Lords Sitting of 16 May 1985

Preamble
The House met at three of the clock (Prayers having been read earlier at the Judicial Sitting by the Lord Bishop of Hereford): The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.

EC Consumer Affairs Council Meetings
Baroness Burton of Coventry: 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 which consumer affairs items were included on the agenda for discussion at the Internal Market—Consumer Affairs Council meeting held on 6th and 7th May, and of these which resulted in agreement and which were deferred to the next meeting; and whether quarterly meetings of the EC consumer affairs ministers are now to be resumed.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Trade and Industry (Lord Lucas of Chilworth): My Lords, in the event, the council meeting held on 7th May dealt solely with the internal market. A separate Council of Ministers on consumer affairs is scheduled for 21st May. Meetings of the council specifically devoted to consumer affairs were never intended to be held at quarterly intervals. The three-month intervals between the meetings in December 1983 and March and June 1984 were purely coincidental.
The Government share the view of many member states that consumer affairs councils should only be held to deal with those subjects which are not more appropriate for discussions at other councils. The decision whether to hold any particular council rests with the current presidency.
Baroness Burton of Coventry: My Lords, while I realise that it is not the Minister's fault, I should like to ask him whether he appreciates that it seems almost impossible to obtain a clear picture of what, if anything, is happening in this area of consumer affairs. Looking at the four points mentioned in the Question today, in spite of the detail that the noble Lord has given does he accept that a satisfactory answer has not been given to any one of these? Finally, may I ask him, on the point that I think he made that ministers of consumer affairs would meet as and when it was considered necessary, is it not true that some eight or nine items are awaiting decision and that some have been waiting for years? Would this not seem a good time to deal with them?
Lord Lucas of Chilworth: My Lords, I really am sorry that the noble Baroness finds it impossible to obtain a clear picture. I have tried to paint it as clearly as possible. There is a satisfactory outcome in prospect in that, as I understand it, two of the items which have been on the agenda for some little time are again to
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come up on 21st May. I have to say to your Lordships that it is not true that there are eight or nine items outstanding, because a number of them have been set aside, as it were, on the way.
Baroness Burton of Coventry: My Lords, does the Minister agree that, while he has tried to paint a picture, it is a picture of non-progress? That is the point I am trying to make. Does he feel that on the Question set down for 6th June he will be able to give the House the information for which I asked?
Lord Lucas of Chilworth: My Lords, certainly the directive on misleading advertising was adopted in September last year. That is at least one of a number of items that have been successfully brought to fruition.
Baroness Elliot of Harwood: My Lords, does the noble Lord the Minister realise that these delays are so frustrating for those organisations, of which we have many in this country, connected with consumer affairs, and that this is one of the difficulties which I know the EC has? Can the Minister press it further so that we really can get some replies which would encourage our own people, as well as everybody else?
Lord Lucas of Chilworth: My Lords, I understand what my noble friend says in regard to frustration; but one must realise that we are in a Community and that we have to carry our partners—and I am sure our partners sometimes say that of us. When you have as large a number of people, each with various and different domestic issues to be considered at the same time as Community issues, it is not always the easiest task to reach amicable conclusions in the short time that I fear some noble Lords might wish.
Lord Bruce of Donington: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that his notification that certain items will be on the next agenda of the Council of Ministers concerned with consumer affairs is not really very encouraging? Is the noble Lord also aware that in another field the freedom to establish insurance services, other than life assurance, in various parts of the Community has been on the agenda for the last 10 years without any successful resolution, and indeed has been on the agenda during successive British holders of the presidency?
Lord Lucas of Chilworth: My Lords, I am not quite sure what question the noble Lord, Lord Bruce of Donington, was addressing to me. On his latter point, I think that it is a little wide. On his former point, he will appreciate, with his past connections in Europe, that it is of course for the presidency of the day to determine exactly what the agenda should be when the Council of Ministers meets.
Lord Diamond: My Lords, if the procedure which the noble Lord the Minister recommends is acceded to, is there not a danger that consumer affairs will tend to be overlooked? Is there not advantage in having consumer affairs dealt with every three months as a matter of routine to pick up matters which would not otherwise be dealt with? Finally, are not all of us in this House grateful to my noble friend who keeps such a vigilant eye on these matters?
Lord Lucas of Chilworth: My Lords, I advocate no particular procedure. I outline the facts as they are. Her Majesty's Government are not happy at the idea that consumer councils, or any other council of a particular nomenclature, should automatically have a place. We believe that when consumer matters come to a relevant point that needs discussion, a meeting should be held. That, again, as I said, is up to the presidency. I have indicated that there is to be a meeting on 21st May at which some consumer affairs matters will be discussed. How far down the agenda the meeting gets I should not like to say.
Lord Kennet: My Lords, the noble Lord has mentioned the directive on misleading information which has at last come into force. Is he aware that I was the rapporteur for that directive in the European Parliament in 1978, and is seven years about par for the course? If so, is it, in the Government's opinion, good enough?
Lord Lucas of Chilworth: Indeed, my Lords, I was aware of the interest of the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, in this matter. I wonder whether, had the rapporteur set out the case more quickly, we might have arrived at a decision more quickly.

Cultural Heritage: Tax Concessions
3.8 p.m
Lord Chelwood: 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, in considering the present resources and tax incentives (including the "in lieu" procedures and CTT relief) to protect the heritage, they will take full account of land of exceptional scientific or scenic importance.
Lord Skelmersdale: Yes, my Lords.
Lord Chelwood: Good, my Lords.
Lord Strabolgi: My Lords, remembering that the Government put a £1 million ceiling for annual acceptance of heritage items, and that the noble Earl, Lord Gowrie, in the debate recently said that he was taking this up with his right honourable friend the Chancellor in view of feelings on all sides of the House and, indeed, outside, have the Government anything to report?
Lord Skelmersdale: My Lords, this matter is under urgent review. But I should point out to the noble Lord that the "in lieu" provisions are not the only way of funding the heritage on these occasions. There are of course the funds of the Office of Arts and Libraries, the Countryside Commission, the National Heritage Memorial Fund and the Nature Conservancy Council; and of course special capital transfer tax arrangements are all designed with this object in view.

Privatisation: Government Programme
3.9 p.m.
Lord Taylor of Blackburn: 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 which public industries they intend to privatise during this Parliament.
The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Minister for the Arts (The Earl of Gowrie): My Lords, individual candidates will be announced as and when circumstances make this appropriate; but we shall build on a substantial record of achievement. Including British Telecom, 12 major public sector companies and a number of other enterprises have been successfully privatised, bringing in receipts of about £4 billion and transferring more than 400,000 jobs to the private sector.
Lord Taylor of Blackburn: My Lords, is the Minister aware of the Gallup poll published in this morning's Daily Telegraph? If he is aware of it, does this mean a total rejection of the Government's policies?
The Earl of Gowrie: My Lords, I have always considered it rather indelicate for Members of your Lordships' House on any side to comment on electoral matters. But that said, I would not suggest that the noble Lord rush into election fever precisely at this moment.
Lord Shinwell: My Lords, are there not some Government departments which have a monopoly and which we could dispose of, and then get some money out of them? Take as an example—it has just occurred to me—MI5, which has been a complete failure for many years. We could sell that off quite easily, and some of us would be glad to take some shares in it.
The Earl of Gowrie: My Lords, I have always looked upon the noble Lord, Lord Shinwell, as one of the most trenchant advocates of defence expenditure in your Lordships' House, so I am rather surprised at this volte-face, if that is what the noble Lord is engaged in. As for Government departments generally, I would remind your Lordships that without significant loss of service to the public, we have reduced the Civil Service by more than 110,000 since we came into office.
Lord Ezra: My Lords, is the noble Earl aware that there is a growing feeling that the main purpose of the Government's privatisation policy now is to enable the Treasury to rake in as much money as possible? Will he kindly inform the House whether that is indeed the main purpose of Her Majesty's Government's policy?
The Earl of Gowrie: My Lords, any receipts from assets sales are naturally welcome, as the previous Government found in selling British Petroleum shares. When I was sitting on the opposite side of the House, I urged them to sell the lot. The Government's primary aims, however, in their privatisation

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programme are to increase efficiency, promote growth, spread ownership of shares generally, which is something I believe the Alliance parties are interested in, and to encourage employees to participate in the success of the companies in which they work.
Lord Bruce of Donington: My Lords, in view of the fact that the loss of confidence in the Government, to which my noble friend Lord Taylor of Blackburn referred, is now evidently shared by quite a number of the Government's own supporters in another place, would it not be far better to suspend the whole operation of privatisation, which is quite irrelevant to the country's needs and adds nothing at all to its output? Would it not be far better to abandon the whole silly and ridiculous programme?
The Earl of Gowrie: My Lords, the Government's maintenance of confidence both in the country and with their own supporters is a great deal higher than at this period in the Parliament of the Government which the noble Lord, Lord Bruce of Donington, supported. As to the second part of his supplementary question, it would really be idiotic of the Government not to press on with one of their most successful programmes.
Lord Beswick: My Lords, if the Government have found a cleverer way of managing these industries, why do they pick out the easier and more profitable concerns to hand over to this new concept?
The Earl of Gowrie: My Lords, it is not the view of the Government that the entire public sector should be privatised but only those parts of the public sector that are appropriate.
Lord Diamond: My Lords, further to that, as the Government are—
Noble Lords: Lord Somers!
Lord Somers: My Lords, will the noble Earl explain why the Government have constantly turned a blind eye to the one industry which is crying out for privatisation; and that is British Leyland?
The Earl of Gowrie: My Lords, I do not think the eye that has been turned is blind. My right honourable friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer is very sensible of what the noble Lord, Lord Somers, has said. In fact, part of British Leyland, the Jaguar company, has been very successfully privatised, as he will be aware.
Lord Diamond: My Lords, at the end of the Government's period of office when they have completed their privatisation programme referred to in this Question, and in view of the fact that they have already realised more than £4 billion, according to the Minister, and will no doubt realise a great deal more of the country's national assets, what will the Government have to show by way of capital creation to replace those billions of pounds spent in this regrettable rake's progress?
The Earl of Gowrie: My Lords, far from being a rake's progress, at last public ownership will mean something. Since we seem to be in electoral mood, I
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certainly look forward to the Alliance's manifesto at the next election when it suggests the renationalisation of these assets.
Lord Diamond: My Lords, I did not ask anything about electoral moods. I asked: what will the Government have to show in terms of capital creation for this huge amount of national assets—more than £4 billion and possibly £6 billion to £8 billion—which they will have realised and spent?
The Earl of Gowrie: My Lords, any Government should be proud to have redistributed capital from the Executive to the public. That is a thoroughly good thing to do and the Government should be doing more of it.
Lord Molloy: My Lords, will the noble Minister not agree that the next list of British-owned industries to be carved off to friends of the Tory Party will probably be the most profitable of publicly-owned industries? Will he not agree that many privately-owned organisations and privately-owned industries depend on these great British-owned industries for their livelihood? Before they indulge in this rape of British-owned organisations and publicly-owned industries, will they take into account the fact that many other privately-owned industries, their shareholders and workers, depend on the publicly-owned industries for their livelihood?
The Earl of Gowrie: My Lords, all the assumptions underlying the question of the noble Lord, Lord Molloy, suggest his reluctance that the British should own their industries.
Lord Harmar-Nicholls: My Lords, is an asset domiciled in this country any less of a national asset just because it is not publicly owned?
The Earl of Gowrie: My Lords, I think that my noble friend puts his finger on the button. The fact is that we are returning these industries to the ownership of the public.
Lord Molloy: My Lords, what about the Navy and the Army, then?
Lord Stoddart of Swindon: My Lords, the noble Earl mentioned that the Government had received £4 billion from the sale of assets; but does he recall that British Telecom was sold by the Government for a total of £2 billion? The value of British Telecom assets now on the Stock Exchange is £6 billion. The Government have lost £4 billion. Is that what they call good business?
The Earl of Gowrie: My Lords, the Government's loss is the gain of the public. But I can point out to your Lordships that I shall be answering a debate in the name of my noble friend Lord Thorneycroft on this very subject on 5th June, and I am thoroughly looking forward to it.
Viscount St. Davids: My Lords, will the noble Earl agree that the 50 per cent. increase in the value of the shares, now that they are in the hands of the public,

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shows how much more confidence the public have in this industry than they had before it was sold?
The Earl of Gowrie: My Lords, like many converts from the Labour Party, the noble Viscount, Lord St. Davids, has seen the light.
Lord Beswick: My Lords, will the noble Earl say why he has chosen the date of 5th January to discuss this, as I shall be travelling back from Japan on that day?
The Earl of Gowrie: My Lords, it is 5th June, not 5th January.
Lord Stallard: My Lords, following the question of the noble Lord, Lord Ezra, and the noble Earl's reply to it, will the noble Earl accept that there is a great deal of disquiet outside that these candidates, as the noble Earl refers to them, are being fattened up prior to sale? I give as an example the contract for ferrying troops backwards and forwards to the Falkland Islands which has been taken from the Royal Air Force and given to British Airways in a blatant attempt to fatten up British Airways prior to privatisation. Will the noble Earl explain?
The Earl of Gowrie: My Lords, one cannot really have it both ways. If it were true that the Government were fattening industries prior to sale, there would not have been an appreciation on the markets for which the Government are criticised subsequent to sale.
Lord Wallace of Coslany: My Lords, will the noble Earl tell the House to what extent the Government want to extend the privatisation of public toilets? This is a matter of great interest to noble Peers.
The Earl of Gowrie: My Lords, I take a great deal of trouble with my briefing but I am afraid that I have nodded on this aspect. I shall look into it.

Education Act 1981: Monitoring
3.20 p.m.
Baroness David: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government how they are monitoring, and how they propose to monitor in the future, the way in which the Education Act 1981 is working.
The Earl of Swinton: My Lords, Her Majesty's Government are monitoring implementation of the Education Act 1981 by means of frequent and regular reports from Her Majesty's inspectorate; a research project extending over three years commissioned from London University to monitor the development of local policy and provision for special needs; and local seminars held to promote discussion and provide guidance on the inter-professional co-operation required by the new procedures. We shall continue to
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consider the need for other forms of monitoring and to examine any specific proposals which may be made.
Baroness David: My Lords, I thank the Minister for that reply. I was aware of the report that is to come from the Institute of Education, but is it not a fact that that report is not due to be published until 1986? That really is quite a long time off. Is the Minister satisfied in view of the fact that 15 authorities have not sent in their returns for the number of children, with statements, although those returns should have been in by January last? Is the Minister certain that those 15 authorities are implementing the Act properly?
The Earl of Swinton: My Lords, I confirm what the noble Baroness said about the research project at London University. That will be completed in 1986, but obviously it is a long-term project. I cannot comment on the 15 authorities individually beyond saying that there are bound to be teething problems with the introduction of a major piece of social legislation.
Baroness David: My Lords, can the Minister give a figure for the number of children ascertained as being handicapped now who are in ordinary schools? The last figure I could find was from January 1983.
The Earl of Swinton: My Lords, according to returns from schools, the number of children ascertained as handicapped in ordinary schools rose from 29,976 in January 1982 to 37,970 in January 1983. Although the figure for 1984 is not directly comparable because of changes introduced under the Education Act 1981, the provisional return for January 1984 shows 48,069 pupils in ordinary schools assessed as needing special educational provision.
Lord Davies of Leek: My Lords, is the noble Earl aware of the sad loss to the child who will only ever receive an elementary education, of books and all the other paraphernalia that is needed by that lower echelon of children? They should at least receive a first-class elementary education.
The Earl of Swinton: My Lords, the original Question refers to the Education Act 1981, which is largely to do with handicapped children receiving education in ordinary schools. The figures I have given are surely very encouraging and show that this is happening more and more.

Business
Lord Denham: My Lords, at a convenient moment after 3.30 this afternoon my noble friend Lord Brabazon of Tara will, with the leave of the House, repeat in the form of a Statement an Answer to a Private Notice Question in another place on job losses in British Rail Engineering Limited. This will be followed by my noble friend Lord Glenarthur, who, again with the leave of the House, will repeat a Statement on the review of public order law.

Interception of Communications Bill
3.23 p.m.
The Lord President of the Council (Viscount Whitelaw): My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time.
I am particularly pleased to be able to move the Second Reading of this Bill today. Its introduction follows the undertaking I was able to give just over a year ago that the Government would legislate this Session on the interception of communications. That undertaking was—as I said at the time—absolutely firm. This Bill is a full response to it, and I gladly acknowledge the part that noble Lords have played in its gestation.
The Government do not approach this Bill in a partisan spirit, and they have never seen it as a measure on which party differences need directly bear. During the course of proceedings in another place the Government made or undertook to make a number of changes in response to concerns that had been expressed. These included spelling out the maximum validity of warrants and that the tribunal could address the merits of decisions taken by the Secretary of State; defining what was meant by serious crime; and introducing additional limitations into the arrangements for urgent cases. This reflected the Government's open mind on practicable changes which might enhance the confidence people could have in the operation and supervision of the system of authorised interception. I know that your Lordships will approach the Bill in the same way, recognising the need for carefully framed legislation in this area, which closely affects individuals but is also vital to national security and to the fight against terrorism, drugs running and other major crime.
I should like first to set on the record a number of the principles which underlie the Bill. On the first, there will, I believe, be agreement here today. Interception is an unpleasant necessity. It is unpleasant because it involves an intrusion into a sphere of daily life where people are entitled to expect confidentiality. It is essential that it is strictly controlled. But it is, as Governments of both major parties have recognised over a very long period of time, a necessity. Speedy communication is vital to those who trade in dangerous drugs or who carry out acts of espionage and terrorism. It would be intolerable that such people should know they were entirely safe from any form of investigation when communicating by letter or telephone.
One example may serve to underline the vital contribution which interception can make to the protection of us all. The police in England and Wales estimate that as a result of interception they have in the past 10 years been able to make more than 5,000 arrests, to recover about £40 million worth of stolen property and to seize drugs valued in excess of £50 million. Those figures speak for themselves.
The question which this Bill is concerned with, therefore, and the question which is before us all as we examine it, is not whether there should be a system of authorised interception but how that system should be regulated and controlled. It is a question not of principle but of balance between the essential
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protection to the individual and the vital needs of society as a whole. Such questions are easier to ask than to answer. The Government believe that the Bill provides a clear statutory framework within which they can be answered and within which the answers of those responsible on a day-to-day basis can be independently reviewed.
The second principle is equally fundamental. All Governments—and I emphasise the "all" because I believe there is nothing partisan about this—have operated very stringent controls. I can say without equivocation from personal experience—for, after all, as Home Secretary I had the unpleasant responsibility of operating this system for four years—that the highest of standards are observed and very clear limitations are imposed on the manner in which the power to authorise interception can be exercised. These same standards and limitations apply throughout the system, to those who make application, execute warrants or receive intercepted material. I emphasise this because the Government are not seeking through this legislation any extension of existing practices. The Bill is not designed to allow anything which has not long been done by successive Governments. I wish to underscore that point to noble Lords; it is fundamental to our consideration of the whole Bill.
Thirdly, this Bill is comprehensive in its application to interception. It deals with all aspects of authorised interception; provides a means of redress to the individual and other arrangements whereby that system is checked and reviewed; and establishes a new criminal offence of unauthorised interception. But just as it is comprehensive, so also it does not seek to deal with more than interception. In the Government's view interception is a matter on which it is possible to introduce legislation now, and which gives rise to a distinct set of issues.
Lastly, the Bill, in the Government's view, fully meets the United Kingdom's obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights. It clearly establishes in law the circumstances in which interception can be undertaken and thereby meets the judgment of the European Court last year. Noble Lords will wish to bear in mind that in that judgment the court did not criticise the purpose for which interception was authorised or the manner in which it was undertaken, but simply the absence of a clear statutory framework. The criteria in the Bill on which interception may be authorised are all set out in the convention. The Bill itself narrows the application of certain of these criteria. A number of other grounds set out in the convention, such as public safety, have not been included because in the Government's view they cover areas where interception would be entirely inappropriate.
I should like now to turn to the provisions of the Bill to demonstrate how it is that they seek to achieve the balance to which I referred a moment ago. The Bill rests on Clause 1. First, it sets the Bill's scope as communications in the public system; that is to say, telecommunications and the post. Communications of this kind fall into a special category because people have no option but to commit them to the custody of organisations over which they can have no control. Both the sender and the receiver are entitled to believe

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that their communications will be properly safeguarded while they are within these systems, and there is, of course, a long history of statutory provisions designed to ensure that this is the case. It is this scope which underpins all the other provisions of the Bill.
Clause 1 is also fundamental to the measure in establishing a new offence of unauthorised interception. I know it was a surprise to many when, following publication of the White Paper on 7th February, it came to be appreciated that there was not already a general offence of unauthorised interception. There are offences, of course, but they are concerned for the most part with the staff of the public systems. The new offence changes all this. For the first time anybody, whoever he is, whoever he works for, or whatever his purpose, will commit a criminal offence if he intentionally intercepts communications in the public systems in contravention of this provision. The maximum penalty of two years' imprisonment or an unlimited fine, or both, is stiff, and rightly so. Improper interception is a very serious matter and it should be penalised this way.
The exceptions to the offence provide for the circumstances where interception is properly undertaken. This may be in execution of a warrant; or in doing things necessary to run the public systems, such as repairing faults. The Bill also allows somebody to consent to the interception of his own communications; for example, if he is receiving obscene telephone calls. This provision has been criticised as too wide, and my right honourable and learned friend the Home Secretary has undertaken that it will be re-framed. The Government will accordingly bring forward an amendment in Committee in your Lordships' House to meet these objections.
Clauses 2 to 5 are concerned with the authorisation of interception, and are most usefully seen as a whole. Clause 2 empowers the Secretary of State to issue warrants and specifies the only grounds on which he may do so. There are three such grounds, but all rest on the requirement that he must consider the warrant "necessary". This is a central point in the whole Bill. It is not sufficient, for example, that the Secretary of State should consider the warrant to be "expedient" or "desirable". The test of "necessary" echoes the wording of Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. It requires the Secretary of State to examine, for example, whether the warrant itself is necessary as a means of pursuing the particular investigation, given both the value of the information and the opportunities for obtaining it in other ways. Self-evidently, a warrant could not properly be issued where the information would merely be of passing interest.
The first of the grounds on which, if it is necessary, the Secretary of State may issue a warrant is that it is in the interests of national security. The term "national security" is widely used and occurs in some 50 different statutes introduced over a long period by Governments of both major parties. The term encompasses the protection of the country and of its institutions from internal and external threats. As the recent White Paper made clear, it is concerned with
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espionage, terrorism and subversion and also with the acquisition of intelligence in support of the Government's defence and overseas policies. The exercise of the power to issue warrants on this as on the other criteria is, as I shall explain in a moment, subject to independent review just as it is governed by the requirement that each individual warrant should be "necessary".
The second ground on which a warrant may be issued is the prevention or detection of serious crime. This term is now defined in the Bill as a consequence of amendments made in another place in terms of the published criteria which, with other aspects of the Bill, are those which have long been applied.
The third ground on which a warrant may be issued is for the purpose of safeguarding the economic wellbeing of the United Kingdom if, but only if, the information it is considered necessary to acquire is about matters outside the United Kingdom, Channel Islands and Isle of Man. This limitation on externality does not apply in the parallel provision in the European convention.
Clause 3 deals with the sort of warrants which can be issued on one or other of the grounds set out in Clause 2. In the case of Clause 3(1), warrants will be directed at the communications of one person or organisation, or at those to or from one set of premises. The provision ensures that the warrant is directed against particular communications from, for example, a particular telephone number. This is necessary not only so that the Secretary of State exercises his powers in a precisely focused way, as he must, but also so that those executing the warrant are left in no doubt whatsoever as to exactly what it is they have to do.
Through subsection (2) this clause also replaces the provisions of the Official Secrets Act 1920 which provide for the interception of external telecommunications. The 1920 powers have been regularly exercised by successive Governments of both parties since they came into force and the Government believe it is essential that they should continue to be available. The provisions of the Bill, however, represent a very considerable narrowing of these powers, both as regards the grounds on which they can be issued—those of Clause 2—and the stringent limitations on the material which may be examined as a result of their exercise.
I turn now to Clauses 4 and 5, which make detailed practical provision for the issue, renewal and duration of warrants, and for their modification. I would wish to detain noble Lords to make only two points. First, they secure the vital principle that the issue of a warrant must be the personal decision of the Secretary of State. There can be no circumstances in which that decision can be delegated, even in the most urgent of cases. This principle is fundamental to the whole system of authorised interception and it is the Government's intention that it should be firmly adhered to. Secondly, in fulfilment of an undertaking given in another place, an amendment will be put to your Lordships' House in Committee to incorporate into the Bill, in a manner applicable to statute, the arrangements for the duration of warrants set out in the 1980 White Paper.
These provisions are complemented by the requirements in Clause 6, which deal with the handling of

