Lords Sitting of 29 October 1985

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

Electricity Resale: Publicity
Baroness Burton of Coventry: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they have taken to bring to the attention of electricity boards their stated wish that all the electricity boards would take note of the suggestion of the Director General of Fair Trading that greater publicity be given by those boards to the resale of electricity and the conditions that apply to users of electricity (20th June, col. 362).
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Trade and Industry (Lord Lucas of Chilworth): My Lords, the Government have had wide-ranging discussions with the electricity supply industry about the report of the Director General of Fair Trading, including his recommendation for wider publicity. I understand that many electricity boards are already discussing with their area consultative councils what steps should be taken to improve publicity.
Baroness Burton of Coventry: My Lords, is the Minister aware that, though that Answer is a little better than the one I had expected, it has taken four months to reach this stage? As no question of legislation is entailed and as the Government themselves have expressed a desire that this should be done, can the Minister say what is holding matters up?
Lord Lucas of Chilworth: My Lords, I am glad that the noble Baroness feels that that Answer is a better one. However, she will recall that on the 20th June and the 30th July I answered a Question similar to her last supplementary. The matter is complex and the Director General of Fair Trading has raised a number of points which have cross-departmental frontiers. In fact it is the necessarily detailed consultations and conversations which are to some extent delaying the Government's full response to all the recommendations.
Baroness Burton of Coventry: My Lords, while I remember that the Minister said that the last time, does he realise that the House found no credence at all in the fact that giving a little greater publicity cut across all the other departments involved, and if the department itself wished to go ahead it would do so? Why does the department not take steps to help those tenants who are most in need and who are overcharged by a minority of fraudulent landlords?
Lord Lucas of Chilworth: My Lords, as I explained we are disinclined to take in isolation one recommendation out of a series. Perhaps I could remind the noble Baroness that the Department of Energy has produced a leaflet called Reselling Electricity—A Guide for Tenants and Landlords, which offers advice on the more common problems.
Baroness Burton of Coventry: My Lords, does the Minister realise the near despair that is felt by people who are trying to do a job who continually get that type of answer from him? It is nothing but stonewalling and it gets us nowhere. It takes months to get a proper answer.
Lord Lucas of Chilworth: My Lords, I am disappointed that the noble Baroness finds no satisfaction in this series of answers. I can add nothing further to that which I have already said.
Baroness Fisher of Rednal: My Lords, can the noble Lord tell the House where the copy of the leaflet is placed, so that we can give advice to other people? Where is it available and from where can we get it?
Lord Lucas of Chilworth: My Lords, I understand that the leaflet to which I referred is available in Citizens Advice Bureaux and from supply showrooms. The noble Baroness will know that pricing structures are shown on the back of bills and accounts. She will also recall that the accounts are sent to landlords, that is, the first buyer of the supply, rather than to the tenants.
Baroness Fisher of Rednal: My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord if he will make quite sure that it is placed in post offices, where many of the people who are compelled to accept social security payments are also those who are paying high costs for their electricity? It would be advantageous if the leaflet were placed in post offices.
Lord Lucas of Chilworth: My Lords, I note what the noble Baroness says, but of course I cannot dictate to the Post Office what should be disseminated through their offices. I shall certainly see that both the Department of Energy and the Post Office are made aware of the request of the noble Baroness.
Lord Bruce of Donington: My Lords, in view of the seriousness of the matter raised by the noble Baroness, would the noble Lord consider advising that press publicity in the shape of some ordinary advertisements be given to these matters, in order that the public at large may be far more widely aware of their rights than at present appears to be the case?
Lord Lucas of Chilworth: My Lords, there have been advertisements in journals and newspapers, as well as on the radio and television.

Whitefish Stocks: Protection
2.42 p.m.
Lord Campbell of Croy: 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 in what ways they are protecting stocks of edible sea fish available to British fishermen from increased by-catches in the industrial fishery practised by Denmark.
The Minister of State, Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Lord Belstead): My Lords, the by-catch of the main human consumption whitefish stocks in the industrial fisheries is limited by Community regulations to 10 per cent. of the total catch. The Government are resisting a Commission proposa which would have increased the permitted by-catch of whiting in the Norway pout fishery in the North Sea to 18 per cent. between 1st October 1985 and 31st May 1986.
Lord Campbell of Croy: My Lords, I thank my noble friend for his reply. Although I recognise the importance to Denmark's economy of industrial fishing because it produces fishmeal for the Danish livestock industry, will the Government impress firmly on the other members of the EC how shortsighted it would be to permit those operations to wipe out large numbers of juvenile fish of the kinds needed for human consumption?
Lord Belstead: My Lords, my right honourable friend strongly resisted the proposal at the last Fisheries Council Meeting. I agree with my noble friend that priority should be given to human consumption fisheries. We do not believe indeed that Danish fishermen need a higher limit. All the evidence seems to show that they are usually within the 10 per cent. by-catch limit.
Lord Parry: My Lords, in making his representations, will the noble Lord the Minister quote the statistics for the decline in the deep sea fishing industry around the whole coast of Britain? Over-fishing has all but wiped out the Welsh deep sea fishing industry over the past 25 years.
Lord Belstead: My Lords, I realise the truth of what the noble Lords says, but let us at the same time look on the bright side. The package of total allowable catches and quotas agreed earlier on this year for this year includes significant improvements in the availability of the main human consumption whitefish stocks in the North Sea, which is really the area about which we are talking in my noble friend's Question.
Lord Boothby: My Lords, is not Denmark the only country now seeking to change the regulations laid down in the European Fisheries Agreement with a view to limiting the by-catch of immature fish for industrial purposes? If so, can he promise us the most strenuous opposition, with other European countries, to that change which would go a long way to destroy the inshore fishing industry in the North Sea?
Lord Belstead: My Lords, I can confirm to the noble Lord that Denmark would be the main beneficiary from the derogation being proposed by the European Commission because it is only the Danes in Europe who have an industrial fishery. I agree with what I
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think lies behind the noble Lord's question. It is important that the regulations are maintained to safeguard the juvenile whitefish stock both in terms of the permissible by-catch and the prohibition on fishing for Norway pout in the Norway pout box. I repeat to the House that we have resisted the proposal and shall endeavour to continue to do so.
Lord John-Mackie: My Lords, is the Minister aware of the size of the problem? Committee D produced a sea fishing report at the beginning of the year. The evidence was that out of a total North Sea catch of 4 million tonnes, the industrial catch was 2 million tonnes. If we take it that the 18 per cent. which is allowed for the period will become 20 per cent., that means that 400,000 tonnes of edible fish is going into fishmeal. The figures should be widely known and our Minister should press this matter very hard indeed. As the noble Lord, Lord Boothby, says, it will ruin fishing if such figures persist.
Lord Belstead: My Lords, I well remember the important report, which was the first one for this Session of Parliament, produced by your Lordships' Select Committee, to which the noble Lord, Lord John-Mackie, contributed, and which we debated on 11th March. I venture to suggest to the noble Lord that we have to be just a little careful about figures. My advice is that of the total by-catches notified to the Commission during the period of the derogation last year, 6,500 tonnes was whiting, 2,500 tonnes was haddock, and under 500 tonnes was cod. One has to compare that with 39,000 tonnes of whiting and 72,000 tonnes of haddock discarded in the human consumption fisheries in 1984. I know that those figures cannot be absolutely accurate. Nobody can completely vouch for them, but I think that they cause us to be a little careful when looking at the figures and drawing from them the conclusion that the by-catch situation is on a disastrous course. Nonetheless, I repeat to the noble Lord what I said to other noble Lords during this Question. We believe that the Commission's present proposal is unwelcome and unhelpful, and we shall continue to resist it.
Lord Inglewood: My Lords, can my noble friend let us know, only in the rough, how these figures are calculated? Does every fisherman have to report his catch every day or does somebody have a good guess? Otherwise, these figures that have been quoted from different parts of the House do not sound very convincing.
Lord Belstead: My Lords, these are the national returns to the Commission. I, like the noble Lord, was a little hesitant in drawing conclusions from them.
Lord Campbell of Croy: My Lords, is it correct that the Council of Ministers is due to meet within the next few days to take the decision? If so, will the Government do their very best to make sure that the Commission is properly informed on the results of the experimental period that ended in May?
Lord Belstead: Yes, indeed, my Lords. The next meeting of the Fisheries Council is due on 4th November.

Pay Settlements and Unit Costs
2.50 p.m.
Lord Rochester: 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 agree with the recommendation of the Select Committee on Overseas Trade that pay settlements in British industry must have regard to the competitiveness of the manufactures which are produced; and if so whether they will initiate discussions to that end.
The Secretary of State for Employment (Lord Young of Graffham): My Lords, pay is a matter for negotiation between employees and employers. The Government have made it very clear, and will continue to make it clear, that excessive pay settlements mean fewer jobs and damage competitiveness. We will continue to do so. All those who care about employment and competitiveness should do the same.
Lord Rochester: My Lords, would it not be in the Government's own interest to try to obtain through a forum such as the National Economic Development Council a greater public awareness of the effects which more competitive unit labour costs could have on prices, investment, productivity and, above all, employment?
Lord Young of Graffham: My Lords, yes. The CBI, Government Ministers and, I suspect, from time to time, those within the council of Neddy try to make clear that the essential element in our position in the world today is our unit costs. It is a combination of wage levels and productivity. On that depends the future growth of industry in this country.
Lord Dean of Beswick: My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord the Minister if he will join with me in disabusing people of the idea that the wage rates paid in British manufacturing industry are a major factor at present in losing orders, bearing in mind that we have some of the lowest rates of pay within the EC and that wage rates among most of our major competitors in Europe over the last five years have risen far faster than they have in this country?
Lord Young of Graffham: My Lords, my concern is with unit costs. And, last year, I am afraid to have to say, unit costs in this country went up by 5 per cent., while unit costs in Germany went down by 3 per cent. and in Japan by nearly 6 per cent. It is not the level of pay that counts; it is the level of unit costs.
Lord Bruce of Donington: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that there is an additional factor in the make-up of unit costs aside from the cost of labour? It also depends, as the noble Lord may know, on the quality of the machines that are worked by labour. Unit costs are a product of that. Is the noble Lord aware of that? Is the noble Lord further aware that, if he is to address any recommendations about pay to the managers of British industry, he should inform them that example is a very good thing and that managers'
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pay, as reported in the press, has risen by 17 per cent. during the last year? Will he remind them that leadership requires that an example should be given?
Lord Young of Graffham: My Lords, I should like to commend to your Lordships' House the report of your Select Committee on Overseas Trade, which says:
"pay settlements in manufacturing must have regard to the cost competitiveness of the manufactures which are produced. These criteria must influence the pay settlements of shopfloor and all ranks of management alike".
I will not dissent from that.
Lord Ezra: My Lords, will the noble Lord not agree that a clear commitment by Government to the regeneration of manufacturing industry would go a long way to deal with the issue raised by my noble friend?
Lord Young of Graffham: My Lords, I would prefer a clear commitment from all parties concerned in manufacturing industry to that aim.

British Telecom: System Y Purchases
2.53 p.m.
Lord Orr-Ewing: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what are their reactions to the Oftel report on British Telecom's intended purchases of System Y exchange equipment from overseas suppliers.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Trade and Industry (Lord Lucas of Chilworth): My Lords, we welcome the report as a close and detailed study of the issues by the director general in fulfilment of his statutory duties. The director general, who is to keep British Telecom's buying policy under review, has concluded that BT's decision need not impair the basis for the success of System X. It could have a beneficial effect if it includes further improvements in System X's development, marketing and manufacture.
Lord Orr-Ewing: My Lords, does my noble friend recall that, in that report, the director general of Oftel recommended that, other than the present ones, no further orders for System Y be placed overseas and that this recommendation could not be accepted by BT? When the licence was discussed in this House during debates on the subject, we were assured that if we had not provided Oftel with enough teeth the licence could be adjusted in accordance with any recommendations that might come from the Monopolies and Mergers Commission. Is that still the position? If it is necessary to adjust the licence and give Oftel more teeth, can this be done with expedition?
Lord Lucas of Chilworth: My Lords, certainly, under the terms of the Act, the director general of Oftel has the opportunity to say whether or not he thinks his functions and duties are sufficient. If they are not, he may make a reference to the MMC which will then give consideration to the licence conditions. I have

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little doubt that, if such a reference was made—there is no indication that the director general feels this to be necessary—the MMC would deal with the matter expeditiously.
Lord Bruce of Donington: My Lords, the noble Lord's noble friend has given the House an example of Oftel recommending one thing and the firm concerned declining to comply with the recommendation. Can the noble Lord give some enlightenment as to what action the Government propose to take when there is a conflict in a matter of this kind?
Lord Lucas of Chilworth: My Lords, my noble friend did not in fact do as the noble Lord suggests. May I draw to the attention of the noble Lord opposite the conclusion in paragraph 40, in which the director general says:
"In my view BT's action in looking to non-System X suppliers for a second digital switch manufactured in the United Kingdom, in effect to enable BT to secure the modernisation of its network to meet competitive pressures and user requirements, need not destroy the basis for the success of System X".
As to the second question, your Lordships will recall that, during the passage of the Bill, Oftel was set up to be an independent body—that is, independent both of Government and BT—to ensure that the terms of the licence, which were made available to both Houses of Parliament during the course of the Bill, would not be breached.
Lord Winstanley: My Lords, will the noble Lord confirm that Oftel now has the duty of fulfilling all the functions on behalf of the users which were formerly the responsibility of POUNC before privatisation? If that is the case, will the Government take steps to inform the public and telephone users in general of the new role of Oftel so that telephone users can be entirely clear on how they should take their complaints to Oftel and how they should make comments to that body?
Lord Lucas of Chilworth: My Lords, the Advisory Committee on Telecommunications which has taken over substantially the role of POUNC acts on behalf of consumers and advises the director general of Oftel in these matters.
Lord Taylor of Gryfe: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that the decision of British Telecommunications in this case has caused redundancies in areas of high unemployment in the telecommunications industry in this country? Is he also aware that, according to the Oftel report, the placing of this order in Sweden will mean that new research and development in this field will be conducted in Sweden and not in this country?
Lord Lucas of Chilworth: My Lords, so far as the first question is concerned, the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Gryfe, will recall that he addressed the same question to my noble friend Lord Brabazon of Tara about a fortnight ago. My noble friend answered saying that the redundancies to which the noble Lord referred are only in small part due to this. The reason is the running down of that existing factory in Scotland and the products which that factory made.
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As to his second question the noble Lord will recall that Thorn Ericsson, the company to which he refers, is 51 per cent. United Kingdom owned, has a substantial building plant in Scunthorpe employing 300 people and has declared that some parts of its work will be undertaken in that factory, so securing employment for those employees and possibly, in the fullness of time, extending that employment.
Lord Annan: My Lords, does the noble Lord imagine that in any of our partner and competitor countries in Europe, such as France and Germany, an order of this kind would not have been placed in the home country? Will he obtain from the CBI some evidence of the degree to which our competitors subsidise in one form or another their main industrial concerns? Lastly, does he not think it odd that the Government should be so totally nescient and uninterested in this problem?
Lord Lucas of Chilworth: My Lords, I do not allow my imagination to run riot, as perhaps the noble Lord opposite does.
Noble Lords: Oh!
Lord Lucas of Chilworth: My Lords, on the point about taking the advice of the CBI, perhaps I may say that the CBI continually puts submissions to us and they are considered by my department. In regard to subsidy, I am not able to comment on what it is reputed that others do. I can say that the Government stand with all the support services that are available, not only for the telecommunications industry but all industry in the furtherance of their activities, particularly in overseas countries.
Lord Bruce of Donington: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that he is being a trifle discourteous—to put it at its lowest—in accusing the noble Lord of allowing his imagination to run riot on matters of this kind? Is he not aware that one of the characteristics that has now become obvious in the new privatised British Telecom plc is a shortfall in the regard for the public interest that was not the case before British Telecom was privatised?
Lord Lucas of Chilworth: My Lords, the noble Lord opposite will recall that Parliament decided during the passage of the Telecommunications Bill, which effectively brought about privatisation, that the Government should stand apart from the activities of that company unless the national security or international events forced the Secretary of State to take powers. Those duties are set out in Part I of the Bill. Parts II and III of the Bill leave the director general of Oftel with the functions that he should undertake; and Parliament gave him those functions.

Business
3.4 p.m.
Lord Denham: My Lords, at a convenient moment after 3.30 this afternoon my noble friend the Leader of the House will, with the leave of the House, repeat a Statement that has been made in another place on

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heads of government meetings in Nassau and New York. This will be followed by my noble friend Lord Glenarthur, who, again with the leave of the House, will repeat a Statement on 9 Signal Regiment.

Berkshire Bill [H.L.]
The Chairman of Committees (Lord Aberdare): My Lords, this is the first of three Motions in my name on the Order Paper. I beg to move the first Motion.
Your Lordships will remember that last week I moved Motions which had the effect of allowing Private Bills now before your Lordships' House to be carried over into the next Session of Parliament. The three Motions I am moving today have the same effect for Bills which are presently before another place. We are asked to reciprocate to Motions already agreed in another place as far as these five Bills are concerned. I beg to move the first Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.
Moved, That the Promoters of the Bills have leave to suspend any further proceedings thereon in this Session, in order to proceed with the Bills in the next Session of Parliament, notice of their intention to do so having been deposited in the Office of the Clerk of the Parliaments;
That such Bills shall be deposited in the Office of the Clerk of the Parliaments not later than three o'clock on or before the third day on which the House shall sit after the commencement of the next Session of Parliament, with a declaration annexed thereto, signed by the Agent, stating that the Bill is the same in every respect as the Bill at the last stage of the proceedings thereon in this House in the present Session;
That the proceedings on such Bills shall, in the next Session of Parliament, be pro forma only in regard to every stage through which the same shall have passed in the present Session and that no new fees be charged in regard to such stages;
That the Standing Orders by which the proceedings on Bills are regulated shall not apply, in the next Session of Parliament, to such Bills in regard to any of the stages through which the same shall have passed during the present Session.—(Lord Aberdare.)
On Question, Motion agreed to, and it was ordered that a message be sent to the Commons to acquaint them therewith.

Felixstowe Dock and Railway Bill
Lord Aberdare: My Lords, I beg to move the second Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.
Moved, That this House do concur with the orders made by the Commons set out in their message of Wednesday last.—(Lord Aberdare.)
On Question, Motion agreed to, and it was ordered that a message be sent to the Commons to acquaint them therewith.

Yorkshire Water Authority Bill
Lord Aberdare: My Lords, I beg to move the third Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.
Moved, That this House do concur with the orders made by the Commons set out in their message of yesterday.—(Lord Aberdare.)
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: My Lords, as the Greater London Council now has only five months of life before it, I should like to ask my noble friend why it is necessary to take over to the next Session a Bill conferring general powers on it?
Lord Aberdare: My Lords, I think that the answer is that it is covered by the Local Government Act 1985, Clause 87(6) of which specifically excepts Bills presented in pursuance of an order of either House giving leave to suspend proceedings on a corresponding Bill in a Session beginning before that date. In regard to the necessity of it, a number of these powers are powers that are required by district councils, and the powers that are required by the Greater London Council will be distributed among the districts according to the provisions of the Act. This is a Bill which is now before another place and has not yet reached this House. I beg to move.
On Question, Motion agreed to, and it was ordered that a message be sent to the Commons to acquaint them therewith.

United Nations: 40th Anniversary
3.7 p.m.
The Lord Archbishop of Canterbury The Lord Archbishop of Canterbury rose to call attention to the 40th anniversary of the United Nations and to the need to increase the effectiveness of the organisation; and to move for Papers.
The most reverend Primate said: My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper to call attention to the 40th anniversary of the United Nations and to the need to increase the effectiveness of the organisation.
After the spate of speeches and articles on the subject during the past fortnight I may be thought to cut a figure rather like Ruth gleaning after a combine harvester; but it would seem to me to be a grave omission if this House did not have the opportunity to mark this anniversary with a short debate, for we recall with pride that in 1945 the preparatory meetings for the first General Assembly took place over the road at Church House. So I feel that it is not inappropriate for me to propose this Motion today and to invite your Lordships to assess both the progress made so far and the formidable agenda which still lies ahead. On this evaluation and assessment the strength of our own commitment in the future will depend.
The United Nations as an effective force for good has already lasted more than twice as long as its ill-fated predecessor, the League of Nations, and has played a major role on several occasions in the prevention of a third world war. Its membership, increasing from 51 nations in 1945 to 159 in 1985, means that it has at last achieved virtual universality.

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Let us acclaim these achievements while at the same time recognising the serious flaws that are still evident in the United Nations system: regional wars still waging; double standards; areas of inefficiency; and the numbing effect of a rhetoric which might remind us how the Parthians poured molten gold down the throats of those who spoke too long in public council.
The founders, let us never forget, created an organisation which is essentially the servant of the sovereign states which compose it. The stream cannot rise higher than the source. Wisely, those who wrote the charter did not attempt to create Utopia; and that is why the United Nations still survives and prospers modestly today. Dag Hammarskjold captured the spirit exactly when he remarked (although sometimes, with understandable national pride, the phrase is attributed to Winston Churchill):
"The United Nations was not set up to get us into heaven, but to save us from hell".
Your Lordships will recall that five years ago this House held a debate on the specialised agencies of the United Nations. In that debate, Lord Ritchie-Calder eloquently reminded us that 40 years ago it was widely believed that Britain's manifest destiny was to give a lead to the world community through the Commonwealth and the United Nations. In that debate, a number of noble Lords outlined the ways in which Britain has indeed supported and strengthened the agencies of the United Nations. I do not wish to go over that ground again, although as 80 per cent. of the United Nations' expenditure is in the area of economic and social development, it is an important part of the all-round achievements which we celebrate at this time and on which your Lordships may find that others wish to speak.
However, before I move to the main part of my speech, I should like to mention one specialised United Nations organisation which, for me, sums up all that is best about the UN agencies. I refer to that agency from whose handsome building flies the blue flag of the United Nations and which I can see from my window at Lambeth Palace—the International Maritime Organisation. That organisation—the only UN agency to have its headquarters in Britain—quietly, unobtrusively and yet persistently goes about its technical work of enhancing safety, encouraging rescue of refugees at sea, diminishing the damages of pollution, and the small-scale but important training of harbour masters for the great ports of tomorrow. Without its hundreds of conventions and codes, and the sanctions to ensure their application, we could not even cross the Channel without fear of collision or disaster. The agencies are generally effective, and they can and will be more useful if we give them our persistent loyalty and our steadfast support.
Such generosity of spirit towards helping people in the developing world has been strikingly demonstrated by the overwhelming response, particularly from the young, to Bob Geldof s Live Aid Appeal. However, let us be clear that the voluntary societies cannot, by themselves, cope with major disasters. The role of governments is crucial, and even governments acting separately will not be sufficient. The mandate to deal with this subject, given to the United Nations Disaster
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Relief Co-ordinator in 1972, has not been fulfilled. Thousands of lives could have been saved in Ethiopia and the Sudan had governments been ready with contingency planning which could have been speedily implemented. Could not Britain, acting within the UN framework, give a lead in contingency planning for the future in the war against the common enemy? We simply cannot allow disasters on a comparable scale ever to happen again without having the international organisation to cope.
I wish to focus my remarks in preparation for this debate on the United Nations work for peace and for human rights. These imperatives—the search for peace and the release of prisoners unjustly detained and convicted—are at the heart of the Christian Gospel which I represent. The prevention of wars is the raison d'etre for the founding of the United Nations. Therefore, it is with dismay that we look around the world today and discover that there are no less than 20 wars raging.
Of course, under Charter 7, the Security Council, and under Article 99, the Secretary General, have the authority to determine possible action where there is a threat to peace. However, with the exception of the remarkable Resolution 242 of November 1967 on Palestine—in which the noble Lord, Lord Caradon, demonstrated, in negotiating with the Soviet Deputy Foreign Minister, just how much diplomacy within the framework the United Nations can achieve—other efforts to resolve conflict have seldom been made before war breaks out. Indeed, recently things seem to have been going backwards—for instance, the failure to stop the outbreak of war between Iran and Iraq. In July 1980 the community of nations wasted a whole month which could have been used in peace-making. When there is a threat to peace, the machinery of consultation between the Secretary General and the Security Council must be strengthened and improved. Also, of course, the contribution which the Secretary General can make in exercising his own impartial good offices can be crucial.
In the field of peace-keeping there could evolve a form of collective action which would have anticipatory, preventative and enforcement elements. This could include the stationing of UN presences in potential trouble spots, as recommended by a former Ambassador to the United Nations, Sir Anthony Parsons. There would have to be a new acceptance of this process by third world members, especially by their foreign ministers and the permanent members of the Security Council.
Not only do these proposals for anticipating conflict stand a good chance of being effective; they would also be remarkably cheap. The Secretary General—the central figure in the implementation of any such proposals—deserves our continuing support and encouragement.
Gradually, unspectacularly, over the past 40 years the United Nations' contribution to the completely new experiment of peace-keeping has been enhanced. During this time, no fewer than 10 observer groups and a succession of peace-keeping forces have been created. But the United Nations can only act when the member nation states wish it to do so, and all too often over the past 40 years states in conflict have chosen to ignore the role of the United Nations.
Nonetheless, there are successes to record. The role of the UN soldiers in Cyprus, where they have for so long acted as a buffer between Greek and Turk, should not be underestimated. The presence of a UN force on the Golan Heights since 1973 may have prevented a regional conflict and even the outbreak of a third world war. In Zaire, a force of 20,000 men helped to avert a war in which the super powers might have fought each other by proxy. It is seldom realised that the lives of countless men, women and children have been saved by these unsung peace forces—they win no battle laurels, but they have made a substantial contribution to world peace and stability.
These United Nations soldiers have served us splendidly. Excluding the casualties in Korea, well over 400 men have given their lives. United Nations soldiers never shoot their way out of difficult situations. Indeed, the restraint of these forces comes close to matching the exacting demands of the Gospel about the use of force.
What can we do to make their work more effective in the future? First, we must avoid cheeseparing. A peace-keeping force, after all, costs no more per year than a minesweeper spread between 159 countries. If we expect them to hold the ring in, for example, Namibia, then we must provide a force adequate to cope. Member countries could do far more to include peace-keeping in the basic training of their forces, and all could be asked to keep units on standby. We have, perhaps, a special responsibility here, for our forces understand better than most the difficult discipline of aid to the civil power. Perhaps a lead could be given by our defence colleges. Again the number and seniority of military advisers in the office of the Secretary General may need to be increased. At present, the United Nations defence staff is smaller than that of almost any member government.
Lastly, the work of the United Nations for peace and international security cannot be considered without reference to the subject of disarmament and arms control. In the 1960s and the 1970s, the United Nations played an essential role in facilitating the partial test ban treaty, the seabed treaty, the outer space treaty, the non-proliferation treaty, and the biological weapons treaty. It is a matter of concern that Britain has not yet signed the Law of the Sea Treaty.
It would probably be helpful if the conference on disarmament were to be more actively involved with the current bilateral disarmament talks between the United States and the Soviet Union. Fear escalates and weapons proliferate; and in developing countries too many armaments may presage the onset of famine. Let us be grateful when the United Nations in its public deliberations again and again jogs the conscience of the world about the size and weight of our arsenals.
Let us also celebrate another United Nations achievement—this is in the field of human rights, where unexpectedly positive results have been quietly achieved in these four decades since the end of the war. Our concern, which I believe is a special Christian concern, is with the release of captives and the operation of justice against their oppressors. The United Nations blueprint for right conduct, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the social and cultural rights conventions, does not stand up yet
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very well when tested against the long list of abuses detailed in the annual reports of Amnesty International. But this is not a sufficient reason for despair. There has been substantial progress in investigating cases in individual countries, an activity which until recently would have been prevented by the excuse of unwarranted interference in the domestic affairs of another country. But no longer. Nation states now concede that individuals can petition the United Nations, and the UN can pursue the cases of individuals. Beginning with Chile and moving on to Argentina and Uganda, the UN is demanding and receiving co-operation with its investigations. In 1982, the United Nations Human Rights Sub-Committee received no fewer than 27,000 communications about violations of human rights. Can we not establish an international inspectorate of prisons, and also of police interrogation centres, possibly involving the Red Cross and other organisations?
As a Church leader, it is particularly distressing to me that religious persecution persists. In spite of the 1981 declaration of the elimination of all forms of intolerance based on religion we still have a long way to go to implement all its recommendations. The problem of implementation is also crucial with regard to the prevention of torture. I hope that Britain, which has adopted the recent convention, will soon be able to ratify it.
A key problem in this area is to reconcile the civil and political rights of individuals with the poor majority's perception of social and political rights and responsibilities. However, in general it is interesting how often developing countries which have shown the highest respect for human rights also have the best record of economic growth. Conversely, where human rights have been most widely abused, economic growth has been the slowest. These two types of rights, far from being always in conflict, can be complementary.
Only when the United Nations sources of information are improved, and when the UN Commission for Human Rights is strengthened by a higher level of representation—and the British contribution might be improved—only when these improvements are in place can we feel secure that there is a truly effective procedure which can reverse the tide of persecution which has yet to be turned back in so many places.
But the United Nations is greater than the sum of its parts. So at this point may I pay tribute to Brian Urquhart, the indefatigable peacekeeper, a fellow countryman and under-secretary general who, for 40 years, has worked at the United Nations and never lost sight of the wider vision and hope. Speaking last month in the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York he said:
"All nations, great and small, have a vital stake in developing a world community which will ensure a better future. Whether we like it or not, we have created one world before creating the political institutions to manage it. That is the main purpose of the United Nations. Let us accept this challenge in all its grandeur and in all its importance, and let us enjoy doing it".
That was said by someone who should know from the inside. I believe those last words of his of enthusiasm are essential; they are not just rhetoric. Defeatism about the United Nations, as in other matters, ensures defeat. The theological virtue of hope, as in other matters, shapes the future.
In giving advice about the future effectiveness of the United Nations we are not simply exhorting others, we are exhorting ourselves both as a nation state and as a part of, "We, the peoples", and we have to work for these improvements from the inside. After all, we have been present and active in laying the foundations of the United Nations here in London. Surely this is the occasion, 40 years on, to remember with gratitude the contribution of so many. I mention the noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn, who, back in 1945, made those first steps possible and who, I understand, was present at last week's commemorative session. During the last four decades the United Nations system has developed a complex network of institutions to match the interdependence of today's world. Universality and authority belong together, and so I suggest that it is not an option to pick and choose only those parts of the United Nations that take our fancy.
On the last day of his life, President Roosevelt wrote these words to deliver to the United Nations at San Francisco. As we contemplate the future of the United Nations they can still serve as marching orders for us all:
"The work, my friends, is peace: more than an end of this war, an end to the beginning of all wars. The only limit to our realisation of tomorrow will be our doubts of today. Let us move forward with a strong and active faith".
My Lords, I beg to move for Papers.
3.27 p.m.
The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Baroness Young): My Lords, we are indebted to the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury for putting down such a timely Motion for debate today. The 40th anniversary of the United Nations Charter was commemorated in New York last week. My right honourable friend the Prime Minister was among those who addressed a special session of the UN General Assembly. Last month my right honourable and learned friend the Foreign Secretary chaired a special commemorative meeting of the Security Council at Foreign Minister level.
The United Kingdom's prominent participation in those commemorative activities reflected our country's close involvement with the United Nations during the past 40 years. We helped draft the charter. We hosted the first meetings of the Security Council and General Assembly and, as a Permanent Member of the Security Council, we have played a full part in trying to ensure that the organisation functions effectively in its central area of responsibility—the maintenance of international peace and security.
I am pleased that a number of your Lordships taking part in today's debate were and are closely involved with the United Nations. The noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn, played an important role in the negotiations which established the United Nations, and acted as its Secretary General during its early months. My noble friend Lord Home of the Hirsel, as Foreign Secretary, and the noble Lord, Lord Caradon, as a Permanent Representative, have great personal experience of the United Nations at work. The noble Lord, Lord Ennals, is President of the United Nations Association of Great Britain.
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The Motion before us draws attention to the need to increase the effectiveness of the organisation. It is in the central area of peace and security that the expectations of 1945 have been most disappointed. The United Nations Charter created the Security Council as a mechanism through which the major powers which had defeated nazism and its allies would be able to act together to prevent the further outbreak of war. Yet wars have broken out. A number are raging in the world today. What went wrong? How did the world change to make the activity envisaged in the charter so difficult?
First, the alliance which had won the war quickly fell apart. Common purpose was replaced by deep political conflict. The idea of the major powers agreeing on military action to enforce the peace quickly proved unrealistic. The Security Council instead had to cope with a flood of Soviet vetoes; and by the time of the Korean war in the early 1950s the Soviet Union was boycotting the council.
Secondly, the UN Charter was written at a time when the international community was small, power was concentrated and a small number of countries had, through their colonial empires, control over vast areas of the world. International relations are today much more complex. The rapid pace of decolonisation has trebled the membership of the United Nations from 51 to 159. Newly independent nations were rightly jealous of their national sovereignty. The idea of the United Nations acting as a kind of global policeman rapidly became impractical.
Thirdly, the United Nations was born when memories of the devastation of the Second World War were still fresh. The defeated states were prevented for many years from joining the organisation. The constitution of the United Nations at least partly reflected its founders' desire that it should be equipped to deal with any resurgence of threat from that quarter. Yet that threat did not materialise; instead we have been faced during the past 40 years with a succession of regional and civil wars on which it has often proved impossible for the international community to take a united stand.
These developments lie behind the failure, through the United Nations, to live up to the organisation's prime purpose: "to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war". We should therefore look for ways of increasing the organisation's effectiveness. But if we are to do so from a sound basis we must build on the real successes which the United Nations has achieved.
We have had to accept that a body composed of sovereign states cannot, in the modern world, act as an agent of enforcement against recalcitrant members. But the United Nations has nevertheless made an important contribution to international peace.
The Security Council has prime responsibility in this area. Action in the council has at crucial moments been able to defuse regional crises. The Middle East war of 1973, which threatened to escalate into a wider conflict, is a case in point. Negotiations in the Security Council eased tension, and the disputing states were able to agree to the swift deployment of a UN peacekeeping force.

