Lords Sitting of 7 May 1985

Preamble
The House met at half-past two of the clock: The LORD CHANCELLOR On the Woolsack.
Prayers—Read by the Lord Bishop of Norwich.
The Marquess of Aberdeen and Temair—Sat first in Parliament after the death of his brother.

Tobacco Promotion
Baroness Ewart-Biggs: 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 their view of the British Medical Association's proposal for a ban on all forms of tobacco promotion.
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, this Government, like their predecessors, have chosen to regulate tobacco promotion mainly by way of voluntary agreements. When the time comes to review the present agreements we shall take account of all the relevant circumstances, including the views of the medical profession.
Baroness Ewart-Biggs: But, my Lords, will the Minister not agree that more is now necessary? Does he recollect that in the first place the tobacco companies failed in their voluntary agreement not to advertise on television before 9 p.m.—an agreement which was designed to protect children? Is he aware that since the 1965 Act, banning tobacco advertising on television, they have tried to circumvent this law by sponsoring sports events, which is designed to make children associate sports such as car racing and snooker and adventure holidays with smoking? Thus would the noble Earl not agree that in order adequately to protect our children from a product which kills one in four of its consumers, we should perhaps now follow the example of Norway and Finland and ban the promotion of cigarettes?
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, the noble Baroness said that the 1965 Act banned tobacco advertising. Perhaps I may just correct her: it was cigarette advertising on television that was banned. No, my Lords; I think that the voluntary agreements which have been in effect since 1971 have been beneficial. Cigarette sales, which stood at 137 billion in 1973, are reported as being 98 billion in 1984, while the proportion of adult smokers in the population has fallen from 47 per cent. in 1972 to 35 per cent. in 1982. That is not a bad record.
Lord Orr-Ewing: My Lords, is it not desirable, when possible, to use voluntary agreements rather than legislation? Are they not more flexible, so that one can adjust to any arrangements that are necessary in the interests of public health? Is it not true that the tobacco industry is spending something like £8 million in sponsoring sport and recreation? Is it not true that
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both that and the £4 million being ploughed into the arts is very valuable for the well being of many people who like their recreation and their art?
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, I totally agree with my noble friend Lord Orr-Ewing that voluntary agreement is the best. I think that there is benefit from sponsorship of the arts, provided that it does not encourage particularly young people to smoke.
Lord Mackie of Benshie: My Lords, will the Minister care to put the figure of £8 million spent on sponsorship of sport against the cost to our hospital service of treating patients?
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, I am afraid that I cannot confirm the figure of £8 million because that matter involves a private agreement with the Department of the Environment.
Lord Kinnaird: My Lords, is the noble Earl aware that the content of this Question reminds me of the plight of little Tommy, whose interfering mother said, "Find out what little Tommy is doing now and, whatever it is, tell him not to do it"?
Lord Ennals: My Lords, has not the noble Lord put a very relevant question? Is not one of the great problems that more and more youngsters are taking up what we know to be a seriously addictive habit? I am talking about cigarette smoking. Can the noble Earl say when the present voluntary agreement is to end? Will he also seek to draw a distinction between the very severe dangers of cigarette smoking and the very much less severe dangers of tobacco smoking and cigar smoking?
The Earl of Caithness: Yes, my Lords, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, that there is a very great difference between cigarette smoking and cigar smoking. Cigarette smoking is reported to be much worse, though I would not know because I do neither. I think in a free society such as ours we must be cautious about banning an activity by legislation unless there is firm evidence to support such action—and there is no such evidence at the moment.
Lord Shinwell: My Lords, may I ask the noble Earl the Minister whether he is aware of any Member of your Lordships' House having been sponsored by any of the tobacco firms? Is he aware of anything of that kind going on? Is he aware that I have been smoking for ever so long as I can remember, since I was aged 13, and that I still indulge in an occasional whiff when it suits me? I do not ask permission from anybody, whoever they happen to be and however prominent they think they are. I have never been sponsored by a tobacco firm, but perhaps they would like to start it now. My stock of tobacco has run short. I do not mind. After all, there is nothing really seriously wrong with smoking; there is no corruption about it. If there was any corruption, I should have nothing to do with it; I assure even my noble friend Lady Ewart-Biggs that I would have nothing to do with it. I cannot understand why she raises this Question. I should have thought that she was the kind of person who occasionally indulges in a cigar.
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, I am not aware of any noble Lord being sponsored by a tobacco company, but I am sure that the companies will now be carefully looking at the noble Lord for the next 100 years.
Viscount St. Davids: My Lords, will the noble Earl comment on the fact that one of the most serious ways in which tobacco smoking is encouraged happens when sch000lmasters and youth leaders do it? Is it not most important that we should discourage these people from smoking, although, I must admit, they are not paid for doing so by anyone? They do not seem to be very highly paid at all.
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, it is, I think, the policy of this Government as of all Governments in the recent past that we should get across the message of good health to everyone.
Viscount Simon: My Lords, will the noble Earl answer the question put by the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, as to when the present agreement runs out? The noble Earl said that it would be renewed when it ran out.
The Earl of Caithness: Yes, my Lords. I am sorry if I missed that point. One agreement on sports sponsorship runs out on 31st December this year. One on tobacco products advertising and promotion and health warnings expires on 31st March next year.
Lord Rea: My Lords, is the noble Earl aware that before the last war, when we did not know the harmful effect of smoking cigarettes, 20 cigarettes a day took 7 per cent. of average earnings, whereas today, when we are fully aware of the harm that cigarette smoking does, it takes around 6 per cent. of average earnings? Mindful of this, would he not agree that a useful method of reducing cigarette smoking would be to increase the excise duty on cigarettes by a percentage above the inflation rate a year? This would have the effect not only of discouraging smoking but also of keeping the very useful Exchequer revenue from it at the same level.
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Rea, noticed that my right honourable friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer increased the tax by about twice the rate of inflation in the last Budget.
Lord Kennet: My Lords, is it the Government's intention to reduce tobacco-induced mortality and disease in this country? If so, are the Government satisfied that they are doing everything within their power to achieve that intention?
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, we believe that we are doing everything that is justified at the moment on a voluntary basis, which is the most effective way of proceeding.
Baroness Ewart-Biggs: My Lords, is the Minister not concerned—I am sure he is—that Great Britain has one of the highest rates in the world of lung cancer among women? Does this not make him feel that every
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kind of measure should be taken to dissuade small children, including small girls, from starting to smoke?
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords I agree that we should make every effort. We have had one of the largest reductions in smoking in the last 10 years. There is, I believe, more good news to come on that front.

Clam Farming: Exe Estuary
2.46 p.m.
Baroness Nicol: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will confirm that the manila clam (venerupis semidecussata) has been introduced into the Exe estuary for fish farming.
The Minister of State, Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Lord Belstead): My Lords, I understand that private shellfish cultivators have laid relatively small quantities of manila clams in trial plots in the Exe estuary. I am informed that these shellfish are held in captivity under mesh or in containers, on private layings.
Baroness Nicol: My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for that reply. Can he confirm that the cages in which the clams are held will prevent the larvae escaping? Is he aware that if that happened it would be in contravention of Section 14 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act? Can he assure the House that there is no chance that these clams can establish themselves in the wild?
Lord Belstead: My Lords, I cannot quite give the assurance for which the noble Baroness asks. Water can come into the containers, they can feed on plankton and the larvae can go out. I am advised, however, that it would require exceptionally high water temperatures for manila clams to breed successfully in our waters. For that reason, we do not believe that there is a breach of Section 14 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act.
The Earl of Radnor: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that there was an accidental release of clams in the Solent from the "Queen Mary" coming back from America; that they have multiplied greatly and that they have been of tremendous commercial value to the area? Is he further aware that these unpronounceable clams now in the Exe estuary stand the chance of being killed by tin based anti-fouling paint from the keels of yachts?
Lord Belstead: My Lords, let us keep off yachts for today. All that I can say is that if the clams off the "Queen Mary" bred, they were very remarkable. It really needs a succession of highly unlikely events, one following another. I am advised that it would take exceptionally high water temperatures for manila clams to breed successfully. If they did breed, development would be exceptionally slow. They

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would be subject more than usually to predators. For the clams then to become established as a colony, the process would have to be followed through all over again. This leads me to say on behalf of the Government that we believe that there is no contravention of the Wildlife and Countryside Act.
Lord Melchett: My Lords, the noble Lord will be aware that it is not unusual in the natural world for a succession of unlikely events to take place. Did the Government ask advice from their statutory advisers, the Nature Conservancy Council, about the introduction of the clams? Secondly, is he able to assure the House that information about alien species of this sort, which may introduce serious damage to commercial and other fisheries and other interests in the countryside, is made readily available to those who are interested?
Lord Belstead: My Lords, we have not asked the NCC for its advice. We have told it what our view is. The council has not informed us that it disagrees with our view.
Lord Melchett: My Lords, will the noble Lord be able to answer the second part of my question?
Lord Belstead: My Lords, I have to admit to the noble Lord that I did not really listen to the second question because I am only listening to one question at a time.
Lord Melchett: My Lords, in that case, may I ask the noble Lord a second question? I was trying to save time. Is it possible for the noble Lord to assure the House that information about the release of alien species of this sort, which may be damaging to sport fishing and other interests, is made readily available to those with interests in the subject?
Lord Belstead: My Lords, with the greatest of respect to the noble Lord, this exchange of information about manila clams has been very useful. If the noble Lord has other species of fish in mind and cares to put down a Question, I shall endeavour to answer it.
Lord Beswick: My Lords, may I ask the Leader of the House whether this a new rule? If a question has two parts, is it the case that the Minister has been instructed not to answer the second part?
The Lord President of the Council (Viscount Whitelaw): My Lords, it is not a new rule. However, the noble Lord, who is very assiduous in these matters, will have noticed that the Procedure Committee said that, on the whole, one question should be answered and Ministers should not be obliged to answer more. Indeed, Ministers were criticised by the Procedure Committee previously for answering too many questions. To that extent it is new. However, of course it is a matter for the discretion of Ministers. If the question is both new and goes outside the original Question, then I think that it is reasonable not to answer it.

USSR-United Kingdom Trade
2.50 p.m.
Lord Molloy: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will consider sending a trade, commercial or industrial mission to the USSR in response to that country's expressed desire to improve trade with the United Kingdom.
Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, Her Majesty's Government have already considered this matter. A trade mission organised by the Scottish Council, Development and Industry intends to visit the Soviet Union from 15th to 19th September this year. My right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Scotland plans to lead the mission together with the President of the Council, the noble Lord, Lord Clydesmuir. Approximately 10 company representatives are being invited to participate in the mission.
Lord Molloy: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that he has given in part a very happy reply to my Question? However, bearing in mind that this is a momentous week which acknowledges the mighty achievements of the Americans, the British and the Russian people, would it not be a rather remarkable and perhaps superb idea for our present Government, despite the fact that they are a bit short on imagination, to initiate a new mission to go to Russia to acknowledge the Russian people, similar to the one which we sent to China? May not such a course be the beginning of a new approach and an entirely new aspect of international life between the three great nations that did so much to save mankind 40 years ago?
Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, we are actively trying to promote trade with Russia. Indeed, the visit by Mr. Gorbachev in December indicated that he would like to see trade with Russia increased by 40 to 50 per cent. The possibility of a visit to the Soviet Union during 1985 by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry or my right honourable friend the Minister for Trade is under consideration. However, the timing of such a visit will need careful consideration in the light of the visit by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Scotland and other ministerial visits in both directions this year.
Lord Bruce of Donington: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that this country was in trade deficit with the Soviet Union in 1984 to the tune of £119 million and that the average per annum over the last five years is a minus of £137 million per annum? Does he not think that in all the circumstances it might be wise if a delegation from England and perhaps Wales went over at the same time as a delegation from Scotland in order that the trade between our two countries may be considerably increased on the lines proposed by President Gorbachev?
Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, I am aware of the balance of trade but, as I have said, we cannot send everybody at once. However, there are other things happening. My right honourable friend the Minister for Trade has invited the Soviet Minister for the Coal Industry, Mr. Bratchenko, to visit this country, and he has indicated that he wishes to take up this invitation in June. An invitation has also been extended to the Minister for the Chemical Industry, Mr. Listov, and we hope that he will take up that invitation very soon. Of course, there is also the thirteenth session of the British-Soviet Joint Mission which will be held in London in the first week of June.
Lord Jenkins of Putney: My Lords, will the noble Lord the Minister recognise that cultural exchanges and trade exchanges are closely linked, and will he do his utmost to encourage both of them?
Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, the cultural aspect is rather outside the Question and is something about which I know very little. However, as I have said, I hope that we shall do all we can on the trade side.
Lord Bottomley: My Lords, would it not be preferable for the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry himself to lead a trade delegation to the Soviet Union?
Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, I think that I said that the possibility of a visit during this year is under consideration. However, there are a number of other missions both ways taking place and we must take them into consideration.
Lord Molloy: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that the Russian people and their Government have already stated that they would welcome such a move on our part? Therefore, bearing in mind that the noble Lord has said that the Government have this matter on their agenda, would it not be possible for perhaps the noble Viscount the Leader of the House to see to it that this matter is put a little higher on the Cabinet's agenda so that it becomes a reality in this particular year?
Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, from the answers which I have given so far, I had hoped to show that it was pretty high on our agenda. We must wish all the British companies who take part in these missions—both ways—the utmost success in securing business.

Deer: Slaughter of Farmed Animals
2.56 p.m.
Viscount Massereene and Ferrard: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will make it obligatory for farmed deer to be killed on the farm from which they come and not slaughtered in public abattoirs.
Lord Belstead: My Lords, the Government are looking into the question of the slaughter of deer as part of their consideration of the Farm Animal Welfare Council's report on the welfare of farmed deer. The council recommended that, subject to specified safeguards, the slaughter of farmed deer should be permitted in slaughterhouses licensed for that purpose. The report also contains a note by four members of the council who disagreed with this recommendation. The report is currently the subject of consultation with interested parties. When this is completed the Government will decide what action should be taken in response to the recommendations.
Viscount Massereene and Ferrard: My Lords, I thank my noble friend the Minister for that Answer. However, is he aware that the red deer is our largest indigenous mammal? It is a very highly strung animal, with acute senses. It can scent a man on the hills from a mile away. We cannot compare red deer with sheep or cattle which have been domesticated in this country certainly since the days of the Romans. Would my noble friend agree that to subject these highly sensitive animals to a journey in a lorry amid the roar of traffic and to the smells and bustle of the slaughterhouse is extremely cruel? Would he agree that the kindest thing to do would be to shoot them in the neck with a rifle on the farm, and that preferably the rifle should be fitted with a silencer? That would be by far the kindest method.
Lord Belstead: My Lords, I give my noble friend an assurance that the Government will take very serious note of what my noble friend has said in his supplementary question, as, indeed, we shall take serious note of what is said in answer to the very extensive consultations which are taking place at present. I also give my noble friend an assurance that in forming their own view the Government will carefully consider how the welfare of deer can be satisfactorily protected.
Lord Beswick: My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord the Leader of the House whether the rule about more than one part to a question applies in this case?
Viscount Whitelaw: My Lords, I thought that my noble friend's answer to the question was immaculate. So far as I could see, he answered one question out of four.

Business
2.58 p.m.
Lord Denham: My Lords, at a convenient moment after 3.30 this afternoon my noble friend the Leader of the House will, with the leave of the House, repeat a Statement that is to be made in another place on the Bonn Economic Summit. That will be followed by my noble friend Lord Gray of Contin who, again with the leave of the House, will repeat a Statement on the gas industry.

Housing Bill [H.L.]
The Lord Chancellor (Lord Hailsham of Saint Marylebone): My Lords, I beg to introduce a Bill to consolidate the Housing Acts except those provisions consolidated in the Housing Associations Act 1985 and the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 and certain related provisions, with amendments, to give effect to recommendations of the Law Commission. I beg to move that this Bill be now read a first time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read a first time.—(The Lord Chancellor.)
On Question, Bill read a first time, and to be printed.

Housing Associations Bill [H.L.]
3 p.m.
The Lord Chancellor: My Lords, I beg to introduce a Bill to consolidate certain provisions of the Housing Acts relating to housing associations, with amendments, to give effect to the recommendations of the Law Commission and of the Scottish Law Commission. I beg to move that this Bill be now read a first time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read a first time.—(The Lord Chancellor. )
On Question, Bill read a first time, and to be printed.

Landlord and Tenant Bill [H.L.]
The Lord Chancellor: My Lords, I beg to introduce a Bill to consolidate certain provisions of the law of landlord and tenant formerly found in the Housing Acts together with the Landlord and Tenant Act 1962, with amendments, to give effect to recommendations of the Law Commission. I beg to move that this Bill be now read a first time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read a first time.—(The Lord Chancellor.)
On Question, Bill read a first time, and to be printed.

Housing (Consequential Provisions) Bill [H.L.]
The Lord Chancellor: My Lords, I beg to introduce a Bill to make provision for repeals, consequential amendments, transitional matters and savings in connection with the consolidation of the enactments in the Housing Act 1985, the Housing Associations Act 1985, and the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985. I beg to move that this Bill be now read a first time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read a first time.—(The Lord Chancellor.)
On Question, Bill read a first time, and to be printed.

Road Traffic (Production of Documents) Bill
Brought from the Commons; read a first time, and to be printed.

Local Government Bill
3.2 p.m.
The Minister of State, Department of the Environment (Lord Elton): My Lords, I beg to move that the House do now again resolve itself into Committee on this Bill.
Moved, That the House do now again resolve itself into Committee.—(Lord Elton.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House in Committee accordingly.
[The LORD ABERDARE in the Chair.]
Clause 6 [National Parks and countryside functions]:
Lord Chelwood Lord Chelwood moved Amendment No. 55:
[Printed 2/5/85; col. 456.]
The noble Lord said: I beg to move Amendment No. 55. We can no doubt, by agreement, discuss this together with Amendment No. 58, as we did on Thursday night.
[Printed 2/5/85; col. 456.]
The adjournment at eleven o'clock on Thursday night cut short our discussion of these two amendments, which went with Amendment No. 54, to which we may have to return on Report. All three amendments were strongly supported on both sides of the Committee, but it was late, the Committee was thin, so may I briefly summarise my arguments.
The purpose of these amendments is to establish schemes in Greater London and the metropolitan counties so that ecological advice will continue to be available as an essential part of the planning processes. The suggested mechanism is through a lead authority, nominated with its consent, in precisely the same way as in the Government draft of Clause 47—that is a new clause—which allows for similar schemes for making grants for voluntary organisations.
I think that I showed convincingly that it was now accepted practice, enshrined in numerous statutes and not only in the 1981 Wildlife and Countryside Act, that ecological and nature conservation evidence is now a material consideration in formulating structure and local plans, hence the "shall" in these three amendments. They do not, in my view, and after most careful consideration, create any new functions but merely formalise the present position. The latest example of this is Clause 6 of the Wildlife and Countryside (Amendment) Bill which has passed through another place and which will be coming to us on 17th May, which puts a duty, using the word "shall", on the Forestry Commission with regard to nature conservation.
I went on to give high praise—praise that I know the Government share—to the ecological work of the GLC in particular and the metropolitan counties, among which I singled out for special mention the Greater Manchester Council and the West Midlands County Council for their far-reaching practical work. I described this work as cost-effective, good value for money and thoroughly professional. I went on to suggest that it would be costly, inefficient and

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irresponsible not to ensure that this work continued without interruption on a centralised basis exactly as it is at present, or broadly as it is at present, and as indeed it is in all the shire counties.
To leave it simply to the whim of boroughs and districts would, I think, be ecologically and socially damaging because some of them would be bound to contract out of this work, for obvious reasons. I stressed the outright and enthusiastic support for these three amendments given by all the significant voluntary organisations nationally and focally, and I asked my noble friend to be good enough, when he came to reply to these amendments, to tell the Committee what advice the Government have had from the Nature Conservancy Council. I was a council member for six years, so I have some idea of the thinking on this subject, though I have no idea what advice they have given, but I felt sure that their advice would favour these proposals.
Finally, I reminded the Government that the Bill ignores this question altogether and makes no mention of it, and that the onus must surely therefore be on the Government themselves to make sure that the necessary funding is continued and that the small staffs are transferred to the new schemes, together of course with the existing data systems, and so on. I was encouraged over the weekend—and this is my final word—when I re-read the speech made by my noble friend Lord Whitelaw, the Leader of the House, in winding up the Second Reading debate. He was referring to the Science and Technology Committee's report, chaired by my noble friend Lord Cranbrook, which we have all read with so much interest, when he said that the Government
"agree that valuable expertise should not and must not be lost".—[Official Report, 15/4/84; col. 587.]
I feel therefore that I am pressing at an open door and that I am doing the right thing, with my noble friend, to put down this amendment. I look to the Government to either accept these amendments or to suggest a better way of achieving the same object. I beg to move.
Lord Elton: The matters raised by my noble friend Lord Chelwood on his Amendment No. 54 last week, and spoken to by many noble Lords opposite, and which are touched on again in this amendment, may be small in geographical area but they clearly bulk large in your Lordships' concern. In fact the degree of your Lordships' interest was borne in on me as I listened to Thursday's debate. Your Lordships had far from finished all that you wanted to say on the subject, and that is why we agreed to continue with the same debate today on my noble friend's next amendment and others associated with it. I am most grateful to my noble friend for allowing this to happen.
My noble friend Lord Skelmersdale did not have the opportunity before we adjourned to comment on the amendment which my noble friend withdrew. Since it touches also on matters that we are about to discuss, it may be appropriate if I start by saying a little about that. First, we share my noble friend's view of consultation. We believe that the Nature Conservancy Council and the Countryside Commission are important centres of expertise, that their influence and
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help should be brought to bear wherever possible and appropriate, and that the resources of other specialist bodies should not be left untapped.
That is not only our view; it has been the official view for a long time and it is embodied in statute. My noble friend referred in particular to certain consultation requirements imposed on planning authorities under the town and country legislation and on water authorities under both the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 and the Water Act 1973.
Paragraphs 3 and 4 of Schedule 1 to this Bill transfer planning authority powers and duties to the borough and district councils. Water authority powers and duties are of course not transferred by this Bill. The GLC's and the MCC's existing functions in relations to national parks and the countryside are transferred, as they stand, in Schedule 3. Moreover, the most important powers to which my noble friend specifically referred are those in Section 71 of the London Government Act 1963. It is under this provision that the GLC now collects ecological information and carries out research into the natural environment. The G1,C's existing powers are effectively transferred to the London borough councils under Clause 86. I can assure my noble friend that he did not withdraw his amendment prematurely. All the existing consultation requirements, and the powers under which the GLC operates its ecology unit, will be covered in this Bill.
May I refer briefly to Lord Melchett's points when he raised Amendment No. 53B. Again I am conscious that we are looking backwards in debate, which one does not normally do, but this is an unusual occasion, in that we agreed at the end of the last debate that this is what we would do.
In moving that amendment the noble Lord sought details of the arrangements for the continued management of a number of areas within the GLC area following abolition. We were in a little difficulty over this in that while I think the noble Lord was talking of successor bodies, our difficult} is in establishing what is already being done. Before we can identify any specific problems in individual areas or undertake consultations on them, we are dependent on the information provided by the GLC, which now has the responsibility and is discharging it. We have asked for this information on properties, parks, open spaces, including details of ownership, management, application of local acts, covenants, trusts, et cetera; and we have had to do so, I regret to tell your Lordships, under the powers in the paving Act, since the information was not forthcoming voluntarily. But to date no information has yet been forthcoming. I do not doubt that the GLC will comply with the request as it has a statutory force, and when we get the information we can deal better with the points that the noble Lord, Lord Melchett, raised.
Your Lordships will have much more to say on all these amendments and I will leave further points for reply by my noble friend. I return to where I started by saying that I have been much impressed by the closeness and degree of your Lordships' interest in these matters. We shall have that very much in mind between now and Report, when we consider the transactions this afternoon.
Lord Melchett: It might also be convenient if with this group of amendments we also discuss my Amendment No. 58ZA, which covers very much the same ground. It would save our having separate debates on that later.
Amendment No. 58ZA: After Clause 6, insert the following new clause:
("Countryside and Nature Conservation Authority.
.—(1) If it appears to the Secretary of State in the case of Greater London or of any metropolitan county, necessary or expedient for the effective discharge of functions to which this Act relates, he may, after consulting the constituent councils concerned, by order establish for that area a body corporate to be known by the name of the London Countryside and Nature Conservation Authority or by the name of the county with the addition of the words "Countryside and Nature Conservation Authority", as the case may be.
(2) Each 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 London Countryside and Nature Conservation Authority shall be the London borough councils and the Common Council.
(4) The constituent councils in relation to a metropolitan Countryside and Nature Conservation Authority shall be the councils for the metropolitan districts comprised in that county.
(5) An authority established in pursuance of this section shall provide an ecological service in the area of the authority.
(6) In subsection (5) above, the provision of an ecological service shall include the employment of staff engaged in and the provision of facilities for ecological research and development, including data handling, or the application of ecological knowledge in the management of country parks, nature reserves and other land of natural character; the rehabilitation and management of derelict land; the application of ecological knowledge in support of any function of the London boroughs or metropolitan district councils, or in support of any function of an authority established under this Part of this Act; and in London the management of land within the green belt owned by the Greater London Council.
(7) An order under this section may contain such supplementary and transitional provisions as the Secretary of State thinks necessary or expedient, including provisions for the transfer of property, staff, rights and liabilities and provisions amending any enactments or any instrument made under any enactment.")
I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Elton, for what he said about the amendments that we discussed on Thursday night. I now appreciate that we were involved in a misunderstanding on that occasion. I had hoped that my amendment would have served to give the Government some information about the areas of national wildlife importance, which I and other Members of your Lordships' House are concerned about, if abolition of the GLC goes ahead. In any event, I caution the noble Lord that the GLC is not the only source of advice and information on Sites of Special Scientific Interest. These are declared, not by the GLC or any other local autthority, but by the Nature Conservancy Council, the Government's advisers. So far as I know, the NCC and the Government are talking readily and I should have thought that it would have been possible for the Government to go to the NCC to ask about Sites of Special Scientific Interest in the GLC area and to discuss their future with the NCC. I had hoped that my amendment might have encouraged the Government to do that and if, at the end of the debate, the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, can confirm that, it would be a step forward.
3.15 p.m.
My Amendment No. 58ZA goes a little wider than the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord
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Chelwood, and others. I think a problem on which it would be worth spending a brief moment is that it will be difficult to draw a line between the various subjects we shall be discussing today and those we discussed on Thursday; namely, the nature conservation and ecology aspects of the GLC and the metropolitan counties; secondly, the farmland which they own and which will be discussed under an amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Stanley; and thirdly, the parks which we discussed at some length in respect of Holland Park, also on Thursday.
I shall give an example of why I believe that these three things should be taken together. It is always worth looking on the ground when discussing the countryside, nature conservation and farming, to see what happens there rather than what may be thought to happen in theory. In the Denham-Harefield area in the Colne Valley Park the GLC owns a large amount of land. Some of this land is let to tenant farmers and provides an important area of agricultural activity in a part of the GLC which is under intense pressure from development. It is near Heathrow airport and it is extremely important that that area should continue to be farmed as it has been under GLC ownership. But that estate also includes an historic house which the GLC has been doing-up with a view to making it part of the countryside management and countryside interpretation of the estate. It includes one of the Sites of Special Scientific Interest, which we discussed on Thursday, Frays Farm Meadows at Hillingdon; and also some land which the GLC has restored using a revolutionary new technique, so I am informed, which involves earthworms. That does not sound all that revolutionary or new to me, but I think it is in the context in which the GLC has been restoring land in this way. It includes an area where intensive management has been used to restore and improve the environment. It also includes a farm interpretation centre at Park Lodge Farm, where farming is interpreted and explained to the general public and to many thousands of school children every year.
There is a whole range of activities from parkland and farmland to interpretation, countryside management, improvement and scientific nature conservation on one site, and also maintenance of an historic building and finding a purpose for that building. I do not see how it will be possible to manage that site effectively without a single body carrying out all those functions; being the landlord to the tenant farmers, having the ecological expertise to manage Sites of Special Scientific Interest and so on. That may be one of the larger examples, but there are others. Hampstead Heath has a Site of Special Scientific Interest; it has Kenwood House, an historic building; it has a large area of parkland and semi-natural habitation and also an area where the GLC has been attempting greatly to improve the environment by re-seeding a meadow with native wild flowers, cutting it for hay and restoring and improving wildlife habitats. A whole range of activities takes place just on that site; and there are many others in London which I will not go into at this stage.
It seems to me that in considering the future of ecological work in London we may need to take it with the countryside management work, with the role of the GLC as landlord to farmers and with the role of

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interpreting and giving advice on the countryside. There are a number of other aspects of the work that the GLC and the metropolitan counties are involved in apart from the land that they own and manage themselves. There is the strategic planning role where ecology, the Importance of farming and a number of factors need to be taken together. There is the grant aid function, which we shall come to later in the Bill. There is the giving of advice to district councils, to statutory undertakers, to voluntary bodies and to many other organisations. It has been helpful in the GLC to have not only the ecological and the nature conservation expertise but the expertise that resides in the parks department and so on. There is education and countryside management in which the metropolitan counties particularly have been involved with other organisations, in such matters as Operation Groundwork.
My amendment was aimed to see whether the Government saw some merit in this argument, that if we are considering the countryside—there is much very important countryside, much of it very beautiful, rich in wildlife, very intensively used for recreation—it is important that we continue to see much of it farmed as it has been. In protecting those acres by continuing to manage them it would be good if a number of functions were brought together under a single body. For that reason, I put down this amendment and I hope that the Government will see merit in my arguments.
Baroness Nicol: I will try not to cover any of the ground that has already been covered because I know that there is pressure on time today. I am reminded of the justices' clerk's advice to his magistrates on the way into court, "Be just if you can, be merciful if you must, but, for Heaven's sake, finish your list". We did not finish our list on Thursday and therefore we are under a little pressure today. I will not be too specific about the issues which have been nobly covered by the noble Lord, Lord Chelwood, and by my noble friend Lord Melchett, in giving some excellent illustrations of the need for a county-wide planning body.
The Minister gave a very good answer to the debate that took place on Thursday night, having had the weekend to reflect on it. But the fact still remains that without the impetus of a county-wide planning authority we are likely to lose sight of many of the issues now being dealt with because they become fragmented among the various bodies, each perhaps feeling that it is not their responsibility to cover it. Some of the work done is of national importance, and not simply of local importance. We have heard of a number of small specific local sites and of some larger ones.
In order to give your Lordships' Committee some idea of the background to what we are talking about I shall briefly mention some of the projects that have been undertaken, first of all, in the areas of the metropolitan counties. Nearly 20 million trees have been planted since 1974, under the direct responsibility of the county councils; 6,000 hectares of derelict land have been reclaimed by the county councils, much of it in urban areas. In Greater Manchester the county council has taken a leading role
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in improving the river valleys of the county. Obviously, this covers very much more than one area. It has been instrumental in the provision of a very long list of new footpaths, cycle tracks and bridleways.
On Merseyside the Sefton Coastal Management Scheme has protected the ecological value of the dune coast line, and dunes have been stabilised and nature reserves established. In South Yorkshire the Rother Valley Park Scheme, a major recreational facility covering 700 acres, has been attempted and is succeeding. The Tyne and Wear Urban Fringe Area Management Scheme was launched covering 35 square miles to improve landscape, woodlands and hedgerows.
I am cutting down the list dramatically; but there are many, many examples more on it. In the West Midlands there is the Beacon Regional Park. In West Yorkshire there have been a number of canal restorations and improvement works, covering a wide area. These are just a few of the kind of schemes which in future are likely not to be initiated. This is the problem. I think that under the new proposals smaller schemes may be thought up by local authorities, but these bigger schemes will not, and even with the provisions of the new Amendment No. 58, if it is accepted, or Amendment No. 58ZA, if that is accepted, we shall be left without the initiative which has to be taken.
The other very dangerous aspect of what is happening is that the expertise which has been so painfully assembled over the years in these authorities—in the GLC, in particular, and, to a lesser extent perhaps, in the metropolitan counties—will be dissipated. It is unlikely that, even if they want to, these smaller authorities will be able to afford to employ the necessary team of experts to run any one of these projects, because it is not a one-man job, or even a two-man job. You need a wide range of expertise in order to see that they succeed.
In Amendment No. 58 we are suggesting that a body be set up between three borough councils or more which will require a two-thirds majority before it can go ahead. Having had some experience of cross-boundary attempts to implement parts of a structure plan, I know how difficult it is to get a simple majority, let alone a two-thirds majority. My very informed guess is that it will not come off and that nothing will happen.
We have turned down on earlier amendments the idea of a strategic planning body which would have given us the necessary control over these projects. We have even turned down the idea of an inquiry which would have given the experts who are presently concerned with these projects, as well as experts on the outside who know about it, a chance to tell us what kind of scheme would have worked and still have met the Government's plan. We have not had the benefit of that advice.
I think that we are taking another step in the dark on what is a very important aspect of public life. More and more people are concerned about conservation and about the protection of our urban environment, particularly. It is not any longer a lunatic fringe, if it ever was, and young people particularly are concerned. I think that to show the kind of disregard

