Lords Sitting of 20 May 1985

Preamble
The House met at half-past two of the clock: The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
Prayers—Read by the Lord Bishop of Chelmsford.

Libyan School, Chelsea
Lord Chalfont: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper.
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether it is true that political meetings have taken place at the Libyan School in Chelsea; and whether they are still of the opinion that this establishment poses no threat to national security.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Home Office (Lord Glenarthur): My Lords, I understand that political meetings have been held at the Jamahiriya School, Chelsea. I have no information to suggest that anything sinister has occurred, but if there were any grounds for thinking that this establishment posed a threat to national security, the police would take appropriate action.
Lord Chalfont: My Lords, I thank the Minister for that reply. If political meetings of any kind have taken place at this establishment—and there is, as the Minister has said, substantial evidence that they have—is this not in itself a matter for grave concern? The establishment concerned is meant to be a school. In the light of the fact that there is substantial evidence of the infiltration of terrorist groups from Libya into this country in recent months, does the Minister not agree that the activities of this school require far more attention and supervision than they appear to be receiving at the moment?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, the school, as I understand it, is a bona fide educational establishment, and so long as the activities of all those who use
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the school remain within the law there are no grounds on which the police may act. At present the police have no grounds for believing that there is anything untoward about the school or its activities.
Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: My Lords, will the Minister deal with the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Chalfont, concerning the infiltration of terrorist groups from Libya into this country over the past few months? Can the Minister confirm that that is true? If so, what are the Government doing about it?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, there is no evidence to suggest that people from Libya who should not be in this country are here.

Immigration Rules
2.38 p.m.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will examine the immigration rules for any discriminatory provisions, report their findings and consider the revision of those provisions.
Lord Glenarthur: No, my Lords. In accordance with Section 3(2) of the Immigration Act 1971, the immigration rules are laid before Parliament. There is thus opportunity for Parliament to consider the justification for the rules.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, this is another example of a Question made necessary by the refusal of the Minister to answer a specific point made by me, in this case during your Lordships' debate on women on 1st May. Is it not the case that wives in this country, whether or not they be British citizens, have no right to secure their husbands' entry from abroad, whereas husbands have the right to arrange for their wives living abroad to join them in this country? Is this not a flagrant breach of the principle which the Minister enunciated at the end of our debate on 1st May; that the Government are committed to equality?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, the differences in the treatment of husbands and male fiancés compared with wives and fiancées reflect the need to protect the domestic labour market.
Lord Avebury: My Lords, does the Minister not recall that Parliament has considered the report of the Commission for Racial Equality which draws attention to numerous examples of discrimination in our immigration law which some of us have been talking about for many years? During the course of the debate to which the noble Lord, Lord Hatch, referred, the noble Lord, Lord Elton, agreed to make certain changes to the rules as a result of that report. Can the Minister say what progress has been made with those moves and whether, as a result of continued reflection on the CRE report, any further changes are contemplated?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, will be aware that there are currently three cases before the European Court of Human Rights. The commission's report was an advisory report, and the court's judgment, which will be binding, has not yet been received.
Baroness Wootton of Abinger: My Lords, if it is a matter of principle not to discriminate, is it not absurd that that principle should be set on one side, apparently for reasons connected with the labour market?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, despite changing patterns in recent years, men are still more likely than women to seek work, and particularly full-time work at that. The Government have taken the view that at a time of high unemployment it would not be right to make the changes which the noble Lord, Lord Hatch of Lusby, is seeking.
Lord Glenamara: My Lords, is not the argument about the labour market entirely fallacious? Is it not the case that immigrants create a demand for goods and services which more than cancels out the effect of the employment of them?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, it was a Labour Government who in 1977 found it necessary to reintroduce tests to prevent marriages of convenience for immigration purposes. In 1979 we were elected with a mandate to strengthen those tests. Having tightened up the work permit system so as to prevent young men entering this country, it would be absurd if we allowed exactly the same young men to come onto the labour market by using marriage as a device. It works both ways.
Lord Pitt of Hampstead: My Lords, will the Minister accept that his replies so far have been very disappointing? Does he not agree that the rules in question are racist as well as sexist, in that it is mostly non-Europeans who are affected by them?
Again, will the Minister not accept—I am moving to another side of the immigration rules—that,
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whatever may be the actual wording of the rules, there is a great deal of discrimination occurring at airports? I have already told your Lordships the story of when I was chairman of the commission investigating the disturbances in Bermuda—
Noble Lords: Order! Question.
Lord Pitt of Hampstead: My Lords, one of the members of the commission—
Noble Lords: Order! Question.
Lord Pitt of Hampstead: My Lords, I am sorry, but I am asking a question. One of the members of the commission objected to my suggestion that we should write a report because of the discrimination experienced at Heathrow Airport. Will the Minister not agree that, whatever may have been the decisions of the House, it is right to look at rules which it is suggested are discriminatory to see whether that is so?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, I entirely reject the noble Lord's assertion that the rules are in any way racially biased. The immigration rules stipulate quite clearly that the control of immigration should be administered without regard to race, colour or religion; and any breach of this requirement would be dealt with by means of disciplinary procedures.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, why is it, then, that discrimination on sex grounds is necessary, according to the Government's criterion? Is it not the case that a large number of women born abroad who come to this country take full-time employment? I believe that the last figure was 41 per cent. of Asian women. Are the Government protecting the male labour market or protecting the total labour market; or is this simply another sign that the Government believe in a male dominated society in which the man is considered to be the head of the household and the breadwinner?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, I do not know whether the noble Lord is suggesting that because the rules apply to men in this way they should apply also to women. It has not been considered necessary, up until now, to apply the tests to foreign wives and fiancées, but we continue to monitor any evidence of abuse of the marriage rules by women to secure admission into this country.
Lord Stoddart of Swindon: My Lords, can the noble Lord say whether the same rules apply to the European Community to protect the employment market? Does he not also believe, bearing in mind the conflict there is over this problem, that there should now be a new, full-scale inquiry into the whole issue?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, I should have thought that it would be better to wait for the judgment from the European Court of Human Rights.

Midwife Trainees
2.45 p.m.
Lord Ennals: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the first Question standing in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether the recruitment of midwife trainees will be adequate to meet the anticipated demand for midwifery services in the future.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Security (Baroness Trumpington): My Lords, it is for individual health authorities to determine their future requirements for student midwives in the light of local needs and circumstances.
Lord Ennals: My Lords, will the noble Baroness accept that I am very disappointed at her reply? Is she aware that in the report by the Royal College of Nursing to the Pay Review Body the college revealed that there is now a deficiency of nearly 24 per cent. in the funded establishment of trained midwives, and that the trend is getting worse each year? Rather than just referring to the health authorities, can the Minister say what the department is doing to ensure that the pay and career structure within the midwifery profession provides adequate reward and encouragement to get people to join what is a noble and important profession?
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, of course I entirely agree with the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, that it is a noble profession. With regard to pay, as the noble Lord will know, the pay of NHS nursing and midwifery staff is determined in the light of the recommendations of an independent review body. It is a matter for the review body concerning midwives, which will take into account all evidence from interested parties. Should the noble Lord wish for more information on the number of student midwives in training, information supplied by the English National Board for Nursing, Midwifery and Health Visiting shows that the numbers increased by 26 per cent. over the past 12 months.
Lord Ennals: My Lords, does the noble Baroness realise that only one-fifth of those who have been trained as midwives are now in the midwifery profession, due to the pay and conditions? Is she aware of what is said in the report from the Royal College of Midwives? It states:
"At all levels of the midwifery profession morale is low".
Surely this is a matter for the department and not simply one to be fobbed off on the health authorities.
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, refers again to the issue of pay. I have already given him the answer to that. As I have also said, the number of midwifery students is rising and the number of midwives employed in the NHS continues to increase. At 30th September 1983—the latest date for which detailed information is available—there were 17,310 full-time equivalents: an increase of 4.7 per cent. compared with 2.4 per cent. in 1982.

NHS Private Patients' Fees
2.49 p.m.
Lord Ennals: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the second Question standing in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government how much money is lost to the National Health Service annually by the failure of health authorities to collect the appropriate fees from private patients.
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, the extent of those losses cannot be reliably estimated. The Government are determined that all necessary steps shall be taken to ensure that the National Health Service receives income to which it is entitled.
Lord Ennals: My Lords, is the noble Baroness aware that that is an encouraging response? May I further ask whether she accepts the recent strictures by the Comptroller and Auditor General, Sir Gordon Downey, on the failure of health authorities to collect the fees of private patients and the recent study which suggested that the loss amounts to about £60 million a year? Does the Minister accept that the responsibility for the collection of these private patients' fees lies with the health authorities? Is it not really appalling that when the Health Service is so desperately in need of funds there is money that is simply not being collected?
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, the report of the Comptroller and Auditor General relies heavily on the evidence produced by the department's own auditors, and the Government accept those criticisms. With regard to the noble Lord's other point about the extent of the national loss, it is impossible to say what it is, but the figure of £60 million which has been bandied about in another place is quite baseless.
Lord Harmar-Nicholls: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that many people would be interested in the other side of this particular coin? How much money does the National Health Service receive from private health fees that are paid?
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, I am unable to answer that question from my noble friend, but I should be glad to let him know.
Lord Ennals: My Lords, does the noble Baroness recognise that it is not just a question of information that may be given in another place? I have had detailed correspondence with the British Medical Association who are themselves very much concerned about this. Will the noble Baroness say why she is not concerned about it?
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, I never said that I was not concerned about it. That is a total misuse of my words. I said that on the figures from the audit it was impossible to state the extent of the national loss.

Business
Lord Denham: My Lords, at a convenient moment after 3.30 this afternoon my noble friend Lord Belstead will, with the leave of the House, repeat a Statement that is to be made in another place on the Council of Agricultural Ministers on 13th to 16th May 1985.
It may be for the convenience of the House if I announce that the Committee stage of the Local Government Bill will be adjourned at approximately 7 p.m. for approximately one hour and that during this adjournment the Commons amendments the Prosecution of Offences Bill will be taken.

Royal Bank of Scotland Bill
Read a third time, and passed, and returned to the Commons with amendments.

Local Government Bill
2.53 p.m.
The Minister of State, Department of the Environment (Lord Elton): My Lords, I beg to move that the House do now again resolve itself into Committee on this Bill.
Moved, That the House do now again resolve itself into Committee.—(Lord Elton.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House in Committee accordingly.
[The LORD ABERDARE in the Chair.]
Lord Hayter Lord Hayter moved Amendment No. 135ZB:
Before Clause 47, insert the following new clause:
("Voluntary service authorities.
.—(1) On the appointed day there shall be established in Greater London and each metropolitan county a body corporate to be known by the name of the London Voluntary Service Authority or by the name of the county with the addition of the words "Voluntary Service Authority", as the case may be.
(2) Each authority shall consist of members of the constituent councils appointed by them to be members of the Authority.
(3) The constituent in relation to the London Voluntary Service Authority shall be the London borough councils and the Common Council.
(4) The constituent councils in relation to a metropolitan voluntary service authority shall be the councils for the metropolitan districts comprised in the county.
(5) Each authority shall be a joint authority within the meaning of Part IV of this Act and the provisions of that part shall apply to this section as if this section were included in that part.
(6) Each authority shall annually review the social needs of the inhabitants of its area.
(7) Each authority shall make a scheme for making grants to eligible voluntary organisations.
(8) In this section "voluntary organisation" means a body the activities of which are carried on otherwise than for profit but does not include any public or local authority and "eligible voluntary organisation" means, in relation to Greater London or a metropolitan county, a voluntary organisation whose activities will directly or indirectly benefit either the whole of Greater London or that county or any part of it extending beyond the area of any particular constituent council.").
The noble Lord said: I should perhaps preface my speech by saying that it has been agreed that for the convenience of the Committee there should be a grouping of this amendment with the next one, under the names of the noble Lord, Lord Kilmarnock, and others, and with Amendment No. 136ZB, which noble Lords will find at the bottom of page 4 of the Marshalled List, under the names of the noble Earl, Lord Perth, and the noble Viscount, Lord Buckmaster.
Amendment No. 136ZBA: Before Clause 47, insert the following new clause
("Transtitional funding for voluntary organizations
.—(1) The Secretary of State shall provide transitional support under the Local Government (Social Needs) Act 1969 for expenditure by London boroughs or metropolitan district councils, acting under any of their powers, on revenue support to voluntary organisations benefiting their areas which are funded in the year before the abolition date wholly or partly by the Greater London Council or a metropolitan county council; and such transitional support shall be provided annually for the four years after the abolition date up to an amount that the Secretary of State shall determine, having regard to the need to ensure continued funding of voluntary organisations comparable with that which obtained before the abolition date.
(2) Any local government contribution towards projects funded under this section shall be disregarded for purposes of calculating block grant penalty under section 5 of the Local Government Finance Act 1982.").
Amendment No. 136ZB: After Clause 47, insert the following new clause
("Supervisory Council for s. 47 schemes
.—(1) The Secretary of State shall by order appoint a Council to oversee the schemes made under section 47.
(2) The Council shall have responsibility for distributing as it thinks fit any sums made available by the Secretary of State for voluntary organisations under such schemes.
(3) The Council shall report annually to Parliament.
(4) This section shall continue in force for three years after the passing of this Act and shall then expire unless Parliament by affirmative resolution of each House determines that it shall continue in force for a further period of three years.").
Let me start on a non-controversial note. The Committee could have been saved a great deal of trouble, and the noble Lord as well, if many of the issues in this Bill had been argued out more fully in another place. But if there is one area in particular where the expertise of many of your Lordships and the compassion of all of us in this Committee can most usefully be employed, it is on the effect of this Bill on voluntary organisations, with which so many of us are familiar.
I assume that noble Lords on all sides of the Committee will share a determination that many excellent voluntary services should not be damaged or destroyed as a by-product of this abolition Bill. The Government have given repeated assurances that no such damage is intended, but we feel that the Bill in its present form will not deliver that assurance in practice and will not help us to tackle the massive social problems of all our conurbations.
The amendment is based on the full acceptance of the principle that local responsibilities, including support for voluntary projects, should be devolved to districts and to boroughs. The amendment relates only to the voluntary services which benefit people in more than one district or borough, since its scope is precisely the same as that of Clause 47. It also accepts that borough and district nominees—I emphasise the word "nominees"—should be responsible for supporting these county-wide services. There is no conflict here

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with the purpose and spirit of the Bill. Our quarrel is with the highly inadequate arrangements suggested in Clause 47 for supporting county-wide voluntary services.
Perhaps I may remind your Lordships' Committee that we are dealing here with services now receiving about £30 million in support from the GLC and the metropolitan county councils combined. They are often the front line in the attack on social problems which run right across borough and district boundaries; problems such as alcoholism, drug addiction, homelessness and racial discrimination. Other voluntary organisations provide a cost-effective service operating over a number of districts and boroughs on matters ranging from the citizens' advice bureaux, law centres and other organisations to support the victims of crime. Other voluntary services provide the essential resource materials, advice and information to enable local projects to function in many different parts of the county.
Funding from the county has in innumerable cases been the crucial core to which to attract private charitable donations, volunteer effort and funds from central and local government. Parliament therefore has a heavy responsibility for the sake of the many vulnerable and disadvantaged people who benefit to ensure that this impressive edifice of initiative and service is not brought tumbling down by inadequate legislation.
To our minds Clause 47 has serious weaknesses. First, it is left to boroughs and districts to decide if they want to make a scheme at all. There is reason to fear that no scheme would materialise in some metropolitan counties in which there is no tradition of collaboration between the districts. Political and parochial divisions between different districts run very deep. Moreover, they may see little political advantage in supporting a county-wide service which may primarily benefit other districts. Then we have a big question: what is to become of the charitable organisations which may have no scheme or grants to which to apply? The Bill provides no safety net for them. Such an insecure prospect may kill voluntary organisations as staff leave and management committees seek to escape the threat of heavy personal responsibilities. I do not believe that your Lordships would find this acceptable.
Secondly, there is no provision requiring any sort of county-wide or London-wide overview of need; and I stress the word "need". This is a highly significant omission when services to meet county-wide problems are being devolved to local ward councillors whose perspectives and priorities are quite properly geared to the particular district or borough electorates which they serve.
Thirdly, grants to voluntary organisations can be made only with the agreement of at least two-thirds of the districts or boroughs. How will voluntary organisations be able to lobby so many different authorities to explain their clients' needs and seek support? Even where they can, there will often be extreme difficulty in obtaining sufficient support. In Merseyside and Tyne and Wear, for example, four out of five districts would need to agree. In South Yorkshire it would be three out of four. In Greater
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Manchester it would be seven out of 10; and so on. Even where the odds are less mountainous, districts and boroughs are sometimes split by bitter political divisions which are not of voluntary organisations' making. Moreover, many eligible services are the Cinderella client groups which lack political appeal. They may benefit a few boroughs, but not the whole.
3 p.m.
For these reasons charitable services, however important in the perspective of county-wide needs, may often fare badly in competition with all the other claims on the budgets of the boroughs and districts. In some cases, these boroughs are the only source of funding which Clause 47 provides. Hence the need to secure the support of two-thirds of the boroughs or districts would probably imply the demise of many services. Of course that device may well kibosh the homosexuals and the lesbians but it may also kibosh many others as well.
No doubt we shall be told in reply that a lead borough, in this case Richmond, has been identified in London and that the London Boroughs Association is entertaining grant applications for a wide range of groups concerned with single homeless people. I should not want to minimise the great effort that has been made to achieve this. However, it is of no comfort to voluntary organisations in the metropolitan counties where, so far as I know, not one lead borough has yet been identified. It is also of relatively little comfort in London, where nobody knows the scale of the budget which would actually pass the two-thirds test and, incidentally, where the single homeless account for less than one-fifth of the GLC's present spending on county-wide services. These then are the reasons why voluntary organisations throughout London and the metropolitan counties have denounced Clause 47.
It has been suggested once or twice in this Committee that the voluntary organisations have made such energetic representations to your Lordships simply because their natural anxieties have been fuelled and exploited by the GLC. That interpretation is incomplete and inadequate. Voluntary organisations have developed their own independent assessment of what this Bill will do to their work; and I will admit that they are handicapped and irritated by some of the more foolish GLC advertisements. Their arguments are based on local experience and are levelheaded arguments which compel respect.
They are led by the National Council for Voluntary Organisations, formerly called the National Council of Social Service, which has worked alongside Governments of all political colours ever since 1919, with the great object of protecting and promoting the interests of voluntary organisations. It does not lightly become involved in any matter of public controversy.
This amendment provides for formally constituted authorities with powers to precept, subject to the systems of financial control which apply to all the other authorities established by this Bill. They will comprise borough and district nominees in line with the thrust of this Bill as a whole. They will have a duty to review social needs county-wide and make a scheme or grants to eligible voluntary organisations, again set out in subsection (10) of this clause. They will have no

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powers relating to local projects which benefit only one borough or one district.
This amendment is really based on charity and compassion, which perhaps sounds rather alien to party politics. Yet in this case of course it must conform so far as possible with the political implications of the Local Government Bill. Therefore we who are sponsoring this amendment accept the abolition of the GLC and the metropolitan councils. We are not trying to link it with residuary authorities because this has become somewhat suspect for reasons which have emerged during the Committee stage. Nor are we seeking for any elective procedure. We start from the premise that, just as everybody's view on art is as valid as anybody else's, so is everybody's view on charity—though I suppose I should add that the view of the right revered Prelate on charity is perhaps better informed than my own.
I ask the Committee to support this amendment as an arrangement more worthy than Clause 47 of the magnificent contribution made by voluntary services across our capital city and across the metropolitan areas, and to set their very genuine fears at rest. I beg to move.
Lord Kilmarnock: The new clause proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Hayter, particularly affects grants currently made by the GLC or the metropolitan counties for charities working on a wider than borough or wider than district basis. This is clearly the type of charity that will be most at risk after abolition of the upper-tier authorities. The suggestion that the smaller councils, freed of the precepts of their larger regional parasites, will joyfully and collectively assume the responsibility for funding, to a comparable extent, existing London-wide and county-wide voluntary activities, is frankly naïve and can only be received with scepticism.
It may be said, "All right; so be it. Boroughs and districts must decide how much they can contribute to charities whose operations extend outside their own boundaries. That is local democracy". However, if local democracy decides that the realities of local government finance prevent it from contributing to voluntary bodies dealing with alcoholism, drug abuse, homelessness, mental handicap and so forth, what happens?
The Bill proposes in Clause 47 that there should be a lead borough or district through which applications are channelled and processed prior to the hurdle of securing a two-thirds majority. I understand that, in London, Richmond has offered itself for this job and the London Boroughs Association is confident that the new unit will be able to cope with this much-enhanced task. That may be so, but it says nothing about the amount of funding that will clear the two-thirds hurdle, or the maximum amount that may be imposed by the Secretary of State under Clause 47(5).
Furthermore, it takes no account of the nightmare that will face charities of having to lobby successfully 22 out of the 33 London boroughs, or seven out of 10 in Greater Manchester. The director of one of the largest lobbying organisations told me quite openly that he saw this clause as a charter for lobbyists. The
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smaller charities would never be able to face the cost. In the six metropolitan counties, the situation is even worse since not one single district has yet offered to take the lead in its area. Therefore there will be large areas of the country in which the mechanism proposed in the Bill will simply not exist.
These are some, and only some, of the reasons that the proposal of the noble Lord, Lord Hayter, for voluntary service authorities for London and the counties is so important. These authorities fall fully within the scope of Part IV of the Bill. Their funds will be derived as under Clause 66 of the Bill. If you need them for police, fire and civil defence, you need them for the rising tide of social problems presented by old age, homelessness, unemployment and so forth. That is why we on these Benches so strongly support this amendment.
I now want to say a very few words about Amendment No. 136ZBA, which is the second amendment on the Marshalled List, which has been grouped with the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Hayter, in this debate. I shall be as brief as I possibly can. This amendment addresses a related but separate issue. The transitional assistance which the Government propose to give to districts and boroughs in coming to terms with their new responsibilities in this field is at present quite inadequate.
The Government have on offer only £7.5 million to help in the year after abolition, tapering away to nothing after four years. Where help is offered, districts and boroughs must pay a 25 per cent. contribution in year one and more thereafter. This rising contribution will be fully subject to rate support grant penalties if the penalty system remains unchanged. The Government's offer will be quite insufficient to prevent the collapse of many local projects, the total of whose grants is several times as much as the money currently on offer. Even this is less generous than it sounds, for reasons which I shall shortly explain.
First, let us look at the realities of the situation. Several districts and boroughs have no significant experience or understanding of partnership with the voluntary sector. For instance, nine London boroughs currently give less than £200,000 a year each to voluntary bodies of whatever kind. Even this is better than the position in some metropolitan districts where certain local authorities prefer to municipalise everything on the grounds that voluntary organisations should be composed exclusively of volunteers and should require no support whatsoever from public funds. Those authorities which do not believe in a pluralistic pattern of services to meet social needs will have little difficulty in finding arguments to reject grant applications from the voluntary sector.
Further, many districts and boroughs have very different priorities from those of the larger authorities. Many have no record of concern for child-care or latch-key schemes for the children of working mothers, or for the needs of ethnic minorities, or for transport facilities for disabled people, to mention only a few. Others will have contracted a positive dislike of voluntary services which help citizens assert their rights against municipal landlords and other local government services. So there may well be a direct conflict of interest between, for example, an advice

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bureau or a law centre and the council that is asked to contribute to their support. Few of your Lordships in this Committee, I would suggest, are opposed to the widest possible range of advice and information being available to our citizens.
Furthermore, the leaders of boroughs and districts which support the abolition of the upper tier have committed themselves, understandably enough, to savings for their ratepayers as a result of abolition. This will surely be a powerful brake on grants to voluntary bodies however worthy or, indeed, essential.
I invite your Lordships to consider also the general financial climate in local government. Nine London boroughs are rate capped. A further eleven are in grant penalty. Most metropolitan districts are also in penalty. Sixteen London boroughs plan to decrease their support for voluntary organisations in 1985–86 and a further six plan no growth. This is the measure of the heavy competition for available resources.
Now, along come the Government saying they hope and believe that boroughs and districts will pay exclusively from their own budgets for all county-wide voluntary services and most local ones inherited from the GLC and the MCCs at the very time when they are striving to avoid or minimise cuts in statutory services and to find money to continue local projects that they have nurtured within their own boundaries. It simply does not add up.
There will inevitably be a conflict between statutory and voluntary services and between internally financed voluntary services and those previously financed from outside. For all these reasons, there is little doubt that all manner of local projects will go to the wall as a by-product of abolition unless the Government are prepared to step in with much more generous transitional assistance.
I should now like to deal with, and I hope demolish, the argument that boroughs and districts will have more resources after abolition because they will no longer be paying the precept to the GLC and the MCCs and they will get a share of the GRE assessment previously allocated to the upper tier. This does not wash. First, some authorities will want to deliver the savings to ratepayers and will therefore levy less than the precepts of the defunct authorities. Secondly, rate-capped authorities will be constrained by the obvious disadvantage of rate capping. Thirdly, dividing up the GRE of the GLC and the MCCs will not cover what they actually spend, since they spend more than their GRE. Fourth, statutory services already under severe strain will make pre-emptive prior claims. Fifthly, many smaller authorities will not be in tune with the broader perspectives on which upper tier authorities based their grants to local organisations.
I refer briefly to the second subsection of the amendment that would relieve any local authority contributions under the scheme from rate support grant penalty. This must be right because penalties would distort the whole scheme. For example, an authority in penalty might have to pay back to the Government £2 for every extra £1 that it spends in this field. That means that it would end up paying 75 per cent. of the cost of a project under the transitional finance scheme when it was, in theory, supposed to pay only 25 per cent. It is for identical reasons that
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much urban aid spending by local authorities is disregarded for penalty purposes. So no new precedent will be set up by disregarding the transitional scheme in the same way.
The effect of Amendment No. 136ZBA is to give reality to the Government's assurance, repeated on a number of occasions, that they do not intend worthwhile voluntary organisations to go to the wall as a result of abolition. It is based on the same principles as the Government's own scheme for transitional finance but lifted into a more realistic order of magnitude while firmly leaving the ultimate decision with the Secretary of State. In determining the level of transitional assistance, it simply enjoins the need to ensure that there is no dramatic decrease in the overall flow of funds to voluntary organisations in the four years after the abolition date. It will be up to the Secretary of State to define the criteria for transitional assistance so that he can make absolutely sure that no such assistance is available in respect of allegedly lunatic projects or for any other reason to which the Government take serious exception. I believe that this will be welcomed as an important safeguard by many of your Lordships.
This amendment complements the new clause moved by the noble Lord, Lord Hayter. Whatever the Committee's decision on that amendment, which I strongly support, it is vital that this provision for transitional finance should be written into the Bill. I hope very much to hear from the noble Lord, Lord Elton, that he will accept it.
3.15 p.m.
The Earl of Perth: I wish first to apologise to the Committee for the fact that my amendment appeared so late. I am sure that many of your Lordships will not have had a real opportunity to consider its merits or its demerits. Having said that, let me get down to what it is all about. I start by echoing the worries of the noble Lord, Lord Hayter, and others about the fate of voluntary organisations. The problem that we face today is how best to ensure that they continue to receive proper assistance from the boroughs in the London area and the districts in the metropolitan areas. It is not only the boroughs that have to help. The charitable organisations themselves will have to raise some money. Apart from anything that comes from the voluntary organisations or from the Government, there must also be a contribution by outside groups.
I fear that I have to say that I am unhappy about the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Hayter, and others. If that amendment succeeds, my amendment falls. I hope therefore that I shall be able to persuade your Lordships that the merit in my amendment outweighs that contained in the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Hayter. I am very glad to know that I have at least one supporter in the noble Viscount, Lord Buckmaster, who has put his name to my amendment. That is one up.
My worry about the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Hayter, is that, above all, whether we like it or not, it has a political flavour. Whatever the noble Lord, Lord Hayter, may say, many of your Lordships must recognise that this is the case. Whether this is because the boroughs themselves have a political flavour or because, potentially, the amendment

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represents a nucleus for forming a new GLC or MCC at a later stage, as in the case of waste disposal and other examples, we cannot get away from it. This is my main objection. It also involves no less than seven local authorities, which complicates matters.
What am I proposing in my amendment? My amendment comes after Clause 47. Very simply, it starts by saying that the Secretary of State shall appoint a council to oversee the schemes made under Section 47. It is possible that Section 47 needs to be changed. There are many amendments before us today to that effect. I am not objecting to that. What I am saying is that there should be a council to oversee the workings.
Secondly, I say that if the Government, as we know they intend to do, help the voluntary organisations, or rather the schemes that have been formed, at least for a period of years, it will be for the Government to pass any funds that they make available through this council. What sort of council will it be? It is, I suggest, fairly easy to see its composition. Certainly, it should contain some members of the borough councils themselves. I hope that the Secretary of State would also recognise the important role of the Churches. Then again, there are such bodies as the National Council for Voluntary Organisations or, more important still, the Charities Aid Foundation, which already has the job of discriminating between the good and the bad in the charity world. If the Secretary of State, as I feel sure will be the case, forms a council with that sort of membership and appoints a chairman, pre-eminent and recognised by one and all to be anxious to promote the good of voluntary organisations, that will constitute, I suggest, a very strong body to help.
Let me take the matter further. I have called it a council quite deliberately because I believe that an analogy can be drawn with what the Arts Council does at present in relation to the arts. The Arts Council receives a grant from the Government and it distributes that grant according to what it judges to be the right and proper merit of the various people who are asking for help. My idea for the council which I am putting forward is very much the same: it will judge according to need, according to how worthwhile it considers various projects to be, and generally it will take into account the type of support that the voluntary organisations are receiving from elsewhere. It is not just the Government who will do it. Like the Arts Council, they will decide whether the voluntary organisations can get outside help—as, indeed, they ought to do.
If I am right and if the idea of a council to do this job is a good one, then it is very important that we should have a chance to see how it progresses. Indeed, that is why subsection (3) of my amendment asks that the council should report once every year to Parliament.
Finally, I have no idea whether in years to come this will or will not be a good and necessary council. Therefore I suggest that after the period of three years Parliament should have a chance to judge for itself. If Parliament judges that the council should continue, then it may continue for yet a further period.
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One of the great features of today is the growth of voluntary organisations. Indeed, that is natural when one considers the greater leisure time available to people. Yet, bearing in mind all the attempts of Government and local authorities, very often it is the local people who start these voluntary organisations who know the gap and what is needed. If my amendment is right, the council which will be set up will be able to judge the rights and the wrongs and which are the best schemes. I know that it is a novel idea and that novel ideas take time to get off the ground. However, I very much hope that, in view of what I have said, your Lordships will feel that this proposal is really worthwhile.
I hope that you will support my amendment rather than the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Hayter, and I say that for the following reason. If your Lordships were to go along with Lord Hayter's amendment, then my amendment would fall to the ground. If that were to happen then not only would I be sorry but I believe that a great opportunity would have been missed to start something which in every way is an exciting new thought as regards how best to help the voluntary organisations to do even greater things in the years ahead. I am not quite clear whether I should or should not be moving this amendment at this stage. However, I hope to do so in due course.
Lord Elton: Clause 47 deals specifically with only one aspect of funding for voluntary bodies—that is, the power to establish collective schemes under which boroughs and districts acting jointly can fund voluntary organisations serving more than one borough. The amendments to which noble Lords have spoken do, however, range rather widely. Therefore I hope it will be helpful to your Lordships if at the beginning of this debate I speak generally about the whole issue of voluntary bodies and abolition and respond to the more detailed aspects of the amendments at the end of it.
I must preface my remarks by noting that the noble Lord, Lord Hayter, and his supporters have removed from the Marshalled List the notice which they had originally put down to the effect that they proposed to object to the Motion that Clause 47 stand part of the Bill. We must therefore assume that this arrangement is intended to go in parallel with the Clause 47 arrangements, unless they correct that assumption. However, that is what flows from the removal of that notice from the Marshalled List.
I shall not now digress on the oddities of funding that may arise from that decision, nor indeed upon the fact that there are no indications in the noble Lord's Motion as to where the funding is to come from, although there is every indication of where it is to go. I wish to speak to the wider issues first. Voluntary organisations which now get money from abolition authorities are naturally very anxious about their position. Therefore first let me establish that the Government wholly support the principle of voluntary work. We believe that it brings considerable benefits not just to the immediate causes which it supports, but to the community as a whole. I wish also to give credit where credit is due. I freely and readily agree that in London, where anxiety is greatest, the vast majority of GLC funding goes to voluntary organisations which are

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doing a good and very worthwhile job of work. They bear no responsibility for the actions of the current GLC administration, and our respect for them is in no way affected by the conduct of that administration.
We also recognise that many voluntary bodies in the areas touched by this Bill are anxious about the future. Their anxiety is perfectly natural and has been made clear to us in many approaches by individuals and by organisations; and we have paid, and are continuing to pay, close and careful attention to it. I believe that the care and personal commitment in all this of my honourable friend Sir George Young are already well and rightly known to a number of your Lordships. I know that many of your Lordships have received copious correspondence on this subject. I believe that your Lordships would have done so even without the cynical campaign to heighten anxiety among the already anxious, organised by the political opponents of this Bill in London, of which your Lordships took scornful note a week or two past. Therefore we pay careful attention to it.
We cannot very well discuss the changes that are to be made in the existing arrangements for getting money to the voluntary bodies if we do not first have a clear picture of what those arrangements are and what are their effects. Some people are a little hazy on the facts. One might almost suppose that most of this money comes from the GLC and the metropolitan county councils. I ought therefore to start by saying something about what happens now.
From where, in fact, does the income of these bodies come at present? I remind the Committee that your Lordships concern centres on the money, recently raised to £50 million a year, given to London voluntary bodies by the GLC, and the very much smaller amounts given by the metropolitan county councils to voluntary bodies in their county areas. If you roll up the two together you would certainly not get a total of more than £60 million in 1983–84. Against that figure your Lordships must set, first, the £215 million of grants given by the Government nationally to voluntary bodies; and, secondly, over and above that £215 million the very substantial sums paid by the Manpower Services Commission and other sponsored bodies. In London alone some £28 million was channelled into the voluntary sector via the boroughs last year.
As I have said, outside London the role of the county councils is small. Easily the biggest source of public cash for the voluntary organisations in the metropolitan county council areas are already the district councils. This Bill is of much less consequence to them than it is in London. I have shown that in London it is very much not the case that the voluntary sector is supported either wholly or even chiefly by the GLC. I have done so without even referring to the £900 million or so which the Charities Aid Foundation estimated as coming nationally to charities from private and corporate subscriptions in 1980–81. Apart from the very considerable sources of money to which I have referred, there are also the borough councils themselves. It is these elected councils that will be responsible for the GLC share of funding after abolition, now that we have it in perspective. They already have close connections with the
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voluntary sector and they already provide the voluntary sector with cash.
3.30 p.m.
The London Voluntary Service Council estimates the amount of that cash at £28 million over and above everything I have mentioned so far. At present much of the money goes to voluntary bodies that do all or most of their work inside the boundaries of the borough that gives the funds. That linkage will in no way be affected by what we propose in the Bill. Each of the bodies will still have to knock on one door only in its borough to get their cash from local government, and it will be the same door that they are knocking at now. So your Lordships' concern is not for them. It is with the remainder, with the organisations that operate in or bring benefit to more than one borough. They may serve several boroughs or they may serve the whole of London. It is to these bodies that much of the GLC money has been going. Your Lordships' fear either that it will dry up altogether or that there will be no one to see that it is properly distributed. There are two concerns and they run in parallel.
Before I come to what further proposals we have, let me describe how things stand at present. Under the Bill the boroughs will have the whole responsibility for local government funding of voluntary organisations. They already undertake considerable activity in this field, and it is true that we look to them for a response in no way different from their response on any other of their inherited functions. In the short term we expect them to increase substantially their funding to voluntary groups. We expect them to support individually and collectively those groups which are of genuine benefit to the areas which they serve and which will no longer get GLC support.
At this point some of your Lordships will no doubt narrow your eyes and say, "Ah, he is forgetting the GLC's £50 million. They will not have that money". But in fact they will. They will have exactly that money. And where, I ask, did the GLC get that money from? They obtained it from these boroughs, from the very boroughs we are talking about; and the boroughs, of course, obtained it from their ratepayers. The GLC secured it from the boroughs by precept, and that precept will cease. The London boroughs therefore will have exactly the same amount of cash available between them for this purpose next year as the GLC would have had and could have spent on their behalf had it not been abolished. It is the boroughs' money collected from the boroughs' ratepayers by the boroughs and paid to the GLC by the boroughs as precept. The effect of the Bill is merely to transfer the function of spending the same ratepayers' money from the GLC to the boroughs. Not one-tenth of a penny increase in the rates will be needed to maintain that expenditure at its present level as a result of abolition.
Lord Kaldor: Can the noble Lord confirm that the money paid by the boroughs to the GLC was earmarked for these special purposes?
Lord Elton: I understood the noble Lord to ask me whether the money was earmarked for this purpose. The money was precepted for this purpose by the GLC. It will in future be paid by the boroughs under

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arrangements which I am about to describe. Whether the level at which it is paid will remain exactly the same or not, I cannot of course say. That will be for locally elected councillors to decide.
Noble Lords: Oh!
Lord Elton: Well, I think that is no bad thing. I ask the Committee to hear me out. It will be for them to decide both on exactly how much money to give and indeed to which organisations to give it. This uncertainty is not, as your Lordships might think from the knowing noises opposite, anything new. It has not been introduced by this Bill. The level of support has always gone up and down. It has varied under the GLC and may vary in exactly the same way under the boroughs. The reason why I cannot now give, and never under any past arrangements could have given, a guarantee is that the decision is not for Ministers, it is for councillors. Councillors elected by the Greater London Council have been having their say and now it will be the turn of councillors elected to London borough councils. I would remind the Committee that they have a good record and already give some £30 million of support to the voluntary groups in London. The source of the money that the voluntary sector now gets from the GLC will be, just as it now is, the borough councils who collect it from their own ratepayers.
Lord Pitt of Hampstead: Is not the noble Lord in some sense trying to mislead the Committee? The real difference between what exists now and what will exist after abolition is that the precept will no longer be in existence. What now happens is that richer boroughs contribute to the aid which is required by poorer boroughs; the voluntary organisations in poor areas of London are being helped from the GLC precept, and the people who pay are from the richer boroughs. Once that precept is removed that redistribution will also be removed.
Lord Elton: I intend no discourtesy to the noble Lord although he said that I might be misleading the Committee, which is a wounding thing to say. I intend no discourtesy to the noble Lord and other Members of the Committee if I say it would be a good thing to hear me out before trying to unstitch what I am saying, because your Lordships do not know what is yet to come. As the noble Lord, Lord Pitt of Hampstead, has rightly said, the difference in future will be that the GLC will not be there to collect it from the boroughs by precept and hand it out. I accept that that is an alarming prospect for treasurers of voluntary bodies. Things were difficult enough when they had only one door to knock on without being suddenly told, as they believe, to knock on 32 in pursuit of exactly the same cash result. We recognise that difficulty and that is why we have provided in Clause 47 of the Bill for the boroughs to come together voluntarily themselves and provide a single door to knock on.
There is a similar problem, it is true, in the metropolitan counties. Given that the districts and boroughs already have wider powers to fund voluntary bodies than either the metropolitan county council or the GLC, and given that the Bill does nothing
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whatever to diminish those powers for groups operating wholly within the districts or borough administrative boundaries, there is, as I have said, no problem for the locally-based body. The only legislative action required therefore is to give them clearer and stonger powers to fund groups that serve more than one borough. That is the effect of Clause 47. That clause enables simple majorities of councils in an abolition area to select a lead authority and make a collective grant-giving scheme. It provides for financial decisions to be approved by a two-thirds majority; and I do not doubt that your Lordships will become interested in the balance represented by the majority by which those decisions are to be taken. We shall no doubt return to that. There is however a lower majority for initial adminstrative costs so that such schemes can be started up quickly this year.
A constant theme of our critics has been that too little is being done to prepare for abolition, and what has to be done in the available time is too much; but with an eye on Clause 47 the councils are already preparing for the future. A number of them have begun to collect information about those voluntary groups in their areas which at present receive funding from the upper tier authority. Several have invited bids from the groups concerned. In London a majority of the boroughs are already involved in preparing a collective scheme. Richmond has been designated as a lead borough, a grants unit has been set up; and your Lordships may well have seen a letter from its chairman in The Times just over a week ago.
We in the Department of the Environment have seconded staff who are already starting to work with it. While they are doing so, management consultants are drawing up plans for a permanent organisation. The post of director has been advertised at a substantial salary. They have already contacted 800 voluntary groups—not a few but 800—to establish their needs and priorities. They have taken a number of decisions which mean that so far 69 organisations providing mainly for single homeless, as well as all women's aid hostels in London, whether or not they are currently funded by the GLC, have been recommended for grant aid.
There is no lack of will on the part of these boroughs. If the remainder have the interests of voluntary organisations truly at heart, they will, I am sure, join in very soon. They will not help them if they continue to stand aside. If they hang back, they should perhaps receive some advice as to how to proceed in the interests of the under-privileged for whom so many of these organisations work.
The noble Lord, Lord Kilmarnock, was anxious about the uncertainty of future funding. I have already pointed out that there is nothing new in this. Boroughs do not strike, and the GLC does not strike, their budgets this far ahead of the next financial year. The budget will be made by the Richmond group in the autumn. That budget will be made in the light of policy and criteria decisions taken by the group as a whole. That again means that there is not a multiplicity of doors to lobby—if you can lobby a door; there is the one.
There are safeguards under our proposals and they are there both to protect the position of the lead

