Lords Sitting of 16 April 1986

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

Royal Assent
The Lord Chancellor (Lord Hailsham of Saint Marylebone): My Lords, I have to notify the House, in accordance with the Royal Assent Act 1967, that the Queen has signified her Royal Assent to the following Acts:
Lothian Region (Edinburgh Western Relief Road) Order Confirmation Act,
Swansea City Council (Tawe Barrage) Act.

Germany: UK Exports
2.37 p.m.
Lord Ezra: 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 are being taken to expand exports to the Federal Republic of Germany, in view of the increased value of the deutschemark.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Trade and Industry (Lord Lucas of Chilworth): My Lords, exporters are already taking advantage of the favourable exchange rate to expand their sales to the Federal Republic, and the British Overseas Trade Board and our posts in the market will continue to provide the service needed to help them.
Lord Ezra: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that over the past three years on visible trade account we showed a deficiency with western Germany of no less than £3.5 billion and that last year this result was arrived at even after we had earned over £2 billion on oil exports? In view of the fact that Germany represents our second largest export market, should we not now be mounting a special effort to recover our situation there, having regard to the improvement in the currency position?
Lord Lucas of Chilworth: My Lords, the truth of the matter is that over the three years which the noble Lord mentioned both our penetration of the German market and the volume of our non-oil exports—that is, our manufactured exports—have shown increases, and the Federal Republic now takes 11.4 per cent. of our worldwide exports, which is an increase of 1.4 over the 1983 figure.
Lord Barnett: My Lords, it will be recalled that the Prime Minister was delighted to boast that the pound was very strong, which it was, in 1979 to 1981. Are the Government now pleased that it is lower?
Lord Lucas of Chilworth: My Lords, it is not a question of being pleased or displeased. The net result of the current rate is that it puts our exporters in a more competitive position—a position of which I would hope they would take full advantage.
Lord Harmar-Nicholls: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that the Question, asks what Her Majesty's Government are doing about increasing exports? Is not that a matter for private enterprise exporters to deal with, and it could well be that government intervention would be counterproductive?
Lord Lucas of Chilworth: My Lords, I appreciate what my noble friend is saying. Certainly it is largely for industry to take advantage of the market places; but the Government, through the British Overseas Trade Board, spend some £5 million annually. We also have staff in London to support those exporters and six Foreign and Commonwealth Office posts in the Federal Republic to aid and assist those industrialists who take advantage of the position open to them.
Lord Gladwyn: My Lords, would not the prospects for our exports be brighter if we were now able to join the European Monetary System?
Lord Lucas of Chilworth: My Lords, I am sure that the House will agree with me that that question is a little wide of the original Question.
Lord Williams of Elvel: My Lords, can the noble Lord give us figures for the visible non-oil trade balance between the United Kingdom and West Germany over the past three years?
Lord Lucas of Chilworth: My Lords, manufactured exports from the United Kingdom to the Federal Republic of Germany in real cash terms in 1982 were £3,409 million; in 1983, £3,943 million; in 1984, £4,409 million; in 1985, £5,755 million. That shows an increase of 69 per cent in 1985 over 1982.
Lord Williams of Elvel: My Lords, I am sorry to come back again to the noble Lord, but I asked for the visible trade balance, which of course includes imports as well as exports.
Lord Lucas of Chilworth: The answer is, "No", my Lords.
Lord Diamond: My Lords, does not the Minister's wide experience in the affairs of his department indicate to him that one of the problems that exporters have is not knowing what rate of exchange will apply at the time they are paid for the goods they are wishing to export? Therefore, is it not directly relevant and pertinent to the Question on the Order Paper that the Minister should answer the question of the noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn?
Lord Lucas of Chilworth: My Lords, there are a number of factors which influence the competitiveness or otherwise of our exporting industrialists, and currency fluctation is but one. However, it is one that is widely recognised by Her Majesty's Government. In

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direct answer to both noble Lords, all I can repeat is what my right honourable friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer said in answer to a Question in another place on 6th January this year.

NHS Waste Disposal: Crown Immunity
2.43 p.m.
Baroness Nicol: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will consider removing Crown immunity from prosecution from National Health Service establishments in regard to their waste disposal operations.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Security (Baroness Trumpington): My Lords, the Government have no current plans to remove immunity from prosecution for waste disposal operations in National Health Service establishments.
Baroness Nicol: My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for replying, though I find that Answer rather disappointing. Does the Minister recall that when the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, in its eleventh report, drew attention to the shortcomings of National Health Service kitchens, it also drew attention to the shortcomings of National Health Service incinerators? Will she not agree that it seems unreasonable that their standards should be allowed to be any lower than those for other incinerators?
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, while the report of the Royal Commission recommends the removal of Crown immunity from NHS waste disposal, it also points to procedures under the current legislation which provided safeguard against instances of air pollution arising from Crown property. Under the procedure in Section 22 of the Clean Air Act, local authorities, in the light of the findings of their environmental health officers, can submit reports and require the Secretary of State to investigate breaches of the regulations. The department will not tolerate immunity from prosecution being used by health authorities for not taking effective remedial action in response to adverse reports.
Lord Mellish: My Lords, is the Minister aware that her Answer is illogical? Only the other day, under pressure, the Government readily agreed—and we all welcomed this—that they would remove Crown immunity from hospitals, because of the food poisoning in a hospital up north. Now she is asked a similar Question about what must surely also be a menace and a threat. Why should these people be immune from prosecution? At the end of the day, it is a matter for the judge and jury to decide whether they are guilty. Why not let people have the chance?
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, Clause 1 of the National Health Service (Amendment) Bill, published just before Easter, applies only to food handling, as the noble Lord said, in health service premises. The Bill
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received an unopposed Second Reading yesterday in another place. Any waste emanating from NHS catering operations will be of a non-clinical nature, and its disposal will be without danger to the public.
Lord Kilmarnock: My Lords, does not the National Health Service (Amendment) Bill now before Parliament provide an excellent vehicle for extending its provisions slightly to do precisely what the noble Baroness suggests?
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, although the Government have no current plans to make changes on Crown immunity in respect of NHS waste disposal, we shall keep the situation under review. The Government expect the NHS to meet and maintain the standards required by the relevant Acts, and any evidence that suggests that health authorities are not paying due attention will be thoroughly investigated.
Lord Ennals: My Lords, does not the noble Baroness accept that this is precisely what the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution was doing? It said, in relation to incinerators and other methods of waste disposal, that it was an historic anomaly that the National Health Service was excluded, and that many would fail to meet the standards required by the existing Acts. Can the noble Baroness explain what is the logic of making a change in relation to Crown immunity for kitchens, when so far we have not been prepared to do so for incinerators? Will she accept that clearly there is little logic in this, and if the matter is now under review will she note that there are certain to be amendments which will seek to make greater sense of the Bill than it now makes?
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, I have already replied on the position of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution and its recommendations. I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, would agree that repetition is rather boring.
Lord Edmund-Davies: My Lords, does this dialogue not indicate that the piecemeal relaxation of the Crown immunity is not satisfactory, and that the Government should quickly address themselves to the question of the total abolition of the Crown immunity?
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, that is rather wide of the Question before us today.
Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: My Lords, with great respect to the noble Baroness, it is not wide of the Question. Will she say a little more about the review to which she has referred? Will she say who is conducting the review, what are the terms of reference, and what government departments are being considered in this review?
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, the Question on the Order Paper refers to removing immunity from prosecution for waste disposal. It does not refer to other matters which are under Crown immunity. Therefore, I think that the noble and learned Lord's question was rather wide of the present Question. I have already said that we shall be keeping the situation under review. With regard to the make-up of the

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Royal Commission, I shall have to write to the noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn.
Lord Mellish: But, my Lords, this is nonsense. It must be understood that removal of Crown immunity does not mean that the Crown are necessarily in the wrong. It simply means that an ordinary, individual human being has a right to go to a court of law and take a case. The judge will listen, and if there is a jury they will consider it and give a verdict. Why should not people have the right to do that? Why should Crown immunity be given to people in the hospital world?
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, I have already replied to the original Question and have said that we have no current plans. I have said that the matter is under review, and I am in no position to answer for the whole of Crown immunity.
Baroness Masham of Ilton: My Lords, may I ask the noble Baroness whether she is aware that there is great public concern because of the problem of the AIDS virus and also drug addicts? Is she aware that private homes are not immune, but local authority homes are immune as well as health service establishments? That seems an extraordinary anomaly.
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, guidance on AIDS which was issued to health professionals last year contained specific advice on disposal of clinical waste. Further guidance produced by the Advisory Committee on Dangerous Pathogens will be issued very soon. This will be aimed primarily at clinical, nursing and laboratory staff who might come into contact with patients who have been exposed to the HTLVIII virus, or specimens taken from them. The advice in the guidelines will also be relative to others as it covers such areas as post-mortems, body handling, disposal of waste, and maintenance and cleaning.
Baroness Nicol: My Lords, is the noble Baroness aware that there is a new dimension now in the waste disposal problem from National Health Service establishments? It is that, under pressure from the Government to commercialise operations, I understand that some authorities are contemplating offering a service to local industries to dispose of their noxious waste in their incinerators. As this would patently be unfair, would not the noble Baroness agree that this would at the very least cause unfair competition with other disposers in the neighbourhood as well as being an added risk to health if Crown immunity is allowed to remain?
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, the onus is on health authorities to provide their services in the most efficient and effective manner. Services to patients are paramount. If a health authority's incinerator has spare capacity then it is a matter of judgment for that health authority to decide whether it can increase its workload by taking on non-NHS work. All incinerators are subject to inspection by environmental health officers. Section 22 of the Clean Air Act allows for breaches of the Act through excessive pollution to be investigated. I can assure the noble Baroness, Lady Nicol, that the department will not
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allow Crown immunity to be used by the NHS to unfair commercial advantage.
Lord Campbell of Alloway: My Lords, in deference to the question put by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Edmund-Davies, will my noble friend the Minister not agree that it is certainly a tenable view that the removal of Crown immunity, far from being wide of the subject, lies at the heart and essence of it?
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, I have listened with great interest to my noble friend.
Lord Elwyn-Jones: My Lords, in view of the intimation of the noble Baroness the Minister that there is to be a Royal Commission into this matter, would it not be desirable—
Baroness Trumpington: No, my Lords, I did not say that.
Lord Elwyn-Jones: I thought that was said, my Lords. Perhaps I may complete my question, and then it can be corrected by the noble Baroness. In the light of the intervention by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Edmund-Davies, and by the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Alloway, would there not now be a case for a Royal Commission into the more general question of Crown immunity, including a specific consideration of the matters referred to in the Question?
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, I think I referred to the report of the Royal Commission on environmental pollution. I am not aware that I mentioned any further Royal Commission. I shall certainly pass on the remarks of the noble and learned Lord to my right honourable friend the Secretary of State.
Lord Diamond: My Lords, could the noble Baroness help an ordinary layman?
Noble Lords: Order!
Viscount St. Davids: My Lords, one knows that there are many cases and matters in this country to which Crown immunity applies. One knows that there is a power in the Crown to waive that immunity wherever it considers it should be waived. Can the noble Baroness tell me whether this power applies in these hospital cases, and would it be waived if the matter was considered to be serious enough?
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, I am not sure what hospital cases the noble Lord refers to. I am not in a position to give any answer on the waiving of Crown immunity.
Lord Diamond: My Lords, the question I was going to ask the noble Baroness ties up very much with the question that has just been asked. Is it not the case that there is ample precedent for the Government not relying upon Crown immunity in cases where they do not think it proper so to do?
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, I really am unaware of any cases. If the noble Lord has any particular cases, perhaps he would bring them to my notice.

Honey Lane Hospital
2.55 p.m.
Lord John-Mackie: 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 if they are satisfied with the West Essex Health Authority's plans to provide the necessary ancillary services in Waltham Abbey when Honey Lane Hospital is closed in July this year.
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, the matters raised by the noble Lord are the responsibility of the West Essex District Health Authority. I understand that the authority held formal consultations on the proposal to close Honey Lane Hospital. The proposal was not opposed by the community health council which formally represents the local community and was not therefore referred to Ministers. It would not be appropriate for me to comment in the circumstances.
Lord John-Mackie: My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for that rather unsatisfactory reply. I was hoping she would be more kind to me, and perhaps we shall be more kind to her, on this Question than on the last one. Is she aware that Waltham Abbey is a community of 22,000 people who are worried about the closure of this hospital? Is she also aware that the Epping District Council is asking for a judicial review on the subject, admittedly on the procedure of the closure, and that the local people have the support of all the elected bodies in the area? She may say that the community health council represents that, I do not know, but it certainly has supported it in that way.
However, if the hospital is to be closed, is the noble Baroness aware that the people of Waltham Abbey feel that they should have a health service centre and the right way to do it would be to use the old buildings for this to provide a nursing home, an ambulance station, an elderly people's home, a chiropody clinic and so on? I feel that though it is the West Essex Health Authority's pigeon, the noble Baroness could give the authority a push in the right direction to do that. May I point out—
Noble Lords: Speech!
Lord John-Mackie: My Lords, all right, there will be time in the future. I shall leave it at that for the present.
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, the matters raised by the noble Lord are for the West Essex District Health Authority, I am confident that the DHA has done all it can to ensure that no unnecessary inconvenience will occur when the agreed closure takes place. For example, the DHA is providing out-patient clinics, a new NHS nursing home and a new day centre for geriatric patients in Waltham Abbey. I understand that Mr. Hackford, the district general manager and a near neighbour of the noble Lord, Lord John-Mackie, is keen to discuss these matters with him.
Lord Graham of Edmonton: My Lords, I wonder whether the Minister can tell the House what consultation takes place between neighbouring
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regional health authorities in matters of this kind? For example, within five miles of this hospital, the neighbouring health authority, North-East Thames, has closed the Enfield War Memorial Hospital. It has plans to decimate the Highlands Hospital in Enfield and to close the cancer unit at Edmonton. I wonder whether the Minister can tell the House what steps the Ministry takes to ensure that when closures of this kind take place the local councils and ancillary services are adequate and that patients are not returned to the community without the Minister being satisfied that alternative arrangements have been made.
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, as the noble Lord knows, matters that take place to do with closures are matters for the district health authorities and the regional health authorities. Unless community health councils object as I said in the original Answer, the matter is not brought for adjudication by Ministers.
Lord Graham of Edmonton: My Lords, the Minister has not taken on board my point. I have given examples, such as the Cheshunt Cottage Hospital, again within an area of five miles. In a community where five hospitals are being closed, what concern does the Ministry show about it?
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, the Question on the Order Paper refers to Honey Lane Hospital. If the noble Lord would care to raise a Question on any of the other hospitals which he has mentioned, I shall be glad to answer it on another occasion.
Lord Underhill: My Lords, does the noble Baroness appreciate that, as my noble friend has just referred to another hospital, one cannot consider these things on a piecemeal basis? Does she recall that I had an Unstarred Question debate on the closure of another hospital also in the Epping Forest District Council and in the West Essex District Health Authority area administered by Waltham Forest, and this would be the fifth hospital in that area to be closed? Do the Government appreciate the inconvenience for people receiving ancillary services and visiting patients when they have to go to these very large hospitals some miles away?
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, we must stick to the Question on the Order Paper. The health authority issued a consultation document in May 1985 proposing the closure of this hospital for two special reasons. I would go into those reasons if there was more time. But, if I may say so, I well remember the debate that we had on the other hospitals in that area.
Lord Ennals: My Lords, will the noble Baroness accept that the Act which established the National Health Service placed the responsibility for the provision of a health service upon Ministers? Does she agree that it is the responsibility of Ministers to ensure that an effective health service is provided throughout the country, and that for Ministers constantly to say that this is the responsibility of a local health authority is not good enough? May I ask a further question? Is she aware that there are growing numbers of hospitals being closed without adequate provision being made

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for the people who live in the area and for whom there are no other services?
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, certainly in this case that is not true. There is perfectly adequate provision being made. This is a specialist hospital and other arrangements have been made for all the specialties, many of which will be more convenient for the majority of patients in the future, plus the new hospitals and clinics which I have already spoken about at Waltham Abbey.
Lord John-Mackie: My Lords, may I ask the noble Baroness to confirm that in regard to the three places that she mentioned which are to help the ancillary services they are all about two miles apart? The coronary clinic is in Stewartson Road and the other clinic is a mile away. What the people in Waltham Abbey would like is a health centre with all these services under the roof of the present hospital.
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, out-patient clinics will be re-provided at a more central location in Waltham Abbey. Specialties using Honey Lane have a large number of in-patients from outside Waltham Abbey. Re-provision for the majority of these inpatient will be at Bishop's Stortford and at Epping, nearest their homes. The proposed reorganisation with GP beds staying in Waltham Abbey will therefore arguably be of benefit from the travelling point of view.

Libya Bombing
3.4 p.m.
Lord Kennet: 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 have any further statement to make about the use of British airfields by the United States to bomb Libya.
The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Baroness Young): My Lords, I refer the noble Lord to the Statement repeated in this House yesterday by my noble friend the Lord President of the Council.
Lord Kennet: My Lords, is the noble Baroness in a position to answer a question which I asked the noble Viscount the Leader of the House yesterday, which he was not in a position to answer and to which it would be useful to have an answer before Friday's debate? It concerns the message which was sent from Tripoli to the Libyan office in East Berlin about 12 days before the bomb outrage in West Berlin and which was read by Britain and America at least? Was the information in the message passed to the East German authorities so that they could take the necessary steps against the Libyan office, to the West German authorities so that they could protect likely targets in West Berlin or to the Soviet Union so that they could dissuade Libya? If not, are not the Government likely to have to defend themselves against the certain charge of complicity in the outrage itself?
Baroness Young: My Lords, the noble Lord would not expect me to comment on details of intelligence reports, but what I can say to him is that the Pentagon stated publicly that warnings were given to United States personnel in Berlin and that security officers were on their way to the La Belle discotheque but were five to 15 minutes away when the bomb exploded. I cannot possibly accept the last statement in his supplementary question.
Lord Broxbourne: My Lords, can my noble friend say whether in preparation for Friday's debate it will be possible to place in the Library any summary of the opinions of the Law Officers in regard to the application of Article 51 of the Charter?
Baroness Young: My Lords, I think that this would be most unlikely. I suggest to my noble friend that he will find a lot of background material available as a result of the debate in another place this afternoon.
Lord Jenkins of Putney: My Lords, is the noble Baroness aware that, although the noble Viscount the Leader of the House objected yesterday to my use of the word "accomplice", it exactly applies to those who facilitate the murder of civilians?
Lord Gridley: My Lords, may I ask my noble friend this supplementary question? Are not these terrorist attacks by Colonel Gaddafi against the West, ourselves, our democracy and our very way of life, and if we appease and do not act do we not ignore this to our peril? Are we not aware that the Security Council condemns terrorism in words but does not act, and that mere words mean nothing to Colonel Gaddafi?
Baroness Young: My Lords, both the United Nations General Assembly and the Security Council have adopted declarations and resolutions condemning terrorism and calling for greater international co-operation to combat the problem. These were positive steps but they did not deter the Libyans from giving support to terrorists attacks; nor has the Security Council been able to agree on a response to the Libyan attack on US forces in the Gulf of Sirte.
The Lord President of The Council (Viscount Whitelaw): My Lords, in the interests of the whole House and of the debates that are to come, it will be appreciated that, in accordance with the promise that I made when making the Statement yesterday, there is to be a debate in your Lordships' House on Friday. I hope that it would be reasonable to keep some of these points for the debate on Friday. It would be much better to proceed to the next business. I think, and I hope the House will agree.

Business
3.8 p.m.
Lord Denham: My Lords, I should like to say a word about the arrangements for this afternoon's two short debates standing in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson of Kingsbridge, and my noble friend Lord Campbell of Croy. On the principle that the mover is

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allowed approximately 15 minutes and that the Minister should rise to reply not less than 20 minutes before the scheduled end of the debate, in the case of the short debate in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson, the number of speakers is such that it is not necessary to propose such formal time limit, but I am sure that noble Lords will agree that it would conform with the spirit of these short debates if they would keep their speeches within the 15 minutes which apply to the mover of the Motion. In the case of the short debate in the name of my noble friend Lord Campbell of Croy, all other speeches should be limited to a maximum of 12 minutes and any noble Lord who spoke at greater length would do so at the expense of subsequent speakers in the debate.

Drainage Rates (Disabled Persons) Bill
Brought from the Commons; read a first time, and to be printed.
Clifton Suspension Bridge Bill [H.L.]
Read a second time, and committed to an Unopposed Bill Committee.
Yorkshire Water Authority Bill
Read a third time, and passed, and returned to the Commons with amendments.

Business of the House
Viscount Whitelaw: My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.
Moved, That the debate on the Motion in the name of the Lord President (Viscount Whitelaw) set down for 18th April shall be limited to 5 hours and that Standing Order 35 and paragraphs 10, 11, 12 and 13 of the Rules for the Conduct of Short Debates set out in Appendix H to the Companion to the Standing Orders shall apply to the debate with the substitution of "5 hours" for "2½ hours" and "25 minutes" for "20 minutes".—(Viscount Whitelaw.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

Grendon Prison
3.10 p.m.
Lord Donaldson of Kingsbridge Lord Donaldson of Kingsbridge rose to call attention to the present situation at Grendon Prison with special reference to the number and training of staff necessary for a therapeutic regime; and to move for Papers.
The noble Lord said The noble Lord said: My Lords, I think I should begin this debate by declaring an interest—not, I need hardly say, a financial one but a very deep and lasting interest—in one of the most bold and imaginative efforts with which I have had the honour to be connected. It is in fact an attempt to deal with an extremely difficult range of problems.
I was lucky enough to be the chairman of the board of visitors of the late Dr. Gray for the first 10 years of his creation and development of Her Majesty's Prison at Grendon. He was a very remarkable man and I doubt whether anyone else in the country could have achieved as much as he did with such difficult material. All of us who worked with him, whether "pros" or amateurs, were proud to have done so and are determined not to allow his work to be wasted. But that is what it seems to us, ominously, is now extremely likely to happen.
I do not want to attack the Minister, the Home Secretary or the Home Office. I do not think that what is happening is because of malice aforethought. It is rather due to inadequate understanding of the problems, some lack of attention and some lack of competent direction. It is now three years ago last February that I raised in your Lordships' House, on behalf of the Parliamentary All Party Penal Affairs Group, the problems confronting Grendon Prison consequent upon the Home Office's declared intention to increase the number of inmates above the level which we thought suitable for an effective, therapeutic regime—a function, be it remembered, for which the prison had been designed some 30 years earlier but not finally built and opened until 1962.
I pointed out then that Dr. Gray did not agree (he was then retired) and would never have agreed to such an increase of inmates. I said it was the unanimous view of the then medical staff and the chairman of the board of visitors and his whole board that such an increase would substantially change the character of the institution and transform it from an effective treatment centre for specially difficult cases into a mere holding prison. However, the Home Secretary wrote to the chairman specifically repudiating this intention, and said that he was determined not to prejudice the therapeutic role. The noble Lord, Lord Elton, in reply to the debate on 9th February 1983, at col. 1311 of Hansard, said:
"We regard Grendon as an essential and a very successful part of the psychiatric services in the prison system; and we are committed to ensuring that it continues to provide this valuable service."
I see that we have more light on the subject, and this may help us. The noble Lord went on to say, in col. 1312:
"Our longer-term aim is to ensure that Grendon is more fully used as a therapeutic establishment … These plans involved posting more permanent staff to Grendon and converting some of the dormitories into cubicles."
Without being satisfied, I was somewhat reassured, and so was the board of visitors. Soon after that, the medical superintendent, Dr. Jillett, who was Dr. Gray's successor as governor, died and some agitation began (to which I lent my weight) to insist that it must be a medical practitioner who replaced him. Grendon is the only prison which I believe has ever had a doctor as governor, and we thought it important to continue this practice.
There was a long interim, and we got a rather worrying report from the Grendon branch of the National Association of Probation Officers, suggesting that things were not going well, We took this up with the Home Secretary through the Parliamentary All Party Penal Affairs Group, and Mr. Brittan gave a full reply to our chairman, Mr. Kilroy-Silk, MP. He wrote:

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"It is my firm intention that Grendon should continue to function as a psychiatric establishment offering a therapeutic regime."
He accepted there was then a serious shortage of staff, but ended by saying:
"I am satisfied that the changes at Grendon will not interfere with the therapeutic character of the regime, and there is no question of choosing between this and the need to ease the pressure elsewhere in the prison system."
In May 1984 the noble Lord, Lord Elton, let me know that he had in fact appointed a non-medical governor, through lack of suitable medical applicants, in the person of Mr. Selby, someone whom I knew and admired. I went down to see him and discussed the future with him. I came back happy that, doctor or no doctor, he would put his heart and soul into maintaining the therapeutic regime; and I had every hope that he could stop the deterioration of which we were complaining.
In 1985 (last year) as in 1983, the new chairman of the board of visitors wrote to the Home Secretary and to the regional controller informing them once again of the deep concern felt by the board and asking for a sensible review of the situation. As reported in their annual report of 1985, they said that a critical situation had arisen because of staff shortages and cash limits imposed on overtime. The result had been the cancellation of evening classes and physical education sessions and—this is the most sinister thing—the governor told the board that the continuance of therapy was under threat. The chairman comments in the report:
"Surprisingly, this letter was not acknowledged."
I fear that to old hands this will be no great surprise.
Last February, my noble friend Lord Hunt went down to see for himself what was going on, after discussions with us. He will be making his own report to your Lordships in a few minutes. It seems that our fears were justified, that in increasing the number of patients at Grendon and intensifying the work, the Home Office were in fact allowing the therapeutic regime to crumble. This was because, through difficulties we all know only too well, they had failed to accompany their intensification of workload with the promised increase of staff.
This is where we came in three years ago. This is the same old story: appreciation of what is being done but total failure to implement it. This failure is now critical. The current cut is for 124,000. Ten staff were lost last year with several expected to go this year. Dr. Spencer, a pyschiatric consultant, tells me he is in despair and the Prison Officers' Association has issued an extract from a letter from Dr. Kilgour, the senior medical officer, saying the same thing. The position could really hardly be worse at the moment.
I feel sure that the Minister is not going to tell us that he and the Home Secretary have changed their minds about the value of Grendon to the prison service. I am sure he will tell us, as his colleagues have told us twice before, and now for the third year running, that the department is taking the greatest care to preserve the psychological subtleties which are needed to establish and
maintain a therapeutic atmosphere in the community and that some temporary shortages of staff will soon be overcome. I can only say that though the bellman claimed, "What I tell you three times is true",
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I cannot accept such a claim from the Minister today, as the evidence is quite otherwise.
I do not think we can let things go on as they are, with the Home Secretary and his department saying that they value the Grendon regime as an important part of the prison service while the people who are trying to work it say it is in the process of being undermined and will eventually cease to exist as such. It seems to me that the Home Secretary and his advisers wrongly believe that they can run a regime of this kind, with the most intractable human material, at half cock. In my opinion, that would be worse than scrapping the whole thing and accepting Grendon as just another holding prison. If the Home Secretary says, with the prison service labouring under its dreadful difficulties which we do not deny, that he can no longer continue the Grendon regime which depends for its effectiveness on full and proper staffing, we shall attack his judgment but not his propriety. What I beg him not to do is to accept half-baked advice from his advisers and allow the regime slowly and very expensively to deteriorate.
I was brought up by my nanny to believe that if a thing is worth doing at all, it is worth doing well. That is an aphorism which has enabled me with a good conscience to avoid doing some things which I expect that I should have done. However, the Government in 1962 decided that Grendon was worth doing and laid down conditions that enabled it to be done well. The aphorism contradicts its companion maxim:
"Half a loaf is better than no bread".
Half a therapeutic regime is worse than no therapeutic regime and is virtually money wasted.
May I turn for a minute to the question of whether the Grendon regime can be justified morally or practically? I do not think that anyone will doubt that there are a certain number of irrational and irresponsible individuals among Her Majesty's prisons' collection of offenders who are not ordinary petty offenders or ordinary professional or political offenders who commit the most serious crimes. Those people, though demonstrably short of real psychosis and not certifiable as insane, suffer from some mental disorder or, as we tend to say today, from serious personality problems. They do not seem motivated by the ordinary human desires which so often lead to crime—greed, lust, jealousy and revenge. A fair number of them are conscious that they have something wrong and, properly approached, are prepared to accept help.
Sir Norwood East, in the 'thirties, recognised that type of offender as someone whom ordinary prison could not help and could not contain effectively without danger to other prisoners and staff. He put up a strong case for a special therapeutic prison to deal with those mentally disordered folk, and Grendon was the result. Apart from what most of us see as a moral duty, to look properly after people whom we have shut up as punishment or for the protection of the public, there is a considerable practical gain in isolating that category of disruptive inmate rather than leave them to make trouble in other prisons.
Grendon has worked to a very large extent. Its success has been in containing difficult and violent men, without violence and with no escapes bar one in

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25 years, and with a population of really explosive potential. Every inmate has come of his own free will for treatment.
Three years ago I gave the following population breakdown, and it has hardly changed today. The average age is 25; the average number of previous convictions is 11; the percentage of suicide attempts before coming to Grendon is 70 per cent. and the percentage of violent actions before coming to Grendon is 80 per cent. In a follow-up of 100 men from Grendon with convictions for offences of extreme violence—by which I mean grievous bodily harm, rape with violence, manslaughter and murder—two years after release 40 per cent. remained free and had not been reconvicted; 30 per cent. had been convicted of non-violent offences and only 30 per cent. had been convicted of violent offences. That must be read against the current reconviction rate of 58 per cent. for all male releases, including first offenders, of whom only one-third were violent offenders, whereas in our sample every man was a man of violence. To succeed to that extent, with a population as difficult as Grendon's, is a real achievement.
Let me end by quoting the Prison Commissioners' definition of Grendon's primary tasks which was given in 1963:
"Grendon's three primary tasks will be to investigate and treat mental disorders generally recognised as responsive to treatment, to investigate offenders whose offences in themselves suggest mental morbidity, and to explore the problem of dealing with the psychopath. The prisoners … selected will be those whose mental disorder is not of such a nature and degree to qualify for …... transfer to a hospital under section 72 of the Mental Health Act but who require psychiatric treatment and management".
I maintain that for 20 years, from 1962 to 1982, those tasks were being carried out successfully. A change of policy in 1983 has led, as we warned the Government that it would, to a serious deterioration in the effectiveness of the work done there. The key problem is one of staff numbers and staff training. My noble friend Lord Hunt will describe that from a first-hand investigation, and the noble Lords, Lord Mishcon and Lord Graham of Edmonton, will say something from the prison officers' point of view.
I repeat my request that the Government should make up their mind one way or the other. I urge them to accept that Grendon's work is worth keeping going at the level set by Dr. Gray during his first 12 years. That means adopting one of two courses—either reduce the number of patients or increase the staff at least to the old ratio under Dr. Gray. Anything less will not deal with the situation. My Lords, I beg to move for Papers.
3.26 p.m.
The Earl of Longford: My Lords, I have been informed by the Government Chief Whip that there is no formal restriction on our speeches this afternoon, but I do not intend to abuse the opportunity, if only because the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson, has made such a powerful case that I do not know that I can add a great deal to it. As he said, he was chairman of the board of visitors for 10 years. I do not have that degree of knowledge. I first visited Grendon in 1963 and I have visited more than once in the meantime. I visited
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Grendon this morning so as to be up to date for the benefit of your Lordships.
Every now and again, during these penal debates, I say that we should have another Grendon. We should not be confined to one. We should have more than one. However, that is looking ahead a little. Nothing that I say commits the governor of Grendon. I have talked to people widely. I do not commit him to the view that I shall explain. The view this morning was that Grendon will be lucky to survive. That is what we are fighting for. The noble Lord is leading us to fight for survival.
We must ask the Minister to say clearly whether the Government value the Grendon adventure. We do not just want promises. I call it an adventure because it is something different. The essence of Grendon was that it was different from other prisons. There have been other experiments in prisons. Some of them have been soft-pedalled with the passing of the years. The open prisons have not been used to their full extent, nor for that matter has the hostel scheme. Every now and again the Home Office and people involved with it have good ideas, but they gradually play them down.
There is a widespread feeling inside Grendon, and out of it, that the Government wish it no good. Being a diplomatic man, the noble Lord was tactful. He was not speaking from the Front Bench but he was speaking in the spirit of the Front Bench. He has a great sense of responsibility and he said he was not going to criticise the Government, the Home Office or anybody else. He then went on to make a strong implied criticism, which perhaps is the most effective way of doing it. I criticise all concerned. I think that it has been a lamentable story.
I shall look into one or two of the details. The noble Lord referred to staff. I was at Grendon this morning and I collected some figures. As the noble Lord explained, the number of inmates was more or less doubled a few years ago. But there are now fewer staff than there were—I feel able to underline a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson, if he does not mind—when the number of prisoners was half what it is now. The noble Lord, with all his skill and finesse, will find it impossible to answer that effectively and I only hope that at the end of the day he will just take back these criticisms and assure the Home Secretary that there is widespread and very hostile criticism of what has been done to Grendon.
There has been a betrayal of the Grendon ideal over the last few years. You can only call it that. If you have double the number of prisoners and reduce the total staff you cannot do much worse. The general feeling there is that it is deliberate. The noble Lord may say that it is no such thing; that it is muddle. But if it is not deliberate it is very hard to see how that has come about. At this moment, there is an allocation of 82 disciplinary officers and there are 59 employed; there is an allocation of 38 nursing officers and there are 26 employed. In other words, even by the low standards which the Government are setting themselves at the moment, there is a total failure to keep faith with Grendon.
In my time I have criticised Ministers over many years, but I have never criticised this Minister who is less to blame—I certainly do not blame him—and who

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will find it impossible to answer. There is no way of answering these matters. All he can do, if I may respectfully venture to say so, is to convey the indignation of all who know anything about this to the Home Secretary.
But let us just look at Grendon. Is the noble Lord, Lord Glenarthur, who is always so acceptable here, going to be able to say clearly that the Government value the Grendon experiment? Is he going to say that it will be kept in being, or is he going to equivocate? He would not wish to equivocate; he is not an equivocal man. But will he give a clear undertaking that Grendon will go on? Will he be able to say that the Government value what Grendon is doing?
Let me say a few words about the Grendon idea. I should have thought it was best described as therapeutic. Some people use words like "psychiatric" or "medical", but let us call it therapeutic. It is in that respect different from the other prisons. All sorts of progressive ideas have been tried at different times in prisons such as Maidstone, but this was something different. Is it still different or is it gradually being assimulated into the ordinary run of more or less unsatisfactory prisons? Will it still be different? Here I think I can quote the governor on this point. He assured me this morning that there is no intention of altering the conception. I accept that as his intention, but will the Government live up to that firm purpose on the part of the governor?
I have to say a word here—in a way I would rather avoid the matter—on the question of whether one should have a governor with medical qualifications. No one would deny, and the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson, would not deny, that a great deal was achieved in the time of Dr. Gray that could hardly have been achieved by someone who was not a doctor. That is a matter of history. I am not saying that it is necessary to have a medical person in charge; it may well be that such a person is not available and that may have been the case recently. So I am not saying that it is necessary. But I am bound to say that when you do not have a doctor in charge it is widely understood that the ethos is being altered and that has been widely understood about Grendon.
I happen to have a very high regard for the present governor. He was grossly ill-treated a little while ago in connection with Brixton and I wish him well in every possible sense. I know that he is completely dedicated to making sure that the conception of Grendon remains, but I do not see how it can remain as we knew it in the days of Dr. Gray.
I want to touch on one point which arises on the Motion and which I do not think the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson, had time to mention; that is, the question of the training of staff. As I said earlier, the disciplinary staff who are untrained medically amount to two-thirds of the staff and the nursing staff represent perhaps one-third. They have had six months' training, which is not long enough, but they have had medical training. I submit that if it is to be the therapeutic prison that we want, all concerned ought to have had some therapeutic training.
I do not want to say more about that. Anyone who knows Grendon today will agree that the ordinary
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disciplinary staff are showing an exceptional degree of care for the prisoners, so that to some extent the ethos continues, and I shall not make any criticism of those who are now working in the prison. But the fact is that if Grendon is to be something quite remarkable, as it should be, all concerned should have had some therapeutic training.
I shall not say more because, in a way, what one says is counter-productive, and it is as if there was some extraordinary emotional aspect towards it. But I had not been to Grendon for some time and I was horrified when I learnt what is happening through the fault of no one there, but through the fault of the department which the noble Lord represents in this House.
3.36 p.m.
Lord Hutchinson of Lullington: My Lords, I should like to enlarge a little the scope of this debate, a debate which was so impressively opened by my noble friend Lord Donaldson who knows more about Grendon than anybody else in this House—even more than the noble Earl, and that is saying quite a lot. What Grendon does, and has been doing for over 20 years, is of crucial importance not only to the inmates of the institution, but to every one of us as members of the public at large.
In this age, violence has become the foremost concern of the ordinary citizen. Apart from the violence of governments, we see it on the streets in our daily lives and we are brought it by an almost gloating media into our homes every day. Grendon uniquely confronts violence head-on, not with reciprocal violence, not with any media retaliation or retribution, but with cool, constructive down-to-earth analysis, observation and experimentation using the raw material itself—men convicted of crimes of violence, often repeatedly, as we have heard. In this establishment there is therefore a great fund of knowledge and established fact as to why men repeatedly resort to violent anti-social behaviour, how such men can be managed behind bars and how they can learn to accept responsibility for themselves and gain insight into why they behave as they do.
My first plea to the Minister is to recognise the unique work of Grendon, to recognise its central relevance to the law and order problem and to prove that recognition by giving priority to its funding and to its staffing requirements. I implore him not to fob us off with a lecture on current restrictions on public expenditure. We are dealing with priorities, not with the question of restrictions on expenditure, and here, surely, is an overwhelming priority.
My second plea to the Minister is to spread the knowledge and experience of Grendon throughout the prison system wherever men and women of violence are being held. The lessons of Grendon must be applied more widely. The special unit at Wormwood Scrubs was an invaluable spin-off from Grendon and, largely because of the row that we made in this House, that unit was saved from extermination when the government of the day tried to shut it down a few years ago.
I would ask the Minister: is it now in full operation and in full health today? I would also ask him: is the unit at Parkhurst operating now? The unit at Holloway was doing invaluable work until the late

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governor saw fit to destroy it and to condemn the 20 or 30 disturbed women in that prison to the outrageous and notorious C Wing, which is now being rebuilt and rethought largely as a result of protests in this House.
I further ask the Minister: which is the more intelligent and the more effective approach to the problem of violent criminals? Is it the Tebbit line, the line of sublime ignorance advanced so ironically recently from a pulpit in a place of Christian worship, of longer and longer sentences, of incarceration in the dustbins of our society? Or is it the line of Leon Brittan for lifers of 20 years' minimum imprisonment with no review, no reappraisal, no reward for remorse or reform for at least 18 years? Or, my Lords, is it the careful building on the experience and knowledge of Grendon, to get at what it is that brings men to violence, to learn how to defuse their frustration, their intolerance and their contempt for authority?
The first lesson from Grendon, surely, is that it organises the prison into six wings, each an entity of 40 or so men; a policy, incidentally, recommended by the all-party penal affairs group, in its largely unnoticed but I suggest remarkable publication on life sentence prisoners. Secondly, it operates free association within each wing, freeing the institution at a stroke from the suffocating atmosphere of the turnkey and the clanging of metal doors, the pervading atmosphere of tension to be found in other prisons. Thirdly, and above all, its philosophy, jealously maintained by the inmates themselves, that each man must in the end be responsible for himself, a philosophy practised not by the use of psychotropic drugs or tranquillisers which are banned from use in Grendon but by the creation of groups, including members of the staff, where inmates talk out without restriction their individual problems of aggression.
These inmates are, as we have already heard from the noble Lord, the most difficult persons within the prisons. Twenty per cent. are lifers, and as we have heard no fewer than 70 per cent. have a history of attempted suicide, most of them with long lists of previous convictions for violence. None of them qualifies for hospital treatment because they do not suffer from a diagnosable mental illness, yet they are disturbed, inward-looking with a low tolerance of frustration and aggression, and many are what we used to call psychopaths, a phrase which—thank goodness—is no longer used; men with a personality disorder who are liable to violent, explosive and often infantile behaviour, unable to form relationships; men who are inward-looking, isolated and very, very difficult to change.
The Tebbit approach leads inevitably to the continuing deteriorating circle of events: aggression, crime, punishment; aggression, segregation, release; aggression, crime, punishment, and so on. Grendon breaks that vicious circle. It is a plain fact that there is no violence within this prison. There have been no attacks on the staff, there is no self-mutilation or attempted or successful suicide. The regime is built on gaining self-knowledge and insight and taking responsibility for oneself. Within the group verbal violence is allowed, but outside the group the inmates see to it that there is no violence. The men help each other to work out their frustrations, they share their
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experiences and above all learn to live with their own abnormal and difficult selves.
My Lords, of course you cannot hear such people, you cannot guarantee that they will not re-offend, but these prisoners at least know something of themselves when they leave that prison, they are aware of their intolerance and aggression and find it possible to deal with the natures which they have.
In the present hysteria about the offence of rape, demands are being made—and regrettably even in this House—that convicted rapists should be castrated—no doubt a foremost Tebbit reform. What does Grendon discover? Such men are not oversexed, the drive towards violence is not libidinal, it is aggressive. Such men are often deeply depressed in the medical sense, they suffer from acute self-depreciation, lack of trust, they are withdrawn, unwanted and often in their own belief impotent and unattractive. In the ordinary prison the authorities accept as inevitable that such persons, particularly if involved with children, are picked on, despised and often assaulted. They are therefore segregated and the causes of their aggression are intensified.
At Grendon they share the routine of all the prisoners, they participate equally in group therapy, they are helped by other inmates to gain insight into the realities of their otherwise fantasy existence. For the continuation and success of the unique contribution that Grendon is making, the staff ratio, the number of inmates, and the continuity of staff must be kept to the figures which are laid down. Overcrowding, understaffing and changes of staff simply kill the regime and the institution then has no purpose.
My own aphorism, not gleaned from any nanny, I may say, is that you cannot maintain a great orchestra by cutting out half the violins. I ask the Minister: should not Grendon be overseen by a medical directorate or a special committee rather than simply the South-East regional office of the prison department? Would he seriously consider that? And would he tell us whether the staff has increased proportionately to the increase in inmates?
We are taking part in a so-called short debate, but as I have come to realise over the years, when penal matters are discussed in this House only on the rarest occasions is there any contribution from the Benches opposite. The knowledge, the experience and the concern seem always to be concentrated in quite large numbers on this side of the House and repeatedly we tend to speak with one voice. There is no debate. Why is it that the Tebbit philosophy is never argued here? Why are the hardliners who go on the air and into print never prepared to stand up and debate these issues in this House? When it comes to a vote on a reform for which we have pressed for years and years in debate after debate, the Party opposite will flow into the lobbies and vote it down. Yet on these crucial questions raised by my noble friend Lord Donaldson and spoken to by noble Lords with long experience and knowledge which override all party political considerations, we hear absolutely nothing from any speaker on the other side of the House.
I hope that the Minister will respond with more than mere polite concern and charm. We have warned the Government for years over the prison officers' plight,

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on the situation of remand prisoners, on the excessive use of custody, on the demise of law centres, on the breakdown of legal aid and the emasculation of the legal services. I regret to have to say that I have little confidence in the future of Grendon.
3.50 p.m.
Lord Graham of Edmonton: My Lords, I rise to speak conscious that I am surrounded by noble Lords extremely well qualified to participate in this debate. I begin by declaring my interest in that I speak in this House on behalf of and with the authority of the Prison Officers' Association. We are not short of documentation in respect of Grendon. I should like to begin by claiming the attention of the Minister whose words on the "Today" programme this morning I heard with appreciation. At the end of a discussion on a separate but not wholly unrelated topic the Minister concluded his remarks by saying that prison officers are a caring profession and they are concerned with the care of those in their charge, or words to that effect. He set the tone for what I hope will be a good day in every respect.
We are here this afternoon not to air grievances and complaints. As previous speakers have demonstrated, we are full of concern and fear about the possible disintegration of an experiment which has been referred to more than once as the jewel in the crown of the prison department. There are those who have spoken with a background of experience and knowledge. The very first speaker encompasses all those qualities. The previous speaker referred to that in his impressive opening. The noble Lord, Lord Hutchinson, made that reference to the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson, and I entirely agree with him. I very much hope that the Minister will understand that we are here today not to berate him or his right honourable friend but to ask him, perhaps before it is too late, to recognise the seriousness of the deterioration of the position at Grendon. It is not a question of something that has happened this year or last year; the statistics will show that the people involved—the medical staff and the prison officers—have been under stress for a long time.
Grendon suffers from a syndrome which is felt throughout the prison service. It rests on an attempt to accommodate major changes on a nil cost basis. It is impossible to do that. It is sad, but at Grendon and at other prison establishments prison officers have fewer and fewer facilities to divert prisoners from engaging in bad behaviour. It is inevitable in the current situation that this will lead to a contraction in the facilities for the inmates. At Grendon, and through the prison service, there is a need for adequate staffing levels to deal with the tasks that have been laid down; laid down not by prison officers but laid down sensibly and fairly after consultation over a wide range of disciplines involved in these matters.
It should not be the only priority for those in management to be concerned to remain within budgets. To remain within budgets is one of a number of imperatives but, at the end of the day, particularly at Grendon, it ought not to be the sole criterion for judgment. There is an increase in the risk factor and for the safety not only of prison officers but of other
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civilians who are in prison service. It is quite clear—I have figures which are not wholly relevant here—that there is a marked increase in the number of assaults and of disciplinary actions as the stress and strain brought about by a diminution in adequate staffing become apparant.
I referred to documentation. We can always go to the Report on the work of the Prison Department 1984/85. On page 69 under the sub-heading Advisory Committee on Grendon it states:
"The Advisory Committee, which reports to the Director General of the Prison Service, is chaired by Dr. J. L. Kilgour, Director of Prison Medical Services. The membership includes the Governor, Mr. Michael Selby, Dr. Malcolm Faulk, Consultant Forensic Psychiatrist, Wessex Regional Health Authority".
We are told about a report which was submitted in February 1985. The committee made 30 recommendations. I cannot believe that the Minister is not sufficiently well briefed to tell this House how many of those 30 recommendations have been carried into effect some 15 months later. I invite him to tell the House precisely what has been done.
I have the list of recommendations before me and I simply draw attention to some of them:
"The involvement of prison officers in therapy as part of a multidisciplinary team should continue".
Can the Minister comment on that?
"The rescue unit should be staffed by psychiatrically qualified doctors and registered mental nurses".
Can we be told about that?
"When the pressure of numbers on the prison service reduces, consideration should be given to lowering the adult therapy wings to 35 prisoners".
What has been done about that?
"The number of both professional and prison officer staff at Grendon should be kept to near the authorised staffing level".
I can tell the Minister what has happened about that. I am told that the sad situation at Grendon—it may not be up-to-date; these figures are from this morning—is that the authorised staffing level, excluding works, is 178. That figure was agreed, conceived and negotiated by the manpower department—I believe P6—which said that in the light of the CNA one needs 178. This morning there were 136. How on earth does the Minister, let alone the House and the people outside, expect, with a shortfall of 42 officers—a quarter of the total—tasks to be completed successfully from the community's point of view?
I am told that the budget for overtime is always controversial. Last year's budget was £693,000, albeit to meet the shortfall in the number of full-time officers required. This year £817,000 was requested and only £693,000 was agreed. Last year the overtime required to keep Grendon afloat was £759,000. Reference was made to the decline in numbers. There are 12 fewer staff this year than last year. With 12 fewer staff the very least one would need is more overtime to be paid to fulfil the tasks. Yet I am told that the overtime total has been reduced. The position is very serious.
It has been said that it is impossible for prison officers to do their job. Perhaps I may read from a letter in The Times today. It comes from the secretary of the Association of Prison Dental Surgeons, who was commenting on an observation by Mr. Eric Caines,

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the Prison Department's director of finance and personnel. Mr. Caines had referred to "the restrictive practices" of prison officers. Mr. Bamber, the association secretary, writes today:
"My members find that often the only reason that they are able to continue to treat patients, with the present shortage of prison staff, is due to the flexible attitude of the prison officers. It is often forgotten that many of the improvements in conditions that have come about in recent years within prisons have arisen not from the Prison Department but due to pressure from the Prison Officers' Association".
As other noble Lords have said, this is not an attempt to corner or berate the Minister. We want him to understand the great gap between that which we are told by those on the ground who operate the system and that which he is told by those who manage the system, who are perhaps not as close to the day-to-day operations.
Reference was made by the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson, to the serious situation at Grendon at this time. He mentioned information supplied by the Prison Officers' Association. I have received a communication from the POA in which it draws my attention to serious expressions of concern that have been coming from the senior medical officer at Grendon. He writes:
"Superimposed on our undermanned (in staff terms) and overpopulated (in patient terms) regime, the year's budget is a disaster. Because of last year's drastic cut-back in the treatment progamme, treatment has barely been possible".
And we are talking about treatment. We are talking about therapy and about therapeutic communities and regimes. He continues:
"The medical and psychology staff believe that we should dissociate ourselves from a regime that is no longer one of treatment but one of control and containment".
I feel very sad, having listened to those who speak with the experience of previous speakers and having followed these matters for 25 years, that Grendon has come to this. It is certainly far removed from the aspirations of 20 or 25 years ago.
In conclusion, I want to say to the Minister that the Prison Officers' Association does not wish, here or anywhere else, to dictate manning levels. It does not challenge management's right to manage. What it wants to see is secure, humane conditions where staff safety can march alongside inmate security.
The Minister has a good opportunity at a terribly difficult time—and I say that sincerely, with all the pressures that are being placed upon him, upon his resources and upon his capacity—to reassure those who feel concern, not only from the staff point of view but also from the community point of view, that, if what we believe is wrong is as stated, he has plans to put the situation right. I hope very much that he will be able to respond helpfully this afternoon.
4.3 p.m.
Lord Hunt: My Lords, my noble friend Lord Donaldson has given the background to the unique quality of Grendon from his long association with that special prison. I speak today against a background only of two visits paid more than 10 years ago, when I was chairman of the Parole Board, but brought up to date by a recent visit last February. I presume to add my voice of concern to today's debate, for which I thank my noble friend, against a background of a fairly
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long acquaintance with the very different and differing conditions in the majority of our prisons in England, Wales and Scotland.
As my noble friend Lord Hutchinson stressed, Grendon is unique among our penal establishments in being the only prison whose total purpose and commitment has been, from the outset 25 years ago, to provide the specialised regime that my noble friend Lord Donaldson has described.
That regime has also achieved remarkable results with violent and dangerous men, and nothing I have heard or seen over the years has diminished my belief in it. It has been described by two former criminals who were notorious in their day
but who are now reformed characters and have broken free from that vicious circle of crime. John McVicar, who has written about his prison experiences, commented:
"This kind of regime is designed to break down the subculture in which the criminal lives".
Jimmy Boyle, who is an equally well known ex-offender and who underwent a similar form of treatment at Barlinnie Prison in Scotland, had this to say:
"Every one of us had to look at himself, warts and all, probably for the first time in his life".
Grendon contains just such men as those two were in their criminal days. They are serving substantial sentences for serious crimes of violence—few would dispute that—and before such people complete their determinate sentences, a very determined effort must be made to turn them away from their propensity to violence, and as my noble friend Lord Hutchinson has said, it is very much in the public interest that that effort should be made.
To visit Grendon—and I am talking of my earlier visits—was, and to an important extent still is, a remarkable and impressive experience. With the sole exception of the governor, the staff and the inmates are all on first-name terms. The whole atmosphere is relaxed, despite a full and demanding programme; or at least that used to be the case, and hereby hangs a tale about which I shall say a few words in a moment. And it has depended upon a high ratio of staff to inmates. It was the whole philosophy of Dr. Gray that it should be one-to-one.
The face to face, personal relationship of course imposes considerable demands on the staff but also upon the prisoners themselves. It is most noteworthy—and my noble friend Lord Hutchinson has made this point—that there have been no assaults on staff, despite reported assaults on staff in other prisons. The nub of the problem, as has been made amply clear to your Lordships this afternoon by others who have spoken, is that as the prison population has soared, there has been a shortage of staff to meet the principle established by Dr. Gray.
That principle has been endorsed on more than one occasion—my noble friend Lord Donaldson referred to a letter from Mr. Leon Brittan when he was Home Secretary to Mr. Kilroy-Silk as one such occasion—but the means are lacking. Mr. Leon Brittan, in a letter to the chairman of the All-Party Penal Affairs Group on 22nd February 1984, assured him that Grendon would benefit from the recruitment of more than 5,000 additional prison officers in the next four