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intercepted material. Just as the manner in which the Secretary of State exercises his powers must be clearly regulated, so I know your Lordships will agree that there must be strict controls over the use to which intercepted material is put. These controls will be founded on Clause 6. It will require that there are arrangements to limit material to those who really need to know it and to ensure that copies are taken and kept only to the minimum extent necessary under the Clause 2 criteria. These requirements apply comprehensively to the handling of all intercepted communications.
My Lords, I should like now to turn to two of the most important provisions of the Bill, in Clauses 7 and 8. They are fundamental to securing and maintaining the balance between the needs of society and the rights of the individual to which I referred. They introduce an independent element into the system of authorised interception and thereby, I believe, are crucial in ensuring that this system will secure continued public confidence.
The first of these provisions, the tribunal established in Clause 7 and Schedule 1, is entirely new. It offers a means of redress to any person who believes that his communications have been intercepted. Anyone holding such a belief can apply to the tribunal for an investigation. There are no limits on this application; for example, in the form of evidence which needs to be presented or hurdles to be crossed. The tribunal can be brought into play without any need for legal representation or expensive proceedings.
There has been some misunderstanding of the precise nature of the tribunal's task. The Government have sought to remove the grounds for this misunderstanding by incorporating in the clause the reference to judicial review. The task of the tribunal is to decide whether interception had been properly authorised, in the sense of whether the material placed before the Secretary of State was such that he could properly have come to the conclusion that a warrant was within the specified criteria. The tribunal will thus decide for itself whether on the facts available the decision to issue a warrant was a proper one, in the sense that it was not unreasonable. This is what the tribunal should be about. It must be an effective remedy, capable of providing the means of redress to which people are entitled and to which the Government attach the utmost importance. For the first time, therefore, the decisions of Ministers can be subject to independent review. I cannot emphasise too strongly the importance of this new body, both in ensuring the maintenance of the highest of standards and in securing public confidence.
If the tribunal concludes the Act has been contravened, it must inform the applicant of that fact. It may then quash the warrant in question, order the destruction of intercepted material, and direct the Secretary of State to pay compensation. The Bill imposes no limit on the amount of that compensation. These are very considerable powers as a result of which the decisions of the Secretary of State can be overturned and an aggrieved party duly compensated.
The second of these provisions is to be found in Clause 8, which establishes the post of commissioner. The task of the commissioner is to undertake a
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continuing review of everything to do with authorised interception, which includes not only the warrant provisions but also all the associated procedures, and the arrangements for safeguarding material in Clause 6. The commissioner will be a judge of at least High Court standing, and will thus be the successor to the existing monitor, at present the noble and learned Lord, Lord Bridge of Harwich.
The commissioner's continuing review will be free-ranging. He will decide what he wishes to look at, and the Bill ensures that he will have access to all forms of relevant material and may talk to whomsoever he wishes. If, during the course of his work, he discovers a contravention or an inadequacy in the safeguards, he must report that to the Prime Minister. He must in addition submit an annual report to the Prime Minister on everything to do with his work over the 12 months. Subject to necessary deletions on, for example, national security grounds, that report will be laid before Parliament.
The last provision of the Bill I should like to dwell on today is Clause 9, which deals with the exclusion of evidence about interception from court proceedings. Interception, as I know noble Lords will agree, is a vital tool in combating crime and safeguarding the nation's security. It depends for much of its effect on secrecy, not only as to individual cases but also as to the general pattern of its use. It would be ridiculous and wholly counter-productive if, as a result of the enactment of this Bill, spies or drugs runners could mount proceedings against the Secretary of State to find out if there had been an authorised interception, and, if there had been, the grounds on which the warrant was issued, or could force the production of such evidence in a criminal hearing. I have to state very clearly that the Government would be failing in their responsibilities for the effective enforcement of the criminal law in serious cases and for the effective safeguarding of national security if legal proceedings could be used in this way.
The special procedures for the tribunal are one way in which essential secrecy is safeguarded. They ensure that nobody is able to find out about the existence of a properly authorised warrant, or indeed about its absence, merely by making application to the tribunal. This must be right. The same principle applies to court proceedings. In criminal cases hitherto safeguards have been manufactured on an ad hoc basis to protect these things. This has not been entirely satisfactory, and cannot be relied upon when the statutory scheme is in force. It is right that a Bill which deals so comprehensively with other aspects of authorised interception should deal also with this crucial matter. If it is not addressed the long term value of interception might be significantly undermined. I know that your Lordships will wish to give due weight to all these considerations.
Over the past few minutes I have sought to explain the important provisions in the Bill, but in so doing I have necessarily dealt with them in a piecemeal way. In conclusion I should like to urge noble Lords to see the whole measure as one. Each of its provisions complements others. The basis of the scheme is the new general offence of unlawful interception. Everything to do with the issue and management of warrants is clearly set out in the Bill and a statutory basis is given

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for tight control over the use made of intercepted material. The decisions the Secretary of State takes and the adequacy of all the supporting arrangements are subject to independent review. The Secretary of State is thus not the final arbiter either on matters of law or on matters of practice. These provisions taken together offer a series of complementary checks and are comprehensive in their application.
I have also sought to set out the main principles which have underpinned the Government's approach to the whole measure. Though there are certain matters on which it would be contrary to national security to speak publicly, I believe that noble Lords will wish to have as clear an understanding as possible of how the Government view this legislation. Interception is, as I have said, an unpleasant necessity. The purpose of this scheme is not only to secure a proper balance between the individual who uses the public systems and the needs of society as a whole, but above all to ensure a means of maintaining that balance. The Government believe that the provisions in this Bill, taken as a whole, meet that objective. It is in that firm belief that I am glad to commend the Bill to your Lordships today.
Moved, That the Bill be now read a second time.—(Viscount Whitelaw.)
3.51 p.m.
Lord Mishcon: My Lords, as is typical of him, the noble Viscount the Lord President of the Council, if I may say so in marked contrast to his right honourable and learned friend the Secretary of State for the Home Department in another place, introduced this Bill in the soft strains of a Schubert symphony, I say in parenthesis immediately that I chose Schubert in order to maintain the alliteration. I say "in marked contrast" because his right honourable and learned friend in another place used instead the strident tones—it was a mixture of brass, wind and percussion—usually associated with a Wagnerian overture.
This is what he said:
"there is one important difference between this Government and their predecessors. It is that we are providing, for the first time, a clear and comprehensive statutory framework for the interception of communications".—[Official Report, Commons, 12/3/85; col. 151.]
That was a most eccentric view of the history that precedes this Bill. Indeed, if I may be allowed to say so, it completely ignores the very important part played by your Lordships' House before this measure came before Parliament.
If I may, I shall just summarise that history. First of all there was the rule of law requirement in the European Convention on Human Rights. It was embedded in Article 8. That was followed by a case before the European Court of Human Rights in September 1978. It was the judgment in the Klass case. Nothing was done. Following upon that there was the famous Malone case, to which the noble Viscount referred.
That case, if one can put it briefly, concerned a gentleman who was charged with unlawfully dealing in stolen goods. He was acquitted, and by chance, it most likely was, counsel in cross-examining on his behalf
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called, as is not unusual, for a policeman's notebook; and on perusing it he saw that there had been some sort of interference—some form of listening to a telephone conversation in which Malone was a participant.
A case was subsequently brought against the Commissioner of Police for the Metropolis. The learned judge, Sir Robert Megarrry, Vice-Chancellor in the Chancery Division, delivered himself of these words in his judgment in May 1979:
"I would only add that even if it was not clear before this case seems to me to make it plain that telephone tapping is a subject which cries out for legislation".
Nothing was done. Following upon that, and indeed concurrently with it, were all the efforts of the Post Office Engineering Union to try to get this put upon a statutory basis. Malone then brought a case before the European Court against the United Kingdom. The commission in its recommendations in the report found against the United Kingdom. Nothing was done.
Then on 21st February 1984, after a similar amendment had been proposed in a previous Session by my noble and learned friend Lord Elwyn-Jones, I had the privilege of moving from these Benches an amendment to bring under statutory control the whole process of interference with telecommunications. It was opposed by the Government which brought into play a voice that we very often miss now in your Lordships' House—that of the then Lord Advocate, Lord Mackay. Despite his strong advocacy against the whole idea of statutory control, noble Lords from all parts of your Lordships' House passed that amendment against the Government by 129 votes to 112.
That was followed by an undertaking given to your Lordships' House at the Report stage of the Telecommunications Bill, and I venture to remind your Lordships of that undertaking which, as one would expect, has been honourably fulfilled so far as the noble Viscount is concerned. He said:
"My Lords, in rising to move this amendment I should like to make it clear at the outset what I am not doing. I am most certainly not seeking simply to reverse the decision which your Lordships' House took in Committee, against the advice of the Government. I believe that that would be wrong for many reasons, not least in terms of the relations between this House and another place".
A sentence later he said:
"The amendment which was moved by the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, in Committee reflected a determination that the whole business of telephone interception should be regulated by statute. The amendment found favour with a majority of your Lordships".
Later in his statement he said:
"I have today given an absolutely firm assurance on future legislation. I hope this House will appreciate fully from what I have said when indicating that the Government wholly accept the spirit of the amendment carried in Committee. We accept that the time has come to legislate on this difficult subject".—[Official Report, 19/3/84; cols. 1032 and 1034.]
I have recounted that history not just to make a debating point that the right honourable and learned gentleman in another place should be a little more careful about boasting before he make statements of that kind when introducing a Bill in another place. However, my main reason for doing it is to remind your Lordships that indirectly, if not directly, you are the parents of this statutory measure and, as parents, I believe that you would want the child that has come

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to you in the form of this Bill to go back to another place in a rather healthier state than it is in at the moment.
If I may say so, this is the way in which I should like to discuss this Bill, and I believe it will meet with your Lordships' approval. As the noble Viscount has said, the whole idea of interfering with privacy of telephone conversations, of the post and of all kinds of telecommunications is anathema to all of us. However, when the safety of the realm is at stake, when there are questions of the state having to deal with espionage and terrorism and the prevention of grave crime, including, as your Lordships well know, trying to track down drug traffickers and people of that kind, it is quite impossible to say that telephone tapping cannot take place.
However, one has to control it. One has to say that, although it is a grave necessity, there is, on the other hand, the valuable principle embedded in the whole of our life; namely, the privacy, and the protection of the privacy, of the subject and the liberty of the subject. What we have to do in this Bill—and it is a difficult task—is to strike that balance. It is against that background, I am sure, that all the debates in your Lordships' Chamber during the various stages of this Bill will take place.
The first point that I have to make in regard to the Bill is that a great opportunity has been lost. The Bill narrowly deals with the question of interference with telecommunications. All of us know, indeed the Philips Royal Commission pointed it out when it dealt with the whole question of criminal procedure, that the danger in regard to interference of privacy and liberty is equally as grave, if not graver, in this electronic age when there are all kinds of electronic devices and bugging and so on can take place.
Perhaps I may remind your Lordships of what was said by the Philips Commission in regard to surveillance generally. At paragraph 3.57 of their report they said,
"We therefore recommend that the use of surveillance devices by the police (including the interception of letters and telephone communications) should be regulated by statute. The specific practices subject to regulation should be set out in secondary legislation to enable new techniques to be incorporated as they are developed".
In view of the long period of gestation, if I may say so, so far as this Bill is concerned, one would have thought that the opportunity might have been taken to deal with that recommendation in the Philips Report and to see that this was broadened into the whole question of dealing with the mechanical electronic devices to which I have referred.
Next I come to Clause 2, which the noble Viscount so correctly said is a very important clause. It sets out the bases upon which the Secretary of State can issue his warrant. He can do it on various grounds. The first one is national security, "the interests of national security". There are the bare words, and there they remain, undefined. If I may respectfully say so, it is no answer to say that in something like 50 statutes the words "national security" occur. They may occur, but they have no direct implication, necessarily, on the reduction of the rights of the subject in regard to privacy and liberty, as much as they do in this statute.
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Thus I call for a definition of "national security". I call for it on the basis of no less and no more than the Government's own White Paper and what they said should be covered in regard to national security. I say that it should be for the defence of the realm, for the prevention and detection of subversion, terrorism or espionage.
Then, when it comes to subversion, in order that your Lordships may have a clear definition of that, I turn, if I may, to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Denning, who once gave a definition of one who was guilty of subversion. This was his definition:
"One who would overthrow or contemplate the overthrow of the government by unlawful means".
With my very much inferior mind I have endeavoured to find words which could possibly better that short, sharp, pithy definition of what subversion should mean. If those words were used, there could be no doubt at all among those people who are very anxious about the extent of telephone tapping, who feel very worried about whether or not their organisations, which are perfectly lawful organisations, will suffer, not necessarily from this Secretary of State's warrant but from some future Secretary of State's warrant, because it is thought that they are subversive.
It is a fact that the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Greenwich, in his more mature moments when he was on the Labour Benches, and, indeed, when he was a junior Minister at the Home Office, gave in this House a definition of subversion. I shall say merely that whereas I think that that is possibly a wider definition and a little more vague, it is one which, if the House accepted it, personally I would not want to quarrel with it; although I repeat that I should have thought that the short, sharp, pithy definition of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Denning, was a very good one.
Next we come to an equally vague ground upon which a warrant can be issued. I quote it:
"for the purpose of safeguarding the economic well-being of the United Kingdom".
It is conditioned by Clause 2(3) of the Bill, which says that, in order that a warrant on this ground can be issued, the communication has to be outside the United Kingdom; the communication can be made by a British subject, but it would have to be made outside the United Kingdom.
What does,
"the economic well-being of the United Kingdom",
mean? Here it is in a Bill. I am just wondering whether I can think quickly of an example in this regard. What happens if a merchant bank in this country, carrying on its business, and of course welcoming foreigners as customers, is engaged in a conversation with a customer abroad, who is talking about the heavy selling or buying of sterling? That obviously has a national economic effect. Are we to broadcast to the world that if someone overseas indulges in a conversation of that kind on the telephone, it is possible for our Secretary of State to issue a warrant and listen in, most likely to that gentleman's detriment and possibly to the bank's detriment as well? Obviously, my Lords, we shall have to give very careful consideration to that issue.
I come now to the tribunal. The noble Viscount made a great point of saying—he was quite justified

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—that this is the built-in safeguard. The tribunal to be set up will be sitting in secret. One quite understands that this will have to happen. I wish therefore to examine this tribunal with your Lordships for a few moments in this Second Reading debate, and not merely to make Committee points, although it is useful to indicate to the Government what points may be raised in Committee.
The first point—one that your Lordships would never expect me to make—is this. The Bill says that the five members of the tribunal are all to be senior lawyers—or that they are to be lawyers. However, you can take it for granted from what has been said that they will be senior lawyers. I wonder whether it is right that the composition of this tribunal should be limited to members of the legal profession. They are not matters of great judicial complexity that will have to be decided. The whole basis is that of judicial review, as the Bill says.
The tribunal has to decide, "Was it reasonable for the Secretary of State to make the decision that he did in regard to the warrant?", and in its view "Was it reasonable that he thought it was necessary to do so?" I accept that a legal training would be useful. I accept that it would be very good to have a legal colleague sitting with you. I say a "legal colleague" but I should have said a lawyer colleague. I well understand that. But to limit the whole tribunal, not even one member of which is to be an electronics engineer—he is out, although he may be an expert on the matter—in this way, is something that I question.
The next matter that I have to mention is extraordinary. The tribunal is supposed to be the great bulwark of safeguard for the citizen. If your Lordships look at Schedule 1 to the Bill, you will find that it is sufficient for one member of the tribunal to sit and adjudicate on behalf of the whole tribunal. I do not honestly know whether the Secretary of State himself studied the schedule when he was dealing with this matter in another place. I say this with every respect. But it will be found that in the other place—I am looking at col. 1126 of the proceedings of 2nd April—he said:
"Under the Bill, the tribunal—it will not be a single judge but a tribunal comprising five people—will be empowered to do all of those things".
That, obviously, must have given the impression in another place that it would not be a single judge but that five of them would have to be sitting. The schedule to the Bill says no such thing. It says that one member of the tribunal can sit. Again, this is not a mere Committee point. It is a point of principle. Under this procedure, if the public are to feel secure that their complaints are going to be properly looked at—they are serious matters that the tribunal will have to deal with—I do not think it is good enough that they should be told that one single member of the tribunal (from which there is no appeal) can adjudicate upon a matter which they regard, quite obviously, as being so important.
Rather more fundamental than this in regard to the tribunal is that criteria were laid down in the White Paper as to how the Secretary of State is expected to
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act. I shall not recite the criteria to your Lordships because I want to try to bring my speech to an early conclusion. But the criteria were set out. They included such matters as making sure that there were no alternative methods, that alternative methods had been tried or that, in the particular case, there could be no alternative methods. Those words do not occur in the Bill. The tribunal therefore is merely looking at the Act of Parliament. It is the Act of Parliament that will be going down through the years. The tribunal will not find those criteria when deciding, as it will have to decide, whether or not the Secretary of State acted reasonably.
Lastly, I have two points. The commissioner, looking at the whole procedure under the Bill, to find out whether it is being properly administered by the Secretary of State in general terms, is, under the Bill, to report to the Prime Minister and only to the Prime Minister. What is Parliament doing? Why should not the report of the commissioner be to a Select Committee of the House? Surely, that is the proper way to deal with this, so that the House can know through its proper representatives what is going wrong or what is right. Should the commissioner's report dealing with matters in general terms, although he may refer to specific cases, just be dealt with by the commissioner and the Prime Minister, or should it go before a Select Committee of the House?
I come to my very last point. Clause 9 of the Bill, with great respect to the noble Viscount, who explained the Bill to the House in very fair terms, is a nonsense. It is a nonsense for three reasons. It is the clause that talks of the offence under Clause 1—I am putting it in shorthand—and matters connected with it, which, with certain exceptions cannot be referred to in any court or tribunal. Does one know what this means? It means, for example, that Malone would never have got his evidence because it could not have been referred to in cross-examination by counsel that something that appeared to be an unwarranted, a wrong and an unauthorised tapping of his telephone had taken place. That would have been an offence under Clause 1.
The second thing wrong with the clause is this. Post Office workers and the Post Office are included. If the Post Office dismisses one of its employees because that employee is suspected of making an unwarranted intervention on a telephone conversation and the Post Office is then brought before a tribunal for unfair dismissal, then, under this clause, at the moment, the Post Office would not be able to give evidence of the reason for its having dismissed the man. Therefore, again, it is nonsense. Thirdly, it is wrong and a nonsense because until the Government bring in their promised—and they have promised this—civil right of interference with privacy under breach of confidence, then this clause will interfere with what civil rights may be in existence until that law is brought forth.
I have finished, but I believe that your Lordships, being the direct or indirect parents of the Bill, would want, as I have said before, to study its provisions—because the liberty of the subject is at stake—with the very greatest care in the supervening stages of what is a very important enactment.
4.20 p.m.
Lord Harris of Greenwich: My Lords, I welcome the fact that we are debating this Bill today, but I do not propose to go through the history of it. I agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, said. His version of history was rather more accurate than that of the Home Secretary in another place. That is undoubtedly the position, but I found it remarkable that the Home Secretary spent quite so much time boasting that it was a truly wonderful thing that the Government brought forward this Bill without at any stage referring to the fact that the only reason it was being brought forward was that the Government had been defeated in this House.
However, as we recall from what he said last year, the noble Viscount gave an undertaking then that we would have this Bill and he has entirely fulfilled his bargain, as we would expect. But as the noble Viscount will realise, our debate today is bound to range over rather wider territory than that covered by the Bill itself; for the Bill deals not only with activities involving the police but also those involving the intelligence community. After the report of the Security Commission on the case of Mr. Michael Bettaney and the allegations on the Channel 4 programme involving Miss Massiter, it is clearly our duty to raise these matters in the House today.
First, I turn to the contents of the Bill. I believe that telephone and mail interception is highly necessary in a number of clearly defined and strictly limited circumstances: for instance, where it is the only means of detecting and bringing to justice people involved in serious crime. In such a case I believe it is essential. May I take just one fairly obvious example.
As we all know, we are now faced with an alarming increase in the trafficking in narcotics. This is a major problem in many parts of the country and it is growing, as again we all know, at a most disturbing rate. High quality professional criminals are continuing to move into this trade and are establishing relationships both with the Mafia and with criminal elements in south-east Asia and South America. It seems to me not only desirable but absolutely essential that the police and customs authorities are given encouragement to use both the existing powers and those set out in this Bill to apply for warrants to help them bring to justice these dangerous men and women.
There is only one point that I would make on this to the noble Viscount; it is that in the 1980 White Paper, and repeated in the most recent White Paper, the Government said that a test applied by Ministers in authorising a warrant was whether or not the alleged offence was serious. This is defined—I am aware this happened during the period of the previous Government—as to whether the person concerned, if he had no previous convictions, could reasonably be expected to be sentenced to at least three years' imprisonment. I am bound to say that I find three years' imprisonment rather on the low side. I suspect that in the overwhelming majority of cases where warrants have been applied for and granted by the Secretary of State, they would have been issued even if the test had been five rather than three years. I am bound to say I would prefer the higher figure, and I
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hope that the noble Viscount and Ministers will consider this point at a later stage.
Quite apart from issues of crime, there are other circumstances which clearly necessitate the use of intercepts, as the noble Viscount said in his own speech. I believe the case for this approach was argued in the most persuasive terms by the European Court of Human Rights itself in the Klass case of 1978 when it said in its judgment, and I quote:
"Democratic societies nowadays find themselves threatened by highly sophisticated forms of espionage and terrorism with the result that the State must be able in order effectively to counter such threats to undertake the secret surveillance of subversive elements operating within its jurisdiction. The court has therefore to accept that the existence of some legislation granting powers of secret surveillance over mail, post and telecommunications is, under exceptional circumstances, necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security and/or for the prevention of terrorism or crime".
That is the European Court of Human Rights in the Klass case. As I have indicated, I think it got it just about right, because this country is threatened, as are our colleagues in the European Community, with espionage directed by the KGB and from East European embassies, and also by a sustained campaign of terrorist violence. We have also to accept that the level of collaboration between terrorist organisations is growing. Not only that; there is now regular contact between many of the terrorist organisations, and some of them have even been involved in joint operations. In these respects, I believe the powers set out in the Bill are justified.
But the question before us today is not just whether the Bill deals satisfactorily with these issues and with the Malone case, or whether (to take an example) the members of the tribunal to be appointed under the terms of the Bill should be appointed by Ministers or by some independent authority; it is whether, following recent revelations involving the security service and the secret intelligence service, the Bill should not cover far wider territory. It is this issue I now propose to discuss.
First, when discussing matters of this sort, if we are frank with ourselves we have to accept one deeply unpalatable truth; that is, that as a nation our record in security cases over the past 40 years has been dreadful. We have had the atom spies. They gravely damaged our relations with the United States, to the immense benefit of the Soviet Union. We have had the cases of Burgess, Maclean, Philby and Blunt, all men with a most direct involvement in our intelligence community, all passing on some of the highest secrets of state to the Soviet Union. We had Blake, an intelligence officer who became a Soviet agent and caused the deaths of several of our own agents in eastern Europe. And only two years ago we had the case of Mr. Geoffrey Prime. He was a Soviet agent for 13 years, first with the Royal Air Force in Berlin and later with GCHQ. Then, as your Lordships may remember, Mr. Prime was brought to justice, not as a result of the activities of our own counter-intelligence service but as the result of an investigation into a number of sex offences by the West Mercia police.
Most recently we have had the case of Mr. Michael Bettaney, an MI5 officer who offered his services to the Soviet Union as a spy. I welcome the detailed recent report on this matter by the Security Commission. But

