Lords Sitting of 30 April 1986

Preamble
The House met at half-past two of the clock: The CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES on the Woolsack.
Prayers—Read by the Lord Bishop of Hereford.

Adult Training: UK Companies
Lord Rochester: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they consider that United Kingdom companies are making adequate provision for adult training.
The Secretary of State for Employment (Lord Young of Graffham): No, my Lords. The available evidence suggests that a significant number of United Kingdom companies, large and small, are not investing sufficiently in adult training to meet the needs of constantly changing markets. This is why Her Majesty's Government have initiated measures to encourage companies to increase their investment in adult training.
Lord Rochester: My Lords, I thank the Secretary of State for that honest Answer, so far as it goes. However, does he agree that a clear link has been established between industrial training and success, and that adult training in this country has been shown to compare most unfavourably with that of our main competitors? Indeed, is he aware that the chairman of the Manpower Services Commission recently went so far as to say that compared with those competitors our adult workforce emerges as "a bunch of thickies"? Does the noble Lord accept ministerial responsibility for this alarming situation, and, if so, what, beyond the exhortation of which he has just given us a good example, does he actually intend to do about it?
Lord Young of Graffham: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for his unsolicited testimonial to my candour and honesty. However, I must tell him that this is not a new problem; it is a problem that has been concerning Her Majesty's Government for many decades. In 1964 we introduced ITBs and they had an effect; but, alas, the effect appeared to be to increase bureaucracy and not to increase the supply of training.
Since then, we have tried other ways. We know that, as a recent survey of about 500 employers who employed more than 25 employees showed, off-the-job training occupied on average just 14 hours, or 1·9 days per year, per employee. The best evidence that we can obtain is that of good West German practice, where it occupies 30 to 40 hours a year; in other words, it is nearly three and a half times as much over there. I hope very much that an increasing awareness of the need for good training will remedy that position.
Lord Mottistone: My Lords, following on my noble friend's remarks in answer to the last question, is the Minister aware that when I was director of the Distributive Industry Training Board particular efforts were made to keep the bureaucracy to a minimum and we were largely successful in doing that? But the main question that I want to put to him is this: do his initial remarks about the fact that we are not good enough apply equally to management training?
Lord Young of Graffham: My Lords, I regard the responsibility for all training as primarily in the hands of management. The fact is that management should appreciate that having a more professionally trained workforce—and in my book that includes management—can only be to the benefit of their own organisation and to the United Kingdom as well.
Lord Mellish: My Lords, is the Minister aware that he has given a very disappointing reply? There are a number of firms involved which are not taking up the opportunities for adult training. Surely the whole key to the training scheme is that after training those who have been trained will in fact get a job. Is it not time for the Government to do more than they are doing at the moment to ensure that firms take advantage of the facilities available in our new technological world in order to obtain the kind of people for whom they are crying out?
Lord Young of Graffham: My Lords, I am not sure how we define adult training. Of course, this Government are the ones who introduced the two-year YTS and the Government who are giving more training to more people than at any time before in the history of our nation. Moreover, it is training which is essential foundation training, and training for young people which has led to two-thirds of them entering full employment or going back into full-time education or further training. At the moment we are concerned about the general acceptance throughout the whole of industry and commerce of the fact that a better trained workforce is a more efficient workforce and works to the common good. This understanding can only come from employers themselves and not from the Government telling them that it is so.
Baroness Seear: My Lords, on reflection, will the Minister agree that his comment on the industrial training boards was certainly less than generous and certainly less than accurate, having regard to the fact that the Engineering Industry Training Board managed to bring about a major modification in engineering training and was responsible for introducing quite revolutionary training for women?
Lord Young of Graffham: Yes, my Lords, but I wish to assure the noble Baroness that in fact 16 of the 23 training boards were disbanded some three or four years ago because they were thought to be overly bureaucratic. I am told that the views of the industries were widely canvassed before that decision was taken. The Engineering Industry Training Board of course continues to function to this day, as do the Construction Industry Training Board and five other training boards. Nevertheless, even within the field of engineering training there has been a movement in the

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past two years that has led to the Vital Skills Agency, which is another training authority that has been set up because of (as it would have it) the lack of ability of the EITB to respond to training for electronic engineering and its commitment to traditional engineering training. Those are its views and not mine.
The Earl of Selkirk: My Lords, will my noble friend say whether there is any sign of improvement in the training of apprentices by self-employed craftsmen? This has very nearly dropped out altogether but it is a vital part of the training of certain types of craftsmen.
Lord Young of Graffham: My Lords, the world passes on. Craftsmen are just as necessary as they were in the past, but possibly in lesser numbers. However, one great matter calls for congratulation today. I read that the Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers decided yesterday that it would at long last drop time-based apprenticeship and go towards standards. This has been long overdue and I hope that we can now begin to see a revolution in the whole field of apprenticeship.
Viscount St. Davids: My Lords, will my noble friend, if he will allow me to call him so, consider hanging upon his wall a fine Chaucerian quotation which is unfortunately little known? It is this:
"If gold ruste, what shal iren do?".
The day that the boss starts making a muck of it, what sort of muck does he expect lower down the tree? Will my noble friend consider that?
Lord Young of Graffham: Yes, my Lords. I have no wish to disappoint the noble Viscount but I have no intention of leaving these Benches for some considerable time!
Lord Parry: My Lords, will the noble Lord accept that there is another dimension to the problem? Is not one of the frustrations for him, as for me, the fact that those public agencies which have a splendid record on the training of adults—it is the one feature of public enterprises that I am sure he will agree is valuable—are nevertheless funded by major companies which, having no training programmes of their own, rely on taking their educated management and labour from others that do?
Lord Young of Graffham: Yes, my Lords, but I think that there is cause for hope and quiet satisfaction about the future. I attended yesterday the "Spring Open", an exhibition at the Novotel Hotel in Hammersmith. I saw there how we had become a world leader in the principle of distant learning covering all sorts of occupations. This affords considerable cause for concern because English is the world's first commercial language and it could be the world's greatest training language as well. This is an area in which we have considerable expertise. I only wish that our own employers used it more.
Lord Rochester: My Lords, does the noble Lord recall that the authors of a recent report commissioned jointly by the Manpower Services Commission and the National Economic Development Office put forward a number of proposals aimed at stimulating
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investment in training? They included improved tax incentives and a statutory requirement that companies should disclose in their annual reports how much they were spending on training. What is his reaction to those specific proposals?
Lord Young of Graffham: My Lords, we are examining the proposals. One of the great difficulties in the tax d'apprentissage, which is the French system of the payroll tax—and many similar ingenious ideas have been put forward—is that it says something about the amount of money spent on training but not about quality. One of the problems in our society is the perpetuation of old-fashioned training methods. We must find ways to get our training in the technologies of tomorrow. That is a matter to which we are now giving thought.

American "Workfare" Programme
2.46 p.m.
Lord Rodney: 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 studied the advantages of the "workfare" programme now operating successfully in the United States, and which was featured in the BBC "Panorama" programme on 7th April, and whether they will initiate an early trial in this country along similar lines.
Lord Young of Graffham: My Lords, the Government are studying the American experience of "workfare" programmes which was featured in the "Panorama" programme on 7th April. We have already applied some of the lessons of these programmes in the restart programme to help the long-term unemployed. For example, jobclubs have been very successful in a number of states and have proved equally successful here. We are planning to establish 200 jobclubs by the end of this year, and to increase the number to 450 as soon as possible thereafter.
Lord Rodney: My Lords, I should like to thank my noble friend for that encouraging reply. Does he agree that this "workfare" programme in the United States seems to receive considerable support from all sections of society, including the unions, and that it gives unemployed people a chance of regaining their self-esteem?
Lord Young of Graffham: My Lords, this is a matter which must be handled with care. Nevertheless, I am aware of the views of Lord Beveridge. He said in the Beveridge Report:
"The co-relative of the state's undertaking to ensure adequate benefit for unavoidable interruption of earning, however long, is enforcement of the citizen's obligation to seek and accept all reasonable opportunities of work, to co-operate in measures designed to save him from habituation to idleness and to take all proper measures to be well".
I am not sure that the answer is "workfare" on some of the patterns we have seen in the United States of America, but I am sure that some of the "workfare"

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programmes such as jobclubs and so on will be of the very greatest help to us in helping the long-term unemployed.
Lord Stoddart of Swindon: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that I, and certainly my colleagues, will be pleased that he said that this needed to be handled with care? He is absolutely right. I saw the "Panorama" programme. Did it not appear to him that the system smacked of cheap labour and in some respects forced labour? It reminded me of the old Soviet Communist view that if you did not work you did not eat. I am sure that the noble Lord will agree that we need a much better approach and that the real answer is for the country to co-ordinate the opportunities and its resources to get the 3 million unemployed back to work and into real jobs.
Lord Young of Graffham: My Lords, all sides of your Lordships' House will agree with that. The best thing for everybody is to be back at work. But we are part of Europe and it is a Europe-wide problem and a problem with which we must deal. I agree with the noble Lord that schemes such as those practised in Russia are not what we should contemplate even in our wildest dreams. Nevertheless, we must ensure that people do not become so discouraged that they give up or so determined to live off the work of others that they do not try. We have to find ways in which we can help people to help themselves.
Lord Orr-Ewing: My Lords, will my noble friend assure the House that he will continue to consider all conceivable new ways of creating jobs? As one who saw that programme, I thought that what was remarkable was that it seemed to please the person concerned, his family and the community. Above all, it was safeguarding the position of the trade unions, and therefore was supported by them. Will he bear that in mind if (as I hope will happen) he starts a test programme in one or two places in this country to see how it fares under the different conditions here?
Lord Young of Graffham: My Lords, we are investigating the workfare programmes in the United States. We commissioned a report some months ago. I hope that report will be released shortly. There is an essential difference between the United States and this country. The difference is the wholesale co-operation which that programme showed between unions and all parts of society in promoting such a programme. I am not sure that co-operation would necessarily be received here.
Lord Glenamara: My Lords, while we would all subscribe to the quotation from Beveridge that the noble Lord gave a moment ago, is he aware that the concept on which workfare is based in the United States is that of welfare—indeed, the noble Lord used the word "welfare" a moment ago—whereas in this country it is based on insurance to which all working people contribute throughout their working lives?
Lord Young of Graffham: My Lords, of course; and the insurance element is unemployment benefit which lasts for the 12 months. That is the period of the insurance benefit. We are talking on this matter about supplementary benefit for those people who have been out of work for more than one year. That is the essential difference between the two.
Lord Avebury: My Lords, did the Secretary of State notice one feature of this programme which, I venture to suggest, would be objectionable in this country? That is that young mothers with small children were forced back to work and to put their babies in creches. In any experiments that are undertaken in this country will the noble Lord guarantee that that element of compulsion on young mothers is omitted? Will he also consult with the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland to see whether experiments of the kind that have been suggested might be appropriate in that context where unemployment is higher than anywhere else in the United Kingdom?
Lord Young of Graffham: My Lords, I said that we shall investigate this matter with great care. I cannot see much future for the kind of programme that was seen in Oklahoma, I believe, in which mothers of eight-weeks-old children were forced to put them into day care so that they could go to search for work. On the other hand, I believe that there is something that we possibly could do. The one element which ran through that programme was the apparent approval by those receiving benefit and those giving the work that it was a good scheme. That is worthy of investigation.
The Earl of Halsbury: My Lords, will the noble Lord the Minister agree that what we need is a fundamental rethink of the problems of keeping 25 million willing workers occupied and out of mischief through idleness, and psychologically satisfied that what they are doing matters because people are prepared to pay for it what it costs? The parameters at our disposal are the number of hours worked per day and the number of years worked per lifetime in relation to the standard of living expected.
Lord Young of Graffham: My Lords, I am grateful for the suggestion. Only one matter holds me back from this. It seems to me that those parts of the world where unemployment is high and the economy is sluggish consider that these are problems of the future; that there will not be sufficient work to go round. In other parts of the world where the economy is growing fast, the problem is exactly the opposite. They are looking for people to fill the jobs. I do not know how many in your Lordships' House will have noticed that in the United States the debate taking place is on extending the age of retirement. The retirement age is moving up to 67. There is legislation going through in the United States to give people the right to work until 70. The problem seems to be the exact reverse of the problem that appears in Europe.

Oil Prices and Depletion Policy
2.57 p.m.
Lord St. John of Bletso: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether in view of the collapse in oil prices it would be in the country's long-term interests to revise their depletion policy.
The Minister of State, Scottish Office (Lord Gray of Contin): My Lords, our approach on depletion policy is to leave decisions on production levels to the oil companies, subject to maintenance of good oilfield practice. This is an important factor in creating a climate in which the oil companies are ready to take the major arid high-risk investment decisions necessary to find and develop new oilfields. We see no case for changing this policy.
Lord St. John of Bletso: My Lords I thank the noble Lord the Minister for his Answer. Can he say how the Government intend to ensure that the economy remains energy self-sufficient through the 1990s when an energy shortage is widely predicted, particularly in the light of the implications for the nuclear industry following the recent Soviet disaster?
Lord Gray of Contin: My Lords, I am quite sure that those who take an interest in energy matters would agree with me that there are many pitfalls involved in energy forecasting. However, I believe that a country such as ours, which is rich in energy availability—being able to call on oil, gas, coal and nuclear power—must remain self-sufficient, or nearly so for some considerable time in the future.
The noble Lord has made mention of the disaster in Russia. Of course, like all other Members, I am sure, I am appalled at what must be a very severe situation with possibly great loss of life. I am also appalled at the lack of information from the Russians in this matter. It seems to me that all countries which have been involved in the nuclear energy field up until now have readily made available, one to the other, as much information as possible. The situation in the case of the Russians seems regrettable.
Lord Stoddart of Swindon: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that I agree absolutely with him that it is deplorable that the Russian Government have not made available to the rest of the world the full extent of the catastrophe that occurred, the reasons for it and what is being done to control it? Will he also agree that it has implications for the Government's energy policy? May I ask the noble Lord whether, in the light of the catastrophe in Russia, the Government will be considering their nuclear policy? If they are so doing they will have the support of the Opposition.
In relation to oil, will the noble Lord agree that the price of oil, at 12 dollars a barrel, has implications for exploration and for the coal industry? In spite of what he said about the oil companies and their plans, is it not absurd that we should now be selling oil at 12 dollars a barrel when in the 1990s we shall probably—indeed, almost certainly—be importing oil
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at 40 dollars a barrel? Does this not require government action on depletion now?
Lord Gray of Contin: My Lords, perhaps I ma' take the first point that the noble Lord raised. I anticipated that he would agree with my remarks about information being made available from country to country in the event of nuclear mishaps or nuclear disasters. I am grateful to have his support on that matter. With regard to the implications for our energy policy, we shall wait and shall assess very carefully whatever report is made known by the Russians as to the causes of the accident. I would point out that there is no direct implication so far as our nuclear industry is concerned, for the simple reason that the type of reactor involved is not a type that is used in this country. In addition to that, our safety requirements with regard to the nuclear industry and the construction of reactors are much more stringent.
Perhaps I may turn to the point raised by the noble Lord on depletion policy. I am afraid that I cannot agree with him. I think he was suggesting that we should be having production cuts for oil. I ask the noble Lord to bear in mind that that would have little effect on the oil price. Our contribution in world terms is a mere 5 per cent. of world oil production.
The OPEC countries are still far and away the leaders so far as oil production is concerned, and whatever action they take, either up or down, has a very much greater effect on price than anything that we could do. In addition, as I said in my initial Answer, I believe that we must ensure that those who make massive investment in the exploration and development of oil are left to be the best judge as to how and when that oil is uplifted.
Lord Campbell of Croy: My Lords, I agree with what my noble friend has said, especially as regards the Soviet accident and also policy as regards the production of oil within the United Kingdom. However, I should like to ask him a question. As the oil companies have always had to be conscious of how volatile the world price of crude oil can be and are therefore ready for contingencies, such as the difficult ones produced by the present situation, should not policy also include other energy industries, in particular the coal industry, which may feel most acutely the present collapse in oil prices?
Lord Gray of Contin: My Lords, I agree with my noble friend. His experience in these matters is readily available to the House and we always appreciate his views. However, I think that the coal industry is on an upward curve of success. Since the disastrous miners' strike, there has been a complete change of attitude within the industry and happily production is now on the increase. The reports and the outlook for the future are healthy.
Lord Strabolgi: My Lords, do the Government not have an overall long-term plan for all our energy resources considered together? How can they have such a policy if they do not have a depletion policy such as that which the Labour Government had?
Lord Gray of Contin: My Lords, I am sorry to say that that was one of the troubles with the Labour Government. They never maximised the potential of the various energy industries. We believe that there is healthy competition among the energy industries and that can only be good for the consumer.
Lord Stoddart of Swindon: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that the Labour Government did, indeed, have a long-term energy strategy and that that strategy made use of all the elements of fuel: coal, oil, gas and, indeed, nuclear generation? It is because the Government have thrown everything to the winds and left it to market forces that their energy policy is now in a mess. Is he absolutely sure about the assurances which he has given regarding nuclear safety and that such an occurrence could not happen here? Is he aware as regards Three Mile Island that the residents of Harrisburg were assured that the accident which occurred could not happen, and that in Russia the residents were given the same assurances? I hope that the noble Lord's assurances are not the same as theirs.
Lord Gray of Contin: My Lords, it would be silly to hide the fact that there is always an element of risk and to be complacent. It is precisely for those reasons that energy policy in connection with the safety of the nuclear industry—which has been wholly supported by successive governments in this country—is of such a high standard. Although we should never dare to suggest that there could not be an accident in this country, we do everything conceivable to ensure that such an accident, if it did happen, would be minimised.
On the question of energy policy, I am afraid that the noble Lord and I will have to disagree. However, I suggest to him that the oil industry, the gas industry, the nuclear industry and the coal industry are all in a much healthier state now than they were before 1979.
Lord Parry: My Lords, the politics of the situation apart, I should like to support the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy, and ask whether the Minister honestly believes that an international oil price of 10 dollars or less a barrel would make the British coal industry able to support our needs or to continue with its present plans?
Lord Gray of Contin: My Lords, I think that the coal industry is revising and has revised a great many of its plans and is now embarking upon a policy which we hope will enable it to compete in the energy world. As far as the price of oil is concerned, whether it be 10 dollars or 20 dollars a barrel, it must be achieved without the Government interfering. It will be taken care of by the market. As far as depletion is concerned, if the price falls to 10 dollars or even less, the companies themselves will regulate the amount of production in which they engage.
Lord Parry: My Lords, I accept that qualification hopefully.

Business
Lord Denham: My Lords, at a convenient moment after 3.30 this afternoon, my noble friend Lady Young will, with the leave of the House, repeat a Statement
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that is to be made in another place on the evacuation of British subjects following the accident at Chernobyl.
With the leave of the House. I should like to say a brief word about the length of speeches in this afternoon's debate standing in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, to which your Lordships have agreed to apply a five-hour time limit. On the principle that the mover is allowed approximately 20 minutes and that the Minister should rise to reply not less than 25 minutes before the sheduled end of the debate, all other speeches should be limited to a maximum of 14 minutes. If any noble Lord should speak at greater length he would be doing so at the expense of other speakers in the debate.

Government Policies: Social Effects
3.6 p.m.
Lord Wells-Pestell Lord Wells-Pestell rose to call attention to the social effects of government policies; and to move for Papers.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, having looked at the list of speakers I could perhaps be forgiven for thinking that there are areas in your Lordships' House which have no interest in what we are about to discuss this afternoon. There is not a single Member from the Cross-Benches participating and there is only one Member participating from the Alliance, but I am glad to say that we probably have the greatest authority in your Lordships' House on insurance matters and supplementary benefit in the noble Lord, Lord Banks, and I am delighted that he is taking part. Of the four Members who will be speaking on behalf of the Government, we at least have two Ministers, so perhaps we ought to be grateful for that.
The purpose of this debate is to draw attention to the kind of life which a large number of people are experiencing at present, due, we believe on this side, in large measure to the present Government's policies. There is no doubt in the minds of my friends and myself that those policies have caused a great deal of misery and a widening gap between the rich and the poor. Whether this debate will serve any useful purpose remains to be seen, for we on this side of the House have always felt that there is a wide divide between the philosophy of the Conservative Party and that of the Labour Party. That makes our task all the more difficult, for there must be a number of areas and situations which are familiar to us but which are almost unknown to a large number of noble Lords opposite. I did not say every noble Lord opposite, but a large number. Even if they know about them, they certainly will not have personal knowledge or experience of them.
We on this side of the House feel that it is the quality of human life and values which matter in the long run. One—and in my view the most important—function of government is to provide adequately and effectively for the underprivileged, to ensure that those in need are provided with the means to lead a worthwhile life, free of the anxiety of making ends meet. To put it another way, they should have a secure roof over their heads and sufficicent money coming in each week to pay their way and meet the family's needs. It is a perpetual struggle for a very large number of people.
In this Government's first Budget in June 1979, of the £3,500 million handed out in tax cuts, about 40 per cent. went to 5·5 per cent. of the taxpayers, and no one could agree—not in their right minds—that they really needed any of that money at all. Much the same happened this year, and the rich again came out of it very well. The gap between the rich and the poor was widened even more.
There are far too many people in our society who are not only finding it difficult to make ends meet but who do not succeed in ever overcoming their struggle. Beveridge's aim and principle was that the state should do more than just relieve poverty; it should provide the means to live without the anxiety of making ends meet. This principle, if not lost sight of by this Government. I honestly believe has been undermined by them.
I am not unmindful of the problem facing us, and I appreciate the cost of meeting the numerous benefits. Government expenditure on social security benefits in 1984 to 1985—obviously the last figures available—was £36,882 million. It is a lot of money. It is difficult to get a detailed and accurate breakdown of the figures available, but there are some 30 main social security benefits, including retirement pensions for nearly 10 million persons. In addition, there is supplementary benefit, where it is considered necessary, for the elderly, the sick and disabled, the unemployed, widows and one-parent families; that accounts for another 5 million people. That is not the total number of people who are in receipt of benefits; they were the only ones I was able to identify. Statistics are difficult to separate or get together, but these clearly show that there are millions of people entirely dependent upon the state for their existence. In a television broadcast on behalf of the Child Poverty Action Group on Sunday 20th April the Bishop of Stepney referred to the people's daily struggles to survive. He spoke about children who were inadequately clothed and noted that there were more than twice the number of people in his area on the breadline this year compared with last year. This was a statement made only last Sunday week.
The Government have surely been well aware of the situation of the poor as compared with the better off section of society; yet social security benefits have been cut since 1979, as a result of policy changes, the staggering amount being £11,100 million. In addition, the Government have taxed the unemployed by a total of £3,000 million since that tax was introduced in 1982. It means that the very poorest—pensioners, unemployed families with children, single parents, and the sick and disabled—have lost about £14,100 million since 1979.
Unfortunately pensioners fare the worst. Since 1979 the retirement pensioner has not been fairly treated; and in the recent spell of bad weather the amount of pension was not enough to ensure that there were no cases of pensioners dying. The Government have shown a great lack of concern, for it is certain that if pensioners had had more money, many hundreds of them would not have died during the cold spell.
The tax cuts for those earning over £30,000 a year totalled £4,400 million; an average saving of £2,380 per annum. In other words, the tax cuts recently given to those earning over £30,000 a year were worth about
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£200 a month. For those earning over £50,000 a year the cut was £12,780, which was over £1,000 a month. We all know that the Government's reply will be, "We could not afford higher benefits". It is always their reply in matters of this kind.
The City of London has done itself extremely well in recent years, though its conduct, I think most of us will agree, leaves much to be desired. Today it is a place where young men in their late 20s can earn £30,000 to £40,000 a year.
Noble Lords: More than that.
Lord Wells-Pestell: One firm—a leading stockbroker—last year doubled its wages bill, paying an average of £47,619 per person. I should like to quote a comment in one of the newspapers, which said:
"At the lower end of the employees' scale 73 people were paid between £35,000 and £120,000 a year".
I understand that the chairman of Jaguar was given a 100 per cent. rise in 1985 from £86,000 a year to £173,000 a year, an increase of £1,673 a week. A press report refers to;
"the latest in a line of privatised company executives to benefit from huge pay rises as soon as they transfer to the private sector"
Frankly, I do not think that the man or woman has yet been born who is worth £186,000 a year either to the community or to any firm employing them. When one considers that there is so much poverty and misery in the country wage rates of that scale and increases of that scale really are quite immoral.
In view of the Government's meanness towards those in real need I should like to ask what has happened to the £53 billion revenues from North Sea oil since 1978, the £7,620 million which so far the Government have received from privatisation, the £3,892 million and the £1,206 million from levies on gas and electricity, and the saving of £4,900 million on rate capping.
It would be interesting to know where that money went. A caring government, aware of the misery and poverty of such a high percentage of people, would have arranged for a part of this vast amount to have been set aside to increase state benefits to a more reasonable level than they are at present.
I understand that the big four banks have between them made a profit—I admit before taxation—of about £2,800 million. But more than half of that amount will remain after taxation, and so they will come out of it very well. Is it beyond the wit of the Government to think up some way of taking a bit of what is left, as they have done from gas and electricity? In view of the conditions in which so many of our fellow beings are living some provision should have been made from this newly-found wealth so as to relieve the misery that exists at present. At least we ought to be doing something along that line.
We have a vast army of lone parents. I wonder how many noble Lords in this House realise that there are about one million lone parents. Their children are permanently clothed in other children's cast-offs. These children are never likely to have the experience during childhood of wearing anything new. Can your Lordships imagine the effect that this has on those children and the contribution it makes to anti-social behaviour? I am astounded that so many people (I am inclined to think that there are some such people in

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your Lordships' House) who have lived so long, seen so much and heard so much understand so little of the conditions that some people are forced to live under. There is a responsibility on each of us to see that better provision is made in the future for the poor. There ought not to be so much poverty and misery in our society. It is not surprising that anti-social behaviour and crime are on the increase. Most of us know that violence is the language of the deprived.
On Wednesday, 9th April it was announced in the press:
"A suite with a view of the City and the Thames for £350 a night with breakfast is the main feature of Britain's most luxurious private hospital",
which opened in London a few days ago; £350 a night with breakfast! It is immoral. There is no justification for that whatsoever. I admit that it was provided from profits from the Kuwait oil boom. The hospital can provide everything from heart surgery down to mundane tonsillectomy. It is all right if one can afford it. It is stated that Guy's, St. Thomas's, King's College Hospital, Moorfields and Bans are referring parents. That is an example of what can be done if only one can afford it. There is no waiting for weeks, no waiting for months, no being in acute agony and pain. A patient can go in immediately if he can afford that kind of treatment.
But the significant point is that all five hospitals I have mentioned which are sending patients to that hospital are themselves already facing cuts. At Guy's 200 hospital beds have been closed since 1984. St. Thomas's will be closing to all except emergency cases in August and will be carrying out 400 fewer heart operations. King's College has had to close 14 specialist liver transplant and dialysis units and cut back its cancer treatment service. It is also proposing to close 29 surgical beds. What a delight it must be to be rich and what a curse it must be to be poor and have to depend on the National Health Service. Yet on more than one occasion the Prime Minister has stated that the National Health Service is safe with the Conservative Government. Safe for whom?
In Oxford where I live we are witnessing the closure of hospitals and of beds, curtailment of treatment and reduced services, not because they are not needed, but because the money is not there. The authorities have been told that they must make cuts.
Every week I torture myself by reading in local papers that in areas such as Harrow, Stanmore, Finchley, Barnet and other parts of north London houses are selling at between £125,000 and £500,000 each. This is disgraceful. They are not just put up for sale; they are sold. House prices are now tremendous, and yet the money is there. It is not just one or two houses; there are many, advertised not only in one paper but in several.
In last Sunday's Observer Mr. Michael Heseltine presented his plan for a better society. The keynote of this plan was that we must not become a society of two nations. That is precisely what we are, as millions of our citizens are painfully aware. The responsibility of a caring government is adequately to provide for their citizens who are old, infirm and in need of life's essentials and to see that those who are on the bread line, or just below it, are provided with enough food so that they can live a reasonable existence. My Lords, I beg to move for Papers.
3.25 p.m.
Lord Young of Graffham: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, for introducing the subject of this debate. Before I say anything further I must apologise to all your Lordships for my inability to remain until the end of the debate. Unfortunately I have a long-standing engagement, but I assure all in your Lordships' House that I shall read with care all the contributions to the debate.
I am very glad that we are having this debate though rarely have I ever heard the politics of envy expounded in such a way. Rarely have I heard such a lack of understanding of the word "morality" and of the way in which the economy works or a clearer exposition of the reasons why this country fell so far. I hope today that our debate will contribute towards our understanding in both a philosophical and a practical way, because in a philosophical vein I believe that it is vital for all in your Lordships' House to understand just how Government policies have an effect, and how they had an effect in the past, on the social fabric of our nation. On a practical plane I hope that all in your Lordships' House, if not the people outside, will recognise the solid achievements of this Government.
I must start by confessing to a sense of uncertainty in approaching the question of the social effects of government policy. I had thought that the age of social engineering was dying in the 1960s and was buried in the 1970s. Of course we can measure the social changes that affect our people in many ways. Government policies have direct effects on people's well-being in such areas as health, education and law and order. But the direct links between social change and Government policies are often hard to identify and I believe dangerous to try to create through deliberate government policy.
Indeed, here lies the essential difference in the policies which different governments have adopted. Socialists believe in putting decision making in the hands of the state. They actually believe that they can legislate and make people good. When they fail they console themselves that if they are not yet good, then against all the evidence they are at least better. They say that the state knows what the individual needs and can best provide it. George Orwell has shown us where this could lead. Eastern Europe provides an object lesson to us in the practical results of the state taking care of the people's social life and welfare.
Our belief is diametrically opposite. Our belief is in personal freedom and personal responsibility, for the two are inseparable. Look at industrial relations. We have restored the trade unions to their rightful owners, their members. They tell the unions what to do. In home ownership, the great strides have been paralleled by a greater control for tenants in their housing estates. In companies, the drive for privatisation has given managers a chance to manage and at the same time the employees have become the real owners of the company.
Some would say that what is important is not these broader philosophical questions but what has actually happened to people's real incomes and how well off they are. We heard much from the noble Lord opposite about what has happened in tax over the last few years. A single person on average earnings has enjoyed a significant increase in real take-home pay under this Government. I will remind your Lordships

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again and again that the only money that people spend is their take-home pay. The amount of tax they pay is an irrelevance. What really matters to everybody is the size of their pay cheque at the end of the week or at the end of the month.
Under this Government we have seen an increase of over 18 per cent. in real terms between 1978–79 and 1986–87. Let us look at the period the noble Lord was extolling between 1973–74 and 1978–79 when for a single person on average earnings the real take-home pay fell by 2·9 per cent.
If your Lordships object that that is just for a single person, then let us look at families between 1978–79 and 1986–87. A family with two children had an increase in real take-home pay—the money they were able to spend themselves—of 17 per cent. Between 1973–74 and 1978–79 that family would, I must confess, have enjoyed an increase. But, my Lords, it would have been an increase of half a per cent.
Lord Barnett: My Lords, I am sorry to interrupt the noble Lord's catalogue of statistics. Among them, would he care to add what has happened to the average taxpayer during the period since 1979—namely, whether they have or have not had their tax and national insurance increased or decreased?
Lord Young of Graffham: My Lords, a great gap divides us and I have an enormous task to bring home the economic realities of life. It does not matter two hoots what happens to the level of tax and what happens to the level of national insurance. What does matter is what people spend at the end of the day and how much money they take home. Until we get that understanding of their economics, then I think that I had better pass swiftly on to education because this is a profitless area with noble Lords opposite. All that I can say is that I will gladly swap the tax bill of the noble Lord opposite for his net take-home pay because I think he will find that his net take-home pay and that of any noble Lord is always larger than their tax bill.
In looking at education, it lays the groundwork for a citizen's life. After all, it is education that inculcates society's values as it prepares young people for the future. We are sometimes accused, amid all the sterile accusations about spending cuts, of neglecting education. That is simple nonsense. The key fact is that more money is being spent per pupil in real terms than ever before. Real spending per pupil in primary schools was 17 per cent. higher in 1983–84 than in 1978–79. Pupil-teacher ratios have fallen year by year.
What I want to be careful about is the simple connection that somehow spending more money equals a better output. We all know that higher spending is not the real key to better education. There was a report only last week on ILEA which showed spending above the national average having below average results. A year or two back, there was a famous report on Haringey—the second highest per capita spend in the land and education was, alas! one of the lowest. The key that unlocks and frees the minds of our children is the quality of the education that they receive. It requires a real effort to improve the quality of education to a standard and to get the best possible return for the enormous resources which we invest in education. That is our aim and objective, and one of the ways in which we hope to achieve it is to put more responsibility and more choice in the hands of parents.
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Parents are those with the first interest in seeing that their children have the best education. Many teachers and many people seem to feel that the dispute between education authorities and teachers over pay indicates the Government's lack of commitment to education. That could not be further from the case. Our concern is to raise standards of teaching. We have looked to better selection of student teachers and more and better in-service training for existing teachers, but we believe above all else that appraisal of the performance of all teachers will identify the help that the less effective ones need and provide the rewards for the most effective teachers.
Of course we have looked at the closer links between education and the world of work. The Technical and Vocational Education Initiative will, I believe, bring into the school system a better appreciation of the opportunities that await our young in the outside world. I hope very much that the new General Certificate of Secondary Education will put a greater emphasis on understanding and a greater emphasis on practical skills. The review of vocational qualifications which has just been made has revealed the need for a clearer structure of qualifications which will enable young people to develop their own pattern of work-related education and to change direction of skill more easily. That is true freedom.
Then we heard reference a few moments ago to health. Health, like education is something on which any Government could and would like to spend ever-increasing amounts; but, as in education, the amount that we can spend is limited by our national wealth. Your Lordships may think that in saying that I am leading up to an explanation of these cuts about which I keep on hearing. What is the actual record? I hate giving statistics but, if noble Lords opposite would drop the word "cuts", I will not give statistics. The simple explanation is that spending in real terms has increased by 24 per cent. since 1979. In the health service today we have 10,000 more doctors and dentists and 63,000 more nurses and midwives. We have more buildings. We have had 58 hospital schemes, each worth over £2 million, started and completed since 1979 and over 150 more hospital schemes worth over a billion pounds being planned, designed or built. I do not see very much in those figures about cuts. When we look at the actual facts, more people are being treated and the average number of patients per family doctor has fallen. Health care has improved under this Government but I have no doubt at all that noble Lords opposite will talk again and again about the existence of cuts.
On the matter of law and order, one of the most basic needs of our society is the safety and security of our people. We have responded to the problems of law and order by increasing police strength by almost 13,000, by putting bobbies where they belong, back on the beat, where they can be fully effective. We provided the pay, the equipment, the technology and the moral support to the police in their difficult and dangerous task. That we shall continue to do.
All these areas—health, education and law and order—are vital parts of the services which government provide for their citizens. There are those who have often confused our concern to limit spending, our concern to increase efficiency, with cuts in people's welfare. That is wrong and irresponsible.

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Wrong because the facts on such vital services are against them. Irresponsible because we know that the demands for public services are limitless. They are not constrained by the price mechanism which forces those making demands to balance those demands against costs. Encouraging people to think that the well of public money is bottomless only encourages the spend, spend, spend attitude which has brought us steadily higher taxation and lower incentives and, even worse, it encourages people to believe that they can do nothing for themselves.
If noble Lords opposite continue to tell people that they can do nothing for themselves, that they cannot be trusted to look after themselves, that "Big Brother knows best", well, after a while, they may even start to believe it. The real contrast between our policies and those which some other people propose is simply the power of the state. Our concern is to encourage personal responsibility and to roll back the frontiers of the state. Our country was seduced by the welfarism of the 1960s into believing that the state should take care of everything. The beliefs of Beveridge were left far behind in the scramble to provide services.
If we look at what has happened over the last few years and at the way public spending has risen steadily—from 35 per cent. of GDP in the early 1960s to 45 per cent. in the mid-1970s—we find five major changes. People took home less of the money their employers paid them, and employers paid more and more in additional costs to hire labour. The tax structure was so distorted that we subsidised everybody to enable them to buy machinery to take away jobs from people. The worst effect is that we attempted to redistribute wealth through the tax system. We set tax rates at 83 per cent. and at an unbelieveable 98 per cent. Indeed, in one year I remember it was 103 per cent. After 35 years of tax rates at that level, lo and behold, we had not redistributed wealth but, as sure as anything, we had eliminated wealth creation, and we wondered why we got poorer and poorer and poorer!
The achievement of this Government is that we have restored wealth creation and respect for it. What we have achieved and what we shall continue to achieve is a better standard of living for all our citizens. What we must not lose is the quality of life of which our fathers were justifiably proud. What we must give our children is the best possible start in the next century; a chance to grow up and live in a society in which freedom and individuality are cherished, in which wealth creation is respected and in which the less fortunate of our people are safeguarded. Those are the desirable and inevitable social consequences of this Government's policies.

