Lords Sitting of 8 April 1987

Preamble
The House met at half-past two of the clock (Prayers having been read earlier at the Judicial Sitting by the Lord Bishop of Leicester): The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
Lord Goold
Sir James Duncan Goold, Knight, having been created Baron Goold, of Waterfoot in the District of Eastwood, for life—Was, in his robes, introduced between the Lord Home of the Hirsel and the Lord Sanderson of Bowden.

The Lord Chancellor: Leave of Absence
2.41 p.m.
The Lord Chancellor (Lord Hailsham of Saint Marylebone): My Lords, before the commencement of business, I take the opportunity to inform the House that, with the approval of Her Majesty the Queen, I have accepted an invitation from the Lord President of the Supreme Court of Malaysia to attend the fourth international conference of appellate judges and the third conference of Commonwealth chief justices which are to take place in Kuala Lumpur consecutively between 20th April and 25th April this year. Accordingly, I trust the House will agree to grant me leave of absence for Monday, 27th April.

Fylingdales Early Warning Radar Station
2.42 p.m.
Lord Hunt: 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 progress has been made in modernising Fylingdales early warning radar station in the North Yorkshire Moors National Park.
The Minister of State for Defence Procurement (Lord Trefgarne): My Lords, we announced on 22nd May last our decision to proceed with a programme of modernisation of the ballistic missile early warning system at RAF Fylingdales in co-operation with the United States Government. Since then, a notice of proposed development has been submitted to the North Yorkshire Moors National Parks Committee, and a memorandum of understanding has been concluded with the Government of the United States.
Lord Hunt: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for that Answer. While totally accepting that NATO defence must have absolute priority, I should like to ask whether he would agree that the present design and location of the station at Fylingdales is totally at variance with the character and purposes of a national park. Does the new technology embodied in the modernised design of the station not permit of some latitude, some flexibility, as regards its location? Has
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the noble Lord's department looked into the possibility of moving that station to some other place outside the national park, taking that fact into account as well as our treaty obligations?
Lord Trefgarne: Yes, my Lords, we have looked very carefully at the point which the noble Lord raises, but I am afraid we have had to conclude that topographical and geographical factors, which constrain the selection of a site very considerably, are such that there is no prospect of moving it elsewhere.
Lord Renton: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that forewarned is forearmed and that our early warning system is a crucial part of the air defence of the kingdom, including the most beautiful parts of it? Will he therefore ensure that Fylingdales is given the highest priority of equipment, of manning and indeed of location?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, I certainly share my noble friend's view about the importance of this facility. He may be assured that we shall fully follow the concepts that he suggested in his supplementary question. But we must, too, do our very best to ensure that environmental considerations are fully taken into account in the design and construction of this facility.
Lord Paget of Northampton: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that if we get into a nuclear war there will not be any beautiful parts?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, the noble Lord is quite right, but then the whole essence of our policy and of our equipment, including Fylingdales, is to ensure that no such conflict should ever happen.
Lord Mayhew: My Lords, does Fylingdales have a strategic defence capability? If not, could it be given one?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, Fylingdales is not part of the strategic defence initiative.
Baroness Nicol: My Lords, will the Minister accept that we are agreed on the importance of maintaining an early warning system? But can he say whether it is true that alternatives are available which would be just as good as Fylingdales and which would not cost a great deal to bring into use? Can he say how much weight was given to the fact that this was in a national park and how much effort was made to get the site out of the national park? In other words, how many other sites were seriously considered before this new proposition went ahead?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, we are in the process of modernising the facility at Fylingdales. It is not a new facility, as I am sure the noble Baroness will understand. As I said in answer to the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, a moment ago, there are very stringent topographical, geographical and indeed operational criteria which have to be met with regard to this facility, or modernised facility as it will become. That meant, I am afraid, that it was not possible to find another site to meet the purpose. Having said that, I have accepted and do accept the need to ensure that

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the facility imposes the minimum possible impact upon the environment.
Lord Gladwyn: My Lords, are the Government satisfied that the work undertaken by the United States Government at Fylingdales is in strict conformity with the narrow interpretation of the ABM Treaty of 1972?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, I am not sure whether the noble Lord is talking about the work now going on to modernise the station. If that is what he has in mind, I can tell him that Her Majesty's Government are satisfied that the modernisation of the system fully conforms with US obligations under the ABM Treaty.
Viscount Hanworth: My Lords, has the noble Lord been up to see Fylingdales, as I have many times? If he has, does he agree with me that it possibly provides an interesting feature in a very large area of plain moorland and that the environmental aspect, except to enthusiasts, does not arise?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, that is a point of view, but I have accepted at least twice this afternoon already that we need to ensure that the facility represents the minimum possible conflict with environmental considerations. Having said that, a large antenna of this kind will create some sort of an impact wherever we put it, I am afraid.
Lord John-Mackie: My Lords, will the modern equipment be taller and bigger than the equipment there now?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, the details of the modernisation were submitted to the North Yorkshire Moors National Park Committee last year. It will be a new pyramid-shaped structure to replace the so-called golf ball structures that are there at present.
Viscount Ingleby: My Lords, as a former member of the North Yorkshire Moors National Park Committee, may I ask the Minister whether the existing signal station at Menwith Hill near Harrogate has been considered as an alternative site?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, I can assure the noble Viscount that we looked at all possible solutions to the problem, but the conclusion we reached was that the right way to proceed was with the modernisation of the facility.
Lord Hunt: My Lords, in the light of the questions will the noble Lord assure the House that there has been and will continue to be full discussion and consultation among his department, the Department of the Environment, the Countryside Commission, the North Yorkshire County Council and the voluntary bodies concerned?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, I can certainly assure the noble Lord that we shall continue with the detailed consultation procedures that we have always followed in the past in connection with this matter. As he may be aware, the national park committee has decided not to raise any objection to the proposed development, although I understand it is regretted by the committee,
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and naturally I too understand the position on that. However, its decision not to raise any objection was subject to my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for the Environment being satisfied that there is no possible alternative site. I understand that he will be giving his decision on that shortly.

Scottish Skiing Facilities
2.50 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 approve applications for additional skiing facilities in Scotland, in particular on Aonach Mhor, Fort William, and at Lurcher's Crag, Cairngorms.
The Earl of Dundee: My Lords, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Scotland is unable to reach a decision on Aonach Mhor until the uncertainties surrounding the project have been clarified. The Government are not aware of any current application relating to Lurcher's Crag.
Viscount Mersey: My Lords, does my noble friend agree that Scotland is a country of kilts and whisky rather than salopettes and glühwein? I am glad that there are no current plans for Lurcher's Crag in particular. I should like to ask my noble friend whether he is aware that should there be skiing development in that area, the most magnificent valley walk in the British Isles would be ruined; I am referring to the walk called the Lairig Ghru. Also there would be grave danger of ruining an ancient Caledonian pine forest called Rothiemurchus.
The Earl of Dundee: My Lords, in reply to the second part of my noble friend's supplementary question, no doubt he is aware that Lurcher's Crag has already been designated as an SSSI by the NCC. That fact will be taken into account by the Highland Regional Council if an application should be submitted. As regards the first part of my noble friend's supplementary question, although I agree with him that Scotland is indeed a country of kilt and whisky, I see no reason why it should not also come to be, if it is not already, very much a country of glühwein.
Baroness Nicol: My Lords, does the Minister consider that Aonach Mhor could provide quite a good case for development as Fort William needs more economic development? However, so far as Lurcher's Crag is concerned I support the words of the noble Viscount.
The Earl of Dundee: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness for her comments. I agree with her that Aonach Mhor has a great deal of potential. However, as she may be aware, there are uncertainties and potential difficulties attached to the proposed development.
Baroness Carnegy of Lour: My Lords, does my noble friend agree that the people of Scotland would

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very much resent the suggestion that they are not a country of glühwein? They are extremely keen skiers and at most skiing resorts glühwein is available and is much enjoyed. Does he agree that what is required is a degree of balance and not panic about the effect on the ecology and on Rothiemurchus, which is a large tract of land, much of which is not forest? It is important that there should be balance there and at all the skiing resorts which want to expand. It is the job of the Government and of the local authorities to see that that balance is maintained.
The Earl of Dundee: My Lords, I agree entirely with my noble friend that there is never any cause for panic in these matters and that the problem should be considered after taking into account all the factors which need to be balanced.
Viscount Mersey: My Lords, is not the difficulty with the Aonach Mhor scheme that it is very much in the Western Highlands and subject to the warm we weather of the Gulf Stream? Is it not a fact that the problem there could well be just lack of snow?
The Earl of Dundee: My Lords, I do not think I can comment on that but, as many of your Lordships may be aware, in the Scottish Highlands there is certainly no lack of rain. When the weather is cold we would perhaps be safe in saying that there is also no lack of sleet and snow.
Lord Wigoder: My Lords, does the noble Earl recognise that in deciding where to station skiing facilities the need for balance is extremely important? Also does he appreciate that no facilities are likely to be sucessful in a resort called Lurcher's Crag?
The Earl of Dundee: My Lords, there is undeniably a great deal in what the noble Lord says. On the question of balance, I always recommend my friends if they are in doubt to use the snow plough position when going downhill.
Baroness Strange: My Lords, since "mhor" means "big" and "beag" means "little", why is it that Aonach Beag is in fact 49 feet higher than Aonach Mhor? May I ask what plans my noble firend has for rectifying this matter?
The Earl of Dundee: My Lords, I am very interested to hear what my noble friend has to say about "beag" and "mhor". I am afraid I am not in a position to comment, but if I knew more about the matter and if perchance she should be wrong, I suppose I would have to say to her that I could not beg to differ more.

Jarratt Report
2.55 p.m.
Lord Annan: 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 response universities have made to the Jarratt Report and
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how many are taking steps to implement its main recommendations concerning the executive powers of council and vice-chancellor.
Baroness Hooper: My Lords, all universities have responded to the University Grants Committee's request for detailed information about the steps they are taking to implement the recommendations of the Jarratt Report. The UGC will submit a report and commentary to my right honourable friend the Secretary of State by July this year.
Lord Annan: My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for that Answer, but does she agree that, if the White Paper recommendations are to be implemented and vice-chancellors are to be required to negotiate with the University Grants Committee for funding and sign a contract, it would be singularly unfortunate if after the contract has been negotiated it could be overturned by the recommendations of senate or of council as advised by senate? Is there not a case for the Privy Council to look into the necessity for some changes of statutes in universities?
Baroness Hooper: My Lords, almost all universities say that they are implementing the recommendations of the Jarratt Report and profess themselves to be in favour in principle. But we recognise that there are different structures in different universities and sometimes procedures do not quite fit. However, as I said, the University Grants Committee is still analysing the universities' responses in order to determine what practical action has been taken. We shall take note of the noble Lord's remarks in that context.
Lord Taylor of Blackburn: My Lords, is the Minister aware that several universities have already made application to the Privy Council for changes in their statutes to bring them into line with modern thinking?
Baroness Hooper: Yes, my Lords; but in this case I think we must await the final analysis in July before further action is taken.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, I appreciate the noble Baroness's difficulty in anticipating the decisions of the University Grants Committee so far as the Jarratt recommendations affect it, but those recommendations also affect the Government. May I ask her what action the Government are going to take to implement the recommendations so as to restore a longer-term horizon for the universities in view of the disincentives to strategic planning and so that they should fund the realistic cost of future staffing reductions agreed between the universities and the UGC?
Baroness Hooper: My Lords, with regard to the longer funding horizon proposed by the Jarratt Report, the White Paper on higher education rejects the idea of government funding for the new funding council being fixed for a series of three-year periods. The Government believe that the rolling triennium effectively offered by the public expenditure survey is a better means of indicating future funding levels. As for the funding arrangements between the proposed

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UFC and the Universities, the Government will encourage the council to provide medium and long-term planning parameters on a regular basis. The additional £95 million for the universities announced last December was intended to help them to improve their quality and efficiency and to promote change.
Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: My Lords, would the Government or the department concerned allow some tolerance in this matter, given the fact that universities have been literally bombarded with reports, White Papers, exhortations and letters from the UGC over the last 12 months or so? Is the noble Baroness aware that universities and their administrative departments are really stretched to the utmost? If I may declare an interest as pro-Chancellor of the University of Wales, the registry of the University of Wales with seven colleges has been stretched to the utmost. Will she bear that in mind and convey it to her right honourable friend?
Baroness Hooper: My Lords, we recognise that this is a period of change. Nevertheless, it is important that such changes as have been agreed should be seen to be implemented as rapidly as possible.
Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: My Lords, I fully agree and support that. But what I want the noble Baroness to take aboard and convey to her right honourable friend is the large volume of additional administrative work which has been imposed on the universities.
Baroness Hooper: My Lords, I will most certainly pass on the noble Lord's comments to my right honourable friend.
Lord Annan: My Lords, while recognising that no system of management is foolproof and that good management depends on the individuals who are at the top of an institution, would the noble Baroness agree that workers' control is a form of management which does not have the support of the Labour Party, the Liberal Party, the Social Democratic Party or the Communist Party and is supported only by the Workers Revolutionary Party? Does she agree that there is therefore a case for looking into the governance of those universities in which the management is entirely composed of those who are working in the universities?
Baroness Hooper: My Lords, we recognise that one of the messages of the Jarratt Report is that leadership within universities may have swung too far in favour of senates and away from councils, and the procedures which have been followed through are helping to counteract that.

Business
3.2 p.m.
Lord Denham: My Lords, I should like to say a word about the arrangements for this afternoon's two Short Debates standing in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Molloy, and the noble Viscount, Lord Buckmaster. On the principle that the mover is allowed approxi-
1028
mately 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 Molloy, this means that all other speeches should be limited to a maximum of 11 minutes. If any noble Lord should speak at greater length he would do so at the expense of subsequent speakers in the debate. In that of the noble Viscount, Lord Buckmaster, the number of speakers is such that it is not necessary to propose a formal time limit, but I know that noble Lords will confine their speeches within limits compatible with the spirit of these Short Debates.

Irish Sailors and Soldiers Land Trust Bill [H.L.]
Lord Beaverbrook: My Lords, on behalf of my noble friend Lady Young, I beg to introduce a Bill to require the payment to the Governments of the United Kingdom and of the Republic of Ireland of the surplus funds of the Irish Sailors and Soldiers Land Trust, and to make provision for the winding up and dissolution of the trust. I beg to move that this Bill be now read a first time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read a first time—(Lord Beaverbrook.)
On Question, Bill read a first time, and to be printed.

House of Lords Offices: Select Committee Report
The Chairman of Committees (Lord Aberdare): My Lords, I beg to move that the Second Report from the Select Committee be agreed to.
Moved, That the Second Report from the Select Committee be agreed to. [H.L. 103]—(The Chairman of Committees.)
The report was as follows:
1. LIBRARY
Viscount Davidson was appointed to the Library Sub-Committee in the place of the Earl of Swinton.
2. STAFF OF THE HOUSE
A report from the Sub-Committee was received.
The Committee authorised revised scales of pay for Hansard Editorial staff and the Accountant and payment of a special efficiency bonus to industrial employees in the Refreshment Department.
The Committee also sanctioned the appointment of a temporary post of Assistant Editor.
3. COMPUTER DEVELOPMENTS
A report from the Sub-Committee on Computers was received.
The Committee agreed that the Clerk of the Parliaments for the time being be authorised to enter into contracts on behalf of the House of Lords for the acquisition and maintenance of computers and related matters.
4. INSURANCE FOR LORDS
The Committee approved an increase in the personal accident insurance cover for Lords whilst on Parliamentary duty.
5. TERCENTENARY CELEBRATIONS 1988
The Committee approved provision in the House of Lords' Vote to meet a share of the expenses.
6. COMMONWEALTH SPEAKERS' CONFERENCE 1988
The Committee approved provision in the House of Lords' Vote to meet a share of the expenses.
7. PARLIAMENTARY DELEGATIONS
The Committee approved, in principle, the payment of revised subsistence allowances.
8. PARLIAMENT OFFICE
The Committee were informed of the promotions of Mr. R. H. Walters, to Chief Clerk and Mr. M. L. Hickes to Assistant Editor and authorised an extension of service for the temporary part-time archivist in the Record Office.
9. REVISED SCALES OF PAY
The Committee confirmed the application of Civil Service memorandum CM/775 to applicable clerical staff.
10. HANSARD REPORTING STAFF
The Committee authorised payment of revised late night attendance allowances and fees to permanent staff, revised attendance fees to temporary reporters and transcribers and a revision of charges for agency typists.
11. OFFICIAL SHORTHAND WRITER
The Committee authorised a revised scale of fees for the Shorthand Writer.
12. SUPERANNUATION
The Committee were informed of new early retirement arrangements that are being introduced for civil servants and agreed a proposal to apply the improved benefits to eligible staff of the House of Lords from 1st April, 1987.
The Committee were also notified of the following awards made under the House of Lords' Staff Pension Scheme:—

(a) Pension and lump sum to Mr. R. E. Peters, Senior Reporter, who retired on 1st January, 1987.

(b) Revised pension and lump sum to Mr. D. J. Huxley, Principal Doorkeeper, who retired on 17th January, 1986.

(c) Revised pension and lump sum to Mr. A. A. Barber, Second Principal Doorkeeper, who retired on 11th April, 1986.

(d) Revised pension and lump sum to Mr. T. Taylor, Doorkeeper, who retired on 1st September, 1985.

(e) Pension and lump sum to Mr. K. A. Hayes, Senior Doorkeeper, who retired on 16th December, 1986.

(f) Pension and lump sum to Mr. C. W. Hunt, Clerical Officer, who retired on 21st January, 1987.

(g) Pension and lump sum to Mr. C. T. Grover, Clerical Officer, who retired, on ill health grounds, on 1st January, 1987.

(h) Pension and lump sum to Mrs. E. F. Sawicka, Waitress, who retired on 1st January, 1987.

(i) Short service payment to Mr. J. D. J. Dixon, Assistant Librarian, who resigns on 27th March, 1987.

(j) Short service payment to Miss P. M. C. Carpenter, Personal Secretary, who resigned on 31st December, 1986.

(k) Short service payment to Miss C. L. Rodriguez, Cleaner, who resigned on 31st October, 1986.

(l) Short service payment to Mrs. G. Robertson, Cleaner, who resigned on 2nd January, 1987.

(m) Notional Transfer Value in respect of Mr. R. H. Walters, Senior Clerk, who was seconded to the Treasury, on 1st April, 1986.

(n) Notional Transfer Value in respect of Mr. J. I. Stoodley, Legal Officer, who was transferred to the Department of Trade and Industry, on 4th August, 1986.

On Question, Motion agreed to.

Sound Archives: Select Committee Report
The Chairman of Committees: My Lords, I beg to move that the Report of the Select Committee on Sound Archives be agreed to. Perhaps I may say a brief word of explanation about this report. When the
1030
House agreed to the sound broadcasting of its proceedings in 1977, it was decided that only a selection of the resulting sound tapes should be preserved for the archives and it was proposed to institute a process of selection every six months after the end of a parliamentary Session. That has not taken place and all the tapes have in fact been kept, as has been the case with the tapes made in another place.
Recently both Houses have received an offer from the National Sound Archive to house these tapes, and the Broadcasting Committee recommends acceptance of this offer. Accordingly, this report seeks your Lordships' agreement to amend the original resolution of 28th July 1977 and to accept the memorandum of agreement with the National Sound Archive. My Lords, I beg to move.
Moved, That the Report of the Select Committee on Sound Archives be agreed to. [1st Report, H.L. 95]—(The Chairman of Committees.)
Lord Ferrier: My Lords, as one who has been concerned with the reporting of Parliament over the years, may I ask whether the storing of these archives will commence from July 1977 or later?
The Chairman of Committees: My Lords, it will indeed start from the very beginning of the sound broadcasting.
The report was as follows:
Sound Archives
When the House agreed to the sound broadcasting of its proceedings, it passed a Resolution on 28th July 1977 to govern the conditions under which sound broadcasting might be undertaken. Among the terms of the Resolution was the following requirement: "Archive tapes of all signals supplied by the broadcasting authorities shall be made, together with a selection for permanent preservation, under the direction of the Committee". Thus it became a duty of the Sound Broadcasting Committee, the predecessor of this Committee, to oversee the making of a selection from among the archive tapes for permanent preservation. The Joint Committee on Sound Broadcasting (whose report was the basis on which the sound broadcasting of the proceedings of both Houses was undertaken) had recommended that the selection process should begin about six months after the end of each Parliamentary session. It is now over nine years since the sound broadcasting of proceedings of the House of Lords began but no selection of archive tapes has yet been undertaken.
At a meeting in November 1985, the Sound Broadcasting Committee considered the question of selection. They were told that the Clerk of the Records had concluded that no system of selection was worth considering unless it led to the preservation of only 10 per cent. of all the tapes. They were also told that the informal joint committee on Library and Record Office Storage Accommodation under the chairmanship of Lord Trend had recommended that decisions on the question of selection should be reached urgently because of the demands on space as the archive grew each year.
The Committee learned that the House of Commons' Sound Broadcasting Committee had already decided against any proposals for selection. This decision weighed particularly heavily with the Committee since it would be clearly undesirable for the House of Lords to destroy the majority of its sound tapes while the House of Commons preserved its archive tapes in their entirety.
Following the November 1985 meeting, an approach was made to the National Sound Archive to see if there was a way in which the sound archives of both Houses could be preserved in their entirety, without creating imposible demands on storage within the Parliamentary precinct. The result of these discussions is now contained in the memorandum of agreement which is attached as an annex to this report. This lays down the basis on which the sound archives could be transferred on a regular basis from the Sound Archive Unit to the National Sound Archive.
The Committee have considered the memorandum of agreement and recommended it to the House as a suitable arrangement under

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which the National Sound Archive should store the bulk of the Lords sound archive. They understand that the House of Commons Sound Broadcasting Committee have also endorsed the memorandum of agreement.
In the new circumstances, in which the storage of the earlier tapes can be transferred to the National Sound Archive (if the House agrees) and with the likelihood that technology will make possible the storage of sound on much smaller units than at present, the Committee recommend to the House that a policy of selection should now be abandoned. It would indeed be a formidable task for any committee to decide which tapes should be retained and which should be destroyed.
If the House agrees that no selection of archive tapes should be made, both the House and the Committee would be in breach of the Resolution of 28th July 1977 which requires a selection to be made. The Committee therefore recommend that the Resolution of 28th July 1977 should be amended by the deletion in paragraph 4 of the words "together with a selection for permanent preservation".
ANNEX
HOUSE OF LORDS AND NATIONAL SOUND ARCHIVE
Memorandum of Agreement on the Archiving and Production of Parliamentary Sound Recordings
There are four main areas in which agreement is required:—

