Lords Sitting of 2 December 1986

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

Truancy in Schools
Lord Taylor of Blackburn: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether there has been an increase in truancy in our schools and what steps they are taking to combat this problem.
Baroness Hooper: My Lords, the Government do not collect statistics on truancy at a national level. Nevertheless, we are aware that unjustified absence is a serious problem in some schools. In February, the department issued a circular to local education authorities which made a number of recommendations about the work of education welfare officers with a view to concentrating their efforts on school attendance problems. Progress on this will be monitored early next year.
Lord Taylor of Blackburn: My Lords, I thank the Minister for that reply and appreciate the work that the Government are doing in this direction. May I ask the noble Baroness to consider the figures in Lancashire, which have gone from 7 per cent. to 10 per cent., and at the same time to read the chief constable's report on delinquency and crimes among the juvenile population, which have increased also by 3 per cent.? Does she agree that there may be a link between the chief constable's figures and the percentage increase shown in the figures produced by the education department, and that truancy may lead perhaps to glue-sniffing, shop-lifting and drug taking?
Baroness Hooper: My Lords, in response to the noble Lord, I agree that there may be a link between truancy and juvenile crime, but connections are not firmly established in spite of the statistics that he quoted. Juvenile delinquents often have a history of poor attendance at school. But whatever the interaction, the Government are committed to urgent and effective action to tackle the problem of drug and solvent abuse. A booklet giving information and advice to teachers and other education service professionals was issued last year. The appointment of a co-ordinator is being funded in each education authority area to combat drug misuse, and in-service teacher training related to drug abuse is being supported by the new scheme of INSET grants. We hope that this, together with an attack on the attendance problem, will help.
Lord Campbell of Alloway: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that there is in current circulation in certain schools a school stoppers textbook: 91 ways to
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smash and sabotage your school; that one of the ways advocated is truancy; and that this publication is sponsored by the Lesbian and Gay Youth Magazine, Issue 69? What do the Government propose to do about that?
Baroness Hooper: My Lords, on hearing my noble friend's question, my immediate reaction was that absence from school must help guard against smashing the school! Nevertheless, I take on board the example that he has quoted and I assure him that we shall look into the matter.
Lord Mackie of Benshie: My Lords, may I ask the Minister whether she has considered paying an attendance allowance to the pupils?
Baroness Hooper: No, my Lords.
Baroness Elliot of Harwood: My Lords, may I ask the Minister whether she agrees that truancy more often than not is a problem connected with the home as well as with schools? In those circumstances should not the latest circular have been issued jointly by the Departments of Education and of Health and Social Security, since both are involved in this?
Baroness Hooper: My Lords, I believe that parents have an important role to play in this. Where they show an interest in their children's education and show that they regard education as important, truancy is less likely to occur. The Government in all the steps that they are taking are very keen on introducing and cementing parent power in this as well as in other areas of education.
Lord Avebury: My Lords, can the Ministers say whether parents are entitled to receive from the local education authority details of truancy rates at the various schools in their area, where these have been collected, or whether the local authority is entitled to say that parents will not be given these statistics because they are confidential?
Baroness Hooper: My Lords, I am not aware that there is any entitlement for parents to receive these figures, but I understand that in many local authority areas they are made available to them.
Baroness Seear: My Lords, does the noble Baroness agree that this is the sort of statistic that parents would wish to have when choosing a school for their children and that figures should be available before they choose a school?
Baroness Hooper: Yes, my Lords, I agree.
Lord Beloff: My Lords, can my noble friend explain why children should be blamed for playing truant when teachers play truant with impunity, only they call it "industrial action"?
Baroness Hooper: My Lords, perhaps I may half answer that supplementary question. I agree that teaching needs to be lively and absorbing and that the curriculum has to be seen by pupils and parents to be relevant to encourage pupils to attend.
Lord Leatherland: My Lords, may I ask the noble Baroness whether she will look behind her to see how many of her supporters are playing truant today?
Baroness Hooper: My Lords, the answer must be, not many.
Lord Wallace of Coslany: My Lords, can the noble Baroness say what is the role of the school attendance officers these days—those who in my day were known as "kid-chasers"?
Baroness Hooper: My Lords, the education welfare officer has an important role here. The officer's most important duty, in the Government's view, is to investigate and remedy school attendance problems. Indeed, the circular to which I referred in my original Answer recommends that education welfare officers devote the major part of their time towards this end.
Viscount St. Davids: My Lords, can my noble friend say whether things are any worse in schools in the London area? Can we really blame the children when we see what some London schools are trying to stuff into their unfortunate minds?
Baroness Hooper: My Lords, although we do not collect statistics on a national level, we receive some local surveys, including an ILEA survey. The survey of secondary school pupils absent on one day in 1985 produced a figure of nearly 19,000 absentees. That is 15.6 per cent. of the pupil population, and it is rather an alarming figure.
Lord Irving of Dartford: My Lords, is not the alienation of some children a by-product of the Government's failure to provide enough resources in schools to create a contented teaching staff to take care of the situation?
Baroness Hooper: My Lords, we have been over this ground before. It is, I believe, of the utmost importance that teachers fulfil their proper role in making school and education attractive and interesting to pupils.

Bus Services, Glasgow
2.44 p.m.
Lord Tordoff: 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, following the Answer of 13th October (col. 517) and the rejection by the Traffic Commissioner of an application by Strathclyde Regional Council, what steps they now propose to take to end "bus wars" in major cities.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Transport (Lord Brabazon of Tara): My Lords, the Transport Act 1985 gives traffic commissioners the power to intervene to prevent danger to road users or reduce severe traffic congestion. The Traffic Commissioner for Scotland has not rejected the application by Strathclyde
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Regional Council for traffic regulation conditions in Glasgow. He has simply said that he is not prepared to take emergency action without holding a public inquiry to allow all the parties concerned to express their views. He has published the application and made it clear that he will be prepared to hold an inquiry if he receives a formal request for one.
Lord Tordoff: My Lords, is this not a continuing problem in Glasgow? Am I right in saying that the time-scale for the inquiry is about the middle of January? Do the Government not feel that the situation is getting out of hand and that they ought to intervene? If the Government are expecting some sort of voluntary arrangement to take place between the operators, would that not be against the spirit of the Act?
Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, no. It is for the Traffic Commissioner to decide whether he should reach a decision without holding an inquiry that would allow all the parties concerned to put their case. The Scottish Traffic Commissioner decided against acting without an inquiry. In reaching that decision, he noted that the severe congestion of 11th October, when other factors were involved, had not recurred.
Lord Carmichael of Kelvingrove: My Lords, is the Minister aware that the very fact that there has been an application to the Traffic Commissioner, although it was unsuccessful in achieving the full effect that Strathclyde Regional Transport wanted, seems to have brought about a slightly more sensible attitude on the part of the Scottish Bus Group?
Is the Minister aware that there is great uncertainty about the future of buses in Glasgow? We are at present grossly "over-bused". Many buses are travelling almost empty, with the obvious intention of pushing competitors off the road. Is the Minister aware that if Glasgow loses its bus services other than those of the Scottish Bus Group there will be a monopoly situation and that after Glasgow has been conquered, the same could happen in other cities around the country? Would the Minister keep this possible development in mind? Would he also perhaps ask the Office of Fair Trading to keep the matter before it?
Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, it is certainly within the power of the Office of Fair Trading to look into this matter. It is for the commercial judgment of each operator to decide what services he runs. Operators will provide services according to the demands of the market. This is the best way of ensuring that services reflect the needs of the travelling public, which of course should be the paramount consideration.
Lord Nugent of Guildford: My Lords, in view of the great interest taken by this House in the legislation that promoted the new system of free operation of bus services, could my noble friend arrange in the New Year to publish a report of a survey nationally of how the new bus services are working throughout the country in order to fulfil our hopes as well as to allay our anxieties?
Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, I shall certainly take note of what my noble friend suggests and see what might be the best way of putting forward such information.
Lord Ferrier: My Lords, is it not probable that the matter will sort itself out in the middle of next month?
Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, I gather that, to some extent, the problem has sorted itself out already.
Lord Teviot: My Lords, may I send my noble friend a rather nasty lob? Can he equate, in the spirit of this Bill, that there are two organisations—the Strathclyde Bus Company, which is owned locally, and the Scottish Bus Group, which has not been privatised—both intent on war and possibly keen, therefore, to keep out private enterprise? Does my noble friend think that, ultimately, this war will bring a better bus service to the citizens of Glasgow, and to the employees of the bus companies? Will he say who is going to be the winner after all in this very unsatisfactory and unsavoury situation?
Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, my right honourable and learned friend the Secretary of State for Scotland is of course keeping in close touch with the competition aspect in Glasgow and elsewhere. If any evidence of anti-competitive behaviour emerges, the Government will take appropriate action. Also, as I said earlier, the OFT can also look at the matter.

Nuclear Test Ban: Progress
2.49 p.m.
Lord Mayhew: 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 why they are opposed to the resumption of negotiations for a comprehensive test ban treaty.
The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Baroness Young): My Lords, as I have explained on previous occasions, it would be premature to resume negotiations for a comprehensive test ban treaty until progress has been made on resolving outstanding issues, especially verification.
Lord Mayhew: My Lords, has the noble Baroness yet studied the statement in Moscow yesterday that the Russians propose to end their moratorium on testing at the end of the year? In view of the decisive improvements in verification techniques that have been discovered recently, will the Government suspend their ban on negotiations and make a final effort to reach agreement in the matter?
Baroness Young: My Lords, as I have explained to the noble Lord before, we are committed to seeking progress before a comprehensive test ban treaty. But any negotiations would need to deal with difficult questions such as scope, duration and compliance—the key issue being verification.
Lord Jenkins of Putney: My Lords, is the noble Baroness aware that, so far from its being premature, we are almost at the eleventh hour on this issue? Will she not show some sense of urgency in the matter when an opportunity is before the Government at the moment which may not recur? If the arms race is to be arrested, some action by the Government has to be taken. It is no use them sitting around doing nothing, as they have been for so long.
Baroness Young: My Lords, that is not the case. We suggested as long ago as 1984 a non-negotiating mandate for the ad hoc committee at the Conference on Disarmament, but as yet this has not been taken up by the Soviet Union.
Lord Mellish: My Lords, will the noble Baroness give some indication to the House of how far verification, so far as the Russians are concerned, has proceeded? We all know that that is what has held it up. It is not a question of any bad feeling on the part of the Government or of anybody else. We all want peace, but we want it to be a genuine peace.
Baroness Young: Again, my Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Mellish, makes an important point. We should all like to see movement towards a comprehensive test ban treaty, but a limited unilateral gesture, as has happened with the Soviet Union, is not a substitute for a long-term agreement with verification.
Lord Brockway: My Lords, will the Government progressively reconsider their attitude on this question? Would not this step be part of a great progress towards ending the danger of a nuclear war and has it not overwhelming support in the world, with the exception of the President of the United States and of our Government?
Baroness Young: My Lords, I do not think I have anything further to add to the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, other than I have already said in answers to questions. But I really cannot accept his last statement.
Lord Mackie of Benshie: My Lords, can the noble Baroness tell us what standards of verification the Government would require before we can take this very desirable step of banning tests?
Baroness Young: My Lords, as I indicated in the answer that I gave to the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins, we have suggested a non-negotiating mandate for the ad hoc committee at the Conference on Disarmament. Some countries—the Soviet Union and some non-alligned countries—are not even prepared to accept this. It is a technical matter and it needs to be considered appropriately in that committee.
Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: My Lords, as the noble Baroness has said, it is a technical matter. But is it not the case that it is now claimed that major advances in seismology would make possible at the very least a low yield threshold test ban? Can she say what is the Government's view on that, and is it not possible at Geneva to get a multilateral discussion on the possibilities based on recent scientific discoveries?
Baroness Young: My Lords, I am aware of the papers which were presented in Modern Geology by Sykes and Leggatt which criticised the United Kingdom's paper. But they present no new elements and we do not believe that they undermine the conclusions in the Committee on Disarmament of July 1985. In fact, officials wrote to Dr. Leggatt answering his points in August, and we would of course welcome publication of the response that we made.
Viscount Trenchard: My Lords, will my noble friend agree that one should not overstress the importance of individually declared moratoriums, and that there are more convenient moments for some powers to declare a moratorium than others?
Baroness Young: Yes, my Lords. We believe that these unilateral gestures are not a substitute for long-term durable agreements. Of course, the second point that my noble friend made is important.
Lord Mayhew: My Lords, apart from the question of verification, do the Government need to make further tests of the Trident warheads?
Baroness Young: My Lords, again I think that I answered the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, in a Written Answer earlier this year. We are committed to the modernisation of an independent nuclear deterrent and we shall take steps to ensure this, as, of course, have previous governments. The fact is that while there are no prospects of negotiations on a comprehensive test ban treaty, it is a hypothetical question to link the two.

Nuclear Power Stations: Accountancy Life
2.55 p.m.
Lord Campbell of Croy: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government how many nuclear power stations in the United Kingdom will have completed their expected commissioned lives by 1996.
Viscount Davidson: My Lords, the future operation of the Magnox stations owned by the boards and those operated by BNFL will depend on a number of factors, including the outcome of the long-term safety reviews that are currently being undertaken and the economic viability of the stations. For accounting purposes, the lives generally adopted by the boards for the Magnox stations is 30 years. This accountancy life will have expired by 1996 for the following stations: Berkeley, Bradwell, Dungeness A, Hinkley Point A, Hunterston A, Trawsfynydd and Sizewell.
Lord Campbell of Croy: My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that reply and I should like to ask him this question. Will not the replacements have to be coal-fired or nuclear stations, since renewable sources, such as tides and wind, cannot make the necessary contribution to electricity supplies? Is he aware that
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where coal is concerned there are problems of pollution, acid rain and the greenhouse effect on the atmosphere which all have to be taken into account?
Viscount Davidson: My Lords, I agree entirely with my noble friend. I understand that the CEGB is considering the possibility of building new coal-fired stations, but my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Energy has received no application to construct new power stations apart from that for Sizewell B. Proposals for new power stations must come from the electricity supply industry.
Lord Renton: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that eventually all fossil fuels, coal and oil, will be used up and that future generations will resent our folly if we have not meanwhile maintained our development of nuclear power?
Viscount Davidson: My Lords, this subject was covered very fully in a debate the week before last and I have to agree entirely with my noble friend.
Lord Dean of Beswick: My Lords, does the Minister recall that during that debate and in previous recent answers to the same question it has been said that the Government have a policy that any new coal-fired stations will be acid rain free and that the necessary equipment will be built into any new coal-fired stations? It is a fact that the phasing out of these Magnox stations requires urgent ordering of power stations. Bearing in mind that the turbine manufacturing industry is at present in danger of further redundancies, with the loss of skilled men who cannot be replaced when we need them, may I ask the Minister whether he will use his best endeavours to try to being forward the building of coal-fired stations pending a decision on a nuclear energy programme?
Viscount Davidson: My Lords, I shall certainly bring the noble Lord's remarks to the attention of my right honourable friend.
The Lord Bishop of Birmingham: My Lords, can the noble Viscount tell us about any possible plans for decontamination, should it be the case that these Magnox nuclear power stations will have completed their expected commissioned lives in the fairly near future?
Viscount Davidson: No, my Lords, I cannot at the moment, because no decision has been made as to when they will have completed their lives. The answer I gave related to their accountancy life of 30 years. It is quite possible that some of these Magnox stations will have a much longer life than their accountancy life, and at present there are no plans for what the right reverend Prelate calls decontamination.
Lord Jenkins of Putney: My Lords, is the noble Viscount aware that with nuclear energy there are even more serious intrinsic problems than those which have been referred to already in relation to coal-fired energy? These problems might be described briefly as Chernobyl problems, Three Mile Island problems and Windscale problems. Does the Minister agree that those problems have not yet been solved, that they are

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intrinsic to nuclear energy and that it is therefore to be hoped that the Government will think carefully before continuing their total reliance upon nuclear energy?
Viscount Davidson: My Lords, the stations which are the subject of this Question have provided cheap and safe electricity over many years. There is no reason to dispense with such assets before the end of their useful lives.
Lord Campbell of Croy: My Lords, does my noble friend agree that the first generation of nuclear stations has served this country extremely well, with significantly few incidents or casualties?
Viscount Davidson: My Lords, I agree completely with my noble friend.
Lord Beswick: My Lords, is it not a fact that most of the criticism which can quite properly be brought against nuclear fission cannot be brought against fusion? Can the noble Lord say whether he is satisfied that enough effort is being made in research and development in that field?
Viscount Davidson: Yes, my Lords. I assure the noble Lord that that field is being researched with urgency.
Lord Orr-Ewing: My Lords, can my noble friend say what is the life of the 374 operational nuclear power stations around the world and what is likely to be the life of the over 150 nuclear power stations currently being constructed? How does that life compare with the life of our own Magnox? Is it greater or is it less?
Viscount Davidson: I cannot answer that without notice, my Lords.
Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: My Lords, does the noble Viscount agree that the report of the Sizewell Inquiry, massive as it will be, will provide a new forum for a detailed and thorough study of all the alternatives? In the light of that, will he say when this report is going to be published? Is it not the case that that report is in the hands of his right honourable friend? Is his right honourable friend proposing to make a Statement when the report is published? What course will the Government follow to ensure that there is a full discussion, not only within Parliament but throughout the country as well?
Viscount Davidson: My Lords, I think the noble Lord the Leader of the Opposition is better informed than I. I had not heard that the report was in the hands of my right honourable friend. He is expecting to receive that report any day and when he has studied it he will then decide when to publish it.
Lord Somers: My Lords, can the noble Lord say, in view of the increase in the number of such stations, whether any advance has been made in the problem of disposal of nuclear waste?
Viscount Davidson: My Lords, I think that is another Question.
Lord Beswick: My Lords, may I go back for a moment to the answer given me a little while ago? In view of the extra effort which the noble Viscount says is being put into nuclear fusion research, can he put a time-scale to that? Is he able to say when it will be an economic proposition to expect power from fusion?
Viscount Davidson: No, my Lords, I cannot, but I shall write to the noble Lord.

Business
3.5 p.m.
Viscount Long: My Lords, at a convenient moment after 3.30 this afternoon, my noble friend Lord Beaverbrook will, with the leave of the House, repeat a Statement that is being made in another place on the Rover Group.

Business of the House
The Lord President of the Council (Viscount Whitelaw): My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.
Moved, That the debates on the Motions in the names of the Lord Winstanley and the Lord Kilmarnock set down for 10th December shall each be limited to 2½ hours and that Standing Order 35 and paragraphs 10 to 13 of the Rules for the Conduct of Short Debates shall apply to each debate.—(Viscount Whitelaw.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

Personal Bills: Select Committee
The Chairman of Committees (Lord Aberdare): My Lords, I beg to move the first Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.
Moved, That a Select Committee on Personal Bills be appointed, to which all Petitions for Personal Bills shall stand referred; and that, as proposed by the Committee of Selection, the Lords following, with the Chairman of Committees, be named of the Committee:

Banks, L.

Campbell of Alloway, L.

Murton of Lindisfarne, L.

Templeman, L.

Wilberforce, L.

Willis, L.

—(The Chairman of Committees.)

Leave of Absence and Lords' Expenses: Select Committee
The Chairman of Committees: My Lords, I beg to move the second Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.
Moved, That a Select Committee be appointed for the general supervision of arrangements relating to leave of absence and the reimbursement of Lords'

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expenses; and that, as proposed by the Committee of Selection, the Lords following, with the Chairman of Committees, be named of' the Committee:

Denham, L.

Hylton-Foster, B.

Ponsonby of Shulbrede, L.

Stedman, B.

Tordoff, L.

—(The Chairman of Committees.)

Minors' Contracts Bill [H.L.]
3.7 p.m.
The Lord Chancellor (Lord Hailsham of Saint Marylebone): My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time.
Before I begin my speech, let me say how sorry I was to learn that we shall not be hearing the noble Lord, Lord Meston, whose name was on the list of speakers. He is detained in court. One of the prices we pay for having younger Peers is that they must pursue their professions. I am sure your Lordships wish him all the success that his case deserves.
The purpose of this Bill is to give effect to the recommendations of the Law Commission in its 134th Report on Minors' Contracts. The need for the report arose from a number of court decisions concerning the provisions of two rather dated nineteenth century statutes. Those statutes are respectively the Infants Relief Act 1874 and the Betting and Loans (Infants) Act 1892, both of which sought to place a gloss or glosses on the general principles of common law. To explain this, the House will of course know that under English law until very recently those under full age were called infants, owing to the influence of Franglais, which was invented by English lawyers. They are now referred to as minors—although, with respect to Mr. Scargill, I spell the word with an "o"!
The Law Commission considered the whole of the law relating to contracts made by minors, but eventually made recommendations only on those parts of the relevant law which caused injustice or difficulty.
The existing common law on minors' contracts is based on a principle which is known as qualified unenforceability; that is, with certain exceptions, a contract concluded by or with a minor may be enforced by the minor but not against him or her. The exceptions are contracts which are likely to be of benefit to the minor, such as contracts for what are called "necessaries" and contracts of employment. These are perhaps the most common but there is a further category of contract which is binding on a minor unless and until repudiated by him during his minority or shortly thereafter. These contracts, such as contracts for the sale or puchase of an interest in land, marriage settlements, or partnership agreements, all involve the acquisition of a lasting interest in property or the incurring of a continuing obligation attached to a property.
The basic principle of the common law—that a minor's contract is enforceable by but not against him or her—exists to protect the minor from unscrupulous
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adults or from his own inexperience. In the last century, however, Parliament added further glosses to the existing common law principle. Unfortunately in practice these have brought obscurity and difficulty to this area of the law. In particular the Infants Relief Act 1874, of only two substantive sections, has caused problems quite incommensurate with its brevity.
Section 1 of the Infants Relief Act, if I may remind the House, renders "absolutely void" contracts entered into with minors except in the cases to which I have already referred. In practice, however, the courts have been reluctant to give the words "absolutely void" their literal meaning. Ordinarily a void contract and particularly an absolutely void contract (whatever the word "absolute" may add to the original adjective) has no legal effect at all.
Property cannot pass under that section and money paid under it can be recovered. Nevertheless, it has been held that where goods which are not "necessaries" are delivered to a minor, the property in them does pass to the minor, notwithstanding the 1874 Act, and that money paid by a minor under an absolutely void contract cannot be recovered unless there has been a total failure of consideration. On the other hand, a guarantee by an adult of an "absolutely void" loan is itself void and a minor cannot be made bankrupt in respect of debts arising out of the supply of non-necessary goods on credit since any contact for the supply of such goods is, to quote the Act once more, "absolutely void".
Section 2 of the 1874 Act prevents a former minor from ratifying any contract made during minority. This section has at least the merit of being clear in its operation. The same might be said of Section 5 of the second Act now under review in the Law Commission's report—the Betting and Loans (Infants) Act 1892—which invalidates a new contract to repay a loan contracted during minority. However, so long ago as 1967 the Latey Committee (whose principal recommendation was the reduction of the age of majority from 21 to 18, which has of course since taken place) recommended that both ratification and the making of a new contract should be fully effective. This view was wholly endorsed by those who commented on the Law Commission's working paper.
The Bill will remove all these uncertainties and restrictions introduced by the nineteenth century legislation I have referred to, and allow the common law rules of "qualified unenforceability" to prevail. Clause 1 of the Bill disapplies prospectively the 1874 and 1892 Acts in respect of any contract made by a minor. This will mean that Section 1 of the 1874 Act will cease for the future to render a minor's contract "absolutely void" and also that a minor will be able to ratify a contract on attaining his majority. The disapplication of the 1892 Act will enable the minor for the future to make a new contract to repay a loan obtained during minority.
The Law Commission recommended that a guarantee by an adult of full age—sui juris—of a minor's contract should be enforceable. Clause 2 of this Bill accordingly provides that such a guarantee shall not be unenforceable against a guarantor simply because the primary obligation was entered into by a minor. The Bill does not affect such rights as the guarantor may enjoy against the minor himself.

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The Law Commission has also recommended and Clause 3 of the Bill provides that the court should be empowered to require, if it thinks it just and equitable, a minor who has made a contract to transfer to the plaintiff any property acquired under the contract or any property representing it. The clause would not, however, require the minor to pay the seller the purchase price or a sum equivalent to the value of the goods, since to do so would, in effect, make the contract enforceable against the minor. In this context I would remind your Lordships that the Bill is not intended to disturb the common law principle of "qualified unenforceability".
Lastly, Clause 4 repeals for the future the 1874 and 1892 Acts and makes a small amendment to the Consumer Credit Act 1974, so as to bring guarantees as well as indemnities within the provisions of that Act. The Bill will of course apply only to contracts made after the Act is in force.
The proposals in this Bill are confined to those relatively few areas of the law of contract which at present cause difficulty or injustice to minors and those dealing with them. Most of these difficulties have been caused by the statutory glosses which I have attempted to describe. On their repeal, the common law principles can be developed by the courts. These proposals have, I repeat, been greeted by a wide measure of support. I cannot pretend that this Bill will cause a revolutionary change, but as far as it goes I hope the House will agree that it is good. I ask the House therefore to give it a Second Reading.
Moved, That the Bill be now read a second time.—(The Lord Chancellor.)
3.16 p.m.
Lord Elwyn-Jones: My Lords, the House will be grateful to the noble and learned Lord. He will reflect, I hope, that his explanations are not absolutely in vain. They bring clarity to a scene not notable for clarity. The Bill has the great merit of brevity. Its quality is assured by the fact that it is a replica of the Bill that was annexed by the Law Commission to its report upon this matter in 1984. The Bill is yet another example of the debt that Parliament owes to the Law Commission not only for producing reports of very high quality but for the additional facility of making a draft Bill readily available for us.
The Bill has its basis, I suppose, in the law reform of 1969 which gave effect to the recommendations of the Latey Committee report on the age of majority. I remember that reform well as it was my pleasure to take it through another place. My goodness, yes, it was 15, 16 or 17 years ago! The report recommended the lowering of the age of full legal capacity from 21 to 18, reflecting the social reality of our time. The age of 21, as I gathered at the time, was originally linked with the ability of a knight's son to sustain a heavy suit of armour or lift a lance or sword. It was also thought necessary in Victorian times to protect from the clutches of money lenders young men who were said by the law journal of the time to be,
"prone to horse flesh, dog flesh"
I do not quite follow that, but I see the point—
"cigars, sparkling drinks, swell attire, betting and making presents to ladies who are sometimes fair and often fragile."
What a sweet Victorian note there is about all that!
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I agree with the rejection by the Law Commission, and, by implication, of the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor, of the alternative proposal to make 16 the critical age for contract purposes. I note from the report of the Law Commission that the majority of adults, teachers and others whose work brought them into close contact with this situation took a similar view. They stressed the vulnerability of 16 and 17-year olds to high powered advertising and such matters.
As the noble and learned Lord has explained, the report confined itself to amending the law on qualified unenforceability—the rule that a minor's contract is enforceable by him but unenforceable against him. The Bill does not try to reformulate the existing exceptions to the principle of qualified unenforceability under which a minor's contract is enforceable against him. The most important exceptions are in respect of contracts for necessaries, contracts for employment and contracts involving certain lasting property rights or obligations.
As the noble and learned Lord said, the Law Commission confined its recommendations for legislation to the aspects of the law regarding minors' contracts which in practice cause difficulty or lead to injustice. These have been explained by the noble and learned Lord. I agree with the amendments made in the Bill. So, as a matter of comfort, does the Law Society. I suspect, too, that there will be unanimous approval both in legal circles and among those who have to deal with the problem. I am grateful to the noble and learned Lord for his explanation and I support the Bill.
3.20 p.m.
The Lord Chancellor: My Lords, the House is always indebted to the noble and learned Lord for his knowledgeable and very informative speeches—none the worse on this occasion for being short. I am particularly grateful for what he said about the Law Commission. We need to remind ourselves that without its work, and that of the two Law Reform Committees, law reform would be a virtual impossibility. It would become bogged down in the government programme year after year. As it is, the commission's process of consultation and, in this case—as in a number of other cases—the fact that it has been able to employ a professional draftsman to annex a draft Bill to its report, make it much easier for a Lord Chancellor to persuade his colleagues to give up valuable government time to it. The noble and learned Lord has probably had as much difficulty as I have in securing a niche for law reform, which seldom has much sex appeal about it, in the Government's programme and in the Queen's Speech.
That is all I have to say. I thank the noble and learned Lord very much. I agree with what he says about the rejection by the Law Commission of an even earlier age of majority at 16. Curiously enough, among the consultees there were the elder minors—those of 16 and upwards—who very much approved of the Law Commission's rejection. They found the existing protection of the common law a valuable possession and they did not want to lose it. Of course, the two Acts we are getting rid of, as the noble and learned Lord pointed out, were a reflection of, I will not say Victorian values, because that might get me into

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trouble, but of the fact that they were designed to protect young and foolish men, with, as a rule, too much money, from those who wanted to remove that money from them. They do not, I believe, reflect modern values at all.
I am very much obliged to the noble and learned Lord and I will now proceed to do my minuet to the Woolsack.
On Question, Bill read a second time, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

