Lords Sitting of 17 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 Ely.

Barony of Strange
The Lord Chancellor (Lord Hailsham of Saint Marylebone): My Lords, I have to inform your Lordships that Her Majesty has been pleased to terminate the abeyance of the Barony of Strange in favour of Jean Cherry Drummond. The barony has been in abeyance since the death in 1982 of her father John, Lord Strange. A Writ of Summons has been issued in pursuance of Section 6 of the Peerage Act 1963, and the noble Baroness attends at the Bar to take her seat.
Baroness Strange took the Oath.

Air Transport: EC Internal Market
2.36 p.m.
Baroness Burton of Coventry: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether prior to relinquishing the Presidency of the European Community on 31st December they will make a statement on the step-by-step advance they propose for the inclusion of air transport in the agreed decision to work towards the elimination of barriers to the internal market of the Community by 1992.
Viscount Davidson: My Lords, the Council agreed in June that the 1992 target date applies to air transport in common with other sectors of the economy and that there should be a step-by-step approach to full liberalisation by that date. We have therefore concentrated on a three-year first step. At the Transport Council on Monday there was unanimous support for our proposals on capacity and a substantial majority in favour of our ideas on market access. Seven states clearly support our proposals for cheaper fares and only two are still totally opposed.
Baroness Burton of Coventry: My Lords, I wish that I were as optimistic as the Minister in his reply. Will he not agree that responsibilities of the Presidency extend to the whole of the Community? I am asking whether the Minister considers that at the end of this year, on 31st December, we, as President, should issue a statement on what we have tried to do on this matter, where we have failed and what we think the step-by-step advance towards this 1992 achievement should be. That would surely be a legacy to leave behind as President, and a necessary one.
Viscount Davidson: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness. I shall certainly convey her remarks to
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my right honourable friend. I am sure the House will agree that my right honourable friend has done extremely well. Our efforts represent solid progress and put the incoming Belgian Presidency in a commanding position to complete a worthwhile first-stage package.
Baroness Burton of Coventry: My Lords, I am sorry to niggle. Is the Minister aware that I think Mr. Moore and the Government have done their best? However, it is not enough. Is he aware that there is no sense of urgency in the Community on these matters? Everything we read in the paper speaks of developments in three or four years and when the Commission has taken further decisions. Can the Minister urge on his right honourable friend and the Prime Minister that we would welcome a Statement on 31st December along the lines I have suggested?
Viscount Davidson: My Lords, I shall certainly convey the remarks of the noble Baroness to my right honourable friend. The noble Baroness knows better than I do how difficult it is to get two parties to agree on a policy, let alone 12. However, we are treating it with the maximum urgency.

Balance of Payments:Estimate
2.40 p.m.
Lord Ezra: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what are their latest estimates on the outturn for the current account of the balance of payments in 1986 and 1987.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Trade and Industry (Lord Lucas of Chilworth): My Lords, the Chancellor in his Autumn Statement put the likely outturn for this year at broad balance on the current account and a deficit of £1½ billion for next year.
Lord Ezra: My Lords, will the noble Lord comment on the trend in the non-oil visible balance underlying the overall balance, bearing in mind that so far this year there has been a deficit of some £9½ billion on the non-oil visible balance compared with £10 billion for the whole of last year? Does this not indicate that, in spite of improvements in our export trends, imports of goods continue to surpass them?
Lord Lucas of Chilworth: My Lords, manufacturing output between September and October is up by a half per cent. The forecast for 1987 on 1986 is an upturn of 4 per cent. While it is true that imports continue to exceed our own domestic consumption, the outlook remains bright.
Lord Williams of Elvel: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that there is a serious problem of credibility in the estimates produced by Her Majesty's Government on balance of payments in 1986 and 1987? Will he comment on the revised estimate of invisible earnings which was debated on the Statement which the noble

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Lord repeated from another place in this House and which has now come down in the latest figures from the Central Statistical Office? Does the Minister think that those figures will come down further in the future?
Lord Lucas of Chilworth: My Lords, I do not believe that there is any lack of credibility in the statistics provided by the CSO. I do not think that I can add anything to that which I said in response to the noble Lord and to other noble Lords in this House on 26th November.
Lord Ezra: My Lords, nonetheless, is it not surprising that, as we indicated in the debate on the occasion of the Statement being made by the noble Lord, estimates should have been made on invisibles so close to the period when the actual figures would emerge? In the event the actual figures were somewhat lower than the estimates then made. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Williams, that if this is to become a regular practice, even if a lack of credibility may not be the case, nevertheless we could become confused.
Lord Lucas of Chilworth: My Lords, again, I do not think that I can add a great deal to what I said on 26th November. It has been the practice of all governments to adjust and modify the figures as information comes to light. That could be upwards as well as downwards.
Lord Harmar-Nicholls: My Lords, is it not unhelpful to the overall position of this country for the official figures to be accused of lacking credibility without facts being produced to justify such an extreme comment?
Lord Lucas of Chilworth: My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for his question. The truth of the matter is that our exports are in a very healthy position. Over the last two or three years we have gained in world share on 1980. We continue to make an impressive performance in world markets. The surpluses which have arisen in other areas have led to increased demand, reflected in higher imports, and that is indicative of the success of the Government's fiscal policies.
Lord Beswick: My Lords, how can the noble Lord expect credibility when he talks about increased exports without giving a satisfactory explanation for the increased imports?
Lord Lucas of Chilworth: My Lords, I am quite sure that the noble Lord appreciates, as I do, that as the wealth of the country increases consumer demand increases. Our manufacturing industries have not yet been able to meet the increased demand. There is therefore a demand which is satisfied by imports.
Baroness Seear: My Lords, does the noble Lord agree that a considerable amount of the increased demand is being financed by debt, and that this not only creates serious problems but to some extent makes nonsense of the Government's claim to be able to control liquidity—to control the money supply?
Lord Lucas of Chilworth: My Lords, I do not think that this makes nonsense of the Government's policies at all. If the noble Baroness would like to put down a Question on the element of indebtedness of the nation, I or one of my noble colleagues will be pleased to answer it.
Lord Beswick: My Lords, has the noble Lord not noticed that the total amount of debt floating around has increased by £1,000 million? This has been used for consumer purposes. That is why we are sucking in imports from abroad. Has this not something to do with the Government's financial policy?
Lord Lucas of Chilworth: My Lords, that may well be so and it may have some effect upon the Government's policy. Nevertheless, the situation reflects a growing confidence both of the lender and the consumer and a confidence in the buoyancy of the economy.
Lord Mackie of Benshie: My Lords, did I understand the noble Lord to say that the result of this tremendous efficiency and success was to be a £1½ billion deficit in the balance of payments next year?
Lord Lucas of Chilworth: My Lords, I shall not comment on the forerunner to the noble Lord's question because he draws an assumption which I did not. I gave an estimate and repeated the Chancellor's estimate of the outlook. One must accept that the change in the trading pattern that has occurred over the last two years, notably since the fall in oil prices, takes some while to readjust. I believe that our manufacturing industry is making that adjustment, and that is reflected in the acceptance of our exports abroad.
Lord Williams of Elvel: My Lords, can the noble Lord explain how, when the figure of £800 million per month surplus on invisibles was given by the Government from statistics provided by the Central Statistical Office at the time that he commented on the Statement on invisibles, two weeks later the CSO revised that figure down to £750 million? What new facts came to light for it to revise the estimate downwards?
Lord Lucas of Chilworth: My Lords, I explained to your Lordships' House on 26th November exactly how these figures are arrived at, the length of time it takes to collect figures on invisibles in particular and the way in which adjustments are made. I see nothing wrong with the way in which the CSO has arrived at the figures. I believe that it is right and proper that, as the information comes through, the adjustments as it sees them are made public.
Lord Leatherland: My Lords, in view of the sad nature of the figures that the Minister has given us, is he satisfied with the economic policy which the Government are pursuing?
Lord Lucas of Chilworth: My Lords, first, I see nothing sad whatever in the figures. Manufacturing industry output is at a higher level than it was in 1980. Investment is greater; profitability is greater; our

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penetration of export markets is greater. That is all indicative of the success of this Government's financial policies since we came to office in 1979.
Lord Leatherland: My Lords, does the Minister agree that the number of unemployed, which is well over 3 million, is greater than it was in 1979?
Lord Lucas of Chilworth: My Lords, I or one of my noble colleagues will be happy to answer questions on unemployment if the noble Lord cares to put down a specific Question.
Lord Leatherland: My Lords, the Minister cannot answer the question.
Lord Beswick: My Lords, in all kindness perhaps I may say to the noble Lord that credibility is not increased when he selects 1980 as the base line instead of 1979.

London University Slide Library
2.49 p.m.
Lord Ardwick: 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 the report is true that the London University Library Resources Committee has recommended the closure of the photographic slide library.
Baroness Hooper: No, my Lords. I understand that the committee's recommendation was that new ways should be found of funding the slide library.
Lord Ardwick: My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for that Answer. This will give great reassurance to many extramural students who regard the library as an absolutely essential teaching aid in the appreciation of art. I also ask the noble Baroness whether she is aware that they are extremely disturbed at the threat of the savage cuts over the next three years in the extramural department of London University; so much so that the department itself may be jeopardised.
Baroness Hooper: My Lords, in so far as the Question concerns the University of London library—that is, the central library and not the more heavily used individual college libraries—this is currently operating at a deficit, and it is consequently reviewing which of its activities might be reduced or how additional income might be attracted, which has given cause to the rumours which prompted the noble Lord's Question.
It is recognised that the library has a collection of over 300,000 photographic slides covering architecture and fine arts and that this collection is held mainly to support teaching by the Department of Extramural Studies. But, as I have said, there is no question of the collection being disposed of in any way but of seeking to find sources of alternative funding.

Engineers: Transfer to Teaching
2.51 p.m.
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 what steps they are taking to encourage the suggestion of the Engineering Council that engineers who are also mathematicians and physicists and who are nearing retirement should take early retirement and join the teaching profession.
Baroness Hooper: My Lords, the Government are taking a number of measures to attract engineers and other suitably qualified people to change to a career in teaching by, for example, special funding for initiatives in higher education institutions, the development of better industry and education links, and the introduction of a £1,200 bursary scheme for students.
Lord Taylor of Blackburn: My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for that reply. May I ask the noble Baroness whether she will go on encouraging the Engineering Council in the way that they are going, in making suggestions for people from their ranks to take up posts in education?
Baroness Hooper: Yes indeed, my Lords. The Government welcome the Engineering Council's concern and interest in this matter. I am sure that the industrial affiliate organisation of the Engineering Council, which has a loose network of subscribers from the public utilities and other major industrial companies who gather together to discuss items of common interest, will prove extremely helpful, and officials are currently giving further consideration to the best ways to tap into this matter.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, would the noble Baroness not agree that these laudable objectives would be better secured if the Government were to refrain from their hamfisted attempt to intervene in the teachers pay negotiations, which are rapidly approaching a successful conclusion, and to withdraw the Teachers' Pay and Conditions Bill?
Baroness Hooper: No, my Lords.
Lady Kinloss: My Lords, did the Minister see a report in the Daily Express of Tuesday, 2nd December last, that Margaret Chavington, the director of the Think British Campaign, welcomes the £100 million plan for a pilot network of technology schools? Can the Minister say whether this is a government plan, where they hope to build the technology schools, and whether they would consider employing these retired teachers in these schools?
Baroness Hooper: My Lords, I am not absolutely aware of the particular reference in the newspaper report to which the noble Lady has referred. Certainly the Government are, as I said, in a number of different ways taking initiatives to encourage both the increase of training of teachers in these areas and, in the form of the city technology colleges, in the spread of technology instruction.

Business
2.54 p.m.
Lord Denham: My Lords, after the end of the short debate on the accountability of the security services and before the short debate on Cyprus, my noble friend Lord Belstead will, with the leave of the House, repeat a Statement that is to be made in another place on the Agriculture Council. It has been agreed through the usual channels that the Statement which is to be made in another place on the Foreign Affairs Council 15th/16th December should, by leave of the House, be printed in the Official Report.
I should like to say a word about the arrangements for this afternoon's two short debates standing in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Putney, and the noble Lord, Lord Willis. It is customary in short debates that the mover is allowed approximately 15 minutes, and that the Minister should rise to reply not less than 20 minutes before the scheduled end of the debate. In the case of the short debate in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Putney, it means that all other speeches should be limited to a maximum of nine minutes. If any noble Lord should speak at greater length, it will be to the disadvantage of subsequent speakers in the debate.
In the case of the short debate in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Willis, the number of speakers is such that it is not necessary to propose any formal time limit, but I know that the House would appreciate it if noble Lords would still limit their speeches to a length in keeping with the spirit of these short debates.

Foreign Affairs Council Meeting, 15th-16th December
Following is the Statement by the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs referred to above:
"With permission, Mr. Speaker, I should like to make a Statement on the meeting of the Foreign Affairs Council which I chaired in Brussels on 15th and 16th December. My honourable friend the Member for Wallasey represented the United Kingdom.
"Foreign Ministers confirmed the reappointment for a further two-year term of the President of the Commission and the Vice-Presidents.
"The Council noted that a solution had not yet been reached in the negotiations with the United States concerning the accession to the Community of Spain and Portugal. Ministers emphasised the need to reach a settlement as soon as possible, and confirmed the decision of the April and June Councils that in the event of unilateral US action the Community would take equivalent action to defend its interests.
"The Council approved a negotiating mandate for a Trade and Economic Co-operation Agreement between the Community and Romania.
"The Council expressed its concern about the considerable number of current trade problems with Canada, and invited the Commission to pursue these matters vigorously and firmly with Canada.
"The Council discussed the guidelines for the 1987 Asia and Latin America aid programme, and an export stabilisation scheme for least developed countries not party to the Lomé Convention.
"The Council discussed two important procedural consequences of the Single European Act: concerning the powers of the Commission and the Council's own rules of procedure. I am glad to say that on the latter point a satisfactory agreement was reached.
"The Council also discussed social measures in the coal and steel industries; and held a conciliation meeting with a delegation from the European Parliament on the new regulation on food aid policy and management on which the Development Council agreed a common position on 11th November. The regulation, the UK Presidency initiative, was then formally adopted.
"An Association Council at Ministerial level was held with Cyprus. Both sides agreed on the importance of bringing the current customs union negotiations to an early conclusion."

Debtors (Scotland) Bill [H.L.]
2.55 p.m.
The Earl of Dundee: My Lords, on behalf of my noble and learned friend the Lord Advocate, I beg to introduce a Bill to make new provision with regard to Scotland for an extension of time for payment of debts; to amend the law relating to certain diligences; to make provision in respect of messengers-at-arms and sheriff officers; and for connected purposes. I beg to move that this Bill be now read a first time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read a first time.—(The Earl of Dundee.)
On Question, Bill read a first time, and to be printed.

Infant Life (Preservation) Bill [H.L.]
The Lord Bishop of Birmingham: My Lords, I beg to introduce a Bill to reduce the period of pregnancy which for the purposes of the Infant Life (Preservation) Act 1929 is evidence that a woman was pregnant of a child capable of being born alive. I beg to move that this Bill be now read a first time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read a first time.—(The Lord Bishop of Birmingham.)
On Question, Bill read a first time, and to be printed.

Employment Guarantee Bill [H.L.]
Lord Jacques: My Lords, I beg to introduce a Bill to make provision for opportunities of employment for persons unemployed for periods of time; and for connected purposes. I beg to move that this Bill be now read a first time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read a first time.—(Lord Jacques.)
On Question, Bill read a first time, and to be printed.

House of Lords Offices: Select Committee Report
The Chairman of Committees (Lord Aberdare): My Lords, I beg to move that the First Report from the Select Committee be agreed to.
Moved, That the First Report from the Select Committee be agreed to.—(The Chairman of Committees.)
The Report was as follows:
1. Appointment of Sub-Committees
The following members of the Committee were appointed to the Sub-Committees:
(a) Library Sub-Committee

L Ardwick

L. McIntosh of Haringey

L. Fanshawe of Richmond

L. Mowbray and Stourton

E. Ferrers (Chairman)

L. Seebohm

With the Clerk of the Parliaments.
With power to co-opt further Lords.
(b) Refreshment Sub-Committee

L. Ampthill (Chairman)

L. Nugent of Guildford

L. Boyd-Carpenter

B. Phillips

L. Denham

L. Ponsonby of Shulbrede

B. Hylton-Foster

B. Stedman

L. Moran

L. Tordoff

With the Clerk of the Parliaments.
With power to co-opt further Lords.
(c) Works of Art Sub-Committee

Ardwick

B. Hooper

M. Cholmondeley

E. Munster

L. Fanshawe of Richmond

L. Strabolgi

L. Gibson (Chairman)

With the Clerk of the Parliaments.
With power to co-opt further Lords.
(d) Computer Sub-Committee

E. Ferrers

L. McIntosh of Haringey (Chairman)

With the Clerk of the Parliaments.
With power to co-opt further Lords.
(e) Staff of the House Sub-Committee

L. Aberdare (Chairman)

B. White

L. Nugent of Guildford

V. Whitelaw (L. President)

B. Seear

With the Clerk of the Parliaments and the Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod.
With power to co-opt further Lords.
(f) Finance Sub-Committee

L. Aberdare (Chairman)

L. McIntosh of Haringey

L. Ampthill

L. Ponsonby of Shulbrede

L. Denham

B. Stedman

E. Ferrers

L. Tordoff

With the Clerk of the Parliaments.
With power to co-opt further Lords.
(g) Administration Committee

L. Aberdare (Chairman)

L. Gibson

L. Ampthill

B. Hylton-Foster

E. Cathcart

L. McIntosh of Haringey

L. Denham

L. Ponsonby of Shulbrede

E. Ferrers

B. Stedman

B. Fisher of Rednal

L. Tordoff

With the Clerk of the Parliaments and the Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod.
With power to co-opt further Lords.
2. Staff of the House
The Committee considered further proposals from the Sub-Committee.
They agreed to the introduction of a scheme permitting limited flexible complementing at chief clerk and senior clerk levels and authorised payment of night duty allowances to certain administrative staff up to the rank of chief clerk or equivalent.
A proposed restructuring of industrial grades in the refreshment department was agreed and revised scales of pay and laundry allowances for uniformed staff were authorised.
3. Computer Developments
The Committee agreed a proposal that from the financial year 1987–88 provision for parliamentary computer services be transferred to the Votes of the two Houses.
4. Revised Scales of Pay
The Committee confirmed the application to staff of the House of Lords of the following Civil Service memoranda:—
CM/768—Revised subsistence payments towards the cost of meals and overnight expenses.
IM 86/8—Revised rate of London weighting for industrial staff.
5. Gift to Australian Commonwealth Parliament
The Committee agreed that provision be made in the House of Lords' Vote to meet a share of the costs of providing a vice-regal chair for a new Parliament building in Canberra which is to be opened in 1988 when the Australian bicentenary is celebrated.
6. Late Night Transport
The Committee agreed a revision in the conditions regulating the provision of transport to certain staff who work late after public transport has ceased to run.
7. Superannuation
The Committee were notified of the following awards made under the House of Lords Staff Pension Scheme:

(a) Revised pension and lump sum to Mr. A. W. K. Chittil, re-employed doorkeeper, who finally retired on 15th November 1986.

(b) Pension and lump sum to Mrs. M. E. Curd, clerical officer, who retires on 20th December 1986.

(c) Pension and lump sum to Mrs. M. J. Hacking-Brian, personal secretary, who resigned on 3rd October 1986.

(d) Preserved Pension and lump sum to Mr. G. F. Holborn, assistant librarian, who resigned on 31st May 1985.

(e) Lump sum death benefit and short-term pension to widow of A. E. Tomlin deceased, former doorkeeper, who died on 31st October 1986.

On Question, Motion agreed to.

Security Services: Accountability
2.58 p.m.
Lord Jenkins of Putney Lord Jenkins of Putney rose to call attention to the lack of accountability of the security services; and to move for Papers.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, I beg leave to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper. Much water—not all of it clean, I am afraid—has passed under several bridges since this Motion was put down. In the other place, debates have tended to concentrate on the mistakes of the Government and on the defence of their actions, as is customary and natural in that House. But perhaps here we may concern ourselves, as the Motion suggests, with the wider question of what ought to be done about the secret services.
There are those who will say, "Well, yes, it does seem that all is far from well, but what can be done? How can secret services become accountable and still remain secret?" The Government's position is that nothing needs to be done; but that view is not widely held now outside the Government, and even inside it it is said that it is held with a certain lack of conviction.
I can best declare my own position by quoting, if I may, from a letter I wrote to the Cabinet Secretary in 1978. At that time it was Sir John Hunt, now Lord Hunt of Fawley, who is aware of my intention to refer to him. It was about a book I wrote, subtitled An

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Experience of Government and Arts. Sir John, to whom I had, as instructed, submitted the typescript, had objected, as indeed was his duty, to certain passages. I quote my reply:
"One of the objects of the book is to show how decisions are made and this cannot be done without demonstrating how advice is given by civil servants and quoting opinions expressed by Ministers. Nevertheless I am very ready to go along with the recommendations of the Committee of Privy Counsellors, whenever I can do so without damage to the public interest. I regard such damage as being done whenever information is concealed without good reason".
I went on to say that a junior Minister in an area remote from national security, the arts, was well placed to advance the reality of open government. I added:
"I consider it wrong to deprive the electorate of information about the processes of government, for where they are bad they remain bad and get worse in the dark".
That remains my view. I think it all too clear that the reason why the Government are concerned not only about Mr. Peter Wright but about such smaller fry as Miss Joan Miller and Miss Cathy Massiter, is that the Government still mistakenly hang on to the view that to preserve secrecy everything must be secret. The opposite is true. To preserve secrecy only essentials must be secret. The Government must not be economical with the truth. They must be economical with secrecy.
As it is, we are the most secret of all those governments who profess to be open. Even the Soviet Union does not pretend to be without secret services. In that closed society the existence of the KGB and of those at the head of it is freely discussed. It is respectable to be a spy. Perhaps our attitude regarding the spy and the counter spy as opposite sides of the same coin, as people doing dirty work which has to be kept under the table, is nearer the truth. But that should not involve carrying it to the point at which we become a laughing stock, to the point at which a senior civil servant is persuaded to behave publicly and privately in a way which demeans a hitherto highly respected man, to the point at which even the word of the Prime Minister in Parliament becomes suspect. That is going too far because by seeking to cover everything up we have made the preservation of secrecy so widespread that its cloak simply will not cover the essentials, and a judge in open court calls the Government's case "baloney".
The quality of books about the Secret Service varies considerably. I am not an admirer of Mr. Chapman Pincher, and like Sir William Rees-Mogg, like Mr. Philip Knight—whose impressive book was impressively reviewed, if I may say so, by Lord Annan last Sunday in the Observer—and many others indeed, including the Prime Minister, I shall need more than the evidence of Mr. Peter Wright to convince me that Sir Roger Hollis was a Soviet spy. As for Lord Rothschild, the tergiversations of his role in these matters have so far defied rational explanation. If I were the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor I might be tempted to say that the whole lot of them seemed to have gone completely bonkers. As Mr. Knightley shows in his book, the risk of inter-spy lunacy is one of the dangers of a secret service which is not subject to systematic oversight and is not
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accountable, even indirectly, to the open forum of Parliament.
The description by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Denning, of the nature of the British security services in his report on the Profumo affair has stood the test of time in all but one vital respect. The noble and learned Lord says in Cmnd. 2152, paragraph 273, that the security services have no executive powers. That of course is true. But unfortunately Lord Denning goes on to say that the security services have "managed very well" without executive powers. They have not. They have assumed powers they do not legally possess. They regularly break the law.
The full examination of the secret services which has taken place in other countries and which must surely now take place here shows that, without exception, secret services commit crimes as a matter of course. I ask you Lordships to see The Ties that Bind by Richardson and Ball, which is available from the Library. I think it is the best comparative book obtainable on this subject.
In 1952 the Maxwell Fyfe directive set out for the first time what the general duties of our five secret service agencies are supposed to be. Clause 2 says, inter alia, that the task includes defence against dangers arising:
"from actions of persons and organisations whether directed from within or without the country which may be judged to be subversive of the state".
That judgment is left to the security service itself and, as Mr. Roy Jenkins said on 3rd December in the House of Commons (at col. 959 of Hansard) that spies and counter-spies are,
"entirely unfitted to judge between what is subversion and what is legitimate dissent.".
The record suggests that the security services judge the Conservative Party to be virtually synonymous with the state and the Labour Party to be naturally subversive. This is in spite of the fact that the Maxwell Fyfe directive goes on to say that the security services must keep themselves free from political bias. According to Mr. Andrew Roth, there are a number of ex-intelligence officers in the House of Commons. All of them are members of the Conservative Party. There are a number of Members of Parliament who have been under surveillance from time to time by the security services. All of them are members of the Labour Party.
When I was chairman of CND I used to talk frequently on the telephone to Dr. John Cox, who was a vice-chairman. It has since been admitted that Dr. Cox a member of the Communist Party—a rather orthodox member of that party: I believe he stood politically somewhat to my right—was bugged under an authority signed by Mr. Leon Brittan, who was Home Secretary at that time. The flat which my wife and I still occupy in Putney was the subject of a curious unacquisitive burglary about that time, with papers strewn all over the place and all drawers and cupboards open, but nothing much apparently taken. For a time after that our telephone behaved oddly with scraps of conversation heard. The police were baffled and so were my wife and I. Let us hope it was just a coincidence. I am sure no Home Secretary authorised anything.
Why have the Government taken action to suppress the book One Girl's War by Joan Miller? Some copies were issued before the suppression came into effect and here is one of them obtained by the House of Lords Library being quick off the mark. There is nothing in this book which could possibly threaten the safety of the realm, for the late Miss Miller's connection and story, as the title, One Girl's War, suggests, was essentially a war-time one. Miss Miller was naïve but she was patriotic and, like Miss Cathy Massiter today, she had her own moral standards. Her stomach was turned by some of the things she had to do.
Miss Miller quite casually and almost accidentally reveals what a sleazy and irresponsible and occasionally ruthless bunch these spooks were. She worshipped her chief, Maxwell Knight, with whom she lived for some time. She described him as being anti-Semitic and much else. When he decided to drop her she began to fear for her life, for she recalled another member of the staff who:
"performed some unofficial jobs for M [as he was called] such as getting rid of an unreliable double agent in the middle of the North Sea".
Well, it is peacetime now and there could not be any truth in the idea that Miss Hilda Murrell, the antinuclear rose grower, was murdered by accident by an agent of MI5, could there? Surely not!
I must leave to others to suggest how this can of worms can be cleansed and prevented from again falling into the smelly decay which seems to be the natural habitat of the spy. There is not time to give details of my own views, but I would suggest an outline. In another place, the committee proposed by the Alliance has been seen in two lights: first, as a committee to examine the situation and to make recommendations; and, secondly, as a permanent oversighting body. That might happen but first must come the examination and the proposals for reform.
Personally, for that purpose, I would settle for a committee of Privy Counsellors from both Houses, providing that they were representative of all parties. Second must be the report to Parliament—and there must be an annual report—not by the director of the security services, for he cannot be exposed, I think, to that. He should report to the committee and the committee should report to Parliament. In this way, accountability and security may both be served without breaching the principle of ministerial responsibility.
Finally, I would hope that one of the recommendations of the committee would be the adoption of the proposal of Mr. Roy Jenkins—and on this subject he knows what he is talking about, because he was of course a most distinguished Home Secretary—that MI5 be pulled out of its political surveillance role. It is particularly important that this nonsense should be stopped when we are lumbered with a Prime Minister who talks about "the enemy within" and about "eliminating socialism".
If we want to go on settling our differences by discussion and by majority voting, we must not descend to the level at which power is preserved by force and surveillance. It would be better for us all if that kind of talk and that kind of action were to stop
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on both sides—indeed, on all sides. My Lords, I beg to move for Papers.
3.12 p.m.
Lord Dacre of Glanton: My Lords, finding myself, to my surprise, the first to follow the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Putney, I am glad to take this opportunity of being the first to congratulate him on introducing a debate on this important subject. I have to be very tentative for we are moving in a world of cloaks and daggers, false names and false identities; but I think that I may be the only person here who has actually worked in both MI5 and MI6. Admittedly, that was a long time ago and in rather special circumstances. But, after all, the skeletons which come tumbling out of our cupboards to enjoy their periodical ritual dance all date from that time.
Although there have been many changes in the services since then—mostly, I think, for the better—time and observation have rather confirmed than refuted the general views which I then formed about the nature and the limitations of the work of the security services. Whatever may be the truth of recent allegations, I think it is clear that they have done great damage to the reputation and to the morale of the services. That, after all, is why we have this debate.
The root cause of the damage is, I believe, a lack of control, both external and internal, a lack of consistent policy and excessive secrecy. I find myself, again to my surprise, in agreement with many of the things—not everything but many of the things—which the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Putney, said. The services need control not only to ensure discipline but also for their own protection—protection especially from themselves.
All professions have their occupational dangers and the occupational danger of enclosed societies is a tendency to live in a private world; hence a loss of balance and of sense of proportion. These dangers are compounded by secrecy. Secrecy takes its toll and needs its psychological compensations. It can lead to fantasy and even occasionally to paranoia.
Much of the recent trouble, I believe, has been due to fantasy; uncontrolled conspiracy theories made paranoid by unusual events. The discovery that both MI5 and MI6 had harboured traitors in responsible positions was a traumatic event. But the paranoia, I believe, has been uncontrolled and the question that we have to ask is how it can be brought under control. Obviously, it requires a more consistent discipline, a stricter chain of command, regular accountability; but mere mechanical discipline cannot of itself cure the ailment.
It may intensify it and especially, I may add, when it is lifted, for it is then often that the fantasy is released. I have observed that the most advanced cases of it have occurred after such persons have retired—and I am not thinking here of one case only; I can think of several—after they have returned from the excitement of shared, continuous machination to the vacuum of retirement.
What is needed, I believe, is not only the pressure of a consistent discipline but also safety valves for the steam generated under that pressure. The operations of a secret service must necessarily be secret but the