1. Storage

2. Preservation

3. Production

4. Timing

1. Storage
The National Sound Archive will undertake to store those sound recordings which antedate an agreed rolling date being 7 years previous (and are thus transferred to them), in such a way as to ensure that they are secure and reasonably guarded from atmospheric or other conditions which would tend to accelerate their deterioration. More specifically, the recordings would be housed either in the Exhibition Road/Princes Gate premises, which would be the case for those of more recent date, or in one of the other storage vaults sited in London and utilised by the NSA. At the present, this would be either Micawber Street or Belsize Park. The recordings would be subject to the same kind of archival conditions as regards the monitoring of temperature and humidity as apply to the NSA's existing collections. The NSA would undertake to provide this accommodation without charge to the participants.
Transfer to NSA storage will be made by annual increments in the first month of the calendar year. The Parliamentary Sound Archive undertakes to make available with each batch of recordings copies of any relevant finding aids, including Hansard, that it may possess. Transport arrangements for this material would be handled by the Parliamentary Sound Archive.
2. Preservation
The National Sound Archive undertakes to store the recordings in such a way as to minimise deterioration and thus the cost of preservation. It will therefore physically, and if necessary, chemically, inspect the recordings from time to time to ensure that they receive treatment when appropriate. The NSA has permission to make such preservation copies in either analogue or digital form of the recordings, as it may deem necessary at any juncture, but it will inform the Parliamentary Sound Archive of any action taken.
The Parliamentary Sound Archive will continue to give due consideration to archival factors in its selection of tape types for its recordings.
It will also ensure that during the first period and before transfer, no tapes are permitted to be used to the point where their audio quality is appreciably deteriorated. To this end, the Parliamentary Sound Archive will consider using a system of recording each usage so that it can automatically make a copy of any tape coming under pressure. More than 15 uses might be a suitable maximum without a preservation copy being made.
3. Production (for Listening Services and the Provision of Transcribed Copies)
The National Sound Archive undertakes to produce for listening purposes the recordings emanating from the last three years of transfer on the same day as the request is received. Normally the interval between the receipt of a request and production will be a matter of minutes or hours at the most. In the case of requests for material earlier than the last three years of the transferred recordings, the NSA undertakes to produce the recording within 48 hours, at the worst. Normally, it will do so within 24 hours.
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The NSA will make available to any enquirer, as well as to present authorised users, any of the requested recordings for listening purposes only on its premises. For this, no reference will be made to the Parliamentary Sound Archive but a record of such usage will be provided to it once a month. In the case of all requests for transcribed copies, the NSA will refer the enquiry to the Parliamentary Sound Archive for clearance of the request. Once the written assent of the Parliamentary Sound Archive has been received to the request or verification has been telephoned to the NSA by the Parliamentary Sound Archive and duly logged, such verification to be confirmed in writing as soon as possible, the NSA will provide a transcribed copy on an appropriate carrier within five working days. This will invariably be the case with requests not exceeding one reel. In the case of requests of greater extent, the NSA will furnish the required copies as soon as can reasonably be achieved. Where faster times of production are essential—as often is the case with broadcasting organisations—the NSA reserves the right to charge the extra costs incurred in meeting the client's requirements. However, the NSA will not charge those wishing to listen to recordings on its own premises but will operate a scale of charges to be agreed with the Parliamentary Sound Archive on all requests for copies.
In the case of requests for listening purposes and for transcribed copies received by the Parliamentary Sound Archive in respect of material held by the NSA, these will be proposed to the latter with a note of clearance and when it is required that transcribed copies are to be collected from, or distributed by, the Parliamentary Sound Archive, they should be sent to the latter, transport arrangements being organised by the Parliamentary Sound Archive. After use, they will be returned to the NSA as soon as possible.
Both parties accept that these arrangements, which are based upon an estimated scale of usage—itself derived from recent experience—will likely require amendment and adjustment in the light of actual demand. At the present juncture, the NSA does not anticipate that the costs of operating the service will require it to levy any charge upon the House. For copies it will expect to charge upon an agreed scale, a figure which will genuinely defray its actual costs in materials and labour.
The NSA will provide listening access to these recordings to all who request permission for such access, whether they be Peers, officers of the House or general public. In the event of there being any recordings transferred which require limitations to be imposed upon access to them, the House of Lords undertakes so to inform the NSA and the NSA agrees to restrict this material accordingly. In the case of copies that may be ordered, it will be deemed that the approval given by the Parliamentary Sound Archive accurately reflects the wishes to the House and that the NSA is under no obligation to make further enquiries before furnishing the requested copies.
4. Timing
It is the intention of both parties that this agreement is initiated in 1987. The agreement would run for five years in the first instance and then be quinquennially renewable. Both parties will continue to investigate—and adopt as appropriate—improvements coming from the advance of technology which tend towards the more efficient and economical discharge of their operations. To this end, the NSA will investigate the advantages or otherwise of a landline link between its premises and the Parliamentary Sound Archive. Similarly, the House will bear in mind, when modernisation of the House recording equipment occurs, the possibility of switching to a digital audio standard compatible with that adopted by the NSA. The archival advantages of reduced costs and easier restoration make this a desirable course.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

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

Motivating Britain
3.5 p.m.
Lord Molloy Lord Molloy rose to call attention to the case for creating a sense of unity and purpose among all United Kingdom citizens; and to move for Papers.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper. I say immediately that I am a devout supporter of the principle of clash and clang in a free society of political debate, whether it be in Parliament or outside, because the clash and clang of political debate, political argument, is the life-blood of a free democratic society. There have been times in our past when this has been in danger, and I am of the opinion that while it is not in danger at this present moment the time will come when we shall have to devote our attention to certain issues that are taking place in this country of ours which are divisive, are giving grave concern and are taking the purpose out of the lives of millions of our fellow Britons.
Before the war, I was one of those who trudged daily to the queues for the dole. Sometimes it took us two-and-a-half to three hours in South Wales simply to sign our names to get a paltry few shillings in order to keep body and soul together. And yet, although there were our marchers and our demonstrations, there was no ugly violence. All that happened when the Welsh miners and steelworkers marched from South Wales was that Cwm Rhondda rolled down through Slough and right the way to this famous building. There was not one incident of violence that was recorded. Things are different today and we have to take full notice of that fact.
When there was an act of unity, it was because of the threat to our country. At that moment of threat to our nation in 1939–40, there was a remarkable unity which is unparalleled in world history. In a dreadful moment of stress and threat, this nation garnered itself together and was victorious not only for Great Britain but for millions of others in Europe and in other parts of the world.
Then came the famous 10 years of post-war history from 1945 to 1955. During that time ordinary people were really put on the agenda. We did not wait for any war to get rid of unemployment. We got useful measures under way, such as building hospitals, schools and technical colleges. That is how we got rid of the unemployment, and what a wonderful thing that was. That continued in a most remarkable manner for 10 years.
In that time this nation of ours created something that had never happened before in mankind's history. We created out of a mighty empire the famous British Commonwealth of Nations, and those who at one time had been subjected to a lack of freedom under British rule nevertheless had confidence in the new Britain to ask and want that our monarch should be their monarch as well. That is something of which we can be proud, because they recognised that in this country, irrespective of government, there was a massive sense of unity and purpose. I am very anxious that perhaps that sense of unity and purpose is diminishing.
It is diminishing because of a lack of attention to four particular areas of our national life: housing, health, law and order, and employment and unemployment. People are getting very angry at obvious unfairness and losing confidence in our political way of life. They read in the newspapers of the behaviour of all the oleaginous, shady-takeover City entrepreneurs, who in the language of ordinary people are getting away with murder. Millions of pounds are involved and those people are paid fabulous salaries; yet everyone can understand that what they have done must be illegal. Our people read that one day and they read the next that a woman who forgot to return her library book must go to gaol. The British people say that there must be something wrong in a society that allows that sort of behaviour.
We are an affluent nation and yet millions are trapped in unemployment. London and other cities in their inner hearts are experiencing a dramatic increase in crime and violence. Many of those acts of crime and violence are born out of poverty and unemployment. I ask the House to understand that unemployment is not simply concerned with the method of counting people who are out of work. We cannot be thrilled to bits if unemployment is only 3 million in one quarter of the year and 2⅔ million six months later. Unemployment means agony within a family. It means quarrelling within families and bitterness in the streets. It means an angry reaction in our nation. It means the threat and the fear of bills which pile up and which cannot be paid. It means agony of the spirit. That is what unemployment means.
Another aspect of the matter is education. Education cannot be an accident of death because then it is all over. But that is the only time that some people think that we get some form of compassionate attention, and try teaching us this. It may be a minority but it is there. What is appalling is that education can be an accident of where a child lives. If a child lives in a poor, overcrowded area of our nation, it will suffer from a dreadful teacher-pupil ratio. I believe that this sort of feeling threatens our national unity. The nation is accused of having double standards.
At one time we could see that religion and education were linked together in Scotland and Wales. That may have differed slightly in parts of England. But that linking was vital and I believe that it was a good thing. The centralisation of education is dangerous. We are told that there will be one Minister in charge of the lot. That reminds me of the ambitious Nazi equivalent of the Minister of Education, who stated that at 11 a.m. on every day from Monday to Friday the mass of German children under 11 years of age were on page so and so of the equivalent of the Oxford Reader. That was a centralised system of education. There have to be central contacts. However, I believe the freedom we have seen in our educational system is in danger of being undermined by the principle of centralisation. That is a principle which is alien to the British way of life and it helps to destroy both a sense of unity and a sense of purpose.
Our health service is probably one of the finest systems which mankind has ever seen. It became the envy of the world and it still is. Its creation was an act of decency which I believe is unparalleled. However, it

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is in some danger when the Royal College of Nursing and the Confederation of Health Service Employees are outraged to discover that every time they ask for something to meet a rise in the cost of living or to improve themselves they are told that they should concern themselves with their patients and not ask for more money—yet the managers of health authorities have had a rise far superior to that of any nurse, health visitor or midwife. Those managers seem to condemn the possibility of any increase, irrespective of what it is, for the ordinary nurse or doctor. Indeed, some of the managers of the health service are being looked upon as the death-watch beetle of the National Health Service.
When general practitionrs say that they need better general practice help, they do not want more money in their pockets. They are British doctors who simply want to give a much better service to their patients. What is wrong with that? I should have thought that it is something we should applaud. We have to appreciate that the salaries of nurses provide for only third-class accommodation. The British Medical Association has warned that there is a potential disaster ahead if we do not do something about overworked doctors. Patients are at risk. That is not the view of some loony-Left organisation; it is the view of the British Medical Association. I believe that Parliament should take note of what the BMA has said, just as it should take note of junior doctors who complain, as they have for many years, of the appallingly long hours they work.
The Health Education Council has given a warning, as we have all been reading, about the health divide. There is a health gap between the rich and the poor and it has widened. I should like to ask the noble Lord who will reply in this debate the following question. Did the new chairman of the Health Education Authority ban the press conference which was intended to explain what was happening? If that is so, that is very serious. That the equivalent of a civil servant can stop a press conference on this island of ours seems absolutely appalling to me and I hope we shall have a reply. The surgeons, doctors, nurses, therapists and health visitors all put their claims. What they are asking for is not connected with salaries and wages. They want to serve with unity and purpose the patients for whom they are responsible.
I wish to touch upon one other matter. All political parties suffer from time to time from banal and inane utterances made by those within the party. One such utterance which was made a few weeks ago caused great annoyance and hurt many people. It was stated by a Member in another place that you cannot be a Christian unless you are a Conservative. That annoyed members of the Conservative Party; it annoyed members of all the other parties; it also annoyed all the various religious denominations of this country. It did no good whatsoever. It was an argument, a split and a row which need not have happened. It was in no way political; it was simply vulgar and crude.
I believe that Britain could be drifting into a new and dangerous society. Inequality of income has risen dramatically since 1978 and so has poverty. I believe that such things are unhealthy for our country because they help to destroy a sense of unity. There are people who are at the bottom of the poverty scale who do not
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have much time for the nation in which they live. It hurts me desperately to have to say that. However, it has to be said. Love of liberty is the love of others; love of power is the love of ourselves. I am desperately anxious that we shall not witness the dangers of Gresham's Law, where the greedy evil can drive out the caring good.
I appreciate that my time is limited and I do not wish to exceed it by even one minute. However, if we in the United Kingdom can restore a sense of unity and purpose among our citizens, I believe that that will be exceptionally good for our United Kingdom, will be good for the British Commonwealth and will set a good example in this sad world.
In conclusion, perhaps I may say how grateful I am to your Lordships. You may not necessarily agree with what I have had to say but I thank you very much for your courtesy in listening to me. I sit down grateful for the civilised courtesy that the House has extended me. I beg to move for Papers.
3.20 p.m.
The Earl of Arran: My Lords, the tone and tenor of this debate introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Molloy, are such that he would have us believe that we are a nation wracked by social and economic disparities, a nation divided by class and by money, the poverty of the North for ever at odds with the affluence of the South, a nation stricken down by the ugliness of unemployment, envy warring with greed, a nation heading for ruin and ultimate disintegration. These really are rather emotive, provocative and in my opinion highly exaggerated sentiments. I would ask your Lordships to consider for a few minutes whether there is any validity whatsoever in the noble Lord's comments.
While much of the media in this country may make similar accusations, I think the House will agree that the media does not necessarily express the views of its audience. Instead, it imposes upon its audience its own views. The best barometers, the best interpreters of the political mood of the country, are the national opinion polls in which voting trends are recorded and published. It is important to realise and appreciate the fact that for the past eight years, ever since the Conservatives came to power in 1979, that party has been in the lead in all the opinion polls significantly more frequently than any other party. Moreover, for three consecutive years following the Falklands campaign it was never out of the lead. Not only is that very remarkable but at the same time it neither advances nor enhances the argument of the noble instigator of this debate. Indeed, in my opinion, it goes some way towards destroying it.
Top of the political pops for far more often than not over a period of eight years is no mean achievement, and it is even more remarkable when considering what the state of the nation was eight years ago, the background at that time, and what unpleasant medicine it has had to be given since then in order to start that long cure of all its ills. Do you remember, my Lords, eight years ago when inflation was more than 20 per cent? Do you remember the number of working days lost due to those ceaseless strikes? Do you remember the power of the unions, the restrictive practices?

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Do you rember the economic ills and the crises of the nation? Do you remember the low esteem and the sinking regard in which Great Britain was held at that time throughout the world? Do you remember when the boil burst and all hell was let loose during that famed winter of discontent? Is that the sort of unity on which the noble Lord now rests his case? Surely not, for under that previous Labour Administration downright division abounded and fiendish forces were at work. Something had to be done. It was done and is still not finished.
Such was the state of the country at that time that the remedies necessary to be imposed were bitter and, in many quarters, unpopular. Attitudes had to be changed, old habits had to die, overmanning had to be checked, management had to be able to manage, wages had to he linked to productivity, taxation had to be lowered and new industries had to rise. Above all else, we had to be able to pay our way in the world, our goods had to be competitive and we had to become an economically sound trading nation. We had to do all this at the same time as advances in technology were greater and faster than at any other time in our history. How many jobs have been lost as a result of the silicon chip and the computer? I have named but a few areas in which change had to be brought about. They are, nevertheless, some of the most important areas, for achieving the right results here would mean that the benefits thereof would eventually work their way through to the citizens of this country.
Through the leadership of my right honourable friend the Prime Minister—who at that time we remember well saying "There is no alternative"—and through her firm guidance, we have come a very long way on our journey of restoring this country's wealth and credibility. It has been a hard, long and controversial journey but it would either be a fool or a person smitten with political envy who did not admit that very considerable progress had been made, again reflected in the current state of the opinion polls, and increasingly so.
When leadership is strong an inevitable fall-out of those who are unable to keep up will occur. Those who are able to adjust less quickly will lag behind. It is those to whom we must give support and encouragement and help them to help themselves for it must always be the duty of any party in power to protect the weak. But in spite of those who protest at this strong leadership of the Conservative Party, I do not detect any undue or abnormal lack of unity or purpose among the many and varied people around the country whom I frequently meet. I can speak only for those. Many may not have liked the medicine but they now understand and appreciate why it was necessary. At the very worst they see no other political leader with any credible alternative.
Since the last war they have never seen any party leader who has had more courage or guts to take painful decisions in the interests of the long-term benefit of this country. Instead, they have grown accustomed to short-term gains at the expense of our long-term interests. As examples of outstanding acts of shoulder to shoulder solidarity among our citizens, first, in times of war, I point to our country's victory in the Falklands campaign as a victory against arrant
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territorial aggression; secondly, in times of internal strife, I point to that victory against the forces of evil as depicted in that tragic yet horrendous miners' strike. Courage to resist and conquer such wrongful acts quickly serve to combine and unite nations, particularly the people of this nation. Thirdly, in times of peace, I point to the recent visit to Moscow of my right honourable friend the Prime Minister, a visit which I consider sets her aside from all other world leaders as now the most effective, courageous and respected leader on the world stage. What pride she has restored to this country, through this visit and many other besides! Contrast her visit with another recently made to the United States of America. With regard to our work force, I point to the state of comparative peace now prevailing and to the new-found pride of those who work in industries recently privatised, industries in which more than 80 per cent. of the labour force now own shares.
There is an institution in our kingdom which at all times, being above party politics, serves to unite this nation above all else. I refer of course to the Monarchy, to Her Majesty the Queen and other members of the Royal Family. Whatever part of this kingdom they visit, whatever foreign countries they travel to, they never cease to be the cause of fervent and infectious admiration, together with enormous respect. They toil unendingly to bring about peace, friendship and understanding. Her Majesty, as head of state, and my right honourable friend the Prime Minister, as leader of the Conservative Party, serve to unite this country in such a way as to bring about a United Kingdom, strong in its resolve and purpose and respected for reason, freedom and good sense. My Lords, for long may this continue.
3.29 p.m.
Lord Mayhew: My Lords, we are all grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Molloy, for putting this subject on our agenda, and no one is more grateful than my noble friends and I for this unexpected and welcome opportunity of reaffirming the message of the Liberal and Social Democratic Alliance, a message which is increasingly understood and accepted by the electors; namely, that the two major obstacles to unity in this country are the two class-based political parties.
The noble Lord, Lord Molloy, made a number of excellent points with which I am sure my noble friends and I would agree, but whether his speech was an appeal for unity, whether he was trying to build bridges with noble Lords opposite, was not apparent to me. Certainly judging from their faces if he was trying to build bridges he was failing.
The noble Earl, Lord Arran, made an eloquent speech with a number of good points, but one cannot pretend that that was a contribution to the unity of the nation. Let me say frankly to him that it does not help the unity of the nation to associate the monarchy too closely with one particular political party.
The noble Lord, Lord Molloy, spoke as though his party was the solution to the problem. But of course it is the problem; it is not the solution to the problem. The Labour Party has never denied that it is class-based. It acknowledges openly and officially that it is the political wing, just as the trade unions are the industrial wing, of the working-class movement. The

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party is financed by trade unions, and it allows them to dominate the decisions of its conferences by their block votes. In government and opposition it favours more power to the trade unions, an increased public sector, penalties on private education and health and tax changes to help the poor rather than the rich. As surveys have shown, it draws its votes disproportionately from the C2 and D social classes. It stereotypes its opponents—indeed, the noble Lord did so himself this afternoon—in class terms, as landlords, bankers, takeover bidders, and so on.
The Conservative Party earnestly denies that it is class-based, but in every respect it is the Labour Party's mirror image. It receives its money not from the unions but from the other side of industry. It calls for less power for the trade unions, for a smaller public sector, for help for private education and private health, and for tax changes which favour the rich rather than the poor. That party also stereotypes its opponents in class terms as work dodgers, welfare scroungers, Marxists, and so on.
This country has been divided and hamstrung for decades by the sterile confrontation between these two class-based parties. There was an example of that in another place last Monday during a debate on the same subject. Both Labour and Conservative speakers declared that their party had a single aim: one nation; yet speakers of both parties proved, with a wealth of documentation, with a mass of statistics that the opposite party was a menace to the unity of the nation. The speeches were emotional, ill-natured and often included personal attacks. As a contribution to national unity and a sense of common purpose they were wholly counter productive.
One can see how in some parts of the world, in South Africa, Northern Ireland or the Lebanon, political parties which are based on race or religion increase racial or religious prejudice and conflict. If one looks at British political history one sees how political parties based on class increase class prejudice and class conflict. There is no doubt that that is true, and in other countries that is accepted as a characteristic of British politics.
There is no evidence whatsoever that class-based parties are what the British people want. On the contrary, there is much evidence that they want the position changed. However, until now, that has been all that there has been on offer. Until now, it had seemed impossible that a third political force could emerge, drawing its voting strength from all classes in equal proportions, tied to no class-based source of money, neither for nor against the unions. It seemed impossible that such a force could become strong enough to be a credible challenger for power. In particular, it seemed impossible that such a third force could overcome the defensive barrier maintained against it by the class parties; namely, the preposterously undemocratic first-past-the-post electoral system.
Like the class parties themselves, that system might have been specially designed to divide the nation. It gives huge advantages to political parties whose support is polarised either in the North or in the South, or among the rich or among the poor, and penalises parties whose support is spread broadly over the
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regions and over the different classes. It is not surprising that those who believe in confrontation support the first-past-the-post electoral system.
Now all that is changing. A fresh wind is blowing. The British people no longer regard the confrontation of two class-based parties as immutable. Public opinion polls and by-elections increasingly show that the British people are supporting the new political force, the source of which is not based on class or on class-based sources of finance, but is capable of judging national issues on their merits and not from the point of view of special interest.
I know what will be said in objection. For instance, if I may anticipate the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, in one of the last speeches which I think he will make from that side of the gangway, I expect that he will say, using the propaganda of both parties, "These third-party surges are only a flash in the pan; we have had them before and they disappear". But if one takes the long view that cannot be maintained.
In 1955 at the election the Liberal Party polled 700,000 votes. In 1964 it polled 3 million. In the two elections in 1974 the Alliance polled 5 million and 6 million, and in 1983 it polled 8 million. Moreover in 1983 the Alliance went into the election with the public opinion polls showing them having around 22 per cent. instead of 30 per cent., as is the case now. That is the true picture of the new kind of politics coming to this country, of the British people getting rid of the old class confrontation between Labour and Conservative. So the noble Lord, Lord Molloy, need not despair. The Alliance warmly supports the aims of his Motion and will soon be in a position to start carrying them out.
3.40 p.m.
Lord Denning: My Lords, I too should like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Molloy, for raising this important matter, though in my innocence I had not thought it would deteriorate into political debate.
There is a case for preserving and creating a spirit of unity and purpose among our people. It is the responsibility of all leaders of all political parties and of the media to do all that they can to create that spirit of unity and purpose. One should remember how we had to combine together in times of war. I remember during the First World War the finger of Lord Kitchener pointing to us: "Your King and country needs you"; and of course we all went. In the Second World War Winston Churchill created unity of the people. He said:
"Victory at all costs; victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be; for without victory there is no survival."
That is how unity and purpose is created—by speeches and with leaders such as Winston Churchill.
We then had, as has already been referred to, the spirit of unity in regard to the Falklands. I go back to my Shakespeare:
"This England never did, nor never shall,
Lie at the proud foot of a conqueror,
But when it first did help to wound herself.
Now these her princes are come home again
Come the three corners of the world in arms
And we shall shock them! Nought shall make us rue
If England to itself do rest but true!"

