fire authorities, but in this speech and for the purpose of your Lordships making a decision, I am emphasising the position of the police force quite separately. Paragraph 2.19 then says:
"the Government believe that the present fire service organisation in the metropolitan counties and in Greater London is broadly appropriate on both operational and cost grounds and the existing brigades will be retained".
Is this a quarrel between the Home Office and the Department of the Environment? If it is, it ought to be resolved in the fact that the noble Lord the Minister in this House who graced the Home Office now graces the Department of the Environment. Therefore, I hope that in some synthesis he can resolve any difficulty there might have been between the departments.
However, in July 1984 the Secretary of State for the Environment issued some more details of the Government's proposals in a document entitled Abolition of the Greater London Council and the Metropolitan County Councils. At paragraph 2.12 the Secretary of State gingerly said:
"The White Paper proposed statutory joint boards for a small number of services: police, fire and public transport in the metropolitan counties, and education and fire in London. But it made clear that the Government would consider on their merits any proposals by individual district councils to provide separate transport services outside the Passenger Transport Executive framework".
Then he went on:
"They have decided that, for the other services, joint boards remain the right solution, although they also announced on May 4th that they would provide for the possibility that individual authorities or groups of authorities could take over responsibility for fire and police services in their areas. The local authorities would be required to satisfy the Home Secretary, once the joint boards had been in operation for a reasonable time (and no application would be entertained before then), that they would administer the services more effectively, and that provision in the rest of the metropolitan area or nationally would not be adversely affected".
Let me explain to your Lordships why I spoke about the opposing views, so it seemed, of the Home Office and the Department of the Environment, which seem to want to throw something for the edification, if not for the appetite, of district councils in regard to this Bill. If The Times is an accurate reporter of events, on 30th July 1984 it published an article which stated:
"Conservative MPs concerned about effective policing have been given private assurances by Mr. Leon Brittan, the Home Secretary,
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that powers which would allow the break up of police authorities in the metropolitan counties will never be used".
If that account, that they would never be used, is accurate, why include the clause in the Bill and why have the Sword of Damocles hanging over the police authorities? If there be an exceptional event, which not even the Home Secretary can foresee, why not deal with such a serious matter by primary legislation, and not by an order?
I shall now deal with the chief constables. Your Lordships usually take chief constables to be people who are not actuated by any self-aggrandisement or by any political considerations, but are experts in their own forces and, by and large, do a national job which we admire so much. What do they have to say? A Parliamentary Question raised by Mr. Eldon Griffiths, on 31st January in another place, as reported at col. 245 of the Official Report, asked:
"How many chief constables have made known to the Home Secretary their views on possible breakaways from the proposed police joint boards?"
I quote from part of his Question. That part was answered by the Minister, Mr. Giles Shaw, in the following terms:
"No chief constable has indicated to my right honourable and learned friend that he favours a change in existing force areas".
I now quote from a gentleman whose name is not unknown to your Lordships, Mr. James Anderton, the chief constable of Greater Manchester, who is not known to be a rebel against the establishment. What he had to say, as quoted in the Manchester Evening News, is something that I find necessary to quote before your Lordships. It is the Manchester Evening News of 10th January, and this is what he said:
"the possibility of the county force being broken up either wholly or in part was 'totally ludicrous'. He added: 'I can't understand why this particular clause is in the Bill'",
and he was referring to the clause that I am dealing with before your Lordships today.
"Serious disruption of the major metropolitan forces in this country at perhaps the most sensitive period in police history in modern times makes no kind of sense at all".
He added that it was,
"nonsense to say that the clause would not be invoked ant then leave it in the Bill".
If I may say so, what a sensible observation and how moderate in its tone!
Then there is Mr. Geoffrey Deare. On his appointment to the post of chief constable of the West Midlands on 22nd February of this year he said that he was,
"opposed to moves to split the force into smaller 'borough style' forces on abolition of the County Council. I think it would be a pity if it happened".
There I am quoting from the Birmingham Post of 23rd February 1985.
I referred to Mr. Loveday of the Birmingham Polytechnic who was asked to conduct an investigation and research on behalf of the Merseyside Police Authority. Perhaps your Lordships will forgive me if I quote from this relevant portion of his report, as follows:
"The provision of this additional clause within the Local Government Bill came as something of a surprise to senior members of the Police Service. There had been an assumption among Chief Constables within the Metropolitan areas that the maximum

15
reorganisation to which their service would be subject would entail the replacement of the existing Police Authority by a Joint Board. It would not be an exaggeration to state that the inclusion of Clause 42 within the Bill has caused some consternation among members of the Police service. It is of interest that the Association of Chief Police Officers was not consulted prior to the decision to add this new power. Even more surprisingly, members of Her Majesty's Inspectorate at the Home Office were not informed either. In addition to the reservations which members of the Inspectorate have expressed as to the viability of Joint Boards must now be added the problems which will arise from de-amalgamating"—
I ask your Lordships' forgiveness for that word—
"some, if not all, of these Metropolitan Forces. One HMI commented that the decision made by the Secretary of State for the Environment concerning the creation of District Forces appeared to him to be 'inexplicable'.
"An immediate issue arising from this is the degree of commitment to the proposed de-amalgamation of Metropolitan Forces within the Home Office itself. It is of interest that the general view held within the Police Department is that there is not justification for de-amalgamation whatsoever. This view was expressed by the Deputy Under-Secretary who stated that he 'saw no need for any increase in the number of police forces' ".
What is almost my last quotation goes back to something said by the noble Viscount, Lord Whitelaw. It is a quotation of 18th January, and I ought to say that I made inquiries, having given notice to the noble Viscount, and in answer to my inquiries I was told that the transcript of the interview with the noble Viscount was sent to him before publication and that he had no amendments to make. It reads:
"In response to an inquiry as to whether the Government would implement the provision of de-amalgamation powers, Lord Whitelaw commented: 'That is certainly not the Government's intention. They (the Districts) may believe that is what will happen in the end. They have always wanted it to happen. I think, myself, that the Home Office will be very much against that. After all, having put all those police forces together, they are hardly going to want to split them up again'".
I wish that the noble Viscount would have consented to add his name to my own support of this amendment, but in a sense he has done so by making these pregnant sentences available to me in pursuance of what I am moving.
Lastly, I should like to turn to the ordinary members of the police forces—not the chief constables. What do they think? Perhaps I may quote from the Police Magazine of March 1985:
"Home Office resistance to what appears to have been originally an initiative of the Secretary of State for the Environment, has most recently been evidenced in correspondence between the Home Secretary and the Police Federation. In a letter to the Secretary of the Police Federation the Home Secretary stated:—'We have stressed that it is not our intention to use these powers in the foreseeable future. No application from a Metropolitan district to have its own police force will even be considered until the Joint Authorities have been in operation for a reasonable time"'.
The article in the Police Magazine of March 1985 continues:
"Further, in the light of the Government's justification for the abolition of the Metropolitan Counties, the Home Secretary concluded his statement by commenting that:— 'I am satisfied that the Metropolitan County Forces are efficient and I see no justification for altering the Force Areas'".
The professionals, the experts, Ministers, past eminent Home Secretaries, all say that this is never likely to happen. I repeat: if, indeed, the Minister wishes to reply that a reserve power is always useful, may I say that we are very careful about the reserve powers we give in an Act of Parliament. If the
16
exception of the rule, the million to one chance, which seems to emerge from the quotations that I have given is the only time when this clause will ever by brought into effect, perhaps may I say that your Lordships would expect that it be done by primary legislation, properly considered after full consultations, and with Parliament knowing what they are doing to the great police force of our country. I beg to move.
Lord Inglewood: My Lords, I am glad to be able to follow the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, who has close relations with the police. He has had association with the police in the same sort of way that I have had; that is, close association with the police for a long time. Together we should be able to make a strong case.
My name appears on three amendments compared to a much longer list of his, but I shall try to keep my few words to these three amendments and I shall try to avoid repeating what the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, has already said so clearly.
I think both he and I can agree on the first thing that comes to mind; and that is that too much power is likely to be in the hands of the Home Secretary. The Bill could bring big changes in our police. There may be cases come forward with poor reason, subject, perhaps, to political pressures, but when one considers police business it is always necessary to look ahead.
3.30 p.m.
What distresses me particularly is that we have not had a public inquiry before any decision, such as we could see, with the splitting of a metropolitan district from a metropolitan county. In practice the Minister's powers seem almost unlimited. The clause appears to be drafted both ways. It is possible for a district to break away from a metropolitan county, while it is possible for there to be amalgamation under the powers in the Bill. These might be parochial matters or there might be decisions which would have some effect throughout the country, and still there would be no proper inquiry.
Reference has been made to the constitutional issue which the noble Lord has been speaking about. There is another and practical side. We live in a world where police efficiency depends to some extent on the size of the force. However, that happens not in this country alone. The 1964 Act and later provisions were drafted with this trend in view. It would surely be foolish now to risk fragmenting larger forces against this trend, which cannot be ignored or overlooked.
I make no great claims to professional experience, but I have spent some time with police forces, probably more abroad than at home. I have tried hard to learn, to get into their minds and to try to live in their world, because it is a special world. In Britain, I am sure there is no feeling against the idea of a national force. But where could the Home Secretary's powers lead under the Bill? We might find ourselves well on the road to a single national force.
I have not yet heard any expression of the view or preference of the police authorities. It is strange that in the police world the main control has been in the hands of those who move in a grey area which is very imprecise. First, we have the authority of the Home Secretary, which is difficult to grasp; then we have

17
chief constables, who tend to seek more power; then we have the police authorities, which do not know what their own position is. I have spoken to many of them. In the near future we must think clearly ahead as to how we would like this control. We do not now want to bring arrangements into being under this Bill which could make it more difficult to work out. It would be best to leave well alone for the time being and, while there is no clear evidence of any breakaway, let us leave the words out of the Bill that we are considering.
Lord Elton: My Lords, I am anxious to find the right speech on this occasion! Clause 42, to which these amendments are addressed, provides for the reorganisation of the functions for the joint authorities to be set up under Part IV. I shall from time to time refer to transport issues because they are embedded in the workings of the clause. I want to start by ensuring that your Lordships are familiar with the way the clause works as now drafted, because it is to changing that that the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, with the assistance of my noble friend Lord Inglewood, has addressed himself, and it is proper so to do.
Lord Mishcon: My Lords, before the Minister continues, I wonder whether he would help me in the same way as I was trying to help him in having this matter dealt with tidily. What I thought was (I should love him to agree or disagree) that the opinion of the House, and therefore, the debate, ought to be limited first to the police, then to fire and then to transport. Otherwise we shall have speeches on transport, on fire and civil defence which will muddy the whole issue. To be frank, I regard the police as possibly the most important, although I do not in any way diminish the importance of civil defence, fire and transport. However, they are separate issues and I therefore do not want them to be muddied by a mixed debate, as I said. In my speech I tried to talk only about the police and I wonder whether the noble Lord the Minister may agree that it is proper to do the same in his.
Lord Elton: My Lords, I think I ought to take your Lordships a little into my confidence about the background to this. I was not surprised when at the close of business on Friday, which was about seven or eight o'clock at night, it was not possible to get any indication of the groupings which noble Lords opposite wished for these amendments. I was not altogether surprised when I telephoned the usual channels on Saturday to get the same response. I was a little surprised when at nine o'clock, ten o'clock, eleven o'clock, half past eleven and at twelve o'clock today I could still get no groupings from the usual channels. When I thankfully received the groupings they were, as I stated at the beginning of this debate, that all the amendments down to Amendment No. 80AH were to be taken together and Amendments Nos. 80AJ and 80AK were to be taken separately. I was content with that and it was on that basis that I put my remarks together.
I have endeavoured to mark out in my speech the passages which refer exclusively to the police, those which refer to fire and civil defence and those which refer to transport. It is my honest intention to try to
18
follow the intentions of the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, but I must say that it would have been useful it I could have known them sooner through the usual channels. I do not propose to make a great song and dance about this or score any runs off it. I do not ask your Lordships to give me any credit for coping with a difficult situation. I merely say that I shall do my best, but the Bill is constructed with these three facets interwoven and when I deal with the way the Bill works I shall refer to transport, fire and civil defence. But they will not be germane to my arguments and I am perfectly prepared to look at the police alone, which is what the noble Lord wishes me to do.
Lord Mishcon: My Lords, I interrupt for the very last time, but I am trying to get things clear for the future. I want to make it abundantly clear that not over the weekend when I was abroad but certainly not in the course of this morning did I receive any message about the groupings—this is, after all, an amendment to which my name is attached as is the name of the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood—but if the noble Lord the Minister had indulged in the often more convenient channels of a personal call to me I should have told him at any time this morning that the police were being taken separately from civil defence and fire and that transport was also being taken separately. I regret that we were not in touch.
Lord Elton: My Lords, I always regret an opportunity missed to speak to the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, particularly outside the Chamber, where we more frequently agree than we do inside it. The amendments to which I refer carried also the names of my noble friend, the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, and the noble Lord, Lord Carmichael of Kelvingrove, and, until we discovered that they were not a part of this, there were amendments in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Birk. It is the function of the usual channels on the noble Lord's side of the House to make the communications which the noble Lord says were not made and not for the usual channels, or indeed the unusual channels on this side of the House, to volunteer and, as I always do when I interfere in other people's business, get things in a muddle. We seem to have done it without my assistance on this occasion.
Having said what I intended to say and why I am going to say it, I shall proceed to say it. Clause 42, to which all these amendments are addressed, provides for the reorganisation of the functions of the joint authorities that are to be set up under Part IV. The joint authority with which the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, is particularly concerned is that for the police. The other two dealt with in the clause are for the fire service and civil defence, which now have one authority, and for passenger transport. The noble Lord's interest in the police is shared by my noble friend Lord Inglewood, but not the other two.
Broadly, the first subsection of the clause enables the appropriate Secretary of State to make an order withdrawing any district from the police authority or any borough or district from the fire authority and constituting it a separate police or fire authority in its own right. Under paragraph (c)he could also withdraw a district from the passenger transport area— but I shall leap over that passage.

19
The second subsection of Clause 42 provides for the Secretary of State, again by order, to arrange for the re-combination of seceding districts into new police or fire authorities where that is appropriate, or for them to amalgamate with other existing police authorities. The Bill as at present drafted therefore permits the Secretary of State to take one of four courses in respect of the police authorities.
The first he can take is what I would call the normal one. It consists of leaving things as they are or rather as, after abolition, they will be. The second is to take one district out of the joint authority on its own and leave it on its own as a separate authority in its own right. The third is to take two or more districts out of the set and to set them up together as a new joint authority. The fourth and final course is to take one or more districts out of the set and put them straight in with the existing shire county police authority next door.
Subsection (3) requires the Secretary of State to consult with the parties to any such reorganisation before he makes an order to do any of the things that I have described, whether they relate to the police or to another authority.
What I have so far described are the provisions of the Bill as it is drafted. Before I deal with the changes that noble Lords opposite want to make in these provisions, I ought to state why we put them in in the first place. It could be called an act of humility or common sense because what we have done is to look at the recent history of local government in this country and to learn an important lesson from it. It is a lesson, I should add, that nobody in the world but Ministers and politicians would have to learn because everybody else has known it all along.
It is simply this. No matter how right what we do may seem to us now, it is almost certain that it will not remain the best arrangement for ever. Later, if not sooner, we shall need to make changes. That has been proved by the reorganisation of 1965 and proved again by the reorganisation of 1974. If the changes needed later prove to be fundamental or sweeping, then clearly they must be made (as the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, suggests that these should be made) by primary legislation. But primary legislation is slow and expensive when it can be obtained, and very often there is a long wait for it. Often, it also calls into question by politicans much larger areas than actually require attention; and this alone curbs the enthusiasm of governments to embark upon it.
There ought therefore to be in the Bill provision for change of lesser matters that will otherwise have to remain unaltered long after they have been proved to be unsatisfactory. I am speaking now of things not big enough for statute but too big for the Secretary of State to do, as it were, at will. There must still be safeguards in the form both of consultation and of parliamentary procedure but not full-blown legislation.
It seems to us that the pattern of allocation of functions between grouped local authorities falls into exactly this category of change and that the consultative duty and the affirmative procedure in both Houses of Parliament provide exactly those safeguards. I repeat that we would be very arrogant if
20
we now were to assume that we have all these arrangements exactly right already, and we would be very optimistic if we assumed that the minute we or our successors thought that they were wrong, time would be available for primary legislation to right them.
But that is what Amendments Nos. 80AA to 80AH would in effect be saying; and I address myself only to those on Lord Mishcon's list. Amendment No. 80AA strikes clean out of the Bill the Secretary of State's power to set up a single district as a police authority on its own; and Amendment No. 80AG strikes clean out of the Bill both his power to take two or more districts out of a joint authority and form them into a new joint authority by themselves and his power to take a single district from a joint authority and put it with an adjacent one.
I ask your Lordships—and in particular I ask my noble friend Lord Inglewood, who wishes to help the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, in this matter and who has such long and creditable police service experience, as I very well know from conversations I had with him on a number of occasions when I held office in the Home Office—to ask whether you are absolutely, 100 per cent., rock-bottom, solid certain that we have got these groupings right—not just for now, as I for one believe we have, but for all time or, at least, for the entire life of this legislation.
Indeed, did not the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, say a great deal on his own behalf and even not a little on behalf of my noble friend Lord Whitelaw to the effect that it is difficult to get these arrangements right even to start with? The noble Lord quoted my noble friend. And talking of quotations reminds me that he referred to, and put some weight on, the Loveday Birmingham Polytechnic Report. Obviously, I cannot comment extensively on a report which has only just been sent to the Home Office for information but it may be of interest that the chief constable of Merseyside has told us that he is seeking legal advice on the possibility of taking action over some of the statements in the report. Obviously, I can say no more than that—
3.45 p.m.
Lord Mishcon: My Lords, before the noble Lord continues, I was very careful to say—and I am sure that he heard me—that I would not quote what the noble Viscount, Lord Whitelaw, had said without two precautions: first of all, a courtesy call to his office to say that I would be quoting from this report of what he was supposed to have said; and, secondly, that I obtained information that the transcript of the interview was sent to the noble Viscount before publication for any observations that he had to make. My report is that he had no such observations. Since I am only relying upon the accuracy of the report for the quotations of what the noble Viscount had to say, I do not think that the Minister ought to take any more joy out of referring to the fact that somebody or other may be taking certain proceedings against the gentleman who edited or compiled that report.
Lord Elton: My Lords, I rather think that the noble Lord will find that we are at cross-purposes when he reads Hansard. I have no quarrel with the noble Lord's wish to quote my noble friend. Indeed, my noble friend has no quarrel and, as the noble Lord has said, he has accurately quoted a transcript which my

21
noble friend had no wish to correct. However, I am heartened in saying that and would not have said it if it did not strengthen my argument which is that we cannot be confident that we get these things immediately right and that we ought to have some means of putting them right if we prove not to have got them right after they have been running for a while.
Lord Inglewood: My Lords, might I ask my noble friend one question if he will allow me? Can he confirm that the Government are doing their best to bring the police and the public really close together? In the times in which we are living it is very important that that should happen; and there is a terrible tendency that their ways should part.
Lord Elton: My Lords, I can confirm that, with the close personal experience of the way in which community policing was developing when I was at the Home Office and is continuing to develop. I would endorse absolutely my noble friend's thesis which underlies what he has said in his question; that policing is something which ought to come from the community and not be imposed upon it. Once you have community policing, you have an orderly public. But I am not quite certain how that knits into the matters that we are discussing now because plainly that will remain the case whatever the size of the police authority. Indeed, I suppose that there are those who would suggest that a smaller authority would be closer to the public and that there might be something to be said for reducing the size of the authorities which the noble Lord asks us to leave intact unless we have primary legislation to enable us to change them.
Since we are on the subject of the Home Office position, the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, suggested that there was a divergence of view between the Home Office and the Department of the Environment, or more particularly between my respective right honourable friends who stand at the head of each. I am glad to reassure him that we are in fact at one; and so are they. We both believe that there ought to be arrangements for secession, and we both hold that they should be used only in a way that will not harm, and which ought actually to benefit, the service in question.
May I also reassure the noble Lord on another point, which he could with advantage pass on to his senior friends in the police force? My right honourable friend the Home Secretary has said, I confirm, publicly as well as privately, that he would not consider applications to secede until existing forces had been in operation for a reasonable time after abolition. That he has said both in public and private, and, indeed, in my hearing. But what he has not said in any of those contexts is that he will never do so, and that none of his successors will do so, either. The noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, accurately predicted that I would say this, that a reserve power is often very useful—and a reserve power is indeed what this is.
I then come to the difficulty of extracting the telling points that I wish to make about the police from the telling points I wish to make on other subjects which the noble Lord denies me. I have in fact covered the ground in some detail. I am convinced that it is right to provide flexibility, as this clause does, for the
22
boroughs and districts to take over, in the future, responsibility for functions which, on abolition, will be transferred to joint authorities. I believe the safeguards which already exist to protect the interests of the other authorities involved, and of the services themselves, are adequate in the Bill. Your Lordships know that the Secretary of State would never contemplate allowing secession unless he was thoroughly convinced that the services offered would be as good as or better than those under the joint authorities. Your Lordships will know that neither would the Secretary of State contemplate allowing secession unless he was thoroughly convinced that the new arrangements will be economic and sound. If the Secretary of State decided in favour of secession it would not he who had the final word: it would be Parliament.
We are proceeding by the affirmative procedure. This is not something which a Secretary of State could do, by any sleight of hand or stretch of the imagination, in private. It is something which would, by the nature of the scope of the operation, be very public, which would be tabled as an order before it was debated in both Houses. I know that your Lordships feel—and frequently say—that the affirmative procedure is a weak one because your Lordships do not in fact amend an order. But your Lordships have been over this ground with the Prevention of Terrorism (Temporary Provisions) Act, as it now is, very carefully, and have pronounced yourselves satisfied with the procedure for that very delicate purpose on a suggestion brought in by the noble Lord, Lord Henderson, and I think consented to by the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon. It is therefore not the case that Parliament is powerless. It is not the case that Parliament would be deceived. It is the case that your Lordships would have a voice in this decision. I ask your Lordships therefore to bear that in mind before coming to a conclusion on this matter. I shall speak at the end of the debate very briefly. I think I should now ask your Lordships to bear that in mind while making your own views known.
Lord Jacques: My Lords, when the Minister tells us that we cannot be sure that we have got it right, surely he must realise that that applies to almost every Bill that comes before this House. It does not apply only to this Bill or to a few Bills; it applies to almost every Bill. We cannot be sure that we have got it right, and because we cannot be sure, have we to put reserve powers in every Bill so that it can be changed quickly? Surely this is nonsense. This is a phoney argument. The Minister must know that if there is a case for avoiding reserve powers it must be where it concernss the organisation of the police. That is something which ought to be done by primary legislation. I have never seen such a poor case put to the House against any particular amendment.
Lord Mishcon: My Lords, I regard that as a most welcome introduction to my closing remarks. I wonder whether I may summarise the case in literally a couple of minutes before I ask your Lordships to decide. First, this is not a Motion that comes to your Lordships' House, as the noble Lord the Minister at one time inferred in only one sentence, from these Benches opposite to the noble Lord the Minister This

23
is something which is essentially non-political; which has nothing at all to do—and I repeat this—with the principles behind this Bill; and where the support is available of the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, to whose co-operation with and knowledge of the police force the noble Lord the Minister bore testimony.
I want to make these few points. First, it is debatable that where your Lordships are not perfectly sure that you have the solution for all time it may be a sensible thing to put in a reserve power. My noble friend Lord Jacques intimated to the House very correctly that if one wanted to do that in regard to every measure that one passed it would not only make the particular Bill most cumbersome but would also give untold power to a Secretary of State to do anything he liked in order to upset legislation later on.
But let us take for granted for one moment that that point is a valid point. What your Lordships have to do is to set against what the noble Lord the Minister himself admits is a most unlikely situation the apprehension of police forces throughout the country as to the security of their position and their areas because of this reserve power. Your Lordships have to put against it, too—and this is such an essential point—the fact that one will get district councils off on the wrong foot the moment that this Bill becomes an Act of Parliament in regard to their relationships with the joint boards which have police powers, because they will be very conscious of this Clause 42, very conscious of the fact that it may be better if they looked after their own—the noble Lord the Minister wants to intervene.
Lord Elton: My Lords, I had intended to wait until the end of the sentence, but I was going to ask the noble Lord whether he is aware that the powers already exist in the Police Act 1964 and the Fire Services Act 1947 for my right honourable friend the Home Secretary to amalgamate or combine police and fire authorities. They do not seem to have been acting as a Sword of Damocles since 1964.
Lord Mishcon: My Lords, the noble Lord the Minister is not unaware of the fact which I shall now recite to him; namely, that in this Bill the passing over to the joint boards is something which the police forces of this country have to swallow. It is indigestible enough as it is, without the noble Lord making it a matter of the gravest possible duodenal ulcer by introducing Clause 42 into this Bill.
I should like to continue my point if I may, but, as soon as I have finished it I shall readily give way to the noble Lord the Minister, who is always courteous enough to give way to me. What I am saying is that it is starting the district councils off on the wrong foot. They will be encouraged to take a local partisan view on the basis that all they have to do is to show that it is desirable for there to be a secession to the district council police powers and they will face the joint boards in that way, when I and, I believe, your Lordships would want them to face the situation that there is a vesting with the same areas in the joint boards.
24
The third and last point concerns the disadvantages as against the possible reserve power advantage. What is the difficulty if there occurs that million-to-one chance of primary legislation? The noble Lord the Minister indicates that this is a cumbersome procedure which may take some time. It will be a very short Bill. It will be a Bill after consultation, the noble Lord the Minister says, with all the parties concerned. It will be a Bill which will follow upon the Home Secretary deciding that great advantages will inure if this change is made. Can your Lordships not envisage in any such instance that there will be facilities afforded to both Houses of Parliament if, indeed, there is any urgency in the matter? If the present siting of and confinement to these areas has stood the test of some time, is it likely to be a matter of so much urgency that the normal courses of primary legislation cannot take place? I repeat, my Lords, that the police forces of this country regard it as the Sword of Damocles. The district councils will regard it as affording the possibility of having the wrong relationship with the joint boards.
4 p.m.
Lastly, I say this: really, is The Times inaccurate and is the Home Secretary wrongly quoted, or have the Conservative Members of Parliament been misled? I repeat that The Times, on 30th July 1984, said:
"Conservative MPs concerned about effective policing have been given private assurances by Mr. Leon Brittan the Home Secretary that powers which would allow the break-up of police authorities in the metropolitan counties will never by used".
Take it for granted, my Lords, that that is inaccurate and that Mr. Brittan instead said, "unlikely ever to be used". Are not the disadvantages which I have recited to your Lordships greater than the advantage of having a possible reserve power? I ask for the opinion of your Lordships—
Lord Elton: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, has very kindly said that he would yield. He has managed to deprive me of my winding-up speech and so I think I should exploit that courtesy. To start with, perhaps I may reply to the question he asked me, which may have been an oratorical one, by saying that the account I gave of the conversations, speeches and writings of my right honourable friend the Home Secretary was accurate and that he has never used the word "never".
The noble Lord prompted me to come to my feet when he started talking about both duodenal ulcers and the Sword of Damocles—a very uncomfortable condition for a local authority to be in. But why has the Thames Valley police force managed to get on so well when it is a combined police authority with exactly this possibility hanging over it? Why have the other six combined police forces managed to operate so well? This must not become a speech; it is an intervention. However, your Lordships will see the tendency of my argument which is that the noble Lord is wrong and that the Government are right.
Lord Mishcon: My Lords, it is a tendency that I have noticed the noble Lord the Minister has had very often. But before he accuses me of using a mixed methaphor, perhaps I may tell him that there are

25
many doctors who would agree with me that if you have a Sword of Damocles hanging over your head, you are likely to get a duodenal ulcer. My last response to him before I sit down is this. He must not quote what has happened in regard to past legislation where there have been no joint boards and where the police did not have to get used to joint boards. This is very new legislation in regard to the police. I want them to have, not just from these Benches, but from all your Lordships' Benches, the security of knowing that paragraph (a) is not in the Bill and that they are secure in their boundaries and in the efficiency that is achieved as a result of having those boundaries. I hope that your Lordships will accordingly vote for this amendment.
4.5 p.m.
On Question, Whether the said amendment (No. 80AA) shall be agreed to?
Their Lordships divided: Contents, 102; Not-Contents, 124.

DIVISION NO. 1

CONTENTS

Amherst, E.

Jeger, B.

Ardwick, L.

Jenkins of Putney, L.

Aylestone, L.

John-Mackie, L.

Bacon, B.

Kilmarnock, L.

Banks, L.

Kinloss, Ly.

Beaumont of Whitley, L.

Leatherland, L.

Beswick, L.

Listowel, E.

Birk, B.

Llewelyn-Davies of Hastoe, B

Blyton, L.

Lovell-Davis, L.

Boothby, L.

McNair, L.

Bottomley, L.

Mayhew, L.

Briginshaw, L.

Melchett, L.

Brockway, L.

Milford, L.

Bruce of Donington, L.

Mishcon, L.

Buckmaster, V.

Monson, L.

Burton of Coventry, B.

Moran, L.

Campbell of Eskan, L.

Morton of Shuna, L.

Carmichael of Kelvingrove, L.

Mulley, L.

Cledwyn of Penrhos, L.

Northfield, L.

Collison, L.

Oram, L.

Crawshaw of Aintree, L.

Parry, L.

Darcy (de Knayth), B.

Phillips, B.

David, B.

Ponsonby of Shulbrede, L. [Teller.]

Davies of Leek, L.

Davies of Penrhys, L.

Porritt, L.

Dean of Beswick, L.

Rathcreedan, L.

Denington, B.

Reilly, L.

Diamond, L.

Ritchie of Dundee, L.

Donaldson of Kingsbridge, L.

Roberthall, L.

Elwyn-Jones, L.

Rochester, Bp.

Evans of Claughton, L.

Rochester, L.

Ewart-Biggs, B.

Ross of Marnock, L.

Ezra, L.

Serota, B.

Faithfull, B.

Shaughnessy, L.

Falkland, V.

Shinwell, L.

Fisher of Rednal, B.

Simon, V.

Fitt, L.

Somers, L.

Gaitskell, B.

Stallard, L.

Gallacher, L.

Stamp, L.

Galpern, L.

Stewart of Fulham, L.

Gladwyn, L.

Stoddart of Swindon, L.

Graham of Edmonton, L.

Strabolgi, L.

Hampton, L.

Strauss, L.

Hanworth, V.

Taylor of Blackburn, L.

Hayter, L.

Taylor of Mansfield, L.

Henderson of Brompton, L.

Tordoff, L.

Houghton of Sowerby, L.

Wallace of Coslany, L.

Howie of Troon, L.

Walston, L.

Ingleby, V.

White, B.

Inglewood, L. [Teller.]

Wilson of Langside, L.

Irving of Dartford, L.

Wootton of Abinger, B.

Jacques, L.

26

NOT-CONTENTS

Alexander of Tunis, E.

Kinnaird, L.

Allerton, L.

Kitchener, E.

Ampthill, L.

Lane-Fox, B.

Arran, E.

Lauderdale, E.

Atholl, D.

Long, V.

Belhaven and Stenton, L.

Lucas of Chilworth, L.

Bellwin, L.

Luke, L.

Beloff, L.

Lyell, L.

Belstead, L.

McAlpine of Moffat, L.

Bessborough, E.

McFadzean, L.

Boyd-Carpenter, L.

Macleod of Borve, B.

Brabazon of Tara, L.

Malmesbury, E.

Caccia, L.

Margadale, L.

Cairns, E.

Marley, L.

Caithness, E.

Maude of Stratford-upon-Avon, L.

Cameron of Lochbroom, L.

Merrivale, L.

Campbell of Alloway, L.

Middleton, L.

Campbell of Croy, L.

Montgomery of Alamein, V.

Cathcart, E.

Mottistone, L.

Cayzer, L.

Mowbray and Stourton, L.

Constantine of Stanmore, L.

Murton of Lindisfarne, L.

Cottesloe, L.

Newall, L.

Cowley, E.

Nugent of Guildford, L.

Cox, B.

O'Brien of Lothbury, L.

Craigton, L.

Orr-Eving, L.

Cranbrook, E.

Portland, D.

Croft, L.

Radnor, E.

Cullen of Ashbourne, L.

Reigate, L.

Davidson, V.

Renton, L.

De Frevne, L.

Renwick, L.

Denham, L. [Teller.]

Rodney, L.

Digby, L.

Romney, E.

Dormer, L.

St. Aldwyn, E.

Eccles, V.

St. Davids, V.

Eden of Winton, L.

Sandford, L.

Effingham, E.

Savile, L.

Ellenborough, L.

Seebohm, L.

Elliott of Moroeth L.

Sempill, Ly.

Elton, L.

Skelmersdale, L.

Fanshawe of Richmond, L.

Stodart of Leaston, L.

Ferrers, E.

Strathcona and Mount Royal, L.

Fortescue, E.

Sudeley, L.

Fraser of Kilmorack, L.

Swansea, L.

Gardner of Parkes, B.

Swinton, E. [Teller.]

Gibson-Watt, L.

Terrington, L.

Glanusk, L.

Teviot, L.

Glenarthur, L.

Thomas of Swynnerton, L.

Gorell, L.

Thomeycroft, L.

Gowrie, E.

Tranmire, L.

Gray, L.

Trefgarne, L.

Gray of Contin, L.

Trenchard, V.