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services themselves need not be so. At least they need not be so all the time. The days are past when we need—if, indeed, we ever needed—to pretend that they do not exist. The whole mentality of romantic, puerile amateurism generated by a school of popular novelists, a mentality which was still cultivated, deliberately cultivated, in those services when war descended upon us, is surely out of date.
Secrecy must be reduced to its necessary minimum or it will take its revenge in a psychosis of suspicion. I believe that what is required is an indivisible package: first, firmer responsibility all the way up, both internal and external; secondly, safety valves for the evacuation of suspicion; and, thirdly, less secrecy in inessentials. On internal discipline I believe that the Government were quite right to make a stand in the case of Mr. Wright, although I believe that they should have done so in the case of Mr. Pincher and I do not understand why they did not.
He was, after all, only a pseudonym and a ghostwriter for Mr. Wright. On external discipline, I have come to the view that responsibility to Parliament through an overburdened Cabinet Minister of high rank is not enough. There must also be a body which, though external to it, enjoys the trust of the service, which sits in secret and which can hear confidential complaints, enforce attendance and give advice.
I do not think that the Security Commission can fill this role; it is too remote. Such a body would be both a watchdog and a safety valve. If such a body had existed, I think that the scandals and public exposures of recent years could have been avoided. Members of the service who suspected their own chief, or even the Prime Minister, could have gone to it. The problem could then have been either resolved internally or, if that proved impossible, referred to a judicial inquiry.
Such a system exists in America in the form of the Senate Intelligence Committee. A close friend of mine, a distinguished former intelligence chief whom I greatly respect, tells me that the intelligence community in America was at first opposed to this innovation but, now that it is reconciled to it, it finds that it is a very valuable institution and wishes to preserve it. I have no doubt that some such body would be equally valuable here.
Finally, there is secrecy. Provided that there is internal discipline, and that members of the service are forbidden by enforceable contracts to publish books or to supply matter to writers, or at least cannot do so without express authority, I believe that the fetish of security could be left to wither away. Let journalists speculate; their speculations can be treated as such. Let historians write as they do. The secrecy of the history of the security services, as distinct from their current operations, is not worth protecting. It is already open to those who know where to look. A distinguished historian, the late Sir Lewis Namier, once wrote:
"most secrets are in print if one knows where to look".
He also observed:
"documents have nine lives, for they have eight carbon copies".
My Cambridge colleague, Dr. Christopher Andrew, has recently published an excellent and very readable
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history of the British Secret Service entirely from public sources, mainly in the Public Record Office. There is now a learned journal with the title, Intelligence and National Security, regularly published in London. I recommend it to your Lordships as a useful work of history and perhaps also of psychological therapy for bringing the intelligence world out of the closed mentality from which the recent traumas have grown.
3.22 p.m.
Lord Hutchinson of Lullington: My Lords, I should also like to congratulate the noble Lord for initiating so topical a debate. I should like to say at once that I agree with a great deal of the remarkable speech we have just heard from the noble Lord, Lord Dacre. My justification for speaking is that over 25 years I have had a close professional involvement in court cases involving the security services. Blake, Vassall, Martelli, Roberts and Conway were all my clients, as were the editor of the Sunday Telegraph and Mr. Duncan Campbell in the ABC case. Even Miss Keeler sought my services.
It has been my duty to cross-examine a number of security service personnel. Indeed, Mr. Turnbull's role in Sydney has at times seemed curiously familiar; though I must add that if a potential Prime Minister had sought to contact me during the currency of a case for purely political reasons and, as it now quite clearly appears, to give succour to the case against the Government, he would have received a massive flea in his presumptuous ear.
In the area of defence and terrorism, the security services are essential. Over terrorism their performance, with the special branch, has been brilliant and we all owe them a huge debt of gratitude. But their reputation overall, I suggest, no longer stands where it should in the eyes of the public. A restoration job is plainly necessary. The list of defectors and leakers is astonishing and the accumulation of credible allegations of unauthorised and mischievous operations is substantial.
My experience has led me to three conclusions. The first is that the blanket secrecy which smothers the service has become a harmful obsession and has infected responsible civil servants and Ministers in successive governments. I go along with what the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins, said about that. The Maxwell Fyfe directive of 1952 lays down a far too restrictive obligation on Ministers, I suggest, based as it is on the stifling principle of the need to know. Also, the need for a safety valve for officers to channel complaints and suspicions is surely made out; and I am glad that the noble Lord, Lord Dacre, takes the same view.
I will deal with those three headings shortly, but I should like to quote from an article in The Times of 29th November last by the distinguished diplomat Sir Reginald Hibbert, our last ambassador in Paris. He writes.
"On a strict interpretation of the Official Secrets Act, government in Britain is carried on by a process of leaks. The system depends on everyone knowing and respecting how much they are allowed to leak"—
my Lords, the authentic voice of the establishment!

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He then points out, with an exquisite use of words, that the secret and security services have,
"to endure the full rigours of the Official Secrets Act without ever enjoying the relief of leaking".
He adds:
"The historical convention is that they do not exist and can neither be seen nor heard.
He continues:
"it is not surprising that an elaborate system of controlled leaking from the top has been evolved, leaking to chosen writers and journalists"—
and, I would add, politicians.
In the ABC case, it took us three days of cross-examination to convince a High Court judge that the existence, location and purpose of GCHQ could not be a state secret to be kept from the public as argued passionately by the Crown witnesses. By taking photos from public footpaths, reading unrestricted service magazines and looking at notice boards, anyone could establish which Signals unit was there at Cheltenham, the name of its commanding officer, and indeed, for any radio enthusiast, the frequency on which the station transmitted its messages. The only secret was: what were the messages received and how were they used?
My client was charged under Section 1—the most serious of all secrecy offences. After a week the judge threatened to summon the Attorney-General to court unless the prosecution withdrew the charge, which he described as oppressive. After two more weeks the judge, unprecedentedly, announced that whatever the verdict on the other charges he had no intention whatever of imposing a custodial sentence. I am sure that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Silkin, who was the Attorney-General at the time, would agree that he had not been properly briefed by the security services when he pitched the prosecution so high. We see the same thing happening daily in Sydney, Australia. The reason: obsessive secrecy, even in relation to Ministers of the Crown.
It is absurd and untenable to forbid any publication by any member of the security services, past or present, in any circumstances, whatever may be the public interest. It is absurd to deny the existence of MI6. Indeed, I am not persuaded that the noble Lord, Lord Dacre, has made what I might call another mistake. What surely is sensible is to admit the existence and location of the security services and to allow publications subject only to vetting by the service on clearly stated, sensible grounds, spelt out as a reasoned policy.
The Need to Know, the Maxwell Fyfe directive, refers to the convention that Ministers are,
"furnished with such information only as may be necessary for the determination of an issue on which guidance is sought."
In other words, the initiative must come from the Minister. The truth is that the busy Minister does not want to know and the service does not want to tell. Those awkward political birds of passage must only know what they need to know.
The Secretary of State says that if the director general's judgment is wrong, he is answerable to the Home Secretary. But that is ex post facto. When Commander Crabbe swam under the Russian cruiser, which was ironically on a goodwill mission at
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Portsmouth, the Russians found him out and blew the operation. The Prime Minister had to come to the House of Commons and admit, humiliatingly, that he and other Ministers knew nothing whatever about the operation.
There must surely be some political oversight, some political guidance and some sharing of responsibility. Sir Robert Armstrong, I suggest, should never have been expected to undergo a political cross-examination. Accountability means neither interference in operations nor sharing secrets; nor does it mean a total crossing of Mr. Hurd's barrier of secrecy. It is the old question that all democracies have had to answer: quis custodet and where lies the public interest. Other democracies have solved these questions, and with some political will we can do the same.
What is required is a forum which is not a court of law where these questions can be put. That would provide the watchdog and the safety valve to which the noble Lord, Lord Dacre, referred. That plus the reform of the Official Secrets Act and the passing of a freedom of information Act would restore the reputation of the security services. I ask the Minister: is the time not demonstrably overripe for some inquiry into the whole affair?
3.34 p.m.
Lord Denning: My Lords, I too wish to thank the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Putney, for raising this topic. In 1963 the then Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, asked me, in the light of the circumstances leading to the resignation of the former Secretary of State for War, Mr. J. D. Profumo, to examine the operation of the security service. I undertook that task. Coming before me to give evidence were not only the Prime Minister but most of the members of the Cabinet, the director general of the security service and many of his staff. I visited MI5 as well. I hope that I performed that examination carefully.
The first matter to be observed is the structure of the security service. On this matter, perhaps I may repeat what I said in my report at paragraph 273:
"The Security Service in this country is not established by Statute nor is it recognised by Common Law. Even the Official Secrets Acts do not acknowledge its existence. The members of the Service are, in the eye of the law, ordinary citizens with no powers greater than anyone else".
I had much confidential information given to me and I summarised that in the report. Until 1952 the Prime Minister was responsible for security. In 1951, a proposal was made to the Prime Minister by Sir Norman Brooke, who many of your Lordships will remember as one of our most experienced civil servants. He proposed that responsibility should be transferred to the Home Secretary. Sir David Maxwell Fyfe in 1952 gave an important directive to the director general of the security service which is set out in the report. I also had a great deal of further evidence.
The general principle, which I ventured to state in paragraph 239, was as follows:
"(1) The head of the Security Service is responsible directly to the Home Secretary for the efficient and proper working of the Service and not in the ordinary way to the Prime Minister.

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(2) The Security Service is, however, not a department of the Home Office. It operates independently under its own Director-General, but he can and does seek direction and guidance from the Home Secretary, subject always to the proviso that its activities must be absolutely free from any political bias or influence.
(3) The function of the Security Service is to defend the Realm as a whole from dangers which threaten it as a whole, such as espionage on behalf of a foreign Power, or internal organisations subversive of the State. For this purpose it must collect information about individuals, and give it to those concerned. But it must not, even at the behest of a Minister or a Government Department, take part in investigating the private lives of individuals except in a matter bearing on the Defence of the Realm as a whole".
The burden of the report is that the security service is not to investigate the private morals or private lives of individuals or their political aspirations. It must be quite independent of any moral or political bias whatsoever. The director general of the service is answerable to the Home Secretary. In matters of prime importance, the last section of paragraph 239 of the report states:
"The head of the Security Service may approach the Prime Minister himself on matters of supreme importance and delicacy".
I venture to think that that report and those recommendations still hold good and that there is no need for a further or more elaborate chain of accountability. I saw all those witnesses in connection with that report, and I saw the director general, Sir Robert Hollis, myself. I saw his staff. They were keeping in touch from the very beginning with the situation involving Stephen Ward and the Russian, Ivanov, and with the happenings in Ward's flat with such people as Christine Keeler and the like. They were reporting on the situation to the proper people—to the Foreign Office and to Admiralty House, where the Prime Minister then was. They took the line all along that it was not their function to investigate either the private morals or the private lives of any individual. Having regard to the whole of the circumstances, they came to the conclusion that there was no security risk involved in anything that Mr. Profumo did. I hope that all those suspicions were cleared away by that report.
Having seen Sir Roger Hollis, his staff and how they worked with him, I have complete confidence in his integrity and uprightness, and indeed in Lord Trend's subsequent vindication of him. So much for that inquiry.
As regards the matters which are the subject of controversy today, I shall not go into them. There is undoubtedly unease about disclosures that have been made. Do they require another inquiry? All I would say is that any senior officer of the service who has any doubts about the loyalty of his superiors and others should immediately report them to the Home Secretary or to the Prime Minister, rather than waiting until after people are dead and unable to answer for themselves. That is what anyone who was uneasy about the conduct of persons in office should have done, rather waiting until after such persons were dead and unable to answer for themselves.
I hope that the House will accept the importance of people in the security service maintaining complete confidence not only during their period in the service but for their whole lives. In the circumstances, I hope that those principles will be established firmly throughout.
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To come back to the question of whether there is any need for further accountability, I venture to think that the system I described in my report still holds good. In exceptional cases, there may be need for an inquiry, as there was in the case in question, but as a general rule let the position go on as it is. It is very good on the whole and has withstood the test of time.
3.40 p.m.
Lord Campbell of Croy: My Lords, our gratitude is due to the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins, for having raised the question of accountability of the security service, which is an important subject. We have to ask ourselves how best to balance the need for some basic secrecy with the proper supervision of such a service in a democracy.
The noble Lord in the Motion and in his speech has used the plural, "services". I shall refer to the "security service" in the singular, the organisation concerned with counter-espionage, also known as MI5. As regards any other organisations involved in gathering intelligence, I shall refer simply to the British intelligence system.
In the limited time available to each speaker I hope that I can make a thoughtful contribution, because my work in public service has at times brought me in touch with the security service and our intelligence system, in particular when I was Private Secretary to Sir Norman Brooke, then Secretary to the Cabinet. I should make it clear that I have never myself been a member of the organisations concerned. I saw something of their problems and their successes, and I benefited from the products of their work.
In speaking today, I am very conscious of being subject to the restraints of the Official Secrets Act, imposed when I entered the Foreign Office in 1946. Since 1970, I have also been bound by the Privy Counsellor's oath. Consequently, your Lordships will understand that I tread with care, and will speak in general, not in detail.
Because of the positions that I have held, my interest has been engaged, and continues to be engaged, in the nagging question: how can the activities of the security service and the intelligence system be satisfactorily supervised and accounted for? There is no straight-forward solution of the orthodox kind because we must recognise that there are two special requirements. First, most of their important work must be secret, otherwise they could not carry out their functions. There would be no point in their existence. Secondly, they ought to have discretion to carry out covert activities, and be able to act quickly, in accordance with understood guidelines.
Their accountability at present, as in the past, is to certain Ministers through designated officials. The Ministers are of course accountable to Parliament, but they do not discuss the work of the organisations in Parliament, or elsewhere in public, since this would make it impossible to retain the necessary secrecy. That convention has always been accepted by governments and official oppositions.
From time to time there have been suggestions for a Select Committee or a parliamentary commission. The same difficulty, I suggest, arises as for the Floor of either House. It is not a suitable place for a discussion

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of matters most of which are secret and are being ardently sought after by certain hostile organisations and individuals.
Another proposal suggested in another place in the debate on 3rd December, and again today the preference of the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins, is a conference of Privy Counsellors. I happen to be in an excellent position to comment because I was the secretary of the first such body to be appointed at the end of 1955, and so was involved in drafting its report, produced four months later. The conference was on security. It was established after the Soviet Government had suddenly produced in Moscow Burgess and Maclean, who some three years earlier had disappeared. The Russians obviously did this in order to embarrass the West. Their appearance certainly caused headlines, confusion and calls for an inquiry.
The problem, however, was how an inquiry could be unbiased, yet consist of people who could be informed about very secret matters. An internal investigation within government was not considered acceptable, though party politics did not arise at that stage because the events to be examined occurred during periods in office of different governments. The Privy Counsellors appointed were as follows: three members of the Conservative Government of the day, the Lord President, the Lord Chancellor and the Home Secretary; three former Labour Cabinet Ministers, including Lord Jowitt, a former Lord Chancellor, and Mr. Morrison, a former Foreign Secretary. The seventh Privy Counsellor was Sir Edward Bridges, who was head of the Civil Service as well as Permanent Secretary to the Treasury. One member was Lord Kilmuir, who, as Sir David Maxwell Fyfe, had been the Home Secretary who formulated in 1952 the directive to the security service which I understand still governs its operations today.
The report of the conference making recommendations on security in the public service was published as a parliamentary paper, Cmnd. 9715. Incidentally, I had met both Burgess and Maclean in my work in the Foreign Office in the late 1940s. A similar formula was used when another conference of Privy Counsellors was appointed a few years later on telephone tapping. Again, sensitive secret matters were to be looked into.
Having had a hand in thinking up this kind of body, the first one in 1955, I favour it as a formula for certain occasions but not as a permanent body. It was clearly suitable as a means of investigating a particular situation or episode, but I believe it is not appropriate as a body attempting permanently to monitor and supervise the security service. It would make little if any addition, I think, to accountability to Parliament. For completeness, I should mention that a similar group of Privy Counsellors was established immediately after the Falklands conflict where an inquiry was clearly needed and defence and security secrets were involved. An internal government inquiry might have been seen as a whitewash.
At that time, I was aware of the same climate of concern as in 1955. I am sure that the Government had it in mind, but in case the formula had been overlooked I reminded the appropriate quarter of the 1955 conference. I was therefore gratified to find that
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this was eventually adopted even to the equivalent of Sir Edward Bridges—for Sir Patrick Nairne, the civil servant, was appointed a Privy Counsellor and made a member of the committee.
I have spoken of secrecy. Your Lordships will know from Question Time that I am one of those who have been trying to get Section 2 of the Official Secrets Act replaced. Indeed, the Government introduced a Bill to do that in 1979. They made a worthy effort, but ran into difficulties.
I believe that those who are recruited and work in the security service should not be free to release sensitive information or write memoirs, including such information after retiring. If they have an urge to write about their work they should go into another occupation. I also believe that some blame attaches to publishers if they press for memoirs with the maximum number of names, rumours and allegations. The effect is to reduce to some extent the security of the 55 million people living in this country. The effectiveness of our security service is diminished and other countries will be less willing to share secret information with us.
Perhaps I may express a final thought about past relationships with the Soviet Union. During the war, from 1941 to 1945, the Russians were our allies and presumably military intelligence and other useful intelligence was passed to them. Those who worked in our intelligence system had to readjust after 1945. That could be illustrated by my own case because I was an ordinary regimental soldier from the beginning of the war until the end of the war in Europe. I was wounded during the assault across the Elbe on the day before Hitler committed suicide.
What was our objective? My division was due to meet the Russians near Lübeck, which happened within two days. I departed with a bullet through my middle which kept me in hospital for more than a year. A year and a half after that sudden departure from the army I entered the Foreign Office, having been successful in the entrance exam, and was immediately sent to the Eastern European department where I found myself dealing with the Russians on a quite different basis. They had changed from being wartime allies to being potential enemies with whom we had to be very careful.
I accept that there is a place for special inquiries on particular subjects and episodes and that membership can be devised suitable for receiving secret information. But I do not think a workable system can be set up permanently for supervision and accountability which would improve upon the present arrangements for ministerial responsibility.
3.51 p.m.
Lord Hooson: My Lords, I should like to join in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins, for initiating this debate. It seems to have come at a particularly appropriate time not so much because of the affair that is going on in Australia but because in the other place there is an early-day motion, headed by the very respected former Home Secretary Mr. Merlyn Rees, calling for an inquiry into the alleged political surveillance of the noble Lord, Lord Wilson of Rievaulx, when he was Prime Minister of this country. As your

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Lordships will recollect, Mr. Merlyn Rees was the Home Secretary who reported to the succeeding Prime Minister, Mr. James Callaghan, that everything was all right because it had been reported to Mr. Rees—and I have had words with Mr. Rees about this—by the director general of M15 that there was nothing to report. The fact that his name now heads an early-day motion calling for an inquiry into the matter underlines the seriousness of the affair.
I found the speech by the noble Lord, Lord Dacre, with his excellent knowledge and experience, totally convincing. The Government would do well to heed his very wise words in regard to the security services. I should like to underline the point that has been made that there is excessive secrecy. I was engaged last year in my professional duties, defending in the so-called Cyprus spy trial of young servicemen charged with Section 1 offences. The way senior officials of the intelligence services had to deny the existence of facts that could be simply proved by producing newspaper reports and government announcements over a number of years was ludicrous. The jury and everybody else in the court found it ludicrous. There is excessive secrecy.
I should like to make my position clear. I accept of course that the security services must necessarily be properly and effectively secretive about their legitimate operational matters. I totally accept that there must be a binding obligation for life on members of the security services not to disclose what was entrusted to them as confidential in the legitimate pursuit of their duties. But that is not the point that really arises; and we all know this to be true.
I want to concentrate on two spheres where difficulties arise. First, if the service under its director general indulges in legal activites—for example, under the guise of political surveillance—given its power and expertise, it must be very tempting at times to go beyond the bounds of legitimacy. It would be very dangerous for the country as a whole, as well as being totally and unacceptably unfair to individuals who were selected as targets, if this were allowed to go on uncontrolled. I entirely take the point that the noble Lord, Lord Dacre, so convincingly made about the need for tighter internal control. I also accept his view that there should be a measure of external control.
Secondly, there is the much more likely scenario of dissident members of the security services indulging in illegal activities—for example, if they do not seek warrants to intercept telephone calls but just do it; if they commit burglaries, and so on—in pursuit of what they subjectively consider to be acceptable aims. If a part of the service gets out of control, as it has been alleged part of the service did for one period, what is the situation of an individual member of the service who is an upright person and is deeply offended by what is going on? What is his duty? Is it to keep silent? The answer is no, it cannot be. Is it to report to his superiors? Clearly, it is.
However, what if the superiors pay no attention? Is he to take an active part in a cover-up? Is he to continue making protests when perhaps his superiors do not want to know? What is that officer's duty to the country? I have to remind your Lordships that at
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Nuremberg, in a different context truly, the defence of superior orders was there held by all the judges to be no answer to a charge of the commission of a war crime. It is not entirely an analogous situation but there are certain situations when even in the security services it is legitimate to say that the defence of superior orders is no defence.
The danger is this. The individual involved has to reach a subjective judgment on what is or is not legitimate and on what is or is not proper for him to do. Surely the noble Lord, Lord Dacre, is right that there must be somebody to whom an officer can report, an outside body or at least an outside individual, so that an anxiety can be expressed, guidance sought and advice taken or to whom he can legitimately make a complaint about the running of the service. This appears to be the greatest single problem affecting the security services at the present time.
I go back to the allegations concerning the noble Lord, Lord Wilson of Rievaulx, of whose political views and political activities I never entirely approved. I am bound to say that the allegations are that there were surveillance, interceptions and burglaries involving the houses of the Prime Minister himself. Did it happen? Surely that can be answered. Why did it happen? Was it authorised? If so, by whom? If it was not authorised, who did it? How many were involved? What disciplinary action was taken in respect of them? Surely these are matters that the public have a right to know. This House and I think the Government owe a duty to the country to make as much information available as possible so that the matter can be fairly judged.
I do not have the expertise to suggest what kind of body is appropriate for the external control but I think it should be a permanent body to which any member of the security services with true anxieties and needing real guidance can go. That would perhaps prevent the kind of scene that has presented itself in the court in Sydney, where the Government are quite legitimately trying to prevent the publication of all kinds of disclosed secrets, when if they had provided their own machinery for complaint and guidance they would not be faced with that situation.
3.59 p.m.
Lord Beloff: My Lords, I join in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Putney, because the subject we are discussing is important and one on which I think most people's minds are not closed. We have had a variety of suggestions as to how the situation might be improved.
I cannot claim, as have other speakers, to have had any direct involvement in any capacity with any of the security services. As a private citizen and, at the time, a university teacher I was from time to time approached with questions about a pupil or other former acquaintance of mine who was presumably being looked at with a view to confidential employment. My impression on those occasions was that the security service was employing people whose degree of political sensitivity was rather low. I should have thought that the important aspect in a security service must always be the quality of the personnel.