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Peacekeeping indeed is perhaps the prime example of the way in which the Security Council has been able to adapt its practices to changing realities. It was not an activity envisaged in the UN Charter. It has developed pragmatically. Peacekeeping operations rely on consent and co-operation to operate effectively. But where the parties to a dispute commit themselves to its deployment, a peacekeeping force can play a vital role in maintaining an otherwise fragile peace. And it can, as for example in Cyprus, help create the conditions in which negotiations on the underlying problems can begin. Successive British Governments have devoted military and financial resources to UN peacekeeping operations. We can take pride in the important role played by a British citizen—and I was pleased that the most reverend Primate referred to Mr. Brian Urquhart, Under-Secretary General—in the development of UN peacekeeping. This Government will continue fully to support this crucial UN activity.
The Security Council has been able to perform another important role. It has from time to time outlined a possible basis for a comprehensive settlement of some of the major problems facing the international community. Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338 addressed the Middle East conflict; Resolution 435 established the basis for Namibian independence. Such resolutions have not of themselves solved such deep and difficult international problems. But they set out the parameters of the sort of settlement which might be widely acceptable to the international community.
Successive Secretary Generals have worked closely with the Security Council in efforts to preserve peace and resolve disputes. Indeed, the Secretary General has on occasion been able to act when the Security Council itself has been paralysed by superpower dissension, as during the Cuba missile crisis in 1962. At other times the independence of his position has enabled the Secretary General to assist governments in conflict. The current Secretary General has, for example, worked tirelessly to bring the Greek and Turkish Cypriots together. The Government fully support those efforts.
The United Nations may not have prevented all wars. But it has helped prevent some, and played a role in ending others. The organisation was also established to further international co-operation on social and economic problems; to develop friendly relations among nations; and to promote human rights. In these areas too the United Nations has accomplished much.
Through the specialised agencies and related bodies of the United Nations system the member states work together on technical, humanitarian, social and economic issues. Some of the achievements of these organisations are well known: the eradication of smallpox by the World Health Organisation, and its programme to immunise the world's children against the diseases of childhood; the efforts of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees to ease the plight of those made homeless by war and repression in areas such as Ethiopia, Afghanistan and Cambodia; the work of UNICEF on behalf of the young.
Other parts of the system are less well known but no less essential. The International Maritime Organisation and the International Civil Aviation
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Authority regulate international transport. The Universal Postal Union and the International Telecommunication Union facilitate international contact. Other UN agencies, such as the Food and Agricultural Organisation and the UN Development Programme, do valuable development work. Together these agencies represent a vast network of common international enterprise. Their achievements are not always dramatic. Yet they underpin much of our daily activity.
The United Nations can also focus attention on the need for governments to take action in important areas. In recent years, for example, the UN has made a unique contribution to the process of increasing the participation of women in economic, social, political and cultural life. We have a high regard for the work of the Commission on the Status of Women, the United Nations expert body on women's affairs. We welcomed the proclamation of International Women's Year in 1975, and the subsequent declaration of the Decade for Women, on the problems which women face. I myself had the honour to attend the world conference held in Nairobi in July to review the achievements of the decade. We adopted by consensus a comprehensive and detailed document containing practical and realistic ideas for making further progress.
Such documents help establish an agreed basis for governmental conduct. The UN Charter—the most important document in this area—established a code of international behaviour: rules of conduct designed to guarantee the maintenance of friendly relations between states. And it went further. It marked the first attempt by the international community to commit governments to civilised behaviour towards their own citizens—obligations and standards which were further elaborated by subsequent human rights covenants.
Of course governments have not always lived up to their commitments. Some have pursued their objectives by force. Others have consistently abused the fundamental human rights of their citizens. But those who do wrong are forced to justify their actions before the General Assembly and the Human Rights Commission. The Soviet Union, for example, has been forced to pay a political price for its invasion of Afghanistan. Successive General Assembly debates—the sixth is due next month—have exposed the Soviet Union to wide condemnation. This year for the first time the General Assembly will also have before it a report on the abuse of human rights in that country. Such constant reminders of Soviet aggression have, I believe, contributed to third world disillusionment with the Eastern bloc.
In general, states seek to avoid the condemnation of the international community. Without a common standard of conduct against which to judge governmental behaviour, without international fora in which such behaviour can be held up to examination, resort to force and the abuse of human rights might be even more common than they are today.
I have concentrated so far on the achievements of the organisation. It is right that we should be reminded of them as the United Nations celebrates its 40th year. But few would deny that these achievements fall short of the expectations of 1945. As the Motion before us

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today implies, the effectiveness of the organisation needs to be improved. I wish to suggest some ways in which this might be accomplished.
The Security Council is the most crucial of all the United Nations organs. It was designed as the supreme body of the international community: one which was to engage disputing states in dialogue, encourage the peaceful resolution of conflicts and, above all, work for a common international position on crucial issues of peace and security. All too often states use it as a platform for the trumpeting of national grievances. They come to the council looking for confrontation rather than compromise; a propaganda victory rather than the promotion of a settlement. It is up to member states to use the Security Council for serious work, not for rhetoric. We believe that some procedural innovations might help.
First, the Security Council could make more use of private meetings. It is not always helpful for an issue to be publicly debated. Nor need a debate always end in a resolution. A private meeting with one or both parties to a dispute present might help get negotiations underway. Of course, the Security Council will not have a role in all disputes. But when issues are brought to its attention private meetings might sometimes help the parties to find ways of resolving their difficulty by peaceful means.
Second, more preventive diplomacy: the Secretary General might have a role here, in bringing disputes to the council's attention at an early stage. The charter invests him with that power, but he has not always been encouraged to use it. Yet he might sometimes be able to act when member states are reluctant to point the finger at a particular regional problem.
I have mentioned the institution of UN peacekeeping as one of the organisation's great successes. But the UN's effectiveness in this area is compromised by the failure of some states (principally the Soviet Union and its allies) to pay their full share of the cost. It is disappointing, but perhaps not surprising, to see the contrast between the Soviet Union's professed commitment to peace and its reluctance to join in the most practical efforts to secure it.
The General Assembly has neither the power nor the responsibilities of the Security Council. But at its best it can act as a vehicle for the expression of international opinion. It can turn the spotlight on acts of aggression such as the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the Vietnamese occupation of Cambodia. It can put the weight of the international community behind particular proposals. The General Assembly unfortunately undermines its ability to perform these tasks effectively by having an agenda clogged with irrelevant issues, by the repetitiveness of its debates, by its rigid programme of work and by the adoption of resolutions which are merely declaratory, especially in the field of disarmament. The agenda and working methods of the General Assembly need to be thoroughly rationalised. There are hopeful signs that many states are beginning to share that opinion. Let us hope that the 40th anniversary will prompt constructive action in this area.
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Finally, the specialised agencies which have accomplished so much have sometimes suffered from poor co-ordination, confused and ineffective administration and the diversion of their energies and resources into political issues more properly the business of the Security Council and General Assembly. This has been particularly true in recent years of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation. Indeed things reached the point last year where we were forced to give notice of our withdrawal from UNESCO.
We have since worked vigorously for the reforms which would allow us to stay in UNESCO: better programmes; less political bias; a responsible attitude to money matters; and improved management. We want to see resources concentrated on the most valuable activities; fewer abstract studies and meetings; less activity in Paris and more in the field. We want to see the organisation promote the free exchange of ideas rather than call into question such principles. We seek management reforms that would make the organisation less slow-moving and less top-heavy. We hope sufficient progress can be achieved at the General Conference now under way in Sofia, and will take a decision in the light of its results.
In the end such progress will depend on the political will of member states. The same is of course true of efforts to improve the effectiveness of the United Nations as a whole. The Government believe that the organisation—or rather, the international community acting through it—has achieved much. But we can achieve more, and must do so, particularly on problems such as drug trafficking and terrorism. These problems were not foreseen by those who drafted the charter. They nevertheless affect us all, irrespective of our political differences, and they will only be conquered through close international co-operation.
The 40th anniversary of the United Nations is an opportunity to step back and take our bearings. The Government will play a full part in efforts to ensure that the United Nations sets the right course for the future.

Heads of Government Meetings
3.45 p.m.
The Lord President of the Council (Viscount Whitelaw): My Lords, with leave of the House, I shall now repeat a Statement about the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in Nassau and the visit to New York. The Statement is being made in another place by my right honourable friend the Prime Minister.
The Statement is as follows:
"I will, with permission, Mr. Speaker, make a brief statement on my visits to Nassau for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting from 16th to 22nd October, and to New York on 23 rd and 24th October for the 40th anniversary of the United Nations. My right honourable and learned friend the Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary accompanied me to Nassau.
"I have arranged for copies of the communique from the Commonwealth meeting to be placed in the Library of the House.

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"Much of our time at that meeting was devoted to the problems of South Africa. We were unanimous in our abhorrence of apartheid; in our wish to see fundamental peaceful change in South Africa as soon as possible; and in our desire to find practical ways in which the Commonwealth could help secure that objective.
"As my right honourable and learned friend the Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary has already told the House, we reached an agreement which was endorsed by all 46 Governments attending the meeting. That agreement is set out in the Commonwealth Accord on Southern Africa. I wish to emphasise four points from the Accord.
"First, we called on the South African Government to establish a dialogue with representatives of the black community with a view to establishing a non-racial and representative government.
"Second, the dialogue should be initiated in the context of a suspension of violence on all sides.
"Third, we agreed to set up a group of eminent Commonwealth persons to encourage and facilitate dialogue.
"Fourth, we agreed on a programme of common action which incorporated a number of measures we were already taking, together with two new measures of which my right honourable and learned friend has already informed the House.
"The Commonwealth Accord is a clear political signal from the united members of the Commonwealth of the need for rapid change within South Africa as well as of the need for the South African Government to end its illegal occupation of Namibia. We shall review the situation in six months' time.
"The Commonwealth Heads of Government agreed on a number of other matters including: a declaration on world order reaffirming the support of the Commonwealth for the United Nations; a welcome for the report of the Commonwealth Consultative Group on the vulnerability of small states; the need for greater co-operation both to counter the international traffic in illicit drugs and to deny to those convicted of drug trafficking the proceeds of their crime; and the need for greater co-operation to prevent and combat terrorism.
"Mr. Speaker, I believe that the outcome of this meeting demonstrated the capacity of the Commonwealth, despite widely varying initial views, to reach a sensible and realistic agreement acceptable to all Governments. Its rejection of violence as a way to solve the problems of South Africa is of particular importance. I believe that the outcome of the meeting is one which fully meets the interests and concerns of the United Kingdom.
"I subsequently visited New York from 22nd to 24th October to address the 40th anniversary Session of the General Assembly of the United Nations and for meetings with other Heads of Government. I held bilateral discussions with President Reagan, Mr. Craxi, Mr. Peres, Premier Zhao Ziyang, and the Secretary General of the United Nations. I also attended a meeting with Present Reagan and with the Heads of Government
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of Canada, the Federal Republic of Germany, Italy and Japan, to discuss the forthcoming meeting between the President and Mr. Gorbachev. We expressed our support for and confidence in President Reagan's approach to this important meeting. We wish him well."
That concludes the Statement, my Lords.
Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: My Lords, we are very grateful to the noble Viscount for repeating the long Statement. The conference was inevitably dominated by the question of sanctions against South Africa as a mechanism for persuading the South African Government to institute measures of peaceful change away from apartheid. We join the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs in their expression of "abhorrence and loathing" of apartheid. We also welcome the Prime Minister's calling for the lifting of the ban on the ANC and for the unconditional release of Nelson Mandela. Will the Government participate in talks with the ANC when that organisation meets with the group of eminent persons to which the Statement refers, which is to be charged with negotiating with South Africa?
We also warmly support what was said about Namibia, about the drug traffic and about international terrorism. It seems that it has been agreed that there will be limited sanctions for six months. If, by that time, there has not been a significant move on the question of apartheid, then more severe sanctions will be imposed by those who decide to do so. What do the Government intend to do at the end of that six months if, as Mr. Botha is now saying, he and his government propose to disregard the measures which were proposed by the Commonwealth Conference? Will Her Majesty's Government then firmly join with other Commonwealth countries in imposing economic sanctions? I believe that to be the crucial question in relation to this Statement and it is the reply to that that will be listened to here and across the world.
Further, who is to represent Britain in this group of eminent persons? As we understand, the Prime Minister was hoping at one stage that her right honourable and learned friend the Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary would be the person concerned. We understand that there has been a change of mind on that. Can the noble Viscount indicate whether the Government will perhaps follow the guidance of the Secretary General, Mr. Ramphal, on the question of the composition of the deputation?
Lastly, is it the case, as has been reported over the weekend in the press, that Britain still has two military attachés in South Africa? I am bound to say that I was surprised to learn that they were still there and I should be glad of confirmation of that. If these gentlemen are there, why are they retained there, and are they to be withdrawn very quickly?
Lord Diamond: My Lords, we on these Benches, too, are grateful to the noble Viscount, the Leader of the House, for being good enough to repeat this important Statement. The first thing we want to do is to share in expressing our utter loathing of the system of apartheid and to support everything that can be done in a peaceful way to bring it to an end.

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We welcome most of what has been said in the Statement. I therefore need not go into it in any detail, except to say this. With regard to the meeting with President Reagan the Statement is very short on information and I should be grateful if the noble Viscount the Leader of the House can enlighten us a little more as to the kind of things which were agreed upon for the forthcoming talks.
We, too, regard the South African element of the discussions as being most important. I was surprised that the Statement said that the matter would be reviewed in six months' time, as if nothing would be done in the meantime. Surely, with the knowledge that one already has, that it will be most likely to be necessary to do something in six months' time, one can in the meantime be preparing the ground. In terms of preparing the ground, I hope it is clearly the Government's continuing firm view—because it has not been mentioned in the Statement—that the release of Nelson Mandela is a pre-condition to having a proper dialogue with representatives of the black community.
Secondly I should like, if I may, to draw the attention of the Government to the experience of the Labour Government of 1964 to 1970, in which I was privileged to play a part and to have the responsibility for looking after financial sections. I can assure the noble Viscount, in case he has not this in mind, that financial sanctions can be both selective and effective. So far as we on these Benches are concerned, we should want the sanctions to be as selective as possible, so as not to damage the poorer section of the African community and the black community there. However, we take the view that they must surely be taking: that it is open to men and women of every colour to decide on their own priorities and to take the view that they would rather be free and enjoying respect equally with the rest of the community, even though that may mean, in the short term, some additional hardship. We very much hope that the Government will share that view.
Viscount Whitelaw: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn, and to the noble Lord, Lord Diamond, for their response to the Statement. I am also grateful for their support for the expressions of abhorrence of apartheid, and for many of the other measures taken which are mentioned in the Statement. I therefore do not think I need to waste the time of the House on commenting on measures where there was clear support for what is being done.
The noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn, particularly asked what the Government would do if, at the end of the six months, the limited measures taken in accordance with the Commonwealth Accord had not been successful. I think the noble Lord will appreciate that at the present time such questions must be wholly hypothetical ones which he does not expect me to answer. At this time we are naturally taking our part as agreed at the Commonwealth Accord. Therefore it is to be seen and hoped that these measures will work and that there will be progress. What will happen if there is not will have to be decided at that time and I do not think I can possibly say anything further on that account.
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The noble Lord asked me who would represent Britain. That question has not yet been decided. He also asked me whether the British military attachés are still in South Africa. I understand that we are taking steps to arrange their recall now. I gather therefore that they must still be there. If I am wrong in that, I shall inform the noble Lord. However, from information that I have been given, I understand that that is the position.
The noble Lord, Lord Diamond, said that he wished for more information on the meeting held between the heads of Government and President Reagan, at which my right honourable friend the Prime Minister was present. I am afraid that I am not in a position to give any further information for one of the best possible reasons in the world: that I was not there. However, I understand that they reviewed the way in which President Reagan intended to approach the summit meeting with Mr. Gorbachev and that, as the Statement says, they were in full accord and wished him well in what he was going to do, expressing considerable confidence in his position.
The noble Lord, Lord Diamond, asked about the possibility of selective financial sanctions. Her Majesty's Government are committed by joining in the Commonwealth Accord, which they signed, to the measures taken there. They also agreed with our partners in the EC to the measures on which they were agreed. That is the position of Her Majesty's Government at the moment and for the present time that is our full position.
Lord Home of the Hirsel: My Lords, we must hope for favourable developments so far as South Africa is concerned over the next six months. However, will her Majesty's Ministers recognise that, if the economic sanctions were successful against South Africa, that would be the quickest way to ruin the economies of Swaziland, Basutoland, Mozambique and Namibia, with severe economic repercussions further afield? Could that make any contribution to the development of the continent?
Viscount Whitelaw: My Lords, I hope that there will be many people in this country and perhaps throughout the world who will listen to the wise words of my noble friend Lord Home of the Hirsel, who has unrivalled experience of these matters. I must say that I wholly agree with what he has said. Her Majesty's Government wholly agree with the position that he has set out. I hope that many of the people who advocate stronger measures will think very carefully on the words which my noble friend has just spoken to the House.
4 p.m.
Lord Paget of Northampton: My Lords, could the noble Lord tell us—and this is the case of Mr. Nelson Mandela—whether in our case we would be prepared to release a man who has been convicted of running arms and explosives into this country for the purpose of making war on the British Government, and who declares that if he is released he will proceed immediately to continue to do the same thing? If the answer to that is "yes", whom would he not release?
Viscount Whitelaw: My Lords, I do not intend to be drawn by the noble Lord in further comments about other people. Suffice it to say that, as my right honourable and learned friend the Foreign Secretary has made clear, the British Government believe, in the circumstances, that very serious consideration should be given to the release of Mr. Mandela as a means of helping to remove the tension at the present time.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, may I ask the noble Viscount two questions. The Statement refers to violence, and I understand that Her Majesty's Government have expressed their intention of refusing to meet Mr. Oliver Tambo, the leader of the African National Congress, until he renounces violence. Do Her Majesty's Government consider President Botha to be a man of violence? If not, in what way is he different from Oliver Tambo, Nelson Mandela or any other members of the ANC who have been forced into violence? Further, do Her Majesty's Government not remember that they were forced to talk to Joshua N'Komo and Robert Mugabe, who never pretended that they had not organised the violence in order to destroy the oppressive regime in Rhodesia if an agreement in Rhodesia was to come about?
Secondly, is it the view of Her Majesty's Government that President Botha and his règime can be persuaded by words, despite the failure of such persuasion for the past 74 years? If not, are not some stronger measures needed behind those words if any substantial change is to take place in the règime in South Africa?
Viscount Whitelaw: My Lords, the noble Lord has produced a number of trick questions for me. I think I shall answer them fairly briefly and in a straight manner. First, the Government have said that they will not see the head of the ANC until he has renounced violence in accordance with the position we have made clear in other cases. I think it has to be said that these are people who are not prepared to renounce violence directed against the overthrow of the state in South Africa. That, I would have thought, puts them in an entirely different position from the president of that state. They are seeking by violence to upset the state and we have agreed that we will not see those who have engaged in violence. That remains our position. Indeed, I do not think the various comparisons with other cases are appropriate in this case.
As far as the question of words is concerned, the Government wish to see peaceful change in South Africa and we will do everything we can to encourage such peaceful change, as my right honourable friend the Prime Minister made clear when she saw President Botha last year. The noble Lord then asked: what happens if those efforts of peaceful change do not succeed? When he talks then of stronger measures, I think that I can only add that perhaps he will examine when economic sanctions have been effective in the world in which he and I have lived for a considerable time. There are extremely few examples that I can think of when they have been successful; and I do not believe that they would be successful if they were taken on a severe scale, a scale, as my noble friend Lord Home of the Hirsel has said, damaging the economies of neighbouring states and probably damaging very
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much the standard of living of many black people in South Africa itself.
The Earl of Onslow: My Lords, is it not true to say that the situation in South Africa is far too complicated just to squeak for sanctions? The Boers have been there in South Africa a lot longer than the black men have. I think that they collided at the Battle of Blood River in 1787. That is when the Zulus and the Boers collided. The Cape Province was settled by the Boers long before the black man got there.
A noble Lord: No!
The Earl of Onslow: My Lords, the noble Lord's history may be better than mine. I doubt it. Furthermore, if we destabilise South Africa totally, every body is going to suffer. Surely what my right honourable friend is trying to do is to help a stubborn, arrogant and proud Boer people to change for the better. That is what we ought to be doing—helping people to change, rather than saying, "You can't buy oranges!" or by sitting down in the streets of Milton Keynes.
Viscount Whitelaw: My Lords, I do not think I will enter into a discussion with my noble friend about the various historical matters, which I think go slightly wider than the Statement that I have just made. I note, and I agree profoundly with, what he has said about the need for peaceful change.
Lord Gladwyn: My Lords, I should like to ask one short question regarding the final sentence in this important Statement. We understand from that that the President revealed to the Prime Minister and her colleagues the general nature of his approach to his important meeting with Mr. Gorbachev. Surely on her return, the Prime Minister will have revealed what the general nature of his approach was going to be. I can hardly imagine that that would not be so. Without asking any indiscreet questions, what I should like to know is whether the general support given by the Prime Minister to this important approach by the President contains also support for his attitude to the vexed question of star wars in the forthcoming talks in Geneva?
Viscount Whitelaw: My Lords, I do not think I can add anything to the statements that have been made by my right honourable friend the Prime Minister and my right honourable and learned friend the Foreign Secretary on all these subjects over a period of time. I think that the positions of the British Government are very well known. These were discussed. The position of President Reagan is very well known and, as a result, the nations together expressed their support and confidence in President Reagan's approach. I think the basic proposals behind the approach are really very well known from many statements that have been made previously.
Lord Monson: My Lords, may I ask whether there were any plans proposed to impose economic sanctions upon the Soviet Union, Bulgaria, East Germany and so on unless these countries started to dismantle the oppressive communist system within six months?
Viscount Whitelaw: My Lords, mindful as I always am of seeking to further the recommendations of the procedure committee of this House, as my position as Leader should certainly imply, I think that I have to say that that supplementary question goes far beyond the Statement which I have just made to the House.
Lord Taylor of Gryfe: My Lords, may I invite the noble Lord to expand on the reply that he gave to the noble Lord, Lord Diamond, on the question of selective sanctions? Is he aware that there are substantial credits due for renewal in the next six months; and will the application of selective sanctions involve the cessation of further credits to the South African banks who are now in the market for these renewals?
Viscount Whitelaw: My Lords, it would be a mistake for me to go further than the statements which have been made in the Commonwealth Accord and the agreement among the EC members. If there is any way in which I can help the noble Lord, Lord Diamond, or the noble Lord after discussing this with my colleagues, I shall be very pleased to do so.

United Nations: 40th Anniversary
Debate resumed.
4.10 p.m.
Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: My Lords, like everyone else, I am most grateful to the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury for choosing this important subject for debate at so appropriate a time, and also for his thoughtful and comprehensive speech. I think that it is important for the Church to give a clear and unambiguous lead on the great issues of the day; for a failure to do so reduces the influence for good and the authority of the Church. The most reverend Primate has given such a lead today and we appreciate that very much. We are also grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Young, for her clear statement of the Government's attitude and commitment to the United Nations.
As far as public opinion is concerned, the Church and the United Nations have a good deal in common. Some people are for it, some are indifferent, and some have no time for it. Mr. Conor Cruise O'Brien, who has great experience of the institution, has said:
"Hardly anyone has much time for the United Nations".
In travelling around the country and talking to people, one certainly has the impression that there is very little interest in the United Nations. People know that the Government and, to a lesser extent, the European Community have a direct impact on their daily lives, and they react to that in various ways. That is reflected in the press and in the media. But the United Nations, like heaven, seems to be remote and detached from the reality of day-to-day living; or so it seems to the man-in-the-street.
This is a problem and a disappointment to those who, like the most reverend Primate, believe in it. I share his views and those of Mr. Conor Cruise O'Brien, who also said in his article:
"The United Nations is the most important international institution that has ever existed, and its survival is bound up with the survival of the human race.".
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If that proposition is true, then it is of the first importance that the United Nations should survive, that it should grow stronger and that we as a country, through our Government, of whatever complexion, should support it.
The most reverend Primate has referred to the charter and the history of the last 40 years. The charter is an historic document and I am not aware of anyone who really finds fault with its wording or its principles. Everyone—East, West, North and South—subscribes to it, but after 40 years of immense change, convulsion and trauma there are those who say that the United Nations is an expensive failure, a pestilential nuisance, a talking shop or a platform for propaganda. Those are words which I have heard not only outside this House but inside it and in another place.
Nevertheless, I wonder how many would in fact vote for the abolition of the United Nations; for its abolition, in my view, would be a dreadful thing for mankind since it would deprive the world of the only forum where all the nations have the opportunity to meet regularly and talk to each other. Of course there are deficiencies and there are weaknesses; there is opportunism; there has been failure; too many resolutions and too much aimless talking. The United Nations is the only place where such things take place. But, for all that, its abolition would leave the world a much more dangerous place than it is. It is necessary to emphasise that given its short life—what is 40 years against the backdrop of history?—and the political strains and tensions of the period we have lived through, it has not been a failure; at least, that is my belief.
The United Nations has no real power; that remains in the hands of sovereign states, both big and small. Nonetheless, its achievements are substantial, and they were mentioned by the most reverend Primate and by the noble Baroness, Lady Young, in their speeches. They are substantial because the influence of the United Nations rests not on political power but on the authority it is able to command as a forum for the international exchange of views.
The first objective set out in Article 1 of the charter is:
"to maintain international peace and security".
Let us, however, be realistic. If two or more nations are bent on war, as was the case with Iran and Iraq, the United Nations cannot stop them. If, however, they wish to avoid war or to bring war to an end, if the combatants are looking for a way out, the United Nations can in various ways be invaluable. Several examples have already been mentioned. At the time of the Suez crisis and at the time of the Cuban missile crisis the United Nations played a constructive role in getting the parties "off the hook". As the most reverend Primate has just said, in Cyprus, in the Golan heights and in Kashmir the United Nations has played an important part in halting bloodshed and easing the plight of refugees. The United Nations role as a "trouble-shooter" is certainly not to be underestimated. It can contrive a situation in which the great powers can retreat gracefully when they approach a dangerous confrontation. That helped Mr. Krushchev and President Kennedy during the Cuban missile crisis.