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I still find it quite extraordinary that a man involved in highly secret work continued to drink the equivalent of a bottle of spirits a day without it apparently occurring to anybody that it was a good idea to have another look at his positive vetting status. The Bettaney case was serious enough in itself. What made it even more disgraceful was that it was the last in a whole series of scandals which have affected our intelligence community. I consider that this case and the deplorable series of cases that preceded it make it necessary for us to consider whether it is not now essential to write into this piece of legislation specific statutory requirements affecting the accountability of both MI5 and MI6.
At present the position of the Government on this appears to be inflexible. "Leave it to us", they say. "These matters are far too sensitive to allow any outsiders to become involved" they say. The only trouble about that particular argument is that Parliament has followed precisely that advice in the past. They left it to Government after the defection of Burgess and Maclean. They did the same in the Philby case, in the Blake case and in the Blunt case. Two years ago they left it to Ministers after the revelations in the Prime case. Are we in Parliament really going to tolerate the same cosy complacency after the revelations in the Bettaney case?
Then there have been the allegations of Miss Massiter and an unnamed former MI5 officer in the recent Channel Four programme. What was alleged here was altogether different. Two serious charges were made. First, it was suggested that, in deliberate breach of the Maxwell Fyfe guidelines, Ministry of Defence officials obtained information from MI5 about the political beliefs of members of the executive committee of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, for use by Ministers. Secondly, it was alleged that the definition of a subversive, as given by me in this House in 1975 and as was quoted a few moments ago by the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, was misused so as to enable telephone intercepts to be used against the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.
What was alleged here was that a warrant was secured for intercepts against a Communist Party member who was on the executive of the CND and that, as a result, information was obtained relating to many non-Communists in that organisation. I hardly have to say that I am not regarded as a particular friend of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Indeed, since I was Hugh Gaitskell's personal assistant 25 years ago and watched the CND marching round a hotel in Scarborough chanting "Gaitskell must go", I have regarded the CND as dedicated political opponents.
However, there is a big distinction between political opponents and a subversive organisation. I do not regard the CND as a subversive organisation, either within the definition as given by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Denning, or as given by me in this House in 1975; nor, am I am glad to say, does the Home Secretary, who made his position on that clear. That being so, when allegations of the kind made by Miss Massiter and others are publicised, and widely publicised, I believe that it is necessary that they should be investigated by someone.
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I believe that there are a number of possibilities. The first is that which was put forward by Sir Edward Gardner, a Conservative Member of the House of Commons. During the Committee stage of this Bill in the Commons, he proposed that there should be an independent complaints commissioner standing outside MI5 and MI6, who could be approached by members of these two organisations if they believed that some improprieties were taking place. Given the very difficult position of members of both these services, it seems to me to be crucially important that some attention should be given to this particular proposal of Sir Edward Gardner. The commissioner, as recommended by Sir Edward, would, as I have indicated, have a right to look into these complaints by members of MI5 and MI6 and then report his findings to the Secretary of State.
If I may give a single example relating to Miss Massiter, I think it is only right to say that, as I indicated earlier, she alleged that there had been a deliberate breach of the Maxwell Fyfe guidelines—the directive issued by Sir David Maxwell Fyfe when he was Home Secretary some time ago—by members of MI5. I have no idea whether that allegation is true or false, but it seems to me essential that if members of both these services are genuinely concerned about what is going on, they should have a right to go to some independent person who can look into the matter and, if necessary, report on the question to the appropriate Secretary of State. As I have indicated, I think that the House should look at this particular proposal. I believe that it is a modest one and I think that it would represent a considerable improvement on the present situation.
Then there is the far more wide-ranging proposal to establish a small committee—be it a Select Committee of the House, as suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, or, as I would prefer, a small committee of Privy Counsellors from both Houses of Parliament—to consider intelligence issues from time to time. I favour that approach. I think it is quite apparent that many of the issues that I have mentioned today raise highly sensitive questions about the efficiency of our two intelligence organisations which obviously cannot be freely debated in public. Unlike other issues, they obviously do not fall into that category. That being so, I believe that it is the responsibility of Ministers to reasure both Parliament and the country that vigorous action is being taken to bring to an end this deplorable series of security blunders which has taken place under Governments of both political persuasions and which, unhappily, has damaged the reputation of both MI5 and MI6 and, for entirely understandable reasons, has led to some lowering of morale among members of both organisations.
I hope that we shall not be told once again that these issues are so sensitive that no one outside Government can possibly be allowed to have any knowledge of them. I believe that that argument would be very hard indeed to accept. First, in the United States, Congress has a degree of over-sight of both the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Central Intelligence Agency, and the United States has rather more secrets to protect than we do. Secondly, as a result of the sheer scale of past Soviet penetration of our own security organisations, I believe that it would be foolish to

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suggest that more damage would have been done to this country's vital interests if there had been some consistent monitoring by a committee of senior Privy Counsellors, than by the lamentable series of episodes which, as we know, have taken place.
I believe that the Government have to accept that there is public disquiet about the past failures of our intelligence community. I hope that they will recognise this and, by agreeing to amendments to this Bill, use it to store the morale of both organisations and public confidence about their competence.

British Rail Engineering Ltd: Job Losses
4.38 p.m.
Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, with the leave of the House, I shall now repeat in the form of a Statement the Answer which has been given to a Private Notice Question in another place on the announcement of job losses in British Rail Engineering Limited. The Answer is as follows:
"At a meeting of their Joint Consultative Committee on 15th May, the management of British Rail Engineering Ltd. informed the unions that they had reluctantly come to the conclusion that it would be necessary to make further reductions in manpower within BREL.
"A year ago the management had already informed the unions at the equivalent meeting of proposed reductions. Their latest evaluation of workload, however, shows a futher reduction of 13 per cent. in repair work. The company has therefore concluded that they need to reduce manpower by a further 1,300 over the next two years.
"It may be helpful to the House if I explain these workload projections, Mr. Speaker. The demand for railway repair and maintenance has declined because of BR's decisions to invest in new rolling stock. In particular, investment in new diesel multiple units with higher performance means that the same frequency of services can now be provided with fewer trains; and each of those fewer units requires less maintenance. Major programmes of refurbishment, particularly the stripping of asbestos from older vehicles, are also nearing completion. This has been a significant part of the recent workload.
"In the light of this reduced demand, BR and BREL have, with considerable regret, decided that they must propose to the unions a sizeable rundown of the Glasgow Springburn Works and some further manpower reductions at other works, particularly Doncaster and Eastleigh. Most regrettably of all, they have decided, after considering the position carefully, that there is insufficent work to maintain the BREL works at Swindon after March 1986.
"Mr. Speaker, I know these proposals will be a hard blow to the communities concerned particularly to Swindon. But British Rail and BREL have considered the matter carefully and concluded that a reduction of capacity on this scale is unavoidable. There will, of course, be an opportunity for all the possibilities to be re-examined fully in the consultations with the employees that now follow BREL's announcement.
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"BR and BREL will do all that they can to find alternative work for redundant employees by offering opportunities to transfer to other works, and by encouraging business development and job creation at both Swindon and Glasgow."
My Lords, that concludes the Statement.
Lord Carmichael of Kelvingrove: My Lords, I wish to thank the Minister for repeating in the form of a Statement the Answer to the Private Notice Question. I am sure that the House will realise that it is a serious Statement for a number of old, well established railway communities, particularly that of Swindon, which has a long tradition of railway work, as well as my own town of Glasgow, where the Springburn works have been building and maintaining railway rolling stock for more than 120 years, and where railway work is an absolutely vital part of the community. It was built with the railways, and this is a sad day.
Is the Minister aware that the announcement shows an acceleration of the loss of jobs which British Rail Engineering said would take place over a 10-year period? Only last May they said that 1,700 jobs would go at Swindon and 900 at Springburn. This was bad enough, but now Swindon is to close entirely and Springburn is to be reduced to a mere 460, which must mean that the people remaining at Springburn will be very anxious about whether or not they have any future.
We all recognise the impact of technological change, but the Government, as well as the industry, have a duty to prepare for the new situation arising from this change. The question must be: are the Government taking this responsibility seriously? With regard to the freight loco replacement plan—I raised this earlier with the Minister in another context—the British Rail Board are believed to have put out tenders for prototype models of the new freight locos. I understand that tender offers have gone to seven companies, mainly foreign. Applications are expected back in the winter, and the models should arrive by 1987. Although there are only small batches up for tender just now, the company which wins the tender will have entry into a large market, producing a large number of locomotives, about 750 over the next 25 years.
Does the Minister really believe that other Governments would allow overseas penetration in a field such as this if they had the skills of design and manufacture that we undoubtedly have in these old workshops? I believe that the other countries would give their indigenous industry the breathing space if needed, including in many cases allowing temporary protection to the firms to meet the new challenges. Can the Minister tell the House whether any such help has been offered to British Rail Engineering in respect of the new freight locomotives?
Lord Harris of Greenwich: My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement to this House. May I ask him two questions? First, would he not agree that there is bound to be increasing public concern that this proposal will not only damage the West of Scotland, as the noble Lord, Lord Carmichael, has pointed out, but will also do devastating damage to the

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town of Swindon? It represents a further run-down of our productive capacity in this country at a time when increasing public concern is being expressed by many leading figures in business and industry as to the scale of what has been happening.
In the light of that situation I should like to ask two questions. First, given the fact that there are suggestions that substantial orders are going to be placed by British Rail in the United States, is there not now some urgent need to reconsider that position to see whether it is possible that work of this kind can be put out for tendering within the United Kingdom? Secondly, the Minister referred to British Rail's desire to consider certain job creation possibilities in Swindon and elsewhere. What specifically does this mean? Does it mean, for instance, that British Rail will repeat the example of British Steel and set up a wholly-owned subsidiary like British Steel Industries to create employment opportunities for small businessmen, people who are prepared to start businesses of their own within the supportive environment of a company such as British Steel Industries? Can not that be done in Swindon and elsewhere? Can we have an assurance from the noble Lord that it will be done?
Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, I thank both noble Lords for their reception of the Statement. Perhaps I may first answer the last question concerning the possibilities of job creation in both Swindon and Glasgow. In Swindon British Rail have set up a company called Swindon Holdings to develop redundant parts of the work site. They are already working on the east side of the works. They are studying a consultant's report on the scope for redevelopment potential for industrial and housing use and are aiming to set up a managed workshop by the end of the year. In February they announced that £750,000 was initially available for alternative employment, and in view of yesterday's announcement that figure could be raised.
In Glasgow they have made £500,000 available through discussions with the local enterprise agency, Glasgow Opportunities, and they hope to finalise a package there to assist in finding new employment. Again, in view of yesterday's announcement that figure will probably have to rise.
The noble Lords, Lord Carmichael and Lord Hams of Greenwich, both asked me about the possibility of future orders for locomotives going overseas. Perhaps I may remind both noble Lords that neither Swindon nor Glasgow was actually engaged in the manufacture of locomotives; they were engaged in the maintenance of locomotives.
One reason this sad decision has had to be made is to enable British Rail Engineering to become more competitive and tender for work of this sort, whether in whole manufacture or in part contracts. Any suggestion that we are definitely going to order locomotives from the United States is quite wrong. No such decision has been made. Certainly we hope that many United Kingdom companies will tender, and tender successfully, for these orders.
Lord Shinwell: My Lords, we have been frequently told by Members of the Government that one of the
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causes of increased unemployment is inflation in wage rates; that is to say, wages go up and as a result unemployment is caused. Are we to believe that that applies in this particular instance, where so far as British Rail are concerned they close down their workshops and there is a loss of orders which has nothing at all to do with wage rates?
If I am right in my observations and in recalling what Government spokesmen have said, what is going to be done about this increase in unemployment? It goes on all over the place. The effect on a place such as Swindon must be disastrous. There have already been considerable reductions in the workforce in that area. For this to happen now will affect not only those associated with British Rail but also shopkeepers. A vast variety of people engaged in trade are concerned. The effects will be far too widespread for this to be allowed to happen without something being done.
Surely in these circumstances the time has arrived to consider whether we cannot engage in a constructive effort to deal with matters that have not been attended to for many years, either because the costs of the equipment were excessive or because it was thought that merely to provide additional equipment for sewers, drainage and the like would not provide more employment. It is a matter of judgment, a matter of opinion. In these circumstances, what is to be done about it? Or is nothing to be done about it?
Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, first I should explain to the noble Lord, Lord Shinwell, that the reason for these sad closures is largely, as I hoped I had explained, the increase in efficiency of the new rolling stock. For every three old-style trains which British Rail used they now need only two of the new diesel multiple units; and each new diesel multiple unit requires 30 per cent. to 40 per cent. less maintenance than the present rolling stock. All that adds up to approximately half the work that needed to be done before. The noble Lord asked me what we were doing to help create extra jobs in these areas. I have tried to answer that in my previous replies.
Lord Stoddart of Swindon: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that I had the honour to represent Swindon for a long period of time? The news that Swindon works is to close has come as a devastating blow to me as it has to the people of Swindon. Is he further aware that this year the town will celebrate the 150th anniversary of the opening of Swindon works? Tens of thousands of visitors from all over Britain will go through the Swindon works only to be told that there will be no 151st anniversary. That is terribly sad, and I hope the Minister agrees. That is another part of our heritage which has been destroyed by present policy.
Is the Minister further aware that the workers at Swindon railway works have co-operated over a long period of time and have improved productivity several-fold? They now feel betrayed and kicked in the teeth by a Government who appear not to care about the railway system and by a Prime Minister who unfortunately refuses to travel in a British train. Does the noble Lord realise that throughout this country we have much clapped-out rolling stock and a lot of clapped-out railway equipment, particularly in the

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south-east commuter belt? Does he realise that if a really good effort were made to replace all this stock there would be adequate work for Swindon and all other railway works where they are to lose men?
Is he further aware that it will be seen as an outrage in Swindon and elsewhere that British Rail could even contemplate buying 1,500 locomotives from abroad? Although he says that Swindon has not built railway engines for some time, it has built them for export. What is more, Swindon and other railway works throughout the country could contribute towards building these railway engines in this country. Indeed, Swindon has and continues to have a part to play in the railway work of this country. I fear that present railway policy and Government policy will ensure that in the future we shall very much regret this decision because we shall be very short of railway engineering capacity.
Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, while I fully recognise the long association of the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, with Swindon—it is sad that on the occasion of its 150th anniversary this decision had to be made—British Rail carefully considered the options and they concluded that the closure of Swindon was the only sensible option for the overall viability of British Rail Engineering. Each works has special skills, equipment and functions, and on future workload forecasts Swindon could not be guaranteed a sufficient workload to be viable. It was a difficult managment decision for British Rail. We back their judgment and there is no question of Government pressure either way on British Rail.
As for investment in the railways, this Government have a record second to none. Since 1979 we have invested £2½ billion at today's prices. In the last 18 months alone we have approved 12 major projects worth over £580 million. We have approved the electrification of the east coast main line, which is a £306 million investment, and British Rail's corporate plan projects further spending on investment of £2.2 billion over the next five years. I think that record speaks for itself.
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: My Lords, in the light of the understandable emotion of the noble Lord opposite, is it nonetheless fair to say that so far from this situation resulting from having a Government who did not care about the railways, the figures of Government investment which my noble friend on the Front Bench has given show the contrary? Is it not a paradox that it is the greater efficiency obtained as a result of that massive investment that has caused this situation? Is there not great danger for British industry in harking back over 150 years instead of seeking to grasp the opportunity which modern technology, backed by massive investment, can bring about?
Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, I quite agree with my noble friend. That is why British Rail Engineering has had to make these difficult decisions to be able to compete in both the home and export markets in years to come.
Baroness Phillips: My Lords, is the Minister aware that as a constant customer of British Rail I am completely astonished to learn that it is much more
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efficient? Last week I made three journeys to totally different parts and in each case there was a breakdown and a delay. That hardly fits in with his description of greater efficiency. It seems to me that we have never been in greater need of these engineering works because not only do we need more locomotives, but we need a much more efficient service. British Rail is in a sad state of decline. Anyone who uses it constantly and compares it with even 10 years ago will know exactly what I mean.
Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, I am sorry that the noble Baroness feels that way. I am afraid that all I can say is that I disagree with her.
Lord Boothby: My Lords, I agree that in the end one cannot stop the march of modern science and modern technology. Nothing can stop it. Men are now being replaced by the machines which they themselves created. That is a situation which will get steadily worse not better, whatever Government are in power. I should like to urge the Government to give some consideration to the problem that, while we have a substantial, very well paid, highly technical pool of workers, we shall soon have at least as large a pool of unemployed with nothing to do because the machines are doing it for them. Can we consider some method by which these young people can be given a life worth living, unconnected with technical production?
Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, the question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Boothby, goes rather wide of the immediate Statement that I have had to make. But I agree with him and, as I said earlier, I hope that what can be done at Swindon and in Glasgow will be successful in providing new employment.
Lord Carmichael of Kelvingrove: My Lords, have any arrangements been made about the possibility of those who work in the workshops in Swindon and Glasgow being offered alternative employment throughout the railway industry as a whole?
Lord Brabazon of Tara: Yes, my Lords, I said that in my original Statement. British Rail would do all it could to find alternative work for redundant employees by offering opportunities to transfer to other works.

Public Order Legislation: Review
5 p.m.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Home Office (Lord Glenarthur): My Lords, with the leave of the House, I shall now repeat a Statement about the review of public order law which is now being made in another place by my right honourable friend the Home Secretary. The Statement is as follows:
"The Government are today publishing a White Paper announcing the conclusions of the review, which was commenced in 1979, and which I have conducted in conjunction with the Secretary of State for Scotland. In conducting the review we have taken into account the lessons to be learned from the varying forms of major public disorder in recent

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years. We have also considered carefully the response to the 1980 Green Paper on the Public Order Act 1936 and related legislation, the report of the Select Committee on Home Affairs, Lord Scarman's report on the Brixton riots and the Law Commission's proposals for the codification of the common law public order offences.
"The rights of peaceful protest and assembly are among our fundamental freedoms: they are numbered among the touchstones which distinguish a free society from a totalitarian one. But these rights, fundamental though they are, have never been regarded as absolute.
"The European Convention on Human Rights, for example, in the article guaranteeing the right to freedom of peaceful assembly, recognises that it may need to be restricted by law for the prevention of disorder and for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.
"Even so, any limitations on the rights of peaceful protest and assembly should be imposed to the minimum extent necessary to preserve order and protect the ordinary citizen. That has been our approach in this review.
"Most of the present law relating to these matters is either to be found in the Public Order Act 1936 or derives from the common law. The 1936 Act was passed to deal with a particular problem of the day: the threat to freedom posed by the fascist use of intimidation and violence. It is hardly surprising that since 1936 different problems should have come to the fore and the rights of the citizen should need protection from altogether different sorts of threat.
"None the less, the review has revealed no yawning gaps in the law. It is also important to bear in mind that even where there may be a theoretical case for change, there is no point in passing laws or conferring powers which are of no practical value because they are unenforceable. There are, however, a number of areas where the law can and should be extended and clarified, mainly in improving the opportunities for the police to try to prevent disorder or disruption before it occurs.
"To this end, the first proposed change is the introduction in England and Wales of a national requirement to give advance notice of marches, subject to certain exemptions for religious and traditional processions and those for which longer notice is not possible. A requirement of advance notice already exists in Scotland and certain other parts of the country and helps reduce the risk of disorder by giving the police and organisers time to make the necessary preparations.
"Under the Public Order Act the powers of the police to impose conditions on a march are confined to circumstances when serious public disorder is anticipated. We have concluded that the power to impose conditions should also apply where what is anticipated is a serious disruption of the life of the community or the coercion of individuals. There will, however, be the opportunity to challenge police conditions imposed on any of these grounds in the courts, and there will be no extension of the existing power to ban marches.
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"One of the major developments of recent years has been that the threat to public order or to the rights of the individual is nowadays often posed not by a march but by a static demonstration or assembly—whether it is a football crowd that has turned into a mob or a mass picket behaving in an intimidatory manner.
"The use of open-air assemblies is, however, so fundamental to free speech and the right to protest that we think it would be quite wrong to confer any power to ban them. But where such assemblies threaten to result in serious public disorder, serious disruption or the coercion of individuals we have concluded that it is right for the police to have the power to impose limitations on the number of people present, the location and the duration of the assembly. The imposition of such conditions would also of course be subject to challenge in the courts.
"The power to impose conditions would apply in the case of all types of assembly in the open air. We do not, for the most part, consider that there should be special limitations on particular types of demonstration, such as pickets or demonstrations by foreign nationals. It is both in principle and in practice preferable for the general law to apple, and we consider that the general changes we propose are adequate to deal with disorder and violence whatever its cause or source.
"One of the most objectionable assaults on the rights of the individual citizen is the use of intimidation against his person or property in an attempt to prevent him doing what he has a legal right to do or force him to do what he has a right to abstain from doing. Such conduct is already an offence under Section 7 of the Conspiracy and Protection of Property Act. But for this to be an effective remedy it is not sufficient for the police to bring charges after the event. They must be able to nip intimidation in the bud. We therefore propose that this offence should carry a specific power of arrest, and that the maximum penalty should be increased from three months' and £100 fine to six months' imprisonment or a fine of £2,000.
"I turn now to the common law public order offences. In England and Wales the Law Commission have recommended the modernisation of the offences of riot, unlawful assembly and affray. Subject to certain minor amendments, the Government propose to accept their recommendations for the new statutory offences of riot, violent disorder (the successor to unlawful assembly) and affray. These changes will not significantly affect the overall scope of the criminal law. But they will restate these offences in clearer, more modern language; they will introduce statutory maximum penalties and give prosecutors greater flexibility over the mode of trial, by enabling less serious cases of affray and violent disorder to be tried in a magistrates' court.
"The White Paper contains a number of other improvements to public order law, including some tightening up of the offence of incitement to racial hatred; but I have outlined the main proposals which will apply in England and Wales. Scotland already has some of the provisions we now propose for marches, including advance notice. The

