Lords Sitting of 4 June 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 Chichester.

London Hazards Centre: Funding
Baroness Nicol: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they can confirm that support for the London Hazards Centre is to be continued.
The Minister of State, Department of the Environment (Lord Elton): My Lords, I understand that the centre has received funding for the first quarter of 1986–87 from the London Boroughs Grants Committee. The committee has commissioned further reports on the centre's activities, in the light of which it will consider whether additional funding should be made available.
Baroness Nicol: My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for that Answer. Is he aware that this is an organisation with a unique data base which is London-wide, and that it is used by many established agencies—voluntary and otherwise—as well as ordinary Londoners? Does he not feel that, as the Government were responsible for the uncertainty which the centre is now suffering, they have some responsibility to ensure that this very valuable work continues?
Lord Elton: My Lords, I am sure that the considerations which the noble Baroness has put before your Lordships will be taken into account also by the committee when it considers what to do. However, the effect of the abolition Act was to transfer responsibility for this type of funding to that committee and it is not, therefore, for me to intervene.
Baroness David: My Lords, is the Minister aware that the London Boroughs Grants Committee received a letter about the London Hazards Centre from the Institution of Environmental Health Officers, drawing attention to the very valuable work that the centre does for the whole of London? As the Government were responsible for a great many voluntary organisations losing grant because of the abolition Bill, will they use their influence to try to give some support to this very valuable centre?
Lord Elton: My Lords, the more impressive the evidence the committee receives, the more impressed no doubt it will be. However, I have to say that this is a matter for the committee and not for the Government.
Lord Mellish: My Lords, will the Minister be good enough to tell me what the centre does?
Lord Elton: My Lords, I understand that it provides advice and information on occupational and environmental health and safety and that the London Boroughs Grants Committee has called for a report on what these activities actually amount to.

Unemployment: Government Measures
2.39 p.m.
Lord Dean of Beswick: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they are planning any new initiatives to tackle unemployment.
The Secretary of State for Employment (Lord Young of Graffham): My Lords, we have recently launched the Action for Jobs campaign to draw attention to the full range of our current measures to promote enterprise, training and employment. These measures are costing over £2,700 million this year. We are also launching a national restart programme to give special help to all those who have been unemployed for more than 12 months. Our policies to create an enterprising, competitive economy have led to the creation of nearly 1 million extra jobs since March 1983.
Lord Dean of Beswick: My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for that Answer. However, would he not agree that, welcome as those measures may be, they are in no way sufficient to deal with the present situation of nearly 3·5 million unemployed, half of whom it is calculated will never get another job? Will the Minister tell us to whom he directed his statement last week that the country has never had such a good time? Was he directing it at and taking into account the 3·5 million people who are unemployed, or was he directing it to the 7,000 millionaires in this country, whose numbers have increased by 40 per cent. over the last five years?
Lord Young of Graffham: My Lords, I said much in a 15 minute interview last week. However, before I deal with that let me say that no country in the world has greater policies designed to help those who have been out of work for a long time than has this country, and no other country in the world has introduced programmes to help youth move from school into work. Let me clear up once and for all one canard that is in popular mode. We have 1·4 million people who have been out of work for more than one year. It is not the position that those people are not going back to work; many are going back to work. Our programmes are designed to help them to get back to work. Indeed, 25 per cent. of those who lose their jobs are back in work within three months; 80 per cent. of them are back in work within a year. What we have to do is to strive, through our policies, to ensure that they all get back to work.
Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: My Lords, the House will have noted the Minister's comments with great interest. However, would he not agree that the closure

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of major undertakings, of tin mines, of shipyards, of railway workshops and other industries which are absolutely crucial to areas outside the South of England, is a major tragedy? Would he not further concede to the House that, in spite of the policies to which he has referred and to which we give a limited welcome, the reason for the unemployment is the failure of the Government's economic policies? When do he and his colleagues propose to make a change in that?
Lord Young of Graffham: My Lords, the reason for the success of the Government's economic policies is the simple fact that we realise that the world is changing. There is no way in which we can go back to a world in which we can rely on building ships for a world that does not require ships or, unfortunately, on digging for tin for a world which does not require tin at prices at which we can economically dig for it. It is a world in which we have to prepare ourselves for the jobs that will arise tomorrow.
If noble Lords opposite wish to advocate alternative economic policies, I suggest that they go on a short trip to Australia, which elected a Government on good socialist policies—on getting unemployment down by investing in infrastructure. Lo and behold, last week, less than two years later, their finance Minister said, "We must stop this nonsense; we are in danger of becoming a banana republic". My Lords, this country must never go back to the days of being in danger of becoming a banana republic.
Lord Strabolgi: My Lords, how many of those people recently gaining employment are going into private domestic service, and do the Government think that this a productive use of labour?
Lord Young of Graffham: My Lords, to my knowledge the total amount of those involved in both agriculture and domestic service is 2½ per cent. in this country. Of that perhaps even half a per cent. is private domestic service. I am not sure of the figures. It is certainly not a significant number.
Lord Grimond: My Lords, in view of what is happening at Swan Hunter, can the Government tell us whether they are bringing forward the date for the next naval orders; and, if so, when will they be?
Lord Young of Graffham: My Lords, that is an entirely different question. If the noble Lord would put it down on the Order Paper I am sure that it would be answered.
Lord Moyne: My Lords, is there any measure which could create more direct employment pound for man than an increase in financial support for the Housing Corporation?
Lord Young of Graffham: My Lords, what we have seen, other countries in Europe have seen, and other industrialised economies have seen, is that investment in infrastructure for the purpose of creating employment does not work. Investment in infrastructure, for the purpose of improving the infrastructure, does. We have a considerable housing
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programme. That is valuable in its own right. It is not by any means an efficient employment measure.
Lord Glenamara: My Lords, is the noble Lord really aware of the latest mass redundancies at Swan Hunter on the Tyne, to which I think the noble Lord, Lord Grimond, referred, bringing the unemployment in some parts of the North-East to a level which far exceeds that of the 1930s? Following the recent redundancies by British Shipbuilders, what initiatives do the Government intend to take in the North-East of England, or have the Government written off the North-East of England?
Lord Young of Graffham: My Lords, the Government have certainly not written off the North-East of England. Indeed, only two weeks ago, when unfortunately redundancies became abundantly clear in British Shipbuilders, British Shipbuilders set up an Enterprise Corporation. It is no good finding any help for the North-East, the North-West, or other areas of this country, other than by building up slowly and painfully new enterprises and new businesses. There is no other short cut.
Lord Brougham and Vaux: My Lords, reverting to the original Question regarding new initiatives to tackle unemployment, may I ask my noble friend how many jobs the Government think will be created by the clean up Britain campaign? Secondly, referring to the noble Lord who asked the question about millionaires, they in fact contribute a lot to the economy of this country.
Lord Young of Graffham: My Lords, the formal programme which is looking towards what has popularly been called litter has not been announced, but I have read a considerable amount about it in the local papers. It is, so I read, a programme which is going to involve some 5,000 places on the community programme, and it is a programme that I look forward to seeing announced in due course.
Baroness Seear: My Lords, would the Secretary of State confirm that the restart scheme is genuinely intended to get people back to work and is not, as is unfortunately and in my view mistakenly in many quarters believed, a way of finding people who are in fact drawing benefit when they should not be doing so? I ask this because the scheme is being damaged by rumours to that effect.
Lord Young of Graffham: My Lords, I hope that no one in your Lordships' House will think that there is anything wrong in the Government seeking to ensure that those people who are not entitled to benefit do not draw it. The restart scheme is predominantly about helping those who have been out of work for more than a year, back into work; and in that it is going to have considerable success. The efforts of my department are concerned with those who have been out of work for a long time. However, I am equally concerned that there should not be people who prey off the unemployed by taking benefit when they are not entitled to it.
Viscount St. Davids: My Lords, would my noble friend consider having somewhere at the back of his mind—I do not mean instantly—this point? Tourism can be helped by encouraging the rebuilding of certain of our inland waterways—a subject that I am sure he knows about well. Of course, one does not get all that much from the actual rebuilding, or indeed the starting of the resultant waterways, but each waterway rebuilt creates a sheaf of new employment along each side of it. This, in the end, produces a great many new and permanent jobs which are of great value to this country both for earning foreign currency and also in dissuading our own people from going abroad.
Lord Young of Graffham: My Lords, since I entered your Lordships' House I have had a long and intensive learning process on the value of inland waterways from the noble Viscount. I shall certainly bear it in mind.
Lord Barnett: My Lords, accepting that the noble Lord's recent interview was truthful if somewhat insensitive, may I ask him this question? Would he not accept that those who are having a good time are doing so at the expense of the unemployed, given that the growth of earnings has been so much in excess of inflation and indeed of productivity? In those circumstances, what does the noble Lord propose to do, other than exhortation, to help the situation?
Lord Young of Graffham: My Lords, the great insensitiveness about the interview was the selectivity with which one particular phrase out of the 15 minute interview was taken. I hate to bore your Lordships' House but I should say that immediately before that my actual words were:
"I feel concern for people who have been out of work for a long time, and more than anything else I am motivated by a desire to see people back into employment and see the economy grow and, above all, to have a caring society."
The purpose of that interview was to point out that we live in a world in which we have strongly rising living standards paralleled by rising unemployment; it was to point out that last year in manufacturing industry we needed to see wages increased by 1.2 per cent. to maintain living standards, and manufacturing wages increased by 7½ per cent. Last year we had probably the largest single rise in real earnings in manufacturing industry since the war, and possibly this century, and what we have done is laid the seeds for further unemployment in manufacturing industry. That was the purpose of that interview, and if noble Lords opposite wish to misinterpret that, so be it.
Lord Maude of Stratford-upon-Avon: My Lords, is it not the case that the problem that needs addressing is not that of preserving out-of-date and uneconomic industries, but the fact that the rate of innovation in this country is deplorably low and that outside the defence field the expenditure on reserch and development is totally inadequate?
Lord Young of Graffham: My Lords, I think it is innovation which is the important part of our economy. However, in looking at it—if I may refer to the earlier question from the noble Lord opposite—the
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Government are seeking to endeavour to persuade both trade unions and management that in the interests of future employment there should not be excessive pay rises. On the other hand, we must look not towards a low-wage economy but towards an economy in which future profits can be shared so that management and workforce can both be part of a more profitable society.
Lord Stallard: My Lords, will the noble Lord accept that I am not one who wants to stop him making the kind of speeches or remarks that were attributed to him last week? On the contrary, I am one of those who think that those kind of remarks only serve to show how remote are he and many of his governmental friends from the real situation in the world in which we live—
Noble Lords: Question!
Lord Stallard: Does he accept that? I asked that when I rose, but the noble Lord's noble friends did not hear me. Following his replies today, can he explain to me why, if we have learnt from all the mistakes of every country in the world that he keeps quoting, we are in the mess we are in? Why if the world is as rosy as he sees it, do we have today a report that long-term unemployment will be with us into the 1990s on an increasing scale?
Lord Young of Graffham: My Lords, if we were to judge between the question I have just been asked and the answer I shall give on who is out of touch with the world, I think the record will show the position. I have spent all my time, for four years and two months now, looking at the problems of unemployment and of helping to get people back into work. We, in common with all other large industrialised nations, have seen long-term unemployment rising. It has finally been checked in this country. I would venture to make a forecast that in six months' time we may well see it lower than it is today. We may well see long-term unemployment begin to decline. I very much hope so, because that is what we are working towards. It is no good wishing away the world. What we have to do is to find ways of combating the problem.
Lord Dean of Beswick: My Lords, cutting through all the figures that have been bandied about today, is it not a fact that the most dangerous feature of unemployment is that our manufacturing base is still shrinking? Is it also not a fact that we still have lower wage rates than most of our major competitors? When can we expect the shrinkage of our manufacturing base to stop and the base to start moving upwards? Is this not the absolute keystone of our real economic recovery?
Lord Young of Graffham: My Lords, manufacturing employment—I am the Secretary of State for Employment—has been declining steadily since 1966. It has been declining at a steady rate which accelerated for two years in 1980 and 1981 and it has carried on declining, as it has in all industrialised nations, other than Japan, where it has remained roughly stable, because of technology. We still export per capita more

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than Japan and more than the United States. We shall solve this problem when we pay more attention to design and performance and to ensuring that our goods sell in a highly competitive world.
Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: My Lords, can the noble Lord say whether the very important six-month forecast that he has just given is a Government forecast, or is it a personal forecast?
Lord Young of Graffham: My Lords, I said as a member of the Government that I suspect that in six months' time we shall begin to see long-term unemployment go down.

Labour Force Statistics
2.55 p.m.
The Countess of Mar: 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 the respective increases or decreases in the number in the labour force of men and women, and in full- and part-time jobs since 1983.
Lord Young of Graffham: My Lords, we estimate that the employed labour force increased by 283,000 men and 702,000 women between March 1983 and December 1985, a total of 985,000.
A full breakdown of the increase into full- and part-time jobs is not available, but figures from the labour force survey suggest that 57 per cent. of the increase for men between spring 1983 and spring 1985 was in full-time employment and 43 per cent. was in part-time employment. For women, 27 per cent. of the increase was full time and 73 per cent. was part time.
The Countess of Mar: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for his reply to my Question. Although there is an overall increase in employment, is it not significant that the general trend in male full-time employment is downwards while it is upwards in female employment, in particular in part-time female employment? Have we not now a dual labour market where we have in work a small core of full-time highly-paid workers, generally men, and a growing periphery in the job market for low-paid female jobs? Should we not be concerned at the high social costs and the economic inequalities which are created by such a situation?
Lord Young of Graffham: My Lords, we should be concerned with all aspects of the labour market. It is only right to point out that although the number of males in employment has gone down over the past two years, the number who are self-employed has risen strongly; therefore, the total number of men working is going up, not going down. Many in your Lordships' House tend, if I may say so, to look down a little on part-time jobs for women, but if we look at the survey, we find that 83 per cent. of women working part time were happy with the hours worked and, what is more, 30 per cent. of women working full time would prefer to work fewer hours.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, is it not the case that when the noble Lord quotes figures for the self-employed these are figures which are taken out of the air by the Government and have no sound statistical base?
Secondly, is it not the case, as has been shown by the figures given by the noble Lord, that when he talks about the 87 per cent. of the employed population whose standard of living is rising that is a false figure because many of the new jobs, particularly for women, are well below the average wage and some of them are below half the average wage?
Lord Young of Graffham: My Lords, perhaps I may say on behalf of the Government's statistical service how much we resent the imputation that Government figures that are issued are taken out of the air. These are official Government figures from the statistical service. They are not manufactured by me or by any of my colleagues, and on behalf of my statisticians I must register that point.
Secondly, I should be happy to show the noble Lord the position. He is accusing me of the same thing of which I was accused in another place only yesterday—that I have got the figures entirely wrong and that in any event the bottom decile, the lowest 10 per cent., had not gone up but had gone down. I have checked on this figure and I am sorry to tell Mr. Roy Hattersley, who accused me yesterday of a variety of different things—ignorance, callousness, cynicism and stupidity—that he was the one who was wrong, and as for the others, let the two judge between us.
Lord Underhill: My Lords, will the Minister kindly tell the House what was the survey to which he referred which said that 83 per cent. of women in part-time work were satisfied with their employment? What was the survey—because that could not be a statistical figure but merely the result of a survey?
Lord Young of Graffham: My Lords, a survey is the way by which most of these figures are arrived at. The figure is from a publication called Women in Employment, from the Office of Population, Census and Surveys, dated 1981. It was the last survey taken on this matter. These are the surveys that come through.
Lord Molloy: My Lords, when the Minister responsible for Northern Ireland was answering questions on unemployment last week I asked him whether he would be good enough to convey to the noble Lord the fact that there were many technological, technical and scientific institutions which sincerely believe that they can put proposals to Her Majesty's Government to increase jobs for men and women. They would not necessarily reduce unemployment, but would increase jobs; there is a slight difference. Will the Secretary of State say whether he has had time to study the suggestion that was put to his noble friend?
Lord Young of Graffham: No, my Lords; but I shall certainly study it.
Lord Underhill: My Lords, will the noble Lord bear in mind the importance of the answer he gave to my supplementary question—that the survey was last taken five years ago, in 1981? It therefore takes no account of the huge increase in part-time employment to which he referred earlier.
Lord Young of Graffham: My Lords, many of these surveys take some time to prepare before they come out. If the noble Lord looks at the whole field of population census and surveys, he will see that that is the case with many of them. I shall certainly have a look, but attitudes change remarkably slowly in these fields.
Baroness Lockwood: My Lords, would the noble Lord the Minister agree that there are a great many women who would prefer part-time employment because of their domestic commitments, but that they would also prefer to have the terms and conditions of that employment pro rata with those who are on full employment terms? Would he also agree that this does not apply in the majority of cases but in only a very small minority of cases?
Lord Young of Graffham: My Lords, I am afraid that I am quite unable to answer that supplementary question for the simple reason that conditions of employment are freely negotiated between people. My concern is to see that as many people as possible get jobs. The one way, I suggest, by which we shall reduce the number of jobs is by laying down external conditions of employment.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that I cast no aspersions at all on his statisticians? But is it not the case that when the Government calculate the numbers of self-employed, they estimate—they have no firm figures on which to base the calculation—and that frequently they have to readjust those figures at a later date? On the second part of my question—and the noble Lord did not answer that question—is it not the case that a large number of the new jobs that he claims to be creating are ones where the wages are well below the average wage, and that the number of employed people below that average wage is increasing, has increased since this Government came to power, and shows no sign of decreasing?
Lord Young of Graffham: My Lords, the figures on self-employment came out as a result of the labour force survey. It is a survey of 60,000 homes. It is issued by the Government statisticians. It is a survey. The figures do not come out of thin air. Secondly, of course in any average wage there must be as much below as above because that is the definition of an average. What I can tell you is that the average wage in this country has been rising strongly and rising above the rate of inflation.

Tripoli: US Action
3.4 p.m.
Lord Jenkins of Putney: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they were aware before the event that the American plan was to launch an attack on Tripoli without warning.
The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Baroness Young): My Lords, President Reagan assured my right honourable friend the Prime Minister that the United States action would be limited to clearly defined targets related to terrorism, and that the risk of collateral damage would be minimised.
Lord Jenkins of Putney: My Lords, as it is the case that a number of innocent civilians were killed and injured both in Benghazi and in Tripoli, have the Government expressed their sympathy at this occurrence and, if not, will they now do so?
Baroness Young: Yes, my Lords, it is a matter of sorrow that there should have been civilian casualties. But the point of the noble Lord's Question is answered by saying that the targets met the criteria stipulated.
The Earl of Kimberley: My Lords, would my noble friend not agree that questions such as this do irreparable harm to Anglo-American relations?
Baroness Young: Yes, my Lords. What is important in this matter is a recognition by this country of the importance of our alliance with the United States. I made clear in my Answer to the Question the points that my right honourable friend the Prime Minister made in consultation with the American President.
Lord Avebury: My Lords, what estimate have the Government made of the number of civilians who were killed during the American air attack on Tripoli and Benghazi? Furthermore, can the Minister explain the difference in logic between the notion that killing civilians in Tripoli and Benghazi will influence the Government of Libya and the notion that killing civilians in Brighton or Birmingham will influence the behaviour of the British Government?
Baroness Young: My Lords, there were no civilian targets; so a question of warning to civilians did not arise. As I indicated, we laid down the criteria for the use of United Kingdom-based aircraft, and within these criteria the operational decisions were for the United States.
Lord Molloy: My Lords, my I ask the noble Baroness whether she really believes that the activities of NORAID and the IRA, which lead to the wanton slaying of British people, improve relationships between the United Kingdom and the United States of America? Would she rather not prefer to see that harsh steps were taken by President Reagan not merely to return those who are charged with killing Britons but to prevent the killing of British nationals by stopping financial aid getting to the IRA?
Baroness Young: My Lords, the question of NORAID is quite outside the terms of the Question on the Order Paper.
Lord Avebury: My Lords, I am sorry to intervene again, but would the Minister be kind enough to read the supplementary question that I put and the answer that she gave? If, in the light of her study of that question and answer, she agrees that it has not been satisfactorily dealt with, will she find some opportunity of placing on record what are the facts concerning the civilian casualties, and what is the Government's view of the logical difference, if any, between the two circumstances that I quoted?
Baroness Young: My Lords, of course I shall read Hansard when it is published, as I always do. I have already indicated that it is a matter of sorrow that there should have been civilian casualties. The truth is that the possible risk to civilians is not a sufficient reason for rejecting the concept of self-defence in the face of terrorist action which sets out deliberately and ruthlessly to maim and kill innocent civilians in many parts of the world.
Lord Mellish: My Lords, to get this matter in right perspective, is the Minister aware that some of us regard the decision to bomb Tripoli and the rest as a justified decision? Some of our central NATO allies refused to co-operate, yet on the very first occasion they get, they put their hands out for all the friendship and for all the money that they can receive from America. Is it not hypocritical that people like that should now be criticising what the Americans have done? Is the noble Baroness further aware that some of us think that the United States alliance is the most necessary and essential part of our future foreign policy?
Baroness Young: My Lords, I think that the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Mellish, would be shared by very many Members of your Lordships' House.
Lord Jenkins of Putney: My Lords, is the noble Baroness aware that the House of Commons research note on this could find no justification whatsoever for the action that was taken? Is she aware that it is therefore a crime in international law; and that the role of an ally when another ally commits a crime is not to comply with it but to criticise it; and that that is what the noble Baroness ought to be doing?
Baroness Young: No, my Lords, I do not accept what the noble Lord has said. The United States action
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was in accordance with the inherent right of self-defence recognised under Article 51 of the United Nations charter.

Business
Lord Denham: My Lords, after the first short debate on criminal legal aid and before that on pharmacy, my noble friend Lady Trumpington, with the leave of the House, will be repeating in the form of a Statement an Answer which is to be given to a Private Notice Question in another place on the resignation of the chairman of the National Health Service management board. My noble friend then, again with the leave of the House, will repeat a Statement on the report on legionnaire's disease.
I should like to say a word about the arrangements for the two short debates themselves standing in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Benson, and the noble Lord, Lord Hunter of Newington. On the principle 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 Benson, this means that all other speeches should be limited to a maximum of nine minutes.
In the debate of the noble Lord, Lord Hunter of Newington, the number of speakers is such that it is not necessary to propose a formal time limit. But I am sure that noble Lords will agree that it would conform with the spirit of these short debates if they would keep their speeches at least within the 15 minutes which apply to the mover of the debate.

Criminal Legal Aid
3.9 p.m.
Lord Benson Lord Benson rose to call attention to the current concern about the provision for criminal legal aid and to the need to consider ways of improving the machinery for negotiating levels of remuneration in the future; and to move for Papers.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, I should say at the outset of this debate that I was chairman of the Royal Commission on Legal Services which sat from 1976 to 1979 and that I was a member of the Roskill Committee which sat in 1984 and 1985. The reports of both have a number of paragraphs which are highly relevant to the subject that we are discussing this afternoon. In case I do not have an opportunity later, may I say how much we are looking forward to hearing the maiden speech of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Ackner. He is no stranger to this House, and his contribution will add lustre to our debate.
I have no wish to pick over the miseries of the past few months, which have seen the spectacle of the legal profession and the head of the judiciary being locked in conflict in the High Court. Suffice it to say that everybody who knows anything about this subject, whether within or without the legal profession, is distressed on behalf of both parties in the struggle and

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feels very strongly that some alternative method of negotiation should be introduced to prevent any such situation ever arising again.
I want to concentrate on two things. First, there is the risk that the legal aid scheme will become a second-class service unless the legal profession is properly remunerated. Secondly, I want to explore the possibilities of some alternative means of negotiation. The facts are not in dispute. The Royal Commission on Legal Services observed that 10 years ago the earnings of the legal profession were falling behind the index of average weekly wage-earners and behind the retail price index. It made a number of other criticisms in connection with the way that legal remuneration is fixed and it said that the procedures were unfair and bad for morale and that the arrangements were a strong source of grievance. The position has worsened in the intervening 10 years and the remuneration now payable under the legal aid scheme is wholly inadequate.
The Roskill Committee said the same thing in a different context. It pointed out that the remuneration payable for the preparation of legal cases was wholly inadequate. This is a policy which is wholly incomprehensible because it is common ground that if any project is to succeed, it must be properly prepared, and if it is not paid for, it will not be properly prepared. That was one of the reasons why the Roskill Committee felt it necessary to point out that far too many cases are not being properly prepared and are not being properly presented to the courts.
The legal aid scheme was one of the great social reforms after the last war, but the Royal Commission was careful to point out that one of the planks on which democracy rests is the right of every citizen to have equal access to the courts and equal service to the rights provided by the law. Those rights are in grave danger of being eroded.
The consequences of these shortsighted and parsimonious policies are inevitable. The best brains in the legal profession are withdrawing from this branch of the service because it is not properly remunerated. Barristers and solicitors will not undertake this work. The result of that is that the legal aid scheme is in danger of becoming a second-class service. This is not fair to the citizen; it is not fair to the legal profession; and it does little credit to the claim we make in this country that justice is fairly administered.
The long-term consequences are even more damaging. We draw our judiciary from the ranks of the practising lawyers, but if the best brains of the legal profession are not prepared to enter this branch of the service, in 20 years' time the judges will be second class. Responsibility for that dreadful legacy rests fairly and squarely on the decisions made now. The Roskill Committee pointed out that it is necessary not only to maintain but to improve the quality of the judiciary. If it is to be further eroded by the factors I have mentioned, it means that the public will lose confidence in the judiciary and in its judgments. And the consequences of that are very grave indeed. What we are doing is to sow the seeds now of discord in the future.
If the legal profession is to be paid more, it will cost money, and I am sure that in the course of this afternoon we shall hear the word "affordability". But I am satisfied beyond all reasonable doubt that the cost of paying the legal profession properly would be met many times over if a determined effort was made to streamline the legal procedures in the way recommended by the Royal Commission on Legal Services, by the Roskill Committee, by the inquiries now being made into civil procedures and the many other studies which have been made over recent years on this and related subjects.
I see from The Times of 13th May that the Lord Chancellor's Department is proposing certain reforms. Of course these will be helpful, and I am sure they will be welcomed by the legal profession. But it requires a much more dynamic and forceful attitude by everybody concerned in the legal process if the legal process is to be brought up to date and we are to cut away the huge overload and dead weight of complication which has been inherited from generations past. It will require a team of top grade administrators, who should be assisted but not dominated by persons skilled in the law.
Every great organisation needs a long-term plan so that it may define its strategies and ensure that the impetus of implementation is not lost. The Royal Commission made just such a recommendation seven years ago. It was repeated six months ago by the Roskill Committee. We are entitled to ask why this basic principle is not adopted for the purpose of bringing the administration of justice up to date and saving many millions of pounds of public money.
I now turn to the second subject, which is the machinery for negotiation. The present system has three defects. First, it is delegated to officials at too low a level, who are not themselves up to date in the practice of the law. Secondly, they do not have the power of decision and—I say it in sympathy and not in criticism—they are puppets dancing to the strings of the Treasury behind the curtains. Thirdly, they do not have the basic up-to-date independent evidence available in front of them on which fair judgments can be made. These three factors are a certain recipe for failure; and so it has proved in practice.
The Royal Commission on Legal Services foresaw this situation with great clarity. It was for that reason that it recommended that a review board should be set up which would advise on all forms of legal remuneration. This is even more important now because the Crown Prosecution Service has just been set up, and that means another Minister and another government department will be drawn into the affray. The restrictions which have been imposed upon the Attorney-General are even more severe than those which presently apply to the Lord Chancellor.
The characteristics of a review board of the type recommended by the Royal Commission are three in number. First, it should be, and be seen to be, wholly independent of the government and of course of the body whose affairs are being looked into. Secondly, it should fix scale and other fees so that fair remuneration is paid for work properly done. Thirdly, its findings and its reasons should be made public. Of course that is not the only method of a review board;

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there are several different variations—but the principle is there. There is nothing unusual in it. It has been well accepted in other walks of life and has been well tested in the hot fires of practical experience. Examples involve the review board for government contracts, the remuneration of the armed services, doctors and dentists, nurses, pharmacists, the police, senior civil servants, the judiciary and, if I may remind the House, the remuneration paid to Members of another place and the allowances paid to your Lordships in this Chamber. It is eminently suitable for the legal profession.
In the final result the Government, of course, must settle the pay which is given to the legal profession for legal aid because it comes out of the public purse and the Government are responsible for the overall economy of the country.
But the great advantage of having such a body is that it is comprised of men of integrity. They are objective and independent and they collect all the essential facts and information on which fair judgments can be based. In the other cases that I have mentioned it has been the practice of successive governments to undertake to abide by the recommendations made, unless there is some compelling reason in the national interest to prevent their doing so.
I believe that these are the main topics that we ought to consider this afternoon, and I have only one further observation to make. Contentious matters should not be allowed to drag on, because they breed discontent, and this subject has dragged on for at least 10 years, as the public records show. I suggest to this House that the time has come to grip the situation. My Lords, I beg to move for Papers.
3.20 p.m.
Lord Rawlinson of Ewell: My Lords, time was when neither House of Parliament ever sat on Derby Day, which was given over to a holiday and a flutter on the horses. I have a memory of when I was first the Member of Parliament for Epsom and Ewell 30 years ago. The inhabitants and the procession of carriages, led by the pearly kings and queens, used to flow down to Epsom Downs, and there there was also a flow of funds into the satchels of the bookmakers. I trust there is no significance in the fact that the powers that be have selected this Derby Day to discuss lawyers' fees and the lack of funds flowing into barristers' brief bags over the last few years. Limiting the debate to two-and-a-half hours certainly ensures that there will be restraint in the flow of words by, mainly, the lawyers who are to speak in it.
I want to thank the noble Lord, Lord Benson, for initiating this short debate and for introducing it so ably and so comprehensively. The public interest owes the noble Lord, Lord Benson, a great debt indeed. He was a very distinguished chairman of the Royal Commission which sat for many years and studied in depth part of all the problems affecting the legal profession. It is worth remembering that after hearing all that evidence—not relying on personal prejudices or preferences—which included the evidence of the Chief Justice of the United States, where there is a combined profession, and the Chief Justices from
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other jurisdictions of the Commonwealth, it came out with the conclusion that it is in the public interest that the profession should remain in two branches.
Of course, there exist pressure groups and personal interests of certain people. But it is important to recollect that that Royal Commission, over which the noble Lord, Lord Benson, presided as a layman with such distinction, made the recommendation in the public interest that the profession should remain in its two branches.
With regard to the particular subject which the noble Lord has introduced in his Motion, I have to declare an interest—not a personal interest—as present president of the Senate of the Inns of Court and the Bar. Among the list of speakers there will be three of my predecessors, including the noble and learned Lord, Lord Ackner, who will be making his maiden speech here in your Lordships' House.
The very fact that there is this debate demonstrates the degree of concern over the present system. We cannot disguise in the profession the fact that it follows a sad and anxious dispute between the profession and the Lord Chancellor's department. That gives all of us great concern because of our personal affection for, first, the head of that department—a former colleague, an ornament, if not an institution, in the public life of the United Kingdom, who towers over the law and politics of England—and, secondly, for the department itself, with which I first had official relations nearly 25 years ago when I first became a Law Officer in 1962.
But times have changed since then. Certainly, as the noble Lord, Lord Benson, has said, over the last 10 years they have changed very much, and now the department is a great spending department of the government. The Lord Chancellor's department has dedicated and skilled personnel, but I wonder whether, in considering the machinery of government, there ought now to be regard for greater administrative resources and greater administrative specialists. The noble Lord, Lord Benson, has referred to this need. It is a small department, it is grossly overworked, and I certainly doubt its ability to withstand, and not to be overborne by, the juggernaut of the Treasury.
But in regard to the dispute it must be remembered that Parliament adopted the principle that an accused person in our criminal courts should be afforded the assistance of experts and expert advocates, and the government accepted the principle that those advocates should be paid a fair and reasonable reward for the work done. Therefore, if they will that purpose, the government must afford the means; otherwise we are dealing with a sham.
It is this obligation to be prepared to pay full fees which was analysed by the report of Coopers and Lybrand. That showed that for a barrister with 10 to 15 years' experience, a man of 33 to 40 years of age, to obtain parity with civil servant lawyers there needs to be an increase of 30 to 40 per cent.
Always, at all times, there will be the claim that this is a time of restraint and that the Government must introduce considerations of wider pay policy to