Soviet Nuclear Accident: UK Citizens
3.41 p.m.
The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Baroness Young): My Lords, with the leave of the House I shall now repeat a Statement on the evacuation of British subjects following the nuclear accident at Chernobyl in the Soviet Union which is
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being made in another place by my honourable friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Mr. Eggar. The Statement is as follows:
"Following indications from countries bordering the Soviet Union the Soviet authorities announced on 28th April that there had been an accident at the nuclear reactor in Chernobyl. This was a day after radioactivity had first been monitored in Scandinavia. The Embassy in Moscow was in touch with the Soviet authorities early the next morning to seek information. The Soviet authorities were unwilling to give any details, but assured our Embassy that there was no cause for concern over the British citizens in Kiev and Minsk. In the absence of any authoritative information from the Soviet authorities, which continues to be a feature of this crisis, the Ambassador was instructed to seek the fullest possible details. He was only able to talk to the Soviet authorities this morning.
"During the course of yesterday afternoon I took the decision, in the light of the continuing uncertainty and lack of authoritative information, that it would not be right for British citizens to visit the western Soviet Union unless absolutely necessary. As regards those already there, we requested the fullest co-operation of the Soviet authorities in assisting any who decided to leave to do so. The Embassy was instructed to offer every help in this respect including repatriation.
"I reviewed the situation this morning. Despite inadequate information from the Soviet Union, it was evident, particularly from reports based on United States satellite observations and from Swedish scientific sources, that the situation at Chernobyl was such that it was necessary to evacuate British citizens. We have also decided to extend to north east Poland the advice already given to intending travellers to the western Soviet Union. We are in touch with the Polish government to identify which areas they consider are at risk.
"Our Embassy is in continuing contact with the Soviet authorities about the practical arrangements for evacuation. That will probably mean the students from Kiev and Minsk travelling to Moscow for evacuation from there. Our Ambassador has been told that the Soviet authorities will help. My right honourable friend the Prime Minister will be seeing the Soviet Ambassador this afternoon and impressing on him the need for the fullest practical co-operation.
"There are still many unanswered questions. We urge the Soviet authorities to release the fullest possible information immediately. We have established an expert working group in order to monitor the situation and advise Ministers on appropriate action.
"The lesson of this affair is that the openness which Mr. Gorbachev has said is necessary in Soviet society must become a reality."
My Lords, that concludes the Statement.
Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: My Lords, we are grateful to the noble Baroness for repeating the Statement and we welcome the action taken by the British Embassy to expedite the students' departure. Can she say

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whether there are any other British subjects apart from students and teachers in the Kiev and Minsk areas and whether contact has been made with them? Can she also say whether assistance has been given to the students and the teachers in respect of their return fares to this country? We also welcome the action described in the Statement which has been taken in other countries and especially in Poland. Has the noble Baroness any idea how many British subjects are involved there and in neighbouring countries that may be affected by the accident?
May we also ask whether Her Majesty's Government have offered assistance and technical advice to the Soviet Government on this issue, and what, if anything, has been the response to that? We regret this tragic accident and send our sympathies to the people who have been affected, but we must again deplore the failure of the Soviet Government to inform the world of this disaster, especially that part of the world which is affected by the tragedy, and to inform the world immediately so that other countries could take necessary action? Will Her Majesty's Government therefore encourage as soon as possible an exchange of views on the disaster between our country and our partners in the European Community, many of which are affected by it, and the Soviet Union, and also on its long-term implications? Is that not an urgent necessity now?
Lord Taylor of Gryfe: My Lords, from these Benches we welcome the Statement made by the noble Baroness this afternoon. We join the Leader of the Opposition in deploring the failure of the Soviet Government to give details, particularly since human life is at stake. I am not talking simply about British lives, but about the lives of others, including the Russians in the vicinity who have obviously been endangered by this explosion.
May I ask the Government whether they will refrain from any propaganda advantage that might be derived from the disaster, though I am not suggesting that they have not refrained so far? In instructing the British Embassy to offer all possible help, including repatriation, will the cost of the fares of students who have been invited to return to this country be met? I heard a young student on the radio this morning say that so far no offer of assistance with the return fare was available. I hope that that will be considered as part of the assistance which is going to be given by the Embassy.
I very much welcome the offer of technical help by Her Majesty's Government and by the American Government. I should be glad if the Minister will confirm this. May I suggest to him that out of tragedy sometimes comes good? Out of this tragedy there may emerge opportunities for co-operation in establishing international standards of safety in nuclear production. Can I ask the Government whether in the circumstances they are prepared to take the initiative in trying to organise international safety standards for nuclear energy which may be accepted by all countries producing energy in this way? The experience of the last war suggests that countries of different ideological backgrounds can work together in the face of tragedy and in case of human need. In this case we must not minimise the extent of the tragedy that has taken place.
Baroness Young: My Lords, I thank the noble Lords, Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos and Lord Taylor of Gryfe, for their responses to this Statement. I think we would all join, as the Statement makes clear, in deploring the failure of the Soviet Union to give us the necessary information, not only of course in their own country but particularly in Europe and in the world as a whole.
Both noble Lords asked me several specific questions and both raised the point about the students. The students in Minsk will travel on their revalidated air tickets from Moscow to London under arrangements being made by the British Council and our embassy in Moscow. Those students in Kiev are on a visit organised by Progressive Tours Limited and we understand that the company is making similar arrangements for their return to London. The refunding of costs is something to he taken up in the first place with the tour operator and the sponsors; but our main concern at this stage must be the safety of the students and seeing that they can travel home.
The noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn, asked about other British subjects in Kiev. We believe there are a number of short-term visitors both in Minsk and in Kiev, and perhaps also in neighbouring areas in Poland. Of course, we have no firm details of that. They will be advised via the BBC's overseas services what would be best for them. However, we believe that for safety's sake it is right to move our people out of Kiev and Minsk, which means an area of about 200 miles radius from Chernobyl. So far as British citizens in Poland are concerned, we believe they should follow the advice that is provided by the Polish Government, with whom our embassy is in close contact.
Both noble Lords asked about assistance to the Soviet Union. I repeat what my right honourable friend the Prime Minister has said and will make clear to the Soviet ambassador today, as our ambassador has already made clear to the Russians, that any technical assistance and advice needed will be supplied.
The noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn, spoke of the need for an exchange of views between the United Kingdom and the European Community on this disaster and its long-term implications. That is certainly a point which I shall pass on to my right honourable and learned friend the Foreign Secretary. As, regards the opportunities for co-operation, which was the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, I would only say to him that taking any initiative means that everybody has to co-operate in giving the information. I take note of the point he has raised on this matter.
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: My Lords, can my noble friend confirm that, with the present westerly winds over these islands, there is no risk of radiation from this explosion affecting this country? Can she also confirm that if the Soviet Government had promptly informed Her Majesty's Government of this disaster on the day of the disaster it would have been possible to extricate British subjects from the area of radiation earlier than it has proved possible to do now?
Baroness Young: My Lords, the answer to the first question about advice to people in Britain is that no special precautions are necessary since radiation levels

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are normal; but, as I said in the Statement, we are constantly monitoring the situation. On the second point regarding early information, I can only think that must be the case and that, as would have occurred in our own country or in any of the Western countries, the fullest information would have been given immediately.
The Earl of Halsbury: My Lords, Chernobyl means in Russian "black burrow". Will the Government exercise the maximum diplomatic pressure on the Soviets to come out of their black burrow into the light of day and tell us what is going on? There are nine other of these stations potentially capable of exploding in this way. What are they going to do about them to safeguard the world from further incidents of this kind and when are they going to abandon their peasant mentality—sly, suspicious, secretive—and tell us the truth? We already have an international organisation. Why do they not join in?
Lord Parry: My Lords, before the noble Baroness rises to answer the question, does the House accept that we should surely be concentrating on the fact that it appears that a major human tragedy has taken place and that we should be addressing our feelings to that and not to the politics of the situation?
Baroness Young: My Lords, as the Statement makes quite clear, there has obviously been a very serious nuclear accident. I am sure the whole House would agree that what we need to have is the fullest possible information from the Soviet Union about what has happened. Our ambassador in Moscow is under very detailed instructions to find out as fully as he can what has happened. My right honourable friend the Prime Minister is seeing the Russian ambassador this afternoon and will be not only offering assistance to him but seeking to gain the fullest information that we can get. I think that is the most important matter at the present time. We must all hope very much that such an appalling accident does not happen again; but certainly getting the information on the present one would be a help.
Lord Harmar-Nicholls: My Lords, as this incident is so important and its effects are likely to last for a long time, is there not a risk in some of the reactions we have heard in the House this afternoon of our giving the appearance of national feelings, as distinct from examining the matter constructively? Apart from the fact that Sweden and neighbouring countries ought to have been warned immediately the accident happened so that precautions could be taken, are we not perhaps being a little too precipitate in suggesting that Russia is not giving all the facts as they are known?
Is it not reasonable to believe that in circumstances as technical as this, they would want time to find out what the facts are before they give them out and not merely attempt to satisfy people by guesswork? It may well be that if we wait we shall get the true facts, and that will be helpful to everybody. But if in the meantime we give the impression of having a doubt about the truthfulness of the facts when they do come it may, as a consequence, not be in the best interests of anybody at all.
Baroness Young: My Lords, I do not think there is any question of doubting the facts when they come. I think our concern has been that we have not had the facts. As the Statement makes clear, the Soviet authorities announced on 28th April that there had been an accident. That was the day after radioactivity had first been monitored in Scandinavia. Therefore there is a presupposition that the accident happened earlier than that, and it is the time-lag that has been of concern. What we now want to have are the fullest possible facts about the situation.
Lord Morris: My Lords, may I ask my noble friend whether she feels it is enough just to hope that this type of accident will not happen again? Having a little bit of experience of Russian-designed chemical plants, at any rate, I have a great fear that it may well happen again, bearing in mind the age and type of design of the plants I understand they have in Russia. I think that there is an appalling likelihood of its happening again and I do not think it is good enough just to hope that it does not.
Baroness Young: My Lords, I recognise that this is a very serious accident and I would not wish anything that I have said in any way to appear to understimate the seriousness of it. The fact is that Chernobyl is unlike any existing or planned reactors in the United Kingdom, and the United Kingdom nuclear authorities rejected its design many years ago as intrinsically unsuitable. As that is a matter for the Soviet Union, we must—I use the verb again—hope that with its co-operation such an accident will not happen again.
Lord Caccia: My Lords, would it be possible to have published the photographs that have been taken of the incident so that we can have some further information which is really already available?
Baroness Young: Yes, my Lords, I note the point that the noble Lord has made; I see the point of that.

Government Policies: Social Effects
4 p.m.
Debate resumed.
Lord Banks: My Lords perhaps we may now return to the debate. I should like to begin by saying that I am extremely grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, for providing us with the opportunity to examine the social effects of the Government's policies. Like him, I find them in many ways adverse. I was astonished to hear the noble Lord, Lord Young of Graffham, say, if I understood him aright, that the Government's policies are not designed to have social effects. If the Government are involved in social security, health, education, housing and the economy, what they do is bound to have a social effect, and we are entitled to review it.
The more I consider the problem the more I am forced to these conclusions. First, as a result of Government policy, there has been a redistribution of income from the poorer to the better off. That was

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clearly demonstrated by the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell. Secondly, the numbers of the poor, though they are a minority within a comparatively affluent society, have considerably increased. Many of them—the noble Lord, Lord Young, may perhaps remember this—do not have any take-home pay at all.
Thirdly, the division between the comfortably off majority and the deprived has become more acute, as the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Liverpool pointed out to us a little while ago. Fourthly, it is not only the poorest but also many in the middle income range who are concerned about the inadequacy of the resources available in the education system, the National Health Service, housing and the maintenance and repair of the infrastructure.
I shall give some of the evidence which has forced me to those four conclusions. There can be no doubt in my mind that part of the blame for the considerable increase in unemployment which has taken place since 1979 lies in Government policies. Unemployment is of course a problem for all similar industrialised countries, but it was exacerbated here by government policies which led to an accentuation of the decline in manufacturing industry, high interest rates, an overvalued pound, and a refusal to embark on a significant programme of redevelopment in mitigation.
There is no need for me to go into the details of the social effects of unemployment—no jobs for the young, and the middle-aged thrown on the scrapheap. The House is familiar with those problems. The House has discussed them many times (rightly) and will undoubtedly do so again. Unemployment has greatly increased the numbers of the poor, as the increase in the numbers on supplementary benefit clearly indicates.
Next, the shift in the burden of taxation has favoured the better off. The numbers caught in the poverty trap have increased fivefold since 1979. The number of families forced to top up their income with family income supplement has trebled in that period.
If we look at income tax and national insurance contributions as a percentage of earnings, we find, for example, that a married couple with two children on half national average earnings are 100 per cent. worse off than they were in 1979; a similar couple on national average earnings are 3 per cent. worse off; on five times national average earnings they are 13 per cent. better off; and on 10 times national earnings they are 22 per cent. better off.
We must bear in mind of course that social security benefits are less than they would have been but for government policies. I think in particular of the cuts to which the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, referred, which took place in 1980. At that time the then Secretary of State for Social Services declared that £1,500 million per annum had been cut from the social security budget. Some of those cuts have of course been restored, but many of them have not, such as the break in the link with earnings for pensions, the reduction of 5 per cent. in sickness benefit, and the abolition of the earnings related supplement in relation to sickness and unemployment benefit. More recently we have seen child benefit not uprated fully in line with prices so that its real value has decreased, creating concern about the future of that benefit.
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There has also been a decline in the education system throughout the country. I recently watched a programme on schools on television and soon after I listened to a programme on the radio which was also about schools. The two programmes were separately produced and yet they had a similar theme, which was that our education system was dividing into three streams—the private schools with adequate resources, the state schools where the parents were able to afford to provide considerable resources, and state schools without any additional funding, which were normally in the more depressed areas where the buildings were likely in many cases to be deteriorating.
The National Confederation of Parent Teacher Associations sent a questionnaire to its members covering a great many primary and secondary schools, and among its findings was the fact that 48 per cent. of primary and 82 per cent. of secondary school children are sharing text books. That may not matter so much in primary schools, but one soon realises that it matters a great deal in secondary schools.
That survey also showed that parents are supporting the state system to the extent of 30 per cent. of capitation in primary schools and 9 per cent. in secondary schools where the amounts of money are higher.
There has been a similar decline in the National Health Service. The noble Lord, Lord Young of Graffham, said that noble Lords in this House would probably continue to talk about that. He rather suggested that the problem did not really exist, but Mr. Maurice Burrows, the chairman of the British Medical Association central committee for hospital services has told the Secretary of State for Social Services that there is widespread disillusion among senior hospital doctors over the state of the service. Why do those people say those things unless there is some substance in the charge? Mr. Burrows wrote:
"Across the United Kingdom, services are being reduced mainly in terms of ward closures on a temporary or extended basis".
In a report entitled All our Tomorrows which deals with the treatment of the elderly the British Medical Association says:
"The general treatment of the frail elderly by the state' is a scandal".
It goes on to explain why, and one of the reasons is lack of money.
I believe that there is now widespread concern in the country about the future of the education system and the National Health Service.
Let me deal with housing. We find that there is a shortage of houses to rent. I am glad that 63 per cent. of households are now owner-occupiers, but the remainder require rented accommodation, and they include, in the main, the poorest in the community. The amount spent on housing has been reduced drastically by over 50 per cent. during the period that the Government have been in office. There has been a continuing decline in the condition of the housing stock.
We are all aware of the problems of inner cities where unemployment, bad housing, a cumbersome and not always adequate social security system and a crumbling infrastructure combine to create a serious problem.

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Nearly all these problems are due to shortage of money. Whether we are spending more money than we spent before is not the point. It is clear that we are not spending enough to avoid these problems.
That situation, I suggest, stems from the Government's belief that public expenditure as a percentage of gross domestic product should be reduced, and yet if we look at figures issued by the OECD for 1983 we find that the United Kingdom in that year on this calculation took 47·2 per cent. of gross domestic product for Government expenditure, while the percentage figure for West Germany was 48·6, for the Netherlands, 63·6, for Belgium, 56·3 and for France, 51·5—all higher than our own amount of government expenditure.
All the problems that I have mentioned except unemployment, could be solved, at least in the short run, by greater expenditure; and unemployment could be reduced, at least in the short run, by expenditure. The Government say that you cannot solve these problems by throwing money at them, but they do not mind individuals throwing money at their individual problems if they can afford to do so. The trouble is that if you leave too much to individual initiative the poorest go to the wall.
The Government do not mind extra expenditure on health and education so long as it is private. It is not increased expenditure therefore that they are against but increased public expenditure. Why is that? First, it is because they fear that increased public expenditure must be inflationary. Secondly, they seem to believe that money spent in the private sector promotes recovery but expenditure in the public sector does not.
I reject the second argument, because I reject the first. I do not believe that public expenditure is of necessity inflationary. If the Government financed extra expenditure out of taxation, that would surely not be inflationary. Incidentally, my honourable and right honourable friends in another place voted against the cut of 1p in the standard rate which cost £1.2 billion because they felt that with all these problems to be faced it was wrong to be making that cut at the time; and various tax cuts which have favoured the better-off since 1979 have cost over £3 billion. We on these Benches have made clear that we are committed to a measure of redistribution, and, in my view, as I have said many times in this House before, a tax credit scheme would be a suitable mechanism for that.
But what about borrowing? If the extra cost, or part of it, were financed by borrowing, would that be inflationary? We know that there are other countries with a public sector borrowing requirement which constitutes a higher percentage of gross domestic product yet which have a lower rate of inflation. May I just mention the Netherlands as one of those? It has a public sector borrowing requirement almost twice ours and yet the figures for the previous year to last February show an inflation rate of 1.2 per cent. Also, we know that the United States has run up a considerable deficit without any adverse effect on inflation.
How important is a percentage point or two on the public sector borrowing requirement so far as inflation is concerned? How much more important are
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exchange rates, interest rates and world commodity prices? How much more important than a few points on the public sector borrowing requirement is the price of oil?
I believe that the Government should speak clearly to the country and that they should say something like this: "We have these serious social problems. We propose to forget for the moment privatisation and nationalisation. We wish to concentrate on these social problems. To begin to reduce them, we need to spend more money in the years ahead. We propose to get that money partly by a limited increase in government borrowing, with the safeguard of an incomes policy, and partly by calling on comfortable Britain to make a contribution with a higher proportionate contribution from the most comfortable."
I believe that such an appeal and such a plan, detailed as to figures and proposed expenditure as it would have to be, would evoke a favourable response from the British people and go some way to offset the social effects of the present Government's policies.
4.15 p.m.
Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: My Lords, I am grateful for the opportunity to take part in this debate initiated and opened by my noble friend Lord Wells-Pestell. My noble friend delivered an impressive, wide-ranging and deeply-felt speech and proved, in my view, beyond any shadow of a doubt that wide sections of our community are suffering acute hardship primarily as a result of this Government's policies—or lack of policies.
I shall deal with some of these problems in a moment, but I am bound to say to the noble Lord, Lord Young of Graffham, that it was unworthy to talk of my noble friend as having reflected "the politics of envy". I thought my noble friend was reflecting the politics of principle and compassion. My noble friend commented on the recently opened private hospital here in London which is charging £350 a night. I did not think that his remarks deserved the noble Lord's description of the politics of envy. It was a reference to what Mr. Edward Heath once described as the unacceptable face of capitalism. The noble Lord should not have dealt in so unworthy a manner with my noble friend's speech. My noble friend, of all Members of this House, is the last to have anything to do with the politics of envy. The Government's defence—
Lord Young of Graffham: My Lords, my reference to the society of envy was in reply to a remark that I did not think was justified about the man who built up Jaguar, taking it from 14,000 units a year to 43,000, and, who knows, many more beyond, and who is giving employment to many people. To say that people who are the leaders of companies that succeed are unworthy of the salaries they draw is only showing envy and is not looking at the achievements.
Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: My Lords, that is a totally unsatisfactory reply to my charge, and I am sure that noble Lords in all parts of the House will agree. The Government's case is well known and we have heard it again from the noble Lord, Lord Young, today.

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Broadly, it is that they are on the right track, that inflation is down, that we are economically healthy and compare well with other developed countries and, finally, that the people of this country must work out their own salvation without government intervention; that is to say, that everybody must stand on his own two feet.
They go on to say, if pressed, that if there are difficulties, such as very high unemployment, these are due partly to the world recession and partly to the inequities of the previous Labour Government. They used to add that the difficulties were also partly due to the high price of oil and the OPEC cartel. I suppose they are now due to the low price of oil. Someone ought to write a book entitled How the Conservative Government took advantage of the great North Sea oil bonanza. It would be a classic on how not to run the economy of Britain.
It is also time that the Government accepted responsibility for their actions. They have been in power now for seven years, with a large majority. After seven years, we should begin to get results and the promises made in 1979 and 1983 should now be seen to fructify. This is what the debate is about. In her speech in the Debate on the Address in 1979, the Prime Minister said:
On restoring the economic balance"—
This was 1979—
"we start from a poor base. For almost four years there have been well over 1 million and sometimes as many as 1½ million unemployed. Recent improvements offer no hope of long-term recovery".—[Official Report, Commons, 15/5/79; col. 77].
Again, the Conservative Party manifesto of 1979 said:
"We are setting out to rebuild our economy and reunite a divided and disillusioned people".
After seven years of Conservative Government, we have well over three million people out of work—probably nearer four million on the basis of 1979 methods of calculation. Furthermore, I regret to say that we are a more divided and disillusioned community, certainly than at any time since the last war. It is, in my view, a major tragedy. I do not dismiss everything that the Government have done as a failure or as foolish. They have, in fact, brought inflation down, although that has been done at a very high cost. I would pay the noble Lord, Lord Young of Graffham, credit for the work that he is trying to do in providing training opportunities over a wide field. But, broadly, the Government's policies and the quality of their leadership have created an atmosphere of division and hopelessness in many places, and this has bred an unpredictable mood that bodes no good for this country in the longer term.
One must leave the Home Counties and the more prosperous parts of the South to appreciate this properly. The noble Lord referred to the "higher standards of living" that people are enjoying. He should go to the North East; he should come to parts of Wales; he should go to Scotland. He must talk to the people there and learn the facts of life. I do not propose to deal in detail with unemployment in this debate, save to repeat that it remains the greatest problem and the greatest evil. I do not think that anyone in any part of the House will dissent from that. There are some who will seek to minimise it by talking about "moonlighting", about "fiddling" and about "the
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black economy". I think that I heard the noble Lord, Lord Young of Graffham, in an exchange at Question Time a few days ago, referring to the black economy.
Lord Young of Graffham: My Lords, no.
Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: My Lords, I do not defend these practices. But those who practise them are a small percentage of the total out of work. Where these practices do exist, they are the product of high and long-term unemployment. They are men "getting on their bikes" to clean windows on the side. Anyone who wishes to study fiddling and the black economy should not waste his time with the poorer section of the community: he should take a walk to the City of London to see the experts at work. Some of the great men there have not set a good example at times of hardship and of poverty. As my noble friend Lord Wells-Pestell said so eloquently, poverty there is in so many areas of our society.
There are some Ministers who appear to resist the facts. They should look at them carefully. I was appalled to read a series of articles that appeared in New Society on 18th April. I hope that noble Lords will study them carefully, if they have not already done so. They are worth careful study indeed. For example, the articles calculate that in 1983—and, certainly, there has been no improvement since then—nine million people, or one-sixth of the population of Britain, lived in poverty. They claim that Government policy has made matters worse. They say:
"The number dependent on low wages has increased sharply in the past five years, a process helped by the weakening or dismantling of protective wage mechanisms such as the fair Wages Resolution or the Wages Council. As a result, the number of families dependent on family income supplement—payable to families with children dependent on low wages—has doubled, increasing by 100,000 since 1981".
We hear a great deal—and we have heard it again today—about tax reliefs that help the poorer section of the community. The fact is that the tax burden on the poorer section of the community has increased. Since 1979, the proportion of income taken in income tax has doubled. The same proportion of tax taken from those earning five times the average has been cut by 13 per cent. I do not accept the definition of the right honourable gentleman the Secretary of State for Education that,
"a family is poor if it cannot afford to eat".
The DHSS itself commissioned a study by the Policy Studies Institute in 1984. It produced a depressing report. Here are a few words from it:
"To run out of money more than occasionally is a pretty miserable life. To run out most weeks must make a lot of people near to desperation. Yet 38 per cent. of non-pensioners, and 51 per cent. of couples with children, reported that near desperate situation and many others were not far from it".
Then there was the survey, "Breadline Britain", to which reference has been made. This found that three million people are unable to heat the living area of their homes and that around six million go without some essential item of clothing, such as a warm waterproof coat, because of lack of money. Three and a half million go without the basic consumer durables such as carpets, a washing machine or a fridge, which most people consider to be necessities.

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The problem of poverty is vast and painful. Surely, it must be tackled as a matter of urgency by the Government. The welfare state, as we know it, cannot cope with its inequalities. The welfare state was not designed to deal with mass unemployment and poverty. It is true that our benefit system and our taxation methods must be reformed, but unemployment can only be tackled realistically by a new economic policy. This is precisely where the Government fail to act.
Ministers should also study the Gallup Poll, if they want the view of the people, or some of the people, commissioned by New Society. I will quote three conclusions of the poll. The first was that the Government say that they care about poverty: the public disagrees. Secondly, the Government say that they are providing an adequate safety net of income support for the poor: the public disagrees. Thirdly, the Government say that income tax cuts are more important than increasing benefits to the poor: the public disagrees. This should be a salutary warning to the Government. They will ignore it at their peril.
In her introduction to the 1983 manifesto, Mrs. Margaret Thatcher said:
"We have a duty to protect the most vulnerable members of our society, many of whom contributed to the heritage we now enjoy".
I agree entirely with the Prime Minister. But have the Government really succeeded in doing this? Are the vulnerable members of society better off? Or are they as well off as they were when this Government took office seven years ago?
Let me sum up. I do not think that the elderly are better off. The link between pension increases and the rise in prices or earnings was broken in 1980. What about children—another vulnerable section of society? Here, again, child benefit was kept below its May 1979 value from 1979 to 1983. And it is really worth little more today in real terms. If there is unemployment and if there is poverty, the children of the families affected always suffer. These are "the vulnerable members of our society" to whom the Prime Minister referred—the elderly, the disabled, the children, the unemployed and their families. I regret to say that it is they who are suffering now—suffering from a drop in their standards as a result of Government policies over a period of seven years. Even now we are told that half a million children from low income families may lose free school meals. This is almost unbelievable.
My noble friend Lord Underhill and other noble friends will pursue these matters. They will deal, I know, with the questions of homelessness, shortage of qualified social workers and the problems that exist in the health service and in other areas. But there are, my Lords, other ways of managing this country—and I was impressed with the summing up of the noble Lord, Lord Banks, in his excellent speech—that would not lead to the disasters often predicted by some members of the party opposite. That is the view of many distinguished members of the Conservative Party. A good number of them have now indicated that they do not propose to seek re-election to another place although they are not elderly. Why are they opting out? One of the major reasons is that they are profoundly dissatisfied with the policies of Her
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Majesty's Government at the present time. They could form a very good government in exile if required!
I fear that these are dangerous times, and that if we do not change course very soon we shall be in trouble. Massive long-term unemployment and the levels of poverty I have described, taken side by side with a high crime rate, alcoholism and drug abuse, and a menacing increase in violence, are not to be dismissed lightly. I well remember the 1930s, and I believe that the atmosphere is more highly charged today than it was then.
I know that noble Lords opposite are not without compassion. They will understand me when I say that all this has to do with the future of our country—not only with material standards of living but also with the preservation of parliamentary democracy over the next 50 years; of freedom under the law; of the liberty of the subject; and of the right of the individual to build a good life for himself and for his family and children. The noble Lord must not think that we want the state to intervene at every point. As a Welsh non-conformist radical, I have been in favour of independence for a much longer time than the noble Lord. As we approach the end of the 20th century, those are the matters that we must analyse and ponder over. Again, there are those who would use every opportunity and every grievance to shake the stability of our country, and we must beware of them.
The Government still have time to assess the problems and to introduce new policies. But if they fail, they will carry a very heavy burden of responsibility.
4.32 p.m.
Lord Soper: My Lords, I should like to add my thanks to those already offered to the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, on the introduction of his theme and on the magisterial way in which he set the pattern of what I believe to be an accurate and comprehensive view of the kind of society in which we are living today. It was all the more impressive, it seems to me, because of the failure of the immediately succeeding speaker to produce a sermon after he had taken due care to read the collect for the day. I believe that the collect for the day was set forth admirably by the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell. It is something upon which, as a Methodist preacher, I would humbly suggest that your Lordships should properly listen to my testimony.
I do not believe that one can measure unhappiness or destitution in corporative terms. After all, there is no suffering, no misery and no happiness that is not personal. However, I believe that one can calculate over a period of years what is the general trend of a society; whether it is away from those conditions that add lustre and goodwill, or whether it is to some extent a decadent trend. I have no pleasure in saying to your Lordships that I believe that there is a large measure of decadence in the society that I know today and which I have known in social terms uninterruptedly for the past 50 or 60 years.
I do not believe that the sum total of human wickedness has necessarily increased, but I believe that there are elements in contemporary society that present acute and hitherto unprecedented problems for those who seek the welfare of a society and not

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merely the aggregation of individuals. I shall select three and speak to them very briefly.
In the first instance, I believe that there has been a marked increase in the scourge of alcoholism, and more contemporaneously still, a very large increase in child abuse. I see no evidence in the social work to which I am committed to suggest that those problems are abating. They are probably increasing in their devastation. It is for me, therefore, a very desolate experience to have to read that the Maudsley Hospital, which has been a pioneer in alcoholic research in its work there, and the Tavistock Clinic and the two Maudsley institutions committed to child care and adolescent care are in peril of having to close a great deal of what they have been trying to do because they do not have the money to continue that work. I regard that as totally scandalous.
In the same area of Camden in which I have been involved in social work for a very long time, I visit from time to time—as no doubt your Lordships do—the great railway stations of Euston, St. Pancras and Kings Cross. I have no doubt that your Lordships have seen some of the young, single and unemployed youths from other parts of the country who have been encouraged to get on their bicycles and venture into London, where they have not been received with any kind of opportunity of a decent place in which to lay their heads and a decent opportunity of establishing themselves but where they have become increasingly dispirited. Should anybody be surprised that they are at the same time less liable to obey a strict moral code, when the very principles of life have been undermined so far as they are concerned?
One has there a situation that has been pinpointed in respect of the curse, as I say, of bed and breakfast hotels. I was associated for many years with Shelter. Your Lordships may allow me to read a very brief statement, for I believe that it is unexceptionable and totally condemnatory of the present indifference that there is in many respects to the need for decent housing and rented accommodation for those who come, with the encouragement of the Government, to seek their fortunes in London and to obtain jobs here. It says:
"The number of families in bed and breakfast hotels is only the tip of an iceberg of London's homelessness crisis. Thousands of other families are dumped in other forms of temporary accommodation like hostels and short life houses. If anything, the position of single people is even worse. They have no rights worthy of the name under the Homeless Persons Act and are increasingly obliged to live in bed and breakfast hotels with no prospect of being rehoused".
It is that situation that prompts me to ask a question that hitherto has not been posed, or which has not been sufficiently dealt with. However, I have no doubt that it will receive adequate treatment in later speeches. My question is this: why is it that the Government are not prepared to pour into those particular vacant opportunities the kind of public money that in the short term at least can relieve a great deal of the misery that is suffered by so many people? The simple answer is that we are committed to a defence programme that absorbs such vast amounts of human and capital expenditure that, according to the Government, we cannot afford to do the things that are immediate and that belong to the nature of a civilised and compassionate society. It is in that regard that I shall venture somewhat wide of what I imagine
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was the original purpose of this debate and in a few words commit to your Lordships something that is increasingly my conviction.
I believe that we have a society for which there is no precedent and which has characteristics hitherto unknown. Some of them are unpredictable in their future possibilities but many of them require an entirely revolutionary principle if we are to survive the threats of this nuclear age. I say that not from a parsonic point of view, to scare the eternal wits out of anybody, but to say something that is increasingly my conviction.
I believe in the pacifist situation because I am convinced that increasingly the commitment of any country to the use of armed violence is first a danger in itself and then becomes an increasing danger with every new opportunity for increasing the total fire power of that armed society. I do not say that the recent calamity in Russia is primarily concerned with armaments, though I have no doubt that a great deal of it is. What I do say is that from the Christian standpoint that I hope I represent I find an increasing recognition on the part of ordinary people that the society in which we are encouraged to live and privatise into acceptance is a society that is in itself doomed. That society cannot continue to exist The dangers are ever increasing and the threats are ever more momentous. Perhaps what is more significant than anything else is the fact that we progressively lose control of the very means by which in other ages and under other conditions we were able to contain the menaces of even a capitalist regime.
I do not enjoy saying this. I only wish that the Church would say it with greater fortitude and greater clarity. In my judgment there is no way today in which one can baptise the influence and power of a defence mechanism which depends on the use of armed violence (or the threat of it) to deal with the problems which confront a society which is now bereft of the very source that turns a society into a community. The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer; and the North is different from the South. If I may be permitted to say so, I found in the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Young, something which seemed to me to be a thousand miles away from the realities in Tower Hamlets from where I have just come, as I do every Wednesday. It did not seem to me that it corresponded with anything that I have heard in the words or seen in the eyes of those people, some of whom are unemployed, many of whom are cynical, and most of whom are frightened to death.
It is in the light of such conditions that I make this simple plea. We have taken the risk time and again of committing ourselves to the processes of violence in order to correct what we believe to be social evils. I believe that the situation which we have today no longer renders that a viable proposition. In the past we have been prepared to take that risk and now we can see to what extent that policy has failed us.
Would it not be in the interests of our children for us now to be prepared to take a comparable risk with non-violence? We could then direct the kind of resources that now are devoted to this fearsome option into the means by which we might indeed preserve our children from the kind of calamity of which so many of us are afraid. Such is my plea, and it is a very simple

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plea. I know that it contains within it immense problems, but I believe that it is the only way which is reconcilable with Christian teaching and the only way which can offer hope for the future.
4.42 p.m.
Baroness Turner of Camden: My Lords, I, too, welcome the opportunity to participate in a debate on this important subject, but how difficult it is to follow the noble Lord, Lord Soper, whose speech was so moving. Since I have been a Member of your Lordships' House I have had the opportunity of observing at first hand the working out in legislative terms of the Government's philosophy. It must be said that it has a cohesion and consistency which are rarely found in governments. Some people might call it an ideological inflexibility. Essentially it appears to be that deregulation, privatisation and the working of the free market will ultimately solve all our economic and social problems.
Deregulation includes the removal of all restrictions (thought by previous generations to be protection) in regard to employees, no matter how vulnerable those employees may be. Hence, we have seen the attempt to remove from employees the protection that existed under the Shops Act 1950 which was fortunately frustrated by your Lordships' amendment and dealt with finally in another place. More recently there has been a similar attempt in the context of the Sex Discrimination Bill.
Similar attempts are being made through the Social Security Bill, which undermines previous pensions legislation on which there had been an all-party consensus. The introduction of private personal pension provision in effect is an attempt to privatise pensions and, incidentally, it undermines good occupational pension provision as well. We shall shortly have the opportunity of debating these matters when the Bill comes before your Lordships.
In the field of general services we have had the privatisation of essential services such as transport, though there is no evidence that this will lead to an improvement in services in those parts of the country—particularly rural areas—where provision of such services is not and cannot reasonably be expected to be a profitable exercise. Of course, your Lordships also have before you the Gas Bill, and that again is another privatisation exercise.
On the wages and salaries front previous protection, some of which has existed for many years, has either been expunged or is in course of being so. My noble friend Lord Cledwyn has already referred to the fair wages resolution which was passed as long ago as 1945 and which has been honoured by all governments except this one. That has now disappeared. At least it meant that, if they wanted to get a public contract, contractors undertaking public work had to abide by certain minimum standards so far as their employees were concerned.
Schedule 11 to the Employment Protection Act which enabled a union to take a case to arbitration if it was felt that an employer was paying below the general level has also been expunged. As we have seen in another context, the Government seem to have no
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role now for the Central Arbitration Committee, despite its good track record and its acknowledged expertise in dealing with industrial relations problems.
We have often been told by government spokesmen that various regulations are no longer necessary. We are told that they are out of date and that such arrangements can be left to unions and employers to negotiate. However, this Government have done their best to weaken one side of the bargaining and industrial relations structure, and that is the union side.
Schedule 11 to the Employment Protection Act at least provided some kind of basis for assessing employee opinion about the recognition of a union at places of employment. The process was not perfect. It involved a survey by ACAS, which would then make an award on the basis of what that survey revealed. However, it was a reasonably civilised method of testing employee opinion and ensuring that the unions which the employees joined would be recognised by an employer. That, too, has gone. Now the only pressure that can be brought to bear on a reluctant employer is industrial dispute action, which it behoves governments to devise machinery to avoid, wherever possible. If the Government pride themselves on giving the unions back to their members, the least they can do is to encourage employers to recognise the unions to which employees want to belong. However, the unions themselves are subject to more restrictions now than ever they were before. In the employment field the bias of the Government is there for all to see.
The main thrust of government policy, as exemplified in statements repeatedly made on their behalf, is to put the emphasis on assisting the employer to reduce labour costs. For that reason protective legislation is repealed, wages councils are to be emasculated, and it is made more and more difficult for unions, which are already weakened by unemployment, to represent and look after members' interests, while tripartite and highly respected bodies such as the Central Arbitration Committee are to have their role drastically reduced in the name of government philosophy.
However, what is this policy achieving in social terms? We are told that the economy is recovering and that things are on the up-turn; but to the young unemployed person who has little hope of getting a job, or to the unemployed man or woman over 50 who is perhaps risking his redundancy pay in setting up a small business (and over a third of those small businesses fail) this may seem a hollow claim indeed.
According to published statistics, the total number of employees in employment has fallen considerably since 1980. The decrease has mainly been in male employment. In 1980 there were just over 13 million male employees, which is nearly 60 per cent. of the total workforce. By 1985 this figure had fallen to just over 11½ million, which is a decrease of nearly million jobs, or over 11 per cent. These figures reflect the decline in manufacturing industry as a major employer. The noble Lord, Lord Banks, has already referred to this fact in his excellent speech. Manufacturing lost over 1·4 million jobs between 1980 and 1985, which is a fall of over 20 per cent.