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for planning which the Government have shown so far—and I hope that they are going to withdraw from that position—is not acceptable. I hope that at least some of these amendments, or something which does the job which these amendments want to do, will be acceptable to the Government before the end of this Bill.
The Earl of Onslow: As somebody who has his name to this amendment, I was very encouraged by the noises which came from my noble friend Lord Elton. What I should very much like to do is to underline, if I can, what the noble Baroness, Lady Nicol, has just been saying on the importance of not losing expertise. The very small ecology unit of the GLC has done some very special work, at very low cost indeed. If we allow it to be dissipated or provide that it should become the duty of each borough to provide something for itself, each borough itself will provide something at a quarter of the cost, if it can; and in regard to the 32 boroughs it will end up at eight times the cost and about a quarter as effective as keeping in being the things which already exist.
One must underline also the little things that the unit does. For instance, it ensures that the hay on Hampstead Heath is cut once a year, and the hay is then fed to police horses. This may sound a rather naïve thing to do. The unit also preserves the flowers on Hampstead Heath. What it does not do is what has been done in Richmond Park, which has been to put sewage sludge on to Richmond Park to increase the grass for the deer. Consequently, the grass has become too rich and the wild flowers have been swamped by grass. It is in regard to all these little things that an ecology unit of sensitivity and intelligence can contribute towards making sure that matters do not go wrong. Furthermore, if the ecology unit remains in existence, its educational value will I think be so important. People are now more conscious of ecology and more conscious of conservation in the truest and best sense than ever before. For that, we must all be very thankful. To make sure that that small unit stays in being is very important.
Furthermore, it is important that during the hiatus of dissolution of the GLC the unit knows what its future is going to be. If it does not, it will become demoralised and then things will slip through its fingers and it will be interested solely in internal politics and in finding out what its next job is going to be, and so on. We will then have destroyed something of very great value. I am not asking for the Government to spend any money. I am asking the Government actually to save ratepayers' money. I am not asking them to be anything other than I know they can be, which is intelligent and sensitive Ministers. They are represented on the Front Bench now and I am sure they will not let me down.
Lord Winstanley: I, too, was most grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Elton, for the reply he gave to those of us who spoke on these amendments last week. I was reassured up to a point, but I hope the noble Lord will accept that I was not, let us say, sufficiently reassured to feel that we can allow this subject to go without further words from the Government or perhaps without certain further assurances.
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I think that my present anxiety is whether the Government really understand what it is we are worried about. So often when we talk about this Bill in its various forms, people seem to think that all that we are worried about is money. Indeed, quite often noble Lords opposite seem to worry only about money. But in terms of resources so far as countryside and conservation is concerned, we are nothing like so worried about money as we are worried about expertise and experience in the highly trained and very dedicated staffs of the metropolitan counties, the GLC and all the others who have been doing all this work for a very long time. The noble Baroness, Lady Nicol, has outlined some of the things that have been done in the different metropolitan areas, and so on. I accept that it has been argued that it is not really a statutory function. But it has been done, and nobody is suggesting that what the counties have done was ultra vires in any way; it certainly was not.
The noble Lord, Lord Elton, in his reply just now, talked about the transfer of powers to the districts. I am a little more interested in obligations. If they understood that by having the powers there was an expectation that they would use those powers, that I think would perhaps be slightly different. What I am particularly anxious to receive is some assurance that the expertise which has grown over the years in the county councils among staff dedicated to this kind of work, with a great deal of experience and ability, will continue to be available to whoever goes on doing this work.
3.30 p.m.
I accept that as and when the Bill goes through the counties will have disappeared, but those people will not have disappeared. Of course, there would perhaps be a greater expectation that they could be recruited to continue the work they have been doing over the years if there had been some kind of overall successor body to take over these various functions, rather than their being taken over individually by different districts. I think we shall need some kind of assurance on that point.
My worry, I repeat, is not so much about whether the districts will have the resources in terms of money to do this kind of work or whether they will realise that there is an implied obligation to do it. It goes along with the transfer of the powers. What I am particularly worried about is: will they have the expertise and ability which is at present contained in the employees who have been doing the work for years in different counties? In saying that, I do not for a moment wish to belittle the quite excellent work which I know has been done already and is being done by many of the metropolitan districts, both in London and in different parts of the country. They have done excellent work. It has been of a slightly different order, but from my own personal experience in this field I have found in a number of the areas that the major contribution has come from the counties and the staff in the counties. It is not a matter of money; it is the input in terms of staff resources.
I think that is what we want to hear a little more about—what kind of machinery will exist after this Bill has been enacted which will be able to attract to its ranks the people who have been doing this work for

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years in the counties. Or will they merely be lost and shall we just hope that somebody else who is already in the districts will develop the same kind of ability? It would be a tragedy if all that experience and expertise were lost now. I am quite sure there are ways of ensuring that it is not lost, and I hope that before we leave these various amendments we will receive assurances on that point from Ministers opposite.
Lord Sandford: I share the view of those who have been speaking on this group of amendments that it is important that the countryside in the metropolitan areas and on the fringes of the metropolitan areas is properly and comprehensively managed and that the flora and fauna in them are looked after carefully and well.
However, I do not share all the misgivings that have been expressed about the inability or unwillingness of the metropolitan boroughs to discharge these functions adequately. They have not been doing so up to now because the metropolitan counties have been there to do it for them. But noble Lords who were listening to this debate last Thursday heard the noble Lord, Lord Winstanley, say that, for example, in the Operation Groundwork project in Merseyside the initiative and a lot of the drive came from the metropolitan boroughs of Knowsley and St. Helens. There are plenty of other districts up and down the country—urban areas—with resources far less than those of a metropolitan borough, who are discharging these functions of countryside management as skilfully as anybody else.
However, it is a fact—and this is a concern I share—that there is now available in these metropolitan counties a body of expertise which ought not to be lost. I should like to suggest one solution to my noble friend Lord Chelwood. When my noble friend on the Front Bench, Lord Elton, and I are discussing the way in which an amendment similar to the one I tabled as No. 19 is tabled by the Government, as I hope it will be, at the Report stage, both in respect of London and of the metropolitan counties, we should consider ways and means (I hope the Government will do some preliminary work on this) in which the agenda of this matter—which is to say, how to supply the expertise to the metropolitan boroughs which will be discharging countryside management functions—can be made available from the strategic planning conferences. I hope it is the Government's intention to set up these conferences and put them on a firm basis. This is just another way of handling the matter if that solution of a lead metropolitan authority does not seem in every case to be the most suitable way forward.
Lord Birkett: I shall not detain your Lordships more than a moment, but I cannot resist adding my voice to these small comments, from my privileged position of being Director of Recreation and Parks at the GLC, where I have responsibility for so much of London's open space.
I should just like to add my voice to those of many noble Lords who have expressed worries about the continuation of expertise, experience and, above all, dedication. I do so because many of these areas come
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within my own personal control within the GLC. There are many examples, though I will not go through too long a list. For instance, there is the whole question of landscape architecture. Within my department comes probably the biggest group of landscape architects in the world—certainly in Europe. They are a very expert and dedicated body. Also within my control comes a whole team of itinerant tree pruners. That may seem a small and slightly irrelevant issue, but it is in fact an economic way of going about the business of conserving London's trees, and it works exceedingly well. They are in themselves very expert.
There are teams of play leaders who look after the one o'clock clubs, the adventure playgrounds and all the extras to the parks of London. There is the entertainment division which looks after all the entertainments, not simply the great big ones which one hears a lot about but little entertainments for children in the parks every afternoon all through the summer. There are countless bodies of experience, expertise and dedication that one fears will not survive, not because anybody would wish them anything but well but simply because the borough structure is not capable of looking after them.
I echo what the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, said on this subject. It is not a matter of will but a matter of capability. It is indeed possible that everybody would make their contribution either by employing a little bit of such expertise or by joining in with some wider expert body. I do not see the structure at the moment for doing this. I fear that either a ramshackle edifice will be put together at twice the expense or nothing will happen. In between, which is exactly where it is at the moment, I do not see it happening.
I hope your Lordships will forgive me for a rather circuitous exercise. Funnily enough, within my department the one thing that does not happen is exactly what we are debating this afternoon. I do not look after the ecology unit, but I admire it and work very closely with it. It co-operates with my landscape architects, park managers and everyone else. It would be a tragedy if that body of expertise were to be lost.
I am sorry not to have been here earlier in the debate to hear what were described as the most encouraging words from the noble Lord the Minister. I hope he will make even more encouraging noises at the end of the debate.
Lord Elton: If the noble Lord will forgive me, I was not intending to wind up. I was most interested in what the noble Lord, Lord Birkett, had to say. Our sources of information in the GLC are not very generous and I just hope he might prevail upon his friend who is responsible for the ecological unit to be similarly forthcoming, if his employers would permit it.
Lord Birkett: I am most interested in and even embarrassed at what the noble Lord has to say.
Lord Campbell of Alloway: Very briefly, I support the spirit of the amendments moved by my noble friend Lord Chelwood. I understand that his intention is that both amendments should enter the Bill and supplement each other. I totally accept that expertise should not be lost—the point made by my noble friend

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Lord Sandford—but I rise to distinguish between advice and consultation on ecology, which is the hallmark of Amendments Nos. 55 and 58, and the creation of a formalised body with executive functions, with ecological service and staff, under subsection (6) of Amendment No. 58ZA. I support the spirit of the former, but not that of the latter, to which the noble Lord, Lord Melchett, has spoken.
The Earl of Onslow: I should like briefly to comment on something the noble Lord, Lord Birkett, said. It seems to me that there is a difference between people who are there to advise on ecology and conservation which is quintessentially non-money making and cannot, under any circumstances, go to the private sector, whereas it would be perfectly reasonable to employ outside private landscape architects. Repton and Capability Brown did not work for the GLC. One of them worked for my forebear.
What one is talking about here is the very important part which I think can be played only by some form of Government body or quasi-Government body like the Nature Conservancy Council, which is concerned with conserving and looking after something and which is essentially non-financially productive.
Lord Shinwell: May I, without any knowledge of the subject at all—I make my confession to begin with—add my word to some of the speeches to which we have listened this afternoon and to some of the speeches we heard last week? As this debate has proceeded—I have listened to most of it, and what I have failed to listen to I have read in the reports that are available to us almost every day—I have come to the conclusion that there is a general desire which applies to every Member of your Lordships' Chamber that something should emerge as a result of our debates which is devoid of anything in the nature of bias, prejudice or distasteful features that exist in our minds because of what has been happening for some years now under the GLC. Occasionally there has been a kind of arrogance—I would not put it higher than that—on the part of those associated with the GLC in their advertisements and in the manner in which they have availed themselves of their finances, and so on, about which some of us, perhaps because of a lack of knowledge or expertise of the subject, have felt there is something wrong and that something ought to be done to correct the situation and remove the defects which appear to be obvious.
As the debate proceeds, I find that submissions and presentations of the case are being made which are very much more intelligent as the days go on, and also, if I may say so, that there is on the part of members of the Government an endeavour to change their approach, to some extent, to the submissions made by Members of your Lordships' Committee, who at the beginning appeared to be, in the language of some people (although I think it was mistaken), indulging in wrecking amendments. I do not believe there was any intention on the part of anybody on any side of the Committee to indulge in anything of that sort. After all, an election has taken place in a democratic fashion and we have to accept the consequences of that election; otherwise, we cannot claim to be democrats. Whether or not we like it, there it is. It is a decision
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taken by the general public, by the electors, and also by what may be regarded as a referendum. That is the position as I see it.
Therefore, it would seem to me that we are now approaching a stage when, because of some of the speeches we have listened to and which appear to have been taken notice of by members of the Government, and also because of the reassuring statements made by members of the Government, it is possible that something creative may emerge which will be to the advantage of London and to all those who have been associated with this problem. That is how I see it, and I would therefore recommend that we proceed along those lines.
There is one further thing I should like to say. I am concerned about how your Lordships' Chamber works. I have often thought that it could work much better to the advantage of the nation and rather less in the interests of certain bodies, who appear to use our Chamber to their own advantage, who have a self-interest and who are self-opinionated about it. For example, we have had to listen for some time now to speeches made on certain amendments, only to discover immediately after the arguments have been presented and briefs have been furnished to those who have addressed your Lordships that the amendments are withdrawn one after the other. We have had amendments moved and amendments withdrawn. It seems to me to be all wrong. Amendments should not be produced at all if there is the slightest thought in the minds of those associated with the amendments that there are some defects in them. They should not be presented to your Lordships; and there have been far too many of these amendments.
3.45 p.m.
I should also like to see rather more Members of the official Opposition taking part in the debates. After all, very largely they have been left in the hands of just a few Members of your Lordships' Committee; and although I have no doubt that they have all the expertise that is necessary about matters of this sort—perhaps more expertise than anybody else, and certainly more expertise than I have—it nevertheless worries me a bit. They go on talking and talking and talking, and withdrawing and withdrawing and withdrawing. What is it all about? I am sick and tired of it.
That is why the other day I ventured to intervene as I did, and I got the impression that my intervention might have been of some value—not because I happen to be who I am, but rather because I said something that many others of your Lordships would like to have said but did not dare to say because they might be accused of seeking to wreck the Government's proposals. Certainly that is not my intention. I want to see your Lordships' Chamber making a good job of this, in the interests of London and in the interests of all those associated with local government. Local government is of the highest importance. It is democratic; it is not something we can afford to lose. We have to develop it and make it more effective, and if that were being done I would support it 100 per cent.
I hope that your Lordships do not mind my speaking in this fashion, but I do it because I have a great conviction about the ability that exists in your

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Lordships' Chamber and about what we are capable of doing if only we use our resources perhaps a little more wisely and more correctively than we do at times. There are so many things I should like to see done in the interests of the nation, and which are so necessary for the nation's future. Anything I have said is intended in that direction, and in that direction alone.
Noble Lords: Hear, hear!
Lord Skelmersdale: I am not sure that I can answer the major part of the intervention of the noble Lord, Lord Shinwell; I do not think that is for me. But what I can do is attempt to answer the various speeches that have been made on this very important series of amendments.
I should like to preface my remarks by saying that, having reading Hansard this morning, I think that in my efforts to answer the debate on Amendment No. 53B at our last sitting I over-pruned the points that I wished to make. Listening to what the Committee had to say both last Thursday and today, I detect that there are two separate but related issues contained in the amendments we have been discussing. The first concerns the future ownership of specific sites and the second concerns the maintenance of specialist expertise available to assist in the management of each site.
On the former point, I hope I made clear that all the existing sites named in the amendment would continue in being and would remain subject to exactly the same statutory controls as now, albeit under different ownership. The noble Lord, Lord Melchett, just now mentioned Frays Farm Meadows, and that is of course a case in point. It is currently owned partly by the GLC and partly by the local authority, and it is managed by a tenant farmer under the CLC. This management of the land will continue, no matter who holds the (shall I say?) head lease, or whoever owns the land. Both he and the owner, as I have just said, will be just as bound by statute as he and the previous owner were. However, it is to the latter point—the maintenance of specialist expertise to assist in the management of sites, with proper regard to conservation and ecological factors—that this second group of amendments is addressed and on which I shall concentrate my remarks.
The speech of my noble friend the Leader of the House, to which my noble friend Lord Chelwood made reference, has not been overtaken by events and we stand by it. The noble Baroness, Lady Nicol, drew our attention to the fact that, first, the subject covers more than the GLC area and extends to the metropolitan areas. Secondly, she and my noble friend Lord Onslow drew attention, as did the noble Lord Lord Birkett, to ecology units as a centre of expertise. This is not in doubt.
However, the first point on which we need to be clear is the powers; about which the noble Lord, Lord Winstanley talked, under which ecological work is carried out. It is under Section 71 of the Local Government Act 1963 that the GLC has collected ecological information and carried out research into the natural environment. We have already provided in Clause 86 of the Bill, and we have tabled an
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amendment to strengthen it, that the London borough councils should have virtually the same powers as the GLC now has under Section 71 of the 1963 Act to collect research and information. Indeed, one can readily see that the wording of Clause 86 has quite deliberately been very closely modelled on the existing wording of Section 71 of the 1963 Act.
I agree that Clause 86 does not mention ecological information specifically, but then neither does Section 71. In fact, both provisions are drawn in the widest possible terms and refer to "any matters". I should be reluctant to try to write into Clause 86 specific reference to ecology, because if we did so, we should risk narrowing the scope of the powers which it now provides. I hope therefore that my noble friend will recognise that we are giving the successor authorities—the London boroughs and the metropolitan districts—all the powers that they need to carry on the sort of work that the GLC and the metropolitan county councils have done in the field of ecology.
My noble friend's Amendment No. 58 goes further in seeking to place a new duty on the boroughs and districts to draw up a collective scheme for urban nature conservation. The wording of his amendment is very closely modelled on that of Clause 47 of the Bill and the improved version of Clause 86 which we have tabled as an amendment for later discussion. As I have explained, Clause 86 does not specifically mention ecology, but that is because it has been deliberately drawn very much wider.
We could, of course, attempt to draw up a specific list of things which we all agree should be covered, but in doing that we should run the serious risk of narrowing the scope of the provision and unintentionally ruling out desirable things that we had failed to think of when we drew up our list. We are quite satisfied that the words "any matters" include ecological work. I can therefore assure noble Lords that our revised Clause 86 will enable the boroughs and districts to set up such a collective scheme where a majority agree and to fund expenditure approved by two-thirds of them. Such a scheme could provide for a lead borough or district to employ a specialist unit providing expertise to all.
The Committee clearly feels that there is a problem in ensuring that existing specialist units are kept together. The Government appreciate that concern. So what are we doing about it? My noble friend Lord Chelwood addressed to me a direct point which was: have we been in discussion with the Nature Conservancy Council? The answer is that Ministers have been, and are still, in discussion with the NCC on these matters. The chairman of the NCC has expressed concern on the need for boroughs and districts to have appropriate strategies for ecology. The NCC itself considers that it can help best by providing encouragement and advice to locally employed ecologists. We have assured the Nature Conservancy Council that the Government are keenly aware of their concern and welcome their constructive approach.
Further than this, I can offer the Committee a simple assurance; that is, that the residuary bodies will be able to provide such units with a temporary home if permanent arrangements cannot be made by the abolition date. This prevents out and out and

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immediate disaster. After that, we would have breathing space in which we would seek to operate a new Clause 86 solution or something similar to it, but I should point out that this can be decided only by the successor authorities themselves. Like my noble friend Lord Sandford, I am confident that the boroughs will be able to make such arrangements in due course.
It should not be thought that effective conservation management is the sole province of the GLC and the metropolitan counties. At present there are, indeed, some very good examples of sites well managed by boroughs and districts. For example, the London Borough of Hillingdon already manages the largest ancient woodland in London, Ruislip Woods, and, in the West Midlands, Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council owns and manages Saltwells local nature reserve, which is an important geological SSSI.
Further to that, my noble friend and I have listened very carefully to what has been said today and I hope that what we have been able to say to the Committee will have provided some reassurance. I believe that the provisions we are making in the Bill itself, and what I have said about the use of the residuary body, will enable a satisfactory resolution to be devised.
However, I accept that the Committee has made important points and it may be that the Bill's provisions need strengthening in some respects to ensure that the objective, which we all share, can be achieved. We shall look very carefully at this in the light of the points made in what I think everybody will agree has been a quite excellent and brief discussion on these amendments. If on further examination we find that some improvement can be made to the Bill, my noble friend and I undertake to come back to this at Report. I hope that in the light of those very concrete assurances that I have given to the Committee noble Lords will not seek to press these amendments.
Baroness Fisher of Rednal: I listened very patiently to what the noble Lord has just said, but I did not hear him say anything about derelict land sites, though most of the metropolitan counties have quite a large acreage of these at the present moment. If we are to have restoration in the metropolitan counties, something must be done about derelict sites. Those are the sites which have old industrial buildings on them, and if we are to attract industry to the metropolitan areas, we must compete with the green-field sites. The metropolitan counties have, to a great extent, been getting rid of derelict land sites. So will the noble Lord explain how the districts will be able to do this in the future, when many of them will be very much smaller than towns in the shire counties?
Lord Skelmersdale: I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Fisher, for directing our minds to that point. In the speech which I have just made I assumed that the expertise of these ecology units would go on, and I said that I thought that their expertise was directly relevant to the problems, as has been expressed from all corners of the Committee. As regards derelict land sites in inner city areas, they may very well have—and, indeed, already have—an input into the consideration of what that land should finally be used for. For example, there are very often
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temporary nature reserves set up, and that is an idea which the ecology units would obviously pursue with the various councils. But the other point, which is slightly away from what we are discussing at the moment, is that the urban development grant, with which money so many of these sites have been reclaimed in the past, will go on.
Baroness White: I do not wish to delay the Committee, but will the Minister enlighten us? He has been making great play with Clause 86 which, as I understand it, refers exclusively to research and collection of information, whereas Amendment No. 58, which we are considering, refers to services and schemes. Those are not entirely the same. I am absolutely in favour of collecting information and undertaking research, but I understood Amendment No. 58 to refer to something implementing some of the advice given. Am I in error in this?
4 p.m.
Lord Skelmersdale: No, not in total. The point is, I think, that you cannot have the one without the other. Basically anybody can do the job if they are once told what to do. I suggest that at this moment we should concentrate our minds on the centres of expertise which can provide basic back-up and basic knowledge for the carrying out of the work on the ground, which, incidentally, need not necessarily, and already is not necessarily, done by employees of any local authority. One knows, for example, of the inestimable value of the work being done by the British Trust for Conservation Volunteers, to name but one.
Lord Winstanley: Since we are on that particular point, the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, in reply to the noble Baroness, said that we could not have the one without the other. Are we to assume from that that if we do have the one, we will inevitably and ipso facto have the other as well?
Lord Skelmersdale: No, exactly the opposite. If we do not have the one, we will not have the other. That is the point I am seeking to address to the Committee.
Lord Harmar-Nicholls: Since my noble friend has said that in the light of the debate he is going to look at this again to see which words will figure at Report stage, I cross swords with the noble Baroness, Lady Fisher of Rednal, when she suggests that district councils and, indeed, the smaller authorities generally are not capable of dealing with the re-establishment of derelict land—
Baroness Fisher of Rednal: I did not say that they were not capable of re-establishing derelict land, but that it was financially impossible.
Lord Harmar-Nicholls: There is nothing new in this. They were perfectly capable of doing this before we had the metropolitan boroughs; they did it and we have much evidence that they did. My noble friend ought to bear in mind that we must not have bigger, extra tiers to carry out something that was done most effectively and satisfactorily by the smaller authorities before the bigger one was put in their place.
Lord Melchett: As I will not be moving Amendment No. 58ZA, perhaps I may make one or two remarks before the noble Lord, Lord Chelwood, withdraws this amendment. All of us will be grateful for the positive way that the noble Lord looked at the future of the ecology unit. I did not say anything about that in my own speech because it was touched on by others. All of us very greatly admire the expertise built up in the Greater London Council ecology unit and the magnificent work done in practice not only in giving advice, but also in many other ways. Indeed, I believe that the noble Lord mentioned the British Trust for Conservation Volunteers, a recipient of grant aid from the GLC, whose work in London will be decimated if that grant aid does not continue. That is something we will have a chance of debating later in the Bill.
The noble Lord drew a distinction between "duties" and "powers" in the earlier part of his speech. We are all concerned about reality; we are concerned not as to whether it happens to be the duty or the power of some successor body, but whether or not the excellent work done now actually continues and, if so, who will do it.
The noble Lord went some way to say that we will make sure that somebody does this work, but for my part before the Bill leaves this House I want to see something more definite on that. It is too important for it simply to be left to saying, "Someone will do it and we will work out what later". The noble Lord said he will look at that, too, and we will come back to it on Report.
The noble Lord, Lord Sandford, raised the question of borough councils and their abilities. Nobody will deny that borough councils in many parts of the country have been able, on the nature conservation side, to own and manage nature reserves, but it is fair to say that their record is not as good overall as that of the metropolitan counties and the Greater London Council. They have not done as much or have not done it as quickly in recent years as the metropolitan authorities.
I was lucky enough this morning to be at Camley Street, a GLC site created into a nature reserve just north of King's Cross. That was done jointly by a voluntary body, the London Wildlife Trust, the borough council, Camden Council, and the GLC. Camden Council made it clear, as did the London Wildlife Trust, that they would not have been able to do this without the support of the GLC, not just from the point of view of the expertise drawn from the ecology unit, which was vital, but also in terms of the financial support, the provision of the site itself and support in the planning process which enabled the site to be rescued from being a lorry park and turned into a wildlife park. I believe that the input from the metropolitan county and at GLC level has been very important. It is not just the advice which has been given which has been so important; there are many other factors as well.
Finally, it was fascinating at Camley Street to see the large number of schoolchildren from London; incidentally, from all over London. This site will not serve people from Camden borough area only, which is why a wider view is necessary, and it was fascinating to see the pleasure those children were getting from dipping in the water, looking at the birds, and enjoying the wildlife. It is something of great importance to
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people living in urban areas and I hope that when we come to Report stage the Government will give this matter further consideration than they have done today, welcome though that is.
Lord Chelwood: I am very much encouraged by the intervention of my noble friend Lord Elton. What he said was extremely helpful and I am grateful to him for his intervention in our discussion. We have had a good debate. I cannot help feeling that what the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, said was rather vague, to put it no higher. It was not very positive. It showed the Government have an open mind on this question—and we all welcome that—but surely we need ecological advice and advice on nature conservation to be part of the planning process, which it really is at present. The mere collation of data under Clause 86 is not the same as giving advice for planning, and no one can say that it is. We need to be sure, too, that the cost-effective teams continue. They are multi-disciplinary. It is true that some of the boroughs and districts have done excellent work in this sphere and will continue so to do; but it is equally true that some are not interested, and that others who will be under severe financial stringency simply will not be able to afford to do it in a cost-effective way.
So I am not completely reassured by what was said by my noble friend Lord Skelmersdale. I shall want to study his words—and the speeches of those who have put their names to the amendment, and others who have spoken—with very great care indeed, in particular his suggestion that if a permanent solution cannot be found to keep the teams in being, perhaps the residuary body might be used as a temporary holding place. However, despite what I have said about the noble Lord's words being somewhat vague, I feel reasonably confident that between now and Report stage a sensible way can be found to keep the ecological advisory expertise in being on a Greater London Council and county-wide basis. It is for those reasons that I think the right thing to do is to beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Lord Skelmersdale: This is a suitable moment to adjourn the Committee, and therefore I beg to move that the House do now resume.
Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Motion agreed to.
House resumed.

Economic Summit Meeting, Bonn
4.8 p.m.
Viscount Whitelaw: My Lords, with the leave of the House, I shall now repeat a Statement about the Bonn Economic Summit being made by my right honourable friend the Prime Minister. The Statement is as follows:
"With permission, Mr. Speaker, I shall make a Statement about the Economic Summit which I attended in Bonn, accompanied by my right honourable friends the Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary and the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
"Heads of State or Government of the United States, France, West Germany, Italy, Canada and Japan were present, accompanied by their Foreign

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and Finance or Economic Ministers, together with the President of the European Commission.
"I have placed in the Library of the House copies of the Economic Declaration and of the Political Declaration to mark the 40th anniversary of the end of the Second World War.
"I shall deal first with the political issues. As countries which once fought each other bitterly, we recalled the benefits of reconciliation and of 40 years of co-operation, and pledged ourselves to their continuance.
"We welcomed the opening of negotiations in Geneva on the reduction of nuclear arms, expressed our appreciation of the positive proposals of the United States and urged the Soviet Union to act positively and constructively in order to achieve significant agreements.
"Foreign Ministers discussed the Middle East, Southern Africa and Central America. They condemned the continuing brutal occupation of Afghanistan by Soviet troops and of Cambodia by Vietnam.
"On Britain's initiative we had a discussion of the growing problems posed by drugs and we agreed to set in hand work on further co-operative measures to combat the vicious trade which is the cause of so much human suffering. We also reaffirmed our determination to strengthen further the co-operation against terrorism agreed at the London Summit last year.
"On economic matters the discussion and the Communiqué reflected the similarity between the approaches and policies of all seven governments. We recognised the further progress since our last meeting in keeping down inflation and strengthening the basis for economic growth. We also welcomed the fact that the recovery has begun to spread to the developing world. Nevertheless, we recognised that our countries still face important challenges. Among other things we need to strengthen the ability of our economies to respond to new developments, to increase job opportunities, to combat protectionism and to improve the stability of the world monetary system.
"In order to sustain non-inflationary growth and to create higher employment, we agreed that we will consolidate and enhance the progress made in bringing down inflation. We will follow prudent and, where necessary, strengthened monetary and budgetary policies with a view to stable prices, lower interest rates and more productive investment. Each of our countries will exercise firm control over public spending in order to reduce budget deficits when excessive, and, where necessary, reduce the share of public spending in gross national product. We will work to remove obstacles to growth and encourage initiative and enterprise so as to release the creative energies of our peoples, while maintaining appropriate social policies for those in need. We will promote greater adaptability and responsiveness in all markets, particularly the labour market. We will encourage training to improve occupational skills, particularly for the young.
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"Building on those common policies, each country indicated its specific priorities: for example, President Reagan emphasised his determination to achieve a substantial reduction in the United States' budget deficit; the Japanese Prime Minister undertook that his Government would make further progress in deregulating financial markets, promoting the international role of the yen, facilitating access to markets, and encouraging growth in imports; the United Kingdom will continue to work to reduce inflation, keep public spending under control, promote the development of small business and advanced technological industries, and encourage initiative and enterprise in the creation of new job opportunities.
"On international trade we agreed that protectionism does not solve problems, it creates them; that further progress in relaxing and dismantling trade restrictions is essential; that a new round of multilateral trade negotiations should begin as soon as possible, with the broadest possible participation; that the preparations for the new round should begin with a meeting of GATT officials before the end of the summer. With the exception of France, we were agreed that the new GATT round should start in 1986. France was not prepared to commit herself to a date.
"The discussions on international monetary questions which began after the Williamsburg Summit will be completed next month when the Group of Ten meets in Tokyo. They will put forward proposals for discussion in the Interim Committee of the IMF at its October meeting. We endorsed the case by case approach to the debt problems of the developing countries set out at the London Summit.
"We expressed our particular concern for the plight of African peoples suffering from famine and drought. While acknowledging the very substantial assistance provided not only by governments but by private organisations and individual citizens, we instructed experts to report to the Foreign Ministers of the Seven at the end of September with proposals for further measures which might be necessary. Particular concern was voiced about the practical distribution of food aid which has been so generously given, and the need for long-term policies of good husbandry to avoid creating more desert land. We also called on the Soviet Union and other Communist countries to assume their responsibilities in helping to relieve the suffering caused by famine and drought.
"Mr. Speaker, what was impressive in the Summit discussions was the conviction of all represented there that lasting job opportunities can be created only if we maintain sound financial policies and open markets and remove disincentives and unhelpful regulations to foster a climate of more vigorous enterprise and initiative.
"As the Communiqué said:
'By pursuing these policies we will not only address our domestic problems, but at the same time contribute to an enduring growth of the world economy and a more balanced expansion of international trade'."
My Lords, that concludes the Statement.
4.17 p.m.
Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: My Lords, we are grateful to the noble Viscount for repeating that long Statement. It covers several important matters and refers to the key points in the Communique. I shall seek to make two or three short points.
The objectives in the Statement are obviously acceptable, especially the urgent need for talks to avert the protectionist trade war, although we must regret that the Communiqué was not unanimously supported. I am sure that the noble Viscount agrees that the failure to secure unanimous agreement on a firm date for talks is disappointing and regrettable.
The Statement says that officials will prepare for the new round of multilateral negotiations this summer and that the talks will commence,
"as soon as possible".
This is obviously disappointing. But can the noble Viscount say whether the new GATT round now scheduled to start in 1986 could in fact take place without France? This seems to me to be the implication of the words of the Statement. Obviously French participation is eminently desirable, but are talks without them a possibility? If I may read from pages 10 and 11 of the Statement:
"With the exception of France, we were agreed that the new GATT round should start in 1986. France was not prepared to commit herself to a date".
There is there some slight implication that talks without France are a possibility.
We warmly welcome the reference in the Communique to the need to increase job opportunities and to reduce social inequalities. Can the noble Viscount say how this is to be achieved in this country? We note that Mr. Shultz did not rule out a mild measure of reflation. Can the noble Viscount say whether the Government have this in mind, and what other initiatives are now proposed by the Government in the light of the Bonn talks?
On the issue of Japan, can the noble Viscount say whether there was any specific proposal by the Japanese Government to take action to adjust their trading balances with us, they being grotesquely out of proportion? Is it true that while the United Kingdom bid for the second Bosphorus bridge was highly competitive, the Japanese bid, while less competitive, involved excessive aid and subsidy to Turkey? If that is true, it is a deplorable state of affairs.
We welcome the references in the Statement to the plight of the African people suffering from famine and drought and to the setting up of the expert group to prepare follow-up measures. We warmly support what was said about the necessity for constructive work at the Geneva talks, and also the initiative, which we understand was taken by the Prime Minister, to take action against drug traffic.
While it is clear that many useful initiatives were taken at the summit, will the noble Viscount answer this question: if fiscal tightness and the pursuit of an ever-lower rate of inflation are to take priority over all economic goals, where is the stimulus for a world economic recovery to come from under those circumstances? Can the noble Viscount be confident that, by the time of the next economic summit, world
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poverty will be reduced, if only marginally? Or does the noble Viscount subscribe to the theory that the world economy defies any kind of international planning?
Lord Diamond: My Lords, we on these Benches are also very grateful to the Leader of the House for being good enough to repeat this important Statement. It was a long Statement but not very full of substantial content. I will start by selecting those matters on which we should like to support the Government fully in what they have been saying in this Statement.
The first matter is the fight against protectionism. All countries have a modicum of protectionism inbuilt in their trading policies. The United Kingdom is no exception to that. That illustrates how difficult it is to keep protectionism out of our trading pattern, whereas all of us know that what is in the prime interest of a great commercial and trading country such as ours is the absence of protectionism. We therefore assure the Government of our fullest possible support in maintaining and improving the fight against protectionism. We are grateful for the steps that were decided upon. Although we can understand France's attitude for the time being, we are sorry that France found it inopportune to share in fixing an early date. We repeat our assurance of total support in this battle.
We welcome also what the Government said about the fight against drugs. Indeed, the House will recollect that we on these Benches devoted one of our very few available days to debating this important topic. At the end of that day a vote was taken and the Motion was unanimously agreed to. I am therefore bound to ask the Leader of the House what is meant by the words,
"to set in hand work on further co-operative measures to combat the vicious trade"?
Can the noble Viscount tell us what steps have keen taken by the Government following upon the unanimous vote of your Lordships' House?
As to the rest of the Statement, I am bound to say that I regard this summit conference as a conference of missed opportunities. I want to illustrate that by referring to the two most important opportunities. One of the major opportunities that was missed is referred to in the Statement, when it makes mention of the need,
"to improve the stability of the world monetary system".
Why were the Government unwilling to start on that by improving the stability of the European Monetary System, and why do they insist on being the one man outside the group who are sharing in this system and so helping with this very desirable end?
The second great opportunity that was missed was in failing to do something tangible about increased job opportunities. We on these Benches rate that as Priority No. 1 and not Priority No. 3, as the Statement makes clear. The Statement makes as the first priority reducing inflation and the second as enabling our economies to respond to new developments—whatever that may mean. It cannot mean unemployment in this country because that is an existing development. The Statement gives third priority to increasing job opportunities.