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postpone, if not to deny, the payment of the fair sums. But in the face of that analysis, which was the first ever taken, the junior officials of the department were totally hamstrung and failed to undertake proper and appropriate negotiations. They failed to do that because of the overall government policy. Having regard to the principle which has been accepted first by Parliament and secondly by government, that must be a cheat.
Of course, I can judge what happened behind the scenes. I have no doubt that the noble and learned Lord who heads the department did all that he possibly could to obtain from the Treasury the money to do this. But the Treasury and the political managers refused to honour the principle, and the effect has been the sad and sour relationship between the profession and the department. It is a truism that if, through political expediency to gain temporary time, you let slip over a number of years annual increases which ought fairly to be made, then, when the cumulative increase is eventually required, it will appear extraordinary.
The Royal Commission made the recommendation—perhaps because of this—of the Advisory Review Board to which my noble friend referred. It is not a new principle. It is applied to doctors and the armed forces, as well as to we here in this House with regard to our expenses. Such a review board could create a reasonable system which could afford rational means of implementing the agreed principle. Therefore, I certainly support the review board with strong lay representation and I believe this could excise what has developed into a running ulcer in the relationship between government and the profession.
We have to remember that all who administer the law, all who oversee those who administer the law, and all who practise the law are playing a part in the process of providing justice and upholding the rule of law. Save for the defence of the realm, there is no more important or responsible duty for a civilised state. If a government—as they must, as they should, as they do—require justice to be done, in their turn they must be just and must honour their obligations to those on whom they rely to participate in this prime duty of a democratic state.
3.29 p.m.
Lord Elystan-Morgan: My Lords, perhaps I, too, may thank the noble Lord, Lord Benson, for initiating this debate and congratulate him on the clarity and vigour with which he presented his case. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Rawlinson, has said, the noble Lord, Lord Benson, has added very considerably to the debt which the legal profession already owes him.
I regard this debate as being one that is of crucial importance not only in relation to the remuneration of lawyers but also because it goes to something that lies at the very heart of administration of justice: the proper representation of a defendant before the criminal courts. I intervene briefly as one who has been for many years a solicitor and who practised thereafter for many years as a barrister, spending most of my time in criminal trials in the Crown Court. Indeed, I feel that I should be less than loyal to my
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profession if I were not to seek to say a few words this afternoon on this matter. Nevertheless, my position is one of humility and embarrassment: humility on account of the great weight of distinguished professional representation that appears in this debate, embarrassment at having to speak about one's own income. That is an arid exercise when one has to do it with a bank manager or an accountant. It is even less pleasurable when one does it in your Lordships' House.
The provision of legal aid for criminal defendants is central to the administration of criminal justice. It follows, therefore—as both speakers who have preceded me have said—that it is axiomatic that those who practice under the aegis of legal aid must not be regarded as being diminished in status or in any other way in relation to the rest of the profession. Indeed, the Royal Commission, headed by the noble Lord, Lord Benson, recommended that there should be fair and resaonable reward for work reasonably done. That principle was endorsed by Her Majesty's Government very shortly after the publication of that Royal Commission report in October 1979. That principle has its echo in the legislation relating to legal aid over the whole of the last 35 years.
I venture to think that it is a source of pride and satisfaction for all who are concerned with the administration of justice that our legal system by and large, in relation to those who are represented by legally-aided counsel and solicitors compared with those who are privately paying, knows no distinction whatever in practice. There are two types of clients: legally-aided clients, and privately paying clients. But there is only one standard of skill and dedication for the advocate and for the solicitor who instructs him. If a fair-minded and intelligent observer were to look into a trial day after day at any Crown Court in this land, when, let us say, there were two men, one legally aided and the other privately paying, he would not know from the effort of counsel or the preparatory work of solicitors in that case who was legally aided and who was not. It would be a grave and sad day for the administration of justice were it ever to be different.
The question of the level of remuneration in relation to legally-aided defendants is in a sense a key to the question of remuneration for those who practise in the criminal courts. As the Coopers and Lybrand Report puts it, there is very little privately paid defence work in the Crown Courts. Almost the whole of it, I venture to think—about 97 to 98 per cent. of it—is legally aided. Prosecution work is in practice all publicly funded. That means that it is inevitable that the scales of pay in relation to prosecution work are largely governed by the levels of remuneration enjoyed by petitioners in relation to legally-aided work. Therefore, the level at which remuneration for legally-aided work is set determines in large part the general remuneration earned by petitioners in the field of criminal law altogether.
The Coopers and Lybrand Report of 1985 is a treasure house of very significant information. However, it is not a Domesday survey. It is a study which has great range and depth, but this is certainly not the place to deal with its detail and varied parts.

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Indeed, it would not be correct in any event in the light of the fact that very delicate consideration is being given to many aspects of it.
In the few remaining minutes that I shall be on my feet I should wish to refer to the mood that dominates the criminal Bar at the moment, particularly among those who practice at the junior Bar, in relation to legally-aided remuneration. The mood is one of gloom and depression. There is a depth and intensity such as I have never seen before in my years at the Bar, nor during the years when I was a solicitor. It is a mood of fear, uncertainty, and frustration. It affects barristers in every part of England and Wales, though I cannot speak for my colleagues north of the Tweed. It affects barristers at every level of seniority. One could understand if this was a problem that was confined in some way to youngsters in their first faltering years of practice, but that is not so. There is a great deal of evidence to support the contention that it affects most harshly those who are at the very top of the junior Bar.
It has been my experience over the last few years to have the confidence of at least a dozen persons who are at the very top of the junior Bar. Two or three of them by now are circuit judges and leading counsel. The evidence that they give follows these lines. They say: "As compared with my position 10 years ago I find that my practice grew steadily with each case. Cases became heavier and heavier. I worked harder and harder. My earnings increased". These are people who do defence work in the main and depend very largely upon legal aid. But it was the evidence of each and every one of them that by the middle of this decade their earnings in real terms were a third to a half down upon what they had enjoyed in the middle 1970s. That I venture to suggest to your Lordships is a cri de coeur by people of the utmost probity. It represents a situation which is already grave and will grow worse unless it is tackled immediately.
In my submission, the case for a review body has been made out very clearly by the noble Lord, Lord Benson, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Rawlinson of Ewell. I believe that it is an unanswerable case. Whatever arguments there may have been against such a body in 1979, those arguments have now disappeared. It is right that the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor should be assisted in his difficult task. We accept that it is a task of agonising difficulty. We accept that he is deeply committed to the independence and strength of the Bar and to preventing any injury whatever to the system of legal aid. However, it is only right that he should be assisted by a body of independence such as that already described.
Perhaps I may make one last point. When one thinks of an award given in relation to legal aid—whatever the magic figure be, whether it be X, Y or Z—the public at large believe that is immediately translated by the application of that multiplier directly into the pockets of those who practice at the criminal Bar. That is not so. All that an award would do would be to raise the ceilings. In day-to-day practice when fees are claimed a figure is put into the column by one's clerk. The taxing clerk may have a totally
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different view and may knock it down by 20, 30 or 40 per cent. Therefore, there is no direct relationship, as there is in the case of the award given, let us say, to teachers or civil servants, when an award is made in this connection. That is a problem that the House can consider no doubt on a different occasion.
I am grateful to the House for the attitude that it takes to this matter. Society at large is not, nor has it been throughout history, over-kind towards lawyers. The House is more fair, more generous even than St. Luke, who said, as the House will remember,
"Woe unto you, lawyers! for ye have taken away the key of knowledge".
3.40 p.m.
Lord Wigoder: My Lords, I no longer practise; but I spent most of my working life in the criminal courts, sometimes prosecuting, sometimes defending, appearing sometimes privately and sometimes on legal aid. It was not perhaps the best of training for learning how to limit a speech to a maximum of 9 minutes. It is a period that gives me time, I think, only briefly first to thank the noble Lord, Lord Benson for the way in which he has introduced the debate, and secondly to say how eagerly I anticipate the speech of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Ackner.
In the remaining time that I have, I want to make only one point. I do not want to deal with half the subject of the debate, which is how those engaged in the criminal law should achieve fair remuneration. I want to deal simply with the question as to why those who are engaged in the criminal law should be offered fair remuneration. I want to make it perfectly clear that I do not suggest for one moment that the state owes barristers a living. When young people come to the Bar, they know perfectly well the difficulties and the obstacles. They know that it is insecure; they know that work is difficult to find. They know that fees are low; they know that, when they get work payment does not always follow. They appreciate all the problems. I do not think that it is for the state to take upon itself the burden of saying, "Here is a profession and if anyone enters it we will guaranteee him a living". That would be wrong, and it is not the basis upon which I would put my argument.
I think that one must also look at what the nature is today of those who are engaged in the criminal law. Times have changed very much. At the turn of the century the Old Bailey practitioners were widely regarded as the people with the least desirable attributes of any members of the Bar. Indeed, that approach persisted for many years afterwards. I well remember that, when I first came to the Bar just after the last war, there were still clear indications in the Lord Chancellor's Department of a belief that no criminal practitioner, however distinguished, could possibly be allowed to try the simplest running-down case, whereas on the other hand there was a belief that any civil practitioner could be appointed to the Bench and at once let loose to preside over the most complicated criminal trial. There are perhaps semblances of that still today; but I believe that gradually it has become realised that those who engage in criminal work require qualities of the same

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degree—not necessarily the same qualities, but the same high skills as those who practise in the civil courts.
Inevitably these days most of the people who appear in the criminal courts from the Bar appear on one side or the other publicly funded. They do so, and when they do so they are participating in an essential function—and indeed in one of the most essential functions of a civilised society.
All political parties talk about the importance of law and order, how necessary it is to preserve it, how it is right that it should be promoted in one way or another. That commitment to law and order means nothing and will distintegrate unless the criminal courts upon which that commitment depends are properly staffed. That means having judges with the ability skilfully and competently to try criminal cases. It means having a supply of advocates on both sides: advocates for the prosecution in cases where people are alleged to have committed crime, particularly where the allegation is well-founded, who have the ability to conduct those prosecutions and to prepare them firmly and efficiently, and advocates appearing on behalf of the defence, particularly if the allegation may be ill-founded, who have the skills vigorously and fearlessly to carry out the function of defending those people. Let no one think that that is not sometimes a very difficult task. There are many occasions in a criminal trial when the whole might of the state is brought into action against a defendant. There are many occasions when the collective hysterical comments of the media are brought against a defendant. To conduct a defence in those cases requires a degree of independence, of judgment and of courage which is fair and absolutely necessary if, as I say, our system of criminal trial is to survive, and therefore our system of law and order is to survive.
That means quite simply that there must therefore be a steady supply of first-class talent to the criminal Bar for both sides, those who prosecute and those who defend. It means that when they are persuaded to come to the Bar, they must remain there and not drift off, as so many of them do, into industry, local government or the Civil Service. It means, indeed, as the noble Lord, Lord Benson, pointed out, that they must remain there until the stage at which they provide the necessary pool from which there can be appointed the criminal judges who play an equally important part in the whole process of the criminal law. One saw only this morning a report in The Times that the waters in that pool are now getting a little shallow perhaps, and that the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor is already finding it not easy to discover skilled circuit judges to conduct complicated criminal cases.
Therefore, when one has this situation in which in a criminal case both sides are in fact funded by the state—and that I think is an indication in itself of a mature and advanced society—it is absolutely essential that the practitioners who carry out their duties should be in this position: if they are competent enough to secure for themselves a steady supply of work carrying out that invaluable task, they should then be in a position to earn adequate rewards—not
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excessive rewards, no one is asking that for one moment, but adequate rewards.
One has only to glance at the Coopers and Lybrand Report to realise how far removed we are from that situation today. I know that one can make nit-picking comments about various parts of that report—of course one can. However, the fact remains that it becomes perfectly clear from that report, as was mentioned by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Rawlinson, that the competent full-time practitioner in the criminal courts today is earning some figure of 30 or 40 per cent. less than the average legal civil servant. I do not want to make any criticism of lawyers in the Civil Service. There is no conceivable reason why I should. But one has to bear in mind that there are certain advantages that they have in security of tenure, in index-linked pensions, and so forth, that are denied to the Bar. Without trying to draw any strict comparability in regard to the work that they do. I do not believe that anybody in your Lordships' House would contend that a lawyer in a government office is doing an infinitely more valuable job than a lawyer who is competently and fearlessly playing his part in a criminal trial.
In those circumstances, I would suggest that the case for fair remuneration for the Bar is made out. It is not made out because it will happen to help the Bar and will happen to be in its interests. I believe that the case for fair remuneration is made out because it is in the interests of society that we should have a Bar that will carry out those functions. That means that it is in the interests of every single one of us.
I know that when frequently reforms have been suggested in recent years the reply from the Lord Chancellor's Department has always been that reform cannot be afforded. The issue of fair remuneration for those who take part in criminal trials is, I believe, an issue upon which the Government and the Lord Chancellor's Department cannot afford not to offer fair remuneration. If that is to be decided, it cannot be decided by the exhibition of industrial muscle on either side, as though it were an ordinary trade union dispute. It can be decided only with the assistance of the sort of independent element, in determining what that fair remuneration should be, that has been so carefully and competently explained by the noble Lord, Lord Benson.
I hope that after listening to this debate the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor will be able to persuade the Government that there is indeed a strong case for considering in the interests of society as a whole the matter that has been put forward—the case of the criminal Bar and the desirability of an independent element in helping to determine its fair remuneration.
3.51 p.m.
Lord Bancroft: My Lords, I begin with three points. First, I offer a humble apology, since I may have to leave shortly before the end of the debate. Secondly, I wish to pay a tribute to my noble friend Lord Benson for his extremely cogent introduction to the debate following his admirable Royal Commission report.

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My third point is that it would be both decorous and sensible if I were to make the briefest of interventions, as I am one of the only two non-lawyers speaking in the debate. That I promise to do. I speak from the point view of the consumer, as it were, of legal services.
My interest centres on the notion of introducing an element of independently collected evidence and independently assembled advice into the machinery for settling the remuneration for publicly funded legal work. My only qualification for intervening is that over the years I have had a little experience of both rationality and total irrationality in that general field. As a result, I prefer the review body procedure to the arbitration panel, and I prefer both to the present mishmash.
I am aware that the creation of a fees advisory board can be, and indeed has been, criticised on a number of grounds. The first is that the Government are abdicating a crucial responsibility. Secondly, it places too much power in the hands of a non-accountable body. Thirdly, it omits from the equation the critical item of the ability to pay. All those arguments are very old and are totally misconceived.
The proposed body, like the several others that already exist, and to which reference has been made during the course of the debate, would be advisory to the extent that it would be open to the government of the day to reject or modify the advice if there were clear and compelling reasons in the national interest for doing so. It is for the Government to make that judgment for good or for ill. I believe that I am right in saying that in their wisdom successive governments of both colours have almost invariably used that right of modification—in the case, for example, of the Top Salaries Review Board—but there has always been a public benchmark, whether honoured or not.
I regard it as self-evident even to the most raucous partisan of market forces that the present arrangement is no longer sustainable. To call it a system would strain both language and credulity. It places the responsible Minister and his officials in a totally impossible position, by interposing the say-so of the Treasury jack-in-office between them and the professions. I speak with due reverence for my former department, quoting the late Sir Thomas Farrer. It allows of no rational process of argument, let alone negotiation. It imposes a government incomes policy, the existence of which is then promptly denied. And it alienates two honourable professions from both the government of the day and the Minister, who has a wholly proper concern—indeed, if I may respectfully say so, in the case of the present Lord Chancellor and his pedecessor, a properly passionate concern—for the efficiency and health of the two professions.
But much, much worse, as my noble friend Lord Benson pointed out, it will end up with the provision of a second-class service to those of our fellow citizens whose circumstances require them to depend on publicly funded legal services. That would be, in the phrase of my noble friend, a truly dreadful legacy. I repeat that I speak as a consumer.
To those who recoil from a fees advisory body I can only say from my experience that it simply cannot help being an improvement on the existing arrangement.
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That arrangement can be most charitably described as a moonbeam from a larger lunacy. Your Lordships will be relieved to hear that it is not my purpose to undertake any further lunar exploration today, in the interests of hearing the noble and learned Lord, Lord Ackner.
3.56 p.m.
Lord Ackner: My Lords, 40 years ago I was sitting robed in counsel's row in the Inner London Sessions, one of the busiest criminal courts in London. I had not then entered pupilage, but I was doing so on the advice of my pupil master-to-be, who thought that I should get used to the novelty of the wig and gown pending his return from vacation.
Five young men were brought into the dock, all charged with burglary. Four pleaded guilty and the fifth man asked for a dock brief. As your Lordships may recall, the dock brief system permitted anyone in court, for the princely sum of £1.3s.6d., to retain the services of any barrister who happened to be there. As luck would have it, there were two barristers. With unerring discernment the accused chose the other one, who was the then editor of Archbold Pleading, Evidence and Practice in Criminal Cases, who regretted his inability to accept the kind offer since he was attending in order to prosecute the young man in question.
It was thus to my astonishment, and to the dismay of my client, that I achieved my first brief. I refer to that somewhat traumatic experience for two reasons. First, on that occasion, as I rose to present the defence, my voice sounded as alien to me as it does now, appearing for the first time before your Lordships' House. Secondly, with the exception of the court brief that a judge occasionally handed out when he wanted someone defended, for which the barrister was paid the handsome sum of £3.5s.6d., increased to £5.7s.6d. if the case lasted for more than three days, the dock brief was the sole source of criminal legal aid.
It was to deal with that parlous state of affairs that the criminal legal aid legislation was subsequently passed, providing for fair remuneration for work actually and reasonably done. I passionately believe that a strong and independent Bar is absolutely vital to the proper administration of justice in this country, and I know that the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor takes the same view.
The same view was taken by two recent Royal Commissions. The first was under the late Lord Beeching and the second under the noble Lord, Lord Benson. But the Bar is at present being seriously weakened, and in an important area. Fifty per cent. of the Bar, both in London and in the provinces, depends almost entirely, if not wholly, on practice in the criminal courts. Almost the entirety of that work is paid by the legal aid fund and it appears to be generally accepted, at least in this House, that the members are grossly underpaid. I shall not deal with the figures in the Coopers and Lybrand report. I would rather refer to the position on the ground.
As a former chairman of the Bar Council, a former president of the Senate and treasurer of my Inn, I have done my best to keep au fait with what is happening in the profession. There are three matters of acute

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concern. First, there is recruitment which is the very lifeblood of any profession. There are highly competitive attempts by applicants of very high calibre to get into chambers where the work is wholly or mainly civil, including of course an element of civil legal aid. Sadly, but not surprisingly, the reverse is the position in respect of criminal chambers.
Secondly, competent members of the Bar are leaving practice at the Bar, even going abroad in order to obtain a decent living. The Attorney-General, whom I visited in Hong Kong in 1984, told me that he was surprised, indeed shocked, at the number of highly competent members of the Bar practising in the criminal courts in this country who had applied for a very modest appointment in his office. I know that very recently there has been a substantial intake of members of the Bar into the Hong Kong Bar despite all the problems that face that country.
Thirdly, there is in England and Wales a flight from crime at the Bar. Those members of the Bar who are able to are turning as fast as they can from criminal work to civil work. I know that that is a fact because it has occurred in my own chambers and in a number of chambers in the Temple. As a result, there are growing up two Bars—a Bar that devotes its time essentially to civil work, which is properly remunerated, and a Bar dealing in crime, which is impoverished.
In a memorandum which we submitted to Lord Benson's committee, the High Court judges sought to emphasise how advocacy lies at the root of our trial process. We sought to emphasise what is often overlooked—how much the judiciary depend for the proper dispatch of their business upon the competence, the industry and the integrity of the Bar; and how if you reduce those standards you reduce the product of the efficiency and the justness of the courts. I suggest that my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor has perhaps done the judiciary too great a credit in the first sentence in the foreword of his little pamphlet on judicial appointments when he said that the quality of justice is largely determined by the quality of the judges who preside.
So much for the present, but what of the immediate future a decade or two hence? It ill lies in the mouth of a judge to talk about the merits of the judiciary, particularly when he is obliged to be noncontroversial. Therefore I quote with confidence from an article in The Times by the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, in 1966:
"We have a judiciary of great wisdom, great fairness of mind and absolute probity. It is to be doubted—and this is not a narrow chauvinistic claim—whether any country in the world possesses better judges viewed over the whole range of our judicial system".
But circuit judges who try the bulk of criminal trials, trials before juries, are recruited mainly from practitioners in the criminal courts. Where, one might ask, in the year 2000 and beyond is the then Lord Chancellor to trawl for his circuit judges when the fishing grounds have been starved to near extinction? In an era when the efficient maintenance of law and order is so vital, a weak criminal Bar and a debilitated criminal Bench must be a national disaster.
I strongly support the setting up of an advisory committee to give objective advice on this difficult
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subject. My noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor may recall that many years ago he appeared for the hospital consultants before the Doctors and Dentists Pay Review Body. I appeared contemporaneously for the general practitioners. I like to think that our joint efforts and the wisdom of the government at the time, in applying the recommendations as and when the reports were made, helped to stem the medical brain drain.
As a judge I have appeared before the Top Salary Review Body on behalf of my brother judges. I venture to suggest that if the advice of that body had not in substance been accepted from time to time the number of senior counsel who, because of family commitments, found that it was impossible to afford to take a judicial appointment would have increased from a trickle to a torrent.
I am deeply grateful for the privilege of being able to make my maiden speech on a subject which I believe to be so vital to the quality of the administration of justice. I thank your Lordships for your courtesy and indulgence in hearing me.
4.7 p.m.
Lord Templeman: My Lords, it is my pleasure and privilege to follow my noble and learned friend Lord Ackner and to congratulate him warmly on his maiden speech in this House. In the manner of his speech my noble and learned friend displayed that wit, charm and eloquence which made him such a formidable protagonist at the Bar; and in the content of his speech he demonstrated that concern for justice and fairness and the experience which has made him a renowned judge on the Bench.
My noble and learned friend has, and has maintained, great experience among all members of the Bar and of the other branch of the legal profession. As a member of the Bar Council and chairman and president of the Senate, he has great experience upon which to deliver that warning which he has just delivered and which we all hope will be given attention. We hope that my noble and learned friend will make many more contributions to the debates in this House.
My noble and learned friend Lord Ackner, and other noble Lords, have emphasised the public interest in securing reasonable remuneration for criminal legal aid. The machinery enabling the Lord Chancellor to consider and decide the proper rate for remuneration has for a number of years caused great discontent among respected and responsible leaders of both branches of the legal profession and it has caused great resentment among many members of the legal profession practising in the criminal field.
The resentment has stemmed from the fact that over the past 10 years their professional expenses have doubled and doubled again—expenses of rent, payment of salaries to their staffs and the expense of installing electronic and other equipment which every modern profession needs. Their personal expenses have also doubled and quadrupled. Their modest semi-detached house or apartment in Islington, within reach of the Old Bailey, is now nearer £100,000 than the £20,000 that it used to be near. As against that,

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they have had genuine grievances about slow payment and inadequate payment, some of which have been acknowledged.
The recent unhappy and successful litigation by the profession against the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor demonstrated that the complaints of the profession were well founded and that the present machinery for enabling the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor to decide upon rates of remuneration is as unsatisfactory as the noble Lord, Lord Bancroft, demonstrated just now. It would be wrong to attribute fault to individuals, and I echo the words of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Rawlinson of Ewell, in his commendation of the officials of the Lord Chancellor's Department.
However, I suggest that it would be equally wrong to ignore the need for reform of the system, which everybody who has spoken so far has mentioned and which the late litigation has demonstrated. Of course, the final decision with regard to expenditure must be the responsibility of the Government, and no machinery for helping to evaluate claims to remuneration is perfect. But as the noble Lord, Lord Benson, illustrated, machinery has been devised on an ad hoc basis for everybody from doctors and dentists to pharmacists, firemen and teachers, some of whom are wholly dependent on public money and some partly on public money and partly on private money. I venture to suggest that some of their organisations have been far more strident and militant than the legal profession is likely to be, and that what has proved good for them will prove good for the legal profession.
I know that both branches of the profession are anxious to avoid conflict. They have been driven reluctantly to demonstrate that the present machinery is unsatisfactory. They and the public are entitled to have reform, and I hope that my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor will be able to indicate his acceptance of the principle that some change must be made and will acknowledge that it is not sufficient to say, "We shall go on in the same old way and you can trust us to do the best we can because we have the interests of the Bar, the solicitors and the public at heart".
No one doubts the good intentions of my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor, who has a great fund of affection available to him from both branches of the profession. But as the noble Lords, Lord Benson and Lord Bancroft, have said—and I would echo it—the time has come for machinery to be devised which will improve the present method of securing reasonable remuneration for criminal legal aid.
4.12 p.m.
Lord Hutchinson of Lullington: My Lords, as one who over the last decade has watched at first hand the ever descending level of publicly-funded fees in criminal legal aid, I welcome this debate. I particularly welcome the outstanding way in which the noble Lord, Lord Benson, opened the debate, and I would suggest to the House that his arguments are really totally unanswerable. I also welcome the participation of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Ackner, who is one of the most effective chairmen of the Bar that we have
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ever had and who is a Law Lord who has actually conducted cases and trials at the level of the old quarter sessions. As your Lordships have appreciated, his speech was like a breath of fresh air in this House, and the experience that he brings to the House is indeed rare on the Cross-Benches. Certainly I, and I am sure all your Lordships also, will welcome such speeches as he will make in the future that give the same attention to the practicalities of the subject on which he is speaking.
The Motion refers to the current concern about the provision for criminal legal aid. The noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack knows well enough that for some Members of this House (and I am among them) the concern has been deep and long-lasting. Over the years I have certainly warned him—and on occasions have had my knuckles smartly rapped for doing so—that the situation which existed in 1979, and which was confirmed by the Royal Commission chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Benson, has continued and has grown worse year by year. As we have already heard, the Royal Commission said that the present system is unfair, gives rise to a strong sense of justified grievance in the profession and gives the Government a complete power of veto on political grounds; and that the quality of the new intake into the profession is steadily falling. I have added to that—and I have warned the noble and learned Lord of it—the increasing drift away from the criminal practice of the more able and the frustration of the younger Bar which has now publicly and sadly exploded into outright anger. On top of this there is the forced collapse of the legal aid provision offered by so many solicitors of repute in London.
The Government rejected the Royal Commission's recommendation of an independent advisory committee and for seven wasted years the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor has been wedded to direct negotiation. Mr. Robert Alexander, the distinguished chairman of the Bar, has described negotiations as wholly illusory and a charade—words which are far stronger than I, who have a concern for my knuckles, would ever have dared to use in this Chamber.
With publicly-funded fees forming more than 80 per cent. of all young banisters' incomes, it is indeed ironical in such circumstances to read of the noble and learned Lord's rejection of a Ministry of Justice on the grounds, among others, that it would undermine the independence of the Bar. If it is the concern of this House that the Bar should retain and preserve its vital independence, then the establishment of an independent review body that is equipped to carry out its own independent surveys and which will publish reasons for its recommendations for all to read should surely have an overwhelming priority.
Let no one suggest that we are debating a mere wage claim or that the criminal Bar is resistant to change. It is not the fault of lawyers that whereas in 1959 there were half a million crimes in a year, now there are over 2 million. If there is an increase in the incidence of disease, surely that is the last reason for cutting the remuneration of doctors and nurses. Certainly since 1974 the stated and reiterated view of the Criminal Bar Association has been that publicly-funded fees