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financial years. That forecast has not yet shown results at Grendon. The contrary has been the case. In informal conversations with officers of the POA executive that I had recently, I understand that recruitment is flagging.
As regards the question of ratio, the figures have been given by the noble Lord,
Lord Graham of Edmonton. I will only say that when I was at Grendon in February, the ratio stood at 148 uniformed staff to 235 inmates. I understand that the number of staff has gone down, while the number of inmates is very much the same today, so the situation has deteriorated.
I should like to stress that the governor and staff have done their very best to compensate for that shortfall of 40 staff, or 20 per cent. of the requirement, as it was when I was last at Grendon, by the expedient of overtime at about 17½ hours per officer per week. That expedient has recently been seriously undermined by Home Office budgetary cuts, as we have heard, in rest time working to produce a saving in the Grendon budget of £124,000 in the current financial year.
That cut has already forced the governor, so I understand, to eliminate overtime work on one day a week, and from early next month it will be necessary to further reduce it by eliminating such work on three days of the week. As a response to that decision there is now, I believe, a threat by the uniformed staff not to participate in group therapy sessions which are (need I stress?) the very essence of the programme. That amounts—and no one could dispute it—to a crisis which puts the future of the prison as a therapeutic institution seriously in doubt.
Even as recently as my visit last February, before the overtime issue had cropped up, I came away very seriously concerned. The shortage of uniformed staff has had, among others, the following effects. It has eroded the education programme; eliminated evening classes and reduced the morning sessions. All three workshops have had to be closed. Recreational activities have had to be severely restricted. This was the source of a very strongly voiced grievance among the younger prisoners with whom I spent a half-hour session trying to answer the questions put to me.
Another effect is that insufficient officers were even then available to take part in all the group and unit therapeutic discussions. Members of the probation staff, with whom I also spent considerable time, are doing their best to fill in but it is only at the expense of their own priority work—their proper job—of social work with prisoners and through care liaison with the families outside.
Finally, and to me the most important point of all, it is having a severe effect on the very special and difficult training that is required of the staff at Grendon. Apart from their generic training they learn on the job, and if there are not enough officers to do the essential jobs the training of new officers is bound to suffer. In those circumstances the prisoners have too much unfilled time on their hands. I cannot stress too strongly the importance of a full programme of education, work and recreation as an antidote to boredom and as a necessary counterpart of the therapy to get at the root of the psychological and emotional
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problems behind the crimes which inmates have committed.
I have three questions to put to the Minister, but before doing so I wish to say this. Grendon is fortunate in having a governor and staff dedicated to this highly specialised and demanding work. Their concern and sense of frustration today—I would not say despondency, but frustration—are a measure of that loyalty and dedication. There is, too, deep concern among the prisoners at Grendon who do their best to co-operate and to create that climate of community which is the very essence of the philosophy of Dr. Gray.
My questions are these, and I am adding to the questions already asked. Can the Minister reassure the House about the prospects for increased staffing at Grendon without increasing the number of inmates held, as Mr. Leon Brittan led the Parliamentary All Party Penal Affairs Group to expect? My second question arises from Her Majesty's Inspector of Prisons report—Sir James Hennessy's report—published in June 1984, which pointed to the need for research by internal audit and on the effects of specialised treatment afterwards, and also on the reasons that Grendon receives such a very small number of black offenders at the prison. That recommendation for research was endorsed by the advisory committee on the therapeutic regime at Grendon in its report published in July 1984, in recommendations 26, 27 and 28.
Mr. Brittan, who was replying to a Question from Mr. William Cash, MP, in another place in July 1984, said:
"I have asked the prison department to consider how, and at what speed, the objectives of the Advisory Committee can be achieved".
What, therefore, is the position on research?
Finally—and I am repeating a question put in another way by my noble friends—can the noble Lord assure the House that the policy for Grendon's continuing role as a therapeutic establishment is firm and secure for the future despite present appearances? Will he confirm that it remains very much in the public interest to maintain the unique character of this, one of the few among our prisons of which we have real cause to be proud? Grendon is, or should be, treated as a special case.
4.15 p.m.
Lord Mishcon: My Lords, may I be permitted to disclose what is very doubtful as an interest in order to comply as strictly as I would want to with your Lordships' rules? I am the senior partner of a firm of solicitors which has for many years acted as legal advisers to the Prison Officers' Association.
As has been said, this debate was so well initiated by the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson. Tributes have been paid to him this afternoon and on previous occasions—and rightly so—not only for his knowledge of prison conditions but for his care in regard to prison conditions which is so often expressed by him in this House with a very authoritative voice.
In winding up this very useful and necessary debate, perhaps it would be of use to remind ourselves of the purposes of the prison we are talking about and which has quite obviously reached a very critical

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situation in its history. What I want to do, if I may—it is a very short but extremely adequate quotation—is to read to your Lordships the introductory paragraph, dealing with those objects, to the report of the Chief Inspector of Prisons on Grendon and Spring Hill; but obviously I am referring particularly to Grendon.
The report was issued in October 1985 and the paragraph reads as follows:
"The aims of the establishment were to evolve a regime which in itself was therapeutic; to attempt for the first time, in an English prison, a therapeutic community approach to the psychiatric treatment of non-psychotic recidivist offenders with moderate to severe personality disorders; and to report the results. The three primary tasks of the establishment were seen as first, the investigation and treatment of mental disorders generally recognised as responsive to treatment; secondly, the investigation of offenders whose offences in themselves suggested mental morbidity; and thirdly, the exploration of the problem of dealing with the psychopath. The introduction of group therapy was seen as the principal means of breaking down the barriers between prison officers and prisoner and thus fostering the development of a treatment ethos."
There have been many debates on prisons, penology, crime and punishment, and there has been a golden thread running through those debates. It is the need, where possible, for there to be curative treatment and a care for prisoners who warrant it. So many times have we talked in terms of the valuable relationship between prison officers and inmate. This was a great experiment of the caring prison officer, assisted medically by specialists in that field, to see what could be done by group treatment to help those who were afflicted by a disorder of some sort in their personalities.
In the course of this debate figures have been quoted that I shall not repeat, but there was a report of Gunn and Roberston in 1982 on the evaluation of Grendon, which was published in Abnormal Offenders—Delinquency and the Criminal Justice System. They reported, a reduction in prisoners' neurotic features; an increase in prisoners' self-confidence; an improvement in prisoners' attitudes towards authority, and—a figure which at first struck me as discouraging—a 70 per cent. reconviction rate within two years. Then I found something which was encouraging and which was statistically most important: there was only a 30 per cent. reconviction rate within two years for prisoners who had been in Grendon longer than 13 months. This shows that, within a reasonable time in which one would expect treatment to take effect, there had been a very solid reduction in the figures for those who were returning to prison as a result of having committed a crime.
Others of your Lordships who are more knowledgeable than I have spoken about the
worth of this great experiment. I want merely to say to your Lordships that, as I believe the noble Lord the Minister will acknowledge, we are this afternoon considering one of the very valuable institutions in our prison service and our social life. I must say, as did the noble Lord, Lord Hutchinson—and I shall put this comment more in the form of a question than a complaint—that it is extraordinary that, when we are dealing with such vital matters as prison and social reform, there is not one single Back-Bench Member on the Government side who feels it worthwhile to contribute to this debate. I shall answer the question myself. With the charity that I hope I always have and goodwill towards
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membership of this House on whichever seats their Lordships sit, I shall take it for granted that their absence from the speakers' list was owing to their acute embarrassment after having studied the conditions and the current situation in Grendon, and they felt that they should not further embarrass the Minister when he came to reply. I pay tribute to their loyalty.
I shall continue with what I have to say, and come immediately to the question of crisis. What is the crisis that is at present before what I have no hesitation in calling this great institution? I have two comments to make to your Lordships. First of all the organisation which is so well known to us in this House when we talk in terms of social problems, the National Association for Mental Health, the chairman of which is my noble friend Lord Ennals, has taken a great interest in conditions at Grendon. The association has been good enough to supply me with their reactions to the present conditions, which correspond completely with the summary that was given by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, in the course of his authoritative speech to your Lordships following the visits that he made. They record the critical situation as follows:
"A reduction in the education programme—evening classes have closed and day classes are reduced; closure of workships; restriction of recreational activities; reduction in prison officer participation in group therapy; reported frustration and despondency among prison officers and anxiety and cynicism among prisoners".
I am entitled to call that a crisis situation.
The second item that I want to bring to the attention of your Lordships is a very contemporary one. On 1st April, as a result of the economies enforced upon this prison to date, the governor had to issue the following instructions:
"1. As from 7 April a reduced task line will be worked on one day a week, namely Monday, at Grendon.
2. In addition, the first 11 tasks on the reducing task list will be permanently cut.
3. On 5 May to keep within budget, it will be necessary to introduce a 3 day restricted task line (as well as the weekend), unless other means of saving can be achieved".
I report to your Lordships that, as a result of minor industrial action that was taken, the notice was withdrawn. Immediately I address myself to the Minister: it has been withdrawn, but for how long will it be withdrawn? Can the noble Lord the Minister assure us that no instructions such as those which I have read out to your Lordships, or anything like them, need be given in the future?
I said that there was a crisis. I do not understand what is happening in regard to some of our social services—and I say this perfectly frankly to your Lordships. We are told that the rate of inflation has now been reduced to a very small figure, and in those circumstances one assumes that prices and costs have not considerably increased. We are told by the Government each time we ask a question about unsatisfactory standards, be they in hospitals, in institutions, in the care of the aged, in homes or whatever, that much more money has been piled into these services than was ever there prior to 1979. What is the reason for what, regardless of party differences, we ourselves know are the deficient standards in all these social services, including the prisons? Is it a lack of efficiency? Is it because of wrongful priorities in expenditure? We ought to be looking at this situation because I have no doubt that the noble Lord the

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Minister, in the course of his reply, will tell us again about the money that has been piled into prisons and new buildings, and yet we have crises of this nature. What is wrong?
Have our priorities gone wrong? One of the priorities about which we ought to be thinking very seriously—and I hope that the noble Lord the Minister will have some encouraging news for us—is what my noble friend Lord Graham has so rightly described, or rather repeated as the description of this prison, as "a jewel in the prison service".
Perhaps I may conclude by asking what possibly the Minister may think are some relevant questions. It was the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, I believe, who mentioned that an inquiry had been advocated by the advisory committee into its astonishing finding that the ethnic minorities contributed a very trivial percentage of the number of inmates at Grendon. It wondered why that should be so. I should therefore like to know whether the inquiry has been carried out and with what result.
In regard specifically to matters raised in the debate—I express again our appreciation from these Benches to the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson—relating to the availability and level of prison officer training in psychotherapy and counselling, does the Minister and his department consider that this is adequate? The training was halted between 1982 and 1984. Has it been reinstated? As to the reduction in education and work opportunities, does he agree that the impact on the regime is obviously critical, leading to increased boredom and restlessness? What is he doing about it? I conclude merely by asking this question. Does the Home Office have long-term plans for Grendon and, if so, may the House be informed of them?
4.31 p.m.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Home Office (Lord Glenarthur): My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson, has afforded us another valuable opportunity to debate the work of Grendon Prison. I join with those of your Lordships who have acknowledged that this is a subject on which the noble Lord speaks with special authority and expertise. All of us, I believe, are well aware of his long-standing involvement with, and great interest in, this particular establishment for which he served for many years as chairman of the board of visitors. I pay tribute to his work as I pay tribute to those who worked with him at Grendon.
The noble Earl, Lord Longford, was the first speaker this afternoon, following the opener, to ask me a direct question along the lines: "Do we value the Grendon venture?" I believe that "venture" was the word that he used. I must stress that Grendon does now, and will continue to, play an important role in our prison system. I wish, however, to make two preliminary points before going any further. The first is to express appreciation for the work that goes on in that prison. I shall have more to say about that later.
The second point is to explain that Grendon is of course part of a wider system. It is always right to focus on particular features of the system, and there is good reason to concentrate on Grendon. It has not been short of attention of this kind, for obvious and good
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reasons. But it is nevertheless part of the prison system. My right honourable friend the Home Secretary has responsibility for the system as a whole and this must be the particular perspective that I bring to the debate because Grendon and the prison system are not mutually exclusive.
As the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson, said, we had an opportunity to debate Grendon's work in February 1983. On that occasion, as now, his principal and understandable concern was for the maintenance and furtherance of the particular contribution that Grendon makes in the form of its special therapeutic regime. I visited Grendon about two years ago when I was in the DHSS, and I hope to go again in due course. I should like therefore to refer, in general, to the department's policy on mentally disordered offenders in the prison system. It has three facets. The first is to transfer out of prison and into hospital those mentally disordered prisoners who are detainable under the Mental Health Act 1983. The second is to maintain close liaison, in particular with the Department of Health and Social Security, on the provision of sufficient hospital places. The third is to try to provide appropriate regimes for those who have to stay in the prison system.
I am glad to be able to report that we are making headway with the transfer to hospital of prisoners who are mentally disordered within the terms of the 1983 Act. Moreover, we are collecting information about the number of mentally disordered prisoners who cannot be transferred under the 1983 Act to help us re-examine the provision that is made for them within the prison system.
The noble Lord, Lord Hutchinson of Lullington, referred to other facilities
within the prison system for such people. There are existing facilities at Grendon and also in the hospital annexe at Wormwood Scrubs, which is now open. The annexe concentrates on treatment of drug offenders and others who can benefit from the regime. There is also the C1 Unit at Holloway, together with facilities at Glen Parva and Feltham youth custody centres. As your Lordships will be aware, on 30th December last year the first of the special units for disruptive long-term prisoners, recommended by the control review committee, was opened at C Wing, Parkhurst. This unit will eventually hold up to 35 disruptive prisoners from the dispersal system who have a history, or show symptoms, of psychiatric disorder. In answer to the noble Lord, Lord Hutchinson's specific point, it has now about a dozen inmates and is developing in a most encouraging way.
I should say, too, that I am in touch with my noble friend Lady Trumpington, who has a special responsibility for mental health, about how, together, we might extend our existing co-operation between the Home Office and the DHSS in relation to mentally disordered offenders and the development of appropriate provision for them in prison, in hospital or somewhere else in the community. I have her agreement to say that she is sympathetic to our looking for ways to build on what is already being done. I hope that we shall be meeting shortly to map out the ground.
Grendon Prison will celebrate its 25th anniversary next year. It is a closed Category B establishment with a total certified normal accommodation of 190 adult

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prisoners and 69 young prisoners. It is run, as we have heard, as a collection of therapeutic communities. Each wing is a self-contained and independent unit with daily group meetings of staff and prisoners. Therapy, which is Grendon's whole ethos, is conducted primarily through these meetings by placing emphasis on participants accepting the consequences of, and taking responsibility for, their own actions. It is important, therefore, to understand that careful selection is necessary to find the right sort of person to go to Grendon. Not everyone is amenable to the features that Grendon offers.
The aim is to enable prisoners to mature and to modify their behaviour during their sentences. A secondary aim is to bring about longer-term improvements leading to better social functioning and an ability to act responsibly in the community outside. The group therapy process requires active participation. So, as I say, only inmates who are willing to go to Grendon are transferred there. The group therapy dimension means that there is less concentration on work than elsewhere, but facilities are available for a full range of activities.
As the noble Lord, Lord Hutchinson of Lullington, said, the governor of Grendon has a direct operational responsibility to the regional director of the South-East region. Responsibility for medical matters rests with a principal medical officer in the directorate of prison medical services. All the staff at Grendon are accountable to the governor through the deputy-governor on operational matters and through the senior medical officer on medical matters. So the medical oversight that the noble Lord seeks is, I believe, fully available.
The noble Earl, Lord Longford, expressed interest in the fact that the governor of Grendon, in this case, is not a doctor. The position is that when the last governor/medical superintendent Dr. Jillett, died in April 1983, the department looked for the best person for the post. That is, I believe, what the noble Earl would wish. The best person was appointed—as it happens, someone who is not a doctor. Future appointments to the post will also be made on the basis of the best person for the job.
In 1983 my noble friend Lord Elton made it clear that the Government were committed to Grendon's special contribution. He also made the point—and I recognise that this may not have been music to the ears of the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson—that it was:
"not possible to protect Grendon entirely from the pressures which bear so ineluctably"
on the rest of the prison system. That commitment stands, but the pressures are no less powerful. In February 1983, when we were last debating Grendon, the prison population stood at about 44,000. Last summer it exceeded 48,000. It is now about 46,600.
I mention those facts to set this debate further in context; but in doing so I must point out that our response to last year's surge in the prison population was swift and decisive. In successive statements my right honourable friend the then Home Secretary announced the recruitment of additional staff to relieve local prisons; and the provision at short notice of more than 2,000 places by advancing, reopening and rearranging accommodation and purchasing,
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converting and bringing into use (in 16 weeks) the RAF site at Lindholme.
This major work was undertaken against the background of a clear strategy designed to deliver the prison system from the threat of rises in the inmate population beyond the system's capacity, and to alleviate overcrowding, poor conditions and restrictvie regimes. And we continue to give priority to the prison building programme, which consists of 16 projects of which three have been opened; this will provide a total of 7,700 new places, other schemes providing a further 4,000. Much of the benefit and relief which this strategy
will provide lies in the future. For the present, the pressures of population remain heavy.
The noble Lord, Lord Graham of Edmonton, referred to a broadcast which I made this morning and it therefore may be appropriate if I say a few words about the industrial dispute which is currently threatened by the Prison Officers' Association, because if it were to come about it would have an effect upon Grendon as well as upon other establishments. The Government fully recognise the undoubted pressures on the prison service. These derive principally from the difficult nature of the job which prison officers have to do, whether they be in Grendon or anywhere else. That fact is widely appreciated both inside and outside this House, and it is also connected with the whole question of overcrowding.
I have already described what we are doing about overcrowding through the building programme. We have also recruited, and plan to continue to recruit, significant numbers of additional staff. Later in my reply I shall say more about the record levels of resources that we are now devoting to the service.
The Government have therefore expressed their support for the prison service not just in words but in actions. More and more resources are being provided for the service year in, year out. But there are also serious inflexibilities in working practices which have to be ironed out if the service is to make best use of the money being given to it.
We are by no means satisfied that existing systems of attendance and complementing allow us to make the best use of staff. For example, the shift systems rigidly determine when staff will be on duty regardless of whether that best matches the needs of the establishment. Indeed, Grendon provides a good example of that type of mismatch. The staff there work a shift system which was intended for use in local prisons and remand centres which have a heavy commitment to external court duties. The system means that staff are on duty in large numbers in the morning but are thin on the ground in the afternoons, evenings and at weekends.
Rigidities of that kind have led us to engage consultants to help us find better systems of complementing and attendance. Their report is due to be considered by the prisons' board within the next week or so and we hope that the outcome of the review will point the way forward to less inflexible and more efficient use of staff throughout the prison system
Lord Graham of Edmonton: My Lords, will the Minister take on board the letter which I read in The Times this morning? It was from someone whom I

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would describe as a comparatively disinterested person who very quickly tried to redress the balance of criticism about the inflexibility of the prison officers by pointing out that it was thanks to the flexibility of the prison officers that many prison regimes are capable of being carried on.
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, I, too, read that letter and it is a matter of judgment just how disinterested was the person who wrote the letter. However, rather than go into that letter now I should like to develop this important theme which I think the noble Lord in particular will agree concerns a very important matter.
The management of the prison service is seeking with the full support of Ministers to remove the inflexibilities to which I have referred and to do so in consultation with all the prison service trade unions, including the POA. I very much hope that even at this late hour the leadership of the POA, over which the noble Lord, Lord Graham, may have some influence, will pick up the repeated statements by the director general of the prison service of management's willingness to seek, through discussion, solutions to current problems. Much of great importance to the future of the prison service lies on the table for discussion. Industrial action will result not in victory for the prison officers but in damage to their interests as well as to those of the rest of the prison service.
Having set the scene, I return again specifically to Grendon. I should like at this point to refer to the important recent development to which several of your Lordships have alluded; namely, the establishment, work and first report of the Advisory Committee on the Therapeutic Regime at Grendon, known under the acronym ACTRAG. The committee was set up in March 1984 to review and monitor the therapeutic regime there, and with the aim of broadening the role it can play in the humane containment and treatment of inmates who require psychiatric facilities in the prison system. Its first report was published in July last year.
The committee's main recommendations were: first, Grendon should continue to concentrate in the main on group therapy, with the therapeutic communiity constituting the predominant form of group therapy; secondly, referral and induction arrangements should be improved; thirdly, the prison hospital should be reorganised and one floor converted for use as a small unit for the temporary care of prisoners suffering from acute psychiatric breakdown elsewhere in the prison system. The report also suggested the establishment of a research strategy and programme, and links with outside academic departments. It made recommendations too about staffing which are directly relevant to this debate. Those matters have been referred to, and I shall have something say about them soon.
We welcomed and accepted the broad thrust of the proposals in the report, in particular the recommendation that Grendon should continue to concentrate on group therapy. My right honourable friend the then Home Secretary had asked the prison department to consider how and at what speed the objectives of the committee could be achieved, having regard in particular to the resource implications.
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Since July last year work has been progressing on several fronts, and ACTRAG's recommendations on research are being followed up. We are currently considering two research projects with outside academic institutions, one in the context of Grendon itself, the other going wider into the nature and extent of psychiatric abnormality in prisons. I hope that that gives some reassurance to the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, that we are taking that particular matter forward.
Secondly, the regional director was asked to undertake a full assessment of a number of key recommendations and of their resource implications. These concern staffing levels and staff selection, which are of course central to this debate; the establishment of an induction unit; the use of the first floor of the hospital exclusively for the physically and mentally ill; the conversion of the ground floor into a "rescue" unit for adult prisoners transferred from other establishments because they are experiencing an acute breakdown; and the staffing of that unit. The regional director's assessment has now been completed and will form the basis for devising an implementation plan within existing resource constraints.
Obviously all this will take time, and your Lordships will understand that I am not in a position this afternoon to say what will be possible or within what timescale as your Lordships would have liked me to have done. However, I would say this: the first report and continuing oversight of ACTRAG, together with our other initiatives in this field, will bring precision and focus to the development of Grendon and of ways of dealing with the mentally disordered in the prison system, and in particular of ensuring that the best possible use is made of the resources which Grendon provides in the prison service.
The noble Lord, Lord Hutchinson of Lullington, somewhat lightly cast aside the whole matter of resources, but like it or not the resource question is central to any debate about our prisons. It is part of the Government's policy to contain, reduce and make the best use of public expenditure and to reduce where they can civil service manpower. Nevertheless, they have accorded exceptionally favourable treatment to the prison service.
Since the last year of the government of the party opposite in 1978–79, spending on the prison service and the prison building programme has increased from £250 million to £640 million a year, a 36 per cent. increase in real terms. The building and redevelopment programme has more than doubled in real terms. Therefore, I cannot understand how the noble Lord, Lord Graham of Edmonton, can seriously call that a nil cost basis.
Lord Donaldson of Kingsbridge: My Lords, before the noble Lord leaves the question of manning and goes on to resources, may I ask him whether he will now, or possibly later, after thought, answer my final question? Does he agree that if the Government are to support Grendon in the way that it was built up, which I understand him to be saying again that they wish to do, there are only two ways that they can do it? One is by reducing the number of patients treated to the present staff level and the other is by increasing the number of staff to the present inmate level. Nothing else is of the slightest use in my opinion.
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, I shall come to the point about staffing at Grendon in a moment or two. Staff are a most valuable resource and the number of prison officers in the system as a whole is now higher than it has ever been. It is important to get these points on the record in order to put the debate that the noble Lord has initiated in context. The figure for staff was 18,887 at the beginning of this month, which is an increase of 18 per cent. over the figure for 1st January 1979, compared with an inmate population increase of something around 10 or 12 per cent. Recruitment plans will provide more staff to man the new accommodation and replace wastage.
Within the existing systems of attendance and complement to which I referred, I recognise that, despite the steady increase in staff numbers, there remains a difference between the actual numbers of staff employed authorised staffing levels. It is true that the South-East suffers more than other reegions. Generally speaking—and I shall return to this point—it is the local prisons and remand centres that are under the greatest pressure and their position was seriously affected by last year's surge in the prison population.
As has been described in this debate, there is a shortage of some 21 per cent. of prison officer class staff at Grendon. In part this is due to the net loss last year of 10 staff, but the shortfall is not dissimilar to that experienced by other Category B establishments in the region. Moreover, let us put the shortfall at Grendon into perspective. In the first place Grendon is not exposed to the same pressures to which local prisons are subject. Apart from their escort commitment, the locals have to bear the brunt of overcrowding, and this has to be an important factor to be weighed in the allocation of staff to establishments. At Grendon, by contrast—and this is important—the inmate population, at about 220, is some 15 per cent. below certified normal accommodation.
Nevertheless, I fully understand, as the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson, would like me to, the special needs of Grendon. ACTRAG considered that it was important for Grendon that staff in post should be kept near to the authorised staffing level to safeguard the therapeutic regime and maintain staff training and support. I can assure your Lordships that we are fully seized of Grendon's special needs so far as this is concerned. There are a great many competing demands for staff, and many have to be allocated on the basis of greatest need. No one can say that an establishment whose population has stayed below CNA but whose staffing levels are as they are at Grendon has not received a degree of priority, and this will continue. Every effort will be made to match staffing more closely to need. The current aim is to allocate a few additional staff to Grendon later this year. I cannot be more precise than that, but that is the answer I give to the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson.
Lord Mishcon: My Lords, before the noble Lord leaves the subject, can he indicate in which region the increase of staff is anticipated? Is it in medical staff? Is it in prison officer class staff?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, so far as I can tell—and I may have to correct this if I am wrong—this applies to prison officer staff. But I willingly acknowledge that more than one type of staff suits the facility at Grendon. Grendon is a facility which can use others in a therapeutic regime, such as probation officers and those with a high degree of skill in working with prisoners. It is not just prison officers who have the ability to look after prisoners. If I have further information I shall let the noble Lord know.
I turn now to the question of overtime. Again I pause to make a general point. There is no doubt that present numbers and patterns of staff attendance lead to excessive levels of overtime. And overspending on overtime can take place only at the expense of other parts of the prisons' budget; for example, programmes designed to improve the conditions in which prisoners and staff live and work. It was to exert control over overtime spending that in 1985–86 a cash limit set at some £82 million was introduced and budgetary responsibility was devolved to regional directors. They in turn distributed their share of the cash limit to individual establishments.
The staff shortage at Grendon and the overtime cash limit led to some restrictions of regime activities, as was pointed out. However, the governor was able to maintain the group sessions which are at the heart of the regime. Moreover, therapeutic work at Grendon has been strengthened by the appointments of a new psychiatrically qualified medical officer last year and a new psychologist this year, both with considerable experience in group pychotherapy.
For the current financial year Grendon, like other establishments, and indeed according to the same formula as applies to other establishments, has been given an overtime budget for 1986–87. Concern was expressed by Grendon management at the implications of their 1986–87 budget for the maintenance of the therapeutic regime. The governor was asked to set out the additional provision that he estimated he would need in order to maintain it.
The regional director gave full and sympathetic consideration to the matter, and, in view of Grendon's special position as a national resource, the importance attached to its therapeutic regime and the needs of that regime, he decided that the governor should be allowed to plan on the basis that provision would be made to ensure that the regime would be maintained at broadly last year's level. This demonstrates our commitment to the therapeutic regime at Grendon.
Finally, I come to the important matter of training, which was referred to by the noble Earl, Lord Longford, and the noble Lord, Lord Hunt. Priority has been given to training in group therapy. Last year it became apparent that staff changes over the previous couple of years had led to a loss of expertise in group therapy. In consultation with the Directorate of Prison Medical Services a course was held to remedy this (and I hope that this answers a point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon), and some 30 discipline and hospital staff were trained last autumn. I cannot give the noble Lord a categorical answer on the question of the ethnic issue he raised, but I shall look at that and let him know precisely where we stand.
I should also mention that staff have been trained in control and restraint techniques to enable them to