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If it were not for power politics and the fact that nations assess problems as they affect their own interests, much more progress would have been made. Power politics always seem to take precedence over co-operation. I have already quoted Mr. Conor Cruise O'Brien, but I admire him both as a man and a very good writer; and he put it in a nutshell in The Times last Wednesday, when he said:
"The UN has developed a set of rituals that make it possible for powerful people who have made fools of themselves to climb down and not look quite as foolish as they deserve to look".
The classic examples of this use of the United Nations stage were provided by the Suez crisis of 1956 and the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. There are also cases where political leaders have used the United Nations in order to stay out of trouble that their friends and supporters expected them to get into. The United States used it in this way in 1956 over Hungary and the Soviet Union in 1982 over Lebanon.
Since 1945 there has been a great enlargement of the United Nations, as the most reverend Primate has said, from 51 to 159 today. The developing world has become a major factor and in recent years, because of the colonial past, the West has tended to adopt a defensive posture. I believe this to be a temporary phase. Indeed, third world attitudes are not set in concrete, and many of the leaders there know that Western economic support and techniques are essential to them. They also realise that the United Nations agencies, whose work is important to their development, are more dependent on the West than on the East. The Soviet Union's support of these agencies has not been good, and this is regrettable. Realistic third world leaders know this, and they are wise to do so. Indeed, the experience of Ethiopia must have taught them and others a tragic lesson.
The fact is that the third world countries are not so uniformly anti-Western as they have been, and this is demonstrated by the decline in the number of hostile resolutions, against the United States in particular, which peppered the order paper of the United Nations. Things have improved. There is more objectivity today than there was three or four years ago. I am not saying the developing countries are becoming involved in Western politics or that they should be associated with us in that way. I think it is best that they should concentrate upon their own huge problems and that we should continue to help them as effectively as we can.
If I may, I should like to repeat what has been said by both previous speakers today in paying a tribute to those in this Chamber who have played an important, indeed a seminal role in the founding of the United Nations. I refer to the noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn, who was there at the very start. I believe that Mr. Brian Urquhart, whom I shall mention in more detail shortly, was the noble Lord's personal assistant at that time. I should like to also pay tribute to my noble friend Lord Caradon and the noble Lord, Lord Home of the Hirsel, both of whom a little later played most important roles in the development of the United Nations.
Mr. Brian Urquhart, as has been said, deserves the warmest tribute, for his most distinguished service. He has been responsible in very large part for the operation of the peace-keeping role of the Unite
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Nations. They afford, as he said a "depolarising constituency", and in a world where politicians and political scientists so often construe international events in terms of the simple East-West dichotomy, what could be more important than that?
In looking to the future, we must ask what role we see for the United Nations and what part we, the United Kingdom, should play. More particularly, what can be done by our Government working through the UN to help resolve the most pressing problems now confronting us—South Africa, the Middle East and nuclear disarmament, to name the most urgent. We are all very aware of the myriad of resolutions that issue from the UN Council meetings. And we are all aware of the number of times such resolutions are either fruitless or transgressed. A crucial example of the latter was cited in last week's press, where it was reported that we, Britain, had been contravening the 1979 United Nations mandatory arms embargo against South Africa. Nonetheless, the United Nations resolutions on South Africa, on the Middle East, on nuclear arms control do offer a starting point for negotiation; a reminder of what should be achieved.
We must certainly not distance ourselves from the UN and treat it as of little account. We occupy a privileged position as a permanent member of the Security Council and we should not only use that opportunity to express our own views, but should also aim to increase the influence, authority and, eventually, the power of the United Nations in the world.
We should examine the role of the Secretary General and his secretariat and consider whether this should be made more authoritative, and enable them to take a more positive line in overseeing and vetting the work of the agencies, to which I have referred. Some of these agencies already act as if they were autonomous bodies. I do not propose to look in detail at these—ILO, FAO, WHO, UNESCO, IMF, World Bank, and the International Maritime Organisation, which was referred to by the most reverend Primate, but to read this list alone is to realise how crucially important the United Nations is.
The UN is worth preserving for the sake of its agencies alone. The world would be an enormously poorer place without them. My noble friend Lord Oram, with his deep experience as a former Minister of Overseas Aid, will deal with them in detail when he winds up, and I am sure that my noble friend Lord Ennals, who is the president of the UN Association in this country, will also have a great deal to tell us.
There is one significant power which the Secretary General can exercise, which has been mentioned by the noble Baroness and which comes under Article 99 which states:
"The Secretary General may bring to the attention of the Security Council any matter which in his opinion may threaten the maintenance of international peace and security."
We should encourage him to use this power as potentially dangerous issues arise, in the hope that West and East will combine to damp out flames before the fire spreads. This is surely in the interests of East and West alike.

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In an editorial last Thursday, The Times commented that the Security Council is a glaring example of
"an institution which is badly in need of change",
and pointed out that the Secretary General has urged that the council should be made more use of as an instrument of "preventive diplomacy". It was suggested that this would enable the Secretary General to summon the council for meetings to consider emerging issues in the world, and that this would be additional to the council's function of considering disputes which have been formally brought to its attention. I note with interest that the Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary has also made suggestions for reforming the Security Council with a view to making it rather more flexible than it is, and the most reverend Primate underlined this in his speech.
The late Dag Hammarskjold said this:
"None of us is ever going to see the world order that we dream of appear in our lifetime, but nevertheless the attempt to build that order is the difference between anarchy and a controlled degree of chaos, a tolerable degree of chaos."
We could, in fact, achieve something better than "a degree of chaos" if East and West could cohabit the globe with some greater degree of mutual confidence. One hopes that a little more trust may emerge in the forthcoming meetings in Geneva.
We as a nation must support the concept of the United Nations and the charter of the United Nations. Forty years on we do have something to celebrate. We have never needed the United Nations more than we do today. We are living through a most critical and dangerous period when several things may go awry. The United Nations is the best chance of establishing some sort of understanding, the start of permanent peace, an increase of trust, and we must work unremittingly for its continuing and greater success. The future of the world depends upon it.
4.26 p.m.
Lord Gladwyn: My Lords, as the Secretary to the Preparatory Commission of the United Nations which made all the arrangements for the holding of the first General Assembly in London in January 1945 and which recruited a considerable number of civil servants who went on to New York with the new Secretary General, Mr. Trygve Lie, then as acting Secretary General for a period of two or three weeks when the Assembly met in London, I may, I suppose, be expected to say a few words about my broad impressions of how the world organisation has progressed—if, indeed, "progressed" is the right word—during the ensuing 40 years. I fear that I have largely confided my views on this point to the media already, but I shall endeavour to insinuate in my remarks a few original ideas.
May I say at the outset how right and proper it is that we should be indebted to the most reverend Primate for initiating this debate and for making such a powerful and interesting speech, with every word of which I think I myself agreed, including his interesting proposals for reform of the organisation generally. I was going to make one or two similar suggestions, but I shall not need to do so now.
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For let us not forget that, whatever cynics may say, there is a moral element in the whole concept of the United Nations; that is to say, the basic idea that nations, however jealous of their "independence", must somehow evolve a system whereby they at least avoid killing or exterminating each other, and also combine to help the afflicted, even at the cost, to some extent, of penalising the rich.
This is clearly not a political notion. If Machiavellian politics was the only guide, the rich would have made every effort to preserve their riches by combining to share out markets and, indeed, to hold down the poorer countries—something in which, by so combining, they might very well succeed. There would thus, politically speaking, be no need for any international organisation, except no doubt as a meeting place for the powerful and the well-to-do. In international relations generally, the element called "conscience" would naturally not apply.
Happily, there was from the start no question of operating such a stark Realpolitik. In the first place, the old empires were about to disappear and they have all now virtually disappeared. As has been said already, from 51 in 1945 the members of the United Nations now stand at 159—an increase of more than 100 members, consisting chiefly of former colonies which are now quite rightly described as free. This does not mean that they are necessarily better off. A few certainly are, but the majority are considerably, and some are very much, worse off by any standard than they were when they formed part of some larger economic whole. Most are happier, perhaps, but even this is doubtful. It may well be that such evident deterioration, where it exists, is chiefly due to over population and to world recession. It may also be due in part to incompetence in the handling of certain Western scientific techniques. However, the process of decolonisation was inevitable. It was also desirable on moral grounds and thus necessary, but it does complicate the actual operation of the United Nations itself.
The other factor which affected the whole operation of the United Nations from the start was the outbreak shortly after the ending of the first assembly in London of the so-called "Cold War". The Soviet Union then made it clear—and has never repudiated the notion—that it alone possessed the right kind of government—namely a totally "directed" social and economic system—and that is was surrounded by nations which would necessarily, by the very force of things, seek to impose their rival or "free" economic policies in its place. This made it impossible to run the United Nations, politically, on the original conception of at least some kind of understanding between the super powers. Economically, it was also more difficult to run owing to the Russian insistence that any "capitalist" aid to the new emerging nations was merely a form of neo-imperialism, and that the only right way to help them was, as far as possible, to see that they also adopted something equivalent to the Soviet system.
May I mention at this point that at the famous conference of Dumbarton Oaks in the summer of 1944 the British delegation had the impression—and I am afraid that this impression was confined to only one conference—that the Russians really wanted to

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play and seemed confident that co-operation with the West, and notably with America, would be possible after the war. We were very pleased when they accepted nearly all of the basic Anglo-American proposals and, more especially perhaps, that the famous Yalta voting formula, devised by Sir Alexander Cadogan and myself and then transmitted to the United States delegation, was eventually accepted by Stalin after I had myself passed it on in London to Gromyko's number two, Arkadi Sobolev. Were we entirely ingenuous in thinking, at Yalta, that something like the charter might actually work? Perhaps we were, but I am not absolutely certain even now that some rather different régime might have emerged in Moscow. Conceivably, it may still emerge.
As we all know, the charter did not work or worked only very imperfectly. There was indeed one very considerable United Nations victory (which has not been referred to so far this afternoon) in early 1946, namely, the withdrawal on United Nations insistence of Soviet troops from Iran—the so-called Azerbaijan crisis—but there was very little of importance, politically, after that. Korea, four years later, was of course a success for the United Nations in the sense that obvious aggression was defeated, but really only because the Russians, absurdly from their point of view, were absent from the Security Council when the crisis came. It was thus scarcely a victory for the charter. True, the Soviets did not veto the constitution of the State of Israel, and I suppose that, on legal grounds at any rate, you can, if you will, rate the imposition of a collective United Nations will over France and the United Kingdom at the time of Suez as a success for the United Nations too. As the noble Baroness, Lady Young, said, Resolution 242 was also a document of great significance even though unfortunately, as we all know, it has not as yet been applied. I myself would also rate fairly highly the resolution of the Security Council on the Falklands which seemed to be extraordinarily good and worthy of the organisation as a whole. I should also like to support all the proposals for reform of the Security Council put forward by the noble Baroness, Lady Young. They seem to be very sensible and should be applied.
The great general failures were, after all, the rejection (however comprehensibly) by the Russians of the Baruch plan for the international control of atomic energy and the impossibility of agreeing on any permanent United Nations security force. And you might also add the rejection of Western help in the rebuilding of Russian and eastern Europe at the time of Marshall Aid. Nevertheless there have also been certain minor successes, among which I would certainly reckon the setting up of small United Nations peace-keeping forces in, I believe, no fewer than five areas, more especially, in Kashmir, Cyprus and the Lebanon. It is quite true that the small forces—who are, in practice, forbidden to shoot to kill—could be pushed aside by determined militants. But it seems certain that their mere presence does have some stabilising effect and that a rather mysterious kind of aura attaches to what are called the "casques bleus". My first recruit to the United Nations secretariat, Mr. Brian Urquhart, has recently been developing on television the case for these small forces,
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for the constitution and upkeep of which he deserves enormous credit. It is indeed a pity that at the age of 66 he will shortly be leaving the secretariat.
On the political side, too, I do not think one can ignore the fact, that, for one reason or another, most important statesmen cannot resist the temptation of coming to the annual General Assembly and making speeches setting out their individual points of view. Having just returned from the celebrations regarding the 40th anniversay, I cannot say that such speeches, to some of which I listened, were particularly brilliant or illuminating, but at least, everybody had his say and of course highly important discussions were also held, as it were, on the side of the major speechmaking. It is a pity that there are so many very small states, but this is something we cannot help at the moment. In principle, I believe that the members should have been limited to those numbering say 1 million inhabitants, which I believe was the rule under the old League of Nations, but I do not think that we can do anything about that now.
There remains the whole vast non-political side of the United Nations and its allied organisations. It may be that some of the smaller organisations, of which there are an enormous number, have proliferated and that if they were wound up nobody would know the difference. It may well be that even some of the larger ones are considerably overstaffed and could well be reorganised—UNESCO is an obvious case in point. But the difficulties here are great: no international organisation can be altogether efficient. Since all members demand representation on the staff, a considerable number of them tend to be what might be called "place men"—whose work is often in practice performed by more efficient members. But that does not mean that the major United Nations agencies are not on the whole effective, or that they do not perform a very necessary task. I would particularly single out the United Nations' efforts to cope with the appalling problem of refugees, successfully undertaken up to now under the admirable direction of Prince Sadruddin who has just left his job. Then there is the United Nations development programme which I do not think has been mentioned up to now. Although it is criticised by some, it undoubtedly transfers many resources to where they can substantially relieve economic distress. That cannot be disputed as a general statement.
It is particularly disappointing that our own contribution to that fund, and more especially the contribution of the Americans, is now being substantially cut. I know that in the past there have been abuses in the administration of aid. If we could simply increase trade, that would be much better. However, it can hardly be denied that, as matters stand, some aid is essential.
I should like to mention also the excellent children's fund, UNICEF, if only to emphasise the extent to which we all depend on the non-governmental organisations of the United Nations. I entirely agree with the most reverend Primate that we must support them within the limits of our power to do so.
I should like to say a few words in conclusion. It seems possible that, unfortunately, the human race has taken leave of its senses and—perhaps as the result of

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over-population and by the misapplication of modern science—is pursuing policies that must inevitably result in its destruction, or at least in some enormous reduction in its numbers.
If that is indeed so then, short of some divine intervention, there is nothing that we can do about it. In practice, we must of course proceed on the assumption that the human race, still remaining sane, is at least susceptible to the promptings of some kind of reason. If, therefore, we adopt what the Germans call an als ob attitude—that is, acting as if something were true—then we must surely imagine that, war between the two super powers being so obviously suicidal for both, it will not be long before they come to some agreement on the severe limitation of their immense nuclear and other armaments which—again on the assumption that the nuclear genie cannot be put back into its bottle—can be achieved only through the retention by them both of a small number of such weapons, sufficient, however, to obliterate the other on any possible second strike.
When, and if, such a broad agreement is achieved then clearly the opportunities for the United Nations are immense. Vast sums saved in the armaments field as a result of progress by the United Nations disarmament agency could be diverted, at least in part, to encouraging trade with the third world. Russia and China could be developed as never before. The lion would indeed be lying down with the lamb!
Is this an idle dream? To some extent, no doubt it is. Even if an East/West agreement is arrived at, tensions of some kind will persist for as long as human nature remains what it is. But without what I would term the first essential stage of East/West agreement, it is difficult to imagine how the United Nations can fulfil its essential functions; and I fear that its future may indeed be rather grim.
Whatever happens, we in Europe must in any case be in the forefront of those urging moderation and support for the great international organisations. If we in Europe really could speak with one voice on such matters, we may indeed have an influence quite disproportionate to our actual strength. In co-operation with the Churches and with other religious organisations, such as the Japanese Buddhist movement, Soka Gokkai, we must, while recognising that in this wicked world disarmament cannot, without disaster, be unilateral, combine to support all liberal forces working against wars. In the words of one of our modern poets, we must never fail to,
"Rage, rage, against the dying of the light".
4.44 p.m.
Lord Home of the Hirsel: My Lords, it is always agreeable to follow the noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn, but particularly so today when I recall his very distinguished service to this country in the early and formative days of the United Nations, both in the Security Council and in the Assembly. Incidentally, I remember that the noble Lord made himself into a television star overnight. It was a very impressive performance as we watched it from far away.
It is right that this House should mark this anniversary of the foundation of the United Nations and in
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particular its charter for international relations. I am with others grateful to the most reverend Primate for his thoughtful introduction to this debate. With one of his proposals I have a good deal of sympathy. It was that there should be a standing organisation to deal with emergencies in the world. I made such a proposal at the time of the general election in 1963.I hope that the most reverend Primate will not be discouraged by that disclosure and that he will try to renew that resolution in some form before very long.
In the 1940s, following the war, when for the first time millions of civilians found themselves in danger of death, it was entirely creditable that man should search for a system of security for the nations where the emphasis was placed on the prevention of wars, or, if wars should unhappily break out, on their containment; a system more reliable than that of military alliances and the balance of power which had proved fallible in the past. The emphasis was on peacekeeping.
For that the charter was designed. It was decided also—and I remember this well—to place at the very centre of the document the clause which required that no one country should intervene by force in the internal affairs of another. They knew (and they were right) that this was the key to peace between the nations. It still is. Unless that rule is observed, wars will break out and there will be no peace. I remember that the stage was set and hopes were high when that pledge was underwritten by the formation of the Security Council, with the leading powers giving it substance by their membership. When the Soviet Union, after months of detailed discussion, put her name to the charter and to the non-interference clause, she became a member of the council.
Post-mortems on political issues are never very profitable. However, my noble friend Lady Young asked: after those high hopes, what went wrong? If we are to learn and profit by the experience of the past then we must face up to facts and ask the question: why have so many hopes been dashed?
Perhaps that development came too soon. Perhaps the world was not ready for such a concept as collective security. The sequence of events as I saw them, very often at first hand, was something like this. There was the early and frequent use of the veto by the Soviet Union on virtually all peace-keeping resolutions. One of the few resolutions to be passed was that referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn. As he said, it went through only because the Soviet Union was absent on that day. Then there was the refusal by the Soviet leaders to agree to any military machinery which could be put at the disposal of the Security Council, and the increasingly definite statements from the Kremlin that force could be used in support of a political aim.
Next there was the absence of the Russians from any of the United Nations organisations dealing with finance and development; and finally, of course, the occupation by the Soviet Union with its own troops—and I emphasise this because this is not concerned with an appeal from some other country for assistance or anything like that—of Czechoslovakia and in particular Afghanistan, which is a third world country.

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I take no pleasure in recalling these events, but when a member of the Security Council breaks the non-intervention clause which is at the kernel of the charter, then any hope of organising collective security goes out of the window. The plain truth of the matter is, that unless and until the Russian leaders withdraw from those occupied territories and substitute co-operation for cold co-existence, there will be no confidence, no trust, and the United Nations as a peace-keeping body is virtually paralysed. Of course, as the most reverend Primate has said, it can undertake minor roles and they should not be underestimated. He was right to emphasise that the United Nations have done some very useful work.
The significance of the Russian action is that for the present, instead of embarking upon a new experiment in collective security to keep the peace, the world is thrown back on the military alliance and the balance of power. That is something from which we tried to escape 40 years ago.
The situation is anxious; but there are two new ingredients in it by reason of which we need not despair. The two world wars in this century started because the German leaders relied on the military weakness of Britain and France and the fact that America was not counted in the balance of power. They calculated that for those reasons a war could be won. It is imperative that the potential aggressor should be given no excuse to make such a calculation now. If, by reason of the absence of any security stemming from the United Nations, we have to return to the balance of power, as we have done, then the best guarantee of peace is to make that balance real. We can hope—which is right—that during the disarmament conferences that are proceeding the balance will be reduced to lower and lower levels and that members of the United Nations will combine to achieve that end.
Is the United Nations worth preserving? The answer must be emphatically "yes". A forum where the leaders of nations can openly express and exchange views is a safety valve. Some of the United Nations agencies do very valuable work. Other noble Lords have named them, and I would pick out particularly the World Health Organisation and the Food and Agriculture Organisation, both of which are of great importance. I have a feeling that the latter, in conjunction with the World Bank, should be able to take a leading role to enable the countries of Africa, for example, to sustain their peoples by native agriculture and husbandry. I hope that a lead will be taken there.
There is one aspect of the United Nations which I find hopeful. During most of the time when I played an active part there, colonialism featured very strongly in all the debates, and the ex-colonial powers, the new powers in the United Nations, were affected by it in their whole outlook. The fear of neo-colonialism has undoubtedly inhibited progress but I think that it is working itself out of the system of the United Nations, which can only be welcomed. It is high time that it did so.
There is a danger in the United Nations as it is of increasing bureaucracy. I do not know whether any of your Lordships heard Alistair Cooke say the other day in his programme from America that when the
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General Assembly is sitting there are going to and fro what he called "ten thousand extended limousines" taking the members backwards and forwards to the Assembly. I hope that that number at any rate can be cut.
The next few years will reveal—and this is the essence of the matter—whether or not Russia will use the United Nations so that the great problems facing the nations will be solved in co-operation and peace. I have one positive suggestion to make as to how we might begin. It is that the Russians might feel able to co-operate in preventing terrorism, which is something that they are experiencing for the first time. Let us hope that they take a view of it and lend their support to other countries in order to curtail these awful activities.
I shall not bother the House with it but there is a list of conventions which, if they were universally supported, and if the Soviet Union were to co-operate, would do much to curtail terrorist activities. Such support would enable the United Nations to perform a much more useful role than it has been able to perform up to now and would enable it to give a lead in important co-operative efforts against terrorism. I am afraid that until that day the democracies are bound to look for their security outside the Security Council. We have no alternative. If and when the Soviet leaders seriously try to work within the spirt of the charter, then that will be the day when hope can be born again.

Official Secrets Trial: 9 Signal Regiment
4.57 p.m.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Home Office (Lord Glenarthur): My Lords, with the leave of the House I shall now repeat a Statement on 9 Signal Regiment being made in another place by my right honourable friend the Minister of State for the Armed Forces. The Statement is as follows:
"With permission Mr. Speaker I should like to make a Statement about the outcome of the trial concluded yesterday of eight servicemen under the Official Secrets Acts.
"On 3rd February 1984 a senior aircraftsman of 9 Signal Regiment based in Cyprus failed to complete unit clearance procedures prior to being posted back to the United Kingdom. On the 6th February he was interviewed by the Deputy Unit Security Officer of the Regiment. From this interview it appeared that a breach of security had occurred and the senior aircraftsman was arrested. His case was referred to the RAF Provost and Security Service in Cyprus. Subsequently, the Army Special Investigations Branch was also brought in since it appeared that soldiers as well as RAF personnel were involved. As is the standard procedure where a breach of the Official Secrets Acts may have occurred, the Ministry of Defence Security authorities brought the matter to the attention of the Director of Public Prosecutions during the course of their investigation. On the 15th March 1984, in view of the seriousness of the alleged breaches of security, the director asked the

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Metropolitan Police Special Branch to assume responsibility for the conduct of the investigation and in the light of their investigation he considered that the evidence justified prosecutions under the Official Secrets Acts.
"On the 11th April the Attorney General consented to the prosecution of seven servicemen who were charged on the 13th April. The Attorney-General subsequently consented to the prosecution of an eighth serviceman, who was charged on the 8th June 1984.
"As the House is aware, the servicemen charged have all been acquitted. Their future in the services will be determined in accordance with normal service regulations. These afford a right of appeal to the service boards which include Ministers before any final decision on their future is taken.
"As the House is aware the Security Commission reports to my right honourable friend the Prime Minister. My right honourable friend has authorised me to say that she decided in June 1984 that, given the gravity of the apparent breaches of security and the length of time the trial proceedings would be likely to take, it would be right to make an immediate reference to the Security Commission. The reference was not announced at the time so as not in any way to prejudice the course of justice. In the light of the acquittals my right honourable friend will consult the Chairman of the Security Commission and report to the House in due course.
"The House will wish to know of the steps that my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Defence has taken in the light of what has occurred.
"First, my right honourable friend the Secretry of State was first informed of the possibility of a breach of security on 10th February 1984. In the light of further information he decided that there should be an investigation of the security arrangements and procedures in 9 Signal Regiment which was to be led by the Security Service. In parallel with this investigation my right honourable friend instructed that further investigations should be carried out into security procedures in all other static communications units of all three services which handle sensitive traffic. These security investigations produced a large number of detailed recommendations for enhancing security at the units concerned. Most of them have been accepted, and either have been or are being implemented.
"Second my right honourable friend has decided that there should be an independent inquiry into the way in which the service police carried out their investigations of the eight men originally accused. Mr. David Calcutt, QC, has agreed to conduct this inquiry and to complete it as quickly as is practical. He will start work next week. His terms of reference will be as follows:
'To inquire into the question of whether the investigations carried out by the Royal Air Force's Provost Marshal Branch and the Army's Special Investigation Branch into matters which formed the substance of charges subsequently laid under the Official Secrets Acts against SAC Geoffrey Jones, SAC Adam Lightowler, SAC Wayne Kriehn, SAC Christopher Payne, SAC Gwynn Owen, Lance Corporal Anthony Glass, Signalman Martin Tuffy, and Signalman David Hardman were carried out
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in accordance with lawful and proper procedures; to report with all practicable speed; and to make recommendations as to any relevant procedure.'
Subject to the usual security considerations, it is my right honourable friend's intention that Mr. Calcutt's report will be published."
My Lords, that concludes the Statement.
Lord Boston of Faversham: My Lords, we are grateful to the noble Lord for repeating the Statement, and we quite understand about the unavoidable absence of his noble friend Lord Trefgarne, who is, I understand, visiting the Ghurkas in Nepal.
The Statement is deeply disturbing. It is clear that the circumstances which have led up to it have caused great and widespread concern throughout the country. It is something—and this at least is commendable—that the Government have recognised that in the speed with which they have acted in deciding to set up the inquiry. We welcome that and also the reference made to the Security Commission and the appointment of Mr. David Calcutt. We recognise that it is difficult for the Minister today to answer certain questions, in particular about the facts and circumstances, because he cannot anticipate the findings of the inquiry. However, some questions arise immediately.
Various allegations have apparently been made in the course of the trial about the methods of interrogation of the defendants. We wish to be assured that in going into the procedures the inquiry will also go into the processes of interrogation employed in the services and be free to make recommendations on those for any necessary changes. It is said that the defendants were subjected to long periods of interrogation and detention. We shall want in due course to know the truth about that, and in particular how they came to sign the so-called confessions. I think it is also vital that we should be assured—it perhaps should not be necessary to say this, but since it has been raised in some quarters it may be—that our servicemen and women are of course no less protected than they would be if they were civilians. We shall wish to know eventually who is to blame and to be assured that appropriate action is taken against those found to be blameworthy.
I believe that we should be careful not to come to quick judgments, as have been attempted in some quarters, about the role of the law officers and the Director of Public Prosecutions. After all, we need to bear in mind, for example, that they do not know what the defence will be. But there is a clear need for inquiry into the procedures involving the law officers and the director in this case, and for reassurance that any shortcoming in the procedures will not be repeated, so far as that is possible to ensure. We need eventually, in particular, to know whether the director and the law officers knew about the long periods of interrogation and detention, if that indeed was the case, and whether they were alerted, or whether they alerted themselves, to the dangers arising from that, and whether Ministers knew about that before making reference to the director and the law officers; and the extent to which they were accordingly alerted to the dangers of accepting the so-called confessions.