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should reflect the quality of the work done; in other words, that there should be value for money. The CBA has advanced a whole series of measures for increasing the efficiency and speed and for reducing the cost of criminal trials. It was the CBA which initiated the pre-trial review. It has put forward proposals for reform of the listing procedures. It has cried out for tape recording to be carried out in police stations and for legal advice to be made available in police stations. It has called for pre-trial disclosure, for bail courts and for a whole series of reforms for case preparation and the streamlining of committal proceedings. It has warned of the treadmill syndrome, which is the maximisation of court appearances by barristers, simply so that they can make ends meet, and at the expense of proper and considered preparation of work.
All these matters go to the very heart of the law's delays, as does the periodic prolixity of counsel, and to the failure of judges efficiently to conduct the trials that are before them. Neither are we dealing here with percentages, which are so dearly loved by the media and the trade unions. The Bar has put forward proposals for realistic restructuring of publicly-funded fees—sensible fee levels that will result in earlier and better preparation of briefs, in shorter trials and in a higher qualified and more efficient Bar.
My Lords, legal aid must be taken out of politics, away from departmental civil servants and placed in the hands of an independent advisory body as proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Benson, in 1979—a body which can genuinely fulfil the statutory criterion of a fair and reasonable reward for work reasonably done.
4.21 p.m.
Lord Denning: My Lords, I would add my congratulations to my noble and learned friend Lord Ackner on his maiden speech. I heard his eloquence and ability when he was at the Bar appearing before us; I heard his eloquence and abilities when he was sitting beside me in the Court of Appeal, and today he has excelled himself in eloquence and ability in the speech he has given before your Lordships—so much so that I think I could say, as I have sometimes said in the Court of Appeal, that I entirely agree and there is nothing I can usefully add.
I will, however, add just a word or two. He goes back with his first brief to 1946. I was already a judge at that time, I go past that, long past, far, far back into the past when I had my first brief, when I had the dock brief. We were sitting in a row, it took a long time to get any practice in those days and a long line of us would be waiting to see if there had been a request for a dock brief. Then there was the good fortune of being chosen, seeing the accused in the cell, making the plea in mitigation, for £1.3s.6d., or if it went on for two or three days, it might go up to £3.5s.6d. That was the state of the law before we had the criminal legal aid system; one law for the rich, another for the poor, and very little for the poor.
The criminal legal aid system, or the legal aid system generally, is the greatest legal revolution in my time, the greatest legal revolution in the administration of
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justice. I know the impact when it started. Now, every accused man is entitled to legal aid at the expense of the state, from the moment when he is arrested right through till he is tried and convicted or acquitted. That is a great piece of legal justice and the Bar and the solicitors responded in those first days. They expanded their numbers to deal with the greatly increased amount of work, they did their cases well and were well paid, or, shall I say, properly paid at that time.
I was impressed by what my noble friend Lord Elystan-Morgan said about how it has become different in these last 10 years, this last decade. The fees have not been commensurate with the economy of the time. The result is that the younger barristers are not getting the fees they ought to, you are not getting the recruits to the Bar that you ought to, and I fear you may not be getting the standard of service which you should have. If people are not properly paid, will you find them spinning out cases in order to get more fees? Will you have them advising, "Oh, go for trial by jury, don't go before the magistrates", in order to get more fees? No, my Lords, in order to get rid of any abuses you must see that the members of the Bar are fairly and properly remunerated for their services so that they can do their work well as a service to the community.
My Lords, I have only a word more. The Coopers and Lybrand report draws a parallel between the prosecution service and the defence service now to be put under the Attorney-General on a general level. Both of them are publicly funded in the interests of justice. The report compares the two. I will just read two short passages in paragraph 4:
"Almost all criminal work carried out by barristers is publicly funded. There is a close affinity in the fee rates for public prosecution and legally aided defence work. The former are decided post facto by Crown Court "taxing officers", the latter by Crown Court "determining officers", both employed by the Lord Chancellor's department, frequently the same people and always working on the same bases for decision."
So there Coopers and Lybrand draw the parallel and then they draw the conclusion a little way further on when they come down to figures. They say they have compared:
"the salaries and conditions enjoyed by barristers in similar age groups in the government legal service. This demonstrates that the incomes of self-employed barristers who specialise in publicly funded criminal defence work would need to be increased by between 30 and 40 per cent. at current rates if they were to be put on a similar earning basis to government legal servants"
My Lords, there is the report by Coopers and Lybrand. I draw that parallel only because in principle there should be no difference whatever in the level of remuneration of those barristers who prosecute and those barristers who defend. They are both doing work of the first importance in the administration of justice. The country should see that they are fairly remunerated for their work. The only question at issue is, what is the best machinery for determining this matter? On that, I should like to endorse all that was said by my noble friend Lord Benson in his admirable report, now six years old.
4.29 p.m.
Lord Roskill: My Lords, a plea of justice for lawyers does not often fall on receptive ears, but this afternoon that plea, so eloquently reinforced by the maiden

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speech of my noble and learned friend Lord Ackner, and most noticeably by the speech of a former Permanent Secretary of the Treasury, is one which can no longer be ignored, even though it is not a matter which readily finds places in election manifestoes. It is a great pity that lawyers have always had the reputation of earning vast incomes. I sometimes think it was a great misfortune that Lord Mansfield was able to build Kenwood and Lord Eldon was able to leave a fascinatingly large sum of money on his death.
But, my Lords, those of us who have spent our working lives in the law know that that is very far from the truth and has never been less true than in the last 10 years. My noble and learned friend Lord Rawlinson of Ewell mentioned that there were three of his predecessors as president of the Senate speaking this afternoon. He will, I hope, forgive me if I mention that it is four, not three; in addition, two of them, one of whom is himself, were chairmen of the Bar. I mention that because between us I think we cover something of the order of the last 15 years, and if one adds those periods in which some of us have had the privilege of being treasurers of our Inn, we are all in the fortunate position of having remained in touch with the practitioners and have not, I hope, got that degree of remoteness of which the higher judiciary is sometimes accused.
We have been in touch with those who are suffering at the moment. They are entitled to look to us for support and to insist that we point out to the Government the failure of authority, which has made repeated demands on the legal profession for its services, to match those demands with adequate remuneration for the profession as a whole so as to enable the members of either branch properly to earn their daily bread.
There is this afternoon one matter alone on which I wish to touch. My noble friend Lord Benson mentioned the report of the fraud trials committee, of which he was a leading member, and I had the privilege of being chairman. The report was, we were both flattered to think, warmly greeted in your Lordships' House and the Government have pledged themselves to doing what they can to adopt anyhow some of the recommendations with a view to eliminating the plethora of fraud in the City. I want only to say that I hope that the recommendations which will be adopted—and my noble friend has touched on this—include those which are directly relevant to this debate.
First, we have recommended, to use a colloquialism, putting teeth into pretrial reviews to enable the trial judge to insist upon the central issues in a complex fraud case being properly and concisely defined. That requires that responsible counsel are present at the hearing and shall have read, marked, learned and inwardly digested the papers previously. Council must be paid, and paid properly, for that work. At present they are not. Pupils are sent and a pretrial revue is often little better than a farce.
Secondly, prosecuting counsel must be brought into complex fraud cases at an early stage and direct the course of the prosecution. It is quite useless to have a prosecution conducted along one line and for that
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course to be violently changed when counsel is brought in later as happens in the present day. Counsel must be brought in earlier and must be paid, and paid properly. That is not happening at the moment.
Thirdly—and these are but three of the points that we make in the report—younger prosecuting counsel must be trained by being brought into these cases as extra juniors at an early stage, so that they in their turn can learn the exceedingly difficult art of conducting prosecutions in complex fraud cases. That has not happened; it must happen. It requires money.
If the Government will only grasp the nettle of these complex fraud cases and make provisions for their efficient conduct and trial, as we have recommended, the figures in the report, which I invite your Lordships to look at, will show that large savings can be made. "Large" is too mild a word. The savings will be immense and they alone will offer a substantial source of extra remuneration for the criminal Bar.
Governments must realise that it is not just the earnings of lawyers which are involved. As has been said already this afternoon, it is the whole quality of justice which is at stake. Many of us who are now at the end of our career in the law have over recent years viewed with increasing alarm the downward trend which government parsimony has caused. The slippery slope is there. My noble and learned friend on the Woolsack, I know, is still fond of his Virgil. May I remind him of three words only: Facilis descensus Averni? It is all too easy to see the profession slipping down into those dark waters which will engulf it unless something is done to correct the slide away from the Bar and in due course a lessening in the quality of the judiciary.
I ventured to mention those three words in Latin. My noble and learned friend on the Woolsack will perhaps allow me to finish the quotation, this time in the vernacular:
"But to recall thy step and issue to the upper air—there is the toil, there is the task".
Matters cannot be left as they are. As my noble and learned friend said, we all have the greatest personal affection for my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor and affection and respect for his able staff. But other steps must be taken, and taken properly. There is their toil; there is their task. It is to set up a body which will restore the confidence of the profession which is at the moment so sadly lacking.
4.34 p.m.
Lord Griffiths: My Lords, your Lordships have had the pleasure of listening to the outstanding contribution to this debate of my noble and learned friend Lord Ackner in his maiden speech. You will readily appreciate that over a period of 25 years, when I found myself against Mr. Desmond Ackner I was up very early in the morning indeed. I should think that over the course of my career he probably owes me about six months' sleep.
I ventured to take part in this debate because I was president of the Senate of the Bar when the decision was taken to commission the Coopers and Lybrand report. I think that it is of some interest to consider the circumstances that led to the commissioning of that

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report. Over a period of two years I had listened regularly to reports from the chairman of the Bar's legal aid fees committee which was negotiating with the Lord Chancellor's Department on legal aid fees. It was quite apparent that they were totally sterile negotiations. They were getting nowhere. The cause was also apparent.
The Lord Chancellor's department was working under the shackle of the Treasury. It had nothing to give. Equally it was unthinkable that we had any real pressure to exert upon it. Ultimately in negotiations of that type the only sanction that labour has is to withdraw its labour, and it would be unthinkable that a profession committed to defending those whose liberty is at stake should withdraw its labour, however great the provocation might be.
But one of the arguments which was constantly put forward by the Lord Chancellor's negotiating team, and with some justification, was this: "You tell us that the Bar is earning so little, but your evidence is all anecdotal. You are not giving us any firm evidence at all and we can get barristers. How can we accept that in fact their incomes are as low as you say?". Those who were engaged upon our side of the negotiation were convinced that that was put forward in good faith (and I do not doubt that it was) and that the only solution was to obtain the firm evidence; and, indeed, they were encouraged to believe that if only they could put firm evidence before the Lord Chancellor's team that would give them the lever that they needed with the Treasury.
A decision was taken to use a not inconsiderable amount of our very limited senate funds to commission an extensive and very expensive report. I am afraid that I always had my doubts about its effectiveness, because I thought that the Treasury shackles might prove too hard to break, even with firm evidence. Sadly it looks as though I was right. Here is this report which shows that the earnings of a barrister
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working full time on legal aid in his mid career are 40 per cent. less than the earnings of a lawyer of comparable seniority employed in government service.
There was a great deal of debate as to how best to present the figures. There were those who urged a comparison with earnings at the private Bar; the Bar working for private clients. But I took the view, along with others, that that was unrealistic and that those who are working on the public purse, as are those who are engaged in criminal legal aid, cannot expect to be remunerated on a scale different from other comparable skills who are also paid from the public purse. It seemed to us that the nearest sensible comparison was the lawyer who was employed in government service; but what was the response to the suggestion that that was at least a basis for comparison? The answer was, "Comparisons are not useful". When one has arrived at that pitch, is not the answer that a new and fresh look is needed? I can see no way out of this impasse other than a totally independent review body. Of course one accepts that if such a body comes forward with an unrealistic assessment, it would be the Government's duty to reject it. However, there is no reason to believe that that is likely to be so. All the other professions which work in the public service have such review mechanisms and their recommendations are, on the whole, accepted, although occasionally they are staged. We have evidence that such a system works sensibly and fairly.
I need not elaborate the danger to the administration of justice that will flow from inadequate remuneration leading to a deterioration in standards because the Bar will not attract able people. That point has already been fully deployed by previous speakers. I give my full support to the suggestion that the time has now come for a review body to consider the remuneration offered to those who work for the legal aid service of this country.
4.42 p.m.
Lord Meston: My Lords, I hope that I shall be acquitted of impertinence for venturing to participate in this debate in which so many noble and learned Lords and elegant leaders of the Bar are taking part. My only excuse for so doing is that as someone who endeavours to hack a living on the less rarified lower slopes of the law, I can at least declare an interest in the outcome of anything concerning barristers' legal aid fees. I hasten to join with the noble Lord, Lord Elystan-Morgan, in conveying to your Lordships the deep and continuing concern of the junior Bar in this matter.
I hope that it is also not an impertinence if I respectfully add to the congratulations to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Ackner. I appeared before him only once in the Court of Appeal after a solicitor persuaded me, much against all my advice, to take the case to the Court of Appeal. The noble and learned Lord found previously unrevealed strengths in my case and allowed the appeal. Needless to say, I never saw the solicitor again, but ever since I have had the greatest admiration and respect for the noble and learned Lord.
The legal profession is fortunate to have had the sustained and authoritative interest of the noble Lord, Lord Benson, in its affairs. He has crystallised our thoughts, and in the debate provided a catalyst, for which we are all most grateful. Looking at the two parts of his Motion, we can take as read that we are all well aware of and have had our attention well and truly drawn to the concern felt about legal aid fees. To find the Bar so dissatisfied with negotiations being carried out that it resorted to litigation would have been unthinkable had it not happened all too recently. I can only agree with noble Lords who have suggested that a hostile Bar is dangerous for the Government and that a demoralised Bar is bad for the country. There can be no doubt that the Bar has resorted to what it has done to show the level of dissatisfaction, and that can leave no doubt that every effort must now be made to take the resolution of fees and their level out of the courts and the political arena.
My noble friend Lord Wigoder eloquently described to your Lordships the importance of the criminal Bar's work. I should merely like to remind your Lordships of some of the problems of criminal barristers and criminal lawyers in general. It is not just a problem created by operating in an overexpanded profession, though that is sometimes a contributory factor. It is a peculiar problem, created by specialisation. If one specialises in criminal work, as distinct from commercial work, almost all one's work will be publicly funded. It is less and less easy to maintain a mixed practice—what one might called a mixed economy—because there is little private work available to subsidise legal aid work and there is, in the criminal field, little paper work available to supplement fees for court work. In other words, one is almost certainly likely to be wholly dependent on the state. There is also a problem created by the nature of the legal aid fund and the legal aid scheme, which is not a public service so much as a private service publicly funded.
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There is, as several of your Lordships have reminded us, a real distinction between publicly funded private practitioners and salaried lawyers and others such as the medical practitioners. There is no regularity of pay or work and fees are paid on a standardised basis and are subject to delay. I am bound to say that criminal legal aid fees seem to come faster than civil legal aid fees, but payment is still an uncertain process. It depends on the workload of the taxing officer at the time. For example, I was recently told by an acquaintance that his ability to go on holiday this year will depend upon his being paid for a long case which he had just finished in which a large amount of money had accrued. His payment also depended upon whether the taxing officer could get to the matter before he himself went on holiday.
All those problems are added to the ordinary problems of the self-employed person with professional expenses to pay, families to support, taxes to pay and bank managers to placate. It is not just a problem of the fictional young, struggling, briefless barrister. It is the struggle of the hardworking middle-aged barrister in a profession in which there is a unique requirement, if one is to get on, to take a leap into the dark in middle age and apply for silk. Last but not least, unlike what obtains for the employed barrister or his counterpart in the medical profession, there is no inbuilt pension scheme. When there is income tax, value added tax, clerks' fees, chamber expenses and other bills to pay, pension contributions out of income do not have the priority that they should.
Several of your Lordships have mentioned that lawyers fees will never be a vote-winning subject. We should never expect to be a special case but, as my noble friend reminded your Lordships, in few other professions does one realise quicker that the world does not owe one a living whatever academic or other qualifications one may have; and yet the myth of the "fat cat" lingers on but the evidence is to the contrary. The Coopers and Lybrand report shows clearly that there is hard evidence that there is precious little feline obesity at any level in the modern criminal Bar.
Clearly the Government must realise that the problem of fees will not go away. The answer is simple. Fair and reasonable remuneration must be achieved now, and if the figures are correct now we shall have a reliable yardstick for the future. The way to achieve that is to have a mechanism for maintaining fair and reasonable remuneration and for adjusting the figures from time to time. The way to do that is to have the type of review committee which the noble Lord, Lord Benson, has proposed.
All those arguments have been well ventilated in your Lordships' debate this afternoon. It need not even meet every year. If the figures are got right now and there are inbuilt inflation-linked increases, the need for such a review body to meet annually is arguable. It is not a revolutionary idea as a number of your Lordships have observed. There are several well-tried precedents. One has yet—at least this afternoon—to hear any arguments to the contrary.
This is not just a matter of private self-interest. There is a public interest in the calibre of lawyers attracted to and retained in the profession. It is not just a matter of enabling enough talent to be around that

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can be caught by the noble and learned Lord's trawls for judicial appointees. It is in the public interest to ensure the fairness and stability of our legal process through having ordinary practitioners of the highest calibre advising clients and conducting cases. I would mention briefly that the need for the calibre of barristers to be increased is itself affected if the levels of remuneration to those who instruct us, the solicitors, is based on the assumption that the solicitors' work will be delegated to unqualified people.
As several noble Lords have reminded us, we are brought up in the law to believe that careful and thorough preparation is essential to the good conduct of cases. I hope that I am not reducing the level of this high-calibre debate if I remind your Lordships of the adage of the barristers' clerks—that if you pay peanuts you get monkeys. If you want an independent and competent legal profession, it must be properly remunerated. We cannot store up problems for the future because of short-term requirements. There will be long-term damage if we do so. The inexorable logic of the arguments that have been advanced this afternoon, in my submission, cannot be answered.
4.52 p.m.
Lord Elwyn-Jones: My Lords, seldon can this noble House have enjoyed such a feast of advocacy and eloquence, spoken with authority, to the extent of our debate today. I include within that general encomium not least the two junior members of the Bar who have spoken, my noble friend Lord Elystan-Morgan and the noble Lord, Lord Meston, who have movingly spoken of the real problems facing those members of the junior Bar now involved in the field of criminal aid. I was involved at the beginnings of the story. I had the privilege of holding the high office of Parliamentary Private Secretary to the then Attorney-General, Lord Shawcross. From those small beginnings we have reached the mighty ends of a broad legal aid service in both the civil and criminal fields. Now, however, we have reached the point where, clearly, the provisons in regard to criminal legal aid give cause for grave concern, as shown by the speeches of noble Lords who have been involved from day to day in the work of the courts and who have examined these problems.
I begin by congratulating the noble and learned Lord, Lord Ackner, on his powerful and delightful maiden speech. This has been rather a unique occasion. No less than three noble and learned Lords of Appeal have spoken. We would wish sometimes that they spoke more often. Happily, of course, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Denning, is always with us, ready and willing to take part in any matters that interest him.Hansard shows how many of those there are. Today, we have had the privilege of the speech in this legal judicial field of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Ackner. Most of us have shared the horrors of the first dock brief. Mine happened in Swansea. Fortunately, I cannot remember the details of it. I do not think that it was terribly savoury. I can therefore claim the very good reason of lapse of memory for not elaborating the information.
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The principal tribute is owed today to the noble Lord, Lord Benson, first for introducing the debate and, secondly, for chairing the Royal Commission. It was set up—I make no political point here—by an earlier Administration. It was my privilege to have occasional discussions with the noble Lord, Lord Benson, about the report itself. This emerged, powerful and well documented, after months of research and agonising investigation by a most distinguished body. Apart from the noble Lord. Lord Benson, the membership included the noble and learned Lord, Lord Templeman. It was a report of very considerable authority, largely but I think not totally unanaminous, if my memory serves me aright.
We have today reached a situation where, unhappily, a state of near crisis has arisen in the criminal legal aid field, and, sadly, in the problems of determining what should be the fees for criminal legal aid. I say "sadly" because it involves the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor, dedicated to the Bar and a fighter for the rights and importance of the independence of the Bar and assisted, as I know from my six years' experience in that office, by a staff equally dedicated to seeking the best conclusion and service to the public. Now, however, we have reached a situation of deadlock to the point of unhappy litigation, about which I shall say nothing. It is apparent, at any rate by now, that we have reached a situation, clearly defined by the noble Lord, Lord Bancroft, former head of the Home Civil Service, where present arrangements are no longer sustainable.
That is a grave and serious statement. It underlines the pass to which we have come. What is now at issue is how to resolve an undoubted impasse. Can it be resolved by a continuance of the process of attempted negotiation? Or does it call for the intervention of a new element? If, this time, negotiations were perhaps to succeed, there will be cause, if not annually then frequently, for further estimates and examinations of the appropriateness of fees and arrangements. Even if, as we pray will be the case, there is a happy outcome this time, the task lying ahead is to ensure that this state of affairs shall not occur again.
We have had a vivid account and a good deal of evidence of the standards of reward and remuneration to the criminal Bar in today's debate. The public outside know that this has been a debate dominated by lawyers with only one person modestly representing the consumer. There were perhaps two consumers. As the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack (from which he so helpfully makes comments from time to time) says, we are all beneficiaries of a well-regulated and well-conducted legal system, properly manned and properly administered.
The situation of the Bar has now been examined in great detail by Coopers and Lybrand, and their findings have been reinforced by those who have spoken today from their own experience of the process of endeavouring to deal with the situation and from their own personal experiences at the Bar. We have heard from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Rawlinson, who is now engaged in the responsibilities of chairing the Senate. We have heard from the noble Lord, Lord Wigoder, who was a distinguished

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practitioner in his time. I have already spoken of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Ackner, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Templeman. The noble Lord, Lord Hutchinson, is as doughty a fighter at the Bar as in your Lordships' House. There are no holds barred when he is speaking. The important thing is not to be within punching distance! We have heard from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Denning, with all his experience, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Roskill.
I am always tempted to translate into Welsh great phrases like, Facilis descensus Averni. I shall do so today: Maen rwydd i gwympo ond yn galed i ddringo, which translated means, "It is very easy to fall but damned hard to climb up"! However, I must not be tempted by the classical scholars here to break into the oldest subsisting European language.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Griffiths, also spoke from his experience of the matter about which the expert investigators came to a clear conclusion; namely, that the present fee scales of barristers carrying out criminal legal aid work fall far short of the principle that fair and reasonable reward for work reasonably done should be provided. That is a finding which is made the more serious, perhaps—I shall not use the word "sinister", but it is certainly made more grave—by the consequences which those investigating the matter (Coopers and Lybrand) identified and which have been spoken to by noble and learned Lords who have taken part in the debate today. I am referring to the fact that there are indications of a declining quality of entry into the criminal Bar. I do not know whether the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor will be able to give us any reassuring indications about that in his closing speech. I hope that he can do so. Of course we welcome the appearance of solicitors also on the Bench at various levels. But if those indications be the case, then the future for the judiciary of this country dealing in crime becomes a matter of serious concern.
There is also the information given by more than one noble Lord who has spoken about the flight from the criminal Bar—the tendency for the criminal Bar to be left to the least competent and the least qualified because of dissatisfaction with the financial rewards involved. These are serious matters which give importance to this debate, and they are matters of which I hope the public will become conscious and aware.
As has been said, this is not a debate merely or even principally about fees, although we shall all be suspected of having that motivation. There are so many tales that go to point to that. There is the story of the American who visited an English country churchyard. He saw on a tombstone the words, "Here lies John Smith, a lawyer and an honest man". The American observed, "They have strange habits in these parts. They bury two guys in one grave".
I have not overlooked the admonitions coming from the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack. I am told that he must be sure to be on his feet by 5.19. We want to hear from him long before then, and so I shall refrain certainly from telling any further attempted jokes. However, I wish to underline the fact that I have
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now also come to the conclusion which has been unanimously reached; namely, that a powerful case has been made out for the fulfilment of the recommendations of the Royal Commission, and I hope that we shall get reassurance to that effect from the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack.
5.7 p.m.
The Lord Chancellor (Lord Hailsham of Saint Marylebone): My Lords, let me refer to one matter of reassurance. I had prepared a most eloquent speech anticipating this debate. For various reasons I have decided to scrap it, and the result will be a more scrappy speech but perhaps one that is more in tune with what has been said rather than with what I anticipated would be said.
As has been said more than once, this short debate has attracted a galaxy of talent, not least the maiden speech of my noble and learned friend Lord Ackner, a chivalrous if dangerous opponent at the Bar, but a much prized colleague on the Bench. I am sure that his speech was universally admired.
Having said that, the debate could hardly have come at a more awkward time for me. The proceedings, to which delicate reference has been made from time to time, have not yet been abandoned; they have been adjourned. The matter is therefore still technically sub judice. Moreover, they were adjourned for the purpose of enabling discussions to take place between the two professions of solicitors and the Bar—though most references have been to barristers' remuneration this afternoon—and myself, and of course parallel negotiations between the Attorney-General and the Bar and solicitors relating to prosecution remuneration.
Obviously I cannot take the House into my confidence to the same extent as I would otherwise have wished to do. However, I should be less than generous if I did not acknowledge my personal indebtedness to the sensitivity and kindness which the House and those who have participated in the debate have shown towards my poor person, gravely embarrassed, as noble and learned Lords realise I must be, in having to reply at this time.
I shall begin by referring to certain general matters which I think need to be said by a person in my position and by me personally. I am of course wholly wedded to an independent and vigorous legal profession, fairly remunerated. Secondly, I wholeheartedly accept the principle of fair remuneration according to work reasonably and actually performed. I should be wedded to that principle whether or not the words were embedded in statute. Otherwise I should be guilty of trying to defend work not reasonably remunerated in that manner.
Thirdly, I am wholly committed to legal aid in criminal cases no less than civil legal aid where the interests of justice require it. I would wholeheartedly endorse what has been said by my noble and learned friend Lord Denning, that it was perhaps one of the greatest revolutions in that sort of field in our professional lives. The fact is, however, that the cost of it has exponentially increased. I think in real terms it has doubled in the past seven years and in cash terms trebled; and that has obviously put the apparatus

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under strain. It may be no more than growing pains, but that has been so. I am less impressed with the cries of lamentation and foreboding which have been issued.
It is of course right that it is wholly in the public interest that the Bar and the solicitors' professions should continue to attract and retain a sufficient number of competent practitioners in the criminal as in other fields. But I do not think it has been mentioned in the course of this debate that since first I was Lord Chancellor in my first term of office the Bar has raised the standards of qualification for entry and it has doubled in numbers. That has applied to legal aid work no less than other fields. Although there have been parallel cries of lamentation from the solicitors—not heard quite so loudly this afternoon—the fact remains that in the current year there are more solicitors taking criminal legal aid work than there were before.
Moreover, I must say two other things in this field. I sometimes sit judicially upstairs. It is a great privilege that my father enjoyed every day and that I have to put up with on rare occasions. I should like to do it every day, as my father did. I do not see signs of a rapid decline in the quality of those who address your Lordships' House, whether leading counsel or junior counsel. Nor am I persuaded that the quality of the judiciary as they are recommended for appointment by me has visibly declined. What is true is that in fields other than criminal law, and perhaps to a lesser extent in criminal law, a potential judge has to suffer a great decline in his remuneration from what he is earning at the Bar.
Therefore I do not think that we are in the presence of impending doom to anything like the extent that some of the speeches to which we have listened would indicate. When I look, for instance, at the fees payable even under the present regime, which are allegedly wholly inadequate, I notice that the basic fee for junior counsel in the magistrates' court, all cases, and subject of course to taxation, goes up to a maximum of £330; jury trials, £385 maximum; cases prepared for trial in which no jury is sworn, £225; guilty pleas, maximum £135; appeals against conviction, standard fee £76, maximum amount £148; appeals against sentence, standard fee £55, maximum £77; commitals for sentence, standard fee £50, maximum £77.
Of course I am not saying that the Bar has not made out a case; that is something for negotiation. But the House, in judging the extent of penury being imposed upon members of my poor profession, should be aware of the actual figures involved, and that is why I read them out.
That brings me back to the situation in which we now are. Where we now are is that both the Lord Chancellor's Department and the two professions have accepted a timetable for negotiation. The preliminary discussions were concluded, I think, on 30th May, which was last week. I have to put forward tentative proposals on 27th June, for which of course I must carry my colleagues with me, and I shall return to that in a moment. I shall then be open to representations from the two professions, coming to a final
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conclusion in the discharge of my statutory duty on 16th July. So far we have kept up to date with the programme, and I have every intention of remaining up to date with it.
I said that I would have to carry my colleagues with me. It would be perfectly possible for me to avail myself of the bolthole provided by several speakers in the debate of hiding behind the grisly figure of the Treasury. I think it would be equally contemptible if I tried to do so. We in the Government are a collegiate body, and I must accept the statutory responsibility imposed upon me as though it were a statutory responsibility imposed upon me under which I had to arrive at an individual decision.
However, I must add to that general warning this other consideration, which is, as a matter of fact, that the Coopers and Lybrand report, to which frequent reference has been made, has been the subject of discussion between officials of my department and the barristers, the senate representatives in the negotiating committee. I have to tell the House that differences have arisen between my department's officials and the officials on the other side as to the assumptions and validity of some of the arguments presented.
That has nothing to do with the programme. I make no complaint at all that a distinguished firm of management consultants—of which I think the noble Lord, Lord Benson, is himself a distinguished partner—should have been consulted by the Bar. I think it was an admirable suggestion, so do not let my noble and learned friend Lord Griffiths in any way suppose that I am criticising their employment. Indeed, I have employed another firm myself, and in another connection I have employed Coopers and Lybrand, which shows how much confidence I have in them.
However, management consultants are a little like computers. If you put in unreliable data, you will get unreliable results. I have to tell the House in all candour that differences between my officials and the officials with whom discussions are taking place have arisen both as regards the validity of some of the assumptions and as regards the accuracy of some of the figures which they have been able to compare with the actual court records showing times taken for various classes of work, and the survey in March 1986 of practising members of the legal profession practising in this field of work.
It is clear therefore that these matters have to be cleared up, because I cannot conscientiously go to my colleagues and say to them, "Look, this has been claimed by the Bar, and they are asking for an increase of 30 per cent. to 40 per cent." when I find that there are outstanding questions of fact to be discussed and ironed out between officials. I hope that they will be ironed out in due course.
That brings me back to one or two of the fundamental problems to which perhaps too little attention has been given. The Motion refers to the existing arrangements. What are the existing arrangements? The first point is that Section 39 (3) compels the Secretary of State—nowadays that is me, the Lord Chancellor, and not the Secretary of State—to make

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regulations which have regard to the principle of fair remuneration for work actually and reasonably done. I have already said that I wholeheartedly embrace that principle. The statute is silent upon what the words "having regard to" mean. Do they mean the same thing as pay or do they not? It does not say so. It is also totally silent about what is relevant to the consideration of what is fair; what are the factors which the Lord Chancellor ought to pay attention to in deciding what is fair. These, as a matter of fact, are matters in dispute, maybe within the Government and certainly between the Lord Chancellor and the profession. These are not easy matters.
The next thing to observe is that the legal profession in this field is in a uniquely privileged position. I do not doubt that my colleagues who have to negotiate with other claimants on the public purse in the public sector want to pay people what is fair. It would be very odd if a government, of whatever complexion, did not want to pay what is fair, but the legal profession in this capacity is the only case, so far as I know, on the statute book in which the matter is written into the statute and for that reason and for that reason only may be subject to proceedings in the Divisional Court.
It does not really stop there. Let us consider the position of the Lord Chancellor, chased as he may be by other spending departments or the Treasury on the one side, chased by the judges on the other and harried by the profession which is naturally and quite properly asking for remuneration. That is absolutely unique; there is no other case, in deciding the fees for the prosecution, for example. The Attorney is not bound in that way.
I only mention this, not to establish that I am a poor old man. I do not ask for sympathy. I am a very lucky old man to have full-time employment and to be paid for the work actually and reasonably performed. But I have to say that one has to marry that with this proposal for an independent body. From my point of view, of course, that is a very attractive proposal indeed. If the independent body said to the Bar, "You already have enough", I should say, "The great and the good have spoken. Who am I to give you more?". If they say they must have a great deal more I would go to my colleagues and ask, "How can you deny the poor old Chancellor this boon, when the great and the good have urged him to take a more generous view?".
It would be convenient for Lord Chancellors, but does it marry with the statutory provision which puts upon the Lord Chancellor the duty to have regard to what is fair remuneration for work actually and reasonably done? One thing is quite clear: it would not in any way get rid of the danger of litigation. Let no one say that we should take it out of litigation, take it out of controversy, take it out of the courts and put it in the hands of a body, because the very suggestion is that when the great and good have spoken they would have to give reasons for their decision. If the Lord Chancellor followed those reasons he could be challenged in the Divisional Court for following them. They might have taken into account that which they ought not to have taken into account and they might have failed to take into account that which they ought to have taken into account; and there might be no
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health in them. Great and sound would be the denunciations from the judge who presided over the Divisional Court of the Lord Chancellor for following the great and the good.
Equally, if the Lord Chancellor did not follow the great and the good the Divisional Court would be able to anathematise him for that. Nor would it get this out of controversy. Do not let us concede that for a moment. The fact is that your Lordships will all remember what happened to the TSRB a year ago. I had letters from dear old clergymen. The altars of Mammon were flaming again because the Government had given in to the demands of the poor judges who wanted a little more. So it would not get rid of controversy; not at all.
But I shall say this, and this is about as far as I can go. I am not unfriendly to this suggestion. I never have been. I simply want to fit it in to the arrangements as they will be after the suggestion is accounted for. I cannot do it this time round; that is quite clear. I cannot do it before 16th July. Everybody must accept that this will not happen. Whether I like it or not, I am stuck with direct negotiations this year. If I could find the mechanism, whether by an advisory committee or otherwise, which would help to establish common ground as the basis for any decision which a statute required me to take and to improve and sweeten the atmosphere, I should greatly welcome that. I shall certainly think along those lines.
Having said that, I think I have been as candid as I ought to be—possibly more candid—and have taken the matter as far as the time limits will allow. I see I am coming up to 19 minutes and I am told I have 20 minutes. But I have tried to help the House as much as possible. I hope that no one will regard me as being disloyal to my profession. No one has suggested it for a moment. Indeed, the Financial Times last week condemned me as having a doglike and white knight-like devotion to its interest. I hope I have. I see nothing wrong with loyalty and I never have. Now my 20 minutes is up.
Lord Elwyn-Jones: My Lords, the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor could have gone on and we should have enjoyed it if he had.
The Lord Chancellor: My Lords, we have to observe the rules of the House, and I now have to ask a Question from this position, two paces to the right of where I was a moment ago.
Lord Elwyn-Jones: My Lords, what about the noble Lord, Lord Benson? The noble Lord, Lord Benson, must withdraw his Motion.
The Lord Chancellor: My Lords, that is just what I was going to do. Does the noble Lord wish to withdraw his Motion?
5.28 p.m.
Lord Benson: My Lords, may I make one short personal observation to remove any possible question of doubt? The noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor mentioned that at one time I was a partner in Coopers and Lybrand. I should like to make it clear, so that my own position is not in question, that I retired from that firm over 11 years ago. I take no part

