Lords Sitting of 18 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 Truro.
Lord Davies—Sat first in Parliament after the death of his father.
Viscount Knollys—Sat first in Parliament after the death of his father.

Miscarriage Risk: Contact with Lambing Ewes
Baroness Masham of Ilton: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government how serious is the danger to pregnant women of miscarriage following contact with lambing ewes.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Security (Baroness Trumpington): My Lords, since 1981 10 cases of miscarriage caused by chlamydia psittaci have been reported in the United Kingdom, apparently contracted from ewes in lamb. The risks of infection appear to be small but the condition itself can be serious. Reports of the infection are being monitored closely by the health departments and the communicable disease surveillance centres in the United Kingdom.
Baroness Masham of Ilton: My Lords, may I thank the Minister for that interesting reply? I think that I should declare an interest in the Question as we are sheep farmers. May I ask her whether she is aware that many doctors do not know about the disease? It seems to me that vets know more about it than doctors. Will she see that all health authorities in rural areas make doctors aware of it, and also what to look for and how to treat the patients?
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, the Government are very concerned about the recent cases. Advice is or will be reaching the farming community in a number of ways. The most practical advice that I can offer about the prevention of further cases is that high standards of hygiene should be observed, and that wherever possible pregnant women should keep away from infected flocks and ovine abortions.
Lord Walston: My Lords, in view of the fact that a large number of farmers' wives, particularly in hill areas, help their husbands with lambing, and precious few, if any, know of the risk, will the Government do all that they can, in addition to what the noble Baroness has already told us, to make quite certain that, in the first place, the risk is well known to all those women who are likely to be involved with
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pregnant ewes and also to encourage further research so that the experts may have more knowledge which may thereafter be available for the farming public concerning this relatively newly-discovered but probably long-standing disease?
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, discussions concerning research continue among the Ministry of Agriculture, the public health laboratory service, the communicable disease surveillance centres and ourselves. We should certainly consider carefully proposals put to us for research in that area.
Lord Campbell of Croy: My Lords, can my noble friend confirm that a large proportion of the cases were in Scotland and that the Scottish Office has already carried out research? If that is so, can she ensure that is made available to other health departments, and that it continues? Is she aware that I understand that the unfortunate women also contracted a painful and distressing illness?
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, four cases have been reported in Scotland over the past five years, three in England this year and a further three in England over the years 1981 to 1985. There was one death in 1980. The Communicable Disease Surveillance Centre and the Communicable Disease (Scotland) Unit routinely monitor all reports of chlamydia psittaci. I understand that cases of the infection being acquired from sheep are extemely rare. With regard to the seriousness of the disease, my noble friend is perfectly right. The report indicates that following the miscarriage, the women suffered from complaints involving defects in blood coagulation, kidney and liver disfunction and heart problems.
Lord Taylor of Blackburn: My Lords, will the Minister kindly ask general practitioner committees to make doctors aware of this problem? I do not think that she has answered the noble Baroness's question, which was whether she would make general practitioners aware of the problem.
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, I understand that the Ministry of Agriculture will be giving instructions to its veterinary officers before the start of the next lambing season about the risk of the disease for pregnant women and on advising farming families at risk. Any woman who has attended lambing or abortion in ewes should inform her doctor if she thinks that she is pregnant. I understand that the Health and Safety Executive recently issued a press release to the farming papers drawing attention to the disease and warning families at risk.
Lord Taylor of Blackburn: My Lords, is the noble Baroness the Minister aware that many general practitioners do not take farming papers and that therefore the department should make general practitioners aware of this matter? It should not be done through the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food or anyone else like that. It is the department's responsibility to make general practitioners aware of this.
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, this is a rare condition. A number of cases have been reported to the medical press—for instance, the British Medical Journal—and this is how many doctors find out about matters. Any pregnant woman who has attended lambing or abortion in ewes should inform her doctor, as I said previously.
The Earl of Halsbury: My Lords, is there not something of a discrepancy between the rate of circulation in this Chamber and the rate of circulation outside it? It needs only one Starred Question here to put every Member of the House on the alert that there is a danger to pregnant women from infected sheep. How do we get that message quickly—at the same speed at which we transfer it to one another—to all the shepherdesses in this country?
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, as the noble Earl says, a Question in this House creates very wide publicity. If the medical authorities in the DHSS think that there is a need for further information to be imparted to doctors, following the advice that they receive, I am sure that they will do that.
Lord Ennals: My Lords, may I follow up just two of the points which have been made? First, it seems to me that rural doctors should receive, as was suggested by my noble friend, such information as the Government have. Secondly, may I support the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Walston, that there should be some research into this matter? I know that the noble Baroness said that they would look at the possibility of research. I wonder whether some research on this subject could be initiated.
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State will take note of what the noble Lord has said. Doctors, particularly those practising in rural areas, should recognise the possible risk to pregnant women in rural areas where chlamydia infections in farm animals may be widespread. Noble Lords may not be aware that there are two strains of this disease. The other one is another question.
Baroness Masham of Ilton: My Lords, is the noble Baroness aware that our shepherd's daughter, who was a shepherdess and who was married and pregnant, sadly experienced a still birth? Many cases may not be reported, documented and known about. It is important to prevent the death of an unborn child. Will the department look further into this matter?
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, as I have already said, I understand that from time to time there have been articles in the farming press and that the HSE has drawn the attention of the farming press and doctors to the risks. We shall keep under review the need for further action if the number of cases justifies it.
Lady Saltoun of Abernethy: My Lords, will the noble Baroness bear in mind that many hill farmers are dependent upon the assistance of their wives during lambing? Therefore will she put pressure on the DHSS to concentrate on preventive measures?
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, may I ask the noble Lady whether she is referring to the ewes or the women?
Lady Saltoun of Abernethy: The women, my Lords.
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, the best advice that can be given is to wear protective clothing if one has to be near sheep and if possible to keep away from lambing ewes and placenta disposal and to observe good hygiene.

M.25 Motorway: Capacity
2.47 p.m.
Viscount Cross: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether the present bridges on the M.25 motorway will allow the building of a fourth lane in each direction all the way round London, leaving aside the possibility of a second crossing of the Thames at Dartford.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Transport (The Earl of Caithness): My Lords, a full standard dual four-lane motorway with hard shoulders could not be provided without major alterations to over 300 bridges and numerous other structures.
Viscount Cross: My Lords, I should like to thank the noble Earl the Minister for that reply, though I am disappointed that it is in the negative. At the same time I should like to congratulate him on the construction of this bold and imaginative road around London. In view of the traffic problems on the M.25, will he consider adopting the traffic system as practised on the freeways of the United States of America and that practised in, for example, Oxford Street whereby all lanes are equal, so as to make the best possible use of the road space provided and to ensure the free flow of traffic?
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, I can assure my noble friend and the House that we have seriously considered whether overtaking on either side on motorways is a possibility. We are not in favour of that alternative driving procedure for different classes of roads because we believe that road safety, which is paramount, depends upon uniformity.
Lord Underhill: My Lords, does the noble Earl's Answer ignore the fact that a survey is being undertaken by the Secretary of State? I have a copy of press notice 261 dated 13th May, which refers to a speech given on the evening of that date by the former Secretary of State to the Federation of Civil Engineering Contractors in which he said that a survey was being undertaken not merely on the question of widening but also on whether other measures might be introduced. Is this a survey of only certain sections of the M.25 or the whole of it, dealing not only with the possibility of extra lanes but also with all the problems of the heaviness of traffic; and when can that report be expected?
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, I am grateful for the noble Lord's question. I can tell him that the study area is junctions 10 to 13 in the south-west sector, not the whole of the M.25. We expect the results shortly.
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: My Lords, will my noble friend break it to his right honourable friend that his right honourable friend's predecessor was quite wrong in basing an important aviation decision on the theory that there would be a quick and easy flow of traffic between Gatwick and Heathrow on the M25, whereas the contrary has been the case?
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, I am well aware of my noble friend's concern for the helicopter link. When the study is completed, we hope that it will give some solutions for achieving a speedier flow of traffic in that south-west sector.
Lord Underhill: My Lords, will the noble Earl say why the survey is being restricted to certain sections of the M.25 when there are general complaints about various sections?
The Earl of Caithness: Yes, my Lords. The most pressing complaints at the moment relate to the south-west sector. Our consultants are looking into a number of items connected with the motorway such as the remodelling of junctions, better traffic management and perhaps widening the carriageways, or a combination of those measures, that might well help. If any results come forward from the study that can be applied to other parts of the motorway, we shall not fail to apply them.
Lord Auckland: My Lords, is my noble friend the Minister aware that road safety is of extreme importance? Those like myself who live within half a mile of an intersection in Surrey consider that road safety is much more important than increasing the traffic on the motorway.
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, I hope that both can be done.
Viscount Cross: My Lords, will my noble friend the Minister not agree that drivers in this country drive quite as well as those in any other country? Can he say why it should be more dangerous to overtake on the left-hand side than on the right-hand side?
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, I agree that drivers in this country are perhaps no better and no worse than drivers anywhere else. But we believe that uniformity is essential for road safety. It would cause severe complications, I believe, for many drivers if they were suddenly told that they could overtake on the left-hand side on a given section of road. That would cause problems not only to the person undertaking the manoeuvre but also to others who were unaware of it.
Lord Mellish: My Lords, will the noble Earl give an undertaking that if the survey to which he refers confirms that the M.25 is not the salvation that it was believed to be, certainly by the Minister, he will look again to see whether the helicopter link can be resumed?
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, I cannot give that undertaking. I shall draw the noble Lord's point to the attention of my right honourable friend.

Radiation Measurement Units
2.53 p.m.
Viscount Mersey: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will introduce one simple measure of radiation to replace the present multiplicity of Roentgens, REMs, RADs, Curies, Sieverts and Becquerels with a view to enabling the public to distinguish between a nuclear disaster and a nuclear mishap.
The Minister of State, Department of the Environment (Lord Elton): My Lords, the Units of Measurements Regulations 1980 specify that as from 1st January 1986 units of Curies, RADs, REMs and Roentgens are no longer authorised for official use. The unit which best represents radiation risk is the Sievert. A dose of one Sievert is generally regarded as giving rise to an average risk of incurring a fatal radiation-induced cancer of about one in a hundred. Higher or lower doses lead to proportionate risks.
Viscount Mersey: My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that reply. Certainly things seem to be getting a lot simpler. Is he aware of what I would call the nicotine equivalent measure, used by the noble Lord, Lord Marshall of Goring, in which he would liken a person who, say, recently drank a pint of water in the Lake District after Chernobyl to a man taking one puff at a cigarette a week, and liken a man living, say, only 10 miles from Chernobyl to a man smoking, say, 40 cigarettes a day?
Lord Elton: My Lords, the arithmetic of these comparisons is difficult, whereas their simplicity is attractive. I am advised—I believe that I am correct on the advice I am given—that half of one Sievert per annum carries an equivalent risk to smoking 10 cigarettes per diem over a year.
The Earl of Halsbury: My Lords, is it not the case that what the public want is a simple indication of reassurance like the Beaufort scale of wind or the Richter scale of earthquakes whereby one can associate a number with a degree of hazard? I have suggested to both the Central Electricity Generating Board and British Nuclear Fuels how this can be done. Will the noble Lord the Minister give an undertaking that he will ask them what progress they are making in implementing what I have suggested?
Lord Elton: My Lords, my answer to the noble Earl's second and substantive question is, yes.
The Earl of Lauderdale: My Lords, will my noble friend not consider, in addition to the so-called nicotine equivalent, that he might also look at the alcohol equivalent and perhaps liken so many drams of whisky or so many pints of beer to so many Sieverts

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or whatever they are called? The public does not understand this terminology. It is important that they should have something they can understand.
Lord Elton: My Lords, I am entirely in sympathy with the idea that the public should be able to understand something which, because it is not properly understood, at the moment is far more frightening than it should be. I shall certainly look at any suggestions.
Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: My Lords, can the noble Lord say what steps the Government are taking to convey this important information to members of the public? It is not conveyed by an exchange of questions in this House, however important that may be. Are the noble Lord and his right honourable friend taking steps, for example, to convey to local authorities that they may disseminate the information; or is there some other way in which this can be done?
Lord Elton: My Lords, the information is of course disseminated to local authorities in the normal way. I take the noble Lord's point that there may be merit in suggesting that it should be translated in some way.
Lord Mackie of Benshie: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that what is necessary is that the public should believe what the Government say? The noble Lord used the word "reassurance". Will he give an assurance that instead of trying to reassure the public the Government will tell the truth so that the public will know when to be alarmed and when to do something instead of disbelieving the Government, as so often is the case?
Lord Elton: My Lords, this Government have always been committed to open government and have actually passed legislation to that effect. I can add to that the record of the recent Secretary of State for the Environment in ensuring that events of this kind are brought to public attention immediately. I hope that the noble Lord did not imply that the Government obfuscated in any way on the matter. We believe that knowledge is the best combatant of fear.
Baroness David: My Lords, can the Minister inform the House which government department is responsible for recommending counter-measures to a nuclear emergency, such as the removal of cattle from contaminated pastures in Cumbria, which some people think should have been done some time ago?
Lord Elton: My Lords, I do not want to appear craven simply because there are no fewer than three Opposition Front Bench spokesmen to one on this side. I believe, however, that I should direct the noble Baroness's attention to the Question on the Order Paper and suggest that she puts down another.
Lord Stoddart of Swindon: My Lords, I hope that the noble Lord has not taken seriously the question of nicotine comparison. It will lead us into all sorts of difficulties. There will be crossing the road comparisons, and what have you. This is a serious matter not concerned with the approval or otherwise
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of the nuclear industry. It is essential that we have a proper and understandable measure. May I urge the noble Lord to take up the suggestion of the noble Earl, Lord Halsbury, who is so expert on these matters?
Lord Elton: My Lords, the idea of a commonly understood comparator is extremely attractive. I recognise that the views of those who smoke and drink may not coincide as to what it might be. I shall certainly look carefully at the suggestion of the noble Earl, Lord Halsbury. However, I would also point out that the substantive Answer I gave produced a unit which is perfectly safe at nought and which is lethal at 100. That is a scale which is not too difficult to understand.

Parking Permits: Disabled Drivers
3 p.m.
Lord Nugent of Guildford: 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 arrangements exist for providing temporary parking permits for disabled drivers.
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, no such arrangements exist.
Lord Nugent of Guildford: My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that surprisingly uninformative Answer. Is he aware that there is a real need for short-term permits for parking for disabled people? Many people who have injuries, accidents, operations and so on require a short-time permit only. If only long-term permits are issued this puts a premium on unscrupulous applications for a permanent permit which is not required.
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, I am very well aware of the arguments put forward by my noble friend. The first three-year cycle of the badge and the programme has been completed. We are looking into the operation of the scheme with the local authorities and we shall bear in mind the arguments of my noble friend.
Lord Parry: My Lords, will the noble Lord assure the House that he will not simply accept the brief that he is offered from the department, but that he will take into account the fact that the general badge has been grossly abused? Will he take into account that there is—as the noble Lord, Lord Nugent, has said—a very real need for this short-term parking facility?
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, we are aware that there has been abuse of the badge. This is one of the matters that we are looking at in reviewing the operation with the local authorities.
Lord Campbell of Croy: My Lords, can my noble friend confirm that local authorities draw up their own schemes and issue the orange badges which are then valid throughout the country except in central London? Within the legislation and the guidelines

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issued to them is there provision for them to issue licences for shorter periods than three years or more, even if in practice they are not doing so?
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, I do not believe that the local authorities can issue the badge for a shorter period than three years. However, this is one of the points that we shall be looking at. I think that we have to go back to why the scheme was designed in the first place. It was designed to assist only those people with a permanent and very considerable difficulty in walking, and the blind and one or two other groups.
Lord Renton: My Lords, as one who sometimes has to drive a very severely disabled person in my car, and bearing in mind that that person can walk only a few yards from the destination at which the car arrives to the place where that person has to go (for example, a doctor's surgery), will he bear in mind the need to issue at least temporary permits for driving severely disabled people as passengers?
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, the scheme at present is designed specifically to take into account my noble friend's point where one has, as a passenger, somebody who is severely disabled and has considerable difficulty in walking, whereas the driver, such as my noble friend, I am glad to say, is fit enough to compete with the rest of us.
Baroness Masham of Ilton: My Lords, may I ask the noble Earl my kinsman why he thinks permits have to be for three years? Why cannot temporary permits for three or six months be issued in a different colour? They could then be handed back. Can these not be issued by people's doctor and handed in to the doctor?
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, the scheme is run by the local authorities. The original purpose of the scheme was, as I have said before, to help those with a permanent disability. There was therefore no intention of providing for a temporary badge. But all these arguments will be taken into account in the process of our consideration of the scheme. The arguments of any of your Lordships who care to write to my department will of course be considered.
Lord Nugent of Guildford: My Lords, I, and I am sure other noble Lords, are grateful to my noble friend for undertaking to consider this point. Is he aware that in doing so he should remember that when arrangements were made in this House for permits for exemption from wearing compulsory seat belts, there was a specific provision for short-term permits? As that was workable, it might be possible to make this workable, too.
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, my noble friend makes a very valid point.
Lord Campbell of Croy: My Lords, it is some time since we last debated this subject of parking for disabled people. Is not the most important point that the orange badge must be removable and therefore it is shown on the car only when a disabled person—as mentioned by my noble friend Lord Renton—is in it?
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, my noble friend is absolutely right. The abuse of this scheme is something that we should not tolerate because it lowers the value of the scheme and makes it considerably harder for those who have a serious problem.

Business
The Earl of Swinton: My Lords, after the first short debate on greater public investment in housing and before that on urban and rural environment, my noble friend Lady Trumpington will, with the leave of the House, repeat a Statement that is being made in another place on social security benefit for students. I shall, again with the leave of the House, repeat a Statement on student support. My noble friend Lady Trumpington will then, again with the leave of the House, repeat a Statement on supplementary benefit board and lodging.
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 Dean of Beswick, and the noble Lord, Lord Ardwick. 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 Dean of Beswick, this means that all other speeches should be limited to a maximum of 14 minutes, and in the case of the short debate in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Ardwick, all other speeches should be limited to a maximum of 10 minutes. If any noble Lords were to speak at greater length they would be doing so at the expense of subsequent speakers in the debate.
Lord Alport: My Lords, may I ask my noble friend the Deputy Chief Whip whether any arrangements are going to be made in this House in the immediate future to discuss the position in South Africa?
The Earl of Swinton: My Lords, that is a matter for the usual Channels.

Housing: Public Investment
3.8 p.m.
Lord Dean of Beswick Lord Dean of Beswick rose to call attention to the case for greater public investment in housing and the need to reduce the waiting time for applicants for local authority housing; and to move for Papers.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, I rise to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper. That reads as follows:
"To call attention to the case for greater public investment in housing and the need to reduce the waiting time for applicants for local authority housing; and to move for Papers."
The reason I read that in extenso is because it is my belief that if the first part of the Motion is not put into operation there is no possibility of achieving the objectives of the second part.
I consider it a great privilege to be able to move this Motion. I believe it deals with a subject that is perhaps the most serious that we as a nation face, apart from

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the major one—the question of unemployment. I believe that housing is a basic service that not only covers the question of housing but has a spin-off effect in other directons. Good housing provides a motivation to a better social order but I and other people believe that it also contributes to better health and to a better start in education. Statistics show quite clearly that where a child does not have the advantage of good housing and perhaps exists in a deprived home, that very often is related to the question of poor education. Those of us who are familiar with the big cities see that all too often.
It was only five months ago, in January, that your Lordships had an extensive debate on housing in the United Kingdom on the Report of the Inquiry into British Housing chaired by the Duke of Edinburgh. The debate on that occasion was introduced in an absolutely first class-manner by the noble Lord, Lord Seebohm, who I see is present in his place today. Noble Lords from all sides of the Chamber contributed to that debate and brought their great expertise to bear on the subject. I said at the time that I thought that the debate had to take place in conjunction with the report. It was a first class exercise enabling us to discuss what was happening.
I am a little sad that, so far as I can see, no Government Back-Bencher's name is on the list of speakers for this debate. I know that there are quite a number of Government Back-Bench supporters who are as interested in housing as any of us on any side of the Chamber or of any political party.
This debate must be something of a re-run because the situation of housing in this country has been discussed in the not too distant past. There has been a series of non-political bodies with expertise in this subject which have given us the benefit of their experience as to what is taking place at present. I shall give your Lordships a list of those people who have declared what is happening in this particular field. The series started in autumn 1984 with a report by NEDO on behalf of Neddy. That was the first major report that indicted the serious situation which was developing as regards housing. It was followed by reports by RIBA, the Federation of Civil Engineering, the National Home Improvement Council, the AMA, the Institute of Housing, and finally the CBI and the TUC became involved. However, the most profound report which has been debated to date is the one to which I have already referred; namely, the Duke of Edinburgh's report on the problem. Since then there has been published the report entitled Faith in the Cities which we have not yet debated. It is the report of the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury, and I understand that arrangements are trying to be made to enable us to debate that report perhaps in the overspill of this particular Session. I look forward to that occasion when we can once again go over old ground.
During this debate some of us may wander from the strict disciplines of the Motion on the Order Paper, and that is because we cannot isolate any particular facet of housing without affecting the others involved. All of the reports which I have mentioned come to the same conclusion; namely, that massive amounts of money ranging from £18 billion to £35 billion (if we
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include the private sector owner-occupiers) need to be made available over a long period to deal with the problem. It is no good the Government or anyone else standing back and assuming that there are other huge sums of money that will come into housing from the private sector. If private sector money is to be attracted, it can only be so attracted if there is public money acting as a catalyst and attracting it.
Let us consider the Government's answer so far to the problem. Figures were produced during the debate in January showing that, even allowing for some additional schemes initiated by the Government, on balance local authorities had lost, because of Government action, £8 billion from their housing programmes since 1979. That factor, coupled with the reduction of the rate support grant from, I think, 61 per cent. to 46 per cent. over the same period, is the main cause of the deterioration which is taking place in the public sector stock. I and other noble Lords from various sides of the Chamber, including Government supporters, have questioned the Government as to why they continually refuse to make available the £6 billion of assets upon which the Government placed a moratorium, although they are allowing the local authorities to use 20 per cent. of the interest to deal with their housing problems.
It is a fact of life that when the original Bill dealing with the compulsory sale of council houses went through, its main premise was that it would release or make funds available for local authorities. I have with me figures relating to one of our major cities which show the treatment which the Government have meted out over the past 12 months to deal with the situation. Last year Manchester asked for £96 million to deal with its housing problem. It received £36 million. This year it asked for £108 million, and received £26 million. That is an indication of the seriousness with which the Government view the present problem with which we are dealing. While all that is going on, I point out that all the known figures relating to people asking for local authority accommodation continue to escalate.
I read in the Sunday Times at the weekend that the Minister of Housing, John Patten, was horrified that about 120,000 council tenancies were empty. I think that the correct figure is 113,000. I would not for one moment excuse tenancies in the public sector being kept empty because of poor administration and organisation by housing departments. However, if the local authorities had been granted the resources to get on with their job, I honestly believe that the figure would be considerably lower than it is at present.
Let us compare the 113,000 with the other sectors of housing. If we take the 113,000 as a percentage of the housing stock of the public authorities, it represents 2·3 per cent. of their total stock. At present there are 16,000 housing association properties empty, which represents 3·8 per cent. of their stock. There are 541,000 owner-occupier properties empty in the private sector, which represents 4·2 per cent. of the stock. I do not have the figures for Government departments, but I am assured that, in percentage terms, 6·9 per cent. of housing accommodation under their control is empty. Therefore, it is about time that the Government found another wicket on which to bat.
Every conceivable piece of information on housing indicates that demand is on the increase. In 1979, the known and identifiable waiting list. for housing accommodation was about 1 million; it is now 1·2 million. Over the past few weeks I have persistently put questions to the Minister regarding the escalation of other figures in respect of handicapped people, people in wheel-chairs, homeless people and concerning sheltered accommodation. I do not want to repeat the figures because there is not time, but there has been a tremendous increase in demand for public sector housing. I must tell your Lordships that the figure will not decrease unless the Government decide to make the resources available.
In the few minutes remaining, I think that I am entitled to ask the Minister to comment on the statement made over the weekend by the Minister for Information Technology, Mr. Geoffrey Pattie. He made the most outrageous and scandalous attack on council house tenants that I have ever known. It was absolutely outrageous.
I now turn to some of the points made by the right honourable Nicholas Ridley at the Institute of Housing last week in his first major housing speech since his appointment. He said—and I have to quote quickly—
"Although there is some disrepair in all sectors, owner-occupiers are on the whole well satisfied with the quality of their housing".
I have figures from reliable sources which show that £26 billion would be needed to put the owner-occupation sector in reasonable order.
Mr. Ridley also referred to municipal tenants and said that this Government had as paramount in their thinking on the question of municipal tenants that the views of the tenants should absolutely stand supreme. Does this mean that the new Secretary of State—and he is the fifth or sixth we have had in this Government; Secretary of State for the Environment is a very hot seat in this Government—will withdraw from the Housing Bill shortly to be discussed by your Lordships the disgraceful proposals which will allow a local authority to sell off municipal houses over the heads of the tenants, whether they like it or not? In other words, that would destroy any security of tenure that municipal tenants have historically enjoyed. When that Bill comes before the House we, with I hope the support of Members of all parties in the Chamber, will try to prevent such a disgraceful suggestion going ahead.
I have to finish shortly because I have only 15 minutes. Not only the housing section but also the building section of the community, starting with the Building Employers' Confederation, and including the National Federation of Building Employers, the Federation of Civil Engineers, the Institute of Maintenance and Municipal Building Management, are all ready to play their part. I am not suggesting for one moment that it would be possible to release huge sums of money and absorb them immediately, but surely a start must be made. The figures that I have quoted make it clear that had the Government not imposed those financial cuts, we would have had another half a million council houses available today for letting to people.
The purpose of my Motion today is to try to bring some light to bear on the most difficult social problem that we face as a nation. I was saddened and disappointed by the Minister's reply on the last occasion we debated housing in January. If the Government are not more sympathetic to the overtures and pleas that are being made to do something about this situation, I can only conclude that they place the god of tax reductions above the well-being of our people as a nation. My Lords, I beg to move for Papers.
3.23 p.m.
Lord Ezra: My Lords, we are indebted to the noble Lord, Lord Dean of Beswick, for introducing this Motion for debate today. It is not the first time that we have directed our attention to the housing problem of the nation. It will certainly not be the last time because, as the noble Lord has rightly said, this is one of the most important social and economic problems that we face. The evidence, as he has pointed out, is overwhelming that the state of British housing is rapidly deteriorating.
I should like to quote from only three important reports in recent times which indicate the size of the problem. The 1981 English House Condition Survey, which is the latest one we have had—the next one is not yet available—indicated that the cost of putting right defects in the housing stock was then estimated at some £30 billion. That estimate was recently reviewed by the Select Committee on the Environment in another place, and they considered that that figure, in current terms, would now be £40 billion.
Secondly, the Department of the Environment's own recent inquiry into the state of housing in the public sector pointed out that 3·8 million out of the 4·6 million houses in public ownership required attention, at a cost estimated at £19 billion, or £5,000 per dwelling requiring improvement. Then the Association of Metropolitan Authorities, referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Dean of Beswick, in regard to London estimated that one in five of the houses in London, amounting to 500,000 dwellings, required essential improvement, the cost averaging £5,000 per home. This is overwhelming evidence that the state of housing in Britiain is deteriorating, and I do not believe that this is at all consistent with our position as one of the leading developed countries in the world.
The Environment Select Committee in their last report made the comment, with which I am sure we would all agree, that neglected maintenance is not merely maintenance postponed, but gives rise to the need for even more maintenance later. We all know this from experience in our own homes. The Select Committee went on to say that some property, particularly in the public sector, could be approaching the point where replacement was the only possibility. In other words, maintenance and repair have been so long neglected that the whole house had to be replaced.
Many of your Lordships will no doubt have read a leading article in the Sunday Times last Sunday on the whole question of housing policy. Reviewing the housing policy of the Government, the article stated that "new building has slumped, the existing housing

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stock is becoming increasingly dilapidated, and homelessness is on the rise". It concluded:
"The Government's housing policy is in tatters".
This is a sad, but I believe reasonably objective, reflection on the state of housing in Britain. We are today far from the objective that the Government stated in their manifesto in 1983 when they said:
"Our goal is to make Britain the best housed country in Europe".
When we now compare ourselves with our Community neighbours we find that their expenditure on housing in the period since then has been greater than the expenditure that we have allocated in proportionate terms to our own housing.
It seems that the Government, in their housing policy, have been unduly concerned with changing the ownership of houses—and I think that the majority of us in this country believe that people should own their own homes—but they have been far too little concerned with the adequacy and physical condition of houses. It is that balance that I suggest now urgently needs to be put right, and I should therefore like to make a few suggestions as to how that might be done.
I believe that there are three clear courses that the Government could now take to correct the balance. The fact of the matter is that there is now what might be termed a house maintenance bulge in Britain. The lack of maintenance in housing is now increasing, and the amount of expenditure on maintenance, in both the public and private sectors, is not keeping pace with increased requirements. This is what has to be put right before the fabric of a house falls into such a state that the whole house has to be replaced.
How do we deal with this? There are three ways in which the Government, if they were to act vigorously and with determination, could begin to correct this problem. First, we know about the moneys that have been obtained from the sale of council houses and the Government's restriction on the use of those moneys for the purpose of maintaining, repairing and building houses. A sum of £6 billion is now available for this purpose and has to be held in reserve because of fears about the possible inflationary impact. But our inflation is now falling. The Government have taken great credit for the low level of inflation in Britain today. Is this not the time when we should be releasing more of these resources to get such an essential part of our social structure as housing right? This needs seriously to be looked at again. The inflationary argument no longer stands.
Secondly, there is a need to increase home improvement grants. I have a special interest in this because I am president of the National Home Improvement Council and I follow these things with great interest. At an earlier date the Government encouraged home improvement, and the discretionary grants under this heading were over £600 million in 1984–85. The trouble is, however, that the Government then had second thoughts and the grants under this heading that were made available in 1985–86 fell to £350 million. At the very time when the need was there to increase the efforts on maintenance the discretionary grants were nearly halved. The companies which were gearing themselves up to produce the tiles, the bricks and other equipment
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for this purpose were stopped in their tracks. The construction industry, the local authorities and indeed the home owners and occupiers, having got geared up to a certain momentum of home improvement, found that momentum halved. That does not seem to me to be sensible in the light of all the evidence that has been accumulated about the need for improving the housing stock of Britain.
Thirdly, the Chancellor recently introduced VAT on improvement and repairs carried out by registered builders. This has been a further discouragement to home improvements. It has been a further encouragement to people who are not acting as registered builders and therefore it has led to a degree of shoddy work. What we need to do is to encourage people who strictly keep to the law, who want to be registered, who undertake work in accordance with agreed conditions and precepts and who had been held back by this imposition. When one looks at the overwhelming evidence on the one hand, and when one considers the actions of the Government on the other hand, it does not seem to me that the two go together. The actions taken by Government have indeed diminished the efforts to improve the housing stock of Britain.
So what I believe your Lordships should like to hear today from the Minister when he replies to the debate is, first, that the Government take very seriously the deteriorating condition of the housing stock of Britain, and secondly that they intend as quickly as possible to take the necessary measures to deal with the problem.
3.35 p.m.
Lord Pitt of Hampstead: My Lords, I should like to thank my noble friend Lord Dean of Beswick for giving us the opportunity to debate this Motion. Building, repairing, and improving the nation's homes is one of the most important economic responsibiliites which pass from generation to generation. Through building we create jobs and preserve valuable skills and technologies. Through building we create the homes which our children and our children's children will live in and make their own. Neglect of this task creates a social burden of homelessness and poor housing and also an economic burden of a back-log of repairs and a shrunken construction industry. That is obvious; it is known to everyone; yet over the past 10 years public sector investment in housing has been a major target for cuts in public expenditure. I presume that the idea was that the private sector was to expand to fill the gap. But this has not happened. In 1985 total construction industry housing output was only 90 per cent. of its 1976 value.
But this is a much more serious development than it seems at first sight. Housing investment is needed to provide new homes to allow for the growing number of separate households and to replace older properties which are worn out and should be demolished. But in addition existing homes must be repaired and improved to make good deterioration due to age or defect and to bring older properties up to modern standards. All these things have to be done at the same time.
The Department of the Environment statistics put the number of new households being formed at around 200,000 a year. Yet the number of new homes being

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started in both the private and public sectors has exceeded that figure only once in the last six years—even though the number of households is increasing by the figure I have mentioned. We have not built more than that except in one year in the last six. In fact, in 1980 and in 1981 new house starts barely exceeded 150,000. The figure of 200,000 does not take account of the need to build new homes for those households currently living in overcrowded conditions or in properties which are unfit for human habitation or are in a poor state of repair. So there has to be an addition to that 200,000.
Calculations arrived at in outlining a building programme designed to take account of these needs were last made in 1977 for the Labour Government's housing policy Green Paper. Subsequent studies have suggested that the forecasts in that Green Paper were basically well founded. The Green Paper forecast a need for 300,000 new homes a year between 1976 and 1986. Of those houses it was suggested that 180,000 would be built by private builders to meet the demand for owner-occupation, while 120,000 a year would be built by public bodies for those who needed to rent.
The last year in which 300,000 homes were started was 1976. Since then the overall level of starts has been less than two-thirds of that needed; in other words (I am almost repeating myself) it has been less than the 200,000 we need to meet the new households that are being created. That shortfall has been greatest in the public sector where, since 1980, starts have averaged half the level required. In other words, instead of the 120,000 that the Green Paper estimated would be built in the public sector, we have averaged 60,000,—in fact more often a lot less than that.
Overall, the country has built nearly 550,000 fewer homes over the 1976–86 period than the Green Paper said were needed. The shortfall is about 100,000 in the private sector and about 450,000 in the public sector. This explains the lengthy waiting lists about which my noble friend spoke. It also explains the rising homelessness.
In 1985 the number of households accepted by local authorities as homeless exceeded 100,000 for the first time ever. A large proportion of these people are housed in unsuitable bed and breakfast accommodation. The conditions in much bed and breakfast accommodation are a direct risk to the health of the occupants. Severe overcrowding, infestations by cockroaches, mice and rats, inadequate sanitary facilities and fire hazards are common. Infections causing diarrhoea are frequently reported by GPs working in areas which contain a high proportion of the hotel homeless. There is also evidence of malnutrition and of children living in these conditions being underdeveloped because of lack of food. Added to that, of course, are the obvious mental health problems affecting both parents and children.
There is an urgent need for investment in new housing, particularly in the public sector. The Government are making a real attack at the moment on drug abuse, but seem never to have connected drug abuse with homelessness. I can tell your Lordships from my experience that the area close to my practice known as Tolmers Square was squatted in and most of the squatters registered with me. After a while I realised—my noble friend Lord Stallard knows all
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about it; he is laughing—that I had a large number of drug addicts on my books and I endeavoured to treat them. I never run away from problems; I never run away from challenges. One of the things I discovered was this: you can often get a drug addict to the stage where he will give up, but in order for him to do that he has to get away from his environment, his friends and associations, because the society in which he lives is a society of drug taking. Therefore, you have to get him away. I found that often I could not get the addicts away because there were no homes for them to go to, and the only homes they had were those associated with drug taking.
There is a real need for some attention to be given to this housing problem. The need for greater investment in repair and improvement work is equally clear. The last English housing condition survey carried out in 1981 found that 900,000 homes leaked—I am sorry, I am misreading my writing; I should have said that they lacked one or more basic amenities. It is probably right that they leaked, but that is not what I had written in my notes. As I say, they lacked one or more basic amenities, and at one point 1 million were unfit for human habitation while over 4 million, or nearly one quarter of the housing stock, needed repairs costing £2,500 in each case.
Some of the people who suffer most are the elderly. As your Lordships know, I am chairman of Shelter, and we have a lot of problems helping elderly people who own properties that they cannot possibly maintain. This is where I am always having to draw swords with the Government. The Government have this one-vision, a tunnel-vision, approach to housing, and they want owner occupation, but that requires a willingness to support the owner occupiers when they reach the stage that they cannot repair their houses. The Government must take that on board. Unless they do so, many people will be placed in grave difficulties and their homes will be not pleasant places but very unpleasant places in which to live.
Added to that, there are the increasing number of local authority dwellings built in the last 40 years using non-traditional repair methods which are now developing faults. There are several estimates—your Lordships have heard them already—of the cost of the backlog of repairs, ranging between £18 million and £35 million, but whatever the figure, the problem is huge, and it will not go away.
There must be a programme of increased house building—new homes—and of repair and improvement of existing houses. We want both. Shelter has suggested a modest programme for increased public sector investment in housing. We have suggested a public sector new housebuilding programme of 100,000 units a year, which is 40,000 more than we have had on average during the last six years, but in effect is about 70,000 more than we are building now. There is also required repair and improvement spending on public sector housing aimed at reducing the backlog of disrepair by a £1,000 million to £1,500 million a year. There should also be increased public support for private sector improvement spending—the sort of thing I was talking about just now—to restore it to its 1983–84 level because, as I have already pointed out, the Government were moving in the right direction on

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that one. There again, they have faltered; there were 320,000 houses repaired in 1984, but the figure fell to 195,000 in 1985. We want that to be restored.
This is a modest programme. In fact, I can assure your Lordships that most of my friends think it is much too modest. But it is a programme which in four years will enable us to arrive at the housing investment we had in 1976. I think it is very modest and we cannot ask for anything more reasonable. Remember, my Lords, that building houses also provides jobs. Let us do it.
3.48 p.m.
Lord Stallard: My Lords, I too should like to add my congratulations to my noble friend Lord Dean of Beswick for giving us yet another opportunity to discuss the problems of housing and housing investment.
While it is always a great pleasure for me to follow my noble friend Lord Pitt of Hampstead, I do not know if I shall be able to match his eloquence or his expertise because I know of his long experience in trying to deal with the problems of bad housing in the area in which he has spent most of his practising life, and I respect him all the more for that.
A recent survey conducted by a MORI poll puts housing at the top of the correspondence list of Members of the other place. The correspondence received by Members in another place on housing far exceeds that on any other subject, and, as any former member of the other place will tell you, that has been the situation for many years past under different governments. But in the past governments have accepted responsibility for public housing, and although there have always been arguments about the extent of responsibility and amount of responsibility, there has been some kind of broad consensus about the Government's role and the need for a government role. The present crisis, as has been said, is well documented. We have had reports from the Duke of Edinburgh's inquiry, from the Church of England's Faith in the City, from SHAC in their excellent booklet on capital decay, from the Association of Municipal Authorities, the Audit Commission, the Campaign to End Bedsit Squalor, from Shelter's numerous reports, from the Labour Party documents, expertly researched documents, I may say, and from many other bodies. Whereas housing had come to be regarded as a major government priority, since 1979 this Government's attitude and approach have changed. The main thrust of this Government's policy towards housing now seems to be mainly directed towards seeking ways to offload the responsibility, to shun the responsibility, not in an attempt to get better housing or to improve the situation but in yet another cost-cutting exercise. I think that was clearly demonstrated in the examples given by my noble friend Lord Dean.
It would appear from that, that the Government have abandoned any pretence of a housing policy or strategy and recent statements again seem to underline this view. There are not many statements about the size of the problem coming from the Government, from Ministers or spokesmen or about the seriousness
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of the situation, or about any recommendations to deal with it. There is not even this spate of panic legislation which we have had in other areas such as social security to deal with immediate problems. There are problems far deeper than many of the social security problems that we have dealt with in the panic legislation to which I have referred. They have abandoned any pretence of involvement in public-sector housing. This means, so far as we are concerned, that after the election of a Labour Government at the next election, the new government will face a formidable task if first of all, they are going to try to retrieve the situation, before they can go on to improve it.
I have listed four major areas that they will have to deal with. First, there is the collapse of the house building programmes themselves. In 1981, house building (public and private) fell to its lowest level since the 1920s. Since then, public-sector house building has remained almost unchanged while the private sector which had shown only a modest recovery is not making much progress and is in fact now falling. Public house building has been slashed: less than 40,000 new council houses were started in the 1984–85 period; that is 65 per cent. down on 1968 and 80 per cent. down on 1975. As my noble friend Lord Pitt says, the present Government seem to be inferring that the private sector can make up this fall but house builders have said quite clearly that it cannot do so. Taking public and private house building together, the number of homes started under the Tories are almost 40 per cent. below the number started under the previous Labour Government.
The second major element that will have to be picked up is the poor quality of our housing stock at the moment. Facing the next government will be a huge problem of poor-quality housing; and the worst of this poor-quality housing is in the private sector. This would seem at least partly to answer part of the speech made by a Government Minister, referred to by my noble friend Lord Dean and reported in yesterday's issue of The Times, headed, "Pattie put his case for No. 10". It reads:
"Mr Geoffrey Pattie, a leading contender for promotion to the Cabinet, last night appeared to put himself forward as a right-wing candidate to succeed Mrs Margaret Thatcher when she eventually steps down as leader of the Conservative Party".
It goes on:
"He condemned demands for extra government spending by colleagues as 'electoral bribery' … and claimed that council housing bred slums, delinquency, vandalism, waste, arrears and social polarisation."
Put in that context, none of us has any doubt about what he was saying. He was blaming the people who live in those places for their conditions; but he had nothing to say about the private sector or about any possible solutions.
Let me say that nearly half the unfit homes in the country are owner occupied in the private sector. These figures reflect the fact that nearly one-third of today's homes were built before 1919 and are rapidly deteriorating. 1¼ million homes in England and Wales are unfit for human habitation; 1 million homes in England and Wales lack one or more of the basic amenities; 2½ million homes in the United Kingdom are seriously affected by damp; 3 million homes require repairs costing more than £2,500; and 1½

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million homes have serious design defects. The estimate for putting those defects right has been mentioned by previous speakers.
The third aspect that I want to mention is the defects in the design of system building. As a Member of the Opposition who participated in a recent Bill on housing defects, I was privy to a whole batch of documents outlining that programme. We have no time to go into that now, but certainly the Association of Metropolitan Authorities estimate that it will take £5,000 million to remedy system-built design and construction defects in tower blocks and in other high density areas built in the 1960s and 1970s. Some of these, we know, passed into private ownership in good faith. Unlike that Bill and unlike the approach of this present Government, it will not be the intention of a future Labour Government to differentiate between tenants and owners who are trapped in that defective housing. We will treat the problem as seriously as it deserves.
The fourth problem is that of the backlog, again mentioned by my noble friend Lord Pitt. The AMA have stated that this backlog has accrued mainly as the result of cuts in the budget on housing expenditure by the present Administration. They have estimated there is a present shortage of 1 million dwellings. There are now about 1¼ million households registered on the local authority housing waiting lists. There are 83,000 households accepted as homeless compared to 57,000 in 1979; and many homeless people—and we know there are thousands of homeless people especially single homeless people—do not even get counted and do not emerge in the statistics anywhere. Because of this concealment, the known figure of 500,000 overcrowded households may seriously underestimate the real number of householders searching for suitable accommodation. As well as this, we know that by the year 2001 there will be another 2·3 million extra households.
I want to spend my last couple of minutes on two areas of particular interest to me. First, the single homeless. I have just mentioned a few statistics. I cannot apologise for mentioning statistics because they are important in this kind of debate. A government survey shows that over a million people face fire risks and overcrowding because of the conditions of these houses. There are 334,000 multiple-occupied properties in England and Wales and 2 million people live in them. At least, 53 per cent. of those properties are substandard. These are all in the private sector and not, as Mr. Pattie would have us believe, only in council and public sector housing. Some 127,000 houses lack satisfactory means of escape from fire; 110,000 houses need major repairs; 96,000 houses lack proper amenities; 77,000 houses are unsatisfactorily managed and 53,000 houses are overcrowded or over-occupied, according to the Government's own survey. That is no mean problem. And we could probably add a great deal to that because, if their previous record in other fields is to be followed, I imagine that they would automatically doctor the figures.
The other aspect I mentioned, which was touched on, was the question of housing for the elderly. We know that expenditure on public-sector housing is now less than half what it was in 1978–79. The cuts that
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have been made have had a serious effect on the elderly, and that situation, if left, can only deteriorate. If the housing of elderly people is left static so that nothing is done to cure some of the problems which have been outlined by the noble Lord, Lord Pitt, the situation will get worse and cost much more to put right. So we have to face the fact that there are now 10 million elderly people in Great Britain, and by the year 2000 the number of people aged 75 and over will have increased by almost 1 million. The housing needs of elderly people, either to remain in their existing home for as long as they wish (for which appropriate repair work will be needed) or to move to more convenient accommodation, often to be nearer their families, create many problems.
I could go on about the plight of the elderly but I hope that other speakers may also touch on it because it is a problem that affects every area in the country—the problem of elderly owner-occupiers trapped in a house which is far too big for them and unable to qualify for the necessary points to move because they may wish to move to an area, to be near their family, which is outside the area in which they live. There are many other attendant problems, and altogether these represent a tremendously difficult situation that will face the next administration.
I have mentioned the fact that the next Labour Government will have to tackle this problem. Our Motion calls for greater public investment in housing; and in documentation from the Labour Party headquarters the party is firmly committed to accepting the responsibilities in the field of public expenditure because we recognise that poor housing is in fact a false economy. It throws extra burdens on health and social services; it contributes to immobility in the labour market and to greater economic decline. What is needed is a major programme to repair and improve old homes and build new ones. We also know that, pound for pound, house building and construction creates more jobs than any other government spending and it creates little direct strain on our balance of payments. There are 400,000 construction workers on the dole, a recession in the construction materials industry and a massive shortage of decent homes. The arithmetic of those figures ought to be apparent to everybody.
It is a prudent investment. We need good quality housing stock for many years to come. We simply cannot afford to let housing deteriorate at the present rate. Repairs, improvements and replacements, if done now, will safeguard the future of our housing stock and certainly—I can speak only for the next Labour Government—we shall work with tenants, with local authorities and housing associations to develop a strategy that will begin to solve the crisis that has been created and worsened by Conservative administrations since 1979.
4.3 p.m.
Baroness Ewart-Biggs: My Lords, the topic that my noble friend Lord Dean has put before us this afternoon is clearly a vital one. That has been proved, I think, by the speeches that have already been made—speeches which have contained statistics and statements which have proved that the Government's housing policy is in very serious disarray.