London Docklands Railway (City Extension) Bill
3.23 p.m.
Lord Hacking: My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a third time.
As your Lordships may recall from Second Reading the promoter of the Bill—London Regional Transport—is within the provisions of the Bill, petitioning Parliament to have all necessary authority to extend the London Docklands Railway by about 1·1 of a mile, from just east of the Tower of London right into the Bank and Monument Underground stations; and by so doing link the Docklands Light Railway into the entire London Underground network. Most of this journey of 1·1 miles will be underground. The railway will descend into a tunnel just east of the Tower of London and will remain in that tunnel for the rest of its journey to the Bank and Monument Underground stations.
As some of your Lordships may also recall from Second Reading, by the London Docklands Railways Act of 1984 and 1985, authority has already been given to build the London Docklands Light Railway from Stratford, to the north of the Isle of Dogs, and from Island Gardens, opposite Greenwich Royal Naval College, to Tower Gate. Therefore, your Lordships are concerned, as on Second Reading, with just the extension of the Docklands Light Railway from near the Tower of London into the Bank.
The history of the Bill is as follows. It was deposited in the House of Commons in November last year. It received its Second Reading in the House of Commons on 6th March of this year. It was then before the House of Commons Select Committee in May and June: it had its Third Reading in another place on 10th July, and then it came to your Lordships' House, when I introduced the Bill for Second Reading on 30th July this year.
Since then, with the instructions moved by the noble Lord, Lord Sefton—that instruction to the Select Committee being to have regard to the consequences of the proposals contained in the Bill on the rest of the South-East region and, in particular, on the City of London—the Bill has now been considered by our Select Commitee under the chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord Alport. At this stage in our proceedings I should certainly like to express gratitude to the noble Lord and the members of his committee for the very careful and thorough consideration they gave to this matter.
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The committee of the noble Lord, Lord Alport, reported on 16th October. Thus, of the 15 petitions against the Bill, all relating to bodies that alleged interests had been adversely affected by it, eight were withdrawn before the committee met; six more were withdrawn on the first day of the committee, and the one remaining petition was withdrawn during the course of the committee's proceedings. Therefore, I have further to report to your Lordships that the Bill left the Select Committee unopposed and without amendments.
The Bill then went before the Unopposed Bill Committee and, by consent, various amendments were incorporated into it. For example, British Rail wanted some protection on its operational property; the Department of Transport was concerned about the workings in the tunnels; and there were also some drafting amendments. Finally, there was an amendment concerning new measures against fare dodgers. These new penalties against fare dodgers were incorporated in the two earlier Acts to which I have referred, but it was thought that there was some defect in the structure of these penalties, carrying the risk of double jeopardy. For that reason they were removed from this Bill.
They are also being removed from the earlier two Acts; but in an omnibus provision London Regional Transport intends to come back again to deal with the matter for the whole of its network. I understand measures will be incorporated in a Private Bill to be promoted by London Regional Transport during the next parliamentary Session. Therefore, the Bill now returns to this House unopposed. It remains unopposed and amended to the degree I have just described.
I think it may be helpful to remind your Lordships of some of the essential features of the Docklands Light Railway. First, I refer your Lordships to the routes. I have already indicated that these run from Tower Gate to Stratford, going towards the north of the Isle of Dogs and round to the south, to Island Gardens, which will be the station at the bottom of the Isle of Dogs opposite Greenwich Royal Naval College. At present, the total distance of the Docklands Light Railway is 7·3 miles and with this extension into the City of London it will have a total length of 8·4 miles. Therefore, the journey from the Bank to Stratford will be six miles, taking some 18 or 19 minutes; from the Bank to Island Gardens, four-and-a-half miles, taking 16 minutes; and from the Bank to Canary Quay—where the proposed Canary Wharf Consortium will be erecting its building—will be two-and-a-half miles and taking about nine-and-a-half minutes.
Briefly, to go through the other major features of this railway, it is proposed that there will be frequent services from the Bank. During the rush hours they will be every four minutes and every seven-and-a-half minutes during ordinary hours. It is proposed that it should be constructed by the modern light railway design, in which one major British manufacturer—GEC—is taking a major part; and the choice of the light railway is for speed and economy. When travelling it will consist of two articulated carriages each carrying 260 persons, making a total per train of just over 500 persons. It is expected that in the London Docklands as presently sited the initial traffic will be in

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the region of 11·4 million passengers per annum. But if your Lordships give your approval and this extension is built, it is estimated that it will then be in the region of about 30 million passengers per annum, and of those about 80 per cent. are expected to be commuters.
It is also intended that this railway should be run at a profit. The estimated operating cost will be £6 million, with a fares revenue of £10 million when under full operation. The cost will be just under £100 million. That includes not only the building of the tunnel but modernising and altering the existing track in order to take bigger trains. Just under half of that amount has been offered by the Canary Wharf Consortium. The proposal for building the Docklands Light Railway, and that regeneration of the Docklands connected with it which constitutes the Canary Wharf development, owes its origins to two major occurrences which are quite separate from one another but each of which is as momentous in its own way as the other.
I refer first to the severe decline of the London Docklands industry and secondly to the vital need for the City of London to expand its financial services industry if it is to keep its position as a major international financial centre and in so doing be a world leader. As regards the decline of the London Docklands, I can do no better than refer to the evidence given before the Select Committee by the Deputy Chairman of the London Docklands Development Corporation, Mr. Mills, who said:
"This is an area of East London which has had two devastating economic blows rained on it in the last 20 or 30 years, one being the collapse of the docking industry and all its associated trades and the other being a very substantial decline in manufacturing in the immediate hinterland and the result of this has been not only the very high levels of unemployment"—
to which your Lordships have had reference earlier—
"but also a devastating effect on the communities there who have seen one opportunity after another in social and economic terms slip away. It was a community where many of the most able had upped sticks and gone to live somewhere else. It was a community of people who were suffering considerably lower standards of living than other people in this country and one where disillusionment and despair was pretty rampant and where the economic base needed almost total renewal if the area was ever to be brought back into the mainstream of London and bright life again".
The second major matter concerns the City of London. Your Lordships may recall from Second Reading that it was estimated that the City of London will need to increase its work force to 500,000 from its present level of 300,000—which is an increase of 200,000 persons—during the next 10 years. This is exactly how the Canary Wharf Consortium came to the Docklands. It was not to help solve unemployment per se, although clearly it will do so, but for the healthy reason that there was a commercial need for the construction of that vast building.
It is proposed that it will indeed be a large building: altogether of 10 million square feet of usable office and hotel space. It will consist of three tower blocks, one extending upwards to about 850 feet. The employment levels that it offers will be high—somewhere between 45,000 and 49,000 jobs—and there is a total estimate, including jobs created off site, of about 57,000. The figure for local employment estimated by the Henley Centre is 21,000, although certain different
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figures have been given by Peat Marwick. If we get into a tussle over statistics I shall deal with that point later in the debate. Thus the Canary Wharf Consortium is offering to provide about one third of the expansion needed for the City of London.
If this proposal goes ahead, benefits will come not only to local and national employment, to which I have drawn your Lordships' attention, but also to British industry. Let me cite three examples which I did not give at Second Reading. There will be five United Kingdom construction firms directly involved in building for the Canary Wharf Consortium. About one third of UK production of structural steel will be needed for the construction of this vast building and there will be benefits to a multitude of other industries whether they be carpet manufacturers, tile makers or whatsoever.
According to the promoters and the London Docklands Development Corporation, in some ways the proposed extension of the Docklands light railway is essential on several counts. It is essential as a direct link for the Docklands community into the London Underground system. It is essential, too, for the future extension of the London Docklands Railway to the west—and I am referring to further plans to extend this railway through the Royal Docks to Beckton. It is also essential to have the presence of the large building proposed by the Canary Wharf Consortium because the consortium has made it quite plain that, if this railway link is not built, there will be no economic base on which it can proceed with that massive assistance to accommodation for the financial services in the City of London.
At this stage in the passage of a Private Bill it might be reasonable for the promoters to invite the House to be satisfied with the Bill—satisfied on the need for the railway extension for the reasons that I have put before your Lordships and satisfied that the interests of all persons adversely affected have been properly considered. As I told your Lordships earlier, all the 15 petitioners have been satisfied by the promoters and therefore the petitioners have withdrawn their petitions and left this Bill as an unopposed Bill.
However, there are other matters which have been put before the House. There was the instruction of the noble Lord, Lord Sefton, at Second Reading which the Select Committee took up and upon which it gave its judgment. There was the right reverend Prelate's amendment, which has now been withdrawn, but as I understand it he will still be addressing the House on the matters which lie behind it. I see that the right reverend Prelate nods his head. Also, there is now another amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Sefton, which must be considered by this House.
As a promoter of this Bill I have no wish to curb the debate but I must advise the House that all the matters which the right reverend Prelate and the noble Lord, Lord Sefton, propose to raise fall outside the provisions of this Bill and outside the control of its promoters, London Regional Transport. Therefore I suggest that the most helpful way for your Lordships' House to proceed—a Government Statement permitting—is to hear directly from the noble Lord, Lord Alport, and other members of his committee who put down their names to speak about how they came to deal with the instruction.

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With reference to the committee of the noble Lord, Lord Alport, I should just like to observe that as a result of your Lordships giving leave for the committee to follow such a course—although it is not usual for evidence to be heard in these circumstances—evidence was heard from two Members of another place; namely, Mr. Mikardo and Mr. Spearing, who are Members of Parliament for constituencies which are affected by the Docklands area development. Their Lordships also heard from Councillor Fred Jones who as well as being a leading local politician is also chairman of the Docklands Consultative Committee.
Those of your Lordships who have read both the report of the committee and the evidence given to it will agree with me that the committee probed the matters very thoroughly. The noble Baroness, Lady Fisher of Rednal, did not leave unexamined any of the witnesses called by the promoters and indeed she examined them with thoroughness.
I should like to remind the House also of the conclusions of the Select Committee and to highlight the appropriate passage in which the committee advises your Lordships' House, which is to be found in paragraph 18:
"In their [the Committee's] opinion the consequences of the proposals contained in the Bill are likely to be beneficial to the City of London. The City must expand and the development of the London Docklands provides it with an opportunity to do this".
That encapsulates the committee's response, having heard all the evidence which was introduced as a result of the instruction of the noble Lord, Lord Sefton.
However, I think I should give a word of warning about the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Sefton. If the amendment is carried, it could adversely affect the execution of the Bill and the building of the railway. I ask whether the noble Lord is repeating the same exercise that he took your Lordships through on Second Reading. I have received a note from him, and I hope that he will not find it necessary to press his amendment although I accept that he wishes to address the House upon it. Therefore, however long this debate may go forward, I ask your Lordships not to allow any of the amendments to imperil the passage of this Bill, which, for reasons that I have tried to put to your Lordships, carries so much benefit for London and for England as a whole. I commend the Bill to the House.
Moved, That the Bill be now read a third time.—(Lord Hacking.)
Lord Graham of Edmonton: My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down, am I correct in having heard him twice tell the House that the developers have indicated that, unless they get the Bill, they will not find a commercial base from which it is viable to proceed? Is that not some form of blackmail?
Lord Hacking: My Lords, absolutely the contrary, if I may say so. The Canary Wharf Consortium is comprised of consistent men of commercial judgment. They are entitled to make their own commercial judgments. They say simply: "We need this railway if our project is to be commercially successful". It is a matter of commercial judgment, not of blackmail.

The Rover Group
3.41 p.m.
Lord Beaverbrook: My Lords, with the leave of the House, I should like to repeat a Statement made by my right honourable friend in another place. The Statement is as follows:
"With permission, Mr. Speaker, I should like to make a Statement on developments within certain Rover Group businesses.
"On 24th July I informed the House that agreement in principle had been reached on the sale of Leyland Bus and of a majority holding in Unipart, and I can report in both cases that detailed negotiations are proceeding satisfactorily. In reply to Questions on 5th November I also announced the disposal of majority interests in Jaguar-Rover-Australia and in Istel. The situation on Land-Rover remains as I stated last April, that Land-Rover will be retained in the Rover Group for a possible flotation or trade sale at a later date.
"The Chairman of Rover Group has also been reviewing the options for Leyland Trucks. This review has been taking place against the backdrop of continuing depressed demand, particularly in overseas markets, and severe overcapacity in Europe. Our objective is to achieve a secure future for the production of Leyland Trucks. But it must be recognised that any option for the company—whether related to collaboration, merger, sale or indeed continuation under present ownership—will involve restructuring.
"Talks are progressing with two companies. The first is DAF. Honourable Members will be aware that in October a limited but important collaboration on the marketing of Roadrunner trucks and Sherpa vans was announced. DAF and Rover Group are now in talks about the benefits that could arise from much more fundamental collaboration in the truck and van businesses.
"The second is Paccar, the parent company of Foden, who are considering the basis on which they might wish to make a bid for Leyland Trucks.
"Both sets of talks are at an early stage and, for the reasons I have already outlined, Mr. Day has my full support in pursuing them; I thought it right to inform the House at this early stage and I shall of course keep the House in touch with developments. I am sure Honourable Members will understand and accept that it would be prejudicial to the interests of those employed in these operations and in their suppliers for me to make any futher detailed comment on the discussions at this stage.
"Mr. Day's review of the plans for all Rover Group operating companies including Austin Rover will form the basis of the 1987 Corporate Plan now under preparation. After I have received it and given it careful consideration, I will announce the Government's response. In respect of Austin Rover, I should however like to take this opportunity to emphasise that I expect Mr. Day's plan to set out a positive course for the continuation of the company as a major producer and leading exporter of cars made in Britain. I stress that the Government's aim is to secure the best possible future for Austin Rover,

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its suppliers and the motor industry generally in this country".
My Lords, that concludes the Statement.
Lord Williams of Elvel: My Lords, we are most grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Beaverbrook, for repeating the Statement made in another place. We are also glad that the Government have seen fit to take us a little more into their confidence this time round than they did in the confusion that took place somewhat earlier this year when successive Statements were made basically contradicting each other.
I have several questions to ask of the noble Lord, and I hope that he will bear with me. The first two are general. After the fall in the exchange rate that has taken place, would it not be true to say that there are great opportunities even at times of depressed demand for selling our trucks overseas, and particularly into Europe? Is it not to this that the noble Lord, Lord Young of Graffham, was referring the other evening when he said that there are great opportunities for our manufactured exports?
Secondly, does the expression "restructuring", which the noble Lord used in the Statement, mean capital restructuring or is it a polite way of saying further redundancies? Perhaps the noble Lord could clarify that point. My third question relates to the specific proposal to collaborate with DAF. If this is to be a collaboration between equals, is the noble Lord aware that we shall give this a guarded welcome? We agree with the proposal that there should be,
"a limited but important collaboration on the marketing".
We would go further and say that more detailed collaboration with DAF could be successful and sensible. The only proviso that I would make is that Volvo, which has close relationships with DAF, should at least undertake to make sure that the interests of the United Kingdom are protected in any such arrangement.
My fourth question relates to Paccar. Is the noble Lord aware that Paccar is a US company; and I should like to ask what distinction can we make between the Paccar proposals and the ill-fated GM proposals that we were considering earlier this year? What protection would there be for Leyland Trucks, and what protection would there be for component manufacturers? If GM proceeds with its unfortunate plans to close down truck production and Ford does the same, what would be left of truck production in the United Kingdom or truck production under UK control? So far as I can see, there would be only a small company called ERF, which was a spin-off from Foden when it was taken over by Paccar.
My final question is a general one, but it is most important. Have the trade unions and the industry been consulted on these proposals? If they have not, why have they not been consulted, and can we have a guarantee from the Government that the trade unions will at an early stage be brought into consultations? It is vitally important, as I am sure the noble Lord and your Lordships will agree, to keep up the morale of the workforce in these difficult times, and the trade unions are representative of the workforce. I hope that the noble Lord will be able to give us that undertaking.
Lord Diamond: My Lords, we too on these Benches are most grateful to the noble Lord the Minister for repeating the Statement. We should like to add our appreciation of the fact that the Government have thought it proper to consult both Houses of Parliament at an early stage. I am sure that this will help forward the best possible outcome to these difficult and longstanding negotiations.
The questions that I have to ask are mainly covered by what has already been said by the noble Lord, Lord Williams of Elvel; but I think that I ought to make our position very clear. First, we welcome very much the very positive attitude taken by the Government at the end of the Statement, particularly in stressing that the Government's aim is to secure the best possible future for Austin Rover, its suppliers and the motor industry generally in this country. Can I take it from that that the Government accept as an economic principle that a domestic volume car production is essential for any healthy economy, as we believe?
Although my second question is similar to one that has been asked, perhaps I may ask it in a slightly different form. Has the workforce been consulted through whatever channel is appropriate, including the unions? It is absolutely essential in our view that this should be done, that their full co-operation should be sought throughout and that they should be told very fully at the earliest possible stage what this might mean to them individually and to their employment.
My third question is again about Paccar. The Statement says that Paccar is considering the basis on which it may wish to make a bid for Leyland Trucks. That is unclear. As has already been said, we want to know whether that means that Leyland Trucks will continue or that it is merely an offer to buy competing production and put it to bed.
My next question is about Land-Rover. The Government say that Land-Rover will be retained in the Rover Group for a possible flotation or trade sale at a later date. A possible flotation of what? Is it a possible flotation of Land-Rover by itself, which we would not welcome, or is it the possible flotation of the Rover Group, which would need to be looked at in the terms current at the prescribed time? We should naturally want to satisfy ourselves that such a flotation is in accordance with the Government's undertaking to secure the best possible future for Austin Rover, and is not to secure the best possible amount of cash as part of their policy of selling the nation's assets. Those are the questions in which we are mainly interested.
Lord Beaverbrook: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lords, Lord Williams of Elvel and Lord Diamond. I shall preface my remarks when answering their points by emphasising that the discussions with DAF and Paccar are at an early stage. The noble Lord, Lord Williams, asked whether the fall in the exchange rate would create new opportunities for the domestic motor industry. We have explored a great many avenues and we have concluded that doing nothing is not an option. We need to look at all possible means of securing a reliable, long-term future for the industry. Sale is one option, but it is not the only one.
The truck industry in one in which international links are increasingly seen as essential. Ford and Iveco and Volvo and GM are among the many examples.

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The exchange rate has an effect, but the effect may be less clear where there is international co-operation.
The noble Lord, Lord Williams, asked me to tell him what I meant by restructuring. At the moment, in the early stages of negotiations, restructuring has to be considered in the broadest sense. However, foreign ownership can be wholly consistent with an expanding manufacturing base. It is the competitiveness of industry, not its ownership, that is most important in determining what is good for Britain. Employment will have to be looked at. It will no doubt be looked at if and when more meaningful negotiations commence with Paccar and/or DAF.
The noble Lord, Lord Williams, suggested that the existing collaboration arrangements with DAF had opened up new opportunities for Leyland. The benefits of the linkages with DAF under that arrangement are already evident. That is why the possibility of closer links with DAF is now being explored. On the noble Lord's point about Paccar of the United States, he suggested that that proposal could be damaging for Leyland and that the company could be absorbed so that Paccar could gain an extra share of the market. At this stage it is too early to say what arrangements could be made. Discussions are at an early stage. We must wait and see what develops during the current discussions.
The point about Leyland's employees is important. Employees who may be affected will of course have the opportunity to express their views about future plans for the company through the normal machinery. The noble Lord, Lord Diamond, claimed that it was fundamental to the general health of our economy that we should have a prosperous motor industry. Yes, the Government fully agree with that. The long-term aim of the Rover Group Board and the Government is to return the company to the private sector as a thriving business.
The Statement makes it clear that we expect positive plans from Mr. Day. The noble Lord also asked me about consultations with the work force. Those employees who may be affected have today been circularised with the Statement and an explanatory memorandum. They will be fully informed as far as possible. He also asked me about Land-Rover. The position of Land-Rover remains as set out in the Statement of 24th April made by my right honourable friend. It is to be retained in the Rover Group for the time being.
The Lord Bishop of Birmingham: My Lords, I should like to thank the Minister for his Statement. I should like to ask him one or two questions about Sherpa Vans, which he said might collaborate with DAF or Paccar. Sherpa vans are manufactured within my see. He said that he was concerned with what is good for this country. I hope that he will tell us that he is concerned with what is good for Birmingham and Solihull. He said Sherpa Vans may belong to another group, but he did not know where it would obtain its engines. Noble Lords may not be aware that its present site is contiguous with that of Land-Rover and that parts other than engines come from there. What will the people who work there think?
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Can the noble Lord assure us that he is aware that Sherpa Vans has been and is doing well and has plans for expansion? Can the Minister tell the work force of Sherpa Vans what its future is likely to be if he does not know where its engines will come from if there is collaboration with DAF or Paccar? Finally, is he aware that his Statement will cause considerable anxiety in the West Midlands unless he can give precise answers to the precise questions that I have asked?
Lord Beaverbrook: My Lords, I am grateful to the right reverend Prelate. I am of course aware of the excellence of the Freight Rover Company. However, I prefaced my remarks by saying that discussions are at an early stage and that I cannot give any information about detailed arrangements for the future manufacture of Sherpa vans and other Freight Rover products. I should make it clear that Freight Rover is not included in discussions with Paccar. I believe that Freight Rover has a secure future. The benefits of linkages with DAF are already evident in the existing market collaboration. That is why the possibility of closer links with DAF is being explored.
Lord Sefton of Garston: My Lords, will the Minister persuade the Government urgently to seek an assurance about the future of the Leyland truck site? Will he undertake to present to this House the result of that as soon as possible?
4 p.m.
Lord Beaverbrook: My Lords, as I said, these are early stages in the discussions. I heard what the noble Lord said and no doubt if and when matters progress, in the normal procedure this House will be fully informed.
Lord Teviot: My Lords, will my noble friend please answer my question on Leyland Bus which has not so far been answered? Will he tell us what he thinks the future of this company will be, despite the current traumatic changes in the home market? I shall be pleased to hear all news that he can give us.
Lord Beaverbrook: My Lords, the Government are of course anxious that Leyland Bus will prosper as an individual company. We hope that in the plans for Leyland Bus it will prosper. Rover Group is continuing to negotiate the details of a sale with the management buy-out group.
Baroness Fisher of Rednal: My Lords, I come from the City of Birmingham, and my title, Baroness Fisher of Rednal, incorporates the large Leyland works at Longbridge. Following what the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Birmingham said about the anxiety that will be caused in the West Midlands by the Statement that the Minister has given today, this must really be the death knell for the employees of that organisation, an organisation of workers who have accepted categorically from management that they have to become more efficient. They have taken unemployment; they have taken redundancy; they have slimmed down and now there is what is called an efficient workforce.
The workers having done all that we now have this Statement almost saying, "Thank you very much.

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You have made yourself very efficient. The Government think you are now ripe to be picked and sold off". It is an unfortunate set of circumstances. This is after we fought hard against the sell-out to General Motors. The appointment of Mr. Day filled employees with dismay because they knew the successful job he had done for the Government previously and quite obviously thought that they were in line to be slaughtered as the shipbuilders were.
This afternoon we have to ask the Minister this question. What does he mean when he talks about the normal machinery of consultation with the employees? He said that he cannot give any assurances. We have to ask whether he can speak not in Government doublespeak but in language which the employees there will clearly understand.
In conclusion, is the Minister aware that unemployment in the West Midlands is now up to 20 per cent. of the workforce? If anything happens to these industries the spill-off will involve all the other firms making motor accessory parts. We do not want to see a further worsening of the situation when the whole area is trying so hard to pull itself up without government aid. What it does not want is a government dagger in its back.
Lord Beaverbrook: My Lords, in trying to answer the large number of points I should like to say that Mr. Day's job is to run the company commercially in the interest of all concerned. I am quite sure that uncertainty surrounding the company will be minimised if Rover Group is able to get on with these discussions confidentially and quickly.
As I have said several times previously, it is not yet clear where the outcome of these discussions with Daf and Paccar will end. All I can say is that those employees who may be affected will of course be consulted at the appropriate time as to what their prospects will be. We are anxious to see the establishment of a long-term solution to the problems of the industry. The noble Baroness may be aware that there is overcapacity of truck production in Europe of 40 per cent. Therefore it is not a problem that can easily be solved.
Lord Taylor of Blackburn: My Lords, I am sure that the Minister is doing his best to answer these questions. Those of us who live in the area—both in Birmingham and in Lancashire—are aware of the commercial difficulties, but we are trying to stress to the Minister and to the Government not just the commercial side but the compassionate side as well.
Lord Beaverbrook: My Lords, we are very much aware of that side. That is why the Statement is being made today, in order to give as much information as there is at this stage on the subject.
Lord Williams of Elvel: My Lords, will the noble Lord report to his right honourable friend the disquiet that many of your Lordships have expressed on receipt of this Statement? Will he also give us a very clear undertaking that the interests of the United Kingdom, of Birmingham and of Solihull will be taken into account and fully safeguarded in any deal, whether it be with Daf, Volvo or Paccar? I refer also to
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Lancashire. I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Taylor of Blackburn for bringing that in. Will the noble Lord also give us a clear undertaking from the Government that there will be full and proper consultation with the trade unions and employees involved—not just telling them at the last moment what is to happen but proper consultation? That means that they will be allowed to express a view and that that view will be clearly and seriously taken into account.
Lord Beaverbrook: My Lords, I shall convey the views of the House to my right honourable friend but I emphasise that it is in the interest of all employees of the company that a viable long-term future be secured.
Lord Diamond: My Lords, that is absolutely right, but I want to press the Minister further on the very unsatisfactory answer he gave me with regard to Paccar. I specifically asked a question which he can answer. It does not relate to how far the negotiations have reached. It does not relate to any of the details which he regards as sub judice in some form. It relates to the Government's intention.
Is it the Government's intention with regard to Paccar to enter into an arrangement which might result in that factory being closed down, or is it intended to result in that work being strengthened? It is a very simple question. The noble Lord will remember that when we last had a series of Statements on this matter we could not get an answer out of the Government as to whether their plans were for an amalgamation or for a sell-off. It is a similar situation today. Are they proposing to achieve a situation in which there is continued manufacturing in the Paccar plant or are they proposing to enter into negotiations which might result in that plant being closed down and the employees not having jobs?
Lord Beaverbrook: My Lords, the Government wish to see a solution in the best interests of the company, the employees and all concerned. The discussions are at a very early stage. The board of Austin Rover will put to the Government the alternatives for the Government to consider once the board has completed negotiations with the two interested parties. The Government at that stage will have to review the options. The Government want to see as much as anybody else—in fact probably more than anybody else—a successful truck manufacturing industry in this country.

London Docklands Railway (City Extension) Bill
4.9 p.m.
Third Reading debate resumed.
Lord Sefton of Garston Lord Sefton of Garston moved, as an amendment to the Motion "That the bill be now read a third time", at end to insert:
("but this House considers that the Canary Wharf development will highlight the problems of high costs and congestion in the South-East and that a Select Committee should be appointed to inquire into the matter.")
The noble Lord said: My Lords, can I clear up what appears to be a misunderstanding? I certainly do not intend to oppose this Bill; I never have. I do not intend to delay it; I never have. I had assumed that the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London having withdrawn the amendment he previously tabled, the long list of speakers did not contain anyone wanting to speak to that matter. If I have been the cause of the tremendous number of people, certainly more than I ever thought, putting down their names, then I apologise. I can perhaps say to the noble Lord, Lord Hacking, that there is nothing in my amendment that would delay, damage or obstruct the Third Reading of the Bill. In fact, if the noble Lord were so minded, he could accept my amendment. The amendment does not simply say, "this House considers". It also includes the words:
"that the Bill be now read a third time".
I believe that it is absolutely vital and essential, more now than ever before in the history of this country, that the financial world should be attracted to London. Lord knows, the deterrent to the international financial world coming to London has not sprung from someone who wishes to see fair treatment between the North and the South of this country. It has sprung from the City of London. The other deterrent factor is, of course, the high cost of setting up offices in the City of London.
The congestion that follows the setting up of offices and the high cost are also deterrent factors to the private sector coming to London. I believe this implicitly. I am a socialist. I would never subscribe to the view that the pursuit of private greed ever results in the best for the largest number of people. I do not subscribe to that feeling.
I recognise however the implicit fact that in the international field we have to be competitive; therefore, this nation should look upon itself as a limited company. Somehow or other we have to make the City of London pay. We can make it pay only by being efficient. When it takes 15 minutes to move one mile in a perfectly good British motorcar, the inefficiency should be apparent to everyone in your Lordships' House. But that is the common experience in London.
I say to the noble Lord, Lord Hacking, "Do not worry about the amendment; it has no problems for you". I look for another reason to see why so many noble Lords have their names down to speak on a Bill that would have gone through with a nod of the head if I had not tabled the instruction at Second Reading. I was told that. Everyone knew it. Now we have a long list of speakers. Why? I can only assume that the London Docklands Development Corporation sent the speakers, or some of them, the same letter that urged me to support the Bill. There is no need to urge me to support the Bill.
While we, in the City of London when we are here, appreciate all the problems in the City of London, even the greatest supporter of private, capital enterprise would agree that there are some abuses that should be stopped. We have a duty to ensure that the country is run with a sense of fairness and that we make proper use of our economic resources.
It is ironic that the Statement before this Bill, once again in regard to our economic affairs, highlights the difference between the North and the South. There is no one from Middlesex bothering about the Statement. Those taking part were from Lancashire, the Midlands, Birmingham and everywhere else in the North. That is the pattern of our economic affairs.
I suppose that we could have tackled the housing problem in London if we had got down to it properly and looked at the problem as a whole along with the needs of the rest of the country. We did not. We certainly could have tackled the congestion in the City of London and the South-East, but we did not. We could have tackled the question of high costs; again we did not. We did not tackle these problems because Parliament has never really given itself to the task of looking at a proper regional policy.
Parliament has never got down to the task of saying, "What is wrong if we have an over-affluent society in the South-East and a very poor society in the North?". Parliament did try in 1978 to divert some of the government-provided jobs from the South-East to the North, then government stopped it. There was a case made out in government circles for the moving of the jobs inside the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries to the North, as I said in the debate on the Second Reading, and as I say in my instructions. However, the Government saw fit to abolish it.
Do any of your Lordships really subscribe to the view that the distribution of economic resources in this country is fair, just or proper? I am not asking that the situation should be rectified overnight. I am not setting myself up as an authority as to how it should be done. What I am suggesting is that, instead of building garden festivals in Liverpool and in Stoke-on-Trent and not bothering about the result, we should look at the question of a regional policy within the context of a national economic policy. It is no use going to a region and saying "This is what needs doing here", if you are allowing all the resources to be concentrated in another region. In effect, this country is slowly and surely building up to such a situation. We have neglected all the chances to plan properly.
When I started to move the Instruction I was told not to be silly, and that nobody would take any notice; it should not be done on this Bill. I searched and searched for other ways to draw attention to this very problem, and more importantly, to get your Lordships' House during all the time that is available to stop talking in debates at which we have no vote at the end, to face up to the problem and decide to do something. Perhaps the Front Bench spokesmen on either side might tell me there is another way, but the only way I know in which problems of that sort can be looked at is through a Select Committee. It would not cost much. A Select Committee would be able to gather all the evidence needed for any change in our economic policy. The Select Committee would be able to do many things that I cannot do.
On Thursday there is a Question which will be raised which is very apposite to this subject: "What is the difference in costs paid to employees of the Government in London, and those paid to people in Merseyside?" This question arises because for some mysterious reason or other the Chancellor of the Exchequer thought that if people in the provinces