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There have been increases in employment in the service sector. Much of it is female employment and a great deal of it is part-time. The slight rise in employment figures is almost entirely due to increases in part-time employment and in the service sector. But there are problems lying in wait for us there as well because we have not yet seen in the service sector the full impact of new technology, particularly in service industries, such as banking, where it would be possible, if technology were more widely applied, to perform the same sort of jobs with far fewer employees than are at present employed in those industries.
We know from debates in this House that your Lordships are concerned about unemployment. This is shown by the number of times the subject is referred to in debates. We also know that there are parts of the country where unemployment is incredibly high. When we discussed the closure of Gartcosh last year a figure of 36 per cent. was given for that area which was not disputed or doubted by the Minister when he replied to that debate. It is recognised on all sides that this is a major social problem which may very well lie at the root of other problems that increasingly trouble us; for example, the decline in the quality of life in urban areas, the disaffection of sections of youth, particularly very young people and young people in the ethnic minority groups, who are feeling basically alienated and disaffected, and the effect of that on the problem of law and order. It is by far the major issue that we have to tackle and yet government policy does not do so, despite the single-mindedness with which that policy has been pursued.
It will no doubt be said—indeed, it has been said already—that this phenomenon is not confined to the United Kingdom and that throughout the EC unemployment is perceived as a problem. Our belief on this side of the House is that the Government, through their policies, have made the situation worse. Nor are we alone in that belief. Both the CBI and the TUC agree that there should be a radical government initiative designed to boost manufacturing industry.
It is clear that the unemployment problem cannot be solved overnight—and I am sure that nobody on this side of the House would suggest that it can be—but the manner in which manufacturing industry has been allowed to decline, without apparently any thought for the social consequences, is not likely to assist; rather the reverse. Mass unemployment is economic nonsense. It has been stated on this side of the House that the real figure is probably nearer 4 million. If we take the figure as being 4 million, the annual loss of output from these people must be considerable. It has been estimated that it could be as much as £37 billion. More than £22 billion is lost to the Exchequer in payment of benefits and lost taxation.
There are countries that have pursued full employment as a major policy objective, with active government intervention and planning techniques. Despite economic difficulties, they have kept down the level of unemployment. Norway, for example, has managed to keep it down to 2.9 per cent.; Sweden, 3.0 per cent.; and Austria, 3.9 per cent. That should be compared with our figure of around 13 per cent. What I am saying is that it is a matter of policy priorities. The priorities of the present Government do not
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include full employment as a target, however difficult to achieve. Nor do they include social welfare, as many noble Lords have already said in this debate.
Indeed, the provision of employment is part of a social welfare policy. In that the Government differ from Disraeli. In his novel Sybil—or the Two Nations (and he was very much opposed to the polarisation of society into two nations) he wrote:
"Power has only one duty—to secure the social welfare of the people".
Power is not being used in that way by this Government.
4.52 p.m.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, for giving us the opporunity to debate this subject, which I find a very interesting one. I begin by saving that, knowing of his great knowledge of the health service, I was somewhat surprised to hear how amazed he was at the private hospital with beds at £350 a night. Many of the costs of National Health Service hospitals are now enormously high (although perhaps the patients do not realise it) but I had thought that the noble Lord would be aware of it. I left the Chamber briefly to telephone to check on that matter. In 1984–85 the cost of keeping a patient at the National Heart Hospital was £253.74 per night, excluding any capital cost. Such things have become expensive.
Lord Wells-Pestell: My Lords, the point that I was trying to make and probably did not make very well was that, not being an ordinary National Health Service hospital, it could not be used by National Health Service patients. Someone could get into it only by paying £350 a night.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord. That leads on to the rest of the argument that I was going to bring against him. I blame the Labour Party for this division of the health service, and particularly of hospital treatment, into separate private and National Health Service camps. When we had pay beds, NHS patients definitely benefited from the amount of time the consultants were able to spend at the hospital which now they spend travelling between their private and their NHS commitments. That separation has not been a good thing in terms of medical treatment.
Another point to be appreciated is that if private patients were paying that amount of money to go to the hospital, those patients may well have been entitled to free NHS treatment and were not making the demands upon the state that they otherwise would. Anyone willing to pay such amounts, whether out of his own pocket or not, and choosing that rather than the cost of a holiday abroad, is quite entitled to do so.
I have been directly involved in the NHS for many years both as a general dental practitioner and as a member of health authorities and hospital boards. This Government's record on health care is good, and that should be stated and restated as it is not sufficiently well known. Under the last Labour Government capital spending on the NHS fell by 35 per cent. When we listen to noble Lords on the other side of the House, we get the impression that

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everything was marvellous in the health service, but it was not by any means. The health service has needed an injection of funds for a long time.
In 1984–85 this Government increased the real level of investment by more than 30 per cent. It is 30 per cent. higher than in 1978–79. It was a Labour Government who introduced RAWP, which was the planned reallocation of resources in the health service. There was a case for it because it was to meet the population movement out of London. New areas needed hospitals. The shrinkage of population from, I think, 8 million to 6 million in London has made a dramatic difference to the demands of patients, particularly in central London, whereas all the dormitory areas around the fringes of London have greatly increased populations and need better hospitals.
One hears a lot about what is happening in terms of rationalisation of health treatment in London. It is very painful for people who are used to a service and are familiar with a hospital. No one likes to lose the unit to which he is attached. But we must bear in mind that even in London new hospitals are under construction. We hear little about that. One needs only to drive to Paddington to see St. Mary's Hospital, a brand new, multi-million pound hospital being reconstructed as a major teaching hospital. The National Heart Hospital, the board of which I have had the honour to be a member since 1974, is being rebuilt right now on a new site in Sydney Street, Chelsea, as the National Heart and Brompton Hospital. Phase I alone is costing £21 million. That will be a centre of excellence and will be available to give the most complicated heart and lung care to patients from all over the country. The hospital has an international reputation for research and is doing much to help people throughout the world, as well as in our own country.
These hospitals have been made possible by the present Government. We hear so little about that. My daughter is a new and comparatively young doctor. She is now in Hertfordshire and has also worked in a hospital in Suffolk. In each of those places she was working in a new purpose-built hospital. These are the areas about which we tend to hear nothing because the people there are very pleased with the new facilities that have been provided. I suppose that it is human nature to complain about what we do not have and not to be delighted with what we have.
When I listened to the noble Lord, Lord Soper, who spoke so movingly about the homeless young in London, I thought of the time when I had been a social services chairman in this very part of London under a Labour Government. We had the same problems. The problem of young, homeless single people in London is not new by any means. The noble Lord mentioned the various units of accommodation such as short-life accommodation and old hotels or hostels that are being made available to these people. Under the Labour Government we were crying out for these to be made available. Times have moved on, there has been gradual progress and people now accept that these units can be made available. But I cannot see that problem ever being solved, because the capital city is a great magnet and draws people from all over the country. You cannot fit a quart into a pint pot. There
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is no way you can suddenly provide magically a lot of extra housing. But too much council housing is empty for too long. I believe that approximately 25,000 council houses have been empty for over a year. Whether it is due to turnover, refurbishment, or whatever, that is too long to have so many dwellings out of use.
Since this Government were elected in 1979 they have determinedly planned and pursued economic policies for steady, sustained growth with lower inflation and a balance of payments surplus. Every Government since the war have had this aim, but this Government have achieved it. The present rate of inflation is 4·2 per cent., and it is still going down. The target is 3·5 per cent. by the end of the year, and it is believed that that will be reached well before the end of the year.
The social effects of this are very significant. It is so easy to take improvements for granted and to forget the previous situation. In 1975 the rate of inflation was 27 per cent. Do noble Lords remember when the price of foodstuffs in the supermarket rose so quickly that those fortunate enough to be able to buy in advance of their needs were much better off than those who had to go in and buy whatever they could to use then and there? The prices rose almost daily, and certainly week by week. That was the time when all the higher-price labels were superimposed on the earlier ones, until that was banned. Then the supermarkets stopped putting prices on and told one the price at the checkout. With inflation under control people have the security of knowing how to plan their budgets. The financial experts last week pointed out that even with falling interest rates, which are of benefit to those with home mortgages, savers today are getting a better real return on their money than for many years.
Those who have worked and saved for their old age under the Labour Government found it a terrifying situation that inflation eroded those savings. They had to rely on the state for support. These were people who had wished to be independent and had worked and planned for their old age. Inflation was certainly a leveller, but not a desirable one.
I know that unemployment is high and that many want work who are not able to get it. I also know that in London there are plenty of jobs and no applicants for them. As I have mentioned before in this House, we have had a vacancy since March. I rang the careers office this morning to check the situation. The reply was, "Yes, we have quite a few vacancies." I asked, "Can you quantify those?" The reply was, "No." I asked, "Can you tell me how long people are waiting to get work?" The reply was, "No, but we do not get many applicants and no one is very interested". That is a tragedy. In London it is not a question of whether one wants a job—any job—but a situation where people are picking and choosing what they would like to do. It is very nice to have a job that one likes to do. There is greater job satisfaction if one can find that type of job. But it certainly gives the lie to the fact that there is such desperate unemployment in London.
There is a certain mismatch of skills and jobs—that I accept. However, recently I met a group of industrialists in this House. They have factories in Wales, the North and Scotland—all areas of high unemployment—and they said that they could not get people to fill

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their job vacancies. The reason is that they need people with the most elementary scientific knowledge, and the schools are not able to teach these sciences to an appropriate level. As your Lordships know, the Government are trying to get agreement on the curricula so that every child will be taught some sciences up to the age of 16. I hope that that will be accomplished, because it is a tragedy that there should he so many people genuinely wanting work who are unable to reach the necessary educational standards.
Comment has been made today about the appalling ILEA standards, and I must echo those comments. It is sad that the O-level standards in Inner London (which is the most expensive and, in terms of results, the least satisfactory educational system in the country) should be 40 per cent. below the equivalent for pupils in the whole of England.
Although I am limited by time I must comment on the housing policy of this Government, which is a great success. Two and a half million more people have now become home owners. The happiness and security of a family is based on its home. Families are taking a pride in maintaining and improving their own homes. I well remember the petty restrictions placed on people by the GLC, among others. People were not even allowed to have a budgie in a cage. It is rather nice to be able to paint one's front door the colour that appeals to one instead of being refused any right to have one's dwelling look different from anyone else's. People have taken to home ownership. I think that it is a great interest and morale builder. It also saves the council a lot of money, because maintenance and repairs have become a major item in the case of council-owned property. People talk about the high cost of repair needed to council homes as if this Government created that. It is due to many years of mismanagement and neglect on the part of local authorities. One cannot lay that at the door of this Government.
This Government have done much in housing to open up new opportunities with regard to converting flats, starter homes, and so on. Nationally, there are enough homes, and more should not be needed. But, again, we have that mismatch. These homes are frequently in places where people do not wish to live. Then, again, we have this problem of people who want to come to London, where we simply cannot provide for any more. I have mentioned the 25,000 houses which have remained empty for a year. However, Government policy is encouraging and supporting home improvements, and these have excellent social effects. In 1985 the local authorities estimated that £18.6 billion needed to be spent to bring local authority housing stock up to standard. The Government have given a commitment to support schemes. Many grants are being made for homes and home improvements.
I have almost run out of time. I cannot therefore go further into supporting policies that I believe have been introduced by this Government effectively and to the benefit of the people. It is very easy to be critical. We can always see more that we should like to have and to do: but I think that this Government's policies have been good and have helped people.
5.7 p.m.
Lord Parry: My Lords, if I understood the noble Lord the Secretary of State for Employment correctly one of the few substantive points that he made in his speech was not only that Government policy did not affect the community but that it should not. I found that an extraordinary statement because it takes us back more than 70 years to an economic situation that would allow events to happen rather than seeking to direct them to the benefit of the community.
Statistics are important to this debate, and we have heard vital statistics. I am therefore freed from the obligation to repeat them.
I wish to speak today of the community and of the communities. In common with other noble Lords I have a geographic title. Mine is Parry of Neyland. Neyland is not the first town to spring to mind when noble Lords discuss the communities of Great Britain. In a Welsh Office official report Neyland was described as a little grey street leading down to the river—the Blaenavon of Pembrokeshire. It was also fitting to describe it, as Dylan Thomas described Swansea, as "a tumbledown town". It is one of those towns which promised but never fulfilled. In the 1800s it was one of the fastest-growing towns in Wales. It became a railhead and attracted the advantages for social, political and economic development that railheads did attract. In 1900 it was given a town council. It may please the noble Baroness, Lady Gardner of Parkes, to hear me say that from that day it started to go backwards.
I am not subscribing to the unaccountable battle which has taken place between this Government and the local authorities. I believe that the closer government gets to the people, then the more local it becomes and inevitably the better it becomes. I believe that this country is superbly well blessed as regards its local government and the figures which it attracts. Some of the denigration of local government at this difficult time has been neither in the interests of the Government nor of the nation.
Let us consider the town of Neyland. Let us consider the whole basin of the Cleddau estuary. What about West Wales? Neyland is my town; Pembrokeshire is my county; and Wales is my country. I am as proud as anyone to be part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain. However, if you were to go with me to Neyland tomorrow, you would understand that the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, was speaking not the politics of envy; but the politics of empathy—the politics of understanding. It is possible for good and well-intentioned people and for good and well-intentioned governments so to isolate themselves from the truth of what is happening as not to be able to understand that there is real poverty in this land, real under-privilege in this land, and that in the town of Neyland probably more people are out of work long-term than those who have any prospect of fulfilling themselves in work.
Therefore, I have deliberately chosen to speak to those matters which I know best and to which I am closest, because I shall be going home tonight and I shall be meeting the people with whom I was at school, and who I taught, and a great many of them are poor—poor by the standards that I have come to

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enjoy, by the standards that your Lordships have come to expect, and by those standards that every medium and every government promise in advance of an election and lead the people of Great Britain to expect.
It is a question of rising expectations—and this is part of economics that we learned at university—which, when they are not met, lead to disillusion. When the disillusion arises it creates a mood which no government can properly affect. I repeat what my noble Leader said in his speech: it is a question of mood. It is felt thoughout the country that so much is at fault that it will take a very long time to put right.
What must we do to begin to put the situation right? The curious feature and the anomaly of the situation is that those very local governments which have come in for so much stick have pent-up expenditure which they have accrued. I am advised that if that money were now allowed to be used by the local authorities—not by spendthrift authorities, but by responsible authorities comprising expert people who have spent a lifetime in local government—they could begin to phase into the spending programme the resurfacing of roads, the restructuring of services and the rebuilding of the community which some government at some time soon must do, because the services which affect our lives are rundown.
I have sometimes heard from my own Benches noble Lords whom I deeply admire give the impression that the poverty and the difficulties now being faced by people are of a different nature and quality from the poverty that they knew in 1926. Indeed, this debate is very much about 1926. On St. George's Day I happened to hear someone say in honour of the Queen's birthday that she was born in 1926 and that it as a "vintage year". I was born just at the end of 1925, and my wife was born in 1926. My daughter has grown up in Neyland; and, as the noble Baroness has just said, under successive governments we have seen a deterioration in the quality of life in that community.
However, during my childhood one could catch a train out of Neyland and buses left Neyland every half hour. There was also a ferry operating. Nowadays that community has been isolated by acts of successive governments. To pretend that the quality of life has not been affected—which was what I thought the noble Lord the Secretary of State for Employment was doing—is to misunderstand what is happening in this country.
If it be thought that I have based what I have had to say on Neyland, let me immediately lift my remarks to apply to every other community. Let me tell your Lordships about the market towns of Wales—towns which in their own right were once proud of their individuality and independence; towns that were serviced by markets; towns that were invested in by the products of the agricultural economy. Acts of government and of the European Community—an amalgam of Government—have robbed those towns of their lifelines and are vitiating the agricultural economy of the rural areas of this country, halving the land values and creating real poverty in those places where once the strength of the community lay.
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It would be ridiculous for anyone to have the impression that noble Lords on this side of the House believe that simply the election of a government of the party of the Members on this side will radically change overnight the long-term deterioration and decadence of those communities as a result of government policy. It cannot be done. However, there must be a change of mood and, instead of the dreary recitation of the catalogue of meaningless statistics which are piled one on top of the other as though they really mean something, let us for heaven's sake set up a national commission. Let us get three or four of the best people in this country to look at the communities of Great Britain. It may be a suitable role at this time for the heir to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth. What more caring man could we find, who has expressed his view about the community, than His Royal Highness Prince Charles? Why not set up a Royal Commission to look at the state of the communities and the state of society and start to do something about rebuilding the quality of life that we once knew?
Sometimes I sit here and people who I know to be caring, decent and friendly stand up and react automatically to the situation as though it matters in the course of human history what particular card we carry in our pocket. Surely to goodness what we are talking about here is that there is a better way than the current one. When I see the people whom I have taught standing on the street corners of the town of Neyland, and when I sit with them, it becomes all the more apparent.
Someone mentioned people not wanting to work. The other evening I sat alongside a lad who had just completed a 19-hour journey from the Falklands. For 17 months he had worked in the Falklands putting down, to my mind, a totally unnecessary runway which we could do with in Cardiff, although we have a better runway there now. I understand that the conditions in the Falklands are not all that good, and certainly the money is not all that good. He has had two periods of leave in 17 months. That boy wants to work, and so do the majority of the people I have taught. They want work, but they do not have it. This is a European Community problem which must be tackled on a European basis, but first and foremost it must be tackled on a Neyland basis, a Swansea basis, a Cardiff basis and, of course, elsewhere.
Sometimes we talk as though nothing exists outside the "golden triangle". Sometimes we talk as though no problems exist except in the area of this great metropolis. I urge my friends on all sides of the House to understand that we have a major problem of the running down of our communities, which are the lifeblood of this nation. London can be made more powerful; London can be beautified; London can attract the tourists; but if outside of London there is increasing decadence and increasing failure to find new solutions to 20th century problems despite the progress that has been made, we shall all fail in the end.
I make this appeal. Will the Secretary of State for Employment ask his right honourable friend the Prime Minister to consider setting up, after consultation through all the channels and with all the parties, a national commission to examine the true state of the communities of Britain and to release funds to begin to rebuild them?
5.20 p.m.
Lord Sefton of Garston: My Lords, in opening the debate my noble friend Lord Wells-Pestell made a speech which I considered to be permeated with emotion and morality. It represented to me the best of British politics because my noble friend knew the difference between wealth and money.
The validity of that argument was highlighted by the arguments put forward by the noble Baroness, Lady Gardner. How easy it is, when one lives with a philosophy that the most important thing in life is money, to get to the situation where you really believe that because one person has more money than another he is entitled to go into hospital and take priority in the administration of health. The noble Baroness, Lady Gardner, nods her head, but the truth is that private medicine establishes those priorities.
Some of the private hospitals in this country are used for administering bedside manners to cases that could well wait, while working class folk are suffering untold pain and misery because they cannot have an operation on their hip because they cannot afford it. Members are looking at me as though they do not believe it. Of course they do not believe it because the philosophy of the present Tory Party is that market forces are dominant.
I am not surprised for one moment that there are not any senior Members of the Government side on those Benches eager to stand and defend the policies of this Government. I am old enough to remember when after the last war some Members on those Benches really believed that we should be able to create a society which was fair and just, and based on need—not upon the ability to pay, but on need—and they supported that. They supported the establishment of our National Health Service. I have heard them boasting about it.
The noble Lord, Lord Young of Graffham, in his speech used the words "politics of envy". It sounded to me like a speech prepared as a thesis by some university student who had been safely ensconced inside a university for years and had never seen the real world outside.
The noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, underlined the division that exists between two types in our society. Roughly it was first the creators of wealth, who provide the necessary labour to create wealth, and the others of course were the wealthy ones—the manipulators of wealth on the Stock Exchange and in the City of London.
Let me draw attention to another division in our society: the division that Mr. Heseltine went to Merseyside to cure. When he arrived on Merseyside he was told, "This is not just a contemporary problem. This is a problem that Merseysiders have had for over half a century". The problem is that the reason for the existence of Merseyside has now ceased. It came into existence to serve this nation as the terminal of a movement from one land area to another. When the need for that went, the need for Merseyside went. But Mr. Heseltine would not listen, because he knew the answer. The answer was to let market forces run Britain. When market forces became dynamic and started increasing wealth, so would the wealth of the people be increased.
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I took the trouble to get out the London dockland report and the Merseyside dockland report. They are good reading. The Government should read them. The report from London dockland talks about the creation of 3,500 jobs in the few years since it was set up. Good luck to them. We had an exchange about that with the noble Lord, Lord Mellish, and the Leader of the House the week before last. There are 3,500 permanent jobs. The only mention of Merseyside was 35 jobs created for the garden festival. They have had the same time.
The success in London is not due to the fact that they have a better board or executive. The success in London is due to the drift which takes place to the South East, and which is now being increased. You have the Stolport; the Channel tunnel; Stansted; and Canary Wharf. All those things will drain the North.
If it goes on, the situation that exists in Liverpool will intensify. In case your Lordships do not know what the situation is in Liverpool, generally speaking it is that both parties, Tory and Labour, realised after the world war that the first problem was housing, and so an intensive programme of housing was carried on. After that it was realised that what were needed were steps taken to create jobs in Merseyside, and that it was no longer possible or practical to rely on the old traditional industries of Merseyside.
From then on we started pressing the Government from 1947 that we should have special measures, and that the solution to Merseyside's problems lay in curing the maldistribution of resources in the whole of the nation. We pressed for resources—not money—to be moved from the south-east of England, which was hopelessly congested, and we asked for them to be sited on Merseyside.
During the debate we have had the noble Lord, Lord Young, telling us that it is not tax that matters and that what matters is how much money you have to spend after you have paid your tax. Again that is probably a point made by a social welfare worker in a thesis in a university. Let us examine what it means. If we take London alone and even assume that the working class chap at the bottom end of the scale is no worse off after he has paid his tax, what do we learn? We find that the pressure from the people the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, was referring to, those who manipulate the stock markets, has now increased to such an extent that the working class chap in London cannot even afford to buy a house, or even rent a house.
That is the fundamental problem, and that is why the Halifax Building Society—no doubt the kind of organisation favoured by this Government—is now coming out with the point of view in its latest housing report that one of the solutions that should be looked at seriously with a view to bringing down, and stopping, the escalation of house prices in London would be to move out of London some of the resources and congestion that causes those high prices. There has been a 19 per cent. rise in house prices in 12 months in London, while they have actually dropped in parts of the rest of the country because the demand is not there.
But the question of house prices is not the greatest danger to this Government, or the greatest danger to our society. The situation becomes more dangerous still. After the war we had a city government united in

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its desire to try to encourage private enterprise to come into the city, to try to encourage the Government to come into the city to create jobs in order to remove the discontent and frustration that people were feeling in that area. We tried and tried, and the last attempt was the Merseyside County Council.
Just before the Merseyside County Council was established we managed to persuade the Government to do something. The Leader of the House, the noble Viscount, Lord Whitelaw, said last week that I dare not accuse him of knowing nothing about the North. That is something I should not dream of doing. I should not dream of telling him that he does not know and appreciate the frustration and feeling of alienation of people who have been unemployed for five, six, seven years; the feeling of those young working class folk with a couple of children who at Christmas cannot even afford to give them some of the basic things that most people in this country accept as a right; the feeling that they are being starved of what they should have as of right and which ultimately sometimes leads them into law breaking that should never take place.
The noble Viscount, Lord Whitelaw, will know all about that. He will know that 3,500 jobs in the centre of Liverpool would have made a tremendous difference. I am not concerned that the noble Viscount knows about the North. I am concerned that he is not prepared to do anything about it, and worse still—he is not here, but he will be able to read it if he wants to—that he should have made it worse, because it was the noble Viscount, Lord Whitelaw, and this Government, as soon as they took office, who altered the plans of a Labour Government to move 3,500 civil servants to the North West, and 3,000 right into the centre of Liverpool. They did that and they boast about knowing the problems of the North but are not concerned to do anything about them. Ultimately the consequences were that one cannot say that the return of an extreme city council in Liverpool came out of the blue. It was not deliberately planned by some politician. "We will set out to be extreme. We will set out to defy the Government. We will set out quite deliberately to get control in Liverpool so that we can embarrass the Government". Of course it was not. It needed support from the grass roots. It needed the people in Liverpool to feel that ordinary moderate government, that ordinary appeals from local authorities to the Government, could ultimately win the day and improve their standing. They did not. Your Lordships should not be surprised if the voters in Liverpool prove once again that they have had enough that they are not prepared to accept what market forces are doing to them in Merseyside.
They see market forces operating on minor pleasures in Merseyside. Those who know Merseyside know that it is not a wheel round the hub of the centre. The centre of Liverpool is the port and the consequences of that are socially very severe. When the centre of Liverpool was depopulated, the people could only move one way. If those people down in the South could imagine what would happen if there was no South Bank and they had to spread the population out, they would see that they would have to spread long distances north. Doing that in Liverpool, because the roots are still in the centre of Liverpool, it would
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mean extra costs on transport. Both parties realised that they ought to subsidise transport. What is happening now? The Government have decided that market forces will be introduced into transport. The subsidies will disappear, the number of bus journeys will be decreased and the feelings of those people who have unfortunately had to be moved away from the centre will be made worse.
I could give a list of the deprivations suffered by Liverpool and Merseyside people which would easily last for another half hour. I shall not. My time is up. But let me make this plea. If the Government really want to do something about the existing divisions in our society—I do not believe for one moment that they do, but they say they do—then they should go back to Macmillan, go back to the people who realised that if there is to be a divided society ultimately the consequences will be on their own heads.
It probably will not be just a lost election. If this problem is not cured properly the sickness and the canker that have been eating at Merseyside because of the failure to control private enterprise will spread. Ultimately what appears now to be a small division between the South and the North will grow until finally the northern part of the United Kingdom will resemble the southern part of Ireland or the south of Italy and it will then be too late to stop the frustration breaking out just as it broke out in Toxteth and in other places throughout this country. If the Government really mean business on behalf of the nation they had better start redistributing the resources and jobs that exist in the nation and not have them all resting in the South-East.
5.34 p.m.
Lord Pitt of Hampstead: My Lords, I agreed so much with what the last speaker said that I should happily have given him my 13 minutes. Like other speakers I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Wells-Pestell for introducing this debate. I shall content myself with commenting on the way in which government policies have increased homelessness and their deleterious effect on youth.
The avowed aim of the Government in their housing policy is the expansion of home ownership. The noble Lord, Lord Young of Graffham, boasted how successful they are. As many of those who are homeless, or threatened with homelessness, are in no position to buy property, they receive little help from policies with this objective. Worse than that, to achieve their aim of higher levels of home ownership the Government have directed resources away from the provision of housing to rent (which would most benefit the homeless) to the provision of housing to buy. The clearest example of this is the reduction of public expenditure on housing. The housing budget for the Department of the Environment has fallen by nearly 60 per cent. in real terms since 1979.
One result has been a sharp reduction in capital investment in housing for rent by public sector agencies especially local authorities. Local authorities have the main legal responsibility for helping the homeless. The number of new homes built by local authorities in Great Britain fell from 75,000 in 1980 to 25,000 last year. At the same time local authorities have been obliged to sell houses to sitting tenants, and

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nearly 600,000 council homes were sold between 1980 and 1985. Councils have thus suffered a net loss of stock, making it more difficult for them to provide rented housing for the homeless. In fact in some areas the situation has deteriorated to the point where the local authority has fewer houses available for letting than the number of homeless households for which it is legally responsible. Yet government restrictions have prevented councils investing the proceeds of sales in building new homes.
Your Lordships will remember that when we were debating the Housing Act 1980, when we were opposing the forced sale of council houses, I pointed out in my speeches that if we were to build houses it did not really matter whether we sold them but that it mattered very much if we were not building. I suggested at the time that that was what I expected to happen. I remember my noble friend the Duke of Norfolk taking me to task about that. He is not present this evening, but he can read Hansard and remember what he said to me across the Floor. It is all very well to boast that council houses can be sold, but if as a consequence homelessness is increased then more harm than good will have been done.
The reduction in the number of houses available for rent from the public sector has a number of consequences. One is that it has proved impossible to expand the legislative framework for dealing with homelessness, which is the Housing (Homeless Persons) Act. We have always asked that it should be improved to include single people and childless couples. There is no point in doing all that, however, if there are no homes in which to put them. The position is that the Government will not amend the legislation. What is much worse is that lack of resources has increased the pressure on individual councils to interpret the Act in a restrictive way. All who have had anything to do with it will know that that is going on.
Lack of rented housing has also increased the number of people living in board and lodging establishments, often at public expense. Local authorities have been forced to place an increasing number of people in bed-and-breakfast hotels because of the lack of permanent homes for rehousing. Homeless single people have found hotels the only accommodation available particularly if they are unemployed.
The Government's reaction to this has been changes—not to their housing policy but to the welfare benefits system. This has merely resulted in increasing homelessness. It has not tackled the underlying problem at all. Government policies to decrease the number of people living in institutions under present circumstances are also likely to increase homelessness. The Care in the Community policy has a laudable objective but without adequate housing provision what will happen is that there will be increased homelessness among the most vulnerable sections of our community.
There is no evidence that the Government are providing the additional resources. The opposite is the case. The Government are pressing the local authorities to spend less; but they cannot provide the services by spending less. Housing policy needs to give
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greater priority to helping the homeless and that in time to prevent homelessness.
I should like to make a few suggestions—and I am looking at the clock—which I hope will help. For example, there should be increased public investment in housing: I think that we would all agree with that. Local authorities should be able to spend the receipts from the sale of houses. The Audit Commission recommended that controls on capital spending should be abolished. Why not do that? Let us have the houses being built. Then, in my view—and this is probably more controversial—local authorities should be encouraged to purchase private houses in order to fulfil their housing obligations. At present, as your Lordships know, they are forbidden by law to do so. Councils are not allowed to purchase homes on the open market. Such purposes, as I see it, would allow a rapid expansion of rented houses at the same time as we are building up the housing required.
I have suggested in this House before, and I repeat it, that housing subsidy should be reformed. The subsidy should aim to encourage the provision of homes for the homeless and reform of the housing revenue financial procedures—and that is a detailed matter which the noble Lord, Lord Sefton, will know very well—is needed in order to allow for better use of the subsidies to help the people who are homeless and in need. With more homes available, then we could amend the Housing (Homeless Persons) Act to include single people and childless couples. That really could be done in stages but it should be done.
Then, housing benefits also need to be improved because they need to be adequate to meet housing costs and the board and lodging regulations should be amended, with value for money being dealt with not in the way that it is being dealt with now but through regulation of conditions and costs.
Again I say to the Minister that the true cost of care in the community must be faced and extra funds should be provided to local authorities so that they can provide not only the housing needs but the other needs, the support needs, which must be met if we are going to have this policy. I do not want to be misunderstood. Care in the community is a laudable objective. What is wrong is advocating care in the community and then putting vulnerable people in the community without adequate support. That is wrong. It should not be done.
Housing of good quality costs money and of course people who are unemployed do not have the sort of money to enable them to buy houses of good quality. In many instances also the elderly are in the same position. Therefore, you find that people who are unemployed, the elderly and also the black population are in houses that are inadequate and in poor condition. In the case of the blacks of course, they have to face discrimination on top of their other problems. They will be discriminated against not only in the private sector but in the public sector as well. They encounter discrimination even when they try to buy. Even though it is illegal, they have problems in getting the loans and the credit facilities. Therefore, they tend to be found in disproportionate numbers among those in rented houses. In the case of the extended families, the local authorities have never built for large families