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I should like to confine my few remarks to only one area and one category of people who are caught up in our housing situation through having no home at all. I should like to speak only about the homeless; about who they are, how many of them there are and what can be done to rectify their situation. There are, it is thought, no fewer than 100,000 households—I know that the statistics we use are put forward in good faith but sometimes they vary slightly as between different speakers—who are accepted as homeless, in terms of the Housing (Homeless Persons) Act. As my noble friend Lord Stallard said, it is felt by those who work in the field of housing that the true figure, including the categories of people whom local authorities are not under an obligation to house—all those people who do not approach the local authorities—might well be three times that number. Also, there is no doubt that the figure is rising.
The reasons that a growing number of people are being squeezed right out of the housing market are various, and I should like to give your Lordships a few of them. First, while the right to buy has enormously grown, the right to rent has enormously declined, both in the private and the public sectors. It now seems absolutely inconceivable that in 1914 the privately-rented sector's share of the housing stock was as high as 90 per cent. Much of that may have been imperfect accommodation but nevertheless it provided an option for those people on waiting lists for council accommodation. Today that option has almost disappeared, with only 10 per cent. of the housing stock remaining in the privately-rented sector and with the publicly-rented sector standing at about only 30 per cent. That can only mean that the balance between home ownership and private and public rented housing has been completely lost, with the result that a growing number of people are without homes and on the waiting lists.
Surely it is true to say that the whole concept of a waiting list is itself becoming an anachronism because it implies that there is somewhere to wait. But, as I have said, the waiting room which used to be provided by the private landlords has disappeared and there is a virtual disappearance of new lettings, so that the only option left to those people on the waiting lists is to live with relations or friends or to enter the network of hostels and bed and breakfast lodginghouses.
My noble friend Lord Pitt has given some very vivid examples of the effects on the health of those people who are living in this accommodation. May I also remind your Lordships that as there is no rent control, no security of tenure and no controls over standards, the owners of those commercial establishments are able to make vast profits at public expense by letting squalid, overcrowded and often unsafe accommodation to homeless people. I have visited some families living in these conditions, and it is impossible to overstate the problems of living and bringing up children in such a setting. I have seen small, inadequate and appallingly decorated rooms, with the family eating their takeaway meal sitting on the bed—a takeaway meal because the cooking facilities in these bed and breakfast establishments are almost nil, and they sit on the bed because there is nowhere else to sit.
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I have also heard so often that children who are cooped up in these very restricted areas, with their education very often disrupted through moving and having lost their friends and homes, are showing serious signs (as my noble friend Lord Pitt said) of withdrawal and of disruptive behaviour. In addition, their physical health can be affected. It must also be remembered that the people who end up in these miserable places are often the most vulnerable people in our society: the single-parent family, often a very young mother and often unmarried, with small dependent children. What sort of grown-ups will those small children grow up to be?
Then there is the mother who, with her children, has left her home because of domestic violence. Others may be patients coming out of hospital with nowhere to go or young people who have left home either because they have to or because they wish to do so, and young people who have been in institutions or in care, because they have nowhere to go. The last category of people who often end up in this kind of accommodation are of course ex-offenders who, when discharged from prison, have nowhere to go. I know from experience through my work with the New Bridge that rehabilitation is the major problem. But if there is accommodation for an ex-offender the risk of that ex-offender re-offending is very much diminished. That very often is the reason for their re-offending: they have nowhere to go.
It really boils down to the fact that, at an exorbitant price to local authorities, the most deprived and vulnerable sections of our community are kept in these miserable conditions. The irony, as has already been said, is that it would be not only better but much cheaper to allow those local councils and housing associations to provide proper self-contained flats than to pay the cost of board and lodging to commercial landlords. However, far from allowing that, the Government's response has been to bring in the new limits which will force people into still more substandard temporary accommodation or, literally, put some of them out onto the streets. Another reason for homelessness, which the noble Lord, Lord Ezra, has given, is the very large number of houses standing empty in need of repairs and, as he said, the majority of those houses are from the private sector.
So may I put forward two suggestions as to how this situation, which presents so many homeless people, could be slightly remedied? First, the balance of public investment must surely be redistributed, giving a higher priority to investment in public housing, both for building and for repairs, and less to subsidies for mortgage tax relief, exemption of owner-occupied housing from capital gains tax and discounts to council house tenants buying their homes with these bribes, as one would see them. It has now come out that so many of those owner-occupiers are unable to look after and maintain their own houses. This point has been very clearly made this afternoon. So this redistribution is surely the only way to bring about a reality of choice between the right to buy and the right to rent.
We on these Benches have often been blamed for not respecting that right to own, but we respect it so long as there is also a right to rent and sufficient building to provide an option for those people who will

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never be able to own and buy their own houses. Public investment in housing has continued to decline and, at the same time, the number of unemployed building workers increases. This point has again been made several times this afternoon.
My final point is that surely the way towards a good housing policy is not through a centralist approach but from a local base. Surely a housing policy constructed from the bottom upwards must mean that housing plans and priorities are set locally, based on full discussions with those in unsatisfactory housing and those without a proper home. If local authorities were under a statutory obligation to prepare annually a comprehensive assessment of housing needs and demands in their area, to discuss this with local people and to publish their report and plans, that would definitely provide an essential framework for local housing programmes and would also lead the way towards removing the terrible scourge of homelessness of which I have spoken this afternoon.
There is always a danger that this unfortunate group of people who are homeless will become a forgotten community. That is one of the reasons why we are extremely grateful to my noble friend Lord Dean for bringing forward this subject this afternoon, so that some of us can speak about that group of people who, through no possible fault of their own, are without a home and are therefore unable to live with the dignity which a home provides.
4.14 p.m.
The Lord Bishop of Manchester: My Lords, some 45 years ago Archbishop William Temple wrote in a book entitled Christianity and the Social Order some significant words about housing. He said:
"A society committed to the family would see that there were houses available for all citizens within their means, in which a family could be brought up in health and happiness in the unity of family life and in the decency and dignity proper to human beings who are the children of God."
All these many years later, we have been given another opportunity to air in this House the problems of housing and I for one am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Dean of Beswick, for introducing this subject in the way that he has.
However, it is sad and depressing that we have to come back, again and again, to this terrible crisis in housing and find that, far from progress having been made, things seem to be getting worse and worse. Sometimes it is alleged that the British people are among the best housed in the world. This may be true for approximately 70 per cent. of them. It certainly includes people like your Lordships and myself. I live in a tied cottage—not a palace, I hasten to say (those days are disappearing for the Bishops)—but a tied cottage adequately maintained by the commissioners.
This is not a personal and pressing problem for me and I suspect, if we are honest, we have to admit that this is so for all of us here in the House this afternoon. Yet we know perfectly well from what we are reading, from the reports which have been mentioned, from the news media and from articles in the press that this is a terrible, pressing and urgent problem which is very damaging for many people who are our fellow citizens in our country today.
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I believe that one reason that it has been so difficult to get on top of the housing problem is precisely because it is a problem which affects a minority of British people. If you think back to some of the documentaries which have been produced, such as that television documentary "Cathy come Home", a good many years ago now, they had a tremendous effect, but it was not a lasting effect, and surely this was partly because politically the people who are the worst housed do not really have enough clout in this country. Problems which affect minorities in health, in education, in some of our disadvantaged areas in the country are particularly intractable, because they are not problems which affect the majority of our population, and because politically influential majorities do not experience such problems at first hand. That, I think, is partly what concerns us in the issue of housing.
But let me hasten to add that I do not believe this is really a party matter. For example, if you look back at the debate which was held in this House in June 1982, there was one telling quotation from a speaker at that time. He said:
"I can think of no issue on which political economists of widely differing tendencies are in more substantial agreement than on the unholy mess which successive governments have made of the housing market. Housing has become the growing source of human misery."
So there is no cause for complacency on the part of members of any political party in this House this afternoon. Yet, having said that, the situation has been deteriorating and Government Ministers responsible would ignore at their peril what is being said.
We know that we live at a time of diminished resources. We know that, in some ways, Britain has become a poorer nation than some years ago. Yet it is apparent to all that, when something is recognised as a real crisis, money can be found. You have only to go back to the Falklands crisis for that. The national situation over housing has been well outlined in this debate already this afternoon and the noble Lord, Lord Stallard, referred to a number of reports that are readily available and in which the situation is well documented.
So far as the Church reports are concerned—and perhaps your Lordships will expect me to make some reference to them—I think that the Churches have been paying more attention to this subject in recent years, though we feel as puzzled, as weak and as helpless in some ways as the rest of sections of society over how to tackle the housing problems. I think back to a very good report in 1982 that was produced by our Board of Social Responsibility nationally, called Housing and Homelessness, which is in my hands. Faith in the City, which has already been alluded to, carries an excellent section on housing.
As regards the area of Greater Manchester from which I come, we have a Board of Social Responsibility under my own diocese which outlined in a special report several years ago the situation in the Greater Manchester area. It brought home the facts in such a startling manner that, when we had a diocesan synod debate on it, there was no dissentient voice from the fact that housing should be given a far higher priority politically and also by the Churches. That report showed that housing in the Greater Manchester

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area is of poor quality or in disrepair and nearly 30 per cent. of it is substandard. As is well known, there have been great problems with some of the newer properties—not just the older properties dating from the early years of this century but those which have been put up since, such as multiple-decked access flats in the 'sixties. The case of Fort Beswick, which has had to be demolished, is well known. On one estate in Salford which consists of housing from that era a survey showed that more than half the tenants wished to get out of the estate. The problems instanced concerned overcrowding, small, inadequate kitchens, damp houses, rubbish not removed, repairs not done, and things of that kind. Part of the problem facing us in the greater Manchester area involves public sector housing of poor quality or in disrepair.
We all know that the resources to deal with these problems have simply not been available in recent years and that the situation has been growing worse. Mention has been made of the waiting lists for local authority housing. That is part of the subject of our debate this afternoon. Current figures for Manchester city show that 37,640 households are awaiting housing, nearly 20,000 of them new applicants. Most of these are families or households with elderly dependants. This links to what I was saying at the start with the quotation from Archbishop William Temple about the devastating effect of such problems on family life. Any political parties which make the family a plank in their programme should pay special attention to what housing means for families.
I consulted one of our major local housing associations about what waiting lists meant in their situation in Manchester city. This is what I was told:
"Families being rehoused now have waited four years for a house. The families coming on to our waiting list cannot be told how long they will have to wait, because the waiting list simply cannot be calculated for time. The waiting list has now expanded to unmanageable proportions, and we could fill our entire holding of 1,100 units if all were vacant and still have a substantial waiting list. In short, in a situation of ever-increasing demand we have a significantly decreasing supply leading to over-crowding, homelessness, frustration, boredom and aggression".
There are no individual reasons why this crisis has been growing so much in recent years. You can put a number of things into the pot and look at them in turn. There is bad design from the past, some poor housing management (let us face it), some bad planning in various estates, and of course there is misuse by tenants, which is often used as an excuse for the housing situation. I should certainly not wish to underestimate the amount of misuse that there is. But I think we must all appreciate that there is a real cycle of deprivation which leads to this misuse. That in turn leads to vandalism and the problem becomes difficult and intractable. Again and again one comes back to the problem of under-resourcing in these areas.
I am perfectly aware of the reasons why we are not as wealthy a county as we were and why all the time there is competition for scarce resources, but I believe that there is a moral issue here. I turn for a moment to homelessness. I need not say very much because the previous speaker, the noble Baroness, Lady EwartBiggs, has referred to this. The figures are now higher than have ever before been recorded, though it is very hard to find out exactly what is happening in regard to
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homelessness. It can be linked very clearly to shortage of housing, as many surveys show. I quote from the Church report on this matter, Housing and Homelessness:
"Homelessness cannot be attributed to personal failure. It results largely from the inability to acquire suitable housing. Thousands of people are forced to live at present in institutions and in situations of stress engendered through over-crowding or poor physical conditions".
We ought to explode the myth that those who are homeless are always single people—male, middle-aged, drunken and inadequate. This applies to only a proportion, and perhaps a small proportion at that. In a recent survey women constituted more than 25 per cent. of the single homeless; 30 per cent. were under 30; and many had skills and above average qualifications. Homelessness is such a distressing feature of our situation today and we must treat this crisis with very great urgency.
I have already said that there is competition for resources and that we have to recognise the danger of inflation. We give credit to government where credit is due for a low rate of inflation, though as we well know, quite a lot of this is due to fortunate circumstances for this country—circumstances which are not necessarily bringing the same good fortune to others in other parts of the world. But now that inflation has come down perhaps attention can be given to other sides of the various problems which face our country at the present time.
Public sector housing remains a vital element of the scene. Whatever we may or may not think about the drive for greater private ownership—and I am not opposed to this—we need to make sure that an adequate proportion of our national resources continues to go into public sector housing and all the problems which are to found there. I support the plea which has been made from the Benches opposite that a hard look should be taken at the tax relief being granted on mortgage payments. This may be unpopular politically in certain circles, but if we are to achieve greater fairness and a better distribution of the resources in this country, this point seems to me to be fundamental.
I shall finish by saying that with all problems which seem to be intractable and which come up again and again for debate in the House of Commons and in your Lordships' House there can easily be a feeling of hopelessness and an attitude of, "Oh, not that again". But we must somehow get over this feeling and look at the facts and try to tackle them realistically and with great urgency. This is surely a moral challenge to us all.
4.27 p.m.
Lord Parry: My Lords, as every speaker in the debate up to now has said, the House owes a debt to my noble friend Lord Dean for introducing the debate at this time. He has done a favour to this, the temporal, side of the House. In introducing this debate in Ascot Week he has done no favour to the noble Lord who has to reply. The House will have difficulty in proving to the people who are homeless and in substandard accommodation at this time that it is the caring House that we know it to be. We are told from time to time, often from the Benches opposite, that there is no monopoly of care in this House. I subscribe

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to that view and have said so many times. It has therefore been greatly to the credit of this House that the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester has been able to make a massive contribution from the spiritual side of the House to this debate this afternoon.
This debate should be equally supported in all parts of the House because we represent here the entire population of Great Britain, if we have a role in the constitution, as I believe we have. Having said that, I want specifically to say that the debate up to now has identified the problem as it stands nationwide across Great Britain. It would be correct for me to say that in January the Secretary of State for Wales—my former parliamentary election opponent—announced that he was undertaking the most expensive and detailed research into the difficulties of housing in Wales that has ever been undertaken. That survey will cost £1.5 million and it will indicate once and for all the pattern of housing difficulty which exists in Wales.
It is not only a Welsh problem, but a world problem. Food, clothing and shelter are things which we all in our political philosophies seek to provide for the people. The right reverend Prelate was perfectly right to say that no political party should take particular credit for having been able completely to solve or even completely to plan away this great social difficulty. In fact, in the bibliography that has already been provided, one might write in another title. It is the biography of Aneurin Bevan by my right honourable friend Michael Foot.
In 1945, in another place, there was a classic debate on housing. That outlined the very problems which we are discussing this afternoon. Anyone discussing the subject of housing has first to talk about two things. They have to talk about the quantity of housing and about the quality of housing. Those aspects have been identified by my noble friends, and by the noble Lord, Lord Ezra, speaking from the right hand side of the Temporal side of the House.
In that debate in 1945, Aneurin Bevan said that a government could be judged in two or three years on the number of houses that it had built; but in 10 years and thereafter, it would be judged more and more by the quality of the housing that it had built. So we are speaking this afternoon about the type of housing as well as the volume.
I want to focus the attention of the House on the fact that we can all of us, though caring, grow away from our own perceptions of the need. I was born literally into a cottage-type house. My father was a nonconformist minister in Wales, and I was born in a tiny manse. Now I am constantly surprised and amazed when I go into terraced houses—and I occupied one myself until the late 1950s—at the limits of scale that there are. So that even within houses that are existing and adequate, there is a certain limitation of life. That comes from a style, scale and type of house that would otherwise pass all the tests as being adequate as a home.
When the right honourable Member for Pembrokeshire, the Secretary of State for Wales, looks into the facts as they affect the Principality, he will find them already presaged, even before his report comes out. I am sure that he, being a caring man, will have set
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his report in motion because he knows of bleak facts such as that there are in Wales 80,000 homes that have no toilets, bathroom or hot water supply. We forget that some noble Lords who sit on these Benches grew up in houses such as those. As the years go by they tend to forget. It is not that they cease to care; it is just that such memories are no longer in the forefront of their minds. Today we have the opportunity to say, and the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, and the Government have the opportunity to say in response to my noble friend's deposition, that they do care; that they do remember; and that they are in touch with the facts.
I have to handle Parliamentary Questions asked in this House and in another place concerning cash grants to landlords of properties. They have been reluctant—and we know the reasons why—to take advantage of development schemes by successive governments because they do not offer the return on capital that the landlords can obtain elsewhere. We understand that. Local government has been prevented from major public housing development schemes by the Government's changes of direction in fiscal policy. It is a fact that many caring councils have been unable to spend money that they have had available because it is the Government's fiscal policy not to spend money in that direction. It may be that a caring Conservative, a caring Socialist or a caring Liberal might find other priorities at any given time for the spending of the national purse. However, that does not remove long term a problem that was identified in 1945 as being soluble only if this nation could build then and there 750,000 houses.
I wonder whether your Lordships realise the similarity of those figures, and whether your Lordships now understand the emphasis of the right reverend Prelate on the failure of successive governments really to grasp the nettle of our housing problem. It was said in 1945 that 750,000 houses were needed. Those houses had to be built in the context of returning this nation's economy from war production to peace. An attempt was made, and it was probably the most courageous attempt that had ever been made up to then.
I shall for just one moment take the issue back another 30 years. Why was it that all those houses were needed in 1945? Many of them were needed because of war-time bombing and because of the war-time failure to spend money on bringing housing up to decent standards. More importantly, the crisis in the economy that existed in the 1930s led to a failure on the part of the private sector to invest in the development of housing. So by 1945, there was not much argument as to the previous position between private and public spending, because everyone said that the building industry had to be remotivated, and that it had to build both public and private housing.
That is my own position from these Benches. We are not arguing for more spending on public building than on private building in the economy. We are arguing that the balance should be maintained and that houses should be built. It is vital that money should be spent in the public sector because some of the money that was spent betwen 1945 and 1951 provided some of the finest public housing in the world. Some of that housing of a high standard has recently exchanged hands. Its market price has been demonstrable, and

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people were delighted to buy their own homes. I do not want to go into that issue. What I want to say is that, because we build houses of sufficient scale and style, some families were fortunate enough to grow up in them.
It is a fact that some people advised Aneurin Bevan that one could not build 300,000 houses a year. He always regretted accepting that advice; he said so publicly. In fact, subsequent Ministers in a subsequent government built 300,000 houses a year, to his embarrassment. They did so by cutting down on the standards, by limiting the sizes of those houses, and by building an inferior type of house. If Mr. Pattie, whoever he may be, in another place wishes to point the finger at certain council estates and describe them as slum housing, then let him pick up the lease and find out in what period those properties were built. Who built that slum housing, if indeed it is slum housing? How long has it been in occupation?
I quickly want to tell your Lordships that the Secretary of State, when he supplements what is already known with the inquiry for which, very properly and rightly, he has called about my own native land, he will find, because the lines are already drawn, that the number of dwellings both in Wales and in England has increased by more than 50 per cent. over the past 30 years—but that the population has grown rather more slowly.
In 1984, there were 2·5 persons per dwelling compared with 3·6 persons in 1950. The housing stock in Wales is rather older than in Great Britain as a whole, with 22 per cent. of the houses built before 1891 compared with less than 16 per cent. in Great Britain. That is why Wales is one of the poorest areas in Great Britain in terms of housing provision.
The relative importance of public and private housebuilding has changed over the past 30 years. I believe it to be proper that it has. I believe in a property-owning democracy; but I believe also that it is essential for a democratic country to keep within its control, and the control of Parliament, an adequate housing stock of the best possible quality that it can afford. Any government who fail to do that are failing the nation and the challenge of this time.
4.39 p.m.
Lord Crawshaw of Aintree: My Lords, it is always difficult to follow the noble Lord, Lord Parry, who puts over what he has to say with such feeling because it comes from his heart. I was interested in everything that the noble Lord had to say. I may also say how much I appreciate the opportunity that has been given by the noble Lord, Lord Dean, once again to express our views on this particular subject. I hope that the noble Lord was not apologising for bringing this subject forward. I am sure that he was not doing so, because what he and other noble Lords said two months ago is still as relevant today. It is still as true today, and it will still be true in two months' time. However, the more we say it the more chance there is that somebody will pay some attention.
The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester spoke about Salford. That is where I was born. I know the area he was speaking about where slums have been
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removed and other slums built. That is not unusual, and it brings me to my first point. This is not a political issue. When we refer to statistics, as we have this afternoon, we must remember that each statistic is a human being living in inadequate circumstances and, in many cases, in squalor. It is not, therefore, a party political matter.
I was going to point out, had not the noble Lord, Lord Parry, done so, that it was a Conservative Government that I believe managed to reach a target of 350,000 houses and I was going to pay tribute to that. But where have all those houses gone to? Where are the tower blocks? They have been taken down at tremendous expense. In Liverpool we shall be paying the interest on the money borrowed for the next 40 years; but the blocks are not there now. That is what we must think about when we decide on building. How are we to do it? It is not just a case of putting up houses. Houses have to be maintained and standards have to be maintained. Obviously the systems we have had until now have certainly not maintained standards. We must look at that problem immediately.
I believe, and I have said it before in this House, that one of the most fruitful means of rehousing people in this country, at a rent which is economic and which people can afford to pay, is through housing associations. But I am not bound to that view. I think there is a tremendous prospect in the private sector if the Government are prepared to help finance building societies and organisations of that nature and get private investment into private housing which could be available for rent. However, having lived through the age of Rachmann I am always loath to talk about private rented housing because of what happened in those circumstances. However, it should not be beyond the wit of government to frame legislation which can provide the private investor with a reasonable return on his money. We must face the fact that, unless finance is going to come solely from the Government, we shall not get private investors unless there is a return. That is why I say the Government must do something to help finance the building societies or other private enterprises that want to go into housing.
The Government have done that in London's docklands. I know that some of those houses are a tremendous price, but there is no need for houses to be built at such prices. Therefore, we must first see how we build in order to maintain their standards. I have said previously in this House that if we build in London for letting at a high rent we should not have the buildings open for all and sundry to go through the main door into the corridors and make a mess all over the place. There should be a commissionaire allowing people to enter or not enter as the case may be. Why should corporation tenants be treated any differently?
One of the points that I made when serving on the Liverpool housing committee was that millions of pounds would have been saved if we had paid for a rota system of commissionaires on the bottom floor of the flats instead of spending millions of pounds a year on each block repairing the damage inflicted on them. Those are the issues we must consider. Penny-pinching only costs more money.

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That brings me to my next point. The Government talk about getting on your bike. I accept that it is always helpful to go out and look for work but if you live in the North of England and get a job in the South, what do you do? You have to live apart from your family while you are working. There are no houses available in the South at an economic rent that anyone from the North can afford. I know of many executives who are looking for promotion but dread that the promotion might be into the London area or the South-East. At present they have their own homes and are living comfortably, but selling their house in the North-East would not buy a decent garage in the South. So when we talk about getting on bikes and the mobility of labour it is necessary to look at the circumstances which exist.
That is the position in the private sector and that is why I believe that a great need exists, and not only through housing associations, which I have had the privilege of working with for a number of years. I have said often before that each tenant in an association is known personally by the person responsible in the association. At committee meetings they can discuss why someone is behind with the rent. Perhaps the husband has been ill or out of work; all those things can be discussed.
I am not trying to run down the local authorities. They were given an impossible task. In dealing with 80,000 or 100,000 tenancies as in Liverpool—when I was on the council there were 80,000 people on the waiting list—how can you speak of individual tenants? It is an impossibility. Therefore, I plead with my noble friends to be careful, when we are speaking about money being put into local authority funding, to think out some way whereby these tenants can be given their say in the running of the places in which they live.
There is no reason why a tower block should not be handed over to a tenants' association, which would be told, "You look after it. You make suggestions. You have committee meetings and tell us what you want us to do." I am not seeking to take housing out of the hands of local authorities but I have had bitter experience in Liverpool of seeing housing estates developed with hard-won money some of which are now the drug centres of the city.
Those are the problems, and they will not be solved overnight. However, we hear that the Government do not have the money available. I asked a Question about housing associations a few weeks ago and the Minister replied that the allocation was not cut down last year and that the associations received more money. That is true but at the same time it is false. The associations received the same money as the year before but that did not take into account the 2½ per cent. rise in the cost of living. In addition, that money was primarlily sent to the inner city areas. I do not complain about that. I have fought for the inner city areas. But, as I said to the Minister, it leaves a nasty taste in your mouth when you know that the effort you have made on behalf of the inner cities is being paid for by housing associations in other parts of the country where the housing situation is as bad as in some of the inner cities. In many cases they have been cut down to 30 or 40 per cent. of what they were getting the previous year.
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I do not believe that the Government are sincere in saying that they are trying to solve the housing problem. I have never criticised the Government on a whole range of policies. When the Conservative Government came into power there were many actions they had to take which were unpopular, and I went along with many of them. We cannot live with inflation at 25 per cent. But the Government seem to have made some sort of god of reducing inflation. When they reduced inflation to 7 per cent. they wanted it down to 6 per cent., even at the cost of another 200,000 jobs. That is the sort of thing which I believe is wrong. The more they continue on those lines the more they depress the economy. The more people the Government throw out of work the less money the Government have for what we are asking for this afternoon.
We talk about inflating the economy—and I know that "inflate" is a horrible word for the Government—but I believe that in housing we are in a prize field to do it, under regulation. We know approximately how much it costs to refurbish 1,000 houses, so there is no need for the Government to say that they are going to give £20 billion. All they need say is that 20,000 houses will be refurbished in the next six months. Then, if the economy does not overheat, they can take another 20,000 or 30,000 houses and go on until such time as they reach a position where they think the economy is overheating. Then, of course, any normal government would have to pull back. But the excuse that the Government will spend nothing at all in case the economy overheats is hypocrisy. I do not think that they mean it.
I do not believe that members of the Government are insensitive to people's feelings. I have never believed that. But I wonder how many know what it is like to live in such conditions or have seen people living in them. I had the honour of being the Member for Toxteth for 20-odd years and was a councillor for more than that. Few weeks went by without my seeing 30 or 40 houses that had things wrong with them. As has been said, it is not just the housing; it is what it does to the families. The husband would come home from work to his family of three or four children, and there would be nowhere for the kids to go apart from the one room that they lived in. What sort of married life is that for anybody? It is even worse when the husband is out of work and spends all his time in that environment.
I do not believe that the Government know what it is like to live in such circumstances. After he had been to Liverpool, Michael Heseltine said that he did not know that people lived in such conditions. I do not think that he is insensitive. One cannot criticise people if they have never had the opportunity to see such things. The right reverend Prelate and others know what it is like.
I say to the Government that the tide is running out fast. Bad housing is not the reason for riots in Toxteth; there are a whole collection of things. But when people live in such circumstances they come to a stage where even a riot is a bit different from the life that they are living day to day. That is the great reality of the situation. It is no good the Government saying that they do not have the money. What has happened to the 50 per cent. of the proceeds from the houses sold

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by councils? I went against my party when I was a member of the Labour Party, because I always felt that there was a need to sell council houses. But in my wildest dreams I never thought that we should have a government who would let the council sell them and keep the money. It is hypocrisy for them to say that the money is not there. There is plenty of money from the council house sales. At least that would be a start to what we are asking for.
4.52 p.m.
Baroness David: My Lords, housing is a human problem, and a very big human problem, and it is not going away. It is getting bigger. That fact and the information in the speeches this afternoon and in the numerous important reports that we have had over the past year totally justify our choosing the subject for debate. Those who suffer from poor housing or no housing at all need others to put their case, as the right reverend Prelate said.
The Government have had a strong case made against them. I hope that they will come up with good answers. All the reports tell the same tale of gross under-investment in housing, of a shortage of houses, particularly in the areas of the country where there is work, of an accelerating deterioration of the housing stock and of a failure to bring the many properties lacking the basic amenities up to a respectable standard.
The Government are constantly telling us that they have spent more in real terms on education and health than was spent in 1979. One can argue about what effect that has had and about its adequacy, but there is no question but that the money spent on housing has been cut by this Government more drastically than public spending in any other area. I should like to ask the Minister to tell us the amount spent in, first, cash and, secondly, real terms on public sector housing in 1979 and in 1985.
The lack of resources in the public sector has resulted in 1985 having the record lowest number of new houses started since the First World War and there was no net decrease in the number of empty houses needing work to make them habitable. Eighty five per cent. of council-owned dwellings require some repair and improvement. The noble Lord, Lord Ezra, spoke powerfully of the need for more improvement grants. Are we to have a response to the Green Paper on improvement grants? The responses from local authorities have been in for some time. I hope that the Minister will be able to tell us about that. I totally back up the noble Lord's plea for the removal of VAT on repairs. That should definitely be done. Both he and the noble Lord, Lord Crawshaw, mentioned the ability of councils to spend their own money.
I have no doubt that when the Minister replies he will be referring to the helpful report of the Audit Commission in March 1986, Managing the Crisis in Council Housing—and crisis it is. He will doubtless point out that councils could do better than they do with the money they have. No one would deny that there is the possibility that some councils could do better. Estate management does not always receive sufficient attention. Too little is spent on it and too few
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staff are allocated to it. Top managers are not always of top quality. Their responsibilities are great. A typical large authority might have 40,000 dwellings and an annual rent roll of £30 million a year, but few directors of housing receive more than £25,000 to £30,000 a year and salaries are not competitive with industry.
The commission refers to empty properties, and my noble friend Lord Dean mentioned that 2.4 per cent. of the total housing stock was vacant at any one time. He made the point that the housing associations, the private sector and the Government most of all have higher percentages. Many homes are awaiting repair, being repaired or awaiting sale or demolition. It is possible by good practice to reduce the relet period, but waiting lists are large and growing, the Audit Commission admits. They are increasing at the rate of 3,000 a year. There are also those who want to transfer; over 4,000 applications a year might be made in a typical metropolitan district.
I think that it would be appropriate to ask the Government whether they can set about collecting very much more information on those lists. I should have thought that much more precise information and monitoring are needed in order to understand the national need and to formulate a national housing policy. I am not suggesting that local authorities should not have their own arrangements about creating their lists. Circumstances may be different in different parts of the country. But an overall and up-to-the-minute view is necessary. With computers available, as they were not 10 to 15 years ago, that should be quite possible.
Shelter did a good job in producing in 1983 a waiting list survey and an analysis of trends in waiting lists between 1976 and 1983, but that is now three years out of date. It says that it is supplying information which is not officially available elsewhere. That also applies to transfers, which are equally important. The information ought to be officially available, and what is the department to do about that?
I want to say a word or two about the homeless, although the subject has been well covered by my noble friends Lord Pitt and Lady Ewart-Biggs. However, it is such a important problem that I feel I should mention it from this Front Bench. The number of families in London in bed-and-breakfast accommodation has tripled over the past three years. The total cost of homelessness to local authorities was £28.6 million in 1983–84 and rose to over £34 million 1984–85. That can be compared to the increase in the DHSS cost of supplementary benefit board-and-lodging payments, which have risen from £76 million 1980 to a staggering £380 million in 1984. Surely a wiser Government would use those huge sums to invest in hostels or indeed in houses. The average cost of a night's bed-and-breakfast accommodation for a family is about £19, which is above the average weekly rent of most council dwellings.
A Shelter report, A Decent Home Makes all the Difference, shows the position in four large cities. The larger problem is found in the large metropolitan authorities and in London. I met an old friend, the headmaster of North Westminster Community School last week. I told him about this debate. He said that he

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would send me a report on 90 Bangladeshi children from homeless families in his school living in bed-and-breakfast accommodation in Bayswater. It makes devastating reading. I shall quote from it about one family:
"When the children come home from school at 4 o'clock, all they can do is sit in the two rooms the family occupies. There is nowhere for them to do homework or to play, except the hotel corridors and stairways—or outside by the busy main road. Four of the children sleep in one of the rooms—they are aged 19, 14, 11 and 9. The fifth and younger child sleeps with the parents in the other room. There is little or no privacy."
The report tells more horrifying stories. The length of time families are staying in such accommodation is increasing. A two-year stay is no longer remarkable. It seems a little ironical that in this House on 2nd June we passed an amendment to the Education Bill to the effect that where sex education is given to pupils it should be given in such as manner as to encourage those pupils to have due regard to moral considerations and the value of family life. There must be some hollow laughs in Bayswater if they know of that. What sort of family life can there be in the wretched circumstances of those seven people "partly living" in those two rooms?
In his defence of the Government's position on housing, I am sure that the noble Lord the Minister will mention rent arrears and the figure of £250 million. Authorities vary enormously in the amount of debt. Total rent arrears at the end of March 1985 amounted to the equivalent of some 25 days' rent on average, but in 262 authorities it was under 3 per cent., of gross debit—less than 10 days' rent—and in 168 authorities it was under 2 per cent. When local authorities are criticised, it should be remembered that many housing associations have arrears in the range of 2 per cent. to 3 per cent. of gross debit, and nearly all manage fewer dwellings.
Since the Audit Commission's 1984 report, Bringing Council Tenants' Arrears Under Control, the trend has been downward. I want to ask the Minister, and I believe it is relevant in this context, what are the building societies' repossession figures for the past three years? It is worth remembering that 10 per cent. of families accepted by local councils as homeless in the first nine months of 1985 had defaulted on their mortgage payments. It is not always right to buy.
There could be tighter financial control and better management, but the savings so made would only go a small way to solving the enormous housing problems in this country. On page 72, the Audit Commission's report states:
"even on optimistic assumptions about the value improvements that could be generated from implementation of the recommendations in this report, little immediate headway would be made in clearing the £20 billion repairs and improvements backlog. The most that could be reasonably expected after a 2–3 year implementation period would be of the order of £1 billion a year. Moreover, local management may not be able to cope with the challenges involved. In such circumstances proposing a managerial solution may be tantamount to suggesting a rearrangement of the deckchairs on the Titanic".
In chapter 4 the commission considers what steps should be taken over and above those managerial proposals made in the earlier chapter. I should like to refer to those:
"(i) relax the current controls over local authorities' ability to fund capital spending internally, from the sale of assets".
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That point has been made previously. The second is:
"Attract more private sector finance. This will be essential in Category B authorities"—
they are the ones with moderate problems—
"where saleable assets and local property market values will not be sufficient to generate the necessary funds internally to meet the authorities' capital needs.
(iii) Invest more public resources in Category C problem authorities, if only to attract the necessary weight of private money to tackle the serious problems involved".
The 1985 report, Capital Expenditure Controls in Local Government in England, is referred to and a plea is made for local authorities to be given much greater freedom to get on and be allowed to help themselves. In particular, it asks for a new approach and for a three- to five-year planning horizon so that programmes and projects are not subject to abrupt changes in the year-end "rush to spend". I have referred to and quoted from the report fairly extensively because, as the Audit Commission is a body set up and created by this Government, one hopes that its wise words will be heeded. Will the noble Lord the Minister tell us when we shall hear the Government's reaction to the report?
I want to turn to another side of the need for more investment in housing. The Government seem to have lost sight of the fact that investment in public housing for rent makes a major contribution to private sector building. Somehow, the impression has been conveyed that houses for rent are built by local authorities and housing associations. That is rarely true. It is normally carried out by local and national builders who tender for the work. They are firms such as Wimpey, Laing, Costain and Tarmac. They have suffered from the drastic decline in public sector starts. Public money is also vital if private builders are to be able to build for sale on sites other than the easy-build easy-sell green-field sites. Massive sums must be made available for infrastructure, roads, sewers, etc., and, in many inner city areas, for basic land reclamation.
The Government have quietly recognised that in the case of the London Docklands Development Corporation, as the noble Lord, Lord Crawshaw, said, where £300 million of public money went into assembling the land, the infrastructure and so on. Huge public expenditure is a prerequisite for new house building, both public and private. Land prices and availability of land are vitally important. The reason that the London docklands can sell 75 per cent. of its houses for less than £40,000 is that the land was made available to it free of charge.
I should like noble Lords to look at my area, Cambridge, where £500,000 is being asked for one acre. In a few cases more than £500,000 is being asked. Assuming that 15 houses are built to the acre, the site cost per house is over £33,000. That is before a brick is laid. It is not surprising therefore to hear that a not very attractive three-bedroomed semi-detached house in a fairly smart area of Cambridge has just sold for £91,000 and that a very small terraced house with the front door on the street in the Romsey Town area, where houses were run up pretty quickly when the railway came to Cambridge, has just been bought by a young couple whom I know for £38,000. Grander houses are fetching London prices—£200,000 or so.

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That is crazy. Will the Government think again about mortgage tax relief reform which would help to stop the ridiculous escalation in house prices? Of the £4,750 million spent on mortgage tax relief, £1 billion went to those paying higher rates of tax. Are the Government going to develop any policy on land allocation and availability, because it is the scarcity and high price of land which is helping to cause the escalation? Even some Conservatives are becoming bothered. I was told by one housing expert who went to speak at a Conservative meeting in the Home Counties that people there were becoming very angry because although they were living in houses which had increased astronomically in value, that rise was of no immediate benefit to them, and their children were now marrying and wanting homes and just could not afford to be first-time buyers.
The House-Builders Federation has produced an interesting document, Homes Jobs Land The Eternal Triangle. Current planning policies are creating difficulties in building houses where they are needed and where there is work. On Greater London it says:
"the shortage of suitable land for private housing at the right price means that only 10–15,000 dwellings in total can be built each year during the 1980s compared to the requirement for some 20,000 dwellings per year to meet the recognised level of need. As a result, some 40,000 people a year are currently leaving London. Yet the counties in the rest of the South-East are planning to keep them out. Many local authorities are seeking to resist natural growth trends and to suppress the development of the housing and job markets. Hertfordshire proposes to cut housing provision by 17 per cent. from previous levels to well below market demand. But it intends to continue to promote jobs and office growth".
Are the Government taking note of the way that this restraint pre-empts the planning of land for public and private housing? If the Minister refers to lifting the burden, or building businesses, not barriers, I would say that they will make no impact on this problem. Job mobility and employment opportunities are being suppressed by high land value resulting from these restraint policies.
I must finish now as I see that I have overshot my time. The Secretary of State made his first speech on Friday as Secretary of State. I do not believe that the speech was very helpful. He is, however, the third Secretary of State to hold that office within the Department of the Environment during this year. It does not seem likely that we shall get very forward-looking or sensible policies while these changes are going on.
5.10 p.m.
Lord Skelmersdale: My Lords, I welcome the opportunity of discussing housing in this Chamber, and I am very willing to cross swords again with the noble Lord, Lord Dean, on a subject upon which we profoundly disagree. This debate, with a few notable and welcome exceptions, has concentrated almost entirely on bricks, on mortar and on cash. Hardly a word have we heard about people, and their desires, their wants and their needs. It is these—I agree here with the noble Lord, Lord Crawshaw—which should dictate housing policy and not theoretical prescriptions that have been tried and found wanting on so many occasions in the past.
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The first part of the Motion, putting the case for greater public investment in housing, emphasises what has been evident in the Opposition's contribution to recent debates here and in another place. Despite plenty of gloss, presentation and changes of colour scheme, the Labour Party's heart is still firmly entrenched in the same discredited old ideas. Its approach is clearly illustrated in a comment that the noble Lord, Lord Dean, made during his contribution to the debate on the inquiry into British housing. The noble Lord said:
"We must have some action. I do not think it can come from the private sector. It never has before, and as it is so urgent this action mut come from the Government".—[Official Report, 29/1/86; col. 758.]
The noble Lord said much the same this afternoon. If the noble Lord was right, we would listen to him. Indeed, even though he is wrong, we listen to him. Why is he wrong?
"I do not think",
he said,
"it can come from the private sector".
I assume that the noble Lord knows perfectly well, as the noble Lord, Lord Pitt, revealed that he did, that in the last three years private housing starts have been in excess of 150,000 a year and total 485,000, the highest three-year total since 1972–74. But, as amply demonstrated this afternoon, this, of itself, is not enough.
The noble Lord, Lord Parry, referred to a debate on housing that took place in 1945—the year, incidentally, that I was born. He suggested that the same problems existed then as now. In fact, there have been enormous achievements in housing since then. The number of dwellings in England and Wales has increased from 10.7 million to 18.7 million, and standards of accommodation have improved dramatically. Nearly every dwelling now has basic amenities, and space and the number of rooms per household have steadily increased. In these strict terms—I agree that this is not a particularly valid comparison—our housing is among the best in Europe.
The Government are no Jeremiah in these matters. Briefly, the major differences between us and the party opposite are that, first, we have faith in the skills and capabilities of the private sector and, secondly, we have learned a lot from the lessons of the past about the effects of massive public sector house building drives, both in terms of the type of housing that results and the effects on the economy.
Some speakers today have pointed to the stockpile of capital receipts that local authorities have accrued through council house sales as a possible source of finance for more public housing investment. If this money was sitting idle in town hall petty cash tins, there might be an economic case for spending it. But this is not the case. Receipts are used by local authorities to reduce their borrowing requirements. Therefore, if the money is used on capital projects, local authorities will have to borrow yet more money to replace the sums used in this way, thus adding to their external debt that already amounts to around £30 billion in England. We now know that the accumulated receipts amounted to £6.2 billion at the end of 1984–85, and the figure by now will be substantially

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larger. If the whole of this were to be released into the economy at once, the effect on the PSBR, interest rates, inflation and ultimately unemployment would be devastating.
Lord Graham of Edmonton: My Lords, will the noble Lord bear in mind that we are talking in terms of housing shortage and crisis? Will he justify the morality of refusing councils the freedom to spend their own money in providing houses with cash that has been raised from the sale of houses? If the noble Lord is arguing that to release all the money now would be catastrophic, the reason that it has accumulated is that Government policy has not allowed it to be spent in reasonable tranches.
Lord Skelmersdale: My Lords, if the noble Lord will do me the courtesy of allowing me to develop the argument in my own way, he will find that I am about to answer that question. It is only reasonable, in view of the shortness of time available to me, if I do not answer any further interruptions.
The construction industry would be unable to cope if we were faced with the situation I mentioned a few moments ago. The Government are currently reviewing the whole area of local government finance, including the capital control system. But one option which is definitely not being considered is that apparently favoured by Labour Party spokesmen—unleasing all at once this whole immense torrent of purchasing power. Listening to the speeches of some noble Lords, one would think that the Government were preventing councils spending their capital receipts from the sale of council houses. As I have sought to explain, that is simply not the case. Over a period of three years a council can spend about half of any receipts that it has generated on new capital projects. And councils are making use of their receipts. In 1985–86 the housing investment programme allocation was £1,600 million. But actual spending was about £2,500 million. The difference was made up mainly through the spending of capital receipts.
Let me return to people. By disagreeing with the approach suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Dean, I shall immediately be accused of lack of sympathy and even of complacancy in the matter. That is a palpable nonsense. It does not mean that I am not sympathetic to the strong desire and need of everyone to be properly housed. I recognise and put first and foremost in my mind the fact that there are people who have to live in sub-standard housing on impersonal estates or indeed who have no accommodation at all. I can assure the noble Baroness, Lady Ewart-Biggs, that rented housing is far from completely lost. The Government's strategy for dealing with the problems is aimed at helping these people through better targeting of public funds and the greater involvement of the private sector. As the noble Baroness, Lady David, pointed out, public expenditure on housing under this Government has indeed been reduced. What the noble Baroness did not add was that cuts in investment under the last Labour Administration were much more severe—46 per cent. as opposed to 36 per cent. Both figures are in real terms. The noble Baroness asked for the particular figure. In 1984–85, in real terms, £3,914 million was spent. The figure for
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1979–80 was £3,159 million in cash terms and £4,812 million in real terms. So, yes, it has reduced as I have just explained.
The crucial consideration is not the amount of public investment but the total resources mobilised to solve housing problems, public and private. No one has recognised that where a local authority arranges for a developer to build for sale under licence on land that it owns local authorities can use not 20 per cent. and not even the old 40 per cent. of their capital receipts, but a full 100 per cent. Why do we make this exception? It is for one very simple reason. The vast majority of people want to own their own homes. It is right that the Government should do all in their power to help them achieve this aim. These schemes are, of course, self-financing.
While I am speaking about home ownership I should respond to the noble Baroness, Lady David, on the question of the number of homes repossessed by building societies. This is still a very small proportion of the total number of loans given. The noble Baroness asked for figures for the past three years. These are as follows. In 1983 it was 7,320 homes, or 0.12 per cent. of total loans. In 1984, it was 10,870 homes, or 0.17 per cent. of total loans. In 1985, it was 16,590 homes, or 0.25 per cent. of total loans. I cannot agree that a repossession rate of 0.25 per cent., or 1 in 400 homes, gives credence to the contention of the noble Baroness that people are being forced to buy who cannot afford to do so and are then suffering the consequences.
As well as owner-occupation, people have other pressing needs which local authorities have to meet. I am pleased to say in response to the noble Baroness, Lady Ewart-Biggs, that local authorities each year prepare an annual assessment of housing need as part of their housing investment programme submissions. The Government discuss these assessments very carefully with the local authorities before reaching decisions on their HIP allocations. It is as a result of this that the Government have continued to devote very substantial amounts of public expenditure to housing.
Gross capital expenditure on housing in England is currently £3.25 billion. Indeed, we have started following the advice of the noble Lord, Lord Crawshaw, by increasing the provision by £200 million last year. We fully intend to see whether it is possible to maintain a small increase until we get to the damaging figure that the noble Lord very reasonably recognised. Within this total the Government have been encouraging local authorities and housing associations to target their expenditure at those people and areas most in need: the inner cities, the homeless, the elderly and the disabled on low incomes. These will continue to be the priorities. These are the types of housing need for which the public sector still needs to provide and—I freely admit it—will always need to provide.
It is not the job of local authorities and housing associations to house the great majority of the population for whom the private sector has been catering with increasing success. We must be careful to ensure that the public sector does not fritter away its resources on people who can meet their needs perfectly well in the private sector.