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I share the admiration for Mr. Christopher Andrew's remarkable History of the Secret Service. If one reads his book one is amazed, at a time when great efforts were made to handle recruitment for the Civil Service, the armed forces and the Colonial Service, how haphazard and amateur was the procedure by which people became members of the secret services. Therefore I should have thought that if strengthening is needed that is where the strengthening is required.
What I am doubtful about—apart from this question of appeal by a dissident member, where I think the noble Lord, Lord Hooson, is probably right in saying that there ought to be such machinery—is the suggestion of a permanent body of oversight. The noble Lord, Lord Dacre, suggested the parallel of the Senate Intelligence Committee; but in spite of his praise for that institution recent revelations in the United States would not suggest that the activities of the American services are altogether free from blame. Indeed, they seem more bizarre than many of the allegations against our own service.
It does not seem to me that parliamentary surveillance is appropriate in this field. It is of course tempting—the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy, referred to this—to make use of the existence of the special status of Privy Counsellors, but I can only refer to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Hutchinson of Lullington; that is. when the Leader of the Opposition, who is a Privy Counsellor, associates himself and aids the presentation of an anti-government case in a security matter, as Mr. Turnbull made quite clear in court yesterday, that is very damaging to the cause of those——
Lord Mishcon: My Lords, I am sure the noble Lord will give way. So far this debate has taken place without any party political points being set. Will the noble Lord be careful in his language? He said that it was aiding the case against the Crown. Mr. Kinnock, to whom the noble Lord is referring, is an honourable man. He said that he was asking to correct, if necessary, information that he had. He was not giving information. Will the noble Lord please remember that and couch his terms a little more carefully?
Lord Beloff: My Lords, I am sorry, but I am not referring to what Mr. Kinnock said. I am referring to what Mr. Turnbull said in court yesterday. He said that were it not for the information elicited by Mr. Kinnock in questioning the Prime Minister he would not have been able to present so convincing a case. That is Mr. Turnbull's statement, not mine. I was not using it in a party sense. I was using it in the sense that the Privy Counsellors' oath is perhaps insufficient.
Lord Mishcon: My Lords, the noble Lord is courteous in giving way but not courteous in his language. He is now referring to what was openly said in Parliament by way of question and answer. That was in public.
Lord Beloff: My Lords, I never indicated that it was in private. I am sorry, but I never indicated that anything was done in private. I merely said, as did the noble Lord, Lord Hutchinson, in rather more extreme language than I have used, that this event cast some
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question over the possibility of using a committee of Privy Counsellors. If it had involved a Conservative, a Liberal or a Social Democrat I should have taken precisely the same view. There are problems in using the Privy Counsellors' oath in matters of this kind. It may be possible to overcome those problems, but it would be idle to pretend that they do not exist.
Another point which I believe must be made is this. I can quite understand the belief, the wish and the hope that has been expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Putney, that security should be limited, so far as possible, to non-political matters. Of course when it is a question of not allowing a potential enemy to have a picture of some weapon of war everything is very straightforward and few people find that to be a problem. But the history of the secret service has, alas, never been limited to that.
The first and great exponent of the British secret service was Sir Francis Walsingham, who, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, spent a great deal of public money and employed a great many perhaps doubtful people in seeking out Catholic priests who were thought to be agents in a plot to dethrone Queen Elizabeth in favour of a Catholic pretender. If one refers to the state papers of William III's reign one finds, again, an enormous amount of secret activity directed towards intercepting communications between this country and foreign courts where the Stuart pretender of the day was residing.
Therefore, whenever you have in a country a great gap between what the Government of the day or the state regard as security and some element in the population which directly challenges that view it is difficult to see how the security services can avoid being implicated. The noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Putney, for example, indicated that he thought the service went beyond its brief in looking at or intercepting communications between two prominent members of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. However, in view of the fact that persons associated with that campaign have not merely made propaganda—as is their right—for a totally different set-up in our defences but have actually intercepted military convoys and endeavoured to interrupt the ordinary course of military practice, clearly at some point such people will no doubt deserve and receive the attention of the security services.
It is a very difficult area, and short of having tight ministerial control, better recruitment and, as the noble Lord, Lord Hooson, said, a proper appeal mechanism for those who feel aggrieved or feel that things are going wrong, I find it hard to see how much progress can be made.
4.9 p.m.
Lord Wilson of Langside: My Lords, so far we have had an interesting debate. I venture to say that it will probably become even more interesting when the Minister replies to at least half of the very pointed questions put to him by the noble Lord, Lord Hooson. I hope he will have already applied his mind to that.
It has been, too, an encouraging and useful debate. Like many others, I found the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Dacre, particularly encouraging and interesting. I think the question to which the House

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will wish to have an answer, in the context of what he said, is this. Can we take it that, broadly speaking, what he said represents the Government's approach to the problems in this area with which we are concerned this afternoon? Can we take it that the Government have absorbed the lessons of the events which led to such nonsense as the trial in Australia and the various other bits of nonsense which have been visited upon us over the last 40 years? Moreover, can we take it that the Government's approach to that situation is broadly the sensible one which, as I understand it, the noble Lord, Lord Dacre, was advocating?
I found the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Dacre, intriguing too because he reminded me of my own experience in the intelligence hierarchy at the very bottom of the ladder of which he was at the top. My experience, which was brief, took place when I was in my mid-20s and took the shape of the lowest form of life in the military field; namely, the regimental intelligence officer.
As the noble Lord was describing his experience, I wondered what excuse I had for participating in your Lordships' debate this afternoon. At various levels over the last 40 years or so, for my sins I have been involved in prosecuting and trying criminals and that has given me a wide experience. During this time I have often reflected upon the dangers of the establishment cover-up, which is an invention neither of the media nor yet of the anti-establishment lobby but is a fact of real life. I feel that my experience has perhaps given me some locus to participate in the debate.
More seriously, I am concerned to make only one short point to emphasise the importance of accountability in this sphere. What above all persuaded me that some government action was essential with regard to the accountability of the security services was the granting of immunity from criminal prosecution to the traitors Blunt and Philby. I thought that the circumstances surrounding that grant of immunity to both those rogues were quite outrageous. So far as they are known to the public, the circumstances will be well known to your Lordships and I shall not venture to elaborate upon them, but it is said that the Attorney-General of the day was consulted. I should dearly like to know the form that that consultation took but I know that if I asked him the Minister would not tell me, even if he knew, which I imagine he does not.
If that circumstance is true I find it profoundly disturbing that a Law Officer of the Crown should have concurred in such a step. To me it suggests a degree of irresponsibility that sits ill with such an office. In the other place on Monday, after dealing with the statement of 23rd August 1977 made by the then Prime Minister, Mr. Callaghan, a statement of which so much was made by the Government in debates in the other place and outside, the Minister of State at the Home Office said:
"No one is above the law in this country, and members of the Security Service are no more immune from prosecution than anyone else if they commit criminal offences".
That is from the Official Report of the House of Commons, of 15th December 1986, col. 796. The question that I put to the Minister—and I hope that he will attempt to answer it—is what warrant there is in
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the law of any part of the United Kingdom for the grant of that immunity to those two traitors.
4.16 p.m.
Lord Annan: My Lords, I am very much in agreement with the speakers who have opened this debate and particularly with the noble Lord, Lord Dacre. The problem we are facing stems from the fact that there has been a change in the position of the security services. In the period before 1914 spies were people who were paid by nations to extract information, whereas after 1919 spies were motivated by ideology. One of the greatest disservices done to their country by the Cambridge spies was to create within the security services a profound sense of unease about who was or was not loyal within the service. That is one reason why things have changed.
The second reason is that we are no longer living in a society which respects confidentiality in the way that it was once respected. It is no good hoping that those days will return. I know perfectly well from my academic life that if I send a confidential letter about someone's merits or demerits for a particular academic post that letter will be leaked probably right back to the person about whom it was written. Times have changed and we are unlikely to return to a time when one can rely on secrecy and confidentiality being preserved. It is not preserved in Government. We all know the way in which government is conducted by leaks.
There is a point on which I slightly dissent from the noble Lord, Lord Dacre. He expressed surprise that Mr. Chapman Pincher had not been prosecuted. I am not a lawyer but I cannot see how he could have been prosecuted, because he has nothing to do with the security services and was merely retailing what he heard. I would guess that one reason why it would have been so unwise to prosecute is because the noble Lord, Lord Hutchinson, might well have been the counsel who would have been briefed for his defence. The noble Lord has had the most astonishing and remarkable forensic successes in security matters.
We live in a free country. So when the noble Lord, Lord Wilson of Langside, asked why it was that Blunt was not prosecuted, the answer must be that in a court of law Blunt would have won his case with ease because he would have refused to admit anything. It was only by a promise of immunity that information which, in the opinion of the security services was of great value to the state, could have been extracted from him. There is an inconsistency about the way in which confidential material has been regarded by the Crown. The first notable book on secret matters which appeared was that written by the late Sir John Masterman who was a great pillar of the Establishment, the Provost of Worcester and the tutor in history of the noble Lord, Lord Dacre of Glanton—from whom no doubt, he learned a great deal! Sir John was the person who first revealed the secrets of the double-cross during the war—the use of double agents to deceive the German Army.
Then we had the revelations of Group Captain Winterbottom who revealed that there was a place called Bletchley and that the cryptographers who worked there produced the remarkable traffic known today as Ultra. Those of us like myself who did not

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produce but consumed Ultra knew that its existence was known to hundreds of people, and yet not one of them ever said a word about this. Was the Group Captain Winterbottom told that he might write his book? Was he told that unofficially? I do not think he could have been told it officially because the official history is now being written by Sir Harry Hinsley.
There is the case of another person. We all know that many operations of great gallantry were performed during the war by officers in Greece. Mr. Paddy Leigh Fermor is famous for having captured General Kreipe in Crete, and wrote an enthralling book about it. Colonel Monty Woodhouse wrote an extremely good book about his operations with ELAS. Another officer wrote a book about his operations in the Epirus. Why was it that there was an attempt to stop publication of this last book? The reason an attempt was made to stop it was that after the war (not during the war) that officer joined the security services. The book was in no way connected with anything he did while in the service. It really is very strange when there is such inconsistency to know what line is likely to be taken about publication.
Mr. Wright is undoubtedly someone who has broken his trust. He is also someone who, as the noble Lord, Lord Dacre, said, is paranoid that his view of what happened in the years between 1950 and 1970 is not accepted by his superiors. So long as we try and maintain, as the noble Lord, Lord Dacre, said, total secrecy about these matters there will be rows and confusion. We must move more towards the American system whereby an officer of the CIA submits any book he wishes to write about his life to the CIA which judges what parts of it, if any, should be excised. If we go on saying that nothing can be published of any kind, we shall have another case like that in Sydney again on our hands.
I therefore very much approve of the proposal that there should be a more thorough system of surveillance of security matters than exists today. I should hope to see any such commission headed by one of Her Majesty's judges, perhaps with two Privy Counsellors in attendance, because I think that judicial wisdom is required there. We need someone who can ask the right questions of the security chiefs, and particularly so since it is always difficult to know what the right questions are.
There is one last point I should like to make which concerns political surveillance. It is not entirely true that the security services are interested only in Left-wing organisations. In 1939 a former member of the security services, Admiral Sir Barry Domville was interned for the duration of the war, and Joan Miller was used by MI5 to infiltrate a ludicrous fascist cell.
When one comes to the business of political surveillance, one needs to remember that people come under suspicion very often because of those they associate with. Having associated during my life with disreputable company, I would not be at all surprised if at any time the security services began to investigate me.
Lord Dacre of Glanton: My Lords, before the noble Lord. Lord Annan, sits down, may I correct a small point? I never suggested—or at least I never meant to
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suggest—that Mr. Chapman Pincher should have been prosecuted. My point was that his book should have been prevented in the way that an attempt is being made to prevent the publication of Mr. Wright's book; or if that had failed, that Mr. Wright should have been prosecuted then, rather than pursued now.
Lord Annan: My Lords, I am so sorry if I misunderstood the noble Lord. Thank you so much.
4.26 p.m.
Lord Birdwood: My Lords, this is not the first time I have had reason to thank the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins, for initiating a topic of exceptional interest, nor is it the first time in which I find myself in profound disagreement with him.
The use of the word "accountability" in the Motion before the House is in the height of political fashion. The Left uses is as a petulant taunt to any body which does not go through the Left's own play acting at democracy. It is no surprise that a universal feature of Left-wing totalitarianism is complete, obliterative secrecy in all its actions. But the word "accountability" is scarcely safer in the hands of the Right wing ideologues. This is the accountability of super pragmatism, of any means to achieve ideological ends.
There is a popular surge of feeling in our times for openness in all the mechanisms of authority. We are told that public demand will not be served, and cannot be served, until all the levers and cogs of state become public knowledge. Anybody who questions this headlong rush to disclosure is pointed out as a conspirator, a plotter, a concealer, an enemy of the people. Openness has become confused with honour. Discretion has become confused with conspiracy.
Let me give your Lordships' House a personal perception of reality not fantasy. To start with, the reality is that we are discussing an arm of state which is properly called the secret services. The Official Secrets Act is an oath of secrecy, openly, willingly taken. It is not some temporary condition of employment such as travel warrants. Your Lordships have heard a lot about "wrestling with conscience" or "deeper loyalties". In the areas of behaviour covered by the Official Secrets Act, breaking that oath is the first step to treason. It is a clear choice between reality and fantasy. It is an oath of secrecy. There are anomalies which make good copy—but they are not the anomalies of tyranny.
Every so often, a debate in this House allows us to peer briefly into our deeper ideas of values, and one of these ideas is our judgment of what makes tyranny and what makes freedom. Do we seriously believe that accountability of our secret services would somehow promote freedom? I suggest that reality—perhaps one should say Realpolitik—shows us that invariably these activities go into deeper and ever deeper concealment.
The Left on this matter likes to play the American card. Its posture is: here is the society you say you want to emulate. Go ahead: show us the British equivalent of the Senate Intelligence Committee. In an outstanding essay in Time Magazine a few days ago this notion is blown out the water. While we are fiddling with schemes of letting light in on our intelligence activities, the Americans are realising that in their maturity of global power there is now an absolute responsibility of secrecy.

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Another authoritative article in The Times newspaper dissected the issue of secrecy and concluded incontrovertibly that if some regulatory hand is ceaselessly monitoring every action in detail we shall get not better government but worse.
I have listened to the argument supporting the Congressional Intelligence Committee system and, closer to home, the Franks Committee remodelling of the Joint Intelligence Organisation. Nowhere do I find an able, cogent case for a permanent programme or accountability—what is sometimes called the "oversight" body. It may come about that there is a need to mount specific ad hoc investigations. We have the capability to do it in the existence of our senior legal voices—the judges, the inheritors of nine hundred years of holding truth to be important.
The reality is that I am a British citizen. This is not the time to talk about all that this means to me. But in my defence of this state of mind are vigilance, subtlety, perseverance and honour. Perhaps, for me, it is part of being British that I trust in the un-elected components of this nation's machinery of state, and trust that its secrets are kept.
4.30 p.m.
Lord Gladwyn: My Lords, like the noble Lord, Lord Dacre—whose speech we all so greatly admired—I should perhaps start, even after the lapse of about half a century, and subject, of course to the Official Secrets Act, by declaring a certain limited interest. During 1938, 1939 and the early part of 1940 I was, in fact, as private secretary to the head of the Foreign Office, Sir Alexander Cadogan, the sole direct link with what is now, I understand, known as MI6, but not with MI5, which was responsible to the Home Secretary. In that capacity, I was assisted by one lady typist and, as war approached, by an elderly retired diplomat. That was all the assistance I had!
In those far-off days the relationship of the government with what were then called "the friends" was, on the whole, a happy one. The organisation was perhaps not all that important. Its reports were quite valuable but on the whole they did not add a very great deal to our existing knowledge of what was going on in Nazi Germany. On the other hand, from about the middle of 1940 onwards, as is now common knowledge, their reports became a major importance owing to the organisation's immense success in cracking the German and many other ciphers.
Certainly the "friends" were in a general way accountable—that is the word used by the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins—in that we in the Foreign Office were conscious of what we were doing in a general way even though they could rightly be repudiated if anything went seriously wrong—which in my time I do not think it did. It never occurred to us that there might be defectors or enemy agents in the ranks of the "friends". In so far as such defectors were at that time, as we now know, pro-Soviet and not pro-Nazi, no doubt their existence did not matter very much until after the war was over. I have no idea what the position now is. In fact, I do not even know for certain—apparently with the Government—that MI6 exists! But I imagine that by this time all possible
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precautions have been taken as regards treachery. We must assume that that is so.
However, what the Russians gained by the treachery of Burgess, Maclean, Philby and others was probably less important than what we ourselves gained from the intelligence provided over the years by the many Soviet defectors. I believe, for instance, that Penkovsky gave us more information regarding Soviet nuclear progress than they ever gleaned from the reports of Fuchs, and even from Maclean himself. Incidentally, it is possible that Maclean was acting in the interests of the Western world by presumably reporting from Washington to Moscow that the Americans were entirely serious about organising NATO and joining the Europeans in a common Atlantic defence. Perhaps that even prevented war.
In other words, we should perhaps not be too despondent about the activities of traitors in the Western camp. Some no doubt still exist in Western Germany at the moment. We should not be too despondent. Traitors may always to some extent be with us. I am talking of the Western world. Nor should we get too excited about goings on in our secret services generally.
As regards MI5, I have, as I have said, no inside information whatever, but it rather looks as though the allegations that Sir Roger Hollis was a Soviet spy are without foundation and that the exact motives of Mr. Wright in pursuing this vendetta may be open to question. What is certain is that it is quite wrong for an ex-employee of any secret service who has sworn not to talk about his experiences in the service to break his word and do precisely that. That is surely wrong and that must be admitted by everybody.
However, there remains this question. How can these secret services best be controlled and prevented from doing anything which might be considered prejudicial to the public interest? In this connection my attention has been drawn to the statement made in 1977 in the House of Commons by Dr. Shirley Summerskill, at that time Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Home Office, when the House debated an interview between journalists and the former Prime Minister, Sir Harold Wilson, in which the latter seemed to be accusing MI5 of having insinuated that Members of his Government had had improper relations with the Soviet Union. With the permission of the House I shall quote a few sentences from this statement of Dr. Summerskill, because it seems to me to give an excellent definition of ministerial responsibility. I quote:
"Whatever may be the inhibitions upon our discussion of these matters in the House, honourable Members are entirely justified in seeking to be assured that Ministers are satisfied of the competence, integrity and loyalty of this service. That more than the accuracy or otherwise of allegations of what happened or did not happen on particular occasions in the past, is the serious point in all this. The House is entitled to look to the Ministers to whom the security service is answerable and accountable—that is, my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary and in the last resort my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister—to accept responsibility that all is well in this respect …
"As to that, the tradition in this country is that the service is accountable to Ministers. Parliament accepts that the accountability must be to Ministers rather than to Parliament, and trusts Ministers to discharge that responsibility faithfully.
"My right hon. Friends, the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary will continue to undertake a close oversight of the work of

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the security service and will take any further action that may be required, from time to time, to assure themselves that it is staffed by persons who are competent professionally".
It seems to me from this statement—which I trust is still valid—that if there are any abuses in a security service, which there would have been if the allegations regarding improper action against Lord Wilson and some of his colleagues in 1977 were at all true—then these must be rectified in the first instance by direct ministerial action.
It has, however, recently been suggested—and suggested by many noble Lords this afternoon—that there is a case for some kind of supervision over the secret services being maintained by a committee, perhaps of especially appointed Privy Counsellors, presumably responsible to Parliament.
It seems to me—and I think one or two noble Lords have said this—that such a body, if constituted, should not be concerned with the operations of such a service but rather with possible investigations into any alleged misuse of its powers, or with any major defections on the part of its staff. In this way the public, and notably Parliament, might be assured that the Government, which would still have the primary responsibility of coping with the incident, were at least taking the matter seriously.
It is presumably questionable whether the findings of such a committee should be published in extenso when transmitted to the Government. It must in any case be hoped that they would not be formulated on any party lines. May I therefore suggest that the commission, if it is ever formed, might be composed of Privy Counsellors who are also Cross-Bench Members of your Lordships' House and, after all, Members of Parliament. I think it may also be desirable that such a body, if formed, be composed of not more than possibly three or five members. I am sure that suitable Privy Counsellors of that calibre and in that number could be found among the Cross-Benchers. In this way party politics would not come into the commission's conclusions at all.
It is undoubtedly a difficult and perhaps dangerous subject to pursue, so I will conclude my brief remarks with what might perhaps be a constructive idea. It could appeal to the Government if they are going to take the proposal for some body to supervise the secret services at all seriously.
4.43 p.m.
Lord Harris of Greenwich: My Lords, I think that there is general agreement in the House that this has been a very worthwhile debate. We all owe a debt of gratitude to the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Putney, for having initiated the debate.
What I want to say tonight relates primarily to MI5. It is involved in two areas of work which in my view require the highest degree of public confidence in its activities. First, it has to deal with the undoubted threat posed to this country and our colleagues in the North Atlantic Alliance by the existence in this country of Soviet and East European intelligence services. Secondly, there is the crucially important work it does in relation to the terrorist threat. In those two areas it is of the utmost importance that it gets the highest degree of public support. I think it is a matter
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for concern that over the past few years there has been a substantial degree of dissatisfaction expressed about some of its activities. I think that we must look at some of those criticisms in the debate tonight.
I should first like to discuss the Australian case (if I may so describe it) and related matters; and, secondly, the question of the accountability of the service. I should like to begin by making my position on Mr. Wright quite clear. I do not regard the publication of books containing sensitive information by former members of MI5 and MI6 as acceptable. Indeed, I regard it as deplorable; and on that issue I very much agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy, and my noble friend Lord Gladwyn, said a few moments ago.
However, in my view that does not begin to justify the activities of the Government in the courts in Australia, and indeed those in Ireland. Already one of those cases, the case in Ireland, has failed, and to put in mildly, the case in Australia does not appear to be going terribly well at the moment.
Perhaps I may quote what Mr. Justice Powell said on Monday in Sydney:
"How can one, after what has happened in the last five years, accept that the British Government is genuinely concerned to demonstrate that MI5 is leakproof when it has, with abundant forewarning and … abundant opportunity to do something about it, let the Pincher book go to print, the West book, in a truncated form, go to print, the Massiter interview go to air and, more to the point, Mr. Wright to go to air".
Lord Mishcon: My Lords—
Lord Harris of Greenwich: My Lords, with great respect—
Lord Mishcon: My Lords, the case is before the courts.
Lord Harris of Greenwich: My Lords, I have very little time at my disposal. With great respect, the speaker of the House of Commons has already made it clear that this matter is not sub judice, and I am surprised that the noble Lord appears to be unaware of that.
That is what the trial judge said in Sydney. I think it is a matter that the House has to take very seriously. If it is right to attempt to use the Australian court in this way, why have the Government decided not to use the British courts? This is precisely the point that the noble Lord, Lord Dacre, made a few moments ago. The Government say that they acted against Mr. Wright and failed to act against Mr. Chapman Pincher for his book Their Trade is Treachery, which contained exactly the same allegations as does the book by Mr. Wright, because Mr. Wright used to work for MI5 and Mr. Chapman Pincher did not. However, as we all know—and the Government know this just as well as everyone else—Mr. Pincher was little more than a ghost writer for Mr. West. Again that was a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Dacre. They even split the proceeds of the book on a fifty-fifty basis. Why did the Government not attempt to get an injunction against Mr. Pincher—not a prosecution, my Lords, but an injunction?
The judge in Australia has said that he did not understand it and we now know that the Attorney-

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General in this country was not consulted either. There is one document which goes to Ministers in this Government as it went to previous governments, which is known as "Prime Minister's Instructions to Ministers". This document has already been leaked extensively in the British press, so one can draw upon it. It makes it quite clear that the Attorney-General must be consulted in any case where major interests of the state are involved. Yet we now know that at no stage was the Attorney-General consulted. I find that astonishing and I should like to know what reply the Government have to make to that particular point.
I believe that the Government made a further great error by sending Sir Robert Armstrong to defend their case in Sydney. I worked with Sir Robert Armstrong in two government departments. I know him to be an official of the highest degree of integrity and honour, and I think it most unfortunate that a distinguished public servant has been pushed into the firing line in this way. I hope that Ministers have experienced some degree of embarrassment for the position in which they have placed him.
Turning to the question of accountability, Mr. Justice Powell referred to the Massiter case and the Government's strange reluctance to use the courts in this country in respect of the serious allegations which she made. In this case an ex-M15 employee made allegations on Channel 4 television. She alleged that the definition of "subversion' given by me in this House as a Member of the then Government was deliberately misused in order to allow telephone interception of the CND. To reply to what the noble Lord, Lord Beloff, said, that is an organisation, which the last Home Secretary said he did not regard as subversive.
Secondly, Miss Massiter's allegation was that the Kilmuir guidelines had been deliberately breached by Ministry of Defence officials who had obtained information about the political beliefs of some CND executive members for partisan political use by Ministers. This subject was raised in this House during the debate on the Interception of Communications Bill. On that occasion, on behalf of my noble friends, I pressed for a security ombudsman on the lines proposed in the House of Commons by Sir Edward Gardner, supported by Mr. Callaghan and Mr. Rees, and by many others. I very much welcome the support given to this today by the noble Lord, Lord Beloff, which makes it even more puzzling because when we put the matter to the vote last year, the noble Lord voted against us.
I think that undoubtedly progress in this direction is now of critical importance, and I believe that that has been recognised by Members on both sides of the House. The noble Viscount, Lord Whitelaw—who was in his place until a few moments ago—sought on the occasion of that debate to reassure us that efforts were being made to provide internal outlets for grievances by members of MI5 and MI6. He said at col. 994 of the Official Report of 1st July 1985:
"He"—
that is, the new director general of the security services—
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"has also—and this is a crucial consideration so far as this new clause is concerned—been asked to consider and to report on what developments he proposes by way of internal outlets for the expression of grievances or anxieties by individual members of the service.
"The matter with which this new clause is concerned is accordingly under his examination."
I hope that the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, will answer this question: what progress has been made since July of last year to fulfil that undertaking?
His right honourable friend the Home Secretary, when pressed on this particular matter in the House of Commons, said this:
"Discussions on that important point are still going on."
That is at col. 944 of Hansard, House of Commons, on 3rd December. So, one and a half years have passed and still nothing has been done. It does not seem to indicate that there is a great deal of urgency.
It seems to me that it is damaging to the morale of the security service that in one and a half years there has been no move to create an internal avenue of complaint in the security service. If Miss Massiter was right in her allegations, they should have been investigated. Likewise, the grave allegations relating to activities against the noble Lord, Lord Wilson, should clearly also have been investigated if any member of the then security service was aware that they were going on.
Quite apart from this, we need an all-party watchdog committee on the lines proposed by my right honourable friends in another place and my noble friend Lord Gladwyn today. Without this, this climate of suspicion will continue to grow, and I believe that that will damage the basic interests of the security services.
4.52 p.m.
Lord Mishcon: My Lords, I think I owe it in courtesy to the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Greenwich, and to the House to explain why I rose in the midst of his interesting speech. It was not that I was going to plead any point of sub judice. But it seemed to me—possibly the House may think that I am right, or wrong—that it was not extremely loyal to be arguing a case against the Government while that case is still pending in Australia, and to do so by quoting statements made by the learned judge of the court trying the case when he was making remarks which seemed to be contrary to the case of Her Majesty's Government. It seemed to me rather worse than any allegation that could be made that a leader of a party communicated on the telephone with counsel for the defence. That was why I rose as I did, and I do not apologise for doing so.
If I may turn to the subject of this important debate, I do so at the commencement not merely as a matter of courtesy but in sincerity by thanking my noble friend Lord Jenkins of Putney for choosing such an important debate at this time. As is customary in this House, the debate has been conducted, with very few exceptions, in an atmosphere which is objective and contructive and which has in no way involved petty party points.
It would be wrong for this House to do anything else. Either MI5 and MI6 are inconsequential in regard to the defence of the realm—in which case why talk

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about accountability; why not just do away with the departments?—or they are vital to the security of this country, in which case one does not try to interfere with the morale of those in the service. Nor does one, by cheap comments or by empty debates, add doubt to our allies who trust in the adequacy and efficiency of those services. It certainly only does something to aid our own possible enemies. Therefore it was the right atmosphere that we had throughout this debate, and if I may humbly say so I propose to continue in that atmosphere.
There are possibly three matters of concern. There is the Official Secrets Act. I am not going into that in any detail except to say, as nearly everybody has said who has ever talked about that Act, that Section 2 is an abomination, but an abomination that Parliament has not yet been able to rid itself of merely because the alternative has not been agreed upon. The sooner there is some consensus of opinion, whatever be the proper channel to reach it in regard to an amendment of Section 2, the better.
The next point that obviously worries everybody is the question of the channel of complaints. If something is going wrong in the services, if really there is a suspicion that people who are in a high position are doing something which instead of helping the security of this country impairs it, where is the channel if there is no accountability for complaints?
The third question that worries everybody who has been concerned with this matter—and I think that at this moment the public is concerned about it—is: what is the machinery for reviewing what MI5 and MI6 may be doing? It has been said, and correctly, that the present channels which are there—MI5, the Home Secretary, and, in case of need, the Prime Minister as the ultimate person to whom to go; MI6, the Foreign Secretary, the Prime Minister, if it has to go to that level—are unsatisfactory. The unsatisfactory situation in regard to that is that Home Secretaries and Foreign Secretaries are not only busy people but they are somewhat transient. It may be that they are transient with no ambition reached, because they lose their position and everything else. It may be of course that they are translated into other spheres. If there is one thing that you need if you are dealing with accountability, especially in regard to services like these, it is some sort of permanence.
We then turn, both in regard to the complaints matter and the review matter, to the suggestion that has been made about the Privy Counsellor's committee. Obviously that ought to have quite a hit of consideration. I suppose there are two doubts that I have: first, what happens if a Prime Minister to whom the names are submitted has some doubt in regard to the adequacy (I am not talking about loyalty) of the person nominated by a political party, or indeed on behalf of the Cross-Benches, as has been mentioned? To turn down that name is really to have the innuendo about it that it has been turned down on security grounds. It is a very embarrassing position.
But the greater fault that I find—this is only a personal opinion—with any such suggestion is that if it is to be a surveillance of policy that the committee is committed to, is it to be a committee of Back-Benchers that tells Ministers of whatever government
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what they have to do? That strikes me as a little difficult.
Therefore in an endeavour to be constructive I put forward a suggestion which did not appeal—and he dismissed it very shortly—to the noble Lord, Lord Dacre, who, as everybody who has mentioned his name in this debate said, delivered a most thoughtful, instructive and, if I may say so, literally rather beautiful speech. The noble Lord said in regard to the suggestion that we look at a body which is already there and is non-political—the security commission—that it was too distant. I was listening with great interest to hear how he was going to develop that point. Because of the time limit imposed on all of us he was presumably unable to do so.
What are the terms of reference of that commission that was set up in 1964? It was requested by the Prime Minister to investigate and report upon the circumstances in which a breach of security is known to have occurred in the public service and upon any related failure of departmental security arrangements or neglect of duty, and, in the light of any such investigation, to advise whether any change in security arrangements was necessary or desirable.
Those terms of reference could be extended to the hearing of complaints that there might be within the security service that ought to be referred to such a commission ("referred" is a word I am using deliberately)—matters of concern at that moment; or to allow the commission to take unto itself a referral of any thing to do with the security service and give it the power to call for documents and witnesses; add to its number—I shall say one word about its membership in a moment—a couple of High Court judges: I especially did not mention Lords of Appeal, in ordinary or otherwise. I mentioned High Court judges with all the robustness that some puisne judges undoubtedly have.
My last word is to tell your Lordships of the present membership of such a commission. It is not had. The reports it has produced have been worthy and helpful reports. The members are: Lord Griffiths, the right honourable Lord Justice Lloyd, Lord Allen of Abbeydale and General Sir Hugh Beach. If your Lordships add to that two High Court judges, do you not have a pretty permanent commission to which surveillance and accountability could well be brought? Add to that the duty to produce an annual report in discreet language, preserving the security of these services, and that might produce a solution which is at least worthy of government consideration.
5.2 p.m.
The Minister of State, Home Office (The Earl of Caithness): My Lords, I welcome the initiative of the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Putney, in providing the House with an opportunity to debate the issue of the accountability and control of the security service. I particularly welcome the opportunity to put on record the debt which our country owes to the security service. Its work constitutes a vital dimension of the defence of the nation. The nature of the work means that its members receive few plaudits and they deserve better than to be the butt of the present rash of stories, claims and counterclaims, rumour and innuendo.