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cope in a way which is safe to them and to inmates when violent incidents occur, and they may occur even in a therapeutic regime. In addition, senior officers at Grendon have recently taken part in a five-day introduction to management course; and all staff participating in group sessions have to attend staff support meetings twice a week, which are an indirect form of training. I do not believe that the necessity for training is in any way undervalued.
Lord Graham of Edmonton: My Lords, the noble Lord says that staff have to attend two sessions a week. Is he saying that they actually attend two sessions a week, because that is contrary to my information?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, I understand that they have to attend. If there is a difference in my information and the noble Lord's, I shall try to sort it out.
I have taken careful note of the valuable points raised in this debate, and I shall bear them and the manner in which they have been expressed clearly in mind as we develop Grendon for the future. But to fulfil the noble Lord's forecast, and to sum up, I hope that it is clear to your Lordships that we are committed to the maintenance of the therapeutic regime at Grendon. However, Grendon cannot be entirely isolated from the pressures which bear on the prison system as a whole or exempted from the measures which it is essential for us to take to make the best use of the resources which Parliament has provided. Within the prevailing constraints, however, I repeat my assurance that every effort is being and will continue to be made to enable Grendon to continue to make its unique contribution to the prison system.
5 p.m.
Lord Donaldson of Kingsbridge: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for his full reply. Above all, I am very grateful to the half-dozen speakers whom we might describe as the "old prison gang", who speak on most occasions. But if we add together what all six of us have said, I am afraid that if one then reads the noble Lord's reply with care one will see that no effort whatever has been made to answer our problem. The position is very clear. Of course we know about the difficulties in the prison service. For heavens sake, most of us have been dealing with it for over 30 years and it has got worse every year under every government. It is no good talking to us about that. In view of the present great difficulties we are asking the Government whether they want to go on with the therapeutic regime at Grendon, which they admit and we agree is important and good, or can they not afford to do it? If they cannot afford to do it, I beg the Minister not to think that he can do it at half cock; he cannot. This is what he is suggesting.
The Minister spoke for something over 20 minutes. For three-quarters of that time his subject was the prison system as a whole. We are not talking about that. If within the Home Secretary's duties of running the prison system something which is effective now is too expensive to run, we should say so and scrap it and make it a holding prison. At least we would not ruin the lives of the psychiatrist and medical staff and the rest of the staff and stop doing any good to the people within the prison.
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I am sorry to have to speak so strongly. It is what I was afraid would happen and I hoped very much would not. The noble Lord knows that I respect him. He knows that I believe he values Grendon. I am telling him, as somebody who has much more experience of Grendon than he has, that he is killing it stone dead with his approach. It will not do. There are only two ways of maintaining this system which, for 20 years until 1982 when the policy was changed, worked so well. I should like to repeat those. The first is to reduce the number of inmates to balance the staff and the second is to increase the staff to balance the inmates. If we do not do one of those, it will be no good. A no-good prison of this kind is worse, in my opinion, than a good holding prison.
I wish to make one further point. I was talking about "no good". Does it matter very much? The noble Lord spoke about the certified normal accommodation. Nobody who knows anything about Grendon ever agreed to a CNA of 260. That was thrust upon us against the strongest opposition. We said that it could not work and it has now been proved that it does not. I want to end on a note appealing to the Government to feel rather differently about this special case. It is, as the noble Lord, Lord Hutchinson, said, the only effort in the whole of the United Kingdom to deal with violence without violence. I have seen what happens in prisons where violent men break out and hit out. They are badly hurt. One cannot expect them not to be. Prison officers have to protect themselves, and when a man is out of control the whole situation is serious.
I remember—it was not in this country, I am happy to say, but in another country—going round a well-run prison and finally seeing a man chained to a wall. I asked what was going on and I was told that he was dangerous and they could not control him. The point is that we can control these people in Grendon, so I beg the noble Lord not to feel that he has satisfied us. I do not think he
has satisfied one of us, respect him though we do. I ask him to go to Grendon within the next couple of months. I know how busy he is and that he has much more worrying matters to deal with. When he returns I hope I may be allowed to ask an Unstarred Question to hear whether he is able to offer us a better solution. After those gloomy words, I beg leave to withdraw my Motion for Papers.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

The Tourist Industry
5.5 p.m.
Lord Campbell of Croy Lord Campbell of Croy rose to call attention to the importance to the economy of the United Kingdom of the tourist industry; and to move for Papers.
The noble Lord, said The noble Lord, said: My Lords, 1985 was a record year for the British tourist industry. I suggest that as a country we can build on that success in the future. This is a labour-intensive industry which can produce jobs in areas where they are needed, both urban and rural. I am glad that my noble friend Lord Young is to reply. As Secretary of State for Employment, he has a special interest because of the employment potential in this industry. I am delighted too that other noble Lords who are well qualified to speak on this subject have put down their names for the debate.
Last year, about 15 million visitors from overseas came to this country, an increase of 9 per cent. on the previous year. They spent more than ever, over £5 billion, mostly in foreign exchange coming into this country. That was an increase of 19 per cent. Of course we must remember that there was an advantage for holders of American dollars during much of that year.
One statistic is of special interest; that is, that about 35 per cent. of expenditure by those overseas visitors was on shopping compared with 40 per cent. on accommodation and meals. I shall return to that later. Tourism is now the fastest-growing major industry in Britain, with 1.3 million persons directly employed in it. Tourism also helps to produce additional jobs in connected trades and services and more money is spent in the areas concerned. I have been referring to overseas visitors, and that is an important element for our national economy. The other part consists of tourists and sightseers from within the United Kingdom—a larger number—and upon them particular regions of the United kingdom depend, if only seasonally. The economies of certain areas flourish or decline in proportion to the numbers of visitors who go to them.
A study commissioned by the British Tourist Authority has estimated that about 70,000 additional jobs were created in the United Kingdom during past years by tourism. The industry need not compete with other industries. They should be complementary.
How can we as a country make further progress? What have we to offer which we should seek to make the most of and provide for visitors besides the straightforward holidays by the sea or in the countryside? Our temperate climate favours recreation, field sports and sightseeing in general. There are places of outstanding natural scenery in different parts of the country and also—I believe it is of increasing importance—there is what can be summed up as our heritage. There is a greater interest in this now, both at home and abroad. I am delighted that my noble friend Lord Montagu of Beaulieu, the chairman of English Heritage, has put his name down to speak. Whether it is the Tower of London, Edinburgh Castle or stately homes and ancient fortresses, more people are wanting to visit them. They should be rewarded with efficient organisation and competent guides. In Scotland in particular, where the clan system exists, many overseas visitors, especially from North America, are keen to trace their ancestors and visit the places where they lived. I am glad to be able to report that more is being done to encourage that and to provide the information needed. But more still, I am sure, can be done in this field and in other parts of the country, too. Then there is another category of visitor and that is the business visitor. This is not only a matter of tempting individuals or groups to stay on and combine their business with a cultural visit or a recreational break. It is also a matter of attracting international conventions, exhibitions, athletic meetings and the like. Edinburgh will be welcoming the Commonwealth Games in July, Edinburgh had the Games also in 1970 when I played a role as the resident ministerial host.
These events bring many visitors and much beneficial activity over a wide area. I wish Birmingham all good luck in their bid for the
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Olympics in 1992. My former colleague in another place, the right honourable gentleman, Mr. Denis Howell, is playing a leading part in that bid. As your Lordships will remember, he was a Minister for Sport in at least one Labour Administration. He was also a Minister for the Weather and had almost too much success in bringing to an end a notable drought. I wish him a revival of his miraculous powers to regulate the weather in the Midlands.
I mentioned the surprising amount that overseas visitors spend on shopping. This brings me to the point that Scotland's tourist industry now has two tremendous advantages over the rest of the country. One is that there is no restriction on Sunday trading, a situation which has existed in Scotland for about 40 years; and it seems that we in Scotland will happily continue with that advantage compared with England and Wales after certain events last Monday. We shall also continue, I am sure, to have a higher proportion of our population in Scotland attending churches on Sundays than in England. One reason why there was so much opposition to the Shops Bill is because it was not brought out in the early stages that part of the United Kingdom had already enjoyed the situation which it would have created, and enjoyed if for many years, with no dire effects.
Only last Monday morning, I heard on my radio at home in Scotland a Minister say, almost as an afterthought at the end of a discussion, "Let us now look elsewhere; for example, Scotland". Scotland is not "elsewhere". Admittedly, is it beyond the reach of the Church of England but it is part of this country. It was a mistake in my opinion to have carried out such a public debate on a matter affecting England and Wales as if it were the whole country and to have failed to point out that in Scotland shops are already free to open on Sundays and have been for many years. Could I have done more myself? Well, I did something. I wrote a letter some weeks ago which was published in The Times.
The second great advantage is that the licensing hours in Scotland are very relaxed. There was a debate about this in your Lordships' House last week in which I took part. I will not repeat what I said then but the relaxation of the licensing hours has operated now in Scotland for nearly 10 years and it has been successful. It has not led to an increase in drunkenness or alcoholism. Drinking has become civilised and the new regime is very helpful to the tourist industry. I followed this with more than usual interest because I initiated the reform in the early 1970s. My noble friend Lord Montgomery of Alamein is due to speak. I shall be very surprised if he does not make some passing reference to this subject.
So Scotland enjoys these two great advantages, and because I am used to the system—both systems, both the licensing and Sunday trading—because I live in Scotland and I see that there are advantages and, so far as I can see, no disadvantages, and it does not have any effect on people going to church on Sundays, I hope that England and Wales will in due course be able to change their systems to help their tourist industries, among other things.
An encouraging development in the tourist industry has been, I believe, the team work which has developed in what I call the hotel industry and particu-

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larly the aim for high standards of service both in large establishments and small ones. There is competition between the major hotel groups and I believe that this has been a factor. The staffs appear to be going out of their way to be helpful and to do what they can for visitors. I am delighted that my noble friend Lord Forte has put his name down to speak in this debate. His British group of hotels has made a notable contribution in this field. I commend an annual system of awards made by the Highlands and Islands Development Board in their area for competition among hotels for the ones which have extended the warmest welcome to visitors, with highland hospitality. The judges visit these hotels unrecognised so that it is not possible for anybody to put on a special show for them.
I should like to add, in addition to hotels, a few words on the self-catering part of the industry. I urge the Government to give more recognition to that contribution because there is scope for much expansion. The self-catering part provides freedom of flexibility for visitors who may not want to be tied to particular places or to be dependent for meals upon hotels or restaurants, if they even exist in large enough numbers in remoter areas of our country. In this I include chalets, accommodation on permanent sites and caravans. I mention caravans, and I believe that the British public have a love/hate relationship with the caravan. They object to it understandably when they get stuck behind one on a road or if it appears to be intruding upon the scenery. Both these problems can be alleviated with care and imagination, and I have seen it done must successfully.
The self-catering side has started a national training scheme offering courses to earn certificates. Training in the industry as a whole is being regarded as vital for its future—and here I am sure that my noble friend when he winds up will have something to say because of his special responsibilities. I hope that local authorities will go out of their way to help over planning permissions; for example, avoiding quite unnecessary delays. The local authorities can also help in other ways. I particularly draw attention to dealing with refuse and rubbish. The whole tourist industry can be affected if the streets and the countryside are littered with old newspapers, particularly after there have been some winds in the area.
I would add just one anecdote, if I may. I believe that we should go out of our way to market what we can sell and interest bodies who might come to this country or go elsewhere in what we can offer. I am reminded of an occasion when I was invited to go to speak to what was called an international council which had taken over the Gleneagles Hotel some years ago. The body, which met twice a year in different parts of the world, consisted as far as I could see of the chairmen and senior executives of some of the biggest companies in the Western Hemisphere and their wives.
I was asked to speak on a subject which I think had to do with the constitutional history of this country. A bit later, when I had got to know the administrators, I asked why it was that I had been asked to speak on such a dull subject. I had done my best to try to make it interesting but if I had been given more scope I
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could, I think, have made it more entertaining. The reply that eventually came was "Well, there is a certain percentage of the programme which has to be described as educational and pass the test with our tax authorities in the United States. You were in the educational part."
I calculated at that time that the effect of that conference and the amount of dollars spent in central Scotland as a result of it in about a week was absolutely enormous. If we can supply whatever it is they want, even to meet the requirements of their tax authorities, then I suggest that we should go out of our way to do it. We should indeed, as parliamentarians, support the British tourist industry in every way that we can. I beg to move my Motion for Papers.
5.20 p.m.
Lord Parry: My Lords, it is not merely mandatory but courteous to say that this House owes a debt to the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy, for introducing this debate at this time. It is in fact a favour that he does the House—a favour that the Minister failed to do on the last occasion we debated a Motion in terms similar to that put forward by the noble Lord today. In introducing that debate, I ended by saying I had one question and I looked into the attractive blue eyes of the Minister who was to respond and I asked whether the noble Lord, as soon as he came to the conclusion of his examination towards the end of July, would give us government time so that we could have a sustained debate on this matter of the greatest potential industry in the service sector. I went on to say, (in col. 298 of Hansard) on 22nd May, 1985:
"I believe that, while the world does not owe us a living, there is one out there waiting for us to pick up."
I see that the Secretary of State is with us and that he is going to respond. I am delighted about that. I think it is time that we corrected some of the basic mistakes that exist about what we are trying to do. We have talked about the right honourable gentleman the rainmaker. I was taught in Wales that two Gordons together make good weather, and they have given our debate here a good start.
"It is often suggested",
says this gentleman,
"that tourism offers salvation. It is equally clear that this cannot be. Those of us who love and enjoy holidays in our small country know there are practical limits. We are also enthusiastic travellers ourselves and spend about the same abroad as tourists do in the United Kingdom. In fact, tourism's contribution to the balance of payments is only slightly positive. ICI alone has a positive contribution to the tune of nearly £2,000 million a year—so you will need to entertain at least another six million tourists each year, that is 40 per cent. more than we now entertain, just to make up for the loss of the Company I work for. In any case, if we imagine the UK can get by with a bunch of people in smocks showing tourists around medieval castles, we are quite frankly out of our tiny minds. What's more, if that's the sort of future we offer our young, we shan't find them staying here to enjoy it."
I quote that at the beginning because it is absolutely essential that we realise that if anyone is out of his tiny mind it is an individual, in an otherwise splendid and important lecture, the Dimbleby Lecture—John Harvey-Jones—who is a Welshman and a fellow countryman of mine and who makes the elementary mistake of assuming that there is conflict between tourism and its contribution to the economy and the existing economy of Great Britain. What a pity the

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man said that and spoilt his lecture by talking about people in smocks! What a pity he thought that what we were offering the younger generation was a third-rate custodial job where they put on a peaked cap and show people some interesting things. The tourism industry at this moment does more for the young people of Great Britain than the rest of the heavy industrial economy. I have asked questions in this House that have received the answer that there are more young people working in Lord Forte's industry, which was once thought to offer limited employment opportunities and limited wages, taking a route to the top, assisted by the education service, taking qualifications and in fact achieving a status which tiring and dying industries could never give them.
What a silly thing it is to pretend that such a thing conflicts with the massive efforts of Harvey-Jones at his best when he is running the great industry, which is of course important. But I want at this time—and I hope we shall have the opportunity of a longer debate when we can come to grips with some of these misunderstandings—to say exactly what the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy said at the beginning.
One-quarter of all the shoes produced by the industry in this country that is still clinging on in competition with other countries, because of its traditional values and because of the acceptance by the world of the quality of its production, are sold to tourists in this country. If it were not for their presence in the country, many of the shops would close down.
This has been a bad month for tourism, because items extraneous to it have had their effect upon it. Everyone knows—it is no part of my duty in the debate to refer to what happened in Libya yesterday and the day before—that the Americans (and I had four of them with me here in the House only a short while ago) are beginning to look again at their holiday programmes. It is inevitably going to have an effect on the figures that have been developing gradually over the past few years, because Americans are important to our economy. I do not want to blight this debate by conveying the impression that it is all going to be bad. European tourists, being closer to us, are sometimes under-estimated in regard to their contribution to the tourism economy and to the economy of Great Britain. I was delighted and astounded, for example, to learn that the massive contribution made by the German tourists, individually visiting this country, is nine times more than that of a tourist from the United States: they actually spend nine times more. I do not know whether I am causing consternation among my colleagues on the Front Benches: they are patting each other on the back as though they had achieved it themselves—Front-Benchers act like that, my Lords!
The point is this. We have some hope for the economy of Great Britain and for a resurgence in our overall earnings. It is based in the intelligent use of the facilities that exist for tourists. I shall not repeat the figures given by the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy, but he pointed out that there were certain attractions. I am not speaking here for Wales. Believe me, I am speaking for Great Britain; but it is a fact that the one attraction that brings more visitors year round to it than any other attraction in Wales, is a great big greenhouse in Rhyl called the "Rhyl Sun Centre", because it provides wet-weather tourism. Inside what
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is really an artificial environment it creates opportunity. It is also the result of massive investment—investment which in part has been borne by the public purse but, in overall terms, has come from the private sector. It is this balance between carefully-selected pump-priming with public money and intelligent entrepreneurial skills and private money that is needed at this time.
I want to leave this particular aspect with the Minister. We need to see public and private co-operation—statutory boards and statutory bodies with private entrepreneurial skills, energy and capital encouraged at least for the foreseeable future, and a very long future. We know that many of the great impulses to develop have come from the minds of the Lord Fortes of this industry. We know that many of the best achievements have come from that sector. Also, more and more of them will say that many of the best efforts of the smaller individuals—those who have not great resources behind them—have been best helped by the statutory bodies.
When we make our appeal in this country, we have to make certain that we are able to offer, because we cannot compete in warm-weather facilities, properly developed all-the-year round facilities. If you check the figures you will find that those places which have roofs over them, like the Blaenau Festiniog caves and the Blaenavon Big Pit, are the ones—those are just two illustrations—which can continue all the year round to offer attractions.
I have believed all along that this House has a real chance of providing leadership. It provided leadership in the matter of Sunday trading. It has provided leadership in the matter of our archaic licensing laws—leadership, if not total success! I think that another place has totally failed to give that leadership and has backed away from decisions that it ought properly to take. We cannot bring tourists into this country and then offer them inferior facilities. We cannot bring them here and expect them to find their own way about on a Sunday when they can be enjoying the great services that we are able to put on, and at the same time spend to entertain themselves in a way they would expect in any modern country.
In this debate, which the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy, has raised, I want to leave this thought with the House. We are able to make a contribution which is out of all proportion to what people once thought tourism could make to the economy. Moreover, we can do it at a time when in the rural areas agriculture's contribution to the economy has staggered because of circumstances outside its control. In west Wales land values and the value of farms have fallen. The removal of milk quotas has left farmers with little hope for the future. With a little careful thought we can apply what has already been learned about farm tourism to provide an alternative income and to give an opportunity to some small farmers to do the only thing that they want to do—to stay on their land, manage it and make it productive.
In 12 minutes there cannot be an effective presentation of the case, but this evening we can perhaps say to the Harvey-Joneses of this world, who totally misunderstand the situation, "We want to help you to make your part of the economy modern,

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effective and competitive, in national and international terms, why do you not help us?"
5.31 p.m.
Lord Winstanley: My Lords, if there are any noble Lords who have any doubts about the importance of the tourist industry to the United Kingdom economy, those doubts should have been dispelled by the excellent speech made by the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy, when he introduced his Motion, for which we are all deeply grateful. If there were any lingering doubts, I should have thought that the splendid speech of the noble Lord, Lord Parry, would have dealt with them.
Both noble Lords have talked about Mr. Denis Howell. As I worked so closely with him for many years it might be invidious if I left him out. When as chairman of the Countryside Commission I was able to get him to open the South-West Peninsula long distance walk, which the Countryside Commission had pioneered—a long, long-distance walk of about 300 miles from Minehead in Somerset, all round Land's End and into Dorset—the sun shone, the skies were blue and we had a wonderful day. Some weeks later, when I was fortunate enough to persuade the then Archbishop of Canterbury to open the South Downs Way, the skies opened, the rain fell and the wind blew. If there is any lesson to be learned from that, it is perhaps that Mr. Denis Howell might be able to get the Olympic Games to Birmingham. I hope that he manages to do so, because that would be important to the tourist industry.
I am not competent to analyse all the interesting figures which have been supplied to us by the British Tourist Authority about the economics of tourism, save to say that at the moment it seems that we are in credit on tourism. This year we look like earning about £7 billion in foreign currency from overseas visitors, but on the other side of the equation it appears that we spend about £6 billion on travelling overseas. If we are to maximise the economic benefits of tourism, the task before us is to increase the one and reduce the other.
Of those two I should perhaps take the first point, first. In that connection I feel that I can do no better than refer to a splendid article which appeared in The Guardian on Monday 14th April. That was rather before the debate which has been referred to by both noble Lords. The article was by Polly Tonybee. It consisted, as many who have read it will know, mainly of quotations from Mr. Michael Montague, the former chairman of the English Tourist Board. I say that not as a criticism of Polly Tonybee. As a working journalist I know that good articles are mainly scissors and paste. Why should we not have splendid quotations linked together in a splendid article?
If I could have persuaded Hansard to write the article into the record I might have saved your Lordships having to listen to the speech. I hope that some noble Lords will read the article because it summarises and underlines some of the crucial matters with which we shall have to deal. It begins, curiously enough, with references to Sundays and the late lamented Shops Bill, to which reference has been
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made. All I would say about that is that I am not terribly happy about the recent voting record of some of my honourable friends in another place. I understood and expected that the Labour Party would oppose the Bill. The Labour Party has always been deeply conservative and opposed to change of any kind. I expected a little better from my honourable friends. I accept of course that there are difficulties with regard to staff protection. I share that view with the Labour Party. However, I feel that if we were now to revert to attempts rigidly to enforce the present anomalous and absurd law we should be in grave difficulties. I think we should greatly damage our tourist industry.
What type of places are we talking about? What places should be kept open? I hope that garden centres will continue trading because I know that foreign visitors greatly enjoy them. They have an opportunity to see our horticulture, which is, in many ways, unique. I hope that some of the village antique shops will also stay open. I declare an interest, in that my wife has what she is pleased to describe as an antique business. Sometimes I have to say to her that an antique business is not really a business, it is a disease in which all commercial considerations are flung to the winds while people buy things that they like from one another. Antique shops dotted about the country are honeypots for tourists. They like to visit them and they spend money in them. It would be sad were they all to close on Sundays.
It is interesting to note that Polly Toynbee's article quoting Michael Montague ends with references to the licensing laws. The noble Lord, Lord Campbell of
Croy, referred to them. I agree with him. I do not believe that foreign visitors to the United Kingdom want to drink all day, but they sometimes want to drink at the times they want rather than at the times we tell them they are allowed to. I hope that some day we shall move on that issue.
A number of matters are referred to in the article. It mentions the deplorable state of our lavatories. They have remained terrible throughout the whole of my life. The only improvement that I could see was when we raised the school-leaving age. It seemed that the graffiti went about two inches higher up the walls. I have noticed no other improvements. The article calls for major improvements and I hope that we shall make them some day.
The article also refers to taxi drivers. Polly Toynbee says that they are:
"rude, unhelpful and interested only in tips."
I shall not go into our tipping system, but only recently an American visitor spoke to me at Westminster having just got out of a taxi. She paid £138 to come from Heathrow. She asked me whether that was right. I told her that it was not, but that unless she knew the number of the taxi driver I doubted whether she could do much about it.
I regret the disappearance of some of our consumer protection arrangements, particularly in the metropolitan county areas, where there is still some uncertainty about the role of trading standards officers now that the metropolitan counties have been abolished and they are alleged to have been taken over by the districts.