Grimthorpe, L.

Vaux of Harrowden, L.

Hailsham of Saint Marylebone, L.

Vickers, B.

Halsbury, E.

Vivian, L.

Harmar-Nicholls, L.

Westbury, L.

Harris of High Cross, L.

Whitelaw, V.

Hertford, M.

Wise, L.

Hives, L.

Wynford, L.

Home of the Hirsel, L.

Young, B.

Hooper, B.

Hylton-Foster, B.

Kaberry of Adel, L.

Zouche of Haryngworth, L.

Kilmany, L.

Resolved in the negative, and amendment disagreed to accordingly.
[Amendment No. 80AB not moved.]

British Leyland 1985 Corporate Plan
4.14 p.m.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Trade and Industry (Lord Lucas of Chilworth): My Lords, for the convenience of your Lordships and with the permission of the House, I

27
shall repeat a Statement on the British Leyland 1985 Corporate Plan, which is now being made by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry. The Statement is as follows:
"With permission, Mr. Speaker, I shall make a Statement on the British Leyland 1985 Corporate Plan. I am making available in the Library of the House and in the Vote Office a report by British Leyland on its recent performance and details of the 1985 Corporate Plan.
"The Company submitted its corporate plan in December 1984, at the end of a year in which British Leyland's recovery had been slowed by continuing over-capacity and highly competitive conditions in most of British Leyland's markets. There has however been a significant improvement in performance in the first part of this year.
"In March the company put to us outline proposals for further collaboration between Austin Rover and the Honda Motor Company, extending the successful collaboration on the Acclaim, Rover 200 series and XX executive car project. The central element was a joint design and development programme on a further new car, embodying the best technology of both companies. It was also proposed that ARG would manufacture in the United Kingdom the Honda version of the new vehicle and Honda would manufacture in Japan for ARG. British Leyland would also manufacture other Honda models for European sale. Honda also said it was considering setting up its own engine manufacturing plant in Swindon to supply engines for these Honda vehicles and the Rover 213 which currently uses an imported engine.
"The Government welcomed these negotiations and have given their approval in principle to these proposals, which, now also agreed in principle between Honda and British Leyland, provide for collaboration on the new model, the manufacture of certain other cars for Honda by British Leyland and Honda's further consideration of the engine factory at Swindon.
"The Government undertook with the company an examination of both the basic corporate plan and possible variants. In the light of this, the Government have given approval to the plan as amended by British Leyland to incorporate the substance of the collaborative proposals.
"As the House knows, one of the British Leyland board's objectives is to return the business to the private sector as soon as practical. Further steps towards this objective are under consideration, and I will keep the House informed of progress".
My Lords, that ends the Statement.
Lord Bruce of Donington: My Lords, we on this side of the House should like to thank the noble Lord for the Statement that he has been kind enough to repeat. It is of course a little early for us to comment on the British Leyland 1985 Corporate Plan and its report for 1984 because these have only just been made available and they will take some time to study. One observes in the Statement that the Government have welcomed the negotiations and given approval in principle. This
28
term "in principle" occurs on two occasions. Would the noble Lord be kind enough to indicate what exactly agreement "in principle" means? Does the use of the term mean that the Government are entitled, on more detailed examination, to take a different view from the one they take at the moment?
It occurs to us on this side of the House that there has been no mention at all, despite figures that have been bandied about in sections of the press, of the financial commitments, if any, that result from the approval by the Government of the corporate plan. The Statement mentions—and then I think skates over a little—the fact that the Government considered a number of variants to the plan. Perhaps the noble Lord will confirm that one of these was a suggestion which emanated from No. 10, that British Leyland should be required to install engines manufactured by Honda. It may be only a rumour; but in the light of that, one should like the assurance of the noble Lord that, despite the intention of Honda to set up a manufacturing plant in Swindon—and one welcomes any endeavour to set up manufacturing capacity in Swindon—British Leyland will, in all circumstances, retain its responsibility for engine manufacture, which indeed is a key aspect of the car manufacturing industry in the United Kingdom. We on this side of the House are extremely nervous of abandoning to any foreign company, or any company from overseas, responsibility for making engines for British cars, leaving the car industry here in the position of being purely an assembly operation. We on this side of the House regard the retention of an engine manufacturing capacity in this country as being one of the basic essentials for the retention of the integrity of the British motor-car industry.
From what one has been able to gather from a very brief glance at the 1985 corporate plan and its supporting documents, one gathers that there has been a decline in the demand for buses in the United Kingdom. Will the noble Lord take it on board that one of the principle causes for the decline in the prospective demand for buses has been the Government's ridiculous proposals for deregulation, which have spread considerable uncertainty in the whole of the transport industry? We should like to consider further details of the 1985 corporate plan, as and when we have had an opportunity of examining it. But, in the meantime, we should be pleased to have the Government's assurance of their firm intention, come what may, that a car manufacturing industry will be fully maintained in this country in the national interest.
Lord Diamond: My Lords, I should like to thank the Government for continuing the practice of issuing a Statement of this kind to accompany the publication of an important and detailed document. It is a wise practice and it enables us the better to read the document in question. Of course, it means that those of us who have to deal with a Statement and have had no time to read the accompanying document must be a little guarded in what we say. I am grateful, also, to the Minister for repeating the Statement. It is in that context that we on these Benches give a guarded welcome to the Statement, especially the reference to Swindon where, undoubtedly, those who are about to

29
become unemployed in railway manufacturing will look forward to employment in engine manufacturing.
But, as has already been said, the Statement is curiously silent on finance—a most important aspect. Do I understand the position correctly, that the undrawn balance of agreed finance amounting to £110 million has been decided to be withdrawn by agreement between the Government and BL; that is to say, that BL have forgone their right—not their wish—to draw £110 million, which the Government had previously undertaken to provide by way of funds, and that no further funding is contemplated?
In that connection, therefore, one should like to know to what extent the company have been leaned on, if I may use a political expression, in order that this, so far as the Government are concerned, satisfactory conclusion could be arrived at. In short, have their plans been altered in order to enable them not to ask for the £110 million to which they were entitled, and, in particular, has this any relevance to the manufacture of the Metro replacement engine to which a good deal of publicity has recently been directed?
The Statement refers a great deal to partnership with Honda. One understands that and one also understands that it is a continuing partnership. What we on these Benches should like to ask the Government is whether inquiries have been made and consideration given to partnership with manufacturers within the Community. It seems to us a little odd, unless the commercial circumstances so compel it, that we should be looking only to far eastern horizons and not at all to European horizons in order to develop our partnership, which may be a very good thing for both partners.
The final question which I should like to ask is whether, having regard to the statement both in the report and in the Government's Statement, that one of the BL board's objectives is to return the business to the private sector as soon as practicable, the Government are satisfied that that is the best motivation for a board which is concerned to bring success to a company working in the public sector.
Lord Seebohm: My Lords, can the noble Lord, Lord Lucas—
Noble Lords: Order!
4.30 p.m.
Lord Lucas of Chilworth: My Lords, I wonder whether I may, in conformity with our usual practice, answer the main Opposition speakers' comments, and in doing so perhaps I may thank them both for their reception of this important Statement. First, I wish to deal with the points made with regard to the financial arrangements and say that British Leyland themselves have not asked for any additional moneys and are anticipating that their forward investment programme, which has been agreed with the Government, can be funded from self-generated profits.
In so far as their borrowings are concerned, as in earlier years, there have been discussions with the Government on British Leyland's borrowings, and in these discussions the Government have reached agreement with British Leyland on the likely pattern of
30
their future borrowings. Agreement was also reached on the treatment of receipts from the privatisation; whether British Leyland would have the whole benefit in cash or whether their borrowings would be reduced. I am thinking particularly in terms of the widely publicised privatisation of Unipart.
The Government will carefully monitor all aspects of British Leyland's performance, including borrowings. If it becomes clear that British Leyland would want to deviate from the agreed pattern, of course the company would be talking to the Government. The board and the Government agreed last year, as has been made clear in the company's annual report, that the company would not ask for the £110 million to which the noble Lord, Lord Diamond, has specifically referred. That was the amount outstanding from sums previously indicated as being available.
So far as the engines are concerned, as your Lordships will probably know, some of the models that British Leyland market are, in fact, powered by foreign engines, notably the diesel engine in their motor-cars. But the K-series engine, which ARG have been developing for some time, will continue. On the subject of engines, whether or not Honda proceed with their plans to build an engine plant at Swindon remains to be seen. If they do proceed, we expect that Honda would include in that engine build programme a substantial local content. With regard to whether those engines would then be fitted into cars produced at British Leyland's factories, for whichever market they may be produced, we would be expecting substantial local content for those cars, and an engine built in Swindon would make a contribution there.
With regard to the decline in Leyland bus business, I cannot accept that the uncertainty in the United Kingdom and the European bus market is in any way a reflection of the Government's current proposals on bus deregulation. There is a decline in both truck and bus usage across Europe, and indeed across the world. British Leyland, sadly, have suffered their share of that decline.
The Government have a firm intention to maintain car manufacturing in this country. That is why we welcome the collaborative arrangements that have been made with Honda. The noble Lord, Lord Diamond, asked why British Leyland make collborative arrangements with a company from the Far East. The only thing I really need say here is that such arrangements are made between two willing partners for their joint benefit. I assure your Lordships that the discussions which the Government have with British Leyland—these discussions are on a continuing basis —do not include (I quote the noble Lord, Lord Diamond) any "leaning upon". These discussions take many forms. The Government recognise British Leyland's wishes; and, equally, British Leyland accept that the Government also have some desires, particularly recognising that some £2,230 million worth of taxpayers' money is being used by that company. It may be useful if I say at this stage that the company have and are enjoying an improved acceptance or their products, and currently have about 18·3 per cent. of the United Kingdom market. The products are well accepted, and we would expect the company to achieve greater success as time goes on.

31
I think I have answered all the questions. Perhaps I may add that, with regard to the Swindon project, the Government look to and encourage inward investment, especially where it shows benefit to this country and to the motor industry.
Lord Harmar-Nicholls: My Lords, my noble friend seemed rather hazy about what is likely to flow from the important question of the provision of engines. Would it not be reasonable to expect that at any rate the joint cars that were sold in Britain and Europe contained the British constructed engine and those sold in the rest of the world perhaps contained the Honda engine? My noble friend said that the discussions were still going on. I hope that in those discussions, as a minimum, he will push for what I have suggested.
Lord Lucas of Chilworth: My Lords, the engine programme of British Leyland—the A-series, the S, O and V8-series—is continuing. As I understand it, the K-series, which is to replace the A-series which is now fitted to all the Metros, some Maestros and some Montegos, is to be further developed by British Leyland. With regard to a collaborative motor car —the Rover 213 and the XX—various engine options will in all probability be utilised, dependent, I would imagine, on the markets into which those motor cars will be sold. With regard to the next stage and the collaborative motor car which will succeed the XX series, I think it would be premature of me to suggest to British Leyland or to Honda which engine should be fitted and where it should be made. I do not think that either of the two companies has come down firmly on that point.
It is recognised by British Leyland, and has always been recognised, that an engine is very much the heart of the motor car and should be produced by them. Whether a collaborative arrangement for engines is ultimately decided upon is for the commercial decision of those two companies, but certainly any engine that is produced in this country by virtue of such an arrangement will have a local content. Any motor cars that are produced for the overseas market by British Leyland to use up some of their spare assembly capacity would have a substantial local content. That would be good for the British motor car industry and the people employed in it.
Lord Gladwyn: My Lords, as a non-expert may I ask whether the production in this country of what would obviously be to a large extent Japanese motor-cars, and their export, notably to the Community, under British labels as British cars, is likely to appeal to our colleagues in the Common Market and, indeed, to the United States Administration? Has there been any expression of concern on the part of our colleagues?
Lord Lucas of Chilworth: My Lords, I cannot accept that a motor car which is built as a result of collaboration would be not British. If one accepts a substantial local content under whatever badge it may be, it will be largely a British motor car made in the United Kingdom by a United Kingdom workforce. That it may have variants to satisfy different world markets is
32
a rather different point, but I am quite satisfied that any motor car produced as a result of these arrangements will be largely British.
Lord Seebohm: My Lords, my question has partly been answered in that it is impossible at the moment to say what will be the local content of XX machines, on which we are placing so much hope. If we do proceed with making engines at Swindon under Japanese plans, will that put Longbridge out of work?
Lord Lucas of Chilworth: My Lords, I am glad that the noble Lord, Lord Seebohm, has had most of his question answered. Local content is on a value formula and is accepted by all the leading manufacturers and by those who seek to make an inward investment. With regard to the possibility, or one might say the probability, of an engine plant being set up in Swindon, I do not believe—it is certainly not my understanding—that this plant would in any way reduce engine-building capacity or engine production in British Leyland's own factories.
Lord Dean of Beswick: My Lords, may I press the Minister further on that question? Those of us originally from engineering have seen, all too often in the past, a manufacturing base in this country surrendered for what, at the time, looked to be rather an attractive financial deal. It would be no good swapping jobs in the West Midlands to satisfy the very important need for jobs in Swindon. The Minister ought to be aware that if we now surrender our engine manufacturing capacity, which is totally British, and go out of it in this round of discussions, we will never get back in. Top priority must be given to ensuring that a fully British input in the manufacturing of motor car engines is retained, irrespective of the Japanese involvement.
Lord Lucas of Chilworth: My Lords, I understand exactly what the noble Lord, Lord Dean of Beswick, is saying. Let me reply immediately that there is no question of swapping jobs between the Midlands and Swindon. Indeed, we are talking of a project which Honda are considering, but no firm decision has been made. The British input to an engine is assured. There is no question of a takeover. I have said that the K-series engine—the one to replace the current A-series used in the Metros, a number of Maestros and a number of Montegos—is continuing. That the two companies may exchange technological expertise to their joint benefit would, I should have thought, have been welcomed by your Lordships. Certainly what one might call the British motor industry, with which the Government are always in contact, have expressed no fears in this regard.
Viscount Hanworth: My Lords, can the noble Lord say why it appears so difficult for a large firm to design and manufacture a new engine, whereas a very small firm, like Aston Martin, to the best of my belief produced, or gets produced, an engine without any trouble at all?
Lord Lucas of Chilworth: My Lords, I understand what the noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth, is saying but I do not think that it is totally germane to British

33
Leyland's engine programme. British Leyland is developing its own engines. I have said, and I repeat, that it is developing a replacement to the A-series. It is looking for, and Honda are looking for—as has been demonstrated in the very successful collaboration on, for example, the Acclaim and the current series of Rover 200 cars—the joint benefit that there is in exchanging technology and in collaborating. There is nothing mysterious in that.
Lord Somers: My Lords, the noble Lord mentioned the possibility of the return of British Leyland to the private market. Can he give some sort of assurance that when that long-awaited event occurs, British Leyland will be broken up into its component parts? I am sure that the noble Lord will agree with me that there is just as little competition with a private monopoly as there is with a public one.
Lord Lucas of Chilworth: My Lords, I cannot give the noble Lord, Lord Somers, that kind of assurance. The board of British Leyland wants to return to the private sector. We shall be discussing with the board, at the appropriate time, the best way in which this might be done to the advantage of all concerned.
Lord Stoddart of Swindon: My Lords, the noble Lord was careful in what he said about continued engine manufacturing by British Leyland. However, am I correct in believing that what he is actually saying is that there will be no diminution of engine manufacture by British Leyland? Can he also say whether local content means what he actually said; that is, that it will be British content and not EC content? He will recall that the Nissan deal was made for 80 per cent. local content but that meant EC and not British content. Does he really mean that there will be 80 per cent., or more, British content and not EC content?
May I also ask the noble Lord how quickly the jobs with Honda will build up in Swindon and how many jobs will be involved? Will it be possible for the jobs lost by British Rail Engineering to be taken up?
Lord Lucas of Chilworth: My Lords, I certainly did not wish to be guarded. The Austin-Rover group is alive to the opportunities for improving performance through collaboration with other manufacturers, including Honda. However, I do not think that British Leyland or Honda would expect me to refer in public to their confidential discussions about commercial matters which include the contents of motor vehicles, their engines, and so on. I can confirm—and this is only repetition of what I said earlier—that British Leyland is proposing to continue with its own engine manufacture.
Local content, which the noble Lord mentioned, does mean, of course, the European Community as well as the United Kingdom, because we belong to the Community. In so far as Swindon and jobs are concerned, I am sorry that I cannot tell the noble Lord when a job take-up might occur or, indeed, how many are involved, since Honda's plans for the Swindon site have not yet been determined or communicated to Her Majesty's Government.

Local Government Bill
4.48 p.m.
Consideration of amendments on Report resumed.
Lord Carmichael of Kelvingrove Lord Carmichael of Kelvingrove moved Amendment No. 80AC:
Page 26, line 29, leave out paragraph (c).
The noble Lord said: My Lords, it may be for the convenience of the House to discuss Amendment No. 80AF at the same time.
Amendment No. 80AF: Page 26, line 40, after ("functions") insert ("except passenger transport functions").
The purpose of the amendments is to prevent the break-up of the joint transport authorities by excluding passenger transport functions from the provisions of Clause 42. In the White Paper, Streamlining the Cities, the Government, in referring to the current trend of PTEs to break up their operations into smaller accountable units, stated that,
"these are unlikely to coincide with district boundaries"
A group of international consultants—Booz, Allen and Hamilton—examined the possible break-up of West Yorkshire PTE and found that a rationalisation of facilities such as those for servicing and garaging has slowly taken place since the setting up of the West Yorkshire PTE. The rationalisation was an intelligent thing to do, and anyone operating or examining a service would agree with that, but it has produced a situation whereby if districts opted out of the PTE E and tried to operate their own services some would be without adequate facilities and others would be over-provided. They concluded that the inevitable result would be a substantial increase in overall costs.
That confirms the White Paper statement that the organisation of passenger transport services does not necessarily, or even very frequently, coincide with district boundaries. That is inevitable because transport patterns pay little respect to boundaries. They tend to be rather complex. For example, 25 per cent. of employed people work outside the district where they live. Again, I refer to the West Yorkshire area. Public transport must recognise this, and appropriate structures have grown up over the years to accommodate the needs of the community. That is why the first PTEs were established in 1968 and why metropolitan counties were made passenger transport authorities in 1974.
Since then each of the six metropolitan counties has made great progress in co-ordinating bus and rail services, fares, ticketing arrangements and concessionary travel across the whole of its area, much to the benefit of passengers. For instance, Tyne and Wear Metro operates in every single district of the county, supported throughout by properly integrated bus services. Old and disabled people can travel the length and breadth of their counties under a single concessionary scheme. Prepaid, county-wide, all-mode tickets of various kinds have improved patronage and encouraged interchange between bus and rail to the benefit of both—for example, Merseyside's zone and "saveway" tickets.
That would be very complicated and bureaucratic, if not impossible, if some areas dropped out and different arrangements had to be made on crossing a

35
district boundary. It would be a chequerboard pattern, with those in and those out, and so on. It would be extremely complicated. Breaking up the joint boards would increase costs and would not bring about more effective services. It would also adversely affect the areas that wish to stay inside the system. I say that on the basis of your Lordships having accepted Amendment No. 58D in a much earlier debate. I think that that would be detrimental generally to public transport in the counties and in the PTEs. The clause should not be amended in the way previously suggested, and I beg to move this amendment.
Lord Elton: My Lords, I shall now endeavour to salvage those elements of my last speech which applied only to transport and which were snatched from my lips by the untimely decision of the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, to speak only on the police and marginally on the fire and civil defence services aspects. I am well served and I think that I have something coherent to say.
As far as public transport is concerned, we made it clear in the original White Paper, Streamlining the Cities, that we would be prepared to consider on their merits any proposals which a metropolitan district council wished to put forward—proposals, that is, for taking over some or all of the responsibilities which the passenger transport authority would have for the provision of public transport services in the metropolitan area.
Paragraphs (c) and (d) of subsection (1) of Clause 42 fulfil that commitment. Paragraph (c) would make it possible for an order made by the Secretary of State to remove a metropolitan district entirely from what is now the strategic transport authority. Indeed that power could be used to dissolve a strategic transport authority if, but only if, that was what the constituent district council wished to see. Paragraph (d) provides greater flexibility. The PTE is responsible for the actual running of the public transport services under the policy direction of the joint board. The paragraph makes it possible for my right honourable friend to transfer some but not all of the powers of the STA or the PTE to an individual district.
Before he made any decision on an application for secession under those provisions he would of course need to be convinced that the proposed change was in the best interests of transport services for the area in question. As was made quite clear in Streamlining the Cities, he would also need to be satisfied about the relationship between the district and the joint board as regards facilities such as rail services, or indeed the Tyne and Wear Metro, which benefited the metropolitan area as a whole. The provisions in the Bill therefore allow the greatest possible degree of flexibility in arrangements for future public transport provision. That would be particularly necessary if the new joint board were to retain the wider strategic functions which it at present possesses under the terms of amendments passed in your Lordships' House.
Decisions as to future transport provision would of course depend on the nature of any proposals put forward by individual district councils as well as on the circumstances of each particular case. It may well be, for example, that a district would wish to take over
36
responsibility for its own bus services. If that was its wish, and if my right honourable friend found that acceptable, that provision would of course be subject to the provisions of the Transport Bill, which has now achieved its Second Reading in your Lordships' House. That would mean that the bus operation would be formed into a separate company owned by the metropolitan district council. It would run bus services on a commercial basis and would also bid, along with other bus operators, for contracts for subsidies offered by the district council.
As to timing, I am not sure whether the noble Lord adverted to the subject of concessionary fares.
Lord Carmichael of Kelvingrove: Yes, my Lords.
Lord Elton: My Lords, in that case, if it was agreed that a district council should take over responsibility for the support of its own bus services in the way I have just described, the Government believe that it would also be right for it to take over responsibility for its own decisions on concessionary fares. We can see no grounds for denying a metropolitan district which has those responsibilities the same powers to take its own decisions and exercise its own judgment and priorities as would be enjoyed by any other local authority.
As to timing, my right honourable friend does not believe that it would be practicable for secession to take effect immediately on abolition day. It would not even be possible for it to come into force before the beginning of the next financial year on 1st April 1987. But my right honourable friend would be prepared to consider any proposals which any district council wished to put forward as expeditiously as possible, and would urge any council which wished to put forward such proposals to do so as soon as possible.
The Government have from first to last made it clear that they would be prepared to consider proposals from districts which want to take over some or all of the relevant public transport functions. That is not something which we have put into the Bill as an afterthought. This provision therefore fulfils a clear commitment.
We have also made it clear that before accepting any such proposals Ministers would want to be fully satisfied that they were in the best interests of transport provision in the district in question and would not be to the disadvantage of other districts in the metropolitan area. Their interests therefore would be protected. I must ask your Lordships not to be persuaded by the noble Lord's cogent but I think unsuccessful arguments.
Lord Carmichael of Kelvingrove: My Lords, it was an interesting reply. The noble Lord kept making the point that the Secretary of State had to be fully satisfied. He said that more than once. He said that the proposals had to make transport sense, though that was not his actual phrase. He said that particular metropolitan districts could be drawn out and it would still make sense, but I think that that is most unlikely. If the Secretary of State is reasonable—and another Minister may be in the position by that time—when a district asks for permission and he considers whether it will make transport sense, he surely cannot be fully

37
satisfied. The noble Lord said that the Secretary of State would need to be fully satisfied, and I hope that that will be remembered when the time comes that a metropolitan district asks to secede. However, I do not propose to take the matter further at this point.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendments Nos. 80AD to 80AK not moved.]
5 p.m.
Lord John-Mackie Lord John-Mackie moved Amendment No. 80AL:
Before Clause 43, insert the following new clause:
("Open spaces and London Recreation Authority.
. —(1) On the appointed day there shall be established for Greater London a body corporate to be known as the London Open Spaces and Recreation Authority, in this section referred to as "the Authority".
(2) The Authority shall consist of members of the constituent councils appointed by them to be members of the Authority.
(3) The constituent Councils in relation to the Authority shall be the London borough councils and the Common Council.
(4) The Secretary of State shall by order taking effect on the abolition date make provision for vesting in the Authority the lands, property and functions to which this section applies.
(5) This section applies to—

(a) the parks, open spaces and sport facilities owned immediately before the abolition date by the Greater London Council which are situated in more than one London borough or outside Greater London or which in the opinion of the Secretary of State are for the benefit of an area of Greater London greater than the London borough in or near which are situated or which require the resources of a London-wide authority for their future development;

(b) the functions of the Greater London Council with regard to the management of those parks, open spaces and sports facilities including powers to provide public events and entertainments therein;

(c) any interest in land held by the Greater London Council immediately before the abolition date under the Green Belt Act 1938;

(d) the functions of the Greater London Council under the Green Belt Act 1938; and

(e) any sports facilities not otherwise transferred by this section which, in the opinion of the Secretary of State, could with advantage be vested in the Authority.

(6) The 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 noble Lord said: My Lords, since I have been a Member of this House, this is the second time I have been landed with a job that I was not prepared to take on. The noble Lord, Lord Kilmarnock, is not carrying out his duties as efficiently as he should! My task on this particular amendment was to deal with the question of agricultural land. That has been mentioned only very briefly by my noble friend Lord Melchett, I think at Second Reading. However, I consider it an important item in the layout of the various duties of the GLC.
Before I speak about that, I can certainly say a little about the main gist of this amendment, which of course is to try to co-ordinate all the ramifications of what the GLC does for the people of London where it has control in the green belt. There is no doubt that there is to be fragmentation of all these various jobs, and farms, recreational grounds and so on are to be broken up between numerous local authorities and counties. The Countryside Commission is extremely
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worried about this. If I may, I should like to quote what it says on the subject:
"For many people in Greater London and the other metropolitan areas the countryside on their doorstep is a very valuable and much appreciated asset, as recent public opinion surveys have shown. As the statutory body responsible for the conservation of the countryside, access to it and recreational opportunities within it, the Countryside Commission is concerned that legislation should not damage the very considerable advances made in recent years"—
and I emphasise that to noble Lords.
"The Commission has not adopted a position for or against the more controversial provisions of the Bill. It merely wishes to ensure that the roles and resources proposed provide for at least as effective management of the countryside in and around the major conurbations as before. Sadly, because this is not a matter of contention between the parties, there is real danger of the issue being overlooked.
"The Commission set out detailed views on the Government's White Paper Streamling the Cities in October 1984 and a copy is attached. It is recognised that the issue is as much one of providing a co-ordinating role"—
I repeat, "co-ordinating role"—
"as of providing additional resources, and it may well be that this can be on a temporary and transitionary basis. What is certain is that explicit government action will be required if the momentum is not to be lost".
That was written by the statutory body responsible, as it said, for the conservation of the countryside. I think its opinion should be given consideration. I am quite certain that other noble Lords will go into the details of all the various ramifications that are at issue. I must emphasise that of course the Countryside Commission is interested not only in the green belt around London but in all the areas concerned in the metropolitan counties as well. I now see the noble Lord, Lord Kilmarnock, in his place. He will deal more adequately than I have done with some of the major issues.
I wish to speak on the farming estate belonging to the GLC. This estate extends to nearly 13,000 acres, of which just under 10,000 acres are let farms. There are just over 100 farms in the accepted sense of the word, and there are just under 100 statutory smallholdings. The farms vary in size from about 90 acres up tc the biggest one of 600 acres. The horticultural holdings go all the way from one acre upwards to about 50 acres.
I have no interest in that way now, but I was a tenant of the GLC from 1967 to 1979. I found it a particularly good landlord. I just want to illustrate how good it was, because I think it is an essential part of my argument that it has been a very good landlord. I should like to speak of a situation that arose in relation to the farm that I tenanted. The farm was in two parts, about 400 acres and 100 acres. The main reason for that was because there were only two cottages on the main farm and the other farm had one house on it. That augmented the stock of houses for labour in that area, which of course is very difficult to obtain unless one has a house. The GLC came to me because a farmer had to leave his farm near Heathrow Airport because of the expansion of the airport. We came to an agreement whereby I gave up my 100-acre farm to this farmer and the GLC provided me with a house on the other farm to replace it. That kind of arrangement can only be made when there are good landlords and tenants willing to co-operate.
The other thing the GLC does is to operate the farming ladder. Where it is appropriate, smallholders

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are given a chance to step into bigger farms on this estate. Last year, two smallholders stepped up into farms on the estate. I have heard it said that, on the whole smallholdings do not provide this ladder. I think it is because they are separate from any other estate. In this case, they are part of an estate with farms, and the farming ladder therefore operates there.
The amenities side of the estate is well maintained. Since the dreadful loss, about which we all know, of over 7,000 elms, a major tree planting programme has been taking place. The council runs a farm, Park Lodge Farm near Harefield, as an educational centre, providing facilities for Londoners, especially children, to gain a greater understanding of the working of the countryside in all its aspects—farming, amenities, recreation, and so on. Many thousands have taken advantage of this. The project received an RICS award in 1983. I have the submission here. It is a very good one indeed. It is great credit to the GLC and the estate management section of it that it carried that out.
The GLC has also a contributory interest in 20,000 other acres in the green belt. It carries out very close surveillance on this to protect these areas from undesirable development. All this is managed by a team of certified land agents. The chief land agent, who I know well, has been there for over 20 years and has gained a tremendous knowledge of all the farms and the area. I should hate to think that that knowledge will be lost.
What will happen to all this if the Government take their way? (I suppose one should say "have their way", but this present Government, with their huge majority, can of course just take their way). Leaving aside the recreational and contributory lands, more than half the farming estate will go to the boroughs. Not one of these boroughs has a qualified land agent or any other agent with any experience of agricultural estates. The rest will be fragmented between the counties, which of course have land agents but which are receiving only less than half of it. Thus a 10,000-acre estate, a going concern, well managed, is to be handed over piecemeal to 12 different authorities. No wonder the NFU is concerned about some of its members! Nothing is more upsetting than a change of landlord. I have had it happen to me. It upsets tenants no end.
There is also little wonder that there is a heading in the Farmers Weekly, which I have here, which says:
"GLC's demise may bring chaos for farm tenants".
They use the word "may": I use the word "will" bring chaos to farm tenants. The Government pay lip-service (I see the noble Lord, Lord Belstead, in his place: he has paid lip-service, but I hope it is not only lip-service in his case) to the need for a tenanted section in agricultural occupation. We had the Agricultural Holdings Bill a couple of years ago. This was to bring a stream of tenancies on to the market to compensate farmers for losing their three-generation security of tenure given to them by the Labour Government. No stream of tenancies has appeared. In fact, I think the opposite has happened: more and more farms that had been tenanted have been sold. One of the best farms in Scotland was sold this year when some of the estate land became vacant. When
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the NFU looks down the garden path it was led up, it must have great regrets over what it did.
The Government also give lip service to the farming ladder. Here is an estate with a complete ladder, one acre to 600 acres. Why break that up? There are 16 smallholdings, very small ones, of about two to three acres each, that will go to Surrey but only one farm of just over 100 acres. The borough of Enfield is getting 2,500 acres—to be exact, 2,439 acres—consisting of farms but no smallholdings. What chance has the efficient smallholder in Surrey of being considered for a farm in Enfield? This is the point that I wish to make. The estate is broken up. The smallholdings go to a county whose stock of smallholdings is increased. Those fellows on an estate at the moment—two of them, as I say, stepped up last year—have no chance.
What is to stop the counties or the boroughs selling off land? They have been doing so already. I hope that the Government have been warned as a result of what happened in Somerset when this was an issue at the local elections. With all due respect to the borough of Enfield, and I represented a large part of it for 16 years—
Lord Graham of Edmonton: And very well too, my Lords.
Lord John-Mackie: My Lords, thank you. Who, on its staff, knows about agricultural estate management? It is ridiculous to hand over 2,500 acres with no arrangements for their management. I could go on pointing out the chaos, as Farmers Weekly puts it, resulting from the break-up of the estate. Who will run Park Lodge Farm? It had 10,000 visitors over last weekend. Which borough will get this demonstration farm and run it for the whole of London? Will it be Harrow, Hillingdon or Ealing? It will not happen. It is ridiculous. If the Government really believe in a tenanted sector and the farming ladder, this estate must not be broken up. I plead with the noble Lord to accept the amendment, which would keep together the estate and all the other things that the noble Lord, Lord Kilmarnock, I am sure, will now put before the House. I beg to move.
Lord Kilmarnock: My Lords, I must apologise to your Lordships for not being in my place when the amendment was called. I am most grateful to the noble Lord, Lord John-Mackie, for moving it. At the Committee stage, I moved an amendment to set up a London regional parks authority. It received some encouraging support although it did not quite carry a majority of your Lordships. This amendment is, I believe, an improvement. It covers not only the parks but also the green belt that was previously included in a more ambitious amendment, featuring arts and recreation, which your Lordships did not accept. There is a natural and logical connection between the parks and the green belt. Both serve recreational and environmental purposes and share common services. I hope therefore that the new version will appeal to your Lordships.
I do not want to repeat what was said at Committee stage, but I should remind the House of the GLC's holdings. First, the parks. There are 43, totalling 5,500 acres containing many sports facilities including 230