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We regret immensely that no action was taken to persuade particularly the European countries to do something to reflate their economies so as to provide an increase in economic activity and an increase in job opportunities as a result of that. We totally disagree with the statement that there was:
"similarity between the approaches and policies of all seven governments".
Of those seven governments there are two at the top of the ladder and the rest are broadly at the bottom of the ladder. If one is at the top of the ladder, it is not surprising that one is happy to go along with suggestions that no reflation should take place in the economies of those at the bottom of the ladder but that everything should be left as it is: "I am perfectly happy here, Jack", if I may use that expression.
It is astonishing to me that the Government should attempt to assert that the policies of the United States and Japan are quite similar to our policies, their financial policies being the total reverse. Of course they sold us the original monetary policy on which the Government have been hooked ever since they first came to power, but they very quickly departed from it. As we all know, they have run up a huge deficit, as a result of which they have increased their employment, have maintained low inflation rates, and have done very well indeed, thank you.
In the case of Japanese domestic policies, their social and labour relations policies are totally, but totally, dissimilar from our own. It is not surprising that those two nations, with their totally separate policies in the areas which matter, have risen to the top of the ladder whereas the rest of us have remained at the bottom of it. I therefore say that it was a missed great opportunity to help in restoring the economies—especially those of the European countries—so that we could start to climb up that very ladder and hold our own with these other countries.
This summit conference was so unproductive that it raises the question of whether summit conferences are worthwhile. Every government knows that summit conferences have to be most carefully prepared. We do not share the view that summit conferences are not worthwhile. We congratulate the Government on having held a summit conference and trust that they will continue to do so. But it is extremely regrettable that this conference produced so little.
4.27 p.m.
Viscount Whitelaw: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lords, Lord Cledwyn and Lord Diamond, for their reactions to the Statement. In view of the many comments they both properly made, it will be easiest for me to reply to them separately. I will do that simply because, through my own inadequacies, I would find it difficult to combine my replies to their comments.
First, the noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn, raised the question of the talks on protectionism. He said that those talks were good so far as they went. I agree with him that it was extremely important that those talks took place. I also entirely agree with the noble Lord that they need to be followed up by action. The noble Lord also questioned whether the new GATT round in 1986 could take place without France. Without having heard the discussions, I would have thought that it was
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very desirable indeed that the French should participate and that every effort should be made to ensure that they do. Without one of the major countries, clearly any such talks would be that much less effective.
On the question of increasing job opportunities, of course it is fair to say to the noble Lord that indeed all the countries concerned (and I shall return to that aspect when I come to answer the noble Lord, Lord Diamond) believed that job opportunities were best found, provided that inflation was kept under control in all these countries. The noble Lord said that Mr. Shultz spoke of a mild measure of reflation. I believe it is fair to point out to the noble Lord and to the House that it cannot, I think, be said—in view of the many measures the Government are taking at the present time in this country for the improvement of the infrastructure, when one looks at roads, housing and many other factors—that a great deal of work is not being done. I would challenge those who say that, and look at the facts of what is actually happening.
On the question of Japan, the trading balances and the bid for the Bosphorus bridge, I think it would be unwise for me to comment any further on that particular deal. Obviously, I know something of the details, but at this moment in time it would be better for me not to make a comment on something which, certainly from our point of view, has been a sad position.
As far as constructive work for the Africans and for the famine in Africa is concerned, I am grateful for the noble Lord's support, and, indeed, for his support on the question of drugs. On the noble Lord's last point, I believe he asked: if fiscal tightness is to continue, how will there be recovery? I believe it is felt by all the countries concerned that a measure of fiscal tightness and a determination not to allow inflation to start again is a necessary prerequisite of the recovery which we all want to see.
Perhaps I may now turn to the noble Lord, Lord Diamond. He welcomed the fight against protection and he welcomed the fight against drugs. He welcomed the idea of further co-operative measures. He raised the question of the debate initiated by his party in this House on the question of drugs, and asked what measures had been taken by the Government. I believe that over a period of years considerable measures have been taken by the Government. Perhaps I am entitled to say from a previous incarnation (which is always difficult) that a great deal was done in seeking to stop drugs coming into this country, and a great deal is being done today both through the customs and the police. I hope that this House will realise—and I make no apologies for this "plug" for something that may be happening in this House in the near future—that intelligence work on this matter is crucially important, and that those who would seek to deny any form of intelligence that can be gained by those who are fighting against drugs would be very unwise if they really want to stop drugs coming into this country.
The noble Lord regarded it as a missed opportunity that the United Kingdom Government had not joined the EMS. I appreciate the noble Lord's point on this. I have to say that the Government's position has not been changed. Economic spokesmen far more able than me have explained all the reasons why the

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Government have not decided to join the EMS, and I do not think I will add to them any more this afternoon. As far as inflation and increased job opportunities are concerned, the Government firmly believe that the efforts to reduce inflation are absolutely crucial if we are to provide increased job opportunities; and I can only report, in relation to the Statement, that that was the view of all the other countries who were engaged at the summit conference. Those who wish to disagree have to disagree with all the seven Governments.
The noble Lord says that the seven Governments were agreed, but some of them on different propositions. In reply, I can only say that if we look at the countries concerned it is perhaps inevitable. Nevertherless, they were all agreed that low inflation rates were crucial, and it would be a very unwise country, therefore, which decided that, whatever their circumstances, they would go back on that and give up the determined struggle to keep inflation as low as possible.
Lord Shinwell: My Lords, will the noble Viscount the Leader of the House agree—
Lord Harmar-Nicholls: My Lords, I think it is the turn of this side of the House.
Lord Shinwell: My Lords, I merely want to ask a question.
Lord Harmar-Nicholls: My Lords, I think it is.
Lord Shinwell: Very well, my Lords; go ahead.
Lord Harmar-Nicholls: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that he did not completely answer the noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn, when he said that we are having a meeting of the officials of GATT? Of course, everyone hopes that France will eventually join; but are we to understand that if they do not join, if they remain adamant, the talks will go on, or will they not? If they are not to go on, there is no point in the officials meeting. Could I remind my noble friend that there is some significance, which should bring satisfaction to this country and to this Government, in the fact that all the other Governments seem to have accepted a basis of improvement in the world's problems founded upon the lines already being taken by our Government; and that the implied criticism from the Front Bench opposite and the SDP Bench does not fit in with the acceptance of all the other nations that our line of approach to overcome the world's problems seems to be the right one.
Viscount Whitelaw: My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend. He has expressed more trenchantly than I did what I had sought to put before your Lordships' House. On his first point, one must say that so long as the question of France attending is a possibility, every effort must be made to ensure that France does attend, and if the meeting of officials works to that end that surely is something which we would all wish to see.
Lord Shinwell: My Lords, does the noble Viscount the Leader of the House agree that if the noble Lord speaking for the Liberals can occupy our attention for nearly 20 minutes in a speech, one might from this side of the House ask a simple question arising from the Statement that he was kind enough to make—that is, about the attitude of France? We learn from the press that for some reason (though so far as I know nothing has been discovered as to the cause) the French did not support the otherwise unanimous decision of the summit conference. Can we understand the reason for that? If there is to be another conference and France may be asked to change its mind, how is that to be brought about? Can the noble Viscount the Leader of the House explain this attitude of France, and why it is adopting this attitude? There must be some reason for it.
Are we taking any measures to correct it; and, if so, what are those measures? For example, a very prominent member of the Government recently visited Czechoslovakia and East Germany. Would it not be advisable for somebody to meet President Mitterrand and discover the reason for France's refusal to join the summit conference in coming to a unanimous decision? There is a very great deal of doubt about it, and from the press we discover very little. I wonder whether the noble Viscount the header of the House could answer that question.
Viscount Whitelaw: My Lords, I am indeed grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Shinwell, all the more because, of course, however long any other noble Lord might take in saying things, the noble Lord will still be able to ask his question and most certainly will do so. The answer, I believe, as far as the French are concerned, is bound up particularly with the case of French agriculture, and especially with the common agricultural policy in the Community. As the noble Lord, will probably appreciate, there are still discussions (alas! not so far leading to agreement) on the agricultural settlement within the common agricultural policy for the next year, and the French, not necessarily in that regard but certainly as far as French agriculture is concerned, are very dubious as to whether they can take part in the GATT discussions for that reason. It is French agriculture that is at the root of the problem, and added to that is the problem of the common agricultural policy.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, the noble Viscount will recall that at last year's summit agreement was reached that all the industrial countries should increase in real terms their aid to the developing countries, and by doing so should assist in increasing their purchasing power. Nothing has been said in the communiqué this year as to whether or not that was achieved. This year's communiqué refers to the tragedy of the drought in Africa and sets up some kind of official committee. Can the noble Viscount tell us whether the British Government have fulfilled their obligations to last year's communiqué, and in the ensuing 12 months have increased their overseas aid to developing countries in real terms, and whether they intend to increase in real terms the resources that they make available to offset the tragedies of the drought in Africa?
Viscount Whitelaw: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord and, if he will understand, I shall be very cautious in the exact terms of the response I give at this present moment because I would not wish to prove him right and myself wrong on some answer that I may give. Therefore, I would say that I could not give him a specific answer, but I will certainly seek to do so on exactly what the Government have achieved in real terms in relation to meeting the communiqué on the last occasion. I believe we have made a substantial contribution in general in line with that communiqué. I would say, too, that we have made a very considerable contribution to famine relief in the African countries. I know it can always be argued that it is possible to do more but it would be very unfair to this country not to recognise the very considerable contribution, both from the Government and from private individuals, that has been made to famine relief in Africa. I am sure that that should be recognised.
Lord Gladwyn: My Lords, while agreeing with my noble friend Lord Diamond that there are certain features in the Statement which we welcome, I also agree with him and indeed, with the entire press that the results are almost entirely negative and consist largely of a number of pious platitudes and hopes. I shall only ask one or two questions. The Statement says:
"We welcomed the opening of negotiations in Geneva … expressed our appreciation of the positive proposals of the United States".
I do not know what exactly is meant by the "positive proposals of the United States". They have I believe been discussed in the Council of Ministers but I am not sure that they have been revealed in their entirety to the general public. In any case, would not the Government agree that unless the American Government can meet what I believe are the legitimate anxieties of the Soviet Government about the Star Wars proposals—at any rate, to some extent—and agree to have a truce, so to speak, on anti-satellite activities, which is equally important, the negotiations are likely to fail, which would be a disaster for us all?
Secondly, in regard to economic matters, the Statement says that,
"the recovery has begun to spread to the developing world."
What evidence do the Government have that that is so? I have not seen anything in the financial press to that effect. Once again, it is merely a statement of unjustified optimism. The whole question is dominated by the debt, which is also referred to and said to be coped with by bilateral means, whatever that means. But not much progress has been made in that direction either and unless there is I am afraid we must fear the worst.
Finally, I think the Statement says that Ministers are entirely in favour of lower interest rates. What has the United States Government actually done to lower interest rates? These are still unacceptably high and the Chancellor of the Exchequer has already said, I think, that they are almost intolerable. What is to be done about it? It is no good saying that we are in principle in favour of reducing interest rates; that is not an answer at all. Equally, as regards the United States deficit, it is said that President Reagan is going to do
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his best to reduce it. What has he done? Nothing at all. At the moment he is quarrelling with Congress. The real reason it is not being reduced is the enormous expenditure that he is proposing to make on largely useless nuclear armaments. Cannot something be done to convince him of the folly of this attitude? Did Mrs. Thatcher say anything at the conference in that respect?
Viscount Whitelaw: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord. I am sure that with his great experience he, in his time, has attended many summit meetings of one kind or another which expressed hopes for the future and did not necessarily produce results at that moment.
He asked me what will be the results of the various agreements at the summit. All I can say is that surely the agreements as a start are worthwhile. I cannot prove to him that they will be followed up, as he asked me to prove, and neither can he; but we must both hope that they will be followed through, both on the economic front and as regards lower interest rates.
On the Council of Ministers and negotiations between the American and Soviet Governments, I do not have anything further to say, so I think it would be better that I do not seek to pursue the matter further.
4.45 p.m.
Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: My Lords, I apologise to the House but there is one brief question of importance that I wish to put to the noble Viscount. Can he confirm that French officials will be among those officials who take part in the preliminary GATT talks?
Viscount Whitelaw: My Lords, subject to any correction, I believe that to be so. I am not absolutely certain and if I am wrong I will, of course, immediately let the noble Lord know.
Lord Kaldor: My Lords, did Her Majesty's Government disagree with what is evidently the French view, that trade questions and trade agreements cannot be considered in isolation from currency and monetary matters and exchange rates? Evidently any concession made in the field of tariffs could be offset by changes in relative exchange rates. Therefore, to follow the American attitude, which demands far-reaching agreements concerning trade and at the same time be quite unwilling to consider a new system of exchange rates, is illogical.
Viscount Whitelaw: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord. I think he is enticing me almost into a further debate on economic subjects in which he would do much better than I would. Therefore, I do not think I wish to proceed further.
Baroness Vickers: My Lords, may I ask the noble Viscount whether there is a committee of experts, Africans, apparently, to discuss the question of agriculture? After all, they have been using the same methods of agriculture for over 100 years and it will be difficult to get them to change without further co-operation.
Viscount Whitelaw: My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend. I am sure she is right in what she says. I cannot confirm exactly what efforts will be made by the countries of the summit to that end, but I will certainly look into it and let her know.
Baroness Masham of Ilton: My Lords, is the Leader of the House aware that many people throughout the country will be pleased that the subject of drug abuse was discussed at the summit? Was there any positive suggestion of legislation to confiscate the gains made by traffickers? Is he aware that if other countries have this legislation, and we do not, this may make this country an even more attractive place in which to push drugs?
Viscount Whitelaw: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness for what she has said. I am sure there are many people who think that, with the great drug menace that affects the whole world and which it would be very unwise to imagine is not likely to get worse rather than better in the immediate future, it was right that the subject should be discussed.
As regards the laws of different countries, no doubt there was an exchange of views but laws are a matter for each individual country. As regards this country, I note what the noble Baroness said, but at this moment I do not have anything further to add about our proposals.
Lord Pitt of Hampstead: My Lords, I am unhappy that the noble Viscount the Leader of the House did not answer the question put by the noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn, about the evidence which suggests that the conditions of the under-developed world have improved. I am quite worried about that. The noble Lord may not have the answer, and if that is so will he undertake to write to me with the evidence because I should like to have that?
Viscount Whitelaw: My Lords, in answer to the noble Lord I will say that that was the view of the countries at the summit. I was dutifully reporting the views of the countries of the summit. It is their consideration and I have nothing further to add to the views of the great experts who were all there.

Gas Industry
4.48 p.m.
The Minister of State, Scottish Office (Lord Gray of Contin): My Lords, by leave I shall repeat a Statement made in another place by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Energy. The Statement is as follows:
"With permission, Mr. Speaker, I would like to make a Statement about the future of the British gas industry.
"Major progress has been made with the Government's privatisation programme. Management and enterprise have been freed from bureaucratic intervention in industries as diverse as aerospace, the ports and cross-Channel services, the oil industry and British Telecom.
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"The Government have decided that the time has come for a further major step in the transfer of state industry to the private sector. I propose to introduce legislation at the earliest opportunity to provide for the transfer to a new private sector company of all the assets of the British Gas Corporation, and for appropriate regulation of monopoly aspects of the gas supply business. Following that legislation the Government intend that the shares in the new company should be sold to those employed in the industry and to the public.
"This change, like the earlier ones, will remove state intervention and substitute realistic tests of performance for bureaucratic or political ones. It will create a real ownership by the public and employees in place of the nominal public ownership of the nationalisation statute. It will place new emphasis on efficiency for the benefit of consumers and give employees a new stake in the business.
"The legislation will protect the consumer by establishing regulatory arrangements to oversee gas prices to the consumer and terms and conditions of supply. The new company will have an appropriate obligation to supply consumers, as has been the case with the British Gas Corporation. The legislation will protect consumers against discrimination and will contain necessary safety provisions, including the obligation on the new company to maintain the emergency services.
"The opportunities for greater competition opened up by the Oil and Gas (Enterprise) Act will be maintained and kept under review. In particular it is the Government's intention that competitors should be able to supply not only large industrial consumers but also smaller domestic and commercial consumers in areas not already supplied by the British Gas Corporation with suitable safeguards for safety.
"Outside the areas of gas supply, the new company will be able to develop other areas of its business in a competitive environment, subject like any other company to the general framework of competition legislation.
"I intend to provide special opportunities to gas consumers and other small investors to purchase shares, in line with our policy on wider share ownership. All gas consumers will benefit from the emphasis on efficiency which will be built into the regulatory system and from a straightforward system of gas pricing related directly to achieved commercial performance.
"As with previous privatisation measures I propose to make generous provision to enable all who work in the industry to acquire shares and thus to take a new stake in the company's performance and success. There will be new opportunities, as well as new challenges, for management and employees in the new company.
"The British gas industry is now nearly two centuries old. It has spent nearly 40 years as a nationalised industry but was developed for a century and a half in the private sector. It has undergone great change in the last two decades with the transition to natural gas, which has linked it to the great expansion of British industry into the

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North Sea. I believe that today's announcement will mark a new and long period of successful development into which the management and all who work in the industry can bring their present talents and link them with new freedoms in the interests of the nation".
That concludes the Statement.
Lord Stoddart of Swindon: My Lords, perhaps I may first of all thank the noble Lord for repeating in this House the Statement that was made in another place. Is the noble Lord aware that this Statement has come as a very unwelcome surprise, indeed shock, to the Opposition, the gas industry and the general public? It proves yet again that this Government are prepared to squander the nation's long-term assets for short-term political gain. Will not the Government's proposals create a new private monopoly at the expense of the public? Can the noble Lord say for what purpose and to what end it is being done? Will it introduce new competition into the gas industry? What benefits will there be for consumers? For example, will gas prices be lower and will service to customers improve? So far as I can see, there is no evidence that customers will be better off; indeed, quite the reverse.
The Statement boasts that gas consumers will be offered special opportunities to buy the shares. However, is the noble Lord not aware—indeed he must be aware—that the huge majority of consumers have difficulty enough in paying their gas bills, inflated by Government action in imposing price increases 10 per cent. above the rate of inflation for three years running, plus the gas levy which has imposed a further £1·5 billion on consumers, let alone buying shares? Very few of them will be able to afford to buy shares under those circumstances.
May I ask the noble Lord about safety? As he particularly knows, the British Gas Corporation has an outstanding safety record. Is there not a danger that a private monopoly might cut corners on safety to inflate profits? What additional safeguards are planned against the possibility of lower safety standards?
Can the noble Lord tell me about employment? The Secretary of State for Energy made a great issue of job creation in his Cambridge speech last week. How many new jobs will this measure create? Can the noble Lord give an assurance that there will be no redundancies in the gas industry as a result of this privatisation measure? Can he say what the effect will be on the thousands of people who supply the industry?
The Statement makes no mention of the percentage of capital to be privatised. Can the noble Lord say what percentage of shares are to be sold and how much the Government expect to realise from this sale? What price will be put on them? Will it be a similar price to the British Telecom issue, where people have made 200 per cent. profit at the public's expense over the last three or four months? Is the noble Lord further aware that there is no national energy case for these proposals? Does he not understand that it is not far short of criminal to be selling off BGC, which has been one of the great success stories over the past 20 years? Can he not accept that there is every reason to maintain the British Gas Corporation in its present form in the national interest?
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Finally, I have to tell the noble Lord that the Opposition are diametrically opposed to these proposals and believe they stem from the disreputable motive of finding money to pay for a Tory pre-election tax bonanza. We shall oppose the proposals and shall contest any Bill at every stage.
Lord Ezra: My Lords, I, too, am grateful for the Statement which the noble Lord has repeated in this House. I should like to ask three questions. First, it is difficult to see, in all the circumstances, the industrial logic for this proposal. The British gas industry has been one of the success stories of British industry in recent years. I was associated with the gas industry in my previous occupation in the 'fifties. That was an industry in the doldrums. By remarkable achievement and great technological advances, it has turned out to be one of the most successful industries in Britain, with a turnover in excess of £6 billion and profits of £1 billion. It seems remarkable that anything should be done to interfere with this success. In view of the fact that, as the Statement has said, many of the safeguards and other qualifications to protect the consumer in the existing Act will be introduced in the new Act, it becomes even more difficult to understand why this transfer is being made. That is the first point I should like to put to the noble Lord.
Secondly, I should like to ask him about the financial implications of this transaction. It is rumoured in the financial press that £8 billion will be realised as a result of this. That means that £8 billion of private money will be transferred into the public purse. That £8 billion could otherwise have been used for investment in wealth creating activities. Thus my question is: what are the Government going to do with the £8 billion? Are they going to improve our road system? Are they going to improve the quality of housing? Are they going to look at the water supply, sewage systems and all the other things which we on this side of the House have been saying should be done? Or will this £8 billion just disappear into the coffers of the Treasury, never to be seen again by man?
The third question is about the cost of the operation. An £8 billion transfer of funds from the private to the public sector will require an enormous amount of underwriting. Great cost will be involved in the prospectus and in working out how the shareholding shall be undertaken. In addition to that, there is the cost of the regulatory body to do all the things which existing legislation does to safeguard the interests of the consumer. I should like to ask the noble Lord whether he can give us some indication of what this massive cost will be and whether he thinks it will be justified.
4.59 p.m.
Lord Gray of Contin: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, and to the noble Lord, Lord Ezra, for their comments on the Statement which I have just repeated. I am surprised that the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, should say that the Opposition feel shocked by this decision. I think that only reveals the fact that the Opposition are still totally wedded to their old Clause 4 of nationalisation, and any movement away from that is repulsive to them; that is, just as any movement away from it, as far as this side

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of the House is concerned, is in line with our belief that the less Government involvement in industry the better.
I am rather surprised that the noble Lord, Lord Ezra, also should have gone down that road. I had always understood that his party stood up for the right of those employed in industry to have a share in that industry. This is precisely what we are doing, or will be doing, in the legislation. We are ensuring that those who are employed in the industry will have a right to participate in the shareholding of it.
The noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, made particular running on the question of prices. He asked what this would do for gas prices. Let me say that I believe that privatisation will achieve three things. It will give a clear and straightforward system of gas pricing based on a company's costs and achieved commercial performance. It will put pressure on the company through the regulatory system to reduce the onshore costs which are directly within its control. It will engender the new commercial spirit and entrepreneurial drive that the changes can be expected to unlock. That is what it will do for prices.
The noble Lord asked about safety. There is already wide-ranging safety legislation both under gas legislation and the health and safety Acts. There may be a need for some reinforcement. Officials are examining this urgently with the Health and Safety Executive which has day-to-day responsibility for the safety regime. I agree entirely with the noble Lord that the industry has a good safety record. It has an excellent safety record. We believe that the new utility will want to maintain the high standards set by the British Gas Corporation in this area. We see no reason whatever why it should not.
The noble Lord mentioned capital, as did the noble Lord. Lord Ezra. At this stage, obviously, it is impossible to assess the value. But it is fair to say that we are talking about a flotation getting on towards the British Telecom flotation. We are talking about a quite major flotation. The noble Lord mentioned the gas levy. Of course, when the company is privatised, it will be in the same position as any other company and will be subject to the taxation laws of the land. The gas levy may form part of that. That is a matter for the future.
The question of Government participation has been mentioned. I would not call it Government participation. I would call it Government interference. Some of the matters that were worrying the noble Lord, and may be worrying some of his noble friends, will not exist when the Government are no longer directly involved in a nationalised industry. The industry will no longer be nationalised; therefore, it will not be subject to the constraints and interference of Government and Ministers. For those, among a great many other reasons that I shall hope to deploy during the Second Reading, the Committee stage and the Report stage of the Bill, I believe that the Statement indicates a significant change and a change for the better for the gas industry.
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that some of us, unlike him, were not at all surprised at the predictable reaction of the noble Lord,
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Lord Stoddart of Swindon? Is he equally aware that many of us are very glad indeed to see that the impetus of the Government in moving industries from the public to the private sector is being fully maintained? Can my noble friend, however, clarify two points? He talked of a large flotation. Is it intended, at the first stage, to put the whole 100 per cent. of the shares of the new set-up on the market or only, as happened to begin with in the case of one or two other industries, a proportion? If the latter, what is that proportion? Secondly, will this change, when it has taken effect, inhibit the steps taken by the Government a little time ago—some of us were very critical of them—to force up gas prices for general economic reasons?
Lord Gray of Contin: My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for his comments. I can tell him that it is the intention to place the British Gas Corporation firmly in the private sector. I cannot at this stage tell him what percentage of shares it is intended to offer. I think that I have partially answered already the second point that my noble friend raised. I said that when the company is removed from the constraints and controls of Government, it will be free to exercise its rights as it sees fit.
The Earl of Lauderdale: My Lords, will my noble friend not agree that, thanks to this Government's progressive policy in the last few years, there is now a bonanza in North Sea gas with some 46 wells being drilled last year against 26 the year before, with nine annexed fields for gas exploration now under study at the department and with an upgrading of probable and crude reserves of 15 per cent. over the past year? Will he not agree that all these are beneficial results of the Government's general approach to freeing the exploration industry? Does he not also agree that it would be logical, in the light of that, if the Government proceeded to consider seriously the possibility of allowing the export of gas found on the United Kingdom Continental Shelf, as there is likely to be a surplus?
Lord Gray of Contin: My Lords, I thank my noble friend for his comments. I answer him by saying, yes, I agree that there is a potential bonanza at present, particularly in the southern basin of the North Sea. The action taken by the Government in recent legislation has made that possible. My noble friend is absolutely correct in saying that. Many jobs will be created as a result.
As to his second point, concerning the export of gas, 1 have to remind him that at present our licences insist that gas shall be landed in this country unless special dispensation is given otherwise. At the moment, the Government have no intention of changing that rule.
Lord Monson: My Lords, will the noble Lord give an assurance that the new company to be privatised will be subject to substantially greater competition than the nationalised British Gas Corporation has faced, in order to keep prices down and generally to help the consumer?
Lord Gray of Contin: My Lords, the whole intention of removing the British Gas Corporation from the constraints of Government is to try to ensure that its

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entrepreneurial spirit will be developed. This should lead to what the noble Lord wishes.
Lord Bruce-Gardyne: My Lords, is not the answer to the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Ezra, about where the money is to come from, that most of it is likely to come from money that otherwise would be invested in gilts and would therefore go to the Treasury in any case? However, is my noble friend aware that some reservations about the wisdom of passing a monopoly into the private sector may not be held exclusively on the opposite side of the Chamber? Am I not right in thinking that the Government, at the election, promised the electorate that competition would be injected into the gas industry and that this was over and above the provisions of the Oil and Gas (Enterprise) Act? What has happened about that commitment?
Lord Gray of Contin: My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend. What he probably has in mind is the question of gas showrooms—
Noble Lords: Oh!
Lord Gray of Contin: I shall come to the other things that he may have in mind in a moment. To deal with that point first, I would remind my noble friend that considerable progress has already been made. Where showrooms have not been paying their way a number have been closed down. It will be entirely for the new company to decide how to proceed on this matter.
The other point that my noble friend had, I think, in mind was the breaking up of the British Gas Corporation into small units. I would remind my noble friend that the Government considered this possibility. It is not, however, realistic for a distribution system such as that which has been built up over the years to be completely broken down again, with the possibility of competitive distribution systems being introduced and all the environmental hazards that this would create. The course upon which the Government have decided is far and away the most satisfactory.
Finally, my noble friend referred to the estimate, I think, of the noble Lord, Lord Ezra, of about £8 billion. Obviously, I shall not comment on the accuracy of that estimate, because we do not know. That will come much nearer the time when the British Gas Corporation is actually floated off. However, my noble friend is absolutely correct about from where the money will come. The money will come from the private sector, and that is from where it should come.
Lord Stoddart of Swindon: My Lords, I hope that noble Lords will forgive me if I ask a couple of short questions. The noble Lord has not told us from where, in the absence of competition—because this will be a private monopoly—and bearing in mind that Sir Denis Rooke has brought all the entrepreneurial drive and spirit that can be brought, this is all coming under the new set-up. As the noble Lord has criticised the noble Lord, Lord Ezra, as regards employee share ownership, will he say how many employees of British Telecom still hold shares in the undertaking?
Lord Gray of Contin: My Lords, perhaps I may deal with the last point first. I find it difficult enough to master the brief on an involved Statement such as I have given this afternoon, without diverting my attention to British Telecom just at this moment, but I have no doubt that the noble Lord will have his own way in which to ascertain the figure. However, I would say that anybody who has sold shares in British Telecom has probably sold them to his own satisfaction. Therefore, that justifies the principle involved.
The point which I have to make to the noble Lord is, I am afraid, one which he will find very difficult to accept because it is a difference in philosophy. I am referring to removing from the nationalised sector an industry which has been successful but with which there is very little to compare it. We believe that such an industry can be very much more successful in the private sector. I pay tribute to Sir Denis Rooke who was mentioned by the noble Lord. He has been a very successful chairman and, as an engineer, there are few who can compare with him. I am quite sure that Sir Denis will do all that he can to ensure the easy transition of the British Gas Corporation from the public to the private sector. I am sure that when it is privatised and thriving in the private sector, the noble Lord will, along with others, recognise the wisdom of the move which we are making.