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I take it that the way those confessions were obtained will need to be established. Can the Minister say whether any of the investigating officers in this case was in last summer's Cyprus case, and, if so, whether any lessons have been learnt? Can he also say something about the powers of Mr. David Calcutt? The Statement mentions the terms of reference, but further help on the powers would be appreciated.
I dislike, as I think we all do, extravagant claims and extravagant language, and some of those have appeared in the newspapers over these past hours. But one is bound to say that if the reports last night and today of the extraordinary series of factual errors in the evidence for the prosecution are anything to go by, there has been a serious failure in the course of the investigations to make the most elementary checks on the evidence. If that is borne out by the inquiry (which I hope will go into that aspect), that will amount either at least to negligence or at worst to a deliberate distortion aimed at perverting the course of justice. I hope that the Minister will be able to confirm today, obviously without pre-empting the task of the inquiry, that it will be part of its job to disentangle this material in particular and give us its view about it.
Can the Minister say anything about the cost of the trial? I ask one final question. There has been great suffering not only for the defendants but also for their families, and they can never be adequately compensated. But has consideration been given to ways, financial or otherwise, to try to restore them so far as possible to the position that they were in before this arose?
Perhaps the only good and comforting matter—and it may be important—to emerge from this distressing saga has been the vindication of our system of justice and in particular of our jury system.
Lord Wigoder: My Lords, there may have been in some quarters an hysterical over-reaction to the result of this case, and there may be a tendency to attempt to use it in obscure ways as a stick to beat the Government. I can only say that I think there are more effective sticks available at the moment.
One does not need to have been in the legal profession the whole of one's life to know that acquittals sometimes happen. The length and the cost of the case are irrelevant. Acquittals happen because that is an integral part of our legal system. It seems to me quite wrong that some people are saying that simply because there has been an acquittal there must be some form of inquiry into why it took place, so that blame should be imputed in some way or another to the Director of Public Prosecutions, the Attorney-General, those responsible for the investigation or the prosecuting counsel at the Central Criminal Court. If we are going to have inquiries into cases every time there is an acquittal, we shall very soon run out of judges or senior members of the Bar to carry out those inquiries.
The second matter, as we all know, is that the cases in this instance were based on signed statements by the defendants, apparently without any supporting evidence. It is inevitable that there should be a call in some quarters in support of the suggestion that there should be corroboration where that is the situation. I hope that this will be resisted by the Government. It is
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a fact that, in a very large number of cases, defendants make signed confessions and there is no supporting evidence. It is a fact that, in the overwhelming majority of those cases, the defendants are guilty and plead guilty, and that is the end of the matter. If we were to attempt to import a system under which there has to be corroboration in addition to a signed statement, the inevitable result would be that a large number of dangerous criminals who are at the moment behind bars would be today walking the streets.
In the small number of cases where there are signed statements and the defendant pleads not guilty, this is a result, as a rule, of one of two factors. Either the signed statement has been taken as result of improper pressures, which is, of course, what the defence was saying in this case, or sometimes the defendants change their minds about the admissions that they have previously made and decide that they will say that there have been improper pressures, even though there have not been. It is a very difficult line for the jury to draw in attempting to determine which of those two situations has arisen. It is perhaps worth recalling that the jury do not have to decide which of those two situations they think is the more probable. They simply have to decide whether they are sure that the signed statements are true. It is obvious that the jury in this case were not sure. That is as far as anyone can go. They are not even required to give any reason for their decision.
It is perhaps also worth recalling that, at the end of a very long preliminary inquiry, a very distinguished judge found that he was satisfied, in the absence of the jury, that at least the statements had been made voluntarily. In those circumstances, the lessons to be drawn are perhaps not quite as clear-cut as has been suggested in some quarters. I venture to think that, first, there is a general lesson to be drawn—that perhaps the security services in this country are not sufficiently accountable to Parliament. I believe that we should look at the whole general situation in due course.
Secondly, in this particular case, there appears to be some indication that at the beginning of the inquiry those who were carrying it out were not entirely sure what they were seeking to achieve; whether it was to establish that there was a leak and to plug it, or whether it was an attempt to make certain people responsible for what they believed had happened. Thirdly, it is apparent, I think, in this case that the question must arise as to whether the provost and security services have in fact the experience or the impartiality, in carrying out investigations of this sort, to do so entirely satisfactorily. Clearly, the Special Branch have to be brought in on a case of this nature. It is apparent from the satement made today that some 36 days elapsed from the original discovery that there had been a breach of security to the time that the Special Branch were brought in. That, I would suggest, is far too long on the face of the Minister's own Statement.
It appears from the Statement that on 6th February the evidence became clear that there had been a breach of security. We are told that in due course the attention of the Director of Public Prosecutions was drawn to that matter. One would hope that this had

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been done on the 7th or 8th February. Perhaps the noble Lord the Minister can say on what date the Director of Public Prosecutions was notified of this matter.
The only other question that I have to ask the Government is one about which they have been a little coy so far. It is this. Is there clear and unambiguous evidence that there have been serious breaches of security by someone in Cyprus? Finally, I note that the matter has now been referred to an independent inquiry. I am bound to say that I myself have some doubts about the wisdom of that in this particular case. I have no doubt at all about the wisdom of appointing Mr. Calcutt because I am sure that his report will be very thorough and very rapid. We shall look forward with great interest to its contents.
5.15 p.m.
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, I am grateful for the comments of both noble Lords opposite on this Statement. I can perhaps first try to answer some of the questions asked by the noble Lord, Lord Boston. He refers to the question of procedures of interrogation in the services, the way that these people were investigated initially, and also the question of the long periods during which they were detained. These are perhaps both matters that will fall to Mr. Calcutt to investigate. I do not think that I can take them further forward now, except to say that I am sure they will be looked into.
As to the question of the same protection for those in the military as for those in civil life, I can only say that the relevant rules for all this are contained in service regulations. They are voluminous. I shall be happy to arrange for the relevant regulations to be made available to your Lordships in the usual way through the Library. The noble Lord was kind to suggest that no quick judgment should be made about the role of the Law Officers. I am grateful for that. When it comes to the question of whether or not they were aware of the long periods of detention, I can say, yes, they were aware. So far as being alerted to the dangers arising from them, I can only say that no complaint was made until the committal proceedings. So far as the interests of Ministers is concerned, they would, of course, have been told, not consulted, on this. It is strictly a matter for the Law Officers and not for Ministers. So far as investigators are concerned, can I say, yes, some investigators who took part in this case did look at earlier cases. I cannot go further than that.
So far as the question of taking evidence in the case of Mr. Calcutt's inquiry is concerned, Mr. Calcutt will have no power to compel witnesses to appear but this is clearly related also to issues of immunity which my right honourable friend the Attorney-General and the service authorities will be considering. Mr. Calcutt will be given access to all relevant papers in the hands of the Crown. The noble Lord asked about the cost of the trial. Calculations about this sort of thing are notoriously difficult to make. I certainly cannot venture a figure at this stage. It is too early, I believe, in any case.
Lastly, the noble Lord asked me about the question of compensation for the distress that may have been
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suffered by the families. I can certainly appreciate that, inevitably, stress is involved in this sort of thing. However, I have to say to him that compensation is not paid in such circumstances under either service or civilian court proceedings.
The noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, who, in a balanced manner, introduced the arguments that bring out the difficulties associated with trials of this sort, asked a number of questions. So far as the prime question—if that is the right word—is concerned, over whether there had been any breaches of security, all I can say to the noble Lord is that there appeared to have been serious breaches of security at the time the original investigations took place. I cannot go further than that.
On the question of timing, and the report to the DPP on these issues, the first letter was sent to the DPP on 6th March and the first full briefing at the DPP's Office was on 15th March.
I do not think that the noble Lord asked me any other specific questions. He was concerned about the accountability of the security services to Parliament. With respect, I think that that goes very much wider than this immediate matter, but I note his comments. The noble Lord was also concerned about the relevance of the experience of the provost and security services and the Special Investigation Branch's work to matters of this kind. I am quite certain that these are also matters which will be addressed by the Calcutt inquiry.
Lord Mishcon: My Lords, may I raise three points with the noble Lord the Minister on the important Statement that he repeated. If I may respectfully say so, is not the answer to some of the observations made by the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, that the Government—which have so properly ordered this inquiry—have not done so because there were acquittals? They have done so because there were accusations of improper methods being used in a vital series of investigations with a jury finding, presumably as a matter of fact, that those statements had been improperly obtained.
I move to my second point, which I believe is a point of some importance. In the course of the Statement this sentence occurs:
"On the 15th March 1984, in view of the seriousness of the alleged breaches of security, the Director asked the Metropolitan Special Branch to assume responsibility for the conduct of the investigation and in the light of their investigation he considered that the evidence justified prosecutions under the Offical Secrets Acts".
At the end of the Statement, when the terms of reference for Mr. David Calcutt's inquiry are set out, they are purely:
"To inquire into the question of whether the investigations carried out by the Royal Air Force's Provost Marshal branch and the Army's Special Investigation Branch … were carried out in accordance with lawful and proper procedures".
That would appear prima facie to exclude from the inquiry the very people who the Statement says were asked to supervise the conduct of the investigation, in the light of whose investigation it was decided to bring the prosecution. If the answer to my question is that the Secretary of State for Defence is not constitutionally in a position to order an inquiry into the Metropolitan Police Special Branch, will the

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Secretary of State for Home Affairs join in this mandate and see to it that the investigation covers the very people who are stated to have responsibility?
My third question arises out of my second one. It is this: Is the Minister satisfied, is his right honourable friend satisfied, that there are proper lines of communication between the Ministry of Defence and the Special Branch when inquiries into security of this nature have to take place?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, it is not, of course, possible to go into details on what transpired at the trial because the proceedings were in camera. But the fact is that we are dealing here with the question of the investigations which were conducted by the two service agencies, one for the Royal Air Force, and one for the Army. The relevance of the Metropolitan Police Special Branch is to the responsibility for conducting the investigation, not as I see it, the handling on the ground. The Special Branch did not take over the investigation of the matter from the service authorities; they merely conducted it. I think that there is a difference there which I am sure the noble Lord will appreciate. They retained responsibility. They did not carry it out on the ground.
As for the lines of communication, I certainly know of no reason to suppose that the lines of communication are not adequate. No doubt, again, these are matters which Mr. Calcutt will consider when he looks into the specific question of whether or not there were failings in any way with the servicemen who conducted the investigations in the first place. However, it is certainly not unusual and I should have thought that they were satisfactory.
Lord Mishcon: My Lords, will the House assume that all of us are most sympathetic with the noble Lord the Minister who has taken over the responsibility for repeating this Statement and answering questions in the absence of the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne. And may I say that with his usual frankness he has done all he can to answer the questions. Having said that—because the question I asked is very important—would the noble Lord look at the wording of the Statement which says not only that
"the Director asked the Metropolitan Police Special Branch to assume responsibility for the conduct of the investigation".
but goes on to say,
"and in the light of their investigation he considered that the evidence justified prosecutions".
Would the noble Lord therefore take the matter back to his right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Defence and to his right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Home Affairs with a view to considering whether this inquiry should now be made complete, as it should be, by an inquiry also being made into the conduct of this matter by the Metropolitan Police Special Branch?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, can I say simply to the noble Lord that I understand his concern. Can I say to him simply that if, in the course of the investigations that Mr. Calcutt will conduct into the way the service authorities dealt with these cases, it involves the lines of communication leading to—the noble Lord shakes
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his head, but I am endeavouring to explain and since I had not finished before he started to shake his head I must be failing dismally. I am trying to explain to him that the conduct of the investigation was under the auspices of the Metropolitan Police Special Branch once it had reached a certain point. But the investigating and talking to the servicemen in Cyprus was by the service branches, that is to say, the SIB and the provost and security services. I am quite sure that when it comes to the investigation that Mr. Calcutt conducts, those matters about which he is concerned will also be looked into.
Lord Mishcon: My Lords, for the very last time, I promise the House—
Noble Lords: Order!
Lord Wigoder: My Lords, may I pose one simple question, before we get involved in an orgy of police bashing led by the Labour Party Front Bench——
Noble Lords: Oh!
Lord Wigoder: Is it not a fact that at this trial there were no serious allegations of misconduct made against the Special Branch of the Metropolitan Police?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, so far as I know that is absolutely correct.
Lord Granville of Eye: My Lords, following upon the showing on breakfast time television this morning, of amazing scenes inside a rather doubtful night club in Cyprus, with British airmen taking part in all states of inebriation, which operation was then turned into some kind of a soap opera, may I ask the Minister whether there will be any control of cheque book journalism over the next week or so while this inquiry is taking place?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, I do not think that that is a matter for me.
5.30 p.m.
Lord Mischon: My Lords, I must return to the Dispatch Box in view of a comment which was made by the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, which, if I may say so, was neither worthy of him as a Member of this House nor as a member of a very honoured profession in which we are taught to be careful with our language. From this Front Bench my colleagues and I have on all occasions praised the police, admired their courage and stood by them. However, that does not preclude a proper investigation when justice and the freedom of the subject is involved. There was only one thing that I wanted to say to the Minister and then I shall sit down. I promise that this is the very last time that I shall speak from this Dispatch Box on this matter. If the noble Lord looks at the terms of reference he will find that an investigation into what happened at the Special Branch and its supervision of the matter is excluded. I merely ask the noble Lord to look at the matter with his right honourable friends to see whether that is proper.
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, I shall certainly study the noble Lord's remarks. However, I can say that I believe—and I sincerely hope that I am not wrong—that a complaint could be made to the Police Complaints Authority under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act on the question of the Metropolitan Police Special Branch. If I am wrong, I can only apologise, but I believe that to be the case.
Lord Chalfont: My Lords, will not the Minister agree that in the rightful concern about who was or was not to blame for improprieties in the procedures which led up to this trial, we may be in danger of losing sight of one important matter? That matter has already been brought out by the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, and I should like to press the Minister on it. Is it not clear beyond any reasonable doubt that classified information bearing upon the security of this nation was passed from this unit in Cyprus to a foreign power? If that is so, and if it were not passed by those who confessed to passing it, then is it not a matter of great interest to discover by whom it was passed? As in the terms of reference the inquiry to be conducted by Mr. Calcutt does not seem to include any mention of that matter, will the Minister assure the House that we shall have an inquiry into who passed that information and that when, if possible, it is known, it will be made public, irrespective of the decisions made recently in a court of law?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, I am afraid that I can add nothing to what I said in answer to the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder; namely, that at the time of the earlier investigation there appeared to have been serious breaches of security. That is as far as I can go.
Lord Morris: My Lords, I should like to ask my noble friend one very simple question which bears upon the observations of the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon. The noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, suggested that the terms of reference of the investigation were drawn too narrowly. On the basis of the facts as adumbrated in the Statement, it appears that the noble Lord has a very strong case. I only ask that my noble friend asks his right honourable friend to look at this matter in all seriousness.
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, I am sure that my right honourable friend will note my noble friend's remarks.
Lord Mackie of Benshie: My Lords, as a layman, I should like to ask whether or not the servicemen concerned had a right to be tried at the Old Bailey by jury, or who it was who insisted that they not be tried by court martial? Was the matter dealt with in that way so that they could have the full benefit of British justice, or was it dealt with in that way because a court martial cannot pass severe enough sentences? There is concern about the cost of the trial. I would be very interested to know why this course was adopted.
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, it was a decision of my right honourable friend the Attorney General.
Lord Denham: My Lords, I think that the House may probably feel that we have given this Statement a full airing and that perhaps it might be better to resume the debate.

United Nations: 40th Anniversary
Debate resumed.
5.35 p.m.
Lord Ennals: My Lords, I warmly thank and congratulate the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury for the signal service which he has performed in raising this issue for debate this afternoon. However, it is only one of the many services which he has given to the United Nations and the United Nations Asociation, because he preached a sermon at a very special service at St. Paul's Cathedral on Sunday, for which I am not only personally grateful, but also grateful on behalf of the United Nations Association, of which I must say that I am only the chairman. I must make that point clear, because both of my presidents are here today. Indeed, the noble Baroness, Lady Elliot, and the noble Lord, Lord Caradon, are not only here, but they are to speak. I should hate them to think that I was trying to usurp the rights of a president over a very modest chairman!
In January, 1946 I was able, as a disabled serving officer, to obtain a ticket as an observer for one day to see the first sesson of the General Assembly in Central Hall, Westminster. I must say that at that stage I did not for one moment imagine that I would ever have the honour of standing in your Lordships' House speaking after the noble Lord, Lord Home of the Hirsel, and the noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn, who, of course, was present on that occasion. The United Nations General Assembly is very different today from what it was then. At that time it comprised 51 countries which had mainly white-faced delegates. Now it comprises 159 countries representing virtually the whole of the world. I submit that the dramatic change in both the membership and the nature and composition of the United Nations, explains many of the difficulties which have transpired in fulfilling the terms of a charter which was drafted while the war was still taking place and while there was a military alliance, at least, between the great powers.
We must recognise that many of the early hopes have not, and could not, have been fulfilled in a world which is deeply divided. On 10th and 11th January, 1986 we shall see youngsters from schools throughout the country representing 159 countries. I guess that they will be as deeply divided in the presentation of their case as is the situation in the United Nations. It is worth reminding ourselves of the fact, as we were reminded by the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury, that (to use his words) the United Nations:
"is the servant of the sovereign states which compose it".
The same point was made by the noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn. To put it another way, the United Nations can do no more than its member states permit it to do; it has no inherent power as if it were some super power or some super international power. It is no miracle worker.
Sometimes when looking at problems of peace and war, I compare the role and the machinery of the United Nations with that of ACAS which deals with industrial disputes in our own country. It follows the disputes, it watches and considers what it could do if it

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were called upon; it is ready to arbitrate or to mediate; and it is ready to offer its good offices privately or publicly. However, until it is asked, it cannot act. That is the situation of the United Nations. I think that we have to accept that far too many of the wars which have occurred in the past 40 years have been because the states involved did not go to the United Nations until war had virtually or had actually broken out. Therefore, we must recognise that the strength and the weakness of the United Nations lies in the strength and the weakness of the member states.
I should like to give an example of one or two matters which took place for its 40th anniversary. On October 24th the Prime Minister spoke at the United Nations General Assembly and I felt proud she did so. But the guns were firing in Beirut, in Iraq and in Iran; France chose that date to explode a nuclear device, and President Reagan spoke of the importance he attached to the strategic defence initiative. But one thing that pleased me personally was that President Zia of Pakistan announced there would be the return of a quarter of a million Biharis from Bangladesh to Pakistan and they would be resettled. This is a cause with which I have been associated for the last 14 years.
On that same day, an all-Party committee emphasised the downward trend, in a sense of percentage, of our spending on overseas aid as a percentage of gross national product, and showed the very serious extent to which it had slipped, and the fact that it was going to slip still further at a time of the greatest famine that mankind has known.
In spite of the immense difficulties which have faced the United Nations, I believe, as was clearly indicated by the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury, that the United Nations have many achievements to their credit. The noble Lord, Lord Home of the Hirsel, referred to minor achievements. I think that is a little modest when one looks at some of the things the United Nations have done. Some things have been minor, but some have been major. I would almost say that to have survived 40 years and to have enabled the world to avoid a world war for 40 years of itself is no mean achievement. But I think what I admire most about the United Nations is the flexibility they have shown. Because of the divisions of the world, so many provisions of the charter cannot be carried out—Military Staffs Committee, and all. The UN have, however, enabled tasks to be done which had not been thought of in the charter.
My Lords, reference was made by the most reverend Primate to peace-keeping forces. I think he will be interested to know, as a distinguished ex-serviceman himself, that for the first time ever in the Armistice Day parade in Whitehall, there will be a small contingent of men and women wearing pale blue berets. They will be there because they have served in the United Nations peace-keeping forces in different parts of the world.
Secondly, the United Nations have set standards—standards in human rights, standards in the prevention of torture, standards concerning terrorism, referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Home of the Hirsel, standards of rights of women, referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady Young, the rights of children and, indeed, of the disabled. The very fact
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that so many of those standards tragically have been broken by many of the member states does not mean they do not have to account for their behaviour before the United Nations General Assembly or the Human Rights Commission, or the Economic and Social Council, or what-have-you. One of the great things about the United Nations is that no country can take action, however witless it may be, without having to account to world-wide opion for what it has done. I do not believe that the Soviet Union or any other country in the world is totally immune to the pressures of public opinion. When the noble Lord, Lord Home, referred to a safety valve he was thinking in terms similar to those to which I am referring.
The United Nations have also negotiated many agreements of world-wide importance, such as the treaty on the Law of the Sea. I have a particular interest in this because at one stage, as the Minister at the Foreign Office, I led the British delegation in Caracus to the negotiations to bring about what eventually was the treaty. I most earnestly plead with the noble Baroness the Minister that she will recognise, and that the Government will recognise, that nothing is perfect, but that this is an agreement, a treaty, which is immensely in Britain's interest. It is in her economic and her defence interest, in the interests of pollution, the environment, and in so many other ways. It would be a tragedy if Her Majesty's Government continued to stand out with very few other countries in not signing that treaty
My Lords, remarkable things have been achieved through the United Nations High Commission for Refugees. I refer to it because it is not one of the specialised agencies, but I have seen much of its work with refugees from Afghanistan, in Pakistan, Thailand and in the Sudan. The work of the United Nations High Commission is quite magnificent, as is the work of UNICEF. I had the privilege of being a member of their secretariat at one stage earlier in my life.
One of the things in this, together with the other specialised agencies about which I will not go into detail for reasons of time—is that in the United Nations we have achieved universality as we never did achieve it in the League of Nations. I say, "We never did achieve", because I was a member of the League of Nations Union and felt intensely involved 50 years ago. We have now achieved universality. Switzerland will have a referendum to decide whether after 40 years perhaps it should come into the United Nations, and then we will have 150 members. It would be sad if that universality were to be broken.
I will refer just for a moment to the position of the Government in relation to UNESCO. I do not wish to be too critical. I believe there were some important changes to be made in UNESCO, as was said by the noble Baroness; some important changes in priorities and administration. I believe that the Government have made some important proposals. I am glad that they have been so significantly followed up. I hope the conference now taking place in Sofia will enable the British Government to decide to remain within UNESCO, a body which we played such an important part in bringing into existence.
My Lords, 40 years have passed, and we must look forward, especially in the sphere of peace and war as,

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indeed, this Motion does. We must improve methods of anticipating and seeking by diplomacy to prevent localised conflicts. I agree this is not always done in the open and in public and with mediators. From my own experience as a Minister, I know how much is done in the corridors of power, or in the bars most likely, of the United Nations, or perhaps in private rooms where delegates from countries in deep conflict with each other are able to come to agreement such as might prevent a situation going from bad to worse.
The most reverend Primate referred to Brian Urquhart, as did my noble friend Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos. Brian Urquhart is an outstanding international civil servant. I do not want to say more about him because I think his greatness speaks for itself.
I believe there is a great need to build up a core of senior members of the United Nations secretariat whose commitment is to the United Nations and its charter only, and in no way due to the nationality of those concerned. I am thinking of men of the calibre of Dag Hammarskjöld, U Thant, Bunche and the present Secretary General, Perez de Cuellar. Far too often because of the requirements of the balance of nationality, we have people who come and go in the secretariat. There needs to be a core of dedicated men of integrity and principle who can stand up for and fulfil the important tasks of mediation.
My Lords, in conclusion, I said that power lies with governments—and that is right. But in most countries, unhappily not in some, power ultimately lies with the people. The importance of public opinion, of public education as well, should not be underestimated. I know that the Government do not underestimate it. When 20,000 people gathered, as they did just a week ago today, coming from all parts of the country—from the Churches, from branches of the United Nations Association, the World Development Movement, Oxfam and the rest—to plead with the Government to do more and set more of a lead in terms of the battle against poverty, they were expressing their deep convictions. That is a healthy thing to do, and the Government ought to listen to what they have to say.
I find, and I think it would be found among those 20,000, a growing concern among young people. It is only among us older folk—many of us having been in at the beginning of the UN—that there was this great vision, and we have now allowed ourselves to become pessimistic about it. The young generation are looking at the next 40 years—not the last 40 years—of the United Nations.
There is for Britain a special responsibility. The United Nations was founded here, and we should be proud of that fact. The noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn, played a vital and crucial role. We are permanent members of the Security Council, and that should not be just an historic anachronism. If we started the United Nations today it might be that Britain would not automatically be picked out as one of the five great nations of the world. I do not think that anyone would doubt what I am saying. But we are because of history, and because of the charter, and we have a special position.
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If we have that special position, then we have a special obligation. It gives us a position, which I hope we shall practise, of moral leadership and influence for the next 40 years. I have confidence that we will learn many of the lessons of the past, and that with the sort of leadership which has been given by the most reverend Primate and by my noble presidents—to whom I must pay my tribute before I sit down—the next 40 years may be more productive. For the human race 40 years is a short period of time, but we may be able to learn from the lessons of the first 40 years and build on them in the next 40 years.
5.53 p.m.
Lord Campbell of Croy: My Lords, I am glad to find myself following the noble Lord, Lord Ennals. He and I have followed United Nations and United Nations Association affairs over the years since 1946, as he has mentioned. I should like respectfully to congratulate the most reverend Primate on his speech. I think I agreed completely with every comment and sentiment that he expressed. I am venturing to take part in this debate on the 40th anniversary because I worked at the United Nations in its early years and I feel I might help by recalling some of the atmosphere of those days.
I first went there in 1948, two years after it had established itself in New York. I was a member of the permanent British mission there for three years from 1949 to 1952. I assisted, and sat behind, our first permanent representative, Sir Alexander Cadogan, for a year, and then for two years his successor, my noble kinsman, Lord Gladwyn. I am probably the first Member of this House to have lived and worked at the United Nations after its headquarters was established in New York, of course in a junior capacity as a British diplomatist. Others who have spoken, or will speak, in the debate were there later in much more important capacities.
At the time of the General Assemblies I was assisting and sitting behind the Ministers of State. My job was primarily in the Security Council, but I found myself sitting behind Hector MacNeil, Kenneth Younger, and then, with a change of Government, Selwyn Lloyd, whom many noble Lords will remember.
Mention has been made of the outbreak of hostilities in Korea. I attended that first hurried emergency meeting on a Sunday morning at Lake Success. We were summoned in the early hours of the morning. I was part of the British delegation. I cannot remember whether there were two of us or three of us, but it was a vital meeting. The North Koreans had attacked the South, following the example of Mussolini, on a Saturday evening, but the Security Council was hurriedly meeting at 11 o'clock on the following morning.
It had also slightly caught the British delegation because Sir Alexander Cadogan had departed on retirement and his successor designate, Lord Gladwyn, had not yet arrived. As has been mentioned in the debate, the resolutions went through that day and at subsequent meetings without a veto because the Soviet Union was absent from the meetings right the way through July. The Soviet Union did not come back

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until August, and the attack had occurred on 25th June. Therefore, those resolutions went through.
There are two points which even from these early experiences I should like to make. First, I think that the eventual success of the United Nations forces in the Korean episode had the effect of deterring a great number of possible aggressors later on from trying to chance their arm. The existence of the United Nations and the Security Council has, over the years, prevented aggressions—perhaps minor ones—where neighbours were tempted to attack and take over another country or piece of territory.
The other point I should like to make is on the veto. Had the Korean question involved the really vital interests of the Soviet Union, I am sure that the Soviet representative would have been there and using the veto. I think that the veto is essential. It has sometimes been criticised but I am sure it had to be in the charter. If it were not there one could face a head-on collision between one of the major powers and the rest of the United Nations which could cause the kind of world war which it was the primary aim of the United Nations to prevent.
In those years when I was in the permanent Mission of the United Kingdom we were trying to apply sections of the charter for the first time. During that period, or part of it, I knew the charter by heart.
Lord Gladwyn: Hear, hear!
Lord Campbell of Croy: I am glad to say that my former boss is apparently able to confirm that. I could certainly recite any article, as required, and we were determined to try to make it work.
My noble friend Lord Home has already referred to the article, which again was an essential part of the Charter, precluding intervention in internal affairs. That was Article 2, subsection 7. It is essential to have such a provision in the charter, but it is sometimes difficult to draw the line, because what is going on internally in one country can cause a great deal of trouble and even outbreaks of fighting in another.
There is part of the charter which has never been put into operation. While I was there, the five main powers, as they were then, were trying to get Articles 43 to 47 put into effect. Those are the articles which would set up the military staff committee and also required countries to earmark forces to be available to the Security Council for use when required to stop fighting. During that period the Soviet delegation simply did not co-operate. What had happened was that the Russians had agreed to this part of the charter at the preparatory conference at San Francisco and had apparently changed their mind since then.
The military staff committee was set up in embryo, but they were simply the military representatives of the five major countries. However, they could never get any further at their meetings than confirming the minutes of the last meeting and then trying to adopt the agenda, and of course that simply ran into the sand. Because that part of the charter has never come into force, peace-keeping arrangements have come about instead. They had been brought into being to meet particular situations. Now they have been formalised as a method available to the United
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Nations, and I suggest that that has been a useful development.
Another role which the United Nations has played successfully is in discussions behind the scenes on major problems. The United Nations has been a meeting place for ministers and diplomatists of the countries involved and I do not think we should underestimate the work that has gone on in the corridors in starting to settle some of the most difficult problems, particularly those affecting the Soviet Union and the West.
Here I come to one of the weaknesses that I do not think anyone has yet mentioned. There has been a temptation at the United Nations for the smaller countries to indulge in what is known as horse trading. A small country not interested in some particular subject affecting another part of the world is prepared to trade its vote. Perhaps I may give an example of something that happened during that early period when I was there, because it well illustrates this. Some Latin American countries came to a pact behind the scenes (but we all knew about it) whereby they would support the Arab argument in the problem of the Middle East which was before the Assembly at the time. In return, the Arab States would support another proposal which was put forward at that time—that Spanish should become an official language of the United Nations. That had absolutely nothing to do with the subject. Of course there is a temptation to indulge in that kind of horse trading. A small country has one vote equal to the single vote of the United States, Britain or France and it is an asset which at times it no doubt feels it should use. But it means that some questions are not necessarily decided on their merits.
I was not around at the time of the anniversary we are celebrating. In October 1945 I was still flat on my back in hospital and I did not emerge until the following summer, but I had been successful in the Foreign Office exam before I could walk again. Later I had to take a medical and fortunately those concerned got me onto my pins in time. I think it was a "stretched medical" that was used for people like me after the war.
I should particularly like to applaud the speech of the most reverend Primate in what he said about the past and his assessment of the present and prospects for the future. I hope he will not mind my saying so, but one reason is that we are in the same age group. I must confess to being a few months older than him which meant that I was in the army a day or two before the war and found myself later commanding a field battery in a Scottish division. He will remember that it was in that way that we first came across each other in the closing stages of the war, when for two years I was operating with the squadron of tanks in which he served and which was commanded by my noble friend Lord Cathcart.
Some of our particular age group were imbued after the war with a determination to do what we could to prevent a conflict of that kind ever happening again and to try to take part in the reconstruction of the world. That was so in my case. The noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn, is not here now, but I should like to address that remark to him because he was speaking of some who were cynical and critical of the United Nations. It