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In this connection, I should like to make a small reference to the Building Societies Bill which is to have its Second Reading in your Lordships' House on Friday of this week. I hope that building societies will make full use of the opportunities offered by the Bill to play a much more direct role in housing than has been possible up to now. The new powers to own and manage land will enable societies to offer, for example, shared ownership, a full range of agency services, and schemes to revitalise rundown council estates.
The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester and many other speakers discussed the problem of the homeless. Of course I share the concern about the increase in the numbers of homeless. It is for local authorities to decide how to fulfil their duties under the Homeless Persons Act. We have improved the way that housing resources are distributed to give a better measure of the problem in the areas most affected. In addition, the homeless stand to benefit from a wide range of government policies; for example, measures to encourage the private rented sector, facilitating subletting of council dwellings, and the Government's hostels initiatives.
Within the public sector the first priority lies not with new building but with renovation of the existing stock. The House may be interested to know that this is true not only in this country but in developed countries generally. The United States House of Representatives agreed unanimously earlier this month to restrict public housing funds to renovation, and not to allow any new building. We have not gone that far. Local authorities take decisions about the content of their housing investment programmes but we expect them to be guided by the priorities as I have stated them, and by the facts.
As the noble Lord, Lord Ezra, noted, the Department of the Environment's stock condition inquiry last year estimated that the backlog of repair work needed in the local authority housing stock amounted to almost £19 billion. The noble Lord, Lord Ezra, spoke of private sector home improvement, and the noble Baroness, Lady David, also asked me about it. The House will be aware that we published a Green Paper on this subject. I can tell both the noble Baroness and the noble Lord that we are looking again at the proposals in the Green Paper in the light of the many comments that my department has received. It will not be too long before I or my noble friend can reveal the answers to the House.
This £19 billion was built up over many years and with the best will in the world cannot be conjured away overnight however much the Government, or indeed any government, spend. I agree with the right reverend Prelate and the noble Lord, Lord Parry, that it is a colossal amount of work even though not all of it requires action right away. I am very encouraged by the way local authorities are now responding.
The noble Lord, Lord Dean, asked about the English house condition survey. The next survey in this five-yearly series begins this autumn and will give an up-to-date overall assessment of the condition of the stock. Surveys of this kind are complex exercises and thorough analysis of the results will be necessary. As has become normal form, it will be published in due course. It is also too early to start speculating
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about the results. However, I am encouraged by the recently published provisional report of the AMA's Greater London house condition survey which suggested that the Capital has enjoyed a considerable reduction in the number of unfit properties and those lacking basic amenities. We shall have to wait to assess the contention of the right reverend Prelate that the situation is still getting steadily worse.
The noble Lord, Lord Stallard, reminded us that nearly half of the unfit homes are owner-occupied. He failed to add that in Great Britain, at December 1985, 62 per cent. of the houses were owner-occupied and 30 per cent. of the houses were in the public sector—and in the time available I have been unable to find out what has happened to the other 8 per cent. I shall let noble Lords know in due course. The number of unfit owner-occupied dwellings is high because owner-occupation forms such a high proportion of the stock and the average age of owner-occupied dwellings is much older than public sector stock.
More immediately, it is for local authorities to decide how much to spend on grants, taking into account their local housing needs and priorities. Last year, spending was around £450 million. To put this in perspective I would remind the House that in the last year of the last Labour Government grant spending amounted to a mere £90 million. I agree that both these figures are in cash terms. However, even in 1983–84—the peak year for grant spending—public spending accounted for only about 10 per cent. of the total. Private spending will therefore be the most important factor in improving the condition of the stock. Public help should be directed where it is most needed. We have asked local authorities to consider giving priority to certain groups when approving discretionary grants. These comprise those living in unfit dwellings in statutory improvement areas, private rented housing, elderly owner-occupiers, the disabled and other applicants known to have limited income.
Our strategy is also designed to stimulate and encourage the maximum contribution from the private sector, both in its own right and in partnership with the public sector. I have already told the House the recent very encouraging trends in new private housing starts. Furthermore, there are also increasing examples of joint ventures and partnerships with local authorities. This is happening not only in Conservative-controlled councils but also in those Labour areas which have been far-sighted enough to see private developers not as bogeymen but as invaluable repository of expertise and resources. A major part is being played by the Department of the Environment's urban housing renewal unit. This unit recently completed its first year of operation and has just published its first annual report. I have arranged for copies of this report to be placed in the Library of your Lordships' House. It illustrates very well what can be achieved when local authorities, central government, private developers and the tenants themselves get together to devise ways of revitalising run-down estates. So far 23 schemes have been approved, which when completed will transform some 15,000 dwellings, and the lives of the people living in them. A number of other applications are still being considered.

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I turn now to the second part of the Motion—the need to reduce council waiting lists. By encouraging local authorities to concentrate on specific needs rather than general needs, and by applying public and private sector resources where they are most needed, local authority waiting lists should fall. I deliberately say "should" rather than "will" fall, because this is not simply a question of resources. Good management is also a critical factor.
It is a scandal to hear, as we did last week from my noble friend Lady Macleod, of 2,000 letable units in Southwark standing empty; and I understand that on 1st April this year there were 110,000 empty local authority dwellings in England, and of those 30,000 were in letable condition. That surely is an affront to the homeless, the taxpayer and the ratepayer.
The recent Audit Commission report Managing the Crisis in Council Housing draws attention to the need for reletting periods by local authorities to be reduced to the absolute minimum necessary. We shall of course respond in due course. A particularly telling statistic appears tucked away as a footnote. In London the average reletting period varies from over 30 weeks in the worst borough to seven weeks in the best, compared to an overall weighted national average of 11 weeks. In case anybody wants to suggest that this had to do with the size of the borough's housing stock, noble Lords should also note that a leading American property company with a stock of over 60,000 dwellings, aims for a reletting period of just five days—even when major repairs are required.
As I told the House last week, the Audit Commission estimates that, if all authorities could improve this turnover time by just two and a half weeks, an additional 20,000 dwellings would become available for letting. Imagine the effect on the waiting lists if all councils started to approach the American model! I shall of course look at the suggestion of the noble Baroness, Lady David, of having a rolling investigation into waiting lists. I think that that has a great deal to recommend it.
One matter which has been in your Lordships' minds is the speech made recently by my honourable friend the Minister for Information Technology. I should make it clear that in the course of a wide-ranging and hard-hitting speech he was expressing a personal view of the problems of council housing. He did not express government policy on public sector housing.
In conclusion, I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Dean, will join me in urging local authorities to do all they can to improve their management in the light of the Audit Commission's report. I hope they will be able to achieve this in months rather than years. Perhaps I may be allowed to rephrase the quote with which I started the speech. Throwing money at a problem, does not make it go away. It never has and it never will. But solving all the problems of Britain's housing will not be easy and will take a concerted strategy by all the parties concerned over a period of years. The Government have such a strategy which they are determined to pursue until the problems are solved.
5.33 p.m.
Lord Dean of Beswick: My Lords, it falls to me as the mover of the Motion to wind up the debate. I must say that I am disappointed at the quality of the Ministerial reply which I think only indicated the Minister's prejudice against public sector housing. He mentioned my reference to private capital being involved in housing. He obviously had not read carefully the Motion on the Order Paper. The point which I was making—and which I have made again and again—is that private money will not flood in to rescue the public building stock. It never has done, and it never will do so unless it is matched by Government money.
I was also surprised to hear the Minister say that the debate was not about people. One speaker after another talked about people—about the homeless, about drug addicts, about people who had nowhere to live or who were living in overcrowded conditions. If this debate was not about them, it was not about anything.
The Minister once again castigated local authorities for not letting houses quickly enough. Does he not realise that the figures which he gave meant that of the total of 120,000 houses that are empty and under local authority control only 0.25 per cent.—I repeat, 0.25 per cent.—are due to local authorities not letting them quickly enough? No other sector of housing, according to my figures, comes anywhere near it. I would not for one moment defend authorities that are slow in letting. However, the Minister should try to put the picture in its proper perspective.
I opened this debate by saying that I was privileged and pleased to be able to move a debate in your Lordships' House on such an issue as housing. At first, I thought that it might have been a little soon after the debate which we had in January on the report of the inquiry chaired by the Duke of Edinburgh. However, I am convinced that it has been a worthwhile exercise because it has shown that the Government have not shifted one inch in the stupid policies which they are pursuing.
Having said that, I wish to thank each and every Member of your Lordships' House, from all sides of the Chamber, who have taken part in the debate. I cannot thank anyone on the Government Back-Benches, because no one there has taken part. I thank all those who spoke to the Motion. My Lords, I beg leave to withdraw my Motion for Papers.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

Students: Social Security Benefits
5.36 p.m.
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, with the leave of the House I shall now repeat a Statement being made in another place by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Health and Social Security. The Statement reads as follows:
"With permission I would like to make a Statement about social security benefits and students.

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"In January the Government published proposals which were a first step to channelling support for students more through the educational maintenance system rather than the social security system. I referred these proposals to the Social Security Advisory Committee and I am today publishing the committee's report together with the Government's response to it. I am also laying before the House amended regulations which take account of their views and those of the local authorities' associations and others expressed during the consultation period.
"Mr. Speaker, it remains the Government's view that in the long term it cannot be sensible that students should be subject to two separate but intertwined systems of support. It cannot be satisfactory to have students permanently dependent upon a system which is primarily designed for those who for various reasons cannot work rather than for those who have withdrawn voluntarily from the labour market to study. The vast majority of comments to the Social Security Advisory Committee supported the principle of rationalising student support. But at the same time three main concerns were expressed.
"First, there was concern that the major change proposed to housing benefit—whereby the accommodation element in the grant would be taken fully into account when assessing housing benefit entitlement—would cause a wide range of losses. The Social Security Advisory Committee shared this concern while at the same time recognising the case in principle for the change. Although there is no doubt that the present rules treat students more favourably than other claimants, the Government are prepared to withdraw this proposal.
"Second, there was concern that in relation to the withdrawal of housing benefit for accommodation left unoccupied in the summer vacation some students would not have time to change existing plans and commitments. We recognise their concern and therefore this measure will not take effect until the summer of 1987 as we accept that students who have already entered into rent commitments for this summer could face difficulties.
"Third, there was concern about the position of students without an award who have begun their studies on the assumption that they would continue to draw benefit at the current level. We accept that we should protect the most vulnerable of these—existing students living away from their parents' homes. Those students will be treated as now for housing benefit—in respect of private rented accommodation in term time and the short vacations—up to 1st April 1988 or when their present course ends.
"The remainder of the Government's proposals are largely unchanged. We shall remove entitlement to unemployment benefit and supplementary benefit in the short vacations when students are already provided for through the grant. We shall simplify housing benefit administration by averaging grant income for the whole of the grant-assisted period. Students in halls of residence will in
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future be able to claim housing benefit only during the long vacation for which there is no provision in the grant.
"Our proposal to make a £36 additional increase in the grant still stands and is an important step to the long-term aim of shifting student support away from the social security system. Nevertheless the Government recognise that there are important issues to be discussed before making further progress towards this aim. This raises a question of a wider review of student support and this will be dealt with by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Education in his Statement shortly.
"Our other proposals have been widely welcomed and will go forward. We shall extend help under the students dependants' hardship scheme to cover the full year for two-parent families, as well as single parents. We shall disregard for housing benefit those parts of the grant which cover books and travelling expenses. This change will now take effect for the academic year 1987–88. We shall provide a firm legal basis for treating students' income from parental covenants so that it does not affect their claims to benefit during the summer vacation.
"Mr. Speaker, the Government's long-term aim of removing students from the benefit system has been widely welcomed and accepted in principle. It cannot be right that generations of students should be encouraged to depend on social security. We set out our proposals five months ago and we have responded carefully and constructively to the comments made upon them. I believe the proposals I have described today represent sensible steps towards rationalising provision for students, and reducing their dependence on benefits".
That, my Lords, concludes the Statement.
Lord Ennals: My Lords, may I first thank the noble Baroness for repeating the Statement made by her right honourable friend the Secretary of State in another place. Of course we must be thankful for small mercies in terms of grants this summer and in terms of the £36 additional increase in the grant; £36 goes a long way over a year, I have to admit.
While I accept the principle that student support should primarily be a responsibility of the Department of Education and Science, is it not apparent that the Government have created great concern and uncertainty among students as a result of this long delay? The right honourable gentleman's Statement referred to the January proposals which were referred to the Social Security Advisory Committee, and the report of the Social Security Advisory Committee was received in March this year. That is three months ago.
Why was there this inexcusable delay? Is the noble Baroness not aware that her right honourable friend has postponed his Statement until many university students have left for the summer vacation, thus causing great uncertainty and consternation? Is she not aware of the confusion that her right honourable friend has generated among students, parents, advisers, and even his own administrators?
Welcome as the proposals for changes in the system of assessing students' covenanted income must be, is the noble Baroness's right honourable friend not

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embarrassed to be bringing these proposals to the House only now, having promised them as long ago as last August? Will she concede that her right honourable friend's claim to have been motivated by the desire to rationalise the system seems to be somewhat in shreds? In the face of the report by the Social Security Advisory Committee will the noble Baroness acknowledge that her right honourable friend's original proposals were hasty, ill-considered, and, some would say, vindictive? Will she also admit that his promise of a review proclaims the measure of the haste and lack of consideration which applied at that time?
We are glad that there now is to be a review; that is to be welcomed. But will she accept that it seems quite wrong to take action which, in many cases, will cut student benefits before a new system is instituted? Surely the idea of a review is to produce a new scheme, and would it not seem unwise to start taking some action on it before the scheme has been worked out and announced?
Will the noble Baroness accept that students and their parents are being squeezed as a result of the conflict between the DHSS and the Department of Education and Science? How many students will lose and how many will gain from the announcement made in another place today? What is to be the saving to the DHSS as a result of the measures that her right honourable friend has announced?
Does the noble Baroness accept that the students who will suffer most are the poorest students, and especially those living in areas where summer jobs are virtually impossible to find because of the high level of unemployment? Will she accept that we shall want to discuss this Statement, the regulations, and the Social Security Advisory Committee's report after we have had time to read them carefully?
5.45 p.m.
Lord Kilmarnock: My Lords, we, too, on these Benches should like to thank the noble Baroness for repeating this Statement. We accept in principle that it is not sensible to have two separate but intertwined systems of student support, and it is the case that students have been bandied about between two departments for long enough; so we welcome the move towards a single system of support.
As the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, has just said, this Statement has come in the nick of time. I believe that the Government have been brooding on the Social Security Advisory Committee's report for five months, and in the meantime students have been in an agony of uncertainty about their future.
The Statement says that the Social Security Advisory Committee supported the principle of rationalising student support. Can the noble Baroness say whether the Government will publish these comments in full? I forget whether or not they are obliged to; the noble Lord, Lord Banks, would know. I should be grateful if the noble Baroness would tell me. It would be interesting to see the Social Security Advisory Committee's full report.
We welcome the withdrawal by the Government of the proposal to take the accommodation element of grant into account for housing benefit. That is correct,
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because of the wide regional variations. The withdrawal of housing benefit for accommodation left unoccupied in the summer vacation has been deferred until 1987, and we certainly welcome that as students will indeed, as the Statement says, "have already entered into rent commitments for" their accommodation. It is the case that they have to pay for the vacation period if they are not to lose their accommodation and become homeless. But what about the future? This just takes us until 1987. Students without grant will be protected for housing benefit up to 1st April 1988, or the end of their course, and we welcome that.
These are all holding measures which will relieve immediate hardship, but they do not provide a longterm solution. The removal of unemployment benefit and supplementary benefit for the Christmas and Easter vacations we cannot welcome. The removal of these entitlements is another indication of the Government's lack of sympathy for those students whose studies are blighted by constant worry over finance. This entitlement should have remained in place pending new arrangements, as the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, has said.
The initial savings rumoured in the press from the original proposals were said to be in the region of £20 million to £25 million. Can the Government say what savings are now envisaged after these revised measures?
The additional £36 of the grant is held in the Statement to be,
"an important step to the long-term aim of shifting student support away from the social security system."
It is an extremely inefficient one. It gives each student a lump sum, regardless of the regional variants and his costs; also, routing this compensation via the grants system presumably means that it will be liable to parental contribution. Can the noble Baroness say whether that is the case?
These are all short-term measures. We are glad the Secretary of State has drawn back from some of his predecessor's more draconian and punitive measures, but for a real solution we await the next Statement.
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, for his welcome for the £36 grant. Both the noble Lords, Lord Ennals and Lord Kilmarnock, spoke about lengthy delays. They must remember that there was a need to consider the SSAC report and comments with great care. They must also remember that students will not suffer any losses of benefit this summer. The noble Lord, Lord Ennals, will understand that I cannot comment on the review about which I understand a Statement will follow. Furthermore, any discussion on this whole matter would have to be referred through the usual channels.
The noble Lord, Lord Ennals, remarked that these were ill-considered, hasty proposals. I suggest to him that all proposals were supported in principle by SSAC. The concern was about the practical consequences. The Government accept this concern and have made, as noble Lords will know, considerable concessions. The proposals will reduce some wasteful and unjustifiable expenditure and the review will carefully consider options for the future.

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The noble Lord, Lord Ennals, asked me for the numbers of losers. One hundred and forty thousand gain the full £36 per annum; 260,000 other students will find varying effects, according to their individual circumstances and which of the particular measures apply to them. Most will lose from only one source. The effects of the measures do not in general overlap. If the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, requires any further figures I should be only too happy to write to him.
The noble Lord, Lord Kilmarnock, asked me about the publication of the SSAC comments in full. He should be aware that the SSAC report and the Government's response were published today and laid with the regulations.
The noble Lord, Lord Kilmarnock, raised a question on unemployment benefit. As for supplementary benefit, we consider that students' availability for work is slightly dubious. In a way they are rather like seasonal workers who cannot be working at certain periods without being considered to be unemployed in the proper sense. Students have provision for the short vacations in their grant, but despite this unemployment benefit is paid in full so students are getting double provision from public funds in the form of two separate income replacements at the same time; in other words, the grant and unemployment benefit.
Halls of residence are required to be self-supporting and receive no subsidy from the Department of Education, but housing benefit in effect has been providing an alternative subsidy. Moreover, it does this by paying usually small amounts of benefit at a disproportionate administrative cost. Hall charges should not in general need to be as high as private rents and we see no justification for bolstering them through housing benefits. We shall ensure that the exclusion does not affect schemes whereby the education institutions act as an intermediary between students and private landlords. Also, it must not be forgotten that where a student needs to stay in hall during a long vacation (when of course he is not supported by a grant) we shall allow him to claim housing benefit.
The noble Lord, Lord Kilmarnock, also mentioned non-grant-aided students. I should like to say in reply that at the outset we do not and never have considered it appropriate for social security to provide support for the maintenance of full-time students where the award system does not, for whatever reason, make provision for them. Our proposals therefore provide equally for all students whether grant-aided or not, but we recognise the impact this will have on students who have already begun their courses. That is why we are making a concession whereby these students will not lose help with their housing costs. The concession will last until the introduction of the new scheme in April 1988 or until the end of the student's course if that is sooner. This will mean that the most vulnerable nongrant-aided students, those who are away from the parental home, will not be disproportionately adversely affected.
The noble Lord, Lord Kilmarnock, also asked me about the net saving and the parental contributions. The net savings will be £8½ million in 1986–87 and £16 million in 1987–88. With regard to parental
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contributions, all students will receive the £36 in full except those whose parents have to contribute all the maintenance grant. Those parents will he expected to contribute the £36 also. If I have omitted to answer any questions, I shall write to noble Lords.
Lord Ennals: My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Baroness for her helpful reply. I shall not ask her for any more factual information. There was one point that I wanted to ask and I put it in my first intervention. I do not understand—perhaps it can be explained to me—why the Secretary of State for Social Services and the Secretary of State for Education and Science decided to have their review after the Secretary of State for Social Services reached his conclusions in January, rather than having the review before. It seems a most peculiar way to come to policy decisions.
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, will understand that I cannot answer for my right honourable friends in another place who make these decisions.

Student Support
5.57 p.m.
The Earl of Swinton: My Lords, with the leave of the House I shall repeat a Statement on student support which is being made in another place by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Education and Science. The Statement is as follows:
"The measures just announced by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Social Services mark a return towards a system in which support for students will be provided through the single channel of the educational maintenance system. It is a limited step, taken in close consultation with my department. I am, however, convinced from the many representations I have received that it would be very difficult to make further progress towards disentangling students from the social security system without a wider examination of the whole structure of student support.
"My right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Scotland and I, in association with the Secretary of State for Social Services, have therefore decided to institute a comprehensive review of all aspects of financial support for students in Great Britain studying at first degree or equivalent level. It will examine the maintenance needs of students and the extent to which they should be provided for from public funds, having regard to other actual and potential sources of support, including loans.
"The study will be carried out under the chairmanship of my honourable Friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education and Science, the honourable member for Buckingham. The Scottish Education Department and the DHSS will be represented on it and the education departments of Northern Ireland and of Wales will be associated with it. The review will be carried out within government. But we shall be open to representations and advice from every source. We shall undertake extensive consultations and

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consider international comparisons. The outcome of the review will itself be in the form of published proposals for public discussion and consultation.
"Meanwhile because the Government recognises the needs of students, we have mitigated the proposed removal of benefit whilst maintaining the level of compensation through the grant system originally proposed. Subject to the agreement of Parliament, the maintenance grants of students living away from home will be increased by £36 a year from the beginning of the academic year 1986–87. This will be in addition to the increase of 2 per cent. which my predecessor announced on 16th December and will result in an overall increase of 4 per cent. on present rates for students living away from home. This is higher than the current rate of inflation. A similar addition to grant will be made in Scotland. A paper setting out detailed grant rates is being placed in the Library. The main rates of grant applicable to Scottish students are being given separately in a Written Answer by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Scotland today.
"Student numbers in higher education are at an all-time record level. We want still more to benefit. The Government stand by the principle of access to higher education for all who have the necessary intellectual competence, motivation and maturity, regardless of parental income. We want to ensure that students will neither be deterred from entering higher education nor handicapped in their studies by lack of means. But in doing so we must have regard to the claims on national resources. That is why I think the time is ripe to investigate with an open mind all possible forms and sources of support. I hope the House will welcome the review which I have announced today."
My Lords, that concluded the Statement.
6 p.m.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, the House will be grateful to the noble Lord for repeating the Statement which has been made in another place. Will he accept from the outset that we are not saying from these Benches that everything about that Statement is bad? In particular, the announcement of a review, which although it is to be carried out within the Government will nevertheless take representations from interested parties and will publish its results, I hope with rather less delay than the results of the review of the Social Security Advisory Committee, is welcome. It has been the policy of my party for a number of years that a review of this sort should take place, and we are pleased to see the Government accepting the logic of our position.
Nevertheless, the Statement refers with some pride to the fact that with the addition of the £36 a year the level of grant for 1986–87 is above the level of inflation. Is it not the case that the real value of student grants has been eroded by something like 20 per cent. over the seven years since this administration took office? Under those circumstances, is it justifiable for the Government to congratulate themselves on maintaining the position in this year only when the real loss has been so great?
904
In view of the very considerable justifiable alarm and despondency which there has been among students, parents and educational institutions at the lack of decision about student grants over the years, is it adequate for the Government simply to postpone the decisions in this way by postponing until 1988 the effects of the abolition or disregard of deemed grant by postponing until 1987 the changes which have been proposed on rents, and by maintaining the unemployment benefit for the long vacation? Is it not the case that those who claim unemployment benefit have very often earned that unemployment benefit from previous employment and therefore their entitlement to it comes as of right and not from any sense of privilege or debt to the Government or to society? The grant which is now available to students is simply not adequate even to maintain students during the short vacation, and is it not the case that the Government ought to think again about this and to review their decision to take away the unemployment benefit from the short vacations?
We welcome the Government's continuing commitment to access to higher education, but how can we be convinced that this commitment is a real commitment in the light of the reduction in the real value of the student grant and in the light of the very considerable uncertainty and insecurity which students have felt?
If the Government had been wholly sincere and wholly well-meaning in announcing the review, they would have delayed some of the measures which have now been proposed. As it is, will the Government accept that they have gone only part of the way to reassuring those involved in higher and further education about the goodwill that the Government feels towards them?
Lord Kilmarnock: My Lords, we on these Benches should also like to thank the noble Earl for repeating that important Statement. The thrust of the Statement is:—
"a return towards … the single channel of the educational maintenance system".
Is it not because that single channel has broken down through erosion that the social security system has had to be relied on increasingly? Would the noble Earl not agree that that is the case?
We certainly welcome a wider examination aimed at disentangling students from the social security system; but the Government must realise that this cannot be achieved simply as a cost-cutting exercise. We are told that the comprehensive review will examine all potential sources of support, including loans. I am not implacably opposed to loans in all cases, but I should like to ask the noble Earl if the Government will include in this review a serious examination of support for adult learners. It is monstrous that adult learners are at present left out in the cold, and it is indefensible to go on preaching about adult re-education and adult retraining while doing nothing to facilitate these things. So will that area be taken into account in the comprehensive review?
We are told that the review will be carried out within the Government. I quote:

905
"But we shall be open to representations and advice from every source".
There will then, it appears, be a further stage of consultation on the published proposals. At which stage in this process is the Government prepared to look at submissions from other parties and relevant bodies? I hope it will be before and not after they have made up their minds.
On the £36 which we had in the last Statement, I am not quite sure from where the Government get their figure of 4 per cent. from December because there is presumably a gap until the £36 actually comes into operation, so there must be a period in which only 2 per cent. is what is being provided, in fact.
What does take my breath away is paragraph 5 of the Statement. I quote:
"Student numbers in higher education are at all-time record level".
Surely, this is extremely smug by international comparisons. With 40 per cent. in Japan and 50 per cent. in the USA taking some form of higher education. This really takes the biscuit for smugness. Is the Government still planning on the lower of the two departmental projections of student demand? That would leave us with an age participation rate of 14 per cent. in the 1990s when we on these Benches would aim for 20 per cent. at least. There is no way in which the revised Robbins principle which is quoted in this Statement can be met on that projection of demand.
Of course we welcome the review. We hope that it will be positive and durable and lay the foundation for a fairly funded student maintenance system which will last, and for the increase in numbers in higher education not least among adults which this country so sorely needs.
The Earl of Swinton: My Lords, I am grateful to both the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh of Haringey, and the noble Lord, Lord Kilmarnock, for the way in which they have received this Statement. At least the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh of Haringey, seemed to treat it as something of a curate's egg: it was not wholly bad all through. The noble Lords did make a number of comments and asked some questions.
The noble Lord, Lord McIntosh of Haringey, said that he hoped this review would be speedy and would not take as long as the present ones. I cannot give any date as to when the review will report. This is the first major review of the subject since the Anderson Report in 1960. I can give the noble Lord an undertaking that it will be conducted as expeditiously as is consistent with thoroughness, bearing in mind the need for wide consultation and the need to examine the arrangements in other countries with developed systems of student support. I mentioned consultation and I can tell the noble Lord, Lord Kilmarnock, that anyone will be invited from the outset to give evidence to the department and to the committee going into that matter.
The noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, went on to refer to the much-quoted figure of the loss of 20 per cent. in the value of grants since this Government came to office. The decline in real terms in the value of the
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grant between 1979–80 and 1985–86 for the great majority of students who study away from home has actually been 12 per cent. I know that that is not perhaps a marvellous figure; but it is better than 20 per cent. The 1986–87 grant settlement, including the £36 increase announced today, is expected to maintain the value of the grant in real terms for those students, although it would not make up for the loss of DHSS benefit. To restore the value of the grant to its 1979–80 level would cost another £90 million.
I think that I would take this opportunity to point out that, in comparison with our European neighbours, we are still being extremely generous. After all, the 390,000 students currently in receipt of maintenance awards will this year cost the taxpayer some £470 million in maintenance grants and nearly £1,400 million in tuition. The United Kingdom spends on average between three times and five times as much per student as is spent in the Netherlands and West Germany and much more still compared with Denmark, France and Italy. We devote a much higher proportion of our gross national product to student support than other major developed countries. The noble Lord asked whether the fact that we are so mean, or not as generous as we might be, has not eroded the number of students and possible entrants into higher education. I am not being complacent, as the noble Lord, Lord Kilmarnock, said earlier, but I think that I must point out again that despite the fall in the value of grant there are nearly 80,000 more students in higher education now than there were in 1979. Moreover, the proportion of 18 year-olds and 19 year-olds entering higher education is about 15 per cent. higher, and the number of mature entrants 12 per cent. higher, than when this Government took office.
The noble Lord, Lord Kilmarnock, said that this was just a cost-cutting exercise. The purpose is not to cut costs but to examine how the principles of access to higher education can be reconciled with what the nation can afford. The cost of student support must be considered in relation to the cost of maintaining the quantity and quality of higher education provision. There are of course also the competing claims of other groups such as the old and the sick; and the level of the student grant represents a balance between the students' needs and the total expenditure which taxpayers and ratepayers can reasonably be asked to contribute, given some of the other claims of which I have given examples.
Finally, the noble Lord, Lord Kilmarnock, asked me whether adults could be included in the review that is going to take place. In fact, the committee will match the remit given to the Anderson Committee inquiry in 1958 and is sufficiently formidable. A review which tried to raise the support of students over the whole range, from non-advanced further education to post-graduate studies, would lack cohesive purpose and would be at considerable risk of dissipating its energies and failing to agree on recommendations for action. But I must say to the noble Lord that that is not to say that either the policy of student support in other areas will be subject to no process of continuing scrutiny or that the results of the review will not have implications for student support in other areas.
6.15 p.m.
Lord Annan: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that the Statement that he has made will give great pleasure to those who care about trying to maintain numbers in higher education? I hope that he would agree that the Anderson Committee, when it formulated the procedures and rules for obtaining student maintenance grants, carried out its deliberations entirely in ignorance of (or, at any rate, without cognisance of) the expansion of universities which Sir Keith Murray was responsible for and also without reference to the Robbins Committee. Therefore, its conclusions were really inapposite to the kind of expansion which was being planned at that time.
I hope very much that the noble Earl will pass on to his right honourable friend the very good point made by the noble Lord, Lord Kilmarnock, about adult education. This is a difficult area because it must comprise two kinds of adults: one, those who are coming to universities from jobs to which they will return for retraining, and those who are adults who may well have retired or are without jobs and who want to improve their qualifications. They are separate problems and they will require separate treatment.
Would the noble Earl also agree that one of the things that is most important is to bring down the costs of higher education as a whole if we are to increase student numbers? I agree entirely with what was said by the noble Lord, Lord Kilmarnock, about the need to increase student numbers but we cannot expect this to be done unless some extra control is exercised over costs. May I also tell the noble Earl that there will be a great welcome for the principle that the maintenance grant should be the sole way in which a student receives grants from the Government for his maintenance and that he should not have to fall on social security.
The noble Lord, Lord Kilmarnock, said that the reason why he had to go to social security for extra benefits was because the maintenance grant was inadequate. But in fact that principle of going to social security was taken many years ago when the maintenance grant was very much higher than it is today or was in 1979. It was much higher in those days of the 1970s when students, showing a very considerable degree of entrepreneurial acumen, discovered a new way of obtaining extra money to supplement their maintenance grant.
I thought at that time that this was wrong; but of course it was very difficult to controvert. I welcome the principle that we shall now go back to a single grant which then will be able to be seen in its entirety as being adequate or the best that can be done in the present financial circumstances.
The Earl of Swinton: My Lords, not for the first time in this House, I am able to say that I an very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Annan, for the points that he has made, with most of which I would agree. Of course, I will draw to the attention of my (if I may say so in inverted commas) "new" right honourable friend the points that he has made about adult learners. Perhaps I should say, in case I misled the noble Lord, Lord Kilmarnock, in the reply that I gave, that all adult students studying at first-degree or equivalent
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levels automatically will be taken into account in this review anyway.
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that those of us who have a share of responsibility for the acceptance of the Robbins recommendations have always followed with a measure of anxiety the mounting costs (to which the noble Lord, Lord Annan, referred) of higher education in this country and therefore welcome indications of the Government's concern in that area, too.
Is he also aware that the very interesting comparison which he gave us of the cost of supporting higher education in some of the European countries, as compared with this country, reflects to some extent the fact that in those European countries a far larger proportion of students study at home and go to a university near their home, which can be reached fairly easily? Will he not exclude from this forthcoming review the possibility that some saving in the ever-increasing cost of an ever-increasing university population might be achieved by adopting a system which is a little less geared than the present one to encouraging the student to study away from home?
The Earl of Swinton: My Lords, I am grateful for my noble friend's suggestion, and of course I will draw it to the attention of my right honourable friend. The whole idea of this review by this committee—call it what you wish, my Lords—is that it will take evidence from abroad, hopefully with a thought to introducing those ideas here.
I think I really must state categorically to my noble friend and to the House what I said in the original Statement—that the Government stand by the principle of access to higher education for all who have the necessary intellectual competence, motivation and maturity, regardless of parental income. We want to ensure that students will neither be deterred from entering higher education nor handicapped in their studies by lack of means. I should not like my noble friend to get the impression that we are going to try to make them all pay and that only those who can afford it will be able to benefit from it.
Lord Rochester: My Lords, will the noble Earl go a little further than he has done and accept that, in view of the very considerable difficulties which some students in higher education are now experiencing, it is highly desirable that the consultative exercise and the comprehensive review to which he has referred should be carried out and the Government's decision made in time for that decision, if approved by Parliament, to operate before the year 1987–88 if at all possible?
The Earl of Swinton: My Lords, I said that I really cannot give a date, but I should hope that the report would be available by the end of 1987.

Board and Lodging: Supplementary Benefit
6.22 p.m.
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, with the leave of the House, I shall now repeat a Statement being made in another place by my honourable friend the Minister

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of State for Social Security. The Statement is as follows:
"With permission, Mr. Speaker, I should like to make a Statement on supplementary benefit arrangements for board and lodging.
"As the House knows, when the main lines of the present system were set in April 1985 the Government undertook to monitor its working carefully and to review the financial limits on maximum payments after a year. Following the subsequent decision to have a general social security uprating in July 1986, it was thought sensible to defer any changes until then but meanwhile, in advance, to make significant increases in the limits for residential care and nursing homes alongside the previous uprating in November 1985.
"I am arranging to place in the Library copies of reports on the extensive monitoring and statistical surveys undertaken by the department since April 1985, together with the full report commissioned from the consultants Ernst and Whinney on residential care and nursing homes. I have placed in the Vote Office copies of Ernst and Whinney's own summary of their report, and of my right honourable friend's response to the Social Security Advisory Committee's comments on last November's amending regulations. In reaching our conclusions we have of course also taken account of the representations we have received from honourable Members and from other individuals and organsiations.
"For ordinary board and lodging, our most recent figures show that expenditure in 1984 rose not to £380 million, as we earlier estimated, but to over £500 million—an increase of no less than 80 per cent. in a year. At the same time, the number of boarders increased from 112,000 to over 160,000. Our monitoring and surveys confirm the existence of an accommodation market unduly influenced by the amount of benefit payable, rather than by normal commercial factors, and of an unacceptable degree of abuse. Many landlords have reduced their charges in response to the restraint imposed, and across the country our studies show average charges for the most part close to average limits.
"In view of this, and of the continued need to ensure firm control in this area, the Government have concluded that no general increase in the financial limits for ordinary board and lodging, or in the associated meals allowances, is at present justified. This is also the case for hostels, where our monitoring showed that average charges in all regions (including London) were below the present limit. We have, however, looked again at the current limit for couples without young children which is 1¾ times the single adult limit. This has been widely represented to us as unrealistic, and we have decided to increase it to twice the single limit, as for couples with young children.
"Mr. Speaker, it will not surprise the House that many of the representations about ordinary boarders have focused not on the financial limits but on the limited time for which many of those under 26 can be paid as boarders at all. The regulations which come into effect on 24th
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November 1985 provided for those paid as boarders at the time to be exempt from time limits until 28th July 1986. We now propose to extend that exemption indefinitely. New boarders under 26 will, however, continue to be subject to time limits which we do not propose to change, unless they come within the extensive range of exemption categories covering those for whom longer-term boarding is a genuine need.
"I turn now to the limits for residential care and nursing homes. Following the November 1985 increases of £10 a week in the residential care limits and £31.40 in the nursing home limits, the evidence is that in general homes charging at or below the average will fall within the benefit limits—in several categories, well within. While there is therefore no clear case for an all-round increase in July in addition to last November's, we nevertheless think it right to make some further increase where the evidence suggests it is most needed—in the limit for residential care homes for the elderly. We propose that this should go up by £5 to £125 a week, making an increase of £15 a week overall since April 1985.
"In addition, we intend to make five important changes to meet specific problems which we judge to be of greater significance than the limits for particular categories of home.
"First, for those elderly people in residential care homes who are very dependent who are at present limited to £120 a week, we propose an increased limit of £140 a week where they qualify for the higher rate of attendance allowance. Secondly, for blind people over pension age, where the same limitation currently applies, we similarly propose to increase the limit from £120 to £140 a week. Thirdly, for those in residential care or nursing homes in Greater London, we propose to increase the limits by a special extension of up to £17.50 a week.
"Fourthly, for those whose benefit is being paid at a transitionally protected rate in July, we propose an addition of up to £10 above their protected rate. This is a departure from the normal conventions concerning transitional protection, but one which will, I think, be welcomed in all parts of the House. Fifthly, for those who are away from a home for short periods, for example, for a break or to maintain contact with their families, we propose new provisions to meet retaining fees.
"Taken together, the changes I have outlined mean that, for example, the limit for a severely disabled elderly person in a residential care home in Greater London will rise by £37·50 a week. To assist the House, I am arranging for details of the new pattern of limits to be inserted in the Official Report.
"Mr. Speaker, these proposals are an important step towards the more flexible approach, but within a firmly-controlled framework, which is also the aim of the longer-term studies we are conducting with the local authority associations, in consultation with the private and voluntary sectors. Subject to the views of the Social Security Advisory Committee, we intend to embody them in regulations to take effect from 28th July".
My Lords, that concludes the Statement.
Following is the information referred to in the Statement:

RESIDENTIAL CARE AND NURSING HOME LIMITS FROM 28TH JULY 1986

Residential Care Category

July Limit £

London Limit £

Present Limit £

Elderly

125

142·50

120

Very Dependent or Blind Elderly

140

157·50

120

Mentally Ill

130

147·50

130

Drug or Alcohol Dependant

130

147·50

130

Mentally Handicapped

150

167·50

150

Physically Disabled:

Disabled under pension age

180

197·50

180

Disabled over pension age

125

142·50

120

Very dependant elderly

140

157·50

120

Others

125

142·50

120

Nursing Home Category

July Limit £

London Limit £

Present Limit £

Mentally Ill

180

197·50

180

Drug or Alcohol Dependant

180

197·50

180

Mentally Handicapped

200

217·50

200

Terminal Ill

230

247·50

230

Physically disabled:

Disabled under pension age

230

247·50

230

Disabled over pension age

170

187·50

170

Others (including elderly)

170

187·50

170

6.30 p.m.
Lord Ennals: My Lords, may I once again thank the noble Baroness for repeating the second Statement made by her right honourable friend in another place? Does she accept that this Statement is another step in an extraordinarily sad story of government incompetence? The fact that ordinary board and lodging payments rose after 1984, not to £380 million, as had been estimated, but to over £500 million—an increase of 80 per cent. in just one year—while the number of boarders increased from 112,000 to 160,000 seems to me to be a sign of ineptitude, even by the standards of this Government.
Is it not an appalling admission that there was widespread profiteering by those running private homes and, according to the Statement, there was,
"an accommodation market unduly influenced by the amount of benefit payable, rather than by normal commercial factors, and of an unacceptable degree of abuse".
Those are very hard words to describe what I believe was a scandalous situation at the time when the new levels of payment were introduced. I should like to ask the noble Baroness why those figures were suddenly and dramatically increased, and whether the increase was designed to put money into the pockets of those who were running private homes. Does she recall that this factor was brought to her attention by my noble friend Lady Jeger nearly two years ago?
Secondly, in view of the fact that there had been many complaints about the limited time for which people under 26 can be paid as boarders, and about the unseemly process of moving on genuine cases like refugees, is it not reprehensible that the Statement says:
"New boarders under 26 will, however, continue to be subject to time limits which we do not propose to change, unless they come within the extensive range of exemption categories covering those for whom longer-term boarding is a genuine need."
I do not know what to make of this, because I do not know what are the exemption categories. What I do
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know is that there has been intolerable damage done to young people who have been forced to be on the move because they are homeless, and for no other reason, and when this has affected particular categories of people it has caused very great hardship. Perhaps the noble Baroness can tell me what is this extensive range of exemption categories, in order that we know what we are talking about; because without it that paragraph is meaningless.
Personally, I have to say that I find it very difficult to comment on the list of increases available in the various categories of benefits until I have seen the details in the Official Report, the report from the SSAC and the consultative studies by Ernst and Whinney. I must say that these days, as I keep on hearing of city accountants who are undertaking what must be well-paid studies on behalf of government departments, I wonder why these studies are not done by the DHSS itself, rather than constantly putting these studies out to profit-making private firms.
The National Council of Voluntary Organisations recently said:
"The whole system of funding residential care needs a radical rethink and the NCVO, along with other voluntary organisations, will continue to press for changes that both alleviate the current crisis and put funding on a secure foundation for the future."
Maybe the actions which have been taken by the noble Baroness have alleviated the current crisis, but certainly they have not put funding on a secure basis for the future.
I hope that the noble Baroness can tell me what are the Government's long-term intentions; whether they are just going to stagger on from problem to problem, increasing by bits, rather than have the kind of long-term survey which has been proposed by the NCVO and which I myself strongly support.
Lord Banks: My Lords, I too should like to thank the noble Baroness for repeating the Statement made in another place. I must confess that I am very surprised that the Government should have concluded that, generally speaking, no uprating is necessary. We shall certainly want to examine most carefully the evidence on which the Government have based this decision. It would appear to conflict with evidence which we have received from other sources.
I am equally surprised and concerned that the Government should feel that no regional variation is necessary, even for London. That goes against the view of most welfare organisations working in the field. I should like to ask the noble Baroness whether the Government have considered the control of prices and conditions of boarding establishments.
I welcome the extension of the exemption from time limits indefinitely beyond 28th July 1986, which is referred to in the Statement, but will this not create a sense of unfairness among other boarders? I also welcome the specific increase for some special categories in residential accommodation. But I note that while the elderly blind limit is raised from £120 to £140 a week, for blind people under pension age the figure is £180 a week and I wonder whether that is just. Elderly people are excluded from local authority topping-up. Is that justified? Would the Minister consider establishing another category for elderly mentally ill—for example, people suffering from

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dementia—or is the increase for those who are very dependent intended to cover those people?
I am glad that the new proposals are to be presented to the Social Security Advisory Committee for comment. Will the Social Security Advisory Committee have the opportunity to discuss the decision not to have a general uprating and not to introduce any regional variation?
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, I must say that I am rather disappointed with both noble Lords, because I thought that this was a good news Statement. We have responded to the needs where they were most felt and I think they will certainly be welcomed by some of my friends in residential board and lodging nursing-home establishments, who have been worried about the very elderly. I should have thought that they would welcome this news—
Lord Banks: My Lords, will the noble Baroness allow me to say that I welcomed the Statement where there are advances in particular categories? I made that point, but I had criticisms as well.
Lord Ennals: My Lords, may I also say that I did not comment unfavourably? I said that I wanted to study the figures very carefully before I made comments.
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, the more we are together, the merrier we shall be. I am delighted to hear that there was a welcome, because it would have been sad, when people were feeling very pressed, if the Statement had not been welcomed.
The noble Lord, Lord Ennals, said that the time limits should be written because they failed to achieve any results except to create further homelessness and rootlessness. Our monitoring does not support any suggestion that the time limits have led to increased homelessness or any significant movement between areas. In fact most people stayed in the same area; often in the same accommodation. Our monitoring also shows that the time limits have had a successful impact on boarder claims while the exemptions have been widely applied; a quarter of cases qualifying for protection. The boarder caseload declined significantly in the light of advance publicity about the April 1985 changes and their introduction. There was also a sharp decline in the number of new and repeat unemployed boarder claims following both the April and November changes compared with an increase in such claims when time limits were withdrawn.
The number of new and repeat unemployed boarder claims in April 1986 was some 4,000 a month lower than in the same period last year before the measures were introduced. I shall gladly let the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, have a list of the extensive exemption categories which apply. We recognise that a number of young people may be in board and lodging for what may be considered good reasons. That is why we have drawn up that extensive exemption provision from time limits, but we do not think it right as a general principle that supplementary benefit should be freely available so as to entice or encourage (or whatever way one wants to put it) young people into expensive board and lodging, perhaps sometimes after a row with their
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parents. That would be no service to the taxpayer, the family or the young person.
The noble Lord, Lord Ennals, suggested that we had not acted promptly to curb growing abuse and expenditure. We acted promptly as soon as all the signs of growth and abuse were shown. We introduced changes in November 1983 to curb growing expenditure and abuse and took further steps in September 1984 by imposing a freeze on limits before further measures were introduced in April last year. I should clarify one point. The growth in spending about which I spoke was in ordindary board and lodging and not in homes, as suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Ennals.
The noble Lord spoke about the long-term future for funding for residential care homes. We are already in discussion with local authorities to harmonise funding in residential care homes. On increasing the limits at the next uprating, we cannot give any undertaking about particular increases. While we remain firmly committed to continued proper control of expenditure, the limits will be reviewed and changes made when a clear need is shown, just as we have reacted now.
The noble Lord, Lord Banks, spoke about the limits in particular areas being too low and about there being too little accommodation available within the limits in comparison with other areas. He suggested that the limits were too low and that the charges were somewhat above the limits. We looked closely at the limits in all areas, considering carefully available charging information. This included surveys and representations of local groups, although these were not generally fully representative of the range of accommodation available to claimants. However, since an important objective of the 1985 changes was to move away from a system where limits were determined by local charging practices, we looked at a range of other factors such as the operation of the market for claimants. We also loked at changes in adjoining areas and the existence of any special local factors.
I fully recognise that in a broader brush system of locally related limits with limits set at £5 bands, a difference of as much as £5 in adjoining areas may strike a jarring note. But unless the same limit is to apply everywhere boundaries do have to be drawn. However, we are firmly convinced that any increases in the current limits are not justified. What is clear is that to make changes simply because some local landlords fix their charges by reference to the limit but some way above is a recipe for chasing up the limits. This was something the 1985 changes were designed to avoid.
The noble Lord, Lord Banks, asked about changing the rules for all people in homes for the physically handicapped to get the higher limit. It was never intended that the higher limit should apply to people suffering some physical restriction simply because of old age. In order to avoid any ambiguity between those suffering from substantial and permanent disablement and those simply becoming frail with the passage of time, the physical disablement category has been limited to people whose disabling condition arose while they were below pension age. However, some of

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these elderly people will now get the £140 limit if they are entitled to the higher rate attendance allowance or are blind.
The noble Lord, Lord Banks, asked why the ordinary boarder limits have not been raised, particularly in central London. We considered most carefully the limits in Central London and carried out a good deal of consultation and took account of all the consultations. We concluded, however, that for the greater London board and lodging area as a whole, changes in limits were not justified. I could expand on that, but I have a horrible feeling that a good many people are waiting for the next business and so I shall not gain any Brownie points if I go on. I shall write to any noble Lord who wishes me to do so.

Business
The Earl of Swinton: My Lords, just before the second short debate is called, I should like to make a Business Statement for the convenience of the House. In view of the amount of business before the House this evening, the noble Baroness, Lady Lockwood, has indicated that she will not ask her Unstarred Question on health and family planning in developing countries.