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in their policies, their decisions, their work or anything like that. I had no part in the Coopers and Lybrand report.
This has been a curious debate. Usually conflicting views are expressed, but so far as I can read the temper of this House the whole House is looking one way. The noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor knows the affection and respect in which he is held. We realise that his lips are sealed. But there was a hesitation in the comfort which he appeared to offer to us. I realise that he possibly cannot go very far. But I hope that as the months go by when the uncomfortable negotiations are out of the way the longer-term future may be looked at to see whether some better form of negotiating machinery cannot be introduced along the lines suggested by so many noble Lords today. It may be that the statute is compelling; in which case let the statute be altered. We do not want laws which produce the wrong result. It only remains for me to thank your Lordships for taking part in this debate. I ask formal permission to withdraw my Motion for Papers.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

NHS Management Board: Chairman's Resignation
5.30 p.m.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Security (Baroness Trumpington): My Lords, with the leave of the House, I shall now repeat in the form of a Statement the Answer to a Private Notice Question that is being given in another place on the resignation of Mr. Victor Paige from the chairmanship of the National Health Service Management Board. The Statement is as follows:
"In October 1983, I announced that the Government accepted the recommendations of the NHS Management Inquiry, under the chairmanship of Sir Roy Griffiths, that general management should be introduced into the NHS, and that a board should be set up within my department to be responsible to Ministers for the department's functions in relation to the management of the NHS.
Mr. Victor Paige took up appointment as chairman of the board, and as Second Permanent Secretary within my department, on 2nd January 1985. His contract was for three years. The board was established in April 1985 and contains members drawn from business, from the National Health Service and from the Civil Service. Mr. Paige has paid tribute to the abilities of the board and the progress the board has already made. I should like to express my thanks to Mr. Paige for his part in this progress.
I confirm that very substantial improvements have already been made in the efficient management of the NHS. These achievements reflect great credit on the health service itself, including authorities, managers and staff, and on the direction and leadership which the service has had from my department.
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As the House will be aware, Mr. Page has resigned from his position as chairman of the Management Board. He discussed his intention with me, and we agreed that it would be right for him to stand down. I have published the exchange of letters between us in which Mr. Paige explained his reasons. There is nothing that I can add to what he has said and my reply. I have therefore appointed Mr. Len Peach, who is the board's director of personnel on secondment from IBM, as acting chairman of the board. I shall make a substantive appointment as soon as possible.
The Government remain fully committed to better management of the National Health Service. I have every confidence that under the leadership of the management board, health authorities and their general managers will continue to ensure that more and better care is provided for patients and that the best value for money is obtained".
My Lords, that concludes the Statement.
Lord Ennals: My Lords, I would first thank the noble Baroness for repeating the Statement made by her right honourable friend in another place. One has to accept that this is a devastating blow to the Secretary of State and to the National Health Service. Personally, I had the privilege of knowing Mr. Victor Paige over many years. In my view, he is an extremely able man and deeply committed to the National Health Service. His record is not one of a man who acts lightly or in a fit of temper. He has confirmed today that his decision to resign is one on which he had been reflecting "for some time"; so that we must assume that the decision to resign from his £70,000 a year job, with the undoubted effects which this action would have, and would have on the National Health Service, was over a major and fundamental issue. In order that we may learn some of the lessons from this resignation there is a range of issues which I think we need to probe and which, with respect, were not dealt with in the Statement read by the noble Baroness but delivered by her right honourable friend.
Is it in fact a viable prospect to appoint a man to preside over the management board when he has a motley group of senior and junior Ministers breathing down this neck? He said in his published statement today:
"Ministers and the chairman of the management board can approach the same issue with different perspectives, priorities, objectives, and restraints. The conclusions are not always compatible.
Also, there are always others in the action—or trying to be. 'Within my remit, that makes for difficulties in working to the management standards and style to which I am committed.
I have brought this to your notice"—
he says to the Secretary of State—
"on several occasions. You are aware that this is not working out as I believe it should".
He listed as among the key issues that he had addressed:
"improving employee commitment and motivation, more devolution to health authorities within clearly defined standards of accountability and monitoring, the implementation of more effective financial management and planning and creating a high awareness of the importance of consumer and quality care".
Let us also remember that since he was appointed, whatever Ministers may say about the totality of

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resources, public concern about cuts in the National Health Service has greatly increased. I am certainly not implying for one moment that this was Mr. Paige's fault. But it leads to a series of questions which I want to put to the noble Baroness.
First, did he resign or was he sacked? Secondly, was it a breakdown of personal relations with the Secretary of State? Quite clearly, he found it impossible to work with the Secretary of State. Or were the issues ones of major principle? If so, what were those issues of major principle? We and the public are entitled to know. Thirdly, was the resignation linked with the inadequacy of resources? Fourthly, who was really in charge? Was it the Secretary of State and the Minister of State, Mr. Hayhoe, or Mr. Paige? What was the role of the Permanent Under-Secretary, Sir Kenneth Stowe? I think that I once said in the presence of the noble Baroness here in your Lordships' House that the structure, as it had been created, was a scenario for a new "Yes, Minister" series. I think that this is proved by today's announcement.
Fifthly, is it not an impossible job to manage the National Health Service when it is Ministers who are accountable to Parliament? Sixthly, will this resignation at the top affect the role and status of other general managers in trying to do their work throughout the country? Seventhly, will there not be a major issue of morale—when National Health Service morale is already at a very low level? Finally, how many down the line of managers have resigned since their appointments? I know that some have done so and that some have publicised their resignations. How many have resigned? Bearing in mind the very long time that it took to find and appoint Mr. Paige and the qualities that we all know that he holds, is there not now a real question not just about the competence of Mr. Victor Paige but about the competence of the Secretary of State for Social Services?
Lord Kilmarnock: My Lords, we on these Benches should also like to thank the noble Baroness for repeating the Answer in the form of a Statement; but, frankly, this does not take us very much further than the press reports that we were all able to read this morning in the national press. The Statement that the noble Baroness has just repeated on Mr. Paige's resignation vindicates the argument that we advanced from day one that it was most ill-advised to go for the full implementation of the new management structure on a nationwide scale without a prior pilot scheme in one or more regions. This is a point we made at the time.
Mr. Paige must have been confronted with an impossible task in getting to grips with some 750 general managers, some from within the service and some from outside it, with widely varying ideas, all at once. If Sir Roy Griffiths had been advising a Sainsbury re-organisation, he would surely have experimented with one or two supermarkets first before decreeing it throughout the chain. But the Government, as so often, were determined to rush in where angels fear to tread.
Mr. Paige has reaffirmed his commitment to the general management concept. Do the Government not agree that this will be undermined by his early
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departure and that there must be severe misgivings over its future? Can the Government say any more than what emerges from between the lines of the correspondence between Mr. Paige and the Secretary of State as to what were the real difficulties? Was the problem perhaps that the original scheme involved substantial devolution of decision and responsibility to local managers and authorities but that civil servants and Ministers were determined to keep their fingers in the pie at all levels and would not allow Mr. Paige or his network of managers to manage?
Should not the ideological commitment to privatisation of ancillary services at all costs have been dropped and left to local management decisions? Was that one of the specific difficulties? Perhaps the noble Baroness could enlighten on that. How can we get to the bottom of this unless there is an inquiry? Will the Government agree to an immediate review of what went wrong? Do the Government not think that this would be an appropriate task perhaps for the Select Committee on Social Services of another place, which, after all, could take evidence from Mr. Paige and other people concerned, many of whom were mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Ennals; or what alternative do they have in mind? There is no use in just going on as if nothing had happened. Something has obviously gone badly wrong and surely we must seek to learn all the lessons we can from this regrettable episode.
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, may I say first of all to the noble Lords, Lord Ennals and Lord Kilmarnock, that I have absolutely no wish to interpret Mr. Victor Paige's letter. He wrote the letter; he is responsible for its contents and it is not for me to interpret them. Secondly, with regard to the question of whether Mr. Paige resigned or was sacked, he resigned. The letter makes it perfectly clear and my right honourable friend's reply makes it equally clear.
The noble Lord, Lord Ennals, asked me about a "motley group of people" breathing down his neck—which I think is a strange way to describe a lot of people who are working very hard to make a good National Health Service. There are a lot of people from different disciplines involved with everything in the National Health Service, as the noble Lord knows. Inevitably, people have their own particular interests and to advance those interests is of paramount importance to those involved. The whole process of government, and certainly not just the DHSS, is a question of competing priorities. Inevitably some may feel disappointed. There are horses for courses and just because somebody is a great success in industry does not necessarily mean that the person will be happy with a hybrid animal such as the DHSS. Some people will feel happy and others will not. That is just a fact of life.
With regard to differences with Ministers, of course there were differences in points of view from time to time on some issues. That is perfectly normal in any healthy and vigorously-managed organisation. But, as regards the particular issues, we have nothing to add to what Mr. Paige himself said about his resignation. I really think that the noble Lord, Lord Kilmarnock, is making a mountain out of a molehill when he asks for inquiries and things of that nature. I have never heard such exaggeration.

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With regard to the question of resources, Mr. Paige's letter makes it perfectly clear that the reasons for his resignation are not related to disagreements on policy nor to resources or anything of that kind. For example, Mr. Paige considered that more money was needed this year to meet the cost of implementing from 1st July the review body's awards for doctors, dentists, nurses and professions allied to medicine. The Government are providing the necessary funds to the health authorities—an extra £60 million—to do just that. Morale in the NHS is good. The future of the NHS management board is sound and in very good hands: it will continue the excellent work done by its members.
The noble Lord, Lord Kilmarnock, asked about a pilot study, but experience shows that general management is on the whole working well in the NHS. Major difficulties have been very much the exception rather than the rule. This fully justifies the decision to implement the Griffiths Report for the country as a whole.
Lord Auckland: My Lords, I should like to join in the thanks given to my noble friend the Minister for having repeated this very disturbing Statement. Those of us on the Back Benches will of course be far less au fait with what has been going on than is my noble friend. Indeed, it was only this morning that I myself heard about this. Will my noble friend take on board the fact that all those concerned with the National Health Service—those who serve on house committees, regional boards and so on—will be very upset by what we have just heard.
While recognising that it would be quite wrong at this stage to put too many technical questions, can my noble friend the Minister say what links Mr. Paige has had not only with Ministers and permanent civil servants but with those who are actually working in the health service as nursing officers, doctors, and so on? Also, when his successor is appointed, what will the relationship be there? Quite clearly a breakdown in communications will be the interpretation of many of those working within the health service. While recognising that the record of the relationship between the Government and the National Health Service has been a very good one, will my noble friend finally appreciate that Parliament on all sides will need to study this matter very much more carefully at some future date?
5.45 p.m.
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, I thank my noble friend for what he has said. In reply, I should like to assure him that close liaision with the DHAs and RHAs will continue, as they have always done under Mr. Victor Paige's management up to the present. On a personal note, I should like to say that I am very sorry that Mr. Victor Paige is going.
May I take this opportunity of remedying an omission? I realise now that I did not answer a question concerning the resignations that have taken place, which I believe both noble Lords asked me. Out of 191 DGM appointments, three gentlemen have resigned. Of those 191 appointments, 41 were from
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outside the NHS. One health authority chairman has resigned from his post. The NHS has over 700 general managers, and some have been in post for nearly two years; so perhaps three resignations is not all that numerous.
Lord Ennals: My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Baroness for some of the comments she has made. However, may I press her a little further? What she did not say in answer either to my questions or to those raised by the noble Lord, Lord Kilmarnock, was what went wrong. Certainly the statement made by Mr. Victor Paige was very clear indeed and I expect we have all read it. But if there is not to be an inquiry then surely at some stage, in a public appointment of this kind with a resignation after 16 months, we are entitled to know what went wrong. How can we learn anything unless we learn from the experience of this particular matter? The noble Baroness referred to horses for courses. Was this the wrong horse for this course or was the course the wrong course? Is it better that you appoint as general manager for the National Health Service someone whose experience has not been in that service? All these questions are going to be asked and at some time or other, if not now, answers will have to be given.
The noble Baroness implied that this was perfectly normal; but really it is not perfectly normal for such a responsible post and one which has been awaited for many months by those in the health service. A very admirable and fine man (as we both admit) was appointed. For him to resign in 16 months is really most unusual and most disturbing. I think that was a point which was recognised by the noble Lord, Lord Auckland. Really, I think the noble Baroness should not underestimate the effects this announcement will have within the National Health Service, not only among the general managers but among others working generally within the National Health Service. If the man at the top resigns because he cannot get on with Ministers, we must learn what it was that went wrong.
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, I must take up the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, on his last remark. So far as I know, there is no question of Mr. Victor Paige not getting on with Ministers, and I regard that as a slant which implies things which are not written directly in Mr. Victor Paige's letter. I cannot answer for Mr. Victor Paige and his letter. It is up to him, if he so wishes, and he has expressed himself fully in his letter.
With regard to appointments such as Mr. Victor Paige's, we believe that fresh blood is important. We have tried to choose the best man for the job in every case, regardless. It may happen that people are not happy. But there is no reason to make sinister suggestions about a letter of resignation which is perfectly reasonable. I should not speak personally, but it looks to me as if the man was not happy, and that can happen anywhere and for any reason. The team will continue to work in its usual efficient and helpful way carrying on the work of the board. I very much hope that the NHS will regard this as merely another step and that we shall get over what is really not so great a tragedy as was implied by the noble Lord, Lord Ennals.
Lord Thorneycroft: My Lords, may I ask the noble Baroness one question? I am not sure that I press her too earnestly to answer it, but it could be asked. It is: where do we go from here? I ask the noble Baroness whether she agrees that there is a view that money has been poured into the National Health Service. I know there are views that more should be poured, but there is certainly one view that masses of money have been poured, and grave doubts exist about the quality of management to manage an organisation of that size and that cost. Mr. Paige was given some degree of responsibility concerned with management and, though we may talk about horses for courses, I could ask the noble Baroness if she would consider whether the next horse ought to be given infinitely more authority over the management side of the health service, if any real impact is to be made on that organisation, to ensure that whatever sum is eventually agreed to be paid is spent to the best advantage.
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, in answer to my noble friend Lord Thorneycroft, the management board's achievements so far have been that a general management has now been largely established throughout the NHS, with over 700 general managers appointed; important new management systems and tools have been introduced; there is a new series of performance indicators and performance reviews at regions; there are much better short-term programmes and better management of the estate; streamlined organisations and procedures for hospital building have been ensured and the foundations have been laid for the long-term job of the better and more professional management of the NHS. The Secretary of State has expressed his full support for the board. It will develop and build on the foundations already laid. There is an enormous amount still to be done and the board are detemined to tackle it with vigour and resource.
Lord Kilmarnock: My Lords, since the noble Baroness has accused me of making a mountain out of a molehill does she agree that the best course for demonstrating whether or not that is so would be to hold an inquiry and see what comes out of it?
Baroness Trumpington: No, my Lords.

Legionnaires' Disease: Badenoch Report
5.55 p.m.
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, with the leave of the House, I shall now repeat a Statement which is being made in another place by my right honourable friend the Minister for Health. The Statement reads as follows:
"With permission, Mr. Speaker, I will make a Statement about the first report of the Badenoch Committee of Inquiry into the outbreak of legionnaires' disease in Stafford.
"The outbreak at Stafford District General Hospital occurred in April 1985. One hundred and one patients caught the disease, and there were 28 deaths. This was the second most serious incident ever recorded, surpassed only by the outbreak in
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Pennsylvania in 1976 from which the disease was first recognised. The source of infection was traced to the air conditioning system. My right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Social Services appointed a statutory public inquiry on 7th June 1985, chaired by Sir John Badenoch.
"The inquiry has produced a first report covering the Stafford outbreak and has also made recommendations more generally about hospital air conditioning systems. The inquiry will now consider and make recommendations on action to reduce the possibility of future outbreaks whether in hospitals, other buildings or elsewhere, and the Government expect to receive this second report around the turn of the year.
"The first report concludes that, on present knowledge, the outbreak at Stafford cannot be attributed to any single factor, nor does it hold any individual or group directly responsible. It points out that legionnaires' disease has only recently been identified and is not well understood. The report refers to a combination of circumstances which appear to have contributed to this outbreak.
"These circumstances include defects in the design and construction of engineering services, problems during the commissioning of the air conditioning plant, lack of knowledge and understanding of the sophisticated engineering plant, shortcomings in maintenance including chlorination, and the weather conditions. The report also points to the inherent difficulty on present knowledge of eliminating the legionella bacillus in water spray cooling towers used for air conditioning.
"The report praises those who cared for the infected patients and I gladly endorse this tribute. The report makes recommendations specific to the circumstances surrounding the outbreak and requiring local action. In particular, it calls for a review of the health authority's microbiological services in Stafford. I am asking the West Midlands RHA and the Mid-Staffordshire DHA to report within three months on the follow-up action they have taken or intend to take.
"Revised guidance on the maintenance of cooling towers was issued to health authorities in January 1986 following consultation with Sir John Badenoch. This reflects the lessons learned at that stage from the inquiry. In the light of the completed report, the department has today issued a further circular to health authorities asking them to check for features similar to those found at Stafford and to take appropriate action. They are also being asked to ensure that existing guidance on maintenance is being followed and that operational engineering staff have access to detailed guidance on the operation of individual water spray cooling systems.
"The recommended code of practice for hospital engineers should be available by about the end of the year. In the meantime, discussions are in hand with the Public Health Laboratory Service to establish a register of engineers so that relevant expertise can be available if needed by the Communicable Disease Surveillance Centre and health authorities.

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"The inquiry recommended that a committee of experts should be convened urgently to consider all aspects of the use of biocides as a means of minimising build-up of legionella. This committee will be chaired by Dr. A. E. Wright, director of the Public Health Laboratory Service, Newcastle laboratory, and will begin its work shortly.
"Other recommendations dealt with reducing reliance on air conditioning in general and water spray cooling towers in particular. Current hospital building policy with its emphasis on smaller hospitals means that new hospitals generally use less air conditioning than before. Preliminary inquiries indicate that no new water spray cooling towers will be incorporated in hospitals currently being planned. The inquiry's conclusions will reinforce the commitment to air-cooled systems for new hospital building.
"As regards existing hospitals, health authorities have been asked to give details about the type and number of water spray systems now in use, as a first step to carrying out the recommendation that urgent consideration should be given to their replacement. Only a minority of hospitals are thought to have such systems but the inquiry will establish an accurate national picture. I understand that the inquiry team did not envisage immediate replacement of such systems; they were concerned to ensure that existing systems operate as safely as possible and those which have reached the end of their natural life or present particular maintenance problems should have priority for replacement.
"Mr. Speaker, early action was taken with the two health notices in July 1985 and January 1986 and further instructions, based upon this first report, have now been issued to health authorities. These steps will reduce the risk of any repetition of the outbreak. Production of a code of practice and setting up the register of engineers experienced in this field will also contribute to that end. In the longer term the new committee on biocides should help to clarify how these chemicals can best be used to reduce risks further. Information is being collected about existing hospital water spray cooling systems as a first step in the consideration of their longer term future.
"We owe a great deal to Sir John Badenoch and his fellow inquiry members for the energy and application they have brought to producing this report. For the broader questions about what may need to be done to reduce any risk from the disease in other circumstances in hospitals, other buildings and elsewhere, the Government look forward to the second report, which is expected around the turn of the year."
My Lords, that concludes the Statement.
6 p.m.
Lord Ennals: My Lords, once again I must thank the noble Baroness for repeating the Statement given in another place by her right honourable friend. One recognises that this is in a sense an interim report and that there is more to come. However, having had the opportunity of only glancing through this very
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substantial interim report, I think that we have every justification to thank Sir John Badenoch and his committee for the thoroughness of the work that they have done so far. We have to recognise—and I am certain that the noble Baroness does—that this was a very serious outbreak indeed. That a disease should be caught in one of our hospitals—not elsewhere, but in that hospital—and that there were 28 deaths is a very serious matter. Equally, there are very serious conclusions and recommendations that are made.
I note the reference to the defects in the design and construction of engineering services, problems during the commissioning of the air conditioning plant, lack of knowledge and understanding of the sophisticated engineering plant, shortcomings in maintenance including chlorination, and the weather conditions. This is a very serious indictment of those who were responsible for fitting this equipment in the hospital. I find it surprising that the noble Baroness says that it is not possible to pin some blame on some people because there are a number of commercial firms who were responsible for establishing this equipment in which there were defects and problems during the commissioning, as well as a lack of knowledge and understanding. This was a very serious, one might almost say crime that was committed by those involved, which led to such a serious consequence.
I welcome the Government's circular that has been issued today and the code of practice for hospital engineers. But the Statement of the noble Baroness leaves one or two questions unanswered. I should like to know when the system was installed in the hospital. This may be in the report. Has it been in too long? Is it too old, rotten or rusty, or was it installed five years ago? When trying to pin responsibility, as we must, for the death of 28 people, we need to know who was responsible and when they were responsible for it.
Secondly, what kind of system exists as of now—not in the future—for inspecting water systems and air conditioning systems within our hospitals? I am sure that it will improve as a result of the inquiry, but I want to know what our present system is.
The third, last, and I believe most important question is this. Will these issues be dealt with in the Crown immunity legislation which is now before another place, and which will eventually come to your Lordships' House? That deals with very important health and safety requirements. There is no earthly reason why people responsible for such a situation, because they are within a hospital, should be in any way held less responsible to society than those making similar mistakes in a commercial enterprise. I need to know—I ask the noble Baroness, and hope that she can tell me—whether this issue will be dealt with in the Bill that deals with Crown immunity which will shortly come before your Lordships' House.
Lord Winstanley: My Lords, on behalf of my noble friends on these Benches, I would wish to join at once with the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, in thanking the noble Baroness for repeating this extremely important Statement. At the outset I should like to join the noble Lord and the noble Baroness in conveying our thanks from these Benches to Sir John Badenoch and his colleagues for the very thorough way in which they

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have done their very important work, and for the expeditious manner in which they have produced their first report.
As a doctor I know enough about the matters contained in this report to know that it would be extremely unwise to make any detailed comments until I have studied this lengthy report with more care. I have no objection whatever to making instant comment on Statements concerning matters about which I know nothing, but on matters of this kind I think that I should be unwise.
Having glanced at the report, with my noble friends on these Benches I should like to join at once with Sir John Badenoch and his colleagues in thanking all the staff at Stafford and the other medical and environmental personnel in that district for the way in which they carried out their very difficult and worrying duties at what was a very worrying time. In my experience, visiting Stafford at that time, it seemed to me that many of the staff to whom I have referred, and to whom Sir John refers in his report, carried out duties with a total disregard of any considerations for their own safety.
I note that this is a first report. As one of those in your Lordships' House who asked for a statutory public inquiry when we discussed this matter briefly during a Statement on Stafford, I welcome the appearance of this first report. However, I note that the inquiry will now proceed to consider and make recommendations on action to reduce the possibility of future outbreaks, whether in hospitals, other buildings or elsewhere. The word "elsewhere" appears in the Statement which the noble Baroness has given us. It seems to me that places to be looked at urgently are establishments where people are kept in perhaps crowded conditions, and sometimes old buildings. I would particularise prisons, some schools and barracks, and other military establishments. I make the prediction that sooner or later there will be another outbreak of legionnaires' disease. When there is another outbreak we shall be much better able to combat it as a result of the work already performed by this committee of inquiry.
I notice in the Statement also that a committee of experts is being convened urgently to consider all aspects of the use of biocides as a means of minimising the buildup of legionella. I express the hope, as a doctor, that when that committee of experts has conducted its inquiries and comes forward with its recommendations that expert advice on biocides will be accepted rather than being rejected, as very often expert advice on matters of that kind has been. I am not going to mention fluoride and such things, but we do not always make great haste to accept the advice of experts, and on this matter I think that is important.
Finally, I note with satisfaction what was said in the report and particularly in the Statement by the noble Baroness about the design of new hospitals. It is important that the design of new hospitals should be entirely in keeping with what we know about legionella, though it is right to say that there is much that we do not know at the moment. Surely that points to the urgent need to get rid of some very old hospitals. I hope that the noble Baroness will agree with me when
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I say that it will be impossible at any acceptable cost to make some of the very old buildings that are still in use wholly safe in the way in which all noble Lords would wish.
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, with regard to the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, of course, we realise the seriousness of the outbreak. I hope that the Statement expresses that seriousness. The report did not find any single cause of the outbreak. Although it is critical of the actions of some individuals, it does not point to any one person or group of people who, by their acts or omissions, either caused or failed to prevent the outbreak. The actions by any local staff are of course up to the health authorities that employ them. It is for them to take any necessary action. The date when the system was installed was 1983. The systems are inspected as a matter of priority by the health authority engineers and the Health and Safety Executive.
With regard to the question of Crown immunity, the current Bill does not deal with that except so far as food poisoning is concerned, and there is no reason to think that further legal sanctions are needed in this case.
The noble Lord, Lord Winstanley, asked about other buildings. The inquiry's recommendations are specific to hospital air conditioning systems. We must await the second report to learn its views on the recommendations that should apply to other kinds of building and what additional advice it offers. The risks to health are clearly greater in hospital because of the greater vulnerablility of sick people to disease, which of course the noble Lord appreciates. Obviously some of the recommendations in the first report are relevant in other buildings with water-spray-cooled air conditioning, and I am sure that the inquiry report should and will be carefully studied by professional and other bodies. The guidance to the National Health Service issued by my department is publicly available on request. The report is of course a published document and my department stands ready to deal with inquiries arising from it.
The question of finance was raised by the noble Lord, Lord Winstanley. The immediate priority for health authorites is to ensure that existing equipment is correctly and safely maintained. I would hope that the vast majority are already doing this. I see no reason why any extra cost should not be met from any existing budgets. Replacing cooling towers will have a cost. As I said in the Statement, however, the inquiry team did not recommend immediate replacement of such systems, and replacement of towers at the end of their useful life will have a cost in any case.
I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Winstanley, for not making instant statements. Some of us are of course used to doing just that; equally we are used to listening to them.
6.15 p.m.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes: My Lords, I should like to take this opportunity to ask the noble Baroness about the situation in the new hospitals that have been referred to, and in particular in the new Brompton National Heart Hospital, which is under construction. I attended a meeting this week to see the plans. It is

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imminently ready for construction, and I understand that there has been much concern about this matter of the water-sprayed cooling towers and that a great deal of research has been done. It has been discovered that air-cooled cooling towers can be provided, and that would certainly be desirable in view of the findings in the report.
However, there is a definite financial difference in the cost, and I hope that the noble Baroness's department will look at the matter very carefully and authorise it as soon as possible. Without doubt it would be more expensive in a new hospital now to go ahead with what is considered an unsatisfactory system and then have to replace it very soon thereafter. Having heard that the present system was put in only in 1983, I shall certainly support the view that no one intentionally or deliberately would have done anything to injure people in hospital. It was simply that these facts were not known at that time. Now that they are known, I am convinced that the department will confirm that it will be willing for a proper air-cooled system to be put into this new hospital.
I am sorry to say that the cost arises because the only country producing a system of air cooling of adequate size is Japan. I hope that we shall soon start producing something in this country to give us what we want and provide additional employment in Briain.
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, I thank my noble friend for her helpful remarks. With regard to Brompton National Heart Hospital, I hope that she will understand if I reply in writing. With regard to the dependence on air conditioning in future hospitals, current hospital building policy with its emphasis on smaller hospitals has already much reduced the reliance on air conditioning. We shall have regard to the risk of infection identified by the report along with other considerations.
Lord Ennals: My Lords, the noble Baroness having established herself as the listening Baroness or Minister, may I pursue two points briefly?
The noble Baroness, Lady Gardner of Parkes, was as surprised and disturbed as I was that this equipment was put in in 1983. It is very new—it is not as if it was a piece of old equipment. If this were to happen in some situation other than a hospital and 28 people were to die as a result, I should have thought that cases of civil liability would be brought in the courts by the families of some of those killed as their deaths appeared to be a direct result of faulty equipment. I therefore very much hope that the noble Baroness, Lady Trumpington, will reconsider the answer she gave me on whether Crown immunity should not cover health and safety in a hospital as well as simply heating. Heating is very important, but dying is even worse—it has a kind of permanency about it.
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, will know that I shall bring his remarks to the attention of my noble friend.