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authority and to give stability to the schemes. The Secretary of State also has to set a limit on the amount which can be spent each year. Let us be clear both about the purpose of this and about the way it will be used. Its purpose is to be a safeguard to limit the potential demands which may be imposed on individual authorities which may not have been part of the majority voting for a scheme. We originally proposed to use it to impose limits of £10 million in London and £3 million elsewhere. We withdrew those figures when it was made clear to us that the first of them at least was too low.
The first undertaking that I give to your Lordships' Committee this afternoon and to the voluntary sector generally is that the Secretary of State does not intend to use this power as a means of reducing the level of grant in 1986–87. I can, therefore, give an assurance today that we will set the limits for 1986–87 in the light of authorities' budget plans for the collective schemes and that we will not seek to contain those budgets below the level of the equivalent expenditure by the abolition authorities this year. This, I believe, meets some of the concern in the second subsection of the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Kilmarnock. The successor bodies will, as a result, be free at least to spend right up to the amounts spent by their predecessors, and that expenditure will be in addition to what they themselves are now spending under current schemes.
Lord Diamond: Will the noble Lord indicate where in the clause this is safeguarded?
Lord Elton: It is safeguarded by the undertaking which I, as a Minister of State at the Department of the Environment, gave on behalf of my right honourable friend a moment ago, and which is written into the record.
One inference which could be drawn from the first amendment—I take it very poorly when noble Lords opposite shake their heads at a clear undertaking, given in terms, limiting the use of a power given by statute to a Secretary of State by a Minister of State in his department. I think it is a perfectly adequate safeguard.
As I was saying, one inference that can be drawn from the first amendment, the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Hayter, is that the scheme that I have described would produce some sort of policy vacuum. In fact, the councils operating, a scheme under Clause 47 will of course be able to set the policy under which the collective grant giving is done. There can be no doubt that there must be a clear set of policy guidelines and of priorities. That would be essential, particularly in an area such as London, where we can expect a budget of several million pounds. In London the necessary majority of the boroughs have assured the voluntary sector that they will provide such a policy.
In our view it is right that these policies should be drawn up by the same authorities as are responsible for the statutory, social, housing, and other services with which voluntary organisations are generally most closely associated. Those authorities are the London boroughs, and we see no case for a separate statutory
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body to duplicate a role which they are ideally qualified to perform and which most of them are clearly taking on.
I ask the noble Lord, Lord Hayter, and his supporters to consider carefully the importance of that practical and illuminating link between the social work department and the needs of the voluntary sector. It is, after all, the boroughs which already know most about such critical matters as those referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Kilmarnock, such as those involving child care schemes and latch-key children, to which the voluntary sectors also relate.
We therefore think that we have the shape of this scheme right, but we also recognise that there may well be difficult problems for local groups as we change from the existing system to a new one. These are transitional problems, and that is why we have announced a transitional grant scheme. Under it we will pay a proportion of the cost incurred by a local authority in taking on a voluntary project which has been receiving funding from the GLC or a metropolitan county. We will pay 75 per cent. of the total in the first year, tapering down to 50 per cent. in the second year, 50 per cent. in the third year, and 25 per cent. in the fourth. At Report stage in another place we announced that we would cover £10 million worth of projects under this scheme each year. That is double what we originally proposed and it reflects our willingness to respond to the voluntary sector's concern.
3.45 p.m.
Your Lordships, and the noble Lord, Lord Hayter, in particular, have made it clear that that concern arises from the fact that the scheme in the Bill is a voluntary scheme, and that the concern persists in spite of the fact that the voluntary scheme has already started to work where it matters most, in London. Whether or not that anxiety is well founded, I accept, and the Government themselves accept, from your Lordships that it exists.
My second announcement that I have to make today is therefore this: we will again double the amount of transitional aid. This will increase it to cover not £10 million, but £20 million worth of projects. That raises our commitment to transitional aid to a total of £40 million of Government cash over four years. That money will be allocated so as to take account of the total amount of extra funding each authority is taking on.
I ask your Lordships to note that this money is separate from, and additional to, the resources which the local authorities concerned already have; and it is separate from, and additional to, the extra resources that will be released to them by abolition and the end of precepting by the upper tier bodies. These councils, I repeat, already provide every penny spent on these grants, both by the GLC and the MCCs. The whole of that money is already provided by them out of their rates.
Some of your Lordships fear that this provision will in some way be negated by our general system of rate control. I think that the noble Lord, Lord Diamond, was moving towards that concern, if he did not express it. My third undertaking, therefore, this afternoon is

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that both RSG and targets, if we still have them, will be adjusted to take account of their additional responsibilities for this expenditure.
If there was any doubt about our readiness to give special help to the voluntary sector, I hope I have finally removed it. But increased financial support from Government is only part of what is needed to sustain a vigorous and independent voluntary sector. The noble Lord, Lord Hayter, emphasised—and I deeply sympathise with what he said—the importance of official money in attracting private money. Anyone who compares the funding of charitable causes in our capital city with that in major cities in other countries is struck by one particular thing: how small a contribution is made by our private corporate sources compared with theirs in the Western world.
In the United States, for example, corporate donations for these purposes are estimated at just under 2 per cent. of pre-tax profits. In this country the proportion is about one-tenth of 1 per cent. In this country we have built up high levels of public sector funding and we have got used to them. This can, and sometimes does, result in unfortunate threats to the independence and integrity of the voluntary movement. Pressures can be put on voluntary bodies when they become over-dependent on funding from the public purse. They should not be required to become embroiled in political issues; that destroys their freedom of action. It is essential that we protect their independence and their integrity. We have recently seen the pressures that can be put on voluntary bodies when they become over-dependent on funding from the public purse. Your Lordships will remember the examples.
We believe that it is necessary to the health of the voluntary sector that it should begin to be able to get a greater proportion of its support from private and independent sources. It would be a source of great strength to the voluntary organisations as a whole if we were able to create for them a new permanent and independent source of funding. The present reform of local government provides an admirable opportunity to do this and we propose to take it.
Lord Barnett: I believe the Lord is in danger of giving the House a misleading picture. He talked about public funding of voluntary organisations and quoted the example of the United States. But the 2 per cent. to which he referred also includes substantial public funding because it is wholly allowable for tax.
Lord Elton: The noble Lord can return to the detail as we all will during the debate. The fact is that however one does the calculations there is greater support coming from the private sector to the voluntary sector in the United States than there is here to an order of magnitude of a considerable size.
In no way put on the wrong foot by the noble Lords's well-timed interruption, I shall now make my fourth announcement of this afternoon. It is that we intend to use a proportion of the resources to endow a charitable trust for London whose purpose will be to provide assistance to voluntary bodies whose activities benefit Londoners and to focus additional support from the private sector. The initial endowment that we
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propose is a least £10 million. If the proceeds arising from the disposal of the GLC's surplus assets allow, we might be able to increase that amount further. In addition, we intend that the new trust shall be added to by contributions from private and other corporate sources. It will be seed money sown both for short term benefit and for future generations of Londoners.
Lord Elwyn-Jones: May I—
Lord Elton: I really ought to finish because your Lordships will look at the clock and think that I have taken even longer than I have—and that is long enough! We propose that the new trust shall be administered by a widely-respected and established charitable organisation that will take it and keep it right out of politics altogether, as the noble Lord, Lord Perth, would wish. The trust would not replace existing sources of grant giving nor would it replace anything provided for in Clause 47. On the contrary, it will be additional to both. The other arrangements we have already announced will continue to go forward. It will necessarily take some time for the endowment of the new trust to become available, but I believe your Lordships will see in it an important and constructive investment in the long term.
We must get the nature and the composition of the new trust and the terms under which it would give grants right. These are matters on which we propose to consult very extensively, as your Lordships would wish, before we take firm decisions. We are particularly anxious to discuss them with the voluntary sector and charitable organisations themselves. All this will take time and will be a matter for subordinate legislation. What we must do in the Bill is to provide a place for that subordinate legislation. The unallocated assets of the GLC will pass to the London residuary body on 1st April next year and it is from them that the endowments must be transferred. We shall therefore bring forward an amendment at Report stage to enable the Secretary of State by order to require the residuary bodies to make payments to such charitable trusts as he may specify.
At present our proposals are for London only, but we shall not rule out the possibility of considering such trusts for one or more metropolitan areas. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Perth, will see the merits of non-political bodies standing outside both national and local government to set, as it were, the tone of this form of activity and to set an example. Outside London the main difference is that the metropolitan councils have been in existence for a shorter time and have acquired fewer assets. But, equally, in the metropolitan areas the need is not so great.
Baroness Fisher of Rednal: I wonder whether the noble Lord will give way?
Lord Elton: No, it would be much better if I sat down altogether rather than having the noble Baroness leaping up before I sit down so that I then have to rise again.
To summarise: first, all the reserve resources now spent on the voluntary sector by local authorities in London will still be available from the same sources, not via the precept but direct from the boroughs.

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Secondly, the scheme that we provide in Clause 47 provides a focus for collective action to which the voluntary sector can look as well as the councils. Thirdly, that scheme is already in being, in embryo, and kicking. It will work. Fourthly, nonetheless we recognise that there are transitional difficulties. We had already offered grant on £10 million-worth of projects now raised to £20 million which means £20 million of Government cash now raised to £40 million for the transistional body. Fifthly, we have assured the Committee that that will not be caught by the provisions for controlling the expenditure of local authority money in the terms which I read out a moment ago. Sixthly, we are providing a new voluntary charitable body outside politics altogether and endowing it with £10 million to start with as a focus for non-political private sector money in the future. I know that the right reverend Prelate will speak next. I know him of old. He is efficient; he is analytical; he is clear—and he was once my boss. I therefore know that he will tear to pieces very carefully everything that I have said. However, when he has finished I ask your Lordships to put the pieces together and you will find a very good scheme for London.
Baroness Fisher of Rednal: May I ask just one question? I have listened with the greatest of interest to what the noble Lord has said, but on behalf of all metropolitan councils I wish to say that the deprivation, the unemployment, is much higher than it is in the London area. The anxieties are as great as in London; and when he said he had the shape about right, I should say that the shape he gave for the metropolitan counties is like the piece of jigsaw that is lost under the table that one can never find.
Lord Elton: I have done many jigsaws and I have always found the piece in the end. It is an important piece, but it is less important than the London piece. I shall not recapitulate the whole of my speech, but the ratio between the district councils and the MCCs is entirely different from that of London and the whole of the piece is therefore smaller. We recognise its importance, and we are open to suggestions for trusts there, too, as I have said.
4 p.m.
The Lord Bishop of London: Before I speak to this amendment, to which I have attached my name, may I apologise for the absence of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Southwark who is at this moment presiding over a conclave (I think "conclave" would be the proper word) of all his clergy at a conference in the Midlands which was arranged many months ago. He is very sorry that he cannot be here with us today and hopes that it will not be taken amiss or to represent any lack of concern on his part.
I appreciate very much the assurances which the Minister has given with respect to the voluntary associations and the concern of the Government that their work should not be affected adversely. What he said reflects the commitment which the Prime Minister gave to the leaders of the churches in reply to a letter which they wrote to her. I accept that these statements are in the best of faith and I wish to affirm that. For that reason, I welcome what the noble Lord,
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Lord Hayter, said in his opening speech about the real issue being one of method rather than of aims. I accept what the Government have said with regard to the voluntary associations. I welcome many of the points that have been made by the noble Lord, Lord Elton, and I hope he will not think I am ungrateful if I do not refer to these in detail. They are encouraging and I shall explain why in reply to the noises behind me because, in spite of all that he has said, he has really not directed his attention to the main issue. The main issue is a very simple one. It is that to which I direct myself and upon which I shall concentrate. None of his proposals provides the necessary framework to ensure adequate security for the voluntary associations and make certain that their needs, the needs of those associations which extend beyond one borough, will be met.
One does not have to take an unduly low view of human nature to appreciate the need for such a framework. I sometimes think that those of us who sit on these Benches actually take a rather more realistic view of human nature than do some other Members of your Lordships' House. Perhaps not, however, because the odd thing that I notice here is that the Government have not shown themselves lacking in zeal for legislative framework in other aspects of human relationships when they feel that it is necessary in order to help people to behave in a better way. I cannot understand why in this particular case they are so loath to pursue the same course of action.
I should like to take a simple example from my own Diocese of London which, as many of your Lordships will know, extends down to Staines in the West, up to the River Lee and Enfield and so on, including the East End and Tower Hamlets as well as the centre here, the Cities of London and Westminster. We have resources at our disposal which come from one source or another. They are at our disposal. We do not receive them from on high. They are ones which come from the disposal of our land, from voluntary giving and so on. So far as that money is concerned, we need and we have a statutory framework which enables that money to be shared and then to be applied where it is most necessary.
The point that I really want to make is that the framework that we have in the diocese, which is there by statute, does not put another body over us in respect of this expenditure. What it does is that it makes us get together, it gives us a framework to do that and then says, "When you have agreed in the proper way you will all abide by it". So there is a body called the Bishops' Council which is also our diocesan fund on which all these deaneries—boroughs, if you like—are represented properly. We meet together. It makes decisions and they are binding.
It is a body which is drawn from and composed of representatives of the parts of the diocese, and this amendment does not propose for another body, an additional body to be slotted in above. This, I am afraid, is why I cannot go with the noble Earl, Lord Perth, because I think that he is putting in another body. The body which is proposed in this amendment cannot be seen in any sense as a successor body to the GLC because it is constituted of the bodies, the boroughs themselves, which (as the Government recognise) have the responsibility for recognising and

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meeting local needs. This body which we have in the diocese—which any diocese has; but it is particularly important to London with our structures and our needs—we do not resent. We welcome it.
Let me give an example of a recent case where we disposed of a certain site in London. One-third of the proceeds had to go to looking after redundant churches elsewhere but two-thirds of it comes with us. It is available for us to use in the right way. As soon as that money became available, I was under immediate pressure for that money to be spent where the site was, in the area, for that immediate locality, irrespective of how its demands related to those in Tower Hamlets or in Brent or elsewhere.
What happened was that the proper body, again not a body from above but the body composed from among ourselves, met and decided how that money should be allocated, having taken counsel from people who could assess the needs of the different parts of the diocese. We need that body. We do not resent it, as I say: we welcome it. We should be in a most lamentable condition if we were in a situation where all the pressure went to spending money locally where it was raised. Supposing that the site to which I referred had been in the middle of Chelsea and that we had let them spend it all there. What howls there would have been, and rightly so, from some parts of the rest of the diocese where the need was infinitely greater. It is a statutory body and it needs to be a statutory body. It means that we accept its decisions. It is a body which we accept as determining how we spend. This amendment cannot be seen, in my judgment, as a proposal to have a successor to the GLC in any form. It is a body like ours, composed of the boroughs, to help them to meet the London-wide needs.
On the question of funding, may I say that my concern is not merely the maintenance of funding; it is in giving the local authority associations the money that they need to be able to look ahead, to explore—because they have often taken the initiative. I found it a little odd that apparently (if I understood him aright) the Minister said that we must hope that the boroughs will follow the example of the GLC in providing the money which the GLC itself had spent. It seemed to me very odd that we should be urging the boroughs to follow the example of a body that we are in process of demolishing. I mean that quite seriously.
Lord Elton: I spoke for too long and necessarily left out detail. Your Lordships have seen lists of what the GLC is funding. I said that a lot of it, most of it, a great deal of it, was very worthy. I did not say that all of it was. I am in no way counselling the boroughs to spend exactly the same amount of money on exactly the same causes.
The Lord Bishop of London: I am grateful to the noble Lord the Minister but I still think that my main point holds, which is that the money has got to come from the boroughs and that we cannot just ask them to do what the GLC did, even in its better moments. The function of legislation, as I understand it—and I have said this here before—is to make it easier for people to do what is right and harder for them to do what is wrong. We all need it, and I believe that the boroughs need it in this instance.
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It is not just a question of people being awkward or unco-operative and so on; it is also a question of loyalty. It is to this that the noble Baroness, Lady Faithfull, referred on an earlier occasion when she pointed out the tensions which one can have between one's statutory responsibilities to the area in which one is an officer and the needs of the wider area. I believe that we need something such as we have proposed here in order to help those members and officers to be able to resolve that kind of tension which otherwise arises. I appreciate very much the spirit of the letter which Councillor Cobbold wrote to The Times. I must confess that I am not convinced by it. I feel that if one really looks at what is happening it is in far too rudimentary a stage to give any real strength to the voluntary associations. It is true that they wrote 800 letters to various bodies but may I tell the Committee that they wrote on 23rd April and asked for answers by 10th May, and that that includes a Bank Holiday? Frankly that is not very realistic so far as the voluntary organisations are concerned because voluntary organisations have very little capital, if any; their staff are greatly pressed, they have little security and they are not in a position to produce quick answers or to survive long periods of uncertainty.
I could make one other reference to the question of ethnic minorities, but that would take too long and I have spoken too long already. But there is a great gap here which we do not believe is really covered by the proposals as they stand. Of course we welcome the proposals for the fund to which the Minister has referred. That is very encouraging but I do not think that it is in any way to be seen as a substitute for the framework which we see as essential in order to enable the boroughs to work together.
Perhaps I may endorse what the noble Lord, Lord Hayter, said about the inspiration of our concern. So far as I am concerned, the GLC did not inspire me one bit on this. I have never known an occasion on which all the leaders of the churches became all of one mind so quickly. The immediate response to the Society of Voluntary Organisations in respect of its first inquiry about response to Streamlining the Cities showed without any pressure from outside—it was a spontaneous response—an overwhelming concern for these proposals.
I do not want a successor body to the GLC. What I think we need is a co-ordinating body with statutory authority which will provide a framework to enable the boroughs to carry out the intentions expressed both by them and by the Government. In passing, do not let us forget that the London Boroughs Association is a voluntary association. It could go out of existence at the drop of a hat, so far as I can see. We cannot really leave the future of the voluntary organisations to something like that. If this amendment fails it would be better for the scheme to be mandatory, and that is why I support the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt—
Lord Renton: Will the right reverend Prelate allow me to intervene? I do apologise, but perhaps he does not realise that the London Boroughs Association was given specific duties under Section 14 of the Greater London Council (General Powers) Act 1970; that until two years ago it was able to exercise those powers but

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that changes in the last two years have frustrated its statutory duty and since then it has carried on with a voluntary duty without the statute having been repealed.
The Lord Bishop of London: I am very much obliged to the noble Lord, Lord Renton, and I should like to follow up what he said, if I may have the indulgence of your Lordships for a few more minutes. In consultations that I have enjoyed with the Government about this Bill, I did say that one thing which would make all the difference to us would be to have some statutory recognition given to some body with responsibility for co-ordination. If in fact the situation relating to the London Boroughs Association was what it was previously—and I am grateful to the noble Lord for informing me about this, because nobody else has provided any information—that would go some way to meeting my point. But now, as he says himself, it has become voluntary and I do not think this job can be left to a voluntary body in that way.
The disadvantage of simply having a mandatory scheme is that it would have to have the power of the Secretary of State to enforce it, if the need arose. I think it is better left to providing the framework by statute, in which the boroughs themselves can be helped to get together and provide the necessary support for the voluntary organisations in our capital. I realise I have said nothing about the areas outside London, but I believe that what I have said applies equally to them and I hope that your Lordships will bear that in mind in voting upon this issue.
Lord Kaldor: Can the noble Lord inform the House that the new sources of funds at the disposal of the designated council for the financing of museums and art galleries will not include the imposition of fees or charges for visitors to museums?
Lord Ennals: I rise to support most strongly the amendment moved so ably by the noble Lord, Lord Hayter, and the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Kilmarnock. I have a great deal of respect for much of what was said by the noble Earl, Lord Perth. My objection to it has already been stated by the right reverend Prelate, but much that is said in that amendment could be incorporated within the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Hayter.
I was quite delighted to see that the noble Lord, Lord Bancroft, had added his name to this amendment as one of the sponsors. After all, as a former Permanent Under-Secretary of the Department of the Environment he would not have put his name to an amendment like this, with all his knowledge and all his background, unless he felt it was the right and proper thing to do.
4.15 p.m.
Perhaps I may say to your Lordships that although I am speaking from this Bench I am speaking as one who has spent much more than half his life working with voluntary organisations. I am speaking in no sense in a political way, and this amendment, quite clearly, has nothing to do with politics. Thank heavens for that. It so happens that there are 15 of the
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voluntary organisations in London and one in one of the metropolitan authorities with which I am associated as an officer or in some other way. I want to make it clear that I feel most deeply about the tremendously important role that voluntary organisations have to play in our society. They have played that role in the past and must play it in the future.
It has been suggested, I know, on earlier occasions and referred to again today, that somehow or other we or they have been lobbied and got at by the GLC. I am frankly not interested in what the GLC has said to me about this. I am interested in what the voluntary organisations have said to me about their problems. They have done so in meeting after meeting: the disabled and the homeless and especially those groups who are least able to help themselves, such as the disabled and those who are mentally ill or mentally handicapped; those who are suffering from those infirmities who have set up their own organisations which could not have existed had they not had the financial support of the GLC, where that applies. I am certain this also applies to the metropolitan authorities.
So I beg your Lordships to recognise that I speak as a voluntary organisation man with a deep conviction. Even when I was Secretary of State for Social Services I sought, by means of greatly increased grants that were given, to show my feelings, as I did when I launched the Good Neighbour campaign. I am most grateful to the noble Lord the Minister for intervening as early as he did. As one would expect from him, he made a number of points that are extremely relevant and on which I should like spontaneously to respond, if I may.
It has been suggested that the same money will be available, whether under the scheme as proposed by the Government or under the provisions of the amendment. We have no assurance of this. We know perfectly well that the money to be raised, as the noble Lord the Minister said, would be raised by the London boroughs, and by the districts in the case of the metropolitan authorities. I wish I could think that the record of those who are to provide money, if they so do, somehow or other is going to be totally different from their record up to now. The noble Lord, Lord Kilmarnock, quite rightly said that nine of the London boroughs give less than £200,000 a year to all voluntary organisations; that 16 London boroughs have already said that they plan to reduce their spending on voluntary organisations in 1985–86; and another six have said that there will be no growth.
How can we feel certain—and I want to come on to the Minister's personal assurance—that that money will be available, especially since it requires the approval of two-thirds of the authorities concerned? The letter from Councillor Bowness, the chairman of the London Boroughs Association, of course reminded me that if they had their will it would not be two-thirds but three-quarters who would have to give their approval before schemes were adopted. So I ask—
Lord Elton: The noble Lord asked me a question. He asked how could we be certain that the money would be forthcoming. I would remind him, first, that there is no certainty that the money would be

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forthcoming next year without abolition. There is no compulsion on the GLC to provide this money; there is no compulsion on the GLC to precept this money. The only compulsion is on the boroughs to pay the money if it is precepted.
I then ask him to reflect who actually puts up the elected people to make these decisions. It is the same electorate who are electing people to the GLC and to their local borough councils. It will be the same people carrying out those elections in the future. Therefore the electoral pressures will be the same. All the indications are that the results will be the same. The balance between local giving and overall giving will of course vary as it has in the past; but there is no certainty now, and there is no likelihood, that it will go wrong in the future.
Lord Ennals: I wish that I had the confidence of the Minister. I have to say that I do not have it at all. All the evidence of past performance suggests that there are some local authorities who, with the wishes of their electorate, will wish to contribute; and others who will do as I say they have done and who have decided that they are not going to increase the funds concerned. We have to accept that.
Lord Elton: Will the noble Lord allow me?
Lord Ennals: I feel that I must make my speech. The Minister gave an assurance. In your Lordships' House we would always give due respect to an assurance that is given, but we would give much greater respect if that were placed in the Bill. If I may mention one of the assurances to which he referred, it was that there will be as much money next year as there was last year. All he has to do is to accept Amendment No. 135AAB, which calls for subsection (5) to be deleted, because that in fact goes in exactly the opposite way.
I well remember, when debating on the London Regional Transport Bill an issue concerning voluntary organisations, the noble Earl, Lord Avon, giving an assurance again that the organisation Dial-a-Ride would without doubt be funded from the London boroughs. In fact I am afraid that exactly the opposite has happened. I admire Dial-a-Ride tremendously as an organisation which has opened the doors to people who have been housebound, who have been unable to move to places which they wanted to visit, to see relatives or to have forms of entertainment. Yet unless something has happened in the last week or so, only two of the London boroughs have made a contribution in spite of the assurances that were given by a noble Lord from the Government Bench. Only two London boroughs have sought to finance that magnificent organisation. They happen to be Camden, where I pay rates; and Islington. The Greater London Council has itself had to bear 95 per cent. of the total cost.
What assurances can they have? They are writing to me and telephoning asking to speak to me because, they say, "We have had an assurance before and it did not come off. How can we accept an assurance now? And if the assurance is genuine then why can it not be put into the Bill; or why cannot the amendment"—that has been so ably proposed and supported from all sides of the House—"be carried through?" The noble
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Lord knows he cannot guarantee what will be the attitude of the London boroughs. I have to say that I am always a little doubtful (I hope the Minister will not take me amiss) when someone comes along with last-minute offers which suggest perhaps that they are a little concerned about how things will go. All of a sudden, instead of £ 10 million, we have £20 million in transitional funds produced today.
Lord Elton: It is interesting that when the Government resist the Opposition we are intransigent; and when we answer pressure in Parliament we are in some way caitiff.
Lord Ennals: I do not think that is an answer at all. I am speaking in favour of the amendment which would give some guarantee and some commitment. After all, even with the £20 million we are only talking about transitional figures. It is only a transitional period. The noble Lord made it clear himself that it is £20 million for one year; then it is reduced by the next year; and then it is phased down to nothing. He also brought out of the hat this new trust—the sort of community chest which as I understand it (I will certainly give way if I am wrong) is a £10 million sum that will come from selling the GLC building, County Hall.
Lord Elton: The noble Lord asked me to put him right; I do. It does not come from that source. It comes from the whole of the GLC assets, any part of which is surplus to the requirements of the successor bodies. It is a very much larger fund and is far more than one building.
Lord Ennals: That is right. I did not expect that it came just from one building. But this is an entirely new proposal. It is similar to the community chest schemes which have operated in the United States. It is quite new so far as this country is concerned. If it is £10 million, then presumably it would be the interest that would be available; and that would be roughly £1 million out of a £10 million capital sum. We have to bear in mind the enormous gap and the amount that we have already seen which was contributed by the GLC. The Minister was absolutely fair. The vast majority of the grants that were given by the GLC were for worthwhile projects. I think it was quite right that he should emphasise that. But a new trust producing £1 million extra a year, if that is roughly what the estimate would be, depending on interest rates—the noble Baroness thinks it is £1½ million; or it may be a little less—is clearly no answer at all to the problem.
He referred to the threats on the independence of voluntary organisations. I think that everyone who is involved in voluntary organisations is dedicated to ensure that their independence is not undermined by successive Governments—whatever colour they may be—or by any other authority. I think respective Governments have shown that same approach. What they are worried about is not that they are going to be interfered with by this Government or by a new organisation to be set up. They are concerned that they will not have the money to do their job.
I heard the Minister say that he was going to have consultations with the voluntary organisations. He must know the tremendous consultation that there has

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been during this whole period about the role of voluntary organisations. He must know that it is the National Council of Voluntary Organisations—which is as far from being a party political organisation as any organisation that I have ever met, because it represents all that is best in the voluntary organisational movement as well as the churches—which has been expressing support for the amendment so ably proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Hayter.
It is quite true that the voluntary organisations are very frightened indeed. If they were not very frightened none of us would have had the sort of representations that we have had. I must say that over the weekend I was deeply moved by someone who telephoned my home. His speech was quite clearly impaired. He was trying to get over a message to me. I could not understand it. There was someone else at the side of the phone who asked, "Lord Ennals, did you understand what my friend was saying?" I said, "I am sorry, but I have to say I did not understand it. Can you possibly say what it was?" He said, "He was trying to say to you: 'Can you do your best to see that the proposals that have been made are carried and that we are not dependent upon the scheme that is in the Government's Bill'?". Of course that was difficult for him to say. I was deeply moved and there were tears in my eyes. That is the last I shall say in response to the Minister.
My noble friend Lord Barnett—as the Minister said, perhaps at a very timely moment—intervened and asked about tax in relation to schemes that are comparable with schemes in the United States. He said that it was not perhaps very relevant. I think it is very relevant indeed. No doubt, at a later stage he will respond to that, since he was not able to do so earlier. So my concern is not just with the big voluntary organisations. I thought that the GLC was quite absurd when it put out an advert that said that MENCAP, MIND or many other organisations were in peril. That was not true. I am saying it, as well as the noble Lord who has the distinction of being president of MENCAP. What are in peril are the individual voluntary organisations, sometimes parts of or affiliated to bodies such as MIND, MENCAP and the Church of England Children's Society, of whose committee I was a member until very recently. It is those small organisations that are worried; it is not the national organisations.
4.30 p.m.
Perhaps I may conclude—there is much more that I should like to say, but there are other noble Lords who are better qualified than I am—by mentioning a letter that I received very recently from the Royal National Institute for the Blind. No one could for one moment think of that organisation having some political motivation. It states:
"The Royal National Institute for the Blind is not itself directly funded with grants from metropolitan county councils or the GLC".
It puts itself together with others that are going to live on.
"However, district councils and boroughs sponsor places vitally needed by pupils in RNIB's special schools, old people in homes for the blind or people who need rehabilitation. Abolition of the metropolitan county councils and the GLC will place greater
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responsibilities on districts and boroughs for funding projects. We fear that there may be less money available overall to enable these councils to meet their obligations".
It goes on
"In the last year the metropolitan count councils and the GLC funded voluntary organisations to the tune of about £60 million".
That we know.
"The money helped, for example, physically and mentally handicapped people and victims of crime who need emotional and practical support".
The letter continues:
"The Government now proposes that it will contribute £7·5 million for a transitional year".
All right, that figure has been raised. I shall not read any more; but the organisation expresses its deep concern.
There cannot be any other legislature in the world which has more people who, in one way or another, are involved in the work of voluntary organisations than has your Lordships' House. There cannot be any place with greater experience of voluntary work than your Lordships' House, regardless of which political opinion your Lordships may hold. I plead with noble Lords to take seriously what the voluntary organisations say, to accept that they are really frightened about their future. When we look at the mass of social need in our society, in London and in the metropolitan areas, we should not be talking about whether the voluntary organisations are to be cut back. Our task is to look at this and to see how voluntary organisations can do more; by raising their own money, of course, but also by having a guarantee and a certainty that their future is there, in order that they can serve the nation as they have done in the past.
Lord Bellwin: I shall not keep your Lordships long, because I suspect that if I did, I should be repeating many of the arguments already made, but there are one or two observations which I should like to make. First, if the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, is so concerned that the many bodies which he mentioned are, to quote him, "scared", I am not in the least surprised, in view of all the distortion, publicity and advertising that has been going on. It has been going on for so long that it would be rather amazing if they were not scared.
What one has to look at is: who is responsible for their being scared. Who are these people? In many instances they are the same people who are deluging us with the kind of material that I have been receiving on a scale that I have never experienced before in my whole life. I make no bones about it. I am heartily sick and tired of it. So far as I am concerned, it is very counter-productive, and many of your Lordships tell me that you feel the same.
The noble Lord, Lord Ennals, said that he feels most deeply about this subject and the noble Lord, Lord Hayter, said that the amendment is based on charity and compassion. But there is no monopoly on compassion. There is no monopoly of feelings on these matters. I come from a background where I lived among scenes of deprivation and all that goes with it, and I am very aware of the magnificent work that the many voluntary bodies carried out. I want to see them expand. I like to think that in my former incarnation I made a small contribution towards helping some of

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them so to do and I want that to continue. I am satisfied that what is in the Bill will happen. I was there—
Lord Ennals: Will the noble Lord—
Lord Bellwin: Will the noble Lord allow me to continue? I was there when much of the words and music of this Bill were being written. I was there when we discussed what might or might not be done to assuage the fears.
Lord Ennals: I greatly respect what the noble Lord had to say about the voluntary organisations and about his own contribution. But is he now saying that all of these organisations have not followed the debates, have not read the Bill, and that they are dupes who do not understand what is going on? If he is, he is doing a great disservice to some fine people, who have at the head of their notepaper the names of people as distinguished as the noble Lord and others who are here today.
Lord Bellwin: I intend to make only one speech, and I want to go on by saying that, having been there when it was started, having watched the imaginative response of the Government to the representations and the consultations, and having listened today to what the Minister has come forward with, I believe that there can be no possible complaint about a lack of response to consultation with organisations such as the NCVO. They are highly responsible bodies for which I have the greatest respect. So I am satisfied that the Government are responding.
I want, fairly briefly, to make one or two other points which must be made. It is very difficult speaking in this debate when we seem to be covering so many amendments. Amendment No. 136ZBA calls for transitional support for a period of four years. The noble Lord, Lord Kilmarnock, spoke about that, but I want to say this about it. In all the legislation on local government with which I was concerned for five-and-a-half years never once did we as a Government seek to impose upon local government prespecified spending on prespecified services of any kind. The one factor we always maintained was that we were concerned about the totality of spending. We were concerned where individual authorities were, in total, exceeding what was fair and reasonable in relation to everybody else in local government. But we always said that the priorities on spending must lie with local government itself.
I ask your Lordships to think very carefully about what is being said today. It is being said that you cannot trust people in local government, because they will not have the money. I thought that my noble friend Lord Elton very explicitly explained why they will have no less money than they have now. But I want to remind your Lordships of some of the kind of spending that has taken place by many of these same authorities which, we are being told, will not have the money. I want to remind your Lordships that a sum approaching £20 million has been spent on campaigns by the seven authorities that are about to be abolished; and spending by the district authorities and others on
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campaigning alone can be measured in millions. If they stop all that nonsense, they will have a great sum of money which they can apportion.
But having said that, at the end of the day the greater concern must be that you cannot seek to dictate exactly what each authority should spend on each separate service. If we cannot trust authorities to do that, we must not hear from noble Lords opposite, as I have heard in the last few years, about how we seek to control them and tell them what to do. I trust them, because I was a member of one of them. I support them, and always have done. But I wonder how happy the local authority associations are about the implications of what is being said today.
I will not detain the Committee longer. As the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, has probably gathered, I feel equally deeply. I have all along been concerned about the voluntary bodies, but I am satisfied more than I have ever been about this whole Bill, having listened to what was said today by my noble friend the Minister in respect of what the Government intend to do.
I ask noble Lords to bear in mind the key factor mentioned by my noble friend and to consider the fact that we are being asked today to vote on a question of £60 million out of the hundreds of millions of pounds which are there anyway and which will not be affected. I am satisfied with what the Government propose to do. I hope that all my noble friends, many Cross-Benchers and—as I am an eternal optimist—even some noble Lords opposite will see that there is merit in the Government's action and that the fears which have been expressed are groundless.
Lord Irving of Dartford: I hope that the Committee will allow me to speak to this group of amendments, although I have put my name to a later amendment on the Marshalled List, Amendment No. 136.
Amendment No. 136: After Clause 47, insert the following new clause:
"Grants for Information and Advice Service.
.—(1) The Council of a London borough and of a district in metropolitan counties shall make such grants to appropriate voluntary organisations as are necessary to ensure that such organisations can provide citizens with information, advice and assistance with regard to the responsibilities and rights of those citizens.
(2) In this section "voluntary organisations" has the same meaning as in section 47(10) of this Act.
(3) The duty created by this section shall not be regarded as restricting the powers of section 47 of this Act.").
However, it is quite clear that, as a result of the Government's proposal concerning the fund, much of the debate will arise on these amendments—although I do not believe that the amendment in my name and that of the noble Lord, Lord McGregor, will be any the less relevant, whether or not the other amendments are carried.
One of the serious consequences of the disappearance of the GLC and the metropolitan counties will be the interruption to the work of many voluntary bodies upon which much of the well-being of our people depends. I should declare my interest. I am vice-chairman of the National Association of Citizens' Advice Bureaux. This is one of the largest, if not the largest, of voluntary bodies. I will describe to the Committee the consequences that this Bill will have for that organisation in respect of the

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interruption and possible damage to the CAB's information and advisory services.
The Citizens' Advice Bureaux were established in 1939 to provide an emergency service during the war. Bureaux worked from mobile units, air raid shelters and rest centres—helping people with their personal problems. After the war, CABs were still needed to deal with resettlement problems and to advise people about benefits under the new welfare state.
This service has continued to respond to the changing needs of the community. The association now consists of a central office and 22 areas in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, which provide support services to 682 main bureaux and 221 extensions. Scottish CABs are in a separate organisation but it is of course associated with that representing England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Approximately 13,500 people—90 per cent. of whom are volunteers—work in the service, and a further 10,000 people are associated with the committees which run the bureaux—and they are also volunteers. It is a large and complex organisation. Any interruption of funds could be totally disastrous to the service it gives to the public. The service has an open door policy. Any member of the public can walk into a CAB and obtain free, confidential and impartial advice on any subject. People are often advised by the press and television and by indications in leaflets published by Government departments and by libraries to obtain help from their local CAB. In response to need, an increasing number of CAB also provide specialist services—such as debt counselling, tribunal assistance, and assistance with workers' rights and legal work—to complement their generalist service.
The national association receives a grant from the Department of Trade and Industry to provide back-up services to bureaux, and the local bureaux are funded primarily by local government. The service has gained a high reputation for itself and has received high praise from many quarters. Indeed, when it was under attack last year it was encouraging that so many Members of both Houses who had experience of the CABs came to its support.
The independent inquiry set up by the Secretary of State last year under the distinguished civil servant, Sir Douglas Lovelock, described the service as,
"an invaluable national asset".
A month later the Government accepted the inquiry's recommendations that the CABs should have £1 million more to improve back-up services and to help encourage local authorities to offer long-term support.
The noble Lord, Lord Bellwin, is not in his place now but he made the point in our rates debate, more than adequately, that this organisation represented the best type of voluntary organisation where, for the involvement of a number of paid staff, the money put into it stimulated the work of a vast number of voluntary people. The GLC takes a London-wide view, but there are rich and there are poor boroughs in London—and the poor boroughs will suffer if there is no London-wide organisation to provide them with effective support in areas which desperately need it; areas of dereliction and poverty. That is why we need a London-wide authority.
4.45 p.m.
Lord Elton: It may be helpful if I interject at this stage to make a point I intended to mention when winding up this debate. The effects of the Clause 47 scheme will be, in conjunction with the London rate equalisation schemes, such that the burden of supporting these schemes will be distributed in roughly the same proportion as it is now. Your Lordships' Committee can dismiss from its mind any anxiety about the penalising of the poorer boroughs.
While I am on my feet, perhaps I may ask the noble Lord, Lord Irving, whether, in speaking to Amendment No. 136, he is preferring this amendment to his own, or whether he intends to speak also to his amendment later in the event that Amendment No. 135ZB falls.
Lord Irving of Dartford: I will not speak again; I do not intend to impose myself on the Committee twice in one evening on the same subject.
It is true that there is an equalisation scheme but it is also true that the amount of money available in poorer boroughs will be wholly inadequate to deal with many of the problems which they will have to face and which exist historically. When the time comes, I feel sure that there will still be problems. I will speak later about the difficulties which exist already.
Total funding by local authorities in England and Wales in 1982–83 was £9.2 million. With help given in kind, overall funding reached a little more than £10 million. The total number of inquiries continues to rise at a slightly slower rate than in 1982–83. Nevertheless, this year there has been an increase of 8.9 per cent. over the last year for which we have figures. This represented an additional 500,000 inquiries. Given the stringent financial conditions under which many bureaux have been operating, their increase in workload is significant. In many places, clients have to wait up to two hours for an interview and advisers are under an increasing strain.
I turn now to the crux of the problem. The funding of individual bureaux is already patchy and inconsistent. The association is keen to encourage local authorities to recognise that increases in bureau workload require additional resources, if the demand for local services is to be met. In some parts of the country increases in funding have not kept pace with inflation, let alone with the increased demand for the service from the general public. Last year the number of inquiries totalled 6 million.
The Lovelock Report stated:
"We are in no doubt that the level of funding to bureaux needs to be raised",
but added that:
"in the present economic climate local authorities have limited funds at their disposal".
Some authorities, such as the London Borough of Hillingdon, have for this reason already confirmed that they are withdrawing 65 per cent. of their grant aid to the CAB service. It is expected that this will cause the closure of two bureaux and our legal support service. All this is without the problems to be imposed on the service by the abolition of the GLC and the metropolitan authorities. It is in the light of difficulties already existing that we now see the end of support

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from the GLC and the metropolitan authorities. It is unrealistic to believe that authorities facing acute difficulties in funding their bureaux at present will be able to take on much additional funding, even with the money that they will receive from the precept that will no longer go to the GLC.
With less than 10 months to go, we have no guarantee that the funding now provided by the present authorities will continue. I am sure that the Government do not want to damage this service, which is unique in the world and which last year attracted visitors from 10 or more countries to see it in operation. It is the case that the Government have, over the past year or two, generously increased their support for hard-up services, but if they want to prevent damage they must act to ensure that there is no interruption in the transitional period and, above all, no reduction in the total amount of money available.
In terms of the fund, the proposal is obviously a recognition by Government of the tremendous financial problems facing voluntary organisations such as the CAB service when the GLC and the metropolitan counties are abolished. Such recognition is greatly welcomed. However, the CAB service relies on the GLC fund for about £500,000 a year, and this will need to be underwritten by the Government long before April 1986—a mere 10 months to go—if there is not to be an interruption of services. I think that many organisations will still have great anxieties even after what has been said today by the noble. Lord. They will have grave anxieties about the future, particularly during the transition period. Therefore, I beg to support these amendments.
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: The noble Lord, Lord Ennals, called in aid, very justifiably if he will allow me to say so, his own very distinguished record in connection with the voluntary bodies. I hope I may pay him the flattery of imitation and say that I can claim, however modestly, that during the six-and-a-half years I filled the office of Minister of Pensions and National Insurance I did my utmost, within that department and outside, to encourage and assist the development of voluntary bodies. So there is really no quarrel between us on this.
Nor indeed is there any quarrel with the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London, who is no longer in his place. As the right reverend Prelate said, the difference that we have is not about ends but about the means. Despite the absence of the right reverend Prelate, who made a powerful speech which was highly critical of the Government, I should like to come back to him on at least one of the points that he made. He took my noble friend Lord Elton to task by saying that my noble friend has missed the point and that the real point was that the Bill did not give security to the voluntary bodies. What security do they have now? What is there to prevent the GLC, if it went on, from cutting right back on some or all of them? They have, it would seem to me and I suggest to your Lordships, much less security now, when they are completely dependent for this large part of their support on the decisions of one large body, than they will have when, under the Bill, they pass into the care of the boroughs.
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I do not know whether the right reverend Prelate realises that this large expenditure by the GLC—£50 million in the current year—is a very new development. As recently as 1981 the figure was between £8 million and £9 million. A figure that has grown in that spectacular way can, as your Lordships know well, wither away equally spectacularly. I thought that the right reverend Prelate—unusually for him and, if I may say so in his absence, particularly for a Balliol man—was very unsound indeed. He then went on to say—
Lord Melchett: Is the noble Lord implying that this growth is a bad thing which should not have happened? That is what he seemed to be saying.
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: I was not saying that it should not have happened. I was merely pointing out that a growth of that speed, first, has an element of uncertainty about it and, secondly, that it is interesting—and I am indebted to the noble Lord for his intervention—to consider what happened to the voluntary bodies up to 1981 when the support that they received from the GLC was very modest indeed.
I am very glad that the right reverend Prelate has returned to his place because I want to take up a further point with him. He told us about the experience he had in his great diocese of the demolition of a church and the disposal of the funds. He had to resist, as I am sure he did very properly, any suggestion that those funds should be used solely in the near proximity to the demolished church. But again, what security is there that the GLC will use its funds to support voluntary effort in any generalised way? Is it not at least possible that it may wish to use them particularly in areas where it has a great deal of support; perhaps even in the areas represented on the council by its leading members of the majority? With great respect to the right reverend Prelate, it seemed that on both these points he was being somewhat unfair to my noble friend the Minister.
I have only two other points to make. First, this amendment proposes to set up an authority. I think it is a mistake, particularly in this sphere, to call any such body an authority. If one calls a body an authority it is apt to develop authoritarian tendencies. It is apt to think that it is the boss. For a body of this sort, if it is to be set up at all, it is a mistake—perhaps a revealing mistake—that those who drafted the amendment inserted the word "authority". Perhaps it suggests a line of thought on their part because the alternative, and the alternative posed by the Bill, is that we should trust the boroughs, the elected representatives of the people throughout London.
In that context, I received recently a letter from Mr. Bowness who, as your Lordships probably know, is chairman of the London Boroughs Association. I should like to read an extract from this letter which seems highly relevant to the amendment. Mr. Bowness writes:
"I ask you to remember that the boroughs have been supporting voluntary organisations consistently for many years, both through the joint scheme and individually. In 1984/85 we gave some £30 million, in addition to substantial help under the Urban Programme. GLC funding"—