Local Government Bill
5.12 p.m.
House again in Committee on Clause 6.
Baroness Stedman Baroness Stedman moved Amendment No. 56:
Page 3, line 38, at end insert—
"( )The Secretary of State shall before the abolition date lay before Parliament a report on the steps he will take to secure the full adoption by metropolitan district councils and the London borough councils of those facilities, services, and responsibilities for the protection and enjoyment of the countryside which serve the continuing needs of the wider country areas and neighbouring populations.")
The noble Baroness said: We are now back again to the conservation of the countryside batch of amendments which are designed to safeguard the quality of life in the country and they also deal with the planning and environmental issues. I understand that we are also dealing with Amendment No. 58.
I should like to confine myself to Amendment No. 56. The Greater London Council and the metropolitan counties have been very active in conservation and in the promotion of the countryside. A great deal of work and investment has been put into making attractive countryside accessible to the public from these large conurbations. Under the Bill, all the work of this nature is to become the responsibility of the district councils with no county-wide body to guide and maintain the work over the whole area.
The effective development of the open land in the countryside for recreation needs an authority which can take an overall view and not be constrained by purely administrative boundaries. Despoiled landscapes and derelict sites have been made into pleasant and attractive areas as major projects undertaken by the county councils, often in partner

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ship with other local authorities and with statutory undertakers and the voluntary organisations. The Countryside Commission, like the National Farmers' Union, believes that without special support the successor districts and the boroughs will not be able to continue the valuable work of the metropolitan counties and the GLC in improving and enhancing the countryside environment; in promoting and encouraging the environmental education (about which the noble Lord, Lord Melchett, was speaking earlier); and in providing recreational facilities.
A recent MORI opinion poll showed that attractive countryside came second only to safety on the streets in contributing' towards the quality of people's lives. The Countryside Commission carried out its own survey in 1984, and that also showed that 60 per cent. of all visits to the countryside were to places within six miles of urban areas. The metropolitan counties at the moment are spending £10 million a year on land reclamation and another £2 million a year on other environmental schemes. That is exclusive of the revenue expenditure on management and maintenance. Many of the metropolitan county country parks receive up to a quarter of a million visitors a year. Surely those places are at least as important to the people of the counties as a whole as are certain arts and sports facilities for which special arrangements via the Arts and the Sports Councils have already been conceded. A great deal of good work now stands at risk unless similar arrangements are made for the countryside and for conservation.
The Countryside Commission has advised on grant-aided work by the metropolitan counties and the GLC, recognising its importance to their counties and indeed to their regions. These recreational sites serve a very wide catchment area and they often extend beyond the boundaries of any single district. The countryside management schemes for environmental improvement work protect the vulnerable and quite often farmed countryside on the urban edge between urban settlements. These schemes have brought great benefits to the population of the entire urban area and to those in adjoining shire counties. Encouragement and additional financial support must be given to ensure, as the metropolitan counties and the GLC have done, that the boroughs and the districts continue to take a wider than local view.
It is important to ensure that the public and private investment is not wasted and that major developments are located to give the maximum benefit to the whole of the area. It is important that we have an assurance now that the Government will underwrite the £3¼ million which the Countryside Commission estimates that it will need to continue its existing work until the boroughs have agreed to take on the responsibilities.
My noble friend Lord Hunt is not here this afternoon, but he has asked me to make one point on his behalf about the national parks with which he has been so closely associated over many years. He says that the area which this amendment covers would require Parliament to scrutinise and to approve. These parks have a most important national as well as local importance because they are enjoyed by people from a far wider area than the fringes of the GLC and the metropolitan areas.
My noble friend takes as a particularly good example the Peak National Park, parts of which lie in
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the Greater Manchester, the West Yorkshire and the South Yorkshire metropolitan counties. Under the terms of Clause 6(b) the six county councillors who sit on the Peak Park board, two from each of the metropolitan county councils, will be replaced by the district councillors in whose district lie parts of the national park, and they may, indeed, number more than the present six because I understand that there are 19 districts in the three metropolitan counties involved.
My noble friend makes the point that the wider county-wide perspective is likely to be lost when the county councillors have to stand down and perhaps a narrower and a more parochial focus might take their place on the park board's deliberations. He thinks it extremely important that we try to get an assurance that, until agreement is reached by the boroughs, and until the boroughs have given the Government a firm agreement that they will take on these responsibilities, the Government will be underwriting the situation.
If we are not to have a county-wide body concerned with the protection and the enjoyment of the countryside, to provide the services and the facilities which are necessary for the continuing needs of the wider county areas and the neighbouring populations, then we have a right to know now how the Secretary of State will secure a full adoption of these schemes and their maintenance. If the boroughs and districts cannot cope financially with their additional responsibilities, what plans has the Secretary of State for ensuring, and assuring, that the Countryside Commission have the necessary increase in their finances to be able to encourage the specialist staff to be employed, and our natural countryside to be preserved for all to enjoy?
The Minister will no doubt tell us that the boroughs and the districts will receive a higher level of RSG and that their GREA will reflect their new responsibilities. But many of these councils are already hard pressed and there can be no assumption that they would be willing, or able, to divert scarce financial resources to this sort of countryside work. Therefore, what we are asking in this amendment is that the Secretary of State should consider, and should bring before Parliament, measures which will encourage, and will enable, the districts and the boroughs to cope with the heavier financial burden and the additional responsibilities which this Bill seeks to place upon them. I beg to move.
Lord Stanley of Alderley: This really is the other side of the coin to Amendment No. 34 moved by my noble friend Lord Molson. His amendment dealt with the long-term problems and this amendment deals with the short-term, immediate problem of what happens when the metropolitan counties get disbanded next April. It is politically minor, but to those of us involved in the countryside—the National Farmers' Union; the Countryside Commission; and indeed the National Trust (and I have an apology from the noble Lord, Lord Gibson, who has had to leave)—it is important and it is constructive, allowing us to plan forward, which is so essential in all country matters.
I hope that my noble friend Lord Skelmersdale will be able to accept this amendment. Before he sat where

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he does he often chided me for being an avaricious farmer, caring not one jot for the needs of others, particularly those living in towns. I know that he still feels that way. Therefore, I just hope that he is not going to be forced to give your Lordships some contrary dogma, if I may call it that.
The noble Baroness, Lady Stedman, put the case, as I knew she would, so well that I am left to deal with only one aspect of this amendment. Needless to say, that is the agricultural one. My points have really been taken away by the noble Lord, Lord Melchett, in the last amendment. He explained many of the problems in dealing with agricultural land that I was going to explain.
The metropolitan counties and the GLC have managed their agricultural land quite exceptionally well—keeping the green sites green, which was mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Fisher—and it is a large acreage that they have. They have gone further than anyone to solve the problems of farming on the urban fringe, of rights of way, of access to farmland for recreation, and of relaxation in the country, which, I suggest, are so much better to relieve our stress than Valium or some of the drugs we were talking about a few moments ago.
Apart from the fact that the Bill concentrates in my opinion overmuch on the GLC—my noble friend Lord Sandford had a constructive amendment, Amendment No. 19, but it really only dealt with London and SERPLAN, whereas the other metropolitan counties matter just as much—so far as I can see, there is no provision or information to satisfy me that this countryside work, and the work mentioned by the noble Baroness, will be continued.
The amendment asks the Government to tell us what is going to happen, particularly to projects in hand, when the metropolitan counties and the GLC are disbanded in April. We ask them, are they going to let these schemes collapse? Nature does not stand still just because the politicians wish it to. We must know what is going to happen in the countryside now, because we have to plan ahead.
I therefore beg my noble friend on the Front Bench to accept this amendment, even if he feels that he may have to come back at Report and modify it. I believe that it is time the Committee did something positive rather than waiting all the time for jam—and the jam, it seems to me, that we are being promised has not got a lot of sugar in it anyhow.
Lord Campbell of Alloway: May I be permitted a brief word in opposition to this amendment, which seems to have within it a double-barrelled mandatory provision. The first provides that the Secretary of State shall lay a report, and the choke refers to,
"the steps he will take to secure the full adoption".
This surely savours of an over-centralisation of power which, in view of the assurance given earlier today by my noble friend Lord Elton on Amendments No. 55 and 58, appears not to be necessary.
I take the point that Clause 86 will require substantial amendment to accommodate the assurances. As has been said by my noble friend Lord Stanley of
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Alderley, this is the short-term obverse of the amendment of my noble friend Lord Molson. But, to refer to Amendment No. 19, as I understand the position, my noble friend the Minister has taken this back with a view to enlarging it to take in the other amendment, whose number I have now forgotten, which deals with the metropolitan district councils. Therefore for my part I should prefer to wait and see how those assurances are reflected in an amended Clause 86, and to stay my hand for the moment.
The Earl of Radnor: I put my name to this amendment because I felt that of this clutch of amendments dealing with the parks and the countryside, it was the best. I thought for a start that it did not put the Government to a great deal of trouble. It is merely asking them to tell your Lordships' House and another place what my noble friend Lord Stanley has just said; what precisely they mean to do. By implication that means that I at least am not too happy about what they say they are going to do in Clause 6 and Schedule 3, because two matters seem to be left hanging.
I put them in what I think is the order of importance. The first is money, and the second is the compatibility of these councils which succeed to power and through which boundaries of national parks, and those kind of things, can run. They then have to form boards and they have to agree what they are going to do. I do not believe that they will in fact form good, cohesive, progressive policies as have been formed in the past by the metropolitan counties and by the GLC.
Having said that, perhaps in fairness one ought to go into a little detail. The noble Baroness, who put the case so well, referred to the sum of£34¼ million as being mentioned by the Countryside Commission. I myself have said that I think there will be not perhaps a squabble but a difference in priorities in this body drawn from two other bodies when they come to consider these matters.
5.30 p.m.
The suggestion that came to my mind is that one needs an independent vehicle to deal with this money from wherever it may come. I hope it will come from somewhere. My understanding is that that sort of money is needed to keep the national parks going as they are now; that is, not needing any initiative to make them better or to improve them. In my naïveté, perhaps, it appeared to me that the vehicle was there in the form of the Countryside Commission. This is a fair-minded, well-run and well-led body, with the interests of people, not just the country, at heart. It is people we are considering—the accessible areas where people who live in conurbations can get out to breathe. Many of us like myself are lucky enough to be born, bred and live in the country, and we can only imagine how much other people look forward to visiting the countryside.
What we need in the period before 1st April 1986 is to hear from the Government something a little more detailed and positive which we can discuss again. I do not in my mind muddle this amendment with Amendment No. 58; it seems to me to be a different amendment. I sincerely hope that my noble friend on the Front Bench will find it acceptable.
Baroness Nicol: I wish briefly to support the amendment from these Benches. We give it our full support. I allow myself a little wry amusement at the intervention of the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Alloway, who strains at the gnat of this tiny bit of intervention and has swallowed a hundred or so camels throughout the rest of the Bill.
The Earl of Onslow: Lord Camel or Lord Campbell?
Baroness Nicol: It is a biblical reference, which I am sure is familiar to your Lordships. We are concerned not with the powers of local authorities—we are all satisfied that they have the powers; it is the duty that we want to lay on them to take those powers. The only way to do that and to persuade them that they can allocate some of their money—many of them are hard pressed, as we know; they must be persuaded that some of that money must be allocated for this purpose—is to have an undertaking from the Minister that he means business. To ask for this report is entirely reasonable. It will be helpful not only to us and to those who care about conservation, but also to the authorities themselves, for it will give some idea of what is expected of them. We fully support the amendment.
Lord Molson: I hesitate to intervene, but shall do so briefly in order to raise two points. If this is not the right amendment on which to raise these matters, I do not apologise because this is a complicated Bill. All the amendments dealing with these matters tend to overlap. They are trying to deal with much the same subject, but they offer different alternatives. I open with what might more appropriately be my last sentence. I hope that if the Government are not prepared to accept these amendments at the present time, they will indicate that these are substantial problems which we are trying to raise and that we might have discussions between now and the Report stage with a view to the solution of these problems being reached with agreement.
The first point I want to make is that, though I may have misunderstood, I was under the impression that the High Peak National Park would not be broken up by this Bill. It would be tragic if it were broken up. The High Peak, which I represented for 22 years in another place, is one of the most successful of the national parks. One half of the inhabitants of England live within 60 miles of Buxton. It is of immense importance to the rural dwellers in the whole of the industrial Midlands of England that the High Peak should be preserved as a single unit. I had thought that that would be the effect because, as your Lordships may not be aware, although there are six or seven national parks, there is a joint board only in the case of the High Peak and the Peak District. It would be tragic if the effect of the Bill would be to break up what have been two planning authorities set up in 1947 or 1948 which have been extremely successful and which are considered by a large proportion of the urban inhabitants of this country as being involved with areas which should be preserved, planned and treated as a single whole.
I do not intend to develop my other point at any length, but it, too, raises a general issue. As I have
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mentioned before, the Department of the Environment withdrew the first two circulars it issued, one dealing with housing and the other with green belts. They were replaced by two circulars which were almost entirely acceptable to the amenity societies with which I have been associated. There was an undertaking by the Government that the whole principle of the green belts should be preserved. I said previously that while I had not the slightest doubt that the Government would carry out in the spirit and the letter the undertakings implicitly given in those circulars, I was not clear whether the machinery provided under the Bill would enable them efficiently to carry out the policy to which they are committed.
It is possible that on some later amendment we may be able to discuss the whole question of the green belts more appropriately than on this amendment, but I should like guidance and advice from the Government as to whether this is the right time to raise that matter. I raise it only on the broad principles of whether the machinery is effective for giving effect to undertakings which Government have given in those two circulars to the country as a whole and whether they are satisfied that the present machinery will not result in the eating into of the green belts and, in the case of the High Peak, the fragmentation of an extremely successful national park.
Lord Melchett: I want to say a word on one aspect of this that concerns the GLC land holdings in the green belt. Noble Lords who have spoken so far have tended to underestimate the scale and the urgency of the problem. There was an article in Farmers' Weekly recently which made a number of points. The first was that the boroughs that will take over the land currently owned by the GLC and let to tenant farmers have no experience in managing agricultural holdings. They have no staff, no land agents and so on, whereas the GLC has an experienced and much respected team. It is unusual to hear tenant farmers praising the landlord in quite the terms in which tenant farmers praise the GLC. In considering the political complexion of the GLC and the likely politics of many of the tenant farmers it becomes all the more remarkable, but the tenant farmers have been unstinting in their praise of GLC management.
As the noble Lord, Lord Stanley, said, those areas have been farmed very well and a great deal of effort, expertise and money—and money is important on the urban fringe—has been put into reconciling the conflicting demands of agriculture, access and recreation in areas all over the country and particularly around London where those pressures are greater than anywhere else; and it has been done very successfully.
The Farmers' Weekly reports that already farmers are suffering. Investment in buildings and repairs is declining because of the uncertainty caused by abolition, according to the tenant farmers actually involved. And there is a real fear—and I shall be interested to know what the noble Lord who is going to reply will say about this—among tenant farmers, which must be a sensible one, that when the land is transferred to London boroughs or to county councils they will find themselves, in the current climate, short of cash and they will sell the land. That seems to me to be a real threat for the future of a large tenanted sector.

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As I understand it, on all sides of the Committee we are keen to see the tenanted sector in agriculture continue, but if this land is sold to other landlords or to the farmers themselves, then, in the long run, it seems to me inevitable that it will leave the tenanted sector of agriculture and that must be bad for the industry as a whole. What is even clearer and immediate is that the resources which have been put in by the metropolitan councils and the GLC to managing the land, to keeping it at a high standard, to keeping it farmed (which is very difficult on the urban fringe) will go as soon as the land is sold. We will then see the spread of what is called "horseyculture", the tin shacks, the dereliction which spreads out so easily around cities as real farming is pushed away into the countryside; and the blight that occurs around cities all too easily follows.
That seems to me as inevitably going to happen if this land is sold by local councils. I cannot see London boroughs which are rate capped or desperately trying to maintain services and which are picking up the tab for things which the GLC were paying for, not taking the opportunity of realising the cash by selling the land. So this is going to lead to immediate, serious problems not only for the farmers but for all the people of London who enjoy these areas for recreation. It seems to me that this amendment does not go nearly far enough in tackling what is a very urgent and serious issue for everyone concerned, for the countryside in general and for the farmers involved in particular.
The Earl of Onslow: I should like to underline some things that were said by the noble Lord, Lord Melchett. I was about to call him "my noble friend Lord Melchett". He is so in some ways, but I do not always have to say that. He spoke of the terrible damage that can be done in the urban fringe. One has only to look around Staines, Slough and London Airport to see the most ghastly mixture of town and country which is neither town nor country. It is squalid, there is no character to anything and it has neither the benefit of the town nor the benefit of the countryside. Unless we are very careful, that particular form of urban fringe can spread.
I come up in the train quite frequently on what is genteelly called the New Guildford Line—it was built in 1876. It goes from Oxshott to Wimbledon and Surbiton. Right up to Surbiton there is some really pleasant farmed countryside with nice hedges and nice oakwoods. I do not know who it belongs to, but it is exactly how one wants the border of town and countryside to be. I would assume that they have the problems of access, the problems of plastic bags and the problems suffered by anybody who farms and lives near a built-up area. But the urban fringe has been avoided. If my noble friend's amendment can show what the Government intend to do about that in the transition stage, he will have achieved a very great deal. We must be careful on the problem of urban fringe.
Lord Davies of Leek: Very briefly, there is an angle on this which is omitted. It is this. What happens in the case of the continuity of a meandering stream, brooklet or rivulet in regard to the responsibility all along the line of that system of water flow, which is
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important to the entire theory of land drainage. It should be stated somewhere that the policy and control would overlap district areas, borough areas and local council areas so as to get a continuous policy for meandering streams, rivulets or brooklets. Otherwise an intelligent system of land drainage cannot be worked out.
I have started the point. There is no need to develop it further, I think that what I have said is axiomatic that there needs to be a policy along the whole line of the flowing of water so that control is administered all along the line of any rivulets or water flow. Otherwise agriculture, land drainage, hedging, ditching—the whole lot—can be ruined from the point of view of a constructive drainage policy. I have said enough. I hope that note is taken of that point when we come to the end of this Bill.
5.45 p.m.
Lord Walston: I support this amendment but I share the reservations of the noble Lord, Lord Melchett, that it does not go far enough, that it is almost too gentle in its phraseology. I hope that that may be overcome by the Minister when he replies; because when, as I hope he will, he accepts this amendment, I hope that he will spell out very clearly that he agrees with those who have already spoken on what is implied in this amendment as to the three criteria which must be observed in this body which is to be created to look after these rural spaces.
First of all, as the noble Lord, Lord Molson, rightly said, they must be planned as a single whole and the body that is set up to look after them should have very wide parameters in which to operate; it should not be fragmented. Secondly, the body should consist of people who will look after the interests of those who are going to enjoy these open spaces as well as those who are actually cultivating them, as has been mentioned by more recent speakers. Those people may come from very great distances but their interests nonetheless are great that these open spaces should be properly looked after. They must not be looked after solely by representatives drawn from the areas themselves, the rural district councils, the local councils, in which the land happens to be situated.
Thirdly, and I suppose in some ways most importantly, this body should either have powers to raise adequate finance for its own purposes—and nobody but that body will know how much money it needs to do its job properly—or, if it cannot have those powers, then it should have powers to demand adequate finance either from the constituent local authorities or from central Government. Unless the money is there, unless it has the right to that money, then, however good it is, however good its intentions, it will fail in achieving the purpose.
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: I hope that your Lordships will not hold it against my noble friend Lord Onslow if I confess to your Lordships that my intervention in this debate is solely the result of his speech. My noble friend unwittingly, I think, touched on a rather curious aspect of this matter. He referred (in terms which the late Sir John Betjeman could hardly have bettered or worsened) to Slough, to Staines and to the Heathrow area. But your Lordships, while not necessarily being

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enthused by the aesthetic and amenity aspects of those areas will, I think, have in mind that they are almost certainly the most economically efficient, employment productive and prosperous sections of our community today.
Heathrow Airport itself generates a very large proportion of our overseas earnings. It provides a great deal of extremely well paid employment for a great many thousands of people; and the same is true, although in lesser degree, of Slough (which in fact is an extremely well run town) and of Staines, with which I also happen to be familiar. Therefore, if these are to be held up as awful warnings which it is the object of this amendment to prevent, then that would dispose me, I think, to be very critical of this amendment.
Lord Melchett: If the noble Lord would not mind giving way, I do not think anybody was trying to plant trees in the middle of Heathrow Airport, desirable though some of the local residents may feel that is. It is where the countryside meets those developments that all ofus feel we want to keep it countryside, we want to keep it green. I cannot believe the noble Lord really thinks that a whole load of tin shacks and bedsteads and a few horses grazing in a field are particularly productive to this country or to anyone else.
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: With his habitual adroitness, the noble Lord has neatly sidestepped my noble friend Lord Onslow's point and put it not on Heathrow, not on Slough nor Staines, but on the areas adjoining, where the case is quite different.
The Earl of Onslow: May I interrupt my noble friend? I am sorry, is this a private fight or can anyone join in? I really think that for once I should refer my noble friend Lord Boyd-Carpenter to the noble Lord, Lord Melchett, who has expressed my views 100 per cent. accurately. I am talking about the "rurban fringe" on the edges of Staines, on the edges of Slough and on the edges of Heathrow Airport. That is what I am complaining about and that is what nobody should take credit for. It is what I want to avoid in the future, to make sure it does not happen outside Oxshott.
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: I am much obliged to my noble friend for those observations, although if they had already been expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Melchett, it would appear to be perhaps a trifle superfluous to repeat them. If he would consult Hansard, he will see that he named these three areas which happen to be economically among the most valuable aspects of this country and for those of us who care about the provision of employment, they are of very real significance. He referred to them and not to their adjoining areas.
But I will pass on from that to the terms of the amendment itself which I would have thought, even from the point of view of my noble friend Lord Onslow, go too far. They refer to the statement having to be made by the Secretary of State. This is an easy sort of amendment to put down, but of course it ignores the fact that, whether it is carried into law or not, it is perfectly possible for noble Lords or Members in another place to ask questions of the Secretary of State on these points.
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I myself am always rather doubtful about multiplying the number of formal statements by Ministers who are, of course, anyhow, without any such amendment, answerable to each House of Parliament. Your Lordships' House has certainly not demonstrated, particularly in the last few weeks, any lack of determination or willingness to ask quest ions of Ministers.
The second point on the amendment is that it refers to the full adoption by the metropolitan councils and borough councils of these facilities, services and responsibilities. That, as I read it—and I am subject to correction by the authors of the amendment—means that we are being committed to the precise pattern of support of the activities to which the GLC and the metropolitan councils have committed themselves. I certainly would not be prepared to give a blank cheque and say that all the activities either of the GLC or of the metropolitan councils were such that they had to be backed by a parliamentary provision that their full adoption must be carried on by the successor authorities.
If the amendment had been framed in more general terms—and I can see the point of it—I think it would have been more acceptable. But to try to nail the Government to securing the carrying out of every activity of this kind which these authorities which are to be abolished have undertaken, would, I think, be a very rash, foolish and unjustifiable thing to do,
Baroness White: If I may spring to the defence of the noble Earl, Lord Onslow, I am afraid that Lord Boyd-Carpenter is not familiar with the jargon of those of us concerned with countryside protection. I think I correctly heard the noble Earl use the phrase "rurban fringe", it is jargon, it is not very elegant, but it is expressive. He used it, and therefore his version of what he said was correct and that of the noble Lod, Lord Boyd-Carpenter, was not, I am afraid.
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: I do not want to waste the time of the noble Baroness, although it is always a pleasure to address her. But the noble Lord quoted, as examples of the urban fringe which he deprecated, these three specific locations. If the noble Baroness will contain her impatience until Hansard is available, Hansard, I think, will confirm that.
Baroness White: Unfortunately, the noble Lord is still incorrect. The term "rurban"—inelegant though it may be—refers to the land surrounding the areas which he rightly described as of economic importance. It is not the areas themselves. The noble Earl, Lord Onslow, was entirely correct.
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: I would suggest to the noble Baroness that she should read Hansard, if she feels able to.
The Earl of Onslow: May I suggest that this argument should come to an end?
Lord Skelmersdale: I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Onslow. I was about to suggest that I might be allowed to reply to the amendment. The provision of facilities for recreation in the countryside is primarily

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the responsibility of local authorities. The Secretary of State has no direct role in these matters. Countryside management, as the Committee will appreciate, is generally best left in the hands of the owners and occupiers of the land.
However, to the extent to which public authorities must intervene, this too is a function of local planning authorities. The provisions of the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act 1949 and the Countryside Act 1968, which confer these functions on local authorities, are couched in terms of what the local authorities may do, not what they must do.
Local authorities, therefore, have the freedom to provide whatever facilities they see fit. I should be very surprised if your Lordships wished to take away from them that discretion which is implicit in the amendment and in the words of the noble Baroness, Lady Nicol, but the amendment does not do this.
The role of the Secretary of State in these matters is an enabling one. In Clause 6 we have already provided by Schedule 3 for the transfer of responsibility and the continuing operation of those matters concerning national parks, by-laws and public rights of way for which amendment to existing legislation is necessary.
While I am on this matter, perhaps I might respond to various points which have been made about national parks and even perhaps a little later on urban fringes. The noble Baroness, Lady Stedman, in moving this amendment, referred to the views of her, unfortunately absent, noble friend Lord Hunt and his concern about the county-wide discussion on membership of the national park boards.
In the case of the Peak Planning Board, the only national park whose membership is affected by abolition, it is the case that the metropolitan county seats which are six in number will be redistributed to the districts who will be able to bring detailed local knowledge.
The noble Baroness then no doubt will say, "But what about a national overview?" This can and will be expressed by the one-third of the members of the board who are ministerial appointees and are there for that reason. Over and above this, there are ten national parks.
As far as the Peak Park is concerned, abolition in no way breaks up the Peak Planning Board, which will remain totally. That is my answer to my noble friend Lord Molson. It will remain moreover as a unitary authority, though with the necessary changes in membership to which I have just referred.
We now come to the point which my noble friend Lord Molson made about the green belt. Yes, I certainly accept on behalf of the Government that the two circulars, namely, the one on the green belt and land for housing to which he made reference in his speech, were not as well received as the Government anticipated they would be. But the Committee well knows the story here: the two circulars were withdrawn and have been replaced. Since their replacement, I have not heard the sort of outcry on the original circulars to which my noble friend properly drew attention.
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Further than this, obligations on successor authorities in regard to green belt and housing will remain exactly the same as under that replaced circular. Just as we are not imposing new duties, equally we are not taking away existing ones, nor are we taking away obligations. Belts will become no less green because of this Bill.
The Earl of Onslow: Before my noble friend leaves the subject, am I to understand that instead of green belts they become green chunks round the metropolitan counties?
6 p.m.
Lord Skelmersdale: Green belts are as currently defined in the circular. The process of abolition does not change them. My noble friend very properly asks: are they likely to be broken up because we have smaller conurbations? But we do not have smaller conurbations. What we do have are district councils rather than metropolitan county councils; but the areas will remain.
Lord Molson: May I interrupt my noble friend to ask for elucidation? It is difficult to take in precise words about these rather complicated matters. It is very difficult to see how the green belts can be efficiently administered if different planning authorities are going to be responsible for different parts of them. It has been the great advantage of the intermediate tier that they have, first, in the case of all the municipal county councils, exercised a general strategic control over the lower-tier planning authorities. That, I understand, was removed by the Act of 1981, I think. In the case of the Greater London Council, however, it was preserved. I ask the Government, if they are to give full effect to the policies they have themselves laid down in the two circulars to which my noble friend referred, to consider between now and Report stage whether it is not really essential to have some supervising authority. Perhaps my noble friend will tell me that the strategic guidance which we were discussing rather fully the other day, and which is in the hands of the Secretary of State, will be used for that purpose. Of course it will be difficult to do, but if I have an assurance that the Government really intend that it shall be effective, I have no doubt that they will see to it that it is effective.
Lord Skelmersdale: Rather than be drawn into the green belt question at this stage, I shall say that what I have already said—that the green belt will not become green chunks, in the sense that there will be white or black chunks in between—is absolutely correct. That was one of the points put to me by my noble friend Lord Onslow.
The green belt does not rely for its protection on the ownership of the land. It is planning controls which protect the green belt. The acquisition of the London and Home Counties green belt land under the 1938 Act pre-dated general legislation on the green belt. The new owners of the 1938 Act land will be subject to all the controls applied to that land by the Act. That of course includes the overriding view, to which my noble friend Lord Elton referred on, I think, the first day of our Committee stage, of the Secretary of State. To that extent my noble friend Lord Molson is absolutely correct.
Lord Campbell of Alloway: Will my noble friend forgive me for one moment? I am only trying to assist. Is this not a classic example of the need for coordination between the different authorities in charge of the green belt, to which my noble friend Lord Colville of Culross referred?
Lord Skelmersdale; Yes; and that is yet another reason why the unitary development plans, which we have discussed at some length on previous days, have been drawn up in the way they have. Part I has to have the approval of my right honourable friend and, equally, any one district or borough council has to have consultations with a neighbouring one if its unitary development plan concerns its activities. But, with the greatest respect, I think that it is better to try to go forwards rather than backwards.
Lord Harmar-Nicholls: I absolutely agree with that; but in order to avoid any misinterpretation of what he has said, can my noble friend not give a categorical answer to my noble friend Lord Molson? I would have thought that we have given the reserve povvers to the Minister because, in the last resort, he is in a position to put right any perverse result that may flow from smaller authorities having taken different decisions. There has been so much criticism of the powers given to the Minister that I would have thought we should advertise and show some pride in one of the things that he could do, in order to overcome some of the feelings that have arisen on this subject.
Lord Skelmersdale: Yes; we have here two voices with but a single thought. My noble friend is absolutely correct. I am not sure whether this would be an appropriate moment to turn to the comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Leek, about the water authorities. The Government are well seized of the unified river basin management, which has been the subject of discussion in so many debates in your Lordships' Chamber over the last two years. The Government have no present plans to change it, and of course that will be relevant when we come to discuss amendments, for example, on land drainage and the sorts of things which the Thames Water Authority may or may not get up to as a result of the passage of this Bill.
The noble Lord, Lord Melchett, expressed fear that the inheriting boroughs will sell land and thus put off such tenant farmers as they have on that land at present. I am not sure that that is really viable as a proposition because the successor authority will inherit the land subject to existing tenancies, and the rights of those tenants against their new landowner will be exactly the same then as they are now against the GLC or the metropolitan county councils. The change of ownership will not affect a tenant's legal rights or obligations.
Perhaps I may now—
Lord Melchett: If the noble Lord is going to leave that point, may I just ask him two questions, because he did not deal with the matter of land which falls vacant, as tenanted farm land inevitably does over the passage of time? I wonder whether the categorical answer he gave to the noble Lord, Lord Harmar-
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Nicholls, about the Secretary of State using his power would apply in this case, so that the Secretary of State would stop tenanted agricultural land being sold by a successor authority and insist on its being kept in the tenanted sector, which the Government are so keen to protect and, indeed, to expand. That is my first point.
Secondly, the noble Lord did not say anything in response to what I said about resources. Farming in this area is a very difficult business and it takes a lot of expertise and money to keep agricultural land in good heart, given the pressures which are inevitably there on such land, being on the fringe of very large urban areas. The GLC, for example, has a very good reputation for keeping agricultural land in good heart, because they have had the expertise and have been prepared to spend the money. Will that continue?
Lord Skelmersdale: I shall return to the noble Lord's point as regards tenanted land in a moment, but so far as resources are concerned, I was just about to deal with that very point, before he spoke. The question of how existing projects funded by the GLC and the metropolitan county councils will be handled after abolition is of course of vital importance. Under our abolition proposals, as I sought to reassure your Lordships' Committee on Thursday, the matters of finances are more or less as the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman, described them. At present the cash for these and other functions of the GLC and the metropolitan councils comes from the ratepayers. It is taken from them by precepts which are levied via the boroughs and the districts. It goes without saying that those precepts will go now not from the GLC and the metropolitan counties and can be used, certainly in part, where they are not needed for other successor bodies (which we will come on to a little later) by the successor local authorities for their own purposes. The functions will now be transferred to the boroughs and districts, which can have recourse to exactly the same ratepayers direct. The GREAs, and consequently their grants, will be adjusted to take account of the transfer of those responsibilities—
Lord Melchett: May I intervene?
Lord Skelmersdale: May I just finish the point? I see no financial reason, therefore, why the boroughs and districts should not co-operate in providing facilities which service a wider than local area. Now I give way.
Lord Melchett: I am very grateful to the noble Lord. I am sorry to prolong this discussion, but I understand that, for example, so far as the GLC's land in the green belt is concerned, most of it lies outside the GLC's own area and it will revert to neighbouring county councils. Surely the financial argument which the noble Lord has just used does not apply in those cases?
Lord Skelmersdale: If, for example, land which is owned by the GLC is situated in Buckinghamshire and it therefore goes to Buckinghamshire under the Bill's proposals, what I am saying is that the GREAs will be altered to take account of those responsibilities. Certainly, on the point about precepting the noble Lord is absolutely right. Yes, that would not involve a shire county.

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However, the main point about this amendment, it seems to me, was in regard to the Countryside Commission and its attitude to all that is going on. As the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman, has said, the Countryside Commission contend that between £3¼ million and £4 million is currently spent by the GLC and the metropolitan counties on country parks, countryside management schemes and facilities for recreation, which would be at risk if transitional arrangements were not made. I have already described some of the transitional financial arrangements which are to be made under the existing scheme of things.
Incidentally, although I am trying to compress what I want to say because I seem to be making rather a long speech, let no one misunderstand me. The work that is being done in this connection is extremely good—not, though I should love to say it, in 100 per cent. of the cases, as I do not know 100 per cent. of the cases, but may we settle for somewhere in excess of 95 per cent. of the cases for the sake of argument? The commission's view is that the situation might be helped if its grant in aid were increased and if it then offered increased levels of grant-in-aid to local authorities.
The Countryside Commission is the Government's statutory adviser on matters pertaining to countryside conservation and of course we take its advice extremely seriously. My honourable friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State will meet the chairman of the Countryside Commission, who is an ardent campaigner for the cause of countryside conservation and recreation, on 11 th June. This has already been arranged. They will discuss the commission's plans, including the question of a change in the level of funding for the commission in the light of abolition, as well as the commission's other proposal for future work.
Obviously, I cannot pre-empt the results of those discussions, but I would say to my noble friends Lord Campbell of Alloway and Lord Boyd-Carpenter that I agree with them that this is an excellent reason for waiting to discover what goes on in those discussions. Therefore, I do not think that it would be appropriate to take a final decision on this matter this evening.
Having said that, whatever the outcome of those discussions, I am convinced that it would be wrong to enforce by legislation the continuation of all GLC and metropolitan county council schemes. They might, for example, not be appropriate, in view of unitary development plans. Some of these schemes are, as we all know, temporary; and noble Lords will be able to think of their own examples where it just might not be appropriate for these schemes to continue.
Moveover, the amendment calls for a report and I really feel that that is not a matter for the Government. It would sit much more naturally with the successor authorities themselves. The Government's, the Countryside Commission's and the Nature Conservancy Council's role is to enable successor authorities to carry out such schemes and to ensure that they have the best possible advice. Furthermore, this amendment appears to rob the successor authorities of the freedom by which all local authorities, whether in metropolitan or other areas, exercise their priorities.
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As I have said, I am extremely sensible of the points made by my noble friends Lord Molson, Lord Campbell of Alloway and, indeed, Lord Boyd-Carpenter, on how to take the matter from here. But what I can assure the Committee is that the matter is being taken extremely seriously and that we are moving forward in a spirit of inquiry and wanting to get the job done. Unfortunately, I am in the cleft stick of not being able to report instant success to your Lordships this afternoon. On those grounds, I hope that the noble Baroness and my noble friend will feel that it would be reasonable not to pursue this amendment any further at this stage.
6.15 p.m.
Lord Winstanley: For two reasons I did not intervene before the Minister replied to this amendment: first, because I thought that the speeches I had made on earlier amendments would have made it crystal clear that I supported this amendment; and, secondly, because I thought that we would have a much more reassuring reply from the Government. But not having had that reply, I feel bound to say one or two words.
In essence, the noble Lord Lord Stanley of Alderley, at the end of his speech, was asking the Government to tell us what is to happen in regard to urban fringe countryside after abolition. In essence, the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, has said in reply that we must wait and see what happens after abolition and then he will be able to tell us what will happen to urban fringe countryside after abolition. That is not good enough.
I also have to object on two other grounds. First, I think that in his reply the noble Lord dwelt rather too much on the financial provisions—I accept that they are important—and where the money is to come from. But we all know that money for urban fringe countryside comes from many sources. It comes on certain occasions from derelict land grant, which is sometimes used to restore land to beneficial use, perhaps as countryside; it comes as grants from the Countryside Commission, from Community Task Force and from all sorts of places. Never mind the money. As we said on an earlier amendment, what matters is the very important work which has been done hitherto by personnel in the county councils, the GLC and the other metropolitan councils and that work will, in the end, disappear.
The noble Lord the Minister said in his reply, quite rightly, that the statutory adviser to the Government on matters of the preservation of the countryside and access to the countryside for recreational purposes is the Countryside Commission. There is a difficulty there. The Countryside Commission's duties are enshrined in statute and it is made utterly clear that the one thing it is barred from doing is work in urban centres.
This is one of the reasons why the Countryside Commission has found it necessary now, in connection with the groundwork movement, to establish the Groundwork Foundation, because some of the work being done by the groundwork movement is dealing with greenways extending right into the centre of urban areas and it could be argued that to grant-aid some of this work might be regarded as ultra