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would only lower their wage demands, and accept lower wages then people would flock up to the North. Well, are they, my Lords? Twenty per cent. more is paid by the clearing banks to the same staff in London as is paid in the North, but do the clearing banks move their staff? Certainly, they do not. Will Government move if in fact the differential is the same? Of course, they will not. This has been tried before.
There are many other questions which could be raised. With all due respect to the noble Lord, Lord Alport (whose opinion I value very greatly having had a long conversation with him about the problems of Liverpool and Merseyside), the report does not really go into the matters that are associated with the creation of 200,000 more jobs in London's Dockland. The report did not really deal with the problem of 200,000 more people having to be transported from the centre of London to the Dockland. I accept why it did not do so. I accept of course that the report is limited in its scope and therefore I do not criticise it. However, it has enabled me to air the problem here and pose the following question to Members of your Lordships' House: "Do you think there is a problem?" Do not forget that London Dockland will be followed by something else—Stolport. This would create the need for more people to move from the east of London to the city centre.
Lo and behold, when the Channel Tunnel Bill comes to your Lordships' House one of the proposals will be to take all the people arriving from France through the tunnel to Waterloo. Will that not have an effect upon the people there? I have heard already Members of your Lordships' House, particularly noble Lords on the opposite side, getting very irate about the number of tourist buses that are parked outside your Lordships' House. Of course, noble Lords have been irate. Regularly, every summer, they complain about the congestion caused by tourists. The Channel Tunnel Bill will introduce more on top of those already to be seen in Victoria. One will be unable to walk along Victoria Street, never mind go down there in a cab.
Those are some of the problems that will arise from an increase in commercial activity inside London's Dockland. Does anyone deny them? Of course not. There are plenty of speakers on today's list. If someone is going to suggest that we do not have a problem over congestion in the South-East, he can stand up and tell us all about it; he can tell us how nice it is to live in the South-East, how convenient it is to live in the City of London and how easy it is to commute between the City and home—an hour and a half each way—crammed into tube trains. They call that a civilised way of life! That is the kind of situation which pertains in the City of London.
I am not saying that it is bad. After all, if your costs go up by 20 per cent. and you are fortunate enough to be a civil servant, an employee of one of the big clearing banks or an employee of one of the financial houses, it does not really affect you because your association or union will immediately slap in a demand for Greater London weighting. What does that mean? In effect, it means that the 20 per cent. increase in wages alone, not counting the cost of housing or the rateable value of an office in London, is,
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by and large, met by the rest of the country. It is a London levy which income-tax payers in Merseyside, Lancashire, Yorkshire and the North are expected to pay so that the Government can dish out the money to civil servants in London. Is that wrong? Will someone say that it is not a true statement of affairs? Of course, it is true, and it is continuing. Therefore, that is another problem that could be examined.
I do not think that I need say much about transport congestion. I have already referred to my own personal experience this morning. Even London Regional Transport admits this, so who am I to argue? In its annual report, it says:
"Traffic congestion is causing lost mileage [and higher costs] and excess waiting times, and is worsening".
That is very nice for those who have to travel by public transport. Of course the situation is worsening, because Canary Wharf is also a generator of other activity. If Canary Wharf is to provide a third of the extra 200,000 jobs to which the noble Lord, Lord Hacking, referred, other organisations will go to Dockland in order to cash in on the prosperity of Canary Wharf. Therefore, again, congestion will increase.
I am not saying that there is an easy solution. This Government have been in office since 1979. I do not say this in a party sense; I merely mention it in order to show that governments of all colours have a certain pattern of development. As a result of pressure by Members of Parliament from the North, who were mostly Labour Members, the previous Labour Government began a regional policy that encouraged movement from London to the provinces. That was perfectly in order. Now the complete opposite has happened. This Government have stopped that flow. There is, of course, a philosophy behind their policy, and I accept it. However, I am hoping to appeal to Members of this House to forget the political philosophy of either Left or Right and to ask: is it right or wrong that the policy of the marketplace adopted by this Government should rule when we are talking about equity and fairness in the distribution of economic resources (and that means jobs) to the rest of the country? I maintain that that is not right.
I have taken up a long time, partly because so many speakers are on the list. If so many names had not been put down, the House would not have had to put up with me for so long. It is a peculiarity about this House that one is told when to put down one's name. I did not want to put down my name following the opening speaker. I wanted to speak at the end because some of the things that I have said may not have been disagreed with. So I have to repeat them over and over again. I can call in evidence only those Members of this House who share my concern. At the conclusion of the Queen's Speech, there was no vote of any moment. Everyone knew which way the vote would go; it was a vote for or against loyalty to the Government. At cols. 266 and 267 of the Official Report of 19th November the noble Lord, Lord Alport, dealt with the problems of Liverpool, my home town, of which I am very proud. I note that one of the organisations there received a very high award from the CBI. My noble friend Lord Dean—and I forgive him for coming from Manchester—was also concerned about the North. Perhaps a better person to call in evidence as regards

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concern over the North—South divide is the noble and learned Lord, Lord Simon of Glaisdale. I shall not take up time quoting his remarks. If noble Lords are interested they can read the Official Report.
My noble friend Lord Mellish, of London Docklands fame, also made some very telling remarks about the North and South. He said that it is a national problem, and that we cannot just walk away from these problems. He was referring to some of the problems outlined by the noble Lord, Lord Alport. My noble friend said that we must face them.
I am merely asking that this House goes along with that. We should face the problems; we should set up a Select Committee in order to obtain evidence. What evidence is there that something needs doing about the affluent South, while all the important statements coming from the Government are further worsening the position in the deprived North? Is there, or is there not, something to be done?
I am very sorry that the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London has withdrawn his amendment. I was sorry to be told by some Members of this House who come from the North that I am wasting my time and should not press this amendment to a vote. Those who believe that there are problems about the North-South divide and have named some of them should at least be given an opportunity to stand up and be counted. Therefore, I intend to press my amendment to a vote. I have been told that I shall look silly if only two people vote for me. I shall look even sillier if only one person votes for me. However, as a certain famous international politician once said, "I may be in the minority of one, but that does not count. I am bloody well right." That is what matters. If I do not get another teller, I could not care less. Those who do not support me but who believe in what I am saying will let themselves down, not me.
I have already referred to the Channel Tunnel, and I conclude my remarks on that. I shall treat the House kindly and shall not go into all the quotations from the Daily Telegraph which I have here. However, in yesterday's edition of the Daily Telegraph there was an article about the British Road Federation's proposals to ease traffic congestion in London, which is something that is close to all our hearts. It will be very nice for the proposers, the developers, and the construction firms if a proposal to build a £200 million elevated road above the railway lines from Wandsworth to the City of London goes ahead. When serious-minded people propose that kind of remedy to solve our traffic problems that is the sort of farcical situation which we are reaching.
Let me draw your attention to what happened in Los Angeles. The worship of free enterprise and the freedom of people to use motor cars anywhere they wanted was pursued by the local authority, who then built motorways right throught the city. If you went to Los Angeles at a certain time, and they allowed you, you could go down a motorway and fly right off the end of it because it was never completed. They found that by planning for traffic to this density they were in effect killing the very places that the motorist wanted to get to. That is how they stopped it; they ended a motorway right in mid air.
There is Stolport, the Channel Tunnel, Canary Wharf and the extra traffic that Canary Wharf will generate, and now a proposal by the Church of England to develop Paternoster Square with, I think, a million square feet of offices. I am sorry that the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London withdrew his amendment. Now that proposal comes along.
Members of this House may think that this is a serious issue, or they may not. Let me tell you that the people in the North think it is serious enough. People in the North think it is serious enough to get to a situation where the Tory Party in Liverpool has walked out, neglected it. They are having nothing more to do with it. It will not be long before the people in the North will be saying the same thing to this kind of government. If we go on for another 20 years with a slow Rake's Progress of dividing this nation into two, do not be surprised if the division becomes very painful, and indeed a lot more painful from Brixton, Liverpool and elsewhere, the deprived areas, because that is what will happen unless we do something to rectify the situation. I beg to move.
Moved, as an amendment to the Motion "That the Bill be now read a third time" at end to insert ("but this House considers that the Canary Wharf development will highlight the problems of high costs and congestion in the South-East and that a Select Committee should be appointed to inquire into the matter.")—(Lord Sefton of Garston.)
4.32 p.m.
Lord Nugent of Guildford: My Lords, since the noble Lord is going to divide the House at the end of the debate, I ought to spend a minute or two answering the amendment so far as it relates to the Bill. I certainly read the amendment to mean that the noble Lord wanted a Select Committee to be set up and presumably to reach a conclusion before the Bill was approved. But I am sure the House is relieved to hear that that is not his wish and that indeed he is in favour of the Bill. Therefore, when the substantive Motion is put to the House, assuming the amendment is not carried, no doubt he will vote for it.
After listening to the noble Lord, Lord Hacking, I feel that is is unlikely that any noble Lord in the House could be other than in favour of the Bill, because why it was needed was extremely well explained. But the noble Lord's main contention was the need for a national regional policy which would somehow help the extreme problems of the northern half of the country, with which we are all familiar. Certainly I respect the noble Lord's sincerity and the passion with which he puts over his case, but I must observe that that does not quite fit into the Third Reading of this Bill.
The noble Lord is probably right in his guess that the long list of speakers on this fairly simple measure was provoked by what appeared to be a hostile amendment—or at one time, when the right reverend Prelate's amendment was there, two hostile amendments—that might have stopped the progress of the Bill, which to most noble Lords appears to be an extremely valuable measure. In so far as it has provoked an interesting debate the noble Lord has succeeded, as a great many noble Lords are to speak

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who otherwise would not have spoken, including myself.
I was not invited by the London Docklands Corporation to speak. In fact, I had to ring up yesterday and ask the corporation whether it would be so good as to send me some facts so as I could speak on the Bill. Therefore, it was not all that busy getting speakers together. I assure the House that I shall not take very long in my remarks because most of my speech is not needed. The noble Lord made the primary point—about which I agree with him, and the House would agree—that what we are concerned with here regarding the London Docklands Corporation is the further development and strengthening of the capacity of the City of London to earn a substantial part of the nation's living in its trading with the world.
London, with its financial and commercial services, is I suppose by far the strongest point in our whole economy to earn the money we need in order to live as a nation. Therefore, this major expansion which Canary Wharf promises—and that kind of specialised building is needed nowadays—connected into the middle of the City is undoubtedly going to help London's capacity not only to hold its place but further to strengthen its place as one of the leading financial centres in the world; New York (Wall Street), Tokyo and ourselves in the middle. Therefore it is vital to see that we have the space to trade, and trade profitably. This is what Canary Wharf would do, and its obvious that unless it is connected into the middle of the City, to the Bank, it could not fulfil the hopes of its developers.
When you look at the names of some of the developers—I have no experience in the City but I know one or two things there—and you see the Swiss Bank connected with the development, you can be sure that it is going to be a very profitable development, as long as they get the conditions right. I do not doubt that this is something that will be very good for the City. A point I would make to the noble Lord, Lord Sefton, who speaks with such passion of the needs of Liverpool which all of us see and sympathise with, is that there is a limit to which the Government can divert resources from the South-East to help the North. There is a limit.
The way we have to look at it is this. Before the national cake can be divided, it has to be earned. Because London has such a terrific earning capacity we must do everything we can within the limits of London to see that it has the capacity to expand and to continue to increase its earnings. That will make more money available for all the other needs of the country.
In this context, where the Docklands Corporation has been so outstandingly successful is that, although it has received fairly substantial sums from the Government—not all that much more than the London boroughs and the Greater London Council were receiving before to help this area, which they were not doing very successfully—it used it as a pump priming in order to attract private money. This is where the leadership of Nigel Broackes and the noble Lord, Lord Mellish, was so brilliant. They were successful in attracting private money to the docklands to the tune of something of the ratio of six to one for the public money so as to make possible this dramatic development that we can see there today. It is a sight
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for sore eyes to go down to the docklands and see this hive of activity in an area which 10 years ago was completely derelict.
In my days gone by, when I was chairman of the London and South-East Planning Conference, I went down there several times and puzzled over it, with all the problems that the London boroughs had, and I know what a desperately depressing sight it was. However, today it is a sight for sore eyes. That has been done because the corporation has been successful in attracting private money. It does not fall on the taxpayer but on public funds. It does not trench into the money which may be available to help the North. What it does is bring in private money to earn more money, so that there will be more revenues, so that we shall be able to do more to help parts of the country which are less able to help themselves.
This is the secret of what is being achieved there. It can only be done if you can get private business to come in. That means making not only areas to build offices, factories and industries but to build private houses so that people can buy them. The local people had a chance to buy them too. They have bought some 40 per cent of them.
We were told on the original Select Committee—I see the noble Lord, Lord Ampthill, sitting there—that the local people did not want to buy houses but that they wanted to have a council house to rent. But, my word, when they got the chance about 40 per cent. of the houses went to the local people. Of course it is natural that anyone who can afford a private house would much sooner have it for themselves. But the share out has been pretty reasonable, so that, however you look at it, the Docklands corporation to date has been a great success, and I believe that with this extension it will be an even more spectacular success.
The noble Lord mentioned the further extension of this railway down to the Royal Docks, at present, an absolutely stagnant area. There we see Stolport coming in and this will connect the air services of Europe right into the middle of the City. What a marvellous thing to do to improve the trading of London, connecting it with everywhere in Europe! This is a magical development. And, there again, there are plans for massive development of offices and all kinds of commercial activities, with a huge further increase in employment.
This is a picture which should delight the heart of everybody. In terms of regional planning as far as the South-East is concerned, what a relief it has been. Previously we had an outflow from London at a serious rate, putting pressure on the areas further out beyond the Green Belt and on to the Green Belt for new housing. Here we have houses going up by the thousand, and there are many more to come in this area, which was previously completely derelict.
However one looks at it, this has been a wonderfully successful scheme. I have already spoken for eight minutes and do not propose to speak for longer, considering the large number of noble Lords who are speaking. But I hope that the noble Lord, by the end of the debate, will feel that he has made his point. There is a major national planning problem. But as far as this Bill is concerned, it would look much better without the amendment being moved at all. I hope the noble Lord will be persuaded not to move it.
4.41 p.m.
Lord Hampton: My Lords, I have listened with interest to the previous speakers' differing views and I shall be brief. The visitor to the Docklands in London today—and the noble Lord, Lord Nugent, has touched on this; and I refer in particular to the Isle of Dogs and Canary Wharf—cannot fail to get the impression of activity and life. There is some exceptionally beautiful modern architecture going up and an atmosphere of enthusiasm among the staff. A light railway has already been constructed and our task was to decide whether a vital link with the City should be authorised forthwith or delayed while a public inquiry was undertaken into the whole nature and effects of the Canary Wharf complex.
The position is now somewhat changed and I am glad that the noble Lord, Lord Sefton, is not seeking to prevent a Third Reading to allow construction of the railway extension. I am somewhat surprised now to be speaking before the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London. I can only anticipate what he has to say. I do not have great experience of the area in question but I have been excited by what I have seen. I served on the select committee to consider this Bill under the chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord Alport, whom I look forward also to hearing shortly. This was a committee which sat only briefly, unlike the experience of the noble Lord, Lord Nugent in 1981.
Perhaps I might repeat that in due course all petitions against the Bill were withdrawn; it was therefore unopposed and cross-examination was reduced to the minimum. In these circumstances, the committee felt—and the noble Lord, Lord Alport will make this point—that it was difficult to satisfy Lord Sefton's searching Instruction passed by the House on July 30th:
"To have regard to the consequences of the proposals contained in the Bill on the rest of the South East Region and in particular on the City of London".
But now the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Sefton, gives chance for some further debate on North/South problems and making the point that, as Canary Wharf is in an enterprise zone, normal planning procedure is waived and no official inquiry necessary.
I have been approached by those arguing both for and against the Canary Wharf development scheme and I seek to consider the case of both sides. The London Churches Group—and I expect the right reverend Prelate to be sympathetic here, while the noble Lord, Lord Sefton, has also touched on these points—state: one, that the effects on the local community seem to be:
"not regeneration, but further deprivation"
and, two, that there is increasing polarisation in the community of the Docklands,
"with luxury housing, often heavily protected, situated next to deplorable public sector accommodation".
And it has been pointed out that the land values have rocketed to such an extent that there is very little chance for residents to buy their own houses.
Thirdly, they go on to say that the transport position is very uncertain and, as in the case of the M.25, the very success of the system may mean overloading; and, four, that the huge skyscrapers—and
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the noble Lord, Lord Hacking, referred to these—are planned with minimum consideration of position. Perhaps I may make the point here that when I saw the model of proposed Canary Wharf building, I thought that the three skyscrapers stood out like sore thumbs.
There is also the sharp division—and again the noble Lord, Lord Hacking, touched on this—about probable job creation. The sponsors of the Bill talk of more than 50,000 new jobs, of which 20,000 would be for local recruitment. The accountants, Peat, Marwick, however, report that only 1,800 would be likely to be for local people. Perhaps somewhere between the two is the truth: but any job creation must be welcomed.
On the other hand, my colleague in the other place, Dr. David Owen, living in London for 21 years, has despaired watching what he describes as its "progressive decline", and he says that only in the past few years has he sensed, in the development of Docklands, signs of hope and a sense of a new beginning. In Inner London there has been a spiral of deprivation, with less money and relatively greater need; the whole quality of life has deteriorated; the general environment and housing have got worse, many have left and there is an urgent need to check the decline. I quote Dr. Owen:
"Canary Wharf should be the exciting challenge which Britain, with 3½ million unemployed, should back wholeheartedly. It is a project that will create more construction jobs than the British end of the Channel Tunnel. It represents the biggest restructuring of London since the city was rebuilt following the great Fire of London in 1666".
I warm to this enthusiasm and optimism.
I have always thought, as did the select committee, that it would be wrong to prevent this Bill getting a third reading but we on these Benches are not blind to the problems and anxieties of the residents of Dockland. We shall, in fact, abstain on the amendment but I think, in any case, that we should issue a caveat to the LDDC. Mr. John Mills, the deputy chairman, says this:
"The LDDC sees its role in delivering socially acceptable results for the community in Docklands as just as important as economic regeneration."
It is absolutely vital that the corporation should at all times keep these admirable aims in mind; for none of the activities at Canary Wharf is subject to the normal rigours of planning control. I trust the corporation not to fail the country—the world will be watching.
4.48 p.m.
The Lord Bishop of London: My Lords, before I speak specifically about the Bill, the amendment and Canary Wharf, I apologise to the House for any confusion which I may have created in your Lordships' minds by putting down an amendment and then withdrawing it before it came on to the Order Paper. As Bishop of London, with a pastoral responsibility in the East End, I felt obliged to secure some public discussion of issues which lie behind this Bill, and I was advised that it was the proper, and indeed the only, way in which I could do so. However, I did not feel that it was right to presume on the willingness of the House to allow me to withdraw my amendment when the time came and I therefore

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decided that the proper course was for me not to ask for it to be placed on the Order Paper.
I fear that I may take a little time this afternoon, for which I ask your Lordships' indulgence but at the outset I make it clear that I do not oppose the Bill or the Canary Wharf development, with which, as the report of the Select Committee makes clear, it is inextricably linked. I believe that we are being quite unrealistic if we think that we can debate this Bill without actually talking about Canary Wharf.
I want to raise certain fundamental questions which lie behind this development. I confess I was a little disturbed and uneasy when I heard the noble Lord, Lord Hacking, suggest that it was not proper for us to raise issues which extended beyond the precise scope of the Bill. Surely when we consider legislation here we must look at its overall impact on the community as a whole, on the country, and so on. We cannot restrict ourselves to the precise wording of the Bill.
In this respect I have a certain sympathy with the noble Lord, Lord Sefton. I can share his frustration. He is saying, "Yes, we can debate these things in general terms but when it comes to the crunch how do we actually make our views effective?". I can understand him wanting to add this amendment to the Bill, although I shall not feel able to support it when the time comes. However, I hope there might be some other occasion on which we can seek to initiate action in the way he suggests.
The key questions are what regeneration of a deprived inner-city area means and what it involves. The report of the Select Committee recognises the need for regeneration in the East End. It recognises that that was the purpose of the creation of an urban development area in 1981, of the establishment of the London Docklands Development Corporation and of the enterprise zone. The report says that since 1981 much of the Docklands has been regenerated. In one sense that is true. I welcome, and those whom I represent in one way also welcome, the developments which have taken place. But can it be said that there has been regeneration of the community? As I walk round the East End I find it difficult at times to say that there has. Rather, I find a situation in which deprived areas, with acute problems of housing and unemployment, remain next-door to such developments, admirable though they are. I find these two side by side, with little relationship between them and very often without the trust and co-operation which are essential if any community is to thrive.
I want to make it absolutely clear that I do not question the need for the production of wealth, without which a community cannot prosper. Without such wealth a community is reduced to a parasitic existence, wholly dependent upon external assistance—an existence which is inimical to healthy community life. But the fundamental question is this. How are new resources and the wealth they produce to be related to the community in which they are situated?
The report of the Select Committee recognises that the extension of the railway and the development proposed at Canary Wharf are inextricably linked. Perhaps I may just remind your Lordships that this development will be the largest single one ever
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undertaken in Europe. It will be bigger than the New York World Trade Centre and it will have more investment in it than the Channel Tunnel. Such is the dimension of the development, and it is not surprising that there should be concern about its effect on the local community.
That concern can be summarised, as is seen in the report of the Select Committee, under four headings. First, there is the fact that the majority of the development, being in an enterprise zone, is not subject to any planning inquiry. The noble Lord, Lord Hampton, has already reminded us of that. As the report says, it was pointed out to the committee that this massive project has so far received less statutory consideration than would the change of use of a small shop just outside the enterprise zone. Thus local opposition to the development, so the report says, cannot be voiced or taken into account.
Secondly, there is the problem of employment. As the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, and other speakers said, there is a dispute about the figures. It was suggested that some 50,000 new jobs would be created. It was suggested during the Second Reading of the Bill that some 21,000 jobs would be available for local people. As your Lordships have heard, these figures have been questioned by independent reports, not only from Peat, Marwick but also from Queen Mary College. It is difficult at this stage to know where the truth lies—which is an argument, I would maintain, for the open discussion of this matter and for consultation. I have some reason to suppose that the developers would see greater opportunities for local employment than some people would suppose.
The figures, as I say, are a matter of dispute: from between 21,000 and 1,800. That is a big difference. I submit that we cannot just leave the matter there and see what comes out in the end. If we do that we are asking the local communtiy to face a great deal of uncertainty, and that would naturally cause much disquiet.
There is the problem of skills mismatch as we have to call it these days. I shall not go into details but perhaps I may give your Lordships one or two examples. In the neighbouring borough of Newham, fewer than 1 per cent. of the residents are qualified professionals and fewer than 1 per cent. go on to further education. It may be asked what effect that would have on the kind of jobs which will be available in a high-technology development. There is again dispute about this. Some people say there will be very few; others say that when you look at the details of the development there will be opportunities for which many people could be well fitted with a comparatively modest degree of training.
Nevertheless, what is happening at the moment, as it is seen by the local community, is that certainly jobs have been lost because of the closure of firms with small workshops—firms like John Lenanton and Son, an old-established timber firm which provided local jobs. Such firms have gone and people ask what is to come. There is distrust and concern because of this situation, and we need to know what is likely to happen and what can be done about it.
Thirdly, there is the housing problem, which is only marginally referred to in the report. The LDDC has

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recognised this and has tried to pursue a welcome policy of building some affordable housing so that local people can benefit from the opportunity to buy their own homes. But in practice the spiralling increase in the cost of houses has meant that house prices are now well beyond the reach of ordinary people. I am told that a three-bedroomed family house now costs £1,092,000.
Lord Mellish: My Lords, will the right reverend Prelate allow me to intervene? His housing figures are really monstrously wrong and I beg of him, whatever else he does, to stay to listen to what I have to say, because it is about time that this myth was exploded.
The Lord Bishop of London: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for his intervention. I certainly hope to be here to listen to what he has to say and I shall be very interested to hear what he has to say about the price of houses which are available for people who at the moment are living in very inadequate accommodation in the surrounding borough. I shall not develop the point of housing further, but I merely say that it is a problem, and it is bound to be a problem—and it needs to be faced and dealt with—when you have two different standards of housing cheek by jowl. It may be that this is inevitable, but at least it should be dealt with in a way which is based on consultation and understanding.
Then there is the concern about transport and the effect on planning. Again this is a problem which affects not only the immediate borough but other boroughs too, although they have not been consulted. I shall not go into details; I just say that there is good reason for questioning the assumption that when Canary Wharf is completed 80 per cent. of the journeys to and from it will be by public transport. That is the figure for central London, and it is achieved there because there is a dense provision of public transport in all directions. This is a figure which ought to be questioned.
There is the environmental effect, about which English Heritage has expressed its serious concern both at certain aspects of the development and at the failure of the LDDC to consult it in respect of the West Ferry Circus development, which lies outside the enterprise zone, and on the main development itself.
Having said all this, the real question is the relationship between the development and the local community. It is essential that this is right for the sake of those living in the community and if we are not to build in a situation of social conflict. If we create an enterprise zone, we must also create a mechanism for social reconstruction so that the two are related. There appears to be no strategic planning to deal with the effect of such a development on the local community, particularly in such vital aspects as housing, education and employment. There is no strategic planning. That is not the role of the LDDC, but whose role is it?
When the Select Committee on the setting up of the LDDC reported, it said:
"If a UDC is to be a success, it must work in harmony with the boroughs and give due consideration to the views of the local population as expressed through the forum. Once it is seen that the UDC is operating in this spirit opposition to it will die away".
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It cannot, alas, be said that opposition has died away. Even if we do not use the word "opposition", there is certainly much concern and distress and it will not die away unless there is a much greater degree of consultation. I recognise that the LDDC and the consortium have held numerous presentations, but presentation is not consultation.
Since the passing of the Pastoral Measure in 1964, a Bishop is under a statutory obligation to consult particular parties before making decisions on a wide range of matters, such as the pastoral re-organisation of parishes. When I so consult—and I here try to practise what I preach, though perhaps I cannot always do that—it is essential that I enter the process prepared to change my mind as a result of it. If I am not, it is not consultation; it is simply information and the two things are not the same. One of our concerns is that there has in this whole area been too much presentation and too little consultation.
Part of the development—the West Ferry Circus—is outside the enterprise zone and the Canary Wharf Development Company is seeking full planning permission for this, which is perfectly right and proper. As the LDDC press release states, the application has been sent to the Secretary of State, but with a request that the LDDC itself should determine the application.
Community groups, such as the Docklands Forum, the Association of Island Communities and the Docklands Consultative Committee, are all asking for an inquiry into this development, as are the London boroughs of Newham, Greenwich, Lewisham and Southwark. These adjoining boroughs are concerned at the impact of the development on them in terms of traffic, the size and scale of buildings and the effect on land values and existing development. The Secretary of State has not yet given his decision on this application. When a small delegation from the London Churches Group, which represents all the denominations, met with Sir George Young last December, the refusal of a public inquiry had just been announced. The Minister agreed that that meant there would have to be other and public forms of consultation so that the local community could participate and be involved.
As I said, a news release was issued by the LDDC on 3rd November, stating that the West Ferry Circus planning application was to be sent to the Secretary of State with a request that the LDDC itself should determine the application. There is an impressive list of those consulted, which includes a number of groups who are all opposed to that request, but that is not stated. It is set forward in the press release. It is simply stated that a list of people were consulted without any indication of their views. At the bottom of the list is a note that the London boroughs of Newham, Greenwich and Lewisham, as well as English Heritage, were informed but not consulted. I find that quite extraordinary. All these have complained vigorously about the lack of consultation by the LDDC, as have the officers of Tower Hamlets.
For some years, there has been thought and planning between the East London Church leaders about the setting up of an East End trust, which was to be for the benefit of and administered by the local community. Quite by chance they discovered that the

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LDDC was also planning to set up a trust and had decided to call it the East End Trust. Obviously, consultation was needed. In response to a request, the articles of the trust were sent to Church leaders for comment and a letter was sent back expressing many reservations about the level of Community participation and representation—crucial factors in the operation of any trust of that kind.
It then took eight months to get a response to these comments. A letter had apparently been written by the LDDC, but it did not arrive. When, after many telephone calls and requests, a letter dated January arrived in September, the trust, they were told, had already been set up. I must give credit to the LDDC for recognising the problems that this has caused, and remedial action is now being taken. But the necessity for remedial action could have been avoided, if there had been more effective consultation over such things as relationships with the community.
Various other ways of co-operation have been under discussion, of which I do not think I need weary your Lordships with details—the Master Building Agreement, the Community Benefit Agreement and the Social Contract. All these have great potential in them. But it is not clear what clauses will go into what and what their status will be. Many questions are still outstanding. The response, as so often, to these proposals is in vague terms, such as that every effort is being made to secure this kind of relationship with the community. But against the present background this is not good enough.
All seem agreed that the size of the Canary Wharf proposals is exciting and will do much for the regeneration of the East End, but it is also in some ways frightening, as is clear from the dimension which I spelled out earlier in my speech. Yet the consideration of the implications of this massive development on London and the South-East, not to mention the local community, has been minimal. A high degree of public subsidy is involved and, quite apart from the needs of the local community, that should have meant a greater degree of public involvement in the consideration of the implications.
This House gave very careful consideration to the setting up of the LDDC in 1981 and the Select Committee met for a total of 46 days. This Canary Wharf development is far bigger than anything imagined then, and yet this debate is the main opportunity, if not the only opportunity, for statutory consideration of its effect in strategic and planning terms on London and the South-East. I repeat my request not for a formal inquiry—in a sense, I think the time has probably passed—but for effective and continued consultation with all involved about the social impact of the development of the City into East London, a process already starting, on East London itself and on the South-East region.
Lord Hacking: My Lords, before the right reverend Prelate sits down, perhaps he can help the House. Will the noble Lord accept that from the position of the promoters, it is a matter of extreme difficulty to deal with a multitude of complaints on non-consultation during a Third Reading debate when this Bill has been through this House and another place? In those circumstances perhaps the right reverend Prelate
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would assist your Lordships' House on whether he has made representations to the LDDC and, if he has made representations concerning these matters, when they were made. That information would be helpful to the promoters. Perhaps we may also know why, when the right reverend Prelate himself was filing his petition which was considered in another place, none of these matters was raised? Why have we had to wait through the long journey of this Private Bill to its Third Reading?
The Lord Bishop of London: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord. First, I agree that it would have been more appropriate if these matters had been aired at Second Reading. However, the time factor was against us. On the question of consultation with the LDDC, all I can say is that the London Churches Group in particular, which is not generally a wild and extravagant group, has made repeated and continuous efforts for this kind of consultation. It has done so precisely because it feels that it makes its points and that there is very little come-back. I therefore felt that it was necessary to raise the points I have made to this House this evening.
Lord Harmar-Nicholls: My Lords, before the right reverend Prelate sits down, following his answer to the last question, ought he not to have kept in mind the importance of parliamentary procedures? He admitted in answering the noble Lord, Lord Hacking, that perhaps the points he made ought to have been made on Second Reading. If we are to enter upon a practice in which Second Reading speeches are made on Third Reading, it may well be that the whole of the parliamentary system, as we attempt to work within it, will not be able to function.
Lord Graham of Edmonton: We will remind you of that!
Noble Lords: Order!
Lord Harmar-Nicholls: My Lords, in the interests of self-discipline, we must keep ourselves in order.
The Lord Bishop of London: My Lords, I take the strictures of the noble Lord on the need for self-discipline, as you would expect a humble prelate to do. However, I would remind noble Lords that this whole massive development has come to us only through a Private Bill. This has made it extremely difficult. I cannot at the moment give chapter and verse. But we were certainly given to understand that it was not appropriate to raise most of these issues at Second Reading of a Private Bill. We may well have been wrongly advised, but there have been no other stages, as there are in the ordinary way with a public Bill, when we have been able to comment. Frankly, I do not see how we could have acted in any other way. Another point is the question of where, in public inquiries, could we have made our voice heard? It is precisely because of the legislation about enterprise zones and such matters that we feel that that opportunity is not given and does not arise.
5.13 p.m.
Lord Alport: My Lords, this Third Reading debate on a Bill which authorises the building of 1,000 yards of railway line has so far proceeded in a rather unusual manner. However, it has enabled the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London to carry out his undoubted pastoral responsibilities and the noble Lord, Lord Sefton, to raise before the House the question of the North-South divide.
As chairman of the Select Committee on the London Docklands Railway (City Extension) Bill, to which was added an instruction, I have an obligation to explain (although at this stage of the debate my explanation is only for the record) the manner in which the Committee tackled the task which was given to it. As the noble Lord, Lord Hacking, has said, this is an unopposed Bill. Although, as your Committee records, we were faced with some 15 petitions initially, all these were settled satisfactorily so far as the parties to the hearing were concerned. The petitions were withdrawn by the middle of the second day of the hearing. Thus, the Bill became unopposed. None of the petitions was against the principle of the Bill; all the petitions were concerned to protect the property rights of the petitioners. There were no petitions from any local authority or other organisation which might be interested in the Bill.
It therefore became the sole duty of the Committee to give its views in response to your Lordships' instruction which was,
"to have regard to the consequences of the proposals contained in the Bill on the rest of the South-East region and in particular the City of London".
In relation to this, the Committee thought it right to respond to the request by two Docklands Members of Parliament and the chairman of the Docklands Consultative Committee to present their views. The Select Committee sought and obtained the approval of your Lordships to follow this unusual procedure. In so far as the extension of the railway from Tower Hill to Bank was a prerequisite for the developers of the Canary Wharf project to proceed with its construction, in which they had already invested some £63 million, it soon became clear that the issue being presented to your Committee was not the effect of the Bill on the City of London, either as defined by the square mile or as that complex of banking and financial services in and around it, nor its effect on the South-East of England, covering the whole of the Home Counties and beyond. It was rather its effect on the area of East London where the London Docklands Development Corporation had been entrusted in 1981 to carry out a major programme of regeneration under powers granted by Parliament. As an urban development area and an enterprise zone, the corporation was relieved of the statutory obligation to have its planning proposals vetted by public inquiry at which local objections could be voiced and local representations made.
Your Committee gave full opportunity to the two Members of Parliament and the chairman of the Docklands Consultative Committee to present their views. However, it was the clear opinion of the Committee that it had neither the right constitutionally (nor did your Lordships' instructions require it) to assume the responsibilities of a statutory planning inquiry. It therefore listened sympathetically
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to the views expressed on behalf of the community of the Docklands, and these are summarised in its report.
In its conclusions, it said:
"Changes in the way of life of the people living in the immediate vicinity of the Docklands was seen to be inevitable at the time when Parliament approved the creation of an Urban Development Corporation. In the view of the Committee, it is the responsibility of the London Docklands Development Corporation and the local authorities, assisted where necessary by the Government, to ensure that the process of regeneration is carried out with the least possible hardship to those adversely affected."
Since the Bill had become unopposed, there remained the Select Committee's responsibility only to provide an answer to the two questions implied in the instruction. First, what would be the effect of the development facilitated by the extension of the Docklands Light Railway to the Bank on the City of London; and secondly, what would be its effect on the South-East of England? The Committee did not, and was not required to, pronounce on the financial viability of the Canary Wharf project or on its architectural merits or demerits, or on those of any of the other developments completed or planned by the corporation. It concluded, on the evidence presented to it, that the provision of substantial additional technologically designed office accommodation for the expansion of the financial services industry of the City of London could and should be of direct advantage to the City in the post-industrial era.
Secondly, the Committee considered that the additional employment which would be provided, both during the period of construction and subsequently, would be of advantage to the South-East of England and to some extent to the present resident population of Docklands. It would, I think, be right to add that the view was held that this would result from the extension of the railway into London's Underground network, irrespective of the eventual materialisation of the Canary Wharf project. I hope that your Lordships will feel that, with the obvious limitations of considering an unopposed Bill, the committee endeavoured to carry out your Lordships' instructions. I can only say that I am extremely grateful to my four colleagues for the wisdom and conscientiousness which they applied to the task in somewhat unusual circumstances.
I listened with great care to the speech of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London who has withdrawn his amendment. As he reminded the House, this Bill was considered at great length by a Select Committee in another place and substantial amendments were made to it. In 1981 a Select Committee of your Lordships' House considered and approved proposals to give the London Docklands Corporation special powers to speed up the regeneration of the London Docklands which had suffered, as we all know, severe social and economic decline. If your Select Commitee had been asked to hear representations from the London Churches Group, it would certainly have sought your Lordships' approval to do so.
I remind your Lordships again that we did hear those parliamentary representatives and the representatives of the local authorities of the area of the docklands. Mr. Mikardo and Mr. Spearing, who are very experienced and distinguished Members of