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The article refers to service stations. I am referring to service stations in general, not motorway service stations. The article says, and I think rightly, that when people go for petrol:
"Who wants stamps, gambling games, plastic daffodils and tumblers?"
We want petrol. As a person who does a great deal of motoring, I object to stopping at a petrol station which says "open" when it is closed. That should be a breach of some kind of trading law. Service stations leave the notice "open" just in case someone happens to be there. When one has come out of a queue of traffic and found that the pumps are shut it is annoying later to pass the same vehicles up the road.
Polly Toynbee also refers to motorway service stations. As something of an expert on them, having travelled widely on our roads for many years, I acknowledge that they have improved remarkably. Some are now excellent. I had a debate on motorway service stations in another place 20 years ago on the Consolidated Fund Bill. Following that debate, I was taken by a popular English daily newspaper, which still exists—that is rather strange and your Lordships may be able to work out which one it is—and driven to every motorway service station in Britain within a period of 24 hours. We bought the same article at each service station. We measured each and compared quantities and qualities. We found wide differences in prices, standards and standards of service. I am delighted to say that the service stations have improved considerably.
I had a recent experience which I found a little alarming. Sometimes service stations have to close one side due to staff problems. They merely open the other side. One parks one's car in the car park and crosses the bridge to obtain a snack. My wife and I crossed the bridge to the restaurant. Shortly after, we found that the service station filled with a coach-load of Glasgow Rangers' supporters There was a rowdy element in the service station. At the next table to me was a delightful young Indian couple who were visitors to this country; They asked whether we were crossing the bridge and said that if we were they would like to come with us because they were afraid to cross on their own. It is said that coloured visitors to this country feel that they cannot cross a motorway bridge on their own because of fears of being attacked—not that I could have defended them, but perhaps they felt that there was some safety in numbers.
It was interesting that on that occasion I found down below a plain clothes officer from Special Branch whom I knew. He was with a colleague dealing with a serious crime. I accept that they have to do that, but at some of those places I should like occasionally to see a uniformed officer on duty, particularly on Saturday nights after football matches, so that visitors to our country might get some protection if they are given reason to be afraid.
On hotels, I was in a hotel the other day in Cheshire. It was not owned by the
noble Lord, Lord Forte, but it had excellent stars and I asked for afternoon tea. They said, "We do not serve afternoon tea any more. It is difficult with staff problems and it is not really worth it." It is worth it to me and I do not think that we ought in order to get afternoon tea, to have to go to Reid's in Madera. We ought to be able to get it in an
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English hotel. I think that foreign visitors like afternoon tea in our English hotels and I mention that point because I consider it valid.
There were many other points raised by that article but I will leave them now. We must make up our minds whether we really want foreign tourists in this country. There is a certain ambivalence about our attitudes, even in your Lordships' House. There are noble Lords with a great interest in and commitment to the tourist industry who come into the House, get on their feet at Question Time and complain bitterly about the coaches full of West Germans, Americans or Japanese tourists which cause difficulties in London. We cannot have it both ways, though we can perhaps do something to get our foreign visitors out of London and to other parts of Britain. That is something on which we should concentrate.
I should like to appeal particularly for an increased number of conference centres in different parts of the country. I know that there are many other attractions. The noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy, has mentioned Edinburgh, and the Edinburgh Festival has done a great deal to bring people to Edinburgh. I know only too well that the noble Lord, Lord Montagu, has brought a great many foreign visitors to his motor museum, down in Beaulieu and to his maritime museum at Buckler's Hard. Those are very valuable. We want more attractions of that kind and we must take more steps to get visitors out of London.
We should also do something about the differential in petrol prices in the rural areas. Why should petrol be so much more expensive in Cornwall than in London? Why should it be so much more expensive in the North Yorkshire Moors than in London? I should like to see something done about that, which would assist in getting some of our visitors out of London and to other parts of the country.
Let me say a brief word about the other side of the equation—holidays for British people here. We have too many inducements to the British to go abroad—duty-free drink and so on. If people going on holiday are to have cheap booze, cigarettes and scent, why should they not get them in Blackpool or in Bournemouth? That would be fair. On the whole, the duty-free shops are a way of inducing our wives to buy things they do not want, at prices far in excess of what they would pay at home in a supermarket. And to describe as duty-free something which manifestly is not is sometimes a breach of the Trade Descriptions Act, so I hope that that will be dealt with.
Let me just mention the most important matter of all. If we are to maximise our tourist earnings, we must do something about funding the arts properly in Britain. There is no greater attraction to foreign visitors than the arts, our theatres, our orchestras and so on and until we start funding those properly we shall not have the success for which we hope.
All I have tried to do in this debate is to drop one or two pebbles in the pond, if I may so describe your Lordships' House, in the hope of creating one or two ripples. Finally, let us fund the arts properly, let us get more conference centres dotted about the country and not only in London, let us change our attitudes to foreigners and, for goodness sake, let us teach our own people to learn to know and to love their own country. It is tragic to find the number of British people who do

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not know that we have in Britain within a very short compass a variety of landscape which is quite unique—look at the villages in Dedham Vale, the Yorkshire Moors and the Cornwall coast—yet British people persist in going to Majorca or the Costa Brava. I wish that more of them would stay at home and enjoy Britain.
5.45 p.m.
Viscount Mersey: My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Campbell of Croy for initiating this debate. I am also very pleased that my noble friend the Secretary of State will be summing up. As for the noble Lord, Lord Parry, I find myself in the happy position of being in complete agreement with what he said, for the second time in two days. My speech will be similar to his. It will perhaps be a little shorter, but it will not have that unique Welsh lucidity which the noble Lord, Lord Parry, practises.
I agree particularly with the noble Lord, Lord Parry. Tourism is symptomatic of the change in our society. It is a service industry and it is growing fast. By contrast, the older manufacturing industry is growing quite slowly. Our society is no longer a pyramid with the affluent at the top and the manual workers at the broad base. Rather it is diamond shaped, with the service class occupying the widest part of the diamond and the old manufacturing class now in the ever narrowing base. That shrewd shape of society was first described by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Liverpool; and I have referred to that rather brilliant definition before, as have other noble Lords. Yet I believe that we have one problem, which is this: we are keener on the abstract concept of tourism than we are on the tourists themselves.
Tourism is exploding, just as the communications industry is exploding. The growth in tourism matches the growth in sunrise industries along the M.4 corridor. Tourism is an industry of information: informing both British and foreigner of the beauties of Fountains Abbey and Stirling Castle; showing them the Norfolk Fens and the Mendip Hills; communicating the wonder of the Cornish gardens and the majesty of Snowdonia. We live in the great age of information and tourism is a part of that.
Strangely, I find that I am a bit too old to understand what is really happening. I am by trade a technician. I grew up in a world of skilled manual labour which was, in my case, film; and that meant celluloid, film cement, the Bell and Howell foot joiner and the Acmade Pic. Sync. Those were difficult machines to work and I mastered them. The trouble was that the mastery of the machine blinded me to what we were really trying to do: we were trying to inform.
Likewise, the mastery of old printing machinery has blinded some SOGAT members in Fleet Street to the new technology and to their purpose, which is to inform, not by moving pictures, as in my case, but by the printed word. SOGAT members tend towards the Luddite, but so do I. I too am a Luddite. Tourism is symptomatic of our revolutionary society, because it is non-Luddite; it is pure information uncluttered by technical barriers. Travel, for instance, is no barrier compared to the problems of 100 years ago. Even the
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barrier of photography—your happy holiday snaps—becomes less with cheap cameras with automatic exposure and focusing.
Yet the Luddite barrier to tourism is around and it shows itself in our dislike of the tourist and, as the noble Lord, Lord Winstanley, said, of the tourist coach. But I would single out the tourist hotel and that is symbolised by a new and, for once, useful acronym: NIMBY—not in my back yard. NIMBY means that my council, the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, say: "Of course there should be more tourist accommodation, but not in our borough". That would be all right if the borough of Westminster next door was not saying exactly the same thing. Thus demand exceeds supply, prices rocket, tourist numbers fall and we lose out in foreign earnings.
Surely NIMBY stems from that same Luddite lack of understanding that I mentioned a moment ago. Jobs nowadays are not what I would call proper jobs. My young cousin, for instance, is director of education for an employment charity. My whiz-kid neighbour nextdoor from Bradford markets video discs and tapes. I tend to wonder "What's it all for? You can't eat a floppy disc". It is simply more information; information for information's sake, and service for service's sake. Who are they servicing?—other servicers; and whom informing?—other informers. But whatever it is, it is real and it is happening.
Let us consider for a moment the hopes of some sixth formers which I picked out of The Times last Saturday. I do not think manufacturing industry featured at all. John Mark Warburton hoped to be a games teacher; that is a service industry. Joanne Parker hoped to be a journalist; Stephen Jones, to work in a bank or building society; and John Green, with computers. Tina Cullen was staying on in sixth form and may then join police or become physical education teacher. For Adrian Bellis it was also the police; for Claire Bentley, drama school; for Adam Roland, a law career, community work or conciliation; Donna Coombe, nursery nursing or catering; Neil Chaudhri, planning a medical career; and Graham Flint was applying to five different colleges for hotel management. Mr. Flint, as your Lordships will gather, is opting for the tourist industry, and all the others are opting for service industries.
I cannot understand it—nor am I quite the oldest member of your Lordships' House! But I hazard a guess; I put two and two together and say that it is the old-fashioned lack of understanding of the service industries that causes tourist hostility, resulting in NIMBY. NIMBY comes to a head in York. The Yorkshire and Humberside tourist authority is at loggerheads with the city council over the number of tourist beds in the area. I believe the council has introduced a ceiling of 36,000 beds. I see the problem, for the walled city is well under a square mile and suffers from the simple sardine effect.
Set against that is the excellence of the tourist board which is epitomised in the Jorvik Centre. There, as many noble Lords know and may even have experienced, one travels through the Viking city of York. The trip is so popular that I saw people happily queuing for two hours to make that journey and get back in time. They were queueing out of doors on a chilly October morning.

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I wonder how we can reconcile the great information revolution, of which tourism is such a key part, with NIMBY. I ask my noble friend the Secretary of State who is right in York. Is it the city council or the tourist board? Perhaps I can cast a fly over him, to which he may rise, by mentioning Venice. It must be the foremost tourist attraction in the world, yet I have found it cheap and it is easy to get accommodation there. I wonder whether York can learn from Venice. Can Bath learn from Sienna? Can the United Kingdom learn from Italy, indeed? I maintain that our NIMBY attitude is caused by Luddite thinking, myself included; I am a Luddite. But I also maintain that tourism is without doubt one of the most important industries of the future.
5.53 p.m.
Viscount St. Davids: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy, for enabling me to say a few words on the subject of the tourist trade. I want to limit myself to the inland waterways, what they are doing to tourism and what they could do if they were further developed.
I first became aware of their tourist potential some years ago. My wife and I were navigating the Oxford canal and we entered a lock at the same time as a canal boat which according to a sign on its side was Swiss. This looked unlikely, but we brought up that evening close to the people, met and had drinks on each other's boats, as is usual. We found out that this was indeed so. It appears that, while in winter we ski on their mountains, the Swiss around their fires study maps of our inland waterways.
Since that time, over the years, we have noticed an enormous increase in foreign visitors handling canal boats, and I should like to quote one example. A few years ago, the River Avon was unnavigable. Then two trusts set about restoring the navigation and they did it mostly with private money. They did it with only such public money as they were able to get from the small sums available through improvements to local facilites, and they did the job. I am glad and proud to say that one time I asked how much per day the operation was costing and I was able to pay for one day's work out of my own pocket.
Those waterways are now fully open and they have become crowded with craft. When I say crowded with craft, I also want to mention the fishermen, because the River Avon is, as everybody knows, one of the finest fishing rivers in Britain. I am happy to say that the steady depth of water now prevailing has meant that the fishing has been improved. The number of boats is enormous. I have asked the organisers of the two trusts, and they say that those two trusts alone are putting into the local economy something in the region of £4 million a year, which is a great deal more than the two waterways took to repair.
Not only that, but there are now major shipbuilding yards along those waterways giving employment. They are building canal craft not only for use there, but one is actually building canal craft for export to the French waterways. What is more, they are building canal craft which they are selling to foreign visitors who are using them as mobile country cottages around the English waterside, and also taking them across to the
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Continent. On those grounds, we are certainly attracting a great deal of foreign money to the waterways.
There is a further point which was made a day or two ago from the Government Front Bench in this House. A number of people who use our inland waterways are taking holidays here and not abroad. We have heard about import substitution. This is import substitution on a very great scale indeed, and the large numbers of people using our canal boats would be spending their money in other countries if they were not spending it here, including, I may say, my wife and myself.
That is not all. The noble Lord, Lord Winstanley, talked about spreading the
load. One of the happy things about the inland waterways is that they cover the whole face of Britain. There are at this moment over 3,000 navigable miles of linked water inside this country. I know that this is the correct figure because I had a bet on it with an Inland Waterways Association friend of mine. We sat down with a map and measured the lot, and I am happy to say that I won.
Not only that, but these are self-catering holidays, which Lord Campbell of Croy mentioned. There is a further matter; it may not be possible to get a room in an hotel in a major town precisely when you want it. This can be difficult, especially if you have some business purpose which takes you to a town in a hurry. What people do not realise is that in those cases, because of the glorious fact that there are inland waterways through nearly every single old industrial town in this country, you can hire a canal boat a little way outside, take it in there, moor it up and do your business. You can have your family and indeed your family dog and cat and anything else with you. When it comes to entertaining a business friend, "Come up to my hotel and have a drink" has its minor attractions, but, "Come to my canal boat and have a drink and a trip" is a totally different proposition and one which is far more likely to attract business.
I believe that we are considerably neglecting our inland waterways. What we need among other things is publicity. There are far too many otherwise intelligent people who seem to regard our waterways as stinking old mud-filled ditches, useless for anything. That is very far from the fact. I am pleased to say that the British Waterways Board, in conjunction with the tourist authorities, is putting in a very powerful push to advertise particularly in the United States the uses of our inland waterways. That is a very valuable service indeed. That is one thing that we can certainly push on with and should do more of.
We should also consider opening a few more waterways. A waterway makes its own traffic. Open the waterway and the traffic appears. That is what has happened on the Avon, as I have just explained. We are at the moment reopening the Montgomery Canal. The Government have now agreed the matter and it is starting to go ahead. There are 33 miles of it. It passes through lovely countryside; through an area with quite considerable tourist attractions. I am sure that when it is open it will develop the same sort of increase in traffic as has the River Avon. Nor is that the end of the possibilities. There is the River Severn, which flows through a magnificent valley. The valley is full of tourist attractions both scenic and historical. Opening

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that up would not be expensive because a great deal of money from private pockets would go into the project. The work needed is not enormous. I have myself seen a study and it represents another chance.
There are still more chances. There is a scheme for the High Avon to deal with the River Avon between Stratford and Warwick, two centres both of great tourist and scenic attraction. It is only 11 miles of river and as a matter of fact it is now 80 per cent. navigable. The money is simply waiting for permission for the work to be done. That would be of enormous tourist value and would incidentally link to the Grand Union and make the whole system better.
There are other cases. There is the matter of the Bedford Ouse, which is now navigable but is considerably underused. It would not be technically difficult to connect that upstream simply by putting in a few locks and weirs, which are not expensive especially if done by amateurs in the way we know how to do it. We amateurs now have our own heavy earth-moving machinery, so we could do it. If that was taken upstream it would meet the Grand Union Canal at Wolverton and connect up the system there. Again, the whole system would be improved, and with the High Avon it would give us a broad canal system clean across the centre of England, which we do not now have.
All these things could easily be done. They do not need much government money. What they really need is a little government blessing and a little government push. If we can achieve those, I believe that we can increase the already very large tourist attraction of the inland waterways to an extent which will be truly surprising.
6.5 p.m.
Viscount Brentford: My Lords, I too should like to thank my noble friend Lord Campbell of Croy for initiating this debate on tourism, particularly at this juncture in world affairs and in the light of what is going on outside. Perhaps I should say that, while I would gladly answer his comments, I propose to pass on what he said about the late—and by many people unlamented—Shops Bill at this point.
I should like on this occasion very warmly to congratulate the Government on what they are doing on behalf of the tourist industry. My noble friend the Minister has on many occasions emphasised that this is a service industry and a growth industry with an extra 50,000 employees a year coming into it. Nobody has yet mentioned the fact that the Government have increased by 20 per cent. their contribution to the BTA and the English Tourist Board this year. That is a really practical step in encouraging tourism in this country at the present time. I personally warmly congratulate them on that. This may go a long way towards easing the impact of a slightly reduced income for the BTA in the previous year. I feel that this increase is marvellous and I hope that the Government will continue to encourage the BTA in this way in the years to come.
I was not aware quite how much impact what is said in this Chamber actually has on the outside world. I remember that in a debate on tourism in your
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Lordships' House last year I strongly recommended that the BTA should open another office in Atlanta. I understand that this happened on 14th April this year. It may well be that other people also saw the validity of that recommendation, but I am delighted to know that when things are said here, action flows.
The main point of what I intended to say in this debate has been slightly accentuated by what has happened in the past two days. The point related to the reduction in American tourists coming to this country this year because of their fear of terrorism. As I understand it, many Americans actually look upon Europe very much as they look upon the United States itself—as a single unit. If there are terrorist attacks on one or two airports in mainland Europe they therefore will not come to England because they fear attacks at Heathrow. This sadly was rather accentuated by the photographs of armed soldiers at Heathrow that were published in America. Some of the provincial newspapers were not quite sure whether they were terrorists or soldiers. That, I am informed, damaged the tourist inflow into this country in the present year.
I believe that the impact is much more on groups than on individuals. One enterprise with which I am connected had three American groups booked in this month of April. Two of them have been cancelled directly for fear of terrorism in Europe. I appreciate that many American groups come to England but go on to Europe as well. This means that the whole group is cancelled if they decide not to proceed with the European tour. Perhaps the American attitude can be
illustrated by an American I was talking to this morning. He had just come off the telephone to his family in Chicago. He said that the family there were urging him to leave London immediately because of the danger here. I simply want to emphasise what I see as a real fear which is reducing tourism here from America. I hope that the Government will do all that they can to allay such fears. The BTA is still optimistic that there will be an increase in tourism this year, and I hope very much that they are correct. However, I personally am concerned.
There are many thoroughly optimistic features that we have going for us in tourism this year. One is the Royal Wedding this summer. I am certain that many Americans and other nationals will come to this country to enjoy all that will be going on in conjunction with that event. Another excellent innovation for tourism is the emphasis on operation off-peak, in extending tourism activities out of season. That is a valuable exercise. We have a weather problem in this country, of course, but there are many tourism activities that can go on for a much longer period than the summer months. Again, I hope that the Government will continue to give encouragement to extend that activity, as they are doing at the present time.
One last point I should like to make for the Government's consideration is that in the past 48 hours the BTA has produced a report that contains a request to simplify immigration procedures for incoming tourists to this country. I believe that one very unpopular obstacle to people coming into this country who do not have British passports or Common Market passports is the length of the queues at airports where they may have to wait for