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was not just idealism. There was some idealism but it was strongly laced with realism. We found in New York at the United Nations that on the whole the American public were over-optimistic and starry-eyed about the United Nations. At that time they thought it would do far more than the charter could ever have enabled it to do. That changed later, because that kind of opinion was disappointed when weaknesses emerged.
I remember again, in about 1950, the delegate of a small country with whom I was talking saying, quite frankly, that the 51 nations who were then members—when I went there were 51, and when I left there were 60—were mainly concerned with peace and trying to prevent happening again the kind of war which we had just been through. Of course those member states were virtually the countries that had been on the Allies' side during the war. He said something which certainly registered with me at the time because it mattered later: "You must remember that some of us think that the most important role of the United Nations is to eliminate colonialism." It was important that one realised early on that not all the countries of the world thought that peace was the main object. It was an important object but others had other aims in mind too.
The United Nations is needed as a meeting place for all the countries of the world. It has to be there for that purpose. It is needed also as a forum for voicing views and drawing attention to dangerous situations. Of course this can be abused: it can be used simply for propaganda, but I suspect there are few national parliaments who could rebut that kind of criticism. Above all, the United Nations is needed because the Security Council can immediately be convened to consider outbreaks of hostilities or threats to peace. Its authority is still an effective way of influencing the plans of governments tempted to resort to violence.
I am sure that Britain will continue to play a full part and will help to strengthen the organisation and especially its peace-keeping role.
6.8 p.m.
Lord Bottomley: My Lords, it is a pleasure for me to follow the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy. When he was in the diplomatic service he assisted me as the Minister in concluding a successful trade agreement with Yugoslavia, following which the Russians and the Yugoslavs parted company. This is also an opportunity for me to tell the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury how much I admire him and to thank him particularly for raising this subject for discussion today.
In 1946, 1947 and 1949 it was my privilege to be a member of the British delegation to the United Nations. The team was led by the great Foreign Secretary, Ernest Bevin. My joy and excitement at being present at that august assembly was, I regret to say, short-lived. The bullying tactics of the United States towards the Latin American countries and the way in which the Soviet Union treated the East European countries made me cast-down and miserable. No wonder that, when we met at Lake Success, some cynics called it "Fake Success".
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However, I was proud to be a member of the British delegation. That delegation behaved with dignity and decorum. The United Kingdom was responsible for ensuring that the dependent territories and colonies, who were at the assembly as observers, were kept fully informed and were consulted. Indeed, as a result of the meetings that we continually had we laid the foundations for the commonwealth of nations as we know it today.
Ever since the inception of the United Nations it has been maligned and vilified. With wars occurring in many parts of the world it is not surprising that people should be cynical and sceptical, for the United Nations came into being to create a peaceful world and to stop wars. Unfortunately the United Nations is not a world government and can only do what its members permit it to do. Power politics enter into the procedures, and that takes advantage of the power politics where national interests are put first and co-operation is forgotten. However, as has already been said by many noble Lords, successful things have been done.
In spite of all its restrictions and difficulties, the nearest the United States and the Soviet Union ever came to confrontation which could have led to war was at the time of the Cuba missile situation. The Secretary General of the United Nations, U Thant, with whom I worked in connection with Burmese independence, took an active role. It was because of that that the Soviet Union and the United States came together,and indeed both sent a letter to the Secretary General thanking him for what he had done to help prevent a third world war.
The General Assembly of course enables foreign leaders of other nations to come together in an informal way and discuss matters. Often very successful things are accomplished in those informal meetings. As has already been said, the United Nations is also concerned with the promotion of high living standards, with all that implies: better food, better health, better education and better working conditions.
The special agencies, the World Health Organisation, the Food and Agriculture Organisation and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation do admirable work. In my past capacity as Secretary of State for Commonwealth Affairs and Minister for Overseas Development, I had the opportunity of playing a part in the work of these agencies. I have seen at first hand many of the excellent results that have been achieved. The United Nations special agencies do work which is really worthwhile in terms of development and improvement of the circumstances of many people worldwide. It was just possible that there might have been another agency, the world trade organisation. I led the British delegation to the Havana Conference. The Poles and the Czechs came to that meeting; the Russians stayed away. In due course the Russians put the pressure on Poland and Czechoslovakia to withdraw. It was unfortunate. The economies of the world might have been in better shape if that trade agency had come into being.
However, one thing arose from that conference. It was the creation of the general agreement on tariffs and trade, in the creation of which my noble friend Lord Wilson played a most active part. The reason the

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United Nations Organisation is not as effective as it should be is that the nations of the world are not yet prepared to work through it and give it all the support possible. The will for peace must come from the hearts and minds of people throughout the world as a whole.
6.14 p.m.
Baroness Ewart-Biggs: My Lords, first I should like to apologise for having arrived a little late for this debate. I had a long-standing speaking engagement at lunchtime in Kent. For that reason, I was most sorry to have missed the speeches of the right reverend Primate and the noble Baroness. I very much look forward to reading them in Hansard tomorrow.
I am delighted to speak after so many noble Lords who took such an active part both in establishing and building up the United Nations. For that reason, I am very proud to follow my noble friend Lord Bottomley, with all the experience he has had and the contribution that he has made. However, the reason I particularly wanted to take only a brief part in this debate today was that in my capacity as President of the United Kingdom Committee for UNICEF, I should like to say a few words about the work of that vitally important agency. I am most grateful to those noble Lords who have already paid tribute to its work, notably my noble friends Lord Ennals and Lord Gladwyn.
Generally speaking, I do not think that either governments or indeed the public recognise or give enough credit to the humanitarian, social and very practical achievements of many of the specialist agencies in the field of human and children's rights. For example, there is the work of UNESCO in rescuing and restoring cultural treasures on every continent. There is the UNHCR's assistance to those driven from their homes by conflict or disaster, in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Uganda and throughout the Sahel. There is UNICEF, with its work for the welfare of the world's children. The United Nations is the sole vehicle through which the world's concern for so many issues, so many families and so many individuals can be expressed.
Next year is the 40th birthday of UNICEF. Perhaps no better way could be found to celebrate those 40 years than to grasp that opportunity to make this already most effective arm of the United Nations still more effective—effective in saving the lives of thousands of children who currently die each day. What is needed is not a transformation or a restructuring in the case of UNICEF because it has built a system which seems to have worked very well, but rather the provision of more funds. As your Lordships know, UNICEF, unlike the rest of the United Nations, is dependent entirely on voluntary contributions from governments and peoples and its resources do not match its needs. Like its children, UNICEF is suffering from a kind of malnutrition, a financial malnutrition, with all the consequences of that.
I think there is little doubt that the public is doing its bit. I have visited branches of UNICEF in the poorest areas of the United Kingdom, where people are already feeling the pinch. It is always heartwarming to see their interest and devotion to helping the people in other countries who are more hard up than they are themselves. However, I do not feel that the
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Government have followed the lead given by the public. There have been all kinds of examples of how the public are deeply concerned with helping the developing world. Indeed, compared with other countries in Western Europe, I do not feel that our Government come out very well in the way that they contribute to these all-important agencies.
The right reverend Primate's debate is about the need to increase the effectiveness of the United Nations. I should like to point out one or two of the areas of effectiveness in the work of the United Nations Children's Fund. First, there is its work in the area of peace. It achieved the Nobel Peace Prize in 1965. It was present in besieged Beirut on both sides of the green line in 1983. It brought about three separate days of ceasefire between government and guerrillas to achieve the immunisation of children in El Salvador. There is its work in the field of water and sanitation, where its achievements have been extraordinary. In the area of the all-important gift that any country can be given, which is that of water, UNICEF is currently supplying clean, safe water to no fewer than 97 countries in the world.
Its very radical child-survival revolution ideas, which have caught the imagination of various world leaders, are bringing about a peaceful revolution in the quality of children's lives all over the world. There is also its work in nutrition, emergency relief, and its efforts to improve female education and opportunities in training, and so on, throughout the world.
I have seen how effective that work is when visiting the Sudan and I saw all the different areas of the United Nations Children's Fund working with programmes concerning health, the provision of dean water and the education of mothers to try to enable them to bring up their own children in a better way. Many governments are showing the way and in some cases they are mobilising entire populations behind this campaign. In Colombia, Nigeria, Turkey, Pakistan and China we have seen this, and India has committed itself to a national immunisation campaign as a memorial to Mrs. Indira Gandhi. Italy at present has pledged most generously 100 million dollars in similar campaigns in Africa.
If developing countries with all their economic, social and often natural problems show so much will, together with other wealthier countries, it seems both hypocritical and churlish for us to protest that we cannot afford to help more than we help at present. We must do more to assist the practical development programmes which really benefit the poorest of the poor. Support for this particular arm of the United Nations, which has proved that it can bring the kind of lasting assistance which so many of the poor countries so badly need, would strengthen the whole apparatus of the United Nations. The Times last Thursday in its leader stated:
"The best way to celebrate today is to look to the future of the UN, not its past—and begin the refining process which it needs to press on towards the hopes and ideals that are still high in the clouds above".
But many of these hopes and ideals, as I have just indicated, are not so high above us. There is an opportunity for a tangible increase in effectiveness right before us.
6.21 p.m.
Baroness Elliot of Harwood: My Lords, I should like to express my thanks to the most reverend Primate for inaugurating this debate, which I found extremely interesting. I have listened to all the speeches and there is no doubt at all that we have in our Lordships' House people who have made a tremendous contribution to what is really the greatest thing that has happened since the war. My mind goes back, because I am now of considerable age, far more than 40 years, to the early 1920s—in fact, to 1922 when the League of Nations union was formed and we all joined in enthusiastically, hoping that this would see a new era after we had lived through the First World War. But of course we know, rather sadly, that those efforts did not succeed. However, we were not deterred by that, and the next effort that was made—and which we are discussing today—had the great advantage and great importance that it brought both North America and South America into the world picture.
Looking back on the League of Nations, I remember going to a meeting in Geneva in 1937 with my husband. Little did we realise how imminent was another World War. That was 47 years ago. I remain firmly of the opinion—as I was then, though, alas! it did not then succeed—that an organisation such as the United Nations is the only way we can avoid another world war. In fact, that has been proved more than once in 40 years, because the United Nations has prevented a world war breaking out. Unfortunately it cannot prevent nations from quarrelling with each other, arguing with each other in what one might almost term a guerrilla struggle; but it has prevented the outbreak of a major conflict, which is the main reason we should all support it today.
We hear continually of its weaknesses and not enough of its strengths and achievements. Other noble Lords have spoken of the great international organisations which have started through the United Nations. I will not go into them in detail because they have been mentioned: the WHO, the Food and Agriculture Organisation, UNICEF, the refugee organisations. All these have in different ways done marvellous work. There is much more to be done. The noble Baroness, Lady Ewart-Biggs, has pointed out that UNICEF is developing all the time; that WHO has prevented the spread of many diseases and is stronger today than ever. I think that FAO (as the noble Lord, Lord Home, has suggested) could be more effective, given more financial support from the World Bank, in the terrible problems of starvation, drought and misery brought about by the climatic difficulties in the Middle East.
I remember taking an active part in one of the very successful efforts of the United Nations in 1961, at the time of the World Refugee year, when I was chairman of a committee and raised millions of pounds. In this country £10½ million was raised; I think it was the biggest response ever achieved in a single year for a great cause like that. We all hoped that this would lead to the permanent resettlement of refugees in the camps, the influx of refugees created as a result of the war. The refugee year enabled the resettlement from camps of all refugees. What we did not realise was that there would still be in the world appalling conditions which would produce more refugees.
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Today that challenge is still there, and I am sure that it is one of the challenges the United Nations can tackle with the support of all the other nations. I shall not go closely into the question of UNESCO because it is controversial; but my own feeling is that one can do more to change an organisation if one is inside it and working in it than if one is outside. I hope very much that we may be able—this Government particularly—to alter some of the organisations of UNESCO so that we do not need to leave but can put right some of the things which definitely are wrong.
Without the United Nations, none of these organisations would function. It is a long time—not quite so long as in the case of the noble Lord, Lord Bottomley; but it is a long time—since I was a delegate from the United Kingdom to the United Nations. It was in the years 1954, 1956 and 1957.I was a member of the third committee, the committee that deals with social services, social work, refugees and so on. Through that work, I learnt a tremendous amount of the problems which arise. It was by no means plain sailing. The arguments put forward were, "Let there be all talking and no shooting", and, as Winston Churchill once said, "Jaw-jaw is better than war-war".
It fell to me on one of these occasions (I think it was in 1956) to make the leading speech for the United Kingdom when the Russians invaded Hungary. It was on a Saturday morning. I can remember it well, because the other delegates had to go back to the House of Commons since there was a crisis going on here. I found myself on the rostrum attacking the Russians for this really monstrous invasion of Hungary. I shall never forget it. It was an event in which, alas! the United Nations failed, but at least the protests are recorded; and although the Iron Curtain has not lifted, the Hungarians know that some day (we hope) they will be free again. But today, with 159 member countries, the problems of agreement are far different and more difficult than ever. However, the discussion goes on, as it must do.
The United Kingdom, as has been pointed out by other speakers, is a permanent member of the Security Council. This is a vital matter and one which is of enormous importance to us and to the rest of the world. The United Nations must and does carry on. None of those things would exist if it were not for the United Nations.
The United Nations Association, of which the noble Lord, Lord Caradon, and I are joint presidents, is the organisation in this country which we must support in every way we possibly can, because the criticisms one often hears could so easily be answered by the United Nations Association's membership and by its meetings throughout the country. I feel very strongly indeed that we must stick to this principle of being an active and very important member of the United Nations and that we must do everything we possibly can to preserve world peace and to prevent another war breaking out.
6.31 p.m.
Lord Caradon: My Lords, I think everyone in this House will wish to express gratitude to the most reverend Primate the Archbishop for coming himself to take part in this debate and giving us such a

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magnificent lead. I, on behalf of everyone here, would wish to express to him our gratitude and our admiration.
The thought I should like to put to your Lordships is this. It is the members who matter. When I read the press or listen to some of the speeches, I am depressed by people speaking as though it is the United Nations which has failed or succeeded. Not at all: it is the members, of course. The United Nations provides a system, a method, an organisation and a leadership too, and I have in mind the very fine Secretary General we have at this time. They provide the means, but the leadership and the initiative must surely come from the members, and particularly from the five permanent members of the Security Council. It would be a very great mistake to imagine that there is a body there which must take responsibility for the failures or claim an occasional success. That is not so: it is we ourselves who can play a vital part in working for peace, and it is the other members who share that responsibility with us. It is useless and wrong to speak of the United Nations having succeeded or failed in any particular sphere. It is we who have taken a lead or who have failed to do so.
Having said that, I would wish to go on and say that I do not think the general impression of all being well should be allowed to pass tonight. I would take one particular example which I remember very well from my own experience, where a tiny country in the United Nations came to the General Assembly. The representative of the island of Malta came at the last moment before we entered the General Assembly that year. He said he had a new subject. Everybody was very irritated that this tiny country should come and hold up the work of the world organisation. What was it he wanted to say? The ambassador for Malta said he wished to raise the question of the deep sea. There was further consternation. Why should Malta want to hold up the whole work of the United Nations to deal with the deep sea? What did he want to say about the deep sea? The Maltese ambassador said he understood there were riches in the deep sea and he wanted to propose at that stage, before anything was done about it, that the riches of the deep sea should be the common heritage of mankind.
It appeared to be a rather ridiculous proposition, but something would have to be done about it and a little time was allotted later in the session for the subject to be raised. By that time Malta had raised a good deal of excitement and support. I do not forget the day when we took a vote on the Maltese resolution that the riches of the deep sea bed should be the common heritage of mankind. It was passed by 99 votes to nil. I remember that a sort of gasp went up, and I wondered whether this might turn out to be an important time in the history of the world when the great assets of the sea were declared to be the common heritage of mankind.
I remember what happened after the session was over and after that favourable vote. Members went into committee and worked, led by the ambassadors of some of the smallest countries in the world. I remember that when the Maltese ambassador handed over the detailed work of the committee on this issue, he handed it over to the ambassador for Sri Lanka, and when he died the representative of Singapore took
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over. These three representatives of small Commonwealth countries led the world and they convinced the world. They got to a stage when they drew up a treaty dealing with all the main issues: pollution, fish and the rights of the countries bordering on the sea. Everything was dealt with in agreement. That could be looked upon as one of the most remarkable achievements of international negotiation: a brilliant result. There was the summoning of the main conference in Montego Bay in Jamaica, where all the countries of the world were to come together in the expectation of signing a treaty which would alter in these respects the future of the whole world. And nearly everyone voted in favour.
The United States during the last few days, unhappily, sent word to say that they would not sign the agreement, and I am sorry and ashamed to say that the United Kingdom consequently abstained on this great issue on which they had previously worked so hard with the others and with the Americans too. That is a very serious result, is it not? It indicates that even when there is agreement and even if there is international advantage, the United States, the United Kingdom and other Western powers are not to participate in the general world effort. That is a bad outlook.
I think it is worth remembering that now when we see the actions of the United States in the United Nations we must show serious concern about the future; and if we follow in the footsteps of the United States in these matters in attacks on the institutions and organisations of the United Nations, it is a very bad outlook for our country and for the United Nations. I think it is well that these things should be said now rather than that there should be a general euphoria which would be unjustified. It is of tremendous consequence that we should use our influence. We have great influence and tremendous experience; we are widely respected. It is important that we should use our position and our history to work for the advancement of the idea of the United Nations authority.
Of course it can work; and having given a depressing example, perhaps I might be permitted to turn to the example which was quoted earlier this evening of when we voted unanimously on a subject which is not easy to agree upon: the whole question of the Middle East. I do not forget the time when the Soviet representative took me aside and said, "I want two more days; I beg you to get me two more days; I am personally asking you for two days." I was somewhat reluctant and uncertain, but I agreed, and we left the matter to the following Wednesday. I do not forget that moment of time when there was a cheer, and I turned to my right and there was the Soviet representative voting for the British resolution, making it unanimous. Yes, my Lords, it was an important day, because it showed that it can be done. I hesitate for a moment to say this to your Lordships, but it was done in a spirit of friendship and cheerful understanding.
I think that I am the only permanent representative at the United Nations who ever spoke in verse, but I took the opportunity shortly afterwards of asking permission to speak in verse. My little verse was this:
"When prospects are dark and hopes are dim,
We know that we must turn to him.

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When storms and tempests fill the sky,
'Bring on Kuznetsov' is the cry.
He comes like a dove from the Soviet ark,
And light appears where all was dark.
His coming quickly turns the tide,
Propaganda floods subside.
And now that he has changed the weather,
Lion and lamb can vote together.
God bless the Russian delegation.
I waive consecutive translation."
That was my little contribution at that time. It was misquoted in The Times a day or two ago, to my annoyance, when they said that the rhyme had been used in connection with the Cuban crisis. I had no connection with the Cuban crisis.
It was to give some little satisfaction to my friend Kuznetsov who, incidentally, has several times in subsequent years sent me word personally to say that our resolution is still doing well. It can be done; it must be done. We must work in a spirit of cheerful friendship in dealing with the issues of the world and it can give results.
I should like to tell one other personal story with which I was associated. I was at that time Governor of Cyprus and they were going to have yet another debate in the General Assembly on Cyprus. The Greek side and the Turkish side were to be adequately represented and our representative, our ambassador at that time, worked to get the maximum votes for the resolution which we supported, and he obtained them.
He got into his car to go down to the United Nations for yet another debate on Cyprus. It is not very far from the British Mission headquarters to the United Nations—not more than 10 minutes. He told me late that night by telegram—because I was in Nicosia, Cyprus—what happened on that momentous day. He said that as he went down to the United Nations he told himself: what we really want today is not a victory, but a success. He thought that it was a rather silly phrase, but when he arrived at the United Nations it was still in his mind—not a victory, but a success.
So he did not go into the General Assembly, which was waiting for the vote, but went instead to an upper room and asked the Foreign Ministers of Greece and Turkey to go and see him. Mr. Zorlu, the Foreign Minister of Turkey, came first. He inquired what was in his mind and the ambassador asked, "Couldn't we at this last moment work for some progress, some advance—not for victory, but for success?" Mr. Zorlu replied, "Too late. They are all down below and they are waiting to vote. They have promised their votes for two days."
Where was Mr. Averof, the Foreign Minister of Greece? He had gone to meet the then Queen of Greece. He was reached on the telephone and asked whether he would come as quickly as he could. He said, "Yes, I will come". And the three men in the upper room, with all the Assembly waiting below, earnestly looked again at the whole problem, looking not for a victory but for a success. At the end of that time, Mr. Zorlu of Turkey shook hands with Mr. Averof of Greece, and each pledged their personal honour to work as rapidly as possible for a final settlement in Cyprus.
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The question was: what to do now? There was no time to get anything in type. They scribbled out a new resolution, which did not mean very much, but neither side was scoring a victory over the other. Who could propose it? The rule of the Assembly was that when you had backed one resolution you could not propose another. They went through the list of all the other members. Was there anyone there who had not backed one of the existing resolutions? They found Mexico. They put out a call on the loudspeakers for the ambassador of Mexico to come, and he came hurriedly from his position in the General Assembly. He was asked: would he move a resolution on Cyprus? He wanted to see what it was, so they explained it to him. He understood and agreed.
Then the angry Assembly, who had been waiting so long below, were amazed to see the Foreign Ministers of both Greece and Turkey, who were practically at war up to that point, coming in together with the ambassadors of Mexico and the United Kingdom. Later, to their further astonishment, the ambassador of Mexico rose to propose a resolution which they had never heard of, although almost every member of that great Assembly had previously promised his vote to one side or the other. But, to their amazement, the Mexican resolution was immediately supported by the Foreign Ministers of Greece and Turkey and by the ambassador of the United Kingdom. In an atmosphere of further amazement, the Mexican resolution was passed that day without opposition, and in effect unanimously.
Within about three months of that time we had a settlement in Cyprus, largely on the basis of proposals put forward by the two Foreign Ministers and I, as Governor, was able to leave the island shaking hands with Archbishop Makarios and with Dr. Kutchuk of the Turks in agreement. Subsequent events are another matter; but I like to remember that as something which can happen. There can be people working not for victory but for success,and it can be that they can succeed.
So I put that thought to your Lordships, that it is for the members to play their full part and we are not at the moment. It is essential that we should exercise every influence we have in our own country, in regard to our own delegation, to make sure that we are not misled by the Americans. We are going to take a line of our own. We are going to work for the things that we believe in. We have done it before and we can do it again. So I put this thought to your Lordships: we in this country have a greater responsibility than any other country in the world to work unsparingly for success, not for victory. It is with that in mind that I welcome so warmly this debate, and greatly hope that we may be increasingly determined, first, to understand and, secondly, to use our maximum influence in the world in order to make the United Nations a success.
6.49 p.m.
The Lord Bishop of Rochester: My Lords, it is almost an impertinence for me to follow the moving speech that we have just heard from the noble Lord, Lord Caradon, with the unique and distinguished contribution that he has made to the United Nations for the whole of its 40 years. Perhaps I may say that for

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those of us who were born during the First World War and who lived through the second, this 40th anniversary of the United Nations is a milestone on a longer journey. I feel sure that we would have been reminded of this by the late Lord Noel-Baker, had he still been with us.
Robert Rhodes James, from his wide experience, has said that the United Nations was born not in 1945 but in the darkest months of 1916, when the small League of Nations society began to be taken seriously. By the time I was a schoolboy, the League of Nations Union had fired the imagination of the between-the-wars generation; and I recall that the first public speech I ever made was somewhat precociously in its support in 1929.
The failure of the league to stop another world war must not be allowed to overshadow its pioneer work in many fields, which undoubtedly prepared the way for a second attempt in 1945 to provide the means not only of preventing conflict but also of promoting co operation on practical projects of mutual advantage. We do well to recall the wide public support that the League of Nations had at its zenith, for I believe that if we are to make the United Nations more effective we need, before all else, to capture the enthusiasm and the imagination of a generation that has had no personal experience of war, either on the battlefield or on the home front.
Forty years ago, on the eve of the first meeting of the United Nations General Assembly, King George VI entertained the delegates at St. James's Palace. Characteristically, the founder of the Duke of York's camps said to them:
"The outstanding feature of membership of the United Nations is service—not a selfish defence of mere national interest, but service to the whole community of nations. Here is the prime motive power which must inspire all its actions and enable the approach to every difficulty to be made in the spirit of co-operation, understanding and goodwill".
It is that same motive power which has characterised the specialised agencies of the United Nations to whom the Prime Minister paid a handsome tribute in her speech in New York last week. She said:
"They have concentrated on their appointed task, eliminating disease, caring for the needs of children, feeding and sheltering refugees. They and the men and women who serve them deserve all our thanks".
The perspective from which each of the agencies does its work is a supra-national one. In a complex and contracting world, they are helping to pull the globe together. The agencies transcend national boundaries and enable the smaller and poorer countries to co operate internationally in dealing with problems that they could never begin to tackle on their own. The most reverend Primate referred to the International Maritime Organisation, whose offices are on the other side of Lambeth Bridge. I should like to refer to the United Nations environmental programme because this programme is probably one of the major achievements of the last 40 years. Changes in population, in wealth, in speed and mobility and in learning have made it essential that the world community should gradually develop a global environmental system. The United Nations has challenged governments and public everywhere to examine their collective responsibilities for the care and maintenance of what someone has called this small planet that humanity
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calls home. So a global agenda of environmental issues has emerged, including the management of air resources, the phenomenon of acid rain, the pollution of water and the destruction of forests. The importance of this agenda is obvious: it is a developing responsibility of the United Nations, and if the United Nations did not exist the nations would have to create a body to handle this 20th century environmental revolution.
The noble Lord, Lord Ennals, referred appreciatively to the work of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees. It is insufficiently realised that since 1951 the High Commission has helped 30 million people. But there are today 10 million refugees in the world and the maintenance of refugees, either in camps until they can return home or in sending them to a new country, is a costly business. This work, done in the name of the United Nations, is financed completely by voluntary contributions. The high spending during the last year on Africa is putting a great strain on work in other areas. Many of the senior staff of the High Commission are British and take pride in running an efficient and cost-effective organisation. Africa is not the only emergency situation in the world. There are those silent emergencies—refugee areas which are no longer in the news because of what has been called compassion fatigue, due to it all having gone on for so long.
It is a matter of great urgency that such work is not starved of funds. I should like to ask the Minister to tell the House when she replies what plans Her Majesty's Government have for increasing their contribution to this humane and caring work for individuals. I know that I do not need to remind her that the dignity of the individual is fundamental to this work for refugees. Support for it inevitably falls on those countries who value the role of the individual in society and who do not take a collectivist view. The Prime Minister said last week:
"We cannot do without the United Nations, but we can do a lot more with it".
She clearly sees the need for still further agencies to end the international drugs trade and to deal with international terrorism. This underlines the importance of seeing the work of the specialised agencies as part of the peace-making process about which the mover of the Motion has spoken so forcefully. The work of the agencies and the work of peace-making belong together.
Several of those who have prophesied in recent days about the future of the United Nations have seen the opportunity which the United Nations gives for the newly emergent nations of the world to play a larger role on the international scene as its major possibility for development. The things that concern them, as Mr. Ivor Richard has pointed out in his article in this week's splendid edition of the House Magazine, are:
"on the whole pacific and sensible—disarmament, world development, food production and distribution, and a new international economic order. These items are hardly the original intentions of the founding fathers, but they perhaps amount to an agenda which is relevant, helpful and stimulating".
I believe that one of the ways in which we can all help the United Nations to be more effective is by being constructive in our own attitude towards it, appreciative of its achievements as well as of its