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football pitches, most of which serve wide areas of London larger than a single borough. Indeed, many parks cross borough boundaries, including Hampstead Heath, Golders Hill, Blackheath, Abbey Wood, Crystal Palace, Hainault Forest, Hackney Marshes and Wormwood Scrubs. The GLC's green belt holdings, to which the noble Lord, Lord John-Mackie has already referred, consist of 12,500 acres which it owns outright and a further 21,000 acres in which it has a contributory interest. Of the 12,500 acres owned outright, 8,000 acres are working farms and about 1,100 acres are smallholdings. The remaining 2,000 acres are country parks such as Trent Park, Hounslow Heath and Hainault Forest.
5.15 p.m.
I want to turn to the reasons for keeping the GLC's parks and green belt lands under one authority instead of splitting them up among the boroughs and the county councils. I shall deal first with the parks. The GLC parks are different from those currently run by the boroughs. The borough parks are primarily of local significance, whereas the GLC parks serve wider areas of London and indeed, in some cases—for example, Hampstead Heath and Hackney Marshes—they serve the whole of the metropolis. When the GLC was formed, the 1963 London Government Act required that there should be a review of the parks that t he GLC had inherited and only those that served an area substantially larger than a single borough were to be retained. This was done, and a number of small parks passed to the boroughs. This happened, I believe, while the noble Lord, Lord Plummer, was leader of the GLC.
As recently as 1978, Lord Marshall's inquiry into the GLC concluded that the present division of the parks between the GLC and the boroughs was correct. That was back in 1978. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Elton, will take note of these points. His comment during the Committee stage that the boroughs already have 20,000 acres of parks in comparison with the GLC's 5,500 acres misses the rather important point that the GLC's parks are of a different character from the borough parks, as recognised by the 1963 Act and by the Marshall inquiry.
Administrative efficiency and economies of scale are obvious reasons for keeping the GLC parks together. But there is another telling reason. It is that sports facilities are not spread evenly across London. Under the Bill, some boroughs will find themselves running facilities which mainly benefit residents of other parts of London. Some boroughs may respond to this; others may not. The Minister may say that the boroughs will no longer have to pay the GLC precept. This is true. But there is no guarantee whatever that they will spend these savings on this type of service. Hackney may have urgent priorities that take precedence over the maintenance of 100 football pitches on Hackney Marsh when most of the users come from outside the borough.
As regards the development of new parks, especially Burgess and Mile End parks, the noble Lord, Lord Birkett, spoke powerfully about these in Committee. I am glad to see that the noble Lord is again in his place. He also spoke passionately about Park Lodge Farm
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and Langley Farm. I shall therefore leave these matters in his capable hands.
I turn now to the question of how parks which cross borough boundaries are to be managed. This is important because Ministers have made some rather misleading statements on the matter both at our Committee stage and in another place. To the layman, it would seem obvious that there are bound to be difficulties if two or more boroughs are expected to run a park when they may be of different political colours and have different management policies and different demands on their financial resources. In another place, Sir George Young suggested that such problems would not arise because a number of parks are already run jointly by two or more boroughs. As examples, he cited Clapham Common, Tooting Bec, Wimbledon Common and Wanstead Flats.
At our Committee stage, the noble Lord, Lord Elton, repeated the examples of Clapham Common and Tooting Bec. I am afraid that both Ministers were wrong. None of these parks is managed by two or more boroughs. So they cannot be used as examples of successful inter-borough management. Clapham Common is owned and run exclusively by Lambeth; Tooting Bec is owned and run exclusively by Wandsworth; and Wanstead Flats are part of Epping Forest, which is managed by the City of London. These instances seem to me to be important, not only because they show that Government assertions that everything will be all right on the night are not supported by their chosen examples but also because they show clearly that the Government have not given serious consideration to the likely effects of these proposals. Had they done so, they would surely have discovered that the examples they have chosen to support their arguments do not stand up to examination.
I turn now to the GLC's green belt responsibilities. Although there is nothing in the Bill about these, we know from a Government Statement made on the 7th November last year that it is intended to transfer them to the boroughs and the county councils. The effect of transfer on this basis will be to fragment the green belt so that there will be no overall policy on preservation and resistance to undesirable development. Where land which the GLC owns outright is concerned, it will pass to bodies which could be highly vulnerable to pressures for development. Where the GLC has only a contributory interest, the other landholder will no longer be required to gain GLC consent for development under the Green Belt (London and Home Counties) Act 1938. Such matters will be decided by the Secretary of State for the Environment.
Indeed, the Secretary of State's statement, also contained in the press release of 7th November, is tantamount to an admission that he knows that the green belt lands will be less safe in the hands of the boroughs and counties than they are at present. On that occasion he said:
"I am also taking this opportunity to remind authorities of my own considerable powers and responsibilities for the oversight of all 1938 Act interests, including those being transferred when the GLC is abolished, and of my continuing determination to regard this land as inalienable".
That all sounds very fine, but does it inspire the fullest confidence? It certainly does not in the light of a

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remark made by the Secretary of State in an article published in the Sunday Times on 5th May, when in relation to the Government's policy for the green belt, he was quoted as saying:
"We want to keep the green belt green but a balance must be struck between conservation and development. I have little sympathy for those who believe that we can stop the clock and say no to further development. That would be an extreme example of the 'I'm all right Jack' attitude".
I must confess that I find it very difficult to reconcile these two statements. The Secretary of State appears to be saying that the green belt is inalienable except when he says that it is not. Of course, the present Secretary of State may turn out to be a splendid guarantor of the green belt, but that does not bind his successors.
Lord Elton: My Lords, perhaps I may put the noble Lord right on one matter. I think that he should have said that green belt land will not be available except when the Minister says it will.
Lord Kilmarnock: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for that correction. I shall read this very carefully when I come to look at Hansard. I do not think the noble Lord was saying that the Secretary of State did not make the statement which was attributed to him in the Sunday Times.
It is also of some importance that the Government have no support for their proposals from prominent organisations which are concerned with the preservation of the green belt. For example, the Civic Trust has said that it believes that the proposals in Streamlining the Cities could set back the implementation of Sir Patrick Abercrombie's vision of green belts and green wedges by many years. Indeed, the Trust went further. It said with regard to environmental quality that it,
"can find nothing to commend in the White Paper proposals".
The Countryside Commission takes the view that abolition of the GLC would be a step towards weakening the protection of the green belt because of the greatly increased number of authorities which would become involved, each with more local and conflicting interests.
The Council for the Protection of Rural England believes that recreational projects in the green belt which cross boundaries will become more difficult to initiate and, for those already in existence, increasingly difficult to ensure uniform standards of maintenance. I should have thought that the views of these organisations are not to be dismissed lightly.
I have spoken at some length, and longer than I intended, but the future of London's green parks and green belt is so important a subject. Up to now discussion in this area has been somewhat overshadowed by perfectly legitimate concerns about arts funding and the management of Hampstead Heath, on which I see that another amendment has been tabled in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Cottesloe. Of course, I am sympathetic towards that, but I am bound to say that I think the general principle of London's parks management is one which we should try to establish, in which case the worries about the heath will fall away.
Finally, I should like to summarise the main reasons why we need a London open spaces and recreations
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authority, although I am prepared to negotiate on name if other noble Lords can think of a better title. They are as follows: first, the special character of London's parks and the fact that they serve much wider areas than a single borough; secondly, economies of scale and administrative efficiency; thirdly, to avoid conflicts which will arise between boroughs where a park crosses borough boundaries; fourthly, to preserve the valuable teams of experts, such as the GLC Landscape Architects Division.
Few London boroughs employ any landscape architects and, therefore, they often have to turn to the GLC's experts for advice; indeed, only an organisation with a large number of parks could justify employing such a group. There are other specialist groups which it makes sense for the GLC to employ, which are uneconomic for individual boroughs, and one example is the GLC's horticultural unit. There is also the matter of completing Burgess and Mile End Parks. The final reason is to prevent the green belt being subjected to almost irresistible development pressure. In this context we have to remember the long-stated strategy of Consortium Development, for instance, which is to build 15 new towns in the South-East, and where more tempting than the green belt? I repeat, the glory of London is in its greenery; not in its avenues, boulevards, Roman antiquities, dazzling light or crisp air. The glory lies in the parks, the terraces, the gardens and the cordon sanitaire, which we call the green belt. This Bill does not offer adequate protection for these unique aspects of London's heritage.
Lord Campbell of Alloway: My Lords, I oppose this amendment. We are now at the stage of the Bill where it is difficult to avoid repetition. The various aspects of this amendment, acknowledged by the noble Lord, Lord Kilmarnock, very fairly to be a more ambitious amendment than previous amendments, in truth and in substance have already been spoken to seriatim, but not in relation to this form of grouping. This is really a new bite at an old much-nibbled cherry.
The farming activities and the green belt under paragraphs (c) and (d) may well call for special consideration and long-term co-ordination of policy. The point is well made about the qualified land agents and the tenanted sector, but no doubt how that is dealt with is a matter for further consideration. However, in its present form the amendment is open to very serious objection on any showing because it is again an attempt to co-ordinate activities of the GLC, transferring them to a recreational authority. What recreation has to do with farming and so forth is difficult to understand.
Lord Kilmarnock: My Lords, with the leave of the House, if the noble Lord will forgive me, it has a great deal to do with farming. If the noble Lord knows Hackney Marshes, he will know that about 100 football pitches are sited there. There are about 230 football pitches throughout the whole of the GLC's estate.
Lord Campbell of Alloway: My Lords, the noble Lord and I can take different views about that. As I regard this clause—and, if I may say so, it has been spoken to with great ability from the Opposition Front

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Bench—there is a serious problem about the question of farming. The GLC has had a good record in that area. There are problems about the qualified land agents and the tenanted sector. At least I was trying to come to grips with the sense of the part of the argument which certainly impressed me. That does not square with the broad concept in paragraph (e) of sports facilities and a recreational authority. That is the point I was trying to make, on which the noble Lord, Lord Kilmarnock, took me to task. But I am unrepentant.
We are really here again creating unrelated, assorted, disparate functions and loading them all into another of these joint authorities. As your Lordships know, they are joint authorities with a limited lifespan. So what happens when the temporary and transitional transfer has taken place? In the main, although perhaps not all, these activities lie within the remit of the boroughs in accordance with the concept of devolution, and by and large the boroughs are competent to manage their affairs without the superimposition of this tier. It is for those reasons that I oppose this amemdment not only in substance, in spirit, but also in particular in the form in which it is presented, carrying in so many disparate functions into what is called a recreation authority.
5.30 p.m.
Lord Birkett: My Lords, this is one of those occasions on which I must not only declare my interest but declare it very particularly, especially in view of what the noble Lord has just said. I feel slightly hurt because the amendment has been described as covering various altogether too disparate territories. This territory is exactly my concern every day of the week. It is precisely my territory.
I am a director for recreation and the arts. Recreation and the arts cover not merely all the green spaces of London but the recreation which happens within them: the sports, and, in a slightly separate way, the arts; although often they are not as separate as one would think because the entertainments programme extends right through the parks. "Recreation" is not one of my favourite words although it occurs within my own title. It has that slight flavour of bureaucracy about it which does not endear it to me. If one looks at it and wonders what it really means I suppose that "re-creation" is what our green spaces, what our parks, and what our arts and our sports do for us. They put us together again. Recreation, or re-creation, is essentially what the services that the GLC in my particular department provide. Therefore, I find that this amendment, although admittedly it is broader then ever before, commends itself more to me than it has done before simply because of that breadth.
I could wish that there has been fewer engagements, fewer skirmishes, across the Floor of this House on the subject of this enormously complicated Bill. I sense that so many of your Lordships care so much for the precise area of this amendment—indeed for parks, open spaces, the countryside, recreation and sport, everything contained within it—that had we reached this point in the continuing debate weeks earlier, I would have hoped that I might have persuaded both sides of the House to vote for this amendment because
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I believe that it concerns the most serious danger, certainly within my own area, that abolition presents to us.
It has been said that today's debate can only echo, or re-echo, things that have already been said. Therefore, I shall not weary your Lordships for long. But I must re-echo three elements of that area of recreation, of sport, and of art about which I am talking. One is the green belt itself, which has been mentioned many times this afternoon. It is a pity that this amendment comes today on a Monday and was not considered last Thursday because I could have urged all your Lordships to go to Park Lodge Farm in Denham and see the open day there. However, I may be forgiven for that regret because, as has been pointed out, 10,000 people went without us.
What I might have been able to urge upon your Lordships was to look not merely at Park Lodge Farm itself but upon its two neighbours; upon Knightscote Farm next door and upon Langley Farm just beyond it because they are one day to be the complementary farms. Park Lodge Farm is a modern, active, 1980s farm. Knightscote Farm is the museum of the farm world, and Langley Farm will be a re-creation of a Victorian farm, which is where it has its origins.
That trio will be of educational benefit, of entertainment benefit—if that is the right phrase—and it brings up in my mind one of the greatest regrets that I nave about this entire abolition proposal, and that is not so much what will be abolished that we have already done, but what I sense will be abolished is the potential for doing the things that we have not done.
This is not merely an admission that we have not done things which we should have done. Money is never limitless, whatever your Lordships may think of the GLC. Time is never limitless. Talent and imagination are not limitless. There is so much still to be done. That applies to Burgess and Mile End parks. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Elton, will be concerned about the future of those two because they concern me more than any other open space. They are half-finished. They consume a large amount of money. Laying out London into parks does consume money. The future of those two parks, half-finished as they are and consuming millions a year, must be of concern to us all. I have wearied your Lordships before on this subject and I shall not do so further again; but that is another unfinished task before us.
The third point is to re-emphasise how much of London's green and open space depends on the teams of people I am happy to control at the moment. There are specialists like tree pruners, entertainments people, dog handlers, the special duty keepers, play leadership, and a great raft of people who live centrally. They look for where they are needed from week to week. They do not belong to a borough. It cannot be expected that boroughs will pick them up individually because they do not belong there yet.
I look in vain to find an authority which will understand the strategic functions they perform. For that reason too I regret what is before us. If this amendment is broad, it is broad with a purpose. I hope that we can all agree that that purpose, which is looking after recreation and everything that the countryside of London means to us, is not something

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which will be lightly disregarded. I beg to support this amendment.
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: My Lords, if one had not known it already, I think all your Lordships would have sensed that the noble Lord, Lord Birkett, is the son of the man who was in his day perhaps the greatest advocate at the Bar. In a hereditary House it is nice to see hereditary abilities coming out. One can understand—if it is not impertinent on my part to say so—that when you have been doing the kind of obviously fascinating and interesting job that the noble Lord has been doing on behalf of the Greater London Council, he would be I do not know whether it is more or less than human, or anyway quite different from human kind, if he did not intensely resent its breaking up, and feel instinctively that those to whom these functions would be entrusted would not do them as well as he did.
I accept at once that if you are to have a GLC then it is sensible to put a Lord Birkett in charge of these activities. But your Lordships' House has decided, as the Commons has decided, as the electorate has decided, that there is not to be a GLC. Therefore, we come up against an amendment which proposes once again the setting up of a London-wide authority with precepting powers.
On an earlier amendment the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, warned me that I could not, if I had spoken—which I did not—use the argument that the amendment went right against the spirit, or the philosophy, or the policy of the Bill. I am not absolutely sure on that point that the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, was right on that amendment, but as I did not seek to intervene then I must leave that point with him. But it is as plain as a pikestaff that this amendment, which proposes the setting up of a London-wide authority with precepting powers and a wide variety of functions, goes slap against the major policy of the Bill. It proposes that functions which under the Bill will go to the boroughs should be retained in a new authority set up London wide.
That is a totally different situation from the situation which still exists today while the GLC drags out its last few painful months of life. When there is no GLC is there any case for saying that functions, which throughout the rest of the country are generally performed to the satisfaction of their electors by local authorities, shall not be transferred to the boroughs together with the other functions which are being so transferred under this Bill from the GLC? It is difficult to justify saying that the London boroughs are incapable of undertaking these functions.
The only possible exception is the case of Hampstead Heath, but as that is covered by another amendment in the name of my noble friend Lord Cottesloe, I should be wasting your Lordships' time if I were to direct argument to that. Otherwise, throughout the country parks, recreation areas and all these other various amenities, spelt out at great length in this amendment, are discharged by the elected local authorities. If they are not discharged satisfactorily, the electors of those authorities can always effect a change in them. Therefore it seems wholly wrong at this stage of our discussions of this Bill to propose the
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setting up of this large authority. It would be a massive affair. With all these functions it would have very substantial staffs and have further staffs on top for the purpose of co-ordinating them and their activities. It would plainly be an expensive addition to the burden which is already carried by London ratepayers and would be carried in the future.
Therefore, though one sympathises in human terms with the noble Lord, Lord Birkett, and feels that in losing the services that he so well undertakes, we may be losing something, it is plain that the continuance of this kind of thing under a new authority would plainly not only be contrary to the spirit and intentions of the Bill, but would be wholly anomalous, expensive and unnecessary.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes: My Lords, I, too, wish to oppose this amendment. The implication that the Greater London Council owns the green belt is quite inaccurate. Much of the green belt is in private ownership and yet from the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Kilmarnock, there came the implication that the GLC was the owner as well as the protector of the green belt. The noble Lord, Lord Birkett, spoke about the farm in Denham. To my knowledge Denham is in Buckinghamshire and I think the Buckinghamshire County Council would be quite capable of protecting land there. Most of these farms—a number are in my own GLC constituency—are tenanted and the tenants have every right that farming tenants have everywhere else. Therefore I see no sudden dramatic change about to take place.
Hackney Marshes were mentioned. I was the vice chairman of planning when Hackney Marshes were to be developed. We found that because the GLC had been dilatory for a long time all sorts of wonderful conservational projects had been built up. Due to pressures from local residents we went to inspect and it was decided to turn it into a conservation area. However, that happened almost by chance, not by deliberate and careful planning.
There is the suggestion that local boroughs are incapable of caring for open spaces in London. The City of Westminster has not one but dozens of open spaces and recreation patches already. People underestimate these matters. It was certainly underestimated by a gentleman from overseas who bought what was described as a desirable building site in Rutland Gate in the central square garden. When he applied for his planning permission to build on it he had quite a nasty shock; so the local borough certainly cares.
I should point out that Paddington recreation ground is a large and successful amenity run by the City of Westminster and it attracts people from a much wider area. That is just an example of how local boroughs can and do run recreational facilities. We have had excellent recreational facilities from the GLC. The expertise is there and I hope that the people with that expertise go to the boroughs where these most important sites will be. But to underestimate the boroughs would be a mistake. They are used to running parks and recreation areas. They have tree experts and other experts.
The noble Lord, Lord Birkett, stated that the GLC was responsible for all the green spaces in London, and

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I feel that that statement is rather an exaggeration. The GLC may look after a large number, but it does not look after all the green spaces of London; there are other experts as well. This present amendment would create a new and unnecessary structure. I oppose it.
5.45 p.m.
Baroness Birk: My Lords, I did not intend to intervene, but what the noble Baroness and the noble Lord, Lord Boyd-Carpenter, have said is not in line with the facts as they are. First, we are not talking about odd urban parks which belong to and are run by many of the boroughs. We are talking about open spaces and green belt land which does not always respect borough boundaries. A widespread city such as London is so built up that it is of tremendous importance to ensure that the land which we call green belt or open space is kept and is respected; otherwise it will be encroached upon and there will be no rural surround to London at all. Everything will be built up.
What I find impressive in the argument for this, or a similar amendment, is that organisations such as the Civic Trust, which has no particular interest in who looks after what, are concerned about the best way of carrying out these functions. The Civic Trust has come out strongly against the present system, saying that it can find nothing to commend in the White Paper proposals that will protect the green belt as it is now. Similarly, the Countryside Commission takes the view that abolition of the GLC would weaken the protection of the green belt and the Council for the Protection of Rural England has the same views. There is no political or other reason why these groups should take these views unless they believe them. They are specific organisations, concerned with specific functions. I do not think that this argument can be dismissed. There are many other examples, but I do not wish to take up the time of the House. To dismiss this matter in this way as though it was something which individual boroughs could look after is grossly unfair. They cannot, and they should not be asked to do so. The proposal will not work by default. I am sure this is quite plain and it will be a great pity if we lose the opportunity in this House to do something about it.
Lord Elton: My Lords, I start by congratulating the noble Lord, Lord John-Mackie, on the impressive way in which he sprang into the fairly large breach left by the absence of the noble Lord, Lord Kilmarnock, not only from the place where he now sits, but from his usual place as well. The Bill before the House is a Bill to abolish the GLC and the metropolitan county councils and to transfer as many of their functions as possible to the borough councils in London and the district councils in the metropolitan counties. These purposes already have your Lordships' declared approval, as well as that of another place. I am sure the noble Lord, Lord John-Mackie, will be able to read this tomorrow. One complete set of the functions in question is that of owning and managing public open spaces. The Bill as drafted provides for those functions to be transferred in line with the principal purpose directly from the upper-to the lower-tier authorities.
The effect of the amendment now before your Lordships is only upon London. In London the upper-tier
50
authority is the GLC and the lower is the London boroughs. The Bill accordingly would transfer parks, open spaces and sports facilities from the GLC to the boroughs. The amendment would intercept that transfer and direct both ownership and the responsibility for management of all these facilities not to the various boroughs but to a single body composed of members of those boroughs, adequately and accurately described by my noble friends Lord Campbell of Alloway and Lord Boyd-Carpenter.
The noble Lord, Lord John-Mackie, brought to this debate an agricultural tang which I do not think it had to that degree at Committee stage. I was interested in what he had to say. The GLC's farms are principally in the 1938 green belt and are located, as my noble friend Lady Gardner of Parkes said, in the counties outside Greater London. If they are tenanted, all that will happen is that the landlord will change its identity. I know of no reason to suppose that the county councils do not have the service of adequately certificated land agents. I suspect that the noble Lord was thinking that the farms in the outlying districts would go to the boroughs; but if he looks at the map, I think he will be reassured.
Lord John-Mackie: My Lords, I was given the particulars of exactly where the farms were going to go. The Borough of Enfield certainly is getting 2,500 acres and one or two other boroughs are going to get quite a lot. But the point that I was making was that more than half was going to the boroughs and, of course, less than half going to the counties.
Lord Elton: My Lords, I am obliged to the noble Lord, and I shall take further advice but, at least as to the half that is not going to the boroughs, he may be reassured. Statutory smallholdings will also pass to the county councils and this will not have the effect of dispersing smallholding ownership, therefore, but of concentrating it in different hands.
As far as the acreage is concerned, as I understand it, the boroughs will receive 7,500 acres and the counties 5,300 acres. But the Department of the Environment—and all this bears on what the noble Lord has just correctly drawn to my attention—has just invited the authorities to discuss a different distribution if this would be more appropriate. We are prepared to be flexible and I shall see that the noble Lord's point is brought to the attention of those who are considering this possible redevising of the distribution.
The noble Lord, Lord Kilmarnock, in his amendment proposes the interruption of the devolutionary process for a variety of reasons which include the protection of the green belt, the scale of the present operations of this kind by the GLC, and its acquired expertise. Perhaps I may look first at the green belt. I was a little surprised by the tenor of what the noble Lord said about where he thought we now were and what he thought was the attitude of the present Secretary of State. What is proposed in the Bill is a transfer of assets and interests. There is to be no change in the law protecting this land. Receiving authorities will have the same obligations as the GLC to protect the land under the 1938 Act and the Secretary of State's consent will continue to be required for disposal or development of the land.

51
I am not sure what the noble Lord, Lord Kilmarnock, was quoting, but I can say that in his statement of decisions in response to consultation issued on 7th November 1984 (which is the authoritative source) the Secretary of State made clear his policy that this land should continue to be protected, and he reminded authorities that he regards this land as inalienable. I remember having difficulty with the pronunciation of that word at Committee and I know, therefore, that I have referred to this before.
Agreements were acquired giving a public authority interest in each holding. The intention then was that this should be in perpetuity and, while the Secretary of State must continue to consider any proposals on their merits, he would agree to changes only in the most exceptional circumstances. Green belt land will, of course, also continue to enjoy protection in structure and local plans prepared under the Town and Country Planning Act 1971, as amended in accordance with the policy advice in Circulars NHLG 42/55, 50/57 and DOE 14/84. I read those slowly into the record. The point that I wish to make, as it were verbally, is that there is no change whatever in the legal protection of this land and that the Secretary of State's commitment to its protection actually has been reinforced within the last 12 months. So, in that respect, your Lordships can set aside the anxieties which the noble Lord, Lord Kilmarnock, sought to link with his amendment, because they do not apply.
In welcoming the noble Lord, Lord Birkett, to this debate, I hasten to acknowledge his expertise. Indeed, if any of your Lordships doubted that the expertise of the GLC was enlightened and efficient, you had only to listen to the noble Lord speaking in the Committee debate eloquently and, as I recall, helpfully—although not exactly in the sense that I would have wished—from the Cross-Benches. He did so with all the authority of the person now responsible for discharging that duty for the GLC. I am glad to take this opportunity of acknowledging that there are some things that the GLC has been doing well, that this is very much one of them and that the noble Lord has played a conspicuous part in that achievement. I hope that he will not entirely disappear from the scene when the present regime does so.
The noble Lord spoke not only of expertise, but also of scale. He mentioned at Committee stage, certainly, that the GLC was responsible for over 5,000 acres of public open space; and the noble Lord, Lord Kilmarnock, reminded us that, as I reminded your Lordships at Committee stage (which was on 14th May) that the borough councils, on the other hand, already manage nearly 25,000 acres of similar land; that is, incidentally, nearly five times as much as the GLC. So that that disposes, I should have thought, of the argument of scale as well as the argument of green belt protection. The argument has been put forward that they are of a different nature. I am aware that it is said that at the time that the LCC was succeeded by the GLC there was an inquiry which was designed to separate public open space into those pieces which had a local function and those which had a more-than-local function. I think the expression was "a regional or strategic function". Looking at the list, I am not sure that the argument holds good for very many of
52
them. I do not know whether the Archbishop's Park in Lambeth or Geffrye's Garden in Hackney or Tower Hamlet's cemetery would fall into what I would call the strategic band. But it is about that sort of place that we are talking.
I was also called to account by the noble Lord, Lord Kilmarnock—my honourable friend was similarly called to account for saying in another place what I said here—for saying that the experience in Tooting Bec and Clapham Commons made it clear that land which fell into the ownership of different authorities, even if they had sharply different political leanings as to their elected members, could be peacefully managed. The noble Lord made much of the fact that each is managed by only one of the authorities acting as to half of the territory or thereabouts on behalf of the other. I do not see that that is any argument against my argument which is that the fact that the boundary runs through the land in question does not stop it being properly run because, manifestly, it is properly run. So I do not see that the difficulties regarding the green belt or scale or shared ownership are anything like big enough to justify the breach in the general intention of the Bill which this amendment proposes.
That brings me to the actual content of the text of the amendment which your Lordships may have found a little familiar, and you were reminded by the noble Lord, Lord Kilmarnock, in case you had missed it, of its parentage. Your Lordships can see it in col. 1024 of the Hansard of 14th May, almost the whole of it, word for word, in Amendment No. 132E. That was the Committee stage amendment which we debated. The noble Lord, Lord Birkett, said that he only wished we could have discussed all this three weeks ago; his wish has been granted, because we did so. The Committee stage amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, proposed, as this one does, a joint authority which, like this one, is to be a body corporate made up, like this one, of members of the borough councils and the common council and charged, as this one will be, with the lands, property and functions of the GLC related to the parks, open spaces and sports facilities at present owned by them where they fall into or benefit more than one borough area or which require, as he put it, "the resources of a London-wide authority for their future development". That amendment, like this one, provided for the new authority to run all those facilities and to take on, like this one, the green belt responsibilities of both the City and the GLC.
The difference between the amendment lies, first, in the name of the new body. The old one was called the London Authority for the Arts and Recreation, while this one would be called the London Open Spaces and Recreation Authority. The second difference, which is of course paid for by the first, is that the noble Lord, Lord Kilmarnock, has dropped out of the text—which he has taken from the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi—the references to museums, concert halls, theatres, galleries and artistic and cultural activities.
6 p.m.
I shall come back to the composition of the new body in a moment; but the first point that I wish to make arising from that is about its functions. It is simply this. All the functions listed in this amendment

53
for transfer to the new body proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Kilmarnock, were listed in the same order and the same words in the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, at Committee stage. That is important because your Lordships considered them with some care along with the other functions to do with the arts from roughly five past three in the afternoon until twenty-three minutes to six in the evening and then threw the amendment out by a majority of 29 votes.
It is true that more time was given to the arts than to the parks. Today's debate has provided a welcome remedy for that. Nevertheless, we are by convention obliged to abide at Report stage by the decisions that we took at Committee stage. It therefore follows that the only merit the noble Lord, Lord Kilmarnock, can claim for his amendment, over and above what your Lordships have already rejected, is not that it contains provisions for the parks, open spaces and recreation, but that it does not contain provisions for the arts. The improvement on what the noble Lord now proposes over what was proposed before amounts to no more than this: he has dropped the arts.
The only remaining difference—and one have not mentioned before—is a further deletion from the text of the Committee stage amendment. Whatever the merits or demerits of what the noble Lord otherwise proposes, this deletion seems to me to be fatal to his proposal. What he has left out is the careful reference by the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, to the provisions in Part IV of the Act. That is more than a drafting error because it leaves us entirely in the dark as to the composition of this body, other than that it is made up of councillors. We do not know how many members there are to be; how they are appointed, either at first or on a vacancy. We do not know what attention, if any, is to be paid to the political balance between the parties; we know nothing about remuneration or expenses. We do not even know if it is to have a chairman. As to where its money is to come from, that remains a total mystery; and a very important one.
This unnecessary committee appointed to deprive the London boroughs of functions they are well equipped to discharge, suffers from what in other circumstances noble Lords opposite would vigorously call the disadvantage of not being directly elected. It is a mystery as to where the money is to come from; or how it is to be controlled; it is without limit of size; without any distinct form; and without any discernible source of finance. It is a pig in a poke and I advise your Lordships not to buy it.
Lord John-Mackie: My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down, I should like to try to correct the situation about the land. The figures I have given refer to the land that is present in the various boroughs. As I understood it, a statement was made that that land would pass to the boroughs and the land in the counties would pass to the counties. If that is not correct, then I think the noble Lord will need to tell us. But it does not alter my main argument: that it is a major mistake to break up an estate of 10,000 acres which is working so well at the present moment and of great benefit to smallholders and farmers.
Lord Elton: My Lords, with your Lordships' leave, I do not think there will be time for me to get an exact form of words. I was quite careful in what I said in reply to the noble Lord after he intervened for the first time in my speech. If he would read that, I conceded that the acreage was greater to the boroughs than to the counties, but I also said that we were looking at this and would consider his views (which are on the record) as to any further alterations in the boundaries. The noble Lord was kind enough not to interrupt my peroration. I hope your Lordships have not forgotten it.
Lord Kilmarnock: My Lords, with the leave of the House, we have had an interesting debate and I shall not delay your Lordships very long. There are one or two points that I should like to bring out. The noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Alloway, referred to our simply setting up a temporary body; and he asked what was the point of that. This is not the case. The body was designed to be a Part IV body within the terms of the Act. The noble Lord, Lord Boyd-Carpenter, also argued that—
Lord Skelmersdale: My Lords, before the noble Lord, Lord Kilmarnock, goes too far along this road, I have observed that, although technically speaking it is his amendment, he did not move it but the noble Lord, Lord John-Mackie, did. The noble Lord therefore has already spoken once; and we are at Report stage, which puts the House in some difficulty.
Lord Kilmarnock: My Lords, I requested the leave of the House. Will the House allow me a minute? I shall pass on if I may simply from the points I was making concerning the noble Lord, Lord Boyd-Carpenter, to the important points that the noble Lord, Lord Elton, made.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes: My Lords, with the leave of the House, would the noble Lord tell us whether he is winding up to finish this amendment?
Lord Kilmarnock: My Lords, that was my intention, with the permission of the House.
Noble Lords: No!
Lord Sandford: My Lords, the House was glad to give the noble Lord, Lord Kilmarnock, leave to make a short point but I am sure that the House does not intend to give him leave to wind up a debate that he did not move.
Lord Kilmarnock: My Lords, if that ruling is accepted, may I make the one point? We shall then test the opinion of the House. It was simply that the noble Lord, Lord Elton, accused me of in effect reverting to the umbrella authority which would have covered the arts and recreation. I want to assure him that all I have done is to take the parks amendment, to which I spoke at Committee stage, and to add to it the green belt. As regards what type of animal is proposed—
Noble Lords: Order!
Lord Kilmarnock:—it is already, as I have said, a Part IV body subject to the finance provisions of Clause 67 of the Bill.
Noble Lords: Order!
Lord John-Mackie: My Lords, I moved this amendment earlier and I see no reason why we should not test the feeling of the House.
6.7 p.m.
On Question, Whether the said amendment (No. 80AL) shall be agreed to?
Their Lordships divided: Contents, 109; Not-Contents, 160.

DIVISION NO. 2

CONTENTS

Airedale, L.

Kennet, L.

Ardwick, L.

Kilmarnock, L. [Teller.]

Attlee, E.

Kirkhill, L.

Aylestone, L.

Lawrence, L.

Bacon, B.

Listowel, E.

Bamett, L.

Llewelyn-Davies of Hastoe, B

Beaumont of Whitley, L.

Lloyd of Kilgerran, L.

Bernstein, L.

Longford, E.

Beswick, L.

Lovell-Davis, L.

Birk, B.

McNair, L.

Birkett, L.

Mayhew, L.

Blyton, L.

Melchett, L.

Boothby, L.

Meston, L.

Boston of Faversham, L.

Milford, L.

Bottomley, L.

Mishcon, L.

Briginshaw, L.

Monkswell, L.

Brockway, L.

Morton of Shuna, L.

Brooks of Tremorfa, L.

Nathan, L.

Bruce of Donington, L.

Nicol, B.