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regulatory powers of local authorities there over marches will continue, and the police will be given the same powers as in England and Wales to impose conditions both on marches and on static assemblies. The proposed change to the Conspiracy and Protection of Property Act and those on incitement to racial hatred will extend to Scotland, but the common law there will remain unchanged pending recommendations from the Scottish Law Commission on mobbing and rioting.
"As the House already knows, legislation will also be introduced in England and Wales to control the availability of alcohol at or on the way to football matches along the lines of the existing Scottish legislation.
"Mr. Speaker, the White Paper contains a set of proposals which bring up to date the age-old balance between fundamental but sometimes competing rights in our society. We must and shall continue to preserve the basic and crucial right to freedom of speech and freedom of assembly. These freedoms are essential to any democratic society. They must be given full and effective protection. But people also have the right to protection against being bullied, hurt, intimidated or obstructed, whatever the motive of those responsible may be, whether they are violent demonstrators, rioters, intimidatory mass pickets or soccer hooligans. I believe these proposals will contribute in a practical way to protecting both sets of freedoms."
My Lords, that concludes the Statement.
5.9 p.m.
Lord Elwyn-Jones: My Lords, the House will be grateful to the noble Lord for repeating the Statement of the Home Secretary. The review of public order law was set up as far back as June 1979, arising from the fearful and tragic Southall disturbances. It is right, of course, that a good deal of time should have been taken over the consideration of what should best be done, bearing in mind the necessity to strike a proper balance between the interests of society in the maintenance of law and order and the right of the individual to enjoy civil liberties.
We are presented with a White Paper which comes out today for the first time. I make no complaint about that fact, but it means that we cannot give a full and considered judgment to the important changes that are proposed, altering the common law in a number of ways, until we have had an opportunity of examining not only the White Paper but, what will be more important even than that, the Bill which will be introduced in due course to give effect to the proposals. Can the Minister say when it is proposed to publish such a Bill and to legislate upon this matter? Certainly, some of the proposals give some satisfaction; but some, in our view, taking an interim view of the matter at the moment, do not go anything like far enough.
I noticed that early in the Statement it was said that the 1936 Public Order Act was passed to deal with a particular problem of the day—the threat to freedom posed by the Fascist use of intimidation and violence. That use continues, particularly in the areas where a large number of our friends from the Dominions and other places are now found. The conditions in places
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like Newham and Tower Hamlets have become positively alarming because of the outrageous ways in which racist threats are being made as well as intimidation, and apparently the police are powerless to intervene. So we shall look to a hardening of the law in that direction.
The White Paper draws attention to the intolerable situation of masses of racially inflammatory material being exposed, as I know it is, in areas near Brick Lane, and this is done with impunity. What, apparently, the White Paper proposes is to create an offence of possessing racially inflammatory material with a view to distribution or publication. But then it goes on to say that someone who was handed a racially inflammatory leaflet in the street would not be committing an offence. I am not sure that that is good enough. Clearly, someone keeping several hundred leaflets for distribution will come within the scope of what is proposed, and that is good so far as it goes. But this goes to emphasise the importance of waiting to see precisely what is to be included in the legislation before we pass judgment upon it. But so far as it goes, this is a necessary and welcome step to prevent this vice of racial inflammation going on in the heart of many of our communities.
There are other important changes in the law which are proposed. There is the suggestion of modernising the offences of riot, unlawful assembly and affray, and new offences are to be created. The result of some of these changes will be to enable less serious cases of affray and violent disorder to be tried in a magistrates' court. There again we shall have to see how that is defined. Removing the right to trial by jury in serious offences of that kind is clearly an important step which we shall have to consider with great care.
Then, on the problem of how to deal with intimidation of those going about their lawful occasions, what is proposed, as I understand it, is to give the police power of arrest without warrant in those circumstances. This is an important and potentially perilous development in regard to the necessity for maintaining a good relationship between the public and the police. But here again we shall have to see how the proposal is spelled out in detail before we can pass judgment upon it.
The prohibition of marches has had to be considered and particularly we think in an election period, when excitement is great. Marches at that time are of great importance, especially marches with racial overtones. In some elections, we have seen that they have proved very damaging indeed to public order. As I said, the provision in regard to giving the police power to arrest without warrant in a new sphere is something of importance.
I feel that at this stage, when we are without the real material upon which to decide on these matters, it is better to withhold any final judgment. But as regards the emphasis on the intention to punish and penalise those who are guilty of a breach of civil liberties in achieving their purposes, we welcome an approach along those lines and we shall await with interest the production of the Bill to give effect to these proposals. We shall then no doubt examine them with responsible care.
5.17 p.m.
Lord Wigoder: My Lords, we welcome the publication of the White Paper in order to bring the whole area of public order law up to date. It follows, perhaps somewhat belatedly, the Green Paper of April 1980, the Home Affairs Committee's report of August 1980, and of course the Law Commission's very useful report of October 1983. Only one or two comments might be helpful at this stage until one has had a chance of studying the White Paper.
First, I must say that I have some sympathy with the comments in the Statement about marches. I have never quite understood the viewpoint that there is an inalienable right in a human being to collect together with a large number of other ones, in order to march through streets carrying indecipherable placards and bringing the life of the neighbourhood to a complete standstill. Certainly, I believe it is quite right that restrictions should be envisaged where the location for such a march is quite deliberately chosen in order to cause the maximum amount of provocation and, if possible, the greatest danger to the public peace by the creation of acts of violence taking place under the noses of television cameras specifically invited along for that very purpose. We shall look forward with interest to see precisely what restrictions are imposed in the interests of the public as a whole.
Secondly, I note the comments made about public assemblies, and in particular the somewhat curious one that the police should have the right to impose limitations on the number of people present. How this will work I do not know. I envisage a somewhat curious situation in which organisers of a demonstration are told that in Trafalgar Square the limit is 5,000 and the inspector in charge of the police says that there are 5,001 present, but the organisers say, "No, there are only 4,999". I hope that before any such artificial proposal is put forward, the Government will think about the slightly absurd consequences that might result.
Thirdly, I support what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Elwyn-Jones, has said about the suggestion that trial by jury might in some respects be diminished. I hope very much that that will not take place. Any right of trial by jury that is diminished in any way will meet with a great deal of resistance by my noble friends on these Benches because we all know that it will be the thin end of a wedge and might be expanded very rapidly as soon as the opportunity presents itself.
Finally, perhaps I may ask the noble Lord the Minister a very simple question. I am sure he is aware that on a number of occasions recently at public inquiries the whole purpose of those inquiries has been frustrated by those who have deliberately indulged in disorder. I refer in particular to the inquiries at Archway and Highgate. If the criminal law in its present form is able to cope with those outbreaks of public disorder then clearly it is not being used. I should like to ask the noble Lord the Minister, why not? If, as I rather suspect, the criminal law is not adequate at the moment to deal with those who deliberately bring public inquiries to a complete halt, may I ask the Minister whether the Government have considered creating a specific offence to deal with that very real problem?
Earl Bathurst: Mr Lords, may I—
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, perhaps I may respond, first, to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Elwyn-Jones, and to the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, and thank them for their comments and for what I believe to be a general welcome for what is proposed in the White Paper.
The first thing I have to say is that a Whitt. Paper such as this requires a study over a period of time. It might encourage the noble and learned Lord. Lord Elwyn-Jones, if I say that he will find at Chapter Nine where it summarises the proposals the comment:
"The Government would particularly welcome comments on the proposals marked with an asterisk".
Those are two on which he and other noble Lords will no doubt comment.
With regard to timing for legislation, I can say to the noble and learned Lord that we intend to bring forward proposals at the first legislative opportunity. I cannot go further than that but I hope he will accept that in the way it is intended. In regard to the offence of incitement to racial hatred and why there is a need to strengthen it, the offence will be strengthened, first, by extending it to conduct which is likely or intended to stir up racial hatred. This is necessary to catch material which is circulated to groups of people, such as clergymen, Members of another place and no doubt even ourselves, who are unlikely themselves to be incited to racial hatred. The second way in which it will be strengthened is by making it an offence to possess racially inflammatory material with a view to distribution or publication. This is being introduced because of the difficulty of bringing prosecutions against those who produce or supply racially inflammatory material unless a specific instance of distribution can be proved against them.
On the question of marches, the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, was encouraged by what he had read. The Select Committee recommended a requirement of advance notice, as did the noble and learned Lord, Lord Scarman, in his report on the Brixton riots. An advance notice requirement currently exists in Scotland and in 92 local authority areas in England and Wales; and its works very well. The Government are merely proposing an extension of these arrangements to the rest of the country. Most responsible organisers of marches already give advance notice to the police. The statutory requirement will simply formalise that practice.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Elwyn-Jones, asked me about the minimum period of seven days' notice, particularly with regard to times such as elections when it might be considered too short. The period must be sufficient for the police to conduct the very necessary discussions with the organisers and to make their own preparations. It is clearly desirable for organisers to get in touch with the police before distributing publicity about the route of their march, and so on. Seven days is the statutory period of notice in Scotland and, as I have said, we propose to adopt the same period in England and Wales. As far as I can see, this must be a benefit both to the police and to the organisers of marches.
On the question of affray and violent disorder and the kind of points which the noble Lord, Lord

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Wigoder, raised just now, other offences carrying higher maximum penalties—theft and burglary—are triable either way. No case can be tried in a magistrates' court except with the consent of prosecution and defendant. Most cases will probably continue to be tried in the Crown Court, but it would enable less serious cases to be tried more speedily and more economically. That I think would serve us well.
On the question of public inquiries and the disruption that has occurred in the past—I am well aware of the sort of thing to which the noble Lord refers—the noble Lord will find the answers to the points that he raised in paragraph 5.17 on page 36 of the White Paper. I will not necessarily read it out now but I hope that that will answer the questions he raised.
Those are the immediate questions that were asked. If I have missed out any I shall certainly study them and write to both noble Lords.
Earl Bathurst: My Lords, may I ask my noble friend whether this measure, which I imagine every law-abiding citizen in this country would welcome, will allow the banning of gatherings which, it may be guessed, will damage either public or private property? From what the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder said, numbers can be reduced. If the noble Lord cannot answer on that matter, I wonder whether it could be considered at another stage or at another time, so that this measure can be made to cover gatherings which are likely to damage either public or private property? Trafalgar Square was mentioned by the noble Lord opposite. I can think of many other places in connection with the public point of view, but I am thinking in particular of private property. I do not expect an answer now.
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, I am afraid that I cannot give an answer in quite the terms that my noble friend asks, but I shall certainly study his remarks and let him know.
Lord Monson: My Lords, does the noble Lord the Minister not agree that, as the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, hinted, the right of ordinary peace-loving citizens to go about their lawful business without being intimidated or, for that matter, obstructed by mobs, is every bit as important as the right of demonstrators to demonstrate? It is on that basis that the fine print of the Government's proposed legislation will be judged.
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, I hope that I made clear when I repeated the Statement, and my right honourable friend made clear in making the Statement, that that was one of the most important features of the White Paper and the proposals that might eventually stem from it.
Lord Somers: My Lords, I am personally very happy that the White Paper states what it does. I should like to make one point. A march is not really necessary at all; nor does it ever really achieve anything that it intends to. Those who organise a public march no doubt hold very firm convictions themselves but they very seldom manage to convince anybody who is watching them. I think that all of us have very firm convictions about many things, but we would convince nobody else by going out and organising a
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march through the streets. Therefore I think that the only motive behind organising a march is to cause a little excitement which may sometimes escalate to dangerous heights.
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Somers, is certainly entitled to his view on that. I suspect that his remarks might quite well be addressed to those who organise the marches.
Lord Mishcon: My Lords, would the noble Lord not agree that the ability to march and demonstrate is all part of a British tradition? Would he not accept from me that it enables a lot of people to get rid of a lot of steam in regard to something about which they feel fervently and is therefore a good reason why they should not indulge in any other rather more energetic enterprise which may indeed lead to a breach of public order?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Somers, expressed the view that marches do not achieve anything. I was not attempting to make a judgment. I am sure that a march does allow people to let off steam. The point is that in doing so they should not necessarily trespass against other people and bring about all the other difficulties which might occur. That is why the proposals in the White Paper appear as they do.
Baroness Hornsby-Smith: My Lords, perhaps I may follow up the comment made by the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon. I will point out to my noble friend that those of us who live in SW1, and not north of Hyde Park, suffer from more demos and interruptions than any other area in any city in this country. For four and a half hours on one occasion, eight streets in the particular area where I live were closed, and it was impossible to use one's car. We have seen Westminster Bridge closed, and on occasions Lambeth Bridge as well. This means that people cannot take buses or use their cars to get home.
It really is about time that we placed some limit on the size of demonstrations. On the two occasions I have in mind, pensioners trying to start their cheap off-season holidays were stranded and, with heavy luggage, were quite unable to reach Victoria Station and catch their train to Gatwick. They were sobbing their eyes out because they could not reach their destination. It is about time that something was done for the ratepayers and residents in this city—particularly in the SW1 area—who find themselves isolated in their homes by perpetual demonstrations, which in many cases involve abnormal numbers of people, who parade down streets which are closed to the rest of us.
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, I note my noble friend's concern. The fact is that the two new tests which the Government propose—and particularly the first of these, that serious disruption to the local community should be one of the factors which the police ought to consider—will no doubt to some extent take account of some of my noble friend's worries. This measure was proposed by the Home Affairs Committee in another place, and their report vividly describes the degree of disruption which can be caused

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by a procession of even average size. I believe that those tests will probably meet my noble friend's concern.

Interception of Communications Bill
5.32 p.m.
Second Reading debate resumed.
Lord Denning: My Lords, we may now revert to our Bill—not a little Bill—concerning the interception of communications. I should first like to thank the Government for introducing this measure and to thank the noble Viscount the Lord President of the Council for the clarity with which he expounded it.
Telephone tapping is obnoxious and distasteful to all ordinary, law-abiding citizens. I should like to think that tapping was already contrary to law but our common law has not developed, as I would have liked it to develop, a right of privacy or a right of confidence. The nearest the law has come to that is in Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. It states:
"Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence".
Sir Robert Megarry, the Vice-Chancellor of England, in a judgment, could find no warrant for any illegality in telephone tapping. I am very glad to see, in the very first clause of this Bill, that although we have not declared a right of privacy or confidence, we have it enforced in the criminal law in regard to telecommunications; that for the first time, a new criminal offence is created for the person who interferes with or taps telephones, or the like, without lawful authority. That is in the first clause of the Bill, and most important it is.
On the other hand, we must recognise that there are exceptions to that principle—exceptions in the interests of society at large. We have heard about security and espionage, but more particularly—as was mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon—we have the case of Mr. David Malone. I will remind your Lordships of that case. Mr. Malone was an antiques dealer. The police became suspicious that he was a receiver of stolen goods; that, dishonestly, he was handling stolen goods. The police applied to the Secretary of State for a warrant to be allowed to intercept Mr. Malone's telephone. The Secretary of State granted a warrant and the police intercepted the suspect's telephone. I suppose that the police obtained much valuable information.
The outcome was that Mr. Malone was prosecuted for handling stolen goods. The case went before a jury. Mr. Malone was acquitted on some of the counts. On others the jury disagreed. The case was re-tried, and again the jury disagreed on some counts. The prosecution declared that there was no use continuing any further; it offered no evidence and Mr. Malone was acquitted.
Mr. Malone then brought an action before the Vice-Chancellor, Mr. Justice Megarry—complaining that the police had acted unlawfully. He came to know of their actions only because, in the course of the court proceedings against him, a detective sergeant read
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from his notebook a record of what had been recorded from a telephone conversation.
One can see that it is very important that in order to detect and to prevent crime or to catch a criminal, the police should be able to tap telephones. That is very important for society at large. In the case I cite, Mr. Justice Megarry said that nothing wrong had been done, but he went on to emphasise that there ought to be legislation upon the matter. He said:
"Any regulation of so complex a matter as telephone tapping is essentially a matter for Parliament and not for the courts"
That is why this matter is now before your Lordships.
I can understand the Government of the time saying, "This is all too difficult a matter to deal with by legislation. The law has worked very well in the past. It would be troublesome to introduce new legislation". However, Mr. Malone's case went before the European Court of Human Rights. That court found that Britain had not fulfilled the convention. These were the words of the exception, which appear in Article 8(2):
"There shall be no interference by a public authority with the exercise of this right except such as in accordance with law as is necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security … for the prevention of disorder or crime"—
and so forth. That is the exception. The European Court found that we had broken with that convention; that what we had done was not in accordance with the convention because we did not have a law that was sufficiently detailed to deal with this matter. The European Court stated that:
"The law of England does not indicate with reasonable clarity the scope and manner of the exercise of the discretion conferred on the public authority".
So according to the European Court, our law is not specific enough and is not clear enough. We were entrusted with the task of remedying the situation, and that is what the Government are now doing in this Bill.
I should like to thank the Government because this is a most difficult subject on which to legislate. I have mentioned the first clause. It is now a criminal offence for anyone to carry out telephone tapping unless with lawful authority. Clause 2 states that telephone tapping may be done if one has a warrant from the Secretary of State. It is permitted in the interests of national security, for the purpose of preventing crime, and so on. However, there is one small query concerning where telephone tapping can be carried out, under Clause 1(1)(b) not with the consent of the Secretary of State but,
"with the consent of a person occupying the premises to or from which the communication is sent".
I am nervous about that. Can the proprietor of a hotel, who is the occupier, consent on behalf of any of the people in the hotel for the telephones to be tapped? That provision needs looking at. But there it is. The usual provision is that it can only be done with a warrant from the Secretary of State for the purposes mentioned. The Bill fulfils what we have done in the past.
Those are the main provisions and I shall not dwell upon them now except in two respects. The noble Viscount mentioned the important point about setting up a tribunal. If anyone suspects that his telephone is being tapped—of course, he cannot prove it but he may wonder whether it is happening—and he may be

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an ordinary private citizen, or he may be a rogue or criminal, he can now, under this procedure, apply to a tribunal. It is not a proper judicial tribunal, but a tribunal which will investigate; a tribunal of investigation to see whether there is anything in his complaint and whether or not his telephone is being tapped. If it is being tapped, the tribunal can ascertain whether or not the Secretary of State had given a warrant. That is a most valuable safeguard for the ordinary individual.
I make this qualification. In this clause the Government, quite rightly, have been very careful to try to keep things as secret and confidential as they can. It is like in the case of a police informer. In the witness box the policeman cannot be asked who told him what and what are the details. Some information must be kept absolutely secret and confidential and there are provisions in regard to the tribunal in that respect. It is a strange tribunal. It need not give any reasons. It can give compensation. There is no appeal from it, even under the latest procedures, and there are restrictions on what you can bring out in evidence or in examination of the witnesses.
I can see the difficulty but, on the other hand, in this very important and, if I may say so, secret sphere it is important that all investigations made should be kept confidential. You should not let the rogues and spies get at your machinery. At any rate, this tribunal is most important and no doubt your Lordships will look at the details of it in Committee.
We then come to the commissioner who will monitor the arrangements. What a good proposal that is. I always like to think that I was almost the initiator of these commissioners. I dealt with the Profumo case. I remember Lord Kilmuir and his report. Since then the practice of having a commissioner has become a much more practical way of dealing with such matters. It is a good provision to have a commissioner to monitor everything to see how it goes on and to report. I am in two minds as to whether he should report to a Select Committee or to the Prime Minister. On security matters certainly let it be to the Prime Minister. I learned in the Profumo case that the Prime Minister is the person who has to take responsibility for the security of our realm and he, or she, would be the right person to have many of these reports; certainly those on security.
On the whole, I sincerely welcome the Bill and I hope that your Lordships will give it a Second Reading.
5.45 p.m.
The Countess of Mar: My Lords, I know we all agree that in some circumstances it is necessary in the national interest to intercept telephone conversations and the mail. This piece of legislation has been welcomed in many quarters, particularly by my former colleagues in the Post Office and British Telecom. Their unions have for a long time been worried about the lack of a precise statutory framework for interception; and for the past five years they have been actively campaigning for one.
However, the welcome must be a qualified one, for there are a few deficiencies in the Bill. I am confident that these will be rectified during its progress through
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your Lordships' House. Recently there has been a great deal of publicity given to the increasing number of so-called leaks of secret and confidential Government information. Employees of British Telecom, and presumably of other companies who provide or will provide telecommunications services, must be protected from the temptation to inform individuals that they are under surveillance or to leak such information to the media. In the course of their duties telephone engineers often come across taps or are instructed to put them on. It is highly unlikely that they will ever see a warrant and, therefore, they have no means of knowing whether or not the interception is legal. There are bound to be occasions when they are worried.
It has always been the policy of British Telecom management to regard telephone tapping as a Home Office matter, and staff do not have the usual recourse to their supervisors or senior management to discuss their doubts. For obvious security reasons their trade unions would not want to become involved.
We need to understand the nature of the kind of person who may be involved in such a situation. My knowledge of British Telecom engineers is that they are men and women of great integrity who take a professional pride in their work. They are also very public spirited, but they will be extremely reluctant to report to the police their suspicions of any illegal procedures. I understand that the Minister in another place gave an assurance that they would be able to approach the commissioner with a case, but even this does not really provide a sufficiently clear-cut channel.
I ask your Lordships to imagine the quandary of a telephone engineer who comes across a tap which he suspects is illegal. He is probably very good at his job, but perhaps he is not very literate. He knows, for reasons which I have already explained, that there is not much point in approaching his boss. He knows that there is this eminent man in London to whom he can take his problem, but he is reluctant to put pen to paper because of his supposed inadequacy. He desperately needs to talk to someone about it to get it off his chest but he is bound by the Official Secrets Act. He can either shelve his problem and remain unhappy about it, or he can leak it and risk prosecution.
There is provision in the Bill for a member of the public who suspects that his communications are being intercepted to apply to the tribunal to have his case investigated. The tribunal is to consist of legal men but it sounds so much less intimidating than the commissioner. Would it be possible to enable those engaged in the provision of telecommunication services to approach the tribunal, or some locally authorised representative of the commissioner or the tribunal, to deal with their problems, and who would, if necessary, pass any evidence of infringements of Clause 1 to the police?
Another cause for concern is that while employees are not liable to prosecution under the Official Secrets Act for any evidence they give to the commissioner, they have no guarantee that they would not be subjected to disciplinary action by their employer. The Government are already intervening in the normal managerial decisions by requiring positive vetting in areas of security and a little further intervention in this case would be enormously beneficial to employees.

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I have little doubt that the response of the noble Viscount the Leader of the House will be that no employer would be so petty and that there is no need to legislate for such a remote possibility. The provision of telecommunications services is no longer a matter for a single state-owned corporation whose day-to-day management is bound by the management methods of the Civil Service. Private companies can and do behave very differently. We must ensure that employees of these companies, as well as the public, have total confidence in the operation of this Bill and that they, as well as the Secretary of State, will use it.
Other noble Lords have already spoken about the need for a precise definition of certain terms, and I agree with them. However, I do not propose to venture into any of the legal arguments. My prime concern is that all our citizens should be protected by this Act. The position of employees in businesses which provide communication services must be clarified. I certainly hope that occasions when they need to take their suspicions to a higher authority will be few and far between, and I am confident that they will not abuse any system which is set up. To incorporate into the Bill the two safeguards about which I have spoken would be relatively simple and I hope the noble Viscount will view them favourably.
My Lords, the time has marched on very much faster than I thought it would and I must leave by ten minutes past six. I hope the noble Viscount will accept my apologies if I do not manage to stay for his winding up.
5.51 p.m.
Lord Foot: My Lords, the House has been particularly fortunate, in my view, in having this Bill presented to us by the noble Viscount the Leader of the House. Not only has he explained it all with great clarity but I think it only right to say that while he is only a recent convert to the belief that we have to put this business of interception upon a statutory basis, nevertheless he has been involved in this problem for many years and I do not think anybody who has had the opportunity of looking back over the history of this matter will be in any doubt about the anxiety that the noble Viscount has always shown, that whatever we do in this matter we must at all costs preserve the liberty and privacy of the subject.
I can offer only a few miscellaneous observations but as I was thinking of what I might say I was struck by the thought that this Bill differs very substantially from some of the Bills that come before this House in that now, at any rate, it enjoys the benefit of a wide measure of acceptability, of general approval, cross-party. That is a very considerable asset. It distinguishes it, for one thing, from a Bill like the Local Government Bill with which we have been preoccupied over the last week or so. There there is no agreement upon the fundamental objectives of the legislation; but here there is a wide measure of agreement, and that seems to me to be entirely satisfactory. I would join with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Denning, in commending, first of all, the first clause of this Bill, which makes the unlawful interception of communications a
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criminal offence and attaches to that criminal offence, as the noble Viscount has said, substantial penalties.
The second thing upon which there is now general agreement, I believe, is that it is right that at long last the whole of this process of interception should be put upon that statutory basis. I think it is also true—and this has emerged clearly in this debate—that there is a general agreement across all parties upon the two propositions which are the twin pillars on which this Bill rests. The first of those is that a modern democratic state must have the power where its security is threatened to take appropriate steps of interception to discover where its enemies are and what they are about to do. The other thing that is agreed upon is that those operations, that process of interception, must necessarily and in the nature of things take place in secret. But side by side with that, the other twin pillar on which the Bill rests is the belief, which I hope is shared on all sides of this House, that interception is always a grave invasion of the privacy of the subject, and it is something which requires the strictest safeguards against abuse.
The fundamental question which this Bill asks, as the noble Viscount has said on many previous occasions, is whether we have struck the proper balance between one interest and the other. This seems to me to be what one might call primarily a Committee Bill. I believe the real useful work is going to be done when we get to the Committee stage and when we consider the various things that have been spoken about in this debate, including the interpretation of difficult words and so on. When we get to that stage I believe we shall be doing our most useful work.
There is a small plea which I would make to the noble Viscount, which indeed I think it is scarcely necessary to make because I think I am going to get a satisfactory response. This Bill, as he has rightly said, is only marginally party political. Indeed, I would hope that it was not party political at all, but the Government at any rate did run into some trouble in the other place and got some rather rough treatment.
My own view is that, at any rate as the Bill now stands, although I have reservations about particular wording and particular parts of the Bill, and although I have doubts upon some other matters, I believe that this Bill is presented to the House by the Government in good faith in the sense that they want to try to achieve a satisfactory balance. My plea to the noble Viscount, therefore, is that in the further stages of this Bill the Government will keep an open mind as to the possibility of amendment and improvement.
The Bill incorporates a number of quite new concepts. There is the role of the commission and there is the role, most important of all, of the tribunal. These are all completely new conceptions, and there is much else in the Bill which is new, too. This is the first attempt that has been made in this country to legislate in this field and it would be very surprising, would it not, if we got it all right at the first shot? I hope, therefore, that the noble Viscount will be prepared to consider all the matters that may be put to him when we get to the Committee stage.
There are just one or two points of special interest that I would like to mention and I will do nothing