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and here he comes back to the point I made—
"has on the other hand been a short term phenomenon, growing from only £8 million in 1981 to its present £50 million which could as readily vanish again. We are answerable to local people for what we do, and I can assure you that no local council would lightly ignore the needs of voluntary groups in its area. We know what they can do, and how effectively they can do it. Equally important, so do the electors to whom we answer".
Therefore on this amendment I say one simple thing to noble Lords opposite; simple because it is an expression they so often use themselves in arguments on other matters: why not trust the locally-elected representatives of the people to do what is right?
The Lord Bishop of London: I apologise for having to be out of the Chamber for a few moments. First, perhaps I may say to the noble Lord, Lord Boyd-Carpenter, that in my reply I may have been insufficiently grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Elton, for his additional financial help. I thought that in what I was saying I was trying to help to bring about precisely what he said he intended should come about: namely, encouraging the boroughs to work together and giving them a framework in which to do so.
The noble Lord, Lord Boyd-Carpenter, quoted from a letter which I too have. It seems to me very significant that the chairman said:
"I can assure you that no local council would lightly ignore the needs of voluntary groups in its area".
That is the crux of the matter. The chairman should have said:
"I can assure you that no local council would lightly ignore the needs of voluntary groups in its area and would be very sensitive to greater needs in other parts of London".
If he had said that, it would have meant a great deal more to me.
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: If the right reverend Prelate had studied the letter from Mr. Bowness, if it be identical to mine, with the care which the responsibilities of his great diocese might make difficult for him, he would have noted that earlier on in the letter Mr. Bowness refers to the fact that,
"the boroughs have been supporting voluntary organisations consistently for many years, both through the joint scheme and individually".
I ask the right reverend Prelate to note the words "both through the joint scheme".
The Lord Bishop of London: I wish the chairman had repeated it later on.
5 p.m.
Lord Soper: I rise to support this amendment because I believe that this Bill, unamended, will do great damage both to the financial situation and indeed to the more, shall we say, spiritual characteristics of the voluntary services. I have not been in any way reinforced in any opposition to that view by what has been said this afternoon.
I believe that there is a requirement—and I speak with some passion on this—to understand what is the nature and what are the particular virtues that belong to voluntary associations. I shall spend a moment or two in describing them. In many respects voluntary services are the bell-wethers of enlightened civic administration. The first créches in London were
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organised by the Methodist Church in 1885. The crÉches have now become the broad highway of intelligent and responsible administration with regard to children in care or lacking care. That kind of opportunity should be cherished and there is as ample a need for such adventurous participation in this kind of voluntary activity as ever there was before.
There is a second virtue which must be introduced if we are to find a comprehensive attitude to this very complex question. I can put it in the form of an anecdote. It is a very simple one. I myself have been engaged in voluntary services and have been responsible for some over the past 60 years in London. I remember almost the last thing that happened in the old LCC, of which I was a member. There was a project for something to be done for the poor relations of the alcoholics, the spirit drinkers. A long discussion followed and finally it was agreed that if the West London Mission would provide that particular service the LCC would fund it.
The reason for such a decision was not that they believed that those who would be responsible would be careless of the moral and other spiritual responsibilities attached to such a totally disagreeable form of service, but that they believed that there was a peculiar kind of devotion and commitment which could be expected from those in the voluntary area. I believe that that is true and I shall be very sorry to see either of those virtues within the voluntary services pass away. I am sure that they will not, but I see the imperilled position that now faces the voluntary services in particular on the basis of the responsibility that will be theirs in the local boroughs.
It seems to me that the demands on local boroughs in many respects will be in inverse proportion to their capacity to pay for them. Is it not obvious that there is an alcoholic problem in, shall we say, Lambeth, which is not so obvious and much more concealed in, shall we say, Richmond? Is it not obvious that, whatever might be the intentions and the commitments of the Lambeth people to deal with this problem, they will be expected to pay far more and to take much greater responsibility than their restricted resources can command or can deploy?
There is another equally relevant question. I share with the episcopal Bench a realism about the way in which one can trust the local authorities. I very much doubt it, I am afraid. I am not committing myself to a condition of total depravity but there is a situation of original sin in which personal behaviour patterns are very largely geared to the immediate issues with which people confront themselves or are confronted. I have no evidence to support the view over the past 50 years that when you are dealing with local authorities they are likely to take very much more account of things outside their own areas than of things that belong to their own immediate areas of responsibility. It is in this kind of circumstance that I look for an authority—I do not mind the word—which in its essence will do three things.
In the first place, it will provide an overall commitment to which there will be a more likely response than if you depend on the individual responses of local boroughs themselves. Secondly—and here I introduce a note which has not hitherto been struck—not every voluntary commitment is

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worth supporting. I confess that, having some knowledge of the Church, there have been a number of voluntary associations and voluntary services which I believe have been, if not perverse, then thoroughly impractical and thoroughly stupid. I believe that an authority should discriminate between that kind of service which is required and is obviously desirable and that which is promoted by undue sentimentality. Perhaps I may give an example of that. Over the years I have had something to do with alcoholism and with the provision of some answer to it. How necessary it was for us to try to provide that the alcoholic treatment was based on knowledge and expertise and not merely on the sentimental desire to reclaim the drunkard or the alcoholic.
I am very grateful that, in funding the alcoholic set-up for which I was responsible, the Greater London Council insisted on certain quite obvious technical and administrative conditions without which they were not prepared to fund what we were trying to do. As a result—I shall not detain the Committee—we now have a three-tier system which is funded particularly in the realm of detoxification, which is an expensive thing; which can provide something of the process of rehabilitation of the alcoholic; and which, finally, can set up something in the nature of protected housing. These are illustrations of the way in which an overall authority, by whatever name you call it, will indeed be responsible for the distinction between those things which ought to be funded and those which are not, and can provide a sense of obvious and much required expertise in that function.
I finish by saying this. I hear on many sides and in many open places that the present Government are committed to the dismantling of the welfare state. I do not make such an accusation, or not now, but I am quite sure that there is widespread fear that that is what in fact is happening. If there is one thing that could allay that fear it would be if the Government of the day were prepared to see that the impoverishment of the voluntary services is one step along that road, at any rate in the opinion of a great many of our contemporaries and ultimately of the rate-payers.
In that regard, I hope very much that this Government will see to it that, whatever may be the virtues in the two-tier administration—I share an appreciation of those virtues—they are dead wrong on this particular issue and should take the advice of those who really know a great deal about social services and particularly voluntary services, not as though we are immaculate in what we say or infallible in what we propose, but because one cannot ignore the overall commitment of the Methodist Church, the Anglican Church and other Churches, that this particular amendment is required if the virtues of this Bill are to be preserved.
Lord Shinwell: May I say—
Noble Lords: Lord Bancroft!
Lord Shinwell: I am a Back-Bencher but Back-Benchers should have an opportunity to speak. I will not be long, I assure you. I want to declare an interest. I am president of the Easington Council for Voluntary
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Service. I initiated it ever so long ago; 30, 40 or 50 years ago. They elect me president every year although I have offered to resign to allow somebody to undertake the tasks involved.
When I listened to the noble Lord, Lord Boyd-Carpenter, expressing his views about it, I agreed with much that he said but with something I was bound to disagree. It was the statement he made that we must leave matters of this sort to the elected representatives to do what is right. That is exactly what he said. But they are not always allowed to do what is right. They are subject to the parties, the political parties, which help to elect them at election times. They are subject to what the Government of the day decide that they should do. They are subject to the financial provision made to them from time to time. At certain times that can be withdrawn. Sometimes it is reduced, as we know, by reduction in grants and so on.
Thus it is going a bit too far (I will put it no higher than that) to say that these matters must be left to elected representatives. The fact of the matter is that one cannot afford to leave everything to elected representatives any more than one can afford to leave everything to one government. As we see just at the moment, there is almost chaos in Government circles because of misunderstandings about this or that, However, I do not want to pursue that line this afternoon. I have no time for it; nor have I the inclination.
What occurs to me is this. We are talking about the need for freedom, to be permitted to express ourselves. I am all in favour of that. I think that in a civilised society it is essentially wrong to interfere with one freedom; that is, the freedom of those who are elected or who are engaged in voluntary service, whoever they may be. It is a mistaken line of policy. There must be an element of freedom. As one knows, one cannot always have that freedom in an elected body. There is a great deal of criticism of elected bodies, for example, local authorities. There was a great deal of criticism of the GLC. Long before the GLC, in the days of Herbert Morrison, the London County Council was the subject of almost daily criticism.
In the long run there must be something alongside elected bodies. There must be voluntary services: a number of people who club together and say, "We do not think that is right; we must say something about it, we should express an opinion about it". One may offer those organisations some funds to enable them to carry on, or one may deprive them of funds which they have been given in the past. One does that kind of thing. There is nothing wrong with that.
I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Soper, and with the right reverend Prelate. There must be something. It does not matter what kind of organisation is set up. It can have all the authority in the world (and we do not have that in this country) but alongside that there will need to be some bodies, people who can get together from time to time. For example, there may be a body of women who have similar conceptions about society and who want to express their opinions. I should allow that, as long as they do not ask for too much money and as long as they satisfy the noble Lord, Lord Elton. May I say how much I admire the noble Lord's capacity for debate, even if I have not agreed with a single word he has said? That does not matter.

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No; you cannot allow even voluntary bodies to have all their own way and to be presented with funds to do what they like with. That cannot be allowed to happen. Alongside these voluntary bodies, who have funds at their disposal, are set other voluntary bodies who say, "You cannot spend this and you cannot spend that". One wants an element of freedom. Therefore I suggest that whether noble Lords vote for the amendment or vote against it, we should vote so that there will still be some voluntary bodies continuing. They may not have a great deal of authority but they are the kind of concept which the country cannot afford to ignore or destroy.
Lord Bancroft: It is a disconcerting experience to follow the noble Lord, Lord Boyd-Carpenter, the noble Lord, Lord Soper, and the noble Lord, Lord Shinwell. They are all brilliant debaters, and I most certainly am not. In the case of the noble Lord, Lord Boyd-Carpenter, there are two further reasons for its being disconcerting. The first is that I have to confide to the Committee that he has been an object of strictly non-political veneration to me for 35 years. The second is that he and I and the right reverend Prelate were all at the same college. He also speaks with authority on the subject of authority, given his past experiences.
Since I retired, I have never made any secret of the fact that I have little time for the GLC or the metropolitan county councils. Of course they have good things and some excellent staff to their credit. However, they have often failed to deliver the services which we expect from local government effectively, efficiently and economically. All too often some of them have become continuous political corroborees. Yet, in abolishing them, I ask noble Lords to consider whether, in one or two areas, it is right to put in their place something which is ineffective, inefficient and uneconomical. That is the gravamen of my criticism against Clause 47, even with the imaginative, interesting and very last-minute additions made to it so ably by the noble Lord the Minister.
5.15 p.m.
I do not think that those noble Lords who like myself support the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Hayter, can properly be described as a platoon of bleeding hearts; not do I think that those who oppose it can be described as a section of Scrooges. I hope that the right reverend Prelate and others will forgive the reference to military formations. Those who support the clause are interested in devising an arrangement which is in keeping with the spirit of the Bill but which actually delivers the help that is so sorely needed.
I think especially of disabled people. Organisations dealing with disability regard this clause with dismay or despair. I hasten to add that this in no way derogates from the good work which the boroughs and the districts have done and will continue to do, mainly within their own borders; because we are here dealing with London-wide and county-wide tasks.
During the debate, we have been reminded that the existing borough and district precepts will be available for supporting county-wide voluntary organisations. I concede at once that some will be available. However,
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it would take a robust, even a Panglossian view of human nature to imagine that, left entirely to themselves, the boroughs and districts would feel themselves able to spare more than a fraction of the amounts of their present precepts (in some cases already small) for county-wide voluntary organisations.
I repeat that I heard with enormous interest what the noble Lord the Minister had to say during the course of his remarks. Most of it was extremely helpful. All of it was imaginative. Yet I am bound to confess that at the end of the day, in organisational terms, I feel one is left with a body or series of bodies which are patched, which clank, whirr and wheeze into action. I do not think that that is sensible.
There was a word about the United States experience. Taking up a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Barnett, and, indeed, commented on by the noble Lord the Minister, perhaps I may say something about the United States. I think it is the case that, despite much greater fiscal concessions to private and to corporate giving in the United States of America, despite Community Chest there and all the rest of it, the American voluntary sector depends primarily on government funds. A quotation from—as I think the noble Lord the Minister would agree—one of the greatest experts on the American voluntary sector, Lester M. Salamon of the Urban Institute, Washington; confirms what I say. He said:
"Private charity is no longer the principal source of support for the charitable sectors [in the US]: government is."
Now, I should like to comment, if I may, on the reference—
Lord Elton: The noble Lord paused as though he had disposed of something that I had said. I never claimed that the United States Government did not provide a very large amount of money to charities. What I said was that American private corporations provide a vastly greater proportion of their pre-tax profits than do ours. I shall come back to the arithmetic of that later, but that is what I said. I never made the position that I thought I heard the noble Lord, with satisfaction, demolishing.
Lord Bancroft: I assure the Minister that I would not dream of thinking that I had disposed of that point. I was adding a gloss to it.
I now come to the proposed voluntary trust for London. This, in my view, is to be welcomed unequivocally. But the fund's contribution to the solving of the totality of the London-wide problems facing the voluntary sector over a long period of time, let alone the problems of the metropolitan counties, will be, in the former case, I fear, pretty minor, despite what has been said, and so far, in the latter case, nil. It is, I repeat, a welcome experiment, but in the context of this Bill it is a piece of interesting marginalia with, I am bound to say, a whiff of makeshift diversion about it.
I pass without comment over the fact that we first read of the proposed voluntary trust in The Sunday Times yesterday and again in The Times today. This simply confirms me in my attachment to the television proverb that in this country the ship of state is one of the few craft that leaks from the top.

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I have great sympathy with the amendment of the noble Earl, Lord Perth. What divides us, I think, is that the noble Earl believes that the system in Clause 47 is fundamentally workable. I believe that it is basically defective. To set up a council to supervise a defective system will not improve its defectiveness. It might produce an efficient defectiveness, but that is not, I think, what we are after.
The Earl of Perth: Perhaps I may make one comment, since the noble Lord has mentioned my amendment. It is simply this. Both the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London and the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, have, I am afraid, misrepresented my proposal. They said that they were not interested in it because it added yet another body to the set-up that we are talking about. My answer is that this is not the case. I am proposing that there should be a body totally outside politics that would be replacing both the GLC and the MCCs. If the amendment on which the name of the noble Lord, Lord Hayter, appears first, is passed, my amendment would also replace the voluntary service authority. My proposal is not to establish another body. It is a substitute. I am glad that the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, has sympathy for me. If he has sympathy for me but votes for the noble Lord, Lord Hayter, my amendment disappears.
Lord Bancroft: I am grateful to the noble Earl for what he has said. His remarks enable me to conclude my remarks on a note of total agreement in the sense that I regard the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Hayter, as totally non-political. I shall vote for it because I have put my name to it. I believe that it has wide support both here and elsewhere.
Baroness Faithfull: During the debate in the other place my noble friend Lord Elton's ministerial colleague Sir George Young said that the voluntary organisations needed stability, security and permanence. Those were, I think, his words. First, however, I wish to pay tribute to my noble friend Lord Elton for upping the £10 million to £20 million. In this day and age he is to be congratulated on that. Secondly, perhaps I may also congratulate him on his idea of the trust.
I have only two points to make. Will the boroughs do their duty, or will they not, under the framework mentioned by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London? I have every confidence in the desires and wishes of the boroughs. However, I do not have every confidence that they always have the money, or that they will have the money. Times have changed. There was a period when the boroughs could afford to give money. Now, quite rightly, not all of them feel that they can afford to do so. It is argued that local people will lay down what they want their councillors to do. I am sure that local people will not want their local councillors to spend money on London-wide projects, such as those to which the noble Lord, Lord Soper, referred, when the boroughs are short of money themselves. It is not a question of whether or not the local councillors support the voluntary organisations. You cut your coat according to your cloth. That is, I am afraid, the reality of the situation.
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Some people say that the boroughs will not take this course. But they are doing so now. I do not blame them. If they have not the money, they cannot pay. I would cite one example in my capacity as president of what was called the Adoption Resource Exchange engaged in finding adoptive homes for handicapped children. Voluntary organisations found the homes, vetted them and prepared them and then offered them to local authorities for £3,000. To keep a child in care costs £3,000 a year. If the child is adopted, the local authority does not have to pay the £3,000. This can be multiplied over the years until the child is 16 or perhaps 18. A great deal of money is therefore saved by the local authorities.
One authority has rung today to say that in future it will not be indulging in the scheme; it will do the work itself. That is not cost-effective. Coming down to hard cash, what worries me is that the boroughs will not be able to afford to help voluntary organisations. That, in turn, will not be cost effective. At the end of the day they will have to pay out much more money.
My second point concerns the trust which my noble friend Lord Elton spoke about. I fully support the trust. I go further and say that I should have liked to see a national trust set up. I should have liked to see local voluntary organisations given stability, security and permanence by a national trust. It is my hope that in that way finance to voluntary organisations would not depend on the ebb and flow, and swing, of political opinion in the country, either locally or nationally.
The question will be asked, "What about the financing of such a trust?" I would only say that in Australia, in order to fund voluntary organisations, the Australian Government allow tax concessions for voluntary contributions. Secondly, they allow direct funding on a matching basis. Lastly, though I am not quite sure I understand what it means, there is joint Commonwealth and state funding.
I support the two amendments, that of the noble Lord, Lord Hayter, and that of the noble Lord, Lord Kilmarnock, to which my name is attached. I support them simply as stepping stones over the next few years to enable us to think out a much better way of permanently helping the voluntary organisations.
5.30 p.m.
Lord Mottistone: Before my noble friend sits down, I should like to raise one matter. In the first part of her speech she made a great point about the fact that if it were left to the boroughs, they would not have the money. I cannot see how the body suggested under Amendment No. 135ZB will have any more money. There does not seem to be any arrangements about it. Surely, it will have to be funded through the boroughs? Therefore, the totality of the money will be exactly the same.
Lord Elton: My noble friend has raised the point that I was about to raise. We have been discussing all this time how the money is to be spent. I can see nothing in the amendment which says from where the money is to come. I presume that it is to come from the rates. I presume therefore that there is some system of charging or that there is to be a precept. Noble Lords opposite nod their heads sagely and eagerly; but

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I cannot see it written anywhere in the amendment. We need to know about that, and I need to know about that before I answer the debate.
The Lord Bishop of London: Perhaps I may try and answer the noble Lord. My understanding was that it was to come through a precept on the boroughs made by the boroughs themselves. That is why I was able to say that this is not another tier with its own funding, not another body. There is the money which comes from the rates and the body exists to enable that rate money to be shared in a way which fulfils what is being asked for in Clause 47.
Lord Elton: Is the right reverend Prelate able to tell me who sets the level of the precept? I thought that it would be the body referred to here. However, if it is not a precepting body but only a distributing body then we must know who will set the level of the precept. Is that going to be the Clause 47 system? Shall we have the two going in tandem, or what?
The Lord Bishop of London: As I understand it, it would fulfil the functions which are at present provided for in Clause 47. The boroughs would set their own rate. They would have obligations as regards voluntary grants and they would agree among themselves under this framework as to how the money should be distributed. That is the situation as I understood it. However, there may be other noble Lords better equipped to answer the point.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes: Under those circumstances, if it is to be a precepting authority, then it will set a precept on the poorest of the poor in the same way as it will on everyone else. Will there then be an exemption or some way in which to help those people? It seems to me that if we are to set up yet another precepting authority we shall run into all the same problems as we have at present.
Lord Ennals: I should like to answer the point raised by the noble Lord the Minister. If he looks at subsection (5) of the amendment, he will see that it says:
"Each authority shall be a joint authority within the meaning of Part IV of this Act".
It is in that subsection that the precepting power is granted.
Lord Elton: I am much obliged.
The Lord Bishop of Norwich: One hundred-and-fifty-eight minutes ago the noble Lord, Lord Hayter, made a very useful speech when he spoke of charity and compassion. The fact that the Committee is so full tonight is another way of saying that we are a House and a Chamber which believes passionately in both compassion and charity, and therefore in the principle of the voluntary organisations. In that regard I take comfort from the very clear statement by the noble Lord the Minister when he says that the Government wholly support the principle of voluntary organisations. I hope that that rings out from this debate.
I also have the greatest respect for the noble Lord, Lord Ennals. He and I share the same title of
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"Norwich", in English, or "Norvic", which is Latin. I have seen his work in our fine city of Norwich. He is second to none in the way in which he has cared for voluntary concerns. Indeed, I also believe that that is something upon which the whole Committee is agreed.
I shall not enter into the private argument between the Balliol men. They can get on with it on their own. As a simple Cambridge man I would not understand about Balliol. It is a different university from my own and I wish them the best of British luck. Personally, I am preaching in Great Snoring in Norfolk next week and that, as far as I know, will keep my feet firmly on the ground—not, I hope, an Oxford living.
Here we are, after 161 minutes, looking still at this very important and, I believe, major amendment. In the light of the four major assurances which the noble Lord the Minister has given openly and publicly on behalf of the Government, and in the light of the fact that we must assuage the fears of which the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, has spoken as regards the voluntary organisations, the message must go out clearly from this Chamber that whatever our view on the amendment, we are concerned about those who need help. I believe that the voluntary organisations will receive from every corner of this Committee support, care and concern. I believe that to be a united feeling.
As regards the amendment, I came to the Committee with a very sad heart. Although, due to sheer pressure of work in the diocese, I have been unable to be present as many times as I should have liked, I have watched a steady change of pattern—though I should like to be thought wrong—in the way in which we are dealing with a Government Bill. Essentially, we are a revising Chamber, and that is something which I recognise and which I believe we all recognise. I see in not only this amendment but in the amendments preceding and following it a steady determination so to dismantle this Bill that we are not tonight speaking only about this amendment. I believe that we are speaking about a change of course in the way in which we conduct our business. I share my anxiety. I am happy to be thought wholly wrong, but I believe that there are many people who think that I am right. However, we shall leave that matter for the moment.
I return to the amendment. In the light of the fact that the Government, through the Minister, have given four direct assurances concerning matters of major importance to all of us concerned with the voluntary organisations—and I am second to none in my concern, support and care for them—I believe it would be right for those who moved this amendment now to withdraw it. If not, I feel that we will be moving towards an approach to the Bill which is beyond a revisionary approach. I shall leave the matter there.
Viscount Buckmaster: I have put my name to one of the amendments, and I assure your Lordships that I shall be brief. I must confess that I have been tempted to nail my colours to the masts of both the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Hayter, and the amendment of the noble Earl, Lord Perth, in the hope that one of those two vessels will reach port. After considerable thought I feel that Lord Hayter's vessel is perhaps

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better equipped than the other, lighter vessel in the name of the noble Earl, Lord Perth.
I wish to speak about only one area of this problem which is of vital importance. It concerns the ethnic minorities, the refugees and the migrants. I know that the noble Baroness, Lady Birk, has tabled Amendment No. 136D, which is almost identical to the amendment which I did not move. Therefore, I do not in any way want to pre-empt the noble Baroness. However, I suggest to the Committee that these two amendments can quite easily stand side by side. I did not move my Amendment No. 85 because, taking the advice of a great many noble Lords and a great many bodies who know so much about this matter, it was considered at the time that the problems of the ethnic minorities would best be considered under Clause 47. Nevertheless, I wish the noble Baroness, Lady Birk, all possible success with her amendment and I shall, of course, support it.
My reason for rising at this late hour is to tell your Lordships' Committee that in its report on its response to Streamlining the Cities the National Council for Voluntary Organisations said that abolition will affect the ethnic minorities more than any other group in London. What strong words they are! That is the linchpin of my speech, but that is not the end of the story because that view has been shared and expressed by the Commission for Racial Equality, by the British Refugee Council, by the London Voluntary Social Council, by the Runnymede Trust and by several other bodies. Let me examine briefly why the ethnic minorities will suffer. They will suffer because, as I see it (and I may well be wrong) there will be no central body to combat multiple deprivation, racial discrimination in housing and employment, and to meet their many social and other needs.
The Commission for Racial Equality in its report for 1983 said that no less than 50 per cent. of employers still discriminate against ethnic minorities; and a Policy Studies Institute report for 1984 reached the conclusion that black unemployment was twice that of white. There is a very important aspect of this problem. Perhaps I can draw the Committee's attention to the Race Relations Act 1976, Section 71 of which obliges local authorities to draw up policies to combat racism. The point here, when related to London—I fear I cannot speak about the metropolitan counties—is that of the London boroughs less than half have drawn up a programme at all. That is why I cannot in any way accept the Government solution which is that the functions of the GLC and the metropolitan counties in these spheres should be devolved to the London boroughs and district councils. How can one do that when we have this situation with half the boroughs doing nothing about implementing the legislation?
The situation is even more serious. No less than one-third of the boroughs are totally disinterested in the problems of the minorities; 14 of the boroughs have no specialist staff and have not applied themselves in any way to the problem. So I feel very strongly that what we need is some kind of overall authority such as has been proposed. This idea has been supported by many noble Lords who have spoken. We need an overall authority with an advisory
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role, a co-ordinating role and a watchdog role. Your Lordships have accepted the principle of overall bodies for highways and waste disposal. We are not now dealing with highways or waste disposal; we are dealing with the real, live human problems: and human problems surely demand humane solutions.
Baroness Carnegy of Lour: There is one very important point which has not been made in this long debate. I feel it needs making, and clearly. I speak as one who has spent the whole of her adult life working within voluntary organisations, who was involved for eight years as the chairman of a main committee of a strategic local government council, that committee being responsible for much strategic grant-aiding; and I speak as someone who has discovered that the way to get continuity and stability of funding, and the understanding of councillors of all political parties for voluntary organisations, is by depoliticising the exercise. How does one do that when the exercise is about money raised by local government councillors on behalf of the people they represent, and they have different political views and so do their electors? How does one do that?
In the council where I served we had an all party sub-committee which looked, with an official, at all grants and at the merits of all the different applications. We decided and we recommended to the committee, and as a result there was virtually never a vote. I am bound to say that the amendment is proposing a method which I do not believe could produce a structure that could be apolitical when it looks at these grants. I have listened very carefully and very seriously to what the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London had to say about the need for structures. This structure will mean that when councils are deciding whatever it is that they have to decide—my noble Friend the Minister asked who was to raise the money, and how; and that has not yet been revealed—if they are deciding in some way the level and allocation of funding they will do so simply as people who have come from the councils which they represent. If we are talking of London as at present constituted, it is fairly evenly balanced. The decision will depend on who is there. If there is a change after an election there may be a slight swing or there may be a big swing. It will be enormously political; and quite frankly that is not what the voluntary organisations want. They have been kind enough to tell me their views.
5.45 p.m.
I went to one meeting of voluntary organisations which was chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, and he was kind enough to allow me to ask the voluntary organisations whether they agreed with me about certain things. I believe he will agree that on the whole they did. As far as I can make out, the noble Lord the Minister has now largely met exactly what they were saying—the problem about increasing the bridging money while the new authorities decide how they want to allocate their resources. They also agreed that it is up to elected people to decide on behalf of London that which is funded on behalf of the people of London through local government; and that we cannot tell what they will do and we should not want to tell what they will do. They agreed that. They are

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fearful. They have had many assurances. I believe the last thing they actually want, although because they have not all been on local councils they do not envisage what will happen, is a highly politicised body such as this body is bound to end up being.
I know that the proposal of the noble Earl, Lord Perth, is an attempt to rectify that. We come to that point when we take that amendment, but certainly I feel that what is wanted is in no way what is proposed in this amendment and that the recommendations in the Bill, although they were by no means perfect when they started, have got a good deal better this evening. We may yet get them a tiny bit better still, but certainly this amendment should be rejected.
Lord Ennals: Before the noble Baroness sits down, she referred to a meeting at which I had presided, which was not of course a meeting called by me but a meeting of the National Council of Voluntary Organisations. I think that if the noble Baroness were to consult the national council she would find that they are by no means satisfied with the assurances that have been given and that they are deeply worried—as worried as they were before.
Baroness Carnegy of Lour: I accept what the noble Lord has said. I believe I said myself just now that I do not think the voluntary organisations quite envisage the kind of politicisation that will take place if this amendment should be accepted.
Lord Ingrow: Perhaps I could draw your Lordships' attention to that part of the country north of Potters Bar. We seem to have dwelt in London for a rather long time today. At the start of the afternoon, if I heard the noble Lord, Lord Hayter, aright, he said that the district councils were political. This may be true. It had not actually occurred to me that the county councils were not political. There does not seem to be very much in it between them, but I suppose it is a good stick with which to beat the districts. In the last few weeks I have listened to a series of attacks from all sides of the House on metropolitan district councillors. They were used as a peg to try to achieve some particular kind of amendment to the Bill. If the councils have not been rogues or fools then they have lacked moral principle entirely or have been far too inexperienced to deal with large authorities such as these.
That last argument has gone overboard on this particular issue. There is no great problem of administration involved except that subsection (6) of the amendment would seem to need an organisation about the size of the Greater London Council to carry out that work every year. There is no excuse for that particular proposal today.
This criticism, with great respect, seems to have come in the main, if not in the great majority, from noble Lords whose practical experience of metropolitan districts, or even county boroughs or non-county boroughs, seems pretty tenuous. The criticisms have come just the same, but not from practical experience. These are the councils which after next April we shall have to be dealing with, and perhaps we should not say too much about them.
The interesting point which came out, that the metropolitan districts raise more money and generally
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give more money to charity than the county councils, is as one would have expected. If you are in a district and trying to raise money for a charity it is Lord Mayors and Mayors who issue appeals. If the chairman of a county council issued an appeal he would not get the postage back. It is the Lord Mayors and Mayors who count in the cities and towns in this matter. They are the ones raising the money.
If we are talking about voluntary organisations, to some of us voluntary organisations conjure up things like the lifeboat fund, or the NSPCC, organisations supported by people up and down the country who believe in this cause and work for it, and not enormous bodies which have to be funded by central Government in order to exist. It has seemed, listening to the arguments today, as though there is a terrible risk in the minds of some people that these awful people might not do what we think they should do. This is a paternalistic attitude. It ought not to prevail.
We have elected councillors. If they are not doing their job and what the people want, they will be thrown out at the next election. That seems the right and proper way. We ought not to say that we know best—that was discredited about 40 years ago—and that it must be done this way, and that we cannot trust these other people. It may be expedient and an easy touch for the charities, but it is not democratic.
Lord Pitt of Hampstead: Perhaps I may delay the Committee for a minute to follow what the noble Viscount, Lord Buckmster, had to say. It is true that in fact the ethnic minorities are most worried about the abolition of the GLC. I must apologise to the noble Lord who has just sat down in that I have to come back to discussing London and not stick to the subject of the metropolitan counties. However, I know London best.
The noble Viscount, Lord Buckmaster, dealt with the situation in London in relation to the way in which boroughs have attempted, or not attempted, to do anything about Section 71 of the Race Relations Act. I want to deal with another aspect of the matter, and that is the question of ethnic minority organisations. In that respect the situation is even worse. Until the GLC started making grants to ethnic minority organisations very few of them received any grant at all from local authorities.
Their fear is that the removal of the GLC will mean that the situation which prevailed before 1981, when the GLC started giving grants to ethnic minority organisations, will again prevail, and that they will have difficulties in being able to do the work that they are now doing. In actual fact as a result of GLC funding there are a large number of ethnic minority organisations in London which are doing good work. There is a great deal of worry about the consequences to them of the abolition of the GLC.
I would therefore invite your Lordships to make a decision which will enable a London-wide authority to exist to make those grants, and that that London-wide authority should be able to precept on London as a whole because those two requirements are essential. I notice that the noble Baroness, Lady Gardner, is about to speak. I want to tell her that her city has a large number of blacks, but it does not make the contribution that it can afford to make. That is part of the problem.

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The areas which can afford to make real contributions are not making them, and the areas which need them and cannot manage to make contributions are the very areas where there are large numbers of blacks, and where in effect the authorities are sympathetic but are being rate capped. For example, my borough, Camden, does not have the same number of blacks as Westminster, but Camden makes a much larger contribution. In fact it has been rate capped as a consequence and been penalised.
In the various interventions I have made in this debate I have always spoken in the same direction, and that is that the precept, making it possible for the sort of distribution which takes place now, the kind of services which are being granted through the richer boroughs servicing some of the needs of the poorer boroughs, is an essential pre-requisite to any proper functioning of local voluntary organisations in London.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes: May I—
Lord Elton: I rise merely to provide an opportunity for the noble Baroness, Lady Darcy (de Knayth), to speak. She has been trying to do so for ages and cannot without my help.
Baroness Darcy (de Knayth): I am grateful to the Minister. I speak with far more trepidation than the noble Lord, Lord Bancroft. Anyway, he is much too modest and underestimates his debating powers. He spoke with an immense amount of expertise and authority. However, thanks to the noble Lord the Minister I shall carry on.
I should like to support Amendment No. 135ZB in particular, and 136ZBA which, as the noble Lord, Lord Kilmarnock, said many moons ago, is complementary to it. Although I am very much cheered by the undertakings made by the Minister this afternoon, I do not feel that they solve the whole problem. As the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London said, they are not really a substitute for the framework offered by 135ZB.
I shall try to be brief and stick to two points about organisations dealing with disablement which, predictably, is what I am most concerned about. Many of these organisations, those dealing with minority groups, feel that they will not command enough support in individual boroughs to obtain grants. I feel that a voluntary service authority with a duty to review annually the inhabitants' social needs and to produce a grant-making scheme would help these organisations a lot. I think under the amendment of the noble Earl, Lord Perth, they would still have to secure the agreement of two-thirds of constituent councils unless I have misunderstood it.
Now the first of my two points. I should like to refer to Dial-A-Ride, which I gather has already been mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Ennals. I must apologise that I was not in the Chamber because I was moving from one end of the Chamber to the other. I shall omit much of what I was going to say in an effort not to bore the Committee. I hope what I say still makes sense.
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I should like to talk briefly about Dial-a-Ride because they are seriously worried about funding. This service has liberated many Londoners who are too severely disabled to use either the public transport system or, indeed, even the taxi service. It is currently 95 per cent. GLC funded and, as yet, has received no assurances about funding, and it is apparently to be left to the boroughs. I feel that Lord Hayter's amendment might be helpful to prevent Dial-A-Ride foundering because of lack of funds, lack of uniformity, and lack of co-ordination.
However, Dial-A-Ride must really be planned as part of the transport system to run alongside conventional public transport. However accessible the latter becomes to severely disabled people—and it is most desirable and necessary that it should become so—there will always be a need for a combination with Dial-A-Ride because no public transport system could ever hope to provide the door-to-door service which people with a mobility problem need. Really it is only logical that Dial-A-Ride should be taken over, developed, and financed by LRT. I realise that the Government are aware of the importance of Dial-A-Ride and the taxi service to the disabled. I hope that the Minister might be able to make another welcome announcement and be able to say that LRT will take over, develop and fund Dial-A-Ride. However, I have to talk about it in this context because at the moment it is said to be a borough responsibility.
6 p.m.
My other point was very much covered by the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Hayter. I mentioned the organisations concerned with minority groups. We have heard how worried are the CABs and how some of them are threatened with closure. The citizens advice bureaux do a marvellous job and cover a wide spectrum of the community. How much more will the smaller advisory services, dealing with the small disability sectors, feel threatened and at risk? I will give a few examples. The Disablement Income Group, DIG, which runs an advisory service for disabled Londoners on a grant from the GLC, does not think that it will be able to convince the individual boroughs that it is doing enough in a particular borough to warrant even a small grant. OSCA, which is the sickle-cell anaemia organisation, would be in the same position with only one or two members in each borough, and such a small minority would not have a chance. SENSE, the national blind and deaf rubella association at present receives £53,000 from the GLC. Over the past two years it has approached every London borough and secured less than £2,000 in funding. This illustrates very well how likely it is that those organisations dealing with severe, rare or multiple handicaps would slip through the net and not receive assistance. The organisations must be able to convince the individual boroughs to secure the agreement of the two-thirds of a borough. I think that an authority which must review needs and produce a grant-making scheme would greatly help these organisations. That is why I warmly support the amendment.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes: I should like to reply to the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Pitt, about the so-called rich boroughs and what they do or do not

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do for ethnic minorities. Perhaps at the same time I should say that I support Dial-a-Ride. When the noble Lord said "your city" I presume he meant the city of Westminster. Tonight my husband finishes his term as Deputy Lord Mayor. Immediately after that he will become the vice-chairman of the social services committee and I shall be pushing him very hard on Dial-a-Ride, which is an excellent service and is greatly valued by the people of Westminster.
But we return to the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Soper, which the noble Lord, Lord Pitt, also took up, on the concept of the richer and poorer boroughs. Westminster may appear a rich borough because it collects such a high rate for every penny, but the GLC and the Inner London Education Authority have been absolutely soaking it to such an extent that it has ended up with about 15 pence for every £1·35 raised. Therefore Westminster ends up poorer than the poorer boroughs to which it hands out all the money in equalisation.
The other side of the picture is where the noble Lord, Lord Soper, is genuinely concerned, about boroughs such as Lambeth. I understand that under the Bill there will continue to be additional equalisation between the boroughs. I hope that the Government balance that finely enough to leave Westminster with a little more to spend on its social services while enabling something to go to the poorer boroughs to help them as well. There will certainly continue to be equalisation, though I do not think anyone has mentioned that today. We have all implied that once the GLC has gone, the poorer boroughs will have no other source of funding. The so-called richer boroughs pay a great amount in to help those poorer boroughs now.
Other speakers have mentioned that nine London boroughs give less than £2,000 each to voluntary organisations. I should be interested to have details of those and I wonder whether many Members of the Committee are aware that many London boroughs have had an agreement with the Greater London Council whereby they have made no attempt whatsoever to fund anything locally, because under the agreement they say, "You send it all up to us, we will pay it, you need not charge your ratepayers, we will charge everyone else in London". That agreement will go, but it means that those boroughs will be able to reconsider matters. Possibly it will involve the nine boroughs we are talking about; I should be interested to know.
I remember one committee that I sat on where 17 of the grants were totally for Lambeth. None of this was for London overall. Many of the grants given by the Greater London Council were for specific boroughs with no overall London concept. Setting aside the 15 per cent. of grants that everyone in the Committee is opposed to, given to what we would call the bad causes, much money is given to what I do not consider are voluntary bodies in the true sense. To me a voluntary body has to be a body which augments the money it is given. It augments it either by raising additional funds or by involving other people and getting them to help. That is a true voluntary organisation. If an organisation does not augment what it is given by the local council—the noble Baroness, Lady Faithfull, has often made this point in
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debate—why should the local council give money when it could do the work better itself, with its own social workers?
It is because of the marvellous element of productivity and involvement of the voluntary organisations that the local councils give the money. The voluntary organisations involve more people or produce additional funds. I would divide my local organsiations into, first, those 15 per cent. totally out and, secondly, the lot doing nothing but asking for 100 per cent. funding for everything they do and making no effort to involve extra people or extra money. We certainly need to review those.
These amendments do nothing to help. Amendment No. 136ZBA is positively harmful in that it is a blank cheque to give everything to everybody that they have had up till now. Without further ado I oppose the amendment.
Lord Pitt of Hampstead: Before the noble Baroness sits down, I hope she will realise that she has illustrated the point I was making.
Lord Elton: Your Lordships have conducted a fascinating debate. For me the most bitter-sweet moment was when your Lordships' Committee's eldest member flattered me by saying how well I debated, and illustrated perfectly the truth of what I have long suspected, that the more persuasive I think I am being, the more vigorously he disagrees with me.
That is a disincentive to a long speech. I shall therefore, pick up a number of points that your Lordhips made to which you expected answers. I begin more or less at random, with the point made by the right reverend Prelate, that the current voluntary scheme had started by sending out 800 requests for information in a matter of a dozen days. I should tell your Lordships that the request was for information, not for bids and, secondly, that the replies were asked for as quickly as possible, so that work could begin as soon as possible, which is something your Lordships keep urging. Thirdly—and perhaps more to the point—over 400 replies have been received. So it was not such an impossible task that was set.
I accept, as do the Government, the importance of the citizens advice bureaux. They rightly command a great deal of support from local authorities. I do not think that I ought to address them any differently from all the other voluntary bodies to which your Lordships have referred, except to say that at Second Reading the coadjutor of the noble Lord, Lord Irving of Dartford, the noble Lord, Lord McGregor of Durris, in his amendment said that terrible things were happening in Hillingdon. Hillingdon is not, as I think Lord McGregor suggested, but not the noble Lord, Lord Irving, a rate-capped authority. But even here, when the authority was taking difficult decisions on cuts, not just on voluntary bodies but across the board, it has continued substantial funding for citizens advice bureaux, so that all four bureaux remain open, though I understand that they may somewhat curtail their hours. I should not want your Lordships to feel that the pruning knife is working there already with a chill foreboding of what will happen after abolition.