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That is in wartime, or under the threat of war. Now, in peacetime I expect,
"Nought shall make us rue
If England to itself do rest but true."
We have wars on our hands in peacetime which must be tackled just as those in the past. Crime, violent crime, is increasing everywhere. Corruption, corroding corruption, is increasing everywhere. Noisesome pollution is increasing everywhere. Sin, disgraceful sin, is disgracing everywhere. There is the war. The call of all leaders, of all parties, should again be a sense of unity in combating crime—and I believe it is so—in preserving law and order and in defeating this menace to our society.
However, some branches of the media, and others, do us a disservice when they do not support the police. They accuse the police of brutality. They put pictures on the media against the police when it is the duty of every rightminded citizen to support the police in their most dangerous and difficult endeavours. Not only that, but the courts of law are being degraded with accusations made against them. All that is against the spirit of unity in the people. The war of law and order must be common to all political parties, and I believe it is.
There is in our people now, I fear, a moral and spiritual decay. How is that to be tackled? Sin is no longer condemned. Spiritual values are lost. Here again, the responsibility of our leaders is to education and religion. We must bring home to people the proper values which have made our country what it is.
We hear how, in some places and in some councils, the educationists are teaching people sin, and disgraceful sin. This applies in other fields as well, including the spiritual. Those are the dangers which must be tackled. They must be tackled by all the leaders of the country and by the media to give to us all a sense of proper values. Above all, we must maintain law and order, on which the whole of civilisation depends. We must ensure the maintenance of true religion, virtue and proper standards throughout all our people.
I am glad that the noble Lord, Lord Molloy, has enabled us to consider this question. I put the issue above all political parties and call on the nation to uphold the standards of the past.
3.44 p.m.
Baroness Phillips: My Lords, I thank my noble friend for introducing this debate and I offer to him my most humble apologies for not being here at the beginning of his speech, due to British Rail which did not get me here from Wales in time. I confess that listening to the speakers who followed my noble friend—the noble Earl and the noble Lord on the Alliance Benches—it seemed to me that they were doing anything but promoting unity. Surely you do not stir up the other side if you intend to promote unity; but perhaps I have misunderstood the nature of this debate.
I believe that too often we divide people unnaturally. It has become the habit now to refer to the old, but no one has defined when one is old. We refer to the middle-aged, the adolescents and the young mature adults. We refer to the working class,
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the middle class and the upper class. The only way to have unity is to recognise that people are people. The only difference is that there are males and females; and they are not all that different except for one very important biological difference.
The ultimate nonsense is in an advertisement which I now quote. It states that the advertiser is an equal opportunities employer—which it must be by law—and that it welcomes applications,
"irrespective of race, gender, age, sexual orientation or disability"—
though the advertisers go on to state they do not have wheelchair access at present. To me, that advertisement is a total nonsense. If one is advertising for an individual one wants the best person to do the job. It is not necessary to include all the above. It is indicative of the kind of divisions which are artificial.
I look at the so-called advance movements from which we are all suffering, including the animal lobby which loves animals but obviously hates human beings and sprays all kinds of liquids which are damaging to people. There are the people who set up ethnic groups and stir up unreal divisions which never existed until they brought them up. Those people do a great disservice to humanity. I look at the matter simply, and I always have. All human beings want the same—security, achievement and love. Sadly, many people in every country do not get all three. Human beings such as ourselves are very fortunate.
I follow the noble and learned Lord in saying of security that we must abolish crime. I find as a Londoner that it is horrifying to have to admit that I will not go on the London Underground after six o'clock at night because of the horrible crimes one might encounter. I find it terrible that when my grandchildren go out for a cycle ride I have to ask them to telephone me when they arrive home because we do not know what might happen to them. That is not freedom. It is an encroachment on the liberty of ordinary citizens, of whom, thankfully, 99 per cent. are still good, honest and loving people. It is the 1 per cent. who are making life totally untenable.
We are always being told that crime is linked with certain aspects such as poverty and unemployment. Certainly there is a link, but it is not the link that some people would have us believe. I grew up in the 1930s when times were very hard. However, there was not the same high degree of crime because people were not so greedy. Somehow society is now stimulating human greed.
There is the terrible tragedy of the ship which capsized and which we are reading about today. What did that result from? It was greed. It resulted from taking on board too many people and making too many trips without observing all the proper precautions. That is the kind of situation which we must look at first.
When we talk of insecurity we have to consider health. However, we want positive health. Our hospitals are not part of a health service, but part of an ill-health service. They are temples of ill-health. Whatever happened to the wonderful centres we were going to have to promote positive health? That is what we want. People must be kept healthy and not have to be picked up because they are unhealthy. We want security for old people, the handicapped or anyone

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who somehow falls through the net. Whatever government are in power must see to all those things before they can say that they have unity of purpose.
Let us now consider achievement. Everyone needs a place in the world. Everybody wants to achieve and to be first at least once. One need only look at those degrading television shows where people go into ecstacies of emotion because they have won a coffee pot. It shows that for once they have achieved something—they are in front of the cameras. These wretched cameras are going to dominate our lives. That does not apply, of course, to the cameras here. It is an indication that every human being wants achievement. They have to have it. They have to have it through their paid work and through the other things they do for the community. They have to have it through being educated to be civilised individuals.
Everyone has talents—I tell you that, my Lords—but they are not always found. Every child needs education, not merely to be a forcing house for A-levels and 0-levels but to be exposed to all the beauties of life, to art, to the joys of painting, to the things that they can do—singing, speaking, writing poetry. All those things are part of life for every human being. They are all achievements. There is sport—not sport just for money, for heaven's sake, but sport in terms of the old Roman idea where sport was something that everybody took part in, and the leaders in the community often were the great sportsmen. Everyone has at least one talent, and that has to be discovered.
I make a plea for not such large conglomerations of industry. Small is beautiful. We demoralise and minimise people when they have to live in great housing units, work in great units, school in great units. Therefore I plead that industry will not become something that is there just solely, as the accountants would say, to give a good balance sheet.
Then we come to love. That word is used now in all the wrong connections, in my view. It still means that every human being demands it. The family—I go along entirely with my noble and learned friend Lord Denning—must be the basic unit. There are too many broken homes, too many split marriages. Some people do not even work at it. When I was very young, as a Catholic one was taught that one gave service to community because one was fortunate enough to be healthy and happy, and one had to give. We have to restore those kinds of things if we are to get unity.
A truly great society would abolish completely disease, ignorance, squalor, idleness and poverty. I am not laying the blame on any government. It is the people who have to provide unity of purpose.
3.52 p.m.
Lord Taylor of Gryfe: My Lords, in anticipation of the debate I turned back to an interview that was given by the most reverend Primate Archbishop of Canterbury in The Times a year ago in which he said:
"People will wake up to the fact that this is no longer a decent society. They will not accept that greed and self-interest are the driving dynamic of the good society, and that is why I think that people will say, we can't allow this state of affairs to continue".
He went on to say this:
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"I believe there is an opportunity at the present time in a highly polarised society to explore much more the middle ground".
It was precisely that direction which took me from the Labour Benches to the Benches of the Alliance, because I believe that both the traditional parties, as my noble friend Lord Mayhew said, are prisoners of their history and their traditions.
The Labour Party is traditionally a class war party, supported and financed by the trade unions, and compelled accordingly to represent their interests to the exclusion of other interests in society. The Conservative Party in its turn represents private enterprise and big business, and if I may say so, in the current culture of economic affairs in this country has elevated greed and self-interest to a virtue. The great prophet of the present age is Mr. Ivan Boesky, who boasts in a book which he wrote of his activities as a great and successful financier that greed is a virtue. I believe that that kind of culture is becoming inculcated into some city affairs in the United Kingdom. It is becoming increasingly accepted in many people's minds that to make money is the major objective in life. Where that occurs, it is a sick society.
I want to analyse briefly just what are the reasons for the lack of unity. I think that one will get unity in any society where people believe that it is a fair society. But today's society is patently unfair. Let me quote one statistic. Between 1976 and 1984 the poorest, the bottom 5 per cent. of households, have seen their share of disposable income decline from 7 per cent. to 6.7 per cent., but the richest one-fifth in our society have improved their share from 38.1 per cent. to 39.7 per cent. In 1985 the numbers living near or below the poverty line, assessed by supplementary benefit, increased from 11 million in 1985 to 16.6 million. In a society in which it is said by government that we are making more money and becoming more prosperous, the poor are becoming poorer.
One can complain about a divided society, but so long as these conditions exist there will be a divided society. There will be resentment on the part of people who see the city slickers earning £300,000 per annum and doing insider dealing at the same time when so many millions of our people are living at the poverty level. That is what is destroying the unity of our nation. For people to feel a sense of unity of purpose they must believe in the democratic society; they must believe that the Government are fair. My noble friend Lord Mayhew has said a word about this.
In the last election the Conservatives got 42 per cent. of the vote—they did not even have a majority in this country—and collected 61 per cent. of the seats in the House of Commons. Labour, with 27 per cent., collected 32 per cent. of the seats in the House of Commons. The Alliance, with 25.3 per cent., got 3.5 per cent. of the seats in the House. That cannot be fair, and neither can it be democratic or contribute to a sense of unity in society.
Liverpool, Brent and Haringey would have escaped some of the problems of confrontation and divisive politics if there had been proportional representation on the local councils. The Alliance collected 20 per cent. of the votes for the European elections and got no seats to represent 20 per cent. of the electors. These are the things that create a sense of unfairness.

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I notice that the noble Earl, Lord Arran, was much concerned about opinion polls. Let me tell him a little about the situation in Scotland, since the division of our nation is more clearly marked between the prosperous South-East and the neglected North and Scotland. If one takes any of these standards of measurement, unemployment in the South is 8.1 per cent. and in the North 16.6 per cent. Taking weekly expenditure per household, the national average is £156; in the North it is £131 and in the South-East £186. There will never be unity of purpose so long as that great division in our society exists.
I draw the attention of the noble Earl, Lord Arran, who is concerned with the polls, to a very interesting fact in today's Glasgow Herald; the opinion polls record that the Conservative Party has now 18 per cent. of the total votes of the people of Scotland. There is the fact that the Government have cut back on regional aid from 1982 at £900 million to 1985–86 at £300 million, and this during a period when the division is becoming ever greater. The Government have cut back the measures which would enable us to have a fairer distribution of industry.
However much we may desire unity in this nation, these facts indicate that one cannot have unity of purpose where people feel neglected and overlooked. The noble Earl should go up to Scotland and see what is happening there. The people there feel that they are neglected. During the past few days we have debated at great length in this House the abolition of rates in Scotland and the imposition of a poll tax. What does that mean? It means that people who are living in a £100,000 house in the South-East of England will pay the same poll tax as the man who lives in one room with a kitchen in Glasgow. That is the intention of government policy. Such obvious lack of fairness causes the disunity in our society.
I have only two minutes left to end my speech, but let me say that so far as the Alliance is concerned we on these Benches are committed to the creation of a society that is not divided. We shall provide a fairer system of democracy and democratic government. We shall offer a greater degree of decentralisation. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Molloy, that one of the worst features of our society at the moment is the increasing centralisation of power, which makes people feel less involved and of little importance. That is damaging to the democratic system. The Alliance believes in decentralisation, a wider distribution of shares, employee participation, profit sharing and a tax benefit system which will shift the burden of taxation on to people who are more able to pay in order to assist people who are less fortunate. The Alliance believes in a fair society, and it is because of that belief and that conviction that the opinion polls are recording our success.
4.3 p.m.
The Earl of Longford: My Lords, we have listened to a number of eloquent speeches, including the last one. Although, naturally, I agree more easily with my colleagues, the noble Lord, Lord Molloy, and the noble Baroness, Lady Phillips, I endorse much of what has been said today (and no doubt was also said
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yesterday) by the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, when he spoke about the maldistribution of wealth; and I am sure all of us on these Benches would do likewise.
However, when he and my dear old friend the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, talk about the Labour Party being a class party, one wonders when they discovered that idea. The Labour Party is no different today from when they joined it about 50 years ago. It is the same party that they represented so efficiently. I remember when the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, was the darling of the late Ernest Bevin, who had the highest opinion of him—and rightly so. Earlier than that, he was my pupil. I shall not use the same expression of him but he was, anyway, the most promising pupil in the University of Oxford. He was, and still is, clean-limbed. I think he played rugger for the university occasionally. He jumped prodigious distances in both the long jump and the high jump and was a wonderful speaker at the union. I forecast—and I put it on paper—that one day he would be Prime Minister. He forecast a victory for the Alliance. That party may have all kinds of revolutionary ideas, so I suppose that the prospect is still open.
I should like to ask him and the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Gryfe, when they came to the shattering discovery that in some sense or other the Labour Party was based on the working class. Although in these debates noble Lords do not like giving way, I am perfectly happy to do so if either of them can provide the answer to that question.
Lord Taylor of Gryfe: My Lords, I should like to ask the noble Earl how important is converting. Worse than people who see the truth are people who hang on to old ideas in which they have ceased to believe.
The Earl of Longford: My Lords, the noble Lords in question hung on for a good many years but now they have joined what they believe to be the winning side. That is what we understood from their remarks.
A noble Lord: Come off it.
The Earl of Longford: I am asked to come off it, my Lords, but if the noble Lord wants to interrupt perhaps he would rise in his place. I say that they have now joined what they tell us is the winning side and they have repudiated the side that they have represented with such zeal for so many years. But that is by the way and it was said just to enliven the debate a little.
Within reason I gladly support any Motion that is brought forward by the noble Lord, Lord Molloy. But on this occasion I might not have ventured to take part in so wide-ranging a debate if I had not recently been reading a remarkably interesting book, which I can recommend. It is in what I think is called a softback. It is written by the Reverend David Holloway, the vicar of an Anglican parish in the North-East, who is a very active member of the Church of England Synod. His general thesis is that England is still actually or potentially a Christian country and that all of us, clergymen and laymen alike, should be doing far more than we are at present to make that a reality. In the few minutes that I have to speak, I shall be speaking from that point of view.

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The question of whether or not England is a Christian country can be argued interminably. David Holloway points out that statistics from the best poll available suggest that 85 per cent. of those approached were ready to describe themselves as Christians. However, he admits that the figures for church-going make sad reading.
I myself was a member of the Church of England for 34 years—roughly for the same period during which I was a member of the Conservative Party, but that was coincidental—and as an adult I very seldom attended church. I have been a Roman Catholic for 47 years and have gone to church every Sunday ever since I became a Roman Catholic unless I had a plausible excuse for not going. I would make a bet that the great majority of your Lordships, whether present today or on other occasions, would describe yourselves as Christians. Another bet that I would make is that only a relatively small proportion of the Members of this House went to church last Sunday. If any noble Lord wants to take up that bet he may do so, but I think that that is likely to be the case.
No doubt the proportion of churchgoers in the House of Lords is larger than the national average but only a minority will go regularly to church. One should not equate the idea of whether or not one is a believing Christian with the idea of whether or not one goes to church. One could ask people whether they say their prayers, but perhaps that is carrying the matter into too intimate a sphere.
So we have to accept David Holloway's thesis—and I am accepting it—that England actually or potentially is a Christian country. If that is so, is it possible to unite its people on a Christian basis and to appeal in the name of Christianity? It should be done not only by clerics but by distinguished laymen—someone like the noble Lord, Lord Nugent, who I see is present. He is someone who preaches a Christian message in this House and achieves a good deal of response—probably more in this House than in most other places; so I should not like to say that Christianity is silent in this Chamber.
However, there is the problem that quite a number of very good people are Christians in practice but not in belief. There is no politician in this century whom I admire quite so much as Lord Attlee. But when Lord Attlee, whose conduct was impeccable, was asked toward the end of his life if he was a Christian, he replied, "Accept the Christian ethic; can't stand the mumbo-jumbo". He put that view, in his rather succinct manner. In some way that expresses the attitude of a good many people.
Today I am not pleading for a return to Christian belief. I hope that that will happen, but it is perhaps too hard to expect it all of a sudden to take place. I plead only for a reassertion of Christian values. In case any Jewish friends feel that that approach is narrow I should say that Holloway lays great emphasis on the Judeo-Christian tradition. He finishes his book with three quotations from the Old Testament. We can see that there is plenty of room for all within that Judeo-Christian tradition.
That is one way of unifying the nation. I do not think there is any other in peacetime. We are aware that a nation threatened by extinction will draw
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together in wartime in a way that we cannot expect in peacetime. In another context, Sir Winston Churchill said:
"Integral communities, like human beings, are dominated by the instinct of self-preservation".
Patriotism, which is almost dormant in this country, is brought to the fore when we are faced with a threat such as that presented by Hitler. We cannot expect anything like that in peacetime.
We are about to have a general election. No one knows who will win it. The one certain thing is that there will be many differences of opinion and a great many acrimonious exchanges. That is part of democracy. No one would suggest that we wanted to pack that up and enter a stage of permanent coalition, although that is what we are confronted with.
The noble Earl, Lord Arran, in his own way speaks a well as his father but along rather different lines. His father specialised on homosexuals and badgers. The noble Earl is stronger on Mrs. Thatcher's merits. His father was a good speaker and so is he. If I may respectfully say so, the noble Earl is infatuated by the merits of that remarkable woman Mrs. Thatcher. No dispassionate observer could suggest that Thatcherism—we all know what is meant by that; the appeal above all to self-interest spilling over into selfishness—can be united with the Labour Party's traditional ideals. The Alliance must speak for itself through its newer or older members. They must express their own point of view.
No one can imagine that there will be a coming together of minds. Mr. Harold Macmillan, the former Conservative Prime Minister, by implication made plain his views about Mrs. Thatcher more than once in this House. Mr. Butler's views of Mr. Macmillan were made plain on many occasions. Mr. Edward Heath made plain his views on all those people on many occasions. With any of those gentlemen one could imagine a coming together. There was once something called "Butskellism", but those days are past. We cannot now expect anything very harmonious.
We must face the fact that sharp political conflicts will continue in the immediate future. I do not wish to imply that I disagree with everything for which Mrs. Thatcher stands. I agree with her on pornography. On that subject she is excellent. If it comes to that, she is better than some of my dear friends. On the subject of hanging of course she is abominable. One cannot agree with everybody on everything.
I want to say very sincerely that I think that when Mrs. Thatcher lit that candle in a church in Russia she struck a blow for religion which I hope will never be forgotten. I am bound to say that in all honesty. That does not mean that I think she is the right person to be re-elected. Whoever wins the election, we want someone who will unite the nation. I hope that it will be someone who can achieve, however imperfectly, the ideal expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Molloy.
4.14 p.m.
Lord Granville of Eye: My Lords, we are indebted to the noble Lord, Lord Molloy, for his Motion and for his moving and sincere speech. I am sure many of us agree with him when he says that a sense of unity and purpose is vital. I should like to deal with another

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aspect of that topic. We are talking about consensus. The problem is how to achieve consensus except in a time of national crisis. There is a practical side. There is no doubt that one of the problems we face at present is the overwhelming power and importance of the media, particularly television, and the effect that it has on a large number of people. If one talks to people in the morning they will tell you what they saw on television the previous night. They will also tell the people who ask them how they will vote.
I want to be frank about this, because unfortunately we have recently witnessed what is called a process of character assassination. That has had a serious effect. It is not new. Mr. Harold Wilson suffered from it when he was Prime Minister. I think that it was Churchill who said that if we want to get rid of a government, we should not attack the whole. We must find the one loose brick and keep at it until we have destroyed the government. There are many people who think that that has been happening in respect of the present Prime Minister.
The media have tremendous power when there is an election coming. People read newspapers and see television every day. I may be exaggerating, but we must recognise that the BBC is the official opposition. It does not matter what we say here. It does not matter what they say in another place. I have listened to people who have studied this issue. There is no doubt that there has been an orchestrated campaign of character assassination. Although Parliament and constituency meetings are important, no one is as important as the programme-makers. They put over arguments which influence the public.
The orchestrated character assassination technique is the idea of some of the up-and-coming publicity boys, but it boomerangs. They think they are getting away with it and then they discover that it begins to boomerang. I think we are in the middle of a boomerang period now.
One other point has been referred to during this interesting debate. It arises from the problem of consensus. There are two parties. We nationalise; we denationalise. What is the effect of that upon the country's trade, industry and employment? We should go to some of the big industrial fairs abroad and hear what overseas buyers say. They ask where we stand. They say it is swings and roundabouts. They ask what they are to expect.
There is a great deal of talk about a hung Parliament. I went through a hung Parliament from 1929 to 1931. The Liberals had 59 seats. Mr. Ramsay MacDonald was Prime Minister when the Labour Party took over with a minority government. What happened? There was a financial crisis. Maggie Bondfield was Minister of Labour. We had 3 million unemployed people. The fund was bankrupt; the pound was running. We had to borrow from Pierre Laval and from America to save the pound. We woke up the next morning, not 12 months ahead in thinking it out and planning it.
I met Sir Herbert Samuel outside 10 Downing Street. He said, "Will you be my PPS?". I said, "Do you mean that there is a Labour Government?". He said, "They resigned 20 minutes ago". I met Sir
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Archibald Sinclair in his silk hat and frock coat. He was the Chief Whip of the 59 Liberal MPs. I asked him where he was going and he told me that he was going to Paris. He was Secretary of State for Scotland. That is how national governments are formed—not a year ahead. It ended in crisis unfortunately.
The Ottowa agreements reared their ugly head after the national government had been formed. Sir Herbert Samuel took half of the Liberal Party out of the Government, Sir John Simon took the others into the national government and it became the Liberal National Party. It lasted for 14 years.
I think that we must think back a little. I agree that we must achieve a sense of national unity. I was greatly interested in the noble Lord's speech, but I think that in trying to achieve this we must look back to see what happened in the past.
4.21 p.m.
Viscount Hanworth: My Lords, the essence of this Motion has been expressed many times in different ways by thinking people of all parties, because our nation is still divided—for example, by class—to a greater degree than many others in the West. Many of us hoped that as the division between the working man and the white-collared person became blurred, and the ownership of cars and other desired consumer products became more common, so would class differences largely disappear. Admittedly, the extreme manifestation of a privileged aristocracy is no more. However, the "them and us" syndrome remains.
Historically the battleground has been in industry. We are trying to improve matters in industry. For its efficiency it is absolutely vital that we should do so. Few people would disagree that a company should be a partnership among shareholders, management and workers. This is easy to say but hard to achieve in useful practical terms.
When I joined industry in 1958 management did not seem to realise that it could no longer wield a big stick over their blue-collared workers. The only alternative would have been what in Army terms is called "leadership"; in other words, inspiring the labour force with a sense of purpose and belonging to the firm. The result of this failure was that at a time when unions could have been persuaded to bring their thinking and procedures into the 20th century they turned in on themselves. They gained excessive power which, with honourable exceptions, was not used either in the nation's good or in their own members' long-term interests. Apart from unnecessary strikes, the crises in the London docks, demarcation in the shipbuilding industry and in British Leyland are just three obvious examples. I need hardly mention the miners.
We are of course to a great extent prisoners of our past. In days gone by the fighting between political parties may even have been amusing and in a less complicated age may have done no great harm. Today these antics are not appreciated by the public who believe that they are governed by Parliament. However, what is much more serious is the reversal of policy; for example, to nationalise, denationalise and renationalise steel. It is now manifest in a Labour defence policy.