Buckmaster, V.

Northfield, L.

Campbell of Eskan, L.

Ogmore, L.

Caradon, L.

Oram, L.

Carmichael of Kelvingrove, L.

Parry, L.

Chitnis, L.

Phillips, B.

Cledwyn of Penrhos, L.

Pitt of Hampstead, L.

Collison, L.

Plummer of St. Marylebone, L.

Crawshaw of Aintree, L.

David, B. [Teller.]

Ponsonby of Shulbrede, L.

Davies of Leek, L.

Rathcreedan, L.

Davies of Penrhys, L.

Rea, L.

Dean of Beswick, L.

Ritchie of Dundee, L.

Diamond, L.

Roberthall, L.

Donaldson of Kingsbridge, L.

Rochester, L.

Elwyn-Jones, L.

Ross of Marnock, L.

Ennals, L.

Serota, B.

Ewart-Biggs, B.

Shackleton, L.

Falkender, B.

Shepherd, L.

Falkland, V.

Shinwell, L.

Foot, L.

Silkin of Dulwich, L.

Gaitskell, B.

Simon, V.

Gallacher, L.

Stallard, L.

Galpern, L.

Stewart of Fulham, L.

Gladwyn, L.

Stoddart of Swindon, L.

Graham of Edmonton, L.

Strabolgi, L.

Grey, E.

Taylor of Blackburn, L.

Hampton, L.

Taylor of Mansfield, L.

Harris of Greenwich, L.

Tordoff, L.

Hatch of Lusby, L.

Wallace of Coslany, L.

Heycock, L.

Walston, L.

Houghton of Sowerby, L.

Wedderburn of Charlton, L.

Howie of Troon, L.

White, B.

Irving of Dartford, L.

Wilson of Langside, L.

Jacques, L.

Winchilsea and Nottingham. E.

Jeger, B.

Jenkins of Putney, L.

Wootton of Abinger, B.

John-Mackie, L.

56

Abercorn, D.

Ingrow, L.

Airey of Abingdon, B.

Kaberry of Adel, L.

Aldington, L.

Killearn, L.

Alexander of Tunis, E.

Kilmany, L.

Allerton, L.

Kimball, L.

Ampthill, L.

King of Wartnaby, L.

Arran, E.

Kinloss, Ly.

Atholl, D.

Kinnaird, L.

Barber, L.

Kitchener, E.

Bauer, L.

Lane-Fox, B.

Belhaven and Stenton, L.

Lauderdale, E.

Bellwin, L.

Liverpool, E.

Beloff, L.

Long, V.

Belstead, L.

Lothian, M.

Boardman, L.

Lucas of Chilworth, L.

Boyd-Carpenter, L.

Lyell, L.

Brabazon of Tara, L.

McAlpine of Moffat, L.

Brougham and Vaux, L.

McFadzean, L.

Bruce-Gardyne, L.

Macleod of Borve, B.

Caccia, L.

Malmesbury, E.

Cairns, E.

Mancroft, L.

Cameron of Lochbroom, L.

Marchwood, V.

Campbell of Alloway, L.

Margadale, L.

Campbell of Croy, L.

Marley, L.

Carnegy of Lour, B.

Maude of Stratford-upon-Avon, L.

Cayzer, L.

Coleraine, L.

Merrivale, L.

Colville of Culross, V.

Middleton, L.

Constantine of Stanmore, L.

Monk Bretton, L.

Cottesloe, L.

Montagu of Beaulieu, L.

Cowley, E.

Montgomery of Alamein, V

Cox, B.

Mottistone, L.

Craigavon, V.

Mowbray and Stourton, L.

Craigmyle, L.

Munster, E.

Craigton, L.

Murton of Lindisfarne, L.

Croft, L.

Norfolk, D.

Cullen of Ashboume, L.

Nugent of Guildford, L.

Davidson, V.

Orkney, E.

De La Warr, E.

Pender, L.

Denham, L. [Teller.]

Perth, E.

Digby, L.

Peyton of Yeovil, L.

Donegall, M.

Radnor, E.

Dormer, L.

Reigate, L.

Eccles, V.

Renton, L.

Eden of Winton, L.

Renwick, L.

Elibank, L.

Rochester, Bp.

Ellenborough, L.

Rodney, L.

Elliott of Morpeth, L.

Romney, E.

Elton, L.

Rotherwick, L.

Energlyn, L.

Russell of Liverpool, L.

Erroll of Hale, L.

St. Aldwyn, E.

Faithfull, B.

St. Davids, V.

Falmouth, V.

Salisbury, M.

Fanshawe of Richmond, L.

Sanderson of Bowden, L.

Ferrers, E.

Sandford, L.

Fortescue, E.

Savile, L.

Fraser of Kilmorack, L.

Sherfield, L.

Gainford, L.

Skelmersdale, L.

Gardner of Parkes, B.

Somers, L.

Geddes, L.

Stamp, L.

Gibson-Watt, L.

Stodart of Leaston, L.

Glanusk, L.

Sudeley, L.

Glenarthur, L.

Swansea, L.

Gowrie, E.

Swinton, E. [Teller.]

Grantchester, L.

Terrington, L.

Gray, L.

Thomas of Swynnerton, L.

Gray of Contin, L.

Thorneycroft, L.

Hailsham of Saint Marylebone, L.

Torphichen, L.

Tranmire, L.

Hanson, L.

Trefgarne, L.

Harmar-Nicholls, L.

Trenchard, V.

Hemphill, L.

Trumpington, B.

Henley, L.

Vaux of Harrowden, L.

Hertford, M.

Vickers, B.

Hives, L.

Vivian, L.

Home of the Hirsel, L.

Whitelaw, V.

Hood, V.

Wise, L.

Hornsby-Smith, B.

Wynford, L.

Howe, E.

Yarborough, E.

Hylton-Foster, B.

Young, B.

Inglewood, L.

Zouche of Haryngworth, L.

Resolved in the negative, and amendment disagreed to accordingly.
6.15 p.m.
Lord Strabolgi Lord Strabolgi moved Amendment No. 80AM:
Before Clause 43, insert the following new clause:
("Arts Council Funding
.—(1) The Minister shall make available to the Arts Council of Great Britain such sums as are sufficient to enable it to exercise its functions under this Act and to undertake such new responsibilities as are necessary in consequence of the passing of this Act.
(2) The sums paid under subsection (1) above shall be additional to any moneys which are paid to that Council in any year in respect of its other functions and responsibilities.
(3) In this section "the Minister" has the same meaning as in section 46 of this Act.").
The noble Lord said: My Lords, I beg to move Amendment No. 80AM. As the House is aware, on 6th June, just two weeks ago, the Arts Council of Great Britain made a very disturbing statement about their capacity to take over the arts-funding role of the GLC and the metropolitan county councils after abolition. Having now looked carefully at their financial situation, the council have concluded that if they are to receive only the £16 million the Government have offered them to compensate for the loss of GLC and MCC funds, they will not be £4 million short, as the Minister had previously indicated: indeed they will not be £8 million short, as Mr. Luke Rittner, their secretary-general, had originally thought. No, my Lords, they will be underfunded by the staggering figure of £30 million.
It is estimated that the GLC's and the MCCs' arts spending in 1984–85 was £46 million, excluding films and museums. The Government have offered £34 million to compensate for the loss of funds from the GLC and the MCCs, and of this £17 million is earmarked for museums and galleries and £1 million for the British Film Institute. This leaves only £16 million for the Arts Council to fund all the other arts bodies which the GLC and the MCCs currently support and for managing the South Bank arts complex in London.
If we take £16 million from £46 million, we arrive at the £30 million shortfall I spoke of a moment ago. The Arts Council have now made clear that unless there is a very substantial increase in the funds the Government make available the council will not be able to run the Royal Festival Hall and the rest of the South Bank as the GLC currently does. The council will not, at the present level, be able to cover the replacement of metropolitan grants even to the major companies.
The council take the view that of the £46 million, £9 million is spent on countrywide activities, and they expect, regretfully—and I regret it too—that there is no prospect of this being made up. That still leaves a requirement of £37 million to be given to the arts through the council and through local authorities. The Arts Council, I understand, believe that no substantial part of the £37 million will be found by successor districts, for the reason that the great majority of metropolitan grants do not go to organisations whose work is conveniently located within the geographic boundaries of a single district.
If the Government are to honour their pledge to protect arts funding so that the arts do not suffer as a result of abolition, the sum of £16 million that has been made available so far will have to be substantially increased to close the gap. The Arts Council are making a case for about 550 arts organisations out of the 600 funded by the GLC and the "mets". These cover the whole spectrum of cultural activities throughout England and Wales and many of these will be at risk.
Concerning the South Bank arts complex, the Arts Council have now made allowance for the capital needs of the South Bank; that is, the money to maintain the fabric of the buildings, which the Government in their haste forgot all about—it is not the first time they have forgotten something in this Bill. It makes an allowance of £1.7 million for inflation over the two-year period from 1985 to 1987. So these figures are certainly much more realistic than those that have been quoted in the past; but they make no allowance for running the facilities adjacent to the Festival Hall, which we understand the Government intend to pass to the Arts Council; facilities such as the Jubilee Gardens, the Riverside Walk, the Hungerford railway arches, which contain Felix Topolski's mural, and probably the new Festival Pier.
I do not know how much all this will cost to run, but it will certainly be a substantial sum. I would remind the House that during Committee on 14th May, the noble Earl, Lord Gowrie said, rather rashly I thought, if I may so, that;
"the Arts Council is frankly delighted" [Official Report, 14/5/85; col. 1058.]
at the prospect of taking over the South Bank complex. We now know that that is not the case. Far from being delighted, the Arts Council are very apprehensive indeed. I understand that they are so worried, in fact, that they may even refuse to assume responsibility for it.
The worries about the future of arts funding in England and Wales which are being voiced on all sides of the House, and indeed outside this House and throughout the country, are in our view fully justified. The Government have to do a great deal more if they are to honour their promise that abolition will not harm the arts and our cultural life. My Lords, I beg to move.
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: My Lords, whatever the anxieties about the arts to which the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, has referred—and on that point I think your Lordships will want to await what the noble Earl on the Front Bench, who is of course the Minister for the Arts, says—I suggest to your Lordships that this amendment simply will not do. Perhaps your Lordships will look at subsection (1), which reads:
"The Minister shall make available to the Arts Council of Great Britain such sums as are sufficient to enable it to exercise its functions under this Act and to undertake such new responsibilities as are necessary in consequence of the passing of this Act."
In whose opinion are those sums to be assessed? Is it to be the opinion of the Arts Council? It does not say so. Is it to be the opinion of the Minister? It does not say so. It simply puts it vaguely like that. In this day and age, when, as your Lordships know, this country is facing very severe economic difficulties, it really has a

59
touch of irresponsibility about it to put forward an amendment in such loose terms in respect of financial provision.
Having said that, there is only one other point that I want to make. I hope that the Arts Council will take over the South Bank complex. I have a very high regard for the Arts Council and I believe that it will be able to operate that complex much less extravagantly than the GLC has done. I will not go into details, but everything, from the salary paid to the director to the general laxity over finance that has been shown there, suggests that when it is handed over to a responsible body like the Arts Council it will cost a great deal less than at present.
Lord Somers: My Lords, I should like to support this amendment very strongly. I do not think there is any noble Lord here tonight who would sincerely want to see the arts dying of starvation; but I am quite certain that unless something is done by the Government, that is what will happen. I must say it is very good news indeed to hear that the Arts Council is preparing to take over the South Bank, which of course includes the Queen Elizabeth Hall. But the Queen Elizabeth Hall is not a great deal of use if there are no orchestras to play in it, and that is precisely what will happen unless the Government supply a little bit more in the way of funds to the Arts Council to support them. Not many noble Lords realise, perhaps, that no major orchestra ever gives a concert without ending up in the red, and it is that debt that has to be paid by the Arts Council or somebody else. That is the painful fact of life for any orchestra.
Therefore, we have to face the fact that if we want to keep these sources of really fine music going we must pay for them. It would be rather interesting to know—though I do not think that any of us will attain to that knowledge—just how much the Government have benefited by what has happened. I should say that probably it is a sizeable amount, but, surely, if they are going to take away the source of life of orchestras, and other arts, too, it is up to them to provide something which will take its place. I sincerely hope that they will provide something more than they have at present.
Lord Harmar-Nicholls: My Lords, like the noble Lord, Lord Somers, I have a great deal of sympathy with what I know the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, has in mind. We want to maintain and, if we can, improve the arts in this country, but I do not think for one moment that the noble Lord who moved this amendment expected it to be accepted. He knows that in purely parliamentary terms, as my noble friend Lord Boyd-Carpenter has said, it is too open-ended. You do not know to what you are committing yourself.
I do not think that any responsible Government could possibly accept an instruction which is as open-ended as this. One does not know what it would cost. One does not know whether or not the extra money that would flow as a consequence of it would be properly spent, so as to maintain the standards to which the noble Lord, Lord Somers, has been referring. In addition to that, I think that from the tactical point of view it would be wrong to
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contemplate accepting anything like this, because I do not think the Arts Council figures stand up to really detailed scrutiny. I do not think that what they say it would cost to do the things that the noble Lord, Lord Somers, and I want comes anything like within them, and if you give them an open cheque such as this there is no inducement at all for them to provide the quality and the amount that we want within a sensible budget. So I do not think we ought to give them that sort of open cheque, to spend as they like.
The other factor that I do not think the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, and his friends have properly taken into account is what they will get from the boroughs as a consequence of their being relieved of the precept. They will be left with the same amount of money in their hands as now goes through the Greater London Council system. Why should we think that the boroughs are not going to make a reasonable contribution to the arts? It is the same money. It merely comes directly from them instead of going via the Greater London Council under the form of their precept.
So I think that the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, is very valuable. It is on the record. It will let this Government or any Government know, with the support it is getting from both sides of the House, that we want to maintain our arts at a level which is commensurate with the vital part they play in our lives today. We want that. But, at the same time, I think that when we are preparing statutes, as we are doing now, we ought not to give open cheques to anybody, and when we are setting out on a slightly new road, as we are, there ought to be every inducement for the Arts Council to be as economical as they can be, and for the boroughs to be in a position where they are shamed into making the same contribution directly as they now make through the precept. To act differently would be damaging to the way in which we spend the nation's money.
6.30 p.m.
Lord Ritchie of Dundee: My Lords, I should, very briefly, like to approach the matter from a different angle and say a word about the regional arts associations, which have not had very much said about them in all the debates that have taken place in the last few weeks and months. We have heard a great deal about the Arts Council, the GLC and the metropolitan counties, but we have heard very little about the regional arts associations, which have over many years done a very fine job in the arts. I say this particularly because they have paid attention to small and, sometimes, amateur groups of artists and this has very often been unheard of.
I should also like to say that the Greater London Arts Association is working in close collaboration with the London boroughs and there will be a great opportunity for the arts associations of the north, for the Merseyside to work with the Merseyside area, for the Northern Arts to work with the Tyne-Wear area and for the West Midlands and Yorkshire to work with those areas, in softening the blow that abolition will cause. I hope it will be possible to have as generous a grant for the Arts Council as possible, in order to support the very excellent work that has been done,

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and is being done, by the regional arts associations. Therefore, I support this amendment.
Lord Boothby: My Lords, I came here with the intention of voting for this amendment, because I know of the immense services that the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, has rendered to the arts in the past and no doubt will in the future. But I must say that I have been convinced by the speeches which have been made that the proper authority for running the arts—whether we have a Local Government Bill or not, and whatever happens to the GLC—is the Arts Council. I have great confidence in Sir William Rees-Mogg and in all the work that he has done. I believe, apart from the financial reasons cogently advanced by the noble Lord, Lord Boyd-Carpenter, that the proper authority to administer the arts throughout this country is the Arts Council, for which it has been set up and about which there has been no complaint yet made to justify interfering with the powers that they already have. Therefore I intend, greatly to my own surprise, to support the Government.
Lord Birkett: My Lords, I hope that your Lordships will forgive me for one second if I speak about the South Bank and take up a point which the noble Lord, Lord Boyd-Carpenter, made. He accused the GLC of being rather profligate and expensive in its running of it and he mentioned the director. Profligacy is a matter of opinion, but there must be confusion here because, unless he is referring to me—and I suspect that he is not; it is, of course, part of my empire like everything else—
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: My Lords, the reference was to the director of the National Theatre.
Lord Birkett: My Lords, I beg the noble Lord's pardon. I missed the reference to the National Theatre. I thought the noble Lord was talking about the concert hall, and I was going to point out that it is only a matter of weeks ago that we even appointed a general manager there. I stand corrected. I am most interested to hear what the noble Earl has to say about this amendment, because I think that the phrase "I told you so" is the most attractive ever invented. Therefore, I shall now be tempted to bring it out.
But your Lordships will recall that we started with the famous figure of £16 million, out of the £34 million which the noble Earl promised for arts grants after abolition. He himself reckoned that it would be some £4 million short, expecting, as I understand it, that what remains of local government after abolition would, and should, pick up that sum of £4 million out of the £16 million. Assuming that even £5 million were picked up by local authorities, or sources other than large local authority funds, I have calculated that there would be £8 million to £10 million short and have said so loudly. It now appears to me that the sum is exactly £16 million short. If you take £5 million from £37 million, it leaves £32 million, of which £16 million is promised and another £16 million is necessary. Everybody's mathematics will differ, but that is the position as I understand it. Therefore, I am waiting to hear the noble Earl's mathematics—I am sure he has them well up his sleeve—because that is what is before us this afternoon.
Lord Jenkins of Putney: My Lords, before the noble Earl gives us the benefit of his mathematics which, unhappily, have proved faulty in this matter—and I have no doubt that he will present to us an argument to the contrary—perhaps he will permit me to rehearse the position which has brought us to this pass. We on this side of the House are, in effect, acting as the agents of the Arts Council. For this reason, the noble Lord, Lord Boothby, should change his mind again and come with us, because it is the Arts Council who have put the cat among the pigeons and have said that the Minister is misleading them and everybody else by stating that they can get away with a figure of £16 million—
The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Minister for the Arts (The Earl of Gowrie): No.
Lord Jenkins of Putney: Yes.
The Earl of Gowrie: My Lords the noble Lord mentioned me, so would he care to give way? The Arts Council have not accused me of misleading anybody.
Lord Jenkins of Putney: My Lords, if I have offended the noble Earl by using the word "misleading", I withdraw it. But I must say, as I shall demonstrate in a moment, that what the Arts Council have said is that the figures given by the Minister are inaccurate to a fantastic degree. He has said that the amount which is sufficient to cover their needs in this matter, to enable them to do the job that they are required to take on under this Bill, is about £16 million. They have said that they want twice as much as that. That is the reason why we are here, that is the reason why this amendment is on the Marshalled List, and that is precisely why I say that, unintentionally perhaps, the noble Earl has misled the Arts Council in this matter.
It is 21 years since I first entered Parliament—I was a late entrant—and I have never encountered a Bill which has lost friends as rapidly as has this one. As we approach the later stages of this measure, we find that not only are the Opposition parties united against it, not only are many Cross-Bench Peers opposed, but support on the Government side is, to say the least, luke warm. Noble Lords opposite are going into the Government Lobby out of loyalty, I think, rather than out of any conviction. I have been informed, and I think reliably, that in the Government itself there are an increasing number who take the view that the day this Bill was embarked upon was a disastrous one, not only for the country but even for the Conservative Party.
It may yet be possible to do something fundamental about that, but at the moment what this amendment seeks to do is to mitigate some of the damage. It seeks to ensure simply that the Arts Council have sufficient funds to replace the arts support provided by the Greater London Council and the metroplitan county councils. In doing that, they cannot state a figure. It would be totally improper to do so and the Government, on the whole, are not anxious to state figures. They prefer, on the whole, not to do so and in this respect we are right not to try to state a figure. But, of course, the figure under the heading of "such sums",

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which appears whenever such matters are mentioned in legislation, gives the decision to the Government. It is the Government, it is the Minister, who will decide—one hopes in consultation with the Arts Council—what such sums are. Therefore, there is nothing here that we need to be afraid about.
This is an astonishing development which has happened at the Arts Council. In the persons of its chairman and secretary-general they originally stood firmly by the Government; so much so that they were widely criticised as being the Minister's puppets. But now that they have had time to look at the facts they have changed sides. They now say, "No, not on your life. On this basis, disaster will follow."
It is, nevertheless, difficult to withhold sympathy from the Minister and I certainly do not do so. He has been deserted by his friends. He begins to resemble Casabianca, the boy who stood on the burning deck whence all but he had fled. The noble Earl had one or two standing with him still, but the latest to go overboard is the significant figure of Sir William Rees-Mogg, followed closely by Mr. Luke Rittner. If I may mix my ships a little, the good ship "Monetarist" is beginning to look more and more like the "Titantic". As for the design of Mr. Milton Friedman, he has gone back to the drawing board and has not been heard of since.
I must make it clear that in reaching its claim for at least an additional £17 million the Arts Council has taken the view that this is the minimum sum which wilt enable it to do the job which it has been required to do by the Minister. Perhaps I may remind your Lordships of the Arts Council's statement of 6th June. The council said that its first preference for the organisation of arts funding in the event of the abolition of the GLC and the metropolitan counties was not that the Arts Council should be given extra funds but that a joint board for the arts and heritage with power to precept should be created in London and in each of the metropolitan counties. The Government, sadly, opposed our attempts to introduce sensible arrangements along these lines, but they cannot, if they are to maintain the slightest shred of credibility, oppose this amendment which seeks, now that we know the real scale of the shortfall in arts funding, a scale supported and stated by the Arts Council itself, to ensure that the Arts Council gets most of the funds that it needs.
This amendment does not run counter to the Government's stated intentions, as the noble Lord, Lord Boyd-Carpenter, said, I think quite correctly, in relation to an earlier amendment. This amendment simply seeks to give legislative force to enable the Minister to get enough money to fulfil his own promises. That is all it seeks to do. It enables him to give his friends on the Arts Council the money they now know they need and have said that they need. I hope that the noble Earl the Minister will therefore adivise the House to accept this amendment. If he fails to do so, I would urge the Minister's friends and all other noble Lords to save the noble Earl's face by accepting this amendment even if he should feel forced to ask you not to do so.
Viscount Eccles: My Lords, I shall be very brief. First of all, I agree entirely with my two noble friends: we could not put in an Act of Parliament an open-ended financial commitment such as that contained in this amendment. That is certainly true. My noble friend who sits beside me mentioned the Director of the National Theatre and the high salary. I know nothing about that. I have very great admiration for Sir Peter Hall. When he was appointed I was Minister, and I received a postcard from the first Viscount Chandos which read as follows:
"Do you realise you have appointed the most expensive boy in the business?"
Never mind that, my Lords.
What I should like to say, having had to get money for the arts out of the Government as best I could for a long time, is that in my opinion my noble friend Lord Gowrie is doing very well indeed—far better than we had ever expected. I think it is remarkable in these financial times that he has extracted so much money. What always concerns me is that the Arts Council has to look after two sections of the arts which are so different. The national companies, which take such enormous sums of money, should, I think, be financed directly by the Treasury or the Minister. The Arts Council's real job is in the smaller artistic efforts, especially in the provinces. I do not think that the metropolitan counties—I really only know about the north-east coast—were anything like as extravagant as the GLC. It is very important that those metropolitan counties should get the money that is necessary to carry on. As for London, it is a very difficult case to argue, as undoubtedly a great deal of money was wasted.
6.45 p.m.
Lord Beloff: My Lords, I was moved to rise by the extraordinary statement, based on no evidence that I know of, that there are no noble Lords on this side of the House who are enthusiastic for the Bill before us. It is true that there are some noble Lords on this side of the House who have reservations about one or other aspect of it, but the attempt to suggest that the majorities in the Division Lobby today and on other days do not represent a carefully thought out policy in which we support Her Majesty's Government is offensive.
Secondly, I wonder whether the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, with all his experience, really intended this amendment to pass for the technical reasons that have already been given. The noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Putney, says, "Of course, it is the Minister who would decide how much money". It is not even the Minister. Public expenditure is governed by the responsibility of Ministers to Parliament. Public expenditure, of which this would be only a part, is not something that can be dictated here and there by an amendment to a Bill dealing with a specific issue such as the arts. However much we may prefer public expenditure on the arts to public expenditure on many other aspects of our national life, this cannot be made an exception. Therefore, although I strongly feel with the noble Lord, Lord Somers, and others about the importance of this form of funding, it does not seem to me that those who are concerned with it have done their cause much good with this amendment.
The Earl of Gowrie: My Lords, I sometimes have sympathy with the arguments of the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins, because I know he shares my own interest in, and passion for, the arts. But what usually riles me are the noble Lord's rhetorical and parenthetical asides. It is always a great temptation not to sit on one's hands about them. All Governments, I might point out to him, are monetarist these days: printing money has gone out of fashion. If the country is sufficiently unfortunate as to have a Labour Government again in the foreseeable future, I will bet the noble Lord a grant of £100 from each of us to any arts body which he cares to name that that Government will employ a methodology of cash limits and monetary control just as any other Government will.
The other parenthetical aside from the noble Lord which created some irritation for me was this business about my puppet friends, as I think he put it, Sir William Rees-Mogg and Luke Rittner. Ever since I have been Minister both Sir William and Luke Rittner have said that they needed more money for the arts, and ever since I have been Minister I have told them that I would try to get them some more but nothing like as much as they wanted. We have always known exactly where we have stood on that matter. As to the general policy, which is an important aspect of the debate, I have to say that I stand on record, I think, as one who has opposed the GLC and urged its abolition since 1971, when it was in Conservative hands. I have always thought it a wholly supererogatory tier of government, and that remains my view today.
Perhaps I may turn now to the amendment. The noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, very fairly said that his amendment referred to the recent statement by the Arts Council that the £16 million which I undertook last year to make available for the performing arts and the South Bank complex after abolition is insufficient. Of course, there will alway be room for differences of view as to how much money is sufficient, and with nearly every other speaker on this side of the House—my noble friends Lord Harmar-Nicholls and Lord Eccles in particular—I really do not see how the amendment which has been tabled could have been made effective. I do not believe that this issue of the amounts of sufficiency or insufficiency of money is a matter which can be dealt with by legislation. I suspect that on reflection the movers of the amendment may themselves share that view.
I have of course discussed the funding situation with Sir William Rees-Mogg, and I am studying the Arts Council's press release. The Arts Council has not yet put any specific proposal to me for an increased level of central Government funding in 1986–87. It would not come as an enormous emotional blow or mental shock if at some point in the foreseeable future it did so. I shall at that time study its calculations most carefully, as I always do. However, no direct comparison, it seems to me, can be made between the £16 million—out of £34 million altogether—which I undertook last year to make available and the £37 million which the Arts Council, to judge from its press release, is now talking about.
I want to make it clear to the House on just what terms my £16 million was offered. My £16 million is what the Government have undertaken to contribute.
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It is based on what the GLC and the metropolitan counties budgeted to spend in the year 1983–84. I deliberately left a proportion of that to be picked up by the boroughs and districts. The proportion is £4 million, and my criticism of myself is that this is an insanely modest sum. I believe that it is in the interests of arts bodies to have a funding relationship with their local authorities as well as with the Arts Council of Great Britain, and other sources of funds.
By contrast with that the Arts Council's £37 million takes account of increases in GLC and metropolitan county councils' spending in the last two years. It also goes beyond that to include sums which are not being spent by the abolition authorities at present but which the Arts Council, perhaps very fairly, thinks ought to be spent in support of the arts next year in the areas affected by abolition. I say "ought to be spent." They ought to be spent by somebody, but it is not yet clear by whom. Thus, the £37 million includes £3½million for the total replacement of GLC support for 160 smaller organisations which affect more than one single borough. At least some of that figure should,, in my view, be provided by the boroughs and districts.
It includes £4½ million for purely local activities. I have always said, I think from the first week of my appointment, that the boroughs and districts should surely pick up the bill for these activities, and that remains my view. When one considers what Bristol, Bournemouth and Thamesdown, to take but three examples, manage to do for the arts, it is rather absurd and insulting to suppose that boroughs and districts in the abolition areas can do nothing. If I were Bristol, Bournemouth or Thamesdown or, come to that, Glasgow or Edinburgh, I would resent what the noble Lord, Lord Birkett, said when he asked, "What local government remains after abolition?" I remind the House that abolition involves only one tier of Government and only seven areas of this country.
The £37 million also includes a substantial capital provision of £3½ million for the South Bank, most of which seems over and above what the GLC is spending at present, let alone what it was spending in 1983–84. As regards revenue funding, I should say that I have budgeted for the revenue cost of the South Bank in my £16 million contribution. There may well be some arguments between the Arts Council and myself, as funding Minister, about whether or not more is needed or at what stage more is needed. The Arts Council and I will, as always, have to come to the most equitable and best agreement that we can.
The £37 million of the Arts Council projection includes £2 million for other "capital replacement funding." I am not saying that capital replacement funding is not desirable, but it is additional to what is being spent today. It includes £2 million to replace matching funding from the GLC and MCCs which has not yet been obtained but which might have been obtainable if those authorities had survived. I am very glad to say that the Arts Council—and I congratulate it on this—has so far done very well in attracting matching funds from boroughs and districts to help with its Glory of the Garden policy. I back that matching, or challenge, or partnership funding approach. I certainly think that to accept this amendment would throw that out of the window as well as other things.

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I hope that it is evident from these examples that the figure of £37 million, to put it a little bluntly, contains nearly everything that the Arts Council could think of on the expenditure side. I understand that. At the moment we are in that season of the political year when organisations that are publically funded by the Government start putting in their bids for next year's money. If I were chairman of the Arts Council, that is precisely the kind of approach that I might, at this season of the year, adopt myself. But the whole pressure of the Arts Council's case and, therefore, also the case of the amendment, is that on the income side next year's spending must be contributed by central Government out of general taxation and nothing by anyone else. I see no reason whatever to take that view.
I hope I shall not be accused of any inconsistency in this respect. I made it clear a year ago that the Government were not, and could not be, committed to pick up whatever increases in arts support the GLC or the MCCs might decide to go in for in the last two years of their existence. They have gone in for such increases. Many of the increases have been specifically designed to swell the volume of arts activity—the built space available for the performance or the number of people employed. I do not intend to speculate about the motives for this surge of activity. Like most human motives, they are probably a mixture of good and bad. Central Government and general taxpayers cannot be expected to give any guarantee that they will automatically pick up these decisions and fund their consequences for the indefinite future. I made clear to all concerned a year ago that I would not guarantee that; and I repeat that I do not guarantee it now.
That said, of course I understand—and this is perhaps a point to make in regard to the very sensitive contribution by the noble Lord, Lord Somers—that all change brings some uncertainty and all uncertainty brings some anxiety. It would be wrong for me to ease that anxiety by simply saying that central Government will take on the whole of the replacement task. There is a proper responsibility for the boroughs and districts, as indeed there is for all the other boroughs and all the other districts in the rest of the country outside the affected areas.
I believe my noble friend Lord Harmar-Nicholls pointed out that ratepayers in the affected areas will have a lesser burden to carry as a result of abolition. I agree with him. I hope that they will take that on board and make a generous contribution to this area of our national life about which we all care so much, wherever we stand on the political divide.
There is also a proper responsibility for the arts bodies and organisations themselves to seek what I call plural funding, whether from central Government by coming to Sir William and myself, or from local government, from consumers—the best form of box office that there is—from patrons or from business sponsors. Nor can I defend a situation in which the ratepayers of, say, a city such as Bristol, are expected to make a substantial and generous contribution to the arts—and Bristol is indeed very glad to do so—but for some extraordinary reason, as a result of the amendment, ratepayers of London or of Manchester would be expected to make no substantive contribution whatever.
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I note, however, as I always do, the great interest and concern of this House in arts matters. I undertake to think most carefully about the calculations which the Arts Council has made in a general context of arts funding rather than in the context of this particular Bill. I shall give the most thorough consideration to whatever bid for central Government resources it decides to put forward. As I said earlier, it has not put forward a bid yet. In short, as before, I will do my best, and my previous best has not overall been all bad. That is as far as I can go today, and I urge the rejection of the amendment if it is put to the vote.
Lord Strabolgi: My Lords, I think that we have had a very interesting debate. I should like to say in reply to the noble Lord, Lord Boyd-Carpenter, that I am not claiming that the Arts Council can or cannot run the South Bank better or more cheaply than the GLC. But this is a case that the Arts Council itself has put up. It has written to me and to a number of other noble Lords. It has had a press conference, and this has all been in the press. In its letter to me it says:
"If the Government is unable to increase its offer of additional money beyond £16 million currently offered, the Council could not run the South Bank at its present level and cover the replacement of Met grants even to the larger companies".
It goes on to say that the,
"Council's detailed examination of each grant given by the Mets in 1984–85, leads it to believe that no substantial part of that £37 million will be found by successor districts.… There would be no provision whatsoever for smaller regional or county-wide organisations either in London or outside"—
which was a point made by the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles—
"organisations which have been assured by the Minister that 'the arts have nothing to fear from this abolition' ".
That point was, I think, endorsed by the noble Earl, Lord Gowrie, when he talked about the Arts Council's case. Indeed, what a strong case it has.
I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Boothby, for what he said, but I should just like to remind him that it is to the Arts Council of Great Britain that the amendment is proposing that the sum be directed.
I am rather surprised that the noble Earl, Lord Gowrie, mentioned Glasgow and Edinburgh. My understanding is that the Bill does not apply to Scotland, and I think that Scotland is rather wise in not having this inflicted on it.
The Earl of Gowrie: My Lords, I referred to Glasgow and Edinburgh precisely because the Bill does not apply to them. It would to me be a rather insulting notion to think that other cities in areas not affected by this legislation are not making a substantial contribution to the arts. All I am suggesting is that under the legislation the various parts of the country are put on the same standing where local government and where arts funding are concerned.
Lord Strabolgi: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Earl. I shall read carefully what he said tomorrow. I am sure that he had so few good examples that he had to choose one or two from north of the border!
This is an amendment to ensure that the noble Earl comes up with the money. At the moment he does not seem to have persuaded his right honourable friend the

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Chancellor of the Exchequer to do that. There is a large shortfall, as I attempted to show. There is a very large gap indeed. There is great concern throughout the country about the number of arts organisations that are at risk. Therefore I think that we must test the feeling of the House.
7.4 p.m.
On Question, Whether the said amendment (No. 80AM) shall be agreed to?
Their Lordships divided: Contents, 95; Not-Contents, 148.