Pharmacy: Nuffield Foundation Report
6.19 p.m.
Lord Hunter of Newington Lord Hunter of Newington rose to call attention to the Nuffield Foundation report on Pharmacy; and to move for Papers.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, this report, I believe, is of great importance and significance to everyone. Do your Lordships remember years ago the first time they entered a pharmacy, sometimes called a druggist or apothecary? The shop had a distinctive, unusual smell. There were rows of bottles, all with Latin names, and perhaps a jar or two of leeches. Medicines were prepared and compounded at the rear of the shop. The pharmacist was a friendly, helpful person, and if one felt unwell but had no prescription, then he was prepared to advise.
History tells us that the apothecaries stayed in London during the Great Plague when many of the physicians fled. Whatever the truth of that, their connection with human illness goes back many hundreds of years, and doctors and pharmacists have frequently worked together for the benefit of sick people. The schools of pharmacy in this country have achieved high professional standing in relation to retail pharmacy, the pharmaceutical industry, and the field of medical research. It is mainly about the first of those that I should like to speak to your Lordships.
There are about 10,000 pharmacies in England and Wales dispensing 350 million prescriptions ever year. That costs the National Health Service more than £1·7 billion. There is no control or restriction over who may open a pharmacy or where, but there must be a qualified pharmacist in control whenever a pharmacy is open.
The situation is different in many European countries and in the United States of America. We have all heard of and seen the drug store in the United States, which does so many things other than dispense doctors' prescriptions. On the other hand, in France or Austria a pharmacy only dispenses drugs and it does not sell other goods. In the United Kingdom we have the big multiple chemists that also sell many items, and the small pharmacist who very often has a modest shop as well. His income comes substantially from National Health Service dispensing of prescriptions, but to make his livelihood he may have to earn 30 per cent. of his income or more from other commercial interests.
However, there are problems. There are economies of scale in dispensing National Health Service prescriptions. The more prescriptions that are dispensed in a pharmacy, the less that each of them costs, because overheads are spread more thinly and chemists obtain discounts if they run large organisations and buy drugs in large quantities. So the larger the number of prescriptions, the more profitable is dispensing and the greater is the saving of public money.
It is therefore not good for the taxpayer if there are many small pharmacies open near one another. A balance obviously needs to be struck between the size of the pharmacy and ensuring that sick people do not have to travel too far to obtain their medicines. The report tells us that there are too many pharmacies in

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towns and cities and not enough of them in rural areas. What the report does not mention is what relationship it thinks pharmacists should have with dispensing doctors in rural areas.
There is another set of problems related to developments in the pharmaceutical industry and to the modern technology of packaging and presentation. In contrast to 50 years ago, when the pharmacist compounded his medicines, the modern pharmacist does very little preparation and dispensing. He buys from the manufacturer drugs that are ready for use by the patient, often packed in special containers and accompanied by instructions clearly presented for use. Those containers include the childproof bottles that the noble Baroness was telling the House about at Question Time the other day. I did not dare rise to tell her that the person who taught me how to open one of those bottles was my granddaughter aged five.
Should the pharmacist, as a drug expert, have a different relationship with the family doctor, as many hospital pharmacists have with the medical staff, and ought something to be done to discourage the development of small pharmacies where there are already enough of them? Should there be that new role for pharmacists? What asssistance can be given by new communications technology, perhaps with substantial savings in costs?
In hospitals, nurses have begun to play a wider role in drug treatment, particularly in respect of complex cancer therapy. What sort of people are pharmacists? They are one of the best qualified, in a professional sense, of the professions allied to medicine. They are graduates, and the standards of their professional education are rigorously maintained by the Pharmaceutical Society. That training has begun to recognise what is called clinical pharmacy, which is designed to achieve maximum efficiency and to minimise toxicity in the giving of drugs to individual patients.
Should the pharmacists be remunerated, as in the past, in relation to the number of prescriptions that they dispense, or should they be remunerated differently, as highly qualified professional people giving a different type of service? It was against that background that the Nuffield Foundation set up an inquiry into pharmacy. The chairman, Sir Kenneth Clucas, expressed the optimism of the report when he stated:
"The pharmaceutical profession has a distinctive and indispensable contribution to make to health care that is capable of still further developments".
The report deals in the main with community pharmacy, or general practice pharmacy as it is sometimes known. It recommends that pharmacists and general medical practitioners should co-operate on a more systematic basis to increase the effectiveness and reduce the costs of prescribing. Their co-operation should include regular discussion on appropriate medication, drug interactions, and adverse drug effects.
There is, however, the difficulty that the pharmacist is running a business as well as dispensing and he must make a reasonable living. There tends to be a clash between the requirements of running a business and professional duties and responsibilities. The Nuffield
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Report suggests that payment under the National Health Service contract should be reduced and that separate payments be made for other professional activities. Other noble Lords will be discussing that point.
When one considers the modern scene, with massive drug taking and drug abuse, one begins to wonder whether there is an even wider role for pharmacists in health education, with perhaps expert input into police drug squads. Such highly qualified people could surely be of inestimable value in such situations. Do they have a role, for example, in relation to the complex use of medicines in homes for the elderly and perhaps in assisting in the rational prescribing that is so important for the third world? I believe that a number of noble Lords will be dealing with facets of that problem. The Nuffield Foundation has done a service to the pharmacist and to the public by commissioning this inquiry. I beg to move for Papers.
6.28 p.m.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Hunter of Newington, for bringing this very interesting debate before the House today. It concerns a subject in which I have a great interest. As a general dental practitioner, I have always felt an affinity with the pharmacists with whom I have served on many health committees. Indeed, most of my remarks will be about the community pharmacist.
The noble Lord, Lord Hunter, mentioned the smell of an old pharmacy. I have in my own home a cupboard that I have owned for about 20 years, which was an old pharmacy cupboard. It still has that smell, and it is very pleasant and certainly nostalgic when one opens it.
I must also explain to the House that I shall not be able to stay for the whole of the debate. I explained that fact to the noble Lord, Lord Hunter, when he kindly invited me to speak. His debate was put down at short notice and I have a long-standing engagement. However, the noble Lord persuaded me to speak and I am glad that he did so.
In speaking about the Nuffield report it is also interesting to note that the DHSS discussion paper on primary health care has a large section on the community pharmacist which obviously has been related to work done by the Nuffield committee, as there seems to be quite a parallel. There are definitely changing patterns for the community pharmacist. When I was on the executive council of the health service in inner London in the 1970s, before the first reorganisation of the health service, many small pharmacists were suffering badly. They simply could not make ends meet and small pharmacists were greatly disadvantaged. There was enormous pressure then to do something to help the small pharmacies to stay in business.
That action was taken and was very effective, to the extent where the front loading for the small pharmacist is now making him quite a lot better off than the equivalent pharmacist in the larger concerns. This means that the community pharmacist is now asking for action to be taken to counteract the previous action that was taken. It is interesting to note that there is in the other place the National Health Service

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(Amendment) Bill which will be coming to us and which deals with many of these points concerning the community pharmacist.
Without doubt, as in dentistry, there is a need for a more rational distribution of pharmacists. The dentists and the pharmacists have over the years resisted any attempts to set up a committee which would determine where and how they should practise. They like a completely open, free market. But the situation has changed. I believe that dentists too are reaching a point where they would welcome a committee along the lines of the Medical Practices Committee which has always, in medicine, determined where doctors were needed.
In the days when dentists and pharmacists happily set up anywhere and everywhere it was because there was plenty of work for them. Now there is a considerable fall-off in the amount of work for them. In dental practice the reasons are different, but in pharmacy many of the lines that were standard for the chemist only to sell are now readily available in the supermarkets. That is definitely affecting the income of community pharmacists. A number of pharmacists now find themselves locked into small practices which they cannot sell. No one wants to buy simply because they are not profitable enough.
These pharmacists will, I am sure, be delighted at the provision which I understand will be included in the Government's Bill—it has been agreed by the Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Committee and the DHSS—to provide early retirement with benefits as high as £22,000 according to a formula, the length of time and the business of the pharmacist. I welcome that and I hope the same will happen in dentistry.
There is a suggestion in the Nuffield report that patients should be able to register with a particular pharmacist. That proposal, while not being harmful, will have only a limited role. However, there are some elderly people who benefit from an attachment to one place and there is no harm in that. It is a good idea to encourage pharmacists to play a greater advisory role in health matters. I am at present an elected member of the General Dental Council. We have considered this matter in relation to our own profession. We think that it is excellent for pharmacists to be better informed and able to help people who go to them, as the public tend to do. Many more people will pop into a chemist shop for a little help or relief than will go to the bother of arranging a medical appointment.
It is important that in the case of both medicine and dentistry pharmacists must be trained to recognise which conditions need referral to a doctor or a dentist. Many simple complaints can be dealt with and that would remove a burden from doctors and dentists, but there are other more serious conditions which must not be left unrecognised, because that could prove harmful.
Many people are merely looking for some comfort and understanding. I remember, when I first came to England, going to a general practitioner's waiting room where there was an elderly lady sitting in front of the fire. When her turn to see the doctor came up she said to the others waiting "You go ahead of me." It transpired that she only went to the waiting room because she liked the warmth of the fire and the company of the people in the waiting room.
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In this country we suffer from too much legislation. We certainly also suffer from too many prescriptions. Those matters are clear-cut. Throughout the whole country we have had, and continue to have, what are called "dump" campaigns. Under these dump campaigns, hundreds of thousands of tablets, potions, pills and lotions are delivered to chemists but eventually thrown away. Those hundreds of thousands of prescriptions must represent a considerable waste of money. There may be many reasons why prescriptions are not taken. I remember a patient many years ago who had some trouble after oral surgery and I gave him a prescription for antibiotics. His wife returned 48 hours later and told me that he was no better and, in fact, was getting worse. I said, "Really, but those tablets should be having an effect." She said, "But he has not been taking any of them." I asked why not and she replied, "The prescription states that they should be taken after meals and he has not felt up to eating." That is a true story and it is typical.
Some people like to be given a prescription by the doctor but have no intention of taking whatever is prescribed. Others take a few tablets and are not sure whether they like them or whether the tablets disagree with them. Indeed, there are many drugs for which it is important to make clear to patients that the) must take the whole course of treatment or they could be harmful.
Shortly after the election of the Conservative Government in 1979 the BMA and the Pharmaceutical Service Negotiating Committee put forward a suggestion which they considered would save money. It was for the use of three-tier repeat prescriptions. This involved the use of what I believe is called a no-carbon-required pad in triplicate on which the patient's name and address is written. Each of the three sheets represents one-third of the prescription, so that the patient can collect one-third of the prescription and if more is wanted the second and third parts can be collected and treated as a continuation of the same prescription. I understand that although the BMA and the PSNC were much in favour of the proposal and the Minister of Health was considering that it might be good, eventually, the Minister was persuaded against the idea because the officials said that the cost of the no-carbon sets was known but the cost of the saving was unknown. Therefore they did not think it was worth trying.
Under present conditions, 70 per cent. of national health prescriptions are dispensed free of charge to patients. Only 30 per cent. are paid for at £2.20 per item. In some cases that is because the item is less expensive than the £2.20. I know that if I go into my chemist and ask for some Piriton for hay fever and present an NHS prescription he will tell me not to bother because the prescription price is £2.20 whereas the product can be purchased for less than half that price. It is clear, therefore, that the people who are using national health prescriptions all the time are those people who do not have to pay even half price but are receiving completely free treatment. I find that there is a considerable gulf beginning to occur in both dentistry and pharmacy where some people get everything totally free and others have to meet the total costs. Of course, I think that the gap is much greater in dentistry than it is in pharmacy.

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There are a lot of new things that we are planning to do and we are asking a lot of the pharmacists. We are asking them to be skilled businessmen, and I should point out that under their new contract, which has already been agreed, they still have a cost-plus basis. As a dentist, I have prayed all my life for a cost-plus basis but dentists have never achieved it. Under the cost-plus basis those pharmacists practising in more expensive areas have direct help with their rent and rates. This is not the case in dentistry, where the dentist working in an expensive area is that much worse off than his colleagues elsewhere, because for dentists the system is worked out on an averaging basis.
As I say, we are asking a lot of the pharmacists. We want them to be skilled business people and we want them to be ethical professionals—and I have no doubt that they are—and we want them to be a mainstay of the community in caring for people. I have no doubt that they will respond. I have a very high regard for the members of the pharmaceutical profession and I believe that they will respond to these demands.
However, I say to the noble Lord the Minister and other noble Lords who are present today that we must not regard anything that has been decided in the Bill that is to come before us as being an end to the matter. My own experience in the health service has shown me that when ever a solution to a problem is found it subsequently creates a new problem of its own, and a few years later the question has to be looked at again and the next step has to be considered. Let us now press on with the Bill that is at present going through in another place and welcome it when it arrives in this House; and let us remember that it is just another stage in the long, continuing health story.
6.41 p.m.
Lord Rea: My Lords, I think that we should all be grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Hunter of Newington, for bringing forward for discussion this important document, which, as he says, affects us all. At some time in our lives we all make use of the services of pharmacists. I am personally grateful to him because it is not the first time that he has actually encouraged me to read properly an important report such at this, instead of just skimping the reading which I would otherwise have done. It is a very welcome addition to the discussion on primary care which is much in the news at the moment with the Government's recent publication of their long awaited Green Paper (actually it is now a Blue Paper) entitled An Agenda for Discussion.
In fact, that report in the section on pharmacy services refers to the Nuffield report and largely welcomes it. This evening I shall concentrate my remarks on the relationship between the community pharmacists and general practitioners which are both branches of the family practitioner service and in one of which I happen to work. Since I started in general practice, which is about a generation ago, I have been singularly fortunate in having very good relationships with the pharmacists in my area. In fact I can say that I and my colleagues have had a special relationship with the pharmacists who are working nearest to our practice. We have found them courteous, helpful and tolerant of the occasional inaccuracy in our prescriptions.
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They have also been a very useful source of information: for instance, when a patient has needed an unusual drug or if it has been difficult for us to identify a preparation or drug that has been prescribed elsewhere and which a patient has produced and wants to have repeated. More than that, the helpful advice of a pharmacist on a number of prescribing problems has always been available and has been useful. Unfortunately it seems that this is not always the case and throughout the country sometimes not very good relationships are found with overt or covert conflict between two helping professions which should be co-operating.
The British Medical Association, while welcoming the report in general, has been a little lukewarm about it. I quote:
"The General Medical Services Committee supports the need for a greater clinical pharmacological input into patient treatment but is not convinced of the wisdom of persons with no formal clinical training or experience becoming involved in diagnosis or intruding into patient therapy without consultation with the doctor in charge".
In my view that is rather a defensive statement but it reflects the feelings of the consumers association that advice given by chemists is not always good and is too often given by unqualified assistants rather than by the pharmacist himself—or herself, because it is more likely to be a woman, as women are in the majority now in the schools of pharmacy.
The British Medical Association discourages the idea of home visits by pharmacists or the registration of patients with pharmacists which was put forward in the Nuffield Report as a possibly helpful arrangement for old people who have complicated drug regimes and who may need guidance and reminders as to how to take their treatment. To my mind this is something which perhaps could be done rather better by a pharmacist than by the doctor. Certainly there could be greater collaboration in this area than is sometimes the case.
The noble Lord, Lord Hunter, has explained why this review—the report of the pharmacy profession—was necessary. A pharmacist's work has indeed changed over the past decade or two and though the potency of drugs has increased and there is greater need for care in overseeing that the drugs dispensed are correct, there is in fact far less work for the pharmacist to do which involves making up complex products in the pharmacy. Theoretically, this should allow the pharmacist rather more time to concentrate on professional activities other than physically preparing drugs for dispensing, and the report suggests a number of ways in which this extra time could be used.
But it faces squarely one of the problems of the community pharmacist, which is that his income is largely dependent on the amount of prescriptions which he dispenses. So an increase of the time in which he advises clients or patients may not seem to the pharmacist to be well spent if it results in advice against the use of a drug, though this may well be to the benefit of the patient and at the same time reduce the cost of drugs to the National Health Service.
In fact, the report says:
"It is very difficult to ask any professional to act continuously against his or her own economic interests. A serious criticism of the way in which the community pharmacist is at present remunerated

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is that it acts counter to rather than in support of the exercise of a professional role. This criticism we would stress is a reflection on the system and not on the individual pharmacist. It is the system that needs to be changed".
I find the proposals for change in the Nuffield Report very well thought out. They suggest greater delegation of some of the routine activities of dispensing to assistants working under supervision and under careful rules, perhaps with the aid of more electronic equipment to reduce the incidence of errors and improve their detection. Suggestions are made about how such assistants should be trained.
With regard to remuneration, the report points out that payment systems influence behaviour, as I have mentioned, and it suggest that the linking of pay so closely to dispensing is one of the reasons why community pharmacists involve themselves personally in dispensing rather than delegating it to assistants. The present system does not encourage the individual pharmacist to collaborate with his general practitioner colleagues to reduce the level of prescribing or the cost of individual prescriptions, because that could lead to a reduction in the pharmacist's own income. I quote again from the report:
"The trouble about the existing remuneration structure is that it fails to support and reinforce the objectives that we think the Government and the profession should now pursue. It acts as a serious handicap to development instead of acting as a powerful force for change. The objective of changing the type of work that a pharmacist does in the community is not served by a system which requires that the whole of a pharmacist's own costs are to be met and the whole of his professional fee is to be paid by reference to prescriptions dispensed."
Later the report recommends,
"that some of the amounts under either or both these headings should cease to be paid by reference to prescriptions dispensed and that the money so saved together with the basic practice allowance should be used to enable other professional activities to be separately and specifically remunerated."
Then it goes on to list which work they feel should be encouraged, and it includes, first, work done in collaboration with doctors to improve the effectiveness and reduce the cost of prescribing, including work done as a member of a drug or therapeutics committee; and then, perhaps most contentious, advice to patients on response to symptoms which may or may not lead to the sale of a medicine. They admit that there are difficulties here and suggest that there is a variety of ways in which it would be possible to define the work for which payment is to be made and to monitor whether it has been done. One suggestion here is that pharmacists should provide a room where consultations can be held in private. This is in line with a suggestion of the consumers' association, but it is viewed with some alarm by the pharmacists themselves who are chary of possible medico-legal problems which might arise. It would seem here that the pharmacists are more afraid of intimate contact with their clients than vice versa.
They also suggest that there should be more services provided to individual patients on long-term or complicated medication. Here the controversial suggestion is made of a capitation fee for patients opting to register with a single pharmacy, to which the British Medical Association takes some exception. They suggest that pharmacists should be responsible for the supply of pharmaceutical services to residential
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establishments—old people's homes, for instance—and finally that they should be involved in health education and that all these activities should be recognised as meriting remuneration.
The report suggests that the number of pharmacy outlets should perhaps be reduced while retaining pharmacists in outlying districts who might not be able to operate on an economic basis without some special payment. But here there is scope for discussion with the representatives of general practitioners who provide dispensing services themselves. The report argues that there is still a role for pharmacists in remote districts but that this is rather a delicate area and will need some carefully conducted discussions between the two professions. I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Winstanley, will have something to say here. Dispensing general practitioners wish to retain their rights to dispense and argue that it is not economic to encourage small pharmacies to develop in such areas, and that their function can be perfectly well carried out by doctors, to whom the additional dispensing fees act as an inducement for them to work in such remote areas.
It is gratifying to see that the Government's agenda for discussion which I have mentioned takes up many of the suggestions put forward in the Nuffield Report, but it seems to me that they dodge the issue of exactly how to alter the contract and the system of remuneration so as to encourage, in financial terms, the expanded range of activities which they welcome and advocate for pharmacists.
Both the Nuffield Report and the agenda for discussion look at the education of pharmacists and point out that it is necessary for the rather rigid laboratory-based curriculum to be expanded and include aspects of the behavioural sciences which might be helpful to the community pharmacists in their wider role. There is already considerable criticism that pharmacy degree courses do not prepare graduates for the kind of work that they are going to meet when out in the field and where they are often very isolated from their professional colleagues. Several useful suggestions as to how this problem should be overcome are made in the Nuffield Report, some of which I think would make uncomfortable reading for the academics in certain pharmacy schools, but many of the suggestions will be welcomed by the more forward-looking members of staff in those schools.
Some of the same problems that face community pharmacists also face hospital pharmacists, particularly the dispensing of ready packaged preparations rather than the formulation of medicines in the pharmacy itself. The expanded role of hospital pharmacists into clinical pharmacy which the noble Lord, Lord Hunter, mentioned leads to them becoming much more involved in the actual ward care of patients in hospitals. It is recognised in the report as an important and desirable development. Where this is working well, it is much welcomed both by the doctors and the pharmacists, who found it a mutually very rewarding method of collaboration between the two professions. It means that more of the routine work in hospital pharmacies should be done by technicians and less by trained staff, in the same way as is suggested for community pharmacy. This has

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training implications for the junior personnel involved.
A sensible suggestion is that it should be possible for such technicians doing that work to enter the profession of pharmacy itself by enabling them to gain qualifications, if they have the ability, by the provision of part-time courses and perhaps the reduction or elimination of the required pre-registration year.
My Lords, I hope that the Government will be guided by the sensible recommendations which this report makes. The fact that they have already adopted a number of its recommendations in the Green Paper on primary care is a welcome indication that this is likely to be the case. Altogether, I think this is a sensible, forward-looking document which indicates how the profession should advance and change to adapt to present and future developments. If the recommendations are followed, I think that the profession of pharmacy will become more satisfying for pharmacists themselves, and it will also give a better service to the other branches of the health service and the public.
6.58 p.m.
Lord Winstanley: My Lords, bearing in mind the forthcoming debates in your Lordships' House on the National Health Service (Amendment) Bill, to which reference has already been made by the noble Baroness, Lady Gardner of Parkes, I think that this is a very timely debate indeed. Therefore, I would say that the noble Lord, Lord Hunter of Newington, has earned our thanks for introducing the debate at this time. It gives us, if I may say so, a first bite at a number of cherries which we shall be chewing over very carefully later on. I will leave that Bill for the moment, save to say that certain of the matters dealt with in it are dealt with comprehensively in this report.
Unlike the report we were discussing a little while ago to do with legionnaires' disease, which we had only just received, this report is one which I have read from cover to cover and therefore I feel perhaps I can comment on it without the same inhibitions as I had in the case of the other one. It is a very all-embracing and widespread report which seems to me to cover almost everything in the field of pharmacy. Therefore it allows us to stray very widely indeed in discussing this topic without finding ourselves outside the rules of order. In general I should like to give the report a very sincere welcome. I welcome the majority, if not all, of its recommendations, and in particular I welcome what it has to say about the relationship between the pharmacist and the general practitioner.
Turning to part of the report, I should like to quote one or two of the things said in the section on page 28, at the top:
"Doctors are increasingly recognising the value of a pharmacist's advice before reaching decisions on prescribing. Co-operation of this kind is much more rarely to be seen between the GP and the community pharmacist."
I am not wholly sure that that is true, but that at least is what the report says.
It goes on on the same page to say:
"What is needed is a working relationship between GP and pharmacist in which prescribing and dispensing are discussed regularly and naturally between them, and not just as the
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consequence of a query on an individual prescription that has been made".
I underline and echo those sentiments very warmly indeed. I have noticed that such things are beginning to happen.
Page 29, paragraph 3.44 in that section of the report, states:
"We think that there is a need for more systematic, though not necessarily more formal, arrangements to enable community pharmacists to co-operate with GPs in order to increase the effectiveness with which medicines are used and to reduce the overall cost of prescribing".
To that too I say a fairly loud "Hear, hear".
I think it is right to say that there have always been—and I do not think that this is referred to anywhere in the report, and I have read it all—certain ethical difficulties with regard to the close working of the general practitioner with the pharmacist. Indeed, it has been regarded as ethically improper for a general practitioner to have any kind of commercial interest in a pharmacy business or indeed to be operating directly in partnership with a pharmacist. That impediment was overcome in my earlier days by the simple measures of a young doctor marrying a pharmacist, or, to show that there is no discrimination, occasionally a pharmacist taking the sensible decision of marrying a young doctor who was in general practice. I had many experiences of those unions operating happily and to the great benefit of the doctor and the pharmacist and indeed to the considerable benefit of their patients, but I have no doubt to the intense chagrin of other pharmacists who I think looked at such arrangements with grave distrust. That has been one of the problems.
When I worked in a group practice not all that long ago we had a pharmacist next door. We worked closely with him. Indeed, we had an extension telephone line to him. I could pick up the 'phone and say, "Look, which is the cheapest of these?" or "What is the dose of so and so?" or "What have you in stock?". It was very helpful. I do not think that the other pharmacists in the district altogether cared for it. But there is no doubt that that close association between the general practitioner and the pharmacist was immensely beneficial to me as a general practitioner. I am quite sure that it was therefore very beneficial to my patients. I hope we can arrive at arrangements whereby that can happen more readily and easily than it does now.
I note that the report refers to the fact that only in 150 health centres—I do not know how many there are in Great Britain—is there a pharmacy. Why is there not a pharmacy in them all? In part the difficulty relates to the matter to which I have just referred. Here I am treading on rather dangerous ground so far as some of my noble friends on these Benches are concerned; but some noble Lords will recollect that when we had the doctors' charter—I think that it was at the time when Mr. Kenneth Robinson was the Minister—there was a recommendation that we should have some kind of experimentation with a salaried service.
I am not crossing to the Benches next to me to say that I am wholly wedded to a salaried system, but it was recommended at the time of the charter that we should have an experiment with the possibility of a

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salaried service, not just for GPs but for pharmacists as well, in certain areas. If that were to happen it would be very easy indeed in a particular area to have a GP with a salaried pharmacist working in the same health centre. I accept that that is dangerous ground. I do not want to see us move to a salaried system, but I should like to see impediments to such a working partnership removed, and there are impediments.
The report lays considerable emphasis on the fact that the pharmacist is often the first port of call in time of health trouble. Indeed, we all know that to be true. It is to the pharmacist that the patient first goes. Here I should like to say a little about my experience in this field. In 1960, I think it was—I cannot be absolutely sure—I wrote an article in the Manchester Guardian on the subject. It had struck me at the time—and I had friends who were studying pharmacy and becoming pharmacists—that a great deal of that exacting and lengthy course (it is very lengthy indeed; almost as long as the course to qualify in medicine) was taken up with students learning to do things which, frankly, were no longer necessary. They learnt how to make pills, how to compound mixtures, how to make ointments and things of that kind. In other words, they were learning how to dispense in that sense.
In reality we now know that dispensing is not making pills or compounding mixtures. It is reaching on to a shelf, picking the right bottle of tablets, putting the right label on to them and passing them to the patient. If less of the time of trainee pharmacists or pharmacy students was spent in learning skills that were no longer required and some of that time could be used to train the pharmacist in the diagnosis and treatment of minor maladies, that would be to the advantage of all.
I was astonished at the time to get letters of rebuke—and one appeared in the Guardian from the secretary of the pharmacy society—asking what business it was of mine as a doctor to ask pharmacists to do my job. How times have changed! Now that is the job which many pharmacists are asking to do. It is the job too that the report for the Nuffield Foundation is asking them to do. That shows how times have changed.
If we are to change in that way and to recognise that the pharmacist is the first port of call, it could be helpful to the patient and the general practitioner by removing some of the workload if the pharmacist had a bit more training in the diagnosis of minor maladies and their treatment. That could be very valuable. But there would be other changes. If the pharmacist was so trained, we should have to make certain other changes. We should have to ensure that the pharmacist was remunerated directly for that professional service and that he was not required merely to finance that service by the sale of possibly unnecessary remedies.
That matter has already been referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady Gardner. It has always seemed to me in general practice that we too as general practitioners have encouraged the national reliance on remedies; that every symptom must have a remedy. It was my experience in practice that it may take only one minute to dish out a bottle of inert medicine, but it may take half an hour to persuade the patient that he did not need treatment.
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If we are to take steps to train the pharmacist and to encourage him to be the first port of call and to treat minor maladies, we ought to remunerate him so that he does not find it necessary to subsidise that part of his work by selling the patient unnecessary remedies. If we did that we should be in a similar situation to the recent one with opticians, where there was a division between two jobs, one which was a commercial one of selling spectacles and the other a professional one of testing eyes. If we move in that direction with the pharmacists, I hope that we shall see to it that they are properly remunerated for the professional task of being the first port of call and being, as it were, a sieve that could reduce the workload of the general practitioner regarding dealing with minor maladies.
I was particularly interested that in the report totally separate sections are devoted to hospital and community pharmacy services. I should like to come at once to some of the recommendations and to point in particular to one with which I do not wholly agree. It is recommendation 40 on page 134. That states:
"Serious consideration should be given to the transfer of outpatient dispensing to the community sector, without reducing the number of pharmacists employed in hospitals".
That is the recommendation, but it is a long section in the report on the hospital pharmacy service. It does not seem to me that that says enough about the recruitment of hospital pharmacists, which is a difficulty at the moment. But it comes with that recommendation. I notice that elsewhere in the report there is the possible suggestion that a community pharmacist might take over the work of the hospital pharmacist. In other words, it would still be a hospital pharmacy but it would be sited with the community pharmacist rather than the suggestion that appears to be implied in this recommendation No. 40 that hospital outpatients should almost invariably go to GPs for their prescriptions. That is a matter that I have pursued in your Lordships' House for a very long time indeed.
The noble Lord, Lord Ennals, will recollect that when he was Secretary of State a note of guidance was sent to hospitals which pointed out that where a hospital consultant retained clinical responsibility for a patient he retained with that clinical responsibility the responsibility for prescribing drugs and seeing to it that those drugs were dispensed in the hospital pharmacy.
I have in mind people who were on anti-coagulant therapy and things of that type and who had to go weekly to the hospital for blood tests. The consultant then adjusted the dosage. If he did not give the patient the prescription or the patient did not have it made up in the hospital pharmacy, the patient had to trudge round and make an appointment to see me as a general practitioner. By that time I should not have received a note from the consultant, and I would have to ring up the hospital to find out what the drugs were and what change had been made in the dosage. The patient had been put to a great deal of inconvenience and it had all probably cost a lot of money.
The noble Baroness will recollect that I have recently asked Questions, to which she has replied, about the comparative costs of prescribing and dispensing drugs by the hospital pharmacy and by a pharmacy under contract to a family practitioner