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This, I submit, is the main reason for the formation of the Social Democratic Party. It is most certainly why I and others joined them. Whatever your Lordships may think of the merits and otherwise of proportional representation, it would certainly mean a greater consensus on important issues and avoid some of the bitterness felt by unrepresented electors. Surely one cannot rightly support local government councils when they push down their electors' throats extreme policies by a majority of one or two votes, regardless of the real wishes of their electors or of any minority interests. This is not democracy in any sensible meaning of the word.
I now turn to motivation, which is called "purpose" in the terms of this Motion. Before the First World War, but to a lesser extent between the two wars, there was a sense of national interest and pride engendered by our colonies and possessions overseas. Religion also gave a strong cohesive bond to many people. I remember every day while at Wellington College passing through an archway which carried the inscription: "The path of duty is the way to glory". Humbug and hypocrisy you may well say, but it had its effect to inspire one.
However, this has all been swept away. Today Britain is a second-rate power, surpassed in industrial muscle by several other nations, and we have lost our national objectives. A country needs objectives. Consequently there have grown up idealist groups—communists, humanists, anti-nuclear protagonists and a host of others—fragmented and pulling in different directions. The common merit is that the adherents usually put their cause before solely personal interests, but there is a danger that in doing so they often become fanatics.
If you look at our adversary politics it is hard to find those who put national interests before party or personal gain. The same applies in other areas, and the City cannot be excepted. But yet in so many of us there is an idealism which, if given a suitable cause, will regard it as more important than personal or party gain. To some extent Mrs. Thatcher has tapped this source, but without flexibility or apparently humanitarianism, and the sense of uniting the nation is lacking.
I still find it hard to understand how some on the Opposition Benches could square their consciences in supporting the miners' strike. I once asked this of a senior member of the Labour Party. The only real point that he made was that Mr. Scargill was democratically elected. So much for the idea of what democracy should mean. In the extreme, adversary politics pursued in a nation less stable than Britain leads to civil war.
I know that your Lordships may want me to suggest what should be done in more detail than the broad areas which I have indirectly mentioned. I am not going to do so for two reasons; first, because even now the priority must be to recognise and define the problem. That is why I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Molloy, on putting forward this Motion. Secondly, there are no obvious quick solutions, but I suggest that a start could be made in the Palace of Westminster—in the Conservative and present opposition parties.
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I think that my party has the merit of putting forward a different point of view where one is needed but of refraining from just opposing reasonable measures for the sake of doing so. In this context, just consider the Falklands issue. Four separate governments of different complexions concluded that there was only one solution: sovereignty to Argentina and a lease-back, like Hong Kong. Each time they were in opposition they stood out against this solution. In my view that was irresponsible, to say the least, and I think I hardly need say more.
4.30 p.m.
Lord Somers: My Lords, I am in wholehearted ageement with the terms of the Motion which we are discussing, although I am not absolutely certain that I agree with everything that the noble Lord, Lord Molloy, said in the way of interpreting it.
Equality is what we need above everything else, but not equality which is a hypothetical status or is laid out on paper and which we do not necessarily live up to. We need the equality of opportunity which we can achieve for ourselves. We are not meant to be identical. The human race was not created like that. We are all individuals and we all have our individual talents, aspirations and ability. It is no use trying to destroy that fact by some magical Act of Parliament.
There is Biblical confirmation of that principle, as noble Lords may know, as St. Paul said that we are all members of one body and let not the arms say, "because I am not the eye I am not of the body". We are all individuals and we all belong to our own country, Great Britain. Let us work together and not in separate factions.
Education has been mentioned and is certainly a factor, though it is not quite as important as some noble Lords believe it to be. Far more important is the influence of the home in one's early life. I regret to say that such influence is not as good today as it should be. I am hoping that with a great deal of influence and campaigning that situation will improve.
The noble Earl, Lord Longford, mentioned religion. I wholeheartedly agree with him that religion is surely a matter which can bind us together more than anything else. However, there is one especially divisive quality today. Fortunately, to a great extent we have got rid of Victorian class distinction, and I am happy to see that happen. But in its place there is something which is even worse; namely, party politics.
Today everybody judges another by whether he supports Labour, Conservative, Liberal or another party. Some noble Lords may think that I am condemning party politics because I sit on these Benches. If so, that is quite the wrong way round. I sit on these Benches because I dislike party politics with my heart and soul. It is the most divisive policy which we could possibly have in the country today. Until we are all ready to work together to improve our country, we shall never achieve equality.
Finally, tolerance of other people's ideas and principles is also an important matter which can bring us together. Intolerance is an extremely divisive factor. We must educate ourselves to this fact. I am sure that noble lords who really wish to see the country flourish will do so.
4.35 p.m.
Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede: My Lords, first I must congratulate my noble friend Lord Molloy on winning the ballot today for short debates and indeed on the moving way in which he opened the debate. The subject which he chose for debate is one which I know has intrigued many noble Lords as to the exact course the debate was likely to take this afternoon. Noble Lords did not know when they came into the Chamber this afternoon what that course would be. We did not know for certain what was to be the main theme of the debate today.
My noble friend has highlighted the great divide between different sections of the community in a number of areas. It is certainly a unique occasion this afternoon in that the Government Chief Whip is about to make his first substantial speech since he became Government Chief Whip in 1979. Of course that is the period for which the present Government have been in power, and it has provided a useful starting point for us to discuss the Motion in the name of my noble friend.
As has already been mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, a Motion in rather similar terms has coincidentally been debated in another place earlier this week. One is bound to ask why a sense of unity and purpose among all United Kingdom citizens needs to be called for. I suggest, as have other noble Lords, that it is the policies of the present Government which have been of such a divisive nature that this call has had to be made.
The noble Earl, Lord Arran, thought my noble friend had been provocative. Indeed, he told your Lordships that the opinion polls had consistently put the Conservative Party (the Government) at the top, ignoring the fact that opinion polls have consistently shown that the Conservative Government hold only a minority of the total votes cast in each opinion poll. The anti-Tory vote has exceeded the Tory vote consistently for many years.
I do not know why, but the noble Earl tried to bring the monarchy into the question of the sense of unity and purpose. He suggested it was the Queen and the Prime Minister who united the country. The problem is that they do not. The measures which the Prime Minister has sought to put through this House have not provided the unifying factor. They have been of a divisive nature, and indeed we have had the unique spectacle of the Government suffering over 100 defeats in your Lordships' House on a number of issues which have divided both sides of the House and on occasions have also divided the noble Lord the Chief Whip's own party.
The noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, lashed out at two class-based parties and at sterile confrontation between the two sides, and said that he saw a new wind of change in the Alliance. However, even he hinted that this might be a temporary phenomenon; and that is what we very much believe.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Denning, spoke about the great unity of purpose which was achieved during the First and Second World Wars. He then went on to say that every rightminded person must support the police completely. I entirely agree with and support the general consensus of that point, but it must not be unblinkered support. Over the years we
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have suffered from unblinkered support here and we have now moved to a situation where we can quite sanely and without emotion examine complaints as they arise. That is something which has been of benefit.
Under the present Government we have seen the more prosperous sections of the community becoming more prosperous and the poorer sections becoming poorer. We have seen the quality of medical care improve for the most well off and become worse for the least well off. We have seen the richest 10 per cent. of the community improve their standard of living seven times faster than the 10 per cent. in the poorest section of the community. It is a classic case of private affluence and public squalor.
It is no wonder that we are two nations and no wonder that there is no unity of purpose. The Government's policies have increased the divide between North and South and the divide between rich and poor. If we are to achieve a sense of unity and purpose, which my noble friend Lord Molloy wants, the Government of the day must be seen to be acting for the whole nation and not for one privileged part of the nation.
The British people are much concerned and have a great deal of compassion and common sense. They are concerned about poverty, poor housing and injustice. Those are unifying factors throughout the whole nation and they transcend party differences. My noble friend Lady Phillips thought that unity would come through people providing the unifying factor because they want security and love. I am sure that there must be a great deal to be said for that.
The noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Gryfe, said that unity would only come about in a society which people believe is a fair society. I noted that he chose to relate his argument to the question of the unfairness of the electoral system and not, curiously enough, to the question of unfairness in salary levels which touches many corners of society. We have heard of telephone number salaries that are reported as being paid in the City to very young members of the community when at the same time those doing socially useful jobs are being denied a living wage.
My noble friend Lord Molloy mentioned that the Health Education Council report which was published last week came to the stark conclusion that the health of upper income families has improved much more readily than that of the families on low incomes. Thus again the health divide is strong.
My noble friend Lord Longford thought that unity would come through Christian values. Indeed, many of the matters about which we have spoken this afternoon are Christian values; for example, compassion and concern for others. Certainly as long as we can share those values we shall achieve unity through them.
My old friend Lord Granville of Eye spoke about consensus in a national crisis. I am sure that that is something about which we are very much aware. Analysis of the past can be useful but it is the future that we must look forward to. We must learn from the past, but if we are to achieve a greater unity of purpose we must look forward to a government who are concerned about the welfare of the whole community

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and are concerned to do something about unemployment, to lessen the inequalities in health and to improve the conditions in which we live. I support my noble friend's Motion.
4.45 p.m.
Lord Denham: My Lords, it was with some diffidence that I agreed to reply to a debate which had the potential of ranging so widely over so many areas of policy. But questions of unity and purpose are central to the function of Whips' Offices, so perhaps it is not so very inappropriate for the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, and me to find ourselves winding up this afternoon.
It is 15 years since I last wound up a debate for the Government in your Lordships' House, and on that occasion, the Second Reading of a Private Member's Bill, I was furnished with a speech some 10 pages long which in effect said no more than that the Government welcomed the Bill and hoped that the House would give it a Second Reading. I therefore compressed it to just that:
"My Lords, Her Majesty's Government welcome this Bill and hope that your Lordships will give it a Second Reading".
It is a record that I am rather proud of and I am not sure that it does not stand to this day, but as the sentiments of the Motion moved by the noble Lord, Lord Molloy, are such that not one single Member of this House could disagree with them, I had hoped to be able to equal, or even beat, it this afternoon. The noble Lord, Lord Molloy, made such a statesmanlike and moderate speech that until the recent speech made so charmingly, if I may say so, by the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, I still thought that I could get away with it. However, I am afraid that I cannot let go by default the suggestion that all the compassion in this regard lies with his side of the House and all the divisiveness with my noble friends' and mine. I therefore have no alternative but to demonstrate that neither of these hypotheses is correct.
In parenthesis the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, complained that neither the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Molloy, nor that of my noble friend Lord Arran did much to help the unity called for in the Motion in that they each attacked the other's party. I really cannot see how the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, who made the only other blatantly party political speech this afternoon, did better in this respect by attacking both the other parties. However, he did at least spare us the lecture on PR that we received from his allies the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Gryfe, and the noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth, and perhaps we should be grateful for that.
There is nothing so divisive as what I would term "hate politics" and "spite politics", where the emphasis is on taking away from those who have rather than on being able to provide for those who need. There are of course divisions of income and wealth. Raising the standards from the bottom is surely a far more effective way of narrowing the gap than by artificially lowering them from the top. In Britain we have too long underrated the role and importance of wealth creation in general. Your Lordships' Select Committee on Overseas Trade drew attention to this fact and Her Majesty's Government
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agreed with it. But the Government have consistently placed great emphasis on developing an economic climate in which industry can flourish and they are trying, by creating opportunities for enterprise, to change the nation's attitude.
Her Majesty's Government want to see everyone have a stake in wealth creation. In our privatisation programme we have been determined to encourage the small investor. In 1979 about 17 per cent. of the adult population owned shares. Today it is 19·5 per cent.
Labour's rate of tax for top wage earners was as high as 83 per cent. Her Majesty's Government have reduced this to 60 per cent. and the population at large has benefited. Real take-home pay has risen substantially, right across the board, including the lowest incomes.
I say to the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Gryfe, and the noble Lord, Lord Molloy, that the real take-home pay of a married man with two children on half average earnings has risen by almost 18 per cent. The noble Earl, Lord Longford, has been very scathing about Thatcherism. If the record of Her Majesty's Government in this respect is an example of Thatcherism, I am a Thatcherite and I am proud of it.
Punitive taxation of the successful—the "make their pips squeak" philosophy—seldom does anything to reduce the divide between rich and poor. It is nothing more than a ritual killing of the goose that lays the golden egg.
There is also the so-called North-South divide. It is a sad fact of life that there are over 3 million unemployed in Britain today and that the worst concentrations of employment difficulties lie in the regions, the North in particular. But my noble friend Lord Young of Graffham has been constantly keeping your Lordships informed of the steps that Her Majesty's Government are taking in this regard, in particular the Youth Training Scheme and RESTART.
The South-East is undoubtedly better off than other regions but let us not disparage the fact. Let us rather use its wealth-creating capacity to help stimulate growth and jobs in other parts of the country and the Government, I can tell the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Gryfe, are contributing to just this through our regional development grants and regional selective assistance. Unemployment is now falling in all parts of the country and, over the past 12 months, it has fallen fastest in Wales and the North.
The Government are also striving to overcome divisiveness in housing. The landlord has so often been regarded as the villain and the tenant as the victim, even in cases where the latter is richer and better placed than the former, and over-repressive measures to curb the landlord have over the years virtually dried up the supply of houses to let. I am pleased to say that it is now government policy to bring back a much greater degree of choice and variety to the rented sector and it is proposed to give local authorities power to give financial support to private sector bodies wishing to provide rented housing.
Even more strange, in society at large it seems to me, is the attitude over buying and selling of houses, where the seller has come to be looked on as someone who

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has to be watched and the buyer as someone who ought to he protected. For a seller to gazoomp—that is, to renege on a deal because someone else has later offered him a thousand or two more—is quite rightly regarded as outrageous. But for a buyer to renege because someone else has offered him a similar house for a thousand or two less almost passes unnoticed, although the result can be equally devastating in both cases. This difference of attitude to buyer and seller becomes even more ridiculous when you consider that today's virtuous buyer has to become tomorrow's wicked seller before he can become the day after's virtuous buyer again. But the record of Her Majesty's Government is notable in this connection in that our right-to-buy policy has resulted in nearly three quarters of a million new home owners, and the figure becomes over a million if sales by agreement are included too.
The rift between town and country is hardly likely to be healed by the party opposite's latest policy document on the countryside, two of the main planks of which involve the throwing open of the farmer's land for the purposes of recreation to everybody while, at the same time, the farmer's own traditional country sports are to be banned. In the late nineteen forties the Scott Henderson committee, set up by the Labour Government to look into field sports, found that these were generally acceptable subject to two or three minor recommendations, which were immediately implemented. In the late seventies a Labour Government Bill to ban competitive hare-coursing was dismissed by a Select Committee of your Lordships' House as a legal nonsense. If any future administration were to introduce such a Bill, without a further independent inquiry having first reversed, or at least substantially differed from the Scott Henderson findings, it would be nothing less than political bullying of the most divisive kind.
But, my Lords, perhaps the most divisive rift of all is the one that has been developing—and the noble Lord, Lord Somers, referred to it—over the past few years between the political parties themselves. I referred earlier to "hate politics" and "spite politics". Political hard-hitting is part of the necessary machinery of politics, but there is all the difference in the world between the encouragement of hatred and mistrust between the parties.
If I may say so, nothing of this sort happens in your Lordships' House, partly, I suppose, because the restrictions imposed on us by statute, by convention and by agreement over the years prevent us from deciding the main issues of party political controversy, but partly also because of the general temperament and traditions of the House. I really do believe that, at least over the whole field of politics, your Lordships' House makes a major contribution towards the objectives called for in the Motion of the noble Lord, Lord Molloy, today.
4.54 p.m.
Lord Molloy: My Lords, may I briefly say that it was not exactly my intention to provide the Chief Whips of both sides of this Chamber the opportunity to come to the Dispatch Box. As I do not at all believe in any form
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of privilege, I shall have to talk to them both privately about that later on.
I wish sincerely to thank everybody who has participated in this debate. I think that we can all at least agree with Goethe's dictum that divide and rule is a capital motto but unite and lead is a better one. My Lords, I beg leave to withdraw the Motion for Papers.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

Lebanon and Palestine
4.55 p.m.
Viscount Buckmaster Viscount Buckmaster rose to call attention to the situation in the Lebanon and the Israeli-occupied Arab areas of former Palestine; and to move for Papers.
The noble Viscount said: My Lords, I rise to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper. I am indeed most grateful for having been given this opportunity to address myself to the problems of the Middle East, and in particular to those of Lebanon and the occupied areas. Unfortunately, this debate has had to be put on at very short notice, but I am extremely grateful to those noble Lords who have come into the breach in the past day or two. They will have had even less time to prepare their speeches than I have had.
I think one can describe the problems of the Middle East as polycentric, multi-factional, and hydra-headed. What do I mean by that? Hydra-headed refers of course to the PLO. Many attempts have been made to crush them by the Israelis, by Amal, and somehow or other if you lop off one head of the hydra another springs up. They seem to be quite indestructible. Polycentric, my Lords? Well, we only have to look round the Middle East to see how many centres there are.
Multi-factional, what about that, my Lords? What about the situation in the Lebanon, about which I shall talk in a minute or two? How many factions are there there? A friend of mine said recently, "It is not so much a case of 'a plague on both your houses,' but 'a plague on all your 25 houses' ". By that of course he meant all the various political and religious divisions in the Middle East, and there are 17 main factions in Lebanon alone.
Perhaps I might remind your Lordships of some of the confessional groups which make up the infinitely complex, infinitely fragile, political structure of the Lebanon. The oldest established of the Christian communities are the Maronites, who established themselves in the mountain hinterland of Lebanon in AD640 under the leadership of St. Maroun. Politically they are divided into two main groups—the supporters of former president Chamoun, and those of the present President, and they are frequently scrapping among themselves. There are other Christian groups which I could briefly mention, but they are of no great political importance, such as the Greek Orthodox, the Greek Catholic, the Syrian Orthodox and the Syrian Catholic.
Of the Moslem communities it is important to stress that the largest of these—and indeed the largest in the whole country—is now the Shia, who number at least 800,000, and some people say even 1 million. They

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are found mainly in the southern part of the country. It is this faction, whose military wing, Amal, have come into prominence recently with the blockade of the Sabra and Shatilla camps, fortunately now over. I shall say a word about that in a minute.
When I was speaking about Lebanon on the last occasion in your Lordships' House—it was in fact on an Unstarred Question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, on 22nd June, 1984—I said that we had reached in the Lebanon a Humpty-Dumpty situation. In other words, the Lebanese Humpty-Dumpty had suffered such a great fall and fragmented into so many pieces that there seemed no possibility of re-joining it. I much regret that that is proving all too accurate today. President Gemayel, who visited this country recently, controls little more than the limits of his garden. The cabinet has not met for nine months, and the government are in no way in control of the country.
I shall not say much about the blockade of the camps, Sabra, Shatilla and Bourg E1 Barajneh, because, as your Lordships will have read in the papers today, the Syrians have entered the Shatilla camp, which is the one where there was the greatest suffering, and they have put a stop to the activities of the Amal. It is perhaps worth mentioning that when the siege was at its height entry of food and medicines to the camps was forbidden, starvation and disease were widespread, women were being fired upon as they went to draw water at the wells, and rats were reported to be eating the flesh of the unburied bodies. What a horrible picture! Having heard an account of conditions there from a Chinese doctor who worked in that area I can assure your Lordships that this was in no sense an exaggeration.
Let me turn now to the situation in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. I must make it clear, although some noble Lords may disagree with me, that there can be no doubt whatever that these occupied territories are slowly but inexorably being incorporated into the State of Israel. One cannot get away from that basic fact. Perhaps I may give your Lordships some examples. As will be appreciated, I am sure, an adequate supply of pure water is a paramount need in countries like Israel, where temperatures often rise to over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. There is a lovely passage in the Koran which says:
"We have created from water every living thing".
What a lovely idea that is! But, my Lords, what do we find? the water allowance for agricultural purposes has been fixed at from between 90 to 100 million cubic metres per year for 400 Palestinian villages. This allowance of water will not increase, even by the year 2010. By contrast, however, water for the Israelis' agriculture will increase during the 1980s to an estimated 60 million cubic metres by 1990 for only 30 settlements. There are several quite serious agricultural restrictions: for example, farmers in the West Bank and Gaza face many difficulties. These include restrictions on land that can be cultivated, the amount of water that can be used and the planting of trees. They face unfair competition from Israelis whose agriculture is subsidised, and they have to pay many taxes, including those on land, income, exports, and so
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on. Their export is restricted. They are not allowed to sell produce in Israel—a very important point—whereas the Israelis are able to flood the local markets with cheap subsidised produce.
Then there are many abuses of human rights. For example, no political activity is allowed. Road blocks, curfews, demolition of houses, detentions and deportations have been common. Universities are closed periodically and students arrested, as your Lordships will have seen in the press. Youth centres have been closed for the flimsiest of reasons. To take one example, the youth centre at Kalandia camp was closed because it showed the film "The Lion of Africa", which was claimed to be an incitement to riot. I could go on, but I hope I have given a fairly clear picture of the extent to which the people in those territories suffer.
The situation in the Gaza Strip is worthy of rather special attention. Since the military occupation of the strip, together with the Golan Heights and the West Bank in June 1967, attention has been largely fixed on those latter two territories to the virtual exclusion of Gaza. This strip is an artificial entity about 45 kilometres long and eight kilometres wide. It has no historical identity, and it is inhabited by about 500,000 people, making it one of the most densely populated areas in the world. Of this number nearly 50 per cent. are under 14 years of age. Some 350,000 are refugees, living in camps where conditions are about as bad as anywhere in the Middle East. There seems little hope of an improvement so long as the rat-infested sewers continue to run through the camps. The government health services in Gaza are, sad to say, chronically under-staffed and short of funds. They work with outdated equipment. Gaza has no qualified anaesthetist, no heart, paediatric or chest surgeon and only one psychiatrist compared with 2,000 in Israel.
The main purpose of this speech is not to tell your Lordships what has been happening in this area, but to make recommendations to Her Majesty's Government concerning policy. Here I think we must do all we can to support the Declaration by the Twelve on the Middle East signed in Brussels on 23rd February, 1987. That declaration has not been given very wide prominence, so far as I can see, but it includes some important recommendations. Time permits me to mention only two. First, Article 4:
"the Twelve would like to state that they are in favour of an international Peace Conference to be held under the auspices of the United Nations with the participation of the parties concerned and of any party able to make a direct and positive contribution to the restoration and maintenance of peace and to the region's economic and social development".
What could be more positive and constructive than that? Surely Her Majesty's Government will go along with that. Then we have Article No. 6 which to my mind is also very important and particularly relevant today. It reads as follows:
"Without prejudging future political solutions, the Twelve wish to see an improvement in the living conditions of the inhabitants of the Occupied Territories, particularly regarding their economic, social, cultural and administrative affairs. The Community has already decided to grant aid to the Palestinian population of the Occupied Territories and to allow certain products from those territories preferential access to the Community Market."
There are just two other aspects of this problem that I should like to touch on briefly. One is the problem of

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terrorism. I have not given figures of numbers killed or details of attacks because that is largely unnecessary; but I should like to say—I hope we may get further on this if the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, gets his debate on terrorism—that terrorism is essentially the product of maladjusted people. There are very important psychological considerations behind it. To give one example, the genesis of all this trouble in Lebanon was way back in 1974 when a Christian boy of 14 years, no more, held up a bus containing Moslems and killed them all, just like that; he mowed them down with a machine gun. In my view that 14 year-old boy was not basically evil. He was probably no worse than any of your Lordships' 14 year-old sons, but it happened. I hope that some time may be given to consider this problem in rather more detail.
I hope your Lordships will forgive me if I reminisce about my earliest visit to Palestine and Lebanon which was during the war in 1942 and 1943. I can remember so well walking over those hills of Galilee—the northern part of Israel now but formerly Palestine—and all the beauty of the spring flowers. One would see little children running joyfully from school with their smiling faces and their warm welcome. I can remember being taken on one occasion to a Palestinian house. There I was given not a glass of water, not a cup of tea or coffee: I was given a bowl, a piece of soap and a towel. I was invited to wash my feet. Is that not a wonderful link with the Palestine of the Bible? How splendid it would be if we could restore something of that atmosphere to those troubled countries today. My Lords, I beg to move for Papers.
5.11 p.m.
Lord Kagan: My Lords, I shall be very brief. I well remember the speech of the noble Viscount, Lord Buckmaster, on 22nd May 1985. At that time there was very severe criticism of Israel, with blame for what had happened in the Lebanese camps. At that time it was implied that there was lack of goodwill on the part of the Israelis. Sadly, we have now seen that no one could put order into Lebanon, and the description of "Humpty Dumpty" was absolutely justified. I feel that Israel has received an unfair amount of blame.
So far as the occupied territories are concerned, I am afraid that in a situation like that there is not a choice between a good answer or a bad answer. Sometimes fate gives us the choice between bad, worse and terrible. It is not easy to administer a country in which a lot of vested interests are hostile. The Israelis have tried very, very hard indeed to co-operate with the native population in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank to try to improve things, but as soon as anyone among the native Palestinians there shows the slightest sign of co-operation with Israel, terror is applied against them.
In Israel, the Israelis are allowed to have different opinions, to discuss and to disagree in a civilised manner; but I am afraid that among the Palestinians any dissent is punished and squashed by terror. That is the difficulty. It is not just a question of Israeli lack of goodwill: it is the case that one has to make the best of a very bad and difficult situation.
So far there has been no mention that at the present moment Shimon Peres is attempting to arrange a
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meeting in which Palestinians will participate. What the outcome will be one does not know. Israel not only wants peace: it needs peace desperately. As I said earlier, the perfect answer is not there as an option.
5.14 p.m.
Lord Mayhew: My Lords, I am sure we are all grateful to the noble Viscount for introducing this Motion and for the extremely informative way in which he did so. My noble friends would, I feel, support all the recommendations that he put forward for the attention of the Government.
At long last a degree of law and order has been imposed by the Syrians in Lebanon. It is a thankless task, for which I think they deserve credit. Already there are an increasing number of acts of violence against the Syrian occupying forces, and it remains to be seen how long even the present measure of order can be maintained.
Perhaps the noble Baroness, when she comes to reply, would say something about our relations with Syria. My noble friends and I were among the first to support the Government over the breaking of relations following the disgraceful Syrian association with a monstrous terrorist act. Is it the Government's view that there have been changes of personnel since in Syria and some signs of a more positive policy? Are the Government considering, bearing in mind the immensely important position of Syria in the Middle East, some partial restoration of relations with that country?
At the moment the Syrians have succeeded in raising the siege of the refugee camps. In a world where scenes of cruelty have become all too commonplace, it is hard to beat the spectacle of women and girls running to fetch food for their starving families and being shot as they do so. The relief of these camps was an absolute first priority. We hope and pray that the lifting of the siege will continue.
If I may, I should like to draw attention to the noble conduct in the Bourj al-Barajneh camp of two British citizens, Dr. Pauline Cutting and Nurse Susan Wighton. I hope that the Government will assure us, since there has been talk of reprisals, that they will spare no pains to do whatever is possible to ensure the protection of these two brave ladies and in due course perhaps give them the public recognition that their heroism deserves. Credit is also due to a small band of newspaper and television reporters who have recently shown to the world the real horror of life under siege in the camps. May I also ask the noble Baroness whether she can tell us what the latest position is on the kidnapping of Mr. Terry Waite and other British subjects in Beirut?
Even at the best of times, when Lebanon was free and prosperous, stability was threatened by tension between Christians and Moslems. There was no chance of this stability surviving the sudden influx of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees, driven from their homes by Israel. Naturally these unhappy people demanded to be allowed to return to their homes. Naturally also, in my view and I think in the view of most people, very disastrously and most mistakenly, the PLO set up a kind of mini-state in Lebanon to forward thòse aims.