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immigration. Sometimes there are no queues at all but on other occasions the queues are very long.
I hope that the Government will consider that point with a flexible mind, to see whether a scheme cannot be devised that will cut out those queues, in order to give tourists coming into this country a really warm welcome so that they will feel they are wanted, and in order that they will not be made to stand in a queue for two hours. I warmly support this Motion and hope that we may continue to strive to improve conditions in this country for the tourists who come here.
6.12 p.m.
Lady Kinloss: My Lords, I happen to live in the largest county in England—North Yorkshire—which is estimated to be second only to the London area in the tourist industry. I was not born there but my husband first visited York as a teenager to stay with an uncle and aunt 50 years ago. It was then a sleepy, old-fashioned cathedral city with no real attractions except architecture.
During the past years, and especially since the war, it has woken up and it now has one of the most remarkable series of attractions, I think I can say, in all Europe. There is the splendid Castle Museum of folklore, crafts and commerce. There is the superb railway museum, which I believe is unique in all the world, certainly in Europe. There is also the very remarkable Jorvik exhibition, where one can visit a recreation of Danish York. There is the Yorkshire Museum, set in the most delightful gardens, which has set up an exhibition of Roman Britain. There are new discoveries as yet unexhibited as well as, of course, the noble and splendid minster. There are many other minor attractions, and not far away are the North Yorkshire moors, to which I shall refer again in a moment.
Those attractions and the seaside resort of Scarborough, as well as others, all bring to the area £200 million a year and employ 35,000 people. As the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy, has said, perhaps the most important point to note is the growth rate of that industry, which is almost half as high again over the past three years as inflation has been. Sometimes I wonder whether we take the tourist industry seriously enough. The British Tourist Authority has produced some interesting statistics and states that Britain is expected to earn £7,700 million in foreign currency from tourism in 1986. Less than £10 million was spent nationally on the growing tourist industry last year. If we are to see a continual growth in that industry, then surely money must be invested to make Britain attractive in all sorts of ways.
In York itself, hotel occupancy is now more than 70 per cent. on an annual basis, which is the highest in the United Kingdom outside London. For all that, tourism is still not believed to be a real industry that offers real jobs. It is time that we woke up our ideas. There is no room for complacency. It is thought that there are insufficient hotels in York, as the noble Viscount, Lord Mersey, has already said, but there is also, to a certain extent, a lack of country house hotels in the numerous market towns in North Yorkshire.
Both the quantity and quality of catering developments, including self-catering developments
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with leisure facilities, need to be increased and the facilities improved. A further complaint is insufficiency of private bathrooms in hotels on the coast. At the well-established major tourist attractions in Scarborough and Whitby, and possibly in Harrogate, there is a need to develop leisure tourism and especially wet weather activity.
To refer back to the North Yorkshire moors, the North Yorkshire Moors National Park has published a paper, The Visitor, which indicates areas of interest. I believe that it costs 20p and is easily obtained. There is also a free guide to hotels in the area. The Ryedale District Council has published a free guide to acceptable hotels, boarding houses and restaurants for the tourist trade. That council has also appointed a tourist officer and it hopes to set up an information centre with trained staff possibly in Malton, which is some 20 miles north-east of York. Once that centre is established, the council hopes to be able in future to cater not only for the ordinary tourist but for the unfortunate disabled tourist as well.
I should like especially to direct attention to the lack of facilities provided for disabled people. There are more than 6 million disabled people in this country, many of whom could take a holiday if the facilities were available to make their holiday a practical possibility. That is important not only for them but also for those friends and relations who devote themselves to looking after them. York has gone to great trouble to produce an access guide for the disabled and also to provide facilities for them. All such facilities are very clearly signposted.
I particularly invite attention to the Bonhomie holiday centre for the disabled, which is near Southampton. It started as a registered charity during the 1960s as the enterprise of a Mr. and Mrs. Davies. It has now developed out of a large Victorian house to be a centre that can accommodate up to 48 people at any one time. The Southern Tourist Board has been able to assist with grants to develop self-catering units and bungalows and also terraced self-catering bedsitters. It seems to me that that development could well be imitated in other parts of the country. I hope that the Minister will take an early opportunity of discussing that point with the different tourist boards, to see in what way such schemes could be initiated elsewhere and be extended.
In Warminster, there is a tourist information centre manned by 10 voluntary workers. The main disadvantage of that centre is its siting. There is a desk in the local library that can only be manned during library hours. The main trouble with that arrangement is that when tourists are seeking help in finding accommodation, the centre is closed. The centre provides good information on obvious places of interest but not a great deal of information on points of interest in between.
As a cousin said to me only yesterday, we so often undersell ourselves. He pointed out, for example, the silver vaults in London, which are full of interest but which compratively few people visit. There is so much of interest, scenically and historically, and so much room for development, that I hope the Minister will give a firm lead forward.
6.19 p.m.
Lord Mancroft: My Lords, as time is beginning to run short, I shall confine my remarks to one point; and that is a point of caution. I heartily agree with everything that was said by the noble Lord who moved this Motion about our debt to tourism as part of the national economy. However, I believe that there is a risk of overselling. There is a risk of overenthusiastic marketing, and there is a risk of making enemies by going too far and exercising too little tact. I believe that is called counter-production in modern jargon. In plainer English, if one over-eggs the omelette, one may get egg on one's own face.
For 10 years I served as president of the London Tourist Board. I had the honour of following my noble friend Lord Forte and handing over to the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby. They will remember the pleasure that we had from the many letters that we received saying that one aspect that struck tourists particularly in this country was our friendliness and our honesty. That runs very much counter to the views of Mr. Michael Montagu, which the noble Lord, Lord Winstanley, recently produced for us. We called that file of letters "The natives are friendly" file. It gave us great pleasure to see the number of people who went out of their way to say that friendliness is one of the principal tourist attractions in this country. I believe it to be so.
Of course there is the odd taxi driver who charges £138, but I find that, on the whole, our taxi drivers are as efficient and as honest as any that can be found in any other country in the world. The same goes for waiters. There is occasionally a rude waiter and unfortunately he is nearly always English; or, to satisfy my noble friend Lord Campbell, perhaps from elsewhere. Occasionally one also finds that the service asked for at a service station is the one thing that is not available. We are to blame. How many of us standing outside the front of this building have grumbled about the buses that clutter up the place, waiting for the tourists to come back from watching the changing of the guard? That is the tourists' fault, we say, but we ought not to.
There is trouble at Bath at the moment. Your Lordships may have heard about it and certainly the noble Lord, Lord Montagu, has. It is one of the finest cities in the world, with one of the finest streets—the Royal Crescent—which is apparently cluttered up with buses stinking out the place with petrol fumes, drowning conversation with the guides' running commentaries and cracking up the pavements and roads. There is a good old row going on. To make matters worse, when the tourists have finished they hop back into their buses without spending anything in the pubs and shops. Away they go round the circuit to Oxford, Stratford-upon-Avon and the Cotswolds. The trouble with this country is that it is too small for tourism. There is not enough room. I am not suggesting that we should open picnic areas on a Sunday in Wolverhampton, but I suggest that we could show a great deal more of the country if we really set about trying to find it—and we all know where it is.
Back to the London Tourist Board; my noble friend Lord Forte will remember that 75 per cent. of tourists coming to this country do not leave London. They try to pack as much as they can into their visit here. I remember that we had a letter from a Japanese tourist
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operator. He wanted his group to do as much as it possibly could in the time at its disposal. They wanted the usual round of Westminster Abbey, St. Paul's, the Tower of London, Marks and Spencer, and so on. He nearly added by way of a postscript, "Is St. Paul's open on a Sunday?". We sent the letter to the Dean of St. Paul's, just to annoy him, but he immediately came back and said, "That is nothing. We had an American couple here yesterday who were in a hurry. They agreed that she would do the outside of the Cathedral and he would do the inside". We must spread tourism around a great deal more.
Is there a solution to the problem of keeping the natives friendly? I regard it as essential that people should accept tourism, welcome tourists, be prepared to give them a friendly hand and give them all the assistance they deserve to help them enjoy our heritage once they are here. Yes, my Lords, there is a solution. We are all entitled to play our part. It is not the right moment and there is not time to go into the Shops Bill or the licensing laws. That is for the Government. Local authorities have a great part to play and I am glad to say that they have done so in Bath, where peace is likely to break out at any moment—much helped by the noble Lord, Lord Montagu.
The tourist boards ought to bear in mind that a little more tact, a little less aggressive selling and a little more thought for the natives as well as for the incoming tourists would not come amiss. The same goes for the tourist trade in which I myself was employed for 20 years. I started in an office in a club next door to the Minister who is to reply to the debate today. The heritage and all the other amenities of the people have a part to play. It is no good blaming everybody for the fact that tourists are cluttering up the country. We welcome them. We welcome what they bring. We are delighted to show them what we have to offer with the beauties and history of our country; but it is necessary that the natives should remain friendly. There are no more friendlier natives in the country than the Members of your Lordships' House. I do not wish to sacrifice that friendship, and so I now resume my seat.
6.24 p.m.
Lord Forte: My Lords, I am most grateful to my noble friend Lord Campbell of Croy for initiating this debate. I am also grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Parry, for being, as usual, enthusiastic about tourism.
My noble friend Lord Mancroft is a very old friend of mine and he has reminded me of the London Tourist Board. That board was formed many years ago. I gave a lunch—it is easy for me to give a lunch occasionally—to nine of my friends. I tapped them for £1,000 each and with £10,000 (I contributed £1,000 myself) we started the London Tourist Board, of which I was the first president. It was a great title, but people laughed at me. They said "Tourism in this country? But look at the weather!" The weather then was not quite as bad as we have recently experienced, but it was bad enough. People said "With our weather, people will not come here. We have no sunshine and we have no beaches of any note", and so on. I told them that people would come here.
Our arrivals at that time amounted to about 600,000 or 700,000 visitors per annum. I said that

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people would want to see this country. I said that they would come here in their millions. Last year, in spite of what the noble Lord, Lord Winstanley, said about high prices reducing the number of tourists, and so on, we have gone from strength to strength and increased the tourist presence every year until last year we had 16 million visitors.
I am inclined to agree with what my noble friend Lord Mancroft said about the size of our country and the necessity, as many noble Lords have said, of distributing our tourist arrivals throughout the country. We have lovely parts which people do not see. We have lovely parts of the country even in Wales which are not seen. There is the north of Scotland, the west coast of Scotland and Edinburgh. Those are places that people must see. Instead of coming here and going across to France and beyond, they should go north and occasionally west. There are many parts of this country which could attract more tourists. However, I agree that this is not a country where we want hordes of tourists. We do not want that. We want good quality tourists because this is a good quality destination.
When they come here there may be the occasional taxi driver, and possibly hotel keeper, who is not as honest as he could be. However, generally I can tell your Lordships that in the course of my career of 50 years in this industry—and in the past 12 months, for example—I have not had a single complaint about prices from anyone, Americans, Continentals, or our own people. I have had complaints about service and about attitudes, but I have never had a complaint about prices.
We are always talking about how expensive are hotels. Of course they are. We want to pay our staff well. We have reduced union membership in my business. This has been done by natural process. There is no need for unions in our business. In my business we have reduced membership from 36 per cent. to 3 per cent. How have we done this? We have done it by paying our people well, by looking after them and by giving them good training. Last year my company alone spent £6 million in training. Therefore, we have satisfied employees. Should we charge less and pay our staff less? Should we charge less and change the sheets three times a week instead of twice a day at times? We are a good quality tourist country.
I have been asked to curtail my few remarks and I shall do so in deference to the House. Do we want people to come here and wander around in thousands but not spend any money? We want people to spend money. British people make up 92½ per cent. of the people employed in our industry. We are not all foreigners. I have said before in this House that perhaps the only tinge of foreignness in my company is myself—maybe; I do not feel foreign, but maybe it is so. We train British chefs; they are English, Welsh, Scottish and Irish chefs. The head chef of Grosvenor House—forgive me if I talk of my own concern but I am really speaking on behalf of 50,000 large, medium and small hoteliers—is called Archer. He is 36 years of age and he is English. Even ten years ago that would have been unheard of.
I am here tonight to plead for your Lordships to focus your attention on this great tourist industry. In this country we speak badly of ourselves and of the
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hotel and catering industry, but we are as good as anyone else in the world today. The BTA statistics tell us that London takes 32nd place among the cities of the world in price. That is not my figure but that of the BTA. In Europe, London ranks behind Rome, Paris and Frankfurt—we are perhaps fifth or sixth. We are not too expensive and we give good value. Let me plead, therefore, that anyone heard denigrating the people who work in this industry should be contradicted.
This industry works 365 days a year, every day including Sunday. We have Sunday opening. What would this country be like without hotels and restaurants which are open on Sunday? I should like to see the shops open. I am sure the people who work in them would say, "Right, I do not have Sunday off, but I do have Thursday off". People work like that in the hotel and catering industry; they are only too happy to do so. Many people volunteer for weekend work and it is a nonsense to say that staff will be annoyed by Sunday opening. They will not be annoyed; they will co-operate.
As I said before, the people in this industry work at weekends, Saturdays and Sundays, and on holidays such as Christmas Day and Easter Day. Every day there are people who work, sometimes until 3 o'clock in the morning. They are there whenever it is necessary. They rise to the occasion. Why should these people have to read in the papers or see on television or in the media somewhere that they are not efficient and do not know what they are doing, or that the industry is not as good here as it is in other parts of the world? It is as good as any industry of its kind anywhere.
I am sorry I have been a little emphatic but, as I promised that I would take only five minutes, I have had to curtail my remarks and pack as much as I could into the few words I have said. I thank your Lordships.
6.34 p.m.
Lord Auckland: My Lords, I should like to associate myself with the tributes that have been paid to my noble friend Lord Campbell of Croy not only for initiating this debate in his usual very convincing manner but for the timing of it, because the tourist season is now just about upon us.
The former constituency of my noble friend contains some of the finest scenery in the world. Anyone who has gone from Grantown-on-Spey to Nairn across the Dava Moor, particularly when the weather is fine, will recognise that. Also, it is always a pleasure to follow my noble friend Lord Forte, whose contribution to the hotel, catering and tourist industry in this country and elsewhere in the world is unique.
I should like to say a word or two about hotels because several members of my family are concerned with the hotel and catering industry in various forms. My brother has now turned the home of my late grandparents in Perthshire into a country house hotel, which three years ago won the Egon Ronay award of the year. I mention this because the staff employed there—managers, chefs, cooks, and those who wait at table (who are mostly youngsters)—are all British. We have that tradition. Race relations or anything of that sort are not in question here. In a time of high unemployment what is wrong with giving

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opportunities to British people? Youngsters grasp them extremely well.
Last week I opened the Peterborough Trading Association. It is, in fact, part of the Youth Opportunities Scheme, in which I know my noble friend the Minister who is to reply tonight takes an extremely conscientious interest. Some of the youngsters there are studying catering. Probably not many of them will go to hotels; they will rather enter the industrial catering and canteen catering fields, but perhaps some of them will graduate to hotels and boarding houses and will serve tourists. I believe that schemes such as this are extremely valuable for training our own people to serve in such establishments.
It is unfortunate that young people in this country think that it is beneath their dignity to wait at table. A nephew of mine who served a nine-month apprenticeship as a commis waiter at a leading London hotel found that some of
the language which was thrown at him was a bit fruity and that he was chased from pillar to post, as they say, but he enjoyed it; it was a marvellous experience for him. As has already been said, there are now more of our young people who are entering the catering industry. Of course it is a hard life. It is a seven-day-a-week job and it can mean working 24 hours a day, particularly in the larger hotels, because public holidays, such as Christmas, bring in quite a number of tourists, as do holiday times during the height of the summer season.
I do not think we need to be too gloomy about our British weather. The weather this year is something of an exception, which is true not only of this country but of other parts of Europe. Certainly in Scotland, where I have spent much of my life, as has my family, they have far better weather there than many people think and the publicists give credit for. I think that somebody, possibly someone from one of the tourist boards, should proclaim that Scotland not only has decent weather but often has weather which is better than in many other parts of these islands, because I believe that tourism in Scotland is most important.
The noble Lord, Lord Winstanley, quoted from Polly Toynbee's article in the Guardian, which I too have read. She raises an important point when she speaks about the public conveniences. Tourists now come over en famille and when there are children and elderly people in the party they have to make more convenience stops. At the present time on over 100 miles of our M25 motorway there is not one refreshment centre or public convenience. I know there are franchises being offered for such places, but this is a deplorable situation and I hope that the Government will take note of it when motorways are built in the future so that priority is given to these matters, because that is the kind of thing which tourists really expect.
Mention has been made of conference centres. We could do a great deal for our balance of payments by having better conference centres. Wembley is fine but it is a long way from the centre of London. Helsinki has a most magnificent conference centre in the Finlandia Halls where the SALT talks took place, only a few miles from the centre of that lovely city. I hope that the Government will take on board the need for
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something to be done here. I feel that we have much to offer tourists. I would hope, however, that our railway stations could be cleaned up. Victoria station is not a pretty sight for the tourist. This is not necessarily the fault of British Rail; it is often the fault of the consumer. But here, again, is a matter that needs looking into.
This has been a timely debate. We are in debt to my noble friend for having allowed us to discuss the subject.
6.41 p.m.
Lord Montagu of Beaulieu: My Lords, I agree with my noble friend Lord Auckland that the debate initiated by my noble friend Lord Campbell is indeed timely and apt. I should like to say a few words about what I know the world considers to be Britain's greatest tourist asset. I refer of course to our heritage—our historic buildings, our churches and cathedrals, our museums, our historic towns, our landscapes and our theatres. For nearly 40 years, I have personally been working for, and promoting, both here and overseas, these jewels in Britain's tourist crown. Looking back to 1946, what a remarkable success story it has been! It is the envy of other countries, particularly in Europe. The recent Treasure Houses of Britain exhibition in Washington was recognition of, and tribute to, a success to which successive governments, individuals and organisations like the BTA, the HHA and the National Trust, can claim to have been major contributors.
As past president of the Historic Houses Association and chairman of English Heritage, I cannot emphasise enough the vital importance of our heritage as our principal tourist asset and income earner. It could be said that it is like Spanish sunshine but perhaps rather better because it shines all year round, or at least should do so. There has been a steady increase in the number of secular historic buildings open to the public, partly because public access is a condition of government grant. My only criticism is that we need more buildings open in the off-peak season especially during the winter months. After all, London has, and many parts of Britain should have, a 12-month season. In many historic buildings, however, the opening times are infrequent and inconvenient. It would be helpful to potential visitors if there was greater standardisation of opening times. Of the 145 historic buildings attracting more than 50,000 visitors, nearly one half are closed during the winter. It is the same in respect of the National Trust and private owners. So more could be done to encourage private owners to provide some form of public access in all seasons, perhaps through an employment subsidy.
Access to historic Anglican churches has been sadly declining. Some 30 per cent. of these churches are now kept locked for fear of theft and vandalism. If more volunteers could be recruited or assistance given through the community programme, many more could perhaps be opened. I have no doubt that government investment in our heritage must be one of the best long-term investments. It preserves our historic environment and its treasures for future enjoyment not only by British people but by people from all over the world. This guarantees further increased tourist earnings worldwide.

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English Heritage would of course like more money but we are also trying to earn it. We are playing our part in forging a partnership between the tourist trade and local authorities to improve visitor facilities, the presentation of our heritage and sometimes even the theatrical interpretation of it. Tourism is, above all, a partnership activity and a task that cannot be undertaken by the state alone. The benefits are widespread. Overseas visitors spent last year £1,600 million in our shops.
What often saddens me, however, is that tourism and the great contribution that it makes to the economy in earnings and employment is not recognised as an industry. This is, after all, Industry Year. I believe that tourism deserves the interest and support of industry as a whole. Like the noble Lord, Lord Parry, I was rather saddened to hear Sir John Harvey-Jones recently denigrating tourism in the remarks to which reference has already been made. It is a pity that people like Sir John look upon those employed in the tourist and service industries as not doing a proper job earning wealth for the United Kingdom and that they are perhaps second-class employees compared to those earning wages by manual labour.
I doubt whether one would hear a head of Swiss industry sneering at the benefits that ski-ing brings to Switzerland or indeed a Spanish industrialist knocking the hotel trade and that country's beaches. I can assure Sir John Harvey-Jones that the managers of our heritage are much more sophisticated and professional than wanting to present the public in bogus smocks. If they did, they would not attract 55 million visitors to their houses every year, many of them, no doubt, employees of ICI needing an enjoyable and enlightening leisure experience from the dreary work that they do there.
Certainly, the tourist industry does not aim to replace manufacturing. But there is clearly room for a better understanding between the service industries and the heavier side of industry. All those concerned with tourism warmly welcomed the transfer of responsibility for tourism in this country from the DTI to the Department of Employment under my noble friend Lord Young. My noble friend's interest in tourism and his excellent report on Pleasure, Leisure and Jobs, in particular, came as a breath of fresh air to all, especially the recommendation for signposting. Let us not forget that in this period of decline, for a wide variety of reasons, in our manufacturing industry it is tourism that has been least affected. It has continued to increase at a time of economic difficulty and has provided employment for more than 1.5 million people in this country.
Of course, we must have better training and more, professionalism, especially in marketing. Naturally, we must also have greater support for the BTA and the English Tourist Board, as only they can act as a catalyst to make sure that the right tourist development happens and that it is viable. If there was more time, I could make a case for tourism to receive priority treatment from Her Majesty's Government. All we ask tonight is for equal treatment and recognition of tourism as an industry that can bring great benefits to the country as a whole.
6.47 p.m.
Viscount Montgomery of Alamein: My Lords, this debate, so ably initiated by my noble friend Lord Campbell of Croy, has ranged over a wide variety of different aspects of tourism, and there are many more on which we could touch. I wish to mention one specific aspect of tourism; namely, catering. I shall refer specifically to catering in the restaurant trade. Thirty years ago, food in England was a joke—a rather poor joke, as very few people would think of coming to England, Wales or Scotland to enjoy food. All that has changed. It has changed out of all recognition. Not least among the reasons is the major contribution made by people like my noble friend Lord Forte in this area. The standard of service, to which many noble Lords have referred, is much more respectable. Like other speakers, I was sorry to see service being denigrated in newspaper articles by those who should know better.
I wish to mention two organisations that have contributed to the improvement in standards in our restaurants and to making service respectable. The first is a quango. I recognise that quangos usually come in for a good deal of opprobrium, and not only in your Lordships' House. I wish to refer to the Hotel and Catering Industry Training Board, for that has done an enormous amount of work—I am glad to see that several noble Lords agree—in making service respectable and drawing this to the attention of a wide audience and in pointing out the career opportunities that exist in the hotel and restaurant trade. Indeed, it is worth mentioning that there are careers and that they are well remunerated. I am reliably informed that a successful person in this industry can by the age of 25 be earning more than £20,000 per year in both kitchen and waiting positions. There is nothing disreputable about that: it is worth while.
The HCITB has also been encouraging British native talent in an industry which at one time was dominated by foreigners. The noble Lord, Lord Forte, has mentioned that in his own hotels there are British chefs, and that is the situation all over the place. The fact is that there are now British chefs in Paris, which is indubitably the world centre of haute cuisine.
Another organisation—and here I must declare an interest—is the Restaurateurs Association of Great Britain of which I have the pleasure and honour of being the honorary president. That organisation has also played an important part in collaboration with the HCITB in raising the standards of catering in the restaurant trade in this country. I wish to give one specific example. Last year the RAGB initiated the Young Chef and Young Waiter of the Year Contest. In fact, 2,000 application forms were completed by young people
under 25 and they were narrowed down to the most promising 32 candidates in each sector. Those candidates competed in four regional contests and the winner and runner-up in each regional final came to London and competed in the national final which took place, I am glad to say, at Grosvenor House—once again thanks to the noble Lord. Lord Forte. I am also glad to say that the final was attended by my noble friend Lord Young who I am reliably assured—and unfortunately I was out of the country when it took place—enjoyed himself and thought that it was extremely stimulating.

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That type of contest must do a great deal for the service industry because the winners in both sections—both the young chef and the young waiter of the year—received not only a cash prize but a trip to Hong Kong and one week's work experience—and I repeat, "work experience"—in the Mandarin Hotel, which is another great hotel. Those types of actions have contributed enormously to raising the standards of catering in this country.
My Lords, what more can we do? I believe that probably not very much government action is required in this case. However, there is one subject—and it has been quite rightly anticipated by my noble friend Lord Campbell—which cannot escape mention, and that is the reform of the licensing laws in England and Wales, which are totally archaic. I hope that my noble friend Lord Young will encourage his right honourable friend the Home Secretary to do something about the situation because reform is long overdue. He will appreciate that not only will the reform of the licensing laws do a great deal for both the consuming public and for the trader, but it will create employment and stimulate tourism. It is calculated that 25,000 new jobs would be created by reform of the licensing laws in England and Wales. It is very easy to produce these figures and very difficult to justify them.
However, the fact of the matter is that there are over 50,000 restaurants in England and Wales employing over 300,000 people and therefore it is not unreasonable to suppose that 25,000 new jobs—fewer than 10 per cent. of the whole—would be created by a breakthrough of that kind. It does not require any finance: all it requires is a very simple Bill which I believe I am right in saying would receive all-party support and no opposition from the right reverend Prelates. That in itself would be a great breakthrough, and I hope that we shall hear more about it later.
6.55 p.m.
Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede: My Lords, like other noble Lords, I too should like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy, for introducing this debate and for giving your Lordships the opportunity again to underline the important contribution which is made to our national life by the tourist industry. All noble Lords have spoken about its contribution and about the relative healthy state of the industry.
I do not wish to repeat the impressive figures which have already been given. The noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy, got the debate off to a very good start by giving us the details of the figures. However, we should not delude ourselves that every aspect of the industry is rosy. We must not forget that tourism is a fickle industry and no one should expect or indeed can guarantee that people will continue to travel in the same numbers in the future as in the past.
Whatever work we do to ensure an adequate welcome to visitors, to accommodate them in comfort, and to provide the interests and attractions for them to experience, all that can be undermined by terrorist action. We know of the effect on the Egyptian tourist scene of last year's hijacking of the "Achille Lauro" and the TWA jet. Tourism went down by 80 per cent. We know how instability in individual West
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Indian islands can have disastrous effects on that tourist industry. Closer to home, we know the effect which TV pictures of Heathrow, showing armed guards patrolling the airport, had on the number of North American tourists visiting this country during the following months. Fortunately, memories are short and the damage that can be done to the industry can be overcome by a period of relative tranquillity while these problems recede.
I have said before, and I say again, that London is the gateway for overseas visitors to Britain. If London fails in its task of fulfilling that role, it is the rest of the United Kingdom which will suffer and the rest of Europe which will benefit. I should like to take the opportunity again to applaud the role of the noble Lord, Lord Forte, in helping to found the London Tourist Board so many years ago. I recall his reminding me that at that time there were only eight hotels in his empire; now there are 800 hotels.
I have for some years been particularly concerned about the London hotels situation. Criticism has been voiced in this House about the high cost of London hotels. That has been refuted by the noble Lord, Lord Forte, this afternoon. However, the prices in London hotels must seem particularly heavy to North American visitors who, in dollar terms, over the past five or six years enjoyed almost stable prices for hotels in London. In the past few months the rise in the value of the pound against the dollar—the pound now purchases 1.5 dollars as opposed to purchasing 1 dollar not so very long ago—has meant that as regards exchange rates alone there will be something approaching a 50 per cent. increase in price for North American visitors. That will have a sobering effect on the number of visitors this year from the North American continent.
At the other end of the market, there is the problem concerning hotels in the budget accommodation range. A number of hotels at the lower end of the market—two-star accommodation—are being increasingly used by local authorities to house homeless people, with the result that at least 2,000 hotel rooms have been taken out of the tourist accommodation which is available. This means, with the lack of building of new hotels in London, that there is an increasing crisis in this area.
This has primarily arisen, as has been said, through the local authorities in the central area of London adopting, as my noble kinsman Lord Mersey said, a NIMBY attitude towards new hotel developments. One would accept that there may be an argument in some places for restricting the number of visitors, but these arguments cannot apply to London, the world's most popular destination, where a number of new attractions such as Greenwich, the Museum of London, Covent Garden and the Cabinet war rooms have opened in recent years.
My noble kinsman referred to the problem in York. I am informed that more tourist revenue is earned in Bristol than in York, as in Bristol they have built new hotels, people stay the night, and therefore there are more tourist earnings in that city; in York, with such a restriction on tourist accommodation, people have to make a fleeting visit and therefore do not contribute so much to that city.