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and therefore people with extended families have difficulties and, again, find themselves disproportionately represented among those left in bed-and-breakfast hotels for long periods. But the fundamental factor preventing access to decent quality accommodation is low income. It is there that this issue must be faced.
I want to use the last couple of minutes of my time to deal with the effect of government policies on youth. Government policies have been particularly harmful to youth. I do not need to spell out to your Lordships the impact on growing youth of unemployment: everybody recognises that, but it undermines young people's vision of the future and leaves them without a clear sense of identity and a purpose for today. That is one of the things that it does. I ask myself about the sense of values of a society which is prepared to allow its youth to be unemployed and homeless.
The most glaring example of the way in which the Government are dealing with this situation are these board-and-lodging proposals. In addition to being homeless and unemployed, they are making them rootless as well. I cannot really believe that any thinking government can be satisfied with approaching problems in that way. I hope, for example, that these regulations will not be reintroduced in the same form. I hope that the Government will begin to look more seriously at enabling more homes to be built so that we can prevent increasing homelessness. And, as a by-product of that, a lot of people would be employed.
5.50 p.m.
Lord Carmichael of Kelvingrove: My Lords, I am most grateful to my noble friend Lord Wells-Pestell for raising this subject and giving us all the chance to speak on it. I think his own speech was moving, caring and gentle. Of course, there was a certain amount of indignation in it, but I think even to suggest that his speech reflected the politics of envy was a gross distortion of anything he tried to say. In contrast to that I was thinking about how I would categorise the noble Lord, Lord Young, who made the accusation. I thought of many things, but one of the gentlest things I could think of was what Pangloss said about everything being for the best in the best of all possible worlds. We have heard this frequently from the noble Lord, Lord Young of Graffham. I believe that what has come across from this side at least is evidence that the rest of Britain does not think that things are quite as easy, and they are not quite as smug as noble Lords opposite appear to be.
I do not want to speak for too long. Much of what I wanted to say has already been said, in some ways much better and more forcefully than I could say it. But I want to speak about some of the Scottish experience. It would be quite wrong if I did not take the opportunity to speak about it in such a debate as this. First of all, the old people in Scotland, particularly in my part of Scotland in the west, as well as generally, are mostly of the generation of the time of the smoke-stack industries we hear about, the heavy industries which have now disappeared. This has left them with a legacy of poorer health than people in many other parts of the country. People who have
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been involved in heavy physical work, frequently in inclement conditions, tend to have more acute illnesses than do those in much less onorous types of jobs.
We must accept that deprivation and lack of opportunity do not disappear quickly. Some of the deprivation of the 1930s is still apparent on people's faces, even now, in some of our areas.
The Scottish climate is not particularly suitable for old people. Last winter it was a gross scandal that old people in Scotland, in a country surrounded by oil, with unlimited coal reserves if we want to dig them out, were dying of hypothermia. Despite the pleas of the media and all sections of the Scottish community the DHSS still used quite unfathomable formulae to decide whether people should get an extra allowance to combat the cold. I can say that few people in Scotland actually got the allowance. Very little was given to them to help fight the cold last winter.
I hope that as we are moving towards slightly better conditions during the next few months the Government will sit down and take time to work out a better system for the allocation of additional heating allowances. One of the jokes in the newspapers has been that up to now the system was that someone in the DHSS office put his head out of the window and if he thought it was cold enough, an allowance was given, and if he did not feel it was too bad, no allowance was given. That appeared to be the attitude in Scotland: there was no genuine system.
The next question I should like to deal with in the context of Scotland has been dealt with very fully by my noble friend Lord Pitt. It is the question of housing. We have been discussing housing recently in this House, and we shall return to it. We have discussed the purchase of housing association housing and local authority housing in Scotland, but I should like to say something about the real problems we are storing up for the future in respect of local authority housing.
It is obvious from the debate—and many experts have spoken and given figures on housing—that no matter how many houses are sold, no matter how many people buy houses, there will still be a great need for houses to rent, and most of these will be controlled and owned by local authorities. No one in Scotland, including Government Ministers, believes that there will be a marked reduction in the need for local authority housing for a very long time.
The director of social work in Strathclyde, which is the biggest local authority area in Britain, speaking at a conference in Edinburgh some time ago, said:
"Housing quality is deteriorating quicker and the re-emergence of slum conditions is now a realistic prospect".
He was speaking about slum conditions such as we had in the industrial areas of Liverpool, Glasgow and many other places. These conditions leave marks on people for the rest of their lives. The director of social work said that that is the situation we are approaching now.
We have about 975,000 public sector houses in Scotland. If one assumes that a house has a 60-year life, that means we need about 16,000 houses a year to replace the stock. At present we are building about 5,000 houses a year in Scotland; so there will be 10,000 houses a year fewer than we need merely to

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keep up. That does not include rehousing people. That is just trying to keep the stock we have in decent condition. One assumes that each house will have a major modernisation at least once in its lifetime. As one knows, wiring and many other things need fundamental, fairly drastic modernisation at least once in 60 years. Housebuilding, modernisation, repairs and planned maintenance are all affected by the stringent economic policy of the Government. I believe that we are building up massive problems for the future.
As I have said before in this House, one factor about housebuilding is that there is practically no imported content in houses at all. There may be a little imported timber, but practically everything else is indigenous. We have many building trade workers, bricklayers, joiners, plasterers, plumbers, and architects. There is also plenty of land in Scotland, and we have all the materials we need. Yet we are one of the worst housed nations in Europe.
The last point about which I should like to speak concerns young people. We have a special situation in Scotland, again linked to housing. Traditionally in Scotland a higher proportion of children stay in the parental home after leaving school than is the case in the rest of the country. That leads to higher levels of overcrowding. When that is added to unemployment problems, (of which we have as many as most other industrial areas in Britain) with perhaps both the parents and the children unemployed, one can imagine the situation in such an environment. The stress placed on the family is greatly increased because of unemployment and overcrowding.
If the suggestions of the Government housing benefit Bill go through—those put to the social security advisory committee—we shall reach a situation which I thought had disappeared in the 1930s, with young people having to leave home in order to allow the family to get as much as possible from their housing benefits. In the 1930s, as many of your Lordships may know, there was means testing—and there is a lot to be said for certain types of means testing so long as it is done right across society and with dignity. But if these housing benefit recommendations go through the type of means testing we get in the future could lead to the break-up of families such as happened frequently in the 1930s.
Where I live in Glasgow, and the place that I represented in the other place for a long time, is the centre of the student population, serving Glasgow University, Clyde University, all the technical colleges and the colleges of higher education. The young people tend to gather in that part of Glasgow. Therefore I think I know a little about students, and one of the sad things is that almost all these students or young professionals can tell you about their brothers, sisters or close friends who have the same qualifications for higher education as they had themselves when they were allowed into higher education; but because of educational cut-backs those people are not able to get into university or into other types of higher education now.
This of course causes great frustration. I am not talking about people who are not capable of benefiting from higher education but about people who are well qualified and who a few years ago would have got into
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a university but cannot get in now. This is a terrible waste of talent and a terrible waste of young people.
Academic cut-backs are disgraceful enough but when the latest burdens on young people trying to get into university are added, that raises again the question of student housing and the fact that the Government are going to stop students being given housing benefits during the long and short vacations. In fact, it has been suggested that they will not be able to apply for unemployment benefit during the long vacation. If they cannot get unemployment benefit or social security benefits, it means that the chances of a young working-class student being able to go to university, even if he does get a place (and he must have very high entry qualifications now to get a place) are very remote. It is just too much for him to do.
I think we must accept that we shall never have the mass industries back on the Clyde. The enormous shipyards, the Beardmores and the engine works will not come back. Those were the places that employed 20,000 or, in some cases, 40,000 people. We shall be much more involved in using brain power rather then muscle power in the future. The present unemployment figures for Scotland are 338,500 plus 18,000 school-leavers. From the way the Minister spoke when he was replying and the way the noble Baroness, Lady Gardner of Parkes, spoke, one would have thought it would not be long before we heard again the old cry (and it may be stamped on unemployment cards): "Not genuinely seeking work". That was the way we were drifting, I felt.
What has already come to the people of Scotland very clearly—and I think it will come to the rest of the country soon—is the way we have totally squandered North Sea oil revenues, which could, and perhaps should, have been poured into education. That could have been the last chance for a country such as our own to build a decent future in the 21st century. The way the money was squandered in order to give tax relief and to bolster Budgets for the Chancellor of the Exchequer will not be easily forgiven in the future by generations still to come.
6.5 p.m.
Lord Wallace of Coslany: My Lords, I too, with other colleagues who have already spoken in this debate, resent the remarks made by the noble Lord, Lord Young, about politics of envy existing on this side of the House. It is an unjustifiable remark and an insult to many people who have devoted their lives to raising the standard of their fellow men. Many of us are old enough to remember the workhouse days; many of us are old enough to remember the time when mother went without medical attention in order to pay the doctor's bill for her children. That is not just stuff to raise self-pity but is one of the driving forces, along with many other experiences that we have had not only of our own poverty but that of people among whom we have lived. That is the driving force that spurs us on in order to achieve a better society; and I resent very much indeed the remark the noble Lord made. Unfortunately, the same attitude is shared, I am afraid, by some of his colleagues.
I speak as one who during the 1945–50 Labour Government took part in the discussions on the health

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service Bill, having previously campaigned, like many others, for a National Health Service. Those were heady days in the establishing of a National Health Service which became the nation's pride and the envy of many other countries. In the general election of 1979 we were told by the present Prime Minister that,
"the National Health Service is safe in our hands".
Today the situation is one of general crisis in health districts and a severe decline in service.
In fact, in spite of claims of increased spending by government—and I accept those claims—there has been a slow but sure dismantling of the health service and the encouragement and advancement of the private sector, which is dependent still to a great extent on the National Health Service, from which it recruits nurses and doctors trained at state expense. I once raised the question of some reimbursement being made by the private sector for this service, but so far as I am aware nothing has been done to obtain a degree of refund of the cost. However, it is only fair and right that there should be some degree of compensation.
There is hardly a health district that at this moment is not having to prune its budget and cut services. My own health district of Bexley faces a reduction of f £1·6 million. Last night decisions were made in secret session—that was the second meeting that has taken place in secret—and details are to be announced later of measures to be taken to meet the deficit. There is bound to be a drastic reduction of facilities. Only last week I was given to understand that domiciliary visits by nurses are being reduced and as a result elderly and disabled people will not be bathed and assisted by a friendly visiting nurse. In a caring society, community nursing is a vital factor in health care.
We are told of greater spending, which is true, but we are not told that spending has not kept pace with inflation, with technological advance or need. Another factor affecting health authority finances was the disastrous reorganisation built in by Sir Keith Joseph, followed by yet another reorganisation eventually; and Salmon was another disaster affecting nurses. Now we have the new general managers at inflated salaries on a three-year contract which, by the way, ensures that they will toe the government line, or else. Finance apart, all these measures, including a degree of privatisation, mainly affecting domestics, has brought about disillusion and despair among the staff. It is an undeniable fact that morale in the service is low.
From May 1979 to March 1985, 221 hospitals were closed and 38 new hospitals opened, with a net loss of 2,500 beds. With a major cost cutting exercise in progress in the majority of health districts, many more beds are being lost and more hospital closures are projected. Waiting lists for operations are becoming longer and longer. I understand that in London alone 10,000 people are waiting for operations under the National Health Service.
The closure of smaller hospitals, in particular in rural areas, has created hardships because of the additional travelling involved to obtain treatment. In my area Bexley maternity unit has been closed. That much loved mother-and-baby hostel in Woolwich was closed and an expensive extension was added to Queen Mary's maternity unit. That means that mothers come from a wide area. It is entirely wrong that an expectant
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mother in an advanced state of pregnancy should have the problem of obtaining public transport to go to hospital for an examination. At that extension there were over 3,000 births last year. I do not claim increased productivity in Sidcup, because the catchment area is large. RAWP—
Lord Ennals: My Lords—
Lord Wallace of Coslany: Yes, my Lords, I know that a Labour Government introduced it.
Lord Ennals: My Lords, I wonder whether my noble friend is aware of the recently announced proposals to make drastic cuts in the clinical services of the Maudsley Hospital, one of the greatest psychiatric hospitals in our country, which will affect young adolescents, disturbed children and drug addicts? They are some of the people in our society who most need treatment.
Lord Wallace of Coslany: My Lords, I am speaking generally and from my experience. I know that the Labour Government introduced RAWP and that my noble friend was responsible for it. It is another factor which affects the service. Originally it was intended to adjust differences of need among health regions. It is now being used to make adjustments to health districts within regions. That is a big difference. For example, the south-east regional authority is proposing to mortgage four hospitals to raise urgently needed funds. Government funding for the south-east region will fall by £1·8 million a year until 1995. There will be a need to switch funds from inner London to Kent and Sussex for an expansion of facilities in the Medway towns and the South-East. That is what I term internal RAWP. That is badly and seriously affecting many parts of London, outer London and my district in particular.
Official figures show that the various Thames regional health authorities had reductions in growth in 1982–83 from between 0·02 per cent. to 0·03 per cent., whereas in 1983–84 the reductions were from 1·1 per cent. to 1·2 per cent., and, in addition, in six other regions the reductions were between 0·01 per cent. and 0·04 per cent.
That is another factor that seriously affects health district finances. All those items will lead to pressure for cuts. Well deserved pay awards to nurses increase health authority problems. That is yet another burden that they must face. Many regions have increased spending on qualified nursing staff but have reduced spending on nurses in training.
According to a report in the Guardian yesterday, the DHSS was expecting the number of nurses in the National Health Service to fall by 2,000 because of recruitment problems. Part of the recruitment problem is caused by pay and career structure. Another even more important factor is the reduction in many areas of student and pupil nurses—the basis of future qualified staff.
A lack of facilities and long waiting lists are forcing people into the private sector, which is growing rapidly. By 1980 there were 139 private hospitals available with a total of 6,408 beds but by 1985 the figure had risen to 195 hospitals with 8,541 beds. The number is still increasing at the expense of the

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National Health Service. For instance, as has already been mentioned, we have the new London Bridge Hospital just a stone's throw away from the financially pressed Guy's Hospital. Apart from the provident schemes such as BUPA, many hospitals are seen as a financial investment by American or Arab interests. I emphasise that I find a profit motive in health hard to appreciate.
I have no objection to schemes such as BUPA. As I have said before, people have a right to choose, but it is wrong that today we have the situation of "Go private or wait and linger in hope". I have a personal problem. Someone made that remark to me. On principle, I should never go private having fought for a National Health Service to which my family and I will stick. I do not attack BUPA. It is a provident scheme, but there are other schemes where the profit motive is the only factor for the establishment of a hospital.
It is no use the Government boasting of additional spending when European countries spend more of their gross national product on health than Britain. Since 1979, there has been a massive increase in prescription charges. It is true that people of pension age obtain relief, but that does not apply to the supply of spectacles where, unless on supplementary benefit or in acute medical need, pensioners face the full cost of the provision. That could become much worse under the proposed voucher system.
We are told by Ministers that those of us who complain about cuts or charges in the National Health Service are Moaning Minnies. That is not the way that we should proceed. We are not Moaning Minnies. I regard that remark, which is so often repeated, as blatant arrogance from those who came into power on the pledge that the health service was safe in their hands but who proceeded to mutilate and disorganise what was once truly a National Health Service.
Viscount Massereene and Ferrard: My Lords—
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, time—
Viscount Massereene and Ferrard: My Lords, the time factor of course spoils the debate.
6.19 p.m.
Baroness Fisher of Rednal: My Lords, I should like to compliment he noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, on giving us the opportunity to debate this important matter. Although we have bandied around figures, statistics and percentages, all the comparisons that have been made are about people. That is the important factor that we must remember in a debate of this description.
As the noble Lord, Lord Pitt of Hampstead, said when he opened his remarks about housing, it is obvious that in the urban areas the declining housing subsidies and rate support grant, the tighter restrictions on revenue and capital expenditure, and the increasing level of homelessness are creating a crisis. Most large local authorities—and I know Birmingham so very well—say that that trend seems likely to continue unless government policies change.
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Only last week I was speaking to the chairman of the housing committee and I took down her words to make sure that I did not misquote her. She said:
"The state of housing in the city"—
that is, Birmingham—
"is deteriorating rapidly and every week more problems emerge. The housing committee is continually having to reassess priorities as the headaches grow but the money available dwindles. It is an absolute nightmare".
Birmingham will be allowed only one-third of the amount for which it asked in grants towards housing.
But the irony is that the Government have already conceded that it was wrong to cut grants to Birmingham City Council by about £7 million. When the matter was taken to the High Court. the Department of the Environment said that it had exceeded its powers in reducing the city's block grant by £7 million. But Birmingham will not get that £7 million which it has lost, for the simple reason that the local government Minister has decided to bring in a one-clause Bill which will make sure that Birmingham does not get it. In other words, the Government are saying "We are going to move the goalposts because you have scored your goal".
It is a most unfortunate situation. I am talking about not 7p. not £70 but £7 million. The Department of the Environment has conceded that it was wrong, but the Government have said "No, you are not going to get it. We have found loopholes which we did not know about". Birmingham's lawyers were much more clever, as the leader of the council said, but although they proved their point and won their case Birmingham is not to get the money.
As regards council housing, it worries me very much when I listen to the constant sniping at local authorities and at their provision of housing. For a considerable time, I was chairman of the Birmingham housing committee and the wards that I represented were in slum clearance areas. I became involved with housing because, in the early 1960s, I was absolutely amazed at the conditions under which people had to live.
It is important for us to recognise the people for whom local authorities cater. For my information I am using the Audit Commission's report which the Government have already received. That report states at page 33:
"At present, council house tenants tend to be poorer, and generally older than the overall population average. The following statistics illustrate the social challenge facing local housing authorities generally in England and Wales:
—The median household income of council tenants (excluding old age pensioners, single parent families and the unemployed) is almost one-third lower than for owner occupiers with a mortgage … The precise figures for 1982 were £7,419 against £10,787".
That clearly shows the lower income.
"— 57% of single parent families in England and Wales are council tenants …
— Over 62% of households in receipt of supplementary benefit in Great Britain are council tenants".
That is the burden which a local authority has to carry. I ask the Minister who is to reply whether she thinks that the private sector will take up those responsibilities. If it does not take them up, they must be taken up by the local authority and further resources must be given to manage homes for those people.

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I want to mention another item which is very well known to Her Majesty's Government; that is, the arrears on rent income that are accruing to local authorities. Arrears are a mounting problem not only in Birmingham but in the whole of the country. I am not talking only about rent arrears. There are electricity arrears, gas arrears and hire purchase arrears. In the courts—and I speak as a magistrate—there are even arrears of fines. Fines are being paid at the rate off £1 a week, which will take four years to pay off, in order to prevent people going to prison.
But I speak particularly of arrears of council house rents. At the present time the arrears in the city of Birmingham amount to £7.2 million. Before I go any further I want to explain that Birmingham is not a badly managed authority which cannot collect its rents. It has a very good arrears collection and it has been complimented by the Audit Commission on being a well managed authority. The strategy which Birmingham employs in collecting rents has been taken up and used by the Audit Commission. Nevertheless, the council has rent arrears of £7.2 million.
The economic furtunes of the West Midlands have declined substantially over the last 10 years. I have tables which show clearly what has happened to arrears of rents and rates. In 1979, the figure of council tenants in receipt of standard rent-rate rebates—that is, the unemployed or low-paid working tenants—was 19.1 per cent.; in 1981, the figure was 24.1 per cent. and this year it is 26.9 per cent. In 1976, the figure for tenants in receipt of supplementary benefit was 25 per cent.; in 1981, it was 29.9 per cent. and this year it is 50 per cent. In 10 years the number of people on supplementary benefit has doubled.
The figure for tenants in receipt of assistance with the payment of rent-rates was 44 per cent. in 1976, 54 per cent. in 1981 and 76.9 per cent. in 1985–86. Those people are in receipt of supplementary benefit or housing benefit. They are not rent arrears cases. For noble Lords who do not know the workings of housing benefit, it is a direct payment which is made to the housing office and the tenant never sees the money at all.
The Government's White Paper on the reform of the social security system insists that all housing benefit claimants should pay a minimum of 20 per cent. towards the cost of rates. Birmingham has estimated that 40.000 of its tenants who now pay nothing at all will have to pay 20 per cent. of the rates. When I tell your Lordships that the rates in Birmingham are over £2 in the pound, you will see that that will be an extra burden on them. Where are they to get the money when they are already in arrears with their rents?
My noble friend Lord Carmichael stressed that we should be asking the Government to use their priorities in the same way as this is being asked of local authorities. I concur in my noble friend's view that the Government waste money on unemployment and housing benefits when that same money could be spent on providing employment and giving people status once again in society within the construction and allied trades. If money was spent in this way, it would
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provide not only employment but also what the customer wants—that is, homes for those who are seeking them.
6.30 p.m.
Lord Elliott of Morpeth: My Lords, I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Sefton, has left his place. I should have liked to tell him directly, in response to his remark that few of us are standing up in defence of the Government's policies with regard to social welfare, that I am very happy to do just that. I am very proud of what my Government have achieved through their policies, in the face of many difficulties, over the past seven years. I am grateful, like other noble Lords, to the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, for initiating the debate. The noble Lord made a comparison between Labour and Conservative policies, suggesting that they were distinct. I suppose that in many ways they are. However, his remarks remind me of a debate in another place in which I took part a few years ago on a very similar subject to that being discussed today.
I had calculated, for the purposes of that debate, that since the end of the Second World War there had been 17½ years of Labour government and exactly the same period of Conservative government. I said, at that time, that I had never been in any doubt that every government between 1945 and the time of that debate—it was presumably the early 1980s—had done their utmost to introduce policies that would have, in their application, beneficial social effects. Methods differed, of course. They still do. But whichever government have been in office, they have done their best. Their application of economic policy, as mentioned several times already, has been basic to social welfare. I say without hesitation that success in controlling inflation has meant that this Government have been able to achieve a great deal in areas where problems common to every party in office have essentially to be faced. I refer to the relentless advance of automation and the decline of major industry, automatically leading to redundancies, to unemployment and to the social consequences of which we are very much aware.
It is on the subject of unemployment and this Government's facing up to the problem that I wish to address myself in the time available. I listened with great interest when the noble Lord the Leader of the Opposition suggested that my noble friend Lord Young should leave the Home Counties and go to the North-East. As the noble Lord knows, I go to the North-East all the time. I was born there, and I have lived there all my life. I should like to tell him that my noble friend Lord Young is a regular visitor to the North-East and is very concerned with our particular problems. I join with the noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn, in his tribute to my noble friend for what he is trying to do in respect of training. A great deal is taking place in areas such as my own. A great deal has happened in the past. But my noble friend, during his period of high office, has given a new impetus to training. We are grateful to him.
My part of England, the North-East, has known its share of the major problem of redundancies and unemployment. I welcome this opportunity to commend most strongly the present Government for

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their considerable success with policies in this context. I can give no better example of what is happening today than the northern town of Consett. In 1980, the town of Consett knew the closure of its iron and steel works. Those works had given employment for generations in that town and district, now known as Derwent. No better example could ever be given of a one-industry town. Consett was wholly dependent for its employment and social wellbeing on iron and steel. When the works was closed, this was a very serious matter for its people.
I was often asked by my south country colleagues in another place if unemployment, that, sadly, has been with us for some time in my part of the world, was visible in the North-East. Could one see it? The steelworks was closed in the autumn of 1980. It was just before Christmas of that year that I went to Consett to see this steel town that had lost its only industry. And, my goodness, unemployment was very visible! There were men and boys standing on the corners—the same scene, one imagines, as during the depressed days of the 1930s. There was a lacklustre feel about the whole place. Shopkeepers were expressing dismay at what they considered to be a very serious matter for them. The media wrote off the town of Consett. I recall two headlines of the period. Consett, in 1980, was described as the Jarrow of the 'eighties. It was described also as the town that had died.
On Saturday last week, having decided to take part in this debate, I visited Consett again. What a change is to be seen! The rusting steelworks, so depressing, right in the middle of the town at the time of closure are gone. They have been razed to the ground. Consett now has a trading estate called Consett No. 1 with an amazing range of new firms of all kinds, large and small. To drive round was very encouraging. High technology is to be seen in Consett No. 1, and small factories, providing everyday requirements. There is an unprecedented degree of diversification. What a wonderful thing this is for a town that was once dependent on a single industry. The closure of the steelworks meant bang—the loss of 3,500 jobs.
I should like now to quote from the Derwentside Industrial Development Association third annual report, just issued. It says:
"The direct results of the industrial development programme are measured very carefully each year through a job audit. To the end of March 1986 the Derwentside Industrial Development Programme has yielded nearly two and a half thousand 'jobs on the ground'. Many more job opportunities should be generated in future as the full growth potential of the businesses now located in Derwentside is realised. The agency is currently managing an exceptionally good set of active enquiries and anticipates another excellent year's peformance during 1986".
This is a wonderful story. A town in the northern part of England has suddenly a new life, thanks to the present Government's policies of investment and encouragement. It is a wonderful co-operative achievement involving the development association, English Estates, who do so much good work in the northern part of the country, and the local authority. Every available grant has of course been taken up. The most interesting one, taken up to the full in Consett, is the enterprise allowance. It is so encouraging, in addition to seeing the new factories and workshops, to realise that much of the effort and much of the new business is indigenous.
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I pay great tribute to people in that area, mans of whom used redundancy payments to get up, have a go and start a new small business. I wish them luck, and I am sure that that wish is shared by noble Lords in all parts of the House. Some bought their houses with their redundancy payments. Again, as has been stated during the course of the debate, the buying of houses has been encouraged by the policies of this Government. Good for them! They have decided to stay put and to make their town work.
In addition to Consett, English Estates appropriately has its headquarters in the Tee Valley in the North-East of England—appropriately, because that is where the very first trading estate was established in the 1930s. English Estates has just reached the end or its year and has announced a 20 per cent. increase in factory and workshop lettings in the North-East. What is more, that is a 20 per cent. increase on a very good previous year. There are 50 additional factories and workshops that have come into being in the past year on trading estates in that region. They represent 4,500 new jobs. Government policies are working very well.
That is not to underestimate—and I am sure that no one would expect me to do that—the problem that remains with us. Our unemployment rate is far too high but in making policies such as those I have described the Government are facing that problem and overcoming it.
The policy regarding enterprise zones was a courageous one in itself. There is considerable evidence at this time of existing firms within the zones investing and expanding when they would not otherwise have done so but for that courageous concept. Another great investment in the North-East that has just been announced is that of the twelfth Japanese factory. That was opened a week last Monday. What a wonderful thing that is. I pay tribute to the North-East Development Council, which has so energetically campaigned in that area and which has been and is able to do so because of an enormous government grant, currently running at £¾ million. Again, it is a case of the Government's policy working and working well.
I pay tribute to the North-East Development Council for having brought into being also a conference that is to take place on 16th May. I refer to the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Sefton, when he said that everything happens in the South-East. He included in his catalogue, quite rightly, the Channel Tunnel. In the North-East—not the South-East—there is to be held on 16th May a conference in support of engineering industries in the North-East, because there will be an awful lot of work for the North-East from the Channel Tunnel, even though the entrance to it, through which the noble Lord will pass, is in the South-East. I commend that conference very warmly indeed.
Finally, I move on to the Port of Tyne, which in my region has always been taken as the barometer of our well being or otherwise. At this moment the Port of Tyne is flourishing as it has not done for many a year. A deficit of £¾ million has been turned in the past year into a £2¼ million profit. Everything seems to be going well on the Tyne—particularly the new coal handling plant, which is a co-operative effort between the National Coal Board and the Port of Tyne Authority.

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That coal handling plant has come into being with an enormous government grant. Again, the Government's regional policy is seen to be working well. It used to be known as,
"The Tyne, the Tyne, the coally Tyne".
It used to be known also as the queen of all the rivers. It will be the queen of all the rivers again with regard to the coal trade. It is flourishing as it has never done before. That is an indication of government policies within the region working and working well.
As I have precisely one minute left, I conclude by again referring to the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Sefton, who did something that is damaging to both his part of the country and to my own. There is a constant suggestion that there are two halves to this nation—the North and the South. There is a constant suggestion that the southern half of the country is given all the preference and all the advantages to the detriment of the northern part. I do not accept that. We are one nation. The North-East of England and the Merseyside area wish nothing other than to play their full part in the nation's industrial well being and in ensuring that social welfare for all is kept at the highest possible level throughout the country.
6.45 p.m.
Lord Stallard: My Lords, I, too, wish to join in the congratulations to my noble friend for initiating this debate and for his choice of subject. He has given the House a useful opportunity to examine the effects of legislation enacted in recent years covering many aspects of our daily lives. I shall resist the temptation to follow the previous speaker because that would eat up all the time that I have for what I have to say.
My noble friend, in a thoughtful and constructive speech, set the tone for the interesting discussion that has taken place this evening. One of the inevitable consequences of being No. 15 on the list of speakers is that noble Lords have already raised many of the points that I intended to make. I can therefore concentrate on my main interest in this debate, which is the effects of the Government's policies on the elderly, because of my long association with pensioners and with pensioners' organisations.
In the years immediately after the last war, this nation was respected and admired throughout the world for its health and welfare services. Now we are falling behind most of our European partners in our treatment of the elderly and others in need. Countries much poorer than ours are giving higher priority to social and welfare services.
A recent discussion paper published by the science and education board of the BMA states:
"British doctors who have travelled to other countries to look at their systems of care for the elderly return here angry and depressed".
It is asked why countries no richer than Britain can provide care that is so much superior.
That the Government have made it clear that they no longer accept the Beveridge objective of security against want without a means test must be obvious to all who try to keep abreast of developments in social security legislation in Parliament. The Green Paper
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Reform of Social Security which was recently published states in Volume 1, paragraph 7.13:
"We should not place on our successors the responsibility for meeting all our financial expectations in retirement. Instead we should ensure that everybody is able to save and invest for his own additional pension".
Later, the report states in paragraph 7.19:
"That additional pension will be his own investment for his retirement, not a promissory note to be presented to a future generation".
That goes completely in the opposite direction to the Beveridge concept.
To find the Government's inspiration for their new approach to social security, we need look no further than a book entitled Free to Choose which was written in 1982 by the Friedmans and which was republished in this country last year. In that book, Milton Friedman had this to say:
"Any assurance [about future pensions] derives solely from the willingness of future taxpayers to impose taxes on themselves to pay for benefits that present taxpayers are promising themselves. This one-sided 'compact between the generations' foisted on generations that cannot give their consent is a very different thing from a 'trust fund'. It is more like a chain letter".
The Government's nil cost approach to social security benefits legislation has obviously interpreted that part of Milton Friedman's book quite accurately.
They take us back to the beginning of the century, because I read recently that it was recorded that at the end of the Boer War, Charles Booth's critics argued successfully that the government's first duty, now that they had money to spare, was to reduce taxes on the rich, and that the cost of old age pensions along the lines advocated by Booth would prevent a reduction of as much as tuppence in the pound on income tax. That has indeed been the present Government's approach since taking office in 1979.
What has been the effect on pensioners' incomes and living standards? I shall try in the few short minutes that I have left briefly to illustrate the effects in three main areas of concern, though there are many others, which are housing, income maintenance and transport.
First, as regards housing, because of cuts in central government finance and restrictions on local authority and housing authority expenditure and inadequate provision for repairs, many elderly people are living in inadequate accommodation. They often have insufficient support in their present home, but they are unable to transfer to more appropriate accommodation. Age Concern has estimated that 5 per cent. of elderly people live in residential and nursing homes or in hospitals and that of the 95 per cent. who are living at home 50 per cent. own their own homes, 35 per cent. rent from a council or a housing association, and 15 per cent. live in private rented accommodation.
About one-third of all elderly people live alone. Many of them are women, of whom a large number are over 75. It is estimated that there are 300,000 elderly council tenants who are desperately wanting to move, often from unsuitable properties which are too far away from relatives. In addition, a large number of elderly tenants live alone in large houses. This is not what many of them want and it means that family-sized properties are often under-occupied. Because councils do not have the resources to provide appropriate alternative accommodation, a totally

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unsatisfactory situation continues and worsens as a result of deliberate government policy.
There are 48,000 dwellings classed as unfit for habitation which are occupied by elderly people; a further 195,000 classed as fit but in serious disrepair are occupied by elderly people; and 500,000 dwellings lacking one or more basic amenities are occupied by the elderly. The number of dwellings lacking a bath is 290.000. It is a fairly grim picture, which cannot be confused with the presentation of glossy packages about which we have been hearing from government spokesmen in the past few years.
There is little chance of elderly people obtaining repairs or improvement grants because there is a lack of funds, and because of cuts in housing expenditure far higher than in any other area of public spending the number of one-bedroom dwellings and sheltered accommodation being built by local authorities has fallen dramatically, until the situation has reached crisis proportions. In this area the social effects must be as self-evident to Government Ministers and Members of the Government, if they are honest with themselves, as they are to the rest of the nation.
The effects of the board and lodging limits were mentioned by my noble friend Lord Pitt, but the major effect of the board and lodging limits has been upon elderly people—those who are already living in residential care and those who are in need of such care. Again, I am indebted to Age Concern, which represents the interests of elderly people, for reporting a steady flow of cases of people in difficulty because fees have been increased. I shall mention only a couple of examples because of lack of time.
There is the case of an 85-year old lady who suffers from senile dementia. She has no relative and her affairs are handled by a solicitor as receiver under the Court of Protection. The DHSS could not meet the increased fees of the nursing home which threatened to dump the lady in the solicitor's office.
Then there is the case of an elderly amputee who had been taken into a home before the 29th April 1985 but the home only had available a room on the second floor. She was promised ground-floor accommodation if it became available, so that she could move about in a wheelchair. But when such a room became available it was more expensive and the DHSS would not pay the extra cost. There has been a similar impact on elderly people who are living at home and on the people caring for them.
Gaining access to residential and nursing home care when it costs more than the supplementary benefit available is becoming virtually impossible. These effects of government policy are surely unacceptable to all who value this scheme.
I now turn to income maintenance. In the White Paper Growing Older, which was published in 1981, the pledge was made that:
"As the economy improves, elderly people will share in that improvement".
How far has that promise been kept by this Government?
The Government's chief claim to benefiting pensioners lies in the decline of the rate of inflation. I accept that benefit, as does my noble friend Lord Cledwyn, but I qualify my acceptance by pointing out
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that because elderly owner-occupiers will have paid their mortgage, any reduction in mortgage interest becomes irrelevant. Indeed, it can be said that lower interest rates reduce the income from pensioners' savings.
Also, government fuel policy has meant that the price of gas has been raised to a level which is considerably higher than costs would warrant; and the structure of price increases is such that the standing charge increases proportionately more than does the unit charge. This adversely affects elderly people whose unit costs as a rule are a smaller proportion of their total bill.
Yesterday we also heard about the Government's charging policy given to the newly privatised British Telecom and the effects of that policy in further increases for domestic consumers which are well above the rate of inflation. It is deliberate government policy which has far-reaching social implications for telephone users as well as for pensioners.
The breaking of the link between pensions and prices and earnings has been mentioned. This has prevented pensioners from sharing in improvements in the economy, as promised in the White Paper, Growing Older. That, too, is self-evident. Had the link with average earnings been preserved, the single person's pension would have been £3·5 a week more in January 1986 and the married couple's pension would have been £4·55 a week more. By July 1986 when the next uprating is put into effect the losses may he between £6 and £7 for a couple and £4 and £5 for a single pensioner. So the total cumulative losses since 1981 could be in the region of £570 for a couple and £390 for a single pensioner. So much for a share of the improvements in the country's circumstances.
Other factors have affected the value of the retirement pension, with all the social consequences that that implies. For example, I recall that in 1980 the pension was two weeks late. It was a 54-week year instead of a 52-week year, and that cost a couple £12·30, which was never repaid. In 1984 the uprating was a week late again and that cost a couple another £2·80. So pensioners' standards have been deliberately reduced by government policies as the years have gone on.
As regards transport, I recognise that the effects of the abolition of the Greater London Council and the metropolitan county councils and the implications of the Transport Act on travel for elderly people cannot yet be fully judged. Concern that elderly and disabled people will be disadvantaged over time has not lessened. Deregulation of transport services under the Act will undoubtedly mean that unprofitable hut socially necessary services will eventually be withdrawn and doubts remain about the long-term future of concessionary fares.
A specific example of a difficulty caused by the abolition of the GLC is what has happened to the London taxicab scheme whereby certain categories of disabled people were able to use a taxi for a charge of £1, the difference in fare up to a maximum of £6 being paid by the local authority; in other words, by the GLC. A replacement scheme has been agreed by the individual London boroughs working in concert, except that Sutton, Hillingdon, Barnet and Bromley