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The control of the security service is naturally a matter of legitimate public concern. The public has the right to expect the Government to ensure that the country is protected by an effective security service and that the service itself does not abuse the cloak of secrecy which must cover its work.
I must inform the House that I am under two constraints—one general, one particular—in what I can say today. First, I am under the general constraint, which I know your Lordships will well understand, that I cannot always give an answer to many questions which have been raised about the security service. The noble Lord, Lord Wilson of Rievaulx, wrote in his book The Governance of Britain that,
"the Prime Minister is occasionally questioned on matters arising out of his responsibility. His answers may be regarded as uniformally uninformative".
This has been the practice under successive governments of all parties and must remain so.
A second and particular difficulty is that I cannot comment on the case currently before the courts in Australia. While we are conducting that case, for reasons which my right honourable friend the Home Secretary has explained, we may not be drawn on the matters which are currently at issue. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Greenwich, will understand that. If he was still in the position that I now have the honour to hold as Minister of State at the Home Office he would have said the same as I say.
Obviously it would be nice if we lived in a world where we did not need to safeguard ourselves against espionage or to protect ourselves against terrorism. These threats continue to loom large. Indeed the threat of domestic and international terrorism is probably now greater than it has been at any time. Through force of circumstance the role of the security service in combating terrorism has grown. An effective security service is a crucial part of the defence forces of the Crown and is central to the present and future safety and security of the British people. It would be a contradiction in terms to think that the security service could carry out its operations effectively in a blaze of publicity. Publicity is anathema to sensitive intelligence gathering operations.
It is not our contention that secrecy should mean the total isolation of the security service from all our democratic institutions. There has to be some means of ensuring oversight and responsibility. There has to be some way of working out that the resources and the opportunities provided for the security service are used for the national good.
The security service operates under the directive issued to the director general by the then Home Secretary, Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe, in 1952. Ministerial responsibility operates through the director general to the Home Secretary, although on matters of extreme delicacy the director general has access to the Prime Minister. The directive was made public in the report of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Denning, and still applies today. I was very pleased to hear the excellent contribution to today's debate made by the noble and learned Lord.
The director general is expected to seek direction and guidance from the Home Secretary as to the way
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the service goes about its business. But with one exception the Home Secretary does not concern himself with individual operations. That one exception is when an interception warrant is sought, when of course the Home Secretary must be given sufficient supporting information for him to judge whether the application comes within the established criteria. But as paragraph 6 of the directive makes clear:
"Ministers do not concern themselves with the detailed information which may be obtained by the Security Service in particular cases but are furnished with such information only as may be necessary for the determination of any issue on which guidance is sought".
The security service is emphatically not in the business of obtaining information on behalf of the Government. It is there to protect the state against external and internal dangers and must, as the directive makes clear, do this without political bias. That is why operational judgments must be for the director general to make. If his judgment is wrong, he must answer to the Home Secretary.
Parliament is entitled to expect the Home Secretary to be well informed about what the service is doing; about its priorities, about how it is deploying its resources and about the overall effectiveness and efficiency of its operations. The Home Secretary receives reports, asks questions and meets the director general and other members of the service. My right honourable friend explained in another place on 3rd December his approach to the trust and responsibility which rests upon his shoulders in carrying out these functions.
I understand though that however high the regard in which the Home Secretary and the director general of the day are held, there is a frequent nagging desire to impose a further check upon them in their role as custodians of the public interest. It is an understandable impulse, but however wide a view one takes of the public interest in these matters it is much more difficult to design a satisfactory framework to meet the objective. It is essential to judge any proposal for radical change or external oversight against three criteria. First, will it preserve effectively the necessary secrecy of security service operations? Secondly, will it blunt or diminish the direct personal reponsibility of the Home Secretary of the day to Parliament? Thirdly, will such a change serve to increase the confidence felt by Parliament and the public in the security service?
Different models have been suggested by your Lordships this afternoon for some form of external review body to monitor the security service. My noble friends Lord Campbell of Croy, Lord Beloff and Lord Birdwood mentioned the possibility of an ad hoc committee. I think that something like what they were suggesting exists in the present Security Commission.
The noble Lord, Lord Gladwyn, made reference to a committee of Cross-Bench Privy Counsellors. After 12 minutes of trying to exploit some of the recent unease relating to the security service, the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Putney, said that he had little time to pursue his suggestion that there should be a select committee of Privy Counsellors charged with this task. My noble friend Lord Dacre of Glanton suggested that a judicial body was the right one to take the matter forward. The idea of expanding the role of the existing

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Security Commission was raised by the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon. The noble Lord, Lord Hooson, said that something was needed but he was not quite sure what.
On the question of permanent supervision of the security service, any of these suggestions would tend to blunt—because they would share—the direct responsibility towards Parliament which rests on the Home Secretary of the day. Even if this not inconsiderable obstacle could be overcome, any form of external security body would need to have a clearly defined role in respect of the operational responsibilities of the service.
I have emphasised the need for the secrecy of operations to be maintained but there are additional practical constraints. If we start to share the director general's responsibilities with a group of outsiders, this to my mind is a sure recipe for confusing lines of command and accountability in day-to-day management. On a day-to-day basis we must leave the managers in the service working within the terms of the directive to manage their responsibilities effectively and properly.
The central problem, however, is that there must be a veil of secrecy drawn between the security service on the one hand and the debates of Parliament and the speculations of newspapers on the other. On which side of that veil should a monitoring body sit? If the monitor sat on the secret side of the veil, how would that help public accountability? Having to preserve secrecy and not being able to produce the evidence, how would it be able to satisfy the public interest in what was going on and public concern that everything was being done correctly?
Let us suppose that it was given limited review powers so that it could get access to some information but remained apart from operational details. Surely it would have little credibility if it gave the security service a certificate of probity merely on the basis of general reports by the director general without being able to check with operational statements if those reports were true. If, on the other hand, it sat on the public side of the veil it would be less well informed and less directly and personally accountable than the Home Secretary himself and therefore would perform no particularly useful functions.
I wish to dwell for a moment, if I may, on the proposal put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon; that is, to extend the role of the existing Security Commission. The commission has been in existence for more than 20 years and brings together a distinguished membership of retired senior officers and civil servants under the chairmanship of a judge. Under its terms of reference it investigates and reports on any failure of security arrangements and advises upon whether changes in these arrangements are needed. But the Security Commission does not attempt to provide a continuous monitoring of the security service. Its interventions are intended to be ad hoc. In order that its role should touch upon the central issue in today's debate, which is the relationship between Ministers and Parliament and the security service, its role would need to be fundamentally changed, thereby calling into question the present membership and structure of the commission.
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I should also mention a further practical point relating to any parliamentary form of scrutiny. It is difficult to envisage such a change being brought about unless there were to be re-establishment of the type of consensus on the two matters of national defence and security which used to characterise dealings between the parties before 1979 and with which most other Western democratic countries are blessed.
We know that many well respected noble Lords on the Benches opposite view the policy of their party with regard to defence with nothing short of horror. This was recently made clear by the noble Lord, Lord Stewart of Fulham. Were their party's policy to be implemented, it would place the security of our country in grave jeopardy. Were those—albeit a limited number—of members of the Labour Party who have no concern for the effectiveness of our security service in defending our country and who think only of seeking to embarrass Ministers who hold posts of influence, to be in a future government, we should all have cause to sleep uneasily in our beds. If the Labour Party's pledge to repeal the Prevention of Terrorism Act were carried out, the police—
Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: My Lords—
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, may I at least—
Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: I merely wish to say that—
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, I am going to tie it all in and—
Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: My Lords, I merely wish to say that we strongly resent the line which the Minister of State is taking. It is totally irrelevant to the subject of the debate.
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, with due respect to the noble Lord the Leader of the Opposition, I do not think it is irrelevant to this debate. If he had let me finish, I should have tied it all in. If the Labour Party pledge to repeal the Prevention of Terrorism Act were carried out, the police would be denuded of many of the powers which they need to combat the terrorism menace.
For that reason I support what the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, said when he stressed the need for continuing bipartisanship in the approach to a subject as important as these security matters. I do not wish to give the House the impression that the present arrangements for ministerial responsibility for these matters are static and uninformative. That is not so. This Government can claim to have discharged their responsibilities to Parliament in as full and open a way as is consistent with the need to preserve national security.
On 21st November 1979 my right honourable friend the Prime Minister thought it right to confirm that Blunt was a Soviet agent, a factor of which previous governments had been aware but had not informed Parliament. On 26th March 1981, during a debate on the implications of the hook Their Trade is Treachery, my right honourable friend commented that positive vetting arrangements had not been

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reviewed since 1962 and indicated that she had asked the Security Commission to review the security procedures and practices followed in the public service.
In 1983, the Security Commission, in connection with this and other inquiries, including the Prime case, made a number of suggestions for improvements in the positive vetting procedures. In May 1985 the Prime Minister reported to Parliament on the results of the inquiry by the Security Commission into the Bettaney case and made a full statement on the commission's criticisms and suggestions for reform. My right honourable friend announced acceptance of the Security Commission's recommendations for changes in positive vetting procedures in the security service. She also said that she and my right honourable friend the then Home Secretary were determined to see that action was taken to remedy the management weakness identified within the service.
The present director general has devoted a major part of his time and energy to that management task, especially in regard to personnel arrangements. Earlier this year the director general put forward to my right honourable friends the Home Secretary and the Prime Minister a report on changes in the organisation and a management of the security service. The report was made available to the Security Commission. All concerned have been impressed with the thought and effort which the security service has devoted to dealing with the problems identified by the Security Commission during the inquiry into the Bettaney case.
The Security Commission has informed my right honourable friend the Prime Minister of its approval of a more open style of management which the director general has introduced throughout the service. The Security Commission has also noted with approval that the vetting procedures were being improved following recruitment of more investigating officers and that division of responsibility between management and specialist personnel managers had been tackled and clarified.
The commission considers that the director general is to be congratulated on the way he has tackled the problem identified in the report following the inquiry into the case of Mr. Bettaney. Finally, this Government have had the courage to bring the difficult issues raised in the Interception of Communications Act 1985 before Parliament. Interception has been undertaken for many years outside any framework of law under the authority of Ministers of successive governments. Since the 1985 Act a full statutory framework has been provided within which interceptions have to be authorised.
The decisions of Ministers are subject to two forms of outside scrutiny. Anyone who thinks his communications have been wrongly intercepted can appeal to an independent tribunal of distinguished lawyers empowered to inquire into warrants and, if it judges fit, to quash them. In addition, the interception commissioner, a senior judge, keeps all the arrangements under continuing review and has access to all material.
The Government believe that the principle of ministerial responsibility, adapting itself as it has to
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particular events and situations, continues to provide the best model for the British security service. We are not at present persuaded that any of the alternative models would yield marked advantages. No government, when they have thought through the issues raised, have felt it right to share responsibility in these matters with some form of external review body. Within obvious restraints, this Government have, I believe, been open and receptive to fresh ideas in the field of security.
The noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, and my noble friend Lord Campbell of Croy, raised the question of the Official Secrets Act 1911. I have answered Questions in this House fairly recently about that, and your Lordships will recall the 1979 debate that we had on trying to reform the Act and the difficulty encountered on getting agreement, notwithstanding the work of the Franks Committee.
The noble Lords, Lord Jenkins of Putney and Lord Hooson, questioned whether the security service was out of control. The Government accept that it is certainly not. The allegations, true or false, relate to a period ending in 1976, when Mr. Wright retired. Ministers have made very clear their continuing concern to satisfy themselves that the security service operates entirely within the letter and spirit of the Maxwell Fyfe Directive.
The noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Putney, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wilson of Langside, questioned whether there had been illegal actions by the security service. It is quite clear that no one is above the law in this country and that members of the security service are no more immune from prosecution than anyone else if they commit a criminal offence. It would be quite wrong for me to comment on any individual case mentioned, except the case of Mr. Blunt, which was raised by the noble and learned Lord. On that I would refer him to the debate in another place.
Lord Silkin of Dulwich: My Lords, I wonder whether the noble Earl will give way—
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, I am sorry, my time is limited in the debate. I have only 20 minutes and I must conclude. Discussion of the present—
Noble Lords: Order!
Lord Silkin of Dulwich: My Lords, this is a matter of correcting a question of fact.
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, I have only 20 minutes. Discussions of the present arrangements will doubtless proceed beyond this afternoon's debate. What is of overriding importance is a continuing appreciation that the conduct of security must proceed in secret. That must be the basis of a consideration of arrangements to ensure accountability.
There are two obvious dangers if we seek to elaborate the handling of security matters. The first is that by unduly widening the information generally available we prejudice the secrecy necessary for effective security service operations. The second is that by creating a new structure we blur the lines of

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responsibility and detract from the Government's central accountability to Parliament as a whole.
Surely that is not what this country wants or deserves. My right honourable friend the Home Secretary made it clear on the 3rd December that the Government do not approach this matter with a closed mind, but our advice to the House is that we should be most cautious in considering a change in the present arrangements lest we create diversity without clear responsibility and imperil the safety of our people.
Lord Silkin of Dulwich: My Lords, before the Minister sits down, in view of his reference to Blunt, which might have been misconstrued when he spoke about the Prime Minister having revealed to the public the facts about Blunt, will he be good enough to confirm that immunity was granted to Blunt by the late Sir John Hobson in early 1964 and that that fact was known to all successive governments?
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, I apologise. With the leave of the House, let me say that I think it would be wrong for me to comment any further than I have at the moment.
Lord Jenkins of Putney: My Lords, it seems to me to be a pity that this debate, which has been carried out on a very high level—I thought most of us appreciated that we were trying seriously to deal with the nature of the problem—should have been terminated in a way not up to that level. That seems rather sad. That is the only thing I wish to say. It is not our custom for the mover of a short debate to be given permission to reply. Therefore I shall not attempt it, much though I should like to.
I thank those who have taken part in this debate. Most of your Lordships have taken the view that something is wrong and that something needs to be done. That is the first step.
I am very glad that the noble Earl said that the Government's mind is not closed. He could have fooled me, but I am glad I was wrong about that. It seems that he will be going to his right honourable friend in another place and it is possible that even now the Government may be coming forward with something to rectify a situation which has disquieted so many of us. It is on that note that I should like to conclude the debate and not on any note of party-political contention. I beg leave to withdraw my Motion for Papers.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

EC Milk and Beef Reforms
5.26 p.m.
The Minister of State, Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Lord Belstead): My Lords, with the leave of the House, I should like to repeat a Statement which is being made in another place. The Statement is as follows:
"With permission, I will make a Statement on the outcome of the meeting in Brussels of the Council of Agriculture Ministers which covered 90 hours of negotiations, including two all-night sessions, and
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ended yesterday afternoon. My right honourable friend the Minister chaired this meeting and I"—
that is, my Lords, my right honourable friend Mr. Gummer—
"represented the United Kingdom. Important decisions were taken which involved major reforms to the milk and beef sectors.
"On milk, the agreement will result in reduction in production of 94 per cent. over the next two years. This is to be achieved first by the permanent reductions in milk quotas of 2 per cent. for 1987 and a further 1 per cent. in 1988, as agreed last April; secondly by a temporary suspension of quota by 4 per cent. in 1987 and a further 1½ per cent. in 1988; and finally by a further 1 per cent. reduction which results from a tightening up in the operation of the quota system. I insisted throughout the negotiations that the necessary reductions in production had to apply in all member states, and this was agreed.
"Our aim will be to achieve as much of the permanent reduction as possible in the United Kingdom by the voluntary outgoers scheme. I am pleased to say that the maximum rate of Community compensation under this scheme will be increased by 50 per cent. from 2.6 pence per litre a year to 3.9 pence per litre a year over seven years. Compensation from FEOGA for the temporary suspensions of quota will be paid at 6.5 pence per litre per year, and this rate is guaranteed for two years.
"Changes are to be made next year in the arrangements for implementing the supplementary levy in order to make this more effective in discouraging production in excess of national quotas. We succeeded in our aim of retaining Formula B and Article 4a, which contribute to ensuring the flexible operation of the quota arrangements within the United Kingdom. As part of the agreement, changes are to be made in the intervention arrangements. These are designed to prevent excessive recourse to intervention, which has been noticeable in the Community particularly over the past year.
"The Council took note of a Commission paper which sets out its plans for a major disposal of existing intervention stock, designed to reduce these to more manageable levels by 1989. The cost of this programme of disposals will be financed over the four years beginning in 1989.
"On beef, the Council agreed substantial reforms in the intervention system. These are designed to reduce both the cost and the volume of intervention buying. They involve reduction in the price levels at which intervention buying will operate. It will take place only when the average price in the Community is below 91 per cent. of the intervention price and when at the same time the average price in a particular member state or region is below 87 per cent. of the intervention price.
"Alongside these changes in intervention, various premium arrangements were agreed. These include a new premium worth £16 per head payable on male animals only on specialised beef enterprises up to a limit of 50 heads per farm. This particular premium was totally unacceptable to the United Kingdom, and we shall not be applying it here.

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Instead, we succeeded in retaining our existing variable premium arrangement on its existing terms, which is much more favourable. The maximum rate payable averages at about £45 per head and covers heifers as well as steers and young bulls. Moreover, the 50-head limit does not apply to it. In addition, the rate of Community funding for the suckler cow premium is being increased. It will be possible in 1987 to pay up to a maximum of £33 per head. The decision on the actual rate will be taken later.
"These changes to the beef system represent a major shift away from dependence on intervention towards a more market-orientated policy. This is in line with the approach which we have followed in the UK under our variable premium system. The beef arrangements have moreover been agreed until the end of 1988. They will, therefore, provide an important element of stability for beef producers during a period when the adjustments to milk production, and the effects of this on the beef market, will be felt.
"In response to the request which we made last September, the Council agreed to devaluation in our green rate of 6 points for beef and 3·2 points for sheep. These changes, which take effect on 5th January, will result in support prices in these two sectors being increased by around 5 per cent. and 1½ per cent. respectively. This will be worth an additional £50 million to farmers in a full year. The devaluation will also help towards restoring our meat traders' position relative to Ireland. Other green rate devaluations were agreed at the same time: for France in the same two sectors; and for Greece, Portugal and Spain in the sheep sector only. The Council broadly approved in outline a package of socio-structural measures and agreed that detailed decisions on these would be reached by the end of February.
"One major aim of these arrangements is to help tackle the surplus problem. Member states will be required to offer aid for the extension of production and conversion to non-surplus output, and also to operate an early retirement scheme for farmers who want to abandon production on their farms. These schemes will be able to cover afforestation as well as fallowing. Member states will have a wide measure of discretion on how they will be applied.
"The measures will help the southern countries in the Community to restructure their farms. There is provision for Community-funded schemes for environmentally sensitive areas. This is of course an important concept which has been introduced into Community legislation as a result of the pressure from the United Kingdom",
and in particular from my right honourable friend.
"The Commission originally proposed a limit on the financial contribution to compensatory allowances for livestock which would have severely discriminated against some farmers in this country. I succeeded in securing a form of words in the final document which is acceptable both to us and to them. The changes, particularly in the milk sector, will of course cause serious problems of adjustment
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for many individual farmers. But they will be sizeably compensated. The package agreed at the Council on milk and beef fits in well with the best interests of the UK industry. In particular, the cutback in milk production will be applied across the Community and we have retained flexibility in the system; we have kept the beef variable premium and an improved suckler cow premium; and we have secured the green rate changes which will greatly benefit our livestock sector.
"The Agriculture Council has, I believe, under the British Presidency taken an historic step forward in tackling the problems of surpluses which will bring substantial savings to the Community budget. Twelve nations have together found the way forward in agriculture, despite differences so big that once they could have caused wars. It is in the interests of all of us—farmers, consumers and taxpayers alike—that decisions have been taken which put the common agricultural policy on the right road for the future".
My Lords, that concludes the Statement.
Lord John-Mackie: My Lords, we are very grateful to the Minister for repeating this complicated, interesting and important Statement. I should like first to congratulate the Minister of Agriculture on the tremendous amount of work which he has put in on this subject. He has achieved what are in many ways very good results indeed. However, I think that the press have become rather euphoric about this matter. For the Daily Telegraph to say that,
"EEC conquers food mountain",
in letters almost two inches high is going a bit too far.
The Financial Times is much more cautious in saying:
"Brussels reform package gets to grips with milk problem".
The Times says:
"Farm Ministers agree on sweeping CAP reforms"
and it again asks what is a very big question:
"How soon will EEC mountains begin to fall?"
I think we must look at the situation in the light of the major problem which is tackled here on two fronts only—but they are indeed two important fronts. I will not go into the details of this very complicated Statement, which will require much more study and much more time than we have tonight. However, as we all know, there is a necessity to stop the building up of surpluses and this is only a start. Very little is said concerning how to deal with surpluses which are already there. There is, in the paragraph half-way down the first page, the statement:
"The Council took note of a Commission paper which sets out its plans for a major disposal of existing intervention stock".
There has been some publicity on how this will be done, but I hope the Minister will be able to comment on this major item involving getting rid of the present surpluses as well as controlling those which may occur in the future.
As regards milk, we note that the United Kingdom is to rely mainly on a voluntary outgoers scheme for the next two years. After our debate at either the end of last year or the beginning of this year on this subject of whether an across the board cut in quota was the

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best plan for a voluntary scheme, I made it plain that I frankly did not think that scheme would work. We know that the response was very poor. I should like to ask the Minister whether, in spite of an increase in inducement, he really thinks this will give the 9½ per cent. over two years that the Government expect in this country, as distinct from other European countries. This is a very real problem indeed.
The other point I should like to have clarified concerns the paragraph in the middle of the first page of the Statement which says:
"As part of the agreement, changes are to be made in the intervention arrangements. These are designed to prevent excessive recourse to intervention, which has been noticeable in the Community particularly over the past year".
We are not told how that will be carried out.
I said that I would not go into detail, but I am afraid that I have done so. However, as regards beef it is difficult to tell how much effect the scheme will have. As the noble Lord knows, there is a great deal of beef in the pipeline and one cannot shut it off like a tap. We are very grateful indeed for the retention of the variable premium and the increase in the suckler cow premium. Of course all this depends on whether the premium will be sufficient to compensate for a drastic drop in price. The devaluation of the green pound will certainly help; there is no question but that it will help all stock.
However, there have already been estimates that there will be a drop of £50 per head for fat cattle. I do not know how correct that estimate is. But when one thinks of the flood of dairy cows that will come on to the market if the Government get their outgoers scheme, with the number of cows that will come out of the scheme, one realises that it will create a big beef problem. If that happens, the demand for dairy calves will go down, which will be yet another disadvantage in terms of the income of the dairyman. I should like the Minister to look at this point. Everything that is done has a rolling effect on all facets of agriculture; then a major scheme like this comes forward to reduce the price. The devaluation of the green pound, as I have said, will help all stock, including sheep producers. The problem is what one does if one goes out of milk or out of beef. In many areas—indeed, in the bulk of areas—I think the decision is bound to be to go into sheep, which will create a surplus in the sheep regime.
The Statement refers to alternatives. Perhaps the Minister has some idea what these alternatives are likely to be. They are getting fewer as the years go on. Whether the socio-structural measures mentioned in the Statement will help by persuading farmers to retire and abandon their land is anyone's guess. No one denies that we have these enormous problems. We are grateful for the start that has been made in the conditions on which the Ministers of Agriculture have managed to agree. As I said earlier, it is such a detailed question to go into that I hope we may get a debate on the whole subject after the Recess.
I ask the Minister to remember that drastic cuts in farm income will hurt not only farmers and farm workers but the entire rural community. I hope that will be borne in mind as further plans for dealing with the problem are envisaged.
Lord Mackie of Benshie: My Lords, I thank the Minister for the Statement. As usual, I have to come after my noble kinsman, who has said many of the things that I wanted to say. However, it would do no harm to say them again.
The cuts are necessary, but I do not think that anyone should pretend that they will not hurt somebody. There is no need to declare an interest; my interest in agriculture is long term. The reason that I welcome the breakthrough—and it is a breakthrough that has been made—is that, if we do not do something about it, the whole of the CAP will go "bust", and we will be left without any support arrangements for farming except the national ones that may be made in this country—a country that is the least sympathetic to agriculture in Europe.
The Government have therefore done reasonably well in making a start. If they had been more European and more sympathetic and had not lectured quite so much, they might have made a start earlier. Nevertheless, they have made a start. On milk, which is the worst problem that we have, I wish to ask the Minister how much he intends to reduce the surplus. The previous target that we had resulted in an enormous surplus continuing to go into store, so ruining world markets. I should like to ask him, if we achieved 9.5 per cent. to 10 per cent., what state of balance this will give between production and consumption in Europe.
It is important to realise that the EC has had a severely deleterious effect on really competent and unsubsidised agricultural industries in New Zealand, which I think is the best example. I have just come back from there. The farmers are really being hit over the head. They are making every effort to cut. They are cutting production—they have to—but I should not like them to be bracketed with the United States, as I see they are in the press. It would be valuable to know the Minister's attitude on New Zealand production.
I should also like to ask the Minister what effect he thinks the cuts in milk quota—the release of cows for slaughter on to the beef market—will have on the good effects of the 5 per cent. revaluation on beef. If the intervention price is lowered to 87 per cent. before the premium is paid, I do not think that we can look forward to anything but a definite fall in the price of beef and a very difficult three or four years for the beef industry. I should like the Minister to comment on that. Can the Minister also say whether we are paying the maximum allowed under EC rules to the hill farmer for his hill cow and hill sheep? I think that he will need this protection. Without any doubt some people will go over to the rearing of sheep on the low ground.
The Statement mentions the other measures that will have to be taken, such as getting land into forestry. That, the Statement says, is a national matter. Will the Minister tell us what practical plans he is producing? It is very important that the farmers know there is some real alternative to creating a surplus in another area, which of course is what happens when one takes land out of production. If there is no substitute, that simply causes a surplus in another area. If he can tell us something on that, it would be helpful.