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The results were disastrous. First, there was Lebanese resentment at the infringement of their sovereignty and then, much worse, there was the Israeli invasion in which over 100,000 innocent Palestinian and Lebanese civilians were either killed or injured, apparently in the hope that somehow in this way the PLO would be destroyed and Palestinian national aspirations would be ended.
Israel is still contributing to the destabilisation of Lebanon by maintaining a de facto presence in the south of the country and by continuing bombing raids. There have been eight bombing raids so far this year. All these things have been in defiance of unanimous Security Council resolutions.
Will the noble Baroness confirm that it is still the position of the Government, as I believe it is, that they warmly support the work of UNIFIL in the south of Lebanon and will resist all efforts to have the force removed? It is regarded by the people there—the people who are in danger—as their friend and ally, and it has done a splendid job in very difficult circumstances indeed.
It has often been said that there will be no peace in the Middle East until a measure of justice has been done to the Palestinians. Lebanon is one example of this and another example, as the noble Viscount has so admirably shown, is the deplorable situation in the West Bank and Gaza. It is not merely the denial of normal civil liberties, freedom of speech, freedom of association and freedom to vote, but far worse, as the noble Viscount indicated—the deportation of people without trial from their own country. There are collective punishments and frequent shootings of unarmed civilians—so frequent as not now to get much notice in the press, although I saw that there was a case last Monday. It is, I am afraid, an example of colonialism of a rather brutal kind and it is in nobody's interests, least of all in the interests of Israel, that this situation should be allowed to continue.
A just solution has long been available on paper. I refer to the unanimous decision of the Foreign Ministers of the European Community at Venice, which was reaffirmed, as the noble Viscount mentioned, in February this year. On these Benches we congratulate the Government and the other governments of the European Community both on the original Venice declaration and on the reaffirmation in February.
It laid down the essentials for a peaceful settlement. On the one hand, there was recognition of Israel's right to live in peace within her recognised international frontiers, with her security guaranteed not only by an international treaty, but also by European troops on the ground, which is plainly implied in the Venice declaration. On the other hand, there was self-determination for the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza and—so the Venice declaration puts it—the "association" of the PLO with the peace process. On these Benches we warmly support this way forward.
Further, we support the Government in any efforts they can make to bring about an international conference to start the peace process going. We know that there are very grave difficulties. Such a conference would be attended by all the interested parties including Israel and the Soviet Union, and with
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Palestinian representation acceptable to the PLO. This is, I know, a very great difficulty. No one can dictate what the Palestinian representation should be. But all those who understand that the PLO is accepted as the leader by the overwhelming mass of Palestinians, including those on the West Bank and Gaza, must, I am sure, agree that peace negotiations which exclude the PLO are worthless. There must be Palestinian representation at this conference acceptable to the PLO, and we should certainly support the Government in that.
But, alas, there are of course grave obstacles. Last week, overriding his Foreign Minister, Mr. Peres, the Prime Minister of Israel, Mr. Shamir. reaffirmed his unqualified opposition to any international conference and any negotiations on relinquishing the West Bank and Gaza and, as his recent visit to the United States showed, the views of Mr. Shamir carry inordinate weight in Washington. indeed, it is fair to ask how far the United States Government are actually in command of their own policy in the Middle East, bearing in mind their high dependence on Congress and the high dependence of Congress on the pro-Israeli lobby. American Senators and Representatives will explain quite readily that if they oppose the Israeli line they pay a heavy penalty in loss of media support and in campaign contributions particularly. They will frankly admit that Congress seldom decides Palestinian problems on their merits. This lamentable state of affairs places a particularly heavy responsibility on the European Community in its efforts to reach a just settlement.
But though the outlook is bleak—no one can deny that—it is not hopeless, and there are one or two developments which ought to encourage the Community. I am thinking, for instance of the increasingly influential and positive role being played by Egypt and also by Syria and the Soviet Union. I am thinking also of the small but growing section of Israeli opinion which recognises that the status quo is no solution for Israel, no option for Israel, in the longer term; that the balance of power is bound to shift against Israel in the longer term not only in economic, financial and military terms, but above all, in the view of well informed Israelis, in terms of population, of demography. These far-sighted Israelis are willing to trade land for peace.
Then on the Palestinian side within the PLO there are strong elements, braving the murderous threats of the Abu Nidal terrorist group, which are striving also for a just and peaceful settlement. These are the elements, together with the European Community itself, on which hopes for the future rest. Let the Government encourage and build on these elements and they will have the warm support of my noble friends and myself.
5.26 p.m.
The Lord Bishop of Rochester: My Lords, like the last speaker I am most grateful to the noble Viscount, Lord Buckmaster, for providing us with this opportunity to comment on the continuing chaos and horror of events in the Lebanon. Your Lordships will be aware that on these Benches we have at this time our own particular concern about the progress of events there. But such is the delicacy of the situation,

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I am sure your Lordships will understand if I simply reaffirm our constant prayers for the safe return of all captives, including the Archbishop's envoy. Terry Waite's disappearance has perhaps done more than years of war, kidnaps and suffering to bring home to many the reality of life in a country where the rule of law has been replaced by terror and anarchy. It is this reality which I believe should be the focus of our concern, and in this short debate I should like to draw your Lordships' attention to both political and humanitarian realities.
There are in your Lordships' House many who are much better qualified than I am to speak about the political dimensions of the situation in the Lebanon, but I feel that underlying those dimensions is a wider moral one. This is that the institutions we have created in our efforts to bring peace to the world are woefully inadequate to the task. We are thankful to have the United Nations as a world agency, but its existence is a beginning and not an end. Until the UN has the power to intervene in such a situation we cannot be content. It will remain impotent until it is given proper resources and is able to demonstrate a political will that will make it work. The situation in the Lebanon should remind us every day that while we may leap ahead in some fields, we progress little in other more vital ones.
I would draw your Lordships' attention to the general effects of the fratricidal conflict that we see in the Lebanon—the cheapening of life, the acceptance of war as a habit, the casual acceptance of torture and murder. These can become the touchstones by which everything is judged. The bell tolls loudest for those closest, but its echoes should reach whoever values peace. For this reason, I am sure your Lordships will join me in believing that the problems of the Lebanon, whether it be the homelessness of the Palestinians or the treatment of other groups and minorities, should continue to concern us all. We must all want to assure the people of the Lebanon, of whatever political or religious group, that their suffering is not forgotten and that we work and pray daily for their deliverance from fear and hunger.
Finally, I should like to salute the courage of those who share the dangers in order to bring aid and relief to those who suffer. I am thinking of the doctors, nurses and officials of the Red Cross and the United Nations agencies who remain committed to their humanitarian work, despite great threats to their own security. They more than anyone demonstrate the possibility of simple humanitarian concern taking precedence over political or personal advantage. Those of them who give their lives we should surely revere and honour as we do the heroes of other causes.
I should also like to thank the Government for the money they have provided to support the work of relief agencies. Like the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, I share the hope that it may be possible to mount an international initiative to address the causes of conflict in the Lebanon. Until that time—and it may be quite a while—I hope that the Minister will be able to assure us that we shall continue to see that funds are made available for relief work. That work serves in particular the widows and orphans of the war.
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I began my few remarks by asking that we concentrate today on the realities of life in the Lebanon. I believe that it is only when we see clearly the plight of the most desperate that we shall find the moral energy to move mountains on their behalf.
5.35 p.m.
Lord Paget of Northampton: My Lords, the noble Lord the Chief Whip of the Government referred in the last debate to our happy estate in having government by sympathy, by agreement and with mutual affection. He referred to the horrors of government by hate and spite. In the Middle East, government is about hate and spite. It is about nothing else. One cannot run around saying how nice it would be if all the Middle Eastern peoples loved one another. They do not. As the noble Lord, Lord Kagan, pointed out, we are dealing with a situation in which there is no good will available. We are dealing with a situation in which we have to choose between order and terror. It is a straight choice. In governing the Middle East, people must be more frightened of you than they are of the other man.
The PLO is a terrorist organisation. We all know that terrorism has been its method. The PLO illegally got itself into Lebanon. It at first tried to get itself into Jordan. However, thanks to the King of Jordan, it was defeated and expelled. Do not tell me that we are urging the king to have it back. The PLO then went into the Lebanon. I remember Lebanon in the old days, with its strange arrangement of a Christian president and a Muslin chief justice working happily together until the PLO came in. The PLO is the villain of this piece as it has been, to a considerable degree, within Palestine as well.
Lord Chelwood: My Lords, may I put one point? Is the noble Lord aware that more than 100 countries, including EC countries, recognise the PLO as the sole legal representative of the Palestinian people? One really cannot condemn all the members of the PLO as terrorists. That is quite ridiculous.
Lord Paget of Northampton: My Lords, I shall happily give the noble Lord a list of the absurdities upon which the whole of the United Nations agree. When one has this absurd and unworkable forum of bogus representation, one gets people who are perpared to find that black is white and that the PLO is not a terrorist organisation. It has never been anything else; terrorism is what the PLO believes in. It has urged terrorism and used it at every opportunity. When it was finally thrown out of Lebanon, it was not long before it was back again and got back into the camps. We have heard of the misery of those camps. They are the people who are to blame for it—
Lord Chelwood: Where else have they got to go?
Lord Paget of Northampton: My Lords, I shall not give way. I have only six minutes. Those are the people who went into the camps. They did not go there to be peaceful; they went there to make war, in just the same way that the IRA goes into Northern Ireland and makes war. We are dealing with terrorists. We should not block our eyes to that.

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So far as the West Bank is concerned, the noble Viscount, Lord Buckmaster, said that he wished he could restore the Bible situation which he found there before the war. I profoundly wish that he could. However, has he any idea what the Bible situation was? The land was ruled by Rome with a rod of iron. It was ruled in such a manner that wherever one walked one could not fail to see the crucifixes in the countryside. Read Josephus; he tells us what Palestine was like. The archaeologists will tell you that one of the most prosperous times in the history of Palestine was the time when Roman rule gave order. That is what the Middle East needs now.
The West Bank is working very well, It has order. That order may involve some people being thrown out or being expelled from their own country. However, it is vastly better than the chaos which is the alternative. The same situation exists in Ireland. We are the Jews in Ireland as the Israelis are in the West Bank. Both of us are doing an exceedingly good job.
To my noble friend Lord Mayhew I should like to say that though we have been friends for a very long time, I have recognised this strange aberration of his during all the time in which I have been with him in Parliament, from the time when he was with Ernest Bevin in the Foreign Office. At that time, the attempt was made to allow the Arab nations, who had armies available at that time, to destroy and annihilate the Jews. It was a shocking part of our history and it failed because of the tremendous courage of the Jews who defeated Ernie Bevin's plan. At that time my noble friend acquired his anti-Semitism—
Lord Mayhew: What?
Lord Paget of Northampton: —and I have never known him to dissent from it for a moment. There has never been an occasion either in this House or in another place that he has not used his opportunities to viciously attack Israel.
Lord Mayhew: My Lords, I am sorry to interrupt my old friend. However, he surely is not suggesting that I am racially prejudiced against the Jews. That is a very serious accusation and he has no evidence. I am willing to prove the contrary. If I may remind him, there is a grove of trees planted in my honour in Israel. It is called the Christopher Mayhew Grove. Perhaps he can answer that.
Lord Paget of Northampton: My Lords, I do not know how that happened in the negotiations in which he was representing Ernie Bevin. Those kinds of actions may happen when one tries to conciliate one's enemies. If that grove is there for any purpose, that is the purpose, because he has never been anything other than an enemy of Israel. I am not saying that he is racially prejudiced. Doubtless he will tell us that many of his best friends are Jews. However, his behaviour has never displayed any love of Israel; this is the final time and I am tired of hearing it.
This is an occasion on which we can look at the situation. The issue, and the only issue, in the Middle East is terrorism. That overwhelmingly transcends all the others. Until you have destroyed, defeated and
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bound terrorism, you can have no peace and no order. Get your priorities right—that is what I urge on the Government—and do not say that in order to settle this we have to bring the terrorists, the PLO, into the negotiations. The rule which the Government try to follow is that they do not deal with terrorists. Once they deal with terrorists—whether they be the IRA or the PLO; it is just the same thing—they will be in trouble.
5.40 p.m.
The Earl of Oxford and Asquith: My Lords, the rather short notice of the debate has certainly left me less well prepared for it than I should have liked. But having served for many years in what was then Palestine, I should feel ashamed if I did not speak, however briefly, in support of the Palestinians now in Lebanon and in the West Bank and Gaza. In part, at least, it was for their welfare and that of their parents and grandparents that we undertook responsibility for the Palestine mandate. We failed them in the end in this responsibility, with the consequences for them that we see today.
The noble Viscount, Lord Buckmaster, has done a great service in drawing attention so eloquently to their plight, not least because there is a worrying disproportion between the attention that this has received and the attention given to sufferers with more powerful backing. If an American hostage is taken, still more if an American is killed, all America is up in arms, sometimes literally so, when it results, for example, in the bombing of Tripoli, with British support. If an Israeli is killed—it may be Sidon that is bombed, with shocking casualties, or it may be Tunis—this is called "teaching the terrorists a lesson". But when Palestinian Arabs die in tens of thousands—the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, has given 100,000 as the number—or survive certainly in hundreds of thousands in the most deplorable conditions, the world's reaction is strangely muted; a curious disparity of response.
Only a week or two ago we saw how the concert of Western opinion—again with British support—has induced Russia to make important concessions in the interests of Soviet Jewry. Is it too much to hope that concerted action by ourselves and others could help to alleviate the Palestinians' ordeal and redress the injustices which have been done to them? Latterly, it is true, conditions in the camps of Lebanon have become so appalling that more publicity has been given to them in the press. The heroic efforts, which have been mentioned, by the charitable organisations—the British charity, Medical Aid to Palestinians, and others—to bring medical skills, medical supplies and food into the beleaguered camps are worthy of the highest praise. I commend this charity, Medical Aid to Palestinians, to your Lordships for any support, moral or material, it may be possible to give it. The news in this morning's papers about the relief of the camps will come as an encouragement to these efforts.
But while conditions in the Lebanon have received their share of the limelight, less than ever is said about conditions in the West Bank and Gaza, where abuses of human rights, contrary to international conventions—the fourth Geneva convention in

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particular—receive scant attention in the press. First and foremost is the expropriation of lands on which Arab families have lived for centuries, so that a very large proportion of West Bank land is now under Israeli ownership or control. Other abuses have been mentioned by previous speakers—restrictions on freedom of movement, freedom of association, academic freedom. I need not expand on them.
One or two have not been mentioned; for example, the obstacles which are being placed to the reunification of close families where spouses or children are living on different sides of the border; the maltreatment of prisoners and suspects under interrogation in prison; the denial of political status to prisoners of conscience—a matter which Amnesty International has taken up in the strongest terms—and injuries of the most severe kind, often by gunfire, inflicted on children throwing stones. On the economic side—less poignant but hardly less important—there is the apparent determination by Israel, to which the noble Viscount has referred, to integrate the economy of the occupied territories into her own and to prevent any separate development.
One example of this is that agricultural marketing in the West Bank and Gaza has to be conducted through Israeli state agencies, undermining the European trade concessions to Palestinian farmers recently agreed in Brussels. Another example to which the noble Viscount also referred is the rigid control of water resources which has forced thousands of Palestinians off the land, compelling them to seek work as unskilled labourers within Israel itself.
In these and other ways it is clear that Palestinians of the West Bank have become second-class citizens in the country where they have always lived. In the words of Professor Leibowitz of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem:
"One and a half million Palestinians are deprived of their civil and political rights. This is a false democracy".
Professor Leibowitz is an example of the large and growing number of Israelis determined to uphold civilised standards, and if arguments and pressures could be more vigorously concerted and pursued it would seem odd that Israel's government should be less responsive to them than, in the recent instance, Russia has been. In Israel there is at least an organised government. In the Lebanon, where conditions are so chaotic, it is a puzzle to know what can be done and for the time being we may have to make do with palliatives.
Among various ideas that have been put forward is the suggestion that we and other friendly countries should give more generous hospitality on humanitarian grounds to such refugees as might wish to be resettled outside the Middle East. As a nation we have fine traditions of asylum and the idea could certainly be worth pursuing. But I have some doubts whether it could make much headway except within the framework of a long-term political solution.
Palestinian refugees so far have taken the line that what they want is not only charity but justice, and have been slow to relinquish the hope of returning to the land from which they have been obliged to move. Palliatives are useful and I do not want to disparage them. They are useful but they are not enough and
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they should not distract us from our efforts to help towards a more fundamental settlement.
The Venice declaration, which explicitly recognises Palestinian rights to self-determination, is still, I am glad to say, a cornerstone of our policy and that of our European allies. I was glad to see that we and they are now also supporting the idea of an international conference on the Middle East because I now believe this to offer the best, and perhaps the only, hope of such a settlement. I am glad to see that the Israeli Foreign Minister, Mr. Peres, seems now to agree with this approach.
I would ask the noble Baroness when she replies to the debate to say what progress, if any, has been made in the matter of a conference and what in her view are the prospects of overcoming possible objections by President Reagan and highly probable objections by Mr. Shamir. In addition, I ask her whether she can tell us anything of what passed in the Moscow discussions between the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and Mr. Shevardnadze on the subject of the Middle East in so far as it is relevant to this debate. Perhaps she can also tell us whether anything relevant to that emerged from the recent conversations between the Prime Minister and King Fahd.
5.50 p.m.
Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: My Lords, we are obliged to the noble Viscount, Lord Buckmaster, for initiating this debate and for his knowledgeable speech, and we have also heard a number of interesting speeches from other noble Lords who have a close acquaintance with the Middle East. The noble Earl, Lord Oxford and Asquith, who has just sat down, knows the Middle East in detail and speaks of it with understanding and sympathy.
I cannot pretend that I have the same expertise, but I recall a visit to the Lebanon and Jordan over 30 years ago with Members of both Houses. My noble friend Lord Paget who has just spoken was also a member of that delegation. Prior to setting off we were asked by Mr. Selwyn Lloyd to do all that we could to improve relations with the Lebanon following the recent bitter war. We were received with a good deal of argument but also with kind hospitality. I remember the long talks we had with men such as Mr. Chamoun, Mr. Emile Bustani and Mr. Henri Pharaon, as well as with Ministers in the Government. As my noble friend said, Christian and Moslem worked together in government and administration, and the country was prosperous. They appeared then to have overcome the religious divide in a remarkable way.
Beirut was a prosperous and beautiful city and port. We walked through its streets with interest and without fear. We also visited some refugee camps which had recently been set up there, and although we had a sense of foreboding we did not fully contemplate the appalling, catastrophic developments which lay ahead. We did not foresee that friendship between Moslem and Christian would turn into bitter hatred and violent conflict or that, against all the precepts of the Koran, Moslem, would kill Moslem, and that Beirut would be changed into a scene of dreadful carnage and suffering.