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failures since 1945, and hopeful about its future. As the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, suggested, the young today increasingly see themselves as part of one world. They increasingly take a global view, as the large and cheerful lobby last week showed. Young people look to the Government to be as ready as many of them are to support those working for the maintenance of peace and for the elimination of poverty.
The United Nations is a vast, worldwide operation with a huge multinational staff, but some of its best work is done by individuals for individuals. Behind the great international structures are dedicated individuals who have deliberately chosen to serve all the nations and not just one nation. The noble Lord, Lord Ennals, is one of those sponsoring a memorial award to one such dedicated worker. He was a young man who died at the age of 41 after giving the whole of his short working life to Oxfam, the United Nations Association and the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations. At his death he was secretary of World Food Day and was deeply involved in the problems of rural development and social change. David Moore's life symbolises the devotion and dedication of countless men and women of every nation who together make the work of the United Nations not only effective but also memorable.
7.1 p.m.
Lord Parry: My Lords, in a sense, and inevitably, this Chamber has this afternoon been haunted by the ghosts of our own youth. Each one in our turn has taken down the faded pictures of what we saw ourselves to be 40 years ago. We have sought the inspiration that took us into the United Nations Association. We have talked about the roles which we have played, and that is proper, and about the anniversary. As we have talked, it has become increasingly obvious to me at any rate that an institution of which we are still a part has fallen short of the proud hopes that we had. Even those who associated themselves so formidably with the association and with its development internationally know in their hearts this afternoon that the organisation itself did not come to fulfil their youthful bright hopes.
Such is inevitable. It had to be, because the world was a rapidly changing world. Speaking shortly after the most reverend Primate, the Minister referred to the smaller nations using the forum of the United Nations to put their specific cases. She spoke also of the larger nations inevitably using its rostrum for their own specious politics. The noble Baroness too was referring to an inevitability, because any organisation that is created by man records the follies as much as the hopes of man. In the United Nations, we have shown ourselves, both as people and as members of our individual nations, to be as prone to folly as we are to hope.
However, because we are recognising an anniversary, and because the most reverend Primate carefully set his Motion in the future of the organisation, we are being asked what we can do in order to strengthen the effectiveness of the United Nations. The most reverend Primate mentioned in particular the pacifying agencies of the United Nations caught between the ambitions of great and small nations and
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between points of human conflict in history. The most reverend Primate asked the House what we could do to strengthen those agencies.
My noble friend Lord Cledwyn said that the United Nations no longer seemed to interest very many people. It is meant as no disloyalty to our distinguished and busy colleagues to point out that during the course of this afternoon, interest during this debate has risen twice. It was raised on matters of contention introduced as political Statements by the Ministers concerned when they intervened in our debate about the future of the United Nations. The Chamber was full twice during the course of this debate—but not for the debate on the future of the United Nations itself.
Also, there has been no mention during this debate—unless one was made by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Rochester, when my attention was distracted for a moment—of the work of Bob Geldof.
Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: I believe there was, my Lords.
Lord Parry: I apologise, my Lords; I am so glad that there was and I withdraw my comment. It does not detract from the seriousness of the point I am hoping to make. The agencies which we represent and for which we speak in this place were the formative agencies of those very emotions that rise in us; the ambitions that some of us had between the wars, some of us during the wars, and some of us afterwards. Those agencies—the Church, the schools, the groups which we joined in our small communities and in our larger cities, our colleges and universities—were at that time, in what seems now to have been an innocent world, consenting to some broad ideals as to the direction in which society should move.
As a young trainee teacher in West Wales, I remember being impressed by the argument that, being in loco parentis, I stood in for the parent in helping to determine the direction in which society should develop. The various agencies we went on to join and the political parties with which we came to be identified were a part of our growth process.
I have conferred with those who had great experience of the United Nations, not only as founding personalities but also as great supporters of the United Nations Association. I may be wrong, but I believe that the great international organisations that signed the initial charter agreed also that they would teach in the schools of the individual nations the principles of the United Nations, rehearse the preamble to the charter of the United Nations, and almost daily instruct their children as to the freedoms which the United Nations was set up to enshrine. Because of our folly, because of our politics and because of our national identification in arguments—which is natural—the organisation became more and more concerned with border disputes and with political arguments in a way that perhaps made it difficult for people to see that the United Nations was concerned properly with the foundation freedoms and with those great energies which we thought it was releasing.
I am not saying that the United Nations has been a failure. I think it has been a roaring success. I agree with all noble Lords who have said that it has provided

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hope for mankind and has at great moments focused the better ambitions of mankind. However, we have failed to educate a new generation, and that new generation has sought its inspiration, and found it, elsewhere. All that clanging noise that came out of a stadium in London one Saturday afternoon taught me, anyway, as an old communicator and as an old teacher of youth—and as an old preacher, even if not one under the discipline of the right reverend Primate—that young people have ideals and enthusiasm, and that it is only the organisation and education processes which are letting them down.
I hope that the message will go out from this important and timely debate that it is possible for an older generation to communicate adequately with a younger generation—just as it has been amazingly possible for that unkempt and haunted young man to represent the ambitions and hopes of his generation and to get politicians moving under differing disciplines and opposing ideologies. What better triumph could there be for the 40th anniversary of the United Nations, in this convoluted way, than the convoy of lorries we saw going across the desert, defying local politics and local politicians, and getting the food into the hungry bellies of the poor? We need to fire again our own enthusiasm with the practical enthusiasm of the generation that is in the streets, taking up the inspiration that we perhaps thought was lost.
7.10 p.m.
Lord Beaumont of Whitley: My Lords, as the first speaker below the line I am able to vary slightly the congratulations which are being paid to the most reverend Primate for having initiated this debate, because we are now able to look back and see what a good and satisfying debate it has been in many ways.
We have heard from a number of speakers with immense experience of work in, with and through the United Nations. If I may pick out in particular any part of it, I think possibly we may have not talked quite enough about the role of the United Nations Association. The noble Lord, Lord Ennals, has spoken to us and he represents it, and there have been other people, ex-leaders of the United Nations Association here; I saw Mr. Thorpe, who is an ex-president, listening to our debate. But perhaps above all it is the ordinary man and woman who is a member of the association throughout the country who needs a great deal of thanks from those of us who still believe in the United Nations. It is not a glamorous thing to be a member of your local United Nations Association. It has no so-called "political sex appeal". It is low down in the list of contestants for your guineas. It does not appear to evoke as immediate a response as helping the hungry or sending subscriptions to appeals in brochures with pictures of cripples. Nevertheless, the United Nations Association is a most valuable organisation and one that it is important to keep going.
The state of the United Nations on its 40th birthday is a matter neither for congratulation nor reproach, though it is true that a case could be made out for either of those views. For instance, it would not be inappropriate to regard with some awe this mighty organisation, which represents for the first time in the history of the world all the nations on earth, and to
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reflect that our grandfathers would have regarded the prospect of such a phenomenon at best as a poetic and visionary dream, a distant and almost unattainable step on the path toward that day
"When the war drum throbs no longer and the battle flags are furled In the parliament of Man, the Federation of the World."
On the other hand, it is not out of keeping with the facts to view the United Nations as a mere talking shop, corrupt, ineffectual, expensive, with built-in factors which make it almost incapable of reform. But neither picture is at all helpful, nor is either really a true picture, though each one has a sufficient element of truth to make it tenable.
Surely the most constructive picture from which to start is the portrait of an institution which exists, which has to exist at this moment of history, and which has arrived at this moment furnished with all the flaws which are entailed by its and our past. If we start from this point, we may find that we are not tempted to apportion blame for what is wrong nor to make too much of what is right, but to take the United Nations as it actually is and to consider what best to do with it now.
To take this stance is to be a believer both in predestination and in free will with equal logic. We can say on the one hand that two world wars, the invention of the A-bomb and the H-bomb and the development of virtually instantaneous world-wide communication were bound to throw up some such organisation and that it was bound to have faults; on the other hand, we can say that each moment we are dealing with a new situation in which we can change the future for good or ill.
Just as the collapse of the international tin market over the last few days gives an opportunity to the world's commodity markets, which they may or may not take, to profit from its lessons to build up better commodity agreements for the good of all, so, on a larger scale, the failures of the UN are merely opportunities to try better. The terrible temptation is to be so overcome by the complexity of the machinery, the magnitude of the task and the length of the time-scale that we give up trying. It seems to me that that is what practically every nation has done.
Foreign affairs has for centuries—perhaps for ever—been the hunting ground of the cynical. A distinguished Member of your Lordships' House, an ex-head of the Foreign Service, once said on television that he had only once heard a Foreign Secretary mention the "good of mankind" when working on the framing of policy. That of course is the basic trouble. Decent men of all nationalities, who would act unselfishly in their private lives, who even in domestic politics take it for granted that the electorate at large wants them, as our representatives, to exercise humanity and generosity, take it for granted that in the field of foreign policy, self-interest is all and that they are failing in their duty if they do not squeeze the orange till the pips squeak.
As a result, with few exceptions who are often sneered at for their pains, that is how countries behave. And I do not deny that that is how a very large number of countries will go on behaving. But the moment has surely come for some countries to try and reverse the process and it would not be inappropriate if this effort

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started in the heartland of Christendom. I hope that such a suggestion is in line with the speech and the thought of the most reverend Primate.
Mr. Ian Bradley, in his recent stimulating book The Strange Rebirth of Liberal Britain, has said:
"The United Nations badly needs one country to take the lead in building a coalition of member states across the world which will make it their business to implement the charter and use and improve its machinery for international peacekeeping and co-operation".
It is quite clear that Britain could be that country. Our key position in Europe and the Commonwealth gives us an unparalleled chance to exercise leverage. It is true that at the moment we are not only wasting the opportunity but also literally wasting it away. The present Government's attitude to Europe seems to be that it is a cockpit in which the weakest go to the wall and that all efforts at progress are of little importance beside our efforts to see that we get our dues. As for the Commonwealth, many of us could have wept with shame at the appalling performance put up last month by the mother country, where we alone lagged behind in an important moral initiative of immense psychological importance.
The task of giving a lead could be done and should be done and with a government of another complexion, from any party, including the party on the Bench opposite, let us pray God that it will be done. What is needed is first of all a modest but definite list of aims to be achieved, and for that I commend those listed in Evan Luard's excellent book on the United Nations, some of which, I was delighted to see, were adopted and quoted by the noble Baroness speaking for the Government. I have one or two reservations on individual points, but on the whole they will do admirably.
But much more important than any particular structural reform is the necessity to build up an unspoken code of practice among any countries that will dare to say that they put the establishment of such a code above their own special interests and are prepared to lose a trick or two knowing that they are not engaged in a zero sum game but in one where, played rightly, all the players equally may be the winners. The need is to build up an uncorrupt tradition in exactly the same way as an uncorrupt civil service is built up in those countries which have known only a corrupt one—and that, let us remind ourselves, is every country, including our own, at some time in its history. It is an extremely difficult task, but it is not an impossible one.
To lead in this effort we need a country with political skills—a lobbyer, a negotiator, a peacemaker, a broker. It could be this country. We have those skills. Indeed, I think those skills are one of the reasons why France always used to regard us as hypocritical—Albion perfide. We have lost that strangely honourable title, which meant at least that vice was paying the necessary tribute to virtue and that we exercised skills in making friends with the Mammon of unrighteousness. Instead we seem to have joined France in the tradition of the bare-faced bourgeois nation, scheming to drive the hardest bargain and to hold on to everything that we have with tooth and claw.
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It is not a pretty sight. Let us strive for something different. It was Dean Acheson—was it not?—who said that Britain had lost an empire and not yet found a role. That could be our role if only we had leaders with the vision to see it; and a very honourable role it would be, too.
7.22 p.m.
Lord Oram: My Lords, I join most readily and most warmly with those who have thanked the most reverend Primate for introducing this subject and giving us the opportunity to review the work of the United Nations over 40 years. During the review that we have had in this debate it is understandable that the main theme of most speeches has been the role of the United Nations in the prevention of war. But, while acknowledging that that is the main purpose set before the United Nations, most speakers have also drawn attention to other equally important functions, particularly those in the economic and social spheres.
I think I am right in saying that Articles 55, 56 and 57 set out those economic and social purposes. I do not know whether the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy, can recite those articles verbatim, but I believe that he will confirm that those other purposes are set out in the charter.
I think that it can be argued that success in providing food, health and basic amenities for the populations of the world is a necessary base for the maintenance of peace. One is perhaps tempted to make a comparison with the current problem of riots in the inner cities. It is argued with some justification that violence arises from social deprivation. I make it clear in drawing that comparison that the causes of war are very much more complex than economic and social deprivation. But I believe that there is little doubt that a stable peace will continue to elude us as long as poverty, hunger and disease are the common lot of millions of the inhabitants of the globe.
Many speakers in the debate today have paid tribute to the work of one or other of the specialised agencies. I want mainly to confine my remarks to them. There has been quite a lot of memory seeking in the debate. I think we should recall that Britain played a most important part in the setting up of two of the specialised agencies. I recall the work of Sir Julian Huxley in relation to UNESCO and of Lord Boyd-Orr in relation to the Food and Agriculture Organization. When we try to weigh up, as we have been weighing up today, a balance sheet of successes and failures of the United Nations, I think that the work of such men in its early days needs to be part of the bookkeeping in which we engage.
Today there is much heart-searching about the cost-effectiveness of many of the United Nations specialised agencies, but I suggest that it is all too easy to find grounds for criticism and to forget the areas of success. That is largely because the successes are slow and often undramatic over the years. They do not hit the headlines but they are successes none the less. The noble Baroness, Lady Young, mentioned one of the great successes. I have in mind the World Health Organization having eliminated almost entirely from the earth the scourge of smallpox. I suggest that that achievement is immeasurable in statistical or human terms. It is something which we should remember just

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as in other specialised agencies there are other great triumphs.
Although there is still too much hunger in the world, bad though the situation is, how much worse would it have been had the Food and Agriculture Organization, together with many research institutions, not brought about the green revolution? We see famine and hunger in Africa, but the green revolution prevented them in the southern continent of Asia. In my judgment the FAO has been well to the fore in helping to deal with the grave shortages of food in the African continent as well. The noble Lord, Lord Home of the Hirsel, and the noble Baroness, Lady Elliot, pointed to the important role that the FAO can play, and I would say has played, in the famine in Africa. I shall mention later other organisations in this field which are not being enabled to do the work that they would wish because of the depletion of their funds.
UNESCO has been mentioned particularly by the noble Baroness, Lady Elliot. It is currently under a dark cloud of criticism. I have no doubt that some of that criticism is justified. On the other hand, in debating the issue of UNESCO, as we no doubt shall in the weeks to come, let us remember that it has a record of promoting equality in educational facilities, combating illiteracy, improving the status of women, promoting human rights, controlling drug abuse and fostering international scientific collaboration. That work, I believe, is lasting work and should not be easily abandoned. There is some danger that it may be.
Turning to the International Labour Organisation, that, over the years, has been a powerful force for raising and maintaining the living standards of workers around the world, through its conventions and recommendations. It also operates a number of programmes on aid to developing countries. Those that I have mentioned—FAO, UNESCO and ILO—are the organisations which, to some extent, are recognised in the public mind. But, as other speakers have said, there are other specialised agencies less noticed, less in the public mind. My noble friend Lord Cledwyn listed a number of the initials of those institutions. I would ask your Lordships to bear with me while I read out their names, not just their initials, for their names are descriptive of the vital work that they do. The right reverend Prelate referred to his neighbour on the other side of the river, the International Maritime Organisation. That is a similar organisation in a technical sense to the others that I have in mind—the International Atomic Energy Agency, the International Civil Aviation Organisation, the Universal Postal Union, the International Telecommunications Union, the World Meteorological Organisation and the International Narcotics Control Board.
Those words in those names, I suggest, represent a most important field of international activity. And the Governments which subscribe to them get enormous benefit from the work of those agencies. Indeed, civilised life could not continue without that sort of work under the auspices of the United Nations. Moreover, the United Nations network is of very great importance for the provision of funds for the development of the third world. I have in mind particularly the United Nations development programme which has, I think, been mentioned only
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once during our debate. It is an important source of funds for much of the work in the third world. Equally, the International Development Association is the soft loan subsidiary of the World Bank. That organisation has provided some 30 billion dollars to the third world on very favourable repayment terms.
Summing all this up, there is no doubt in my mind that that combined work of the network of United Nations specialised agencies has been of enormous benefit to the world. Not only has each of the organisations dealt with its own agenda and its own problems in a positive way, but something else, I think, has emerged from their work. In their constitutions, they have brought together representatives of the three main political trends in the modern world. There is the western world plus Japan; there is the Soviet bloc; and there are the former colonial territories which we describe as belonging to the third world. Representatives of all three groups are brought together within the specialised agencies. It is surely the case that practically working together in these agencies has helped to counter the political confrontations between these groups in other ways. But satisfaction which we have expressed with the past achievements of these specialised agencies should not blind us to the dangers that lie ahead and to which I now wish to turn.
There have been several references to the great growth in the number of countries which have become members of the United Nations since it came into existence. Some 100 third world countries are now members. At the time that the United Nations was founded they were colonial in status. But they have reached independence. And now they can sometimes, indeed they frequently do, exercise voting strength, particularly in the Assembly of the United Nations, which is superior to that of the great powers. In recent years, that new voting power has resulted in a whole series of resolutions—I recall such matters as the new international economic order—which are unwelcome to the western nations, our own included. This change in the balance of power in the United Nations is in itself causing serious conflicts of interest and open clashes of view.
In particular, I would suggest that the United States has shown its displeasure with this new political development. It is there that I sense the danger to which I have referred. It has taken a series of steps which are inimical to the development, and, indeed, to the maintenance, of the multilateral framework of institutions to which tributes have been paid during this debate. The United States began that process of inimical decisions back in 1977 when it withdrew from the International Labour Organisation in a fit of political pique. Only two years after that it rejoined, having recognised the error of its earlier withdrawal.
Now we have the case of UNESCO, from which the United States has withdrawn. To the dismay of those of us who are anxious to strengthen international links, our own Government are threatening to follow the United States into isolation on this matter. I thoroughly agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Elliot, who expressed the view that it is better to seek to change these organisations from within rather than to abandon that opportunity by withdrawing.
There are many other examples of this kind of negative decision. The latest, of which I have read in

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the United Nations information bulletin, is the failure of the United States to meet its undertaking to the United Nations Fund for Population Activities. The director of that organisation, Dr. Salas, has said:
"Withdrawal of a commitment firmly made can only jeopardise the future of multilateral co-operation in population and other development objectives".
I echo what my noble friend Lord Caradon said in this connection about the dangers of following the United States in this kind of negative decision. I have instanced two—UNESCO and the Fund for Population Activities—but there are others. IMF quotas were not replenished. Increases in special drawing rights and in other facilities were refused. Perhaps most seriously, the International Development Association, which as I have indicated earlier provides funds for the third world, has not had its adequate replenishment. I make no accusation to our Government, who have a good reputation in this connection, but I regret the United States action and I issue the warning that our Government should not follow along that path. Indeed, because of this kind of action—withdrawing or retreating from internationalism—the World Bank set up its own special fund to deal with the problem of agriculture in Africa. It set up the special fund for Africa; and Britain failed to contribute directly to that fund. There is another small but very significant organisation, IFAD—the International Fund for Agricultural Development—which also is still awaiting the renewal of its resources.
I believe this to be a sad catalogue, and we must remember these setbacks on the economic front at the same time that we celebrate quite rightly, as the most reverend Primate asked us to do, the achievements of 40 years of the United Nations. But we should recognise this danger. I believe that we are at a point of crisis in the affairs of international institutions. There are powerful forces at work which are seeking to bring about a retreat from internationalism and thereby to weaken the agencies of the United Nations.
This leads me to ask two questions. What is the cause of this attempt to turn the clock back; and what should be done to prevent it? I believe that the cause is that certain governments of the developed world, our own included, have become alarmed by the change in the power structure within the United Nations and cannot reconcile themselves to the fact that the developing countries, having thrown off the colonial yoke during the course of the 40 years that we are considering, are now seeking a more powerful, collective political voice in the centres of world politics, and they will not be denied.
I believe that in attempting to resist that development the industrialised countries are like King Canute bidding the tide to turn. If we follow the course of withdrawing from or weakening the United Nations system we shall indeed be acting against our own best national interests. We shall be pushing the third world countries away from the West and into the arms of the Soviet bloc. Therefore I believe that we should instead seek whenever we can to strengthen the United Nations as it faces the years ahead and be prepared to accept, indeed to promote, changes in the constitution of the organisation so as to give third world countries
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an influence commensurate with their needs, even though this will involve (as I believe it will) a major transfer of resources from the rich nations to the poor.
During the course of this debate there have been many personal memories of people who were in at the beginning; and I am sure that that has benefited and entertained us in this most interesting debate. We have had people such as the noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn, who were right there when the charter was inaugurated. But a noble Lord who has not spoken, my noble friend Lord Beswick (I am glad to see him in his place) reminded me that he too was at the first meeting of the United Nations. I recall also that round about that same year he was a witness in the Pacific of the testing of the atom bomb. This causes me to reflect that in those middle' forties, when we were raising the hopes of the world through the United Nations Charter, we were developing the atom bomb, which is potentially the doom of the world. Surely as we contemplate the successes of the last 40 years and look at the current dangers of the present years and of the future, it ought to be our resolve—in whichever part of this Chamber we sit, or whatever our role in life—to make sure that it is the charter of the United Nations that is victorious over the bomb.
7.45 p.m.
Baroness Young: My Lords, it is a tribute to the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury, and to the Motion that he has put down for debate today, that so many noble Lords have spoken this afternoon. If I may say so, almost everyone has spoken from his or her personal experience. In my opening remarks I was able to pay tribute to a number of noble Lords who were in at the beginning of the United Nations. But now that I come to wind up I should also like to pay tribute to my noble friend Lord Campbell of Croy—I had not appreciated that he, as a young diplomat, was at the early meetings of the United Nations—to the noble Lord, Lord Bottomley, who reminded us that he was a member of one of the first British delegations to the United Nations; to the noble Baroness, Lady Ewart-Biggs, who is the president of UNICEF; and to my noble friend Lady Elliot and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Rochester, who both reminded us that they were involved in their youth in the League of Nations.
With all this behind one, I feel it is a very brave Minister who gets up to speak at all. However, I welcome the constructive spirit in which noble Lords have addressed the need to improve the effectiveness of the United Nations and which reflects your Lordships' continuing commitment to this organisation.
I should like to say right at the beginning that the Government share this commitment. We make it first in practical terms, by contributing money and resources to the organisation and to its activities. In 1984 we contributed £138 million, over half of which represented voluntary funding of United Nations activities and specialised agencies over and above our assessed contribution to the United Nations budget; and I shall return to this point. But before going on to detailed points I should like to say, having listened to this whole debate, how impressed I have been at the amount of agreement there has been from all parts of

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the House about the United Nations, both about its problems and about its weaknesses, and at the same time the value of its strengths. I may say that not all of us are capable of putting our thoughts in verse as did the noble Lord, Lord Caradon.
Of those points of agreement, one which I think came out very clearly from the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury, from the noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn, and from the noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn, was the importance of the United Nations peace-keeping forces and the effectiveness of them. I was also very interested in the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy, on the lessons that were learnt from the United Nations intervention in the Korean War.
I think there was agreement with the very valuable points that the noble Lord, Lord Oram, made about the specialised agencies of the United Nations. I drew attention to these in my opening remarks but I think that nearly all noble Lords have spoken about them and have recognised their importance.
Nearly every noble Lord referred to the great changes in the composition of the United Nations and of course to the fact that during this 40-year period many of those countries which have become independent believed that one of the objects of the United Nations was in fact the abolition of colonialism. Now that colonialism has almost departed, there are other problems which again were referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Oram. I am sure that we all listened with great interest to the very useful analysis which was given by my noble friend Lord Home of the Hirsel about the weaknesses of the Security Council, which he identified very clearly, and also to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Campbell, about the value of the veto.
The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Rochester drew our attention to the importance of capturing the imagination of the young and of a generation which does not remember the war or indeed the start of the United Nations and which needs, therefore, to look at and to be taught about its value and what it should do. That point was picked up by the noble Lord, Lord Parry, and by the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont.
The most reverend Primate referred to the importance of the funding of the United Nations. Perhaps I may begin by giving some examples of the money which we have contributed. We are a significant contributor to the finances of many of the United Nations aid-giving institutions. In terms of the number of personnel on technical assistance assignments and of training facilities for overseas students, we are one of the largest suppliers. In cash terms, of Britain's total or gross aid programme in the current financial year of over £1,200 million, some £68·5 million will go to UN agencies such as the United Nations Development Programme (£20 million), the United Nations Fund for Population Activities (£4·5 million)—and I confirm to the noble Lord, Lord Oram, that we support that agency—and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (£9·4 million). The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Rochester asked me about our contribution in the future. For the current financial year the sum of £9·4 million has been voted for the United Nations High
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Commissioner for Refugees. However, the aid budget for the next financial year is still under discussion. We give £7·8 million to the Food and Agriculture Organisation; £6·5 million to UNESCO; and £4·5 million to the International Fund for Agricultural Development, to which the noble Lord, Lord Oram, referred towards the close of his remarks.
The noble Baroness, Lady Ewart-Biggs, raised a number of points about UNICEF. I am happy to agree with the noble Baroness and to pay tribute to the work of UNICEF. We consider that organisation to be one of the best United Nations agencies with a good field programme. I can confirm that UNICEF is funded by voluntary contributions from governments, nongovernmental organisations and individuals. In 1984, some 75 per cent. of its total budget of 342 million US dollars came from governments. In the financial year 1984–85, the British Government's contribution to the regular programme was £6 million. That has been increased in the current financial year to £6·3 million, In addition, the Government gave a further £1 million for the Special Appeal for Africa in 1984–85, and a further £1 million in the current financial year. The Government have also contributed £100,000 to the UNICEF Special Programme for Mothers and Children in Chile.
The noble Lord, Lord Oram, asked me again about a number of specialised agencies, particularly about the World Bank. I should like to confirm that Britain is one of the five largest shareholders of the IBRD which taps the world's financial markets for the vast majority of its lending to developing countries. Its current annual lending level is around 11·5 billion dollars. Britain also plays a major part in the funding of the International Development Association (IDA), IBRD's soft loan affiliate, and is making over £400 million available as a grant to the Seventh Replenishment of the IDA covering the bank's three fiscal years ending 30th June 1987.
We have all been conscious, as a backdrop to this debate, of the very serious situation in Africa. Indeed, a number of noble Lords have referred to this matter. Perhaps I may say in parenthesis that I think we all acknowledge the very great achievement of Bob Geldof as regards the incredible amount of money which he has raised. However, I should like to quote what my right honourable friend the Minister of State for Overseas Development, Mr. Raison, said on 22 nd October about the situation in Africa:
"Our famine relief programme for Ethiopia started in 1982—since when we have spent over £75 million sterling in that country alone. Our contribution grew as the dreadful effects of the drought widened and deepened. So for Africa as a whole we spent over £89 million on famine relief in 1984–85 from the aid programme. This year we will provide at least a further £75 million. None of this has meant cutting back on any of our planned long-term programmes."
I think that that sets out what the Government have done in response to this very serious situation.
The noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn, suggested that there may have been an alleged violation by a United Kingdom company of the arms embargo against South Africa. I should like to confirm to the noble Lord that the United Kingdom already complies with the arms embargo set out in Security Council Resolution 418. We can and do prosecute when there

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is evidence of someone contravening the embargo. We do not import arms supplied from South Africa.
The noble Lord, Lord Caradon, asked me about the law of the sea. I should like to confirm that the Government decided that this country should not sign the UN Law of the Sea Convention. However, we decided not to stand in the way of the signature of the convention by the European Community whose competence as regards the convention is limited to fisheries, pollution, Customs matters between landlocked states, and commercial policy to a limited extent. Although much of the convention was recognised as valuable, the proposed regime for deep sea-bed mining was unacceptable. Potential United Kingdom mining operators made it clear that they would not wish to commence operations under the mining regime as presently proposed in the convention. We hope that as the drawbacks of the convention as presently envisaged become clear, it may yet be possible to establish a regime for marine matters which would be built on consensus among the whole international community.
The noble Lord, Lord Beaumont, raised the point about the Commonwealth Accord. I was concerned that he should feel that Britain had not played an important part in this matter.
The Commonwealth Accord on South Africa, which was signed in Nassau, is, we believe, a major Commonwealth achievement. A vital part of it is the call on all sides of the South African conflict to suspend violence. This is unprecedented and constitutes a considerable step forward. The urgent priority is to promote a process of dialogue between the South African Government and the genuine representatives of the black community. The accord is designed to further that process. A small group of "eminent Commonwealth persons" will be set up to assist in this process.
In addition, the Commonwealth has adopted a list of measures designed to send a clear political signal to Pretoria of the deep concern in the Commonwealth at the urgency of the need for fundamental reform. Britain is already observing most of these measures. However, two additional measures are action to preclude the import of Krugerrands and no further Government fundings for trade missions to South Africa or participation in exhibitions or trade fairs in South Africa.
The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Rochester quoted from the speech of my right honourable friend the Prime Minister to the United Nations. I intended to use precisely the same quotation, and I think it is good enough to repeat. My right honourable friend said:
"We cannot do without the United Nations, but we can do a lot more with it".
I should like to conclude with some forward looking issues which I think we need to address.
First of all, there is the very serious modern problems of drugs. From its foundation, the United Nations assumed responsibility for international aspects of drug control. Today, the problem of drug misuse is viewed by almost all nations as a very serious threat which can be tackled only by international
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efforts. As a result, the United Nations drugs bodies to a gratifying extent are free from political bias and enjoy worldwide support. But—and this is important—there is room for improved co-ordination and rationalisation between the United Nations drugs bodies themselves and for greater co-ordination between them and other United Nations bodies whose work touches on questions of drug misuse.
As a long-standing and influential member of the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs we fully co-operate in the work of the United Nations drugs bodies and are pressing for better co-ordination in all appropriate United Nations fora. We are a regular contributor to the UN Fund for Drug Abuse Control. We have just announced our intention to make available, in addition to our regular annual contribution, a further £3.4 million for use in Pakistan, where we are already providing law enforcement equipment and training, to back up crop substitution schemes, and in support of programmes aimed at reducing the illicit production of cocaine in Latin America. We must all do what we can to keep up the pressure on the traffickers. We must unite in our commitment to rid our societies of the scourge of drug abuse.
My noble friend Lord Home of the Hirsel referred to terrorism—again, another modern problem. International terrorism is a problem which affects the international community as a whole. Therefore, we welcome the recent presidential statement issued by the Security Council in the wake of the "Achille Lauro" incident. That statement resolutely condemned the unjustifiable and criminal hijacking as well as other acts of terrorism, including hostage-taking. Indeed, it condemned terrorism in all its forms wherever and by whomsoever committed. We now need to build on this by working towards widespread acceptance of the principle that there should be no concessions to terrorists and no safe havens for those who resort to violence in support of political aims. We need to work for the ratification of international conventions on terrorist offences by those not currently party to them. We need to ensure that states adhere to the provisions of the conventions when faced with a terrorist incident.
I should like to refer once again to one of the points made by the most reverend Primate about disaster relief. It is important that the international community should respond effectively when disasters occur. The United Nations has an important role to play in mobilising relief to disaster-stricken areas, and in promoting disaster preparedness. The key organisation in this area is the Office of the Disaster Relief Co-ordinator. It has shown a flexible and effective approach, capitalising on past experience to ensure maximum efficiency. It acts as a central control, avoiding duplication of effort and the consequent wastage of resources. It fosters the pooling of knowledge and the co-ordination of action. United Kingdom disaster aid expenditure in 1984–85 was £12·4 million. We are a major contributor to the programmes of other agencies active in relieving disaster victims, such as the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, to whom I have already referred in my earlier remarks.