The Environment: Protection
6.47 p.m.
Lord Ardwick Lord Ardwick rose to call attention to the need to protect our urban and rural environment against current threats to it; and to move for Papers.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, nothing is easier than to philosophise about the environment. But when you look into the causes of physical threats to it you are overwhelmed by a mass of contradictory evidence presented by warring scientists, ruthless propagandists, self-protective industries and defensive governments. However, we must do our plain man's best. But before proceeding, perhaps I may say that we are all looking forward to the maiden speech of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Truro, who I am sure will speak out of his experience of that most agreeable environment in Cornwall.
More and more people are becoming more and more alarmed about the manifold threats to our environment—threats which may range from a disturbance of our tranquility to a nuclear disaster bigger even than at Chernobyl.
Let us look, to begin with, at the minor disturbances. There were, it is true, several reasons for the national rejection of the proposal to allow all the shops to open at will on Sundays. But surely a major reason was that the British Sunday might cease to provide the traditional relaxed environment which contrasts so sharply with the tense environment of working weekdays. Now we have residents of inner London battling against the proposals to turn Battersea power station into a gigantic fun park and Waterloo Station into a terminal for the Channel Tunnel. They fear the crowds and the traffic.
When we return from abroad we see Britain with new eyes. We notice its shabby, run-down and
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neglected areas. Thus the Prime Minister was appalled by the litter on the motorway verges, and then Mr. Richard Branson, that lively, charismatic self-made millionaire, was persuaded to preside over a government-appointed committee that hopes to recruit thousands of young people who will tidy up Britain, rewarded by a modest wage. Some of my friends, and many others, greeted that proposal with not unjustified derision. Surely, they said, much of the litter remains ungathered because local authorities, crippled by Government financial edicts, have had to sack 25,000 or more street-cleaners and dustmen. The Branson scheme, they suggested, was a mere political gimmick, simply applying cheap cosmetic to the ravaged face of Britain.
Yet, to be fair, there is a bit more to it than that. It was the brain-child of Mr. Kenneth Baker, who proposed to increase the funding of some voluntary bodies so that they could organise the clearing of derelict urban sites and improve river and canal footpaths, etc. I give the scheme a single cheer. But I should like specifically to ask the Minister whether it is true that the 15,000 jobs that will eventually be created are not new jobs but part of the 225,000 jobs to be created by the Community Programme. Is it also true that there is very little new money being put into the scheme—probably a mere £½ million?
We have to recognise that concern about the environment is worldwide. It is one of the most remarkable phenomena of the latter part of the twentieth century. There is a growing realisation that we are capable of destroying our environment, either bit by bit or in one big bang. Yet although there have always been enlightened people who have been concerned about such matters, we have tended to look upon many of them as consisting mainly of bicycle-riding lentil-eating, sandal-wearing cranks. But today we are all cranks, even if we do not share the full apocalyptic dread of the crusading Greens. Yet Chernobyl has upset even those of us who have defended the nuclear power station. This is not the time to discuss that tragedy and its consequences for the industry. We must know more about the causes of disaster, more about the real possibilities of similar disasters, and more about the real possibility of safeguards.
The Government and the authorities must understand that we live in a different world after Chernobyl. The kind of assertions that have been made in the past about the virtual impossibility of such accidents are no longer acceptable. They have a very hard task to regain their credibility. They must not believe that public anxiety will disappear with time. Every nuclear incident will get the maximum publicity in the media, and every minor incident will remind us all of what might happen. Soon, this country and other nations will have to decide whether we add to our nuclear capacity, perhaps decommissioning those power stations that we already have.
The Green movement is not yet a political party in this country, but even here it is a mass movement, with 3 million adherents and many fellow travellers, whose votes could affect the results in 50 constituencies. Parts of the movement are highly emotional, hopelessly idealistic, often unfair and sometimes

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reckless in their tactics. Yet one must acknowledge that pure reason will get them nowhere, for governments dealing with environmental problems must be pressed into doing things that they profoundly dislike—such as spending money, impeding economic growth, or getting business to behave in unprofitable ways.
One may take the case of Durham. For 30 years, the people of Durham have been fighting to get their beaches cleared of black pit waste and of raw sewage. They have had not just sympathy from the highest quarters but promises as well. However, the beaches remain defiled. No wonder they are welcoming this month the Greenpeace ship "Beluga", and the opportunity to publicise their plight further.
For a moment, let us look on the cheerful side. There are some improvements in our environment. We must rejoice that the Thames is less of an open sewer than it used to be and that the bolder and hardier salmon can live in it again. Then of course, we, and most of our friends, have stopped smoking, and smoking is prohibited in many unlikely public places, such as in the Labour Party Conference. Smoke-abatement laws have removed from our cities and from London the kind of fog that killed 4,000 people in the early 1950s, and it is now worth while to clean the exteriors of the Palace of Westminster and Westminster Abbey. Yet the atmosphere is not nearly so good as it seems. The haze that cuts down our view of the countryside on fine sunny days is produced not by nature but by polluting man.
The noise is getting worse, and traffic is getting ever more threatening. Will the Minister tell the House what is the policy of the police on traffic in central London? I refer not only to private cars but also to heavy vehicles and long diesel trucks that sweep through with no risk of prosecution for excessive speed. Is the concern of the police only to keep the traffic moving? Every morning there are reports of hold-ups on one or more of the motorways into London because a truck has jack-knifed or has met with some other disaster. Is that because those vehicles are badly designed, or because they are incompetently driven at excessive speed, or could it be a combination of those factors? Our British roads seem to be more congested and less well-controlled than those of some other countries.
When I said a moment ago that smoke abatement, with all its conspicuous benefits, has still left us with problems of pollution, I was thinking of acid rain—or acid deposition, as it is now fashionable to call it. It is a subject that requires a whole debate, so I will confine myself to a single question. The current number of Catalyst, that new and most useful journal of policy debate, is concerned wholly with choice and the environment. In it, the former Minister, Mr. Patrick Jenkin, deals with international pressure on the United Kingdom to reduce the acidification of lakes and streams, and damage to coniferous trees, particularly in Scandinavia.
Mr. Jenkin argues that it is not just a question of cost that is holding us up, but scepticism that the benefits could justify the cost incurred. Yet he believes that the United Kingdom could improve its image by agreeing to join the club of nations which promise to reduce
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sulphur-dioxide emissions by 30 per cent. of the 1980 figure. Mr. Jenkin says that it is more than probable that we should achieve the required reduction without any further measures. What do the Government think about that matter now? Was Mr. Jenkin's assertion based on the belief that a larger proportion of our electricity than currently seems probable after Chernobyl will now be produced by nuclear means? As a lot of pollution has been attributed to the motorcar, will the Minister tell the House what point we have reached in the control of exhaust emissions? There is a European Community draft directive, several times revised. The last news we had of the directive was that Denmark was still blocking it because it was well below the American standard, and the Greece was blocking it because it wants more money to deal with the damage done by pollution to the classical buildings in Athens. Where does Britain stand? May we be sure that there will be adequate supplies of lead-free petrol by the time controls take effect?
I shall not try to deal with the question of the countryside in view of the conservation measures in the Agriculture Bill that is now passing through your Lordships' House. I will simply refer to a story in the Observer that there is a report claiming that the Government's policies for protecting the countryside are ineffective. It is alleged that that report has been suppressed. Will the Minister tell the House whether that is a fair representation of the report and, if so, why it has not been made public?
The concern for the environment cuts across party lines. This week, the Evening Standard, not a Labour paper and not an intemperate paper, wrote pretty roughly about the Government and the London Green Belt. It is, the Standard said, under greater threat than ever, despite Mr. Ridley's promise to maintain the policy of the previous Minister for the Environment and preserve it against all major planning development. The Standard said that half a dozen major schemes have been brought forward, several of them near the M25. The Standard alleges that what has spurred the developers is Mrs. Thatcher's contempt for any kind of conservation that appears to stand in the way of growth. Yet, the Standard adds, there are 20,000 acres of derelict land in London. Can we have another assurance about the Green Belt?
There is then, for a million or more of Londoners, the question of aircraft noise which for those of us who live in the Richmond area seems to be getting worse, particularly at night. I hope that my noble friend Lord Jenkins will deal with that point.
Finally, I quote the Emeritus Professor of Economics at Leeds, Mr. Arthur Brown. He recalls how Galbraith's 1958 phrase about the contrast between private affluence and public squalor so influenced public opinion in America that between 1967 and 1975 they sacrificed between one-tenth and one-twentieth of the increase in material output that they might have privately enjoyed in order to abate environmental pollution. We have spent considerable sums, too, but I imagine they represent nothing like that proportion of the material improvement.
The professor makes observations about the reductions in public expenditure over the past half-a-

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dozen years. It is highly relevant, he says, because improvement or protection of the natural environment, the built and the human environment is dependent upon public expenditure. He adds,
"The downward pressure on such expenditure, along with related financial policies has produced a major increase of unemployment which with the consequential increase in the incidence of poverty has a powerfully adverse affect on environmental character."
The question of public expenditure is only part of the problem, but it is an important part. A government who, in today's conditions, make a 5 per cent. tax cut their primary objective are putting private affluence before the abatement of some of the current public squalor. Although we all enjoy having more money in our pockets, the Government should understand that they may well be wrong in thinking that that is always the highest priority of the people of this country. I beg to move for Papers.
7.3 p.m.
Baroness Vickers: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Ardwick, for opening this debate and I look forward to hearing the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Truro because I have had the pleasure of hearing him preach. I am sure we shall enjoy what he says today and I wish him every success.
In January 1986 a document was published by the Association of District Councils called Rural Economy at the Crossroads. On the cover was a signpost showing nine different ways that one could go. Today I shall chose only four and I hope they will be useful. One subject that I choose which is not on the signpost is farming. At present farmers can build anything they like—houses, sheds, outhouses—without any permission from the local authority. I think that is unfortunate and it is about time there was some control over what farmers build. They are building very ugly places in many cases. They are building houses which they then sell to people who are not necessarily farmers. Futhermore, they have no chance of getting another piece of land easily. Moreover, the PSA has a system whereby farmers rent their barns, and so on, without repairing leases. I have been into this several times and I believe it to be accurate. Therefore, many lovely barns are falling down. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, who rescued a beautiful old barn by making it possible for people at Bristol who have a model farm to fetch it at no cost and rebuild it there so that it will last for the future.
District councils have very good relations with voluntary organisations and that is particularly helpful in the rural areas. I gather that they combine on housing for the elderly, usually in small towns. The voluntary organisations do everything they can to keep the elderly in their own little houses or cottages for as long as possible.
One difficulty is that when a house in a village becomes vacant and is auctioned the price is always above that which anyone in the village can pay. Therefore, there is practically nothing left for the young married couples in their home village. That is a great pity. I am not saying that the people who buy the houses are not nice people, but they are not local people and they do not fit in with the local economy or the wishes of the local people themselves. There is no community spirit.
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Another difficulty is the lack of village corner shops. These are of course in danger from supermarkets. The Association for Village Shopkeepers and the Council for Small Industry in Rural Areas have helped county shopkeeper associations and said that the village shop and the post office are used by pensioners and mothers with small children who cannot get to a supermarket, and that they often remain the social centre of a village. It is becoming increasingly difficult for village shops because items are much more expensive in their shops than in the supermarkets. For example, pork pies are 35 pence in the village shop and only 22 pence in the supermarket. Ajax is 32 pence in the village shop and 25 pence in the supermarket. These are often used as loss-leaders in order to attract customers.
As regards post offices, there are now 22,000 and there are rumours that up to 1,600 are to be closed. The biggest blow has been the switch of pensions and family allowance payments to banks. However, many people still do not have bank accounts. For example, the village in which I live is 10 miles from a bank. If people have bank accounts that is a long way to go. Fortunately, I have a kind publican who is willing to change cheques, and that is very helpful. When the Wages Bill comes in it will be still more difficult—it will be difficult, I know, for other reasons—for those many people who do not have bank accounts.
In February 1986, the Daily Telegraph published an article headed "Vanishing Villages" and urged that £20 million should be given to halt the decline. Councillor Nick Wilson, chairman of the ADC Economic Development Committee, said that the rural areas are being forgotten by the Government because they do not have a strong enough voice. He suggested a more locally based approach to rural problems; districts themselves to do more to encourage economic development in their areas; the Government to recognise special needs in the rural areas; and pointed to the district councils' role in reversing the decline.
I should like to congratulate my noble friend Lord Vinson, who is chairman of the Development Commission—England's rural development agency. He is involved in 200 county towns. In April 1986 he stated in the Daily Telegraph that £38 million was needed to stop the developing crisis in the countryside where 10 million people—22 per cent.—of English people live. In the past 10 years the number of farm workers has fallen by 30 per cent., and in the past five years 500 schools have been closed.
The noble Lord in his report said further that money would help to convert old buildings to be used as workshops and small factories. It makes no sense to open a new workshop in a village when the local authority is closing down the only school. His programme covers 28 counties which have areas needing special assistance.
I again thank the noble Lord, Lord Ardwick, for mentioning various points. I shall not take them up, but I was interested in what he had to say. I should just like to quote what the Prime Minister said on 28th May 1986 in connection with conservation and development and the British approach. She stated:
"There is no reason why a modern country should not develop modern institutions, good transport systems and proper housing in a way which fits in with those things we need and want to conserve.

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The British Government intends to meet the challenge and to preserve the rest of our heritage".
I hope that through this short debate today we shall try to carry out that wish and that in the future more interest will be taken in the rural areas which give us such great pleasure in this country. I have lived in many countries, as some people know. Always when I come hack to rural England I think that this is a heavenly place to live.
7.22 p.m.
The Lord Bishop of Truro: My Lords, there is a great deal of knowledge and expertise on all sides of the House and we have had two speeches that have born witness to that fact. I should like to express gratitude to the noble Lord and the noble Baroness who have kindly welcomed what I am hoping to say.
The subject of the environment is constantly before us. Because there is so much knowledge it would be inept for me to speak in any detail about any one particular aspect. But it is before us this very week. For instance, on Monday we were looking at the Agriculture Bill; later today there is the special development order; and on Thursday we are debating the protection of children legislation which has to do with the consumption of tobacco. All those things take place against a background of world conservation strategy, the Royal Commission on Pollution of the Environment and the many other publications, inquiries and statements of public policy. We all ought to know a great deal about the subject.
The noble Lord, Lord Ardwick, touched on various areas of concern. I should not wish to go over that ground again, nor indeed that covered by the noble Baroness, Lady Vickers. But we have to see those things in the context of the population explosion in the world at large and of waste of natural and artificial materials, and we have to remember the need for what is called sustainable development; in other words, the constant lessons that we have to learn from nature about the whole process of recycling, remembering that we are ourselves part of nature.
If I may say so with respect to noble Lords, I think also that we need to remember that there is built into the whole relationship of man and his environment a need to have respect, reverence and even humility towards nature. There is a fine quotation that often appears in these documents and reports to the effect that we are not inheriting the earth from our fathers but borrowing it from our children.
But there are one or two dilemmas in the situation. I should like to illustrate them as far as the rural scene goes from Cornwall from whence I come. If one stands outside the front windows of my house one can see for at least two or three miles to the horizon. The terrain slopes gently down towards the River Fal and before you there is a belt of trees where there is represented every possible shade of green. The eye can wander through an arc of 180 degrees from left to right and back again and there will be no sign whatever of human habitation. It is therefore a tremendous privilege to be living there.
There are one or two other houses within a mile or so that have a somewhat similar view. But it has to be said that that illustration is a paradigm of the whole
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notion of privilege. It is a wonderful thing to have such a glorious and spectacular view, but every time that I look at it I feel slightly guilty because so few people are able to share it.
Already the landscape for human beings to wonder at and to enjoy, if not always to profit from, and the countryside as the natural habitat for flora and fauna of all sorts are at grave risk. But in spite of that there is an even more serious conflict between what might be called, simply put, the amenity and productivity of life (that is to say, the employment, the living standards and the human dignity of our people). For instance, in the United Kingdom rural industries contribute some 10 per cent. of the gross domestic product. Of that 10 per cent., oddly enough, agriculture and forestry represent only 2 per cent. Mining and quarrying represent 5 per cent. and tourism and recreation some 3 per cent. of that 10 per cent.
The noble Baroness, Lady Vickers, said that the number of people working on the land had reduced over the years. My researches indicate that since the last war fulltime workers on the land have dropped from half a million to one-third of that number. One can imagine what such figures mean when translated into Cornish terms, as it is a county full of small rural communities.
Noble Lords are probably aware of the British response to the World Conservation Strategy. That strategy evolved at a Stockholm conference in 1972. The response was contained in a report entitled The Conservation and Development Programme for the United Kingdom which was published in 1983. It had a number of valuable proposals for discussion and implementation at national and local levels covering the management of cities, conservation in rural resources use, marine frontier management, overseas policies and education for conservation. I am quoting from the chapter headings of the report. All those things do not of themselves help us a great deal over the dilemma that I have described.
Some of us in Cornwall are attempting to make a tiny contribution towards balancing the need to conserve the countryside on the one hand, and on the other to sustain human beings. Cornwall is its own greatest natural asset. It has to be enjoyed even when its riches are tapped for production. I do not bemoan the great St. Austell moonscape—those china clay mountains—because they have been skilfully landscaped and are indicative of the employment and dignity that they have brought to many thousands of people over the years, and still do.
However, there are still 9,000 unemployed people between the ages of 18 and 25 in Cornwall. There are probably more than that with the recent closure of the Geevor mines. That is the group at which the little party of people with whom I am associated is attempting to look. We do not wish to patronise those people. We do not want to try and find something for them to do. We would rather look at what needs to be done and see in what ways that group of mobile young people between the ages of 18 and 25 can respond.
We are thinking in terms of setting up some teams of those young people to promote Cornwall both up country and perhaps abroad, to provide trained and enthusiastic guides for tour operators, families and

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individuals visiting Cornwall, to run adventure playgrounds, seaside sport and nature trails, and so on, for children coming into Cornwall, and to help tidy up the countryside—the footpaths, beaches, and so on.
Such a project will take a great deal of planning, organising and funding. In all probability there will be help from the Manpower Services Commission and the Development Commission. We shall have to see what comes of it. There will be some resistance in the guise of conservation even to that programme. Many people coming to Cornwall to retire or to work will perhaps be among the first to hesitate to welcome more visitors. Landowners and farmers who have done nobly for the environment will be a little nervous; hoteliers will complain that the season is too short, but Cornwall is a self-conscious and proud county, and newcomers quickly sense a rare solidarity among its people.
There is a need for a training programme to be undertaken by the tourist board, which has a limited budget in Cornwall, by the mass media and by other public and private institutions. In the past few weeks, the Church of England has produced a report, through its board of social responsibility, entitled, Our Responsibility for the living Environment. I recommend that to noble Lords. It has many valuable things to say.
Of course there are factors in the situation over which control is limited; for instance, the whole matter of the disposal of surplus foodstuffs, the common agricultural policy of the European Community and the personal tastes of the British housewife. In Cornwall, we know as well as anyone the dangers of economic undercutting from overseas. While public education must be part of an ongoing programme for resolving those tensions and promoting the balance between amenities and production, some intellectual initiative would be welcome and some research on the British landscape such as has not been done substantially since the last war. There should be research by qualified people, including the environmental science professions, land managers, and so on. We could do with a higher proportion of graduate farmers.
Government have their part to play and so do the local authorities; but at the end of the day it is for the whole community. The good earth is for everybody to enjoy, and I believe to reverence.
7.24 p.m.
Baroness Fisher of Rednal: My Lords, I shall start by congratulating the right reverend prelate the Bishop of Truro on a a very interesting and informative first speech in the House. It has been a long time since I visited that part of the world. I know that there are many people from the Midlands who pay glowing tributes to Devon and Cornwall. From some of the points that you raised it was obvious, my Lord Bishop, that you and your colleagues are trying to play your part—
Lord Elton: My Lords, I apologise. I was merely noting that the noble Baroness had departed from the convention of addressing the House rather than individual Members. I am very sorry to have held things up.
Baroness Fisher of Rednal: My Lords, I apologise to the House. I thank the right reverend prelate the Bishop of Truro for his contribution.
The downward pressure on public expenditure, together with related financial policies, has produced a major increase in unemployment which, with the consequential effects of poverty, has had powerful adverse effects upon the environment of our inner cities.
The inner city problem is the old slum problem reborn—old and worn-out housing and abandoned and derelict industrial buildings. In the West Midlands, 8,500 acres of derelict land were reclaimed between 1979 and 1984, but the total of such land rose from 11,500 acres to over 14,000 acres.
Merseyside, the North-East and many other regions recorded similar experiences. I think that all will agree that all derelict land is unsightly and depressing. Decaying factory buildings are eyesores and, as the City of Birmingham knows all too well, are also prone to fire-raising by the squatters who tend to inhabit them during the evenings. They impoverish the character of our cities, leading to a further loss of commercial and industrial activity because they have to compete against green-field sites.
Anyone who wants to invest money looks at both and decides against the inner cities. It is important for us to recognise that fact if we are to increase our manufacturing base. Dereliction is clearly a serious problem in our inner cities, which cannot be left untreated. If the Government are sincere in their efforts to resuscitate the inner cities, they should consider speeding up the granting of ministerial permission on derelict land grants to enable local authorities, with private enterprise, to deal much more comprehensively with those sites and to create new communities.
While I welcome the garden festival ventures in Liverpool and Stoke-on-Trent, they are only land reclamation schemes; they are icing on the cake, but the cake is growing stale and mouldy. The regeneration of the physical environment and decent housing are a fundamental part of enabling local people to fulfil their potential. A lack of such things is ultimately a denial of social justice in a developed economy like ours.
Following the riots last year in several city areas, the Prime Minister announced a review of urban policy. Riots unfortunately took place in Handsworth, Birmingham. However, last week Birmingham City Council was told that the Government will not help with the cost of rebuilding Handsworth after the riots nor will they exempt the city's expenditure on Handsworth from financial penalties for overspending. So much for the Prime Minister's review, which appears to refuse with one hand to give any help and threatens to take it away with the other.
Those inner city areas are also areas of low-income groups and the highest pollution. This pollution is largely the result of traffic going about its business through the cities and from the city centres to the suburbs. Despite major advances in engine technology, motor vehicles remain one of the principal contributors to atmospheric pollution. The extent to which the exhaust gases of lorries, vans, coaches and

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cars contribute to the problem of pollution in the environment is almost totally unqualified.
I understand that the Government are fully aware that motor vehicle exhaust emissions can be substantially reduced by fitting autocatalyst convertors but that they are hesitant about enacting legislation because of the cost. A former transport Minister has said that the cost would be in the region of £400 to £600 a vehicle. This is at variance with an estimate of £100 that I heard mentioned by a notable speaker at a conference on the international environment in Birmingham recently. Like my noble friend Lord Ardwick, I should like to ask the Minister to be more forthcoming about tighter emission standards as envisaged by the recent EC draft directive. Are the Government going to take any action on tightening up emission standards? The Government have been surprisingly tardy in encouraging the introduction of the sale of unleaded petrol. This was, I believe, initially a British initiative within the EC. It may have been a British initiative, but perhaps the intention was to do nothing about it.
My next point relates to motorways and trunk roads. The first motorway was the construction of 100 miles between Birmingham and London; though I should perhaps say, so that there can be no doubt, from London to Birmingham. This was completed in 1959. The motorway was designed to carry 28,000 vehicles a day over the Northampton section by 1979. In that year, the actual movement of vehicles was 70,000—a little removed from 28,000. No doubt the Minister can give a much more up-to-date figure of the increase.
It is not only the volume of traffic that has increased. The weight of vehicles has increased, as has the length of vehicles. As my noble friend Lord Ardwick said, more accidents are occuring on our trunk roads and on our motorways. I should like to congratulate those responsible for the information given on radio every morning warning those who intend using motorways or trunk roads of the latest breakdown or the latest spillage. One marvels at the kind of loads that lorries shed on the motorway. Within the past six months, on the M.6 motorway interchange in Birmingham, spillages have included a load of marmalade, a load of metal pipes that were rolling all over the place and a load of bottles of milk. It is amazing what falls off the backs of lorries.
Even more interesting is the information given on the radio about contraflow operations. These seem to be a daily occurrence. The manufacturers of cones used on motorways must have a very flourishing business. I trust that they are all of British manufacture. It could be argued that increased capital spending by British Rail would alleviate the delays and the inefficiency arising from motorway repairs. However, as we all know, that is unlikely to happen when the most important person in the Government attaches something approaching leper status to trains.
I should like to conclude with a few remarks about holes in the road. The noble Lord the Minister must, when he meets friends, find that they wish to talk about various subjects. Yet more often than not, I would think, someone wishes to talk about holes in the
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road. The Government cannot pass the blame to local authorities for lack of maintenance. All of us are aware that central government have direct responsibility for the financial management of the road network comprising our trunk roads and motorways. The noble Lord might find it a useful experience, if he has the time, to make spot checks on our trunk roads in order to measure the depth and width of some of the holes. That might not be so glamorous an occupation as a Minister from the other place visiting a Spanish resort but would no doubt be equally useful.
7.36 p.m.
Viscount Mersey: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Ardwick, for initiating a debate that cuts across party lines.
It is my unique privilege to be the first from this side of the House to congratulate the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Truro on an excellent maiden speech. I share particularly his views about the dynamism of English China Clay's Cornish Alps, as I think they are known. I wish to confine my remarks to Liverpool, a proud city founded in 1202—a city of magnificent buildings, a great port whose ancient emblem is the Liver Bird and whose goddess is Minerva. And yet, as noble Lords have already said, it is a city with problems, with unemployment up to 80 per cent. among the blacks of Toxteth and with the problem, too, that many of its fine buildings have decayed into slums. The only paint that those buildings have seen in the past 20 years is the green, yellow and red of the Rastafarians.
As noble Lords will realise from my name, it was in Liverpool that my family made their mark in the 19th century. That century saw an influx of entrepreneurs into a thriving community—great Liverpool names like the Swires, the Holts, the Brocklebanks, the Booths, the Ismays, the Inmans and the Harrisons. In among those giants tiptoed my great great grandfather John to set up shop modestly as a pawnbroker. Liverpool was so vibrant in those days that he was soon able to buy his own ship and made his fortune by exporting turpentine to America.
Liverpool must have been an exciting place in those days, perhaps like Silicon Valley today. His son, John Charles, was called to the Bar and rose to be president of the Admiralty, Probate and Divorce Division. He sat briefly in another place as Member for Liverpool, Exchange. He was then ennobled and is best remembered for presiding over the inquiry into the loss of the "Titanic". He had an ability to worry at a problem and for that reason was known as the little terrier of Toxteth. Like all noble and learned Lords, the little terrier was impartial. He would therefore doubtless be pleased to see in this House today a balance in the Mersey dynasty. Obviously one of his great grandsons—myself—is a Tory. But his other great grandson is of a different political persuasion. I refer to my noble kinsman, Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede.
I put it to noble Lords that a balanced impartial approach to Liverpool's problems is the only one that will work. I am not here to make a party political speech. I am not here to knock Derek Hatton. I am here to knock the party political feuding that has

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bedevilled Liverpool and has caused it to decline steadily since 1912. Noble Lords who have seen that great city, as the noble Baroness, Lady Fisher, has obviously done, will be struck by the large areas that have simply been left as derelict bomb sites since the Second World War. They will be struck, too, by the fine Victorian terraces and squares of Toxteth, apparently never repaired since the First World War.
We cannot say that such long-term neglect is the fault of Left-wing socialism. Liverpool has had councils of every political persuasion. The problem is feuding. The problem is that too many good men and true start their remarks about Liverpool with those defeatist four words, "The trouble is that". Anyone who starts a sentence that way is doing a cop-out. He is passing the buck; for instance, "The trouble is that the Liverpool blacks hate the whites" or "The trouble is that Militant has bankrupted the city". A person speaking thus is ending all hope of progress in Liverpool and I think that, subconsiously at least, he is inviting us to switch to a more hopeful town, like Basingstoke or Milton Keynes.
As His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales said so ably on 14th June:
"Those involved in assisting community initiatives really must try and stop feuding and recognise that a multiple approach is called for".
Indeed, our success in urban renewal is the result of multiple approaches and multi-party approaches. The highly successful London Docklands regeneration was masterminded by the noble Lord, Lord Mellish, who is surely as multiple a Peer as one could wish to find in this Chamber. The equally successful Glasgow eastern area renewal scheme—the acronym of which is GEAR—is much praised by the present Government, and rightly. Yet it was started in 1976 when the socialists were in power.
There is much to be said for authorities with multiple powers: the London Docklands Development Corporation and the Scottish Development Agency. Indeed, Liverpool has one of them too: the Merseyside Development Corporation. Its most spectacular achievement is the rebuilding of the Albert Dock. I was there on a Saturday three weeks ago. It was a hive of activity. The Maritime Museum was packed, as was the Museum of Emigration. There are 50 or 60 new shops all doing a brisk trade in quality goods. Indeed, they make the goods on offer at Covent Garden tatty by comparison.
In the dock itself, a weird assembly of crews was practising for the fancy dress raft, race to take place on 29th June. Across the dock we saw taking shape the new Tate Gallery of the North. Beyond that again, we saw workmen laying the cobbles of a splendid new riverside walkway to stretch from the garden centre along three miles of waterfront. The architect in charge, Mr. Jorrisen, forecasts that Liverpool will be the great new tourist centre of the North-West, and indeed the enthusiasm on the banks of the Mersey is so catching that I regard Mr. Jorrisen's forecast as much more than a pipedream.
I am generally much more hopeful about the future of Liverpool than is the noble Baroness, Lady Fisher. My only regret is that Merseyside Development Corporation's sphere of activity is not larger. A few
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hundred yards inland one finds oneself in one of the worst areas of urban blight on God's earth. There is worse housing in the world, as anyone will know who has seen the shanty towns of Delhi or Bombay. But, as I see it, the Indians are making the best of a bad job whereas the Scouses are making the worst of a good job—by which I mean a solidly built stock of perfectly good Victorian housing. There is hope in Delhi but defeatism in Liverpool 8, in Toxteth.
Surely the way forward in Liverpool is to extend the area managed by the MDC. I should like to ask my noble friend whether there are plans for so doing. The potential of Liverpool is greater even than the potential of London Dockland. In Liverpool, the aim is to graft excellent new buildings onto excellent old buildings. Hard by the Albert Dock lie the stately Cunard and Liver Buildings. In the city centre there is the great Grecian temple of St. George's Hall, which Queen Victoria thought worthy of ancient Athens. To its north stand a series of neo-classical buildings all dedicated to culture, the arts and education. They include the finest picture gallery in the North: the Walker. Nearby is the Liverpool Philharmonic Hall, and the Everyman Theatre. A more recent building is the Cavern Walks built by the Liverpool architect David Buckhouse in honour of the Beatles.
This sounds almost like a Michelin Guide, but the truth is that Liverpool has so much going for it. It is a port on a hill with some of the finest buildings in the land. It is thus all the more depressing and annoying to note that a European Commission recently listed 102 great cities in order of excellence. Frankfurt came top and Liverpool came 102nd.
There is something peculiarly exciting about Liverpool. Perhaps it is the cheek by jowl nature of the good, the bad and the ugly. Gilbert Scott's Anglican cathedral almost backs on to the awful Granby Street, dominated by ganja and violent crime. How are we to get rid of the bad? Certainly it will not be by political feuding. As I hope noble Lords will agree, this has not been a political speech but I hope a patriotic one. The approach has to be multiple and then Liverpool can and will make it. I remind noble Lords of the unique loyal toast by many a worthy Liverpudlian: "God bless the Queen, the Duke of Lancaster."
7.45 p.m.
Baroness Phillips: My Lords, I should like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Ardwick, for giving us the opportunity to call attention to the current threats to our urban and rural environment. I should also like to express my appreciation and thanks to the right reverend Prelate for his splendid maiden speech. When he described the wonderful forests I felt that the words of the poet were certainly true: where everything is lovely and only man is vile. I often feel that the real threat to our development is mankind himself—and the Government will be glad to know that I am speaking generally and not for once calling upon them.
During this week we have had several appeals from various people to do something about our urban environment. This morning I heard on the radio that someone who was going around the world for charity had had all his belongings stolen when he was in New York. It was interesting to hear him say that he had

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been the victim of theft on only two occasions—in New York and in a major city in Australia. He said that when he travelled through the poor countries of India and Africa he was safe and nothing happened to him.
I feel strongly about this. As the noble Viscount who has just spoken is proud of his city. I am very proud of mine. I am a born Londoner. I still live in the borough in which I was born and I am sure that I shall continue to live there until I die. I like my neighbours. But there is no doubt that the London I grew up in is not the London that we now have. I do not know where to apportion the blame, nor indeed whether we should attempt to apportion any blame, but I so agreed with His Royal Highness Prince Philip when he described the day when one could leave one's car unlocked and one's door open. For some reason the press seemed to castigate him for this. I thought that he was making a very sensible and intelligent speech—and he is a very sensible, caring and intelligent man, though not perhaps one of the darlings of the press.
What is disturbing as one walks through the city of London—whichever borough one chooses—is its shabby, rundown and derelict appearance. This was mentioned by my noble friend Lady Fisher when speaking about her part of the world. We have heard of the holes in the road, but the broken pavements are incredible. How blind people cope in these conditions I do not know. There is the indescribable dirt. I know that I shall get a lot of letters, but I must say this. Dogs do not do very much for our urban environment.
I feel particuarly strongly sometimes about the animal movements and the conservationists. I am chairman of a small urban development in my borough. We received permission to have what would have been a beautiful park on a part of Wormwood Scrubs. All of a sudden up came the wildlife conservationists. I asked them what wildlife there was in Wormwood Scrubs, apart from the prisoners—and we could not do anything about that. I said that if it were rats, I was not too bothered; I cared much more for children. But I am afraid that they spoiled that scheme. The right reverend Prelate made a valid point about this. There is conflict, unfortunately, between the interests of one group and those of another. They sometimes prevent schemes which could be of benefit to us all.
As one travels through my borough, which is a very typical borough, one sees closed schools. There is nothing more depressing than a closed school. One also sees closed hospitals (which people have fought to keep open), as well as closed churches, some of which are boarded up and others of which are used perhaps to manufacture soap. As a good Catholic, I shall not pass any further comment on that! However, there is decay and general degradation which should never be the lot of a city like London.
The Prime Minister has encouraged people to come to Britain. She has encouraged people to come to London in particular. I sometimes wonder what we offer people who come to London. What does Trafalgar Square look like most days? It is full of empty beer cans and all kinds of dirt. People cannot
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get buses if they want to move about; they cannot cross the street very easily because cars race about and lorries thunder through. The general feeling about this great city is that it is not a place in which one wants to be for too long. It is very sad and it is something for which we all have responsibility. No one group—and certainly not governments—can be held wholly to blame for the situation in which we find ourselves at present.
I noticed the other day—and this has been referred to already—that the chairman of the Green Belt Council uttered a warning about intrusion into the green belt. In this respect I should like to make an appeal to the Minister. I know that we have been promised that the green belt will be protected, and I should like to underline that promise. The green belt is a marvellous lung for those of us who live in London. Please do not let the property developers get into it and build hundreds and hundreds of what are laughingly called "starter houses" which are so small that you could not do much else other than start in them. Please leave for those of us who live in the city the joy of walking in it and the pleasure of good pavements and good houses, with schools and churches nearby. We who have built this city over centuries should still be allowed to enjoy our urban development. I am not quite sure to whom I am appealing—perhaps to all of us. However, it is important that we look at the situation now because if we do not, there will be nothing of which we feel proud for us to leave our grandchildren.
7.52 p.m.
Baroness Robson of Kiddington: My Lords, I should also like to thank the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Truro for his very interesting maiden speech. Perhaps I may also say how interesting it has been to listen to this debate. I have been transported from the beautiful countryside of Cornwall to the centre of the Midlands and up to Liverpool, and I should now like to come back roughly to London.
I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Ardwick, for having introduced the debate. He managed, when opening the debate, to cover so many aspects of the problems of our environment. As there are many speakers in the debate, I have chosen to deal with only one aspect of the environment, and that is as it relates to London. Perhaps I should have been speaking in a debate called, "The need to improve our urban environment and protect our rural environment".
It is perhaps difficult to protect the rural environment around London to which the noble Baroness, Lady Phillips, referred; namely, the green belt around London. It looks as though it will be a tremendously difficult problem for us to preserve it. The most marvellous piece of legislation that was ever passed was the creation of the green belt around our urban cities. However, there has been erosion of that green belt. At present there is tremendous pressure on the use of the green belt by big development consortia. There is the consortium which is asking for planning permission for the proposed new Tillington Hall New Town and there is the Country Properties' development at the Golden Triangle. All those pressures will increase; they will not diminish. We

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must be enormously vigilant to ensure that we do not destroy what we so proudly once created.
It is really an anachronism that this pressure is being brought to bear while at the same time—and various figures have been quoted in the House tonight—in our cities there must be something approaching 250,000 acres, according to the Civic Trust, of idle land. According to the Civic Trust, that does not take account of empty or under-used buildings.
We must positively try to redress the balance between investment in the development of green field sites and the rehabilitation of run-down or derelict cities in urban areas. To do that we must tackle the situation both in a fiscal manner and by the introduction of new administrative measures. I believe that the Government have an opportunity immediately to take one step. It may not sound very big, but I believe it would have an effect on the development programmes. If the Government would be prepared to remove VAT from the refurbishment and rebuilding of buildings which are under-used in the inner cities, it would go a long way towards helping to promote greater energy being put into the development of those buildings. Perhaps at the same time, instead of allowing building on a green field site free of VAT, why not put VAT on building on green field sites and thus help us to encourage the redevelopment of our inner cities?
The recent Audit Commission Report on local government expenses stated that there was not enough encouragement for local authorities to help themselves. They said that local authorities should be able to generate more funds internally and work with private companies without circumventing central government public expenditure control. However, at present the Government control the total amount of capital spending by local authorities, from whatever source the money comes, and they have thereby reduced in real terms the total amount of investment. For instance, the London boroughs currently hold nearly £1 billion of receipts from assets which they are not allowed to spend, and they have acquired many of those assets by obeying the Government's encouragement to sell council houses. If we want to revitalise the inner urban areas we must use that money in the place where it has been raised, and together with an input of private finance, I believe that we could achieve a tremendous turn-around in the dereliction of the inner cities.
It is desperately important that when it comes to planning, the power to take the decisions must be devolved as low down as possible—to a very local tier of government—if it is to be environmentally beneficial. I am a great believer—as I think we all are in this House—that the local people living in an area are more likely to be sensitive to the environment around them than those taking decisions in Whitehall departments.
On a previous occasion, when we were discussing the Sizewell nuclear inquiry report, I suggested that all planning inquiries should be on a two-tier level; and I make no apology for voicing that opinion again. It would make it easier for local people to have an input, without having to spend too much money in these lengthy inquiries, if we divided the planning inquiry
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into two stages. The first stage would be purely to justify the proposed development; to come to the conclusion that a development of some kind is needed. Then the second stage of the inquiry would be held where the development should take place. This is where local people would be able to have an easier input, and this is important.
Although I have just said that decisions should be taken as locally as possible, it is also worth considering whether we need a Secretary of State for environmental protection with a seat in the Cabinet. That department should include planning, national parks, historic buildings and ancient monuments, the control of pollution, resource conservation, and material recycling. It should also have within its orbit the Nature Conservancy Council and the Countryside Commission, because too often at the moment there are different areas of conservation, and it does not make for a coherent programme. I hope that the Government will consider those suggestions.
8.2 p.m.
Baroness White: My Lords, after the rousing speech of the noble Viscount, Lord Mersey, I feel that I have to declare my Merseyside connection. My mother was entirely Welsh in origin but my grandfather on the maternal side was the official port gauger for the docks of Liverpool. I can therefore claim a certain indirect connection. He was also incidentially the first person, so far as I know, to take a doctorate in literature by examination of the University of London in his spare time.
This debate has come at a slightly awkward moment for those of us engaged on the environmental clauses of the Agriculture Bill, and who are looking forward with some apprehension to the massive Housing and Planning Bill, which I believe comes before us early in July. Nonetheless I am sure that it is much to be welcomed as it provides an opportunity to touch on certain considerations which affect both the urban and rural areas, and all of us have indicated that we have certain causes particularly close to our hearts that we are anxious to draw to the attention of your Lordships' House.
For my part I am concerned about the structure on which a great deal of our environmental protection depends, and that is our planning system, which, in recent years, has come in for a good deal of criticism. The Government's declared aim, expressed a few days ago by the environment Minister, Mrs. Rumbold, is,
"to simplify and improve the efficiency of the planning system without deteriment to careful control."
An admirable sentiment, but not too easy to put into practice.
One must agree that the planning system to which we have grown accustomed over the years has led to unnecessary complexities and to some long delays, but I have a great deal of sympathy for the views expressed by the noble Baroness, Lady Robson of Kiddington. Are we not now in danger of going to the other extreme by over-centralising and so depriving local communities of the chance to put their own case effectively?
We have examples in major projects. The Channel tunnel and the second Severn Bridge, or barrage, if it

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comes about, may be cases in point. Consultation for the former seems, in a formal sense, to be confined to those willing and able to enter into the list of petitioners in Parliament on a hybrid Bill. This is a quite daunting undertaking. It is not at all clear to me how local people are going to make their own community interests fully apparent to those who are primarily concerned with major financial and construction enterprises.
London docklands is another case in point. The procedures that seem to be likely to be embarked upon appears to be more daunting than the traditional public inquiry, with all its disadvantages. For private citizens, whose life can be significantly affected by proposed developments, the chance to make their voice heard is extremely important. Whether we ought to rethink the whole structure of planning policy on the lines suggested by the noble Baroness, Lady Robson, I do not think we can enter into tonight, but that there is a feeling of unease and questioning, on a broader basis than the Government perhaps realise, is of importance and should engage our attention, although it is doubtful whether we can do this on the Housing and Planning Bill coming before us. There is so much else in that Bill that it would be difficult to attempt a real reconstruction of our planning system just yet.
The Government have already made certain alterations, in their enterprise zones, and simplified planning zones, both of which have their justifications but unless they are handled with a strong sense of social and environmental responsibility they can diminish rather than enhance local values. They need the most careful scrutiny and examination in practice.
Faced with the challenge of unemployment and the urge to invest in enterprise at almost any cost, there is a strong temptation for both local and central government to let other considerations slide. Fortunately our traditional planning procedures, with all their faults, retain a strong hold. There have been two encouraging recent examples in the London area. Not long ago there were apprehensions that Wimbledon town centre conservation area might have been de-designated—an ugly word, but I believe it is the correct jargon—to enable the Borough of Merton to develop land to the detriment of the conservation area, but land in which the borough itself has a direct financial interest. Fortunately, the Minister, as I understand it, has now seen fit to call in this planning proposal for his own determination after public inquiry.
Another encouraging sign has been that in Westminster many of us are glad to learn that the public library and the adjacent attractive area in Great Smith Street, in close proximity to Westminster Abbey, the precincts and Dean's Yard, is unlikely to be demolished. The proposal was to build yet another office block there, together with a deep underground car park which would have hopelessly congested traffic in that particular locality. I understand that the Westminster City Council is to be advised not to proceed with this development. This has been achieved only by a massive campaign of protest by the Victorian Society and other bodies, to which Westminster City Council has now given its ear.
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It is an articulate area—and that does not apply to all other neighbourhoods—and it has some doughty champions, including the noble Baroness, Lady Elliot of Harwood, who played an active part in this campaign. At least it is encouraging that, if people care enough and can organise themselves adequately, the worst ravages can be prevented.
But difficulties remain. I want to draw attention tonight to one particular one. Your Lordships will be surprised to hear that it is in the Principality of Wales. On our Heritage Coast adjacent to the Pembrokeshire National Park, we face an example of economic development which is desirable in itself but which threatens to take a most damaging advantage of a planning loophole of the kind referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady Vickers. Above Marros beach, on a conspicuous Heritage Coast headland, within recent months a network of farm roads has appeared. I have seen aerial photographs of them and also of the 28 chicken houses recently erected. They are large chalet type structures, but just small enough to qualify on agricultural grounds for exemption from planning control. They are for free range poultry, but sited on a headland so windswept that the birds often prefer to remain indoors.
A steep pathway has been bulldozed down the cliff to the beach below. It can hardly be intended for the hens. Indeed it is not, because now the developer wants planning consent for housing for the people required to tend the poultry and to take over the poultry enterprise: a consent that he could never have hoped to obtain had he not first put up agricultural structures free of planning control. Now, of course, he can appeal to local sentiment because he is providing jobs—most desirable—but nobody is going to tell me that in South Carmarthenshire and the adjacent county of Pembrokeshire he could not have found sites for these 28 very conspicuous structures. Whether the chalets will ultimately be turned into holiday accommodation for visitors is not clear, but it is not entirely impossible.
This developer wishes to repeat the performance at Laugharne, the Dylan Thomas shrine currently being visited by the former President of the United States. Mr. Jimmy Carter. But I am told that, fortunately, Carmarthen District Council is now fully alerted and is to apply to the Secretary of State for Wales for an Article 4 reference on the Laugharne proposition. What disturbs me particularly is that this developer has been partly financed by the official Welsh Development Agency. On another site the enterprise would have been admirable and much to be commended, but as it is the whole affair is a very sad example of how not to attempt to do good exploiting a planning loophole. This use of a planning loophole is apparently being encouraged in certain areas in North Wales as well as South Wales as a way of moving into an area to which otherwise one would not have access, by first putting up agricultural structures for which planning consent is not required as long as you keep them just below the limit of size.
I hope very much that, having drawn attention to this, both the Department of the Environment and the Welsh Office will take it on board to see what can be done to make certain that this sort of exploitation is not repeated.