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more than that. The noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, made some reference to this, but not quite the reference that I want to make. In the White Paper which preceded the Bill there were set out the conditions on which the Secretary of State should satisfy himself before issuing a warrant; and the noble Viscount will remember very well, I think, what they were: first, that normal methods of investigation are not available. Secondly:
"that other methods of investigation have been tried and failed or must, from the nature of things, be unlikely to succeed if tried";
and the third one was in respect of serious crime that there is,
"good reason to think that an interception would be likely to lead to an arrest and a conviction".
I mention those matters because those words and those reservations do not appear anywhere in the Bill. I can see no possible disadvantage in putting those requirements on the Secretary of State into Clause 2, let us say, of the Bill so that, in addition to the matters which are set out in Clause 2(2), the Secretary of State will have to take those matters into account when he is deciding whether to issue a warrant.
I suggest that that would have this considerable advantage. If that is done, when the tribunal, or the commissioner in the course of his supervisory duties is considering whether there has been any breach of the law in the issue of a warrant, it will be useful—will it not?—if either of them can have regard to those considerations which the authors of the White Paper thought were of such importance.
Lord Mishcon: My Lords, I interrupt the noble Lord, I hope, with his full permission. I want to say only this. He has so much more eloquently than I made the very point (which he will see if he has the kindness to read my speech) that I myself was making. I am delighted to know that he supports it.
Lord Foot: My Lords, if I suggested that the noble Lord did not develop this point better than I did, I was gravely at fault.
Another matter that I should like to mention is one which the noble and learned Lord, Lord Denning, mentioned just now, and it is on Clause 1(1)(b). I think that I heard the noble Viscount say at the beginning that the Government have undertaken to reconsider those words and will bring forward something which is intended to target upon things like obscene telephone calls.
Another matter that I might perhaps mention is this. One of the curiosities of the regulations about the tribunal is that its powers can be invoked apparently only on the complaint of a member of the public that his communications have been intercepted. I find it odd that there is no obligation on the commissioner to inform the tribunal when he finds that there has been an improper interception. I say that that is odd because of this. In a case of that kind, where it is the commissioner who discovers the breach of the regulations, the person whose communications have been intercepted wrongly may know nothing about it at all. If the commissioner comes across the fact that something has gone wrong and the regulations have not been observed, is it not right that he should be under an obligation to bring that fact to the attention of the tribunal?
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The last matter that I wish to bring up is merely one of information. If I heard the noble Viscount rightly, in his opening speech he made some mention of the intention and promise of the Government to make amendments to Clause 4 which I think related to the duration of the warrants. As the Bill now stands, the relevant period is six months. I believe that some undertaking was given in the other place that that period would be reduced to two months, to bring it into accord with what has been proposed in the White Paper.
I apologise for those somewhat miscellaneous observations. I very much hope that the Bill will quickly reach the statute book. We have been waiting for it for a very long time.
6.3 p.m.
Viscount Whitelaw: My Lords, I am extremely grateful to all noble Lords who have taken part in the debate and I thank them for the generous things that have been said about me personally. I came to the conclusion that, while I enjoy these very much indeed when they come, if rarely, I am only too well aware when some of them are perhaps rather more generous and kindly than they ought to be. In this case I felt rather like that. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Denning, was, as usual, totally correct. The fact worried me yet again that noble Lords and judges of his distinction can look so plainly into the minds of simple people like me and know exactly what we are thinking.
The noble and learned Lord said that during the Malone case and afterwards I was saying to myself: "Oh dear! Oh dear! This will all be much too difficult to legislate on. I do hope we do not have to do it". Yes, my Lords, that is exactly what I was saying. The noble and learned Lord is perfectly correct. Not only, I suspect, was I saying that but I imagine that nearly all my predecessors as Home Secretary over the years have been saying exactly the same. Perhaps we were right, but I think that I am a convert, as the noble Lord, Lord Foot, said. Having seen what it is possible to do and having seen the Bill, I now feel that it is right to legislate. In any event, I think that we had no option, but even if we had, I still believe that it was right.
Many new developments have occurred in this field. For example—and do not let us argue now about whether the privatisation of British Telecom was right or wrong—that move introduced a somewhat new situation so far as the aspect of telephone interceptions is concerned. I believe that we were right to legislate, but I have to say that I cannot take credit for having done it either speedily or necessarily very willingly. Just before I gave the undertaking in your Lordships' House I had been busily doing my best to make sure that the particular measure did not get through. However, better late than never.
I am very grateful indeed to, I think, all noble Lords for their support for the basis of the Bill and the balance that we have sought to set out. I made the point about balance clear in my opening speech. I do not think that I need to repeat it now. Everyone who has spoken has said that we have to get the balance right; but basically, in principle, the Bill sets about

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getting it right in a sensible and proper way. However, I could not agree more that where there may be need for amendment we must look at such questions very carefully.
I now turn to some of the detailed points raised. The noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, asked whether an opportunity has been missed, whether the Bill was too narrow and whether we should not have gone into the field of surveillance as well. I believe that in the modern world it is important to address the whole question of surveillance. This is being done and will continue to be done. Equally I believe that to try to deal with it in this Bill would have meant further delay before the Bill could have been introduced, and I think that your Lordships might not have thought that that was satisfactory.
Let me say why I think that it would take longer. We have to recognise the many problems coming forward at the present time with videos and the rest which would have to be addressed when considering surveillance. If we are to do it successfully, we have to make sure that we get it right. However, to be fair to myself and certainly to my right honourable and learned friend the Home Secretary, I think that I should point out that the Government have already directly addressed the question of surveillance. My right honourable and learned friend has announced that the Government intend to introduce legislation based on the Law Commissioners' proposals on breach of confidence. That will of course deal with legislation at the point where it can be handled. Indeed, last year he also published strengthened guidelines on the use of surveillance devices by the police. That demonstrates the Government's commitment to making progress in this field. But I believe that it would have taken longer to introduce the Bill if we had had to go wider than merely interception.
The noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Denning, and others raised the question of national security, including subversion and the problem about the definition. As the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, pointed out, we have before us the definition of subversion of the noble Lord, Lord Harris, and indeed the particular words of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Denning. I think that we are perfectly clear that those two definitions come close together, and I believe that they form the basis on which the Government have been acting and should act in the future. That was certainly the way that I acted throughout the time I had the responsibility as Home Secretary. There is no doubt that we can look at these words again in Committee, if that is the wish of noble Lords, but I think these definitions have stood the test of time and on the whole have proved to be right.
The noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, then referred to the economic purpose. In this field the Government are certainly not seeking in any way to extend the present scope of interception. I should like to give the noble Lord that undertaking. This applies to interception in the economic field as much as in crime and national security. If we look at these, I should like to emphasise that that will be the basis on which we are looking at it. The Government in no way wish to extend this particular area.
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The noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, raised the question of the membership of the tribunal and whether it was necessary that they should all be lawyers. I never though I should see the day when I would necessarily be arguing in favour of everyone being lawyers in any particular field. However, I have to point out that in this particular case it is in the main questions of law to which the members of this tribunal will have to address themselves. As to whether it should be that some of them may have knowledge in the field of telecommunications and so on, I see the argument but I suspect that in the end lawyers really will have the sway because they are the people who will be dealing with most of the matters concerned. On the question of the quorum, again it was felt that it was right that the tribunal should be given the chance to operate basically with as much flexibility as possible. However, we certainly can consider the point that the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, made.
The noble Lord came to the question of the commissioner and his responsibility for reporting to Parliament. I pointed out in my speech, and perhaps I should remind the noble Lord, that the commissioner would report to the Prime Minister. She would submit the report to Parliament, subject to any necessary deletions that there might have to be on the subject of national security. That is clearly stated and would clearly be the case. Of course my right honourable friend the Prime Minister is responsible to Parliament, and once it was reported to Parliament it could then be discussed in Parliament. That would be the purpose of it. I noted that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Denning, thought that it was right that the commissioner should report to the Prime Minister. I must say that, from my own experience in these matters, I think I would basically accept that decision.
The noble Lord, Lord Harris, raised various questions concerning the working of the security services. These were the main points that he raised. One has to admit immediately and at once to the noble Lord, who has experience in these matters, that there have been some very unfortunate and worrying lapses, which we have to accept.
The noble Lord then raised the question of accountability. He raised the question of the independent complaints commissioner and also the possibility of having a committee of Privy Councillors. As my right honourable friend the Prime Minister made clear when she made the Statement after the Bettaney case (which, as your Lordships will remember, I repeated in this House), the new head of the security service had been asked immediately to look into both aspects of the service and to report urgently to my right honourable friend. That is being done at once. It was felt and is felt by the Government that this is the right first step. It certainly would not rule out some of the questions that the noble Lord put forward but it might make it somewhat difficult to put some of the points into this Bill in view of the timescale, particularly if the director general is to have a chance to make a full report. However, if he were to report that he wished something like that, obviously that would raise a new and very important situation.
I was extremely grateful for the support of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Denning. He has considerable knowledge of all these matters. To hear that he felt that

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we were on the right lines was indeed extremely encouraging. Again, he raised the question about the consent exemption, which the noble Lord, Lord Foot, also raised. Perhaps I should remind him that the Government accept his point of view, accept that it is too wide and, as I think I said in my opening speech, will introduce amendments to improve that particular situation. As I made clear, the commissioner reports direct to the Prime Minister.
The noble Countess, Lady Mar, raised this question. I appreciate that she is not here but if noble Lords do not mind I should just like to put a quick point into Hansard for her so that she can read it. I think it is only courteous to her since she was very courteous to me. I appreciate what she says about the Telecom engineers. During my time as Home Secretary, obviously I met and talked to some of the people who were carrying out some of this work. I realised at once how dedicated they are and the difficult position in which they are frequently placed. I fully appreciate that. They would have access to the commissioner. That would be real. They would not have to feel that proper matters could not be brought to his attention.
The Government amended the Bill in the Commons to ensure that people such as the engineers need not feel unwilling in any way to go to the tribunal. I hope we have shown very plainly how keen we are to respond to the feelings and the difficulties of these people who work in this very difficult field, particularly (if I may come back to this point) as they work in different circumstances from those in which they worked before the privatisation of British telecommunications.
The noble Lord, Lord Foot, was very generous in what he said about the Bill. As all the other noble Lords have done, he accepted the twin pillars on which the Bill is founded. He again raised the question of the wideness of the consent amendment. I think I have been able to assure him that the Government accept that and will deal with it.
The noble Lord raised the question of the duration of warrants under Clause 4. Again, I have made it clear that the Government intend to put that right, to make amendments there. He raised the question of whether we should be able to seek to amend this Bill during the Committee stage. I should like to give him the absolute assurance that I am most anxious that we should have every opportunity to consider the Bill very carefully and to see in what ways we can improve it. I shall seek all the time to play my full part in that.
Perhaps I may just add this point for the noble Lord and indeed for all your Lordships. There may be occasions when, for obvious, good reasons, it may necessarily be very difficult for me to be as forthcoming as sometimes I would naturally wish to be. If that is the case I shall make that position very clear. I may have to do it. I hope I shall have to do it only on very rare occasions. However, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Denning, said it is a problem, in the nature of this particular operation, that sometimes secrecy is extremely important.
I come back to one last point of the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon; that is on the question of Clause 9. There is a very great problem here. Of course we can look at it and should look at in Committee. However,
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there is a terrible problem about the need to preserve the secrecy. If we were to take action in this field, whereby some very clever criminals could piece together a lot of information which would be greatly to their advantage in prosecuting their crimes, we would not have done good to the security of the nation and we would not have done good to the means of trying to deal with crime and with drugs.
I am extremely grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken. I hope that I have answered most of the points that have been raised in the debate. I look forward to the Committee stage. I hope that it will in no sense be felt that the Government are sticking rigidly, without any reason, to some of the points that I have put forward. We shall do our best to meet and discuss with the House the problems that are involved. I hope that we shall be able to make sure that a Bill which has received such a welcome at the start will prove to be something which will be in the best interests of the nation as a whole.
On Question, Bill read a second time, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

Unfair Dismissal (Variation of Qualifying Period) Order 1985
6.20 p.m.
The Minister of State, Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Lord Belstead) rose The Minister of State, Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Lord Belstead) rose to move, That the draft order laid before the House on 17th April be approved. [19th Report from the Joint Committee.]
The noble Lord said: My Lords, under the provisions of the employment protection legislation currently in force employees have a right to complain to an industrial tribunal of unfair dismissal after one year's service with an employer or after two years with an employer with 20 or fewer employees. The purpose of the draft order is to standardise this qualifying period at two years for all employees. The change will not affect the qualifying period of one month in respect of unfair dismissal following suspension on medical grounds under certain health and safety regulations. Nor will it affect the right not to be dismissed unfairly at any time because of membership or non-membership of a trade union, or because of taking part in trade union activities, where no qualifying period is required.
Employees who work for between eight and 16 hours a week will continue as now to have a qualifying period of five years. Finally, of course, this order will have no effect on the protection afforded to employees under the sex discrimination and race relations legislation. It is intended that the order should come into force on 1st June 1985. It will apply only to employees starting to work for an employer on or after that date. We believe that in spite of the changes we have made since 1979, the employment protection legislation, and, in particular, the provisions relating to unfair dismissal still discourage many firms, especially small ones, from taking on more people.
The Government cannot alone create jobs. Their key contribution is to create an economic climate in which enterprise can flourish. But they can and do also provide direct help for those worst affected by unemployment; and Government can help to improve

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the operation of the labour market by encouraging better training, more flexibility and fewer barriers of regulation and cost. The changes introduced by this order are part of this strategy. It is important that we should take all reasonable steps to remove the barriers that might be standing in the way of new jobs being created. In this case the barrier relates to employers who want to take on more people but are afraid to do so because of their fear of being taken to industrial tribunals.
It is probably common ground among most of your Lordships that employees should have a right to protection against unfair dismissal after a reasonable period of service. At any rate, that is most certainly the view of the Government. I think it is also common ground that such protection should not generally be available immediately but that there should be a period of service during which time the employer has an opportunity to decide whether he or she wishes to retain a new employee. The length of this qualifying period is a matter of judgment and what is right at one particular time is not necessarily right at another. Our judgment at the present time, in the light of the paramount importance of reducing unemployment, is that two years is a reasonable period for an employer to have to decide whether an employee ought to be retained, while the position of employees who have demonstrated their commitment to an employer over such a period is also safeguarded. The change will also bring the qualifying period for unfair dismissal claims into line with the long-standing two-year qualifying periods for redundancy payments, maternity pay and the right to return because of absence owing to pregnancy.
We believe that the change will have an important psychological effect. Employers will be more ready to take a chance and employ people in the knowledge that they will have two years in which to see whether things work out as they wish them to, without the fear of being taken to an industrial tribunal. But I must say that the right to complain to an industrial tribunal remains and I make no apology of any kind for that. Employees who have invested two or more years of their lives with an employer are entitled to safeguards, and they will continue to be so protected. My Lords, I beg to move.
Moved, That the draft order laid before the House on 17th April be approved. [19th Report from the Joint Committee.]—(Lord Belstead.)
Lord Wedderburn of Charlton: My Lords, the Minister has explained the nature of the order, and much of the explanation we can accept. But this is far more than a technical piece of fine tuning, even if the Government believe that it might help with unemployment. The common ground between the two Front Benches is, I believe, less than the Minister suggested. The old bipartisan approach to the qualifying period for unfair dismissal was based upon the notion that you needed such a period in order that the tribunals should not be flooded with work. It is there in the literature from 1970 to 1979.
It was this Government who changed the alleged purpose of the qualifying period first in 1979, then, for a second time, in 1980, and who now, again, are increasing the qualifying period which is only a legal
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phrase that means, when translated, depriving workers—the Minister did not say how many—of their right to complain not of dismissal but of unfair dismissal; of what the first president of the tribunal called dismissal in less than a civilised manner.
Those of your Lordships acquainted with the many law reports on unfair dismissal—I am sure that such documents are never far from your Lordships' grasp—will see that the test of unfairness is not an unreasonably high one. We are perhaps debarring, when the order comes finally into effect—as the Government did in 1979 with their increased qualifying period—a million or more workers from protection against unfair dismissal. How many, I wonder, does the Minister think will be affected?
This is said to be done in the face of the need to cut unemployment. The need to cut unemployment could hardly divide any of your Lordships, one from another. But the method should be based rather more than upon a belief. I wanted to hear the evidence that the Minister would give that these changes in the unfair dismissal law would improve the employment prospects of workers, either those now not to be protected against unfair dismissal or, indeed, some others. There was none. Yet there is literature. What is the literature? There are three major surveys.
The first was a survey of 1978, perhaps the best survey of all, by Daniel and Stilgoe, which came to clear conclusions upon a survey of 301 firms, employing 50 employees or more. Their central finding on this matter, repeated many times, was:
"There was very little sign in our findings that employment protection legislation was inhibiting industrial recovery or contributing to the high level of unemployment by discouraging employers from taking on new people".
They added that they unequivocally rejected criticism of the employment protection laws and especially redundancy and unfair dismissal laws on that basis. In fact, only 2 per cent. of their sample—these figures are important when we come to the evidence that the Government have from this year's survey—mentioned these problems of unfair dismissal and employment protection law as a reason for not recruiting or for recruiting in smaller numbers.
I quote again:
"Very few managers attributed a major impact to these pieces of legislation. And there was little difference in recruitment practice or expectations between those who felt the respective measures had had a modest impact and those that felt they had had none".
The second survey was an official Department of Employment survey a year later, in 1979—again a most scrupulous piece of work—by Clifton and Tatton Brown who came to conclusions which, it is generally agreed, were almost identical in the small firm area to those produced by the Daniel and Stilgoe survey. Very few firms mentioned the Employment Protection Act in respect of non-recruitment or, indeed, other labour difficulties. The figure was less than 9 per cent. Only a small number, they said, mentioned the Act or difficulties in reducing the labour force. I quote their central conclusion on the matter:
"Respondents were later asked specific questions about the two measures that are most likely to make it difficult to reduce their work force, the unfair dismissal provisions and the redundancy provisions".
They go on:
"Eight per cent. mentioned a reluctance to take on new staff".

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They develop this point to show that it is a very small number indeed.
The Government were faced with this evidence in 1980 and they had a response, and it became a sort of counterpoint, I noticed, in the speech of the noble Lord the Minister. That was to argue that maybe there is no real objective problem with the employment protection laws as surveys of comparable kind in other countries have suggested, but businessmen, especially small businessmen believe it; it is the psychological effect.
I well remember the phrase of the noble Earl, Lord Gowrie, who is not here at the moment—"the anecdotal evidence", which he pressed upon us. The first duty of Government faced with anecdotal evidence which conflicts with real evidence is to explain to people that they are wrong—not to take away workers' rights. But the response of this Government has been if anything to increase the anecdotes. Before they came to the House and to Parliament with this order they thought they ought to do a little more research. It was mainly an attitudinal survey, the survey of 1985 entitled Burdens on Business, done by seven departments—three out of seven from the Department of Trade which organised it.
There are many methodological criticisms that have been made of this document already, but quite apart from those, we find in the document, which is said to be evidence of employment protection laws inhibiting recruitment of labour, that the document does not in fact support any such proposition. In fact the document, which I am sure the noble Lord the Minister has, supports the surveys of 1978 and 1980 that the evidence is extremely slender that small businessmen even believe that these employment protection laws have a major effect on recruitment.
I pause to say this, because it is very important. If you are taking away from one million people rights albeit to slender compensation—because that is all it is; they do not get reinstatement, except for 3 per cent.—if you are taking away their right to £1,500, which is the median award, roughly, for unfair dismissal, you have to have better evidence than this.
What does the 1985 report show? First, its category of employment protection legislation is much wider than unfair dismissal. It includes redundancy laws, equal pay, equal opportunity, wages councils, the law on the disabled, and industrial training boards. So there is a much broader category. Well, does all that in the belief of small businessmen stop them hiring labour? The answer is, no, if you look at the unprompted questions. In 5 per cent. only of the unprompted answers do you get that argument at all over that whole area of labour law, let alone unfair dismissal itself. It is only when you have the prompted questions, against which the 1979 survey of the Department of Employment itself warned, that you get a different answer. The 1979 survey was very scrupulous in pointing out precisely the inconsistencies which came from prompting; and we all know the problems about prompting. We do not know exactly the prompting methods that were used in this case.
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When your answers are multiplied by six, so that employment protection legislation which runs a poor joint fourth with PAYE in the unprompted answers, behind local authority planning, statistical returns, and the top one, which is of course always VAT in any survey, jumps up to a nice second through a lot of prompting, that is not the kind of thing that can put aside the scrupulous evidence in all the rest of the documents, including all the rest of this document.
Indeed, I must say—and I mean to be critical of this report—that I think it a great pity that some of the methods used were used. I think it a pity, albeit that the attitudinal survey and the fieldwork was satisfactory in itself (it is difficult to judge), no trade unions were consulted. The only people consulted were the CBI, chambers of commerce, and departments of trade. There is extensive sociological literature on small firms or, indeed, literature that you may not call sociological. The only four documents or publications cited in the report are: one from the Centre for Policy Studies, one from the Institute of Directors, one from the Alliance of Small Firms, and one from the Adam Smith Institute. It is rather as though the Labour Government came forward with an enormous Bill to take away the rights of employers based on memoranda from the Militant Tendency and the Socialist Workers' Party. It is no good putting this kind of thing in the middle of the agony of unemployment and to pretend that we can have any confidence whatever in unemployment being affected by way of recruitment—and this has been the argument again today.
I come to the noble Lord the Minister with this question. The Government have increased the qualifying period twice on the same argument. So there should be some kind of evidence from that. I know it is very hard—indeed, none better—to judge the social effects of legal change. But they changed the law in 1979 and in 1980 to exclude more and more and more workers from their right to complain of unfair dismissal. Where is the result? Where is the result even if they say that unemployment has increased for other reasons but that this has made things slightly better? Is there any kind of evidence of that? If not, what right do the Government have to come to Parliament and say that these people shall lose their rights to small compensation when they cannot show that that is the situation in the United Kingdom, because the 1984 report Burdens on Business also includes a fascinating Appendix 8. What does that say? I shall quote it, fairly, I hope. I certainly wish to quote two or three sentences—key points:
"There is no evidence that regulatory burdens borne by business in our main international competitors are significantly lighter than in the United Kingdom".
That includes the United States, as the next few paragraphs show. It goes on:
"Nor is there evidence that other advanced countries have yet achieved substantial cutbacks in the fields we have examined"—
and they mention the United States. Then it goes on:
"But there is clear evidence of growing concern in several advanced countries about the adverse effects of regulation on employment and efficiency. And in at least three advanced countries—the United States, Germany and the Netherlands—deregulatory initiatives have received substantial political impetus".—
—political impetus no doubt being the Government's