DIVISION NO. 3

CONTENTS

Airedale, L.

Jenkins of Putney, L.

Ardwick, L.

John-Mackie, L.

Attlee, E.

Kilbracken, L.

Aylestone, L.

Kilmarnock, L.

Bacon, B.

Kirkhill, L.

Barnett, L.

Lawrence, L.

Beaumont of Whitley, L.

Llewelyn-Davies of Hastoe, B.

Bernstein, L.

Lloyd of Kilgerran, L.

Beswick, L.

Longford, E.

Birk, B.

Lovell-Davis, L.

Birkett, L.

McNair, L.

Bottomley, L.

Melchett, L.

Brockway, L.

Meston, L.

Brooks of Tremorfa, L.

Mishcon, L.

Bruce of Donington, L.

Monkswell, L.

Buckmaster, V.

Morton of Shuna, L.

Campbell of Eskan, L.

Mountevans, L.

Caradon, L.

Nicol, B.

Carmichael of Kelvingrove, L.

Northfield, L.

Chitnis, L.

Ogmore, L.

Cledwyn of Penrhos, L.

Oram, L.

Collison, L.

Parry, L.

Crawshaw of Aintree, L.

Phillips, B.

David, B. [Teller.]

Pitt of Hampstead, L.

Davies of Leek, L.

Ponsonby of Shulbrede, L. [Teller.]

Dean of Beswick, L.

Donaldson of Kingsbridge, L.

Rea, L.

Elwyn-Jones, L.

Ritchie of Dundee, L.

Ennals, L.

Rochester, L.

Ewart-Biggs, B.

Ross of Marnock, L.

Falkender, B.

Serota, B.

Falkland, V.

Shackleton, L.

Foot, L.

Silkin of Dulwich, L.

Gaitskell, B.

Stallard, L.

Gallacher, L.

Stewart of Fulham, L.

Galpern, L.

Stoddart of Swindon, L.

Graham of Edmonton, L.

Strabolgi, L.

Gregson, L.

Taylor of Blackburn, L.

Grey, E.

Taylor of Mansfield, L.

Hampton, L.

Tordoff, L.

Harris of Greenwich, L.

Walston, L.

Hatch of Lusby, L.

Whaddon, L.

Heycock, L.

White, B.

Houghton of Sowerby, L.

Wigoder, L.

Howie of Troon, L.

Williams of Elvel, L.

Ingleby, V.

Wilson of Langside, L.

Irving of Dartford, L.

Winchilsea and Nottingham, E

Jacques, L.

Jeger, B.

NOT-CONTENTS

Abercorn, D.

Beloff, L.

Airey of Abingdon, B.

Belstead, L.

Aldington, L.

Boardman, L.

Allerton, L.

Boothby, L.

Ampthill, L.

Boyd-Carpenter, L.

Arran, E.

Brabazon of Tara, L.

Barber, L.

Brougham and Vaux, L.

Bauer, L.

Caccia, L.

Belhaven and Stenton, L.

Caithness, E.

Bellwin, L.

Cameron of Lochbroom, L.

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Campbell of Alloway, L.

Lindsey and Abingdon, E.

Campbell of Croy, L.

Liverpool, E.

Carnegy of Lour, B.

Long, V.

Carnock, L.

Lothian, M.

Coleraine, L.

Lucas of Chilworth, L.

Colville of Culross, V.

Lyell, L.

Colwyn, L.

McAlpine of Moffat, L.

Constantine of Stanmore, L.

McAlpine of West Green, L.

Cork and Orrery, E.

Macleod of Borve, B.

Cottesloe, L.

Marchwood, V.

Cox, B.

Margadale, L.

Craigavon, V.

Marley, L.

Craigmyle, L.

Maude of Stratford-upon-Avon, L.

Craigton, L.

Cullen of Ashbourne, L.

Merrivale, L.

Davidson, V.

Middleton, L.

De La Warr, E.

Monk Bretton, L.

Denham, L. [Teller.]

Monson, L.

Digby, L.

Mottistone, L.

Donegall, M.

Mowbray and Stourton, L

Dormer, L.

Munster, E.

Eccles, V.

Murton of Lindisfarne, L.

Eden of Winton, L.

Nugent of Guildford, L

Elibank, L.

Orkney, E.

Ellenborough, L.

Pender, L.

Elliot of Harwood, B.

Perth, E.

Elliot of Morpeth, L.

Peyton of Yeovil, L.

Elton, L.

Plummer of St. Marylebone, L.

Faithfull, B.

Falmouth, V.

Portland, D.

Ferrers, E.

Radnor, E.

Fortescue, E.

Rankeillour, L.

Fraser of Kilmorack, L.

Reigate, L.

Gainford, L.

Renton, L.

Geddes, L.

Renwick, L.

Gibson-Watt, L.

Rodney, L.

Glanusk, L.

Romney, E.

Glenarthur, L.

St. Aldwyn, E.

Gowrie, E.

Salisbury, M.

Gray, L.

Saltoun of Abernethy, L.

Gray of Contin, L.

Sanderson of Bowden, L.

Greenway, L.

Sandford, L.

Halsbury, E.

Savile, L.

Harmar-Nicholls, L.

Selsdon, L.

Hemphill, L.

Skelmersdale, L.

Henderson of Brompton, L.

Stamp, L.

Henley, L.

Stodart of Leaston, L.

Hertford, M.

Sudeley, L.

Hives, L.

Swansea, L.

Home of the Hirsel, L.

Swinfen, L.

Hood, V.

Swinton, E. [Teller.]

Hornsby-Smith, B.

Thomas of Swynnerton, L.

Hylton-Foster, B.

Thorneycroft, L.

Inglewood, L.

Torphichen, L.

Ingrow, L.

Tranmire, L.

Kaberry of Adel, L.

Trefgarne, L.

Killearn, L.

Trenchard, V.

Kimball, L.

Vaux of Harrowden, L.

King of Wartnaby, L.

Vickers, B.

Kinloss, Ly.

Vivian, L.

Kinnaird, L.

Whitelaw, V.

Kinnoull, E.

Wynford, L.

Kitchener, E.

Yarborough, E.

Lane-Fox, B.

Young, B.

Lauderdale, E.

Zouche of Haryngworth, L.

Resolved in the negative, and amendment disagreed to accordingly.
Lord Skelmersdale: My Lords, it is now probably an appropriate moment to move on to next business. I should say that the House will not come back to this particular Bill before 8.15. I therefore beg to move that further consideration on Report be now adjourned.
Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Motion agreed to.

Rating (Revaluation Rebates) (Scotland) Bill
7.13 p. m.
The Minister of State, Scottish Office (Lord Gray of Contin): My Lords, I beg to move that the Rating (Revaluation Rebates) (Scotland) Bill be now read a Second time.
Your Lordships may recall that on 14th May last, I repeated in your Lordships' House a Statement about the Government's proposals for legislation to give some relief to certain ratepayers in Scotland faced in 1985–86 by very steep increases in the rateable values of their property. The Statement promised a Bill to give effect to the Government's proposals. The measure which I have just moved is that Bill. The statement of 14th May outlined some of the background to the recent revaluation in Scotland and measures which the Government had introduced to mitigate the effect of revaluation on the domestic ratepayer. I hope your Lordships will bear with me, and find it helpful, if I repeat something of that background.
By law, regular revaluations have to take place in Scotland every five years. It is generally accepted that this is the fair way, as long as we have a rating system, to keep up to date the relative values on which rates are levied.
The Government's intention to have a full Scottish revaluation effective from April 1985 was published in August 1983 in the White Paper on Rating Reform in Scotland, Cmnd. 9018. That intention was approved by all parties and by the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities. It is not surprising that the principle of regular revaluations is generally accepted. It is manifestly unfair to perpetuate indefinitely old rateable values which become increasingly out of date. The revaluation we face today was, of course, postponed from 1983. But when the time came when the 1985 revaluation could have been postponed in an orderly manner, there was no further justification for postponement.
Notification of the results of a revaluation proceeds by stages. The first results of the assessors' work began to become available in the autumn of last year. At the time the rate support grant for 1985–86 was announced on 7th December the Secretary of State had been made aware of a very substantial shift of rateable value away from manufacturing industry and towards domestic property. It has been suggested that this reflected arbitrary or even political judgments. It does nothing of the kind, but reflects that the assessors have measured over a period of seven years, in which there has been substantial economic change, increases in value which are not the same for the heritable assets of Scottish industry as the increases in value of domestic properties in Scotland.
The Government responded to the situation that this presented by using both the instruments available to the Secretary of State to moderate the general effect of that shift. Accordingly, the Secretary of State adjusted the level of industrial derating down from 50 per cent. to 40 per cent. and at the same time provided in the Rate Support Grant Order for 1985–86 a level of domestic rate relief which, at 5p in the pound, is five times the level prescribed for 1984–85. I must
72
emphasise that the information available from assessors at that time was on the broad indication of the average effect of revaluation in different sectors and not on the effect on individual subjects. The action we took reflected the general information that domestic subjects would lose, commerce would neither gain nor lose, and industry would by and large gain.
Assessors are required by law to deliver valuation rolls to rating authorities by mid-February, and it was very soon after that that it became clear that some domestic ratepayers would be faced with very large increases in their bills once the local authorities had determined their rates. This was a marked change in the situation with which we had been faced in December when there was still some prospect of more general compliance with the Government's guidelines than was becoming evident would be the case in February. This was an exceptional situation and we took the exceptional measure of increasing the domestic rate relief yet further, from 5p to 8p in the pound, at an extra cost of £38.5 million. This was announced early in March.
We were still at this point concentrating on the effects of broad movements of rateable value in terms of the averages for different sectors. It seemed at that time that it was not unreasonable to expect that the measures that we had taken would provide sufficient mitigation of the results of the revaluation, even where those were exacerbated by high rates to fund overspending, to allow the various sectors of ratepayers to live with the results of revaluation in terms of the broad view of the effect on the various sectors which was at that time still all that was available.
It is, however, important to bear in mind that the reason for having a revaluation is to give effect to changes in values both up and down. It is not merely a matter of increasing all values by a common index. That would merely perpetuate the old values and relativities which revaluation is designed to bring up to date.
Up to that time we had been working on the basis of—without being disparaging—statistics and averages. But by the time individual valuation notices had gone out and been associated with individual rate demands, it became clear that however good the information on which we had based the measures we had taken up to that time had been, there were still very many ratepayers whose valuation increases were so steep as to lead to unacceptably large increases in their actual rate bills. This was especially true of the commercial sector, for which, as I have said, the indications were that the overall effect of the revaluation would be that the gainers would balance the losers. This is, however, small consolation to those who are worse off to the extent that the viability of their business is in jeopardy.
In the course of the spring, evidence became available that the effect of the more extreme valuation changes would be very damaging, and the Government decided that the effect of revaluation should be limited. Revaluation increased the value of all property in Scotland on average 2·33 times. It has been suggested that we might have set out to

73
compensate for increases above that level. That would have meant that revaluation would only have been effective in decreasing the share of the rate burden borne by those who gained. This would have gone far beyond mitigating the impact of revaluation. Having gone through the exercise, and in the light that revaluation is generally accepted as desirable, it would have been wrong to have set a threshold for relief at such a low level. The Bill provides therefore for relief to be available to those whose rateable values have increased by more than three times.
The Government are very much aware that even after the proposed rebates there will be many ratepayers in Scotland who will face substantial rate increases in the current financial year, especially in the areas of those local authorities budgeting to spend at a level which I can only describe as less than responsible. The Bill does not, however, aim to reduce high rate bills as such. It is an exceptional measure intended to reduce the burden and hardship which would be suffered by those individuals and businesses facing extremely high increases in the rates they would otherwise have to pay.
The Bill itself is, quite deliberately, a short measure. It provides for two new statutory duties. The first of these is to oblige rating authorities to grant rebates to those whose valuations have increased more than three times between the value appearing in the valuation roll on 31st March this year—the last date on which the "old" roll was valid—and the value for the same lands and heritages in the new roll which came into force the next day. Entitlement to rebate under the Bill is essentially a matter of comparing different values for the same property.
Rebate will not be available for all properties. The Bill lists in Clause 1(2) those properties which are excluded. These are properties already valued by a statutory formula approved by Parliament, properties which benefit from their valuations being already reduced by statutory derating, and local authorities' own properties. Crown properties—hospitals, Government offices and the like—are not liable to local rates and no exclusion is necessary in respect of them in the Bill. The Treasury Valuer makes payments in respect of Crown properties in lieu of rates and this arrangement will continue unaffected by the Bill.
The Bill also creates a duty for the Secretary of State to reimburse to rating authorities the amount of the rebates which they grant. Rebates are, of course, a reduction in rate income and for that reason and because they will be reimbursed 100 per cent. by the Scottish Office, rebates will not be relevant expenditure for rate support grant purposes and will not count against local authority guidelines.
The Bill is an enabling measure. The Secretary of State intends immediately after it is enacted to bring to another place an order making necessary provisions for operating the rebate scheme. These will include a ceiling of £10,000 on the rebate which may be granted for any single property. The Convention of Scottish Local Authorities is being consulted about the terms of the order. The convention's representatives have already made several useful contributions. In particular, they pointed out that it would be better for rating
74
authorities to take the initiative in calculating and granting rebates rather than for ratepayers to send in individual claims. Only if a ratepayer feels that he has been missed out will there be a claim procedure. The Secretary of State has agreed with the convention that its proposal seems desirable. The administration of the scheme should thereby be more economical and less trouble for rating authorities and ratepayers alike.
As I have said, this is an exceptional measure designed to deal with an exceptional situation. In introducing it, the Government are taking swift, effective action to deal with a situation which has swiftly and comparatively recently developed. I commend the Bill to the House.
Moved, That the Bill be now read a second time.—(Lord Gray of Contin.)
7.26 p.m.
Lord Ross of Marnock: My Lords, we are grateful to the Minister of State, the noble Lord, Lord Gray of Contin, for his exposition of the Bill. It was calm, it was lucid, it was factual; but, oh dear!, oh dear!, he then said that this was something that had arisen swiftly and that the Government were acting with due expedition and speed. Acting with due expedition and speed? The last statement that I read in the Bill was:
"This Act … shall come into force on the expiry of 2 months beginning with the day on which it is passed".
So it is to be two months after it is passed before the Government take action. That is speed! Can the noble Lord say how one prepares and passes an order in relation to a Bill that has not come into force? It may be the case that, although the Government do not want to do so, they will have to amend the Bill.
I thank the noble Lord for his explanation. It was far better than that of the Secretary of State in another place. The Secretary of State managed, somehow or another, to get an Order in Council into this. That was not the only thing on which he went more than slightly wrong. And you can excuse him. We had a Statement, not just on 14th May. We had a Statement on 7th March, when he thought he had taken action. However, he thought that he had taken the right action way back in the autumn, when he increased the domestic relief in rate support grant by five times, that is to say, it was raised from a penny—it had never been lower, and the Government had reduced it in other years—to five pence. That was at a cost, I believe, of £19 million to the Secretary of State and £31 million to the local authorities. What did he say then about swift action? He said:
"the increases in rate bills now emerging are in general so steep that I must take further action to protect domestic ratepayers"
He finished up by saying:
"the object of revaluation is to apportion the rate burden fairly. This means that some pay a larger share and some a smaller share. That is justifiable, but it is necessary to have regard to the effects on domestic ratepayers in current circumstances. This I have done with a substantial increase in domestic rate relief".—[Official Report, Commons, 7/3/85; col. 1177.]
So he increased it to eight pence. First it was five pence—that was a good increase—and then it was eight pence. That cost another £38.5 million. Where did that come from? It came from the Secretary of State's budget—in other words, £38.5 million worth of cuts in the other services provided and financed by the

75
Secretary of State. That is what he said in his Statement in March.
In reality the Government were guessing at what was happening. They were complacent and satisfied that they had done the right thing. Small shopkeepers, retailers and some domestic ratepayers proclaimed their dissatisfaction. Sir James Gould came down to London to see the Secretary of State and he went back with a flea in his ear—the Secretary of State was going to do nothing.
Suddenly the Government realised that they had a Tory conference on their hands and even the noble Lord, Lord Home of the Hirsel, could not pull them out of this without increasing the pressure upon the Chancellor to do something. The Government moved from complacency to panic in a fortnight. The most expensive conference ever held in Scotland was the last Tory Party conference at Perth. It cost £50 million.
On 30th May the Daily Express carried an article in which the Secretary of State admitted that the figures for the original calculations were produced hurriedly and were necessarily speculative. As a result of that we had the rebate. It applies only if your revaluation is greater by a multiple of three—that is, if it is three times the last valuation. Therefore, everyone who is in a position of having a valuation multiplied by three is all right. It is only after that point that you obtain any relief. This Bill was produced so speedily that those who were to furnish the figures were not consulted until about 29th May, after the Government had produced this figure. Of course, I refer to COSLA. With the aid of their computers, COSLA have produced calculations of what this will cost and have come to the figure of £29.5 million, not £50 million.
So here we are with people still dissatisfied, the Government having resorted to a scheme which will not satisfy them and which will not spend the money which on this occasion comes from the Treasury. Your Lordships may remember what the Chancellor said at Perth—that everyone was brought up to appease the multitude. The Chancellor had baled out Mr. Younger in his crisis with exceptional funds. That same day, 11th May, in an article published in the Guardian the Chancellor said that no more money was likely for Scotland next year. He said:
"I do not think that Mr. Younger will find me in the same compassionate, open-handed and generous mood next time."
That is important from this point of view. The Government took this action because they wanted the rating system to be fairer and to reduce the unexpected hardship which may fall on people. However, the valuation roll remains in force for five years. If it is unfair this year, it will equally be unfair next year. So the Chancellor is saying "No more money from me, I shall not bale out Mr. Younger again"; he did not say that he would not bale out the Secretary of State. There may be some justification for saying that, in that Mr. Younger may not be the Secretary of State next year. So that pledge can go and a new Secretary of State can approach the Chancellor. But is that likely to meet with generous help? I doubt it very much indeed.
However, the valuation roll is subject to appeal. If people pay by instalments, they would already have paid the first instalment of their rates. It may be that
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the rates are applicable for this rebate if a particular revaluation is more than three times the last valuation. It is not the rates that must have increased, but the revaluation must be three times the last valuation. They receive relief only on that part of the rateable burden which is calculated as being responsible for an increased revaluation of three times the valuation. It means that people will receive a rebate.
Some people may be satisfied with that, when it is paid. From what is said in the Bill and from all that has to be done, I do not know when it will be paid. Then there is the appeal procedure, which may take place about four years from now. A group of people in Troon only settled their claim against the last revaluation last year. What a mess we are in! If by any chance someone receives a rebate, he may have to pay it back, probably when he least expects it.
There is another point that I should like answered this evening. The Government are responsible for this mess. There is a very considerable administrative burden in relation to this Bill. The local authorities have to go through all the valuation rolls and pick out those who are eligible to receive a rebate. They have to calculate the rebate. It may be that those people will have to return it. That will involve a considerable amount of manpower. If it is to cost a fair amount of money—and although the Government say that it will cost £50 million, I do not believe it will be as high as that—the local authorities will have to wait for that money. The local authorities must have the money or borrow it. If they borrow it, they have to pay high interest charges. Who will pay for all this? Will it be the local authority or the Government? I know that the Government will reimburse the local authorities in respect of the rebates; but what about the cost of the scheme and the cost of the Bill? Surely it is only fair that they should do so.
I was interested in the history given by the Minister of State. In 1983 everybody agreed that there should be a revaluation. Perhaps I may remind the noble Lord that a Statement was made and an Act of Parliament was passed in this House on this subject in 1981, at which time the Government said that there would not be any revaluation for domestic ratepayers but that there would be revaluation for non-domestic ratepayers. What did they lay down in that Bill? The noble Lord, Lord Gray of Contin, probably will not remember, but they said that the ratio of the burden between non-domestic and domestic should remain, and that there should be no change. Why could not the same thing have been done in respect of this revaluation and it be left to appeal tribunals to sort out those who were at a disadvantage? The noble Lord said that everyone agreed with it. I do not remember anyone asking me whether or not I agreed with it, but then I am not very important now. That was the start. Why did they do that? I see the noble and learned Lord the Lord Advocate smiling; he was not even consulted. The party to which he belongs and which he supports as a Minister had pledged that it would get rid of domestic rates; so it thought that there was no point in having a revaluation of domestic rates if it was to get rid of them.
However, by 1983 it discovered that it could not get rid of them. We were back with a revaluation

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situation. If this had happened in the middle of an election, a great many people in another place would not be there. One Member of Parliament—I think the Member for Renfrew West and Inverclyde—suggested that thanks to the muddle and the mess and the Secretary of State's incompetence there will be only four Scottish Conservative Members of Parliament after the next election.
A noble Lord: That is too many.
Lord Ross of Marnock: My Lords, I know that it is too many. That lady herself will not be one of them, and that is what is worrying her. That is what is worrying a lot of them. That is why the £50 million was provided. If the Government do not spend the £50 million, they are going to get no thanks for their generosity. It will be seen as £20 million, if there is that difference, filched away from Scotland.
Everybody says—it was said by the noble Lord's own colleagues in another place, and I could list them all—that if there is a shortfall in the expenditure, that must be given back to the Scottish ratepayers. But according to the Government's statements, so far they just do not know what they are going to do with it. I know what Mr. Lawson has probably agreed. It will come back to him. These are points to which we must have an answer.
The other point is: what about future assistance? Have they to be saved this year and perish next year? The Government have given no pledge that they will continue this assistance for another year. I want an answer from the Minister. Then there is the question of appeals in respect of someone who feels that he has been passed over by the local authorities.
I do not know what the Minister of State is going to say about it. I should like to hear in a maiden speech that we are to have in a few moments from my noble friend Lord Morton, who is learned in the law, what he thinks of the idea that the aggrieved ratepayer who has been passed over by the local authority should have an appeal to the Court of Session. To the Court of Session! This was said by a Minister in another place, and he wondered at that time why Mr. Dewar, who is also a lawyer and leads for the Opposition in another place, burst out laughing.
The Government have made an absolute mess of this. Their panic is understandable, considering the position at the present time of the Conservative Party in Scotland and the Conservative Government, never mind the English opinion polls. I suppose the noble Baroness realises that in Scotland the last poll showed Labour with 51 per cent., the Conservatives with about 18 per cent. and 20 per cent. for the Alliance. That is how low they have sunk, and they are going to sink lower from this.
It all could have been considerably helped by an action in this House. I moved an amendment to the last rating Bill exactly a year ago, asking for an inquiry into the Scottish rating system. The noble Baroness, Lady Carnegy, will remember the speech she made on that occasion when she helped to save the Government by five votes. She said that everybody in Scotland to whom she had spoken—presumably both of them—thought that the rating system was right and
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fair. Of course that is what the White Paper said. It said that the rating system was basically sound but needed improvement, and the improvement was in the Bill about which we are speaking and with which no one is now satisfied.
Does the Minister remember what he said? He said that we did not need another inquiry into the rating system. They had already looked at it. Well, I gather that there is one going on now. They have made a mess of the rating system. They did not take action when they should, and the action they have now taken in respect of this dramatic increase of valuations is not satisfying the people of Scotland at all. We have to accept the Bill. It is something. But we want some reassurances about the future for the rating system and in respect of the continuation of this kind of help, which many people will need for next year.
7.45 p.m.
Lord Morton of Shona: My Lords, I am in a position of great nervousness, and I would ask your Lordships' indulgence. My trepidation has been increased by the fact that I have been introduced to some of your Lordships as a successor to the noble and learned Lord, Lord McCluskey. It will quickly become apparent that I am very different and far less able a person than that noble and learned Lord.
This Bill arises out of the recent revaluations in Scotland, which by itself created a feeling which may be right, or may probably be wrong, that Scotland by this revaluation is losing out as against England, which has no revaluation. That feeling of dismay would be increased considerably if it became apparent that the £50 million that we heard about in May was in fact not going to be the figure spent on the rebate for those with high increases in valuation.
In addition to the lower figure suggested by the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, it is in the nature of things that there will be an eventual decrease, because one would suspect that people with more than a 300 per cent. increase in their valuation may be the people who are likely to appeal against that valuation, and that at least some of these appeals will succeed. The time that it will take them to succeed may be shown by the fact, as I understand it, that not all the appeals out of the 1978 revaluation have yet been disposed of, but eventually some of them may succeed, and that will reduce again the total amount that central Government require to be paid.
If in the end there is a substantial reduction even below the £29 million figure, I would suggest that the Scottish ratepayer would feel that he had been corned by the offer of £50 million, and the logical position is that the crucial figure should not be a multiplier of three, but some slightly lower figure.
As a secondary matter—as the noble Lord. Lord Ross, suggested—the question of to where ratepayers who think they should get a rebate and the rating authority which thinks they should not should appeal has been dealt with in another place by a suggestion that they should go to the Court of Session. Even with the new procedure in the Court of Session for a review of administrative decisions that would be an expensive and cumbersome procedure.

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One can imagine a ratepayer with a house in Wick, Inverness, or Portree, having to go to the Court of Session to argue whether, because he had put up a garage attached to his house, it was the same lands and heritage or a different lands and heritage. It would be much easier to have an appeal on that issue to the local sheriff, which would be both cheaper—which I trust might be acceptable to the Government—and much quicker. I gather that it is the practice for maiden speeches to be about 10 minutes. I hope that I have not offended your Lordships by speaking for a much shorter period.
7.49 p.m.
Lord Kirkhill: My Lords, it is with much pleasure that I rise to remark upon this Bill following the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Morton of Shuna. It is a pleasure greatly enhanced because it gives me the opportunity to welcome a fellow Scot to your Lordships' deliberations. Moreover, one disciplined, as is the noble Lord, in the mystery of Scottish law can only be of great benefit to Members of the Opposition, although whether in the course of time the Lord Advocate will take that view is something which remains to be seen. As to the speech itself, it surely followed in the great tradition of this House, essentially uncontroversial, yet with subtlety, indicating the probable attitude of the noble Lord. It is clearly a harbinger of many which will follow, which are awaited by the rest of us with keen anticipation.
As to the Bill, the Minister properly said in his introduction that it was an enabling Bill and the statutory instrument will follow, I suppose, in July. Whether that is by design on the part of the Government I am not too sure, but I can see advantages from their point of view. It is the main holiday month in Scotland, and perhaps the part of this Bill which is not effective may slip past without the appropriate public comment which I believe to be necessary.
The main reason I put my name down to speak this evening was because at the time that the Minister repeated the Statement being given in another place in your Lordships' House I took issue with him, as I do today. I challenged him then and I now repeat that I do not believe that the Government could not have postponed revaluation. I believe that his colleague the Secretary of State for Scotland made a political miscalculation which reverberated against him at the Scottish Conservative Party Conference in Perth; a fact mentioned by my noble friend Lord Ross of Marnock. Because of this political miscalculation, as I believe it was, we are now faced with this most imperfect, albeit short, Bill. I believe it is imperfect, principally because it is becoming clear from all informed opinion which I have contacted—and I have made some contacts—that, although there will be a measure of relief on the factor-of-three formula to some offices, some shops and surprisingly to all licensed premises—
Lord Ross of Marnock: And to lockups, my Lords.
Lord Kirkhill: My Lords, and to lockups—there will not, in any meaningful way, be relief to the domestic
80
ratepayer. There is, of course, the £10,000 cut-off beyond which no one will receive relief. It is clear now in considering what is likely to happen that many will see, as I do and as the Minister might admit, a higher number of the very large commercial concerns will benefit more than most others. Although they are entitled to benefit, it is not the most desirable thrust of a piece of legislation which comes before your Lordships' House.
As both the noble Lord, Lord Ross of Marnock, and the noble Lord, Lord Morton of Shuna, have said, the figure discussed in the Financial Memorandum is £50 million. Informed professional Scottish opinion suggests that the maximum will be £30 million, and that shortfall will occasion serious criticism in Scotland when it becomes more widely known than it presently is. I suggest therefore to the Minister that the thrust of the Bill is not in the right direction and that the factor of three is the wrong formula calculation. Again I should tell the Minister—he will know anyway but I will still tell him—that informed Scots professional opinion shows clearly that a factor of about 2.75 would have taken up the Government's £50 million and would have spread the load as it should have been spread over a proper and widely-shared basis.
7.55 p.m.
Lord Monkswell: My Lords, I hope no one will object to my entering this debate. I arrived at a late stage, but no doubt the House will accept my apologies for that. My reason for speaking in this debate is that there are a number of issues that an Englishman can raise in this debate which might bear listening to. The first is that I must declare my own attitude to taxation in this country. To my mind there are two taxes which are basically progressive, in that they tax the rich, who are more capable of paying those taxes, more heavily than they tax those who are poorer and less able to pay the taxes. Those two taxes are income tax and the rates. One is a tax on income, the other is effectively a tax on property and wealth.
In considering our present rating system there are several matters we need to bear in mind. The first is the way that our rating system works, as far as I can gather, which is on the basis of the rentable value of property rather than the capital value of property. That has implications: with a property such as a large factory or municipal undertaking such as a power station, it is almost inconceivable that the owners of that property will rent it. What a nonsense it would be if, for example, Fords or British Leyland rented their factories from somebody else. No, they will buy them outright or build them as part of their own capital investment so that the value of those properties in rentable terms will be significantly different and effectively lower than the value in capital terms. Thus the rates assessment will be correspondingly lower. The implication of that is that the largest establishments in our land, which could probably afford to pay higher taxes, will end by paying less tax.
Another factor in paying rates is the way that values can change over time. We are told that the problems faced by the people of Scotland are because they have had a rate revaluation. I make a plea that in fairness the rateable values in England should be reviewed at

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an early opportunity because for many years rates have not been reviewed in the same way as they have in Scotland. In fairness we should have the same medicine that the Scots have had.
This brings me to my final point. Surely the major reason for the increases in rates in Scotland and those in England, which have been considerable, has been the lack of support through the rate support grant given by this Government. Effectively we have been subjected for a number of years to cut after cut in the support for local government provided by this Government. That is one of the fundamental problems facing us at present not only in Scotland but in England.
8 p.m.
Lord Wilson of Langside: My Lords, I think I am right in saying that it has been made known in your Lordships' House in the mysterious way in which these important matters are made known that it should not be customary for more than one speaker after a maiden speech to express his congratulations and good wishes to the speaker. I hope your Lordships will forgive me if I make an exception in this case. I have known the noble Lord, Lord Morton of Shuna, over these last 30 years, and I have always had the highest regard for his personal and professional ability and integrity. He talked about the noble and learned Lord, Lord McCluskey, and of course the noble and learned Lord, Lord McCluskey, was a great advocate. He is now a judge.
I think that at one stage, if my recollection does not play tricks on me, they were both members of the same team in the Crown Office for a period, and they both contributed differently to a team which, as far as I remember, was never savaged either in Parliament or in public. So I should like to add my congratulations and my best wishes to the noble Lord, Lord Morton, and to hope that we shall hear him often again. He is obviously a man of considerable character because he had been told, as one is told when one is introduced here, that a speech for a maiden speaker should last for 10 minutes. He took three. If I may say so, this could well be an example that might be followed by older and more experienced Members of your Lordships' House. But who am I, a mere tyro myself, to make such an ignoble suggestion?
On these occasions, when we have these almost set-piece exchanges between the two noble Lords, Lord Ross of Marnock and Lord Gray of Contin, I often think about Tweedledum and Tweedledee. Your Lordships will remember them. They agreed to have a battle. Tweedledee said that Tweedledum had spoiled his nice new rattle. Judging by what was said in the other place, I should not be surprised if the noble Lord, Lord Gray of Contin, in reply to the very valid criticisms and the power attack on this Bill after the Opposition had agreed to co-operate in getting the Bill through quickly, felt that the noble Lord had perhaps spoiled his nice new rattle.
But this Government have a remarkable capacity for presenting the steps which they are taking and the measures which they are presenting (which are necessarily only in consequence of their own incompetence) as anything from statesmanship to the smack of firm government—and this is the way both in this
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House and in the other place that this Bill has been presented. The very clear introductory background report which the noble Lord gave us was very useful and very helpful, but, in the outcome, the noble Lord, Lord Ross of Marnock, is absolutely right: the situation is a mess. If I may use a good Scots phrase, it is in a "proper guddle". And it is in a guddle because of the Government's incompetence, because the Government have failed to tackle the problem of a radical reform of local government finance.
That is the simple fact of the matter with which I am sure that few of your Lordships, at least in private, would quarrel. It is as plain as a pikestaff. And, of course, this is where Tweedledum and Tweedledee come in again, because we have not always had a Government of this particular party. As far as I am concerned, speaking from these Benches, the one lot are just as bad as the other. I am not sure which is Tweedledum and which is Tweedledee; and the sooner we get rid of them, the better it will be.
That is all I have to say, because I think that we have taken rather longer on this debate so far than the House authorities expected. Just to make it quite clear, let me say that I did not disagree at all with any significant part of what the noble Lord, Lord Ross of Marnock, said or with what the noble Lord, Lord Kirkhill, said. But the proof of the pudding is in the eating. In their day, they never made a speedy attack on the rating system or recognised the need for a radical reform in that area. Indeed, as I have mentioned in your Lordships' House before, the Labour Government of which I was a member pursued the same sort of lines as had previous Governments of both parties so far as concerns worsening that tension between local and central Government which has done so much to damage the government of this country. The only thing is that this Government have made it even worse.
8.5 p.m.
Lord Gray of Contin: My Lords, we have had a useful debate, constructive until the last speaker; but I shall come a little later to what the last speaker had to say. First of all, I should like to reply to the serious part of the debate and to the serious points which were put to me by the noble Lord, Lord Ross of Marnock. As I explained in my opening speech, the Government, in setting a threshold of three times the old valuation, were mitigating some of the most adverse effects of revaluation. We are not nullifying or neutralising revaluation. That is certainly not the purpose of this Bill. Nor, again, are we seeking to spread thinly some meagre relief over every ratepayer whose share of the rate burden has increased from revaluation. The new rebates are designed to meet the extreme cases on which revaluation is most harsh in its effect. Using a multiplier of 3 extends protection to those who have been hardest hit without entirely wiping out the intended effect of redistributing the rate burden.
No one can deny that there are often very good reasons for changes in assessment. After all, if, in individual cases, the assessor's reasons are not sound, he will be unable to defend such valuations if they are challenged in court. A multiplier of 3 will convey a very generous measure of rebate; indeed, much more generous than the schemes proposed by, for example,