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There are many other matters which concern those of us who are interested in conservation areas, listed buildings and so on but most of these will come up in the legislation that will be before us in July. I should say in advance that many of us are very much concerned with the proposals in that Bill for the relaxation of the conditions for Grade II buildings. We are also very much concerned about the landscape conservation orders that are coming up before us tomorrow in your Lordships's House. In a recent press release Mrs. Rumbold referred to these as being confined to national parks. If this is really so—this is by way of giving notice to the Minister about what may be raised tomorrow—most of us would consider that to be quite unacceptably narrow.
There are many other matters of business coming before the House tonight so I shall conclude by thanking my noble friend Lord Ardwick for giving us a chance to air some matters about which it is quite clear that many of us in this House are deeply concerned. This is an unusual parliamentary opportunity to draw attention to them.
8.15 p.m.
Lord Jenkins of Putney: My Lords, I feel a little nervous at following three such excellent speeches from three noble Baronesses. Indeed, this debate is dominated by the female sex because we have also heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Vickers, and my noble friend Lady Fisher, and we are about to hear from my noble friend Lady Nicol. I think that this is appropriate because women for the most part have to live with the consequences of misplaced male ingenuity. That is their life, and that is the life of all of us because we all live with the consequences of our misplaced ingenuity.
There may be one or two of your Lordships who are old enough to remember, as I am, when progress was automatically a good thing. The words "progress" and "good" were virtually synonomous and one knew that the future was bright, even though one might arrive at it from different avenues, by, on the one hand, the sudden perfection of the perfect market economy which would operate to the benefit of all concerned, or, on the other hand, by the development of a Socialist peaceful revolution which would give us all that we wanted. One way or another we were sure that we would arrive at a wonderful condition in due course. We did not quite know when, but we knew we would get there somehow.
I am afraid that the generation growing up now has lost all that. They do not have the confidence we used to have that we would arrive eventually at a condition in which the good would prevail. It is not with us any more. So we are now concerning ourselves not with the ultimate good, but with how we can modify and mitigate the bad, how we can make things less bad than they are, rather than how we can bring them to some ultimate perfection.
My noble friend in his felicitous opening speech has given us an indication of the width of this subject. So could I: in this context I should like to talk about theatres; I should like to talk about the consequences of nuclear development. I should have said that if there was one threat above all since Chernobyl that we
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are all conscious of, it is the threat of nuclear development. At one time I thought it was possible to separate opposition to the bomb from support for nuclear energy. That conviction or belief has recently been badly shaken. I now gravely doubt whether man can survive the consequences of his own nuclear ingenuity and I fear that he may succeed in destroying himself not by the consequences of nuclear war but by the incidental consequences of trying to use nuclear energy for a purpose which some people might argue must ultimately, possibly accidentally, lead to disaster. Human beings are fallible. They are fallible in the Soviet Union; they are fallible in the United States; they are fallible here, and mistakes can be made.
My noble friend reminded me that at one time my main concern was not with these disastrous things which we have to try to handle but with the relatively minor nuisance (but not minor to those who lived under it) of aircraft noise. He and I share in common, because we live not too far from each other, the consequences of living under the flightpath to Heathrow. He said that I would deal with aircraft noise. I am not sure that I shall deal with aircraft noise because I have been trying unsuccessfully to deal with it ever since 1958 when I moved to Putney. I tried to deal with it in another place as the Member of Parliament for that constituency, but I was not very successful, I am afraid. At one time we used to have a measurement of aircraft noise called the noise and number index. I wonder what has happened to it? I wonder whether it has gone the same way as the RPI, whether, because it produces inconvenient results it has been decided to concentrate on some other form of measurement which will not point to the truth so clearly. The noise and number index indicated that the great nuisance of aircraft noise was to do with the amount of noise; you could put up with a single noise in one hour, but what you could not put up with was a noise every minute. That is why the people living under the glide path at Heathrow suffer so much.
I want to assure the right reverend Prelate that I listened very closely to his remarkable maiden speech. I heard all of it from below the Bar because we have a rule that if a maiden speech has started, one cannot come in and sit down in the middle of it in case the "maiden" is so nervous as to be upset. There was no chance of that happening so far as the right reverend Prelate was concerned. He occupies a very strong Bench, but he will add further strength to it, and we shall all wish to hear more from him in the future.
My Lords, how are we going to deal with this problem of aircraft noise? How are we going to deal with the even greater problem of nuclear weapons? Frankly, I do not really know. It is a minor problem on the one hand, a major problem on the other. What it really boils down to is that all sections of the human race must be determined to get the situation under control and not allow the consequences of our own ingenuity to destroy us. We must decide consciously on a world basis to take hold of the situation and ensure that we are in charge and are not simply carried along by the consequences of what we can do. We have arrived at a point, as the "green" people tell us, at which we must not necessarily say that because we can do a thing we must do it, that it can be done and therefore we have to do it. We used to think that way

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at one time and we cannot get out of the habit. Because a thing could be done all societies used to say "It is there, so we have to do it". The mountain had to be climbed, the experiment had to be conducted.
We have reached the point at which we must say, "No". Whether it is chemical warfare, nuclear warfare, or the minor injury of aircraft noise, it must be brought under control. It must be controlled not necessarily in the interests of those who are flying in the air or those who are conducting experiments, but in the interests of the people who are living under the glide path, the people who are going to suffer the consequences of the nuclear experiments, the people whom we in this House, indirectly perhaps, regard ourselves as representing.
I welcome this debate. My own contribution to it has not been as informed and as particular as some of the contributions have been. I hope that does not mean that I have nothing informed or particular to say. However, in spite of what my noble friend said, I have allowed myself to be urged along on to the wider path, and I hope your Lordships will think no worse of my contribution for that.
8.24 p.m.
Lord Walston: My Lords, first of all I should like to express my thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Ardwick, for giving us the opportunity to have this extremely well-informed and highly interesting debate. He has given an example of how to protect his environment by placing himself originally between two noble Baronesses and behind yet another one; so his environment has been well protected and it is good that he gives us that example!
I should also like to add my congratulations to the right reverend Prelate for his stimulating, well-informed and sensitive maiden speech. He certainly does not present any "sly shade of a Rural Dean"; rather, he presents the robust reality of a realistic rural Bishop, which for us in this House is an enormous asset. We look forward very much to hearing his wisdom on his own area and many other areas, too, in the future.
It has come out in this debate, far-ranging as it has been, that this problem of protection of the environment, rural and urban, is almost entirely a question of balance. For instance, the right reverend Prelate talked about the conflict—conflict or balance; one has to hold the balance in a case of conflict—between amenity and production and rural employment. That is a real conflict between groups at Wormwood Scrubs: a difficult balance to hold. The noble Lord, Lord Jenkins conflict between groups at Wormwood Scrubbs: a difficult balance to hold. The noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Putney, talked about aircraft noise. That involves the balance between the amenity of those living underneath and the convenience of those who have to get from one place to another speedily. The whole question of environment is surely a question of balance.
There are many other balances. For instance, there is the balance between cost and benefit. Protection and enhancement of the environment is a costly matter. Are the benefits that are going to accrue, not only to the present generation but to those of the future, worth
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that particular amount of expenditure? There is the balance between those who want to enjoy the quiet environment, as the noble Baroness, Lady Vickers, mentioned—those living in a rural area—and those who do not have the advantage of living in a rural environment but who want to have the opportunity of going there and enjoying it, of picnicking there, of camping or hiking there, very often to the detriment of those who actually live there.
There is the balance between preserving the old and encouraging the new. That is something which has not been mentioned but we must remember it. For instance, what would we think of Rome today if there had been environmentalists in the 16th century who had preserved all the mediaeval and older parts of Rome and we had none of the beautiful buildings which appeared there because the old ones were razed to the ground? What if the environmentalists had been busy at the time of Capability Brown and he had not been able to level his hills, make his lakes and build his bridges?
There is a further balance that we have to bear in mind, the balance of convenience and efficiency against that of conservation. The City of London, which is not a place for which I hold any brief, was created primarily for the convenience of merchants in the first place and later, in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, for finance houses. Yet, in order to create that environment where they could prosper and work comfortably and efficiently, the City of London destroyed more Wren churches between the wars than any of Hitler's bombs did during the whole of the war. That is again some form of balance.
Then there is the balance between a quiet countryside and good communications and access. Should motorways be built? Should bypasses be built? They destroy some of the things that people fortunate enough to live in the country have enjoyed for generations, and yet they add to the enjoyment of those who do not have the privilege of living there. They enable them to get there; they enable them to get to other places too.
There is the balance between the official flotation of industry and creating overcrowding in the South-East and dereliction in the North-West—and in the North-East, too, for that matter. All these are matters of concern, matters of environmental importance, which cannot be decided as they were until relatively recently purely by the free play of the markets. They cannot be decided solely by the gentlemen in Whitehall who know best. They cannot be decided by the pressure groups who happen to have got a great movement going to preserve some particular type of rare bird and who ignore all the interests of the other people who live near or by that particular area.
I think now that in some cases, but by no means all, the pendulum may have swung rather too far in the opposite direction from the old laissez-faire way. There are inordinate planning delays which cause not only a great deal of hardship to people and loss of money but a great many lost opportunities. The Piccadilly Circus problem still has to be solved. And there are preservation orders on some houses of interest, in good state and of considerable attraction but in which nobody wants to live and which the owner cannot afford to preserve properly.

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I believe that some of these things have gone too far. But for all that, having made that caveat, I think there is still a great deal to be done; there is still much on which money must be spent and to which thought must be given: effluent control, exhaust gases (which have been mentioned), acid rain (also mentioned), nuclear wastes. These are matters of very pressing importance indeed; and there are also the environmentally sensitive areas (which we shall be discussing tomorrow): the national parks, the areas of outstanding beauty. All these are steps in the right direction. I am not blaming the Government for this at all; but all the steps that have been taken so far, although good, useful and even admirable, have been too small. The steps have not been great strides; they have been hesitating, little steps. If we are to preserve and improve our rural and our urban environment, we must go farther and we must go faster.
May I make one suggestion to the noble Lord who is going to reply? In my view, the old regional economic planning councils played an enormously useful part in achieving a balanced form of long-term planning in their regions. One needs a body which is more widely based than are our normal local governments; which is closer to the actual problems of the area than central government can ever be; which can take a long-term view without an eye on elections coming up and on popularity; but which looks overall and can look at a wider area than any single local authority; which can look at matters such as location of industry, long-term planning of communications, including the siting of airports; whether there should be more international airports in the North or in the North-East; housing; whether there should be a new town here or whether it is better to have substantial housing estates on the outskirts of existing towns, public and private; whether you should enlarge certain villages. All these things must be looked at on a longterm basis and on a regional rather than a purely local authority basis.
Similar plans and decisions must be taken for industry, too. I believe that as well as encouraging and expanding those authorities, those bodies that are already in existence, the revival of some form of regional planning is the most effective way of protecting both the urban and the rural environments against current effects.
8.34 p.m.
Baroness Nicol: My Lords, it is customary to say that this has been a wide-ranging debate. I think that perhaps this evening, the cliché is actually true. We have ranged from inner cities to Cornish landscapes and back again. I must thank my noble friend for giving us this opportunity because many of the things that we are discussing tonight loom very large in people's minds and another opportunity to discuss them is very welcome indeed. Perhaps I may also add my compliments to the right reverend Prelate on his maiden speech, which was excellent. I think that it is an interesting reflection on the state of mankind's minds that when he described as the height of privilege an absolutely empty landscape, there was a murmur of approval all round the House. I think that it is rather sad that we should have reached the stage where to get
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out of sight of our fellow beings is our one aim in life. But that seems to be what we all want.
My remarks can be only a summary because it is a vast subject and we have very little time. But there is no doubt about the public concern and the growing awareness of the need to conserve our environment. I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Walston, feels a little defensive about conservationists. I am equally sorry that he chose Rome as an example because I seem to remember that it was burned to the ground—which got them off to a flying start; and there was not much that the convervationists could do about it at that stage.
All governments have contributed to protective legislation. In an idle moment, I sat down and made a list of the protective Acts which Labour governments have brought in. Perhaps I could make a pact with the Minister. I shall not read out my list to prove the green virility of the Labour Party if he will promise not to read out his, which I am sure that he has. Let us just accept the fact that all governments have introduced legislation which has been useful in protecting the environment. The Royal Commission on Environment Pollution has now produced 11 reports and has given us plenty to go at. If we are looking for ways in which to do it, we have plenty of guidance. But the need for action is greater than ever, and today I want to concentrate on the United Kingdom's problems not because we can ignore world problems or the fact that we contribute to them—and demands on world resources which we make too must be considered—but because we have our own problems and they are the ones which press hardest upon us.
Our greatest problems are because of overpopulation. A number of speakers have made this point. It is that and it is the high expectations that we have now introduced into our population; we expect a very high standard of living accommodation, of feeding and of environmental surroundings. But our most immediate problem is the one caused by the waste products of a very sophisticated society. I shall come on to litter in a moment. It is visible, it is the one which upsets people but it is perhaps the most superficial of all the problems that we have to deal with.
We have chemical wastes, nuclear wastes, sewage residues and motor vehicle emissions; and we have learned to live with the need to deal with these. The only way we shall not be able to have them to deal with is if people are prepared to live with reduced expectations—and I cannot see that happening. Our problems could be lessened because some of the processes producing chemical wastes are capable of being reorganised to produce less waste at a cost. Discharges to sewage systems could be more tightly controlled, making sludge less toxic and easier to dispose of; and that is one of our greatest problems at the moment. Vehicle emissions are being controlled and I am happy to be able to say to my noble friend Lady Fisher that we hope to have lead-free petrol in full use in the early 1990s and certainly by 1997 which I think is the very latest date for it.
But the noise and the visual intrusion of traffic are still with us, and particularly that of the very large lorries, and so is aircraft noise. It is no coincidence that this year a noise council has been formed to try to deal

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with the problems caused by noise. It is being more and more recognised as a pollution in its own right, and the Environmental Health Institution is very concerned with it. Agricultural pollution is at least being recognised as a very serious problem, and legislation exists which could be used to control it. Overall we could, as a nation and as individuals, look to our attitudes of over-consumption of energy and natural resources—including, incidentaly, packaging. We are hopelessly over-packaged. We buy items which have packets within packets, wrapped in plastic bags, for one item. That contributes largely to our litter problem that we are all having to deal with.
Last month, the Government's response to the World Conservation Strategy was published: that is six years after the original document came out. The document to which the right reverend Prelate referred, I think, was a document which was produced by a combination of voluntary and statutory bodies. It was not the official government response. The one we are dealing with at the moment—this beautiful object—is the official government response, which has just come out.
The response itself and the speeches which the right honourable Minister in another place made at its launching are hopeful and we do not quarrel with them. What worries us is that in the application of existing legislation and in Government proposals for the economy there is direct conflict with their stated conservation aims. I shall give just a few examples of that, although I have not very much time. The response admits the need for continuing research in environmental science: yet money for such research is being cut year by year, and many of the institutions who have made past contributions to environmental science are to be privatised—which almost certainly means further reductions in non-commercial research. This document draws attention to the value of environmental science in the control of pollution and in other ways.
The noble Baroness, Lady White, was very anxious about this and about the White Paper Lifting the Burden, and its offspring which has just arrived Building Business, not Barriers. Both documents undermine the planning system which has been the backbone of environmental protection in urban areas. We have heard cries from all sides tonight for protection of the green belt and we have heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Vickers, about the need to control farm buildings. However, if we are to introduce controls for farm building we need also to remember that controls on industrial building are about to be relaxed; and I think this is a very dangerous road for us to follow.
The Food and Environmental Protection Act, which we all hailed last year as a step forward in the control of farm pollution, is likely to fall short of some of the most useful protections because, in spite of promises made at the time of its passing, we understand that adequate staffing to enforce the provisions has not been appointed and is unlikely to be so. If I could return just for a moment to the question of litter, which has been having a lot of publicity lately because of a certain amount of litter on the way from Heathrow, I saw today an extract from the Code of Practice for Routine Maintenance, issued by the
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Department of Transport at the end of 1985 and which came into effect on 1st April this year. I will read only small extracts from it because there is quite a lot all in the same vein. It gives directions for highways authorities on how to maintain roads, and it says:
"Kerbed rural all-purpose trunk roads shall not be swept more than once per year unless … there are special circumstances".
It also says,
"Urban kerbed all-purpose trunk roads shall not be swept more than twice per year"
and
"rural unkerbed roads will not be swept at all unless a particular need arises."
I wonder whether the Minister from the Department of the Environment is aware of what his friends in the Department of Transport are doing. On the very next page—and this is even worse—it says:
"All litter bins shall be removed from all-purpose trunk road lay-bys and notices erected advising road users to take their litter away."
In view of the fuss that is currently being made and the appointment of Mr. Branson to clear up the country, it seems to me that the Department of Transport needs to be reminded of the present priorities of the Government. That document goes on like that, and there are other pages which I will not read.
I could give many more examples of inconsistencies but I have reached the end of my time, and so I shall simply say that we have now to support all our fine words in legislation with action—not for political reasons but for reasons of survival. The Church of England report, which I have read with much interest and great pleasure (and I am delighted that the Church is taking an active interest in this side of life because I believe it is its right to do so) seems to imply that we have a choice between protection of the natural world and meeting the needs of mankind. In reality, there is no choice. If we destroy the natural world, we destroy ourselves. It is time to stop making speeches and take action. To borrow the slogan of the World Wildlife Fund in its local British wildlife appeal, "Tomorrow may be too late."
8.45 p.m.
Lord Elton: My Lords, the House will be grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Ardwick, for a debate today of great interest to so many noble Lords and for the opportunity to hear an extremely well-informed and constructive maiden speech from the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Truro. If I may add another word of congratulation, I think that the noble Baroness, Lady Nicol, actually triumphed in a difficult situation in imposing a structure on a speech which was almost complete from start to finish and which will certainly be far more cohesive than anything I shall be able to produce from the cobbled-together bits that I have in response to points made in the speeches we have listened to.
I am glad of the opportunity of explaining the action which the Government are taking to deal with many of the threats to our environment to which noble Lords have referred. One of the most characteristic features of the 20th century has been the change it has brought in how we see the planet on which we live. That is not surprising, because, for the first time, we can actually see it as a planet from outside, thanks to satellite technology. What we then see is that it is what we have

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always been told it was—one single finite object on which all of us live, all of us move and all of us have our being. Natural resources are more clearly finite and therefore more clearly precious than they have ever been; and our environment is more clearly common to all of us than it has ever been.
As the noble Lord, Lord Ardwick, has pointed out, the explosion at Chernobyl has driven that lesson home. In that context, I should say that that is why discussions are now under way in the International Atomic Energy Authority to make more effective international arrangements for disclosing information on nuclear accidents. Noble Lords should also be aware of the existing bilateral treaty arrangements with France. An agreement is currently being negotiated with Ireland and representations have been received from the Federal Republic of Germany and from Denmark. So conservation and preservation of the natural environment is not simply a local activity; and to treat it even as simply a national activity still does not fully recognise either its scale or its importance. What we do to the environment in one country can, and quite often does, affect what happens to it not only there but in other parts of the world as well.
That is why this Government welcome the publication of a World Conservation Strategy by the United Nations Environment Programme, the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources and the World Wildlife Fund. The noble Baroness, Lady Nicol, referred to that and she also referred to the United Kingdom's response to this strategy, which was published last month. I am grateful to the right reverend Prelate and to the noble Baroness for their references to this, as it explains our approach to conservation in the United Kingdom fully. I will not now attempt to summarise it but the whole of it is relevant to this debate. Copies are available in the Printed Paper Office, and I commend it to your Lordships, who can have it free, as a very clear and full exposition and, as the noble Baroness said, elegantly presented.
I am also glad to see that the World Resources Institute and the International Institute for Environment and Development have together produced the first of what is intended to be a series of annual reports, aimed at providing a valuable contribution to the information base on the world's natural resources and what is happening to them now. I think that this is a constructive and useful step and, had it been published a week earlier, many of your Lordships would have drawn from it this evening.
Conservation and protection cannot be considered on their own, because they have an important interaction with other policies and other priorities. The economy of a nation is as much an organism of interacting parts as is its ecology, and in both good health comes, as the noble Lord, Lord Walston, sagely pointed out, from a proper balance.
So the first thing to be said about today's subject is that policies to improve or preserve the environment must be made and seen as part of the overall strategy for future development. The balance between production and conservation, for instance, means this. We cannot afford to create an environment in which
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we cannot subsequently afford to live; and that echoes the theme of the right reverend Prelate's speech. The guide to the World Conservation Strategy put it very well when it said that:
"The aim of the world conservation strategy is to help advance the achievement of sustainable development through the conservation of living resources".
The concerns which have been expressed today go wider than those about living resources. There is much of our physical and built environment that is also precious. But the underlying point remains valid; we need both conservation and sustainable development and we have to strike a healthy balance.
The British approach to environmental protection is to take sensible, balanced measures which recognise the interests of all the parties concerned and which will endure. We also recognise that in many situations prevention may be better than cure. But complete protection from environmental damage will not always be technically feasible or economically practicable.
I want to turn now to how this approach is being put into practice. Several noble Lords have spoken about their concern to see more done to control pollution. The noble Baroness said that we must be most careful about our waste products. It reminded me—I think I am right in saying this—that the way in which cheese mites preserve cheese is by producing a level of waste products which stops them from eating any more. We do not want to get into that position ourselves. Our policies are based on the concept of finding the best practical environmental option. This means that we compare the potential impact of alternative ways of dealing with pollution, and choose that which secures the best overall result when costs and benefits are taken into account.
The noble Lord, Lord Ardwick, directed our attention to sulphur dioxide. Emissions of this have fallen by 42 per cent. since 1970 and by more than 20 per cent. since 1980. Noble Lords have suggested that we ought to join the 30 per cent. club. The club's 30 per cent. target is entirely arbitrary, and the 1980 base year gives a country like the United Kingdom no credit whatsoever for the reduction in emissions before that year, during which time some members of the club were actually increasing their emissions and producing a higher threshold from which to reduce. We expect our actual performance to equal or better that of a number of those countries which have signed the club protocol. Had it been a "40 per cent. since 1970" club we should have been a founder member.
The Government hope to achieve a 30 per cent. reduction on the emission level of 1980 by the later years of this century, and I remind your Lordships again that that reduction will be from a level already reduced by 24 per cent. since 1970. We are not the uncaring villains, therefore, that people sometimes paint us. Nitrogen oxide emissions, which have changed little over the past decade, will also be reduced. The aim is a 30 per cent. reduction on a similar timetable. In reply to the noble Lord's direct question, the reduction in sulphur dioxide will result from continuing steps to control the emission from power stations, from a continuing increase in the efficiency of use of energy and from an increase at a responsible rate, as he suggested, in our nuclear power capacity.

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Pollution from motor vehicles has come under criticism from the noble Baroness, Lady Fisher, and others this evening. It has also come under increasingly tight control. During the 1980s, more cars travelled further on British roads than ever before. That includes, no doubt, the road linking London with Birmingham or, for the avoidance of doubt, Birmingham with London. Yet their total emission of lead to the atmosphere was falling even before the maximum permitted amount of lead in petrol was reduced from 0.4 to 0.15 grams per litre at the beginning of this year—a reduction of over 60 per cent. We are also taking steps to ensure that lead-free petrol will become increasingly available in this country in the late 1980s and hope that this form of pollution will be phased out altogether by the end of the century.
I should also say to the noble Lord, Lord Ardwick, and the noble Baroness that we should also see an improvement in other emissions from motor vehicles. Agreement reached last year by the EC environment ministers on the framework of a permissive directive for tighter standards for gaseous emissions from cars is still subject to outstanding reservations by Denmark and Greece. We hope that these can be lifted soon. So far as the United Kingdom is concerned, although we do not intend to impose any standards which effectively require expensive three-way catalysts, considerable improvements on current standards should be possible in the early 1990s, using cost-effective technology. An appropriate standard can be decided nearer the time, in the light of research now under way.
I am not competent to judge the comparative costs, which the noble Baroness suggested were advertised at the conference. I will read Hansard with care, but I think the noble Baroness will find that she was comparing one system, which is fuel efficient and improves fuel efficency, with another which is fuel expensive and therefore has a different environmental impact; and again we come to the question of balance.
I will draw my colleagues' attention to the regulations about the cleansing of roads, but I would just say without special information that, having driven over a great many unkerbed rural roads for many years, both before and after the issue of this guidance, one does not see the rubbish on the roads. One sees it in the hedgerows, and sweeping a country road, unless there is a special circumstance which is provided for in the regulations, would often be an interesting but not a useful method of employment of the person driving the sweeper. However, I am not expert in this and will write to the noble Baroness.
The noble Lord, Lord Ardwick, like the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Putney, was also concerned with the aircraft noise climate around Heathrow and suggested that it is worsening. I sympathise with anybody who believes subjectively that nights are getting noiser, but I assure him that that is not the case in that area, because I have to tell him that, objectively tested, there has been a considerable improvement. The area within what is described as the 35 noise and number index contour—the generally recognised indicator of the onset of annoyance; whether it coincides with the noble Lord's onset of annoyance, I do not know, but that is the recognised criterion—was 826 square
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kilometres in 1974. In 1984, the last year for which information is available, it was down to 433 square kilometres and the population within the area affected had reduced from 2 million to under 800,000. That is a considerable improvement, but it will not have improved the sleep of the noble Lord, Lord Ardwick, and he is now about to tell me so.
Lord Ardwick: My Lords, it was not the quality of the noise with which I was so much concerned, as the number of night flights which has increased and is apparently increasing. They have been counted.
Lord Elton: My Lords, I am obliged to the noble Lord for his clarification. The noise and number index embraces number as well as noise, but as to night noise I have no special information. I will leap over the legislation, which the noble Baroness invited me not to mention, and undertake simply to write to the noble Lord on that technical aspect.
From air, I turn by natural progression to the question of water, where I think the Government also have a good record of cleaning up our rivers. In 1958, the extent of our tidal and non-tidal rivers and canals classed as grossly polluted amounted to 7 per cent. of their total length. By 1980, it had dropped to 2 per cent. Ninety per cent. of all river and canal length in England and Wales, and 99 per cent. of all river length in Scotland, are now in good enough condition to supply drinking water and to support fish. Looking at some of them, your Lordships may be surprised. Thirty years ago the tidal Thames was virtually devoid of life, whereas now it supports more than 100 species of fish, some in abundance.
Action to improve rivers will continue and particular effort is being devoted to cleaning up the Mersey, which is of interest to a number of your Lordships and which is one of the most grossly contaminated major estuarine systems in the country. Britain will host an international conference on the North Sea in 1987.
After those references to water and air, it is natural to turn to the land, and its uses. Land use control is provided by the town and country planning system which has to balance two very different objectives—to provide for developement and to protect our natural and built environment. The development control system has reduced the natural rights of individual property owners to use their land to its full economic potential. It is right, therefore, that the procedures for operating the system are based upon judicial principles so that the rights of individuals can be properly safeguarded. But some of the procedures have become too cumbersome and time consuming, as the noble Lord, Lord Walston, said. The Government have taken steps to simplify and speed up planning where this can be done without undermining the principles on which it is based. The announcement I made on Monday about our proposals to simplify the Use Classes Order illustrate this philosophy. They will remove from planning control changes of use which have no significant environmental effects, but retain more effective and efficient control over the remainder. I believe noble Lords will find that these are sensible and practical proposals and that the fears of the noble Baroness, Lady Nicol, will prove unfounded. We are also taking steps to make

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considerable reductions in the time taken to process about 80 per cent. of all appeal cases.
I sympathise very much with the view of the noble Baroness, Lady Robson, that local people are the best custodians of their environment. They can see both sides of the balance more clearly than we can. That is why I am concerned to see that the strategic guidance we provide, for instance, to replace the structure plans of the Greater London Council and the metropolitan county councils, shall be general in nature and provide a matrix within which local authorities can prepare their unitary plans with reasonable freedom. I have to remind the noble Baroness, Lady White, however, that some decisions have far more than a local importance and are proper for the Secretary of State to call in, as I am sure she will agree, and that others have regional and even national importance and are the proper concern of Parliament.
I am profoundly relieved to hear, and I heartily endorse, the view of the noble Baroness that the Housing and Planning Bill is not a vehicle for the fundamental restructuring of the planning system. I shall draw the attention of my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Wales to the chickens she refers to on his heritage coast.
The noble Baroness, Lady Robson, also shares my interest in public inquiries. We do keep procedures under review; but of her proposal for a two-stage system I can only say that at present I fear that very heavy penalties in length of time would result from the difficulty of distinguishing between strategic and local matters and seeing that they were not inexhaustibly rehearsed on both occasions. I am not qualified to judge her proposal on value added tax, which I shall pass on. I shall comment only by saying that I foresee hideous difficulties in fitting it into the European formula, but that is not for me.
The noble Baroness, Lady Phillips, expressed a concern, shared I think by all, for the green belts, and about the Government's attitude to them in particular. I believe our record on this ought to speak for itself. There are now some 4½ million acres of green belt, and more than half of it has been approved since we came to office in 1979. Green belts not only check urban sprawl and provide open space around and between settlements for people like the noble Baroness to walk and simply breathe in; they also provide a means by which pressure for development in city areas can be focused back into the inner city where it is so badly needed. There was one quotation from a most regrettable leading article in the London Standard on Monday. I shall not waste time on rebutting a travesty of the Prime Minister's position that was published there.
But even in the green belts we must achieve a balance for the health of the system we want to preserve. We are committed to preserving the green belts but it would be dangerous and destructive to the local communities to stop all new initiatives in the green belts and to leave them to stagnate. I can tell my noble friend Lady Vickers that that is why we are encouraging the redevelopment of redundant farm buildings in the green belt. It is far better to have a well maintained building in active use supporting a rural community so that we have a live green belt than to let
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it fall into disuse, disrepair and ruin with others while the rural economy—and the green belt—decline with it. The change in agricultural methods and the decline in agricultural population mean that we have to do something if there is not to be this sort of stagnation.
I should like to return briefly to the point I made about the importance of making use of land for development in inner city areas. Many noble Lords will have seen an article in The Times last week by His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales. It mentioned the importance of releasing surplus land for regenerative projects. We agree that this is vital. That is why we set up the land register system, which records unused and underused publicly owned land throughout England. Without the register we should not even know the extent of the wasted resource. The register shows that some 110,000 acres of land in England are under-utilised of which around 5,700 acres—not 100,000 acres as stated—are in London.
But even so it shows that there is still considerable scope for development in London. Since the register was set up in mid-1981, 148,000 acres have been registered and 38,000 acres removed, of which 27,000 have been sold or otherwise brought into use by the owner. That is not a completely negligible amount of land to have removed from sterilisation. And the process of development within our major conurbations has been made simpler and quicker within the past few months by the removal of a whole tier of planning authorities in the metropolitan counties and Greater London. We have reduced by a third the number of hurdles a developer potentially has to jump in order to get into this land and develop it.
The noble Lord's approach to this whole subject was a touch pessimistic. I apologise if I go on a couple of minutes longer, but I have actually an awful lot of spare time—I shall not use it all. The noble Lord's approach was I think a little less than cheerful. I hope I said a few things that may cheer him up. He should certainly have been cheered up by the right reverend Prelate with his constructive and intensely loyal commitment to Cornwall. I was deeply interested in his description of where his roots were and the equally intense loyalty of my noble friend Lord Mersey. Where there is positive enthusiasm there is more than hope; there is the expectation of success.
I think your Lordships would prefer me not now to start banging the rather large and impressive drum I have for the things we have done in the urban environment. The figures are impressive but your Lordships have not teased me too much on this. I believe that I should leave it on the record—it is already in Hansard—rather than detain your Lordships before the next debate.
I am grateful to the noble Lord for a fascinating and very wide-ranging debate. I believe that the Government have the correct philosophy, and it is a philosophy of balance and care. For as long as I am attacked from one side for too much development and from the other for too little, then I shall think that we are not going too far wrong.
Lord Ardwick: My Lords, I must thank the noble Lord the Minister for his detailed answers to the questions that I and other noble Lords have raised.

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However, I must add that his reply on the subject of the green belt fills me with dismay, as I am sure it fills others with dismay, and he failed to repeat the undertaking that has been given previously by the Government that there would be no major developments within the green belt. But perhaps that can be read into the noble Lord's words, which I shall read tomorrow in Hansard.
I want to thank also everybody else who has taken part. I was very worried about this debate because I saw that it was starting too soon after the last race at Ascot and rather before the kick-off of the World Cup game. I hope that everyone here has felt well rewarded by this debate because I understand that we have missed another glorious triumph for England, who have beaten Paraguay by three goals to nil. In any event, perhaps noble Lords will be able to watch the highlights later.
There is one other point I want to make. My noble friend Lady Nicol spoke about the burning of Rome. Many years ago our beloved late Baroness, Lady Stocks, wrote a play on Nero, in which the final line was:
"This is not just slum clearance; this is town planning".
My Lords, I beg leave to withdraw my Motion.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

Children and Young Persons (Amendment) Bill
9.10 p.m.
Baroness Lane-Fox: My Lords, I beg to move that the House do now resolve itself into Committee on this Bill.
Moved, That the House do now resolve itself into Committee.—(Baroness Lane-Fox.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House in Committee accordingly.
[The LORD STRABOLGI in the Chair.]
Clause 1 agreed to.
Lord Meston Lord Meston moved Amendment No. 1:
After Clause 1, insert the following new clause:
("Amendment of Child Care Act 1980.
. After section 18 of the Child Care Act, 1980 there shall be inserted:
"Complaints 18A.—(1) It shall be the duty of a Local Authority to make arrangements for dealing with complaints made by or on behalf of a child or children in their care,
(2) The Local Authority shall secure—

(a) that children in the Authority's care and their parents are notified of the arrangements made under subsection (1) above; and

(b) that the said arrangements involve a person or persons independent of the Local Authority, and,

(c) that children and their parents have a right to obtain independent advice and representation when pursuing a complaint under the said arrangements.

(3) The Secretary of State may by regulation make provision for the conduct of arrangements made under this section." ").
The noble Lord said: The intention of the new clause proposed in this amendment is to require local authorities to set up a proper procedure to deal with complaints concerned with children in care. The
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amendment is suggested by the Children's Legal Centre, and the position is as follows.
At present, there are in most parts of the country no established procedures for dealing with complaints about a large number of matters affecting children in care, ranging from the relatively trivial to far more important issues that can arise. They are issues, even the relatively trivial, which can be of considerable importance to the child concerned and which can indeed become a source of friction, tension and unhappiness, both between the child and the adults involved in his or her welfare and between the adults themselves—the parents, relations, foster parents, social workers, and so on.
I will not give the Committee a list of the matters that can arise but perhaps just some examples. The most serious question that can arise in relation to a child in care is of course abuse of that child. Less extreme matters that quite often arise include complaints by foster parents about the removal of a child from their care and control; complaints from parents about the phasing of a child's return to home on trial; decisions about access that fall outside the court's normal jurisdiction; decisions to split siblings; decisions about education, and so on.
Although there are no generally established procedures, there are in some parts of the country varying ad hoc procedures set up by local authorities to deal with, for example, appeals against decisions made at the child's six-monthly review. Both the social services Select Committee inquiry and the interdepartmental working party report into child care law consider that there should be some form of appeal. I quote briefly from paragraph 9.11 of the interdepartmental working party report as follows:
"Every local authority should have a procedure for handling complaints and resolving disputes on the way it carries out its responsibilities for particular children. In the first place this will amount to reconsideration by social services management. If this does not resolve the complaint, a further channel for challenging decisions or actions should be provided".
The amendment suggests a clause which is quite loosely drawn. There are only three specific requirements; first, that the parents should be notified of the arrangements; secondly, that there should be an independent element so that the local authority would not be judge and jury in its own case; and, thirdly, that the children and the parents have a right to independent advice and representation. There is no mandatory requirement on the Secretary of State to make regulations; simply an enabling provision.
Finally, I stress that it is not intended that the procedure suggested under this amendment should overlap, or intrude into, the courts' jurisdictions. The vital necessity remains for the really important issues to be resolved by the courts. This procedure will provide a forum for other important issues to be resolved—issues which are outside the jurisdiction of the courts or on which it will be generally inappropriate to require the courts to have to decide.
I suggest that a procedure such as is proposed in the amendment will help to defuse problems, maintain standards and provide a further safeguard for children in care. I do not envisage that it will cause undue expense and I would not expect there to be any undue formality in the procedures to be created. I hope that

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the amendment strikes a chord with the Government. I beg to move.
Lord Ennals: I totally support the new clause and the words used by the noble Lord, Lord Meston. If on Second Reading the noble Baroness had been able to give some idea of when the Government's major legislation will come forward, I would have been reluctant to be associated with an amendment to strengthen the Bill. However, she has not given any idea and it may be two or three years before we have any child care legislation covering a wide range of issues. This particular issue is felt very strongly by parents and, indeed, by most who have looked into it.
The noble Lord referred to the Short report. I was a member of that Select Committee when it was taking evidence. I quote from it:
"The risk of abuse of power by social workers and other adults concerned with children in care is however sufficiently serious for there to be a need for some means by which a child can contact, without fear of reprisal, their local authority parent".
The Select Committee thought that the formal involvement of elected members might offer the best way forward and recommend only
"that the Department support efforts being made to reach an agreed model for complaints by clients about social services provision".
It is certainly my impression that the Government are in favour of the principle of this, although I must not anticipate what the noble Baroness will say. However, as she will realise, there is as yet no statutory duty to provide a complaints procedure about local authority treatment of children in care in general.
The Children's Legal Centre carried out a study of a number of local authorities. There were 63 local authorities which responded to a question on what sort of appeals procedure they had. Only 22 of those 63 said that they had any form of appeal, and of that number several had very casual and ad hoc arrangements or permitted appeal only by professionals. In fact, only a handful had anything approaching a formal complaints procedure.
The purpose of the amendment, as has been said, is to see that parents have an opportunity of making their complaints. I do not believe that most of the Committee would have wanted to go as far as the Bill originally did in giving more power to the courts, but I believe that if we do not give more power to the courts and we leave these powers with the local authority, it is only right and fair that we should create some sort of procedure. I do not think that either the noble Lord, Lord Meston, or myself has sought to define what should be the nature of the appeal procedure, but we believe that every local authority should have one.
Baroness Trumpington: Although I accept the spirit of the amendment and recognise the concerns which lie behind it, I cannot support it. This is a major amendment which would place on the local authorities a new duty on which they have not been consulted, and we are reluctant to proceed with this subject in advance of our own child care legislation. As my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Social Services announced on 1st May, the Government intend to publish a White Paper in the autumn setting out proposals for child care law, and
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this issue will be covered in these proposals. The Government believe that this Bill should meet only the most pressing needs in this area in advance of this planned major legislation.
I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Meston, that each local social service authority should have an established procedure for handling complaints about all its services. In general this is a matter for local government rather than for government prescription. The Lambeth model is a good example of a local government doing its own thing. Local government has recognised the need for general guidance, and the Representative Body for England (the local government body that oversees their ombudsman) and the Commission for local Administration (the local ombudsman) have jointly issued to authorities guidance on complaints procedures. What we shall need to consider is whether the position of children is such as to justify an exception from this general policy.
I ask the noble Lords, Lord Meston and Lord Ennals, whether they will withdraw their new clause in the light of what I have just said.
Lord Meston: I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, for his authoritative support for the amendment. I must admit that I am a little disappointed at the Government's response, although I appreciate the welcome of the noble Baroness for the spirit of the amendment. I venture to suggest that the new clause would not have imposed an onerous duty on a local authority and would simply have provided a general framework. But, as the noble Baroness reminded us, there is an excellent precedent in the Lambeth model, which shows what can be done, and such procedure can be successfully set up. We shall have to await the White Paper. She will understand that this is no more than a probing amendment. I have no wish to overburden or to jeopardise the Bill. I beg to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 2 [Appeals]:
On Question, Whether clause 2 shall stand part of the Bill?
Lord Ennals: I had not previously heard the date on which the White Paper will be published. I very much welcome the statement that the Secretary of State will be publishing it in the autumn. That will enable many organisations that have concerns about various aspects of child care to be consulted and, if they wish, they will in advance be able to put forward proposals to the Secretary of State, though I know that he has a whole pile already on his desk. I entirely agree that it would be unwise to press an amendment, short of those which are proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, but I want to welcome the statement made by the noble Baroness.
Clause 2 agreed to.
Clause 3 [Parties to care proceedings]:
Baroness Lane-Fox Baroness Lane-Fox moved Amendment No. 2:
Page 3, line 26, at end insert—("and 'grandparent" in relation to a child means a grandparent whether of the blood or by affinity and includes, where the child is illegitimate, any person who would be such a grandparent if the child were the legitimate child of his mother and father." ")
The noble Baroness said: I hope that this amendment will be more welcome to the Government. Under Section 107 of the Children and Young Persons Act 1933 the definition of a guardian is someone,
"who … has for the time being the charge of or control of the child".
It would be unusual for the putative father to be in that position.
Clause 3(2) permits in certain circumstances a grandparent to become a party. I realise that there is no statutory or long-established judicial definition of a grandparent. In whatever way the policy is decided, the Bill should make clear whether it is intended to include grandparents whose relationships derives through the putative father of the illegitimate child.
To avoid ambiguity, my amendment defines "grandparent". And it reflects the policy that the grandparents, even of an illegitimate child, should be included. I realise that it may seem odd to confer the possiblity of representation upon the grandparents when it is not being conferred upon the father through whom the relationship comes. I believe that apparent oddity is justifiable.
I said on Second Reading that I recognised that the question of illegitimacy was complex and one which has been the subject of a major report by the Law Commission. That report proposes major reforming legislation and a draft Bill is attached. Its overall conclusion was that the status of illegitimacy should not be abolished, but that all the legal disadvantages of illegitimacy should be removed so far as they discriminate against the illegitimate child. The Law Commission did not think that parental rights should vest in the father of illegitimate children without prior scrutiny of the child's interests by the courts.
The question of illegitimacy and the rights of the putative father are not only complex but contentious, bound up as they are with such questions as society's attitude to marriage. The Bill therefore should not trespass on to those separate and complex questions. The DHSS working party's review of child care law has made proposals on that point. I hope they will be reflected in the more major legislation which is still to come.
I see no reason why we cannot deal now with the grandparents of the illegitimate child. The Bill makes provision for grandparents, and so that nettle has to be grasped. I understand that many of these cases concern illegitimate children, and grandparents of such children are often just as caring and concerned about them as if they were legitimate. Where parental relationships are not stable, the grandparents on the paternal as well as the maternal side can have a great deal to offer the child, including sometimes even a permanent home.
The Bill gives no automatic right to grandparents to become parties. They can only be joined with leave, on grounds to be presribed by rules of court. The grounds will presumably relate to whether the grandparents are concerned and have had or could have an important role to play in the child's life. If there are such grounds, it seems to me that whether the child happens to be legitimate or illegitimate should not be relevant. I am
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sure that my noble friend the Minister will agree that no matter what is the situation behind it we are concerned with the reality of the child's life and its welfare. Accordingly, I hope that my amendment can be accepted, and I now beg to move.
9.30 p.m.
Baroness Trumpington: I appreciate the concerns which led my noble friend Lady Lane-Fox to table these amendments. Like my noble friend, I am speaking to Amendments Nos. 2 and 3. One lives and learns. At first, my instinct was to go down the same path as my noble friend Lady Lane- Fox. I am sorry that I cannot do so. My main reason is that at present the natural father of an illegitimate child has no right to participate in care proceedings as a parent unless he qualifies as a guardian. That includes cases where he has the charge or control of his child.
The legislation and case law relating to child care and to adoption and fostering recognise only the mother of an illegitimate child as a parent; the natural father is regarded as a relative. The amendments before us, then, would allow greater rights to the parents of the natural father of an illegitimate child than to the natural father himself. These amendments, in allowing such a situation to arise, would be anomalous and would add extra complexity to the law.
My noble friend Lady Lane-Fox mentioned the future question of the whole issue of illegitimacy that is currently under review. My noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor has already announced his intention to legislate at the earliest opportunity on the Law Commission report on illegitimacy. It would be premature at this stage to take action which would have implications for a wide-ranging review in this area. Moreover, as my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Social Services has already announced, the Government intend to publish a White Paper later this year setting out proposals for child care law reform and I hope there will be an opportunity before too long for noble Lords to consider a major comprehensive Bill on child care.
In the Review of Child Care Law, the proposal was made in chapter 14.5 that "parent" should include a putative father who wishes to take over custody of the child and in chapter 14.8 that any other person such as a grandparent should be able to take such part in proceedings as the court directs, including being granted party status. How these recommendations will be handled in the White Paper, I cannot of course now tell the Committee.
I think therefore that it is right that we should avoid introducing complex change to this already very complicated area of law at this time. The Government believe that the Bill, as it received a Second Reading on 4th June, is a worthwhile measure which meets the most urgent needs in this area. More major changes are best left to the comprehensive legislation which the Government wish to introduce as soon as is practicable.
I should like to take the opportunity to say a little more about the rules of court, as I indicated at Second Reading. The detail will need to be worked out but I can say that our intention would be for a grandparent who wished to be joined as a party to make an application

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to the court in writing stating why it would be in the child's best interests for him or her to be made a party. The criteria would be, first, that the grandparent had had the actual custody of the child or young person for such and such a time; secondly, that the court considered that the grandparent had exercised some or all of the parental rights on behalf of a parent or parental duties as related to the person of the child or young person and had maintained a continuing interest in that child or young person; and, thirdly, that joining the grandparent as a party was in the child's best interests.
I hope that this information will be helpful and that my noble friend Lady Lane-Fox will withdraw her amendment on the principle of reculer pour mieux sauter—another day.
Lord Ennals: Before the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, replies, I must admit that I had supposed that the noble Baroness, Lady Trumpington, was going to say yes to her noble friend. I suspected that the amendments might not have been tabled unless the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, expected to get a more positive response. I wish therefore to say that I support the amendments very fully. I know that they will not go through.
One of the great advantages of what is acknowledged as a modest piece of legislation is the recognition of the role of the grandparent. It seems to me that to recognise the role of the grandparent but to deny that same role to the grandparent of an illegitimate child is unfortunate. There are strong feelings and indeed a campaign to deal with many troublesome aspects of illegitimacy. This would have been a very nice, little, inoffensive, but very helpful measure if the noble Baroness could have brought herself to accept the proposal of her noble friend.
Baroness Trumpington: Before the noble Lord sits down may I ask him a question? Would he wish for the grandparents of an illegitimate child to take precedence over the father? That is what would happen as things stand.
Baroness Lane-Fox: Yes.
Lord Ennals: A direct question was put to me. I believe that an illegitimate child is at a very considerable disadvantage, in most cases, by not having a father able to act in any of the normal ways in which a father can act. That is not always so, but it is very often so. Therefore I would not object to seeing a grandparent playing a father substitute role, which is one of the reasons why I warmly supported the amendment.
Lord Meston: Surely the answer to the question of the noble Baroness, Lady Trumpington, is, yes, in circumstances in which the father is a ship passing in the night and the grandparents are potential mainstays for the child in question.
Baroness Trumpington: I do not wish to proceed with this argument. But, quite honestly, if the noble Lords will read with care what I said, they will see that the answer is no.
Baroness Lane-Fox: I must say I am disappointed, though I understand a good deal that the Minister has said to us tonight. She has suggested that we can look forward with a great deal of hope to what is coming. I am prepared, sadly, to withdraw this amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendment No. 3 not moved.]
Clause 3 agreed to.
Remaining clauses agreed to.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Strabolgi): The Question is that I report the Bill to the House without amendment.
Lord Skelmersdale: I hate to interrupt the Lord Chairman, but there are still something like 100 amendments to be discussed.
Baroness Trumpington: My noble friend is on the wrong Bill.
Lord Skelmersdale: I apologise.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees: I think that the noble Lord, as the Minister has said, is on the wrong Bill and it is best if he keeps quiet, if I may say so.
The Question is that I report the Bill to the House without amendment.
House resumed: Bill reported without amendment.

Disabled Persons (Services, Consultation and Representation) Bill
9.34 p.m.
Baroness Masham of Ilton: My Lords, I beg to move that the House do now resolve itself into Committee on this Bill.
Moved, That the House do now resolve itself into Committee.—(Baroness Masham of Ilton.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House in Committee accordingly.
[The LORD STRABOLGI in the Chair.]
Baroness Trumpington Baroness Trumpington moved Amendment No. 1:
Before Clause 1, insert the following new clause:
("Appointment of authorised representatives of disabled persons.
.—(1) In this Act "authorised representative", in relation to a disabled person, means a person for the time being appointed by or on behalf of that disabled person (in accordance with regulations made under this section) to act as his authorised representative for the purposes of this Act.
(2) The Secretary of State may by regulations provide—

(a) for the manner in which the appointment of a person as an authorised representative is to be made; and

(b) for any such appointment to be notified to the relevant local authority (as defined in the regulations) if made otherwise than by that authority.