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objective. Here it does not mention employment protection legislation. I do not know of any proposals in the Federal Republic of Germany or the Netherlands to slash the guarantees against unfair dismissal there. If the noble Lord the Minister has that evidence, perhaps he would give it to your Lordships.
What we have is a situation in which there is no evidence to show that taking away workers' rights in the industrial tribunals is even thought by businessmen, except for a very small number, to have any effect whatever on recruitment policy. As for the objective evidence, there is none. The Government have done it twice. Perhaps it is not a matter for criticism, because, as I say, it is very difficult sometimes to match legal change with social effect, but at least nothing is shown from that.
We know that the regulation of business as a whole is roughly the same here as with competitors; in some cases I would have thought perhaps slightly less burdensome for the businessmen. In other words, we are in a situation where the Government are asking us again to take as an article of faith that employment protection law is what their party called the law in its election speeches of 1978 and what some people called employment destruction law. The Government did not know then that unemployment would go so high, and they do not know now how on earth a change in these laws will improve the employment position. What they do know is that they do not like employment protection laws, they will take every opportunity to cut them back, and disqualifying workers for two years is now a suitable opportunity.
I come to a final point, which is really the whole argument so far as managers are concerned. I noticed the noble Lord said that two years, after all, is not so bad because it is there for redundancy. Of course it is there for redundancy payments for quite different reasons; and there are the maternity rights and so on, which he rightly quoted. But here it is a question of the unfairness of the deprivation of a job merely by the decision of an employer to dismiss. There is a famous manager who gave a reply to the 1978 Daniel and Stilgoe survey. He was asked about the 26 weeks' qualifying period, as it was then; the worker had to be six months in his job before he had the right to complain of the injustice of his dismissal. When this manager was asked whether he thought this was a burden he said, "If you are a manager and you can't tell within 26 weeks whether you want to keep the worker, you are not much good at your job". I suggest that the Government ought to read literature of that kind rather than inflate their beliefs in an order which, in the state of our knowledge, if I were honest I would say should be withdrawn, and which appears to represent some kind of Government tantrum. Because the Government cannot do anything about unemployment, they turn back on those matters which they know that at least many of those behind them do not like.
It is a deplorable measure and it is certainly one which we on these Benches would want to do something about as swiftly as we could get rid of a Government who appear to have no respect either for those dealt with by the order or for the social evidence upon which they appear to act.
Lord Sainsbury: My Lords, while thanking the Minister for explaining the order, may I say that we on these Benches do not welcome it as we do not think that a sufficient case has been made to justify weakening employees' rights to go to an industrial tribunal. As has already been said, these rights were weakened in 1979 when the Government extended the qualifying period from six months to a year.
Certainly it is laudable that the Government have been inspired to extend the qualifying period by their concern to encourage employment and to promote the development of small businesses. We are equally concerned that the prospects for employment and the development of small businesses should be improved. We welcome all measures that will do this. However, this is not such a measure.
If a manager is unable to evaluate the suitability or performance of his staff within a year, there is little reason to suppose that he will be better able to do so within two years. The proposition becomes more ludicrous when talking of small businesses where the owner or manager is working in close daily contact with his small number of staff. As far as the large employer is concerned, he is likely to have a personnel department or officer whose function is to evaluate the suitability and performance of the firm's employees. There is nothing to suggest that the extension of the qualifying period will improve industrial relations in general, and it is for these reasons that we on these Benches do not welcome this order.
6.43 p.m.
Lord Rochester: My Lords, briefly, I should like to support all that my noble friend Lord Sainsbury has just said. Perhaps I can best do this, and at the same time reinforce some of the strictures that have been made by the noble Lord, Lord Wedderburn, by asking the Minister a question. Is it not the case that, under existing legislation, only a very small percentage of people who have been dismissed within a year of engagement have even taken their cases to an industrial tribunal? Indeed, if he is able to, can the noble Lord tell us what the proportion has been? Do not the figures for which I have asked constitute insufficient justification for this amending legislation and, therefore, will it not be perceived for little, if any, gain as tipping employment legislation further in the direction of employers and against those whom they employ? Therefore, in that respect, as my noble friend Lord Sainsbury has just said, will it not damage rather than improve industrial relations generally in this country.
Lord Belstead: My Lords, I confess that I am surprised that the noble Lord, Lord Wedderburn, is affronted that, in order to find out the effect on employers' attitudes to taking on people in their businesses, both the Department of Trade and Industry, together with other departments, and the CBI should have approached employers in order to get some answers. If I may say so, I can see nothing wrong in that.
Lord Wedderburn of Charlton: My Lords, what about the unions?
Lord Belstead: My Lords, as I understood it, the noble Lord was at pains and went to some length to tell your Lordships' House that only the pieces of research which the noble Lord read out, and with which I am familiar, were worthy of any notice, because they were truly independent, and all the other pieces of research were worthy of no notice because they simply asked employers for their answers. I repeat, I am surprised that the noble Lord, Lord Wedderburn, should be affronted that, in trying to find out what employers think, people should think it right to go to employers.
Lord Wedderburn of Charlton: My Lords, if the noble Lord will give way, in order to show on the record that we are not at odds, may I say that of course I was not objecting to attitudinal surveys of employers in order to see what they thought. That was done in all three surveys, and no one in his right mind would object to that; and even if I had lost mine, I could not do it. It is ridiculous. I object that the last survey is said to contain results which, on inspection, it does not contain; and it was the other evidence, such as that from the Adam Smith Institute and so on, which was not balanced by any kind of research in areas which might give a different attitude, or, indeed, where trade unions or others were also asked for their views on the matter.
Lord Belstead: My Lords, the last words of the noble Lord give the game away. I agree with the noble Lord that, when looking at research, it is desirable that there is a balance. But it is no good saying across the Floor of the House that research or attitudinal surveys are not worthy of being received because those who have been doing them have been selective in the people they have gone to see.
Lord Wedderburn of Charlton: My Lords—
Lord Belstead: My Lords, I shall not give way.
Lord Wedderburn of Charlton: My Lords, I shall explain it to the noble Lord.
Lord Belstead: My Lords, I would prefer to be spared that explanation. If one wants to find out what it is that employers really believe in relation to this particular matter—and the vital point is what employers do believe, because it is they who are taking on the employees—then it is desirable to ask the employers for their views. If I may say so, in the academic approach which the noble Lord has taken to this matter there are two basic facts which the noble Lord has wholly neglected. The first is that, although I went out of my way at the beginning to say that the Government most certainly believe that the employment protection legislation should exist, it does not in fact create jobs. If anyone has an ounce of human compassion at the present time, it is necessary to try to see how jobs can be created.
The other matter which the noble Lord wholly neglected is that all the research of any kind which has been carried out shows that some employers are definitely deterred from recruitment because they fear subsequent unfair dismissal claims. That is a serious matter, and it cannot be argued around. Indeed, may I remind the noble Lord that findings which came out
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from the committee of the noble Lord, Lord Wilson of Rievaulx, on the review of the functioning of financial institutions in 1980—which was two years after the first piece of research which the noble Lord, Lord Wedderburn, mentioned—recorded that that committee was frankly surprised at the strength of feeling that was held on employment legislation by many companies.
These are serious matters. They cannot be argued away by academic arguments. They affect the livelihoods of people who are in employment. The only way of getting round them is to try to see that the employers will take on more people. If the noble Lord opposite resents what the Government are doing at the present time, may I tell the noble Lord straight across the House that I resent the sort of charges which have been put across the Box today that the Government have no compassion in this matter and are simply doing this out of political dogma. Nothing could possibly be further from the truth.
As opposed to that the noble Lord, Lord Sainsbury, is a man who can forget more about employment than I realise I shall ever learn, and yet with respect to the noble Lord even the noble Lord's remarks today are not in tune with what employers who are in the field at the present time are saying.
Lord Sainsbury: My Lords, would the noble Lord give way?
Lord Belstead: My Lords, I have not come to what I was going to say. If the noble Lord would care to look at the DTI Burdens on Business scrutiny of administrative and legislative requirements, that showed that the employment protection legislation, and particularly the unfair dismissal provisions, was the second most important burden mentioned by employers.
Lord Sainsbury: My Lords, I was merely going to say that before I made my short speech I consulted a large employer of labour and also, as it happens, that same employer of labour has started a company with the sole aim of helping small employers starting off businesses. I took care to look at it from both ends, and regrettably I am not an academic with no qualifications.
Lord Belstead: My Lords, again I concede that the noble Lord has enormous experience in this matter and took great care before he came into the House to look matters up. But what the noble Lord is saying does not honestly chime in with the anecdotal evidence which the noble Lord, Lord Wedderburn, mentioned—and, for reasons which I understand, dismissed. There really is considerable anecdotal evidence coming in to my honourable and right honourable friends in the Department of Employment from employers who say that they are deterred from recruiting because of the legislation. Once again, with respect, I say a lot. I have not got the figures, but there is a great deal coming in.
Lord Bruce of Donington: My Lords, what is a lot?
Lord Belstead: My Lords, if the noble Lord went into a Government department and started signing the

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replies the noble Lord would know what I mean by "a lot".
May I come to the point which the noble Lord, Lord Rochester, put to me about how many people this would affect. The advice I have is that on the basis of a sample analysis of complaints of unfair dismissal for 1983, it is estimated that 1,650 such complaints heard by an industrial tribunal involved persons who had been employed for more than one but for less than two years. I think that that covers the point put to me by the noble Lord, Lord Wedderburn.
I hope I have made clear that I believe that this is a step in the right direction. It in fact returns the law to what it was in 1971 when unfair dismissal was originally put on the statute book. I beg to move.
Lord Diamond: My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down—I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Wedderburn, was going to ask the same question, and I apologise for interfering—could he give us the positive information which we are all waiting for of the evidence the noble Lord has that moves of this kind which have taken place already have improved the situation?
Lord Belstead: My Lords, the evidence is to be found—the noble Lord, Lord Wedderburn, will dismiss it as being partial, and I can understand that this is approaching employers and not taking a view across the board—in the DTI survey, and also in the CBI survey which was conducted in 1984, and I repeat a very great deal of anecdotal evidence which comes into the Department of Employment.
Lord Wedderburn of Charlton: My Lords, before the noble Lord the Minister finally sits down, I was going to ask him whether we could clear up his misunderstanding of my speech, but I shall let Hansard do that. Instead I shall ask him a question in the same manner. In our view at any rate the only evidence on which the Government are acting is indeed what he calls, and it is common ground, the anecdotal evidence—which I do not dismiss, and never did; I said it has to be weighed for what it is—and he says that the Government have a large number of letters on which this evidence is based (although we cannot hear the anecdotes we can read that). Would the noble Lord be prepared to put in the Library at least a summary of those letters, necessarily no doubt changed in order to preserve the anonymity of the authors, in a form where an estimate of the numbers and, if preferable, an estimate from the Government of the numbers, within a range, of jobs that might be created on this specific order?
Lord Belstead: My Lords, I would certainly be prepared to put in the Library an estimate of the number of letters which are received on this particular subject.
Lord Wedderburn of Charlton: I said number of jobs.
Lord Belstead: And the number of jobs which would be created? That might be more difficult. I must confess to the House that I am thinking of the time and
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expense which it will take in order to quarry out these matters. The noble Lord shrugs. I do not think that the noble Lord even begins to have any idea of the expense of employing people in man-hours who are supposed to be doing other things—in this case in Government departments—in order to quarry out answers.
What would be comparatively straightforward would be to give an answer to the noble Lord—which I certainly shall use my best endeavours to do, and indeed I give an undertaking to do—to say what the volume of letters is which comes into the Department of Employment, so that the noble Lord can get some idea of what is the evidence of an anecdotal kind.
I think it will be in line with what is sometimes said in answers to Parliamentary Questions, that it would be unwarrantable public expenditure to start saying how many extra jobs would be created as a result of those letters, because the record of those letters is something which can be looked up and put into the Library, but the rest of the answer is not. My Lords, I beg leave to move this order; I believe it is a step in the right direction.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

Weights and Measures (Liquid Fuel carried by Road Tanker) Order 1985
6.58 p.m.
Lord Brabazon of Tara Lord Brabazon of Tara rose to move, That the draft order laid before the House on 22nd April be approved. [20th Report from the Joint Committee.]
The noble Lord said: My Lords, I beg to move that the draft order standing in my name on the Order Paper be approved.
The draft order serves two main purposes: first, it will provide additional protection for purchasers of liquid fuels, such as central heating oils and petroleum, by ensuring that they are given documentary evidence of deliveries; and, secondly, it will assist enforcement authorities to pursue allegations of fraud or short measure deliveries. It also means that the order will introduce documentation requirements for liquid fuel similar to those already in force for the carriage by road of solid fuel which are set out in the Weights and Measures Act 1963.
For safety reasons the loading, transport and unloading of liquid fuel takes place in a closed environment. This means that purchasers have no opportunity physically to inspect the product they are buying to check the quantity delivered. At the same time the increasingly high price of liquid fuel has provided incentives for the unscrupulous to perpetrate fraud. The target for this fraud is often public utilities or the absent householder. And this has caused concern to local authorities and led to complaints from consumers.
The primary purpose of the order is to remedy this unsatisfactory situation. If approved by your Lordships, the order will greatly reduce the incentive for fraud by requiring documents to be carried on a road tanker showing the quantity of fuel loaded at the depot at the beginning of every journey and, where known, its intended destination and the quantities ordered. Documentary evidence will also have to be left with each buyer showing the quantity actually

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delivered and copies will have to be retained by the driver throughout the journey. This will make it considerably easier than at present for enforcement authorities to follow up allegations of misdeliveries.
Since 1981 three rounds of consultations on the order have been undertaken with some 46 organisations representing the oil industry, road transport operators, distributors, consumer organisations and local authority enforcement interests. In drafting the order we have been concerned to ensure that the documentation requirements should not impose an undue burden on any of the interests involved. Nor should they require the duplication of information which is already required for other purposes or interfere unnecessarily with operational methods. In compiling the proposals we have not therefore stipulated that the information should be provided in any specific way. Instead we have set out a description of the information required, leaving it to the interested parties to decide how that information should be provided.
In summary therefore these relatively simple documentation requirements will enable the enforcement authorities to see at a glance the quantity of fuel loaded on to the tanker at the start of the journey; the quantity that has already been delivered; and what fuel should therefore remain on board.
I am fully aware that the documentation requirements proposed in the order are unlikely by themselves to deter the unscrupulous trader. However when they are taken together with the existing technical regulations which have been in operation for the past two years which control the use of the measuring equipment actually used for dispensing fuel from road tankers, I believe they will greatly reduce the prospect of frauds remaining undetected.
Finally, I am sure your Lordships will wish to know that this order was considered by the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments but the Committee did not draw the special attention of your Lordships' House to it.
My Lords, I commend the draft order.
Moved, That the draft order laid before the House on 22nd April be approved. [20th Report from the Joint Committee.]—(Lord Brabazon of Tara.)
Lord Bruce of Donington: My Lords, we on this side are grateful to the noble Lord for having given an explanation of this order. Perhaps I may say at the outset that the information the noble Lord has given your Lordships' House is somewhat more extensive than that given by the Government in another place when discussing this order before the Standing Committee concerned.
The first question I have to ask the noble Lord concerning this order, which is just now coming into operation, is: what has happened before? It is a rather long time since the Weights and Measures Act 1963, and the thought immediately occurred that it is some 22 years later that this regulation has been introduced. What has been happening over the past 22 years since the passing of the Act that suddenly propels the department into action to produce a regulation of some five pages? I have one or two small questions to
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ask the noble Lord in relation to the text, but it would be useful to know what arrangements we should infer in the absence of any evidence that things have been swimming along quite merrily over the past 22 years. Fuel has been delivered by tanker between depots and to various individuals for quite a long time now. From what the noble Lord has said (and I can only judge from the basis of what the noble Lord said), in 1981 it must have emerged from some pigeon hole somewhere in the Ministry and somebody decided, "We must have a regulation covering the whole matter". So here it is.
Does the noble Lord consider that the regulation as now drafted, which has a simple purpose, is in simple terms which can be readily understood by all those involved, including, presumably, the drivers? Since the noble Lord, Lord Belstead, during the debate on the previous order before your Lordships ventured to quote Burdens on Business, I shall also quote from Burdens on Business, at paragraph 6.1. It reads:
"We found that in its length and complexity most Government literature on requirements is self-defeating. Managers simply do not have the time to absorb the volume of written guidance and instruction showered upon them".
This is what they told the Government. I ask the noble Lord to look through this five-page regulation and to inform the House whether he can honestly say that this is the most simple way of conveying what he succeeded in conveying with the utmost clarity in the course of his opening remarks. In particular, if one considers Article 3(1) one sees that it reads:
"If the road tanker is carrying any liquid fuel for delivery to a buyer in pursuance of, or of an agreement for, a sale, or in contemplation of a sale, there shall be"—
this that and the other.
Then at paragraph 4(1) it reads:
"If all or any of the liquid fuel on the road tanker is being carried in such circumstances that Article 3 above does not apply"—
then certain other things shall happen.
The detailed question I wish to ask the noble Lord is: what are the circumstances referred to in Article 4 to which Article 3 does not apply? Also, in its various paragraphs this order refers to documents from which there may be readily ascertainable the quantity of each type of liquid fuel. The word "quantity" appears at various other parts of the regulation. What it does not specify, so far as I can see, are the units of measurement that are to be disclosed. Are they to be in gallons and pints or in litres? It simple does not say. There are regulations within my knowledge that specify that on petrol pumps, for example, both have to be disclosed, but there is no mention of the units of quantity which are to be disclosed on these documents. They might vary. We should like the noble Lord's advice on that.
The regulations say:
"If any provision of this Article is contravened without reasonable cause, any person who sells, agrees to sell or has in his possession for sale the liquid fuel shall be guilty of an offence".
The question I have to ask is: who is to enforce this regulation? Are the police able to stop vehicles and make the inquiries? Are there to be special enforcement officers in the various districts to which this applies? Are they to be mobile and to turn up at various points in the journey to monitor what has happened up to date? How is the regulation to be enforced? It would be interesting to know, and in view

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of the noble Lord's predictions about manpower it would be interesting to know whether any extra enforcement personnel will be required. These are all questions to which I am sure the noble Lord will be able to give an answer.
Finally, I must draw the attention of the House to the fact that this five-page order is priced at £1·35. I have done some diligent research into this matter, as your Lordships might expect, and I find that the cost to the public of a five-page order in the year 1979 when this Government came into office was some 35 pence. It only needs a rapid calculation to observe that the price of this order of five pages has increased by 350 per cent in the course of the noble Lord's period in office.
During that time the RPI shows an increase of between 65 and 70 per cent.—that is the increase in prices which the country has enjoyed in general under the Conservative Government. How is it that a wretched little bit of paper like this costs so much more than it cost in 1979? These statutory instruments have to be bought by people whom they affect. We are supposed, in British law, to operate on the principle that ignorance of the law is no excuse. Therefore, hundreds of people will be buying this ridiculously overpriced piece of paper in order that they may acquaint themselves with the law. Incidentally, this applies also to copies of Hansard, covering the proceedings of your Lordships' House, except that the increase there is 333 per cent. since 1979 and in this case it is 350 per cent., whereas the general increase in the cost of living is between 64 and 65 per cent.
May I suggest that in addition to consulting themselves about the desirability of issuing legislation of this kind at all, which has to be enforced and which the country has done without for some 22 years, the Government could apply themselves far more usefully to other matters that need more urgent attention? This is not to say that we on this side of the House disagree with the principle, but we think it could have been more simply expressed. We think that the document itself could have been priced very much lower than it is.
The Government have captive buyers, because people have got to buy the order to ensure that they themselves comply with the law. So, in general, although we do not dissent from this and although we observe always that an affirmative resolution of the House is invariably required on non-controversial matters whereas the negative procedure is always adopted when a matter of controversy is involved, which seems a little peculiar, we thank the noble Lord. Of course we shall not resist the passing of the Motion which the noble Lord has so ably moved.
7.12 p.m.
Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Bruce of Donington, for his reception of the order. He has asked a number of questions which I will attempt to answer. His first question was: what had happened since 1963, and why had it taken so long? The reason is that in 1963 there was not nearly so much transportation of this kind of fuel oil around. Secondly, and probably more importantly, this order hinges on the regulations specifying measuring equipment, which came in in 1979: the regulations
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were revised in 1983 and it was only then that serious work on the complementary documentation requirements could proceed.
The noble Lord asked what evidence was needed that this order was necessary. National statistics are not collected centrally, but prosecutions average about 12 per year, and of course there are considerably more complaints which cannot be proceeded with for lack of evidence. We hope, obviously, that after bringing in this order it will be easier to bring evidence to prosecute in such cases.
The noble Lord also mentioned possible burdens on business. This order will not impose any heavy burdens on business because reputable companies already use documentation which covers the requirements of the order, which we have kept as simple as possible, consistent with the best existing practice. Others will need to bring their documentation procedures into line with it.
The noble Lord also asked me about the difference between paragraphs 3 and 4. Paragraph 4 covers fuel which is not for sale: that is, fuel which is being transported between depots. He also asked what unit of measurement would be used and whether it would be gallons or litres. Either can be used. The noble Lord then asked me who would enforce this measure. In the normal course of work, it will be trading standards officers. It will simplify their job and should not require any additional manpower.
Lastly, the noble Lord asked why the order was priced at £1.35, which appeared to him to be very expensive. I am afraid I really have no answer at all to that question; I really do not know.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

Speech Impairment and Loss
7.15 p.m.
Lord Campbell of Croy Lord Campbell of Croy rose to ask Her Majesty's Government what consideration they are giving to the problems arising from loss or impairment of speech.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper. This is an opportunity to discuss what is being done and what could be done to alleviate problems arising from handicaps in speech, and to hear the Government's views. I am grateful to the noble Lords and Baronesses in different parts of the House who have indicated their intention to take part in this debate. All of them possess great knowledge of the subject and are clearly concerned about sufferers from loss or serious impairment of speech.
I start by suggesting that the development of speech therapy and the production of qualified speech therapists in recent years have made a notable impact. It has proved possible to restore communication by speech in cases where it was previously thought that nothing could be done. Of course, such apparent magic cannot be performed in every case. However, the degree of restoration and the amount of improvement in cases of impairment constitute a tangible and notable record of success from this comparatively new profession of speech therapists. There is scope, I sugggest, for wider use of their skills.
The particular point I should like to emphasise today is that a considerable number of people with a

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wide range of disorders of other kinds, as well as in speech, can benefit greatly from speech therapy: spastics or people suffering from multiple sclerosis or mental disabilities, to give three examples only.
Someone whose legs are paralysed by accident or illness and who has to be in a wheelchair may also have a speech disorder as part of his condition. He is no longer able to communicate. It may not be possible to do much medically to improve the paralysis in his limbs, but if we are able to restore speech well enough for him to communicate, that will transform his existence. It may make all the difference as to whether he can live at home or will have to be kept in hospital or in an institution. There is a message here on public expenditure for Ministers, my Lords. Hospital and institutional care is very expensive. The cost of the availability of a speech therapy service could be offset to some extent—perhaps even totally—by success in improving a patient's ability to live in the community and so be eligible and willing to be discharged.
A key event in the short history of modern speech therapy was the publication in 1972 of the Quirk Report. The report produced evidence that
"speech therapy had established itself as an indispensable service, vitally important in a large range of conditions, and that the demand for speech therapists far exceeded the supply".
It recommended expansion and set target figures for numbers of speech therapists in relation to the population: namely, 12 therapists per 200,000 of population.
I was a Health Minister at the time, as Secretary of State for Scotland, and I saw action started on that report. I am glad that in the 12 years since then significant progress, based on the Quirk Report, has been made. In some areas of the country the target figures have now been reached. My submission today, however, is that still more needs to be done to provide wider availability of speech therapy. More people can benefit by cure or improvement than was imagined or contemplated in the past. Speech therapists have shown by results what can be achieved in restoring and improving ability to communicate.
I should explain that long before the Quirk Report my personal interest was engaged. I spent more than a year, 40 years ago, in the hospital ward of a leading neurosurgeon. Many of the others in the ward were head cases, mostly from shell and mortar wounds. I got to know the speech therapists and saw them at work with men who had brain damage and, in one case which I remember particularly well, complete loss of memory. At this point I should perhaps make clear that I was not myself a head case, though some of my uncharitable friends may be surprised. The surgeon was operating on my back, a bullet having gone through my middle—incidentally, nine days before VE Day which we have recently been commemorating. I do not conceal my admiration then and later for the skill and patience of those speech therapists and their successors.
Turning to more recent times, within the last three years a new organisation has been formed bringing together various voluntary bodies which are concerned with particular diseases or disorders. It is named Voluntary Organisations Communications and
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Language, which felicitously produces the acronym VOCAL. It now has 28 constituent members as diverse as the Parkinson's Disease Society and the Downs Children's Association. The important common factor for all 28 of these voluntary bodies is that many of the people they cater for have, besides other handicaps, loss or serious impairment of speech. Another member of VOCAL is the Royal Society for Mentally Handicapped Children and Adults, known briefly as MENCAP. I am very pleased that my noble friend Lord Renton, who is president of MENCAP, is proposing to speak in this debate and he will no doubt say more on that subject.
At least two other member organisations are concerned with handicaps resulting from strokes. Where speech is seriously affected by strokes, remarkable improvements can be made. It is estimated that about 10 per cent. of the survivors of strokes have severe impairment of speech. Those who could benefit from speech therapy do not all at present have access to it. I believe that the noble Lord, Lord Smith, will say more on this. I am delighted that he has put his name down to speak in this debate, being a former president of the Royal College of Surgeons of England.
VOCAL took part in a survey completed at the end of 1983 into conditions and needs of speech therapists in the National Health Service. It was largely carried out by obtaining replies to a questionnaire from speech therapists in the country who are members of the College of Speech Therapy. The response was good and informative. Among the conclusions from the survey are these. There is a need for speech therapy and it has increased since the Quirk Report was published, notably in the fields of mental handicap and categories of small children who have speech difficulties before school. Another conclusion was that more knowledge of what can be achieved should be spread throughout the National Health Service and higher priority should be given to speech therapy in providing opportunities to restore normal communication for patients who have lost the power of speech.
Today there is another matter which must be raised; that is the training and placing of students. Recently there has been a revision of student training and allowances. Apparently there was no consultation with the College of Speech Therapists. It has led to a less satisfactory situation. In particular, the system of block placement has ended; that is a description of the stage where a student spends three of four weeks working with a qualified speech therapist
I ask the Government to look carefully at this with a view to restoring clinical training places and the allowances. This should be the best way to provide the therapists needed to meet future demands. We should beware of false economies. If patients can regain the ability to communicate by speech, even though disabled in other ways, they can return to a fairly normal life in the community. Again, as regards children, if speech therapists are available at an early stage they can reduce or obviate the need for expensive care and treatment later in life.
It might be thought wholly inappropriate for this subject to be raised in your Lordships' House. Everyone here is very articulate and fluent and has no