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the National Federation of Self-Employed and Small Businesses and in a 10-minute Rule Bill in another place. The total amount of rebates will be the sum of the individual rebates ultimately settled on the basis of a multiplier of 3.
The scheme is demand-led and, I would emphasise, not the share-out of a predetermined pot of money. These points worried not only the noble Lord, Lord Ross of Marnock, but the noble Lord, Lord Kirkhill, also. I acknowledge his wide experience in local government. The noble Lord, Lord Kirkhill, suggested that a multiplier of 2·75 as a threshold would use up the £50 million. Using up the £50 million is not really the point. It is a demand-led scheme based on a multiplier of 3. Setting a threshold multiplier of 2·75 would virtually remove the effect of revaluation for all domestic property. The average for domestic property is, in fact, 2·7. A multiplier of 2·75 would greatly increase the number qualifying, and put up local authority administration costs enormously.
The noble Lord, Lord Ross of Marnock, asked me about the timetable of implementation and suggested that really it was too leisurely. An order can be passed through the Commons after Royal Assent but while the two-months period is running. No problems are envisaged in getting the Bill into operation in time. COSLA accept this, and the Opposition in another place did so. Indeed, they withdrew an amendment which might have had a contrary effect.
The noble Lord, Lord Ross of Marnock, as I think I suggested to him at the time I repeated the Statement that had been made in another place, found it rather difficult to find penetrating questions about that Statement because—although knowing the noble Lord as I do he would never admit it—he secretly welcomed in his own quiet way what the Government were trying to do. I think this time the noble Lord decided to fire a barrage of questions at me but I shall not duck them and I shall do my best to try to follow them through.
Lord Ross of Marnock: My Lords, would the noble Lord tell me when I was quiet?
Lord Gray of Contin: My Lords, it is very difficult to find such an occasion, I have to admit! The noble Lord suggested that the borrowing costs of local authorities while they waited for reimbursement would be quite considerable. The Government will consider making some early payment to the rating authorities in advance of audited claims. The noble Lord also asked—as did the noble Lord, Lord Kirkhill—about the situation next year. As the noble Lord is well aware, decisions on rate support grant and on the domestic relief element of the rate support grant are taken in the autumn each year. Obviously the noble Lord would not expect me to pre-empt these decisions. But I would remind him that the Bill is drafted as an enabling measure by order and that can be applied in any year. There is no question of there not being the power to apply it in future.
Lord Ross of Marnock: My Lords, one can deal with the domestic ratepayers under an increase of domestic rate relief but one cannot deal with commercial ratepayers in respect of the rate support grant.
Lord Gray of Contin: My Lords, the Bill which we are discussing tonight is not a one-year Bill and it would be possible for the Government to deal with any problems which arise in future years in the same way that they are dealing with the problem this year. But obviously I cannot pre-empt decisions which are taken on such issues in the autumn of each year.
I was delighted that the noble Lord from south of the Border decided to participate in our discussions. Scottish business is something which we consider of such importance that we are always delighted when anybody, whether they have a direct interest or not, takes part. We welcome the noble Lord to our deliberations.
I would suggest to the noble Lord, Lord Morton of Shuna—and in saying that I would break the rule, as did the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wilson of Langside—that his contributions to our debates will be most valuable and, in congratulating him and welcoming him to Scottish debates, I would also commend him for his great brevity by which he lost nothing in his speech. He made his points; and we all appreciated them. I am sure that the brevity with which he made his maiden speech will be widely applauded throughout your Lordships' House.
The noble Lord, Lord Ross of Marnock, suggested that we should prescribe the proportional effect of revaluation for different sectors. The order-making power in the 1981 Act is to adjust for properties not valued under powers introduced by the Act for partial revaluation. Such powers do not apply to a complete revaluation such as that in 1985. Both the noble Lord, Lord Ross, and the noble Lord, Lord Morton of Shuna, suggested that the ratepayers' right of appeal against not getting a rebate was likely to cause problems. This is intended to be a simple scheme. There should be no need for the complexity of extra procedure. Where a ratepayer disagrees with an authority's decision not to give a rebate there is indeed no specific provision mentioned in the Bill although recourse could be, as the noble Lord, Lord Morton of Shuna, rightly pointed out, to the jurisdiction of the Court of Session. It seems to us most unlikely that such a measure would require to be employed. The noble Lord, Lord Kirkhill, also raised the point about the benefit for domestic ratepayers. I would answer him by saying that an estimated 132,700 domestic properties will qualify. Total rebates on these are estimated by COSLA at £4.2 million. The increase in domestic rate relief in 1985–6 is some £88 million.
Lord Kirkhill: My Lords, I wonder whether the Minister would give way for one moment. Can the noble Lord tell me what proportion of the total the 142,000 represents?
Lord Gray of Contin: My Lords, I cannot answer the noble Lord off the top of my head, but I shall certainly make a point of finding out. Perhaps I may write to the noble Lord with that information for him.
Lord Kirkhill: My Lords, yes.
Lord Gray of Contin: My Lords, I am quite sure that the noble Lord, Lord Ross of Marnock, could tell the noble Lord. There is very little about the rating system

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that the noble Lord cannot tell us. I am sure that his great modesty would prevent him from giving us that information at this moment; but he will no doubt have a letter to the noble Lord before I shall.
The latest estimate by the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities of the total amount of rebates has been mentioned by a number of speakers. Their estimate is of the order of £30 million. We accept that this is a better indication than the first estimate of £50 million because it is based on a much more lengthy and detailed exercise than it was practical to carry out in the time immediately before the Government's scheme was announced. But the total cost is of relatively less importance. What really matters is getting to ratepayers the right level of help. That is what we think a multiplier of three will do. The total cost, whatever that turns out to be, follows from that. We shall not know what the total cost may be until the last ratepayer has been paid.
I think that we have had a very useful debate. In conclusion, as I promised I would do, perhaps I may refer to the contribution of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wilson of Langside. I often find it quite amazing that when Members move from one party to another their enthusiasm for reform increases. Although they had been members of their original party for many years, that bursting zeal for reform had never surfaced. It is encouraging that the noble Lord takes such a view and no doubt as we move through the remaining stages of this Bill he will enlighten us as to how he envisages that the system might be reformed. We are certainly looking for reforms and I am sure that the noble Lord will give us the benefit of his own deliberations and those of his colleagues.
I take no exception to his alluding to Tweedledum and Tweedledee. I am sure that the little bit of levity which he was able to introduce into our debate was welcomed by all sides of the House. I commend the Bill to the House.
Lord Wilson of Langside: My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down, I should like to apologise to the House and to the Minister. I was a little impatient in view of the time factor and I neglected to refer to this matter. I wish to ask the noble Lord whether he was aware of the great concern which the Retail Consortium has expressed about the detail of the Bill. The Retail Consortium represents some 90 per cent., so it says, of retailers in the United Kingdom. It is known that the concessions in the Bill will amount to about 4 per cent. of the total bill in the commercial sector. The concern of the Retail Consortium is that the impact, so far as the retail trader is concerned, will be even less. I have a number of figures which I received from the consortium this morning and I had intended to put them to the Minister. I should simply like to ask whether he can tell the House that he is aware of the consortium's extreme concern and its rather pessimistic assessment of the Government's proposals in the Bill.
Lord Gray of Contin: Yes, my Lords, I am aware of the letter to which the noble and learned Lord refers. I think that many other noble Lords have received a similar letter. I am studying it at the present moment and in due course I shall be sending a suitable reply to
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my noble friend Lady Carnegy of Lour, who raised the subject with me earlier this afternoon. I shall make sure that a copy of that letter is sent to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wilson of Langside.
On Question, Bill read a second time, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

Local Government Bill
8.21 p.m.
Consideration of amendments on Report resumed.
Lord Graham of Edmonton Lord Graham of Edmonton moved Amendment No. 80AN:
Before Clause 43, insert the following new clause:
("Sports.
Before the abolition date the Secretary of State shall consult with the councils of London boroughs, the Sports Council of Great Britain, the Arts Council of Great Britain and other interested bodies and persons on arrangements for the continuation of events, entertainments and sports championships organised or promoted by the Greater London Council before the abolition date.")
The noble Lord said: My Lords, I beg to move Amendment No. 80AN. The House will be aware that this particular aspect of activities has not so far received the attention which I believe it deserves. The events, entertainments and London-wide sports championships which are organised by the GLC were mentioned briefly at Committee stage. It is almost certain that most, if not all, of them will disappear when the GLC is abolished. That will be a very great pity. The Minister may have a brief which will seek to persuade the House that such a thing "ain't necessarily so". We want more than assurance that he believes it to be unthinkable that these activities will not be taken care of. If ever there was a probing amendment or a peg on which to hang a case, that is the status of this amendment.
There are people outside the House, as the Minister knows very well, who will read with interest and with anxiety what is said here. I think the Minister can be helpful, if he wishes. There are more than 800 events, ranging from small children's entertainments to large-scale entertainments such as the Easter Parade, which are enjoyed by hundreds of thousands of people each year. Over a hundred of them are organised on a regional basis and they attract visitors from all over London and beyond. In addition to the Easter Parade, in this category there are the Greater London Horse Show, Thamesday, the Kenwood and Crystal Palace open-air symphony concerts, which enjoy an international reputation, large-scale corn m unity festivals at Victoria Park, Burgess Park and Lampton Park, the Thamesmead Festival, the South Bank Spring Festival, the Holland Park open-air theatre season, the South Bank Weekend, the GLC-Capital Radio Steel Band Festival, the South Bank Children's Festival, the Spirit of London painting and photographic competitions, and many more. Furthermore, there are the GLC's London-wide sports championships, which are held each year, covering athletics, bowls, cross-country running, cycling, cyclo-cross, swimming, table tennis, golf, race-walking, and orienteering.
The problems which face those who organise the events and the sports championships are twofold. First, most of them are held in GLC parks, and if the parks are split up among the boroughs, there seems to be little chance that the boroughs will wish to continue to organise events which are of a London-wide nature. Although the Government have not said anything about these events in the Bill, they have implied that whether or not the events continue will be left to individual boroughs to decide.
In the case of events held on the South Bank, such as Thamesday, the South Bank Spring Festival and the South Bank Weekend, these will be matters for the Arts Council. We know, of course, that after the Arts Council takes over the South Bank it will be seriously short of funds. I would ask your Lordships to remember that only two weeks ago the council revised its estimate of how much money it will be short of when it takes over the arts functions from the GLC and the MCCs. The estimate has been revised from the very worrying figure of £8 million to the quite disastrous one of £16 million. That takes no account of the running costs of the Jubilee Gardens, the Festival Pier, and so on. Is it likely, even if it wants to, that in these circumstances the Arts Council will be able to continue the old GLC's South Bank events? I do not think there is any chance whatsoever.
The second problem is that all these events and sports championships are organised by one highly experienced team from the GLC's Department for Recreation and the Arts. I am delighted to see that the noble Lord, Lord Birkett—assiduous as always in these matters—is in his place, and perhaps he can be helpful to your Lordships. This is a very efficient and economical form of organisation, but only a body which organises many events could justify the employment of a group such as this. Therefore when abolition comes the team will be broken up and its valuable expertise lost, unless the Government are prepared to step in and offer a solution which will keep the team together and ensure that these much-loved events continue. That is why this amendment requires the Government to enter into consultations with the bodies concerned to try to ensure the continuation of the GLC's entertainments.
This is a modest amendment. It asks for modest things, such as consultation, to ensure that people can be reassured. It places no onus, financial or organisational, upon the Government. It simply asks for reassurance so that the House may be satisfied that the good things which have been done in the past are at least borne in mind and that there is the possibility of a hopeful framework within which these events may continue in the future. I beg to move.
Lord Campbell of Alloway: My Lords, I apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Graham, for the fact that I was not in my place when he moved this amendment but, in recompense, I shall be very brief. Of course the amendment is prompted by the very best of intentions to ensure continuity in sports championships and related matters, but the problem is that it seeks by its terms really to consult to ensure that the old GLC regime shall be continued. That binds the succession and, as I understand it, that is precisely what the
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Government do not wish to do. It is only for those reasons that I oppose the amendment in principle, although I accept the good motives for its advancement.
Lord Birkett: My Lords, I imagine that your Lordships will have anticipated at this moment a very short speech from one of the "old regime". I, too, must apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Graham, for not being in my place when he moved his amendment. I can only plead that traffic builds up in certain areas of London. Lest anyone should think that there is actually a political connotation to that traffic, I plead ignorance of everything except arts and recreation this evening.
Entertainment, sport and indeed all that might be considered ancillary activities also come within my sphere of influence at the GLC. Not long ago the noble Lord, Lord Boyd-Carpenter, said of me that he could understand why somebody in my position would regret the passing of such a fascinating job as I am lucky enough to have. I know he said that with the best possible intentions and with the kindest thoughts in his mind and so I do not for a moment reproach him for it; he is of course right. One of the jobs which gives me most satisfaction—it is not, of course, the job of which the noble Lord was speaking, but job satisfaction is a fashionable but unfortunate phrase, though it is accurate enough in my case—and about which I feel most keenly is entertainments, particularly those large London-wide entertainments which are really the reason for my uttering a few words on the subject tonight.
I am referring to the sort of entertainments which cover the whole of London and which are aimed to attract the whole of London. Your Lordships will be familiar with them. They start at the beginning of the season with the Easter Parade in Battersea Park and they finish up at the end of the season with Thamesday—the kind of four- or five-year-old regattas that we have invented for the South Bank—and include the Greater London Horse Show and, of course, not ours exclusively, let me be clear, but certainly helped and much encouraged by ourselves, the London marathon.
8.30 p.m.
What I find so enormously satisfying on those occasions is not just the fact that hundreds of thousands of people come out to enjoy them. Indeed, on those occasions—I leave aside the marathon, when you can reckon in millions, if you count the roads of London surrounded by well-wishers and excited spectators—such as the Easter Parade or Thamesday one can count those who enjoy them not in thousands, but in hundreds of thousands. We rely always on the police for our guesses because they are cleverer at it than we are, but it is very difficult to know exactly how many people visit occasions of that sort, because you never know whether the people you are counting have been there from dawn to dusk or whether they have "renewed" themselves; that is, they have come for an hour before lunch and totally different persons have come after lunch. Nevertheless, when one is talking of estimates of a quarter of a million people for such events, even supposing one was out by 100,000

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people, one would still be talking about 150,000 or maybe 300,000 people. So one is talking of enormous numbers of people.
But it is not only the numbers that give me the satisfaction. It is the feeling in the air. Any of your Lordships who have been at the sort of occasions I am talking about will sense in the air the kind of goodwill that is absolutely the opposite of so many glum and aggravating occasions in our life today. The kind of "aggro", as the modern generation has it, that pervades so much of our life on the streets is notably absent on such days. Quite the contrary; I feel that on a day such as Thamesday, at the Easter Parade and certainly at the marathon, if one wants an instance of how society should behave towards itself, those days show it.
Of course, one may say, "Why, that is simply because it is a kind of bunfight, a circus, a free entertainment provided at the ratepayers' expense, at the taxpayers' expense or at somebody else's expense". It is true that it is at the ratepayers' expense or the taxpayers' expense, but, believe me, my Lords, it is worth it because it shows on those days exactly how life ought to he. Life cannot always be free events. I see that as clearly as anybody else. But these are things which should not be lost.
That brings me to the ultimate point of this debate, which has shot through every argument this evening and indeed on many other evenings. Why, if these things are good—and I hope that your Lordships will agree with me that they are—will they not survive after abolition? My argument is that they will not survive because such tasks will be placed in the hands of very local local government in London. A moment ago the noble Earl took me to task for saying, "What remains after abolition?" I should have said that it was that tier of local government that will remain after abolition. The point about my argument is that boroughs will not be able to manage. It is not that I have any suspicion of the goodwill or indeed the financial ability of boroughs.
The noble Earl was quoting local authorities in the arts which he admired enormously. I echo his admiration. He is right of course. What he did not do was to put the opposite case of those local authorities for which he and I will, I know, equally feel no admiration. It would do scant good for the cause of the arts if I were to proceed to mention those authorities by name, as the noble Earl mentioned the good ones, but he, as well as I, knows that they exist. It is the inconsistency of the pattern that troubles me; not the lack of goodwill throughout. I have nothing except admiration for those boroughs which do their job within sports, the arts and recreation. But they cannot be relied upon. That is why I believe that a strategic authority for these matters is necessary, and to leave it to a second tier of purely local authorities will not do. It is for that reason that I support this amendment.
Lord Skelmersdale: My Lords, I must confess I derived a certain amount of innocent amusement from the first part of the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Birkett, which sought to knock down arguments that I was not going to use in the first place. However, this new clause requires the Secretary of State to consult all interested parties about arrangements for
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continuing the various sporting events and entertainments organised by the GLC. That sounds quite unremarkable, until one looks at it again.
The sting of this amendment is in the tail; namely, that it intends that any event currently organised or promoted should be continued by putting pressure on the successor bodies to continue these events in a way which we cannot accept. Decisions on the future of these events are quite properly a matter for the successor authorities. It is not for the Government to interfere in the discretions of London borough councils on what artistic and sporting events they are to organise or promote. The relevant powers are discretionary, and the noble Lord is quite right in saying that such decisions should be taken by the councils themselves. Similarly, it is neither right nor necessary for the Secretary of State to consult the Arts Council or the Sports Council, both of which are independent bodies, on the schemes and events that they are likely to support after abolition. We are convinced that they will continue to exercise their usual good judgment without unwarranted, and I suggest unwelcome, interference from us.
As my noble friend Lord Campbell has said, noble Lords opposite have consistently given the impression that only a unified London-wide body can continue these great sporting events. In this amendment they are replacing the GLC by the Secretary of State. I am glad that the noble Lord, Lord Birkett, is in his place, because my information is that none of the events referred to either by him or by the noble Lord, Lord Graham, is supported by the GLC at the moment. By "supported" I do not mean of course the use of the ratepayers' money that the noble Lord referred to; I mean whether the GLC itself, or indeed his own organisation within the GLC, is the sponsor of the individual events.
We have already recognised that after abolition individual authorities may not take sole responsibility for projects and events that benefit a much wider area. That is why we have announced a limited extension of Exchequer funding that will be made available for these to be administered by the Sports Council. Concern has been expressed about the future of the London Marathon, for example, but the contribution of the GLC to the marathon has been much exaggerated in some quarters. The marathon will continue as now to be administered by an independent organising committee, it will continue to seek private sector support from sponsors, and my department will continue to offer what assistance it can to ensure the continued success of the race.
Lord Birkett: My Lords, if the noble Lord will give way, perhaps I ought to explain that the events that I was referring to, which included the London Marathon, are all, with the exception of the marathon, entirely organised and sponsored, if that is the right phrase, by the GLC. We have for the most part invented them. Certainly we have run them and they are exclusively the province, the expense and the organisation of the GLC. The marathon is, of course, the exception, and I readily acknowledge that the GLC is not the only organiser. It is, however, the provider of the finish, the provider of the start, the provider of the organisation for the registration of runners—which is

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quite the most complicated matter of the year, let me assure your Lordships—and it is the provider of a great number of services along the way. It may be that it would survive without us, but it would not survive very easily or very happily without us.
Lord Skelmersdale: My Lords, I asked for the noble Lord's view and I am very grateful that he gave it. But the point I was making was that the boroughs will be free to carry on such events as Thamesday, the South Bank Weekend, the Greater London Horse Show, the Easter Parade in Battersea Park or anything else that has been mentioned this evening. The important point is that the decisions on whether they wish to continue these events or organise new ones must be left to them. We expect them to continue to take their sports and recreational facilities seriously, as indeed everyone will admit they have done in the past. Over and over again, the Opposition have based their case on what I can only call not trusting the local authorities. This clause represents another unwarranted and quite unnecessary check on the freedom of responsible and capable successor bodies. I therefore urge the noble Lord to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Graham of Edmonton: My Lords, I intend to withdraw it, but it is rather sad that the Minister has so much faith, not in the willingness but in the ability of the boroughs to carry on that which the GLC has carried on. This is the Government that will be screwing down as tightly as possible the resources that the boroughs have to enable them to do a range of things; this is the Government that will be laying responsibility upon responsibility on the boroughs and yet this is the Government that say that they see no reason why, on the question of organising and partially funding these London-wide events, they should not continue in the same way.
If it is possible for the Minister to attend group meetings, Conservative or Labour, in every London borough this week, this month or next year, he will find that they are absolutely eaten up with their ability to do a range of things and it is not possible for them to take this easily on board. The intention will be there, but when the priorities line up this is a priority that will slip and slip and, in the course of time, people will forget these events. All we are asking is: why not consult so as to try to let the boroughs see that the Government are concerned that these events are kept on? I suspect that the Government are not concerned that these events should continue. I do not say that the Government have been destructive or malicious; they are simply saying that they are not prepared to go through the simple exercise of consultation.
The noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Alloway, quite rightly pointed out that there is an implication in the words of the amendment that we want what has been successful in the past to continue. That is absolutely right. We also recognise that there will be a new ball game next April and they will be their own masters. We simply sought to get the agreement of the House that what we specify is good and worthy of being preserved, and we wanted the Government to have a duty to consult, which would not have implied anything more than trying to stimulate a desire to keep
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these events going. I strongly suspect that when, as we shall, we return to these matters in three or four years' time a great many of these events will have gone and the answer we shall get from the London boroughs, whatever their political complexion is, "We've got enough on our plate." I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave withdrawn.
8.45 p.m.
The Viscount of Falkland The Viscount of Falkland moved Amendment No. 80AP:
Before Clause 43, insert the following new clause:
("London Conservation and Heritage Authority.
.—(1) On the abolition date there should be established a body corporate which shall be known as the London Conservation and Heritage Authority.
(2) The London Conservation and Heritage Authority shall consist of members elected by the local government electors of Greater London in accordance with this Act and the Representation of the People Act 1983.
(3) Prior to the abolition date the Secretary of State shall make an Order confirming upon the London Conservation and Heritage Authority such functions under the enactments specified in subsection (4) of this section as will enable the Authority to promote the conservation and preservation of such areas and buildings in Greater London which he shall specify in the Order as being worthy of conservation and preservation, including all Conservation Areas in Greater London designated at the date of the passing of this Act under the Town and Country Planning Act 1971.
(4) This section shall apply to—

(a) the Town and Country Planning Act 1971;

(b) the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Areas Act 1979;

(c) sections 5 and 6 and this part of this Act; and

(d) any other enactments which the Secretary of State shall consider relevant to the functions of the Authority under this section.

(5) The London Conservation and Heritage Authority shall exercise such functions as are vested in it within the financial provisions laid down in this Act.").
The noble Viscount said: My Lords, what this amendment seeks to change in the Government's Bill is something which, if not complicated now, gives rise to visions of all kinds of complications in the future. As we see it, the situation is quite simple. The present committee of the Greater London Council, which is probably one of the least party political committees on that council, is the only way by which the ordinary people of London can, through their electoral power, safeguard the heritage of ancient buildings and monuments which we have in London. The picture in London at present is not a pretty one. I do not think any of your Lordships would say that London's skyline is a pretty sight, but it would be a good deal less pretty if this committee of the Greater London Council had not put the brake on and prevented some disasters.
There are some recent ones which will be fresh in your Lordships' minds. The building known as the Palumbo project will probably come readily to mind, but there were such proposed monstrosities as the Hay's Wharf project and an enormous building, the name of which I cannot remember, but which was tall and green and it stood about 500 feet high, dwarfing the Tower of London, all the churches and even St. Paul's. I am reminded that it was called the Green Giant. The name sounds attractive, but the building was most unattractive.
Through the agency of this Committee, which is not only representative of the electors of the City of London but is a carefully chosen body, extremely good work has been done and it has drawn to itself on this subject the advice of some of the most eminent brains in the land. Notwithstanding this brake on the progress of—if I may be contentious at this time of night—rapacious developers; and I do not suggest that all developers are rapacious, because some of them are my best friends, but they tend to be rapacious and heavily armed, and sometimes link with boroughs which do not have the interest of conserving historic buildings at heart—
Lord Elton: My Lords, I wonder whether the noble Viscount could enlighten me, because I do not want to listen to the rest of his speech under a misapprehension. He started the passage on which he is now engaged with a reference to the Palumbo development and then went on to the Green Giant. He then said that if it had not been for this committee—and then I lost him. Is he telling the House that it was this committee which decided that the Palumbo development should not take place, because I am sure he cannot be doing that?
The Viscount of Falkland: My Lords, I am grateful to the. Minister and I was not doing that. I rather clumsily bracketed a number of monstrosities together. I was not suggesting that this committee was in any way involved. I was trying to illustrate to the House that over a period of years there have been a number of projects with which this committee was involved. The Palumbo one was not, but I think it groups itself quite naturally in one's mind with those monstrosities. It is the purpose of the movers of this amendment to ensure that all steps are taken to prevent projects of this kind going forward, without every possible precaution being taken through the electoral system.
We have here this excellent committee. There may be noble Lords who will say that in some cases it has not been excellent, but all committees are at times subject to error. But if it had not been for this committee, which affords the people of London a way of expressing their view and their concern for the future of their environment, the position would be a sorrier one than it is today. London must have one of the least attractive skylines in Europe. There is still a lot to be done, there is still a lot to be preserved and there is still a lot left, but even in the short time that I have been in London I am astonished at what has happened from the reaches of Fulham right through past Aldgate Pump. One can produce a myriad of examples of listed buildings and places of interest which have just disappeared.
What we have here is the suggestion that in some way two quangos (that is a very unattractive word, but I must use it) which consist of Government appointees—there are two of them, and that is why I made reference to the complications that could occur—can replace the committee. The two quangos will have to work in unison because their responsibilities overlap. We have the London Planning Commission and the Historic Buildings and
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Monuments Commission. These bodies will have among their number—some of the names have been whispered abroad—some very eminent and capable people who are as committed as I and my colleagues are, and as most Members of your Lordships' House are, to seeing that at this late stage some kind of uniformity, some kind of cultural symmetry, if I may use a rather pompous phrase, some long-term planning for the cultural heritage of London, can at last be achieved.
Even if the people making up these two quangos should be satisfactory in every degree in terms of their capacity to judge what is conservable and what is not, it is extremely doubtful whether they will be able to play a properly briefed and effective role in a public inquiry. Those people who now take part in public inquiries have a wealth of experience. One thing which has been noted in recent years is the thoroughness of the procedures of public inquiries. Highly complex matters are discussed, and I do not think that some of the members of these quangos will even be willing to involve themselves, at least initially, in the complex issues which are involved.
It will be difficult to oppose the enemies of conservation, if I may thus describe them. I do not think it is too emotive to say that one can visualise the developers and the allies which collect around them. Sometimes these are boroughs which are attracted because of the tightness of their financial budgets. I do not imply anything sinister by this—it is human nature—but there are advantages when you are allied to powerful interests such as some principal developers. If one does not have in the boroughs the kind of expertise and cultural commitment which is available to the present committee, it is easy to see that when issues of this kind come up it will be very difficult to oppose them.
The whole business of conservation has become a difficult area. There is the extremely intense conservation which a lot of people find extremely boring. Many people say there is too much conservation. There is the jocular Mr. Auberon Waugh, who in the latest edition of Private Eye suggests that for one's own good one should go out every day and punch an architect. I hope it is a jocular approach, but there is a kind of desperation in this kind of humour. I hope your Lordships will agree in some measure that we need in some way to emulate the example of other European countries in the way they have tackled the business of conservation in terms of historical continuity. That is evident in their cities.
Indeed, in this country cities such as Bath—I do not know whether many of your Lordships have been to Bath recently; one of my colleagues on these Benches who, unfortunately, is not here tonight, the noble Lord, Lord Raglan, has been very much involved with it—and York have against enormous opposition had very satisfactory development and have become prosperous as a result. If London is allowed to continue in this way without at least the elected inhabitants of London being able to express their view and being able to influence the decision about conservation areas, and so on, the whole thing is likely to collapse into utter anarchy and incompetence, and by pure force of expertise and power there is the

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likelihood that certain projects, which I described at some length at the beginning of my speech, could emerge unchecked and our beautiful city, with its reputation as the seat of Western democracy, could emerge with just the character and flavour of a suburban shopping centre.
This should not be a party political matter. Conservation should cut across political lines. I would suggest to your Lordships that this be considered very seriously. The amendment suggests an elected body—I know that this does not appeal certainly to two noble Lords in this Chamber—which can replace the council. It is hoped that the 13 million people of London will become aware that "environment" does not relate just to the disappearance of buildings of beauty and of historical continuity, but also to the environment in which young people grow up.
I live in Battersea. I live in one of the two remaining Victorian cottages in an area of utter desolation. I am surrounded by enormous blocks which are full of deprived people and people needing psychiatric help. This is the result of the planning, if I may call it that, of the 1950s. Let us hope that this never happens again. I suggest that the only way to develop London in the way it should be developed is by something along the lines of the amendment which we are now proposing. I beg to move.
Lord Campbell of Alloway: My Lords, the noble Viscount has spoken with verve and eloquence of the complexities of the future, but this amendment, though such is not the noble Viscount's intention, imports its own measure of complexity. In case it be thought otherwise, I speak not as an enemy of conservation. I declare in that regard my interest as a member of the Georgian Group and yet another conservation society.
This amendment proposes a directly elected body corporate with executive functions to promote conservation and preservation in London. But why London and nowhere else? Why assume that the London boroughs are not competent to manage their own affairs in this regard? That is the theme that drives through so many of these amendments.
There are, however, it would appear, no reserve powers in this regard. I wonder whether my noble friend could consider whether in effect a reserve power exists in the calling in procedure, because there should be some form of reserve power. I am not sufficiently acquainted with the technicalities of the Bill to be able to find where it is. I do not think it is in Clause 100, but I cannot believe that there is no reserve power at all. I thought, with respect, that your Lordships might require a measure of assurance in that regard.
Leaving that aspect aside for the moment, important though it is, the setting up of this body corporate, directly elected with executive functions, again as a superimposed tier of administration, is yet another attempt to derogate from the principles of devolution. Apart from the principle—one can leave that aside for the moment, it is so tedious—there does not appear to be any special case made out on the merits of conservation and heritage in this regard. The
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body corporate would be cumbersome and costly. I suggest that it would do little more than the London boroughs are able and willing to do. Apart from involving an unnecessary derogation from the principle, it involves a permanent bar to devolution because this, as I understand it, is a permanent statutory body. The effect is, whether or not such be the intention, that this is another harbinger of that manifest desire to set up this elected tier of local government as a second tier in yet another area. On those grounds, I oppose the amendment.
9 p.m.
Viscount Buckmaster: My Lords, my support for the amendment is based on my unshakeable belief that beauty, harmony and orderliness in one's environment are indispensable ingredients for a balanced, properly adjusted life. It was Plato who said:
"Let our youth live in a beautiful land".
It is perhaps not fanciful to suggest that the lack of beauty and orderliness which one sees in so many of our great cities today is perhaps at least partly responsible for the soccer hooliganism, violence, and so on, which seem to be increasingly prevalent.
As the noble Viscount, Lord Falkland, said, despite its manifold and splendid beauties, no one could call London a well planned city. While serving abroad one of my chief delights over the years on my spells of leave in London was to visit St. Paul's Cathedral, of which I am a Friend. I expect some of your Lordships are, too. But over the years I have seen this great cathedral increasingly hemmed in by concrete horrors which, particularly when viewed from a distance, shatter the sublimity of Wren's noblest creation. Indeed, so pervasive is the presence of these new buildings that St. Paul's now seems to be the odd man out. How can I answer the many overseas visitors who I take to St. Paul's and who ask how we Londoners can allow such a situation to develop? What can I say to them?
Then there is Euston. For many years I have been a great railway lover and, possibly like many of your Lordships, I deplored the destruction of that great station with its Doric arch, its great waiting hall, and so on. From a railway point of view the station was a mess. It could not exist and cope with the modern electrified trains. It had to go. But was it necessary to destroy the Doric arch? Surely something more lovely could have been built than the monstrous horror which replaced it.
Some of your Lordships will no doubt be familiar with the strict conservation orders protecting the hearts of many of the great European cities. Indeed, I ask: would the French allow skyscrapers to crowd in on Notre Dame? Would the Italians permit ferroconcrete monstrosities to overshadow St. Mark's Square in Venice? I wonder, indeed. However, perhaps even more interesting and instructive than these European examples are the comparisons I could draw with some of the Arab countries with which I am very familiar. It has often been said that Arabs are philistines; that they are totally unmindful of beauty; and that they are uncaring about the preservation of their cultural heritages. Well, some 20 years ago that was so. Then the oil money came rushing in, fast and furious, and the order of the day was, "Build, build,