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another place, explained the problems of the Docklands community most ably, as did the chairman of the Docklands Consultative Committee. These were, I think, fairly reflected in the Select Committee's report. Nothing that the right reverend Prelate has said this afternoon adds, at any rate as far as I am concerned, to the evidence which the Select Committee heard or, I think, would alter its view that the responsibility for tackling these problems lies with the corporation, the local authorities and the Government.
As far as the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Sefton, is concerned, its relevance, as he made quite clear, is to the contrasting situations in the North and South of England. I hope that the noble Lord will acquit me of lacking any interest in this problem. I would make two comments on his remarks. First, it is wrong to suppose that obstructing or limiting the flow of investment to take advantage of available opportunities for expansion in the South of England will ensure that that investment is diverted to the North; secondly, the needs and attractions of the great industrial conurbations of the North for investment must be tackled in a partnership between the Government and local interests to meet the special situations which are different from those of the South of England.
As long ago as the 1560s, the government of Queen Elizabeth I passed legislation to prevent the growth of London. It was, as we know from history, completely ineffective; and the same has happened to attempts by subsequent governments. There are economic, climatic, geographical and communications factors in determining the location of population and industry in all countries and the gradual shift of activity from the North to the South is to some extent inevitable. This does not mean that nothing can be done to help areas such as Merseyside and Sunderland; but it certainly does not mean that the advantages which location in the South present should be frustrated. If that is done, the nation as a whole will suffer. I hope that I have given a clear description of the activities of your Lordships' Select Committee and I trust that your Lordships will give the Bill a deserved Third Reading.
5.24 p.m.
Lord Bellwin: My Lords, perhaps I may begin by declaring an interest in that I am a non-executive director of Taylor Woodrow. Although the company has no interest in the railway extension, it is part of the consortium that would take part in the construction of Canary Wharf, if that proceeds as I hope it will. Having said that, I should like to stress even more that I have another interest. I had the privilege of introducing into your Lordships' House in 1981 the very legislation which created the London Docklands Development Corporation. Therefore I have watched its progress—and I use that word deliberately—with more than usual interest.
I was sad to hear some of the comments made by the right reverend Prelate and I was not so much sad about as expectant of those which the noble Lord, Lord Sefton, made. I suppose that I still find it difficult to get away from the ministerial habit of wanting to comment on what has been said by those who have
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spoken before me. If noble Lords will bear with me, perhaps I may comment on the remarks which were made by the right reverend Prelate and by the noble Lord, Lord Sefton, because they are relevant to what this debate is about.
The right reverend Prelate said that it is important to look at the overall impact of the Canary Wharf proposals. We have just heard from my noble friend Lord Alport that that is precisely what his Select Committee did; and from what I gather the committee did so in detail, depth and extremely well. No one has suggested for a moment that it did otherwise.
The Lord Bishop of London: My Lords, how does the noble Lord relate what he has just said to the recognition in the Select Committee report that,
"most of the reservations expressed about the proposals related to the effect which they would have on the Docklands themselves. The Committee were sympathetic to the disquiet expressed by the local representatives but found much of what was said outside the terms of the Instruction"?
Do not those words in the report of the Select Committee indicate that it found itself unable to give concern to the total impact of the development in this respect on the Docklands themselves?
Lord Bellwin: Not to me, my Lords. To me the report was in depth and succinct and it satisfied me on what was said.
The right reverend Prelate asked where the new resources will come from and said that the issue is about how the new resources should be directed. But what are these resources? They are coming from the private sector, the very sector which for so long did not come forward with resources. It did not come forward with resources because there were not the incentives that we see here and there was not the government pump priming that we see through the Urban Development Corporation. The right reverend Prelate said that he was concerned about the fact that some talked of 21,000 new local jobs and others talked of 1,800. The noble Lord, Lord Hampton, said the same thing. Is it not nice to be wondering how many thousand new jobs will be created in contrast to the situation which pertained previously not only of new jobs not being created but of jobs being lost at a rate that can only be described as alarming.
The right reverend Prelate referred to the housing problem. I wondered how these new proposals will worsen the present position. For decades we have lived with dereliction in housing and with something that was miserable to everyone concerned. There was no shortage of protest and objection to that, and rightly so. What is now happening is that there are new houses there. They may not all be of the kind that everyone would like to see but you can be sure that as someone goes into a house accommodation will be available for others.
The right reverend Prelate was concerned that there would be two standards of housing. I say, thank goodness, there will be two standards of housing. We saw for years what one standard of council housing meant and the estates to which that led. I hope that there will be more than two different kinds of housing. I want to see houses from housing associations, from the private sector, from councils and from every other possible source.

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Perhaps I should not speak for too long on the various points made by the right reverend Prelate. He will have gathered by now—and I say this with the greatest possible respect—that we probably differ a great deal on most of his concerns. As for the noble Lord, Lord Sefton—and it is nice to be crossing swords with him again after years and years of doing so in other places—I think he will concede that there is no monopoly in concern about the situation in the North, to which he referred. I come from the same part of the world as he does.
My concern about this amendment is that if it is carried it will cause delay. The noble Lord may well feel that that is not so, but that is not only my view; many others feel the same way. But delay, as I shall mention again in a moment, is what we cannot have. The noble Lord said, and I quote him, that one has to face up to the problems of deciding to do something. But that is exactly what has happened with the Urban Development Corporation and the London Docklands Development Corporation.
One has only to remember—and sometimes it is hard to remember when one thinks back—what it was like before. It was a shambles and it was a disgrace. I do not complain entirely that the local authorities were not able to do what has been done since. The fact is that it is only the kind of body that has been set up which can make such changes. The Government must be given credit for having had the imagination and initiative to set it up. It is comprised of people who have the specialist knowledge, the drive and the energy, and who are single minded, with a single purpose. Such bodies do not have the responsibility of deciding on the apportionment of resources. The elected members of councils have that responsibility. They cannot have the same kind of single purpose and direction that there is in an urban development corporation.
That is a major factor in what can only be called the largest example of urban regeneration in the world. The right reverend Prelate will allow me to say that those words are justified. If anyone doubts that, they should go to the Docklands and ask to see the photographs of what the Docklands were like before; and if that is not urban regeneration, after 25 years or so in the business, if I can call it that, I do not know what is.
I have enormous sympathy with the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Sefton. My noble friend Lord Alport said exactly what I had intended to say when he pointed out that failing to create employment in the South does not help the creation of employment in the North. One has to answer to all the people who are unemployed in the South when they are told that they should not receive resources but that the resources should go to the North. The key point is this: it is not "either/or". It is not, for example, that the people who wish to invest in this project in London will contemplate investing either in the North or the South. The alternatives are either this country and London, or Europe with Paris, Stuttgart and other places. It is not what the noble Lord thinks.
I suggest to him, if I may, that something is being done at last, if you like, by government—although I
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wish that more could be done by local people. He does not make a good case when he refers to Liverpool; and one has sympathy for that city. I know his great record in Liverpool. If he had been in Liverpool in recent years there would not be the problems there that there are today. There are problems of credibility for people who want to build a factory there or to start a business. Can one really consider what some of the local politicians in Liverpool have done and then deny that that has nothing to do with the fact that people are not as willing to go to Liverpool as they should be? I am sure the noble Lord will not disagree with me on that.
Therefore, I say to the noble Lord that if the new urban development corporations which are to be set up—and they are to be set up now, as announced by government, in Tyne and Wear, Teeside, Trafford and the West Midlands—achieve as much for those areas as has been achieved in the London Docklands and, in its own way, by the Merseyside Development Corporation, the noble Lord will be much more content at what is happening. There are some differences, and I am the first to acknowledge them, but that is not for debate today; perhaps for another time.
The noble Lord, Lord Hacking, put it so well and so clearly that there is not a great deal more to say. He gave statistics for both employment prospects and the amount of investment, but there is one factor he did not mention. It has been given to me and I hope it is correct; namely, £1·5 billion of private money has already been committed to the Docklands and another £7 billion is in prospect. Those are staggering figures by any standards, anywhere. If they are true, as I am told they are, it can only be a triumph for what we all want to see, certainly in London and in the City.
It is true that some people in the City have been anxious about certain aspects, but to paraphrase a famous, or notorious, person, "They would, wouldn't they?", because it actually goes outside their boundaries. Nevertheless, it is my view that there can be no doubt that, given the extension of the railway, the consequent development at Canary Wharf will be a significant factor in enhancing London as a financial services centre. It will enhance British influence in the rapidly growing financial services industry and that means jobs, improvement, prosperity and all that flows from them; and it flows over to local people as well as to everyone else.
I shall bring my remarks to a conclusion. I believe that I feel as strongly about this matter as any noble Lord who has spoken in the debate. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Sefton, will decide not to press his amendment. If for any reason it were carried we would lose the momentum that at present exists in the Docklands. There is a magnificent team of officers in the Docklands. It is a model for everywhere. Many people from all over the world, and I know many of them, are coming to see what is being done there and to learn. We should be praising that to the skies. I certainly do. I do not want the Docklands to lose that momentum. There is a great team of people who are single-minded in that respect. I do not want the investors to lose heart; I want them to be encouraged. I hope that the noble Lord will consider his amendment in that sense and, if he does decide to

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press it, that your Lordships will show resoundingly that they feel as I do and let the Bill go forward unamended.
5.38 p.m.
Lord Mellish: My Lords, the House will know that I have a vested interest to declare: I was the vice-chairman of the London Docklands Development Corporation until July of last year. I do not deny that I have a special prejudice which shines through at all times. If I relate why, perhaps the right reverend Prelate, in particular, will understand how strongly I feel about some of his remarks. They were unfair and, if he will forgive me for saying so, they were almost naïve. He has been the victim of some of the stuff he has been reading, but I doubt whether he has actually seen the Docklands. He could not have done so.
I shall start at the beginning. Over 20 years ago I made a speech pleading that the Docklands should be treated as a matter of urgency and dealt with as one entity. I said then—and I repeat it—that this is the last chance for major regeneration that we shall have in London. Let us deal with it as an entity. The last occasion when such an opportunity occurred was the Great Fire of London in 1666, and we missed it because there were a lot of petty people about then. In fact, the great plans of Sir Christopher Wren were disbanded.
Bringing history up to date, in 1981—which is only five years ago—the London Docklands Development Corporation was created. However, let me say quite clearly that it was brought in against a background of considerable bitter, personal, political recriminations. Before we even started we were told that we were no good. We were the tools of capitalism; we were rotters, Fascists—you name it, my Lords, we were it—and we had not even started. But that was the beginning. That was literally the first day. I remember that Nigel Broackes, who became chairman, and I as deputy chairman, went down there on the first day that we were legalised and I felt utterly and completely depressed. So far as the eye could see there was dereliction—8½ square miles of it. There were cranes overturned and huge mountains of filth and filthy puddles. Nowhere was there any work. We were told that it was our task to regenerate the Docklands.
We started with one very simple thesis; namely, that the first thing one does in order to regenerate anything is to own it. We happen to live in a democracy and unless you own something, developing it becomes confiscation. We wanted no part in that. We bought the land from the PLA, British Gas and others. The spend of the government of the day, through Michael Heseltine, was superb. They gave us £22 million to spend in the first year.
The next thing we had to do was to start converting that awful derelict land into a saleable commodity. We had to put in roads, drains, sewers and ditches. Had we not been there, does anyone in this House believe that what has happened down there would have happened? Is there anyone here who believes that? There was a Docklands Joint Committee in existence for nearly three years and what did it do? It did not build a toilet! All it did was to talk and pass stupid resolutions. As a matter of fact at every one of its meetings the old
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Docklands Joint Committee included the community groups, and the representatives of the Churches. I was told by many people in authority, "Bob, whatever you do, don't do that, because when you get that lot there, you can't do anything at all. Your meetings are aborted". That is something I have never forgotten.
However, we decided on the strict plan that this land would be developed, and in fact that the drains, sewers, roads and the rest would be such that private enterprise could be brought in. I make the simple point, which I have often made before and which I shall repeat, that we live in a mixed economy. Whether we like it or not, private enterprise has to be encouraged. If you do not encourage private enterprise who is to be encouraged? The state? It could not run a fish and chip shop—and everyone knows it. Therefore, what one does is to bring in private enterprise, and encourage private enterprise to come in. But at that time private enterprise could not be encouraged to come into docklands.
Our best move was to spend £9 million in building a road on the Isle of Dogs. Why did we do that? It was in order to encourage Asda to open a store—and that is what Asda did. That store, with its car park for 400 cars, is one of the most successful stores today in the whole of London. That was the beginning of the story. Everywhere we went we rehabilitated the land.
I say to the right reverend Prelate that it is nonsense not to put into orbit some of the things that we have done on behalf of the local people. One would think that we had treated them with contempt or utterly ignored them and carried on and all the rest of it. Such an idea could not be more wrong. Let me tell him one or two things that we have done. We brought in ITEC—industrial training. Has he ever been down there to see what we are doing? Every single one of those who are under training at this moment—and there are 70 of them—come from the East End. That is one of the problems. How does one define an East Ender? Listening to some people one would think that only those who live on the Isle of Dogs are East Enders. I will not have that. I happen to think that those who live in Barking, Stratford, East Ham or West Ham are also East Enders. We therefore widened our scope and every single person who is being trained at our ITEC centre, which the London Docklands Development Corporation established, aided and abetted by the Manpower Services Commission, are local East Enders. We intend to increase that number to over 1,000.
The point is of course that when these new firms with the new technology come in they cannot obtain the skilled labour they require and have to look further afield. We have said right from the beginning that we must train our youngsters to be skilled workers and able to do the jobs required. There is a reservoir of unskilled labour in that area. I was brought up in the dock industry—my father was a dock worker—and the truth is that when the dockers were once taken away from the loading and discharging of ships they had no other skills to offer. Therefore, the youngsters in particular are being trained to do the particular technical jobs that are required today.
The first point I want to put on record is that at this moment on the Isle of Dogs—and I invite the right

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reverend Prelate to come down and see for himself—there are hundreds of youngsters now being trained in hi-tech and they are doing a brilliant job. There is another matter about which I am very keen—I am not just one of those who pass resolutions and hope that everything will work out because I prefer to be realistic. I argued from the beginning that these youngsters should not be trained unless there was a job to offer them. Nothing is worse than, having trained someone, having to say to him, "Well done, son, but there is no work for you". So we have guaranteed that end of it.
By the way, did we get any help from the Churches on all that? I do not remember receiving even a letter either criticising, patronising or helping in any way—but I shall let that pass. The fact is that we have done and are doing a first class job in training youngsters for the work that is yet to come in the area. That includes the Canary Wharf development with its enormous schemes and plans for employment—and I shall not argue about the figure, but talk to the 1,000 people who have been under training—because the Canary Wharf will demand that type of work. We are prepared to see that it is provided.
But let me say something to the right reverend Prelate about housing, which is the political world I came from. Housing has always been my first priority. One figure will interest him. When we first took over in 1981, 85 per cent. of the entire housing stock on the Isle of Dogs was owned by the local authority—and what a state some of those houses were in, too. Talk about slums—by God! The local authority owned 85 per cent.; 10 per cent was owned by housing associations and 5 per cent. was owned by the people themselves. I happen to believe in a genuine property-owning democracy. There is nothing wrong in that. I own my own house—or I am trying to own it. I do not see why other people should not be given the same chance. So when I came in my policy was to ensure that the people in this area would be given the chance to buy their own homes. We stipulated the price and laid down at that time that no property would be over £40,000. When we built our first houses in Beckton most of the prices were around that figure from £35,000 to £40,000 which was the top price to which we went. Where the figure of £300,000 for the special flats is obtained comes from the fact—and this is where the right reverend Prelate may have been misled—that a great deal of property in Docklands has nothing whatever to do with the Development Corporation. The Development Corporation never owned it from the beginning and they were not able to purchase it when they came in. It is owned by the private entrepreneurs.
For example, some of the warehouses were owned by private entrepreneurs. They put capital into the enterprise and made the warehouses into luxury flats. There was nothing that I could do about it. We do not live in the sort of country in which you tell people that they cannot do such things, and they were able to sell them. So only a tiny percentage of the houses actually built are in that category.
But what can we say about the 7,000 to 9,000 houses that we built for the London Docklands Development Corporation? Who have they gone to?
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Over 70 per cent. of them have gone to the people who live in the borough, and they have been sold for prices of £40,000 and just over. Has anyone said anything for example about the scheme where in fact we plough something back and give a chance to the tenants? If a house is now worth £60,000 we say that they can buy it for £40,000 and that the other £20,000 is not repayable until they resell the property. We have given them that money out of our pockets because I was determined that housing should be made the social requirement that it always was.
So I say to the right reverend Prelate that he is quite wrong to throw up the idea as he did in the general debate that somehow we were building a great rich society with these vast hundreds of flats at exorbitant prices—because that is the tale that is told by the opponents and enemies of the Docklands, and I have seen enough of them in practice. I took that job in 1981 and we have met professional groups and people who had no other purpose in life but to destroy us—and I am the wrong bloke for that, because I am not taking that from any of them. My objective is right—and my one objective is to regenerate Docklands and put it in such a position that when I pass from the scene people will say, "That was not a bad job. It was pretty well done". I have no interest in Canary Wharf, I do not know any of the people, I know nothing of them, I have no financial interest. I do not know any of the directors, they mean nothing to me as such. But their proposals will be the biggest scheme in the whole of Europe. It is the ultimate of what I have always dreamed of in the dockyards, private enterprise coming in there in an enormous way and spending of millions of pounds of their money. That is what they are proposing to do.
The railway link, which we started long before these people came on the scene, going to the east of London, is now to be extended into the City. My Lords, what is so wrong about that? Is it not a natural consequence? Is it not right that the City should be involved, the City which had strong objections to London dockyards and was very jealous, but now suddenly realises there is nothing it can do about us? We are there to stay and doing pretty well. The City has now swung over to us, and I am all for it. It is about time that it did—it has suddenly become realistic.
There is no doubt that what is being proposed at Canary Wharf is a great fillip for the City and will make it stronger, better and more flexible. I welcome that. For me it is the ultimate in what was the adventure in Docklands. From deprivation, filth, rubbish of the worse kind, after six years of control by a docklands joint committee, that is what we inherited.
The noble Lord, Lord Sefton, made a point of talking about the North versus the South. No one can feel more about that than I do. I believe that the divide between North and South is the biggest problem for the Government. It is not right for me living in the South to be better off than someone living in the North. The people of the North are not my kith and kin, but they are my fellow countrymen.
The biggest problem that this or any government have to face is how we can apply the success stories of the South and implement them in the North. There is

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some handicap in Merseyside with the crowd there—let us get that on the record. Merseyside happens to be a big city and, I should have thought, is not unimportant. It has to be understood that, if private enterprise is to be attracted there, the conditions have to be laid on to make private enterprise come in.
I say to the critics of the London Docklands Development Corporation: come down and find out for yourselves. A total of 75 Peers visited the Docklands at my request and have seen the place. I did not tell them what to look for, they saw it for themselves. I invite any other Lord who wants to come to make a visit. He is welcome. Let us see what has been done.
I say to the right reverend Prelate, if he wants to know the prices of houses, please come and find out—do not talk from bits of paper. He should not believe some of the stuff that he has been told. He had better come down and find out for himself. If he asks the people in the houses where they come from, who they are, how much they paid for the houses, then he is qualified to talk; but he is not qualified to talk if all that he has done is to be told things by some of the kinds of groups that I have met since I have been down there. Where he has been getting his information from terrifies me. They are so "anti-us" that, no matter what we do, we are wrong. The media have given us headlines about a £300,000 flat. Who the heck believes that anyone in docklands built a flat for £300,000? It certainly was not us—although there are some, I do not deny it.
I hope that the Bill will be given a Third Reading automatically. I ask my noble friend Lord Sefton—and he is a friend—not to push his amendment. If he does, I shall vote against it, and there is no doubt that it will be swept out of the House. I do not want him to see this indignity take place, because I know that his heart is in the right place. I do not believe that the amendment is effective or worthwhile, but I believe that the Third Reading of the Bill is an absolute must.
The Lord Bishop of London: My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down, perhaps I may say two things. First, I do not propose to defend myself against the strictures of the noble Lord, Lord Mellish. I have been down there, I have visited people in their houses and the people to whom I talked are people who respect the corporation and acknowledge what it has done. It is precisely because of what they have done that we are concerned that community relations there and all that members of the community have done may not be harmed in any way.
The second point that I wish to make concerns the noble Lord's remark about how Church people have taken no part, for example, in retraining and so on. On behalf of many good Christian people, particularly in the East End, I really must say that a person is not a Christian only if he has a collar round his neck. I know many of the people who work for the community in the East End: they are good Christians and they come from Churches. I know at first hand what the Churches have tried to do in helping regeneration in the East End.
Lord Mellish: My Lords, the right reverend Prelate will remember that in his remarks he referred to the price of housing. He conveyed the impression, at least to me, that somehow we were building a type of housing ouside the reach of ordinary working people. That is why I wanted to correct what was said. That is untrue and unfair. That is why I wanted to get it on the record.
Secondly, with regard to what the Church is, I do not deny that the individuals down there are absolutely superb. I have been proud to meet some of the finest East Enders. They are first class. As to the Church—all the people with the collars—I cannot remember ever being approached by them and being told: this is the right way to do it, this is how to do it and we will help you to do it.
5.55 p.m.
Lord Graham of Edmonton: My Lords, I do not intend to follow the noble Lord, Lord Mellish, in seeking, as he did, to go back in history to denigrate democracy and—in my view wickedly—to malign some very good people who had worked not as successfully as the corporation in latter years but had worked very hard to try to do what the noble Lord, Lord Mellish, I accept, has wanted to see happen over the past 20 years. No good will come out of the debate if the opportunity is given over to using the kind of emotive and, I believe, unworthy language that the noble Lord, Lord Mellish, has chosen to use against some very good locally, democratically elected—unlike the noble Lord, Lord Mellish, and me in your Lordships' House—councillors and their supporters in the docklands area.
I wish to begin, as I believe everyone in the debate has sought to do, by separating the issues of the railway and Canary Wharf, at the same time recognising that it is not possible to separate one from the other. I have always viewed the endeavours of the LDDC to regenerate the area under its control and to breathe new life into the docklands not only as a worthy objective but as something in which in general it has been very successful.
It was the noble Lord, Lord Mellish, who said that this was the biggest scheme of its kind in Europe. I want to ask the House to stop and allow me to use that as my text. It is the biggest scheme of its kind in Europe that will not be subject to a public inquiry, a public scrutiny. This is the gravamen of my criticism of the present situation.
I am perhaps the only Member of your Lordships' House who served as a member of the committee in another place that dealt with the Local Government, Planning and Land Bill. It started off as three separate Bills which the Government in their wisdom decided to role into one—local government, planning and land. In the course of the Bill, two further Bills were added—a new towns Bill and an enterprise zones Bill. Those of us who served on the committee—the date has been given more than once, 1981—recognised that the government of the day took a decision of enormous significance, and not just for London or for Merseyside. As the noble Lord, Lord Bellwin, has pointed out, there will be lessons to be learnt, procedures to be followed and public inquiries to be

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held in other places beyond London and Merseyside. The significance of the debate goes far wider than that.
I believe that the noble Lord, Lord Hacking, did the House a service by making his remarks not only scrupulously fair, as they always are, but strictly in accordance with the terms of the Bill. He made a very good case for the extension. He also made it quite plain that, without the Canary Wharf development, there would be no need for the extension and, without the extension, there would not be the Canary Wharf development.
I want to ask members of the House who are trying to separate the conflicting arguments to realise that all those who have spoken in favour of Canary Wharf—and it is not the railway but Canary Wharf that is under debate tonight—have trotted out before us all the benefits, the entrepreneurial skills and the financial packaging and advantages for the City.
I believe that it was the noble Lord, Lord Nugent, who said that the scheme will be good for the City. I did not detect that he said much about it being good for the people who currently live in the area. It may be good for the people who will come to live in the area in future.
Lord Nugent of Guildford: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for giving way. He cannot have listened to the rest of my speech. I made it clear that 40 per cent. of the new housing was being taken up by the local residents who have never before had a chance to buy a house. That is the first point of interest for local people. I also referred to the number of new jobs that would go to local people.
Lord Graham of Edmonton: My Lords, I assure the noble Lord that I have not left the Chamber during the debate. I heard every word that he said. I shall read with care in the Official Report tomorrow what he said.
Reference has been made to those who will live in the new housing. I also shall refer to that point. The difficulty of reconciling the conflicting figures of the jobs that will be created and the number of local people who will benefit from those jobs has been mentioned. They are all part of the argument.
I do not quibble over the railway but we are talking about a development which we are told is the biggest in Europe. The noble Lord, Lord Bellwin, said that about £7 billion of private capital could be generated. I can understand those who contribute private capital not being too interested in a public inquiry or a scrutiny, but what about the £1 billion of public money? Are we entitled to have the way in which £1 billion of public money is to be spent scrutinised by a public inquiry?
I live in the borough of Edmonton and Enfield. It is far removed from the docklands. However if a development of this size was being proposed at Cheshunt, Chingford, Potters Bar or in the Lea Valley I should want to know not just that some committee had invited members of the local council or the local Member of Parliament to discuss the matter with it; I and hundreds, if not thousands, of other people would want to know that the £1 billion of public money which was to be spent on a kind of new town—this is a kind of new town—was being scrutinised fully.
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It is monstrous that so few people in the debate are paying so little attention to something which the House and the country have held dear. We have been told that there is no time and that we cannot delay the matter. We are being invited to accept that time is of the essence. Over the centuries, many people have argued that there was not time to do certain things. That has been regretted later. The procedures are not the responsibility of the LDDC or the local councils; they are the responsibility of the Government and Parliament. Parliament, because of the way in which it is now structured, has accepted that it is proper to have such procedures.
I have been to docklands with the noble Lord, Lord Underhill. I stood on the 18th floor of a tower block in Greenwich. We looked at where the new housing and new development would be built. I must accept that it is possible for the tenants of the 18th floor of some of those blocks to sell their flats. With whatever money they obtain they can then pay the kind of money that they must pay elsewhere.
We are fortunately served by the London Standard. Last night on its commercial property page it stated:
"Rich pickings in the Docklands".
That is how it describes the Canary Wharf development. I quote selectively, as we all do. One paragraph that struck me stated
"Last month a block of flats at West Ferry Road, with prices from £100,000 for the smallest, saw its first phase completely sold out in half a day—from plans—before the marketing even began."
I am expected to believe that about 40 per cent. of the local people may have been in that queue!
I have received, as other people have, the documentation about the economic profile of the people who live in the docklands area. I do not have the experience of the noble Lord, Lord Mellish, and others who have lived, worked and represented those people, but I cannot believe that what I read in the London Standard is likely to be to their benefit.
The same article continues:
"Developers are now finding the authorities not only less bureaucratic but also the legal framework of the LDDC itself and more especially of the Enterprise Zone, conducive to their own enterprise."
The developers will find the present planning structure more conducive to their own enterprise. Tonight's London Standard states:
"An orgy of property development is under way which could totally transform the appearance of London by the late 1990s… 'The scheme is now 95 per cent. certain to go ahead', says Docklands Development Corporation supremo Reg Ward, though last-minute political problems cannot be ruled out."
I wonder what he has in mind when he talks about last-minute political problems? Mr. Ward knows, as does every Member of this House, that the Bill will receive its Third Reading tonight because, as I understand it, the Third Reading will not be opposed; that the developers' plans will be furthered, and there will be a transformation of the area. However, as I understand it, and I am not as expert as other people, there is a sourness among locally elected people on the councils and many other bodies.
I am enormously grateful to the right reverend Prelate for telling us how the LDDC, perhaps not malignly, has sought to put forward the view that it has consulted although it has not told us the result of those