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committee. The noble Baroness has not been able to give me the exact costs. I have referred to the letter of guidance sent by the previous Government. I later asked Questions which established that the same policy was adopted by the present Government and is still adopted by them. I asked a Question which was answered by the noble Baroness's predecessor, the noble Lord, Lord Glenarthur. I asked:
"whether they will take steps to ensure that patients attending hospital out-patient clinics and who are under the continuous clinical care of a hospital consultant, and require drugs prescribed by that consultant, can have their prescriptions dispensed by the hospital pharmacy rather than have to pay an unnecessary visit to their general practitioner, who will not, by the time of the patient's visit, have received notification of the nature of the prescription".
The answer which I received way back on 7th February 1984 was from the noble Lord, Lord Glenarthur, who said:
"Long-standing guidance to health authorities makes it clear that when a hospital consultant needs to retain clinical responsibility for the treatment of an out-patient, he should also retain responsibility for prescribing. The Department of Health will continue to follow up individual cases of non-compliance with the guidance".— [Official Report, 7/2/84; col. 1135.]
I have given the department innumerable cases of non-compliance, but I now find that in the present situation, when hospitals are forced to try to save money, many of them no longer have a hospital pharmacist and in certain hospitals all out-patients are being referred for their drugs to general practitioners. First, it causes the patients a great deal of inconvenience and sometimes distress if they are not well and have to pay a special visit to the general practitioner. Secondly, it causes the general practitioner unnecessary work; and, thirdly, though it may save the hospital some money I suspect that it probably costs public funds a great deal more. That it is without quantifying the general practitioner's time or the patient's inconvenience.
When last I raised this matter in your Lordships' House I received innumerable letters from consultants. I have many of them here. One states:
"I am required to send all my patients away"—
that is, all hospital outpatients—
"and to refer patients to the general practitioner for their drugs in order to save money for the hospital".
The consultant points out that that probably does not save money.
Another consultant states:
"We have, during the last part of the last financial year, been asked not to prescribe drugs if at all possible but to return patients to their GP to get their prescriptions. This is undoubtedly more expensive to the public purse".
That consultant rheumatologist with the Greenwich Health Authority further states:
"I would estimate that it would be as much as 50 per cent. to 75 per cent. more expensive. It is a most useful way of saving hospital money especially as our pharmacy budget at Queen Mary's has been markedly overspent".
I hope that the noble Baroness will be able to answer that question at the end of the debate.
I have referred to Recommendation No. 40. I have no objection to the idea suggested in the report of a community physician taking over the role of a hospital pharmacist. But among the many letters that I have received from consultants since ventilating the matter,
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I have had one from a senior pharmacist with the hospital service who asks whether I realise that patients are sent to their general practitioner of necessity because the hospital cannot recruit pharmacists. He confesses that they cannot recruit hospital pharmacists because they do not pay them adequately and people will not seek the jobs.
I should like to ask the noble Baroness one or two specific questions. I should like her to tell us, if she possibly can, what is the present position with regard to the recruitment of hospital pharmacists. If it is impossible to get any, we need to know the reasons for that. Secondly, what can she tell us about the comparative costs to public funds of a patient having had to be sent unnecessarily to the general practitioner for his drugs, rather than those drugs being prescribed at the hospital by the doctor who sees him there?
If I receive answers to those questions, I shall be deeply grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Hunter of Newington, for introducing the debate, because they are questions which I have been asking over and over again for many years.
Lord Rea: My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down, I should like to back up his request to have those questions answered at the end of the debate; and if they are not, perhaps the noble Baroness will pass them on to the Minister.
7.15 p.m.
Baroness McFarlane of Llandaff: My Lords, I should like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Hunter of Newington, for giving your Lordships' House an opportunity to debate the Nuffield Foundation report on Pharmacy, and to congratulate the foundation on its initiative and the quality of its report. I also welcome the statement put out in the discussion paper on primary health care that the department will give the report serious and positive consideration.
The Royal Commission on the National Health Service which reported in 1979, of which I was a member, had an opportunity to look in broad perspective at the different professions within the health service and their relationship to one another. In that discussion I came to recognise the critical role played by the pharmacist. Two aspects of pharmacy concerned us. One was access to pharmaceutical services, especially in rural areas, and the effect they could have on access for the aged. Our deliberations were greatly helped by the OPCS survey on access to primary health care, which was published as a research paper allied to the commission's work.
The second point about which we were concerned was the evolving role of the pharmacist. We pointed out its increasing role in health education advice to patients, and the implications that that could have for economies within the service and also for advice to the health care professions.
Both those aspects of the subject have been covered well and in great depth by the Nuffield Foundation report. I am grateful for the way that it highlights the excellence of the background and education of pharmaceutical sciences, firmly built on physical and biological sciences, and the unique mix of the knowledge that they bring to the health service, which embraces the nature of the properties of drugs, the

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appropriate formulation of medicines, their actions and their interactions. The effective use of modern drugs is a prime consideration and hence the value of the advice that the pharmacist can give to the cognate professions.
I should like to take up the function of pharmacy in respect of my profession of nursing. Over the years, there has been a great deal of variation in the customary practice in respect of the administration of medicine and the scope of professional judgment accorded to nurses. When I trained as a nurse, almost 40 years ago now, on admission every patient was prescribed a limited list of medicaments, such as laxatives and simple analgesics which could be given as required by the nurse. In that, the nurse used her professional judgment. On leaving my training hospital I was surprised to find that that practice was not universal. I believe that in the intervening years defensive practices have been developed by many health authorities which have eroded the nurse's ability to use professional judgment in the use of medicines. That kind of restriction can militate against the rehabilitation of the patient.
I have been to geriatric wards and seen equipment installed, designed to help elderly people become adapted to self-administration of drugs before they are discharged home, but the equipment is left unused because of the legal implications associated with it. There are, however, some more positive developments, I believe, within the nursing service. I was on Monday at the nursing development unit at Oxford where patients are admitted directly for nursing care. There is at the unit a limited formulary of 60 items which a nurse may administer. Here, increasingly, the nurse is able to use her professional judgment. However, in other situations, a great deal of nursing time is wasted and patient treatment delayed, so that there is unnecessary suffering. A nurse may have to wait for a prescription from a doctor. I have witnessed this in the work of district nurses who may be delayed in getting dressings, ointments, aperients, and so on, that are well within their professional competence to prescribe.
We have then a whole area, already referred to, of more complex management of pain and management of patients on chemotherapy undertaken by the nurse. I rehearse these instances to underline the importance of the recommendations made in the Cumberlege report, Neighbourhood Nursing, and taken up in the discussion paper, Primary Health Care, that nurses should have the power to prescribe a limited list of items and simple agents as part of their nursing care programme and that the DHSS should issue guidelines to enable nurses to control drug dosage in well-defined circumstances.
The implications for pharmacy are, first, in the educational preparation of the nurse. I believe that nurses, to carry out this role, need a far greater depth of preparation. The pharmacist is the person to whom we should be looking for education in pharmacology. It is essential, I believe, that nurses should understand the action and the reaction and be aware of the contraindications in the use of certain medicines. Certainly, my own students in their undergraduate programme
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in the University of Manchester have a year's course in pharmacology together with a year's course in pathology. I am confident that with that kind of preparation they have a far more effective awareness of the action of drugs than they might otherwise have.
We should be looking to the pharmacist for help in the education of nurses. A colleague relationship with the pharmacist should be fostered and developed. I am excited, too, at the reference to the use of information technology on pharmacy and all that this could hold for cognate professions such as nursing and medicine.
As someone involved in higher education, I should like to turn now to the implications of the report for education. As a member of the University Grants Committee panel on subjects allied to medicine, which includes pharmacy, pharmacology, nursing and allied subjects, I have been greatly impressed with the scientific excellence achieved in many schools of pharmacy. This has been underlined when I have joined visits by the panel to the schools of pharmacy. It has also been underlined in our recent resource allocation exercise in which schools of pharmacy have figured very well and also by their ability to attract new blood posts in the universities. I recognise the value of the knowledge fed into the health care system by this discipline. Yet, as the report says, its relevance to practice has to be made apparent. The report suggests that practice or practice research units should be set up in the universities. These will have implications, I believe, for staff-student ratios and obvious resource implications for the universities.
In addition the report rightly stresses the importance of continuing education for the changes of role of the pharmacist. It is also suggested that continuing education should be made a condition of re-registration for practice. One would support that, having seen it happen in other health service professions. The Department of Education and Science has encouraged those of us in the university world to invest far more in continuing education. Unfortunately, no resources have been made available through the UGC. I believe therefore that the resource implications of the role in education and continuing education of pharmacists and allied professions such as medicine and nursing need to be addressed. This is, I believe, a responsibility of the department if it is to have an efficient heath manpower force.
Associated with the educational needs of the profession is the dilemma of attracting and retaining good scientists in the universities. There is the lure of industry. Pharmacists and scientists certainly have a contribution to make to industry. While university salaries remain at their present inadequate level, one has the dilemma of attracting and keeping pharmacists in the university sector.
I should like, in conclusion, to welcome the report and what it has to say about the enhanced role of the pharmacist, particularly in public education and advice to professions such as my own. I would, however, ask the Government to consider related suggestions—for instance, what the Cumberlege report says about the role of nurses in a limited formulary—and that the resource implications for the suggestions in education and continuing education should be taken into account.
7.27 p.m.
Lord Ardwick: My Lords, I believe that I am the only lay person to speak from the Back-Benches. I cannot therefore follow the arguments of the noble Baroness, Lady McFarlane of Llandaff. I have nevertheless a special interest in the subject. Twenty-five years ago I was reaching the end of a five-year term as assistant director of the Nuffield Foundation. I am delighted that thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Hunter of Newington, we are debating a report sponsored by that splendid institution. Indeed, the noble Lord, Lord McGregor of Durris, himself a foundation grantee, has reminded me that our previous debate this afternoon was very much in the Nuffield domain. In the early 1970s, the foundation set aside £250,000 after the Lord Chancellor's legal aid advisory committee had reported. The foundation set up a legal and research unit to study unmet legal need. As a result, the legal action group was established that created the radical atmosphere in which law centres proliferated and led to the Benson Royal Commission on legal aid.
This is, I believe, the first time that the House has used a Nuffield report as the basis for one of our free-ranging Wednesday debates. Yet this House has had close links with the foundation almost since it began. For as long as I can remember, such noble Lords as the noble Lord, Lord Todd, and the noble Lord, Lord Flowers—people of that high calibre—have served as managing trustees, for example.
The very first Wednesday debate that I attended 16 years ago was on ageing and the aged, and I fully expected noble Lords to deploy the conclusions reached by the studies the Nuffield Foundation had sponsored over a long period. Those studies dealt with psychological, sociological and physiological problems, but I am afraid that they had not made the slightest impression on the noble Lords of that generation.
Nor did we debate even the famous Nuffield studies undertaken by Members of this House. I am thinking of the long-term investigation into hospital functions and design led by the late Lord Llewelyn-Davies: or the work of the noble Baroness, Lady Wootton, on social science and social pathology; or Lord Taylor's work on good general practice.
My experience at the foundation was that the problem of communicating with the inner ring of decision makers was simple; yet it was always difficult to make an impact upon wider audiences and so produce a head of democratic steam behind proposals for reform. Therefore, I very much welcome the bringing of a Nuffield Foundation report into this wider area this afternoon. I hope that the two reports which they now have in the pipeline on town and country planning and the learning of languages in higher education will find their way some day into our discussions.
So far as this report is concerned, I speak only as a customer. Like some other noble Lords present in the Chamber, my experience goes back long before the National Health Act to when you could ask the local chemist—and no layman ever talks about a "pharmacist"—to relieve you of the symptoms of some minor ailment, the kind of ailment in respect of which you were reluctant to consult your doctor
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because it would be putting him to unnecessary trouble and yourself to unnecessary inconvenience and unnecessary expense.
In my district of Ardwick there was a chemist who had greater reputation, greater respect and who was held in greater affection than any of the doctors. I do not know what he put in his medicines but they were taken with great pleasure.
As an earlier speaker was saying, the great advantage of the chemist's shop was that it was a walk-in service. The great disadvantage was that you could not be sure of privacy and it was embarrassing to mention in the presence of other customers symptoms which could not be discussed in polite society in those inhibited days. Therefore, it is a very good idea that there should be a place in a chemist's shop where you can speak confidentially to the pharmacist. I can understand the objections to a closed room, but perhaps one could go round a corner and talk to him.
It is years since I asked an English chemist for advice. I am tempted to say that after the age of 40 every man is a fool or is his own pharmacist. However, that cannot be true, because if it were I might be asking for valerian or belladonna or some of the recipes of my youth.
On several occasions when in France I have consulted the pharmacien, who has, I think, a rather higher status than his opposite number here. I think that he undergoes a longer training of five years. I approached those people rather than tackle the difficulties of going to an unknown French doctor. Twice I had to seek help late at night. It seems that the French chemists accept an obligation that from time to time they must be available on duty for 24 hours or for a whole weekend. I often think of this service de garde when I see in the chemist's window in England a notice saying that they will open late until 7 p.m., or for an hour on Sunday morning.
I can see that there are great difficulties these days. Even if we could persuade the chemists to adopt the system of the French chemists, in these days of drug abuse and of violent assault, the idea of somebody being required to give a service at any hour of the night presents difficulties. Yet I should have thought that if chemists are to have a wider function, particularly a wider function of giving advice, they should be open longer than they are at present. They seem to close very early—at about 5.30 or 6 o'clock at night.
The report points out that on the Continent the pharmacists do not diversify into cosmetics or, to use an utterly vile word, toiletries. Yet that does not make them ethically superior to our chemists. Last week I was in France and each French pharmacy that I saw had a big window display for a slimming cream which the Advertising Standards Authority in this country would instantly reject as misleading.
They do not order everything better on the Continent. I once accompanied the noble Lord, Lord Bruce of Donington, as interpreter when he went to a hospital in Brussels in the hope that they would syringe his ears which had been made painful by the wearing of headphones all day. They said that they could not help him, because they did not have an ear specialist on duty. I was reminded of the famous Fleet Street chemist who many years ago on the morning of the

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resumption of Parliament had a busy time syringing the ears of the Press Gallery reporters!
I note with relief that the law should continue to require pharmacies to be under the personal control of a pharmacist, but that the requirement should be satisfied if, while absent on other professional work, he can be contacted. My mind went back to the famous Bardell/Pickwick trial, where, you will remember, a chemist was pressed into service on a special jury. He resisted on the ground that he had no assistant. The judge insisted that he should be sworn, but the chemist interrupted again. The chemist said, "There'll be murder before this trial's over". The judge was unimpressed. The chemist said, "I merely wanted to observe, my Lord, that I've left nobody but an errand boy in my shop. He is a very nice boy, but he is not much acquainted with drugs. I know that the prevailing impression on his mind is that Epsom salts means oxalic acid, and spirit of Senna, Laudanum". With that, said Dickens, the chemist composed himself into a comfortable attitude, and assuming a pleasant expression of countenance appeared to have prepared himself for the worst. I shall emulate the chemist.
7.38 p.m.
The Countess of Mar: My Lords, perhaps it will be some consolation to the noble Lord, Lord Ardwick, to know that he is not the only lay person on the Back Benches. I am patron of the Dispensing Doctors Association and that is where my interest in the debate comes from.
The Nuffield report on Pharmacy has very effectively brought into the public arena a situation which has been developing over a number of years. I too am most grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Hunter of Newington, for bringing the contents of the report before your Lordships for debate. As we have heard other speakers say, technology has radically changed the role of the high street chemist since the inception of the National Health Service. It is hardly surprising that qualified pharmacists are seeking to extend their role, albeit in an advisory capacity, into the field of general health care. The rewards in terms of job satisfaction cannot be many for the modern pharmacist within the community.
Before I embark upon consideration of some of the recommendations in the report, it is important that I point out that what we are discussing is the future of the profession of pharmacists and not the National Health Service pharmaceutical provision. All registered medical practitioners are qualified and licensed to dispense medicines and over 3 million of our population receive the National Health Service provision from some 3,000 National Health Service general practitioners. I have said before in your Lordships' House that all patients should have the right to choose whether their medicines are dispensed by a doctor or a pharmacist, and obviously it is practical that doctors practising in rural areas should also dispense. Any new contractual arrangements for pharmacists should not interfere with the integrity of the rural dispensing regulations which ensure a cost-effective and comprehensive provision, and have been agreed mutually after long debate between the two professions.
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We need also to remember that doctors carry the burden of responsibility in law for patient care, and that they can never abrogate their own responsibility. Collaboration between GPs and pharmacists can only be beneficial, and should be encouraged. However, I am concerned that people with no formal medical qualification or experience should become involved in diagnosis, or should intrude into patients' therapy without consultation with the doctor—the noble Lord, Lord Rea, mentioned this, and I think he tends not to agree—who is ultimately responsible.
Many of the suggestions made in the report for the extension of the role of the pharmacist would duplicate systems already made available by doctors, nurses and health visitors as part of their long-accepted duties. Home visiting beyond the provision of oxygen is known by health care professionals to be costly, and under the current financial restraints I cannot see that the proposals in the Nuffield report are feasible. A peripatetic pharmacist would also be taken away from his major responsibility, his pharmacy The pharmacists' professional organisation has made much of their role in supervising dispensing of prescriptions and discovering and rectifying mistakes made by doctors. Now this report suggest that they can leave this work to unqualified staff while they make domiciliary visits.
All those involved in health service provision hear a responsibility for health education, and it is laudable that pharmacists should want to utilise their skills and their premises in furtherance of better provision, but they must receive a comprehensive training. The report of the Consumer Association survey on advice given by pharmacists published in the Which? magazine of August 1985 highlighted some serious flaws in the advice given by some pharmacists, or permitted by them to be given by their assistants.
To offer advice without the necessary qualifications would seem to be asking for payment under false pretences. Not all pharmacists surveyed followed the guidance of the Pharmaceutical Society when dealing with patients asking for advice, and in almost all cases medicines were sold whether or not their need was indicated. It is inevitable that there will be conflict between their commercial and advisory selves, and the commitment to reduce drug consumption when they derive the bulk of their income from the provision and sale of drugs is clearly unlikely to materialise.
I fully understand the desire of pharmacists to find a more rewarding professional role, but few of the proposals in the report could be implemented without cost to the NHS; and in some cases a quite considerable cost in altering premises and that kind of thing, for example, and home visiting. In view of the financial restrictions currently imposed on the health service it could well be said that some of the proposals are untimely. There is a good deal pharmacists can do to help themselves, their counterparts in other disciplines in the health service and their customers, without demanding payment; but maybe I am being too altruistic.
That they should collaborate with doctors and other health workers goes without saying. Many do this very effectively now. Advice to patients on minor ailments has been a traditional part of the service they offer.

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Patients will soon know which pharmacists provide sound advice and which merely want to sell them nostrums of limited therapeutic value.
If doctors, nurses and health visitors are not currently providing the services for which they have contracted, family practitioner committees have the power and the duty to see that they do provide them. I can see no need for yet another professional group taking on these responsibilities. I also have a feeling that there would be a great many confused patients, and sick elderly patients do not take much confusing—for that matter, sick young ones do not either. The NHS was created for the benefit of patients, and we really must ensure that their interests are paramount. Their freedom to choose must be defended, and we have a duty to ensure that the service gives value for money.
7.44 p.m.
Lord Ennals: My Lords, we are greatly in the debt of the noble Lord, Lord Hunter, for having introduced this important debate, and I want to thank him. At one stage he was wondering whether there would be adequate response to the subject that he had chosen. When I realised that he had attracted a former assistant director of the Nuffield Foundation, a professor of nursing, two general practitioners, a dentist, and two old politicians, if I may say so, I began to ask myself, "Is there a pharmacist in the House?" We have not actually got a pharmacist but we have got the patron of the dispensing doctors association, so we have done the next best thing.
I recognise that this is the first comprehensive report on pharmacies in very many years. I also thank the noble Lord for adding to my reading in the Recess. Not only the Nuffield report, but comments I had made in speeches when Secretary of State, and in articles subsequently written about the crucial role of pharmacists in the community, in hospitals and in industry. I found the report refreshing. I am certainly not going to get into the argument as between dispensing doctors and pharmacists.
It has long been my view that pharmacists have a range of expertise and experience which should be more widely available in society, and that pharmacists should be enabled to take on a wider role with greater responsibilities. That is the real lesson and message of the report, for which we are also grateful to Sir Kenneth Clucas as chairman of the review team.
It is a view also held by the Pharmaceutical Society, and in their evidence to the Nuffield inquiry they demonstrated not only the essential service that the profession, in all its branches, provided for the public but also the unused potential that could be, and ought to be, tapped in the public interest. The Nuffield report endorses those views, and in so doing has improved tremendously the chances of developing the pharmacists' full potential.
This broad view was fully endorsed by the Nuffield report, and also by a leading article in the Pharmaceutical Journal on 22nd March which said:
"The publication of the Nuffield report has been awaited with hope, but with some trepidation. In the event, the report not only places a high value on pharmacy, but on pharmacists themselves.
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"There was a fear at one time that arguments that pharmacists were over educated for their tasks and that they could be replaced by lesser qualified individuals, might have found favour with the inquiry. On the contrary, the report says that there can be no question of the educational qualifications for community pharmacists being reduced."
I agree with that, and the more so when I read the Consumer Association's report referred to by the noble Countess, Lady Mar. Perhaps I may just draw a little from the study they made. They showed that it was easier in 1984 compared with 1974 to consult the pharmacist in person when a specific request was made. But when no such request was made a large number of inquiries were either still handled by assistants without reference to the pharmacist, and they asked fewer relevant questions.
A significant minority of pharmacists, one in four, were still selling medicines for potentially serious symptoms without asking further relevant questions, or advising the need to see a doctor. Of the four out of five pharmacists who sold medicines for serious symptoms, almost two thirds failed to check whether any other medicine was being obtained. I learnt from that that it was of great importance that the standards of education and training of pharmacists should be increased, and certainly not decreased.
There is a demand for good, qualified pharmacists, and adequate training is a virtual guarantee of employment. The Government's own Green Paper on higher education showed that in 1983 unemployment in associated disciplines was as follows: of those trained in chemistry, 29 per cent. of graduates were unemployed; in biochemistry, 33 per cent. were not in employment; biology, 39 per cent. When I say were not in employment, I mean that they were not using their skills for the benefit of society, for which they had been trained. These are horrifying figures which tell the sad tale of Britain's decline in economic performance. But in contrast pharmacy had a nil percentage of unemployed because of the demand for pharmacists. The section in the report on remuneration for community pharmacists is a crucial part of the report and very relevant to the profession itself. The committee wants a shift away, as has been said, from payments based on prescriptions throughout to a system based on services provided. It proposes some new services such as a state remunerated advice service to patients and an advisory service to doctors—not necessarily the rather incestuous relationship that I thought the noble Lord, Lord Winstanley, at one stage seemed to suggest—nevertheless an advisory service to doctors the latter funded in part with money currently allowed as legitimate expenditure on medical representatives by pharmaceutical companies.
Pharmacies providing an advisory service for patients should have facilities for confidential discussion. This is an important point which was touched on by the noble Lord, Lord Winstanley. If I return to the Consumers' Association report it showed that four out of five conversations with pharmacists could be overheard and that may be a possible source of embarrassment to customers who may wish to discuss an ordinary common complaint such as diarrhoea or what-have-you. If one is to consult a pharmacist I think there ought to be circumstances in which it can be done privately. The Consumers' Association concluded that while it might be more

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convenient to visit the local chemist's shop to obtain a medicine for a minor ailment than to have to book an appointment to see the doctor, not all pharmacists were following Pharmaceutical Society guidance when giving advice, and large numbers of inquiries were handled by other staff in the chemist's shop. Overall, it was thought that the situation could be improved but there was concern over the lack of privacy in the average chemist's shop.
The report also wants part of premises devoted to NHS pharmacy services to be "visually distinguishable" from the rest, although it does not feel that the professionalism of pharmacy need be compromised by a commercial environment—I agree with this. It is critical of retail establishments engaging in pharmacy simply to enhance their image. One can think of examples in this respect. The report backs the new contract in overall terms, but criticises the absence of a national appeals procedure in relation to contract limitation. It is against pharmacists having any say in the local sub-committees deciding in the first instance whether a new contractor would be necessary or desirable. I think that is a very important point. I do not know whether the noble Baroness, before the Bill is brought before the House, will have time to consider this. If she does not, clearly there will have to be consideration in this House about precisely that question. It will possibly be an issue to which we shall return.
A number of points were raised in the Nuffield report which would positively require the Government to look again at some aspects of the contract negotiated by the Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Committee and the DHSS. Perhaps I may pick on three. In a sense this is pointing towards some of the issues that will certainly arise when the health services Bill comes before us.
First, there is the ability that has been demonstrated over the past eight years to influence numbers through the price mechanism which it is said should be fully utilised. I think that is right. If the differential between different sizes of NHS contractors is not producing the desired results, it should be adjusted, says the report. The more accurate the tuning of the differentials, the fewer the applications that will need to be considered by the family practitioner committees.
Secondly, the report thinks it is wrong that pharmacists should play so large a part, as is proposed, in deciding whether or not new applications should be granted; a point that I have already touched upon. Thirdly, the report states that there should be an appeal against decisions of the sub-committee to the Secretary of State and not as at presently proposed to a neighbouring family practitioner committee. In that respect the report is absolutely right and this is a further point which we shall need to come back to when the Bill comes before us.
There is one quotation from the report which I should like to give. It states:
"There is one element in the new agreement with which we do not agree, and that is the decision, as a consequence of abolishing the basic practice allowance, to load the NHS remuneration even more heavily on to the number of prescriptions dispensed. For the reasons we have given, we regard that as a thoroughly retrograde step".
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I think we have to consider that very carefully. When I, as Secretary of State, introduced the system of loading NHS remuneration on the basis of the numbers of prescriptions dispensed, it was at a time when there was a serious decline in the number of pharmacies across the country. That loading certainly stopped what was a very serious slippage in the number of available pharmacists. That slippage was to the detriment of the customer as well as to the small pharmacies, and we were seeing small pharmacies going out of business. Many of the small pharmacies do not want to see simply a reversal to the previous situation just because there is now, as it is argued, a surfeit of pharmacies or an adequacy of pharmacies, or whatever we may say.
My own local pharmacist Mr. Michael Franks (from whom I quote every time I touch upon the subject in this House) as far as I am concerned is, like my general practitioner, a fount of wisdom and a wise counsellor. I consult him frequently.
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, the noble Lord will send him a free copy of Hansard.
Lord Ennals: My Lords, I am not paid for it, if that was the suggestion.
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, I merely said that I expect that gentleman will get a free copy of Hansard tomorrow.
Lord Ennals: My Lords, I promised him that if I were to refer to him I would give him a free copy of Hansard so he gets paid. I thought for one horrid moment that the noble Baroness was suggesting that I was not declaring an interest.
I am quoting my pharmacist and he said:
"I trust you will push for your Robin Hood scheme to be retained".
Two of his arguments as a small pharmacist tire:
"Small contractors are useful to the community"—
so say all of us, including the Nuffield Committee. He says:
"Nobody in the pharmacy gains from the scheme to any great extent—but smaller contractors lose out to a great extent
I certainly do not want to see introduced into our country a system which squeezes out the small corner-of-the-street pharmacies who often are vital members of the community and to whom, because they are better known, and not just a little corner of a big pharmacy, is someone to whom one goes for consultation.
I turn briefly to hospital pharmacists on which this time I must declare an interest as the editorial adviser to the new publication Pharmacy Management, which brought out a special supplement on hospital pharmacy in April this year. The past 20 years have seen two highly significant developments in the nature and conduct of pharmaceutical services in hospitals. It has been noticeable in this debate that we have talked almost entirely about community services. I think that this is quite right because three-quarters of the pharmacists are working in the community. I said there have been two highly significant developments. The first has been acceptance of the principle of specialisation within hospital pharmacy. Among these

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two key areas are quality assurance and drug information. The second even more critical development was what has been described as the move of the pharmacist out of the pharmacy and onto the ward. The potential consequences of this development raise by far the most important issues in considering the future role of the hospital pharmacist.
There was a whole section in the Nuffield report of great significance to hospital pharmacists, touching on pay and a variety of other issues that I am not going to go into but which I hope the Government will study because we shall want to go into them eventually. I do not think that we can expect from the noble Baroness a reaction to every one of the 42 recommendations, or however many there were, in her speech tonight. It would otherwise be a very long speech.
If I may quote from Pharmacy Management:
"Hospital pharmacy over the last 10–15 years has been leading the profession in many professional aspects and the potential to continue on this path is certainly present. However, the most overwhelming problems caused by the acute shortage of junior hospital pharmacy personnel are such that not only is the extending role threatened but the very basis of hospital pharmacy is in jeopardy and unable to follow the Nuffield pathway".
I think we must take this very seriously. When I said that it was very good that there are virtually no pharmacists who have had their training and education who are not now putting it at the disposal of the community, the situation actually was much worse than that because there is a serious shortage of pharmacists operating within the hospital system. I think we must try to remedy that.
As I have said, the report has 22 recommendations on hospital pharmacy alone, so that its total number of recommendations must be more like 80 or so. I want to come to my conclusion, but there is a third section that we have not talked about. That is the industrial section. This is an issue which has not been touched upon here and it concerns only a small proportion, relatively, of the pharmacists who are involved in industry. If I may quote a report about Professor Peston, the professor of economics at Queen Mary College, University of London, and a member of the Nuffield inquiry, he said that he had no doubts about the professionalism of hospital pharmacists, who were perhaps the most impressive people he had met on the inquiry, and not many doubts about the professionalism of industrial pharmacists. The real problem, he said, concerned community pharmacists.
That really takes us back to where we started. The bulk of pharmacists in this country are working in the community; and all of us, I think, would echo the basic recommendations of the report that they should not only be trained to the maximum degree; they should not only be enabled to use the skills that they have for our benefit and the benefit of the country; but they should be an integrated and integral part of the community health team which we shall no doubt discuss when the White Paper which introduced a Green Paper which introduced a Blue Paper introduced by the Government comes up for debate in this House.
8.3 p.m.
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, may I first of all add my thanks to those who have already praised the
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noble Lord, Lord Hunter of Newington, for giving us this opportunity to debate the report of the Nuffield inquiry into pharmacy. The timing of this debate can be looked at by me in two ways. The various exchanges of views we have been listening to will certainly be noted by my colleagues in another place who are presently discussing the National Health Service (Amendment) Bill. Those same views will most certainly be valued in the context of the Government's discussion document on primary health care. However, these two factors leave me little choice but to say that the Government are examining carefully the recommendations of the Nuffield report and are consulting interested parties about the way forward. I would not want to say anything today to pre-empt or prejudice the consultations that lie ahead on these important issues.
The Government wish to see discussion on the important issues of how to make the best use of nursing skills and clinical expertise. Views are being sought on five main issues contained in the report. One of these is that, as part of the nursing care programmes, nurses should be able to prescribe a limited list of items and that they should be able to use their professional judgment on matters such as the timing and dosage of drugs prescribed by doctors for pain relief. Ministers will be holding a series of meetings with representatives of the professions, or consumer organisations and other bodies. But they will also want to hear from local bodies and individuals, those engaged in providing care, those receiving it and others with an interest. So, until all the consultations are completed, it would be premature for me to make any statement on this issue. I am sorry to keep on saying that I am not going to say anything—and boy, am I going to take a long time to say nothing!
The noble Baroness, Lady McFarlane, described the nurses in the Cumberlege report. The Government will be very interested to have the views of all interested parties on the proposals in the Cumberlege report that nurses should be able to prescribe a limited list of items and a varied dosage of drugs. Any legal or statutory implications arising from whatever changes are recommended will be considered at the end of the consultation period when all comments have been examined and analysed. These would obviously be new training requirements, if changes were proposed, and these would be brought to the attention of the nurse education and training bodies.
What I would wish to say immediately is how much the Government welcome the establishment of the committee of inquiry by the Nuffield Foundation and we are pleased to note the publication of this detailed and thorough report. Let me illustrate just how thorough the committee was. It met 29 times, received over 200 submissions, held 12 sessions for oral evidence and made a number of visits to working pharmacies. We congratulate the committee for its work. The report represents an important contribution to an important debate.
The Nuffield report covers all aspects of pharmacy: in the community, in the hospital, in industry, and in education and training. The aspect of pharmacy with which the public most often comes into contact is community pharmacy—the local chemist about whom we heard so much this evening. Public interest

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in medicines and health has always been evident. Nowadays, however, although patients need a prompt and efficient service, they quite rightly want more information given to them. They want to know more about their treatment; more about any potential side-effects of their medication; and they are more willing to accept greater responsibility for their own health.
At the same time, there has been a shift of emphasis in the role of the community pharmacist. He still has the task of providing an accessible and responsible source of advice about the treatment of minor ailments, over-the-counter medicines and counselling patients on the use of prescription medicines. However, as the noble Lord, Lord Hunter, said, community pharmacists are now rarely called upon to make up a medicine from different ingredients. Now, most medicines are supplied already prepared in a form allowing direct supply to the patient. These are the so-called original packs. But, while the pharmacist's expertise on the manufacture of medicines is now not so important, other areas of the pharmacist's knowledge are increasing in importance. The limitations of medicines, their possible side-effects, interactions between different medicines and foods: these are all areas in which the patient relies on his local pharmacist to complete his proper and efficient treatment.
It is our belief that these developments create a need for, and provide an opportunity for, the skills of community pharmacists to be put to better use. The Government are committed to using the skilled resources of pharmacy as effectively as possible. The Nuffield report makes a number of recommendations about the development of a wider role for pharmacists. There may well be; I should like to say to the noble Lord, Lord Hunter, a role for pharmacists in the fight against drug abuse. I am sure that this will be one of the topics which will be aired when we discuss the possible wider role of pharmacists and I shall be very pleased to hear the view of the profession itself on this subject.
The second stage of our policy is to develop the role of the pharmacist in allowing the profession to make a greater contribution to patient care. With the agreement of the profession, we have embarked on a two-stage process to achieve our joint aim, which is better pharmaceutical services for patients. Stage 1 is the introduction of a new form of contract, a better arrangement for pharmacists that is less complex, more efficient and more conducive to a more effective distribution of pharmacies. Stage 2 (the development of a wider role for pharmacists), will have a firm basis, provided by the new contract for pharmacists.
In 1985, after more than a year of negotiations between the pharmacists' negotiating body, the Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Committee, agreement on a new NHS contract for pharmacists was reached. It was approved by the then Minister for Health and by a conference of the local pharmaceutical committees. Both sides agreed on the desirability of early implementation. However, in the light of subsequent legal advice it was reluctantly decided to delay the introduction of the new contract to allow the Government to confirm their powers to
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make the new arrangements for the allocation of NHS contracts. The National Health Service (Amendment) Bill, which is currently being considered in another place, contains the necessary powers.
The new arrangements would not exercise any control over non-NHS retail pharmacy. Failure to obtain an NHS contract does not stop a pharmacist from setting up a dispensing pharmacy, if the market can bear it. The Government would not wish to interfere with private enterprise and we are not doing so now. The issue here is about contracts to provide a public service and how to avoid the cost of excessive provision.
To follow up a point which was put by the noble Lord, Lord Hunter, in rural areas, whether the dispensing is done by doctors or pharmacists or both is determined by the rural dispensing committee. We believe these arrangements command the support of both professions and we have no plans to change them. They will exist alongside the new provisions.
I am very pleased to note the Nuffield report's general support for the new contract. However, I should point out that the report makes three suggestions to temper the powers proposed for family practitioner committees. They are: that the use of the price mechanism should be fully utilised and that the role of pharmacists in deciding when a new contract should be awarded should be looked at again, as should the proposed appeals mechanism. We are considering these suggestions carefully, in the context of the new contract, the report as a whole, and the debate in another place on the National Health Service (Amendment) Bill. However, those reservations should not divert us from the report's general endorsement of the new contract arrangements, which the report considers are basically well conceived.
Moving on to stage 2, the committee of inquiry stated that it was anxious to ensure that its recommendations would be both realistic and cost-effective while, so far as is possible, reflecting consumer choice. Also, it said that the recommendations were directed towards improving the use of existing resources rather than increasing them. This shows a realistic and sensible approach which I commend. The Government will examine carefully what further contribution pharmacists might make to primary health care services. This will include how such services might be paid for and monitored to ensure quality of service and value for money.
We agree with the general principle that the remuneration system should support and encourage the activities we want pharmacists to provide under the National Health Service. That was a point raised, I think, by my noble friend Lady Gardner and by the noble Lord, Lord Rea. It has long been our position that we are prepared to introduce a system of payments which will reward good professional practice. We have made this point to the pharmacists' negotiators at many meetings. The great barrier hitherto to such a system has been the absence of a generally agreed body of standards within the NHS contract. Now that discussions with the Pharmaceutical Society are going forward, that barrier appears to have been passed.