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need of speech therapy. Indeed, I must confess to the mischievous thought I have sometimes had at times, both here and in another place, when one of my long-winded colleagues has been in full spate, that providence might intervene with a sudden loss of capacity for speech—of course only a temporary loss. Be that as it may, we can all visualise the frustration and complete disruption of someone's life which loss of speech causes.
I ask the Government whether they will direct more attention to the need for speech therapy and to the ways in which it can most effectively be met. This includes wider availability within the National Health Service and greater awareness of that availability, and of the potential for improving the conditions of patients in many varieties of cases. It also includes the vital matter of devising the best and most suitable system of training for this essential profession of speech therapists. I look forward to hearing from my noble friend Lord Caithness who, I am very glad to know, is to reply from the Government Front Bench.
7.28 p.m.
Lord Ennals: May I say first how much all of us feel indebted to the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy, for raising this extremely important issue and, equally, for having attracted, in what will inevitably be a short debate, so many people of experience and skill from whom I know we shall all learn. May I also congratulate him on the timing of this debate, because it is of course National Deaf Children's Week and nothing could be more appropriate than that we should be discussing this subject during this week, though there are problems which go beyond those children.
It has been estimated by the Department of Health and Social Services that more than 4 million people in Britain have significant hearing loss. About one child in 1,000 is born with severe hearing loss, so the first priority is obviously prevention. This includes genetic counselling, better ante-natal and peri-natal care, treatment of upper respiratory and other infections and vaccination of mothers against rubella, as deafness in infants can be related to rubella. One wants to give maximum support to the national council which is campaigning for children to be vaccinated against rubella, and I think it not inappropriate to say how much one appreciates the support of the Princess of Wales in this connection. The publicity gained cannot but have a good effect on the public.
It is not always possible to prevent deafness, which makes it important that any impairment is discovered as early as possible. Emphasis continues to be placed on the need to screen children at an early age—perhaps around eight or nine months—so that action can be taken quickly to diagnose, to assess and to treat any child in whom hearing loss is suspected. New equipment has been developed which is opening up prospects of effective tests on babies before they leave hospital. I think that we would all want to welcome that development.
I am fortunate in contributing to this debate not so much because of my own personal knowledge but I have in my family two trained speech therapists. I have a son who is a development officer with SENSE, which is concerned with the deaf, blind and rubella handicapped. I have another son who is concerned
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with computers and the expanding means by which they can be used in a communication sense for disabled people. So if I do not say the right thing I shall be in trouble with about half of my family.
I should like to start first with the provision of radio hearing aids, which was not touched on by the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy. Acquisition of speech and language for deaf children depends very greatly on the level of their hearing loss and on the adequacy or otherwise of the hearing aids. The National Deaf Children's Society is particularly concerned about the shortfall of approximately 50 per cent. in the provision of radio hearing aids for children. At the present time only about 25 per cent. of children wearing hearing aids have the use of a radio aid. Forty per cent. of these radio aids have been bought by charities. I think that this is a useful reminder of the important role of charities, which in another sense we will be discussing on Monday.
It is true, and this was confirmed by the National Deaf Children's Society, that roughly half of Britain's 30,000 deaf children are losing out educationally in their battle to acquire speech because they do not have a radio hearing aid. This is just one aspect of what the National Deaf Children's Society called the "communication jungle" which now exists in Britain. One of the main findings of the survey carried by the society was that 80 per cent. of parents, and 81 per cent. of professionals, desperately wanted more information about new technology for deaf children.
"Radio hearing aids have revolutionised life for the deaf children who have them. In particular, they have been the single largest technical contribution to the integration of hearing-impaired children into ordinary schools: they provide a direct link between a deaf child and the teacher in a class of hearing children. At the same time, they have also helped these children to acquire speech and language at home, because they provide a sound link with their families even when they are moving about at a distance".
However, while an ordinary hearing aid has to be provided by the National Health Service, there is no statutory provision of radio aids. I am raising this point particularly—and I am raising it early in the debate—in the hope that the noble Earl when he comes to reply will be able to say something about it. At present the provision of radio aids is left to charity, to parents, if they have the money to do so, and to the enlightenment of individual local education authorities, if they have the funds and wisdom to provide them.
The director of the National Deaf Children's Society said just a few days ago:
"It is unjust that a few deaf children benefit from the tremendous help these radio aids can give, whilst the rest have to struggle without them. We would like to see statutory provision of radio aids for all hearing impaired children who need them. We estimate that the cost of providing radio hearing aids would be £2 million initially, with as little as £200,000 annually to service and maintain them. This is only 1·6 per cent. of the existing NHS hearing aid budget".
So we are not talking about a massive sum of money. He went on to say that,
"things are going to get even more complicated and confusing in the near future. In the United States and Canada for instance provision of telephone services for deaf people is about 15 years ahead of us".
We ought to be applying the new technology which now exists to those who are so seriously deprived.
My second point, which was very properly raised by the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy, concerns the provision of speech therapy for deaf children. There is

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no doubt that a hearing loss has a profound effect on speech development. Those of your Lordships who heard the presentation by a number of, let us say, smaller organisations of disabled people last week were very much aware of the difficulty that someone with a hearing defect has when presenting his case to a significant number of your Lordships.
Teachers of the deaf and the blind are trained in speech and language work with deaf children. Speech therapists with experience of hearing impairment have a special contribution to make to the assessment and development of speech and articulation. The proposal that had been made by Sir Keith Joseph to withdraw the mandatory requirement in terms of teachers of the deaf and the blind was, as a result of all-party pressure, fortunately withdrawn. We are faced here with a very serious problem in terms of the shortage of speech therapists and the training of speech therapists.
I received a letter, which I shall quote, from Heathlands Primary School for Deaf Children. They wrote to me only yesterday and I received the letter today. They knew of the debate which was to be initiated by the noble Lord. I shall quote the letter from the headmistress:
"Heathlands is one of the special schools hit especially hard by cut backs over recent years in the Health Service.
Eight years ago the school asked Area Health for Speech Therapy for Heathlands pupils. Finally after much hassle … we were given three sessions a week (1½ days) to divide between 50-odd pupils.
The Parent Teacher Association, in desperation, realising that nothing would be done for a whole generation of pupils, decided to employ a fulltime Speech Therapists' Aide to work under the visiting Speech Therapist.
The School now has a roll of 89 pupils. The P.T.A. has to fund a salary currently of £5,000 annually"—
a considerable sum to be raised by a Parent Teacher Association. The letter continues:
"Continuing representations to District Health (since yet another re-organisation) has still not seen any improvement in staffing establishment for Speech Therapy. Since the '81 Education Act it is now law that non-educational provision for the handicapped should be provided by each District. Despite this there is still no improvement. In fact the Speech Therapist who desperately wanted to work fulltime with profoundly deaf children has now left to work in another area, so, Heathlands now has no speech therapist at all!
Co-ordinating services for the hearing impaired seems to be very patchy … I.L.E.A have a fulltime Speech Therapist for each school"—
she was comparing that with the position at Heathlands. The letter concludes:
"I do hope that the legal requirements of each child's special educational needs, under the new Act, can at least be met".
I hope that the noble Earl the Minister will have something to say on that issue as well.
The third issue I want to raise concerns those who suffer from both deafness and blindness. I am of course interested in the work of the National Association for Deaf-Blind and Rubella Handicapped. I am told that for many years that association has been protesting that there is no specific training course available—let alone mandatory—for teachers of deaf-blind children, despite the widely acknowledged fact that they are some of the most difficult and demanding to teach.
Your Lordships, to appreciate that argument, need only give some thought to the plight of the deaf-blind child—or adult, although they are mostly children—who is both deaf and blind. The problems of
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communication are enormous. Until a few years ago, the majority of such people were to be found in hospitals for the mentally handicapped—totally unsuited, as there was no reason to believe that someone who is deaf or someone who is blind is in any way mentally handicapped.
Historically, deaf-blind children have been left out of the planning of the Department of Education and Science. Recent consultations concerning education for the blind and for deaf children failed to consider education for deaf-blind children. It was only through the action of the National Association for Deaf-Blind and Rubella Handicapped that the DES agreed to carry out a separate consultation. This has not yet been reported.
I will conclude by expanding a little further on this point. There are a number of universities at which teachers can undertake a further qualifying year for teaching hearing-impaired children, and there is one university at which teachers may qualify for teaching the visually impaired. Moreover, it is conditional upon accepting a post in special schools for these disabilities that teachers who are not already appropriately qualified undertake to pursue the training within three years, either through in-service courses or by attendance at one of the universities. Thus one can guarantee that most hearing-impaired and visually-impaired children are taught by appropriately qualified teachers. I am sure that objective is one we would all want to set.
I should like to quote a statement recently made by Mrs. Jessica Hills, who is chairman of the National Association for Deaf-Blind and Rubella Handicapped. She said:
"Is it not then extraordinary that dually sensorily-impaired children, who surely need even more highly qualified teachers with an understanding not only of techniques for the deaf and the blind but also for the specific problems caused by the combination of the two disabilities, should not be protected by law in the same way? Only a very few teachers working with dually sensorily-impaired children in this country have the full qualification which is unobtainable here. These teachers either qualified in the USA or Australasia. The Association has contributed towards the costs of two teachers going to the States for training".
I mention this statement because it suggests that in the case of children who are handicapped in one way or another—and particularly speech-handicapped children—we are slipping behind. If that is not so then I am sure the Minister will give the House some assurance.
If the Minister is not in a position at this moment to comment on the three rather detailed points I have raised, perhaps he will take the opportunity that has been provided by this debate initiated by the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy, to arrange a confidential discussion and consultation between those involved and Ministers, to deal not only with the questions I have put but also the points which other Members of your Lordships' House will raise during the course of this debate.
I repeat how grateful I am to the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy, for raising this issue and providing an opportunity for this House to consider the case of children and adults who are very severely handicapped.
7.45 p.m.
Earl Attlee: My Lords, speech—possibly after touch—is the most basic of all forms of

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communication. I join with the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, in congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy, for initiating this debate this evening.
In my maiden speech in your Lordships' House in December 1983, I explained that I was dyslexic and described some of the pressures that condition placed me under when I was a child. When I make speeches outside your Lordships' House I nearly always mention the fact that I am dyslexic—not, I hasten to add, to attract sympathy but for a very different reason. I find that after making such a speech, members of the audience will come up to me and say, "I am awfully grateful that you mentioned you were dyslexic because my son (or daughter, or grandson) is dyslexic. It helps when public figures stand up and admit that they, too, suffer from that handicap".
At one meeting I found myself addressing a group of true blue Tory ladies. Afterwards, about five of them gathered around me. I will not say that they were an adoring bunch but they were very nice. Certainly this was not because I had convinced them of the joys of being part of the Alliance in your Lordships' House, although I had been speaking about the way in which your Lordships' House functions. The point is that each of those ladies had a relative who was dyslexic.
Furthermore, my hostess on that occasion told me that she was a governor of a local well-known fee-paying school for girls; actually, she pronounced the word "gels". She explained that because one of her relatives was dyslexic she had asked the headmistress of that school how she approached the problems of pupils who were dyslexic. The headmistress had replied, "We don't use that word in this school. We prefer to call such children lazy". This is 1985, my Lords—not 1895.
The dyslexic child cannot spell and so has to look up words in the dictionary, if he can find them. The child may use that word once and then within half an hour, or an hour, or even a day later—if the child wishes to use the same word—he must look it up again in the dictionary—and so on for the rest of his life. The dictionary owned by a dyslexic person is always, like mine, very well thumbed. One may compare that situation with that of a non-dyslexic child, who will simply look up the word in the dictionary and then memorise it. The ordinary child will probably never need to look up that word again. So one could say that the normal, non-dyslexic child is really the lazy child.
I mentioned dyslexia in this context because when dyslexics muddle up words in their minds, the same muddle shows itself in their speech as well as in their writing. The actress Susan Hampshire, in her book Susan's Story, describes what happened when she was asked to present a large cheque to a pools winner. She began by congratulating the winner and then said, "I'm happy to present him with a cheque for £696". There was dead silence. Miss Hampshire was a little surprised because she had in mind a huge sum of money. She tried again and said, "I mean, a cheque for £6,096". At this, there were mutterings all around her. In desperation she said, "This cheque is for six, zero, zero comma, six, nine, zero pounds". Someone grabbed the cheque from her and said, "The amount is £600,690". I wrote it down incorrectly myself.
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Dyslexia is one of the minor defects. Another is stammering. As I admitted to your Lordships, I stammered when I was a child. I worked for the Barnet Volunteer Bureau. I took a young lad who, unfortunately, had no legs back to where he had been brought up in a Dr. Barnardo's home on the other side of London. When we arrived he was greeted by a little boy, and they chatted away. I did not understand a single word that this little boy was saying to my passenger—not one word. I realised that it was as if he were speaking in a foreign language which my chap had learned and I had not. I have a very strong feeling—I think the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, touched on this—that the average person listening to this little boy talking would have said he should be in a mental hospital, that he is a loony. But he is not a loony. I do not know from what he was suffering but he had an inability to speak normally and I do not think even the speech therapists could have done very much to help him.
The noble Lord, Lord Ennals, mentioned deafness. What he said is very true. What worries me is that there is selective deafness where it might be that one is deaf to low-frequency sounds or to high-frequency sounds. One can have a child in a school who can understand one teacher perfectly but cannot understand another teacher who is speaking on a different frequency. I give an example. I worked for an oil company and we installed oil-fired heating in an old lady's house. She complained very bitterly and we went to see her. She said that the noise of the central heating pump was driving her crazy. We went into the kitchen and listened, and it was absolutely silent.
I said to my colleague, "You stay there and mess around and I will talk to the old girl". The engineer came back a few minutes later and said, "I can't find anything wrong". The old lady said, "I should think not; all you have been doing is switching that damned thing on and off all the time". I said, "You can actually hear it?", and she said, "Of course I can". We took out what to us was a very quiet central heating pump and we installed one that when we switched it on groaned and rattled and chattered. "Ah, that's perfect", said the old lady, "not a sound". She was susceptible to very high-frequency noise, and provided the noise of the pump was low it did not affect her. I felt guilty because I thought she was being stupid. I could not hear the pump; therefore why should she? But obviously she did.
I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy, that we need more speech therapists. In my maiden speech I mentioned talking to a lady in the Press Club who said to me, "You used to stammer, didn't you?" It turned out that she was a speech therapist. So they are obviously trained, and we need more of them.
In conclusion, I hope that the Government will bear this in mind because it seems to me such a crying shame that young children are classed as being mental and are put into homes where no one ever tries to teach them because they think they are unteachable. But although they may be brain damaged they do have a fair degree of intelligence—it is just that we do not happen to speak their language.
7.55 p.m.
Lord Smith: My Lords, I must first, as it were, declare an interest at the start of my short speech. I

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know to my cost about loss or impairment of speech and its treatment at the present time and in the future. Therefore I ask your Lordships to bear with me while I deal very briefly with a piece of personal history, because it is highly relevant to the debate.
Four years ago, as a result of the blockage of a minute artery supplying the speech area in the brain, suddenly my speech was reduced to nil—literally nil. My wife and I had to start with "A", "B" and "C", working with a mirror to adapt my mouth to resemble hers in the sounds she made. My thought processes were in every sense normal. For example, I could play chess normally but I could not say "check" let alone "checkmate". I thought normally but could not translate my thoughts in terms of speech.
Quite by chance my wife and I were introduced to the volunteer stroke scheme, directed (bless her heart), by Valerie Eaton Griffith, who taught that supreme actress Patricia Neal to speak again after her stroke. Valerie started something for the future which she could not have known at the time would be of fantastic benefit to sufferers from the loss or impairment of speech. Within a few days a number of volunteers were visiting our house and each one of them spent an hour or more encouraging my thoughts to have an expression in language. In the beginning it was a word or two, and later a sentence. These wonderful volunteers were part of the service provided by the Chest, Heart and Stroke Association. In this association, Lord Hill was the chairman of the council; later Lord Cameron whose death we mourned recently.
I personally think that victims of chest and heart complaints are very well looked after by a variety of organisations, but there is a yawning gap in the treatment of victims of a stroke, particularly of a stroke which destroys the means of communication. The victim of a stroke of that kind is bereft of any communication with wife, husband or friends, which induces a mood almost suicidal; and the wife or husband very nearly gives up the struggle, surrounded by obstacles which he or she could not imagine being imposed on him or her.
One imagines that doctors might help, but consultant neurologists in hospitals are too near the problem and they transfer the patient to his home the moment the emergency is over. The general practitioner has no time to attend to the painstakingly slow improvement of stroke victims. Nevertheless, neurologists and general practitioners have welcomed the use of the volunteer stroke scheme and are very willing to work with it. But these volunteers cannot do everything; and they need instruction and control in their use.
A specialised group of speech therapists has been developed with the aim of treating aphasia patients resulting from a stroke. Ideally speaking, every patient who has suffered a stroke and as a result has a loss or impairment of speech should be treated by a doctor on general grounds, a speech therapist specialising in aphasia and a group of volunteers. In this chain of three the weakest link is in the middle. Doctors are adequate to deal with the situation. The volunteers are rapidly increasing in number, for the wish to help the victims of adversity is still strong in most people; but
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we need more speech therapists to co-ordinate this chain of three.
With the modern thought about loss or impairment of speech we know the way they should be treated. With enlightened and progressive thought in their management, the victim will be prevented from sinking into apathy and in danger of dying in a mood of depression. The victim of a stroke can be given the first real hope in the struggle for survival and can, with luck, and with proper help, achieve a remarkable degree of recovery. I know that from past experience.
I have to confess that my impromptu speech is not brilliant and I have to speak from notes today, but I have succeeded the noble Lord, Lord Hill of Luton, and the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Balhousie, as chairman of the Council of the Chest, Heart and Stroke Association, and I speak to your Lordships today in support of the wise words of the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy, in the hope that the Government will pay due regard to what his Lordship has said.
I must end on a brief personal note. I thought that the making of a speech within the House would be very much of a trial but your Lordships have listened to me with great forbearance and with the kindly atmosphere for which the House has always been famous, and my fears have evaporated. I speak nevertheless from emotion in the hope of persuading your Lordships that in the management of those smitten with a loss or impairment of speech we could do better.
8.3 p.m.
Baroness Lane-Fox: My Lords, it is inspiring to follow such a notable example of recovery as portrayed by the noble Lord, Lord Smith. Any of us who have just heard the noble Lord must be affected by his words. The lack of ability to communicate with anyone is a dreadful situation. Like many others in your Lordships' House I have seen the effect, both in an out of hospital. With the victim almost like a drowning figure, one instinctively longs to reach out and help. The wonderful volunteer service referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Smith, gives us great hope.
Many noble Lords in this House will know the story of Miss Diana Law, MBE, struck down and helpless by an early stroke. She heard with perfect comprehension conversations across her hospital bed to the effect that she would never in any way be active again. After some years such an idea was proved to wrong. Due to the loyal determination of her family and friends, the skill and persistence of her speech therapist and her own tenacity and courage she has made a remarkable partial reovery. She has helped in many ways countless people in the United Kingdom, and yet more people overseas during her extensive journeys abroad, by forming clubs in which people who are learning to speak again gang together to get better. For those cases it is always the speech therapists who are so important. I am told that with grown-up cases really rewarding results can be achieved by intensive and concentrated treatment.
My noble friend Lord Campbell of Croy listed some of the causes of these conditions: accidents, illnesses, strokes, all calamities that can happen too easily. What is owed to those who suffer any of those conditions is that they be allowed the treatment known to hold the

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key to unlock them from their imprisonment. Trained and dedicated speech therapists are the people who can really help. Diana Law founded Action for Dysphasic Adults, called "ADA" for short, of which a number of noble Lords are vice-presidents, and I am proud to be one. Her work and example deserve our admiration and support. While Diana Law deals with adults with impaired speech Mrs. Browning founded the AFASICS, which stands for the Association for All Speech Impaired Children. Through her success with her own son she has devoted her life to enthusing others with the urgent need to retrieve children from the maze of lack of communications. Again, the need for speech therapists is the first priority.
An outstanding feature in this field in recent years is the voluntary effort to help, and the excellent organisation referred to by my noble friend called VOCAL. That indeed gathers together the combined effort under the heading of Voluntary Organisations for Communication and Language, and with about 28 bodies affiliated they are a strength, doing admirable work; and the main thrust of their very vocal message always is the need for more well trained speech therapists. Here are 28 bodies who are ready to sink their individuality to put across their combined message.
All these points reinforce the plea already made by the College of Speech Therapists for more placement of students for clinical training. Once a method of treatment has been discovered for this at least humiliating and at worst imprisoning disorder, treatment depending so much on the trained skill of the therapist, surely it is up to society to increase its chance. I support the Question so aptly initiated by my noble friend Lord Campbell of Croy and appeal to the Secretary of State to recognise this as a most necessary item for the list in his readjusted health programme.
8.9 p.m.
Lord Henderson of Brompton: My Lords, I too should like to express my gratitude to the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy, for asking this Question this evening, for many reasons and for one in particular, that he and I both suffered the same kind of injury much the same period ago, in my case 41 years, and I think in his case 40 years; and both of us had the same experience of being put into mixed wards where we saw at first hand, that long ago, speech therapists at work. That is something one will never forget because it is a quite distinct and special gift and a training which I have valued from that day to this.
Secondly, I should like to thank the noble Lord because he brought to the fore this admirable organisation known by the acronym VOCAL to which the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, has just referred. Twenty-eight bodies have, so to speak, sunk their differences, though they all have the things in common which bring them together, and have been able to co-operate in that way. That is one of the things which I am hoping may be achieved—it has already been achieved by VOCAL, but in other spheres—if the idea that I have for a national council for disability gets off the ground. This kind of pilot scheme of VOCAL is something which I very much had in mind and which I hope will be followed in other spheres.
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The noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy, must feel that this debate has been worth while alone for the remarkable and moving speech by the noble Lord, Lord Smith. To have attracted the noble Lord and given him the courage to get up on his feet to give us this remarkable demonstration of restored speech is an inspiration to us all and especially, I think, to those who remember the noble Lord, Lord Smith, and his splendid utterance—which remains unimpaired —before this calamity happened to him. For that reason alone the debate has been of the most remarkable value.
Enough has been said by the noble Lords, Lord Campbell, Lord Ennals and Lord Smith, to convince everyone who has attended the debate that there is an undoubted shortage of speech therapists. I may be wrong about this, but there seems to be a shortage of candidates, a shortage of training facilities and a shortage of posts for those who are trained. In the most difficult cases the therapist-patient relationship should be one to one, but in less difficult cases, as the noble Lord, Lord Campbell, said, the provision of speech therapists may save money for the state if those who are cared for in homes can be taken out of those homes and visited by speech therapists or can attend classes conducted by speech therapists.
I think that one of the reasons why there is a need for more speech therapists is the very point which the noble Lord, Lord Smith, made. Although the numbers of those who suffer from dysarthria (people who find difficulty in producing speech) have been known more or less exactly for some time, by contrast, it has been found that the numbers of those who are dysphasic or aphasic (people who either cannot speak or find difficulty in producing speech) are very much larger than had hitherto been realised, especially as it is a common condition after a stroke. That alone may be one of the most powerful reasons for recruiting more candidates for speech therapy and increasing training facilities.
I would say that those who go in for that profession will not be disappointed. It is a profession supplementary to medicine that requires intelligence, sensitivity and patience of a high order. I believe it to be one of the most difficult, as well as one of the most rewarding, of therapeutic skills to acquire. I should like to ask Her Majesty's Government what they are doing to encourage young people to become speech therapists. What are they doing to provide training facilities or to expand those facilities and to provide enough posts for therapists when they are qualified? There is certainly a current shortage.
Then I should briefly like to touch on something which the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, has already touched on, and that is the supply of electronic aids—either the kind that he mentioned which may suit a number of people, or specially adapted electronic aids for impaired people. I think that this is a somewhat neglected area. What is needed is not just electronic equipment which can be used by a number of people with the same condition, but a laboratory which can design specially adapted electronic equipment. That should not be neglected, as I believe it now is.
On the other hand, I should like to congratulate the Government because I believe that the department has