(3) Any such regulations—

(a) may provide for the parent or guardian of a disabled person under the age of 16 to appoint himself or some other person as the authorised representative of the disabled person (but shall not permit a person under that age himself to appoint a person as his authorised representative); and

(b) may, in accordance with subsection (4), provide for the appointment of a person as the authorised representative of

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a disabled person to be made by, or under arrangements made by, a local authority in a case where the disabled person appears to the authority to be unable to appoint a person as his authorised representative by reason of any mental or physical incapacity;

(c) may contain such incidental or supplementary provisions as the secretary of State thinks fit.

(4) Regulations under paragraph (b) of subsection (3) may make provision—

(a) for requiring a local authority, for the purpose of enabling them to determine whether a disabled person is unable to appoint a person as his authorised representative as mentioned in that paragraph, to obtain the opinion of a registered medical practitioner;

(b) for authorising a local authority, where they determine that a disabled person is so unable, either—

(i) themselves to appoint a person as the disabled person's authorised representative, or

(ii) to make with any voluntary organisation, person or persons approved by them for the purpose such arrangements as they think fit for such an appointment to be made by the organisation, person or persons concerned;

(c) for requiring or authorising a local authority, before determining the question specified in paragraph (a), or (as the case may be) before making any appointment of an authorised representative, or any arrangements, in pursuance of paragraph (b), to consult any of the following, namely—

(i) a person or persons appointed by them for the purpose, or

(ii) a person or persons falling within any class or description specified in the regulations;

(d) for requiring a local authority, in such circumstances as may be specified in the regulations, to review the case of a disabled person whose authorised representative has been appointed in pursuance of paragraph (b) (whether by the local authority or under any arrangements made by them for the purpose of determining whether he is still unable to appoint a person as his authorised representative as mentioned in subsection (3)(b).

(5) Subsections (2) to (4) shall apply, with any necessary modifications. in relation to the termination of the appointment of a person as an authorised representative as they apply in relation to the making of such an appointment.
(6) It is hereby declared that any person exercising under Part II of the 1983 Act or Part V of the 1984 Act—

(a) the functions of the nearest relative of a disabled person, or

(b) the functions of the guardian of a disabled person received into guardianship under that Part of that Act.

may, if appointed as such in accordance with this section, also act as that person's authorised representative.").
The noble Baroness said: This new clause, like other amendments tabled jointly by myself and the noble Baroness, Lady Masham, has been the subject of detailed discussion between my department and the Bill's sponsors. I am grateful for the constructive part which the Bill's sponsors have played in these discussions, and I think that if the Committee accepts the amendments we have jointly proposed we shall finish up with a first-class Bill.
This new clause contains all the provisions previously contained in Clause 1 concerning the appointment of authorised representatives for disabled people. Clause I has been split into two—otherwise, with all the new material it would be inconveniently long. Subsections (1) to (3), (5) and (6) are substantially the same as the provisions in the existing Clause 1.
Subsection (4) sets out in more detail (as promised at Second Reading) how the regulations prescribing the arrangements for the appointment of representatives will operate in the situation where a disabled person cannot appoint a representative because of mental or physical incapacity.
I draw the attention of the Committee to the following particular features of subsection (4). First, the Secretary of State is to be enabled to require local authorities to get a medical opinion before deciding that a disabled person is unable to appoint a representative because of mental or physical incapacity—subsection (4)(a). But he is also to be enabled to require them to consult other people as well; for example, relatives or carers—subsection (4)(c). Exactly how these powers will be used will be the subject of further consultation.
If a local authority determines that a disabled person is unable to appoint a representative, there will be a power to authorise them in regulations either to appoint representatives themselves—subsection (4)(b)(i)—or to set up schemes under which voluntary bodies can do so—subsection (4)(b)(ii). If local authorities appoint representatives themselves, it will be possible under the regulations to enable or require them to consult people appointed by themselves for the purpose or, for example, some sort of local panel, before doing so.
I accept that in an ideal world one would not want the local authorities—the providers of social services—also to be in the business of appointing representatives to argue disabled persons' cases for the provision of such services. But, given the practicalities, I hope that the Committee will accept that local authorities will have to be involved in the appointment process where disabled people are not able themselves to appoint, and that the safeguards provided should be sufficient to produce a satisfactory system.
Subsection (4)(d) will enable the Secretary of State to require local authorities to review their decision that a disabled person is unable to appoint a representative if they have reason to believe that his circumstances have changed. I think that the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, has some amendments later on which are relevant to this clause. However, I preferred to move the clause on its own in order to allow him to move his amendments before I spoke to them. That seemed to be a courtesy.
I commend the new clause to the Committee. I think that it provides a workable framework for the appointment of authorised representatives of disabled people. I beg to move.
Lord Ennals: First, I must thank the noble Baroness for her courtesy because I shall want to move certain amendments later on. However, I wish to welcome most warmly the initiative in the tabling of this amendment both by the noble Baroness, Lady Trumpington, and the noble Baroness, Lady Masham of Ilton. I should like to pay tribute to those officials not only within the department but also of the voluntary organisations who have taken a very active interest in the matter. As I am in a sense speaking as the chairman of MIND, which has a very close interest in this matter and whose clients stand to gain greatly from what has been done in Clause I, I should like to mention William Bingley, John Healey and Peter Mitchell of MIND and RADAR who have played very important roles and spent many hours producing this great improvement to the Bill.

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I want to press strongly that the sooner representatives are recognised in the terms of this Bill in relation not only to social services provided by local authorities but also health authority services, to which I shall come later, the better it will be. Therefore, I am pressing for speedy action. Not only is this a good new clause, but I want the action to be taken on it as quickly as possible.
If and when representation is extended to health authority services, it is crucial that the arrangements for the appointment, and the termination of that appointment, notified to the relevant authorities are as
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simple as possible. When a representative has to be appointed for a disabled person I hope it will be possible, for instance, for such an appointment, say by a local authority, to be recognised by any relevant health authority without the latter feeling obliged to go through the appointment process themselves, so that once we have been able to establish who is the representative this will be able to apply both for local authorities and also for health authorities. This is an important key concept of representation for disabled people, whether they have mental or physical incapacities, and I warmly welcome the initiative to bring about this compromise.
9.45 p.m.
Baroness Trumpington: In my over-zealousness to be polite to the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, I totally forgot to say that I was moving No. 1 with Amendment No. 15 which is a purely technical amendment to go with Amendment No. 1.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Strabolgi): I must remind the noble Baroness that, while she can speak to No. 15, she must not move it at this stage. She will have to move it when we come to it. I hope she does not mind my pointing that out to her.
Baroness Masham of Ilton: May I speak to Amendments Nos. 1 and 15? I warmly welcome the new "Before Clause 1" and the consequential amendment tabled in the names of the Minister, the noble Baroness, and myself. I should like to pay tribute to the Minister and her department for their co-operation on this complex and innovative clause. For the first time in United Kingdom legislation, a legal framework is provided for disabled people to appoint representatives if they choose to do so.
Representation, or advocacy as it is sometimes called, does not mean that disabled people will be suddenly represented by litigation-hungry lawyers. Representatives will not be paid, and in most cases they will be friends or relatives appointed by the disabled persons to assist them put their points of view to social services departments. The fact that this Bill recognises the importance of the development of representation for disabled people is a legislative landmark, and I have no doubt that it will be welcomed by disabled people, their families and friends, and professionals as well.
Like all primary legislation, especially when it is concerned with an issue as complex as this, much is to be left to regulation. While welcoming the new clause, I should like to take this opportunity of raising with the Minister one important issue. I know that behind the scenes much attention has been paid to the difficulties of representation for that small group of disabled people who arguably are most in need of a representative: those who are unable to appoint a representative for themselves.
Lord Mottistone: I cannot welcome this as much as perhaps I should because there has been so little time to consider it. It has not been possible for me to consult with the people with whom I normally consult on these matters, and I have to speak more or less straight off the cuff. I cannot be sure that I shall not have to try to put down some amendments at Report stage. However, I shall do my best, being really rather distressed that we have not had time to consider these matters. It is all very well for some people to get together with the Minister to produce what is virtually a rewriting of the Bill, but I think it would have been helpful if we could have had greater knowledge of what was happening.
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As my noble friend said, she was speaking also to Amendment No. 15. I should like to speak also to Amendments Nos. 16 and 18, both of which will not be called if Amendment No. 15 is accepted by the Committee. With regard to Amendment No. 16, I should be most grateful if my noble friend the Minister could reassure me whether the sense of what I am saying in Amendment No. 16 is covered. If it is not, I hope that if she cannot tell me now she will be able to write to me on that point so that I may put down an amendment at the next stage to have that made public.
Amendment No. 18 would naturally—if it had been possible for me to do it—come into this part of the Bill. When my noble friend was referring to the new subsection (4)(c), I think she said that this would include carers, nearest relatives and those kinds of people. I should be grateful if she would confirm for me that subsection (4)(c)(ii) covers what she has in mind as the classes and descriptions of people to be included in the regulations.
I welcome subsection (6), but it is not quite what I should have hoped to see because there is no suggestion here of consultation. It is just a bland statement that if the nearest relatives are appointed in accordance with this subsection they can then act as a person's authorised representative. But there is no suggestion that they should be brought into the discussion. It is possible that subsection (4)(c)(ii) will meet the Bill. I should be grateful for reassurance on that.
On another point altogether, the Committee may remember that at Second Reading I expressed concern that when these new regulations have been made they could put an extra burden on the existing hard-pressed local authorities. My noble friend reassured me, at col. 1250 of Hansard on 14th May, that it was not the intention to implement all these clauses immediately, but only those for which resources were known now to be available. She did not mention Clauses 1 and 2. I should be grateful for reassurance that that would cover also this new clause we are discussing and the new clause in Amendment No. 52.
I have a feeling that these new duties will add a burden on the local authorities which they may not be wholly ready for at the moment. I noticed that the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, said "Let's get this going as quickly as possible". Of course one sees why and it would be a good thing if we did, but there is no good in getting it going if the resources are not there to implement it. We must be quite certain that that is well accepted by the Government.
I am sorry to cast a blight on what was starting to be a happy affair. I am sorry to take up the Committee's time. I am sorry that that will be necessary as we go on, but we have virtually a new Bill thrust at us and I am very sorry about that.
Baroness Trumpington: I am also very sorry that my noble friend feels the way he does. This clause was actually printed on Monday, and so I think there has been sufficient time.
Lord Mottistone: Two days.
Baroness Trumpington: Exactly. The noble Lord asked about the effect of Amendment No. 15. It is to remove from the Bill subsections 1(5) to 1(8) which have now been introduced in amended form before Clause 1 of the Bill, but it simply—
Lord Mottistone: I did not ask for Amendment No. 15 to be described. I asked for Amendments Nos. 16 and 18 to be considered.
Baroness Trumpington: I think that my noble friend did mention Amendment No. 15. He mentioned it in the context of my taking it with Amendment No. 1. I was going to get to Amendment No. 16 in due course, but before I do so I shall repeat that Amendment No. 15 is a technical amendment to remove subsections 1(5) to 1(8) from the Bill because these provisions have been included in amended form in a separate clause.
With regard to Amendment No. 16, which the noble Lord says he will not move, the provision is unnecessary because I can give him an unqualified assurance that nothing in Clause 1 or anywhere else in the Bill would diminish the effects of those sections of the Mental Health Act listed in the amendment. So when we come to Amendment No. 16 it is up to my noble friend to make up his mind what he wants to do then.
My noble friend asked whether subsection (4)(c)(ii) included consultation with carers and relatives. This will be a matter for consideration in the regulations, on which there will be full consultation. My noble friend also asked about the implementation of the clause. This again will be the subject of full consultation, and resources are something which we will certainly bear in mind. I should be grateful if my noble friend would permit this rather battered Baroness to write to him on Amendment No. 18.
Baroness Masham of Ilton: I think it would be useful for the Committee if we were to stick with the groupings that we have been given, otherwise, I can see we might get into some muddles. I ask the noble Baroness, Lady Trumpington, whether she would agree with this since the noble Lord, Lord Mottistone, has not kept to the groupings.
Lord Mottistone: Perhaps I may explain. I am sure the Lord Chairman would agree with me that when he calls Amendment No. 15, which, assuming the Committee accepts this one, will go through on the nod, he will have to say that if he calls No. 15 he will not be able to call Nos. 16, 17 or 18; so therefore it could not be spoken to.
Lord Swinfen: There is one small point which I think is quite important for disabled people. Can the noble Baroness the Minister assure the Committee that disabled persons will not be forced to have a relative as the official representative when they are themselves trying to be as independent as possible? We all know how, with ordinary able-bodied young people, very many parents try to hang on to their children and will not let them get away from the nest.
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It is far more difficult for a physically disabled person or indeed, a mentally diasabled person, to flee the nest. Yet they have the same need. Can my noble friend on the Front Bench give us this assurance?
Baroness Trumpington: I would gladly give that assurance if I could, but I cannot as things stand. I remind my noble friend that the local authorities will be in the business of appointing representatives. If the noble Lord requires any further information, I shall have to write to him.
Baroness Masham of Ilton: When the regulations are drafted, it would be well to distinguish clearly between powers of representatives and those of someone with power of attorney.
Baroness Trumpington: I must protest about the noble Baroness who has put her name to this amendment and therefore must not ask me as the co-sponsor of the amendment for explanations. It is too much.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Clause 1 [Authorised representatives of disabled persons]:
10 p.m.
Lord Ennals Lord Ennals moved Amendment No. 2:
Page 1, line 6, after ("authority") insert ("and health authority")
The noble Lord said: It might be for the convenience of the Committee if I were to take Amendments Nos. 2, 3 and 5 together. They all say the same. They all deal with the same issue concerning representation for disabled people so far as local authorities are concerned. Frankly, I do not see any logic at all in not including health authorities. I have therefore in Amendment No. 2 sought to ensure that,
"A local authority and a health authority shall permit the authorised representative of a disabled person".
I have sought to do the same in Amendments Nos. 3 and 5.
I am especially concerned with this as it affects all people, of whatever age; and there is, as I say, simply no logic in the present situation. We are talking about young people who move back and forth. We are talking about people who may spend a hunk of their lives, if they have long lives, in a psychiatric hospital and then move into a local authority area. We are speaking of people who may be in the community for a while and are then admitted to hospital. There is a certain continuum about the way in which a local authority and a health authority treat a disabled person. It seems to me to be very strange that we have not been able to get an agreement which includes the health authority.
The second aspect I am particularly concerned about is young people. Children and young people in particular seldom have anyone to speak up on their behalf. The Mental Health Act Commission, in their recent report, said about the plight of children and young people:
"Such patients however have none of the protections afforded by the Mental Health Act. Particular dangers for them are that they tend to get lost in the system: having been 'volunteered' by parents

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or guardians for treatment at an early age, they remain as 'voluntary' patients for the rest of their lives; and in some places their care and treatment tends to receive a low priority".
The Health Advisory Service—and I am not going to quote this in full—have also expressed their concern about the absence—I do not say there is any neglect—of any advocacy for young people who are in hospital:
"In recent years HAS teams have repeatedly found serious shortcomings in the way services are provided to adolescents and particularly those manifesting abnormal behaviour".
I could go on at considerable length, but I shall not, arguing the absolute logic of the case.
There are so many ways in which through joint planning and joint financing we try to bring together the health and social services, and this is no more so than in the field of disabled people whether they be physically disabled, mentally handicapped or have suffered a mental illness. If the noble Baroness says, "We couldn't get agreement on this because of resources", I would point out that she has already said that about local authorities. She has said that her right honourable friend the Secretary of State can bring this into operation only when resources are available. That argument was used by the noble Lord, Lord Mottistone, when I said, "Please let us get on with the job".
If the argument is simply one of resources, it is one which would apply to health authorities and social services. But if we are going to pass a Bill which is creating some new rights for disabled people, and we have all enormously welcomed it, we want to see that the Bill is right, even if it takes a year, two years or whatever it is for the resources to be found. We are not going to see another Bill like this for another few years: we have not had a Bill like this since the 1970 Alf Morris Bill in which as a Minister I had some involvement. This Bill will not be right until, in this respect of representation, health authorities as well as local authorities are included.
Baroness Masham of Ilton: I am grateful to the noble Lord for tabling these amendments, as it gives us a further chance to seek clarification of the Government's intention in regard to subsection (9). Several people and organisations, especially in response to the Government's consultation document on the Bill earlier this year, expressed concern that the Bill only recognises the representative in relation to social services provided by a local authority. The Bill allows for the Secretary of State to extend this recommendation to health authority services and to other local authority services after a consultation exercise has been carried out. I am sure your Lordships would agree that one of the main purposes of representation is to prevent disabled people falling through the net of services which are increasingly provided by different authorities. It makes little sense to limit the scope of a representative to social services only.
I should like to ask the Minister therefore to give, first, an undertaking that the Government will use their powers under subsection (9) to consult on extending the scope of the representative; and, secondly, to give an indication of when she hopes to initiate that consultation.
Baroness Trumpington: The noble Lord, Lord Ennals, expressed the hope in his speech on Second Reading that the Secretary of State would use his powers in the Bill to extend the provision of Clause 1 to the health service and to other local authority services and also that he would not drag his feet about this.
The noble Lord is now seeking to ensure that my right honourable friend has no choice in this matter. I accept that in the responses to the Government's consultation paper on the Bill issued in February, a lot of support emerged for extending the provisions of Clause 1 to services provided by health authorities. The Government brought forward an amendment to the Bill at the Report stage in another place to respond to that view. The reason why the amendment was framed in the particular way it was is that in the time available it was not possible to carry out detailed consultations with health authorities, professional organisations and others about the practical implications of extending the representation provisions to health services or other local authority services.
I should say that there are a number of potentially difficult areas here. Some of these were highlighted in the Government's consultation paper and both the noble Baroness, Lady Masham, and I had copies before Second Reading of a letter from the Royal College of Psychiatrists, re-emphasising some of the problems. In particular, there might be difficulties in drawing distinctions in the health service context between disabled people who had the right to appoint representatives and other patients who did not. We may need to think further about the implications of the principle of representation for the clinical relationship between a doctor and his patient.
As the noble Baroness, Lady Masham, asked me about this, further consultation will be undertaken on this matter if the Bill becomes law, with a view to possible activation of Clause 1(9). I do not think it would be right to extend the principle of representation to services provided by health authorities until that consultation has been carried out. Further to what I have said—I hate to tell the noble Lord, though he can imagine what I am going to say—the amendment is technically defective. For these reasons, I hope that he will agree not to press his amendment.
Lord Ennals: Almost any amendment that I draft is technically defective. It is an argument which, during long years as a Minister, I always used as a means of arguing against something that I did not like. It is always within the ability of the Government at the next stage then to bring in an amendment which is technically not defective. But the Minister did not say that she would do so.
I am not really impressed by the argument that she quoted of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, that there were some problems of definition. After all, this is a Bill which is providing services and representation for people with mental or physical handicap or mental illness. So far as concerns mental handicap and mental illness, there are a number of pieces of legislation, particularly the Mental Health Act, as amended, which have sought to draw a definition.

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This is a definition which enables the Mental Health Act Commission to operate effectively, and I am not suggesting—and I am certain that the Royal College of Psychiatrists are not suggesting—that this should be a right that is offered to every patient in every hospital. This Bill is just about disabled people and I do not believe that there should be a difficulty about definition.
The noble Baroness is right. I recognise that I am seeking now to oblige the Secretary of State to do what I said I hoped he would do and what he has powers to do. I shall not press these amendments to a Division, but I wanted to air this issue because I want to urge most strongly upon the Secretary of State that he should enter into negotiations, discussions, consultations, so that we have these two things brought together. Otherwise, we shall have a Bill which is dealing with only half the problem. But with the assurance that I think the noble Baroness gave me—I do not think my hearing is as defective as that—that it was the intention of the Secretary of State to consult in order to fulfil a right that he has within the Bill, I shall not press my amendment further. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendment No. 3 not moved.]
The Deputy Chairman of Committees: Before I call Amendment No. 4, I have to inform the Committee that in the penultimate line of this amendment the word "the" should be added at the end.
Baroness Trumpington Baroness Trumpington moved Amendment No. 4
Page 2, line 10, at end insert—
(" (2A) In relation to a disabled person whose authorised representative has been appointed by virtue of subsection (3) of section (Appointment of authorised representatives of disabled persons), subsections (I) and (2) above shall each have effect as follows—

(a) if the appointment was made by virtue of subsection (3)(a) of that section, the words "the parent or guardian of shall be inserted after the words "if so requested by"; and

(b) if the appointment was made by virtue of subsection (3)(b) of that section, the words "if so requested by the disabled person" shall be omitted.")

The noble Baroness said: This makes a drafting change, which is somewhat ironic after the drafting change from the Chairman, consequent upon the splitting of the existing Clause 1 into two separate clauses. It also makes clear that, in the case of a disabled child under 16, the representative can only act if requested to do so by the child's parent or guardian. The Bill already provides that only the parent or guardian can appoint a representative in the case of a disabled child. I beg to move.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
[Amendment No. 5 not moved.]
10.15 p.m.
Lord Banks Lord Banks moved Amendment No. 6
Page 2, line 19, after ("likely") insert ("on medical grounds").
The noble Lord said: Clause 1(3) permits a local authority to prevent the presence of an authorised representative at any meeting, or part of a meeting, or
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to decline to supply to an authorised representative any information or documents if they are satisfied that to do so would be likely to be harmful to the interests of the disabled person. This is a fairly sweeping power. I understand it is intended that it should be used in rare circumstances only. That is the intention, but will it always be the practice? The amendment is intended to restrict the use of that power to occasions when on medical grounds the local authority felt that it would not be in the disabled person's best interests. The aim is to prevent this power being used for purposes of purely administrative convenience. I am not sure that it has been made entirely clear in what circumstances it is intended that this power should be used. I beg to move.
Baroness Trumpington: I am not convinced that this amendment is necessary or desirable. I am sure there would be scope for a lot of argument as to what constituted medical grounds and there could be circumstances where it would be desirable to withhold information on purely social grounds—for example, when a wife or a husband is acting as representative of a disabled person and sexual matters are at issue. It might well be harmful to the interest of the disabled person to discuss such matters with the spouse, at any rate without first getting specific clearance from the disabled person himself or herself. But this would hardly constitute medical grounds.
The requirement that disclosure should be,
"harmful to the interests of the disabled person"
is a pretty tough one and I am not convinced that further amendment is necessary. I therefore hope that the noble Lord, Lord Banks, will withdraw his amendment.
Lord Banks: I take it that the sponsors of the Bill agree with the Minister as they have not spoken in a contrary sense. It seems to me that there could be as much argument about what was the interest of the disabled person as about what are medical grounds. It is left extremely vague and wide. Nevertheless, in view of what has been said, and in view of the time, I shall not pursue this. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Lord Mottistone Lord Mottistone moved Amendment No. 7:
Page 2, line 23, at end insert ("and by his nearest relative.")
The noble Lord said: This is a small probing amendment. "Nearest relative" is a technical term and is included in my Amendment No. 101, which relates to mental patients. This part of the clause to which I have added it applies to all sorts of disabled people. But I should like reassurance from my noble friend that when the decision is taken in subsection (3) that in determining the matter the authority,
"shall have regard to any wishes expressed by the disabled person",
in the case of mentally ill people they should also consider the wishes expressed by the nearest relative. It would seem sensible. But I appreciate that the amendment itself is probably defective. I beg to move.
Baroness Trumpington: As my noble friend Lord Mottistone said, this is the first of a series of

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amendments which he is proposing. My noble friend has links with and does a great deal of work for the National Schizophrenia Fellowship, and is rightly concerned to preserve the rights of relatives. I acknowledge the role of relatives in caring for disabled people, and I can understand my noble friend's concern that the representation provisions in the Bill should not undermine relatives or cause them to be bypassed.
I make the general point that there is of course nothing in the Bill to prevent a disabled person appointing a relative as his authorised representative. That is a matter for the disabled person himself where he is capable of appointing a representative. It may also in practice often be a relative who is appointed representative by the local or health authority in the case of disabled people who are not capable of appointing a representative themselves. We shall be considering and consulting on what provision should be made for consulting relatives when we come to draft regulations under this clause.
We have some difficulties with regard to this amendment. It would require the authority, in determining whether the admission of the authorised representative to a meeting or the supply of information to him would be harmful to the interests of the disabled person, to have regard to the views of the nearest relative as well as those of the disabled person in all cases, whether or not the disabled person fell within the incapable of appointing his own representative category or was currently, or had been, detained under Mental Health Act provisions. It would seem inappropriate to require the involvement of the nearest relative in the case of mentally able disabled persons. I think that I will leave it there.
Lord Mottistone: Good enough.
Baroness Masham of Ilton: This is the first amendment tabled by the noble Lord that seeks to give powers to the nearest relative as defined in the Mental Health Act. I shall reserve most of what I have to say for Amendment No. 19, but, as a disabled person myself, I find this amendment particularly objectionable, inasmuch as it would give, for instance, my noble kinsman as much say as myself in matters that may affect only me. How much worse if my nearest relative happened to be someone who I really disliked or who disliked me. It shows how very complicated the Bill is, because it stretches over so many different people who are disabled by different disabilities.
Lord Ennals: I simply echo that point, though not in relation to the noble Baroness's noble kinsman, because I do not want to touch upon the relationship between them. However, I feel that the assumption that the nearest relative is always the right person to represent the interests of the disabled person is fundamentally wrong. The choice must be that of the disabled person concerned.
There is no doubt that there are some situations—sad though they may be and understandable though they may be—where the nearest relative has played a significant part in ensuring that the disabled person was sectioned and placed in a mental hospital. Under
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those circumstances, it might very well be that the nearest relative would be the least suitable person to act as a representative. As the noble Baroness, Lady Masham, has said, whenever that argument is used I shall not necessarily get up and argue against it, but I shall in my heart be totally opposed to it.
Lord Swinfen: That which has been said by the noble Baroness, Lady Masham, and the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, adds emphasis to the point that I raised earlier. I shall be most grateful if my noble friend the Minister will give the matter her very serious consideration when preparing the letter that she said she would write to me and when the regulations are being prepared in due course. It is a very important point so far as disabled people are concerned.
Baroness Trumpington: I take note of what my noble friend has said.
Lord Mottistone: I said that this is a probing amendment, so I do not propose to argue the point with the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, at this stage. I said also that I was aware that the amendment was defective and did not apply to all types of disabled people. It certainly does not apply to the noble Baroness, Lady Masham, because "nearest relative" is only a technical term which, if one refers to Amendment No. 101, comes from the Mental Health Act.
The amendment has had a good airing. I shall return to the charge because, whereas the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, may consider that I go too far in one direction, I believe that he goes too far in another. I should like to debate the point but we do not want to waste too much time on it. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees: Before I call Amendment No. 8, I must inform the Committee that the amendment is in the names of the noble Baronesses, Lady Trumpington and Lady Masham of Ilton, and not in that of the noble Lord, Lord Mottistone, as printed on the Marshalled List.
Baroness Trumpington Baroness Trumpington moved Amendment No. 8:
Page 2, line 24, at end insert—
("(aa) in hospital accommodation provided by the Secretary of State under section 3(1)(a) of the 1977 Act or, in Scotland, in hospital accommodation (other than accommodation at a State hospital) provided by the Secretary of State under section 36(1)(a) of the 1978 Act, or").
The noble Baroness said: I am sorry that I was not present when my noble friend Lord Mottistone opened the Marshalled List and saw that he was to move this amendment.
The amendment is necessary to provide a right of access for an authorised representative to a disabled person who is resident in health authority accommodation. This issue might arise particularly if the provisions of the Bill are extended to health authorities. I beg to move.
Baroness Masham of Ilton: This is a most important amendment, which will greatly assist people seeking to

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move from hospital into the community. I am most grateful to the noble Baroness.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Lord Ennals Lord Ennals moved Amendment No. 9.
Page 2, line 43, at end insert—
("( ) in a community home as defined by section 32 of the Child Care Act 1980.")
The noble Lord said: It will be for the convenience of the Committee if I speak also to Amendments Nos. 10, 11, 12 and 13, which apply to the same point.
On page 2 of the Bill, in subsection (4), there is a certain listing of where disabled persons may be residing. Since we are also dealing with young disabled people, it is important—and perhaps even more important for a young disabled person—to have someone who can represent them and advise them. Therefore, in this series of five amendments I have sought to list a number of other places where a young person might be.
As at present drafted, the Bill excludes many places where children and young people are—community homes, voluntary homes, private homes, community treatment centres and schools. It appears to me that if these places are not included in the Bill it may well prove extremely difficult for a representative to gain access to the disabled person.
There is total logic in this amendment. The noble Baroness may say that there are a few others which ought to be added to the list, and if she does I will happily go along with her. However, as I have been sitting quietly here I have been trying to think of what conceivable arguments the noble Baroness could find for not being in favour of these five amendments. I beg to move.
Baroness Trumpington: Extension of the representative's right of access to children in residential care would give rise to a number of problems. In cases where a parent had appointed himself as an authorised representative he would have right of access to the child if he or she was in residential care but not if the child was placed with a foster parent. We try to achieve equity between children in residential care and those in foster homes.
Secondly, such provision could conflict with a local authority's right, in the best interests of the welfare of the child, to restrict or terminate access by a parent (again, if he or she had appointed himself or herself as the child's representative) to a child in care who was a subject of a parental rights resolution or court orders. I am advised that such provision would have a "knock on" effect on other child care legislation.
Finally, we have doubts about the desirability of other representatives—albeit appointed by the parents—having access to a child without necessarily the parent being present or even aware that such contact was being made. I doubt whether in practice the problem of access to a disabled child on the part of his or her representative should be a major one, although I will study carefully what the noble Lord has said. In the light of what I have said, I hope the noble Lord will not press his amendment.
Baroness Masham of Ilton: I have great sympathy for the amendments, but, having listened to what the noble Baroness said, the matter seems a bit more complicated than it at first looked. In the debate on the previous Bill she said that there was to be a major child care Bill and perhaps the provision could be incorporated in that. Will she do her best to accommodate children in that Bill?
Lord Ennals: I did not find the answer given by the noble Baroness in the least bit satisfying. I do not think that she expected that I would. I shall not press any of these amendments to a Division. The only little bit of hope that I received from her lips was the assurance that she would think about what I said. If that thought is reflected in the child care legislation that we discussed earlier, tabling the amendments will have been worth while. In those circumstances, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendments Nos. 10 to 13 not moved.]
10.30 p.m.
Baroness Trumpington Baroness Trumpington moved Amendment No. 14:
Page 2, line 45, at end insert—
("(4A) In paragraph (b) of subsection (4) "voluntary organisation" in relation to England and Wales includes a housing association within the meaning of the Housing Associations Act 1985.").
The noble Baroness said: This amendment is to ensure that a representative has a right of access to a disabled person resident in accommodation provided on behalf of a local authority by a housing association, as well as by any other type of voluntary organisation. I beg to move.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
The Chairman of Committees (Lord Aberdare): I have to point out that if Amendment No. 15 is agreed to, I cannot call Amendments Nos. 16, 17 or 18.
Baroness Trumpington Baroness Trumpington moved Amendment No. 15:
Page 3, leave out lines 1 to 34.
The noble Baroness said: I have already spoken to this amendment. I beg to move.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
[Amendments Nos. 16 to 18 not moved.]
Lord Mottistone Lord Mottistone moved Amendment No. 19:
Page 3, line 34, at end insert—
("( ) If a nearest relative is not appointed as an authorised representative, the facilities in subsection (2) above shall be afforded to the nearest relative unless the local authority has convincing reasons for withholding them.").
The noble Lord said: This amendment seeks to extend the facilities that are given in Clause 1(2) to the nearest relative, as well as the authorised representative if the nearest relative is not performing that function. There may be many cases in which that would be a good thing. But it has the proviso that the local authority may have convincing reasons for withholding the facilities. That brings me back to the point that the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, was making, that there are cases in which it would be as well if the nearest relative was not involved. That is why I have

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put in that the local authority should have discretion, but in normal circumstances the nearest relative should have the same access to the information that is being provided to the disabled person and the authorised representative.
I hasten to say to the noble Baroness, Lady Masham. that the nearest relative in this case is as defined in my amendment, Amendment No. 101, and so the provision would not apply to her but only to mental patients. I think that that is clear.
I should he most grateful to hear what my noble friend has to say. I beg to move.
Baroness Trumpington: I have a good deal of sympathy with the intention behind this amendment, though once again we have a few difficulties of a drafting nature. It does not seem unreasonable for the nearest relative to have access to documents and information on the same basis as the representative if, as the existing wording of this subsection already makes clear. the disabled person wishes. One difficulty is that this amendment would seem to call for consequential amendments to subsection (3) of this clause, which deals with the circumstances in which a local authority may refuse to disclose information to a representative. It would seem necessary to make further provision in the subsection to prescribe the circumstances in which disclosure should not be made to the nearest relative. That would include where disclosure would be harmful to the interests of the disabled person and perhaps also to those of the nearest relative.
There could well be circumstances in which information which would not be harmful to the disabled person or his representative would be harmful to the nearest relative—for instance, references in a document to marital infidelity by the disabled person. That is rather like the previous amendment.
Other points I should note are that we are not altogether sure that "convincing" is the right word to use because it is not clear what it means in law. We should also want to look at the effect of the close links that subsection (2) has with subsection (1). We should need to ensure that we had a definition of "nearest relative" which worked for the purpose of the provision.
In view of what I have said, I hope that my noble friend will agree to withdraw the amendment. I shall be happy to discuss this proposal with my noble friend and the Bill's sponsors to see whether we can arrive at a workable provision and one which is acceptable to the noble Baroness, Lady Masham, in time for a later stage of the Bill. I fear, however, that in view of the shortness of the time I cannot give a commitment on the outcome of those discussions.
Baroness Masham of Ilton: I listened carefully to what the noble Lord, Lord Mottistone, and the noble Baroness said. She clearly indicated that she is sympathetic to Amendment No. 19, which would give the nearest relative the same rights as the authorised representative has under subsection (2).
I foresee difficulties, especially in circumstances where the disabled person has already appointed a representative. There may well be information which it is appropriate to disclose to a disinterested represen
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tative but which might cause harm to the disabled person and the relative if the relative were told. That would put a local authority in a difficult and invidious position.
I am also not certain that it is helpful or appropriate to single out the relative in a Bill which is interested more generally in disabled people and those who care for them. The nearest relative often has the most power over the disabled person, and I am not sure that that power should be increased in this way. Nevertheless, I shall listen most closely to other noble Lords on this issue. I should be happy to talk further with the noble Lord and the Baroness the Minister before Report, but without commitment, because I believe that the issue is rather more complex than it may seem at first sight.
Lord Mottistone: I am most grateful, to my noble friend the Minister for her sympathetic acceptance of the thinking behind the amendment. I note with great care what the noble Baroness, Lady Masham, said. The difficulty is that there may be circumstances in which the nearest relative is causing the trouble. and the provision would not be appropriate. However, there are many cases where it would be most unfortunate if the nearest relative were pushed too far out of the picture when he or she can still help. I am not talking about physically disabled people; I am talking solely about mentally ill people, because I am only advised about them.
I am grateful to my noble friend. Whether there will be time to do all that she suggests is another matter. I shall rush to her aid if she is going to call a meeting on this subject. With the undertakings that have been given, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
The Chairman of Committees: I have to point out that if Amendment No. 20 is agreed to I cannot call Amendment No. 21.
[Amendment No. 20 not moved.]
Baroness Trumpington Baroness Trumpington moved Amendment No. 21:
Page 3, line 37, after ("appropriate") insert ("and such other bodies as appear to him to be concerned")
The noble Baroness said. The amendment merely recognises that other bodies may have an interest in being consulted before the Secretary of State extends representative provisions to health authorities or other local authority services. This amendment provides for such bodies—for instance, professional bodies and voluntary organisations—to be consulted. I beg to move.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Baroness Trumpington Baroness Trumpington moved Amendment No. 22:
Page 4, line 2, at end insert—
(" (9A) An order under subsection (9) may provide for any provision of regulations made under section (Appointment of authorised representatives of disabled persons) to have effect for the purposes of the order with such modifications as may be prescribed by the order, and in that event the reference in subsection (1) of that section to regulations made under that section shall be read as a reference to any such regulations as may have effect in accordance with the order.")
The noble Baroness said: In moving this amendment, I should like to speak also to Amendments Nos 23, 24 and 25. Amendment No. 22 is to ensure that if the Secretary of State decides to extend the Bill to health authorities or other local authority services by making an order under subsection (9), the provisions of any regulations made under the new clause relating to appointment of authorised representatives can be applied to them with the necessary changes. I beg to move.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Baroness Trumpington Baroness Trumpington moved Amendments Nos. 23 to 25:
Page 4, line 3, leave out ("subsection (9))—") and insert ("subsections (9) and (9A)")
Page 4, leave out line 8.
Page 4, line 9, at beginning insert ("and in subsection (9)")
On Question, amendments agreed to.
Clause 1, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 2 [Assessment by local authorities of needs of disabled persons]:
Baroness Masham of Ilton Baroness Masham of Ilton moved Amendment No. 26:
Page 4, line l5, leave out ("On any occasion when") and insert ("Where—

(a) on any assessment carried out by them in pursuance of any provision of this Act, or

(b) on any other occasion,")

The noble Baroness said: In moving this amendment I should like to speak also to Amendments Nos. 28, 30 and 34. Although the amendments to Clause 2 may look complete, I can assure the Committee that they are all most welcome and are designed to meet suggestions made by noble Lords on Second Reading. Broadly speaking, they ensure that a disabled person or his representative may receive a written statement if they request it after any assignment and may ask for review of any decision in any circumstances. The Bill, as it stands, was seen to be unnecessarily restrictive and would probably have caused more problems for local authorities if there were arguments as to whether a disabled person was entitled to a review or not.
Amendment No. 26 is purely technical and simply represents a change of mind by the draftsman on the appropriate wording. Amendment No. 27 is more important as it gives a right to a written statement even if there had been no representation by a disabled person or his representative before the assessment. Amendment No. 28 requires the statement to specify the needs of the disabled person as well as the services to be provided to meet them.
This may seem a minor clarification, but it will prove useful if there is a dispute as to how the needs are to be met: for example, the common choice between a stair lift or downstairs adaptations on which there is often disagreement between disabled people and the social services. In combination with Amendments Nos. 30 to 34 it provides the right to review on any matter included in the statement. I believe that these
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amendments fully cover the purpose of Amendment No. 29 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Banks. I beg to move.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Baroness Masham of Ilton Baroness Masham of Ilton moved Amendment No. 27:
Page 4, line 26, leave out from ("(1)") to ("the") in line 29 and insert (", or the period mentioned in that subsection has expired without any such representations being made, and the authority have reached a decision on the question referred to in that subsection (having taken into account any representations made as mentioned above)").
On Question, amendment agreed to.
The Chairman of Committees: I have to point out that, if Amendment No. 28 is agreed to, I cannot call Amendment No. 29.
Baroness Masham of Ilton Baroness Masham of Ilton moved Amendment No. 28:
Page 4, leave out lines 32 to 34 and insert—

("(a) either specifying—

(i) any needs of the disabled person which in the opinion of the authority call for the provision by them of any statutory services, and

(ii) in the case of each such need, the statutory services that they propose to provide to meet that need,

or stating that, in their opinion, the disabled person has no needs calling for the provision by them of any such services; and

(b) giving an explanation of their decision; and

(c) containing particulars of the right of the disabled person or his authorised representative to make representations with respect to the statement under subsection (4).").

On Question, amendment agreed to.
[Amendment No. 29 not moved.]
Baroness Masham of Ilton Baroness Masham of Ilton moved Amendments Nos. 30 to 34:
Page 4, line 40, leave out from ("services") to end of line 43.
Page 5, line 2, leave out from ("matter") to ("that") in line 3 and insert ("included in the statement supplied under subsection (2)").
Page 5, line 5, leave out ("further").
Page 5, line 6, leave out ("the particular need in question") and insert ("that matter").
Page 5, leave out lines 9 to 11 and insert—
("(a) consider (or, as the case may be, reconsider) whether any, and (if so) what, statutory services should be provided by them for the disabled person to meet any need identified in the representations; and")
On Question, amendments agreed to.
10.45 p.m.
Baroness Masham of Ilton Baroness Masham of Ilton moved Amendment No. 35:
Page 5, line 15, after ("Where") insert ("(a)").
The noble Baroness said: Amendments Nos. 35 to 39 clarify the right of either a disabled person or his representative to assistance if either or both have a communication handicap. I should mention that Amendment No. 75 extends this right to communication assistance to carers during a local authority assessment of the disabled person. New subsection (6A), introduced by Amendment No. 38, attempts to meet some of the concern expressed by our British Deaf Association which was raised on

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Second Reading by the noble Baroness, Lady Darcy (de Knayth). In determining both the need for communication assistance and the nature of that assistance the local authority must have regard to the views expressed by the disabled person or his representative who are uniquely qualified to identify this. I beg to move.
Lord Swinfen: There is one point on this amendment. It is not just the deaf who have difficulty in communication. There are a number of people with speech defects of such a nature that there are a very limited number of people who can understand them. It is absolutely essential that the local authorities, when providing the necessary services, make certain that those very few people are used for the interpretation. Sometimes the officials may not be aware of who the relevant person is to do the interpreting. Will they please make certain that they make any necessary inquiries and not just assume that a mentally capable physically disabled person is considered to be mentally disabled purely because they cannot communicate properly?
Baroness Darcy (De Knayth): May I also welcome this group of amendments, very briefly. As my noble friend has already said, this is something that I brought up at Second Reading. Amendment No. 38 deserves particularly warm thanks in that it ensures that any views expressed by the disabled person or his representative as to the need for interpretation services, or what form those services should take, will be taken into account. Perfection would have been if people with communication difficulties were given the same degree of control as a disabled person is given when appointing his representative. But I feel that we have been given very much more than half the loaf—much more like three-quarters of the loaf. I should like to say to my noble friend that the British Deaf Association, who had been worried, welcome this amendment most warmly. The members of the BDA are likely to be the biggest single group affected by subsection (6); but, as the noble Lord, Lord Swinfen, has already pointed out, there will be many severely physically handicapped people, and those with multiple handicaps, who have communication difficulties also. I should therefore like to thank the Minister and my noble friend for making it possible for all these people to have a little more control over their lives.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Baroness Masham of Ilton Baroness Masham of Ilton moved Amendment Nos. 36 to 39:
Page 5, line 17, ("writing") after insert ("(or in each of those ways)")
Page 5, line 18, after ("incapacity.") insert ("or
(b) both on those persons are in that position (whether by reason of the same incapacity or not),")
Page 5, line 25, at end insert—
("(6A) In determining whether they are required to provide any services under subsection (6) to meet any need of the disabled person or his authorised representative and (if so) what those services should be, the local authority shall have regard to any views expressed by either of those persons as to the necessity for any such services or (as appropriate) to any views so expressed as to the services which should be so provided.")
Page 5, line 28, leave out from ("both") to end of line 39.
The Chairman of Committees: With the permission of the Committee, I put Amendments Nos. 36 to 39 en bloc.
On Question, amendments agreed to.
Clause 2, as amended, agreed to.
Baroness Trumpington Baroness Trumpington moved Amendment No. 40:
After Clause 2, insert the following new clause:
("Services under s.2 of the 1970 Act: duty to consider needs of disabled person.
. When requested to do so by—

(a) a disabled person,

(b) his authorised representative, or

(c) any person who provides care for him in the circumstances mentioned in section 5.

a local authority shall decide whether the needs of the disabled person call for the provision by the authority of any services in accordance with section 2(1) of the 1970 Act (provision of welfare services).")
The noble Baroness said: We recognise that there may be some uncertainty about the duties placed on local authorities under Section 2 of the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act 1970. This section of the Act places a duty on local authorities to "make arrangements" where they are satisfied that there is a need for a service or services (such as practical assistance, holidays, telephones etc); however it does not make it explicitly clear whether a local authority has a duty to determine what the needs of a disabled person are. Therefore it has been put to us that the duty to "make arrangements" could be interpreted as applying only after the local authority are satisfied that such arrangements are necessary in order to meet particular needs and that a local authority may refuse to come to a view as to what the needs are.
We are sure that local authorities are interpreting Section 2 of the CSDP Act in the spirit in which it was passed—that is to say determining what the needs of a disabled person are. However, during the Second Reading debate in this House the subject was raised by a number of noble Lords—the noble Lords, Lord Banks, Lord Mottistone and Lord Allen of Abbeydale—and I agreed to look into the matter and if necessary bring forward an amendment at a later stage.
We are not convinced that in practice there is a problem but we agree that the matter should be put beyond doubt. The new clause will place a clear duty on a local social services authority to decide whether the needs of a disabled person require the provision of welfare services under Section 2 of the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act 1970. A local authority will be required to make this decision when requested to do so by a disabled person, his authorised respresentative or a carer.
I have noted that the noble Lord, Lord Banks, whom I do not see in his place, has tabled Amendment No. 76. I hope that, having listened to what I have said about the new clause, he will in due course feel able to withdraw his amendment. I beg to move.
Baroness Masham of Ilton: I am particularly pleased that this new clause will he part of the Bill. Although the best legal advice and, indeed, the departmental circular issued in August 1970 has always maintained that a local authority has a duty to

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assess the needs of a disabled person for any of the services listed in Section 2 of the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act 1970, it is not stated clearly in that section. As recently as February 1986 a disabled person received a letter from a chief executive's department, from which I should like to quote one or two extracts. The official wrote:
"I cannot agree that under Section 2 of the Act, the County Council has a duty to assess the needs of disabled people for the services mentioned in the Section … there is nothing in the language of the Act to suggest that the making of such an assessment on receipt of an application is mandatory on the council … If it were the intention of Parliament to impose upon the Council not only a duty to provide a service or services where need for the services had been determined but also a duty to determine whether such need exists, Section 2 would not have been worded in the way it is".
I would say immediately to noble Lords that I believe that statement to be entirely misconceived. Nevertheless, I believe that it is in the interests of disabled people throughout the country for the matter to be put beyond doubt. With the new duties imposed by Clause 2 of this Bill, it may well be that the other rogue authorities would be moved to use the same argument to evade these duties.
The other major aspect of the new clause is the explicit mention of carers. The right of carers to ask for an assessment was one of the major issues at the Report stage in another place, and I am delighted that this is being included in the Bill.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Clause 3 [Persons leaving special education]:
Lord Ennals Lord Ennals moved Amendment No. 41:
Page 6, line 9, after ("time") insert ("with the consent of the parent or of the disabled person if aged 16 or over").
The noble Lord said: Like the noble Baroness, Lady Masham, I am delighted by Clause 2, and I just draw the attention of the noble Baroness to Amendment No. 40, which says:
"When requested to do so by—

(a) a disabled person,

(b) his authorised representative",

and so on. I am therefore talking about consent. Consent is an integral part of the Bill. In particular, I feel that the identification of someone as a disabled person should be with the consent of the disabled person if that person is 16 and over, or with the consent of the parents or the guardian. There is no compulsion within the Bill to take up services, and it seems unduly restrictive not to allow consent on this point. In Amendments Nos. 41 and 42 we are dealing with Section 7 of the Education Act and a statement of a child's educational needs:
"the authority shall at that time require the appropriate officer to give to the authority his opinion as to whether the child is or is not a disabled person."
I simply want to ensure that he should be required to do so with the consent of the parent or the disabled person if aged 16 or over. I do not want there to be statements made on issues like this, particularly if it is a mental disability, unless it is done by consent. I hope
980
that the noble Baroness will think that since this is my last amendment I have at last won her over.
Baroness Trumpington: I am afraid that once again I am a big disappointment to the noble Lord. The line 9 amendment would require an LEA to obtain the consent of the child, if 16 or over, or his parent prior to requiring the appropriate officer of the SSD to give his opinion as to whether the child was a disabled person. The line 11 amendment appears to require the appropriate officer similarly to obtain consent before he gives his opinion. I am sure this is not what the noble Lord intended. I assume he intended only the one consent requirement: two would clearly be a nonsense.
At present, LEAs are required, under paragraph 3 of the Education (Special Educational Needs) Regulations 1983 to notify the SSD when they intend to carry out an assessment under Section 5 of the Education Act 1981. The Bill is designed in such a way that the request to provide the opinion required in Clause 3(1) can, for most children, form part of the notification when the mandatory reassessment of their needs is carried out in the 12-month period following the age of 13 years 6 months. No separate approach is necessary. To add a requirement that the LEA obtain consent before requiring the opinion will in most cases mean an additional and an unnecessary bureaucratic step.
There is no obligation on the parent (or guardian) or the young person, if appropriate, to agree to an assessment of needs under subsection (4). The Government's amendment at subsection (4B) of Clause 3 provides that a parent or young person over 16 may request that no such assessment should be carried out. This subsection has been drafted in this way to make it consistent with Clause 4(3). Drafting in this manner ensures that a child cannot be deprived of his rights under this clause simply because he, or his parent or guardian, fails to respond to an invitation to give consent. The dilemma that LEAs may experience if they fail to get any response to a request for consent is avoided. There is no intention that a family should be subjected to an assessment they feel unnecessary or do not wish for. The government amendments at subsection (4B) make this perfectly plain.
These amendments are unnecessary in so far as the point is more effectively met elsewhere in the government amendments. Further, the line 9 amendment is also inconsistent with drafting elsewhere in the Bill because it fails to include the child's guardian where this would be appropriate. And the line 11 amendment either duplicates the line 9 amendment or generates a double dose of unnecessary bureaucratic procedure. I am sorry that the Government cannot support either of these amendments, and I would ask the noble Lord to withdraw them.
Lord Ennals: I am tempted to withdraw the congratulations that I gave to officials for their excellent draftsmanship at an earlier stage of the Bill. Instead of doing that, I shall simply withdraw my two amendments.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendment No. 42 not moved.]
11 p.m.
Baroness Trumpington Baroness Trumpington moved Amendment No. 43:
Page 6, line 27, leave out subsections (3) and (4) and insert—
("(3) Where an opinion has in pursuance of subsection (1) or (2) been given in the case of a child that he is a disabled person and it subsequently appears to the responsible authority—

(a) that the child will cease to receive full-time education at school on a particular date and will not subsequently be receiving full-time education at a further education establishment, or

(b) that the child will cease to receive full-time education at such an establishment on a particular date,

and (in either case) that he will be under the age of 19 on the relevant date, the authority shall give to the appropriate officer written notification for the purposes of subsection (4) of the date referred to in paragraph (a) or (b); and any such notification shall be given not later than the relevant date and not earlier than four months before that date.
In this subsection "the relevant date" means the date falling 8 months before the date referred to in paragraph (a) or (b) above.
(3A) If at any time it appears to a local education authority—

(a) that a person has on a particular date ceased to receive full-time education as mentioned in paragraph (a) or (b) of subsection (3) or will cease to do so on a particular date falling less than 8 months after that time, and

(b) that no notification of that date has been given to the appropriate officer under that subsection with respect to that person, but

(c) that, had that or any other authority (as the responsible authority for the time being) been aware of his intentions 8 months or more before that date, they would have been required to give notification of that date under that subsection with respect to him,

that authority shall, as soon as is reasonably practicable, give to the appropriate officer written notification for the purposes of subsection (4) of that date.
(4) When the appropriate officer receives a notification given with respect to any person under subsection (3) or (3A), he shall (subject to subsections (4A) and (4B)) make arrangements for the local authority of which he is an officer to carry out an assessment of the needs of that person with respect to the provision by that authority of any statutory services for that person in accordance with any of the welfare enactments, and any such assessment shall be carried Out—

(a) in the case of a notification under subsection (3), not later than the end of the period of 5 months beginning with the date of receipt of the notification, or

(b) in the case of a notification under subsection (3A), before the date specified on the notification, if reasonably practicable, and in any event not later than the end of the period referred to in paragraph (a) above.