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Another factor we shall have to take into account is that community pharmacy in this country has developed in a way that has required the pharmacist also to be a shopkeeper. When looking at the requirements of fulfilling customer demand through a public health service, I think there is no conflict between the successful businessman's need to provide a decent service for customers and the ethics of public service. I intend in no way to belittle the obvious importance of other pharmacists when I say that combining business motivation with public service is a great strength of the pharmacy profession in this country. It should be borne in mind that the average NHS pharmacist spends 95 per cent. of his time on dealing with NHS pharmaceutical services rather than his other business interests.
The noble Lord, Lord Rea, asked about the number of prescriptions going down, and so on. If the number of prescriptions goes down, the pharmacy profession does not suffer. The fees are set at a level which distributes all the money to the profession. If the number of prescriptions goes down, each fee goes up and the same amount of money is spent.
Let me now turn to hospital pharmacy. I know that the hospital pharmacists, like other professional groups employed by the NHS, are concerned about their role, management responsibilities and accountability in the new management arrangements in the health authorities. I hope they will see this change as an opportunity to develop ideas and formulate policies in the interests of all involved: patients, the taxpayer and the community as a whole. The essential message of the Griffiths proposals and the Government's policy is to ensure that the NHS delivers the goods to its customers as imaginatively, efficiently and effectively as possible.
The noble Lord, Lord Winstanley, practically issued a "dare" to me; but with regard to out-patient prescribing I rather fear the noble Lord may not like my answer very much. A distinction has to be made between prescribing and dispensing. Our policy, about which the noble Lord, Lord Winstanley, has talked, is very clear. Prescribing is the responsibility of the clinician with clinical responsibility for the patient. Once the patient has a prescription it can be dispensed either in the hospital or in the community by the pharmacist. The hospital doctor does not send the patient back to the GP to prescribe. That is why I said I did not think the noble Lord would like my reply. I repeat, as my predecessor, my noble friend Lord Glenarthur, said, that we shall follow up all cases that are brought to our attention; and we would welcome the details the noble Lord has.
The health authorities should be perfectly aware of our policy about prescribing for hospital out-patients. The doctor who is clinically responsible for the patient's care should prescribe any necessary drugs. The decision as to which doctor has clinical responsibility is for the doctors concerned. Health authorities should not attempt to transfer prescribing responsibility to GPs in order to make savings: nor on the grounds that a GP has a continuing responsibility for his patients. Such measures are not legitimate contributions to cost-improvement programmes and can add to the total cost of the NHS; nor are they in the
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best interests of patients. As the noble Lord, Lord Winstanley, said, they can put them to unnecessary inconvenience. My department follows up cases brought to its attention where health authorities appear not to be following this policy. As I said before, we shall gladly look into any specific cases which are brought to our attention.
Lord Winstanley: My Lords, will the noble Baroness give way? I was most interested to hear what the noble Baroness has said. I know, of course, that her words are very carefully followed by health authorities. I wonder whether on this occasion she could take special steps to make sure that the words she has just spoken in answer to the point. I raised are brought specifically to the attention of health authorities; because I am bound to tell her that many health authorities are acting in a manner quite contrary to that advice.
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, I would not want to go to the extra expense of sending out a blanket notice, but I will see that my words are brought to the notice of the health authorities. For instance, we have a review process, and that is one of the questions which it would be very good to ask them—
Lord Ennals: Send them a copy of Hansard.
Baroness Trumpington: That would also be extra expense. The pharmacists' main concern on Griffiths has been that its implementation could fragment the current grouping of pharmaceutical services. These arrangements, which were implemented in the early 1970s, followed the recommendations of the Noel Hall report. If any authority contemplated action which would be detrimental to the provision of pharmaceutical services for hospital patients, I am sure that pharmaceutical officers would not be slow to offer the necessary advice. I am equally sure that the principles of wise management, which must prevail in the NHS, will ensure that the advice will be heeded, provided it is seen to be in the interests of patients.
Since we have decided that it is for each health authority to determine its own arrangements, it is inevitable that there will be different decisions and detailed structures from district to district: there can be no ready-made solution dictated from the centre, if the meeting of local needs is to predominate. However, we should not forget that pharmaceutical chief officers will, of course, be accountable to their general manager for day-to-day management functions. But they will remain directly accountable and have direct access to their health authority on the presentation and quality of professional care.
The staff side have not yet accepted the management side's offer and have asked for a meeting to discuss some aspects of it in greater detail. I say that in reply to the noble Lord, Lord Winstanley, about the Nuffield report not saying enough about the recruitment problems in hospital pharmacies. This meeting is being arranged and it would not be right for me to speculate on the outcome while negotiations are in progress. No claim for salary increases in respect of 1986–87 has yet been received.
I am confident that all pharmaceutical officers will be able to bring new thinking, new energy and a wider,

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more flexible view of their service demands in order to produce the more efficient NHS which we all recognise to be so necessary.
I was teasing the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, at an earlier stage, but, of course, I share his admiration for the wisdom and hard work of pharmacists in general. I can out-do the noble Lord and tell him that I am acting as a sponsor to my ex-pharmacist for a scholarship to an American university, but I fear that she will not get a copy of Hansard.
Pharmacists, in whatever sector they work—the community, the hospital, education and training or industry—are facing a period of change. I am confident that it will be change for the better; an exciting period rather than an uncertain one, which pharmacists will find challenging rather than frustrating, but, above all, a period when the pharmacist's role will expand rather than contract.
Lord Hunter of Newington: My Lords, I think we shall all want to thank the noble Baroness for her vigorous reply, and, in spite of many cautions, the light of hope was strongly shining through her statement, which, I think, was welcomed by everybody here. May I also thank all noble Lords and Baronesses who have taken part in this debate. I beg leave to withdraw my Motion.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

Civil Protection in Peacetime Bill
8.23 p.m.
Lord Renton: My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time.
This Bill was introduced in another place and piloted through another place with great ability by my honourable friend Sir Nicholas Bonsor, MP for Upminster. I am glad to say that it had the support of all parties, and that is not surprising, surely, for its limited purpose is necessarily one which commends itself to everyone who wishes to improve the protection of the British people against peacetime disasters of all kinds.
It is a short and simple Bill which enables those local authorities who are required by law to carry out functions under the Civil Defence Act 1948—and, I should add, the regulations made under that Act—to use for peacetime purposes the resources that are available to them for civil defence. Those resources include personnel, premises, equipment, services, facilities and, I dare say, finance; and when I say "personnel" I include not only local authority staffs but volunteers as well. The Bill is designed to encourage but not to enforce the use of civil defence personnel and other resources when making plans and preparations to deal with peacetime disasters, and, of course, to deal with them when they occur.
May we consider briefly the nature of peacetime disasters which arise in our modern complex industrial society? We have had some pretty nasty ones in our time. Of course, some of them are climatic and we have had floods, blizzards and even hurricanes here. Sheffield has suffered twice in the last 30 years from
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hurricanes—it is most extraordinary that it should have done so, but it did—causing great damage. Other peacetime disasters have been due to man-made conditions; for example, Aberfan, the massive oil pollution that we have had several times in the estuaries around the coasts, and major industrial disasters like the terrible chemical explosion at Flixborough.
It so happens that on each of the most serious occasions when those various disasters have occurred the local authorities have used our civil defence organisations, with their communication systems and their volunteers, to deal with those peacetime disasters, and it has been of tremendous help and consequence that that should have been so. But, curiously enough, the legality of their doing so has been in doubt. Perhaps if they had been challenged they could always have asked, "What better kind of training exercise for civil defence could you have than having to deal with a peacetime disaster?" But under this Bill the matter can be removed beyond doubt.
Some of us have been drawing attention for some years—and I refer particularly to those of us among your Lordships and in another place who are supporters of the National Council for Civil Defence—to the need for local authorities to be prepared to protect their people from the risk of peacetime nuclear hazards, even those arising on the Continent of Europe. Most local authorities have acknowledged their responsibility for trying to do something about this within their limited powers. But, of course, some local authorities did not bother at all. They just declared themselves nuclear free zones and left it at that.
But now that we have had Chernobyl, which has been such a terrible tragedy for so many people in Russia, surely we should be alerted to the need for doing more and for every local authority to do more—not just some of them. Although the radioactive fall-out from Chernobyl drifted over a very large area, none of it on this occasion came over here to any dangerous extent—mercifully.
However, if the Chernobyl disaster, or something like it, had happened in the United Kingdom or on the continental coast of the Channel, or in any not very far distant part of the Continent from us, our civil protection capability would have been ineffective. Thousands of casualties would have been caused unnecessarily through lack of adequate preparations. There are scores of nuclear power stations on the Continent. Some European countries have gone in for nuclear power even more than we have done. Various types of station have been used, although, so far as I know, none of them of the vulnerable type that was at Chernobyl. Although there has so far been no accident involving radiation or fallout on anything like the scale of Chernobyl, either in the United Kingdom or on the Continent near to us, it is surely vital that our local authorities should now be prepared.
This Bill will enable them to be prepared merely by using the civil defence resources which they are obliged to have, and using them for peace-time purposes. If they do not make civil defence preparations as they are required to do by law they will not be able to take advantage of this enabling Bill. That is plain. I hope

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that I have established sufficiently the case for this simple non-controversial, useful, Bill.
I am glad to see that my noble friend Lord Davidson is to speak for the Government. Like Sir Nicholas Bonsor, I should like to acknowledge the part played by the Home Office in advising on this Bill. I must stress that this is Bonsor's Bill. It will go down in history—informally, not in the official records—as Bonsor's Bill, and will be remembered as such.
In conclusion, I should like to ask my noble friend Lord Davidson two simple but important questions. First, what conclusions for this country do the Government draw from the Russian experience at Chernobyl? Secondly, to what extent are local authorities now complying with the responsibilities under the civil defence regulations of 1983? We need to know the answer to that second question because upon that answer depends the extent to which the enabling powers given by this Bill can be used effectively. I beg to move.
Moved, That the Bill be now read a second time. —(Lord Renton.)
8.32 p.m.
Earl Grey: My Lords, we on these Benches welcome this short but important Bill, especially in the light of what has recently occurred at Chernobyl. That disaster brought home the consequences, and the precautions that have to be taken. I accept that our nuclear power stations are of a different design, but that is no guarantee. That kind of disaster is only one illustration of what is covered by this Bill. I understand that there are only 9,000 volunteers serving in the civil defence reserves, of whom 2,000 are in my home county of Devon. I have witnessed the good works and exercises that take place in Devon in conjunction with the WRVS and St. John Ambulance Brigade and would welcome the same effort and support being given nationwide. I should like to ask the noble Viscount the Minister what steps are being taken to advertise and promote the need for people to volunteer.
I reinforce a concern that my honourable friend Mr. Stephen Ross raised in another place regarding the grant of 75 per cent. to local authorities. Because of the need for civil protection in this country should not the full cost of local staffing be borne by the Government? In another place the Minister answered by saying that the grant was being reviewed. I ask the noble Viscount what is the result of that review, or shall we know in the near future?
With reference to the London Fire and Civil Defence Authority, that authority is concerned that it is not included in Section 138 of the Local Government Act 1972 and it wishes to be included. We wish this Bill a speedy passage.
8.35 p.m.
Baroness Ewart-Biggs: My Lords, I am sure that the House is grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Renton, for introducing this Bill into your Lordships' House after its successful passage in another place. We are all aware of the extreme concern which the noble Lord has shown in the past about the need for adequate
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provision for civil protection both in war time and in peace time. On 6th February last year we had a long and wide-ranging debate on this very subject during which the noble Lord, Lord Renton, cited many instances of disasters which had tragically occurred. Indeed, he has outlined some of them today. He has also reminded us of the terrible Chernobyl disaster, which has brought home to us in the worst possible way the dangers inherent in nuclear power. The point has therefore been made very clear by him that we live in dangerous times and that it is increasingly important that the Government provide the resources necessary for local authorities to be able to cope with peacetime emergencies.
In the Conservative manifesto of 1983, published over three years ago, it was said:
"We propose to amend the Civil Defence Act 1948 to enable civil defence funds to be used in safeguarding against peacetime emergencies as well as against hostile attacks".
Perhaps the noble Viscount, Lord Davidson, when commenting on behalf of the Government, can explain why that commitment has taken so long to be fulfilled.
As the noble Lord, Lord Renton, said, this Bill is small and its purpose is self evidently very good. The Labour Party recognises that planning for major accidents and natural disasters in peacetime is a proper and legitimate local authority function.
In another place it was said from the Opposition Benches:
"We must welcome anything that tries to concentrate resources on the peacetime use of civil defence rather than on preparation for hypothetical war use". [Official Report, Commons, 21/2/86; col. 614.]
I fully support this comment. However, I think that I must say that I also support the previous comment of the same speaker in the House of Commons when he said that he had:
"the severest doubts about the value of civil defence or civil protection preparation for a nuclear war". [Official Report, Commons, 21/2/86; col. 613].
Therefore what is so good about the Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Renton, is that it enables a framework set up for a doubtful role in war to fulfil a positive and certain one in peace. It is for that reason that I am sure we are deeply grateful to him.
I support the principle of the Bill but I should like to make clear my position on the value of civil defence and on the present situation with respect to this Government's provision for peacetime civil protection. I realise that this is not a Government Bill and that the noble Viscount, Lord Davidson, representing the Government, is not answering for the Government with respect to the content of the Bill. Nevertheless I should like to take the opportunity to address a few comments to him. The funding for the emergency provisions comes in part from the powers of the local authorities to incur expenditure under Section 138 of the Local Government Act 1972, and the Scottish Act of 1973. However—a point that the noble Earl, Lord Grey, has touched upon—as a result of the abolition of the metropolitan authorities, the fire and civil defence authorities that replace them are not entitled to such powers or funding. This may be a misunderstanding, but it is a good opportunity for the Minister to clear up the concern once and for all. The

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chairman of the London Fire and Civil Defence Authority, in a letter that he wrote to me this morning, explains the problem that he faces. Briefly, this is what he says:
"Fire and civil defence authorities already have specialised staff trained to make contingency plans and the facilities to co-ordinate remedial actions during civil emergencies; unlike their counterparts in the shire counties, they no longer have the means to utilise their skills and resources."
This appears to be an illogical and inconsistent approach. He goes on to say:
"The lack of civil emergency planning powers has potentially serious implications for London. The Section 138 powers in the capital are vested in the 32 London Boroughs and the City of London Corporation, with each having the power to prepare its own plan. It would, however, be pointless to regard a major emergency or disaster (such as … the Thames flooding, a major escape of toxic material or a passenger aircraft crash) as an individual borough matter. Such an incident would need co-operation and coordination between any number of London boroughs. Surely it would be more appropriate for London's Fire and Civil Defence Authority (which is, after all, made up of representatives from each borough) to co-ordinate London-wide planning for civil emergencies."
In another place, as the noble Earl, Lord Grey, said, the Minister was asked whether he would consider this question. In response to the request, the Minister said:
"I take the hon. Gentleman's point that if there are to be effective plans for civil defence by the local fire and civil defence authorities through the implementation of the 1983 regulations we shall have to ensure that resources are available that will enable them effectively to be made."
Perhaps the Minister can tell the House what steps are being taken to ensure that civil protection for peacetime emergencies will be adequately funded.
The other source of civil defence funding is the civil defence grant, which is discretionary. It became clear in the debate in another place that funding through this channel for peacetime emergencies would not be possible unless that funding went towards projects that would also have a wartime application. Can the noble Lord say what facilities and resources are available to the local authorities for specific planning for peacetime emergencies?
In his speech at the beginning of the debate in February last year, the noble Lord, Lord Renton, said that there were a number of reasons why peacetime emergency planning should be at the forefront of a debate on civil defence. The first of these was:
"that peacetime disasters occur in this world with increasing severity in our modern industrial society, and we want to know what is going to be done about it".—[Official Report, 6/2/85; col. 1068.]
While very much welcoming the Bill, given the present circumstances, I should like to end by reiterating the noble Lord, Lord Renton's, question with respect to peacetime emergencies and by asking the Government whether they feel that the Bill will be sufficient or that it will be right to do something further at some stage.
8.44 p.m.
Viscount Davidson: My Lords, the first thing that I have to say this evening is that this Bill has the full support of the Government. It is both constructive and helpful. Secondly, I should like to emphasise that, as was clearly demonstrated during its progress through another place, it derives support from all the political parties. No doubt there are different views about the
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practical effectiveness and the broader implications of planning against the horror of wartime attack. The main purpose of this Bill, however, is that it willl enable civil defence legislation to be used to prepare and protect the public against the probability and possibility of peacetime disasters. It seeks to ensure that there is no legal hindrance to a flexible use of civil defence resources.
If we look at the resources that should be available to local authorities in meeting their civil defence obligations, possible peacetime uses are readily apparent. County authorities should have trained and experienced emergency planning staff; emergency centres, designed and equipped for use in coordinating activity; communications equipment, to ensure that the authorities and services involved can be kept in touch; and informed and enthusiastic volunteers in the community. The authority should also have prepared a prescribed range of civil defence plans covering topics such as emergency feeding arrangements and temporary accommodation for those made homeless. These plans, with obvious modifications, can often form the basis of responses to peacetime emergencies. The Bill would give specific authority for account to be taken of those modifications in the civil defence planning process.
The Bill is clearly consistent with the all-hazards approach to emergency planning, which the Government encourage and which has found widespread support. There are clear benefits from a unified approach to planning, where the expertise built up in making preparations to cope with one form of emergency can flow through to inform thinking about another. The all-hazards approach does not require any facile equation of peacetime disasters and war: nobody would claim that they are the same. The horror and devastation of a nuclear war would of course be of a different order from the most severe and extensive emergency in peacetime. But even in the very worst circumstances there would be some survivors to whom some help could be given if proper preparations had been made beforehand.
The terrible accident at Chernobyl is of course in the front of all our minds. Although the physical effects on this country have thankfully been slight, the incident has given further weight to the all-hazards approach, as we have contemplated radioactive fallout from a non-military source. My noble friend Lord Renton asked what conclusions we had drawn from the accident. The Government will be reviewing contingency arrangements in the light of experience following this incident. There will undoubtedly be many lessons to be learnt, but it is readily apparent that civil defence resources could have a role to play in these sorts of circumstances. Had Chernobyl, for instance, been closer at hand people would have had to have been evacuated, housed and fed. This is the sharp end of all emergency planning and embodies its basic humanitarian motives. The Bill seeks to ensure that the mechanisms developed to help alleviate suffering in wartime can be deployed whenever and wherever it may be appropriate in peacetime.
My noble friend, Lord Renton asked to what extent local authorities are now complying with their responsibilities under the 1983 regulations. This is

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indeed relevant to this Bill since those authorities that are reluctant to comply are unlikely to have in place the resources to which the Bill relates. The Government are currently compiling a full assessment of the state of civil defence preparedness in local authorities on the basis of the plans they have prepared and the results of visits to individual authorities by the Home Office's civil defence adviser. It is too soon to draw final conclusions, but it is clear that the pattern is uneven and that there is much still to be done in many areas. The Government are preparing a planned programme for full implementation of the regulations, setting out priorities and target dates for progress over a number of years. That programme will be available later this year and will, I hope, do much to encourage co-ordination and consistency in preparedness across the country. I hope that those two answers will satisfy my noble friend.
The noble Earl, Lord Grey, asked me about volunteers. There are about 13,000 local authority community volunteers in total, including volunteers' scientific advisers. There are in addition some 11,000 volunteers attached to the United Kingdom warning and monitoring organisation. Advertising for volunteers is in the hands of the local authorities, and I am sure that the noble Lord's county of Devon can show him how to run a successful advertising campaign.
The noble Earl and the noble Baroness, Lady Ewart-Biggs, asked about funding and the level of grant. The majority of local authorities' civil defence expenditure attracts grant aid at 75 per cent. Some categories of expenditure—principally communications equipment, training and the expenses of volunteers—attract a 100 per cent. grant. The Government are currently considering proposals to extend the categories of expenditure eligible for 100 per cent. grant, particularly to cover staff costs.
The noble Earl and the noble Baroness mentioned the subject of fire and civil defence authorities, particularly in London. County and district councils have a general power under Section 138 of the Local Government Act 1972 to incur expenditure in responding to peacetime emergencies. That does not apply to the joint fire and civil defence authorities in London and the metropolitan counties because of their more limited responsibilities and resources. The Bill will however ensure that a joint authority will have power to do everything of which it is capable in responding to a peace-time emergency. Its fire brigade would be involved in any case, and the Bill will provide that its civil defence resources may also be brought into play.
The noble Baroness, Lady Ewart-Biggs, asked why it has taken so long to fulfil our manifesto commitment. All I can say is that the Government have always been determined that that commitment should be fulfilled; but your Lordships know perfectly well the pressures on the time of both Houses, and we are all aware of that. That is why we are extremely grateful to my honourable friend Sir Nicholas Bonsor and my noble friend Lord Renton for bringing forward this Private Member's Bill.
A number of local authorities have already used their civil defence resources in responding to emergencies such as major floods, blizzards, and the
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leakage of dangerous chemicals. However, as matters stand, there is no firm statutory basis for doing so, and the Government believe that that is wrong. The Civil Defence Act 1948 is couched entirely in terms of hostile attack by a foreign power, and civil defence grant can only be paid in support of expenditure in connection with emergencies.
The Bill does not seek to amend the basis of the 1948 Act. Its aim is more modest and simple. It takes the 1948 Act and local authorities' activity under it as they stand as a starting point. It then seeks to ensure that that considerable human and financial investment in contingency planning can be used more flexibly. The Bill's purpose is to recognise the practical basis of the all-hazards approach to emergency planning, by providing for more efficient essential use of resources and thereby achieving the best possible value for money from the country's investment in civil defence contingency planning. I believe we can all agree about the desirability of that aim.
Finally, I congratulate my honourable friend Sir Nicholas Bonsor for introducing this useful Bill and for steering it so capably through its consideration in another place. I am delighted that my noble friend Lord Renton has now taken it on and has brought it to your Lordships' House. In the hand of such a knowledgeable and effective advocate, I am confident that the Bill will continue to make speedy progress towards the statute book.
8.53 p.m.
Lord Renton: My Lords, I thank those noble Lords who have spoken in this short debate. I am sure all those who have heard it will agree with me that although it was short, it was important and very encouraging. I find it encouraging for two main reasons. First, because of the firm agreement on both sides of your Lordships' House, and among different parties, on the need for improving the protection of our people in peacetime. Secondly, because of the acknowledgement that much still needs to be done.
I also find it encouraging that my noble friend Lord Davidson, in replying to the various points made in the debate, was able to give fairly positive answers. To some extent, they are answers that are of immediate application, but my noble friend also held out some hope of further action to be taken by the Government in what I have regarded as a reasonably-paced evolution in the past few years in improving our protection.
The review that is taking place of the implementation of the civil defence regulations has been going on for some time. When my noble friend says that the outcome will be made known later this year, I hope to goodness that we will not be disappointed in that respect. Although we would not have expected an immediate reply at this moment, I also take note of what the Government are doing about considering the effects upon this country of the lessons to be learnt from Chernobyl. There again, I hope that we shall not have to wait too long.
Every speaker except myself has mentioned the fire and civil defence authorities. I too have received representations, and I read what was said in another place about the doubts that have been expressed,

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especially by the London fire and civil defence authority. But having taken a closer look at the various powers that they have, I do not believe that any amendment to the Bill, to the extent that one would be in order, would add very much to the powers that they have.
So far as concerns some of the amendments that the authorities have in mind, they would be beyond the scope of the Bill and could not be discussed in your Lordships' House any more than they were in another place. I hope therefore that we can dispel the anxieties that have existed, rightly or wrongly, on the part of those newly-created fire and civil defence authorities. I do not believe that they will find themselves limited. But under this Bill, as my noble friend Lord Davidson made abundantly clear, they will have opportunities, just as the ordinary civil defence authorities will have opportunities.
I must pay tribute to the, Devon Emergency Volunteers, who have set an example to the rest of the country. I am very glad that the noble Earl, Lord Grey, mentioned them. With the encouraging short debate that we have had, I too hope that we will get this Bill quickly onto the statute book.
On Question, Bill read a second time, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

Children and Young Persons (Amendment) Bill
8.57 p.m.
Baroness Lane-Fox: My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time.
The honourable Member for Westbury sponsored the Bill in another place, and I am grateful to him for entrusting me to take the Bill through your Lordships' House. If at first glance the Bill appears to be slender, when read more carefully it will be seen that its provisions are clearly important, and sometimes very important, to persons who are in what are often stressful situations.
My own interest in child care started way back in 1939, when my very first job was that of billeting clerk to a rural district council for a reception area during the government evacuation scheme. Later, as chief billeting officer dealing with child evacuees, both accompanied and unaccompanied, to see the reaction of infants and school children in their changed circumstances, plus the trouble that threatened their parents or guardians, left me continually interested in that area. Lately, those matters have been highlighted by numbers of dreadful cases, culminating in the tragedy of the Beckford case.
The main objectives of this Bill are, first, to make children in care more safe; and, secondly, to make child care law more fair and just. It is intended as an interim measure of reform in advance of a comprehensive review of child care legislation. The DHSS working party, in its Review of Child Care Now, proposed reform over the whole field. On Second Reading of this Bill in another place the Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Security said
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that consultation was in hand towards this goal and that he was, to use his own words, optimistic that the exercise will be launched before very long.
The Bill before us today aims to tackle, here and now, some of the worst defects in the present system. Nothing in this Bill pre-empts the impending wider reform. In these matters delay can cause harm or even irretrievable damage, so this Bill is designed, please, for action at the earliest possible moment.
Clause 1 provides the power to make regulations concerning the return of a child from care to its home, on trial. This, it is hoped, will prescribe standards and criteria to be ascertained by the social worker before such a move can take place. The regulations will also deal with the level at which, and the manner in which, a decision will be made to take the child home.
Clause 2 refers to appeals. It ensures that the parents always have a right of appeal whether in the name of the child or, when a separate representation order has been made on the grounds that there is or may be a conflict between the interests of the child and those of the parent, in their own name. The Review of Child Law says that,
"such a change would obviate the need to clarify the parent's present right in such cases to appeal on his child's behalf and would therefore meet the Select Committee's concern over the confusion in that part of the law".
This is a real step taken, for I understand there was formerly no right of appeal on this basis.
Clause 3 deals with parties. Subsection (1) has the effect of making parents and guardians automatically parties if a separate representation order is made. Subsection (2) enables grandparents to become parties with the leave of the court, subject to the rules of court, which will make provision for leave to be given in certain circumstances.
On Second Reading in another place the Minister said he was much impressed by the argument of my honourable friend the Member for Westbury on the contribution that grandparents can make in these circumstances towards obtaining the best outcome for the child. On Report stage in another place the Minister said that the rules of court would be outlined in your Lordships' House. I therefore avidly await the comments of my noble friend the Minister, believing that grandparents can play a leading role in a child's life and upbringing.
Initially the honourable Member for Westbury proposed that in some situations the putative father should be entitled to apply for leave to be a party, but as the whole question of illegitimacy is still so complex and is under review the Bill as it now stands does not pursue this further. However, the question of grandparents is different. I understand that there is no statutory definition of "grandparent", and there seems no grounds for putting grandparents through a test of legitimacy. After all, many of the cases concern illegitimate children who often are particularly close to a grandparent. At Committee stage, I shall table an amendment aimed to allow for this.
Clause 4 is about rules of court. Subsection (1) enables an authority to make rules of court providing for this to take effect. Subsection (2) empowers rules to make a parent or grandparent become a party Clause 5 refers to the commencement of these measures.