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vires if it were done by the Countryside Commission. That is perhaps in part, why the Countryside Commission has found it necessary to devise some alternative method where that is required.
The crucial point is that the work which has been done is of immense importance not just for recreational purposes, which is of great benefit to local residents, but for production as well. The noble Lord, Lord Boyd-Carpenter, who said so much about what is important in regard to certain land is making money and providing jobs, must remember that much of the work which has been done by the metropolitan counties in urban fringes has been to restore the countryside by the simple method of restoring productive agriculture in areas where, in a sense, it had disappeared under the pressures of trespass, litter and vandalism. The big problem has been to resolve the conflicts between urban fringe farmers and people who live in urban areas, and the metropolitan counties have done admirable work in that respect. The point is that by restoring productive farming to some of those areas, as has already been done, we are not only providing better countryside for the enjoyment of people, but actually making money and producing food which would not otherwise be there, and providing opportunities for employment.
I really do ask the noble Lord the Minister to give us a better reply, and to address himself in particular to the whole question of expertise. I shall not be long on this, but I am chairman of the Groundwork Trust, a partnership between the Countryside Commission, St. Helens and Knowsley Borough Councils and the Merseyside Metropolitan Council. The input of the Merseyside Metropolitan Council to the work we have done there is by no means only a question of money, although it has been money; much of it has been by way of highly skilled expert work from people who work for the metropolitan county. We want to hear clearly what is going to happen to them, what structure is going to be created to make sure that they continue doing that work, and that their expertise is not lost from these areas. Of course, the noble Lord can say that the district councils may take them on; they may indeed. But merely to say that this is enabling legislation, that districts will take over the same powers and have the right to continue to do the same things, and we must wait to see if they do, is not good enough. I hope we can have a better reply. If, not, I hope the noble Lord will press the amendment to a vote.
Lord Elton: Has the noble Lord, Lord Winstanley, been entirely fair to my noble friend? The amendment we are discussing is fairly clear in what it proposes. It proposes that there shall be a report, and on that noble Lords have hung a great many interests. The noble Lord knows this is not a Bill to create new powers or duties. This is a Bill to transfer existing powers and duties.
My noble friend said quite properly that that is precisely what the Bill will do. It is not proper to expect him to create out of the air a new duty on local authorities to perform something which before has been done voluntarily. He said that resources would be voluntarily available from the same people who
586
provide them now. At present, the Greater London and metropolitan county councils' precept to do these things falls upon the ratepayers of the borough and district councils. The borough and district councils who inherit the opportunity but not the duty to perform those functions which the Greater London Council and the MCCs performed as an opportunity and not as a duty, will be able to go to the same ratepayers and ask for the resources therefor. They will have transferred to their GREAs—Grant Related Expenditure Assessment—the allowance for the functions that were performed as an option by the preceding authority. My noble friend adequately described that as well.
The noble Lord, Lord Winstanley, wants a cast iron undertaking that every single person engaged in these functions and every single operation will be continued, but that is to remove from the Bill its essential feature of perpetuating what we already have. Noble Lords have spent a great deal of time saying how good is what we already have. It does not fit very well with their argument now to say we should change all that and apply compulsion where at present there is merely the opportunity. So I think my noble friend is absolutely right in that regard.
The only gloss I would add is that derelict land grant from the department will continue to be available to the districts and boroughs, which will be of great personal interest to the noble Lord. In sitting down, I would say how we appreciate—it will not alter what he will do or say—the work he has done.
The Earl of Onslow: I am sorry to intervene again, but there is something I do not quite understand. If we have a policy for the countryside all the way round the metropolitan areas, we do not want to go back to the situation before the war, when Middlesex County Council went full steam ahead and developed all of Middlesex and consequently it vanished. Surrey County County decided not to develop. I am talking of two contiguous counties here. Consequently the Surrey County Council bit goes much further into London and the old Middlesex County Council is much further out of London.
I would say this to my noble friend, that I do not think his amendment is a good one. I see the point very clearly behind what he is getting at (and I actually could vote for it) in wanting to get some answers from the Government. What several of us are worried about is: how is the actual policy for the whole round outside metropolitan areas going to be co-ordinated so that we do not get a Middlesex and Surrey situation, such as we had before the war?
Lord Elton: I do not wish to take on this debate, but if I can say so to my noble friend, Lord Onslow, we are back on the ground we were discussing on unitary planning. I sought to describe the system there as a patchwork quilt in which the patchwork was provided by the unitary plans of the unitary planning authorities, the local development plan authorities, and it was held together as a quilt by two things; one was my right honourable friend's strategic guidance—and he will not always be my right honourable friend, by which I mean the Secretary of State; he will not always have the strategic guidance of

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the Secretary of State. The other thing is the power to call in any of these plans if they appear to the Secretary of State either not to be congruent with their neighbours, or if their neighbours think they are not congruent; so there is every means of producing a coherent national strategy, which is what my noble friend wanted to ask.
Lord Harmar-Nicholls: This seems to be a move towards pushing this to a vote, but I wonder whether, from our point of view, if ought to be done. It is not for me to give advice to the sponsors of this amendment, but this is the sort of thing which ought to be brought up on Report. We have a large part of the Bill still to go. We can get many indications as to Government thinking in this particular line of country. If this is pushed to a vote now, we inhibit ourselves in the sort of thing we can put on the Order Paper on Report. My advice—if I can give advice to the sponsors of the amendment—would be: do not put it to a vote now but keep yourselves clear to do something about it later.
A noble Lord: Where is the noble Lord, Lord Shinwell?
Baroness Stedman: The noble Lord, Lord Harmar-Nicholls, was my Member of Parliament for 25 years and I did not take much notice of him in all that time!
Noble Lords who have spoken today, including the noble Lord, Lord Boyd-Carpenter, have said we have every opportunity in this House to ask questions of the Minister as to what is happening. But it is not questions we want to ask. We want answers now, before the Bill becomes operative, so that we know exactly where we are going. We have been told that the amendment could be framed in more general terms and we have been told that it does not go far enough. Perhaps we have not gone far enough, but that is something we can put right at a later stage or, if the Government feel so inclined, they can stiffen it up at a later stage.
I am sorry if I misled the noble Lord, Lord Molson, into thinking that the Peak District National Park was going to be fragmented. What my noble friend Lord Hunt asked me to intimate was that the membership of the Peak planning board will be altered and instead of having the county people who take an overview of the area it will be broken down into representatives of the districts. There is a danger they may take a rather more parochial view. I am not completely convinced by the suggestion of the Minister that one-third of the nominees are the appointees of the Minister and therefore would have some guidance on it. There are six others who are not.
Lord Skelmersdale: If I may correct the noble Baroness in that impression, what I said was that one-third of the members of the Peak Park National Planning Board are ministerial appointments and one of their roles is to give an overview as to what is happening nationally; whereas the job of district council members obviously is to represent their own districts. So although the noble Baroness did not quite understand, I hope I have now made myself clear.
Baroness Stedman: The mistake is mine. I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, was quite clear and that it was I who lacked comprehension at that time.
The obvious queries we have had surrounding green belts underlines our concern about planning procedures which we expressed earlier and which no doubt we shall come back to. The noble Lord referred to reserve powers; but they are the last resort and do not help us to know what is happening on 1st April 1986. We want to know what is happening now and whether the money will be available to service the tenanted land so ably referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Melchett. The noble Lord has said that the precepts that were levied by the counties will still be available to the districts, but we still have no guarantee that they will use them for this purpose. The noble Lord, Lord Elton, chided me the other night because he did not want to get drawn into local government finance. But when we start talking about GREAs we have also to talk about targets. I come from a shire county whose target is less than its GREA and therefore GREA does not help us. We go into penalty.
I think that this Bill came to us with a good many unanswered questions. A good deal of time was spent on it in the other House. We have not really had answers to very many of our questions so far as the Bill has been going through this Chamber. I think that the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, has been batting on a very sticky wicket. He has said that our views are going to be taken seriously and that we are moving forward. But quite frankly I do not think that is good enough, and I should like to test the feeling of the Committee.
6.31 p.m.
On Question, Whether the said amendment (No. 56) shall be agreed to?
Their Lordships divided: Contents, 152; Not-Contents, 135.

DIVISION NO. 1

CONTENTS

Airedale, L.

Darling of Hillsborough, L.

Allenby of Megiddo, V.

David, B.

Amherst, E.

Davies of Leek, L.

Ardwick, L.

Davies of Penrhys, L.

Attlee, E.

Dean of Beswick, L.

Avebury, L.

Delacourt-Smith of Alteryn, B.

Aylestone, L.

Banks, L.

Denington, B.

Beaumont of Whitley, L.

Diamond, L.

Bernstein, L.

Elwyn-Jones, L.

Beswick, L.

Ennals, L.

Birk, B.

Evans of Claughton, L.

Blease, L.

Ewart-Biggs, B.

Blyton, L.

Ezra, L.

Boothby, L.

Falkender, B.

Boston of Faversham, L.

Falkland, V.

Bottomley, L.

Fisher of Rednal, B.

Brockway, L.

Foot, L.

Brooks of Tremorfa, L.

Gaitskell, B.

Bruce of Donington, L.

Gallacher, L.

Buckmaster, V.

Galpern, L.

Burton of Coventry, B.

Gifford, L.

Carmichael of Kelvingrove, L.

Gladwyn, L.

Chandos, V.

Glenamara, L.

Chitnis, L.

Glenconner, L.

Cledwyn of Penrhos, L.

Graham of Edmonton, L.

Collison, L.

Greenway, L.

Croham, L.

Grey, E.

589

Grimond, L.

Ogmore, L.

Hampden, V.

Oram, L.

Hampton, L.

Peart, L.

Hanworth, V.

Phillips, B.

Harris of Greenwich, L.

Pitt of Hampstead, L.

Hatch of Lusby, L.

Plummer of St. Marylebone, L.

Hayter, L.

Heycock, L.

Ponsonby of Shulbrede, L.

Hooson, L.

Radnor, E.

Houghton of Sowerby, L.

Rathcreedan, L.

Howie of Troon, L.

Rea, L.

Ilchester, E.

Roberthall, L.

Ingleby, V.

Robson of Kiddington, B.

Irving of Dartford, L.

Rochester, L.

Jacobson, L.

Ross of Marnock, L.

Jacques, L.

Sainsbury, L.

Jeger, B.

Scanlon, L.

Jenkins of Putney, L.

Seear, B.

John-Mackie, L.

Serota, B.

Kaldor, L.

Shackleton, L.

Kennet, L.

Shepherd, L.

Kilbracken, L.

Simon, V.

Kilmarnock, L.

Somers, L.

Kinloss, Ly.

Stallard, L.

Kirkhill, L.

Stamp, L.

Kirkwood, L.

Stanley of Alderley, L. [Teller.]

Kissin, L.

Lawrence, L.

Stedman, B. [Teller.]

Listowel, E.

Stewart of Fulham, L.

Liverpool, Bp.

Stoddart of Swindon, L.

Lloyd of Kilgerran, L.

Stone, L.

Lockwood, B.

Strabolgi, L.

Longford, E.

Tanlaw, L.

Lovell-Davis, L.

Taylor of Blackburn, L.

McIntosh of Haringey, L.

Taylor of Mansfield, L.

MacLeod of Fuinary, L.

Terrington, L.

McNair, L.

Thurlow, L.

Mar, C.

Tordoff, L.

Masham of Ilton, B.

Tryon, L.

Melchett, L.

Wallace of Coslany, L.

Meston, L.

Walston, L.

Milford, L.

Wedderburn of Charlton, L.

Mishcon, L.

Wells-Pestell, L.

Molloy, L.

Whaddon, L.

Monk Bretton, L.

White, B.

Monkswell, L.

Wigoder, L.

Monson, L.

Wilson of Langside, L.

Mountevans, L.

Winchilsea and Nottingham, E.

Mulley, L.

Nicol, B.

Winstanley, L.

NOT-CONTENTS

Airey of Abingdon, B.

Croft, L.

Allerton, L.

Cullen of Ashbourne, L.

Arran, E.

Davidson, V.

Auckland, L.

De La Warr, E.

Belhaven and Stenton, L.

Denham, L.

Bellwin, L.

Digby, L.

Beloff, L.

Dilhorne, V.

Belstead, L.

Dormer, L.

Bessborough, E.

Drumalbyn, L.

Bolton, L.

Eden of Winton, L.

Boyd-Carpenter, L.

Ellenborough, L.

Brabazon of Tara, L.

Elliot of Harwood, B.

Brookes, L.

Elton, L.

Brougham and Vaux, L.

Enniskillen, E.

Broxbourne, L.

Faithfull, B.

Bruce-Gardyne, L.

Fanshawe of Richmond, L.

Caithness, E.

Ferrier, L.

Campbell of Alloway, L.

Fortescue, E.

Campbell of Croy, L.

Fraser of Kilmorack, L.

Carnegy of Lour, B.

Gibson-Watt, L.

Cathcart, E.

Glanusk, L.

Clitheroe, L.

Glenarthur, L.

Coleraine, L.

Gowrie, E.

Colwyn, L.

Gridley, L.

Constantine of Stanmore, L.

Haig, E.

Cork and Orrery, E.

Hailsham of Saint Marylebone, L.

Cottesloe, L.

Cox, B.

Halsbury, E.

Craigavon, V.

Harmar-Nicholls, L.

590

Hood, V.

Portland, D.

Hornsby-Smith, B.

Rankeillour, L.

Hylton-Foster, B.

Rawlinson of Ewell, L.

Ingrow, L.

Redesdale, L.

Kaberry of Adel, L.

Rcigate, L.

Killearn, L.

Renton, L.

Kilmany, L.

Renwick, L.

Kinnaird, L.

Rodney, L.

Lane-Fox, B.

Romney, E.

Layton, L.

St. Aldwyn, E.

Loch, L.

St. Davids, V.

Long, V. [Teller.]

Sandford, L.

Lothian, M.

Shannon, E.

Lucas of Chilworth, L.

Sharples, B.

Lyell, L.

Skelmersdale, L.

McAlpine of West Green, L.

Southborough, L.

Macleod of Borve, B.

Stockton, E.

Malmesbury, E.

Stodart of Leaston, L.

Margadale, L.

Strathcarron, L.

Marley, L.

Strathcona and Mount Royal, L.

Marshall of Leeds, L.

Massereene and Ferrard, V.

Strathspey, L.

Maude of Stratford-upon-Avon, L.

Sudeley, L.

Swinfen, L.

Merrivale, L.

Swinton, E. [Teller.]

Minto, E.

Teynham, L.

Molson, L.

Thomas of Swynnerton, L.

Mottistone, L.

Todd, L.

Mowbray and Stourton, L.

Tranmire, L.

Munster, E.

Trenchard, V.

Murton of Lindisfarne, L.

Trumpington, B.

Newall, L.

Vaux of Harrowden, L.

Norfolk, D.

Vestey, L.

Norwich, Bp.

Vickers, B.

Nugent of Guildford, L.

Vivian, L.

Onslow, E.

Ward of Witley, V.

Orkney, E.

Whitelaw, V.

Orr-Ewing, L.

Windlesham, L.

Peyton of Yeovil, L.

Young, B.

Polwarth, L.

Young of Graffham, L.

Resolved in the affirmative, and amendment agreed to accordingly.
6.40 p.m.
[Amendments Nos. 57, 58 and 58ZA not moved.]
Clause 6, as amended, agreed to.
Schedule 3 [National Parks and countryside functions]:
[Amendment No. 58A had been withdrawn from the Marshalled List.]
Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran had given notice of his intention to move Amendment No. 58B:
[Printed 30/4/85; col. 424.]
The noble Lord said: The object of this amendment, relating to Holland Park, about which I have spoken at great length in the past, was to persuade the Government, if I could, that Holland Park ought to be dealt with on the lines of a Royal Park, and therefore should be looked after by the Department of the Environment. At the last meeting of this Committee the noble Lord the Minister agreed to see me about the position of Holland Park. In these circumstances, and as I have already spoken partly to this amendment, I do not propose to detain the Committee any longer. I will raise this matter with the Minister when he is good enough to see me.
[Amendment No. 58B not moved.]
Schedule 3 agreed to.
Lord Carmichael Lord Carmichael of Kelvingrove moved Amendment No. 58C:
Before Clause 7, insert the following new clause:
(" Highway and Road Traffic functions.
. The Secretary of State shall by order taking effect on the abolition date make provision for the London Residuary Body to exercise the following functions relating to highways and road traffic in London to the extent and in the manner that such order shall provide—

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(h) that, for the purposes of ensuring that the exercise by the London borough council of their powers under the Road Traffic Regulations Act 1984 does not have any adverse effect on traffic on roads for which they are not the highway authority, the Body shall be given reserve powers similar to those given to the Secretary of State in Part 1 of Schedule 9 of the said Act;

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

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

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

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

The noble Lord said: This is one of a very important group of amendments to which I hope the Committee will listen with the same amount of enthusiasm as that with which it listened to the previous group of amendments. It is clear from the Second Reading debate and the votes both here and in another place that the GLC and the six metropolitan counties are to be abolished. However, there remain a number of
592
unanswered questions relating to the effectiveness of the proposals in the Bill as far as highways and transport are concerned.
Travel is an essential part of our way of life, and in the metropolitan and London areas, in particular, journeys make up a very complex picture. The management and improvement of the increasingly sophisticated transport system is a multi-million pound industry. It is essential that the organisation of it is done effectively and efficiently. I believe that this requires a sensible organisational structure which can support the necessary specialist teams.
In April—just last month—your Lordships' Select Committee on Science and Technology, in their interim report, stated that the case for uniting highway, traffic and transport functions is strong. By putting down this and the following amendment, the object is to retain the best features of the existing arrangements. We need to keep together the skilled teams and the technology which have been developed over the years.
In drafting this Bill, the Government have recognised that problems may arise in the provision of highway and transport services to a satisfactory standard. But not having found the solutions to the problems which are likely to arise, the Government have found it necessary to give the Secretary of State a whole series of very powerful reserve powers. These would be used as necessary to rectify deficiencies which arise from the proposed arrangements. I do not believe that anyone in this Committee would regard that as being the neatest or the most elegant arrangement to insert in an Act of Parliament.
6.45 p.m.
In moving Amendment No. 58C, I intend to speak mainly about the problems of the London area. The noble Lord, Lord Evans, will be speaking to Amendment No. 58D:
Amendment No. 58D: insert the following new clause:
("Strategic Highway Functions in Metropolitan Counties.
The Secretary of State shall by order taking effect on the abolition date make provision for the authority established by section 27 of this Act for each metropolitan county to exercise the following functions relating to highways and road traffic in that county to the extent and in the manner that such order shall provide—

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

(b) the functions of a local authority for the purpose of section 1 of the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984 in relation to the management of road traffic on principal roads within the county:

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

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

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

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

I assume that the noble Lord will concentrate on the six metropolitan counties. However, the principle in

593
both amendments is the same. In fact, there is a theme running through all the amendments which have been grouped under this heading.
The purpose of Amendment No. 58C is to enable the London residuary body to prepare highway and traffic plans for London, to carry out research, to be the executive authority for the strategic road network, and to have limited powers to ensure satisfactory arrangements are made with the boroughs. The Bill as it stands proposes to abolish the only strategic highway and traffic authority in London and to replace it with 33 separate planning authorities and 34 highway and traffic authorities. There are no proposals in the Bill for co-ordinating transport programmes and budgets.
In pursuance of its London-wide responsibilities, the GLC at present employs a number of specialist teams backed up by sophisticated computer and data collection systems. These teams were praised for their cost-effectiveness and efficiency in the recent Cranbrook Report. They include those working in highways, bridge design and maintenance, urban traffic signal control, data collection and research, freight planning, road safety, cycling, parking, and other aspects of traffic management. All these will be disbanded upon abolition, and they will not be replaced.
The Government have recognised, however—or seem to have recognised—that there is some need for London-wide co-ordination. The Bill proposes a massive transfer of power and responsibilities from the GLC to the Secretary of State. The trunk road network, for instance, is being extended without passing through the normal channels of consultation and inquiry, some 300 miles of main roads are to be named "designated roads", and the Secretary of State will issue mandatory guidance on all roads. The Secretary of State—or, much more likely, civil servants—will become the final arbiter on highway and traffic policies throughout London. I believe that this is a recipe for increased costs, bureaucracy, conflict, inaction and loss of local control or even local knowledge.
The London residuary body as allowed for in Clause 55 would retain the most important of the London-wide powers and responsibilities and the specialist teams to implement cost-effective policies and programmes, while allowing considerable devolution of traffic powers to the boroughs. The body would co-ordinate strategic highway and traffic policies and programmes. It would implement this programme on the main road network and issue guidelines for traffic management and parking controls as part of the plans to which the boroughs would have regard. The authority would sustain the existing cost-effective and efficient centralised teams of experts and associated resources in line with the Cranbrook Report. This amendment ensures that strategic policies for London can be implemented cost-effectively and efficiently by teams of established specialists.
There is no intention in this or in any of the other amendments in this group dealing with this theme to criticise either the London boroughs or the districts within the now existing metropolitan counties. It is merely a function of the subject we are discussing—that is, transport and highways—that
594
makes the smaller areas an inappropriate size properly to carry out the specialist tasks essential to the proper provision of the complicated transport needs of the public in large conurbations.
I am sure that many noble Lords have become aware of the quite deep disquiet of the very wide body of non-party groups and organisations which have indicated their concern over the Bill. There is a very long list. For brevity I shall mention only a few of them. The CBI, the British Road Federation, the Automobile Association, the Royal Automobile Club, the Institute of Highways, the Association of British Chambers of Commerce, the GLC Conservative Group, Air Freight Transport and the London Chamber of Commerce and Industry are all very concerned that there is no overall planning for the highways and traffic of London.
I submit to the Committee that the amendments in my name and that of the noble Lord, Lord Evans of Claughton, are deemed the most appropriate to meet the concern of almost all informed professional and experienced opinion. Our amendment would transfer the necessary functions immediately on abolition. It would transfer them to the most appropriate body and it would avoid the break-up and the loss of specialist expertise; and I would urge the Committee to support both Amendment Nos. 58C and 58D.
Lord Evans of Claughton: It might be appropriate if I were to speak now, as the noble Lord, Lord Carmichael of Kelvingrove, has suggested, on the amendment which deals with the same problem but in relation to the six metropolitan councils. The position is in a sense a little more straightforward than that of the metropolitan counties because our proposal is that the already recognised need for a passenger transport authority taken care of in Clause 27 makes a very good and neat vehicle for taking on the highways services function and avoids the necessity, which is obviously required in London, of a special residuary authority.
So it seems fairly obvious to anyone who has been engaged in local government, or, indeed, in the general running of county and district authorities since reorganistion outside the London area, that the kind of philosophical and practical reasons that the Government have for maintaning a passenger transport authority apply in very many ways in regard to the needs of an overall highways requirement. The highways and transport services are very closely integrated with each other. I have in mind, for instance, bus lanes and the necessity to co-ordinate traffic signals and so on involving buses and trains and ordinary passenger traffic. In other words, there is an almost unanswerable case—though after the last vote who knows what will happen—for doing the same with the overall specialist highways services at present run by the counties in the same way as the Government have conceded that it is necessary to deal with the transport services.
There is the question of urban traffic control. There is the question of accident investigation. There is transport data collection, analysis and planning. There are such matters as road condition surveys, bridge inspections, maintenance and design, major highways design, soils and materials and traffic management inquiries. Since 1973 all these have been co-ordinated

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in the metropolitan counties and without exception, as the noble Lord, Lord Carmichael of Kelvingrove, has said, this has been supported and confirmed as the ideal way of dealing with overall traffic problems by one authority; namely, a metropolitan county council. We on these Benches, and I believe many of your Lordships, would have liked still to have had this controlled by an elected authority. However, since the earlier narrow vote prevented that coming about, we are going for what we believe is a second best but still a very good remedy. We seek to treat highways services in the same way as the Government have accepted that the services of the transport requirements of metropolitan areas are being treated.
Perhaps I may spend a moment in referring to the particular problems of the area from which I come, though I shall try not to take up any points that the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Liverpool takes up. The problems in our part of the world are particularly significant in terms of having to be treated in an overall way. The noble Lord, Lord Carmichael of Kelvingrove, has dealt very effectively and briefly with the Greater London Council's problems, but in Merseyside the boundaries between the metropolitan borough of Sefton and Knowsley are quite arbitrary. When one is travelling between the City of Liverpool and Knowsley, or the old Bootle which is now part of Sefton, one does not move through a cordon sanitaire, as it were, of a green belt or anything. One just moves from one set of terraced houses into a place with another set of terraced houses which are totally indistinguishable.
My briefing note says here—so I shall take courage to say it, though it is rather offensive to the metropolitan borough of Knowsley—that Knowsley is a sausage-shaped amalgamation of Liverpool east and outer suburbs without a single dominant centre. I would not say that myself. I would only quote someone else as having said it. Half the work journeys in Merseyside by car and 80 per cent. by rail cross district boundaries. More than half the work journeys to Liverpool city centre by car, bus and train originate from the other four districts that make up the metropolitan council, and the vast majority of the heaviest goods vehicles—and Merseyside is still a very important export port—cross district boundaries.
We can add to this the unique problems of the Mersey, which crosses through and divides Wirral from the rest of Merseyside. Perhaps some of your Lordships will be aware that the metropolitan borough of Wirral, of which I was a member for some years and where I lived, wants to declare UDI and thinks it should be an all-purpose authority. But in their wisdom this Government do not permit that as an alternative and so we must assume that the metropolitan borough of Wirral will be part of the county-wide organisation for transport and roads. One gets from The Wirral to Liverpool by car by paying an exorbitant toll of 40 pence, though in most of the rest of the country no such tolls are payable, as, for instance, in moving from one end of Manchester to the other. One must pay 40 pence every time one goes from Wirral to Liverpool or from Liverpool to Wirral and we should like to know what precise arrangements the Government have in mind for the Mersey Tunnel.
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What we should like—and many Conservative Members in another place have proposed this to the Secretary of State for Transport as being a help to Merseyside—is to see the tunnel toll-free; but that is an aside.
There are these special problems in Merseyside. I submit, however, that these problems, though special to Merseyside, are in another sense general to all the metropolitan counties and only slightly different from those of Greater London. We have a natural opportunity for using the Clause 27 body as the highways body in addition to being the passenger transport body. Anyone who works or lives in London knows how integrated must be policies for passenger transport, roads, private cars, buses and trains.
I would have thought that on mature reflection Her Majesty's Government might like to give serious consideration to, and be willing to accept, the principle that we deal with overall highways problems in the same way as they have chosen to deal with passenger transport in the metropolitan counties. I beg to support very warmly the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Carmichael of Kelvingrove, on the first amendment and I ask your Lordships to consider the amendment to which I have spoken and have a general debate about the problems of the GLC and the metropolitan counties together.
The Earl of Cranbrook: If it is agreeable to follow the suggestion that the noble Lord, Lord Evans of Claughton, has just made, I believe it would be appropriate if I were to discuss Amendment No. 59, which stands in the name of myself and three other Members of your Lordships' Select Committee on Science and Technology, whose interim report has already been referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Carmichael of Kelvingrove.
Amendment No. 59: Clause 7, page 3, line 40, at beginning insert ("Subject to the provisions of sections 38 and (London Highways and Traffic Authority) below").
Amendment No. 59 deals—
Lord Elton: Will my noble friend forgive me? Will he also speak to Amendment No. 129, which is the other side of the same problem?
7 p.m.
The Earl of Cranbrook: Yes. My noble friend is impatient with me, but I was getting there slowly. I was about to say that Amendment No. 59 is, in a sense, a paving amendment. It anticipates Amendments Nos. 115 to 119 and also Amendments Nos. 128, 128A and 129:

Amendment No. 115: Clause 27, page 18, line 18, leave out ("Passenger") and insert ("Strategic").

Amendment No. 116: Page 18, line 20, leave out ("passenger") and insert ("strategic").

Amendment No. 117: Page 18, line 21, leave out ("passenger") and insert ("strategic").

Amendment No. 118: Page 18, line 23, leave out ("passenger") and insert ("strategic").

Amendment No. 119: Page 18, line 27, leave out ("passenger") and insert ("strategic").

Amendment No. 128: Clause 38, page 24, line 18, leave out ("passenger") and insert ("strategic").

Amendment No. 128A: Page 24, line 20, at end insert—

("(2) If it appears that functions relating to highways or road traffic to which Schedule 4 or 5 to this Act refers could with

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advantage be discharged by two or more metropolitan district councils jointly, the Secretary of State may by order transfer to the authorities such functions as may be agreed by the district councils by which those functions are exercisable.
(3) The Secretary of State may, after consulting the authority and the district councils concerned, by order revoke an order or any part of an order under subsection (2) above.
(4) An order under this section may contain such supplementary and transitional provisions as the Secretary of State thinks necessary or expedient, including provisions for the transfer of property, staff, rights and liabilities and provisions amending any enactment or any instrument made under any enactment.").
Amendment No. 129: After Clause 38, insert the following new clause:
("London Highways and Traffic Authority.
.—(1) If it appears that functions relating to highways or road traffic in Greater London to which Schedule 4 or 5 to this Act refers could with advantage be discharged by two or more constituent councils jointly, the Secretary of State may by order, on or after the appointed day, establish for Greater London a body corporate to be known as the London Highways and Traffic Authority.
(2) The authority shall consist of members of the 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 may by order transfer to the authority such functions relating to highways and road traffic in Greater London as may be agreed by the constituent councils by which those functions are exercisable.
(5) The Secretary of State may, after consulting the authority and the constituent councils concerned, by order revoke an order or any part of an order under subsection (4) above.
(6) An order under this section may contain such supplementary and transitional provisions as the Secretary of State thinks necessary or expedient, including provisions for the transfer of property, staff, rights and liabilities and provisions amending any enactment or any instrument made under any enactment.").
Together, these amendments cover the same subject as the two amendments which have just been introduced by the two noble Lords who have just spoken; that is to say, transport in London and in the metropolitan counties.
The effect of Amendments Nos. 115 to 119 and No. 128 would be to change the name of the proposed metropolitan county passenger authorities which are already in the Bill to strategic transport authorities. There is no particular value in the coin "strategic", but the Select Committee felt that that particular name, over which they would not press any issue whatever, indicated broadly the scope of those authorities that the Select Committee wished to propose.
Amendment No. 128A would permit the Secretary of State, if two or more metropolitan districts within a metropolitan county area wish him to do so, to make orders to set tip a joint facility through the strategic transport authority to operate their highways function. Similarly, Amendment No. 129 would permit the Secretary of State to establish a joint authority for London boroughs wishing to co-operate in certain highways functions.
There is a difference in approach in these amendments from those which were discussed by the two noble Lords in so far as the mechanism by which the strategic transport authorities would come into being is one in which the districts of metropolitan county areas and the London boroughs would voluntarily come together and make a proposal to the Secretary of State.
I want to stress that this set of amendments comes forward as a result of proposals which are published
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and available to your Lordships in the Select Committee's report on the local government Bill and as specifically detailed in that report. In paragraph 77 of the report your Lordships' Select Committee emphasised its overriding concern to preserve the integrity of the specialist services which have been built up in the transport area in recent years by the metropolitan counties and the Greater London Council and to ensure that these remain available to the metropolitan districts and the London boroughs after abolition.
The Select Committee was also concerned to safeguard centres of excellence, to retain scarce professional skills and, most importantly, to create an administrative structure which would encourage innovation for the benefit of present and future generations of urban citizens. The services in the transport field which the committee singled out for special consideration in the light of these principles were bridge and highway design, major road schemes, urban traffic control, data gathering, travel-demand forecasting and highway maintenance. These would be gathered under a strategic transport authority in the metropolitan counties.
In comments which I have received since the report was published this list seems to be generally accepted in professional circles with the addition of other strategic traffic management matters when appropriate; for instance, parking policy, which is important, abnormal load routing, and other such details as traffic engineering, possibly with the exclusion of highways maintenance.
The point is that this amendment does not seek to specify precisely those facilities which should be placed with the strategic transport authorities; it seeks to provide a mechanism by which the districts in consultation with each other, and the boroughs in consultation with each other, together with the Minister of Transport will be able to preserve the scientific capacity that now exists and to develop it in the future.
Since our report was published the Department of Transport has issued two circulars; one a discussion document relating to the future arrangements in the London boroughs, and the second, which followed shortly thereafter, relating to future arrangements in the metropolitan districts. These circulars are, I believe, in the Library of your Lordships' House and I need not elaborate on them in detail.
As regards the Greater London Council, it appears that the circulars envisage that traffic management policy, guidance, principal road policy and some monitoring will go to the Department of Transport. Other data gathering and the maintenance and use of the Greater London transport service data bank and its models would probably transfer in the first instance to the residuary body. It also appears from this memorandum that urban traffic control would transfer to the residuary body as the agent of the Secretary of State. This would have the effect of separating the planning and the operation from each other and from borough road schemes.
I fear that this system risks the loss of capacity to choose between alternative solutions and to develop combined ones. In particular, the separation of the data bases and the models from their users could, in

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fact, impede future development of sophisticated management techniques.
The Select Committee's report was mainly concerned with facilities, and I particularly emphasised that at Second Reading. In drafting amendments to the Bill we find it very difficult to separate facilities from functions because the Bill is about functions—therefore, the amendments refer to the transfer of functions—but this seems to me to be an inevitable factor when considering legislation. However, the underlying purpose of the amendments—and I stress this—is to offer to the Government a mechanism which in the view of the Select Committee will ensure the continued existence of bodies which are able to provide the staff and the facilities needed for transport matters in an efficient manner, in the long term, and not to separate these staff and facilities from the functions which they serve.
One omission in the department's memorandum is bridge engineering, for which, in neither case, do we see any provision made. Bridge engineering is an extremely scarce skill. At present within the metropolitan county councils there are small teams of specialists who service the very variable needs of their districts because it is at present the statutory duty of the counties. Some metropolitan districts may have large, modern bridges and others may have many small, brick bridges. Therefore, one anticipates that the future needs of districts will vary greatly and it is not sensible to consider splitting up the existing bridge engineering teams.
Some of these have been extremely innovative. For instance, I recommend to your Lordships that, if you have the opportunity, you should drop in on the West Yorkshire and ask the teams to exhibit to you the skills that they have developed in resisting bridges in a terrain which is constantly being undermined by the National Coal Board; and in which the ground is likely to, and does, subside. In fact, the West Yorkshire has devised a large concrete bridge which, I understand, is not only capable of dropping for a metre or more after it has been built, but at the same time can survive a torsion of 15 degrees. That is a remarkable engineering skill which has been developed because the need is there and the skills are there—but by a small team using highly sophisticated, specialised equipment based on its own skills and computer-aided designs.
Another aspect that has impressed your Lordships' Select Committee are the benefits of urban traffic control. This is extremely impressive. The saving, in journey time, for instance this time, in West Yorkshire, has been of something like 40 per cent. resident's time for any vehicle on the road when there are now 100 per cent. more vehicles on the road at any one time.
Traffic engineering can substitute for massive engineering works. It is a far cheaper option than enormous road building schemes. Traffic engineering can be used to open routes in the case of emergency to let through fire engines, ambulances or police. Traffic engineering can be adapted, very simply, to divert abnormal loads down the roads which are capable of carrying them. Examples like Strathclyde, where there is a sophisticated urban traffic control system in
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operation, emphasisd the fact that this must begin far outside the purview of any one metropolitan district. Those members of the Committee who drive down the motorway from Edinburgh to Glasgow may like to know that one begins to be under surveillance, and under the control of the urban traffic control system, before one has left the motorway and some time before one reaches Glasgow. All this operation is conducted centrally from the control.
This is the kind of important centralised skill to safeguard which this Bill must make provision. This is the purpose of our amendments. I recognise that we may not have the amendments right. We do not have the drafting skills that are available to the Government. However, as I have said before, I speak as a scientist interested in politics rather than as a political scientist. I am deeply concerned that the professional capacities which now exist should continue to be available in the future.
I emphasise that our amendments will work through a voluntary system. The point is that our proposed joint authority under Amendment No. 128A would need to operate a wider range of services than only that of passenger transport. The Select Committee did not feel that it was sensible to consider a passenger transport authority which did not have under its own control all the mechanisms for other aspects of traffic engineering. For instance, it must have the capacity to control the road marks on the roads, whether making bus lanes or preventing roadside parking. It must control all traffic light signals.
Incidentally, this is a criticism of the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Evans, in so far as I do not believe it is sensible to separate major roads from minor roads. The traffic light system of any urban traffic control inevitably involves all roads, and I do not believe that one can separate these two classes of roads under a strategic transport authority.
I should like to give the Committee a further example, and to discuss briefly the current plans to relieve congestion in Headingley on the A.660 corridor. These plans involve a combination of the following: some road building; urban traffic control; a park-and-ride bus service and a promotion of train services. Many of the commuters live in Bradford but the problems are in Leeds. Thus it is essential that any proposals which we consider should keep together under united control the various arms of this complicated system and the services. There is an overriding need for continuity in the specialist teams and for security in staffing. I believe that at some stage a message must go from this Chamber to the professionals who are at present providing this service, giving them the assurance that their jobs will be there after April 1986.
I turn briefly to paragraph 3(7)(ii) of the Guidance Note for Metropolitan District Councils, which list? certain services which are already envisaged by the Government as being centralised. It is already thought that the following will need to be centralised for all districts in a metropolitan county; that is to say: traffic counting, both for local monitoring and local needs and for national censuses; accident data and analyses; road network description files; and travel surveys and analyses. The memorandum continues:
"To compile an inventory of existing MCC data sets which will