(4A) If—

(a) a notification has been given to the appropriate officer with respect to any person under subsection (3) or (3A), but

(b) it subsequently appears to a local education authority that that person will be receiving full-time education (whether at school or at a further education establishment) at a time later than the date specified in the notification,

the authority shall give written notification of the relevant facts to that officer as soon as is reasonably practicable; and on receiving any such notification that officer shall cease to be required under subsection (4) to make arrangements for the assessment of the needs of the person in question (hut without prejudice to the operation of that subsection in relation to any further notification given with respect to that person under subsection (3) or (3A)).
(4B) Nothing in subsection (4) shall require the appropriate officer to make arrangements for the assessment of the needs of a person—

(a) if, having attained the age of 16, he has requested that such arrangements should not be made under that subsection, or

(b) if, being under that age, his parent or guardian has made such a request.

(4C) Regulations under paragraph 4 of Schedule 1 to the Education Act 1981 (assessments and statements of special educational needs) may, in relation to the transfer of statements made under section 7 of that Act, make such provision as appears
982
to the Secretary of State to be necessary or expedient in connection with the preceding provisions of this section.").
The noble Baroness said: This amendment deletes the existing subsections (3) and (4). It substitutes a requirement, in subsection (3), that LEAs shall notify the appropriate officer (in the social services department) of all children leaving full-time education, whether in school or an establishment of further education, at a date not earlier than 12 months and not later than eight months prior to the expected leaving date. The requirement to notify embraces all children who have not reached their nineteenth birthday on the date the notification is due.
Subsection (3A) provides that where a child or person decides to leave full-time education at short notice, the LEA shall notify the appropriate officer as soon as possible. It covers the case where the individual concerned moves to the area of a new LEA and ensures that authority gives the requisite notice to the new appropriate officer.
Subsection (4) places a duty on the appropriate officer, on receipt of a notification, to make arrangements to carry out an assessment of the needs of that person in accordance with the welfare enactments. The assessment is to be carried out within five months of the date of receipt of the notification, or, in cases of late notification, before the person leaves full-time education if practicable but in any event within the five-month period stipulated for other assessments.
Subsection (4A) provides that where a person changes his mind and decides not to leave full-time education as anticipated, the LEA shall notify the appropriate officer as soon as possible. The appropriate officer will then not be required to complete the arrangements for an assessment in accordance with the welfare enactments until a further notification giving a revised leaving date is received. Even in the case of individuals who move to the area of a new LEA the obligation will operate.
Subsection (4B) discharges the appropriate officer from making arrangements for an assessment in any case where a person over 16, or his parent or guardian if he is under 16, has requested that no such arrangements be made. Subsection (4C) gives the Secretary of State power to amend the Education (Special Educational Needs) Regulations 1983 in respect of the transfer of statements. The provision is designed to enable the Secretary of State to amend paragraph 12 to place a duty on the LEA which made the statement on a disabled child to transfer it to a new LEA in the case of children who move areas and for whom the new LEA have not had time to make a statement or obtain the necessary opinion as to whether he is a disabled child to provide information on opinions which have been received and notices which have been sent. I beg to move.
The Chairman of Committees: I understand that there is a misprint in the last line of the new subsection (3) where it reads "8 months". It should read:
"8 months before the date referred to in paragraph (a) or (b) above".
Lord Ennals: In supporting the noble Baroness, may I suggest that on future amendments—since all of us have studied the Bill with such care—she should feel

983
the necessity to explain the amendments only if there is a question or a doubt raised by a Member of the Committee. This would save both time and her throat.
Baroness Masham of Ilton: I just briefly want to say that I am grateful to the noble Baroness for explaining the intricacies of the amendments to Clause 3 so clearly, even though her throat sounds bad. There are one or two outstanding matters which I hope will be covered in guidance. I am concerned particularly that students who are over 19 on the relevant date, the date eight months before they leave, are excluded from the Bill. I hope strongly that guidance to both LEAs and the social services departments will ask for them to be included, albeit on a non-statutory basis.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Lord Stallard Lord Stallard moved Amendment No. 44.
Page 6, line 40, at end insert—
"( ) In making or causing an assessment to be made under the said sections, the local authority or their agents shall consider whether the disabled person may have—

(a) a need for information about and training in independent living skills; or

(b) a need for technical aids and equipment to assist independent living.")

The noble Lord said: May I say to the noble Baroness that I have limited my intervention so far to this one amendment, first of all because I think the Bill has been much improved, for the reason stated by my noble friend Lord Ennals at the beginning, by the background work done between Second Reading and this Committee stage. It is a better Bill than it was then, and I certainly have no intention to impede the Bill any more than is necessary, but I feel fairly strongly about this particular amendment. I am sure the noble Baroness will recognise that it arises from the short debate we had a few weeks ago on the question of young disabled people and their problems.
As I see it, Clause 3 is a crucial section of the Bill so far as that was concerned because it focuses attention on the needs of young people making a transition in their lives, and at the same time a transition from one network of services to another network of services. In the experience of the organisations like the Spastics Society that I mentioned in that previous debate, many disabled young adults slip through the net. This is the problem at the crucial transition from leaving school and starting to lead an independent life in the community. This clause and this amendment seek to remedy that problem.
Two key factors contained in the amendment are, in my view, the determining factors in how successful this transition will be for a disabled person. The first is the necessary information and training to be able to take up opportunities to live independently, including further training in living skills and training for employment or useful occupation. The second is information and provision of the necessary aids and equipment to help make independent living a reality. This amendment would seek to ensure that support is made available to achieve the aims of independent and integrated living by writing these two parts into the Bill.
On employment, all the evidence shows that disabled young people suffer disproportionately from unemployment as compared with their able-bodied counterparts. Changes in arrangements at Jobcentres make it very difficult to get any meaningful statistics, but let me try to provide some indication of the problem, taken from MSC statistics. In October 1982 41 per cent. of unemployed disabled people under 25 had been out of work for more than a year compared with 24 per cent. of all unemployed people under 25. In the period October 1980 to October 1982 unemployment amongst disabled people under 25 rose by 58 per cent. compared with a rise of 46 per cent. in unemployment among all people under 25. These are the statistics of the MSC.
The report by the Spastics International Medical Publications—that is the report to which I referred in that previous debate—found much evidence that unemployment and underemployment among young handicapped people had a serious damaging effect. They reported that this included a reduced chance of obtaining employment; feelings of resentment and defeat in the handicapped person; stress for the carer; and a greater dependence on state benefits. Clearly, these factors would militate against the chance of successful independent living.
Yet much could be done in the form of carers' advice, extra training and assessment to ensure that young people entering the labour market are better eqiupped to make a smooth transition from work to school. Hence the reason for the first point in my amendment.
Secondly, on aids and equipment: independent living depends upon having the appropriate environment. Although many thousands of young disabled people have been helped by assistance given both by the health and social services and by aids provided through the provisions in the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act 1970, there is often more that could be done. The same report to which I have just referred found that there was increasing dissatisfaction amongst disabled people with the standard of service available. Hence the need to include this in the assessment procedure. A recent survey of young adults with cerebral palsy showed that over half were living in accommodation considered unsuitable for the severely physically handicapped; bathroom, bedroom and toilet were all inconveniently situated on the upstairs floor, yet the necessary aids including stair lifts had not been provided in many cases. Transport facilities to attend hospitals and clinics and general aids to use in the home were also found to be vital for independent living, yet often were not provided for.
In looking to the future more account should also be taken of the technical advances now being made and how these can be used by young disabled people. There are many new aids which may be of use to disabled people which are not known to them. Computers are starting to play a larger role in the lives of disabled people, and yet they need help, advice, and training to know how they can live a more independent life with the help of these new developments.
This amendment is important and is needed. The needs of these young disabled people in the two areas I have mentioned are specific and if they are neglected,

985
as they have been in the past, they could cause a great deal of suffering. I hope that the noble Baroness will find it possible to accept this small amendment which will mean so much to youngsters trying to make this difficult transition. I beg to move.
Baroness Trumpington: Section 2 of the Chronically Sick and 'Disabled Persons Act already covers the provision of practical assistance to a disabled person in his own home and the provision of any additional facilities designed to secure his greater safety, comfort or convenience. The noble Lord's amendment would seek in effect to add to that section specific references to a need for information about and training in independent living skills and a need for technical aids and equipment to assist independent living. I applaud the intention of this amendment and accept the importance of the concept of independent living for disabled people, which is very important. But "independent living" is not a clearly defined concept and to improve the proposed statutory duty on local authorities would represent both a constraint on the manner in which they carried out their duties and, in some cases, a possible substantial additional cost. The existing provisions of Section 2 are broad enough to achieve what the noble Lord seems to be wanting and I hope that he will withdraw his amendment.
Lord Stallard: I am grateful to the noble Baroness for her considered remarks and her tacit support for the implications of my amendment. I am not entirely satisfied with the section of the Disabled Persons Act that she mentioned. It does not operate in the way that I would like to see it operate; hence my reasons for putting down this amendment. However, in view of what she has said—and I dare say that it will be brought to the attention of the appropriate authorities—I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Baroness Trumpington Baroness Trumpington moved Amendments Nos. 45 to 51:
Page 6, line 42, leave out from beginning to end of line 9 on page 7 and insert—
(" "the appropriate officer", in relation to the child or person referred to in the provision of this section in question, means such officer as may be appointed for the purposes of this section by the local authority for the area in which that child or person is for the time being ordinarily resident")
Page 7, line 12, leave out ("college of further education") and insert ("further education establishment")
Page 7, leave out lines 14 to 17.
Page 7, line 17, at end insert—
(" "the responsible authority"—

(a) in relation to a child at school, means the local education authority who are responsible for the child for the purposes of the Education Act 1981:

(b) in relation to a child at a further education establishment, means the local education authority who were responsible for the child immediately before he ceased to receive full-time education at school;

in each case whether any such opinion as is mentioned in subsection (3) was given to that authority or not;")
Page 7, line 18, leave out ("expressions used") and insert ("other expressions used in this section and")
Page 7, line 18, after ("1944") insert ("(and not defined in this Act)")
Page 7, leave out lines 20 to 22.
The noble Baroness said: With the leave of the Committee, I beg to move Amendments Nos. 45 to 51 en bloc.
On Question, amendments agreed to.
Clause 3, as amended, agreed to.
Baroness Trumpington Baroness Trumpington moved Amendment No. 52:
After Clause 3, insert the following new clause:
("Review of expected school-leaving dates of disabled children.
.—(1) A local education authority shall for the purposes of section 3 above keep under review the dates when the following children are expected to cease to receive full-time education at school or (as the case may be) at a further education establishment, namely—

(a) children for whom that authority are responsible for the purposes of the Education Act 1981 and in the case of each of whom an opinion has been given in pursuance of subsection (1) or (2) of section 3 above that he is a disabled person (whether it was given to that authority or not): and

(b) children at further education establishments for whom that authority were so responsible immediately before they ceased to receive full-time education at school and in the case of each of whom any such opinion has been given as mentioned in paragraph (a).

(2) Subsection (5) of section 3 shall have effect for the purposes of this section as it has effect for the purposes of that section.").
The noble Baroness said: The aim of this clause is to require LEAs to establish a procedure which keeps track of disabled children and thus permits them to have available the necessary information to enable them to comply with the notification requirements in Clause 3. The safeguard is a sensible one and I hope the Committee will welcome it. I beg to move.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Clause 4 [Persons discharged from hospital]:
[Amendment No. 53 not moved.]
11.15 p.m.
Baroness Masham of Ilton Baroness Masham of Ilton moved Amendment No. 54:
Page 7, line 25, leave out ("a").
The noble Baroness said: With Amendment No. 54, I should like to speak to Amendments Nos. 55, 58, 60 and 62 to 65. The amendments to Clause 4 standing jointly in the names of the Minister and myself are all most welcome additions to the Bill. They clarify and confirm the procedures for ensuring that people who have been in mental handicap or psychiatric hospitals for more than six months have an assessment of their needs before they are discharged. I am sure all noble Lords and noble Baronesses will agree that in these days an in-patient stay of six months' treatment is a very long one. Most if not all such patients will encounter considerable difficulties in re-establishing themselves within their families and communities.
Together, the amendments more than meet the original aspirations of the sponsors. They give body to the spirit of the agreement reached in another place. I am happy to report that they have the agreement of the Association of County Councils, the Association of Metropolitan Authorities and the National Association of Health Authorities. These of course are the main bodies representing the authorities who will put this clause into practice.
Amendments Nos. 54, 55, 58 and 60 require the hospital managers to send written notification of the date of discharge to the local authority of the area in which the patient is to live and also to the district health authority and the local education authority if the patient is under 19. I should say in explanation that in most cases the hospital managers will be a district health authority, and there are exclusions throughout the clause to prevent them informing themselves or consulting themselves if the same district health authority will continue to be responsible for the patient.
Following notification, Amendment No. 64 ensures that each authority will be required to take action as follows. Under subsection (2)(a), the district health authority must assess the patient's need for services under the National Health Service Act 1977, in consultation with the hospital managers. Under subsection (2)(b) the social services department must assess the need for services under the welfare enactment, and of course in this case Clause 2 of the Bill will also apply. Subsection (2)(c) also places the additional duty on each of these authorities to cooperate with each other in making the arrangements for assessments.
In many cases, authorities may wish to undertake joint assessments, but we do not feel it is right to tie their hands in primary legislation and to tie their practical arrangements to a precise formula which may not be appropriate in all circumstances. Subsection (2)(d) requires both assessments to be undertaken before the discharge or as soon as possible after discharge, following the order of a mental health review tribunal or, in Scotland, the Mental Welfare Commission or the sheriff. Where a discharge is properly planned there should be no fear of its being held up by this clause. As the Mental Health Act Commission asserted in its first biannual report in 1985, discharge should be a process, not an event. Where the temptation might be to make an overnight decision to discharge someone, the clause will ensure that adequate planning for that person takes place. In any event, subsection (3) in Amendment No. 65 allows a patient to waive his right to an assessment.
The duty on the local education authority is not so clear. I understand that if the patient is under 16 the procedures under the Education Act 1981 will apply. The local education authority will either initiate an assessment of the child's special education needs or amend an existing statement. What will happen if the patient is over 16 but under 19 is less clear, but perhaps the noble Baroness can clarify this point.
Subsection (3A) in Amendment No. 65 is a technical amendment to stop assessments being triggered by transfers between hospitals, and also to confirm that time spent in different hospitals will be added together for the purpose of the six months mentioned in subsection (1). I apologise for the length of my speech, but these amendments are complex and most important. I commend them to the Committee. I beg to move.
Lord Mottistone: If I may have the advice of the Chairman of Committees, the noble Baroness said that she was speaking, among other things, to
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Amendment No. 65. I think I am right in saying that, if the Lord Chairman were to call Amendment No. 65, he would warn us that he then could not call Amendment No. 66. Would it be appropriate—
The Chairman of Committees: I would not. No, you can have No. 66.
Lord Mottistone: Amendment No. 66 refers to a subsection (3) which is being left out.
The Chairman of Committees: My advice is that I can call No. 66.
Lord Mottistone: Good. We will wait for it.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Baroness Masham of Ilton Baroness Masham of Ilton moved Amendment No. 55:
Page 7, line 27, leave out from ("discharged") to end of line 35 and insert ("the managers of the hospital shall give written notification of that date—

(a) to the health authority in whose district or area it appears to the managers that that person is likely to reside after his discharge (unless the managers are that authority),

(aa) to the local authority in whose area it appears to them that that person is likely then to reside, and")

On Question, amendment agreed to.
Lord Mottistone Lord Mottistone moved Amendment No. 56:
Page 7, line 35, leave out ("and")
The noble Lord said: If I may, I will speak to Amendment No 59, also for which Amendment No. 56 is a paving amendment. The argument I advance is that it should be the case that the manager of a hospital should consult not only with the local authority and the appropriate authority, in relation to people under the age of 19, but with the nearest relative. That is very much the case here, because we are talking about mental patients anyhow. In this instance, it can be most difficult and alarming if somebody is discharged into the community without the nearest relative knowing that the person is coming. It seems to me that this is a case where the nearest relative needs to be bracketed with the other authorities mentioned in Clause 4(1). I hope that my noble friend the Minister can give me a helpful comment upon that. I beg to move.
Lord Swinfen: May I add a quick word on that? I think this is quite an appropriate amendment, because in a number of instances the young person under the age of 19, because of the good feeding we have had in the last few years, is considerably larger than the mother and, often, the father, and if there is any disagreement as a result of the mental disorder, serious damage could occur to the parents.
Baroness Trumpington: We acknowledge that there is a clear case for relatives, particularly those who will be directly caring for the patient after discharge, to be involved in the assessment process and decisions emerging from it. But, while we are sympathetic to the intention behind this amendment, I think we can best deal with the issues raised in guidance to authorities at such time as this clause is implemented.
Lord Mottistone: That is not subject to a later order. It is going to be the law. It is on the face of the Bill. Am I to understand that we are to rely upon guidance from the department to hospitals to make the point? Is that good enough? Perhaps my noble friend will comment.
Baroness Trumpington: I was trying to deal with this in shorthand in view of the lateness of the hour, but the noble Lord has challenged me and so I must detain the Committee a moment longer. This amendment presents difficulties. On the one hand it seems to put relatives on the same footing as the authorities who are required by subsection (1) to make the assessments, which they are clearly not.
More seriously the amendment opens up a whole series of questions about the involvement of relatives in the process of making decisions about the care of mentally disordered people after discharge, and such questions apply equally to carers who are not relatives. It is difficult to see how we could fully examine these questions without further consultation with representatives of the statutory authorities, professional organisations and interested voluntary organisations. On that basis I hope my noble friend will agree to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Mottistone: That is very much more acceptable. I thank my noble friend and beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Lord Skelmersdale Lord Skelmersdale moved Amendment No. 57:
Page 7, line 36, leave out ("the age of 19") and insert ("the relevant age").
The noble Lord said: I should like to speak also to Amendments Nos. 67, 68, 69 and 73. All of these five amendments are technical and are needed to reconcile this Bill with existing legislation. On behalf of my noble friend Lord Davidson—and perhaps I should say here that I am acting in loco parentis—I beg to move.
On Question amendment agreed to.
Baroness Trumpington Baroness Trumpington: moved Amendment No. 58:
Page 7, line 37, after ("date,") insert ("to")
On Question, amendment agreed to.
[Amendment No. 59 not moved.]
Baroness Trumpington Baroness Trumpington moved Amendment No. 60:
Page 7, line 37, at end insert—
("as soon as is reasonably practicable after that date is known to the managers.")
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Lord Skelmersdale Lord Skelmersdale moved Amendment No. 61:
Page 7, line 42, at end insert ("the Mental Welfare Commission for Scotland or by")
The noble Lord said: I am doing it again for somebody else, it appears. This amendment corrects an omission from the Bill as drafted in its application to Scotland. Clause 4 (2) (a) properly recognises that the provisions of Clause 4(1) concerning the assessment of patients' needs prior to discharge from hospital after a continuous period of not less than six
990
months treatment for mental disorder cannot apply where discharge of such a patient is ordered with immediate effect. In Scotland this is most commonly on the order of the sheriff where a patient makes a formal appeal to him under provisions in the Mental Health (Scotland) Act 1984 against detention and that appeal is upheld.
It is nevertheless also possible for discharge to be ordered with immediate effect by the Mental Welfare Commission for Scotland. This commission is an independent body set up under Section 2 of the 1984 Act which has a duty to exercise protective functions in respect of persons who may by reason of mental disorder be incapable of protecting themselves or their interests. While its powers of immediate discharge are infrequently used, it would be inappropriate for the Bill not to recognise this eventuality. This is thus a potentially important amendment. I beg to move.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Baroness Trumpington Baroness Trumpington: moved Amendments Nos. 62 to 65:
Page 8, line 2, leave out ("in a hospital")
Page 8, line 5, leave out from beginning to ("subsection") in line 7 and insert ("the managers of the hospital shall give written notification of that person's discharge in accordance with paragraphs (a), (aa) and (b) of")
Page 8, line 8, at end insert—
("(2A) Where—

(a) a health authority receive a notification given with respect to a person under subsectiion (1) or (2), or

(b) the managers of a hospital from which a person is to be, or is, discharged as mentioned in subsection (1) or (2) are the health authority referred to in subsection (1) (a),

that authority shall (subject to subsection (3)) make arrangements for an assessment of the needs of that person with respect to the provision of any services under the 1977 Act or 1978 Act which the Secretary of State is under a duty to provide; and in making any such arrangements a health authority falling within paragraph (a) above shall consult the managers of the hospital in question.
(2B) Where a local authority receive a notification given with respect to a person under subsection (1) or (2), the authority shall (subject to subsection (3)) make arrangements for an assessment of the needs of that person with respect to the provision of any services under any of the welfare enactments.
(2C) A health authority and a local authority who are by virtue of subsections (2A) and (2B) each required to make arrangements for an assessment of the needs of a particular person shall co-operate with each other in the making of those arrangements.
(2D) Any assessment for which arrangements are required to be made by virtue of subsection (2A) or (2B) shall be carried out—

(a) where the notification in question was given under subsection (1), not later than the date mentioned in that subsection, or

(b) where the notification in question was given under subsection (2), as soon as is reasonably practicable after receipt of the notification.")

Page 8, line 9, leave out subsection (3) and insert—
(" (3) A health authority or a local authority shall not be required to make arrangements for an assessment of the needs of a person by virtue of subsection (2A) or (2B) if that person has requested them not to make any such arrangements.
(3A) Nothing in this section shall apply in relation to a person who is being discharged from a hospital for the purpose of being transferred to another hospital in which he will be an in-patient (whether or not he will be receiving medical treatment for mental disorder) but any reference in subsection (1) or (2) to a person's having received medical treatment for mental disorder as an in-patient for the period mentioned in that subsection is a

991
reference to his having received such treatment for that period as an in-patient in one or more hospitals (any interruption of that period attributable to his being transferred between hospitals being disregarded).")
The noble Baroness said: I beg to move.
The Lord Chairman of Committees: I think the noble Lord, Lord Mottistone, was quite correct in saying that Amendment No. 65 pre-empts Amendment No. 66. Perhaps we can discuss Amendment No. 66 now if the noble Lord so wishes.
Lord Mottistone: I thank the noble Lord the Lord Chairman. Perhaps we can look at Amendment No. 66 in relation to the new subsection (3) in Amendment No. 65. There may be circumstances in which the person may request that the arrangements referred to should not be made, but they might be subject to an assessment under Section 117 of the 1983 Act which relates to aftercare in relation to people who are detained under Section 3 and certain persons who are criminals. I would have thought that it was sensible to include such a provision in the Bill in its new place, at the end of subsection (3).
11.30 p.m.
The Chairman of Committees: The Committee is discussing this amendment with the others, so the noble Baroness may speak to it.
Baroness Trumpington: This amendment is not as shipshape as I would have expected from my noble friend. While there is a duty under Section 117 of the Mental Health Act 1983 for health and social services to provide aftercare for detained patients, there is no corresponding duty laid upon ex-detained patients to accept such aftercare services—nor should there be, except in the case of restricted patients; for example, those who have been conditionally discharged, for whom provision already exists.
It follows that people who are about to be discharged should not be required to co-operate in the preceding stage of assessment if they do not wish to do so. If a patient refuses to co-operate, that could have a bearing on the decision whether or not he is discharged from detention. Removing a patient's freedom in that respect could remove a valuable indicator of the patient's likely reaction to much greater freedoms once discharged. In view of what I have said, I hope that my noble friend will withdraw his amendment.
Baroness Masham of Ilton: I have listened to the noble Lord's argument but I am not convinced that it is right to exclude the small number of detained patients from the right to refuse an assessment. I am not convinced that they should be treated any differently.
Lord Mottistone: It depends on the circumstances. I accept the statements of my noble friend the Minister but I am not quite so happy about the remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Masham. However, it is late and I shall not pursue the point. We might return to it on Report.
On Question, amendments agreed to.
The Chairman of Committees: If the noble Lord, Lord Mottistone, will allow me to say so, I cannot now call Amendment No. 66.
[Amendment No. 66 not moved.]
Lord Skelmersdale Lord Skelmersdale moved Amendments Nos. 67 to 69:
Page 8, line 16, after ("authority") insert ("or, in Scotland, an education authority").
Page 8, line 18, after ("authority") insert ("or (as the case may be) education authority").
Page 8, line 20, after ("where") insert (", in England and Wales,").
The noble Lord said: I spoke to these amendments with Amendment No. 57. I beg to move.
On Question, amendments agreed to.
Baroness Masham of Ilton Baroness Masham of Ilton moved Amendments Nos. 70 to 72:
Page 8, line 22, at end insert—
(" "health authority"—

(a) in relation to England and Wales, means a District Health Authority, and

(b) in relation to Scotland, means a Health Board;").

Page 8, leave out lines 23 to 33.
Page 9, line 3, leave out ("within the meaning of the 1978 Act").
The noble Baroness said: These are technical amendments. I beg to move.
On Question, amendments agreed to.
Lord Skelmersdale Lord Skelmersdale moved Amendment No. 73:
Page 9, line 19, at end insert—("and
"the relevant age"—

(a) in relation to England and Wales, means the age of 19; and

(b) in relation to Scotland, means the age of 18").

The noble Lord said: This amendment also goes with Amendment No. 57. I beg to move.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Baroness Masham of Ilton Baroness Masham of Ilton moved Amendment No. 74:
Page 9, leave out lines 20 to 23.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Clause 4, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 5 [Duty of local authority to take into account abilities of carer]:
The Chairman of Committees: Amendment No. 76 should precede Amendment No. 75, but I believe that it will not be moved.
[Amendment No. 76 not moved.]
Baroness Trumpington Baroness Trumpington moved Amendment No. 75:
Page 9, line 36, at end insert—
("(2) Where that other person is unable to communicate, or (as the case may be) be communicated with, orally or in writing (or in each of those ways) by reason of any mental or physical incapacity, the local authority shall provide such services as, in their opinion, are necessary to ensure that any such incapacity does not prevent the authority from being properly informed as to the ability of that person to continue to provide care as mentioned in subsection (1).
(3) Section 2(6A) shall apply for the purposes of subsection (2) above as it applies for the purposes of section 2(6), but as if any reference to the disabled person or his authorised representative were a reference to the person mentioned in subsection (2).").
The noble Baroness said: I am happy to move this amendment as it meets a commitment made by the Government at the Report stage of the Bill in another place. The purpose of the amendment has already been explained by the noble Baroness, Lady Masham. I beg to move.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Clause 5, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 6 [Information]:
Baroness Trumpington Baroness Trumpington moved Amendment No. 77:
Page 9, line 39, leave out ("Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act 1970") and insert ("1970 Act").
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Baroness Trumpington Baroness Trumpington moved Amendments Nos. 78 to 80:
Page 10, line 1, after ("for") insert ("the words").
Page 10, line 2, after ("substituted") insert ("the words").
Page 10, line 4, after ("inserted") insert ("the words").
On Question, amendments agreed to.
Clause 6, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 7 agreed to.
Clause 8 [Reports to Parliament]:
Lord Mottistone Lord Mottistone moved Amendment No. 81:
Page 10, line 28, after ("stay;") insert—
("( ) separate analyses of the needs of persons assessed in sections 2 and 4 of this Act, showing the numbers of persons in each category of needs and the trends of such numbers;").
The noble Lord said: It has been represented to me that the statistics relating to persons assessed under Clauses 2 and 4 of the Bill could be much improved and could aid my noble friend the Minister greatly in her planning. It is a technical point and I informed my noble friend the Minister by letter some time ago. I shall be grateful if she will comment on it. I beg to move.
Baroness Trumpington: I have the briefest of comments. This amendment would require the collection of data on each and every assessment carried out under Clauses 2 and 4. It would be a considerable task and have substantial resource implications. I am sorry, but I must resist the amendment.
Lord Mottistone: Would it be possible for my noble friend's statisticians to be put in touch with the people who know about statistics and who might be able to help them?
Baroness Trumpington: On behalf of my department, I resent those remarks.
Lord Mottistone: That is not a very happy reply. However, I shall write to my noble friend on the
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matter. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Baroness Trumpington Baroness Trumpington moved Amendments Nos. 82 to 84:
Page 10, line 35, leave out ("within the meaning of that Act").
Page 10, line 39, leave out ("within the meaning of the 1984 Act").
Page 10, leave out line 40.
On Question, amendments agreed to.
Clause 8, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 9 [Amendment of section 29(2) of the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act 1970]:
Lord Skelmersdale Lord Skelmersdale moved Amendment No. 85:
Page 11, line 3, leave out ("Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act 1970") and insert ("1970 Act").
The noble Lord said: This is a drafting amendment. I beg to move.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Lord Skelmersdale Lord Skelmersdale moved Amendment No. 86:
Page 11, line 10, after ("persons") insert (", or").
The noble Lord said: This clause introduced by my right honourable friend in another place puts beyond doubt the position of persons suffering from mental disorder under the chronically sick and disabled persons legislation in Scotland. This provision, I am happy to say, was warmly welcomed by local authority interests in Scotland, the sponsors and by honourable and right honourable Members in another place. I beg to move.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Lord Skelmersdale Lord Skelmersdale moved Amendment No. 87:
Page 11, line 12, leave out ("under section 12 of the Social Work (Scotland) Act 1968") and insert ("to whom section 12 of the Social Work (Scotland) Act 1968 applies").
The noble Lord said: The same applies to this amendment. I beg to move.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Lord Skelmersdale Lord Skelmersdale moved Amendment No. 88:
Page 11, line 14, leave out subsection (2) and insert—
("(2) In section 2 of the Social Work (Scotland) Act 1968 (social work committees and functions referred to them) in paragraph (a) of subsection (2) after the word "Act" there shall be inserted the words "as read with sections 1 and 2(1) of the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act 1970 and the Disabled Persons (Services, Consultation and Representation) Act 1986".
(3) The foregoing provisions of this section extend to Scotland only.").
The noble Lord said: This amendment repairs a technical omission to the list of provisions containing functions which stand referred to the social work committee of regional authorities in Scotland under section 2(2) of the Social Work (Scotland) Act 1968 and also adds a reference to the present Bill. I beg to move.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Clause 9, as amended, agreed to.
Lord Skelmersdale Lord Skelmersdale moved Amendment No. 89:
After Clause 9 insert the following new clause—
Persons leaving special education: Scotland.
("9A.—(1) Before an education authority make a report under section 65B(1) of the 1980 Act on a child they shall require the appropriate authority to give an opinion as to whether or not the child is a disabled person.
(2) Where the appropriate authority have given an opinion that the child is a disabled person, the education authority shall make a note of this opinion in the Record kept under section 60(2) of the 1980 Act and in the report made under section 65B(1) of that Act.
(3) Where an education authority—

(a) intend to record a child or young person under section 60(2) of the 1980 Act (recording of children with special educational needs) after the period mentioned in section 65B(2) of that Act; or

(b) after making a report under the said section 65B(1) on a child or young person who was not at the time of the report a disabled person, become aware of a significant change in the mental or physical condition of the child or young person giving them reason to believe that he may now be a disabled person

they shall before opening the Record, or, as the case may be, on becoming aware of the change, require the appropriate authority to give an opinion as to whether or not the child or young person is a disabled person and if the appropriate authority give an opinion that he is, this opinion shall be recorded in the Record and (where applicable) the report.
(4) Where the appropriate authority have given an opinion that a child or young person is a disabled person it shall be the duty of that authority to make an assessment of the needs of that child or young person with respect to the provision by the authority of any statutory services for that person in accordance with the welfare enactments, and for that assessment to be carried out—

(a) in the case of a child in relation to whom a report is made under section 65B(1) of the 1980 Act, within the period mentioned in section 65B(2) of that Act; and

(b) in the case of a child or young person who is considered to be disabled under subsection (3) above, as soon as is reasonably practicable (but, in any event, not later than 6 months from the time the appropriate authority was asked for an opinion as to whether or not the child or young person was a disabled person)

and to make a report thereon.
(5) Where the appropriate authority have given an opinion that a child is a disabled person and it subsequently appears to the education authority—

(a) that the child will cease to receive full-time education at school at a particular date and will not subsequently be receiving full-time education at an establishment of further education; or

(b) that the child will cease to receive full-time education at such an establishment on a particular date

the education authority shall, not later than 6 months before that date, record the date in the report or (if no report has been made) give written notification of the date to the appropriate authority.
(6) If at any time it appears to the education authority—

(a) that a child or young person who has been recorded as being disabled has ceased to receive full-time education; and

(b) the authority did not at the appropriate time—

(i) record that date in the report made under section 65B of the 1980 Act; or (as the case may be)

(ii) give notification to the appropriate authority; and

(c) a copy of the report has not been sent to the bodies mentioned in section 65B(6) of the said Act

they shall, as soon as is reasonably practicable, record the date in the report and send a copy of the report to the appropriate authority or (if no report has been made) give written notification of the date to the appropriate authority.
(7) The education authority and the appropriate authority shall keep under consideration the cases of all children and young persons on whom a report has been made under section 65B of the 1980 Act or, as the case may be, under subsection (4) and shall at such times as they consider appropriate review the information contained in the report.
(8) Nothing in subsection (4) shall require the appropriate authority to make an assessment of the needs of a child or young person—

(a) if having obtained the age of 16, he has requested that such an assessment should not be made under that subsection; or

(b) if, being under that age or unable to make such a request by reason of any mental or physical incapacity, his parent has made such a request.

(9) In this section—
"appropriate authority" means the local authority for the purposes of the Social Work (Scotland) Act 1968 failing to perform functions in relation to the child or young person;
and expressions used in the 1980 Act have the same meaning in this section as in that Act.
(10) The foregoing provisions of this section extend to Scotland only.").
The noble Lord said: When this Bill was in another place my honourable friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State gave an assurance that he would make arrangements to bring forward for Scotland provisions relating to persons leaving special education which were similar, in effect, to Clause 3. The new clause now before us does just that.
In considering this clause we had to have regard to the very different statutory provisions covering children and young persons with special educational needs in Scotland. For example, we have had to have regard to the fact that in Scotland arrangements already exist for these children to have their future needs assessed. This assessment, made under Section 65B of the Education (Scotland) Act 1980, takes place during the period when a child is aged between 14 years and 15 years 3 months. In bringing forward this new clause we have taken care to ensure not only that there should be no duplication of effort, which could easily occur if the two assessments needed are not carefully co-ordinated, but also that we build upon existing arrangements in a way which both improves them and makes the extension of assessment more effective. I am confident that those objectives have been achieved in this clause and that no disabled recorded child will leave special education without the benefit of an up-to-date assessment by both education authority and social work departments of his future needs and welfare requirements.
I can tell the Committee that the Association of Directors of Education and Social Work, as well as CoSLA, have been consulted and have agreed these new arrangements in principle. I beg to move.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Clause 10 [Assessment and recording of children and young persons]:
Lord Skelmersdale Lord Skelmersdale moved Amendment No. 90:
Page 11, line 15, leave out ("Education (Scotland) Act 1980") and insert ("1980 Act").
The noble Lord said: I shall speak also to Amendments Nos. 91 to 94 inclusive.
When Clause 10 was introduced in another place my honourable friend the Under-Secretary explained how subsection (5) corrected an anomaly. Section 63(1) of the Act gave rights to parents to appeal against the decision to record their child and for certain other matters but did not give a right of appeal against an authority's decision not to record a child.
Another place agreed that amendment, which applied to children, but I have to tell the Committee that a similar anomaly exists in respect of young persons. As the law stands at present those persons have no right of appeal against a decision of the education authority not to record their special education needs, which effectively may deny them the considerable benefit which might follow recording. The Government believe that that should be corrected, and the tabled amendment to Section 63(2) of the Act is necessary so to do.
The amendment substituting the words "1980 Act" for "Education (Scotland) Act 1980" is consequential and technical and related to the amendments that have been tabled to Clause 12. The other amendments are also technical and relate to cementing in the new provision on appeals. I beg to move.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Lord Skelmersdale Lord Skelmersdale moved Amendments Nos. 91 to 94:
Page 12, line 26, after ("persons") insert ("—(a)").—.
Page 12, line 30, at end insert—
("(b) in subsection (2) before paragraph (a) there shall be inserted—
"(aa) a decision of an education authority not to record the young person or, following a review under section 65A of this Act, not to continue to record him;" ").
Page 12, line 32, after ("paragraph (a)" insert ("—(a)").
Page 12, line 33, at end insert—
("(b) for the words ("(2)(a)") substitute ("(2)(aa) or (a)").
The noble Lord said: I beg to move Amendments Nos. 91 to 94 en bloc. I spoke to them with Amendment No. 90.
The Chairman of Committees: I have to point out that in Amendment No. 91 there is a misprint. It should read:
Page 12, line 26, after ("persons") insert ("—(a)").—.
On Question, amendments agreed to.
Clause 10, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 11 agreed to.
11.45 p.m.
Lord Taylor of Gryfe Lord Taylor of Gryfe moved Amendment No. 95:
After Clause 11, insert the following new clause:
("Advancement of health of people of Scotland.
.—After section 13 of the National Health Service (Scotland) Act 1978 there shall be added the following section.
"13A.—(1) For the purposes of section 13 above, and the duty under section 15 of the Disabled Persons (Services, Consultation and Representation) Act 1986 of health boards and local authorities concerned with provision of services for the disabled to co-operate with one another the following provisions shall apply.
(2) There shall be established for the area of each Health Board a joint planning committee.
(3) Every joint planning committee shall consist of representatives of the Health Board, of local authorities in the area of the Health Board, of housing associations, development corporations, voluntary organisations and of representatives of relevant consumers of health services in that area hereafter referred to as the committee's 'constituent Health Board, authorities and organisations') appointed in such numbers and on such terms as shall be prescribed in a scheme to be contained in regulations made by the Secretary of State.
(4) Before making regulations under this section, the Secretary of State shall consult with such associations of local
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authorities and with such other organisations and individuals as appear to him to be appropriate.
(5) The general function of a joint planning committee shall be to improve through liaison, co-ordination and planning the effectiveness and efficiency of the services of common concern to its constituent Health Board, authorities and organisations.
(6) A joint planning committee shall:

(a) monitor the planning and development of services of common concern;

(b) establish procedures conducive to the implementation of those services;

(c) advise upon the making of payments towards expenditure on community services under section 16A of this Act.

(7) Every joint planning committee shall prepare and adopt every three years a plan (hereafter referred to as a 'joint plan') for the guidance of the committee's constituent Health Board, authorities and organisations in the performance of services of common concern.
(8) A joint plan shall contain:

(a) a comprehensive review of the provision and operation of services of common concern to the committee's constituent Health Board, authorities and organisations including those services in relation to disabled persons;

(b) the committee's proposals for the future provision of the said services.