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It is my fervent hope that my noble friend the Minister will be able to meet our request. It is a request that the adoption of these measures shall be expedited as far as is practically possible. In matters affecting the safety and welfare of children there is always the spectre of losing the race against time. Knowing the sensitive qualities of my noble friend the Minister, I believe this question is in good hands. Clauses 6, 7 and 8 are technical and are, I hope, self-explanatory.
I trust that your Lordships will decide to give the Bill its Second Reading. It embodies valuable reforms to strengthen child care legislation in those areas where at present this does not match the depth of public concern. The Bill was tellingly brought forward in another place by the honourable Member for Westbury, and I now beg to move.
Moved, That the Bill be now read a second time.—(Baroness Lane-Fox.)
9.5 p.m.
Lord Meston: My Lords, we must thank and congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, for introducing the Bill to your Lordships' House and for her exposition of it. Indeed, we must also congratulate the honourable Member for Westbury, Mr. Dennis Walters, for his skill and tenacity in taking the Bill through another place.
The Bill endeavours to deal with a number of different areas concerning care proceedings—areas of concern which have been identified by practitioners in this part of the law. There can be few more difficult or important decisions that a social worker or a court has to make than the decision to take a child away from his or her natural parents and the subsequent decision whether or not to restore that child to the family from which it has been removed.
It goes without saying that all participants in these decisions are motivated by compassion for the adults and children involved. But much more than that is needed. An expert objective assessment of the facts and of the future risks to which the child may be exposed is vital in every case. Day by day the courts and social services are not just dealing with the dramatic cases which catch the headlines, involving wicked people who kill or maim innocent children. We now realise, of course, that children are exposed to a much wider range of abuse, neglect and deprivation by parents and step-parents who are more inadequate than wicked.
In this decision-making process a judicial procedure is, I suggest, essential. In practice, of course, the great volume of the work falls on the magistrates, particularly since certain judgments of the courts and, indeed, of your Lordships' House in its judicial capacity have all but removed the safety net of the residual wardship jurisdiction of the High Court in the area of local authority care cases. Few people would doubt the ability or the integrity of the social workers in the vast majority of cases and few would doubt the fairness of the internal procedures which exist within the social service departments. But sometimes wrong decisions are made—or worse still, sometimes no decision is made—and a child's fate is left to drift.
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All the decisions in this area are of such fundamental importance and involve such basic human instincts, needs, emotions and relationships that it is essential that the ultimate responsibility rests with expert and independent courts to provide a civilised forum, and indeed a catalyst where it is needed. It takes little observation of or participation in these cases to see how, as between the social worker and families of the children involved, suspicions, resentments and frustrations can build up.
This Bill comes to your Lordships' House in a considerably diluted version of the simple and robust Bill that was introduced in another place. I think that of the original Bill only the clauses applying it to the Scilly Isles and disapplying it to Scotland and Northern Ireland remain. Inevitably, the primary reason for its dilution in this way is our old friend "resource implications".
Clause 1 originally provided that a local authority should not return a child from care without the permission of the court, which of course was the product of the great concern that had been mounting over the years but which reached a climax with the Beckford case. On 4th December 1985, at col. 1400 of the Official Report, there appeared a Question for Written Answer put by the noble Lord, Lord Sefton of Garston, who asked the Government:
"How many children have been taken out of care and returned to their parents during the last two years, and how many of these children are reported to have subsequently been ill-treated by their parents".
The noble Baroness, Lady Trumpington, answered:
"Information is not held centrally about the placement of children on their discharge from local authority care; nor about reports of subsequent ill-treatment".
I am bound to say that seems a very disappointing lack of central information. One wonders what the answer would have been—and one suspects that it would have been the same—if the Question had been: "How many children still in care are returned to their parents and are subsequently ill-treated?"
As a result of amendments in another place the precautions envisaged will be left to regulations, which of course will have to combine the various particular and general conditions that are necessary to provide the safeguards that are so essential. Indeed, we look forward to seeing such regulations, in draft at least, to see whether they achieve what is needed.
Clause 2, again in its original form, met a long-overdue need for reform in the appellate structure provided in the Children and Young Persons Act 1969. At present, appeal is to the Crown Court with all its criminal overtones. Again, I gather that that clause as drafted was removed at the Government's insistence, but it must be said that in the interdepartmental review of child care law the avenue of appeal to the High Court was recommended. I wonder whether the Government can indicate that when comprehensive reform is introduced this specific recommendation will be adopted. As to what is left in Clause 2, as it now is, there can be no argument with it so far as it goes in giving a right of appeal which was absent hitherto.
Clause 3 deals effectively with the remarkable oddity that parents do not have the full status of parties in care proceedings. The desirability of that reform is

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so obvious that it needs no further comment. Clause 3 also allows to grandparents the possibility of that status as a party. Evidence tends to suggest that local authorities vary in their practice as to the extent to which they will look to the wider family for help in resolving issues which involve children. A recent decision of your Lordships' House in its judicial capacity offers a good example. It was a case in which grandparents found that their granddaughter had been taken into care and was being prepared for adoption, and they were held not to have recourse to the High Court in wardship. As the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, has indicated, very often for young children their grandparents can prove the mainstay of the family in crisis as they possess the maturity, concern and responsibility that frankly the parents lack.
On 2nd May, at Report stage of the Bill in another place, the hope was expressed that the rules provided for under this clause would not be too restrictive, and I repeat that hope tonight. The Minister in another place also said that the rules would be outlined in your Lordships' House. I wonder whether the Government are able to indicate when they will be outlined and perhaps they will also give their views on the proposed amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, as to the inclusion of the grandparents of illegitimate children.
I join with the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, in urging a swift implementation of this proposed legislation. This is an area of the law which has already suffered from limping legislation under the Children Act 1975. All too often nowadays, it seems, legislation is passed through Parliament enthusiastically and then left and not brought into force for years even; and indeed sometimes it is amended before it is actually brought into force.
It could be said that this Bill produces piecemeal reform. In a sense it is piecemeal, but it is no less valuable for that; and as the noble Baroness indicated in opening this debate, it will not impede comprehensive reform of child care law which, as we all understand, is under consideration. It is entirely consistent with the interdepartmental report's proposals and indeed to some extent it foreshadows them. We recognise that this Bill represents perhaps half a loaf but I certainly urge upon your Lordships the merits of half a loaf in this context and I offer this Bill unqualified support.
9.15 p.m.
Baroness Faithfull: My Lords, perhaps I may pay tribute to my noble friend Lady Lane-Fox for bringing forward this Private Member's Bill. I also pay tribute to Mr. Dennis Walters, the Member of Parliament for Westbury, in that he showed very great sensitivity in bringing forward a Bill which showed his genuine desire to safeguard the well-being of children, and particularly those at risk. When the Bill was first brought before the other place I disagreed with it. I did not disagree with the motives behind it, nor with the sensitivity shown by the honourable Member for Westbury; I only disagreed with the way it was going to be implemented. I should also like to thank him very much indeed for the letter he wrote to me explaining his reasons.
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The noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, and the noble Lord, Lord Meston, have gone through the Bill so I shall not go through it again, but perhaps I may ask my noble friend the Minister whether she considers that the position of parents and grandparents could be improved even more than proposed in this Bill. I think that perhaps this has been mentioned. Would she agree that legislation should clearly state that parents have a right to appeal to discharge care or supervision orders? At present they can do this on behalf of the child but the court is then put in a difficult position when the child is separately represented and the child's solicitor and guardian ad litem cannot support the application. This problem will not be resolved merely by making parents parties to proceedings once an order for separate representation has been made. It will only be resolved if parents have a clear right to make an application on their own behalf. Would my noble friend the Minister consider that parents should automatically be parties to care proceedings? Should grandparents who are made parties to care proceedings have a right of appeal? I would be most grateful for the views of my noble friend the Minister.
I cannot forbear from making a few other remarks, perhaps outside the Bill but related to it. Again I am grateful to Mr. Walters, the honourable Member for Westbury, for giving me this opportunity. First, many of the recommendations in this Bill are good child care practice. To me it is very sad that in some of the things recommended the place of parents and grandparents has not been acknowledged in day-to-day good child care practice throughout the child care field. Secondly, this brings me to the question of the training of social workers. I plead with the Government to support the desire of the Council for Training and Education in Social Work to improve the training of social workers, particularly in the field of child care and child abuse.
A further point that I would make is that a number of us think that the present juvenile court system is not the best one that we could have. Although I think it would be impossible to transpose the Scottish system on to the English, I wish that we could adopt some of the principles and practices of the panel system in Scotland. That would introduce in a much more understandable way the place of parents, grandparents and other relatives. I went up to Strathclyde some time ago and attended a panel meeting. Sitting in the room—I shall not say completely informally, because there was an atmosphere that the law had to be administered—were the grandparents on both sides, the parents and two aunts. That is how it should be. If we are to support and to help children we must be aware of all the relatives in the case. I will just take the opportunity to say how much I hope that we shall be able to look at our court system for juveniles.
I would make another point which was brought forward by the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, concerning the question of illegitimacy. The Law Commission has written a report on it and drafted a Bill. I very much hope that some of the problems stated by the noble Baroness will not arise if that Bill is brought before Parliament and made law.
Lastly, not only with social workers but with doctors, educationists and all others dealing with children, we have sought for a long time to have

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consolidation of child care law. We have had a law that has been fragmented, and Acts of Parliament have been passed, some of which have been implemented and others not. It was therefore with great relief that we read the report of the Select Committee chaired by Mrs. Renee Short in which she recommended a child care law review.
As has been said by the noble Lord, Lord Meston, and my noble friend Lady Lane-Fox, we want this Bill to go through as quickly as possible. But, having said that, I ask my noble friend the Minister whether it will be incorporated into the child-care law that we very much hope her right honourable friend the Secretary of State is to bring forward. When is that legislation to be brought forward? We very much hope that it will incorporate this laudable Bill.
9.22 p.m.
Lord Ennals: My Lords, as vice-chairman of the all-party children's committee, of which the noble Baroness, Lady Faithfull, is chairman, I start by saying that I agree with every word that she said, and that very much includes the welcome and gratitude that she expressed to the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, for introducing the measure and admiration for Dennis Walters for introducing the original measure. However, I have to say that had it not been significantly changed through all-party collusion in another place, as some might say, I should have found myself standing at this Dispatch Box disagreeing with what was perhaps the major part of the Bill. As we recognise, we are now dealing with a Bill which in almost every respect is different from the one that was introduced with the very best of motives by Dennis Walters with all the experience that he has and the sympathetic approach that has been referred to.
I saw one very interesting vote in the Official Report of the Committee stage. Only the Minister and the Labour Party spokesman were on one side and the rest of the Committee went in another direction. The Minister's powers are great and the Labour Party spokesman's powers of judgment are even greater.
I completely agree with the Bill in its present form, which is why I am grateful to Dennis Walters and the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, for enabling the House to ensure that the Bill goes through. It has many good points. In Clause 1 the power to make regulations for the placement of children in care at home on an on-trial basis is an interesting innovation. I hope that it will prove to be a suitable way of ensuring that children in care placed at home who may be at risk of abuse are properly supervised. We all recognise that supervision has been a great problem.
Clause 2 is also much to be welcomed. Where a parent or guardian is made a party to care proceedings or to an application to discharge a care order, they will have a right of appeal. I was a member of the Select Committee in another place—that seems a long time ago—and we put forward the recommendations which the Government have been subsequently considering. Most of the points included in the Bill were reflected by the Select Committee of which Mrs. Renee Short was the chairman.
Some things have changed. Since 1985, parents involved in care proceedings have had no right of
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appeal. That is clearly unjust. Many care orders are made as a result of allegations against parents which they may deny. The effect of a care order is to transfer all parental rights to an authority until the child is 18. The parents may deny the allegations made against them, but they cannot appeal against the making of an order. That is clearly unjust and it is put right in the Bill. The Bill, therefore, remedies a substantial injustice.
I welcome Clause 3. It provides that where an order is made for the separate representation of children and parents in care proceedings, the parents shall be full parties to the care proceedings. Since 1983, parents have been able to obtain legal aid for care proceedings but they have not been parties to those proceedings and have had only limited rights in those proceedings. By consensus, that is put right in the Bill. Another unjust anomaly is therefore put right in the Bill.
I do not know what the Government's views are, but (and this point was touched upon by the noble Baroness, Lady Faithfull) the clause may be amended in Committee so that parents are automatically parties to care proceedings. That may avoid some of the delay caused by waiting for an order for separate representation before parents are granted party status and would be in line with the recommendations of the child care review.
Clause 3(2) is much to be welcomed. We have talked about grandparents being parties to proceedings. I do not know what the statistics show, but the role of the grandparent in bringing up the child—this may apply especially in a one-parent family—is often important. Casework, particularly in the past two years, has highlighted the injustice suffered by grandparents who wish to have a say in their grandchildren's future but who have in fact no legal rights. I am grateful to the noble Baroness for bringing forward a clause which allows for that. We may be able to make some improvements to that clause in Committee.
Clause 2 should perhaps give grandparents who are made a party to care proceedings a right of appeal. That is not in the Bill, and I should like to see it included.
I know that the Government agree that the time has come for major child care legislation, as the noble Baroness, Lady Faithfull, and the noble Lord, Lord Meston, said. I agree with the concept of family courts or panels. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Faithfull, as a member of the Select Committee, I have seen the system at work at Strathclyde in Scotland. I have seen the informal relationship which seems to be so much more appropriate than that which exists in juvenile courts in England.
I hope that the Minister may be able to give some idea of the timetable for the general legislation and to say whether it will come in at the same time as legislation on family courts which we know the noble and learned Lord, the Lord Chancellor, is now sympathetically considering. It seems many years ago, at a time when I was a member of the Social Services Select Committee in another place, that these proposals were put forward. My one fear is that this modest measure, though very welcome, could give the Government justification for delaying major legislation. I hope that the noble Baroness will be able

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to say that this will not be taken as an excuse for not proceeding at what, I think on all sides of the House we agree, is the time for major child legislation.
9.31 p.m.
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, this debate has shown again the deep concern, knowledge and interest that this House has in matters relating to the welfare and protection of children. I am sure that child abuse, whatever form it may take, is abhorrent to us all. We all want to ensure that appropriate steps are taken to prevent abuse and safeguard children from further abuse and that where it is in the child's best interest, rehabilitation takes place. The Bill before us tonight is a modest worthwhile measure in this field. I congratulate my noble friend Lady Lane-Fox most warmly upon bringing the Bill to us following its journey through another place.
I am aware that there has already been considerable debate on the provisions of this Bill and some of those arguments have been reiterated tonight. It is the Government's view—I address myself particularly to the noble Lord, Lord Meston—that building on and improving existing social work practice within broadly the current legal framework is, for the present at least, the right approach rather than the more radical changes in the balance of power between the courts and local authorities envisaged by the Bill as originally presented in another place. There will, I hope, be opportunity before too long for the House to consider a major and comprehensive Bill on child care and I think it is right that before then, we should be circumspect in introducing changes to an already complex—many think over complex—area of law. My right honourable friend the Secretary of State has already announced the Government's intention to publish a White Paper later this year setting out their proposals for child care law.
In saying that we believe we should seek to improve practice in an evolutionary way, I am not underestimating the difficulty of making many "home on trial" decisions, nor am I complacent about the performance of local authorities in these matters. The report of the Social Services Inspectorate's recent inspection of child abuse casework published on 6th May has shown that there are deficiencies which need to be remedied, but I am sure that a preferable way forward is by improving the professional performance of authorities within a strengthened regulatory framework for which this Bill will make provision.
Statistics held centrally record the number of children in care and the percentage of these who are "home on trial" as opposed to boarded out or in children's homes. It would not be reasonable to expect local authorities to report what happens to children after discharge of the care order or what injuries happen when a child is home on trial. The chief inspector of the Social Services Inspectorate has recently written to directors of social services asking them to report the deaths of children in care. These will be followed up by the Social Services Inspectorate. It is worth pointing out that there is no certainty that involving the courts in sanctioning return home on trial will prevent such children subsequently being
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abused. The majority of organisations with experience in the child care field support the Government's argument.
It was in that particular spirit that the Government amended the Bill in another place to provide the Secretary of State for Social Services with a regulation-making power—Clause 1—in respect of children in care placed at home with parents or guardians, or with relatives or friends. This will fill a gap in the Secretary of State's current powers, as he is presently able to make regulations to govern the way in which local authorities discharge their responsibilities for children in their care whom they place with foster parents or in children's homes, but he does not have similar regulatory powers in relation to children in care placed at home under the charge and control of a parent, guardian, relative or friend. Regulations would in the Government's view usefully underpin good professional practice.
The existing legal rights of grandparents in care and related proceedings are limited. My department receives many approaches from grandparents who wish to be involved in decisions concerning their grandchildren and maintain links with them. I am conscious of the importance that these matters have to the many grandparents involved in such cases. It is for this reason that the Government are supporting in Clause 3 a new right for grandparents to apply to be joined as parties to the proceedings as well as the new right for parents to be made full parties to proceedings when the court has ordered that their interests should be separately represented from those of the child's. This is a provision for which there has long been support.
My noble friend Lady Faithfull asked whether parents should always be parties, not just after a separate representation order. My answer is, yes, but this is only part of the comprehensive review of child care law. We are here only making the most urgent improvements. The House must await the White Paper to see the Government's line on this matter. The same applies to parents having the right to apply for discharge.
My noble friend Lady Lane-Fox has asked me to outline the Government's proposals for rules of court concerning grandparents. However, as my honourable friend indicated in the other place, I am afraid that I cannot yet do this, though I hope to do so at a later stage of the Bill. The result is that we now have a Bill which, modest though it may be in size, has, I believe, a potential for good within it. The new regulation-making power in relation to "home on trial" should help to strengthen existing arrangements for child protection, especially when linked to other steps we are taking to assist local authorities in their child abuse work. The new provision allowing parents to have party status where an order for separate representation of the child is made, will, if the Bill becomes law, remedy what I know many see as a real injustice to parents. Their present inability to appeal on their own behalf against a care order is a particular defect and I am glad that we have the opportunity of this Bill to put it right.
Perhaps I may leave the last word with my noble friend Lady Faithfull. If this Bill receives Royal Assent it would be included in a comprehesive child care Bill.
Baroness Lane-Fox: My Lords, I should like to thank my noble friend the Minister for her very encouraging reply. It is very clear that she is seized of our message. Although I am sorry that she could not respond to our request about grandparents at this stage, I feel certain that we can rely on her to do so at a later stage.
I should like to thank everyone who has taken part in this Second Reading debate, particularly after last night's marathon sitting, and to record an expression of my appreciation to Mr. Walters, the honourable Member for Westbury, for inviting me to move this Second Reading.
On Question, Bill read a second time, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

Safety at Sea Bill
9.40 p.m.
The Earl of Lauderdale: My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time.
It comes to us from another place unopposed on party lines, carried on Second and Third Readings without a Division, the product of, and a tribute to, the ingenuity and imagination of the member for Banff and Buchan, sometimes known colloquially and affectionately as the bulldog or the bull terrier of Banff, Mr. Albert McQuarrie.
This is a Bill to help save lives of fishermen aboard something like 2,000 British fishing vessels of more than 12 metres length, and another 4,000 or so shorter and smaller than that. Together the men at sea number about 30,000, among whom some 3 per cent.—that is nearly 1,000—were lost at sea over the 20 years 1961 to 1980. We sometimes do not realise the mounting losses at sea because the news of them comes to us fragmented, incident by incident; but that figure of 1,000 British fishermen lost at sea over 20 years is in itself horrific.
This is a useful rather than a magnificent Bill, but its utility could well prove historic, especially when it is recognised that more than 400—in fact the figure is 424—United Kingdom registered fishing vessels were lost over the 20 years 1975 to 1984. To me the most exciting and most imaginative provision is in Clause 1, requiring the 2,000 or so vessels of more than 12 metres to carry a radio beacon known officially as the Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon—or EPIRB for short, my Lords, if you really want a nasty acronym.
Should a vessel founder, this beacon floats free, is set going by seawater immersion, and sends out signals on a wavelength of 406 MHz which will continue for three days—72 hours—and which can be picked up 100 miles away; but, best of all, will be picked up and relayed to the coastguards by satellites passing overhead about every 90 minutes.
A final refinement which to me is fascinating is that each unit of this mechanism, each signal of the beacon, is different from that of any other beacon, so that the coastguard not only learns where, within a five square mile block, the boat has foundered, but which is the vessel that has gone down and therefore how many men to look for. It really is a remarkable technical
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advance; and the imagination of Mr. McQuarrie in seizing on this as something for a Bill was very noteworthy indeed.
The equipment is not all that expensive. The cost is rather over £1,000 apiece; but when you realise that the capital cost of a fishing vessel of 12 metres or so will be of the order of £1 million or more, £1,000 for the safety beacon is not a great sum. It will not only attract a 25 per cent. grant from the Seafish Industry Authority, but it can be set off against costs. Then there is another device made possible—indeed ultimately mandatory—by the Bill, and that is a most exciting innovation in Clause 2. This is an automatic release mechanism for life rafts. The mechanism is known as HRU—hydrostatic release unit. It ensures that life rafts float free of a vessel instead of remaining lashed to it as it goes down. These HRUs are likely to cost less than £100 each and may well be about £80.
One further new and important point is that vessels smaller than 12 metres in length were hitherto only required to carry a lifebuoy. This Bill will make rafts with HRUs compulsory.
Then comes Clause 3. This requires that the smaller fishing vessels of less than 12 metres carry extra lifejackets of varying size so that there is not only one for each crew member but also for those of larger or smaller size. This is not a provision for the eventuality of my going to sea because I am indeed of large size. The significance of the smaller size provision is important for it is for young folk in their early teens who often accompany their fathers to sea to gain exposure and a taste for the career of fishing.
Then there is Clause 7. Here there is a power to enable the Secretary of State to make regulations providing for the compulsory training of fishermen. This is of particular significance because fishing is so dangerous it is essential that fishermen are trained in survival at sea. It is quite true that perhaps half of those who go to sea have already attended such courses on a voluntary basis, but it is not enough because one can have in a crew two or three men who have been trained and several others who have not. Those who have been trained then have to look after those who have not and their own chances of survival are that much diminished. Thus there is good use to be made of this provision.
There are also one or two rather more general tidying up provisions in this Bill. One relates to the drunkenness of skippers at sea and another to a power to make sure that foreign vessels when they enter British ports do not leave them without being properly vetted for safety. All these requirements will have to be defined in regulations, and these we hope will be agreed and made within 18 months or pehaps two years at the outside, but the sooner the better. They depend on the proceeding of current consultations which are being conducted by the fishing industry safety group in the Department of Transport. That body is in consultation at regular intervals with the industry's representative bodies, the Scottish Fishermen's Federation, the Shetlands Fishermen's Organisation, the Association of Sea Fisheries of England and Wales, the National Federation of Fishermen's Organisations, the Fisheries Organisation Society and what I think will be of particular interest

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to the noble Lord opposite, the Transport and General Workers Union, which has an important part in this.
Then there are certain local fishing organisations such as that at Eyemouth, which is quite near my stamping ground, and the Cornish Fish Producers' Organisation. These organisations have all accepted—or perhaps it might be more accurate to say they have acquiesced—the provisions of this Bill. We all know that fishermen are independent-minded, very much like the miners; and they do not have the high regard for Parliament that parliamentarians have for themselves. They take the view that they know far better than we what to do at sea, just as miners know far better than we what to do underground. So it is not surprising that their attitude has been one of acquiescence rather than enthusiasm. But, at any rate, acquiescence there is, and that is a very satisfactory and important stage to have reached. Once again, however, I think we have to pay tribute to Mr. McQuarrie for the tact and courage, persistence and bonhomie which he has brought to the task of talking with fishermen's organisations, or with their leaders.
The Bill commanded all-party support in another place, but there are problems yet to be resolved. One is the general question of costs. I am not referring now so much to those of administration. There are 15 or so inspectors of the fishing vessel safety section in the Department of Transport whose four-yearly inspection of each vessel rarely constitutes the eventual enforcement mechanism.
The cost questions are important and are more generally related to how the industry itself shall bear the costs involved. I have explained that the beacons and the raft units will attract a 25 per cent. grant and can be set off against costs, but that does not necessarily answer the whole thing, let alone the cost of training. The obvious vehicle for the source of funds is the SFIA, the Sea Fisheries Industry Association, which draws on a levy of fish landings, a levy met not by the fishermen but by the merchants.
Of course, £1,000 a vessel which costs between £750,000 and £1¼ million, and, say, £1,000 for up to eight life jackets on the smaller vessels, are not great on-costs in themselves, but they are costs. It is very easy to talk about large sums of money with a sort of bland indifference. This is a building where conversations are often in millions and quite often in billions; but £1,000 to a fishing skipper or a fishing crewman is a great deal of money, so there is no use in pretending that there is not a quite serious problem here. One should realise that these on-costs are real and that they are incisive in the sense that vessels are now compelled to go farther away and for longer periods to make any sort of a living at all.
Then the safety at sea training will be an on-cost, but so are the guards that are necessary around dangerous machinery in factories. There was much opposition to those at one time by careless employers, but they are now accepted; and so must the cost of training at sea also be accepted.
As I have said, these are matters yet to be resolved in consultation. What the Bill does is to establish the key objectives for later definition and implementation as agreed in detail with the industry. In moving the
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Second Reading, I again invite a due tribute to the persistence, the initiative, the imagination and the courage of Mr. Albert McQuarrie, the Member for Banff and Buchan. This piece of legislation should really go down in history as "the McQuarrie Act". I beg to move.
Moved, That the Bill be now read a second time.—(The Earl of Lauderdale.)
9.54 p.m.
Lord Underhill: My Lords, despite the lateness of the hour after the all-night vigil undertaken by many Members in the past 24 hours, it would be wrong for this very useful Bill to enter your Lordships' House without some word or comment from this side. We are grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Lauderdale, not only for bringing it forward in your Lordships' House but also for the very useful way in which he has explained its provisions. I am totally with him also in expressing thanks to Mr. Albert McQuarrie, the Member for Banff and Buchan, who brought the Bill forward in the other place.
This is a welcome contribution to safety at sea. I have been reading speeches by Members in the other place on Second Reading, Committee stage and Report stage. One can see speeches of many Members with experience and knowledge, particularly those from Scottish fishing constituencies. They make interesting and informative reading and testify to the necessity for this Bill.
I was pleased that the noble Earl gave us a reminder not only of the loss of vessels but also of the number of lives of fishermen lost over 20 years. It so happens that, looking through post-recess post yesterday morning, I found a press notice from H.M. Coastguards, dated 20th May, in which the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, was shown being winched from the sea by helicopter in a search and rescue exercise. The need for this Bill is expressed in these words:
"Usually the most pressing task facing coastguards at the start of a search and rescue operation is to decide the likely position in the sea of those who are missing. This involves a complex series of time-consuming mathematical calculations, until now done mechanically, which allow for the varying effects of wind and tide."
As the noble Earl has said, the provision here for the emergency radio beacon is the main provision of this Bill. Admittedly there are liferafts and lifejackets provisions also, but I hope your Lordships will notice that this is the most important provision. I noticed that the Minister of State, in a series of very helpful speeches, indicated that a register would be set up to record the unique signal of each radio beacon. This will be related to each fishing vessel to which it is attached. That deals with the point made in this coastguards notice.
Reading the reports of the Committee stage, I noticed that most clauses were disagreed to on the initiative of Mr. McQuarrie himself and that alternative clauses were substituted. I assume that was done because the Government favour the Bill and have assisted Mr. McQuarrie with the new clauses. I hope that is the case and that the Government will give this Bill a ready passage. I end by again thanking the noble Earl, Lord Lauderdale, for bringing forward the Bill in this House.
Viscount Davidson: My Lords, my noble friend Lord Caithness has asked me to apologise to your Lordships for his absence this evening. He had a prior official engagement in Paris, where he is seeking to promote the deregulation of shipping services in the European Community.
As the noble Lord, Lord Underhill, mentioned, your Lordships will have seen pictures in the national press recently which prove that my noble friend takes a personal practical interest in the subject of safety at sea. I know he is disappointed that he cannot be here this evening. I should also like to add my congratulations to those already expressed by my noble friend Lord Lauderdale and the noble Lord, Lord Underhill, to my honourable friend Mr. Albert McQuarrie, who so ably piloted this Bill through another place. If I may say so, he has found a worthy advocate here in my noble friend, who I am sure will enable this estimable Bill to reach the statute book safely and surely.
I am most grateful to my noble friend for explaining the provisions of the Bill so clearly and I am glad to say that the Government are in complete agreement with the draft now before your Lordships' House. I think it is right to say that the Bill has achieved a notable consensus within the fishing industry and among all those who are concerned with occupational safety. This has been achieved by consulting closely with all those likely to be concerned. I think it is well worth noting that for consultation to be effective in the circumstances of a Private Member's Bill, a prompt, well-informed and co-ordinated response is invaluable. I understand that a well-established consultative body, the Fishing Industry Safety Group, certainly provided such a response in relation to this Bill at an early stage, and the group's contribution to the Bill's success deserves full recognition. It is my noble friend's intention that this process of consultation should be maintained and that there shall be ample opportunity for all concerned to comment further before regulations are made under the powers that this Bill provides.
To take a particular instance, it has yet to be determined whether the radio beacons which are the subject of Clause 1 of the Bill are best attached directly to a fishing vessel or to a liferaft carried by that vessel. No decision about this will be taken pending further consultation with the industry.
Similarly, specific proposals on training will also be the subject of further consultation. I should add, however, that it is the Government's intention to provide in the regulations that all new entrants to the industry shall be required to undergo a course of training in survival at sea before taking up a job as a fisherman. This Bill is an admirable measure and we feel that it deserves your Lordships' full support.
The Earl of Lauderdale: My Lords, I am greatly obliged to my noble friend for his response to this Bill and also for the co-operation offered by the noble Lord, Lord Underhill, opposite. It would be a pity to let this moment go by without regretting the enforced and undesired absence of the noble Lord, Lord Boothby, who had hoped to speak tonight, whose identification with the fishing industry is, of course, historic and has been admired for many years, and whose mantle has to a degree fallen upon Mr. McQuarrie.
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It is also a pity that my noble friend Lord Caithness cannot be here. I have a particular feeling myself, because I was much involved once upon a time with Caithness and Sutherland and it is a part of the world where I learned something of the fishing industry. Anyhow, Lord Caithness is busy doing good for fishermen in other ways. All I can do now is to say thank you to the Government, thank you to the Opposition and thank you, above all, to Mr. McQuarrie.
On Question, Bill read a second time, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

South Yorkshire Passenger Transport Bill
Reported from the Unopposed Bill Committee with amendments.
House adjourned at two minutes past ten o'clock.