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I believe that we have had a very useful debate this afternoon. It has been valuable for the House to draw upon the personal experience of so many of your Lordships at the start of the United Nations in its early days, and to hear their reflections on the United Nations 40 years on. We shall study the report when it is written in Hansard for the points made by your Lordships. I think it is encouraging that there are many good points which have been made, particularly about some of the agencies of the United Nations, and I think particularly of the World Health Organisation and the Food and Agricultural Organisation, to which particular reference has been made in the course of the debate. I think we are encouraged, too, by some of the examples where the peace-keeping forces have been a success. But there are many pressing practical problems such as the continuing armed conflicts in many parts of the world. These reinforce the need identified by the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury at the beginning of our debate, to improve the effectiveness of the United Nations.
The debate today has proved a valuable contribution to the Government's consideration of the problem. The interest which so many of your Lordships have shown in this important issue will help sustain us in our efforts to ensure that in the years ahead the effectiveness of the United Nations is indeed improved.
8.6 p.m.
The Lord Archbishop of Canterbury: My Lords, it remains for me to express my gratitude to all those who have taken part in a debate which has more than fulfilled my expectations of the contribution this House might be able to make to the commemoration of the 40th anniversary of the United Nations, and our thinking about its future at a critical turn in the fortunes of the world.
I am grateful to the noble Baroness the Minister for her readiness to reply to a debate in which contributions of a statesmanlike character have been made with real authority and thoughtfulness, as well as many personal testimonies given. The noble Baroness has been able to respond with an awareness of those who speak from experience in international relations and political sophistication which I cannot claim. Not only in her reply but also in the opening speeches, I am grateful for the mixture of critical realism and positive appreciation of what has been and is being achieved by the various agencies, together with real suggestions about fresh directions.
My Lords, I believe that the quotation from the speech of the Prime Minister to the United Nations which has already been used twice, in fact captures the mood expressed by the House in this debate. We can do a lot more with the United Nations—that is exactly so. I am glad that the noble Lord, Lord Caradon, gave us a proper perspective of how we should regard the United Nations. As members, my hope is that we shall be able in this country to begin again the task of building the sort of constructive proposals we have heard into the framework of a future and revived United Nations. I beg leave to withdraw the Motion standing in my name.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

Female Offenders: Custodial Provision
8.8 p.m.
Baroness Ewart-Biggs Baroness Ewart-Biggs rose to ask her Majesty's Government what measures they are taking to provide adequate custodial provisions for female offenders.
The noble Baroness said: My Lords, I am very grateful to all noble Lords who have stayed behind to take part in this debate because it must be true to say that the subject of women in prison is one which is seldom discussed. Indeed, it is one of those areas of human life which I think people do not much like to think about, and perhaps they feel that, by not thinking about it, the whole problem might just disappear. So for my part, this evening I would like as briefly as possible to give a few facts regarding women within our penal system. I will not be arguing that the crime of a woman should be regarded differently in the eyes of the law from the crime of a man, but I will be describing some of the ways in which the effect of a custodial sentence is different for a woman than for a man. In doing so I shall make a case for sentencing policies to distinguish between men and women. What I mean is that I am not asking for more lenient sentences for women, but I am suggesting that sentences for women should be more appropriate.
First, as a background, I should like to make two general observations. The first, to disprove the idea held by many that British courts have become over-lenient, is the fact that we in Britain at present imprison more people, men and women, both in absolute numbers and in proportion to population than other comparable nations in Western Europe.
The most recent figures are for 1982 and show that whereas Britain imprisoned 274 per 100,000 population, the figure for Holland was 184, Spain 153, France as low as 140, which is almost exactly half the British figure, and Portugal with an even lower figure of 78 per 100,000. Therefore, although I understand that there is a corresponding rise in crime rates on the Continent, those countries seem to be dealing with it through means other than custodial sentences.
My second point has regard to the rise in female crime here in Britain. Although of course there has been an increase, the fact that it is only slightly higher than that of men's crime is not always recognised. The figures between 1962 and 1982 show the number of males found guilty of indictable offences to have risen by 132 per cent., whereas over the same period female crime rose by 138 per cent., only slightly higher. Moreover, it would appear that over half that increase can be accounted for by shoplifting. I mention this only to discount the popularly-held view that female crime has increased as a result of changes in the position of women in society. Yet I cannot imagine why the reduction in sexual discrimination should lead to more shoplifting. Surely the more plausible explanation for the rise derives from the increase in self-service in shops and the pressures of the consumer society generally.
To go back to the background of facts, first the number of women's penal establishments and where they are situated. There are four closed prisons: Holloway in London; Styal in Cheshire; Cookham Wood in Kent; and one wing of Durham prison. In addition, there is one closed youth custody centre at

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Bulwood Hall in Essex, and two open centres at East Sutton Park in Kent and Drake Hall in Staffordshire.
There are three open prisons for women: one in Staffordshire, one in Yorkshire, and one at East Sutton Park. There are, finally, three remand centres which take women and girls and are situated at Low Newton in Durham, Pucklechurch in Bristol and Risley in Cheshire.
The reason I wanted to give this list was to indicate one way in which women are affected differently from men through custodial sentences; namely, that through the smaller number of prisons women are often in prisons far from home, which in turn makes it harder for members of their families to visit them. This results in weakening of the links with the outside world and their own families; links which are so vital for them when they are in the process of rehabilitation after their release.
Next, how many women are there in prison at the present time? What proportion of these are on remand either before trial or before sentence? And lastly, what have been their offences? The latest figures were for September of this year and show that there were then 1,587 women in prison of whom 351 were on remand, 23 were mothers in custody accompanied by their babies, and the C1 unit of Holloway held 40 mentally-disturbed women.
The fact that the precise number of females in prison as at 30th June 1983 was 1,380 shows that the upward trend I mentioned previously is being maintained. However, the most recent figures for a breakdown of a whole year are for 1983 and show that 3,292 women and girls were remanded in custody during that year, but that of these as few as 31.8 per cent. actually received custodial sentences. Thus, over two-thirds of the women who suffered the disruption and stigma of some weeks or months—sometimes as long as 60 days—in prison, at the end were either released or given non-custodial sentences.
With regard to the offences committed by all those women the statistics are as follows: over 50 per cent. of the total received into prison were for stealing in some form (but not including the more serious crimes of robbery and burglary). Secondly, 1,321 were in prison for not paying a fine. Next, 140 for offences relating to prosecution, the majority as a result of fine default for soliciting, and 226 were in prison for drug offences. That leaves a remaining 203 women in prison that year, and they were the only ones found guilty of crimes of violence. Therefore, only one-tenth of the female prison population in 1983 had actually endangered the safety of members of the public, and indeed records show that the people harmed by those women were usually relatives or friends. Therefore, from these figures one can only deduce that a very large proportion of women are imprisoned for nonviolent crimes.
I should like to comment on four areas of how women are affected within the penal system, knowing that other noble Lords are going to touch on other areas. I should like to comment briefly on women on remand, on mothers and babies in prison, on mentally ill offenders, and just a few comments on the recent report which came from Holloway prison.
First, the figures I have given show that females are more likely to be remanded in custody but less likely than males to receive a custodial sentence. One can only wonder why, for indeed some of the offences for which women are remanded in custody seem trivial. One explanation put forward has been that the adjudication process in itself is used as a form of punishment with women serving time in pre-trial custody who are unlikely ultimately to be sentenced to imprisonment. Other commentators relate to the use of medical remands for females, with the unspoken logic that the female offender must be assessed to see whether she is mentally ill because her offending is a more startling and exceptional deviation from the norm than male offending.
A Home Office circular in 1968 advised all courts to obtain a pre-sentence report before sentencing any women to imprisonment. According to the research carried out in the early 1970s this partly explains the use of pre-sentence remands for females. This is despite the fact that social inquiry reports could just as well have been made while the offender was on bail, and therefore would have kept the woman out of prison.
Next with regard to mothers and babies in prison I want to comment briefly, because I strongly believe that before imprisoning a pregnant woman, or a mother with a young child, a court should have to show that there is no alternative to doing so through the woman's imprisonment being essential to protect the public. The reason of course for this is that there is strong evidence to show that the whole process cannot fail to have the most traumatic effect on both the mother and the baby, and in addition creates a hopeless background for the mother to become a good parent on release.
Indeed, I understand that there is evidence from a Great Ormond Street doctor specialising in child abuse that the negative maternal impulses in mothers in prison are inevitably reinforced, whereas positive ones are quashed. Given that there is a much higher likelihood that women in prison will come from broken homes, or have been abused themselves, anything which reinforces a tendency for them to abuse their children when they are released is worrying.
Now, a few words about mentally ill women in prison. I know the Minister is personally concerned about the C1 unit at Holloway and has made a commitment in this House to the effect that a separate unit is to be constructed within the establishment to accommodate and treat the disturbed inmates of the prison. This means that they will be under a hospital regime rather than in a prison one. But the Minister has yet to tell us when this will happen and what funds will be allocated to the project. Without that assurance it is difficult not still to be concerned about women in the C1 unit now. Perhaps he will give us some information when he replies. I hope he does because I am sure that he cannot forget, any more than I can, the heartbreaking statistic given in July this year that during the previous months there had been 20 self-mutilations and four suicide attempts in the C1 unit.
I will not mention any of the horror stories coming from the C1 unit, but I should like to quote briefly from a letter I received from a doctor whose daughter

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had been trapped in a Catch-22 type situation in the C1 unit. He described how his 20-year-old daughter, Lucy, was mentally disturbed and depressive, had attempted suicide three times and underwent treatment, both in hospital and at a day centre. Her depression then turned to excessive activity and, having discharged herself from the day centre, she got herself into a series of misadventures and scrapes which ended with her arrest for threatening a taxi-driver. She was remanded to Holloway where she spent 16 weeks either in B4 or C1 blocks. Her father tried to arrange daily visits but some were disallowed as she was in a punishment cell and others were conducted through her cell door as she was considered unsafe to let out.
The part of the letter I should like to quote describes the exact predicament that the father was in. This is what he said:
"The current situation is that everyone appears to agree that [Lucy] is sick, and that given the right treatment the prognosis is good. Everyone agrees that psychiatric facilities at Holloway are unsuitable (including the Governor)—and the sooner she can be moved to a mental hospital the better. Unfortunately the dreaded diagnosis 'personality disorder' has been mentioned and there are problems as to whether the two regional Health Authorities concerned are responsible. As far as I can gather all the hospitals so far approached have said 'No' and the psychiatrists are reluctant to put anything in writing in case the relevant officer in the R.H.A. says that the Home Office should 'pay the accommodation bill'. As far as I can gather there is an appropriate local hospital which is considered medically suitable but financially taboo, if only because it raises the issue of which R.H.A takes responsibility for paying, or publicly sends a mentally disordered person to prison in order to balance its books.
We are therefore trapped. If we try and bring the trial forward, with a view to forcing the psychiatrists to commit themselves, there is a danger that Lucy will get a prison sentence because no hospital has been arranged—which means few visits, increased isolation, and probably increased violence [on her part]. Alternatively, if we wait for the psychiatrists to 'explore avenues', Lucy remains on remand in prison. There appears to be little we can do to speed matters up, and no guarantee that a suitable hospital will be found".
The end of the story was that after 16 weeks Lucy was recommended for an order under Section 37 and is now in a psychiatric hospital. Although (as the father made clear in his letter) the prison and nursing staff of Holloway treated her with as much kindness as the prison regime allowed, her psychiatric report unequivocally stated that her psychosis seemed to have become very much more severe after her admission to Holloway.
But what about all the other young women trapped in the same way? Lucy at least had supportive and educated parents to pressurise on her behalf, but so many of the others have been cut off by their parents with no one to speak for them. What will happen to them?
Before concluding, I make the following points regarding Holloway. First, I understand that the number of prisoners on remand in Holloway is as high as 70 per cent. The consequent continual absence of the prison staff on escort duty means that the under-use of a skills training unit, a gymnasium and sports hall has become nothing short of a scandal. I hope the Minister will assure us that this situation will be improved. Secondly, it is felt strongly by many people that an inquiry should be conducted into the medical use of drugs at Holloway, to examine why more drugs are used than in any other penal establishment. Thirdly, Holloway was built to embody the whole
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range of problems associated with keeping women in custody, so it should not be used as a local prison with the abandonment of such important functions as a therapeutic unit for drug addiction and a newly developed mother and baby unit. Fourthly, in view of the deplorable conditions at Durham H Wing, it is felt that this should be closed and that Holloway's maximum security wing should be brought into use instead.
I hope that perhaps the Minister will comment on all those four points, but, finally, returning to my original point that a custodial sentence has more wide-ranging effects on a woman than a man, I make these concluding remarks. First, there is the effect on the children. I have spoken about the small babies in prison with their mothers, but what about all those for whom provision has to be made when their mother is imprisoned? The figure for March 1982 showed that out of approximately 1,288 women in prison as many as 719 were mothers. Between them they had 1,649 children. In view of the trauma caused to (hose children, should we not be more imaginative in devising non-custodial sentences for women with children who have committed non-violent crimes? A community service order is arguably a more constructive sentencing option for women with children, but is used relatively infrequently. There are attendance centres, probation hostels and other means of detaining a woman without putting her into custody. Surely we should do everything possible to protect family structures which must often in the first place be very fragile and where the children are always the main sufferers.
In view of the fact that so many women spend short periods in custody should visiting conditions not be improved? Moreover, as it is predominantly women who are in prisons far from home, surely they should be the first to benefit from extended facilities such as more uncensored letters, more home leave and so on. Experiments have been made in other countries regarding unsupervised visits and the use of telephones. These have helped women to keep contact with their relatives and children—the contacts which I have said before are so vital both for them and for the community in general, when they leave prison. There are other methods too long to list here which could be tried, but they would all have the same aim of making it possible for women who have offended to resume a constructive place in society on release. Speaking as chairman of the New Bridge I feel most strongly that preparations for prisoners' release are not sufficient. Indeed, the reconviction rates show that some ex-prisoners simply cannot cope with the world outside. They might have been able to do so had there been more preparation for them before they left prison.
I am grateful to all noble Lords who will be speaking this evening. I feel that everything should be done to change policies and attitudes away from regarding women's imprisonment as punishment, which is essentially negative in character and has little to do with reform or treatment, and towards a more imaginative, humane and practical view of the penal system which has as a priority a remedial side to it. I hope that I have persuaded the Minister that some changes should be made as a matter of great urgency for women in the penal system.
8.30 p.m.
Baroness Faithfull: My Lords, we must all be very grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Ewart-Biggs, for giving us such a comprehensive view of the problems of women in prison today. I am sure that the women in prison in England will be grateful to her. Indeed, I suggest that the prison staff throughout the country will be grateful to her, as we are grateful to them for the outstanding work which they do.
I seek to speak on three subjects, all of which have been covered by the noble Baroness but perhaps your Lordships will forgive me if I approach them from a slightly different angle. First, I wish to speak, as indeed the noble Baroness has spoken, on the subject of mothers and babies in prison; secondly, I should wish to touch on the recommendations of the Butler Committee concerning the mentally ill and disturbed women offenders; and finally, briefly, on property and fine offenders.
I draw your Lordships' attention to Home Office Instruction Circular 51, which concerns the criteria for admission to a mother and baby unit and the criteria for staffing and administration of such units. There are 33 places for mothers with babies in England and Wales: at Holloway Prison; Styal Prison, and Askham Grange. The prison rules provide, first, that a baby should not normally be admitted to a unit in a closed prison if the child would attain the age of nine months before the mother's date of release, or by the date of her anticipated transfer to open prison if the child would attain the age of 18 months before her earliest date of release. Secondly, a woman in custody giving birth to a baby, or who has her baby with her, should be separated within four weeks or at four weeks if the baby is breast fed. This applies to women on remand or sentenced.
As the noble Baroness has said, the result of this circular is that 25 per cent. of babies of women prisoners are received into care and 75 per cent. are cared for by either relatives or friends. Again, as the noble Baroness has said, altogether there are between 1,500 and 2,000 children deprived of their mother's care, and broken relationships result.
I am very puzzled about this circular. It was published only in 1983. I am given to understand that there was consultation between both the Department of Health and Social Security and the Home Office. I find this disturbing. The Department of Health and Social Security has funded the National Cohort which is being monitored by the National Children's Bureau. The National Cohort, as your Lordships will know, followed up 17,000 children born in March 1958. These children have been followed up at various stages of their lives. The findings indicate that children who were removed from the person caring for them at an early age tend to be those who later in life lack security, lack the bonding process which is essential to the development of maturity of adolescents and adults. Therefore, by separating the children from their parents, the cycle of deprivation is repeated. Furthermore, the cycle of delinquency tends to be repeated. Therefore, by our treatment of the children, separating them from their parents at an early age, we are in some cases perpetuating criminality in our country.
Thus, I should say that this research bears out what we all believe and know. Therefore, I make a plea to
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the Minister that there should be consideration given to the children of parents who are committed to prison, either on remand or having been found guilty. However, may we also consider the women? If the women were helped, could keep their children and were positively helped to do so, I am sure that this would in some cases, though I am realistic enough to know not in all, mature the women and help them so that they possibly do not commit further offences. Indeed, looking at the matter in financial terms, it would be cost effective.
I know that this might be a most peculiar recommendation but I do not believe that women with children should go to prison. I believe that we ought to have a completely different attitude to and way of looking at this question. I believe that for such women it would be possible to have set up a supervision order and a condition of residence in hostels, run on positive training lines in the community.
This may sound pie in the sky, but I have been responsible for a number of hostels for mothers and babies, and I can assure your Lordships that at any rate in 80 per cent. of cases they can be successful. I believe that we cannot tinker about with the rules and regulations and circulars. I think we need a completely new attitude and way of dealing with mothers with children.
I should like to touch on the question of the mentally disturbed prisoners. Many of your Lordships will have read a moving book which has just been published, called A Woman in Custody and written by Audrey Peckham. This book shows exactly the same situation as that which was shown in the case of Lucy mentioned by the noble Baroness—mind you, my name is Lucy; and I just wondered! I think we all know what a disaster it has been that Lord Butler's report has not been implemented over all the years. Surely the time has come for us to look at it afresh so that it is implemented, so that the mentally ill are not having to be cared for in prison.
We sometimes do not pay enough attention to the very difficult times that the prison staff have in looking after the mentally ill in prison. We think of the prisoners, we think of what is happening, but we do not consider the staff. I believe that we ask too much of our prison staff. I think that the mentally ill must be given very special consideration.
I come finally to the fine offenders and the offenders against property. The noble Baroness said that only 10 per cent. of women are convicted of violence. Of those 4,780 women who were sentenced to custody or who went to prison for not paying a fine in 1984, about half had been convicted of various forms of theft and a further 7 per cent. of burglary. I feel I must quote a famous governor of Holloway, Dr. Megan Bull, who, when giving evidence to the Expenditure Committee in March, 1978 said:
"the vast majority of offenders are committing minor offences and the majority of those are theft or handling stolen goods, and I think it is something like 60 per cent. of the people in prison are here on that sort of charge. There are figures too to suggest that the actual amounts of money involved in their offences are relatively small and on the whole women are petty offenders".
When we recall also that women prisoners have fewer previous convictions than men, this calls seriously into question the necessity of imprisoning women on anything like the present scale.

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Like the noble Baroness, Lady Ewart-Biggs, I know of the case of one women, an outstanding secretary to a famous QC. He speaks highly of her work and the service which she gave him. Through a misunderstanding, she made a mistake and eventually was brought before a court for not paying a fine, and finally went to prison. This has done no good for society. It has certainly done no good for her; and we have put quite unnecessary extra pressure on prison staff.
I have to confess that I believe that we could reduce the number of women in prison substantially, recognising of course that there will be some who need to be there. But I believe that we have to find alternative ways of caring for them positively in the community; which does not mean that we excuse anyone for committing crime. Indeed, we diminish the character if we excuse them any sort of crime. Nevertheless, having said that, I hope that perhaps in the next few years we may see reform and a complete change of attitude towards women in prison and particularly in regard to the children.
8.40 p.m.
Lord Henderson of Brompton: My Lords, I am glad to follow the distinguished speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Faithfull, and I should like particularly to thank her for having mentioned the prison staff, who could so easily have been forgotten; that of course includes the specialist staff such as the education staff, as well as the prison staff. I am sure that she was right to do so. I should also like to echo her thanks to the noble Baroness, Lady Ewart-Biggs, for introducing this subject and asking this Unstarred Question today, if only to give Her Majesty's Government the opportunity of answering a number of questions and, specifically, saying what proposals they have for the improvement of the custodial provisions for women. There is no need to enlarge on the need for an improvement in the custodial treatment, after what we have heard from the two noble Baronesses this evening. There is room for improvement not only for the women in prison but also for the staff.
Secondly, I should like the Government to say what proposals they have for custody of women in the new prison building progamme which was announced, I believe, by the last Home Secretary, Mr. Leon Brittan; thirdly, what proposals they have for the separate custody of women who are on remand or who have not yet been sentenced from those who have been sentenced; fourthly, what proposals they have for the treatment of women in mental health assessment centres within the Mental Health Act 1983 instead of within psychiatric units in prison (this of course has already been touched on); and, finally, what steps they are proposing to take to reduce the number of women entering prison by the provision of non-custodial alternatives. I have limited the number of my questions to five, but there are dozens more that I could ask and that need an answer.
I have listened to or read all the debates on prisons in this House for the last 30 years or so—and that is my sole qualification for speaking today. I must record the remarkable change, a change for the better, in official attitudes that has taken place over those years. This gives me considerable hope that the Home Office, under its new Secretary of State, will take a radical
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look at this discrete area of women in prison, or, wider than that, women in the penal system, which is a quite distinct category. There are only 1,500 or so women out of a total of 48,000 or so in prison, but it is a quite distinct category, as the two noble Baronesses have said.
With a view to the reduction of the number of those imprisoned and the improvement of the present environment of the residual number of those who must be imprisoned, may I give two examples of the remarkable change in official attitudes which I have observed over the years? Both come from this House. One is from an Archbishop speaking on behalf, I believe, of the Church of England Board of Social Responsibility and the other is from the Lord Chief Justice himself. The late Archbishop of Durham, in 1971—and he was speaking about long term sentences—after saying that what we do on prisons must reflect our moral evaluation of human personality, said this:
"People are sent to prison as punishment, not for punishment. They are sent to prison for restoration".
No one can be happy to compare the condition of women in, say, Holloway or Durham today with that enlightened statement in 1971 in mind.
Perhaps even more remarkable than those words of the most reverend Primate were words spoken by the present Lord Chief Justice, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lane, in his maiden speech in 1982 on the subject of law and order. Perhaps, as the question of law and order is coming up again, his speech may be remembered and read again. This is what he said:
"Prison never did anyone any good".
My Lords, I never even dared to think that I would ever hear such words from a Lord Chief Justice, or hear him go on to say:
"The shorter a sentence can be, the better",
and that a man should be kept out of prison altogether, if at all possible.
Only the other day I listened to a most humane and enlightened speech by the new Home Secretary when he addressed the New Bridge, whose president and chairman are present today. So surely the voice of the Church through the Archbishop, the voice of the judiciary through the Lord Chief Justice and the voice of the Home Office through the Secretary of State must be able to shift the system; and I would seriously suggest that the Home Office might look with special urgency at the penal system as it affects women.
Your Lordships may ask why women should be treated differently from men. The noble Baroness, Lady Faithfull, has given one or two reasons. I shall give one or two more. I am impressed by some words of Dr. Lena Dominelli of Warwick University, who said this about the nature of the majority of offences by women:
"Women commit crimes mainly for different motivations from men and they are mainly related to things like the care of the family, particularly the children. And so women get involved primarily in crimes like shoplifting, DHSS fraud and doing the meter. … Women tend to get locked into a cycle of crime because they actually want to be good mothers",
which is more important to them than for men to be good fathers. By contrast, she says, men tend to get involved in crimes because they want to keep up with their peers or to get money to spend on themselves.

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Dr. Dominelli may well be right, but even if she is not the special family needs and relationships of women with children present a quite distinct and separate custodial problem from the problems of the custody of men; and there is of course the special case of women with babies in prison, which was mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Faithfull. Of course there should be no women with babies in prison at all, even if there are 33 places for them. There must be some, I suppose, in case there is a residue of those who cannot be anywhere else; but in principle there should be none at all in prison. And do women really need the same security overkill, as it has been called, as in Durham, for example, which must be necessary for the safe custody of dangerous male criminals? Surely not. For these and many more reasons I believe there is a special, urgent need for study and action in this discrete area of women in prison, women within the penal system; and I strongly commend it to Her Majesty's Government.
8.52 p.m.
The Earl of Longford: My Lords, I find it a privilege to rise in support of the Question put by the noble Baroness, Lady Ewart-Biggs, which she expounded in such an effective and comprehensive fashion. As President of the New Bridge, I am honoured to think she has taken on the chairmanship, and the fact that she seems to be an old friend of the present Home Secretary must be an advantage. For that reason and a lot of others, I am sure that she will do great work there.
If I may say so, I was delighted with the speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Faithfull. At the risk of embarrassing her, I would say that she said things, sitting there in the middle of the Conservative Benches, which would have been laughed out of court if they had been said by some elderly Socialist like myself. At the risk of causing further embarrassment, I would say that I regard her as a kind of humanitarian mole in the "hard-hearted" party—
Baroness Faithfull: My Lords, I must rise to the noble Earl. We have compassion and knowledge on our Benches on such subjects.
The Earl of Longford: My Lords, we know that the noble Baroness is full of compassion and that it is infectious—it spreads downwards from her. She has made some very revolutionary suggestions which I entirely applaud but which I will not pursue this evening. I found a certain embarrassment in referring to the noble Lord, Lord Henderson. There is no one in this House who is more totally respected and to whom so many Members of the House are deeply grateful; but when he comes here and says that the official attitude is so much better than it was when these debates started, I am short of words. Of course the noble Lord has a certain advantage over me: he has listened to all the debates during the last 30 years whereas I have started many of them and taken part in all of them. In that sense perhaps he is a more dispassionate judge but I am afraid I cannot notice any improvement.
When I started the first debate in this House 30 years ago there were 20,000 people in prison. Soon there will
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be 50,000, so we cannot say there is much sign of improvement there. And when we talk about these wonderful, enlightened utterances, one would like to see some effect given to them in policy. The previous Home Secretary, Mr. Leon Brittan, produced a number of reforms, which were denounced by everybody outside the charmed circle of the Government; but that is really a topic for another day. I feel that the noble Lord, who has suffered under me for 30 years, should not be expected to suffer any more this evening. However, I must try to keep clear of the general topic because I have a Motion on the Order Paper (no day named) to call attention to the grave increase in the prison population—
Lord Henderson of Brompton: My Lords, the point I was making was that all those whom I quoted are in office and are therefore official spokesmen, whereas the noble Earl I have always regarded as a voice crying in the wilderness.
The Earl of Longford: My Lords, I think there is something in that, but if things had improved so much I should not have thought the wilderness would be quite so bleak. At any rate the noble Lord, Lord Henderson, deserves the respect of everyone here, and by the time we come back to these matters again who knows who will have converted whom?
Tonight we have such a nice, small list of speakers that perhaps I will go on for rather longer than I should have done if there had been a list of 20 or so. At any rate I will speak my mind, as they say, and I shall have quite a bit to say about women and about Holloway. I shall not only be speaking about Holloway but about the staff generally. I agree entirely with what was said by the noble Lord, Lord Henderson, and others in paying tribute to the prison officers. That includes everyone from the governors downwards, including doctors, education officers and probation officers. They have been much maligned, particularly the good people in Holloway, and naturally they are resentful. I should like to feel that in this House at least we can unite in sending them a message of warmhearted encouragment and admiration for what they are doing.
The noble Baroness, Lady Ewart-Biggs, and other people have dealt with the subject delicately, and indeed it is a subject on which it is rather hard to say exactly what one wants to say. I personally feel that women in prison require more sensitive treatment than men, and on the whole I would say they receive it. It is now 30 years since I acted as sponsor for the reception of a young woman into the Roman Catholic Church in Holloway. Dressed in white, she was welcomed by the governor, Dr. Taylor (later Lady Taylor) and given tea in the governor's office. I cannot see that happening in any men's prison, then or now, and on the whole I think there is a sensitivity shown by women officers which one does not find, or hardly expects to find, in men's prisons. However, we are faced with the fact that prison is unpleasant, and must always be unpleasant. There is, however, a limit to the inhumanity which any of us, at any rate here, would approve of in prisons. It is difficult for many women in prison to accept the fine statements to which the noble Lord, Lord Henderson, referred. I do not think that to