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set up a number of centres where people with impairment may go. That is surely something on which the Government deserve and ought to receive congratulations.
I should not like to leave the subject without making special mention of the importance of ascertaining the level of intelligence of those suffering from the loss or impairment of speech, whether dysarthric or dysphasic or aphasic. That of course occurs where people have multiple handicaps, as was mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Ennals. Interesting work is being done at the RHHI in Putney by Dr. Sarah Wilson—that will be of interest to the noble Lord's son, and he may already know about it—with computer-based equipment which is used where standard equipment for ascertaining the level of intelligence cannot be used. By means of visual and aural equipment significant information may be obtained about patients by their replies which are neither verbal nor written. Such information is of great value for therapists treating such patients.
I should just like to mention that on this very day there starts at the RHHI in Putney the sixth seminar on the ascertainment of the level of intelligence of severely impaired people, under Dr. Sarah Wilson. I should like—and I hope I can count on the House to join me—to wish every success to those deliberations at Putney in the following days.
8.17 p.m.
Lord Renton: My Lords, may I first endorse what the noble Lord, Lord Henderson of Brompton, said? A national council for the disabled, about which we all know he is so keen, would have the advantage of helping if it were to take on board this very important question of speech therapy as well as all the other matters that he has in mind for it. I should also like to endorse the tribute that he paid to the noble Lord, Lord Smith, on the triumph with which he overcame his impairment of speech and made it temporary. I also thank my noble friend Lord Campbell of Croy for his initiative. Having for many years been involved with the problems of mental handicap, I know that this is one of the most difficult of the problems of mental handicap.
Although, as has been said, we need many more speech therapists, I think, and I fear that we must assume, that for many years we are unlikely to have enough of them. Finding more people with the aptitude and, as the noble Lord, Lord Henderson, said, the patience and dedication for this work is not easy. When found they have to be specially trained—not only in general speech therapy but also to teach the mentally handicapped how to speak.
It is not too difficult to help a normally intelligent person to overcome a stammer, but it is very difficult to get a person with a low mental age to talk when she is reluctant to try, or is incapable of doing so. I know that because our youngest daughter, who is over 30, cannot talk at all, although—thank goodness!—she seems to understand a lot. However, in the case of many of the mentally handicapped it is not easy to get them to say a word.
A very strange factor is that there are children and young people who have been incapable of communicating with human beings and have uttered
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their first words when on the back of a pony or a horse. That is a serious and practical situation. I am very glad that this idea of riding for the mentally handicapped has taken on. I should like to pay tribute to a man who has done it very much on his own, although under the aegis of MENCAP, Mr. Joe Royds. He has spread the gospel and got many young people speaking for the first time. Having first communicated with a quadruped, they have been able to lead on from there.
From my experience of MENCAP, I say that enormous progress has been made with the help of all kinds of people in helping the mentally handicapped. The best time for giving help to mentally handicapped people is during early childhood, starting at a time when a normal child would be learning to speak. That is a very early stage. During the school years, regular intensive work is required. Even after a young person has left school, the work will have to continue because in some cases it takes years. For real success, I am advised that a 10 or 15 minute session in school is needed every day and should be backed up by a properly structured programme, carried out by the teachers in the school, even if they are not specialists in speech therapy, and by the parents at home.
It is obvious that we have to make the fullest use of the time and talent of such speech therapists as are available. It becomes all the more imperative to do so because of the shortage of them. There are three ways in which the speech therapist can work. One way is by teaching individuals in their homes. That of course is the counsel of perfection—although quite a lot of it is being done. However, I suggest that that takes up too much time in travelling on the part of the speech therapist. Although that way is valuable, we should not regard it as a general rule in practice.
The second way is by teaching individuals separately at a clinic, a centre, or at a special school. That is obviously a very good way. The third way is by teaching groups of people collectively at a centre. This has both its advantages and its limitations; but where it is feasible, as it is for many who have reached a certain stage in the development of their speech, it is a very good use of the therapist's time.
As has been mentioned by my noble friend and by other noble Lords, speech therapy and the training of therapists has so far been the responsibility of the Department of Health and Social Security. It has been regarded as a health problem. I suggest that that is wrong and it is time that we changed it. I hope that my noble friend Lord Caithness will take this on board. This work of speech therapy is so much involved in the training at special schools, which are the responsibility of education authorities, that it should be regarded as an educational matter.
I really cannot think why this was not done in the early 1970s when the training of the mentally handicapped generally was handed over from the Department of Health and Social Security, where the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, played a distinguished part, and was taken over to Education. That was when the Prime Minister was the Secretary of State for Education. It was very good that she accepted that responsibility. However, it is now time for us to put the speech therapists under this aegis.
I do not want to make too much of this because I have not personal experience of it but I am advised

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that there are a number of occasions when there has not been sufficient co-operation between health authorities and education authorities to ensure that the special schools are receiving the help that they need. This is a matter which should be inquired into. I cannot give enough of the facts and figures about it tonight. I am merely alerting the Government to this factor.
Lord Ennals: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. Will he agree that it is really almost as important to ensure that we have the teachers who are trained, as it is that we have the speech therapists?
Lord Renton: My Lords, I said that the work of speech therapists and the training of speech therapists should become an educational responsibility under the Department of Education and Science. I agree entirely with the noble Lord. Perhaps I may say a little more about the position with regard to the mentally handicapped. In most special schools 90 per cent. of the mentally handicapped children need speech therapy. That is a very high proportion. At present, the best that most speech therapists are able to manage are group sessions for several children and an advisory service for the teachers who try to carry on the work started at the group sessions during the rest of the week. That is helpful but is is not good enough.
For the handicapped child who has been integrated into the main stream of education, the picture is even more bleak. If he needs speech therapy, he will probably have to attend a clinic and thereby miss a whole morning, or even a whole day, each week from school. That is clearly something which he cannot afford to do.
Perhaps I may say in passing that I have always opposed the integration of mentally handicapped children into the general system. I know that there are many of those working in the field of mental handicap who think that this is the right thing to do. I do not find that parents take that view. It is some of the over-enthusiastic workers who, I think in a way fir idealistic reasons, reasons of moral principle almost, think that the mentally handicapped should, wherever possible, be integrated into the general system. However, where speech therapy is concerned, that is adding to their difficulties instead of solving them.
This is a big subject. Many interesting speeches have already been made, and I do not think that I can add to them. However, I believe that one should express one's gratitude to my noble friend and to all those who have spoken since then. I conclude by saying as others have done, that a considerable increase in the number of speech therapists is long overdue if they can be found. Anything that the Government can do to overcome the shortage would be good work.
8.30 p.m.
Baroness Masham of Ilton: My Lords, I, too, would like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy, and to say what a most interesting debate I feel this has been. It is a most important subject, for tonight we are discussing the problems of people who may themselves have great difficulty in expressing what their needs are. One morning some years ago, I woke
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up and I could not speak. It was for only a few moments, but it gave me a tiny insight into the fear and frustration that people who suddenly lose their speech must experience. I was luckier than the noble Lord, Lord Smith, and I, too, should like to congratulate him on his splendid achievement in getting his speech back to normal.
The Charter for the '80s, proclaimed by Rehabilitation International, says that each nation should have a programme to prevent as many impairments as possible and to ensure that the necessary preventative services reach every family and every person. To reduce the risk of having a stroke is so important. People should be able to have their blood pressure checked periodically. If they have high blood pressure, this should be treated and monitored every three months. Prevention is so much better than cure as there may not be a full cure for many. The shock, depression, expense and tragedy should be avoided if at all possible.
Are we, as a nation, doing enough in health education? Do we eat the correct food? As has been said, once a stroke has happened, rehabilitation is necessary. It can be a hard, long slog. Those who have a speech defect need the constant skill of speech therapy, and it has been encouraging over the last few years to see how stroke clubs have sprung up. They can be helped greatly by volunteers. But there should be professional support available by a speech therapist. There just do not seem to be enough speech therapists. The ones I have met have all been very well educated, attractive, motivated, patient and skilled women—just the sort of people who get snapped up by men and marry. Is this one of the reasons why there are not enough, or is it that there is not enough money to pay for their valuable services? There always seem to be waiting lists at the schools as so many people wish to become speech therapists.
Does the Department of Health and Social Security have a full-time speech therapist in the department as an adviser? If not, I am sure that this is necessary to help the needs of speech defective people and to enable treatment to be disseminated around the country. Information is necessary, and I am absolutely certain that some health districts are very much better supplied than others. Some years ago I had the honour to officially open the Rubella Centre in Leeds. It is amazing how handicapped some of the children are. Most are blind and deaf with severe speech defects. The staff are so dedicated that it is heartening to see them at work. They say that every child can be educated in some way. Is enough done to ensure that girls have their vaccination to prevent German measles? Would the Minister say whether a booster is necessary, and if so, at what age? I do not think that all parents know this, and I am not sure myself. This is a very important method of prevention of what can be a great impairment.
Are children followed up to have their vaccinations if they are not in school on the day the vaccination is done? What happens if they have moved schools and miss vaccination for that reason? There is a worry that there is not enough skilled speech therapy in schools where there are handicapped children with speech defects. This fear has been well aired tonight. Many teachers do not understand the specialised skills

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needed to cope with such children. They need in-service training to understand the needs of these children. If integration of handicapped children in normal schools is to be effective, there should be adequate funding to provide speech therapists and skilled teachers. Is not one of the problems the fact that funding for speech therapy comes from the Department of Health and Social Security, which means that great co-ordination and co-operation between health and education departments is necessary? They must work more closely together. If these children are to be adequately taught and their speech and language disorders catered for, this should be done.
I serve on a regional health authority and I can tell your Lordships that handicapped people come a long way down the list. I keep reminding my fellow members that help given is very well worthwhile and assists in the long run. The aphasic child needs clear and positive direction in a limited range of well defined tasks and a great deal of repetition. Great dedication and skill is needed by teachers to deal with the tasks of repetition. They have to develop attention skills and concentration as foundations of better learning. Much modern technology is now used in schools, but it is useless if the teachers do not know how to use it. It can be of the greatest benefit to children with speech problems, be they highly intelligent or mentally handicapped. After asking a question of my noble kinsman on the use of computers with handicapped children, I received some most interesting information from all over the country. The future can look bright for many handicapped people so long as what is needed is made available to them and the skills of teachers and therapists are also adequately covered throughout the country.
I have the honour to be a vice president of Action for Dysphasic Adults along with my colleague the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox. I hope that this debate will have given some encouragement to the many people who do so much voluntary work to help and support both children and adults with speech defects. But we must urge that more is done to prevent these tragedies happening. High standards in maternity units are essential, so that spastic babies are not born. We should promote the wearing of safe riding hats to help prevent head injuries in riding accidents, safe crash helmets for motor cyclists, and many other safety issues.
I should like to touch on one subject which I do not think has been mentioned tonight. This is the help given by therapists to patients who have cancer of the throat. Many people will remember the bravery of people like the actor Jack Hawkins. Many people with cancer have to learn to speak again in a special way. We must have informed speech therapists to help these unfortunate people overcome these terrible problems.
8.40 p.m.
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, my noble friend Lord Campbell of Croy said it may be inappropriate to have this debate in your Lordships' House. But I think it is highly appropriate and, as the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, pointed out, highly opportune. Therefore, I
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thank my noble friend Lord Campbell of Croy for introducing the debate so well.
There is no doubt whatever that impairment of the ability to speak is an extremely distressing condition which leads to very severe frustration and isolation for the sufferer and great distress to carers and friends. Indeed, all noble Lords have spoken tonight with great feeling and personal knowledge on the subject. I would also like to pay tribute to the excellent work of the speech therapy profession and the dedication, skill and care that they bring to this specialised field.
We have no firm estimates of the numbers of people with speech disorders, although the Quirk Report on Speech Therapy Services in 1972 suggested this was in the region of 300,000 and a more recent literature study indicated that it was more likely to be double that figure. One of the problems is that of definition; for example, developmental language delay in preschool children is an important condition and requires treatment.
In adult life the major causes of speech impairment are stammering, and that occurring as a result of neurological disease, particularly stroke. Stroke is the single commonest cause of severe neurological handicap in the community, and it is usually reported that about one-third of people who have suffered a stroke have some degree of speech impairment. This suggests there are about 50,000 people in the United Kingdom with this type of communication problem.
At the time of the Quirk report which was mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy, the majority of speech therapists were attached to the school health service. The 1974 reorganisation of the National Health Service brought hospital and school health speech therapy services together within the NHS and under their own professional heads of service. This organisational change coincided with a growing awareness of the relative deficiencies of service for speech and language-disordered people of all ages, and the general impetus to services for disabled people. The Quirk report recommended among other things an increase in the numbers of training places for speech therapists. The noble Lord, Lord Henderson of Brompton, will be pleased to know that these recommendations have very largely been carried out and the annual training entry has been increased beyond the level recommended by the report and 16 degree courses are now recognised for qualification purposes. Post-graduate training is also slowly being introduced by the College of Speech Therapists.
The result of all this has been to more than double the number of speech therapists employed in the National Health Service. Health authorities are trying to give as much priority as possible within their available resources to speech therapy services. There is evidence to show that the expenditure which they have devoted to these services over the last 10 years has increased annually at a much greater average rate than the general increase in Health Service expenditure as a whole. This shows that health authorities are aware of the great needs of speech-impaired people and are determined to improve the service they offer. I do not deny there is room for improvement, but great strides have been made.

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The increase in their numbers and better training has enabled speech therapists to break into new ground, as mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy: for example, working together with teachers of the deaf to improve the speech of profoundly prelingually deaf children; developing new techniques for improving the speech of adults with voicing disorders, and helping the spread of signing systems such as MAKATON, and a symbol system such as BLISS, for those unable to develop speech. This latter was an extremely important development opening ways of communicating for those severely physically and mentally handicapped children and adults.
I now turn to services provided for children and for adults—spending perhaps longer on the former in view of the statutory responsibilities of health and education authorities. The early detection of all handicapping conditions is clearly vital if we are to do all we can to help children to achieve their full potential in terms of their emotional, social and educational development. In this, detection of problems of communication is particularly important.
The detection of such conditions is one of the primary aims of the community child health services. In Care in Action published in 1981, we emphasised that health authorities should have local strategies of health promotion and preventative medicine and these should include screening for disabilities in young children and adequate arrangements for child health surveillance. A programme for this surveillance was suggested in the Department's 1980 paper, Prevention in the Child Health Services. This included the need to review development of early language in children from 18 months. As a result, child surveillance programmes are being instituted in a majority of health districts. Having encouraged these programmes the next step was to improve the arrangements for identifying the needs and determine the nature of services to be provided to individual handicapped children. This is a central purpose of the Education Act 1981. The Act encompasses most of the proposals contained in the Warnock report published in 1978.
My noble friend Lord Renton will be aware that the Act provides a framework for the multi-professional assessments of the special educational needs of the child, taking into account strengths and weaknesses. Opportunities for parents to contribute to the assessment are an essential part of the process. Underlying the new arrangements is the basic principle that handicapped children should be integrated into normal schools.
It would be wrong of me to pretend that the speech therapy service provided under the Act is always adequate; indeed, to say so would be doing less than justice to the very real problems which some speech therapists face in this area. There are no immediate solutions to these problems, but they can be alleviated in at least three ways. We must encourage collaboration between the different professional staff working with individual children, for example, to ensure that a therapy programme developed by one is reinforced by others. We must encourage staff to look for new ways to make the most effective use of their skills; and we must encourage authorities to work together to review their levels of service and through joint planning look
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to the future deployment of services and resources to better meet the needs that are being identified. If this is done then it will do much to help overcome the problem areas.
Perhaps this is an opportune moment to say how grateful I am personally for the work of speech therapists, doctors, and nursery school teachers working in harmony, and teaching my wife and myself the work that shoud be continued at home. 1t more collaboration on a scale like this can be carried out throughout the country, there will be enormous benefits for our children.
I should like to move on now to services provided for adults, although some of what I have to say will also apply to children. There is a growing awareness of the need to change the emphasis of speech therapy away from provision in institutions and the thrust is now towards treatment and care in the community, as mentioned by the noble Lords, Lord Ennals, and Lord Attlee. Priority groups, such as the elderly, mentally handicapped and mentally ill are to be supported in the community and good access to speech therapy is to be part of that support. Some districts are therefore funding extra establishments from cost improvement schemes to help in this direction.
Therapists also accept that face to face therapy is not always the best approach and that once weekly methods of treatment were seldom more than "token" therapy. Intensive courses of treatment are being substituted and these may be planned as group therapy for patients with similar disorders on a multi-district basis. It is in the area of group therapy, too, that the voluntary sector has a major role to play.
One research study funded by the department suggested that provided programmes were directed by speech therapists, volunteers were equally as effective as therapists themselves in helping stroke patients to regain their speech. The Chest, Heart and Stroke Association, for example, have been running a Volunteer Stroke Scheme for some years now. The noble Lord, Lord Smith, in what I thought was a brilliant speech, brought this home very well to your Lordships. The scheme uses volunteers to visit patients' homes on a regular basis to help them with their speech problems. There are also weekly club nights and outings and other events. The scheme is a prime example of the statutory authority and the voluntary body working together since the CHSA pays for the first two years after which the health district meets the costs. Other voluntary bodies such as the Action for Dysphasic Adults, mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, and my noble kinswoman Baroness Masham of Ilion with its 250 stroke clubs scattered around the country and the National Association of Laryngectomy Clubs also plays a major role in the rehabilitation of speech-impaired patients.
Like the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, and the noble Lord, Lord Smith, I cannot praise too highly the contribution made by the voluntary organisations in the field of speech disorders embracing not only the actual needs and treatment of patients, but also the counselling and other needs of their families.
I have spoken at some length about speech therapists and the service that they provide. I must, however, refer to another. For some patients whose language—that is, their understanding of the written

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and spoken word—is intact but who for one reason or another are incapable themselves of producing audible, understandable speech, there is hope in the communication aids. These aids, which are microprocessor based, and which were mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, and the noble Lord, Lord Henderson of Brompton, may take a number of different forms.
The advent of the new technology was an area where central Government could help, and in 1983 the department, together with the Welsh Office and the Royal Associaton of Disability and Rehabilitation, funded six communication aids centres, five in England and one in Wales. The pioneering centre at Frenchay Hospital in Bristol had been set up earlier with voluntary money.
These centres, staffed by speech therapists, are undoubtedly making a major impact in the assessment of speech-impaired people for communication aids, recommendations for appropriate aids and switches, and for provision of information and courses for speech therapists and other professional staff concerned with speech-impaired people. There is tremendous interest in communication aids within the speech therapy profession, and speech therapists have taken to the new technology with great enthusiasm. The whole area of therapy is expanding and emphasises the benefits to patients from multidisciplinary working between speech therapists, bioengineers, doctors and occupational therapists.
Perhaps I may briefly deal with some of the points raised in the debate. My noble friend Lord Campbell of Croy asked what the department was doing about student training and student training allowances. As I appreciate my noble friend knows, the situation is that the Government liaise with the regional health authorities which then liaise with the districts. It is the districts which employ the speech therapists. We must be careful not to interfere too much in local situations which must be catered for on an individual basis. However, the DHSS door is always open and we have told the College of Speech Therapists that that is the case.
My noble friend Lord Campbell of Croy mentioned the block system in training and said that it had been stopped. As I understand it, I do not think that at the moment it has been stopped, but I shall check on that and if I am wrong, I shall write to my noble friend.
A number of noble Lords, notably the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, and my noble kinswoman Lady Masham, mentioned prevention. To a certain extent the prevention of speech and language disability in adults is part of the general health education programme, which includes such things as the antismoking campaign, the prevention of alcoholism, and high blood pressure.
Periodic screening of patients for high blood pressure has been recommended by the Royal College of General Practitioners and in the department's publication Avoiding Heart Attacks, which was published in 1981. About 90 per cent. of people see their GP at least once in five years and GPs are increasingly taking the opportunity of a routine consultation to check their patients' blood pressure.
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Indeed, many GPs run regular screening programmes for their patients. This is a simple procedure but an important one in identifying some of the people at increased risk of hypertension, coronary heart disease or strokes. As my noble kinswoman said, prevention is better than cure.
In childhood the health surveillance programme in the 0 to 5 age group is of prime importance in the detection of speech and language disorder, so that early intervention helps to develop the child's full linguistic potential and thus prevents later learning difficulties. For prenatal care speech therapists and other health professionals may be involved with antenatal classes explaining the importance of early communication.
The noble Lord, Lord Ennals, specifically mentioned speech therapists and deaf children. The College of Speech Therapists has instituted a postgraduate course for speech therapists working with the hearing-impaired. The present course is full and there are applicants for two more such courses. My noble friend Lord Renton will be pleased to know that, starting in the autumn, there will be a special course for speech therapists involved with mental handicap. Complementary to this is the steady increase nationally in the number of speech therapy posts for the mentally handicapped.
The noble Lord, Lord Ennals, also mentioned radio hearing aids. This is another new development. I heard again about it on the radio this morning. I hope that the noble Lord was awake as well and listening. He was not?
Lord Ennals: My Lords, I was at work.
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, so was I—listening to the radio. It is obviously something that has great potential for the future and we shall be looking at it carefully.
My noble kinswoman Lady Masham asked whether the DHSS had appointed a speech therapy adviser. Indeed, Mrs. Susan Swan, a London-based district speech therapist, was recently appointed speech therapy adviser to the Department of Health and Social Security. Although the appointment is on a part-time basis, I can assure my noble kinswoman that Mrs. Swan is here tonight listening to the debate.
The speech therapy services are, as I stressed earlier, an integral part of the NHS and it is the health authorities themselves which must decide how they wish to develop their services, taking into account the resources available to them and other competing demands. I think that I have demonstrated to your Lordships that in the decade since the speech therapy services became part of the NHS, health authorities have shown that they are aware of the needs of speech-impaired people and are prepared to meet those needs. I am confident that they will continue to do so.
I am also confident that the voluntary sector will continue to make its invaluable contribution to the totality of services and in particular in that area which was for so long neglected, the rehabilitation of the stroke patient.
Lord Renton: My Lords, before my noble friend sits down, I realise that I cannot ask him to commit the Government tonight, but may I ask him for an

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assurance that he will pass on and have considered the views expressed by me and, I think, by implication by the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, and perhaps by others, that the training and the organisation of speech therapists should become an educational responsibility, just as the teachers of the various kinds of mentally handicapped come under that aegis?
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, I shall read very carefully, as will my noble friend Lady Trumpington and my right honourable and honourable friends in the DHSS everything that has been said tonight. If we can learn anything from what has been said, as I know we can, it will be taken into account.
Baroness Masham of Ilton: My Lords, before my noble kinsman sits down again, will be write to me about the booster vaccination for rubella?
The Earl of Caithness; Yes, indeed. If I have not answered any noble Lord's, any noble Baroness's or my noble kinswoman's points, I shall of course do so in writing.

Streatham Park Cemetery Bill
Brought from the Commons, read a first time, and referred to the Examiners.
House adjourned at two minutes before nine o'clock.