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The final point that I wish to raise concerns cereals. I should like to ask the Minister what the Government are going to do about cereals, which are one of our biggest problems next to milk. Something must be done, or we will be floating up to our necks in cereals. We already have enormous surpluses costing large sums to store. It is extraordinary that no mention has been made of any plan to deal with the main factors now threatening the CAP.
5.45 p.m.
Lord Belstead: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lords, Lord John-Mackie and Lord Mackie of Benshie, for their reception of the Statement. The noble Lord, Lord John-Mackie, gave his congratulations to my right honourable friend for the negotiations that he has conducted through many long days and indeed nights over last week. The noble Lord, Lord Mackie of Benshie, was good enough to say that this is a breakthrough. Indeed, I believe it is. In these negotiations, the Government believe, we have moved from a position in which Europe has been for many years since the war, when we were protecting people from shortages, to trying now to do something about tackling the unacceptable surpluses.
The noble Lord, Lord John-Mackie, asked what the savings will be. At this stage, ahead of any debate that we may have, perhaps I may say that the milk package is designed to produce savings to the Community budget of £1,200 million over the next three years. The decisions on beef should produce savings, compared to the present beef arrangements, of some £138 million up to the end of 1988. There will also be savings on CAP market support resulting from the socio-structural measures. It is true that those savings will be offset to some extent by the costs of the green rate devaluations, but, as I know the noble Lord, Lord John-Mackie, will be the first to say, those are very necessary and welcome to the producers in the country. In brief, that is the scene on the financial savings.
Both noble Lords asked me to what extent this Statement and these negotiations are going to reduce the surpluses. In regard to milk, the intention is to reduce both butter and skimmed milk powder stocks to normal levels over the next two years. By that I know that the Community means trying to get the stocks down to levels of 200,000 tonnes in store for both butter and skimmed milk, compared with 1½ million tonnes of butter in stock and 1 million tonnes of skimmed milk powder in stock at the present time. It is intended that this should be done by deferring the reimbursement to member states of their purchase price for intervention butter until 1989 and then to spread the cost of the reimbursement to the member states over the next four years.
The noble Lord, Lord John-Mackie, asked whether we are really going to achieve the uptake of the outgoers scheme by farmers, even though, as he was good enough to recognise, there has been in the negotiations a massive increase of 50 per cent. for the outgoers scheme in the compensation that will be offered to farmers. Let me just put this on the record. The objective is to achieve a 3 per cent. reduction in production of milk by permanent quota cuts. We hope
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that with the 50 per cent. increase in the rate of payment to outgoers it will be possible to get the outgoers to come in and take up the whole lot.
I say that because we have gone from 18.3p per litre compensation to be offered up to 27½ per litre to be paid over seven years, an increase of 50 per cent. But if farmers do not come forward in sufficient numbers to take up the outgoers scheme, one of the great advantages of this negotiation is that we could then pay the enhanced rate of compensation across the board to farmers from whom we should then have to make the necessary resulting cuts in order to achieve the 3 per cent.
Then 5½ per cent. is to be achieved by temporary quota cuts over the next two years. These will be across-the-board cuts but the compensation will be at the generous rate of 6.5p per litre a year for at least two years, and the remaining 1 per cent. cut in production is to be achieved by changes in the calculation of the super-levy. This should eliminate production over quota, which amounts to about 1 per cent. at the present time.
The noble Lord talked about the income of farmers from beef. I simply say at this stage of the afternoon that it is reckoned that the beef variable premium scheme is going to add £120 million to the incomes of farmers for the forthcoming year. I am delighted that that is so. Perhaps I may take this opportunity to say that it gives me the very greatest pleasure to be able to stand at the Dispatch Box and say that we are continuing with the scheme which was started by the noble Lord, Lord Peart, in the 1970s. I also make the point that the green rate devaluation will lift the maximum rate of the variable premium in this country to 9.4p per kilogram. I think that the position for beef producers, although not easy, is nonetheless perhaps better than the noble Lord was indicating.
The noble Lord then asked what when all is said and done the alternatives are. This is where we come to the last part of the Statement, which talks about the agreement—what I would call heads of agreement, which have to he finalised by the end of February of next year—on the socio-structural measures. Embedded in those agreements on socio-structural measures, as the Statement says, is an agreement that there is to be a scheme for payments for more extensive or reduced production, including fallowing.
That is the answer to the noble Lord, Lord John-Mackie, who asked what the Government are going to do about cereals. This is the trailer for what could be, if our proposals are accepted by the Community, a cereals set-aside scheme, a cereals land diversion scheme. The words in my right honourable friend's Statement on socio-structures where they refer to fallowing are quite clearly an opportunity which could still be seized by Community countries early next year to go in for a cereals land diversion scheme. But we shall have to wait to see whether that will in fact happen.
There are two other questions which I do not think I have answered. The noble Lord, Lord Mackie of Benshie, asked me whether we are paying up to the maximum in the less favoured areas. I think the noble Lord knows perfectly well that we are not quite up to the maximum. I say no more about that at the

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moment. The noble Lord asked me a very important question, which is a variant on the question of the noble Lord, Lord John-Mackie. He asked whether at the end of the day there will be quite a lot of trouble in the beef market because of the cow meat coming out as a result of milk cow slaughterings. I should just like to make the point, which was not in my right honourable friend's Statement, that I understand that the Commission is to put forward 435 mecus in order to meet market management costs in the future.
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: My Lords, will my noble friend also accept from this side of the House the congratulations which have been so generously offered from the other side to his right honourable friend on this first substantial attack on what most of us regard as the scandal of the common agricultural policy? Is he aware that I offer these congratulations with particular enthusiasm, having just returned from Australia, a country in which comment on the common agricultural policy is not such that I can repeat it within the confines of this House within the rules of order?
Will my noble friend also answer two specific questions? He gave us a good many figures on the savings resulting from these changes. But can he bring the figures, plus and minus, together so as to tell your Lordships the actual net annual savings that will result from next year onwards from these changes? Can he also confirm—I hope he can—that one effect of these changes will be to secure that the sale at a nominal price to the USSR of butter and other foodstuffs will be brought to an abrupt and final end?
Lord Belstead: My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for what he has said about the success of the negotiations and I shall draw his words to the attention of my right honourable friend.
The net savings are as follows. They include the savings for milk, including stock disposals, and the deferred reimbursement to which I referred for paying from 1989 onwards. The net savings for beef, for socio-structures but with offsettings for the green rate changes, would be for next year 1,020 mecus. (I am talking in mecus; not, I am afraid, in pounds.) For 1988 there would be a saving of 450 mecus and for 1989 there would be a saving of 300 mecus to the Community budget. At this stage I have to say that the question of stock disposals is a matter on which we must await further proposals from the Commission, but I have taken on board what my noble friend said about the public attitude to disposals abroad.
Lord Walston: My Lords, I am full of admiration for the stamina of the noble Lord's colleagues in Brussels. I have not such full admiration, but I have some admiration, for their achievements. However, I must confess—I hope this is not unduly grudging on my part—that I cannot see that this is a real breakthrough which helps towards the ultimate solution of the basic problems of the common agricultural policy.
In considering the actual figures for milk, my understanding is that our present surplus of milk production within the Community is around 12 per cent. These proposals appear to me to reduce milk production in 1987 by about 7 per cent., leaving a surplus of 4½ per cent. to 5 per cent. which will add still
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further to the butter mountain or the milk powder mountain. In the following year the total reduction will have amounted to 9½ per cent. Therefore according to my calculations, although the mountains will grow less fast they will still continue to grow. I hope that my calculations are wrong and that the noble Lord will be able to show that in fact the surplus will not only grow less fast but will disappear and become a minus quantity. I should be grateful if the noble Lord could inform the House further on that point.
I support my noble friend Lord Mackie of Benshie in his comments about cereals because, after all, milk and cereals between them are by far the greatest part of the cost of the common agricultural policy and present the largest problems with regard to storage. While I hope a breakthrough may have been made, there is nothing in the Statement which tells us anything about cereals; and although there are pious hopes from the noble Lord that in February something may be done we need rather more concrete action than that if the cereal mountain is to cease growing at the terrifying rate at which it is now growing. All that is quite apart from the question of the disposal of existing surpluses, but I do not think I would be in order to trespass on that subject now.
6 p.m.
Lord Belstead: My Lords, the noble Lord is more or less right in what he said at the beginning of his intervention. The figure I have is a 6 per cent. reduction in the production of milk products. The noble Lord put to me the logical conclusion that therefore the mountains will continue to grow. With respect to the noble Lord, he is neglecting that part of the Statement which makes clear that there will be a policy of stock disposal by the Commission, about which I said to my noble friend Lord Boyd-Carpenter that I did not think I could say more this evening. However, I said to the noble Lord, Lord John-Mackie, that the intention through the stock disposal policy is that over the next two years it will be possible to reduce the stocks of both butter and skimmed milk powder to normal proportions in store. There is therefore that additional factor which, with respect to the noble Lord, I think he omitted.
As regards cereals, again with respect to the noble Lord, who said that something needs to be done, I must say that two things have been done. We have put forward from this country—and we did this three months or so ago—definite proposals which we believe are workable and attractive for a cereals diversion scheme—a form of set-aside which we believe could work and which is being considered by the Community at present. What is important, as I have already said, is that embedded in my right honourable friend's Statement—in the reporting of what has got to be agreed by next February on socio-structures—it is clear there must be some agreement on the giving of aid by nations for the fallowing of land. This is an open door which could lead to a cereals diversion scheme.
Lord Stodart of Leaston: My Lords, this is an immensely complicated subject. I think I saw even on the face of the noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn, a slightly

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puzzled look, even with his tremendous experience of agricultural politics 10 years ago. It is much more complicated than it was 10 years ago.
Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: My Lords, 16 years ago.
Lord Stodart of Leaston: My Lords, one thing is absolutely certain. It was a remarkable achievement at Brussels to secure a package which has been accepted by all the countries concerned. The complication is such that I believe it is quite impossible to give a balanced view of it, particularly off-the-cuff.
My noble friend on the Front Bench said (and I am sure he is right) that it is a very good deal for beef. However, I wonder whether he heard the figure that was quoted on early morning radio today—it was also mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord John-Mackie—to the effect that it means a drop in income to the country of, I believe, £50 to £60 per head for beef cows. If that is the case, what prospect does my noble friend think there is for the beef industry?
The beef industry is of particular importance to what have always been the most difficult areas in agriculture in this country. I refer to the uplands—the land that lies just below the high hills. Uplands are just outside what are often called the handicapped areas and they are vitally dependent on beef. If that figure is true, can my noble friend say what he thinks the prospects are for beef production?
Lord Belstead: My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for the kind words that he asked me to pass on to my right honourable friend. That I shall do.
My noble friend put the point that there are obviously concerns, as a result of these negotiations about the incomes of beef farmers. I think I should simply say that the retention of the beef variable premium scheme, the further devaluation of the green pound by some 6 per cent. so far as beef is concerned, and, incidentally, the harmonisation of arrangements for steers and bulls from which we will benefit to some extent in this country, will mean that the incomes of beef farmers will be down by only a small percentage. We must remember as I said earlier, that the target premium under the beef variable premium scheme, as a result of the green pound devaluation, is to be 9.4 pence per kilogramme. That is nicely up compared to previous years.
Lord Kimball: My Lords, does not my noble friend agree that he has made an encouraging start in the right direction with minimum hardship to the agricultural community?
Turning to the environmentally sensitive areas, when my noble friend negotiates the figure in February—I think it is still to be negotiated—will he please bear in mind that the figure of £6 million which was allocated to the environmentally sensitive areas for the last farming year was most welcome but in view of the number of areas put forward it was found to be inadequate? I think we have six areas agreed and a great many more areas put forward.
The set-aside policy, as my noble friend said, is still wide open. As regards the emphasis on fallowing, it
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would be a great advantage to the English countryside as a whole if we were allowed to return to permanent grass. Permanent grass need not necessarily be a crop. One can have permanent grass and provided it is mown out and not harvested or grazed, it will be far more useful and a greater advantage than having a lot of fallow land.
Lord Belstead: My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for saying that he feels that this important and difficult negotiation has resulted in a major and important change with as little hardship as possible. That more or less hits the nail on the head.
As regards environmentally sensitive areas, I am glad that my noble friend feels that the policy is right. I note that my noble friend suggests more money is necessary. On the final point that he made, I feel that there are both husbandry and sporting interests in that question and I shall look at them with interest.

Cyprus
6.10 p.m.
Lord Willis Lord Willis rose to call attention to the situation in Cyprus; and to move for Papers.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, I should like to begin this debate with a kind of preface. Like many of your Lordships, I have visited Cyprus on several occasions both before and after the island was divided. I have been to both the North and the South. As a result, I have developed a great affection for the people there, whether they are Turkish Cypriots or Greek Cypriots. Sometimes when I go to that island it seems to me that something of the sun that shines so warmly over it has entered their hearts because they are such a warm and friendly people, and although they are sometimes bewildered by the attitude of the British Government, in spite of everything they still retain an affection and respect for this country which I regret is not always returned by us in full measure.
In the light of those remarks, I hope that your Lordships will understand that in this debate I shall try to speak without prejudice or bias on one side or the other, and simply put forward what I know to be the facts. Perhaps the first and most important fact to grasp is that the inhabitants of Cyprus are not, and in the whole of their history never have been, one nation. They are two separate and distinct ethnic communities. They have no common language, although they are linked by a second language called English. They have no common religion and basically they have no common culture. In fact they are two peoples: the Greek Cypriots and the Turkish Cypriots. We have to remember that very basic element in this puzzle.
Of course, these two peoples managed to live together quite peaceably for many years; but that was a long time ago and that fragile peace has long since been destroyed by tragic events and it will take many years before the confidence has returned that will enable them to live together again as equal, independent peoples. We may regret that, but no one should be surprised. We ourselves know only too well the problems of Ulster, where people who actually speak the same native tongue but who have different

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religions find it difficult if not impossible to live together. This is one of the tragedies of the modern world and it can be seen as well today in the Middle East.
When we talk about Cyprus we have to talk about history because in a sense Cyprus is history. The modern "Cyprus problem" goes back many years. I do not want to go back for 400 years, but perhaps we may go back in time to 30 years ago when we governed the island and there was a long and bitter struggle, spearheaded by mainland Greeks and Greek Cypriots, which originally began as a fight for independence but later developed into a campaign for Enosis—political union with Greece. At no point were the Turkish Cypriots consulted about such a demand, and had this struggle for union with Greece been successful, the Turkish Cypriots who were in the minority would have found themselves to be the unwilling citizens of Greece or forced to emigrate. The seeds of discord for the future were sown then.
That was only the first phase of the struggle for union with Greece. In the event that campaign was defeated and in 1960, after the British withdrawal, a new constitution was drawn up and agreed by both sides. I shall not weary the House with long details about that long-dead constitution. In brief, it provided for bi-communal republic in which the Greek Cypriots were to be the senior partners by virtue of their superior numbers but which guaranteed the rights of all. Thus there was to be a Greek Cypriot president, a Turkish Cypriot vice-president and a division of power along those lines in the Government, Civil Service, the Army, and so forth. There were also certain guarantees and rights of veto which guaranteed the minority.
It is worth noting that Article 185 of that constitution, which was negotiated by the international community in alliance with Greece and Turkey, clearly laid down that there could be no Enosis or no union with Greece. But it is a fact of history that within months of the acceptance of the constitution, the then president, the late Archbishop Makarios, had put back Enosis on the agenda. In September, 1960 he said:
"The cause of Enosis has not died. I cannot say that Enosis has been forgotten".
It is not difficult to imagine the effect of this statement on the Turkish Cypriot community who believed that they had agreed to a constitution which guaranteed them against such an event. Was Enosis going to start all over again? Indeed it was. Within three years the Greek Cypriot majority had effectively destroyed the constitution by excluding Turkish Cypriots from their allotted positions. When the Turkish Cypriots tried to invoke the safeguards which had been written into the constitution, they were vilified, abused and worse. Again, it is a matter of fact and of history that by the end of 1963—three years after that constitution had been agreed—the Turkish Cypriots had effectively been stripped of their rights. They had effectively become stateless citizens. They were not allowed to register their children or even to apply for passports. The Greek Cypriots who only three years before had agreed to share power now began to rule Cyprus without reference to the Turkish community. At the
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time they were described—with good cause—by the Daily Telegraph as "double crossers".
Sadly, this was the beginning of the story and not the end because if Enosis (union with Greece) were to be achieved, first of all the minority of Turkish Cypriots had to be removed. So a wave of terrible violence was let loose against the Turkish Cypriots. The Daily Express carried a report of a massacre in the sealed off section of the Turkish Cypriot community in Nicosia in which over 200 people perished. The reporter wrote:
"We have seen sights too frightful to be described in print".
The Observer reported a similar outrage at Limassol in February 1964 in which hundreds of Turkish Cypriots were massacred. According to the Daily Telegraph, all the Turkish Cypriots of one village were murdered. Their bodies were exhumed from a mass grave in the presence of the Red Cross. Those are facts. The Secretary General of the United Nations, reporting to the Security Council in 1967, gave details of thousands of Turkish Cypriot homes and properties which had been destroyed, damaged or looted.
I do not doubt that there were faults and excesses on both sides. We all know that action leads to reaction and terror provokes counter-terror; but in essence, in the light of these facts and in the light of history, it must be said that the Turkish Cypriots have certainly had the short end of the stick.
The effect of these events was that many Turkish Cypriots became refugees. They left their homes and went into sealed-off areas, mostly into enclaves in the North. In a sense the island effectively was divided then and the Turkish Cypriots were rendered almost powerless. At that time hundreds of Turkish Cypriots emigrated to Turkey, Great Britain, the United States or West Germany in order to escape.
Then in 1967 the Greek Cypriot Government, which were still officially recognised as the legal government although they were by no means a legal government, enacted a resolution calling for a struggle, again to achieve Enosis. The resolution spoke of "uniting the whole and undivided Cyprus with the motherland". This was more than a piece of paper because in 1971 Archbishop Makarios said:
"Cyprus is Greek—Greek and undivided. We shall deliver it to Greece.".
Again one can imagine the effect that such a statement must have had on the Turkish Cypriot minority. In 1971 in order to back this up the guerrilla leader Grivas, whom the British have long cause to remember, returned to Cyprus from Greece and began a political and military campaign to achieve union with Greece. Events were now moving quickly towards an inevitable and tragic conclusion. In July 1974 the Greek junta, the colonels, decided that Makarios was not moving fast enough towards Enosis, so he was forcibly deposed and one of Grivas's henchmen, Samson, was installed as President and virtual dictator of Cyprus. Makarios fled and in a speech to the United Nations he confirmed that the coup was the work of Greek army officers, acting under orders from the Greek military government in Athens. It was in effect an invasion by Greece for the purpose of taking over Cyprus.
Samson then began the second stage. He ordered his troops to begin the systematic murder of Turkish-Cypriot people. Once again they became refugees and fled as far North as possible. They appealed to the Turkish Government for help and Turkey landed troops in the North of the island. In fact, as one of the guarantor powers they had the right to do it. That was not the point. If they had not gone there the Turkish-Cypriots would have been virtually eliminated.
What has happened since then is, I am sure, well known to your Lordships. The tragedy is that this long and bitter history has meant tragedy for so many innocent people on both sides, Greek Cypriots and Turkish-Cypriots. It is worth noting at this point that since the Turkish intervention, there has been peace on this troubled island of Cyprus. I think this is one of the reasons why we have not yet found a solution to the problems there. Turkey intervened to protect the lives and property of the Turkish-Cypriots and to its credit it did just that. In the 12 years since the intervention there have been no killings and no massacres. For the first time in 30 years, the Turkish-Cypriot minority feel safe. Enosis has been buried as a practical possibility, if not as an idea.
Sadly, instead of recognising the reality of the situation the Greek-Cypriot Government and the Greek Government have found other means to express their opposition to the Turkish-Cypriot minority. It is a matter of record that they have blocked all attempts by the United Nations and others to find a settlement. Each time the general secretary of the United Nations has worked out an agreed formula, the Greek-Cypriot leadership has backed down. The Turkish-Cypriots, under Denktash, have offered far reaching concessions in an effort to reach a settlement but still the prevarication goes on. Every time there is a chance of an agreement the Greek-Cypriots move the goalposts.
In September of this year, with justifiable irritation the Wall Street Journal commented:
"The problem of Cyprus can be summed up in two words: Andreas Papandreou. The last thing the Greek Prime Minister wants is a resolution of the island's differences. He would lose his opportunity to accuse Turkey of devious intentions which he does to distract the Greeks from their decrepit economy".
Thus Cyprus has become a pawn in a murkey political game. If that were all, it would be enough. But the Greeks and the Greek-Cypriots have carried their bitter vendetta to almost unbeliveable lengths. Sadly, the international community has done very little to help Turkish-Cypriots. To our shame they have succeeded in pursuading us to construct an embargo on the Turkish-Cypriot community. Today it is impossible to post a letter direct to North Cyprus; it has to go to Turkey. It is impossible to fly direct to North Cyprus; one has to go via Turkey. It is impossible to send goods and passengers by sea directly to North Cyprus; it is necessary to go via Turkey. Most of the international aid earmarked for Cyprus goes to the already prosperous South.
What is the justification for this blatant discrimination? Is it because when they grew tired of Greek-Cypriot procrastination the Turkish-Cypriots declared independence and set up their own democratic state—the Turkish Cypriot Republic of North Cyprus? What is wrong with that? Surely it is the right of any
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people to take their future into their own hands, to be free and independent and to govern themselves? If noble Lords care to cast their minds back to our own history they will realise at once that the United States did exactly that, and in more recent times we have the examples of Eire and Bangladesh. Is it because they are a very small community of 125,000 to 130,000 people? We have given independence to West Indian islands with smaller populations than that. Iceland, with a quarter of a million people (less than the population of Southampton) does very nicely, thank you. Therefore, it cannot be because it is small. Have we then abandoned the basic principle that a people has the right to choose its own future.
The reluctance of the international community to recognise this little republic becomes inexplicable when one considers the almost indecent haste with which we recognise governments which have been established by military coups and which are controlled by dictators. Is it because the Turkish Cypriots refuse to agree to the withdrawal of Turkish troops? In view of the bloody history of Cyprus in the last three or four decades, if I were a Turkish-Cypriot, I should not wish to see those troops go.
I have been to North Cyprus and the people there look upon the Turkish army much as the Falklanders look on the British army, not as an army of occupation but as an army of liberators. "We feel safe now," was what one cab driver said to me a few months ago. That is the general feeling that one gets in North Cyprus, a feeling of peace and security and that there can be no more of the troubles that have beset them over the past 30 years.
The Republic of North Cyprus has declared itself ready to reach a settlement with the South. But such a settlement must be reached on the basis of two, free and independent peoples sitting down on terms of absolute equality. If your Lordships think about it that is the only basis on which partnerships can be achieved. If there is going to be a partnership in the governing of the island then there has to be the recognition of that basic fact. If the Greeks will accept this, then a federated Cyprus, in which the two nations collaborate together on certain issues and over certain problems which concern the whole island, is absolutely possible and could work.
However, we have to face the situation as it is today. There can be no going back to some romantic idealised notion of Turkish and Greek-Cypriots sharing the same villages, and working the same fields. That is a lovely poetic, romantic thing; but the hard facts of modern life are that it will not work. We may regret it. There can be no going back to the old constitution for that is unworkable. There can be no dissolution of the Turkish-Cypriot Republic of North Cyprus. It is legal, it was elected by the people. It is democratic and it has political parties stretching from the Left to the Right and it exists because it is the will of the people that it should exist. It will last and it will prosper because it is built on sure democratic foundations.
What is the way forward? The first step must be the recognition of the Turkish-Cypriot Republic. Only this will force the Greeks to come to the table in a serious frame of mind. If this is too great a step to take at one time, too great a mouthful, at least in the name of justice let us get rid of the international embargo.

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We cannot forever keep a whole people, however small, in quarantine, which is exactly what we are doing at the moment.
In Raoul Denktash, the President of the Turkish-Cypriot Republic, as many of your Lordships will know, there is an outstanding politician and statesman who has led his people for 30 years through their troubles with courage and integrity. He is a great democrat. He has declared himself willing to negotiate on most of the outstanding issues—compensation for lost property, adjustment of the land area, and mutual co-operation for the good of the Island. It is not his fault that successive attempts at agreement have broken down. He has twice agreed and twice the Greeks have moved the goal posts. The only thing that he will not negotiate is the independence and the freedom of the people he has served for so long.
The British Government, as the former ruling power in Cyprus, and as one of the three guarantor powers, have a special responsibility for Cyprus. It seems to me that they have been very silent and very slow on this issue over the years. They have failed to exercise their responsibility. They are content to allow the situation to remain as it is in the hope that some solution will emerge out of the woodwork, largely, I suspect—as I said earlier—because Cyprus is at last and at least at peace and is therefore not presenting a very great problem for our Government.
However, it is now time for our Government to act in the name of justice not against the Greek Cypriots but simply to give the Turkish Cypriots the even-handed treatment which is their rightful due. That is all they ask. They do not want treatment that is better than the Greek Cypriots. They want even-handed treatment, and the quarantine removed. To do otherwise—to allow Athens to keep calling the tune—will be an act of monstrous injustice and a stain on our conscience. I beg to move for Papers.
6.31 p.m.
Lord Newall: My Lords, I am sure that everyone, including myself, will be most grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Willis, for introducing this subject. It comes at a very timely moment, when so many leading newspapers are carrying articles about this very subject and have been doing so since June. The visit of Mr. Denktash also alerted us to the situation. With his usual command of the language the noble Lord was a pleasure to listen to, and I disagreed with him not at all.
Since 1974, as we have heard and as I am sure noble Lords will hear again, there have been two sides in Cyprus. But there is no need for me to take sides; I certainly do not wish to do that. There are many facts and a lot of fiction. There is a certain amount of truth, and there are other stories which are more often called being economical with the truth these days.
I spent a week on each side of Cyprus. I went with no historical views; I had an open mind. Since I went there very little has changed, even if the economics and commercial activities have varied a little. However, we have to remember the sequence of Greek dominance over the Turks, who eventually were likely to be thrown off the island like unwilling lemmings. I am
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sure that the noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth, will have something to say about that later.
The history of the island is long and complicated, and nobody wants to go back over it. We have to look at the present situation. The position now is understandable with the knowledge of some history, but it not one that should be allowed to remain. We have to look at the future and at the way that we can help to resolve the present situation.
Although some of this has already been covered it bears repetition. We must remember that over 100,000 Turkish Cypriots have not been recognised in international circles for 12 years. They have had little or no international aid. They have had restrictions on imports, on exports and on their general development. They have luckily had a democratic internal government, but they have had a great struggle. Let us not forget that. They have been unrepresented internationally and have been denied many normal human rights. If perhaps the Greek Cypriots or even the Greek Government had made the slightest effort to co-opt them back into the government in which they were under the original agreement, or if they had given them a proper share of their international aid, to which they should rightly have been entitled, things might be very different today.
Some of the writings which I see from the Greek Cypriot side can be described ony as propaganda. It is full of half truths and one-sided views. They never mention how many Greek troops are on the island; that there are 8,000 Greek officers looking after 20,000 in the local militia with a force of 100,000 able to be called up. There is nothing wrong in that except that the only story they tell is of the Turkish troops which now number approximately 17,500. They never mention how many displaced Turkish Cypriots there are. They never mention why the Turks are so happy and calm in spite of their financial difficulties, because there is no longer the fear—the fear of being killed—that there used to be.
The Greek Cypriots never mention the settlers who have come into Greek Cyprus from Greece, Lebanon and many other places. There were many Turkish Cypriots who left the island; and there were only 15,000 new Turkish settlers, whereas 40,000 Turkish Cypriots have returned, having been turned out of the island in the past. They never mention the Turkish missing persons or the mass graves of the Turkish Cypriots killed by the Greeks. They do not mention even now the new university in Famagusta which is teaching in English, and they have nothing like that yet on the Greek Cypriot side.
However, this is history. We need to look forward. I do not necessarily blame President Kyprianou. I do not believe his health is very good. It is probably difficult for him. He is apparently a puppet of Greece. However, I blame the Greek Government who not only find the present situation highly tolerable, anything else would be worse, but also as members of NATO they fail to live up to their commitments. Until they do, they must remain a very suspect ally. They have brought it all on themselves in my view, but if they were to agree with solutions put to them by the United Nations their credibility could improve. If they do not, they will remain the victims of their own deeds.