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I return for a second to the problem of hotels in London. What I have particularly in mind is that proposals have recently been rejected to convert the British Airports Authority building in Buckingham Gate and the Crown Agents building in Millbank into hotels. These buildings have both had office use previously, and to convert them to hotels would have changed their pattern of use but would not have introduced a great number of extra people into these locations. I know that the noble Lord the Minister has a report being submitted to him on hotel accommodation in London and that that report is to be published on 15th May. I would not expect him to comment this evening, but I hope that when the report is published we shall have a positive response to it fairly shortly thereafter.
Those of us who have been asking for action in this area have warned for a number of years that a crisis would materialise at this point in time. I do not refer only to this Government, but governments for many years past have taken no action, and that crisis is now with us and will be with us for some years. Whatever measures are taken now, it will be some years before the new hotels can be built.
Let me add another point. We have recently seen the splendid refurbishment and upgrading of some London hotels. A side effect has been a reduction in the number of rooms available. All these factors have aggravated the hotel situation in London, which is becoming very serious indeed.
I move on to the question of the funding of the British Tourist Authority. I know that the Government have recently increased the funding for the BTA to promote overseas tourism. We applaud that, but I understand that in dollar terms—a lot of the BTA's money is spent overseas, particularly in North America—the result was to increase the BTA grant in that section to what it was two or three years ago, and it did not provide a real increase in dollar terms compared with what it had some years ago. I have no quarrel with the Minister's decision to tie parts of the BTA grant to specific purposes, but it is important that it should have sufficient funds to market overseas in North America.
I should now like to turn to an area which is important, and that is the question of reception of visitors on arrival. This has been a continuous bone of contention, particularly by the noble Baroness, Lady Burton, who has persevered and argued about this. We know that there are problems at Customs and with immigration facilities both at Heathrow and Gatwick. This is a matter which requires constant vigilance. I understand that some of the airlines have even offered to pay for additional immigration officers to be available at peak times if something can be done to reduce the queues.
There is also a question of visitors being able to obtain information once they arrive. They should find this freely available and not have to fight for it. They should know what facilities there are, and should be made to feel welcome.
I have underlined some of the problems which I see the industry facing. I return to the theme of the debate: that tourism is a great national asset. It provides, as we have already said, a massive number of jobs and is
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capable of providing many more. My noble friend Lord Parry spoke eloquently about this. The English Tourist Board, through its support for tourism ventures by Section 4 grants which are administered by it and the regional tourist boards, has stimulated a great deal of investment in the tourist industry.
This scheme continues to be important, because financial institutions in the City are often reluctant to invest in this sector. The City appears to think that tourism is a lightweight, high-risk, low-return industry, yet tourism projects, supported by the English Tourist Board, have a good record of success. What would be of immense help to the English Tourist Board is if the Government could guarantee its Section 4 money over a five-year period.
I am glad to hear that the regional tourist boards are now to have responsibility in administering the schemes for grants with a capital cost of up to 100,000. I welcome this. The regional boards are one of the most important elements in the tourist board structure. They are the organisations responsible for visitors receiving a warm welcome to this country.
The noble Lord, Lord Winstanley, spoke of the need for more conference centres outside London. There are already quite a number of purpose-built conference centres outside London—Harrogate, Eastbourne, Bournemouth, Birmingham and so on. There are hotels with facilities there. I give a word of warning here. From the noble Lord's speech he seemed to be almost suggesting plonking them down here and there throughout the country. For a conference centre to succeed there must be an adequate number of hotel beds within the area.
One of the problems that we know Brighton has is that it does not have sufficient hotel beds of the appropriate quality. By this I mean with a bedroom and bathroom en suite, as opposed to a bathroom a mile down the corridor. Such facilities are expected by international visitors, and you have to have the infrastructure there first before building a conference centre. Worldwide I am worried that a great many conference centres are being built, with the effect that a lot of them will tend to be under-used. But in London we benefit from some very good conference centres which tend to be full a great deal of the time.
I have taken, I think, more than my allocation of time. I should finally like to say that tourism is an important industry. It needs to be cosseted and looked after. We must work hard, sell hard, and see that visitors to this country are welcomed and looked after.
7.10 p.m.
The Secretary of State for Employment (Lord Young of Graffham): My Lords, I join with all in your Lordships' House to express my gratitude to my noble friend Lord Campbell of Croy for giving us this opportunity to debate the importance of tourism. In his speech to this House in May 1985 the noble Lord, Lord Parry, drew attention to the fact that up until then, tourism had been debated by your Lordships only three times in 11 years. Now we have had two debates in less than 12 months. This in itself would seem to indicate that significant progress has been made of late in elevating tourism to its rightful place as a topic for serious discussion.

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The contributions to the debate have already indicated why tourism is worthy of this attention and I do not propose to repeat all the figures which we have already been given. I am, however, happy to see that my prediction in May last year, when we last considered this matter, that we should again be talking about an increase in the figures has indeed come to pass. We had 14.6 million visits to the UK, an increase of 7 per cent. over the previous year, and that made 1985 the second successive record-breaking year. This is an opportunity for us to congratulate ourselves to ensure that in future we shall have a third, a fourth and perhaps a fifth record-breaking year.
My noble friend Lord Campbell of Croy drew attention to Scotland's great tourist attractions—two new tourist attractions for those who are prepared to leave England and, who knows, that may be cause in itself: shopping hours and licensing hours on a Sunday. We shall have to see how that develops and whether all the tourists in England go north of the Border on Sundays. The traditional nature of the Scottish Sunday will be very different from the traditional nature of an English Sunday. But it is the great diversity of choice in the United Kingdom that we must really capitalise on—not. I hasten to add, the great choice of weather that we offer our visitors but the enormous choice that we offer in our heritage. My noble friend Lord Campbell referred to the love-hate relationship which we have as a nation with caravans. I suspect that what he is really talking about is that every Briton who has one loves his own and hates everybody else's. It is very much that kind of relationship.
I particularly welcomed the contribution made by the noble Lord, Lord Parry. All in your Lordships' House will agree that the time has come for us to declare a close season on this year's Dimbleby lecture save to say how much I agreed with many of the remarks made by the noble Lord. We must never forget that still this nation exports per capita more than the United States of America and more per head than Japan. We still are an industrial nation. That is no reason for saying that we should not be a service sector nation and that we still should ensure that the 14.6 million visitors who come to our shores and who contribute less than half of all the money taken on tourism want to come again. Indeed, if we look at what is happening within tourism we find that we are going more and more towards a year-round facility. In pursuance of my duties, as your Lordships would expect, as a zealous Secretary of State I went to Alton Towers last Friday to open the Grand Canyon Rapid Ride.
Lord Graham of Edmonton: We saw you.
Lord Young of Graffham: My Lords, the fact that I did so in snow was neither here nor there. What was interesting even in that weather, which was cold for any time of the year, was that when I left just after lunch 7,000 visitors had already arrived. Even at outdoor centres of that sort, providing the value that they do, 7,000 visitors at this time of year is extremely good.
Many in your Lordships' House will recall that under Section 4 we have granted a £1½ million facility
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to Center Parks holiday self-catering development in Sherwood Forest. This will be of immense attraction all the year round and will comprise some 600 holiday bungalows to be completed next year, providing yet another 250 jobs. I referred to Alton Towers. The employment at Alton Towers has gone from 50 to 1,250 in
five years and the Grand Canyon Rapid Ride will, I am told, give another 250 jobs. All this is to be welcomed.
The noble Lord, Lord Winstanley, talked much of Sunday trading, but I hope he will not suggest that as a Minister of the Crown I should recommend anyone to break the law by shopping on Sunday. We shall have to see what happens. I join in the contribution made to the debate by my noble friend Lord Mancroft. What is perhaps the British weakness is not over-egging the pudding, but perhaps overemphasising our faults. I do not believe we should be complacent about anything, but many of the remarks in the article in the Guardian that was referred to by many of your Lordships did not accord with the survey taken by the BTA in overseas attitudes. Indeed, only 4 per cent. of all overseas tourists thought that we were unfriendly and two out of three Americans found that we were very friendly. I believe that we should try to see where we can prove ourselves, but not broadcast to the world our faults. Let us keep that in balance.
I certainly agree with the noble Lord, Lord Winstanley, that duty free is neither free of duty nor cheap. But it represents a different kind of purchase. While we are ambivalent about our desire to have tourists we are not ambivalent about our desire to have jobs. We mut recognise that we must have the right number of tourists to support the right number of jobs; which brings me to my noble friend Lord Mersey with NIMBY. That is an expression which I am glad to see is being propagated: not in my back yard. It is very difficult to bring home to many authorities who are elected by those who do not wish to see any change at all, but would rather like to see change in the next authority, that we must allow a certain amount of change if we are to adapt in our modern society.
The noble Lord asked me who is right in York. I had the privilege of visiting Jorvik museum. I say "privilege" because I enjoyed thoroughly a visit to York. There are many aspects of the work of a minister concerned with tourism that are not all bad. Jorvik is a remarkable example of a Section 4 grant. It received £250,000 some three years ago, added about five or six times that amount in terms of loans, and will have those all paid off by 1989–90. It will be making a substantial profit of about £750,000, I am told, each year for the York Trust, and I am told that for each pound that the museum takes the city of York takes £7. This is a very good way in which tourism is shown to work to the benefit of the economy as a whole and the locality in particular.
Since I came to your Lordships' House, the noble Viscount, Lord St. Davids, has made me an enthusiast for inland waterways. I have heard many times from him and I have learnt a great deal from him. I love the concept of mobile country cottages. The fact that we have 3,000 miles of inland waterways is something on which we must capitalise. Within the Manpower Services Commission, the community programme is contributing a considerable amount of work on the

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Kennet and Avon Canal, and I hope it will continue to do so. I know that the regional tourist boards are also co-operating with the British Waterways Board. The North-West Tourist Board is keen on working with waterways and I hope this is something that will grow.
I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Brentford for his recognition of the increase in grant which was given this year to the BTA. He referred to the office in Atlanta which opened this year. Last December I had the pleasure of opening an office for the BTA in Hong Kong, which shows from how far afield we are now beginning to get tourists coming to this country. He referred, as did other noble Lords, to the Heathrow exercise which had an unfortunate effect in the United States of America. I suspect that, as in all these matters, memories are short. We have a Royal Wedding this summer and I hope that will have a considerable effect on tourism during the course of the year.
Only yesterday the BTA published a booklet called First Impressions, which relates to the reception by overseas visitors of the inquiries it made. I commend it to your Lordships. In referring to publications, perhaps I may say that my own department has published Action for Jobs, where we have a section on training for tourism to show that this is all very much part of the facilities the Government are keen to encourage. Indeed, the noble Lady, Lady Kinloss, referred to £200 million a year and 35,000 jobs which came about. That is an immense amount of money. Perhaps I may correct the noble Baroness by saying that it is not £10 million a year that the Government give to tourism; it is £40 million in a year. The importance, I suspect, to this industry, once again and time and again, is not so much money as service. She referred to information centres that should be open when tourists are there. That is something which we could all learn and perhaps help in. Indeed, it is one of the matters dealt with in the publication Pleasure, Leisure and Jobs.
I think that all Members of your Lordships' House were interested when my noble friend Lord Forte confirmed to all of us who may have forgotten it that there is no such thing as a free lunch and told us shortly afterwards that nobody ever complains about the prices in his establishments. We are all grateful to him for the work that he did in establishing the London Tourist Board and perhaps one of the reasons why he has gone from eight hotels to 800 hotels—as I think was referred to in the course of the debate this afternoon—is that he is spending £6 million a year on training and that he recognises, as do his companies, that quality counts; that it is quality for the value of money that people are looking for; that we should be attracting not only overseas visitors but our own. The fact that 92.5 per cent. of employees in his hotels are Britons is something for which we all commend him. Indeed, I hope that we all could find that this industry represents a worthwhile career. If I may say so, it was noble of him to boast of, and to be proud of, as we all are, that in prices we are behind Rome and cheaper than Rome. It is good to see that London prices are now 32nd in the world, which is something that I think we should advertise more widely.
My noble friend Lord Auckland paid tribute to the contribution which YTS will make towards this
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industry. I believe that the two-years YTS will change attitudes profoundly in this country. The opportunity that so many young people will have to spend two years in work-based training to become professionals, and the contribution which the review of vocational qualifications will, I hope, later on this year make to this industry, will make a profound difference. I should like to assure my noble friend that the M.25 will not be without service stations. There are four planned: one in South Mimms will open later this year and one in Thurrock in 1987. A number of noble Lords referred not only to the need to have conference centres but to have conference centres in London. Since we are talking of tourism and leisure, within a 7-iron shot of your Lordships' House the Queen Elizabeth II conference centre is shortly to open and I think that all noble Lords will find that this is a very worthwhile addition to the conference facilities which we have in London.
My noble friend Lord Montagu—and may I pay tribute to the work he is doing to encourage tourism?—drew attention to the need to put many of our "jewels in our crown" on display in order to lengthen our season. I think that is a very important matter. Tourists come here not for our climate. I think that is self-evident. They come for our culture and for our tradition, and I believe we must find ways of lengthening the season. I listened with interest to the suggestion that we would use the community programme to help in many ways in this matter I shall certainly take that away and pay attention to it.
I am very grateful that my noble friend Lord Montgomery of Alamein paid tribute to the excellent work done by the Hotel and Catering Industry Training Board. That certainly is so. I wonder if it is because of the quality of that training that we have seen in the past year the number of people employed by tourism-related industries, including hotels, go up by 5 per cent.; those employed in restaurants and cafés increase by 4 per cent.; those in public houses and bars increase by 3 per cent; those in night-clubs and licensed clubs increase by 3 per cent.; and in libraries, museums and art galleries another 5 per cent. increase.
Throughout, the leisure fields are fast growing and giving real and valued employment. Part of the success of that is the enthusiasm of many people. I think that I have been to few occasions that I have enjoyed more than the "Young Chef and Young Waiter of the Year Award". The enthusiasm of the young people was greatly to be admired and so, of course, was the fact that they were all British. We would not like anyone in your Lordships' House to think that we were being too chauvinist and we welcome the French with enthusiasm—at least their champagne—but the young waiters and young chefs were British and very professional. The award is getting more and more popular. Last year I think there were 2,000 entrants and they are hoping that next year there will be 3,000 or more. I look forward greatly to what happens.
I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, and I can only say that I agree with him enormously that memories are short and that the tourists will return. I do not think that we can in any way restrict London or say that London is too small for tourists. At the moment, London has seven out of the 10 of the tourists who come to this country and only 3 out of 10

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actually leave London. But London is very large. I had the privilege this morning of going to open a new training scheme in Docklands. The more I looked around Docklands the more I realised that we have within our own city a new area of tourism. When the light railway is opened in a year or two's time, I suspect that we shall find that that will be a great attraction.
I am intrigued by the thought of the battle that is developing in your Lordships' House as to whether Bristol may be a better tourist attraction than York. The more our cities vie with each other to be top of the league in tourist attraction, the more we shall actually do to encourage tourism.
I await the report which is to come to me shortly on the position of hotels in London. I cannot say that I do so with any great feeling of enthusiasm. The attitudes in London are well known but we must do our bit to educate all who live in this city that we must encourage the growth of tourism and the growth of employment in particular.
If I may say so, the overseas tourists' loss as a result of the drop in the dollar/pound exchange rate or the apparent increase in London prices, will be equally matched by the gain going to the BTA when they come to spend dollars in the United States on advertising. I hope that the increased grant to the BTA and the increased purchasing power that they will now have in dollars will help considerably. Perhaps I may tell the noble Lord that we are currently considering the results of an internal evaluation of Section 4 grants for cost-effectiveness which will help in decisions about its scope over the longer term. I hope that announcements about this will be made in due course.
Since we last debated this matter in your Lordships' House, I published the report on Pleasure, Leisure and Jobs. If I may take literally a moment or two, I may briefly bring out one or two of the highlights. Ministers are now sitting down and co-ordinating within government tourism both with the territorial Ministers and with civil servants. The British Travel Centre in Lower Regent Street will be open to the public on 1st May. This will help greatly to increase the number of tourists who go out of London. I hope that we shall be seeing some comments of welcome for the consultative document about coach parking which the Department of Transport published on 20th March. I hope the document will suggest a number of ways forward and I look positively to getting a real response to those ideas.
We have enabled nine national museums and galleries in England to keep extra money earned from receipts, and I hope that that will mean that they will be open when tourists and visitors want to go there. That will be a great step forward. In addition, since we last debated this matter, we have a new voluntary system of hotel classification in England, and I look forward to seeing that that will help to improve standards. Also, the Department of Transport will be introducing major improvements in tourism signposts later for introduction this summer.
Finally, what Pleasure, Leisure and Jobs did more than anything else was to draw attention to education and training in this great industry. All of us who are in this industry know that it has to be professional to
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succeed and all of us who are involved in this industry are determined that it shall succeed.
7.30 p.m.
Lord Campbell of Croy: My Lords, in the short time left to me, I should like to thank all the noble Lords and the noble Baroness who have taken part in the debate for making their well-informed contributions which, felicitously, covered a very wide range of subjects. Different parts of the country were considered as well as various leisure and recreational pursuits. The speakers drew from their personal experience of positions in or connected with the industry.
I particularly took note of the warnings which were given by my noble friend Lord Mancroft and by the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby. Tact and sensitive attitudes are necessary in an industry with a fickle clientele. I should like particularly to thank my noble friend the Secretary of State for the very full reply that he has given. I am sure he will have noted the suggestions made during the debate for particular improvements. I beg leave to withdraw my Motion for Papers.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

Sizewell Power Stations
7.31 p.m.
The Earl of Halsbury The Earl of Halsbury rose to ask Her Majesty's Government what commitments have been made by the CEGB with respect to the proposed power stations at Sizewell in advance of the report and recommendations of the inquiry being held there and in advance of the Government's decisions whether to accept the report and recommendations and to choose between the PWR and AGR as alternative designs for construction thereat.
The noble Earl said The noble Earl said: My Lords, in rising to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper, by leave of the House, may I correct three slips of the tongue that I made when addressing your Lordships' House on a previous occasion recently on a Motion put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Ezra? The hour was late; I was in a hurry to help the House get through its business and I was speaking from notes and not from a prepared manuscript. I attributed the Oyster Creek breakthrough announcement to Westinghouse instead of to General Electric; I coupled the use of mixed oxide fuel to the new Mitsubishi-Westinghouse redesigned AGR, there being no such necessary coupling; and, worst of all, I opined that the electrical base-load of this country would be based on coal for a long time ahead. I meant, of course, the non-base-load. I shall try not to score any more "home goals" in the course of my Question this evening.
I put this Question down in order to try to elucidate what on earth the CEGB is up to in behaving in an unprecedented fashion, apparently jumping the gun and risking bouncing the Government into an enforced decision which on earlier occasions it has declared to be an open one pertaining to itself alone.
Some three years ago, a public inquiry was set up into a proposal by the CEGB to install a power station

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at Sizewell to be fuelled by a Westinghouse-type PWR nuclear reactor, re-engineered to British Safety Standards, alongside the existing Magnox station there, known as Sizewell A. The new station was to be known as Sizewell B. In his announcement of arrangements for the inquiry the inspector said that he would be considering the available alternative designs for thermal reactors.
The inquiry listened to what was, in my view, an unprecedented conflict of evidence between the Central Electricity Generating Board and the South Scotland Electricity Board as to the merits of an alternative design based on their experiences of two sister stations of identical design built by the same consortium, the Nuclear Power Group: one operated by the Central Electricity Generating Board at Hinkley Point and known as Hinkley B and the other operated by the South Scotland Electricity Board at Hunterston, known as Hunterston B.
The consortium that built them was forced by ministerial and industrial pressure into a shotgun marriage with its competitor, the BNDC, to form the National Nuclear Corporation—a consultant designer for the CEGB, where TNPG was a turnkey contractor. It is the old TNPG designers who are currently in charge of the two successor designs for Torness and Heysham II. They are now just about complete and soon to come on line, probably within the next 12 months.
In evidence to Sub-Committee F of the Select Committee on EC affairs of this House, which is currently engaged on a study of nuclear power in Europe, the CEGB described Hinkley B as an expensive disappointment. By contrast, the SSEB described Hunterston B as a world leader in nuclear station performance during the course of the Sizewell inquiry and elsewhere. Is this not an unprecedented situation, with two national bodies, one in England and the other in Scotland, taking up adversarial attitudes to the same identical design, each of them having one of two indentical twin sister stations?
I must at this point emphasise that the abbreviation "PWR" in this context stands for a Westinghouse design, serially ordered worldwide and particularly in France. On the other hand, the letters AGR stand for three, or, if you distinguish between two of them, as you may, four different designed prototypes: Dungeness B, a disaster; Hartlepool and Heysham I, unsatisfactory so far but perhaps remediable, subject to spending another hundred million on them; and Hinkley B and Hunterston B, very successful but as to whose merits the CEGB and the SSEB are at loggerheads. It is therefore essential to emphasise that nowhere can you point to an AGR as if it were a member of a species, all of which are identical and of which any particular station was typical.
I must at this point ask your Lordships to backtrack over questions in this House relating to a situation in which the inspector at the Sizewell inquiry will express a preference for a re-engineered PWR or a re-engineered AGR, already represented by the two stations nearing completion at Torness and Heysham. In the first case, the Government will have either to accept or reject the inspector's recommendation. In the second case, they will have to make a decision.
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Either way, the last word must be with the Government.
Let me therefore take a look at what they have said so far. Let us take the 25th February last year. Following a Starred Question by the noble Lord. Lord Ezra, the following exchanges took place on a supplementary question. I quote from col. 812 of the Official Report. I asked:
"will the noble Lord confirm that, in the event of the inspector preferring the AGR, the Government will approach his recommendation with an open mind and not feel themselves in any way bound by the earlier preference of the CEGB?".
The noble Lord, Lord Gray of Contin, who was replying for the Government then, as he will be replying this evening, said:
"My Lords, yes, I can give the noble Earl the assurance that the Government will approach the report of the inspector with the open mind which Governments traditionally use on such occasions".
If the situation as expressed in this House by the Government is entirely open, how can the CEGB possibly justify its commitment to the PWR in advance of the decision by placing contracts for components to the tune of £190 million (as stated in answer to Parliamentary Questions previously), together with cancellation clauses adding another £10 million, as stated in a Written Answer to a Question of mine on this matter?
It has been defended elsewhere as a normal commercial risk. It is nothing of the kind. I have never heard of risk-taking on this scale. Its consequences, however, are foreseeable. Whatever the merits of the case, we may be bounced by the sheer magnitude of the expenditure into a decision which may be the wrong one or which may not be what we would prefer because of the large-scale commitments made in advance of a decision which we have been assured is still an open question. Does this not amount to positive misbehaviour by the CEGB, and is not its board collectively answerable for a situation in which it may be bouncing us into backing the wrong horse?
I most earnestly entreat the Government to perpend upon what I might call the quintuple banana skin on to which they will be dumped in such a case. Let us look at what people will say. The environmental lobby will protest that the AGR is "user-friendly" in a way which the PWR never can be. The features making for its safety are intrinsic: monophase coolant which cannot boil dry and high thermal inertia with a long time in hand to cope with any incident that may arise. There are low radiation doses to plant operatives. All those are in contrast to features making for safety in the case of the PWR, which are extrinsic and dependent on a lot of clever engineering devices paid for by complexity leading to more things being able to go wrong. In evidence before Sub-Committee F, Mr. Gustaffson of the Swedish State Power Board told us that he would not want a Sizewell-type re-engineered PWR for Sweden as it was too complicated.
I come next to banana skin No. 2: the employment lobby will protest that the AGR, being more capital-intensive overall, will be more labour-intensive during the constructional phase and will give more employment, particularly where it is wanted most.
Banana skin No. 3: the anti-French, anti-European and anti-American lobbies will gang up in alliance

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with one another and protest against the high percentage of manufactured components that will have to be imported—30 per cent. of the manufactured components, so they will argue—whereas it is precisely in manufacturing industry that our unemployment problems lie.
Banana skin No. 4: those of the engineering fraternity who are familiar with the pros and cons of the subject, are strongly polarised in favour of the AGR and make no bones about it. Comments to the effect, "Why buy a Ford when you have a Cadillac in the garage?" are in wide circulation. Men of the eminence of Sir Francis Tombs, chairman of Rolls-Royce and earlier chairman of the SSEB and the Electricity Council in turn, have come down publicly in favour of the AGR. An article in the current number of The Scientific American describes the Westinghouse—Mitsubishi effort to produce a safer PWR with a lower fuel rating. What will the CEGB end with, according to what people say? Just one more
obsolete, overcomplicated prototype by the time that it is built. All those adverse judgments by engineers will be quoted adversarially in the context of banana skins 1, 2 and 3.
I come now to the worst of the lot: political banana skin No. 5 will act as cement to wrap up the aggregate represented by Nos. 1, 2, 3 and 4. Staking £200 million at evens is not a normal commercial risk. In no other context can I think of it ever being done. It could only be justified if the odds are not at evens. If the CEGB, having privately decided on a PWR, has been privately assured that the choice is not a choice but a certainty and always was from the beginning, the time-wasting Sizewell inquiry was a fudge from the word "go"—from beginning to end in fact. Whose fudge? That is what will be asked and that is what must be answered.
I ask the Government for straight answers to three straight questions. First, do they confirm, as previously, that the final decision as between those two reactors is still in their own hands and that, although they may take them into consideration in coming to a decision, the wishes of the CEGB and the recommendations of the Sizewell inspector are not binding on the Government until they have made up their minds? Secondly, if the answer to my first question is affirmative, as it ought to be, how can they justify the CEGB's expenditure on PWR components as a normal commercial risk? Thirdly, will they categorically deny that the level of expenditure on a putative PWR at Sizewell risks bouncing them into a loss of choice which they, I hope, will confirm to be still free today? My Lords, I beg to ask the Question standing in my name.
7.45 p.m.
Baroness Airey of Abingdon: My Lords, I thank my noble kinsman for introducing this important subject this evening. I speak with great humility in view of the vast knowledge of other Peers who will speak this evening. I can speak only from my personal knowledge, I had the privilege of sitting on Sub-Committee F, to which my noble kinsman referred. Last week we heard evidence about Sweden. I found it enormously interesting, because Mr. Gustaffson told
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us that it was the accident to the PWR at Three-Mile Island which so politically influenced the Swedish Government that they decided not to build any more nuclear power stations. When the ones that they have come to an end they will be without one.
I thought that strange because Sweden is an advanced country and uses a great deal of electricity. Apart from the institutions which use electricity, a great deal is used in the home because in nearly every home there is not just a refrigerator, a washing machine and a washing-up machine, but a computer. Their electricity needs will be great.
The members of the Sub-Committee wondered what the solution would be. I understand that Sweden is prepared to import electricity from nuclear power stations in other countries. However, that does not give one much independence. I found that point of great interest.
I have visited Heysham II and Torness in construction. I have discussed the performance of the British AGR with scientists and technicians and I was assured that during the recent miners' strike the AGRs which were working contributed largely to our lack of problems at that time. I have also read the SSEB's report to which my noble friend has referred.
I cast my mind back to an earlier debate which took place on 25th February 1985. My noble friend the Minister, in answer to a question which I will not quote, said:
"At the present time we do not want to close options".—[Official Report, 25/2/85; col. 812.]
If that is so, has the CEGB—pre-empting the decision of the inquiry and presumably the debate which I imagine will follow in both Houses—committed the consumers to the contracts about which we heard in my noble friend's speech for components for a PWR which would commit us to at least £190 million with a cancellation fee of £ 10 million, making a total of at least £200 million? Will my noble friend the Minister comment on that and tell us whether the consumers will be paying for that?
7.48 p.m.
Baroness Robson of Kiddington: My Lords, perhaps I may add my thanks to the noble Earl for raising this subject. The Question relates merely to the Sizewell inquiry. It is not a Question about whether or not we believe in nuclear power. I intend to confine myself to the Question that has been raised.
In my view, the Sizewell inquiry was presented with an impossible task. It was asked to look at the possible development of Sizewell B in the context of British energy policy. So far as I am aware, we have no energy policy in this country. The inquiry started by looking at the various aspects of the type of energy policy that we might have. As a result of the inquiry, an enormous amount of documentation has been put together which, if built upon, could create an energy policy for this country. But that was not really what the Sizewell inquiry was supposed to be about. As a result of that elongation of the inquiry, even major national organisations, and individual local people certainly, have run out of money to make their representations when it comes to the point of deciding what type of nuclear power should be installed at Sizewell.