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need to be preserved and preparing storage and retrieval facilities as necessary. Most MCC computer hardware and software will probably be transferred to the residuary body as a transitional measure".
Later on in this Committee stage I shall, on behalf of the Select Committee, be introducing amendments which deal with the problem of the residuary body, which, like the Government, the Select Committee see as a useful body for a holding operation. However, it is only a temporary holding operation. Thus the question must be asked as to what plans exist to ensure the continuity of these traffic facilities, these traffic services, these traffic skills, and the whole gamut of transportation functions that we are discussing. What will exist after the residuary bodies have done their job? I believe that the amendments 'which are proposed by us, your Lordships' Select Committee, provide an option which is acceptable in terms of the Governments strategy in the Bill and one which I believe ought to be there to give comfort to the professionals and to ensure, for the public al large, that the services to which they have become accustomed will continue to be maintained.
7.15 p.m.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Renton): It will assist the Chair and I think the Committee if the noble Earl will indicate whether Amendment No. 55 and the other amendments to which he has spoken are intended as alternatives to the new clauses in Amendments Nos. 58C and 58D, so that if those clauses were carried, his amendments would fall. Will he be so kind as to indicate?
The Earl of Cranbrook: I am subject to the ruling of the noble Lord the Deputy Chairman in such matters, but I suspect that it is true that, since we deal with the same matter, that might be so. However, I regret to say that the noble Lord the Deputy Chairman is a man with far greater experience and far greater skills in this matter than I.
Lord Elton: I think the answer to the question of the noble Lord the Deputy Chairman is that my noble friend's amendments are alternatives to those of the noble Lords opposite. I see them nodding their heads sagaciously in agreement.
Lord Kaberry of Adel: I wonder whether I may at this stage refer to a whole series of amendments which appear on the Marshalled List? If I speak now and we make a decision it will have the result of considerably shortening the Marshalled List. There are 19 in all. They are: Amendments Nos. 59A to 59E; 66; 69; 70; 71; 109A, B, C and D; 121A and 121B; 123; and 124A, B and C.
Amendment No. 59A: Clause 7, page 4, line 6, leave out ("metropolitan district councils") and insert ("police and traffic authorities or Northumbria Interim Police and Traffic Authority or Northumbria Police and Traffic Authority as the case may be").
Amendment No. 59B: Page 4, line 14, leave out ("metropolitan districts and").
Amendment No. 59C: Page 4, line 15, after ("London") insert ("and to the police and traffic authorities, and Northumbria Police and Traffic Authority").
Amendment No. 59D: Page 4, line 19, leave out ("metropolitan district councils") and insert ("police and traffic authority, Northumbria Police and Traffic Authority").
Amendment No. 59E: Page 4, line 22, leave out ("metropolitan district council") and insert ("police and traffic authority, Northumbria Police and Traffic Authority").
Amendment No. 66: Schedule 5, page 120, line 10, leave out ("or a metropolitan county").
Amendment No. 69: Page 121, line 5, leave out ("or a metropolitan county").
Amendment No. 70: Page 121, line 14 at end insert—("Reserve powers of the Secretary of State as to highways and road traffic in metropolitan counties.
10A.—(1) Where the Secretary of State is not satisfied in the case of a metropolitan county that all the local authorities in that area have made joint arrangements for the exercise of such of their functions under Part V of the 1984 Act as are necessary to secure the control, management, development and extension of any system of traffic control which relates to two or more of those authorties, or such other of their functions under the provisions referred to in Schedules 4 and 5 to this Act he may make an order under this paragraph.
(2) An order under this paragraph may transfer to the police authority for the relevant metropolitan county such functions of the local authorities in question under those Schedules as the Secretary of State considers necessary to enable the securing of the control, management, development and extension of that system or satisfactory arrangements for the discharge of any of those functions.
(3) Before making an order under this paragraph, the Secretary of State shall consult any local authority appearing to him to be likely to be affected.
(4) The Secretary of State shall revoke an order made under this paragraph in relation to a system of traffic control in operation in a metropolitan county or in relation to any other function if at any time he is satisfied that all the local authorities in that area have made joint arrangements for the exercise of such of their functions under Part V of the 1984 Act as are necessary to secure the control, management, development and extension of the system or for the exercise of any other function.
(5) An order under this paragraph may contain such supplementary and transitional provisions as the Secretary of State thinks necessary or expedient, including provisions for the transfer of property, staff, rights and liabilities and provision amending any enactment or any instrument made under any enactment.").
Amendment No. 71: Page 121, line 19 leave out ("and 10") and insert (", 10 and 10A").
Amendment No. 109A: Clause 22, page 16, line 15, at end insert:—
(" ( ) A system for traffic control shall for the purposes of this Act include a system of traffic control comprising inter alia transport planning, modelling and data collection, accident investigation data collection and analysis traffic management, associated highway and civil engineering design and construction, computing materials and highway maintenance services.").
Amendment No. 109B: Clause 23, page 16, line 16, leave out subsections (1) to (4) and insert:
("Metropolitan police and traffic authorities.
23.—(1) On the appointed day there shall be established for each metropolitan county which is a police area a body corporate to be known by the name of that county with the addition of the words "Police and Traffic Authority".
(2) The authorities established by this section shall be known as metropolitan county police and traffic authorities.
(3) Each metropolitan county police and traffic authority shall consist of—

(a) members of the constituent councils appointed by them to be members of the authority; and

(b) magistrates for the county appointed by a joint committee of those magistrates ("the joint magistrates' committee").

(4) The constituent councils in relation to a metropolitan county police and traffic authority shall be the councils of the metropolitan districts comprised in the county.
(4A) The magistrates appointed under subsection (3)(b) above shall not take part in any proceedings coming before the authority in connection with the functions vested in the Authority by paragraph 2 of Schedule 11 to this Act.").
Amendment No. 109C: Page 17, line 2, at end insert—
(" ( ) The Police and Traffic Authority may enter into arrangements with any or all of the metropolitan district councils within its area for the discharge of any of the functions contained in Schedules 4 or 5 to this Act.").
Amendment No. 109D: Clause 24, page 17, line 3, leave out subsection (1) to (3) and insert:
("Northumbria Police and Traffic Authority.
24.—(1) On the appointed day there shall be established for the police area constituted by the Northumbria Police (Amalgamation) Order 1973 (which consists of the metropolitan county of Tyne and Wear and the county of Northumberland) a body corporate which as from the abolition date shall be known as the Northumbria Police and Traffic Authority and before that date as the Northumbria Interim Police and Traffic Authority.
(2) The Authority shall consist of—

(a) members of the constituent councils appointed by them to be members of the authority;

(b) magistrates for the county of Tyne and Wear appointed by a joint committee of those magistrates ("the joint magistrates' committee"); and

(c) magistrates for the county of Northumberland appointed by the magistrates' courts committee for that county.

(3) The constituent councils in relation to that authority shall be the councils of the metropolitan districts comprised in the county of Tyne and Wear and the Northumberland County Council.
(3A) The members of the Northumberland County Council appointed under subsection (2)(a) above and the magistrates appointed under subsection (2)(b) above shall not take part in any proceedings coming before the authority in connection with the functions vested in the Authority by paragraph 1A of Schedule 11 to this Act.").
Amendment No. 121A: Schedule 10, page 140, leave out line 13 and insert—
(" Rochdale 3 3 3 ").
Amendment No. 121B: Clause 36, page 22, line 28, after ("police") insert ("traffic authorities").
Amendment No. 123: Page 22, line 39, after ("fire") insert ("and trading standards")
Amendment No. 124A: Schedule 11, page 143, line 31, after ("police") insert ('and traffic").
Amendment No. 124B: Page 143, line 34, after ("Police") insert ("and Traffic").
Amendment No. 124C: Page 144, line 12, at end insert—
(" 1A. The highway and traffic functions referred to in Schedules 4 and 5 to this Act where there is reference to a police and traffic authority or Northumbria Police and Traffic Authority.").
These amendments appear to amount to a lot but all they seek to do is to preserve the urban traffic control system which at present is operated in the six metropolitan counties. I go further and say that it should not be put under the passenger transport authority but that the direction of the control authority should go to the police authority for the county. I shall explain very briefly why I think that is the natural consequence of events to follow.
The traffic control systems in the metropolitan counties, more or less, give and take, are about the same. West Midlands has two control centres, for the eastern and western areas of their area. However, broadly speaking, with various odd agency agreements, they are all the same and operate from one central point.
It is essential today that we should not dissipate the expertise that has been built up in those urban traffic control systems. I have therefore sought to define in one of my amendments what it is essential the urban traffic control authority should have; otherwise, it may be left in extreme doubt as to what is its real function. It should have transport planning, modelling and data collection, accident investigation statistics, traffic management, associated highway and civil engineering design and contribution, and the working of computers in connection with all that.
We find throughout the country that in any conurbation traffic and highway measures have an impact over a wider area than the single district concerned. I am anxious that this should be preserved and managed, as I think it is presently being managed, extraordinarily well. I say that with some knowledge and experience. I have lived for some years in the city of Leeds, where we have always had a traffic problem. Over the years, traffic has continually snarled up at main intersections in the city. Every effort was made by council majorities of differing party complexion to try to solve the problem. However, we were always left with it.
The biggest problem was a place called City Square, so called because it is ovoid. Everything you can think of—gyratory traffic, single traffic, contra-flow traffic—was tried. It never worked until about five years ago, when we began to see the effect of centralised urban traffic control. It was not entirely new in this country; it was not new in the world. One had seen it operating in many countries throughout the world where, with the use of remote control television cameras and proper timing of pad-stalled traffic lights, traffic has flowed smoothly. That is our experience today in the city of Leeds. The skill and the science built up are now being used to deal with all highway development problems. One scheme for what could have been another spaghetti junction problem became very simple with the help of the urban traffic control authority, and many millions of pounds were, I believe, saved.
It so happens that just before I became an elected member of Leeds City Council, some 55 years ago this year, the first automated traffic signal system in the country had been inaugurated by the then chief constable of Leeds. There were fixed stops; there was no mat control; reflection was difficult. Everyone complained that traffic snarled up behind a red signal when it should have been green, and so on. That is, however, some 57 years ago. Since then, developments have gone extraordinarily well. I do not wish a system built up in that way to be lost in the West Yorkshire area by being divided into five parts among the five county districts that will take over highways control.
Local authorities will get back control, taken away from them in 1973, over their own highways, and I have no doubt that they will manage them extremely well. However, we shall not get back our police forces. Leeds and Bradford were amalgamated with others into the West Yorkshire police force controlled by a committee established under the Police Act. It is a committee of special composition that has worked extraordinarily well. I am not seeking to establish another committee to control this urban system of traffic control. I wish to put it with the very authority that has always been involved in traffic problems—problems that have to be dealt with manually should the automatic system break down. It is a proper link identifying the police with traffic control. Those who started it can carry it on and finish it well. I am therefore suggesting that the unified traffic control system should be the responsibility of the county police authority controlled by a newly-named committee, the police and traffic committee. If that is done, we shall see a continuity and development of the system that is now being so well carried out.
I have probably been a very poor draftsman in preparing these many amendments. However, experience in another place over many years has taught me that if the Government have at heart what you have in mind their draftsmen will put right any bad draftsmanship. I am hoping to persuade the Minister to turn his one sympathetic eye towards me and my amendments and to undertake that between now and another stage of the Bill he will study the matter in the greatest detail and bring back a properly worded amendment.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees: The noble Lord can also, I think, assist the Committee. It is my understanding that Amendment No. 59A, with other amendments to which the noble Lord has spoken, are also alternatives to Amendments No. 58C and 58D, and indeed alternatives also to the amendment moved by the noble Earl. Is that the noble Lord's understanding?
Lord Kaberry of Adel: That is correct. It is an alternative in every sense of the term.
Lord Ardwick: I wish to support both the original amendment and particularly the amendment moved by my noble friend Lord Carmichael of Kelvingrove. I do this for a special but very limited reason. It is a better and more radical solution to a problem created by the Bill than the remedy proposed in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Fanshawe, the noble Lord, Lord Tordoff, the noble Lord, Lord Monson, and myself. That is Amendment No. 61. It applies also to Amendment No. 62, standing in the name of my noble friend, which says pretty much the same.
One thing which is wrong with the Bill is that it gives to the Department of Transport unimpeded power to trunk many miles of London roads—power to trunk them without first consulting local interests, local authorities and those people who live on or by the roads to be trunked. After the roads have been trunked, the Secretary of State will hold inquiries—
Lord Elton: Will the noble Lord forgive me? He is, I think, speaking to Amendment No. 62, which does not relate to this group. We already have a very large group. I believe that noble Lords would welcome it if he could stick to it.
Lord Ardwick: I am not speaking to Amendment No. 62; I am speaking to this amendment. I am saying that this is a better amendment than the amendment I have put down. It provides a more radical and better solution than the amendment that other noble Lords and myself have signed and also the amendment in the name of my noble friend Lord Carmichael.
After the roads have been trunked, the Secretary of State, under the Bill, may hold inquiries. But these inquiries are not into whether the deed is to be done but how it is to be done. The fact that a road is unsuitable for trunking will not come into the inquiry. I am concerned in particular with something called the South Circular Road. However, it is not a road at all; it is a winding route that goes from Kew to Woolwich. The fact is that it is already bearing too much traffic, but of course that will not be relevant to the department; the fact that it is unsuitable for trunking will not be a consideration. Under the amendment, the
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new authority that is proposed—the residuary authority—will be required to work out the solutions with the local authorities. Surely that is exactly what should be done. God forbid that the environmental mess of the North Circular should ever be repeated with the South Circular.
7.30 p.m.
Earl De La Warr: It sounds as though my noble friend the Minister is being pulled in a number of directions. Indeed, in one important way I think that he is being pulled in one direction because he has been told by every noble Lord who has spoken so far that the one thing that they do not want is for the highway and traffic power to be left with the districts. Indeed, three separate suggestions have been put forward. I therefore hope that when my noble friend comes to answer he will, at least at one stage, do his best to sweep all those suggestions together and to treat them as one—although they have a negative element—and tell us why he thinks that district authorities are adequate to deal with highways and traffic.
I would only add to what has been said so eloquently by my noble friend Lord Cranbrook what appears to me to be the summing up of the case by his committee, which said at paragraph 73:
"the case for uniting highway, traffic and transport functions is strong. Since in each metropolitan county there is to be a passenger transport authority, the Committee propose that this should become a strategic transport authority, with two executive arms, one for passenger transport and the other for highways and traffic".
That, perhaps, goes a little bit too far as regards my own suggestion. However, I hope that the first part will be taken on board and that we shall hear from the Minister why he likes his suggestion. Hopefully, we shall hear that he is prepared to take all these suggestions away with him and think about them again.
Baroness Fisher of Rednal: I want to pose a question to the noble Lord and ask him whether he really understands the traffic functions of the metropolitan counties. If noble Lords look back to 1974 they will remember that one of the reasons for setting up the metropolitan counties was to overcome the lack of co-operation between the highway authorities of the smaller areas that were operating at that time. I do not know whether your Lordships remember those older authorities, but they were the large metropolitan authorities—Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool and Leeds, and the surrounding shire counties. Therefore, there was a clash of opinion. This Bill is reverting back to a clash of opinion, but it is not reverting back to what all the district authorities used to do before 1974. It was only the major local authorities that had these wide powers. It appears to me that perhaps the Government really need to look at their proposals in 1974 and what they are proposing now because they will see a complete contradiction, bearing in mind of course that the traffic problems are now 10 times worse than they were 10 years ago. Indeed, that is an important point that one ought to remember.
There is a difference—a grave difference—between the metropolitan authorities and the GLC. Both my noble friend on the Front Bench and the noble Lord, Lord Evans, have spelt out the two distinct differences. The relationships between a metropolitan county and

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its districts and the GLC are very different. Apart from the trunk roads and motorways, for which the metropolitan counties are agents to the Secretary of State, the metropolitan counties are the sole highway authorities in their areas—they have complete control over the highways in their areas. That is extremely important when we are considering passenger transport.
As the noble Lord, Lord Evans, has said, in the West Midlands area and Merseyside and, I think it is true to say, also in Manchester, existing boundaries are not known unless one lives in those particular areas. One does not know whether one has moved from Birmingham into West Bromwich or vice versa, or from West Bromwich into Walsall. It is a continuous built-up area and it seems strange that the people in those areas who have enjoyed the benefits of public transport may, under the Bill, quite easily lose the benefits of those facilities. It is important for those of your Lordships who are not familiar with the metropolitan counties, especially the three which I have mentioned, to realise that they are conurbations with no borders, and no green belt dividing them.
In his observations the noble Earl, Lord Cranbrook, drew attention to specialist staff. I would be the last to underestimate all the capabilities of the noble Earl, Lord Cranbrook. I followed what he said with great admiration. However, I would draw attention to one particular aspect of the specialist staff about whom he spoke. I am referring to traffic analysis. We all know that the toll of road accidents is extremely serious and much more serious perhaps in the large conurbations where the traffic is much heavier. We would all say that the toll on the roads through fatalities and through serious injuries is something about which we ought to do something; and the "something" that we ought to do something about is contained in the Road Traffic Act 1974, which is a statutory obligation.
We could truly say that accident analysis is cost-effective because all road traffic accidents are a charge upon the National Health Service. If we look at the matter in the round, if we prevent accidents or reduce the number of accidents, then quite obviously there is a saving as regards the National Health Service expenditure. Therefore, I ask the Minister to give very serious consideration to a commitment in respect of this very small group of specialist staff in all the metropolitan counties who deal with the traffic investigation and accident analysis. I do not think that this service can possibly be taken on in the future by the district councils.
I know that the time is getting late and so I shall draw my remarks to a conclusion. I admired the description given by the noble Earl, Lord Cranbrook, of something that we are doing very well in the West Midlands and in all the areas which his committee visited. It is obvious that the committee were impressed. We must all ask the Minister to make quite sure that the findings of our own Select Committee are very seriously considered. Indeed, it was the noble Viscount the Leader of the House who told us that the arguments and the points of view that were expressed during our debates on this Bill would be seriously considered by the Government. I hope that this particular amendment, which is being moved both for
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London and for the metropolitan counties, will be given that consideration.
Before I sit down may I say that it was just weeks before the Government published their abolition proposal that they announced their policy for roads in England, in which the Secretary of State for Transport said that the lack of road improvements in the conurbations around London has been due to there being too many highway authorities with uncoordinated goals. Is the Secretary of State, are the Government, trying to create that same situation throughout the metropolitan counties?
Baroness Masham of Ilton: We have before us several amendments. If there is to be a Division I should be grateful for clear advice in order to know which one to support. On Saturday I spent four hours with a Conservative Member of Parliament and a Conservative councillor at the traffic control headquarters in Leeds seeing how efficient is the traffic flow and their high technology.
There is a highly dedicated and expert team which it has taken 10 years to build up. If this directorate of traffic highways and engineering should be dispersed it would be a retrograde step for such an important commercial city as Leeds. Even more important is that Leeds has two large teaching hospitals for a large area of Northern England. The efficient and quick movement of patients can be vital.
Furthermore, cross-boundary flow of traffic is important in the detection of crime and the movement of prisoners, and the police and the traffic control work closely together. I think it would be advisable if the noble Lord, Lord Brabazon, and the noble Lord, Lord Elton, visited this system in Leeds. It is admired throughout the world.
Lord Molson: It is at the same time the great advantage and the great disadvantage of your Lordships' House that it does not have the strict procedure which obtains in another place. It puts an almost intolerable burden upon the noble Lord who presides. We have some four amendments under discussion at the moment. I do not think that I am the only person who is not quite sure which of them is before us at the present moment.
I should like to follow what was said by my noble friend Lord De La Warr. There is one thing that emerges, and that is that every speaker, I think without exception, has expressed the view that it is not satisfactory that traffic should be handed over to the districts without there being adequate co-ordination.
The remedies which have been put forward are different. Perhaps the two most important are those put forward by my noble friend Lord Cranbrook, who was in favour of the traffic regulation being handed over to the passenger transport authority, and the other view, I think put by my noble friend just behind me, who thinks that it would be better for it to be handed over to the police authority. The Government are agreed that it is necessary for there to be a joint board to administer those two services, because they recognise that it is impossible, without great disadvantage, to put into fragments the administration of those two services.

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I think it is the unanimous view—and it certainly was the view of your Lordships' Select Committee—that the same arguments apply in the case of transport. Therefore, we are in the position that everybody is agreed that the proposals at present put forward by the Government are unsatisfactory. As to what should be put in their place we are not agreed. It is manifestly an extremely difficult and rather technical question.
7.45 p.m.
I am personally a bit disposed to favour the suggestion by my noble friend that the passenger transport and, if necessary, goods transport should be regulated by the police. About 30 years ago I had experience in the Ministry of Transport when our Ministry was nominally the traffic authority for London. We had power to make regulations forbidding parking in certain roads. Frequently we were asked by the police to add other roads to those where parking was limited. Normally we refused to give permission for it to be extended for this perfectly simple reason: we pointed out to the police that they already had regulations applying over quite a large part of London and they were not enforcing the no-parking regulations. It was not their fault.
At that time the law was rather absurd. Before a charge could be brought for illegal parking it was necessary for a constable to approach the illegally parked car and wait for the return of the driver. Your Lordships will not be surprised to hear that normally when a policeman was seen standing by an illegally parked car, the driver never returned, and so nothing could be done in that way. Because of that, which is such a clear memory in my mind, it seems to me that the responsibility for administering traffic control is so closely connected with the responsibilities of the police that I am rather disposed to favour the suggestion made in the amendment of my noble friend beside me.
I would ask the Government to look at this matter in a broad way. Perhaps after what happened earlier this afternoon they will be disposed to do so. Could they accept that every speaker, I think without exception this afternoon, has been opposed to the proposals contained in the Bill? If they would accept that, and undertake to consider the matter again before the Report stage and come forward with some proposal—whether that made by the Select Committee of your Lordships' House on Science and Technology, or some other practical and workable proposition—which would ensure that traffic was not dealt with simply within the area of a single district, but was dealt with in, I use the word again, a strategic way, covering a large and appropriate area, I feel that that would go a long way to meeting what appears to be the almost unanimous opinion of your Lordships.
The Lord Bishop of Liverpool: I rise to support Amendments Nos. 58C and 58D. In this Committee, as at Second Reading, the point has been well made that skilled teams have been brought together through the life of the metropolitan counties and the GLC, and that these centres of excellence should not be lost in the abolition. That point has been made with great authority by the noble Earl, Lord Cranbrook, on
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behalf of his committee. Nowhere is this more relevant than in the matter of transport.
Lord Elton: I do not want to be difficult, and I want to try to clean up the proceedings. The right reverend Prelate says that he is speaking in favour of Amendments Nos. 58 and 59, but the principle he has just endorsed is in fact embodied in my noble friend Lord Cranbrook's amendments. It was he who was talking about the non-dispersal. All I am asking is, is the right reverend Prelate speaking for Amendments Nos. 58C and 58D against Amendment No. 59, since they both, apparently, embody the principle of non-dispersal of expertise?
Lord Carmichael of Kelvingrove: I hope I was not too inadequate when I was speaking, but one of my principal points was that the teams should be maintained.
Lord Elton: I do the noble Lord a great injustice. What was in my mind was my noble friend's great emphasis on the need to keep expertise together and the fact that he has other amendments later in the Marshalled List for this purpose which may be germane.
The Lord Bishop of Liverpool: May I try to make myself as clear as I can. I share with the noble Lord, Lord Molson, the idea that there are three alternatives before the Committee, all of which are saying that there needs to be some way of making an overall provision for highways and transportation. If I understood the noble Earl correctly, his was a voluntary way; that this was something that the districts asked for. It is a point I made earlier in the Committee, that I am afraid I have little confidence that districts would take those initiatives in many cases where there is a need for an overall look. That is why I favour Amendments Nos. 58C and 58D which are not, as I understand it, on a voluntary basis of some districts asking for that.
The subject of local government repeatedly poses the question, "How local is local?" It is a subtle question and there are different answers to all manner of different subjects. "Local" will surely mean something different for transport matters than it will for housing matters, and to function effectively a transportation authority should be large enough to contain most of the daily travel movements of its population and to provide a good road network for its commercial traffic. As we have seen, it needs to have sufficient resources to embrace the sophisticated technology and expertise which the complex management problems of a great conurbation demands. If I may use the illustration of Merseyside, it has brought specialist staff to examine and evaluate highway schemes. There is a systematic programme of inspection and maintenance on bridges. In the matter of safety there are specialist facilities and equipment to carry out the testing of materials, skid tests and site testing. There is a multi-discipline joint transportation unit using the latest technology and expertise applied to planning and travel data.
District highway authorities would find this level of expenditure impossible to attain without wasteful and

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extravagant duplication of resources. I believe that road safety is one of the factors we are concerned with today. Perhaps the issue concerning highways and transportation we can most easily understand. Again, how local is local in matters of road safety? Often a district response has been to demands of local residents for a small engineering scheme. In a wider-ranging authority computerised techniques make it possible to determine priorities impartially in seeking to reduce accidents and to maintain highways. I would not want to argue that local residents should be unable to bring pressure to bear. In Merseyside there is good evidence that the county authority has responded quite well to local feelings. I am thinking particularly of the inner ring road in the Vauxhall area at the north end of Liverpool where changes were made to a major plan in response to local protests.
How local is local? Speaking of what I know best, the county of Merseyside, is the county or the district the more appropriate authority for highways and transportation? Merseyside is without question substantially one travel-to-work area. The noble Lord, Lord Evans of Claughton, made the point about the number of work journeys which cross district boundaries.
Traffic problems do not fall evenly. I am sure that Merseyside is not exceptional in this. If traffic problems do not fall evenly money ought not to be spent evenly. The county authority has been able to evaluate needs impartially and to concentrate expenditure in areas of greatest need. For example, 76 per cent. of total highway investment in Merseyside has been in Liverpool compared with a 35 per cent. share of rateable value. That has been for the good of the whole because people are constantly moving across district boundaries. But how can district councils respond in a comparable way?
I make the point that I believe it will not be right to rely on voluntary choice of districts. Part of what this Bill is about is streamlining the cities, getting rid of waste and unnecessary bureaucracy. Let us take the matter of co-operation with public transport. Under the Government's proposals the passenger transport executive will have to establish working relationships with five district highway authorities in Merseyside, each with different policies and priorities, instead of one county-wide authority. It seems inevitable that the Bill's proposals will be time consuming, will increase bureaucratic delays and be difficult to operate smoothly.
I linger for a moment on road safety. The Bill devolves responsibility for accident prevention to the districts. The Government seem to have missed completely the point of the value in keeping together the specialist county units. This goes against much professional opinion which your Lordships will know about.
We are not engaging simply in academic arguments about organisational methods. We are talking about people; in the case of road safety about lives. In Merseyside road accidents have been reduced by 15 per cent. over the last 10 years compared with the national reduction of 9 per cent. Why dismantle something that is working well? The metropolitan counties and the GLC have built up small specialised
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accident investigation and prevention teams which are widely acknowledged to be highly cost effective, particularly in their strategic application of engineering measures for accident reduction. The Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety says that to date debate in the Standing Committee in another place, correspondence and a meeting with the Minister have all failed to produce a satisfactory response concerning the arrangements for a strategic approach to this work after abolition. Taking into account the arguments that we have heard put forward in the Committee and those of the Select Committee on Science and Technology with respect to technical services, I press the Government to accept these amendments as a revision which will greatly improve this Bill.
Baroness Lockwood: The three sets of amendments which are before us seem to me in one way or another all to try to meet the objectives in the Select Committee's report: that is, to keep the teams of experts together and to retain the services on a strategic basis. The Select Committee's report, at paragraph 42, reads:
"the balancing of costs and benefits across a whole metropolitan area, regardless of district boundaries, is particularly important".
In moving this series of amendments, the noble Earl, Lord Cranbrook, referred to the various technical services that the Select Committee wished to keep together.
8 p.m.
My name is appended to the amendment which the noble Earl has moved. I added it as a member of the Select Committee, conscious of this overriding need to keep the teams together. But I am sure the noble Earl will understand if I say, having heard the discussion, that my first priority will go to Amendments Nos. 58C and 58D because I, too, have a reservation about the voluntary nature of the amendments tabled by the Select Committee succeeding in keeping the teams together. I wish that more of your Lordships could have accompanied the Select Committee on their visits to Greater Manchester, to West Yorkshire and to Strathclyde. I am not a scientist nor an engineer but it is quite clear from the demonstrations that we had that these are centres of excellence which should not be broken up at all.
This is a view not just of the Select Committee and Members of your Lordships' House. Since the publication of the report the Select Committee has received from Cornell University a letter from a person who describes himself as a civil engineer, an educator, a researcher and a consultant. In his letter he says:
"The engineering excellence in West Yorkshire is well known and respected on a worldwide basis. West Yorkshire engineers have made a lasting contribution in bridge design, earth reinforcement, mining engineering and waste disposal".
Then he goes on to say that their techniques are being sought both in the United States and in Japan-based industries.
This is borne out by the experience of West Yorkshire. The noble Baroness, Lady Masham, referred to her visit to Leeds over the past weekend, She may have noticed that West Yorkshire County Council have developed a profile detector which is

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able electronically to identify different categories of vehicles. Again, this detector has attracted worldwide interest and is being manufactured and sold by a British firm. What I am saying here is that it is not just the local government services with which we need to be concerned; it is also the sale of British technology abroad. This is a very important consideration which should not be overlooked by the Committee in its consideration of these amendments.
Reference has been made to the Minister's guidance to the metropolitan districts and the GLC. I think that this guidance shows beyond all doubt that the individual metropolitan districts cannot hope to replace the metropolitan counties unless they co-operate in joint schemes. One of my hesitations about the metropolitan districts co-operating can be seen in the reference which the noble Earl, Lord Cranbrook, made to the development in Leeds. They are trying to develop their scheme covering road, rail and parking facilities in order to ease the transport problems in the Headingley area. I happen to live at the rural end of Bradford District Council and most of my movements are through and into Leeds. It is absolutely clear that to obtain co-operation between Leeds and Bradford on urban traffic control and on the whole area of public transport would be extremely difficult. If one of them opted out and decided to establish its own transport system, then we should be in great difficulty. For those reasons, I do not think we can afford to rely on voluntary co-operation between the districts and therefore I should prefer to see something written into the Bill which makes it absolutely imperative that the districts co-operate and that there is a strategic authority.
One other reference I would make in relation to the Minister's guidance is that the guidance is so detailed that, in itself, it seems to indicate that the Minister does not have confidence in the ability of the district councils to cope with this problem. But the other omission from the guidance is that there is virtually no reference at all to the need to identify conurbation-wide transport needs. Anyone reading the Minister's evidence to the Select Committee will understand what I am saying. I think that this was pretty clear in some of the questions that she gave to the Select Committee. The Department of Transport seem unaware of the strategic needs of the metropolitan counties and of how essential it is to keep these services and these teams as an integrated and strategic whole.
Lord Brabazon of Tara: All these amendments address the same or similar points. In essence, they cover two lines of argument. The first is whether certain traffic and highways functions require a London or countrywide body; whether it is a residuary body or the passenger transport or police joint authorities or even a so-called joint committee which could be a new joint authority by another name. The other is whether specialist groups of expertise need to be kept together. The two issues need to be kept separate; for, while I do not believe strategic London or metropolitan county councils are necessary for highways and traffic, I recognise that certain specialist expertise needs to be maintained. Let me take first the question of the need for strategic authorities. This is an
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issue that we have already debated; and the first amendment is very similar to one which fell following the earlier debate.
Central to our policy to abolish the GLC and the MCCs is that as many as possible of the functions that they perform should be devolved to the boroughs and districts and that those services—police, fire and passenger transport in the metropolitan counties and fire and civil defence in London—which can be sensibly administered on abolition only on a London or county-wide basis we have provided for joint authorities. The vast majority of highway and traffic functions which the Bill devolves to boroughs and districts are however concerned with purely local issues. They are of concern to the inhabitants of one borough or district. Many are functions which the boroughs exercise already either under agency agreements or with concurrent powers. They are functions which it is neither necessary nor appropriate to transfer to area-wide authorities.
I freely acknowledge that there are some issues which cross boundaries or where action by one authority has direct repercussions beyond its own boundaries. But local government boundaries are not new and it would be sad and, I believe, an unjustified indictment of the boroughs and districts if the Committee were to suggest that they need a statutory basis on which to achieve co-operation in the discharge of their day-to-day business. I must emphasise that in the few cases where wider issues do arise, we have made provision in the Bill to ensure that they are properly considered; but they do not require a special strategic authority. The only result of such an authority would be that it meddled in many local matters in an attempt to find a role for itself. That is one of the current failings of the GLC. We want to free boroughs and districts from such unnecessary interference in local matters and I know that many councils welcome this prospect.
Turning to the particular proposals in these amendments, I should like to point out a few of the most obvious flaws. Amendment No. 58C, for example, provides for most of the GLC's highways and traffic functions to pass to the London residuary body. Our proposals will mean streamlined and efficient arrangements. Let us not forget that boroughs are already the highway authorities for nearly 7,000 miles, which is nearly 90 per cent. of London's roads. They are well capable of taking on a further 830 miles of metropolitan roads.
The present three-tier structure for highway and traffic functions is inefficient and unnecessary. This is a view which has been supported by a report from a Select Committee in another place. Three tiers mean administrative complexity, costly bureaucracy and confused responsibility. Even worse, some of the detailed proposals, particularly in the first amendment, No. 58C, would leave both boroughs in the London residuary authority with concurrent powers over certain roads. That is a sure recipe for chaos. Moreover, it is proposed that functions listed in the amendment should be given to the London residuary body. That is a wholly inappropriate organisation for such functions. We shall be discussing the residuary body when we come to Part VII of the Bill, but I should like to stress now that the residuary