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have decided not to participate and so certain disabled people, including some disabled elderly people, will be disadvantaged in relation to their counterparts in other London boroughs. Again this is a direct consequence of government policy and it has tremendous effects socially.
So all the difficulties that I have outlined—and I could outline many more had I time—are the direct result of government policy since 1979. Many of the concerns which I have expressed affect millions of other people as well as the elderly, on whom I have had to concentrate. In my view since there is no hope of any improvement—indeed, the proposals contained in the social security legislation which is to be debated next month in this House will worsen the situation—I can see no real solution other than a change of government, and the sooner the better.
6.59 p.m.
Lord Dean of Beswick: My Lords, I should like first of all to join previous speakers in congratulating my noble friend and colleague Lord Wells-Pestell on introducing this subject and giving us an opportunity to make our case regarding government policies and their effect on people. It would appear from previous speakers that the debate has in some respects been broken down by Members of your Lordships' House speaking for areas and more or less presenting the case as they see it for the areas from which they come. I have spent all my life in the North of England—eventually in one of the largest cities. I live in another large city, in the North of Britain. I think noble Lords will understand if I restrict my remarks to that part of the country.
I was extremely disappointed by the response of the Secretary of State to what I thought was an excellent speech by the mover of the Motion. The whole speech was riddled almost with self-congratulation and (dare I say?) self-deception. We did not hear anything new to help the situation. I am pleased to have the opportunity to take part in this debate and to comment on the implications of the present Government's policies for many millions of people throughout the country. I want to refer in particular to the growing disparities between the North and the South of this country and to the way in which Britain is to some extent being south-easternised almost by stealth.
We have across the country a record level of unemployment which has hit the North more severely than other areas. There is no apparant strategy for dealing with such regional imbalances—very little regional economic planning and no coherent strategy for regional development. Such mechanisms no longer find favour with the present administration, who in the main are content to let market forces dictate the economic future of the country. It is my contention that such an approach offers nothing to the millions seeking work or any solution to what is now becoming an increasingly divided society.
I should like to quote from an article which encapsulates what some of the argument is about. The article, entitled "Auf Wiedersehen, luv", appeared in last Saturday's Guardian newspaper. The article
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described how northern firms, particularly in the field of home improvements—double glazing and so forth—are now looking for work in the South because, to quote one company chairman:
"In the North demand is flat".
The article highlights many of the issues that cause me and others so much concern—a buoyant economy in the South-East, families with money to invest in their property and of course the ever-widening gulf in house prices, making such an investment an attractive proposition for those in the South but beyond the reach of those in the North.
The article pays tribute to the high standards of workmanship of such northern firms, with wage costs being considerably lower than those of southern firms. I can only assume that such enterprise is what market forces or monetarism—call it what you will—is all about. The sad fact is that demand is flat in the North because of industrial decline. The money is not there for people to invest in that type of enterprise.
Unemployment figures have been bandied about. I should like to take issue with the noble Lord, Lord Elliott, who has just left the Chamber. He appeared to be somewhat complacent about the position in the North-East or to be satisfied with what is happening. Since 1977 the three northern regions—the North, the North-West and Yorkshire and Humberside—have lost 730,000 jobs, 64 per cent. of the total national loss. Of those, nearly 50 per cent. are long-term unemployed. The area about which the noble Lord spoke—Newcastle—has horrendous figures. In the main the position in the South, apart from some of the inner London boroughs, has remained static. There is not much evidence in those figures to support the Government's view that we are still one nation.
In Manchester, where I served for many years as a local councillor, the rate of unemployment stands at 23·8 per cent. Almost one in four of the city's resident workforce is unemployed. More than half of Manchester's unemployed have been without a job for a year or more and nearly one in five for more than three years. You can relate those figures—the figures are probably worse in Liverpool—to most of the cities in the North of England. This is a terrible waste of human resources and talent. They are desperate for the kind of capital investment that would allow them to deal with this problem.
The noble Baroness, Lady Fisher, spoke at length on housing. It is difficult sometimes to keep producing figures, but one has to produce figures to show the dimension of what is happening. The position this year is slightly worse than is shown by the figures given by the noble Baroness, Lady Fisher. Manchester City Council calculates that it requires £600 million to put its housing stock in good order in accordance with the recommendations of a variety of reports from non-political bodies and professional bodies. In 1985–86, Manchester requested £96 million. It was allowed as a borrowing requirement £36 million, which is just about one-third of the sum required.
Despite all the debates in your Lordships' House and in another place, despite speeches from all sides of the Chamber and the numerous reports to which I have referred, including the Duke of Edinburgh's report and Faith in the City, what have the

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Government done this year? Manchester has applied for £109 million in 1986–87, which probably includes an inflation factor and something else. Manchester has been granted £28 million, which is in effect a reduction. I do not have the figures for the other cities. I know how they are worked out, and the noble Lord, Lord Sefton, will concur with this. What happens is that bids are placed and you all get the same percentage of what you ask for. It is a reduction in every way you look at it. Twenty-eight million pounds is an £8 million reduction on last year. This is a city with appalling housing problems, just like most of the other cities.
My noble friend Lord Stallard referred to the Social Security Bill that is going through another place. The Government are currently taking legislation through the House of Commons to deal with what they consider to be defects in the present system of social security. One imagines that this would be welcomed. Let me tell noble Lords what it will mean for people in Manchester and for the city council, which has been forced to assume responsibiltiy for major areas of welfare provision because of the withdrawal by this Government of other facilities over a period of time. This can be applied to other cities and to the inner boroughs of London.
Housing benefit cuts to claimants will amount to approximately £9 million. The city council will also lose £12 million in housing benefit subsidy. Approximately 12,000 schoolchildren will lose their entitlement to free meals. That is how we are caring for our future. All tenants and ratepayers, no matter how poor, will be forced to pay 20 per cent. of their rates and/or water rates. Single payments for furniture, bedding and so on will be replaced by a cash-limited social fund. In Manchester the DHSS currently pays out three times the national average in single payments to claimants. The Government's proposed legislation will do nothing to tackle the problems of poverty in Manchester or in other large conurbations. It will merely place an increased burden on those least able to fend and provide for themselves. That is an example of what will happen in the very near future when we ask for increased resources and care for some of the more deprived in our society.
Noble Lords will recall that a few weeks ago I gave some statistics relating to Manchester during a debate on health on 26th March, reported at col. 1423 of the Official Report. With your Lordships' permission I shall repeat those statistics in the last few minutes that I have in which to speak. They come from a joint report of the three health authorities in Manchester and the city council:
"For example, areas with high unemployment levels will also tend to have high incidences of coronary heart disease and lung cancer. Those differences mean that, on average, Mancunians are more likely to die prematurely than their fellow countrymen".
As I say, this refers to Mancunians, but one can apply it to other large cities and conurbations.
I quote again:
"Some examples of the scale of the problem are that between 1981 and 1983 over 5,000 Mancunians died before reaching the age of 65 years. That was almost 1,400 or 37 per cent. more than should have done had national trends applied. In parts of Manchester death rates due to respiratory diseases and lung cancer were over twice the national rate, while coronary heart disease accounted for almost 80 extra deaths per annum. That is the type of situations that some
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people think can be dealt with by using a broad brush on very broad canvas",
and by leaving people who need aid to their own devices.
However, deprivation does not start among the elderly. It begins in these areas from the moment the child is born. I was not aware until I did some research that children born in these areas—such as the inner city area of Manchester and other inner areas of the big cities—are much smaller than those born in the more affluent areas. I understand that that is in the Platt Report. Evidence was given by my noble friend Lord Ennals that these children are much lower in weight and that the average child born in these areas is two inches smaller than those born in other areas. However, the most chilling statistic of those which emerged was that a child born in the inner city areas has twice the chance of dying in the first week of its birth than has a child in the other more affluent areas. Dare we say, as did the noble Lord, Lord Elliott, that we are one nation when there is that type of suffering being inflicted on babies as they come into the world?
I commenced by saying that I am a northener by heritage, breeding and up-bringing. I am extremely proud of my heritage. Bearing in mind the awful statistics for those inner city areas I hope that this debate—which has been so well initiated by my noble friend Lord Wells-Pestell—will move the Government out of their complacency towards understanding that a large number of people are suffering at the present time.
7.15 p.m.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, I, too, am grateful to my noble friend Lord Wells-Pestell for initiating this debate. It should have been a debate about one or two nations. That it has not been is solely due to what we can see in front of us now: empty Conservative Benches. Indeed, if one looks at the list of speakers, one sees that out of the 20 speakers this afternoon 15 come from the Labour Party, four from the Conservatives, and only one from the Liberals or Social Democrats. Although the noble Lord the Secretary of State who opened the debate talked about philosophy—he at least used the word—it has not been possible to make this the kind of philosophical debate based on evidence which we should have in this House. I would make an exception only in the case of the noble Lord, Lord Elliott of Morpeth, who tried to put forward a coherent philosophy. I should like to refer to that later on.
The opening speech by the Secretary of State contained nothing philosophical. In his predecessor's day when the noble Earl, Lord Gowrie, was in that place, we were accustomed to having a true philosophical debate. I found the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Young, complacent, sterile and patronising, with no reference to anything that could be described in any way as philosophy.
The noble Lord, Lord Young, began, as he has before, by saying that he would not be here at the end—and I do not blame him after that speech. All we heard from him was the parrot-like repetition that one cannot cure social evils by public expenditure. There would seem to be a large divide between the noble Lord, Lord Young, and his Back-Bench colleague the

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noble Lord, Lord Elliott of Morpeth, who gave us instance after instance of how public expenditure and public boards could improve social conditions.
But I shall go beyond that. Who are we to listen to? Who are we to believe in the Conservative Party today? Which Conservative Party is it that determines policy? The noble Lord, Lord Young, tells us that we cannot cure social evils by public expenditure, but only last week his ex-colleague in the Cabinet had this to say:
"The elimination of social stress and the eradication of urban dereliction are not the natural hunting grounds for profit-seeking entrepreneurs left to their own devices".
Those were the words not of a Socialist, but of Michael Heseltine last week on Merseyside, speaking as a man who has been in the Cabinet far longer than the noble Lord, Lord Young, but who seems only now to be contradicting what he, as a Minister with collective responsibility in that Cabinet, has been doing for seven years.
I want to talk simply about the issue of one or two nations. I shall not talk about the unemployed because that has been discussed widely during the afternoon. I simply mention that there are now 2 million more unemployed than there were when this Government came into office. They cannot escape that responsibility. If one has 2 million more unemployed, one has 2 million more poor households.
I want to speak for a moment on the personal issue. I returned last night from West Derbyshire. I invite the noble Lord. Lord Young, and any Member of the Government Front Bench, to return with me to West Derbyshire on Friday morning to meet some of the people I have been meeting over the past week. I do not have to talk about poverty being only among the unemployed. The workers in West Derbyshire are mostly either quarry workers or workers in the tourist industry—both low-paid jobs. Last week I was talking to a quarryman whose weekly pay is slightly above the old age pension. If one talks to the women—and a large number of women are employed in the tourist industry—one finds that it is not just the unemployed who are poor, but also people in full-time work, and, above all, those who can get only part-time work.
Come and talk to the pensioners, my Lords; talk to them about the loss of public transport in the rural areas, and hear about how they have to take three buses to get to hospital; hear about how a pregnant woman cannot get an ambulance to take her to hospital and has to travel by buses which run perhaps only once or twice a day. These are the realities. These are the people about whom we are talking.
Let me remind your Lordships—as my noble friend Lord Stallard has already emphasised—that the pensioners of this country are poor people. Nearly 2 million pensioners in this country are on supplementary benefit. One-third of all the widows in this country are on supplementary benefit. The Government admit that supplementary benefit involves a poverty test.
What did the noble Lord, Lord Young, tell us about the 571 old people who have died over the past four months from hypothermia? Is that part of government policy? Is that an example of the success of the social
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consequences of the Government's policy? I invite noble Lords to come with me to West Derbyshire to talk to some of the survivors and their relatives, because they will receive a very different answer from that which we received from the noble Lord, Lord Young, this afternoon.
Let me harden my view into national figures, showing that to talk about "one nation" is only rhetoric. The reality is that there are now two nations and those two nations are the rich and the poor. I address my remarks specifically to the noble Lord, Lord Elliott of Morpeth, because it is not worth trying to argue the matter with the noble Lord, Lord Young.
Since 1979 the gross earnings of the bottom 10 per cent. of employed men in this country have increased 69·5 per cent. But the increase in retail prices is 74·6 per cent. Therefore, the bottom 10 per cent. of employed men in this country are now worse off than they were in 1979.
However, let us look at the position of the other nation. The top 10 per cent. have increased their earnings—if you can call them earnings—or certainly their income by 101·2 per cent. The noble Lord, Lord Young, talks about pricing ourselves out of jobs. Who is pricing themselves out of a job? It must be the top men; the bottom men are not pricing themselves out of a job. They are receiving lower wages and lower incomes and so are their households—their wives and their families. I point out that these are all official figures.
Let us take the Government's test regarding qualification for supplementary benefit. In 1976 there were 4·7 million British people on supplementary benefit. By 1979 a Labour Government had reduced that figure from 4·7 million to 4·4 million. Therefore there was a reduction of 300,000. It was a slow process, but very important to those 300,000.
In 1983, the last year for which figures have been published, the number had risen to 7·1 million. From 1979 to 1983 the number of people on supplementary benefit had risen from 4·4 million to 7·1 million. Does that indicate one nation or two?
The noble Lord, Lord Young, talks about it not being the responsibility of government. Is that so? Let us look at taxation and national insurance. The noble Lord says that they do not matter. They matter to those people who are paying them; they matter to those who find their incomes being reduced because of the increased burden of taxation and national insurance. Again, let us consider the figures.
The noble Lord gave a selective example of a single man. I shall give real examples from the people to whom I have been talking in the past week in Derbyshire. Let us take the situation of the low paid family, and I emphasise "low paid". The government definition is a married couple with two children on half average earnings—fully employed, but receiving half average earnings. The taxation and national insurance for that low paid family has doubled since 1979. However, those who are earning five times the average income have had their taxation cut by 13 per cent. during the same period. Does that indicate one nation or two?
I wish that the noble Lord, Lord Young, had put some meat into what he claimed to be a philosophy,

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because there is a philosophy and we used to hear it from the noble Earl, Lord Gowrie. We had some good arguments and debates. The Conservatives believe in inequality; the honest ones say so, and they say why they believe in it. The Conservative philosophy is that inequality brings greater productivity, greater production and, therefore, greater national wealth, and that will trickle down to the whole community.
However, it has not worked. We have had seven years of it and it has not worked. Indeed, it has not worked by any test. It has not worked by the Government's own test. It has not worked by increased investment. It has not worked by increased employment, because we have 2 million more unemployed. It has not worked as regards trade, as was shown clearly by the report of the Select Committee of which I was an honoured member. It has not worked over seven years. However, what it has done is to deepen the difference between the rich and the poor.
A great deal of the money that the Government said would go into investment and the development of production in this country has gone abroad to the high interest rates of the Bahamas and elsewhere, starving our own industry at the same time. Therefore, the theory or philosophy which lies behind that belief in inequality has not worked by the Government's own test.
Like my noble friend Lord Cledwyn, I warn the Government that the public are against them. I have been talking to only a few hundred people in Derbyshire, and I shall not draw conclusions from that except that what I have found on the doorsteps in Derbyshire bears out national public opinion polls. On the national level, the commissioned public opinion polls show that 92 per cent. of the people of this country believe that the present poverty in Britain is important. I repeat, 92 per cent. take that view. The percentage is larger for the Labour Party than for the Conservatives, Liberals and Social Democrats, but of that figure 83 per cent. of Conservatives polled believe that poverty is an important and immediate issue in this country.
If we apply that test to the Budget, we find that 61 per cent. of the people of this country preferred that any surplus that the Chancellor had should go to the poor rather than to reducing income tax; only 27 per cent. preferred the policy which the Government followed in that Budget.
Therefore, I say to Members opposite: your own people—people like Mr. Heath and Mr. Heseltine, whom I quoted earlier—and your own people who voted for you in the last election are telling you that you are wrong. We will not tolerate this increase in poverty at a time of increased wealth in our nation.
I should like to ask the noble Baroness who is to wind up the debate two related questions. First, from the weight of evidence on this side of the House this afternoon, with scarcely a squeak from behind the Government, do Her Majesty's Government admit that the evidence shows that under their administration the rich have become richer and the poor have become poorer? Secondly—and this naturally leads on from the first question—in the wake of that evidence, do the Government still believe that this policy of
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deliberate inequality in our society is capable of regenerating the British economy?
7.29 p.m.
Lord Rea: My Lords, as the last speaker before the concluding speeches, I should like to thank my noble friend Lord Wells-Pestell for giving us the opportunity to put forward some of the less happy aspects or results of government policy. I hope that the noble Baroness who is to reply will not feel that this debate has been entirely in an attacking vein. Many speakers have put forward solutions, and I hope that the Government will take note of them.
As might be expected, I am going to look at a few of the effects of the Government's policy on health and the health service. The nation's health and the health service are not one and the same thing. Health depends on a far wider spectrum of factors than the provision of health care. It is easy to point to examples, as many of my noble friends have, of disruption and distortion of the NHS, but it is less easy to demonstrate that these disruptions have had a serious effect on health. In my view this is largely due to the dedication and professionalism of the many doctors and nurses who have had to work longer hours in difficult circumstances and carefully to concentrate their efforts on the critically ill. As a result some of those who are not quite so ill, who are recovering from illnesses or operations or who are awaiting admission to a hospital have had to suffer unexpected and unplanned waits to go into hospital or have found themselves discharged unexpectedly early.
Sometimes their admission is cancelled on the day they had expected to go into hospital. I have several examples of this among my list of patients in the Bloomsbury district. Many more patients than before are having to wait weeks and weeks for out-patient appointments. The waiting time for out-patient appointments in many specialties has increased. The problems of Bloomsbury are shared with many other health districts, as other noble Lords have mentioned. We have heard about Guy's, St. Thomas's and other districts.
The noble Baroness may say that this is part of the effect of applying RAWP—the recommendations of the Resource Allocation Working Party, rationalising the facilities between overprovided and underprovided parts of the country. But this scheme was devised for use during a period of growth in the National Health Service, and it was not designed to be applied within regions but between regions. The ruthless application of RAWP today is decimating once proud and world-famous teaching and research centres of excellence. I have seen it happening with my own eyes.
I am not against hospital closures as such. They may well be logical as health needs change. But just as hospitals need to warn general practitioners or district nurses if they are going to discharge someone unexpectedly, so the contraction of health facilities needs to be planned in advance. The present system of indiscriminate ward closures at very little notice, the temporary cessation of admissions and the sending home of medical students because there are no patients to teach on seem to me to be penny-pinching economy gone mad. It has made a lot of people disillusioned and a lot of people angry.

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I could go on about the annoyances of working in the health service at the moment, but I should like to look at some general effects of the Government's policies on health. Health, says the World Health Organisation, is not merely the absence of disease but includes physical, mental and social well-being. Many speakers have spoken about unemployment Unemployment does not lead in this country to starvation or death from exposure, but the cost of preventing this happening is a major millstone around the Government's neck. The cost of keeping unemployed people from deprivation takes away sums from a whole variety of other, more contructive uses, and health and the National Health Service are two of those.
Unemployment affects mental and social well-being and the will to go on living. One recent study from the City University has shown that suicide among the unemployed is more than twice as high as in the rest of the population. Another well-known and careful study by Dr. Leonard Fagin called The Forsaken Families demonstrates how during a period of recession it is the families least able to cope who suffer most. These are the families most likely to have multiple needs, to make the biggest call on social security funds and to need expensive social support.
The boredom and lack of purpose in the lives of unemployed school-leavers is one of the factors—not the only one—behind the current wave of heroin addiction. Drugs relieve boredom, and their acquisition, usually by raising money by criminal activities, helps to provide excitement and a meaning to life. It is a major factor in the recent increase in crime.
I consider that the much publicised government campaign against drugs is concentrating far too much, in a punitive way, on controlling supply, and too little on the underlying causes or on the health of those with a drug problem. Many of your Lordships will have read of the plight of the Bethlem Royal. This was mentioned by my noble friend Lord Soper. It runs one of the few residential rehabilitation centres available in the National Health Service for drug abusers. It appears that one or more wards, or possibly the whole hospital, will have to close in order to balance the district's budget. The waiting list for admission is already far too long and will extend even more, or it may even have to be closed entirely. So much for the Government's priorities with regard to drugs. I very much hope that the noble Baroness in her reply will be able to tell the House that my information may be wrong here.
The Government have been so concerned with containing the cost of the National Health Service that they have neglected opportunities to tackle some of the basic health problems of the country. I mention, in passing, that an honourable exception is the recent agenda for discussion on primary care. I basically welcome the suggestions in that blue (or green) paper, but I hope that we shall have an opportunity to debate it and to look at the small print at a later stage.
I should like to mention two major health problems that ought to have been tackled more vigorously. These are child health and coronary heart disease. A crude but useful index of child health is the infant mortality rate. This has gone down as standards of
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living and the health service in this country have developed and new technical procedures for caring for health have improved. It has steadily gone down over the years. But other countries have done better than we have. We have been caught up and overtaken by Japan, Hong Kong, France, Denmark and Finland, and recently even Spain has caught up with us. This ties in with the remarks by my noble friend Lord Dean that many countries poorer than we are have better social services.
A characteristic of these countries is the small difference between the infant mortality rate of different occupational groups and classes. If the whole of the United Kingdom had the infant mortality rate of the better-off social classes, I and II, our rate would be equal to the very best in the world. If our national rate were even that of France, more than 1,000 babies who die each year would live.
The remedy for this state of affairs is to concentrate and improve services where they are needed. This is spelt out clearly in the Black Report and before that in the Court Report, both very much neglected and excellent social documents, whose recommendations would cost far less than unemployment benefit does at the moment, and the social security payments which go along with unemployment. We cry out if a child is killed by a terrorist attack, whether it is blown out of a Jumbo jet or killed in a laser-guided raid on Tripoli, but 1,000 babies are dying quietly each year in our country because of government inaction.
If we take coronary heart disease this country is in top position in the world. Some 30,000 men die each year before reaching retirement age, as well as many others suffering painful and disabling illness. There are two well-proven steps to be taken to cut down the risk of developing coronary heart disease. One is to stop smoking and the other is to cut down drastically on saturated, that is, mainly animal and dairy, fats. The Black Report in 1980, six years ago, suggested seven steps the Government could take to reduce cigarette smoking. So far they have taken only one of these, to put up the tax on cigarettes. I do not think that is enough really to deter people. I am still amazed that advertising of a lethal product is allowed when people can be put in prison even for possessing a far less addictive and no more harmful substance, cannabis.
The other thing that can be done is in relation to diet, which has been spelt out clearly by two authoritative and reasonable reports: the NACNE Report and the COMA Report. These have been out for four years and for three years respectively. Only this year are the Government putting into effect the recommendations on fat labelling from COMA. There is no agreed central policy in the Department of Health on food and health. Many of the agricultural support policies of MAFF and the common agricultural policy directly subsidise foods that contribute to coronary heart disease.
It is now accepted that coronary heart disease has its origins in childhood. In 1983 the Government commissioned a survey of the diet of schoolchildren. On 17th December 1984, in a Written Answer, I was told that preliminary results would be available in spring 1985. Last month, spring 1986, news was leaked that the findings showed that our children's diet was very bad, containing far too much fat and sugar

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and too little fibre. This important survey has yet to be published, although it is available. I have just picked up a copy from the Library today and I shall be studying it closely.
The report was discussed in "World in Action" on television on 15th April and several experts said that our school meals were worse than food obtained at home and were the kind of diet our children should be eating if we wished to maintain our leading position in the coronary heart disease stakes into the next century. I should like to ask the noble Baroness why there was a delay of a year in putting out this report and why it is only quietly available now on special request and has not been published? Could it be that pressure has been applied to suppress the results of this important survey, and, if so, by whom? One thing is clear. It was quite wrong for the Government to remove the requirement for school meals to conform to a minimum nutritional requirement in 1980. School meals have got worse. These nutritional requirements should be reintroduced as soon as possible.
I should not go so far as to adapt the warning on cigarette packets and say:
"This Government can seriously damage your health".
But I do say that they are seriously impeding this nation's chance of improving its health. However, on a positive note I say it is not too late for something to be done about it. I hope it will be.
7.45 p.m.
Lord Underhill: My Lords, so that the Minister may commence her speech at the agreed time, I shall have to telescope my remarks or to cut some items out altogether. At the outset I should say how impressed all noble Lords were, I am certain, by the sincerity and the human understanding with which my noble friend Lord Wells-Pestell introduced this important debate. It is a tragedy that only two non-ministerial speakers from the other side have been attracted to take part in a debate that is really about human personalities in our country. Of the 20 speakers, 15 were my noble friends, and with a very impressive speech from the noble Lord, Lord Banks, in addition, they have presented a case dealing with quite a number of important problems covering a number of areas in this country.
I was re-reading the report of the Archbishop of Canterbury's Commission on urban priority areas, Faith in the City, the other day. In the introduction there is the paragraph:
"We have to report that we have been deeply concerned by what we have seen and heard. We have been confronted with the human consequences of unemployment".
Incidentally, the one point I agreed with in the inadequate speech of the Secretary of State was the reference to the importance of the quality of life and values.
Continuing the introduction of Faith in the City, I find this is stated:
"many residents of urban priority areas are deprived of what the rest of society regard as the essential minimum for a decent life; they live next door to, but have little chance to participate in a relatively affluent society; by any standards theirs is a wretched condition which none of us would wish to tolerate for ourselves or to see inflicted on others".
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Later I find that in the latter paragraphs of Chapter 1 of the report the question is raised as to whether two nations are being recreated. The report says:
"the process of polarisation is a general one in Britain today"
The noble Lord, Lord Young, questioned remarks I made in a supplementary question a little while ago about the poor getting poorer and the rich getting richer. I hope that the noble Lord and the noble Baroness will be able to refer to the official statistics in Social Trends, published in 1986, which confirmed the fact that the position of the great mass of poorer households has declined while that of the better-off households has improved.
Chapter 8 of Faith in the City deals also with the decline in central government support. Noble Lords on these Benches and in many other parts of the House have stressed the steady drift downwards of the rate support grant. This is the way in which the nation as a whole is able to assist local authority areas, particularly those areas of deprivation and those areas where the needs are greater than in others. Who can deny that relationships between central government and local government have a considerable effect and have had a considerable effect on the social problems in many areas?
The Secretary of State said that Socialists believe in state control. Who has been endeavouring to stop the Government's central control of local authorities? It is surely Members on this side of the House. In 1978–79 the rate support grant was 61 per cent. of local spending and in 1986–87 it will have dropped to 46·5 per cent. Whatever else has been done about adjustments in rates and penalties, the system of GREAs (grant related estimated assessments) still remains.
The Government centrally—the state, using the words of the Secretary of State—are endeavouring to determine the needs element of all the local authorities. I know the problems that members of local authorities are facing in determining the priorities, which matters they will engage upon and which they will not. I know what my own daughter tells me. She is the chairman of a county council social services committee. They have terrible problems in assessing what are the priorities to be tackled, and that is due to a great extent to the Government's control of the rate support grant.
I must make one or two references to unemployment because the noble Baroness, Lady Gardner of Parkes, gave the impression that there are masses of vacancies all over the place. The figures that I have indicate that there is one vacancy for every seven unemployed claimants. We all see the press accounts of jobs that occasionally arise and where there is one job vacant and a thousand people are lining up rushing to try to get that one job. It would be wrong for anyone in this House to get the impression that there are hundreds of thousands of unemployed claimants who really are not seeking work.
Let us look at the position of youth. The number of young persons who have never had a job since leaving school totals 291,000. Some 85,000 of them are under 18 and have never had a job since leaving school; 56,000 are aged 18 and also have never had a job since leaving school; and 150,000 are aged 19 and over and also have never had a job since leaving school. We

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have the position that there are 1.25 million young people under 25 without jobs. Many noble Lords have expressed the problem that faces our country when we have such a vast number of young people who have never had a job and who have no expectation of a job. These are the youngsters to whom we have to pay considerable attention. Furthermore, 1.4 million of the unemployed—that is, 40 per cent. of those out of work—have been out of work for more than a year. More than half a million have been without work for three years.
As my noble friend Lady Fisher has said, these are just facts; but we are talking about human beings. It is of no use the government spokesmen, as did the Secretary of State today, continually giving us these assertions that things are moving. The Government claim that there have been new jobs created since March 1983. No less than 611,000 of that 700,000 are women's part-time jobs and not full-time jobs at all. The Secretary of State fails to tell us—and he is always talking about the numbers of those in employment, which is the important figure—that the numbers in employment have fallen by 1·8 million since the Conservative Government took office. These are not my figures; these are figures quoted by the Department of Employment Gazette. Manufacturing employment has fallen by one-quarter—no less than 1·8 million since 1979. I believe that we are alone among the industrial nations where that type of unemployment in manufacturing industry has occurred. Our manufacturing industry has lost a quarter of its jobs in under seven years.
It was interesting to listen to the noble Lord, Lord Elliott of Morpeth, who gave his account of Consett. We were all impressed with what he said about Consett; but as my noble friend Lord Cledwyn said to me, "This is like a beautiful flower in the desert". It is encouraging; but the deserts exist in Scotland, the deserts exist in North-East England and in the North of England; the deserts exist in the West Midlands; and the deserts exist in South Wales. These are the problems for our manufacturing industry, and this is where the problems are so acute. It expresses the case that we have for great public expenditure on the infrastructure of our country.
This was explained quite effectively in a speech by the noble Lord, Lord Banks. As he rightly said, the TUC has pressed for this and the CBI has pressed for this—that is agreed, but perhaps to a differing degree—and our own House of Lords Select Committee on Employment also pressed for this. I was impressed by the words of my noble friend Lord Hatch, who said that public work and development of this kind help to underpin the private sector. I think that that was a very important statement that he made and one which I hope the noble Baroness, when she replies, will accept.
Perhaps I may look at a few points in the education field. Apart from the turmoil which results from the present unfortunate dispute with the teachers, and despite what the Government say about expenditure, parents are worried about the shortage of books and equipment. The Minister said in another place that it is for local authorities and schools to decide on the balance of spending on these items, bearing in mind local priorities.
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But, despite what Ministers have said, a recent survey by the National Parent-Teacher Association found that four out of five secondary school pupils are forced to share textbooks and that in over half the secondary schools only fund-raising by parents kept the classrooms equipped with such essential materials as exercise books. The Audit Commission estimates that there is a backlog of £500 million needed in school repairs. I noticed a report in the Financial Times of 9th April which stated:
"Britain, alone in Western Europe, is contracting its higher education sector. Only Portugal and Ireland have a lower proportion of 18 year olds entering some form of higher education than Britain's 13 per cent."
The same report in the Financial Times went on to say that expenditure on further and higher education has been cut by about 10 per cent. in real terms since the Government took office.
One of the worst tragedies resulting from the Government's policies is that of housing. Housing has borne probably the most savage cuts since 1979. I am not filled with envy of anyone. My life has been quite happy and I have no envy of anyone, although the Minister seemed to suggest that practised in this House was the politics of envy. I am one who has always bought my own house. Even when I was married in 1937 on a salary of (what was it?) £4.15s.6d. a week, I bought my own house, and therefore I am not jealous of people who are owner-occupiers. But there will be masses of people who, by the nature of their jobs and by the nature of their low incomes, will want houses for rent. Public sector housebuilding reached the lowest figure since the 1920s—only about 40,000 in the year.
Is there not somewhere in the Department of the Environment files a report saying that some £20 billion is needed for urgent repairs to council estates? The Association of Metropolitan Authorities, of which, as most noble Lords know, I am the president, has estimated that in all there is a bill of £62 billion required for the public sector, for the private sector and for new homes really to bring our housing up to the standard at which it ought to be in a civilised society. I shall not go into all the details of what we are lacking; but local authorities are not even allowed to use the £5 billion of assets which they have and which could have been used to provide these new homes and to repair the property that badly needs repair. They are not allowed to use it.
I do not know whether the noble Baroness saw a statement in the Financial Times of 8th April when it reported a publication by the AMA dealing with the position of many persons who were encouraged to purchase their own council houses, albeit at very massive discounts. The publication reported the results of the AMA study into the mortgage arrears of council houses sold to tenants. Of those people, one in ten families became homeless because they were unable to pay the mortgage; despite the massive discounts that they had on the sales. In the last two years, the number in serious arrears—that is, in arrears over six months—has risen by 40 per cent. Encourage home ownership by all means, but not on the basis of those figures.
In conclusion perhaps I may say that of course the question of costs and expenditure must come into

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consideration, but what this Government always seem to reject is consideration of the social benefits of expenditure. My noble friend referred to the Transport Bill. We fought this on the question of one transport Bill after another; we even fought it on the question of the abolition Bill. Social benefits are important considerations.
This debate is not about who has the most compassion. I am certain the noble Baroness has as much compassion on these issues as I or anyone else; but it is the Conservative philosophy, if you can call a dogma and a doctrinaire outlook a philosophy, that is the problem. It leads to policies where people and social considerations are not placed as the important factors. That is why we on this side of the House have the Motion before us today. That is why we shall be putting before the country our new campaign policy of freedom and fairness—note the words "freedom and fairness". As my noble friend Lord Cledwyn said in his invigorating speech at the outset, what we are considering is the future of our country. That means the future of all the people of our country, and that is why this Motion is so important.
8.2 p.m.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Security (Baroness Trumpington): My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, for initiating this sometimes emotional, always interesting and wide-ranging debate. We have covered so many of the issues which are at the very heart of how we see our society that your Lordships will appreciate that I shall have to refer some points to colleagues, but I shall try to answer as many questions raised as possible. Of course, many answers to many questions are already in Hansard.
I suppose I should not do a tit-for-tat, but the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, the noble Lord, Lord Hatch, and the noble Lord, Lord Underhill, did point to a dearth of Conservative speakers in this debate. I point out that no Labour Peer except for the two Front-Benchers spoke in the Conservative debate on 23rd April on violent crime and the protection of the public, which also seems to me a fairly basic subject which interests us all.
It will not surprise your Lordships if I start from the base of my own department. The Government are fully committed to protecting the position of the least well-off in our society. I have said this before but it is well worth saying again, especially as some noble Lords seem to be in some doubt on that point. The noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, appeared to think that his side of the House represents the only party which cares for people. How wrong can a man be? For instance—I say this in reply to the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Coslany, as well—we are restoring the record cuts, cuts of over a third, that the previous Labour Government made in the health service capital programme. Members of the party opposite are keen to talk about so-called cuts made by this Government. Their memories are short.
My noble friend Lord Young gave examples of what this Government have done. My noble friend Lord Elliott of Morpeth gave other examples and used his long experience of the North-East to great effect. These were not dry statistics. As the noble Baroness, Lady
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Fisher, said, figures represent people and the ability of the health service to look after the ill and suffering. I could not agree more. That is what we in the Government care about and what we shall go on caring about and doing something about.
I refute the arguments of the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, and I was grateful to my noble friend Lady Gardner of Parkes for her informed remarks. Under this Government our hospitals are treating some 800,000 more inpatients than they were in 1978 under the Labour Government; 3 million more outpatients have attended hospitals; there has been a record number of kidney transplant operations: hip replacements are up by 40 per cent.; and more babies' lives have been saved from needless death. Spending in the health service is £950 million higher in 1986–87 than it was in 1985–86, more than double its 1978–79 levels, and about 24 per cent. ahead of general inflation.
As to the inequality of provision between the North and the South raised by the noble Lord, Lord Sefton, the distribution of money to RHAs which use the RAWP formula takes account of relative deprivation in certain parts of the country, as does the urban programme.
The noble Lord, Lord Wallace, raised the question of the NHS management board which is currently reviewing the RAWP formula. That will include a look at the problems of inner cities and the costs associated with medical teaching. The report will be ready by the end of this year. The noble Lord, Lord Rea, will want to know that the management board is also looking into the question of waiting lists.
The noble Lords, Lord Ennals, Lord Soper and Lord Rea, spoke about the Maudsley Hospital cuts. The Bethlehem and Maudsley SHA is considering various proposals for containing its costs. Some of the proposals being considered would affect the services mentioned by noble Lords, but recommendations will be discussed with my department before any decisions are taken.
The other key area of social policy where we are taking bold and decisive steps to secure much needed improvements is in social security. We shall have the opportunity, as the noble Baroness, Lady Turner, said, to debate the Government's proposals in detail when the Bill currently being considered in another place comes before your Lordships' House, and I do not have time to take up the noble Lord, Lord Dean, on his selective quotes from the green paper on the Government's new approach.
I should like to mention the single-parent families of whom the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, spoke. I acknowledge that one-parent families, as the final report found, tend to be less well-off than two-parent families and to rely more heavily on state benefits. That is why in our White Paper we repeatedly refer to one-parent families and include special provisions for them. On income support, there is lone-parent premium and the higher earnings disregard. On the family credit, lone parents will receive the same adult credit as couples and the one-parent benefit is disregarded. There is no intention in the Government's mind to change the structure of the one-parent benefit which has increased by 22 per cent. in real terms since this Government came to power.