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many women—and to men too, although I will not pursue that at the moment—those statements mean a great deal.
Let us take Durham, which was referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady Ewart-Biggs. A reference was made to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham, who, in this House, denounced the "living tomb", as it was called by certain speakers, including, I think, the Lord Bishop himself, of the men's wing—what was then the top security wing, in Durham. It was partly as a result of his efforts and partly as a result of a near-mutiny in the prison that it was closed down: because this top security wing in Durham was thought to be too inhumane for men, it was closed for men. However, nature and the Home Office abhor a vacuum and so in due course it was opened for women and it has been used for women ever since. It has been denounced by every possible agency, inspector or anybody else who has ever had a look at it, but it is still there.
It was suggested by my noble friend Lady Ewart-Biggs and others that when Holloway is expanded—and it is proposed that Holloway will increase its membership, or the number of its inmates, from 330 to 550—the top security wing at Durham should be closed down. I have given the Minister notice of this question. I want to ask him whether he will tell us when the top security wing at Durham will be closed down. Is there any argument at all for sustaining it?
But that is not the only way in which women can suffer rather more in prison than anybody here would wish, and certainly more than the right reverend Prelates or the Lord Chief Justice would wish. I take the case of a woman, a friend of mine, who was sentenced to six months in prison in the present year. She is a cultured woman of 60, who had probably never heard a four-letter word used in anger, but she certainly heard plenty of them when she found herself in a dormitory in an open prison with a lot of tearaway young women whose language, I suppose, consisted of very little else and who applied those epithets to her very freely.
That is the experience of one woman and I have written to the noble Lord and asked whether there is any way of seeing that in open prisons for women there are at least some single rooms. I know that there are some in certain men's prisons, but in that particular open prison there are no single rooms. It was very hard indeed and the lady there, my cultured friend, underwent a cruel experience, which I am sure was the last thing intended by the noble Lord or by anybody else who is concerned with policy.
Again, will it be easy to persuade of the justice of our system a young, or now not so young, woman who has spent 20 years in prison, has been told by the local review committee that she should be given parole and has been commended for her service in prison, if she is then told that, for reasons too profound to be revealed to her, she must spend at least another five years in prison before she can be considered for parole? Will anybody believe fine words, whether they are delivered by the Minister, by the Lord Chief Justice, by the right reverend Prelates or by anybody else, when he or she is living under those conditions?
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I must pass on and come a little closer to Holloway. But before I get there, I should like to make the point that some of the troubles at Holloway are reproduced in other women's prisons. I should like to take the case of a really excellent women's prison—I am not here just to blame everybody and everything; far from it—like Cookham Wood. When I went there last week, I was told by one or two prisoners that some prisoners were spending 23 hours a day in the cells. The governor explained to me that this was quite exceptional. It appears that in that excellent prison at Cookham Wood—and I make no complaint whatever about treatment by the staff or the conditions—only half the hours of work for which the authorities would wish are available, and only half the association is available. Why is that? The answer is plain enough. It is because of what is called a staff shortage.
But there would not be this staff shortage if the governor was allowed to offer overtime to a sufficient number of women officers. Owing to the financial restrictions imposed by the present Government, there is a limit to the amount of overtime and, therefore, there is this very sad restriction on education and on all the other facilities in Cookham Wood. By and large, if ever I were a woman and were sent to prison, that is where I should want to be sent, but I might be sent instead to Durham to teach me my business.
But to come to Holloway, I have a few words to say about C1. Everybody is fairly well informed by now, or should be, about C1. Let me point out that in C1 last week there were only 24 prisoners. According to the figures given by my noble friend, which were taken a little earlier, there were 40, and I dare say that 40 is the normal quota. But whether the figure is 24 or 40, there is a relatively small number of people there, out of a total number of prisoners of 340 or so.
Let us look at the conditions of the other prisoners in that total of 340. We all know by now, if we have studied it at all, that the building of the new Holloway has been a terrible disaster. It could be regarded as a farce, if it were not a tragedy. But I leave out the building for the moment and, before coming to C1, take the situation in Holloway generally. I talked last week to the chief education officer, who ought to know what he is about because he has been there for 13 years. I have given the Minister notice of these points, so he is well equipped to refute me, if it is possible to do so, but I do not think it is at this stage.
The educational provision in Holloway has been rapidly declining and has now reached an appalling level. I am not talking about the quality. I am talking only about the quantity. There is a fine education staff with 15 full-time and 25 part-time officers. If you count the part-time ones as a half, you can say that there are well over 20 people employed on education in Holloway. How many classes were held there in the three weeks preceding my visit? I am afraid that there are no prizes in this guessing game. The answer is none. No classes at all were held in Holloway in those few weeks. That is shocking.
If that came from the noble Baroness, Lady Faithfull, people would believe it, but coming from me they may wonder whether I am exaggerating. But it is the brutal truth. There were no classes held for three weeks, although there were 20 education people all equipped and longing to provide education. Your

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Lordships may ask: what is the problem? The problem is the shortage of staff. That is the argument used. But how many disciplinary staff would be required to supervise the work? I am talking not of the teaching staff, but of the disciplinary staff. I am assured by the chief education officer there that two staff are needed to supervise the education. How many staff are there in Holloway? Well over 300. The ratio is roughly one to one, so out of more than 300 staff they cannot find two to supervise the education. As a result (although I must not say there is no education, because they can do a little education in the cells) there are no classes whatever. That is a terrible story and I am going to ask the Minister—I have given him notice of this question—what he proposes to do about it. The noble Lord is a very talented and sincere Minister so no doubt he will find a talented and sincere answer. But it is really not the answer he gives tonight that is important but the action that we all hope will be forthcoming.
We have already been told a good deal about the C1 unit in various reports. As the House will know, the inmates there are highly disturbed or for the most part highly disturbed. Some are placed there because of the nature of their offence. Contained on this wing are some 40 women, diagnosed as suffering from dementia, alcoholism, sub-normality and epilepsy. I am assured that almost half of the women are listed suicide risks and almost half these women have no outside contacts, no families and no friends. That is the tragic population. I am informed that they are locked up for 23 hours a day. Their food is passed through a hatch in the cell door and the only treatment given to them is heavy sedation. That is according to my information, much of which undoubtedly comes from Women in Prison, that fine crusading organisation which is very well-equipped with first hand knowledge, but I did pay a visit to Holloway last week.
What is going to be done about C1? The Holloway Project Review was set up in December 1984 in response to the public outcry at the spate of appalling cases of self-mutilation on C1. It recommended that this wing should be closed and a purpose built unit should be built to house Holloway's mentally disturbed inmate population. What we must press for tonight is a clear indication as to when these things will happen. When does the Minister hope that this new unit will be built; and in the immediate future what action is being taken to rectify the deficiencies? It is admitted on all sides that it is a shocking affair. What immediate steps are being taken, and what is the programme for long distance action?
Before I sit down, I must refer to the kind of staff who are necessary in this unit. It is a difficult question and I agree that there are problems here. When I went there last week I found that 10 of the staff were prison officers unqualified in medicine. There were nine nurses, most of whom were not psychiatrically trained. I shall close by quoting the Holloway Project Committee Report:
"We recommend that ultimately the unit should be staffed either by psychiatrically qualified prison nursing staff trained to carry out prison duties, or by appropriately trained prison hospital officers recruited from nursing grades".
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I am sure that that is right in the long run. I honestly do not feel that most of us would wish to wait for the long run for this to work itself out. I shall quote one more sentence from the recommendations of the Holloway Project:
"Both nurses and discipline officers should receive appropriate training in caring for the mentally disturbed, including training offered by the NHS".
Will the Minister agree that this should be proceeded with rapidly in the immediate future? Again, I have given the noble Lord a chance in advance to look at these questions.
I cannot remember a Government report so damning as this one. Let us give all those concerned the proper credit for a full and frank confession; but what we want from them in religious jargon is a clear indication of a firm purpose of amendment.
9.14 p.m.
Lord Mishcon: My Lords, as has been said already, my noble friend Lady Ewart-Biggs deserves the thanks not only of Members of this House who have stayed for this important debate, but in my view of the country at large which is indebted to her for having initiated it. We especially appreciate the way in which it was done. It is also my pleasant duty when winding up from this side of the House to pay my tribute to all who have spoken, showing, if I may say so, the utmost consideration in regard to this important matter. A voice of mercy has been heard in the House; at the same time a voice of realism.
I say "a voice of realism" because prisons and the whole prison system will continue, I am afraid, to be the bane of any Government of whatever complexion. It does not do to make a political issue out of prisons—and nobody has attempted to do this. I only hope that my own Government when they Come to power will be able to carry out a number of reforms. But they are not there yet, so I am going to plead when summing up this debate for something to be done by the present Government in regard to this matter.
It has been truly said by the Lord Chief Justice—and the noble Lord, Lord Henderson, quoted this—that prisons never did any good to anybody. I wish that man or woman, or a combination of both, could think of an alternative system for dealing with our criminal offenders. Nobody has succeeded very much. We have thought in terms of community service orders, which I think is a very useful reform. We have thought also of intermediary stages before prison is reached. However, the whole time it is a question of custody. The whole time, too, we find that when people leave prisons, imprisonment has not done them the slightest bit of good. Indeed, we find too many returning there.
If we cannot constructively put forward alternatives along the lines of those mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Faithfull, and other speakers tonight—such as greater use of community service orders and other ways of trying to keep people out of prison—then we must in practical terms say to the Government that something ought to be done and they ought to be doing it.
Having tried to study this subject in a little more detail than I had before, I was very impressed by the evidence that, so far as concerns women in prison,

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many of them are there for offences which do not involve violence. The noble Lord, Lord Henderson, touched on the point that if there are acts of violence, one often finds that they are emotional acts of violence, connected with members of the family or those who have upset the family. That is a very different streak of violence from that usually associated with crimes of violence committed by men.
It has been said often in this House, and one says it again now with respect to the judiciary, that we must try so far as we possibly can, especially in the case of women, to see to it that imprisonment is the last resort so far as punishment is concerned. It has also been said, so appropriately, that the last thing in the world that one should do, unless one has no conceivable alternative, is to send a woman to prison if she happens to be pregnant or has young children.
There was a very progressive governor named, I believe, Mr. Anderson, who recommended that women who were in prison and who were pregnant or who had young children should be let out on licence. That proposal came from a very experienced governor. When the Minister replies I should like him to indicate whether he agrees with that view. If he does not agree, then will he say why?
The second matter that was raised in our debate, and it is very important, concerns the number of women—far greater than men—who are on remand in prisons. More than once we have pleaded in this House for remands in custody to be kept to a minimum. The scandal is the period for which people are kept on remand—and they are so often acquitted in the end.
I was very moved, as I am sure the Minister was, by the report of Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Prisons for 1984. I quote from paragraph 2.11:
"The past few years have seen an increase both in the numbers held in custody awaiting trial or sentence, and in the average length of time spent on remand—both awaiting trial and prior to sentencing. In 1973 the average daily population on remand was 4,613. Ten years later the figure was 8,651. The average length of time spent in custody awaiting trial in 1970 was for men 23 days; in 1983 the average was 47 days—more than twice as long. Over the same period the average time spent is custody for men between conviction and sentencing rose from 25 to 31 days, and for women from 24 to 31 days."
Something must be wrong with our system of trial, investigation of crimes or the bringing of criminals to justice. Again, we have said this before in this House, and I think we look with some amount of jealousy north of the Border, because they have done something about limiting the period of remand, when otherwise the prosecution has to be dropped. I shall be hoping—I do not know whether it is with undue optimism—that in the gracious Speech that we are soon to hear there may be some legislation dealing with the limitation on periods of remand unless there are very exceptional circumstances.
"Why do women suffer from this?" asked my noble friend Lady Ewart-Biggs, and she gave some reasons. I believe that there are some additional reasons, and I should like the Minister to deal with them. One is that very often a woman is remanded because the magistrate or judge thinks, in terms of mercy, that she is in need of some psychological investigation and he will not deal with her until the psychological report is received. The proper procedure should be that she
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ought to go into a hospital for a psychological report, and not into a prison. There again, something is wrong with our system when a woman is sent to a prison for a psychological report. I believe that another reason may be that there are not enough bail hostels for women. I ask the Minister, what is his programme for more hostels for women in respect of bail?
Much has been said about women who should not be in prison at all because of their psychological condition, and horrifying stories have been repeated about what has happened in Holloway and what the situation is in Durham. Whatever the complexion of a government one cannot allow this kind of situation to continue. I know that much was hoped for in regard to Holloway from the July report which was dealt with so eloquently by my noble friend Lord Longford, and I remember that the noble Lord the Minister answered a Question for Written Answer on 17th July, after that report was put into the Library. His reply arose from a Question put by the noble Baroness, Lady Sharples. I know the Minister will forgive me if I quote him, and this is what he then said:
"We accept the committee's view that C1 Unit is not currently meeting their needs as well as it should, despite the best efforts of the staff, which we also commend, and that urgent action is needed to rectify its deficiencies. Its physical state is wholly unsatisfactory and its management structure is not clear. We acknowledge the desirability of re-siting C1 Unit in purpose-built accommodation in a different part of the establishment and have asked for an urgent assessment of whether this is feasible".
The Minister was feeling enough to put it in those words. I ask him whether that urgent assessment is now available. Later on, he said:
"High priority will be given to improving the regime on C1 so that the prisoners there can take full advantage of the specialist training and therapeutic facilities available."
My noble friend Lord Longford raised specifically the absence of education facilities, and gave rather disturbing facts about this matter. Here was the Minister, talking in terms of high priority. I know that the Minister also will have remembered the very specific recommendations that came in the report of the Holloway project committee. If I remember them correctly, they dealt, as indeed did the 1984 report of Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Prisons, with the need for education facilities as a very important part, quite obviously, of the treatment of prisoners in prisons.
I shall read from the report of Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Prisons 1984, and I hope that I do so constructively. He said at paragraph 2.19:
"Last year we referred to the low levels of attendance in many prison education classes which had resulted from the requirement in so many establishments for disciplinary officers to be in attendance and to escort inmates to and from their classes"—
my noble friend Lord Longford referred to that—
"And when discipline officers were not available classes were cancelled or reduced in number. During 1984 we saw a continuation of this phenomenon. But we also saw instances where education officers made staff and materials available to inmates in their cells or wings. So long as the constraints resulting from staff shortages and the present working agreements continue so will there be a need for such flexibility in the approach of management to the task in hand. In the longer term a review is needed of the present working practice in so many prisons which requires classes to close when discipline officers are not in attendance".
I know that my noble friend would want me to quote that. The official report calls for a review of the whole matter because it regards it as so unfortunate that these

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training facilities and education programme are not available.
The hour is late. It is not for anybody who winds up to repeat ad nauseam points made so much better by his predecessors. I hope that I have limited myself to a few additional comments in what undoubtedly has been a most useful debate. We all look forward to the Minister coming out with a progressive speech which will gladden the heart of my noble friend Lord Longford, who I know will then pay him the same compliment as he did the noble Baroness, Lady Faithfull.
9.27 p.m.
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, in asking the Question this evening the noble Baroness has drawn attention to an area of our penal system which understandably often gives rise to emotion. She has pointed to the need for a caring and responsible administration of the female prison system, and I assure her that I and the Prison Department share her ideals.
Over the past three years or so I have seen at first hand and spoken to not only women in female prisons but others in various psychiatric units, including the special hospitals, and those who look after them. One thing is quite clear to me. However much one likes to believe that women should not have to go to prison—we all share a natural distaste for the idea—the reality is that women can be guilty of imprisonable offences varying from the less serious to the most violent and hideous. It may be the responsibility of us all to consider what makes them that way—the noble Lord, Lord Henderson, gave us some reasons in a quotation—but the responsibility of the Prison Department is to administer and direct their confinement in a responsible way. That remit it already fulfils, and I believe that it meets the concern of the noble Earl, Lord Longford, that prison should not be over-pleasant nor an infringement of our natural standards of humanity.
The noble Baroness, Lady Ewart-Biggs, asked me various questions on sentencing, on remand and on sending mothers and pregnant women into custody. I shall develop some of those themes as I go along. The essence of much of what she said concerned sentencing and relates to the exercise by the courts of their powers. It would not be appropriate to go into great detail on that tonight. The task of the prison service is to take into custody those whom the courts send, whatever their circumstances. Where those sent into custody require specialist facilities, we aim to provide them.
By comparison with the male population, that of females is extremely small, averaging in 1984 just under 1,500, fewer than 5 per cent. of the total prison population. Seventy per cent. of the female population is serving 18 months or less. As the noble Baroness said, a large proportion is also on remand. In September, for example, there were 400 remand prisoners out of a total female population of about 1,600. The recent overall increase in prison population has resulted in overcrowding in female remand prisons as well as male establishments. But this is a reflection of pressures on the prison system as a whole, and of course the female prison system has
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had to take its share. Accommodating the small population of female prisoners presents special problems. Only 11 establishments in England and Wales take female prisoners. That is a fact to which the noble Baroness, Lady Ewart-Biggs, pointed.
The noble Earl, Lord Longford, referred especially to H-Wing at Durham. I accept that the size of H-Wing and its location within the confines of a predominantly male establishment makes it less than ideal. I assure him that we are still mindful of the need to provide alternative Category A accommodation. I also agree that the geographical spread of these establishments is less than ideal bearing in mind the desirability expressed tonight of allowing female prisoners to serve their sentences as near to their families as possible. Remand prisoners have to travel long distances to courts with heavy escorting commitments for the prisons concerned and consequent loss of staff time which could otherwise be devoted to developing regimes for sentenced prisoners.
My noble friend Lady Faithfull, with her great experience of these matters, raised the issue of mothers and babies. She referred to Circular Instruction No. 51 of 1983. May I tell my noble friend that this circular was prepared in close consultation with the DHSS—and that included all aspects of it, medical, social work and nursing staff—and we believe it is right that this should be so. There would have been strong criticism otherwise. As for the children of women left when their mothers go into prison, everything is done for the women by the prison staff to enable them to maintain their contacts with them.
As for questions of separation of mothers from their babies in custody, the circular instruction reflects professional advice and the judgments made in the light of that advice, recognising that there are difficult questions of judgment to be made here. The paramount question, which the circular instruction makes clear, is the welfare of the baby and the baby's interests. These are not necessarily the same as the interests of the mother. That is why there is need for the discretionary power which this instruction enables.
On the question of remand conditions generally—raised, I think, by everyone who spoke, although perhaps particularly by the noble Lord, Lord Henderson—we accept that conditions for remand prisoners are far from desirable. We are taking action to improve them. We have made statutory provision for time limits on bringing cases to trial and we are taking action to reduce delays in the courts. We have also begun a large-scale prison building and refurbishment programme designed to tackle overcrowding and to upgrade existing accommodation. The noble Lord, Lord Henderson, asked how the women's prison system would be affected by the building programme. I can perhaps say to him that the main thrust, so far as the women's system is concerned, is the rebuilding of Holloway. There is also a major redevelopment of Styal planned. I hope he will find that encouraging.
As to the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, about Mr. Anderson, the governor of Styal, the views that he expressed were personal ones. The question of the immediate parole of women sentenced to prison who have babies is one for the courts to assess. But I can assure the noble Lord that they take

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this fully into account and only use custody as a last resort. That is something I have stressed in the past.
Lord Mishcon: My Lords, I know the noble Lord the Minister will forgive me. I shall not interrupt him again, I promise, unless I have to. I was talking in terms about licensing from prisons, not licensing from the courts. In other words, the licensing on parole could in fact be done by a Home Office order giving that leave to the prison authorities and giving that direction to them. That is what I was inquiring about.
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, I thought that the noble Lord was referring to the remarks of Mr. Anderson. I do not have that particular quotation in front of me. I shall have to study the remarks of the noble Lord.
On the question of a bail hostel—which was another point—I think again that in the interests of time that is perhaps something I can take up in writing with the noble Lord. There are, of course, matters concerning the courts' willingness to use them and I am sure that if they possibly can they will; but I should like to develop my story a little further, if I may, and perhaps write to the noble Lord.
Population pressures and logistical problems are not the whole story. I should like to echo here comments made by the noble Earl, Lord Longford, and indeed my noble friend Lady Faithfull. I think everyone again paid trubute to the staff who work in women's prisons—indeed in all prisons. In spite of severe problems so much positive and encouraging work is going on. The range of educational and training courses, and the availability of work places, offer inmates valuable opportunities to make good use of their time in custody. I shall return to education in Holloway in due course. Staff in women's prisons do their best to help inmates come to terms with the consequences of their imprisonment. The care and sensitivity with which they deal with women in their care should not be underestimated. Indeed, judging by the remarks that have been in this short debate tonight I do not think that they are.
Of course, there are areas of concern; and several of your Lordships have referred to them. The Government accept that the biggest women's prison—Holloway—presents its own difficulties. One of my first decisions when I came to the Home Office was to go and see Holloway prison for myself, aware as I was of the criticisms and concerns which had been voiced in the recent past. I found Holloway a complicated and disorientating place. The variety of functions that it is expected to discharge are of course legion. Some of the buildings are inappropriate for the functions they are expected to perform. The noble Baroness, Lady Ewart-Biggs, for example, has drawn attention to the deficiencies of the visiting facilities. In relation to that, may I just tell the noble Baroness that every prison for women has provision for women to receive visits once a fortnight? That is more generous than the provision in the prison rules, which is 30 minutes every 28 days; and accumulated visits can also be permitted.
Holloway has had to cope with a diverse and rapidly changing population. Changes have taken place in penal philosophy and practice since the prison was designed. The medical model which provided the theoretical basis for Holloway no longer holds sway, as
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the noble Earl so rightly said. There will inevitably, however, be some for whom medical or psychiatric treatment will be necessary. It is this population which has been the cause of considerable concern in many quarters.
It was against this background that the Government decided in December last year that the pressures on Holloway were such that the role of the prison within the women's prison system needed to be reviewed. As the noble Earl, Lord Longford, has indicated, the report of the Holloway Project Committee has provided us with a valuable analysis of Holloway's difficulties and a refreshingly positive programme for its improvement. The report combined this analysis with practical recommendations for the better treatment of inmates and management of regimes with which no one with the true interests of the prisoners at heart could quarrel. In welcoming the report, we noted in particular its recommendations for the development of its regimes, improvements in management structure, and ways of reviewing staff deployment to ensure that prisoners can be provided with more time on association and more access to Holloway's extensive facilities.
Work is now proceeding across a range of matters identified in the report, and I should like to mention two of them in particualr today. First, manpower. Holloway exemplifies the problems which arise when the need to service a remand function takes away staff who could otherwise be deployed to help develop the regime. No one can be satisfied with a situation in which—as both the noble Earl, and the noble lord, Lord Mishcon, described—of a possible 183 education sessions over the last three months (I think, not weeks) only about half could be provided or in which the use of potentially excellent sporting facilities is severely constrained by manpower shortages. There is a further special difficulty at Holloway in ensuring that the resources of both nursing and discipline staff are deployed as effectively as possible.
In accordance with one of the recommendations in the report, arrangements have been made for an early manpower appraisal to be carried out, and this is a prerequisite for getting it right. That appraisal will have a wide-ranging remit which will enable it to assess the staffing requirements of the prison as a whole. The review will start next month and the aim is that it should be completed by about the turn of the year. That may not be quite the action which the noble Earl was expecting me to describe, but I hope that he will feel that setting out on that track is a significant step in the direction in which he eventually wants us to go.
The Earl of Longford: My Lords, is it to be an internal review?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, it is internal within the Prison Department, yes.
The Earl of Longford: My Lords, but not within the prison?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, the prison will naturally be involved; but those who examine it will come from outside the prison as well.
The second question concerns the provision which is made for those women either on remand or sentenced

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who may need psychiatric assessment or treatment. The plight of these women is of course exemplified by the disturbing incidents of self-mutilation and self-injury, of which there have been some sad cases. There is no single, simple explanation for acts like that. All I can say is that everything possible is done to prevent such occurrences. When, despite our best efforts, an act of self-injury occurs, staff deal with the situation professionally and with proper concern for the wellbeing of the prisoner concerned.
Most sentenced women prisoners showing severe mental disorder have been successfully transferred to a mental hospital. However the majority of people in prison who are suffering from mental disorder, which would justify their detention in hospital for treatment, are those who are not sentenced; they are in prison on remand. The best hope of making a significant impact on this problem is by means of the alternative of remand to hospital under Sections 35 and 36 of the Mental Health Act 1983, which were brought into force on 1st October last year. Those sections give courts the power to remand to hospital for a report on the prisoner's mental condition or for treatment. Their use is governed by the requirements that the court should first have medical reports and the offer of a bed from a suitable hospital. It is too early to tell yet how much effect these two provisions are having on the plight of mentally disordered women remanded in custody. Much must depend on the availability of secure hospital beds within the country as a whole. However, I fear that, sadly, there are always likely to be some mentally disordered women remanded to prison while suitable arrangements are made for them.
The Prison Service will inevitably therefore have to cope with a number of these unfortunate people despite the severe problems which they present. It is not right to keep them in ordinary prison locations, and that is why accommodation is available for the highly disturbed element in C1 Unit at Holloway. We accepted the project committee's view that C1 Unit was not currently meeting the needs of the women there as well as it should do, despite the best efforts of the staff, and we accepted that urgent action was needed to rectify its staffing and physical deficiencies. We are now looking in detail at practical steps to improve conditions in the present unit, particularly improvements to the fabric, the replacement of potentially dangerous fittings, and the provision of more space for association. The project committee also recommended that, in the longer term, C1 should be resited, as we have heard, in purpose-built accommodation in a different part of the establishment.
Despite the very many demands on our resources, we have accepted in principle the inclusion within the forward prison building programme of a replacement for C1 Unit. We are not yet in a position to say how much the new C1 Unit will cost or exactly how long it will take. Our main priority at this stage is to concentrate on getting it right. What went wrong in the past was that it was got wrong: that must not happen again. But work is now going ahead on the planning of the new accommodation. When I say "planning" I am not referring to feasibility, which is the sort of mechanical, engineering feasibility of looking for a
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site, which is what I addressed in answering a question of the noble Baroness a few months ago. On the planning, we are involving advisers from the DHSS, as the project committee recommended, to make best use of their wide experience in the provision of accommodation in special hospitals and regional secure units. I can assure your Lordships that plans for a protected room are well advanced.
We are also pressing ahead with improvements to medical and nursing services at Holloway, as indeed we are at other women's establishments. We accept the project committee's recommendation that the senior medical officer post at Holloway should be upgraded to principal medical officer. Arrangements for selecting suitable doctors for the post, and for the post of senior medical officer with responsibilitity for the medical management of the C1 Unit, are in hand. The senior medical officer on C1 will have a key role to play in the creation of the correct management framework and also in the provision of an appropriate regime for the care and treatment of disturbed women.
Among the anomalies identified by the committee and referred to tonight was the arrangement under which prison officers at Holloway work in hospital sections alongside nurses to carry out custodial and disciplinary tasks which the latter are not trained to undertake. This arrangement has not only led to friction between disciplinary and nursing staff but is also inefficient. It entails deploying two members of staff to perform many tasks which in a men's establishment would be performed by one.
We intend to end this practice by gradually replacing nurse grade staff at Holloway with hospital officers who have nursing qualifications. This will entail recruiting female hospital officers from two sources—existing nurse grade staff and nurses in the community—and then training them for discipline as well as nursing duties. The process will later be extended to the rest of the female system. Members of the prison nursing staff who do not opt to train as hospital officers, or who are not accepted for training, will continue to be employed as nurses. We hope to have the first female hospital officer candidates, in training before the end of the year.
It is important to stress that this development in nursing in no way implies an erosion of the existing policy of employing only nurse qualified staff on nursing duties in establishments for women and girls. Indeed, we shall hope to improve on the already high professional nursing standards in the women's system while at the same time achieving substantial gains in general efficiency and effectiveness.
My Lords, before coming to the end perhaps I may just mention here the use of drugs at Holloway. Concern was expressed this evening, and it has been expressed at other times, about the use of medication in female establishments. There is particular concern about psychotropic drugs—anti-depressants, sedatives and tranquillisers. I can assure noble Lords that it is our very firm policy that medicines should be used only for clinically determined therapeutic purposes and that this is clearly understood throughout the prison medical service. The number of doses at Holloway over the period 1982–84 in fact shows a markedly downward trend and one to be greatly encouraged.

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I have dealt at some length with the position at Holloway. It is clear from this debate that it is a matter of concern to your Lordships. I believe that the project committee's report, and the help that it is to us as a guide, provides us with a real opportunity to set the prison on a new course for the benefit of both prisoners and staff. But Holloway, although dominant, is not the whole story.
This has been a useful debate. It has displayed many of the concerns widely felt on an important issue. I share many of those concerns, as do those who care directly for women prisoners. But all is not gloomy, as some of your Lordships have indicated. Despite the pressures on our accommodation and staff resources, the women's prisons are doing more than just coping with their prisoners. They are, I believe, looking after them with care and imagination in the best traditions of the prison service.

Merseyside Development Corporation Bill
Bill, having been returned from the Commons yesterday in error, in so far as the Commons had not communicated to this House that it had amended several of the amendments made by this House to the Bill, ordered to be returned to the Commons.
Bill returned from the Commons with the amendments agreed to with amendments; the amendments to the amendments considered and agreed to.

Church of Scotland Trust (Amendment) Order Confirmation Bill [H.L.]
Returned from the Commons agreed to.
Worcester City Council Bill [H.L.]
Returned from the Commons agreed to with amendments; the amendments considered and agreed to.
Law Reform (Miscellaneous Provisions) (Scotland) Bill
Returned from the Commons with certain of the amendments agreed to and with the remaining amendments disagreed to with reasons for such disagreement; the reasons ordered to be printed.
Insolvency Bill [H.L.]
Returned from the Commons with the amendments to the Commons amendments agreed to.

Bankruptcy (Scotland) Bill [H.L.]
Returned from the Commons with the amendments to which this House has disagreed not insisted on, with the amendments proposed in lieu thereof agreed to and with the amendments to the Commons amendments and the consequential amendments to the Bill agreed to.
House adjourned at ten minutes before ten o'clock.