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This House has debated that tragedy before, and it knows its causes. There have been invasions and civil war.
Lord Paget of Northampton: My Lords, I remember that visit very well, but surely my noble friend recognises that the friendship between Moslem and Christian which was very evident then only went when the PLO came in.
Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: My Lords, my noble friend has made that point in his speech, but I shall read his remarks very carefully. I am describing the scene as it was when he and I visited the area all those years ago. My reflection at the time was that it was a happy place. It was only when we visited the refugee camps which were then recently built that we felt that dark days lay ahead. That is what we reported to Mr. Selwyn Lloyd when we returned to this country.
Perhaps I may summarise the three great initiatives which have been taken on the Lebanon and the Middle East. First, there were the United States-Soviet peace talks initiated by the United Nations in 1973–74. Secondly, there was the Camp David agreement of September 1978. That had some significant results, notably the handing over of Sinai by Israel to Egypt. Thirdly, there was the Venice Declaration of 1980 which had much in common with the Geneva objectives.
The regrettable failure of those initiatives does not mean that we should not continue to try. It is important that this House should recognise that Britain cannot resolve this intractable problem alone, but in concert with our partners in the European Community. Through the United Nations and other channels, which I shall mention shortly, we can at least persist in efforts to create a movement towards peace.
The Government have stated their policy on a number of occasions. They have said that they will co-ordinate their efforts with those of the United States and the moderate Arab states, notably Jordan and Egypt, while maintaining a friendly dialogue with Israel. In fact, the United Kingdom has gone further than the United States in opening channels with the PLO and holding talks with its officials. We do not forget the proposed meeting between the Foreign Secretary and the Jordan Palestinian delegation which fell through some three years ago. At that time Sir Geoffrey Howe made an important statement:
"An international conference may certainly have a part to play but we are not yet convinced that the scene has been sufficiently set for that".
Well over a year has passed since he said that, and I mention it because I strongly believe that a conference must take place at some stage, though the moment must be right and the preparation for the conference must be careful and adequate. I think that is a view which the House shares and which noble Lords have reflected in their speeches. There must be a will to succeed and there must be full preparation before talks start.
So far as concerns the United Nations, I assume that the Government are still committed to Resolutions 242 and 338. (I shall return to those later.) In fact, those resolutions were the basis of the Venice Declaration and the talks at Geneva.
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There are certain events which make this a timely debate. The first is the recent visit of King Fahd of Saudi Arabia to this country. The Financial Times reported that the king:
"has been attempting to address attention once again to the intractable conflict at the root of the Middle East's problems—that between Israel and the Arab world. They said that the King was out to remind Britain—and through it the US—that the ultimate fate of Western interests in the region as a whole will most probably depend on the resolution of the Palestine dispute".
It seems that King Fahd reflected the frustration of moderate Arabs at the lack of progress, the virtual stagnation in the Middle East peace process and the inactivity of the United States. Perhaps the noble Baroness could comment on that and confirm that that is a fair summary of the political situation at the present time. I think we can assume that Her Majesty's Government are in close touch with the United States Administration on a possible initiative. That really lies at the heart of this debate today.
I now turn to what is probably the most important potential development, and I would welcome the observations of the noble Baroness on this point. The Prime Minister returned from her visit to Moscow a few days ago following her extensive talks with Mr. Gorbachev. To what extent was the Middle East discussed in those talks? I ask that specifically because the Soviet Union now seems to be very anxious to attend any international conference on the Middle East, and appears to me to be anxious to mend fences with Israel. That could be of immense importance.
Let us take this development with other calls for a conference as follows. First, following the special meeting at the end of February, the European Community called for an international conference which would include the Soviet Union. That was an initiative in which Her Majesty's Government participated. Secondly, the Islamic summit held in Kuwait in January stated that there would be Arab support for an international conference. Again, in my view that is a development of the greatest importance.
Thirdly, we read in the International Herald Tribune that Mr. Yassir Arafat said he would consider the possibility of a delegation of Palestinians to such an international conference which did not include members of his PLO. The resumption of diplomatic relations between the USSR and Israel would be an event of profound importance. It would also remove the United States and Israeli objection to the participation of the Soviet Union in a conference. Therefore we may be approaching an historic opportunity.
If we take all these factors together we must agree that the prospects are much more promising than appears on the surface. A conference with the backing of the United States, the Soviet Union and the EC would not necessarily resolve the problem of the Middle East—the ultimate solution must depend on the people of the area itself—but that could be an immensely powerful impetus towards a settlement.
What we cannot and must not dismiss from our minds, as several noble Lords have reminded us, is the suffering of the people. We read about it daily and we see it on television. As the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, said, the courage of journalists such as Mr. Brent Sadler and the photographers who are responsible for

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the pictures we see and who bring the dreadful realities into our homes has to be greatly admired. The suffering of the hostages, such as Mr. Terry Waite, who so far as I can see are guilty of nothing save a desire to help others, reminds us that there is nothing more cruel than religious wars. One can only hope that they will soon be released.
We are conscious of the 40,000 or so hungry Palestinians who have been besieged in refugee camps in Lebanon for over four months and of the efforts to relieve them and to get food to them. We are filled with respect and admiration for the brave people who, for no reason other than compassion, risk their lives hour by hour to minister to the sick and to the wounded. As the right reverend Prelate and the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, said, there are outstanding examples. We know of the dedication of Dr. Pauline Cutting and Miss Susan Wighton. Dr. Cutting has already operated on over 500 casualties and admits to being numbed by the scale of human tragedy.
I understand that they are now regarded as prisoners with a price on their heads because they appear to have alienated the militias. I shall be grateful to the noble Baroness if she can tell the House what steps the Government are taking to assist Dr. Cutting and nurse Wighton and whether they are in further peril. We are glad to learn today of the food which has now been taken to that area.
For all those reasons, and many others, is it not essential that everything should be done to hasten the end of this wicked shambles? I believe that the Government are anxious to do what they can to help. In that they have our full support. The whole of the Middle East has been destabilised and it is a grim lesson to us and to the whole world. There is suspicion and old scores to be settled, but the Arab world and Israel have an urgent duty to seek a lasting solution. Like the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, I know that there are Arabs and Israelis who are moderate and who are working to that end. The rest of us have an equal duty with others to help towards and, if necessary, press for a solution. Together we can do a great deal but alone we can do very little. Perhaps the Government themselves can stimulate the move towards the conference which so many people on all sides are now advocating.
6.4 p.m.
The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Baroness Young): My Lords, I am sure that we are all grateful to the noble Viscount, Lord Buckmaster, for the opportunity to debate the appalling situation in Lebanon and the plight of the Palestinians living under Israeli occupation in the West Bank and Gaza. We greatly appreciate the deep knowledge and long experience of the Middle East which the noble Viscount brings to our debates.
Those who, like the noble Viscount, knew Lebanon in happier times—and I know that this evening many noble Lords have spoken from personal experience of visiting the Lebanon—grieve at the tragic waste of human resources over the past 12 years. From its former glory as the business and cultural centre of the Near East, Lebanon has become the stage for the
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region's conflicts, played out in civil war, foreign invasion, terrorism and economic decline. Perhaps 10 per cent. of the population have been killed or wounded since 1975. Every new development brings a new twist to the civilian suffering.
The plight of the Palestinians in the refugee camps of Beirut and South Lebanon, and of those Lebanese who were caught up in the recent fighting, is of great concern to us all. We have repeatedly called for a ceasefire and regular access to the camps for relief workers and humanitarian aid agencies. We deeply deplore the appalling suffering inflicted on the civilian population by the continuing violence, particularly the sniping in the camps in West Beirut which has killed women who were seeking to buy supplies. We welcome the news that relief supplies are now reaching the Shatila camp as a result of the Syrian action yesterday—a point referred to by the noble Viscount, Lord Buckmaster, and the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew. We hope that the siege of Bourj al-Barajneh will be lifted very soon.
This afternoon I pay tribute, as have so many of your Lordships to all those who at great personal risk are working to relieve the suffering. I, too, salute Dr. Cutting's courage in carrying on with vital humanitarian work in the face of these dangers. The noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn, asked a specific question about Dr. Cutting. I can tell him that we are alert to the need to do whatever we can to ensure her safe departure once she indicates a wish to leave and circumstances permit it. Our ambassador in Beirut is closely watching the situation.
As noble Lords will know, last month we allocated a further £550,000 to the International Committee for the Red Cross and UNRWA for relief work in Lebanon. This is in addition to our contribution of £1 million to UNRWA's reconstruction appeal for Lebanon and of £5 million per annum to UNRWA's general budget, a large portion of which is disbursed in Lebanon. We have also contributed £650,000 to the ICRC in the last two years for its work in Lebanon.
The wider problems of Lebanon are compounded by the inability of the legitimate Lebanese authorities to re-establish control over the whole country. As my right honourable friend the Prime Minister told President Gemayel when he came to London in February, we remain firmly committed to support Lebanon's sovereignty, unity, independence and territorial integrity.
We have consistently pressed Israel to complete its withdrawal from Southern Lebanon—a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew. We regard Israel's "security zone" in South Lebanon as provocative and against Israel's own long-term interests. We urge the Israelis, therefore, to work with the UN Secretariat to enable the Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) to deploy to the international border to fulfil its mandate of bringing peace to the area. UNIFIL's achievement in the face of immense difficulty is impressive. UNIFIL is a force for stability in the area. We fully support it.
The Syrian occupation may at last have brought some measure of stability to Beirut. We hope that stability is maintained and extended. But in the final analysis neither Syria nor Israel, nor even the

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international community, can hope to impose peace in Lebanon. Peace will come only when the Lebanese communities themselves, now tragically divided, are again able to work together, free from all outside interference, to rebuild their country. The recent successful exhibition in London "Lebanon at Work not War", was a timely reminder of the skill and enterprise of the Lebanese people. It is encouraging that there are once more signs of movement towards national reconciliation. We hope that all Lebanese will now work towards this essential goal.
We in Britain are naturally most concerned about our fellow citizens missing in Lebanon. During his recent visit, Walid Jumblatt said that he would continue his efforts to secure Terry Waite's freedom—I recognise the terms in which the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Rochester referred to this matter—and would do all in his power for British hostages. I regret that I have no good news to impart this evening. We continue to do all we can to establish the position of all British hostages in Lebanon; we are doing all we can to obtain fresh information.
I should like to pay tribute to our Ambassador in Beirut, Mr. John Gray, and his small staff who, like their predecessors, have shown great professionalism and dedication under the most testing and dangerous circumstances.
The Arab territories occupied by Israel since 1967 also suffer from an atmosphere of tension and confrontation. Nearly all your Lordships who spoke referred to the occupied territories. The frustrations of a people denied their rights, including their fundamental right to self-determination, can easily boil over. Violence breeds violence, and the cycle of protest and repression gathers momentum. We deplore violence from whatever quarter, and we fully accept Israel's right to ensure her own security. But security considerations cannot justify the use of collective punishments and deportations. We maintained a regular dialogue on human rights with the Israel authorities, and have urged them scrupulously to respect their obligations as occupying power. As my right honourable and learned friend the Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary said to the Middle East Association last January, the Israels cannot,
"indefinitely ignore the aspirations and frustrations of the Palestinians under occupation without destroying the democratic values of Israeli society".
In answer to the question that the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, asked, we have made clear our strong opposition to deportation in our regular dialogue with the Israelis. The United Kingdom statement on behalf of the Twelve deplored the deportation of Hanniya as contrary to international law.
We urge the Israeli authorities to work to promote a better atmosphere in the territories as a prelude to negotiations. A freeze on settlements, an increase in permits for family reunifications and the lifting of travel restrictions on Palestinians are long overdue.
We and our European partners are committed to help improve the conditions of Palestinians in the occupied territories. This year we increased the annual EC aid programme to the occupied territories to £2 million and the EC contribution to UNRWA to about
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£14 million. As your Lordships will know, we contribute 20 per cent. of the Community aid budget. We have also more than doubled our bilateral aid programme to £1 million a year, half of which will be channelled through Jordanian institutions. An ODA team has just visited the area to assess how this new aid can best be used.
The Community, also on a British initiative, has adopted measures to facilitate the export of produce from the territories to the European market. This will encourage new trade flows and provide the Palestinians with an incentive to improve their living standards. The Commission is working actively to overcome the remaining obstacles to such exports.
Conditions in Gaza are of particular concern. This was a point that the noble Viscount, Lord Buckmaster, made. This tiny area suffers from appalling overcrowding, compounded by the appropriation of land for Israeli settlements. It lacks essential facilities. As a specific contribution to the acute difficulties faced in Gaza, we are giving £100,000 over two years to the Rafah municipal sewerage scheme and £94,000 over three years to the Gaza enterprise training scheme, but all this can be no substitute for peace negotiations for a just and lasting settlement. Such a settlement in the Government's view must ensure both security for Israel and justice and self-determination for the Palestinians.
The noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, asked about the PLO and the peace process. We believe that the PLO should be associated with negotiations. In this context, the noble Lord referred to the Venice declaration. However, the PLO can expect to play a full part in the negotiations only if it renounces violence and recognises Israel's right to a secure existence. I am encouraged by the growing consensus that some form of international conference could help break the current deadlock. We salute the efforts of all those working towards this end.
The noble Lord, Lord Kagan, referred to the work of the Israeli Foreign Minister, Shimon Peres. My right honourable friend the Prime Minister discussed this with him when he visited London last January. Agreement has yet to be reached on what the powers of such a conference might be, who might be represented at it or how it might carry out its work.
The noble Earl, Lord Oxford and Asquith, asked about the American attitude to an international conference. The US Administration have pledged to explore all avenues that might lead to a settlement, including the proposals for an international conference. We regularly discuss this with the American Government.
Before a conference two things need to be clear. First, there must be a real prospect of progress. The parties to the conflict must reach enough common ground on the procedural aspects to permit this. We stand ready to contribute, whether individually or with our colleagues in the European Community, to the establishment of that essential measure of common ground. Secondly, it cannot be rushed. The hasty convening of an inadequately prepared conference that failed to make progress would be a disaster leading to a hardening of historical positions. That was the sense of the statement made by the Foreign

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Ministers of the Twelve in Brussels of 23rd February. The noble Viscount, Lord Buckmaster, referred to this.
We of course fully support the points made in the declaration. My right honourable and learned friend the Foreign Secretary played an important role in its preparation. We and our Community colleagues will continue our efforts to encourage all parties to find a settlement. Mr. Tindemans, representing the Presidency, is shortly to tour the region. He will encourage the efforts of the parties to overcome the remaining difficulties. Mr. Tindemans will not be visiting Syria.
The noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, asked about changes in the attitude of the Syrian leadership. While we agree that Syrian deployment at the camp has provided a welcome relief, we continue to believe that ministerial contact with Damascus is neither necessary nor appropriate in the absence of evidence of a change of heart over terrorism or a willingness to play a constructive role in the search for peace.
My right honourable friend the Prime Minister and my right honourable and learned friend the Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary held useful talks on these issues with Mr. Gorbachev and Mr. Shevardnadze in Moscow. The noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn, asked me about these talks. They were impressed by the Soviet willingness to contribute in a realistic and constructive manner in efforts to advance the peace process. In some respects the Soviet analysis is similar to our own. The Soviet Union is fully aware of the need for further detailed preparatory work before any conference can be convened. It is therefore encouraging to note its acceptance of contacts with Israel as a part of these efforts.
The noble Lord asked also about King Fahd's visit. King Fahd confirmed that progress towards a settlement remained a high priority. My right honourable friend the Prime Minister discussed the situation in the Middle East with King Fahd during his State visit last month of course. She is to see him later this week. The Middle East will be included in the talks of my right honourable and learned friend the Foreign Secretary in Washington later this week.
With what I have been able to say, I hope that your Lordships will be assured that we shall continue to do all that we can to promote peace negotiations.
6.20 p.m.
Viscount Buckmaster: My Lords, I am indeed grateful to the noble Baroness who has replied and to all noble Lords who have taken part in this debate, many of them, as I said earlier, at very short notice. I think that we would all agree that the ground has been covered very fully and effectively. There were several important points made which filled in the lacunae in my own speech. Since there is a little time in hand, perhaps I may refer to one or two points that were made by noble Lords and which were not picked up exactly by the noble Baroness.
First, I should like to refer to the criticism of the PLO made by the noble Lord, Lord Paget. On many occasions in your Lordships' House he has described the PLO as a terrorist organisation but, as I have said
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also on many occasions and as I am sure the noble Baroness will agree, the PLO is an umbrella organisation. I do not know quite how many groups it covers. At the last count I think that the number was eight or nine. Some of these groups are quite moderate. Indeed, the PLO representative in London, Mr. Faisal Awada, belongs to the most moderate group of all, known as Fata. I think that that is an important point to make.
Secondly, as regards UNIFIL, I agree with speakers who said that its presence is most important and that it should be allowed to continue. I hope that the noble Baroness agrees that it may be possible to strengthen its numbers, not to enlarge the range of countries represented but to increase the numbers and also at the same time to provide the force with a rather more effective mandate.
The third point that I should like to make is one which has been mentioned by one or two other noble Lords. I consider it most important that we should encourage Russian involvement in the peace settlement. With those few remarks, I beg leave to withdraw the Motion.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

Patents (Amendment) Bill [H.L.]
6.23 p.m.
Lord Northfield: My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a third time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read a third time.—(Lord Northfield.)
Lord Williams of Elvel: My Lords, since this Bill has given rise to a certain amount of controversy, I do not think that it would be right to let it leave your Lordships' House without making one or two comments. I do not intend to detain your Lordships for very long.
Our view from these Benches is that this Bill should have been a Government Bill. Indeed, my noble friend Lord Northfield, when he introduced the Bill in his Second Reading speech on 12th January (Official Report, 12/1/87: col. 447), said: "this is effectively a Government Bill". I believe that it would have been perfectly normal for the Government to introduce this measure as a public Bill because, as I understand it, it was originally intended to be included in the Intellectual Property Bill, which never saw the light of day.
We now know that we have plenty of time in your Lordships' House, and I do not think that even the business managers, who have had their day today, could have objected had the Bill been introduced in government time and with full government responsibility. The fact that the Government did not do that has given rise to a certain amount of confusion and perhaps allowed controversy to take place that otherwise would not have done. For instance, there has been debate about the future estimated cost to the National Health Service. I accept—as I accepted on the second day of Committee—that there were difficulties in making such estimates. Nevertheless, if

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the Bill had been a public Bill introduced by the Government, the Government would have had to produce a considered estimate at the outset and not, if I may say so, one that was dragged out of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, on the second day of the Committee stage, when I asked him—and I had given notice of the question—what would be the Government's estimate of the future cost to the NHS. The estimate—and he admitted it—was made rather hurriedly and I found his reply, interesting though it was, somewhat incomplete.
We could have debated this estimate and indeed other estimates that were around and the Government would have had to accept or reject the various figures that were put forward from different private sources. They would have had to explain their position and make it perfectly clear and we should have had the opportunity to decide whether they were going about matters the right way.
Next there was the controversy over the interests of various noble Lords, a controversy that has been widely aired in the press. I believe that the press comment has been extremely unfortunate. There is a perfectly clear convention in this House that noble Lords are on their honour to declare their interests and, as I understand it, this system has worked extremely well hitherto. It may be that wiser heads than mine will decide in the future that there should be a register of the interests of Members of this House just as there is in another place. Certainly wiser heads than mine—and maybe there is already a committee even now doing this—will be advising the noble Viscount the Leader of the House on this matter. But I do regret that these matters have become a subject of public comment and, if I may say so, a matter for rather cynical discussion in the press. I believe that that could have been avoided if this Bill had been introduced by the Government as a public Bill.
There has also been controversy over the conduct of the debate during the various stages of the Bill. I believe that some remarks were made which would not have been made on mature reflection and which we must all regret. Nevertheless, I believe that the debate would have been conducted in a perfectly orderly manner if the Government, as was appropriate, had taken their full responsibility for the Bill.
I felt it my duty to raise these matters because they caused difficulty and on occasions showed your Lordships' House in a somewhat unhappy light. Nevertheless I do not want to dwell on them because I want to come to the main point of what I have to say.
I must speak in my capacity as Opposition spokesman on these matters and not simply as another noble Lord speaking on a Private Member's Bill. Our view was stated quite clearly at Second Reading by my noble friend Lord McIntosh of Haringey, when he said that, unless it could be clearly shown that there was no significant cost to the National Health Service as a result of the enactment of the Bill, we should oppose it.
The only rider that I add to that remark—and I am sure that my noble friend will agree with me—is that our attitude might be somewhat softened if we were convinced that the extra revenues to pharmaceutical companies resulting from the application of the Bill
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would be applied to research and development, which, as all parts of the House agree, needs every encouragement. My noble friend Lord Northfield rightly emphasised that point.
However, I must confess that both I personally, and your Lordships generally, I believe, are still in some confusion about some points, such as the cost to the National Health Service, and the question of how much will be devoted to research and development and what the eventual result is likely to be. So I have to say again to the Government that, if they want the Bill, they must take full and open responsibility for it. They must prepare their position properly and in detail so that the issues that I and my noble friend Lord McIntosh of Haringey have raised may be fully and properly examined and indeed probed when this Bill arrives in another place.
6.30 p.m.
Lord Beaverbrook: My Lords, as I and my noble friend Lord Lucas of Chilworth said in previous debates, the Government support this Bill. The Government have made it plain that we see it as providing encouragement to the United Kingdom pharmaceutical industry. We have accepted that as research for new drugs becomes more complicated and expensive something needs to be done about the products whose patents will be affected by the transitional licence of right provisions of the Patents Act 1977.
It has been argued that companies should be able to afford to fund research without this measure and that they already profit enough from the sale of drugs to the National Health Service. But we must all remember that this is a risk industry where today's best selling drug can swiftly be knocked off its pedestal by a new entrant to the market. We should also be proud that many new drugs owe their discovery to our scientists and that as a result the pharmaceutical industry provides a balance of payments surplus of about £800 million per annum. I believe that the Bill has been improved by the amendments effected in Committee. It is now fairer to the makers of generic drugs who are not patentees.
I turn now to the question of the cost of this measure to the National Health Service. Perhaps I may remind your Lordships of what my noble friend Lord Lucas of Chilworth said in Committee on 19th March. He said that the Department of Health and Social Security had examined the position and was satisfied that the additional cost to the service would not be significant. He went on to refer to an analysis conducted by the DHSS which indicated that in 1985 and 1986 there were estimated cost savings to the NHS of less than £1 million in the first year and about £1·5 million in the second year due to licences of right. He also pointed out that that should be measured against the total NHS drugs bill of £1,800 million per annum.
I need hardly remind your Lordships of the way in which the DHSS controls the drug companies' profits through the pharmaceutical price regulation scheme. That acts as a moderating force and ensures that the NHS pays a reasonable price for its medicines and that the companies can achieve a reasonable target profit level. Your Lordships have also been told that the

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unions in the pharmaceutical industry support this measure, as do the generic drug companies within the Association of the British pharmaceutical industry.
I come now to the noble Lord's point that this should have been a Government Bill. If the Government had been able to bring forward legislation on licences of right, it would have contained provisions similar to those contained in this Bill. As your Lordships will be aware, there was no opportunity in this year's legislative programme for the Government to do so. I commend the Bill to your Lordships' House.
Lord Northfield: My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have been involved with this Bill. I apologise to the noble Lords, Lord Stallard and Lord Kilmarnock, and the noble Viscount, Lord Craigavon, for the fact that on one occasion I was able to reply to them only in a hoarse whisper as a result of a heavy cold. My answers were also brief. I am also grateful to my noble friend Lord Williams for helping calm things down when stridency was threatening to mar our proceedings.
I am grateful for the concern and almost solicitude for the Bill shown by my noble friend. After the further assurances we have received this evening, I hope it means that he will help the Bill obtain a fair wind when it reaches the other Chamber. He may be wrong for criticising the Government for asking me to take this issue through as a Private Member's Bill. As he knows, and as he has said, the measure was expected to be included in the intellectual property legislation which, alas, did not get into this Session's programme. When the noble Viscount the Leader of the House realised that a promise had been made in April 1986, almost a year ago today, he sought the best way of honouring that promise.
It is doubtful whether the noble Viscount could have persuaded his colleagues to introduce a government measure because that would have opened the way for many others, disappointed by the postponement of the intellectual property legislation, to ask for similar treatment.
In an effort to be helpful, the noble Viscount wrote to me and suggested that I should introduce this small Bill. My interest as an adviser to a pharmaceutical company had been clearly declared; for example, on 22nd April 1986, the same day, I think, on which the promise was made, and repeatedly before and after that date. It is known to the noble Viscount and to the House. Of course, the promise of repeal of licences of right had been made to me in the debate of April 1986. I therefore expressed my thanks to the noble Viscount. I have persevered with the Bill through some difficult days. I hope that will enable him to prevail upon his colleagues to take it up in another place if it is unexpectedly obstructed there. I also thank Ministers who have quietly and firmly backed the measure from the Government Front Bench and put parliamentary draftsmen at my disposal.
May I be permitted to make two final comments? It is helpful to see the funny side of things. These Bills can provide some hilarious experiences. The two companies which oppose the Bill were misled by their
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public relations and legal advisers into making such extravagant attacks that they hanged themselves in public, and all but the most gullible were laughing at them. I do not think that my noble friend was right when he said that the Bill's progress had been rather bitter. I thought it had been rather funny. The public relations man invented a spurious story about what had happened on the day of Second Reading. He had to withdraw the story when it was found to be so obviously a lie and defamatory. I notice that the companies have gone strangely silent in recent weeks.
This is perhaps the most hilarious piece of all, but after I had failed to answer media calls day and night from journalists hoping to obtain a sensational story, one reporter, notebook in hand, hit on the idea of accosting me for a sensational story about the Bill in part of this building which is private and reserved for Members. All I can say is that I have not seen the young lady since. Perhaps Black Rod has consigned her to the Tower!
Journalists prophesied the Bill's demise at every stage. Even in The Times important facts about the Bill and its costs were concealed, presumably in order to provoke me once again into an extravagant response. The Bill is still on course. It is a small but significant measure with no real cost—the figures have been given today—to the National Health Service.
The Bill removes a handicap that exists on research-based industry and researchers which exist in no other country, a handicap that is made doubly hard by the erosion of patent life which we must all soon face. The Bill, as the Minister pointed out, is supported by the country's four biggest trade unions as well as by the employers. I hope that if I can now get it into law I shall have the last laugh on those who have consistently prophesied its death. I commend the Bill to your Lordships.
Lord Stallard: My Lords, it was not my intention to intervene, but before the noble Lord sits down I should remind him that he should not appear to gloat in any way over the passage of this Bill. There are some doubts in the minds of many people and some questions which remain unanswered. They may well be answered in another place when the Bill is discussed there. With all due deference to the noble Lord, he was not correct when he said that the companies were fraudulent or have gone suddenly silent. Many doubts remain. They would undoubtedly have been expressed had there been more time to discuss the Bill in your Lordships' House.
I am far from satisfied about the Bill's effects on the National Health Service even though the Minister has replied. I am not convinced that the PPRS is the perfect instrument or mechanism for controlling the profits of the multinational drug companies. As my noble friend Lord Williams said, those and many other questions might well have been asked had it been a Government Bill. I hope that the Bill will not be thought of as a joke. My noble friend said that he hoped he would get the last laugh. No one is laughing about the Bill's imperfections or the questions that remain unanswered. I shall follow the Bill with interest in another place and I hope that some of the questions will be answered.
Lord Northfield: My Lords, I should like to say that before I sat down I was not gloating at all. I was trying to see the funny side of what has been a tortuous path in getting this Bill through. If my noble friend's telephone had been ringing day and night in connection with this Bill, as has mine, I think that in the end he would be quite happy to say that it is good that we can see the amusing side of the serious operation of getting a Bill through Parliament. My attempt was to lighten the proceedings a little by seeing the funny side of a very serious operation.
On Question, Bill read a third time, and passed, and sent to Commons.