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Unless they show some signs of improvement I shall be forced to believe that they prefer Cyprus as it is if they cannot have it all their own way. The Turkish Cypriots are a very strong race and they will never go back to the oppression of former years.
The Greek Cypriots must surely know this. They must also know that public opinion has changed over the years and is still changing. People now believe that there are two sides of the coin and the story is possibly not one that they knew before. What the Turkish Cypriots have to say is increasingly more believable. I fear that very soon the Greeks and the Greek Cypriots will have fewer and fewer friends.
I find this very sad. I have many Greek and Greek Cypriot friends. They are often worried about the present situation and the way the Greek government are influencing the Greek Cypriots. We need a practical solution in 1987 and not later. I should very much like to think that this Government could partake as an intermediary in some way under the United Nations. I am sure that both sides would listen very hard. It is therefore my plea, and a very genuine one, from a neutral standpoint, that the Greek Cypriots look at the present situation as it is and stop trying to do what is no longer possible. Enosis is dead, and so let us take it off the life support system now and start proper talks about accepting United Nations proposals and recognising the fact that the Turkish Republic of Cyprus will not go away in a hurry.
6.39 p.m.
Lord Kennet: My Lords, we have heard the Turkish Cypriot case ably pressed in the first two speeches in this debate. My original intention was to be as evenhanded as possible in this sad affair. However, after listening to the last two speakers I admit to the temptation to take some time presenting the Greek Cypriot case; that is, the case of the legal government of the island of Cyprus. But I shall not do that. I shall continue to be as evenhanded as possible.
I have visited Cyprus at the invitation of the Government of that country. I have talked with Ministers of that Government and Members of the Parliament of Cyprus. During that visit I was also able to travel in the Turkish occupied zone in the north of the country and to talk with representatives of the occupying power and with Turkish Cypriot separatist politicians.
We must have a little bit of history and we must start somewhere. I do not propose that we should start 1,200 years ago when Greeks and Turks first met and started to quarrel. Nor do I propose that we start in the nineteenth century when Cyprus moved from Turkish rule to British rule, or at the end of British rule in the post-Second World War period.
In 1974 the then Greek Government, being a military junta, took a ridiculous action. They staged a coup d 'état in Cyprus, and on seeing that action most of European opinion thought that if that did not destroy them what on earth would destroy them? Of course it did destroy the Greek military Right-wing dictatorship, to the great relief of all democrats and all civilised people. They managed to destroy themselves by that action in Cyprus. However, that was not before
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the Turkish invasion fleet had sailed and within a couple of weeks occupied the northern third of the island.
I do not want to enter into legalities, but I think it is clear to anyone with an understanding of politics and human motivation that the Turkish Government had a pretty good justification for their action. I do not believe it is possible to say yet whether the Greek Government would have fallen without it. I think that it probably would have fallen, but this is hindsight and who can say? However, Turkey did that and was one of the three guarantors of the Cyprus Treaty of Independence and the Cyprus constitution; the guarantors were Turkey, Greece and ourselves.
The Greek fascist government having been destroyed, what should Turkey have done next? In my submission, it should have gone away again. The justification for the enormous Turkish army there was the Greek coup d 'état. Once that threat had receded there was no justification for an invading army. However, it did not, and the Greeks were driven out of northern Cyprus. With the Turkish army at their back, the Turkish Cypriots, who constituted one-fifth of the people in Cyprus, were at the end of the day left in control of 36 per cent. of the territory. There have been minor adjustments since then.
The age since has been a sad one. In 1978 this country, together with the United States of America and Canada, put forward a plan. That plan did not get anywhere. In 1983 the last threads of dialogue between Greek and Turk in Cyprus broke down and the matter was referred to the UN in due form and order. Later that year the Turkish Cypriot Assembly (the body purporting to govern northern Cyprus) took a decision to call itself the independent state of northern Cyprus.
There were UN initiatives in 1984, 1985 and 1986, all of which our Government very rightly worked for and with. Our Government drafted Resolution 541, which is still the leading UN text in the field and is binding. The noble Baroness will correct me if I have that wrong. That was all to no avail.
We can stand for as long as we like before the fact that Greek and Turk in Cyprus do not agree and say that it must be somebody's fault. We can say that it must be the fault of the Greek Cypriots, as we heard in the first two speeches in this debate, or that it must be the fault of the Turkish Cypriots, as one can hear throughout most of the world. I think we should be more usefully employed if we considered what could best be done now, but not by Greek and Turk. There is no point in sitting there advising them; they have been quarrelling for 1,200 years all over Asia Minor and South-Eastern Europe, and the quarrel is now confined, thank God, to one small island. Long may it stay confined to that one small island, but roll on the day when it is not confined anywhere and when the quarrel at last comes to an end.
What can we do to help? We are in the face of a phenomenon of fear. As is usually the case in a deadlock like this, the two sides are afraid of each other. Perhaps we may look for a moment at the objective basis of this fear. It is fear of armed men. The original founding treaty of the Republic of Cyprus allows Greece and Turkey each to keep a certain military contingent on the island. I want to take the

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military facts in order. The treaty allows Turkey 450 armed men on the island and it allows Greece 650 armed men on the island.
Let us begin with the country which has a common language with the larger part of the Cypriot population; namely, Greece. Athens Greece is allowed 650 men on the island. According to the best information I have been able to glean, they have between 2,000 and 3,000 armed men on the island. That of course is in breach of the treaty but everybody in Cyprus is in breach of the treaty with every breath they draw.
Turkey, with a smaller population related by language and culture, would have a right to 450. Here the estimates of the true number of Turkish troops on the island differ. British sources in general are inclined to say that it is between 25,000 and 30,000. The Cyprus High Commission in London puts it a little higher at 35,000. We are comparing the presence of 2,000 or 3,000 Greek troops with 25,000 Turkish troops—ten times as many. Let us remember that the Greek population is five times as many as the Turkish.
I turn now to the native levies, as one might call them. The Republic of Cyprus, the legal government, has a national guard, and once again the figures differ. The Institute of Strategic Studies puts that national guard at 13,000, while the Cyprus High Commission in London puts it at 10,000. The difference is not very wide. That national guard contains a contingent of Greeks from Greece—officers and NCOs. Here the estimates differ widely. Perhaps the noble Baroness can confirm that the Foreign Office's best information is that it now stands at about 600. The Cypriot High Commission in London says that there has recently been a rapid decline and it stands at only around 150. On the Turkish Cypriot side there is a levy of Turkish Cypriots which stands somewhere between 4,500, which is the ISS figure, and 8,000, which is the Cypriot High Commission figure.
These are big discrepancies but, doing a rough sum, British-based sources will give a ratio of two to one in favour of Turks for armed men on the island: two Turkish armed men for one Greek or Greek-Cypriot armed man on the island. Cypriot Government sources give a ratio of four to one.
But the populations are far from equal, and if we scale these figures to the fact that the Turkish Cypriot population is one-fifth and the Greek Cypriot population four-fifths, we find that the preponderance of Turkish armed men over Greek and Greek Cypriot armed men is, on British figures, eight to one, more or less, and on Cyprus Government figures fifteen to one, more or less. We must ask ourselves who has the better right to be afraid.
We must also look at why the two sides do not sign up on Mr. Perez de Cuellar's dotted line. It looks an excellent text from the outside. The reason is military fear. We should not be far out if we were to say that the greater military fear exists among the Greek majority. On the figures I have just given that is bound to be so. The Greek Cypriot majority is afraid to sign up for a new constitution, a new basic statute for the island regulating Graeco-Turkish relationships, unless and until the military dispositions are agreed and put into effect in advance.
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They are invited to sign up for a constitution which would give the Turkish Cypriots a veto over all the important matters. That is quite a reasonable thing to have if you have two absolutely separate cultures, languages, religions, as the noble Lord, Lord Willis, pointed out at the beginning. They are not going to live together in every village, as the noble Lord, Lord Newall, pointed out. They are going to be separated into two regions or constituent parts, or whatever it is. But if the minority part has an absolute veto over the majority you cannot expect the majority to go on facing a military superiority of at least eight to one on the other side. A veto backed by that military superiority is something that would indeed be hard for any people to accept.
The role of this country has to be to do whatever is helpful. We have to recognise that it is a matter of fear and mistrust. We have to discount the horror stories on both sides, or else count them equal. Whichever side of Cyprus you go to you find horror stories. Some of them are true on both sides, and some of them are untrue on both sides. You will even on one side—and I am not going to say which—find a museum of horrors dedicated to perpetuating hatred of the other side.
It is obvious that the United Nations has to carry on with its present efforts. It is obvious that we have to back the United Nations. We are not going to go against either Turkey or Greece in any big way. Both are members of NATO; NATO needs them both. It is obvious that the United States is not going to go against them in any big way either.
What we have to do—and let us remember that we have a better historical knowledge of Cyprus than any other country except Turkey and Greece, the warring partners—is to be alert every day, by all means, for any possible action that we can take either alone or together with the other guarantors of the old treaty, Greece and Turkey themselves, to help a solution forward. I cannot stand up and say that I know what that ought to be. I do not suppose that the Government can either.
Alertness is necessary—to be staffed for alertness and to have instructions out for alertness. In the meantime it appears to me quite clear in international law that our Government must continue to apply such policies towards the Turkish occupied zone of northern Cyprus as must, under international law, be applied to invaders who divide an existing state and plant a large army on it over the decades, and purport to set up a new state on part of that old one.
We in this country, as a leading member of NATO, should also remember that the Turkish invasion and occupation of part of Cyprus has been, except for Vietnam, by far the largest out-of-area military operation ever undertaken by any NATO government. Its effects on the counsels and plans of NATO itself cannot be helpful.
6.54 p.m.
Lord Caradon: My Lords, I am happy that I can follow a speech so thoughtful and so careful as the one we have just listened to. I want to explain my position in this matter. I was for five years or more in the island of Cyprus, first as colonial secretary and then as the

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governor. I have a devotion for that beautiful island and an affection and admiration for its people of all categories. I know them well. I have worked with them well, and I trust them.
From the time when I first went to Cyprus 15 years ago I have had one overwhelming anxiety, and that is to work with all the people of Cyprus to find a solution in which all categories can make their contribution. I felt it strongly at the time I was there as governor. I worked with both sides, and I was proud and glad when I left that the leaders of both the Greeks and the Turks came to see me at the wharf and to thank me for the work I had done.
At that time, when I left and when Cyprus became independent under arrangements which had been worked out with both sides, I had confidence that the people of Cyprus, Greek and Turk, could work together. That was the only solution that seemed to me possible or acceptable for the island. To divide it in two would be grossly unfair and would make real progress towards a peaceful and satisfactory solution impossible.
I am glad that when I left, the representative of the Greeks, Archbishop Makarios, and the representative of the Turks, with whom I had worked very closely, both came to see me off. They reinforced my passionate devotion for a united Cyprus. Indeed the arrangements that we had made in consultation together at that time would have worked. Since then both sides have stated their own positions and have attempted to get their own advantage.
When I heard that this short debate was to take place here this evening I was sad, because I felt that we should do no good by giving encouragement to one side or the other that they could get their own way. I am afraid that that is what has happened this evening. We have had some speeches already and some still to be made which take a strong line on one side or the other. They say that a substantial and prosperous part of the island should be under complete Turkish control. The Greeks, on the other hand, say that they want an island with the Turks having some powers within their area but being subject, certainly in international affairs, to a joint government.
My mind went back, I must admit, to the time that I was there when we did get agreement and when the leaders of both sides came together and accepted an arrangement that I believe could have worked perfectly well. That was a time when it was agreed that there should be an international Cyprus, with both sides working together and with the minority side, the Turkish side, exercising a wide control within the areas in which the Turks were in the greater number.
At that time I felt an intense desire to see a united island. I felt it more strongly as I listened to the reports of what happened subsequently. Now when I hear speeches such as those we heard at the beginning of our debate this evening, which of course are replicas of what the Turkish community has been saying, I am filled with an intense desire that we in this country should give a lead for equality and a sharing of responsibility rather than that we should come down on one side or the other and ensure bitter conflict for
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another generation in an island which in the past has been so beautifully peaceful.
I am happy to be here this evening to speak for all the people of Cyprus. I hope and pray that we in this Parliament will not do anything which will make that purpose any more difficult. I hope we can make a contribution similar to that made 10 years ago when both sides came together and there was agreement. An agreement was signed in Switzerland and then in London setting out a practical plan which could have been satisfactorily carried out, and can still be carried out, if we the British take a lead as I think we should and must.
I hope that in the final settlement Greeks and Turks will come together as they came together when I was there 10 years ago and will make the island an example to the world of how people of different origins may work effectively together. I pray that that will happen and I pray that in this House we shall not give ourselves to arguments and bitternesses between two peoples with whom we worked before.
I was there in the war and we had the happiest, most effective relations with Greeks and Turks on the island. It can be so, I have seen it so and I hope we do nothing in this House to make a settlement on that equal basis more difficult.
7.2 p.m.
Lord Broxbourne: My Lords, I feel a double sense of privilege in following the noble Lord, Lord Caradon, in debate: first, because of his eminent service in Cyprus but also because he is a member of a family for whom over many decades I have entertained high regard and warm friendship.
I speak as a friend of Cyprus: when I say "friend of Cyprus", I mean a friend of all Cyprus. I, like other noble Lords, have friends in both parts of that lovely but troubled island. As I said to your Lordships in February last, there are nice people in both parts, only with the difficulty of seeing each other's point of view—rather like Parliament, your Lordships may think.
I seek to follow the maxim of my calling: audi alteram partem—hear the other side. It is for us to assess the evidence and evaluate the facts in a spirit of objectivity and good will. Of course problems are always easier to solve the more remote they are. If one is tempted in Cyprus to say, "Is it not remarkable that you here with long centuries of coexistence and common history cannot live together in peace and amity?" may not they reasonably call attention to Ireland, much nearer to us here, and say "Is it not remarkable that the people of that small island, speaking the same language and professing the Christian religion, cannot live together in peace and amity?"
Clearly there is a basis of comparison not only in the existence of the problems but in the fact that so far it has not been found possible to solve them. But of late there is a further common factor, a more welcome one, in that recent efforts and ingenuity have given fresh hope for the future. It is to the future that I want to address myself today.

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As to the past I say only this. Cyprus, like Ireland, is to some extent a prisoner of its past. In the long history of Cyprus with Byzantine, Ottoman and Venetian rule the period of British suzerainty stands out well. The much-maligned British colonial rule bestowed the great benefits of security and the rule of law, benefits which in many parts of the Commonwealth have failed to survive the end of colonial rule.
In 1960 Britain devised for Cyprus a constitution guaranteed by Greece and Turkey as well as Britain which could and should have given Cyprus the stable and peaceful future for which we hoped. It did not. Instead there were the sad events of 1964 and 1974, a period of partition and recrimination. Now, however, the opportunity lost in 1960 presents itself again, thanks to the devoted labours of the Secretary General of the United Nations and his staff, in the form of the draft framework agreement of March this year.
If accepted by both sides it would, in the words of the Secretary General:
"Allow for the very first time, all the outstanding issues to be tackled in earnest as an integrated whole".
Though Mr. Denktash, in his letter of 21st April, expressed his willingness, Mr. Kyprianou withheld his consent and requested an international conference to deal with defined issues. A study of the agreement makes it difficult to understand why it should not be accepted and indeed welcomed as the basis of a just and lasting settlement for Cyprus. It proposes the establishment of a federal republic, independent and non-aligned, bicommunal and bizonal. There is nothing inherently unsuitable about a federal constitution for Cyprus. It is indeed the obvious and perhaps the only viable mechanism for a united Cyprus.
Your Lordships will appreciate that there is no rigid single pattern for a federation. It is a form of government which provides for the allotment of functions between prescribed federal powers, to be exercised by the central government, and residual powers to be exercised by the federated states. The precise appointment is a matter for the proposed constitution to be made in accordance with what is required by the parties. This procedure is meticulously followed in the framework agreement. Article 2 specifies the federal powers and also the residual powers. There is provision in Article 3 for a two-chamber legislature with a balanced membership. Article 4 provides for a Greek Cypriot president, a Turkish Cypriot vice-president, with appropriate rights of veto, and for a council of ministers. Article 5 provides for a constitutional court to adjudicate on disputes between the federal government and the two federated states.
It is difficult to see how the generality of these provisions can be faulted. Indeed, there is no direct challenge to them, though Mr. Kyprianou makes a number of detailed comments and criticisms in his long letter of 10th June. His basic response is to withhold acceptance until prior agreement is achieved by way of international conference or high-level meeting on three basic issues: that is, withdrawal of the Turkish forces and settlers; effective international guarantees; and the application of the three freedoms—of movement, of settlement, and the right
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to property. But all these matters are in fact catered for in the draft agreement. The provision for the withdrawal of troops is clear and specific in Article 8. There is provision for territorial adjustment in Article 7; and Article 6 provides for a working group to discuss these matters.
I hope in regard to the three freedoms that your Lordships will accept my interest in human rights in view of the fact that your Lordships kindly agreed to the Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms Bill which it was my privilege to present to your Lordships in the last Session. There is no doubt that the sad events of the post-1960 period have imposed much human hardship in the form of forced removal, expropriation and the like—hardship on both sides which all will wish to mitigate and, where possible, to remove.
There is in the draft agreement provision for a compensation fund to facilitate resettlement. This could be extended in the proposed discussions so as to allay the suffering and make good the loss of those unfortunates who have lost houses and possessions in the continuing troubles. The advantages of federation in terms of peace, security and the solution of the problems of Cyprus are clear and conclusive. In addition, great economic benefit is likely to acrrue from the removal of the so-called green line restrictions, the opening up of Nicosia airport, the easing of controls and of passport procedures and the withdrawal of troops, with the financial savings consequent thereon. Such steps will remove inhibition on foreign investment and greatly improve the prospects of tourism, with its much needed contribution to the economy of the island as a whole.
In any reasonable assessment of the situation, clearly it is desirable to institute a federal government on the lines adumbrated by the draft agreement. But supposing the general proposition is in the event accepted by both sides but that there are nevertheless genuine points of difference on some of its provisions—a not unlikely situation in so complex and comprehensive a document. There need be no difficulty in resolving such differences within the context of an agreed acceptance of a federal constitution. Article 16 of the draft agreement provides for the assistance of the Secretary General in the interpretation of the agreement if so required. Points of difference could be referred to him in an arbitral capacity or possibly in the wider and less formal jurisdiction of what Continental lawyers call an aimable compositeur; and his decision would bind the parties without jeopardising the federal constitution.
There is, however, one other, if unwelcome, possibility: that in spite of the unremitting efforts of the Secretary General there might be a refusal in the event to enter into an agreement for a federal constitution. As things stand, and as Mr. Denktash has expressed his willingness to accept the draft agreement, such eventuality can only come about by the refusal of the Greek Cypriots, possibly encouraged by the Government in Athens. What then would be the position? We could not properly envisage a continuance in those circumstances indefinitely of the status quo, with Greek Cyprus alone having international recognition and all the advantages deriving therefrom, although patently not representing

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the substantial minority of Turkish Cypriots. If a federal solution unhappily proves impossible, and, a fortiori, if it proves impossible because of Greek Cypriot intransigence, then the anomaly of exclusive recognition must be removed and Her Majesty's Government must recognise the Administration of Northern Cyprus.
I know of no reason in constitutional law or international law why such recognition should not be accorded. It is our British practice to accord recognition on a pragmatic basis. It is a de facto recognition of the exercise of sovereignty rather than a certificate of legitimacy or moral propriety. Indeed, were it otherwise it would be difficult to envisage recognition of some régimes which in fact we recognise today. There is no doubt that Mr. Denktash's government exercises de facto sovereignty. But, more than that, it does so by the expressed and unfettered will of the people and it would indeed be entitled to recognition even on more exacting standards than those which actually apply. Therefore, if the proposals for federation are relegated to the Greek Kalends—a singularly apposite metaphor perhaps in this context—then Her Majesty's Government must take the course which principle and reality alike require, and afford recognition.
But recognition without federation is a pis aller, a last resort, necessary only if federation unhappily proves unobtainable. A federation by mutual agreement with joint participation is surely the best solution. It is the goal to be pursued, with conciliation in place of conflict and common striving in place of divisive strife. It is thus and thus alone that we can hope to realise for Cyprus that better future which its people so sorely need and the world so devoutly desires.
7.18 p.m.
Viscount Hanworth: My Lords, at the outset, I wish to make it quite clear that the views I express are mine and that in some areas they are not so far indicated to be the views of our leader, Dr. Owen. First, I pay tribute to the late Lord Spens, who at a time when it was very unpopular to do so, put forward the Turkish point of view with the intention of counteracting some of the extreme Greek propaganda. I have visited northern Cyprus three times with him and twice since. I was also a member of the CPA delegation which visited Greek Cyprus, but my concern goes far deeper than that.
Before turning to the immediate problem I feel that I too must look at history, because some of the things which I am going to say depend upon it. I apologise for the fact that I shall be at least the third speaker tonight to do so. Between 1963 and 1974, when Turkey intervened, the Greek Cypriots pushed their Turkish neighbours (representing something like a quarter of the population) into enclaves and murdered many of them in the villages and also in Nicosia. They denied them building material and these people suffered near starvation. Finally, when the Greek colonels obtained control they decided to adopt Hitler-type liquidation methods to get rid of the awkward Turkish Cypriot minority by evicting them from the island and also by killing them.
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All these facts are documented but we do not hear much about that these days. We have a bad conscience. We did not live up to our idealised self-image as defenders of the rights and freedoms of the people of our former empire. It was at that point that the Turkish army intervened. The interesting fact is that before doing so Turkey asked Britain, as a fellow guarantor power, to take action jointly with her. It is to our shame that we did not do so. Although we had drawn heavily on the loyalty of the Turkish minority a few years back, as upholders of law and order, Britain abrogated responsibility for the Turkish Cypriots who were still British citizens. This matter was raised in our House not so long ago but no satisfactory answer was given by the Government. The reason probably was that we were then preoccupied with the Aden situation.
During the period I have mentioned, in the 1960s, Archbishop Makarios was doing his best to move towards Enosis. As we have heard, that would have been quite intolerable to the Turkish minority and in fact a breach of the convention. What seems to me so strange today is that after all this has happened some jurists, though by no means all, and our Government still maintain that the Cyprus constitution, where the Turkish minority had no power whatsoever, still remains today. This seems to me an extraordinary view, which is neither moral nor practical in today's context.
I believe that an understanding of and forgiveness for past mistakes are important elements in reaching an acceptable solution in Cyprus. In my view it is therefore unfortunate that the Greek Cypriots have complete amnesia—loss of memory—over what they did to the Turkish minority between 1963 and 1974. They should accept, as the Germans have done in the case of Nazism, that they brought the Turkish invasion on themselves.
I would be the last person not to have the greatest sympathy over the appalling refugee problem that resulted for the Greek Cypriots after the Turkish intervention and over the loss of their properties in a part which many consider to be the most beautiful part of that beautiful island. But I am afraid that, however much we may wish now and in the future that all this could be put behind us, it cannot. There is no possibility within the immediate future, or so far as I can see, of the Greeks being able to return to their houses or anything else in the north. It is absolutely idle to suppose that that is possible so far as we can see the situation today.
Equally, I am afraid I must castigate some of our own people who just do not want to know about the facts of life. Bitterness can so easily grow by what it feeds upon and in the short term there will be a younger generation brought up only to hate. In a war-torn Middle Eastern situation these two territories, each of which at present enjoys peace and security, are in danger of becoming pawns of major outside powers, whose political interests have nothing to do with the peoples of Cyprus.
Enough of the past: Today we still have a very efficient, massive and ruthless Greek propaganda machine, determined to promote any issue which may suit its cause, regardless of morality or accuracy. That

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is nothing new. It exists in all societies. But the Turkish Cypriots cannot afford the money to combat it.
What worries me about this is the effect it is having in preventing a solution in Cyprus. I give your Lordships only one or two examples. I have been exposed to the Greek missing persons act, and it is just an act. It is merely turning the knife in the wounds of bitterness—and both sides have these wounds. The number missing on both sides, for Turks and Greeks alike, is roughly the same. This is the sort of thing which happens in a war, and the Turks have done their best to supply the information. I say no more about that except that the Greeks have continued on every possible occasion to make political propaganda out of it.
To take a more homely example, it is put about that a holiday visit to north Cyprus would be dangerous. Actually there is very little crime there and you are much safer than in London. It is said that there are no good hotels and that the Turkish army is present everywhere. Both are lies and derogatory; and they have the effect of discouraging tourism. However, I wonder whether your Lordships realise that if a firm in England were to advertise such a tour the opposing side would see to it that that firm lost its franchises in all Greek-speaking countries—an even more effective discouragement.
Turning to political negotiations, one must make the point that on the last two occasions the Greeks have refused to accept the proposals put forward by Mr. Perez de Cuellar on behalf of the United Nations, when Mr. Denktash, for the northern Cypriots, has been willing to do so. I know the Greek Cypriots' point of view, which briefly is, "We have been robbed of a large part of our island and we have a real (though completely irrational) fear of the Turks taking over the whole island". That is of course the last thing the Turks would want to do.
In this context it is strange for the Greeks to say that the Turks should remove their army, which is roughly about 18,000 or so men, before—and I repeat before—negotiations begin. The Turkish Cypriots, judging from previous experience, would view this as an act amounting to suicide. If the Greek side seriously wanted negotiations they would not ask the impossible, and of course they know it.
What sort of settlement is possible sometime in the future? It cannot be in terms of a federation as most of us understand the word, with analogy to the United States or to Germany. It might be more aptly called a commonwealth of Cyprus, where matters of mutual concern and benefit could be discussed and agreed. Only after the passage of time would a closer association be possible, and even then there must remain two communities, territorially separate. It is very important that for some time the United Nations peace-keeping force should remain on the border. In existing circumstances it would be only too easy for hot-heads to cross over and kill some villagers, with possibly appalling consequences. In saying this, I would not necessarily blame the Greek Cypriots as much as I would blame their propaganda. It is inflammatory and, as I have said before, potentially very dangerous.
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It is long past the time for us to come to terms with the reality of the situation which I have tried to describe. The Greeks must realise that whatever they do they will not get back the north of Cyprus on the terms they would like. Equally, it is time that our Government faced the issue. Sometimes one would like to hope that we in Britain just might be more sensibly and morally inspired, instead of sitting back and doing precisely nothing.
7.29 p.m.
Lord Stallard: My Lords, it is with some trepidation that I rise from the Back-Benches to speak briefly in the short debate this evening, because I recognise only too well the amount of knowledge and experience of the problems of Cyprus that exist in your Lordships' House; and the debate has already shown that.
I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Willis for introducing this debate on a part of the Commonwealth about which most of us in this country know very little. I first became interested and involved in the problems of Cyprus in the early 1950s when I was a local elected representative for a part of London where many Cypriots of both communities had settled. They had settled there before the war, they had served in our armed forces during the war and they had resettled there after the war. There were many more who came during the 1950s and 1960s because of many different circumstances, and there were many who came shortly after 1974 who were also able to settle here. They came from both communities and we had excellent relations then. Those excellent relations still exist in that part of London, as they do in most parts of London, between the two communities and at many levels.
I became interested and very much involved in that period. I have maintained my interest and have tried since then to keep up-to-date, although it is very difficult because of the scant attention that the problems of Cyprus receive in much of the press and certainly in our media. We can understand that there are a variety of reasons for that.
Much has been said about the history of Cyprus. I never object to that because I have always maintained that a knowledge of the history of any region under discussion is essential to the understanding of its present situation. If we think of the Middle East, we must understand the history of that region if we are ever to arrive at a solution. To come nearer to home, if we do not understand the history of the Irish situation, we shall never get near to a solution of those terrible problems.
Although there is no shortage of literature on the history of this beautiful island, it is the interpretation of the history of all the situations that creates many of the problems. I am probably as guilty as most in this connection. I find it very difficult to understand those who say, "I do not intend to take sides and I shall try to be neutral". They then leave us in no doubt, within a few minutes, as to which side they are on. That might even happen to me; but I shall try to confess before I get into that position! However, I do not intend to get into that position because I genuinely believe that my noble friend Lord Caradon made the most telling comment this evening. If we could only follow his example, perhaps we should get nearer to a solution. I