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The noble Lord, Lord Ennals, and the noble Baroness, Lady Darcy (de Knayth), are both concerned about Dial-A-Ride, as are we. I thought that the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, in the nicest possible way, said that an undertaking of my noble friend Lord Avon had not been met. The Government are well aware of the importance of Dial-A-Ride. They have established a joint working party from the Department of Transport, London Regional Transport and the boroughs which is now looking urgently at the future funding of Dial-A-Ride and other transport systems for disabled people. It will report to Ministers shortly. The Government have set up and are funding a London branch of the National Advisory Unit for Community Transport specifically to help Dial-A-Ride develop along sensible and cost effective lines in future. As no arrangements have yet been decided upon and the working group is still discussing them, it is rather far fetched to accuse my noble friend in his absence, however politely, of not having delivered. The process of delivery is in train.
The noble Viscount, Lord Buckmaster, was concerned about the ethnic minorities. I shall return to this but, again, I think that it is wrong to deal with individual causes separately. But I should tell the noble Viscount that the councillors who are actually responsible for the borough's grant scheme have already assured the LVSC last week that they are considering a specific part of the grants unit dealing with ethnic minorities.
Both these questions touch on money and I come to the question of the levels of private company giving in the United States and in the United Kingdom. I made the comparison—and it is an order of magnitude—of between just under 2 per cent. and a figure of 0·1 per cent. Noble Lords have sought to diminish the clarity of that comparison by asking whether the figures are treated the same. The short answer is that the figures I quoted relate to income and profits; that is, before taking account of the different tax regimes in each country. It is not contested, I think, that the levels of corporate giving are far higher in the United States both in absolute terms and as a percentage of income. The noble Lord, Lord Bancroft, quoted his source and I quote mine. I think that it is no less eminent. It is Professor Ralf Dahrendorf, when he gave the inaugural Arnold Goodman lecture on 29th November 1983. The noble Lord claimed that he was merely casting a gloss on what I said. I rather think he was casting a smoke screen in front of it.
The noble Lord, Lord Pitt, brought us—I think on an intervention in a speech by the noble Lord, Lord Irving of Dartford; and I think it was the first or second time he spoke—to redistribution. I will repeat what I then said about redistribution. Under the collective scheme, all the boroughs will contribute to the cost of making grants. The extended equalisation scheme will ensure that these costs fall on ratepayers in much the same way as if the GLC had precepted for that amount. So the redistributive function which is held dear, I think, by the right reverend Prelate and by the noble Lord, Lord Hayter, and by many noble Lords, and rightly, will be preserved. There is no threat to it to justify supporting the amendments now before your Lordships.
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I can say to the noble Earl, Lord Perth, that our intention is that the schemes in Clause 47 are essentially mechanisms to facilitate local co-operation in each abolition area. We have discussed the concern about the need for an imposed mechanism in each area, but the effect of his amendment, as I understand it, would be to provide a body to compare the arrangements in each area with those in each other area.
The Earl of Perth: I think that the purpose of my amendment is just this. The Government have undertaken—and I am sure that we all rejoice at this—to make considerable grants over an interim period to the local authorities under the grant scheme. My proposal is that the body which should distribute these should be non-political and should so deal with the various matters, not comparing one with the other but judging on the merits of the case.
Lord Elton: I am obliged to the noble Earl, and I shall in a moment come back to the question of the depoliticisation of voluntary grant giving.
I do not think that it is necessary for me to summarise this debate, because your Lordships have paid such close attention to it. I shall point out just one thing which relates to all the individual anxieties which have prompted noble Lords later in the Marshalled List to suggest that a particular body should be written into the Bill so that it either gets first call on the voluntary grant aid or shall have a statutory right to it. Listening to this debate has confirmed my opinion that you could not anywhere in the United Kingdom and possibly in the world find an assembly of people representing more special interests of this sort than there are here tonight. Hardly one of your Lordships is not president, founder, patron, governor, treasurer or you-name-it of something. If any of your Lordships succeed in imprinting the name of your particular favoured ewe lamb in the Bill, the noise of others shouting, "Me, too", will be deafening. I do not think that we can proceed in that way and, therefore, we have to proceed in the way in which both the amendments and the Government propose; and that is to have a system which will be equitable to all.
6.15 p.m.
What is there that distinguishes the system proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Hayter, from that proposed by the Government? In each case there is a separate body that is to decide how the money is to be distributed. We understand—and I absolutely agree with the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, in his interpretation of the drafting of the amendment—that it is a precepting, (in London's case) London-wide authority with the power to perform this function. What we propose is a London-wide, non-statutory body to perform this function.
The function is a voluntary function. I thought I heard from the right reverend Prelate the phrase, "the obligation for voluntary grant". If one is obliged to give something, it is not voluntary. Your Lordships have to decide whether the proper way of doing this is to appoint a statutory body with the duty to call from the constituent councils a sum of money determined by that body on a simple majority. I think I got that right from the amendment. It appears to me that the

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idea is that they shall vote and if 51 per cent. of them think that X is the right sum for the budget or that Y is the right amount for a particular cause, that shall be the decision of all.
I notice that in your Lordships' minds at the end of the day there are two real concerns, and two concerns only. It boils clown to this. First of all, on behalf of the voluntary bodies, you are afraid of the effects of transition; you are afraid that there will be an interruption of funds. Secondly, you are afraid that for political reasons there will be a change of policy thereafter. On the first count I really think I ought to have satisfied your Lordships. I think that a period of four years is reasonable to quote as the period of transition. I think that £20 million of projects amounting to £40 million of hard Government cash spread over those four years is enough to account for that transitional anxiety.
I was interested and pleased to note that when he spoke the right reverend Prelate seemed to move away at once from the question of the quantum, of how much there should be, to the question of whatever is the Latin for "how"; I have forgotten it.
That brings me to the second matter. It was really illuminated for your Lordships far better by my noble friend Lady Carnegy of Lour than it could be by me, because she speaks from direct experience. What she said has the ring of convincing truth about it. If you have a body of which the policy swings on one vote from one direction to the other and back again, you are dealing with a political body which can change its policy overnight. And we have seen that in the existing bodies. If you have a qualified majority—and there can be arguments about the size of the qualification—then what you need is a requirement for a broad consensus of political opinion as to what ought to be supported and what ought not. You can give the detail to the lead borough, and that is what is in the Bill.
Those are the comparisons. I do not want to make too much of this, but I think it is an important and exciting moment that we have now established the fourth commitment of the Government that there shall be a trust for London to expend not only the interest on the initial capital, which will be, I would remind your Lordships, at least £10 million, but also the interest that will accrue on the independent money that we expect and are confident will be attracted to it.
I do think that these things together constitute a very strong case indeed for accepting the Government's proposals and rejecting those in the amendment. If your Lordships have final hesitations about the transitional aid, I would ask you to remember what I said, so that I do not have to repeat it at length now, about the way I protected it as I spoke both from limitation by the Secretary of State below the current level and from the impact of GRE estimates and targets, should they persist.
I think I have done more today than I have ever expected to do in my Parliamentary career to justify the policy of the Government and to put on the line the help that we are able to give to the voluntary bodies. I have no embarrassment in asking your Lordships to stick to the Government's Clause 47 and not to try to adapt the Bill in the way suggested.
Lord Hayter: I should like to make just three quick points. I was glad that the noble Lord the Minister straightened out the Committee on the financial implications of this amendment. Of course he is right and the position is set out in the amendment and in the Bill for those who want to read it. Secondly, I think the Minister's assurances in relation to the transitional financial provisions are well worthy of study, but that is not what we are going to vote on now. So far as this amendment is concerned, once again I think we are all at one: we want to do the best we can for the voluntary authorities. We think one way and others think the other way. Let us put it to the vote.
6.23 p.m.
On Question, Whether the said amendment (No. 135ZB) shall be agreed to?
Their Lordships divided: Contents, 164; Not-Contents, 180.

DIVISION NO. 1

CONTENTS

Airedale, L.

Gaitskell, B.

Alport, L.

Gallacher, L.

Amherst, E.

Galpern, L.

Ardwick, L.

Gladwyn, L.

Attlee, E.

Glenamara, L.

Avebury, L.

Graham of Edmonton, L.

Aylestone, L.

Gregson, L.

Bancroft, L.

Grey, E.

Banks, L.

Hampton, L.

Barnett, L.

Hanworth, V.

Beaumont of Whitley, L.

Harris of Greenwich, L.

Bernstein, L.

Hatch of Lusby, L.

Birk, L.

Hayter, L. [Teller.]

Birkett, L.

Henderson of Brompton, L.

Blyton, L.

Henniker, L.

Boston of Faversham, L.

Hirshfield, L.

Bottomley, L.

Hooson, L.

Broadbridge, L.

Houghton of Sowerby, L.

Brockway, L.

Howie of Troon, L.

Brooks of Tremorfa, L.

Hunt, L.

Bruce of Donington, L.

Hutchinson of Lullington, L.

Buckmaster, V.

Ingleby, V.

Burton of Coventry, B.

Irving of Dartford, L.

Campbell of Eskan, L.

Jacques, L.

Caradon, L.

Jeger, B.

Carmichael of Kelvingrove, L.

Jenkins of Putney, L.

Chelmsford, Bp.

John-Mackie, L.

Chichester, Bp.

Kahn, L.

Chitnis, L.

Kaldor, L.

Cledwyn of Penrhos, L.

Kearton, L.

Collison, L.

Kennet, L.

Darcy (de Knayth), B.

Kilbracken, L.

Darling of Hillsborough, L.

Kilmarnock, L.

David, B. [Teller.]

Kinloss, Ly.

Davies of Leek, L.

Kirkhill, L.

Dean of Beswick, L.

Kirkwood, L.

Delacourt-Smith of Alteryn, B.

Kissin, L.

Lawrence, L.

Denington, B.

Leatherland, L.

Diamond, L.

Listowel, E.

Donaldson of Kingsbridge, L.

Llewelyn-Davies of Hastoe, B.

Eldon, E.

Lloyd of Kilgerran, L.

Elwyn-Jones, L.

Lockwood, B.

Ennals, L.

London, Bp.

Ewart-Biggs, B.

Longford, E.

Ezra, L.

Lovell-Davis, L.

Faithfull, B.

McCarthy, L.

Falkender, B.

McIntosh of Haringey, L.

Falkland, V.

McNair, L.

Fisher of Rednal, B.

Mar, C.

Foot, L.

Mayhew, L.

Fulton, L.

Melchett, L.

63

Meston, L.

Shaughnessy, L.

Milner of Leeds, L.

Shepherd, L.

Molson, L.

Shinwell, L.

Monkswell, L.

Silkin of Dulwich, L.

Morris of Grasmere, L.

Simon, V.

Morris of Kenwood, L.

Soper, L.

Mountevans, L.

Stallard, L.

Mulley, L.

Stanley of Alderley, L.

Murray of Epping Forest, L.

Stedman, B.

Nathan, L.

Stewart of Fulham, L.

Nicol, B.

Stoddart of Swindon, L.

Ogmore, L.

Stone, L.

Oram, L.

Strabolgi, L.

Phillips, B.

Strauss, L.

Pitt of Hampstead, L.

Taylor of Blackburn, L.

Plant, L.

Taylor of Mansfield, L.

Plummer of St Marylebone, L.

Thurlow, L.

Thurso, V.

Ponsonby of Shulbrede, L.

Tordoff, L.

Prys-Davies, L.

Wallace of Coslany, L.

Rea, L.

Walston, L.

Reilly, L.

Wedderburn of Charlton, L.

Ritchie of Dundee, L.

Wells-Pestell, L.

Robertson of Oakridge, L.

Whaddon, L.

Rochester, Bp.

White, B.

Rochester, L.

Wigoder, L.

Ross of Marnock, L.

Willis, L.

Sainsbury, L.

Wilson of Langside, L.

Seear, B.

Wilson of Rievaulx, L.

Seebohm, L.

Winstanley, L.

Serota, B.

Wootton of Abinger, B.

NOT-CONTENTS

Abercorn, D.

Denham, L. [Teller.]

Airey of Abingdon, B.

Denman, L.

Alexander of Tunis, E.

Denning, L.

Allerton, L.

Dilhorne, V.

Ampthill, L.

Donegall, M.

Annaly, L.

Dormer, L.

Auckland, L.

Drumalbyn, L.

Barber, L.

Dudley, E.

Bathurst, E.

Duncan-Sandys, L.

Bauer, L.

Dundee, E.

Belhaven and Stenton, L.

Eden of Winton, L.

Bellwin, L.

Elibank, L.

Beloff, L.

Ellenborough, L.

Belstead, L.

Elphinstone, L.

Bessborough, E.

Elton, L.

Bethell, L.

Fanshawe of Richmond, L.

Blake, L.

Foley, L.

Boothby, L.

Forte, L.

Boston, L.

Fortescue, E.

Boyd-Carpenter, L.

Fraser of Kilmorack, L.

Brabazon of Tara, L.

Freyberg, L.

Braye, L.

Gainford, L.

Brentford, V.

Gainsborough, E.

Bridgeman, V.

Gardner of Parkes, B.

Buckinghamshire, E.

Geddes, L.

Burton, L.

Gibson-Watt, L.

Caithness, E.

Gisborough, L.

Campbell of Alloway, L.

Glanusk, L.

Carnegy of Lour, B.

Glenarthur, L.

Carnock, L.

Gowrie, E.

Cathcart, E.

Grantchester, L.

Cawley, L.

Gray of Contin, L.

Cayzer, L.

Grimthorpe, L.

Chelmer, L.

Hailsham of Saint Marylebone, L.

Chelwood, L.

Coleraine, L.

Halsbury, E.

Colville of Culross, V.

Hanson, L.

Colwyn, L.

Harmar-Nicholls, L.

Constantine of Stanmore, L.

Harris of High Cross, L.

Cork and Orrery, E.

Harvey of Tasburgh, L.

Cottesloe, L.

Hatherton, L.

Cox, B.

Henley, L.

Craigavon, V.

Hives, L.

Craigmyle, L.

Holderness, L.

Craigton, L.

Hood, V.

Cullen of Ashbourne, L.

Hornsby-Smith, B.

Davidson, V.

Howe, E.

De Freyne, L.

Hylton-Foster, B.

64

Ingrow, L.

Renwick, L.

Ironside, L.

Romney, E.

Jessel, L.

Rootes, L.

Kaberry of Adel, L.

Rotherwick, L.

Kemsley, V.

Rugby, L.

King of Wartnaby, L.

St. Aldwyn, E.

Lauderdale, E.

St. Davids, V.

Layton, L.

Sandford, L.

Lindsey and Abingdon, E.

Savile, L.

Loch, L.

Sharples, B.

Long, V. [Teller.]

Simon of Glaisdale, L.

Lyell, L.

Skelmersdale, L.

McAlpine of Moffat, L.

Soames, L.

McAlpine of West Green, L.

Somers, L.

McFadzean, L.

Southborough, L.

Macleod of Borve, B.

Stamp, L.

Marchwood, V.

Stodart of Leaston, L.

Margadale, L.

Strathcona and Mount Royal, L.

Marley, L.

Marsh, L.

Strathspey, L.

Massereene and Ferrard, V.

Sudeley, L.

Maude of Stratford-upon-Avon, L.

Swansea, L.

Swinfen, L.

Merrivale, L.

Terrington, L.

Mersey, V.

Teviot, L.

Middleton, L.

Thorneycroft, L.

Monk-Bretton, L.

Torphichen, L.

Morris, L.

Torrington, V.

Mottistone, L.

Tranmire, L.

Nelson of Stafford, L.

Trefgarne, L.

Norfolk, D.

Trumpington, B.

Norwich, Bp.

Ullswater, V.

Nugent of Guildford, L.

Vaux of Harrowden, L.

Onslow, E.

Vestey, L.

Orkney, E.

Vickers, B.

Orr-Ewing, L.

Vivian, L.

Pender, L.

Ward of Witley, V.

Perth, E.

Whitelaw, V.

Peyton of Yeovil, L.

Wilberforce, L.

Porrit, L.

Wynford, L.

Rankeillour, L.

Young, B.

Rawlinson of Ewell, L.

Young of Graffham, L.

Remnant, L.

Zouche of Haryngworth, L.

Renton, L.

Resolved in the negative, and amendment disagreed to accordingly.
Lord Skelmersdale: I think perhaps this is an appropriate moment to take the Statement. I therefore beg to move that the House do now resume.
Moved accordingly, and on Question, Motion agreed to.
House resumed.

Council of Agriculture Ministers: May 13th-16th
6.34 p.m.
The Minister of State, Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Lord Belstead): My Lords, with the leave of the House I will repeat a Statement being made in another place by my right honourable friend the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. The Statement is as follows:
"With permission, Mr. Speaker, I wish to make a Statement on the Council of Agriculture Ministers' meeting in Brussels on 13th to 16th May 1985. My honourable friend the Minister of State and I represented the United Kingdom.
"The meeting was devoted entirely to negotiations on the 1985–86 agricultural prices and an agreement was reached last Thursday covering all commodities other than cereals and rapeseed.

65
"Decisions on prices were overdue and, while decisions on all commodities would have been preferable, I was not prepared to give in to German insistence that there should be no meaningful reduction in prices for cereals. They felt so strongly on this issue that their Minister made it clear, using the words of the Luxembourg compromise, that very important interests were involved for his country and that the Germans were not prepared to agree to a vote. This represented a significant change in the attitude of the Federal Government towards the use of the Luxembourg compromise.
"Turning to the decisions which were taken, the co-responsibility levy for milk was reduced by 1 per cent., backdated to the beginning of April. This is linked to the reduction of 1 per cent. in the national quotas. With the 1·5 per cent. increase in the support price for milk, this means an average improvement of 2½ per cent. in the support price for milk. Now that these decisions have been made, we can go ahead in the next week or so to notify individual quotas for 1985–86. Letters to producers will start to be sent out later this week.
"The Council agreed that supplementary levy will be collected annually at the end of the milk year. This avoids problems over quarterly or half yearly payments which may bear unfairly on producers if they change their seasonal pattern of production.
"The Council did not agree to the Irish Government demand for a permanent addition of 58,000 tonnes in their quota allocation on account of a statistical error in the Irish production figures on which the Council based its decisions last year. An adjustment was made only for 1984–85 and 1985–86.
"As I foreshadowed in my statement on the implementation of the COMA Report, I accepted that the special United Kingdom butter subsidy should be discontinued. Taken together with other adjustments affecting butter, this will mean over time a small increase in butter prices of about one penny per 250 gram pack.
"I secured the continuation of the Beef Variable Premium Scheme in an unchanged form, against very strong opposition from most other member states. This will be welcome to producers and consumers alike, and will reduce the quantity of United Kingdom beef going into intervention. The guide price for beef will remain unchanged. But United Kingdom producers will benefit—by approximately 1 per cent.—from an increase in the intervention prices under the second stage of the carcase classification grid agreed last year.
"For sheepmeat, there will be no price change this year. But, for next year, when the marketing year will start on 6th January, the basic price will increase by 1 per cent. I successfullly resisted pressure from the Commission and other member states for changes in the regime which would have been damaging to our interests, including a proposal to impose a ceiling on variable premium and a related bar to the recovery through the ewe premium of any money foregone. I also resisted pressure for an immediate end to the Special Export Certification arrangements, which facilitate the
66
export of ewes from Great Britain. Instead there will be further discussions about these arrangements over the coming months. The Commission has undertaken to bring forward proposals to enable annual premium to be paid for next year on certain sheep in especially disadvantaged mountainous areas which cannot be tupped until their third season.
"I secured agreement to the modification which the unions and trade had sought to the sheepmeat seasonal scale which will promote more orderly marketing. I also secured an extension until the end of 1987 of the exemption from clawback for our sheepmeat exports to third countries, which should enable our exporters to develop that trade with more certainty.
"Agreement was reached on measures that should bring about a better balance for Mediterranean products and establish a greater control over the regimes in these sectors. In particular, significant price reductions were agreed for tomatoes, citrus fruits and some varieties of tobacco.
"The overall effect of the changes agreed will have a negligible effect on food prices in our shops.
"Throughout the negotiations, I have attached great importance to the Council continuing with the task which was started last year of bringing greater realism into the common agricultural policy within the budgetary constraints laid down. The Commission stated clearly that they would ensure that the measures agreed, with the decisions yet to be reached on cereals and rapeseed, will be within the budget provision recently agreed for 1985.
"The Council will meet again on 11th June to continue its discussions on cereals and oilseed rape.
"This package agreed last Thursday meets our objectives. In particular, I was determined to resist measures which would discriminate against British interests, and this we have done. I consider it a good agreement for the United Kingdom and for the Community as a whole. I commend it to the House."
My Lords, that concludes my right honourable friend's Statement.
Lord John-Mackie: My Lords, we are very much obliged to the noble Lord for repeating the Statement that was made in another place. It is a pity that it is so late. As your Lordships know, the agricultural year starts at the end of March or the beginning of April, and here we are into May. It was mentioned the other day—I forget in which publication—that the Council of Ministers seem to have their heads in a heap of grain. Our Minister certainly does not hide his light under a bushel, so far as this report is concerned.
What about cereals? The Minister has said that he is not prepared to agree that there should be no meaningful reduction. I wonder whether the noble Lord can say what would be a "meaningful reduction", because during 1983–84 and this year cereal prices have been reduced by nearly £20 a tonne and I should have thought that quarrelling about 0.9 or 0.7 per cent. and not settling was splitting hairs. I shall be glad if the noble Lord has any ideas to offer on that.

67
The milk agreement seems very satisfactory indeed, except that I wonder whether the Minister can clarify the Irish situation a little. Does this mean that the 58,000 tonnes is to be allowed for the two years mentioned or is it some other figure? The Statement does not make that clear. If this statistical mistake was made, it seems a little hard on the Irish that it was not corrected to go on all the time. The Minister may have some ideas on that.
I am sure that the sheep farmers will be delighted with the sheep rÉgime. People who export fat ewes will find that the clawback arrangements help the trade immensely. On the question of Mediterranean products, I wonder whether the Minister can help us. As we know, the Channel Islands and the Scilly Isles have a tremendous interest in tomatoes which are considered a Mediterranean product. Can the Minister say whether this will affect them?
On the overall effect of the changes, the Statement says that there will be a negligible effect on food prices in the shops. The funny thing is that prices fixed by the Council of Ministers sometimes have little effect, but what the processors do afterwards—and I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Mottistone, is not here—makes a big difference. So I hope that the processors have noted what the Minister said.
On the question of the negotiations on cereals and rapeseed, the Statement says—and it is rather curious, considering that this has not been settled—that this budgetary arrangement will tie up with the restraints that have been imposed and it will not cost any more. How can that possibly be forecast when the cereal prices have not been fixed and we do not know the size of the harvest? Last year's harvest was a record one and this one looks like being even bigger. So I think that this is being a little optimistic about keeping within the budget. I wonder whether the Minister would care to comment on that.
On the whole, it is good that this matter is settled. We get very tired of these long processes and I am sure that the Minister and his colleagues get even more tired night after night. However, I hope that the noble Lord will be able to make some reply to the points I have raised.
6.45 p.m.
Lord Walston: My Lords, time was, many years ago, when a messenger returning from a foreign country with bad news paid for his unwelcome news with his life. I am glad that we have now moved on from that time, because I should hate to see the noble Lord, or even his right honourable friend, paying for this abysmal failure with their lives. It really is one of the most depressing Statements that we have had, ever since I can remember these Statements being made, and, as is so often the case, it is masked with a veneer of pleasure and self-satisfaction.
For instance, the Statement says that there has been
"a significant change in the attitude of the Federal Government towards the use of the Luxembourg compromise."
There has, but would the Minister not agree that at least part of that change is due to the example set by Her Majesty's Government over earlier negotiations,
68
in invoking the Luxembourg compromise in matters which we asserted were of significant national interest, but where we found very little support from other countries?
Turning to milk—one of the two most important of the commodities—we are still going on giving an increased guaranteed price for quantities well in excess of the total Community requirements, thereby leading to still further storage costs, still further buying into intervention and still further costs of disposal of these unwanted surpluses. No progress has been made here, other than a paltry reduction of 1 per cent. in the national quotas. Has the Minister any hope to hold out to us that in due course there will be some significant progress both in restricting the quantities of what is required and in making a real approach to the prudent price policy about which we have heard so much?
There is a small adjustment in butter, but what is the effect of that? It simply means that people in this country will now have to pay rather more for their butter—not a lot more, but a small amount more—with no advantage to anybody else. That is true. I declare my interest as a beef producer and I am delighted to hear that producers will benefit by approximately 1 per cent. But will the Minister confirm that there is a growing surplus of beef production within the Community and, therefore, that still more beef will be sold into intervention and will have to be disposed of at a loss after it has declined in quality because of the fact that it has been taken into intervention?
We hear also that progress has been made with the task that was started last year,
"of bringing greater realism into the common agricultural policy within the budgetary constraints laid down".
My understanding—and it is borne out by something that was published in The Times today, and which the Minister undoubtedly read if he did not know it already—is that according to the agreement made last year with regard to wheat, cereals and rape, the price should have been reduced by some 8 per cent. because of the great over-production that occurred due to the munificence of the harvest last year. In fact, that reduction has not been achieved.
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: Is this a speech, my Lords?
Lord Walston: Nothing like it has been achieved, my Lords, and there is now a question mark over what is going to happen. I will underline what was said by the noble Lord, Lord John Mackie—
Lord Denham: My Lords, if the noble Lord will allow me, the Companion to Standing Orders specifies that Statements should not be made the occasion for a debate, but should be the subject only of brief comments and questions for elucidation.
Lord Walston: My Lords, I hope the noble Lord will agree that all the brief comments I have made have taken the form of questions to the Minister, which I hope he will be able to answer.
My penultimate question is, in reinforcing what has been said by the noble Lord, Lord John-Mackie, this: how is it possible for the Council of Ministers to give an assurance that the budget will not be exceeded

69
when there is still a question mark hanging over not only the harvest but also the actual prices that will be paid for cereals—the largest crop of the whole Community?
Finally, can the Minister say on what grounds he considers this to be a good agreement for the United Kingdom and the Community as a whole in view of the various difficulties which have been outlined?
6.52 p.m.
Lord Belstead: My Lords, perhaps I may reply to the questions put by both noble Lords in respect of my right honourable friend's Statement. The noble Lords, Lord John-Mackie and Lord Walston, asked about the meaning of the Statement where it says that we believe there should be a meaningful reduction in cereals. Both noble Lords know the situation: that there should have been a 5 per cent. reduction if the guaranteed threshold had worked. In fact, the commission produced a proposal for a 3.6 per cent. reduction in cereal prices and the Federal Republic of Germany felt that it could not wear even anything like that. This is the one area—an enormously important area—which was left to be decided upon.
My answer to both noble Lords on this particular point is that it is now for the commission to bring forward proposals for the meeting on 11th June. Whatever proposals it now puts forward, those proposals must ensure that expenditure will be kept within the budget agreed for 1985 and within the financial guideline for 1986.
I turn to the second question asked by the noble Lord, Lord John-Mackie, concerning the Irish situation. This is simply a question of meeting the Irish over their request for an increase of 58,000 tonnes for the two years 1984–85 and 1985–86 only. I do not think that the Irish Government have been hard done by in this matter. It was for Ireland, like every other member state, to get its figures right when the agreements were being gone into; agreements which were crucial for all the member states concerned. There was only a certain amount to go around and I believe that the Irish have been treated generously by the other member states in this matter.
The noble Lord was, characteristically, very generous about the result of the sheep negotiations. Indeed, I believe that those negotiations were good. The Statement points out that my right honourable friend did everything he could to defend British interests. If one looks through what has been said about the sheep regime it will be seen that there, perhaps more than anywhere else, my right honourable friend brought home about four very good decisions.
The noble Lord, Lord John-Mackie, asked me also what the meaning is of that part of the Statement which makes reference to Mediterranean products. As a result of the agreement, consumers will benefit from improved access to fresh and processed products but the effect on our growers will be very little. United Kingdom growers receive only a small part of the withdrawal compensation which is paid to growers in the Community. Our main withdrawals are for apples, for which there is no price change, and for cauliflowers, for which there is a small price increase.
70
What is of importance to us in this country is that support for Mediterranean fruit—citrus, and of course tomatoes as well—has been realistically reduced.
The noble Lord asked me finally about the costs of the package; indeed, both noble Lords asked me this particular question. The final cost will depend on what is agreed for cereals and rape seed, but the commission has made an undertaking that if the overall costs after the price fixing looks like exceeding the budget provision for 1985 of 19,955 mecu, the commission will adopt the necessary market management economies to keep within that provision.
I will deal briefly, because of the time, with the questions raised by the noble Lord, Lord Walston, who was, perhaps, uncharacteristically less generous so far as this Statement is concerned. I would say to the noble Lord that when my right honourable friend returns to this country bearing some improvement in the difficult situation for milk producers, the retention of the enormously important beef variable premium (important for both producers and consumers), the retention of all the main features of the sheep regime, and in addition to that has been participating in negotiations which are keeping within the financial guidelines, then that is good news.
It is not the picture which the noble Lord, Lord Walston, painted. For once, I depart from the noble Lord's view. The noble Lord is enormously experienced in these matters but on this occasion I certainly depart from his comments. I will underline the fact that by keeping within the financial guideline, for the first time ever the agricultural expenditure and the price fixing is operating within a financial discipline for which the United Kingdom has been the chief protagonist.
The noble Lord, Lord Walston, spoke about the position of the Federal Republic of Germany. The German Minister of Agriculture specifically referred, as I understand it, to the fact that interests important to the Federal Republic were involved and that he favoured continuation of the discussion. The view of the United Kingdom Government about the Luxembourg compromise is well known. We support the idea of it and we would not have participated if matters had gone to a vote. In that event, if matters had been pressed to a vote the commission's proposals would not have received sufficient positive votes for them to be carried. In fact, we are still in a situation where discussion continues. I hope that on 11th June there will be a sensible final decision in respect of cereals and rape seed, to add to what I believe has been a good negotiation.
The Earl of Onslow: My Lords, can my noble friend elucidate this point? If the American budgetary move is successful, the world price of grain is due to fall quite dramatically. What kind of strain will that place on the EC budget? Secondly, has any progress been made with the introduction of the proper marketability, with the free marketing of milk quotas? I suggest that that could be one of the most advantageous developments for both milk producers and the Community as a whole.
Lord Belstead: My Lords, the answer to my noble friend's first question is that in the event of the situation which he explained there will be considerable strain on the Community's export refunds so far as cereals are concerned. This underlines—as my noble friend very shrewdly implied in his question—the enormous importance of seeing to it that there is a realistic final agreement reached on 11th and 12th June in respect of the cereals part of the negotiations.
My noble friend asked about milk quota mobility. I should like to say to my noble friend that the Commissioner told my right honourable friend the Minister of Agriculture that the Commissioner would be considering British concern that provision should be made for the buying and selling of quota.
Lord Bruce of Donington: My Lords, I have only two short questions to ask the noble Lord. The noble Lord assured us that during the current year the constraints imposed by the budget will be adhered to. Can we therefore have his assurance that there will be no supplementary budget in respect of the current year and in respect of demand-led expenditure in the agricultural guarantee section? Can we have that undertaking and can he also assure us, following what he said, that it will now be subject to strict cash limits, because that is what budgetary constraint ultimately means?
Will the noble Lord explain why on this particular occasion Her Majesty's Government decided to sustain the right of veto of the German Federal Republic but were content to leave the whole question of the 1982–83 veto by the United Kingdom which was overridden by the Community?
Lord Belstead: My Lords, I can give the assurance the noble Lord asked for. There will be no supplementary budget, so I am advised. I think I have already answered the noble Lord's second question.
Lord Stodart of Leaston: My Lords, may I assure my noble friend that the most important objective that his right honourable friend has achieved has been to hold on to the cattle and sheep regimes, because the prosperity of the most difficult areas in the country—namely, the upland and marginal areas—are totally dependent on livestock?
Lord Belstead: My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Stodart. I always bear in mind that the beef variable premium was first secured by the noble Lord, Lord Peart, when he was Minister of Agriculture. Although he was a Minister in the Government of a party of which I am not a member, that agreement was none the worse for that. It was a fine move by, if I may say so, a Minister of the past whom many of us admired. I am very glad that the point has been brought out by my noble friend Lord Stodart.
Again, on sheep, it is enormously important and I am glad to have confirmation from my noble friend north of the Border that the agreement on sheep is looked at as being a good one. I believe it is.
Lord Gladwyn: My Lords, in view of the fact of the apparent vetoing of a 2.6 per cent. lowering of the price of cereals by the German Minister of Agricul-
72
ture, which cannot possibly be described as being in supreme national interest and flatly contradicts everything that the West German Government have been saying for the past few years about majority voting, would it not be possible on 11th June for the President to put the Commission's proposal to the vote and if the Germans are alone in opposing it, simply declare that, under the Treaty, it is carried?
Lord Belstead: My Lords, as I have made clear to your Lordships' House, if it is put to the vote under those circumstances, we would not participate in any such vote because we take a certain view of the Luxembourg compromise, and that view has not changed, and will not do so.
Lord Gladwyn: But, my Lords, confronted with that necessity, the Germans might say, "All right, we agree."
Lord Belstead: My Lords, I entirely understand why the noble Lord, with his skill and experience in these negotiating matters, puts that point to me; but I have to make it clear on behalf of the Government that we believe in the concept of the Luxembourg compromise and if put to the vote, we would not participate.
Lord Soames: My Lords, there has been constant reference to the Luxembourg compromise. May I ask my noble friend whether Her Majesty's Government still construe the Luxembourg compromise as being one which enables any member state of the Community to be the sole judge of whether a particular matter is in its vital national interest? May I suggest to my noble friend that if this continues, there will not be one quarter of the progress made in the European Community towards which most people in all countries aspire? If a country wishes to use the veto because the arguments go against it, that problem can be resolved only if the fact that it considers the issue to be of sufficient national importance to itself is debated before the main question comes before the Council of Ministers.
Lord Belstead: My Lords, I do not think that it would be right for me, with little experience compared to my noble friend, to start talking about the principle of the Luxembourg compromise. My noble friend and, indeed, other noble Lords are enormously experienced in this matter and on this specific agricultural Statement I would be well advised not to start giving any offerings on a matter of principle. However, I say to my noble friend that I have clearly heard what he said.
Before I sit down, perhaps I may add that so far as the practicalities of the matter are concerned, the Agriculture Council is due to meet again on 11th June. Therefore, I remind your Lordships that the Federal Republic has asked for the discussion to continue. I hope that they will have had time to reconsider their position, so that agreement can be reached when that date arrives.
Lord Harmar-Nicholls: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that although he has been pressed from both sides to encourage the withdrawal of the veto, that view is in no sense universal? If matters were as

73
my noble friend would like them to be—and I wish that they were, too—that argument would be fine. But it is quite clear to those of us who have sat in Europe for five or six years and have made some study of how it works that it is not yet the kind of Community that was envisaged. It is still a meeting of nations and the national point of view has to be argued for some time yet before one can throw it open to the majority verdict which would allow all sorts of arrangements to be made which, at the end of the day, would not necessarily be in the best interests of the continuation of Europe.
Lord Bedstead: My Lords, in order to bring this question and answer session to an end I say again that I hear what my noble friend has said. So far as the practicalities are concerned, we must see how we go on 1 1 th June. But surely it is important—and this goes back to the original questions asked by the noble Lord, Lord John-Mackie, and the noble Lord, Lord Walston—that the final negotiations should be within the budget for the current year and within the financial guidelines for next year. We have been given an assurance by the Commission that that will be the case.

Rent (Amendment) Bill
Brought from the Commons; read a first time, and to be printed.
Sexual Offences Bill
Brought from the Commons; read a first time, and to be printed.
Town and Country Planning (Amendment) Bill
Brought from the Commons; read a first time, and to be printed.

Business
Lord Denham: My Lords, with the leave of the House I should like to make a short business statement. Before we go on to the adjournment business it would be only fair to tell those noble Lords interested in the Local Government Bill that we shall not resume that Bill after the dinner adjournment before ten minutes to nine o'clock.
Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede: My Lords, surely the noble Lord means ten minutes to eight o'clock, or eight o'clock.
Lord Denham: I am sorry, my Lords; I should have said ten minutes to eight o'clock.

Prosecution of Offences Bill [H.L.]
7.9 p.m.
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, I beg to move that the Commons amendments be now considered.
Moved, That the Commons amendments he now considered.—(Lord Glenarthur.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

COMMONS AMENDMENTS
[References are to (Bill 96) as first printed for the Commons.]
1 Clause 3, page 3, line 16, after ("all") insert ("binding over").
2 Clause 3, page 3, line 18, leave out from ("person)") To end of line 21.
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, with the leave of the House, I beg to move that this House do agree with the Commons in their Amendments Nos. 1 and 2. At the same time I shall, if it is convenient for your Lordships, speak to Amendments Nos. 15 and 19:

COMMONS AMENDMENTS
15 Clause 15, page 12, line 23, at end insert—
(" "binding over proceedings" means any proceedings instituted (whether by way of complaint under section 115 of the Magistrates' Courts Act 1980 or otherwise) with a view to obtaining from a magistrates' Court an order requiring a person to enter into a recognizance to keep the peace or to be of good behaviour;").
19 Clause 15 page 13, line 19, leave out from ("Act") to ("shall") in line 21 and insert ("binding over proceedings").
For the further convenience of the House, I propose that we should consider Amendments Nos. 3, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 13 and 14 together in one group; Amendments Nos. 4, 5 and 6 together; Amendments Nos. 16 and 17 together; Amendments Nos. 21 and 22 together; and Amendments Nos. 24, 25, 26 and 28 together. I propose that we should consider the other amendments singularly save for Amendments Nos. 29 and 32 which I suggest should also be taken together. I hope that in saying that I have not confused the noble and learned Lord opposite.
Clause 3(2)(c) of the Bill, as it left your Lordships, placed a duty on the new service to take over the conduct of proceedings instituted by way of complaint under Section 115 of the Magistrates' Courts Act 1980. In that way we had sought to ensure that the new service would take over the conduct of all proceedings instituted by the police that resulted in the offender being bound over by the justices. We found that we had not quite met this objective with the clause as it was then drafted, and these amendments were moved in another place to ensure that it could be met. These amendments are therefore essentially technical ones designed to ensure that the clause secures its objective which is that the new service will take over the conduct of all binding-over proceedings instituted by the police. On that basis I beg to move.
Moved, That this House do agree with the Commons in the said amendments.—(Lord Glenarthur.)
The Deputy Speaker (Viscount Simon): My Lords, the Question is that this House do agree with the Commons in their Amendments Nos. 1 and 2 en bloc.
Lord Elwyn-Jones: My Lords, I am in full agreement with what is proposed. It is clearly desirable that the independent prosecution service should have as wide a remit as possible and what is suggested is eminently sensible.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

COMMONS AMENDMENT
3 Clause 11, page 7, line 24, leave out ("local or police").
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, I move Amendment No. 3, and I take it that by having moved Amendment No. 2 en bloc, that has been agreed to.
I beg to move that this House do agree with the Commons in their Amendment No. 3. If it is convenient for the House, I shall also speak to Amendments Nos. 7 to 10 and Amendments Nos. 12 to 14.

COMMONS AMENDMENTS
7 Clause 11, page 8, line 9, leave out ("a local, or police,") and instert ("an").
8 Clause 11, page 8 line 20, after ("section") insert (" "authority" means any police authority or other authority or body mentioned in section 17(6)(c) or (d) of this Act; and ").
9 Clause 12, page 8, line 24, leave out ("local or police").
10 Clause 12, page 8, line 25, leave out ("such").
12 Clause 12, page 8, line 29, leave out ("local or police").
13 Clause 12, page 9, line 1, leave out ("local or police").
14 Clause 12, page 8, line 11, after ("section") insert (" "authority" means any police authority or other authority or body mentioned in section 17(6)(c) or (d) of this Act; and").
As your Lordships will appreciate, under the terms of Clause 3(3) of the Bill, the new service will take over the conduct of criminal proceedings instituted by all police forces specified in regulations to be made by the Secretary of State. Such police forces are intended to include not only those established under the Police Act 1964 but also other bodies of constabularies such as the British Transport Police. This amendment seeks to achieve that so, again, it is essentially technical. I beg to move.
The Deputy Speaker: My Lords, the Question is that this House do agree with the Commons in their Amendments Nos. 3 and 4 to 6 en bloc, and Amendments Nos. 12 to 14 en bloc—
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, I think perhaps that it might be better if we were to take them in order. What I had intended to do in moving those amendments was to speak to Amendments Nos. 3, 7, 8 and 9. I think it might be better to take them in order, and following on Amendment No. 9 would come Amendments Nos. 10, 12, 13 and 14.
The Deputy Speaker: I apologise, my Lords. The Question is that this House do agree with the Commons in their Amendments Nos. 3 and 4 to 6.
Lord Elwyn-Jones: My Lords, we shall get into bad trouble if we try to make the proceedings even shorter than they are going to be. Let us take it in stages; otherwise we shall get into a terrible mess.
Lord Mishcon: My Lords, let each amendment be called.
The Deputy Speaker: My Lords, the Question is that this House do agree with the Commons with their Amendment No. 3.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

COMMONS AMENDMENTS
4 Clause 11, page 7, line 29, leave out ("and").
5 Clause 11, page 7, line 30, at end insert—
(": and
(c) for the termination of the employment with the authorities concerned of persons to whom the regulations apply (whether or not they are transferred in accordance with the regulations) and as to the consequences of that termination.").
6 Clause 11, page 7, line 35, at end insert ("and may make such modifications in the application of any enactment as the Attorney General considers appropriate in connection with any provision of the regulations of a kind mentioned in subsection (2)(c) above").
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, I beg to move that this House do agree with the Commons in their Amendments Nos. 4 to 6. The amendments are technical and tie up loose ends concerning the existing contracts of staff affected by the transfer regulations. I beg to move.
Moved, That this House do agree with the Commons in the said amendments.—(Lord Glenarthur.)
7.15 p.m.
Lord Elwyn-Jones: My Lords, when the Minister says that these are technical amendments, I take it that by that he means that no point of principle arises. I remember one famous occasion in your Lordships' House when some counsel said to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Morris of Borth-y-Gest, that the proposal was raising a mere technical point. The noble and learned Lord said, "Very often, what you think is a technical point is a point of principle that the other side remembered". I am assuming that when the noble Lord says that it is a mere technical point, he means what he says, as he usually does.
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble and learned Lord. I mean that the amendments are technical. If it is any reassurance to the noble and learned Lord, contracts of employment often include provisions as to the notice that must be served before an employee can leave for new employment. These amendments will enable staff to transfer into the new service under the regulations to avoid what in the circumstances may well be inappropriate conditions and, moreover, ones which are impossible to meet.
The Deputy Speaker: My Lords, the Question is that this House do agree with the Commons in their Amendments Nos. 4 to 6.
On Question, Motion agreed to.
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, I beg to move that this House do agree with the Commons in their Amendments Nos. 7 to 10.