Registered Establishments (Scotland) Bill
6.42 p.m.
Baroness Carnegy of Lour: My Lords, I beg to move that the Bill be now read a second time.
This Bill, unlike the Bill with which your Lordships have just dealt, began in another place where it was taken through its stages in the capable and experienced hands of my honourable friend the Member for Banff and Buchan, Mr. Albert McQuarrie. It has government support and the Scottish Office gave my honourable friend assistance with drafting and with consultations.
The Bill, which has been welcomed by all sides in another place, will make arrangements in Scotland on similar lines to those already in existence in England and Wales under the Registered Homes Act 1984. It is concerned mainly with social work care establishments which require to be registered with local authorities under Section 61 of the Social Work (Scotland) Act 1968. Its principal purpose is to give local authorities powers to charge fees for the work that they do in registering independent residential care establishments for adults under the 1968 Act. It also increases to a limited extent the powers available to local authorities to exercise a measure of control over establishments once they are registered.
Clause 1 clarifies the criteria for registration of establishments under the Act. It amends the level of social work care which necessitates registration and it expands the definitions to take account of the changing forms of accommodation which have developed since 1968. It is not the intention here to exclude establishments already registered but to provide clear criteria to assist local authorities in dealing with new cases.
Clause 2 allows voluntary registration of certain residential establishments for children which provide both education and social work care under Section 61 of the 1968 Act. In this it removes an anomaly. At present such establishments, if they are currently registered as schools, cannot register for social work purposes even though child care is a significant part of their work. These establishments include List D schools since direct funding ceased in 1986 (they have a new status), certain grant-aided schools and certain independent schools. This clause should make it possible for schools which commonly take a mixture of referrals based on social work and education needs to be properly assessed by local authorities, which will be able to develop their arrangements through the
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combined operation of both their social work and their education departments.
Clause 3 extends in a number of small but important ways the control that local authorities have over establishments registered with them. First, it requires that local authorities be notified of the name of the manager if he is not the proprietor. Formal registration of a manager is not required, but the unsuitability of an individual is already grounds for cancellation of registration. This new provision gives local authorities, for the first time, an interest in who is appointed as manager. Secondly, the clause requires the registered person to give 28 days' notice of his intention to withdraw. This is simply to assist the orderly transfer of registration. Thirdly, there are set out the grounds for cancellation of registration. The Bill restates the existing grounds in the present Section 62(4) and adds to them failure to notify the name of the manager and failure to pay the annual fee for continuation of registration.
Fourthly, Clause 3 extends the present limited powers of local authorities to attach conditions to registration. It gives them discretion to make any reasonable conditions relating to the proper operation of an establishment, and it gives them power to vary or extend conditions already introduced. These powers are always subject to the right of appeal by the registered person to the tribunal which is established under Section 64. The remit of the tribunal is extended for the purpose. Fifthly, the clause specifies certain information which must appear on the certificate of registration, while leaving the possibility of including other information at the discretion of the local authority.
Lastly, when existing registration lapses or is cancelled, local authorities are given powers to allow an establishment to carry on for up to 60 days without formal registration. This is to minimise the disruption for residents of the change of the person in charge. I suggest that these provisions should assist local authorities without posing undue problems for those running establishments. Many of the measures have already proved useful in England and Wales.
Clause 4 requires independent establishments providing both nursing and residential care to be registered with both the health board and the local authority. At present health and social work legislation in Scotland neither requires nor prevents such legislation. Similar provision already exists in England and Wales. As your Lordships will know, there is a growing tendency among the more innovative establishments in Scotland, particularly in the private sector, to make this kind of combined provision. At present there is no certainty that such providers are able to secure joint recognition and there is scope for different interpretations of the law by different local authorities. This clause clarifies and resolves that problem.
Clause 5 contains the main element in the Bill. It enables local authorities to charge fees for their registration and inspection functions under the 1968 Act on a similar basis to that already operating in England and Wales. It does not seem right that local authorities should continue to be denied the opportunity to recoup their costs, as do their counterparts south of the Border.

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Charges will be payable on application for registration, on applications to vary the conditions, for issuing a new certificate of registration following a change to certain elements in the certificate and for annual continuation of registration. Local authorities will have discretion as to the level of charges, subject to a maximum for each type of fee to be prescribed by the Secretary of State. These provisions differ slightly from those of England and Wales. In England and Wales uniform fees are set out in regulations.
Perhaps I may elaborate briefly on the fees provisions. They do not extend to establishments providing day care or those providing for children. The registration fee will not be retrospective. Establishments which are already registered or which have already applied would not be charged but they would be liable for fees relating to variations and continuing registration in the future.
The Secretary of State will have powers to prescribe the times at which fees are paid. Consultation on this matter and on maximum levels of fees will be necessary. Should my right honourable friend decide on the order of fee levels now existing in England and Wales—namely, £550 for registration and £15 per place annual fee—this would equate to no more than a matter of pence on the weekly maintenance for each resident. CoSLA is, of course, anxious to be able to charge fees and not to be at a disadvantage longer than it has to be over its colleagues in England and Wales.
Finally, Clause 6 makes it an offence to re-occupy premises for the purpose of the 1968 Act where local authorities have used their powers to remove residents from an establishment which is not registered or where an offence against the 1968 Act is believed to have been committed.
Standards of care in registered establishments for the elderly and other vulnerable people are of very great concern to us all. The greater flexibility afforded by the Bill and the ability to charge arc designed to enable local authorities to devote more professional and other resources to their registration and inspection responsibilities and so give establishments and the public the highest possible quality of service.
The Bill has been discussed with representatives of local authorities, professional interests and the voluntary sector which have all welcomed its provisions. My honourable friend has received a considerable number of letters in support. Its passage in another place was accomplished with only one minor technical amendment and without a Division. I commend the Bill to your Lordships and I hope you will give it a fair wind.
Moved, That the Bill be now read a second time.—(Baroness Carnegy of Lour.)
6.52 p.m.
Lord Ross of Marnock: My Lords, I think that the House should be grateful for the detailed information we have received from the noble Baroness in respect of this Bill. She said that she had had some help from the Scottish Office. I reckon that Mr. McQuarrie obtained the Bill from the Scottish Office. For some reason the Scottish Office is anxious to proceed with this Bill—almost as anxious as it is to proceed with another
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Bill that is before the House, which has been my main preoccupation over the past weeks and which is not nearly finished yet.
The Bill before us is an interesting one. I read the purposes of this Bill, which are stated as:
"An Act to make further provision as to the registration of establishments under the Social Work (Scotland) Act 1968 and the Nursing Homes Registration (Scotland) Act 1938".
I then read Clause 2, which states:
"Any grant-aided schools or independent school within the meaning of section 135(1) of the Education (Scotland) Act 1980 (which defines terms used in that Act)".
I immediately went to the Library to find out what this meant. I discovered that, according to the definition under the 1980 Act, a residential establishment is not a school at all. A residential institution is one conducted under a scheme as defined under the Acts of 1928 to 1935, Part VI of the 1946 Act, Part VI of the 1962 Act, and Part VI of the 1980 Act. This information was not very enlightening, and this is really an example of legislation by reference. It is the worst kind of thing to understand and I am not going to ask the noble Earl to go through the whole matter to tell me what it all means and follow the changes which we have.
One of the matters which troubled me was that the new Section 61A(1) says:
"Any grant-aided school or independent school … which performs functions such as are described in section 61(1)".
They are very limited and I can only think of approved schools—List D schools. We used to call such schools Approved Schools and they then became List D schools. They were run directly from the Scottish Office, and for years now the Scottish Office has been trying to hand them over to local authorities. Local authorities, in their straitened circumstances, have not been too willing to take on additional expenditure for which they are to receive only half of the cost.
I should like to know exactly how this matter is tied up with the transfer of List D schools. Some of the List D schools are run by churches. A long time ago I was a member of an estimates committee in another place and one of the tasks we undertook was to go around and make a report on List D schools in Scotland. The report was not very much in their favour as compared with the List D approved schools in England as we visited them. We were very far behind. There was one very well known school which gave the impression of walking into a school in Dickens' time. These schools were run directly by the Secretary of State, although I am talking about a fair time ago. On the other hand, there was one such school run by the Catholic Church in Tranent where the situation was very different indeed. If this Bill is to apply there I am very interested and I should like much more information. I shall probably get that in the Committee stage when eventually we come to that.
I make this appeal. The day after we return from the Easter Recess we are to deal with another Scottish Bill. I am sorry the Leader of the House is not in his place but I know that my remarks will be conveyed to him. The burden is going to be placed on the Scottish Members. The rest of the House may be having a holiday as from tomorrow—that is, if we finish that Bill tomorrow—but the Scottish Members who are interested in the Bill on abolition of rating will not see

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that as it leaves the Committee stage until next Wednesday. By the time it reaches them in various parts of Scotland it will be Friday. After that we shall have to spend our time, not here where it is easy to meet together, but in Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Glasgow and in Ayr (where I live), thus forgoing our holiday in order to get amendments down for the Report stage. There will not be much time for that because the amendments will have to be posted in order for them to arrive in time for the day after we return to the House.
I hope that the Committee stage of this Bill will not place us in the same position—and certainly it should not. Already we have business on two days in the week that we come back, and I hope that we shall not also have the Committee stage of this Bill because the Bill will not be given the scrutiny that it demands.
To turn now to Clause 2 of the Bill before us, that contains the provision about:
"Any grant-aided school or independent school within the meaning … of the … Act … which performs functions such as are described in section 6(1) above may, but shall not be required to apply for registration".
can that be explained to me? If all these new benefits are coming and some of these List D schools will be transferred perhaps to some independent outside body or charitable body, surely, if the beneficial effects of the Bill are to be realised, the word "may" should be replaced by "shall".
There may be some simple answer to that but I have not received it and I have not had time to ask anybody about it. I think that the noble Baroness was probably in the same position. I should like some answer to that matter.
On the other question of nursing homes I noticed that, under Clause 1(1) dealing with the changes to Section 61, it speaks of:
"the whole or a substantial part of whose functions".
That is a difference. However, other references are purely to the whole institution and that could apply equally to nursing homes. The definition of "nursing home" is slightly changed as well.
The noble Baroness said that things had changed slightly, particularly the attention given to elderly people. That does not apply to approved schools, because they are not for elderly people, but for young people. I gather that she was referring to nursing homes for elderly people. During our discussions on the other Bill I mentioned nursing homes and questioned which category they would come under and whether they would be subject to a personal charge or to a collective charge. I have not yet had a proper answer to that question because it will have to be prescribed.
It troubles me that this is almost a new growth industry. I have seen hotels which have suddenly ceased to be hotels and have become nursing homes. The definition of nursing home that still remains demands a standard of care which must include a medical practitioner or a qualified nurse. At present the authorities have the right to concern themselves with the people who are employed, the adequacy of staffing and other such matters. I gather that there has been no change in that.
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The Bill gives powers that may not exist at present for these new nursing homes that are springing up. I noticed that when West Sound Radio, which is based in Ayr, published its balance sheet it had a considerably increased profit. The balance sheet showed specifically that a considerable part of the increased profit came from nursing homes. One would not have expected such a body as a radio station to change its line of business and become involved in nursing homes, most of which are very expensive. Considerable care is required by local authorities in respect of registering these homes and I gather that their powers are unchanged.
There is quite a lot in this Bill which we have not considered because it only reached us on 23rd March, and that is not all that long ago. In fact, we actually received it on 24th March. We have not had time to look at it properly and to realise its importance; nor has the noble Baroness had time to consider it.
There is a lot of hard work involved in this Bill in terms of drafting and going through the previous legislation, checking up on what is being done and on what kind of schools and other bodies are affected. I am grateful to the noble Baroness for telling me that "grant-aided schools" and "independent schools" really mean approved schools.
I approve of the increased powers given to local authorities. However, I am worried that certain bodies may apply for registration but will not be required to do so. If they do not apply for registration where do the powers spring from? The noble Baroness should query that point with her advisers. However, in the meantime I should certainly not think of opposing the Bill and I hope that we shall be given time after we have completed the Report stage of the Abolition of Domestic Rates Etc. (Scotland) Bill to give it the attention which it demands.
7.5 p.m.
The Earl of Dundee: My Lords, may I first congratulate my noble friend Lady Carnegy on so eloquently bringing this Bill before us today. It is a small but important measure designed to enact for Scotland provisions very much on the lines of those—or most of those—in the Residential Homes Act 1984, which is applicable to England and Wales.
My right honourable and learned friend the Secretary of State is wholly in support of the Bill. We have for some time ourselves sought a convenient opportunity for enacting a similar measure in Scotland and are most grateful to my honourable friend Mr. Albert McQuarrie for his enterprise in taking matters forward in another place on our behalf. We have been glad to co-operate by giving all possible assistance with drafting and with such consultations as have been possible in the short time available.
We believe that the provisions of the Bill should commend themselves to local authorities and the owners of voluntary and private establishments. This has been confirmed in formal and not so formal discussions with representatives of local authorities and voluntary organisations.
We particularly welcome the prospect that local authorities will be able in future to recoup some at least of the expenditure which they incur in the

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exercise of registering and inspecting all independent homes. Charging for such services is wholly consistent with the Government's policy on charging for local authority services and I, too, support my noble friend Lady Carnegy's hope that authorities will use the income provided for their registration functions.
The noble Lord, Lord Ross, raised a number of points and he prefaced his remarks by referring to the pressure which those of your Lordships who are taking an interest in another Scottish Bill now find themselves up against—not least the prospect that over the Easter holidays we shall have to do a great deal of homework. Perhaps this Bill coming as it does at this moment does not give all of us enough time to study it as much as we should like. That is the position in which I am today and I wonder whether the noble Lord, Lord Ross, will excuse me if I do not respond to all his points now. I will of course write to the noble Lord, Lord Ross, and I know that my noble friend Lady Carnegy, when she winds up, will be commenting on some of the points concerned.
I would just say on the point that the noble Lord, Lord Ross, raised about which schools will be encouraged to apply for registration under the 1968 Act that the position, as I understand it, is that all the former List D schools, which are continuing to provide child care services from 1st April 1986, were encouraged to apply. Although in theory Clause 2 of the Bill would make such continuing registration voluntary, in practice it is unlikely that the managers of any of these establishments would not follow through on the applications submitted, or would subsequently withdraw, and seek to continue to operate without social work registration. That would make them liable to repay substantial grants to the Secretary of State on the basis of agreement reached between the establishments and the Secretary of State when new arrangements came into operation on 1st April 1986.
I very much hope that the Bill will obtain your Lordships' approval, and that it enjoys a safe and speedy passage through the House under the guiding hand of my noble friend Lady Carnegy.
Lord Ross of Marnock: My Lords, before the noble Earl sits down, may I ask him, when he is having a look at this, to have a look at Clause 5(3), which relates to fees. In paragraph (a), it states:
"the maximum fees which may be imposed by local authorities under this section; and
(b) the times at which fees may be charged",
may be prescribed by the Secretary of State. But in the next subsection it states:
"a local authority shall have regard to their reasonable expenses in carrying out their functions under this Part of this Act in fixing fees under this section."
Surely it is the Secretary of State who should have regard to these things before he fixes the maximum fees, and then he can leave it to the local authorities.
The Earl of Dundee: My Lords, I appreciate the point that the noble Lord makes. I shall certainly have a look at that, and no doubt we shall have an opportunity of discussing it further.
7.12 p.m.
Baroness Carnegy of Lour: My Lords, my noble friend has undertaken to respond at the next stage to a number of the points raised by the noble Lord. In regard to the timetable, having had a word this afternoon with the noble Lord, I have asked that the day when the House will be fully occupied for the whole day with the rates Bill should not be the day when we take this Bill in the dinner hour. I have already asked for that, but there will have to be a discussion with the usual channels about when the Bill will be taken.
The Convention of Scottish Local Authorities and, I think, all concerned are anxious that this Bill should not be long delayed. Therefore we shall have a rather tight timetable, but we shall try to meet the convenience of the noble Lord and my noble friend on the Front Bench so far as we can.
So far as concerns the definition of the word "establishment", I said in my remarks that in the main they are establishments for adults but there are others, and I went on to describe them. When the noble Lord has time to go through the Bill with his usual care and unbelievably experienced assiduousness he will find that there is a variety of different sorts of establishment to which the Bill applies, but in the main they are establishments for adults.
My noble friend responded to the question about the List D schools. I think that when the noble Lord reads what my noble friend said he will find that that is in fact a clear explanation of the position now for List D schools, which have of course been changing their status and changing the way they operate. The Bill picks up the point where they now are and incorporates them in the arrangements. The nursing homes which are dealt with in the Bill are those which have a social work and health element. It is a question of joint registration, and the health side of it would be overseen by the health board and the social work by the social work authority.
As to the fees, my understanding is that the Secretary of State simply fixes a maximum and the local authority has discretion to decide any fees up to that maximum. The figures I quoted are the figures at present operating in England and Wales, which would amount to something like 28p in regard to each resident in an establishment. That was simply a figure to show what would happen if the maximum were fixed at what the fee is in England and Wales. Of course it may be fixed higher or it may be fixed lower, but the provision in the Bill is for discretion up to a maximum.
I think those were the main points that the noble Lord raised, but we shall doubtless get more information from my noble friend at a later stage.
On Question, Bill read a second time, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

Housing Stock: Repairs and Renovation
7.16 p.m.
Lord Ezra Lord Ezra rose to ask Her Majesty's Government what progress has been made in the repair and renovation of the housing stock.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, there have been many debates on the subject of housing, and no doubt there will be many more. The most recent in this House was introduced by my noble friend Lord Winstanley on 10th December 1986 and dealt with the economic and social implications of the housing situation. In another place there was a debate on 10th February of this year introduced by Dr. John Cunningham on housing and homelessness. These previous debates—two of a large number—illustrate the wide-ranging nature of the housing problem. The Question posed tonight concentrates on the physical condition of the housing stock.
I regret that more noble Lords have not been able to participate in discussing this vital issue, no doubt because of the lateness of the hour, although I believe that one or two who are not down on the list may intervene later. I am indebted in any event to the noble Baroness, Lady David, for taking part and to the noble Baroness, Lady Hooper, who will be replying on behalf of the Government.
The condition of housing in this country has been the subject of much inquiry, as we know. I hope that noble Lords will bear with me if I just summarise what has emerged from the various reports because that sets the scene and shows the dimension of the problem. The most recent comprehensive report has been the English Housing Condition Survey published in 1981. We know that a further survey relating to 1986 is being compiled, and perhaps the noble Baroness, Lady Hooper, will be able to tell us when that might appear so that we can be a bit more up to date in our information.
According to the 1981 survey, dwellings requiring repair work of £2,500 or more at the then value of the currency amounted to over 4 million of the housing stock in England, or 20 per cent. A very large proportion, therefore, of the total English housing stock required fairly major repair at that time.
More recently the 1985 Department of the Environment inquiry into the condition of the local authority housing stock in England estimated that 3.8 million, or 84 per cent., of all local authority dwellings needed repair and maintenance work at an average of nearly £5,000 per dwelling or, in total, £19 billion. That is a report issued in 1985, and purely for local authority housing in England.
Next we have the Audit Commission, which compiled a report dated April 1985 that estimated that the backlog of repairs and maintenance for local authority housing is growing at a rate of £900 million per annum. Finally, there are the estimates for the amount of repairs in the private sector. They have been estimated by the AMA to amount to £26 billion. If you add all this up on the basis of the most recent and most comprehensive inquiries, it comes to about £45 billion that is needed to put Britain's housing stock into reasonable repair.
Let us now see what is being done about this. I should like to say straight away that it would be quite wrong to claim that nothing is being done about it. A great deal is being done by the Government, by local authorities, by voluntary organisations and by partnerships of various sorts. The question is not
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whether anything is being done. It is being done. The question is whether in aggregate it is of sufficient size to enable us to see this problem being resolved in a measureable amount of time. That is the issue.
Let us look at some of the things that are being done. First, so far as I can gather from interpreting the figures, local authorities have at their disposal in the financial year 1987–88 a net £1.4 billion for home improvement and for housing generally after taking account of only 20 per cent. of the capital receipts on the sale of houses. I believe it is 15 per cent. in Wales and 20 per cent. in England. In addition to that, there are improvement grants. These were quite substantial in 1983–84 but subsequently have been very much reduced. There is a variable element here. They are at a relatively low level at the moment compared with where they were in 1984.
There are a number of partnership schemes. I should like to give the example of one in which I am involved known as the Neighbourhood Revitalisation Services Scheme, which was initiated by the National Home Improvement Council and has recently been supported quite substantially by the Government who put in £2 million to be matched by the private sector. This is to undertake approximately 25 schemes in areas where it is essential to get a modicum of improvement to housing in the locality to show what can be done on a partnership basis.
Next there is Neighbourhood Energy Action, another voluntary initiative in which I am also involved, which is currently insulating 300,000 homes a year for low income households, particularly for the elderly. We know the repeated sad statistics we have every winter; the problem of health for the elderly caused by extreme winter weather. I am glad to say that the Government announced this afternoon in answer to a Question in another place that it is their intention to continue to support this scheme and indeed to expand it. I am very glad to hear that, because it looks as though we might be able to build up the number to something like 500,000 per annum. But I should explain that our estimate is that there are something like 7 million households in this category to go for, so there is still a long way to go.
Finally, I should refer to the multiplicity of inner city initiatives. I shall not go into those in detail, but obviously they would have their impact one way or another on housing. So we have a variety of things being done. But the question is are they enough? Do they add up to enough, bearing in mind the enormous size of the problem in monetary terms—no less than £45 billion? It is difficult to reconcile the magnitude of the problem with putting together all the initiatives I have outlined. It may of course come to more than appears on the surface.
I should like to complete this brief review of the situation by making two proposals. The first is this. I think it is indeed unfortunate that we are so out of date with our statistics. That we should in 1987 be referring back to the 1981 survey strikes me as being quite wrong. I wonder therefore whether, because of the importance of the question of the state and the condition of housing, we could not have an annual trend survey. I am sure it would be in the interest of government to show what is being done. It would be in the interest of all of us to have more up-to-date