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do not aspire to reach this great depth of understanding, but I can try.
I shall not go back further than 1974, because that would both take too long and be far too controversial, as we have seen. I imagine that there is general agreement that Turkey invaded Cyprus on 20th July 1974 and occupied approximately 40 per cent. of the Republic's territory. I hope that we agree that that happened and that it is a part of history. The pretext for the invasion was the coup against the legitimate government of Cyprus by the Greek military junta which had taken place only a few days before 20th July. I hope that these are accepted facts.
The territory that was captured by force in 1974 is still under Turkish military occupation. The search for an acceptable solution has gone on ever since. In the area under occupation and prior to the occupation, there were some 162 Greek and mixed villages accounting for about one third of all the inhabited localities of the old Republic. Before the invasion, the total Turkish population of the whole of Cyprus amounted to 18·4 per cent. of the total population. They owned just under 17 per cent. of the total land in private ownership. Most of that land was devoted to agriculture. However, the occupied area contained some of the best farmland in Cyprus, which constituted 65 per cent. of all cultivated land in the Republic. Before 1974, that part of the Republic had housed 32·6 per cent. of the total population of the Republic, most of whom were Greek.
I apologise for mentioning statistics such as these. But they come from official British and international sources and I hope that they cannot be disputed. The population in that northern part of the Republic, Greek and Turk alike, was uprooted in 1974 and forced to flee in all directions, but mainly to the south. They became refugees in their own country. Some of them made their way to this country and to other Commonwealth countries. However, the vast majority of the Greek Cypriots—almost 200,000 of them—are still prevented from returning to their land and homes where their people had lived for many generations.
There was also a problem of course with about 40,000 Turkish refugees. However, there was a completely different approach to the Turkish refugee problem. That was inevitable. They did not have the same problems of housing and resettlement; they had an entirely different outlook in that they were encouraged to have the outlook of victors and to look forward to the fruits of victory. There was a different outlook and approach both on their part and on the part of their authorities. It is significant that in the intercommunal negotiations which have taken place so far since 1974, the refugee problem has only been raised by the Greek Cypriots and never by the Turkish Cypriots. That is significant because I think they have virtually solved that particular problem, so far as they are concerned.
We all know that in 1974 a Prime Minister of the Labour Government of the time—I think it was Mr. Callaghan—went to Limassol and personally organised or assisted in the airlifting of some 8,000 to 10,000 Turkish Cypriots from Limassol to the Turkish mainland. Many of those people were brought
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back again after the occupation of the North. It was therefore not exactly the same problem. It is certainly not the same problem as that of the 200,000 people who are still refugees in their own country.
Although it has been mentioned almost in passing, there is a very serious problem concerning the fate of the 1,619 Greek Cypriot refugees who have been missing since the Turkish invasion. We do not know where they have gone; we have asked many times but the problem still remains undetermined and I understand that it is difficult to get any co-operation in resolving this problem. Perhaps the noble Baroness, in replying in this debate, will be able to update us on what steps may have been taken or are being taken on behalf of the many relatives who contact some of us to try to trace these refugees.
There was certainly genuine political progress being made before 1974 in the Republic to try to bring both sides together, as I have discussed many times with representatives of both communities. There was an attempt and a willingness on the part of many people (although not enough people) to try to bring the communities together before 1974. The situation now is that there is a demarcation line guarded by the military artificially separating both communities, despite the wishes of many members of those communities to be allowed to co-exist, as they had done before, in reasonable peace.
It has been mentioned that during the past 12 years efforts have been made to resolve the tragic situation in Cyprus. In 1974 the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution No. 3212, formally endorsed by Turkey, calling for the immediate withdrawal of all foreign troops from Cyprus. So far, Turkey has failed to comply with that resolution. It begins to appear, even from some speeches tonight, that the Turkish authorities both in Cyprus and in Turkey have been trying ever since to achieve permanent partition of the island and indeed have brought over an estimated 60,000 settlers from the mainland in what would appear to be an attempt to alter the demographic character of Cyprus. It has also been mentioned that in 1983 the area of Cyprus occupied by Turkish troops was illegally declared independent. Far from being democratically based, that part of Cyprus was illegally declared independent by the people there. This secessionist move was strongly condemned by the United Nations Security Council. That also was not mentioned, but it is a fact. The entire international community supported the United Nations on that resolution, including Her Majesty's Government, so it was an almost universal condemnation of this attempt to secede that part of Cyprus from the Republic. Most of us in the international community, and certainly in this country, had been striving for a re-united Republic of Cyprus, so were bound to take that attitude. So far as I can ascertain, no country other than Turkey recognises this pseudo-state that apparently exists in northern Cyprus. All calls from the United Nations and resolutions on the matter have been ignored.
Given that recent background, is it any wonder that the United Nations Secretary-General's initiative in Janary 1985, which resulted in a high level meeting in New York between President Kyprianou and Mr. Denktash, ended in failure, yet it is this breakdown

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that has given Turkey and the Turkish leadership in Cyprus the opportunity to proceed even further with attempts to consolidate partition. In my view, these attempts to partition the island run contrary to UN resolutions backed by the international community in the search for progress towards the solution of the problems of Cyprus.
The most recent in March 1986 was mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Broxbourne, from the depth of his tremendous experience in this matter of international agreements. He mentioned the United Nations Secretary-General's draft framework for an agreement on Cyprus. The Cyprus government, I understand, have responded to those proposals. They have offered to initiate negotiations on three basic issues. These were mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Broxbourne, and I had a copy typed out so that I would not make a mistake.
The three proposals are, first, the withdrawal of all foreign occupation troops and colonists. As I said, that is an accepted policy. The second is effective international guarantees for the sovereignty and independence of the Republic of Cyprus. The third is a guarantee of implementation of the three fundamental freedoms—the freedom of movement, the freedom of settlement and free ownership of property throughout the territory of the Republic of Cyprus.
I should say that the Government of Cyprus have offered a solution that could be the basis of discussion and negotiations. I should hope that it would be seen in view of all that has gone on before—the United Nations situation and the stance of the international community on such matters—that these proposals provide a comprehenisve mechanism for a just resolution of the Cyprus problem.
Partition has never resolved any other serious, thorny, problem, and there are many examples. I can think of Vietnam, of Korea and of India; and certainly, nearer home, of Ireland. Other noble Lords could probably add to the list. Partition has never been a permanent solution, nor would it be in this island. It would probably create more serious problems than it would resolve in a very sensitive area of the world.
Those of us who genuinely wish to see a peaceful resolution of the Cyprus problem must continue in the face of all difficulties to work towards achieving an independent, sovereign, territorial, integral federal Republic of Cyprus, as outlined by the noble Lord, Lord Broxbourne—perhaps not in exactly those words but in similar terms—and to be free from occupation, troops and sectors, to the benefit of all the citizens, both Greek and Turkish loyalists alike.
7.44 p.m.
Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: My Lords, we are grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Willis, for enabling us to have this debate on the current position in Cyprus and for his interesting speech and historical analysis.
We have had several knowledgeable speeches. Many of them reflected a partisan viewpoint on the one side or the other. We must not complain about that in the mother of Parliament. But there are times, I think, when it is wise to be muted in our views, especially when there is a possibility of a settlement.
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It is just over three years since we last debated this issue. Our discussion then took place in an atmosphere of crisis, because the Turkish Cypriot community had just made a declaration of independence. I listened carefully to what my noble friend Lord Willis said about past history in Cyprus. I have no doubt that it was accurate. But nobody so far has pointed out that the declaration was universally condemned because it went completely against the United Nations resolution and against the treaty of 1960.
It also seemed at the time to almost everyone who took part in the debate that it stultified the efforts then being made by the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Senor Perez de Cuellar, to find a solution to the island's intractable problems.
This debate is again timely. It takes place against the background of a number of developments. The first is the continuing admirable persistence of Senor Perez de Cuellar to achieve agreement between the two sides. I shall return to this in a moment.
The second is the Turkish Prime Minister's visit to Cyprus in July, which angered the Greeks because he said he would like Turkish northern Cyprus—and I quote him—"to live for ever". Thirdly there is the visit of Mr. Denktash to this country, during which he was critical of Her Majesty's Government's current stance on Cyprus—criticisms that have been repeated in several of the speeches tonight. The fourth is the meeting in this country of leaders of the two communities, the first informal meeting of its kind since the invasion of 1974. Mr. Denktash had said that he wanted this country to try harder to promote the UN resolution.
Here I return to the Secretary-General's efforts. Senor Perez de Cuellar certainly deserves support and encouragement. Repeated failures that would have daunted many men have not deterred him. He knows the problems, because he served in Cyprus as a special representative several years ago. Britain also has special interests and responsibilities because of our former occupation, our obligations under the treaties, our large bases on the island—which have not been mentioned in the debate so far—and our membership of NATO with Turkey and with Greece.
It is very much in the interests of the West to see a settlement. In passing, we also recognise that the Soviet Union has interests too. One of them would be the removal of the bases that we have in Cyprus.
Over the last two years the Secretary-General has placed three sets of proposals on the negotiating table, and we must note the reaction to these. The first in January 1985 failed because President Kyprianou refused to accept it as it was drafted. The second produced later last year was rejected by Mr. Denktash, although Mr. Kyprianou was favourable to it. The third attempt, which was referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Broxbourne, and others, was made earlier this year and sought a compromise between the first two. Here it is Mr. Denktash who says yes but Mr. Kyprianou is indecisive. All this demonstrates the appalling difficulties of the negotiator, with whom we sympathise.
What, therefore, are the snags, what are the sticking points that make agreement appear to unachievable? The principle of a federal solution appears to be

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accepted by both parties. It is a solution that I fully support. It seems that the withdrawal of the Turkish troops is the essential Greek Cypriot condition that stands in the way of agreement. This is understandable.
How many Turkish troops are there in northern Cyprus? The Turks say there are 17,000 and the Greeks say there are between 25,000 and 35,000 and that the number is increasing. I noted the claim in The Times of 10th December that there are 35,000 Turkish troops in Cyprus. Can the noble Baroness tell us what is the Government's estimate? Mr. Denktash says that the troops are there as a result of the Greek Cypriot coup of 1974. But the short point that emerges from all this is that neither side trusts the other. As a settlement is delayed, so things get worse. The lack of trust increases. The regime of Mr. Denktash becomes more entrenched, with growing dependence on mainland Turkey, with all that that implies.
The number of immigrant Turks in Cyprus is now substantial—I think some 50,000—although Mr. Denktash claims that there are 300,000 Cypriot Turks overseas who have the right to return to Cyprus. The closer one views the scene, the more one sees the seeds of destabilisation multiplying on the ground; and that is what worries me most of all. Furthermore it is certainly not healthy or in anyone's interests that the tension which exists should grow between Greece and Turkey, both countries over-armed and both very nervous. There are plenty of dangerous spots in the world without this part of the near East becoming a flash point.
There is a case for our intervention and for more positive action towards a settlement. The Secretary-General is still probing towards an understanding. One possible step which has been suggested is the reduction of Turkish troops to, say, 5,000 as a preliminary stage. This would be enough, or should be enough, to give confidence to the Turkish community and should be a concrete token of good faith to the Greek Cypriots.
Here again we need the co-operative understanding of the United States Government. Here we are, the United Kingdom, Greece, Turkey and the United States, all members of the alliance. It should be possible to reach an agreement with the help of the United States Administration. Their tendency, for defence and security reasons, is to lean slightly towards the Turks and the Turkish Government. This may not be a formal Washington Administration view but the mood can be gauged from reading the American newspapers. It seems clear from them that there is a tendency towards Turkey as against Greece. There are reasons, which I shall not discuss now, why that should be so, but I believe that here again it would be prudent for the United States to be even-handed in the treatment of the two countries.
The point has been made that people are suffering and that human rights are transgressed in Cyprus today. This is an additional essential reason why urgent steps should be taken towards a settlement. It is in the interests of the people of Cyprus of both communities that there should be an early accommodation. It is a choice between a workable federal solution, which could bring economic, social and
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political benefits to all Cypriots and which could be guaranteed by the United Nations and by NATO, or the increasing enmity and destabilisation described by my noble friend Lord Willis.
In consultation with the Secretary-General and President Reagan, the Government should take an initiative very soon. We are the only country involved in the 1960 guarantees which could take this decisive step. Someone has said, and I quote:
"As a former colonial power and as a guarantor, this nation owes both communities in Cyprus something more than tea and sympathy".
This was the sense of the very moving speech made by my noble friend Lord Caradon, who knows more, I believe, about Cyprus and its problems than any other Member of this House. We are all delighted that in spite of his recent illness he has been able to join us this evening to make what was a notable contribution.
It is also the fact, and it is an encouraging one, that, although he has not yet succeeded, the Secretary-General has come very close to success. There was enough promise in his third attempt to turn the proposals into success with support and effective negotiation. It is here that I should like to see Her Majesty's Government, with the special position that this country occupies, taking a lead at this crucial time. We have everything to gain and very little to lose by doing that.
7.55 p.m.
The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Baroness Young): My Lords, this debate has again demonstrated the very real concern your Lordships feel for the situation in the beautiful but tragically divided island of Cyprus. I welcome the opportunity which has been provided by the noble Lord, Lord Willis, to debate the situation in Cyprus today.
Her Majesty's Government fully share the concern that has been expressed. My own visit to Cyprus in 1983 is still fresh in my mind. I recall with particular vividness my visit to the United Nations "green line" in Nicosia, which underlined the danger and the futility of the present situation. It benefits nobody and brings enormous distress to many. Certainly the present situation is not in Britain's interests. We want a stable Cyprus. We know and respect its people and wish them well. In purely national terms we should recall that we have important bases there. And we wish to see the maximum stability on NATO's southern flank.
For all these reasons we want to see an early peaceful, just and lasting settlement. Our commitment to the search for peace is demonstrated by, among other things, our major contribution to the United Nations peacekeeping force, UNFICYP. If I may say so to the noble Lord, Lord Willis, I was surprised that he did not mention this point in the course of his remarks. We contribute by far the largest number of men—760 out of a total of 2,350; and we contribute by far the largest amount of money—more than £21 million annually, more than a third of the total cost.
That, if I may say so to those who are tempted to think along those lines, is more than tea and sympathy. Indeed, this is an enormous financial

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commitment which critics—for example, the noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth, who seemed to favour a long-term presence—should bear in mind. There is a very real cost. This is an enormous financial commitment which critics who feel we should be doing more in Cyprus should remember. But the Secretary-General has said that UNFICYP currently remains indispensable in creating the conditions necessary for constructive negotiations between the parties. We agree.
We regret that one side could not accept the United Nations Secretary-General's March proposals for a unified federal Cyprus. This was a serious setback to the search for peace. But the UN initiative is still very much alive. The Secretary-General is determined to carry on. Perhaps I may say how grateful I was for the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn, in support of the Secretary-General's initiative. I am also grateful to my noble friend Lord Broxbourne and others who have spoken in the same vein.
In his six-monthly report on his mission of good offices produced this month, the Secretary-General has restated his conviction that with good will and determination on all sides it should be possible for negotiations to proceed. Your Lordships will recall that he met President Kyprianou and Mr. Denktash in New York in September to discuss a way forward, and that the United Nations Under-Secretary-General Goulding followed up these meetings with visits to Cyprus, Greece and Turkey in November. We understand that the results of his visits are currently being assessed in the United Nations.
I can confidently say that no other country has done more than the United Kingdom in support of the United Nations Secretary-General's efforts. He has repeatedly told us how much he values our contribution. We are of course prepared to continue to offer him all the help we can. We all listened with great interest to the contribution from the noble Lord, Lord Caradon, and I hope he will accept the importance of what I have said about British support to the UN Secretary-General.
In the course of this debate a number of noble Lords have said that we should do more. We are certainly not complacent about the future. We are working closely with the UN Secretary-General. We take every possible opportunity to remind the parties of their responsibilities to the Cyprus people as a whole. We point to the extreme danger of actions liable to provoke the other side, and we discuss these dangers and the opportunities offered by the Secretary-General with both the Turkish and the Greek governments.
However, an independent British initiative would not be helpful. We are convinced that only direct talks between the leaders of the two communities will lead to agreement. The UN Secretary-General's office and its international standing make this, in our view, the best place to secure this. We would not wish to cut across his efforts. The most helpful contribution we can make is to continue to support those efforts. Perhaps I may say again that we take every possible opportunity to remind both parties of the dangers of actions liable to provoke the other side. We speak frankly and frequently to both Turkish and Greek governments about these dangers.
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It is for those reasons that we are not enthusiastic about the Soviet Union's idea of an international conference, for which the Greek Cypriots have shown some support. We do not like it. Such a conference would provide a forum for debate, but it would do little else. It would not address the constitutional and territorial issues on the island which still have to be agreed. We understand there is very little support for the idea in the Security Council. This accurately reflects the council's view that we should not be distracted from the current UN initiative.
There are those inside and outside Parliament who believe that the British Government should be doing more to put pressure on Turkey to withdraw her troops from northern Cyprus. We are obviously concerned about the number of Turkish troops in northern Cyprus. We have told the Turkish Government that we believe their withdrawal, along with that of other foreign troops from the republic, must form part of a compehensive settlement. This we believe they accept. If the UN March documentation had been accepted by both sides, negotiation on this and other outstanding issues could now be underway. We wish it were.
The trouble is that both sides, deeply scarred by recent history, see the problem as one of security. The Turks keep large numbers of troops in northern Cyprus to reassure the Turkish Cypriot minority. The Greek Cypriots, aware of Aegean geography, live in fear that the turkish troops will spill over into the rest of Cyprus. There is no point in urging people simply to stop being fearful. The people need convincing. That is the role of the respective political leaders. Only when we have a political settlement agreeable to all parties can these fears be put at rest. This is what we should be aiming for.
I have been asked a number of questions about the figures for the number of troops on the island. The noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn, in particular asked about this, and my noble friend Lord Newall also quoted numbers. The figures for the number of Turkish troops in northern Cyprus are, unsurprisingly, a matter of dispute between the two communities, but our estimate is that there are between 25,000 and 30,000 such troops. As regards Greek troops, we understand that in Cyprus there has been no significant change in numbers, which we estimate remain at between 2,000 and 3,000. There are about 650 Greek officers and NCOs seconded to the national guard.
The noble Lord, Lord Kennet, raised a number of detailed points about the numbers. We think that we must be cautious about concluding too much from the figures and the numbers that have been given. It was Disraeli who spoke about lies, damned lies and statistics. Perhaps that is particularly apt of the situation in Cyprus.
Others in your Lordships' House, and outside, say to me equally vehemently that our present policy is unfair towards the Turkish Cypriot community. The noble Lord, Lord Willis, used the word "quarantine" several times. I do not accept that. It is true that we do not recognise the so-called Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. We took a very serious view of the Turkish Cypriot declaration of UDI in 1983, and continue to do so. However, this does not affect our

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acknowledgement of the interests or aspirations of the Turkish Cypriot community. We maintain contact with their leaders in northern Cyprus. We continue to trade normally with them. They both benefit from aid that we give to Cyprus.
We took some trouble to make sure that the Turkish Cypriot community was being consulted informally by the European Commission on negotiations for a European Community-Cyprus Customs union which they will apply throughout the republic. To answer some of the points concerning aid, raised by my noble friend Lord Newall, may I add that, as regards European Community aid, under the second financial protocol to the association agreement Cyprus was offered 44 million ecus. The protocol expires in December 1988 but projects under the protocol must benefit both communities. As regards bilateral aid, we have a small ODA-financed co-operation programme of £250,000 per annum. This includes scholarships and technical aid which goes both to the Turkish Cypriot and to the Greek Cypriot communities.
The noble Lord, Lord Stallard, asked about missing persons in Cyprus. The position is that the UN intercommunal committee on missing persons resumed its work under its new Swiss chairman about 18 months ago. We understand that it is making progress. Certainly it is the best vehicle for this problem. We believe that a separate intervention by Her Majesty's Government with any party would risk cutting across the committee's work; though if the Secretary-General and the whole committee asked for our help we would of course be ready to do what we could. The problems are formidable. As in so many other areas, progress essentially depends on the will of both parties to achieve it.
I think we all agree that the situation in Cyprus is tragic and wasteful. There is an undesirable and unnecessary division of the island. This complicates the political situation in the eastern Mediterranean. It fuels Greek/Turkish disagreements; it runs counter to British interests and those of our NATO allies. All parties say they want a settlement; so does the international community in the United Nations. With sufficient political will on both sides, we believe a settlement is attainable. The present situation has gone on for far too long. The UN Secretary-General is working hard with the parties to achieve a settlement. We are doing all that we can to help. I am sure your Lordships will continue to support that objective.
8.9 p.m.
Lord Willis: My Lords, it is not the custom in these debates for the mover of the Motion to reply to speeches, much as I should like to reply to some of them. However, I want to thank all noble Lords for participating in what I think has been a very useful debate. In particular I thank the noble Lord, Lord Caradon, for his very moving and sincere speech. Nothing that I or other speakers said earlier detracts from his vision, which we all share, of a united and peaceful Cyprus at some time. We may differ about how that may come about but we share the dream. I beg leave to withdraw the Motion for Papers.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

Licensing (Restaurant Meals) Bill [H.L.]
8.10 p.m.
Viscount Montgomery of Alamein: My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time. I thought it might be helpful if I started by giving some background as to why this measure has been brought before your Lordships. As on past occasions, I must begin by declaring an interest, as I am the honorary president of the Restaurateurs Association of Great Britain. The RAGB, as it is generally known, is a trade association concerned with safeguarding the interests of independent restaurants and promoting the highest standards of catering.
Your Lordships will be aware that in July 1985 and in April this year I initiated short debates on the need for some general licensing reform, possibly based on the Scottish experience. I had hoped that Her Majesty's Government would take this question on board and would introduce some measure during the current Session. However, as the Queen's Speech failed to produce any new development, I thought it might help both Her Majesty's Government and the cause of licensing reform to proceed on a step-by-step basis. This simple measure is therefore one very small first step in that direction.
This one-clause Bill will allow flexibility for restaurants or any other establishments at which table meals are served to provide drinks with meals at any time. The main problem for restaurants concerns the afternoon hours when late lunch customers request drinks with meals. It will be obvious that lunching habits vary widely throughout Western Europe, and indeed countries are on different time-scales. For instance, the Spanish lunch-time generally starts at about the same time as the English lunch hour ends. Throughout Western Europe there are no restrictions and only the United Kingdom has remained with outdated and outmoded regulations concerning the serving of drinks with meals in restaurants.
The restaurant trade is not pressing for late night extensions, which are already available up to 1 a.m. or 2 a.m. through special certificates, but is concerned with the afternoons between 2.30 p.m. and 5.30 p.m. on weekdays and between 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. on Sundays.
Let me make one point quite clear. People go into restaurants to eat, and drink is an accompaniment to food. If people want to drink there are many other outlets where that need can be satisfied. Therefore it follows that this Bill is not intended as a bonanza for boozers. Quite the contrary; restaurants provide an important service within the tourist industry and general substantial employment, but they are currently disadvantaged by the restriction on hours. This is the case throughout the length and breadth of the realm, although there has been a move forward in Scotland, for which we must all be grateful.
In conclusion, this Bill is about the quality of life. It is about tourism. It is also about employment. Most job creation schemes are expensive but this modest measure will provide many jobs at no cost whatsoever. This Bill will allow the British restaurant trade to operate on the same basis as continental Europe and

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most other parts of the world. I commend it to your Lordships.
Moved, That the Bill be now read a second time.—(Viscount Montgomery of Alamein.)
8.15 p.m.
Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran: My Lords, it is with great pleasure that I rise to support the Bill, which has been so clearly and succinctly presented by the noble Viscount, Lord Montgomery. I must declare an interest in this matter, because when I last supported the main theme of the Bill presented by the noble Viscount some years ago I was not quite in the position in which I find myself now. Since that time, as some of your Lordships will be aware, I have become the chairman of a trust—the Brantwood Trust—which supports the home of John Ruskin in the Lake District. The trust maintains the house, which is open to the public, and it receives 30,000 visitors a year.
My managers are always looking for opportunities to increase revenue and recently they decided that one of the stable blocks where Ruskin used to keep his horses and carriages should be converted into a restaurant, which has been done. As Ruskin supported the Pre-Raphaelites, my managers and advisers thought it desirable that we should decorate the restaurant in the Pre-Raphaelite style but rather than associate it with the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood we should refer to the Pre-Raphaelite sisterhood. It is furnished with full length portraits of ladies who were associated with the Pre-Raphaelites, and those pictures were presented to us by the Manchester Art Gallery.
I must apologise to the House. Because of prior long-standing commitments I shall not be able to stay until the end of this debate. I am sure that it is not necessary at this late hour for me to put forward further argument in support of the realistic Bill that is now before your Lordships. It seems to me that it is very much in the public interest that such a measure should be passed. The Bill ought to be welcomed by the Government as being another step forward, and not merely a step forward in the sense mentioned by the noble Viscount in his speech but a step forward in harmonisation, particularly with EC countries, so that our arcane laws of licensing will become modified in a European sense in the future.
8.17 p.m.
Lord Mancroft: My Lords, I, too, should like to add a few words of support for this useful little measure which has been moved by my noble friend Lord Montgomery in his customarily lucid way. I must declare a previous interest in exactly the same way that he did, because I preceded him in the office of president of the Restaurateurs Association of Great Britain, a duty that I carried out to the best of my ability for nearly 10 years. I therefore support this Bill not only out of loyalty but also because I think it is an extremely good Bill, especially as I tried to bring forward exactly the same kind of measure about seven years ago but failed because the Home Office said that it would be tackling the job piecemeal and that we should try to obtain wholesale licensing reform.
Having served for some years in the Home Office and knowing its ways, I suspect that when it said that
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the Bill would thereby become too big and should be the subject of a public Bill and a private Members' measure, that was a polite method of putting it in a pigeonhole. Perish the thought that such a thing should happen today! I was only too delighted to hear the present Home Secretary, Mr. Hurd, mention the desire to introduce racing on Sundays.
Baroness Macleod of Borve: Hear, hear!
Lord Mancroft: The noble Baroness says "Hear, hear!", my Lords. Five years ago the Home Secretary would have been swinging from the nearest lamp post if he had suggested such a thing. I know, because I was then chairman of the Tote, and when we tried to get betting on the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe on a Sunday I realised that I was in danger of losing my job. However, times have changed.
I went all over the country when I tried to introduce my little Bill and I found very little opposition indeed. I know that my noble friend Lord Montgomery has also made detailed inquiries. If I thought for one moment that this measure would increase the incidence of drunken driving or alcoholism I should not be supporting the Bill at all. I do not want to add to the reasons for commendation given by my noble friend—the noble Lord, Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran, too, has added his support for other reasons—but I should like to put forward one new one.
I am strongly opposed to nonsensical Bills which the public despise and which the police shut their eyes to, and which authority does not want to touch. In Oliver Twist, Mr. Bumble said: "If that is the situation, the law is an ass; the law is an idiot". I despise asinine and idiotic laws. This law, which the noble Viscount, Lord Montgomery, is trying to reform, is an asinine law, and so are the existing licensing laws generally. When I come to think about it, so are the Sunday shopping laws. I was very sorry indeed to see them fall by the wayside. I have been deeply concerned with them. Therefore, I am very pleased to support this measure.
I remember the 1954 Shopping Act. It was at the Despatch Box representing the Home office in your Lordships' House, that I tried to get it through. I spent nearly three columns of Hansard trying to persuade your Lordships to understand why only a Mohammedan or a practising Jew could operate as a barber in Scotland on a Sunday. I failed, and I hope the noble Viscount will have more success with his Bill than I had with mine. I beg leave to support the Bill.
8.21 p.m.
Lord Monson: My Lords, this is a Bill which one has unqualified pleasure in supporting. I can say without fear of intelligent contradiction that it is a measure which is long overdue. We must all be grateful to the noble Viscount, Lord Montgomery, for taking the initiative and goading us into action to remove a stupid anomaly which has been tolerated for far too long.
To be able, if one so chooses, to enjoy a modest glass or two of wine, beer or cider with one's main meals is not only a prerequisite for enoying the greater part of Western European cuisine, but is an integral aspect of Western European civilisation. It may not be part of the Ayatollah Khomenei's civilisation, it may not even