COMMONS AMENDMENTS
[Printed above.]
Moved, That this House do agree with the Commons in the said amendments.—(Lord Glenarthur.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

COMMONS AMENDMENT
11 Clause 12, page 8, line 26, leave out ("one month") and insert ("three months").
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, I beg to move that this House do agree with the Commons in their Amendment No. 11. The need for this amendment arises from the excellent progress that the Bill has made here and in another place. That in itself is perhaps a tribute to the constructive spirit shown on all sides of your Lordships' House and indeed in another place. The amendment accordingly alters the period within which my right honourable friend is obliged to establish the commission from one to three months. I can, however, assure your Lordships that the commission will be established as quickly as possible, as my right honourable friend and the Director are anxious to have access to its advice from as early a stage as possible. With that end in view, I beg to move.
Moved, That this House do agree with the Commons in the said Amendment.—(Lord Glenarthur.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, I beg to move that this House do agree with the Commons in their Amendments Nos. 12 to 14.

COMMONS AMENDMENT
[Printed above.]
I have spoken to these amendments with Amendment No. 3.
Moved, That this House do agree with the Commons in the said Amendments.—(Lord Glenarthur.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, I beg to move that this House do agree with the Commons in their Amendment No. 15.

COMMONS AMENDMENT
[Printed above.]
I spoke to this amendment earlier with Amendment No. 1. I beg to move.
Moved, That this House do agree with the Commons in the said amendment.—(Lord Glenarthur.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

COMMONS AMENDMENTS
16 Clause 15, page 12, line 33, leave out ("the time at which").
17 Clause 15, page 12, line 34, leave out ("is").
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, I beg to move that this House do agree with the Commons in their Amendments Nos. 16 and 17. These are essentially minor technical and tidying up amendments.
Moved, That this House do agree with the Commons in their said amendments.—(Lord Glenarthur.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

COMMONS AMENDMENT
18 Clause 15, page 13, line 18, leave out ("and (e)").
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, I beg to move that the House do agree with the Commons in their Amendment No. 18. Again, it is a drafting amendment.
Moved, That this House do agree with the Commons in the said amendment.—(Lord Glenarthur.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, I beg to move that the House do agree with the Commons in their Amendment No. 19.

COMMONS AMENDMENT
[Printed earlier: col. 740.]
This amendment was spoken to with Amendment No. 1.
Moved, That this House do agree with the Commons in the said amendment.—(Lord Glenarthur.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

COMMONS AMENDMENT
20 Clause 16, page 14, line 35, leave out ("or") and insert)—
"(aa) on an appeal under that Part against conviction—

(i) substitutes a verdict of guilty of another offence;

(ii) in a case where a special verdict has been found, orders a different conclusion on the effect of that verdict to be recorded; or

(iii) is of the opinion that the case falls within paragraph (a) or (b) of section 6(1) of that Act (eases where the court substitutes a finding of insanity or unfitness to plead); or").

Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, I beg to move that this House do agree with the Commons in their Amendment No. 20. Your Lordships will doubtless recall that when this Bill was last before us my noble friend Lord Elton moved amendments which enabled the Court of Appeal to make an award of costs from central funds in favour of an appellant successful in an appeal against sentence. The court also has powers under the Criminal Appeal Act 1968 to substitute a verdict of guilty of another offence, or to order the recording of a different conclusion on the effect of a special verdict, or to substitute a finding of insanity or unfitness to plead.
It is appropriate, where any of these orders are made on the hearing of an appeal, to enable the Court of Appeal also to consider whether a defendant's costs order should be made in favour of the appellant. The amendment therefore introduces this change. I beg to move.
Moved, That this House do agree with the Commons in the said amendment.—(Lord Glenarthur.)
Lord Wigoder: My Lords, I shall assume, if I may, that the word "eases" three lines from the end of that amendment will be altered in due course to "cases".
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, certainly. I am sure that that is a drafting error. I shall ensure that it is correct in the final print.
Lord Wigoder: My Lords, yes. I wanted only to demonstrate that I had read the matter with some care.
Lord Mishcon: My Lords, with the same object as the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, to show that I had at least read something and wanted to deal with it before your Lordships, I wonder whether the noble Lord can at this juncture explain something to me that I am sure I ought to know. This copy of the Bill, which is headed,
"To be substituted for Bill previously delivered",
has a note at the top. The note says:
"The words marked by a black line in the margin were inserted by the Lords to avoid questions of privilege".
I see that this indeed necessitated a reissue of the Bill because these words were omitted from the Bill when it was brought from the Lords on 4th March. However, the only black margin that I can find is at the bottom of page 28. It has nothing to do with the Royal privilege but the amendment reads at the end of subsection (8) under Part IV "supplemental":
"Nothing in this Act shall impose any charge on the people or on public funds, or vary the amount or incidence of or otherwise alter any such charge in any manner, or affect the assessment, levying, administration or application of any money raised by any such charge".
I am only inquisitive to know why this House inserted these words and what the words "to avoid questions of privilege" mean. If I may, I shall go on talking for a moment in order to enable the noble Lord to consult with whomever he wants. Alternatively, if he feels that this matter should be referred to later in the Bill after an opportunity has been given to him to consider it, then with the greatest of pleasure I shall resume my seat. However, for the moment I shall remain standing.
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for his patience. As I understand it, the fact is that it is normal procedure for Bills which start in this House to have the privilege amendment put in in this House. In this particular case the fact is that we shall come on to it with a later amendment, Amendment No. 27. I think I am right in saying, though I was not here at that particular moment, that the privilege amendment was not included and it had to come back for a second Third Reading, (if that makes sense). I hope that that elucidates the position for the noble Lord.
Lord Elwyn-Jones: My Lords, I recollect that. It put us all slightly to shame when we were putting it right.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

COMMONS AMENDMENTS
21 Clause 20, page 20, line 38, after ("means") insert ("(a)").
22 Page 20, line 41, at end insert ("or—
(b) an order made in a criminal case by the House of Lords for the payment of costs by a party to proceedings.").
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, with the leave of the House, I beg to move that this House do agree with the Commons in their Amendments Nos. 21 and 22 en bloc.
These are technical amendments, consequential on earlier amendments relating to the jurisdiction of your Lordships' House, when sitting in its judicial capacity, to make awards of costs between parties.
Moved, That this House do agree with the Commons in the said amendments.—(Lord Glenarthur.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

COMMONS AMENDMENT
Clause 22, page 24, line 44, at end insert—
23 ("(12A) For the purposes of section 29(3) of the Surpeme Court Act 1981 (High Court to have power to make prerogative orders in relation to jurisdiction of Crown Court in matters which do not relate to trial on indictment) the jurisdiction conferred on the Crown Court by this section shall be taken to be part of its jurisdiction in matters other than those relating to trial on indictment.").
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, I beg to move that this House do agree with the Commons in their Amendment No. 23. The weakness in the Bill which this amendment remedies concerns the right of appeal by accused or prosecution against the decision of a court to grant or to refuse an extension of a time limit. Whereas the unamended Bill provided for appeal to the Crown court against the decision of a magistrates' court, Section 29(3) of the 1981 Act would have had the effect of denying the possibility of any review of a decision of the Crown Court in a case triable on indictment. This is because the Act limits the prerogative powers of the High Court to matters not relating to trial on indictment.
We are not seeking to provide for appeal on a point of fact from decisions of the Crown court. However, we consider that the Bill should enable application to be made for judicial review on a point of law. This would allow the High Court to give an authoritative interpretation of the relevant provision in the Act which would be of value to the lower courts generally, and particularly where the Crown court may have made a manifestly erroneous decision.
The amendment also removes an anomaly. Judicial review would not have been available for cases to be tried on indictment but it would have been available in relation to Crown court determinations of appeals against magistrates' decisions on time limits in summary cases. The case for judicial review to be available here therefore seems to us to be a strong one.
Moved, That this House do agree with the Commons in the said amendment.—(Lord Glenarthur.)
Lord Denning: My Lords, I should just like to say that I agree entirely with what the Commons have done. It fills in a gap which otherwise would have been left in our legislation.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

COMMONS AMENDMENTS
24 Clause 23, page 25, line 17, leave out from ("discontinued") to end of line 19 and insert—
("with effect from the giving of that notice but may be revived by notice given by the accused under subsection (6) below.
(3A) Where, in the case of a person charged wilt an offence after being taken into custody without a warrant, the Director gives him notice, at a time when no magistrates' court has been informed of the charge, that the proceedings against him are discontinued, they shall be discontinued with effect from the giving of that notice.").
25 Page 25, line 29, at end insert—
("within the prescribed period; and where notice is so given the proceedings shall continue as if no notice had been given by the Director under subsection (3) above.").
26 Page 25, line 34, at end insert—
("(8A) In this section "prescribed" means prescribed by rules made under section 144 of the Magistrates' Courts Act 1980.").
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, with the leave of the House, I beg to move that this House do agree with the Commons in their Amendments Nos. 24 to 26 en bloc. With your Lordships' permission, I shall speak also to Amendment No. 28.

COMMONS AMENDMENT
28 Schedule 1, page 29, line 36, at end insert—
("Contempt of Court Act 1981 (c. 49)
3A. In paragraph 7 of Schedule 1 to the Contempt of Court Act 1981 (meaning of "discontinuance" in relation to criminal proceedings), the following sub-paragraph shall be inserted after sub-paragraph (a)—
"(aa) in England and Wales, if they are discontinued by virtue of section 23 of the Prosecution of Offences Act 1985;".
3B. After paragraph 9 of Schedule 1 to that Act there shall be inserted the following paragraph—
"9A. Where proceedings in England and Wales have been discontinued by virtue of section 23 of the Prosecution of Offences Act 1985, but notice is given by the accused under subsection (6) of that section to the effect that he wants the proceedings to continue, they become active again with the giving of that notice.".").
As your Lordships will know, Clause 23 of the Bill was introduced in this House at Report stage. It was always likely that a number of tidying up amendments would be required at some subsequent stage. That is the purpose of these amendments. Perhaps it may be helpful if I outline their collective effect.
First, as the clause left your Lordships' House it was not precisely clear as to what actually happens when the Director issues his notice of discontinuance. It seems to us that for a number of reasons proceedings should be discontinued with immediate effect from the issue by the Director of his notice. If discontinuance was not effective from the issue of his notice, then the provisions of Clause 22 might continue to apply. If the relevant time limit ran out before the expiry of the period within which the case would come to court following the issue by the defendant of his counter notice, the effect would be to deprive the defendant of his opportunity to have the matter dealt with in court.
Secondly, if proceedings were not discontinued upon issue of the Director's notice, those cases listed for hearing during the period from the issue of the Director's notice to the expiry of the period within which the defendant might issue his counter notice would have to come to court. That would run counter to the underlying purpose of the clause, which is to avoid unnecessary court appearances. It would surely not be welcome to the majority of defendants, who will simply be relieved to have cases dropped. The prescribed period within which the defendant might issue his counter notice is to be established by rules made under Section 144 of the Magistrates' Courts Act 1980. There will of course be consultation in the normal way on what the period should be before the rules are made. Proceeding in this way will give flexibility to ensure that the period set is fair to the defendant and will work in practice.
7.30 p.m.
The new subsection (3A) is aimed at a different aspect of the discontinuance scheme. It is designed to deal with those very rare cases where the police have charged someone and the new service has the conduct
82
of the case but the charge sheet has not been presented to the court, and therefore it cannot be said that any information has been laid. In these circumstances the court will not be seized of the case and consequently the provisions of Clause 23, crucial to which is the idea that the court should be informed when cases within its purview are dropped, are not quite appropriate. To take account of this, an additional provision is needed to avoid wasting the time of the courts, the defendants and the prosecutors in coming to court unnecessarily.
Finally, the amendment to Schedule 1 ensures that the provisions of Clause 23 of this Bill sit properly with those of the Contempt of Court Act 1981 on the "strict liability rule" for contempt of court. I beg to move.
Moved, That this House do agree with the Commons in the said amendments.—(Lord Glenarthur.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

COMMONS AMENDMENT
27 After Clause 29, insert the following new clause:
("Expenses.
.—(1) There shall be paid out of money provided by Parliament such sums as the Attorney General may, with the consent of the Treasury, direct in respect of the expenditure incurred by the Director of Public Prosecutions in the discharge of his functions under this Act.
(2) Any expenditure incurred by the Secretary of State or the Attorney General which is attributable to this Act shall be payable out of money provided by Parliament.").
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, I beg to move that the House do agree with the Commons in their amendment. I referred to it earlier. This new clause enables any expenditure arising as a result of the Bill, once enacted, to be funded by parliamentary Vote. The insertion of such a clause is a normal development when a Bill is introduced in your Lordships' House. I beg to move.
Moved, That this House do agree with the Commons in the said amendment.—(Lord Glenarthur.)
Lord Elwyn-Jones: My Lords, this is essentially an Attorney-General protection amendment, and I am all for protecting Attorneys-General from personal expenditure.
On Question, Motion agreed to.
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, I beg to move that this House do agree with the Commons in their Amendment No. 28.

COMMONS AMENDMENT
[Printed above.]
I spoke to this amendment with Amendment No. 24. I beg to move.
Moved, That this House do agree with the Commons in the said amendment.—(Lord Glenarthur.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

COMMONS AMENDMENT
29 Schedule 1, page 30, line 6, leave out ("(1)") and insert ("(2)").
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, I beg to move that the House do agree with the Commons in their amendment. With the leave of the House, I shall speak also to Amendment No. 32.

COMMONS AMENDMENT
32 Schedule 2, page 32, line 26, leave out ("32(1)") and insert ("32(2)").
These are minor drafting amendments. I beg to move.
Moved, That this House do agree with the Commons in the said amendment.—(Lord Glenarthur.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

COMMONS AMENDMENT
30 Schedule 1, page 30, leave out lines 29 to 44 and insert—
("(5) For paragraphs 6 and 7 there shall be substituted the following—
"6. Where the criminal division of the Court of Appeal makes an order as to costs to be paid by—

(a) an appellant;

(b) an applicant for leave to appeal to that court; or

(c) in the case of an application for leave to appeal to the House of Lords, an applicant who was the appellant before the criminal division.".").

Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, I beg to move that the House do agree with the Commons in their amendment. Again, it is a drafting amendment. I beg to move.
Moved, That this House do agree with the Commons in the said amendment.—(Lord Glenarthur.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

COMMONS AMENDMENT
31 Page 31, line 13, leave out ("award") and insert ("order",).
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, I beg to move that the House do agree with the Commons in their amendment. Again, it is a minor drafting amendment. I beg to move.
Moved, that this House do agree with the Commons in the said amendment.—(Lord Glenarthur.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, I beg to move that this House do agree with the Commons in their Amendment No. 32.

COMMONS AMENDMENT
[Printed above.]
I spoke to this amendment with Amendment No. 29. I beg to move.
Moved, That this House do agree with the Commons in the said amendment.—(Lord Glenarthur.)
Lord Wigoder: My Lords, I do not want vigorously to oppose this drafting amendment. It is the last opportunity that I think I shall have of saying farewell to the Bill. I wish to make only one observation.
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It was a highly controversial Bill when it first came to your Lordships' House and a number of substantial alterations were made to it in your Lordships' House. It then went to the other place. The other place carried out what many of us may think it is best at carrying out—and that is its role as a revising Chamber. It went through the Bill with considerable care and has made only one or two very small, minor amendments. The fact that the Bill, altered so substantially in your Lordships' House, was then altered so little in another place is a very great tribute to the work that was done on the Bill in your Lordships' House.
Lord Elwyn-Jones: My Lords, I join in this self-praise which is being inflicted on the House and which is entirely justified. It is very pleasurable that one particular heresy that was attempted, if I dare make mention of the word "heresy"—namely, giving the Attorney-General power to reopen too lenient sentences—is as dead as the dodo, thank goodness.
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Elwyn-Jones, and to the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, for their comments. I was not of course privy to the intricacies of the Bill at that particular stage. I do not think that I should be drawn on the comments that they make about certain parts of the Bill. Nevertheless, I am grateful for their kind remarks and the fact that the Bill is now safely and well on its way.
On Question, Motion agreed to.
Baroness Cox: My Lords, I beg to move that the House do now adjourn during pleasure until 7.50 p.m.
Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Motion agreed to.
[The Sitting was suspended from 7.36 until 7.50 p.m.]

Local Government Bill
House again in Committee.
Lord Kilmarnock Lord Kilmarnock moved Amendment No. 136ZBA:
[Printed earlier: col. 8.]
The noble Lord said: I have already spoken to this amendment. However, the noble Lord, Lord Elton, in the previous debate referred at some length to transitional funding. We had a long debate in which many points were raised, and I should like to clear in my mind one or two matters before deciding what course to take as regards this amendment.
I understood from the noble Lord that the Government were prepared to double their offer for transitional funding to £40 million over four years. I take it that that would mean that £15 million would be available in the first year, £10 million in each of the second and third years, and £5 million in the last of the four years. Perhaps the noble Lord will kindly confirm that that is so.
Lord Elton: To save time, I am happy to confirm that now.
Lord Kilmarnock: I am most grateful to the noble Lord. As regards general expenditure under Clause 47, I understood the noble Lord to say that no limitation would be put on this by the Secretary of State under subsection (5) in the first year after abolition. If I am correct in my understanding, I should like to go on to ask the noble Lord whether that applies to one year only and what is to happen in subsequent years?
I also understood the noble Lord to say that in setting grant-related expenditure assessments and targets the Secretary of State would take into account the level of funding to voluntary organisations. Does that mean the current level of funding in the first year? Again, what about subsequent years?
As regards transitional finance, I do not think that the noble Lord's offer or series of offers quite met the second part of my Amendment No. 136ZBA on the question of disregarding these monies for grant penalty. If that is so, it is still my submission that this will introduce a very serious distortion into the scheme, for the reasons that I explained in my earlier remarks. However, in order to get the position clear I should like to suggest to the noble Lord that what might well happen is that an authority might have to pay back to the Government in penalty £2 for every extra £1 which it spends on these projects. If my understanding is correct, that would mean that it would end up by paying 75 per cent. of the cost of a project under the transitional finance scheme when it is in theory supposed to pay only 25 per cent. Will the noble Lord tell me whether I am correct about that? If so, will he tell the Committee whether he thinks that the Government might do something about that at the next stage of the Bill? In other words, might the Government themselves bring forward an amendment at Report to take care of that point?
I should like to make two final inquiries. Is it the Government's understanding of their own scheme that transitional funding will apply to county-wide bodies as well as to local projects? If that is so, it again raises the question as to whether the proposed transitional funding, even at the higher amount, is in fact adequate.
The last question that I should like to ask the noble Lord is this. His announcement of the trust fund was widely welcomed in the Committee. Our complaint was that it did not address the problem that we were trying to address in the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Hayter. I should like to ask about the metropolitan counties. If the Government are to set up a trust fund for London, which, incidentally, already has some trust funds of this nature, why should the metropolitan counties be left out in the cold, or why have the Government decided to discriminate against the metropolitan counties and in favour only of London? I should be most grateful if the noble Lord would answer those few queries before I decide what to do with the amendment. In the meantime, I formally beg to move.
Baroness Fisher of Rednal: Before the noble Lord the Minister answers those queries, I should like to follow up what has just been said by the noble Lord, Lord Kilmarnock. As the noble Lord, Lord Elton, knows, I am very concerned about the metropolitan
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counties. The whole of the debate during the course of this afternoon has concentrated on London. The noble Lord the Minister has put forward the figures of £15,000, £10,000 and £5,000—
Lord Elton: I think that the noble Baroness means millions.
Baroness Fisher of Rednal: Yes, I am extremely sorry; I mean millions. Is the noble Lord able to give the breakdown as to the amounts which will go to the GLC areas and to the metropolitan counties? I think that previously there was a difference between the figures. Perhaps the noble Lord will be able to tell us the difference tonight, so that those of us in the metropolitan counties will be able to see how badly we do.
I should like the noble Lord to take into consideration what has just been said. There is grave concern about the voluntary bodies in the metropolitan authorities. Perhaps they cannot make their voice so easily heard in this assembly because most noble Lords are from the shire counties or live in the London area. There are very few noble Lords who live in the metropolitan counties. Indeed, I think that they can be counted on the fingers of one hand, and I include myself as one of them. Therefore, it is very difficult for them to have many spokesmen. Nevertheless, they are doing a great deal for the voluntary bodies. I can speak with some knowledge of the West Midlands, which only this last year spent £2¼ million—which is a substantial amount—on the voluntary bodies.
Nobody has said anything this afternoon about the neighbourhood schemes which are operating mainly in the metropolitan counties—and here I speak particularly of the West Midlands—and which have the support of what the Minister would call "private funds". I give as an example the Cadbury family, a family who not only give very generously of their money; the directors, in the old Cadbury tradition, also participate in some very small pioneering activities. They concentrate in the main on what they call "neighbourhood fostering". They start off groups and give them initial funding which continues for about three years. The West Midlands counties have concentrated on neighbourhood funding. The neighbourhood funding has, in the main, been spent on ethnic minorities—on Indian ladies, on the provision of language lessons and matters of that nature. It has concentrated on all the various ethnic minorities. It has helped considerably with the integration of our coloured friends in the West Midlands. That is a matter which has to be considered quite seriously if we want harmony between all the various races.
Therefore, to follow up what the noble Lord, Lord Kilmarnock, has said, I hope that the noble Lord the Minister will be able to give some encouragement to the metropolitan counties; perhaps as much as he has given to London this afternoon.
Viscount Buckmaster: We are now considering transitional funding for borough-based groups.

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Perhaps I may give two examples of London boroughs which will suffer quite considerably. The first is the London Borough of Wandsworth, which currently provides £1·7 million worth of grant aid to voluntary organisations. The GLC funding to the Wandsworth organisations is approximately £1·5 million for the year 1984–85. Therefore, the London Borough of Wandsworth would have to find and allocate double its present expenditure to sustain the current level of voluntary activity. Wandsworth, while not rate capped, is in a penalty position on its 1984–85 expenditure level.
Perhaps I may give just one example of a voluntary organisation which is at risk in the London Borough of Wandsworth. It is the Balham Family Centre, which provides a range of important services for children and young people, including a créche, a latch-key scheme for children, which was referred to by earlier speakers on another amendment, playgroups for the under-fives, and so on. The centre also offers advice on pregnancy and motherhood.
8 p.m.
Lord Elton: If the noble Viscount will give way, perhaps I may ask him whether the Balham Family Centre is directed to benefit the residents of Wandsworth or the residents of a wider area? I ask that question because if it is directed to benefit the residents of Wandsworth, they will still be funded as they now are by Wandsworth Borough Council. If it is for a wider area, it of course falls into the new arrangements.
Viscount Buckmaster: I thank the noble Lord for making that point. I cannot state specifically which of the two applies, but I know that the centre does good work and receives a grant of £54,000 from the GLC.
Perhaps I may next refer to the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham, which now provides about £650,000 of grant aid to voluntary organisations in the borough, and a GLC funding provides a further £1,375,000. So the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham would need to increase its grant-aid programme by some 200 per cent. to stay at that level of voluntary service.
Perhaps I may give your Lordships just one example of a voluntary organisation in the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham which would be at risk. It is a voluntary organisation very dear to my heart, called SPEAK. This is a new venture which provides language classes in a play environment for ethnic minorities, under-fives and their mothers. Between 25 and 30 different nationalities are enrolled during an average year, which is quite impressive. The aim of the scheme is to help the under-fives in particular to cope with the English language and its problems in time for beginning school. The GLC funding for this scheme during the current year amounts to £18,000.
Baroness Faithfull: I shall speak only briefly; my name is attached to this amendment. Perhaps I may ask my noble friend the Minister two questions. I ask with diffidence because I do not really know the
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situation with regard to the metropolitan counties very well. I feel extremely sorry for them in that we have talked so much about London and we have not really addressed ourselves to their problems. I have been asked two points. First, is the Minister satisfied that on geographical grounds it is going to be easy for the different districts to co-operate with one another, because in certain of the metropolitan counties there are very great distances between the various districts? Secondly, where do those voluntary organisations which deal with the arts and theatre fall? Do they fall in this sector, or are they dealt with elsewhere? A number of people in the metropolitan counties have written to me in regard to where voluntary organisations have been set up for a theatre or concert hall. They are very worried because they get their money from the metropolitan counties and they are sure that they will not get it from the districts come the time.
Lord Elton: The noble Lord, Lord Kilmarnock, is right in his arithmetic, The amount of money available in the first year will be £15 million as the Government's proportion of the total of £20 million. In the second year it will be £10 million, as it will in the third year, and it will be £5 million in the final year. The noble Lord asked me what was the exact detail of the undertaking I gave on the limit which the Secretary of State would impose. I can give an assurance today that he will set the limits for 1986–87 in the light of authorities' budget plans for the collective schemes, and that we will not seek to constrain these budgets below the level of the equivalent expenditure by the abolition authorities this year. Those are the exact terms. I cannot of course look beyond the year after next; nor, indeed, could anybody else.
The noble Lord asked me, I believe, about the effects of the undertakings we have given in respect of the amount of money which the Secretary of State allowed to be expended through GRE and/or rate capping. Again, I am not sure whether the noble Lord wants me merely to repeat what I have said. That I can of course do in due course. We will adjust the GRE and if they continue, reduce the targets in order to see that expenditure by the local authorities of these sums of money does not militate against them.
I think the noble Lord probably went further than that and asked about the provisions in these amendments on the disregard. I shall try to sum up in a word as a layman and if the noble Lord is not satisfied, I shall then read out my brief. As I understand it, a disregard is something which is used by the Secretary of State very sparingly on the request of a local authority when they feel that they have been required to spend money above target for inescapable reasons. The inference from that is that the target was set without that particular expenditure in mind, is it not? I have already said that the targets will be set with this expenditure in mind. That is what I have just repeated to the noble Lord. He is asking not only that the target be jacked up to allow for this expenditure, but then if local authorities exceed that expenditure, as far as the excess matches the expenditure which is approved it should nonetheless be disregarded. I hope I have made it clear that that is a blatant piece of

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double counting, and I do not think it is what the noble Lord wanted. However, I hope that if it was, I have explained to him why we cannot give it to him.
The noble Lord, the noble Baroness and my noble friend Lady Faithfull all put in a kindly word for the metropolitan counties which have tended to have their case—their corner of the battlefield, so to speak—obscured by the smoke generated at what I suppose we here regard as the centre. They have not escaped the attention or concern of the Government and I repeat now what perhaps I did not say with sufficient emphasis at the time: that although the trust fund we propose is for London, the provision in the Bill will allow for trust funds for any or all of the metropolitan counties. The reason we have not leapt forward with a scheme immediately is that whereas in London there is an accumulation of resources which in part the GLC has made and in part has inherited from its predecessors, which amounts to a considerable amount of capital value, the metropolitan county councils have not been in existence for so long and we cannot therefore be confident that the same resources are available.
However, the noble Baroness, Lady Fisher, has helpfully pointed out that there is a strong tradition of private sector funding in the metropolitan districts—some, if not all—and it is to exactly that that any such scheme would be addressed. Therefore, I am hopeful that schemes can also be generated there.
The noble Baroness, Lady Fisher, went on to ask about two other matters. One was the breakdown of transitional aid between the areas. I know that this is something which interests the noble Earl, Lord Perth, as well. The way in which the transitional aid will be allocated will at the centre be to make an apportionment between the areas in response to the bids which the areas make through their Clause 47 bodies.
It may be, and it may not be, that the bids exceed what is available. It would then be a question for the Secretary of State whether in fact all the bids are equally reasonable and they should all get the same proportion of the amounts they have bid if the total exceeds the total available, or whether some of them have perhaps sought to take unfair advantage from the scheme. It is difficult for me to say more than that at the moment. The point I am anxious to make is that the allocation of those funds, once they are received by either the metropolitan Clause 47 bodies or the Greater London Clause 47 bodies, will be for them. The Secretary of State will have a minimal role, except if it is necessary to allocate less than the whole amount as asked by one of the authorities.
The noble Baroness went on to refer to an interesting scheme which at one stage she called "neighbourhood fostering" and at another stage "neighbourhood funding". I am not too familiar with the detail of it, but if it is called "neighbourhood", it almost certainly implies that it will be for funding by the local authority because neighbourhoods typically are within the boundaries of a local authority.
Baroness Fisher of Rednal: Will the noble Lord give way? It will be, with the exception of two of the
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districts, between the metropolitan counties. There are two districts where I suppose you would say that there are no ethnic minorities.
Lord Elton: I got two different messages from that. The first said that there were two areas which were trans-borough. The other was that there were two areas where there were no ethnic minorities. If I am right on both counts, the two which go across the borders of neighbouring boroughs will fall to the Clause 47 arrangement. I think that is what the noble Baroness asked.
My noble friend takes advantage of my lack of geography in that I am not certain which of the metropolitan district councils are thought to be too far away from the other metropolitan district councils for them not to be able to co-operate. The only reassurance I can give her at the moment is that I have not yet heard that there is any geographical difficulty involved. But the noble Baroness, Lady Fisher, seems to think that the noble Baroness behind her has some means of illuminating this point, and so I shall sit down.
Baroness Lockwood: I heard someone whisper "West Yorkshire", which of course is the largest geographical county area of the six. I must confess to the noble Baroness that this problem has not been drawn to my attention, though the extremities of some of the districts to the extremities of other districts is a considerable distance.
Lord Ennals: May I just ask one question for clarity? In respect of the nine London boroughs which are rate capped and the 11 which are in grant penalty, does the explanation mean that the level on which they will be either capped or in penalty will be adjusted according to the contribution that they make under the clause?
8.15 p.m.
Lord Elton: I speak subject to advice and correction. As I understand it, there is a distinct difference between penalty and rate cap. Grant penalty relates to the amount of expenditure acceptable under the existing system, and the claw-back begins when you are into penalty. I think that that is the jargon.
I said that targets will be adjusted, and that relates to penalty. But as I understand it, rate capping is for a different order of error, if I may so put it without offending the noble Lord opposite, and the whole expenditure has become excessive. In that case although the target may be breached and the breach may not count against the authority in its expenditure, as I understand it—and, as I say, I await instant and vituperative correction—if the rate cap, if that level, is breached, what I have said has no bearing.
Lord Kilmarnock: We are in a complicated area. The noble Lord, who has come only recently to it, has shown his usual rapid mastery of his subject. I think that he accused me, or my amendment—I do not think he accused me personally—of double counting.
Lord Elton: Will the noble Lord forgive me? I now have a little more to say. I am told in the most

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courteous tones, I may say, and not vituperatively at all, that expenditure limits for rate capping will be adjusted. The noble Lord, Lord Ennals, will be glad to hear that. The other point is that the transitional grants are directed principally to helping individual local authorities fund the local groups.
I said that we should be looking to the groups to make the initial bid, but the initial bids will be brought together from the local authorities. That justifies the mishearing that I experienced, and my noble friend told me that I was wrong. I thought that the noble Lord, Lord Kilmarnock, quite properly said, "The noble Lord, Lord Elton, has shown his usual lack of mastery of the subject". He said "rapid", and I am most grateful to him, but I am afraid he would have been right if he had not.
Lord Kilmarnock: On this question of double counting it is my impression that you can have your grant-giving capacity jacked up in the way that the noble Lord has suggested, but still be fined under penalty. I should like to ask the noble Lord to look at that and tell me whether or not my interpretation is correct. I am not asking him to do it now.
Lord Elton: The fact that you are virtuous about this sort of grant and profligate about others does not protect you from any penalty for misbehaviour for other reasons. The GREs and targets and, I now understand, the rate capping assessment will be adjusted so that the expenditure which I have encouraged local authorities to make with the backing of Government money will not bring them into that sort of penalty. It obviously does not protect them from being brought into penalty for other sorts of over expenditure.
Lord Kilmarnock: We must look at this exchange and some of the exchanges in the earlier debate. As this is, or would be, Government induced expenditure—in other words, there is a Government carrot in it—why should this type of expenditure be different from the urban aid where so much urban aid spending is disregarded for penalty purposes? I do not see the difference.
We are not going to clear this up now, and I am asking only for genuine enlightenment. The best thing to do is to go away and read the debate. If I find that I am not satisfied with what I read, I and my noble friends will come back to this point at the next stage of the Bill. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 47 [Grants to voluntary organisations]:
Lord Hunt Lord Hunt moved Amendment No. 135ZC:
Page 29, line 2, leave out ("may") and insert ("shall").
The noble Lord said: In rising to move this amendment, I am thankful that the indications of this amendment are more simple and not as complex as
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those of my noble friend. I am sure I was persuaded to take on this amendment because it is so utterly simple in its proposition. I am, as all your Lordships present are, conscious of the different ambience that obtains in this thinly-populated Committee at the moment, the calm and quiet in contrast to the marathon debate we had before the break for supper.
I wanted to be quite certain with the noble Earl, Lord Perth, that the amendment I am about to explain would not conflict with the amendment he spoke to, although it will be moved formally after Clause 47. He has given me total reassurance that I can go ahead. The final introductory comment is to assure your Lordships, who I hope will not leave the Chamber, that I do not intend to press this amendment to a Division at this late hour. I am anxious to hear from the Minister what he thinks about it. If, as I confidently hope, he will agree to accept it, there will be no problem. If he does not, he will explain his reasons, which will provide me with the necessary material to demolish his arguments on Report.
It will be quite obvious to the Commitee that this amendment was drafted as a fallback from the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Hayter. I have no hesitation in saying that it is a second best; but, in saying that, it is not my intention to describe it as unimportant. On the contrary, it is very important indeed. It would greatly improve Clause 47 as drafted. I would go on to say that something has to be done about that clause because, if left unamended, its consequences for the voluntary organisations are likely to be serious. I take the word "may" in this context as a variety of possibility ranging from "probably" to "possibly" and not as permissive. Even more important, we have heard much about voluntary organisations, but we have not heard quite so much about the range of their current services in the GLC and the metropolitan counties. Surely that is the most important thing.
Having heard the noble Baroness, Lady Faithfull, stress the amount of time we have spent and thought we have given to the GLC, it is really in the context of the metropolitan districts that I address this amendment. Something has to be done to ensure that the joint schemes envisaged by this clause, which will deal with country-wide and trans-district or borough boundary services, are set up and made to function. We heard the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London earlier this evening in a powerful and persuasive speech draw attention to some scheme in his diocese. He used the phrase, "the component parts of that scheme are made to get together". I immediately say that I see nothing wrong in that.
As it stands, the clause fails to ensure this essential first step. It merely enables the London boroughs and the metropolitan districts to make joint schemes and it begs the question whether they will do so, let alone whether the requisite majority will be found to set up the joint schemes. The noble Lord, Lord Elton, at an earlier stage this evening was reassuring in relation to the county-wide operations of the voluntary organisations in Greater London when he spoke about

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them as being in being, in embryo and kicking—an interesting and not entirely mutually contradictory set of analogies. I think he was referring to London. If I am right in my assumption, he had in mind the fact that Richmond has agreed to be designated. I am advised that this is by no means the case in the metropolitan districts. It is on that blithe assumption that they will set up schemes that the clause proceeds to lay down a number of mandatory requirements governing operation of the scheme in question.
We have heard how little some of us are alleged to know about the operation and the calibre of districts and district councillors in relation to voluntary organisations. But surely we must accept that the voluntary organisations that have close and daily contacts with local government have first hand experience of working with local government. They are deeply sceptical as to whether any district council will, of its own accord, by mutual consent and even with the requisite majority, avail itself of the option open to it to take this essential first step. At any rate it is alleged, averred and feared that the councils will be in no great hurry to do so.
The reasons the National Council of Voluntary Organisations have put forward have been mentioned before. I shall rehearse them extremely briefly because so much has been said in between. They point out that there is no tradition for such trans-district boundary and county-wide operation in the metropolitan county areas in furthering schemes to address the needs and problems which lie possibly equally or in varying degrees in each of the districts. Unlike Richmond, no single district may be identified or acknowledged as the lead borough to be designated as receiving and distributing grants from a consortium of boroughs and districts.
Assuming that the problem can be solved (I am glad to make an act of faith and assume that it will be by mutual consent), there is likely to be a pause while the district to be designated agrees to take on the job; there must be some reluctance to take on the extra work and responsibility. If it agrees it is likely that it will avail itself of the opportunity open to it to do so for the minimum period allowed for in this clause. But, more important, differing political allegiances and policies between districts will make the co-operation difficult. The same consideration will bear upon differing perceptions by the district councils of the work of the voluntary organisations in general and their various causes, areas of interest and activity and provision in particular, despite or because of the existence of county-wide problems and needs which beset or face them all.
Here I come to the point of the amendment. All this adds up to a difficult, delicate and time-consuming task. Voluntary bodies will be faced—with great respect I disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Elton—with lobbying all the many boroughs and councils to persuade them to fund their diverse causes. The designated council has no mandate in this clause to make such judgments county-wide. That means further delay and it is the essence of the amendment in
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the name of my noble friend Lord Ennals and myself that time is the crucial element in the Government's proposals in the clause.
Apart from the time likely to be needed to set up such schemes, the minimum time they are required to run is too short. Your Lordships may say that is another matter, but it is relevant to my amendment, in that it adds to the degree and the depth of uncertainty and insecurity in which voluntary organisations already find themselves and will continue to find themselves to the detriment of their work and even of their survival.
What are their doubts and insecurities? Their doubts are whether they are to be funded, for which particular causes, interests, activities and services they will receive money, and how much and when local authority funds will be made available. This is not in any way to treat the splendid dedicated work they do. The least they deserve is the certainty that all—I repeat "all"—schemes envisaged in the clause will be set up without peradventure and without delay. Thus there is the need to make the setting up requirement mandatory and not optional, by changing the permissive word "may" to the obligatory verb "shall" in line 2. I finish by saying that the Government surely have an obligation to honour the undertaking given by Sir George Young in Standing Committee G on 26th February, when he said:
"It will clearly be important to establish a grants unit".
I would say that this clause does not establish such a unit. It leaves to the local council the decision as to whether or not to do so. That is simply not good enough. I beg to move.
8.30 p.m.
The Earl of Perth: Before the noble Lord the Minister replies, the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, asked a question of me. It was whether his amendment in any way conflicts with the amendment that I propose to move later. My answer to that is, no; far from it. As I read it, it ensures that there will be these schemes. If these schemes are not only from the Greater London Council but also from the metropolitan bodies then the sort of body that I am talking of will be all the more necessary.
Lord Elton: The noble Lord, Lord Hunt—and it is a pleasure to engage in exchanges with him again after the brief interval that we have had after so recently talking about parole and kindred subjects—voiced a general anxiety which I hope he will find has been somewhat allayed when he reads (as I hope he will later this week) what I said in a rather extensive speech early in the debate, before the Division and before dinner. I do not think that I ought to delay proceedings by repeating the assurances that I then gave, but they are relevant to his concern.
He says that if Clause 47 is not amended it will be a very serious matter for the voluntary sector, and he directed our attention not only to Greater London but

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also to the metropolitan county councils' areas. I think that I should ask the noble Lord to look particularly at what I said about Richmond. He referred to it. He will find in those two paragraphs (as I think it is) a really rather considerable amount of detail about what has already been done; so that there is no question that what we propose can be done. It is already being done.
The noble Lord is anxious that it shall be done and he is afraid that it will not. That brings me to the substance of his amendment. I agree entirely with the noble Earl, Lord Perth, that it is compatible with the noble Earl's. It brings me to a certain difficulty which I have, because Clause 47 sets up a voluntary co-operative scheme and that is what we debated at great length before dinner. The noble Lord seeks simply to make it compulsory. I then ask myself what would happen, first of all, if nobody wanted to play. We see in Clause 47, as amended (if he would amend it) in subsection (1), that a scheme for the making of grants to eligible voluntary organisations shall be made for Greater London and for each of the metropolitan counties by the constituent councils. Then it proceeds to name them. Then it goes on to say that any such scheme shall provide—the scheme has become mandatory, we must remember; it is not something that may happen—for the grants to be made by one of the constituent councils.
Who is to blame if this does not happen? How is the noble Lord going to enforce this mandatory provision? It does not bind on any individual one of the constituent authorities; it merely says that one of them shall be appointed as the lead authority. That made me look more closely at the mandatory nature of this; and the noble Lord has clearly addressed himself to the problem of what happens if a minority of the constituent bodies want to play.
It appears that, as the amendment is drafted—I do not know if this is or is not an accidental result; and the noble Lord will be thinking of that between now and Report, no doubt—the effect appears to be that if only two of the district councils in a metropolitan county decided that they would have a scheme, that scheme would be mandatory upon all of them. This says something very confusing about what happens on the occasion when they start voting for schemes under the mandatory scheme.
I do not believe that that is what the noble Lord wants, but he is in the difficulty, if he wishes to graft the mandatory approach on to the voluntary model, of finding how to get over the discontinuity between the two concepts. I am not quite clear how in his heart he proposes that it should be done. I think that what he is saying is that we must bring the horse to the water and we must make it drink. But you cannot do that. You can bring it to the water or you can have some other animal, if you see what I mean. The Secretary of State can make a scheme such as the noble Lord, Lord Hayter, was proposing where he can point the finger and say, "This shall be done".
What you cannot do is to get the authorities to get together and say, "You must by law choose one of you
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to operate voluntarily for the others". I do not for a moment think that I have satisfied the noble Lord about the strength of my position. I hope I have revealed to him some of the difficulties of his own which he may like to think about further.
Baroness Carnegy of Lour: I was glad to hear the noble Lord say that he was not going to press this amendment tonight, because I think that in the course of his introduction of the amendment he has revealed not only a weakness in the scheme as it might be amended, if that amendment was accepted, but also in the noble Lord the Minister's argument as well. Suppose a majority of authorities decided to accept this voluntary scheme and under Clause 7 (towards the bottom of page 29) in the absence of agreement between all the councils, the majority accept that it is binding on them and some councils are therefore left out of the scheme. I wonder whether the Government have thought through how that will affect the fixing of the upper expenditure limit of that council—and my language unfortunately does not stretch to England in this case—the amount up to which the council may spend, the amount of the taxpayers' support of that authority and the amount at which it is rate capped. Those things have to be fixed at a given moment in the cycle of budgeting and the decision about the scheme might happen at a different moment in the cycle of budgeting. So that I think there is a hole in the argument, unless the noble Lord can fill it now. Perhaps that is something that could be looked at before the next stage.
Baroness Seear: The hole is not only in the argument; it is in the total scheme. The noble Minister's reply since the dinner break is, in both content and tone, in sharp contrast to the speech that he made before the dinner break. We were being assured that this was going to work; that we could trust and leave it to the boroughs who would get together to do this funding; that we had nothing to worry about and that boroughs do collaborate. Now we are told that it may well be that only one or two boroughs will get together. What is going to happen to the assurance that this money will be forthcoming for the voluntary bodies through the working together of the boroughs?
Lord Ennals: My concern is exactly the same as that expressed by the noble Baroness, Lady Seear. It is all very well for the noble Lord the Minister to point out that any such scheme "shall" provide; but there may not be a scheme at all. I had rather expected that the noble Lord the Minister would accept these two amendments. Obviously the two are dealing with different things, and I should like to say a word or two about each one of them. There is no point in having a scheme mandatory if there is not a scheme at all. It is possible that if the word "may" remains there, rather than "shall", there simply will not be, either in London or in the metropolitan areas, any scheme at all.
As the noble Baroness has just said, all the assurances that were given that there will be schemes