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body is not designed to have major long-term functions and traffic and highway responsibilities are not appropriate for it. We have already voted against a successor strategic authority: we should not be misled into thinking that this amendment is in any way less contrary to the principle of this Bill.
So far as the metropolitan counties are concerned, the amendments before us suggest a whole plethora of interesting bodies: joint highways and traffic authorities, joint highways, traffic and passenger transport authorities and joint police and traffic authorities. I do not wish to dwell for too long on these suggestions. I have tried to explain why a county-wide authority is not necessary for highways and traffic matters, which are of mainly local concern. I should, however, like to point out that I see no overriding argument for putting highways, traffic and public transport together under one roof.
In London, the GLC has no public transport function, nor do the boroughs. In shire counties, the county council is the highway and traffic authority, while the buses are run by a variety of district councils, private and public companies. Big cities like Leicester and Nottingham do not come to a halt because different bodies run the buses and provide the roads. Why should places like Leeds or Wolverhampton? There have been powerfully argued points made in support of the amendment, but the facts of the matter are otherwise.
As drafted, Amendment No. 58D would also have the unfortunate effect of splitting responsibility for traffic and parking matters on principal roads. For example, the joint authority would be responsible for laying down yellow lines, but the district council would be responsible for locating parking meters. This sort of division would prevent a sensible approach to traffic problems and could only lead to delay and confusion. The amendment would mean that the general duties of a traffic authority to ensure the expeditious, convenient and safe movement of traffic under the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984 would in practice be very difficult to achieve. It would undermine the approach being taken through this Bill of giving powers to those local authorities best placed to discharge them.
I can see the apparent logic in the proposal of the noble Lord, Lord Kaberry, to add traffic responsibilities to the duties of the police joint authority rather than, say, the fire joint authority. The police, after all, have some traffic responsibilities. It may seem convenient that the same district councillors who sit on the police authority should also take on traffic functions.
I cannot resist remarking in passing that there are few, if any, local authority responsibilities in which the police have no interest, and the same logic could therefore be applied equally to other functions. However, in the present instance the logic is in any case faulty. The police may have traffic responsibilities but the police authorities do not, or at least not to any significant or relevant extent.
8.15 p.m.
The noble Lord's proposals would not, therefore, allow the police authority to deploy the knowledge and
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expertise it requires for one purpose to a second purpose. It will need to acquire a whole new expertise. I very much doubt that it would be feasible, still less wise, to add to the considerable responsibilities of the members of the police joint authorities the equally considerable responsiblities which these amendments would confer.
I turn now to the issues raised by my noble friend Lord Cranbrook. Other noble Lords have today argued for strategic authorities to retain existing specialist teams and centres of highway and traffic expertise. I am, however, convinced that the boroughs and districts, as responsible authorities, are best placed to make arrangements for the services they need on a voluntary basis. There is a wide range of possible ways, including through private companies or a lead borough or district, in which the boroughs and the districts could share expert staff and facilities. We are, of course, exploring the possibility of one London borough taking the lead on a consultancy basis in providing specialist expertise on bridge maintenance and improvement, but we shall not be led to impose solutions.
Successor authorities must decide how to proceed in the knowledge that uncertainty should be dispelled as soon as possible. The proposed preparatory committees offer a suitable forum but the Government recognise the need to preserve professional expertise. The question is whether we need a full strategic body for that purpose. We will look at the methods of preserving expertise, but recall that functions fall to district or borough councils and those bodies have been invited to co-operate for that purpose. Some are already preparing and perhaps we may come back to review progress made when we come to the Report stage later on.
But it is too much to expect a cut-and-dried answer then. Detailed arrangements will take time to agree, through the preparatory committees we have provided for. I recognise the very great importance of giving staff some reasonable assurance about their future, but perhaps I may remind noble Lords about the assurances we have given, and which my noble friend Lord Skelmersdale repeated on the earlier amendments that we discussed this afternoon—that the residuary bodies can provide a means of keeping specialist teams together if permanent arrangements cannot be made by abolition day.
We also undertook to look further at the provisions in the Bill to see if they needed strengthening for this purpose and to report back. I can repeat that assurance. I recognise the particular concern about the future of the urban traffic control systems. I have not, as the noble Baroness, Lady Masham, has, visited the one in Leeds, but I have visited the one in Scotland Yard, and I am impressed by the work they do there. We accept that joint arrangements are needed when these cover the area of two or more boroughs or districts. Schedule 5 makes provision for my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Transport, if necessary, to assume the responsibility for ensuring that functions are carried out in a sensible fashion.
I still hope the borough and district councils will come to satisfactory arrangements before abolition day to manage these important systems, but if they do not do so in time my right honourable friend's reserve

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powers will ensure that the benefits of these important systems are not jeopardised. There might also be a role in the short term for the appropriate residuary body, in the case of the UDCs my right honourable friend's agent, in maintaining the systems if he exercised his reserve powers.
On data, the boroughs already collect a considerable range of transport information in their capacity as highway and planning authorities. The Bill provides new powers for them to make arrangements for London-wide research and data collection. If appropriate, the existing computer facilities and data of the GLC will be transferred on an interim basis to the residuary body. It will then be for the successor authorities to settle the most suitable permanent arrangements for integrated data collection and analysis. In addition, as part of its responsibilities, the Department of Transport will be collecting much London-wide data and will make this available to boroughs under arrangements being discussed with them.
I have not given these amendments a very friendly reception, but there are distinctions between them. The amendments in the name of the noble Lords, Lord Carmichael of Kelvingrove and Lord Evans of Claughton, ask for compulsion, which we cannot accept. I hope I have shown my noble friend Lord Kaberry that we do not regard his amendment as being a practical solution.
Turning to the amendments in the name of my noble friend Lord Cranbrook, these contain a permissive element. In some respects—indeed, in many respects—they are similar to the amendments which we shall come to later on, on scientific and technical services. I wonder whether I may ask my noble friend, when it comes to his amendment, to reserve his amendments to a later stage.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: That speech was a—
Lord Tordoff: Nobody has yet spoken from these Benches on this series of amendments, deliberately, but two of us were members of the Select Committee. I must say I am appalled at the response of the Minister. I get the impression that he has not been listening to a word that has been said in this debate. I can understand that the Minister would not wish to accept the amendments from the Labour Party Front Bench, or even from my noble friend Lord Evans of Claughton. But there is no indication in his reply that he has done other than read out a brief that was prepared before this debate started. I feel that things that have been said from all round the Committee indicate the genuine feeling that all of us have, politicians and non-politicians alike, that there is a very serious matter of which we in this Committee have to take the greatest cognizance. We are not just talking about waiting to see what happens, which is what the Minister is virtually saying, and which is virtually the same thing as Mrs. Chalker said to the Select Committee before they wrote their report. If we in the Select Committee had been contented with that response we would have said so in our report. The Select Committee was not satisfied with that response. I, like the noble Baroness, Lady Lockwood, feel that
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the amendments which have come from the Select Committee are perhaps not strong enough. But I do not even think that the Minister has answered his noble friend Lord Cranbrook, who was our chairman on this occasion, in anything like a proper manner.
The fact is that the members of the Select Committee left their political hats outside the door when they went into committee, and we came out with what I believe is a very important document, which has been read widely and has been widely received throughout the country as being an independent report. I think it is extremely sad that the Minister should come back with a Second Reading speech which seems to be totally unchanged as regards the Government's attitude. We are trying to preserve teams of expert people which have been built up over a number of years. Those people are making a great contribution to the way in which people live, move and have their being in our great conurbations: these are people who are saving money for those great conurbations. Moreover, they are producing software and ideas which can be sold abroad. It simply is not good enought to dismiss these matters in the way that the Government have done so far, and I really do hope that they can reconsider their position, even at this stage.
Lord Harmar-Nicholls: That was perhaps a slightly emotional and unrealistic response to my noble friend's speech. I do not accept at all his interpretation of what was said and the grounds on which he based his words. Of course my noble friend will have a general idea as to what sort of criticisms would be made. If the noble Lord had served in Government he would know that Governments do try to anticipate debates, particularly when they are putting forward a Bill which they have to defend and explain. I doubt whether any of the contributions that were made very effectively by many noble Lords were very new in relation to what had been discussed when the whole of this Bill was being put together. It is not just drawn out of a hat; and I would have expected my noble friend to come with something like a prepared answer to the obvious questions.
As regards the debate being overborne by critical speeches, that is not unreasonable: indeed, that is what it ought to be. Most of the noble Lords who have spoken have their names down to amendments, and because of that they have the priority of call. That is right. And in proposing their amendments they put forward things which they believe and all of them want, as they see it, to improve the Bill. Therefore we can gain the impression that there are overwhelming voices against it, just because those who do believe that the general basis of the Bill is a good one remain silent in order to get it on the way.
The right reverend Prelate was, I think, the only one to put forward the decision that we have to make if we want to push this to a vote. The right reverend Prelate was perfectly clear. He said that he had not a lot of confidence in the acumen and ability of districts and boroughs to come to the right kinds of conclusions. I would much rather—
The Lord Bishop of Liverpool: I do not think that the noble Lord should put words into my mouth. The

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record will show that I never used the words "acumen" or "ability". The fact that I do not have confidence, for whatever reasons, that the districts and boroughs will co-operate as we all hope they will, is another matter.
Lord Harmar-Nicholls: I will withdraw the word "acumen" if the right reverend Prelate does not find that to be a fair reflection of what he has in mind; but he has just repeated the point—and it is a very proper point if that is what he believes. He believes that the local authorities are not so likely to be able to come to the kinds of conclusions that would be right or to give the guidance that he thinks ought to be given as would be this permanent authority. On that I venture to disagree with him, and I would hope that noble Lords who have themselves served on local authorities might perhaps be on my side. I have every confidence about the acumen—and I now use the word as I would wish to use it—and the far-sightedness and the desire of local authorities to do the right thing.
I also speak from experience, if the right reverend Prelate will allow me, in saying that local authorities are capable of getting together, and do get together, to arrive at a common denominator in meeting problems which face them. For years I sat as the chairman of a district health authority which comprised about 10 local authorities. That was simply because the areas of the 10 councils concerned made it more suitable to come to conclusions in one body than would have been the case if they had been taken separately. This was done quite voluntarily. If the decision we have taken is whether or not we ought to emasculate the Bill, which is designed to remove a tier of Government which slows up advancement and produces extra expense and which has no more recognised knowledge than have the local authorities that are represented now, I think that is the conclusion we ought to come to.
If my noble friend will allow me to say so, I thought that he established very clearly his case that if the amendment were accepted it would remove the real purpose of this Bill. There is no doubt about that. I think we ought not to do that if our only fear is, as the right reverend Prelate said, that there is not a lot of confidence in the local authorities taking on these functions. I should have liked—
A noble Lord: Come off it!
Lord Harmar-Nicholls: I should have liked my noble friend—and perhaps on these matters I talk with as much, if not more, authority than the noble Lord; he may be an expert economist, but I do not know how many local authorities he has served upon—to understand the inner workings and the way in which local authorities carry out their business. However, the criticism that I would put to my noble friend is this: I should have liked him to go a little bit further in explaining how the expertise might be preserved. I should have thought the one point that is generally accepted is that we do not want to disperse and lose the value of this expertise which is there. I gathered he said that he had been impressed with the need to preserve it and that he would come along with some sort of suggestion when we get to the Report stage.
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At this stage, I should have thought that in order to satisfy many of his noble friends who would like to go into the Lobby with him, if it comes to that, he would like, in advance of the Report stage, to take some extra advice as to how we would preserve the expertise which those on all sides would desire. On the general proposition of not accepting the amendments, however fluently the arguments have been put forward, I believe it is the right one if we want to preserve the main function of the Bill, which is to remove an unnecessary and expensive tier of local government.
Lord Elton: As I have been trying to assist your Lordships to come to a conclusion on this, may I say that my noble friend has put his finger on a slight difficulty. My noble friend on the Front Bench has pointed out the shortcomings of various amendments. He has pointed out that those in the name of my noble friend Lord Cranbrook if taken in the light of his later amendments, Nos. 131, 132 and 137, offer the means of preserving expertise and that, though we cannot accept everything that my noble friend puts on the Marshalled List without commitment, we would be happy to look at those amendments. Therefore, I would ask my noble friends to resist Amendments Nos. 58C, 58D and 59A, and hope that my noble friend Lord Cranbrook would allow us to consider his amendments at a later stage.
Lord Carmichael of Kelvingrove: I shall be very brief. I am grateful to the noble Lord for his last remarks. However, I think that at this particular stage of the Bill probably the feeling of the Committee is too definite to accept his guidance at this point, with no disrespect to him.
Two or three important questions have been raised by noble Lords who felt that joint activity or voluntary activity may not be acceptable. I would say that the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Liverpool is in good company in speaking about the difficulty of having a great deal of reliance on local authorities, because in the Cranbrook Report, Mrs. Chalker herself, in paragraph 62, is reported as saying:
"… past experience casts doubt on the appropriateness of either voluntary joint committees or lead authorities … A more practicable option is a joint authority."
That is precisely why the amendment that I moved earlier is worded in the way that it is. I think it is important, as I tried to say in my opening remarks. I was not suggesting there was anything incompetent about local authorities. I have a great respect for them but they are just the wrong body; they are an inappropriate size for transport and for transport planning. Again, as the right reverend Prelate said, "local" in terms of transport is quite different from "local" in terms of housing. That is the main burden here.
Briefly, I think that the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Kaberry, was partly answered by the Minister. I do not think the police authority is the most appropriate to assume responsibility for the kind of highway improvement and traffic management proposed. There were the questions of the expert teams and of bridge design and many other specialisations. I think that in winding up the Minister was

621
less than fair when he said that one of the purposes of this Bill is to free the boroughs and districts. He did not mention the enormous powers that will be given to the Secretary of State under this Bill. It removes power from the locality and puts it right into Whitehall; and everyone will agree that Whitehall is more remote from Manchester of Birmingham city centres than the local authority or the passenger transport authority.
The authorities that we have suggested in Amendments Nos. 58C and 58D are appropriate for each of the functions—one for the London area and one for the metropolitan counties. "Compulsion" is the wrong word to use. This is a voluntary coming together with the guidance of the Bill, which is essential if we are to keep these experts together. I believe that we are now at the stage when we should test the feeling of the Committee on this matter.
8.31 p.m.
On Question, Whether the said amendment (No. 58C) shall be agreed to?
Their Lordships divided: Contents, 117; Not-Contents, 103.

DIVISION NO. 2

CONTENTS

Airedale, L.

Hacking, L.

Amherst, E.

Hampton, L.

Ardwick, L.

Hanworth, V.

Attlee, E.

Hatch of Lusby, L.

Aylestone, L.

Hayter, L.

Barnett, L.

Hooson, L.

Beaumont of Whitley, L.

Houghton of Sowerby, L.

Beswick, L.

Howie of Troon, L.

Birk, B.

Ingleby, V.

Blease, L.

Irving of Dartford, L.

Boothby, L.

Jeger, B.

Boston of Faversham, L.

Jenkins of Putney, L.

Bottomley, L.

John-Mackie, L.

Brockway, L.

Kagan, L.

Brooks of Tremorfa, L.

Kaldor, L.

Buckmaster, V.

Kilbracken, L.

Carmichael of Kelvingrove, L.

Kilmarnock, L.

Chandos, V.

Kinloss, Ly.

Chitnis, L.

Kirkhill, L.

Cledwyn of Penrhos, L.

Kirkwood, L.

Collison, L.

Lawrence, L.

David, B.

Liverpool, Bp.

Dean of Beswick, L.

Lloyd of Kilgerran, L.

Delacourt-Smith of Alteryn, B.

Lockwood, B.

Longford, E.

Denington, B.

Lovell-Davis, L.

Diamond, L.

McCarthy, L.

Elwyn-Jones, L.

McIntosh of Haringey, L.

Ennals, L.

Mackie of Benshie, L.

Evans of Claughton, L.

MacLeod of Fuinary, L.

Ewart-Biggs, B.

McNair, L.

Ezra, L.

Mar, C.

Falkender, B.

Masham of Ilton, B.

Falkland, V.

Mayhew, L.

Fisher of Rednal, B.

Melchett, L.

Foot, L.

Molson, L.

Gallacher, L.

Monkswell, L.

Galpern, L.

Monson, L.

Gifford, L.

Mountevans, L.

Gladwyn, L.

Nathan, L.

Glenamara, L.

Nicol, B.

Graham of Edmonton, L.

Ogmore, L.

Gregson, L.

Oram, L.

Grey, E.

Phillips, B.

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Pitt of Hampstead, L.

Stedman, B.

Plummer of St. Marylebone, L.

Stewart of Fulham, L.

Stoddart of Swindon, L.

Ponsonby of Shulbrede, L. [Teller.]

Tavlor of Blackburn, L.

Tordoff, L. [Teller.]

Rea, L.

Walston, L.

Robson of Kiddington, B.

Wedderburn of Charlton, L.

Rochester, L.

Wells-Pestell, L.

Ross of Marnock, L.

Whaddon, L.

Scanlon, L.

White, B.

Seear, B.

Wigoder, L.

Seebohm, L.

Wilson of Langside, L.

Serota, B.

Winchilsea and Nottingham, E.

Shackleton, L.

Simon, V.

Winstanley, L.

Stallard, L.

Wootton of Abinger, B.

Stamp, L.

NOT-CONTENTS

Airey of Abingdon, B.

Inglewood, L.

Arran, E.

Ingrow, L.

Auckland, L.

Kaberry of Adel, L.

Belhaven and Stenton, L.

Kilmany, L.

Bellwin, L.

Lauderdale, E.

Beloff, L.

Layton, L.

Belstead, L.

Lindsey and Abingdon, E.

Bessborough, E.

Loch, L.

Bolton, L.

Long, V.

Boyd-Carpenter, L.

Lothian, M.

Brabazon of Tara, L.

Lucas of Chilworth, L.

Bridgeman, V.

McAlpine of West Green, L.

Brookeborough, V.

Macleod of Borve, B.

Brooks, L.

Margadale, L.

Brougham and Vaux, L.

Marshall of Leeds, L.

Bruce-Gardyne, L.

Massereene and Ferrand, V.

Caithness, E.

Maude of Stratford-upon-Avon, L.

Campbell of Alloway, L.

Carnegy of Lour, B.

Mersey, V.

Cathcart, E.

Monk Bretton, L.

Chelwood, L.

Munster, E.

Clitheroe, L.

Murton of Lindisfarne, L.

Coleraine, L.

Norfolk, D.

Colville of Culross, V.

Nugent of Guildford, L.

Cork and Orrery, E.

Onslow, E.

Cottesloe, L.

Orkney, E.

Cox, B.

Orr-Ewing, L.

Craigavon, V.

Peyton of Yeovil, L.

Cranbrook, E.

Polwarth, L.

Crawshaw, L.

Portland, D.

Croft, L.

Radnor, E.

Davidson, V.

Redesdale, L.

Denham, L. [Teller.]

Renton, L.

Digby, L.

Renwick, L.

Drumalbyn, L.

Rodney, L.

Elliot of Harwood, B.

St. Aldwyn, E.

Elton, L.

Sharples, B.

Enniskillen, E.

Skelmersdale, L.

Fairfax of Cameron, L.

Stanley of Alderley, L.

Ferrier, L.

Stockton, E.

Fortescue, E.

Strathcarron, L.

Gardner of Parkes, B.

Swinfen, L.

Glanusk, L.

Swinton, E. [Teller.]

Glenarthur, L.

Thomas of Swynnerton, L.

Gridley, L.

Trefgarne, L.

Haig, E.

Trenchard, V.

Hailsham of Saint Marylebone, L.

Trumpington, B.

Vaux of Harrowden, L.

Halsbury, E.

Vickers, B.

Harmar-Nicholls, L.

Vivian, L.

Hood, V.

Windlesham, L.

Hornsby-Smith, B.

Young of Graffham, L.

Hylton-Foster, B.

Resolved in the affirmative, and amendment agreed to accordingly.
8.40 p.m.
Lord Skelmersdale: I think that this might be an appropriate moment to take a short break.
Lord Evans of Claughton Lord Evans of Claughton moved Amendment No. 58D:
[Printed earlier: col. 592.]
The noble Lord said: I did not hear the noble Lord because of the noise, but I gather that I am likely to be the next speaker. In the light of the decision taken, I move with great pleasure and confidence that this Committee support Amendment No. 58D. I wish to test the feeling of the Committee.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Lord Denham: I beg to move that the Committee be adjourned during pleasure until 9.30 p.m.
Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Motion agreed to.
[The Sitting was suspended from 8.42 until 9.30 P.m.]
Clause 7 [Highways and road traffic functions]:
[Amendments Nos. 59, 59A, 59B, 59C, 59D and 59E not moved.]
Lord Carmichael of Kelvingrove Lord Carmichael of Kelvingrove moved Amendment No. 60:
Page 4, line 27, at end insert—
("(4) The Secretary of State shall prepare and publish in each year following the abolition date a report setting out—

(a) the programme of expenditure for the following year on trunk roads in London;

(b) a summary of the exercise of his powers under this section and Schedule 5 over the previouslear;

(c) proposals for the exercise of the said powers, and the relevant procedures, for the forthcoming year in relation to traffic management measures and designated roads; and

(d) the results of consultations held by the Secretary of State with London borough councils, metropolitan district councils and other organisations in relation to guidance on traffic measures.")

The noble Lord said: Amendment No. 60 asks the Secretary of State to provide certain reports to Parliament if he takes over certain functions. The purpose of the amendment is to ensure that the Secretary of State makes public his programmes for expenditure and plans for traffic control on London's main roads. Individual local authorities are required to publish annual reports on their policy and programmes and therefore the Secretary of State particularly on designated roads, should also be required to follow a similar procedure.
At present the GLC is responsible for preparing and updating the statutory structure plan and associated transport plans. The council is responsible for setting highway policy on metropolitan roads—that is, main roads—and traffic policy on all roads in accordance with these plans. The council has a duty to publish an annual statement of transport policies and programmes which sets down its co-ordinating policies for highways, traffic management and freight policy. It reports on schemes to be implemented and on progress on schemes undertaken. Expenditure, including that on the borough schemes, is spelt out and the document is a public record on how the council wishes to spend money on the London-wide transport service areas that it controls, and is therefore an important part of the local democratic process. It is also a bid for transport supplementary grant.
The residuary authorities will have to produce policies and plans for London and the metropolitan areas. The London residuary body will produce transport plans and budgets. The Bill places no duty on the Secretary of State to produce an annual statement on co-ordinated London-wide highway and traffic policies and related budgets in respect of trunk and designated roads only. This is despite the fact that through the provisions in the Bill the Secretary of State is to take—or was to take—substantial control of London traffic. This is to some extent a fall-back amendment, proposing that the Secretary of State should have to do the same as is at present done by the local authorities.
The Government have on a number of occasions admitted the need for London-wide co-ordination of highway and traffic functions. Acceptance of Amendment No. 58C follows the support for this in this Committee and therefore changes matters to some extent. I should like to have the Minister's view on what changes there will be in the present Bill as a result of Amendment No. 58C. I hope that the Minister will be able to help us in this respect.
The implication of Amendment No. 60 before Amendment No. 58C was put forward was that if the Secretary of State wishes to take over any strategic traffic or highway control, it is right that he should state what his policies are, how much control he wishes to assume, and what his expenditure will be. London has enjoyed open Government for some time. In the case of these matters in particular, Londoners have been able to go before local committees and speak to local councillors, and there argue about expenditure, at either a local or wider level, depending on their particular interest. This amendment seeks to ensure that the Secretary of State will have to give people the same opportunity of being informed as they have traditionally enjoyed.
Amendment No. 60 would ensure that the Secretary of State will prepare an annual statement setting out the programme of expenditure on trunk roads in London, a summary of his exercise of reserve traffic powers over the previous year, proposals for the exercise of his powers over designated roads, and the results of consultations held between the London boroughs and other organisations in relation to guidance. Without this amendment Londoners will be kept in the dark about London transport policies and changes in those policies.
This amendment may require some change because earlier amendments were carried. But until we know the changes which the Government wish to suggest to this amendment, which has a great deal of force behind it, and until we decide on that, I beg to move Amendment No. 60 as it appears on the Marshalled List.
Lord Tordoff: I wonder whether it would be helpful to the Committee if the Government could indicate to what extent they believe that Amendment No. 60 is affected by the amendment that has been passed, and, indeed, how subsequent amendments might be affected. This might not be the moment to discuss this matter, but those of us who are not necessarily directly in touch through the usual channels may find it helpful to know just how many of the subsequent

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amendments are still valid in the light of the earlier amendment having been passed. The noble Lord, Lord Carmichael, suggested that Amendment No. 60 might have to be changed at a later stage. That is probably true, but I am not sure now many other amendments might be affected.
Lord Elton: As regards the amendments in the names of noble Lords other than myself, I understand that only Amendments Nos. 61 and 62 are out of court as a result of the amendments so far carried. It may be that I shall not have to bother your Lordships' Committee with one or two of my amendments later, but I have not come to a view on that yet.
Lord Brabazon of Tara: This amendment would require the Secretary of State to make an annual report about certain of his functions. I entirely agree that he should, like any other Minister, make statements about his policy and the performance of his functions; that is his duty to Parliament and the public. what I do not agree with is that there is any compelling need for him to be placed under a specific statutory obligation to report each year on some limited aspects of his functions and responsibilities. Not only would that give the selected function undue prominence; it is both unnecessary and inappropriate.
The specific duties are not necessary because the Secretary of State already makes regular statements about the exercise of his powers and functions. He regularly publishes White Papers on policies for roads and road reports which set out in some considerable detail his approach to policy and his performance of his national highway responsibilities. These documents include sections on action taken and planned in each region, with a specific section devoted to London.
In view of the decision taken by the Committee on Amendments Nos. 58C and 58D there is now some uncertainty as to how in practice the provisions of Schedule 4 and 5 will operate. We recognise the intention of this amendment but it may help the Committee now if I say that we are already considering how the coverage given in this existing series of
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documents can best reflect the small number of further responsibilities the Bill proposes for the Secretary of State. I hope, however, the Committee will agree that wrenching from their context would give these responsibilities an artificial and potentially misleading prominence.
Lord Carmichael of Kelvingrove: I appreciate the Minister's reply. I am always slightly concerned about a Minister's Secretary of State saying, "I do that in any case and therefore there is no need to do that". I was in another place long enough to hear of a number of cases in which Ministers had not made a report, in one case on a Scottish university, since 1885, although it was in statute that he should make the report; and we had to have a rather amusing exemption for the Secretary of State so that he did not need to go to the hulks. But I accept that transport policy is something that is rather more in the public mind and the public limelight and therefore, as the Minister has given the assurance that the Secretary of State does in any case produce adequate reports, there are facilities for asking the Secretary of State and reminding him of the necessity to give a report.
Lord Elton: For the sake of the record, the latest news from the front is that I gave your Lordships an incomplete list. I ought to add Amendments Nos. 62C, 63B and 64A. I will read those numbers again. The first tranche was Amendment Nos. 61 and 62 only, but I understand that Amendments 62C, 63B and 64A are also hors de combat, as it were.
Lord Tordoff: Since those amendments are all mine, I agree.
Lord Elton: The noble Lord shot himself in the foot, did he not?
Lord Carmichael of Kelvingrove: Before that rather welcome interruption, I was just about to beg leave of the Committee to withdraw Amendment No. 60.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 7 agreed to.
Schedule 4 [Highways]:
Lord Fanshawe of Richmond Lord Fanshawe of Richmond moved Amendment No. 61:
Page 105, line 21, leave out from ("shall") to end of line and insert ("become a trunk road according to the provisions of the Highways Act 1980 subject always to the prior publication of the findings and recommendations of the relevant assessment study.")
The noble Lord said: I realise that my noble friend has told us that this matter may have been overtaken by the events earlier in the evening but I still would like the opportunity for my noble friend to be aware of the very real feeling which has caused the putting down of this amendment. I should also like to hear my noble friend's reply because it might have a slightly different effect on the main amendment which was moved earlier, Amendment No. 58C. My amendment empowers the Secretary of State to order any metropolitan road to become part of a national trunk network, and it is provided in the Highways Act 1980 that a draft order must be published, time for consideration must be given and a public inquiry held; and this Bill at the moment, prior to recent events earlier in the evening, removes the safeguard. I was endeavouring to incorporate it. I believe the incorporation of this safeguard is still needed, even if the appearance of a new body having the functions of a highway authority under the Highways Act 1980 in respect of metropolitan roads does take place. I should state at this moment that I am not in favour of such a body. I would like there to be an inquiry, and for the local authorities to take over these roads.
My interest is that for nearly 25 years I was Member of Parliament for Richmond, which includes an area where the A205, or South Circulr Road as it is more usually known, crosses the area of Richmond, Kew, Barnes, and South London. Over a quarter of a century I have seen a major increase in traffic of which noble Lords on all sides of the Committee who know that part of London will be aware. To describe the narrow lanes and suburban streets in Kew, the lower Mortlake Road, Clifford Avenue, Upper Richmond Road and the traffic that spills out into Barnes High Street would take a very long time, but it is important that noble Lords on both sides of the Committee should be aware of the problem.
The situation has been acknowledged by successive Ministers of all parties. There is nothing new about it. It is not a party political issue. Indeed, the noble Lord, Lord Carmichael, sitting opposite, and I debated this matter in another place some years ago. It is acknowledged by Ministers from both parties that the situation is very grave and has to be dealt with, but so far no Government, and certainly not the GLC, have managed to cope with this major hazard in the streets of South London.
I wholeheartedly support the Bill. I gave evidence to the Marshall Inquiry in 1977 pressing for the abolition of the GLC. I think that the lack of interest by the GLC in the South Circular Road and, indeed, in the roads throughout London, over the years that the GLC has been in existence, is to be deplored. I always pressed in the other place for action to be taken to remove responsibility for these roads from the GLC
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so I am in a slightly different position from other noble Lords in the Committee this evening. I should like to see responsibility for these roads, the South Circular in particular, to be passed to the local boroughs. In this case it would be the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames, which will be only too glad to take it over.
9.45 p.m.
In any case, whatever occurs there should first be an inquiry. Why do I say this? Your Lordships may not be aware that the fears and the feelings in the area of the South Circular Road are very intense. The emotion, which may not be justified but is there, is that action might be taken to widen the roads and destroy the environment along the route of the A205. As I said earlier, this includes narrow lanes and small suburban streets where the traffic flows at great speed. In many cases heavy juggernaut lorries are using roads which are not more than 14 feet wide. The fears of the residents have increased over the past few weeks. Householders, shopkeepers, old people, and mothers are worried. Some have been encouraged to agitate for political reasons. On many occasions fears have been raised quite unnecessarily, but the fears are there and should be recognised.
The locally elected people who are responsible for the area, both on the borough council and on the GLC, led by local Members of Parliament including, in particular, Jeremy Hanley, who led a determined and skilled campaign in Richmond, have made this clear to Ministers. If it has not been overtaken by events tonight I ask my noble friend to look very carefully at my proposals.
The Secretary of State initiated an assessment study and its findings will be given consideration. I hope that they will be put before any inquiry which might be set up under the 1980 Act, if the Minister agrees that such action should take place. Again, I stress that there is no reason why such an inquiry should not take place, even on transfer to a new body.
I should like to make one other point. Many of us complain, worry and grumble about the state of traffic on the South Circular Road, but one should ask: is there an alternative? I think that there is an alternative which this Government have looked at and previous Governments have considered but which the GLC has never put into action; that is, the possibility of a West London relief road—a road built on stilts, running over the railway between Olympia and Battersea. I understand that a study on this point by my noble friend's department is now under way. Perhaps my noble friend can give me an assurance that if this relief road was made, responsibility for the South Circular Road, as it is today, the A205, can be transferred to the local borough council. This is something on which I should welcome my noble friend's comment.
As the Committee will realise, I have this evening concentrated on one area and on one road. I think it brings an essential humanity to the issue, which perhaps is needed here tonight. As for some roads, the Secretary of State may have a case for ownership and

629
trunking but it surely must be incumbent on him to establish it by means of a public inquiry. I hope that there will be some support from the Committee tonight for this amendment. I should like to hear the Minister's reply. I should also like to know in detail how the voting and the result of the Division on Amendment No. 58C affects my Amendment No. 61. I beg to move.
Lord Ardwick: I said on my noble friend's amendment that I thought it gave a better and more radical solution to the problem raised by this Bill than the amendment to which I have put my name. It seems that this is true. If it proves to be the case that the Department of Transport is not to have this absolute power to trunk in London at will, then the residents along the South Circular Road will feel very much relieved. There have been many meetings and protests. There has been a great deal in the local press. There have been many letters. We have had lots of personal letters. People are frightened of what might happen.
The South Circular Road is a very peculiar road. In fact, there is no such thing as the South Circular Road. There are roads which are supposed to comprise it, which wind through the suburbs, through the shopping centres, past the schools and either fringe or divide the parks and commons. By following the signposts labelled "South Circular Road" it is possible to pick a way through South London with many twists and some loops and thus find one's way from Kew to Woolwich. Italy was once described as not so much a nation state as a geographical expression. I may say the South Circular is not so much a road as a topographical expression, the mere indication of a route.
I live on the edge of Putney Common. The South Circular Road is about 200 yards away. Over the years, we have been threatened with one motorway scheme or another. These threats have been beaten off by the vigorous action of the residents, always supported and very often led by their elected representatives. Here we thought the threat was really alive again because the Bill, as it now stands, though we are now trying to amend it, enables the Secretary of State to take over an additional 65 miles of roads in London and, by order, to make them into trunk roads irrespective of the wishes of those who live on or near such thoroughfares. We are horrified at what might be done to our suburb if the South Circular were to be trunked.
The danger was very well seen by 13 amenity societies which are watching this debate with great interest. They are 13 amenity societies which cover the districts from Kew, through Richmond, Wandsworth, Streatham, Norwood, etc. They have a very clear insight into the powers that would be vested in the Minister if this Bill were to pass with this part unamended. As they say in a letter to me:
"He would dispense with all the normal safeguards for the public, of public consultation, rights of objection and, if necessary, a public inquiry."
In the weeks that have been leading up to this, we have been told in the representations that have been made that to designate a road as a trunk road is no more than a change of name and ownership. It implies
630
nothing, it is said, in the way of future development. The Ministers who gave this assurance are right. One is not challenging their good faith. But the department itself is more forthright. Last year, there was a public inquiry concerning changes that were to be desired on the North Circular Road. The department's representative described the policy in regard to trunk roads. He said:
"The Government's policy is that trunk roads in London serve an essential purpose in providing the connections between inner London and the national motorway network. Their adequacy is a matter of national concern".
That is quite right. He said nothing about the fact that it is also a matter for local concern. He added that,
"the proposed addition to the London trunk network following abolition of the GLC will make this strategic network coherent and complete".
The man from the Ministry went on to be even more specific:
"The Government is carrying out a programme of improvements to the existing trunk roads in London and is considering priorities for the new roads for which it intends to accept responsibilit,. These improvements should encourage"—
note these words—
"more of the longer distance traffic to use these roads".
That is exactly what we fear. Up with the juggernauts! Carry on, car commuters! Already, as the noble Lord, Lord Fanshawe, has said, there is an unacceptable heavy volume of traffic passing along the residential and shopping streets that comprise the so-called South Circular Roatl. And there is this danger looming up of increasing the traffic load. The people of south London are haunted by fears that they will meet the same fate as befell others in regard to the North Circular Road, which became a trunk road many years ago. The Department of Transport has upgraded that road step by step. As it has improved one stretch of road, that has attracted increased traffic so that further stretches of the road have proved inadequate Still further schemes have been necessary to meet the new volumes.
At present 30 per cent. of the North Circular Road is still single carriageway. When the department's schemes are completed, none of it will be. At present, 27 per cent. of the road is dual carriageway with junctions at different levels. When the schemes are completed, 86 per cent. of this road going through north London, often between suburban houses and sometimes between factories, will have the standard very nearly of a motorway.
I looked at the road only this weekend. I have often driven along it, but I looked at it then from the point of view of people living along it. It must be hell. Down the middle is erected a great iron fence, sometimes with greenery growing up it which alleviates matters slightly. However, I am not trying to exaggerate when I say that it reminded me a little of the Berlin Wall. Certainly, it divides one community from another. To cross the road, people have to go 300 or 400 yards to a bridge. Ministers insist that no plans exist to improve the South Circular Road as a through route. Good! No plans perhaps, but what of aspirations and intentions? Ministers come and Ministers go, while departments remain for ever with their inexorable long-term aims and aspirations.