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be part of the civilisation of the American mid-west, but these cultures are no concern of ours. It must follow that to circumscribe and restrict that modest pleasure in a country such as ours (which is part of Western European civilisation) is tantamount to cultural barbarism.
Almost as barbarous are regulations which permit the unlimited consumption of wine, beer or spirits at the beginning of a meal and which then force diners to swill down the rest of their bottle, or bottles, in 20 seconds flat or even to see their glasses snatched away unfinished in order to beat the deadline of some arbitrary chiming of the clock.
There may just conceivably have been some justification, albeit shaky and tenuous, for this uncivilised practice in a static provincial society where everybody works exactly the same hours and where everybody eats their meals at identical times. However, there can be no justification in a thriving cosmopolitan society such as ours. This is so especially in these days of large scale international tourism where people may want to eat their lunch at three o'clock following an exhausting round of museums, or conversely may want to eat their dinner at five o'clock before an early evening theatre performance. Nor can there be any justification in these days where people must practise shift work in so many occupations. Especially not at the present time when so many people, particularly in London, but also in other parts of the country, are obliged by the nature of their work to keep the hours of Tokyo, New York, Vancouver, Sydney or Hong Kong and must adjust their mealtimes accordingly.
The puritans and busybodies will demand: "What about drunkenness and alcohol-related diseases!". As the noble Viscount said, the answer to that is that anybody who wishes to get drunk is certainly not going to go to a restaurant to do so. Unless he positively prefers the greater ambiance and expense of a pub, our would-be drunkard will head instead for an off-licence, a supermarket or a corner grocery shop where he can buy drink of all sorts for up to 15 hours a day from Monday to Saturday and for up to five hours a day on Sundays—drink which will cost him between one-half and one-third of what he would pay in a restaurant. So that alarmist argument is a bogus one which will simply not hold water. My Lords, let us declare ourselves in favour of a more civilised Britain by supporting this Bill overwhelmingly.
8.25 p.m.
Lord Kimball: My Lords, it is very appropriate that my noble friend Lord Montgomery should introduce the Bill at this time. After all, we had the Erroll Report just at the time that the breweries and the supply of beer was referred to the Monopolies Commission. At this moment the Director of Fair Trading is looking at the whole of the tied house system.
There is one argument that I am not influenced by. I am not influenced by this great cry that the tourists want it. I look at this Bill from the point of view of what is good for the people of England. If it happens to be of help to the tourist, that is all right. I am all for taking the maximum amount of money off the tourists because they cause us enough trouble and do enough
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damage to this country. But we actually have to have them. Let us be realistic about it. Do not let us legislate just for the sake of the tourist.
I regard this Bill as much more important. I regard it as part of a better Britain, and a brighter Britain. I regard it as the forerunner of dealing with the other problems not only of licensing but Sunday trading, Sunday racing and Sunday betting. However, I approach it in the same way as I approach those matters. We have had a certain experience of those problems under fire. I used to follow the noble Viscount across the ploughs of Cambridgeshire. I hunted him across those ploughs for three years when he used to run for the Cambridge drag. However, I am not prepared to follow him into the political valley of death, unless the guns have been spiked. I think the noble Lord, Lord Mancroft, will recall that that was the context in which the Home Secretary made his speech the other day at the Gimcrack dinner at York. If we want to reform the laws on licensing, shopping and racing on Sunday, then we have to get the lobby properly organised.
One must realise that in every constituency there are churches and chapels covering nearly every polling station. They are an enormous lobby which at the moment is not necessarily on our side. The lobby that wants to see sensible licensing laws and see a sensible Bill like this on the statute book is the majority of people. But so far those people who support these sensible amendments have not been properly organised. They will not be organised by all-party committees or by public relations men having people to lunch in London. It will be organised only by running the matter properly at grass roots level throughout the constituencies.
Concerning the effect of liberalising the licensing laws on the whole question of drink, we have the example of Scotland. Afer all, the Scottish licensing restrictions were far greater than they were in this country. Since the laws in Scotland have been changed, drunkenness has fallen by 41 per cent., which is a pretty amazing statistic. If there are more civilised drinking hours, then there will be much less drunkenness.
I congratulate my noble friend Lord Montgomery on introducing this Bill. He said it is a Bill which goes a long way to allow us to have drinks with meals at any time—a highly civilised idea. I wish him the greatest possible success.
8.29 p.m.
The Viscount of Falkland: My Lords, I too support the Bill of the noble Viscount, Lord Montgomery. There is no inconsistency with the recent speech that I made in your Lordships' House where I promoted the idea that we had a very severe problem as regards alcohol in this country. I support this Bill for the very good reason, as the noble Lord has just said—if I may take the meaning of what he has said—that it improves the quality of our life here to enable people to pursue the civilised pursuit of eating and drinking and all that that entails.
However, I think that it is worthwhile pointing out again that we have an alcohol problem and I should like to press the Minister on that. This is a two-part

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problem. There is the question of dependency and addiction, which is the traditional problem. There is also the problem of intoxication and its immediate effects, particularly among the young, which result in violence to the person and destruction of property. I feel that that is something which has not been given proper attention by the Government.
It is significant that alcohol consumption is increasing in this country whereas in neighbouring countries it is on the decrease. In France, in particular, which is a country where there is no restriction on what one may drink and eat or at what time, it has decreased by 20 per cent. The reason why they do not have the problem of this increase in consumption that we have is that there is consensus. There is consensus with government, with those who manufacture alcoholic drinks, and with the public. There is awareness in this country but we have not yet reached that point.
There have been a number of excellent television programmes recently. Quite a lot of work is being done by groups who are interested in this social problem. I do not think that those groups will welcome this Bill because they will see the measure quite simply as another way of increasing consumption. I do not agree with that argument. The young will not be particularly interested in this measure. The consumption among the young is mainly from outlets which under no circumstances could be described as restaurants.
One can get drink anywhere one likes nowadays all round the clock. The laws are a nonsense. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Mancroft. Indeed, today when driving to a meeting, I heard on the Brian Hayes programme on LBC, a woman who telephoned in saying that she had a son who is clearly under age (she did not state his age but it sounded as though he might be 12, 13 or 14) and who habitually came home drunk. She went to the publican and protested that he and his friends were being served. He was very off-hand about this. He said that as far as he was concerned these young men were of drinking age. She said, "If you do not do something about it, I shall report you to the police". She went to the police, and the police said, "We understand your problem but would you mind standing off for a couple of months because we have this pub under observation as a place where there is trade in drugs". We therefore have a very extraordinary situation where the police are not enforcing the laws of the country as they now stand. I am not saying that this applies generally. This is a situation where drugs and drink are being confused; they overlap. There is definitely much more concern about drugs.
Of course there should be concern about drugs and I shall not repeat the figures I gave when I spoke to your Lordships the other day about the effect of alcohol abuse in terms of illness, crime and so on. However, our drinking culture needs to be considered and debated, and I hope it will be. It will in no way be harmed—indeed it will be improved—by the Bill proposed by the noble Viscount, Lord Montgomery. I hope that the Government will take action before this problem becomes so great that they can no longer go on ignoring it.
Drink is an enormous revenue-earner. The position may well be not unconnected with the news today that
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the enormous revenues coming into the Exchequer this year may possibly result in a lowering of the tax rate. The revenue from drink is immense. I can understand the unwillingness in Government circles to alter this situation.
This Bill has been warmly welcomed in your Lordships' House. I welcome it as an important cultural step in the alcohol culture of this country. At the same time I hope that the Minister will take on board the concern of all of us about alcohol abuse in this country, which is growing. I hope that something can be done to alter the laws to take that into account as well.
8.35 p.m.
Baroness Macleod of Borve: My Lord, I hope to be as brief as all the other speakers, who have been commendably brief so late at night. We are discussing a part of a Bill which was introduced over 70 years ago. Change has occurred in this country, as I am sure all noble Lords will agree. Apart from the relaxation in Scotland in 1976, we have stood by the law introduced 70 years ago. I would hope that all noble Lords—and there are few present—would agree with me that change is our ally and we must march forward and change with the times.
I shall say only a very few words. Mine is a cri de Coeur from a housewife. On many occasions people arrive for a meal by plane, ship, air or train, and one is unable to go to a restaurant as one had hoped because one cannot get a drink of any kind and it would therefore be very inhospitable to take anyone to a restaurant for a meal after perhaps three o'clock in the afternoon.
Accordingly, one has quickly to prepare a meal for eight or 10 people, because it is so very easy to purchase several bottles for eight or 10 people from the local grocery store. But that is not leisurely drinking. Leisurely drinking is impossible in a restaurant at such a time. One is looking at the clock. One therefore has problems in coping with people from overseas, and I do not entirely agree that we should not take those people into consideration. If one looks at the Germans, the Italians, the French and the Spanish—and I have travelled in all those countries—they rarely eat and drink at the same time before three o'clock in the afternoon. Our hours are, as the noble Viscount, Lord Montgomery, quite rightly pointed out, completely different from theirs.
This is not a big measure, but a small one that will help the quality of our life, as I think one noble Lord said. It will help the quality of our welcome to people from abroad. I wholeheartedly support the Bill. I hope that the Government will do so also.
8.38 p.m.
Lord Harris of High Cross: My Lords, I am very glad to join others in congratulating the noble Viscount on this effort to remove obstacles to civilised drinking with meals. I rejoice that it has so far been supported by all the previous speakers. I am very sad to report that my noble and learned friend Lord Simon of Glaisdale is unable to be with us. However, I can vouch that he would have lent strength and vigour to the advocacy of this case.

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As a general rule, if I find too many people agreeing with me I often pause to reflect whether I might be on the wrong side. However, I have decided that there are some propositions that remain true even though supported by Conservatives, Social Democrats and even Liberals—and we have yet to hear from the Labour Benches.
I have no hesitation in supporting this Bill on two grounds. The first is the high principle of individual freedom of choice. The second is the subordinate but wholly supporting expedient of economic efficiency in catering for the widest range of consumer demand. As my noble friend Lord Monson has pointed out, changing patterns of work and more travel and growth in tourism make it increasingly anomalous that the Government should attempt to prescribe the hours at which people may enjoy the amenity of drinking with their meals.
As the noble Viscount, Lord Falkland, and others have said, the only possible cause for a moment's doubt could be on grounds related to the acknowledged evils of alcoholism. Undoubtedly the abuse of alcohol is one of our gravest social problems. There can be few of us who have reached an age to qualify for membership of this noble House who do not have friends or relations who are, or have been or may become, in peril from the demon drink. I confess that I have at least two people currently on my prayer list for this reason. However, the Scottish experience seems to confirm that excess springs from drinking at home or in clubs or in private at parties. The safest environment for drinking is surely the controlled public setting of a pub or restaurant, where the publican or restaurateur has a powerful interest in avoiding the excess that could bring his licence—his business—into jeopardy. My only objection is that for my liking this Bill is a touch too modest a step towards the wider freedom and flexibility that I hope will remain our aim. With that qualification, I gladly support this positive and constructive measure.
8.40 p.m.
Lord Campbell of Croy: My Lords, I should also like to congratulate my noble friend on introducing the Bill, which will take the situation a step forward in England and Wales. I agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Harris, said about Scotland.
Your Lordships know that I would be the last person to suggest that life and conditions in Scotland are the same as they are in England and Wales. I live in Scotland and my home is in Scotland, and I suggest that over the past 10 years the experience in Scotland is very relevant. I remind your Lordships that I was the Secretary of State who in 1971 appointed the Claysing Committee to review the law in Scotland. It reported expeditiously while I still held that office, and I set in train the preparation for legislation which was passed in 1976. I was therefore the initiator of the reform in Scotland.
It was a liberalisation and a rationalisation of the previous restrictions. My main concern was that it would not lead to an increase in drunkenness. There was some drunkenness in Scotland before the reform because there was an incentive to drink up before
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closing time; it was trying to beat the clock, apart from the points which the noble Lord, Lord Harris, mentioned.
The important thing is that the reports on the effects since 1976 show that there has not been an increase in drunkenness and that drinking is now more civilised. In general it has been accepted in Scotland as a successful reform. In particular, two benefits have arisen. First, it has considerably helped the tourist industry and, secondly, it has provided more employment. The employers were worried at the time because it upset their work programmes but they adjusted and worked out new schedules.
In passing, I should mention that of course there is also freedom to shop in Scotland on Sundays. The situation in Scotland is already what the late lamented Shops Bill would have introduced in England and Wales. That freedom does not detract from Sunday in Scotland. Statistics show that a larger proportion of the population in Scotland go to church on Sundays than is the case in England and Wales.
I should briefly like to take this opportunity of dealing with a very recent development where clarification and correction are needed. A few days ago garbled versions of another report came out in the media. At first hearing it sounded as though the reform of Scottish licensing laws had led to an increase in alcohol poisoning. The report was in the British Medical Journal of 6th December, so I looked it up. It appeared to be contrary to the previous report to which I have referred about improvements over the past 10 years.
I now put this in proper perspective. The observations in the British Medical Journal concerned one hospital only in West Fife and did not relate to Scotland as a whole. They were for 12 years: six years before 1976 and six years after the reform. However, the cases were only cases of admissions for self-poisoning, deliberate or accidental, but presumably most cases were attempted suicides by overdoses of drugs. The findings were that in such cases there had been an increase in the frequency of alcohol taken in association with self-poisoning. One hospital is only a very small sample of the Scottish population as regards people who have been trying to poison themselves, most of them presumably trying to take their own lives.
This was the result of scholarly and meticulous research but it related to people who had been taking overdoses of drugs in one small area of Scotland and not to alcoholism in Scotland as a whole. The authors stated in their article that there was no evidence to support the theory that overdoses tend to be more serious when even moderate amounts of alcohol are taken concurrently. They went on:
"It has become increasingly recognised that alcohol has pharmacological actions which may moderate the effects of certain types of drug overdose. In the acute phase alcohol may decrease the severity of self-poisoning".
Some of their findings were the other way. Of course they were not suggesting that alcohol should be taken in such cases. Their conclusions were that, though there appears to have been no increase in the severity of overdoses associated with increase in alcohol abuse, there has been a rise in admission rates.
I am glad to have clarified what the findings really were, because some of these reports made headlines in

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broadcast news. I am therefore glad to point out what the findings were really about. Some of the brief summaries in the media gave a quite different impression. However, all the reports about the Scottish experience have come to the same conclusions.
8.46 p.m.
Baroness Ewart-Biggs: My Lords, I am sure that the noble Viscount must be very grateful that his Bill has aroused so much interest and support. He must also be very pleased that so many noble Lords have spoken even at this late hour and at close proximity to Christmas shopping. As the noble Viscount said, this is not the first time he has brought the subject of our licensing laws to our attention. In April of this year he asked the Government to consider introducing flexible hours in public houses following the reform in Scotland. I remember that the Minister was not persuaded that this was the right course to take, though in his speech he allowed a glimmer of hope to emerge.
I remember that my own view, spoken from the Front Bench on this side, was that on the one hand the opening hours of a public house should fit in with the needs of the local community, and that one unequivocal result from the Scottish experience was that there had not been less drinking but that there had been more civilised drinking. I agreed with the Minister that bringing about more flexible licensing hours might well turn public houses into areas where the whole family might enjoy a place and might have either alcoholic or non-alcoholic drinks.
On the other hand, I remember very clearly the speech that the noble Viscount, Lord Falkland, made when he deplored the lack of sufficient education about the dangers of drinking and the insufficiency of funds going to organisations seeking to provide this education.
In spite of that glimmer of hope that we heard from the Minister in the previous debate, we did not hear anything in the Queen's Speech about any legislation coming from the Government. We have not heard from the Government that they intend to develop a comprehensive policy on alcohol control while at the same time introducing legislation to update our licensing laws. Instead of that we have this Bill relating to licensing hours in restaurants. In the other place we understand there is to be another Private Member's Bill introduced to cover licensing hours in public houses. That Bill is not yet printed, but that is what we understand will happen.
My first point is: what will be the effect, hypothetically speaking, of both these Bills? If the Government support them both, we may see a very radical change affecting the whole of our licensing laws. If the Government intend to support these two Private Members' Bills, which it is thought may be the case, why do they not bring forward a Bill preceded by the usual consultations and formalities which normally go with major social legislation? I very much hope that the Minister, when he answers, will make the Government's position and views clear on this point. It is important to the way we see the noble Viscount's Bill this evening.
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Perhaps I may make one or two comments on the noble Viscount's Bill and put one or two questions to him. First, I certainly agree with the intention behind the Bill. I believe it is perfectly logical and constructive to wish to help restaurants provide a better service to their customers. At the moment there is little doubt that many foreign tourists as well as British families are inconvenienced when arriving late for lunch at a restaurant and are not allowed to have a drink with their meal. This is a well-known fact. The new measure that the noble Viscount wishes to introduce through this Bill seems sensible and, on the face of it, not at all contentious.
However, there are implications which must be considered. As I understand it, there is an elimination of every kind of restriction on an establishment provided meals are served in a predesignated area. This means not only that reputable restaurants could serve alcohol at any time without restrictions, but also that public houses of whatever kind could sell alcohol without control provided they serve meals in designated areas. I have described their service in this way because nowhere is a meal defined; and a plate of sandwiches is no less acceptable within the terms of this Bill, as I understand it, than a five-course meal.
It also has to be noted that the concept of permitted hours completely disappears under the terms of this Bill. As it is, after all, now common practice for public houses to serve food, it is only a small step to common acceptance of a designated area where alcohol, on purchase of a token quantity of food, will be available 24 hours a day.
The failure of the Bill to define a restaurant and a meal, both of which I can understand are difficult to define, raises problems. For instance, would the legislation allow alcohol to be served with fast food? There are many fast-food establishments which are popular with young people, and the serving of alcohol in places such as those would produce a real danger to them, and one that I am sure none of us would wish to see. Secondly, would the proposal bring a spread of increased licensed premises? At present when magistrates are asked to grant new licenses to pubs and wine bars or off-licences they have to consider the question of the need in the locality. If they consider that the locality is already well served they may refuse a licence.
However, this of course is not the case with restaurants. Once it meets the fire regulations and has the proper facilities and security arrangements for drink, etc., a restaurant must be given a licence. This Bill would allow all-day servings, and therefore allow much longer hours than pubs and might bring about a great rush for more licensed restaurants.
I wanted to make those points because I feel that these are the areas that need looking at in the Committee stage of this Bill. I hope that the noble Viscount will consider including amendments which will introduce proper controls, and that the proposals to allow 24-hour unlimited drinking in places where meals are served will be changed.
Many noble Lords have mentioned the arguments concerning Continental behaviour in these matters. The noble Viscount, Lord Falkland, made it clear that this is rather misleading, in that without exception

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those countries are introducing increased restrictions on alcohol. France, for example, has reduced its consumption by 20 per cent. in the past ten years. I believe that at this particular moment we are the only country going in the other direction.
Those of us on these Benches agree that there are many anomalies in our drink laws. We are certainly not against altering them as a point of principle. But we believe that any change made in them should not be done in a piecemeal manner. Surely change can only come from a clear policy on alcohol, and although there have been a number of reports on the subject there is still no clearly defined policy from the Government. If we had that it would provide a proper context in which to consider the anomalies which exist in our licensing laws.
Therefore while congratulating the noble Viscount on this further initiative to rouse the Government into looking seriously at this whole field, I must once again ask the Minister why the Government do not provide their own legislation having first arrived at this clear policy. This policy must be worked out with those who are affected by the anomalies—people in catering and restaurant businesses—and also with those organisations which are trying to assist in the whole area of drunkenness and alcoholism. None of the statistics has been brought out today, but indeed a horrifying toll is paid.
There should also be discussion with those representing the labour force who work in this vulnerable and badly paid area of the workplace. I hope that when the Minister answers he will put the Government's position. In the meantime, I am glad that the noble Viscount has once again brought forward something which will encourage the Government to do that.
8.57 p.m.
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, I have listened with great interest to the views expressed tonight in your Lordships' House. My noble friend Lord Montgomery has stressed the benefits to tourism and employment which his Bill would bring by allowing restaurants to serve drinks with meals beyond the present licensing hours. My noble friend Lady Macleod of Borve has highlighted the irritation and disbelief of tourists coming to this country who find it impossible to buy a drink in a restaurant after 2.30 or 3 o'clock in the afternoon. My noble friend Lord Kimball said, "Don't worry so much about the tourists". It is the poor Englishman he is concerned about. Not surprisingly therefore, the flexible approach contained in my noble friend's Bill has found considerable support.
The noble Baroness, Lady Ewart-Biggs, made reference to the Bill introduced last week in another place which is designed to benefit all licensed premises and registered clubs, including of course restaurants. I shall come back to that in a moment. I need first to say a few words about restaurants in terms of what the law now allows and the effects of the Bill before us. We are not talking about all premises which may serve drinks with meals, such as the bars of public houses, but only those which are designed to cater specifically for customers sitting down to a meal to which the
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consumpton of alcohol is ancillary. In this context therefore we are concerned with the structurally adapted, self-contained restaurant, including those within or attached to premises such as hotels, public houses or the private members' clubs.
The hours during which restaurants may serve alcohol with meals are governed by the Licensing Act 1964. As a general rule, the permitted hours for all licensed premises are from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. and 5.30 p.m. to 10.30 or 11 p.m. on weekdays. On Sundays the hours are shorter, with an afternoon break between 2 o'clock and 7 o'clock. For restaurants which are structurally adapted for their purpose and which serve alcohol only as an ancillary to a meal, the supper hour certificate enables drinks to be served for an extra hour in the evening and until 3 o'clock in the afternoon, seven days a week. For premises which also provide entertainments, late-night extensions are available allowing the sale of alcohol until 1 a.m., 2 a.m. or 3 a.m.
As I understand it (and my noble friend has confirmed this this evening), the main purpose of his Bill is the removal of the dry period in the afternoons; that is, the period between 3 p.m. and 5.30 p.m. Mondays to Saturdays, and between 3 p.m. and 7 p.m. on Sundays. If this were done it would be possible for anyone dining at, say, four o'clock in the afternoon to have a drink with a meal. That is not unreasonable. But when one looks criticially at the Bill one finds it goes beyond that modest ambition, as the noble Baroness, Lady Ewart-Biggs, correctly pointed out.
The Bill effectively removes restaurants from all controls over permitted hours, and would enable them to serve alcohol 24 hours a day. This would mean that there would be no effective safeguards against the restaurant whose customers dispersed in the small hours of the morning and who caused disturbance and nuisance to those living nearby. The only remedy available would be to oppose the annual renewal of the restaurant's licence—a drastic step if all that was needed was a curtailment of the opening hours.
Premises which provide only food but not alcohol throughout the night are subject to a registration procedure by the local authorities so that those which give rise to disorderly conduct may be controlled. No similar restraints would apply to licensed restaurants under the provisions of my noble friend's Bill. We doubt whether this is an acceptable approach. We can all think of examples of restaurants filling with customers once public houses in the area have closed. I wonder whether it is such a good idea to allow restaurants to continue to serve alcohol, albeit with a meal, until the last customer sees fit to leave. Those living in the vicinity of such restaurants may well view the prospects with alarm.
It was for that reason that I was slightly surprised by the speech of the noble Viscount, Lord Falkland, considering what he said when we debated the gracious Speech. He made a strong attack on alcoholism and suggested ways in which the Government should tackle that very serious problem. I fully sympathise with him on this. Having had the honour to be a Whip and to speak for the DHSS, it was one of the areas in which I took a particular interest.
My noble friend Lord Campbell of Croy referred to Scotland. The evidence to emerge from Scotland,

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where the facility for extended licensing hours was introduced in 1977, is that longer opening hours can lead to more civilised and leisurely drinking. That only goes to support the views of my noble friend Lord Montgomery. However, a survey has been conducted by the Office of Population Censuses and Surveys, and, although there has been a small increase in the consumption of alcohol by men, in the eight-year period to 1984 women's consumption of alcohol has increased by 36 per cent.—the very housewives that my noble friend Lady Macleod mentioned. But let us not be mistaken about Scotland. Restaurants in Scotland serving drinks with meals may operate only during strictly limited hours. The proposals in the Bill would go way beyond the situation in Scotland.
In some ways my noble friend's Bill goes wider than the Government would wish, in that it removes what we regard as an important safeguard in the conduct of premises, but in another way it can be criticised for being too narrow, because it seeks to benefit only restaurants. As your Lordships will know, the Government believe there is a strong case for measured reform of the licensing hours to benefit all premises serving alcohol.
Piecemeal reform of the law may be appropriate in some circumstances, and I have much sympathy with my noble friend's objectives. But it is difficult to justify singling out one type of premises for special treatment when others too have a case deserving consideration. My noble friend Lord Mancroft, with his very great experience, will understand the consistency of my argument on that point. At this point I return to the Bill which was introduced last week in another place and which could affect all licensed and registered club premises, including restaurants. Until we have had a chance to consider that Bill, which was printed only yesterday, your Lordships will not, I hope, expect me to offer the Government's reaction to it.
The noble Baroness, Lady Ewart-Biggs, asked what we were going to do as the Government. It was her party, among others, that said we were bringing in too much legislation. If she is happy to sit a little bit longer I shall see what I can do.
It is only right that I have found it necessary this evening to point out the Government's objections to the Bill on two counts: its narrow approach, in that it seeks to benefit only one sector of the licensed trade, and its removal of all effective controls on the hours during which restaurants may serve alcohol. I have, however, taken full note of the speeches in support of the Bill and I cannot but recognise a view in your Lordships' House that my noble friend's measure is a sensible and desirable reform. If any amendments are tabled to define the periods during which restaurants may supply drinks with meals, I can say that the Government will be prepared to look at them with an open mind. I hope therefore that my noble friend will not feel too dispirited that my initial remarks indicated a rather negative approach on the part of the Government.
9.5 p.m.
Viscount Montgomery of Alamein: My Lords, I find myself in rather a difficult position on the Back Benches trying to sum up this very wide-ranging debate, although it is on a narrow subject—if that is
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not a contradiction. First, I thank all noble Lords and noble Baronesses for their support for this measure. We have had speeches from all parts of the House, from all parties. Without exception—although I think the noble Baroness, Lady Ewart-Biggs, had a few reservations—in general there was support from all quarters of the House. It has been my privilege to have been supported in this measure by no fewer than two former Ministers of the Crown. Indeed a third would have spoken, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Simon of Glaisdale, but he was not able to be here. As the noble Lord, Lord Harris of High Cross, said, he too would have supported the idea of reform.
It is difficult to sum up the debate, but perhaps I could make one or two remarks and comment on what has been said, particularly before I come to the remarks of my noble friend Lord Caithness. I should like to lay one ghost to rest concerning the quite understandable preoccupation of many people, particularly the noble Viscount, Lord Falkland, with alcoholism.
Let it be quite clear that British restaurateurs are responsible citizens and that the British restaurant trade is equally opposed to intoxication and alcoholism, as any other citizen should rightly be. But let it also be clear that alcoholism and intoxication are not good for the restaurant business, as I said at the beginning. People go into restaurants to eat; alcoholics and others who suffer from that sort of disease, by and large, do not eat. That is their problem. They are not really catered for by the restaurant trade. Let that be quite clear.
The noble Baroness, Lady Ewart-Biggs, asked me some questions. I am not certain that I am qualified to answer them all, but fortunately they have mostly been answered by my noble friend Lord Caithness. The Bill is not trying to create licences and widen licensing as such. It is trying to provide for a certain section of the licensed trade to operate with greater flexibility, both for the benefit of the tourist and, as my noble friend Lord Kimball said, for the benefit of the home market. I think that was a valuable point.
If I may, I shall turn to my noble friend Lord Caithness. I was gratified to see that he welcomed the idea in some ways, although he had reservations. I see no problem about accommodating the restriction in hours; in other words, what we should do is to narrow this down as far as possible to cover the dry period. I use that phrase, "the dry period", because that was the term he himself used. I believe that it would be quite possible. I shall go away and endeavour to construct an amendment which will meet his request and requirement in that connection; that this one single Act should be restricted in hours to cover the dry period.
My noble friend made some very good points about late night business and the early mornings. But that is not really the problem from which the restaurant business suffers. The problem is in this short, dry period, which is a great handicap to employment and a great handicap for many other reasons.
On the subject of the piecemeal approach I think I take slight issue. If we were to have a wider approach to all this, we should have a general reform. When something is described as piecemeal, I do not think that I quite go for that. We should be very happy for

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this to be a general reform. As it is not, I should rather use the expression, "step-by-step" than "piecemeal". If you are not able to scale the ladder at one go, the only way to ascend it is to go up little by little.
What this Bill attempts to achieve is not to single out a specific industry—although it happens to do so—but to proceed on a logical basis. It happens that I have selected this particular industry and I have explained why. If the Government were prepared to widen the legislation, that would be a very simple amendment. But I think that that is not for me to do at this stage, although that would be very welcome and perhaps the Bill which he talked about in the other place but which none of us has yet seen will cover this aspect. That indeed would be more than welcome.
Encouraged by the limited support that we have, if it is possible to narrow down this Bill to the hours to cover the dry period, I think that that would be acceptable at this stage on the basis that one must proceed on a step-by-step basis. With those few words, it remains for me once again to thank the Minister and all noble Lords who have spoken so cogently and so briefly in this debate.
On Question, Bill read a second time, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

Chevening Estate Bill [H.L.]
Committed to a Committee of the Whole House.
House adjourned at twelve minutes past nine o'clock.