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which will help voluntary organisations fall to the ground. I would much rather the Minister would say that he will take it away and see whether there is not an absolute conflict between one "may" and the next "shall", because the "shall" could be meaningless unless the first one is "shall" as well.
Secondly, in the case of the metropolitan counties in the second amendment, if it is simply "or a" metropolitan county we have been repeatedly saying that in the earlier debate we were perhaps concentrating too much on London and not enough on the metropolitan authorities. Surely we want to see schemes that apply to the metropolitan authorities as well as to London. I would have thought that the wise thing for the Minister to do would be nor simply to defend what I honestly believe to be indefensible but for him to say that in view of the concern, which he must have sensed by now, he will take it away and consider it carefully and come back with something that will not be so conflicting at the Report stage.
Lord Renton: Following what was said by my noble friend Lady Carnegy of Lour, I wonder whether my noble friend Lord Elton would be so good, when he is replying to this short debate, to make clear the difference between the provisions of subsection (3), which refers to the need to have a majority of at least two-thirds of the constituent councils before any expenditure is approved, and subsection (7). That subsection says,
"A scheme may, in the absence of agreement between all the constituent councils, be made by a majority of those councils".
It would seem that under subsection (7) it need only be a simple majority: in other words, 51 per cent. I think this is a disparity which does need to be explained.
Lord Kilmarnock: As my name is also on this amendment, I just want to say that my understanding of the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, is that it simply wants the mechanism to be in place. Once it is there, obviously some schemes will jump the hurdle, whether it is 51 per cent. or 66 per cent., or whatever may be decided by the Committee. Therefore the suggestion made by the noble Lord, for example, that two districts out of four in South Yorkshire would be able to "bounce" their brethren into a scheme is not in fact the intention behind the amendment.
Lord Elton: I am obliged to the noble Lord and I can tell your Lordships that the Government have thought this scheme through, that it will work and that the doubts which the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, has sought to cast upon it will run off it, as water will off a well-oiled duck's back, I hope.
The to-ing and fro-ing between the Box was at my request, to discover whether, in subsection (7), I was right in thinking that the word "them" in line 41 referred to all the constituent councils or only to the majority referred to in line 40. It refers to all; so your Lordships have had your attention helpfully drawn to subsection (7) by my noble friend. That subsection
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provides that if a simple majority of the constituent councils in any of these areas decide that they want to have a scheme, there will be a scheme and it will be binding on the minority. The qualifying majority of two-thirds only comes in when it is a question of fixing the amount of money because this is a voluntary scheme and it is thought that it is necessary, as I said earlier, to depoliticise it and to avoid having a large number of the members being reluctant in their co-operation. It is a co-operative and voluntary effort.
I think that really does dispose of the difficulty which the noble Lord has raised because I do not see—and I should be interested to know whether he does—the remotest possibility of any of the metropolitan county areas deciding, in the name of the majority of the constituent councils, that they do not want to have a scheme to cover the whole of the county. The noble Lord, Lord Ennals, may be about to say that there is such a metropolitan county. I think that is casting a really dreadful slur upon it because the metropolitan district councils are very good-hearted bodies with very adequate administrative arrangements who are very concerned about the under-privileged in their areas—the noble Lord can contradict me if they are not concerned, but I think that they are—
8.45 p.m.
Lord Ennals: I was not going to say that at all: I was just saying to my noble friend that every word the Minister says shows that we have now landed ourselves with a dog's breakfast. That is what I was saying.
Lord Elton: I do not think that the noble Lord is entirely wrong in his interpretation, but I was wrong in my imagination of what he was saying. The fact is that I really cannot believe that there is one metropolitan county which has a majority of its districts which will not get together. I doubt very much whether they will be resisted in fact by a minority. So I can reassure the noble Lord; and as to my noble friend Lady Carnegy, the rate capping and all the arithmetic applies to all the members once the majority have determined that it is uniform. So that disposes of that. I think that the noble Lord will find himself happier when he returns to this matter on Report than he is now.
Baroness Fisher of Rednal: Before the noble Lord sits down, he has mentioned Richmond on several occasions. If one looks at the metropolitan counties, there is a very serious difference between London and the metropolitan counties. If one looks at Manchester, Liverpool and Birmingham, they are large cities in their own right and the constituent districts around them in many cases are quite small districts: 20,000 going up to perhaps 30,000 or 40,000, as against more than a million in the case of Birmingham.
Therefore a difficulty is arising and it has been brought to my attention: which of them starts off the trigger mechanism? Whichever does that will be the district which is landed with the scheme. There is

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going to be a difficulty if all the districts have the same vote. One with a higher rateable value than another will obviously feel they are carrying the can for the other districts in the area. This is quite a serious point, bearing in mind that there are some very large local authorities in the metropolitan districts with very small local authorities. One can see in the future perhaps that the larger authorities might be saying, "We are doing a lot more things than we originally intended" if they start off the trigger mechanism. But no doubt the noble Lord is aware of the point and is taking it fully into consideration.
Lord Elton: I would make only two responses to that. The first is that the equalisation system of the block grant system will continue to apply. The other is that the apportionment of the cost of the scheme will be on a population basis, so although the votes may not be equal, the expenditure will be.
Lord Hunt: We have had a very useful exchange on the amendment that I moved and I do not propose to prolong the discussion. Listening to the various contributions that have been made, I feel that I may have failed to make my main point clear. I shall make it again extremely briefly, in one sentence. The main
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point of my concern was not so much whether the schemes would be set up under the permissive "may", but just how long it would take in a very delicate, difficult and time-consuming operation, particularly in the context of the metropolitan districts, to get these schemes set up to the point where the voluntary organisations will not have to hold their vital operations, trans-district boundaries county-wide, in suspense and themselves in a state of great anxiety.
That is the main point so far as I am concerned in proposing that the districts and boroughs should be required to get themselves together in the first instance without any peradventure, so that they can tackle as soon as possible a matter of great urgency in terms of the time-scale set by this whole Bill. I shall of course read very carefully what I heard the noble Lord say earlier in the afternoon. I hope that he will take into account what has been said in favour of this amendment. In withdrawing it now I shall seriously consider bringing it up again on Report stage. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendment No. 135ZD not moved.]
[Amendment No. 135A not moved.]
Lord Kilmarnock Lord Kilmarnock moved Amendment No. 135AZA:
Page 29, line 16, at end insert—("and
( ) for grants under this section to be determined by a committee comprising elected members of the constituent councils.")
The noble Lord said: Very briefly this amendment is designed to do something about the scenario which I endeavoured to sketch in my speech in the earlier debate this evening on the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Hayter, when I drew attention to the nightmare which will face charities, voluntary bodies, having to lobby successfully—in the case of London—22 out of 33 London boroughs in order to get this scheme accepted; or seven out of 10, for example, in the case of Greater Mancheser. I have the equivalent number of districts and the relevant majorities that will be required here for the other metropolitan counties.
This, surely, would be a most undesirable situation. As I mentioned in my speech on that earlier amendment, I have been assured by the director of one of the larger lobbying organisations that he sees this simply as a charter for lobbyists. The object of the amendment is to make sure that the applications can be made through one door. I think the noble Lord, Lord Elton, in the earlier debate mentioned the concept of the "one-door" applications. But as far as I can see that is not provided for in the clause. Therefore, it is the intention of this amendment to make that absolutely clear; and to make it quite clear that any voluntary body striving to get assistance under this scheme would be able to go to a committee comprising elected members of the constituent councils who could then consider it rather than having to knock on 22 doors in the case of London, and a considerable number of doors in the case of the metropolitan counties. I beg to move.
Lord Elton: I think I can give the noble Lord the assurance he wants. Indeed, I rather think I have done so already in describing how the Richmond scheme is working. Basically, the amendment appears to address itself to the fear that the councillors, having set up the scheme, will not wish to run it. But as it will be their ratepayers' money that is being spent, I think that the fear is not likely to manifest itself and that the Bill as drafted makes it quite clear that it will in fact be a committee of exactly the people the noble Lord wants who will be running the scheme under Clause 47 as in fact is now happening under the Richmond scheme.
Lord Kilmarnock: I shall read carefully what the noble Lord says, to see whether it embodies the assurances I hoped for, and I may come back to this at Report stage. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Viscount Buckmaster Viscount Buckmaster moved Amendment No. 135AA.
Page 29, line 19, leave out ("at least two-thirds") and substitute ("more than half')
The noble Viscount said: This is an amendment of some importance. Its purpose, as your Lordships will
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see, is to ensure that the collective funding mechanism is triggered off by a simple majority rather than the two-thirds majority of boroughs in the GLC and districts in the metropolitan counties.
Clause 47 of the Bill states:
"The constituent councils shall be required to contribute to any expenditure of the designated council which has been incurred with the approval of at least two-thirds of the constituent councils…"
Voluntary organisations—and I am speaking here of a good many—are of the opinion that this requirement for a two-thirds majority approval before a grant is made is a prescription for paralysis. In London the joint borough scheme, which is similar in nature to that proposed in this Bill, has had all sorts of difficulties in reaching a consensus, and in the metropolitan counties I understand—although I have not been there—that there are no such joint district schemes.
The problem of reaching the two-thirds majority seems to stem from four fundamental problems. First, there are the financial constraints on the boroughs and districts. In the metropolitan counties the majority of the 36 districts are being rate-capped or face penalties which put them under considerable pressure to keep their expenditure down to very strict limits. In London, I understand that 9 of the London boroughs are being rate-capped. Therefore, the proposition that two-thirds of the districts would agree to additional funding of countrywide voluntary organisations seems highly unlikely. The second consideration is a political one—political constraints. If we take the case of the metropolitan councils again, district councils are of course accountable to their own electors, and the interests of neighbouring boroughs which may be of a different political hue will be of little concern to them.
The third point is in my view perhaps the most important of all. I touched on this very briefly when I was speaking to the earlier amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Hayter. Voluntary organisations are well aware that even in districts of similar political complexion there are widely differing ranges of performance and understanding of the work of the voluntary sector and their commitment to financial support.
If one turns to the GLC area, for example—I mentioned this earlier on in the context of the ethnic minorities—there are only one-third who are considered to be really caring boroughs. There is the very interesting case, for example, of the London Borough of Ealing, which has no less than 25 per cent.—a quarter—of its population made up of ethnic minorities; and that is one of the uncaring boroughs. How can one imagine that boroughs like that would help to make up the two-thirds total?
There is a fourth consideration. This was touched on very briefly by the noble Lord, Lord Hayter, when he moved his amendment. The fourth consideration is that the arithmetical problems of reaching a two-thirds majority are, as your Lordships can see, enormous. In London, for example, it would require 22 out of 33; seven out of 10 in Greater Manchester; three out of four in South Yorkshire; four out of five in West Yorkshire; five out of seven in the West Midlands; and four out of five in Tyne and Wear. I think that poses a real difficulty.
In conclusion, I would say that the many voluntary organisations concerned believe that collective funding schemes in the seven areas have a much better chance of working and fulfilling the Government's intention of safeguarding country-wide voluntary endeavour if the two-thirds majority is reduced to a simple majority. I beg to move.
9 p.m.
Lord Seebohm: The difficulty for me lies in the tremendous difference that there always is between London and the metropolitan counties. Most of the metropolitan counties have an overwhelming majority in one district, which makes it very difficult to see how this will apply if Manchester wants to do it and the other boroughs do not, though it has an overwhelming majority not only in numbers but also in problems.
Baroness Carnegy of Lour: The Council for Voluntary Organisations was kind enough to explain its point of view to me as well as to the noble Viscount and I talked about it with its representative. From my own experience, and also after conversations with representatives of the London Boroughs Association, I feel strongly that while the anxiety of the voluntary organisations is extremely understandable in this respect, this solution will not solve the problem; in fact, it will be counter-productive.
The noble Viscount has said that a 66 per cent. majority as a requirement is a prescription for paralysis. In saying that I do not think he has considered that in local government people behave differently according to what are their responsibilities under an Act and what are the responsibilities of other councils, particularly if those councils are in a sense in competition with them, even if they are in agreement politically.
Voluntary organisations, as a number of noble Lords said earlier today, want, above all, stability of funding. They need continuity. They need a degree of certainty. The grant award process needs to be above the vagaries of political chance. There needs to be the smallest possible risk if the political balance between councils in an area changes. There needs to be the maximum inducement to people to award grants across the political spectrum.
What would be the effect of a 50 per cent. plus one vote? If, as at present in London, the balance is even, decisions could swing on a given occasion because somebody was not there, because some council for some reason had been leaned upon, or for some other reason. If one party controls the decision-making in an area, and then there is an election and the control changes, there could be enormous swings because there would have been a very politicised decision in the first place on a straight vote. The whole policy could change.
I do not have to remind your Lordships' Committee that in the GLC, over the four years since control
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changed, the spending went up from £8 million to £51 million and one does not know whether, if control had changed again, it might have swung back, though perhaps not so far. I am not commenting on whether that would be a good or a bad thing, but it is what happens in a politicised grant awarding group. This is no way to proceed. Also, importantly, looking at the figures of how it would work out, a 50 per cent. plus one majority would work out very undemocratically. It would be unfair to the electorate of the larger councils. Again in London—I am sorry to use the London example, but these are the people I spoke to—if the 50 per cent. plus one was made up of the counties which are smaller in population and which could make a 50 per cent. plus one majority, they would be paying only 41 per cent. of the cost of the decision that had been taken and the 49 per cent. of people whose representatives disagreed would be bearing 59 per cent. of the cost. This is difficult to imagine, but it is borne out by the figures. Even at the Government's 66 per cent., the smaller counties making up 66 per cent. of the population would be paying only half the bill. From the electorate's viewpoint this is taxation without representation.
I hope it is in order for me to progress into discussion of the amendment standing in my name, which is proposing that it should be 75 per cent. It seems to me that, far from 50 per cent. being a good idea, 75 per cent. would bring about what I am trying to describe very much better, because it would to a large extent depoliticise the whole operation. It would mean that for decisions to be taken there would have to be a degree of cross-party support and any council opposing an award to a certain organisation or trying to bring down the total amount would have to stand up and be counted across the whole area, because there would not be the safety in numbers of the political group meeting, the whipped vote and that kind of thing. They would have to explain why they are doing it, and any of your Lordships who have taken part in this sort of operation will understand what I mean. In this way there would be no sudden swing if there was a change of power in one council at a by-election and even a change of power, unless it was a very big one, in all the councils.
In London a 75 per cent. majority has been required over the last 15 years of collective funding. It may seem to your Lordships that the funding has not been satisfactory, but this is the way it has been done and, in the view of the borough councils, it has worked. As my noble friend Lord Renton said earlier, under the Greater London Council (General Powers) Act 1970 the boroughs promoted a scheme which meant that they would decide on collective grants, they would request the GLC to pay and they would recoup the money in proportion in their case to the rateable value, not to the population, and this would be done only if 75 per cent. agreed. That worked. Since some of the councils have pulled out of the association—it has had to be a voluntary scheme because the Act did not allow for it any more—they have continued with the 75 per cent. It has proved possible to get 75 per cent. in London. Although the total being dispersed was much smaller because the requirement was smaller and the GLC was there, I submit that attitudes

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would change when—known to the electors—the responsibility to do this was on the boroughs.
I suggest that it would be much wiser for the noble Viscount not to pursue this amendment. I hope that he will consider what I have said and what the Minister has to say when he explains this aspect—probably much more clearly than I have done. In the words of the representatives of the London Boroughs Association, I believe that the 50 per cent. plus one provision would be a disaster.
Baroness Birk: I had not intended to take part in this particular debate, but I found myself becoming more and more transfixed as I listened to the contributions. I have thought for a long while that there was a great deal wrong with this Bill. Even if I had not thought so, hearing the kind of discussion which is now taking place in this Committee really makes one wonder what we are letting ourselves, and the boroughs and districts, in for.
Why does the Baroness not go the whole hog? Why not wait until there is a 100 per cent. majority? Why not depoliticise the boroughs and districts so that political parties can be done away with altogether? It really is mind-boggling.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes: I should like to take up the last point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Birk. I believe that my noble friend Lady Carnegy has brought forward this amendment as a reaction to what she considers to be the extreme proposal for a 50 per cent. majority. I oppose the figure of 50 per cent. but I think that my noble friend's figure of 75 per cent. is probably an automatic reaction. I think that the Government are for once probably right with a figure of two-thirds.
I say this because at County Hall at the moment the balance is 48 seats to 44, which is not a very big difference between the majority party and the combined minority parties; yet there is no democracy there whatsoever. In fact, all sorts of things have been voted through to give false numbers on committees and everything else. I therefore believe that a figure of two-thirds would introduce a degree of moderation—which at County Hall might perhaps have meant that we would never have needed to face this Bill.
To go one stage further, it is important to spell out eventually, if not tonight, exactly how this decision-making process for grants will work. I asked Sir George Young, when I had an opportunity to do so on a recent occasion, whether the figure of 50 per cent. (or 75 per cent. or whatever percentage it might be) would be in respect of those present at a meeting. He replied, "No, it would be one of those councils". In that case, I should like to know how the votes of the councils will be obtained and whether they will be obliged to vote.
As I understand the present situation, a great many Labour boroughs are boycotting many meetings. If there is a figure of 75 per cent. the point might be reached where no decision could ever be taken because either party was boycotting the meetings—and 25 per
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cent. might be enough to make the whole process invalid and non-operable. It is important that we should have an exact procedure, whatever the majority may be—and I believe that with the two-thirds suggested, the Government have fixed the proportion about right. It is important that some procedure is developed.
Lord Ennals: I am very disturbed by the way in which this debate is now proceeding. I shall immediately take up a point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Gardner of Parkes. I find it disturbing that she should be telling us of what was said by the Minister in a private meeting as a means of explaining to this Committee how the Bill is to work. If a statement is to be made, it should be made by Ministers before this Committee and not in some private meeting. Whether Sir George explained the matter in exactly the way that the noble Baroness recounted, I just do not know. I do not know either whether the noble Lord the Minister will explain this point in exactly the same way as Sir George did in that private meeting. But I do not consider that we can conduct our business in this way.
My second point is that I find it quite frightening the way in which the atmosphere in this debate has changed since the end of the Division on the first amendment. Before the Division, the Minister was coming along with all his goodies and everything was done to reassure the Committee that the voluntary organisations were going to get what they wanted. We were told that there was to be an extra £10 million here and an extra £20 million there, and there was going to be this and that provision made. All of this was to convince us that voluntary organisations were not going to suffer as a result of the Bill. The amendment was suitably defeated. Naturally I regretted that Now that the amendment has been defeated, I find that there is a very different atmosphere prevailing from the noble Lord and some of his noble friends. It seems to me that the obstacles which are now in the way of voluntary organisations in getting the assistance we all know they need are being emphasised to the Committee. Every attempt to make sure—as I am sure the Minister would like to make sure—that voluntary organisations do receive assistance seems to be turned down. Everything seems to be stacked against the voluntary organisations.
We had a debate on the previous amendment a bout "may" and "shall". There may not be a scheme, as a result of the decision taken by the Minister. Now we are on to: what is "democracy"? Is democracy two-thirds? Is it 75 per cent., 80 per cent. or 100 per cent., as my noble friend asked? As far as I am concerned, democracy is a majority. That is how this House operates. We are not asked to vote according to a particular percentage. A majority of one is enough. If it had to be two-thirds, I do not know who would have won on the last amendment.
9.15 p.m.
I feel that we are stacking the obstacles against the voluntary organisations just too much. The aim is: "Provided we can get enough we will stop having a scheme to help the voluntary organisations". In her amendment, the noble Baroness, Lady Carnet of

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Lour, is saying that it is not enough to have one-third against a grant; that it must be just a quarter to stop it going through. I believe that too much power is being used, which can only work against the interests of the voluntary organisations. If I was the representative of a voluntary organisation listening to the debate now, since dinner, I would think that noble Lords were not anxious to help voluntary organisations and were putting obstacles in the way of effective schemes. I believe that this is an amendment, so ably moved by the noble Viscount, Lord Buckmaster, on which the Committee should divide.
Lord Elton: Before giving his advice the noble Lord should wait to hear what the Minister has to say.
Lord Renton: I have been very surprised, if I may say so, by the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, and also that of the noble Baroness, Lady Birk. I cannot believe that either of them would have made those speeches if they had known of the situation of the London Boroughs Association, acting under statutory powers, between 1971 and 1983. Under the statute which has been quoted by my noble friend Lady Carnegy of Lour, and quoted by me earlier when interrupting the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London, it was provided that grants made under a scheme agreed by the London boroughs within the London Boroughs Association required the approval of 75 per cent. of those voting.
That scheme worked well and without challenge until two years ago when the Greater London Council changed the whole scene. We know the way in which the GLC changed it. The noble Lord, speaking on the first amendment today, was candid enough to refer to the extraordinary situation whereby charities were mentioned which were not even threatened by the Bill. There are 200 charities listed in this remarkable document, all presumably voted funds by a committee of the GLC on a simple majority. The nature of the recipients is interesting. I shall read out some of them. They include: Capital Jobmate; Actionspace Limited (community theatre); London Region CND—but nothing about civil defence; the Lesbian Line (counselling service); the London Gay Teenage Group; I have always understood that under our law one is not allowed to be a homosexual until one is aged 18; the London and Kent Amateur Gymnastic Association; and so it goes on. I restrain myself from reading out 20 or 30 other names of remarkable groups which might not get full acceptance for grant purposes if we had a proper majority required among those having to vote.
The Government have put 66 per cent. in the Bill. The noble Viscount, Lord Buckmaster, wants 61 per cent.—
Noble Lords: Fifty-one per cent.
Lord Renton: I thank your Lordships; 51 per cent. My noble friend Lady Carnegy of Lour has the backing of experience—the experience of the London Boroughs Association until the situation was, if I may use the expression, somewhat mauled about. For 11 years it was a perfectly satisfactory operation. I speak from some knowledge. I know it is vicarious, but my
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wife has been for some years president of the London Association for the Disabled, which relies mainly on voluntary contributions for its support. It used to be able to get what it needed from the London Boroughs Association until, effectively, a lot of them went out. I am not saying which boroughs they were; I leave that to the imagination of noble Lords. The others formed themselves as best they could into a voluntary association. The Greater London Council stepped in, found a situation which was right for its beneficence, and since then they have been dependent upon a somewhat uncertain contribution from the GLC. There was experience, good experience, of the operation of the 75 per cent. rule by the London Boroughs Association.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes: On that point, perhaps I may ask my noble friend to clarify it again. I understood him to say, "75 per cent. of those voting." I think that that is emphasising the very point I made earlier. There is quite a significant difference whether it is of those present and voting or whether it is of the boroughs. Could he confirm that he said "of those voting"?
Lord Renton: I did say "of those voting" and I understand that to be the position, but I am open to correction. But if one has two representatives, or whatever number it may be, from each of the London boroughs who are required to attend a meeting to decide these important matters probably not more than once, or at the most twice, a year, one would very much hope that those who are nominated or elected to attend would turn up. Therefore, quite frankly, and with respect to my noble friend, for whom I have enormous regard, I do not think that it makes very much difference whether it is 75 per cent. of those eligible to vote or 75 per cent. of those voting. Personally, I do not attach much importance to that as a difference.
In conclusion, if we want to make sure that the people's money, the ratepayers' money, is spent in a way which commands support and on causes which command general support, then we can make sure of that by using the experience of the past in the London Boroughs Association to say that it must be 75 per cent. But if we have it as 50 per cent. we could merely get a repetition in certain political circumstances of the kind of nonsense which has prevailed under the GLC.
I have only one last comment, and it is this. It is tempting to say, "Well, the Government say 66 per cent. The amendment proposed by the noble Viscount says 51 per cent. My noble friend says 75 per cent. Perhaps, therefore, the Government have got it about right". Personally, I do not take that view, and I would seriously ask my noble friend Lord Elton when he replies tonight to say that he has an open mind about this and that he will be prepared to consider it between now and Report stage.
Baroness Lockwood: Most of the discussion so far seems to have concentrated on the experience of the London boroughs. I would remind the Committee that we are talking about the whole of the country and not just about the experience of the London boroughs and the GLC. If we take my own metropolitan county

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of West Yorkshire, the argument of the noble Baronesses opposite about 75 per cent. or 66 per cent. is academic because in West Yorkshire we are talking about four of the districts out of five. We would have to have agreement between the four districts all the time in order to get anything through.
If one begins to look at this in terms of how democracy operates, one might have three districts which overwhelmingly supported a proposition and two which were balanced on a knife edge and might vote against a proposition. Therefore there would not be any representative democracy in a decision of that kind. Thus I suggest that the discussion which is going on at the moment is an academic discussion about democracy. The principle upon which most of us in local government have operated in the past has been based on a majority rule. I should suggest that the amendment by the noble Viscount calls for support on those grounds.
Lord Kilmarnock: Following on from what the noble Baroness, Lady Lockwood, has said, I should say this. She referred to West Yorkshire. It so happens that, even with the two-thirds majority written into the Bill at the moment, as one has to round up districts and not round them down, (one cannot take half a district), it is already the case that in Greater Manchester one would require seven districts out of 10; in Merseyside, four out of five; in South Yorkshire, three out of four; in Tyne and Wear, four out of five; in West Midlands, five out of seven and, as the noble Baroness mentioned, in West Yorkshire, four out of five. That is because of the rounding upwards principle, which would have to apply. If the system proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Carnegy of Lour, were adopted, it would arise in only two: Greater Manchester and the West Midlands.
I think that what we on these Benches are saying is that these hurdles are already extremely high. I do not think that this issue is something upon which we should divide the Committee. However, we suggest to the Government that they should go away and think about this matter again.
Lord Mottistone: The noble Lords opposite, starting with the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, seemed to pay no attention at all to the argument which impressed me greatly. That was the argument of my noble friend Lady Carnegy about stability. It is no good having funds provided if they are going to be turned over the next time the council changes. Stability is surely very important. However, not one of the noble Lords or noble Baronesses opposite gave any credibility at all to that. I think that they are mistaken to ignore it.
Lord Kilmarnock: Before the noble Lord sits down, does he not agree that the ultimate stability would be to have no funding at all?
Baroness Fisher of Rednal: Following on from what the noble Lord who has just sat down has said, perhaps I may say this. If one looks at the West Midlands, one sees that for a two-thirds majority they need five out of seven; for three-quarters, as mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Carnegy, they need six out of seven. If noble Lords know anything about the politics in the
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West Midlands, they will know that when Birmingham switches round from one party to another the stability goes immediately, even on the three-quarters basis.
Lord Elton: I think it is probably time that I tried to put in my forecast. The noble Baroness the Leader of the Liberal Party came in briefly to say that the tone and content of everything that I said had changed since dinner, and the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, has endorsed that. For the benefit of any noble Lords who are in doubt I should say that I have been forewarned the bottle since last November, and so there is no influence of dinner on this.
The second matter is that I therefore wonder why there should be this constant drawing of attention to the fact that the Government's position appears to noble Lords opposite to have changed. I must tell them that it has not. The noble Lord, Lord Ennals, spoke as though we had removed the guarantee for a further £20 million worth of grant. We have not. The noble Lord spoke as though we had removed the protection of that from the operation of the expenditure controls that I spoke of. We have not. What the noble Lord is saying is that we gave a great deal in the first debate and it is still on the table, but he wants to see more.
I quite see that it suits noble Lords opposite to paint this party as the enemy of the "voluntaries" and their party as the friend. In fact, that is not the case because what we are doing is looking at the interests of both the receivers and the givers of grant-in-aid to voluntary bodies. There will not be a workable system unless that is done.
I can tell the noble Baroness, Lady Lockwood, that we are not holding an academic debate about democracy. We are talking about who decides how other people's money shall be spent. The purpose of Clause 47 is to provide for the transfer of money from the districts and boroughs to voluntary bodies benefiting more than one of them. Half the equation is made up of the councils and the other half of the voluntary bodies.
We have looked at the voluntary bodies all the way through to dinner and we are now looking at the councils. My noble friend Lady Carnegy of Lour said something extremely pertinent which the noble Lord opposite I think completely misunderstood. The fact is that if you put the boroughs of London in order of magnitude starting with that having the smallest population and have the first 17 of them comprising the majority, that is 51 per cent. of the votes, they would comprise only 41 per cent. of the population. Therefore, you would have 41 per cent. of the population telling 59 per cent. of the population how to spend their money. That does not sound to me like the pure mathematics of democracy. It sounds to me like a problem that noble Lords on the Liberal Benches entirely understand.
Lord Kilmarnock: In fact, an amendment was tabled by Liberal Members in another place which would have taken care of this. It specified 51 per cent. of the population, that is, of the totality of the population. Perhaps the noble Lord will accept that at a later stage.
Lord Elton: I am extremely interested to hear that. I did not know it. The noble Lord has homed in on the problem that appears to have escaped the notice of the official Opposition Front Bench. It is that we see a great danger in setting up a voluntary scheme in which 59 per cent. of the people can find that they are a majority and that they are being told to do something that they do not want to do. It seems to me that this is the first reason for having more than a straight majority for this purpose.
The second reason has already been adduced, and I shall not spend long on it. If you have a straight majority for decisions of this sort, the policy can go through a sort of switchback. It is difficult to arrive at the right majority. The noble Baroness, Lady Fisher of Rednal, has pointed out that the criteria differ from one county to another. But there are conventions in statute that are binding in Parliament. We have to treat—we have had this issue before—the whole of a class of bodies in the same way. We have to strike as a mean what is the nearest to being suitable to all.
My noble friend Lady Carnegy of Lour suggests that we have struck it too low. Noble Lords opposite have suggested with enthusiasm that we have struck it too high. That seems to me, although perhaps not to my noble friend Lord Renton, to be the beginnings of a suggestion that we have it about right. For the reasons that I have given, I ask your Lordships to agree.
9.32 p.m.
On Question, Whether the said amendment (No. 135AA) shall be agreed to?
Their Lordships divided: Contents, 52; Not-Contents, 114.

DIVISION NO. 2

CONTENTS

Airedale, L.

Jeger, B.

Attlee, E.

Kaldor, L.

Barnett, L.

Kilmarnock, L.

Birk, B.

Lloyd of Kilgerran, L.

Birkett, L.

Lockwood, B.

Brockway, L.

McCarthy, L.

Bruce of Donington, L.

McIntosh of Haringey, L.

Buckmaster, V. [Teller]

McNair, L.

Carmichael of Kelvingrove, L.

Monkswell, L.

Cledwyn of Penrhos, L.

Morris of Kenwood, L.

Darcy (de Knayth), B.

Mountevans, L.

David, B.

Nicol, B.

Dean of Beswick, L.

Pitt of Hampstead, L.

Denington, B.

Ponsonby of Shulbrede, L.

Eldon, E.

Rea, L.

Elwyn-Jones, L.

Rochester, L.

Ennals, L.

Ross of Marnock, L.

Ewart-Bigss, B.

Seear, B.

Fisher of Rednal, B.

Seebohm, L.

Graham of Edmonton. L. [Teller]

Stoddart of Swindon, L.

Taylor of Blackburn, L.

Harris of Greenwich, L.

Tordoff, L.

Hatch of Lusby, L.

Walston, L.

Houghton of Sowerby, L.

White, B.

Howie of Troon, L.

Wilson of Langside, L.

Hunt, L.

Winstanley, L.

Irving of Dartford, L.

NOT-CONTENTS

Abercorn, D.

Alexander of Tunis, E.

Airey of Abingdon, B.

Allerton, L.

112

Auckland, L.

Ingrow, L.

Barber, L.

Jessel, L.

Bathurst, E.

Kaberry of Adel, L.

Bauer, L.

Kemsley, V.

Beloff, L.

King of Wartnaby, L.

Belstead, L.

Layton, L.

Boyd-Carpenter, L.

Lindsey and Abingdon, E.

Brabazon of Tara, L.

Loch, L.

Bridgeman, V.

Long, V. [Teller]

Brougham and Vaux, L.

Lothian, M.

Burton, L.

Lyell, L.

Caithness, E.

McAlpine of West Green, L.

Campbell of Alloway, L.

McFadzean, L.

Campbell of Croy, L.

Macleod of Borve, B.

Carnegy of Lour, B.

Mar, C.

Carnock, L.

Marchwood, V.

Cathcart, E.

Margadale, L.

Chelwood, L.

Murley, L.

Coleraine, L.

Massereene and Ferrard, V.

Colville of Culross, V.

Mersey, V.

Cork and Orrery, E.

Middleton, L.

Cox, B.

Mottistone, L.

Craigavon, V.

Norwich, Bp.

Craigmyle, L.

Orr-Ewing, L.

Craigton, L.

Perth, L.

Davidson, V.

Plummer of St Marylebone, L.

Denham, L. [Teller]

Rankeillour, L.

Denman, L.

Renton, L.

Donegall, M.

Renwick, L.

Drumalbyn, L.

Romney, E.

Eden of Winton, L.

Rugby, L.

Elton, L.

St. Aldwyn, E.

Faithfull, B.

Sandford, L.

Fortescue, E.

Savile, L.

Gainford, L.

Sharples, B.

Gardner of Parkes, B.

Skelmersdale, L.

Geddes, L.

Southborough, L.

Gibson-Watt, L.

Stodart of Leaston, L.

Gisborough, L.

Swinfen, L.

Glanusk, L,

Teviot, L.

Glenarthur, L.

Thorneycroft, L.

Gowrie, E.

Thurlow, L.

Gray of Contin, L.

Torphichen, L.

Halsbury, E.

Trumpington, B.

Hanson, L.

Ullswater, V.

Harmar-Nicholls, L.

Vaux of Harrowden, L.

Harvey of Tasburgh, L.

Vickers, B.

Hatherton, L.

Vivian, L.

Henley, L.

Ward of Witley, V.

Hives, L.

Whitelaw, V.

Holderness, L.

Wynford, L.

Hood, V.

Yarborough, L.

Hornsby-Smith, B.

Young, B.

Howe, E.

Young of Graffham, L.

Hylton-Foster, B.

Zouche of Haryngworth, L.

Resolved in the negative, and amendment disagreed to accordingly.
9.41 p.m.
Baroness Carnegy of Lour Baroness Carnegy of Lour moved Amendment No. 135AAZA:
Page 29, line 19, leave out ("two thirds") and insert ("three quarters").
The noble Baroness said: I have spoken to the amendment and now move it. I shall not press it to a vote at this stage, but I should like to ask the Minister whether he will think again about this. I believe the discussion has revealed that the whole issue has not, until we began to talk about it this evening, been very thoroughly thought through. In writing to London Peers, the leader of the Croydon authority said that the London boroughs would accept the 66 per cent. although they regretted it. They would have preferred 75 per cent. Although the noble Baroness, Lady Birk, reckoned that we had taken off into the realms of fantasy, a person as experienced as she knows that