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build, expand, expand, expand. Destroy the old, let us build a new city".
Inevitably, many of those building projects were hastily conceived, haphazard and higgledy-piggledy. However, I am glad to inform your Lordships that wiser counsels prevailed and, as many of your Lordships will be aware, that situation does not exist today. In major towns in places like Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Muscat, for example, one sees that the need for sound planning and sensible conservation has been almost universally accepted. Furthermore, these Arab countries have devised building forms which incorporate traditional Islamic features within the framework of modern designs. So the whole concept—although one cannot say that it is necessarily beautiful, because beauty is in the eye of the beholder—is one of symmetry, order and co-ordinated, well-planned design.
That trend does not apply only to the Arab world. In Malawi, for example, one sees the new capital of Lilongwe, where, so extensive has been the beautification of this city that if one walks around it is hard to see the building for all the flowers, the trees and the grass. What a lovely concept that is.
I would suggest to your Lordships that we have failed so far. We have failed to learn the lessons taught us by France and Italy. We have even failed to learn many, of the lessons which the developing world can teach us. Such failures, I would submit to your Lordships, cannot continue. We must surely preserve our great and glorious capital city, London, from the evils of speculative building and unco-ordinated planning.
The noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Alloway, suggested that we should leave it to the boroughs. I do not believe that local authorities can satisfactorily execute an overall plan. For example, there may be one borough which believes in small houses and another which believes in high rise. There must surely be an overall, co-ordinated plan. I know that in London we have our preservation areas and our listed buildings, many hundreds of them, and all of us at heart are conscious of the need for preservation and conservation. But unless we create an overall elected authority such as that envisaged in this admirable amendment we shall not be able to save London as a source of solace and inspiration for future generations.
Lord Denning: My Lords, I hope that your Lordships will not accept this amendment. The proposal is to set up a new authority altogether—a new corporation to be called the London Conservation and Heritage Authority. What functions is it to carry out? It is to carry out, for instance, existing functions under the Town and Country Planning Act or the Ancient Monuments Act. Let those functions be carried out by the existing authorities—by the boroughs themselves or whatever it may be. They can perfectly well be carried out by them and we should not have a new authority established to take over the position. I would oppose the amendment.
Lord Montagu of Beaulieu: My Lords, perhaps I may be allowed to say a few words as chairman of the
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Historic Buildings and Monuments Commission because the amendment concerns functions which it is proposed should be transferred to us under the Bill. I made the point at the Committee stage that the position of the commission is completely neutral, as we are a non-political body, set up as an non-political body. Therefore we do not wish to get concerned there. Our concern is that satisfactory arrangements should be made for the conservation of historic buildings, monuments and archaeology and that that should continue when and if abolition takes place.
In that context I am not convinced in any way that a single-function authority which the amendment proposes, subject to the inevitable controls on resources and requiring the establishment of yet another bureacracy, would be a satisfactory alternative to the role proposed for the commission in the Bill. I point out that the commission has an enormous amount of expertise within its body which has been inherited from the Department of the Environment. Nevertheless I am aware that there is some degree of concern—and I understand that—about the nature of the commission as an appointed body rather than a directly elected authority as proposed here.
Therefore I think that the House tonight may find it useful if I say a word or two about our intentions should those responsibilities be passed to the commission. We certainly propose to establish a London historic buildings advisory committee to advise the commission on matters affecting historic buildings and conservation areas in London. The chairman of that committee I propose should be a commissioner, but the Secretary of State in his wisdom may wish to appoint yet another commissioner with special responsibilities for London, in which case I would welcome that. We have not yet decided how the rest of the committee should be made up and what balance there should be between experts and those with political experience and affiliations. Obviously that issue will need further consideration. I am sure that the commission will listen with interest to the opinions expressed in this debate. Nevertheless, I feel that we can do a good job in looking after London's historic buildings.
As the noble Viscount, Lord Buckmaster, has just been speaking. I may remind him that since last November all listed building consents have had to come to the commission, and I believe that that system is working well. We gave evidence at the Palumbo inquiry, and I like to believe that our evidence was listened to. I hope that these few words will help the House to know what our intentions are for the future.
Lord Elton: My Lords, I am most grateful to my noble friend for bringing us back from planning to conservation. I thought for a moment I had misunderstood the noble Viscount, Lord Falkland. Indeed I interrupted him at one moment to make sure I had him right. He was referring to a chain of developments which could not be laid at the door of conservation but which were the outcome of planning procedures.
I am not sure whether the noble Viscount was here on 10th June when we conducted the second stage of

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a series of elaborate debates on the planning procedures for London, involving the unitary planning authorities at the London borough level, and the use of Part I of the district unitary plan as the equivalent of the present strategic plan, and keeping the various Part Is of the unitary plans in step with each other by means of the Secretary of State issuing strategic guidance. The point we had reached on the 10th of this month was the point at which we discussed how we should indeed get a voice for London, with some linkage to the electorate of London, into that process. All this, the noble Viscount would have found very fascinating and very relevant to his concerns.
However, they did not seem to me quite to chime in with what had been talked about, which was conservation and the listing of buildings, which is something on which the Secretary of State is already very ably advised in some respects by the Historic Buildings and Monuments Commission and to which a larger role is now to be given in London. We are not giving a larger role to some strange animal or new creation. It is a body which we have grown very quickly to know and respect in this House and elsewhere. Nonetheless, insofar as it is necessary, after the excellent intervention of my noble friend, I welcome the opportunity to clarify the position on that and our proposals for it, and to give some reassurance where that is appropriate. What I cannot do is to suggest that the debate is the occasion for anything more.
9.15 p.m.
Again, I am not quite certain whether the noble Viscount has been here at earlier stages when as a House we have repeatedly come to the conclusion that it is not the wish of your Lordships to establish a body corporate made up of people directly elected to discharge statutory functions on a London-wide basis. It has become almost a litany of disapproval. Thus the noble Viscount will not expect me to welcome what he has proposed as the basis for anything except a reassurance.
The Government have for long recognised the high regard in which the GLC is held by very many people in the exercise of its heritage responsibility—and I use that term in its widest sense. It is for that very reason that the Government reached an agreement with the Historic Buildings and Monuments Commission, whereby their long-standing experience and expertise would be kept together in one place. This agreement has been widely welcomed. Therefore, there is a continuity of which the noble Viscount may not be aware.
The fact is that the commission, although it is still in its formative stages, has already established itself as the leading authority on the conservation of the heritage, including directly, in giving substantial financial assistance to conservation projects, the repair of individual historic buildings. It has established itself as a responsible body which is prepared to work with local authorities and other public and private bodies as well as the individual citizen.
I do not think there is any doubt that it is exceptionally well placed to take on these new
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responsibilities and that the people of London stand to gain a great deal from its direct involvement in the protection of their heritage. Indeed, the combination of the resources of the commission and the resources of the GLC's Historic Buildings Division will be formidable and are likely to be the envy of others, even those in France which the noble Viscount, Lord Buckmaster, feels are so well protected. Looking at Paris, I am not certain that they are absolutely, completely protected. The people of London therefore stand to gain, not to lose.
I should also like to stress to your Lordships that the commission is not a body which is unaccountable. My right honourable friend the Secretary of State for the Environment, who is himself accountable to Parliament, approves the commission's budget and the contribution that his grant-in-aid should make to it. All this is done on the basis of a corporate plan submitted to him by the commission. In addition to this, the commission is required to make an annual report to the Secretary of State on the exercise of its function. The Secretary of State is in turn required to lay a copy of that report before each House of Parliament.
Your Lordships may also wish to note that the Bill provides for two very important modifications to existing GLC procedures in respect of applications for listed building consent and the designation of conservation areas. In each of these cases the powers of the commission will differ from those of the GLC in one very important respect. First, paragraph 1(17) of Schedule 2 gives the borough to whom a consent application has been made the power to notify the Secretary of State of an application that the commission has directed should be refused. If that borough, for whatever reason, does not feel able to accept that direction it can then notify the Secretary of State. Secondly, in paragraph 1(14) of the same schedule there is a requirement that the commission shall obtain the Secretary of State's consent to the designation of a conservation area.
In these two important respects the citizen is being afforded a special degree of protection. In effect, the elected body, the council, can appeal over the head of the non-elected commission to the elected Secretary of State. In the event of disagreement, the Secretary of State will always therefore be able to be involved in the decision-making process.
Finally, both the Government and the commission recognise that the assumption of these responsibilities in London will give the commission powers that are not mirrored elsewhere, and give the commission a special London flavour. It is therefore the intention of the Secretary of State to appoint a commissioner, as my noble friend has said he would welcome, with a specific London remit. I was glad to hear my noble friend Lord Montagu explain that the commission's intention is to set up a special London advisory committee.
In considering the transfer of the GLC's heritage responsibility, the most important thing is to concentrate on the successor's inherent ability to do the job. The commission has the capacity. That is why it is being given the job. Although the job is not outside its existing broad statutory constitution, both the

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Government and the commission have accepted that some modifications need to be made. These are being made. I ask your Lordships, therefore, to be reassured. As to the call-in powers of the Secretary of State, I have just recited them in the two paragraphs of the schedule to which I referred. I should also have mentioned the helpful intervention of my noble friend Lord Campbell of Alloway at that stage.
All the other projections with which the noble Lord is concerned that link up in the really elaborate and strong network of planning requirements will remain in place. The form in which they remain in place is under active discussion in this House and outside it. I believe that at Third Reading we shall have an amendment that will satisfy the noble Viscount, Lord Falkland, and the noble Viscount, Lord Buckmaster, on their particular interest in planning, which is to protect meritorious old buildings, as well as those of your Lordships who feel that it is necessary occasionally to develop, as the noble Lord was good enough to accept at the beginning of his speech. I cannot, for those reasons, ask your Lordships to accept the amendment. I ask the noble Lord to accept the assurances.
The Viscount of Falkland: My Lords, I should like to thank the noble Lord the Minister for his courteous and lucid remarks. I should also like to express my appreciation to the noble Lord, Lord Montagu, for throwing some light on the body and the kind of considerations that it has in mind. I do not like using the phrase "those on this side of the House", because it is a pity that this is something that develops along party lines. I believe that conservation of this kind should go above these considerations. Nevertheless, what concerns us a great deal is the strategic long-term planning of conservation and the preservation of buildings. All of us, I believe, have the same ends in view. It may be upon the manner in which we reach those ends that we disagree. It is perhaps that we have rather vaguer ideas of the monitoring of taste over a long period.
It seems to me that planning and conservation are so closely linked that a difficulty arises when a planning permission which is in every way admirable in fulfilling the desires and aspirations of the creators and, indeed, in adding to the community is granted but other considerations are less seriously considered. The consideration of the preservation of old buildings and of pieces of history could ultimately outweigh, in my view, and also in the opinion of other noble Lords, even those considerations of planning which are acceptable in almost every case. It is the problem of the weight of the preservation against the planning that perhaps concerns us in the longer term.
Lord Elton: My Lords, I do not wish to protract this discussion, but I should like the noble Lord to take on board the point that preservation is part of planning. It is the function of the Secretary of State, when important decisions are taken to him, to have in mind the conservation considerations and to balance these against what the noble Viscount calls planning, although I think he means development. Planning consists of balancing conservation against development. That is where the protection which the noble Viscount seeks should be. That is why our debate on 10th June was, and our amendments for Third Reading will be, so important to him. That is why he is wrong to pursue the line which he is pursuing at the moment on only one aspect of planning.
The Viscount of Falkland: My Lords, I accept the Minister's point. There is an area of confusion here, and it is an area of confusion which is in many people's minds outside your Lordships' Chamber. I think that the whole view of conservation in this area is extremely woolly. In a way I may have projected this woolliness in your Lordships' House; but I think it is useful in that it shows that in public attitudes there are areas which give rise to concern.
Nevertheless, I have been impressed by the sincerity and the helpfulness of the noble Lord the Minister and his noble friends while at the same time I still express anxiety. I am concerned about bodies being created which are made up of appointees. In a society such as ours—indeed, ideally in every society—I believe it is preferable that the views of the electorate should be expressed on all matters of this kind. I believe that t hey should be elected bodies rather than quangos of this kind. However, this may work very well and I have been impressed by some of the remarks that have been made, particularly those by the noble Lord, Lord Montagu. But I do not think it is difficult to project one's imagination into the future, and there may be other overriding factors in the Government's mind. I am a little concerned about the remark made by such an eminent person as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Denning, and that made by the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Alloway. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Denning, said that it should devolve to the boroughs; but the boroughs do not have a very good record, particularly in conservation. If one takes a close look, there is cause for anxiety there.
All things being considered, I accept the assurances which have been offered by the noble Lord the Minister and shall wait to see how matters develop and whether we can clear up some of this woolliness. I shall wait for the Third Reading of the Bill. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 44 [Historic House Museums]:
Lord Cottesloe Lord Cottesloe moved Amendment No. 80AQ:
Page 28, line 34, at beginning insert ("Save as provided in section (Hampstead Heath) below,").
The noble Lord said: My Lords, I beg to move Amendment No. 80AQ, and at the same time it might be for the convenience of the House if I speak to Amendments Nos. 80AR, 80AS and 80AT.
Amendment No. 80AR: Page 28, line 38, after ("State") insert ("except such lands mentioned in section (Hampstead Heath) below,".
Amendment No. 80AS: Page 28, line 42, at end insert ("(insofar as this relates to Kenwood House and its contents).").
Amendment No. 80AT: After Clause 44, insert the following new clause:
( "Hampstead Heath.
.—(1) Hampstead Heath and all land held therewith by the Greater London Council immediately prior to the abolition date, that is to say the land known as Golders Hill, Sandy Heath, The Hill, West Heath, Parliament Hill, Kenwood and Hampstead Heath Extension, shall on the abolition date, unless an order has before that date been made under section 99 below, be vested together with any appropriate functions in the London residuary body.
(2) Any order made under section 66(3) or under section 99 in relation to the land referred to in subsection (1) above shall transfer those lands in their entirety.
(3) In making any order as in subsection (2) above the Secretary of State shall have regard to the functions performed prior to the abolition date by the Greater London Council in relation to Kenwood House and to the desirability of continuing lakeside concerts in the Kenwood part of Hampstead Heath.").
Amendment No. 80AT embodies the heart of this matter. At this time of the evening I shall endeavour to be brief. The purpose of these amendments is to enable the Minister to ensure that all the lands that go to make up the 800 acres and more of rural countryside that is generally spoken of as Hampstead Heath, together with the woodlands and meadows of Kenwood and its lake, are managed as a unit, as they are now by the GLC, and are not fragmented between the boroughs or otherwise.
This would enable Kenwood House and its contents, together no doubt with its terrace and garden, to be assigned, if that is desired, to the Historic Buildings and Monuments Commission, while the wide expanses of the heath would be under a unitary management which would care for the wildlife and the rural aspects that are so much enjoyed by many hundreds of thousands of people—Londoners and others—keeping in touch with and having regard to the views and interests of the public, as the GLC has done so admirably in recent years. I hope that the Minister, who I know regards these matters with sympathy and understanding, may feel able to accept these amendments. I can see no reason why he should not. They would not tie his hands, but they would enable him to ensure that the arrangements are such as all concerned would wish. I beg to move.
9.30 p.m.
Lord Strabolgi: My Lords, I should like to support this amendment, to which I have given my name. I hope the Government are going to be able to give us
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some news of what they intend to do about Hampstead Heath. It is a difficult decision, and there are various options. But until that decision is made it is vital that the Heath should be passed to the residuary body; otherwise, I am advised that it would go automatically to one of the boroughs.
As I see it, there are six options. There is first of all the question of dividing it between three boroughs; and, of course, unlike Gaul, I think Hampstead Heath probably cannot be divided into three parts. If it is a question of passing it to the borough which owns the largest number of hectares, which is Camden, I think nobody would want that. It would be difficult for Camden to run it with the rate capping, and everything else.
Then there are the City of London, the DoE, the commission, and the National Trust. The Government are rather favourably inclined towards the City of London. We were told by the noble Lord, Lord Boyd-Carpenter—I am sorry he is not in his place—that they run Epping Forest very well. On the other hand, I am sorry to say that they have not got such a good record over Highgate Wood. I believe they planted beech trees there which are quite inappropriate with oak, as they prevent the regeneration of the oak wood. They have also, I am told, built houses on the edge of the wood—houses for employees, I think, but all the same houses on the edge of the wood.
There is the question of the commission and the National Trust, of course, who would need an endowment. I personally rather favour the DoE. They run the Royal Parks very well. They run Richmond Park, which in many ways is wild country similar to the Heath, extremely well. But I think that while the Government are considering all these options and also the question of the finance, which is important, it is essential that the Heath should be passed to the residuary body—I can see no reason why it should not—in the interim. Therefore, I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Elton—I know his heart is in the right place over this—is going to give us some news tonight.
Lord Melchett: My Lords, I, too, should like to support this amendment and make two points. It appears that the most favoured body so far as the Government are concerned to take over the running of the Heath is the City of London. I would have to say to the noble Lord, Lord Elton, that if that is the case it will meet with fierce resistance, and fierce resistance based on practical experience of the ability of the City of London to manage areas of a similar character.
My noble friend Lord Strabolgi mentioned Epping Forest. Frankly, that is a bad example because the City of London play a very small part, if any, in the running of Epping Forest, which is in the hands of the conservators. It is the conservators who determine policy and carry out management work there. I do not think that the record of the City of London, and in particular in respect of what my noble friend mentioned, justifies anyone placing any confidence in it being able to manage as complex and varied an area of open countryside in the middle of London as the

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Heath represents. I hope that the Government will try to dismiss that from their mind.
I would agree with the suggestion made by my noble friend that if this has to go to an unelected body it should be the DoE, with their responsibilities for the Royal Parks and, in particular, Richmond, which is by far the closest analogy to the Heath that we have available.
The second point I want to make has not been touched on this evening, and I do not think it was touched on in earlier debates. I have tried to read the debates on all the different occasions on which the Heath has been mentioned, and there are a large number of them and they occur in many different contexts. It seems to me that the Government have not yet fully understood the complexity of the different buildings which surround Kenwood House itself. I am happy for the house and its contents and the formal gardens immediately adjacent and behind the house to go to the Historic Buildings and Monuments Commission. That seems a reasonable decision, although it would be much better for the whole thing to be managed as an entity as it is now.
But there are other buildings there, such as the flats which, I understand, are occupied by staff or by retired staff of the heath, not of the house. There is the coach house, which contains an excellent cafeteria and restaurant which really services the heath and the people walking on and enjoying the heath to a far greater extent than those visiting the house. It seems to me that those buildings should be managed with the heath, not with the house and its contents.
There is the land in front of the house, the lakes and Kenwood itself, which historically has never been part of the house although it is widely thought to be the case. Historically it appears to have been a separate bequest to the heath under quite different terms from the bequest of the house and the land that went with the house itself. All in all it would be a tragedy if part of that woodland, or indeed all of it, and the lake in the wood were to be separated from the management of the rest of the open countryside which makes up the heath. I hope the Government will consider that point.
Obviously the concerts should continue and should be considered to be part of the management of the house. I do not think that the wood and the lakes should go with the rest of the countryside to whichever body is thought appropriate. I hope that the Government will come to the conclusion that the Royal Parks administration should do that job.
Lord Elton: My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Cottesloe and to the noble Lords, Lord Strabolgi and Lord Melchett, for bringing this perhaps rather domestic but nonetheless important London concern to your Lordships' attention. It is a subject of close concern to a number of your Lordships, not least to me, and I am glad of the opportunity to reassure your Lordships on one or two issues.
In drafting the principal amendment noble Lords have recognised the normal and expected way in which ownership of the heath and responsibility for its management would be allocated; that is, by order under Clause 99. Subsection (1) of the new clause defines the full extent of the heath. Subsection (2)
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requires that if an order were made in the normal way under Clause 99, it shall transfer the whole of the heath as a single entity. The first concern therefore is to see that the heath is not broken up like Gad or anything else. I shall return to that in a moment.
The second concern of noble Lords is that if' the destination for ownership of the heath has not been decided by abolition day, it shall not go into some kind of administrative limbo, or indeed to the local borough by default. In subsection (1), therefore, they also provide for that eventuality by saying that in that case it shall pass to the London residuary body. Their second concern, therefore, is to see that the heath does not fall into some procedural hiatus in the devolution process. Again in subsection (2) noble Lords provide that on transferring ownership out of the London residuary body and into the finally chosen destination by means of an order under Clause 66(3) the whole of the heath must be passed on entirely.
The third and final concern of noble Lords is to protect not only the unity of the heath but also the continuation of the lakeside concerts in what they describe as the Kenwood part of Hampstead Heath. This is something that they wish the Secretary of State to have in mind before he makes a final transfer.
I shall deal with the concerns of my noble friend and his co-signatories and of a much wider audience, whose anxieties I am sure they accurately reflect, in the order in which I have illustrated them. First, both my right honourable friend the Secretary of State and I remain firmly wedded to the principle of keeping the heath as a single entity. It was because we became aware of public concern about what was seen as the unequal and opposing interests of the three boroughs concerned that we embarked on the present discussions in the first place. It was in the context of the anxiety that the noble Lord and others have expressed that my right honourable friend undertook that the heath should be managed as a single entity. That undertaking I am happy to repeat.
The second concern of the noble Lords is that the future of the heath might be rendered insecure if it has not been finally dealt with before 1st April next year or that it might go willy-nilly into three boroughs. I believe that that anxiety springs, in part, from a perception of the number of subsidiary issues to be resolved and the range of options to be considered between now and then. We have not yet, it is true, come to a final conclusion. I would hope and expect to do so well before April. Even if we had not done so or if, as I think is more likely, we had done so but had not worked out the final details, the result that the noble Lord seeks to guard against could not happen.
If noble Lords look at Clause 61 of the Bill, they will find a reference in subsection (2) to residuary property. The term "residuary property" is then defined as:
"Any property for the vesting of which provision is not otherwise made … under this Act or any other enactment".
If ownership of Hampstead Heath had not been transferred by the beginning of April, it would become residuary property. If noble Lords look at subsection (1) of the same clause, they will see that, as residuary property within the meaning of the clause, ownership of the Heath would pass automatically to the London residuary body.

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I think your Lordships can agree, on reflection, that my right honourable friend's undertaking and mine and the existing provisions in Clause 61 between them take care of both the first and second of the three concerns. These concerns have been with general principles. We have been looking at the whole Heath, as it were, from a distance.
With their third concern, subsection (3) of the new clause, we zoom in to a precise and particular problem. As background to this problem, those noble Lords not familiar with the issue should know that on the edge of the Heath there is a very fine house known as Kenwood House. This is one of the three historic house museums listed in Clause 44. It came to the GLC from its predecessor, the LCC, and it came to the LCC as a bequest from the late Lord Iveagh, as did a good deal of the surrounding landscape. There is general satisfaction with the decision expressed in Clause 44 to transfer Kenwood House to the Historic Buildings and Monuments Commission and the capable and sensitive hands of my noble friend Lord Montagu of Beaulieu.
I do not propose to go into very precise detail because I do not think this House as a whole would wish to devote its time on Report to matters on that scale. However, there is one important issue beyond the mere practicalities and I am glad that the noble Lords have drafted the amendment in a way that enables me to clarify it. It is this. By defining the Heath as they have in subsection (1) and by requiring it to remain indivisible, as they do, they establish the principle of no separation. Then they indicate in subsection (3) that they are anxious to continue the lakeside concerts. Moreover, they expect this to be achieved by the Secretary of State taking into account the desirability of it happening when he makes the order transferring the heath to new ownership. That can only mean in statutory language that the order itself is to reflect the desirabililty of what they want. The order is an order to transfer property. It can therefore only reflect the desirability of what they want to happen and make it likely that it will happen in terms of the ownership of the property.
There is little doubt in my mind that the concerts—and in this I am at one with the noble Lord, Lord Melchett—are events that go with the house and that the running of concerts is more akin to the running of a museum or a stately home than it is to running a very large public open space like the Heath. If the order were to reflect the desirability of the lakeside concerts continuing after abolition it seems to me the only way that could be done would be by transferring ownership of the lakeside on which the concerts are to take place together with the ownership of the house, which is the natural background and setting.
There is nothing very new in assigning this area with the house rather than with the Heath, because that is what the first recipients of the very valuable bequest themselves did many years ago. It is possible to argue that the land that goes with the house ought to be the land within the fence that the LCC put up some years ago. In support of the view that land should go with the building, I was today approached by the noble Lord, Lord Moyne. Your Lordships will know that he is the
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grandson of the late Lord Iveagh who gave both the house and grounds in the first place. His view, which he kindly said I should quote, is that the glory of Kenwood is the house in its setting. He said:
"The garden of Kenwood is its landscape and not a few flowerbeds around the house. It seems to me important that responsibility for the house and park should be vested in a single authority".
I know that that is also the view of the Friends of Kenwood House.
Lord Melchett: My Lords, may I interrupt the noble Lord to get something clear? He said in that quotation of the noble Lord, Lord Moyne, that the house and the park should be vested in a single authority. Can the noble Lord say what he was referring to in the term "park"? Is that the ground fenced by the LCC, the ground that was originally granted with house, or the heath plus house as a whole?
9.45 p.m.
Lord Elton: My Lords, it was by way of a telephone conversation at a distance and I could not say what the noble Lord defined as the "park". But I put the matter on the record to show simply this. Your Lordships may not want to dwell on the details for long, but what I have said shows that I have received many submissions on this matter and there are clearly contradictory views on what is best. I spoke on it at length only to make it clear that even on our undertaking to transfer the heath as an entity there is room to differ about the precise location of its boundary and that the solution inferred by the drafting of the amendment would be a respectable one, if that is what should finally emerge.
I return to the various concerns which your Lordships have expressed and to another which we have had clearly shown as underlying them all. I repeat that the heath will be managed as an entity. I repeat that interim arrangements already exist which will ensure that it will be transferred' to the London residuary body if no other single body owns it by 1st April 1986. To that I add the important assurance that the residuary body would take on staff to run the heath, at the same time. I also accept the desirability of continuing the lakeside concerts, although that must rest with the successor authorities and not with central Government.
The underlying concern to which I referred was not so much who the eventual owner should be but that, whoever should finish up in possession, the views of those most interested should be heard and the interests of local residents spoken for. I want to put it on record that I share that concern and that I intend that provisions shall be made for that purpose under any arrangements at which we eventually arrive.
I hope that my noble friend will consider very carefully what I have said and will feel that he may withdraw his amendments of which a considerable part is, as I have made clear, a duplication of what is already in the Bill and which your Lordships could not therefore in any case accept. I hope that he will accept also that he has my entire goodwill and I hope that we arrive at a solution which will not only preserve the heath, but also keep happy those who enjoy it.
Lord Cottesloe: My Lords, I am very grateful to the Minister for the assurances that he has given, and,

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indeed, very grateful to my friends on the opposite side—if I may so call them—for what they have said. With regard to what the Minister has said, there is one thing that I should perhaps say that might be further investigated and found to be helpful. I found to my surprise that there are two separate trusts under Lord Iveagh's will, one of which I understand deals with the house and its contents, and the grounds are in a separate trust. There is no particular reason on that basis why the grounds should not go in with the heath without affecting the trust. However, I am very grateful indeed to my noble friend for what he has said and for the sympathy and understanding with which he regards the whole matter. In those circumstances, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendments Nos. 80AR, 80AS and 80AT not moved.]
Baroness Birk Baroness Birk moved Amendment No. 80AU:
Before Clause 46, insert the following new clause:
("Archaeology in Metropolitan Counties
.—(1) The provisions of this section shall apply where immediately before the abolition date there are in being in a metropolitan county arrangements (including the employment of staff) provided by the council of that county for the carrying out of archaeological excavations and related matters within the area of that county.
(2) The councils of the districts in a metropolitan county shall establish a joint committee of members of those councils whose duty it shall be to seek to co-ordinate—

(a) the continued provision in the area of that metropolitan county of the arrangements referred to in subsection (1) above in a form as near as is reasonably practicable to the form of those arrangements immediately before the abolition date; and

(b) the employment, provision or use by those councils for the maintenance of those arrangements, of staff, property and facilities.").