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This all gives us enormous food for thought. Are we running these major public inquiries and major planning inquiries the right way, so that the input can be meaningful to the nation? I suggest that major inquiries of this kind should be run in two stages. There should be an original inquiry to examine the need for the proposed development, including alternatives, and that inquiry would prepare a brief for the second stage of the inquiry. The second stage would only proceed once the need had been established and it would be concerned with specific site aspects, with environmental aspects and with all the other input that goes into a public inquiry. I believe that if Sizewell had been handled in that way we might have had the answer by now.
Such a system would also have enabled the CEGB to place the order for the primary circuit with some assurance that the expenditure would not be wasted, because the original decision about the proposed development and the need having been established, it was then a question for the second stage as to the environmental input. I believe that this would have avoided the position in which we now find ourselves, and it would also have avoided what went on in the other place on 9th February, 1984, when, in answer to a question, the Prime Minister said at col. 1018 of the Official Report:
"If there is to be any chance of the project going ahead it is vital to order those component parts now. If the decision eventually is to let the project proceed, it will turn out to have been a very economical move. The project might not go ahead for a long time. If it does not proceed it will be necessary to dispose of those parts elsewhere".
In other words, resell them.
But where are we as a nation to resell those parts now? Most countries are cutting down their PWR programmes and some of them, like the United States, have cancelled them altogether. Where are we to find the customers for these parts that we have contracted to buy? The noble Earl, Lord Halsbury, has asked "Are we therefore committed already?" If so, it seems to me an enormous tragedy, because we have heard both the noble Earl and the noble Baroness talk about the alternative place of the AGR, and particularly the submissions made to the Layfield inquiry by the SSEB chairman, Donald Miller. He proved—I think to his own satisfaction and certainly to mine—that the new AGR can produce electricity at 1.99p per unit, whereas the PWR costs 2.07p per unit.
In addition, one of the attractions of the AGR is that it can be positioned much nearer conurbations and can contribute to the energy conservation of this country by providing district heating. I think that the Government are in honour bound to answer quite clearly the questions asked by the noble Earl, Lord Halsbury, and to satisfy this House that we are not committed to something that most of us would not like to accept.
7.55 p.m.
Viscount Mersey: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Earl for raising this Question. I must confess that I am quite blinded by his expertise. However, unlike the noble Baroness, Lady Robson, I took this Sizewell PWR question to be symptomatic of the great nuclear debate and I was planning to speak generally for a very short time—around four minutes. But if noble Lords
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feel that even that is too long then, if they will just shout out, "Shut up and sit down" that is exactly what I shall do.
I think I have one claim to be speaking in this debate, which is that I believe I am at the moment a greater radioactive hazard than Sizewell. Last July, not only was I submerged in the Firth of Clyde in HMS "Spartan", which has a pressure water reactor—that did not make me at all radioactive—but I went up to 18,500 ft in the Himalayas. I have since learned from the noble Earl, Lord Halsbury, that I positively soaked up alpha, beta and gamma emissions. So noble Lords sensitive to radioactivity should certainly stay clear of me and also of my noble friend Lord Ridley, who has been up to the Everest base camp, but, above all, of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, who went up to 23,000 feet on the South Col of Everest.
Strangely, I claim that we irradiated Peers are among the most hale and hearty around. I am a reasonably fit Peer, though not in the same league of fitness as the noble Lord who gallantly steered Hilary and Tensing to victory way back on Coronation Day in 1953. But I feel sure the noble Earl, Lord Halsbury, would agree that the radiation dose to which I was exposed hugely exceeded any dose that I might receive from eating fish from the Irish Sea or even bathing off Sellafield beach.
The problem is, of course, that that would not be the general view of the British public, for we all live nowadays alongside a gut phobia about radioactivity. The Sizewell inquiry took three years, I understand from the noble Earl—I thought it was only two-and-a-quarter—and cost millions of pounds. I wonder why it took so long.
I was appreciative of an article written by Woodrow Wyatt in The Times of last Saturday, and with respect to my noble friend Lady Airey of Abingdon, he pointed out that even in the accident on Three-Mile Island no one was killed and no one felt any aftereffects. He contrasted that with the thousands killed in coalmining. I understand that Sizewell—this is very dangerous, because I have no expertise here—is of a different and safer design than the Three-Mile Island plant.
I think the basic diffculty is that we are dealing with an emotive, irrational fear, and where emotion is involved reason does not work as a counter-argument. I believe we should recognise the existence of the emotive fear and produce equally emotive counter-arguments. In the House of Commons environmental reports on radioactive waste, it emerges, curiously, that our predecessors were terrified of electricity. That fear no longer persists and I wonder how people ovecame it. People are still frightened nowadays of flying. I certainly feel more frightened in a 'plane than when I am driving a car. Should someone quote statistics at me that flying is a million times safer than driving, that does not diminish my fear. Naturally it does not, because it is a rational argument trying to counter what I might call gut panic. The airlines recognise our fear of flying, they play us soothing music, they ply us with relaxing drinks, they show us comic films like the "Prime of Miss Jean Brodie" or "Educating Rita"; they never show "Psycho" or "Airport" or "Jaws". So I ask: should not the CEGB be taking the same action? Should they not be

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producing palliatives? To those who say, "What palliatives? There are none", I would ask another question: how have the French managed to sell their PWRs or the Belgians or the Taiwanese?
Cost could be a good palliative. I understand that Frenchmen living near nuclear power stations get cutprice electricity. In Scotland too, which is 40 per cent. nuclear, I think AGR, electricity is cheaper than it is in England.
My Lords, we have a real problem here. According to a Gallup Poll taken on 16th March, 65 per cent. of us think nuclear power should stop altogether. Yet it is the safest power source known to man, be it Magnox, fast breeder, AGR or PWR, and it is cheap.
So far as concerns the issue of AGR versus PWR, and with which this whole Unstarred Question is concerned, I hesitate amid such expertise. I have understood that there are problems concerning very high temperatures in the roofs of some types of AGR. I also cannot help but notice that the French have an awful lot of PWRs and I would have thought that the rest of the world seemed to have chosen numerically the sort of genus of PWR as opposed to the genus of the AGR, though I stand to be corrected here.
I think my Question could be reduced to a set of intitials, as it were, and it would be this: would not my noble friend on the Front Bench agree that there is nothing wrong with the CEGB's PWR. But there is a lot wrong with their PR? On that PR front, I have one useful item for the CEGB which was suggested to me by Dr. John Hemming, who is director of the Royal Geographical Society. Many noble Lords will have seen car stickers which read: "Nuclear power? No thanks." Dr. Hemming suggests the following alternative car sticker: "Stop acid rain. Go nuclear".
8.2 p.m.
Lord Sherfield: My Lords, I rise to intervene briefly in support of the pertinet Question of the noble Earl, Lord Halsbury, about the Sizewell B nuclear power station. It raises what is at this stage a very simple point. For what reason and on whose authority has the CEGB committed resources to the proposed project before the inspector's report has been completed, published and considered?
It is easy to understand the frustration of the CEGB and the nuclear power industry as they watch the progress of the Sizewell inquiry resembling, as it does Pope's "Needless Alexandrine … that like a wounded snake drags its slow length along." It is really maddening for them to see the creeping obsolescence of the Sizewell B design as Westinghouse and the Japanese move on to new and presumably improved designs, and new concepts for reactors are developed.
How infuriating it must be for them when they observe that since the Government announced the setting up of the Sizewell public inquiry in January 1982, the French have commissioned no fewer than 17 PWRs, thus continuing to bring down industrial fuel costs in France yet further, to a point, as brought out in reply to questions in the House last week, some 25 per cent. below industrial fuel costs in Britain, and putting Framatome in a strong position to pre-empt whatever international markets there may be for
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PWRs. The noble Baroness, Lady Robson of Kiddington, had some pertinent remarks to make on the prospects in these markets.
So the temptation to jump the gun must be, or must have been, almost irresistible. Moreover, since leaks are the order of the day, it may well be that the tenor of the Layfield Report has already reached some important ears. It must, after all, be extremely irritating for the Government too when, in the midst of their endeavours to stimulate British industrial revival, they see an important section of heavy industry held in baulk. So there is a temptation for the Government also, but it must surely be resisted. The hand was called when the inquiry was set up, and in spite of these maddening delays, it must be played out straight.
The real culprit in all this is the system of mammoth public inquiries on which again the noble Baroness, Lady Robson of Kiddington, had some pertinent remarks to make. How unfortunate it is that we have become saddled with this system. It may seem democratic, but it is certainly, in many cases, against the national interest. It has come about partly through the weakness of successive governments in grasping nettles, in failing to take firm decisions in large technological questions and to get on with it. In saying this, I shall doubtless be regarded as something worse than a hidebound anti-democratic reactionary, but I think I can stand that.
The situation is also due to the passions, the entrenched irrationality, of the anti-nuclear movements. This might be less serious if, having had their say, they were prepared to accept a tribunal's or an inquiry's conclusions. But in practice, if they do not like the outcome, they continue with the campaigns harder than ever. After years of inquiry, nothing for them has changed. One may mention here the rejection of the painstaking Windscale inquiry. Public inquiries do not seem to settle issues, although that is presumably their purpose.
For some reason this attitude to nuclear power seems to be prevalent only in Anglo-Saxon societies, and the noble Viscount, Lord Mersey, touched on this point. The Latin races are not infected: not the French with their huge and highly successful nuclear programme; not the oriental races; not the Japanese who have some reason for feeling emotional about nuclear matters, but nevertheless have a large programme; not the Chinese either on the mainland or in Taiwan; and of course not the Slavs.
These are obiter dicta, and I shall not pursue them any further but will come finally to the main point. It is not my intention tonight to discuss the merits of the CEGB's decision to go for PWRs as against AGRs. I do not have the expert knowledge of the noble Earl, Lord Halsbury, on the rival systems. All I have learned over the years is that there are as many ways of assessing rival nuclear reactor systems as there are of skinning a cat. In any case, the inspector may put in a negative report or recommendation, in which case a new situation will arise. So I shall resist the temptation to try and anticipate the Layfield Report, and I shall not add to the number of Lord Halsbury's potential banana skins.
In conclusion, I shall simply frame my questions to the Government, which I
think are essentially the same as those put by the noble Earl, as follows. Did

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they know about the decision of the CEGB to pre-order, and did they approve it? If they did, what were their reasons? If they did not, why have they not intervened to correct the situation? Whatever the answers to those questions may be, I feel sure that the House will want an assurance this evening that until the Layfield Report has been published and officially considered, all options will remain open. We do not want a situation to arise in which we are told that it is too late to consider an alternative programme because of the prior commitments that have been entered into. In short, we do not want to be told that the pass has been sold.
8.11 p.m.
Lord Stoddart of Swindon: My Lords, I too should like to thank the noble Earl, Lord Halsbury, for raising this important matter and for the clear way in which he explained the problem that exists concerning expenditure on the PWR in advance of the inquiry report.
As he said, the inquiry was set up three years ago and its report is still awaited. Millions of words were spoken and written in evidence and comment to the inquiry and virtually every issue ralting to nuclear energy was raised. The inquiry did not turn out to be one into the desirability of building a PWR at Sizewell but became a forum for every point of view on civil nuclear power, not only from interested parties in this country but in every part of the world. The whole question of whether there should be a future programme of nuclear power stations at all was raised, giving rise to a greater public awareness of the problems associated with the nuclear industry and, in my view, increasing public opposition to the building of further nuclear power stations in Britain.
The inquiry was due to report its findings last November. When that date was not met we were told in this House that the report was likely to be in the Government's hands by February 1986. However, the February date came and went and there was still no report. The Government indicated that it would not come forward until the spring. Spring has not quite come; not yet anyway, but we are living in hope. The latest information we have is that the report will not be ready until September 1986, nearly a year later than expected. Can the noble Lord, Lord Gray, indicate whether this new deadline will definitely be met?
I have said before, and I repeat it now, that had the CEGB and the Government not made a decision to scrap the AGR and to introduce the PWR there would have been no inquiry of this nature and an AGR would have been under construction and halfway to completion on the Sizewell site. I believe that they made a grave error in deciding to introduce a new reactor type into this country.
I seem to have been interested in and concerned with this issue from the moment that I entered Parliament in 1970. I took an interest in the deliberations of the House of Commons Select Committee on Science and Technology and agreed with its view that the PWR was not the correct option for this country and that the heavy water reactor route should be taken. As a Member of the House of Commons Select Committee on Energy, which considered the
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Government's nuclear power policy, I not only heard a great deal of evidence but also visited many PWR sites, including Three Mile Island. What I heard and saw convinced me that the PWR option was not the correct one, and that if we must change our reactor type we should adopt the Canadian heavy water reactor (CANDU) and work with the Canadians to promote CANDU worldwide as an alternative to the PWR. If that could not be achieved, I, and indeed the Labour Party, had a preference for continuing to build AGRs if it was decided that a nuclear power programme should proceed at all.
But now let me come to the serious point raised by the noble Earl concerning the heavy expenditure being incurred by the CEGB and NNC on work on the PWR in advance of the findings of Sir Frank Layfield's inquiry. As we have heard, the total expenditure so far amounts to no less than £190 million and that amount is being added to each month that goes by. That implies an assumption on the part of the CEGB, the NNC and perhaps the Government that the inquiry report will come down in favour of the PWR.
If I may say so, such an assumption is not only discourteous to Sir Frank Layfield and his inquiry team but is bound to raise the suspicion in the minds of some that the CEGB and the Government have been given advance knowledge of the inquiry findings. But, having raised the suspicions, let me at once knock them down. Sir Frank Layfield is a man not only of the greatest ability but also of the utmost integrity. It is certain that he will have given no indication of the results of the inquiry, since he will not come to his conclusion until all the evidence has been properly sifted and evaluated and all the considerations taken into account.
I can only conclude that the CEGB is taking one hell of a gamble, and a gamble with the electricity consumer's money. As the noble Baroness, Lady Airey of Abingdon, noted, it is the consumers who will pay, and they will certainly pay if things go wrong and a PWR is not built at Sizewell. And things could go very wrong indeed. The situation in the energy market has changed drastically since the inquiry got under way. The basis for the CEGB's case for a PWR was its expectation that the real price of fossil fuels would not only be maintained at the historically high levels of 1980–81 but would continue to increase significantly in real terms in the future. That was the basis of the CEGB's decision to go for a PWR.
However, the price of oil is now about one-third of the price that it stood at in 1980–81, and I understand that the present price of internationally traded coal and natural gas is similarly only one-third of what it was in 1980–81. If this situation continues, as well it might, since the present prospect is that supplies of fossil fuels will exceed expected demand well into the next century, a PWR at Sizewell built before the end of the present century will be quite uneconomic compared with fossil fuel fired power stations.
These considerations may or may not be taken into account by Sir Frank Layfield, but whether they are or not, the Government and Parliament when making a judgment about the Sizewell PWR, following the publication of the report of the inquiry, will have to pay serious attention to them. If the judgment is that the PWR should not go ahead, the electricity

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consumer and the country have lost a lot of money and the impatience of the CEGB will have served us all very badly indeed.
Finally, I want to return to the figures. We have already heard of the £190 million spent up to the end of March, but in a letter to me earlier this year the noble Lord, Lord Gray of Contin, indicated that there would be ongoing current expenditure of £4.5 million per month and, in addition, for each month's delay to the project a further cost of £3.4 million a month would be involved. On top of that, another £1 million per month would accrue in interest charges. If my interpretation of those figures is correct, there will be ongoing expenditure of £8.8 million per month, making £105.6 million in a full year. That is in addition to the £190 million already mentioned.
We therefore have a situation that worsens every month. By March 1987, a total expenditure of nearly £300 million—one quarter of the projected cost of the whole project—will have been incurred and, as I have already said, the whole of that expenditure could well be rendered abortive. I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Gray, will agree that that is a very serious matter and will recognise that the noble Earl, Lord Halsbury, has done the House, the Government and the country a service in raising the subject.
I feel confident that the noble Lord the Minister will do his utmost to deal with the important points and principles that have been raised in tonight's debate when he winds up. I hope also that he will feel able to assure the House that its concern will be expressed at the highest level of government.
8.22 p.m.
The Minister of State, Scottish Office (Lord Gray of Contin): My Lords, first, perhaps I may join with those of your Lordships who have thanked the noble Earl, Lord Halsbury, for giving the House an opportunity of discussing this subject again tonight. We are indebted to him, as we frequently are, not only for that opportunity but also for providing yet another of his extremely well-informed speeches and, on this occasion, his reasonable comments, if criticisms, of the CEGB. Indeed, I shall try to answer the questions that the noble Earl has raised.
We were fortunate also to have my noble friend Lady Airey of Abingdon taking part in our debate. Not for the first time did she return to the question of the AGR/PWR argument. I shall say a word or two about that subject later. The noble Baroness, Lady Robson of Kiddington, also touched upon that subject and expressed what I believe is a much shared view in her criticism of the public inquiry system. I believe it was Winston Churchill who once said of our democracy that it has many faults but nobody has found anything better. We might also apply that remark to the public inquiry system.
We heard also another extremely well-informed speech from the noble Lord, Lord Sherfield, who was penetrating in his criticism of the CEGB. I shall try to answer some of the questions that he raised. My noble friend Lord Mersey gave the House a very interesting combination of seriousness and lightheartedness in his speech. I feel sure that he will not find any of his noble
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friends sitting that much further away from him because of the degree of radioactivity that he may emit.
I listened with great care, as I always do, to the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart of Swindon, because we went through some of the phases of our nuclear-power learning curve together. We entered the House of Commons at the same time in 1970 and I well remember that the favoured son at that time was the steam-generated heavy water reactor. We moved from that through a variety of phases to the present situation.
I am most grateful to the noble Earl for the points that he made and to other noble Lords for the serious comments they contributed. I should have liked to enter into more detailed consideration of the issues raised but I must request the forgiveness of the House if my comments on some of them are necessarily brief and uncommitted, for it would be entirely wrong of me, in view of the statutory role of my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Energy in connection with the Sizewell inquiry, to comment either on the CEGB's application to build a PWR or on any of the many issues considered at that inquiry in advance of the inspector's report and of my right honourable friend's decision.
The noble Lord, Lord Stoddart of Swindon, reminded the House that my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Energy announced in another place on 13th March that Sir Frank Layfield now hopes to deliver his report on the Sizewell B public inquiry in September. The noble Lord asked whether I could give an absolute guarantee that the report would be delivered by that date. I cannot do so; I can only hope, as we all do, that the Layfield report will be delivered by that time. We must bear in mind that the Sizewell B inquiry—the longest-ever planning inquiry in this country—dealt with an extremely complex set of issues and that the report is expected to contain more than 100 chapters. When the Secretary of State receives that report he intends to reach his decisions on it as soon as he possibly can. The Department of Energy has arrangements in hand to have available the resources that will be required for an urgent examination of the report.
Your Lordships must forgive me for the length of that introduction but I felt it was important that the Government's present position should be made quite clear in respect of the issues tackled at the Sizewell inquiry. The noble Earl, Lord Halsbury, requests information on the extent of commitments entered into by the Central Electricity Generating Board in respect of Sizewell B. A number of figures have been mentioned by various noble Lords who took part in the debate this evening.
I shall try to outline the commitments and to describe just how binding they are on the CEGB. The CEGB has advised that by the end of March the total cumulative expenditure chargeable to the Sizewell project amounted to £190 million. That expenditure covers, first, essential design work undertaken by the board's Sizewell project management team and by the National Nuclear Corporation; secondly, development work to prepare the safety case for the inquiry and enable a prompt start on site should consent be granted for the project to proceed.

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In addition, the CEGB has placed contracts to date for the station amounting to some £440 million. Of that, less than £100 million is for preparatory design work that is proceeding. The balance of some £340 million is for manufacture and supply, which will proceed only if the project receives consent. It is pertinent to note that some companies would be in very considerable difficulties if design contracts for Sizewell had not been placed
by the board. There has been only one firm manufacturing contract placed to date, for the reactor pressure vessel forgings valued at £12 million.
The Secretary of State for Energy and the Sizewell inquiry were informed in February 1984 of the board's intention to release that contract. The board explained that failure to do so would delay a start on the main foundations, if and when consent was received, by about two years, and would thereby result in a substantial increase in the cost of the station. The Secretary of State made clear to the board and to the inquiry at the time that it was for the board to exercise its commercial judgment on the risk of, on the one hand, incurring nugatory expenditure, or, on the other, facing lengthy delays and increased costs. He made it quite clear that there was no question of his eventual decision being influenced by the purchase of the forgings. I have dwelt on this point at some length but I hope it has been instructive. It demonstrates clearly my right honourable friend's determination to deal with the issue impartially and strictly on the merits of the evidence presented to the inquiry.
Finally, on the question of commitments, the noble Earl, Lord Halsbury, will also be aware, since he asked a Question on this point on 4th March, that specific cancellation charges and similar penalties of the order of £10 million will be payable by the CEGB in respect of its contractual commitments should consent not be forthcoming for Sizewell B. The amount already spent on design and safety work, the amount of design work under the contracts in existence, together with the £10 million I have just mentioned, add up to £300 million that the CEGB has directly committed to the station. I acknowledge that this is indeed a substantial sum to have committed before the outcome of the inquiry is known. I can confirm that the board will have to bear those costs should the project not proceed.
However, Sizewell B is little different from other large projects on which it is often necessary to spend large sums of money at the planning and design stage. As this would be the first PWR to be built in this country for electricity generation, a large proportion of the expenditure had to be incurred to establish the design and safety case for the purposes of the public inquiry and clearance by the nuclear installations inspectorate. The CEGB is right in believing that the greater extent to which detailed design work is completed before manufacturing commences, the more straightforward and economically construction will be carried out and the greater the assurance that operation will be trouble free.
The noble Earl asked for an assurance that the expenditure incurred and committed on a PWR for Sizewell will not sway the Government one way or the other. Other noble Lords raised the same point. I can give that assurance without reservation.
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I now turn to other issues raised in the debate and I remind noble Lords that what I can say on behalf of the Government is strictly limited. I shall first say a few words about the AGR versus PWR debate to which my noble friend Lady Airey of Abingdon referred. The Government endorsed in 1979 the CEGB's proposal that the PWR should be established as a valid option for the UK and that the next nuclear power station should, subject to necessary consents and safety clearances, be a PWR. The CEGB's application to construct a PWR at Sizewell has been subject to thorough scrutiny at the recent public inquiry. Supporters of both the PWR and AGR have had a full opportunity to put their cases to the Sizewell inspector. We shall have to see what conclusions he draws on all these matters in his report in due course. I know that your Lordships will appreciate and accept that it would be inappropriate for me to comment at this stage. It has been suggested that PWR technology is obsolete, and it has been pointed out that no orders have been placed for PWRs recently in the United States. Again, these issues and others were aired at the inquiry and the inspector will no doubt give due weight to the evidence in his report.
The noble Lord, Lord Sherfield, and my noble friend Lord Mersey both referred to the safety record of the nuclear industry. I can only say that we all endorse what they said. The success rate of the nuclear industry over the years is one which is the envy of many other industries. It is to be congratulated on its achievement. It is unfortunate that at times there is confusion—perhaps sometimes not all that innocent confusion—over the nuclear industry for peaceful purposes and for defence purposes. It is quite wrong that the two uses of nuclear power should become confused. The more that we can highlight the
success of the nuclear power industry for power generation in particular, the better. The success of the French mentioned by a number of noble Lords this evening highlights just what can be achieved in that area.
This has been a short but interesting debate. I know that these debates always attract those who are particularly interested in nuclear power. I am sure that we are all sad that there are not more of our number who are prepared to do their research and take part in debates on these occasions. I again thank the noble Earl for giving us the opportunity to debate this subject and I hope that I have satisfied him with the answers I have been able to give.
Lord Stoddart of Swindon: My Lords, I am sorry to come back to this, but before the noble Lord sits down may I raise one query? There is now some confusion in my mind about the amount which has been spent and the amount which is yet to be spent. I understood the Minister to say that up to the end of March a total of £300 million had been spent. Was I correct in the figures that I gave to the House of an ongoing expenditure of £8.8 million per month, or £105.6 million between now and March next year? I appreciate that the noble Lord may not be able to give that information tonight, but I should like to have it and perhaps other noble Lords would, too.
Lord Gray of Contin: My Lords. I am grateful to the noble Lord for framing his question in the way that he did. I cannot give that information without reference.

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The noble Lord gave a lot of figures tonight and I have done so, too. I think we both probably want to read the Official Report tomorrow. I shall arrange for the information he wants about his figures to be sent to him. I shall also arrange for a copy of my letter to be placed in the Library of the House.
House adjourned at twenty-two minutes before nine o'clock.