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consultations. I am greatly worried that there has been a charade and that too little attention has been paid to try to bridge the gap. If the Swiss bank and others have to wait, although we have been told that we must get in quickly after the Big Bang, and in order to ensure that local democracy is served as well as financial enterprise rewarded there must be a little more time, what is wrong with that?
Although the Minister is entitled to say that it has nothing to do with him, I beg him to contemplate the possibility that part of the Canary Wharf development could be called in by the Minister so that those who live and work locally and those who represent local people get what they want. I am of course referring to the West Ferry Circus development. When one looks at this area outside the enterprise zone the size is 1.8 million square feet. It is only a small part, 20 per cent., of the total. But it is of that size. Given the opportunity, which still exists, to have a better scrutiny in the future than we have had in the past, is the Minister going to tell us that he and his colleagues will respond to the approach by the LDDC and say, "Leave it to us"? I cannot say a bad word about any member of the LDDC because I do not know them well. I would accept that they are honourable men and women. I also accept that they have a mandate and an authority. The wicked Bill which brought them into being, in my view, gives them that authority. If it means the local people will be satisfied in future that they have had a fair crack of the whip, that the roads, sewers and housing and all the other matters have been well looked at, this is surely a small price to pay. It may not be a public inquiry, but a better means of resolving this matter ought to be at hand.
This does not concern merely the docklands, as other Members have mentioned. It is not merely East London. It is those who are proud to call themselves East Londoners. It goes beyond the neighbouring boroughs of Southwark, Greenwich and the others. It also involves a great many people. But more important—and I close on this point—I believe that there is a vital principle at stake. If the Government allow matters of stupendous importance to millions of people to follow the present procedures without allowing the local people to feel that they have been satisfied it will be a very sad day.
A lady rang me at home last night. I have never met her. She said that her name was Kate Heron. She lives at 607 Manchester Road, E.14. She says that it is sometimes called Glen Terrace and she mentioned the term "Dollar Bay" which is an area in which she works. She told me that for the past two or three years there has been some kind of what she called consultation, because they had been told that their area was in what was called a "sensitive sub-zone"—I had not come across the phrase in planning matters. Until recently they had been led to believe that their area was going to be landscaped and open. But now they have been told that at the bottom of this lady's garden, about 60 feet away, there will be a depot for a firm called Ladkarn, which deals in plant hire and refuse lorries; and they have no opportunity of protesting.
The right reverend Prelate pointed out the ludicrous nature of the present situation. Outside the enterprise
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zone one cannot put up an extension or change a use without there being the possibility of a public inquiry. I hope that when this Bill is passed the Minister will reflect that even now something can be salvaged from the tawdry mess of consultation and democracy into which I believe the Bill has sunk.
6.13 p.m.
Lord Teviot: My Lords, following other noble Lords who have spoken at great length I feel that on this occasion I can be appallingly brief. I rightly remind your Lordships that we are discussing the London Docklands Railway (City Extension) Bill. Your Lordships have already agreed to the London Docklands Railway Bill. We are now discussing the extension from the Minories to the Bank station. I shall devote my remarks entirely to that aim.
It is totally wrong to think that anybody can expect any successful future of this enterprise, with which London Transport is associated, to terminate at the Minories. I shall explain the present situation at Minories station. There will be a few years before Bank station comes into operation. One has to go from Tower Hill, cross over the road and climb up a mountain to get on to this railway. That might be all right for a year or two until this Bill—which I hope will be passed this afternoon—comes into force.
Having said that, I can explain my own interest very briefly. About two or three years ago I was asked to go down and look at that area. This track follows the old London Blackwall railway line. I had the privilege one sunny day of going down to Island Gardens. I must mention to the noble Lord, Lord Hacking—I did not challenge him at the time—that I think he was slightly wrong. The railway is going from the Minories, or Tower Gate (as he referred to it), to Island Gardens, and from Island Gardens to Stratford, and not from Tower Gate to Stratford.
Lord Hacking: My Lords, that is right. One has to change trains.
Lord Teviot: My Lords, this is the right time to correct that, and not in the flow of the speech of the noble Lord.
However, I spent the afternoon walking along a track of the railway, along the Limehouse Reach. The right reverend Prelate is not in his seat to listen. But this track of the London Blackwall railway has been overgrown by a horticultural noble friend—who is again not in his place—called buddleia alternifolia, which has completely taken over this. One walked along by this auspicious church and watched people fishing along Limehouse Reach. It was a very pleasant experience. One is sorry to hear about the buddleia, but the tracks are now in its place. Next July this railway will re-open from the Minories to Island Gardens, and from Island Gardens to Stratford. We are asking this afternoon for this to be extended to the Bank station. No developer or anybody can be the slightest bit interested in putting any money into this area if it is not extended to a suitable place. That is the Bank, where all the connections go.
The Government have seen fit to do that. I gather that investors have too. All credit to them. What will

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follow is also very interesting. Your Lordships will have a very interesting experience this afternoon. We are to hear the maiden speech of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Elwyn-Jones! It is rare that Lord Chancellors sit on Back Benches. I was amazed to see his name lower than mine. I realise that it is a rare experience to have a speech from him from the Back Bench. It has not happened for a very long time.
I hope that we shall see this railway extended to Beckton in East Ham, which again will give regeneration to the area. In the absence of the right reverend Prelate, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chelmsford, I say this, because one pops out of Poplar straight into the Diocese of Chelmsford. This area will be revitalised by public transport. (I apologise to the Official Report writer. I am talking very fast.) This area will not succeed unless there is a link. It is very important. We should very much put this forward and bring our minds to it.
I think that I shall now bring my remarks to a suitable close, having listened to 13 or 14 minutes each from about the last six speakers, and just say that I fully approve of this Bill. The noble Lord, Lord Sefton, is not in his seat. Everybody flies away when I get up to speak. However, I believe that the amendment is obstructive and destructive. I wish every success to this Bill.
6.19 p.m.
Lord Walston: My Lords, first, I must declare an interest in that I am a resident of the Isle of Dogs, not, I may say, occupying one of the £300,000 flats about which we have heard so much. Therefore, the rail link, although not the area which we are discussing, is of some particular interest to me. The rail link from the Isle of Dogs to the Tower of London is well under way at the moment.
I want to make it quite clear that I am speaking purely personally and not in any way on behalf either of the Alliance or of the Social Democrats although I do not think that many of my colleagues would disagree with the general line that I propose to take. I am a great supporter of what has been achieved in the Docklands by the development corporation. It has had fantastic success in converting a down-at-heel, depressed and almost deserted area into one of the most booming areas not only of this country but of Europe.
I quite understand the criticisms that have been levelled, against the development corporation, for example, by the noble Lord, Lord Graham. It is not democratic in it workings; that is absolutely true. However, one has only to cast one's eyes around such contiguous areas as Bow and Stepney. which are democratic, and ask why they have not succeeded where the docklands corporation is succeeding at the present time? The answer, I am afraid, is that one can get quick decisions from the docklands corporation instead of going through planning procedures.
The other day we heard from the noble Earl, Lord Perth, about an American benefactor who wished to acquire the lease of a house in Regent's Park. Because of planning delays extending over years, he eventually lost patience and an exciting project is no longer going
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to take place. I am afraid that had all normal planning procedures been necessary in Docklands we would not see what we see today. This extension of the railway is I believe, a necessary part of still further development.
I do not wish to go into the merits or demerits of the Canary Wharf scheme. Personally, I think it is exciting, although there are certain aspects about which I have reservations. Undoubtedly, the Docklands will provide more employment. How much more, no-one knows, not even Peat Marwick or the Henley experts, whoever they may be. There is no doubt that more employment will be created and more wealth and rateable value brought to the area, and that the boom now taking place will accelerate.
All of us accept that the contribution that the City of London makes to the national wellbeing, to invisible exports, is of enormous importance. London is situated geographically, by chance, midway between Tokyo and New York. Therefore, it has a crucial role to play because of the time zone, and it is building on its old tradition to do that. However, it needs more space. It cannot provide it in the square mile. To provide in an area such as the Isle of Dogs is surely good for the City of London and for the country as a whole.
I do not support some of the things that the right reverend Prelate said. I am sorry that he is not here because I would say to his face that he has, I believe, perhaps exaggerated some of the difficulties. He has certainly dwelt too long on the difficulties and has ignored the benefits. There is no doubt in my mind—I speak as a part-time resident of the Isle of Dogs—that there is friction, not unnaturally, between old-established residents and the newcomers, the new industries and the new activities that are taking place.
I accept what the development corporation says. Again, I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Mellish, is not here because I give the noble Lord and his colleagues much credit for what they have done and what they have attempted to do. However, there is still more that they can and must do, in order to create a harmonious melding together of these many different people—the old inhabitants, the newcomers, the rich, the poor, the skilled, the unskilled, the white collar and the blue collar. There is an enormous diversity there, and the problems are very real and very great. I believe that they will be overcome but the greater the consciousness we have of it, the greater the efforts made by the Church and the social workers on the one side and the development corporation on the other, and the more concentration there is, without delays, in granting permissions and carrying on with the job, the quicker those problems will be overcome and the less serious they will be.
Perhaps I may turn briefly to the noble Lord, Lord Sefton. I have very great sympathy for his attitude, as I think most noble Lords have. However, I must say that the way he presented it diminished somewhat my sympathy. Perhaps that is because I do not come from the North. As a former regional planning council chairman, I feel strongly that we must have far more consciousness of the needs and requirements of different regions. The disparities between North and South are too obvious to need any further description by myself. Your Lordships know the facts very well.

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I believe that we are failing in our regional planning. While I do not see this particular Bill as the most appropriate hook on which to hang the coat of regional planning, I hope that the noble Lord will pursue his desire for, if you like, a really serious Royal Commission. I do not know what would be appropriate. But it should be some body that will accept that this is one of the most pressing problems facing this country and that will go on from there to propose methods by which the disparities between North and South can be overcome. I should like to echo what I think the noble Lord, Lord Mellish, said. Probably, the docklands corporation can give an example of how these needs can be met with a combination of the working together of private enterprise risk capital, and a development corporation. If there were more development corporations in the North, I believe we would at least have taken some steps towards redressing that balance.
6.27 p.m.
Lord Elwyn-Jones: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Teviot, for welcoming me to the Back Benches. In fact, I spoke from the Back Benches of this House 40 years ago. Of course, then it was in the occupation of another place and we were, curiously enough, another place for a short time, which is only capable of achievement in this remarkable institution and in this remarkable House.
I intervene, but alas the right reverend Prelate is not here to hear it, to say amen to what he has said. I think it is right and proper that the London Church leaders and those on the Churches group should be saying that there ought to be some social audit about what is going on. I speak as one who represented Newham, or parts of it, for 29 years. There is deep and real concern there as to what is happening.
As far as the people there are concerned, they have no sense of a regeneration of their community. At the present time the degree of unemployment is appalling—30 per cent. of the adult males in the area are unemployed; 60 per cent. of the young people are unemployed. I feel that they cannot see the prospect of betterment in the job scene, resulting in particular from this massive development of office accommodation, 10 to 12 million square feet of it, in three enormous blocks, which will dominate the scene. They cannot see job prospects for themselves out of what is arising. Indeed, I understand that the original estimates were that as many as 75,000 jobs would be created (50,000 direct and 25,000 indirect), with no fewer than 20,000 for local residents. The present estimate is that there could be 1,800 jobs for local residents. I hope that when the noble Lord comes to reply, rather than intervening at this stage, as he has done more than once—if he insists I shall give way—I shall have his comment as to whether the figures which they started with or the figures which are given now are correct.
As regards the housing scene, with a number of noble Lords I was present when we received a delegation from the Docklands Consultative Committee and the Docklands Forum. They expressed their grave concern as to the state of play. First, they found it astonishing that this enormous
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Canary Wharf development received less planning consideration than would the change of use of a chip shop situated outside the zone, because of its good fortune and that of the developers that it is in an enterprise zone. Therefore, that has not given them a great deal of comfort or reassurance.
With regard to the prospects in the housing field, I am bound to say that the information that has been given by the Docklands Forum, which as far as I know is not an irresponsible body, is that:
"House prices will increase way beyond the reach of local people. Few houses in the Isle of Dogs can be afforded by Docklands residents at the moment. For instance, a 1 bedroomed flat will cost in the region of £51,000-78,000. A 3 bedroomed family house will cost a minimum of £92,000 and up to £175,000. This must be compared with the fact that 75% of Tower Hamlets residents earn below £8,000 p.a., enough to support a mortgage of £25,000".
Those are the realities which I am informed exist.
Lord Simon of Glaisdale: My Lords, if the noble and learned Lord will allow me, I have merely visited this area in the company of the noble Lord, Lord Mellish. However, is not the noble and learned Lord giving figures of houses and flats which magnificently overlook the river, like Venetian palaces overlooking the Grand Canal?
Lord Elwyn-Jones: No, my Lords. I can tell my noble and learned friend that I am not saying anything of the kind. I am quoting figures that were given to my colleagues and myself by the Docklands Forum on what house prices will be for the people of the area as the development takes place. Perhaps when the noble Lord, Lord Hacking, replies to the debate he may be able to give us some firm guidance as to his sources.
Lord Nugent of Guildford: My Lords, perhaps I may interrupt the noble and learned Lord for a moment, as he is so generous with his time. He may be interested to know that I visited the area when it had been 12 months under the corporation and saw the first tranche of houses which were built in Beckton and which were selling for £23,500. A number of local people were buying them. Since then the prices of those houses have gone up, but I am informed that the local people have been buying them for £40,000 and less. There is no doubt that the local people have had first pick at very reasonable prices.
Lord Elwyn-Jones: My Lords, in the times when house prices were about £20,000 it was a different scene, but I have quoted the figures. A one-bedroomed flat will cost between £51,000 and £78,000 and a three-bedroomed house will cost from £92,000 upwards. It is put to me that those prices are well outside the range of local inhabitants and that is one reason why, as a former Member of Parliament for the area, I believe that these fears should be met by positive assurances from reliable sources.
Therefore, I believe that the House would be wrongly advised to dismiss the criticisms and the points of concern that have been expressed as grossly exaggerated and unrealistic. There is real concern and it is right that this House of all Houses should ventilate those concerns so that what may happen as a serious tragedy for people who have suffered so much is not repeated.
6.35 p.m.
Lord Geddes: My Lords, sandwiched as I am between two such eminent and learned Lords as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Elwyn-Jones, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Simon of Glaisdale. I think that my remarks must and will be very short. The debate has been somewhat of a pot-pourri around the subject of the Bill itself. I was privileged to speak on the Second Reading of that Bill and nothing that I have heard or seen since has in any way changed my mind in favour of the particular Bill which is under debate on Third Reading. I shall not repeat what I said on that occasion, but I shall try to highlight one or two points which have either been made this evening or which perhaps may usefully be made.
I strongly support the argument that, to use a rather nasty pun, by robbing the South one does not necessarily pay the North. There seems to be a growing misconception, that, if the money being invested as a result of this particular Bill and the Canary Wharf development itself was not so invested, it would go elsewhere. I do not think that there is any logical connection whatever between those two.
Lord Sefton of Garston: My Lords, if the noble Lord will give way, he said that he was dealing with points that were raised in the Bill. Will the noble Lord indicate which Member of this House said that money invested in Canary Wharf should he diverted elsewhere?
Lord Geddes: My Lords, I think that it would be invidious for me even to try to do that because I do not think that that has been said. I said that I do not believe that if money was not put into Canary Wharf, it would therefore go further north, and I said that I do not think there is any logical connection between those two. That is not quite the same thing as the noble Lord has just said.
Lord Sefton of Garston: My Lords—
Lord Geddes: My Lords, perhaps I may continue, because this debate has gone on for a very long time. I do not wish to dwell at any great length on the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Sefton, but my attention was drawn to an article which appeared in the Sunday Telegraph magazine two days ago and which spoke of extensive developments, as it happens, in docklands—in Liverpool in the Albert Dock complex, in Bristol, with 200 acres of dockland being converted to housing, in Middlesbrough, where they want to acquire the old town docks, and in Hull, where the Humber Dock has become a 270-berth marina. Money is being invested there. I do not at all deny the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Sefton—I think that it is an extremely valid one—but I think that it is misplaced in the context of this particular debate and therefore perhaps ill-conceived.
On the question of job creation, I shall certainly not enter the contest of one set of figures against another, but I have had a certain amount of experience in this area and I just instance to your Lordships that there are very real possibilities of job creation. I am not being facetious when I mention such activities as
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baking, window cleaning, the electrical industry, plumbers, joiners, manufacturers of furniture, let alone the enormous number of varied job possibilities within leisure pursuits. A very large amount of development is being made in leisure in docklands, and I for one am very glad to see it.
I believe I am right in saying that the heritage was raised during the debate, I think by the right reverend Prelate, but I beg his pardon if I am wrong. There is one not-so-minor benefit of this particular extension which is that it will enable a through passage, albeit with a change at the Bank, not only to the Stolport, which I mentioned on Second Reading, but to the southern end of the London Docklands light railway, which in turn connects with Brunel's very little used pedestrian tunnel under the Thames, which goes direct to the Palace of Greenwich. For the first time there will be easy and fast access to that magnificent complex, if I may call it that, at Greenwich. At the moment the Tower of London is statistically the largest single tourist attraction in the country. I am willing to lay a certain amount of money outside this Chamber that Greenwich will rapidly catch it up once one can get to Greenwich easily and quickly.
I started by saying that perhaps we had gone slightly off the main track of the Bill. May I say bluntly to your Lordships that I would have supported this particular Bill as a major improvement to the facilities of London and the South-East even if it had not been funded as to between one-third and one-half? I hope that I am not giving the developers a chance to back away, but given the situation that they are funding, and have said that they will fund, to that extent, are we really going to throw out such a benefit in that it is also going to be subsidised to a large extent by the private sector?
I am sure that your Lordships will approve the Bill and give it a Third Reading. The amendment itself seems to be misplaced and therefore ill-conceived, and not least—and here I would support the noble Lord, Lord Mellish, and I am sorry he is not in his place—because I have had occasion, if you like on the other side of the table, to have discussions with the LDDC. I can assure your Lordships that they are the most stringent body of people I have ever had to deal with.
The fears that have been expressed that perhaps the enterprise zone situation and therefore the lack of formal planning consent are disadvantageous overall are themselves misplaced. I can assure your Lordships that the LDDC really watch exactly what is going on and are tough negotiators. I warmly endorse this Bill.
6.42 p.m.
Lord Simon of Glaisdale: My Lords, I have no hesitation in supporting the Third Reading of this Bill, the case for which has been made out in a great number of notable speeches following that of my noble friend Lord Hacking. Nevertheless, I entirely agree with what the right reverend Prelate said, that we have to consider this Bill in its overall impact.
Although the noble Lord, Lord Teviot, gave us a salutory example of parliamentary austerity, the rest of your Lordships—and I follow your Lordships in this respect—have gone from the extension of the railway

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to the railway itself, to the Docklands development area, to the contiguous areas of the City of London and the east and south-east of London, and then embracing the whole of the South-East of England, with the problem of the North-South, to which the noble Lord, Lord Sefton, referred, and whose thrust of argument I venture to follow.
Although I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Sefton, I hope that he will not divide the House. I cannot think that it would be advantageous to have a Select Committee. What we want are government decisions. A Select Committee is inappropriate and will cause delay.
I want to make three points. The first follows up what I ventured to say in the economic and employment debate on the Queen's Speech. This, in my respectful submission, answers the point made by the noble Lords, Lord Alport, Lord Bellwin and Lord Geddes; namely, that if you inhibit investment in the South you do not necessarily divert it to the North.
That is true if one stops there. But what happens at the moment is that it is apparently government policy positively to attract investment by beneficial rewards to the South-East. During the debate on the Address I asked the noble Lord, Lord Young of Graffham—and he agreed with my interpretation— whether it was his policy, and obviously the government policy, to ease planning permissions in the South-East.
If you ease planning consents in the South-East comparatively, you make planning consents comparatively more difficult in the North, in the distressed and depressed manufacturing areas. It is not only what the noble Lord has admitted, but I have had the strong impression—and I hope that the Minister will deal with this—that when planning consent is refused in the South-East the Secretary of State calls the case in.
That is discrimination in favour of development—particularly high tech development—in the South-East to the detriment of where we so sadly need it, namely, in the depressed manufacturing centres. I do not speak of the environmental consequences, although I think that they too are deplorable. I speak mainly in the context, as the noble Lord, Lord Sefton, put it, of the economic consequences.
My second comment is that even the most non-interventionist governments intervene powerfully in the economy. I do not think only of the enormous defence contracts, but the noble Lord, Lord Sefton, and the right reverend Prelate both mentioned the Channel Tunnel. One can think of the enormous investment even in ancillary services that will be involved on the part of the Government in the decision to build a Channel Tunnel.
When we discussed the Channel Tunnel the noble Lord, Lord Elliott of Morpeth, was so impressed by that consideration that he seemed to be suggesting that it should start off from the North-East of England. But it is a matter that the Government must consider in their regional policy. It is a consideration which far outweighs any regional grant.
My third point is merely a summing up of that. With these distortions in planning consents and in government commitment willy-nilly in the economy in favour, as I think, of the South-East, it demands
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positive encouragement to countervail that; positive encouragement in the depressed manufacturing areas. To have countervailing power of that sort, countervailing expenditure and procedures, seems entirely consistent on ultimate analysis with the economic thinking of the Government.
I have ventured to follow the noble Lord, Lord Sefton, because it does not seem to me that this issue, which has been so acutely and finely examined in your Lordships' House, can properly be left without its total national repercussions being considered.
6.50 p.m.
Lord Marshall of Leeds: My Lords, I shall try to avoid any repetition of the very many points made by so many eloquent previous speakers, not least by the noble Lord, Lord Mellish. One has to admit at this time of the evening that most of the points have been made already. The original instruction initiated by the noble Lord, Lord Sefton, required the Select Committee, on which I served as a member, to consider the consequences of the Bill on the South-East region and on the City of London in particular. After the House had agreed that the Select Committee might hear evidence from sources other than the promoters, we were offered no evidence which related to that instruction, or no evidence which I can remember.
On the contrary, such evidence as was proffered related to the effect the proposals would have on Docklands themselves. This evidence would have been of greater relevance to the amendment subsequently moved by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London and now withdrawn. But the evidence of local representatives, although clearly outside the terms of the instruction, was given sympathetic consideration. The result, however, was that, in default of relevant evidence, the Select Committee members had to draw upon their own background knowledge of the subject when they considered the terms of the instruction.
As the Bill became unopposed during its consideration by the Select Committee, we concluded that the proposals would benefit the City of London and would certainly not materially harm the south-eastern region, either. Indeed, they would be of very great benefit. We were also aware that a Select Committee on a Private Bill is not the most appropriate forum to decide major planning issues or regional development strategy either.
But the fact still remains that the noble Lord who originally moved the instruction would have been at liberty to give evidence, either himself or through others, to the committee touching upon his concerns which prompted either his instruction or today's amendment, which anyway is in totally different terms and which raises quite a different argument. He would have been wiser—would he not?—to have incorporated the substance of his amendment within the terms of the instruction. But for his own reasons he chose not to do so, and we cannot argue about that.
Having dealt with the instruction to the best of our ability and having concluded our work—if I may so, under the expert and incisive direction of the noble Lord, Lord Alport—the House is now being asked to

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blow the whistle on this Bill until yet another Select Committee has been set up and has reported. That is what is asked for.
A noble Lord: My Lords, but—
Lord Marshall of Leeds: Yes, my Lords, it is. I speak with some experience of inner-city problems both in the North and the North-East of England. I also have not a little experience of the problems of the eight-and-a-half square miles of London's Docklands.
During the course of an inquiry into the government of Greater London which I conducted during 1977 and 1978, when evidence was given to us by the director of the Docklands Development Team, I used these words:
"In common with other parts of Inner London, the Docklands Area has suffered from the inability to compete for new development on equal terms with other parts of the country with which its problems are comparable".
No question there of the effect of the regeneration of Docklands on the rest of London! Indeed, it was the other way round. It highlighted how far behind the startline Docklands was when compared with parts of the country which had comparable problems.
I concluded in that inquiry that the implementation of any action to regenerate the Docklands might founder:
"because conflict and friction between the constituent members of the Docklands Joint Committee (that is, the five Docklands Boroughs) can so easily lead to indecision, compromise or simply no action at all".
Those were my views in 1978 and I have to tell your Lordships that they have not changed since.
My report continued in this vein—and I am sorry to be tedious about it:
"My view is that the successful regeneration of the Dockland Area is so vital to the future prosperity of the whole of the inner city that a more positive form of direction is needed than the present arrangements can provide. This could perhaps be given by an independent body on the lines of a new town development corporation. My recommended solution is the introduction of a new, comprehensive development area or areas to cover the territory of Docklands".
These were my recommendations of 1978, an imposed solution. The time for talking had gone even in 1978. I think that my recommendations happen to be in line with the subsequent views of the 1981 Select Committee, when the London Docklands Development Corporation and, later, the development zones, were set out.
Speed is essential if the opportunity is not to be missed. If this amendment were to be accepted it would adjourn sine die the possibility of the major regeneration of docklands. It would put back the clock 20 years or more; and in this respect I agree with the views expressed by my noble friend Lord Bellwin. Yet another exhaustive inquiry by yet another Select Committee would consume invaluable lead time which can never be and which will never be made up; for the world will have moved on.
The recommendations of any future Select Committee will by then be too late to be of any more use than the gathering of a great deal of dust. By then the opportunity would have passed us by perhaps, and probably forever. My noble friend Lord Teviot said that Canary Wharf would not succeed without this
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link. The sobbering and melancholy fact is that without this link Canary Wharf will not be developed at all, ever. For all these reasons I hope that the amendment will be rejected, that the report of the Select Committee will be accepted and that this Bill will be given a Third Reading.
7 p.m.
Lord Montagu of Beaulieu: My Lords, I intervene very briefly just to express a few views on behalf of the Historic Buildings Commission, of which I am chairman. We have no doubt that the effects of the Canary Wharf development on London as a whole and on the regeneration of the East End in particular will be indeed profound, particularly on the historic buildings, of which there are so many in that area. However, my commission does not take an indiscriminate objection to new development; nor does it make a blanket objection to redevelopment. Indeed I was the chairman of a committee, and that led to the report on new users for old buildings. Certainly many old buildings are finding new users down there.
Although my commission's primary responsibility is to seek to preserve our ancient monuments and historic buildings and to promote conservation areas, we are very conscious of the importance of the development and conservation schemes which can produce jobs and in turn help to regenerate the area. I therefore approach this debate constructively and with the hope that development of the docklands will bring new life and vigour.
However, I should like to record our concern on two issues. First, we are concerned about the impact of the extremely tall towers on the London skyline and on the glories of the superb baroque architecture across the river at Greenwich. In the right setting, tall towers can add enormous strength to the area, but it must be in the right area. The impact of the proposed enormously high towers would go far beyond the area of Canary Wharf itself.
Secondly, we consider that the development of Canary Wharf ought to take place within a firmly established strategy which recognises the great architectual and historical importance of the area. We are seeking some satisfaction on these concerns, which will be taken into account in the Canary Wharf development. Indeed, we should be very hesitant in wrecking a Bill, but I believe we should seek to ensure that the conservation of the past, respect for present communities and the enhancement of a great city are central considerations in any future development of the docklands.
I must confess that in the early stages the commission was less than happy with the consultation that had taken place between the corporation and the commission. However, in recent times we have established close relations, and I am sure that that will pay good dividends in the future. With regard to the railway itself, it is certainly vital. Perhaps I may end by quoting the words of the great poet Rudyard Kipling when he said, "Transportation is civilisation". I think this railway will prove to be a very civilised thing indeed.
7.2 p.m.
Lord Carmichael of Kelvingrove: My Lords, anyone who did not know the procedure of your Lordships' House, walking in today, will have been surprised that a transport Bill (which is what this is, actually) has gone on as long and has gone down as many by-ways as it has. But of course as everyone has said, and particularly the right reverend Prelate, it would be unrealistic to discuss this Bill only in relation to Canary Wharf, because the whole question of the Docklands Light Railway, although it was originally seen as an aid to local regeneration, is now clearly being seen as a developer's railway and for that purpose primarily.
I personally accept that exceptional problems frequently require that corners have to be cut, and particularly bureaucratic corners. They can be very time-consuming and very frustrating: questions of planning, building control and such things. However, I would suggest with great humility that the London docklands Bill of 1981 perhaps went a bit too far and made rather too big an enterprise zone for local people to feel that they had any involvement in it whatsoever.
We had a situation long before 1981 in Glasgow, where we had great deprivation. An organisation was set up which was known as GEAR, that is, the Glasgow Eastern Area Renewal. The difference between that and the docklands corporation is that the Glasgow Eastern Area Renewal was composed of the local authority, the Scottish Office and the Scottish Development Authority, acting as a unit, and not needing to go and get votes, and so on. Many of the things they did were not very popular but at least there was a channel through which ordinary people could go to see their local council and complain about certain things. That is becoming even stronger now that people realise there is a channel and that they have a say in things. This has obviously been a good thing.
There is a great deal of resentment—and I am from the very far north, from the docklands point of view—among many people (not just the usual cranks that we always get) that this huge development is going on and they have no say at all. As I saw enterprise zones originally, they were meant to be relatively small areas where relatively small industries would be able to get on with their jobs without meeting too many problems. But here we are to have the biggest single development in Europe, if not in the world—far bigger than the New York World Trade Centre—with no restrictions and no local people being able to object or even to comment.
One noble Lord said that the London Docks Group were very tough in their examination of things; but, with great respect, that is not enough. They have perhaps a different purpose from that of the local people and so I think there has been possibly a slight slip-up and that just a little too much power has been given to this enterprise zone. In Glasgow we do not have billions of pounds on our doorstep looking for a place to go, as is the case in London, and so our development is a bit slower. Also of course our bootstraps are somewhat shorter than those of the LDDC. I cannot really believe that Parliament had actually expected quite the amount of development
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and the power to go to one single body, as has happened in this case.
However, we are discussing the special report of the Select Committee, and looking at the map it would be quite crazy for the House not to give the go-ahead to this extension. I think it would be just a nonsense not to go ahead. In pure transport terms permission must be given, but I think a number of points are worth raising. It may be lowering the general standard of the debate if I descend from the heights, where we have been discussing the big principles of population dispersal and regeneration, and go to the mundane question of the transport itself and who is actually going to pay for this extension.
Originally, I understand the Minister said this was going to be privately funded and I should like to have that point cleared up by the Minister in his reply, or if not then at a later stage. But during the Second Reading in another place the Minister reserved his position and said that the Government would be paying for part of the extension. My latest information is that the Government are now about to pay half the cost—in other words, approximately £45 million. The total will be something in the region of £90 million. I should like to know whether that is the case, and if so why the change has been made.
The other important point about the Government's part in this is that it seems as if the Government, through London Regional Transport, will be liable particularly for the tunnelling part of the operation—which of course is the hazardous part. I wonder whether the Minister can say if the total cost will be divided and that London Regional Transport will not have any additional costs added to them because of ground failures or anything else that goes wrong with the tunnelling, with the result that they will be left with a much bigger bill and the public purse will therefore have to pay a great deal more than the original amount. I think that liability for this part of the route should at the very least be met in some way other than by London Regional Tansport alone, and that claims for such things as damage to buildings overhead should be looked at as well. That is therefore another point to which I hope the Minister will be able to reply.
My third point is on the question of the eastern extension to the railway. Speaking in purely transport terms, it seems crazy, if one is going so far as this, not to take advantage of vacant land and carry on with an eastern extension of the route. I understand that this is well into the planning stage. But there is, again, doubt as to who will be paying for it. Yesterday in another place the responsible Minister, Mr. Mitchell, said:
"The Government have been assured by the London Docklands development corporation that, in its view, the project could go ahead without any expectation of Government contribution to capital or running costs."—[Official Report, Commons, 1/12/86; col. 61].
But I have been given another quotation from Mr. Ward, who is the chief executive of the LDDC. He said:
"The financial and economic evaluation of the railway which we have just completed underlines the obvious fact that a project of this dimension simply cannot be sustained wholly by the private sector, because it is unlikely to develop the required rate of return in the end."