The noble Baroness said: My Lords, this amendment is concerned with archaeology. The theme of archaeology, which is an essential ingredient in our understanding of our heritage and history, has been present during the passage of this Bill, from Second Reading through to the Committee stage, and now to the Report stage.
In order not to take up too much time I shall briefly draw the attention of the House to the fact that during Committee stage consideration was given to giving the responsibility for archaeology to the appropriate residuary bodies. That would enable permanent arrangements to be worked out. Although there were some speakers who supported this concept, rather more recognised the absolute necessity for keeping the units together. The amendment was defeated on the basis of not liking the idea (after the Minister had spoken) of archaeology going to the residuary bodies.
Following that, there have been further discussions with the archaeological profession and also with the Historic Buildings and Ancient Monuments Commission. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Montagu of Beaulieu, was hoping to be present but he had to leave the House. He and his commission support the idea embodied in this amendment of joint committees being set up, as does the Council for British Archaeology.
These arrangements would be simple and effective. They would be tidier and easier to start off at this stage. Although the Minister may mention Clause 94(2)(b), which gives districts the power to get together and set up a body, this would be a much neater way to do it. It would also remove a great deal of the anxiety which archaeologists themselves feel at the moment. There are in the metropolitan counties only 23 professional archaeologists; otherwise they are all people who are either from the Manpower Services Commission or volunteers. It is necessary to group them, in order that the work is done properly and that funding should emerge, into county-wide bodies. There are precedents for that type of arrangement. The Greater Manchester Archaeological Unit is managed by a committee representing the city, the county councils and the university.
I remember that at the Committee stage the noble Lord, Lord Beloff, suggested the attachment of these units to universities. He gave the example of Israel, where this happens to a very large extent. The problem in this country is that we have a history of local government funding, and with the disappearance of the metropolitan counties and the GLC it is a question of what will take their place in regard to funding. Whereas the universities can give archaeology a home by way of giving it a place in the structure, they are not able—and in the future I think they will be less able because of cuts—to find the necessary funding. At the same time, the Historic Buildings and Ancient Monuments Commission and English Heritage funds on a project basis, when it funds. That means that somewhere the core funding has to be found if archaeology is to be an on-going activity in this country, not subject to starts and stops. Indeed, al the Committee stage on 14th May the noble Viscount, Lord Colville of Culross, explaining why he did not like the residuary body, said at col. 1076 of Hansard:
"Is there really not any possibility that in a metropolitan county there can be some co-ordination whereby the districts may jointly draw upon the skills of these teams so that they do not have to duplicate them?"
Later on, he said this:
" … there may have to be a co-ordinated county body supported by a number of districts. I would suggest that this matter be carefully considered".
That is almost identical to the amendment which I am moving this evening. It does not go in any way contrary to the grain of the Bill, because quite clearly it is the councils of the district in the metropolitan county. It means that it would save a lot of delay: and with the districts having so many other functions put on them, a leadership of this sort—which is really what it is—would start by being joined together because you cannot divide the 23 specialist archaeologists among the six or seven metropolitan counties. They would start with a proper structure and could then work in that way. I should have thought that this amendment would find favour because of the very respectable and responsible support that it has outside and also because it is a practical solution which is entirely in accord with the Bill. My Lords, I beg to move.
Lord Elton: My Lords, this amendment, ably introduced by the noble Baroness, Lady Birk, is an amendment which she tabled at Committee but which she did not move, advancing instead another related

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amendment to transfer archaeology, not, as she now suggests, to a statutory joint committee, but to the residuary body. That amendment fell foul of your Lordships' wish to avoid transferring any permanent function to this temporary body without giving it a final destination, and it was defeated on a Division by a substantial majority.
I am sure your Lordships will not wish me to repeat word for word everything that I said when the noble Baroness spoke to her related amendment. Briefly, the fact is that there is some excellent work being undertaken by archaeological units under the auspices of the metropolitan county councils. It is highly regarded. It is well supported by public funds, and the Government accept that there is a need for the work to continue. The Government do not accept that the districts neither can nor will touch it.
In returning to the charge with this amendment, the noble Baroness seeks to overcome her difficulties by handing archaeology not to a temporary body but to a permanent body which is to be a joint committee. That committee, I note, will have a duty that is limited to preserving intact, as far as possible, the local authority archaeological arrangements, if any, which existed in all parts of a metropolitan county before abolition. It has, I note, no duty to create such arrangements where none existed; nor does it have any duty to improve such arrangements that do exist at abolition. Indeed, in subsection (2)(a) it is actually discouraged from doing so. Its duty is not to strengthen, encourage or improve, but to seek to co-ordinate the continued provision of those arrangements in a form which is as near as is reasonably practicable to the form of those arrangements immediately before the abolition date; in other words, to fossilise, as it were, the arrangements for archaeology in a form which all of us recognise as being often far from perfect.
The amendment does not provide for establishing new efforts where there is none; and, as I say, it turns its face against improving that effort where it does exist. I hope the noble Baroness can be persuaded that things are not absolutely as bad and the districts are not absolutely as devoid of interest in her subject as she may think, and that there is a more contructive path that she could follow. Even if she cannot be so persuaded there are provisions either already in the Bill or tabled for inclusion in the Bill by the Government which will, I think, do a good deal to reassure her.
The first thing I ask her to reflect upon is Clause 94 of the Bill as drafted. That Bill already imposes a duty on all districts in every metropolitan area, not just in those with existing archaeological units, to establish by 1st September 1985 a joint preparatory committee. This committee will have a duty to co-ordinate preparatory work for the exercise of functions previously exercised concurrently with the counties. However, under subsection (2)(b) of that clause the joint committees will also have the specific duty to consider whether any of the functions could with advantage be jointly discharged, and if so to promote arrangements accordingly.
10 p.m.
This will enable them to make joint arrangements for the employment of staff and the provision of
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facilities for their archaeology. It will also enable them to consider the provisions for archaeology in the context of their other related activities; for example, in the fields of historic buildings, county sites, monuments, records and conservation. It will also allow them to decide on the best arrangements in the light of those that exist at present.
My second point, on which again I should like to reassure the noble Baroness, is that the districts can be assured of support in this work. I have previously drawn your Lordships' attention to the initiative being undertaken by the Historic Buildings and Monuments Commission in offering help and advice in setting up joint successor arrangements of the sort I have described.
The noble Baroness told us in Committee that the districts, at least in West Yorkshire, are willing to cooperate. So they are, I believe, elsewhere. But there remain inhibitions against co-operation which I can only describe as political and which are profoundly worrying to the staff who actually man the service. Failure to co-operate until after abolition will not, it is true, necessarily result in the dispersal of an archaeological service. To those whose concern is only for the service and not for the small band of dedicated officials who deliver it full-time, that can only be reassuring.
As I have already mentioned in other debates, Amendment No. 81C will place a duty on each residuary body to contact all successor authorities in this area to see whether any of them wish, or are likely to need, after abolition any professional or technical services for which prior arrangements have not been made, and if so to enter into agreements for the residuary body to provide professional or technical services on a temporary basis. That gets the archaeological service to where the noble Baroness wanted in Committee to get it, but not on a permanent basis as she wished. We can discuss that amendment later this week.
Archaeological services will come within the scope of this duty. Thus the residuary body will be actively consulting successor authorities about the need for it to take over certain staff on abolition date, in order to provide services temporarily. The residuary body will then collaborate with successor authorities in actively promoting permanent arrangements for services that it takes on on this basis. I stress to your Lordships that this means that valuable expertise will not be lost. Provided there remains a need for any services that the residuary body takes on to continue, there need be no hiatus during the transitional period.
That is, as I say, very important and reassuring to those concerned only with organisation, but we must also be concerned—and I know that the noble Baroness is concerned—about the implications for the people who work in archaeology, and indeed for other public servants of every description, of the prolonged and unnecessary uncertainty caused by the refusal of some authorities of any sort of co-operation on any front.
The way to break that deadlock is not by an amendment such as this, nor by one that has been redrafted to remove the shortcomings that I have described in it; nor can it be to impose, as some noble

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Lords would wish, any functional statutory duties where none at present exists. The purpose of this Bill, I remind your Lordships, is clearly stated and we cannot go beyond it now. It is to transfer functions and duties; not to create them.
Therefore, what I ask the noble Baroness to do is something I ask of all people who wish to avoid local authority staff having to suffer totally unnecessary anxiety in order to satisfy political aims cherished by their elected and their trade union masters long after they have the remotest chance of fulfilment; because, let us face it, the only possible justification of non-co-operation was to ensure that abolition never took place at all, and now this House has joined with another place to say that it shall. The purpose of non-co-operation is defunct and the harm it does is therefore now entirely without point.
What the noble Baroness might do, I therefore hope, with the advantage that I do not have for this purpose of sitting on the other side of the House, is to remind those authorities of their duty to the staff as well as to the electorate of the metropolitan counties to which they are the heirs, and to mention to the districts in West Yorkshire, which she assures us are prepared to co-operate, that they should start to do so, and that they could do worse than take up the offer of help made by the Historic Buildings and Monuments Commission in the letter to which I referred a moment ago. With that, she could, I am sure, do more good than she could with any amendment like this one, which, for the reasons I have given, I fear I cannot commend.
Baroness Birk: My Lords, I must say that that was a hell of a long answer to a very simple and quite short amendment and introduction. At one point the noble Lord the Minister rendered me almost speechless when he talked about fossilising the arrangements for archaeology. If we are going to stay with archaeological metaphors, I would say that I feel he is absolutely scraping the barrel in order to find reasons for refusing the amendment. Incidentally, I did not move the amendment in Committee. It was my noble friend Lady Lockwood, who unfortunately cannot be here this evening, as her husband is unwell. I have read very carefully everything that was said. On that occasion the noble Lord the Minister carefully explained how wrong it was for this responsibility to go to the residuary body. Now he is talking about it going to the residuary body and suggesting all sorts of extraordinary motives behind this very simple amendment which suggests only that the districts should get together. The noble Lord, Lord Montagu of Beaulieu, said in Committee at cols. 1077–78 of the Official Report for 14th May:
"I will admit that the commission is concerned that there may be a reduction in archaeological conservation work in the metropolitan counties as a result of the abolition of those councils and the disbandment of the teams. We have been discussing with Government various matters and have pressed them to find some method of ensuring that funds are available for the continuing work of these archaeological and conservation teams or whoever may take over from them. We have been writing to the archaeological units up there, suggesting that we establish trusts or companies limited by guarantee to take over the work".
Having discussed that with him, the noble Lord agreed that the joint committee would fulfil the same function. The whole question of non co-operation is a
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different one. I agree that it causes difficulties at the moment, but the Minister knows perfectly well that once the Bill goes through, as I fear it will, another situation will arise.
I shall not repeat all that I have said before. However, in view of the small number of professional staff and the importance of using them to the best of their ability and using the structure, a provision of this kind is needed. If the amendment had said that everything should be improved or increased, the Minister would have had some very good answer as to why that could not be accepted. The noble Lord knows that perfectly well. This is just a case of nit-picking.
At this time of night I am certainly not going to go any further with the amendment. The Minister mentioned that he would be coming along at Third Reading with some amendments. I do not think that this is MI5 stuff or anything like that, and if he could indicate the lines along which the Government are thinking about archaeology, we would all be much happier and I could withdraw my amendment feeling that something constructive was to be done.
Lord Elton: My Lords, I just want to confirm that the amendments are already on the Marshalled List. Unfortunately, a good deal of explanation is needed and I do not think I can provide it in an intervention in the speech of the noble Baroness. She will remember that we have previously had debates about professional and technical services. If she looks around Clause 61, she will find what we are looking for. I would rather not try to get into that debate now. However, we are proposing that where there are available in the field valuable professional and technical teams who would be dispersed for lack of adequate reasons, for whom it appears that there will be a call after abolition date but the arrangements are not yet made, the residuary body will be under a duty to go to the Secretary of State and ask for an order to transfer them and their equipment and property to the residuary body pending the making of those arrangements. I hope that I got that right in what was a very condensed form. It is certainly the shape which the noble Baroness asked me to give her.
Baroness Birk: My Lords, I thank the Minister very much. I have seen that amendment on the Marshalled List; it has been there for some days now. I find it rather weak in structure but we are not discussing that at the moment. I am disappointed that that is the answer but perhaps as we go along we can strengthen it. However, I do not think I shall get any further tonight so I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Lord Strabolgi Lord Strabolgi moved Amendment No. 80A V:
Before Clause 46, insert the following new clause:
("Arts in Metropolitan Counties.
.—(1). The councils of the districts in a metropolitan county shall not later than 31st Deccember 1985, establish a joint committee of members of those councils whose duty it shall be from the abolition date to exercise the functions to which this section applies.
(2) This section applies to the functions of a metropolitan county council exercised immediately before the abolition date relating to powers to make grants or loans and to give guarantees to bodies or persons carrying on artistic or cultural activities (including the provision of museums and art galleries").)
The noble Lord said: My Lords, the noble Earl, Lord Gowrie, whom I am glad to see in his place, stated that the arts will not suffer as a result of abolition. It is, of course, appropriate to recognise the value of the promised additional central funding.
The Earl of Gowrie: My Lords, I am reluctant to interrupt the noble Lord but what I have always said, in various idioms, is that there is no need for the arts to suffer as a result of abolition. If people are wilfully determined that they should, that is another matter.
Lord Strabolgi: My Lords, I am the last person to want the arts to suffer. That seems to be a most extraordinary statement from the noble Earl and is one that could only be made late at night. If the noble Earl prefers the words, "the arts need not suffer" I am absolutely at one with him.
The point I was making is that it is appropriate to recognise the value of the promised additional central funding for the arts. However the Minister has ackowledged that this does not replace in full all that the GLC and MCCs spend on the arts, and therefore that the borough and district councils will be expected to play their part after abolition.
The recent Arts Council press release which we discussed earlier on a previous amendment, and bid to the Minister for an increase in this sum, have dramatically underlined this financial shortfall. Should the council be successful in its bid—and I hope it will be—that would of course solve most, if not all, of the financial problems. However, it would totally remove the responsibility for funding those organisations currently supported by the metropolitan county councils from the successor authorities, thereby removing any direct local authority involvement in the arts and also the vitality of plural funding, both aspects of which have been so highly praised by the Arts Council.
I should like to stress that this amendment does not seek to replace or contradict any of the Minister's proposals, but rather to complement and supplement them by creating an efficient mechanism by which the anticipated funding by the district councils could be managed. It is not a covert attempt to increase funding for the arts; rather, it is to ensure that the arts do not suffer. The amendment seeks to establish a joint committee representative of the district councils seeking to allow for the funding of the arts through an efficient system. It would assist both district councils and other funding agencies, and the organisations involved, by saving them the additional time—and, therefore, the cost—spent dealing with the multiple applications. It would spread funding over a wide area so that the contributions are fairly distributed throughout a region, reflecting the regional significance of the activities. It also seeks to avoid a possible downward spiral of funding created by individual districts choosing the lowest possible figure and others following suit.
It is our submission that a joint committee would provide a forum for discussion and for funding and would thereby assist in maintaining arts provision on an equitable basis throughout the county area. It is our view that such joint committees would be able, as the MCCs do now, to work in partnership and close cooperation with the relevant regional arts associations
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and the Arts Council. I hope that the noble Earl will feel that this is a constructive amendment that is helpful and complementary to what he is seeking to do. I beg to move.
10.15 p.m.
Lord Ritchie of Dundee: My Lords, if the local authorites are to be called on to do a lot to replace funding that was undertaken before by the county authorities, we cannot expect that they should deal with all multiple applications individually. One cannot imagine a situation in which an arts organisation has to go to half a dozen different district or borough authorities in order to persuade them to support some scheme. It is also extremely complicated for those councils to have to consider different applications from different quarters.
I know that there is provision in the Bill whereby a two-thirds majority of a group of councils can give authority for supporting some particular venture, but it seems to me that that process is likely to be cumbrous and complicated and likely to militate against innovation, initiative and new ideas. There is always a tendency on the part of bodies of people considering new ideas to say, "No." It is much easier to say, "No" than to say, "Yes". As I say, I think that a scheme whereby different councils have to consider a certain application would be much more likely to produce a negative rather than a positive answer.
There is also the question of continuity of funding. All arts organisations give cries from the heart that whatever funding they receive they should have the feeling that it will be continued and will not be spasmodic, in order that they may plan for the future. That is one of their recurrent cries. I fear that if individual councils were the sole bodies considering applications, they might so easily say, "Well, we supported you last year. I am afraid that there are higher priorities this year. Sorry, old chap, you will have to go somewhere else."
I think that a joint committee such as the one proposed in this amendment is more likely to do two things. I think that it is more likely to continue to support anything that it has already committed itself to supporting; and also that consideration of arts ventures will be its specialty and it will not be spending its time weighing up priorities in the way that the individual councils will.
It is true that the regional arts associations are already providing overall regional strategic funding for the arts, but it should be borne in mind that they are handling mainly central funds. Indeed, the promised £16 million and any additional sum that they may be lucky enough to get constitute central funds. A committee drawn from district and borough authorities would be handling locally raised funding and would be representative of those who had actually contributed. There would therefore be involvement of ratepayers through their representatives. They would not just be handling funds that had been dropped like manna from on high, which is what the regional arts associations are more concerned with. It would be an example of the principle of no taxation without representation.
We should consider, too, that a committee would be an organ of multiple funding, and multiple funding

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should always be the aim, both to ensure some degree of continuity and to provide variety in planning. Also, a committee could cover areas where there is poor provision. Some councils are likely to be stingy. Some areas are likely to have a greater need than others. A committee could take an overall view, make provision where that seems necessary and stimulate a generous response where that might be lacking. For those reasons I urge your Lordships to support the amendment, which I believe to be essential for the vitality of the arts in the areas formerly so well served by the "met" counties.
The Earl of Gowrie: My Lords, I certainly acknowledge to the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, that he intended this amendment wholly constructively. I acknowledge that he moved it in an attempt to be helpful and to ensure support for institutions which may be suffering from anxiety at a time of change. The way the noble Lord moved the amendment reflects the concern, which the Government share, concerning the anxieties that may come about as a result of change, especially perhaps in the context of certain integrated services. I am thinking of the integrated museum services, for example, at present maintained by the Tyne and Wear and the South Yorkshire metropolitan county councils
That said, I do not think the proposal of the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, would be the right solution in the present situation. The reason is that district councils already have powers to establish joint committees to administer arts and museum activities on a shared basis within their areas. It seems to me that it would not be appropriate to single out the successor authorities in the metropolitan areas and, as it were, to force them to do what in all other areas would be done on a voluntary basis.
We have gone far enough in the metropolitan areas to urge co-operation and shared solutions to problems or functions which cross district council boundaries with the introduction into this Bill of Clause 94. The House will recall that this clause requires the establishment of joint preparatory committees of the successor districts no later than 1st September of this year to discuss matters of common interest. I do not see that such preparatory committees could be considered as a model for the permanent statutory provisions moved by the noble Lord in his amendment. It may be—and I very much hope it will be—a decision of such preparatory committees to establish permanent joint arrangements for museum and art gallery services where they feel this to be appropriate. However, I do not think it proper to anticipate the deliberations of local authorities, which should surely be free to decide their priorities, especially where discretionary expenditure on the arts is concerned.
The reality of discretionary spend would still hold, even if the principle were to be dented by accepting the new clause. It does not make explicit the financial provision which would be needed by the joint committee. It is implicit that some financial agreement would need to form part of a joint committee, but this would remain an area in which each district council would of course be free to argue for greater or for lesser annual spend. The museums,
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theatres or other institutions involved would have expectations of greater security which might not be fulfilled. Most likely there would be no built-in compulsion for district councils forming a joint committee automatically to increase their support because, of course, that would be contrary to all the democratic principles of local authority budgeting and planning.
The new clause proposed by the noble Lord envisages the joint committee making grants or loans to bodies in the performing arts field. I see no harm, and in many cases I see much advantage, in districts voluntarily getting together to support bodies whose scope and importance transcends a single district. However, I very much doubt whether they should be compelled to do so. If they do combine, they will have the backing and expert independent advice of the regional arts associations, as the noble Lord, Lord Ritchie of Dundee, acknowledged, as well, of course, as the backing and advice of the Arts Council. Joint voluntary funding could be an advantage to the regional arts bodies, which would need to discuss their finances with one funding source rather than with six or ten district councils. Perhaps the joint preparatory committees would put this on their agenda for further discussion.
Therefore, in conclusion, I should hope that the district councils, in particular in Tyne and Wear, will wish to see the continuation of the pioneering and, from my experience, having visited it, the absolutely first-class integrated museum service. I hope also that they will weigh up the best means of securing this, either by establishing a trust or by establishing a joint committee. I have made clear since April last year that if a satisfactory arrangement is agreed, I shall contribute annually a reasonable sum towards the future maintenance of the service. But I would not, for the reasons I have given, wish to see this Bill compel these councils or fetter their discretion in any way.
At the end of the day, I believe that the local authorities in the metropolitan areas will wish to show both the Government and their own ratepayers that they are responsible and clear-sighted when it comes to support for the arts and museums and galleries. They would rightly resent any implication to the contrary. Such proposals as are before us in the new clause could well prove counter-productive if accepted. Given that I have accepted the very constructive spirit in which the amendment was moved, I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, will not press it.
Lord Strabolgi: My Lords, I thank the noble Earl for what he has said. I am sure that he will agree that over the last decade or so the Arts Council and the local authorities, working together, have been responsible for some noted developments. Nowhere has this success been greater than in the GLC and MCC areas. The GLC and the MCCs taken as a group have been the unquestioned leaders in the field of local authority support for the arts. From the councils' point of view, it is difficult to envisage alternative arrangements that, taken as a whole, would serve the arts as well as those they are designed to replace.
I have listened carefully to what the noble Earl has said. I think that he has accepted a good deal of the spirit of the amendment. What we have done is to

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establish the principle that some form of countywide administration is needed in the metropolitan areas for the continued and effective operation of the existing county authority functions relating to the arts and cultural matters. With that, the noble Earl and myself, not for the first time and, I hope, not for the last, are at one. I think he has accepted the spirit of the amendment, and I beg leave to withdraw it.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 46 [Metropolitan county museums]:
Lord Graham of Edmonton Lord Graham of Edmonton moved Amendment No. 80AW:
Page 29, line 31, at end insert—
("(3) A trust shall be established for any museum or gallery service and any collection of works of art or objects of historical or scientific interest belonging to a metropolitan county council and not vested on the abolition date in accordance with subsection (1) above.
(4) Any trust established under subsection (3) above may make grants towards the upkeep of museums and art galleries and any collection of works of art or objects of historical or scientific interest housed within the area of the metropolitan county.".
The noble Lord said: The purpose of this amendment is to establish the principle that some form of countywide administration is needed in the metropolitan areas for the continued and effective operation of the existing county authority functions relating to museums. The present proposals in Clause 46 and in related ministerial statements cover Merseyside, with the exclusion of Speke Hall and Croxteth Country Park, and Greater Manchester. They provide for the integrated service in Tyne and Wear only if the districts co-operate in management and funding. They omit the countywide service in South Yorkshire and all the other grants, both revenue and capital, given by MCCs to museums and art galleries.
The amendment does not conflict with Clause 46. It adds to it without necessarily adding to the central funding arrangements and would create efficient management arrangements for existing museum services which are not otherwise coped with by Clause 46 or related ministerial statements. I beg to move.
The Earl of Gowrie: My Lords, I shall be brief in my response to the arguments put forward on behalf of this amendment simply because much of what I have just said in response to the proposed new clause moved by the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, is apposite in this context. I pay tribute to the noble Lord for his concern for museum and art gallery collections for which no specific statutory provision is appropriate but which are in a position of anxiety which I understand and with which I have some sympathy.
The alarm with which many of these bodies face the future is not of the Government's making since I have made clear since April last year that I will make a sum of money available by way of the Museums and Galleries Commission to assist the smaller museums and galleries over the transitional problems, mentioned by the noble Lord, after abolition. I am afraid to say that the alarm is a political consequence of those district councils, particularly in Tyne and Wear, which refuse—I think now largely out of
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pique—to face the fact that abolition day is fast approaching. Here I echo the comments made by my noble friend Lord Elton in the debate on archaeological services.
10.30 p.m.
These councils have ignored my invitation to discuss the continuation of the integrated museum services and the result inevitably has been despondency among the staff and growing concern in the museum world generally. That seems to be a very high price to exact to threaten such a service for the sake of a little discussion between themselves and with my department.
As it stands, the amendment would not achieve very much. Outside of property on Merseyside, for which a trustee body will be created under Clause 46(1), there is very little in the way of collections owned by a metropolitan county council. For instance, in the case of Tyne and Wear the district councils own the majority of the collections and the buildings in which they are housed. With so very few objects to care for and own, we are therefore essentially looking at the establishment of trusts as channels of funding for museums and art galleries within the metropolitan areas. This is unnecessary. The Museums and Galleries Commission is at the moment applying for a royal charter which will, when granted, enable it to make grants to local authorities and independent museums and galleries. A suitable amount from the £17 million of additional central funding, which I will make available to support the museums affected by abolition, will go to the Museums and Galleries Commission. Therefore, I envisage that most of the grants will be in addition to those made by local councils or on a similar matching or challenge basis—perhaps it is best put as a partnership basis—to the practice of the Arts Council. I certainly hope that the Museums and Galleries Commission will go down that road as it is very effective.
Therefore, we do not need a proliferation of trusts to do the job either of the district councils or of the Museums and Galleries Commission. Both have the expertise to make judgments on what museums or galleries to support, and both, after abolition, will have quite adequate funds. On the subject of funds, this amendment suggests no pattern for trusts, and like other amendments recently it is ominously silent on the question of money. If it is expected that central funding would be forthcoming, I am afraid that I must disillusion the House. Beyond that part of the £17 million which I shall make over to the Museums and Galleries Commission, I expect local councils to continue to fund local institutions of enjoyment, benefit and enlightenment to their own ratepayers. The metropolitan areas are no different in this from, for example, Stoke-on-Trent, Leicester, Bristol or Portsmouth. Indeed, the major collections in Birmingham, Leeds and Sheffield, which are affected by the legislation, are never passed out of district council hands.
Therefore, while I appreciate the concern which the noble Lord has expressed in moving the amendment, I emphasise that it is misplaced. Adequate funds exist; adequate channels exist to make those funds available for the smaller museums' services and institutions.

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Trusts are not the answer. Common sense and a more responsible attitude on the part of a few district councils is. I urge such councils to enter into discussions with me, and I urge your Lordships to reject this amendment if it is pressed.
Lord Graham of Edmonton: My Lords, I took one minute in moving the amendment and the Minister has, quite properly, taken five minutes to reply. I am absolutely certain that the value of the debate to those outside will be in direct proportion to the time taken. I am sure that the Minister has said something that will be helpful to those who have sought this opportunity to raise the matter here. I very much hope so. Therefore, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Viscount Buckmaster Viscount Buckmaster moved Amendment No. 80CA:
After Clause 47, insert the following new clause:
("Report on Welfare Benefits Projects.
Before the abolition date, the Secretary of State shall consult with the Councils of London Boroughs on arrangements for the continuation of projects undertaken previously by the Greater London Council with the object of informing the public of their entitlement to welfare benefits and encouraging the take-up of those benefits.")
The noble Viscount said: My Lords, this is a simple and straightforward amendment. It is perhaps the simplest of all the amendments on the Marshalled List tonight, and perhaps one of the easiest for the noble Lord the Minister to accept. It seeks to ensure the continuation of the valuable work done by the GLC in the sphere of informing the public of their entitlement to welfare benefits. The need for such a service is revealed by the fact that many millions of pounds-worth of social benefits remain unclaimed every year. Over the last year the project ensured that no less than £10 million-worth of unclaimed additional benefits was claimed by pensioners so entitled.
Now what does the project do? The services which the welfare benefits project runs are as follows: it provides local information campaigns which give advice and information at bus stops; a free phone and free post inquiry service; it provides monthly features on television explaining how to claim such benefits as attendance allowance, mobility allowance, maternity benefits, special heating allowance, housing benefits, and many others.
The most important area of all is that it translates all this information into no less than 10 ethnic minority languages. As the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, will agree, this is important in the context of our ethnic minorities here. How difficult it is for us Britons to understand the immensely complex regulations relating to benefits; how much harder it must be for so many of our ethnic minority residents who have limited knowledge of English. This applies particularly to women. It applies to Asian women, Bangladeshi and Pakistani women, and so on. It applies to many of the Vietnamese boat people, again particularly women, and it is a valuable service.
Then there is an additional provision of training in welfare benefits work for ethnic minority groups, and also the project has developed a remarkable computer which enables operators, after a brief period of
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training, to go into a house and just press a mass of little digits and they can discover straight away what the claimant is entitled to. This is in no sense a radical amendment. No one could possibly call it a wrecking amendment. I consider it a reasonable and restrained amendment. In that sense, I beg to move.
Lord Ennals: My Lords, I have a number of reasons for wishing to support the amendment, which had originally been tabled in my name. I was then not certain that I was going to be here at this moment, and the noble Viscount, Lord Buckmaster, put his name down first.
Often those who are in greatest need of the help provided by social services and social security are those who are least liable to apply. The amendment is to ensure that the most needy in our society are not deprived of this information, and have it brought to their attention. In the Green Paper which we are to debate in this House on Wednesday, the Government have expressed the view that entitlements are complicated. Whether their proposals will simplify this is another matter, and it is a matter for debate, but the Government's acceptance that they are complicated is enough of a reason to make sure that the work now done continues to be done.
The GLC has done an excellent job, as stated by the noble Viscount, in supporting welfare rights centres. The Government must surely recognise this and must want to ensure that that work goes on. If it were not such a late hour, I should also want to refer to refugees, who, as well as ethnic minority groups, are, for linguistic reasons, less likely to know what their rights are and therefore more in need of welfare rights centres.
The amendment, as has been said, makes no demands upon the Government and does not seek to create a new organisation, but simply calls upon the Government to have discussions to see that these needs are met. It would probably have been a better amendment if it had taken in the metropolitan county councils, because the point applies not only to the GLC, but to county councils in West Yorkshire, the West Midlands and Merseyside, all of which have been active in initiatives to inform the public of benefit entitlements. In West Yorkshire, for example, the county council in 1984 commissioned a study on the availability of welfare rights advice throughout the country. On the basis of the Government's national figures on unclaimed benefit the study estimated that up to £40 million benefit entitlement was unclaimed each year in that county alone, affecting the most needy and vulnerable sectors of the population. They have sought to ensure that as high a proportion as possible receive their entitlement. In some cases this has been done by sustaining and developing the work of citizens' advice bureaux. Sometimes it has involved setting up welfare rights centres. My final reason for supporting this amendment—and I hope that the noble Lord will accept it—is that one of my sons runs a welfare rights centre.
Lord Stewart of Fulham: My Lords, I hope the Government will feel that they can accept this amendment. It is not subject to some of the objections that have been raised to similar previous amendments. For example, it does not compel the London boroughs to do this or that; it simply requires that the Secretary

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of State should consult them on arrangements for the continuation of the projects previously undertaken by the Greater London Council. In the course of those consultations it is entirely open for the boroughs to say that they want to continue those arrangements with this, that or the other modification. There is no straitjacket imposed on the boroughs as to what they should do, but their attention is drawn to this important subject of seeing that people receive the benefits to which they are entitled.
Early in their life the Government made it known that one of their policy objectives was to prevent what was called "scrounging" from the welfare state. That no doubt is an appropriate activity for Government, but a Government who undertake it are surely under an obligation also to do the reverse, to see that people are not deprived of the benefits to which they are really entitled because the system is too complicated or because they belong to a group in the population who find it difficult to understand how the whole thing works.
The noble Viscount, Lord Buckmaster, and my noble friend Lord Ennals have described the various groups in the population who need this help and the increasing number of modern methods of giving it. We have now built up, with the help of the GLC, a valuable part of the welfare state. Thanks to the Green Papers that the Government have recently produced, before long the whole nation will be engaged in a discussion on how the welfare state should be organised.
However, a discussion of that kind is greatly vitiated if there is a serious discrepancy between the benefits to which on paper people are entitled and the benefits which they actually receive. It is very difficult to assess the value of any scheme of benefits if we are far from certain that it is working out in practice as it is meant to on paper. I believe, therefore, that it cannot be disputed that the Greater London Council has been doing a very valuable piece of work and that it ought to be continued. In this amendment, arrangements are made to help that without placing any straitjacket on the boroughs and without interfering with what the Government regard as the main purposes of the Bill. I therefore hope that they will feel able to accept the amendment.
10.45 p.m.
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: My Lords, I hope that my noble friend will not agree to put this amendment into the Bill, basically for two reasons. First of all, as the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, has admitted, it is quite illogical to apply it in the case of London and not apply it in the case of the metropolitan counties. I would suggest, on the contrary, that the need for seeing that this information is available is probably greater in the metropolitan counties than it is in the rather more sophisticated atmosphere of the metropolis. I agree entirely with the noble Lord—and, indeed, I draw on my own experience when I was Minister of Pensions and National Insurance some years ago—that there is real need to see that those most in need are informed of the benefits to which they have a right. That is enormously important. But an amendment of this sort, first of all, excluding the provinces and confined
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to London, and, secondly, imposing a duty on the Secretary of State to consult without imposing any actual duty on anybody to do anything, seems to be a very ineffective thing to put into a statute.
Moreover, I think it is a little offensive, perhaps, to the London boroughs to suggest that they are not at least as equally aware as is the GLC of the need to inform people living in their boroughs of their rights under the social security scheme. I cannot see why it is thought that the GLC's activities are such that the Secretary of State must seek to persuade the boroughs to follow them. I would suggest that the London boroughs are at least as capable of knowing what their duties are in this respect as the GLC.
Lord Monkswell: My Lords, on a preliminary reading of this amendment it would be quite easy to use it as a vehicle to attack the Government. I resist that temptation because, on a further reading of the amendment, one can see that it is a very practical and sensible suggestion to put to the Government to adopt within this Bill so as, I would think, to do two specific things. The first is to ensure that there is a discussion between Government, the GLC and the boroughs in London about how activities can be carried on to ensure the best take-up of the welfare benefits. I would hope (and I am sure that the Government would accept) that it is the wish of the Government that all the welfare benefits that are available should be fully taken up for the benefit of the people of this country.
I would suggest that there is a second reason for the Government adopting this amendment. It is that in the process of having that consultation with the London boroughs and the GLC, they will obtain valuable advice and information about the various problems that are associated with particular welfare benefits and the mechanisms by which those benefits can be helped to be taken up by the people, and also what changes may be necessary to ensure that the benefits that this House and the other place have seen fit to place upon the statute book with a view to assisting the people of this country can be better deployed.
I return to my original statement that on this side of the House this occasion is not being used (as it could quite honestly be used) to attack the Government, but to commend this particular amendment to the House in the belief that not only will it help the people of the country at large but also the Government to fulfil their duties to the people.
Lord Elton: My Lords, I can assure the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, that I am glad to recognise the worthwhile work being carried on by the GLC in its effort to boost the take up of welfare benefits. I can assure the noble Lord, Lord Monkswell, that the Government want all those who are entitled to receive those benefits; and the Department of Health and Social Security have been co-operating fully with the GLC's officers in their efforts. I see from the nodding of the heads opposite that I do not need to recount the rather lengthy list of ways in which they have done so. As I have often said in discussions on this Bill, it does not follow that because something is done well by the GLC it cannot be done equally well or better by the boroughs. The boroughs have the same general

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spending powers under the 1972 Act as the GLC and can mount their own campaigns. The advice and the help of the Department of Health and Social Security will be just as available to the boroughs as it is now to the GLC. They provide expertise and continuity, which is vital.
It is open to the boroughs to co-operate with each other in running these campaigns, if they wish to; but in fact I understand that the GLC itself is currently organising its own campaign on a borough-by-borough basis; so it may be that that would not be appropriate. I ought to say that central Government's efforts will continue in this field. At the moment the DHSS has a national Freefone advice service which has recently been extended to the GLC area. They distribute leaflets and claim forms widely and are redesigning them to make them simpler. They already have had one "Plain English" award for this work. Information officers appear on radio and TV programmes on benefits and give talks in local communities; and they write articles in the local papers. The department have translated information leaflets into six Asian languages. They give leaflets inviting a claim to supplementary benefit to all retirement pensioners, widows, sickness benefit and unemployment claimants. They advertise family income supplement in every child benefit order book. They help local authorities to identify housing benefit claimants who might be entitled to other benefits. A lot is being done. I accept that more needs to be done and look forward to continuing co-operation between central Government and the boroughs in the future.
Abolition offers not one single obstacle to that. It does not need the formal provisions for consultation which the amendment suggests—suspended in the air without an application, as my noble friend Lord Boyd-Carpenter pointed out. The initiative for local action must rest with the boroughs. As I say, the advice, help, experience and skill of the department will be readily given. Formal consultation of the sort suggested in the amendment would merely absorb departmental resources unnecessarily which should be deployed to more creative purposes.
I assure your Lordships that I am not being boneheaded about this. It is not simply that we will not accept any change that is suggested to the Bill; and we have demonstrated that already. But I honestly believe that the movement of this from the upper to the lower tier of Government with the continuity provided by the department will ensure that that continues.
Viscount Buckmaster: I thank the noble Lord the Minister for those remarks, which have gone some way towards allaying my misgivings. This is obviously quite an important subject, in view of the number of noble Lords who have supported the amendment. I must say that I am not entirely satisfied with the answer of the noble Lord the Minister. Perhaps I may mention one aspect. He said that the information which the Government would put out would be translated into six Asian languages. Perhaps I may remind him that the GLC welfare project is now putting out no fewer than 10 different language translations. But that is a minor point. In view of the assurances the Minister has given me, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Lord Denham: My Lords, I think we have probably reached as far as we can reasonably go this evening. If noble Lords opposite are agreeable. I will beg to move that further consideration on Report be now adjourned.
Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Motion agreed to.
House adjourned at four minutes before eleven o'clock.