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With regard to housing benefit, one-parent benefit will not be counted as income. The lone-parent premium will be carried through into housing benefit. There is also preferential treatment in tax, as they get the additional personal allowance.
The noble Lords, Lord Banks and Lord Cledwyn, said that child benefit had not been uprated in line with prices. It is quite wrong to keep harping on about cuts in child benefit while at the same time ignoring what the Government are doing to ensure that help goes to where it is most needed. The Government are committed to bringing forward a balanced programme which will give all families a valuable contribution to the cost of bringing up children while directing extra help to low income families.
Although the November 1985 uprating of child benefit was less than the increase in the retail price index, the Government's record on family support over recent years has been well balanced. The level of child benefit from November 1985 compares reasonably with its value since April 1979. Those getting supplementary benefit are not affected by a child benefit increase of less than the RPI because child benefit is fully taken into account.
Also, many less well-off working families are being protected. Their increases of FIS and housing benefit more than compensate for the lower increase in child benefit. The increase of 10p a week from July 1986 for each child is slightly more than the rate of inflation. As for the future, there will be no change to the structure or character of child benefit. It will remain a universal benefit, not means tested and tax-free, and it will continue to be paid to the mother.
The noble Lord, Lord Banks, spoke about the number of families receiving family income supplement, which he said had tripled since 1979. That is not quite correct. I believe the noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn, also spoke about this. The number of families receiving family income supplement has increased from 80,000 in 1979 to over 200,000 now. That is an increase of two-and-a-half times. However, it does not provide support for the noble Lord's assertion that low wages are driving families into poverty. What it does reflect are the real increases in family income supplement, which means that more families are now entitled to receive it than in 1979. Since 1979 the family income supplement prescribed amounts have been increased by 17 per cent. in real terms.
The social effects of our proposals go far beyond simplification. For the first time the three major income-related benefits will be assessed on the same basis, and that basis will be net income. The result is not only streamlined benefits but also a structure that will tackle the absurdities of the poverty and unemployment traps at the roots.
Turning to the question of pensions, it is quite simply a fact of life that all attempts to increase occupational pension coverage over the last two decades or so have failed. No more than half the workforce are in a job which will give them a pension. A Bill shortly to be brought before your Lordships will change that. We believe that in future it will be, as it should be, the exception for people to reach retirement without some form of pension from their job. Because
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we are simplifying the rules for contracting out of the state earnings related pension scheme and because we are providing a worthwhile incentive to get more provision off the ground, we believe that those employers who, for understandable reasons, in the past have been reluctant to set up pension schemes will find it more attractive to do so. In particular, small employers will welcome the opportunity to contract out of the state earnings related scheme without having to make the open-ended promise of a salary-related pension.
The noble Baroness, Lady Turner spoke of the consensus on pensions having been removed. That consensus has ceased to exist. One cannot reconcile Opposition calls for a national investment bank and the direction of pension funds with consensus. The SDP have now called for a radical change to SERPS but cannot agree with their Liberal colleagues in the Alliance on what needs to be done. The noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn, suggested that pensions should be linked with earnings rather than prices. If the link with earnings were restored, the Government Actuary has estimated that for pensions and linked long-term benefits the additional cost would be £6·5 billion by the turn of the century. However, the Government have more than honoured their pledge to maintain the real value of pensions and a married couple's pension is now worth £3 per week more in real terms than in 1978.
The noble Baroness, Lady Turner, asked about occupational pensions being undermined by personal pension proposals. It is certainly not our intention, contrary to what the noble Baroness said, to undermine existing occupational pension schemes, but we are committed to giving every employee the choice of taking a personal pension. We believe that people who opt for a personal pension will do so because they wish to have a direct say in the investment of their pension savings or perhaps because they expect to change jobs frequently. We recognise that people cannot have an unlimited right to opt in and out of their employer's scheme. Once they have chosen a personal pension it will be up to the employer as to whether or not they can rejoin the scheme later on. We are also proposing that people who opt for a personal pension but do not change their job do not have an automatic right to transfer rights built up before April 1988 into the personal pension. This restriction is there specifically to protect the finances of occupational schemes.
The noble Lord, Lord Banks, spoke about the decline in education and three levels of provision. The Government are committed to giving parents the widest possible choice in selecting schools for their children's education, but they are not neglecting the state sector. Expenditure per pupil is now at the highest ever level: the pupil-teacher ratio is the best ever. I do not deny the need for more spending, but there is the need to be sure that current resources are being well spent and to take a view on what can be afforded.
My noble friend Lord Young referred to the need to bring education and work closer together. The Government have done a good deal to improve education and training opportunities for young people, particularly in the 16-plus age group. We have set ourselves a target: no young person should go out

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into the world of work without a relevant qualification or the prospect of obtaining one. We are well on the way to meeting that target.
I was grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn, for his tribute to my noble friend Lord Young in respect of the part he has played concerning the Manpower Services Commission. The commision also provides many people with work-related further education, which is more relevant to them than anything previously on offer and has enormous benefits for society. Many health authorities—for example, South Tees, which I visited recently—make excellent use of MSC schemes and have found the commission's staff very willing to discuss difficulties.
The noble Lords, Lord Wells-Pestell, Lord Hatch and Lord Underhill, said that the rich had benefited at the expense of the poor. The country as a whole benefits by providing incentives to key individuals. That is perfectly consistent with wage restraint in industries and services, where we need to improve our competitiveness. It is consistent with benefits being increased by increases in the price level, or somewhat more. Pay increases for the higher paid often reflect performance bonuses and share option payments. Comparisons with 1979 will include the effects of widening differentials after compression during the Labour incomes policy.
I was very grateful to my noble friend Lady Gardner for quoting concrete examples of the cost of national health care, especially after the noble Lords, Lord Wells-Pestell, Lord Cledwyn, and Lord Sefton, had deplored what they regard as the immorality of private health care. There is a long tradition of private facilities complementing the National Health Services. Health care is expensive and if people can pay for themselves, who are we to deny them? It leaves more to care for those of us who are dependent on the National Health Service.
I regret that it is extremely difficult for me to answer all the questions that have been put in the time available to me to do so. However, there are just one or two things I should like to put forward. With regard to housing policy, the noble Lords, Lord Pitt, Lord Sefton, Lord Banks and Lord Carmichael, spoke about the planned level of public sector investment in housing. In fact it has been increased by £200 million for 1986–87. Earlier cuts were necessary to secure our primary objective of controlling inflation and achieving sustained economic growth.
This brief summary of the points raised by your Lordships will in itself show the length and breadth of the issues before us. I have been able to show your Lordships that this Government are already taking positive steps or have made clear equally positive plans for future action. We do not shrink from such action, nor from making it plain that, unlike the noble Lord, Lord Banks, and other noble Lords opposite, we do not believe unbridled public spending to be a cure-all for the social problems that we face. Our concern goes far beyond that easy and unrealistic "cop-out". We pin our faith on a sensible analysis of the problems and of the direction of resources to where they are most needed and where they will have most effect. I would say this to the noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn: it is on that and on care—in a deeper sense of that word which noble Lords opposite toss about—that our past
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record and our future policies are based and on which we are happy to stand.
Lord Wells-Pestell: My Lords, all I want to do is to thank everybody who has taken part in this debate tonight, in particular my noble friends whom I think succeeded in extending the debate so that it has been wide-ranging and very seldom overlapping. I wonder whether like me they will go away tonight, having listened to the noble Baroness, believing that we are living in Paradise. Whether I shall succeed in holding that view for any length of time I do not know.
The only other matter I should like to raise is this. I had good reason to believe that one of the bishops would have been taking part in the debate tonight. If I say this in the presence of a bishop, perhaps he will be good enough to pass it on to the right quarter. The bishops have so much experience in this field and have published a report in the name of the Church, and so it would have been useful had one of them participated in the debate. I beg leave to withdraw my Motion for Papers.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

Ullapool Harbour Order Confirmation Bill
Brought from the Commons; read a first time. and (pursuant to the Private Legislation Procedure (Scotland) Act 1936) deemed to have been read a second time, and reported from the Committee.

Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms Bill [H.L.]
8.20 p.m.
Lord Broxbourne: My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a third time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read a third time.—(Lord Broxbourne.)
On Question, Bill read a third time with the amendments.
Lord Allen of Abbeydale: My Lords, the Bill has been slightly improved during its passage, but I should not like it to go to another place without putting on record that even as amended it is not a Bill that leaves here with universal approbation. I have no intention of again going over the arguments about its creating uncertainty and tipping the balance between Parliament and the judges too far in the direction of the judiciary, but I still feel that we should be better off without such legislation.
Further, I am not happy with the form of the Bill and think, for example, that it would be preferable, if we are to have an Act at all, that it should incorporate the whole of the European Convention on Human Rights instead of only part, as the Select Committee concluded some time ago. Other noble Lords have put forward other possibilities. Having said that, may I say that there are important issues here? On balance, although I do not go along with the noble Lord, Lord Broxbourne, and my noble and learned friend Lord Scarman, the arguments that they have put forward are genuine and are deserving of careful consideration

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and genuine debate. It is accordingly somewhat disappointing, to my mind, that when we have been tackling such issues there should have been such small attendances at the various stages of the Bill and in general such a lack of interest.
I cannot help recalling that in the debate on the Address on 12th November last year (col. 195) I ventured to express some dissatisfaction over the fact that the Government had decided to renew for five years their acceptance of the right of individual petition to the European Commission of Human Rights and the jurisdiction of the European Court without inviting any debate, without even an oral Question and without any preliminary announcement of their intentions.
I am not aware that anyone took the slightest notice of the point that I was making. That is perhaps not an altogether unusual experience, but, when one comes to think of the fresh legislation, the new statutory instruments and the changes of policy to which the decisions of the court have already led, nearly all of them as a result of indivdual petitions, it seems to me less than satisfactory that we should pay such small regard to our relations with the court and the convention.
It was interesting yesterday, when we were discussing what might happen about the Moonies, or perhaps I should say the Unification Church, that no one thought it appropriate to point out the possibility that Article 9 of the convention about freedom of religion might prove to be relevant.
I still come across widespread ignorance and confusion about the EC Court of Justice at Luxembourg and the European Court of Human Rights at Strasbourg, a confusion from which I fear even the BBC is not exempt. I cannot help but regard the comparative indifference to the Bill as symptomatic of a general lack of interest in procedures which are bound increasingly to affect our actions and policies in this country. During its passage, the Bill has given rise to some interesting discussions among a few. I profoundly wish that they could have reached a wider audience.
Lord Scarman: My Lords, on a point of order. I am not sure whether my noble friend Lord Allen of Abbeydale was in order in addressing the House after the vote had been taken. I hope that I may follow him now in that irregularity so long as we recognise that it is irregular. However, the Bill has not yet passed and therefore I think that both my noble friend and myself, throwing ourselves on the mercy and the compassion of the House, can be heard to say a few words about the Bill. I propose to follow my noble friend's excellent precedent.
I should like at this late stage to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Broxbourne, on the skill and courtesy with which he has directed our labours during the passage of the Bill, which, notwithstanding the disappointing attendances that it has secured in the House, is I am sure a measure of real importance which possesses a highly civilised quality.
It will not I think surprise the House if, with the noble Lord's consent, I inform the House that he and I have discussed the Bill and discussed at length the
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objections raised on Second Reading, in Committee and on Report. I say no more about those objections other than that they give rise to a real debate on questions of genuine importance and deserved a greater throng of concerned Members of the House than they succeeded in obtaining.
Having considered with the noble Lord, Lord Broxbourne, the various points that were made, he and I remain convinced of a number of points, only three of which I think it proper at this late stage to mention. I mention them because they are all of importance. First, the Bill represents no threat to the sovereignty of Parliament. It represents no attempt by a side or a direct wind to secure any change in our constitution. Parliament remains, in matters of legislation, sovereign.
Secondly—I come now to its positive advantages—the Bill, if enacted, will assist our judges to do justice in a field which under the common law is traditionally their field—the protection of the rights and liberties of the subject against the power, whether that power be exercised directly or indirectly, of the state. That has been the function of our judges since the time of Henry II. There is nothing in the Bill which adds one inch to the field of jurisdiction of our judges but within that vital field of protecting the individual the Bill lends them strength.
I could develop that argument with a good deal of particularity. I mention only one specific indication of strength. At the moment, the common law is lacking in the protection that it offers to the citizen for the safeguarding of his privacy. We really have no principled law relating to the right to privacy. We secure the protection of privacy by a number of strange devices derived from the property law, such as the law of trespass, but if this Bill becomes a law it will introduce from the European convention a direct right to the protection of one's private life. That is an immense strengthening in a field where all of us who know the common law have been aware for years that it is deficient.
The most important point—certainly, if your Lordships will allow me to say so, it is the most important point to my mind—is: what is in this Bill for the ordinary citizen? Jurists can talk to the point—I suppose rather in the way I have been talking—almost (I hope not quite) ad nauseam. But what is in it for the ordinary citizen? Quite simply, if this Bill becomes law the ordinary citizen gains this advantage. If he suffers a violation of the rights and liberties guaranteed to him by his Government in ratifying the European convention, he will now have a remedy in his national or domestic courts. He will not have to go to Strasbourg, although the right in certain circumstances will still be there—a right which I suspect will seldom be exercised if this Bill is enacted—and our judgments can administer the European convention in so far as the European convention applies, as it does apply, within our jurisdiction. That is a great advantage to the citizen.
Finally, my Lords, do not talk to me about letting in cranks. There is a six-month time limit and our judges, particularly now in the field of judicial review, have a long experience of dealing with cranks. We are paid to do that.
8.30 p.m.
Lord Houghton of Sowerby: My Lords, I wish to make a few comments about this Bill and to raise a particular point, which I hope your Lordships will not think too small to intrude into the debate on the Third Reading. Unfortunately, I was prevented by other engagements from taking part in the earlier stages of the Bill.
Lord Paget of Northampton: My Lords, surely we cannot have a debate on Third Reading after a Bill has been passed. We cannot go on.
Viscount Davidson: My Lords, may I interrupt? We are in order in having a debate on Third Reading.
Lord Houghton of Sowerby: My Lords, I thought it was possible to say on Third Reading whether we liked the Bill—
Lord Paget of Northampton: But, my Lords, it has had a Third Reading. The Third Reading is over.
Lord Houghton of Sowerby: My Lords, it is either on the Motion, That the Bill be now read a third time, or it is on the Motion, That the Bill do now pass.
Lord Paget of Northampton: It has been passed, my Lords.
Lord Houghton of Sowerby: My Lords, I understood from observing conventions in your Lordships' House that there was hardly any time when you could not speak on a Bill so long as it was still before the House. Anyway, I presume to continue my remarks until somebody puts me down.
Lord Scarman: My Lords, may I reassure the noble Lord on a point of order? He can do anything he likes, so long as he carries the consent of those of us who are here, and at the moment I think he has it.
Lord Houghton of Sowerby: My Lords, I am much obliged to the noble and learned Lord for that reassurance. I can now regain my confidence. In the past I have supported all Bills in similar form to this and this is not the first time that this principle has been before the House in a Bill. Therefore, I am fully behind the motive and purpose of this Bill.
I am glad that the noble Lord, Lord Broxbourne, has taken up this matter. If I may say so with great respect, I think it is always a good thing, when a noble Lord comes to this House, to have a purpose in his mind to achieve something here, however difficult and however small. I may humbly suggest that I set an example in that respect. The point I wish to raise is probably one which would have been more appropriate to the Committee stage, but what I thought was that if we are going to embody a convention of an international body into our statute law, the transposition will have to be done by drafting a statute law to comply with the convention, rather than lifting the whole of the convention and putting it in a schedule to the Bill.
This is my point. The schedule to the Bill is the convention, so when I raised with the noble Lord the point that I wished to make a small amendment to the
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schedule, he said, "Ah, you cannot do that because this is the convention and Clause 1 of the Bill enacts the convention. Other clauses make it clear that when the Bill is passed you still cannot tamper with the convention." I look at Clause 4(2), which reads:
"No provision of an Act passed after the passing of this Act shall be construed as authorising or requiring the doing of an act that infringes any of the fundamental rights and freedoms, or as conferring power to make any subordinate instrument authorising or requiring the doing of any such act, unless",
and so on.
That would therefore stop the purpose that I have in mind now. So I turn straightaway to Article 9, and here we deal with religious freedom. Paragraph (1) of Article 9 makes it clear that everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion. Paragraph (2) establishes freedom to manifest one's religion or beliefs. Paragraph (1) has made it clear that religion may be manifested in belief, worship, teaching, practice and observance. But I am very mystified as to what paragraph (2) means. I read:
"Freedom to manifest one's religion or beliefs shall be subject only to such limitations as are prescribed by law and"—
"and" is the word—
"are necessary in a democratic society in the interests of public safety, for the protection of public order, health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others".
That word "and" seems to me to imply that, although freedom to manifest one's religion shall be subject only to certain limitations as are prescribed by law, it is only if that law is necessary in a democratic society in the interests of public safety and the other conditions that paragraph (2) sets out. I come to the conclusion, therefore, that Article 9 would preclude the amendment of our legislation regarding the slaughter of animals to remove the immunity from our general law of the religious practices of Jews and Moslems in the slaughter of animals. Our legislation at present provides for that immunity. But the Farm Animal Welfare Council has been given the job of considering whether it should continue. The council has made a report that is now in the hands of the Government. If, therefore, it was proposed or desired to change that position, it looks to me as though it would fall into the mischief of Clause 4(2). I wanted therefore to add to Article 9, at the end.
"or for the prevention of cruelty to animals or birds".
I wanted, in other words, to bring into a Bill dealing with human rights the rights of other species, especially as those rights are dependent upon the exercise of the human freedom of religion, its beliefs, its practices and the rest. So the two things are really bound up with human rights; that is the point. I enter, therefore, a friendly caveat. While wishing the Bill success in what lies before it, I hope that before we embody the convention in our statute law we do something to make the language of the convention more compatible with the general structure of our statute law.
8.41 p.m.
Viscount Davidson: My Lords, I, too, should like to pay tribute to my noble friend Lord Broxbourne for the skill, courtesy and tenacity with which he has steered this Bill through its stages in your Lordships' House. I should also like to make clear that the silence

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or relative silence from this Dispatch Box does not mean that the Government are indifferent to the question of human rights. On the contrary, as my noble friend Lord Glenarthur made very clear at Second Reading, we regard the safeguarding of human rights as of fundamental importance. We differ, however, from the supporters of this Bill in that we are not convinced that to graft the general principles of the European convention on to our statute law—a body of law that is very specific in nature—will provide a satisfactory means of promoting human rights within our constitutional framework. Opinions are deeply divided on this issue, and until and unless a consensus can be achieved we would be hesitant to support such an important constitutional change.
I think it is clear that there are substantial problems with this Bill, in particular its constitutional implications. But our discussion of it has, I think, contributed to a better understanding of the arguments surrounding it, and for that we are indebted to my noble friend Lord Broxbourne for the initiative that he has shown.
8.43 p.m.
Lord Prys-Davies: My Lords, before the Bill leaves the House, if I may use that phrase, I, too, should like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Broxbourne, for introducing it to your Lordships' House. I regret deeply that I was one of those Members who missed the debates. I assure the House, however, that I have read all the speeches on this Bill delivered since 10th December. I would have thought, therefore, that the noble Lord, Lord Broxbourne, should not assess the interest of Members of your Lordships' House in this debate merely by the attendance.
Reading the debates, it is accepted on all sides that we need constantly to strengthen the protection of fundamental human rights and freedom, and to protect the individual citizen in the face of the official power of the state. That is, I believe, accepted. There is no evidence of complacency. It is accepted that there is a need for constant vigilance. But the debates, notwithstanding the great eloquence of the noble Lord, Lord Broxbourne, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Scarman, have shown that opinion is still sharply divided as to how we can best achieve the desired end. Should we incorporate into the law, in full or in part, the articles of the European Convention on Human Rights, as advocated by the noble Lord, Lord Broxbourne, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Scarman? Should we continue to build upon our body of existing case law, as advocated by my noble and learned friend Lord Elwyn-Jones, by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Denning, by the noble Lord, Lord Lloyd, and, indeed, by the noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale? Or should one at this stage steer a middle course and establish a human rights commission that would examine the citizen's complaint against the background of the convention and then make a recommendation, as has been advocated? And no doubt there are other options.
Again, notwithstanding the persuasive argument of the noble Lord, Lord Broxbourne, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Scarman, we have heard from a number of noble and learned Lords, who have spoken
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with immense authority and who are highly respected, that this Bill has profound constitutional implications. I am a mere solicitor in private practice. I am not quite certain how I am to steer a course between the arguments advanced by noble and learned Lords. What is known, however, is that these implications are a cause of concern for the Government. I would say only this. One would have thought that before we set in train a constitutional change of this nature, or introduced, to mention the words of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Scarman, a measure of real importance, there should be profound discussions of all aspects of the matter with the public and with interested parties.
We regard the Bill as a contribution to that debate. Although the noble Lord, Lord Broxbourne, expressed disappointment with the Government's response at the end of the Second Reading debate, we would assure him that he has made a valuable contribution by introducing the Bill to your Lordships' House.
8.48 p.m.
Lord Broxbourne: My Lords, we are now at the closing stages of our discussion of a Bill that received an unopposed Second Reading in your Lordships' House on 10th December. I hope that I am not alone in finding our long journey an interesting, absorbing and, indeed, exhilarating experience. Our discussions have naturally enough contained elements of controversy. I shall start today, however, on an eminently uncontroversial note with an expression of my appreciation of the contributions that we have heard both this evening and at all stages of the Bill—clear, cogent and informed as they have been from all your Lordships who have been good enough to instruct and edify the House. I might perhaps say here a warm personal thank you for the kind and over-generous remarks made about me and my part in relation to the Bill in the debate this evening.
The approach of your Lordships has not been uniform. We have had, I am glad to say, enthusiastic and discriminating support from all quarters of the House for the letter as well as for the spirit of the Bill. For that I am extremely grateful. We have had also criticism from those who, in the classic phrase, find no difficulty in combining their enthusiasm within the bounds of decorum. I take comfort from the fact that the grounds of criticism that have been advanced at the various stages of the Bill are by no means uniform. Indeed, many of them have tended to cancel out.
For example, there were the efforts of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Silkin, and of my noble friend Lord Campbell of Alloway to cabin, crib and confine the Bill within much narrower parameters, which were balanced by the efforts of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Denning—whose great authority and wisdom we all respect so much—who sought to terminate the jurisdiction of the Commission and European Court of Human Rights. When one finds such learned and eminent gentlemen taking such extreme, opposed and polarised views, there is comfort for the promoter of the Bill to find himself standing on the middle ground.
Today we have heard interesting, informative and eloquent speeches. The noble Lord, Lord Allen of

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Abbeydale, made a great contribution to the proceedings of this Bill at its various stages, and he served on the Select Committee. I am grateful to him for his interest. We have not seen eye to eye on every iota of the Bill but I respectfully echo that which the noble Lord said tonight concerning the general approach to those matters.
Then there is the noble and learned Lord, Lord Scarman, who speaks with an authority on matters of the law in general, and on these matters in particular, which one cannot hope to emulate but only to envy. It has been a great privilege to have his co-operation, wise guidance and sage counsel in the putting together of the Bill and in seeing it through your Lordships' House. I am most grateful to the noble and learned Lord, as your Lordships will be, as well.
The noble Lord, Lord Houghton of Sowerby, is an old friend from House of Commons days. He raised a point which, as he rightly said, would perhaps have been better raised at an earlier stage of the Bill, but we all understand the reasons for not so doing. The noble Lord was good enough to acquaint me of his intention in regard to the point that he wished to make and I felt obliged to tell him that, in my view, the amendment he proposed was outwith the terms and context of the Bill; that we could not amend in the schedule the convention to which we are a party by international obligation.
The noble Lord was good enough to accept that argument. He has made his point today and we have all listened with sympathetic interest. He need not be unduly disturbed. Animal welfare is something that lies very close to every judicial breast in this country. I am sure that in the interpretation of these laws the noble Lord will find a sympathetic approach that will be of great comfort to him. I know, and other noble Lords know, his special concern in matters of animal welfare. We all respect it, as we do his many other qualities. If I may say so to your Lordships, it is gratifying to find so tender a heart in one who was such an eminent figure in the Inland Revenue.
I shall come in a moment to the contribution of my noble friend on the Front Bench and to that of the noble Lord, Lord Prys-Davies, on the Opposition Front Bench. First, I must say a word in regard to one prominent critic who is not able to be with us tonight. I refer to my noble friend Lord Campbell of Alloway. He has communicated his view to me and has asked me to communicate it in turn to your Lordships' House.
In substance, my noble friend considers that there is much common ground on the question of providing a remedy in our courts, but disagreement, or a measure of disagreement, on the means of implementation. As your Lordships may recall, my noble friend was an advocate of confining the remedy to the processes of judicial review—a proposition that failed to find favour with the House. He expresses to me the hope that if the Bill is not acceptable to Her Majesty's Government, they will introduce their own Bill to provide a remedy more on his lines or perhaps on the lines of a Parliamentary commissioner or the like. I do not propose to detain your Lordships with speculation or exhortation based upon what I think is a melancholy and, I hope, improbable hypothesis. What
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I think my noble friend does not quite appreciate is that it is not a matter just for the Government it is a matter for Parliament.
Not that I despair of Her Majesty's Government. After all, I have seen most members of it enter the House of Commons, and I have seen them learning the ways of the House of Commons and getting to respect its authority. Therefore I do not despair, despite the cautious words of my noble friend on the Front Bench, of the outcome with the Government. If I may say so to the noble Lord, Lord Prys-Davies—and I am much obliged to him for his references to me personally and to what the Bill is seeking to do—I do not despair of the Opposition either.
It is true that the Government have not yet given any mark of approval to the Bill. However, I feel sure that their sagacity will lead them to a statesmanlike conclusion when they have given it further and fuller consideration. I therefore commend the Bill on this, its Third Reading. I hope that it may secure your Lordships' seal of approval and proceed to the other House and thence onto the statute book for the benefit of our citizens and the improvement of our law.
The Deputy Speaker (Lord Airedale): My Lords, I believe that I collected the voices too quickly on the Motion for Third Reading. With permission, I will do so again, and then perhaps your Lordships will wish to take formally the Motion, That the Bill do now pass.
On Question, Bill read a third time, with the amendments.
Lord Broxbourne: My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill do now pass.
Moved, That the Bill do now pass.—(Lord Broxbourne.)
On Question, Bill passed, and sent to the Commons.

South Africa
9 p.m.
Lord St. John of Bletso Lord St. John of Bletso rose to ask Her Majesty's Government what political arrangements they would like to see in South Africa consistent with economic progress and security for all population groups.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, I should like to start by thanking those members of your Lordships' House—noble Lords, noble Baronesses and the right reverend Prelate—who have indicated their intention to speak in this debate this evening. It is a subject which is particularly close to me as I have lived all my life in South Africa. For that reason I hope that I am able to make some contribution to the debate this evening and that I shall be able to add some increased understanding to the crucial issues in South Africa.
At the outset I should like to indicate my position in South Africa in the sense that I am a member of the opposition. I am opposed to the racial and social policies pursued by the successive national governments. But I would submit that much of the opposition to the South African Government's policies that comes from abroad is based on an excessively simplistic critique of the situation. We all regret the escalation of unrest, the deaths and the

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violence that have occurred in the townships, but I would submit that in the last year there has been a rather one-sided view of the situation in South Africa.
I have phrased my Question to include the words "population groups". I have done this because of the rather diverse and unique society in South Africa. It is a society that is divided by ethnic backgrounds, languages, religions and political affiliations. The population of South Africa amounts to approximately 33 million. It is made up of 24 million blacks, 5 million whites, 3 million coloureds and 1 million Asians. Among the black population there are approximately 10 black population nations—otherwise called tribes—the two major population groups being Zulus and the Xhosas. The Zulus number approximately 8 million and the Xhosas 6 million.
This evening I wish to devote a few words to the make-up of the various white cultures and more specifically to the Afrikaaner. The Afrikaaner's striving for an identity and a desire to be separate has been in essence the root cause of apartheid. I suggest that a threat to the breakdown of their culture has been the biggest obstacle to change. However, more changes have taken place in South Africa in the last two-and-a-half years than have taken place in the last 30 years.
These changes have come about as a result of a number of different factors: first, there is the escalation of the urban and rural unrest; secondly, they are due to the pressure exerted by the business community; and, thirdly, these changes have been influenced by international pressure.
I wish to dwell on the issue of international pressure initially and to mention the three threats which international pressure has posed to the South African Government. There is no doubt that the Gleneagles Agreement, the sporting boycott against South Africa, has brought about positive change in the sporting policies of South Africa. Although initially I supported the agreement, and indeed I still do, I claim that it has been taken to ridiculous extremes, a recent example being the banning of the South African paraplegics from competing at Stoke Mandeville.
One other issue that needs to be mentioned is the threatened imposition of economic sanctions. Although I agree that it is important to exert pressure on the South African Government to change their racial policies and that there is a need for the total repeal of the apartheid legislation, I contend that the imposition of sanctions will be counterproductive rather than constructive. Many arguments have been put forward on the pros and cons of this issue, and I am sure that other noble Lords will mention the arguments this evening. Among the points raised will be the loss of jobs and the possibility which President Botha has raised of retribution and the imposition of sanctions on the front-line states. I shall not delve further into the pros and cons of economic sanctions. Rather I shall turn to the measures of reform that have taken place.
The Wiehahn Commission some three or four years ago resulted in the emergence of trade union rights for Africans. I spent two years in England in 1982 and 1983 and during my absence from South Africa I noticed one positive move, which was the emergence
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of a black middle class. The trade union movement in South Africa will indeed gain in momentum, grow in strength and pose a real threat to the South African Government. There has also been the scrapping of the racial job reservations. The wage gap between blacks and whites has closed. There has been recognition of blacks in positions of commercial management, such as in the large chain store Pick and Pay, which has 40 per cent. of its management in non-white positions. There has been the demise of petty apartheid and the repeal of the racial clauses of the Immorality Act and the Mixed Marriages Act. The list of reforms continues.
However, the major stumbling block to a total repeal of the apartheid laws remains the Group Areas Act. It is this Act that I, as one who has lived in South Africa, wish more than anything else to be repealed. An example of the repeal of the Group Areas Act can be seen in South West Africa. This has made no difference to the lifestyle of the South West Africans. It is the reluctance of the Afrikaaner to relinquish the Group Areas Act that I feel has been a major source of the criticisms of South Africa. But of late, we should all welcome the repeal of influx control—more specifically, the pass laws. I also welcome the Commonwealth Eminent Persons group, which has played an invaluable role in promoting dialogue in South Africa.
I do not wish to dwell on all the issues as I am sure, as I said earlier, that many noble Lords and noble Baronesses will be mentioning these, but I wish to touch on a few of what I feel are the real problems. How does one curb the escalation of urban violence? Even if Nelson Mandela were to be released and the apartheid laws totally repealed I sometimes wonder whether this really would do away with the violence in the townships.
Another problem is the escalation of unemployment, now standing at 12 per cent. for the African population. High inflation is one major cause of the escalation of violence in the townships. There is also the need to raise black educational standards. Indeed, a unified Department of Education is vital. I would also submit that the tricameral legislature, the black local councils and the homelands policy are totally out of date. The tricameral legislature excludes 72 per cent. of the population of South Africa.
I would submit that the root problem in South Africa is the Africans' mistrust of the sincerity of the Nationalist Party reforms; and equally the mistrust by many whites of the African National Congress. I regret the move to radicalism which has been expressed of late by Mrs. Winnie Mandela. I myself have always sympathised with Mrs. Winnie Mandela, but the call for violence through necklacing is abhorrent.
The final problem I wish to underline is the loss of human rights in the state of emergency. We all regret the escalation in the townships, but I can state that in Capetown there was a time when one could not travel through any of the coloured townships without the threat of one's car being stoned. The state of emergency helped matters. I would not support the state of emergency but I would submit that its temporary imposition assisted matters.
From here I wish to state the threats to South Africa—the inability to curb the escalation of urban

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violence and, equally, the threat of a white backlash, more specifically by the more radical Afrikaaner. At the outset of my speech I mentioned the population groups. The reluctance of the Afrikaaner to do away with the vestiges of apartheid and to give up his identity has been the root cause of many of our problems. Should the violence escalate into the urban areas there exists the very real threat that the more radical Afrikaaner will exert pressure through violence, as occurred in the vigilante experiences in Kagiso in the Transvaal. Another threat is the increasing disinvestment in South Africa through lack of confidence in the economy and political situation.
In conclusion, what would be the requirements for a peaceful South Africa? At the root of my speech this evening is a desire for evolutionary change rather than revolutionary change. First is the need to abolish the vestiges of apartheid, and more specifically the Group Areas Act; second is the release of Nelson Mandela; third come negotiations with the leaders of the Opposition, which must include the African National Congress; fourth is the need for a Bill of Rights with effective protection for minorities.
I conclude by stating a few of the possible solutions to South Africa. Recently in Natal, as a result of the Buthelezi Commission Report of 1982 an Indaba solution has been suggested for unification of the Natal and Kwazulu, with a multi-racial government. The Opposition have suggested a federal system decided on geographical not racial lines. I would, however, support the supposed Canton system which has been outlined in the book The Solution by Louw and Kendall. I know that my noble friend Lord Monson will be making a few remarks on this issue.
Above all, what is needed is cessation of the escalation of violence and a move to evolutionary rather than revolutionary change. I look forward to hearing what noble Lords, and indeed the Minister, have to say on possible solutions that Her Majesty's Government would like to see, consistent with economic progress and security for all population groups.
9.15 p.m.
Lord Chelwood: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord St. John of Bletso, has, I believe, started the debate on a very constructive note with a balanced and very well-informed speech. I should like to thank him for it.
I feel diffident in following the noble Lord. I do not know South Africa particularly well, though I spent a month there this winter. I must confess that it was only my fourth visit. But what a kaleidoscope of a country it is, especially in the past few weeks. The sudden ending at one dramatic stroke of the pass laws is very remarkable indeed because at one stroke it removes the biggest grievance of non-whites. President Botha has been as good as his word with regard to that. But it will take great courage and skill to sweep away all discrimination under the law on grounds of race or skin colour as to where people may live, where they may work, where they may be educated, or how they can join in the government of the country at all levels. What a formidable task, my Lords.
We now hear with pleasure that the Group Areas Act is not a sacred cow. Those were the words of
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President Botha. We note that forced removals are frozen—and about time too. We note that freehold title is promised for urban blacks. That is another potential large step forward. But sweeping away apartheid will have many dangerous side-effects. We must not oversimplify it. Let us give credit where it is due, however late in the day these root and branch changes are coming, and noting in particular the furious reaction of the extreme Right-wing parties which contrasts strangely with the scepticism and even cynicism of so many who can hardly believe what is happening.
With apartheid hopefully on the way out the way will be open to negotiation and reconciliation in which the drafting of a new constitution, based presumably on universal franchise within a federal or confederal system, must be rooted. I have only, one comment to make on that because I am not a constitution-maker. Surely it would be a great mistake—and the noble Lord, Lord St. John of Bletso referred to this—to try to extend what I believe has been called "co-optive domination" to blacks, by trying to build on the failed experiment of the tricameral parliament. I certainly think so myself.
The South African Government have a daunting task ahead of them. President Botha said that he intends to build a new South Africa. Those again are his words. This means that he has to face up, with his government, to harsh, unpalatable facts which have been blithely ignored for far too long. Good luck to him, my Lords.
I want now very briefly to turn from the general to the particular with a few specific criticisms that I developed when I was there this winter. I wish that we could hear a lot less of the communist bogey. I have sometimes been accused of always seeing Reds under the beds, partly because I happen to have written three books on Marxism. But the communist bogey is always being trotted out by the South African Government. We are told that nearly all the ANC leaders, and the Pan-African Congress leaders are Marxists. There are of course many different kinds of Marxists, as we know every well in this country. Some in South Africa have turned to Moscow in despair. But with regard to the commmunist bogey, there are more than 50 countries in the African Continent and not one can properly be described as a Soviet satellite. Perhaps two are almost that, but both of them are suffering from terrible civil wars.
I noticed the lack of government commitment to equal provision of education facilities for all under a single ministry. Of course it cannot happen very quickly, but the disparity between expenditure on black and white education is really fantastic: it is about one to seven in financial terms. There is a hugh imbalance. I hope that some target dates for correcting that situation will be published soon. I noted as well the failure of the Government to give a lead to the rest of the country, to other employers, through black advancement in the top-heavy public sector. I hope that that will fairly soon begin to put right.
My final criticism is that I was deeply shocked by the police methods used. The police seemed to be a law unto themselves, and that must be taken firmly in hand. They have an extremely difficult task. Incidentally, I know from personal experience in

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Palestine before the war that there is nothing harder than what are called "duties in aid of the civil power" and we know that very well from what is going on in Ulster. However, the very first rule is to apply the minimum force. I am sorry to say that rarely have the South African police done that.
I should like to turn to some of the encouraging matters that have struck me. I noticed a very healthy ferment of discussion among anybody who cares about South Africa which I had not found previously. People were living in a cocooned way and were turning a blind eye to what was going on around them. Now everybody is talking about it, and that must be good. The noble Lord, Lord St. John, referred to the steady growth of the African middle class, and that is good. He also mentioned—and, therefore, I shall leave the subject aside—the development of African trade unions which are much too politically inclined in the present atmosphere, and that is regrettable. He also referred to the growing number of Afrikaaners involved in industry and commerce. They must have a vested interest in stability and in restoring foreign confidence. All those three matters are on the plus side.
Another interesting matter struck me, and I hope that I am not being unduly hopeful in this respect. Now that two Right-wing parties have broken right away from the National Party—and therefore the Broederbond, to whose tune successive South African governments have had to dance since 1948 is no longer nearly so significant as it used to be, and may be quite unimportant in the future—there must be a possibility that the substantial moderate wing of the National Party will get together with the Progressive Federal Party, because they have a great deal more in common than is generally or openly admitted. I see the Conservative Party and the HNP as a natural opposition to what the South African Government are now trying to achieve. It would be excellent if that could come about.
Finally, under this heading I wish to say a brief word about Kwazulu. It is very encouraging that the Buthelezi Plan for multi-racial joint executive and legislative authorities in Natal may at last be on the way after some four years of dithering on the part of the government. I like to think that that will be the way forward for the province, if not a blueprint—and I certainly do not think that it is—for the whole country. It is so important because it cuts clean across the apartheid principle of separate "own affairs" and "general affairs". That simply must be done.
Kwanatal could show that something well short of "one man one vote once" in a unitary state can work, and that making the country ungovernable through violence is self-defeating. I pray that it will show that.
Finally, I wish to say a few words about British policy towards South Africa. How can it be argued—and it often is argued—that the more we trade with the Soviet Union (COCOM rules apart) and the more cultural, educational, and scientific exchanges we have with the Soviet Union, the sooner will the Marxist-Leninist system (responsible for denying self-determination to nine formerly independent countries in Eastern and Central Europe and for flying in the face of the Helsinki Agreement) be broken
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down, but that apartheid will wither away if trade sanctions are applied and all such exchanges, even in sport, are restricted or banned? I simply do not begin to understand. As the noble Lord, Lord St. John, has said, we must get off the Gleneagles hook somehow. We cannot even play ping-pong against South Africa if the Marxist president of the Seychelles says that we should not do so. That is the sort of hook we are on. I am sure that this needs entirely fresh thinking.
So far as sanctions and South Africa are concerned, the Government are right. Sanctions would mean more jobless in South Africa, more unrest, more violence and more poverty. I hope that the Government will not be diverted from their present course, which I believe to be entirely right. Related to this is the mandatory United Nations' embargo on the export of arms to South Africa. I see no reason for change here. I do not believe the Government do either. But how effective is the embargo, with Israel openly defying it and being South Africa's largest supplier? This is a question which must be asked, and I cannot understand why nobody ever points the finger.
I want to say a word about the British Council. I am a great admirer of the British Council. It is surely a matter for us to decide, having taken careful account of the views of our allies and friends, what the British Council should do in South Africa, and how it should be restricted in its work. Out of some 5,000 exchanges between this country and African countries last year, there were only 200 or so with South Africa. The British Council's tiny staff of 14 is grossly overworked.
The staff in other significant African countries is double or treble that number. Yet training black South Africans is an investment in the future in what is, after all, a developing country. We should of course do nothing at all to support or condone apartheid. But is there not a strong case for many more exchanges as our contribution towards the ending of apartheid? What is sauce for the Soviet gander in these respects is surely sauce for the South African goose as well. Are some people perhaps indulging in a false piety?
I have one other brief point about the BBC. I made enormous efforts to listen to the BBC every day, and I had the greatest difficulty in getting it. Moscow and the Voice of America were booming out the whole time. There is an urgent need to improve the BBC's short-wave signal and coverage, perhaps with a transmitter in Lesotho, and also to speed up the sluggish work on the transmitting station in the Seychelles.
What is really needed here is a medium-wave transmission from a neighbouring state. I was shocked to hear that it may be three or four years before that happens. For quite small expenditure we could have a medium-wave transmission. That is what people want to listen to. South Africa for the BBC is a peripheral zone, and this must be wrong. The BBC is beating the air. I hope my noble friend can comment on that.
I conclude by reminding noble Lords that the Queen's Speech spoke of the need for "fundamental change" in South Africa. I believe that the need for it has the solid backing of all parties in your Lordships' House, and not least my own party. There are bound to be honest disagreements about means, but few, if any, about ends.