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there are occasions when there is a more than 50 per cent. majority in local government where for very particular purposes one wants to be quite sure that there is a reasonable ongoing consensus about something; and it is a reasonable thing for the Government to consider this. If the Minister felt he could agree to look at it, I should be extremely grateful. I beg to move.
Lord Elton: I am in a slight difficulty because I have deployed already arguments against both my noble friend's amendment and that of noble Lords opposite. My noble friend is using the opportunity, having spoken to it, to move it formally, which I can tell noble Lords opposite is perfectly all right. I take this opportunity to say that of course I shall read her speech in the earlier debate with very close attention hut I must not give her the impression that I am in some way suggesting that her amendment would be acceptable at a later stage, for the reasons which I have already adduced. I will not repeat them now. I mean no discourtesy to my noble friend, but she can read them at leisure tomorrow. I will of course take careful note, as I always do, of what she has said.
Baroness Carnegy of Lour: I thank the Minister for that answer. I, of course, will read what he said in his long contribution earlier in the debate.
Lord Elton: I have just recalled that I did not in the last debate answer one question that I was asked. It will soon be out of order to do so but we are on the same subject still. The Bill, if one reads it carefully, refers in Clause 47 to a majority of the councils. It is not a majority of those present. It is a majority of the votes available.
Baroness Carnegy of Lour: I accept what the noble Lord says. I shall read with interest what he said. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendments Nos. 135AAA, 135AAB, 135AB not moved.]
9.45 p.m.
Lord Mottistone Lord Mottistone moved Amendment No. 135B.
[Printed 13/5/85; col. 935.]
The noble Lord said: I spoke to this amendment at an earlier stage, on No. 103A. My noble friend Lord Gowrie, at col. 936, invited me to speak again at this stage of the Bill; and I should be happy to do that on this amendment. The point at issue is the problem that youth clubs have of making sure that they get continuity of support. The particular youth clubs I have mentioned several times before to your Lordships are currently given grants by the ILEA, which is why the matter was raised in that part of the Bill.
Since then it has become clear from a letter I have had from my noble friend, which I shall not read to your Lordships, that the ILEA has produced documents which have put great fright in the minds of those organisations they support, which is quite unwarranted. I thank my noble friend the Minister for his letter, and shall pass it on as being good advice not to be deceived by the ILEA on this particular point.
I wish to speak to this amendment because youth services, which includes youth clubs, seem by convention to be supported, if at all from local government, by the education authorities, and in the case of London this is the ILEA. May I be assured by my noble friend whether, on the one hand, a scheme under Clause 47 such as we are debating at the moment would apply? The purpose of my amendment is to show that I understand that there is this education support but would hope that perhaps a scheme might be able to supplement, or even replace, an education authority grant if that was appropriate.
My other question for my noble friend concerns the splendid trust for London that he announced earlier this evening. Would the grants that would be made from that trust be open to youth services even though their main funding base might be an education authority? I beg to move.
Lord Elton: Your Lordships will recall, because I have said it too often already, that Clause 47 deals only with voluntary organisations which serve an area of more than one borough or district. The purely, local groups will be able to look to their individual councils for support. Clause 47 sets up arrangements which will replace the strategic role of the GLC or the MCCs in looking at voluntary services operating over a large number of borough or district councils.
I think it is likely that many of the youth clubs which my noble friend has in mind—but of course not all—will be purely local and therefore fall to the local authority. My noble friend asks in terms whether a scheme under Clause 47 would be able to supplement or replace an ILEA grant. The answer to that is, yes; and that is what he wanted to know. I would anticipate that the grants from the trust would be open to the youth services, as to others.
Lord Mottistone: I am grateful to my noble friend. I should say that the particular youth clubs to which I was referring fall into three separate London boroughs and would be eligible under Clause 47. I am grateful for his reply, and I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 47 agreed to.
[Amendment No. 136 not moved.]
[Amendment No. 136ZA had been withdrawn from the Marshalled List.]
The Earl of Perth The Earl of Perth moved Amendment No. 136ZB:
[Printed 20/5/85; co1.8.]
The noble Earl said: The amendment standing in my name rejoices in the letters "ZB" after its number. Before I give my reasons for it I should like to clear up a misapprehension when the noble Baroness, Lady Gardner of Parkes, rather cavalierly dismissed my amendment on the grounds that it gave a blank cheque for spending. She cannot have read the amendment, because it does no such thing. It works entirely within the ambit of Clause 47 and the amount of money that may be available either from local authorities or, more important, from the Government's generous help which was announced this evening.
I am convinced that when the schemes come up there will be more demands on the Government for money that can be provided. I feel sure of that. The problem is that, if that is so, who will decide the apportionment, and how will it be decided? It is this which my amendment attempts to deal with. I should have thought that the Government would welcome the amendment as drafted because it overcomes the problem of their having to make political decisions. My proposal is that a totally independent body should be faced with that responsibility, a body which is not political in any way.
I shall not repeat the sort of composition that I think is appropriate, but I stress that whichever party forms the Government—it may not always be the present party which forms the Government—it has to come to these decisions. Whatever the Government, surely it is good that a decision should be taken by an independent body. I earlier used the analogy of the Arts Council.
Before the question of a Division goes any further I should like to stress what the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Norwich said. He said that he was afraid that over the last months there had been a tendency for your Lordships to go beyond your function as a revising Chamber. That is probably correct, but the amendment I propose does not go against the Government. It is a revision, but it is wholly within the ambit of the Government's proposals. It accepts Clause 47 and it is the better for the fact that the Government have themselves announced generous further aid for the schemes which may come forward.
I repeat that my anxiety is: who is to decide how that aid is to be divided among the competition of the many schemes which will be before it? At this moment I stop there. I beg to move.
Lord Beloff: I find this amendment very difficult because I still feel, having heard the noble Earl twice, that I am not completely sure what it is he has in mind. As I understand it—and I may be wrong—the proposal in the Bill is for an organisation of boroughs or metropolitan districts which will come together and allocate money to the support of the voluntary organisations. I understand further—and this has been enlarged upon by the Minister today—that, because there may be a gap between the setting up of such an organisation and its ability fully to fund the needs of these organisations, the Government will make certain interim additions to the funds at their disposal.
What I am not clear about is whether the noble Earl proposes that the organisation of the boroughs, in respect of the money which the boroughs themselves raise, should spend it through an independent body or whether the independent body would deal only with the extra money, the bonus, if you like, which the Government are conferring on the scheme. If it is the former, then it is a major change in the proposed arrangements. As the noble Earl said earlier today, it would be the equivalent of setting up for voluntary charitable organisations an equivalent of the Arts Council.
But if it is only for the additional sums which the Government are to give over an interim period then it seems to me that it must enormously complicate the
116
task of distribution because you will have one body which distributes the funds raised by the boroughs and a different body distributing the bonus. I should have thought that this would be awkward both for those who have to distribute and for the recipients. To use a phrase which has been used more than once today, there would be two doors on which to knock. I hope that before we finally decide about the noble Earl's amendment he can clear up my doubts on this score.
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: Before the noble Earl stands up, I have a question to ask him, too, so he may find it convenient to answer my noble friend Lord Beloff's question and mine. I was going to ask him the meaning of his first subsection, which uses the words:
"by order appoint a Council to oversee the schemes made under section 47."
I am not familiar with the use of the word "oversee" in this sense in a statute. What I should like to know is this. Does he mean that they should oversee in the colloquial sense: that is to say, that they should notice and comment upon but that the responsibility should still lie with the local councils in the scheme under Clause 47; or does he mean that they would have power to overrule the local councils in the distribution of the money which they themselves had raised from their ratepayers?
The Earl of Perth: I am grateful to both the noble Lords, Lord Beloff and Lord Boyd-Carpenter, for raising these questions. Let me say to the noble Lord, Lord Beloff, that if he will look at subsection (2) of my amendment, it is totally clear that what I am talking about is only the,
"sums made available by the Secretary of State for voluntary organisations under such schemes".
It says so in that subsection, and I should like to make it totally clear (as I am sure it ought to be clear if anybody reads this) that all that I am talking about is the money which the Government are using for topping up the scheme.
I would repeat to Lord Beloff and others that I think that for the Government to have to make that decision is a difficult one. I should have thought that they would welcome the opportunity to leave it to somebody who is well equipped to do this in a non-political way and to ensure that it is fairly handled. The noble Lord, Lord Boyd-Carpenter, asked me the meaning of "oversee". I find this a difficult question to answer, and I thought of using the word "monitor". However, I am clear that what I mean is this: the local authorities will put up their schemes. Then it will be for the new body, the council, to look at those schemes and decide whether or not it will support them with the money that is available from the Government grant. So it does not, in a sense, decide on the merit of the schemes: it does decide on whether the schemes are worthy of the support of the council which I am proposing. I hope that is sufficient answer.
10 p.m.
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: Just for the sake of complete clarity, then it does not mean that the council would have the power to overrule the local authorities in respect of the money that they themselves raise for these schemes from their own ratepayers?
The Earl of Perth: That is right.
Lord Elton: I wonder whether I may reply, because we have discussed this amendment already at an earlier stage and I do not think we ought to stand too long on it. The noble Earl, Lord Perth, is concerned about the transitional stages of the scheme. He has proposed a system that is in itself transitional, and it is to supervise the distribution of transitional grant. Transitional grant will be given under the 1969 Act on social needs, the urban programme power, to projects currently getting their grant from the GLC and the MCC's. There will be a bidding round; the DoE will make allocations based on the local authority bids; and the point at which the noble Earl would like his amendment to bite is the point when the allocation is made between the different areas.
I can tell him that in fact it will be made broadly proportional to the amount of the grants that each will be taking from the GLC or MCC now. It seems to me that is a satisfactory answer to the question, because his concern is about the transition from what the GLC and the MCCs are now doing to what is done in the future; and surely the grounds for this must be what is done now, rather than take some external opinion. It is on that basis that we intend the allocation to be made.
The Earl of Perth: I am afraid I am not entirely happy with that answer because, as I see the problem, it is that there will be more demands on Government than there are funds available. The noble Lord, Lord Elton, as I understand it, said, "In certain sections it will be done proportionately". Frankly, I do not think that is a good idea. Some of the things may be good, and some of the things may be bad. I should have thought it would be far better to have an independent body making a decision.
If the noble Lord can say that he will think about this further, for the reasons that I have given, fine; then we could look at it again at Report stage. But if he cannot give me any comfort, then I must confess I am in great difficulty. The difficulty is this: in the earlier amendments various noble Lords voted against the Hayter amendment because they wanted to see my amendment go through. That was the advice that I gave them. If I can get no sort of comfort that it will be looked at again, then I am breaking faith with those who helped the Government to win that amendment by not pressing mine. Therefore I would ask the noble Lord not to say, "It will be proportionate", because that seems to me to be not the right method of handling it. Surely the right method is to decide on its merit. I propose, rather than the Government having to decide on the merit of it, that they pass the decision to a body which is in every way impartial and nonpolitical.
Lord Elton: I am always for deciding cases on their merits, and the merits of this one must surely be—indebted as I am to any who voted in the Government Lobby on the last Division—whether or not what we propose carries out the function which noble Lords wish it to do. And what noble Lords want is that the step, if it is a step down between the GLCMCC funding and the new funding—if there is a step
118
in whatever direction—should be smoothed. The only reference point for that is what is happening now. It cannot be a subjective decision. I much regret that I cannot help the noble Earl, much as I should like to, by saying that this is a scheme which we could bring in at a later stage.
Lord Renton: I think the noble Earl, Lord Perth, might understand the position of a great many of us in the Committee if I were to mention that this clause, whatever its merits, is not consistent with Clause 47, which we have already passed.
The Earl of Perth: I do not understand that.
Lord Renton: Clause 47 has already provided machinery for the decisions to be taken as to the grants to voluntary bodies, and the way in which the decisions are to be taken, and the way in which the grants are to be made. To that extent, it not only overlaps with the arrangements proposed by the noble Earl but, I suggest, conflicts with them.
On Question, amendment negatived.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness White): We now have Amendment No. 136ZBB, which is a manuscript amendment to be moved by the noble Lord, Lord Bruce of Donington, in place, I understand, of Amendment No. 136ZE. The manuscript amendment has been available in the Printed Paper Office. I understand that if no noble Lord objects, it is now open to the noble Lord, Lord Bruce of Donington, to move his amendment.
Lord Elton: May I just ask the noble Lord whether, in moving it, he will confirm that it is word for word the same as Amendment No. 136ZE? If it is not, I wonder whether we may have a little time to read it, because I have not yet seen the alternative.
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: May I ask the noble Lord, if he is going to move it, whether he will first read it, so that those of us who have not had the advantage of seeing the manuscript amendment can know what we are debating?
Lord Bruce of Donington Lord Bruce of Donington moved manuscript Amendment No. 136ZBB:
After Clause 47, insert the following new clause:
"Economic Development Authorities.
(1) On the abolition date there shall be established for Greater London and each of the metropolitan areas a body corporate which shall be known as the London Economic Development Authority, or by the name of the county with the words "Economic Development Authority" as the case may be, to which the Secretary of State shall transfer the functions to which this section applies.
(2) Each authority shall consist of members of the constituent councils appointed by them to be members of the Authority.
(3) The constituent councils in relation to a metropolitan economic development authority shall be the councils for the metropolitan districts comprised in the county, and for the London Economic Development Authority shall be the councils of the London boroughs.
(4) The functions of the Economic Development Authority in each area shall be—

(a) the funding of any body corporate whose objects include the assistance, promotion and encouragement of existing and new industrial or commercial enterprises in Greater London and the metropolitan areas by way of grants, loans, guarantees or other financial assistance;

119

(b) the provision of research and information necessary to the development of programmes appropriate for the economic, industrial and employment development of the areas concerned:

(c) the provision of training projects, or funding of such projects by any body corporate, appropriate to the employment needs of the areas concerned.

(5) An order under this section may contain such supplementary and transitional provisions as the Secretary of State thinks necessary or expedient, including provisions for the transfer of property, staff, rights and liabilities and provisions amending any enactment or any instrument made under any enactment."
The noble Lord said: I must apologise to the Committee for the error that took place in the tabling of Amendment No. 136ZE. It was originally drafted at a time when I thought that the machinery of the London residuary body would be more amenable to the Government than the other means that had been proposed. But in the course of the Committee stage I apprehended that the London residuary body was no longer in such great favour and I redrafted the amendment which I propose to read to your Lordships and which alters the provision to make the effective body a joint board. I apologise for the error.
The amendment I now propose reads as follows:
After Clause 47, insert the following new clause:
"(1) On the abolition date there shall be established for Greater London and each of the metropolitan areas a body corporate which shall be known as the London Economic Development Authority, or by the name of the county with the words "Economic Development Authority" as the case may be, to which the Secretary of State shall transfer the functions to which this section applies.
(2) Each authority shall consist of members of the constituent councils appointed by them to be members of the Authority.
(3) The constituent councils in relation to a metropolitan economic development authority shall be the councils for the metropolitan districts comprised in the county, and for the London Economic Development Authority shall be the councils of the London boroughs.
(4) The functions of the Economic Development Authority in each area shall be—

(a) the funding of any body corporate whose objects include the assistance, promotion and encouragement of existing and new industrial or commercial enterprises in Greater London and the metropolitan areas by way of grants, loans, guarantees or other financial assistance;

(b) the provision of research and information necessary to the development of programmes appropriate for the economic, industrial and employment development of the areas concerned;

(c) the provision of training projects, or funding of such projects by any body corporate, appropriate to the employment needs of the areas concerned.

(5) An order under this section may contain such supplementary and transitional provisions as the Secretary of State thinks necessary or expedient, including provisions for the transfer of property, staff, rights and liabilities and provisions amending any enactment or any instrument made under any enactment."
This amendment endeavours to deal with the future of those organisations within the GLC and the metropolitan counties which have been actively concerned in the promotion of business and commercial enterprises within their respective areas in Greater London or in the metropolitan county areas. Normally the activities have taken two or perhaps more forms. Some of the authorities have had in-house arrangements for suitable training for small business enterprises involving the employment of many skilled professional people in making their services available to those who wish to start up
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businesses and, in many cases, to those whose businesses are, or have been, on the brink of failure.
Also, all of the authorities concerned have formed, and have put their efforts behind, various enterprise bodies including the Greater London Enterprise Board, in Merseyside the Merseyside Enterprise Board, in West Yorkshire the West Yorkshire Enterprise Board, in the West Midlands the West Midlands Enterprise Board, in Tyne and Wear the Tyne and Wear Business Development Fund Company Limited and in Greater Manchester the Greater Manchester Development Corporation. All of these have been either limited companies or companies limited by guarantee. They have their own separate legal entity and there is nothing contained within the Bill, as your Lordships would expect, that seeks to abolish them. But their future is of some considerable importance. These enterprises that are not concerned with trading, which I hope will be enlarged upon by the noble Countess. Lady Mar, are engaged in promoting investment in various enterprises either selected by them or brought to them.
10.15 p.m.
It is necessary to state that these enterprise organisations are not peopled, as it were, by politicians but are manned by staffs who are extremely skilled professionally: who have skills in the accountancy profession, in production engineering, and in a whole range of other spheres. Nobody so far has ever sought to take anything away from the qualities of those people.
In the event, they have been singularly successful. We find from the nearest estimate that it is possible to obtain—and time does not permit me, at this stage, to go into further detail although I shall be very happy to do so and to produce the documentation—that their work has resulted in the creation of, or the saving of, more than 50,000 new jobs in the GLC and metropolitan county areas.
We are living in times of very heavy unemployment. Without wearying your Lordships with the figures, unemployment is worst precisely in the metropolitan county areas—although even in London (particularly the inner city area) unemployment is running at some 16·5 per cent.
We are either serious about creating new jobs—genuine jobs, if I may borrow the Government's phrase describing this activity—or we are not. It seems to me that the Bill ought to contain some provision to deal with these various bodies. The Bill is silent on this point, and so far as I can see, there has been very little in the way of Government observations on their futures other than an off-the-cuff observation (which I cannot take very seriously) by one Minister in another place, that they will be allowed to wither away on the bough. I cannot believe that this was meant as a serious observation.
The purpose of moving this amendment is to obtain from the Government a statement as to what their intentions are in this respect. Your Lordships will appreciate (particularly those noble Lords who have experience of business and commerce) that when an investment is made in a new concern—and particularly when it is made at the instance of and after

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investigation by professionals such as investment analysts, accountants, production engineers marketing experts, and all the rest—then the investment or loan support required to move these new enterprises, or to save enterprises, from the state in which they were found can only be accomplished over a period of years.
The normal procedure—and each of the enterprise organisations to which I am referring insists upon it—is for the businesses to provide details of the appropriate cash flows, their forecast of sales or activities as the case may be, their fixed and floating expenditure over the years, the progressive development of their expenses, and so on.
Very often, investment is made on the basis of continuing support. At a later stage if necessary, when the time is more propitious, I can give details to show that in some cases any withdrawal of the facilities already promised and negotiated would mean the failure of the organisation concerned. I could go into considerable detail about the activities of each of the organisations to which I am referring, but time will not permit. Indeed, the purpose of moving this amendment is to find out what are the Government's intentions.
However, I make one point very clear; and that is the economics of the matter. I hope that what I have said will encourage the Government to take what I conceive to be steps that any reasonable businessman, economist or banker would take in the particular circumstances. Your Lordships will recall that in the course of a debate in this House on 21st January last, when we were discussing regional development, the Government underlined the contents of their own White Paper published in October 1983 which put the cost of regional aid at about £35,000 per job. Some amendments were made, by regulation, that went through the House on that occasion and which tied regional aid to one of two alternatives. In labour intensive proposals the limit was going to be £5,000 per job and in the case of capital intensive proposals it would be, in certain circumstances, £10,000 per job. Let us consider the position if there is a saving of jobs to the tune of some 50,000—a figure for which at a later stage I can give a reasonably accurate build up, supported by the appropriate authentications. Then, on the basis of findings arrived at by your Lordships' Select Committee which considered the cost of unemployment to the Exchequer, and which came out with a figure, including lost taxation, of £5,000 per job per annum in the case of a single unemployed person, it will be readily perceived that if, in fact, 50,000 jobs have been either created or saved, the Exchequer has benefited, in one way or another, to the tune of £250 million per annum.
Many noble Lords may think, and indeed the Government may think, that that is not chicken feed. I would not myself think it was chicken feed. What emerges from the figures is that in the case of, for example, the Greater London Enterprise Board, where 2,352 jobs have been saved, the cost is between £3,000 and £3,500 per job. In the case of Merseyside, where 482 jobs were created or saved, the cost was only £519 per job. In the case of the West Midlands, where 3,000 jobs were created or saved, the figure was £2,666 per job. In West Yorkshire, where 4,100 jobs were created or saved, it works out at £560 per job.
There is no need for us to cavil at the precise extent of the figures, though I am prepared, at a suitable stage, to document them; the fact is that they are very significantly below the figures determined for regional aid. They are significantly below the cost to the Exchequer of having a person unemployed, whether through receipt of unemployment benefit or loss of taxation.
Those are the considerations I lay before the noble Lord. Whatever figures may materialise according to different assumptions, I am satisfied—and I have had experience in this field of the reconstruction of companies, the starting up of new businesses, the preparation of feasibility studies, and the like—that they form a good proposition. As I said, if necessary I am prepared to prove it at a later stage. It may well be—I hope so—that I am knocking at an open door. It appears to me to be a matter of commonsense that the aid which has been given to these enterprises by the GLC and by the metropolitan counties, as appropriate, has been a very good business investment indeed. It has been good for the Exchequer and indeed has been well regarded by local chambers of commerce up and down the country in the areas of the councils affected.
I could give the Committee specific quotations from bodies which noble Lords would think to be extremely responsible, many of which have a favourable disposition even at this time towards the broad general policies of Her Majesty's Government; but I shall not weary the Committee at this time of night. I sincerely hope, therefore, that in reply the noble Lord will be able to give for the first time some firm indication as to exactly what are the intentions of Her Majesty's Government towards these bodies. I beg to move.
The Countess of Mar: I rise to support the noble Lord, Lord Bruce. My interest in industrial and commercial training is not a transitory one. Nine years ago, when there were fewer than 2 million unemployed, the subject of my maiden speech was industrial training. I propose to confine myself to the training aspects of this amendment. That was in the days when specialist training considered necessary by employers was provided by them in the form of apprenticeships, sandwich, block and day release courses and in-house training.
Finances are now so stringent that employers seem to expect prospective employees to be highly trained at the expense of central or local government. I know that most of us accept that unemployment and its accompanying social problems have now reached unacceptable proportions. We know too the importance of adequate training in skills which are required by modern industry and commerce. Her Majesty's Government have done a good deal towards the provision of training schemes, particularly for young people, but there is no reason why such provision should be considered to be the sole prerogative of Government.
I wonder how many of your Lordships have been sufficiently interested in the outcome of this debate to see for yourselves the achievements of, for example, the Greater London Training Board. I must admit that before I did so I was more than a little sceptical about the role of a local authority in training for jobs. I had

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not expected to find the degree of enthusiasm, commitment and desire for quality with which I was confronted. Many of the 70 or so projects have been started as a result of local demand. Those most in need of training have gone to the board with their own ideas, and if the board has considered them viable it has offered assistance. The schemes do not compete with those provided by Government but rather complement them. The numerous debates we have had in your Lordships' House on unemployment and training have highlighted the disadvantages suffered by the mentally and physically handicapped, ethnic minorities and women, and especially those who fall within these groups who have a poor educational background.
The Greater London Training Board has tended to concentrate its resources on these people. In the three years since its inception, 5,000 adults and young people have received, and 220 instructors have provided, training in skills as diverse as gardening and advanced computer technology. It has the support of organisations such as the London Chamber of Commerce, the Industry and Employers' Group Training Association, the City and Guilds of London, the British Youth Council and many others. Cross-borough drinks—it sounds as though I have been drinking. I am sorry; I am very tired. Cross-borough links with dozens of employers have been fostered. Its work has also become the focus of widespread international interest, most recently from professional instructors in West Germany, Greece, Sweden, Nigeria, Australia, the Philippines, Austria, Tanzania and the Sudan.
A fine example of the work done by the board is the Tower Hamlets Advanced Technology Training Project. This is an organisation whose objects are to advance the education and training of young people and adults in the manufacture, use, operation, repair and maintenance of computers, microprocessors and other electronic and mechanical equipment, and to teach them the role and effect of the new and advanced technology in society.
10.30 p.m.
At any one time it has 35 trainees whose only qualifications are that they must be over the age of 25 and unemployed. It is funded jointly by the Greater London Training Board, the European Social Fund and the Tower Hamlets Inner Areas Training programme. There I have seen men and women—a high proportion of women—of British, Indian, Chinese and West Indian origin, aged between 25 and 50. There were five severely disabled people in wheelchairs. I was most impressed by the skill and patience of the instructors, who also come from a wide variety of social and ethnic backgrounds. All these people had been considered unsuitable for Government training schemes for a number of reasons. They have been given the opportunity to become productive, independent citizens with nationally recognised qualifications, where they had once been written off. This is only one example.
The board's Women's Motor Mechanics Apprenticeship Programme at the Oval has successfully placed 87 per cent. of white, 89 per cent. of
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Afro-Caribbean and 100 per cent. of Asian students who have completed their courses. This success is one of a long list of similar achievements and must be attributed to the quality and suitability of the training and the capacity of the board to respond quickly to needs of different industries and localities, and of course the availability of funds for the training schemes.
The provision of training and jobs is not an obligation put upon the GLC by statute, but the work of the training board is recognised to be of value in many circles. There is no provision in the Bill for the work to be continued. I am well aware that the boroughs are as concerned as the GLC about unemployment, and that they will do their utmost to alleviate and overcome its accompanying problems. However, their ability to cope with the needs of the unemployed will be limited by their ability to raise rates (the poorest boroughs are those which contain the most needy), the demands upon their resources for other equally important services, and their boundaries.
If we do not accept the necessity of separate economic development authorities for London and the metropolitan counties, more than 10,000 training places will be lost; many teams of skilled and dedicated training staff will be disbanded; public investment in resources, equipment and premises will be wasted, and several million pounds of investment by the European Social Fund will no longer be available. Most important of these will be the inability of the boroughs to provide training and jobs for those who fall outside the Government's training schemes. I ask the Committee to support this amendment.
Lord Elton: It seems that we all want all the best things that are done now to go on being done in the future. Therefore, I do not need to respond to all the credits which the noble Lord and the noble Baroness have passed out to their particular favourite body. What I need to tell the Committee is that it will be possible for this work to go on.
The amendment seeks to enable it to go on by creating what was, when I sat down this afternoon, a residuary body and is now a joint authority. If the noble Lord, Lord Bruce of Donington, finds any lucanae in what I have to say, it will be attributable in part to the fact of this sudden and unexpected change. It would, in particular, provide these authorities with a power to set up and fund enterprise boards and training boards similar to those currently controlled by the GLC and most of the metropolitan counties, and it would allow them to undertake research to provide a framework for a county-wide programme of economic development.
The Committee knows my views generally, and those of the Government, on joint authorities. I shall not go down that particular course and I am sure the noble Lord does not want me to do so. However, I can tell him that without these authorities the borough and district councils are quite capable of taking over full responsibility for local economic development. The Committee has already heard what I have had to say about the resources that will be available to them, and boroughs and districts can spend the resources released by abolition on such activities if they wish.

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The districts and boroughs already have a wide range of powers to pursue economic development. They include the powers under Section 137 of the Local Government Act 1972 which they can use to provide the sort of assistance to which the amendment specifically refers. Many of the boroughs and districts are spending well below their limit and can therefore increase this expenditure. If your Lordships look at Clause 47(11), you will see that the collective funding for the voluntary sector under the clause will not constrain the use of Section 137 and will create some additional headroom under Section 137 for local economic initiatives.
Apart from Section 137, boroughs and districts have other powers available to them. A large part of local authorities' existing economic programmes involve the provision of serviced industrial sites and factory workshops. These are usually provided under powers contained in the Local Government (Land) Act 1963. Districts designated under the urban programme are also able to use the powers in the Inner Urban Areas Act 1978. These will not be affected by the Bill.
The amendment envisages that the joint authorities would pursue a more strategic development role both through the hoards they would set up and through the proposed research and intelligence gathering activities. But using the resources and powers I have described this is something that districts will be perfectly able to do themselves either by taking over control of the enterprise boards currently operated by the GLC and the metropolitan county councils, or by entering into joint voluntary working arrangements with each other to establish similar bodies.
The noble Lord, Lord Bruce of Donington, spoke admiringly of the enterprise bodies and assured us that they are held in the highest of esteem. They already exist, of course, as, for example, in the Greater London Enterprise Board and the West Midlands Enterprise Board. They are private companies limited by guarantee. As such, their existence will not be affected by the Government's proposals to abolish the GLC and the metropolitan councils. The boards are controlled at present by their parent authorities under the terms and conditions of their articles of association. But there is nothing to stop those being amended to allow the successor authorities to have powers to nominate members and directors to the boards and to make financial contributions just as the metropolitan authorities do now. In fact, in a number of instances, I gather that they have already done so. The districts in the West Midlands and the districts in West Yorkshire have agreed to continue support to these enterprise boards. So arrangements are already in hand; and if, as the noble Lord tells us, these bodies are held in high esteem, they will continue.
Where the training boards are in-house departments of the councils to be abolished, as in the case of the Greater London Training Board, their operations will cease. But the district or borough will have power and the extra resources to take over those schemes and to set up new ones. Some of the training boards are independent companies, as in Merseyside. This can continue with the support of the districts, as I have said.
There is more that I could read out, but the point I wish to make is a simple one. The resources and the
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powers are available to the districts to continue this work. The work is widely recognised. It varies in quality. The noble Lord, Lord Bruce of Donington, drew attention to the variations in quality. These variations will be reflected in variations of enthusiasm among the successor bodies as to whether or not to continue the work. But where the work is without doubt constructive and useful, there is the power, and I do not doubt that there will be the will, for it to continue.
Lord Bruce of Donington: I am grateful to the noble Lord for his reply. Since the Government office was aware, at the latest, by 10 a.m. today of the existence and text of the manuscript amendment I am at a loss to understand why it took until the afternoon to reach the noble Lord.
Lord Elton: I can tell the noble Lord that I have a great deal of work to do at the moment, most of it arising from his colleagues on the Benches opposite. It is normal to decide what one is going to do on the Marshalled List several days ahead, particularly when the change that the noble Lord adduced as his reason for tabling a manuscript amendment had been made perfectly clear last week.
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: Perhaps my noble friend will allow me to intervene on that point. Apart from it being a problem for the Minister, is it not also a problem for noble Lords who are trying to follow this Bill if a long and important amendment of this nature is suddenly put down by way of a manuscript amendment? No doubt it is in order, but it is surely a highly inconvenient practice and somewhat unfair to your Lordships.
Lord Bruce of Donington: Yes, I have already apologised to your Lordships about this matter and, if necessary, I shall repeat it. Unlike some, I am always prepared to admit when I make a mistake, and once again I am very sorry for it.
I am very glad that the noble Lord has replied. Unfortunately, he has not met the points that I wanted him to cover. He pointed out—and this is undoubtedly true—that a number of district and borough authorities have underspent their 2p rate yield under Section 137 of the Local Government Act. There are many others, particularly in the more distressed areas, which are already up to the hilt of their 2p rate expenditure on matters of this kind.
I had rather hoped that the noble Lord would repeat the indication that was given by his right honourable friend in another place on 5th October last, when he certainly paid a rather more fulsome tribute to the work of these enterprise boards than the rather grudging remarks that fell from the lips of the noble Lord. The noble Lord's right honourable friend said:
"Of course as the White Paper made clear, there might be a case for increasing the 2p limit to Section 137 expenditure if present funds prove inadequate, and we will be prepared to consider doing so if circumstances warrant such action".
The noble Lord did not confirm that indication and so I think that I am entitled to ask him whether, since that time, there has been a change of mind.
Moreover, I also draw the noble Lord's attention to the rather more complimentary remarks that fell from

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the lips of his noble friend Lord Bellwin when we were considering the interim provisions Bill. The noble Lord, Lord Bellwin, said:
"We are not in the business of halting such useful work as can be, and frequently is, carried out by, for example, the Greater London Enterprise Board and the enterprise boards set up in some of the other metropolitan counties. We accept that enterprise boards can help to forge a vital partnership between the public and private sectors".
I must say that I expected the noble Lord to respond in rather more positive and dynamic terms than to announce that the districts had the power to undertake these functions, that in some cases they had the funds, and that really all that was required was the will. The noble Lord rather understates the position. However, I am grateful to him for his reply. I am sure he appreciates that this is a matter to which we shall return at a later stage.
Baroness Fisher of Rednal: I should like to ask whether, as regards Section 137. we are to be led to understand that the money which will go to economic development in the future will be part of the millions that were given this afternoon as voluntary body money. Will the same money be used for both purposes? Under the present plans a local authority in a non-metropolitan area will have access to a 4p rate yield under Section 137: 2p of its own resources and 2p from the county council. That will be 4p in the shire county areas that the districts can have. Does this not mean that the metropolitan authorities are back again with just 2p?—those being in very deprived areas where I believe the noble Lord the Minister himself has said that the work done by the enterprise boards and the economic development committees have really made an impact upon job regeneration. If what I said about the county councils and the districts which are in their county is correct, is it not unfair that they should have the benefit of 4p and does not this create a two-tier of local government finance? If I am wrong I shall be glad to hear the opinion of the noble Lord.
The other point I should like to raise is that mention of thousands of pounds has been bandied around in debates. I checked up with the Coventry local authority when someone said that the authority had millions of pounds in their area under Section 137. I have had authentic information from them. The true figure for Coventry is approximately £800,000; so I think it is important that when figures are bandied about by the Government they are really checked upon by the local authorities when their names are used.
10.45 p.m.
Baroness Lockwood: May I add one further question to those posed by my noble friend? What will happen to those schemes which have been partly funded by the European social fund and partly funded by the metropolitan counties? Will the successor bodies take over the responsibility for continuing those schemes?
Lord Elton: Your Lordships have tried me. The answer to one of the questions which has been raised—I think it was the last one—is yes. The answer to the point raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Lockwood, is yes. The metropolitan districts have a 2p rate to spend,
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as your Lordships have suggested. The Section 137 money is supported by the transitional money but only if it is spent on bodies capable of being aided under the Local Government (Social Needs) Act. The noble Baroness looks suitably pensive about that. I think she will see what I mean when she looks at Clause 47 again tomorrow. The noble Lord, Lord Bruce of Donington, was not quite quick enough withdrawing his amendment to prevent my replying to his barbed remarks. I did not see my business here at the Box to cry out the excellent work of either the enterprise boards, where it is excellent, or the training boards, where it is excellent. My job was to reassure your Lordships that where it was excellent it could continue. That was the burden of what I said, and I said it briefly because I believe at this hour everybody wishes me to be brief.
It is perfectly true that my right honourable friend said that we would consider raising the 2p limit and we are still prepared to consider the circumstances of boroughs in difficulty but not until the Widdicombe Committee has reported on the wider question of Section 137; but the boroughs and districts have other powers not caught within the limits and therefore the reassurance that I gave earlier stands.
Baroness Fisher of Rednal: Will the noble Lord write to me on the point that I raised regarding 4p that goes to the districts that are in county areas under the two-tier system? Can he explain that in a letter to me?
Lord Elton: I shall be glad to do so, and I am glad of the opportunity of the respite to consider it because I have not replied to that aspect, but I shall do so. Following the conventions of the House, a copy will be put in the Library.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Baroness Birk Baroness Birk moved Amendment No. 136ZC:
After Clause 47 insert the following new clause:
("Report on equal opportunities for women.
. Before the abolition date the Secretary of State shall lay before both Houses of Parliament a report on the effects of the provisions of this Act on equal opportunities for women.)"
The noble Baroness said: At this time of night, I shall deal very briefly with this amendment. Its purpose is to draw attention to the effect that the abolition will possibly have on opportunities for women and women's work. In London the bulk of the grant funds, nearly 60 per cent., go to child care projects. I know that we hear very much more of the funny, offbeat, rather eccentric activities that sometimes take place. This is at the loss and neglect of the very worthwhile activities, very important ones, that are financed by the GLC and also the mets in their areas. One of the most important of those functions which have been undertaken by the GLC has been these child-care centres. Not only are they somewhere where children are well looked after and can develop, but they also enable the mothers to go out to work and know that the children are properly cared for.
In London, where 30 per cent. of women with children under five and more than 50 per cent. with children over five go out to work—that was in the 1981 census—a DHSS survey of three inner London boroughs in 1979 found that more than 90 per cent. of

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mothers wanted, or needed, day care for their three to four-year olds and more than 70 per cent. for two-year olds. Nineteen per cent. of families with children in the GLC area are single-parent households, yet on average there were only 25 full-time nursery places per thousand children who were under five in London in 1981, and extremely limited after-school and school-holiday provision.
By the end of the 1985 the GLC had grant-aided over 200 voluntary organisations, which will provide 4,200 child-care places for under-fives and over 600 jobs at an annual cost of over £5 million, and 47 of these projects provide after-school, latch-key, and school holiday care for children. The women's work has been, as it always is, a significant factor in the voluntary sector for many years, and the types of project which have been funded include in addition to those for children, pensioners' groups, information and resource centres, women's centres, health and counselling groups, welfare and legal rights advice projects, ethnic minority women's projects, transport services for women, and groups providing specialised expertise, for example, in architecture or computers.
Many of these projects should command wide support. For instance, an interesting one—and this ties up rather with what the noble Countess, Lady Mar, said on the last amendment on the provision of training projects—was in 1983–84, when the Greater London Training Board funded approximately 250 places for adult women to train for jobs such as computing and electronics, the construction trade, and motor mechanics—the sort of jobs for which otherwise there may not be opportunities for women to train. Almost all these courses have child care facilities or allowances to enable women with children to participate.
There is anxiety to know who will pick this up. It is not just the financial tab for this work, but it is also the opportunities for women to do this work and the child care centres which are important. It is not going to be reasonable or optimistic to believe or hope that the boroughs or district councils are going to be able to replace what has been done on a county-wide basis. It is for those reasons that I move this probing amendment. Obviously I am not going to press the amendment, but I should like to hear what the Minister has to say about it. I beg to move.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes: Before the Minister replies on this point, I should like to draw to his attention that the Conservative group on the women's committee at County Hall has consistently opposed and voted against all those particular child care facilities that the noble Baroness has just referred to. It has been a strongly political issue. The reason is that the Conservative group believes that these matters should come under the local borough. It is the local borough social services department which rightfully funds child-care facilities, not the Greater London Council. Therefore I consider that after abolition, when the additional funds are left with the local boroughs—if it is true that boroughs such as Lambeth, Islington and Southwark have applied for such vast quantities for child care facilities—they will be keen and will surely carry them on afterwards, particularly
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as they will be getting this additional funding through the equalisation levy.
Baroness Birk: My I ask the noble Baroness, since she seems to be very involved in this: are the boroughs queueing up and fighting with the GLC because they, want to provide these child care centres which the GLC insists on doing? Is there that sort of situation?
Baroness Gardner of Parkes: I mentioned earlier in the debate that there was this agreement, which was strongly opposed by the Conservative Party, between the Labour boroughs and the GLC whereby the statement was made, "If you wish to avoid rate capping, push it all up here to County Hall and we will fund it and you will not rise above the rate-capped level". This has always been a deliberate and clearly agreed policy between the Labour boroughs, I may add. Whenever I spoke about that myself in the women's committee I was told that I should see that the Conservative boroughs applied for something. I regularly did and they never had the same success in getting anything.
Baroness Lockwood: I should like to support this amendment. When the Sex Discrimination Act was passed 10 years ago it was preceded by a White Paper which made it quite clear that in order to eliminate sex discrimination it would be necessary for a wide range of administrative and voluntary activity to take place to assist the proposed Equal Opportunities Commission in eliminating sex discrimination and promoting equality of opportunity between the two sexes.
There is no doubt that the work of the GLC and the metropolitan counties has greatly assisted the work of the Equal Opportunities Commission. The activities of the metropolitan counties and the GLC have fallen under two broad headings. The first is that of an equal opportunity employer. All the metropolitan counties as well as the GLC claim to be equal opportunities employers monitoring the progress that has been made towards the development of equal opportunities in their staffing arrangements; and, secondly, providing training and other facilities for women in spheres outside the immediate employment of the authority. Often that has taken the form of assisting voluntary organisations to undertake certain projects.
Thirdly, the metropolitan authorities have in this sphere been responsible for putting forward projects which have received EC funding which has brought additional funds into the country for the training of women in non-traditional areas. I know in my own authority in West Yorkshire there is within the engineering department a scheme for women technician trainees which is partly funded by the EC and by the metropolitan county. Likewise, in Tyne and Wear there is a scheme for training women in non-traditional areas which is funded half by the EC and half by the metropolitan county. In response to my question in the last discussion the Minister indicated that the successor bodies would be able to take over the EC funding, but one wonders who the successor bodies will be in schemes of this kind and whether the schemes will disappear.

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11 p.m.
Additionally, there is another area for which, again, my own county authority has been responsible; and that is making a substantial grant to Bradford University to establish a centre for research on women. It will be the very first research centre of this kind in the United Kingdom. There are centres in other countries but this will be the first in the United Kingdom which will be adding to the work that is done in most of the universities where they now have a women's studies course either at degree level or at post-degree level.
There is a lot of work that has been done in this whole area by the metropolitan counties and the GLC and I think it would be helpful if we could have a report presented to Parliament which would indicate whether this work was going to continue or what gaps there might be; and, if there are to be gaps, if the work cannot continue in all these spheres, whether or not some other authority could be set up to take over.
Baroness Ewart-Biggs: May I for one second support this amendment by giving just one other example in which I have myself been involved and which I think absolutely supports what my noble friend has been saying? This, again, is a training and education centre for women, this time in Haringey. Its present funding is made up of only 10 per cent. from the borough of Haringey, 40 per cent. from the GLC and 50 per cent. from the EC. As my noble friend Lady Lockwood has said, it is very difficult to understand how that funding, of which the borough is giving only 10 per cent. will be brought up to 50 per cent. quickly enough to guarantee getting the EC funding from the social fund.
To prove that this could make a great difference to equal opportunities in Haringey, of 1,266 students doing technical courses at a local college only seven were women. The unemployment rate for women in Haringey is four times greater than it is for men. The Haringey Women's Training Centre provides 86 per cent. of all training places for women in the borough of Haringey. I just wanted to add that one specific example which I think without any doubt proves that the GLC in this case has contributed a great deal to equal opportunities for women in Haringey.
Lord Elton: The noble Baroness has advanced this as a probing amendment and she wishes to establish, I think, the light in which equal opportunities matters are seen and will proceed. I should start by putting the Government's credentials on the table and reminding your Lordships that we have continued to support the Equal Opportunities Commission and to build where necessary on the legislative framework of the Sex Discrimination Act and the Equal Pay Act. We supported the code of practice on employment produced by the EOC which came into force on 29th April. My right honourable friend the Secretary of State for employment has designated training bodies under Section 47 of the Sex Discrimination Act to run special courses for women wishing to return to work or to enter non-traditional occupations. There are now over 100 designated bodies and we have supported the
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Women Into Science and Engineering campaign run by the EOC and the Engineering Council.
The Civil Service also sets an example as an equal opportunities employer, and in February 1984 a programme of action on equal opportunities for women was circulated to departments for implementation. I am grateful for the opportunity of that plug. I make no apology for it, in part because noble Lords opposite use similar opportunities in a similar way and because it is relevant to what we are saying. It does show that the Government's heart is in the right place on this matter.
The debate today has been centred on collective grant-giving schemes. Perhaps I may spare a moment, however, to look directly at the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Lockwood. As I understand it, boroughs and districts can already come together collectively under Section 101 of the Local Government Act 1972 for the purposes which she describes. Therefore they are not inhibited in that way of proceeding by this Bill. If they proceed within the Bill, the successor bodies for the multi-borough activities will be the Clause 47 arrangements. If they are single-borough activities, they will be the boroughs or the districts. We have covered that ground already, and I am sure the noble Baroness is familiar with it.
In a case where the contribution made by a borough or a district is relatively small and that by the upper-tier authority is relatively large, then we have the arrangements I have already described, which include a recognition in the GREs, and so on, for the change of responsibility. So there is the opportunity for the transfer of funds without pain—and it will not be with pain, because the money spent by the upper-tier authority, as I have already explained, is money they have taken from the boroughs or the districts for the purpose and will no longer be taking from the boroughs or the districts. So the choice is with the boroughs or the districts whether to go on making that expenditure. The resource will be there already in the rate set in the previous year. It will not be necessary to increase the rate in order to create the resources, because the rate was set to provide for the precept and it is simply a question of maintaining the rate at the same level and using the money direct.
So there is no difficulty, and the step I have referred to, if it occurs, is one that derives from the inclination of the funding body and not from an administrative difficulty. We have proposed the transitional arrangements, which we have today increased and which your Lordships have welcomed, in order to get over that difficulty; so I hope the difficulties will be minimal. But my noble friend Lady Gardner lifted the lid off a fascinating situation, which shows how the proportionality of these things can be skewed by political arrangements. Nonetheless, what I said earlier holds good and the resources are there if it is intended to continue this work.
What I have said on this and on an earlier amendment and what I shall say on future amendments relates to all these activities. It is open to the successor bodies to support them if they are beneficial. They do have the resources; they will have the resources; they will in fact have extra resources from Government transitional aid during the

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transitional period. So the acid test is whether what is going on now is something which the bodies which will in future be responsible for funding it want to go on. That is a question for each of them, but, where activities cross the boundaries of the boroughs, there will only be the one place at which it will be necessary to lobby under Clause 47.
Baroness Birk: I should like to thank the Minister for that very full reply. I was pleased to hear the way the Government's intentions were expressed so far as equal opportunities are concerned. I only wish I felt as optimistic and hopeful as the Minister evidently does about the resources and where they are going to come from. But at this time of night, I will beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Baroness Birk Baroness Birk moved Amendment No. 136ZD:
After Clause 47, insert the following new clause
("Report on ethnic minorities. Before the abolition date the Secretary of State shall lay before both Houses of Parliament a report on the effects of the provisions of this Act on ethnic minority opportunities and facilities.")
The noble Baroness said: This is a similar type of amendent, though it deals with ethnic minorities. In recent years the GLC and the metropolitan counties have undertaken innovative programmes to combat racial disadvantage and encourage equal opportunities in the great conurbations. London and each of the metropolitan counties are very different from one another and have pursued programmes suited to their individual problems in an attempt to deal in the most appropriate way with very different needs in their own areas.
In the West Midlands, for example, where there are large communities of Asian and Afro-Caribbean people in the urban centre, aid programmes have concentrated on specific grants to small, often local, groups. In Greater Manchester, with its 10 districts and more distributed ethnic minority populations, aid is limited to core funding of county-wide bodies, with a particular concentration on training. In South Yorkshire a significant aid programme provides positive assistance for the county's more than 40,000 unemployed young people. In London since 1981 voluntary and community-based organisations have, through the GLC's grant-aid programme, benefited to the level of £5 million.
If the current level of funding is not maintained, a number of essential services and projects will be lost which are London-wide or county-wide. The fact that the boroughs and districts do not fund many of the ethnic minority organisations is largely due to the area-wide nature of many of these bodies which do not serve the immediate community, but have an extensive and far-reaching network of activities, and a wide variety of groups benefit from the grant-aid programme. In the same way that the Minister attempted to give some reassurance on the question of opportunities for women, I hope that he will give us assurances that an adequate and proper level of funding to match that of the GLC's and the metropolitan counties' level will continue, and that there will be proper consultation with the ethnic minority communities themselves. I beg to move.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My noble friend Lord Pitt expressed his fears this afternoon, in our first debate, at the deleterious effect which this clause could have on the provision of funds for the work of the ethnic minorities and their organisations. I want simply to emphasise that, and to add one further word.
I think that the answer to the noble Lord. Lord Boyd-Carpenter, and, indeed, to the point which was repeated by the noble Lord the Minister, as to whether the present opportunity for funding of such bodies is to be open to increase and decrease, was in fact contained in subsection (6) of the first amendment which we discussed this afternoon, Amendment No. 135ZB. The subsection states:
"Each authority shall annually review the social needs of the inhabitants of its area".
Why do I say that? It is because, following on the speech of my noble friend, Lord Pitt, we are worried, and people in these areas are worried, that once the overall authority goes, once there is one body responsible for assisting the ethnic minorities, the separate boroughs, particularly those which do not have any substantial number of ethnic minorities within them, may very well not be prepared to contribute, as is done now, to a general fund, and that, in this way, it may very well be that the amount of funding diminishes under the new arrangements.
Beyond that, even if the funding and the equalisation fund keep up the present level of funding, the administration and application of that fund could surely be done much better by a single body; but we have dismissed that. The only alternative to that is surely to have the social information available and that is what this amendment proposes: that there should be a report on the effects of this Bill on ethnic minority opportunities and facilities. Only with that information will it be possible to bring pressure to hear for the work that we all know should be done to be accomplished.
11.15 p.m.
In conclusion, I do not think any of us would minimise the importance of this work, but, if we do, let us listen to the words of one of the most respected Members of our own House, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Scarman, who wrote in November 1981:
"The evidence which i have received"—
reporting on the Brixton disorders—
"leaves no doubt in my mind that racial disadvantage is a fact of current British life. It was a significant factor in the causation of the Brixton disorders. Urgent action is needed if it is not to become an endemic, ineradicable disease threatening the very fabric of our society."
He finished by recommending that there should be,
"a well co-ordinated and directed programme for combating the problem of racial disadvantage."
The only way of getting and sustaining such a programme is to have the information there regularly, provided by the Government.
Viscount Buckmaster: I rise very briefly to support this amendment, which is on almost identical lines to the one which I did not move. I have already spoken to this earlier on, when speaking to the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Hayter. Perhaps I may remind your Lordships very briefly that this is a wide-ranging