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So it has to be a partnership between the public and private sectors. There are fairly large sums of money involved and those are two statements made within 21 days of each other. I hope that the Minister is able to give us his opinion on them.
Lastly, I am afraid that I must disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Marshall, about the amendment of my noble friend Lord Sefton. I cannot see any contradiction between this amendment and his suggestion that he wants the Bill to go ahead. After the Motion, That the Bill be now read a third time, the amendment reads:
"but this House considers that the Canary Wharf development will highlight the problems of high costs and congestion in the South-East and that a Select Committee should be appointed to inquire into the matter."
My reading of it, and I have spoken to others with more knowledge of procedure than I have—
Lord Simon of Glaisdale: My Lords, I wonder whether the noble Lord will forgive me for intervening. While I entirely agree with his reading of the amendment and its effect, nevertheless does it not contain the implication that the best way to deal with regional unemployment problems is a Select Committee?
Lord Carmichael of Kelvingrove: My Lords, I agree that that is perhaps a flaw in the wording; but since the amendment is down, and since practically everyone who has spoken today has expressed sorrow at the state of the North, as it is called, and has said that something should be done, it would be churlish of us to reject the amendment when we are wishing the Bill god-speed. That would be wrong for anyone from the North and certainly for me. I could not go back to Glasgow, and would not want to, and say: Yes, we gave Canary Wharf the go-ahead and, though everyone in the House said that we have to do something about the North, a simple amendment like this was rejected.
So if my noble friend feels that he has to push the matter to a vote, then in a purely personal capacity I would want to support him. But that does not detract from the fact that, in purely transport terms, I believe that this Bill is something which must be given the approval of the House tonight.
Lord Marshall of Leeds: My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down, does he not agree that what I was saying was that the terms of the instruction initiated by the noble Lord, Lord Sefton of Garston, were completely different from the terms of his amendment which is before the House today?
Lord Carmichael of Kelvingrove: No, my Lords, I listened very carefully to my noble friend Lord Sefton, partly because I knew that there would be this dilemma. He said very early on that he would not oppose the Third Reading of the Bill. He merely wanted to take an opportunity, which, fortunately, our democracy gives us the chance to do, to raise once again the disparity between the North and the South. In view of the way that the House has gone today, I find it difficult to believe that anyone would not sympathise with this amendment.
7.15 p.m.
Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, it may be helpful at this stage if I intervene to give a brief indication of the Government's view on the Bill and on the amendment to the Motion for the Third Reading. The Government are fully committed to the regeneration of London Docklands. This railway scheme would be a valuable aid in the process of regeneration and for that reason the Government support this Bill. It is an essential preparation for the Canary Wharf development which would create major new job opportunities in Docklands. It would also increase the benefits provided by the railway already under construction.
That is not to say that we are prepared to provide unlimited supplies of public money to pay for the railway: the negotiations that LRT is conducting with the Canary Wharf Consortium are designed to secure a significant private sector contribution to the costs of the City extension to ensure that it will generate the required rate of return on any public investment which is made. At the end of the day, London Regional Transport will have to satisfy itself and the Government that the deal to be struck meets this requirement. But this afternoon's debate has gone very wide of the railway Bill itself and it might be helpful to give a word of background to the situation on the Isle of Dogs.
The creation of the London Docklands Development Corporation in 1981 signalled the start of a period of rapid economic development across the eight square miles of its area. The corporation has successfully replaced decline and dereliction by innovation and activity. The £289 million of government grant provided to the corporation since 1981 has already attracted private sector investment commitments of nearly £1·5 billion. Over 7 million square feet of new commercial industrial and office floor space have been constructed. Over 300 companies have moved into the corporation's area and 8,000 jobs have been created. There is also an average of 1,500 construction jobs in the Docklands at any one time. Progress on this scale would not have been thought possible in 1981.
Local people have shared in the corporation's success. Mention has been made, particularly by the noble Lord, Lord Mellish, of the 6,000 new private homes that have been built and about 40 per cent. of those on the corporation's land have been sold to local tenants under the LDDC's Affordable Homes policy. Bus services have been improved; voluntary organisations and local projects supported; housing estates renovated; and a wide range of environmental projects undertaken. The area has been transformed in just five years. Perhaps the most obvious of all the London Docklands Development Corporation's achievements in support of local people has been its insistence on rail connections for previously isolated communities. Without the corporation there would be no Docklands railway.
The City extension is an essential pre-requisite for the proposed £1.5 billion development of Canary Wharf. This development prepresents an exciting opportunity to attract large numbers of new jobs and substantial amounts of private investment to a depressed area of London. If the House fails to support

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this Bill, it will be denying the people of East London the major job opportunities that the scheme would bring. It would also be rejecting the chance to lay the foundations of long-term prosperity in an area where it is badly needed.
Complex negotiations are currently in progress on the Canary Wharf development. The site is also subject to a number of statutory planning processes which I must not prejudge. I cannot, therefore, comment on the details of the scheme or on the prospect of an inquiry. The Corporation's decisions on Canary Wharf are, however, being taken with the benefit of wide consultation. It has been in very close contact with Tower Hamlets from the outset of the negotiations and has given presentations to other interested local authorities and MPs. It has also held over 50 meetings with local community groups, including the Docklands Forum, the Association of Island Communities and the Limehouse Development Group.
The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London criticised the inadequate quality of the consultation, but the corporation and the developers have shown themselves very ready to respond to issues raised by their extensive consultations. For example, the Canary Wharf towers were moved to the end of the wharf out of the Greenwich axis as a result of comments from the Royal Fine Arts Commission and Greenwich council. As another example, when the LDDC asked the Docklands Forum to produce a list of the demands of local people, it produced 18 requests, 11 of which have been accepted and a further four accepted in part.
Lord Graham of Edmonton: My Lords, has the Minister taken on board the point that it is still possible for the Secretary of State to call in the application for planning permission for the circus and to say to the LDDC that that is what they intend to do? Is that still an option?
Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, I was going to come to that point later, but I shall deal with it now, since reference has also been made by the right reverend Prelate to the fact that part of the proposed Canary Wharf development lies outside the enterprise Zone and therefore comes within the normal development control processes. These provide that my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for the Environment may call in planning applications for his own determination. I understand that a planning application in respect of the part of the Canary Wharf scheme outside the enterprise zone will shortly be referred to him as a departure from the development plan. It will then be for him to decide whether or not he should call in the application for his own determination and, if it were called in, whether there should be an inquiry. It would not be proper for me to anticipate my right honourable friend's decision or even to comment on the merits of the application lest I prejudice his decision.
The Government are of course concerned with problems elsewhere in the country, and particularly in the North. As my noble friend Lord Bellwin said, there is no monopoly in this concern on the other side of the House. The Government are drawing on their experience of regeneration in London's Docklands to support urban areas outside the capital.
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In 1981 we set up a development corporation for the docklands of Merseyside, just as we did for London. These two corporations have demonstrated that urban development corporations are a powerful and effective stimulus for urban regeneration. As a result my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for the Environment has recently announced his intention to create four new urban development corporations in the North. The first of these will be in the North-West, based in Trafford Park in Greater Manchester. Subject to discussions with the local authorities concerned, the orders designating that urban development corporation should be laid before Christmas. The other areas selected for designation are in the Black Country, on Teesside and in Tyne and Wear. I should expect the designation orders to be laid in the spring. Each of these urban development corporations is expected to spend more than £100 million over the next six or seven years.
In addition to the Merseyside Development Corporation, a range of other initiatives have been developed for Merseyside and the North-West; we have given assisted area status to much of the region. We have provided extra cash for deprived inner-city areas through the inner-city partnership and programme schemes. We have created a free port in Liverpool. We have created enterprise zones at Speke, at Salford and in Cumbria. We have funded derelict land reclamation on a massive scale. The North-West already has a motorway network which is second to none. Over £1,000 million of government money is going into Merseyside alone every year. But as my noble friend Lord Nugent so wisely said, the money has to be made somewhere before it can be spent.
Your Lordships accepted the proposal of the noble Lord, Lord Sefton, at Second Reading, to instruct the Select Committee on the Bill to have regard to the consequences of the proposals contained in the Bill on the rest of the South-East region and in particular on the City of London. The Select Committee has done this, and very thoroughly too, producing a special report that concludes that the creation of new jobs at a time of high unemployment, even in the South-East, must be welcomed. It went on to state that change in the character and appearance of the Docklands would no more arise as a result of Canary Wharf than any other scheme of regeneration and that such changes in the way of life must be seen as inevitable when Parliament approved the creation of the LDDC.
The noble Lord, Lord Carmichael, actually asked me some questions concerning the Bill itself, which was fairly rare during this afternoon's debate. He asked about the funding of the western extension. Strictly speaking, negotiations are a matter for LRT and agreement will be between LRT and the consortium. However, any investment by LRT in this project requires the approval of my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Transport. He will have to be satisfied that, taking into account the contribution to be made by the consortium, the project meets the Government's criteria for public sector investment. Negotiations with the consortium on the financial contribution are being conducted with this requirement in mind.
The noble Lord also asked about the possibility of the Eastern extension to Beckton. As he will be aware,

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a Bill has now been deposited and the Government have been assured by the London Docklands Development Corporation that in its view the project could go ahead with no expectation of Government contribution to capital or running costs. However, the Government will want to see, before the Bill proceeds to Second Reading, the specific arrangement which the LDDC can make to secure that there shall be no signifiicant risk that any of the costs shall fall as a burden upon LRT. We shall also want to see the full financial and economic appraisal of the railways project from London Regional Transport.
I should now like to turn to the precise terms of the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Sefton, for the appointment of a Select Committee of your Lordships' House to inquire into the problems of high costs and congestion in the South-East. I listened carefully to the arguments of the noble Lord, but I am not convinced that there is a case for a Select Commitee to be appointed at this time. The Government do not agree with his arguments, nor with the evidence which he advanced. Nor do I think that it would be appropriate for the House to decide such an important matter as the setting up of what would be a major Select Committee of your Lordships' House on a Motion relating to the Third Reading of a Private Bill.
The Government's view on this Bill is clear. We believe that the regeneration of London's Docklands is a desirable and worthwhile aim and that this railway proposal will contribute to achieving that aim. Third Reading of the Private Bill ought to concentrate on the consideration given to the Bill by your Lordships' Select Committee. When it went into committee there were 15 petitions against the Bill; they have all been withdrawn. We have heard today from the noble Lord, Lord Alport, who was chairman of that committee and we have before us the committee's special report on the Bill and on the instruction given to the committee at Second Reading, following the proposal of the noble Lord, Lord Sefton, to the House on that occasion.
Lord Carmichael of Kelvingrove: My Lords, perhaps I may ask the Minister whether he can confirm that, even if the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Sefton, were to be carried, it would have no effect on the Bill itself? Even if that amendment were carried, the Bill would still go through. Can the Minister confirm that?
Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, the Bill would still go through, but it might put doubt on the project which the Bill is intended to put forward. The noble Lord, Lord Hacking, has already made that point; I am sure he will wish to mention it again shortly.
This Bill has been very thoroughly considered. For all the reasons I have given, I very much hope that the House will reject the amendment and go on to give the Bill a Third Reading.
Lord Sefton: My Lords, before the Minister sits down, may I ask a question, since it will affect whether or not I shall want to divide the House? He stated that this is not the appropriate time or place to suggest a body to examine the question of regional policy. Can he tell the House when he considers that a reasonable time and place will occur?
Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, I do not think it is in my power to say when a reasonable time and place will occur. It is for the House to decide. I am merely giving my advice.
7.29 p.m.
Lord Hacking: My Lords, it seems a long time ago that I was telling your Lordships about a short extension to a light Docklands railway which was to run only 1·1 miles from the Minories to the Bank of England. The case for the promoters remains as I tried to put it in my introductory speech. The promoters say that there is a need for this railway and that all of those who may be adversely affected have had their views fully considered. Indeed they have had more than that; they have been satisfied because all 15 petitioners who presented petitions to your Lordships' House withdrew them.
I did suggest to your Lordships at the beginning of this long debate that that should be sufficient for you to give this Bill a Third Reading and allow it to pass without impediment through the House. However, because a number of matters which are quite outside the control of the promoters have been raised during the course of this debate and because I, who have been asked by the promoters to introduce this Bill at Third Reading, wish to be helpful, I shall do my best to deal with some of the points that have been raised.
It is clear to me, and I think it was clear before I came into this debate this afternoon, that the English have a great love for certain traditions and habits. One of those great traditions and habits since the Town and Country Planning Act 1947 has been the public inquiry. I have been the beneficiary of long public inquiries. When I was at the Bar, these long tedious public inquiries with large piles of papers kept my family in bread and butter. I had some doubt whether public inquiries produced the result that they were meant to. They certainly produced delay. Perhaps the inspector did not understand my client's case. I have always had some doubt about the validity and efficacy of public inquiries.
But that is not the issue here. In 1981 Parliament in its wisdom passed certain legislation. The noble Lord, Lord Graham of Edmonton, drew our attention to it. At the same time Parliament paid attention to the incorporation of urban development corporations and enterprise zones. Parliament did that with its eyes open. Parliament knew when it was doing so that it would cut back or curb the institution of the public inquiry. It did so for solid reasons, the solid reasons that the noble Lords, Lord Bellwin and Lord Walston, have put to the House. The noble Lord, Lord Bellwin, said that councils cannot have the same single direction as urban development corporations.
Referring to the London docklands areas, the noble Lord, Lord Walston, said, if I noted his words correctly, that if normal planning procedures had been followed we would not be where we are now. Therefore, when your Lordships bemoan, and are distressed about, the absence of public inquiries—I understand the emotion behind those feelings—you should he reminded of the decision of Parliament in regard to the Docklands not to go for the public inquiry route. But not going for the public inquiry route does not mean that there is going to be no

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consultation or no influence. During the passage of this Bill, the Select Committee of another place allowed a body called the Docklands Forum, which was not represented by parliamentary agents and was not represented by counsel, to make representations. The Select Committee of another place was influenced, and as a result, an undertaking was extracted from the promoters that they should consult with the Docklands Forum concerning the building of the railway. That is a precise example of how influence can be achieved without going for the public inquiry.
Lord Graham of Edmonton: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord. He places great reliance upon the sanctity of parliamentary approval for what the LDDC can do. Would he care to square that with the conflict that exists with the Greater London development plan which has a statutory basis and yet is in conflict with what has been proposed?
Lord Hacking: My Lords, the debate has gone wide enough. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Graham of Edmonton, will forgive me if I do not follow that hare.
Perhaps I may go back to the premise that I was putting to your Lordships. Even without public inquiries, there is an opportunity for influence. For that reason I was concerned that, at a fairly late stage of the proceedings, the right reverend Prelate should be raising so many questions and indeed complaints about non-consultation. I was mindful that the Bill was drawn to his attention in a way sufficient to cause the right reverend Prelate and other clerics in the City of London to file a petition on 6th February before the Select Committee of another place. If he will forgive me for saying so, when the right reverend Prelate filed the petition he appeared to be concentrating more on property than on souls.
I should not wish to discourage any Member of this House from moving to consider matters of how people are affected but in doing so those who are concerned about the lack of consultation should take active steps. This is what worried me when the right reverend Prelate spoke. I have before me a list of consultations carried out by the LDDC. There have been 15 meetings with a variety of bodies—the Docklands Forum, the Canary Wharf working party and the London Borough of Greenwich. There were 15 meetings between September 1985 and the end of that year. In January of this year there were 12 more meetings with other bodies. I have another list of 13 meetings which took place with the Docklands Forum and the Canary Wharf working party. I have another list of 12 meetings with the Limehouse Development, and so forth.
Lord Mellish: And the public meetings, my Lords.
Lord Hacking: And the public meetings, my Lords. With great respect to the right reverend Prelate, the consultation process has been going on for some time. I draw it again to his attention in the hope that from now on, those who have approached him and who are concerned about the area will make use of these consultations. Such consultations are not without influence. The noble Lord the Minister has drawn your
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Lordships' attention to the re-positioning of the whole Canary Wharf consortium because of representations made by Greenwich council, the Greenwich Society and others. As a result of those consultations—showing that the influence does exist and that it can be effective—a major change of decision was made. I quote that example but I am sure that many others could be quoted. I therefore ask your Lordships to look in fairness at the Bill and to look in fairness upon those from Canary Wharf and the LDDC who have been using their best endeavours to carry out consultations.
I wish briefly to tackle one or two other points. With great self-restraint, I did not attempt to intervene in the speech of the noble and learned Lord. I knew that I was being reproved as he was standing there waving the palm of his hand at me. I showed great restraint and did not join in the debate on the employment figures. The truth is that there have been several studies about prospective employment. There was the Henley report, the Peat, Marwick report and one from Queen Mary College which the right reverend Prelate mentioned. All the reports have come out with different emphasis and different figures. I do not know whether the noble and learned Lord knew it but I think he was quoting from the Peat, Marwick researches when he mentioned that only 1,800 local people may expect jobs. In fact, the Peat, Marwick report went higher on the overall employment prospects of Canary Wharf and produced the figure of 76,000. The figure came down to 1,800 by a curious route. I shall not take your Lordships through the mathematics in detail, but the report showed that 9,000 jobs would go to local people. When divided by the five boroughs, that produces, according to the person who has done the arithmetic for me, a figure of 1,800.
At the present time, there is serious unemployment in the area. There are no jobs available for the reasons that I described to your Lordships when I quoted from Mr. John Mills. Whatever amount of employment may come for the local people—and it will probably come on the upper level rather than the lower level—the fact is that this means new work and new jobs. That fact is undeniable.
There is new work from the Canary Wharf development, from the Heron quay of 1·5 million square feet and from the harbour exchange scheme of 1 million square feet. The Canary Wharf development may be the biggest but it is one of several schemes. The more such schemes come in, the more substantial employment will be created. This will help those who have suffered appallingly high unemployment and appallingly low wages. A figure of £8,000 was quoted by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Elwyn-Jones.
That brings me to housing. If wages are low, and if house prices are driven up by people of higher wages coming to the area from outside, local people will be at a disadvantage. The immediate answer, and the answer striven for by the LDDC, is to provide and keep control over as much publicly owned housing as possible. According to those who have given me information, that is exactly what the LDDC is doing. The longer term answer is to regenerate the area and bring up wages closer to the level of house prices in the area.

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I think that deals with the matter of housing. Therefore, I return to the Bill and to the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Sefton. More than once during the debate the noble Lord stated that he had no wish or intention either to stop or delay the Bill. Although he may think that his amendment will do neither of those things, I am advised that it will. It will obviously cause uncertainty over the Canary Wharf development. That uncertainty will cause delay—delay in negotiations on the positioning of the station, and other matters. That is how it has been put to me and how I put it now to your Lordships. It will cause delay and uncertainty.
If your Lordships were minded to accept the amendment, and even though the noble Lord, Lord Sefton, as he puts it, would not wish it so, there would be problems for the promoters in the execution of the works. For that reason, and many noble Lords have urged this upon the noble Lord, Lord Sefton, I hope that he will not press the amendment to a Division. If he does, I hope that your Lordships will vote against it.
7.41 p.m.
Lord Sefton of Garston: My Lords, some Members of this House will be blaming me for the fact that they are not about their social duties at this hour of the day; but that is not my fault. A number of speeches today, and even the Government brief, were useless. Who is opposing this Bill? The last speech took 12 minutes in which the noble Lord defended the Bill. I should like to see anyone in this Chamber who is opposing it. I am not, but I seem to be the troublemaker.
The noble Lord, Lord Marshall, tried to get out of what he said when replying to my noble friend Lord Carmichael of Kelvingrove. He said that if the amendment were passed there would be another inquiry and then said, "which would subsume"—a lovely word that—"the lead time taken already by the London Dockland Development Corporation in regard to Canary Wharf." That is not true. The promoter of the Bill tried to tell this House that if a chap from Liverpool named Sefton came down here and moved an amendment which merely sought to establish a Select Committee to look at what a lot of Members in this House believe is a serious problem it would stop or delay the developers at Canary Wharf. I only wish that that were true and that the developers would take notice of what this House decides.
I do not know why, for 11 minutes, the Government brief had to deal with supporting the Bill. Someone should tell the Government that no one is opposing the Bill. It seems to me that the only item of contention is that somone from the North had the cheek to come down here and draw attention to a problem that is vexing this nation. The problem can be highlighted by referring to British Rail in the London area not being able to recruit 7,000 members of staff who do not need training. The 7,000 members of staff could not be recruited because no one in the South-East wanted the jobs.
One hundred people from the North of England responded to an advertisement for four jobs as waiters in the South of England. In the end one chap from Liverpool and three Northerners were given the jobs because no one in the South applied. Do not talk to me
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about the unemployment problem in the South—it does not exist. The black economy exists. So I am not in great sympathy with the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London when he pleads for East London. I am not in very great sympathy with him because measured against the privation in the other parts of this country people in that area are on to a good thing.
I was pleased to hear the noble Lord, Lord Walston, say that he considered the question of a proper regional policy was a serious matter and that it should perhaps be given consideration by another body. I was hoping that the noble Lord speaking for the Government would have given me some indication that the Government would look sympathetically at the question of setting up an investigation into the affluent South-East and the deprived areas of the North. I did not get such an indication because the Government are entirely satisfied that these problems will be worked out by market forces. It is a political credence which they will, of course, continue to support. I cannot do anything to stop them.
The noble Lord, Lord Marshall, also said that someone was trying to "blow the whistle" on the Bill. All I can say to that is that the noble Lord, Lord Marshall, has not been listening to the debate and has not read about the issues. He evidently got everything wrong. Some noble Lords agreed that the problem was there, but felt that carrying the amendment would delay the Bill. I think it has been perfectly well shown that the Bill would not be delayed by the carrying of this amendment. It will not be delayed, it will not be hindered and it will not be obstructed. I think that that is accepted by the House and if anyone disagrees let them interrupt now and tell me how.
Lord Bellwin: My Lords, I can tell the noble Lord exactly that. So far as I am concerned, there is no doubt whatever that the Bill will be delayed, and I suggest that that is the view of most noble Lords.
Lord Sefton of Garston: My Lords, that tells me how—"It is the view of most noble Lords"! Am I seriously being told that Swiss banks and American banks will take note? As I said before, I should be very glad to think that they would take notice of your Lordships' House setting up a committee. Some Members of this House suggested that if I adopted a different course and introduced this subject in a different manner the House might agree to set up an inquiry. Would the developers then back out? Of course they would not. Too much money is involved.
Let me say this about the developers. I wish them speed. I hope they are successful, but I hope the LDDC has not been conned, because it is still only in the process of development. Now it has a challenge. Nobody is stopping it. This amendment will not delay the corporation, so it can go ahead. But when these developers who are speaking on behalf of all these international financiers come along to the LDDC and say that perhaps the wonderful schemes are not going to come to full fruition, just remember that someone introduced a note of caution about trusting developers too much.
I have had some experience. I have seen them flow into Merseyside. Of course they would have had an opportunity of seeing the wonderful schemes they

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produce, and I have seen them disappear into thin air like a mist disappearing with the sun. I hope it does not happen here, because I have already explained the reasons why I believe we should encourage the private sector, particularly in the financial world, to come into London.
Let me conclude on this note. Several noble Lords have spoken in the debate about the necessity to provide space for the expansion of the commercial and financial worlds in London. I agree. The future of the country depends on it. It is vitally important. But I suggest to those same noble Lords that when speaking about space in London they should first of all walk down Whitehall, then down Victoria Street and Tothill Street, and Nine Elms Lane, and see what is going up there; because the greatest users of space in the capital city of London are the Government and Government-sponsored organisations. There is not the faintest reason why HMSO should be at Nine Elms Lane. There is not the faintest reason why the Department of Health and Social Security should be in the Elephant and Castle when most of its customers are north of the Wash. And why on earth we should have the head office of the unemployment services in Victoria Street beats me, because it would do its job much better and more cheaply if it were sited in Manchester. I am simply saying: let the Bill go through.
I have been asked more questions today than I have ever before been asked in my life and they always boil down to one simple question: Are you going to divide the House? Until now I have not told anybody. I would divide the House—but I forgive you, and I shall not do so. I shall not do so for one reason. Let it be to the undying glory of all those people who really worry about the North-South divide that, on the first occasion when they had a chance of registering a vote about the importance of cutting the South-East down to size and allowing a comparative development to take place in the North, I could not ask this House to divide because I am not too sure that I would obtain a teller.
With those few words—and I am prolonging this speech a little—I beg leave to withdraw the amendment standing in my name.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
On Question, Bill read a third time, and passed.

Recreation and Youth Service (Northern Ireland) Order 1986
7.52 p.m.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Northern Ireland Office (Lord Lyell): My Lords, I beg to move that the draft Recreation and Youth Service (Northern Ireland) Order 1986 which was laid before your Lordships on the 18th November this year be approved.
This draft order which we have before us this evening will re-enact, with some amendments, the Recreation and Youth Service (Northern Ireland) Order 1973 and also the Recreation (Northern Ireland) Order 1975. The two main amendments—in
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fact there are several main amendments—relate to the functions of the Sports Council for Northern Ireland and the arrangements for payment of grants under the order.
The Recreation and Youth Service (Northern Ireland) Order 1973 provided for the establishment of a sports council and a youth committee for Northern Ireland and required district councils to secure adequate provision of recreational, social, physical and cultural activities. The Recreation (Northern Ireland) Order 1975 amended the 1973 order by enabling district councils to vest land for the purposes of the 1973 order and enabled the Department of Education to make grants towards the expenses of voluntary organisations which provided facilities for social, physical and cultural activities (in addition to those voluntary organisations providing for sport, recreation or the youth service as cited under the 1973 Order).
I wish to stress the excellent co-operation that has existed during the past 13 years between government departments, statutory and voluntary bodies, the sports council and the youth committee, each of which has played a significant part in the furtherance of sport, recreation and the youth service in Northern Ireland.
The proposal for a draft order was widely circulated for consultation and, as a result of recommendations made by the former Northern Ireland Assembly and the comments of other interested bodies, three changes were made to the proposal. These are incorporated in the draft order which is before your Lordships this evening.
The first of these changes is that Article 3 will enable the sports council to assist financially a non-voluntary organisation, provided that the Department of Education's prior written approval is obtained.
The second change is that Schedule 2 of the order before us this evening will provide for consultation with respresentatives of district councils regarding the membership of the youth committee.
The third change is that Article 11 (7), which your Lordships will see on page 9 of the order that is before the House this evening, will provide that where, in the opinion of the Department of Education, grant-aided premises cease to be used in accordance with the grant conditions, or cease to be required for the purpose for which they were grant-aided, the department, in recovering the grant and also the enhanced value of the premises, will have discretion as to the date from which interest on those sums will accrue.
Perhaps I may take your Lordships on a brief tour of the draft order. It is a relatively short measure consisting of 14 articles and three schedules. I should like to take your Lordships through the main changes to the existing law. First of all, if we look at Article 3 (3) we see that this will revise the functions of the sports council. It will no longer be required to fulfil a facilities planning role, because since the publication of the proposal we have found that the article has been extended to allow the sports council, with the Department of Education's prior approval, financially to assist these non-voluntary bodies. We may take as one example the purchase of a specialist piece of equipment which is required for a sporting event at a university or a public facility.