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The Rubicon was only a small stream when Julius Caesar crossed it and committed himself to an irrevocable course of action. There was no looking back. I pray I am right in thinking that that is just what President Botha has done. This may be naive; it may be over optimistic. Perhaps it is. I hope it is not. But how much better to cross the Rubicon before it becomes a turbulent torrent, perhaps even unbridgeable, and before the country sinks inexorably into a revolutionary situation, which it is on the very brink of today.
9.29 p.m.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord St. John, for putting down this Unstarred Question not only because it has enabled me to withdraw my own Motion, which was similar, but because it is healthy that this Chamber should hear the genuine voice of South Africa, and this is the genuine voice of the South African liberal. It was only a few years ago that a notable Lord from the opposite Benches used to speak in complete favour of apartheid. Thai was valuable too, because it enabled noble Lords here to hear what are the true views of South Africa.
When I say that the noble Lord, Lord St. John, has put forward a classic South African liberal case, he starts off with the breaking up of the population into different ethnic communities. I shall not go into detail about this tonight. But I remind him that if one looks at the African National Congress, at the United Democratic Front or at any other of these organisations, one finds that they are totally intra-ethnic. They cut right across ethnic boundaries.
The second point I make to the noble Lord is that it is simply not enough to talk about repeal of the apartheid laws. To Africans, to coloureds and to Asians the prospect of returning to the pre-apartheid conditions in South Africa—to those before 1948, which were deeply discriminatory and had been so for over 200 years—does not appeal and never will appeal again. It is not enough to repeal the apartheid laws. It is the basic discrimination of the whole system that existed long before the word "apartheid" was ever invented that has to he changed if there is to be peace and co-operation within that country.
Finally. I would say to the noble Lord that what he has failed to do is to explain to this House why the two main leaders of the main opposition party—the main liberal party, the party financed by the Oppenheimer group, Van Zyl Slabbert and his colleague—both resigned from Parliament. They had become convinced, after years of endeavour in Parliament, that they would never get the kind of democratic South Africa they were looking for through parliamentary means. That has not been explained and I think it is an omission from a South African liberal speaking in this House.
So far as the case that the noble Lord has put forward and so far as the case that the Government have so far put forward whenever I have inquired, they are based on the belief that South Africa is in a process of reform and that what President Botha says at different times should be believed. I assure your Lordships, although I have not been to South Africa since 1959, through no fault of my own, that that is
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not accepted by the vast majority of black South Africans and a large minority of whites as well.
Let us look quickly at the reforms that have been listed. There is the constitution. It is a new constitution which omits the representation of over 70 per cent. of the population. There is the restoration of citizenship, but it is the restoration of citizenship without a vote. There is the legalisation of trade unions. But, despite the legality now of black trade unions, when the trade unions act and call a strike the state still comes in with its police and its military forces, and the big employers which support the liberal element among the whites in South Africa, dismiss those workers. This is the recognition that the trade unions get. Then there is the dropping of the emergency—but with the accompanying news that the security forces will have new draconian powers and that something similar to the previous emergency can be declared under another name.
Finally, there is the question of the pass laws. I accept that the promised dropping of the pass laws is an important move forward. I hope that it goes forward genuinely, but already it is conditioned by the Government's announcement that there will be passes for everybody, not just for blacks, and that the dropping of the pass laws and the new influx control laws that will be introduced will not apply to the homelands. The blacks will not accept that because they have never recognised, as the noble Lord rightly said, that the so-called homelands are any solution to the South African problem.
The reforms appear to be cosmetic and phoney, as they have done before. We wait to see; but the Africans will not wait to see and they are not waiting to see: and there is no reason why they should. They have been waiting for 250 years. What they see is that these are certain sectors of life, vital, crucial, essential sectors of life, which the South African President does not mention as being reformed. He does not talk about an integrated education system; in fact, he repudiates it. He does not talk about a reform or an abolition of the Group Areas Act. The noble Lord said, quite rightly, that this was an essential element in the South African situation.
Lord St. John of Bletso: My Lords, I should have stated that the Government are at present looking at the revision of the Group Areas Act. That is being done.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, the Government are certainly looking at the revision of the Group Areas Act on the advice of their counsel but the President, the Minister of Education and the Minister of Intelligence have all declared that the Group Areas Act will never be altered in essence.
Finally, once the President's words are taken at their face value by his own Foreign Secretary, who expresses the view that there may at some time result from these reforms a black President, immediately President Botha denies it and contradicts his own Foreign Secretary. Those are the kinds of matters that you cannot ignore and they have to be put alongside the so-called reforms about which we hear a great deal more. What I suggest to this House is that we must face this situation. Peaceful means of change, of removing

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discrimination, have been tried. I participated in many of them myself—the days of protest, the days of prayer, the freedom charter. They were all killed by the power of the state, the brutal, ruthless power of the state. It was only when constitutional means had been destroyed and when the black Africans saw that there was no possibility of getting reform through peaceful means that they adopted the means of violence.
Violence for what? Counter-violence to state violence. But those modifications that have been made in the apartheid system have been made by what means? They have been made by sporting sanctions; they have been made by the financial sanctions of the banks of the world last summer; they have been made by the counter-violence, the rising counter-violence, of Africans to state violence.
Where do Her Majesty's Government come into this situation? First, I hope that tonight the noble Baroness can assure the House that when the Eminent Persons Group reports, that report will be published not later than 30th June; because although the report was only to take six months and although the start was postponed until the beginning of this year—which takes us through to 30th June—there are suspicions that there will be pressures to postpone the publication of that report so that there are not debates in this House and in another place before the long Recess.
Secondly, Her Majesty's Government now have a duty to start talking, not to President Botha, whom they have talked to before, or Pik Botha, the Foreign Secretary, but to black representatives. And they can start with the African National Congress, with the United Democratic Front. They can start with Bishop Tutu. They can talk to genuine representatives of the African people, because over the past few weeks Her Majesty's Government have been put in a position of extra responsibility.
For the last few years her Majesty's Government, whether it be in South Africa, in Namibia or in Angola, have left the leading role to the United States. The United States have now ruled themselves out of any position of negotiation within South Africa. They have done so by openly supporting the rebels, the guerrillas, in Angola, by supporting Savimbi there, and by supplying him with the Stinger anti-aircraft missile. They have ruled themselves right out, because their policy of discussing with the South Africans has led them to supporting the rebel movements in Angola, thus associating themselves with the South African state both in its continued occupation of Namibia and in its invasions of Angola.
Therefore, Her Majesty's Government are in the hot seat, and in the international world only Her Majesty's Government are in a position to conduct any kind of mediation in the internal situation of South Africa. I hope that Her Majesty's Government will recognise that it is not only Colonel Gaddafi who supports state terrorism; it is also the United States Government in Southern Africa. Have Her Majesty's Government protested about this and used their influence to stop President Reagan from supplying Savimbi and UNITA with these weapons and intervening in the affairs of a sovereign state, which affects the whole of Namibia and affects the situation in South Africa?
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I hope that Her Majesty's Government will be able tonight to state that they adhere totally to the principle that in every state in which they have any influence every citizen has an equal right to participate in the determination of the kind of society in which he lives. The British Government have called for the release of Nelson Mandela and Walter Sisulu. I hope that the noble Baroness will repeat this tonight. It also means Her Majesty's Government, in answering this Question, should be able to say publicly that they believe in universal adult suffrage in South Africa. That does not necessarily mean on the Westminster model, which is for them to decide: but universal suffrage does mean that Her Majesty's Government recognise the basic democratic principle that in every society every citizen has an equal right to participate in the determination of the form of society under which he lives.
9.44 p.m.
Lord Kennet: My Lords, the cause of the present violence in South Africa is the fact that the very large African majority of the population in that country has no say in its own government. It has no vote; it has no power whatever at the national level to shape the society in which it is the preponderant element so far as numbers are concerned; no power to organise the police who condition its daily life, and so on. That is the cause. The cause remains untouched by the whole spate of reforms which President Botha has brought in in the last year or two, up to and including the promised abolition of the pass laws. In particular, this cause will remain untouched by the abolition of the Group Areas Act, for a reason which was mentioned in passing by Lord St. John, about which I should like to say a little more.
If you go to Namibia today, you can see a country where the Group Areas Act was repealed—I forget how many years ago. But it is quite long enough for any effect it was going to have to show up. If you travel through that country you see the white townships, all neat, large, white and clean; you see the coloured townships, all neat, middle-sized and clean; and you see the black townships which are all small and as clean as they can possibly be, given the poverty there. Nothing has changed. The reason is very easy to seek. A black person is now perfectly free to go and live in a white township. But he needs to have seven (or is it twelve?) times the income in order to be able to pay the rent or the purchase price. Maybe he could do that if he were to get a job which would pay it to him, but he cannot get that job because he is not educated for it. And he is not educated for it because the education system in Namibia has not changed and will not be changed, in that country or indeed in South Africa of course, until there is the majority power to change it. That is the cause, we can be sure, of the violence, and that is the remedy. It already expresses itself.
We, the rest of the world, have to decide what to think about the bitter and terrible rounding by Africans on those Africans who have agreed to accept service, as it looks to us, in the system of local government. But it has been imposed on the populations without their agreement and without their having any choice in effecting it. That is a kind of demoralisation that we are seeing which is intrinsic in

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the withholding decade after decade, of power from a population, which ardently desires to have it and has a right to it.
A word about violence in a tyranny—the old chestnut of European political philosophy. We have heard a lot in this House in recent weeks about terrorism and violence. I suppose we might agree on the whole that acts of indiscriminate violence against a population in any society are to be condemned unconditionally, that acts of violence against the government of a free society—a democracy—are to be condemned unconditionally, but that acts of violence against the government of a tyranny require further examination.
A subsidiary question has to be asked: how likely was this act of violence to change the nature of the tyranny, to get rid of the tyranny? That has to be referred to a rather refined touchstone: what was the loss of life, or what is the likely loss of life beforehand, weighed against: what is the likelihood of effecting a change in the nature of the tyranny? This is the question which people who live under tyrannies have to ask all the time. We, fortunately, do not, and we sometimes lose sight of these realities.
There was an opinion poll carried out last year in South Africa. It asked a very simple question of a sample of the population: who would you like to settle matters for you? Who has your vote for the negotiation on a future regime in this country? If you add together those who favoured the 30-year-old African National Congress, those who favoured the three year-old United Democratic Front and those who favoured Bishop Tutu, who appears to count as a kind of political party in himself—a one-man force in politics, as indeed he is—you get 61 per cent. and if you throw in Chief Buthelezi and lnkatha you get another 8 per cent., making 69 per cent.
I think that all British people, and indeed all people who do not live in tyrannies anywhere in the world, must have an especially affectionate eye on Chief Buthelezi, who stands for just the same things as all the others do, but who unconditionally rejects violence as a means to their achievement. I think, on the other hand, it is impossible to deny that the time for that is now past. That was pursued for decades with hope. The hope died out some years ago, and what would happen is happening.
The demand of the South African Africans is simple enough. It is for direct negotiations with those who they say "really lead" them. That means the freeing of Mr. Mandela, as so many noble Lords have said, and it means negotiation about the direct and immediate transfer of power from the hegemony of a small minority to the majority. That is what they want and it is clear that that is what they will get in time. The question is, how much blood in the meantime? As to the form of the delightfully open question asked by the noble Lord, Lord St. John about what the Government would like to see, it does not matter a bit what the Government or any member of this House would like to see. It will be settled by the play of national political forces in South Africa. The political structure which holds the majority in political helotry has to change. The demand is to change it. What it is changed to, as several noble Lords have said,
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is something about which we have no right to hold opinions.
Let us look for a moment at external relations. There have been United Nations resolutions galore about South Africa and Namibia. After a time of failure to get anywhere, the international community responded to an American suggestion that they should have a go. We in this country backed away from our earlier association with the Front Line States in an attempt to find a solution, and left it to the Reagan Administration. Somebody in that Administration had the bright idea of using that attempt as a lever to get the Cubans out of Angola, not realising that he was presenting to the South African Government a pretty good excuse for doing nothing for another four years. That of course is exactly what has happened.
The time of the American leadership is now over. We can see that in two ways. First, it has proved necessary for the Commonwealth to send the Eminent Persons, who cannot operate in dual harness with any particular American initiative and, secondly and even more powerfully, as mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Hatch, the commitment of the United States to send weaponry to the Savimbi guerrillas against the Angolan Government has made it as impossible that the United States should have any part as a mediator in that part of the world, as it is impossible that they should have any part as a mediator in the Middle East, given their wholehearted support of Israel.
That has gone one stage further than the noble Lord, Lord Hatch, mentioned. The Angolan Government has formally requested the United Nations once again to act as principal mediator in its affairs, and in doing so has claimed a specific breach by the United States of an American-Angolan agreement, which has hitherto not been published, made at a place called Mindelo in the Cape Verde Islands. That agreement contained an American pledge not to back Savimbi.
I come now to the subject of sanctions, which must be uppermost in everyone's minds. It is clear now that a majority of the South African Africans want sanctions of some sort. Of course, they are worried about the economic penalty which would attach to them, and differ about the kind of sanctions. Perhaps not all understand what can be done by sanctions and what cannot. That is where the British Government and Parliament must come in. There was a complete isolation of Britain at the last Commonwealth summit. There is the undoubted fact, which I think is accepted on all sides of the House, that Britain has "a historic responsibility" in that context. Britain is one of the two European powers which fashioned that strange society. We may be glad that it was not us who introduced the most lethal element of it; but we played a role. From time to time we handed power to this party or that, and that was a formative element in the history of South Africa.
In the SDP a year ago—I mention a historical fact which is interesting not merely for party reasons—we adopted a policy about financial sanctions. We said that if possible there should be Community legislation to ensure that there would be no new loans from European banks except for special projects devoted directly to the good of the African people; that there should be a prohibition on Community banks taking

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a portion of any existing loan, and that the Community countries should deny South African firms access to the European Capital markets. Of course, a fortiori, this we would all want to see done by a British Government if there were not a Community agreement on it.
The interesting thing is that this is all, more or less, happening now, in any case and without any special pressure from governments. The bankers have done this for economic reasons, and because they know which side their bread is buttered. The argument now is not about new loans, taking a portion of old loans, or denying access to the capital markets. The argument now is about rescheduling existing loans.
Is it thinkable that there should be government bans on rescheduling? It is unlikely that the governments of
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the capitalist North are going themselves deliberately to bring about a default in any of the large southern debtors. But, if not, we have in time to face up to the question: can we go on treating South Africa and Brazil—South Africa with its deplorable record by almost any index you can think of, and Brazil with its excellent record, given that it once got into debt—as if they were the same?
The identification of Her Majesty's present Government with the views and interests of the English speaking business community in South Africa is comprehensible. But it is a form of tunnel vision and it is possible to hope—and I very strongly hope—that they will soon abandon it and consider the interests objectively, and the views sympathetically, of the majority of people destined to live and die in that unhappy country.
9.56 p.m.
The Lord Bishop of Manchester: My Lords, the tone of this debate is thoughtful and sombre and I think there is an appreciation on the part of all those who have spoken so far of the desperate urgency of the situation in South Africa, and also an appreciation that the problems of South Africa will be solved inside that country and that what can be done from outside is necessarily limited. I am not sure that the appreciation is general among us, though, that many of the things which have featured prominently in the debate in recent years about the iniquities of apartheid are now beginning to disappear from the scene as major factors, and that what really is at stake is a struggle for power, a struggle for human freedom, a struggle for dignity.
The noble Lord, Lord St. John, who started this debate, said his hope was for evolution rather than revolution. But many people would believe that the revolution has in fact begun, that there is a revolutionary struggle going on; and of course there is a tremendous amount of bloodshed by any standards and a great deal of suffering taking place daily. So it is right that we should be conscious in this debate which we are having now—those of us who live outside South Africa and a long way from it—of the sufferings people are going through, mainly among blacks, in that country at the present time.
I believe also that we ought to recognise our own responsibilities here. This is the point at which there will be a real and genuine difference of opinion in this Chamber, because I hold very strongly that this country is morally responsible, along with other Western countries, for its failure to bring more effective pressure to bear on South Africa over the years, on its internal policies and also on Namibia. I believe that the damage which the Prime Minister did by her remark after the meeting of Commonwealth Heads of State, when she said how she had resisted the demand for sanctions, saying "We have only moved a teeny-weeny bit over krugerrands", did very great damage to Britain's reputation internationally; and I think it was heard in South Africa by many blacks as showing that Britain was putting its own economic interest first. Your Lordships may consider this unfair, but I believe that is how it was heard.
I listened with great interest to the very thoughtful speech of the noble Lord, Lord Chelwood, on these matters. He drew a parallel between sanctions against the Soviet Union or communist countries over trade and why we were not pressing for these while pressing for sanctions against South Africa. The answer surely lies in that old, well-worn phrase, "Horses for courses". The point about sanctions against South Africa is that we have a long historic involvement with that country, we have the biggest economic involvement with that country, and also the judgment needs to be made as to whether these are going to be effective in that situation.
This may be a quite different judgment from that which would be applied over the Soviet Union, although I supported sanctions of some kind against the Soviet Union at the time of the Afghanistan
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invasion. It is noticeable now over Libya and what has come up on the question of state sponsored terrorism that there are those who are prepared to consider sanctions there. They see that the alternative may be something leading to greater violence. I believe that we have not taken this question seriously enough in this country. Many major British companies are morally responsible over this, as also are our Government. All of us have a share in that responsibility.
During the years in which I have had, necessarily, to give some attention to the South African situation I have noticed a great change of view, for what it is worth, among the British churches. I served for 10 years on the division of international affairs of the British Council of Churches. When I joined that body majority feeling was against the imposition of sanctions on South Africa. When I left the feeling was overwhelmingly in favour. This steady change was brought about because it was a body with people constantly coming and going between South Africa and here and having constant contacts with leaders of all shades of opinion and particularly black nationalist leaders in South Africa. It may also be worth noting that on his recent return from South Africa where he had been to represent the Archbishop of Canterbury, the new Bishop of Coventry who, as former general secretary of the Church Missionary Society, has wide international experience, was quoted last week as saying:
"I come back reluctantly convinced that sanctions, carefully applied, are needed now".
More important is the view of Bishop Desmond Tutu, to which reference has been made. Bishop Tutu said before he was elected as Archbishop:
"I have no hope of real change from the Government unless they are forced. Our children are dying. Our land is burning and bleeding, and so I call on the international community to apply punitive sanctions against this government to help us establish a new South Africa, democratic, participatory and just. This is a non-violent strategy to help us to do so".
It is significant that although that statement was thought by some to have cost Bishop Tutu the election, so to speak, as Archbishop of Cape Town, he was elected. It seems to me that this is yet another indication of the way in which opinion in South Africa has moved, especially among black nationalist leaders.
The question was raised by the noble Lord, Lord Chelwood, and others, about the effect of sanctions on jobs and matters of that kind in South Africa. Do we suppose that this has not been carefully considered by people caught up in the situation there? Of course it has. But they see that the real danger now facing them is that the moderate leadership of people like Desmond Tutu is rapidly being outflanked.
Reference was made by the noble Lord, Lord St. John, to the statement of Mrs. Winnie Mandela. I would not wish to defend her language or the threat, especially that terrible reference:
"We shall win liberation with our matches and our necklaces".
That sends shivers down all our spines. Yet the starkness of that language is a sign of the situation into which we have now moved. Massive violence is being used on the part of the South African Government. It

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is being responded to by violence on the part of many black nationalists, some of whom are outrunning the leadership that they have had up to now. Be it noted that Dr. Alan Boesak and Bishop Desmond Tutu risked their lives in front of angry crowds to rescue people who were threatened with a necklace execution.
The Question on which the debate takes place refers to the future of South Africa consistent with economic progress and security for all population groups. None of us can really see what the future holds in that troubled and unhappy land. It is important that all of us should realise that underneath a race situation—this is so in all countries with race problems of this kind—are social problems of deep poverty and inequality. As time goes on and as South Africa gets over to some extent the race problems that have dominated its history over 250 years, as the noble Lord, Lord Hatch, says, the social problems underneath—the problems of great poverty and great inequality—will become more dominant.
What we will begin to see emerging are African black leaders who will make their appeal to those who essentially are the "haves" in that society. That is why I do not agree with the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, who said so much of great sense in his words to the House tonight, in his reference to Chief Buthelezi. I suspect that Chief Buthelezi's appeal will be partly to a tribal power base, but also partly to that section of blacks who now have a stake in a certain form of prosperity. Very quickly such situations tend to polarise, where one gets the genuine nationalist movement that still represents to a great extent those who are the poorest in the country, whereas others represent more an emergent middle class.
If that comes about in the South Africa of the future, I hope very much that we in this country will be sensitive to the emergence of that social struggle too, and not simply assume that those who are leading the poorest sections of the community are those who are not to be taken account of and are to be opposed. Very easily the kind of social system that we have in our country, and especially in the United States, tends to produce sympathies with those who are the "haves" rather than with those who are the "have nots" in such societies; sympathies with those having wealth and power over and against those who do not.
In regard to the question of population groups and the different ethnic groups that make up South African society, reference was made—I believe by the noble Lord, Lord Chelwood—to co-optive domination of blacks; I think that was the phrase that was used. One is dealing with a society there in which for hundreds of years there has been a deliberate attempt to divide society and to increase the divisions, not least by the creation of the Bantustans, which really is an intolerable political solution; it is no solution at all.
In the years ahead it will not be easy for the peoples of South Africa to be able to get over the divisions thus created. Yet, surely there is no real security for the future in continuing to emphasise the differences between ethnic and population groups in that country.
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That is why what has been said about the movement towards a society of individual democratic rights is so important.
In the end the security of racial minorities will depend on the goodwill of the majorities among whom they are placed. All of us in your Lordships' House should have the greatest sympathy with whites caught up in that siutation. They have been and are defending one of the highest standards of living of any racial group anywhere in the world. That is something that cannot go on, as we all know, in that particular form. Any group taken from this country and put into the position of South African whites would undoubtedly behave in the same way. That is why we have no right to point the finger at them, but we should look on their situation with humility and some sympathy.
At the same time we should point them forward to the only possible security in the years ahead, which is the goodwill of the black majority and a society that is fundamentally based on individual rights. It may be necessary to make some interim arrangements but, as has already been said, that is an aspect that will have to be worked out within the country itself. However, in the years ahead that must surely be the direction in which South Africa must move.
Let me close at this late hour by quoting a parable used by Bishop Desmond Tutu at a meeting recently of the South African Council of Churches. I believe he took it from a film called The Defiant Ones, which concerns two escaped prisoners—one black and one white—who are handcuffed together and who, in one impossible situation, find themselves desperately trying to get out of a pit. To begin with they struggle and trample each other down, and fight with each other. In the end they find that only co-operation can get them out of that desperate situation. It should be our hope and prayer that that is what will happen in South Africa. However, I believe that it can happen only if more help is given by us from this country.
10.10 p.m.
The Earl of Lindsey and Abingdon: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord St. John of Bletso, for putting down this very interesting Question. Perhaps I should begin by declaring an interest, inasmuch as I was born in South Africa and lived there for 13 years as well as in Southern Rhodesia before returning to this country during the war in 1944. I therefore did not experience life under the first post-war Nationalist Party Government, who were elected in 1948 and who have been in office ever since, though petty apartheid was very evident, as mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Hatch of Lusby, in his speech.
I have returned to that beautiful country on a few occasions since the war, and my most interesting experience was in 1969, in the company of six Conservative Members from another place, led by the then Mr. Oscar Murton, a Deputy Speaker and now a Member of your Lordships' House, when we visited South Africa as guests of the South African Foundation. This enabled us to meet senior civil servants and members of the Government and gave us an opportunity to try to probe the minds of those

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representatives of apartheid and come to some conclusion as to where they were leading their country.
More than anything else, what struck me was their unfailing belief in their doctrine and their complete lack of flexibility in meeting other people's points of view halfway. As has been mentioned by other noble Lords, since that time there has been a marked change in attitudes, as I was to discover on my return to South Africa eight years later. We are now another eight years further on and change is accelerating all the time.
The question arises of how fast this change is taking place, and, as the noble Lord asked in his Question, what political arrangement would we like to see in South Africa which is consistent with economic progress and security for all races, or should I say population groups?
There was an extremely interesting article in The Times about a month ago by the well-known South African writer and journalist Mr. J. M. Coetzee, entitled "On the Lip of a Volcano". It gave an insight into the minds of ordinary, hardworking Afrikaans people in the Cape who believe in progress toward a multiracial society in South Africa but who have slight reservations and favour a restricted pace in their attitude toward genuine change. There was an article opposing this view in the Review section of the Observer last Sunday and a really disturbing article appeared in the Financial Times yesterday. It is my honest belief that if outside pressures are brought to bear too harshly on the economy of South Africa in order to achieve a political end, the Afrikaaner laager mentality will come to the forefront again with possible re-establishment of Boer republics, as advocated by Mr. Eugene Terre Blanche of the new AWB party, which will be followed by an exit of liberal whites with alternative passports, to the detriment of the majority black population who in themselves are tribally divided.
I submit that it is to this possibility that Her Majesty's Government have to give serious thought in their attitude toward future developments in South Africa.
10.14 p.m.
Lord Paget of Northampton: My Lords, I seldom find myself rising to support our present Prime Minister, but when I hear the right reverend Prelate trying her for taking regard to British interests I feel a little inclined to remind him that that happens to be her job. It also happens to be our job. At present, as I see it, there is only one relevant and important issue. Is there to be a white government or a black government in the Union of South Africa? Which serves our interest primarily, for that is what we are here to look to; and, secondly, which serves Africa's interest? I have no doubt at all that it is the same.
It is a question of a white government or a black government. There is no compromise. African history has made that quite clear. No constitution in Africa can protect a loser. At least we must learn that. While terrorism rages we must not be fobbed off by liberal theology. Theology always gets bogged down in semantics. We hear chat about democracy. What does democracy mean? Does it mean one man one vote, winner take all? If that is the idea, I am most
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emphatically not a democrat. To my mind democracy is far more concerned with the "outs". In democracy the "outs" are free under one law: free to organise, free to argue, free to fight an election, free even to win. Noble Lords should remember one thing. No African Government have ever lost an election. Democracy in any real sense simply is not an option.
What we must all be concerned with is an effective government. Can the blacks provide this? Just look at the record. If fascism means a system under which a dictator rules a one-party state and no opposition is permitted, 28 of the 34 Bantu and Sudanese states have chosen fascism. But they have not been successful even as fascists. I doubt whether one of them is solvent, in the old and simple sense of the word, capable of paying its debts as and when they are due. In spite of having had the advantage of very substantial aid from other countries and a green revolution which has increased agricultural potential by a factor of three, production of foodstuffs in Africa is below what it was before the war under colonialism. Africa was then an exporting country that could afford to export food. Now it is importing food on a very large scale and it is still starving.
Just consider whether they are capable of governing. What has happened to Nigeria? In spite of oil and great wealth it is a collapsed economy and its people are for the first time in memory suffering from hunger as a result of the economic condition. Then consider Zimbabwe. In spite of sanctions and a war the Smith Government held the Zimbabwean economy in vastly better condition than it is in today. Zimbabwe is having trouble in feeding its people.
Just consider to whom the liberals are proposing to give South Africa, under a principle, I suppose, that all men are created equal. They obviously are not. They are created very different indeed. The Bantu are among the most backward of the human race. They never domesticated an animal. Not one African animal has ever been domesticated. They never used a wheel. They never measured time; they never built a stone house; they never achieved a written language. On all things African, the Cape Kaffirs were always regarded as the most backward of all.
Evolution is a slow process. We would be highly optimistic if we imagined that in 30 generations they would be ready and capable of governing a highly complex modern state like South Africa. These are the realities. It is no use "kidding" oneself with a liberal truth of revelation and ignoring the observed facts as we know them. If we had a black government in the Cape it would be not only the economy of South Africa which would collapse but the economy of all the adjoining states, which are highly dependent on her. It would be a worse situation than the Zulu invasion which she suffered a couple of centuries ago.
What do we do? We know very well that we need a white government in South Africa and that South Africa needs a white government because that is the only kind of government that can administer it or run its economy. Surely those people deserve our support. We should make it clear to President Reagan that this is where you find Communist terrorism. What we are facing in South Africa today is the appalling terrorism of the "necklace", the crowds and the burning of the

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policemen. This is the kind of terrorism which one cannot give in to. Libyan terrorism is trouser buttons compared with that. Terrorism must be crushed: there is no other alternative. One cannot argue liberalism with people who are burning policemen. The violence must be crushed. It is pure weakness to be merciful at a point like this.
When the Zulus were on the rampage 140 years ago I have noted down the proclamation that we issued:
"Hear ye and listen with both ears. Whereas from your youth up you have been taught to consider a man's life to be the property of the Chief and that the Chief in this district is the Lieutenant Governor representing the English Queen…".
That is how it began. That is what they understood; and it worked. That is the kind of level of ethics with which we are dealing.
I repeat that there can be no compromise with terrorism, and least of all in Zululand. As with anywhere else in the world—and this we want to say to President Reagan very firmly; we have to be consistent in this—terrorism must be crushed. It is only then that we can begin to think of new arrangements. But they must not be arrangements which imperil white rule, because that is necessary to Africa.
10.24 p.m.
Baroness Sharples: My Lords, I find myself in agreement with much of what the noble Lord, Lord St. John of Bletso, has said this evening. The noble Lord, Lord Hatch, talked about the resignation of Van Slabbert. I was in South Africa at the time that Van Slabbert resigned, and it may interest him to know that the papers were full of criticism of him—and these are the liberal newspapers—and that there was also great criticism by his own party.
Talking to any black parent in South Africa, their paramount ambition is to improve the education of their children. I should like to refer to the educational facilities available to black people in South Africa and to mention that in 1985 98,000 black youngsters obtained matriculation, as against 10,000 in 1981. Noble Lords may say "All right, there is a long way to go"; that is quite true. However, those results will increase rapidly and as such are an achievement to university entrance. Moreover, with the present graduates and undergraduates, together with the increasing number of matriculants, the pressures to consider some form of qualified vote to the blacks—and I do not think that this has been mentioned by any noble Lords this evening—of which education should be one qualification, will mount.
Surely approaches to South Africa should be made along such constructive lines by Her Majesty's Government.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for giving way. I want to ask here a quick question. When defending the system of black education in South Africa today, does she approve of the segregated system both at schools and at universities?
Baroness Sharples: My Lords, I was not approving or disapproving of the education; I was merely stating the facts about the increasing success of youngsters in
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black education. My inquiries during a recent visit to South Africa elicited that there is much agreement on improving education. Consequently, anything that Her Majesty's Government can do would be of great help and assistance at this time.
While all civilised people deplore any segregation of ethnic groups, the condemnation must be based on an understanding of the total situation and not on individual matters. Sadly, criticism appears generally in the form of biased and ill-informed statements which help no one. Over the past few years I have spent some time in South Africa, and I have been aware, especially recently, of the healthy criticism of the government in both the English and Afrikaan newspapers. That has increased enormously, and I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord St. John, will agree with me.
While I was in South Africa, I was encouraged to learn that many blacks are starting up their own businesses in all spheres—factories and small businesses—and they are receiving the necessary financial backing. Indeed, I spoke to various banks on the matter. As other noble Lords have said, there is an increasing number of wealthy blacks, as evidenced this time I was there by their large cars. It is a very good thing. I saw them around Cape Town. It is a very different picture from the one which I saw a few years ago.
We all deplore the exploitation of people, but a single phase of 40 years in the history of a country should be considered in the light of how help can be given, rather than what we can gain from the situation.
10.28 p.m.
Lord Monson: My Lords, I must start by congratulating my noble friend both on his initiative and on his admirable speech. Unlike the rest of us, he actually lives on the spot and therefore he has a personal interest and an up-to-date knowledge of the country about which we are talking. I congratulate him, too, on phrasing the Question in the way he has. It is up to those governments and those individuals who criticise South Africa to do so constructively, bearing in mind that it is not they who will have to suffer the consequences if the changes which they urge turn out to be disastrous when put into practice.
When I landed in South Africa in February last year, after a gap of 20 years, a rather sour joke was circulating around Cape Town. It went something like this: Question: Define a foreign "expert" on South Africa—Answer: A foreign expert on South Africa is somebody who has overflown that country at a height of 30,000 feet during the hours of daylight—the last five words being italicised.
Therefore, although unlike 95 per cent. of those who rant and pontificate about South Africa, I have actually been to the country—three times, and, what is more, one of those times was extremely recently (because conclusions drawn even 18 months ago may well be totally invalid today, as my noble friend pointed out, so rapid is the pace of change)—I speak with some trepidation.
Two distinguished authors wrote magnificent books about South Africa following extensive and thoroughly investigative (if I may use a modern term)