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problem. There are something like 2½ million people of ethnic minorities in Great Britain now. There are just about 1 million in London, representing 18 per cent. of the population. Four out of six children in our ILEA schools are now from the ethnic minorities, and no less than 14.7 different languages are spoken in our London schools.
One of the problems is the very wide difference in the proportions of ethnic minorities in the different London boroughs. For example, Brent has the highest proportion of all at 33.5 per cent., Haringey has 28 per cent. Ealing has 25 per cent.—but, as I said earlier, Ealing is a non-caring borough, which creates a difficult problem—and then there are other boroughs like Barking and Bromley with only 3 or 5 per cent. So this is a difficult problem and I fully agree with all speakers that we must have a wide-ranging report to deal particularly with discrimination in the spheres of employment, housing and so on. I give this amendment my wholehearted support.
Lord Birkett: It might be worth taking just a moment to add the arts dimension to this debate. We have debated the arts so often that it would be foolish to go on at length about them, but over the last four years what the GLC has done for ethnic minority arts is something that is universally admired—at any rate, I hope so. Certainly, it has put an enormous amount of heart into a great number of ethnic minority artists, and that represents a range of arts that covers all the performance arts and most of the fine arts and crafts as well. It has put heart into those artists and apart from that—and this is often forgotten—it has given London an enormously exciting range of arts from a very exciting and talented bunch of people.
If, as I keep gloomily predicting, there will not be quite enough money to replace all the activities of the GLC and the metropolitan counties in the arts field afterwards, I can only beg the Government, and through them the Arts Council and the arts associations, to make absolutely sure that, if cuts happen, nothing too damaging happens to this section of our society, because it is one of the successes of recent years and it would be tragic to reverse it.
Lord Elton: It does not need a great deployment of debating skill or experience of social relations to convince the Government that the ethnic minorities are an important part of our communities and that the work of the commission is of great importance.
As to policy, the Government are firmly committed to good race relations. Nowhere is the implementation of policies to promote equal opportunities more important than in the field of employment. The Government have therefore given firm support to the code of practice produced by the Commission for Racial Equality. This was approved by the Secretary of State for Employment and came into force on 1st April last year.
We reviewed our own policies and procedures as employers in the report published by the Management and Personnel Office in December 1983, and we are again leading by example in arranging for the ethnic monitoring of the Civil Service to ensure that the Civil Service is, in practice, an equal opportunity employer.
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Moreover, we have encouraged local authorities to adopt and implement equal opportunities and practices, with particular reference to ethnic minorities. Last year, Ministers in the Home Office and the Department of the Environment jointly chaired a well-attended conference of local authorities precisely for that purpose. In my own department's administration of Section 11 grant, we require local authorities which seek grant aid to assist them in matching their employment policy to the special needs of minority communities to consult those communities before they make their application to us for such aid. Last year, nearly £80 million in grant aid was paid out in that way.
I am glad to report that many boroughs and districts are already doing a great deal to help and support ethnic minority communities in their areas. All the boroughs and districts have general powers which can be applied for the benefit of ethnic minorities. There is nothing unique about the GLC and the metropolitan councils in that respect.
The Government are supporting and helping local authorities to assist ethnic minority communities. Under the urban programme, more than £30 million was given in the last financial year to more than 1,000 projects of special benefit to ethnic minority groups. Since 1981 there has been a five-fold increase in the urban programme resources being devoted to such projects.
Urban programme grants have been used to support training centres, workshops and co-operatives; language classes and summer schools; bookshops and libraries; day nurseries and pre-school groups; hostels and housing advice centres: youth clubs and community centres, and many other kinds of projects either catering particularly for ethnic minority groups or taking special account of their needs. All these different kinds of projects have been put forward by the boroughs and districts, and have been financially supported by the boroughs and districts. The GLC and metropolitan authorities have no monopoly of support for the ethnic minorities.
Grants are also available under Section 11 of the Local Government Act 1966 to authorities taking on extra staff, in connection with any of their functions, to meet the special needs of ethnic minority groups. Last year nearly £80 million of grant was taken up in this way, as I said a moment ago. Before grant is paid under Section 11, local authorities are expected to consult with the local communities about the proposals that they put forward. That answers the point which one of your Lordships made a minute ago.
There are provisions in the Bill itself which will work to the benefit of ethnic minority groups. First, the new joint authorities will have a specific duty, under Section 71 of the Race Relations Act 1976, to make appropriate arrangements to eliminate racial discrimination in carrying out their functions. Many ethnic minority groups are helped by local authority grants to the voluntary sector. This brings me back—and I do not want to sound like a gramophone record—to the comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Birkett, and others. If the proposal is good and if it is needed, and if the proposal is perceived as being good and needed, the resources are there under the mechanisms which I

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have described. They are supported by the additional transitional aid I have also described, and they are protected from the adverse effects on the rate control mechanisms I have described.
Your Lordships, in saying that it is admirable and necessary, are saying in fact that it is more likely to go on than if it were not. The noble Baroness, Lady Birk, has focused on me suddenly as if to ask what I meant by that. What I mean by that is that the future of any of these activities depends now, as it always has done, on its excellence. It has never been the case that everything is going to go on for ever. There is always change in what is done in the voluntary sector. That will continue to be the case but the pressures will still he the same and the resources will be the same. The noble Baroness can therefore be reassured.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: Before the noble Lord sits down, may I put what he has said in context with this long list? Is he aware that collectively—that is, through the present joint funding scheme—the London boroughs' annual grant-in-aid in the work of promoting racial equality has totalled just 1 per cent. of their grants-in-aid to the whole voluntary sector?
Lord Elton: The noble Lord does not put the other half of the equation. There is the amount of money which the GLC puts into these things and which will now become available in the absence of a precept, through the local authorities.
Lord Pitt of Hampstead: I am sorry, but we cannot go on like this. This is the problem. Before the GLC started making grants to the ethnic minorities they were getting none. It is no use saying that, having abolished the GLC, the grants will be available through the boroughs. If the boroughs will not do so, the grants will not be available. I had hoped that the Minister would say how the Government will make sure—perhaps they cannot make sure—or what they will do to encourage the boroughs to ensure that grants are available. But the Minister has at no stage said that. He merely says that the GLC grants will be available through the boroughs.
That does not help. I had hoped the Minister would understand the point that we are seeking to make. I spent several years as deputy chairman of the Community Relations Commission setting up the various CRCs. The boroughs varied in their attitude. Some boroughs refused to make any contribution. Other boroughs were very generous. That is the situation. What has happened in the past four years is that the GLC has taken over and, through the precept, using its power, has made grants to these organisations which have helped. The point is that now the GLC is being abolished it is feared that these grants will no longer be available. Theoretically of course it is the same money but since the experience is that the boroughs themselves will not do it—that is understandable as they do not all have large numbers of ethnic minority groups in their boroughs—this London-wide contribution which has been given so far may not be available. I am surprised that the Government are making such heavy weather of it.
All we are asking is that the Government should say how, now that the GLC will no longer exist, these
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grants will become available to ethnic minority groups so that the work can continue. I do not think it is so difficult for the Government to say that they will monitor the situation and will report regularly to Parliament on how it is done. I cannot understand why there is all this song and dance about something which, as I see it at any rate, is quite straightforward and simple.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes: Is it not a fact that the urban aid programme has always helped the ethnic minorities quite a lot? Perhaps the Minister could tell us whether, with these additional moneys to be given, some similar system might operate so that, again, there might be a possibility for funding. It is a great encouragement to boroughs to put in funds if they feel they are going to get quite a slice of Government funds to assist them. That has been the case with the ethnic minorities in urban aid programmes in the past.
11.30 p.m.
Lord Elton: The danger of sitting—and sometimes standing—behind this Box from half-past two in the afternoon until half-past eleven at night is that one sometimes forgets who has heard what one has said. I do not wish to weary your Lordships by repeating too much of what I have said before but I think that the noble Baroness recognises that I must say something to the noble Lord, Lord Pitt.
The noble Lord assumes that the increase in ethnic minority funding that has taken place over the past four years has taken place solely as the result of the nature of the GLC and has nothing to do with the passage of time and the change of climate of general opinion. I would remind him that the GLC is elected by the electors of the boroughs, who elect the councillors of the boroughs whom he now regards with such anxiety. They are the same people electing representatives to spend their money. They are to spend their money on the same projects. The noble Lord is afraid that because they are elected to the boroughs rather than to the GLC they will not see any merit in what the GLC has been doing for the past four years and that they will turn off the tap at source. There is no psephological justification for that that I can see. I can see no logic in it at all.
I do understand the anxiety to which he refers. I have referred to this very frequently, both before and after dinner. At present the money which the GLC spends on voluntary organisations, including the ones to which the noble Lord, Lord Pitt, refers with such passion and conviction, is taken from the boroughs in precept. The boroughs get the money from their ratepayers. The ratepayers vote for the GLC just as they vote for the boroughs, so they can object to the precept just as they can object to the rate. The noble Lord is afraid that, because they can object to only one set of elected people, in some way the interests of the ethnic minorities will be reduced.
That brings me to the fears of the noble Viscount, Lord Buckmaster. That is why we have in Clause 47 a scheme for a simple majority to establish a collective scheme and for a qualified majority to require even the reluctant boroughs—I think he described them as the uncaring boroughs; I would not use that term myself, but I use it only as a label that he will understand

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because he used it—who do not wish to take part in a scheme to do so by law.
I cannot really say more to the noble Lord, Lord Pitt, but through him, to those whose interests he speaks for tonight. I would say that the Government's record on race relations in the particular aspect which I have recited is a not unimpressive one. We do regard good community relations as of the essence in the conurbations. There is already the commission to oversee and report on how these things are conducted. What I cannot do, but what the noble Lord would like me to do, is to say that the Government should say that this and this and this and this shall be done and you will pay for it whether you like to or not. That is not democracy. I do think that the fears of the noble Lord are exaggerated.
Lord Pitt of Hampstead: I am saying that the Government should monitor the situation and be prepared to come to Parliament and make recommendations if the situation deteriorates. It is as simple as that.
Baroness Birk: The Minister has given a full answer but, like my noble friend Lord Pitt, I am not satisfied. He is taking so much for granted. First, he is assuming that the boroughs and districts will all carry out what is being carried out on a county-wide area basis. The fear is that even if they are willing to do it and have the resources to do it, it cannot be done properly and efficiently for the people unless it is done on a much wider area.
If this Bill is to make its ghastly progress through the Chamber, we shall have to wait and see how this works out. I should like to feel that this will work out well because then it will be better for the people concerned. However, I certainly feel that the ethnic minorities will suffer from the passage of this Bill. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendment No. 136ZE had been withdrawn from the Marshalled List.]
Clause 48 [Functions of staff commission.]
Lord Winstanley Lord Winstanley moved Amendment No. 136A:
Page 31, line 10, at end insert—
("; and
(d) to advise the Secretary of State on the introduction of a scheme to permit and encourage employees of any relevant authority to retire early from their present employment, such a scheme to include provision for enhanced pension benefits and other compensation to be funded by the appropriate residuary body.")
The noble Lord said: With Amendment No. 136A, which I beg to move, we come now to a whole series of amendments which seek to provide greater protection for staff than is now explicitly given in the Bill. This is something which I am sure many noble Lords in all parts of the Committee would wish to do. However, whether at this hour we can do justice to a matter of such importance as the protection of staff rights and interests, frankly I very much doubt. Indeed, I go on to say that if we appear to suggest that we are doing justice to this important subject at this time, we will be in grave danger of aggravating some of
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the anxieties and fears from which members of staff in the relevant authorities suffer.
However, I am quite sure that, even at this late hour, these amendments can serve a very useful purpose because they can be used as probing amendments, so that we can discover more clearly the Government's intentions with regard to some of these matters. Then we shall better be able to decide what further course to take at later stages of the Bill.
This particular amendment is a comparatively minor one compared with some of the other staff-related amendments which follow later. It merely seeks to add to the functions of the staff commission functions which are set out in Clause 48(2)(a)(b) and (c). We propose to add another one, in paragraph (d), which is to provide for schemes for early retirement on a satisfactory basis. I think that the provision of schemes for early retirement on satisfactory terms and conditions would be advantageous not only to the staff, who are in many cases very anxious about these matters, but also, frankly, to the Government themselves. I take the view that in the end the Government will find that it will prove cheaper to offer someone voluntary early retirement than to compel someone else to leave—and that would be the consequence of not providing adequately for early retirement.
Let me look very briefly at what I understand is the present position with regard to this matter, in the relevant authorities. If my understanding is in any way incorrect, I have no doubt that the noble Lord will correct me. My impression is that under the current regulations an employee may, by agreement with his employing authority, retire after the age of 50, drawing such superannuation benefits as he is entitled to. In such a case no cost falls on the employing authority, as the employee's benefits are paid from the superannuation fund. However, the employer has the discretion to award up to 10 years' additional service in calculating superannuation benefits. In such a case the additional cost is borne by the employer.
In practice different employers exercise their discretionary rights in different ways. Thus, similar employees in different authorities may or may not be permitted to take early retirement and may or may not be awarded a number of additional years' service for the purpose of calculating superannuation benefits. I should like to see an employee given the right to leave with the maximum added service, the additional costs being paid by the residuary body.
Let us for a moment think of the people we are considering. It seems that many of those who feel quite anxious about this early retirement question are people who can claim to have served both Labour and Conservative administrations to the very best of their abilities. Some of these members of staff in the relevant authorities have reason to feel aggrieved since, a decade ago, if they were not compulsorily transferred, they were actively encouraged to move to the county councils from the very authorities which will now take over their work. They were encouraged to move by a Conservative Government. Indeed, in the West Midlands, which has so often been referred to in the Committee this evening, there was a Conservative administration which, in the late

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'seventies, offered county staff a no-redundancy agreement which led to the abandonment of a local redundancy compensation scheme.
The absence of such a scheme is one of the problems facing staff. This is only one of the many matters about which staff in the relevant authorities are anxious. It is my belief that the Government would wish, in the course of this Bill, to see the various provisions for staff harmonised throughout the different authorities. I hope that we shall find that the Government reply means that it will not be necessary to pursue these matters to the ultimate length at later stages of the Bill. I beg to move.
Lord McCarthy: As the noble Lord, Lord Winstanley, has said, we pass now from the somewhat elevated debates that we have been having so far on the Bill about the constitutional role of the House and the political assumptions behind the Bill to consider the consequences for the staff. We shall be arguing that the Bill, in many respects, contains a number of very serious consequences for the staff which derive from the fact that for almost the first time—although not quite—the Government are departing from established principles for dealing with staff problems in matters of reorganisation that have governed these things almost since the years after the Second World War, for 37 years or so. The Government are fundamentally departing from those principles.
One of the consequences—it is behind the assumptions, I believe, of the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Winstanley—is that the Government accept that this reorganisation is going to produce considerable redundancy. Indeed, in the Bill itself the Government calculate that there will be something like 7,100 redundancies as a result of the Bill. It does not tell us very much about where they will occur or about those who will be affected. But there will be widespread redundancy. What this amendment says is that in order to mitigate the consequences, one of the principles of good industrial relations that has been developed is to facilitate early retirement. It seems to me that the Government might well start off this section of the Bill by accepting the spirit behind the amendment.
The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Minister for the Arts (The Earl of Gowrie): I am very pleased to be able to say that I welcome the spirit and purpose of the amendment put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Winstanley. Indeed, we have gone so far ourselves as to put down an amendment to Clause 57 which provides the powers needed to set up the very kind of scheme which the noble Lord envisaged. I can assure the noble Lord that it is not necessary to place a duty on the staff commission to advise my right honourable friend to bring in a voluntary early retirement scheme. The commission has already told him of the value that it sees in such a scheme.
In the light of this advice and of the representations we have received recently from the West Midlands branch of NALGO, in what, as a result of the very unfortunate silence of that union's national representatives, we must take as the real voice of the metropolitan county council staff, we intend to put forward a scheme. That is why we have proposed the
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amendment to Clause 57. The Committee need have no doubt that we shall use our very best endeavours to get a scheme off the ground with the agreement of those who will have to operate it.
Against that background, I am sure that the noble Lord will understand that the immediate goals of his amendment have already been met by the action of the staff commission and the Government. Moreover, its underlying purpose will be secured if the House agrees to the powers provided for in our amendment. Perhaps, with those assurances, the noble Lord will be prepared to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Winstanley: I am most grateful to the noble Earl for the words that he has spoken. Naturally, I shall want to study them carefully. But it seemed to me that he gave assurances which, on this matter, were wholly satisfactory. Of course I agree that there are many ways of doing the same thing. It may be the case that the Government have found a better way of making this explicit than the way I suggested. I am most grateful, and I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
11.45 p.m.
Lord McCarthy Lord McCarthy moved Amendment No. 136AA:
Page 31, line 11, at end insert—
(" ( ) If either generally or in relation to any successor authority the commission forms the view that the interests of the staff or any class or description of staff or individual members of stall of the Greater London Council or a metropolitan county council are not being adequately safeguarded as regards either recruitment by successor authorities or the arrangements for any transfer of staff to successor authorities, they shall recommend and the Secretary of State shall on receipt of such recommendation designate such staff or category of staff or individual members of staff under section 50 below to such successor authority as recommended by the commission.")
The noble Lord said: The aim of this amendment is to give the staff commission, which is set up under Clause 48, a positive role in safeguarding the interests of the staff in authorities which are to be abolished. What we are suggesting in the amendment is that if the staff commission—the composition of which is a matter for the Government; we do not know the details of the composition of the staff commission—are convinced that a section of the staff affected by the changes implicit in the Bill is:
"not being adequately safeguarded as regards either recruitment by successor authorities or the arrangements for any transfer of staff to successor authorities, they shall recommend and the Secretary of State shall on receipt of such recommendation designate such staff or category of staff or individual members of staff… to such successor authority as recommended by the commission".
In other words, if in this particular area the staff commission considered that the staff concerned were not being adequately safeguarded, they could make recommendations to the Secretary of State, and the Secretary of State, under the terms of this amendment, would have to carry out those recommendations.
I fully accept, and no doubt the noble Minister will say, that this is to give the staff commission responsibilities and functions which staff commissions have not had in the past. It is true that previous staff commissions have had general powers and that they have been advisory to the Secretary of State. However, previous staff commissions in previous reorganisations

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of this size and importance have worked within a context which was much more acceptable to the staff concerned. It is true that the staff commissions have only had general powers. However, the legislation has been accompanied by detailed statutory instruments which protected the staff; which protected the conditions of the staff; and which in effect were designed to ensure that the overwhelming majority of them were transferred to new authorities and were in post before the old authorities were abolished. In fact, they were based upon the Crombie code.
However, in this case the Government have not produced regulations of that kind. On the contrary, as we have said, the Government are suggesting that a significant number of the staff concerned will not be re-absorbed, and they have told us that only a relatively small number will be directly re-engaged, or will be directly transferred, by the Secretary of State. Moreover, they will not specify in any detail who they will be.
Therefore, it is in that context, in the absence of a detailed statutory instrument which protects the interests of the staff, that we are suggesting that the Government should consider giving their own staff commission some direct power in this respect. They would not be giving the staff commission a responsibility in a new area, in an area not envisaged by the Government because of course the Bill itself says that the staff commission should be concerned with the conditions and the safeguarding of the conditions of the staff.
However, under the Bill all that the staff commission can do is make recommendations and react to intitiatives taken by the Secretary of State. There is no guarantee whatever, in the absence of the type of regulations that existed in previous organisations, that in fact the Secretary of State will take any notice. Indeed, the whole direction of the Bill suggests that one of the Government's aims is to produce significant redundancies. In that context we believe that the amendment is justified. I beg to move.
Lord Rochester: I should like to support this amendment and in so doing it may be for the convenience, and even I suspect at this hour the relief of the Committee, if I speak also to Amendment No. 136AD, which covers much the same ground but takes the argument advanced by the noble Lord, Lord McCarthy, a stage further.
Amendment No. 136AD: Clause 50, page 34, line 1, leave out subsection (1) and insert—
(" .—(1) The Secretary of State shall—

(a) by order designate for transfer to an appropriate successor authority all persons who immediately before the abolition date are in the service of the Greater London Council or a metropolitan county council (in this section referred to as the "employing council") not having taken the option of voluntary early retirement or redundancy and who are under a contract of employment which would have continued but for the abolition of that council and who are wholly or mainly engaged in discharging any function which by virtue of any provision made by or under this Act will become a function of a successor authority including a residuary body; and

(b) by regulation ensure that proper arrangements exist for consultation with the employing councils, the successor authorities and the employees of those bodies and in the case of both individual and collective disputes, that appropriate appeal procedures exist.")

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The amendment seeks to require the Secretary of State to designate for transfer to an appropriate successor authority under their existing employment conditions all staff who immediately before the date of abolition are in the service of the GLC or a metropolitan county council and who are wholly or mainly engaged in functions that are to be transferred.
One of the main purposes of the amendment is to ensure that there is equality of treatment as regards the employment conditions of all staff who are transferred to a successor authority, rather than that there are eventually two sets of people working alongside each other, one having preferential treatment over the other. The amendment does not even seek to place a limit on the number of redundancies that, despite what the noble Earl, Lord Gowrie, has just said, there might eventually have to be, but rather aims to ensure that in conformity with past practice they occur only at the final stage if, following reorganisation, a successor authority needs fewer employees.
Paragraph (b) of the amendment aims to remedy other deficiencies in the arrangements now contemplated under the Bill by requiring the Secretary of State to make adequate consultative arrangements and particularly to provide individuals or groups of people who feel that they have been unreasonably or unfairly treated with an appropriate appeals procedure.
In speaking to this amendment there is one group of people about whom I am particularly concerned. In the Bill as it is now framed there is no provision to ensure that training, particularly training of young people, which has not been completed at the date of abolition is continued under a successor authority. Now I know from his record that the noble Earl, Lord Gowrie, is a supporter of such training, and I should therefore like to ask him what assurances he can give us that these people in particular will have continuity of employment.
I do not for a moment suggest that the wording of this amendment cannot be improved. Indeed within it in relation to the amendment which the noble Lord, Lord McCarthy has just moved, and one he may move later, there may well be elements of duplication, even possibly inconsistency. If only for that reason, I do not propose to press it further tonight, but I hope that the noble Earl will find it possible to respond positively to these amendments in a way which will give solid grounds for hope to staff who are now deeply troubled about their future.
Lord McCarthy: Now that the noble Lord, Lord Rochester, has, as it were, moved his own amendment, I would agree and we on our part would agree with everything that he has said about his amendment. They are two alternative ways of doing much the same thing.
Lord Birkett: I am exceedingly grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Rochester, for taking those two at once because I was quite in two minds as to which to speak to. I should like to speak to them for a short time, however, because I control a department of the GLC which actually employs 2,000 people; and they are very worried, indeed in some cases deeply dismayed,

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people at this moment, for the very reason that the noble Lord, Lord McCarthy mentioned, that nobody quite knows what is going to happen. It is true that the famous figure of 7,000 or 7,100 has been mentioned in connection with redundancies, but there is no indication, apart from a slightly vague feeling, that it is about half in London and half in the rest of the country, as to what these jobs are, how many are in London, how many in the various metropolitan counties, and why the redundancies will occur. It suddenly occurred to me that I can put my finger on at least one redundancy but the other 6,999 still remain a puzzle to me.
When I say that I have 2,000 staff in my department who are worried I suspect that there are a great deal more than that if you multiply that across the GLC. However, I am not an expert in the staffing matters of the GLC, though I should be surprised if the worries of my department and my 2,000 were not, by extension, to be seen not only in the rest of the GLC but in the metropolitan counties as well.
My 2,000 are an extraordinarily varied crew. I have mentioned before many of the little specialist teams that I worry for. I shall not elaborate on them again but simply remind your Lordships that I was talking about such teams as teams of dog handlers, special duties men, the entertainments branch, tree pruners, a large and distinguished body of landscape architects, sports grounds attendants and specialist sports grounds' groundsmen—a whole range of dedicated specialist people.
If the parks and the open spaces which they service—I am talking now only about this element of the work of arts and recreation—are devolved to a number of small, large and middling bodies, then the point of a centralised service will be quite lost unless all the authorities to which these services pass will, of their own free will, put them together as a central pool of resources. I wish I could believe that they would. I do not believe that they will, and a great part of those specialist services will be lost unless something is done.
That is not the end of it. A large proportion of the staff in my department—and I am sure in others—are not tiny specialist peripatetic units; they are simply people who do solid work in a solid place. I confessed to the noble Lord, Lord Boyd-Carpenter, the other day that I was indeed the very bureaucrat that he was dreading in the speech he had made a few moments earlier. On reflection, I am not as bureaucratic as all that, because I looked at my department wondering whether I could honestly stand up in front of your Lordships and claim that it was run on an economical basis in terms of the number of service staff and the number of active staff.
I worked it out that 87 per cent. of my staff—that is just over 1,700 of them—are people who do things out on the ground. They staff the Festival Hall; they mow the lawns; they patrol the parks; they are active people. A small number on top of that, some 158, are people who service that activity—for example, the landscape architect I have spoken of. Only 110 out of the whole lot are simply there to look after the others. That is to say, they carry out the administration and manage the finance. And, after all, they must be paid and looked after.
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I think it is fair to say that the administration shape is good. But here are these 2,000 people with no indication at all of what their future is to be. In many cases one feels perfectly logically that if functions are to be transferred to successor bodies—and this is not the moment to argue the case all over again, but we know that the intention of the Government is to pass the parks to those local authorities within whose boundaries they reside, presumably sorting out the famous boundary disputes matter—the logical thing to do is to suggest that in the first instance all the people who worked in those parks and had made them should go to the successor authority.
In the fullness of time they might complain that there were too many, or too few; that they did not like the designations; or that they did not like the shape of it: initially, however, you would think that the humane and sensible thing to do would be to pass them over. No doubt it will be said that that is an imposition and a slightly draconian measure, and one would much rather not make rules upon successor authorities. The passing of those rules in the first place was fairly draconian. That was itself an imposition and I should have thought that it was far from illogical to add to that imposition the imposition that the staffs of bodies being transferred should be initially transferred with them with all the pay and conditions equal. I am no expert in these matters, but I say that it is reasonable—that is to say, it is a matter of common sense—and it is humane, and these two points are uppermost in my mind. I think that is the nature of it and I look to the Government for some comfort in that direction, not for me, but so that I can pass it on to the very many worried people who are in my employ.
12 midnight
The Earl of Gowrie: It is very late, but this is an enormously important issue. I want to put on the record a serious statement of the Government which, even if the nation is not at this moment hanging on my lips, I hope that those worried and concerned people at a later stage will read what I have to say. The fact is that this exercise of abolition where posts and employment are concerned is not an exercise designed to make a large number of people redundant. It is an exercise designed over time to reduce posts which are publicly funded by local government. That I believe is right. But there is a great and sharp distinction between the reduction of posts over time and the making of individuals presently in work redundant. If may use an analogy, we are trying to move on to a four-cylinder fuel-efficient car away from an eight-cylinder fuel-guzzling car, but the transition takes a certain amount of time.
In the Explanatory and Financial Memorandum to the Bill we said that there would be some 7,100 fewer posts in local government in these areas. But the number of redundancies will be far fewer than this, particularly by use of the voluntary—I emphasise that word—early redundancy scheme which we have said we shall introduce under an amendment to Clause 57 and which we had a word or two to say about during the previous amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Winstanley. As to where redundancies will occur, Ministers have said that roughly half the 7,100 reductions in posts will arise in London, the other half

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being spread among the six metropolitan county councils. The main areas have been identified as falling in planning and highways, where there is duplication between the two tiers. The other obvious area is in central administrative services.
Most genuinely operational staff of the kind whom the noble Lord, Lord Birkett, has in his care engaged on functions can expect to be re-employed by successor authorities, but it will be for the successors to recruit them.
I acknowledge to the noble Lord, Lord McCarthy, that this reorganisation differs from its predecessors in a number of ways which necessarily affect the way in which the provision is made for staffing the new structure. In 1965 and 1974 in previous reorganisations each authority had a clear successor. Moreover, these successors were generally larger bodies, covering bigger areas, discharging more functions; in fact, with increasing rather than gradually decreasing staffing needs. This allowed for a different general approach to redistributing staff to where they were needed and for compensating those who were no longer needed. In essence, staff were grouped into the new, larger bodies by means of transfers by statute, the new employers were left to sort out a wholly new set of terms and conditions and the principal lineal successors were left to deal with the few no longer needed.
This approach which is being urged on us would not be practical in this reorganisation, but we expect that the majority of staff—firemen, non-uniformed members of the police, and ILEA teaching and other staffs, for example—will be transferred by order under Clause 50. The staff engaged on the majority of GLC or MCC functions will have to look to the borough and district councils for continued employment on those tasks. Not only are these successors more numerous and smaller than the GLC or MCCs; they already have their own staffs and their own fully-developed terms and conditions. That is why we have said that it must be for them to decide how many staff they need and to recruit them on their terms and conditions but giving, so to say, first refusal to GLC and MCC employees.
Before noble Lords say that this is not fair compared to 1965 and 1974, the Committee should remember a simple fact of contemporary life; that is that the position of employees at large, the position of employees generally, as the noble Lord, Lord McCarthy, knows well, is now protected by a number of statutes passed since 1974. It is no part of this Bill to deprive employees of their rights or their liabilities under statute or under contract. We have been at great pains to mesh our provisions in with these other measures. Indeed, I would point out that much of the wording of these clauses derives from that used in employment protection legislation.
I recognise that behind the complexities of the language of Parliament and the language of statutes which I perforce have to use and which we are using here today there lie the very real interests and anxieties of individuals, the staff affected by the Bill. We do have the interests of these people very much in mind and that is why, at each stage in the development
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and elaboration of these proposals, we have invited unions and employers to discuss with us matters affecting the staff. That is why I so much regret and believe it to be such a pity that most of the relevant unions and employers have not responded to these invitations. Indeed, they have gone further. They have refused to talk to the staff commission, which is the subject of this very set of amendments, and have sought to penalise individuals or union branches who have decided that their interests are best served by sitting round the table to discuss these matters. I am glad to say that some have had the courage and commonsense to meet us and we have kept firmly in our minds that we should prevent undue difficulties for staff within the inevitable constraints which I have described.
The noble Lord, Lord Rochester, mentioned the important matter of training. There are of course trainees and training programmes in the GLC and the MCCs. This is very much the kind of area where we would have hoped that the unions and the borough and district councils would already have made plans together to take over these initiatives. The fact that they are not letting anyone, including their prospective employees and union members, discuss future arrangements of this kind is damaging to the interests of those very staff; and I hope that, again, when in the light of a clearer and another day these words are read, second thoughts will be given to that issue.
What I have tried to signal is very simple. This is not an exercise in making people redundant. It is an exercise in gradually reducing certain numbers of posts in local government. Modern employment legislation embraces a great deal of statutory protection for employees; and employees in the public sector are seldom—with the signal exception of Ministers—ever dismissed without generous compensation. I hope the words that I have said will give some comfort to the noble Lord, Lord Birkett, and others; and I do believe that many of the fears are displaced.
Lord McCarthy: I am amazed at the general arguments of the noble Earl. It seems to me that each one he advances contradicts the one before. He says that this is not an exercise designed to make large numbers of workers redundant. There might have been an argument for saying that one could not have accepted one or other of our amendments if indeed it could be admitted that it was an exercise designed to make large numbers of workers redundant. However, if, as the noble Earl said, it is an exercise to shrink the labour force over time, and if the number of the redundancies or the number of the run-down in the labour force, mentioned in the Bill as 7,100, is a greatly exaggerated figure and if the numbers are very small, then this emphasises our case that people could be given a general guarantee. It is only if the Government really intend to dismiss large numbers of people that either of these amendments would be dangerous to them. But if they mean what they say, then certainly there is no reason that I can see why the Government should not accept Amendment No. 136AD which is put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Rochester.
I come to the second argument advanced by the noble Earl. He said it would not be practical to give

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this kind of blanket undertaking. But it is not a blanket undertaking. What does the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Rochester, say? It says that employment in effect should be offered to those who are wholly or mainly engaged in discharging any function which by virtue of any provision made by or under this Act will become a function of a successor authority. In other words, if there are planners, central administrative bodies, if there are personnel officers or chief executives who will be dispensed with and will not be required in the way that the Government suggest when the GLC and the other authorities are disbanded, then they will not be needed to be re-engaged and will not be discharging any function. The people who will be re-engaged and transferred in a civilised way are the people that the boroughs or the quangos in fact require. If the noble Earl is telling me that he is not desiring to make large numbers of people redundant, I say that if he looks very carefully, especially at Amendment No. 136AD, I do not see why he cannot accept it.
But the most astonishing thing he says is that we can avoid all this—I think I heard him say this—because of employment protection legislation passed since 1974. It is true that there was some extension of the unfair dismissal legislation of 1971 passed between 1974 and 1976; and almost all the effectiveness of it, and a great deal besides, has been done away with by successive statutes which the noble Earl has put forward from the other side of the Chamber. Now because of extensions of worker-rights since 1974—after the 1980, 1982 and 1984 legislation—he has the cheek to stand up and tell me that he cannot do decent, honest things because of the legislation put forward by this Government since 1974.
On Question, amendment negatived.
[Amendment No. 136AB not moved.]
Clause 48 agreed to.
Clause 49 [Remuneration of employees]:
12.15 a.m.
The Earl of Gowrie The Earl of Gowrie moved Amendment No. 136AC:
remuneration payable in respect of service before the date on which the order is made or compensation paid or payable before that date.")
The noble Earl said: With this amendment we move into the rather difficult world of Clause 49. This clause is included in the Bill for the same purpose as Section 261 of the 1972 Act, on the wording of which this clause is closely modelled. As some of your Lordships may recall, the Royal Commission chaired by Lord Redcliffe-Maud found that during the run up to the reorganisation of local government in London in 1965 some of the expiring authorities were giving their staff late and unduly large increases in pay and gradings. No doubt they felt they were rewarding their good and faithful servants before they parted company. But such increases are doubly inequitable. They are inequitable between employees giving some undue advantage over others; and they are inequitable in requiring the post-reorganisation employers and their ratepayers to bear either the cost of continuing to pay those inflated salaries or buying out the excess. Anticipating that such increases would be granted by
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expiring authorities in the run up to the 1974 reorganisation, the local authority associations asked for a provision meeting the Royal Commission's concern. This Parliament did, writing Section 261 into the 1972 Act.
As my right honourable friend announced in Parliament on 1st March 1984, the Government consider it right to include in this Bill a measure based on Section 261. This is to preserve equity between employees of all metropolitan authorities including the new authorities, and it is drawn up in terms which will ensure that any late unjustified increases are not carried through into the new structure.
I am sure your Lordships will agree that these objectives are exceptional, but I am sure you will also agree that such a measure should not give rise to cases of employees having to pay back sums received in good faith only to find at a later date that the relevant increase in pay or grading has been declared to be unjustified.
Following discussion in another place we have examined the wording of the clause closely. The possibility of clawback arises before abolition only if my right honourable friend were to issue a direction which had retrospective effect. I assure your Lordships that my right honourable friend would consider doing so only in the most extreme cases. That is where the unjustified payment was so large that the recipients could not in good faith have believed it justified when they received it. I hope that in practice none of the authorities will act so irresponsibly as to necessitate such an undesirable direction from my right honourable friend.
The amendment that we propose addresses the circumstances of increases, identified after the abolition date. It will rule out the possibility of clawback without losing the essential protection that the clause is designed to give successor employers against last minute abuses by the GLC or the MCCs. I commend the amendment to the Committee.
Lord McCarthy: I have no objection to the amendment. My objection is to the clause. But that will be raised when the noble Lord, Lord Irving, moves his opposition to the clause standing part.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
On Question, Whether Clause 49, as amended, shall stand part of the Bill?
Lord Irving of Dartford: I should like to express the anxiety of the unions, particularly NALGO, at this clause. It is felt that the whole of Clause 49 is unnecessary, cumbersome and draconian. It is copied largely from Section 261 of the Local Government Act 1972, as the noble Earl indicated; but in fact the machinery created by Section 261 was never invoked at all. Bearing in mind that the 1974 reorganisation of local government affected far more councils and employees than are affected by the current proposals to abolish the GLC and metropolitan county councils, it seems totally unnecessary to make the complex and onerous provisions of Clause 49 when experience shows that they are superfluous. If the whole 1974 reorganisation could be done without Section 261 of the 1972 Act

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being used even once, surely this current Bill does not need to contain the same provisions. In another place at Committee stage, the Minister, Mr Kenneth Baker, said that Section 261 arose from experience of the London reorganisation of 1965, but did not comment at all on the fact that Section 261 was never invoked.
Furthermore, the clause is most unsatisfactory in that it does not require the advisory body to consult employee representative organisations. It does not require the advisory body to notify affected employees or their representatives of its decisions or evidence. It does not provide any right of appeal for employees against a decision of the Secretary of State. It allows for a decision of the Secretary of State to operate retroactively, which could make an employee have to pay back to the employer some part of his salary received in the past in good faith. The noble Earl expressed a view about this and it is very difficult at this late hour to absorb the implications of everything he said. But for the reasons I have given I oppose the clause.
The Earl of Gowrie: I gave the substantive reasons for including this clause in the Bill in moving the previous Government amendment, and I am sure that the Committee would not wish me to go over that ground again at this hour. But may I remind the Committee that the clause draws very heavily on Section 261 of the 1972 Act. That, in turn, had its origins in comments made by the Royal Commission on Local Government. That commission identified the granting of late, unduly large pay increases by expiring authorities as unfair. It was unfair on the staff who were not so lucky and it was unfair on the ratepayers of the successor authority who had to pick up the bill.
Clause 49 is therefore intended to provide for a means of holding the ring between employees and between employees and ratepayers. It has been seen by some as a move to penalise staff. That is not the case. It can only be in the interests of staff as a whole that they should know that no authority anticipating its own demise is going to give irresponsible increases in pay and gradings to a favoured minority. That is what I argued on the previous amendment.
The clause expressly allows for nationally negotiated changes in pay and gradings. It is not intended in any way to interfere with the normal procedures in any authority for determining promotions, special responsibility allowances and the myriad other forms of payment made in the normal course of events. In short, we see no basis for intervening in the normal management responsibilities of the authorities in the metropolitan areas. We have, however, to take account of the findings of the Royal Commission and the views of the local authority associations in 1972. Both concurred in the opinion that irresponsible manipulation of pay and gradings can occur when authorities are facing abolition. I hope that this clause is not needed in practice—as, again, I have said—but the Government have a duty to ensure that equity is preserved. The clause provides for a fair and efficient machinery to do this and I beg to move that it stands part of the Bill.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes: Anyone who remembers the transfer of housing authority staff from the Greater London Council to the local boroughs comparatively recently will recall the great embarrassment and difficulties caused by the upgrading of salaries just before the move, and the local boroughs then receiving the new staff found the position quite impossible. That has shown in practice how important this clause is.
Lord Irving of Dartford: It is very late at night and I should like the opportunity of considering the implications of what the noble Earl has said, perhaps coming back again at Report stage.
Clause 49, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 50 [Power to transfer staff]:
Lord Rochester had Lord Rochester had given notice of his intention to move Amendment No. 136AD:
[Printed earlier: 20/5/85; col. 143.]
The noble Lord said: I have already spoken to this amendment. There were two points about the noble Earl's reply that I noted specially. One was where he regretted that certain unions had not joined in consultations with the Government about some of the matters involved. I had some sympathy with him on that point. Certainly I should like to use what little influence I have in the matter to encourage such consultations.
The second matter is this. If I understood the noble Earl correctly, he was saying that in the matter of recruitment of employees by boroughs, first refusal would be given to people employed by the Greater London Council and the greater metropolitan councils, as the case may be. If I have understood the Minister correctly, that represents an advance on anything I have earlier heard in respect of that particular point. If I am right in my understanding, that much is to be welcomed.
I was less happy, as was the noble Lord, Lord McCarthy, about some of the other points made by the noble Earl. If I am in order in suggesting this to the Committee, I believe that the best course I can take is not formally to move this amendment now but to study what the noble Earl has said and to reserve my position, so that if after reading in Hansard all that has been said, I wish to pursue this matter, I may return with an amendment on similar lines at Report stage.
[Amendment No. 136AD not moved.]
Clause 50 agreed to.
Clause 51 [Compensation for loss of office or diminution of emoluments]:
Lord Winstanley Lord Winstanley had given notice of his intention to move Amendment No. 136B:
Page 35, line 9, after ("1972") insert ("such regulations to be made by the Secretary of State and to provide for compensation giving benefits broadly comparable to, or greater than, those available prior to 2nd March 1984 to employees in any similar local authority affected by this Act").
The noble Lord said: I shall at this hour be as brief as I can.
Lord Denham: Before the noble Lord, Lord Winstanley, continues, I may point out that we have

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only a little time left. If the noble Lord can be very brief, we can possibly take this amendment now, but if he cannot be brief, perhaps we should leave this amendment until the next Committee day.
Lord Winstanley: I am grateful to the noble Lord. In the light of what he has said, I believe that it would be wise to leave this amendment for now.
Lord Denham: I beg to move that the House do now resume.
Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Motion agreed to.
House resumed.
House adjourned at twenty-seven minutes past midnight.