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Further, looking at Article 3 (9), which is at the foot of page 3 of the order, that extends to the Sports Council the Commissioner for Complaints Act (Northern Ireland) 1969 and also Sections 19 and 21 of the Northern Ireland Constitution Act 1973. These two Acts already apply to other public bodies in Northern Ireland—for example the Northern Ireland Housing Executive, the Education and Library Boards and Enterprise Ulster. Therefore we think it is consistent to bring the sports council within their ambit.
The Commissioner for Complaints Act empowers the Commissioner to investigate complaints concerning actions taken by the public body in the exercise of its administrative functions. The application of the sections of the Constitution Act will make it unlawful for the sports council to discriminate on grounds of religion or politics or for the sports council to require an oath or declaration as a condition of service or employment. Article 4 enables the council to make loans to its officers to enable them to purchase motor vehicles considered essential for their official business.
Article 6 enables the sports council to borrow temporarily any sums which are seen to be necessary to meet its approved expenditure. These borrowing powers are to be subject to certain limits and conditions which will be specified by the Department of Education and any sums borrowed are to be repaid before the end of the financial year in which they are borowed. I hope that your Lordships will see that that is short-term borrowing and it will be very closely monitored.
If we look further to Article 11—which is entitled Grants and your Lordships will find it on page 7 of the draft order before us—that re-enacts with amendments the Department of Education's power to pay grants to district councils in respect of their functions under the order and to voluntary organisations which provide facilities for recreation, sport, the youth service or for social, physical or cultural activities.
The main amendments which are made to the existing legislation are that there is no longer a requirement for the department of education to consult the sports council about applications for grant; and the power of the department to make grants to persons following approved courses of training for employment in connection with recreation, sport or the youth service is extended to courses for employment in social or cultural activities and will include part-time courses as well as full-time ones. Article 11(3) enables the Department of Education to attach such conditions as it considers necessary when making grants.
These conditions will include a requirement for those in receipt of capital grants to make repayment when grant-aided facilities are disposed of or, in the opinion of the department, cease to be used or required for purposes for which they were originally provided. With the significant increase in the value of property in recent years, it has been necessary for the Department of Education to seek additional safeguards to ensure that, where grant recovery is being sought, the department may also recoup an equitable share of the enhanced value of these facilities. Provision has also been made to enable
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interest to be recovered on the sums repayable from a relevant date to the date on which repayment is made to the Department of Education.
Schedule 1 Part 1 sets out the constitution and powers of the sports council, arrangements for the appointment and removal of members, and for setting up committees. The law is not changed except that the chairman of the youth committee is no longer a member of the sports council as of right, but both the sports council and the youth committee have agreed that each will have observer status on the other.
Schedule 2 sets out the constitution of the youth committee. Following publication of the 1984 proposal, an amendment has been made to provide for consultation with representatives of district councils when the head of the Department of Education for Northern Ireland is considering appointments to the youth committee. The chairman of the sports council will no longer be a member of the youth committee as of right but, as I have said, both bodies have agreed to be cross-represented by means of observers.
That concludes my brief journey through the draft order. I hope that I have not delayed your Lordships too long. I thought it wise to point out the main amendments. If there are any points which noble Lords wish to raise, I shall do my best to reply this evening. If not, I shall certainly write to your Lordships. With that, I commend the order to the House.
Moved, That the draft order laid before the House on 18th November be approved.—(Lord Lyell.)
8 p.m.
Lord Graham of Edmonton: My Lords, am I to understand that the Minister has taken both orders together?
Lord Lyell: My Lords, no, just the Recreation and Youth Service (Northern Ireland) Order 1986. I shall make brief reference to the next order.
Lord Graham of Edmonton: My Lords, I am more than grateful. From these Benches we approve the action of the Government and the thrust of what they are doing. We all appreciate, perhaps even more so in Northern Ireland, the value and benefit of properly funded recreation and sports facilities. We know just how big a boost it was to Northern Ireland when Mary Peters won the Olympic Gold Medal, and we know just how devoted are the soccer fans and the boxing fans. However, they are the names that hit the headlines. There are literally hundreds of thousands of other men and women, boys and girls, who enjoy this, so we do not intend to be obstructionist in any way.
The Minister talks in terms of powers and rights. I wonder whether he can introduce some sums of money or figures. After all, these are constitutional changes. Although finance ought not properly to form part of this, for the benefit of the House and for my own benefit, I should like to know exactly what we are discussing. It would help if he could give a general framework. I do not want to make a point about reducing the amount of money, but I should like to know what we are discussing.
The Minister talked about bringing the sports council within the ambit of complaints procedure

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practices. Can he tell us not only why this has been done but whether there are instances that cause him to believe this is necessary? This may be what the Minister would call a precautionary arrangement to make it all of a piece with other bodies. I should like to know whether he can quote some evidence.
In respect of the loans to officers, what he said sounded to me eminently sensible. Can he tell us what has triggered off doing this at this time? Have representations been made or dissatisfaction expressed? Is there an attempt to unify practices in a number of places?
Article 11(1) says,
"make grants towards the approved expenses of a district council in carrying out its functions".
Can the Minister give us some illustrations of the kind of matters for which he believes grants will be given? I appreciate that this may be a hostage to fortune. People may well be waiting, saying, "I wonder what we can apply for. The Minister in the House of Lords last week has in mind this, that and the other". On the other hand, to be fair, I assume that the Minister wants this to be useful and to be used, so it is not wrong to encourage people to do certain things that we like and of which we approve, for which public money is available. If the fund can bear it, one has to consider it.
One sees also in Article 13 that:
"A district council may acquire land otherwise than by agreement for the purposes of the section."
Can the Minister tell us some other ways? Is he talking about compulsory purchase in "otherwise than by agreement"? I can understand a public body needing a piece of land that somebody refuses to part with, but are we talking about compulsory purchase?
Regarding Schedule 1, the Minister talked in terms of the chairman of the sub-committee. I understood that it was someone who previously as of right sat on the sports council, and I thought that the Minister referred to some other body, but now it is not as of right.
Lord Lyell: My Lords, I shall come to that. It is the youth committee and the sports council.
Lord Graham of Edmonton: My Lords, these provisions are not dreamed up by civil servants for the sake of it—although on the other hand they may be. However, if they are not, they clearly rest upon some experience. I should like the House to be told why the Minister feels that it is proper to do that at this time.
With those few observations, I wish the operation of the order well.
Lord Hampton: My Lords, I thank the Minister for introducing this order. In an area where unemployment is so high, it is of particular importance. I notice that the original format has been amended at the recommendation of the Northern Ireland Assembly and other interested bodies. It is absolutely right that local opinion should be allowed to play its full part. It is a great tragedy that the Assembly, which could have done so much, does not at present operate.
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To summarise, the continuing functions of the sports council are to advise, encourage and assist as relevant. The council is empowered to make loans to its officers to help them buy cars or motorcyles for use in their work. Can the Minister say what the current rate of interest chargeable is? The sports council is itself to be allowed to borrow. Can the Minister say what rate of interest is here payable?
We are told that there shall continue to be a Youth Committee for Northern Ireland to advise the department, to co-ordinate the youth service and to encourage the provision of facilities. Are any young people invited to sit on this committee?
Lastly, we are told that a district council shall secure the provision in its area of adequate facilities for recreational, social, physical and cultural activities. When grants are considered, who decides whether the facilities at present available are inadequate?
I shall be glad to know the answers to these few questions. With that, we support the order.
8.9 p.m.
Lord Lyell: My Lords, your Lordships will, I am sure, be grateful, as I am, for the close attention paid to the order by the two noble Lords who have spoken, Lord Graham of Edmonton and Lord Hampton.
The noble Lord, Lord Graham, was kind enough to mention the famed sporting achievements of Northern Ireland. He drew attention to Mary Peters, who of course has had marvellous athletic facilities named after her. He will be aware that tomorrow night Mr. Pat Jennings, Northern Ireland's famous goal keeper, is having a jubilee match to which footballers from all over the world are coming. That will be a great sporting night for Northern Ireland and for Mr. Jennings. The noble Lord mentioned Mr. Barry McGuigan. I wish to add my tribute to Mr. Joey Dunlop who has done a great deal for the motor cycle industry and for Northern Ireland sport and who is something of a folk hero in North Antrim. That is the glory of sport. All those ladies and gentlemen take the smiling face of Ulster around the world.
The noble Lord, Lord Graham, asked about figures. I shall not take the noble Lord into the algebra of Article 11(5) on page 8.
Lord Graham of Edmonton: Please, my Lords.
Lord Lyell: My Lords, not tonight. The dinner hour calls and we may discuss the point later. I hope that the noble Lord will forgive me if we leave out the algebra this evening. He asked about the budget and what figures we were thinking of. I have a huge list of figures of what are called recurrent grants and capital grants. Since its inception in 1974, the sports council has received fairly large sums from the Department of Education, which is the sponsoring government body. I have not added the total, although perhaps I should. In 1985–86, the recurrent grant paid by the Department of Education to the sports council amounted to about £1,082,000. It paid about £36,200 in capital grants. Your Lordships will see that the amounts of recurrent grants are fairly substantial. For 1986–87, the estimate is £1,112,000. Capital grants have fallen, but they have fluctuated during the sports

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council's life under current legislation from £20,000 in 1974–75 to nearly £183,000 in 1979–80 and to as low as £5,500 in 1983–84. There is a fair amount of fluctuation in the amount of capital grants. I have no reason to believe that there is any shortage of capital grants for facilities that the sports council may want. There is a fair sum available, and £26,000 is estimated for this year.
The noble Lord also asked me about the sports council being brought under the jurisdiction of the Commissioner for Complaints Act (Northern Ireland) Act 1969. We used the opportunity of the draft order to extend that 1969 Act to bring the sports council into line with other public bodies in Northern Ireland; for example, the Northern Ireland Housing Executive, the Education and Library Boards and Enterprise Ulster, with which we shall be dealing in a few minutes. We believe that that was right and consistent and will not have any practical effect on the day-to-day life of the sports council.
The noble Lord also asked me about district councils and the type of facility that they provide. They range over a fairly wide area from multi-purpose district centres which comprise swimming pools and sports halls—the type of thing that I as a layman would call a "complex"—with swimming pools, sports halls, and small gymnasia with circuit training and so forth, to arts and community centres and fairly small playgrounds. They will cover sport and play, if one can call it that, over a fairly wide area.
I am advised that capital grants for district councils in the current year amount to about £3 million and that capital grants for voluntary sports clubs are about £230,000. Voluntary sports clubs include athletic teams, football teams and all the village and community sports clubs about which we read in the local newspapers. As the noble Lord pointed out, they do a great deal for the young people of Northern Ireland.
The noble Lord also asked me about what I would call cross-representation between the youth committee and the sports council. They were originally combined as the Youth and Sports Council. When we formed the separate bodies under this legislation, we did not think that there would be too much duplication of interests. The sports council and the youth committee have agreed that each body will have one or more members from the other body taking part in discussions. I understand that they will not technically be members of the sports council. The youth committee will be able to send at least one person, and maybe two, to represent it in the sports council, purely as an observer. I understand that such representatives will be able to speak but will not be able to vote. They will not be classified as members of the sports council. I understand that a similar arrangement will apply to the youth committee. I hope that that covers the point raised by the noble Lord.
The noble Lord, Lord Hampton, asked four questions. I had intended to write to him, but the winged messenger seems to have given me some information. The borrowing rate about which he asked is classified as the bank rate. We had better not
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go into that too deeply. I think it is the bank base rate. I do not think that the commercial rate would be much above bank base rate. Perhaps I may write to the noble Lord with clarification of that point. I promise to be brief in my written communication to him.
As to the adequacy of facilities, I understand that district councils will have the responsibility for determining that. District councils pay close attention to the sports council. That is their channel.
The noble Lord, Lord Graham, asked about the acquisition of land. I understand that district councils have powers of compulsory purchase but only after the normal procedures, including local inquiries, have been completed. I understand that compulsory purchase powers for sports or recreational facilities have been used only ten times since they were originally enacted in 1975. I hope that the noble Lord will see that there is no likelihood of any grave injustice being caused.
The noble Lord, Lord Hampton, asked about the age of members of the youth committee. I understand that young people are represented on the youth committee. I had perhaps better not go into the definition of "young people". They will be over 16. I think that they will be 16, 17 or 18. I assure your Lordships that the youth committee lives up to its name. Its members are not stiff and geriatric like some of the spokesmen in your Lordships' House.
I hope that I have covered most of the points raised by the noble Lord. I shall peruse my remarks and if I have missed anything raised by the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, I shall write to him. I promise to be brief.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

Enterprise Ulster (Continuation of Functions) (Northern Ireland) Order 1986
8.20 p.m.
Lord Lyell: My Lords, I beg to move that the second order before us this evening, the draft Enterprise Ulster (Continuation of Functions) (Northern Ireland) Order 1986, be approved. It was laid before us under the Northern Ireland Act 1974. Enterprise Ulster was established as a corporation under the Enterprise Ulster (Northern Ireland) Order 1973. This gave Enterprise Ulster powers to undertake works of environmental, amenity, cultural or social value for the purpose of creating employment in Northern Ireland. We hope that Enterprise Ulster will employ an average of some 1,200 employees in the course of the present financial year.
However, I am sure that your Lordships will agree that the work of the corporation is being hindered by the fact that its authority to undertake new project works lapsed on 31st March 1986. If action is not taken to rectify this position, Enterprise Ulster will begin to run out of sufficient work to keep its workforce gainfully employed. There is a degree of urgency in this matter arising from the recent introduction of a programme of initiatives through which the corporation aims to reduce job costs over the next three years.

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The programme needs to diversify into a much wider range of projects permitted by the 1973 order than the corporation has hitherto been accustomed to undertaking. Unless Enterprise Ulster's powers to engage in new work are restored at the earliest opportunity, progress on the achievement of the projected savings in job costs will be limited, and as a consequence the number of jobs it is hoped to provide will have to be reduced.
The simple purpose of the draft order before us this evening is to restore the authority of the corporation to undertake new project work and to remove the limitation on the duration of that authority for the future. The order will enable Enterprise Ulster to maintain its valuable contribution to the alleviation of the high levels of unemployment which we are currently experiencing in Northern Ireland. I commend the order to your Lordships.
Moved, That the draft order laid before the House on 18th November be approved.—(Lord Lyell.)
Lord Graham of Edmonton: My Lords, I simply rise to say that we on this side fully support not only the renewal of the order but the manner in which the Minister has introduced it. Can the noble Lord give us one or two illustrations of the new projects which it is possible may be included? If one looks at the order under the heading "Continuation of certain functions of Enterprise Ulster" we refer to:
"The functions of Enterprise Ulster under Article 4 of the Enterprise Ulster (Northern Ireland) Order 1973 shall, so far as they relate to new, projects for the carrying out of works or activities".
I wonder whether the Minister can give us some idea of the kind of new projects which he knows from conversations or consultations are in the pipeline? That is the only question that I wish to ask.
Lord Hampton: My Lords, I too thank the noble Lord the Minister for introducing this order. The stated aims are admirable and I shall not go over them again. They are to undertake works of an environmental, amenity, cultural or social value in order to create employment in Northern Ireland. We are told that its authority to accept new project work expired on 31st March this year. I should like to ask the Minister three questions. First, why was this lapse allowed to occur particularly as no extra public expenditure is anticipated? Secondly, have any new projects been held up, and if so what? The noble Lord, Lord Graham, touched on this matter. Thirdly, I should be glad to be reminded as to what the allowed annual budget for Enterprise Ulster is?
Lord Lyell: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Graham, and the noble Lord, Lord Hampton. The noble Lord, Lord Graham, wanted me to specify any of the extra duties that can be carried out by Enterprise Ulster. I understand that there certainly would be new projects in the social and amenity fields. These would be, as I understand, such matters as small repairs to buildings and houses and matters of this level, but on a fairly small scale. I understand that there are no specific new projects yet lined up.
This order before us this evening is principally in the nature of being permissive since the original order about which I spoke, the Enterprise Ulster (Northern
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Ireland) Order 1973 in Article 12 is marvellously headed, "The cessor of functions of the Corporation". It says:
"The functions of the Corporation under Article 4".
this was written in 1973—
"so far as they relate to new projects would cease on 31st March 1978".
That originally provided for a span of about five years. I understand that the order was renewed again in 1983. However, this time it was for only three years, because the order was not seen as being absolutely necessary, and its lifespan in 1983 was perceived as being necessary for only three years. This has not been the case. That is why we are moving the order tonight. There will be no finite date. The order tonight will permit Enterprise Ulster to carry on with whatever projects are permitted by the original order in 1973; however, not for a specified period of three or five years but for the foreseeable future. That is the reason we have the order before us this evening.
I am not able to spell out to the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, what harm has been done by the gap between 31st March this year and today when we are moving the new order. However, I understand that the Enterprise Ulster has been able to continue to function. But we wish to have the powers to carry on any new projects which might come to hand.
On the budget, I am afraid that I do not have a figure regarding how much is spent. Perhaps I may write to the noble Lord. I was able to tell the noble Lord that we aim to maintain 1,200 jobs this year. The new probationary wage of £75 per week for new recruits will give some indication of the costs. Of course, they are only the wage costs. They do not take into account administration and the support costs for Enterprise Ulster. I am extremely grateful to my noble friend. I understand that it is in the region of £7½ million. Indeed the exact figure I have is £7.465 million. That will be the cost of Enterprise Ulster this year.
Once again I promise that if I have missed any questions from the noble Lords, Lord Hampton or Lord Graham, I shall certainly write. However, I think that it would be the wish of the House that I should commend the order to your Lordships.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

Speech Therapists: NHS Pay
8.28 p.m.
Baroness Turner of Camden Baroness Turner of Camden rose to ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will comment on the difference in pay between speech therapists in the National Health Service and other graduate professions in the National Health Service.
The noble Baroness said: My Lords, I rise to put to your Lordships the Unstarred Question standing in my name on the Order Paper. In so doing I must declare my interests. Speech therapists are members of the union ASTMS of which I am assistant general secretary. However, I am not speaking today simply to make a salary plea for a section of membership. I quite appreciate that your Lordships' House is not a suitable forum for salary negotiation. I am emboldened to speak to your Lordships on this subject because I have been impressed since I have been in the House with the

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concern that is frequently expressed for the welfare of the disadvantaged and the disabled. It is on the subject of speech therapy as a profession and its rewards that I wish to speak. It is my belief that too little is known about it.
Speech therapy for speech disorders began in this country in about 1906, when classes for children with speech problems were developed in Manchester. Other cities followed suit. The original pioneers of the profession were ladies of independent means who worked for an honorarium to establish the foundations of the discipline. They trained recruits of a high academic standard. University entrance qualifications have been required for at least 22 years.
Academically, speech therapy has never been an easy option. It involves a wide range of academic subjects, including advanced neurology, normal and abnormal psychology, phonetics and linguistics, the whole field of speech and language pathology and a wide range of medical and surgical specialities, with heavy clinical commitments during training. The profession is now all-graduate entry. I have here the outline syllabus published by the University of Newcastle on Tyne for a B.Sc. (Honours) Degree in Speech and Psychology, obtained through a four-year course, and the B.Sc. (Honours) Degree in Speech similarly obtained through a four-year course leading to a recognised professional qualification. This is a fairly tough course to undertake.
The profession has always been poised between medicine and education. There is of course a strong teaching element. However, there has been uncertainty about precisely where the profession fits in. There was an examination of the situation by a committee chaired by Professor Quirk, which reported in 1972. The Quirk Report still provides a valuable insight into the profession and the problems it faced then and indeed still faces.
The foreword to the report, which was signed by Margaret Thatcher, Keith Joseph, Gordon Campbell and Peter Thomas, says:
"Although disorders of speech and language may not be as obvious as physical disabilities, they nevertheless cause great distress to large numbers of people. They hinder some of the most fundamental human activities—making wants known, expressing ideas and getting to know other people. Those engaged in the treatment of these disorders are therefore performing an essential service and making an important contribution to human happiness.".
The foreword expresses thanks to Professor Quirk and his committee for the helpful account of the nature and uses of speech therapy and the emergence of the profession and for its rigorous analysis of the problems.
As I have said, it is a valuable source of information as to what speech therapy actually is and the qualities required successfully to undertake it. Not only are these qualifications academic. As one school concerned with the training of speech therapists put it to the Quirk Committee:
"One of the main interests of this work lies in the fact that every case has to be assessed as an individual problem, because the personality of the individual can affect the results of treatment. For this reason, students [of speech therapy] should have a stable, well-balanced personality themselves, as well as a sympathetic and understanding attitude towards others. This work calls for patience,
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initiative and imagination: to the prospective student these qualities are as important as the necessary academic ability.".
When one considers what the work actually entails, it is clear why these qualities are required. Speech therapists are involved in the treatment of a wide range of communication problems in childhood, including specific language disorders, delayed language development, articulation disorders, stammering and disorders associated with cerebral palsy, with emotional disturbance, with hearing loss and with mental subnormality.
As far as adults are concerned, patients include those with an acquired reading and writing problem as the result of a stroke or head injury. Indeed, speech therapists helped many young men wounded during the Second World War who had to face speech difficulties as a result of head injuries. Stammering is also a condition where speech therapists have been of great help. Here there have been some very famous clients, including His Majesty George VI.
There are voice disorders, hearing loss and mental illness, as well as mental subnormality to be dealt with as far as adult patients are concerned. Anyone who has seen, as I have, a formerly articulate person who has suffered from a stroke struggling to make himself understood, or parents of a child with learning difficulties because of problems of communication, can have no doubt at all of the value of the work that speech therapists do and of the need for it.
It is an almost entirely female profession. When the Quirk Report was published, 99 per cent. of the profession was female. I gather it is almost the same today. I think the figure is 98 per cent. It may well be that the history of the profession and its purely female, caring character has been responsible for its lack of status and the low level of pay which has been a feature for a long time and which no doubt contributes to the shortage of qualified speech therapists at the present time.
It is an undoubted fact that the service is inadequate to meet present needs. A recent report by Dr. Pam Enderby and Dr. Robin Philipp, extracts of which appeared in the British Journal of Disorders of Communication, makes this very clear. They say:
"The study of the literature supports a widely held view that the true incidence and prevalence of speech and language disorders is much higher than previously estimated. The data that have been gathered are deficient in many respects but suggest a revised estimate for the size of the speech and handicapped population in the United Kingdom as follows:
Severe communication disorders (that is, people with little or no spontaneous speech) 800,000 persons;
Moderate communication disorders (speech and language is noticeably disordered) 1.5 million persons".
They suggest that these estimates of the size of the speech and language handicapped population in the United Kingdom could well be conservative, because there are some groups of people who suffer from speech and language disorder which have not been included. Nevertheless, the estimates strongly suggest that the speech impaired population quoted in the Quirk Report, which at that time was 324,180, is a considerable under-estimate. It is clear from a report produced by VOCAL, (Voluntary Organisations Communication and Language—a voluntary organisation concerned with these problems) that there is an unfulfilled need. The VOCAL report is

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critical of the restructuring of the National Health Service in 1982 which VOCAL claims produced a serious setback for the profession because of the loss of Area Speech Therapy Management, which had existed until that time.
The report which VOCAL produced is the result of a questionnaire sent to speech therapists who are members of the College of Speech Therapists. The overall impression is of an overloaded, understaffed service struggling against ignorance and apathy. Speech therapists are well aware that they are not reaching all who need their services but are equally well aware that they could not cope with the volume of work if all the patients were referred to them.
The VOCAL report says that it did not seek views in the questionnaire regarding salaries and levels of grading. It says that this was a deliberate omission because the report it was seeking to make was primarily concerned with patient care. Nevertheless, VOCAL concludes that:
"It appears that little progress has been made in recognising and rewarding the important role of speech therapy in health care. It is deplorable that a graduate profession highly trained in all aspects of human communication should be accorded such low priority in staffing, accommodation and clerical back-up."
There has been, and still is, great dissatisfaction with pay levels. Perhaps I may quote some examples drawn from the salary structure at present operative (the date is with effect from 1st April 1986). A speech therapist who is a graduate, gets at point of entry £6,096 per annum. At point 04 in the scale (four stages on) the salary is £7,056 per annum. These are speech therapists with what is known as a "relevant degree". A senior speech therapist can attain the princely salary of £7,368 per annum rising to £8,676 per annum. A senior at the next level commences at £8,676 and rises to £9,720. Your Lordships will be aware of many professions and other occupations in which far less social commitment is required where the salary and the rewards are very much greater than that.
It is not surprising that with rewards at this level there is a shortage of people willing to undertake this necessary work. A survey conducted by the College of Speech Therapists in 1986 showed that, of 130 recent vacancies for speech therapists remaining unfulfilled for more than three months, 20 per cent. were vacant because of low pay. It is all very well to be socially motivated, to enter a caring profession, but bills nevertheless have to be paid. The profession is out of line with other graduate professions in the health service—for example, clinical psychologists—to the tune of several thousand pounds per annum.
As I have already said, speech therapists themselves, who are almost entirely women, believe that there is an element of sex discrimination here. They believe that if this were not a female profession it would be more highly valued. So, they decided to test out our equal value legislation and three of them recently took test cases to an industrial tribunal. However, they failed. They could not even get to the point of having their cases considered in substance with an independent expert undertaking an evaluation, because the industrial tribunal has accepted the argument of the employing health authorities that because salary scales are approved by Regulation 3 of the National Health Service Remuneration and Conditions of Service
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Regulations 1974, the health authorities concerned have no power to vary the salaries paid, even though they may be discriminatory. I have no doubt that the speech therapists concerned will pursue this further. However, if the Government would themselves look again at the profession and its rewards, or lack of them, an expensive trek through the courts on the matter of equal value could be avoided.
It is surely necessary to do something. Every so often newspapers carry stories which highlight the desperation of parents who cannot get speech therapy for children who need it. There was the case of Mr. and Mrs. Wallace, who went to the High Court to try to force a local education authority to provide speech therapy for their nine-year-old boy, who had profound difficulties in learning to speak. They failed in their action. There was the case of the Wilson family, which was referred to in a recent story in the Sunday Times, who were in despair when a school language unit was closed, but who fortunately were able to secure the support of VOCAL, the voluntary organisation to which I have already referred, and the unit was reopened. Incidentally, VOCAL has a great deal of information available about unfulfilled need, based on the material that it has collected.
I therefore appeal for this important but undervalued profession to be given the necessary support and for the Government to ensure that badly needed services are extended and made available to the large numbers—young and old—who need them. On behalf of these kindly, gentle women, who are most unmilitant, I appeal for support.
8.41 p.m.
Earl Attlee: My Lords, when I was a child I could have done with the services of a speech therapist. This morning I could have done with the services of a computer therapist. I wrote the speech on my computer and I crossed the "t"s and dotted the "i"s. Then, after polishing the priceless prose, I pressed the wrong button and lost the lot. I had to start again from scratch.
I should like to begin by congratulating the noble Baroness, Lady Turner of Camden, on putting down this Question, which is, I think, very important. I am only sorry that there are not more noble Lords present on both sides of the House.
I speak with a personal interest. In my maiden speech in your Lordships' House, I mentioned the fact that one afternoon I was talking to a very pleasant lady in the London Press Club. After some time she asked me whether I stammered as a child. I admitted that I had. That was over 50 years ago. I was rather puzzled as to how she knew this. She explained to me that she was a speech therapist. I wondered whether she knew I stammered because there was a certain hesitation in my voice and because there were certain words that I consciously avoided. To be honest, one of those words is "therapist." One cannot very well speak on this subject without using that word. I wondered also whether it was because I speak slowly. This lady had more than just a keen ear. She had spent four years training to become a speech therapist.
The noble Baroness has mentioned some of the attributes that are required. I must admit that some I

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did not know until the noble Baroness mentioned them. Four years' training is a long time. When you have your degree and are a qualified speech therapist, what have you got? You have a job that pays less money than if you had spent three months or possibly six months learning to be a shorthand typist. That is disgraceful.
Therefore, is it any wonder that we have a shortage of speech therapists today? Who do they treat? Obviously, they treat the old. The noble Baroness mentioned those who have had a stroke and who have to be taught to speak again. Speech therapists also teach the young. I should like to give one small illustration. In my new family there is a young son. Let us call him Sid, because that seems to be quite a popular name these days. At the age of nine, Sid had a lisp and, being concerned, his mother went to his school and was told "What do you want? Expert advice? You want a speech therapist? No, you will give the boy a complex". How could the boy have a complex when he knew he lisped. However, the school said "No". By the time the boy was 13 years old his lisp was well developed and he went to another school. Little boys being what little boys are, they teased him. His mother told the school that she was worried about Sid and his lisp. The school said, "We quite agree. What Sid needs is to see a speech therapist." And he did. At the end of the period of speech therapy, his mother was told, "What a pity we did not have him at the age of nine because we could have cured his lisp in six weeks rather than the six months that it took". One cannot really blame the first school. How many of your Lordships know about the training of speech therapists, what they can do and what they do? If we do not know and if the general public do not know, then, sure as hell, local authorities do not know. That is a great shame.
In the broad spectrum of these medical matters—noble Lords can hear how technical I am getting—everyone knows what physiotherapists do. If you have aches or pains or something wrong with your neck, they do the right thing and you are cured. However, with a speech disorder—a great many people have a speech disorder—if you are lucky and you are caught young enough, you will go to a speech therapist, and the disorder will be put right.
As a young lad, I stammered because I was left-handed. There were attempts to make me write with my right hand. But there was no way that I could do so. Left-handed people always notice other people who are left-handed. The noble Baroness the Minister is left-handed and the Government Whip who was sitting in the Chamber a few minutes ago is also left-handed. Unlike me, I do not think that the noble Baroness the Minister has a stammer. Possibly, unlike me, she is also not dyslexic. Whenever I can I mention the fact that I am dyslexic, because it helps those who are dyslexic to know that just because they are dyslexic does not mean that they cannot stand up and speak in public.
The noble Baroness, Lady Turner of Camden, kindly sent me a leaflet produced by the ASTMS, the union to which the speech therapists belong. It contains a foreword by Clive Jenkins, the general secretary and, as she was then, Muriel Turner, the
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assistant general secretary. It is a short leaflet. It is a good one. I would recommend it to your Lordships. I would recommend it to local authorities, and I would recommend it to those members of the DHSS who have responsibility for the payment of salaries and for the numbers of qualified speech therapists who are employed. If your Lordships, myself and everyone else knew more about what speech therapists do, perhaps we should start to get somewhere in respect of having sufficient numbers and paying them the money to which they are entitled.
8.51 p.m.
The Earl of Halsbury: My Lords, before addressing your Lordships this evening, I have an interest to declare. I am in mid-term of my second term of office as the elected president of the College of Speech Therapists. I am therefore deeply grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Turner of Camden, for having raised this subject at all in your Lordships' House this evening, and equally grateful for the extremely distinguished presentation that she has made of her subject. It really renders it quite unnecessary for me to say any more about speech therapy than she already has. Instead, I am going to draw on my own experience to advise your Lordships about where the difficulties lie.
Some 16 years ago the total mess in which successive governments had landed the salary structure of the National Health Service was deposited in my lap by the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State of the day, and I was asked to make of it what I could, starting as chairman of the review body for doctors' and dentists' salaries. To that was added a few years later a departmental committee of inquiry—with a different committee of which I was chairman so that I was the common factor to both—for the salary structure of nurses and midwives in the National Health Service.
Then a third branch fell into rebellion and I was landed with another departmental committee of inquiry into the salary structure of what were sometimes called the paramedicals and sometimes called the PSMs—an acronym which stands for "professions supplementary to medicine"—together with the speech therapists, who were not at that time classified as paramedicals or PSMs. After five years of struggle, I brought a rational scheme of salary differentials into the National Health Service which was accepted by the government of the day, but the great problem, having got this scheme of differentials, was where to level peg the centre of gravity of this system with the centre of gravity of other professions.
After a lot of discussion with my colleagues—and if I sometimes speak in the first person singular I hope you will understand that this is not out of any egotism on my part; it is just a habit of speech—I and my colleagues finally agreed to level peg the ward sister in a hospital with the police sergeant in the police force at the station level. That is the station sergeant in the police force. That was, I think, really the least sexist piece of level pegging there ever was. It gave universal satisfaction. No one in the police force complained that the nurses, midwives and paramedicals were paid too much, and no one in their professions complained that they were paid too little.