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The department was asked at another inquiry in January into a North Circular Road scheme to give an assurance that it would not be used as an argument for South Circular Road improvements to cope with the resulting flow. What was the witness's answer? The witness said that it was impossible to give an assurance that proposed North Circular developments would never be used as an argument for South Circular developments. He concluded:
"All I can say is that the Department of Transport is carrying out a study into the South Circular".
10 p.m.
Nobody has really believed, I fear, the repeated claims that trunking could mean no more than change of ownership. Richmond Council and the local amenity group have asked a number of times about the terms of reference given to the distinguished consulting engineers who are carrying out a study into the South Circular. Their inquiries have drawn only polite and meaningless responses. They asked whether it was possible to rule out road widenings, restrictions on pedestrian crossings and new alignments. The answer was:
"With the best will in the world I am unable to comment on the specific questions you raise".
The view which many of us hold is that when a road becomes a responsibility of the Department of Transport, then sooner or later it will be engineered to provide an unimpeded and speedy passage to vehicles of all weights and sizes. After all, the department's métier is to facilitate through traffic, although generally between cities rather than through them. So far as they are concerned, decent people though they may be, the environment must come second. The traffic is their priority—not people's lives and not people's amenities. That was why we were so insistent that the department should not, as this Bill sought to allow, have the right to trunk a road at will. That was why it was essential that the existing right to a public inquiry before trunking should be preserved.
A study of the North Circular inquiries will reveal that the type of inquiries which are held after it has been decided to trunk a road are appropriate to a given stretch; for example, whether this or that detour should be favoured, whether there should be a pedestrian tunnel under a road, or a footbridge above it. Whether or not the long distance traffic should be encouraged to be there at all would not be a matter within the inquiry's terms of reference.
Now it looks as though our fears are at rest. I took the view that it would be wrong for the people of this large part of London, who have been so anxious and so concerned for many months, to be deprived of a right of hearing as regards their grievances, even though it seems that their grievances are about to be rectified.
Lord Elton: Before we continue with this debate I ought to draw your Lordships' attention once more to what happened an hour or so ago. Your Lordships decided—against the advice of the Government—that the responsibility for GLC roads should not go to the
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Secretary of State but should go to the residuary body. This amendment proposes to do things which are compatible only with the GLC roads going to the Secretary of State. Therefore, this amendment cannot be incorporated into the Bill because it would make a nonsense of the Bill as it now stands. While I sympathise with those noble Lords who wish to air matters—and it is entirely in your Lordships' hands as to what happens—we clearly could not accept the amendment, and by that I mean that the Committee could not accept it. It is not a question of the Government accepting it; the Committee could not accept it. Nor, indeed, could the Committee accept Amendment No. 62, for the same reason. It is addressed to something which no longer exists—it is addressed to a provision which is no longer there.
I have commented on the matter at some length because your Lordships need to take a decision as to whether, nonetheless, you wish to discuss the amendments as though they were sensible amendments which could be incorporated in the Bill. My view is that that is rather a waste of time, but if your Lordships wish to do so, it is not for me to impose upon you.
Lord Fanshawe of Richmond: In view of my noble friend's advice I shall, with my noble friend's agreement—
Lord Diamond: Before the noble Lord seeks to withdraw his amendment I must insist on my own behalf—and I hope that I am representing the view of many others2—that we need a good deal more guidance from the Government than we have received so far. Let me explain why. The noble Lord the Minister has said that this amendment is hors de combat—I think that those were his words—meaning that if the amendment were carried and incorporated in the Bill, there would be a certain inconsistency between the schedule and the clause to which the schedule refers, which incorporates the amendment we have already discussed and voted on. But the noble Lord, Lord Fanshawe, who moved this amendment, has made it clear that this is an arrangement that he is fact would prefer.
I am asking the Government, therefore, to be good enough to tell the Committee what their plans are. If their plans are to return to this topic during a later stage of the Bill—and there are many such—then of course they would be talking to an audience which was aware of everything that had been decided and discussed and the reasons for it. But if the noble Lord is telling us that it is no part of the Government's intention to do that; that the Government reserve their right to bring this matter up in another place where they have an assured majority and can do exactly what they wish to do—or what they advise the House to do, to be courteous to the House—then any amendment which is not within the Bill cannot be discussed by the other place, as the noble Lord, Lord Fanshawe, knows.
The other place will be totally unaware of the fact that the ex-Member of Parliament for Richmond has moved an amendment dealing with Richmond which he holds to be important and which he would have preferred to be carried by your Lordships. The other place would be totally unaware of that and unable, by

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their rules of procedure, to discuss it. How then is this Committee to know how to deal with this amendment?
The noble Lord, Lord Elton, has said that we cannot incorporate it. I do not know what authority he produces for saying that the Committee cannot incorporate one amendment which is not wholly consistent with another. I accept the inconsistency; that is not open to argument. The question is, which amendments, being incorporated in the Bill, will be discussed by another place if the Government take a certain line, and which will be available for discussion in another place if the Government do not? We are totally unable to know which way to proceed until the Government tell us what are their considered plans.
Lord Stewart of Fulham: I think that the noble Lord, Lord Diamond, has put our dilemma very well. If the Government were able to give us an assurance that they have no intention of trying to overturn the decision which the Committee took recently about Amendments Nos. 58C and 58D, we should then know exactly where we are, and I think would accept the idea that there was not much point in proceeding with these amendments. But I am not going to bother to ask the noble Lord whether he can give such an undertaking because I know perfectly well that he cannot. If I had any doubts about that, the expression on the Chief Whip's face would dispel them. Therefore, I think we must proceed on the basis that the decision that the Committee has recently taken could be reversed, and that therefore there is some importance in these amendments.
I should like to say a few words on the merits of the case because it has been represented to me how strong and how widespread is the feeling against the sections of the Bill which give the Secretary of State power to make a road into a trunk road without all the usual safeguards.
Lord Harmar-Nicholls: Would the noble Lord give way? The noble Lord, Lord Stewart, and the noble Lord, Lord Diamond, know better than what they have just said as regards procedure. They know perfectly well that the other place can take pride in the fact that that is a talking shop. Their job is to talk and go all round a matter. That is not the function of this House. The function of this House is to revise a Bill in a responsible and proper manner. We have been told that in terms of this amendment the decision we came to a minute or two ago has ruled that out.
The noble Lord, Lord Diamond, knows very well that if in this House the Front Bench try on Report to remove the decision we made a minute or two ago, we in this House have the power—which they have not in the other House—to bring in an amendment at Third Reading, if need be. Therefore, they are not losing the opportunity.
They are merely using this place as a talking shop, and going over the top of the real procedures and conventions which are well understood. I believe that if we pay respect to the traditions and conventions as well as to the value of this House, we shall accept the guidance that to talk on this amendment, which can
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have no effect, is not doing the job properly. We are reserving the right, right up to the end of Third Reading, to bring in any amendment.
As regards my noble friend being asked to say what another place will do, it is a presumption that this House or any Member of it should try to tell the elected Chamber what they will eventually do. If later they decide to turn over what we have done, that is their power, but to ask anyone on the Front Bench in this Committee is a ridiculous nonsense, as the noble Lord knows.
Lord Tordoff: With respect to the noble Lord, if I may intervene in his intervention, we were not asking what another place would do, but what the Government would do. That is a totally different matter.
Lord Denham: Noble Lords opposite have rather suggested that because the Committee have taken certain decisions—they have taken two decisions this afternoon—the Government should now say, "We capitulate totally". It is the function of this Chamber to refer back to another place matters that we do not, as a House as a whole, think are quite right. It is not up to the Government here, because the Committee has pronounced on something, to say that irrevocably another place will accept it. We cannot do that. We are discussing this Bill. We have passed two amendments to this Bill, against the advice of the Government. I do not hold that against anybody. Can we please proceed now to discuss the rest of the Bill—there are many more amendments to discuss—and not ask the Government to say that they will not reverse things in another place, because it is not up to the Committee to ask this and it is not up to this Front Bench to agree to it.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Ampthill): I should like to draw the Committee's attention to Standing Order No. 36, which reads:
"An amendment to a Bill must not be inconsistent with a previous decision given on the same stage of the Bill".
Lord Stewart of Fulham: I think when the Chief Whip reflects he will realise he has said exactly what I prophesied he would say, that the Government cannot and will not give us an undertaking that a decision already taken by the Committee will not be reversed. I repeat, therefore, that we must proceed on the assumption that that decision might be reversed and there would then be some merit in these amendments.
Lord Fanshawe of Richmond: May I—
Lord Stewart of Fulham: With respect, I think it is still my speech.
Lord Denham: I wonder whether we should be discussing this amendment, because I am advised it is incompatible with something that went before. I think we should probably, therefore, proceed with the rest of the Bill.
Lord Stewart of Fulham: I have been trying to get on with this. As I have said, this is still my speech, although there have been five interventions. I rose only because it has been represented to me from several quarters that there is deep and widespread feeling against the powers that the Secretary of State is given in the Bill to declare roads trunk roads without any of the usual safeguards. I was interested in the matter because I am acquainted with both ends of the South Circular Road. When I was a small boy in south-east London, I attended a school which was bang on a road which is now part of the South Circular Road. It was considered, even in the days when I attended that school, to be a rather dangerous and busy road. The school is still there and is still used, and the idea of its becoming a trunk road is extremely undesirable. More recently in my life, I have become acquainted with west London. Although the South Circular did not run through what used to be my constituency, it runs very near it; and there is other provision in the Bill for what are called "designated" roads that will affect roads in almost any part of London. The point in every case is that the Secretary of State is given almost arbitrary powers about them.
When we were debating Amendments Nos. 58C and 58D the whole burden of the Government's argument was that we should trust and admire the borough councils. Now we are being told that their wishes can be completely overridden and orders declaring trunk roads can be made without any of the rights and safeguards they used to have.
Lord Harmar-Nicholls: What amendment is this?
Lord Stewart of Fulham: I think I have listened enough to the noble Lord.
Lord Harmar-Nicholls: To what amendment is the noble Lord speaking?
Lord Stewart of Fulham: I am speaking to Amendment No. 61.
Lord Harmar-Nicholls: That is out of order.
10.15 p.m.
Lord Stewart of Fulham: I do not think so. The noble Lord seems to make up his constitutional doctrines as he goes along. I am afraid that they do not carry very much conviction with us.
I did not want to say more about this matter, but I know that there is widespread feeling against it. The Bill as it stands gives quite arbitrary powers to the Secretary of State and the rights of the boroughs and the districts in these matters ought to be restored.
Lord Fanshawe of Richmond: In view of the advice of the noble Lord the Deputy Chairman, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendment No. 62 not moved.]
Lord Tordoff: I am sorry to intervene again. The fact is that we have been told which amendments on this side of the Committee have been ruled out of order. It
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would be useful to know which amendments on the Government's side are also out of order in the same context. Perhaps the noble Lord could give us an indication of these.
Lord Elton: As far as I know it is only 71A.
Lord Brabazon of Tara Lord Brabazon of Tara moved Amendment No. 62A:
Page 106, line 42, after ("(2)") insert ("Subject to sub-paragraph (4) below")
The noble Lord said: I am assured that this amendment is still in order. I can say it is purely a technical amendment to close a gap in paragraph 56 of Schedule 4, which deals with the agency agreements between metropolitan county councils and my right honourable friend the Secretary of State. Under these agreements, the MCCs act as agents for my right honourable friend in carrying out maintenance, improvement or construction work on trunk roads and motorways. As drafted, paragraph 56 provides that these agreements may be transferred by order to a successor local authority and that any agreement not so transferred will cease to have effect on abolition.
It may be that on 1st April 1986 there will still be payments outstanding from the Secretary of State for work done by an MCC before abolition or other sums due under the agreement. Equally, as a result, for example, of over-requisitions which the MCC had already received in advance of work being done, sums may be due to my right honourable friend the Secretary of State under the agreement. It would clearly be unsatisfactory from the point of view of both the MCC's ratepayers and the Secretary of State either to transfer such rights and liabilities to the local authority which is to inherit the agency agreement or simply to allow them to terminate.
The amendments accordingly provide for the residuary bodies established under Clause 55 to step into the shoes of the MCCs with respect to such outstanding rights and liabilities. This will enable the MCC ratepayers to benefit fron the sums due and for the Secretary of State also to be able to receive outstanding payments. I hope your Lordships will support this amendment, which will ensure that both parties to the agreements are fairly treated. The need for the amendment is not removed by your Lordships' decision on Amendment 58D since the MCCs will cease to be the Secretary of State's agents upon their abolition.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Lord Brabazon of Tara Lord Brabazon of Tara moved Amendment No. 62B:
Page 107, line 14, at end insert—
(" (4) All rights of a metropolitan county council arising from or in connection with any such agreement as is mentioned in sub-paragraph (1) above to receive payments from the Secretary of State and all liabilities of such a council arising as aforesaid to make payments to him (being rights and liabilities attributable to anything done or omitted under or in respect of any such agreement before the abolition date) shall be transferred on that

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date to the appropriate residuary body; and accordingly as from that date any such agreement shall have effect as respects such rights and liabilities as an agreement between the Secretary of State and the appropriate residuary body.")
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Schedule 4, as amended, agreed to.
Schedule 5 [Road traffic]:
The Deputy Chairman of Committees: In calling Amendment No. 62C, I should point out to the Committee that I cannot call No. 63 and that it is uncertain as to whether No. 62C can be called.
Lord Tordoff Lord Tordoff had given notice of his intention to move Amendment No. 62C:
Page 116, line 48, leave out sub-paragraph (1) and insert—
(" (1) For the purpose of securing the expeditious, convenient and safe movement of vehicles and other traffic, including pedestrians, and having regard to—

(a) the desirability of securing and maintaining reasonable access to buildings;

(b) the effect on the amenity of any locality affected and (without prejudice to the generality of this paragraph) the importance of regulating and restricting the use of roads by heavy commercial vehicles, so as to preserve or improve the amenities of the areas through which the roads run; and

(c) the importance of facilitating the passage of public service vehicles and of securing the safety and convenience of persons using or desiring to use such vehicles,

the Secretary of State may by order designate a road in Greater London and Part I and III of Schedule 1 to the Highways Act 1980 shall have effect as to the making of an order under this paragraph; and Schedule 2 of that Act shall have effect as to the validity and date of operation of any such order.")
The noble Lord said: Before saying "Not moved" in respect of this amendment, I want to say that should changes be made to this Bill at a later stage then, like the noble Lord, Lord Fanshawe of Richmond, in connection with his amendment, I would wish to being this back at a much later stage.
[Amendment No. 62C not moved.]
Lord Carmichael of Kelvingrove Lord Carmichael of Kelvingrove moved Amendment No. 63:
Page 117, line 3, leave out lines 3 to 8 and insert—

(" (a) the London borough councils and the Common Council;

(b) all bodies representative of those authorities, and

(c) such other bodies as the Secretary of State considers to be representative of persons likely to be affected by that designation ").

The noble Lord said: The purpose of this amendment is to ensure that the Secretary of State carries out meaningful consultations before designating a road and that the majority of borough councils to whom the roads belong agree with him on the policies to be adopted for them. Without such approval, the Secretary of State would be able to impose his policies on borough roads without local people being able to say how the roads should be run.
The Secretary of State can, by order, designate any borough road, not just ex-GLC metropolitan roads, for the purpose of facilitating the movement of traffic. He must consult with the boroughs in which the road is located, other boroughs he considers affected by the designation and any other body which he deems fit. But he, the Secretary of State, will have the final decision.
This category of designated route will be linked to London, and the Secretary of State has indicated that some 350 miles of borough roads will be categorised in this way. He does, however, have the power to extend the network at any time on these roads which form more than a third of the mileage of GLC roads which would be handed over. The boroughs will be unable to introduce any measures which prohibit, restrict or regulate traffic or parking without the approval of the Secretary of State. The same will apply to any other road if measures introduced on it affect traffic or parking on a designated route. If a borough undertakes any work on a designated road without the approval of the Secretary of State, then the Secretary of State can reverse or modify the work, as he sees fit, and charge the borough for the work he has done.
Borough councils will not be able to introduce any parking, bus priority measures, cycling facilities, pedestrian crossing facilities, lorry control or road safety measures on a designated or adjoining road if they do not meet the approval of the Secretary of State. He would then effectively be the traffic order-making authority for over half of London's main roads, 200 miles of trunk roads and 300 miles plus of designated roads. This is an unprecedented interference by central Government over local policies and individual schemes. It will lead to delays, bureaucracy and conflict, but always with the Secretary of State having the final word.
The Government claim that the proposals they are putting forward will increase local democracy. I believe this is quite wrong, and the Government must realise it. The proposals represent an enormous increase in central Government control. They reflect the fact that the Secretary of State clearly recognises the need for London-wide co-operation and co-ordination of traffic planning, yet he is getting rid of the one directly elected authority with the expert teams capable of co-ordination and replacing it by Whitehall centralisation. The House of Lords Select Committee on Science and Technology has spoken out against disbanding these expert teams, and I thoroughly agree with it. I hope that the Committee will accept this amendment. I beg to move.
Lord Brabazon of Tara: Before turning to the detail of this amendment I should like, if I may, to explain a little of the background to our proposals. London has some 8,000 miles of roads. After abolition, just under 7,800 miles will be the responsibility of the boroughs, and the responsibility of the remaining 210 miles will pass to the Secretary of State. While the remaining 210 miles of trunk roads known as key routes will form the most important routes for traffic distribution in London, providing links to the national network of trunk roads and motorways, there are about 300 further miles of roads of major importance for traffic movement within London.

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Any traffic or parking measures proposed by borough councils that reduce the capacity of these roads could have serious repercussions over extensive areas. For this reason, a power is proposed to enable these roads to be designated, which will have the effect of requiring the Secretary of State's consent to traffic or on-street parking measures proposed by boroughs on or affecting traffic or parking on designated roads. The intention is to use this power to protect against measures unjustifiably restricting capacity on these roads.
The amendments changing the consultation requirements are unsuitable in two ways: first, they would require all London boroughs and their associations to be consulted over any change to a designated road. All borough councils have already been consulted about the proposals for the initial designation of 300 miles, and other organisations and local groups have had the opportunity to express their views too. Of course, subsequent adjustments to the network of designated roads will be necessary to reflect the changing circumstances such as completion of a road. For instance, once the South Woodford to Barking relief road is constructed it may be appropriate to undesignate some other roads in that area. It would be excessively bureaucratic and needlessly time-consuming to have to consult all London boroughs over such changes, which would be of mainly local significance.
Secondly, the requirement to consult bodies which are thought to be representative of persons likely to be affected would impose an impossible task upon my right honourable friend. Although he would of course invite all interested bodies to comment and anyone interested would thus have an opportunity to make their views known, there is such a multiplicity of often-changing local organisations that he cannot know all of them. The drafting of the amendment would mean that the Secretary of State would never be able to be sure that all relevant bodies had been consulted. That is likely to lead to complex and time-consuming legal challenges. I am confident that the consultation requirements in the paragraph are all that is needed.
I am not quite clear whether the noble Lord spoke to the second amendment, No. 63A, with Amendment No. 63, but they do run concurrently.
Amendment No. 63A: Page 117, line 8, at end insert—
("(1A) Any proposals or policies which the Secretary of State may wish to introduce in relation to designated roads in Greater London shall be issued either—

(a) with the agreement of a majority of the councils of the London boroughs; or

(b) by order in circumstances where no agreement can be reached within such reasonable period as the Secretary of State may determine.

(1B) No order under sub-paragraph (1A) above shall be made unless a draft of it has been laid before and approved by a resolution of each House of Parliament.
(1C) The Secretary of State shall exercise his powers under this paragraph in accordance with any policies proposed by him with regard to designated roads which have been agreed by a majority of those councils.".)
The amendment would require any policies and proposals introduced by the Secretary of State in relation to designated roads to be subject either to the agreement of the majority of London borough councils or else to be set out in an order subject to
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positive resolution in Parliament. This amendment may reflect a misunderstanding about the scope of paragraph 5. Designation does not give the Secretary of State any powers to make proposals for traffic schemes. It only gives him the power to approve or withhold approval from traffic or parking schemes proposed by boroughs on or affecting designated roads.
The purpose of designation, as my right honourable friend the Minister of Transport explained at Committee stage in another place, is to ensure that the Secretary of State is in a position to consider whether a borough's traffic management proposals on or affecting a designated road will lead to serious and unjustified effects on the movement of traffic in the wider area. It recognises that the roads proposed for designation are the most important distributor roads in London. Thus, the policy to be adopted in operating this power has already been set out. The emphasis will now be on making the power work with the minimum of interference with borough councils. An elaborate statutory procedure to confirm simple policy is unnecessarily bureaucratic, and I therefore urge your Lordships to reject these amendments.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: The Minister really ought to insist that the briefs he reads are not the briefs before yesterday. That speech could have been made had the Committee not made the decision it took earlier this evening and had it not been agreed by the Committee that there was to be a body responsible—the London residuary body—which would have the reponsibilities contained in the existing transport policies and programmes procedures. As it is, the brief he has read is almost entirely irrelevant to the amendment moved by my noble friend, and the noble Lord has really painted himself into a corner on this one.
What he has done is to show clearly that the Secretary of State is quite unable to make decisions which have to be taken and will now have to be taken by the London residuary body about traffic in London as a whole. He is quite unable to make any decisions about who is affected by traffic proposals in individual London boroughs. He is quite unable—because he has given only the most general assurances about the continuing responsibilities of the research, intelligence and scientific branch of the GLC—to make any decisions about who is actually affected by a road proposal on a designated road. He has denied himself all the weapons which he might have had if he had paid attention to the amendments which have now been carried.
On the basis of the Government's arguments earlier this evening, there is no answer whatsoever to the argument put forward by my noble friend. I really do think that the Minister ought in future to insist that his briefs are up to date and that they do respond to the situation as it faces the Committee.
Lord Carmichael of Kelvingrove: I listened with care to the Minister's reply and I think that what my noble friend Lord McIntosh said is perfectly true. If the Minister had been able to find an answer to the difficulty that we are now in because of what happened earlier today, his reply might have been more

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convincing. On the other hand, he made out a perfect case when he spoke about the difficulty of the Secretary of State going round all the boroughs for the sake of a by-pass road in Blackheath. That is exactly what we were trying to avoid, by having an authority which would be representative of the general views of London. There would be no need to expend effort and energy on one part of London, without another part of London within that body knowing and without being able to communicate it to the relevant parts. However, I have heard the Minister's reply and I believe that at this stage my best course would be to beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendments Nos. 63A and 63B not moved.]
10.30 p.m.
Lord Carmichael of Kelvingrove Lord Carmichael of Kelvingrove moved Amendment No. 64:
Page 118, line 19, leave out sub-paragraph (2) and insert—
("(2) Any such guidance shall be issued either—

(a) with agreement of a majority of the councils of the London boroughs or, as the case may be, of the metropolitan county in question;

(b) by order in circumstances where no agreement can be reached within such reasonable period as the Secretary of State may determine.

(2A) No order under sub-paragraph (2) above shall be made unless a draft of it has been laid before and approved by a resolution of each House of Parliament.
(2B) Before preparing any such guidance the Secretary of State shall consult—

(a) the chief officers of police for the areas to which the guidance relates; and

(b) any association representative of London borough councils or district councils for the areas to which the guidance relates.")

The noble Lord said: I shall move this amendment very briefly. The amendment modifies the powers of the Secretary of State to intervene in local problems relating to traffic. Under this amendment, before issuing guidance on the exercise of traffic powers which affect more than one district, the Secretary of State must first try to obtain the agreement of the majority of constituent district councils. The amendment seeks to ensure that the guidance given to the London body will be the guidance of the districts of London and not a decision dictated by some central Government order.
The mandatory guidance and traffic powers considerably increase Government control over traffic policy in London and while everyone recognises that all local authorities fully participate in the drawing up of this policy after wide consultation with interested bodies, the feeling is that, nevertheless, there should be more positive means of local bodies making their views known, and so I believe that a London-wide body is required.
We are in great difficulty, because of the earlier amendment, as to how to deal with these points. But the department has little experience in formulating flexible traffic management policies or designated
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schemes in complex urban conditions. That has always been done by the boroughs, the districts, the metropolitan authorities or the county authorities, and the GLC certainly has these skills.
Criticisms of this aspect of the Bill were made by one Conservative Member in the Committee stage in the other place. He said:
"Far from allocating responsibility from the London authority to boroughs, the Bill provides for a high degree of Government control. The Bill is a recipe not only for control by the Secretary of State. He is, of course, responsible to Parliament and he could not possibly involve himself in 895 miles of London's roads. Therefore the Bill is a recipe for control by officials in Marsham Street".
It is in order to try to mitigate that possibility that I move this amendment. I beg to move.
Lord Brabazon of Tara: I am afraid that we need to consider, in the light of the amendments made earlier this evening, the appropriate course to be taken with this amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Carmichael, and I think it would be to the convenience of the Committee if I said no more about it at this stage.
Lord Diamond: May I say one word? As the noble Viscount the Leader of the House is here, he will be aware of the difficulties in which we are placed, because the Government insist on carrying on with the consideration of a Bill after it has been amended in a fundamental way. We have already had the extraordinary situation of an amendment being called, and then being declared to be out of order after it had been called and spoken to. We have had a Government Minister making a speech relevant to a situation which is no longer the case. Would it not have been better had the Government considered their situation somewhat more carefully rather than to have put the Committee into this difficulty?
Viscount Whitelaw: No is the answer to that, quite firmly. The answer is absolutely simple. I do not accept that what happened is a fundamental change in the Bill which was carried through in the Division.
Lord Tordoff: Would the noble Viscount the Leader of the House not accept that it is fundamental so far as this part of the Bill is concerned? Therefore we are in some difficulty, as the noble Lord the Minister has indicated, on this particular clause.
Lord Elton: There is a great deal of work still to be done on this Bill. A lot of the Bill is not touched by that amendment. It happens that the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, said that my noble friend painted himself into a corner; so my noble friend resolutely put his brush into the pot and left it there, which is a very sensible thing to do. On this particular amendment, which does not go very wide, the intricacies of the effect of the amendment are fairly considerable. It is true that there will be borough roads and therefore the amendment is not otiose, but the noble Lord will understand that according to the extent of the borough roads and the extent to which the other powers of the boroughs have been interfered with, if I may so put it, by the earlier amendment, it really would be very unwise of us to give the noble Lord a robust and final answer to this amendment at this stage. But to say that

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we should adjourn or give up the proceedings as a result of that goes beyond what any of your Lordships would wish.
Lord Carmichael of Kelvingrove: I do not think anyone was suggesting that we should give up. There is a great deal of worry, as the noble Lords, Lord Tordoff and Lord Diamond, said, about this particular clause. We are certainly not suggesting that the entire Bill is in jeopardy because of this. This is in a particular clause. To be told that certain amendments are no longer applicable puts everyone in a difficult position in regard to Report or Third Reading if the Government should decide to return the Bill to how it was. It is a difficult situation. No one wants to adjourn. We are really in a great difficulty.
Lord Elton: I am not sure where the noble Lord has left us with this amendment. I am sure he will wish us to consider it, and that we shall do in the light of developments.
Lord Carmichael of Kelvingrove: Considering all that has happened, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendment No. 64A not moved.]
[Amendment No. 65 had been withdrawn from the Marshalled List.]
[Amendment No. 66 not moved.]
Lord Carmichael of Kelvingrove Lord Carmichael of Kelvingrove moved Amendment No. 67:
Page 120, line 28, at end insert—
(" (2A) Before making an order under this paragraph the Secretary of State shall consult all local authorities in Greater London or, as the case may be, the metropolitan county concerned and shall notify the authority or authorities which will be affected by the order at least six months before the order is made.")
The noble Lord said: The purpose of the amendment is to ensure that the Secretary of State cannot take over by order the powerful area traffic control system without first consulting with all London boroughs and giving six months' prior notice of intention. This may seem to be a contradiction of what I said earlier about the Secretary of State needing to consult with all London boroughs about a road in Blackheath or some other part in the conurbation; but it is quite different. This is a powerful traffic control system on which practically all of London's traffic depends, and it is only right that proper notice and warning should be given to the London boroughs before there is any thought of the Secretary of State taking control over it. I beg to move.
Lord Brabazon of Tara: This amendment would require the Secretary of State to consult all the boroughs and district councils to seek their proposals for the continuing operation and development of
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traffic control systems. If as a result he considers no satisfactory joint arrangements can be reached and put to him in good time before the abolition date, he must take steps to be in a position to exercise his reserve powers on 1st April 1986. My understanding is that now that Amendment No. 58C has been passed, and urban traffic control would therefore pass to the residuary body, this amendment is not applicable at this stage.
Lord Carmichael of Kelvingrove: This is the difficulty that we are in. But after the explanation of the noble Lord, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendments Nos. 68, 69, 70, 71 and 71A not moved.]
Lord Carmichael of Kelvingrove: Is the purpose of the noble Lord in not moving Amendment No. 71 A because there is doubt about the logicality of the amendment?
Lord Brabazon of Tara: Yes.
Lord Carmichael of Kelvingrove: I am grateful to the noble Lord for that answer.
[Amendment No. 72 not moved.]
Schedule 5 agreed to.
Lord Graham of Edmonton: There is an understanding as to the progress of the Bill and as to how far we should go beyond the point that we have now reached. There is an understanding as to the pace of the Bill, the amount of work we shall complete tonight and where we shall start on Thursday. If the Government Chief Whip were in his place, this would normally be the time when he would respond to a suggestion that proceedings on the Bill be adjourned. I think that the Minister will understand that I am trying to make it possible for the Chief Whip to make an appearance. Hey presto! I believe that the Government Chief Whip may be able to say something about the progress of the Bill. May I assist the Government Chief Whip by indicating that, as we have understood the arrangements that have been made, we were to reach a certain point in the progress of the Bill and then the Government Chief Whip would respond to the mood of the Committee, which is that we do not proceed beyond the point we have now reached.
Lord Denham: I have been in consultation—
Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede: I apologise for not being present. I was in consultation with the Government Chief Whip. I understand that in our temporary absence we have reached Amendment No. 72 and other amendments have not been called. Therefore we have arrived at the time when we thought we would adjourn this evening.
Lord Denham: If we have reached the stage when we should adjourn I am very happy to do so. We have agreed through the usual channels outside what this time should be. Therefore I beg to move that the House do now resume.
Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Motion agreed to.
House resumed.

Royal Bank of Scotland Bill
Reported fron the Unopposed Bill Committee, with amendments.
House adjourned at seventeen minutes before eleven o'clock.