(9) The Secretary of State shall make regulations governing the preparation and adoption of joint plans including provision for consultation with the public.
(10) The Secretary of State shall issue guidance in a code of practice to joint planning committees concerning the form and content of joint plans.".")
The noble Lord said: I am sorry to interrupt the rapid progress of the Bill in the past hour but the matter to which I shall speak is of great concern, particularly in Scotland. I am sorry that a Scottish Minister is not on the Front Bench, as he would understand the full implications of what I have to say.
From these Benches we have not so far spoken on the amendments and on the Bill. We have no intention of impeding the progress of the Bill and we add our congratulations to the officials and all concerned with the improvements to the Bill that have been effected at this stage. I might even add my congratulations to the individual who initiated the Bill in another place. I see him in the Gallery and he has been following the proceedings throughout. He is to be congratulated on drawing the first place in the ballot for Private Bills and also on guiding the Bill through another place and initiating the measure in that way.
The amendment draws attention to certain weaknesses in the consultation procedures. It was drafted by a group called the Care in the Community Working Party. It is a fairly representative group. It is comprised of Age Concern, Community Service Volunteers, the Society for the Mentally Handicapped and the Association for Mental Health. The fact that those bodies have combined to draft the amendment indicates the depth of their concern about this weakness.
In Scotland, the development of care in the community for disabled people, in particular, lags far behind that in England and Wales. There continues to be a much greater emphasis than south of the Border on long-stay institutional care, primarily in large, inadequate and often inaccessible and inappropriate hospitals. Anyone who has been reading the Scottish press in the past month and the revelations of the appalling conditions at Lennox Castle mental hospital will understand how serious is this matter.
The trouble is that there is an absence of concerted action at the local level across Scotland based upon joint planning and active collaboration among the local authorities, the health boards, the voluntary organisations, the housing associations and all who are concerned in these matters. The lack of substantial ministerial initiatives in Scotland to parallel the significant progress that has been made in England is disturbing. England and Wales are much ahead of Scotland in dealing with this matter of local collaboration by interested parties.
The problem is that instead of legislation in Scotland, successive Secretaries of State have had to rely upon mild exhortations in Scottish Office circulars, whereas in England the circulars governing this matter which are issued by the DHSS have some statutory backing and carry more authority.
The bodies which have asked me to raise the matter in this Committee feel deeply about it and feel that this is the opportunity for a draft clause to be inserted to correct the deficiencies of joint liaison and joint planning committees in Scotland which are being merged due to the absence of any statutory framework for co-operation. It is with that in mind that I commend the amendment to the Government.
The preparation of effective and agreed joint plans is a fundamental prerequisite if joint planning committees are ultimately to be of any real value to the people who need the services of the authorities concerned. It is because I wish to see this proposal implemented and to see the Scottish situation brought more into line with what has been achieved in England and Wales that I beg to move.
Lord Skelmersdale: While I understand the opening remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Gryfe, I should remind him that the Government speak with one voice and on this matter at this time I am it.
On behalf of the Government I regret that I cannot accept the amendment, though I understand the genuine concern which underlines it. The clause is, I understand, identical to one introduced by the Bill's sponsors in Commmittee in another place. My honourable friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary rejected the very detailed and prescriptive elements which it contained and the clause was removed on Report with the agreement of the sponsors, following my honourable friend's clear undertaking to introduce into the Bill when it was being considered in this Committee reserve powers in relation to the establishment of these committees and relevant aspects of their activities.
Now, as the noble Lord has told us, we have it back. With the Committee's permission I shall rehearse very briefly the outline of my honourable friend's case against the clause. While he wished to give the necessary encouragement for co-operation between health and social work authorities as in the present Clause 11 he could not at that stage accept the need for a statutory requirement to form joint planning committees as in subsection (2) of the new clause.
The membership requirements in subsection (3) were felt to be very unwieldy and having to seek the breadth of opinions required in that provision would
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undoubtedly delay the preparation of joint plans to a very considerable degree. Moreover the requirement to consult before making regulations as required in subsection (4) was seen as an unnecessary extra hurdle in discussions and debate which will be necessary anyway. The remaining provisions were, likewise, felt to be unduly bureaucratic and quite inappropriate for dealing with the variety of local circumstances likely to be encountered. In short, the clause was seen as cutting across the approach the Government were seeking to apply to joint planning and which, I understand, is beginning to produce encouraging results.
The arrangements preferred by the Government are now being implemented by health boards and local authorities, with the appropriate involvement of voluntary agencies. In urging the rejection of the same clause in another place, my honourable friend stressed that it would be senseless to make new requirements now and so lose what has already been achieved, thus branding the arrangements a failure without giving them reasonable time to produce results of the kind we expect.
On further consideration between Committee and Report stages in another place, he did however recognise that the present Bill provides an opportunity to secure a reserve power providing for the statutory regulation of joint planning in Scotland should the present administrative arrangements after all fail to show themselves properly effective following a proper period of trial. An undertaking was therefore given in the debate on Report to bring forward an amendment to Clause 11 as it now stands which would have provided a power to proceed in this way.
There was a difficulty, however, which was recognised in the other place and which I may say would equally affect the noble Lord's own clause. Any power taken in the present Bill can only be drafted in terms which apply to the classes of persons to whom the Bill in general relates. It could not, as matters stand, cover any range of priority groups for joint planning, still less joint planning as a whole.
As the sponsors of the Bill already know, attempts to secure an extension of the Long Title of the Bill for this specific purpose have not proved acceptable to the appropriate authorities. The Government have explored how this difficulty might be overcome, and I am advised that an effective solution has now emerged. An amendment on the lines previously envisaged containing the power relating to joint planning committees referred to above but covering all the priority groups and encompassing the provisions of the present Clause 11 will be introduced in the National Health Service (Amendment) Bill, which completed its passage in another place very recently and is now due to come before this House shortly.
I am sure that the Committee will accept that this change in arrangements is required on grounds which could not have been anticipated with any certainty two months or so ago, particularly given the speed with which last minute discussions had to be carried out.
I ask the Committee to accept that the proposal now before the Committee will provide a final outcome in no way different from that envisaged by my honourable friend in his statement at Report stage in another place. It is not proposed to move any

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amendment to Clause 11 at this time but, so that the House can consider this matter fully, we will instead include a repeal provision in the National Health Service (Amendment) Bill to take Clause 11 out of the present Bill, and cover this point in the latter Bill by an amended Clause 11 to this Bill.
This may seem a strange way of going about things hut, on reconsideration, we decided that this procedure was fairest to all sides. To avoid the Government being accused of asking the promoters of the Bill and indeed your Lordships to buy a pig in a poke, I trust that the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, and the Committee will agree with this procedure.
Lord Taylor of Gryfe: I am sure that the Minister appreciates that I shall require time to study his comprehensive reply. I was rather disappointed at the reaction of the Minister. I thought that he was unduly complacent and unduly defensive about the present situation. That situation is intolerable in Scotland. I shall, however, study the new provisions included in the National Health Service (Amendment) Bill that the noble Lord has suggested might cover the points of concern not only to myself but also to the large number of organisations involved which have invited me to state their case tonight. I shall study them. If it is necessary, I shall return to this matter at Report stage. But if the situation which I have described is about to be covered in the new National Health Service (Amendment) Bill which is about to come to us then it is very acceptable.
I do not propose to take this to a Division tonight, but I must say this to the Minister. If he looks at the condition of the treatment of people who are mentally ill and mentally handicapped in Scottish institutions, it is a national disgrace and something will require to be done to ensure that there is appropriate joint planning so that local communities can express themselves and become involved in the changes which are necessary. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 12 [Interpretation]:
Lord Skelmersdale Lord Skelmersdale moved Amendment No. 96:
Page 13, line 18, at end insert—
(" "the 1980 Act" means the Education (Scotland) Act 1980;").
The noble Lord said: This is a purely technical amendment. I beg to move.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Baroness Trumpington Baroness Trumpington moved Amendments Nos. 97 and 98:
Page 13, line 23, leave out ("1(5)") and insert ("(Appointment of authorised representatives of disabled persons) (1)")
Page 13, line 32, at end insert—
("guardian" except in section (Appointment of authorised representatives of disabled persons (6)) means a person appointed by deed or will or by order of a court of competent jurisdiction to be the guardian of a child;
"Health Board" means a Health Board within the meaning of the 1978 Act;
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"hospital"—

(a) in relation to England and Wales, means—

(i) a health service hospital within the meaning of the 1977 Act, or

(ii) any accommodation provided by any person pursuant to arrangements made under section 23(1) of that Act (voluntary organisations and other bodies) and used as a hospital; and

(b) in relation to Scotland, means a health service hospital within the meaning of the 1978 Act;")

The noble Baroness said: I beg to move Amendments Nos. 97 and 98, and speak to Amendments Nos. 100 and 102. These are consequential and drafting amendments. I beg to move.
The Chairman of Committees: With the permission of the Committee I put Amendments Nos. 97 and 98 en bloc.
On Question, amendments agreed to.
Lord Skelmersdale Lord Skelmersdale moved Amendment No. 99:
Page 13, line 41, leave out ("sections 1 and 2") and insert ("section 1, as read with section 2,").
The noble Lord said: This is a purely technical amendment correcting an error in Clause 12. I beg to move.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Baroness Trumpington Baroness Trumpington moved Amendment No. 100:
Page 14, line 2, at end insert—
(" "modifications" includes additions, omissions and amendments;
"parents", in relation to England and Wales, means, in the case of a child who is illegitimate, his mother, to the exclusion of his father:")
The noble Baroness said: I beg to move.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
[Amendment No. 101 not moved.]
Baroness Trumpington Baroness Trumpington moved Amendment No. 102:
Page 14, line 3, at end insert—
(" "special hospital" means a special hospital within the meaning of the 1977 Act;
"State hospital" means a State hospital within the meaning of the 1984 Act;
"statutory services"—

(a) in relation to England and Wales, means services under any arrangements which a local authority are required to make by virtue of any of the welfare enactments, and

(b) in relation to Scotland, means services which a local authority find it necessary to provide themselves or by arrangement with another local authority, or with any voluntary or other body in connection with the performance of the local authority's functions under the welfare enactments;

"voluntary organisation" means a body the activities of which are carried on otherwise than for profit, but does not include any public or local authority;")
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Lord Skelmersdale Lord Skelmersdale moved Amendment No. 103:
Page 14, line 10, after ("and") insert ("sections 7 and 8 of ").
The noble Lord said: This is another technical amendment correcting the definition of the welfare

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enactments in Clause 12 as it applies to Scotland. I beg to move
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Clause 12, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 13 agreed to.
Clause 14 [Short title, commencement, regulations, orders and extent]:
Baroness Trumpington Baroness Trumpington moved Amendment No. 104:
Page 14, line 17, leave out ("made by statutory instrument")
The noble Baroness said: This is a purely technical amendment. I beg to move.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Lord Skelmersdale Lord Skelmersdale moved Amendment No. 105:
Page 14, line 19, at end insert (" , and different provision may be made under this subsection for England and Wales and for Scotland").
The noble Lord said: This amendment recognises that different circumstances regarding the implementation of Great Britain or United Kingdom legislation can and do arise north and south of the border and seeks to adapt the Bill's commencement provisions to the possible need for separate commencement of individual provisions.
It is likely that the Government will wish to see the various provisions of the Bill commenced simultaneously throughout the country. It must be recognised, however, that commencement will depend in practice on a number of factors, including the availability of resources (both financial and human). This point was made clear at the Second Reading debate and in another place.
I can fully assure the Committee that my right honourable friend the Secretary of State has every intention of implementing the Bill as it finally emerges from consideration in another place just as quickly as can be done in the circumstances prevailing at the time and in the light of consultation with the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities. The resources available, however, may be subject to different pressures and priorities north and south of the border and a facility for separate commencement is clearly necessary to ensure that the provisions are commenced in Scotland at the time which is most appropriate in Scottish circumstances, and I commend the amendment to the Committee on this basis.
Baroness Masham of Ilton: I very much hope that this Bill will be extended to Northern Ireland as the other countries have been mentioned.
Baroness Trumpington: Northern Ireland has a separate and distinctive structure for the delivery of health and personal social services. It is most notably a fully integrated service under the area health and social services board. It is important that there should be an opportunity for local consultation in Northern Ireland, and that that process should be able to take into account the quite different administrative
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structures and circumstances. Such consultation will of course, be put in hand if the Bill is enacted.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Baroness Trumpington Baroness Trumpington moved Amendment No. 106:
Page 14, line 21, after ("and") insert ("(except in the case of an order under subsection (2))")
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Clause 14, as amended, agreed to.
House resumed: Bill reported with the amendments.

Town and Country Planning (NIREX) Special Development Order 1986
12.1 a.m.
Lord Holderness Lord Holderness rose to move, that an Humble Address be presented to Her Majesty praying that the order [S.I., 1986 No. 812] be annulled.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.
I offer to those noble Lords who have been steadfast enough to remain to take part, and also to my noble friend Lord Elton, an apology for keeping them (in so far as I am responsible) at this late hour on a matter of some technical complexity. However, although technical, these proposals closely concern and greatly worry a number of ordinary men and women. While I can claim no expertise whatever in these matters, particularly in this difficult matter of disposing of radioactive waste, someone should ask simple and inexpert questions in the hope of receiving expert, comprehensive and, it is to be hoped, comprehensible answers.
Last month this order was approved in another place by a less than usual majority—a modest majority of 78. However, it was decisively approved and the significance of that decision will be evident to all Members of your Lordships' House. If one of these four sites were provisionally selected, I understand that my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for the Environment would order a public inquiry before reaching any decision about future development. Therefore, my noble friend will probably assure me that there is no cause for immediate anxiety. However, although I would willingly certainly accept his assurance, looking back over my own political life, I am conscious of missing a number of opportunities by not voicing anxieties or opposition early enough before attitudes and proposals hardened into firm Government decisions.
Of the four sites, the one which I know best is at Killingholme on the south bank of the Humber. As I live in that county, I am better aware of the attitude of the Humberside County Council than of the other authorities affected.
No proposal of this kind can expect popularity. There are, after all, plenty of things that one does not want outside one's front door, outside one's back door, or even discreetly hidden at the bottom of the garden. Therefore, a proposal to examine a site of this kind for

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the possible storage of nuclear waste is virtually certain to attract the opposition of the vast majority of those who live near the site. That in itself does not necessarily prove the decision to be wrong. We can all think of a great many circumstances in which the national interest must take precedence over the natural protests of those locally affected. However, before conflicts of that kind between national and local interests can be resolved, there are always important questions to answer.
I should like shortly to come to the more general questions to which I urgently seek an authoritative answer from my noble friend. However, the local issues not only in relation to the site that I know best, but in relation to the other three sites as well, must be looked at in the widest possible context because it is in the vicinity of these four scheduled sites where the Government's intention, even to give consent to preliminary investigation, will have immediate and considerable effects.
I do not wish to exaggerate those effects but I have lived for a number of years close to the unemployment problems of Hull and its hinterland and the Humber estuary, and I know how delicately balanced industrial siting decisions can often be; for instance, between, on the one hand, the north and south banks of the Humber, and, on the other, alternative sites elsewhere in the United Kingdom.
The Government, to their great credit, have produced massive assistance towards the development of the estuary. If they are fully conscious of the threat to their own economic policy posed by the introduction of this order, but are nonetheless convinced, and can convince us, that there is an overwhelming case for including Killingholme among the four possible sites, then I myself should find it hard to argue that that site should not he investigated. But I shall remain profoundly worried on behalf of the county of Humberside unless my noble friend can assure me that the Government have taken account of all the facts, physical, environmental, economic and so on, before reaching even this first stage of decision, and that at a subsequent public inquiry, if one became necessary, at either Killingholme or the other three sites, the terms of reference will be equally unrestricted.
Turning to the wider issues, I myself find it hard to believe that there can be any logical connection between the disaster at Chernobyl and the search for a disposal site for low-level radioactive waste in this country. But I doubt whether this is the way it appears to men and women living very close to one of these sites, or even to a lot of people who live in other parts of the country. For a number of reasons, public opinion at the moment seems greatly rattled. It is far more apprehensive than I, with my limited knowledge, think it ought to be. But that really is not the point. Whether or not these apprehensions are justified, I think that the Government must take seriously the need to allay them.
Long ago when I was Minister of Power I enjoyed, or suffered, considerable responsibility for the nuclear generation of electricity. Fortunately for me, there was then relatively little alarm about nuclear matters, and it was not until a good deal later, as the Environment Committee of another place very well put it, that,
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"an awareness grew, that the benevolence of civil nuclear power was tainted by some of the malevolence of its parent, manifested primarily as radioactive waste.".
Looking back to those early 1960s before these nuclear fears revived, I doubt whether I, or responsible members of subsequent governments, gave sufficient—or sufficiently constructive—thought to the problem of disposal. And so here we are in 1986, some 40 years after the problem began, still apparently searching rather uncertainly for a solution. Drigg, in Cumbria, which is the major disposal site at present, is said to have a life of two decades or more. But the Environment Committee, to quote it again, firmly concluded that,
"it is not an acceptable model for any future site."
Therefore the Government seem to be looking for what I might call a superior Drigg, more efficiently and certainly more strictly organised but still based on the same philosphy of near-surface disposal. I fervently hope that my noble friend Lord Elton can convince me that the Government are right in judging near-surface disposal as the best solution. because research and experience abroad certainly suggests that it is not the only solution. In my opinion public anxieties are unlikely to be allayed by the pre-emptive choice of a shallow site and the rejection of any deep alternatives, particularly in view of the paucity of research by the present and past governments, the scepticism of many experts and the very different decisions reached by many other countries. Therefore I ask my noble friend whether this is really the time to go ahead with the investigations authorised by this order when foreign experience may convince us before long that the future choice of another near-surface site would be wrong technically, environmentally and in terms of public opinion.
Recently I have been very disturbed by the doubts expressed by people whose balanced and sensible judgment I greatly respect on the whole question of the continuation of the nuclear programme. I should hate to see it discontinued, but the doubters I have met will soon be multiplied unless the Government show themselves more willing and more ready to examine alternatives. Nor do I think that this responsibility can be delegated to any public body. I have no reason whatsoever to question the integrity or the professional competence of Nirex, but I know that governments, even at times of temporary unpopularity, nearly always inspire the greater confidence because they are ultimately answerable and therefore more sensitive to what electors think and also because—I am sure my noble friend will take this as a compliment—experts generally find it harder to win our trust than do the intelligent amateurs who, by and large, preside over our affairs.
Therefore I am convinced that the leading of public opinion especially in a complex matter of this kind must be the responsibility of the Government. It would be wrong, in my opinion, to seek to overturn a decision reached by a considerable majority in another place. But in return I fervently hope that my noble friend will recognise his obligation to explain as convincingly as he can the need to explore in the near future possible shallow disposal sites at a time when Drigg, however unsatisfactory, still has more than 20 years of life and at a time also when past experience of

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and present research into alternative solutions do not demonstrate beyond reasonable doubt (to put it in the most moderate terms) that the near-surface method of disposal is either the only choice or the best available to us. I beg to move.
Moved, That an Humble Address be presented to Her Majesty praying that the Order [S.I., 1986, No. 812] be annulled.—(Lord Holderness.]
12.13 a.m.
Lord Ezra: My Lords, the House is surely indebted to the noble Lord, Lord Holderness, for introducing this Motion to annul the order. I had the pleasure of close contact with him when he was Minister of Power and I was particularly struck then by the broad view that he took of energy problems. Listening to him speak tonight I notice that he still retains that breadth of view. He has raised a number of key issues arising from what might appear to be a relatively simple exploratory operation. As he rightly pointed out, public opinion is now profoundly disturbed about the whole nuclear issue, and it is important that there should be a period in which there can be some detailed explanation of the whole nuclear problem and such reassurance as can effectively be provided.
In these circumstances it seems unwise to be proceeding with this inquiry. The Drigg site, which plays a crucial part in this whole operation, is still capable of being used for more than 20 years. So the need for haste does not appear to be there. Would it not be wiser, therefore, to withdraw this order, to reconsider the various options for the disposal of nuclear waste to which the noble Lord referred, and then perhaps, in coming back to this, to proceed by way of normal planning procedures? By so doing, I believe that the Government could achieve some degree of reassurance in the public mind.
However justified the procedure now proposed may be, it nevertheless has created a great deal of concern, particularly in the areas affected, and until these inquiries are completed these areas will suffer as a result of the uncertainty to which they will be subjected. Then there is a long-running planning procedure to be followed in the case of that area which might be selected.
So long as the public is not reassured and convinced that shallow trenching is the right way to dispose of this particular category of nuclear waste, then I believe there is bound to be resistance. Would it not be worth while spending more time on such an inquiry? Most of the countries which have to deal with this problem are now using the deep-mine system of disposal. Some very impressive pictures were shown on television recently of the way in which this problem has been dealt with in Sweden. Comparing what we are proposing to do with what the Swedes are doing, it does look as if our approach is somewhat amateur. They seem to be taking a very professional and serious view of the matter. Obviously, the method they have adopted is much more costly, but, when one is dealing with matters of this degree of complexity and uncertainty, I should have thought that the more costly route might in the long run be the more effective route.
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What all this adds up to is that there really is a strong case for re-consideration before this inquiry into the four sites is proceeded with. I very much hope, therefore, that after other noble Lords have spoken, and when the Minister replies, he will be able to tell us that the Government are prepared to reconsider this issue.
12.17 a.m.
The Lord Bishop of Lincoln: My Lords, I also should like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Holderness, for initiating this debate, and also to support many of the points that the noble Lord, Lord Ezra has just made.
The two sites at South Killingholme and Fulbeck which is is proposed to explore are both in the diocese of Lincoln, and I know that I speak with the fullest support of the county councils concerned and of all the people in those areas. The Member of Parliament for Brigg and Cleethorpes has told me that whereas there is the usual vigorous and healthy cut and thrust over political matters in that part of the world, nothing has so united everybody of all parties as the proposals that are presently before us.
The first point that I should really like to make is one about timing. Why are the Government in such a hurry to make these explorations, hustling through the special development order when the very questioning report of the Environment Committee has not yet even been debated? We know that the United Kingdom lags behind in its research, and therefore there is all the more reason not to proceed with irresponsible haste in matters where many important scientific factors are not yet really understood and where the procedures for the process required are, as set out in the Environment Committee's report, quite inadequate. The report says—and the Minister will know this very well:
"The poor state of research in the United Kingdom means that it is impossible at this stage for us to recommend any disposal option with total confidence."
The point is also made in the report that the chairman of the CEGB himself has said that there is not really the haste that was once supposed, and not least, as has already been said, because the lifespan of Drigg is still two or three decades before us.
Surely it would be right that the many and varied questions that are posed by the Environment Committee report should be debated and engaged with before there is the exploration of any of these sites. It seems to me foolish to exacerbate public opinion in advance of convincing research. If the latter came first, in really convincing form, the inevitable problems of public relations would be very much more easily and very much more rationally dealt with.
The second point that I should like to make is about the political process involved. At the moment the main actors in the drama seem to be Nirex and the Government shuffling the whole matter around in a closed circle of their own. Nirex was set up in 1982 by the four public bodies concerned in response to a government White Paper, so that at least it can be thought of as an adopted child of government and, through the special development order, it is now able to make its applications direct to the Minister. This means that the local authorities on whom rests the main responsibility for the nation's planning are, over

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the important issue of the exploration of these sites, cut out of the picture.
I am told that Nirex in its 1986 and 1987 budgets has nearly a million pounds for public relations. Local authorities, on the other hand, are subject to very tight financial control and, anyway, are only allowed to distribute information and not to comment. Here again the important public debate is in danger of becoming damagingly ill-balanced. It is little wonder that the local outcry is so strong, not just because of what is being proposed but because of the way the proposals are intended to be handled.
In a democracy it is surely not proper that matters, just because they are complex and technical, should be taken so considerably out of public discussion as though ordinary local people were hysterical or ignorant. This is insulting to suggest, and it is felt to be so. And it is also not true. The people concerned in this matter in Lincolnshire and South Humberside fully recognise that there is a national problem of waste disposal, but they are demanding, through some very well-informed and technically able committees, the priority of the research which is needed.
There are among other things some scientific facts relating to possible re-entry into the environment of radioactive elements which are plainly not yet fully understood. I think that the Chernobyl disaster makes it quite clear that there are a lot of things that the experts do not yet understand and cannot yet handle. It is therefore all the more surprising that the detailed and well thought out proposals for handling the whole public opinion aspect of this matter put forward by the Environment Committee have, so far as I am aware, received no public mention by the Government.
The last point that I should like to make relates to this matter of criteria of site selection. The Environment Committee's report says about this subject:
"We therefore recommend that site selection criteria should be established in advance and published for each type of waste disposal route likely to be developed. Thereafter, the Department of the Environment should ensure that any possible future disposal sites identified by Nirex should satisfy the site-selection criteria for that disposal option. Thus, responsibility for final short listing of possible future sites should effectively rest with the Department of the Environment rather than with Nirex".
We in Lincolnshire and Humberside have no idea what criteria have been used in the proposed selection of these sites. The geology of both areas is such that it raises very serious questions as to whether the criteria used have been geological ones. Nirex says it has been given geological advice by the British Geological Survey, The BGS provided information about several hundred sites but did not among them recommend Fulbeck. Fulbeck and South Killingholme and, I believe, the other sites are in public ownership. Was this, then, the main criterion of choice which would conveniently cut out the need for compulsory purchase orders? I think we have the right to know from the noble Lord the Minister what criteria have been used in selecting these sites as possible areas for exploration.
12.26 a.m.
Lord Kimball: My Lords, no Member of your Lordships' House would doubt the depth of local knowledge which my noble friend Lord Holderness
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has of at least two of these sites: the one in Humberside and the one in Lincolnshire. I am certain that your Lordships are all very impressed with the arguments which have been advanced by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Lincoln. He, after all, knows the feelings of the people throughout his diocese. His whole life as Bishop of Lincoln has been devoted to expressing those feelings, and I think it is very significant that at almost the end of his tenure of that see he should come here tonight to tell us how very sincerely concerned the people of his diocese are about the proposal.
My only excuse for intervening in this debate is that two of these sites—the one at South Killingholme and the one at Fulbeck—bracketed my constituency in Gainsborough, which I was privileged to represent for some 28 years. I too know the grave doubts expressed by people in those areas, which have also been expressed by their Members of Parliament in the other place. However, I am very conscious of the fact that I myself have offered the Atomic Energy Authority a site for the disposal of intermediate waste. True, it was in what is so often nowadays called a wilderness area. I think we should be perfectly clear that the wilderness areas are mostly on granite, and granite is unsuitable for storing nuclear waste. We come down to the fact that we are advised that the best method of storing this very low-level nuclear waste is in clay, and two of the sites which have suitable clay happen to be in the county of Lincolnshire.
There is just one thing I should like to say, and it is this. I wonder whether we could look at the situation in France, where in some of the rural areas the disposal of low-level nuclear waste has become a good, sound, rural industry. I do not understand what the financial position is, but could Nirex not arrange for Lincolnshire County Council and the district councils involved to go to France to see how the storing of low-level nuclear waste is welcomed in the parishes in France in which it is now dumped? I think they would find that what is done for the people who live in those parishes is of immense benefit.
Of course the immediate worry of people who are faced with having this low-level nuclear waste dumped near their homes is the depreciation of the value of their property. I think that if we look at France we will find that over the period of the next few decades they will not have to pay any rates. I should like to suggest that Nirex should begin to enter into negotiations with the local community so that if one of these sites was finally chosen nobody should have to pay more than 10 per cent. of their rates for the next hundred years. I should like to think that the farmers within the parishes which adjoin the area might well get a payment of, say, £50 an acre, index linked, for the next hundred years for every acre in those parishes which adjoins the area where this low-level nuclear waste is stored.
You could get into an area where there was some public scare as a result of which all the crops in one year were unsaleable; so it would be a good comfort to think that for the next hundred years the farmer would get £50 an area, index linked, for the acres in those adjoining parishes.
As the electricity industry is the main beneficiary of the nuclear programme, could we not have cheap

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electricity for a considerable period in the parishes surrounding these dumping areas? I think my noble friend will find that that is certainly a concession which is extended in France. I mention these three points as opening the bar. If we are going to have low-level nuclear waste stored, could we not have a carrot by which a new rural industry could be profitably established in these areas which might make it a great deal more acceptable?
12.31 a.m.
Lord Monson: My Lords, the noble Lords, Lord Holderness, Lord Ezra, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Lincoln have made the case so well that there is little more I can do other than to dot a few "i's" and cross a few "t's". I live in the former constituency of the noble Lord, Lord Kimball, 17 miles from one of the proposed sites as the crow flies—which is not my normal mode of travel—and 28 miles from one of the other sites. The distances by road are perhaps 25 per cent. greater in each case, so I do not think that development of either site would adversely affect property values in my immediate neighbourhood. However, if anything were to go wrong, if there were to be any sort of malfunction, one would have more serious things than property values to worry about.
It cannot be denied that there is a great deal of official scepticism about the safety and reliability of the proposed method of disposal, to say nothing of public scepticism. The right reverend Prelate has already quoted from the House of Commons environment committee's report. May I quote one further sentence? It reads:
"Considerably greater emphasis must be given in research, development and policy to sea-bed options, especially to the use of tunnels under the sea-bed from land."
It cannot be denied, either, that internationally there is a swing away from near-surface radioactive waste disposal, even for low-level waste. Belgium, Finland, Sweden, Switzerland and West Germany are all concentrating upon deep disposal. Indeed, the West Germans are actively contemplating burying their waste at a depth of up to 1,000 metres—that is to say, over 3,250 feet. In the United States,no fewer than 50 per cent. of the existing shallow burial sites were closed during the 1970s because of water infiltration, lumping of trench covers and erosion, which resulted in a dangerous leakage of radioactivity. The necessary remedial action cost millions of dollars. Who can put his hand on his heart and swear that a similar misfortune might not occur over here?
To a scientific layman like myself, such a possibility seems a distinct, even if statistically remote, possibility at one of the proposed sites, Fulbeck, if not in our lifetime, then at least in our grandchildren's lifetime or in our great-grandchildren's lifetime. Not being a metallurgist, I am unsure of the lifespan of steel drums but I have good reason to know that concrete does not last for ever.
It so happens that the Army used Fulbeck airfield as a training site, and the Army's records demonstrate that trenches when dug tend rapidly to fill with water, showing that for a good part of the year the groundwater level is extremely close to the surface. The risk of harmful material getting into the water
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system is thereby greatly increased. The UK Nirex Ltd. submission agrees that the first prerequisite for radioactivity from such a site to harm human beings is that water must reach the waste itself. At this particular site, there seems a statistically significant increase of such a possibility in comparison with a less waterlogged site, This possibility is heightened by seismic data which shows that Fulbeck happens to be in the above average zone of earthquakes of high intensity in the United Kingdom, and that there is an above average probability of earthquake return within a 200-year period in Lincolnshire as a whole. Echoing the right reverend Prelate, one fears that there may be some truth in the allegation that these four sites were shortlisted not for reasons of optimum safety but because they happened already to be in public ownership which makes things so much easier from any government's point of view.
My Lords, why the rush? On the basis of the Government's own estimates, there is no need for any additional disposal facility for low level waste until the year 2010–24 years from now. The pragmatic French tend to store their low waste near existing nuclear power stations, thereby concentrating the risks in areas where the population are already accustomed to the nuclear industry and have made their dispositions accordingly. This seems a better bet and is fairer than risking the long-term pollution of hitherto unspoiled areas.
But there is a better alternative still. I refer to the method of disposal developed by Dr. Wheeler which involves burying the waste in steel drums beneath the sea bed, which both the French and the Thai Governments happen to be actively considering at present. Surprisingly, the cost is estimated at only £4·10 per cubic metre compared with £6·20 per cubic metre for the shallow trench method on land favoured by the Government. The ocean floor method would be demonstrably safer, would be much cheaper (costing just over 66 per cent. of the method currently proposed), would be electorally vastly more popular, with a general election less than two years away—although I know that this is the last thing that is in the Government's mind.
For all these reasons, I hope that the Government will seriously think again, and at the very least that they will serious consider the interesting suggestions made by the noble Lord, Lord Kimball.
12.37 a.m.
The Earl of Liverpool: My Lords, I, too, should like to join other noble Lords in expressing my gratitude to my noble friend Lord Holderness for enabling us to discuss this matter tonight. The whole question of the nuclear industry programme and the way in which it deals with waste is, I believe, of great concern not only to those people who live in proximity to the four sites which it is proposed Nirex will investigate, but to all of us in this country. The Chernobyl factor has of course only heightened that concern.
The special development order will do nothing to increase the public confidence in the general safety of the nuclear industry and its methods of disposal of waste. I say this because I believe that the sites have been selected not for their inherent suitable location in

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terms of road or rail links, geological strengths or depopulated areas, but because all happen to he in public ownership. This remark has already been made by other noble Lords.
Surely this is not the basis on which to build public confidence in the industry. Public confidence is one of the most important factors and one which we must attempt to build up. The report of the Select Committee on the Environment of another place states in paragraph 242:
"The industry's actions alone will convince the public, not its words. The disorder of the Sellafield site, the crudeness of Drigg, the remoteness of Nirex—these have created far more damage than any amount of facts, figures and PR work will ever repair".
We must have a totally credible and convincing plan for the disposal of all levels of nuclear waste. The responsibility we have in this area is colossal because some elements or fuels used in nuclear power stations have a half life of 24,000 years. I know that that is high-level waste and tonight we are debating low-level waste, but my suggestion is that we could apply one method of disposal to all levels of nuclear waste.
I believe that if we are to succeed in carrying the public with us, we must not only be safe but be seen to be safe. If the strategy is expensive and if it is overcautious, then so be it. What future generations will condemn us for using ultimate safety as the criterion for decision-making, rather than fiscal restraints? So I am in favour of the Rolls-Royce approach, as it is becoming known. I believe that the shallow trench system of disposal that noble Lords have already questioned has been discredited by leakages that have occurred at three such sites in America, which had to be closed down at a cost of millions of dollars.
The alternatives, as we have already heard from the noble Lord, Lord Ezra, and other noble Lords, include the deep mining proposal, which is the option favoured by Belgium, Finland, Sweden and Switzerland. Another is the bore hole into the continental shelf in the North Sea, some 3,000 feet deep. We have also heard about that tonight.
As we have further heard, there is no immediate hurry. I should like to join with the other noble Lords who have spoken tonight in asking: why cannot we consider the other alternatives that are available to us and which Sweden, to take one particular country, has taken so much care to develop?
It is said that we are at least 10 years behind other countries with significant nuclear programmes in our consideration of funding of studies relating to geological disposal of radioactive waste. Is that not a little shaming? Surely now is the time for the Department of the Environment to become fully involved with the industry in setting standards for the future. I do not believe that the implementation of the special development order is the way to catch up with those lost years. I therefore support my noble friend Lord Holderness in his Prayer.
12.42 a.m.
Baroness David: My Lords, we, too, are very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Holderness, for giving the House an opportunity to discuss the special development order. I believe we would all agree that the situation is very difficult. Low level waste must be disposed of and it will continue to have to be disposed
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of, whatever decisions are made about the future or the nuclear industry. Drigg will be filled in by 2010, which, although 24 years away, is really not all that distant when plans of this kind have to be made.
It is very easy to understand the fears and doubts of the local community, particularly at this moment, after the disaster at Chernobyl. It is not surprising that public confidence needs to be restored. I hope that the Minister will be able to do something about that matter, and about the methods being proposed, when he answers the debate.
The local authorities are upset, and that is not surprising. They feel that they have been bypassed once again and that their powers of planning have been taken from them. It is just one more example of central government taking over. However, I will admit that the Government, in their responses to the Select Committee's report, have shown some sensitivity towards the feelings of local communities, particularly in their responses to Recommendations 8 and 21.2.
I would ask, as almost everybody has asked, whether there really is such a need for haste. Is there not time for more research? Could not the decision be postponed, at any rate for a little longer? I may also ask the Minister this question: if the investigation of the four sites goes ahead, and if a site appears to be unsuitable, will that information be given very quickly to the public and the investigation stopped, so that possible planning blight—which is almost inevitable in the four areas concerned—can be removed as soon as possible and some reassurance given to the public? I think it is public concern and public confidence which worries us all. We very much hope that we shall have some reassurance from the Government tonight.
12.45 a.m.
Lord Elton: My Lords, I am much obliged to my noble friend for his tenacity, if nothing else, in providing an opportunity for discussing an important matter which we had on the Order Paper for yesterday and which we are now approaching, bright eyed and bushy-tailed, today.
I will try to be concise but my noble friend asked specifically for comprehensive and technical answers to his questions and I do not doubt that what I say will be quarried in the weeks to come for evidence of either neglect or excessive care according to who is doing the quarrying. I must therefore give a fairly full reply; but I will try to be concise.
My noble friend made a speech that reflects his intimate knowledge both of energy and of government and of what used to be called Yorkshire and what some people think is Yorkshire still and always will be. Before I reply to his questions I must put the special development order as well as the debate itself in the context of the Government's policy. It is a policy that dates back to 1976, when the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution produced its sixth report, on radioactive waste, under the chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord Rowers. The report was well received. Among many other things, it identified the need for national disposal arrangements for low-level and intermediate-level waste. Since then it has been the policy of successive governments to ensure that suitable facilities for disposal are provided. But it is not

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government which is responsible for the actual development of such facilities. That falls to Nirex, a public company owned by the nuclear and electricity industries. It is government's job to set the policy framework and the regulatory controls within which Nirex operates.
In 1982 this Government published a White Paper on Radioactive Waste Management. This concluded that new disposal facilities for low and intermediate level wastes were needed. It envisaged trench facilities for low-level and some intermediate-level wastes: and a deep mine or cavity for other intermediate wastes. In February this year Nirex announced four sites which it wished to examine as potentially suitable for a near surface or trench facility. Only one such site will actually be needed, but the Government asked Nirex to name at least three to ensure a fair and detailed comparison of alternatives. The sites are at Bradwell in Essex, Elstow in Bedfordshire, Fulbeck in Lincolnshire, and South Killingholme in Humberside.
Nirex has carried out desk studies on these sites. It now wishes to undertake detailed investigations of the geology of each. Before any site can be developed Nirex must have sufficient information to determine whether a site is suitable and can be defended at a public inquiry. A proper assessment of the sites' suitability and safety cannot be made without the investigations that the SDO would permit.
A facility, wherever it is established, will be based on the multi-barrier concept. This relies on a number of barriers to retard the return of radioactivity to man. One of these barriers is provided by the geology of the site itself. For the investigation of that geology Nirex needs planning permission. We hope to give it that permission by means of the special development order.
At this point I think I should remind some of your Lordships of what I shall be saying again in a moment in my catalogue of what has happened so far—that we are only talking about low-level waste. Some of the remarks by your Lordships will, on reflection, be considered by your Lordships appropriate not only to intermediate-level but to high-level and long-lasting waste. We are talking about items such as damaged equipment, protective clothing, air filters and ash from the burning of low-level combustible wastes; such items as telephone dials and emergency exit signs. We need to remember that what we are burying are not aggressively lethal materials which can cause great damage in a short time at a long range. We are talking about items which the day or week before may actually have been in a hospital laboratory being worn by a technician.
The next matter that I think I shall be asked to explain is why the Government consider that the special development order procedure is appropriate rather than the normal planning procedures advanced, for instance, by the noble Lord, Lord Ezra. We considered whether those investigations should be subject to planning inquiry, to be followed by a further inquiry into any subsequent proposal to develop a site. The result might have been two long inquiries laid end to end which could have taken a number of years, several of them unnecessary. We believe that it would be wrong to subject communities to such a long period
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of uncertainty unnecessarily. We were strengthened in that belief by views pressed upon us by some honourable Members in another place.
Some noble Lords have criticised the Government for proceeding with the SDO before Parliament had an opportunity to debate the Government's full response to the environment committee's report. The government position on that is that we wanted to reduce to a minimum the period of uncertainty for the communities affected by the SDO. At the same time, we wanted to consider carefully all the committee's wide-ranging recommendations. That led us to set out in a first stage response our comments on all those recommendations that were directly relevant to the SDO, and I repeat all of them. The chairman of the environment committee himself recognised that that was a valid and proper approach when he spoke in the general debate on nuclear energy on 13th May, and a Motion which included an endorsement of that approach was subsequently approved in another place.
It is appropriate at that point to address the question of whether it is necessary to subject the communities to any uncertainty at all at this stage, because the Drigg site, for instance, will be available until after the end of the century. The site will be full, I am advised, between the years 2005 and 2010 as it is at present being used. But proceeding with a near-surface site, as we propose, is unlikely to provide a new site available for use before about 1992. The opening of a new site at least a decade before the Drigg is full will allow better use of Drigg, which can be reserved for wastes from Sellafield and which would, if there was no new facility, have to be transported round the country.
The noble Baroness, Lady David, asked whether we could not extend the period simply in order to conduct more research. But it is clear that as regards this low-level waste the amount of research that has been done is adequate for the risk and the technology in question.
The order that we are considering is not quite the one that was issued primarily to the local authorities and water authorities concerned for consultation in February. We received many comments, and my right honourable and honourable friends in the department met well over a dozen deputations to discuss the order. That is not exactly the closed circuit and secretive exchanges between government and Nirex that the right reverend Prelate felt was the procedure.
The most important change to the order reflects our decision to allow Nirex to carry out test drilling for the investigation of a site to take, as I have already said, low-level waste only. We have dropped the original intention that a near-surface site would take shorter lived intermediate-level waste as well. We took that decision because of the concern of communities around the site and because of views expressed by the Select Committee on the Environment of the House of Commons. I should emphasise that the best scientific advice we have is still that a near-surface facility would be the best option for disposal of some intermediate-level waste. However, pending the identification and development of a deep site, or until the radioactivity has decayed sufficiently for disposal at a low-level waste facility, both short-lived and long-lived intermediate-level waste will now be stored.
My noble friend Lord Liverpool suggested that everything should go into deep bore holes. He rightly

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called that the Rolls-Royce solution, because apart from being very good Rolls-Royces are extremely expensive. The idea of drilling holes 3,000 feet into the earth's crust to drop into them overalls and gloves from hospital laboratories seems a touch extravagant.
Other significant changes have been made to the order which should be of direct benefit to communities around the sites. For instance, the order as originally drafted was open-ended. As now drafted it will run for only five years. All Nirex's investigations will have to be complete within that time. Nirex expects its main work to be over within a year or 18 months, but if a site went before a public inquiry, the inspector could ask Nirex to take additional measures or measurements. That is why although we have introduced a finite period it is one which should overlap the inquiry.
A recommendation of the House of Commons Select Committee that is not reflected in a change in the drafting of the order is its first: that the department's classification of low-level waste should exclude alpha bearing waste and long-lived waste. The committee also recommended that shallow disposal should be limited to short-lived low-level wastes. This simple approach could lead to an unintentional absurdity. All natural materials contain trace amounts of natural long-lived radioactivity. Some granite contains about one part uranium per million, which is radioactive, long-lived and alpha-radiation emitting. If there were an absolute prohibition on shallow disposal of such radioactivity, we could not even put into the facility the granite chippings from the roads that lead to it. That gives your Lordships an idea of the levels about which we are talking.
The geological investigations in themselves should have neither a significant nor a permanent effect on the local environment. I think that your Lordships have seen enough of onshore drilling for me not to spend much time reassuring you about that at this time of night. If during investigations any of the sites is shown to be unsuitable, it will be dropped at once at that stage. Once results are analysed, Nirex will be in a position to decide which, if any, of the sites it wishes to develop. I am sure your Lordships will realise that a full public inquiry will of course be held into any planning application Nirex eventually submits.
My noble friend Lord Holderness was anxious about blight—and other noble Lords chimed in. I understand his concern about blight. I appreciate that Humberside has a fair share of hazardous industries, and that Grimsby Borough Council is trying to establish the area as a centre for food processing.
I have to say, however, that there is no good reason why a Nirex facility should blight an area, still less why a proposal to carry out investigations should do so. Industrial development around Bedford does not seem to have suffered, for example, even though Nirex's interest in Elstow has been known about for over two and a-half years.
Even if the site at Killingholme were to be developed, many firms already operate successfully in Humberside alongside industries far more dangerous than anything Nirex might propose.
I must say a cautionary word about unintentionally induced blight. If the risks of disposal of low-level
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waste are exaggerated, then the blight that everyone fears could be brought about. Noble Lords and the noble Baroness were right to say that the principal difficulty at the moment is public ignorance resulting in public fear. We do not want to mislead the public. By exaggerating the risks of disposing of these materials in carefully controlled conditions we may talk ourselves into an unnecessary blight. I can give my noble friend the assurance that he expected that the public inquiry will be as full as is necessary. An inspector has considerable discretion in deciding what should be discussed. Furthermore, we have laid down that Nirex must prepare for the inquiry a detailed environmental assessment for any site put forward. The assessment will be drawn up in consultation with relevant bodies and will address a broad range of factors, including physical, environmental, economic, safety and social considerations. I think that those were the points that my noble friend raised with me.
As to the criteria adopted by Nirex for choosing sites, it took into account a number of factors, including geology, demographic considerations, accessibility, proximity to national conservation areas and availability. These were not formal criteria, and there was no question of Nirex being allowed to look at certain individual sites only. I understand that private sites as well as publicly-owned ones were considered but Nirex concentrated its search on publicly-owned land because of its difficulties over the privately-owned mine at Billingham which was a potential deep site of which it has experience.
My noble friend asked whether near-surface disposal was the best solution and suggested that paucity of research and other countries' practice threw doubts on this, and referred to the limitations of Drigg. I think that I have probably said enough about research. Since your Lordships and others outside the House are concerned about Drigg, I would repeat that the present arrangements there pose no risk to the public but the site has been operating since 1959 and there is now room for improvement. From 1987, BNFL will be compacting low-level wastes from BNFL before interment. Loose tipping will be replaced by stacking in trenches. Old trenches will be capped to make them impermeable to rainwater, and the site drainage system is to be renewed.
My department recently completed a study of the best practicable environmental options for the management of low and intermediate-level wastes. This showed that, taking social and economic factors into account, near-surface disposal on land was the best option for low-level wastes.
The noble Lord, Lord Monson, advocated disposing of wastes under the seabed. This is an interesting concept. I note what he says about Thailand and others. We consider it more appropriate to the disposal of intermediate-level waste. Nirex has commissioned two feasibility studies of this form of disposal for such wastes. The results are expected later this year. We think it unnecessarily elaborate and costly for low-level waste. Our recent study of options to which I referred confirms this.
A deep site on land would also be unnecessarily elaborate, and I have said enough about that already. I agree with my noble friend when he says that we must

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build up public confidence. We are convinced that the way to do this is to be as open as possible. Nirex, too, is aware of the need for openness. It has recently agreed to make an interim report of the site investigations available to the local councils concerned after the first six months. This will let local people see the sort of data being gathered and arrange for their own assessment if they wish. It will also publish the final report of the investigations and is currently considering other ways in which it can disseminate information. I hope that your Lordships will not feel that the fact that it has a public relations budget, as I think it was described, is entirely against the public interest, because the public must know. We also have to get across more forcefully than we have so far the fact that the Government have a whole range of stringent controls to ensure that disposal is handled responsibly and safely.
My noble friend Lord Kimball, to whom I am grateful for a robust and pragmatic approach and also for some interesting suggestions, proposed that there might be some form of compensation payment to the locals. That might form a difficult precedent. Many communities have dangerous or difficult works or developments in their midst. Government have said in their first stage response to the environment committee's report that its recommendation on this point will be seriously considered. And so will that of my noble friend.
The rest that I have written here is by way of an elegant and flattering conclusion. I hope that I have made the point that we are dealing with material that is a great deal less dangerous than popular myth suggests. I hope that I have made clear that it will be treated with a seriousness far beyond what it would appear to deserve.
Lord Ezra: My Lords, the noble Lord has mentioned so often the relatively little harm associated with low-level waste that it seems to be a crucial part of his argument. Grave doubts seem to be expressed in paragraph 17 of the environment committee's report about the classification of this waste. Indeed, there is a sentence at the end that I find rather worrying. The Committee said:
"no one was able to assure us…that harmful higher activity wastes, alpha-emitting and toxic radionuclides, could not find their way into Drigg and leach out into ground water".
This seemed rather disturbing to me. Therefore in addition to all this cast-off clothing and so on there might be lurking amid this something much more serious. That is what the committee seems to be suggesting.
Lord Elton: I am obliged to the noble Lord for that point. I think that I recognise the paragraph to which he refers. I think that I dealt with it in the reference in part to granite chippings; that is, that there is also a difficulty with the definition proposed by the committee in that it goes too far downwards. However, I think that rather than prolong these exchanges I ought to write to the noble Lord; and in order that my speech shall not have this loophole in it for public consumption, I shall place a copy of my letter in the Library in the usual way.
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The fact remains that we are not even going to be burying the intermediate-level waste, which my noble friend happily invited the authorities to deposit on his home ground. We are talking about something less dangerous than that. We are talking about placing it in impermeable clay at a great depth, surrounded by concrete. I hope that what I have said about both the method of disposal and the method of public inquiry and the research that has been done will encourage my noble friend to allow us now to let this order through.
1.5 a.m.
Lord Holderness: My Lords, I should like to thank the noble Baroness, Lady David, noble Lords and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Lincoln for having taken part in the debate and made very constructive suggestions.
Finally, I should like to thank my noble friend for what he said, and for providing some comfort and relief for some doubts that noble Lords and many people outside have. I am particularly grateful to him for his obvious considerable awareness of the need to reassure public opinion. He will be well aware that this is a task that is not going to be achieved or completed tonight, but it will have to be carried on very enthusiastically and energetically in the future. In those circumstances, I beg leave to withdraw the Motion.
Motion, by leave, withdrawn.
House adjourned at seven minutes past one o'clock.