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journeys round the country made 40 and 20 years ago respectively. The first author was H. V. Morton, and the second was the American author Allen Drury. Though both their books were very different in style and in content, both arrived at the same conclusion—namely, that the more you travel round South Africa arid the longer you spend there the more you realise the complexities of the situation and the less certain you are that you know all the answers, or even some of the answers. This is an additional reason for most of us to speak with some hesitation.
There are perhaps three ways in which the views of an outsider might be of some assistance in this context. First, an outsider occasionally may—I say "may" and not "can"—be able to see the wood at a time when the insider is totally preoccupied with the trees. Secondly, an outsider may—again I do not say "can"—be in a better position to draw upon historical or contemporary parallels which may either help to resolve the problem or at the least help to clarify it. Thirdly, possibly the most important role an outsider can play is to help to interpret the situation to the outside world, which is bemused by so much highly selective, and sometimes positively misleading, media reporting.
Let me give a striking example of this. The other day a distinguished senior European diplomat was astonished when I mentioned that some inhabitants of Soweto ran BMWs. He was obviously under the impression that all South African blacks are barefoot and penniless individuals clad in tattered rags. If somebody of his position thought that, what must the great mass of the public think? We might start the educative process here.
Nine days ago I bought two tabloid newspapers just west of Johannesburg. One cost 10 pence and the other 13 pence. Here they are. The first is called the Sowetan and caters, as you might expect, for the black inhabitants of Soweto. On the cover is a photograph of a wedding, with the groom dressed in a white dinner jacket, a black tie, a stick-up collar, and white gloves. The bride is wearing a lovely wedding dress such as you might see in the pages of the Tatler. My wife and I saw several smart black weddings in Durban, the receptions often taking place in the four-star hotel where we were staying.
Page 9 of this issue of the Sowetan contains a full-page advertisement for electrical goods, ranging from an Electrolux twin-tub washing machine at £285 to a large upright fridge freezer at £323 including tax. Turning to the page containing advertisements for second-hand cars one sees a 1982 Audi 100 advertised at £2,640; a 1984 Escort 1300 GL going for £3,050; a 1983 Opal Commodore, five-speed, said to be in immaculate condition, for which £3,810 is being asked.
It is true that the Citizen, the tabloid which caters for the English speakers of Johannesburg, as well as including second-hand cars in that sort of price range, includes a great many more expensive ones ranging up to a 1985 Mercedes 380 SE, ex-demonstration, at £26,000. It would be foolish to deny that the standard of living of the whites, particularly in the northern suburbs of Johannesburg, is not a good deal higher than that of the blacks. The difference in the standard
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of living between the Afrikaaner and the Portuguese inhabitants of Johannesburg on the one hand and the blacks is not nearly so marked, but certainly the English speakers are much better off.
The point is that the inhabitants of Soweto are well enough off so that literally millions of blacks from other parts of Africa cross into South Africa voluntarily, both legally and illegally, so as to share in that standard of living.
I wish I had time to enlarge upon the aspects of the growing black middle class to which my noble friend has referred: for example, the attractive, elegantly-dressed, highly-professional Zulu newscaster. I wish I could give other examples of the voluntary help which in so many quiet and undemonstrative ways so many whites are giving to blacks educationally and otherwise. Many whites, including a widow, a friend of ours, took teenagers from Soweto into their homes for three weeks and drove them to and from school so that they could sit for their matriculation exams. This was done because the thugs and intimidators had threatened to beat them up or even pour petrol over them and set them alight if they dared to sit their exams.
My wife's godson is a doctor in a black hospital. He told us of a black nurse who was detemined to get to work. When the thugs threatened the driver of the bus taking her to work she walked 40 kilometres in to work rather than be intimidated. I think it is time that this courage among those moderate blacks received more recognition from people in this country.
I wish I had time to defend Bophuthatswana, Ciskei, Transkei and Venda, the first three of which I have visited and the first of which, at any rate, is run by people of the very highest calibre. Naturally I defer to my noble friend's much greater experience, but I wonder whether he is right in putting so much emphasis on a total repeal of the Group Areas Act, rather than its gradual modification. What works in Windhoek—which despite its peculiar charm remains the one-horse town it essentially was when I first visited it 21 years ago—would not necessarily work without a great deal of friction in the much more crowded area of the Vaal triangle. The Act would certainly help Indians and coloureds; but there are already many de facto grey areas, as I am sure your Lordships realise. In other words, the Act is not in practice enforced: Indians and Portuguese are living together in the west of Johannesburg.
I believe that the blacks would be much more interested in the repeal of the oppressive restrictions on starting new businesses in black areas—minicab businesses, for example, which require very little capital to start. All one needs is a clean driving licence and a bit of initiative. These restrictions at present impinge particularly unfairly upon black entrepreneurs: it is much easier for whites to start a business. That is the kind of thing that the Government ought to do without delay, because there would be no question of any backlash if they were to implement such a change.
At the end of his balanced, thorough and very sensitive book A Very Strange Society, published in 1967, the author Allen Drury lists 20 points in mitigation of what might roughly be called the white

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South African position. He balances this with 10 strong condemnations of laws and administrative practices for which he can find no justification in any circumstances. It is pleasing to note that of the 10 matters of which he was so highly critical, at least 8½ have been remedied. I think that the Government should be given some credit for this.
A number of noble Lords have given their reasons for the current unrest, most of which I agree with, some of which I do not: I shall not go into that. But nobody has talked about the one further reason, which is our old friend, or enemy, the revolution of rising expectations. There is, to which I shall return in a moment, the unhappiness and poverty resulting partly from the recession, partly as a result of the boycott and disinvestment. We must bear in mind that 300,000 new people are coming on to the labour market every year. Our Government cannot find work for 30,000, let alone 300,000. How the South African Government can be expected to find work for all these people if disinvestment is being pressed, I do not know.
The police have been mentioned. No one defends the conduct that we have seen, but it ought to be borne in mind that the South African police force is unusually small by international standards. They have only one-twentieth of the police per head of population compared with East Germany. East Germany is a special case, it may be said. Very well, but they have less than half the number of police per head of population compared with France and less than two-thirds compared with Scotland. When numbers are small, you have to have recourse to weaponry much more quickly than if you can swamp an area with numbers. Undoubtedly the education and training levels of the police are not as good as they ought to be, but this is not something that can be remedied overnight.
This brings us to my noble friend's extremely important point. What new political arrangements can there be consistent with security for all population groups? At the beginning of August 1954, Pierre Mendes-France told the European and Sephardic Jewish population of Tunisia, who then comprised 8½ per cent. of the total population, that not only they but their children and their children's children would have a secure and prosperous future in an independent Tunisia. There is no reason to suppose that M. Mendés-France was either insincere or dishonest. Yet within 10 to 12 years 90 per cent. of the Christian and Jewish minorities had been eased or squeezed out. Wherever their children or their children's children are it is certainly not Tunisia; and Tunisia is one of the most liberal and tolerant of Arab countries.
This is all part of the great mass movement of minorities in their millions out of the African continent which has been taking place over the past 30 years, starting with the eviction of the Greeks, the Maltese and the Jews from Egypt, then the flight of the pieds-noirs from Algeria and then the exodus of the Asians from Uganda, Tanzania and to a lesser extent Kenya and some of the central African countries. Then look at Angola and at Mozambique !
If anyone should happen to take a wrong turning when driving out of Lisbon airport on the way to the
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centre of Lisbon, as I did a few years ago, he may come across a street lined with dwellings which are little more than glorified packing cases, packed full of miserable "Ritornados", as they are called; people expelled from Angola and Mozambique, most of them white, quite a few of them of mixed race and a few blacks. They amount to something like 10 per cent of the entire population of Portugal.
Even in Zimbabwe, where race relations are said to be quite good—and from my brief experience there three weeks ago they certainly seemed quite good—at least 70 per cent. of the Europeans have left. Although some are returning, many more would leave if they could get their money out, which they are not at present allowed to do.
The exodus of which I speak has not, in general, taken place because of outright persecution. It has taken place because of the massive population explosion that has occurred in Africa, as it has occurred in some other continents. There are far too many people chasing too few jobs. When this occurs, preference is naturally given to members of the dominant ethnic or cultural group. It is said that Europeans in a one-man, one-vote, unitary South Africa would still be wanted and valued if only for their skills. I wonder! I can well imagine certain categories being wanted, for the time being, that is. For example, they might include doctors, dentists, vets, chartered accountants, agronomists, airline pilots, mining technicians, university lecturers, some judges, large-scale highly capitalised farmers and captains of industry, assuming that a free enterprise system still prevails.
On the other hand, I wonder what sort of a future would await the following: taxi drivers, shop assistants, bank clerks, airline stewardesses, small farmers, market gardeners, coalminers, goldminers, commercial travellers, railway signalmen and assembly-line workers. The latter group is larger than the first yet, given the population explosion, I would not give them much of a long-term chance in a unitary state. It is the first group whose skills are internationally marketable; it is the latter group who have literally nowhere else to go.
Then there is the vital question which my noble friend also raised of the maintenance of economic prosperity, so vital for all the people in South Africa, whatever their race, and for Africa as a whole. The vast fields of maize, sugar cane, tobacco, citrus groves and sleek cattle look impressive, and they are. But they are not easy to grow or to raise. Most of South Africa suffers from an endemic water shortage, exacerbated by the population explosion and by continuing industrialisation. In the east of the country where rainfall is adequate the topography and the particular rainfall pattern means the soil suffers from severe leaching; in other words, agricultural productivity cannot be taken for granted. The land requires a lot of attention and would not long survive a decline in standards.
There is no need to remind your Lordships that South Africa is the industrial powerhouse of Africa. It would be disastrous for Africa as a whole if anything went wrong there. I leave aside all questions of conservation, both nature conservation and architectural conservation, at which South Africans are so

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skilled and into which they are currently pouring so much effort. How shocking it would be if all this first world efficiency, order and creativity were to crumble into the third world chaos and corruption so graphically described by the Trinidadian Indian writer Shiva Naipaul. He writes of the,
"lusts that disfigure African societies",
and of the (substantiated),
"tales of bribery, embezzlement, extortion and corruption that … signal a collapse of self-control verging on collective derangement".
Universal suffrage is in itself no guarantee of justice or freedom. Universal suffrage, after all, led to the Nazis coming to power in Germany and the Marxists coming to power in Chile. Universal suffrage in a unitary state can only work satisfactorily when virtually all inhabitants of the state share common assumptions; when they are on the same beam, as it were.
The treatment of news items by the two newspapers I mentioned earlier, the Sowetan and the Citizen, shows the size of the gulf which has to be breached. The Sowetan totally failed to mention the horrible necklace murder—we have all heard of the petrol-filled tyres put round somebody's neck—of a black policeman, nor the fact that a black softball player is in intensive care after being badly beaten up for daring to play softball with whites, against the order of the thugs. Apartheid works two ways, you see.
On the other hand, the Citizen, the paper catering for English-speaking whites, totally, fails to record the story of the off-duty black policeman in civilian clothes who was walking home quietly at night and was beaten up by policemen, both black and white, who had mistaken him for an ordinary member of the public. The editorial content of these papers shows the gulf even more starkly, with the Sowetan describing Colonel Gaddafi as a "hero" and as one of the "children of light". These two papers are aimed at the relatively moderate in each community. The gap between the extreme positions is obviously very much greater.
Although both Botswana and Bophuthatswana have Bills of Rights which are widely acclaimed as models of their kind, both are thinly populated states with mainly rural economies. I do not think you are likely to get any highly populated, industrialised state on the African continent which equates to our conception of a liberal Western multi-party democratic society for a very long time, if ever.
It is interesting to peruse a leaflet published by the United Democratic Front which I picked up in Johannesburg the other day: the United Democratic Front is generally thought to be the mouthpiece for the banned African National Congress. After talking a lot about freedom and democracy in a unitary state it goes on to deny that, should it come to power, the cultures of different groups would be thrown overboard. However, it says that cultural values which are "reactionary or divisive" will have to be outlawed through legislation—ominous words, indeed!
So far, we have done no more than cover the philosophical gap between the westernised and semi-westernised uban groups. When you consider the rural areas, the gap is often much greater. When I was in
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Natal in March last year the papers carried a report of two Indian boys of 12 and 13 who had bicycled out to buy some sweets. When they did not return a search party was sent out. When their bodies were found they had been ritually sacrificed and horribly mutilated. The murderers have not so far been found, but one can be certain they are neither other Indians nor Europeans. The point is that this sort of thing happens the whole time: it is a very common occurrence. How can one create a democratic unitary state out of such material?
So long as the mineral wealth of South Africa is fairly shared, surely a federation is the right answer. A federation, after all, is consistent with the universally acknowledged right of self-determination. As Leon Louw and Frances Kendall say in their excellent and stimulating book advocating a cantonal system for South Africa, which I wholly commend to your Lordships although it is a little optimistic for a congenital pessimist like myself:
"Any future political dispensation for South Africa must clearly be based on a system which ensures that all her disparate groups can live without fear of domination by any other group."
They go on to say:
"For this country"—
that is, South Africa—
"to have any prospect of enjoying peace and prosperity all the major groupings need to see light at the end of the tunnel in terms of their own perspective."
It is these considerations that Her Majesty's Government should bear in mind in their dealings with South Africa.
10.51 p.m.
Lord Colwyn: My Lords, I can see the look on your faces—"Thank heavens he's the last one in!"—and probably I am the least qualified to speak in our debate this evening, never having been to South Africa, although I have plans to visit there next year to see my brother and his family. He is a housemaster at the Diocesan College in Capetown and was responsible for some part of the education of the noble Lord, Lord St. John, to whom I am grateful for initiating our debate this evening. My brother's enthusiam and belief in the future of South Africa are quite remarkable, and it is under pressure from him that I have been persuaded to make a few comments this evening. I promise to be brief.
Debates on South Africa, wherever they take place, are usually worded to give encouragement to the underlying assumption that some outside force or external factor could be motivated to bring about beneficial change, either by somehow compelling the government to behave in a certain way or by strengthening the oppressed to obtain a more desirable state of affairs. The idea that this external factor, whether it be at government level, business level or some other special interest level, such as Church, university or sporting body, might be able to influence the government to behave in a different way, is fundamentally incorrect. But it is ironic that those who believe that changes can be brought about by external pressure often dismiss the resultant changes as inconsequential and cosmetic.

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Anyone who pursues an external factor can always find an enthusiastic audience with guaranteed media coverage. Fighting apartheid from outside has become a growth industry. I watched the recent documentary by Sharon Sopher, and was appalled by what I saw—incontrovertible evidence of beating and torture of detainees, a large number of them children. I saw clear evidence of police brutality and indiscriminate firing of weapons into crowds, to the extent that I began to wonder whether what I was seeing could possibly be true. The cameras and film crew did not appear to be hidden, and yet the police and soldiers seemed not to care what was recorded on film.
In this country we are used to seeing violence in Ulster and are aware that anyone on television film automatically becomes an actor—to the extent that, in my opinion, it becomes impossible to evaluate the importance and reliability of such pictures. In my rugby-playing days we used to wait for the right moment—when the referee was not looking—before we punched a member of the opposing team.
These television films are obviously causing trouble in South Africa, as can be judged by the restrictions placed upon the reporting of unrest situations. I hope these will soon be ended. The freedom of the media in South Africa is a vital precondition for the expansion of democracy and an important factor in the Western view of South Africa.
For many years the United Kingdom has maintained its position as one of South Africa's five major trading partners. Direct and portfolio investment is estimated to be in excess of £11 billion—almost one-half of all foreign investment in South Africa. Up to 250,000 jobs in the United Kingdom depend on these trade links. Wherever one goes in this country there is always someone who has family and friends in South Africa. Many people will have been there. As a result, the British people have a great deal of goodwill for South Africa. They are concerned that things should go right.
Relations between the two countries, although strong, are under strain. There are three reasons for that. The first is the state of the economy and the weak rand. British business is not getting the profit and dividends it is used to, and it is aware of the growing international pressure, especially from the United States of America.
Secondly, our perceptions at all levels have become deeply influenced by the unrest and continual visual impact of the unrest and police action. Thirdly, there is a general impression of turmoil and disorder coupled with uncertainty as to where the South African Government's political reform programme is leading, which has shaken confidence that peaceful answers are possible.
Ten years ago politicians and analysts could debate whether South Africa might fundamentally transform itself peacefully or whether violence would occur. That issue has been superseded by how much violence is likely to occur and whether it can be limited. In short, is South Africa in the early stages of civil war, and could a revolution take place?
The belief that the revolution has begun and that the destruction of white power is within sight is
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widespread, especially among young black militants in the townships and within the African National Congress. However, I feel that the existence of those organisations and the violence which they have caused does not yet warrant the description "revolutionary". Individual acts of sabotage—the targeting of black local government representatives, of police and of others described as collaborators, are exceptions. It is a course of planned, deliberate action aimed at weakening the foundations of the state with a view to causing its ultimate collapse.
Regrettably, the violence has been greatly aggravated by the extraordinary lack of expertise on the part of the police in dealing with demonstrators. In many cases the police have behaved provocatively and with an apparent lack of control, and the results have been appalling.
Violence among rival black organisations accounts for 30 per cent. of all deaths. Relations among followers of rival bodies have intensified as the political temperature has risen, with fatal consequences, and the organisations have been unable to keep control over their members. That is due partly to the bannings, detentions and even killings of leaders, which not only heightens the level of tension and anger but destroys the ability of a national leadership to keep its followers in check.
Despite all those difficulties, are there any real prospects for a negotiated settlement, or is South Africa destined for degenerative collapse? The Government have given repeated commitments to the principle of negotiation provided that the parties to the negotiations renounce the use of violence. The ANC has never rejected negotiation, but it refuses to renounce violence.
A problem in initiating negotiation is the suspicion among black groups that in seeking their participation the Government are in fact trying to inveigle them into apartheid structures. No credible black organisation will even consider negotiation until apartheid is fully and completely abolished. Changes that have already occurred have stopped short of eliminating the core principle of apartheid—that people are to be allocated compulsorily by statute to population groups. For the majority black opinion the ending of apartheid is not a factor for bargaining: it is the precondition for the initiation of negotiations.
The basic issue is power, and it boils down to the question: who ultimately is going to rule? The cruelties of apartheid and its debasement of human dignities must not blind us to multiethnic-multiracial societies. No ruling minority will ever hand over or share power unless it is forced to do so by massive pressure.
The splendid rhetoric of Mr. Botha on 31st January this year provided a comic parody of the reality of life in South Africa; but I hope that, with the admitted recognition that the present system's days may be numbered, there might be the possibility of compromise between majority rule and whatever kind of group-based participatory scheme emerges from the principles laid down by Mr. Botha.
It is reasonable to assume that whatever happens in South Africa a large proportion of the white population will have to stay. The slogan "We have nowhere to go" will prove true, if only because there

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are few, if any, countries in the world likely to accept large blocks of white South African immigrants. Probably the next decade will see the emigration of significant numbers of professional or skilled white South Africans, most of them English-speaking, and also large numbers of the so-called coloured and Indian categories who do not all view the prospect of majority rule with equanimity.
Even an organisation with clear majority support will find it has to offer safeguards to minorities. A variety of safeguards are available under the constitution and these will be needed in a post-apartheid South Africa to help the minorities which will exist to share power. The world is full of unhappy, wretched and persecuted minorities and it would be naive to suppose that constitutions alone can afford them adequate security, as in the final analysis their security depends upon their usefulness to majorities.
As always in discussions on South Africa, the basic issue reappears: would the nationalistic government ever contemplate genuine power-sharing and would the ANC accept such a compromise, even as an interim stage? These questions are unanswerable but are worth striving for, perhaps, I hope, with the help of the international community.
As I said 10 minutes ago, I have never been to South Africa, and so I am particularly grateful for notes I have received from the office of Ambassador Dr. Denis Worrall and for a text from David Welsh, whose thoughts and ideas are of great help to me. I shall look forward to hearing what my noble friend the Minister has to say, in the hope that any encouragement she can offer will be very welcome to those of us left here this evening and also to South Africa itself.
11.1 p.m.
Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: My Lords, we are grateful to the noble Lord, Lord St. John of Bletso, for enabling us to have this debate, though I am not sure that this is the appropriate time or the occasion to debate a subject which is so important and so crucial. Certainly the House, at the end of a long and tiring day, should not be expected to deal with so significant a subject as this. However, we must do the best we can.
We all know that the instability of this huge area of Southern Africa is caused partly by the failure of a substantial section of the white population properly to comprehend that a failure to abandon apartheid must end in disaster, and partly, too, because the decolonisation of the countries to the north has accelerated the demand for a radical change.
As the noble Lord, Lord Colwyn, has just suggested, no one who knows the area—and I must confess that I have not been to South Africa for seven years or so—and its problems would argue that there are any easy solutions. There are deep complexities. There is a great fear and suspicion and as the conflict continues so the gulf between white and black politicians widens, anger turns into hatred and extreme elements on both sides achieve more power and influence.
Racial and religious conflicts, if they are not resolved quickly, always develop in this way, as this country knows to its cost. Nor must we forget that feelings run deep in South Africa, because the roots of the Afrikaaner population also go deep—a point made
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by the noble Lord, Lord St. John. They are no longer Dutch with grandparents in Amsterdam. They are as South African as New England Americans are American or, dare I say it, as Ulster Protestants are Irish. We know the implications of that very well and the intransigence of the communities involved.
The noble Lord, Lord Paget, and I have been friends for more years than I care to count and we agree on many things, but I must say now that I must disagree with him fundamentally in his views about the developing countries and their rights. In deference to our friendship I shall say no more about that this evening.
The noble Lord's Question is prudently phrased because he asks what political arrangements the Government would like to see. Although we had long historical connections with the area until fairly recent years, there is very little that Britain can do alone to influence the course of events. But, united with our friends and allies, we could do a great deal. The noble Lord's debate is timely because the unrest in South Africa, far from dying down, is becoming more acute. More than 1,100 people have been killed since the autumn of last year, and there were 171 deaths in March, according to the Economist of 12th April, which describes it as the bloodiest month so far.
The noble Lord, Lord St. John, has more local knowledge and experience than most of us. It seems, however, that many white people including businessmen—the noble Lord referred to them—are seeking desperately for some easement by way of a solution. The so-called Natal option has been revived as a possible basis for a solution. But that seems to me impractical. The debate is also timely because the six-month period agreed at the Nassau Commonwealth conference for the ending of apartheid shortly comes to an end. I do not believe that many people would be satisfied that Mr. Botha has moved significantly, although he has made some proposals, from the hard core of apartheid. A decision will have to be taken by the Commonwealth and thus by Britain as to the further steps that may be thought necessary. The noble Lord dealt with the modest reforms of Mr. Botha. The point that he made about the Group Areas Act is an important one. Its repeal would be a substantial step forward, but I see no early likelihood that that will take place. Even if that were to happen, profound and major obstacles would remain to be dealt with.
The Economist the other day made a fair comment. I was very impressed with what the correspondent said. It was this:
"Despite the relentless array of injustices still afflicting black and brown South Africa, it is untrue to say that nothing has changed or that Mr. Botha's reforms are meaningless. Though they mean almost nothing to blacks, to whites they are pregnant with meaning. Since whites have power, that is not irrelevant. What has changed dramatically is that white ideology has collapsed".
That is a very interesting point. The article states that there is no physical threat to white power, and we can understand this. But the Economist asks the 64,000 dollar question. It is this:
"is it wise to assume that because white physical power is unchallenged, the white will to govern will remain constant? Not any more. It is the will, not the physical strength, that is under question. It is the will that is undermined by the collapse of ideology".

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If there is no settlement and no attempt to move forward to a real understanding, the future is bleak indeed.
I return to the Commonwealth initiative that Her Majesty's Government supported and here I assume that the Government are waiting, with others, for the report of the group of eminent persons that includes the noble Lord, Lord Barber. I believe that they are awaiting an answer from the South African Government and the noble Baroness will perhaps be able to tell us more about the expectation on this point.
The noble Lord's Question also refers to economic progress and security for all population groups. These two do not necessarily go together. South Africa has achieved economic progress in the post-war years without political development towards what we would regard as a civilised system. I believe that we and the Government are at one on the objective, but not perhaps on the means whereby it may be achieved. Mr Malcolm Rifkind, when a Foreign Office Minister, summarised the objective on 20th November in another place. He said, at col. 266:
"We are working for the total elimination of apartheid and for rapid progress towards a genuinely non-racial democracy in South Africa".
We agree with that statement, but we differ from the Government on what action should follow. I fear that the uncertain British response at Nassau may not suffice next time. If we have to choose between constructive disengagement and drift, if we have to choose between effective economic sanctions in concert with our friends on the one hand and an ineffective stance on the other, I believe that we must choose positively for clearly defined action.
I do not believe that we can stand still. If we act then there will of course be economic consequences for us, and the noble Lord, Lord St. John, referred to that aspect. There will be consequences also for a section of the black population. But those consequences will be small by comparison with the slow drift into civil war over a period of time; with the suffering that will ensue; and with the deaths that will follow. It is also worth bearing in mind that the people in the homelands—called by the Economist "ten rural cesspits"—are suffering the most grinding poverty at the present time.
I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, when he says that economic sanctions would be understood and would be supported by the great majority of the black population. That is certainly the intelligence that I have received from all those who have visited South Africa recently.
Like the noble Lord, Lord St. John, I would like to see security for all population groups—white, coloured and black. There is room for them all in that large country with its great resources. Let us look at the reality of the situation in South Africa. It has a population of 32½ million. The total black population is 24·1 million. The coloured population is 2·8 million. The white community—Afrikaaner and English-speaking—is 4·8 million. Therefore, as night follows day, the big majority must sooner or later engage in government in South Africa. There can be
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no doubt about that and no argument about it—it is going to happen. The question is: when? Progress must be real, because as delay and conflict increases the bitterness also grows and makes the emergence of an anti-white, anti-Western government the more likely.
The noble Lord's "economic progress and security" depends on stability, not on a bloody civil war. Like him, I think that Mr. Nelson Mandela should be released. I think also that Mr. Mandela and Mr. Oliver Tambo understand the realities well enough. They want stability; they do not want civil war in their country.
There are two other factors. First, one cannot move 5 million white people, most of whose antecedents go back 300 years. Secondly, even if one could, South Africa would be infinitely poorer without them. The answer to the noble Lord's Question is therefore clear. The only political arrangement that will work in the longer term is the one that recognises the inevitability of majority rule and which plans for it in co-operation with all sections of the community in South Africa.
As I have said, that would involve the release from prison of Mr. Nelson Mandela, which is something that the Government have called for, and which the noble Lord, Lord St. John, indicated that he also supports. It would involve also a readiness to hold discussions with the ANC. Some may regard that as impractical and some may regard it as undesirable—but they should know that unless such a step is taken now, there will be a far less desirable outcome in due course. Does it not take a long time for countries to realise the inevitability of that and of the result of failing to take action in good time? It is because of the failure to understand that fundamental historical point that the country has lived through agonies and despair.
The noble Lord made a constructive speech and he made some important proposals. I believe that we should all like to see evolutionary change and not bloody revolution, but it must take account of some fundamental factors. The noble Lord will know and respect—and I understand that he is a lawyer—the basic principles of the common law of this country. They concern freedom under the law; the rights of the individual regardless of colour, creed or race; the evils of detention without trial; and the political freedom that gives every man and woman a vote. That is where I must disagree fundamentally with my noble friend. Those are the only principles that hold out permanent hope for South Africa.
I have always hoped that, to avoid chaos, South Africa would evolve step by step. But the steps must be substantial and they must end in majority rule—though with the safeguards that the noble Lord, Lord St. John, has mentioned. Time is running out, and, as the right reverend Prelate said, revolution is menacing the scene. Experience over the years has taught us not to be too optimistic—but that should not deter us from trying and from hoping.
11.15 p.m.
Baroness Young: My Lords, we are all grateful to the noble Lord, Lord St. John of Bletso, for asking this Unstarred Question this evening. We all listened with great interest to his thoughtful and balanced speech,

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which, if I may say so, contained a great deal with which we can all agree. My only regret, and it is one that I share with the noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn, is that at such a late hour it is difficult to do justice to the very large subject that the noble Lord, Lord St. John of Bletso, has introduced.
Sadly the level of violence in South Africa has continued to increase despite the lifting of the state of emergency on 7th March. One hundred and seventy-one people died in unrest incidents during March, which is the highest monthly figure since the start of the recent unrest in September 1984. The violence has taken a number of different forms, not only clashes with the security forces but also faction fighting, vigilante action and the "necklacing", with burning tyres, of alleged government collaborators. Large numbers of buildings and vehicles in black areas have been destroyed. Your Lordships will, I am sure, join me in rejecting violence from whatever quarter. We must all wish to see an early end to the repression and violence in South Africa, and the beginning of a genuine political dialogue that will lead to a peaceful, prosperous and just future for all its people.
I have noted with interest the various views that have been put forward this evening. At the same time I hope that your Lordships will understand that it would not be right for Her Majesty's Government to prescribe particular political and constitutional arrangements. It is for the people of South Africa—all the people—to find their own solution. The problem is complex, as many of your Lordships have said. What we ask is that the search should be peaceful and that the solution should command the support of the people as a whole. For us to try to tell them what constitutional outcome is best would invite the response—and rightly—that it is they, not we, who will have to live with the consequences. That is why it is the people of South Africa who are best placed to decide what is mutually acceptable.
As I have said on many occasions, the Government start from the position that we utterly condemn apartheid. It is quite unacceptable that there should be legislated discrimination which keeps the majority of people in an inferior position and allocates power and privilege to a small minority solely on the basis of race. Such discriminatory legislation cannot just be modified; it must be completely removed from the statute book.
We recognise that the South African Government have embarked on a programme of reform, which is a point that was raised by the noble Lord, Lord St. John of Bletso, and my noble friends Lord Chelwood and Lord Colwyn. Last year they abolished the Mixed Marriages Act, the Political Interference Act and Section 16 of the Immorality Act. This month they have taken the important step of tabling legislation to repeal the old pass laws and of issuing a White Paper that foreshadows a major easing of influx control. Proposals have also been made for the reform in this parliamentary session of citizenship legislation and the granting of freehold rights for blacks. Those reforms should be widely welcomed. They do not go far enough, but they have contributed to the momentum for change.
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Moreover, President Botha has said that he is committed to negotiating,
"a democratic system of government which must accommodate all legitimate political aspirations of all South African communities".
The implications of this and other principles that he outlined at the opening of Parliament in January are both fundamental and potentially far-reaching.
What is now needed is for the South African Government to move quickly to turn their promises into reality. The need is twofold. On the one hand there must be further steps to abolish all discriminatory legislation, including such key instruments as the Group Areas Act, which was a point referred to by the noble Lord, Lord St. John of Bletso. On the other hand, every effort must be made to open genuine dialogue with the acknowledged representatives of the black population. Failure to act and act soon in this way will only increase the frustration, the disappointment and the violence.
The British Government have on a number of occasions outlined the sort of steps that we believe could create the climate of confidence that is so urgently needed for political dialogue to begin. We have called for them ourselves and with our European and Commonwealth partners. On some of them, for example, the lifting of the state of emergency and repeal of the pass laws, the South African Government have taken action. On a number of others, they have yet to do so. These include the unconditional release of Mr. Nelson Mandela and other political prisoners, a point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Hatch, an end to detention without trial and the unbanning of political parties.
In the course of this evening's debate, noble Lords have raised a number of specific points. The noble Lord, Lord Chelwood, made certain allegations about Israel's breach of the United Nations arms embargo against South Africa. I cannot comment on those allegations. They would be a matter for the Security Council Arms Embargo Committee. I can say, however, that the British Government, for their part, comply fully with Security Council Resolution 418 which forbids the sale to South Africa of arms and related material and calls on states to refrain from any co-operation with South Africa in the manufacture and development of nuclear weapons. We believe that all other UN member states should similarly comply with this mandatory embargo.
My noble friend also raised the question of the reception of the BBC External Services in South Africa. The Government are aware of the poor audibility of the BBC External Services in that country and measures are being taken under the current audibility programme to improve reception there by the introduction of additional equipment in the Ascension Island relay station. We are also examining other ways of boosting the signal to that area without any deterioration of coverage of Central Africa. The possibility of medium-wave transmissions is being considered as part of this study, as well as broadcasting in the tropical bands.
My noble friend Lord Chelwood and the noble Lord, Lord St. John, raised the question of sporting contacts with South Africa. As your Lordships will know, the Government's policy is to discourage such

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contacts, in keeping with their obligations under the Gleneagles Agreement. They advise individual sportsmen or sporting bodies of government policy. It is then up to the sporting bodies and individuals to make their own decisions. Other Commonwealth countries have to reach their own decisions on how they deal with sporting contacts with South Africa.
My noble friends Lady Sharples and Lord Chelwood also asked about education, in particular about the role of the British Council in South Africa. The council administers in that country both programmes from its own budget and a major proportion of ODA's educational aid programme to black South Africans. The total budget for 1986–87 is £1·7 million, an increase of nearly 16 per cent. on last year. A further £500,000 is also being made available this year for aid to black South Africans from funds arising out of the saving on our UNESCO contribution. The British Council is likely to play a key role in administering some of those funds also.
A number of noble Lords have referred to the Government's policy on economic sanctions. I refer in particular to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester and to the noble Lord, Lord Kennet. As your Lordships know, the Government, together with our European and Commonwealth partners, have adopted a number of measures designed to send a political signal to the South African Government without damaging the livelihoods of the South African people. We are, however, opposed to more general economic and trade boycotts since we believe that those would only stiffen white resistance to change, while increasing unemployment in Britain, among black South Africans and in neighbouring African countries. Far from promoting peaceful change in South Africa, we fear that such boycotts would only make matters worse there.
A number of noble Lords referred to the development of the Durban Indaba on the KwaZulu-Natal proposals. On that, we welcome all moves towards peaceful reform in South Africa and we are pleased to see the efforts being made to reach agreement between the races on political advance. It is not for our Government to prescribe what form that advance should take.
I should like now to return to what I have referred to earlier—the urgent need for a political dialogue between the South African Government and the acknowledged representatives of the black population of South Africa. That is a point also made by the noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn, and many others who have spoken this evening. The Commonwealth Heads of Government in Nassau last October established a group of eminent persons with the object of facilitating such a dialogue in the context of a suspension of violence on all sides. The British nominee to the group, which acts quite independently of governments, is the noble Lord, Lord Barber, whose great ability and experience are well known to your Lordships. The whole group visited South Africa in March and met with a broad spectrum of South African opinion in its search for ways of getting dialogue started. The group is meeting again in London today and tomorrow to assess the progress made.
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Wisely it has maintained a high degree of confidentiality. We believe that it has won a great deal of respect and co-operation on all sides. It has already achieved more than many predicted. Its credibility is reinforced by the broad base of international support which it now enjoys. It would be wrong to underestimate the difficulty of its task. But the mission represents much the best prospect at this time for a positive international contribution to a settlement in South Africa. It is now at an important stage. The British Government will continue to give all the help and support we can, using our longstanding links with South Africa to best advantage.
The noble Lord, Lord Hatch, asked that the report of the group should be published not later than 30th June. I can only say to him that it must be for the Commonwealth Eminent Persons Group, which acts independently of governments, to decide when to submit its report.
To conclude, if progress is to be made, the aim must be to prevent further polarisation in an already grievously divided society. Economic progress and security for all population groups in South Africa, to which the noble Lord wisely referred in his opening Question, are important elements in building the mutual trust needed for a lasting political solution. What we need to see is a suspension of violence on all sides, together with further action by the South African Government to show that they are genuinely committed to fundamental reform and to the establishment of a non-racial democracy in South Africa.
If only the necessary vision and statesmanship can be shown on all sides, I believe that the way could yet be found to the just and peaceful outcome that we all so earnestly desire for that country.

Essex Bill [H.L.]
The Queen's Consent signified; Bill reported from the Unopposed Bill Committee with amendments.
House adjourned at twenty-eight minutes past eleven o'clock.