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statistics, and then we could debate the matter to see whether or not more should be done in one year. As it is, we have to put these figures together from a multiciplicity of sources, starting from different bases, and a lot of it is guesswork. That is my first suggestion.
My second suggestion arises from the first. I am wondering whether there ought to be an attempt at an overall strategy to see whether these various initiatives, all of which are perfectly reasonable and need to be encouraged, tot up to the sort of combined effort that is required. If they do not, what other initiatives should be taken? I make those two very simple suggestions in the light of the size of the problem we have. We are all pleased that certain initiatives are being taken, but we must remain concerned whether they will cope with this problem, even over a long time. Surely what we must aim for in this country is to have adequate standards of housing for the people who live here. In particular we must make sure that people can afford to heat their homes reasonably and to have them adequately insulated. I should have thought that that should be a prime objective of any government.
7.27 p.m.
Lord Pitt of Hampstead: My Lords, I must apologise for not putting my name down, but I am only too pleased to support the noble Lord, Lord Ezra, in this Unstarred Question. I am sure the House is grateful to him for having put it down. I shall confine myself to speaking about London because the lack of progress made under the present Government in the repair and renovation of the housing stock is highlighted by the latest Greater London House Condition Survey. Therefore I support the point that the noble Lord has just made about our having an annual survey so that we can see what is what.
The Greater London House Condition Survey, which was published last month by the Association of Metropolitan Authorities, shows that as many as one in five homes in Greater London last year, 1986, lacked basic amenities, was unfit for habitation or required substantial renovation work. Despite a reduction since 1979–1 was glad the noble Lord admitted that—in the number of homes which are unfit or lack basic amenities, renovation work has barely kept pace with the deteriorating condition of London's housing. In fact the number of homes in London in serious disrepair has increased under the present Government and so has the outstanding repair bill.
The Government are reluctant to attempt any estimate of the level of investment required to maintain, let alone reverse, the rate of deterioration in the condition of the housing stock, because they wish to shift more responsibility on to individual owners to maintain their homes in good repair. In fact they are planning to restrict grant aid for the renovation of the private housing stock. This is quite a serious matter. The Government will not allow the owners of public sector properties—that is mainly the local authorities—to invest what they need to maintain their housing stock. This is part of the real problem; and owners in the private sector frequently cannot afford to invest what is necessary to repair or renovate their homes without grant-aid. And it is this grant-aid which the Government wish to restrict.
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This is clearly borne out by the results of the Greater London House Condition Survey, because, unsurprisingly, it shows that the poorest—and by that I mean elderly people, families on low incomes and unskilled workers—are the most likely to live in properties which arc in poor condition and they are the least likely to he able to afford the necessary repairs. That is the problem and that is the dilemma.
Only a small proportion of households living in unsatisfactory accommodation in London would he able to pay for the necessary repair and renovation work out of their income or savings. The repair costs of over half London's households exceed those households' average income. According to the survey, only one-fifth of households whose repair costs are over £5,300 have savings of over £5,000. The other four-fifths do not have them.
The clear implication is that if local authorities are forced to restrict further the improvement grant-aid it will hasten the deterioration in the condition of the housing stock and will increase the link—it is a very important and very worrying link—between poverty and poor housing conditions. Therefore if the Government are concerned to make progress on the repair and renovation of the housing stock they must be prepared to lift borrowing restrictions to enable local authorities to provide more grant-aid. In this small intervention of mine, all I am asking is that the Minister should assure the House that the Government are willing to do that.
7.33 p.m.
Baroness David: My Lords, we are very glad that the noble Lord, Lord Ezra, has asked this Question tonight. I suppose it would have been even more apt last week, which was National Housing Week; but we cannot always put Unstarred Questions when we want to. It is also very suitable that the noble Lord should be asking this Question, since he is president of the National Home Improvement Council, whose interesting report I received last Monday.
The noble Lord has described the scene extremely well. For our part, we fail totally to understand how the Government can sit by and watch the increasing dereliction and deterioration of the housing stock of this country. There is absolutely no doubt that the deterioration increases. The Government may be doing something, as the noble Lord, Lord Ezra, said, but they are not doing enough. Report after report has emphasised the appalling condition of the stock and the billions of pounds needed to stop the rot. But the Government fail to respond adequately and refuse even to allow local authorities to spend their own money, raised from council house sales. They are allowed to spend only 20 per cent. of that money each year.
It is small wonder that local authorities have some empty houses in their stock, because there is just not the money available to improve them. Even so, it is a fact that local authorities have a much smaller percentage of vacancies than either housing associations or the private sector—and government departments are the worst of all.
The 1981 House Condition Survey, as the noble Lord said, revealed that 4.3 million houses were either

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in such poor condition as to be unfit for human habitation or lacked basic amenities or required repairs costing £2,500 or more. The number of homes in serious disrepair had risen since 1976, when the previous survey took place, from 860,000 to 1,050,000. The Department of the Environment's own survey in 1985 revealed that public housing was in an advanced state of decay. That study estimated that over 3.8 million dwellings—84 per cent. of the stock—was considered to require expenditure totalling £18.84 billion at an average cost of £4,900 per dwelling. That is nearly double the cost per dwelling which was quoted in 1981.
As the noble Lord said, the Audit Commission, the Government's own watchdog, said that the backlog was growing at the rate of £900 million per annum. As an example, Birmingham will need 600 years at the present rate of progress to carry out the full modernisation of its traditional stock. It is interesting to note that despite £1,294 billion spent in urban aid since 1981—a figure the Minister may well quote in replying to this debate—the inner cities still present the most distressing examples of decline. One must remember, of course, the vast amount of rate support grant they have lost.
In February this year, as my noble friend Lord Pitt said, the AMA published the Greater London House Condition Survey, a London-wide survey of physical housing conditions, and a linked social survey. In addition, the boroughs of Barnet, Hammersmith and Fulham, Haringey and Islington had in-depth surveys carried out also covering physical and social conditions. Those who are interested in housing really should study them.
On the provisional results the report gave—I am referring to the Greater London report—it seems that there has been a significant reduction in the number of unfit properties and the number lacking the five basic amenities. But the main message is the very worrying trend of increasingly serious disrepair and the greater number of properties that will become unfit in the future. Both these trends, which are particularly prevalent in the private sector, demonstrate that the battle against unsatisfactory housing conditions must continue at an ever-increasing level if London's housing is to improve faster than it deteriorates. In fact, the forecast is very bad.
One of the most significant findings in the social survey is that the residents' perceptions of their own housing conditions are considerably more optimistic than those of qualified surveyors. A lot of people just do not realise how their health can be affected by damp, condensation, poor ventilation, and so on. Good insulation, which was again mentioned by the noble Lord and is most important for comfort, for energy conservation and saving people's fuel bills, is also not very often appreciated until it has been experienced.
On that subject, the cutting of the grant for home insulation so that it is available only to those on supplementary benefit seems to be one of the crazier economies this Government have made. Those on supplementary benefit may well find it difficult to find the percentage of the cost that they are being asked to pay. I ask the Minister what that percentage is to be, if
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it has been decided. Or have the Government seen the light and decided that they will not ask the recipients of supplementary benefit for any payment? If not, I suspect there is likely to be very little work done for the comfort of the poorest in our society or for the saving of their fuel costs.
The AMA has just finished its own update on the 1985 inquiry into the condition of local authority housing stock in England. The general point is that the housing stock in all tenures is deteriorating at a faster rate than it is being repaired or improved. The bill for local authority stock has gone up from £18·84 billion which was quoted in the 1985 inquiry, to between £21 billion and £22 billion; that is, up by £3 billion in a year. The results of the Greater London House Condition Survey, to which I have referred, confirm that the condition of the private sector stock, and the privately rented stock in particular, is worse than that of the public sector.
We expect this trend in London to be confirmed by the results of the 1986 English House Condition Survey, which I understand has now been completed by the DoE. I should like to ask the Minister whether this is so and, if so, will she tell us some of the provisional results of this survey when she replies and also when we can expect publication? I have given her warning of those questions.
I should also like to ask, as the noble Lord, Lord Ezra, has, that the local authority stock condition survey should be revised and reviewed on a regular annual basis. Can the Minister give us any assurance that that will be done? As I have said, the AMA in its up-date asked its members to complete the Summary Form A giving, on exactly the same definitions as used in the 1985 return, an account of the local authority's revised estimate for repair and maintenance expenditure of the housing in its stock. If the AMA can manage this useful and informative exercise, surely the DoE can.
So what are the Government going to do about this housing crisis in our country? New house building starts have gone down from a total of 275,000 in 1975 to 168,000 in 1985. Grants paid to private owners and tenants, where the greatest problems are, peaked in 1984 to 229,000 but were down to 138,000 in 1985. Why? What is the estimated figure for 1986 and what are the intentions? I suggest that a review of the grant system is long overdue and an increase in resources to meet a rising repair bill is needed now more than ever.
The Minister may tell us that the local authority capital housing programme has gone up from £2·324 billion in 1985–86, to £2·532 billion in 1986–87, to £2·922 billion in 1987–88. But the HIP allocation—and that is what is particularly important in the light of the Question of the noble Lord, Lord Ezra—has gone down from £1·65 billion in 1985–86, to £1·465 billion in 1986–87, to £1·366 billion in 1987–88—£300,000 down in the two years.
The important point—I have mentioned it before and I intend to mention it again—is that the Government hold back local authorities' accumulated receipts and will not let them spend 80 per cent. of them. That hold back has gone up in cash terms from £0·355 billion in 1985–86, to £0·78 billion in 1986–87, to £1·24 billion in 1987–88. It is absolute nonsense.

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Can the Government change their dogmatic mind and let the authorities spend what is their money on retrieving the truly devastating situation of housing disrepair and housing shortage in our country? It is people who are suffering—from homelessness, from appalling and very costly bed and breakfast accommodation and from inadequate and ill-maintained homes. After all, a decent home is the most basic need and it is what hundreds of thousands of our fellow citizens do not have. When will the Government accept this and do something constructive about it?
7.43 p.m.
Baroness Hooper: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Ezra, has raised a matter of continuing and considerable importance, and I am most grateful to him for putting the Question so positively in asking, in effect, for a progress report on the repair and renovation of the housing stock. One of the vital things to remember about the housing stock is that it is constantly changing, changing in response to changes in demand, in living patterns and in expectations. All this is a perfectly healthy sign of a vigorous market.
Added to this is what we might call the "life-cycle" of each house or building. From the day that it is completed, a house is subject to a constant onslaught from the wind and the weather as well as from its occupants. This natural wear and tear means that the house and all its elements—bricks, mortar, tiles and slates—gradually deteriorate and without regular maintenance will eventually have to be replaced. We need to bear all these processes in mind when we come to look at the condition of the housing stock and the progress being made in its repair and renovation.
It seems to be fashionable at the moment to claim that the housing stock overall is getting worse, that more and more houses are falling into disrepair faster than ever before. Indeed those suggestions have been made again this evening. No doubt there are houses which are getting worse, just as there are houses which are being improved. But to understand the overall effect of all the changes taking place in the housing stock we need to compare its condition now with its condition in the past. This brings me to one of the reasons for carrying out the quinquennial English House Condition Survey to which the noble Lord, Lord Ezra, drew our attention in his opening remarks.
The latest survey, which began last September, is three times as large as the previous survey in 1981. This will give us more accurate data than previous surveys on each separate region and on the local authority housing stock. The survey covers housing of all ages. The surveyors look at the extent of disrepair, fitness for human habitation and the presence or absence of basic amenities and other aspects of stock condition. The survey will measure condition on a comparable basis across the whole stock. In addition, because the 1986 survey has gone back and resurveyed the dwellings in the 1981 survey, we shall be able to make an assessment of the changes that have taken place during those five years.
The field work for the physical survey and the interviews have all been completed and the pilot stage of a supplementary survey collecting information from local authorities on their improvement activities
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is currently in progress. I believe that it was on this supplementary survey that the noble Baroness, Lady David, asked for some additional specific information. This supplementary survey of the local authority stock is planned for this summer to provide more detail on this sector, and analysis of the results is likely to take some time. So it will not be possible to publish a report on this before next year.
The noble Lord, Lord Ezra, suggested in this respect that not only should the Government commit themselves to a five-yearly survey but that more should be done to collect data in between. I believe that he called it an annual trend survey. We fully recognise the importance of collecting reliable, comprehensive data on house condition, and I can confirm that the Government will wish to continue to collect the information needed to help inform their decisions. But whether this will always and necessarily be in the present form of five-yearly surveys I cannot say.
But there is a problem in trying to collect information on house condition too frequently. Real changes in condition cannot reliably be measured at intervals of less than about five years, and if we conducted annual surveys, for example, it would be difficult to disentangle changes arising from variability between surveyors from those representing a real change in condition. We also have to recognise the considerable input of resources within the department needed to mount a survey of over 30,000 homes throughout England.
The noble Lord, Lord Pitt of Hampstead, referred to the Greater London House Condition Survey and the results published at the beginning of last month. The picture on this is not all gloom. There was a small increase in the number of homes in disrepair, which rose by 4 per cent., and there is no room for complacency. But there were, nevertheless, some encouraging results. Overall housing conditions in London were shown to improve between 1979 and 1985. There were substantial falls in the number of homes which were unfit for human habitation and the numbers which lacked basic amenities. They decreased by 41 per cent. and 57 per cent. respectively.
But of course action on the housing stock does not wait on survey results. As has been said, local authorities are spending over £2½ billion on the maintenance and renovation of their own stock. They are also spending over £500 million on the private stock through improvement grants and other forms of action, while owners themselves are spending far greater sums of around £10 billion on the repair, maintenance and improvement of their homes. An enormous amount is therefore being done, to which I shall now turn in a little more detail.
The public sector has a particular responsibility for its own stock. It is not only the owner, but also the landlord. Most of this stock has now been in use for 30 years or more. In many cases houses will have received little investment since they were built and in some cases it seems that properties have not even received adequate day-to-day maintenance. We have encouraged authorities to consider carefully the maintenance and renovation needs of their stock and to develop proper programmes for carrying out the work needed.

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I know that many authorities are now carrying out systematic surveys of their own stock and considering their priorities for action. We are helping by publishing advice from the Building Research Establishment on ways of addressing some of the more difficult technical problems that authorities face, particularly with non-traditional forms of construction.
Our Estate Action Team is visiting authorities to discuss innovative approaches to tackling rundown and problem estates, involving new approaches to tenant consultation and management as well as investment in physical changes. We have increased the resources available to local authorities for investment in housing in two successive years and I am glad to say that over 50 per cent. of this investment now goes toward the renovation of authorities' own stock, compared with less than 30 per cent. in 1979. The Government believe that this proportion could increase still further.
The primary responsibility for private housing, on the other hand, rests with the owners. This is not our view alone. It is the view of all those who spend such large sums on their homes. Clearly, many houses which deteriorate over time or because they are neglected are rescued and repaired privately. Many first-time buyers, for example, will take on and do up a house which needs improvement and is therefore cheap. They can then sell on at a higher price. We can rely on the workings of the housing market to keep this cycle going.
But sometimes the cycle breaks down. The owner or occupier cannot afford the work that needs to be done. Then there is a role for grant aid. Since 1979, local authorities have given more than one million home improvement grants worth more than £3 billion. Levels of grant expenditure are no longer at the peak levels which prevailed at the time of the special arrangements for 1982–83 and 1983–84. But they are still at very high levels, with perhaps £400 million spent in this last year alone. Possibly that will go some way to reassuring the noble Lord, Lord Pitt, on that particular point.
In answer to the suggestions that all would be well if the Government made more money available, I must emphasise that we are already making more money available for investment. Gross provision for local authority investment in housing has been increased for the second successive year. But it is still essential that we control local authority spending as a whole, as it contributes directly to the PSBR. We estimate that more than half of authorities' housing spending this year will be funded from capital receipts. If we increased the prescribed proportion of capital receipts, less would be available for HIP allocations. That would simply result in a different distribution of spending powers within the given total. It would divert resources away from some of the areas most in need of investment. Over time, authorities may use 100 per cent. of their receipts; the prescribed proportion simply controls the rate at which receipts are used.
Whatever the level of local authority spending, we want to see it being targeted where it will do the most good—helping people who otherwise could not afford to help themselves. That is why my honourable friend the Minister for Housing announced that he intended
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to change the way the Home Insulation Scheme works. Making more grants mandatory will not help to increase the rate of repair and improvement if it means that more grant money is given to people who do not really need it, leaving less for those who do. That does not seem to be the right answer.
The noble Baroness, Lady David, raised a specific question on that point concerning the scheme announced by my honourable friend the Minister for Housing, Urban Affairs and Construction in December of last year. The scheme proposed that the general rate of grant of 66 per cent. should be withdrawn. However, it proposed that a 90 per cent. grant would be extended to all householders who are in receipt of housing benefit or supplementary benefit. He said at that time that the changes would be introduced next year. Therefore, the new scheme will be laid before Parliament in due course. The details of the administration of the materials payment are still being worked out in consultation with the MSC and NEA. We expect that the average householder will pay a contribution of about £5. NEA is considering how to help clients who are genuinely unable to afford even that small amount.
On the subject of home insulation and draught-proofing, I was happy that the noble Lord, Lord Ezra, felt able to give a welcome to the announcement by my honourable friend on draught-proofing which was made today in another place. We keep the home improvement grant system under review to see what can be done to make it responsive to problems which emerge. Your Lordships will recollect that we have taken power in the Housing and Planning Act 1986 to introduce a new type of grant to assist with works to the common parts—the roof and shared areas—of blocks of flats. In particular, long leaseholders can be faced with very heavy repair bills and we thought it right that they too should be able to get help.
Local authorities continue to take an active role in the renewal and regeneration of whole areas of rundown private housing. Concentrating grant and other resources, both public and private, in housing action areas and general improvement areas remains an effective way of targeting help to those who need it most. Apart from the higher levels of grant which are available, authorities have been able to benefit from the provisions we made in 1982 to encourage the coordinated repair of whole blocks of dwellings. More than 100 such "enveloping" schemes have now been approved, covering more than 10,000 dwellings in 14 authorities. Their impact locally has invariably been beneficial, and, when used sensibly with other powers, can help transform an area's prospects.
A new initiative on agency services, announced by my honourable friend the Minister for Housing, Urban Affairs and Construction in November last year, brings together several strands of improvement policy. Agency services are run by a range of public and private sector bodies and they offer help to people to recognise, carry out and finance works to their own home. Some deal mainly with grant-aided work; others go wider and arrange packages of loan finance; some concentrate on small-scale work, perhaps done by their own teams of workers. These organisations provide a valuable service to their clients. But they can also help local authorities to make the best use of their

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resources for private sector improvement. Agency services can sort out the most appropriate finance package for their clients, identify those in most need of grant and ensure that only reliable builders are used.
We wish to see an expansion of these services. To this end, we are to meet half the £6 million costs of establishing 50 new schemes over the next year or so in the private and voluntary sectors. Half of these schemes are to be set up by the National Home Improvement Council—of which the noble Lord, Lord Ezra, is the distinguished president—as a further stage in the development of its neighbourhood revitalisation service initiative. I expect the first of these new schemes to be announced soon after Easter. A further 25 schemes will be helped through Care and Repair Ltd. These will concentrate especially on the needs of elderly people, enabling them to stay in their own homes in comfort and dignity. Funding for nine individual schemes has already been agreed, and a start made on the ground. And the Anchor Housing Trust will shortly announce plans for more of their successful Staying Put schemes. Clearly schemes of this sort are responding to a widespread need, and the Government expect the private sector, with some encouragement, to play their part.
I have tried to outline the many different ways in which the renovation of stock is being tackled. The noble Lord, Lord Ezra, suggested that we needed an overall strategy for the future. We are giving further consideration to possible legislation in the light of comments received on our Green Paper. We remain committed to the idea of attracting more private finance into home improvement, making sure we get good value from it and to devising a grant system which is simpler and fairer and which targets help where it is most needed.
Some of the steps which we are now taking will help us to move in that direction. The results of the 1986 English House Condition Survey will provide us with more information to form the basis of our policies. Agency services are a good example of what we want to do. So too is the work being done by organisations such as the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors to help owners ensure that the very large sums of private money being spent are used in the most sensible way.
A further step is to see that people choose and use reliable builders and contractors to carry out work. The Office of Fair Trading has already produced a booklet called Seven Golden Rules to help people select someone who will do a good job of work and give value for money, and the working party set up by my honourable friend to consider all aspects of small building work will be looking at what more can be done to curb the activities of so-called "cowboy" builders and improve the quality of work carried out.
We believe that there is still scope for increasing the amount of privately financed work. A survey undertaken last year for the Building Societies Association showed that two-thirds of improvement and repair works were paid for from savings and income. That may be a tribute to the thrift of home owners, but it also suggests that many people are not always aware that the resources locked up in their homes can be tapped to secure borrowing to do essential repair and improvement or simply to make
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the house a comfortable place to live, especially for an elderly person. The financial institutions have an important role to play in developing different loan packages to suit people's varying needs and circumstances. As well as the usual personal loans and mortgage advances, there has been growth of "maturity lending", which involves interest-only payments. I hope we shall see other types of loan which can help people on low incomes who nonetheless wish to use the equity available in their home.
What of the role of local authorities? For the public sector stock they will need to work increasingly in co-operation with the private sector and develop new approaches to the management of their estates. Sensitive locally-based management is needed if repair and improvement programmes are to be successful. This may mean devolving management to a tenant's co-operative or even to an outside organisation such as a housing association, provided of course that the tenants agree. Here again our Estate Action Team is offering ideas and advice. A number of schemes are already under way involving refurbishment of local authority housing by private firms for sale or for rent, or a mixture of the two.
For private sector housing, local authorities need to develop increasing contacts with the building societies and other financial institutions to promote privately financed renovation wherever this is appropriate. There will still he a role for traditional forms of public intervention, but this will be where it is clear that the private sector cannot cope unaided. There local authorities will need to plan and target their spending to make the maximum impact and to raise confidence in run-down areas so that private investment will return.
I have been rather lengthy in responding to the debate, but it will be clear from what I have said that much worthwhile work is being undertaken to maintain and enhance this country's housing stock. This can be successful only if it is based on co-operation: co-operation among central government and local government, the financial institutions, the construction industry and home owners. We shall continue to encourage all of these to play their part.

Liverpool Exchange Bill [H.L.]
Reported from the Unopposed Bill Committee with amendments.

Reverter of Sites Bill [H.L.]
Returned from the Commons agreed to.
House adjourned at four minutes past eight o'clock.