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As a result of this exercise I came to the conclusion that the mess from which I had rescued the system would recur within a decade unless the Secretary of State accepted my private recommendation—this was not a public recommendation—to render my function permanent by having a review body for these other bodies. This was because my analysis led me to the conclusion that the Whitley Council procedure was invalid outside the Civil Service.
It is extremely important to realise that in the Civil Service the Treasury is the employer, and in the Whitley Councils the employees, or their representatives, can meet the employer in a bargaining match. But the moment you try to apply that to the National Health Service you find that the National Health Service is in fact a man of straw. It has no money of its own other than the money that the Treasury give it. The Treasury is ever willing to play hide and seek, and to put a third party between it and whoever seeks to get money out of it who will say impassively and with great regret, "Unfortunately, the Treasury won't agree to it'.
I do not want to say anything ungallant about the Treasury. I have always maintained that probably they are the most brilliant collection of double firsts dedicated to the national interest that you could find if you searched the world for them. I think that that is unarguable. Whether in some contexts they possess an ounce of common sense between the lot of them is arguable, but I shall not argue it this evening because in other contexts they undoubtedly work on a basis of common sense.
They are dedicated to the proposition that Her Majesty's Government should spend less. They are the only body of people in the country dedicated to this proposition. Everybody else wants Her Majesty's Government to spend more, provided they spend it on somebody's pet thing. The Treasury do not care what you do not spend money on, as long as you do not spend it, and that is their maxim. Quite frankly, without them we should all be bankrupt.
The speech therapists are now excluded from the review body system, which, eight years after I had brought order out of chaos, collapsed into chaos again, and the Secretary of State of that day then had to institute the type of review body for nurses, midwives, paramedicals and so on that I had recommended earlier. That has now been going for a few years. All they ever ask for is, "Back to the Halsbury scale" so I did them well in the past, and that is probably why the Treasury thought that I was too expensive, and they would not accept my recommendation that I be made a permanency of some kind or other.
The speech therapists stood ouside this arrangement. Why? It would be easy for the noble Baroness to say, "Well, they are the victims of their own decision. The reason they don't get properly paid is that they are looked after by Whitley Councils and not by review bodies". But, my Lords, self exclusion from the review bodies that exist is deliberate because they feel themselves to have more in common with other bodies such as medical psychologists than they have with physiotherapists or radiotherapists, who work under supervision from doctors. Speech therapists are not the subject of reference from doctors. They practise on
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their own. They are their own kind of profession and they want their own kind of review body.
Twelve years ago I liberated them from two situations, both of which were intolerable and one of which has been referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady Turner of Camden. The first was that pay scales were linked to the number of subordinates controlled. Speech therapists do not control large numbers of subordinates. They are much more like counsel learned in the law who practise on their own at the Bar and whose remuneration depends upon their reputation and their skill. At most they may have a junior; and a speech therapist may have at most an assistant. From that prison I liberated them by saying, "There is no connection, or there should be no connection, in some professions between your salary and the number of people you control, where those professions do not control large numbers of people".
The second situation from which I liberated them was that they were imprisoned in far too low a salary structure because of it. It seems to me the ultimate in reductio ad absurdum that a person should be paid less in the profession for which he or she has been trained than he can earn in some semi-skilled profession outside it. That is absolute nonsense from beginning to end. This was the point made by the noble Baroness and to which I believe your Lordships will agree.
The essence of false economy is to spend good money on training experienced people and then have half of them desert the profession for which they have been trained because they are being underpaid. It is a totally false economy. You end by training twice the number of people that you need in order to have perhaps not quite the number of people that you want.
That will conclude what I want to say to your Lordships this evening, because I have tried to place before you what amounted to five years of my life dedicated as a voluntary public service to this subject to enable your Lordships to understand exactly why this situation has recurred and will recur until a proper review body is appointed for the speech therapists equally with the medical psychologists and with one or two other professions in a similar group who do not work under medical supervision, who do their own diagnostics and have their own means of therapy.
I must tell your Lordships that it is a wonderful experience to sit at the side of a speech therapist watching her taking down in international phonetic shorthand the utterances of somebody who, from a speech point of view, is handicapped and then turning back her notes of last week to compare the performance of last week with their performance of this week in order to evaluate the progress that is being made. When you actually do this and talk to them, you will realise what very highly skilled, dedicated people they are. It was always my friendship with them and my insistence on taking the most general, rather than the narrowest, view of the profession that persuaded the speech therapists to extend their interests a little wider than they were originally—from such subjects as stammering and so on, or recovery from strokes, into such associated subjects as dyslexia, which they now take under their wing to a very large extent, which are so important in the educational field.

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The speech therapists and the medical psychologists are a different kind of person altogether from the physiotherapists and the radiotherapists; they are a different kind of person from the doctors and the surgeons; they are imprisoned in the Whitley Council system (as they ought not to be) and they badly need a review body to look after them. Although, as the noble Baroness has said in introducing this subject, it is quite right that this is not the forum in which to discuss finance, pay, individual salaries and that sort of thing, it is a very right and proper forum to discuss the structure whereby these matters are evaluated and settled. On that note, I think I may conclude what I have to say.
9.4 p.m.
Lord Lovell-Davis: My Lords, the subject of this debate, framed as a deceptively simple-sounding Question to the Government, is not only important of itself—to speech therapists, those who have embarked with some understandable trepidation on the qualifying course and to many thousands of our population who will desperately need speech therapy to live or to regain a full life—it is also important in that it raises the question of the support or lack of support the Government give to services, other than crisis-intervention services, which a constantly reorganised and increasingly restricted National Health Service is attempting to provide.
A very wide audience outside your Lordships' House will appreciate the initiative taken by my noble friend Lady Turner in asking the Government to state their position on a distressing, not to say dangerous, anomaly which affects the quality of so many lives.
I hope that what the Minister says in her response to this Question will at least give us some cause for hope—if only that the Government are aware of the seriousness of the problem, of the strength of the "equal value" claim and the need to remedy the present situation.
My Lords, it is desperately serious. In the limited community of your Lordships' House, in the 12 years I have been here, we have witnessed many sad instances of lively and articulate colleagues suddenly and tragically transformed by the effects of cerebral haemorrhage or stroke. Many of us have personal acquaintance of people, even young or in early middle-age, whose whole happiness and ability to function in society has depended upon their being able to regain their speech following a stroke. As has been said, the need for speech therapy goes far beyond the victims of stroke. Thousands of children are born with, for one reason or another, speech defects which, unless remedied, will effectively wreck their lives, causing misery and the frustration of any hope of their leading a full and useful life.
It is quite astonishing to me, as it is to the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, that we have come to the position in which it would be hard to find a recently-qualified typist for the £5,000 or £6,000 a year which is all a graduate speech therapist, after several years of intensive study and practical work—an essential part of the training process—can expect to earn on present scales of pay. Is it any wonder that many give up the struggle, either during training or even having qualified, when the reward for so much work and
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dedication, often having to pinch and scrape to survive as a student, is an income on which one can barely live? Where is the incentive to train for or stay in the profession, vitally necessary though it be, when all that is likely to happen at the end of the day is that your interest and dedication will be exploited and you will be grossly underpaid? As a one-time member of a district health authority, a trustee of a hospital's academic centre and someone still deeply involved in the health service and community care, I know of potential recipients of that derisory £6,000 a year who, in the process of achieving their aim of becoming speech therapists, have acquired academic qualifications up to an MA degree before earning their qualification as a speech therapist—because speech therapy is, of course, a graduate entry profession.
As result of all that effort, and provided you can keep body and soul together in the process, what can you look forward to as the financial crown of your career? It is from £10,556 to £13,770 as a district speech therapist, as against the comparable professional qualification of top grade clinical psychologists of from £18,000 to £24,000. That is a difference at the top grades of £10,000 a year.
Obviously, if the Government set up and maintain such ludicrously inappropriate pay scales and disregard any reasonable claim for improvement, they will get what they deserve, or at least they will get what the country neither needs nor deserves—that is, qualified people dropping out of the profession altogether, or going into the private sector where they can devote their talents to curing lisps rather than post-stroke defect, or they will go abroad and take one of the posts regularly advertised in publications in this country, at starting salaries in excess of the equivalent of £25,000 a year. It is a rotten choice to be confronted with when, as a qualified speech therapist, you recognise only too well that the real and desperate need for your skills lies within the National Health Service.
There is of course an aspect of this problem which does not help towards its solution. It is pretty clear to anyone who looks at the situation carefully that we are into the old "equal pay" bind. Most speech therapists, as my noble friend Lady Turner has pointed out, are women. Therefore any authority seeking an escape route from facing social need, because it costs money, can dismiss speech therapy as a second income profession. This is the argument, which I rather hoped was by now wholly discredited, which says that women get married and have children and their husbands can support them; and so we can deal with the problem on a second income basis. My Lords, what outrageous nonsense, 10 years after the Sex Discrimination Act became law!
It seems to me that the case is so clearly made that I need not go over it in great detail. The answer is obvious, and I believe it has been clearly made by the Association of Scientific, Technical and Managerial Staffs who, although they were not responsible for prompting me to intervene in this debate, have done much to draw attention to the plight of speech therapists. The union is to be applauded for so forcefully taking up the case of this small but socially very important sector of its overall membership.
At the risk of offending the susceptibilities of those whose interest I am trying to promote, I have to say that in contrast to the Association of Scientific,

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Technical and Managerial Staffs, the professional body, the College of Speech Therapists, seemed to me—until tonight at least—to have chosen to maintain a discreet silence on the subject of pay. I hope the college are not deliberately adopting a low profile—and the contribution made by the noble Earl, Lord Halsbury, encourages me to believe they are not—for it is disappointing when one comes across a professional body which distances itself from problems such as this because of a misguided fear of political involvement, as though to say anything in the political arena is implicitly to make a commitment to one party or another, which of course is not the case.
I hope—though I have to admit without great expectations—that in replying to the Question raised
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by my noble friend, the Government, through the Minister and her officials, will not simply resort to bombarding us with statistics. In recent years we have had a surfeit of bland and often misleadng figures to divert attention from what everyone really acknowledges to be problems fundamental to our society. I should like to think, in the interests of a vitally important profession and of those who now need, and in the future will probably increasingly need, its expert help, that this debate will draw from the Government a real expression of concern and commitment—and, what is more important, some practical demonstration of sincerity. The profession has more than a legitimate claim: it has an irrefutable case. It is within the Government's power to concede this claim. They should do so.
9.13 p.m.
Lord Hooson: My Lords, I have an interest to declare in that my elder daughter is a speech therapist of five years' standing and she certainly would not have forgiven her father if he had not taken part in this debate. But I am also very happy to do so because, over the years when she was an undergraduate and since, I have had occasion to meet speech therapists and students of speech therapy at different stages of their development—and not only from this country but from other countries—who have stayed with us.
I must say that I have always been tremendously impressed by them as a body, by how gentle they are, by the great sense of social devotion that they have. They are a body of people in a small, relatively new profession and they need a great deal of help. I should have thought they were the last people on this earth who were likely to prove a militant body, and they are among those who render dedicated service to the community.
The noble Lord, Lord Lovell-Davis, at the outset of his speech expressed the belief that a large number of people outside this House would be grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Turner of Camden, for raising this debate. I wish I could share that belief. I think the noble Baroness is to be greatly congratulated on raising this debate and on the way in which she has framed her Question. But I think one of the problems of the speech therapist is that so few people in this country appreciate what speech therapy is about. There is a great deal of ignorance about it.
The noble Lord was correct in saying that people who have experience of speech therapists—those who have a relative who has had a stroke, those who have had handicapped children, those who have had any kind of contact with children with speech defects and have seen the speech therapist at work—will have very great appreciation of their work. On the other hand, the vast majority of people in this country have not had need of the service of a speech therapist. Unlike a doctor or a nurse, the vast majority of people in this country do not know what speech therapy is about. They are unaware of what speech therapists do, of their substantial skills, of their expertise and of the great range of their responsibilities.
Already reference has been made to the fact that the speech therapist, by the nature of her profession—and, after all, we are talking of a profession with 98 per cent. female members—has to work on her own. From the moment that speech therapists qualify, they are on their own, without direct day-to-day supervision, and they bear a very heavy responsibility. They have to diagnose, to counsel and to treat all kinds of conditions. The range of their patients is great, from the child who the parents learn is having difficulty in expressing himself or herself in communication, to the man or woman who has been highly articulate but suddenly has a stroke; the range of responsibilities is very great.
Then there is the width of their duties, the articulation problems which affect a number of people in their intelligibility and effectiveness of speech. There are the language disorders which affect the use and understanding not only of the spoken word but
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these days of the written word as well. There are voice disorders which affect audibility and the effectiveness of communication. There are all the problems that are involved with people who have had operations on their throat, the larynx and so on, who must have restored to them the means of communication. There are the fluency disorders such as stammering when the continuity of speech is interrupted. Every aspect of these very wide problems has to be assessed, evaluated and treated by the speech therapists. Therefore, with the greatest respect, I do not think that the average citizen has any idea of the breadth of the duties of speech therapists.
I remember that when my daughter was studying speech therapy a cousin of my wife, who is a distinguished orthopaedic consultant surgeon, was staying with us. She happened to look at my daughter's books on the medical aspects of the throat and so on that speech therapists were learning, and her view was that they studied them in far more detail than any GP would need to do in order to qualify. It is a more limited sphere that speech therapists have to study, but that surgeon's view was that she would not like to have to do it, and she had no idea until she saw the books and the notes that speech therapists had to study these matters in such depth.
Today we have the ludicrous position that fully qualified speech therapists, who have entered a university course which is very trying and difficult because they need high academic qualifications, who have to work on their own when they are qualified and who have very heavy responsibilities, are paid less than somebody else who has completed a three-month secretarial typing course. It is a national disgrace and we are taking advantage of them. Everyone knows that that is true.
I not only congratulate the noble Baroness on bringing this matter before the House, but I also congratulate her on the way she has framed her question. As the noble Earl, Lord Halsbury, rightly pointed out, we are an unsuitable body as such to go into the details of precisely what relative pay should be. What we need and press for is an adequate review body. The beauty of the way in which the noble Baroness has framed her question is that it invites the Government, in the form this evening of the noble Baroness, Lady Trumpington, to comment on the difference in pay between speech therapists in the National Health Service and that of other graduate professions. We therefore look to the Government, who surely have a responsibility towards this group of dedicated graduates, to express their view on the matters which have been drawn to their attention this evening.
9.22 p.m.
Lord Rochester: My Lords, like other noble Lords who have spoken in this short debate, I am most grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Turner of Camden, for having asked this Question and for the way in which she has done so. Our discussion seems

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clearly to have demonstrated that the National Health Service is facing a serious and growing shortage of speech therapists. Perhaps your Lordships will allow me to take this opportunity to say how, in terms of overall pay policy, the situation might perhaps be improved.
I join with my noble friend Lord Hooson and also with the noble Earl, Lord Halsbury, in saying that in the short term the best way forward may be to arrange for speech therapists to be included, along with doctors, nurses and dentists, among those whose pay and conditions are determined by review bodies set up for that purpose. I also join them in expressing the hope that the noble Baroness, Lady Trumpington, when she comes to reply, will have something constructive to say to us on that point.
There is a further basic problem from which I think we cannot escape; namely, that the Government at present have no pay policy other than exhortation for the private sector and arbitrarily set cash limits for the public sector. All past experience shows that one great difficulty in the public services is that when matters relating to the pay and conditions of a particular group—such as teachers—are examined in isolation, attention is concentrated on the problem from the viewpoint of the group concerned rather than from that of others affected by it. That, surely, leads to the conclusion that there is a need to establish procedures for pay determination which in the longer term might apply to the public services generally.
As I understand it, there are within these services at least five major groupings: the health service, the Civil Service, education, the police and the armed forces. Similarly, there are at least three different kinds of employer: central government, local authorities and what might be called "quangos". Provisions for pay determination therefore need to be sufficiently flexible to take account of the different circumstances affecting each of these groups.
I do not for a moment underestimate the difficulties of working out practicable procedures along these lines. But that is no reason for inaction. In my view, arrangements should be such as to ensure that the relevant trade unions continue to play a part in pay negotiations. The application of the raw principle of market forces is surely not enough. We cannot merely seek to recruit and retain a sufficient number of staff for a particular public service at a given point in time. Many people in the National Health Service—speech therapists are a good example—need training, experience and expertise that can be acquired only over a period of years. That necessitates provision for career development and for a progressive salary structure.
It is surely inefficient and contrary to the public interest that such people should move in and out of the health service in accordance with fluctuations in their pay and conditions relative, it may be, to those in the private sector. There is also a need for staff—even such dedicated staff as speech therapists—to be thoroughly well motivated. That means that they need to feel that they are being dealt with fairly. Under these conditions there is surely no escape from ensuring
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that, in the public services, pay is broadly comparable with that available for similar work in the private sector.
A number of consequential requirements arise, none of which can be satisfied easily. This is not the occasion, I realise, to do more than merely mention some of them. I refer to the need for a generally acceptable means of collecting and assessing relevant data; the need to take account of factors such as fringe benefits, pension arrangements and security of employment; and the need to ensure that comparability is applied within a particular pay structure in a way which makes internal sense in the public service concerned. In return, society, which has to foot the bill, is entitled to receive a service comparable with that available in the private sector.
This might perhaps be achieved through some kind of efficiency audit on which, again, it is not possible to elaborate now. But in all this, the essential point is that it is surely unreasonable for the Government to argue that the taxpayer can afford only a certain level of pay increase in the public services unless they are prepared to introduce a pay policy that is applicable to public and private sectors alike.
Finally, I suggest, not for the first time, that provision needs to be made for the settlement of disputes by a third party in the event of negotiations resulting in a failure to agree. At this late hour I shall not weary your Lordships by rehearsing once more the precise form that such an arbitrating body might take, nor the procedure under which its findings could be overturned only by parliamentary resolution. But it is only if treatment of the kind that I have sought to advocate is accorded to those employed in the public services that they will feel they are being rewarded fairly.
I recognise that, at first sight, all this may seem a little remote from the specific plight of speech therapists. But, in my view, their situation cannot be divorced from the larger question of overall pay policy and structure. It is when that question is resolved that the pay of speech therapists will fall into place.
9.30 p.m.
Lord Ennals: My Lords, as others have done, I want first to thank most sincerely my noble friend Lady Turner of Camden for raising this very important issue and for the admirable and clear way in which she has done so. She has attracted a significant number of your Lordships to the debate who have in one way or another a great deal of experience on this subject. I am thinking of the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, who, clearly from his lucidity and the way in which he always speaks, has benefited from the skills of the speech therapists.
I think of the noble Earl, Lord Halsbury, as the great liberator. There are many people in the health service who look back with gratitude to the work he did over the years to which he made reference. The speech therapists are very fortunate to have him as their president.
I want to move on to pay tribute to the speech therapists themselves. As with almost every profession, theirs is a changing one. I must add that I am not uninfluenced by the fact that two of my close

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relatives are also practising speech therapists. They are very proud of it and I am proud of them. Moreover, I shall not conceal the fact that my membership of ASTMS, which represents most of their interests, prejudices me in their favour.
The importance of their work is increasingly recognised by the public and by the professions, not only because it has become an all-graduate profession—important though that is—but on account of the very wide range of skills and experience required. As the noble Earl, Lord Halsbury, said, they are not like professions—he said "supplementary" but I prefer "complementary"—to medicine. They are not working under medical instruction. They are highly skilled, and highly trained.
A speech therapist is responsible for the acceptance of cases and for the planning and determination of treatment, having regard to inter-disciplinary consultation and co-operation. This places a high level of responsibility on a speech therapist, particularly on the newly qualified therapist who is in the main working alone, without direct day-to-day supervision. As the noble Earl said, it is quite different from the newly qualified physiotherapist who will probably be working in a large hospital department where patients may be allocated on a daily basis and where he or she is constantly under supervision and able to take advice.
My noble friend Lady Turner and the noble Lord, Lord Hooson, went through some of the speech therapists' major responsibilities, and I do not need to do so. Every aspect of the problems with which they are faced must be assessed and evaluated. That involves the use of test procedures which the speech therapist is trained to administer. Careful and detailed assessment is needed before an appropriate treatment can be planned and carried out.
Thus the speech therapist is completely autonomous in the clinical sense. This accountability is not unlike the level of responsibility borne by members of the medical profession. The speech therapist alone has the expertise to assess, diagnose and treat disorders of communication in children and in adults—sometimes the very elderly and the very young, and sometimes the disabled. Speech therapists are specialists and consultants in the field. As such they do not receive direction or guidance from other professional associates. Of course where the speech therapists suspect that other disorders may be present they will freely consult other professional colleagues.
From the start the speech therapists go alone into schools, day centres, adult training centres and homes. They tackle consultants, give talks and demonstrations, including career guidance talks. They give lectures to doctors, nurses, medical students, physiotherapists, teachers, and so on. Each one is an expert in his or her own field and should be seen as such. With that pattern, which is clear to all of us, one has to ask why speech therapists are so badly paid. It is not as if it has always been so—which was a point made by the noble Earl, Lord Halsbury—and it went on after the noble Earl ceased to have those responsibilities.
If we look at the year 1979, in which I have a particular interest, in some instances the salary of
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speech therapists was similar and in some instances better than people in a range of other comparable professions in the National Health Service; yet by 1986 speech therapists have become by far the least well paid, in spite of the fact that during the same period the level of qualification—and I think the level of performance—improved enormously. We now recognise entry to the profession as being through a three or four year degree course. Many therapists have gained further qualifications including an MSc or a PhD. They are highly qualified people. One asks how it happens that they are so badly paid.
The noble Baroness, Lady Turner, gave some figures which were very alarming indeed. It is ludicrous that these people at the end of a four-year course will receive not much more than £6,000 a year, and one wonders how the profession is able to attract people. It can only be by deep commitment, and I say to the Minister that the National Health Service can no longer rely upon deep commitment. People need to be paid for the job and if the best people are to come into vital professions such as this we have to pay them what they deserve.
Let us look at the teachers, who after industrial action achieved an increase of 16 per cent., and compare them with the speech therapists who would never withdraw their labour from their patients but who have had to accept a 6 per cent. increase. In fact, over 20 per cent. will be necessary to retain the pay status that speech therapists enjoyed in 1979. One asks what action the Government will take. What effect do the Government think that these appalling conditions of pay will have on recruitment? One has to recognise that the demand for speech therapists is increasing greatly and there is a shortage in this profession.
The speech therapist's caseload would be daunting enough if she had only patients with stroke and head injuries to treat. Conservative estimates give a combined figure of between 20,000 to 25,000 new cases per annum in Britain requiring speech therapy following strokes and head injuries. Yet this small, predominantly female profession also treats communication disorders arising from cancers of the head and neck, brain tumours, Parkinson's disease, multiple sclerosis, motor neurone disease, cerebral palsy, cleft palate, hearing loss, etc. The list is a very long one. The Government will have to face up to this problem.
Perhaps I may raise just one final issue, which was touched on by the noble Baroness, Lady Turner. A few days ago in the courts the parents of a nine year-old boy who had profound speech difficulties failed in the High Court to oblige a local education authority to pay for the speech therapy that he needed. First, I do not understand how this could be so. Lord Justice May, sitting with Mr. Justice McCowan, said that he had the "greatest sympathy" for the family but local education authorities were not responsible for providing such therapy. That seems to me to be quite wrong. After all, children with other disabilities are taught by the education authority.
The judge went on to say:
"Its provision should be a matter for the district health authority through the National Health Service".

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Of course the decision had been awaited with great anxiety by parents all over the country who have children in need of speech therapy. It was clear that when they went to the National Health Service it could only offer a very much smaller service than was known to be needed by the child. The area health authority had agreed to provide three daily sessions but it said that lack of funds prevented it from providing more.
I do not understand why speech therapy is not an educational responsibility for a child of school age in the same way that it is a health responsibility for children and adults of a greater age. If this is so, why is there a lack of funds to prevent the child having the necessary therapy?
The debate is about pay. It is in the interests of all speech therapists that we are speaking today, not just the present speech therapists but the speech therapists who will be coming into a noble and skilled profession—or not coming into a noble and skilled profession, because I say to the Minister that unless the situation is improved and improved quickly, in a few years' time we shall find the same shortage of speech therapists (I speak as president of the College of Occupational Therapy) as we are now finding of occupational therapists. We shall find that skilled people will simply not perform this essential role in the National Health Service unless the Government are prepared to find the funds to make the situation compatible with that of other professions to which they may well be attracted.
9.41 p.m.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Security (Baroness Trumpington): My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Turner of Camden, for so elegantly and eloquently raising this important matter. I should like first to say to the noble Lord, Lord Lovell-Davis, that I am seldom bland and, I hope, never misleading.
My noble friend Lord Campbell of Croy led a debate on this subject, to which my noble friend Lord Caithness replied, in May last year. The noble Earl, Lord Attlee, paid his tribute to speech therapists. I am glad to be associated with a fellow south paw.
Today's debate gives me the opportunity to say publicly how much we appreciate the value of the work of speech therapists. Many thousands of people throughout the country are forever in debt to them for their expert and painstaking work, and of course I see much of the wonderful work that they do when I am working with disabled war pensioners.
In times past there was limited understanding of the extreme feelings of frustration and isolation experienced by those who were speech impaired and the distress suffered by their families. The noble Lord, Lord Hooson, was quite right to draw attention to that fact. Happily today ignorance is giving way to a greater knowledge both of the cause and effects of this form of handicap and how it may be overcome with the help of speech therapy. Health authorities have recognised this and have expanded their speech therapy services at a greater average rate than the general rate of increase in NHS expenditure as a whole.
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The noble Baroness, Lady Turner, mentioned the extremely valuable work done by VOCAL. I am sure that she will be interested to learn that my Department made VOCAL a three-year grant of £20,000 a year to enable it to establish a permanent base.
I should like to reply to another point raised by the noble Baroness concerning the Enderby Philipp Report, which states that the size of the speech and language handicapped population is not known. It goes on to quote the estimates that the noble Baroness mentioned and to which the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, in turn referred. These estimates were gathered from various texts used in speech therapy departments of colleges in the United Kingdom and in the United States. The department has no other figures on the instance and prevalence of speech impairment in the population.
The noble Baroness, Lady Turner, in the course of her excellent speech, raised particularly the question of the pay of speech therapists and the difference between their pay and that of other graduate professions. That indeed was the theme taken up by many other noble Lords.
I should say at the outset that the pay of NHS staff who are not either general managers or covered by pay review bodies is a matter for negotiation within Whitley Councils. Representatives of speech therapists negotiate with the management side of the Scientific and Professional Staffs Council. The management side members are appointed by the Secretaries of State to represent the management interests of the whole NHS in reaching decisions on the sums available to the management side and have regard to the overall needs of the service and the total sums available for pay, prices and service developments. Agreements are made by both sides.
Historically, speech therapists, as the noble Baroness, Lady Turner, acknowledged have hovered between education and health. The Quirk Committee in 1972 described them as preferring:
"To remain in the perhaps slightly precarious position of a small autonomous profession, between education and medicine, claiming affinity with both, defending their independence against both and enjoying the patronage of neither."
I return to a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Lovell-Davis, apart from those speech therapists employed by voluntary bodies such as the Spastics Society, few speech therapists choose to enter private practice.
The noble Baroness, Lady Turner, mentioned the case of Gregory Wallace. I watched that case with interest, and noted that the judgment concluded that the provision of speech therapy was a non-educational provision and was a matter for the health authority. The Government accept that.
I return to the noble Earl, Lord Halsbury. Although it is true, as he said, that speech therapists do not depend upon medical referrals, nevertheless, in normal circumstances referrals are made by doctors and when they are from non-medical sources a relevant medical opinion is sought as soon as practicable.
Despite the fact that speech therapists feared for their independence and status by being associated with the other professions supplementary to medicine, until

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1982 they were included with them in the Professional and Technical "A" Whitley Council for pay purposes. One of the recommendations of the committee of inquiry chaired by the noble Earl, Lord Halsbury, in 1974 was that the pay of speech therapists should be formally linked to those professions, and that recommendation, as he well knows, was implemented.
In 1983, the pay review body for nursing staff, midwives, health visitors and professions allied to medicine was set up and speech therapists were invited to take part but refused to do so. While most speech therapists said that they were not opposed to the principle of a review body, they did not wish to be linked with other professional groups with whom they believed they had little in common. The noble Earl, Lord Halsbury, said that speech therapists need a special pay review body, but the present body represents a variety of different professions. It could well have dealt with their special needs but they refused to join, as was their right. Their decision was crucial and one which some speech therapists now regret.
Because the setting up of the pay review body excluded a number of staff groups from the existing negotiating machinery, the system of Whitley Councils had to be rearranged. The present position is, as I mentioned earlier, that representatives of speech therapists negotiate with the management side of the Scientific and Professional Staffs Council. That is an ad hoc arrangement until the trade union side can agree on the formation of a new council.
I understand that in 1985 speech therapists made a formal claim for pay parity with other graduate professions. They eventually received the same percentage increase as other staff groups, but the management side agreed to examine jointly with the staff side the arguments which bore on that aspect of their claim. That examination was to be completed in time for the next 1986 pay round.
Soon after giving that undertaking, the management side became aware that three speech therapists, with the backing of their union, had made claims to industrial tribunals for equal pay for work of equal value with named psychologists and/or pharmacists under the Equal Pay Act 1970, as amended. When the management and staff sides met again earlier this year, the management withdrew its offer of joint examination of the pay parity claim on the grounds that it might prejudice any defence that health authorities might want to make against the industrial tribunal claims. The industrial tribunal has recently found in favour of the health authorities concerned, but I understand that an appeal to the Employment Appeals Tribunal is likely to be made. I am sure that in these circumstances your Lordships would not expect me to comment.
I am informed that the management side conducted its own review of the speech therapists' claims and consulted NHS management. The speech therapists' 1986 pay claim again included a claim for pay parity with other professions. In the light of its consultations the management side told the staff side that it did not believe that the pay of speech therapists should be linked with that of any other profession either within or outside the NHS. Eventually, the speech therapists agreed to accept the management side's final offer of 6
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per cent. on the pay bill. I remind the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, that this is the same as that for most other Whitley staff groups and is twice the current rate of inflation. I emphasise that there was no sex discrimination in this award.
I must try to clarify the position with regard to a subject mentioned by the noble Earl, Lord Halsbury. I understand that the management side of the Whitley Council wrote to the staff side over two years ago agreeing to discuss the grading structure and asking for ideas. No reply has been received, and the staff side has not raised the matter again. If the staff side were to put forward proposals even at this late stage, I am sure that the management side would be happy to discuss them without commitment on either side.
Comparisons on pay are difficult. We can argue all night whether profession A should get more than profession B. But the fact is as the noble Baroness, Lady Turner, agrees, that statistics show that there is no shortage of speech therapists against authorised posts. Neither are we aware that there is any lack of applicants for training. Indeed such evidence as we have suggests that the opposite is the case.
The noble Lord, Lord Rochester, stated that there is a growing shortage of speech therapists. However, the number has increased by about 9 per cent. over the year to September 1985 and the number of speech therapists in post has almost doubled since 1974. Pay therefore does not appear to have had any impact on recruitment. The fact that speech therapy is now an all-graduate entry profession does not automatically qualify them for increases in pay. Many practising speech therapists do not have degrees under the old entry rules. Pay ought to be related to service and not qualifications. Other factors such as conditioned hours have also to be taken into account.
We have had an interesting and informative debate. The noble Earl, Lord Attlee, mentioned an ASTMS leaflet. I have seen this leaflet. However, the NHS has many demands on its services; pay is by far the largest. The merits of each demand have to be looked at in the light of overall priorities and available resources. Pay levels must reflect various factors, including recruitment and retention of NHS staff. As the noble Baroness, Lady Turner, said, this House is not the proper place in which to conduct pay negotiations on behalf of any staff group. However, I hope your Lordships will agree that we have certainly reviewed the position this evening.
House adjourned at four minutes before ten o'clock.